Gaming - Page 413

Hideo Kojima is now living his dreams six years after splitting up with Konami.

Much to the delight of Hideo Kojima, his Kojima Productions company is now branching off into films, TV shows, and music. A new subsidiary has been established in Los Angeles, California that will oversee the production of non-gaming multimedia that ranges from movies, shows, and even soundtracks--basically everything that Hideo Kojima adores.

"Our new division will take the studio into even more areas that present our creative narratives beyond videogames and to open up ways for our fans to communicate and immerse themselves in these spaces," Kojima Productions' Yoshiko Fukuda said about the new studio.

Like Tencent, Epic Games is slowly but surely taking over the gaming world to fuel its metaverse ambitions.

Epic Games just purchased Harmonix, the makers of Rock Band and Dance Central, for an undisclosed sum. Harmonix plans to make new musical events for Fortnite while also supporting existing and current games like Rock Band 4, which is set to release a bunch of new tracks throughout 2022, and its most recent game Fuser. Epic also says that no Harmonix games will be removed from competing storefronts like Steam and older games won't be delisted.

Harmonix is the sixth major acquisition that Epic Games has made in 2021 and follows buyouts like RAD Game Tools, the makers of the games industry's most widely-used compression technology, and portfolio website ArtStation which hosts millions of pieces of art across multiple disciplines.

Fortnite's current Chapter 2 feels like it has been going on forever, with developer Epic Games set to unleash Fortnite Chapter 3 in just over a week from now.

The above teaser trailer to Fortnite Chapter 2 and its "The End" event teases the big reveal, where you will be battling The Cube Queen. Remember that Fortnite Chapter 2 has been with us since 2019, so it has been over 2 years in the making for Chapter 3.

We don't know exactly what to expect apart from massive changes with Fortnite Chapter 3, including a new map, with some more details from Epic Games on Fortnite Chapter 3 teased: "'The End' marks the finale of Fortnite Chapter 2. This climatic event will see players take on The Cube Queen in one last stand for the fate of the Island. Squad up with your friends and players around the world to take on the Sideways corruption. The End supports large parties of up to 16 players queued together, so bring the whole squad along. Be sure to log in early - The End playlist will be available in Fortnite 30 minutes prior to the start time for players to jump in".

Game developers working with Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 will now be able to access AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and add it into their games.

A newly-released plugin for Unreal Engine 4 adds FSR support, with Unreal Engine 4 version 4.27.1, and is not hard at all to have game developers add FSR support into their projects. Developers will get access to FSR settings to their games including Performance, Balanced, Quality, and Ultra Quality.

Unreal Engine 4 support for AMD FSR will only see FSR adoption increase, which Team Red has quite the battle against Team Green and its dominant DLSS technology in many, many more AAA games than FSR. UE4 support will only help FSR over the coming months and years on both the PC and consoles.

Dataminers have revealed the full list of Halo Infinite season 1's storefront unlocks, which amounts to 88 pieces of content including armor cosmetics, weapon skins, charms, and more.

Microsoft reminds us that monetization is a big reason why Halo Infinite exists. Dataminers have uncovered what can be purchased in Halo Infinite's first season from the in-game store, which includes 88 items of varying pricing. None of the items can actually be earned by playing and are exclusive to the store.

According to an excellent breakdown by Redditor samurai1226, buying each individual piece of content would cost as much as two Xbox Series X consoles--or roughly $1,035.

Despite all of the praise, Halo Infinite is mired by a poorly-designed progression system. Players are already needing a break from the relentless grind.

Halo Infinite is designed to be a 10-year Halo game. 343i calls it Halo-as-a-service. The game isn't even a month old yet and gamers are already starting to get burned out, and it's clear that 343 Industries needs to address the situation ASAP.

Fans agree that Halo Infinite's gameplay is immensely fun. The problem is that fun isn't being properly utilized in a tangible way towards progression. Playing matches is a great time, but gamers are constantly aware of the challenges they need to meet in order to actually rank up and earn XP. However, ranking up doesn't always give good or appealing rewards and there's not a lot to look forward to insofar as customizations. You could, however, avoid the grind and buy the armor skins yourself with Halo Credits.

Amazon has expressed interest in making a live action series based on BioWare's beloved Mass Effect sci-fi franchise.

Following the success of The Wheel of Time, Amazon's entertainment division is looking for new IPs to adapt for its video streaming services. Deadline reports that Amazon is eyeing EA's mega-hit Mass Effect franchise for one such show.

Details on the proposal are slim, but reports say the show's negotiations are progressing. EA hasn't officially greenlit the project and once that happens we should see an official announcement. There's no information on what subject or era the show may focus on, or whether or not Commander Shepard will be involved. EA and BioWare are currently developing a Mass Effect sequel that continues the original trilogy's continuity and it's possible there will be some sort of cross-media tie-in.

DICE has addressed Battlefield 2042's hugely controversial launch and promises that fixes are on the way...but some of them like PC optimizations won't be here for a while.

In a lengthy post, DICE has outlined a ton of Battlefield 2042 issues and reveals a plan on how it plans to fix them. Right now Battlefield 2042 is one of the worst-reviewed games on Steam due to poor performance on PC. Gamers are reporting sub-60FPS gameplay at 1080p with higher-level hardware like RTX 3070s and a Ryzen 3600 CPU, which is almost directly opposite of the optimizations that older Battlefield games have.

The reality is Battlefield 2042 is CPU-bound and apparently limits what kind of perf you can get from GPUs. DICE says that a Battlefield 2042 PC performance fix will take some time...so don't expect it any time soon.

Gaming's Big Three have all spoken out against Activision-Blizzard's alleged sexual abuse scandals.

Nintendo, who typically stays out of public affairs to keep up its wholesome family-friendly image, is the latest to speak out against Activision-Blizzard's ongoing controversy. In a private internal email sent to employees, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser tells workers that he is disturbed by the reports on Activision-Blizzard, which include multiple instances of sexual harassment, discrimination, and even rape.

"Along with all of you, I've been following the latest developments with Activision Blizzard and the ongoing reports of sexual harassment and toxicity at the company. I find these accounts distressing and disturbing. They run counter to my values as well as Nintendo's beliefs, values and policies," Bowser said in an email acquired by Fanbyte.

Star Citizen is one of the most expensive video games of all time and has an astronomically high budget.

According to a new financing update, Roberts Space Industries has raised an mind-boggling $400 million to fund Star Citizen's development. The infamous space sim has been in development for nearly 10 years and first entered Kickstarter in 2012; nearly a decade later and a budget that's roughly 4x today's biggest heavy-hitting franchises, Star Citizen still isn't finished or officially released.

Most of these revenues are direct deposits right into Cloud Imperium Games' coffers: "As a crowd funded project, Star Citizen's scope is based directly on the support provided by our backers. Money pledged goes directly to the game's development."

Activision-Blizzard has finally unleashed Call of Duty: Vanguard which is taking the huge battle against EA DICE and its just-launched Battlefield 2042 -- with Vanguard now at the cheapest price I've seen: $39.

Call of Duty: Vanguard at $39 was available early for Walmart+ subscribers, but this afternoon the discounted Vanguard was open for everyone else. Walmart is running the $39 deal on Call of Duty: Vanguard through to November 29, unless they are sold out -- and at $39, that could very well happen at many Walmart stores across the US.

You can buy Call of Duty: Vanguard for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S at $39. This is quite the deal considering Vanguard costs $70 at retail cost, so this is close to half price. You can't get the PC version at this cost which sucks, but Call of Duty sales on the consoles are huge so this is a big deal for Walmart right now.

PlayStation 5 lead system architect Mark Cerny has come out detailing the PlayStation 5 hardware in a new interview with WIRED, where he said that we're in a "third era" of gaming history.

Cerny pushes the world of ray tracing in games right now as being as big of an upgrade from 2D pixelated graphics to 3D polygonal graphics in the 1990s. Cerny said: "If you look at the 50 year history of games, it splits pretty neatly into two eras. The first era -- Pac Man, Sonic the Hedgehog -- is games that are built entirely out of flat components. The second era -- Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted -- these are games built out of 3D triangles with effects on them".

He continued: "Thanks to ray tracing, we're now entering a third era, and the visuals have the capacity to be like nothing we've ever seen before. Ray tracing is radically different technology; it's pure computation. There's a database in RAM that contains a description of the video game world, mostly triangles and boxes. And then there's support in the GPU hardware for seeing if a line intersects that geometry. If the hardware is fast enough, that unlocks new approaches to lighting, shadows and reflections".

Call of Duty: Warzone will soon morph into Warzone Pacific, with Raven Software soon kicking off a couple of limited-time events that will let gamers wave goodbye to Verdansk.

The developer has announced the new Call Of Duty: Warzone Secrets Of The Pacific event which starts on November 24, after the still-going Operation: Flashback event in Call of Duty: Warzone right now. In the new Secrets of the Pacific event, we should be provided with some more details on the new Caldera map, as well as secrets that will be uncovered once you've completed challenges in not only Warzone, but the newly-launched Call of Duty: Vanguard.

We might see weapons and cosmetic options from Warzone Pacific that you can get for completing objections, but the developer hasn't said anything in detail just yet. We're hours away from November 24, so I'm sure we'll get many more details then. As a huge Warzone fan (Rebirth) I can't wait for the new Warzone Pacific update, and the new Caldera map and new weapons, customizations, and more.

Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick tells executives that he may consider voluntarily resigning if the company's core culture can't be turned around.

In correspondence seen by The Wall Street Journal, Activision's chief executive officer told higher-level employees that he may step down and move away from the billion-dollar games-maker if he can't fix the tumultuous, abuse-ridden climate of the company. Kotick says his resignation could happen if the issues aren't handled "with speed," but gave no timeframe.

Advocate groups like A Better ABK, who is made up of current company employees, has called for Kotick's resignation. After all, Kotick was in power during these instances of abuse and even knew about abuse but didn't tell the board of directors. Employees also staged multiple walk outs to protest Activision's alleged sexual abuse issues, and gamers are likewise calling for Kotick's removal.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has approved a patent that grants Sony 15-year exclusivity on manufacturing and selling PS5 cases in the U.S.

Sony has officially patented the PS5's case design and thwarted other third-party resellers who may want to cash in on the idea. Sony has been granted 15-year rights to this specific patent in the U.S. The patent, which was approved by the USPTO on November 16, 2021, is for an "ornamental design for a cover for electronic device" and specifically shows the PS5's two outer case plates that pop off in order to add an M.2 drive or clean the system's dual-sided fan.

It may not take long before Sony starts selling PlayStation-branded case plates with different designs, color schemes, etc. for higher markups. The PlayStation 5's console generation has been accompanied by price hikes across games (new titles are baseline priced at $69.99) and accessories like the $69.99 DualSense controller.

EA DICE has pumped out the delayed-a-few-times Battlefield 2042 and surprise, surprise -- Battlefield 2042 is one of the worst-reviewed games on Steam, ever.

Battlefield 2042 is the #8 worst game on Steam according to Steam250.com, with -- at least at the time of writing -- had over 35,600 negative votes. At the top of the shit games list is eFootball 2022, which I wrote about not long ago and is still the loud-and-proud worst game on Steam.

If you haven't heard much about the drama and meh-ness of Battlefield 2042 then you're missing out -- it's not in the best shape, and gamers (including myself) aren't happy about it. There's close to 40,000 reviews of Battlefield 2042 on the PC on Steam and around 30,000 are negative -- mostly complaining about a lack of weapons, features, and crap performance on the PC.

The Elder Scrolls VI will be exclusive to Xbox and PC consoles, Microsoft's gaming chief Phil Spencer has said.

The next Elder Scrolls game isn't coming to PlayStation. Microsoft didn't spend $7.5 billion to buy Bethesda to release games on competing platforms (for perspective, that's roughly 6 months' worth of total Xbox platform revenues). Gaming's largest buyout was made to boost the Xbox ecosystem. It wasn't made to give Sony extra revenues. This means more exclusives that adopt the complete Xbox package--Smart Delivery, Velocity Architecture, cloud saves, Quick Resume, cloud streaming, etc. These things aren't available on competing platforms like PlayStation, for example.

In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Xbox head Phil Spencer indicates The Elder Scrolls VI will join the likes of Starfield as an Xbox and PC exclusive

The PS5 could've had a 16-core CPU...but the GPU would be dramatically smaller.

Sony built the PlayStation 5 around game developer feedback. Devs share what they want with Sony, and then Sony takes that info and makes a console out of it. The PS5 uses a custom 7nm SoC with a 3.8GHz 8-core, 16-thread Zen 2 CPU and 2.3GHz RNDA 2.0 GPU, but at one point developers actually wanted Sony to use a 16-core CPU instead.

In a recent interview with Wired, PS5 architect Mark Cerny said that a portion of devs wanted a monstrous 16-core CPU but changed their mind once they realized that would take a bite out of GPU power.

Game developers originally wanted an NVMe SSD that hit at least 1GB/sec speeds. Sony went above and beyond by delivering 5x that.

In a recent interview with Wired, PlayStation 5 architect Mark Cerny said that developers had modest requests when it came to storage. Most devs wanted a solid state drive in the PS5 that could deliver at least 1GB/sec read speeds, but Sony had other plans with its ultra-fast SSD tech. The PS5 actually delivers 5x the requested performance target that developers requested with up to 5.5GB/sec speeds for uncompressed data (compressed data can be read at 9.9GB/sec thanks to the potent Kraken compression technology used in the PS5).

"Developers asked for an NVMe SSD with at lest a gigabyte a second of read speed. We booked at that and we decided to go for maybe 5x or 10x that speed. It's always good to have a high target there," Cerny said.

Halo Infinite's controversial progression system is getting overhauled slowly but surely.

Progression is a bit wonky in Halo Infinite, and instead of earning XP from every match, experience points are only rewarded for completing challenges. You couldn't get XP for just completing games. Until now, that is.

343i has made good on its promise to start using fan feedback to quickly adjust and change Halo Infinite's multiplayer. The first big change was giving players a new daily challenge for simply completing a match. Finishing a game will now give you 50 XP...but only once a day (this is a daily challenge and is only offered once a day). 343i has also doubled the duration of XP boosters and they now last 1 hour instead of 30 minutes which makes it even easier to rank up.