Gaming - Page 234

In the vast and immersive world of gaming, the allure of experiencing your favorite games in a real-world setting is an enticing prospect. Gamers are not just confined to their consoles and PCs; many seek out the ultimate gaming experiences in vibrant cities around the globe. These destinations offer unique cultural experiences, state-of-the-art gaming centers, and events that bring virtual adventures to life. If you're looking to level up your gaming journey, here are the top gaming destinations you should consider.

Gaming transcends mere entertainment; it's a form of art, a competitive sport, and a way to connect with people worldwide. The thrill of stepping into different worlds, mastering complex challenges, and competing with others is a universal experience. This passion for gaming is mirrored in various cities that have embraced the gaming culture, offering everything from massive eSports arenas to themed cafes and gaming conventions.

Exploring these cities not only enriches your gaming experience but also allows you to delve into the local gaming culture, meet like-minded enthusiasts, and participate in events that can only be experienced in those locales. Let's take a tour of some of the top gaming hotspots around the world.

Members of SAG-AFTRA's video games branch are advised to strike as negotiations for AI protections hit a wall.

Video game voice and motion-capture actors represented by SAG-AFTRA are called upon to strike, a new announcement has confirmed. The strike comes after 1 1/2 years of negotiations with billion-dollar publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts for guaranteed protections against AI in their contract policies--e.g. how voice and body image captures are used in proprietary AI technologies. The strike will start on July 26 at 12:01am.

"Eighteen months of negotiations have shown us that our employers are not interested in fair, reasonable A.I. protections, but rather flagrant exploitation," Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee Chair Sarah Elmaleh said in the press release.

A full year after Microsoft acquired Activision-Blizzard for $70 billion, and months after Microsoft laid off 1,900 workers across all studios, a core group of Blizzard developers has voted to unionize in an effort to push back against the volatile video games market.

After years of breakout revenues and big spending, the global interactive entertainment industry is currently contracting and pulling back into itself. The goal is simple: Publishers want to reduce costs amid the uncertain economic climate that has driven up basic costs of living for their workers. This has led to mass layoffs across the industry, with tens of thousands of jobs and positions being eliminated.

Amid the tumult, some of the biggest games teams are unionizing in a bid to help bring more stability and bargaining power to the creatives of the $180 billion games market. Yesterday, the Communication Workers of America (CWA) announced that Blizzard's World of Warcraft team has unionized, with over 500 developers voting to form the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild - CWA Union (WoWGG-CWA) union.

Netflix is working on dozens of new games, but a good portion of them will be "interactive" experiences like Black Mirror's Bandersnatch and Bear Grylls' You vs Wild.

In a bid to engage its core subscribers, Netflix has expanded into gaming, going so far as to acquire whole game studios and develop first-party titles for its service. Right now the gaming initiative is mostly limited to mobile devices, with Netflix even securing the immensely popular Grand Theft Auto franchise for release onto mobile, but the company has developed what it calls "interactive narrative experiences" that are playable on TVs--these vary from basic trivia games to choose-your-own-adventure scripted content.

Now the company has given a quick update on where its gaming plans currently stand. Netflix is making/securing over 80 games right now, but from the sound of it, the bulk of these titles should be the aforementioned interactive experiences that tie viewers to their favorite Netflix IPs.

Microsoft is aiming for a new cloud-based tier for Xbox Game Pass, sources tell Windows Central's Jez Corden.

Reports indicate that Microsoft may be considering, working on and/or developing a standalone Xbox Cloud Gaming tier as part of its digital subscription aspirations. Sources have told Windows Central that the trillion-dollar firm could be readying such an offering in its Xbox Game Pass subscription in an effort to reach consumers more broadly. The big selling point would be that users would not have to buy an Xbox console in order to play games--and this could help Microsoft reduce its unprofitable console production cycles.

Leaked documents from the FTC v Microsoft trial show that the company is aiming to considerably grow its Xbox Game Pass subscription base to 110 million subscribers by 2030. Cloud is expected to be a big contributor to this growth with 29% of the sum, or about 32 million subscribers.

Capcom acknowledges that digital delivery has helped offset the high risk factors of the games industry through cost reduction and higher volume of readily-available game sales.

Consumers have mostly shifted towards digital game sales through a combination of convenience and insistence among publishers; games companies can pull specific levers through digital distribution, including frequent sales and discounts that aren't available through traditional retail channels.

This tactic has worked very well for most of gaming's biggest players, including Japanese publisher Capcom, who has achieved consecutive year-over-year operating profit growth for 10 years running. The company attributes these results in part to the digital landscape, which has helped Capcom lower the risk factors and general volatility that it used to face across international markets.

While publishers ultimately call the shots with pricing schemes and delivery, consumers are able to effect change through one of the most powerful levers in the space: Review bombing.

Review bombing campaigns have proven to be one of the most effective ways to send a message to publishers. Billion-dollar titans like Sony Interactive Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and even Take-Two Interactive are not immune to mass negative feedback on public storefronts; these negative reviews are a kind of scarlet letter that deter players while sending shockwaves among shareholders. Bad reviews--whether it be on aggregators like Metacritic or the aforementioned Steam--are a clear red flag to investors, and can spook stakeholders into selling their stocks.

Two recent examples of mass review bombing effecting change come to mind: The disastrous PR nightmare of Helldivers II, and the more recent backlash against Apex Legends. Both of these games have contributing significantly to their respective publishers, with Helldivers II's amazing 12 million sales helping boost SIE's earnings at a critical point, and Apex Legends' revenues helping consistently drive EA's multi-billion dollar live service empire.

Electronic Arts and Respawn have reversed one of the most unpopular business decisions in recent memory.

A bit ago, Respawn revealed a new battle pass for Apex Legends, the live service FPS darling that has generated billions of revenue since launching in 2019. There was one big change to Season 22's battle pass: Gamers could no longer spend Apex Coins to get the premium battle pass. Instead, they'd have to shell out a flat $9.99 for S22's premium battle pass.

This predictably led to mass backlash among the Apex faithful. The push for heavier monetization comes at a retraction point in the games industry, with nearly every single video games company on the planet shrinking its employee base with mass layoffs in order to maximize revenues and profits. EA is no different--the company shed itself of thousands of workers despite making $7.1 billion in revenue in FY23; "During FY24, EA returned $1.505 billion to stockholders," reads the company's latest financial report.

As the games industry moves towards digital-based game sales, Japanese publisher Capcom has no plans to discontinue physical disc-based games any time soon.

While digital sales are taking over gaming, physical media remains an important part of the $180 billion interactive entertainment industry. Consumers still buy millions of discs a year at retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon, and publishers like Capcom, Electronic Arts, and even Sony Interactive Entertainment are still keen on producing disc-based games.

In a recent Q&A with shareholders, Japanese publisher Capcom was asked how the company plans to deal with the increasing digital-based needs of consumers. Capcom's answer was pretty clear-cut: The firm will continue delivering physical games as long as there is demand.

Support for AMD's FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) upscaling and Frame Generation technology is improving, thanks to the launch of FSR 3.1. The latest version of the technology brings notable improvements to FSR 2's image quality when upscaling alongside decoupling and improving Frame Generation. With FSR 3.1, GeForce RTX 20 and 30 Series owners can enable AMD's Frame Generation alongside NVIDIA DLSS upscaling, which is very cool to see.

FSR 3.1 support has arrived in a handful of PlayStation PC games, including Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Including games with FSR 3 and FSR 3.1 and those coming soon, over 60 titles support AMD's DLSS alternative. Hundreds if you count games with FSR 2 upscaling.

With that, we've compiled a handy list, accurate as of July 2024, of all known games with FSR support, available now and coming soon, broken down into each version. Let's get to it.

One of the rarest Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games of all time is currently up for auction, with the current bid over at auction house Goldwin sitting on a whopping $130,000. The game in question is the 1990 Nintendo World Championships cartridge, created by Nintendo America and given out to 26 lucky readers of the Nintendo Power magazine.

Yeah, with only 26 produced, this gold-colored cartridge is legendary - and the one going up for auction comes from Patrick King of Cheyenne, who can be found in Nintendo Power #18 from 1990. The game and cartridge were created to commemorate the 1990 Nintendo World Championships and contain specialized time-limited versions of Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, Tetris, and other games. The visible dip switch on the front allows the time to be adjusted.

Nintendo created 350 gray-colored cartridges for the time-trial speedrunning competition. However, these limited gold versions are highly sought after - making this a rare piece of videogame history that rarely shows up in this form.

AMD has launched FLM or Frame Latency Meter for all GPUs and PC gamers who want to measure the input response time when playing games with mouse movement - like first-person shooters. According to AMD, FLM "measures the entire latency of the mouse response time, from the moment the mouse is moved to the moment the frame is displayed on the screen."

With detailed statistics for latency and "effective framerate" measurements, FLM is a great tool for optimizing systems or pinpointing potential bottlenecks. Unlike competing measurement tools, FLM doesn't use an FPS muzzle flash to determine or measure latency, which means the app can work autonomously, collecting an "unlimited number of measurement samples" for higher accuracy.

FLM works by continuously capturing frames and comparing each frame to the previous one within the selected region. It then generates a mouse movement event (AMD describes it as a standard Windows function) and waits for the "frame contents to change." It is pretty straightforward, but with this data, it can determine overall input latency with a high degree of accuracy.

Final Fantasy XIV Online: Dawntrail is the latest expansion for Square Enix's long-running and popular MMO. Danwtrail introduces the game's first major graphical update and overhaul. The update includes DLSS 2 Super Resolution upscaling support to improve performance for all GeForce RTX owners without sacrificing visual fidelity.

The Final Fantasy XIV Online: Dawntrail official benchmark is available as a standalone app for those interested in seeing how it looks. The benchmark tool also offers an option for players to create a character to be featured in the benchmark's real-time cinematic sequences and one for existing players to import their own Final Fantasy XIV Online character. Very cool.

Naturally, the Dawntrail expansion includes all the new zones, increased level cap, new dungeons, and other goodness expected. In other DLSS news this week, Capcom's Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess has launched with DLSS 3 Frame Generation and Reflex support.

Overwatch 2 has just received its very first Mythic weapon skin, with Blizzard introducing the new Bound Demon Mythic Weapon Skin for Reinhardt. Check it out:

This isn't just a regular skin, but the Bound Demon Mythic Weapon Skin reacts to every movement in the game, where the skin comes alive as you battle through the front lines. It doesn't matter if you're charging into battle, or holding the line swinging your big boy axe, Reinhardt's new Bound Demon Mythic Weapon Skin reacts to your every attack.

I've got to admit, the reactive-powered Bound Demon Mythic Weapon Skin for Reinhardt sounds so damn cool, but the price that Blizzard is charging is out of control. The new Bound Demon Mythic Weapon Skin in base Mythic skin form costs 50 Mythic Shards, which is $39.99.

Forza Motorsport launched in 2023 for PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles, marking the long-running racing series' first 'next-gen' entry built with advanced visuals on a new engine with real-time ray-tracing. However, the launch-day version did not match pre-release footage or screenshots, and many concluded that the game's visuals were downgraded.

A new mod for the game reinforces this. It takes files from an unused folder to replace ones in the 'Ultra' visual mode folder to add ray-traced global illumination or RTGI to the game, increase the level of detail, expand the draw distance, and turn flat ground textures into full 3D grass with foliage. It's not so much a mod that it is a copy-paste.

As detailed in a new video by Digital Foundry, the hidden visual mode offers impressive upgrades to the game's appearance, with more realistic lighting that adds depth and detail to environments.

EA Sports College Football 25 is a huge success with multiple millions of players buying into the lucrative early access period.

If recent trends are any indication, gaming giant Electronic Arts might deliver stellar Q2'25 numbers. According to a recent press release, EA's latest sports sensation College Football 25 has pulled in 2.2 million unique players in the 3-day period from early access launch on July 16 to July 19.

"Football fans have jumped at the chance to get in the game and play as their favorite college teams. 2.2 million unique players played College Football 25 during Early Access, with an additional 600,000 playing via the EA Play trial," reads the press release.

Microsoft plans to release Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 on Xbox Game Pass in a matter of days, sources have told multiple trusted media.

The first Call of Duty is coming to Xbox Game Pass this week--Modern Warfare 3 is set to launch on Game Pass on July 24, sources have told Insider Gaming, Windows Central's Jez Corden, notable leaker eXtas1s, and the Xbox Era podcast.

The timing here is curious, especially within the context of 2023's FTC v. Microsoft federal trial. If Modern Warfare 3 does indeed drop on Game Pass this week, it will arrive shortly after a price hike for the Xbox Game Pass subscription service. Microsoft recently announced it would be raising the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $16.99 per month to $19.99 per month, a +17% increase ($3).

EA's latest College Football 25 has exploded on the console gaming charts, topping the PlayStation Store's best-sellers just days after release.

After 12 years, the triumphant return of collegiate football is here with EA Sports' College Football 25. The sports sensation has taken over gaming's largest console storefront, becoming #1 in both in the top 25 best-sellers and top 25 most-downloaded games on the PlayStation Store for July 21, 2024.

The trend is eye-opening as College Football 25 has pushed Fortnite out of the top spot on the PS Store--typically Epic's battle royale commands the #1 spot thanks to Fortnite's microtransactions. EA's dominance doesn't just end with the latest game, though: Among publishers, EA had 5 games on the top 25 best-sellers list, beating out Sony Interactive Entertainment, Take-Two Interactive, and Microsoft. EA also had multiple higher-priced premium games including College Football 25 ($70), FC24 ($70), FC25 Ultimate Edition ($100), and Madden NFL25 ($100).

It looks like No Man's Sky will be among the first games to support Sony's mid-gen PlayStation 5 Pro console at launch, new datamined information indicates.

References to Sony's upcoming PS5 Pro console have been found in No Man's Sky's latest World's Beyond update. The PS5 Pro's codename, Trinity, was spotted as a new graphical preset within the space sim's source code. The interesting tidbit was uncovered by dataminers and shared via No Man's Sky modder and reverse-engineering specialist @bomber_that on Twitter.

"Graphics Preset Options for "Trinity", the apparent internal codename for the PS5 Pro. Standard PS5 Graphics Preset for comparison," the modder wrote.

GeForce NOW, NVIDIA's impressive cloud gaming service, is having a Summer Sale. During the sale, you can save 50% on Premium Memberships across Monthly and 6 Month subscriptions. This brings the Priority Membership price down to $4.99 a month or just $24.99 for six months, and the Ultimate Membership down to $9.99 a month or $49.99 for six months. The deal is available from now until August 18.

GeForce NOW's Ultimate tier gives gamers exclusive access to GeForce RTX 4080-powered servers where they can game for up to 8 hours on an RTX 4080 in 4K up to 240 FPS with DLSS, Reflex, Ray-Tracing, Frame Generation, and G-SYNC enabled. By comparison, the Priority tier offers 1080p 60FPS gaming in 6-hour sessions with access to RTX technologies.

With Xbox Game Pass increasing its prices alongside those of several non-gaming-related subscription services, it's great to see GeForce NOW discounted like this. 50% off is hard to pass up!