Gaming - Page 322

Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive will be a part of the FTC's merger investigation as a non-party/third-party in the relevant video games market.

Take-Two Interactive has hired three lawyers to represent the company in the Federal Trade Commission's ongoing administrative proceedings of the Microsoft-Activision merger. The merger's case file was updated with three notices of appearances for Take-Two's chosen legal counsel.

The games company has hired James Attridge, Michael Keeley, and Jason Wasserman from the Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider law firm to represent Take-Two during the merger proceedings. Axinn had previously advised Take-Two on its $1 billion bid for Codemasters back in 2020.

Call of Duty's annual 2024 release could launch on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles for maximum exposure, sales, and in-game purchase earnings, Insider Gaming reports.

New details from Activision's recent data breach indicate that Call of Duty 2024 may release on last-gen console hardware like the PS4 and Xbox One family of systems. Insider Gaming has scanned some of the leaked Activision documents and found references to older consoles, however it remains unclear whether or not the plans have changed. Developments could also shift if Microsoft is able to close its proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard.

Call of Duty 2023 was originally expected to be the last game to release on the PS4 and Xbox One, however Activision has recently unified the entire franchise under a single engine that's optimized for both last-gen and current-gen consoles. Starting with Modern Warfare 2's release in October 2022, the series now runs on a cross-gen, cross-platform engine capable of high-def performance on varying hardware. The unification efforts required all of Activision's studios to work together and represented a significant investment of manpower.

Half-Life gets reborn with a new unofficial raytracing mod that's now available on PC.

Valve's beloved 1998 shooter just got a big lighting overhaul thanks to a new Half-Life RT mod that adds full path tracing to the original game.

The results speak for themselves. Not only does Half-Life gleam, glimmer, and radiate with new visual life, the Half-Life RT mod injects quite a bit of tension to the Black Mesa sequences. Shadows are thicker than ever, ambient lighting glows with an eerie cast, and there's just something sinister and oppressive about some of the interior visuals. The RT mod really helps bring out the horror elements of Valve's FPS. And that test chamber sequence...just wow.

American video game developer and PC storefront operator Valve Corporation has hired legal counsel to represent the company in the FTC's Activision merger proceedings.

The Federal Trade Commission's case ledger confirms that Valve will be a part of the FTC's administrative lawsuit against the Microsoft-Activision merger. The filing, which was signed and published on February 17, 2023, shows that Fox Rothschild LLP partner Kristen W. Broz will represent Valve in the FTC's merger case. Valve will be included as a third party as it has not filed complaints against the merger.

Kristen Boz's profile page on Fox Rothschild's website says that Boz is an "experienced litigator with a national practice focused on class action, data privacy, intellectual property and federal government contracts litigation."

Microsoft executives push back against the idea of divesting or spinning off operating units of Activision Blizzard King in order to get the merger passed by regulators.

During an opportune press conference in Europe, Microsoft president Brad Smith said that the company is "more than ready" to address regulatory concerns regarding the $68.7 billion Microsoft-Activision merger deal, however Microsoft is apparently against key structural remedies that could drastically interfere with post-merger profitability while also getting the merger approved.

Analyst and games industry expert Joost van Dreunen came up with an interesting answer to FTC, CMA, and European Commission concerns: Microsoft could divest (sell or spin-off) the Blizzard segment as a structural remedy (learn more about structural remedies here) to satisfy regulators. Blizzard is the least-profitable operating segment but also contains billion-dollar franchises like Overwatch, Diablo, and World of Warcraft.

Sony has announced a new PlayStation State of Play event on the same day that Microsoft makes big power plays with the Activision merger.

Today both Sony and Microsoft attended a big meeting with the European Commission to discuss the $68.7 billion Activision merger. Microsoft outlined why it should be allowed to buy Activision in accordance to antitrust law, and Sony has reportedly countered with its own arguments. Microsoft then made a big PR move by announcing a partnership to bring Xbox PC games and Activision Blizzard titles to GeForce Now, a competing cloud streaming service, if the merger closes.

Sony has now taken an opportune moment to pull the spotlight back on PlayStation by announcing a new State of Play event that will highlight new games coming to the PlayStation platform, including titles for its newly-released PSVR2 headset, indies and third-party games, and a big showcase of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The event apparently will not include major reveals or looks at first-party PlayStation 5 games, however.

NVIDIA now supports the Microsoft-Activision merger following a robust partnership deal that's too good to pass up.

Today was a big day for Microsoft. The company attended a closed-door hearing with European Commission regulators and argued why it should be allowed to acquire Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion. In a rather cunning PR move, Microsoft also held a press conference to publicly announce some major breakthroughs that it has made with competitors in an attempt to quash regulatory concerns.

Just last night, Microsoft signed a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty and other Xbox games to Nintendo platforms. Now at the press conference in Brussels, Microsoft has announced that it has signed a similar deal with NVIDIA to bring all Xbox PC games to NVIDIA's GeForce Now game streaming service. This includes Call of Duty games and other Activision-Blizzard titles. A press release confirms gamers will need to purchase and own a game before it can be streamed with GeForce Now.

Angry Birds developer Rovio has announced that the classic game will be removed from the Google Play Store this week. What's more, the game will remain on the App Store but will get a new name. And that name is less than inspiring. Angry Birds is dead. Long live Red's First Flight.

Yes, you read that right. And why is this all happening? Rovio says that it has reviewed the business case for the game and apparently believes that it's impacting other games it creates. In other words, Rovio wants to make other games with Angry Birds in the title and it knows the classic version will get in the way.

The announcement came via the tweet embedded above and notes that Angry Birds will be removed from the Google Play Store on Thursday, February 23 2023. Presumably, that is also when the App Store version will see its name changed, but that wasn't made clear in the statement. However, those who already have the Angry Birds game installed on their Android phones will continue to be able to play it so long as it remains installed. However, anyone who buys a new phone will not be able to redownload it, unfortunately.

Microsoft says that it has signed a 10-year deal with Nintendo that will see Xbox games be released on Nintendo's consoles. The move comes as Microsoft's attempted buyout of Activision Blizzard continues to cause concerns among antitrust agencies around the world.

Some are concerned that Microsoft owning Activision Blizzard could mean that flagship games like Call of Duty would become Xbox exclusives. But this deal would ensure that wouldn't be the case, with Microsoft also keen to sign a similar one with Sony and PlayStation.

Confirmation of the deal came when president Brad Smith took to Twitter to confirm that a deal had been signed, adding that it shows the company's commitment to ensuring Activision games like Call of Duty are available "to more players on more platforms."

Well-known modder 'Halk Hogan' is finally ready to release the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 HD Reworked Project, an impressive texture overhaul mod to CD Projekt RED's futuristic RPG, on March 12. It's a follow-up to the excellent The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project, which was incorporated in that game's official next-gen update.

The Cyberpunk 2077 HD Reworked Project updates many in-game textures to improve fidelity, sharpness, and overall detail without altering the art direction and original intent. The results can be seen in the trailer above, and it's all impressive, covering things like road surfaces, graffiti, window scuffs, tires, and more. Cyberpunk 2077's Night City is massive, which makes this even more impressive.

It's no secret that with or without a texture mod, Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most visually impressive games available today, and you still need an absolute beast of a GPU to run the game with ray-tracing effects enabled. And you'll need something like NVIDIA's DLSS tech to maintain performance. The good news is that this mod won't impact performance as long as there's enough VRAM headroom for the new textures.

Red Dead Redemption 2 continues to achieve impressive sales more than four years after its launch.

Rockstar Games' Wild West sim Red Dead Redemption 2 has now broken 50 million shipments worldwide, Take-Two Interactive has announced. This represents a strong 4 million quarter-over-quarter increase in total platform shipments. The new milestone pushes total Red Dead Redemption franchise sales past 74 million to date, with the first RDR making up about 24 million copies.

Take-Two Interactive management says the sales spike was a result of successful promotions during the holidays. Red Dead Redemption 2 has been on sale for many months now and Amazon currently has copies for less than $20 on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise has made over $8 billion in revenues since GTA V's release in 2013, new Take-Two Interactive SEC filings indicate.

Every quarter, publisher Take-Two Interactive releases GTA earnings figures that give us an idea of how well the franchise is performing.

According to Take-Two's latest 10-Q SEC filing, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has made over $8.13 billion in revenues since the release of GTA V in 2013 to December 2022.

Tencent, the largest video games company on the planet, is said to approve of the Microsoft-Activision merger.

Microsoft and Activision may have secured an important overseas ally for their proposed merger. According to private market analysis firm Dealreporter (via Seeking Alpha), Chinese games juggernaut Tencent is in favor of the merger. Tencent is the global king of gaming with over $32 billion revenues earned from dedicated and mobile games in 2021. These figures indicate that Tencent makes up nearly 17% of the total global games market revenues for 2021 ($192.69 billion).

Tencent isn't the only overseas industry group to approve of the merger. Dealreporter notes that another third-party Chinese games company agrees with the merger, but the identity of the firm remains unknown. Other major Chinese players include NetEase, a service-first publisher, and MiHoYo, who operates the popular Genshin Impact.

Ahead of tomorrow's big merger hearing, two labor union groups have sent letters to the European Commission explaining why the Microsoft-Activision merger is good for workers.

Tomorrow is a big day for the Microsoft-Activision merger. The European Commission will hold a closed-door oral hearing that will see Microsoft laying out a thorough defense arguing why it should be allowed to buy Activision for $68.7 billion. The defense will include line-by-line arguments against the European Commission's unpublished Statement of Objections as well as reams of key documents, data points, and information. Complainants like Sony will also be there, but so will third-party companies like Electronic Arts, NVIDIA, and even Google.

Two labor unions, UNI Global Union and the Communication Workers of America, are asking the European Commission to be cognizant on how the merger could positively effect workers. Microsoft has made commitments to voluntarily recognize any unions created in its Xbox gaming division on both a pre-merger and post-merger basis. If the merger is passed, Activision-Blizzard employees will be able to form a union and be recognized by Microsoft, which opens a path to collective bargaining.

Sony reportedly gives Activision preferential treatment due to Call of Duty's importance on the PlayStation ecosystem and existing marketing deals, regulators have found.

Call of Duty remains the biggest hurdle that Microsoft and Activision are facing in regards to getting their merger approved. Regulators have thoroughly investigated Call of Duty's importance on the PlayStation and Xbox markets, and the general conclusion is that the franchise has a significant and very real impact on both platforms. That goes double for Sony, who enjoys the top spot in the console market by virtue of its strong hardware base and multi-billion ecosystem of products and services.

In recent filings, UK regulators at the Competition and Markets Authority have uncovered some interesting details regarding Call of Duty on PlayStation. According to the CMA's appendices and glossary filing for their provisionary findings report, Sony actually gives Activision a higher revenue cut for all Call of Duty game sales and earnings made on the PlayStation platform.

Steam Local Network Game Transfers is a fantastic new feature available as part of the latest Steam Client Beta, and as per its naming, it allows for the transfer of games between PCs on the same local area network. It even works for game updates, so only one PC needs to update the game before transferring it to other hardware, including the Steam Deck.

Of course, this is an awesome feature for Valve's portable PC because you can use your primary gaming PC to set up your Steam Deck library without downloading every game repeatedly. This is a significant improvement over the previous manual method of backing up Steam libraries to an external storage device and then using that to get games onto a different PC. As someone who benchmarks titles and keeps Steam libraries on multiple drives, updating games on all devices becomes tiresome, so this is very cool.

As per Valve's official description, copying files will take up system resources to maximize throughput.

Sim developer Firaxis is simultaneously ending one era and entering into another.

Firaxis has officially announced that a new Civilization game is in development, but there's some not-so-exciting news regarding the studio's leadership. The beloved simulation developer is shaking up its leadership teams as two high-profile employees are leaving Firaxis.

The first is Steve Martin, the studio head and president who has shipped over 32 games during his extensive 27-year tenure at Firaxis Games. The other departure is Jake Solomon, who served as creative director on the popular XCOM franchise and the more recent Midnight Suns game.

Meta has lost over $26 billion in little over 2 years on its expensive metaverse ambitions.

Meta's latest Q4 results give us a bigger picture on how much the company is spending (and losing) on the metaverse. From Holiday 2020 to full-year 2022, Meta's Reality Labs division which oversees its VR, AR, and metaverse platform has operated at a loss of $26.01 billion. Reality Labs has operated at a multi-billion dollar loss for many quarters in a row and this aggressive investment isn't expected to slow down.

In an earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke a broader spectrum for what the metaverse entails. Zuckerberg didn't discuss salient details and kept specifics somewhat thin while discussing plans for a new next-gen Meta Reality headset that will tie into its ecosystem of games and content, and talked up how VR and AR may eventually become more social than the current smartphone messaging apps.

Tencent, the largest video games company in the world, has cancelled its plans to make a VR headset, sources have told Reuters.

Economic pressures are forcing game publishers and platform-holders to make tough decisions. While companies like Sony are flourishing, others like Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive have announce layoffs in their game divisions. Even the biggest fish in the gaming pond, Tencent, is hesitant to take on more risks and this aversion has led to a change in plans.

Tencent is now abandoning its ambitious multi-year pipeline for XR or "extended reality," which would have combined software and interactive VR hardware in a new ecosystem of content and services. Prompted by swift sales of the Meta Quest headset, Tencent had opened an XR division back in 2022 with about 300 employees and was planning on developing a unique ring VR controller among other hardware, however Tencent's forecasts indicated the XR platform would be very costly and not turn a profit until 2027 at the earliest.

The Federal Trade Commission has granted another one of Sony's requests for more time to prepare important documents for the Microsoft-Activision merger.

FTC administrative judge D. Michael Chappell has ordered a time extension that will give Sony Interactive Entertainment a few extra weeks to comply with subpoenas issued by Microsoft. Right now Microsoft is gathering critical information to build a pro-merger case against the FTC's claims, and has subpoenaed companies like Sony in order to attain documents, figures, and relevant data from its competitor. The proceedings are currently in the discovery phase, which essentially sees Microsoft and Activision collecting as much data as possible to support the merger in court.

Earlier reports indicated that Microsoft is having a tough time getting the information it requires from Sony, however Sony explains why it has had trouble gathering the files. Sony tells the FTC that Microsoft's subpoena is "truly massive" and it will cost $2 million to prepare and serve the documents and files.