Gaming - Page 276

The beast-men races of Akavir are one of Elder Scrolls' most interesting NPCs that we've never seen, and the ongoing Tamriel Rebuilt mod could be the first to introduce these strange characters.

In Elder Scrolls lore, Akavir is a place shrouded in mystery. It's a continent to the far east where the old phrase 'here there be dragons' is taken literally. There's myths and legends about bizarre snake-vampires known as Tsaesci and the dragon-tiger men of the Ka Po' Tun clan. We haven't seen these races in mainline Elder Scrolls titles--gamers are only piece things together with books and small dialog snippets.

That should change with the help of one particular mod. The massively ambitious Tamriel Rebuilt mod, which aims to bring the entire worldwide regional landmass of Morrowind to the PC version of The Elder Scrolls III, might feature the mainline series' first-ever in-game tsaesci.

CI Games, the Polish dev/publisher behind the Sniper Ghost Warrior and Lords of the Fallen games, wants to shake up the survival genre.

A series of new job listings gives us an idea of what CI Games is currently working on. According to a now-deleted Combat Designer job listing, the Polish game-maker's next project will put a spin on the survival horror genre.

The listing says that CI Games will "put a unique twist on the formula," and that the game will be an open-world survival horror game. Lords of the Fallen itself has a macabre style and grim tone with lots of bizarre visual sequences, but it sounds like the devs will kick this up a notch with their next game.

Sony Group will be in attendance at the Consumer Electronics (CES) 2024 expo, but we may not get PlayStation news.

Sony has solidified its CES 2024 plans and will hold a press conference on January 8, 2024 at 5PM PST/8PM EST. The company hasn't outlined the full extent of the technology it will show at the event, but the announcement does mention Sony Honda Mobility being on the stage.

Sony has partnered with auto-maker Honda to create Afeela, a new EV concept that converges the strengths of both companies: Sony's consumer electronics, entertainment, and sensor tech with Honda's 60 years of vehicle expertise. The electric vehicle has a sort of IoT ecosystem where touchscreens replace all components, switches, and dials; the car looks to be mostly digital in regard to human interfacing.

Just a day after The New York Times filed a copyright lawsuit against Microsoft, the Xbox-maker now faces another AI controversy.

Yesterday, the ID@Xbox Twitter account posted a holiday-themed image of children at play in a winter wonderland. Like Amazon's AI-generated Fallout promo, Xbox's digital Christmas card asked users what their favorite indie game was this year, but it had some irregularities that pretty much denote the tell-tale signs of AI use.

Looking closely at the image makes it pretty clear that AI created it. The sleds have weird control levers attached to them, and the overall color scheme has that "off" quality that all AI art has--the visuals and shadows just seem skewed.

AYANEO has just announced the world's first dual-screen 8840U handheld with the introduction of its new AYANEO Flip handheld. Inside, it's powered by the new AMD Ryzen 7 8840U "Hawk Point" APU. Check it out:

The new AYANEO Flip handheld is a spiritual successor to the super-successful Nintendo DS handheld, where AYANEO has gone with a clamshell design that features a screen hiding alongside a full-sized keyboard (KB variant) or another, but smaller secondary screen (DS variant, get it... Nintendo DS).

AYANEO says that the new Flip handheld series offers both the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U and Ryzen 7 8840U APUs, with both of the APUs fitting into the same socket, featuring near-identical silicon, and virtually the same specifications. Although the Ryzen 7 8840U variant is the "Hawk Point" APU that AMD just announced, which packs an enhanced XDNA1 AI processor... it won't do much inside of the Flip handheld, that is.

Steam's Winter Sale is here, offering good tidings and cheer (and lots of savings).

2023 has been a rough year for a lot of people, so if you're skint for cash, Steam once again has you covered. PC gamers can choose from a pretty wide selection of great games at or below $5. Of course you'll be getting back catalog games that can vary from old to relatively fossilized, but there's still some high-quality experiences to be had for under a fiver, like Far Cry 3 and one of my favorite new bullet hell survivor games from 2023, Halls of Torment.

Based on Steam's search page, there are 46,967 items currently on sale for under $5. Most of these are games, namely smaller-scale indies, but there's quite a bit of DLC and extra content like soundtracks thrown in as well. You can find all of the items on sale below $5 via this search link.

Data from Valve's Steam Charts page reveals interesting details about the storefront's daily and weekly metrics.

It's been well known that Steam is the most popular PC gaming storefront/platform on the market, but some of the info revealed on Valve's various stats pages is still pretty eye-opening. Among the metrics included in Steam's public database are figures for refund requests, best-selling games by gross revenue, and worldwide data traffic.

According to the Steam Charts section, Valve receives hundreds of thousands of refund requests from consumers on a daily basis. A quick scan of provided column graph shows Valve received 542,388 support requests on December 27. Of this total number, 91% of the total or 494,495 of the requests were Steam gamers seeking refunds for games.

Valve has announced the Steam Best of 2023 lists covering the top sellers, the most played, games that left Early Access, most played on Steam Deck, most played with a controller, and VR's best sellers. Instead of a numerical list, Valve's 'Best of Steam 2023' puts games into different sales tiers: Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze.

These tiers cover Gross Revenue, including in-game and full-game purchases, while the tier for 'Most Played' games separates them into different Peak Concurrent Players categories.

Some key takeaways: Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield were incredibly successful, two of the most popular new game releases. Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, PUBG, and Destiny 2 are the most popular free-to-play first-person shooters - with Call of Duty: Warzone also in the mix.

CD Projekt Group is confident it can self-fund all 5 of its new video game projects, including a new Witcher trilogy.

Following 2015's best-selling The Witcher 3, and 2020's record-breaking Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt has been able to consistently generate high sales revenues from its games. During Cyberpunk's controversial launch, the company sold 13 million copies and made $541 million in sales--almost 5x the budget of the game. Alongside a multi-faceted business model that includes a fully-fledged software distribution storefront, the sci-fi shooter's performance helped CD Projekt amass a significant asset pile to fund future games and growth.

Cyberpunk 2077 has seen various price fluctuations and re-releases, including steep discounts post-launch, a game-of-the-year-style re-release for next-gen consoles, and the standalone launch of the Phantom Liberty expansion. The company also re-released The Witcher 3 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. This cyclical product slate is often used in the industry, and it's a key part of CD Projekt's business model.

Thousands of game developers lost their jobs in 2023, but next year may be even tougher as studios maintain current their reduced headcounts.

This year wasn't great for game workers; the industry shed nearly 7,000+ jobs throughout 2023, culminating in the largest series of layoffs that the interactive entertainment market has seen in decades. Companies are slashing personnel to reduce costs, closing down studios like Volition and Free Radical while laying off hundreds of workers and cancelling projects along the way. Inflation has necessitated an economic "correction" among many markets, and gaming, with its $100 million+ budget games, has been hit hard by the current business climate.

Some companies like CD Projekt RED are preparing to move forward with the current staff that they have right now. In a recent interview with Polish newspaper Parkiet, CD Projekt Group CEO Adam Kicinski says that there won't be many new hires throughout 2024, despite CD Projekt working on multiple projects in parallel.

The first Nintendo Switch flashcart officially has a name: The Mig Switch, and the creators are confident that Nintendo won't be able to patch it out via firmware updates.

Nintendo's Switch handheld-console hybrid suffered a critical hardware-based exploit at launch, but after that, gamers haven't been able to really do much with a stock device in the way of modding. To be able to play game dumps, users had to get ahold of a hacked Switch--flashcarts don't exist. Well, until now.

It appears that a device called Mig Switch is the first flashcart for Nintendo's best-selling console. The creators say that the Mig Switch is compatible with all Switch models, including the newer Switch OLED. It comes with a dumper and the flashcart casing, but an SD card is not included.

Yoshi-P believes that the future of gaming could be in the clouds, but it will take time to make that happen.

Streaming games via the cloud is not an ideal way to play most titles, especially fast-twitch shooters. Right now cloud gaming simply hasn't matured, and this is more than a decade after the technology was really first introduced in a mainline package. That being said, cloud has expanded dramatically, pushing to all forms of gaming: From PC to the Big 3 console family, there's some sort of cloud-based offering for games distribution and access.

How far much will cloud gaming evolve in another 10 years? Yoshi-P, producer and director of beloved Final Fantasy XIV and its expansions (and Final Fantasy XVI), recently said he believes cloud could eventually replace all platforms and consoles over time.

Learn how to maintain your PlayStation 5 console with this informative video.

Whether you got a new PlayStation 5 console for Christmas or you're like me and have a launch 2020 model, odds are that you're going to clean out the system at some point. Unfortunately for PS5 owners, the console's unique ventilation design makes it a kind of dust trap and often you'll see dust build up on the vents in the back of the console and the intake fins on the sides of the unit.

Luckily repair expert TronicsFix, who has brought many a broken console back to life, shows us the most efficient and safe way to clean PlayStation 5 consoles.

CD Projekt Group still has no plans to sell the company to a larger video games firm like Sony, Microsoft, or even overseas groups like Tencent, NetEase, and Nexon.

Polish game developer-publisher CD Projekt is fiercely independent. The company has seen massive success with two mega-sellers: The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077, a sci-fi FPS that made record-breaking earnings at launch but embroiled CD Projekt in harsh controversy. Over the next 3 years after release, CD Projekt spent millions of dollars on Cyberpunk 2077's redemption arc, culminating in a series of massive updates and a fully-fledged ultimate edition with a strong expansion.

CD Projekt was very independent before hand, but after Cyberpunk 2077's turn-around, the studio has become even more maverick. Those investments took a lot of effort, money, manpower, and planning, and now that CD Projekt has successfully turned around Cyberpunk 2077, the studio is doubling down on its independence.

Starfield's new user reviewers have fallen to mostly negative on Steam, many of which are from gamers who have spent over 100 hours playing.

Like the online game before it, Bethesda's latest space sim is proving to be quite divisive (at least among PC gamers). Starfield sits at a mixed user review rating on Steam, but the game has fallen to mostly negative in the recent reviews category. It's worth noting that a portion of these recent verdicts are actually from people who played the game for a longer period: Over 14,000 of the total 86,000+ reviewers played more than 100 hours of Starfield.

According to Steam's metrics, there were 7,280 newer Starfield reviews made from November 28 to December 27. Of this number, 67%, or 4,889 of the reviews, were negative and did not recommend that other people buy and play Starfield.

Next-gen PlayStation 6 and Xbox Next consoles may use dedicated AI chips that unlock new opportunities for Sony and Microsoft.

Reports indicate that Microsoft's new Xbox will have an AI processor, potentially an NPU (Neural Processing Unit), that handles a multitude of tasks. Sony's next PlayStation 6 console (or even the PS5 Pro) may likewise have a dedicated AI processor to help streamline operations and unlock new features.

In fact, Sony recently patented a solution for real-time predictive assistance that's powered by artificial intelligence. The patent would essentially use AI to help players beat difficult in-game levels or bosses with tips and tricks being shown on the screen. The tech relies on libraries of player characteristics data that's collected, analyzed, and interpreted by AI. The PlayStation console would create player profiles based on things like skill, game preference, use of services, etc.

Rumors indicate that legendary Doom developer id Software is working on a new game based on Star Wars' popular The Mandalorian serial TV show, but there's not a lot to substantiate this claim.

Now that the 10-year Star Wars exclusivity deal with EA has ended, Disney has conscripted a wide variety of developers for new Star Wars games. Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment, the team behind The Division 2, is making Star Wars Outlaws; the French choice-and-consequence masters at Quantic Dream are working on Star Wars Eclipse; Respawn is making Jedi 3 and another shooter; and Amy Hennig's Skydance New Media is making a new ensemble-based game with Star Wars 1313's Dominic Robilliard involved in the project.

Star Wars games are all over the map right now, and rumor has it that id Software is working on its own Star Wars game. There's just one problem with this claim: No one has heard anything about it. In a recent episode of the XboxEra podcast, Giant Bomb reporterJeff Grubb said the reports probably weren't real.

Square Enix's Creative Business Unit I took direct inspiration from CD Projekt RED's masterclass in open-world RPG design while making the new Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth game.

Since its launch in 2015 (hey, that's almost 10 years ago!), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has influenced countless open-world games. CD Projekt RED set a new high watermark for meaningful and interesting sidequests; gone are the days of rote fetch quests and escort missions, here The Witcher 3 creates dramatic and engaging quests that are just as satisfying as the main storyline.

This didn't go unnoticed, and we've seen companies like even Nintendo leverage this formula with its modern Zelda duology. Now this influence is carrying over to Final Fantasy, namely FF7 Remake's second chapter.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth will be a full-priced $69.99 game and it won't release on Xbox Game Pass.

SEGA and Capcom were among the last publishers to raise video game prices to $69.99, and now both firms are charginging the new MSRP for their premium-priced games. Offsetting this price hike are value-oriented subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass, and SEGA in particular has been a strong Japanese partner for the service.

That support only goes so far, though. SEGA isn't about to release all of their big games on Game Pass--that would eat into full game sales as more consumers opt to buy into the subscription than pay full price. Some games, including the new mainline Like a Dragon game, will skip Xbox Game Pass in a bid to sell more copies.

Shortly after shaking up its domestic video games market, Chinese regulators have approved over a hundred games for sale and play within the overseas country.

China is an incredibly lucrative market for video games publishers and developers, but only if their games adhere to the country's strict rules and regulations. China is notoriously fickle and requires game-makers to abide by controlled policies that are aimed at regulating how much time and money Chinese citizens spend on video games.

The National Press and Publication Administration recently published a draft of rules that, if implemented and made into law, would shake up the video games market. Under the new rules, game-makers would be forced to cap player spending in games, cut out all daily login rewards, and any items that are included in blind-bag style lootboxes would also have to be offered for direct purchase. Also, any kind of promotion of big-earning lootboxes would be prohibited.