Gaming - Page 279

Sony has recently published a new patent that reveals the company is working on a new technology that changes the difficulty of a game in real-time.

The new patent outlines a new technology that will be designed to adjust the overall difficulty of the situation the player is facing by analyzing how a player interacts with in-game mechanics and elements. This technology is officially called "Adaptive Difficult Calibration For Skills-Based Activities In Virtual Environments", and it involves the use of algorithms designed to asses the aforementioned player interactions with the virtual world.

The idea behind this technology is increasing player engagement time with a game, as titles that include this technology will dynamically alter the difficulty to make sure a player is gaming at the perfect sweet spot of difficult, but not too difficult where they would want to give up and revisit it another time. Players' competency levels will differ depending on the challenges ahead of them, and with this technology, players will essentially be able to have a tailored difficulty experience in-game.

A staggering 26 years after the game was released, new footage has emerged showing an early version of Super Mario 64 multiplayer mode and the inclusion of Luigi.

The footage went seemingly unnoticed for approximately a month as it was uploaded to a small YouTube channel, flying under the radar of many super fans of Nintendo's iconic franchise. However, the VHS footage has been noticed, and it showcases Nintendo's 1995 Japanese Space World show, the event where it revealed to the world for the very first time the Nintendo 64. A console that would later be recognized as a significant leap forward in the history of gaming.

The footage shows a quick look at some off-screen gameplay of both Mario and Luigi within an early version of Super Mario 64, which, if the footage is true, would mark the first time Luigi has been spotted in the classic Nintendo 64 game outside of the 2020 leak that showed the character within the game files of the title. Originally, Luigi was meant to launch with the game, according to a 1996 interview with director Shigeru Miyamoto.

Overwatch 2 launched in 2022 with its new 5v5 matches, free-to-play model, and more... but Blizzard promised more than what we've gotten so far... and now more changes are coming to the game.

One of the big changes was the introduction of new Heroes, where you'd have to purchase the premium version of the latest Battle Pass (which costs $10 on its own), or you'd have to complete a bunch of hero challenges which takes a considerable amount of time.

It seems we're on the cusp of some changes in Overwatch 2, where in a re cent episode of the Group Up! Podcast, Overwatch 2 executive producer Jared Neuss explained that the developer is "actively working toward" a new system that will have new Heroes available to all players at launch.

James McCaffrey, the voice behind Max Payne and Alan Wake 2's Alex Casey, has passed away at age 65.

TMZ reported that McCaffrey died after a battle with cancer, with a post on Twitter from developer Remedy Entertainment saying they were "deeply saddened" by the news. Remedy tweeted: "We are deeply saddened to hear about the passing of our beloved friend and collaborator James McCaffrey, the iconic voice of Max Payne and Alex Casey. His remarkable talent not only gave life to our characters but also left an enduring impact on our community. Our hearts go out to his family in this time of loss".

Not only that, but Remedy writer and director -- and the face of Max Payne -- Sam Lake, said: "I'm heartbroken to hear the sad news of James McCaffrey's passing. We worked together for more than 25 years. He was a lovely man and a dear friend. He was a key part of the Remedy family. He was a brilliant actor. No one could do what he did better than him".

We've seen a bunch of different portable gaming handhelds powered by AMD Ryzen APUs, with another announced: introducing the new Terrans Force 5 handheld. Check it out:

Terrans Force 5 is a new handheld that is powered by Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U APU, offering 8 cores and 16 threads at up to 5.1GHz, with integrated AMD Radeon 780M graphics packing 12 GPU cores clocking at up to 2700MHz. The handheld features a 7-inch 1080p touchscreen display at 120Hz, with 100% sRGB color gamut coverage and a maximum brightness of 450 nits.

Inside, it can be configured with either 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5 memory at up to 6400MHz, while on the storage side of things, it comes with a 1TB Gen4 M.2 SSD, which can be upgraded to a larger 2TB capacity. There's a 50Wh battery that has around 25% more capacity than competing gaming handhelds, while the Terrans Force 5 supports 100W USB-C Power Delivery fast charging technology.

Larian believes Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a great fit for subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass.

Xbox Game Pass is a great fit for some games, but others...not so much. The subscription has its purpose for both developers and Microsoft, including buffering Xbox service value, offering massive discoverability to games, and of course the potentially high upfront payouts and even bonuses if gamers play a bunch of hours.

There's also downsides. Game Pass "cannibalizes" game sales, meaning that games offered on the service can potentially sell fewer copies because they're being included as part of the subscription. The market dynamics of Xbox Game Pass have been discussed--although not expressly documented in data form--by Microsoft both publicly and in sworn testimony during the FTC v Microsoft trial in June.

Banning cheaters and players who circumvent the rules and don't play well is as old as the first games that went online. However, Valve's new method of dealing with smurf accounts (players running multiple accounts) might take the cake for the funniest to date.

As part of Dota 2's holiday-themed Festivus 2023 Update, it informed players that "if you're on the Naughty List, we've got great news for everybody else and bad news for you because this year is gonna be a bloodbath." Valve adds that smurfing and other negative behavior in Dota 2 makes matches worse, adding that those on the Naughty List will "choke on their richly-deserved coal-flavored just desserts."

Bold words, with the result being 'Naughty List' players opening what they thought was a Frostivus 2023 only to find a digital Highly Toxic Lump of Coal - alongside a message informing them that their account(s) were permanently banned.

New reports make a shocking suggestion: Sony has prohibited consumers from selling their physical PlayStation games to stores, digital e-commerce sites, and other people. This isn't the case.

Sony's overseas Software Usage Terms are once again under the crosshair for alarming language around game resales. The gaming sphere has picked up on a specific passage in Sony's software EU terms that seemingly forbids consumers from selling their purchased PlayStation titles. This isn't the first time this particular passage has kicked off a controversy, and the actual terms haven't changed in the past 9 years.

The reality is that the Software Usage Terms were controversial even before the PS4 launched. Eurogamer reported on this very subject two days before the PS4 released in 2013, which prompted Sony's Shuhei Yoshida to clarify that yes, users could indeed sell and share their PS4 games.

Netflix's gaming ambitions have taken over both Google Play and the App Store, with free Netflix games topping the charts on both stores.

Two years ago, Netflix announced it would start adding games to its subscription. Netflix now has 86 games available to download and play on mobile, and the streamer has even conquered both the Google Play and App Store digital marketplaces with its latest release. With the help of Rockstar Games' mega-popular Grand Theft Auto franchise, of course.

In a surprising move, Netflix teamed up with Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games to launch the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition mobile port on the service. Actually, launch is a bit of a misnomer; Netflix subscribers can download a special version of the GTA games on both mobile stores. These versions are separate from the base games in the newly-released GTA mobile trilogy, which are sold at $19.99 a piece.

Newzoo's 2023 games market report illustrates just how important North America is for the interactive entertainment industry.

A bit ago, Sony raised the price of its PlayStation 5 console in basically all worldwide regions except for the U.S. There's a good reason for that: North America, including the U.S., is among the top-spending geographies on the planet.

Analyst firm Newzoo recently published its video games industry market report for 2023, and the data is particularly interesting given the current economic climate. Gaming is set to make $184 billion revenues in 2023, excluding games hardware and betting segments. Elsewhere in the report, Newzoo compares the amount of gamers per region, and cross-referencing this data with regional spending delivers eye-opening results.

Microsoft wants to expand its Xbox gaming business to all global regions, but the company faces an uphill battle in countries like Japan.

Microsoft aspires to reach games industry leadership by 2030, with an implied $32 billion of revenue generated from its widening ecosystem of products and services. To get there, Xbox needs to expand. The recent Activision Blizzard King acquisition will accelerate these plans with an enviable content war chest worth many billions of dollars, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush.

Xbox's strategy goes well beyond first-party content, and to achieve its goals, Microsoft needs to build its business in certain markets like Asia, including both Japan and China. Progress is well underway--Xbox has made deals with Square Enix to bring more games to the platform, starting with Final Fantasy XIV in 2024. To streamline this expansion process in Japan, Microsoft recently hired former PlayStation business director Mena Sato Kato to help spark partnerships and relationships between Xbox and Japanese publishers.

Elden Ring's anticipated DLC expansion could launch in February 2024, and FromSoftware may be working on a second expansion set for 2025, new marketing materials indicate.

New accidental leaks at retailer Data Blitz give updates on Elden Ring's new story content. The site erroneously updated marketing materials for a special edition Elden Ring-themed Thrustmaster controller that's specifically designed to make the action RPG more player friendly. The Thrustmaster eSwap X2 Pro Xbox controller touts swappable joysticks, mechanical buttons with better actuation, and extra programmable buttons.

The document makes it pretty clear that the public wasn't meant to see the info--it wasn't necessarily a product page, but more of a guide for retailers to use for their shop descriptions. The leaked materials mention that the controller will "sync" with the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion's launch, and the eSwap X2 Pro would release during Elden Ring's anniversary, which is listed as February 2024.

3D Realms is the latest video game studio to get hit with layoffs as a result of Embracer Group's aggressive cost-cutting plan.

Despite making an estimated $184 billion throughout the year, 2023 has been a terrible year for some of the people who make games. The games industry has suffered over 7,000 layoffs across all disciplines as more publishers, developers, and parent companies aim to reduce spending budgets. Higher costs are eroding year-over-year profit numbers and margins, and now billion-dollar publishers and smaller-scale devs alike are pulling the layoff lever.

Decentralized, entrepreneur-funded Embracer Group has been hit particularly hard by layoffs. The company laid off 904 workers as of September 2023, of which 700+ were game devs, and Embracer said more layoffs were likely. Now that's happened: Layoffs have come for Danish games publisher 3D Realms, who released the original Duke Nukem on PC.

Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke confirms the game dev was given full creative control over Baldur's Gate 3, including free reign on which era the game takes place in.

Baldur's Gate 3 is known for its incredibly vast player freedom. Gamers can choose a multitude of outcomes throughout the RPG, whether it be something integral like character creation/skills/classes or the myriad ways you can win in battle. Whatever the parameter is, you can bet that Larian lets you fiddle and experiment with it.

It turns out that the Belgian RPG masters were given similar freedoms. In a recent awards acceptance letter penned by Swen Vincke, the founder says that Larian was given "carte blanche" (a Latin term that essentially means blank check, in this case denoting full artistic liberty) on how they wanted to use the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. Vincke further comments about the disastrous layoffs that saw Hasbro eliminating 1,100 employees, many of which were at its Wizards of the Coast division.

Microsoft plans to release a next-gen Xbox console by 2026, new unverified rumors and reports claim.

Accidental document leaks from the FTC v Microsoft trial put a next-gen Xbox release in November 2028, however new rumors say that a new Xbox console is coming in 2026. This is a substantially reduced window and would cut the current Gen9 Xbox family to about 6 years, two of which were mostly constrained by chip shortages. It's worth mentioning that this document was published in May 2022 and a lot has likely changed since then.

The trial leaks also show that Microsoft was mulling over a potential mid-cycle Xbox Series X refresh set to launch sometime in late October of 2024. This console was codenamed "Brooklin" and would be a cylindrical, digital-only Series X. The documents also say that the mid-gen consoles (Ellewood, which is the 1TB Xbox Series S, and Brooklin, the aforementioned Series X refresh) have been funded.

The rumored PlayStation 5 Pro will reportedly use custom dedicated raytracing technology developed by Sony.

New reports indicate that Sony is developing custom, proprietary DLSS-like technology for its new PS5 Pro console. Sources have told Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb that the mid-gen PS5 upgrade will leverage Sony's own dedicated, hardware-accelerated RT technology that's based on significant iteration over the PS5's existing machine learning (ML) capabilities.

The PS5 Pro's custom RT tech would target higher frame rates and resolution across demanding current-gen games.

Kojima Productions enters its 8th year of independence as the Metal Gear Solid creator confirms the next phase of expansion is underway.

Hideo Kojima's independent studio is growing. Since establishment in 2015, Kojima Productions has teamed up with Sony Interactive Entertainment and 505 Games to release Death Stranding on PS4, PS5, and PC, reaching 16 million players on all platforms (Game Pass included). This is part of KojiPro's Phase 1 development.

The studio is now in Phase 2, which sees major expansion points into new territories. On the more traditional front, KojiPro is making Death Stranding 2 for PlayStation 5. Kojima is very interested in exploring uncharted waters, though, and opened a new Los Angeles-based subsidiary focused on film, music, and TV. This branch is working alongside movie production company A24 on a new Death Stranding film adaptation.

It's official: Hideo Kojima is finally working on a film based on his games.

Hideo Kojima has a voracious appetite for art, film, and music. Looking at his games, this comes with the territory; Kojima's work is filled with pop culture references, highly artistic influences, and complex stories interwoven with relatable human themes. This combination delivers a cinematic interactive experience.

Now Kojima is officially making a movie (although some could argue Death Stranding is just that). The auteur announced that Kojima Productions is working alongside independent film production company A24 on Death Stranding movie. A24 seems like the perfect fit for Kojima's style--it's known for an eclectic range of art-house films like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Midsommar, Hereditary, and The Whale.

Naughty Dog has ceased development on its Last of Us live service game, which had been in pre-production since The Last of Us II.

Sony's live service push isn't going according to plan. Inspired by billion-dollar GaaS titles like Fortnite, Warzone, Apex Legends, and even Minecraft, Sony's games division laid out an ambitious strategy to release 12 live service games by FY25 (April 2025 - March 2026). This ambition has been considerably scaled down due to the current landscape of the games market, which has triggered thousands of layoffs to counter rising costs.

In a Q2 earnings brief, Sony announced that it had reduced its FY25 live service slate from 12 to 6 games, citing that the other titles would be delayed. Rising costs has triggered layoffs at Bungie, who Sony acquired in 2022 for $3.6 billion to help lead its live service charge. Sony is currently relying on Bungie to help vet its live service games with a "rigorous review process." Naughty Dog's Last of Us GaaS title didn't exactly pass Bungie's live service litmus test and the project had been delayed as a result.

Dune movie stars Austin Butler and Timothee Chalamet have taken the battle to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, where they battled it out in a Rust 1v1 battle with knives only. Check it out:

The two actors will next appear in Dune: Part Two in March 2024, with Activision getting the actors to play themselves in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 with some surprising results. You can get the Paul Atreides bundle in Call of Duty right now for 2400 COD points, which works out to around $20.

Chamalet, on the other hand, used to mod Xbox 360 controllers before he was a movie star, with his own YouTube channel called ModdedController360 when he was a teenager. Chamalet is the winner in the end, and both of the actors said "good game" at the end, which was wholesome to see.