Gaming - Page 319

Blizzard's Diablo IV is currently one of the most talked about and played games on PC and console, breaking both sales and revenue records for the studio. On PC, the game makes full use of GeForce RTX technologies like DLSS 2, DLSS 3's Frame Generation, and NVIDIA Reflex for low-latency performance, not to mention it runs great on a variety of hardware that includes Valve's Steam Deck.

But, with new mainline entries in the Diablo franchise being few and far between, this means that the very first title in the series dates back to 1997 - when the presentation was 2D and a far cry from the massive open world Sanctuary seen in the latest release.

As part of a reminder that Diablo IV supports the GeForce RTX 40 Series exclusive DLSS 3 feature - which uses AI to generate frames and boost perceived performance - NVIDIA and the GeForce team have released a cool little video showcasing the various NVIDIA GPUs that have been used to play each Diablo game over the years. Starting with the RIVA TNT 128, which put NVIDIA on the map regarding 2D and 3D acceleration.

Ubisoft's new Star Wars game came out of nowhere, and it looks to be one of the most visually authentic franchise games ever made.

Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment turned heads with its surprise new Star Wars Outlaws game. The project is a more gritty take on the universe and dispels the myth and magic associated with the Jedi, instead focusing on the dire straits of the galaxy's most-wanted accidental criminal. It's a unique take that's more like Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.

Apart from the storyline, the most captivating part of Star Wars Outlaws is just how well Ubisoft Massive has captured the look and feel of the universe. Star Wars is an eclectic mix of high-tech futurism with low-end analog tech. The Empire has gleaming star-cruisers, but the poorest worlds have lots of junky, broken down rustbucket ships where everything is just held together by shoestrings.

Microsoft's first-party game support teams have been engaged with Starfield's development since early 2022, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty says.

Starfield is one of the most important Xbox games in years. Xbox management feels that Starfield will be a catalyst for growth for Xbox Game Pass and the brand as a whole, and that confidence is partly a result of how stable Starfield currently is.

Xbox execs say that Starfield may ship with the least bugs out of any Bethesda game due to the intense testing from quality assurance teams, and partly because of the support Microsoft has offered with its internal groups, including the console-centric Advanced Technology Group, who has helped Bethesda better streamline its new Creation Engine on Xbox Series X/S platforms. We've actually known about the ATG's involvement in Starfield since May. Bethesda has also made the decision to target 30FPS on consoles to ensure that in-game performance matches their vision for Starfield.

The Federal Trade Commission asks federal courts to intervene by issuing orders that would halt and temporarily prevent the Microsoft-Activision merger from closing.

Microsoft wants to buy Activision for $68.7 billion and acquire some of the most profitable video games on the planet. The Federal Trade Commission is wary of the merger, and has scrutinized the deal in a heavy Phase 2 investigation of millions of business documents and submissions. During its investigation, the FTC identified antitrust concerns and determined that the merger would harm competition. The Commission then opened an administrative lawsuit against Microsoft and is now challenging the merger in its internal courts.

Although the deal is currently in active litigation with the FTC, Microsoft and Activision can still merge in an action known as a "close over". The FTC notes that Microsoft and Activision intend to close the merger after June 15.

Bethesda certainly is known for rolling out games that can be plagued with bugs, and sometimes these bugs are hilarious, while other times they can be so severe that it ruins the experience within game.

According to Microsoft Game Studios head Matt Booty and Xbox Game Studios CEO Phil Spencer, who sat down for a podcast with Giant Bomb, Bethesda has ironed out most of the bugs in Starfield, as the title is expected to be the most bug-free game Bethesda has ever released. During the podcast, Booty says that even if the game was shipped today it would have "the fewest bugs that any game from Bethesda has ever shipped with."

This point was backed up by Spencer, who said that Bethesda has many titles under their belt such as Fallout, Skyrim and the Elder Scrolls. Throughout developing the aforementioned games Spencer believes the team at Bethesda has matured, leading to a much more polished Starfield. Additionally, Spencer said that every QA person at the company is currently play-testing Starfield, looking for bugs within the game and attempting to determine the overall quality of the title.

The mighty decentralized video games company the Embracer Group today announced a restructuring plan that will more closely centralize and solidify its games empire and lead to layoffs and cancellations.

Following the eleventh-hour cancellation of a lucrative $2 billion deal, the Embracer Group today announced that it is enacting a new restructuring strategy that will affect its workforce and content pipeline. This restructuring plan will lead to layoffs, studio closures, and project cancellations. As of March 2023, Embracer Group had 16,601 employees, with 5,175 non-game developers, 138 internal studios, and a total of 221 video game projects in development with 165 of these being unannounced.

"The program presented today will transform us from our current heavy-investment-mode to a highly cash-flow generative business this year," Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors writes in an open letter.

Xbox Game Pass across console and PC represents one of the best deals in gaming, with access to over 100 titles to download and install, including the full library of first-party titles from Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda. It also features a cloud gaming component for a number of its game, opening the door to countless devices, from phones to tablets to smart TVs, that can stream Xbox games.

As part of a new report on the future of Xbox, Microsoft's vision for the future, and opening the platform up to more gamers, we've got word that PC Game Pass is coming to NVIDIA GeForce NOW later this year.

Now, you might think that doubling up on cloud gaming is a little redundant. It's worth stating that GeForce NOW is on the cutting edge in terms of visual fidelity while receiving critical acclaim for delivering low-latency performance with its streaming tech. Compared to playing games on an Xbox console blade, you can access up-to GeForce RTX 4080 performance with real-time ray-tracing and other visually intensive settings.

Diablo IV will define Blizzard's 2023 yearly revenues with explosive game sales.

Blizzard has announced that Diablo IV is not only its fastest-selling video game of all time, but that the game managed to break a devilish $666 million in earnings in just 5 days time. This figure refers to game sell-through, so that's $666 million made from full game sales and does not include microtransactions sold through Diablo IV's cosmetic shop.

A quick comparison shows that Diablo IV has made 40% of Blizzard's 2022 full-year segment revenues in just five days. Game launches will often define a publisher's annual revenues for good and bad, and this year Blizzard will enjoy record results. Even if we excluded revenues from all other franchises, Blizzard's Q2 2023 quarterly revenues as a result of Diablo IV alone are so high that they have exceeded every quarter for the past 5 years.

Avatar Frontiers of Pandora channels big Far Cry vibes with chaotic first-person combat, slick traversal, and impressive open-world exploration.

Ubisoft's new Avatar game looks like Far Cry if the franchise were unleashed upon a magical alien world. That's basically what's happening, and Ubisoft Massive is taking full advantage James Cameron's colorful exotic world of Pandora to deliver some incredible-looking environments.

On a more interactive level, combat looks to be the real draw of Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. As a Na'vi, players are basically incredible lithe and agile aliens who can unleash devastating attacks, power-slide under obstacles, run fast as lightning, make huge leaps, and climb roots and cliff faces. It's a lot like the slick parkour and traversal you'd find in something like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 6, complete with the first-person combat you'd expect from the latter.

Xbox Game Pass and the Xbox business as a whole are both profitable for Microsoft.

We've known for a while that Xbox Game Pass is profitable. Phil Spencer said as much during a Wall Street Journal Live interview from 2022. While we don't know exact figures or the accounting methods used for Game Pass, Spencer has now mentioned Xbox Game Pass profitability twice in recent memory. This comes as a surprise to some considering the immense value that Game Pass offers with its 400+ games available on PC and console.

The Xbox games business is also profitable and is not operating at a loss. Records indicate that Microsoft's games division made $15.56 billion revenues in 2022, driven primarily by content and services, which includes full game sales, monetization, and subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass. Based on percentages provided by Spencer in 2022, further investigation reveals that Game Pass could have made as much as 10-15% of Xbox's digital revenues representing a range of $1.197 billion to $1.796 billion for calendar 2022.

Phil Spencer weighs in on some of the reasons why Japanese game developers and publishers don't release their games on Xbox.

Microsoft has made progress winning over Japanese game developers over the last few years, and the recent Xbox Games Showcase was a big example. Japanese games actually had a sizable presence at the show: Capcom announced a new IP with Path of the Goddess, and Atlus revealed three separate games with Persona 5 Tactica, Persona 3 Reload, and a brand new game called Metaphor: ReFantazio.

Xbox still has a long way to go in order to win over overseas game devs, including Square Enix, who has signed priority timed-exclusivity deals with PlayStation. These decisions are often made for good reason: PlayStation and Nintendo dominate their domestic markets. But what does that look like from the perspective of Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, who is leading the teams that broker these worldwide deals?

The Elder Scrolls VI could be the last game that Todd Howard directs, and the RPG could be a pivotal changing of the guard moment for the studio.

In a recent interview, IGN's Ryan MacCaffrey brought up Starfield's 8-year development timeline and touched upon a kind of grim but apt question--how much time does Howard have left to make games? The truth is that Starfield took much longer than Bethesda hoped it would, and IGN was curious how many more games Howard has left in him. According to the project lead of Morrowind, the next major Elder Scrolls could be his last game.

"I do the math...I'm not getting any younger. How long do people play Elder Scrolls for? [The Elder Scrolls 6] may be the last one I do. I don't know," Howard said.

Microsoft has no plans to release a new Xbox console upgrade any time soon.

The current ninth console generation is entering its 3rd year, which is typically when we see mid-cycle console upgrades like the PlayStation 4 Pro (released in 2016, 3 years after PS4) and the Xbox One X (released in 2017, 4 years after Xbox One). COVID-19 has significantly disrupted and potentially elongated this generation, and Microsoft in particular feels no need to rush to the market with a new Xbox Series X/S mid-gen upgrade.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer assures fans that Microsoft plans to keep focusing on its current hardware. "Right now, we're pretty set on the hardware we have," Spencer said. "[I don't] feel an imperative [to make a new console]. That's not the feedback we're getting right now."

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is officially one of the best-selling individual video games of all time.

In a recent interview with IGN, Bethesda Game Studios exec Todd Howard confirms that Skyrim has now sold 60 million copies, which is double the previous figure from years ago. Back in 2016, Howard had said that Skyrim was at 30 million sales.

"We're sitting at 12 years now for Skyrim, we're looking at a game that's over 60 million copies and all of these people are still playing it. So we have to learn...we need to build in from the beginning games that have this long-term play. Hopefully people are playing Starfield for a long time."

Video game industry legend Todd Howard has released some saddening news about Bethesda's highly anticipated upcoming release of The Elder Scrolls 6.

The Bethesda game director and executive producer, well-known for titles such as Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and now Starfield, stated that his time with the company might be slowly drawing to an end. With Bethesda's first intellectual property in over 25 years and first major release in over 8 years, Starfield, being set to release on September 6th, many fans have been left wondering what is next for the video game giant.

While speaking with IGN, Howard explained what is next in line for Bethesda. According to Howard, fans can expect that Elder Scrolls 6 will be their next big title which will be followed by Fallout 5. Following these statements, Howard teased that when Elder Scrolls 6 does finally drop, he might be taking a step back from the company he has been leading for many years.

A brand new Cyberpunk 2077 trailer has been released for its upcoming expansion Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, with a wide array of details involving the forthcoming DLC.

CD Projekt Red has shared a whole bunch of information regarding Cyberpunk's first DLC, which is to be set in a new district of Night City called Dog Town. Taking place during the main story of the game, players will be able to access it with any of their current saved games.

Many of the game's core systems have had a complete rework following the famously messy and buggy launch of the game in late 2020.

Starfield will officially be locked to 30 FPS on consoles, Bethesda Game Studios has confirmed.

In a recent interview with IGN, Bethesda's Todd Howard has once and for all confirmed that Starfield will deliver 30FPS frame rates on Xbox Series X and S consoles. The only difference between the two systems will be fidelity and visuals.

"I think it'll come as no surprise, given our previous games, what we go for...these hyper-detailed huge, open worlds that are fully dynamic where anything can happen. And we do want to do that. It's 4K in the X, it's 1440 on the S. We do lock it at 30, because we want that fidelity, we want all that stuff. We don't want to sacrifice any of it," Howard said.

Final Fantasy XVI's gameplay demo will release tomorrow, June 12 on PlayStation 5.

Square Enix has revealed new details about Final Fantasy 16's anticipated gameplay demo at the game's big pre-release celebration. The demo will drop tomorrow on PS5, and will allow players to try out the prologue sequence of the game with about 2 hours of content. Yoshi-P warns players that this is the very beginning of the game, so it will be pretty cutscene heavy but they'll get a lot of information about the world, events, and overall story of the grand fantasy experience. "You'll get to learn a lot about what drives Clive."

All the progress you make in the demo will carry over to the final game, and once they complete the demo, players will be able to try out a heightened battle sequence. The prologue takes place in the early portions so Clive will be young, and his abilities, combat proficiency, and overall skillset will be very different than his power in the later portions of the game. Completion of the prologue will unlock a special battle demo where players take on the huge boss combat sequences with the new Eikon summons.

Square Enix's new CEO Takashi Kiryu shares a heartfelt memory of his childhood experiences with video games, and gives new confidence in the company's business focus.

Just minutes ago, Square Enix kicked off the Final Fantasy XVI pre-release celebration event. Square Enix's new fresh-faced CEO Takashi Kiryu took the stage to reveal that not only is he a gamer, but he grew up with the Final Fantasy franchise and has a deep appreciation and love for the RPG series.

In this age of billion-dollar live service games and digital-focused releases, the general reception of Kiryu's words has been met with favor. Gamers seem to be warming up to the new Square Enix CEO following his speech, especially after the often strange messaging delivered by the former Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda.

Today's Xbox Games showcase went off with a bang, giving players updates on some massively-anticipated first-party games that have been quietly in the works for years now.

It's been a few years since we last heard about the Fable reboot, but Playground Games came out swinging with a new in-game trailer that perfectly captures the humorous spirit of the franchise. The trailer had a surprise cameo from The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade, who played Dave, a simple man who finds pleasure in vegetable gardening. Oh, and Dave is actually a giant living in a house in a sky, straight out of a dry British modern-day retelling of Jack and Beanstalk.

The footage shows off the rendering capabilities of Playground's tech as it pertains to human modeling and interior environments, along with the animations from the fighting sequences and general performance capture. Ayoade's mannerisms were captured perfectly alongside his voice and signature facial expressions.