Gaming - Page 251

On the heels of the big new Amazon Prime adaptation, Fallout games are headlining Sony's PlayStation Plus subscription service.

Thanks to the new Fallout TV show, millions of people are talking about the series. People are also buying and playing the games en masse--much to Microsoft's delight. We've already seen Fallout games skyrocket on Steam and now the same thing is happening on PlayStation.

According to listings on the PlayStation 5 console, the Fallout games are among the most popular titles on PlayStation Plus in the United States. Fallout 4 headlines the top 10 list with the #1 spot, and Fallout 76 is close behind at #3.

Bethesda isn't done with Starfield yet, and there are some 'really good updates' planned for the sci-fi RPG which will be revealed soon enough.

That's the word from Bethesda's Todd Howard, in an interview with IGN that mostly focused on the currently very popular Fallout TV show (streaming on Amazon Prime Video).

The gaming side of the equation did come up in the interview, unsurprisingly, and indeed IGN questioned whether the success of the show on Prime might lead Bethesda to switch priorities and have Fallout 5 come out before Elder Scrolls VI.

Sony and Microsoft may be direct competitors, but sales charts also show just how mutualistic the two companies are.

If nothing else, the FTC v Microsoft trial in 2023 taught us one important lesson: PlayStation and Xbox are as cooperative as they are competitive. Microsoft depends heavily on Sony's storefront to sell its games, including mega-hits like Minecraft and Call of Duty, and Sony in turn welcomes Microsoft's revenue contribution. This cooperation has evolved now that Microsoft has broken first-party Xbox game exclusivity.

Microsoft has grown considerably now that it owns Activision Blizzard King, so by virtue of its sheer size, it's not really a surprise that its games now have a larger share and populate multiple charts. To get a better idea of both Xbox's size and its synergistic relationship with Sony, we can take a quick look at best-selling games on the PlayStation Store.

Earlier this week we got confirmed specifications on Sony's upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro, with many of the consoles innerworkings being revealed we learned Sony will be including a CPU with a 10% performance boost compared to the standard PS5. But what does this mean for gamers?

In a recent video by Digital Foundry, the gold-standard when it comes to reviewing gaming hardware and technology, a question was posed to the tech experts regarding the impact of the 10% CPU performance boost. The experts explained that a 10% increase in performance is likely to not be enough to enable developers to push CPU-bound titles from 30FPS to 40FPS, as the CPU would still need to require some headroom.

However, it's probable that 40FPS may be enabled for titles that already run at 30+FPS on the standard PS5. While the aforementioned may be an option for developers, Sony is pushing for higher visual fidelity over framerate, with an emphasis on raytracing. This means that developers will likely choose to go for better graphics than framerate. However, the upgraded CPU should offer better stability in 40FPS modes, but the number of games utilizing this mode may be very limited.

Just when you thought Elden Ring was hard enough, a gamer demonstrated his patience and skill at the FromSoftware title by tackling it from start to finish using just a single button and Morse code.

The persistence, patience and resilience of gamers never fails to impressive me, especially when a gamer decides to purposefully make the game they are playing harder than necessary to create a unique challenge. Twitch streamer Silithur embarked on one of these adventures and decided to test his patience in Elden Ring only equipped with a button, Morse code, and a dream of beating the entire game.

On April 13 Silithur achieved what he set out to do, defeating the Elden Boss and becoming an Elden Lord. Elden Ring has become somewhat of a benchmark for gamers wanting to challenge themselves, as Silithur isn't the first to tackle the difficult game in an unconventional way, as back in April another Twitch streamer and psychology graduate beat the game using nothing but a brain signal controller. Another gamer took on Elden Ring with a dance pad, beating it with sweet moves.

NVIDIA is working with the PC industry to create a new SFF gaming PC ecosystem that will be powered by "SFF Enthusiast GeForce" GPUs, which makes me think... could this be a huge test for a GeForce-powered console?

The new SFF Enthusiast GeForce GPU isn't going to be a new release, nor will it be some next-gen Blackwell-based Mini-ITX graphics card. What NVIDIA is doing here is working with AIB partners to get tiny GeForce RTX series GPUs, like the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060, into Mini-ITX systems... but what about monster GPUs?

NVIDIA's higher-end GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER and flagship RTX 4090 graphics cards will need a much bigger case, more cooling, and a beefier PSU. There are particular SFF cases on the market that are capable of housing a triple-slot, huge graphics card, but with NVIDIA putting its foot into the SFF ecosystem this hard, we will see future chassis designs with NVIDIA's new SFF guidelines in place.

Alongside releasing the PC hardware requirements for Ghost on Tsushima Director's Cut on PC, Sony has announced that it's bringing a PlayStation overlay to its PC games. The overlay will give players access to their PlayStation Profile, Friends list, Trophies, and Settings. Yes, PlayStation Trophies are coming to PC, starting with Ghost of Tsushima.

Sony recently announced that it would double down on multiplatform releases and bring more titles to PC. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hiroki Totoki said, "Strong titles that achieve growth on PS5, PCs, and other platforms will widen our margins. We believe that we have opportunities for margin improvement and intend to pursue them aggressively."

Introducing a dedicated overlay that connects to the PlayStation Network that brings PSN Friends lists and Trophies to PC? That sounds aggressive to us.

PlayStation 4 classic (the game also got a PS5 update) Ghost of Tsushima is headed to PC on May 16, with the Director's Cut version hitting the platform with the Iki Island expansion and the co-op multiplayer Legends mode. In a fantastic move, we've got confirmation that the co-op will support cross-play with PlayStation gamers.

With the talented Nixxes Software handling the port (the studio's most recent effort was the excellent Horizon Forbidden West for PC), Ghost of Tsushima will feature a range of visual enhancements on PC, including support for ultrawide displays (up to 48:9 resolutions), an uncapped frame rate, and upscaling tech that includes NVIDIA DLSS, Intel XeSS, and AMD FSR 3.

Nixxes says it has been working hard to make the game "run well on older hardware." With the PC specs and hardware requirements released today, the good news is that you'll only need a GeForce GTX 960 with 4GB of VRAM to play the game on the lowest settings. The bad news? You'll need a beast of a rig to play the game in 4K 60 FPS.

No Rest for the Wicked is a new action RPG from the creators of the award-winning Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps platformers, with the team at Moon Studios channeling the likes of Diablo and Dark Souls to deliver a mature, story-driven, co-op loot-filled adventure in a dark and beautiful world.

Visually, No Rest for the Wicked is stunning, with a painterly art style that brings its gothic world to life. The animation is impressive; it makes the combat look intense. The game is launching into Early Access this week, on April 18 (on Steam), and the launch trailer showcases glimpses of the world, story, characters, and gameplay.

In the game, you become a "mystical holy warrior" and use your arsenal of supernatural powers to "defeat the Pestilence at any cost." At its core, No Rest for the Wicked is a Diablo-style action RPG where loot and skills will define your playstyle, with a zoomed-out isometric perspective framing exploration and action.

Shortly after Take-Two Interactive bought Borderlands developer Gearbox for $460 million, the publisher has announced a big cost-cutting plan that will eliminate hundreds of jobs.

Take-Two's new 8-K SEC filing confirms the company will lay off 5% of its workforce in a bid to save money. As of March 2023, Take-Two employed 11,580 full-time employees--assuming this is still accurate, a 5% elimination would affect 579 Take-Two employees. Layoffs had already been expected post-Gearbox acquisition.

Multiple undisclosed games have been cancelled because of the cost-reduction strategy. "As part of these efforts, the Company is rationalizing its pipeline and eliminating several projects in development and streamlining its organizational structure, which will eliminate headcount and reduce future hiring needs," reads the SEC filing.

Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro is coming later this year, and developers are already familiarizing themselves with the upgraded hardware so they can have games ready when the beefed-up console launches.

Inside, the new PlayStation 5 Pro console has an upgraded "Trinity" SoC made by AMD and fabbed by TSMC. It features a heavily upgraded GPU -- up to 45% faster than the standard PS5 -- and slightly faster CPU. We've heard that a new "PS5 Pro Enhanced" label for games will see 4K resolution, 60FPS, and improved ray tracing abilities.

PlayStation 5 Pro is said to have 2-3x the ray tracing performance of the standard PS5, so we're in for a true delight with PS5 Pro Enhanced games on a PlayStation 5 Pro console. I can definitely see, and I've been saying it for a while in my PS5 Pro and GTA 6 news, that GTA 6 will be a gigantic system seller for the PS5 Pro, so we can almost guarantee Grand Theft Auto 6 will be a PS5 Pro Enhanced title when the game launches in 2025.

Star Wars Outlaws is doing a good job upselling Ubisoft's own game subscription service.

Ubisoft's new Star Wars Outlaws game looks like one of the most authentic adventures in the sci-fi franchise, but it's still a product that's very much bound by business decisions. Like all of Ubisoft's new releases, Outlaws will release day one on the $18/month Ubisoft+ Premium subscription service.

The value proposition is pretty high. As a consumer, would you rather pay $18 to play a game for a month, or pay $70 to buy it? Sure you don't get to own the game with the sub option, and whether or not this is a good fit totally depends on your habits, but that value is what makes subscriptions so enticing. The choice between full game and subscription gets even harder to make when you bump up the game's price to $130; the Star Wars Outlaws Ultimate Edition bundle with its season pass and variety of extras retails for $130, but you can get access for $18 with Ubisoft+ Premium.

Roblox has opened up its creator economy to the public...but you'll have to pay a fee in order to peddle your digital goods.

Roblox Corp. has found a new way to monetize its userbase, more specifically, those that want to sell their custom creations to Roblox's 70 million daily active players. Yesterday, the company announced that its User-Generated Content (UGC) store was going public. Now every Roblox player has the opportunity to make their own 3D items and sell them to the community.

There's just one fly in the ointment: It's not free. You'll have to pay a 'publishing advance' fee in order to list your items on the store. You pay the fee, and then each time that your item sells, a portion of the sale is then credited to your account. Different types of items have different advance fees and full body assets are the most costly at 4,000 Robux. Check the fee structure here.

A bunch of Final Fantasy games are leaving PlayStation Plus next month. Could these games find a new home under a direct subscription from Square Enix?

New reports indicate that the majority of Final Fantasy games will be removed from PS Plus Extra sometime next month. The news is from a PlayStation catalog tracker on Twitter who notes that 24 games are rotating out of PlayStation Plus by May 21. The departing lineup includes 7 Final Fantasy titles.

There are currently 11 Final Fantasy games available on PS Plus:

It was only earlier today that a bunch of PS5 Pro specifications were confirmed by The Verge, and now the publication has put out more details regarding Sony's internal plans for tackling the "Enhanced" games.

For those that don't know, Sony is planning on releasing the PS5 Pro alongside a new label that will be slapped onto PS5 games that meet certain graphical and performance improvements, with the idea that gamers will see the label and immediately know the game has met the graphical and performance standards set by Sony.

The Verge reports it has been told by sources familiar with Sony's plans that developers are being informed by the company to create a new PS5 Pro-exclusive graphics mode in games that combines Sony's new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling to 4K resolution with a 60fps frame rate and ray-tracing effects.

Call of Duty Vanguard, the one that didn't live up to Activision's expectations, has apparently sold 30 million copies across a two-year span.

There's no other video game franchise quite like Call of Duty. No other game series are able to consistently sell tens of millions of full-priced premium games per year while also making billions of dollars in microtransactions along the way. Official numbers are sparse--we know that the shooter series has made over $31 billion as of Modern Warfare II's release in October 2022, for instance--even doubly so now that Microsoft owns Activision, but it looks like there's an inadvertent sales update from a surprising source.

We don't have official updates for total Call of Duty game sales and/or lifetime revenue. We did get an interesting snippet at Vanguard's overall performance, which is at over 30 million sales. That's according to Brian Hong, who worked as a social media strategist on Call of Duty Vanguard's marketing campaign.

It has been a day for PS5 Pro news as The Verge has posted yet another article revealing more details about the upcoming console.

As I have previously outlined, Sony's upcoming console slated to be launched in the 2024 holiday period, will come with significant performance hikes compared to the standard PS5, and with these performances jumps will be a bump in visual fidelity for games, as indicated by the PS5 Pro "Enhanced" label Sony will be putting on games that meet specific criteria. But what about old game that don't get the new label? Will they run better on the PS5 Pro?

Sony has thought of that and has provided developers with an "ultra-boost" mode that will help Variable Refresh Rate modes run at a higher framerate, and games with a variable resolution may render at higher resolutions. Furthermore, framerates are believed to be more stable on the PS5 Pro.

NVIDIA has pushed out a new GeForce Game Ready Driver and it comes toting support for a couple of imminent high-profile PC games.

Those are Manor Lords and No Rest for the Wicked, both of which are now supported with driver version 552.22.

Manor Lords recently had its release date announced, and the city builder that takes place in a medieval setting - featuring social and economic intrigue mixed with Total War-style tactical battles - is out on April 26.

A lost piece of videogame history has been discovered and preserved: a canceled game for the Nintendo 64 called Riqa, a 3D action adventure in the style of Tomb Raider. The first Lara Croft games were exclusive to the PlayStation console, so the N64 getting its own Tomb Raider clone was a big deal.

Nintendo first announced the game in its official magazine in 1999. Riqa was described as a "sci-fi adventure featuring action and puzzle elements" and has been developing for some time. The title, Riqa, gets its name from the female protagonist. However, the art style was more anime than the realistic look of Tomb Raider.

The now-defunct UK developer Bits Studios led the game's development, with Nintendo set to publish. Originally shown off at E3 1999, the game disappeared, only to surface 25 years later with one of the original developers sharing a few different prototype builds online.

The Fallout TV show has sparked a debate among viewers: Is it better to binge the entire season on day one or take your time with weekly episodes?

The new Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime is an example of incredible execution. The entire transmedia campaign was clearly planned out from the get-go by people who A) know their audience, B) care about the franchise, and C) have a bunch of products at the ready. The Fallout show is a huge success, but it only works because of the engagement firestorm that is binge culture.

I've seen a few articles criticizing the Fallout show's binge format. This thinking is a bit myopic and loses sight of why the Fallout show actually exists in the first place: To shine a lighthouse beacon on the Fallout games. The Amazon show brought Fallout front and center, exposing the post-apocalyptic franchise to Prime's 200 million subscribers.