Gaming - Page 242

In a new interview with Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, we get to find out about the PC version of GTA 6... but we're also teased with GTA 7, which is probably another 10+ years away.

The interview took place during the TD Cowen 52nd Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, the host of TD Cowen estimated that since its launch, GTA V has made $10 billion in bookings. Zelnick agreed, saying it was close, adding it's "simple math," and then into GTA 6.

Zelnick was asked: "When you think about GTA VI and what you've seen they're working on, are you confident that this franchise can take another leap forward in terms of its revenue and its reach?" In response, the Take-Two CEO said: "The world is a different place than when we did launch GTA V. What came before at that point was IV, we had some downloadable add-on content, there was no online version".

The GeForce Rewards program is part of the GeForce Experience and NVIDIA App (which is still in Beta), and on June 4, if you log in, you'll be able to redeem three months of PC Game Pass. This is the Windows PC version of the popular Xbox Game Pass subscription service, which offers gamers access to a library of over 130 games to download and play.

PC Game Pass includes all first-party Xbox games, including the recently released Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, which looks incredible when running on a high-end GeForce rig. You've also got access to hits like Starfield, Forza Motorsport, Palworld, and more.

This free PC Game Pass access deal also applies to GeForce NOW subscribers, NVIDIA's cloud gaming platform that lets you stream PC games to any device with low latency and up to GeForce RTX 4080 levels of visual fiedlity. The PC Game Pass GeForce Reward starts on June 4, and here's how you claim it.

DLSS Ray Reconstruction, supported by all GeForce RTX GPUs, improves the image quality of ray-traced reflections and lighting with AI. The technology will be available in Star Wars Outlaws, which launches on August 30th. It adds detail and delivers a crisper image.

This is going to be a treat for Star Wars fans with GeForce RTX hardware, as the game features a range of RT effects, including ray-traced reflections, ray-traced shadows, NVIDIA RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI), and ray-traced global illumination. The game looks stunning with max settings and DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction, improving the image quality.

Star Wars Outlaws supports the entire line-up of in-game RTX technologies, including NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation (this is limited to the GeForce RTX 40 Series) and NVIDIA Reflex latency reduction. Plus, it will launch into GeForce NOW with GeForce NOW Ultimate subscribers getting access to all high-end RT visual features, including DLSS 3.5.

RTX Remix is designed to be a modding platform that enables the remastering of classic Direct X and Direct 9 games, and at Computex 2024 NVIDIA announced it was going open-source.

Remastered titles arrive with ray-tracing effects for a significant graphical improvement, NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 for a boost to performance, and various other upgrades. The remastering is achieved through the RTX Remix Toolkit app, which allows modders to make changes to game assets and materials. Additionally, NVIDIA announced it made RTX Remix Runtime open source last year, which gave modders the ability to expand game compatibility and rendering capabilities.

NVIDIA has now announced it will be making the RTX Remix Toolkit open source to further give customization power to modders. More specifically, modders will now be able to streamline how assets are changed and how scenes are altered. Additionally, NVIDIA has updated the list of supported file formats for RTX Remix's asset ingestor, while also adding to the RTX Remix's AI Texture Tools.

At Computex last year, NVIDIA showcased a glimpse at the future of gaming with a real-time NVIDIA ACE demonstration of a cyberpunk-style game scenario in which you could fully interact (with voice) with an AI-driven NPC to ask narrative-specific questions or anything else and get dynamic responses.

With speech recognition and Audio2Face animation, the technology has evolved and become more impressive in the following months. At Computex 2024, NVIDIA is presenting game-specific AI technology called Project G-Assist, an "RTX-powered AI assistant technology demo that provides context-aware help for PC games and apps."

How this works is fascinating. Take a game like ARK: Survival Ascended; you can ask for help on where to find resources and offer some tips on building the perfect base and how to overcome a boss or enemy. You can go beyond that and ask Project G-Assist to help optimize the game's settings so you can hit a steady 60 FPS. Very cool.

Dataminers don't let anything scrape by unnoticed and that's exactly what happened in the latest Activision release for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone.

The Season 4 update was rolled out to the two aforementioned titles and dataminers dug through all of the files looking for clues about the upcoming and highly anticipated, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. The dataminers discovered some files that appear to reveal a major aspect regarding the launch of upcoming title, and that is Black Ops 6 supposedly releasing on multiple generations via a "cross-gen bundle".

It should be noted there isn't anything confirming if this bundle is real or not, but let's assume it is for a second. If there is a cross-gen bundle purchasable at launch it will mean Activision will be releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. If true, it wouldn't make it the first time this has happened for the Call of Duty franchise, as Modern Warfare 3 also released with a cross-gen bundle. So, it's not completely out of the ordinary.

Sony has officially publicly apologized to Neil Druckmann, the studio head at Naughty Dog for misrepresenting his comments in a recent interview.

The interview with the boss of Naughty Dog, the studio behind extremely successful The Last of Us franchise, was published by Sony and it depicts Druckmann praising the explosion of AI tools as it will enable developers to push the boundaries of storytelling in games. Additionally, Sony's interview depicted Druckmann teasing the studio's next project, with the studio head reportedly saying it "could redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming."

However, not too long after the interview went live Druckmann took to his personal X account to clarify his statements, saying the comment about redefining perceptions of gaming was "not quite what I said." Druckmann didn't appear angry at the misrepresentation, writing, "In editing my rambling answers in my recent interview with Sony, some of my words, context, and intent were unfortunately lost." While Druckmann certainly took the diplomatic and admirable stance on his words being misconstrued, it appears he has downplayed Sony's violation.

Many gamers have fully adopted digital libraries of the titles they have purchased whether by choice or by need, and one of the most popular services of these is Valve's Steam client.

Steam is easily the most-popular games library for PC gaming, with millions of gamers using the service to access hundreds, or even thousands of games. Many PC gamers may have believed that their digital collection of games would be transferable to a loved one, especially considering the amount of money that some accounts have poured into collecting games. However, that isn't the case - even in the event of the account holder dying.

A user on ResetEra posted a screenshot of the reply they received from Steam support querying about this very topic. A representative from Valve replied to the user informing them Steam accounts and the games linked to them are unfortunately "non-transferable". Moreover, the representative informed the user that Steam is unable to provide access to an account or merge its contents with another. Furthermore, the Steam representative stated that even if the Steam account is outlined in a will it still won't be transferable.

Sony's PlayStation 4 is doing some heavy lifting for Gen9, and is helping prop up and accelerate spending across the new generation.

Sony Interactive Entertainment recently held their annual state of the business presentation, complete with eye-opening figures, lots of slides, and discussions about the future of PlayStation. The slide deck highlighted various operating metrics like revenue, profit, and console user base numbers.

Interestingly enough, the PS4 still accounts for 50% of total monthly active consoles, or 49 million gamers, meaning about half of all PlayStation console users are still playing on PS4 hardware. The PS5 beats the PS4 in terms of total gameplay hours, though, clocking in 1 billion more hours than its predecessor. This speaks volumes as to what kind of games that PS5 owners are playing, and that they are more engaged for longer periods of time.

Player engagement across the Fallout franchise has skyrocketed thanks to the Amazon TV show's success.

In April, Amazon, Kilter Films, and Bethesda taught an important lesson on how to properly do a video game adaptation. The Fallout TV show was a huge hit, attracting 65 million viewers (32% of all Prime subscribers) in little over two weeks.

Bethesda was able to effectively capitalize on this popularity by having a multitude of games at the ready for viewers to buy so that they can continue their Fallout adventures after watching the show. Amazon and Bethesda went one step farther by giving away free copies of Fallout 76 to all Amazon Prime subscribers--it's the live service multiplayer game with microtransactions and its own subscription.

Sony's once-console exclusive God of War Ragnarok is coming to PC, but it'll apparently have a controversial twist.

Today, Sony announced that God of War Ragnarok would drop September 19 on PC. The game's store page on Steam confirms that it'll require a PlayStation Network account in order to play--a move that caused quite significant controversy during the Helldivers II fiasco.

"PlayStation Network Account required, subject to the PlayStation Terms of Services and User Agreement," the page reads.

Microsoft has clarified how Call of Duty Black Ops 6 will release onto Game Pass, confirming that there won't be a special new Game Pass tier specifically for the mainline sequel.

Call of Duty is releasing onto a subscription for the first time ever. Black Ops 6 is slated as a day and date release on Xbox Game Pass, and contrary to our predictions, Microsoft won't be making a special new Game Pass membership option for the Call of Duty series.

"Upon launch, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be playable on Xbox and PC for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass for Console members," Microsoft told Eurogamer.

Sony has finally confirmed a release date for the highly anticipated PC release of God of War Ragnarok, the critically acclaimed sequel to the PlayStation classic that made its way to PC in 2022. God of War Ragnarok will be coming to PC on September 19, 2024, with developer Jetpack Interactive handling port duties alongside Sony's Santa Monica Studio.

God of War Ragnarok on PC is the full version of the game, with all post-launch updates, including the New Game+ mode and the Valhalla DLC. The trailer for the PC version showcases how the game will look on a high-end rig, delivering visuals that look even better than the game's PlayStation 5 version. It's impressive stuff, with crisp textures and environmental detail everywhere you look.

God of War Ragnarok on PC will support the latest upscaling technologies, including NVIDIA DLSS 3.7, AMD FSR 3.1, and Intel XeSS 3.1. This is excellent news for PC gamers; everyone can access performance-enhancing upscaling tech and frame generation.

Fallout 76 has amassed tons of new players on the heels of April's wildly successful Fallout TV show.

More than a month after the Fallout show's release, Fallout mania is still going strong. The games are racking up impressive player counts thanks to the marketing activations from the TV show push, and Fallout 76 in particular recently broke the 20 million lifetime players milestone.

That new figure is up substantially from 2022's previous number of 13.5 million lifetime players. Fallout 76 managed to tack-on 6.5 million more players from 2023 - May 2024, and a good portion of that was likely driven by the TV show an the fact that all Amazon Prime subscribers got a free copy of the game from Prime Gaming.

ZOTAC Technology is set to make a big splash at Computex 2024 with a range of new products and compact, all-in-one solutions for AI, gaming, and professionals. ZOTAC GAMING will be there with its latest lineup of discrete GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards. Demos will showcase full DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction ray tracing, AI-powered NPCs, generative tools, and even an AI chatbot.

However, for those who love PC gaming in all its forms, ZOTAC's most exciting announcement and reveal will be the new ZOTAC GAMING ZONE handheld, described as a "high-performance portable PC." The specs are a bit light, and all we have to go with is the teaser image you can see above - but we know one tasty little detail.

The ZOTAC GAMING ZONE PC gaming handheld will feature a 7-inch AMOLED multi-touch high-refresh-rate display. Actually, ZOTAC is teasing one other feature.

It took a minute, but AMD's FSR 3 Frame Generation is now available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles, with support added to EA and Ascendant Studios's first-person action game Immortals of Aveum. It's the first console game to support FSR 3 frame generation, a technology that inserts generated frames between natively rendered frames to boost performance.

The goal is to make a game feel like it's playing at 100+ FPS without impacting image quality or smoothness or adding tonnes of unwanted input lag. As part of their weekly podcast, the tech gurus at Digital Foundry have provided their initial impressions of FSR 3 on console - and they're mostly positive.

First up, performance. With an Xbox Series X playing a visually intensive sequence in the game with FSR 3 frame generation enabled and disabled, we see a performance increase from around 40-60 FPS to 80-100 FPS - a performance boost of 72% on average.

EA's annual racer, F1 24, is available today. The latest installment improves its realistic visuals and depiction of high-speed Formula 1 racing with multiple real-time ray-tracing effects. The F1 series has featured ray-traced reflections and ray-traced shadows for a few years now, but this year's addition of Ray-Traced Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination takes the game's lighting to a whole new level.

This more physically accurate and realistic version of global illumination produces a more lifelike image as light from natural and other sources reflects and bounces around from object to object. It's hardware intensive, doubly so when paired with RT reflections and shadows, so F1 24 supports DLSS 3 Super Resolution and Frame Generation to boost performance.

Partnering with NVIDIA, the official GeForce announcement for the game's release highlights the performance you can expect across a range of GeForce RTX 40 Series cards with DLSS 3 enabled and what you should expect with DLSS turned off. The results show that for F1 24 in 4K, with max settings and ray-tracing effects enabled, you'll need a GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER to hit an average frame rate of 61.1 FPS.

CD Projekt gives new updates on its new Witcher project.

Now that Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty is shipped out, CD Projekt is now full steam ahead on Polaris, their next big multi-game release. The Polish devs are working a new series of games set in the continuation of The Witcher universe, and the first game, Polaris, will kickstart an evolved saga for the landmark fantasy franchise.

While CD Projekt isn't yet ready to talk specifics, the company did confirm it most of its developers are attached to Polaris. The studio currently has 64% of its total workforce on Polaris, or 407 people, and CD Projekt is confident the game will enter principal development sometime in the latter half of 2024. This means the game will be in full production while CD Projekt also works on other games in parallel--titles like the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, Orion, and its new IP, Hadar.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 will release day one on Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft today announced.

It's official: Black Ops 6 is launching day one into Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft revealed the news ahead of its big Xbox showcase on June 9 at 1pm EST and confirmed multiple reports from The Wall Street Journal and Reuters in the process.

"We're excited to confirm that Game Pass members will be able to jump into Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6 on day one with Game Pass," Microsoft wrote on the Xbox Wire.

Total GTA franchise revenues have broken $9 billion since late 2013.

According to Take-Two Interactive's latest earnings report, Rockstar Games has generated over $9 billion in total revenue from the Grand Theft Auto series since GTA V's launch. Arranged figures indicate the mega-hit franchise has made cumulative earnings of $9.118 billion from GTA 5's original release in Q4'13 all the way through the end of March 2024.

These revenues include full game sales of GTA V across all 3 console generations, sales of the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition re-release from 2020, in-game purchases in GTA Online, and all other sales of previous games made available.