Gaming - Page 304

Crystal Dynamics and Eidos may not be in the black yet, but the studios are making good progress towards profitability.

In 2022, Embracer Group purchased Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and several big-name IPs like Tomb Raider and Deus Ex. The previous owner, Square Enix, sold these properties and studios to Embracer for a surprising $300 million. Closer inspection of both company's books revealed that both Crystal Dynamics and Eidos aren't very profitable, giving key insight as to why Square Enix wanted to sell (it also didn't help that games like Deus Ex Mankind Divided, the new Tomb Raider trilogy, and the more recent Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy games missed Square Enix's expectations).

Now in a recent Q1 earnings brief, Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors gave a quick update on the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex studios:

Embracer Group's mighty games empire will shrink a little as the company attempts to cut costs.

Ever since its massive $2 billion business deal fell through, Embracer Group has been laying out plans to rein its massive team of studios in and reduce spending. Embracer was really counting on that $2 billion influx of cash to help fund new projects. Now the company will pare back its focus, cancelling projects and closing studios along the way.

In a recent earnings report, Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors gave an update to investors on the cost savings plan and confirmed more games and teams would be effectively terminated.

Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter themed around battlemages, but the real battle could be getting it to run okay on your PC - the specs are eye-watering to say the least.

As Wccftech reports (via the above tweet from Sebastian Castellanos), the developer has now confirmed the PC requirements for Immortals of Aveum.

And in the graphics card department - at the lowest spec level, for 1080p resolution (60 fps) - you'll need an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, or an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super.

We're now pretty certain that Starfield won't be supporting anything but FSR when it comes to boosting frame rates in the game on PC.

As Sebastian Castellanos (a name we see quite commonly chipping in around leaks on X, formerly Twitter) tweeted to say (hat tip to PC Gamer), they have combed through the preload files for Starfield on PC. And there is no sign of NVIDIA DLSS or Intel XeSS support anywhere, sadly.

That means DLSS almost certainly isn't happening, and the lack of any announcement from NVIDIA at this point backs that up, too. Given that the release date of Starfield is less than three weeks away now (the game just went gold, ahead of a September 6 launch for PC and Xbox).

Earlier this month, we reported on the Lenovo Legion Go handheld that could compete with PC gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally from ASUS. With the Legion Go set to feature AMD's new Phoenix APU processors, performance would reportedly be on par with the ROG Ally, which features a customized ROG Ally Z1 Extreme chip built off of the Ryzen 7 7840U SoC.

Thanks to a new report over Windows Report offers some exclusive images of the Lenovo Legion Go, which features a look and feel that is part Steam Deck, part Nintendo Switch. The Switch comparison sets it apart from other PC gaming handhelds, including the massive range of options from companies like AYANEO.

Based on the images we see for the Legion Go, it's set to feature removable controllers, much like Nintendo's wireless Joy-Con controllers for the Switch. This will allow the Legion Go to act similarly to the Switch by offering a seamless docking process to connect the handheld to a TV or monitor and still be able to use the same controllers.

Intel's latest bright idea on the giveaway front is to bundle a pair of free games with selected Core CPUs and Arc graphics cards.

The freebies are Assassin's Creed Mirage and Nightingale, with a value of $50 and $30 (US) respectively. They're being given away as an Intel Gamer Day 2023 promotion, but only by certain retailers (so check before you buy, if you're not sure).

So, for those who were planning to purchase the next instalment of Assassin's Creed anyway, this is effectively a $50 discount off an Intel CPU or GPU.

Microsoft is officially shutting down the Xbox 360 storefront on July 29, 2024, the company has announced.

The Xbox 360 Store will be unavailable starting next year, cutting off digital access to thousands of video games and content.

"A lot has changed since the Xbox 360 launched in 2005. Technology has evolved, expectations from players have shifted, and we are focused on making Xbox Series X|S the best place to play now and in the future," Microsoft said.

Some Baldur's Gate 3 players were left scratching their heads yesterday, after a hotfix was rolled back and recent saved games became unusable.

The story here is that Larian released the fourth hotfix for Baldur's Gate 3, but all was not well with the mini-patch - which suffered from an expected side-effect of causing crashes - so it had to be pulled.

However, those playing the RPG at the time the hotfix was implemented, who saved the game since the update was applied, have now found that those saves are greyed out and can't be loaded.

Activision's relatively new Call of Duty HQ infrastructure could be the key to a games-as-a-platform solution for the $33 billion shooter franchise.

Publishers are always trying to find new ways to create new business models and innovate on existing ones. Executing its four-part plan that was originally introduced in 2018, Activision has successfully created one of the most powerful unifications of F2P and premium gaming with Warzone. The company is capitalizing on multiple trends like battle royale in a cohesive, cross-monetized and cross-play ecosystem. Even back in 2020, I recognized that Warzone was clearly the biggest thing Activision had ever done. Things are now accelerating even more.

Call of Duty HQ is the latest manifestation of this plan. Right now, Call of Duty HQ is basically a unified launcher where players can access different COD games in one place. Gamers can launch a game, choose what mode they want to play, and jump in. It's a big more than that, though. Call of Duty HQ could end up being the franchise's own games-as-a-platform (GaaP) model.

Xbox's biggest game of 2023 is finished and ready to ship.

It's official: Starfield is finished and ready to ship. Bethesda Game Studios has put the last touches on Starfield's gold master code, which means the game will soon be printed onto millions of game discs and be loaded up onto the Xbox Store, Windows Store, and Steam in anticipation of the game's September 6 launch.

The day is fast approaching, Microsoft has also confirmed pre-load dates to ensure gamers have all the files downloaded and ready to go for the big launch date. Pre-load begins much sooner on Xbox consoles and the Microsoft Store, with Starfield pre-loads going live tomorrow, August 17 on those platforms.

Bethesda Game Studios reveals a bunch of new Starfield information in a recent Discord Q&A.

Bethesda's new Starfield Q&A just dropped, and we have a quick copy & paste of everything that was said during the session.

Starfield lead quest designer Will Shen and Bethesda studio design director Emil Pagliarulo stopped by the official Starfield Discord for a big Q&A and below are their responses.

Microsoft has introduced a new system to deal with Xbox cheaters and toxic players which, after enough strikes for an offender have been racked up, will ban them for a year.

The 'enforcement strike system' ratchets up penalties for offenders as they are reported for violating Microsoft's community standards, assuming those reports are verified and turn into a strike. (All reports are scrutinized by the Xbox Safety Team as to whether they are genuine complaints that should be upheld).

The way it works is that one strike doesn't come with any punishment, but the second strike given entails a one-day suspension. Reach four strikes, and that's a week-long suspension.

Larian CEO Swen Vincke has been talking about the roadmap ahead for Baldur's Gate 3, making some interesting revelations.

As stated in the above tweet, the next step for Larian is deploying another hotfix for the RPG (which will be the fourth), and then we have the first big patch incoming.

That applies no fewer than 1,000+ fixes and bits of tinkering, so that's a lot of bug squashing and otherwise smoothing over the game.

Baldur's Gate 3 saves have been hitting the headlines recently, due to a bug that could corrupt saved games, which was resolved - but now we have another warning about the RPG.

First of all, note that the reason saves were going corrupt was that they were becoming too big for the specified maximum parameters. Larian simply did not realize how much some players would do in terms of bulking their save with a whole load of stuff relating to their character progression.

So, the solution was to remove the limits on a save file so it can now get as big as it needs to. See where this is going?

The Steam Deck's engine, a Zen 2 APU, is vulnerable to the Zenbleed exploit - but a fix is now inbound (and a 'fallback' solution is activate for now).

The engine of the Steam Deck is a custom 'APU 0405' (toting Zen 2 and RDNA 2), and that particular chip was missed off the list for patching up when it came to the Linux kernel.

This is being swiftly remedied, as per a commit Gaming on Linux spotted (via Windows Central), which reads as follows:

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon comes out in just over a week and we've just had the official specs for the PC revealed.

The good news is that there's nothing too demanding here with FromSoftware's mech shooter, and the minimum requirements (flagged up by Wccftech) are certainly easy going enough.

Here's the minimum spec:

3DMark has added a new benchmark test to its repertoire, called Solar Bay, and it allows for testing ray-traced graphics on both PCs and Android devices.

This allows for comparisons between a high-end Windows rig and a powerful Android smartphone, which, of course, have already been carried out.

VideoCardz spotted the launch of this benchmark and ran a test of a PC with an NVIDIA RTX 4090 graphics card, comparing that to the result from a Samsung S23 Ultra.

Most role-playing game fans are entirely concentrated on the incredibly popular Baldur's Gate 3 and the highly anticipated Starfield, but what about Ubisoft's newest Assassin's Creed?

In what seems like to be an effort to attract some eyeballs toward Assassin's Creed Mirage, Ubisoft has announced its newest Assassin's Creed title will be arriving a week early and at a discounted price. According to a new X post by the official Ubisoft X account, Assassin's Creed Mirage will be released a week early on October 5 and for $50, instead of the typical $70 price point for most other RPG titles.

For those that have been out of the loop when it comes to Assassin's Creed Mirage, players will be immersed within 9th century Baghdad, and according to Ubisoft, this installment into the long-time running franchise takes major inspiration from classic Assassin's Creed games, as Mirage is a stealth-focused title, indicating a shift away from more recent AC titles that force players into grinding/hack & slash combat Valhalla and Odyssey.

Sony confirms that at least one first-party PlayStation game has been delayed into next year.

PlayStation's latest quarterly report outlined what investors should expect from the games unit throughout the new fiscal year. Sony started its new Fiscal Year 2023 by delivering record-breaking PlayStation revenues and selling more PS5 consoles than any other Q1 period. However, operating income slid downwards as Sony continues paying towards the Bungie acquisition. Another big impact to operating profit was the delay of at least one first-party title, possibly others, leaving Spider-Man 2 as potentially the only big marquee game for Sony's Fiscal Year 2023.

It's highly likely that Naughty Dog's new Last of Us multiplayer game is the title that was delayed, however it's possible other games could have been delayed as well. Reports made earlier this year indicated the Last of Us game had been pushed back.

Did you finish Baldur's Gate 3 during the RPG's launch weekend? You were among a very elite group of players if so, as not many managed this feat.

Larian compiled and shared a bunch of stats on Baldur's Gate 3 in its latest community update on Steam, including how many players completed the game in that initial three-day weekend - a grand total of 368.

Of course, there's a lot of game to get through, but still, we thought there'd be more dedicated hardcore RPG'ers out there who would be racing to be first past the finish line. Or at least one of the pack who got over the line in the launch weekend.