Gaming - Page 292

Square Enix once again goes meta with its mega-popular MMORPG, adding in a new in-game crossover with another game in the series.

The worlds of Valisthea and Eorzea will soon clash as Square Enix prepares an official Final Fantasy XVI x Final Fantasy XIV collaboration event. The two games will cross-over with a special experience called The Path Infernal, and will see players fight alongside FF16's protagonist hero Clive Rosfield against the fiery eikon Ifrit, who is also lifted directly from the PlayStation 5 mainline hack-and-slash game.

At the official Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest 2023 event in London, Yoshi-P gave an update on the cross-over event, confirming a Torgal mount and other content:

The Evil Within is one of the free games on offer from the Epic Games Store this week, to give you a dose of horror and get you in the mood for Halloween.

There are two freebies, in fact, and the second game to be given away is a very different kind of puzzler, Eternal Threads.

Head on over to the store to scoop these up now, and don't hang around, as they'll only be available for a couple of days (until October 26).

Criterion Games joins the ensemble of studios working on Battlefield, but a new Need For Speed game is also in preliminary stages of planning.

In a bid to optimize budgets, reduce spending, and tighten up its gaming business, Electronic Arts recently splintered its gaming business into two parts: EA Sports, the label that develops and publishes heavy-hitters like Madden and the newly-released EA FC24, and EA Entertainment, the division that essentially develops everything else, ranging from Battlefield and the Jedi series to The Sims and Apex Legends.

This split has seen a variety of studios gravitating towards certain projects and labels. Naturally, studios like Criterion (and BioWare, for that matter), are now a part of EA Entertainment. In a recent announcement post, EA's Vince Zampella confirmed that Criterion would join 3 other studios and work on the Battlefield franchise. Right now DICE, Ripple Effect, and the newly-launched Ridgeline studio run by Halo veteran Marcus Lehto are working on the future of Battlefield, which is believed to include an inter-connected webwork of titles and experiences ranging from dedicated a dedicated campaign to a free-to-play mobile title.

A sword which was supposedly dropped from Elden Ring (among other cut content) has been discovered in the game - though don't get too excited (we'll come back to why in a moment).

However, the finding of the blade is a definitely a cool story, as it was only known to exist in Elden Ring thanks to data miners who had previously stumbled across unused icons, one of which was the battered and aged looking sword.

As GamesRadar (via TechRadar) points out, the weapon was discussed in a YouTube video by Ziostorm, who then flagged on X (formerly Twitter) that a player had actually found the blade in the Lands Between.

The other day, we got a fresh look at Squadron 42, the ambitious single-player spin-off of the perpetually in-development Star Citizen. With the head of Cloud Imperium Games being industry veteran Chris Roberts, it's described as a modern-day reimagining of the classic Wing Commander series, albeit with space exploration and tactical first-person shooting joining the star-studded dogfighting amongst the stars.

It uses the same tech and engine as Star Citizen, now dubbed StarEngine - the long-in-development Squadron 42 is feature-complete and in the "polish phase." Alongside that impressive demo, there was perhaps an even more impressive StarEngine demo showcasing the full potential of what it can do and Star Citizen's incredible scale.

Okay, talking about this game 10+ years after its initial reveal is often met with skepticism - and rightfully so. However, people have been playing an early version of Star Citizen for several years now (and spending big on virtual ships), and the tech we see in this demo is next-level next-level.

With a 26-minute presentation covering the game's cinematic story, space battles, all-star cast, first-person missions, and stunning visuals - it finally looks like Squadron 42 is on track to deliver the modern Wing Commander game we've all been waiting for.

For those needing a refresher, Squadron 42 was announced alongside the long-in-development Star Citizen in 2012 - described as the 'single-player' component of the ambitious sci-fi universe sim. The original release window was 2014, and from there, it was continuously delayed as the size and scope of both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 expanded. It's a game that has been in development for over a decade.

"Squadron 42 is now feature complete and has entered its polish phase," Chris Roberts, Founder and CEO of Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), says in the impressive video demonstration of the game. If you're into sci-fi games with cockpit action like the Wing Commander series or more modern titles like Mass Effect and Starfield, it's a must-watch.

Alan Wake 2, the highly anticipated sequel from Remedy (the studio behind the brilliant Control and Max Payne franchises), is set to launch globally on October 27 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The latter has been dominating the PC gaming headlines of late because of the super demanding PC requirements for the game.

For 30 FPS performance at 1080p, you'll need a GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600 with DLSS or FSR 2 set to 'Quality' mode - which means the game is being upscaled from an internal 720p resolution. Also, this is 30FPS using the game's Low graphics preset without any ray-tracing effects.

This makes Alan Wake 2 the most demanding PC release ever. However, it doesn't stop there. The developer hasn't included GPUs from the GeForce GTX 10 Series or Radeon RX 5000 Series because they're not officially supported.

Rockstar Games has been steadily improving its in-house graphics engine -- Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) -- for years. It has powered Grand Theft Auto over the years and Red Dead Redemption 1 + 2, but it is being suped-up for Rockstar's next-gen Grand Theft Auto 6.

We're now hearing that the evolution of the RAGE engine in GTA 6 will be a huge step above what Rockstar has done before. With the graphics gap between Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 being huge, we're being told that the graphics gap between Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 will be even bigger.

A new post by Rockstar Mag France is a reminder that a Rockstar Toronto studios developer had their Slack account hacked by the hacker group "Lapsus$" and revealed a bunch of new information on Grand Theft Auto 6. The hack was so big it gutted the staff at Rockstar... but now we're hearing about the graphics side of things, and it has me excited.

Alan Wake 2 is shaping up to be one of the best-looking games of the year on a fully tricked-out PC, but it's also going to look beautiful on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, says Remedy.

Remedy Entertainment's Communications Director, Thomas Puta, has taken to Twitter to discuss the performance of Alan Wake 2 on consoles. Puta said that the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of Alan Wake 2 are "great" and that the PC version of the game is as "good as it can be", with the developer recommending NVIDIA's second-fastest GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card for 4K 60FPS with ray tracing and path tracing enabled.

Puta explained on Twitter: "Especially as a console player, I'm really happy how good Alan Wake 2 is on console platforms. We had a lot of focus on them throughout development ensuring the game would run well and look as incredible as it does. Focused on all platforms to be fair, as well as we could".

Blizzard is really going for the edgy, dark marketing with its latest Diablo 4 marketing stunt: giving away a high-end gaming PC with "real human blood" inside. Yeah... real human blood running through the coolant inside, says Blizzard.

The new Seasons of Blood custom PC will be powered by an Intel Core i9-13900K processor, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, 3TB of Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD storage, and the Quantum Vector GPU Waterblock for cooling. It all arrives in a signature DIablo red/black color palette with custom Season of Blood graphics, too. Inside of that, there's "human blood in the coolant," says Blizzard, so your new gaming PC would be... well... powered by human blood?

How does the sweepstakes work? Well, any gamer in the US over 18 can enter, where you'll need to donate blood at a blood center and submit the proof you have donated blood to the Diablo Blood Harvest Website. A regular blood donation is around 1 pint, so to hit the final goal, Blizzard needs just over 1300 donations of blood at 1 pint each.... not impossible.

If there's something I'm actually excited to when it comes to graphics in PC games over the next few months or so, the first would have to be Alan Wake 2 from Remedy, which has a bunch of the very latest NVIDIA RTX features... but then there's Half-Life 2 RTX that has my attention to. Check out the trailer:

If you haven't read into Half-Life 2 RTX, it's a modding project that was announced by NVIDIA and Orbifold Studios with RTX Remix. Orbifold Studios is a team of developers that worked on the likes of Half-Life 2: VR, Half-Life 2: Remade Assets, Project 17, as well as Raising the Bar: Redx.

But as of the last 24 hours or so, there are some great updates on Half-Life 2 RTX and what we can expect in terms of graphical updates over the original (and one of my top 5 games of all time) Half-Life 2. In a new video interview hosted by Lambda Generation on YouTube, who talked with "Kralich" who is working on Half-Life 2 RTX and had previously worked on Raising the Bar: Redux and Portal: Prelude RTX.

Microsoft's new early-access monetization method is apparently paying off, at least in the United States.

Although Starfield skipped Sony's market-leading PlayStation console and stayed exclusive to Xbox and PC, Bethesda's spacefaring RPG has performed exceptionally well. Starfield was the best-earning premium game in the United States for September 2023, analyst firm Circana has revealed, further highlighting the potentiality for Xbox's newly expanded business model.

The data combines sales of all forms of Starfield that were made in the U.S., including the base $69.99 game, the $99.99 deluxe edition, the $299 Constellation edition, and the $34.99 premium edition upgrade which included early access for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. Circana included both digital and physical retail sales of Starfield in their top 20 best-earning games for September 2023.

The Switch just entered its 7th year on the market, but Nintendo says it will continue making and releasing new games for the Switch until March 2025.

With over 1 billion games sold, 129.53 million units shipped worldwide, and $71 billion in sales, Nintendo's Switch handheld-console hybrid has gone down in Nintendo's record books. These kinds of numbers are typically unprecedented, so It's no wonder why Nintendo would want to stretch the Switch's lifecycle and maximize earnings for as long as possible.

Eventually, though, Nintendo has to move to new hardware, and we've been talking about Nintendo's next console for many years. It's believed to be a Switch successor that pushes graphical capabilities and performance to a level far beyond the current-gen Tegra X1-powered Switch family, complete with upscaled 4K resolution gaming thanks to built-in DLSS support. But the age old question remains: When will we get the rumored Switch 2? Or, more precisely, when will the Switch's lifecycle end?

It looks like the new Crysis is right around the corner, with Remedy Entertainment releasing the PC system requirements for Alan Wake 2, now that it's right around the corner.

Alan Wake 2 looks to be one of -- if not the -- most demanding game on the PC this year, requiring a high-end GeForce RTX 4080 16GB graphics card for the ray tracing on high + path tracing enabled preset for Alan Wake 2 to hit 4K at 60FPS. At a bare minimum, Remedy is asking PC gamers to have 16GB of RAM and 90GB of SSD... but another minimum will not make people happy.

Remedy posted the PC system requirements to their official Twitter/X account, with every single preset -- minimum, recommended, ultra, and the low + medium + high ray tracing presets -- having some form of AI upscaling technology required to hit those performance metrics. Yeah... even the minimum setting to get 1080p 30FPS with a GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600 graphics card requires DLSS or FSR to be enabled.

Xbox's first-party revenues will jump quite a bit with the inclusion of Activision Blizzard King revenues, and games expert Joost van Dreunen gives an estimate on what these post-merger earnings could look like.

Xbox currently makes most of its money from third-party game sales and monetization across PC and consoles. But that percentage is expected to skew much more heavily towards first-party now that Microsoft has acquired Activision Blizzard King, and the publisher's 8x separate billion-dollar IPs, in the largest video games acquisition of all time.

This leads us to a compelling question: How much revenue will Xbox make now that it owns Activision Blizzard King and recognizes the publisher's $7-8 billion yearly revenues as its own? We've outlined some predictions based on past numbers and you can find that data here. This particular estimate is based on the entire Xbox ecosystem, though, and doesn't narrow things down to Xbox first-party revenues.

Reports indicate that Nintendo could be preparing two versions of its next-gen Switch system: One model would support GameCards, and the other would be a digital-only system. But the dual-SKU approach doesn't align with Nintendo's historical financials.

There's been lots of new Switch 2 rumors floating around, including discussions of potential DLSS-enabled performance capabilities of the next-gen Switch that enables 4K visuals to plans for a simultaneous launch of two model variants. Reports indicate that Nintendo could be readying a digital-only Switch 2 model that does not feature a cartridge slot for existing Switch GameCards, not unlike Sony's PlayStation 5 Digital Edition or Microsoft's Xbox Series S. There's just one issue with this report: Nintendo's own financials don't entirely support the hypothesis.

While PlayStation and Xbox make most of their software revenues from digital sources (the bulk of digital revenues for PlayStation and Xbox are typically from free-to-play microtransaction-driven games), Nintendo is different. While Nintendo has a commanding presence in the Big 3, with the Switch selling more units than its competitors, it doesn't exactly play by the same rules.

Diablo 4 is part of Microsoft's latest 'Free Play Days' scheme which offers Xbox gamers the chance to enjoy a small selection of games over the weekend.

You don't need a Game Pass subscription, and this offer is free to any Xbox owner, with Microsoft making Diablo 4 free from now through until October 22 (across this weekend, basically, today included).

There is a limit on how much of the action RPG you can forge through, mind, so don't go thinking you'll run a marathon session and complete it over the course of the next two days.

Rockstar Games is expanding its GTA+ subscription to include mobile games.

GTA+ is essentially Rockstar Games' own personal publisher-specific Game Pass subscription. The service was originally created to supplement GTA Online content by offering a slew of bonuses and extras, but recently expanded to include classic games.

Users who pay $5.99 per month will now get access to a handful of Rockstar titles across consoles and mobile, complete with a cyclic catalog that rotates games in and out on a specific timed basis.

Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirms that Activision-Blizzard games won't start showing up on Xbox Game Pass until 2024.

Microsoft has closed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, so why hasn't a bunch of classic Call of Duty games been added to the Xbox Game Pass subscription? The answer is pretty simple: Migrating and incorporating that much content into Xbox Game Pass takes time and work, and Microsoft simply wasn't prepared.

In a recent Xbox podcast interview, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer says that the 11th hour regulatory approval process didn't give neither Microsoft nor Activision enough time to ready a high-level multi-game integration onto Game Pass. That means there's no surprise launch of Activision games planned for Game Pass, and Activision's previous 2024 schedule was accurate.

Blizzard's Diablo IV, one of the biggest games of 2023, is now available on Steam - the second Blizzard Entertainment game to make up the jump from Battle.net. The first is the free-to-play Overwatch, which also recently jumped to Steam. And just like Blizzard's popular hero shooter, Diablo IV's arrival on Valve's platform is being review-bombed.

Naturally, these "reviews" are based on very little play time on Steam. However, there are fans of the game who have put in hundreds of hours on Battle.net coming to Valve's platform to praise the game - and the new Season of Blood, which introduces a lot of new content and features close to 40 pages of Patch Notes covering balance updates and quality of life fixes based on community feedback.

Diablo IV's community review rating is sitting on "Mixed," much of the negativity seems to be pointed towards Blizzard as a development studio, the Activision side of Activision Blizzard, and the company's love of microtransactions. Plus, many take aim at Diablo IV's 'live service game' aspects.