Gaming - Page 286

DOS_deck is a new way to play classic games released for the MS-DOS operating system on the Steam Deck or PC browser with a controller. The UI follows the look and feel of the Steam Deck interface. So far, there are several classic game demos (which used to be called Shareware) and even full games to check out - including the original Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Syndicate, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Epic Pinball, and more.

Playing classic DOS games on a modern PC or via a browser extension is not new. Still, the simple and elegant UI and integrated controller support make DOS-deck an awesome experience, even on a PC with Chrome or Edge. All controls are already mapped, and you can select games or return to the main menu with a controller.

For PC purists, default keyboard and mouse controls are also here. Getting DOS_deck working on a Windows PC doesn't require anything other than plugging in a controller, but getting it to run on a Steam Deck via Chrome or Edge requires a few steps to ensure the controller works properly.

In 2007, Valve released the iconic first-person mind-bending puzzler Portal. Set in the clinical Aperture Science Laboratories, it introduced the 'Portal Gun' to create one of this century's most innovative and memorable gaming experiences.

Portal was/is a groundbreaking technical and design achievement and something that has sparked continued interest thanks to the recent release of the path-traced Portal RTX mod for the GeForce RTX 40 Series of graphics cards. But what if you went the other way - and tried to port or get the game running on ancient hardware like 1996's Nintendo 64?

That's exactly what N64 expert and programmer James Lambert has been doing for years, recreating and building a working version of Valve's Portal for the Nintendo 64. Right now, a dozen test chambers are playable and working with fully functioning portals and physics.

Diablo IV's launch was a success, both critically and with players. Still, as a live service game as Blizzard's action RPG moved into its first Season - that praise and excitement slowly faded as many players began to tire of the repetitive and somewhat undercooked "end-game."

Season 2, or Season of Blood, which features a vampire theme, new activities, and vampire powers to wield, has seen the positive vibes and sentiment return to Sanctuary. In addition to being able to tackle and farm new bosses for specific gear, the team at Blizzard also sped up leveling so that getting up to Level 100 is now 40% faster.

And with the current Mother's Blessing week, with the massive 35% boost to both XP and Gold until November 27, there's no better time to jump into Diablo IV.

Roblox now ties Call of Duty in one of the most important metrics for interactive entertainment.

Roblox recently posted its Q3 earnings results, showing strong revenues of $713 million on the back of $840 million in net bookings. Outside of the earnings performance, Roblox also broke new ground on its engagement KPIs (key performance indicators), namely with the amount of people who used Roblox on a daily basis.

According to the report, Roblox had over 70 million DAUs (daily active users) throughout the 3-month period ending September 30, 2023. That puts Roblox directly up against Call of Duty, one of gaming's largest franchises.

Like most gamers, Valve's Gabe Newell also believes video games should emphasize fun over realism.

Half-Life just celebrated its 25th anniversary and Valve went all out for the momentous occasion with a feature-length Half-Life documentary and even making the old-school PC classic free to own for a limited time on Steam. The official Half-Life 25th anniversary documentary is filled with lore, history, and tidbits of the earliest days of Valve and of the sci-fi FPS itself.

The doc follows a lot of people who have worked at Valve, including small interviews with Valve founder Gabe Newell. These interviews are always a treat because of Newell's frank candor, and this documentary was no exception. Throughout the doc, Newell expressed his thoughts on fun vs realism, which is particularly interesting given Valve's high-precision VR physics system used in Half-Life Alyx.

In little over six years' time, Fortnite has become one of the best-earning video game franchises in history.

A new updated profile for ex-Epic Games exec Donald Mustard gives valuable data and insight on just how big Fortnite really is. According to the profile, Fortnite has made over $20 billion in revenues, a figure that rivals the top echelon of gaming breadwinners. For context, in just six years, Fortnite has made lifetime revenues that are impressively close to the $31 billion+ that Call of Duty has generated in 20 years.

"During his previous tenure as Chief Creative Officer of Epic Games, Donald's direction and guidance built Fortnite into a cultural phenomenon that currently boasts over 650 million players with over 20 billion dollars in revenue. Fortnite has more than 250 million average monthly players as of 2023 and 25 million players use Fortnite daily," reads Mustard's new profile on AGBO's website (AGBO is the Russo brothers' production company that worked on a myriad of projects).

In order to gain a foothold in gaming, Google once floated the idea of teaming up with Tencent to buy 100% of Epic Games.

Driven primarily by Stadia, Google once had a roaring flame of ambition to break into video games. The search giant made a big splash in gaming throughout 2018 with its now-defunct game streaming platform-and-storefront Stadia, and to help fortify its billion-dollar disruption, Google planned to invest more into content infrastructure. Google had originally eyed some high-profile deals for Stadia before eventually settling on opening its own first-party labels and entreating third-party publishers.

According to new findings in the Epic v Google trial, ex-Stadia lead Phil Harrison had proposed an interesting idea: What if Google could ally with Tencent and completely buy Epic Games' shares? This would help supercharge Google's position with co-ownership of Fortnite, which was practically the biggest game in the world in 2018 thanks to the battle royale's astronomically-high $5.5 billion in revenues.

With a crowdfunding early bird price of $699 USD, the AYANEO Slide is the latest PC gaming handheld from the company to feature the impressive Phoenix APU-tech from AMD - the Ryzen 7 7840U - with a max power consumption of 28W. What makes this handheld a little different from other AYANEO products and systems like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally is that the 6-inch 1080p IPS display is a "floating screen" that slides up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard.

The official MSRP for the AYANEO Slide is $899 USD, so the competitive price point of $699 USD is limited to the crowdfunding period. Although the display panel technology is IPS over OLED, the specs are impressive.

In addition to the Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, the 368PPI pixel density, 400-nit brightness, and 100% sRGB color coverage should make for a wonderful display. On top of this, you've got the full keyboard, ergonomic design utilizing PC and glass fiber materials, plus gamer-friendly hall-sensing analog sticks and hall effect triggers.

Can you believe it has been 25 years since Valve released the original Half-Life, which was a game-changer in so many ways when it was released and has now just received a new update... yeah, there's new stuff from Valve for Half-Life. But, I think the best part of this is the awesome Half-Life 25th Anniversary Documentary, which you can watch below:

Valve has updated Half-Life with a nice refresh to the game, with some new features to boot. Valve has introduced a new graphics setting for Half-Life and some new content to make it fresh. The developer has updated the intro to Half-Life and squashed a few bugs in the game, too.

CD exclusives like Half-Life Uplink and Half-Life Further Data, on top of 4 new multiplayer maps, have been introduced into Half-Life. Better yet, Valve has also improved the UI for higher-resolution displays, thrown in official support for the Valve Steam Deck, and added controller support.

Monolith's upcoming Wonder Woman game will stay a singleplayer title and is not being morphed into a live service experience.

A bit ago, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav pledged to create more live service titles with an emphasis on engagement and monetization. The quarterly investors' call was actually filled with quite a bit of gaming info and insights, including WB Games' operating margins, and Zaslav expanded on the benefits of GaaS business models. So does that mean all future WB Games will have live services, not unlike EA's titles for a certain period? No, it doesn't.

A job listing on Monolith's website set off some potential alarms that the new Wonder Woman game would somehow turn into a live service game. The listing is specifically for the Wonder Woman game and says that "experience helping maintain a live software product or game" would be a "nice to have" from job candidates.

The Epic Games vs Google trial has revealed some interesting figures on the search giant's app earnings.

The Google Play Store may be bigger than previously thought. According to a new report from the Financial Times, the Epic v Google has unearthed EBIT data for Google's immensely popular Play Store business. FT correspondent Michael Acton attended the trial and notes one of the most surprising numbers we've seen so far: "Epic has alleged Google's operating profit on the Play Store exceeded $12bn in 2021, at a margin of more than 70 per cent,"the passage reads.

To put this number into perspective, a 70% margin that delivered 12 billion operating profit would equate to roughly $17.14 billion in revenues. This is a lot higher than the figure that Microsoft provided to investors as part of its Activision Blizzard King acquisition news cycle; in that report, Microsoft says that Google made about $12.4 billion in revenue from mobile games on the Play Store, not profit.

Embracer Group's latest Q2 report has given us some insight on the struggling mega-game publisher, with news that 904 workers have been let go since the company began "restructuring." Also, the company is looking to reduce costs with more cancellations of games currently in development. As of September 2023, Embracer was overseeing as many as 200 game development projects.

One of Embracer's more high-profile games currently in development is the full remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, one of the most beloved RPGs of all time. This one has the backing of Sony, too, and will supposedly be a PlayStation 5 exclusive. However, with the game apparently in development hell, with Saber Interactive taking over from original studio Aspyr and Sony subsequently removing trailers for the game and references to it from its various channels - it might not see the light(saber) of day.

To make matters worse, as part of Embracer Group's Q2 earnings call, someone asked CEO Lars Wingefors about the game's status, and his response was a little concerning.

How does Tencent compare against gaming's Big 3 platform holders? We run the numbers to find out.

Tencent just published its Q3 2023 earnings report, showing a moderate games revenue increase to $6.47 billion (+5.5% year-over-year). Having just converted PlayStation's JPY figures to USD, this figure stood out to me because PlayStation actually beat Tencent's July - September earnings by delivering $6.61 billion in gaming revenues.

This brought to mind some questions: How many other times did PlayStation beat Tencent? And how does Tencent compare to the other platform holders?

Embracer Group telegraphs that it will start culling more of its planned video game projects in an effort to reduce capital expenditures and reduce investment costs.

Embracer's latest Q2 report paints a much more lean diet for the gaming giant. On the heels of laying off 904 people, including over 700 game developers, the company has outlined the next steps of its cost-savings plan. This new restructuring program has already helped Embracer deliver positive free cash flow of about $36 million, driven by a reduction in both capital and operational expenditures.

On the capex front, Embracer says this second phase will draw more scrutiny in what titles that are being funded, including a "global review" the content pipeline. At the end of September, Embracer had 201 game development projects in the works. This number is likely to be culled as the company looks at ways to drive down spending. Embracer also conducted a $108 million write-down of "intangible assets related to restructuring," which should include any titles that have already been cancelled as part of the first wave (including Volition's new projects, among others).

Embracer Group's new restructuring program has taken the toll of 900+ layoffs at the company.

The Embracer Group's latest Q2 report gives an exact number of how many people have been laid off as part of its new cost-saving initiative. The earnings update confirms that 904 workers have been let go since Embracer started its restructuring program, the vast majority of which were game developers.

The decentralized interactive entertainment empire went from 11,356 game developers and 16,605 total headcount in the first quarter, to 10,654 game developers and 15,701 total headcount in the second quarter of the 2023/24 fiscal year. This shows that total game developers were reduced by 702, due to the closure of Saints Row developer Volition and other reductions. As outlined in the report, Embracer's total headcount was reduced by 904, or about 5%.

Payday 3's launch has been hampered by a dire matchmaking issue that prevented gamers from playing the game.

Embracer Group today published its Q2 results, showing signs of revenue growth that's being offset by higher opex (operating expenditures) and spending. Nestled in the Q2 announcement was a quick performance update on released titles, including Starbreeze's Payday 3.

According to the report, Payday 3 has missed internal expectations and is forecasted to continue delivering lower-than-expected results throughout the remainder of the year. That being said, Payday 3 is profitable, and Embracer has confirmed the game has recouped all development costs. A dollar value figure was attached to Embracer's completed and released games in Q2, which amounts to 1.120 billion SEK, or about $105 million.

EVE Online is known for its drama and controversies, and a huge one just happened involving the theft of an unthinkable amount of in-game currency.

The long-standing MMOG just witnessed the theft of several trillion ISK (Inter-Stellar Kredit) taken by a certain Jay Amazingness, a fleet commander of the 'Goonswarm' alliance.

The ISK was pilfered from the alliance itself and according to a report on Reddit (spotted by TechRadar), Jay Amazingness also destroyed 52,670 clones as an additional parting gift.

It's sales season, and with Black Friday right around the corner, Microsoft is kicking off its big Xbox sale this weekend with some pretty tasty Black Friday Deals on all things Xbox. For those looking to pick up an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S console, starting November 18, you'll be able to get $50 off select models of both.

For the entry-level gamer, the Xbox Series S Starter Bundle for $249.99 USD will make for a great holiday treat as it includes three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate - which includes access to games like Starfield, Forza Motorsport, and hundreds more. For those looking for the most powerful gaming console, the $50 discount brings the price of the Xbox Series X down to $449.99 USD.

As the official Black Friday Deals from Microsoft, these deals will be available via Xbox.com and the Microsoft Store this weekend. And moving beyond the consoles, Microsoft has announced some major digital discounts on games - up to 50% off "over 1,000 console games." Going through the list, we even saw older titles discounted by up to 80%.

Sony is emphasizing quality over quantity with its new live service game initiative.

Alongside its ambitious plan to ship 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles in one year, Sony also has a grand vision to break into the live service games market. The company previously wanted to ship a whopping 12 first-party live service titles by April 2026. This plan was always incredibly zealous (and risky, for that matter), but economic trends and the realities of games development have reduced the high output of live games.

In its recent Q2'23 earnings call with investors, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hiroki Totoki confirms that half of the slate of live service games has been delayed. Sony now plans to release six of the games by FY25, and the other six are currently on the back burner with no estimated launch timing. The reason for this delay comes down to quality, and Sony believes some of the live games just don't live up to expectations.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is getting official support for mods, and yes, that's a bit of a surprise for a game this old.

You may recall that The Witcher 3 was released way back in 2015, and with the official mod editor due to come out in 2024, it has taken very nearly a decade to arrive. Which pushes the phrase 'better late than never' to new lengths, of course.

Anyway, regardless of the length of time it has taken to turn up, the editor will allow the modding community - which is still active - to produce some pretty in-depth scenarios, and extensive adventures, hopefully with a minimum of fuss.