Gaming - Page 405

New job listings indicate that Bungie could have as many as 4 new projects in the works.

Bungie is currently ramping up its work force for multiple projects. While nothing's been officially announced, sometimes we can glean info based on job listings. An examination of Bungie's current job openings may set the stage for what's to come. This is by no means official confirmation and there's a chance we're wrong about the number.

Right now the Destiny developer has a massive 113 open positions available across all disciplines, from programming, art, audio, accounting, and brand management. A cursory glance shows Bungie is developing new IP, possible new Destiny 2 content, and unannounced games--all of which may be in development separately and/or in tandem with one another.

Microsoft is so far ahead that "PlayStation is doomed," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter dramatically said in a recent Xbox podcast.

According to the analyst, Microsoft has an "insurmountable lead" in services, infrastructure, and overall ecosystem that has future-proofed Xbox for the next 10 years. Sony, on the other hand, doesn't have that kind of lasting power--at least that's what Pachter believes.

"I think PlayStation's doomed, and I think they're going to cease to exist as we know them in about 10 years. They can't compete. They have no chance," Pachter said during an RDX stream.

An indie game mega bundle has raised more money for Ukraine relief than any other video games company.

The Bundle for Ukraine packs nearly 1,000 games and has raised an incredible $3.59 million for humanitarian relief in Ukraine. The collection includes some pretty choice games including popular titles like Celeste, Superhot, Jotun, and two Towerfall games, but it also has other media like tabletop RPGs comics, ebooks, and even some tools. Over 700 developers and creators have joined forces to make the bundle a reality.

"The people of Ukraine are under attack. As game developers we want to create new worlds, not to destroy the one we have. That's why we've banded together to present this charity bundle to help Ukrainians survive this ordeal and thrive after the war ends."

Halo and Destiny game developer Bungie stands with Ukraine and has removed Destiny 2 content and expansions from sale in Russia and Belarus.

"Bungie stands with the people of Ukraine and everyone impacted by the ongoing war," the developer wrote in an update post.

"Starting today, we will be working with our partners to suspend all Destiny 2 sales and commerce in Russia and Belarus."

Yesterday's State of Play showcase was a flop...all save for one big announcement.

The major consensus among gamers is that Sony's most recent State of Play was pretty bad. Enthusiasts were expecting major updates on games like Final Fantasy XVI and maybe even Resident Evil 4 Remake. Instead, Sony's third-party partners delivered mostly niche products.

However there's one thing that everyone pretty much loved about the stream: The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collection.

Sony has announced it will stop selling PlayStation software, hardware, and services to Russia due to the ongoing Ukraine invasion.

Sony has joined Microsoft in holding a temporary product sales ban in Russia. The company has cancelled all hardware shipments to Russia, and is closing off access to the PlayStation Store in the country. Online-driven games can no longer be played. Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe, who previously served Russian gamers with content and services, helped the company make $16 billion from European markets in 2021.

"Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) joins the global community in calling for peace in Ukraine," Sony said in a statement.

Rockstar Games may be working on as many as five games including GTA 6, one analyst says.

Grand Theft Auto 6 may not be the other game that Rockstar is working on (but it's certainly the most important right now).

"Guess what, Rockstar has five games in development. They do. They may never come out, but they have them," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a recent RDX podcast.

Gotham Knights, the new Batman game where Bruce Wayne is actually dead, will release this October.

After years of waiting, gamers finally have a release date for its gritty and visceral open-world action RPG Gotham Knights. The two-player co-op game will release on October 25, 2022 across PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Gotham Knights features four different playable knights including Red Hood, Nightwing, Batgirl, and Robin, each with their own special abilities, gear, and character roles. The game features distinct RPG elements with elemental affinities, health bars, stamina, adds, and huge boss fights against iconic villains like Mr. Freeze and Talons directly adapted from the Court of Owls comics.

Koch Media, entertainment parent company of games labels like Deep Silver, Prime Matter, has donated more money to Ukranian relief than Activision-Blizzard has.

Video games companies are donating funds en masse to help embattled Ukraine during the current Russian invasion. Many of the top games-makers including The Pokemon Company, SEGA, Remedy Entertainment, Activision-Blizzard, and Koch Media have donated tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to worldwide humanitarian efforts.

One interesting thing about these donations is the overall values. Some companies give what they can--Remedy, for example, made 44.7 million euros in 2021 and donated 50,000 euros to Ukrainian relief. Koch Media, a multimedia company who made roughly $244 million in 2021, has donated $500,000 to Ukrainian relief and is prepared to donate another $500,000 through matched employee donations.

Valve's PC gaming platform Steam had more monthly active users throughout 2021 than the PlayStation Network, new data indicates.

PC gaming is on the rise and big-name publishers like Capcom, SEGA, Microsoft, and even Sony are bringing their games the market. Steam is firmly at the top of the PC platform hierarchy (nearly every publisher has released their own proprietary games launcher, but some, like Bethesda.net, are closing shop) and outside of multi-million Epic Games Store exclusivity deals, everyone wants their games on Steam for one big reason: That's where most of the players are.

New data from Valve shows that Steam had a whopping 132 million monthly active users (MAUs) throughout 2021.

Microsoft has only sold 2.3 million Xbox consoles in Japan over the last 20 years, data from Weekly Famitsu indicates.

Xbox isn't popular in Japan. The platform and its associated services pales in comparison to the mighty PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, which are leagues more popular in the region. While official console sales data is scarce (Microsoft doesn't report specifics any more), new estimations from Japanese gaming magazine Weekly Famitsu paints a rather desolate picture for Xbox in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Across a two-decade span, only one Xbox console has sold over 1 million units. The Xbox 360 sold over 1.6 million units in Japan through its lifetime. The original Xbox from 2001 is next in line with 472,000 units, and the Xbox One has moved little over 114,000 units. The Xbox Series X/S duo is already beating Xbox One's total lifetime sales with a whopping 142,000 units to date, which is 6% of the market's total 20-year console sales.

International sanctions from the United States and European Union have blocked payments to Russian Twitch streamers.

Early on in the Ukraine invasion, Western countries blocked Russian banks from SWIFT, the payment tracking system used by worldwide institutions. This has affected Russia's purchasing power as payment processors no longer accept payments to and from the region; Nintendo's eShop, for example, no longer accepts Russian rubles for online purchases.

Now Russian Twitch streamers are being affected. The California-based streaming company can no longer send payments to Russian influencers due to the sanctions. In the blink of an eye, streamers in Russia have been cut off from their monthly paychecks.

Gear up, Spartan! Catch the new Halo TV series on Paramount+ for just $2 a month.

The Halo TV series will premiere March 24 exclusively on Paramount+, and luckily the streamer is having a special promotion that steeply discounts monthly prices. Paramount is celebrating its one-year anniversary for the service and has dropped subscription costs to just $1/month for 3 months (or $2/month for commercial-free, which I highly suggest over the ad-based version). To get started, click here.

This promotion works even if you have already tried Paramount+ and I was able to re-activate and use the promo on an old existing account that I cancelled months ago.

Gamers are comparing Elden Ring to other open-world games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but this comparison doesn't hold water on a business perspective.

There's a few memes floating around that poke fun at Assassin's Creed games with the humorous tag "if Ubisoft made Elden Ring," complete with tons of on-screen icons, guides, and interactive UI features. The memes have garnered lots of response and gamers are becoming more critical to Ubisoft's style of game development, namely with monetization and hand-holding. Those things are fair on a critical level, but on a business level, comparing Elden Ring to Assassin's Creed is apples and oranges.

The reality is Ubisoft and Bandai Namco are two very different companies. To put it quite simply, Bandai Namco--and FromSoftware's owner, Kadokawa--have a different goals than Ubisoft.

Grand Theft Auto V is currently cheaper on PlayStation 5 than it is on PlayStation 4.

Pre-orders for the next-gen version of GTA V are now live, and the game is surprisingly affordable. GTA V won't cost $69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as we had predicted. Instead, the game is only $9.99 right now on PlayStation 5 (only buyable on-console), which is cheaper than the $14.99 PS4 premium edition (this isn't an upgrade price as I don't currently own or have ever owned GTA V on PS4).

The full GTA V edition is $19.99 on Xbox Series X/S consoles, which is double the price of PS5. Why is that? Here's a refresher: Rockstar is splitting GTA Online from GTA V and selling it as a standalone game. There's now two SKUs, or versions, of Grand Theft Auto V: The Story Mode, which is erroneously named because it includes both story mode + GTA Online, and GTA Online standalone. GTA Online retails for $19.99, but is discounted to $9.99 on Xbox Series X/S until June 14, 2022.

Nintendo refreshed its portable gaming system last year with the introduction of the Nintendo Switch OLED, packing a beautiful OLED display that acted as enough of an upgrade over the original Switch, and now that OLED panel has been put through a burn-in torture test.

Now when I say burn-in torture test, I really do mean it: we're talking about a huge 3600-hour burn-in (3600 hours works out to 24/7 for 150 days). This is years of regular use crammed into less than half a year, with the OLED showing a bright scene the entire time (a static shot of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Link looking into the sun).

After the 3600 hours of being at full brightness, the Nintendo Switch OLED display had only just had ghosting appear... which isn't even that much really. The reality of burn-in has changed so much from the fear-driven panic of early Plasma and LCD TVs, but with OLED panels it really isn't that much of an issue.

Cyberpunk 2077's in-game character models get celebrated in this impressive new graphical showcase video.

Performance issues aside, there's one thing most of us can agree on: CD Projekt RED created one of the best-looking PC games of all time with Cyberpunk 2077 (especially in 8K resolution, as shown by TweakTown's own Anthony Garreffa).

A new video from YouTuber Ultraclocked highlights Cyberpunk 2077's incredibly detailed NPCs and character models featured throughout Night City. The result is a dazzling visual treat that closely inspects the fine grain details of the characters from their faces, eyes, and hair to the fluid animations and lighting effects.

One gamer paid a cam girl over $20,000 to beat Elden Ring's campaign with him.

Elden Ring is better with friends, but if you don't have them, you can apparently pay a digital escort to play with you. Chris, a gamer from New Jersey, reportedly paid cam girl Charley Hart a whopping $20,160 to play Elden Ring's main story with him. The session lasted for an epic 40 consecutive hours and became the longest cam stream on the CamSoda platform.

"It might not be for everyone, but I appreciated the companionship of Charley. She kept things...fun," Chris said in an interview.

Motive Studios is holding a new live stream event for their upcoming Dead Space remake.

EA and Motive today announced a YouTube stream for super-hyped Dead Space remake. The stream will premiere four days from now on March 11 at 1PM EST, complete with behind-the-scenes looks at the game's overall development. We should get closer looks at environments, animations, sound effects, and all of the other main core features that're going into the new remake.

"Motive invites you to the latest in their series of early looks at development and what goes into the remake of a game. Subscribe and keep notifications on to be the first to hear details about our upcoming Dead Space Remake Developer Livestream," the description reads.

WWE could leave 2K Games and move to EA Sports, reports indicate.

WWE 2K22 could be the last game in the wrestling franchise. Sources have told website Fightful Select that WWE Inc. is currently in talks with billion-dollar publisher Electronic Arts for future game releases. It's possible that WWE could license its franchise out to EA Sports. The WWE games are currently published by 2K Games' sports division and developed by Visual Concepts, a team that also makes the massively successful NBA 2K series.

There's reported friction between the WWE parent and 2K Games that stems from the controversial release of WWE 2K20, which scored bad reviews and frustrated lots of fans. This led to WWE 2K21 being cancelled altogether so Visual Concepts could build WWE 2K22 from scratch with a new engine specifically optimized for next-gen hardware.