Gaming - Page 418

Four new Diablo 2 Resurrected runewords have leaked so far, including Unbending Will, Wisdom, Mist, and Flickering Flame.

A bit ago we reported on Unbending Will, the first new Diablo 2 runeword released in the last 17 years. Now three other runewords have been leaked, showing us what to expect from Diablo 2 Resurrected's big new v2.4 update.

Three other runewords of various utility have surfaced: Flickering Flame (Nef + Pul + Vex), Wisdom (Pul + Ith + Eld), and Mist (Cham + Shael + Gul +Thul + Ith). The first two runewords are so-so and have some specific applications.

Rockstar Games' UK studio has received over $77 million in relief throughout 2019 and 2020, likely to help offset high costs of developing games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and the new GTA 6.

According to new reports from Tax Watch, Rockstar North received £56.6 million (roughly $77 million) from the UK's Video Game Tax Relief fund throughout 2019 and 2020. Rockstar received nearly 50% of all VGTR relief during the period.

As outlined in previous articles, Rockstar North is carefully managed to make the most of this relief. The UK-based Rockstar studio makes very little operating profit and pays lower taxes as a result. The VGTR fund adds notional costs (that is, estimated costs) to help inflate Rockstar North's overall taxable costs and losses so it can quality for credits. The HMRC (the UK's version of the IRS) offers a cash payment for losses at a 25% rate.

Phil Spencer is now officially the top boss of Xbox gaming.

Yesterday marked a historic day for gaming. Microsoft announced its plan to buy Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion and merge the Call of Duty publisher in its Xbox Studios lineup. Phil Spencer has been promoted as the new CEO of Gaming--a role that hasn't existed before--at Microsoft. As CEO, Spencer will oversee all facets of the company's interactive entertainment business.

"As Satya mentioned, I am now CEO, Microsoft Gaming. This change is a reflection of the incredible work each of you are doing to create the best entertainment ecosystem anywhere. As a leadership team, we know how much exciting but difficult work we have ahead of us, so it's crucial that we operate as a single, unified team," Spencer said in an email to employees that was made publicly available.

Microsoft makes acquisition history for the second time with its near $70 billion buyout offer for Activision-Blizzard.

Trillion-dollar tech titan Microsoft intends to buy Call of Duty publisher Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Microsoft is offering to buy all Activision-Blizzard shares at a 45% premium.

Suffice it to say this is the single largest video games acquisition of all time and beats the previous record holder (Take-Two's $12.7 billion offer for Zynga) by a staggering $56 billion, or 440%.

Activision-Blizzard CEO and President Bobby Kotick will leave the company after Microsoft's buyout goes through.

Bobby Kotick will depart Activision once Microsoft's acquisition buyout closes, multiple sources have told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The news comes months after Kotick promised to resign if he couldn't fix the company-wide issues and toxic workplace culture.

Kotick will continue his role as CEO until regulatory approval has been made on the deal, which is expected to be finalized during Microsoft's FY22 period (June 2022 through July 2023).

With over 400 games and counting, it's easy to see why Xbox Game Pass has nearly doubled its subscribers in the last two years.

As part of its announcement on the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard for nearly $70 billion, Microsoft revealed a big jump in Game Pass subscribers. The all-you-can play service has attracted 25 million users as of today, making it one of the most powerful video game subscriptions on the market and representing a 150% jump in total subs in almost two years.

The service has yet to be profitable at Microsoft and is a multi-decade investment that serves as both an entry point and a destination to its gaming ecosystem. Xbox Game Pass is synergistic in that it not only fuels repeated subscriptions, but also monetization via free-to-play live service games and full game sales. The value proposition alone is undeniable: The service offers access to 440 games total across four generations of Xbox that are made available across PC, consoles, and now mobile phones.

Xbox Game Pass has hit a huge new milestone of 25 million active subscribers, Microsoft today announced.

Microsoft is buying Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the largest acquisition in video games history. Nestled in the press release announcement was an update on Xbox Game Pass subscription numbers. Game Pass is now at 25 million subscribers, up a thunderous 150% over nearly two years.

"The acquisition also bolsters Microsoft's Game Pass portfolio with plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass, which has reached a new milestone of over 25 million subscribers," the press release reads.

Microsoft plans to buy Activision-Blizzard in a massive $69 billion deal to bolster the Xbox service ecosystem. But not every Activision game will become an Xbox exclusive.

Today Microsoft shook up the video games industry. Like Bethesda before it, Microsoft is also buying Activision-Blizzard in the largest acquisition in the history of the games market. The deal was made specifically to secure billion-dollar content like Call of Duty, Warcraft, Overwatch, an Diablo as Xbox ramps up towards the multiverse.

According to reports from Bloomberg, not every future Activision-Blizzard game will become an Xbox exclusive. Some games will also release on PlayStation, but a portion of games will indeed be kept off of Nintendo and PlayStation platforms. It's likely that Call of Duty titles will still release on PlayStation platforms--at least existing titles like Warzone and Overwatch will remain the connective free-to-play tissue that binds PlayStation, Xbox, and PC together in a billion-dollar powerhouse synergy.

More Diablo 2 (D2R) runewords revealed! CHECK THEM OUT.

The first new runeword in the last 17 years has been revealed...and it's pretty impressive.

YouTuber Dbrunski125 revealed one of the new runewords coming to Diablo 2 Resurrected and it's actually very powerful. The runeword is called Unbending Will (Fal+Io+Ith+Eld+El+Hel) and it's basically a budget-friendly Breath of the Dying.

Xbox Series S consoles are currently in stock at Amazon for $299.

Microsoft's next-gen consoles have been tremendously rare throughout 2020 and even 2021, but it looks like stock is starting to free up somewhat. Retailer Amazon currently has Xbox Series S systems available for the $299 MSRP. There's no crazy markups or scalper prices here--just the standard consumer costs set by Microsoft.

A big thing to remember is the Series S is a digital-only system and the only way to expand its SSD storage is with second-hand attachments or expensive external storage. It's also a lot less powerful than the $499 Xbox Series X with only 4TFLOPS of GPU power, 10 GB of GDDR6 RAM, and a resolution target of 1440p 60FPS that upscales for 4K UHD TVs and monitors.

Call of Duty's billion-dollar free-to-play sensation Warzone suffers as Q&A testers remain on strike.

Dozens of Activision-Blizzard developers are still on strike and the work stoppage is affecting one of the company's most valuable digital assets: Call of Duty Warzone. Workers initially went on strike as protest against executive decisions to fire key Raven Software contractors. New reports from The Washington Post's Shannon Liao indicate that the strike is still ongoing as Activision has yet to overturn its decision, and the strike is biting into the quality of Warzone itself.

QA testers are among the developers currently on strike. Raven Software's quality assurance testers are vital to the upkeep and maintenance of Call of Duty Warzone because they identify bugs, issues, and in-game glitches. Now that Q&A isn't there to point things out, Warzone is riddled with bugs to the point where gamers call the mode broken. All of Warzone's connected games--Modern Warfare, Cold War, and the latest Vanguard--are affected by the QA strike.

One Activision-Blizzard shareholder is prepared to rid itself of all stocks if certain demands aren't met.

Fidelity International has warned $ATVI that it is prepared to sell $62 million worth of stock if the company doesn't heed specific demands. As per reports from The Wall Street Journal, Fidelity International has sent a list of demands to the controversial video games publisher. If the demands aren't met, sources tell The WSJ, then Fidelity International will not only divest all of its Activision-Blizzard holdings but also "enlist the support of other shareholders."

Fidelity has been a stakeholder for at least 22 years and was once Activision-Blizzard's fourh-largest shareholder. Under the Fidelity Contrafund, it owned over 11 million shares worth $1 billion in March 2021, but sold over 90% of its shares following Activision-Blizzard's sexual abuse controversy.

Reports say that Sony has filed a new patent for backwards compatibility on the PlayStation 5. The patent isn't actually new, but a revised version of older patents that stretch back to 2015.

Loud proclamations have been made about Sony's recently-published backwards compatibility patent and gamers believe it could push Sony one step closer to PS3 emulation on the PS5. The latest patent, which concerns Sony's use of cycle counters matching spoof clocks to adjust CPU and GPU frequencies for error-free backwards compatibility emulation, isn't entirely new.

This is the latest in a long line of patents; Sony has been filing this particular backwards compatibility patent--Backward Compatibility Through Use of Spoof Clock and Fine Grain Frequency Control--since 2015. There are 24 related patents (family members) released in multiple regions like Taiwan, Japan, Europe, and even China. This patent is a continuation of all those old patents (which are in turn continuations of their forebears).

Rockstar Games may have delayed the new next-gen version of GTA V by as much as two months.

A bit ago, Rockstar Games pushed its GTA V Expanded & Enhanced version to March 2022. Now according to Portuguese Rockstar news tracker Matheusvictorbr, it's possible GTA V could be delayed as far as May 2022 on PS5 and Xbox Series X.

"I received some information recently regarding the title: Grand Theft Auto V: Expanded And Enhanced: The development was complicated. At the moment its [release] is still in March, but there are great chances that it will be delayed to April/May," Mathheus said on Twitter.

This impressive Skyrim demo in Unreal Engine 5 shows what The Elder Scrolls VI might look like on next-gen hardware.

The Elder Scrolls 6 is still a far ways off, but we do know the game will be running on Bethesda's new upgraded Creation Engine 2.0 to push new high-end photogrammetrical textures and visuals. We've only seen a brief cinematic snippet from 2018 and a few teases, but modders are using Unreal Engine 5 optimizations to show what could be possible with the new Elder Scrolls.

Environment artist Christian Gomm recently made a stellar demo recreation of Skyrim in UE5 that uses custom assets and Nanite tech, with polygons ranging from 100,000 to 15 million triangles.

Gamers have discovered multiple PS3 games on the PS5 storefront, kicking off mass hype for native PS3 backward compatibility on PS5. However our research indicates that this may not be the case.

PS3 games are reportedly coming to PS5 via Sony's new PlayStation Spartacus subscription. However, the most recent reports from Video Games Chronicle are not connected to this plan.

PS3 games recently showed up on the PS5 storefront with an actual price tag. This kicked off speculation that PS3 games could be coming to PS5 as purchasable, natively backward-compatible games. Sadly, we have evidence that some of the PS3 games that show up on the PS5 store are remnants of PlayStation Now's old rental subscription plan.

Konami's new Castlevania NFTs have been a big success with over $164,000 USD earned so far.

Note: All figures current at the time of writing.

Konami's NFTs are doing much better than Ubisoft's Quartz NFTs. The publisher has sold its limited-edition Castlevania NFTs for a total of 49 WETH, or about $164,535 USD. The data we've collected shows a highly speculative market with the intent of re-selling and collecting. The most expensive NFT was the Castlevania - Dracula's Castle Pixel Art which sold for over $25,000, and the lowest is Castlevania - Dagger VS Frankenstein & Igor that sold for $7,380.

God of War has released on PC with thunderous acclaim and popularity, amassing tens of thousands of players in its first day of sale.

Sony's new God of War release on PC further cements a new cross-platform era for its once-console exclusive games. The gambit appears to be paying off quite well. God of War in particular has peaked at 49,411 players on Steam (as per SteamDB figures). God of War reviews are also overwhelmingly positive with a 97% approval rating.

Sales of God of War on Steam are estimated to be up to 217,000, but also remember the game is being sold on the Epic Games Store as well. We might get official numbers from Sony soon, but God of War 2018 has sold 19.5 million units as of August 2021.

343 Industries will finally starting reducing Halo Infinite's microtransactions to make cosmetics and collectibles more fairly priced.

Halo Infinite has been over-monetized since it released on December 8. There have been $20 bundles that include paltry value with one piece of armor and other meager customizables (some didn't have any armor at all), and 343i was even charging $5 for basic armor colors. Now more than 41 days later, 343i says it will start dropping prices; the store will be adjusted starting this Tuesday, January 18, studio head of design Jerry Hook says.

The design head also says 343i will be experimenting with monetization throughout the coming months, but there's really no need for this. Blanket price reduction is what gamers have been clamoring over and a significant portion of Infinite's controversies have been around microtransactions, the weird progression system, and the armor cores--all of which serve long-term monetization.

Anyone that plays Call of Duty: Vanguard, Warzone Pacific (or before it was called that, Call of Duty: Warzone) knows that there are major issues with the game. It's not a mess like Battlefield 2042, but there are fixes that the developers need to do -- and now Activision is addressing that, exactly.

In a new tweet on the official Twitter account for Call of Duty, the developer has a "message to our community" that takes in the criticism gamers have over the franchise, and that the teams have fixes and improvements on the way. Activision said: "We wanted to take a minute to talk about fixing the game. We hear you, and we feel your frustrations. Our teams are hard at work addressing the issues that are being experienced across Vanguard, Warzone, and Modern Warfare".

"Updates are being deployed as quickly as possible. We want everyone to have a seamless experience, no matter which game, game mode or platform you play on. Your feedback is a critical part of our development process to make our games the best they can be. Stay posted for real-time updates" while the company says you should follow Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch on Twitter.