Gaming - Page 382

In just 9 days, Epic Games, Microsoft, and gamers have raised $100 million in Ukrainian relief donations from Fortnite VBuck purchases.

Epic Games and Microsoft plan to donate over $100 million to worldwide humanitarian nonprofits to aid besieged Ukraine. On March 21, Epic Games announced it would donate 100% of all Fortnite proceeds to Ukrainian relief. Microsoft partnered with Epic to add 100% of Fortnite's Xbox revenues into the mix too. Just a day later, Fortnite players spent $36 million on in-game purchases, and in a week players had spent $70 million. Now nine days after the announcement, Epic and Microsoft reveal that players have raised an astronomical $100 million for Ukraine.

"As of today, we've raised $100 million USD together to support humanitarian relief for people affected by the war in Ukraine. In addition to UNICEF, the World Food Program, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Direct Relief, we are now also collaborating with the World Central Kitchen," Epic Games said.

Riot Games today announced that it has raised $5.4 million in funding to help Ukrainian relief efforts in Eastern Europe.

Riot joins major games-makers in donating multiple millions of dollars to aid Ukraine. The company has donated 100% of all proceeds (revenues minus publisher feeds/cuts) from various in-game purchases in games like Valorant, Legends of Runeterra, Teamfight Tactics, and Wild Rift across a week's time. Riot also released a special Bee skin in League of Legends to help raise funds. In total, Riot has will donate $5.4 million

The games industry has now raised nearly $150 million for Ukraine, led by huge numbers from Epic Games ($100 million), Humble ($20.7 million), the Itch.io Bundle for Ukraine ($6.3 million), and Riot takes fifth place with its $5.4 million donation.

Today Nintendo has officially delayed Breath of the Wild's upcoming sequel to Spring 2023.

Breath of the Wild 2 won't release in 2022, Eiji Aonuma today announced (great news for FromSoftware and Bandai Namco as Elden Ring should secure GOTY 2022). The sequel has seen its first major delay to Spring 2023.

BOTW 2's timeline is quite similar to the original Breath of the Wild, which was delayed twice. Originally announced in 2014 for launch in 2015 on the Wii U, Breath of the Wild wouldn't release for another two years until March 2017 as a major launch game on the Nintendo Switch. The new Breath of the Wild sequel was announced in 2019 and then a release window was announced in 2021. Now roughly three years after the game was revealed, Breath of the Wild 2 has seen a similar development/release schedule.

Activision-Blizzard will settle its sexual harassment lawsuit for just $18 million, a paltry sum compared to how much money the company makes a year.

After months of back and forth between state DFEH and federal EEOC agencies, Judge Dale S. Fischer of the United States District Court for the Central District of California has approved Activision-Blizzard's $18 million settlement proposal for its recent discrimination lawsuit.

The settlement would see Activision creating a $18 million victim's fund that could be dispersed across those affected by sexual harassment or abuse as detailed in the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's lawsuit.

Today Sony announced its new three-tiered PlayStation Plus subscription model that will supercharge its services division.

Sony's new PlayStation Plus subscription model is a powerhouse move. The company has announced full details on its new subscription plan (better known as Spartacus) that should help spark new subscriber growth and retention. Sony earned $3.6 billion from network services in 2021 including subscriptions like PS Now (3.2 million subscribers) and PS Plus (48 million subscribers). Today's news combines both into one cohesive package with added value.

PS Now has been consolidated into PlayStation Plus in a new three-tiered structure--Essential, Extra, and Premium. The Premium tier is where the real value is: Sony is offering access to 740 games across six console/handheld generations including PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5, and the PlayStation Portable. The offerings are strategically split between streamable and downloadable delivery methods (for example, PS3 games are streaming-only, and subscribers can't download games on PC).

Activision's design lead admits that Warzone's install sizes are just "f*cking crazy," and is the massive storage requirements are a big roadblock to new maps.

Warzone is the most important thing Activision has ever done, but like Destiny 2, the BR is hitting a wall. The game is simply too big for its own good. A wealth of highly-optimized assets across a huge sprawling in-game map have historically bloated install sizes past the 100GB mark (thankfully the game is around ~80GB on PC right now). Until Activision finds a better way to compress or optimize its data flows it'll be very hard to rotate new Warzone maps in and out of the game without forcing gamers to essentially re-download the full F2P game.

In a recent interview with TeeP, Activision head of design Josh Bridge delivered a rather candid explanation on what's going on with Warzone. "So, there's a technical problem. The install and reinstall sizes are fucking crazy. It's insane, right?"

Today Bandai Namco announced One Piece Odyssey, a new One Piece game made in collaboration with series creator Eiichiro Oda.

One Piece Odyssey looks to be the ultimate game for fans of the anime and manga franchise. The game is a fully-fledged RPG that stays authentic to the distinct One Piece humor thanks to an all-original storyline from Eiichiro Oda, complete with a diverse open world, colorful monsters, and a unique cel-shaded art style presentation the melds 3D with 2D. In a recent presentation, Oda said the game was so immersive it was "like a movie." Tales series composer Motoi Sakraba is lending his talent to make an epic soundtrack

"The goal is to deliver an epic adventure in the One Piece world," producer Katsuaki Tsuzuki said. "It is probably the first One Piece title to be developed so meticulously over an extended period of time."

The video games industry has raised over $113 million for humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine, analysis has shown.

The world's most lucrative entertainment industry has banded together to raise money for Ukraine, with many companies (like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo) cutting off Russia due to the ongoing war. According to data compiled by us (with the help of Levvvel), the games industry has raised over $113 million in funding for various organizations aimed at helping the beleaguered nation.

Below we've put together a list of the current known donations, but it is by no means a complete and definitive grouping that catalogs every donation made. Epic Games tops the list with its mighty $70 million generated from Fortnite revenues on PC and Xbox, followed by the Stand With Ukraine bundle on Humble Bundle, then the mighty Bundle for Ukraine indie megapack on Itch.io takes third place with over $6.3 million earned.

Netflix has secured yet another game developer to help fuel its new free game offerings for subscribers.

Mobile game dev Boss Fight Entertainment is now part of Netflix's first-party video games studios initiative. The studio is mostly known for Android and iOS mobile games like Dungeon Boss, a popular RPG with voxel-style graphics. Boss Fight is the third indie studio to join Netflix behind Night School and Next Games.

Boss Fight will bring its mobile expertise to help Netflix release a salvo of free mobile games to subscribers as well as plan out future titles for the company's eventual games rollout on TVs, browsers, and game consoles through the app.

Gamers have raised $70 million in Fortnite microtransactions in a week, showing just how powerful Fortnite's in-game revenues are.

Epic Games is currently donating 100% of Fortnite VBucks proceeds to Ukrainian relief. Gamers managed to raise $36 million for Ukraine through VBucks purchases in one day, and now that number has almost doubled to an astronomical $70 million in microtransactions in a week's time. These values include 100% of revenues on PC via the Epic Store and Xbox (Microsoft has partnered to donate 100% of Fortnite revenues through April 3), plus the 70% cut from the PlayStation Store and Switch.

"Together we've now raised $70 million USD in humanitarian relief funds for Ukraine. Congratulations and thanks everyone and Xbox for joining this effort!"

Sony will make a historic change in its lucrative services business model next week, sources tell Bloomberg.

Reports indicate that Sony Interactive Entertainment is poised to announce its new breakthrough subscription service next week. The tech giant, who made $3.6 billion from network services last year, aims to combine its two major subscription offerings into one cohesive package.

The service is codenamed Spartacus, and will bundle PlayStation Now (3.2 million subscribers) with its popular PlayStation Plus (48 million subscribers) into one powerhouse offering. While PlayStation Plus outpaces Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass by 15 million subscribers, Sony is positioning Spartacus to compete with Game Pass in strategic ways utilizing Sony's core strengths. The Roman-named contender will offer three tiers with varying value points that include game streaming and classic era games.

Rockstar has announced a new $5.99 a month subscription service for Grand Theft Auto Online.

GTA Online is getting its own monthly subscription plan called GTA+ exclusively for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of GTA Online.. The new service is priced at $5.99 a month and includes a bunch of monthly freebies and bonuses, including in-game cash, cosmetic skins, early access to upgrades and features, and bonus experience points. Rockstar is even adding special Shark Cards exclusive to GTA+ subscribers.

"Being a GTA+ Member gets you a recurring monthly GTA$500,000 direct deposit to your Maze Bank account, plus the opportunity to claim properties in and around Los Santos that unlock gameplay updates you may have missed out on, special vehicle upgrades, Member-only discounts, GTA$ and RP bonuses, and more each month."

Microsoft has paid out billions in royalties to indie game developers as part of its ID@Xbox program, but these payments are just a drop in the company's very deep money bucket.

It's been nine years since the ID@Xbox program first launched in 2013, helping usher in a new wave of indie games onto the Xbox console-and-PC ecosystem. The initiative has helped publish and fund thousands of indie games that have earned Microsoft, and the developers themselves, billions in revenue.

In fact, Microsoft says it has paid out more than $2.5 billion in royalties to indie developers. That sounds like a lot, but it's actually not, at least in comparison to the company's gargantuan earnings from the Xbox marketplace.

Future builds of DirectStorage will help optimize CPU usage even more than it already does, and could significantly impact the performance and gameplay of new PC games.

Microsoft's DirectStorage API empowers developers with new tools to supercharge IO throughput and workload efficiency. The current version of DirectStorage can reduce CPU overhead by up to 40% on systems running Windows 11 with 2.5GB/sec NVMe SSDs; the new IO file stacks included in Windows 11 work in tandem with DirectStorage's simultaneous decompression and asset loading to help free up the CPU for other work--like, say, environment destruction.

Those gains will only get better over time. Right now DirectStorage uses the CPU to decompress data, but future builds will directly feed compressed files into the GPU's VRAM for efficient, ultra-fast decompression and processing. This will free up the CPU even more, giving developers more flexibility to assign CPU cycles for specific tasks like physics and robust worldbuilding.

Polyphony Digital has apologized for Gran Turismo 7's downtime by offering gamers a bunch of free credits.

Today Polyphony Digital president Kazunori Yamauchi has formally apologized for Gran Turismo 7's current issues by giving away 1 million in-game credits with an approximate worth of $9.99. At the time of writing, Gran Turismo 7 is Sony's lowest-rated game on Metacritic by player ratings as major controversy continues surrounding the racing sim.

DirectStorage's IO performance gains will help PC game developers utilize more CPU power in their games.

Microsoft's new DirectStorage API could help revolutionize PC gaming. We already know DirectStorage will lead to faster loading times, but combined with Windows 11 and an NVMe SSD, Microsoft says that DirectStorage can reduce CPU overhead by up to 40%, freeing up the CPU for other vital tasks. This could have a dramatic effect on games, including more populated open worlds with diverse NPCs.

We noted this in an older video on the Xbox Series X/S's Velocity Architecture, but here the performance gains are more pronounced due to the higher NVMe speeds of the drives and the increased optimizations with Windows 11's file stacks. What's interesting to note is that DirectStorage's current version still uses the CPU for decompression and is still able to reduce overhead by 40%.

Polyphony Digital is reversing course on one of Gran Turismo 7's most controversial changes.

Gran Turismo 7 has been a crash course PR nightmare since release. The game has sped into controversy due to unpopular changes like increased microtransactions, reduced credit payouts, always-online requirements, and the strange decision to remove car resales from the game. The last one was particularly frustrating for gamers, who saw it as an attempt to push users towards more grinding or paying outright for in-game credits to buy the cars they wanted.

Now the devs at Polyphony Digital are making some vital course corrections. A new update will allow gamers to sell cars in Gran Turismo 7 alongside a host of new reward adjustments, activities, and races. The changes are coming in a series of updates that are coming soon. Polyphony Digital has also apologized to all GT7 owners by giving out 1 million free credits.

AMD has been steadily ramping into the unleashing of its new FSR 2.0 (FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0) technology, but now the company has announced at GDC that DSR 2.0 is "fully supported" on Xbox.

In a new post on the AMD community website, the company explains: "Additionally, for developers, we're happy to announce at GDC today that FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 will also be fully supported on Xbox and will be available in the Xbox GDK for registered developers to use in their games. Though for gamers, we do not have a timeline today of when you can expect to see any Xbox games with FSR 2.0".

It's not just the Xbox that gets that juicy new FSR 2.0 technology, but the first game with FSR 2.0 is DEATHLOOP. AMD took the time at Game Developers Conference (GDC 2022) to announce another FSR 2.0-powered title: Forspoken, which is developed by Luminous Productions. FSR 2.0 will be dropping in October 2022, with AMD also teasing "along with many other AMD FidelityFX technology effects".

Microsoft's new DirectStorage API isn't living up to its full potential just yet, but a future version could help supercharge data streaming and loading speeds on M.2 drives.

DirectStorage aims to revolutionize data throughput on consoles and PC. The basic gist of the tech is to help streamline how game data is decompressed and loaded from SSDs storage into hardware like graphics cards.

The API's end goal is to stream data from an SSD directly to a GPU's VRAM memory pool for decompression and allow GPU data to completely bypass the CPU. This would theoretically result in a significant IO performance boost that would lead to benefits like faster in-game loading times.

Luminous Productions is leveraging both Microsoft's and AMD"s next-gen APIs and tools for its new game Forspoken, creating an experience that fully leverages the might of enthusiast PC hardware.

Luminous Productions just put out an extremely technical GDC 2022 presentation that breaks down Forspoken's new advanced technologies. The devs give a closer look at DirectStorage and how it enables ultra-fast loading on Forspoken on PC.

Forspoken is one of the first games to utilize Microsoft's powerful DirectStorage tech, a new DirectX 12 API that promises to supercharge loading speeds. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. Forspoken loads in just 1 second on PC using DirectStorage in tandem with a high-speed M.2 NVMe SSD.