Gaming - Page 285

OneXplayer is leading up to the launch of its new external GPU -- the OneXGPU -- which is powered by the AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT GPU and launches on November 28 or November 29, depending on where you live.

The new OneXGPU will start off at $599 for the first 96 hours of its crowdfunding campaign, but that's early pricing, so the pricing is expected to be higher when it hits retail. Inside, OneXplayer is using the Radeon RX 7600M XT with the full Navi 33 GPU powered by the RDNA 3 architecture. The Navi 33 GPU inside of the OneXGPU has a 2.3GHz game clock inside of its 120W TGP (Total Graphics Power) which means you get the maximum power from this GPU as an external GPU.

AMD's Radeon RX 7600M XT features 2048 Stream Processors and 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit memory bus, with up to 288GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

Seven years of game and hardware sales have propelled Nintendo Switch platform revenues to astronomical heights.

Nintendo's latest Q2 earnings report gave key updates on the state of its games business, and things are looking great for the Japanese entertainment giant. Looking at the lifetime revenues of the Switch platform really underlines how well the handheld-console hybrid has performed across its 7-year lifetime.

According to figures provided by Nintendo and charted by us, the Switch platform has generated a whopping $73.9 billion in revenues since its release in March 2017 all the way to September 2023. Major milestones across this lifecycle include over 132 million Switch console shipments and 1.133 billion games sold, which highlights Nintendo's current unshakable place in the Big 3.

Nintendo's latest Q2 earnings report delivers updates on Switch console shipments, showing the system has no signs of slowing down.

The FY24 period marks the 8th fiscal year that the Switch has been on the market. Despite this long period (console cycles typically last for 7 years), the Switch is still performing quite well, even when relative to prior periods.

As of Nintendo's Q2 FY24 period, which ended September 30, 2023, the company has shipped a cumulative total of 132.46 million Switch consoles across the entire hardware family (includes 2017 launch model, Switch Lite, and OLED).

The Super Mario Bros. film has helped Nintendo rake in over $300 million from its royalties and smartphone business, and it's also had a direct affect on Mario game sales.

Nintendo's transmedia plan has worked. The Super Mario Bros. movie is a smash success, helping Nintendo rake in millions and sparking massive interest in its games and content. While the company does want to make money from film royalties, the main goal with the Mario movie was to spread mass-market interest in Nintendo's video games (as if Nintendo, one of the most recognizable brands in history, needs help in this regard).

The success of the Super Mario Bros. movie has translated into a direct rise in Mario game sales. This was the biggest part of the plan all along--the hope was that the film would make consumers want to buy Switch consoles and Mario titles. Taking a look at Nintendo's latest Q2'24 earnings report, we can see that's exactly what happened.

Capcom is developing a new chapter of its next-gen RE Engine in an effort to keep up with demanding games.

Japanese games developer Capcom turned heads with 2017's release of Resident Evil 7, a game that utilized its brand new RE Engine technology. Since then, the RE Engine has matured and evolved significantly, delivering high-end visuals and smooth frame rates across numerous Resident Evil remakes, including RE2, RE3, and the most recent RE4 remake, and it's best-selling Monster Hunter World MMORPG.

Now the company is preparing for the future. A recent video from Capcom's R&D YouTube channel outlines the current state of the engine and what's on the horizon. Details and specifics are vague, but Capcom is working on a new iteration of the RE Engine that's codenamed REX (RE neXt Engine).

Internet trolls have struck again, this time hitting one of the best-known faces in gaming.

Ned Luke, the actor who played the irascible bank robber Michael De Santa in Grand Theft Auto V, was recently swatted while live streaming to fans. A clip of Luke being interrupted by a phone call was spotted by Dexerto:

"Oh nice, nice, nice," Luke sarcastically said before telling his audience what had happened. "Alright, I gotta go. Now these assholes have swatted my house, so I've gotta go."

Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to break records when it comes out, it's one of the most anticipated games of all time... and there are gamers out there that will go to great lengths to play it... including going cold turkey from smoking cigarettes.

A particular GTA 6 fan has posted on Reddit, picked up by Dexerto that claims that he's given up smoking because of the impending release of Grand Theft Auto 6. The reason? This gamer wants to not be sick from any cigarette-related illness or miss out on playing GTA 6 at launch because he's stuck in the hospital over something that could've been prevented.

The post reads: "I've been a fairly heavy smoker for a while now. Lately I've been coughing a lot more and just feeling like shit from the cigarettes but addiction is a hell of a thing. I'm so hyped for GTA 6 the thought of being in hospital or on heavy medication as the result of cigarettes has got me to quit cold turkey. I will not miss out on this game and want to be in my best possible health for it. Today is 10 days free. Thanks Rockstar!"

Intellivision delivers unwelcome news to investors regarding its Amico console.

The Intellivision Amico still hasn't begun mass production, and now the company says that it must raise more capital in order to start manufacturing its family-friendly console. The system was originally announced in 2020 during a time of rampant growth in gaming, but the industry is now rubber-banding the opposite way, leading to significant spending shrinkage and mass layoffs.

"Our ability to begin manufacturing Amico consoles in volume requires securing additional investment," Intellivision CEO Phil Adams said in the update.

Two of Nintendo's must-play Switch games are on sale for Black Friday, and you can grab both for just $80.

Black Friday 2023 could be one of the record books. We're seeing some of the year's biggest AAA games drop to $29.99, and even some rare discounts on Nintendo titles, which are notorious for hardly ever going on sale. If you're a Switch gamer, you can grab two of the most epic adventure games ever made for a cool $80, which is little more than today's base prices for new games.

Walmart has both games of the newer The Legend of Zelda duology for a combined $80. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been reduced from $69.99 to $49.99, a -28% discount, whereas The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been reduced to just $29.99, offering a -50% discount.

Walmart has fantastic deals on some of Rockstar's best games across all console generations.

Black Friday is here, and this year's deals are legit. We've seen steep discounts across the board, from $350 PlayStation 5 consoles at Target to sub-$200 Series S's at Newegg's TikTok shop.

But what about the games? You can snag two must-play Rockstar titles for just $30 with Walmart's Black Friday games sale. Both Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V have been discounted to just $15 each across all platforms, so now is the perfect time to jump in and try them out if you haven't already (with 190 million copies sold worldwide, odds are you've probably played GTA V at some point, though).

A former Rockstar North developer, Obbe Vermeij, who worked as a technical director on the iconic Grand Theft Auto III, among other early GTA titles up to and including Grand Theft Auto IV, has removed several posts from his blog at the request of Rockstar North.

The posts offered candid insights into the development studio, including the fact that the GTA 3 was prototyped on the Sega Dreamcast and little nuggets like how the team toyed with developing a zombie action game set in Scottland following the release of Grand Theft Auto Vice City called "Z." According to Obbe Vermeij, these posts were removed to protect the "Rockstar mystique."

"This blog isn't important enough to me to piss off my former colleagues in Edinburgh, so I'm winding it down," he writes. Adding, "I would love for Rockstar to open up about the development of the trilogy themselves, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon."

Even though the user review rating for Diablo IV is sitting on 'Mixed,' it's still one of the biggest games of 2023 and the second game ever to make the jump from Battle.net exclusive to also being available on Steam. With the current Steam Autumn Sales now on, you can pick up Diablo IV with a sizable 40% discount, bringing the price down to just $42.

Thanks to Black Friday, this is one of the many awesome PC Game Deals currently available. But, if you're unsure whether or not Diablo IV is the sort of game you'd play (we'd argue that Diablo IV is one of the most fun and instantly rewarding gaming experiences of the year), this free trial will let you play the game from now until November 28.

However, there's a catch - in that Blizzard has outlined some stipulations and rules for this Diablo IV Free Trial period on Steam. Character level will max out at Level 20 for the free trial. Still, players will have access to all Diablo IV content - including the new Season of Blood action that sees Sanctuary overrun by Vampires. The latest Season also expands the endgame with new meaningful activities, bringing several quality-of-life updates to the game.

Call of Duty's annual 2024 release will be centered on the Gulf War, sources have told Windows Central's Jez Corden.

The next Call of Duty game will take place in the 1990s during the Gulf War, new reports indicate. COD 2024 is part of the Black Ops sub-series and has been in development by Treyarch for the past 4 years--the only game in the entire franchise to have such a long timetable according to Charlie Intel.

Info on Black Ops Gulf War was originally discovered in a 2022 content leak at Activision, where the game was mentioned under the codename Cerberus. A picture of an F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber was also part of the leaks, further lending credence to the Gulf War setting. U.S. forces used F-117 Nighthawks during the airstrike campaigns of Operation Desert Storm.

Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is set to launch on December 5, bringing the complete version of the game to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation, and PC - in physical and digital forms. This includes the heavily updated, improved, and overhauled 2.0 version of the base game and the critically acclaimed Phantom Liberty expansion starring Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves.

According to the developer and publisher CD Projekt RED, the Ultimate Edition includes "every update ever released," with the announcement making special mention of the new dynamic skill tree inspired by Diablo II, vehicle combat, enhanced enemy and police AI, and the fact that it includes a tonne of free DLC packs including cards, clothes, and new weapons.

Although Cyberpunk 2077 launched in 2020, it still feels as modern and fresh in 2023 thanks to the development team's time and effort. On PC, with the fully ray-traced and path-traced RT Overdrive Mode and NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 rendering, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is also one of the most incredible-looking games ever made.

Modern Warfare 3 may be one of the most polarizing Call of Duty games in history, but it's also delivering record-breaking performance along the way.

It's no secret that MW3 is in the crosshair right now. The game looks to have the worst review score out of any Call of Duty title and has been put on blast for its short campaign. Bloomberg reports indicated that Modern Warfare III was cobbled together in just 16 months, which is a far cry from the multi-year timeline that Activision developers typically spend on COD games.

Despite the negative pushback, Modern Warfare 3 is still setting a new high water mark for the the new MW trilogy. According to a recent update, MW3 has enjoyed more engagement than 2022's Modern Warfare 2 and 2019's Modern Warfare.

The UK's Competition Appeals Tribunal has denied Sony's request to strike down and eliminate an anti-competitive lawsuit. Now the appeals court wants more information from Sony before the courts decide what to do next.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is being sued in the UK. The $6 billion class-action lawsuit is on the behalf of 8.9 million UK gamers, and alleges that Sony has abused its position to negatively affect consumers.

Alex Neill, the lawyer representing consumers in this case, says that Sony has a "near monopoly" on digital game and content sales on PlayStation, and it uses this power to mandate "strict terms" that "allow Sony to set the price of digital games and in-game content" while charging a 30% fee for all games and DLC/microtransaction content sold on the PlayStation Store. Neill alleges that this practice leads to "excessive and unfair" prices for consumers.

Although Fortnite is a big breadwinner that makes billions of dollars a year, it appears that Epic Games pays a flat 30% commission to all platform holders as part of a blanket fee structure.

The ongoing Epic v Google trial has revealed quite a bit about the Play Store, Google's failed games aspirations, and the Fortnite-maker's business. We've learned that the Play Store has a 70% operating margin (such a high margine unheard of in the realm of gaming, especially for a company that doesn't actually make games...well any more, that is), that Google once floated the idea of actually buying Epic Games with Tencent's help, and that Fortnite has earned $20 billion in revenues.

Now we have some other information that could highlight Epic's current overspending. According to The Verge's live blog of the Epic v Google case, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has confirmed that Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox all charge a 30% commission for games. This isn't a surprise and is generally common knowledge. While on the stand, Sweeney answered questions from Google's legal counsel regarding each platform holder's share take, reiterating a general 70-30 split that the Big 3 charge in order to maintain profitable store infrastructures.

Minecraft isn't just a game where you can let your imagination and creativity run wild; it can also be used to demonstrate real-world projects, or at least that is what Japan's government appears to be doing.

A new report from Automaton Media has highlighted a video posted to a YouTube account that's linked to Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism. The video states it is a demonstration of the ongoing Tatsuno Dam project and is a recreation of what is going to be built in real life.

The construction for this dam is currently underway in Kumamoto, Japan, and the video shows off a birds-eye view of the entire project, with the video creators even factoring in the surrounding environment. Reports indicate the video has caused a stir in the online Japanese community, with some users praising the Minecraft world creators' precision in replicating the real-world location within the game. The Tatsuno Dam is expected to be completed and operational sometime in 2024.

Todd Howard inadvertently explains why consumers enjoy physical media in a new interview with Wired.

A bit ago, Todd Howard sat down with Wired to talk about the history of Bethesda and the games he'd worked on. The interview is a good watch and exposes Howard's overall humility as he repeatedly acknowledges the team efforts required to ship games like Daggerfall, Morrowind, Fallout 3, and Starfield.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is at the end of the video. Howard looks down proudly at the game boxes and really touches upon some of the biggest reasons why physical media is still so powerful: Emotional connection.

Starfield has a new patch and it brings in some useful advances on the performance front, including the official incorporation of DLSS for those with NVIDIA RTX graphics cards.

Update 1.8.86 is here and full DLSS 3 support is in the mix for PC gamers, after previously being tested in a beta patch for Starfield (and having various fixes applied for ghosting and other niggling issues).

The game also supports DLAA and NVIDIA Reflex (for reducing input lag), as well as DLSS Super Resolution.