Gaming - Page 364

It's official: EA is making a Star Wars game, and its vehicle experts at Motive Studios are developing the project.

EA Motive today announced they are working on a new Iron Man game for Marvel built on an "exciting original narrative" that explores the adventures of billionaire-turned-hero Tony Stark.

The project is a singleplayer-only experience and is currently in very early pre-production; Motive is hiring multiple developers to work on the Iron Man game.

Sony will release a new PlayStation 5 model with a detachable disc drive in 2024, sources have told leaker Tom Henderson.

Sony's next PlayStation 5 won't be an upgraded pro model or the oft-rumored slim revision. The new PS5 will have the exact same specs as the original 2020, 2021, and recently released 2022 models but will instead feature a detachable disc drive that connects to the back of the system via an extra USB-C port.

The idea is that gamers will be able to transform their PlayStation consoles via modular form factors--remove the disc drive and the PS5 becomes digital-only, and add it to enable the system to read and play game discs and media. At the same time, there were reports the PS5 digital edition had custom firmware that blocked disc drives.

Microsoft has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Halo Infinite's development, new reports from Thurrott's Brad Sams indicate.

Halo Infinite was meant to be the penultimate Halo game. Designed to fulfill Microsoft's Halo-as-a-service ambitions and serve as a direct vehicle for recurring microtransaction revenues, Infinite was supposed to be the last Halo game and span a 10-year period. The platform hasn't coalesced, though, and the game was split between a F2P multiplayer game and a premium campaign. This epic vision cost quite a bit, though; Microsoft is believed to have shelled out a big budget for years of Halo Infinite's turbulent development.

In a recent YouTube video, Brad Sams, VP and general manager at Stardock who also has close ties with Microsoft sources, says that Halo Infinite's budget could have commanded hundreds of millions.

Take-Two Interactive has released a new Form 8-K SEC filing that informs investors on the recent Rockstar Games server infiltration and what steps it has taken to remedy the situation.

Over the weekend, Rockstar Games' internal servers were hacked and someone made off with 3GB of stolen Grand Theft Auto 6 footage, information, and data. The GTA 6 leaks went viral and spread like wildfire, and were confirmed authentic shortly after. Rockstar Games has delivered an official statement on the matter, and parent company Take-Two has responded by issuing multiple takedown requests and is currently investigating the situation.

Take-Two has told investors that it has "taken steps to isolate and contain" the leaks and that support and development for current and future Rockstar titles, including GTA Online, GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2, Red Dead Redemption Online, and the new Grand Theft Auto game, remain unaffected by the leaks.

Rockstar Games has officially responded to the recent GTA VI leaks and delivers updates on the current status of the game.

GTA 6's leaks were recently confirmed by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, and now Rockstar Games has also verified the situation.

In a recent statement, Rockstar acknowledges that its servers were infiltrated and says that developers are "extremely disappointed" that so much information, footage, and screenshots have been released to the public. Rockstar says the leaks will not affect development of its ongoing projects or live services (interesting that this is plural, indicating R* is working on more than one game and likely refers to GTA 6 and the new game's online component).

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan has pledged to do what is best for PlayStation gamers, but the company's current consumer-facing trends are more favorable for the company as a whole.

Sony management has publicly opposed Microsoft's buyout of Activision-Blizzard. PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has outright said that "giving Microsoft control of Activision games like Call of Duty" would have "major negative implications for gamers." This has sparked interesting discussions from gamers, namely PlayStation fans who are being aversely affected by Sony's recent business decisions.

Sony's assertions of doing what's best for gamers is currently a tough sell. The company, who made over $24 billion from PlayStation last year, has officially raised the price of the PlayStation 5 consoles in nearly all global worldwide markets outside of the United States.

New reports indicate the recent GTA 6 leaks could lead to a major delay for the game.

Last night Rockstar Games' internal servers were infiltrated and a hacker stole multiple gigabytes worth of confidential data, including debug footage, pictures, and source code for a pre-alpha build of GTA 6. The leaks started circulating in the early morning hours and spread like wildfire. Take-Two Interactive is currently issuing takedown notices for the leaks, but for Rockstar Games it appears the damage has been done.

Developers are reportedly disheartened about the attack, which broke into private and closely-guarded servers, as well as the overall sentiment about the footage. The hacker is currently trying to blackmail Rockstar Games and is threatening to release source code for GTA V, GTA VI, and even an early GTA VI test build unless the studio can "negotiate a deal."

The recent Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks are absolutely real...and Rockstar Games has been demoralized by the massive data infiltration.

A hacker has infiltrated Rockstar Games' internal servers and stole 3GB worth of early GTA 6 footage, photos, and source code for the game. The hacker, who has also claimed credit for the damaging Uber hack, published the confidential data publicly and the leaks have been widely circulated in the last 11 hours, delivering a crushing blow to the developers at Rockstar Games. At the time of writing there were reports that source code for GTA VI has been released alongside 90 videos of pre-alpha Grand Theft Auto VI footage.

Reporters with sources close to Rockstar Games have confirmed the leaks are authentic. "Not that there was much doubt, but I've confirmed with Rockstar sources that this weekend's massive Grand Theft Auto VI leak is indeed real," Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports.

Grand Theft Auto 6 will be one of the biggest games ever made when it releases, but I'm sure this morning it going to be a doozy for anyone working at Rockstar Games.

A bunch of new screenshots and videos from a purported copy of Grand Theft Auto 6 are making the rounds, with some new animations, new NPC interactions, a robbery scene inside of a restaurant, a police shootout, and our first look at the purported new female protagonist.

The leaked footage of GTA 6 isn't going to be the best -- but what did you expect, 4K 60FPS gameplay? -- with the game reportedly running on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card at the low 720p resolution. It's either very old footage from a few years ago, or it's Rockstar making sure the game is working on a wide range of hardware (which they have to do, given how big the GTA franchise is).

Xbox, not PlayStation or Nintendo, is showcasing games at Tokyo Game Show 2022 and have stopped by Japanese game dev offices like Kojima Productions.

Xbox gaming president Phil Spencer is currently in Japan and has met up with a lot of overseas developers making new games for Xbox, including Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima.

Back at E3 2022, Hideo Kojima confirmed he was creating an innovative new experience for Xbox. Months prior to Kojima's confirmation, reports said that the developer was making a new cloud game for Microsoft's growing online infrastructure. It looks like Kojima has shown Phil Spencer the project...and possibly even other horror directors like Jordan Peele.

Sony's latest gaming smartphone has pretty much ensured the PlayStation Vita will stay dead.

10 years ago, Sony made both smartphones and gaming handhelds; the Xperia and the Vita line co-existed and served different markets. Nowadays the Vita has been rendered largely obsolete by the power and utility of today's smartphones. After 7 years on the market, Sony has decided that dedicated handheld gaming peripherals just aren't worth it.

PlayStation was noticeably absent from Tokyo Game Show 2022, but Sony's Xperia smartphone segment debuted an interesting device. The latest Xperia 1 IV Gaming Edition smartphone adds fresh new soil to the Vita's grave. The Xperia 1 IV Gaming Edition packs on an extra 4GB of RAM onto the base Xperia 1 IV handset to deliver serious hardware specs and performance targets; outfitted with a massive 16GB of DDR5-3200MHz RAM, Qualcomm's powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, and a 120Hz screen with 240Hz touch scanning, the new Xperia gaming edition was built specifically for pro players (namely F2P mobile games).

Halo Infinite has a big untapped PVE market that could facilitate an interesting expansion for the series.

343 Industries is going all-in on multiplayer. The studio cancelled Halo Infinite's split-screen co-op and are about to ship online co-op play. 343i is currently in the midst of a massive overhaul and executive shake-up; the devs have outlined a new five-part strategy that will frame its future work and came under new leadership. 343i founder Bonnie Ross has left, and Pierre Hintze, who is largely known for "saving" Halo MCC, is now at the helm.

So what's next? Probably not much until multiplayer is fixed; MP is the only way to make money from Infinite so that takes precedence. But what if 343i went another way and tried to make money from campaign, too? What if Halo-as-a-service included social PVE content as well?

Kojima's mysterious new teaser has been decoded, but we now have more questions instead of answers.

A bit ago Hideo Kojima released a teaser image for his next project--a shadowy snapshot of a woman with "Who am I?" written in boldface. Now we know who she is: Twitter sleuth Jose Mellinas has identified the woman as Elle Fanning, the famous actress in movies like Maleficent and Super 8.

She also starred in a movie called The Neon Demon,a film that was directed by Death Stranding star Nicolas Winding Refn. Interesting connections. Elle Fanning and Hideo Kojima also follow one another on Instagram.

Microsoft could use the Activision-Blizzard acquisition to justify a new Xbox Game Pass price hike.

Subscription prices almost always rise in proportion to the value that they offer. Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu have all raised subscription prices to reflect significant content investment made by the companies and the greater perceived value from each service. Sony also did this by introducing a costly three-tier subscription plan for PlayStation Plus with prices that range from $59.99 - $119.99 a year, with each tier offering specific value propositions.

Right now there's no better deal in gaming that Xbox Game Pass. The service offers access to over 400 first-party and third-party games across Xbox consoles, PC, and even mobile. At $14.99 a month, the service has become one of the most popular value-oriented subscriptions in gaming, amassing 25 million subscribers as of January 2022. If Microsoft acquires Activision-Blizzard, Game Pass will surge in value...and Microsoft is likely to correct the value-vs-price equation with a Game Pass cost hike.

Sony has officially confirmed that original PlayStation VR games will not be playable on its next-gen PlayStation VR 2 headset.

The new PSVR 2 headset is coming in 2023 with a ton of new features and technological advancements including inside-out tracking and a single USB-C connection...but it's missing one important thing: Backwards compatibility.

In a recent PlayStation Blog podcast, Sony exec Hidaki Nishino says that the PSVR 2 will not support PSVR 1 games. To put it simply, the PSVR 2 is just too different than the PS4-powered headset.

Tekken 8 will flex Unreal Engine 5's muscle on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, and Bandai Namco is working closely with Epic Games on major optimizations.

Yesterday Bandai Namco announced Tekken 8 and promised a new era of fidelity and effects for the long-running fighting franchise. The game is being built from the ground up on Unreal Engine with a complete graphical and physics overhaul--the devs are going all out this time and have completely scrapped all Tekken 7 assets, models, and content.

In a recent interview with IGN, Bandai Namco's Katsuhiro Harada outlined some new details about Tekken 8's massive engine shake-up. Harada says that the team "started on UE4 and gradually started porting certain elements over into UE5," and that developers are working closely with Epic on iterating and pushing the engine to new levels.

Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection will release on October 19 on both Steam and the Epic Games Store for $49.99, Sony today announced.

Naughty Dog has revealed a ton of new features coming to its first-ever PC release of the Uncharted series, including support for AMD's Fidelity FX Super Resolution 2.0, ultra-wide monitor support, and full PC spec requirements.

Microsoft and Sony continue publicly arguing about the $68.7 billion Activision-Blizzard deal and the entire world is watching.

Today Sony delivered new controversial comments about Microsoft's proposed Activision buyout. The two billion-dollar tech giants are using some of the largest websites in the video games industry to publicly jab one another in regards to Call of Duty exclusivity and the Activision-Blizzard buyout as a whole. These websites, which are often quoted directly in reports prepared by legal advisors in response to anti-competition probes, have become public forums for what is fast becoming a rivalry between two games giants.

Sony's latest comment has ignited claims of anti-competition; Sony argues if Microsoft assumes control of Call of Duty that it would directly negatively harm the entire market. These are bold claims, and Sony can't adequately back them up without revealing key market data, earnings figures, and other information that is likely confidential and closely-guarded--in other words, Sony can't exactly prove what it is saying to be true without divulging the same documents that it has provided regulatory bodies like the FTC and CMA.

Warzone 2.0 is the largest, most ambitious Call of Duty game or mode in the history of the franchise, complete with a ton of new mechanics, game modes, concepts, and a massive new map to hold it all together.

Today Infinity Ward revealed tons of details about Warzone 2.0, the new standalone F2P platform releasing November 16. Warzone 2.0 isn't just a battle royale--it's so big that you could call it a platform, and Infinity Ward has confirmed that new modes/maps and content are coming to expand the game outside of BR territory.

Warzone 2.0 is coming just weeks after Modern Warfare 2's release, and the F2P game will launch at the same time as MW2's season 1 multiplayer. The mode will include tons of new vehicles, a new map called Al Mazrah (the largest BR map Infinity Ward has ever made) with lots of points of interest, a new DMZ mode coming at launch, new loot mechanics, the fresh Strongholds mechanic, and massively overhauled AI that will scout and combat players throughout the map.

Overseas regulators will extensively examine and scrutinize the logistics of Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion buyout of Activision-Blizzard, sources tell the Financial Times.

Anti-trust and competition regulators all over the globe are currently investigating the Microsoft-Activision buyout deal. Some agencies like Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Competition have delivered no objection decisions on the deal. Others, like the FTC in the United States, the CMA in the UK, and the European Commission have yet to make a formal decision.

Sources have told the Financial Times that regulators in the UK and Europe will look closely at the deal, especially how it could affect the video games market. We've reported in the past that Call of Duty is an unrivaled franchise in sheer sales volume, reach, and consistent earnings, and the UK's Competition for Markets Authority has raised concerns about how Call of Duty exclusivity and Microsoft's cloud market could potentially squeeze competitors.