Gaming - Page 252

Palworld has become a storming hit very quickly - it was released less than a week ago and has sold 8 million copies - but that explosion in popularity has come with its own problems.

The developer has freely admitted being taken by surprise by the success story of the 'Pokemon with guns' game and the sheer number of players flocking to servers has caused trouble, as well as the bugs that need to be ironed out.

In the latter case, we've just had a patch delivered on PC which fixes some issues, and that includes dealing with cheaters.

Palworld is going great guns, hitting yet another huge sales milestone, although this has been accompanied by what could be looked at as a tentative legal 'shot across the bows' from The Pokemon Company.

The latest sales news is that Palworld has now sold over 8 million copies, a pretty staggering feat considering it was released less than a week ago.

At the time of writing, Palworld is the most played Steam game, hitting 1.77 million concurrent players, which is nearly double the current tally of Counter-Strike 2 in second place (with 915,000).

Last week, the smash hit that is Palworld added DLSS support for its Early Access PC launch to boost performance for GeForce RTX owners, and considering the insane popularity of that game in the span of a few short days - it's worth reiterating this before diving into this week's list of game adding DLSS 2 or DLSS 3 support.

The headline title is Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the latest mainline release in SEGA's Yakuza series and the follow-up to the brilliant Like a Dragon that mixed turn-based RPG combat with a sprawling epic story set in modern-day Japan. The follow-up is even bigger, with a big chunk taking place in Hawaii while ramping up the enjoyable and fantastic mechanics that made the original a hit. It launches on January 26, with DLSS 3 support.

Next up is Enshrouded, which is available now on PC with DLSS 2 Super Resolution. Described as a "co-op survival action RPG for up to 16 players," it's launching into Early Access, and with DLSS 3, performance frame rates are increased by "93% on average at 4K" with max settings. Check out the DLSS video for Enshrouded below.

NIVIDA RTX Remix has entered Open Beta, allowing modders to easel remaster classic PC games with full ray tracing, AI-enhanced textures, DLSS and Reflex support, and modern physically-based rendering (PBR). To say it's a game-changer is an understatement, as it gives the tools to talented modders to essentially remaster and remake games into cutting-edge 2024 releases.

Look at the RTX Remix trailer above and this recent look at Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project from Orbifold Studios. The results are incredible when developers are given an easy way to replace in-game assets and add modern lighting effects, including real-time ray tracing.

RTX Remix is built on NVIDIA Omniverse and allows modders to inject any DirectX 8 or 9 title (a list that includes classics like Call of Duty 2, Hitman 2, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines) and begin the modding and remaster/remix process.

AMD launched FSR 3 alongside the debut of the Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT last year, with support for the company's Frame Generation update available in two games at the time: Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum. That was back in September 2023, and with the next games to get FSR 3 support arriving in December 2023, it's no secret that FSR 3 adoption heading into 2024 was non-existent.

Now, it's worth noting that December 2023 saw FSR 3 arrive in Ubisoft's Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, a visually stunning title that also debuted an updated and improved version of FSR 3 technology, showcasing noticeably better results than what was seen in Forpsoken and Immortals of Aveum. So much so that its platform-agnostic approach to Frame Generation, much like its approach to Super Resolution upscaling, was embraced by Avatar players using Radeon RX and GeForce RTX cards alike.

And now, as 2024 kicks off (with AMD launching a brand-new GPU in the form of the Radeon RX 7600 XT), FSR 3 support in games is heating up.

Hideo Kojima is assembling a dream team of horror icons to collaborate on his new game OD, and Junji Ito could be one of them.

Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima has an ambitious idea: What if games and films were combined in one experimental package? Throw in cloud streaming technology and some sort of mysterious gimmick, and Kojima could have a breakout success that defines a brand new medium.

Kojima's first game-film hybrid is OD, a horror game that's built off the bones of PT and features a star-studded cast. It's not just Kojima working on OD, though; he's conscripted macabre mavens like Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us, NOPE) to help make it happen. At The Game Awards 2023, Kojima said he was assembling a kind of Avengers team of horror:

Pocketpair reveals a big content roadmap for mega-hit Palworld, confirms various new features and modes that in development.

No live service game would be complete without a plotted list of updates, features, and content. Palworld is no different, and Japanese studio Pocketpair has outlined a timeline of fixes, adjustments, and new updates for their popular survival-crafting game.

Palworld is still in early access, but Pocketpair still wants to considerably update the game over time. That being said, there's some immediate fixes that the studio is targeting. The biggest problem is server congestion--the game has been purchased by 7 million people, but some gamers are still having a hard time actually playing.

Whether or not Square Enix achieves its full-year profit targets depends largely on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's sales.

Following Final Fantasy XVI's successful release and subsequent 3 million+ sales, Square Enix has one more big tentpole release up its sleeves to maximize sales revenues and profits. The Japanese games company will launch Final Fantasy VII Rebirth next month, sending off its FY25 timeline with a potential sales surge.

As far as profits, Square Enix has set a 55 billion yen operating income target for FY24, which amounts to roughly $372 million. The company booked 17 billion yen in net income (roughly $117 million) for the first two quarters of the year, leaving the lucrative holiday period and the Q4 period in which FF7 Rebirth will release.

Is MachineGames working on a new Quake? No one knows for sure, but the studio has dropped a teaser for the next Quake game.

MachineGames, the team behind the successful and action-packed Wolfenstein revival duology, just announced its new Indiana Jones adventure game. It's called Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and the reveal trailer actually hosted a surprise tease for the Quake franchise.

The recent Developer Direct '24 showcase took players behind the scenes of Indiana Jones' production and gave us a direct look at MachineGames' offices. Around the 11:35 mark of the dev direct, the words "Quake 6" can be seen written in huge letters on a dry erase board. It's possible that MachineGames is involved in Quake 6's development, and that the studio may be co-developing the project alongside id Software.

Netflix's video games strategy is taking off, but the business isn't yet strongly impacting the core subscription model.

Did you know that Netflix offers free games to all members? The streamer has a variety of mobile games that can be accessed for free. The content selection is growing, and Netflix has plans to eventually bring games to other platforms with the main goal of offered extra value to promote retention (and eventually justify another price increase).

While Netflix's games ambitions have typically seen muted responses from subscribers, everything changed with the free release of the Grand Theft Auto trilogy on mobiles. Suddenly, Netflix was the #1 mobile games company on the App Store and Google Play--and Netflix didn't even make the game, they're only distributing the game's free license.

Pocketpair could have made over $130 million profit on Palworld.

Palworld, the smash-hit indie sensation that's taking over gaming, has become wildly successful with 6 million sales in 4 days. It's not just sales volume and revenue that's envied by billion-dollar publishers, though. Palworld also enjoys an incredibly high profit margin.

According to our calculations, Pocketpair could have made $130 million of profit on Palworld's game sales. Reports indicate that Palworld had a production budget of 1 billion yen. That's roughly $6.7 million in current yen-> USD exchange rates. For context, big-budget AAA games often have budgets in excess of $100 million, and these projects can go on to sell around 4-5 million copies and be considered a success.

Dragon's Dogma 2 game director wants to see more devs commit to engaging travel mechanics in RPGs.

Fast travel is one of the most convenient features in gaming, but what if you didn't have it? The game would have to be pretty compelling to keep your attention as you traveled through its world in real-time. The lack of fast travel something that Capcom's fantasy RPG series Dragon's Dogma is known for, and the game provides a unique experience as a result.

As Dragon's Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno notes, RPGs could do a better job with how they approach traversal across the world. Just look at the robust discovery and engagement enjoyed in the modern Zelda duology and in Elden Ring as prime examples. If the worlds were more interesting, perhaps players may not even want to use fast travel.

Death Stranding Directors Cut is coming to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac on January 30, 505 Games has confirmed. The title, from Kojima Productions, was announced in 2023 but is only now getting an official release date and will lad before the month comes to an end.

Gamers will be able to play the new game on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max as well as any iPad or Mac that has an Apple M-series chip inside. That means that all modern machines will be good to go.

In the case of the iPhone, only devices with Apple's latest A17 Pro will be able to run Death Stranding which is why the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will be the only models capable of playing the title.

While Sony has adapted PlayStation Plus to be more like Xbox Game Pass, the Japanese company identifies potential issues with competitor tactics like day-one releases.

Sony Corp. CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has a very nuanced and level-headed approach to video game subscriptions. Rather than go all-in on subscriptions and services, Sony has kept its more traditional business models alive: Selling hardware at a profit with multiple revisions over time, relying on full game sales, and doubling-down on big AAA blockbusters sold at a premium on day one. This has led to a balanced business that delivered a record-breaking $26.9 billion revenues in FY22.

While Sony has broken from its traditions by bringing its games to PC and mobile (with cloud gaming already offered on PS Plus), the company has no plans to break one rule: No day-and-date releases. Sony is not eager to launch big PS5 games like Spider-Man 2 as part of PS Plus. Multiple sources (FTC v MSFT, Xbox docs, etc) have proven that day one Xbox Game Pass releases can "cannibalize," or jeopardize the sales of full games--Game Pass subscribers can avoid paying $69.99 per game.

Starfield received its "biggest update yet" last week, and now players who have downloaded are taking to the game's subreddit to showcase the visual improvements.

Reddit user DinDisco took to the Starfield subreddit to showcase ten before and after images of the areas within the game that received massive graphical improvements. One of the biggest graphical improvements was the lighting, and before Starfield received this update, it was common for many of the game's areas to feel clinical through stark ambient white light beaming down from above. The update has reduced the brightness levels of these lights while also adding individual lights around the room.

The update has seemingly been very well received by Starfield players on the subreddit, with user p13t3rm writing, "Holy crap, this isn't just minor adjustments and some light position tweaks. This affects the entire mood and feel of some of these areas." Another user, Greathorn, wrote, "They really did go in and manually move light sources around, that's pretty nice. Sauvage's doesn't feel like a hospital anymore."

Riot Games officially announces it will lay off 530 workers.

League of Legends creator Riot Games today confirmed it will lay off over 500 employees across all divisions, primarily focused on non-development roles. Similar to other companies, the Tencent-owned Riot Games is making this decision as an effort towards "sustainability," which typically refers to cost-cutting measures that are made in order to stay profitable.

Riot Games CEO Dylan Jadeja said this in the update: "Today, I'm sharing a decision we hoped we would never have to make at Riot. We're changing some of the bets we've made and shifting how we work across the company to create focus and move us toward a more sustainable future. This decision means we're eliminating about 530 roles globally, which represents around 11% of our workforce, with the biggest impact to teams outside of core development."

Palworld is the success story that keeps on gathering momentum, it seems, and the latest news is it has grabbed third position for all-time peak concurrent player numbers on Steam - while the flipside of the coin is a really nasty bug that's present in the game.

As announced on X (formerly Twitter), Palworld has exceeded 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam, securing third place in the all-time peak rankings as mentioned (beating out Lost Ark which is now in fourth on 1.3 million). Only Counter-Strike 2 (1.8 million) and PUBG (3.2 million) have ever done better.

At the weekend, Palworld passed the 1 million mark, but is swiftly gathering momentum - it also just hit 5 million sales.

CD Projekt Red is currently preparing to increase the number of hands on deck working the highly anticipated The Witcher 4, and the developer has revealed some details about how it will implement artificial intelligence.

The developer behind the critically acclaimed Witcher franchise of video games has said its planning on having around 400 people working on the next instalment in the franchise by the end of the year, with the production phase beginning sometime in 2024. The information comes from company CEO Adam Badowski who spoke to Reuters, saying the new project codenamed "Polaris" is a new triology that will expand the Witcher franchise.

Badowski was asked how the developer will implement artificial intelligence throughout its game production, and according to the CEO a team was formed to look into how AI could be incorporated, but never saw the technology as a means of replacing human employees. "We think that AI is something that can help improve certain processes in game production, but not replace people," said Badowski

The incredible success story that is Palworld continues, with the game passing the 1 million concurrent player milestone on Steam, surpassing Cyberpunk 2077, and even closing in on Dota 2's peak concurrent record. With sales of over four million in the space of a weekend and a peak player count of 1,291,967 on Steam, Palworld's popularity is catching everyone off guard.

A survival and crafting game with creatures called 'Pals' that you collect and fight (and even equip with guns), the similarities to Nintendo's Pokemon and the game's apparent use of generative AI is causing some controversy for the Early Access hit - that is also available on Xbox Game Pass.

Either way, the "Pokemon with guns" meets Ark Survival and is showing no signs of slowing down, and in terms of paid-for titles on Steam, it's the current record holder for peak concurrent players. Making it one of the most popular PC games ever, it hasn't even been out for a week.

Microsoft helping accelerate gaming towards an all-digital future, but the company should be more forthright and transparent with its more immediate plans.

If you've been paying attention to games industry business trends for the last few years, the advent of digital-only gaming consoles like the Xbox Series S and new PlayStation 5 slim aren't exactly a surprise. The market has been leading up to this moment for years now, with the interactive entertainment segment skewing more towards digital over the last decade. Gamers are clearly gravitating towards more convenient purchase and access options on consoles.

This move towards digital has been spurred along with the help of platform-holders like Microsoft, who have molded Xbox into an ecosystem of digital software, services, and content subscriptions. With Gen9, Microsoft and Sony made bold statements with the digital-only Xbox Series S and PS5 models, while Microsoft further evolved its Game Pass subscription to feed the new digital console.