Gaming - Page 317

BREAKING: Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan allegedly never thought Call of Duty would be excluded from PlayStation platforms, new evidence from Microsoft legal counsel submits.

In a recent evidentiary hearing regarding the FTC's preliminary injunction case, Microsoft legal counsel Beth Wilkinson reveals an email that alleges that Jim Ryan never really truly believed that Call of Duty would be withheld from PlayStation. The email was between Ryan and former Sony CEO Chris Deering, which is quoted:

"It is not an exclusivity play at all. They're thinking bigger than that, they have the cash the make these moves. I've spent a fair amount of time of Phil and Bobby and I'm pretty sure we'll continue to see COD on PlayStation for years to come," Ryan said, as quoted by Microsoft's legal counsel.

NVIDIA DLSS 3 has been one of the most impressive bits of technology from the company's new GeForce RTX 40 Series of graphics cards, thanks to it leveraging the power of AI to generate new frames to boost perceived in-game performance.

It's also a combination of NVIDIA technologies, with the 3 in DLSS 3 all about combining the excellent DLSS Super Resolution AI upscaling technology that has been around for a few years now, with the brand-new Frame Generation exclusive to the GeForce RTX 40 Series and NVIDIA Reflex low-latency technology.

The groundbreaking technology makes real-time path tracing in Portal with RTX and Cyberpunk 2077's RT Overdrive Mode possible - both are basically unplayable without the added magic of DLSS 3. The combination of tech and the advanced AI hardware in the GeForce RTX 40 Series (the Optical Flow Accelerator) gives us a look at the future of PC gaming.

Xbox Game Pass is moving to the next phase in its value-oriented subscription model. Here's where Game Pass could go next.

Today reports broke out that Microsoft is raising the price of Game Pass in nearly all countries. Both the base Game Pass and Ultimate subscriptions are increasing to $10.99 and $16.99, respectively. This rise is well-timed in a number of ways. The price increase reflects the global economic situation and is a way to help offset rising costs of goods and services. Games aren't getting any cheaper to make, and 5-6 year development cycles are the new normal.

It's also an opportune time for Microsoft to raise Xbox Game Pass subscription prices ahead of the potential merger with Activision. Microsoft lawyers have told regulators that there are no plans to increase subscription costs if the merger is approved, ergo the pre-emptive hike. The merger has a termination date of July 18, and the price increase goes into effect July 6.

Microsoft is raising the price of Xbox Game Pass on console, but PC isn't getting a price hike. Here's a big reason why.

Xbox Game Pass will soon rise by $1 for the base tier and $2 for Ultimate. The increase is only on consoles PC will remain the same. There's a key reason for this: Microsoft still hasn't secured enough PC gamers to meet a specific threshold.

Shortly after Microsoft legal counsel said that there were no plans to increase Game Pass subscription prices if the Activision merger were to close, Microsoft is apparently taking a pre-emptive strike to raise prices before the merger is either terminated or consummated. The Microsoft-Activision merger has a termination date of July 18, and the first price hike is set to start on July 6.

Reports from The Verge indicate Microsoft is raising the price of its premium games subscription before the merger either passes or terminates.

Microsoft is making good on its warning of price increases for its Xbox brand. The company will reportedly raise the price of both of its Xbox Game Pass subscription options, including the base console version and and its Game Pass Ultimate subscription, in nearly all worldwide markets.

Starting July 6, the regular Xbox Game Pass subscription will raise from $9.99 to $10.99 a month, and Game Pass Ultimate will move from $14.99 to $16.99 in the United States. The price of PC Game Pass will not change.

It's finally happening; Nintendo is officially remastering Mario's first and only turn-based RPG.

Today Nintendo announced a big surprise for 30-something gamers who grew up with a Super Nintendo back in the day: A fully-fledged Super Mario RPG remaster is releasing later this year on the Switch. The original isometric game was released in 1996 by none other than Squaresoft, who was then at the height of their role-playing glory. The game garnered a cult following that grew into a devoted fan base as decades went by, but ultimately the RPG didn't hit it big due to the N64's launch just a few months later.

The new Super Mario RPG remaster will feature upgraded visuals and graphics befit of the Switch, but the core turn-based action remains intact. The remaster will launch on November 17, just a month after the ultra-weird new Super Mario Bros. Wonder game.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a game that's been blighted by performance issues since its launch, with gremlins in the works that are still to be cured - but one enterprising PC gamer has taken matters into their own hands.

Wccftech spotted that 'Snight01' took to the Steam forums with a post linking to their DIY mod (that you stick in the PAKS directory) which fixes some of the most annoying problems with Jedi: Survivor.

Namely the game crashing with ray tracing turned on, plus the mod fixes occlusion culling pop-in (that causes horrible flashes of white to appear fleetingly).

Nintendo's new Mario game is weird...really weird.

Today Nintendo announced Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a new 2D side-scroller that hearkens back to the old-school days of SNES platforming. The game looks pretty familiar on its surface, but things get truly strange when Mario touches a "wonder flower." After that, all bets are off.

The game basically goes into a psychedelic trip that makes Alice in Wonderland look tame; Mario literally turns into an elephant, gets stretched out like a giraffe in a strange shadow world, power flowers start talking to you, and pipes even come alive and wriggle around like caterpillars.

The Sims 4 is getting a new expansion that's broadly cowboy-themed and introduces horses, according to heavy hints dropped by EA.

This follows recent rumors of a horsey expansion, fueled by listings at retailers for 'The Sims 4 Horse Ranch' (as PC Gamer pointed out).

With EA announcing on Twitter that a 'rootin' tootin' expansion' is coming that'll allow you to 'take the reins,' there's not much doubt that horses are inbound for The Sims 4. Especially as in a following tweet, EA tells us that there's a trailer due to arrive on June 22 (tomorrow) and to "giddy up for good news coming soon."

Here's a strange one, with all props going to the team at Wccftech for doing a little sleuthing when it comes to recent major PC game releases. It might be a case of 'tin-foil hat conspiracy' thinking, but the evidence does point to a very noticeable trend.

And that is, regarding PC game releases sponsored by AMD and Radeon, titles with FSR do not feature NVIDIA DLSS support - widely considered the superior rendering tech for boosting performance with a minimal hit to visual fidelity. The flip side to this, NVIDIA sponsored PC games with DLSS support; these games also feature support for AMD's FSR.

Some of the notable AMD-sponsored games without DLSS support include new AAA titles Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Dead Island 2, and Resident Evil 4 Remake, with older releases like Far Cry 6, Callisto Protocol, Saints Row, and many more making up the list.

Traditional console and PC gaming segments are expected to comprise less than half of 2023's total revenues in the United States,

New data from analyst firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) indicates that console and PC gaming are expected to shrink from 2023 onwards, driven by gains in the social and casual gaming segment. According to the figures that were published by VentureBeat, the firm expects console and PC gaming to generate $15.514 billion in the United States throughout 2023, comprising about 27% of total regional earnings.

Casual gaming, which includes mobile titles, is expected to make $34.459 billion in 2023, driven primarily by advertisements (over $20 billion) and in-app spending like microtransactions.

A new patch has arrived for Cyberpunk 2077 which makes an important fix for some PC gamers, plus a bunch of other tweaks and honing across console and PC platforms.

The significant development for those with a gaming PC that pairs a new AMD processor with an NVIDIA Lovelace GPU is that CD Projekt Red has improved the performance of DLSS 3 with Ryzen 7000 CPUs in patch 1.63.

You may have seen reports online that the game engine (REDengine) doesn't play nice with Ryzen 7000 chips, with players experiencing bad stuttering (highly off-putting, of course - and also affecting The Witcher 3, it should be noted).

Some very interesting developers are involved with Skydance New Media's upcoming Star Wars game.

Five years ago, EA shut down Visceral Games and cancelled an ambitious new Star Wars game. 10 years ago, LucasArts cancelled Star Wars 1313, an action game based on Boba Fett's exploits in the layered criminal city-world of Coruscant. Now two of the main creatives behind both of these projects--Amy Hennig and Dominic Robilliard--are under the same roof working on a new Star Wars game.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Dominic Robilliard announced that he will serve as game director on Skydance New Media's upcoming Star Wars game. It's a fitting placement, considering Robilliard was the creative director of the famously cancelled Star Wars 1313 project.

Xbox's management downplays the importance and significance of cloud gaming as regulators use the nascent tech as a lynchpin to their anti-merger arguments.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty shared an interesting perspective on cloud gaming. According to Booty, the tech isn't a big part of Xbox and is more of an experimental and additive part of Microsoft's gaming focus. Despite entering private testing in 2019 as Project xCloud, and moving to public beta in 2020 as Xbox Cloud Gaming included as part of an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, Microsoft apparently considers its streaming service to be highly experimental.

"For us, to be clear, it is a very, very small market. I'm not even sure you would call it a market yet, in fact. It's very small usage and very small audience," the Xbox Game Studios boss said.

Sony's new mobile gaming segment loses the head executive that oversaw business development.

Sony has big plans to tap the mobile gaming segment using its lucrative and popular PlayStation IPs. The company is investing heavily into new segments including PC expansion, live services, and mobile, with around 20% of its new games lineup aiming to launch on mobile by FY25. To help kickstart its fledgling efforts, Sony conscripted Nicola Sebastiani, an industry vet who helped establish Apple Arcade, to serve as VP and head of mobile for PlayStation Studios.

After 2 years of helping build the PlayStation mobile initiative, Sebastiani's LinkedIn confirms that he's leaving Sony.

The Ryzen Z1 Extreme-based ASUS ROG Ally has had a lot of eyes on it of late, with the impressive Windows PC gaming handheld giving Valve's extremely popular Steam Deck a run for its money in terms of performance and capabilities. Though, if you're one of the early adopters, you might want to hold off on updating the device to the latest 319 firmware - as reports out there point to it lowering in-game performance.

The update, available via the MyASUS app, fixes some bugs concerning the ASUS ROG Ally and its software, causing issues regarding everyday gaming on the handheld. In fact, the 319 update was intended to improve performance when using the 9W low-power preset.

Instead, you're getting overall performance degradation with the latest firmware, with the YouTube channel The Phawx showcasing that even across the various power modes, the benchmark results are noticeably worse, especially when it comes to things like 1% Lows, which are great for gauging the overall stability of a game.

As games become more complex, consumers can expect to wait half a decade or longer for new entries in their favorite franchises.

Games take a long time to make. Some, like mega-blockbuster hits like Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, Halo Infinite, or Starfield, can take quite a while. The AAA market demands a certain level of near-perfection in order to achieve multi-million sales, and gamers are quick to pick up on any bugs, issues, or monetization strategies. In this age of social media, controversies can spin up and out of control very quickly and doom a game before it even releases.

The advent of new games engines and enhanced technologies are believed to help accelerate game development, but as Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick rightly tells investors (FY23 call transcript), these new tools have only increased game development production cycles. Teams are simply able to do more than they ever have before, and that gives them more freedom to add more complexity to interactive experiences.

2023 is one of the best years in modern gaming. We've gotten and are getting so many high-profile titles this year (Resident Evil 4, Dead Island 2, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo IV, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI, Alan Wake II, Phantom Liberty, Starfield, Spider-Man 2..the list goes on and on) that gamers may have trouble keeping up.

We're seeing multiple publishers fire off some heavy-hitters, and Ubisoft is among them. Following a few years of declining performance, the French games publisher is set for a big come back with its substantial new AAA game release slate.

The lineup includes three main titles that should help turn the tides in Ubisoft's favor: The return-to-roots Assassin's Creed Mirage in October, the explosively-beautiful action RPG Avatar Frontiers of Pandora in December, and the surprise galactic scoundrel sim Star Wars Outlaws in 2024.

Ubisoft's new Star Wars Outlaws game takes players to the seedy underbelly of the galaxy, and we should be interacting with some of the most notorious criminals in the franchise...possibly even Jabba The Hutt.

Star Wars Outlaws was one of the biggest surprises of last week's big E3-timed events. Ubisoft kept the game under wraps pretty tightly, so most of the reveal was a total surprise. No one expected Outlaws, which looks to be a kind of Han Solo simulator with a brand new face, Kay Vess, taking the helm and forging her path into the realm of scum and villainy. Kay doesn't bring the suave, nerf-herding demeanor like Solo, but she does have a vigilante skill set that makes her one half femme fatale, one half cat burglar. It's an interesting combination, and players will be able to shape her story based on the choices they pick through dynamic dialog sequences and how they tackle missions.

There's a distinct push and pull between the syndicates and the corruption of the Galactic Empire, and players will need to pick who they choose to side with along the way--going full Imperial could close the door on syndicate missions, but the opposite could be true for the Empire, and could cut Kay off of the credits that she needs to clear her name.

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has launched Absurd Ventures, a new startup specifically aimed at telling stories across all media.

Following his departure from Rockstar back in 2020, Dan Houser is back in the media spotlight with Absurd Ventures, a new company that wants to write scripts and stories for games, TV shows, film, graphic novels--the works. Having penned most of Rockstar Games' biggest hits, Houser has proven his ability to create unique and gritty stories across multiple genres and settings. Now he wants to bring his skills to a wider market and help create new IP across different media sectors.

"We are building Absurd Ventures to create new universes and to tell great stories, wherever and however we can," Houser said. The company's debut YouTube video is an enigmatic pastiche of pop culture references and iconography with a three-word tagline that feels straight out Natural Born Killers or A Clockwork Orange: "Storytelling, philanthropy, ultraviolence."