Gaming - Page 287

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.

Sony shipped a record-breaking 4.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles in its latest Q2 period while also delivering hardware sales revenues to match.

PlayStation 5 sales are on the rise as Sony attempts to meet its ambitious 25 million PS5 shipment target. Current data shows that Sony shipped 4.9 million PS5s in Q2, a new modern console shipment record for a non-holiday quarter. Despite these results, Sony still has to ship over 16 million PS5s in order to hit the goal line.

The new PS5 shipment record is accompanied by strong hardware revenues. In the Q2'23 period, hardware made up the lion's share of total Games & Network Services (G&NS) segment revenues. PlayStation 5 console hardware comprised 30% of total gaming division revenues, or about $1.991 billion when converted in the provided yen-to-USD exchange rates.

Sony's PlayStation 5 console nears 50 million shipments, but still hasn't overtaken the PS4 just yet.

Sony recent reported its Q2 results for the Fiscal Year 2023 period, updating investors and consumers on the current state of the business. Gaming is going strong for Sony in terms of overall earnings, with the company generating a record-breaking $6.7 billion in second-quarter revenues. A significant portion of this was made from PlayStation 5 hardware.

According to the results, Sony's Games & Network Services division sold-in 4.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the Q2 period (July - September 2023), a new record for second-quarter console shipments. On a launch-aligned basis, the PS4 is still beating the PS5, with 47.6 million PlayStation 4 consoles shipped in the first 12 quarters compared to the 46.6 million PlayStation 5 consoles shipped in the same period.

Starfield's beta patch that was recently brought out introducing DLSS support (among many other things) has just had some useful fixes and improvements applied.

The changes were outlined by Bethesda in release notes for the new version 1.8.84 update.

As mentioned, DLSS 3 just went live for the game, but there were some issues, notably around blurring and ghosting. (Problems are to be expected in beta testing, of course).

With the release of Starfield a few months ago and the team at Bethesda Game Studios shifting its focus to The Elder Scrolls VI, you wouldn't be alone in thinking that waiting a decade for the next mainline Fallout is going to be painful. However, with the mod-friendly Bethesda engine used to create 2015's Fallout 4, there's some good news.

Projects like Fallout: London are incredible because they look like an official Fallout 4 expansion or New Vegas-style spin-off. Developed by Team FOLON, an indie team that has been working on the ambitious mod for a few years now, Fallout: London shifts the focus to post-apocalyptic London, England, and in a new video shared by the development team, we get a good look at the game's many factions.

With factions inspired by Camelot and Arthurian legend, the punk scene, aristocracy, and 20th-century British military, it's a very different Fallout than we're used to seeing but one that still feels true to the franchise.

NVIDIA has released a new GeForce driver bringing in some important improvements for a couple of big-name games, plus a bunch of useful fixes, too.

Version 546.17 of NVIDIA's Game Ready Driver provides better results for DLSS 3 in new games that carry the frame generation tech, and that includes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Starfield.

Other games getting DLSS 3 this week are Desynced and Remnant 2 - The Awakened King, as NVIDIA announced on X (formerly Twitter).

There are several annual awards for games, but The Game Awards, hosted by Geoff Keighley, is probably the biggest. A celebration, concert, and showcase event where announcements are made (it could be the venue where we get to see Grand Theft Auto VI for the first time), this year's The Game Awards 2023 is set to take place and broadcast live on Thursday, December 7, 2023, at 4:30 pm PT.

The big award for what many view as the Oscars for games is the annual Game of the Year Award, which this year includes six games going head-to-head for the statue: Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

As far as nominations go, Alan Wake 2 from Remedy and Baldur's Gate 3 from Larian Studios lead the pack with a massive eight nominations each across 31 categories. The fact that Alan Wake 2 has only been out for a few weeks makes its appearance in multiple categories slightly surprising.

Sony wants to ship an ambitious 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles this fiscal year, and it still has nearly 17 more consoles to ship in order to hit the target. Based on what Sony management has said to investors, this sales plan hinges on the new PS5 Slim console revision.

The new PlayStation 5 slim revision is more important than consumers think, at least for Sony. The updated consoles make significantly changes to weight, size, and overall form factor, while transforming all base PS5 models into digital-first editions through the sale of an optional disc drive. All of these things are calculated moves on Sony's part, and the PS5 Slim was mainly created to maximize the PlayStation 5's overall profitability.

The Slim's weight reductions translate to lower freight shipment costs, whether exporting directly from Japan's console manufacturing plants like the one Kisarazu, or exporting from other worldwide facilities. Right now the yen is in a depreciated state, meaning Sony could make lots more revenue from console exports as USD and Euros currently yield higher yen values.

The latest update for Starfield - and note it's a beta release - helps to seriously boost the frame rates you'll get on an NVIDIA GPU, thankfully.

The game has, of course, been a source of controversy due it being optimized for AMD graphics cards, and not supporting DLSS out of the gate - fortunately the mentioned patch does add DLSS support (and that includes frame generation or DLSS 3).

What's also eye-opening is that optimization elsewhere has raised the performance level of NVIDIA graphics cards in general with this new patch.

Sony is still selling its current PlayStation 5 console family at a profit, but total financial gains from console sales have 'deteriorated' over time. Why is that? Sony management explains.

Sony's latest Q2 financials delivered impressive results, with the period delivering a record-breaking $6.6 billion in revenues. Console sales were a significant part of these earnings; Sony shipped a strong 4.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles in Q2'23. This led to hardware generating about 30% of quarterly revenues, or nearly $2 billion.

Despite these revenues, though, Sony's total operating income for the period was mostly flat quarter-over-quarter at $339 million--a far cry from the coronavirus boom years of 2020 and 2021. There's multiple causes for this operating income drop, including amortized payments towards the $3.6 billion Bungie acquisition (and other buyouts). Another big reason lies in the current value of Japan's domestic yen currency.

Total Grand Theft Auto franchise revenues have broken $8.7 billion since GTA V's release a decade ago, Take-Two Interactive's financial reports have confirmed.

GTA V is something of a marvel. There are few games that get even close to shipping nearly 200 million copies in their lifetime, let alone within 10 years. Minecraft's incredible 300 million figure comes to mind, as do sales of whole franchises like Call of Duty, which had sold over 425 million copies since MW2's release in 2022. But here we are, and Grand Theft Auto V has now sold-in (shipped) 190 million copies across three console generations.

In addition to strong hundred-million-dollar revenues generated every quarter from GTA Online, those game shipments add up fast. According to Take-Two's financials, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has made over $8.74 billion in net revenues since GTA V's launch in September 2013. Records indicate that Grand Theft Auto made up about 15% of Take-Two's total Q2'24 net revenues, or about $236 million. This is a significant year-over-year increase of 55%, likely driven by GTA V's inclusion as a temporary free playable game as part of Xbox Game Pass.

GTA V players listen up, because DLSS 3 is coming to the game courtesy of a mod, promising much faster frame rates.

Wccftech spotted that well-known modder PureDark has posted a teaser of the mod for GTA V on YouTube, ahead of its release which is supposedly happening in the next few days.

PureDark explains that bringing DLSS 3 to the open world game was no mean feat, as it has no motion vectors in the engine. The modder had to patch up "hundreds of shaders to inject motion vectors" which took quite some time.

Ubisoft has been caught up in a recent controversy with thousands of people calling out the company for using AI-generated art to market Assassin's Creed.

The extremely successful Assassin's Creed franchise has recently come under fire from fans who are accusing Ubisoft of using artwork generated by an artificial intelligence-powered tool such as DALL-E, to promote Assassin's Creed. The artwork in question was posted to a Ubisoft X account in celebration of Halloween, and was quickly pulled apart by netizens pointing out irregularities within the image, or the tell-tale signs of AI-generated artwork.

These signs include a misshapen Assassins emblem, contorted fingers, gaps in the light lines between the buildings behind the assassin, and more. Fans of Ubisoft called for the company to "do better" as its posting AI art to social media channels while simultaneously laying off workers, only adding to the exponentially increasing problem of artists struggling to compete with AI-powered image-generation tools.

Valve's recent surprise drop of the new Steam Deck OLED, which it calls the definitive version of its gaming handheld, confirms that the company plans to release and develop a successor. However, the Steam Deck 2 could be several years away from hitting the market because Valve wants "a generational leap in performance."

This info comes from Valve and Steam Deck designers Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat, who have been doing the interview round as part of the Steam Deck OLED launch. Speaking with PC Gamer, the current status of the Steam Deck 2 at Valve is that the company is waiting for the right parts to emerge, hardware that will deliver a true next-gen experience similar to what you'd find in the console space.

It's a unique and exciting approach for the PC market, which is traditionally all about iterative evolution, and this can be seen in the CPU and GPU space.

Judging by the number of options available, which includes the Steam Deck from Valve, the ROG Ally from ASUS, and the Legion Go from Lenovo, not to mention several options from companies like AYANEO, the handheld PC gaming market has exploded in recent years. However, it could be argued that the popularity of Valve's Steam Deck has taken the idea of a PC gaming handheld that performs in much the same way as a Nintendo Switch mainstream.

The fact that Valve struggled to catch up to pre-orders when the Steam Deck originally launched was an early sign that the creator of arguably the most popular gaming platform in the world (Steam) was onto something. However, without sales figures, we can all draw on little nuggets like Valve celebrating 1 million units sold and research firms concluding that there are roughly 2 to 3 million Steam Decks out there as of October 2023.

Although it's not an exact number, Valve designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais shared information on how the Steam Desk performs as a retail product.

Sony Corp CFO and President Hiroki Totoki may have indicated that about 60% of PlayStation Plus subscribers opt for the 12-month annual plans over the 1-month and 3-month options.

Back in 2022, Sony revamped its PlayStation Plus service and created a multi-tier offering that include different value propositions. The company had previously said it was happy with the reception of its new multi-sub model, and confirmed that most PS Plus users bought into the Extra and Premium tiers. Oddly enough, Sony stopped reporting PS Plus subscriber figures for its Q1'23 period, and then in September, the company raised the prices across all of its PS Plus plans.

While we no longer know how well PS Plus is doing, Sony did give some clues about plan adoption rates in its latest earnings call. Responding to a question about PS Plus' potential impact on revenue increases, Sony President and current PlayStation CEO Hiroki Totoki said that the "12-month package" of PS Plus equates to around "60% of the users."

Videogame adaptations are a big thing right now; in the world of prestige TV, we've had the critically acclaimed The Last of Us series on HBO, and there's a Fallout series coming to Prime Video next year. Movie-wise, videogame adaptations are cooking, too, with a well-received Super Mario Bros. movie from Nintendo. The company plans to release a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie - which could be huge if done right.

What about the big one, Grand Theft Auto? Arguably the biggest videogame franchise out there - to the point where Grand Theft Auto 6's trailer drop in December could end up being one of the biggest gaming events of the year. And we're talking about a trailer!

According to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, Rockstar's parent company, adapting GTA into a film or television series would be "super challenging." And with that, there's no financial incentive to do so because GTA makes so much money as a videogame that it might not be worth "compromising the underlying intellectual property" for a fraction of what the franchise pulls in.

Gamers shouldn't expect a new higher-powered Steam Deck any time soon--Valve's successor handheld is years away.

Valve just announced its new Steam Deck OLED for $549, and even though the new model features a shrunken 6nm SoC design and thermal/battery efficiencies, the device has no raw CPU or GPU performance upgrades over the OG Steam Deck.

With the new high-powered handheld PCs like the ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go entering the market, not to mention Nintendo's upgraded Switch 2 which may be capable of delivering 4K gaming through DLSS tech, Valve is pressured to follow-up with their own next-gen Steam Deck. After all, Valve helped standardize this new wave of PC handhelds.

Valve has announced a new Steam Deck OLED modelthat features a much higher-grade display and some nice improvements over the original handheld PC.

The new Steam Deck OLED starts at $549 for the 512GB NVMe SSD model and comes packed with upgrades. The biggest boost is the new 7.4-inch OLED panel with HDR capabilities, providing much more robust colors and hues while gaming. The OLED panel is still at the same 1280 x 800 resolution, but now features a refresh rate of up to 90Hz.

Under the hood, Valve has shrunken the Steam Deck's custom chip to 6nm, which falls in line with the recent die shrink that Sony has performed with its PlayStation 5 consoles (TSMC's N7 family includes both 7nm and 6nm, allowing for easy carry-over to the smaller chip design). The new 6nm SoC won't translate to any performance gains and the raw specs--CPU, GPU, and RAM--are all the same as the OG Steam Deck.

WB Games is a profitable business with a high return on investment, and remains an integral part of WB-Discovery's growth potential.

It wasn't so long ago when the gaming sphere speculated on a potential sale of WB Games following the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger. These reports were wrong, but now we have an idea of just how wrong they were. New comments from WBD boss David Zaslav underline just how important gaming is for the media giant, while also revealing very rare information on WB Games' overall performance.

In a recent Q3 2023 earnings call with investors, the WB Discovery CEO confirmed three key details about WB Games: 1) The interactive entertainment division has been profitable every year for the last 15 years; 2) WB Games has delivered strong operating income of $400 million for the past three years; and 3) the games segment is doubling-down on live services and F2P (think Suicide Squad: KIll the Justice League, DC Universe Online, and potentially a Harry Potter online game) in an effort to chase long-tailed monetization.