Gaming - Page 272

Take-Two Interactive has filed a trademark opposition against Remedy Entertainment's new R logo, but Remedy now says both companies have already settled the matter.

In May 2023, Control, Max Payne, and Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment filed a trademark for a new logo. The studio wanted to change their logo to a new "R" design. At first glance, viewers might get it mixed up with Rockstar Games' infamous R* logo--at least that's what Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive thought. So the billion-dollar publisher filed a trademark dispute against the Finnish studio in August, and Remedy's new trademark is listed as opposed on the UK Intellectual Property Office.

Now it's been revealed that this is actually a non-story. Remedy tells Game File's Stephen Totilo that both Remedy and Take-Two have settled their differences, and the trademark opposition was just a formality. The publisher and the studio are on good terms with one another.

Street Fighter 6 has now sold 3 million units to date, making it the fifth best-selling game in the franchise.

Capcom's latest Street Fighter game has combo'd its way to success. Street Fighter 6 has now sold 3 million copies on all platforms, which is quite the achievement given the massive amounts of video games competition in 2023. This milestone is also up +2 million sales since July 2023, where Street Fighter 6 had sold 1 million units.

Based on Capcom's historical records, Street Fighter 6 is now the fifth best-selling game in the series and looks to be among the fastest-selling Street Fighters ever released. Total Street Fighter franchise sales are now at 52 million.

Last year, NVIDIA announced that over 500 apps and games were RTX enabled, meaning they used powerful ray-tracing or AI enhancements like DLSS rendering. It's an impressive milestone and a reminder that we're now at the point where gamers expect support for things like DLSS and ray-tracing in modern blockbuster releases.

Today comes another milestone with NVIDIA announcing that its Reflex latency reduction technology for all GeForce gamers is now available in over 100 games. Reflex reduces latency, so there's no delay from when you carry out an action to watching that action happen on screen.

Designed to give gamers a competitive edge in multiplayer titles and make single-player titles feel more responsive, Reflex is available in basically all of today's most-played and popular games - Apex Legends, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike 2, Fortnite, Cyberpunk 2077, Diablo IV, and even The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and the free-to-play Warzone just got an update, adding support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 or FSR 3 that adds upscaling and frame generation to a broader range of gamers.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III launched with NVIDIA DLSS 3 Frame Generation support and DLSS 2, FSR 2.1, and Intel XeSS upscaling. However, like with all DLSS 3-enabled titles, the Frame Generation side of the equation is limited to the GeForce RTX 40 Series of cards - due to NVIDIA's approach using new specialized AI hardware in its latest line-up.

AMD's approach is different, an open-source platform agnostic version of both upscaling and frame generation - meaning that it's available for all players no matter if they're rocking a new 40 Series, a GeForce RTX 30 Series, or a Radeon RX 6000 or RX 7000 Series GPU.

The Elder Scrolls is getting its own Fallout Shelter mobile game.

Bethesda has a big day tomorrow. The publisher's MachineGames studio will reveal its Indiana Jones action adventure game, and ZeniMax Online will show off what's to come in The Elder Scrolls online in 2024. While the show is tomorrow, the company took the opportunity to make an impromptu game reveal just before the big event.

The new game is called The Elder Scrolls: Castles, and it's a mobile game that's basically a TES version of Fallout Shelter. The game isn't live yet worldwide and is currently available in soft launch in the Philippines. Bethesda confirms that users can pre-register to be notified once Castles is available on the App Store and Google Play.

Tomorrow, Microsoft sets the stage for Xbox gaming in 2024...but the lineup won't include a surprise release.

Xbox is known for casually dropping new games the very same day they were revealed. It happened with the colorful Hi-Fi Rush in 2023, so...could it happen in 2024 as well? Microsoft says no, there won't be any shadow drops this time.

A new Xbox Wire post gives gamers an idea of what to expect from tomorrow's Developer Direct. The show won't feature any sort of news updates around Activision Blizzard King games--everyone wants to know when classic Call of Duty is coming to Xbox Game Pass. Nor will Microsoft or any Xbox Game Studios publisher release a new game during the show.

Following the Supreme Court;'s decision not to hear appeals by either Apple or Epic Games in a bloody antitrust battle that saw the former win out across nine of 10 issues, the iPhone maker has claimed that Epic should pay $73 million to cover its costs.

Apple's claim is that since Epic lost 90% of the court case last time out and that there is now no appeal to be heard, the game software company should be forced to pay for 90% of its court bills. Apple says that it spent $82,971,401 defending against its case. It then adjusted that to $81,560,362 before deducting the 10% that it believes it should have to pay itself. The result? A cool $73,404,326 tax bill has now landed at the doorstep of Epic.

Apple says that since Epic broke its App Store rules that brought all of this about, it's on Epic to pay for its costs. This comes after Apple pointed to its developer program license agreement which developers agree to when publishing apps and games to the App Store. In that agreement, Epic and other developers agree to indemnify Apple against legal expenses relating to breaches of that agreement.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 now has a final release date with the developer, GSC Game World, revealing that Heart of Chornobyl will hit the shelves on September 5, 2024.

The revelation came on X (formerly Twitter) via the official account for the game, accompanied by a somewhat lengthy message.

The developer was keen to make it clear that feedback on the beta versions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has been listened to.

Diablo 4's new Season of the Construct starts on January 23, and with that, Blizzard has provided the first details on what to expect regarding new content and quality-of-life updates. With the second season's vampiric theme coming to a close, Season 3 is all about magical mechanical 'Constructs beneath the deserts of Kehjistan.'

In addition to new monster types with gears and glowing bits, players will get a robotic mechanized 'Seneschal' companion as part of the new seasonal questline and story.

More than a pet that follows you around, each Seneschal can be customized with new skills and abilities via new seasonal items called "governing" and "tuning" stones. Depending on the configuration, your new pet will fight alongside you or stay back and offer support through healing and buffs.

Subscription services in games are certainly a contentious topic, and seemingly all AAA publishers are setting out to try and create their own version that provides value proportionate to the cost. However, in the current state of the gaming market, some subscription services are simply of much better value than others.

Whether you like the idea of subscription services or not, they are here to stay, as many publishers have seen a massive rise in popularity for their own subscription services, such as Microsoft's Game Pass or Ubisoft's Ubisoft+. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, director of subscriptions at Microsoft Philippe Tremblay said that in order for subscription services such as Ubisoft+ to expand, gamers will need to become more comfortable not owning their games.

Tremblay is referring to one of the valid points used by people who don't like subscription services, and that is gamers surrender all rights to owning the game they are playing. Tremblay continued and said that consumers moved away from physically collecting CDs or DVDs through subscription services such as Netflix and Spotify, but the gaming industry is moving a bit slower than the two aforementioned transitions.

The highest courts in the United States refuses to weigh in on a landmark gaming case, signalling the final end to the ongoing Epic v Apple trial.

In 2020, shortly after breaking the App Store's terms of service, Epic Games sued Apple for alleged antitrust violations. Without warning, Epic had circumvented the App Store's payment system, instead allowing Fortnite players on iOS to buy digital goods directly from Epic themselves. Apple then pulled Fortnite as a response. Epic sued Apple following Fortnite's ouster from the App Store, citing that Apple was exerting monopolistic control over its app store.

Nearly 4 years of antitrust litigation ensued, leading to an appeals injunction ruling that forces Apple to change its policies. App developers can now inform users of other ways to buy digital goods and content. Predictably, Apple isn't happy about this ruling, and tried to challenge the appeals injunction at the Supreme Court. Epic was likewise not satisfied and also wanted to challenge the ruling.

UK retailer GAME will reportedly stop allowing physical video game trade-ins starting next month.

GAME, one of the most popular gaming retailers in the United Kingdom, plans to cancel its trade-in program at physical locations. Sources tell Eurogamer's Tom Phillips that GAME will stop trade-ins of physical boxed video games at all locations starting in February 2024.

There is no change to GAME's trade-in policy at the time of publication.

Software is still the main driver for the video games market, but subscriptions may one day become the dominant model. This won't happen until consumers shift their behavior.

The video game subscription market has considerably evolved over the years. Prompted by Microsoft's forward-thinking Xbox Game Pass, both Sony and Nintendo now have their own competing multi-game services. The aggressive value model has attracted tens of millions of paid subscribers that regularly contribute to the relatively new billion-dollar gaming segment.

What would it take for subscription to overtake software sales? First, consumers would need to change their habits. This process is already underway as we speak. Microsoft and Sony are trying to convince gamers to be less reliant on full game purchases and instead buy into recurring subscriptions--that's why PS Plus and Game Pass offer such incredible value at the moment. There's potentially more revenue that way, but a lot more upfront spending (and even losses).

AI-powered consoles may be on the horizon for Gen10, but what will the video games market look like in Gen11 and beyond? How will gaming evolve in 2030 onward? We have some ideas.

Every new console generation brings major new innovations to gaming. The Gen8 console market introduced multi-game subscriptions, a shift towards digital, and a wealth of new games. Gen9, the current generation that includes the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, delivered major technological innovations like robust backwards compatibility, new graphics capabilities, and faster loading via SSDs. Gen10, which could start as soon as 2027 with a new Xbox console, may be centered around artificial intelligence with dedicated AI-acceleration via chips with NPUs (Neural Processing Unit).

AI-enabled consoles could become a foundation for multiple shifts across Gen11 and beyond, assuming consoles aren't phased out in Gen10 (I don't think this is likely for a number of reasons).

Ubisoft fragments its subscription service with a new innovative pricing tier.

In order to be successful, subscription services like Netflix, HBO Max, and even Xbox Game Pass need to fluidly adapt to change. We've seen practically every streaming service morph and shift over the years--Netflix went from ad-free viewing being a major selling point to offering a lower-cost subscription tier with ads built right in.

Now the multi-game subscription market is also adapting to change. This time, we're seeing subscriptions fragment their content offerings with new pricing schemes to match. Ubisoft is among the first to introduce this major new innovation to the video game subscription market with the goal of better matching consumers' content needs.

Last year, 11 bit studios announced that it was partnering with AMD and would work closely with them to integrate and leverage Radeon technologies in its upcoming games on PC and console. This includes FSR 3 and frame generation, which led to 8K gameplay footage of The Invincible running on a PC equipped with an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU.

As a developer, 11 bit studios is known for creating thematically rich, dark, and engaging experiences with hard choices to make - personified with its brilliant post-apocalyptic city builder and sim Frostpunk. Set in a new ice age and a frozen dystopian world, players were presented with making hard choices about who to feed, whether to put children to work and choosing the look and layout of civilian housing.

The combination of narrative and city-building was original and groundbreaking - like a twisted version of Sim City or Cities: Skylines. A critical success, 11 bit announced Frostpunk 2 a while back, but today, we've finally got our first look at gameplay.

Blizzard is about to perform some major changes to Overwatch 2, with the developer explaining in a recent blog that it will be providing ALL heroes with passive healing abilities in Season 9.

Overwatch 2's upcoming Season 9 will see both Tank and Damage heroes getting a modified, tuned-down version of the self-healing passive ability that Support heroes have. Blizzard explained: "In Season 9, both Tank and Damage heroes will get a modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive. This should give non-Support players more options in terms of sustaining themselves. It should also take some of the pressure off Support players to keep everyone alive since individual players now have more control of their own health pool".

Blizzard continued: "In Overwatch, there is a constant tug of war between the power of a team and the power of an individual hero or player. A change like this shifts that balance a bit. This is something that we are constantly evaluating. We still want Overwatch to be defined by team strategy and mechanics, but we feel this can be pulled back a bit now and possibly more in the future".

The CEO of the developer of Cities: Skylines 2 has written a blog post about the growing toxicity in the game's community, and how that might potentially mean the devs pulling back from engaging with players as a result.

A respondent from the community replies that the problem of toxicity is bound up in the "state the game released" comparing the Cities: Skylines 2 launch to Cyberpunk 2077. That poster then notes that if the devs keep improving the game based on feedback, they will hopefully get a "redemption story for CS2 too and [toxicity] will probably will turn into praise after some time."

Steam reviews were pretty negative about Cities: Skylines 2 upon its launch, or some of them were, and they remain mixed, with a number of criticisms levelled that the game is essentially still a beta. (Alongside complaints about performance issues, and broken parts of the game mechanics).

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League just revealed its PC system requirements and they aren't bad on the whole, but there is a thorn in the side for some, perhaps - this is another game that stipulates the need for an SSD.

Mind you, these days, if you haven't got an SSD, you're seriously missing out. The difference between SSD and HDD in terms of loading times and general system responsiveness is night and day, so it's the one upgrade you should definitely make if you haven't already done so.

At any rate, back to those system requirements, which were aired via Steam (hat tip to PC Gamer) and you can see in the above screenshot.

Max Payne Remixed (from developer Slasks Psykbunker) is a new mod that uses NVIDIA's RTX Remix platform to transform old games into RTX On showcases. The modding tool is set to be released into Open Beta with the arrival of the new GeForce RTX 40 SUPER Series later this month, but modders have been working with an early version to update classic games like Max Payne.

RTX Remix leverages AI to upscale texture while adding modern PBR or physically-based rendering to all lighting and materials. The results here is Remedy's Max Payne from 2001 with Path Tracing, or full real-time Ray Tracing enabled. It looks glorious, and you can download and check it out for yourself in demo form - the game's first level has been completed.

It requires some customization and installing RTX Remix to work, but it's worth it if you grew up with this absolute gem and are rocking one of the new GeForce RTX 40 Series cards.