Gaming News - Page 355

Peter Molyneux is back with a new blockchain-based game that peddles a limited quantity of digital land NFTs, literally monetizing digital real-estate which is theoretically infinite.

NFTs are storming the games industry and there's not much we can do to stop it. Ubisoft plans to use NFTs to supercharge FOMO, monetization, and engagement. Some game-makers, like Peter Molyneux and his studio 22Cans, are having a lot of success with their NFT ventures by nearly selling out of all in-game digital land plots from the get-go. Publishers are watching and taking notes.

According to the storefront page for Legacy, Peter Molyneux's new blockchain game, over $42 million of its digital NFTs have been sold to consumers. The studio actually sold the city of London for nearly $1 million. We've done the math below. But one begs to question what you're actually buying here. The answer is a tract of in-game land to use as an in-game industrial zone to build your wares and sell them to the market. Your ownership is verifiable via blockchain and you have a digital deed of sorts that can then be further sold on the marketplace.

Ubisoft has officially confirmed a new AAA Splinter Cell game is in development.

Sam Fisher is coming back with a new Splinter Cell game. The game isn't a sequel, but instead a next-gen remake of the original Xbox classic that's "rebuilt from the ground up" in the powerful Snowdrop Engine (the same engine that's powering Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Ubisoft's new Star Wars game).

The original devs of Splinter Cell Blacklist at Ubisoft Toronto are developing the remake, and promise to preserve the landmark stealth espionage elements while completely redoing visuals, shadows, and environments. Contrary to recent rumors, the remake will be 100% linear and won't be open world.

Animoca Brands, an NFT blocckchain startup that acquired a $65 million investment from Ubisoft, is making a blockchain-based video game using Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.

Yuga's Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are so popular they're getting a video game. No exact details have been revealed on the actual gameplay mechanics, however Animoca was quick to say the product will be a play-to-earn experience that's due out in Q2 2022.

The game will also feature a ton of NFTs from the BYAC NFT line in an effort to grow the "Bored Ape Yacht Club universe."

The new System Shock remake is coming to PC and consoles in 2022, complete with physical disc-based versions thanks to a newly-inked publishing deal.

Today Nightdive Studios announced they've signed a deal to have the new Prime Matter label publish its System Shock remake. Backed by the might of its parent company Koch Media (Deep Silver), Prime Matter will handle worldwide distribution of physical console versions of the game as well as promotion and marketing of digital titles.

As a result, System Shock is officially on track to release in 2022 on PC and unspecific consoles--possibly current- and next-gen hardware. The boost from Prime Matter is welcome by the developers at Nightdive:

Comic enthusiasts and Marvel fans are in uproar as Stan Lee's estate bearers use the late pop-culture legend's 4 million-strong Twitter account to promote NFTs.

The people that run Stan Lee's estate are under the crosshair right now for helping create what's seen as an exploitative use of the comic legend's image. The estate owners have created a Stan Lee NFT collection, and the first run is centered on Chakra The Invincible. This line of NFTs is called the Chakraverse collection and actually merges widely-unpopular randomization of loot boxes with the increasingly-unpopular NFT market.

Dictionary.com went so far as to say the estate was "defiling" Stan Lee's image. Some of the NFTs actually include Stan Lee's likeness.

Subscriptions typically succeed based on two things: Value and features. Sony's new PlayStation Spartacus subscription might offer both.

Sony is readying a new subscription service to rival Xbox Game Pass. The service is codenamed Spartacus, and would merge PS Plus and PS Now together complete with legacy PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, and even PS5 games. Reports say there may be three pricing tiers:

On paper that sounds incredibly ambitious. Depending on total cost, the value proposition is there. But Sony could go way beyond our expectations with an innovative new feature that allows Spartacus subscribers to create and share their save states and custom game demos with friends.

Ubisoft is planning a big Assassin's Creed Valhalla x Odyssey crossover. This could be the beginning of its ambitious plans with its never-ending Assassin's Creed Infinity game.

Having already conquered live services, Ubisoft wants to do something different. It wants to transform its franchises from separate mainline releases into singular releases that treat new "games" as content rather than sequelized titles. I call this new model games-as-a-platform, something I originally predicted with Halo Infinite. Think of it as a kind of MMO-like subscription model where you pay for full or segregated access to specific content points. Ubisoft's first games-as-a-platform title will be the new Assassin's Creed Infinity.

The new crossover event between Valhalla and Odyssey should set the stage for Infinity's content ramp up. The never-ending Assassin's Creed Infinity would be a launcher that hosts a bunch of "games" within it, and I predict that crossover events will play a big part of the content offerings included within Infinity. The convergence of multiple timelines and games is a valuable and powerful tool for engagement, combining nostalgia, creativity, and most importantly, existing video game assets that can be re-used and re-purposed.

Dr. Disrespect is making video games alongside some of the most well-known shooter developers in the industry.

Dr. Disrespect's new game development studio is called Midnight Society, and is made up of FPS veterans like ex-Halo sandbox designer Quinn DelHoyo, who worked at 343 Industries for 9 years, and Robert Bowling, a six-year Infinity Ward veteran who helped shape the modern Call of Duty franchise. Both DelHoyo and Bowling are co-founders and will serve as creative director and studio head, respectively.

Midnight Society's first project is (you guessed it) a competitive multiplayer game, likely a shooter. The studio is hiring multiple new roles including marketing, engineering, combat designers, and artists. What's interesting is the devs say they will gather feedback from fans in order to shape the game, not unlike an early access title.

If you own a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S console, you truly owe it to yourself to download The Matrix Awakens experience, an Unreal Engine 5-powered masterpiece. A truly exciting tease at the future of gaming. Check it out:

The video above is new and is an awesome comparison between the Unreal Engine 5-powered The Matrix Awakens experience, and the 1999 film The Matrix. The folks at Epic Games collaborated with the makers of the upcoming The Matrix Resurrections, with SideFX, Evil Eye Pictures, The Coalition, WetaFX (formerly Weta Digital), and many others.

The comparison shows us just how good the work put into The Matrix Awakens is, and how truly next-gen Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 and its various technologies are. On top of that, it shows the true need of next-gen consoles -- and not just a fast CPU and GPU -- but a wicked-fast PCIe 4.0-enabled SSD.

The Walking Dead is the latest franchise to get transformed into a blockchain game, complete with NFT land ownership,

The Walking Dead: Empires is a new blockchain-based MMORPG from indie mobile game developer Ember Entertainment, and published by Gala Games, the same company that's publishing Peter Molyneux's new Legacy blockchain game and Certain Affinity's new play-to-earn shooter The Last Expedition.

The new Walking Dead Empires game is centered around the major driving forces of any live game today--collecting, crafting, survival action with co-op or PVP play in a world filled with zombies and characters from the comic series. There's just one twist: You can buy digital in-game land with cryptocurrency and place your settlement there. Land currently isn't available for purchase, but it will have different rarities including uncommon, rare, and legendary.