Gaming News - Page 4

BioShock creator Ken Levine reveals why he left the franchise and started working on Judas, his new shooter.

In a recent interview with the Sacred Symbols podcast, BioShock visionary Ken Levine gave key insight as to why he decided to leave the series behind. Levine highlights the compounding stress of major success and how developers and creatives are pressured to continually push out big hits that one-up their previous games.

After BioShock Infinite, which Levine says he wanted to be Irrational's own blockbuster version of Call of Duty, the creator essentially felt trapped by his creations. Levine didn't want to feel like he had to compete against himself and up the ante each time, so he chose to work on a different game--one that took many, many years before it was revealed.

Today Apple and Hideo Kojima announced that Death Stranding Director's Cut is coming to the Mac in 2023, and Kojima also plans to bring future games to the platform as well.

Apple is mostly known for productivity and not gaming, but the introduction of its new Metal 3 tech has attracted some developers to release newer titles on Mac, including Capcom with Resident Evil Village. Now Kojima Productions is bringing Death Stranding to Mac.

Apple's latest WWDC 2023 showcase highlighted a new feature called Game Mode that's coming to Macs this year. Game Mode optimizes and prioritizes CPU and GPU to help streamline frame rates, while also reducing controller input latency by doubling Bluetooth sampling rates. Apple also announced a new Metal game porting toolkit that makes it "even easier for developers to port their games from other platforms" through simpler conversion processes.

Tim Cain, the lead programmer of the original Fallout cRPG from the 1990s, gives rare insight into the content that didn't make it into the final games.

Just because a game is out in stores doesn't mean it's complete. Games are actually never complete, and developers typically shave off significant amounts of content from a dev build to make things fit into a finalized version. That was also the case with the first Fallout games.

So what kinds of things were left on the cutting room floor in Fallout? In a recent video, Tim Cain outlines some interesting concepts, stories, and features that didn't miss the axe. One piece of content was a kind of Library of Alexandria for the wasteland that was based on Walter Miller's classic dystopian novel A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain reveals why he left Interplay back in the late-1990s.

Gaming was a lot different back in the 90s. That goes double for PC gaming, which was dominated by big-box titles that were as groundbreaking as they were irreverent. The original Fallout was one such game; with its humor, deep mechanics, and a gritty style augmented by an isometric view, Fallout was one such game that helped solidify the cRPG market.

TIm Cain, who co-created the Fallout series, was significantly influential to the PC gaming scene and the Fallout brand as a whole. Cain had left Interplay back in 1998 due to a myriad of reasons, and in a recent YouTube video, the legendary game developer tells his story on why exactly he departed the studio.

The $12.7 billion merger with Zynga has pushed mobile as the lead revenue-generating platform for publisher Take-Two Interactive.

Take-Two Interactive is mostly known for delivering mega franchises like Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, Red Dead, and Borderlands. However, following its mega-merger with Zynga in May 2022, mobile gaming quickly conquered the business in terms of earnings. The company's annual 2023 SEC filings give an important look at Take-Two Interactive's current place in the industry and it's growth-oriented trajectory.

According to the filings, recognition of Zynga's earnings boosted TTWO's Fiscal Year 2023 earnings by $1.845 billion year-over-year, leading to a total of $5.349 billion in net revenue earned during the year. Zynga made up 40% of total company revenues and its stable of popular free-to-play games pulled in $2.159 billion, helping offset over $300 million reduction in GTA earnings and over $71 million drop in Borderlands franchise revenues.

Sony Group Corp. CEO Kenichiro Yoshida comments on PlayStation's cloud gaming initiatives, and indicates that its proprietary GT Sophy artificial intelligence could play a larger role in emerging segment.

Although it has become more relevant today thanks to the Microsoft-Activision merger, cloud gaming has actually been around for quite some time. Sony became a pioneer in the tech after purchasing Gaikai for $380 million back in 2012 and then launching its PlayStation Now game streaming service. 11 years later, cloud gaming remains a nascent and substantially small part of the overall video games market (European Commission VP Margrethe Vestager has said cloud represents 1-3% of gaming earnings).

While UK regulators at the CMA believe cloud gaming will grow over time, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida notes that game streaming faces considerable challenges and has a more realistic outlook on the technology.

CD Projekt Group management confirms that R&D on the new Cyberpunk game will begin in 2024.

Last year, CD Projekt announced Project Orion, a fully-fledged sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. Details on the new game are slim, but based on the publisher's new live game services focus, we expect that Orion is in some part a continuation of the Cyberpunk 2077 standalone AAA multiplayer game that CD Projekt had discussed some time ago.

We could be waiting quite some time for the game. Project Orion hasn't begun principal development just yet, and CD Projekt Group is planned to start spending on R&D for the game throughout 2024. This is an early phase of development that's technically pre-production, so the actual game may not release until a few years afterwards.

BioShock creator Ken Levine shares the storytelling process and motivations that he used in order to write the fan-favorite series.

Photo Credit: Jim Martin

BioShock is known far and wide for its unique story that weaves themes of classism, history, and unchecked tyranny in a fictional underwater city full of art deco beauty. But how exactly did this classical story come to light?

In a recent interview on Colin Moriarty's Sacred Symbols podcast, BioShock creator Ken Levine shared some interesting insight into his core motivations for the games. Levine explores topics like understanding perspectives from a villain's point of view alongside assertions that everything always has to be in service of characters.

Square Enix's developers give new updates on Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2, including what to expect with exploration and overall release date.

In a recent Facebook update, Square Enix has delivered two new small Q&As with key developers of the new Final Fantasy VII Rebirth game that's due out in 2023 on PlayStation 5 consoles.

According to game producer Yoshinori Kitase, one of the main concerns with Rebirth is locking in a release date. The publisher currently plans to release two major AAA Final Fantasy games in 2023, with Final Fantasy XVI on June 22 and Rebirth expected to release sometime in Winter 2023. It's possible that Rebirth is pushed out to early 2024, possibly before Square Enix's fiscal year ends on March 31, or it could even get pushed into Square Enix's next FY23 timeline to help break apart and stagger game sales.

The reports were correct: Asypr has officially cancelled development of KOTOR II's planned DLCs on Nintendo Switch.

One of the biggest selling points of the new KOTOR II re-release on the Nintendo Switch was the promise that missing content would be added back into the game. Back in 2004, KOTOR II launched as an unfinished game with a portion of its gameplay, features, and content left on the cutting room floor so that Obsidian could get the game out to consumers more quickly. This happens very, very often in the video games industry.

Aspyr, who was previously handling the KOTOR Remake, had originally planned to re-incorporate KOTOR II's unreleased content into the 2022 re-release and sell the first complete version of the beloved RPG. The cut features have been identified for many years thanks to the Sith Restoration Project.