Gaming - Page 289

Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer reveals some very interesting stats on the growth of the Japanese video games market.

While North America and Europe are the predominant regions for gaming, Japan represents an untapped market for Xbox in particular. Domestic giants like Nintendo and PlayStation have traditionally dominated the Japanese console gaming sector with Xbox on the outer fringes. Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer is eager to change things and have Microsoft capture more of the Japanese region, and Xbox Game Pass may represent the gateway to capturing more of Japanese players.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, Phil Spencer listed some interesting metrics for Japan. Spencer believes that Game Pass PC will be a key asset in improving Xbox's presence in Japan. According to the gaming boss, Japan's PC market has doubled and the amount of Japanese users subscribed to Game Pass' PC plan are up by 4x.

Fortnite OG is more popular than even Epic Games could have anticipated.

Fortnite's latest season takes players back to the past--to the halcyon days of 2018, before the pandemic, and back when the battle royale sensation was on top of the world. Similar to WoW Classic, Epic's new Fortnite OG Chapter 1 season essentially resurrects the BR as it was six years ago, almost like players are opening up a time capsule and jumping into Fortnite's best-ever year (during 2018, Fortnite generated over $5 billion in revenues, more money than it ever has before).

Now Epic has announced some incredible stats for their mega-hit sensation. According to the latest metrics, Fortnite OG Chapter 1 has helped the game absolutely smash engagement records. Over 44.7 million players played Fortnite yesterday, which is the "biggest day in Fortnite's history." Gamers also played 102 million hours worth of BR action.

Sony's latest acquisition should influence and propel its game streaming capabilities, and potentially help solidify PS Plus game streaming delivery to mobile devices.

Sony Interactive Entertainment will soon purchase iSIZE, a UK-based company that has developed technologies centered around making video delivery more efficient. iSIZE's proprietary tech leverages AI deep learning across three solutions: Bitsave, Bitclear, and Bitgen. The company's tech slide deck reveals more info about what's involved. Sony plans to leverage iSIZE's three-pronged advancements to better optimize its video and streaming services.

While SIE's official announcement is more basic and generalized, we can analyze this in a more broader scope to see how this could affect different facets of Sony's interactive division. This acquisition isn't just for video streaming services like the Sony Pictures Core subscription (now included with PS Plus Premium), but it also has implications for video game streaming via PS Plus (formerly PS Now) as well.

Bungie management is said to have explored all other options before choosing to lay off 100 workers, including pay reductions for executives.

Destiny is often mired in controversy, but this time things are different. After it laid off 8% of its employees, including Destiny and Halo composer Michael Salvatori, Halo vet Lorraine McClees, and even Destiny's own community manager Liana Ruppert (yes, Destiny currently has no CM), Bungie is now facing near-universal pushback from all sides ranging from its faithful players to workers in the video games industry. It's rough situation for Bungie and everyone involved.

A new report from Forbes' Paul Tassi reveals more info on what went on behind the scenes, including the measures that Bungie management took before the decision was made to lay off about a hundred people from its staff. Based on what Bungie told Forbes, it sounds like layoffs were the last resort. Bungie executives including CEO Pete Parsons are said to have given up and relinquished their annual bonuses in an effort to help stave off the controversial decision to reduce its workforce.

Sony's new PlayStation 5 "slim" revision is a lot smaller than previous models, but the system hasn't received a node shrink.

A bit ago, there were rumors that the new PS5 slim duo could feature a new 5nm SoC refresh to accompany the system's various form factor changes--smaller case, modular hot-swap disc drive, etc. This trend isn't abnormal, and most console hardware revisions also benefit from a die shrink. That isn't the case with the latest PS5 models.

Having looked into TSMC's node processes and family structure while working on TweakTown's PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X reviews, I didn't think the jump from 6nm (N6) to 5nm (N5) was very likely. A new teardown from Linus Tech Tips confirms our suspicions: The PS5 slim uses the same 260mm² die as the most recent PS5 revisions, which indicates a 6nm chip. This means the PS5 slim is effectively the same as the PS5 CFI-1202 models introduced in 2022.

Microsoft Gaming CEO and the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, took the stage at BlizzCon 2023 this weekend, weeks after the company acquired Activision Blizzard in a record deal worth $69 billion. Blizzard and its franchises, including Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and StarCraft, are some of the biggest in the industry, and Phil Spencer praised the studio's history while addressing the crowd.

"Now that Blizzard is part of Xbox, we will nurture the essence of what makes Blizzard unique," Spencer said, name-dropping StarCraft in a move that brought some hope to the idea that we might get another game in the iconic RTS series at some point. "The future of Blizzard is brighter than ever," Phil added.

Seeing Phil Spencer at the event was fun, though he wasn't the only Xbox presence at the show.

World of Warcraft is set to celebrate its 20th anniversary next year, which is an incredible milestone for a game that is still being played by millions and receiving new expansion content and regular updates, with WoW and Blizzard veteran Chris Metzen returning to shepherd "the next 20 years of adventure," World of Warcraft is set to kick off a major storyline called the Worldsoul Saga. And there was a heartfelt cinematic trailer with heroes Anduin and Thrall to set the scene.

"The Worldsoul saga is so epic it cannot be contained within any single expansion," Chris Metzen said, introducing three new World of Warcraft expansions. "It is built to play out over multiple expansions over the next few years. We are working on multiple ways to deliver this adventure to you a little faster than you're used to."

"We are moving with purpose," Chris Metzen added with Blizzard, confirming that World of Warcraft: The War Within, World of Warcraft: Midnight, and World of Warcraft: The Last Titan are the next three major expansions coming to the popular online role-playing game with The War Within launching in 2024.

At BlizzCon 2023, the Diablo IV team took the stage to celebrate this year's launch of the highly anticipated game, dropping stats like players spending over 1.5 billion hours in Sanctuary and how the current (and positively received) Season of Blood produced 14,000 words of Patch Notes driven by community feedback.

Expansions and Diablo go hand-in-hand, but it seems that Diablo IV will be taking a more WoW-like approach in that multiple expansions will be released - and the very first got announced alongside a teaser trailer confirming that it's on track for a late 2024 launch.

Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred, as previous leaks have suggested, continues the story laid out by Diablo IV's main campaign, with the main villain looking to be Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred. The teaser trailer was light on details, but it has confirmed the expansion's setting - the lush jungles of Torajan. A location last seen in Diablo II.

The direction of Destiny 2's future may rely on the success of The Final Shape expansion.

Bungie recently laid off 8% of its staff, or about 100 people, in an effort to lower costs as it navigates an incredibly challenging period where revenue is missing projections by nearly half, and the player base is falling. In a new eye-opening report, sources close to Bungie have told Forbes' Paul Tassi a lot of new info about the going-ons of the studio, the current state of Destiny, and why the layoffs were made

According to the report, The Final Shape's performance could determine the fate of Destiny as a whole. Bungie is doubling-down on the expansion and wants it to go far and beyond any previous Destiny content, even The Taken King.

Baldur's Gate 3 just received another big patch (Bethesda, are you paying attention?) and this fourth effort brings in a whole load of nifty changes, most notably the addition of FSR 2.2.

With FSR 2.2 now on-board for AMD graphics cards - and that means the Steam Deck, of course - the RPG will get nicely boosted frame rates courtesy of the upscaling tech, but with much better graphics.

Using FSR 1.0, which was previously in place, Baldur's Gate 3 looked pretty awful, with all manner of odd graphical artifacts and glitches as PC Gamer, which spotted the release of this patch, points out.

GeForce NOW, NVIDIA's Cloud game streaming platform, lets you play the games you own on a GeForce RTX 4080-powered rig. It is updating the list of compatible games with 15 new titles this week, and it doesn't stop there. Throughout November 2023, over 50 new games are headed to the streaming platform - with many from the recent Xbox and PC Game Pass partnership.

As part of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Xbox made a deal with NVIDIA to appease regulators to bring both its games and those of Activision Blizzard to GeForce NOW. This is great news for subscribers because it's currently the most impressive cloud gaming service available. The setup is simple: play the games you own (or have access to) via Steam, the Epic Games Store, or the Xbox app, which includes PC Game Pass.

Games supported this week include new releases like Jusant, RoboCop: Rogue City, and The Talos Principle 2, which include support for DLSS 3 and Frame Generation.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III seems to be the biggest Call of Duty of all time, with the PlayStation 5 version of the game taking up an SSD-busting 234.9GB of storage... wowzers. The PC version of the game requires an equally SSD-hurting 213GB of space.

Why does XXX require so much storage? Activision explains why the file sizes of the game are "larger than last year", explaining: "This is due to the increased amount of content available day one, including open world Zombies, support for item carry forward from Modern Warfare 2, as well as map files for current Call of Duty: Warzone. (Note: as part of our ongoing optimization efforts, your final installation size will be actually smaller than the combined previous Call of Duty experiences)".

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III requires 79GB of storage in its basic form, giving you multiplayer only without the campaign or the higher-quality textures. The campaign for Modern Warfare III is where all of the storage space is used, with 140GB for the campaign alone. This means that if you want the campaign + multiplayer + zombies + Warzone = 235GB of space on the PlayStation 5 and 213GB of space on the PC.

Legendary hellraiser John Romero plans to celebrate Doom's 30th anniversary with a new WAD.

Sigil II is done. Romero has laid the finishing touches on the new Doom mod (which are actually called WADs, or "Where's All the Data?"), and pre-orders are now open for the new Doom "mega WAD" created by the maven of mayhem himself. Prices start at €6.66 for the digital edition, but just like last time with the original Sigil, Romero is making big box versions of the WAD. These versions are super popular and two of the three big box SKUs have sold out in less than 2 hours.

"On December 10 it's Doom's 30th anniversary, and on Doom's 30th, I wanted to release another episode. It's the sixth episode, and it's called Sigil II," Romero said. "That is the day that we'll start shipping Sigil orders."

Alan Wake 2 has been a hit of a sequel without a doubt, scoring well with critics and players alike going by Metacritic ratings - and a big new patch applies some polish to further make the horror game shine.

The patch is here for PC, Xbox and PS5 (all of them '08' version updates) and it contains in excess of 200 tweaks and bug fixes for Alan Wake 2.

Some of the highlights on all platforms are a better implementation for auto-aim in parts of the game, and a few fixes for gremlins in the works that would stop the player's progress stone cold (like conversations failing to trigger, or not being able to select a dialogue choice that you want).

Bethesda Game Studios has finally given us some info on the first major patch for Starfield, the development team's massive sci-fi RPG that has been one of the most talked about and played games of 2023. And for those with NVIDIA GPUs (especially from the GeForce RTX 40 Series), you'll be pleased to know that official DLSS support is coming, including DLSS 2 Super Resolution and even DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

Of course, DLSS and Frame Generation support for Starfield has been available via community-created mods since the game first debuted in September. Still, it's great to see official support coming. Bethesda took to social media to confirm that the update will arrive in Steam Beta form next week before rolling out to all PC and Xbox players.

Interestingly, the studio notes that AMD FSR3 support is coming later - which is strange for what is an AMD-sponsored release. For those without NVIDIA GPUs, there's much to look forward to, including proper display and HDR controls.

ASUS has just dropped the price of its ROG Ally gaming handheld at one of the official stores, with the more powerful AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme version of the system dropping from $699 to $619 during the annual Black Friday sales.

There's no official reason for the price drop, but with Lenovo Legion GO just announced -- a new gaming handheld with similar specifications, but it's a little lower-end than the ROG Ally -- with ASUS quickly slicing some of the price from its ROG Ally as Best Buy kicks off its Black Friday sales.

You can't buy the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld everywhere in the US, where just a select few partners offer the ROG Ally on the US, while you easily buy it from the official ASUS website, and BestBuy. BestBuy has now dropped the price of the faster Z1 Exteme-powered ASUS ROG Ally from $699 to just $619, a savings of $80. The regular Z1 non-Extreme ROG Ally is still priced at $599. I don't know why you wouldn't spend the extra $20 on the higher-end Z1 Extreme ROG Ally, so be careful.

Nintendo has filed a very interesting new patent that could lead to unique hardware designs.

Note: It's important to remember that a patent does not indicate a finalized design. There's a possibility that Nintendo could make something like this, but there's no guarantee. A patent does not confirm (or deny) a finalized product, so keep that in mind.

Nintendo is well-known for its innovative--if not strange--hardware. Oftentimes, Nintendo's devices are so forward-thinking that they can significantly disrupt the video games market (the Wii, DS, and Switch are all prime examples). We don't know exactly what the next system will be like but a recent Nintendo patent gives us an idea of the kinds of things the company is researching.

SEGA has reiterated its plans to create a brand new video game genre by March 2026.

SEGA has an ambitious plan: The Sonic developer wants to adapt its popular franchises into a new type of genre called "Super Games." This is essentially a term that describes online-driven experiences that scale across multiple platforms; a Super Game seems to be a fancy term to describe live service titles. Based on SEGA's own words, there seems to be a lot of overlap between the so-called Super Game and a GaaS (Games-as-a-Service) business model.

Despite the volatility of the current challenging video games market, SEGA isn't giving up on its Super Game plan. The company's latest 2023 annual report reiterates its strategy to create, and potentially release, its first Super Game by March 2026. It's unknown which franchise that SEGA will use for its first Super Game, but reports indicate that new Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi games are potentially in development, complete with online play. It's also possible that SEGA will make a Sonic Super Game.

Bungie has scaled back its workforce in an effort to counterbalance missed revenue targets, sources have told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

2023 has been hailed as one of the best years for gaming, and more hit games means significant competition. This higher level of competition has stressed developers and publishers across the board, simultaneously leading to record-breaking sales for some and calls for cost-saving measures for others. The gaming sector has stemmed rising costs by enacting mass layoffs of some 6,000+ games workers, including Bungie, a company who had scaled up its workforce for new projects.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Bungie has laid off around 8% of its staff, or about 100 people. There's multiple reasons for this decision, including the current inflation-driven economic environment, but the chief reason may be related to Destiny 2's performance. The badly-received Destiny 2 Lightfall expansion has had a cascading effect on Bungie's business, especially as more hit games released throughout 2023, and the negative sentiment around Lightfall has led to a drop in Destiny 2's player count. Revenues are also on track to miss Bungie's internal projections by 45%. That's a big problem for Bungie, who relies on Destiny 2's recurring microtransaction revenues to maintain course as it develops new expansions for the live game.

Atari's latest acquisition sees the French company consolidating yet another large portion of the retro/remaster video games market.

Atari has announced that it has made an offer to acquire Digital Eclipse, the developer of a multitude of re-releases, collections, and remasters. Know for its emulation tech, a press release confirms that Digital Eclipse has produced over 250 games. The latest buyout comes shortly after Atari also acquired Nightdive Studios, the team behind enhanced re-release of System Shock, Turok, Quake, and many more.

As per the agreement, Atari's consideration terms offer $6.5 million for Digital Eclipse, which is split up into $4 million in cash and $2.5 million worth of Atari company shares. Digital Eclipse can also earn up to $13.5 million in a payout contingent on the group's performance across a ten-year period.