Gaming - Page 404

For the first time ever, Sony is devoting an entire State of Play event to a single third-party multi-platform video game.

Today Sony announced that Hogwart's Legacy, the new highly-anticipated Harry Potter RPG, will get its own State of Play stream. The stream goes live on Thursday, March 17 at 2PM PST/5PM EST on Twitch or YouTube, and will feature 14 minutes of gameplay captured on PlayStation 5 (an interesting choice considering PS5 stock is still very limited) alongside a 6-minute roundtable discussion with the devs at Avalanche Software who made the game.

Hogwart's Legacy has been mired in controversy for two main reasons: First is the transphobic comments made by J.K. Rowling, which has caused lots of fans to discourage pre-orders and purchases of all Harry Potter products, and the second is that one of the game developers, Troy Leavitt, ran a pro-GamerGate YouTube channel. Leavitt later resigned and left the game studio.

Konami has filed and published a new trademark for Silent Hill at the Japan Patent Office.

A new Silent Hill trademark has re-ignited rumors of a possible Sony-produced sequel. Konami's latest Silent Hill trademark was published today on the JPO database and includes many use cases including video games, commercial game machines/machine equipment, game software, and virtual reality headsets.

Recent reports indicate that Sony has acquired the rights to a big video game franchise. Former reports from 2020-2021 indicated that Sony was producing a new Silent Hill game and Hideo Kojima was possibly involved.

A new report from a well-known Rockstar Games leaker says Grand Theft Auto 6 could release in 2024 after all.

Sources have told Rockstar Games leaker and informant Chris Klippel that GTA 6 has broken an important development milestone and work on the game should accelerated in the coming months (and years).

"An important step in the development of GTA 6 has just been reached. Things should speed up (internally at Rockstar)," Klippel wrote on Twitter.

FromSoftware employees aren't happy working at the studio and are complaining of low wages and other issues. Meanwhile, FromSoft parent company Kadokawa Corp. has made over $1.4 billion in the last 9 months.

Like most big games, it looks like Elden Ring's expansive world came at a human cost. FromSoftware employees have complained about a number of issues on Japanese company feedback website Career Connection, stating low wages and crunch (one review says employees are "breaking their bodies" working so much) as problems with the work environment. FromSoft has earned a 2.6 out of 5 rating for employee satisfaction as a result.

According to the survey, FromSoftware employees earn roughly 4 million yen, or $29,000, a year. Those wages are a stark contrast to the $1.415 billion that FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa Corp. has made in the last 9 months.

Discovery Inc. shareholders have officially approved the WarnerMedia merger, meaning WB Games will soon have a new parent company.

The $43 billion WarnerMedia - Discovery merger has been greenlit by shareholders and is now awaiting regulatory approval. WB Games is included as part of the deal, which means developers like Netherealm, Rocksteady Studios, Avalanche, and WB Montreal will have a new corporate overlord soon. No details have been announced concerning possible layoffs, employee shuffling, or studio closures.

Read Also: WarnerMedia delays Suicide Squad game to 2023 before Discovery merger

Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime doesn't believe Facebook's current metaverse plan will be successful.

The metaverse is a nebulous concept that delivers lots of promises to stakeholders and gamers. Investors are promised a huge interconnected ecosystem of ads, monetization, and engagement. Gamers are promised things that technically already exist today--connectivity, interactions, multiplayer games, value, etc. There's just one big problem: The metaverse still hasn't really been defined, and it'll take some serious growing pains and failures to do so.

Some of the games industry's biggest figures are pressing back against the metaverse--at least in its current iteration. According to Reggie Fils-Aime, who led Nintendo of America for multiple years, Facebook (who changed their name to Meta Platforms, signifying its devotion to the metaverse) isn't particularly innovative and their ideals for the metaverse simply won't take off.

Borderlands 3 should get PlayStation cross-play very soon, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford says.

Cross-play might be thee most important new feature of modern gaming, especially for titles with live services and microtransactions. Borderlands 3, which ahs sold 15 million copies, is one such game. Borderlands 3 didn't launch with cross-play on gaming's biggest platform--the PlayStation 4. That should change soon.

On Twitter, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford says Borderlands 3 cross-play on PS4/PS5 is an inevitability:

Nintendo confirms it will no longer ship video games hardware or physical games to Russia due to "volatile" market conditions.

One by one many of the world's biggest brands have turned their backs on Russia. The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has shocked the world and many companies are pulling their products and services out of the increasingly dangerous region. Nintendo is among the latest companies to stop selling to Russia.

In a statement given to Eurogamer, Nintendo says it has temporarily suspended shipments and sales to Russia due to unreliable economic conditions brought on by international sanctions.

Xbox has a vision for a cyclic, streamlined flow of new games that are both revealed and released over time.

Xbox's game division is absolutely massive. When Activision-Blizzard joins Microsoft, Xbox gaming will have over 30 teams working on a multitude of projects. There's so many games in development right now--and that's how Microsoft wants it. Xbox gaming aspires to have a kind of restaurant that's always updating its menu while serving up something new, and wants to give full visibility of its gaming feast to hungry diners.

"We want to get to this point where there's a steady flow of great games that are coming that customers can predict," Xbox president Phil Spencer said in a recent XboxEra podcast.

Peter Molyneux's new game Legacy, which is built around digital land NFTs and in-game commerce, has made over $57 million in crypto sales.

The latest game from Fable creator Peter Molyneux is a big departure from his previous work. His studio at 22Cans has teamed up with Gala Games, a publisher known for play-to-earn blockchain games, to make Legacy. This game is built around a kind of digital e-commerce platform with its own crypto called LegacyCoin where players create thingamabobs, trinkets, other fantastic creations and sell them on an in-game marketplace. Players buy land, make factories, and sell their goods. Like all blockchain games, the details are fuzzy.

That being said, 22Cans has completely sold out of its digital land NFTs. The company has made a total of $57.721 million from selling digital land based on ETH to USD conversions. That's a huge chunk of revenues that's roughly half of Ubisoft's entire microtransaction earnings made in Q3'21.

One of the most well-known game developers has condemned NFTs, joining voices with a multitude of other industry figures against the speculative market.

Warren Spector, known for creation of some of the most lauded franchises on the planet like Deus Ex and System Shock, is wholeheartedly against NFTs. "NFTs are ridiculous. I do not understand why anybody would want to climb on that bandwagon," Spector said in a recent interview with VentureBeat.

"Ownership of virtual goods that can be instantly reproduced in unlimited quantities. Who thinks that's a good idea? So NFTs...I have no interest."

Final Fantasy turns 35 years old this year and Square Enix is celebrating with a bunch of updates on upcoming games.

Square Enix just put up a special website to commemorate Final Fantasy's 35th anniversary. Throughout the year the publisher plans to roll out updates, teasers, and celebratory content highlighting both new and old releases, and has teased some big updates on some of the most anticipated titles in development including the new medieval action-based Final Fantasy XVI, and the ultra-hyped sequel to 2019's Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Right now the FF35 website only includes updates on recently-announced games like Chocobo GP and Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise, but the site also tease "more news" on future games too.

Master Chief's real-life Mjolnir armor is pretty heavy...no wonder Pablo Schreiber had to beef up to wear it.

Halo is a difficult franchise to adapt into movies and TV shows. Apart from the storyline that's focused on deep-future interstellar war, the series' iconic Mjolnir armor--special high-tech suits worn by supersoldiers as humanity's last stand against an unbeatable alien foe--is awkward, unwieldy, and very bulky (just ask any cosplayer).

The real-life armor built specifically for the Halo TV show is now different. According to Master Chief star Pablo Schreiber, the suits are "50 lbs of plastic":

Old-school fake GameCube portable console mock-up becomes a reality, complete with folding screen.

Electronics whiz and hardware modder GingerOfOz has created a real working version of an old outrageous GameCube portable render from 2006. The original concept was a tiny GameCube the size of 4 Altoids tins with a disc drive and folding clamshell screen. It was basically a render of a DS GameCube.

For amusement, YouTuber GingerOfOz actually made a real-life version of the concept. Using a 480p display, a ton of 3D-printed parts, an ultra-trimmed Wii SoC, two 2,000mAh batteries, a custom-designed PCB, and a bunch of totally custom resin buttons made from 3D printed molds.

The worldwide chip shortage may become even worse as Russia's war with Ukraine rages on.

The Russia-Ukraine war may significantly impact the ongoing chip shortage. Reuters reports that two of the world's largest producers of neon have shut down due to the destructive and lethal invasion.

Manufacturers Ingas and Cryoin, both located in Ukraine, produce up to 54% of the world's neon used in semiconductor fabrication. Analyst firm Techet estimates that Ukraine supplies more than 90% of the neon used for chips in the United States. Neon gas is a critical component of chip-making; it powers the lasers used the lithography process of chip creation.

Warzone, the biggest thing Activision has ever done, is officially coming to mobile devices.

Activision adds to the Call of Duty workload by bringing Warzone to smartphones and tablets. The mobile port will join two other Warzone games: The current Warzone for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and the upcoming Warzone 2 that's coming alongside Modern Warfare 2.

Six game studios are working on Warzone mobile including Digital Legends, Beenox, Activision Shanghai, Activision's Central Tech studio, demonware, and the newly acquired mobile experts at Solid State Studios. Outside of an official confirmation Activision has not announced any details on the port but it may be similar to Apex Legends mobile and offer completely separate progression systems from the existing console port and its upcoming sequel.

Gamers are known for pushing the envelope on how to game, from speedrunning to insane challenges such as completing a game with a dance pad.

A streamer that goes by SuperLouis64 has decided to take a strange but extremely interesting approach to Elden Ring, instead of going with a traditional controller setup SuperLouis has opted for eleven bananas hooked up to a makeshift circuit board. Each of the bananas is mapped to individual inputs, so when SuperLouis wants a certain input to occur, he presses the button on the corresponding banana. Additionally, the streamer was able to get the banana setup to work with a PS4 controller.

The streamer is no stranger to modified controller setups and has previously beaten Halo 3 on Legendary difficulty with a Guitar Hero controller and beaten Dark Souls with the controls of Ring Fit Adventure. In the above video, SuperLouis beats Godrick the Grafted, the ruler of Stormveil Castle and the final boss within the area. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

If you've held off on playing Grand Theft Auto IV, it might be time to depart the Lands Between and delve into Liberty City.

GTA IV Complete Edition is on sale for just $5.99 on Steam right now as part of the Rockstar Games sale. The bundle includes the base game and Episodes From Liberty City, both of which have been re-released without SecuRom and the ancient Games for Windows LIVE integration.

Sadly there's a few major issues with the game's virtual RAM usage that is preventing Liberty City from actually loading with GPUs that more than 4GB of VRAM. Be aware of this issue before you buy...however it has an easy fix.

The reports were right: The new Dead Space remake is coming in early 2023 after all.

EA has officially confirmed that Motive's upcoming Dead Space remake will launch sometime in early 2023 on consoles and PC. It's likely to launch before the company's fiscal year ends on March 31 to help pad out Q4 sales and kickstart Q1'24 revenues.

The remake has been built from the ground up specifically for next-gen consoles using DICE's advanced Frostbite engine. EA Motive is optimizing the full might of the PS5 and Xbox Series X to deliver higher-end features like ray-traced shadows and lighting, 4K resolution, and totally seamless gameplay with no loading screens.

Valve has released drivers to get Windows 10 up and running on the Steam Deck...but it's not perfect.

Steam Deck owners can now install Windows on the handheld thanks to the latest driver package issued out by Valve. The necessary Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPU drivers have been released and users can not only get Windows 10 running but Game Pass as well...with some stability caveats (plus not every game is supported).

It's also worth mentioning that there's no dual OS boot option so you will have to completely reformat and wipe the Steam Deck's storage to get Windows running. Plus audio drivers are not available yet so neither the Steam Deck's headphone jack nor built-in speakers will work while gaming on Windows. Fortunately you can hook up a headset via Bluetooth.