Gaming - Page 252

The PC version of Horizon Forbidden West has been well received, not only as an expansive sequel to a great open-world action-adventure but also as one of those rare PC ports that does justice to the source material while leveraging all of the additional goodies that come with the platform, from improved visual fidelity to uncapped frame rates to ultrawide monitor support to upscaling and even Frame Generation.

Horizon Forbidden West's impressive PC port was developed by sony studio Nixxes, image credit: PlayStation Studios.

For its upscaler support, Horizon Forbidden West includes support for AMD's FSR, Intel's XeSS, and NVIDIA's DLSS. However, when it comes to frame generation, this is limited to NVIDIA's DLSS 3.5 version of Frame Generation, which works great. Still, it is limited to the GeForce RTX 40 Series because it requires specialized AI hardware - so there's room for AMD's frame gen.

The Fallout TV show is a hit, with fans and newcomers alike falling in love (or getting reacquainted) with one of the most recognized and beloved franchises in gaming. As expected, the show has brought people back into playing Fallout - but in a surprise twist, the online multiplayer Fallout 76 just broke its concurrent player count record on Steam with 39,455 peak players this past weekend. This is notably higher than the previous launch record of 32,982.

Every major game in the franchise, including older titles like Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4, has experienced a massive surge in players on Steam. The show faithfully captures the fun, bleak, and violent world of post-apocalyptic America, as seen in Fallout, so it's no wonder people have been flocking to the wasteland.

Fallout 76 is interesting because the game launched in an abysmal state, with a litany of bugs and a string of controversies. But, Bethesda has spent the ensuing years fixing the game's many issues, including the addition of actual NPCs, with the latest update to the game expanding the world to include a post-apocalyptic Atlantic City.

The specifications for the PlayStation 5 Pro have leaked and it now seems we have a very good idea of what Sony has been baking behind the scenes and when they plan on releasing it.

The specs for the PS5 Pro were originally leaked back in March, which reportedly sparked an investigation by Sony into which developer seemingly broke the silence on what is under the PS5 Pro's hood, leading to a further assumption the specifications were legitimate. Now, we have a double confirmation of the specifications as The Verge obtained what appears to be a more detailed developer blueprint for the PS5 Pro, which listed many of the same March specs and even more that weren't previously known. Check out that full specs list below.

One piece of information that surfaced was the release window for the PS5 Pro - the 2024 holiday period. This got me thinking. What game will Sony market with the PS5 Pro to sell it? Or is the company going to entirely rely on the performance hike from the standard PS5 to entice gamers? I proceeded to check what Sony has in the 2024 pipeline in terms of games, specifically system seller-caliber titles such as the God of War franchise from Santa Monica Studios or the Spider-Man games from Insomniac Games.

Overwatch 2 Season 10 is nearly here, and developer Blizzard has unleashed a new trailer for the season, which it has dubbed "Venture Forth." So go forth, pun intended, and check out the trailer below.

The upcoming Overwatch 2 Season 10 will deliver multiple changes and new things, including a new DPS hero called "Venture" which will be unlocked immediately once Season 10 is live. A new limited-time mode called "Clash Trial" is included, where teams must battle over 5 capture points, with each captured objecting adding to a point to the prevailing team's scores.

You can win in one of two ways: by controlling all five objectives at once or by scoring five points in total before the other team. Clash will be available as a limited-time trial until April 29. There will be new Mythic Hero Skins, and the introduction of Mythic Prisms which can be earned in the Premium Battle Pass and used in the Mythic Shop to purchase the current featured Mythic Prisms when you complete the Premium Battle Pass.

Square Enix may issue yet another one of its "failed to meet expectations" notices, and this time it could be Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth that's to blame.

New reports indicate that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth isn't selling nearly as well as Remake, the first game in the new reboot series, and it's possible that Square Enix's profit targets will be affected by the potential sales miss.

The news comes by way of Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, who relayed the info on Twitter: "Rebirth is underperforming sales-wise. It's selling about half of what Remake sold in the same timeframe and looks like it'll have a weaker tail," Ahmad said, citing equities research firms as the source of the data.

Sony is preparing to release the PlayStation 5 Pro, and ahead of its release, a full specifications list has been leaked online to a publication.

It was only last month that Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson confirmed previous leaks regarding Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro console, codenamed Trinity, with the insider saying that the previous rumors stating the PS5 Pro was a powerful ray tracing console that will arrive with AI hardware designed to deliver Sony's custom DLSS upscaling technology called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) was all true.

Additionally, previous rumors stated the PS5 Pro would have a GPU 45%+ more powerful at rendering than the PS5, and the CPU would only be a 10% increase over the standard PS5. Now, The Verge has obtained a full list of specs for the upcoming console, confirming many of the previous rumors and adding more details to the equation.

Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro has been all but confirmed through rumors and leaks, but now Sony has filed a copyright claim against Moore's Law is Dead's PS5 Pro video, which has been removed from YouTube.

Moore's Law is Dead covers the PlayStation 5 Pro leaks in his video from mid-March, but it has since been deleted from YouTube. I screenshotted the main Trinity Technical Overview from MLID's video on YouTube, which you can see above, covering the improvements coming with the PlayStation 5 Pro.

Sony filing a copyright claim and having YouTube remove the video kind of confirms the PlayStation 5 Pro. If MLID's claims and rumors were nothing to be worried about... well, Sony would have nothing to be worried about. But having the entire video scrubbed from YouTube is a big step, but thankfully, we've got the receipts in the form of screenshots.

Sony's new PS5 tech may facilitate some sort of 8K resolution gaming in the console market.

Today another major outlet reported on the PS5 Pro's developer documentation. This time it was The Verge, who reiterated a lot of the same details that were originally published by Insider Gaming. While a lot of the focus has been put on the PS5 Pro's beefier 33TFLOP GPU and other hardware improvements, these upgrades were made specifically to better enable Sony's new upscaling tech.

Sony has developed PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which is its own in-house answer to NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD's FSR. Both of these technologies are used to upscale resolution, and Sony's does the same while also being powered by a proprietary machine-learning solution. What's surprising about PSSR is that the PS5 Pro documentation apparently mentions that Sony is working on 8K resolution support.

Manor Lords is a game from a lone indie developer, and rather incredibly, it raced up the rankings of the most wish-listed titles on Steam - before taking the number one spot as the most-wanted game eventually.

Well, if you've been waiting for the game - on Steam or otherwise, as many folks evidently have - over the weekend the game had its release date announced as April 26.

So, it'll be out a week on Friday, but it's already building up quite the head of steam (so to speak) hype-wise.

Sony's rumored PlayStation 5 Pro refresh is indeed real and we can expect a seriously pepped-up GPU with the console, but a tamer upgrade for the CPU, according to the latest from the rumor mill.

The Verge claims to have got hold of the full details of the PS5 Pro's spec and the upgrades are in line with previous chatter from the grapevine.

The refreshed console is referred to as 'Trinity' rather than the PS5 Pro, and apparently it'll use a GPU which is about 45% faster than the PS5, as previously rumored - so that's a major step forward for rendering

The Xbox Series X is about to be pushed to its limits when Ninja Theory and Microsoft release Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, which could possibly be the best-looking Unreal Engine 5 game to date.

Digital Foundry, the gold standard of reviewing game technology and hardware, has released a new video taking a look at the latest footage released by Microsoft and developer Ninja Theory of Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2. The footage that was analyzed is claimed to be raw footage directly from Microsoft, and according to the outlet, the game is one of, if not the best-looking Unreal Engine 5 game to date. For those that don't know, Hellblade 2 will take players through a stunningly visual cinematic experience that will be, at the time of reporting, exclusive to Xbox consoles and PC.

The outlet writes that Ninja Theory has decided to trade raw performance for visual fidelity, as Hellblade 2 has been confirmed to be capped at 30FPS. The trade-off is that it looks incredible, with Digital Foundry saying it will be an extremely "demanding" game on the Xbox Series X and one of the most "demanding pieces of PC software we've seen so far this generation." According to Ninja Theory's VFX director Mark Slater-Tunstill, Hellblade 2 will be capped at 30FPS to make the game feel more "cinematic".

Fallout: London is one of the most ambitious mods ever made. The fan creation presents an expansion-sized Fallout adventure in a new location (post-apocalyptic London) with a story, quests, factions, weapons, and more. The Fallout 4 mod was on track for an April 2024 release; however, due to Bethesda's upcoming "next-gen" update to the game Fallout: London's launch has been delayed.

The reasoning is simple: Bethesda's big patch will bring the game "stability improvements and fixes" and some much-needed performance improvements to the PC and console versions. With Fallout: London viewed by many as a brand-new game in the series due to its sheer size, the developers at Team FOLON want to make sure that the update doesn't, well, break their mod days after its debut.

"Fallout: London was due to come out in just under a fortnight on the 23rd of April," project lead Dean Carter said in a new video. "Everything has been set to go since our last update, and we've been tweaking and testing non-stop to get things as stable as we can for you all."

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 is on track for a 2025 release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and based on the hype surrounding the game's debut trailer from late last year - it's on track to be the biggest thing, since, well, Grand Theft Auto 5. The trailer currently has 185 million views on YouTube, with gameplay showcasing the game's modern-day Vice City setting and male and female protagonists.

Vice City is Rockstar's stand-in for Miami, Florida. With several nods to real-life locations and 'Florida residents doing crazy things,' YouTuber Andrew Levitt has created (or recreated) a live-action shot-for-shot trailer remake. The trailer includes real-world footage of locations seen in the trailer alongside news footage, including the notorious 'Florida Joker' parodied by Rockstar.

There are also stand-ins/actors for the characters and cinematic story bits from the trailer, with 46 shots in total - as highlighted by a behind-the-scenes 'making of' video posted by Andrew Levitt.

If you want to see how Final Fantasy XIV runs on your system, developer Square Enix has just released the official benchmark for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. You can check it out below and download it here.

The developer explains that the official benchmark software isn't pre-canned but uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC, which rates its performance. There's also a character creation tool, allowing you to view your playable character just as it appears in-game.

The new benchmark's character creator allows you to check out the female option for the Hrothgar race. Any characters players create in the benchmark will be carried over to the full release of Dawntrail. On the graphics side, Square Enix promises that Dawntrail will feature Final Fantasy XIV's first graphical update, and you can scope out some of the game's graphical upgrades in the Dawntrail benchmark.

There has been a lot of negative talk lately about the current state of the videogame market. The most popular and played games are several years old, titles like Fortnite, Counter-Strike, Apex Legends, and other popular competitive and online games. Outside of a few exceptions, new games are struggling to find an audience, and as budgets increase dramatically, the risk for developers and publishers to launch something new is on the rise.

Looking at the best-selling games, new titles are few and far between. In Europe, half of the top 10 best-selling games for March 2024 were old Command & Conquer games. Throw in Grand Theft Auto 5, which continues to sell, and Ubisoft's aging Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege - old games are selling.

The best-selling title for the month was EA Sports FC 24 (the FIFA replacement), with Helldivers 2 in second place and Dragon's Dogma 2 in third place - the latter debuting in March. After that, five Command & Conquer games are on the list, which is impressive because the European data includes PCs, consoles, and digital data from storefronts like Steam, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and the Nintendo eShop.

Blizzard is making some more changes to Overwatch 2, with its upcoming Season 10 to see changes to the game that will punish players who leave a game mid-match... finally.

Starting with Overwatch 2 Season 10, the developer is taking a "firm stance" on leavers in Competitive Play, with a new update for that game mode, too. Starting with Competitive Play, with Overwatch 2 players being suspended from Competitive Play whenever they leave a Competitive Play match, with a ban of 15 minutes.

But, if you leave more games, that penalty gets harsher and harsher: 2 games left out of 20 games, there's a 2-hour ban, while leaving 3 of your last 20 played games results in a huge 8-hour ban. From there, leaving 4 out of the last 20 games played will see you with a whopping 20-hour ban, while leaving 5 games out of the last 20 played results in a major Competitive Season BAN, while 10 games left throughout the entire season (at play) will result in a Competitive Season BAN.

Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch believes $70 is too much to charge for a game, but his studio is nonetheless selling Space Marine 2 for $70 on all platforms.

At the start of Gen9 in November 2020, publishers like Take-Two Interactive, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Sony were among the first to charge $70 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of games. This trend has continued well into 2024 and shows no signs of stopping, especially now that publishers are laying off workers en masse in an attempt to stem bleeding budgets and shrinking profit margins. The $70 game was an attempt to offset high production costs (some games like Spider-Man 2 cost $200 million to make).

But not everyone agrees with the new software MSRP. Consumers have pushed back against the pricing--in 2023, we surveyed over 25,000 gamers on the subject of $70 software and most agree that it's too much. Some industry figures like Saber Interactive's Matthew Karch have even spoken out against the price tag, saying that it's just unsustainable.

Microsoft's fragmented but synergistic approach to software and services is helping introduce new business models to the $200 billion interactive entertainment industry.

Xbox is making big disruptive power plays in the world of online gaming. Microsoft is no stranger to disruption, having shaken up the games market with its Xbox Game Pass subscription, the first dedicated multi-game subscription to define an emerging "Netflix of gaming" business model. Game Pass was only the beginning, and along the way it has helped iterate on multiple new gaming trends.

You might be familiar with Games-as-a-Service (GaaS), terminology that publishers use to refer to an online game with microtransactions and a cadence of updates. On top of GaaS, I think I've spotted two new business concepts: Games-as-a-Platform (GaaP) and Franchise-as-a-Service (FaaS).

Xbox Game Pass will grow nearly 500% across the next 10 years, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter predicts.

Analysts often ponder their orbs in private, but rarely do we see ambitious forecasts given to everyday consumers by key industry figures. Michael Pachter is one such figure, and he's gained fame through his very public predictions. Pachter's latest estimate is nonetheless eye-opening: According to the analyst, Xbox Game Pass will break 200 million subscribers by the year 2034.

"In the next 10 years, I think it'll go to 200 million. I'll make that bet with anybody. I promise I'll pay. It will be 200 million in the next 10 years--they are that committed to it," Pachter said in the latest episode of his question-and-answer talk show, Pachter Factor, on SIFTD Games.

First game prices jumped to $70, now game subscriptions are next in line for a price hike.

The games industry is currently going through a universal cost adjustment, and like any publicly-traded companies, video games firms are passing those higher prices down to consumers. Years after the Gen9 console generation introduced the new $70 MSRP for software, we're now seeing game subscriptions hiking up monthly price tags as the services mature (and as the companies aim for more profit).

Over the last few years, we've seen both PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass increase in price across most subscription plans (except for the PC Game Pass tier). Ubisoft splintered its subscription, and Electronic Arts just raised prices of its EA Play Pro sub to a similar monthly price point. All of these services are nose-to-nose with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which offers access to hundreds of games for $16.99 a month.