Gaming - Page 310

On the same day Microsoft announced that it would extend the Activision merger deadline, Blizzard confirms plans to break exclusivity on its Battle.net PC launcher.

For quite a long time, Battle.net has been the only place you could play Blizzard Entertainment PC games. There's a good reason for this: Blizzard's proprietary storefront/launcher allows the publisher to keep all revenues made from purchases and not pay a royalty to third-party platform-holders. After all, Blizzard already brings its games to Xbox, PlayStation, and the Nintendo Switch. But now with the $68.7 billion merger with Microsoft on the horizon, Blizzard is changing its tune.

Today Blizzard announced that it will bring a few of its games over to Steam, but the exact range of titles remains unclear. Blizzard says that Overwatch 2 will be the first game on Steam, and the store page is now live. "We're excited to announce that we are bringing a selection of our games to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2... which will be available on the platform on August 10!"

BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft and Activision have officially extended their merger agreement into October.

Last night, the Microsoft-Activision merger deadline came and went. As UK regulators at the CMA weigh Microsoft's latest offers, both Microsoft and Activision have delayed the merger deadline in an attempt to safeguard the $68.7 billion deal from any further elongated investigations from the Competition and Markets Authority.

"Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have extended the merger agreement deadline to 10/18. We're optimistic about getting this done, and excited about bringing more games to more players everywhere," Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer said.

Despite being released in 2013, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V is still teeming with players, and now those players can push the game to its absolute limits graphically with this eye-watering mod.

While Grand Theft Auto V is certainly considered an old game, the Rockstar title is still one of the best-looking games available, even surpassing some of the most recently released AAA titles. However, those graphical achievements are reached through additional downloadable mods, and thanks to developers such as Digital Dreams, Grand Theft Auto V is still being talked about for its graphical potential.

As demonstrated by the above video posted to the Digital Dreams YouTube channel, Grand Theft Auto V can be seen running at 8K with multiple mods, such as the ReShade Ray Tracing mod, QuantV 3D clouds, and the GTAV Real mod. For those that don't know, the GTAV RealMod converts what was Los Santos into Los Angeles, and according to reports, the results are quite impressive. If you are interested in checking out this mod more, visit the Patreon here.

Diablo 4's Season 1, dubbed the 'Season of the Malignant,' will go live in all regions on Thursday, July 20. And with that, Diablo 4 just got a massive 1.1 patch ahead of the new Season that brings several changes to the game, buffs, nerfs, new Unique and Legendary Aspects, and more fixes than you can shake a Wirt's Leg at. In case you were wondering, that's a deep-cut reference to Diablo 2.

For those wondering what existing skills and builds have been nerfed, it looks like Barbarian Hammer of the Ancients, Druid Werewolf Shred, Necromancer Bone Spear, and Sorcerer Ice Shard builds have been scaled back. The good news is that the patch is mostly about buffing other skills and abilities to broaden the options for players.

One nerf that will affect most players, especially those diving into the first Season, is that the experience points rewarded to players for killing enemies that are at a much higher level than them have been scaled back. "We have observed that the experience bonus rewarded for killing higher-level monsters escalates too fast compared to the relative challenge involved," Blizzard writes. With this, players will get +1.5% experience per level higher than the player up to a maximum of 15% at 10 levels.

In December 2022, NVIDIA released Portal with RTX - a stunning path-traced and fully ray-traced remaster of Valve's iconic puzzle game that took full advantage of modern rendering and the company's DLSS 3 Frame Generation technology. A glimpse at the future of lighting in games through the guise of one of the best first-person puzzle games in recent times.

Created in part with NVIDIA RTX Remix, the company's modding platform that can transform any older title to bring it into the RTX era, it's one of those releases that is a must if you've purchased one of the new GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards.

Today comes word from NVIDIA that it has used the same RTX Remix toolset to remaster one of Portal's most enduring mods - Portal: Prelude from creator Nicolas "NykO18" Grevet. Set before the game's events, this unofficial and award-winning prequel in RTX form includes enhanced materials, full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 3, and NVIDIA Reflex support.

Back in July 2003, Troika Games laid out a very interesting proposal for Baldur's Gate 3 that deviated from classic cRPG norms.

With Baldur's Gate 3 releasing in August, games industry vet Tim Cain takes curious gamers back to the past to discover Troika Games' unique vision for a third Baldur's Gate game on PC.

"It was in real-time [...]This whole thing was a very action-oriented version of D&D," Cain said in a recent video.

Cloud Imperium Games, the company that makes the mega-popular Star Citizen space sim game, has merged with its long-time game development partner Turbulent.

As Star Citizen continues expanding, so too must the teams behind the decade-long live game. CIG has announced that it is joining forces--and companies--with its 11-year partner Turbulent to continue its ambition to disrupt the video games landscape. And, of course, deliver the anticipated Squadron 42 campaign to Star Citizen players.

So who exactly is Turbulent? The studio has worked on various dimensions of Star Citizen, including the game's original website, its StarMap, social systems, and also helped worldbuilding and concept creations.

New reports from Reuters indicate that Microsoft and Activision are continuing discussions on a merger deadline extension.

The Microsoft-Activision merger deadline is tonight, July 18 at 11:59PM. If the deal is not closed by that time, then Microsoft or Activision can walk away from the deal, triggering a $3 billion termination fee that Microsoft will pay to Activision. Walking away seems quite unlikely and risky for the billion-dollar video games publisher, and reports suggest that an extension of the deadline is the most likely outcome.

While the merger is essentially free to close in the United States following the FTC's recent loss in court, the deal's approval is still in limbo in the UK. Microsoft is making major headway in UK, though, and is one step closer to winning over antitrust regulators at the CMA. Microsoft will formally notify a new restructured deal to the CMA that is expected to alleviate many of the agency's concerns about the merger, but this formal assessment process could take up to 20 days' time. With the merger deadline looming, time is something that Microsoft and Activision don't have.

Both Activision and Microsoft are preparing for their impending merger with big moves with the Call of Duty franchise.

Microsoft's post-merger intentions with Call of Duty have been illustrated with recent advancements. First, Microsoft and Activision have discounted every single Call of Duty game that's available on the Xbox store. Some games are discounted by as much as 70%, with a number of fan-favorite Call of Duty games being as cheap as $10.

This maneuver wasn't just to sell a bunch of games ahead of Call of Duty's eventual post-merger rollout on Game Pass, though. It was a strategic effort to also capitalize on engagement across the Xbox ecosystem. Coupled with the massive sale on Call of Duty games, Activision has also fixed matchmaking servers in old Call of Duty Xbox 360 games including Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2, which has led to a massive influx of players. This is by design. Microsoft is already using Call of Duty to ramp up engagement and playtime across its service ecosystem, which is one of the main reasons it sought to acquire Activision in the first place.

The UK regulators at the CMA are the last hurdle for the Microsoft-Activision merger. Things are moving fast, and here a breakdown of what's going on.

Following many months of investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a final report that suggested the Microsoft-Activision merger should be blocked. The antitrust agency argues that the Microsoft-Activision merger will create SLC (Significant Lessening of Competition) effects in cloud and subscription.

Now the UK regulators are having a change of heart. Microsoft has offered new proposals that have convinced the CMA that Microsoft is capable of addressing their concerns in these relevant markets.

It's the 45th anniversary of Space Invaders - which makes us feel impossibly old - and Google has launched an AR game to celebrate this milestone on Android and iOS.

Space Invaders: World Defense is basically Pokemon Go but with blocky 3D invaders turning up in your neighborhood.

The idea is to get out there and set high scores for your vicinity by spotting and blasting the invading ships. To shoot down a Space Invader, all you have to do is point your smartphone and fire at it.

Be afraid. In fact, be absolutely stone-cold petrified. Because Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, which is pretty much universally regarded as one of the lowest points of PC gaming ever, is getting a remaster.

The Definitive Edition of the game, remastered by Limited Run - the original was released way back in 1994 - has just been given a release date of September 2023 in a new YouTube trailer which PC Gamer spotted.

And to say we're excited would be, well, a lie. We're about as far from excited as you can get - indeed, so far from that emotion, there aren't suitable words to convey the distance involved.

Rockstar's original Red Dead Redemption never made its way to PC, at least officially, with the game relegated to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era with modern consoles like the Xbox Series X able to present the game in 4K - albeit with the frame-rate capped to 30fps.

This has always been one of the main reasons why people are keen to see high-profile console-exclusive titles make their way to PC, as you (at least on paper) get a superior version of the game in question able to push higher resolutions, higher frame rates, and more advanced visual effects. Red Dead Redemption has been high on the list of 'games people want to see ported over to PC' for several years, it is a game from the creators of Grand Theft Auto, but the only way to experience it this way is via emulation.

This brings us to the latest deep dive from the all-things gaming team over at Digital Foundry, showcasing the original Red Dead Redemption running on a GeForce RTX 4090 powered rig running the game via Xbox 360 emulator Xenia and PS3 emulator RPCS 3.

The CMA's decision to support the joint application to adjourn the appeals litigation was not influenced by the FTC's loss in the United States.

At the Competition Appeal Tribunal, David Bailey, the lawyer representing the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), affirmed that the regulators' decision to motion to stay the appeals litigation was unaffected by the outcome of the Federal Trade Commission's injunction denial in the U.S.

In an attempt to overturn the CMA's original proposed report consideration that called to block and prohibit the Microsoft-Activision merger, Microsoft legal counsel appealed the decision in the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) courts. Now with the merger's deadline approaching, Microsoft wants to halt the appeals litigation. In light of new proposed deals and negotiations, which involve a "small and discreet divestiture," the CMA has agreed that the appeals process should be halted so that it can properly weigh the proposed terms and decided whether or not it should cancel its final order based on the previous structured deal, or fast-track a Phase 1 clearance.

Microsoft officially announces it its retiring Xbox LIVE Gold, and rebranding the service into its new Game Pass Core subscription tier. This move is actually better than we thought.

Xbox LIVE is being renamed Xbox Game Pass Core, and Microsoft has cancelled the free Games With Gold initiative. Looking at the games roster from 2022-2023, gamers note that the titles offered weren't of the highest quality, and that 2021 seems to be the last year where GWG delivered meaningful big-name games. Still, though, this is technically a loss in value.

What makes Xbox Game Pass Core a better comparative value to Xbox LIVE Gold, however, is two things.

Cyberpunk 2077's launch in December 2020 was full of controversy surrounding the state of the game, from bugs to missing or lackluster features to a console port so poor that Sony decided to remove the game from the official PlayStation store during a very busy holiday season.

The PC side fared a lot better, that is, if you had a powerful GeForce RTX 30 Series GPU to enable ray-tracing effects and DLSS rendering for performance. That said, things like broken enemy AI and bugs were prevalent in all game versions, sparking months and years of continual updates to bring the game closer to its original promise.

With the upcoming release of the Phantom Liberty expansion set to overhaul many of the game's core systems and Cyberpunk 2077 being in a state you'd consider very solid and stable on all platforms, the PC release on Steam has finally hit that all-important 'Very Positive' review rating covering 546,967 user reviews in total.

UPDATE: Microsoft has made the announcement official. Xbox Game Pass Core will replace Xbox LIVE Gold. Read more here.

After decades of online gaming, Xbox LIVE Gold is reportedly being phased out and replaced with a new Game Pass subscription tier.

New reports indicate that Microsoft is preparing to officially retire its Xbox LIVE Gold subscription. Starting September 14, a new Game Pass tier called Core will replace Xbox LIVE Gold, and offer some extra benefits for no additional cost.

UPDATE: Sony has confirmed the Call of Duty deal is for a 10-year period. Sony has told Axios' Stephen Totilo:

Every Call of Duty game that Microsoft offers on its gaming storefront has been discounted ahead of the incoming merger with Activision.

Today, Sony signed a landmark contract to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation. This deal will ensure the mega-hit franchise stays on PlayStation for an undetermined period of time, allaying the Federal Trade Commission's anti-competitive concerns that the franchise could be withheld from Sony's rival platform via partial or total foreclosure.

It's official: Sony has signed a contract with Microsoft to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation.

Given the circumstances involved, was only a matter of time before Sony made a new deal to keep Call of Duty games on PlayStation platforms.

"We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games," Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer said today.

As UK regulators extend their final decision date, Microsoft and Activision are also expected to negotiate a new merger termination date that goes beyond the current July 18 deadline.

Microsoft and Activision are reportedly leaning towards a merger deadline extension, sources tell the Financial Times. The news report was published before yesterday's big loss for the FTC, where the appeals courts denied the Commission's request to prohibit the merger from consummating until after a months-long appeals process was complete. The merger is now clear to close in the United States, but the FTC plans to start its internal administrative case next month.

That just leaves one more potential roadblock for the $68.7 billion merger: the UK regulators at the CMA. It's assumed that Microsoft and Activision will extend their merger deadline as the parties continue negotiating with the UK agency.