Gaming - Page 411

Can you gaming PC handle Elden Ring? Let's find out.

FromSoftware just released Elden Ring's official PC spec requirements, and they're not too bad. The game will run on lower-end Xbox One and PS4 hardware from 2013 after all.

The devs haven't announced perf targets for the following GPU and CPU combinations, but it's implied minimum specs will hit around 720p 30FPS at low settings whereas minimum could be around 1080p 60FPS at medium settings. So far Elden Ring doesn't look like a crazy next-gen spectacle so the lower-end specs make sense here.

Seagate's new Game Drives prep your console for one of the biggest PS5 games on the market.

Games are getting bigger and bigger, but luckily Seagate has you covered. Horizon Forbidden West, for example, clocks in at a massive 87GB on PS5 (even though the official PlayStation Store doesn't give exact file sizes). That's 13% of the PS5's available onboard SSD storage, which goes extra fast because the PS5 SSD's nefarious Other section fills up and takes lots of space.

Luckily Seagate has you covered with its Game Drive expandable storage. The latest lineup features Horizon Forbidden West's Aloy and comes in 2TB and 5TB capacities, which is plenty of space for the massive new open-world game.

Cyberpunk 2077 is finally playable on consoles thanks to a new free next-gen patch, offering tons of upgrades and optimizations for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S hardware.

After a full year of controversy, the definitive console version of Cyberpunk 2077 is now out on next-gen hardware. The new version is free for anyone who bought the game on PS4 or Xbox One and features a bunch of enhancements including a 4K 60FPS mode (with dynamic scaling) as well as 4K 30FPS with ray tracing on. Sadly the game runs at 1440p 30FPS on Xbox Series S without any other game modes.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been tweaked for both next-gen consoles. On PlayStation 5, the game supports the console's Tempest 3D architecture offering 3D audio, haptic DualSense feedback, activity card support. The game also supports smart delivery on Series X/S so there's no need for multiple downloads, and sadly the PS4 trophies don't transfer to the PS5 version because it's technically a different game entirely.

We are hours away from the unleashing of Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone Pacific Season 2, which will introduce some map changes to Caldera, new vehicles, weapons, and so much more.

Warzone Pacific Season 2 kicks off today across all platforms, weighing in at up to 47GB on the PlayStation... while there's something that was music to my ears: Rebirth Island Iron Trials on a new Rebirth Reinforced layout that will change up Rebirth in a huge way.

There's a new Bomber for Warzone Season 2, with the new Bomber plane capable of destroying Loadout Drops... which were, until now at least, indestructible. That's a huge change to the meta of Warzone, and will surely have people yelling into their mics for days. Now while the new Bomber sounds OP, the developer has been nerfing planes in preparation for Season 2 -- plane health decreases will be unveiled in full when the update goes live.

It turns out that Square Enix had the metaverse figured out a while back.

As more and more companies announce their plans for the metaverse, it's important to take a look at key examples that already exist in the market today. With its penchant for inter-connected transmedia and multi-game releases, Square Enix had inadvertently created a conceptual metaverse for Final Fantasy 15 years ago. Now it's doing the same thing with Final Fantasy 7.

A while back, Square Enix was going all-in on Final Fantasy 15. The plans were so ambitious that I called FF15 the new Skyrim. Square Enix created what it called the Final Fantasy 15 Universe, which included a vast webwork of games, animated shows, and even a stunning feature-length CGI film. The mainline FF15 game was the core of this early metaverse and everything branched out--and led to--the centralized framework.

Bandai Namco outlines plans for its IP Metaverse, a vast inter-connected webwork of services, games, and interactive media.

The metaverse is gaming's latest hot trend. The nebulous concept is a convergence of the most powerful mechanisms of gaming: online interaction, personalized customizable social hubs, launching/playing/sharing games, and a service-based ecosystem that offers games, movies, and interactive experiences that are monetized and scaled across a huge network. It's basically a combination of Final Fantasy 14, the PlayStation Network, and the PlayStation Store all-in-one.

Bandai Namco is the latest publisher to embrace the metaverse. The company says it plans to launch a new initiative for an IP Metaverse, which would create a "metaverse", or a ring of inter-connected interactive experiences, for each of its IPs. This strongly implies that franchises like Tekken, Dragon Ball, Gundam, Pac-Man, and Naruto would all get their own content hubs.

A Cryptopunk NFT has sold for nearly $24 million, proving the speculative market is extremely lucrative.

Chain.com CEO Deepak Thapliyal just purchased CryptoPunk#5822 for $23.6 million, or 8,000 ETH, making it the most expensive NFT in the CryptoPunk collection. This is also the fourth largest NFT purchase of all time, and dwarfs the previous CryptoPunk sales record, CryptoPunk#7523's sale for $11.8 million in 2021.

Data from DappRadar notes that the CryptoPunk line generated over $31 million in NFT sales in the week from February 7 - February 13.

Cyberpunk 2077's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S release date could finally be announced tomorrow.

Gamers who have been waiting for the definitive, fixed version of Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles may get some good news soon. CD Projekt today announced a special Cyberpunk stream will go live tomorrow, February 15 at 4PM CET (10AM EST) on the official CDPR Twitch channel.

The developer previously said Cyberpunk 2077's next-gen release would launch in Q1 2022. It's already February, so the game could still release across the rest of the month and the full month of March. CDPR also confirmed CP2077's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S launch would be free for existing PS4 and Xbox One owners, and rightly so given the game's near-unplayable launch condition.

Nintendo may delay its next-gen Switch Pro or Switch 4K due to the ongoing chip shortage.

Now is not a good time to release games hardware. 2023 may not be much better, either. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and a multitude of hardware makers are facing a worldwide chip shortage. Supply lines are constrained and production costs have risen as a result, and hardware is more expensive to make. This typically leads to two things: lower production volume and lower profits.

Meanwhile the gaming market is booming. The pandemic has kicked off a new level of hardware and software spending, and consumer hardware demand has been voracious throughout the shortage. It's not an issue of gamers wanting to buy hardware. It's an issue of companies being able to produce hardware, ship it, and then make enough of a profit on the hardware to make it necessarily worth it--or at least maintain according values.

Nintendo Switch is currently sold at a profit, but that margin is being lowered by the worldwide chip shortage.

Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa tells investors that ongoing semiconductor supply issues are slowly eating into Switch hardware profits. Supply and demand economics have raised prices of critical components, and the Switch in particular is becoming more expensive to manufacture, produce, and distribute.

In a recent Q3'22 Q&A session, Furukawa says profits made from Switch console unit production have been dipping gradually throughout the chip shortage. The CEO confirms Nintendo is prepared for the profit hit and will maintain its 23 million unit production forecast through FY22, but he also notes that next year's FY23 period could be impacted to an even greater degree.

Nintendo has no plans to support the metaverse, gaming's nascent and often-confusing new trend.

Despite properly being able to explain it, Ubisoft, EA, Bandai Namco and even Square Enix are gung-ho for the metaverse. Nintendo, who is typically shrewd, conservative, and studiously careful in its adoption of video game trends, isn't ready to help trailblaze the new NFT-laden digital frontier. Instead, Nintendo will bide its time as it has done so often in the past.

In a recent Q3'22 earnings call, Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa was asked outright by an investor if Nintendo will support NFTs and the metaverse. There was no comment about NFTs (Nintendo stands to make a killing from its treasure trove of instantly-recognizable IPs at the cost of its wholesome brand image) but Furukawa did discuss the metaverse.

Nintendo is embracing more value-oriented subscription models in an effort to sell recurring services and cement players in digital ecosystems.

With its selection of retro classics and online play for $19.99/year, the base Nintendo Switch Online is already one of the most valuable subscriptions on the market. It's a cost-effective sub that allows Nintendo to lease its valuable legacy library to gamers who must perpetually buy-to-play over time. Now the games-maker is adding more value to its more expensive Switch Online expansion pass tier.

The $49.99 a year Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack tier was somewhat of a tough sell at launch. For a 150% price increase, the subscription included N64 games, Genesis games (yes, really), and the base Switch Online games and content. Nintendo is now adding value to the more expensive tier by leasing in-game content, too.

Take-Two expects this year to deliver its third consecutive year of earnings in excess of $3 billion.

FY23 will be another year of impressive for Take-Two Interactive. While exact forecasts haven't been outlined yet, the publisher is confident it will make $3 billion+ in net bookings driven by a number of new games including Grand Theft Auto V Expanded & Enhanced, NBA 2K23, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, and Midnight Suns (although these games won't release in the FY23 timeline, which is from April 2022 - March 2023, a portion of these games' revenues will be deferred and carried over to the next fiscal year).

Thanks to these games and the ongoing earnings from services like GTA Online and Red Dead Online, Fiscal Year 2023 would mark Take-Two's third consecutive year of earning over $3 billion in net bookings, an operating metric that includes microtransactions, full game sales (digital and physical), and earnings from live service games sold during a specific period.

Take-Two Interactive made record earnings from microtransactions and DLC during Holiday 2021.

GTA parent company Take-Two Interactive recently reported a new five-year Q3 high for in-game spending. According to data provided by the publisher, Take-Two generated roughly $551 million in recurrent consumer spending, a metric that includes microtransactions as well as DLC and expansions.

These earnings represent a new five-year high for recurrent consumer spending in both net revenues ($551 million) and net bookings ($494 million). The numbers punctuate previous holiday records set in 2021 and show the long-lasting growth value in Take-Two's live service offerings.

Take-Two Interactive plans to release up to 62 games by March 2024, but some of these games could be delayed or even cancelled.

GTA publisher Take-Two has an absolutely massive release slate on the horizon. The company wants to release 62 games from now until FY2024, which ends on March 31, 2022. The slate, alongside the accretive Zynga purchase, is expected to supercharge annual earnings to the effect of $9 billion in combined revenues (14% CAGR). This fueled our prediction that GTA 6 could release by March 2024, and analysts seem to agree with our assessment.

Even still, Take-Two's slate isn't set in stone. In fact one of the games included in the release has already been cancelled--Volt, a game from Mafia dev Hangar 13, was cancelled with a $53 million write-off.

Horizon Forbidden West is now pre-loading PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 4 right now, and now we know how much SSD storage space you'll need on the PS5 to install it.

According to PlayStation Game Size, the PS5 version of Horizon Forbidden West weighs in at close to 100GB for gamers in Europe, coming in at 97GB. US gamers will have a download size of 86.5GB, while gamers in Japan will be enjoying the smallest download for Horizon Forbidden West clocking in at 82.7GB.

Why is the EU version of Horizon Forbidden West so big? Language packs. There are many languages throughout the EU, hence the download size is between 15GB bigger (from the JP version) or 10.5GB bigger (than the US version) of the game.

Neither Take-Two Interactive nor Rockstar Games has announced how much the next-gen GTA V version will cost.

A while back we predicted GTA V would cost $69.99 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The guess was based on statements made by Take-Two Interactive's Strauss Zelnick on the new frontline pricing model, which sees publishers justifying the cost hike by delivering "extraordinary value" and experiences. GTA V E&E has new optimizations including a 4K mode, up to 60FPS, and raytracing--do those make a compelling value proposition?

In a recent Q3 earnings call, Take-Two Interactive had this to say about GTA V's pricing on Gen 9 systems: "So the next-gen version of GTA V are not, in fact, available for purchase yet, but they will be. And in terms of pricing, we haven't discussed any pricing models around those new releases," Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said.

Here are the top-selling first-party PlayStation games on PS4, PS5, and now PC.

Sony's first-party games are big blockbuster system-sellers with dramatic storylines, explosive action, and an emphasis on singleplayer. Games like The Last of Us, Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War have all defined an entire generation of console gaming. But how much have each of them sold?

Based on data provided by Sony in public earnings documents and reports, and figures from analysts, we've compiled a list of all the current known first-party PlayStation game sales. Do note that some of these sales figures are very outdated and reflect numbers that have remained static in Sony's quarterly and annual filings.

Horizon Zero Dawn is now one of Sony's best-selling PlayStation games of all time.

Sony's move to PC is paying off. Horizon Zero Dawn, one of the initial first-party PlayStation exclusives to cross over to PC, has now sold in a combined 20 million units across PS4 and PC. The news indicates a substantial spike in overall purchases and that the PC market is avid to consume games previously only available on PlayStation.

Back in 2019, Sony had announced HZD was at 10 million units. That's more than double the number of sales in 3 years' time, which is no small feat for an older evergreen game. The steep discounts, sales, and new PC release all helped to supercharge those numbers.

The rumors and reports were true: Modern Warfare II is officially coming in 2022.

Today Activision officially confirmed this year's Call of Duty game is Modern Warfare II, and that a new Warzone iteration is coming alongside the mainline game.

Not a lot of exact details weren't given, but the new version of Warzone was built from the ground up alongside Modern Warfare II. The new Warzone was made on Infinity Ward's new next-gen engine (which utilizations cutting-edge technology and optimizations including high-end AI, graphics, and physics simulations).