Gaming - Page 317

Windows 11 gamers who found themselves unable to play Red Dead Redemption 2 following an update to Microsoft's operating system can breathe a sigh of relief, because Rockstar Games has fixed the bug in question.

You might recall that this problem affected gamers running Windows 11 21H2 (not the latest version of the OS, which is 22H2, of course), and the bug was present in patch KB5023774. That update rolled out to Windows 11 21H2 users at the end of last month.

The good news is that Rockstar has announced an update to its launcher software in which various stability improvements have been applied.

We've seen Mario make an appearance in the App Store and Google Play Store a couple of times over the years, not always to great success. In fact, it turns out that mobile games just might not be worth Nintendo's time anymore.

In an interview with Variety, Nintendo fellow and game designer Shigeru Miyamoto made it clear that mobile apps will not be a key focus for Nintendo going forward. Not that they ever really were. Instead, it appears that the company wants to focus on making games that actually make it the big bucks.

As an example, Mario Kart 8 apparently raked in a cool $3 billion to date, which isn't to be sniffed at. By comparison, Super Mario Run made $60 million in its first year while Mario Kart Tour generated $300 million since its 2019 release. It's easy to see why Nintendo might focus on games for its own platforms as a result.

Sony is reportedly working on a new PlayStation handheld, but it won't be a PS Vita 2.

Reports from Insider Gaming indicate that Sony is developing a new PlayStation handheld codenamed Q Lite that is very different from its previous devices.

Leaks show that the PlayStation Q Lite handheld will not support dedicated gaming like the PlayStation Portable or PlayStation Vita, and will instead only support Remote Play from a PS5. The new handheld is expected to be always-online and target 1080p 60FPS gaming, and will also require gamers to own a PlayStation 5 in order for the handheld to function.

The Last of Us Part I has had a rocky launch on PC. From poor performance to glitches to high VRAM and CPU, it's a mess for several players.

Developer Naughty Dog and its partners at Iron Galaxy are working on updates and patches, with an extensive one expected later this week. In the meantime, to fix the game randomly crashing on GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs, NVIDIA has released GeForce Hotfix Driver Version 531.58, which you can download here.

The Hotfix also fixes issues with the recent Resident Evil 4 Remake when FXAA is enabled, which is good to see - though the big story here is improving performance for one of the most highly anticipated PC releases of 2023. As with all Hotfix Drivers from NVIDIA, this is considered Beta, with the fixes set to appear in the next WHQL driver release.

Cyberpunk 2077's new Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode is set to be released in technology preview form on April 11. It brings full path tracing to one of the most technically impressive and advanced games for PC.

Path tracing or full ray tracing can already be seen in NVIDIA's own Portal with RTX mod, where essentially all lighting effects, including global illumination, shadows, direct and indirect light sources, and shadows, are all path traced. As expected, it's incredibly taxing on PC hardware.

Check out this new look at Cyberpunk 2077 with full path tracing in the trailer above, captured with a GeForce RTX 4090 with DLSS 3 enabled.

Anything announced on April 1 is met with skepticism, but it turns out that the ASUS ROG Ally handheld is real and is being positioned as a direct competitor to Valve's Steam Deck.

Although full details are unavailable, ASUS has confirmed that the ROG Ally is Windows 11-powered handheld PC that will ship with the fastest AMD APU built on a custom 4nm process with Zen 4 and RDNA 3 architecture.

The handheld will sport a Full HD (1080p) display with a 120 Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 500 Nits. The handheld is smaller and lighter than Valve's Steam Deck, with dimensions of 280mm x 133mm x 39mm and a weight of 608 grams. For comparison, the Steam Deck weighs 669 grams and features dimensions of 298mm x 117mm x 50.5mm. Plus, its display is limited to 800p (16:10) with a refresh rate of 60 Hz.

Microsoft's indie game program director Chris Charla believes Xbox Game Pass is additive, and not disruptive. We think otherwise, and here's why.

The games industry typically moves at a slower pace than the breakneck speed of the tech sector. Making games is a slow process, and by the time developers try to capture the latest trend, gamers could have moved on to something else. These trends have led to significant disruption points that evolved the industry from boxed retail games in the old days to a thriving billion-dollar digital landscape where players are always online, always engaged, and always buying.

One of the most noteworthy disruption points of the modern video games era is the rise of multi-game subscriptions. The concept of leasing access to players for a reduced fee is attractive to platform-holders, who make long-term revenues, and players, who pay less to play games. A new way to monetize consumers was born and the industry hasn't looked back.

NVIDIA has announced what's being added to the could-streaming GeForce NOW in April 2023, and it's stacked with great-looking indie titles and a few high-profile releases.

NVIDIA also took the time to remind everyone that it has partnered with Microsoft to bring titles from Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, Mojang, and Activision (pending the closure of the acquisition) and is currently in the process of onboarding Microsoft titles into the GeForce Now ecosystem.

But, until those titles arrive, plenty of goodness is coming - with 11 titles added this week and plenty more coming in April, including the highly anticipated Dead Island 2 and the entire run of The Dark Pictures Anthology interactive horror games from Bandai Namco.

Traditionally the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has been one of the biggest events in the gaming calendar, covering consoles, PC, and anywhere games are played. And now, after a year since we got confirmation that the event was making a return, word of its cancelation has arrived.

So, what went wrong? The short answer is that there wasn't enough industry interest or support for the event to be the sort of large-scale gaming extravaganza it has been in the past.

Several notable players like Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Ubisoft, EA, and others have chosen to skip E3 2023 to do their own digital thing or shift their focus to the newly annualized Summer Game Fest.

The Last of Us Part I was released for the PC yesterday, and early feedback on Steam regarding the quality of the port of the PlayStation classic has been scathing in many cases.

Naughty Dog has swiftly stepped in to acknowledge the feedback on Steam, with reviews on Valve's gaming platform showing as 'mostly negative' after over 7,000 opinions have now been aired on the PC remake of the zombie shooter.

The developer says it is actively investigating multiple issues that PC gamers have reported.

Windows 11 is pushed by Microsoft as a superior OS to Windows 10 for gamers, but not fans of Red Dead Redemption 2 - seeing as a bug in the latest patch has prevented the game from working for some users.

Specifically, this problem affects those running Windows 11 21H2, so in other words, folks who still need to upgrade to the most recent incarnation of Windows 11 (22H2, released late last year).

The latest patch KB5023774 is an optional update for March, which means it's still in testing, so could be bugged - and indeed clearly does have a gremlin in the works, as gamers trying to start Red Dead Redemption 2 are finding that it fails to get going at all.

DLSS 3 support comes to the popular and critically acclaimed racing game Forza Horizon 5 this week, offering a massive performance boost to GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs. NVIDIA notes that with DLSS 3 support available in 29 games, the adoption rate is seven times faster than the first six months of DLSS 2.

With the announcement, NVIDIA has showcased some internal Forza Horizon 5 benchmarks for the GeForce RTX 40 Series (RTX 4090, RTX 4080, and RTX 4070 Ti) with DLSS 3 enabled using max settings and the "Extreme" ray tracing mode.

At 4K (3840x2160), all three RTX 40 Series cards (with DLSS in Performance Mode) can deliver average frame rates higher than 120 fps. At 1440p, this number jumps considerably, with the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 pushing past 200 fps and the RTX 4070 Ti hitting an average frame rate of 175 fps.

The Microsoft-Activision merger has been approved without conditions by Japan's Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), the agency today announced.

Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard King made another breakthrough as another worldwide regulator has cleared the deal. The merger has been greenlit in Japan, with the JFTC saying that the combination is "unlikely to result in substantially restraining competition in any particular fields of trade." The regulators will not issue a cease and desist order (which seems to be analogous to the FTC's move to block the merger). Japanese regulators have now completed their review of the merger.

Japan is the fifth global regulator to approve the Microsoft-Activision merger. The list of territories that have cleared and approved the deal include:

Diablo IV could get DirectStorage support eventually, if clues dug up by data miners are anything to go by.

As highlighted on Reddit, support for DirectStorage was unearthed in the action RPG's beta test, which just completed the open beta phase this past weekend.

DirectStorage allows for faster loading times with NVMe SSDs (ideally on Windows 11 for the speediest performance), and also swifter loading of assets in-game, which facilitates smoother gameplay in big open-world titles.

With Windows 7 and Windows 8 support in Steam ending, it seems that Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii are in. Yeah, it's a weird turn of events but also a case of strange timing. Today we've also got confirmation that the popular console emulator called Dolphin is officially coming to Steam.

There's no word on when exactly it will become available, but the Steam store page for Dolphin is live right now. The page cleverly doesn't showcase any Nintendo games or say the word "Nintendo," for that matter. Or GameCube or Wii.

"Dolphin Emulator is your one-way ticket to nostalgia if you're looking to relive classics from the big N's cube-shaped and motion-controlled consoles," writes the official description. "Return to an era of gaming before the advent of microtransactions and experience a diverse library of thousands of titles that were released for these consoles over a span of 15+ years. Dolphin Emulator allows these classic games to be reborn into the modern era with support for 4K displays, modern controllers, and much, much more. All of this fully Open Source and free to download."

An administrative law judge has ordered Microsoft to comply with all Activision merger document requests made by the FTC's complaint counsel in a recent motion.

Recent filings indicate the Federal Trade Commission is having trouble getting specific documents from Microsoft and Activision. FTC complaint counsel (the lawyers representing the FTC that seek to block the merger) filed a motion to compel production of documents. Statements from the FTC say that Microsoft was largely uncooperative and "have refused to produce anything at all for 24 requests."

Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard counsel argued against the motion and said that the requests (known as RFPs in this context) are "duplicative and unduly burdensome" because they'd require the companies to "re-review millions of documents previously deemed least relevant." The respondents (Microsoft and Activision) argue that complaint counsel has received 17 million pages in a massive second request.

Epic Games has revealed at its State of Unreal keynote at GDC 2023 its new MetaHuman creator tool that will enable developers to animate their MetaHumans with just an iPhone.

The announcement featured the reveal of the above video that, demonstrates the ease of developers using video footage shot with their iPhones to animate characters. The results are very impressive, with the animation tool showing realistic movements in subtle facial expressions, eye tracking, and graphics quality.

Epic showed off what's possible with the technology by releasing a clip of Ninja Theory's game Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, in which performance capture artist Melina Juergens that plays the game's main character, acts out a scene that is then transformed into a gorgeous animation. The Senua's Saga: Hellblade II technology demonstration was created using expensive motion capture cameras within a studio, hence the impressive end result.

Blizzard is looking into reported issues with NVIDIA's RTX 3080 Ti, and possibly other GPUs, in the Diablo IV beta.

This is clearly something to bear in mind for PC gamers who own an NVIDIA graphics card - especially that model - who are planning to hit the open beta, which has just kicked off.

In some cases, there are complaints that the beta test of the action RPG has bricked RTX 3080 Ti cards, with other reports coming in of GPUs overheating to alarming levels (and fans kicking into super-high gear, as you might imagine).

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has issued a statement which takes a more positive attitude towards Microsoft's Activision Blizzard merger.

This is a huge move for the gaming world - a $68.7 billion takeover for Microsoft - so the regulatory scrutiny is intense, but the CMA has let go of some of its concerns about the deal.

Based on reviewing new evidence, the regulator is now satisfied that the Microsoft takeover won't damage the console gaming market in the UK in terms of competitiveness.

NVIDIA has announced that its GeForce Now game streaming service now boasts over 1,500 games, with five new offerings having just been added this month.

That said, it has been something of a slow road to reach this milestone, when you consider that NVIDIA managed to hit the 1,000 games mark back in July 2021, which was a year and five months on from the official release of the streaming service.

That means it has taken the best part of two years to bring on board 500 extra games on top of the first thousand. Nevertheless, GeForce Now is clearly progressing, just not as fast as some gamers would ideally like.