Gaming - Page 398

BioWare's next Mass Effect game has entered early phases of development, studio GM Gary McKay has announced.

In a new blog update, BioWare assures fans that it's working hard on two new projects: Dragon Age 4, which is set to launch sometime in 2024 according to reports, and a new Mass Effect game that's coming way later down the line. Although in initial stages, development on Mass Effect 5 is progressing with a smaller team led by Mike Gamble.

According to the update, Mass Effect 5, which will continue the original trilogy storyline, has moved from prototyping stages to early stages of development.

CD Projekt RED confirms it has abandoned adding further multiplayer support into Cyberpunk 2077's RED Engine, and will use Unreal Engine 5 for multiplayer instead.

In a recent earnings report, CDPR says it is moving to Unreal Engine 5 for its multiplayer needs. This update may signal that Cyberpunk 2077's separate online multiplayer game has either been cancelled or is switching to UE5, which may be a painful process for developers. It could also indicate that the RED Engine has been fully optimized for CP2077's multiplayer project...which may be unlikely given the iterative nature of games development.

CD Projekt RED has recently announced that its future games will have online and/or multiplayer elements, including The Witcher series. The newly-announced Witcher game is being built in Unreal Engine 5 and should make use of the game engine's tried-and-true live service framework.

The Witcher 3 is a sales revenue monster and has delivered its second-best sales throughout 2021.

Today CD Projekt announced its 2021 earnings and updated a bunch of sales figures for its franchises. Cyberpunk 2077 is currently at 18 million+ and The Witcher series has sold over 65 million units to date since first launching 15 years ago.

The Witcher 3 is the overwhelming best-seller and remains one of CD Projekt's most important games of all time. The Witcher 3 has sold 40 million+ copies, accounting for over 61% of total franchise sales. The company says 2021 was the second-best year for The Witcher 3 sales since the game's launch in 2015, where it helped CDPR earn $119.5 million.

Cyberpunk 2077's lifetime sales are now at 18 million+, confirming a significant decline in game sales throughout 2021.

CD Projekt RED recently announced new Cyberpunk 2077 sales figures that fall in line with downward adjustments from analysts. The numbers show CP2077 is currently at 18 million+ sales, which means the game sold at least 4.3 million units throughout 2021. That's a 70% drop from the game's incredible 13.7 million launch sales made in December 2020.

The decline was triggered by the game's heated controversy that eventually led to CP2077 being removed from the PlayStation Store for six months due to disastrous performance on the base PlayStation 4. This significantly reduced overall sales, however CDPR has recognized most of its game unit sales from PC.

Master Chief Collection has beaten Halo Infinite's player counts for two days running.

Gamers are flocking to the old-school Halo collection as they wait for new Infinite content. Thanks to a new substantial update that added Floodfight, Halo 2 custom games to the customs browser, and new modding tools, Halo: The Master Chief Collection's playerbase has surged.

In fact, Halo MCC has had more players on Steam than Halo Infinite for 48 hours in a row. Gamers do want to play Halo, and they're jumping back into classic games to relive nostalgic multiplayer memories across the six-game collection and check out the new update.

If you've wanted the ultimate gaming bed, then Japanese gaming furniture company Bauhutte has just the thing for you with its new BGB-100FA electric bed.

This isn't Bauhutte's first gaming bed, but an evolution -- and a big one at that -- of its first gaming bed. There are motors for your legs and back, so you can have your legs elevated or sit up and work, relax, eat, or any other enjoyable in-front-of-your-PC activity.

Bauhutte also sells the BHD-1200BD Bed Desk, which you'd totally have to buy with the BGB-100FA electric bed so that you can do literally everything at your PC. The only annoying thing you'd have to do at this point is get up and go to the bathroom... maybe we can expect some -- uhhhh, bathroom capabilities -- with the next iteration of the electric gaming bed.

Prompted by a three-year investigation from government watchdog agency the Competition and Markets Authority, gaming's Big Three have all adjusted their auto-renewal policies in the United Kingdom.

At the behest of a CMA investigation started in 2019, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have changed subscription auto-renewal charging policies in the UK. Microsoft and Sony will no longer charge consumers indefinitely if they are not logging in and using associated services like Xbox Game Pass, Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Now, and PlayStation Plus.

Sony's policy sees the company contacting users and reminding them to turn off auto-billing, which will be manually turned off if users are inactive for 24 months.

The Embracer Group has made its 72nd acquisition with the purchase of Beamdog, the team behind console ports of some of gaming's biggest RPGs.

Apsyr, the developer behind the upcoming KOTOR remake, has acquired Baldur's Gate developer Beamdog in a convergence of RPG mastery. Aspyr is currently working closely with Beamdog to publish its new all-original IP MythForce.

"Beamdog's team of 80 artists, designers and developers has relationships with top licensors, including Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, as well as an impressive catalogue of RPG titles. Through the acquisition, Aspyr will add a veteran North American development team, which will continue to be led by Oster," reads a press release.

The Witcher 3's next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X/S version has been delayed indefinitely, CD Projekt RED today announced.

The upcoming free next-gen release of The Witcher 3 has been pushed back to an undetermined period of time. CD Projekt RED says it is now taking over development of the project and is currently trying to figure out how much work is left on the project. Saber Interactive, who ported The Witcher 3 to Switch, has done the bulk of the next-gen game's development.

"We have decided to have our in-house development team conduct the remaining work on the next-gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. We are currently evaluating the scope of work to be done and thus have to postpone Q2 release until further notice. We'll update you as soon as we can. Thank you for your understanding," the company said.

Following Elden Ring's soaring success, Bandai Namco wants to work fantasy author Brandon Sanderson on a new video game...but Sanderson is already involved in a game project.

Some weeks ago, Bandai Namco sent Mistborn and Stormlight Archive author Brandon Sanderson a special Elden Ring package that included a sword, a cloak, the game, and other collectibles. In the package was a note saying the publisher would like to collaborate with Sanderson on a new game, no doubt prompted by Elden Ring's amazingly successful input from George R.R. Martine.

"They are interested in perhaps doing something together. I am as well," Sanderson said in a recent podcast.

No Man's Sky was quite the mess when it launched, but you've really, really got to give it to the team at Hello Games... they have delivered, and then delivered, and continue to deliver new content into No Man's Sky at a rate that other developers should admire. The latest, is called Outlaws.

The new Outlaws update for No Man's Sky gives players missions where you can secure black market technology, and other goods from ships by being a pirate. It is a different element to the game, a completely different element, and brings Star Wars + Star Citizen + Sea of Thieves vibes into the game.

No Man Sky's new Outlaws update introduces a plethora of new things: outlaw space stations, cloth simulation (which looks great), an outlaw story, smuggling, solar ships, you can recruit wingmen, there are plentary frigates, improved space combat, forged passports, more ship slots, bounty missions, and planetary pirate raids. Who can complain about that, especially given it's free.

Who are the most stressed people in Australia? That would be young, male, rebellious, and likely to be gamers according to a new analysis by media monitoring and social analytics platform Meltwater.

The analysis comes from the profiles and social media posts of over 13,000 Australians who have talked about being stressed out on social media in 2021, with Twitch users and gamers the most stressed out of them all. 61% of them are male, with 30% of them aged 18-14 years old.

Melbourne seems to be a hot spot, and it's no wonder the way the Victorian government treated millions of Victorians throughout 2021 under the "leadership" of Dan Andrews... with 30% of those stressed gamers coming from Melbourne, Victoria. It's not just gamers that are stressed out in Australia, but also writers and members of the media... while political activists (which Meltwater adds are "mainly climate activists").

Microsoft is reportedly working on an Xbox Series X/S chip redesign that will help improve power efficiency and production readiness.

The Xbox Series X/S may get a chip refresh that boosts availability and supply, new reports from Brad Sams indicate. The new revision won't deliver more raw performance, though, and is expected to instead be on TSMC's N6 node which is actually part of its 7 nanometer family.

The next-gen Xbox duo currently use SoCs on TMSC's 7nm+ node, but the consoles are believed to move over to 6nm throughout 2022. Sony's PS5 is also expected to move to 6nm in an effort to maximize availability. The 6nm node offers multiple production benefits including better yields and quicker time-to-market, and the process of migrating chips from 7nm+ to 6nm is streamlined and easy.

Nintendo has announced major plans to create a new R&D facility in Japan to serve its growing video games business.

Nintendo has purchased a new plot of land in Kyoto to build a sizable research and development center with an area of 409,028 square feet and 246 feet tall. The company bid nearly $40 million to acquire the land in Kyoto, Japan, and the new R&D facility will be just a few feet away from Nintendo's main headquarters. The building project is expected to be completed in 2027.

R&D spending has been ramping up steadily throughout the years as the billion-dollar games-maker prepares new video game releases and the next iteration of its popular Switch handheld-console hybrid. The new Switch is expected to deliver 4K gaming powered by a new customized NVIDIA chip with DLSS support.

Prompted by Epic Games' donation campaign, Fortnite players have raised a whopping $144 million for Ukrainian relief through VBuck purchases.

A bit ago, Epic announced that it would donate all Fortnite microtransaction proceeds made in a 3-week period to humanitarian groups to help war-torn Ukraine. Now the campaign has ended and gamers have helped generate a staggering $144 million in revenues and profits across all platforms.

It's worth noting that the donation sum includes 100% of Xbox and PC revenues, whereas the 30% platform holder feeds have been deducted from Fortnite earnings on PlayStation, Switch, and mobile. Our records show that Fortnite traditionally makes around $297 million in revenues per month on all platforms, and earnings have undoubtedly spiked thanks to this donation campaign.

Halo The Master Chief Collection's player counts have jumped considerably following yesterday's big update.

343i just released a substantial update for Halo: MCC and players are returning en masse to try out new content like Halo 2 custom browser games and Floodfight. According to Steam DB, Halo: MCC's players are up 88% month-to-month following the update. In fact, the legacy game is nearly as popular as Halo Infinite.

Direct 24-hour peak player comparisons show that Halo: MCC had 8.297 users compared to Halo Infinite's 8,408 peak. Granted that Halo Infinite has been content-starved for many weeks now and should bounce back in May with the release of Season 2 Lone Wolves, but for now the playerbase has dropped some 96% since the game's launch.

Halo 3 ODST's new Floodfight gametype is one of the best things to ever come to the Master Chief Collection.

Yesterday 343 released a new update for the Master Chief Collection with a fusillade of content, changes, and fixes. Some of these were pretty big: Halo 2 is now visible on the custom games browser, campaign cross-play was added for Halo 3 and ODST, and there's a few mod adjustments. The headlining new feature was Floodfight, a new firefight gametype that introduced Halo 3's flood to my favorite game mode of all time.

Being a Firefight purist and having beta tested Floodfight, I was extremely skeptical on the new mode. Floodfight not only adds flood to traditional ODST Firefight maps, but it also packs in Halo 3 weapons like the battle rifle, assault rifle, and even the energy sword. This changes the meta considerably...but for the better. I'm elated to report that Floodfight is incredibly fun. In fact, it's the most fun I've ever had in Firefight.

Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors discusses how his decentralized digital empire mitigates risk by sheer breadth of content.

Lots of coverage has broken out about how Embracer plans to buy up more studios and companies, but this is par for the course for the European giant. Embracer isn't just a name--it's the group's raison d'etre. Of course it will buy up more developers, labels, etc. To date, Embracer has made 71 acquisitions worth over $8 billion, and Wingefors has previously confirmed more acquisitions will happen throughout 2022-23 but this time Embracer will be "more selective than ever," the CEO says.

In a recent Financial Times article, Wingefors said something that perfectly outlines Embracer's game plan. The group isn't trying to create one hit, but instead a myriad of titles that will help subsidize development costs, drive revenues, and eventually turn profits.

Battlefield 2042's numbers are in a really bad place right on Steam and have dropped to their lowest point since launch.

Following significant controversy, lack of content, and tons of glitches, it seems PC gamers are moving on from Battlefield 2042. EA's latest online-only shooter has dipped below 1,000 players today on Steam--it's lowest since launch--but has somewhat stabilized in the rough 1,700 player mark.

It's worth noting that Battlefield 2042 has lost over 98% of its Steam players since launch; the game had 105,397 players upon release and currently has 1,733 players.

Epic Games raised $2 billion in its latest funding round, pushing its total valuation to tens of billions.

Sony and LEGO's parent company have just made a combined $2 billion investment into Epic Games to help propel the metaverse and fuel Unreal Engine 5. Following this significant finance injection, Epic Games now has a valuation of $31.5 billion--nearly double what it was worth two years ago. Epic Games said its valuation was roughly $17 billion back in 2020 (Epic was also worth $15 billion in 2018).

The latest multi-billion investment round reflects Epic's unique ambitions with two entertainment titans. Sony in particular has a vested interest in Epic's success because many of its digital entertainment operating units make use of Unreal Engine, which is used in production of games, films, and TV shows. Sony has been ramping up its PlayStation Productions segment to produce adaptations of key gaming IPs like Uncharted, with major TV shows based on The Last of Us and Twisted Metal currently in the works.