Gaming - Page 290

Baldur's Gate 3's megaton success has spiked Hasbro's video game revenues with two months of sales.

Hasbro's latest Q3 earnings figures have underlined the exceptional performance of Larian's wildly popular Baldur's Gate 3. Hasbro is the parent company of Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary that owns the rights to the Dungeons & Dragons franchise--remember that BG3 takes place in D&D, so Hasbro's reports show how well all branches of its multifaceted gaming business are doing, whether it's tabletop, card games, or interactive experiences like BG3.

The company's earnings show that Wizards of the Coast's digital and license gaming revenues are up by roughly 133% year-over-year, driven by the release of Baldur's Gate 3 in August. Across a two-month period ending October 1 (Hasbro uses a calendar year for its schedules), WotC's digital and licensed gaming jumped to $133.1 million, up nearly $76 million dollars from last year. These earnings do include digital sales from Magic: The Gathering Online.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is off to a great start since it was released on October 20, 2023, and now the game director for the title has commented on what seems to be a pretty big concern about the franchise.

Bryan Intihar, the director of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, has sat down for an interview with IGN's Beyond! Podcast where he discussed what fans could expect out of future sequels of the Spider-Man game. In what seems to be a move to quell fans' fears, Intihar said that Insomniac Games isn't running out of villains to include in new installments into the series. In fact, "I never think we're going to run out of villains, ever," said Intihar.

Notably, if you haven't played Marvel's Spider-Man 2, there will be some spoilers within this paragraph. According to Intihar, it was always planned that Otto (Doc Ock) was going to appear at the end of the game as the main teaser, and Insomniac Games doesn't feel as if it has already exhausted all of its villain characters.

Twitch is officially dropping support for the Nintendo Switch, with the official word from the company stating that from "November 6th 2023, new users will no longer be able to download the Twitch app in the Nintendo eShop." On top of that, existing users will no longer be able to access the Twitch App on the console from January 31, 2024.

In a statement supplied to IGN, a Twitch representative added that Nintendo remains "a valued partner" and that the decision to remove support was a "difficult" one to make. Interestingly, Twitch did not provide a reason as to why it was being removed.

The reason for this comes down to the Twitch App for the Nintendo Switch being relatively new - it launched in late 2021, a full four years after the console's debut.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is set to hit Early Access on November 2, and with PC specs already out there and with the recommended specs listing either a GeForce RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU, you won't need a monster rig to fire up the latest CoD. To play with competitive or 4K Ultra campaign settings, you will need a GeForce RTX 4070. The good news for GeForce RTX 40 Series owners is that the game will fully support DLSS 3 and its related technologies.

Which includes DLSS Super Resolution to boost performance, DLAA to maximize visual fidelity, NVIDIA Reflex to reduce system latency (which is perfect for Call of Duty multiplayer), and the new AI-powered DLSS 3 Frame Generation. Usually, NVIDIA provides benchmark results for its DLSS 3 announcements. Still, without any for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, we'll just have to assume it'll be the same impressive 2X and higher increase.

It's a big week for PC gaming adopting NVIDIA DLSS 3 technology, with games like Jusant, RIPOUT, The Talos Principle 2, and RoboCop: Rogue City all supporting the tech on day one.

NVIDIA's GeForce Now service has Alan Wake 2 available to stream now, but there are some minor caveats with the experience to be aware of.

As Wccftech spotted, the game is now out on GeForce Now but there are some errors that might pop up for some folks trying to play in the cloud. Fortunately, these aren't critical errors, and the good news is they can be ignored basically.

The errors have been highlighted on online forums such as Reddit, and they all appear when attempting to launch the game. The first bugged message confusingly tells the gamer that their GPU driver is outdated, and to update it.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is getting closer to release, with the PC lead developer Beenox fine-tuning the PC version of the game in preparation for the launch.

The PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will launch with NVIDIA DLSS 3 support, with GeForce RTX 40 series GPU owners enjoying NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation and NVIDIA Reflex technologies. This means that if you've got the right RTX 40 series GPU hardware, you can enable DLSS Super Resolution to boost FPS or turn NVIDIA Reflex on for low-latency COD.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will be in its best form on the PC, with developer Beenox saying gamers can expect 4K graphics and ultrawide gaming monitor support included, 500+ customization options on PC, NVIDIA DLSS 3, and Reflex technology, gamers are protected by Richochet anti-cheat technology, too.

ASUS released its super-popular ROG Ally gaming handheld to huge fanfare worldwide with gamers. It has just been updated, providing some new features and a new resolution for the handheld to play.

The ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld comes with a native 1080p (1920x1080) at 120Hz and supports going down to 720p (1280x720), but with the new update, the ROG Ally now supports 900p (1600x900). This is the perfect resolution in between 1080p and 720p, which will make gamers using 900p feel like it's closer to 1080p than it is to 720p, especially because it's a handheld, closer to your face.

The new BIOS 331 is available with a new AMD graphics driver that can be downloaded from the My ASUS application, which is available on the ASUS ROG Ally handheld. The new GPU drivers include support for AMD HYPR-RX technology, the new 1600x900 resolution support, as well as some bug fixes for EA SPORTS FC 24, Resident Evil Village, and fixes a bug with the ROG Ally recognizing 8K 60Hz external monitors.

The PC system requirements for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora have been released, and now we have some more information on some of the AI upscaling technologies and visual goodness in the game.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will support AMD's new FSR3 upscaling technology, but also NVIDIA Frame Generation technology, Intel XeSS, and NVIDIA DLSS 2 are all in the game at launch. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will also have ray-traced reflections and shadows, which will be nice in those jungle and water environments.

Massive Entertainment, the developer behind Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, also supports ultrawide gaming monitors and even high-resolution multi-monitor setups... impressive to see, pun intended. The developers have also confirmed there are optimizations for multi-core CPUs, another thing that's good to see for the world of high core counts in current CPUs.

After Apple announced it during the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro unveiling back in September, the Capcom console game Resident Evil Village is now available for download on the iPhone and iPad. And in our testing, it's pretty great. But that doesn't mean that there aren't a couple of catches to pay attention to.

The new game is available for download in the App Store right now, and it's free by way of a trial. You'll have to pay to get the full version and additional DLC if you want it, but right now that's all on offer with a 60% cut off the normal price to celebrate the launch. If you want the game, now is the time to get it.

However, you'll need to have one of Apple's latest iPads and its best iPhone to be able to do it. The new game is only playable no the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, while you'll need an iPad with Apple's M1 or M2 chip inside if you prefer the bigger screen. That includes most of Apple's most modern tablets including the excellent iPad Pro, but it's worth checking you have the required hardware if you want to get in on the Resi action.

Popular Twitch streamer Amouranth has revealed she is working with a European beer company to develop a custom beer that's created using her own vaginal yeast.

In a new interview with Dexerto, the Twitch streamer Kaitlyn Siragusa, or better known as Amouranth, revealed she is working with a Polish brewery, "The Order of Yoni," to develop a new beer that will use her vaginal smear as the main ingredient to develop a new flavor. Siragusa explained that it is true she is working with the company to produce this beer and that The Order of Yoni has done this in the past with many models' smears.

The Order of Yoni website explains it doesn't actually use yeast but instead a bacteria called lactobacillus. This entire process, from smear to a bottle of beer made out of vaginal bacteria, is explained on the company's website. First, a gynecologist collects the vaginal smear, which is then transported to a laboratory where the lactobacillus bacteria is isolated, cleaned, analyzed, and then replicated. After this process is complete, the leftover is pure lactic acid that is then put straight into Yoni beer.

Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Nintendo's beloved fighting game franchise Super Smash Bros., has reflected on the development of the latest installment in the franchise, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, revealing some concern regarding future sequels.

Sakurai took to his own YouTube channel with a just over 10-minute presentation to reflect on how difficult development was for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Sakurai mentions challenging aspects of development such as the 16-gigabyte limitation on the Switch cartridge vs the 25Gb limitation for the Wii U disc, especially considering the tagline for Smash Ultimate was "Everyone is here!" which calls for more assets, etc.

While the video provides some really insightful information regarding the development of each Super Smash Bros. game, at the end of the video, Sakurai discusses the possibility of future Smash Bros. titles and how they will align with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Sakurai doesn't completely rule out a new Smash Bros. game, but he does remain skeptical that a development team would be able to create something that is bigger and better than Smash Bros Ultimate.

During the era of Doom, Quake, and Half-Life, console gamers got their slice of iconic first-person action on the Nintendo 64 with a little game called Goldeneye 007. Developed by Rare (now a first-party Xbox Game Studio), it revolutionized the genre as something more than games that are best experienced on PC.

The James Bond adaptation was released in 1997, with the team's follow-up - and original science fiction espionage IP by the name of Perfect Dark - hitting the console in 2000. As a first-person shooter for Nintendo gamers, it took what made Goldeneye 007 so popular and dialed it all up to 11, from the single-player missions to the multiplayer with bots and crazy weapons and rulesets.

With Xbox bringing Perfect Dark back to Xbox Series X|S via the newly formed The Initiative, the good news is that thanks to decompiling efforts that led to native versions of N64 games like Super Mario 64 being fully playable on PC - it looks like we can add Perfect Dark to the mix.

At this point, we're just curious to play Ubisoft's perpetually in-development and delayed Skull and Bones. With development led by Ubisoft Singapore, Skull and Bones began life as a spin-off to Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, with the focus shifting to a full-on pirate high-seas "I'm on a boat" action.

That should clue you into how long this game has been in development; the team started working on it in 2013. The official reveal didn't happen until 2017; however, since that time, it's gone through several revisions, including restarts and pivots from live service to free-to-play to PVP to PVE and every trend from the last decade that you can think of.

As part of the latest financial earnings call, the company confirmed that Skull and Bones has been delayed once more to sometime during the first few months of 2024.

Video game acquisitions and buyouts will continue in 2024 as some of the biggest names plan to execute expansion efforts, investment firm Drake Star predicts.

This year, Microsoft made history by purchasing Activision-Blizzard for a record-breaking $68.7 billion. This combination was the biggest acquisition in the history of the video games industry, a segment that is poised to make over $180 billion in 2023. Multiple years of strategic investments and buyouts led to the Activision merger and the current availability of independent third-party publishers continues to dwindle.

According to investment bank Drake Star, this era of consolidation isn't over. M&A will continue throughout 2024 and big players like the $30 billion revenue Tencent, $26 billion Sony Interactive Entertainment, Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games Group, and the recently-merged Take-Two Interactive are expected to make buyouts.

I still remember running the original 3DMark99 benchmark repeatedly as a nerdy PC hardware enthusiast at 15 years old when it came out... making it 25 years old today after it was released in October 1998.

3DMark99 supported Windows 95 and Windows 98 at the time, with DirectX 6.0 compatible hardware. After that, 3DMark99 MAX was released, and then the unleashing of DirectX updates and the massively increased number of advancements in graphics cards from ATI and NVIDIA at the time.

3DMark2000 was released in December 1999, while my favorites of the day in 3DMark2001 and 3DMark2001 SE were released in March 2001 and February 2002, respectively. There have been plenty of 3DMark releases since then, which turned into the 3DMark suite back in 2013, which started with FireStrike, followed by TimeSpy, Port Royal, and then last year we had Speed Way.

Capcom is hard at work on its next-generation RE Engine, which was last used in Resident Evil 8... but it's being beefed up, and the company is providing developers working on the new RE Engine with some seriously powerful HEDT systems powered by AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs and a GeForce RTX 4090 24GB graphics card.

Just as Alan Wake 2 is launching using Remedy Entertainment's in-house Northlight engine, Capcom holds an overview of its RE Engine and even a tease of its next-gen RE Engine, which we'll go into more soon. This year, Capcom provided some high-end desktop PCs (HEDT) to engine developers with some seriously good specs: something that the company says will drop engine build time from 15 minutes with distributed builds to less than 5 minutes for local builds.

Inside, Capcom is using an AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5975WX processor with 32 cores and 64 threads, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 with 24GB of GDDR6X memory, a huge 256GB of RAM, and a massive 10TB of SSD storage. This is some seriously nice hardware to be developing on, with many developers probably reading this and being jealous compared to their far slower PCs used for development.

Morgan Stanley analysts predict the effects of artificial intelligence on the video games sector.

AI aims to supercharge productivity with new tools like Microsoft's Copilot, and artificial intelligence is also expected to help optimize production in the interactive entertainment industry. Video games take many years to make due to the complex nature of the process, which often requires tedious tweaking, steady iterative design, and lots of bug-squashing. The hope is that developers can use AI to automate a portion of these tasks and potentially reduce costs and release games even sooner.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley believe that AI will have a tangible effect on gaming. Platform-holders like PlayStation, Xbox, and potentially even Nintendo are expected to benefit the most from AI, as these companies can bake time-saving AI tools into their respective software development kits (SDKs) for console and gaming hardware. Other engine-makers like Unity and Epic Games could also leverage AI for their production environments.

The Metal Gear Solid Collection's first volume is available on consoles and PC. From Konami, it brings remastered ports of the first three games in Hideo Kojima's iconic stealth action series to all gamers - with Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater all present. Throw in the Metal Gear games from the cartridge-era NES console, and it's a definite cause for celebration.

At least that's what many expected until they fired up the PC version and found that Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 weren't optimized for keyboard and mouse controls, and the PS2-era titles maxed out at 720p rendering. Plugging in a controller fixes the first issues, but you'll need a mod for the latter.

Rendering old games at a super-high resolution can cause issues like UI and textures. Still, according to the MGSResolutionPatch (available via GitHub), it adds a smooth and crisp 4K option for Metal Gear Solid 3. And, as expected, the mod drops within hours of the collection's PC port. And it weighs in at a tiny 64 KB.

NVIDIA has published its latest Game Ready driver, which will offer the definitive day-one experience in Remedy Entertainment's just-launched Alan Wake 2, which features full ray tracing, path tracing, DLSS 3.5, Ray Reconstruction, and Reflex technologies from NVIDIA. Grab the new NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready driver here (701MB download).

Alan Wake 2 has absolutely beautiful ray-traced graphics, which are enhanced and accelerated by NVIDIA DLSS 3.5's huge suite of AI-powered technologies. NVIDIA's new Ray Reconstruction feature in DLSS 3.5 renders the Alan Wake 2 world at its absolute best, while frame rates are boosted by 4.5x with GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs.

"Full ray tracing," you ask: yeah, "full ray tracing" is also known as path tracing, and will accurately simulate light throughout an entire scene. It's used by visual effect artists in film and TV graphics that can be up to photorealistic in quality, but now, with the latest GeForce RTX series GPUs with RT Cores and AI abilities like NVIDIA DLSS, worlds like Alan Wake 2 are coming to life. We have full ray tracing in real-time in video games now, and Alan Wake 2 delivers the very best of what high-end PC gaming has to offer.

The reviews for Alan Wake 2 are in, and it seems gamers are smitten with what Remedy Entertainment has made. It seems it's 10/10 across the board for the most part, with one GameSpot reviewer giving it their first 10/10 review of the year. Alan Wake 2 is a smash hit with reviewers so far, unlocking for gamers in the coming hours.

I went through Twitter and saw many gamers putting out their reviews for Alan Wake 2, with some quotes that I thought I'd share... you know, pumping the hype machine for the game. One tweet read: "happy to join the chorus of praise for Alan Wake 2. this an uncompromising video game adventure. Scary, funny, strange, beautiful. Headphones on, lights off. I was up til 4 am playing. PERFECT for this spooky autumn season and even better for @remedygames fans like me. Vids soon".

Another loved it, comparing it to two huge horror games, Resident Evil and Silent Hill. This reviewer teased: "Alan Wake 2 has elements of Silent Hill and Resident Evil in all the BEST ways! While managing to keep itself to its own thing! The Dark Place Alan has to go through has Nightmare Graffiti while Saga explores her Mind Place! It's all makes for such a GREAT story! Screw it! 10/10!".