Gaming - Page 304

Microsoft is set to pay the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) $20 million for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It collected and retained personal information from children signing up to play games on Xbox without notifying parents or obtaining consent. As part of the settlement, Microsoft must also bolster privacy and protection for children on Xbox consoles.

"Our proposed order makes it easier for parents to protect their children's privacy on Xbox and limits what information Microsoft can collect and retain about kids," said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "This action should also make it abundantly clear that kids' avatars, biometric data, and health information are not exempt from COPPA."

According to the report, Xbox users under the age of 13 were treated like anyone else. "Even when a user indicated that they were under 13, they were also asked, until late 2021, to provide additional personal information, including a phone number, and to agree to Microsoft's service agreement and advertising policy," the FTC writes. "Which, until 2019, included a pre-checked box allowing Microsoft to send promotional messages and to share user data with advertisers."

With Diablo IV now officially out in the wild - breaking Blizzard sales records - if you're rocking a GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU, you've probably checked out its impressive DLSS 3 implementation. Which, even on the new GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, delivers incredible performance with all visual settings maxed out.

Diablo IV scales incredibly well across most PC hardware, it even runs fine on the Steam Deck, but the art and visuals do pop once you dial things up. As per NVIDIA's internal benchmarks playing at 4K with max settings and DLSS 3 enabled everything from the GeForce RTX 4070 to the RTX 4090 hits well over triple-digits.

Firing the game up on the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio, I pushed Ultrawide 1440p into the triple-digit region, which was impressive. The good news is that visual fidelity and responsiveness were great, too - thanks partly to NVIDIA Reflex - which makes Diablo IV an excellent example of DLSS 3 gaming.

Western Digital enters the next-gen Xbox storage market with its own affordably-priced SSDs.

Western Digital today launched two new Xbox Series X/S expansion SSDs with straightforward pricing: a 500GB SSD for $79.99, and a 1TB SSD for $149.99.

WD's new SSDs actually helped stabilize the expansion storage market for Microsoft's new console. For over 2 years, Seagate was the only company to offer expansion cards for the Series X/S duo, which led to aggressive pricing. Seagate significantly slashed the price of its Xbox SSDs about a month before Western Digital launched its new models, leading to a hefty reduction in MSRP.

Capcom has just updated unit sales figures for its best-selling video game franchises, including Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Street Fighter, Mega Man, and Devil May Cry.

Throughout FY22 (April 2022 - March 2023), Capcom sold a total of 47.1 million games across the entire year. The following top franchises made up nearly half of these sales gains. It's worth noting that some games aren't included in these figures, including Street Fighter 6, which launched earlier this month and will instead be included in Capcom's FY23 numbers.

The franchise that saw the largest gains was Resident Evil, which managed to jump by 15 million units, driven by the stellar release performance of Resident Evil 4 in March 2023 as well as catalog game sales. Below we have a better breakdown of how each of these top 5 best-selling franchises performed throughout the fiscal year:

Blizzard's latest demon-slaying medieval aRPG became a huge success even before it launched.

Activision has announced that Diablo IV is now Blizzard's fastest-selling game of all time, setting new records for the live service giant. There's some clarification needed with these claims, though. The press release does not have actual sales figures and the "fastest-selling" claim apparently only applies to early access sales, not launch day sales.

"Fastest selling based on more units sold on all platforms before launch (through June 5, 2023). Sell-through figures based on reporting received from digital partners and Blizzard internal reports," reads the press release.

BioShock creator Ken Levine reveals why he left the franchise and started working on Judas, his new shooter.

In a recent interview with the Sacred Symbols podcast, BioShock visionary Ken Levine gave key insight as to why he decided to leave the series behind. Levine highlights the compounding stress of major success and how developers and creatives are pressured to continually push out big hits that one-up their previous games.

After BioShock Infinite, which Levine says he wanted to be Irrational's own blockbuster version of Call of Duty, the creator essentially felt trapped by his creations. Levine didn't want to feel like he had to compete against himself and up the ante each time, so he chose to work on a different game--one that took many, many years before it was revealed.

Today Apple and Hideo Kojima announced that Death Stranding Director's Cut is coming to the Mac in 2023, and Kojima also plans to bring future games to the platform as well.

Apple is mostly known for productivity and not gaming, but the introduction of its new Metal 3 tech has attracted some developers to release newer titles on Mac, including Capcom with Resident Evil Village. Now Kojima Productions is bringing Death Stranding to Mac.

Apple's latest WWDC 2023 showcase highlighted a new feature called Game Mode that's coming to Macs this year. Game Mode optimizes and prioritizes CPU and GPU to help streamline frame rates, while also reducing controller input latency by doubling Bluetooth sampling rates. Apple also announced a new Metal game porting toolkit that makes it "even easier for developers to port their games from other platforms" through simpler conversion processes.

Tim Cain, the lead programmer of the original Fallout cRPG from the 1990s, gives rare insight into the content that didn't make it into the final games.

Just because a game is out in stores doesn't mean it's complete. Games are actually never complete, and developers typically shave off significant amounts of content from a dev build to make things fit into a finalized version. That was also the case with the first Fallout games.

So what kinds of things were left on the cutting room floor in Fallout? In a recent video, Tim Cain outlines some interesting concepts, stories, and features that didn't miss the axe. One piece of content was a kind of Library of Alexandria for the wasteland that was based on Walter Miller's classic dystopian novel A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain reveals why he left Interplay back in the late-1990s.

Gaming was a lot different back in the 90s. That goes double for PC gaming, which was dominated by big-box titles that were as groundbreaking as they were irreverent. The original Fallout was one such game; with its humor, deep mechanics, and a gritty style augmented by an isometric view, Fallout was one such game that helped solidify the cRPG market.

TIm Cain, who co-created the Fallout series, was significantly influential to the PC gaming scene and the Fallout brand as a whole. Cain had left Interplay back in 1998 due to a myriad of reasons, and in a recent YouTube video, the legendary game developer tells his story on why exactly he departed the studio.

The $12.7 billion merger with Zynga has pushed mobile as the lead revenue-generating platform for publisher Take-Two Interactive.

Take-Two Interactive is mostly known for delivering mega franchises like Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, Red Dead, and Borderlands. However, following its mega-merger with Zynga in May 2022, mobile gaming quickly conquered the business in terms of earnings. The company's annual 2023 SEC filings give an important look at Take-Two Interactive's current place in the industry and it's growth-oriented trajectory.

According to the filings, recognition of Zynga's earnings boosted TTWO's Fiscal Year 2023 earnings by $1.845 billion year-over-year, leading to a total of $5.349 billion in net revenue earned during the year. Zynga made up 40% of total company revenues and its stable of popular free-to-play games pulled in $2.159 billion, helping offset over $300 million reduction in GTA earnings and over $71 million drop in Borderlands franchise revenues.

Sony Group Corp. CEO Kenichiro Yoshida comments on PlayStation's cloud gaming initiatives, and indicates that its proprietary GT Sophy artificial intelligence could play a larger role in emerging segment.

Although it has become more relevant today thanks to the Microsoft-Activision merger, cloud gaming has actually been around for quite some time. Sony became a pioneer in the tech after purchasing Gaikai for $380 million back in 2012 and then launching its PlayStation Now game streaming service. 11 years later, cloud gaming remains a nascent and substantially small part of the overall video games market (European Commission VP Margrethe Vestager has said cloud represents 1-3% of gaming earnings).

While UK regulators at the CMA believe cloud gaming will grow over time, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida notes that game streaming faces considerable challenges and has a more realistic outlook on the technology.

CD Projekt Group management confirms that R&D on the new Cyberpunk game will begin in 2024.

Last year, CD Projekt announced Project Orion, a fully-fledged sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. Details on the new game are slim, but based on the publisher's new live game services focus, we expect that Orion is in some part a continuation of the Cyberpunk 2077 standalone AAA multiplayer game that CD Projekt had discussed some time ago.

We could be waiting quite some time for the game. Project Orion hasn't begun principal development just yet, and CD Projekt Group is planned to start spending on R&D for the game throughout 2024. This is an early phase of development that's technically pre-production, so the actual game may not release until a few years afterwards.

BioShock creator Ken Levine shares the storytelling process and motivations that he used in order to write the fan-favorite series.

BioShock is known far and wide for its unique story that weaves themes of classism, history, and unchecked tyranny in a fictional underwater city full of art deco beauty. But how exactly did this classical story come to light?

In a recent interview on Colin Moriarty's Sacred Symbols podcast, BioShock creator Ken Levine shared some interesting insight into his core motivations for the games. Levine explores topics like understanding perspectives from a villain's point of view alongside assertions that everything always has to be in service of characters.

Square Enix's developers give new updates on Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2, including what to expect with exploration and overall release date.

In a recent Facebook update, Square Enix has delivered two new small Q&As with key developers of the new Final Fantasy VII Rebirth game that's due out in 2023 on PlayStation 5 consoles.

According to game producer Yoshinori Kitase, one of the main concerns with Rebirth is locking in a release date. The publisher currently plans to release two major AAA Final Fantasy games in 2023, with Final Fantasy XVI on June 22 and Rebirth expected to release sometime in Winter 2023. It's possible that Rebirth is pushed out to early 2024, possibly before Square Enix's fiscal year ends on March 31, or it could even get pushed into Square Enix's next FY23 timeline to help break apart and stagger game sales.

The reports were correct: Asypr has officially cancelled development of KOTOR II's planned DLCs on Nintendo Switch.

One of the biggest selling points of the new KOTOR II re-release on the Nintendo Switch was the promise that missing content would be added back into the game. Back in 2004, KOTOR II launched as an unfinished game with a portion of its gameplay, features, and content left on the cutting room floor so that Obsidian could get the game out to consumers more quickly. This happens very, very often in the video games industry.

Aspyr, who was previously handling the KOTOR Remake, had originally planned to re-incorporate KOTOR II's unreleased content into the 2022 re-release and sell the first complete version of the beloved RPG. The cut features have been identified for many years thanks to the Sith Restoration Project.

With the new Zelda game, Nintendo has created an incredible playground for user-generated content...and it could be the beginning of something interesting for the company.

Gamers are making some really outrageous, elaborate, and often amazing things in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, including airships, gimbal aircraft, and even Tie Fighters straight out of Star Wars. Combined with a world ripe for the picking, the game's new Ultrahand power offers such massive creative freedom and should help extend TotK's overall lifespan for many, many years, but it could also be a magic ticket to a new realm of possibility for Nintendo.

Some of the biggest games on the market rely on what's called user-generated content, or UGC. Both Minecraft and Roblox rely on UGC to promote engagement, sell copies of games, and in Roblox's case, push microtransactions. These games have huge player bases in the millions of users, with 66.1 million people playing Roblox every day.

The U.S. House Oversight Committee has opened a probe into Chair Lina Khan's leadership at the Federal Trade Commission on allegations of "abuses of power."

Today the United States House of Representatives Oversight Committee has announced that it is probing the FTC in order to address allegations made by former Republican FTC Commissioner Christine S. Wilson, who in an Wall Street Journal op-ed said that FTC Chair Lina Khan was "abusing her power" to "achieve desired outcomes."

In a formal letter to the FTC, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer outlines key concerns that lead to questions on whether or not the Federal Trade Commission has become a "rogue agency."

Microsoft and Activision may be ready to take drastic measures in order to merge and become one of the biggest powerhouses in the video games industry.

Microsoft is currently looking at ways to carry on with its $68.7 billion Activision merger without the United Kingdom's approval. The megaton merger was blocked by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, and with the merger's July 14 deadline fast approaching, it's possible that Microsoft and Activision could "close over" and proceed with the merger despite the CMA block.

There are already plans underway to close the deal in the United States despite the FTC's current administrative lawsuit. The FTC would need an injunction from a federal court in order to get the merger blocked, and this could be challenging as the merger has already been approved in the European Union for similar reasons as the FTC's anti-competitive objections.

EA has announced a partnership with Nike Virtual Studios to bring .Swoosh "virtual creations" to future EA Sports games. Now the publisher needs to clarify exactly what is happening before the announcement turns into a full-blown controversy.

Note: Most of this article is speculation based on limited information presented by Nike and Electronic Arts. The actual plan for Nike .Swoosh integration may be different than what is presented here. Speculation is required due to the limited amount of information made available by both companies.

It appears that Electronic Arts will tie its billion-dollar EA Sports brand to a new iteration of the NFT market in some form. Today, EA and Nike announced a partnership to bring .Swoosh digital collectibles into new EA Sports games. So...what are .Swoosh "virtual collectibles?" Most people think these are NFTs, but they resemble a kind of game-less lootbox that you buy with real money instead of cryptocurrency.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is expected to make $1 billion at launch, and is expected to sell at least 25 million copies upon release.

GTA 6 is one of the most anticipated games of the modern era, and Take-Two Interactive has telegraphed a potential Holiday 2024 or early 2025 launch for the crime sim. According to a recent newsletter from games industry expert Joost van Dreunen, initial forecasts for Grand Theft Auto 6 sales are around 25 million.

"Assuming a 2025 launch window, which is optimistic given the publisher's propensity for delays, early estimates expect the new title to sell 25 million units," van Dreunen writes.