Gaming - Page 264

Survival-crafter Palworld has amassed an incredible 25 million players in just a few weeks.

Recent sales figures prove that Palworld wasn't a flash in the pan. The game stole headlines earlier this month with its viral sales spree, racking up 1-2 million copies sold per day for almost 2 weeks. By day 12 of market availability, Palworld had reached 19 million players.

Now Palworld developer Pocketpair has released updated figures. In its first month of sale, Palworld reached 25 million+ players. This includes 15 million Steam sales, and 10 million Xbox players, but the last part isn't necessarily full game sales. Remember that Palworld is on Xbox Game Pass, so the "players" metric includes both game purchases and Game Pass subscribers.

Generative and constructive AI could open up a new way to monetize the games industry through creative and interesting means.

AI is a hot-button topic in the games industry, and for good reason. Gaming is collectively bloodletting itself in an attempt to purge the virus of rising costs, leading to thousands of layoffs. Artists understandably don't like the idea of their work being stolen via AI, and very much don't want to be replaced by automated processes. And right now, it's fair to say that companies are eager to grasp at any cost-saving tools that are available. AI is seen as the future of, well, everything, and it will undoubtedly be scaled for the world's largest entertainment medium.

Artificial intelligence is being advanced at such a rapid rate that it will assuredly disrupt key parts of the economy, including the $180 billion interactive entertainment industry. The most practical public use-cases for AI in gaming have been things like automated voiced dialog, and there's been talk of using AI to help create quests and streamline other processes. Microsoft has teamed up with AI experts Inworld to bring AI tools to the Xbox SDK environment, and Xbox's CFO Tim Stuart says that 'anyone can be a game developer' with AI's help.

The GeForce NOW cloud streaming service now supports over 1,800 games as this week sees the arrival of some new titles from Bandai Namco's catalog - including Tales of Arise, Katamari Damacy REROLL, Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, PAC-MAN MUSEUM+ and PAC-MAN WORLD Re-PAC.

Also arriving this week is the new survival adventure game Nightingale, the tactical strategy of Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance, and the excellent new roguelike driving game Pacific Drive. Unlike other streaming services, GeForce NOW allows members to play the games they own from many devices with access to a 'GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPOD', with DLSS, Frame Generation, and real-time ray-tracing.

In addition, you've got access to over 100 free-to-play titles - plus support for games on Steam, Xbox for Windows (including PC Game Pass), Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, and GOG.com. This year, GeForce NOW is celebrating its fourth anniversary, where last week, we saw the arrival of a couple of heavy hitters in the form of Ubisoft's Skull and Bones and Microsoft's Halo Infinite.

Not to be confused with EA's reboot of the franchise, the original Star Wars Battlefront (2004) and Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) were iconic releases. Blending the massive scope and mix of on-foot and vehicles of multiplayer games like Battlefield with everything Star Wars, they were an instant success. Although fans have kept these games alive with mods and custom servers, Aspyr and Lucasfilm Games are releasing a remastered and revamped Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection on March 14, 2024.

The Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection will come to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC (via Steam) for $35.01 USD - and yes, it will support online multiplayer for up to 64 players! Some fantastic additions include expanding the Hero Assault mode to more maps, including all bonus content and official Steam Deck support.

Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection includes maps, characters, vehicles, and ships from the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy - with content spanning the breadth of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace through to Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi.

Nacon is gearing up to unveil more of its new open-world Terminator survival game, where we'll see more of what to expect from the exciting new Terminator game on February 29.

The developer is hosting its Nacon Connect event on February 29, where we'll not only get a more detailed look at its upcoming Terminator game but we'll also see more of GreedFall 2: The Dying World, Test Drive Unlimited, Solar Crown, Ravenswatch, and Crown Wars: The Black Prince.

Nacon originally announced its as-yet-untitled Terminator game back in 2022; where the new open-world survival game is in development at Nacon Studio Milan, with the game taking place between the events of Judgment Day (Skynet dropping nuclear bombs and wiping out human civilization) that leads to the formation of the resistance by John Connor. You'll play as part of a group of survivors trying to stay alive in a post-nuclear apocalypse... against Terminators.

Microsoft is apparently reaching the upper limits of what exclusivity can offer, and now Xbox is taking cues from platform-agnostic giants like Fortnite, Roblox, and Apex Legends.

Like much of the world right now, the video games market is under tremendous pressure. The unsustainably high budgets of AAA gaming have taken a toll, leading to mass layoffs as companies try to squeeze out profits. There's a common theme in the games industry right now: Everyone is willing to try anything in order to scrape together more earnings.

Some of these hail mary approaches include disrupting business models that've been in place for a decade. Microsoft, in particular, recently announced that it will break first-party exclusivity on Xbox games and bring four titles to competing platforms like PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.

Elden Ring's new Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is FromSoftware's biggest DLC ever, and it'll bring a ton of new content to twisted fantasy world.

The upcoming Shadow of the Erdtree launches on June 21, 2024 for $39.99--that's the same price as most AA games. FromSoftware's horror maven Hidetaka Miyazaki had some interesting things to say about the expansion, confirming that Shadow of the Erdtree is the most ambitious post-release content to date.

In sheer size, SotE will take place in a special new map that's about a little bigger than the Limgrave region from Elden Ring. Miyazaki tells Eurogamer that the explorable areas will be a mix of large and compact.

We've all been in that situation where we need to sign into the PlayStation website or if we're lucky, a new console, and find that we just can't quite remember our PlayStation Network passwords. Yes, we should probably have used a password manager and no, the password that we set shouldn't be the same one we used elsewhere. But thankfully these days are coming to an end.

Sony has now announced that PlayStation Network users can ditch the passwords for good and instead use a passkey, a new type[e of authentication that uses biometrics rather than alphanumeric strings like those passwords we can never remember.

The idea is simple. Once a passkey has been configured users can sign into apps and services using Face ID or Touch ID on Apple devices and a fingerprint scanner on Android devices. That's all they need to do and all of the key-matching magic is done behind the scenes. It's more secure than passwords because passkeys can't be leaked, and they're easier to use because you can't forget a passkey, either.

In a recent interview with veteran game journalist Stephen Totilo's Game File publication, Microsoft's Phil Spencer reaffirmed that all games from its many Xbox Game Studios developers - including those from ZeniMax/Bethesda and Activision Blizzard - will be launch on 'day one' on Xbox Game Pass. "Our intent is the full portfolio of games from ZeniMax, Activision Blizzard, and XGS-Xbox Game Studios-will be on Game Pass, day one," Phil said.

This means Call of Duty 2024 will come to Xbox Game Pass. Of course, the game has yet to be formally revealed or announced. However, according to reports, this year's entry comes from Treyarch - the studio behind 2020's popular Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War entry. Rumors hint at a potential story and conflict set during the 1990s, with many suggesting a Gulf War theme for this year's CoD.

The next major Call of Duty coming to Xbox Game Pass represents a significant shift for the franchise - and it will be interesting to see what effect the move has on sales and Game Pass subscriptions. But what about the current Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 3, and legacy titles like the iconic Call of Duty 2 and 4? When will they come to Game Pass?

Unreal Engine 5 is one of the most amazing graphics engines that we've ever seen, and now someone has worked out how to get Unreal Engine 5 running in a web browser. Yeah, UE5 in a web browser.

In a photo posted to X by "moon" we get to see Unreal Engine 5 running in WebGPU, with multi-threaded rendering, many performance optimizations, and an asset streaming system. It's very cool to see, that's for sure. As for WebGPU, it's a modern web graphics API and successor to WebGL, which delivers higher performance and newer features to web applications.

Developers get low-level access to the GPU, which allows them to enjoy more efficient rendering and the option to play around with features and software that haven't been seen in a web browser before. As for the project itself, it's still being announced to the public, but the company CEO has confirmed it will be baking in multi-threaded rendering and an asset streaming system.

Elden Ring was released two long years ago now (very nearly), and the anticipation around the expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, has been stoked to fresh fiery heights with the release of a gameplay reveal trailer.

The video was promised yesterday, and arrived on time, looking very smart indeed as you can see above.

The trailer shows a bunch of bosses - highly imaginative fare - and locations, as well as giving us some story and background details. It doesn't disappoint fervent fans of Elden Ring, and there are plenty of those, as you're doubtless well aware.

It's official: Microsoft and Nintendo have announced two first-party Xbox exclusives that are coming to the Nintendo Switch.

TImes are changing. Exclusivity may be on its way out as games companies outgrow the narrow confines of their controlled platforms to sell as many games to as many people as possible. The new model once again underlines the basics of the games industry: Expanding software and content sales matters the most. Having reached the limits of the Xbox console market, Microsoft is starting to break first-party exclusivity so it can 'use what other platforms have to grow Xbox.' And Nintendo just so happens to have a market with over 139 million systems.

Now we officially know what two of those games are. Microsoft had announced that four Xbox games would come to Switch and PlayStation, but didn't name them, presumably because of official marketing promos. Neither Microsoft nor Nintendo wanted these reveals to spoiled, but the leaks sure fixed that.

Starfield's latest update has finally delivered FSR 3 support for the game, as well as Intel XeSS to boot in something of an upscaling bonanza.

Although the arrival of FSR 3 is going to be too late for many PC gamers, seeing as the player count for the space epic has now dwindled to very small numbers.

Still, better late than never, with the full FSR 3 release coming with the v1.9.67 patch for Starfield. The frame generation tech arrived in beta earlier this month, and Bethesda promised it would be patched in for everyone later in February - which has now happened.

There are specialist game controllers for the likes of flight sims, or driving games, of course - but what about sailing?

Or rather piracy, we should say, because we just caught a glimpse of a controller that we've certainly never seen the likes of before, namely a ship's wheel peripheral for Ubisoft's recently released Skull and Bones.

The teaser video for the wheel (above) shows that it's hand carved, offers the traditional directional pad, buttons, and also velocity paddles - plus there's a button to hit for 'shanty mode' that invokes a sea shanty from the game's library of the ditties.

MSI's new Claw gaming handheld has been pitted against the ASUS ROG Ally, with Intel's new Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" processor inside of the MSI Claw, the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU powers the ASUS ROG Ally.

Both of the gaming handhelds have the same screen size, the same resolution, and 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory. The biggest difference between the two handhelds is that Intel powers the MSI Claw, and AMD powers the ASUS ROG Ally. Now, the handhelds are in the hands of gamers and benchmarkers and have been tested against each other... who wins? AMD.

The benchmarking involved testing the handhelds at different power levels, which is one of the most important parts of a gaming handheld: power levels and what drains the battery (and provides the most performance on the go). The MSI Claw has a bigger battery inside than the ASUS ROG Ally, so you'd expect more battery life... but that's where Intel's stumbles with Meteor Lake in a gaming handheld rear their head.

We are to expect some major upgrades with Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro console later this year, but now we're hearing specifically about the AI upscaling inside of the PS5 Pro, which is said to be an NVIDIA "DLSS competitor.

In a new video released by Moore's Law is Dead, he had Michael from NXGamer on the show, who had a lot of juicy things to say. One of the topics was Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro console and its exciting AI upscaling technology that will provide 1440p 120FPS and 4K 60FPS gaming, an upgraded, better experience over the regular PS5 on the market now.

MLID and Michael also talked about Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 on the PlayStation 5 Pro console, saying that we should expect 40FPS if the developer can work its magic.

Sony owes a big part of its recent record-breaking milestone to an unnamed free-to-play game.

PlayStation's latest financials highlight strong demand for free-to-play content. Sony's games division generated a record $9.7 billion revenue during holiday 2023, of which microtransaction spending represents 24%, or $2.36 billion.

Monthly active users (MAUs) saw the largest spike to a new all-time high of 123 million. In the latest earnings call with analysts, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hiroki Totoki says that one free-to-play game was a significant contributor to this rise. There's one game that just so happens to have released in October 2023, which aligns with Sony's Q3 FY2023 period: the mega-hit sensation Roblox.

Sony is hard at work with AMD on its upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro console, with the latest rumors teasing the company will market the PS5 Pro as a 120FPS, 4K machine.

Wait, a 4K machine... and a console? Yeah, because most people know that upscaling is a thing now, so Sony won't have any trouble marketing a beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro console that's 120FPS capable (it will be) and 4K capable (it will be) even if it's using AI upscaling.

The news on the PlayStation 5 Pro is coming from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, who recently spoke to Michael from NXGamer. We see upscaling and image reconstruction technology used on all platforms now, just like Sony used checkerboard rendering on its upgraded PlayStation 4 Pro console back in the day when most of this image reconstruction technology was in its infancy.

Microsoft has no plans to force an all-digital gaming future by getting rid of physical game discs.

Digital has been on the rise since the Gen8 era, and now digital access and delivery makes up the lion's share of annual video game revenues (Nintendo, on the other hand, is an anomaly that makes more from physical game sales than it does from digital...but not by much).

To further this market along, both Sony and Microsoft have made blatant attempts to shift consumer behavior towards digital by releasing lower-cost consoles without disc drives. The maneuver seems to have paid off, and now all current PlayStation 5 consoles are digital by default. Microsoft is also believed to release a digital-only Xbox Series X this fall.

Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro console has been somewhat confirmed by analysts to CNBC, which reports the Japanese company is "likely to release a refreshed version of the PlayStation 5 this year".

The analysts added that the "souped-up" console -- awww, come on, guys, I've been saying beefed-up -- would be ready for the release of Grand Theft Auto 6 in 2025, which is one of the decade's "most hotly anticipated games". After a bunch of rumors, lots that you've read here, analysts are "now expecting a PlayStation 5 Pro from Sony".

Serkan Toto, the CEO of Tokyo-based games consultancy firm Kantan Games, told CNBC: "There seems to be a broad consensus in the game industry that Sony is indeed preparing a launch of a PS5 Pro in the second half of 2024. And Sony will want to make sure to have a great piece of hardware ready when GTA VI hits in 2025, a launch that will be a shot in the arm for the entire gaming industry".