Gaming - Page 397

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is set to bring sci-fi action to Nintendo Switch on July 29, MonolithSoft and Nintendo today announced.

Nintendo just dropped a new Xenoblade Chronicles 3 trailer that showcases combat, story beats, and officially confirms a July release date for the RPG. The game was originally supposed to launch in September, but was moved up two months--something that rarely happens in the games industry as of late.

The footage highlights the new Evangelion-style mechs called Ouroboros (the clandestine name for the infinity symbol), which essentially multiple party members combine into one for unique abilities, attacks, and playstyles. The mechanic seems pretty innovative and is a big hit among fans, who are excited for the new release.

Five years ago, EA shut down Visceral Games and cancelled Amy Hennig's Star Wars game. Now she's back and Lucasfilm has given her the rights to try again.

Uncharted series visionary Amy Hennig is working on a new Star Wars game under her studio Skydance New Media. Official details on the project are slim, but Hennig says the Star Wars game will be a "richly cinematic action-adventure game" with an all-original storyline not previously featured in other franchise media, films, TV shows, or books.

The news comes at an interesting time for Lucasfilm Games, who has broken its exclusivity deal with EA and is licensing out the Star Wars brand to various developers. Even Ubisoft is making a Star Wars game now.

CD Projekt delivered its second-highest earnings of all time in throughout 2021 despite a substantial drop in Cyberpunk 2077 unit sales.

Regardless of heated controversy and game delays, 2021 was another big year for CD Projekt. The Polish games-maker generated 888 million PLN in sales throughout the year, the second-highest earnings in company history. Chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz says Cyberpunk was the "most important source of revenues."

Cyberpunk 2077 sales dropped by 70% in 2021 to a respectable 4.3 million copies, impacted from the game being delisted PlayStation Network for 6 months. CD Projekt says the majority of the game's sales were digital on PC.

Some of the most pivotal figures in video game history are now embracing new trends like NFTs and blockchain.

It's happening. NFTs are coming, and some of gaming's founding fathers want to usher in the new blockchain era. In a development that can only be described as old-school meets new-school, Richard Garriott, renowned designer of the legendary Ultimate series, is making a new MMORPG that uses NFTs and blockchain.

Thanks to his efforts with the Ultima series, Richard "Lord British" Garriott is largely regarded as the father of modern video game RPGs. Now he's making a new game alongside longtime collaborator Todd Porter called Effigy, a new MMO game that uses blockchain to store data and manage in-game purchases. Effigy will allow players to "own" dungeons and in-game areas with the basic goal of turning players into investors.

SEGA is rebooting Dreamcast classics Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi, sources tell Bloomberg.

SEGA is reviving old-school Dreamcast classics in a big new way. Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi will be part of SEGA's new Super Games, a new category of video games invented by the company. Super Games follow specific criteria including AAA-quality, multiplayer experiences that can ultimately make close to $1 billion in lifetime revenues.

It's believed that both the Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi reboot will be online-based, microtransaction-driven, free-to-play games that launch simultaneously to a widespread audience across consoles, PC, and mobile. These are all key aspects of SEGA's Super Game category.

Sonic Origins has been rated and classified in South Korea and Japan, new database information has confirmed.

A bit ago SEGA revealed Sonic Origins, a new four-pack collection that bundles early Sonic games from the Genesis to the SEGA CD console. The publisher hasn't delivered an update on the project for quite some time but it looks like a release is on the horizon.

Sonic Origins was rated by South Korea's Game Management Committee on April 15, strongly indicating an impending release. The board also mentions that Origins has been rated A for all ages by Japan's domestic CERO ratings board.

Activision's new financial forecasts suggest something big is happening in 2023, and it could be another mainline Call of Duty game.

Reports say Call of Duty will break its annual release schedule for the first time in 19 years. Sources have told Bloomberg that Call of Duty will skip 2023 and move to a biennial cadence, returning in 2024 with a big new game. Activision is expected to release a standalone zombies live experience in 2023 to fill in the gap. Management says Call of Duty is moving towards an "always-on" structure.

However, new financial data from Activision-Blizzard may indicate otherwise. The company forecasts significant net revenue growth in 2023 to a new all-time record high of $4.688 billion, up nearly 18% over 2022's expected earnings.

No, Blizzard has no plans to create NFTs or play-to-earn blockchain games.

Blizzard recently sent out a poll trying to gauge interest in play-to-earn games and NFTs. This led to speculation Blizzard could be planning NFTs and following in the footsteps of Ubisoft and Konami.

Now Blizzard President Mike Ybarra squashes the rumors with a simple and curt response: "No one is doing NFTs."

What's going on with Cyberpunk 2077's multiplayer game? No one knows for sure, and CD Projekt RED won't give more details.

Back in 2017, we predicted Cyberpunk 2077 would have online multiplayer. Then in 2020 CD Projekt RED confirmed Cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer was coming, describing the game as a big AAA release.

Now these plans are in flux. CD Projekt has cancelled all future multiplayer development in Cyberpunk 2077's RED Engine and made a $4.9 million write-off on the technology. Instead CD Projekt will now use Unreal Engine 5 for its multiplayer ambitions.

Following an incredible box off performance, Sonic Speed Simulator is one of the most-played games on Roblox right now.

A bit ago SEGA launched an official Sonic game on Roblox called the Sonic Speed Simulator, a new open-world 3D adventure that's a lot like the early Sonic Adventure game. It's become a huge hit with Roblox's playerbase, amassing an all-time high of 100,000 concurrent users.

"Our Sonic game on Roblox just hit 100,000 concurrent players on its second day of release with a strategic marketing push combined with the organic digital buzz of the metaverse," Gamefam Chief Executive Officer Joe Ferencz said on LinkedIn.

Square Enix has expressed interest in using blockchain to facilitate user-generated content and to pay creators with cryptocurrency for their in-game creations.

Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy-maker Square Enix has always hyped up emerging technologies. Company President Yosuke Matsuda has a penchant for over-promising on industry trends like VR, smartphone gaming, and streaming, but more recently has embraced nascent tech like blockchain, play-to-earn, and NFTs.

However ambitious, Matsuda's latest affirmations could help pave the way for a new era of user-generated content through blockchain. In a recent interview with Yahoo Japan, Matsuda outlined his nebulous vision to use blockchain as a way to distribute user-generated content to gamers and remunerate content creators with cryptocurrency payouts. In practice, Square Enix essentially wants to mimic Roblox, who pays out billions every year to its content creators. It's also similar in theory to Bethesda's paid mods Creation Club platform.

Hideo Kojima has officially debunked rumors saying that PlayStation will acquire his game development studio.

Kojima Productions is not being purchased by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Studio founder Hideo Kojima confirmed the news on Twitter by essentially saying he has no interest to sell the company: "Kojipro has been, and will continue to be, an independent production studio."

The rumors were started from a new PlayStation Studios banner that added Death Stranding among the image slices of first-party games.

CD Projekt RED is far from finished with Cyberpunk 2077 and has devoted considerable development manpower for the game's upcoming expansions.

In a recent earnings report, CD Projekt erroneously reported that most of its teams are working on new games including the next Witcher title. The company has now clarified that the bulk of its dev teams are actually still working on Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming expansion, which is due out sometime in 2023.

"Right now, the bulk of our team is working on the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion that is targeted to be released in 2023," CD Projekt Group President and Joint CEO Adam Kicinski said in the FY2021 earnings call.

New details on Halo Infinite's innovative battle royale mode have surfaced, hinting at huge 100-player chaos.

According to new reports, Halo Infinite's battle royale gametype will be a combination of many existing modes and battle royale mechanics. For example, Infinite's ambitious new mode incorporates elements of multi-team and free-for-all with up to 100 players alongside traditional BR elements like shrinking map zones.

The mode, codenamed "Tatanka", is so big that it could be a separate client or perhaps a whole separate section within the Infinite server, separated from traditional multiplayer.

A huge 'Warzone-scale' battle royale type of mode is coming to Halo Infinite in an effort to revitalize the playerbase.

Halo Infinite's often-rumored battle royale mode could arrive sometime in season 3 alongside Forge, sources have told Windows Central's Jez Corden.

Halo 2 multiplayer developer Certain Affinity is making the mode, a massive undertaking that's been in development for two years with a scale that may rival Call of Duty Warzone--in fact, it's so big that it's "almost like another game."

Microsoft is reportedly working on its own ad tech platform that would serve up advertisements in free-to-play Xbox games.

Reports from Business Insider say that Microsoft wants to facilitate a platform to bring in-game ads to F2P Xbox games. Sources say Microsoft is currently in talks with ad tech specialists to build a new advertisement platform that will inject ads into specific games, namely free-to-play titles that may include the likes of Fortnite, Warzone, and Rocket League.

Although ad tech is one of the most lucrative aspects of mobile gaming, Microsoft's goal may be to boost visibility and engagement rather than make money. Sources say that Microsoft may not take a cut of the revenues generated from ads. Instead, game developers/publishers and advertisement agencies would share the proceeds.

Activision-Blizzard's latest SEC filing gives clues on what's on the horizon for the publisher, including possible release timings for its biggest games.

Blizzard's latest revenue earnings forecast suggests something big is coming in 2023. The company has forecasted a huge 90% year-over-year revenues spike that sees earnings jumping from $2 billion in 2022 to a whopping $3.75 billion in 2023.

Blizzard segment revenues have a forecasted 22% CAGR rate over the four-year period, and this particular rise represents the largest jump in year-over-year revenues across all of the company's segments.

Cyberpunk 2077's controversy has significantly impacted sales to the point where other digital-only games are beating CD Projekt's latest release.

Today Blizzard confirmed that Diablo II Resurrected has sold more than 5 million copies across PC and consoles. This is a stellar debut for a AAA project, especially a remaster/re-release. The game did so well that it actually beat Cyberpunk 2077, which moved about 4.3 million sales through 2021-2022. It's worth noting that CP2077 was discounted to just $5 multiple times during this period, and D2R was a digital-only release that had no physical in-store launch.

While the figure is certainly triumphant for Blizzard and Vicarious Visions, it's also a stark reminder of how devastating controversy can be for game sales. Cyberpunk 2077 launched to extreme hype that quickly switched to controversy due to terrible performance on PS4 and Xbox One. Sony actually pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store for six months and Microsoft branded the game with a warning message on the Xbox store.

Cyberpunk 2077's first expansion won't release this year, CD Projekt RED has confirmed.

Cyberpunk 2077 is far by CD Projekt RED's fastest-selling game of all time. The sci-fi FPS launched into extreme hype and subsequent controversy with a massive 13.7 million copies sold within a month's time, and helped CD Projekt make more money than it ever has before. The trade-off was that CD Projekt essentially sold its reputation for upfront cash: The game performed so badly on PS4 and Xbox One that CDPR was vilified for months on end, with Sony even removing Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store for 6 months.

Ever since then, CDPR has been on a redemption arc and trying to make a big comeback. The recent Cyberpunk 2077 release on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S helped things along but the absence of substantial content has contributed to a dramatic drops in game sales.

Years after controversy, Sean Murray is once again hyping up his next game...which is said to be so ambitious it might be impossible.

Sean Murray has been talking up his new project for a while now. The game, which isn't No Man's Sky 2, has yet to be announced, but we first reported on it back in 2019.

Back then Murray used similar vernacular to describe the game, too: "We've got something else going on at the studio. It's exciting, and it's unfortunately going to be ambitious," said at the time.