Gaming - Page 254

MechWarrrior 5: Clans was teased at GDC 2024, with developer Pirahna Games showing off new footage of the Unreal Engine 5-powered game, as well as juicy new info. Check it out:

The new MechWarrior 5: Clans game will feature a Clan Invasion story, which is the first time we've had a clan-based story since the 1995 smash hit MechWarrior 2 (which I still remember watching the intro to it with my brother over and over, hundreds of times). The plot of MechWarrior 5: Clans will see players following a new young pilot which has just finished their intensive training on Huntress, the homeworld of the Smoke Jaguar clan.

The main character joins a squad -- known as a Star -- which is made up of five pilots from the same clan, fighting side-by-side in a huge full-scale invasion of the Inner Sphere, which is an incredibly important moment in the BattleTech universe. Pirahna Games says that pilots will continue to grow stronger as they progress through MechWarrior 5: Clan's campaign, where you'll visit various plants with different biomes and a sandbox-style play like Mercenaries.

Xbox highlights an important instance of case-by-case exclusivity with Sea of Thieves on PS5.

It's a real sea change at Xbox as first-party games break platform exclusivity and launch on PlayStation and Nintendo systems. Popular pirate sim Sea of Thieves was announced as one of the 4 Xbox exclusive games that would make the jump, and Microsoft is providing some extra small incentives for PS5 gamers. It turns out that some of these cosmetics are exclusive to PS5 and can't be acquired on Sea of Thieves' home port of Xbox.

PS5 gamers can get two sets of exclusive Sea of Thieves cosmetics, but you have to actually pre-order the game and participate in the beta to get them. The first is the Ruby Viper cosmetic pack which you get right away from pre-ordering. The second is a Dauntless Adventurer bundle (a sail and a title) that you can get from actually playing the closed beta--the beta is unlocked from pre-ordering as well.

Helldivers, rejoice! The Super Earth Government is issuing a new warbond that spices up your intergalactic bug-squashing.

Arrowhead Studios has revealed the next premium warbond (essentially a battle pass) for Helldivers 2. It's called Democratic Detonation and gamers are getting a ton of bonus extras...provided they're willing to shell out some dollars.

Democratic Detonation releases April 11 and comes packed with 3 new weapons, including a crossbow that fires explosive bolts, 3 armors, and 3 new secondary items. Another thing that stuck out is the Expert Extraction Pilot Booster that speeds up how fast exfil craft can swoop in and end the match in victory.

If you're hankering for a new game to play on your PC but are a bit short of cash, you're in luck - there's a great new freebie on offer at the Epic Games Store.

Epic is famous for high-quality giveaways and The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition certainly falls under that category.

It's a slick and thoughtful sci-fi RPG that received considerable critical acclaim, coming from Obsidian Entertainment, the force behind the likes of Fallout New Vegas. The Outer Worlds was praised for its storyline, depth and the freedom of choice available to the player.

Deus Ex is a series of first-person games. The iconic and groundbreaking original, released by Ion Storm in 2000, mixes shooting, stealth, adventure, and role-playing elements. With its moody futuristic setting and story, it's widely considered one of the greatest PC games of all time, which makes it a perfect candidate for an RTX Remix makeover.

NVIDIA's impressive modding and remastering tool allows budding developers and modders to take just about any classic games, add full ray-tracing (path tracing), remaster textures, replace models with new updated versions, and generally remaster titles with a robust set of tools add access to tech like DLSS, Frame Generation, and Reflex.

Deus Ex Echelon Renderer, from modder onnoj, is "a fixed-function rendering pipeline intended for use with NVIDIA's RTX Remix." It's not technically a mod, but it allows RTX Remix users to play through Deus Ex with full path-traced lighting. The results are awesome.

The highly anticipated Knights of the Old Republic remake has been officially confirmed to be in development...but there's still no word on a potential release window or concrete updates about the project.

The KOTOR remake was announced in 2021 by Sony, but since the tne project has been shuffled around. Aspyr, the team behind many of the Star Wars re-releases, was originally developing the KOTOR remake. Aspyr was acquired by Saber Interactive in 2021 for $100 million. At the time, Saber was still part of Embracer, and Embracer re-assigned the KOTOR remake to Saber's principal dev teams.

Reports indicated that the remake was put on ice in 2022, but apparently the project is still happening.

Google engineers spent a month hacking the PlayStation Portal to run PSP games natively...but then they handed the secrets right to Sony.

It's official: The PS Portal's is once again a "remote player." Sony has released a new firmware patch for the PS Portal that fixed a big security vulnerability that ultimately led to PSP games running on the device. The $199 PS Portal is specifically designed as a profitable accessory that requires a PS5 in order to stream games to the controller-screen hybrid. Being able to play games without needing a PS5 goes against the entire point of the handheld.

Two Google security experts--Andy Nguyen and Calle Svensson--spent an entire month hacking the PS Portal to see if it could run games natively. It turns out that it can indeed do this, at least when it comes to 20-year-old PSP games. Yesterday, Nguyen confirmed that Sony had been notified of the vulnerability and that a fix has been employed with PS Portal's new v2.0.6 firmware update.

AMD recently announced a big FSR 3.1 update was 'coming soon,' which would improve upscaling and Frame Generation visual fidelity, decouple the two technologies and introduce console support.

With NVIDIA's DLSS 3 and AMD's FSR 3, frame generation has been among the most talked about and exciting PC technologies of the past couple of years. And now, it's finally headed to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

As part of a developer update on Immortals of Aveum, Ascendant Studios announced that, in addition to a new HDR patch dropping for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S today, the team was working on bringing "AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3), including its frame generation capability" to the game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Sony amps up the competition as it signs multiple indie games as day one releases on PS Plus.

Sony doesn't want to bring its own games to PlayStation Plus on day one, but other projects are fair game. Unlike Microsoft, who took a radical subscription-first approach and promised to launch all first-party Xbox games day-and-date on Game Pass. This strategy has affected first-party game sales on Xbox as consumers opt for Game Pass subscriptions instead of buying some games--an effect referred to as cannibalization.

Game Pass has another part of its billion-dollar equation: Third-party games. For years now, Microsoft has been spending tens of millions of dollars to convince indie devs and publishers to launch their games on Game Pass day one. In other words, Microsoft trying to offset any game sales cannibalization with upfront payments. These deals can sometimes go far enough to fund an actual game.

Rockstar's GTA+ subscription has become the cheapest way to play the publisher's games.

Two years ago, Rockstar Games announced GTA+, a new $5.99 subscription service aimed at its billion-dollar GTA Online mode. The idea was to give GTA Online players a bunch of extras if they subscribed, kind of like Runescape's Members subscription.

The service has grown tremendously in scope and value since then. In September 2023, Rockstar turned GTA+ into its own mini Game Pass subscription by offering a rotating lineup of full games. The catch is you can only play the games as long as your subscription is active (Rockstar went old-school PS Plus here), and the games will rotate in and out like Xbox Game Pass.

Dragon's Dogma 2 has now sold more than 2.5 million copies on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, Capcom today announced.

Capcom's latest fantasy game is an innovative, if not sometimes maddeningly complex RPG that's taken the world by storm. The latest figures show that Dragon's Dogma 2 has now broken 2.5 million sales on all platforms in just 18 days' time.

While this is historically below Capcom's previous fastest-selling game records (see below), it's an important milestone for the house of Mega Man that punctuates the company's new modern approach. Capcom has emphasized selling as many games as possible, and this plan has led to multiple years of cumulative record-breaking profits.

Helldivers 2's latest update makes the tense squad-based shooter even more replayable.

Arrowhead just released patch 01.000.200 for Helldivers 2, bringing some welcomed changes. The most radical update is the level cap tripling from 50 to 150. We don't often see these kinds of dramatic level cap increases in live games, but Helldivers 2 is all about exaggeration. Plus there's some extra environmental hazards to keep you on your toes, including blinding sandstorms and frozen blizzards.

Other changes include a full-auto mode for the Liberator Penetrator, a 100 point damage boost to the Dominator, boosted damage to the Breaker Incendiary, bonuses to the Anti-Materiel Rifle, and the Guard Dog now refills full ammo when you pick up an ammo box (very welcomed change).

Sony publicly says PlayStation 2 has shipped 155 million units, but the actual numbers are quite higher.

Sony's PlayStation 2 is the best-selling video games hardware of all time. The system defined the early 2000s era thanks to its ability to play games and DVDs--the latter of which sparked widespread consumer adoption. So we have to wonder...just how many PS2s did Sony ship?

Shortly before leaving Sony, ex-PlayStation boss Jim Ryan recently said the PlayStation 2 sold 160 million units in its lifespan. Sony, on the other hand, officially puts the PS2 at 155 million. So what gives? Who's right?

The full scope of Tekken 8's monetization has been revealed, showing that Bandai Namco is trying to cast a wide net to capture more earnings.

Shortly after launch, Tekken 8 has become the most controversial game in the series. The fighter is packing a lot of extra microtransaction muscle this time around, offering three forms of monetization: Multiple full game versions, in-game premium currency, and the new battle pass. It's that last one that brings us here today.

Tekken 8's battle pass, aka the Fight Pass, has both a paid and free track. The paid Premium Pass track costs 600 Tekken Coins, or about $6, but you can't buy that many Tekken Coins in one go. Due to currency denominations, the Premium Pass requires at least a $10 purchase in order to get (this is by design). The pass will essentially "pay for itself" because it doles out a total of 600 Tekken Coins by the time you reach level 60.

Top gamers and athletes may have an advantage in terms of being able to see more images per second than us mere mortals, according to a new study.

This means they can more easily track fast moving objects, like a ball, or opponents in a shooter, with obvious advantages therein in terms of positioning or aiming.

The Guardian picked up on the research from Trinity College Dublin, published in Plos One, which tested some 80 people (aged 18 to 35) to find out whether they could tell if a light was flickering or not as the rate of flicker was increased.

Microsoft is currently working on a new AI-powered chatbot for Xbox, which will be designed to be a virtual support agent for users.

In a new report from The Verge, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the new AI-powered chatbot will called the "Xbox Support Virtual Agent" and it's currently in its prototype phase right now. Notably, this new chatbot will be animated and will be designed to answer Xbox-related questions with either voice or text. The Microsoft spokesperson said the prototype will make it "easier and quicker for players to get help with support topics" and will use "natural language, taking information from existing Xbox Support pages."

Furthermore, the publication reports that this Xbox AI chatbot is part of Microsoft's "larger effort" of implementing AI into the Xbox platform and services, which aligns perfectly with the company's overall push to add AI into whatever it can. Additionally, the new Xbox AI chatbot will be capable of processing game refunds and will be prepared to answer any support-related questions regarding Xbox issues, subscriptions, and general support queries.

In the world of video game consoles the PlayStation 2 has long held the title for the most sold console of all time, but was the official number right?

In the most recent episode of the PlayStation Podcast, which featured former PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan, the number of PS2 unit sales was revealed to be underreported. Previously, unit sales for the PS2 placed the iconic console at approximately 155 million units, which was reported back in 2012, but now the official number has been revealed, and according to the former official, it's at 160 million units, a difference of about 5 million.

While that number may seem like a negligible difference, it makes all the difference when the Nintendo Switch is closing in on the crown with 139 million units sold. It's good to finally know a definitive number for the unit sales of the world's best-selling console, as previously it was rough estimations. It remains to be seen if Nintendo's handheld will break through the 150 or even 160 million unit sale barrier before Nintendo releases the successor to the popular handheld.

Following the source code for Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V leaking online in December, a group of modders is attempting to get the iconic game to run on the Nintendo Switch, Android and Linux.

The fansite GTA Focal has reported a group of modders that took to X to share their progress on March 28 are attempting to get the 2013 game to run on the Nintendo Switch. The video posted to the platform formerly called Twitter shows the title in a loading screen that is repeatedly plagued with error messages. One video shows the Nintendo Switch running the loading screen and then multiple errors popping up, while the other shows a screenshot of an Android error message.

It should be noted that Grand Theft Auto V was originally designed to run on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which means the Nintendo Switch should have hardware powerful enough to run GTA 5. However, it isn't as simple as just plugging in the leaked source code into a different platform and then expecting it to work, as the Nintendo Switch and Android devices have completely different hardware configurations.

The Witcher 4, codenamed Polaris, is currently in development at CD Projekt RED. The game is set to kick off a new trilogy of Witcher games. Elsewhere, the developer and publisher is also working on a single-player Cyberpunk 2077 follow-up as its US-based studio.

With all the recent fuss surrounding Capcom releasing microtransactions for fast-travel and other things for its single-player RPG Dragon's Dogma II, CDPR has explicitly stated that there'll be none of that for its games.

As part of an investor chat with CD Projekt Red Chief Financial Officer Piotr Nielubowicz and others, someone asked whether the studio would introduce microtransactions in its future titles. Via outlet Stockwatch.pl (translated by Google), his answer is straightforward. "We do not see a place for microtransactions in the case of single-player games," Piotr Nielubowicz responded.

ASUS originally launched the slower of its two ROG Ally gaming handhelds -- the ROG Ally with AMD's Ryzen Z1 APU -- at $599, but quickly dropped down to $499. Now, that same gaming handheld is $200 off, discounted down to $299 at BestBuy.

AMD's Ryzen Z1 APU comes in two forms: Ryzen Z1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme, the Z1 has 6 cores of CPU power and a significant downgrade in GPU abilities.

The AMD Ryzen Z1 non-Extreme comes with just 4 x RDNA 3-based Compute Units, while the Ryzen Z1 Extreme features 12 Compute Units, 300% more. The $100 difference between the two gaming handhelds meant you'd be silly to buy the gimped ROG Ally for $100 less when for $100 more you're getting 2 more CPU cores and 3x the GPU power.