Gaming - Page 390

The GTA franchise has broken $1 billion in yearly revenues for the first time since GTA V's release in 2013.

According to Take-Two Interactive's latest financial documents, the Grand Theft Auto series made $1.083 billion in FY22, the second-highest point in franchise history. GTA is so powerful that it made up 30.9% of the Take-Two's $3.5 billion in net revenues.

The growth spike was driven by GTA trilogy sales, which hit 10 million shipments in Q3, ongoing monetization in Grand Theft Auto Online, and continued GTA V sales. In fact, GTA V has sold 5 million copies per quarter throughout FY 2022.

Saudi Arabia now owns 5% of Nintendo's total shares, Bloomberg reports.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), a sovereign financing account with an estimated $600 billion in assets, has purchased 5% of Nintendo's overall shares to secure long-term earnings.

Saudi's PIF stake purchase represents 6,493,450 shares worth a total of $3 billion (384.86 billion yen). According to stock ownership data, the PIF is now the second-largest Nintendo stakeholder behind the Master Trust Bank of Japan, who owns nearly 13% of shares.

Sony should revive PlayStation Home to serve its new plans for the metaverse.

Sony has interesting ideas for the metaverse. The Japanese giant sees the metaverse as a big online network that could merge media, services, and social interactions. Sony is well-suited with this plan because it has a wealth of games IPs, music licenses, produced films and TV shows, and rights to anime under its Crunchyroll streamer.

"The Metaverse is at the same time a social space and a live network space where games, music, movies, and anime intersect and expand," Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said in a recent corporate strategy meeting.

Sony confirms that it plans to support the metaverse in its own unique way.

The metaverse offers different opportunities for each companies. Some want to use it to peddle NFTs and play-to-earn blockchain games. Others see it as a great avenue for monetization. Sony plans to use the metaverse as a grand convergence of its multimedia businesses.

In a recent corporate strategy meeting, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida gave a brief but telling look at the company's metaverse ideals. Sony's metaverse ambitions are based around immersion through the use of its powerful and flexible technologies that span gaming, music, sports, and even film and TV shows.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is still roaming the frontier with strong sales, and it did so well that even Take-Two Interactive was surprised.

In its recent FY22 earnings call, Take-Two Interactive said that Red Dead Redemption 2 "exceeded our expectations" thanks to continued sales growth. The legendary outlaw tale has sold 44 million copies worldwide since its launch in 2018, with 2 million copies sold during Q4.

"Results for the series were notably above our expectations for the period, which is further proof of the ongoing popularity of Rockstar's blockbuster entertainment experiences," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said.

Techland announces that it is working on a new IP set in a fantasy world, but Dying Light 2 will continue being supported.

Dying Light developer Techland is burying its dead and venturing to a brave new world of sword and sorcery. The studio has revealed tentative plans for its next big fantasy-fueled game. Like Dying Light, the new fantasy IP is an action RPG set in a sprawling open world.

Techland's new IP is built from the ground up for next-gen hardware and is described as a fantasy epic, and the studio is ramping up its teams for the mysterious project.

If you've been wanting to benchmark Unreal Engine 5, then now is your chance with the release of EzBench: a new Unreal Engine 5-powered benchmark with ray tracing and even 8K textures.

You'll need a monster GPU to handle it at 4K, with NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti being the fastest on the planet, and the highest score on EzBench without a doubt. I just ran it on my Intel Core i9-12900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and scored just under 37,000 points. I'll run all my GPUs through it tomorrow, and have an article up ASAP.

EzBench developers recommend people use a GPU with at least 8GB of memory, where you can rewind back to the GeForce GTX 1080, but with ray tracing support you're going to need an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 or RTX 30 series GPU or AMD Radeon RX 6000 series GPU.

CD PROJEKT RED created a beautiful game with Cyberpunk 2077 but it wasn't perfect... and now that Epic Games has unleashed Unreal Engine 5, the game has been teased in the new engine. Check it out:

YouTuber and developer "Enfant Terrible" has used Unreal Engine 5 with assets from other developers, Environment megapacks from the Epic Marketplace, VFX, and Zbrush to create what you see above. Cyberpunk 2077 dipped in the beautiful Unreal Engine 5, and it looks fan-freaking-tastic.

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD PROJEKT RED announced earlier this year that it would be shifting away from its in-house engine and over to Unreal Engine 5 for the upcoming Witcher game.

Final Fantasy is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, and the series has amassed and incredible slate of multi-million selling games. So what's the best-selling Final Fantasy to date?

Today Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XV has sold 10 million copies worldwide. Out of curiosity, I looked over the top-selling Final Fantasy games to see how FF15 fit into the mix. It turns out Final Fantasy 15 is tied for the fourth best-selling mainline franchise game. The original Final Fantasy 7, however, beats all others with a mighty 18 million+ units sold.

Note that this does not include all sales from every Final Fantasy game, and that some data may not be accurate. This is by no means a complete register of all sales throughout the franchise's three-decade span but more of a softer reference point to gauge overall success.

The new Arma Reforger early access game brings the series to consoles for the first time ever.

Beloved tactical shooter Arma is back with its next release for consoles and PC. Introducing Arma Reforger, a new campaign set in the 1980s Cold War built from the ground up with the tweaked Enfusion engine. Reforger takes place in the classic mid-Atlantic island of Everon and is Bohemia's biggest map ever with 52 square kilometers of battlefield.

Reforger supports multiple modes including Game Master, which allows players to edit missions and parameters in real-time. One of the biggest features is how mods are now compatible between Xbox Series X/S consoles and PC. Users can create mods with the same game-making tools the devs used to make the game and release them for both consoles and PC.

Final Fantasy XV has amassed a whopping 10 million sales worldwide, Square Enix has announced.

Final Fantasy XV is a big success for Square Enix, a publisher known for lamenting games as "disappointing". While Final Fantasy XV's big expansions were cancelled and future plans for the game were shelved, FFXV has generated 10 million sales across PS4 and PC since its release in 2016. Square Enix can't exactly say this one didn't live up to expectations.

The winding tale of Noctis and friends is now among the best-selling games in the Final Fantasy franchise. FF15 is currently tied with Final Fantasy IV for the #4 best-selling slot.

Sony says it will add more games to its PS Plus lineup over time and hints that games could rotate out similar to Game Pass.

Yesterday Sony released a list of games coming to its new PlayStation Plus Extra ($99/year) and PlayStation Plus Premium ($119/year) subscription tiers. Sony had originally promised that 740 games would be offered, but the list was incomplete and only included 119 games.

Sony plans to update the list of available games over time which may indicate the promised 740 games possibly won't be available when the service launches in June. It's also suggested that games could leave the service after a specific amount of time, which is what happened on PlayStation Now.

Ubisoft is bringing nearly 30 back catalog hits to Sony's new PlayStation Plus subscriptions starting in June.

Sony's new PlayStation Plus Extra ($99/year) and Premium ($119/year) tiers will include access to a ton of PS4 and PS5 games, including Ubisoft+ Classics. The value-added service is features 27 older games across a wide spectrum including singleplayer Far Cry games to medieval multiplayer For Honor and yesteryear shooter-looter The Division.

The headlining game is Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which is entering its second year of DLC content. The base game will be included on PS Plus Extra and Premium, but the new expansions will not. For a full list of all the games included with PS Plus Extra and Premium, click here.

Grand Theft Auto V has now sold 165 million units to date thanks in part the re-releases on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

GTA V has now sold a mighty 165 million units since the game has released in 2013. The game is now available across three console generations, and the most recent re-release on next-gen consoles help boost sales and adoption. GTA V has sold 5 million copies per quarter for many quarters in a row, and FY22 is no exception.

These numbers show GTA V now makes up 44% of total franchise sales--the Grand Theft Auto IP has now sold 375 million units worldwide. TTWO says that GTA Online's performance has boosted 8% over last year, which was one of the largest periods of all time for the online game.

Fall Guys, which reached over 1.5 million players in its first 24 hours, is going free-to-play.

Today Mediatonic announced its mega-hit gameshow sensation Fall Guys will be free-to-play on all platforms starting June 21. Fall Guys is also coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox One, complete with full cross-play and cross-progression on all platforms (PS4, Xbox, Switch, and the Epic Games Store).

A premium season pass will roll out on Fall Guys in the future.

With a bunch of first-party greats, Sony's new PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscriptions provide significant value for new PS5 owners.

Sony plans to release more PS5 consoles this year than any other period in PlayStation history. The company is preparing new a wealth of content to meet millions of new PS5 owners using its services as a delivery system.

The new PlayStation Plus subscription plans will give PS5 users quick and easy access to 12 next-gen optimized games, including must-have launch titles like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Demon's Souls, and Spider-Man Miles: Morales. It's a great option for new gamers who don't want to pay full price for PS5 games.

Sony is bringing modern convenience features to PlayStation Classic games on its new PS Plus service.

Today Sony announced 119 games that will be available on its new three-tiered PlayStation Plus service (check them here). Original PlayStation and PSP games will actually have new features like save states, rewind, a new UI, and even FPS boost and resolution upscaling features similar to Microsoft's built-in backwards compatibility enhancement tech.

"Some titles that will show improved frame rates and higher-quality resolution compared to their original launch versions. For select original PlayStation and PSP classic games, members will also enjoy a new user interface with menus that allow you to save your game at any time, or even rewind the game if you want a do-over."

The Switch's strong shipments have pushed Nintendo's total lifetime hardware sales to new levels.

Nintendo's latest financial report tallies up its current market performance, showing consistent hardware and software sales that reflect ongoing demand. The Switch recently broke 107.65 million shipments (sell-In) across the globe, with FY22 volume hindered by an ongoing chip shortage.

The Switch's numbers are impressive on their own, but become even more interesting when weighed against--and in combination with--other hardware. According to data provided by Nintendo and compiled by use, the Switch's cumulative growth factor has bumped total handheld sales to an impressive 537.81 million units to date.

Today Sony announced over 100 games coming to its new PlayStation Plus service reboot, but a vast majority of the catalog is still unknown.

The recent PS Plus announcement only includes 119 games across multiple PlayStation platforms. That's a far cry (pun intended) from the 740 games that Sony promised when the service was revealed. That means some 621 games, or 84% of the total advertised catalog, are still unknown.

Sony said this is just a "selection of games," and rightly so because there's only one PSP game on here and no PS2 titles. Check below for a full list of the games confirmed to release on PS Plus Extra and Premium in June:

Unreal Engine 5 is an absolute masterpiece of graphics technology, with every new tease making the world of gamers drool... myself included. Quixel is now here with their insane "Ninety Days in Unreal Engine 5". Check it out:

Quixel explains: "The Ninety Days project kicked off with just three core artists and a simple concept: make something beautiful and inspiring, keep it real-time, and if possible, build each environment in just three days".

Alec Tucker, Cinematic Environment Artist, Quixel, Epic Games said: "Working on several different environments that convey varied stories and moods was extremely fast and iterative using Unreal Engine 5 and Quixel Megascans. This project made me realize how quickly you can put scenes together that hit the detail level of animated films in real-time".