Gaming - Page 416

AT&T's latest Q4 earnings report has no mention of video games and gives no updates on the current events at WB Games.

It's been a while since we've heard from WB Games, and parent company AT&T is no help. The company's Q4 brief didn't mention WB Games, video games, or any current game projects currently in the works. Execs mostly discussed the performance of WarnerMedia's HBO Max subscription (which has grown to 73.8 million subscribers). This isn't unusual for AT&T, who rarely mentions video games during its presentation.

The silence is made all the more loud by the looming acquisition. AT&T is about to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery in a $43 billion deal. All WarnerMedia subsidiaries including WB Games and its studios (Netherealm, Monolith, Rocksteady) will jump over to Discovery.

Today WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar re-iterated that WB Games will deliver a "full slate of highly anticipated games" in 2022.

It looks like WB Games' biggest games are coming this year after all--or at least that's the plan. WarnerMedia's Jason Kilar gave fans hope with a Twitter thread saying that 2022 will be a big year for games. The pictures included Gotham Knights, and Hogwarts Legacy. Rocksteady's new Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League game wasn't pictured but it was implicitly attached.

Some outlets report this means all three games will indeed release in 2022, or at least Gotham Knights and Hogwarts Legacy will. This isn't necessarily the case. All studios have been quiet outside of their initial launch announcements and if anything, Kilar is just reinforcing these existing plans.

Dying Light 2 will be supplied with new content until at least 2027.

Techland is going all out with Dying Light 2. Just like the first game, which had new content launching five years after release, the developers are prepared to support Dying Light 2 with new content for multiple years.

"It all starts on release, but it's just the beginning! We're planning to keep enhancing the game with DLCs, challenges, stories, events, and more for at least 5 years, and that's a minimum! You sure won't be bored!" Techland said on Twitter, revealing its new timeline roadmap for post-launch Dying Light 2 content.

Activision-Blizzard refuses to formally recognize the Game Workers Alliance, the proposed union of Raven Software's QA team, forcing a National Labor Relations Board election process.

Days ago, 34 people at Raven Software's QA team formally asked Activision-Blizzard to recognize their newly-formed union. The Game Workers Alliance, the QA testers became collectively known, would be the first video games union in the United States.

Raven's QA team ended their weeks-long work stoppage after the intent to unionize became known. The strike affected critical testing in Call of Duty Warzone, one of Activision-Blizzard's most lucrative video games.

Halo Infinite could get crossover content from the Halo TV show, possibly new weapons, vehicles, and cosmetic armor sets.

Today 343 Industries revealed a ton of new info about the upcoming Halo TV show, which is set to premiere on Paramount+ sometime soon. The post mentions a lot of interesting points like confirming the SPARTAN-II programs grisly, dark origins will be a part of the show, and also touches on the show's new divergent timeline.

The Halo TV show takes place in the "Silver" timeline, which is a separate and parallel timeline that exists outside of the base Halo canon. (Silver is also the name of the show's fireteam--Chief was part of Blue Team in the original canon). This gives 343i lots of room to bend and manipulate timelines and events to make things more show-friendly.

Valve's Steam Deck hasn't been delayed again, and will start shipping to buyers and the very end of February.

Today Valve announced Steam Deck reservations will start redemption on February 25. Users who pre-ordered a first wave Steam Deck will have 3 days to complete the purchase. If you don't pay for your reservation it will be passed down to the next person.

The first wave of Steam Deck handheld PCs will start shipping out on February 28, 2022 and open up a new dimension of PC gaming on-the-go experiences powered by a custom AMD Zen 2 + RDNA 2 SoC capable of serious handheld performance and compatibility with practically every Steam game on the market.

It's happening... it's finally happening -- Crytek is making a next-gen Crytek game, right in the middle of a pandemic-fueled GPU shortage.

Crytek announced Crysis 4 out of nowhere, saying: "It's something you have been asking us for a long time, so it's now finally time to confirm - yes, the next Crysis game is happening! We are so pleased and excited to bring this news to you, and we really can't wait to reveal more details about what lies ahead".

The developer continues: "Right now the game is in the early stages of development so it will be a while yet, but we wanted to bring you the news at this time as we are so hyped for the future, and to let you know that we will be listening to our community".

Halo Infinite has amassed a substantial 20 million players since launch, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms, a somewhat foggy KPI given the game's conditions.

Xbox gaming just delivered its best quarter of all time with $5.4 billion in revenues. On top of that, more than 20 million people have played Halo Infinite since release. That's about 20 million users in 48 days. A pretty big milestone.

Nadella also touts that Infinite was the largest debut in the history of Halo, however this is to be expected considering Infinite is not only free-to-play, but included with Xbox Game Pass, which has 25 million active subscribers on consoles and PC. The point is that there's a lot of access points to Halo Infinite--that's no mistake, as Microsoft makes its games to drive services and subscriptions.

The next two mainline Call of Duty games will release on PlayStation platforms and will not be Xbox exclusives.

Call of Duty won't be Xbox exclusive until 2025, sources tell Bloomberg in a new report. Sony's pre-existing deal with Activision will prevent full Call of Duty Xbox exclusivity following Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard.

Sony's deal includes the next three Call of Duty games: 2022's Modern Warfare 2, a new shooter from Treyarch, another game--as well as a new version of Call of Duty Warzone.

Xbox gaming made more money in Holiday 2021 than it ever has before.

Microsoft recently reported its Q2'22 earnings (October - December 2021), confirming explosive results for its gaming division. Xbox generated record earnings during the holiday period with over $5.442 billion in revenues, up nearly half a billion dollars from last year's high Q2 water mark.

This is not only the best Q2 in Xbox history, but the best quarter of all time for Microsoft's video games platform. FY22's second-half earnings (Q1+Q2) are $9.035 billion, which is more than Xbox's total-year revenues in FY15. This year should be another record fiscal year for Xbox.

Blizzard's next big IP might be an interesting take on a Kid in King Arthur's Court and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Today Blizzard confirmed it is working on an ambitious new IP. The unnamed project is a survival game that merges modern and fantasy together, as per details gleaned from a brief concept art glimpse. Job listings also confirm the new IP will be an online-based adventure which is Blizzard's usual fare.

"Blizzard is embarking on our next quest. We are going on a journey to a whole new universe, home to a brand-new survival game for PC and console. A place full of heroes we have yet to meet, stories yet to be told, and adventures yet to be lived. A vast realm of possibility, waiting to be explored," reads a job posting.

Respawn Entertainment, EA's new darling that's responsible for the billion-dollar Apex Legends, is leading the development of multiple new Star Wars games.

Our suspicions were correct; Respawn is developing three new Star Wars projects. The first game is a sequel to 2019's best-selling Jedi: Fallen Order, which became the fastest-selling Star Wars game of all time. It was so successful that it changed how EA makes Star Wars games.

The second EA Star Wars project is a FPS led by Respawn's Peter Hirschmann, who says the game will "tell a story he's always wanted to tell." Hirschmann served as a producer at DreamWorks for 7 years, a VP for Product Development at LucasArts for 6 years, and has been at Respawn as a game director since 2016.

People Can Fly is developing a second AAA game for Square Enix...could it be Outriders 2?

Polish game developer People Can Fly is very busy. The company has expanded to multiple territories and is working on three big new games, one of which is another title for Square Enix.

The studio's recent Q3 2021 financial report confirms two new games are in currently in production for a slated 2024 release: Project Gemini, a new game for Square Enix, and Project Dagger, an RPG action game for Take-Two Interactive. PCF is also working on another new IP that it plans to self-fund and self-publish.

NetEase has funded Nagoshi Studio, a new game development team lead by former Yakuza director Toshihiro Nagoshi.

After 32 years at SEGA, Toshihiro Nagoshi joined up with Chinese games juggernaut NetEase to form a new studio. Like Kojima Productions did with Konami, the new Nagoshi Studio has poached former SEGA and Yakuza developers over to the team.

NetEase's substantial revenues affords Nagoshi more freedom to chase new ideas. NetEase's earnings dwarf those of Nagoshi's previous home; The Chinese games-maker has generated $9.7 billion in from Q1-Q3, which is nearly 4x as much money as SEGA generated throughout the whole FY21 period.

Online-only shooter Outriders may have taken 5 years to develop and ship onto the market.

People Can Fly's recent Q3 2021 financials indicate Outriders may have taken as long as 5 years to make, which isn't unusual for AAA loot-and-shoot video games.

The report confirms People Can Fly signed the multi-year publishing agreement with Square Enix in 2016:

Outriders' post-launch content may extend through 2023 with two big expansions.

Outriders' first major expansion, Worldslayer, is due out in 2022. But it may not be the only expansion People Can Fly has planned for the game.

Worldslayer is expected to propel the online-only looter shooter to new heights. Forbes' Paul Tassi guesses Worldslayer could be Outriders' own version of Reaper of Souls, complete with a new usable class, new zones, and more.

Valve is helping out developers with more funding to research open-source Radeon Linux GPU drivers for the Steam Deck handheld, with more testing of Mesa commits + Radeon GPU drivers.

Charlie Turner, programming consultant for Igalia, created a merge request on FreeDesktop's Mesa site for more dEQP runners. The agency itself "specializes in the growth of innovative projects and solutions" with the new request asking Valve to help with AMD Radeon GPU Linux drive testing, and since the Steam Deck is powered by an AMD RDNA 2-based GPU it makes sense for Valve to commit more resources to Radeon Linux GPU drivers.

"This series proposes to add more dEQP bare-metal runners, sponsored by Valve. For now the runners are conditioned on a selection of users (similar to how freedreno's restricted traces work), since there are not enough machines to hit the runtime targets required for inclusion in the automatic pre-merge pipelines. There's nothing secret about the test loads, the restriction is purely practical for now and any interested user may request access to the runner. A follow-up series will add trace testing runners to the CI, using a similar approach to the above".

Battlefield 2042 is an absolute mess, where it garnered literally less than 30 minutes of playtime before I stopped playing it and went back to Warzone and more specifically, Rebirth Resurgence... thinking of that, I don't think I even refunded it. Sigh.

Now we have Battlefield insider Tom Henderson tweeting that EA is reported "very disappointed" in how Battlefield 2042 has performed and that the company is "looking at all the options" when it comes to the future of the game. Henderson says that "this is including looking at Free to Play in some capacity".

But I really, really don't see how making a shit game free, in any capacity, will help. I think admitting the game is a mess, opening the game up to the community to mod into something actually playable... admitting your total faults to the community and maybe turning Battlefield 2042 into something that doesn't resemble a digital pile of dog shit.

Steam has amassed a new concurrent user record as PC gaming surges through 2022.

Today Valve's platform is full steam ahead: Steam has now hit a new all-time high of 29,201,174 lifetime concurrent users, up from the previous 28.7 million mark set earlier this month. That's two new records set in the beginning of 2022 alone and the numbers could inflate more as new releases start popping up.

It's worth noting these are users, not people who are in-game. The numbers for actual in-game users is at 8.5 million, so roughly 30% of the people who are logged in are actually playing games.

After 21 years of waiting, D2's mythical Act 6 could finally be released.

Popular Diablo 2 streamer and speedrunner MrLlamaSC may have accidentally outed plans for a new Act 6 in Diablo 2 Resurrected.

"You want standard of heroes to do something? Well when Act 6...," MrLlama said, quickly realizing what he said on a Twitch live stream and deflecting with: "Yeah...that'd be great if they gave us some sort of way to use it."