Gaming News - Page 321

Bethesda is shutting down its proprietary PC launcher and will move all games and content over to Steam.

The Bethesda.net PC launcher is being retired in May 2022. Starting in April, gamers will migrate their games ownership over to Steam. Most modern games will have automatic save transfers but some, like Elden Scrolls III Morrowind, will require manual save transfers. Oddly enough, Wolfenstein Youngblood's progress is "currently unable to transfer." All Bethesda.net wallet currencies--Fallout 76 Atoms, ESO drakes, and any money associated with your account--will transfer over too.

Bethesda makes it clear only the launcher is shutting down in May, and gamers will still have ownership access to all of their full games after that period. They just won't be able to launch them from Bethesda.net software. The actual Bethesda.net account services aren't being closed, and you'll still need to make and sign into a Beth.net account to play specific games.

Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has ordered more HD2D remakes of SNES games. Could a Chrono Trigger remaster be on the way?

Square Enix loves to re-release classic games on practically every platform known to man, and the new HD2D art style offers a unique opportunity resurrect retro games with new, enhanced graphics. The HD2D wave started with Octopath Traveler, then, Square Enix upgraded its original Final Fantasy games. Now the engine could overhaul other old-school SNES games including the beloved RPG Chrono Trigger.

"The president ordered us to make more use of HD-2D, so we decided to think about remakes of past titles," producer Tomoya Asano said in a recent Square Enix stream (in Japanese).

Guardians of the Galaxy is the second big Marvel game that missed Square Enix's expectations.

Square Enix may have overestimated the Marvel brand. First the publisher said that its ambitious Avengers live game delivered disappointing results, and now its the singleplayer-only Guardians of the Galaxy game missed its original targets. Deep discounts throughout the holiday period where the game sold for about $25 helped stabilize sales revenues, Square Enix says.

"Despite strong reviews, the game's sales on launch undershot our initial expectations. However, sales initiatives that we kicked off in November 2021 and continued into the new year have resulted in sales growth, and we intend to work to continue to expand sales to make up for the title's slow start,"Square Enix chief accounting officer Atsushi Matsuda said.

Square Enix plans to support Final Fantasy XIV for 10 more years and confirms a bunch of new content, features, and upgrades coming to the best-selling MMORPG.

Final Fantasy XIV is a big part of Square Enix's games division earnings; MMORPGs accounted for $419 million, or 23% of total 9-month games revenues. It definitely makes sense that the publisher keeps Final Fantasy XIV going for as long as possible, and that's exactly what they plan to do.

In a four-hour content stream, game producer Yoshi-P recently confirmed the 10-year support plan while outlining key features that are both coming soon and in deep development. One of the biggest new updates is a graphical overhaul that will add a new level of fidelity to in-game areas, NPCs, and player characters.

Sony has "vastly overpaid" with its $3 billion buyout of Bungie, analyst Michael Pachter says.

Sony's decision to buy Bungie was a knee-jerk reaction to its competitors making power plays. According to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard and Take-Two's $12.7 billion merger with Zynga prompted Sony to make a "me too" purchase of Bungie--and that the buyout was significantly overpriced.

In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Pachter outlines his value-oriented rationale. It all comes down to share price and revenues generated by each company. Pachter estimates that Bungie makes $200 million in revenue a year, and Sony essentially paid $4 million per developer (Bungie has over 900 developers).

With a new Fallout game more than 5 years away, Fallout 76 isn't going anywhere. Bethesda has revealed the new content coming to Fallout 76 to carry the game through 2022.

Fallout 76's 2022 roadmap will introduce one of the most ambitious new content drops to date. Later in the year during the Fall season, Bethesda plans to roll out Fallout 76's first-ever expedition to The Pitt, a region previously explored in Fallout 3's original DLC. Expeditions, which are basically bite-sized instances outside of the main Appalachia zone, were originally announced in April 2021 and have been a long time coming to Fallout 76 and original D.C. assets have been in the source files for quite some time.

The main 2022 roadmap cadence looks like this: Every quarter (3 months) gamers will get a new season alongside special themed content, which can include public events, rewards, missions, etc.

Darkstalkers is making a comeback with the new Capcom Fighting Collection arcade re-release.

Capcom is packing in some of their most obscure fighting games into one package. The Capcom Fighting Collection features five Darkstalkers games alongside the first console and PC release of Red Earth. Content-wise, this looks to be a must-have for fighting game enthusiasts. The game "leverages the rich library of content that the company has built up in the fighting game genre over its history," the developer said.

Capcom is going all-out with the Fighting Collection with great bonus features like save states, training modes, and supports rollback netcode for online multiplayer with ranked, casual, and lobby-based matches. All of the games included in the collection have these features and support online play.

Capcom has built Street Fighter 6 specifically for competitive esports gaming.

Street Fighter 6 was announced at the Capcom Cup 2021 with tons of fanfare. The new fighter is built on the higher-end RE Engine, and the in-engine teaser clip shows some serious next-gen effects including higher-end reflections (Ryu's feet are particularly shiny this time around), ultra high-def textures, and superb lighting on two character models, Ryu and Luke.

Capcom has confirmed Street Fighter 6 was made to tap Japan's growing esports market, which remains one of Capcom's core focuses.

The Big Four of crypto gaming pull in less than 500,000 monthly active users, data from New World Notes suggests.

The crypto gaming market may be potentially lucrative, but it seems to be far from the bustling, multi-million user ecosystem that's hinted at in reports. In all actuality the digital NFT-based games landscape is still mostly speculative, with the Big Four--The Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and Somnium Space--attracting less than 500,000 monthly active users. Strong MAUs and concurrent users are the biggest indicator of a online live game's success. In this case (and all other cases), higher numbers mean more people are active in the space.

According to figures collected by New World Notes' Wagner James Au, the Big Four aren't as popular as you'd expect.

Warzone's anti-cheat team has implemented a hilarious just desserts punishment for cheaters.

Cheating is a big problem in online games like Warzone (and even Halo). Activision's newly established anti-cheat team, Team Ricochet, wants to make an example of cheaters by demoralizing ne'er-do-wells by essentially turning cheats on for their opponents.

The punishment enables a "Damage Shield" which effectively a player invulnerable to a cheater's attacks (IDDQD anyone?). If the anti-cheat system detects a cheater, it will automatically turn on the shield for other players for the remainder of the match. The cheater can't kill anyone else--they can only be killed in a hunter-and-prey role reversal.