Gaming - Page 307

The Nintendo Switch handheld-console hybrid has now surpassed 129 million shipments worldwide as it enters its 7th year on the market.

Nintendo just reported strong Q1 results driven by a significant uptick in licensing revenue from the Super Mario Bros. movie, a record-breaking $1.75 billion from software, and consistent hardware shipments throughout the period.

In Q1 FY24, which ran from April - June 2023, Nintendo shipped 3.91 million Switch consoles and pushed the system's total worldwide cumulative sell-in to 129.53 million. This period starts the Switch's 8th year on the market, and despite its prolonged lifespan, Nintendo is still meeting apparently strong demand by sending out the Switch's third-largest Q1 shipment since the console launched in March 2017.

Baldur's Gate 3 has arrived - as you surely won't have failed to notice - and the RPG has already racked up a record on Steam.

It was always clear Steam was going to take quite a hammering from keen role-players when the game went live, especially given its download size of 122GB, and that did indeed turn out to be the case (remember, there was no option to preload it).

As PC Gamer spotted, the Steam stats page shows that Baldur's Gate 3 hit a total bandwidth usage of 146Tbps (terabits per second) at its peak. That's a whole lot of data flying around, and it's nearly three times the peak load that Cyberpunk 2077 put on Steam's servers.

Baldur's Gate 3 is a smash hit on PC and has achieved astronomically high player counts on its launch day.

After six years of development and multiple delays, it's finally here. Larian's epic D&D RPG, which continues the grand fantasy Baldur's Gate saga, released today to massive fanfare and applause. Baldur's Gate 3 is doing so well on Steam that it has risen to the second most-played game for the day, surpassing DOTA 2 and second only to the mighty Counter-Strike GO.

At the time of writing, Baldur's Gate 3 had over 472,000 players on Steam, clearly indicating early launch success for the cRPG. The game is currently sitting at a 89% positivity rating, and hit an all-time peak of 472,136 players in its first 24 hours of launch. Not bad for a release day.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirms the new publisher's new FC24 game will feature 19,000 fully-licensed players.

Following its break with FIFA, EA decided to make its own football label with the FC brand. The first game in the series, FC24, aims to recreate the billion-dollar vivacity that the FIFA games are known for, and to do that, the publisher acquired rights to add a similar amount of footballers as FIFA 23:

"With these recent announcements, alongside our ongoing network of partnerships, the game will showcase 19,000 fully-licensed footballers, 700 squads, 30 leagues, and the biggest competitions," Wilson said during the EA Q1 2024 earnings call.

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson affirms the publisher is working on its biggest-ever pipeline of video games, live services, and content.

EA's latest Q1 FY24 earnings call offered more insight into the company's future plans. Following the digital surge during COVID-19, EA has leaned more strongly into online-based experiences that churn out billions of dollars in microtransactions. The publisher is now adhering to creating Games-as-a-Platform, a new-ish concept that attaches multiple biz models around a specific title.

The idea is to treat EA's biggest franchises as an ecosystem of products, services, and experiences. EA still plans to release singleplayer-only games with strong storytelling--Jedi Fallen Order's success helped change how EA sees these games--and the new Dragon Age was given as an example.

It was thought that a max difficulty playthrough of the game Hades, with no mods or cheesing, was impossible to pull off - but an intrepid YouTuber has proved that isn't the case.

As you can see in the above video, Jade managed to beat Hades at Heat 64 (max difficulty), unmodded and unseeded, in a straight playthrough that took 30 minutes.

Hades, a rogue-like hack and slash dungeon crawler, is regarded as a masterpiece by many gamers, but when you notch up that difficulty, it becomes incredibly, incredibly hard.

Baldur's Gate 3 is set to launch imminently - in an hour, in fact - so if you're about to take the plunge with the RPG, what do you need to do?

PC Gamer spotted that the developer has put together a six-step checklist to ensure that players of the early access correctly prepare their PC for the launch day 122GB download and installation.

So, the first thing you need to do is delete your early access save games, and player profiles, as these won't work with the release version of Baldur's Gate 3.

The one-of-one Magic: The Gathering "One Ring" card has been found and sold to rapper Post Malone for an astonishing $2.6 million

Brook Trafton was the lucky individual that pulled the extremely rare "One Ring" Magic: The Gathering card. Trafton identified that he had the card in July and that he acquired it from a booster pack. For those that don't know, the "One Ring" card is part of a "Lord of the Rings" crossover set that merged J.R.R Tolkien's legendarium with the Magic: The Gathering universe.

Unlike the other versions of the One Ring card, the ultra-rare version was that was sold to Post Malone has text that is featured entirely in black speech, the language of Mordor. According to enthusiasts of the Hasbro tabletop game, the chances of pulling the ultra-rare card are 0.00003%. As for the bids for the card, a card shop owner in Buffalo, NY offered $1 million, which was then out bidded by a $2 million offer from Spain.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is inbound for the PS4 and Xbox One, those who haven't yet bought a current-gen console will doubtless be pleased to hear.

TechRadar spotted this exciting revelation in an EA earnings call (for Q1 24), in which CEO Andrew Wilson let us know the good news.

Wilson commented that: "Thanks to the strength of this legendary franchise and community demand, our development team has committed to bringing this Jedi experience to PS4 and Xbox One."

The excitement around Baldur's Gate 3 is rising, as the RPG is now about to be released - it's out tomorrow, in fact - but that launch could be a less than ideal affair on Steam, at least in one respect.

We've just heard that players who've preordered the game on Steam will not be able to preload Baldur's Gate 3 on their PC, and it's a big old download to have to sit through for launch day.

The install size is around 122GB, in fact, which amounts to a lot of drumming of fingers for those who don't have an ultra-fast broadband connection.

A few months back, it was revealed that World of Warcraft Classic is getting an official hardcore mode - where if you die, that's it, you are dead, no rezzing - and now the servers are about to go live.

Blizzard tells us that Classic Hardcore realms are opening on August 24, just a few weeks from now (as PC Gamer spotted).

The company reminds us: "Face Azeroth's dangers in WoW Classic's Hardcore realms and see just how far you can go. You only have one life to live, and the Spirit Healers won't be there to whisper sweet nothings and send you back out into the world of the living when you die."

Baldur's Gate 3 launches on August 3, in a couple of days, and it's one of the biggest RPG releases of the year on PC outside of Bethesda's Starfield. The return of the iconic role-playing franchise arrives courtesy of Larian Studios, who has been working on the game for quite some time - where it has been available to play in Early Access form for a while.

The full release, of course, is another level entirely, and today, we've got word that on day one, the game will feature support for NVIDIA DLSS 2 and DLAA - the AI version of anti-aliasing called Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing.

Regarding large-scale RPGs, Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty epic - with NVIDIA rattling off some numbers that are part of the DLSS and DLAA announcement. Twelve playable classes, 174 hours of cinematics, and around 2000 interactive characters to interact with. NVIDIA also provided some other numbers, performance covering what to expect when playing the game in 4K with DLSS on a GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics card.

Lenovo has plans to introduce its own PC gaming handheld, sources tell Windows Central's Jez Corden.

Chinese tech firm Lenovo will be the latest to enter the growing gaming handheld market. New reports indicate that Lenovo is working on its own Legion Go device that will take aim at Valve's Steam Deck, the ASUS ROG Ally, and the AYANEO PC gaming handhelds.

The Legion Go is expected to have an 8-inch screen and leverage the Windows 11 operating system for more widespread app and gaming support. As far as performance goes, sources tell Windows Central that the Legion Go is currently powered by AMD's new Phoenix APU processors, and it's possible that the Legion Go could utilize a custom variant to deliver high-end gaming similar to the customized ROG Ally Z1 Extreme chip that is built off of the Ryzen 7 7840U SoC.

Let's face it, console gamepads often have to take a fair bit of abuse - perhaps even occasionally being hurled across the living room - but if you've broken your Xbox controller (beyond the period of its warranty), Microsoft wants to help.

How, exactly? By selling you the components you need to repair a bust controller. Of course, you'll also need enough skill and technical knowhow to complete the repair, although Microsoft is on hand to help here, too.

Microsoft is offering video tutorials on repairing controllers via YouTube, and also has step-by-step DIY guides that Xbox owners can download should they wish to fix up their gamepad.

Remnant 2 now has DLSS 3, according to a report, and the game has already sold over a million units.

As revealed in the above tweet, sales have exceeded the one million mark in just four days after launch, which is pretty good going to say the least.

That said, PC gamers have been unhappy with performance levels in Remnant 2, and we've already seen that even NVIDIA's mighty RTX 4090 graphics card struggles with smoothness if you want to run in 4K resolution (and remember this game doesn't have ray tracing).

Sony is rolling out a new PlayStation 5 system software release in Beta that brings several new accessibility features to the console alongside Dolby Atmos and large 8TB capacity SSD support. The latter is great news for those with a growing digital library of PS5 games, and this update will probably get a few companies to release even higher capacity SSD solutions for the PS5 - as the current limit is 4TB.

The addition of Dolby Atmos is also very welcome, as the surround technology is the go-to for home movie releases, and Atmos has been available on the Xbox Series X|S for a while now. What's cool is that it's compatible with Sony's impressive Tempest 3D AudioTech, with the company noting that in-game audio with "specifically render to the Dolby Atmos audio device in use - including overhead channels - allowing for even greater levels of immersion."

Beta access to the new system software is "limited to invited participants in select countries," with Sony noting that it plans to release the update later this year. There's more than Dolby Atmos and 8TB support in the update, so let's look.

Diablo 4 devs are finally going to give some buffs to the recently nerfed sorcerer class, as well as the barbarian.

The news came via a campfire chat streamed at the weekend, as PC Gamer spotted, and it'll doubtless be very welcome from sorcerers who have been pretty miffed at the curtailing of their powers in the recent pre-season patch.

The next patch for Diablo 4, which will be version 1.1.1, will bring in the buffs and should arrive on August 8, a week tomorrow. The idea is to improve not just the effectiveness of sorcerers in battle, but also the fun factor of playing the class.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion might be getting a remake or a remaster in Unreal Engine 5.

New leaks say that Oblivion might get remade in a new modern-day games engine with Virtuos at the helm. The report was posted to the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit, but was promptly deleted shortly thereafter. Apparently there is no backup to the post on the Internet Archive.

Like any place that spreads rumors, the subreddit is a mix of authenticity and fabrication. The Oblivion remake news was seen as iffy until Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson published a report indicating that he spoke directly with a mod that vouched for the source's credibility. In this case, the source was reportedly a former Virtuous employee.

World of Warcraft actually performs better in certain ways than Call of Duty, a new report from the European Commission has found.

Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMORPG is one of the most popular games on the planet. It has millions of recurring subscribers, and according to the European Commission's findings, it's the only game of its type "able to extract a monthly fee."

The latest report from the EC outlines the Commission's thoughts, reasoning, and rationale behind its decision to approve the Microsoft-Activision merger. The document thoroughly outlines the different phases that were involved in its assessment, and nestled in the report is an interesting mention about how Activision's franchises compare to one another.

Nintendo's next gaming hardware may release in the second half of 2024, sources have told VideoGameChronicle.

According to new reports, Nintendo's upcoming next-gen gaming system could release in the latter half of 2024, possibly indicating a holiday 2024 release. Sources tell VGC that major studios now have devkits for the new system, echoing reports from Bloomberg made in 2021.

Nothing has been confirmed so far, but by all accounts Nintendo's new hardware will likely be an upgraded Switch model. Our assessment finds that Nintendo could choose NVIDIA's new Orin Tegra chip in an effort to deliver higher gaming performance at a low power profile while also leveraging NVIDIA's powerful DLSS technology to deliver upscaled 4K gaming experiences.