Gaming - Page 358

Bethesda is celebrating Fallout's 25th anniversary with unique retrospectives on the franchise's history, and recollects what it was like to show Fallout 3 to the franchise's original creator Tim Cain.

Back in 2007, Bethesda Softworks bought the Fallout franchise from Interplay for $5.75 million, a paltry sum for what is now assuredly a billion-dollar series. The studio had been knee-deep in development on Fallout 3, which would bring Fallout to the 3D world for the first time ever. A year later Fallout 3 was finished, and Bethesda wanted to know what the original Fallout creators thought of their creation...so they invited Tim Cain to a premiere of the game. Everyone at Bethesda was sweating bullets, nervous about Cain's response and wanting approval for their direction of the series.

"I remember this very vividly, sitting at a table asking Tim Cain what he thought of the demo that we just saw...and the whole time you're just crossing fingers and toes like 'oh please, don't hate it!" Bethesda's Pete Hines said with emphatic emotion, as per usual from Uncle Pete.

PlatinumGames tried earnestly to hire Bayonetta actress Hellena Taylor for the third game, and offered to pay her at least $15,000 in compensation, sources have told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

Days ago, Bayonetta voice actress Hellena Taylor published a series of videos that revealed why she was not voicing the heroine witch in the third game. Taylor's videos were emotionally charged, with accusations that PlatinumGames and Nintendo had offered an "immoral" and "lowball" pay offer of $4,000 to voice Bayonetta for the entire game.

Taylor's videos kicked off widespread controversy and garnered significant buzz with many industry figures weighing in, especially as the actress claimed she had suffered mental distress from worries about pay. Now reports indicate that PlatinumGames very much wanted Taylor to reprise her role in the game, and offered to book five sessions at a rate of at least $3,000 and up to $4,000 per session. As per documents seen by Bloomberg, Hellena Taylor would have been paid at least $15,000 to voice Bayonetta in the entire game.

Konami's new Silent Hill 2 remake will be kept off of Xbox and Nintendo platforms for at least 12 months, Sony has confirmed.

Silent Hill is coming back, but not for everyone. Sony has acquired timed exclusivity on the newly announced Silent Hill 2 remake for one year. The remake is releasing on PC, but it won't be available on non-PlayStation consoles for at least 12 months.

"Also available on PC. Not available on other formats for 12 months after release," reads a footnote at the bottom of the official Silent Hill 2 trailer.

Konami today revealed another new Silent Hill game and it could be an episodic-style psychological horror experience.

Following the big Silent Hill 2 remake, Konami also announced Silent Hill Townfall, a new game from Annapurna Interactive (Stray, Twelve Minutes) and horror game dev No Code (Observation, Untold Stories). Not a lot of details were revealed about the project, but given No Code's penchant for unnerving cerebral terror, we're expecting that Townfall will be a real mind-bender.

No release date or platform was revealed for Townfall, however earlier reports suggest the game will be an episodic type of game possibly with multiple chapters. This was not confirmed in the recent stream.

Konami has revealed the official Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team, and it's coming exclusively to PlayStation 5.

Today Konami finally revealed more info on its plans for Silent Hill, a long-dormant franchise. The first project is a remake of Silent Hill 2 from Layers of Fear developer Bloober Team that will only be releasing on PlayStation 5.

Bloober Team says it is working closely with the original creators of Silent Hill including Masahiro Ito and Akira Yamaoka.

Cyberpunk 2077 continues its success streak as millions of players log into the game over the past month.

After tons of updates and a new-gen release, CD Projekt RED has successfully redeemed Cyberpunk 2077. The game was a mega-hit at launch, selling over 13 million copies and helping CDPR make more money than it ever has before, but those earnings came at a controversial cost. Now it looks like CD Projekt has paid those debts.

Today the devs confirmed a big milestone for Cyberpunk 2077. Over 1 million players have logged in every day consecutively over a four-week period. These are huge numbers--1 million daily active users is something you'd expect to see in a live game, not a singleplayer-only RPG-FPS hybrid.

Microsoft confirms that Activision-Blizzard was prohibited from releasing Call of Duty games onto Xbox Game Pass as part of a big multi-year exclusivity contract.

Sony has been secured exclusive Call of Duty content for two ongoing generations of PlayStation consoles through lucrative, multi-year marketing deals with Activision-Blizzard. By our count, PlayStation enjoyed full and/or timed exclusivity to 14 pieces of Call of Duty content between 2015 and March 2020 alone, not including content from games like Black Ops Cold War (2020), Vanguard (2021), and the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 (2022).

According to Microsoft, these contracts also included a clause on competing services. Microsoft states in its response to the Competition Markets Authority that Sony's contract with Activision restricted the publisher from releasing any Call of Duty games onto Game Pass.

Microsoft has officially confirmed that Call of Duty would have remained on PlayStation through the end of 2027 if Sony had accepted a post-merger offer. Sony has officially rejected said offer.

Today Microsoft published a 38-page response to the UK's Competition Markets Authority and made compelling arguments as to why its $70 billion merger should be allowed. Microsoft provided lots of data, figures, and insight on the games industry while also confirming the terms of the controversial Call of Duty deal.

In the report, Microsoft says that Call of Duty would have remained on PlayStation through "at least the end of 2027" if Sony had agreed to the original offer. This confirms two interesting points. First, the statements made by Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan, who had publicly revealed the terms of the offer, were factual. Secondly, it strongly implies that Microsoft did indeed have plans to make the Call of Duty franchise exclusive to Xbox to some degree.

Microsoft has officially revealed the Xbox console platform's full install base as of 2021 as part of new arguments against the UK's Competition Markets Authority regulatory body.

The CMA, which is basically the UK's version of the FTC, is directly challenging the Microsoft-Activision merger. Now Microsoft has fired back with an in-depth 38-page document making a case on why the $70 billion merger with Activision should be approved. While most of the information in the filing is redacted, we do get some very interesting data regarding consoles.

According to Microsoft, the Xbox console platform currently has an installed base of 63.7 million systems as of 2021. This excludes PCs and mobiles, which are now part of the Xbox ecosystem. PlayStation is "ahead of Xbox in all relevant metrics," Microsoft says.

Square Enix's new live service game bets aren't paying off very well...and the publisher really needs new hits right now.

Square Enix is a well-diversified business. It makes most of its revenues from browser and mobile games, but Final Fantasy XIV consistently delivers quality revenues and mainline AAA games typically prop up yearly earnings with a fusillade of sales. Things get murky when Square Enix (and other publishers) try to capitalize on multiple segments at once with a single product. As we've seen with failed games like Babylon's Fall, which may be Square Enix's biggest flop to date, this combination is a risky bet that can backfire.

While Square Enix is still doing pretty well for itself and is in no real danger earnings-wise, we have to mention that its new live service bets haven't taken off as much as the company would have liked. Babylon's Fall was disastrous and not only failed to meet expectations, but it ultimately failed in every aspect as both a live game and a commercialized, full-priced product. This may not have been a big deal for Square Enix, though, considering it's a smaller-scale type of game developed by PlatinumGames. Bablyon's Fall was, however, the latest example in Square Enix's multi-faceted business model which attempts to capture multiple games industry segments into one package (in this case a monetized live game and a premium product).

Bayonetta 3 voice actress Jennifer Hale has delivered a response to the ongoing controversy surrounding the game.

A few days ago, original Bayonetta voice actress Hellena Taylor revealed why she wouldn't be portraying the witch heroine in Bayonetta 3. Taylor alleges that PlatinumGames only offered an "immoral" $4,000 to voice the entire game and asked fans to boycott the game. This kicked off an industry-wide discussion around pay gaps in voice work and a big controversy ensued.

Now Jennifer Hale, who was brought on to replace Taylor as the voice of Bayonetta in Bayonetta 3, has issued a statement regarding the issues.

A Plague Tale: Requiem is the latest new-gen game with a hard 30FPS cap, however the visuals are quite dazzling.

Visuals versus frame rates--it's been an age-old battle since the beginning of gaming. Console-makers, engine crafters, and GPU wizards have been able to significantly reduce the trade offs over the years with technical magic like DLSS, Fidelity FX Super Resolution, and methods like Variable Rate Shading (see our Xbox Series X review for more info).

There's been lots of emphasis on frame rates with new-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, however some games are pushing for maximum visual quality and are willing to significantly sacrifice FPS in favor of dazzling graphics. That appears to be the case with A Plague Tale: Requiem, which looks to be one of the most beautiful third-party games released on the newer generation.

Hideo Kojima recently shared a photograph of himself sharing beers with PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss Hermen Hulst

Kojima Productions is pretty busy right now and the studio is playing both sides of the console market. Following his meeting with Phil Spencer at the Tokyo Game Show presumably to discuss his new innovative Xbox project, gaming auteur Hideo Kojima recently met up with PlayStation exec Hermen Hulst.

It's possible that Kojima and Hulst were discussing plans for Death Stranding 2, which is believed to be in development. Remember that Kojima Productions is using Guerrilla Games' proprietary Decima engine for both Death Stranding 1 and 2, and that Hulst used to lead Guerrilla Games.

Machinima group Rooster Teeth is currently at the center of an ongoing controversy stemming back multiple years.

Multiple former Rooster Teeth employees have come forward with allegations of mistreatment while working at the company. The news broke out over the weekend and spread rapidly on Twitter, with reports of slurs, poor wages, and over-work.

The most damning allegations come from Kdin Jenzen, a former achievement hunter who had made content for Rooster Teeth for 8 years. Jenzen alleges that while working at the company he was called slurs for years, worked 14-15 hour days, and that HR refused to help.

G4TV has been shut down for the second time, and this time it's gone for good.

A year ago, Comcast resurrected the early 2000's gaming network G4TV in the hopes of riding the billion-dollar wave of the gaming market. The landscape has significantly changed since G4 was popular, with the advent of YouTube and established websites with multi-million monthly views. The idea was to reach the same audience that made G4 popular way back when; this audience is older, and is now the median age for the bustling $198 billion video games market.

Sadly this didn't work. G4 didn't take off and simply didn't gain the traction needed to justify the spending. Comcast has officially shut down G4TV and fired all of its teams.

It's officially happening: Konami has confirmed the next Silent Hill game will be revealed next week on October 19 at 5PM EST.

Konami today announced that it will reveal the "latest updates for the Silent Hill series" next Wednesday, Predictably, the internet went into a meltdown over this news.

Fans have been waiting years for a new Silent Hill game, and rumor has it there are as many as three projects in the works including a Silent Hill 2 Remake from Bloober Team, a new game called The Short Message, and an episode game from Annapurna Interactive.

Overwatch 2 has amassed 25 million players in 10 days' time, Activision-Blizzard has confirmed, which cements the ongoing free-to-play game as a big success for the company.

Overwatch 2 is pretty successful insofar as player counts. The game has managed to attract 25 million users in little over a week, breaking records for the franchise. As Benji-Sales notes, the original Overwatch had 10 million players in 3 weeks' time...but that was a premium game with an actual price tag. Overwatch is of course free to play. It also helps that Overwatch 2 released on new-gen consoles too.

The free-to-play reach has been extremely beneficial when it comes to regional numbers, and cross-play integration has helped bring in new players and keep them playing across the world. "The game has proven to be a global phenomenon, already achieving a daily player base spread near-even across EMEA, Asia, and the Americas that's nearly triple the previous daily player peak from the original Overwatch."

Obsidian Entertainment wants to return to the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout. Will Bethesda let them?

The devs behind Fallout New Vegas, one of the most acclaimed games in the franchise, wants to make another Fallout project. There's just two things getting in the way: Time and getting Bethesda to agree.

In a recent interview with DuelShockers, Obsidian studio head Feargus Urquhart said that he would instantly agree to make a new Fallout game. "Of course, if we ever got the opportunity to make another Fallout game, we'd make it. There's not even a question of whether or not we would do it, it's just...will the opportunity arise?"

Rocksteady technical artist Lee Devonald has spoken out on the reports of Gotham Knights only hitting 30FPS on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X, a controversial perf target that has triggered backlash against WB Montreal.

A bit ago, WB Montreal confirmed that Gotham Knights, the big new open-city Batman beat-em-up, would be locked to just 30FPS on the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. This kicked the hornet's nest and gamers wanted to know exactly why the game was running at such a low frame rate. WB Montreal offered a cursory explanation, saying that its environmental effects coupled with "untethered co-op" hindered higher FPS.

Now a dev from another one of WB's studios is jumping in. Rocksteady artist Lee Devonald has shared some insight on Twitter, saying that Xbox Series S is a "potato" and that it's "not much better than a last-gen" console. Apart from hardware limitations, Devonald gives valuable insight from a developer's standpoint on what it's like to make a game run at 60FPS, and how consumers and gamers should see these kinds of decisions.

The confusing market of cloud streaming handhelds expands with the most expensive

Today Razer has introduced the world's most powerful Android gaming handheld. It's called the Razer Edge, and it's the latest in an emerging market for enthusiast mobile gaming, a kind of strange hybridized market that sits between consoles and on-the-go mobiles.

The Razer Edge features decent specs, powered by the Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 SoC for "high-end Android gaming" with a 6.8-inch 144Hz OLED display to match. It's built specifically to play Xbox cloud games and Android mobile games. Everything sounds pretty good except for the price.