Gaming News - Page 418

Capcom isn't ready to commit to $69.99 pricing for its next-gen games just yet, and instead will monitor industry trends and data to make a decision.

Big publishers like Take-Two, EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Sony have established a new $69.99 price for PS5 and Xbox Series X games (they've also started to cut out free next-gen upgrades). Other games-makers like Capcom are hesitant to raise the price tag of their games and want to see how the market reacts to the new schemes. Remember that publishers still expect most of their game sales to be on current-gen PS4 and Xbox One consoles due to the high install base.

In a recent investors Q&A, Capcom management was asked outright if a price hike was planned. The executives responded: "For new titles, we would like to set prices that are appropriate, based on market data."

Capcom's latest franchise sales figures show strong growth in some of gaming's most powerful IPs, including Monster Hunter and Resident Evil.

Capcom kicked off its FY2021 period with a massive spike in game sales. Q1 net sales revenue was up 104% to 48.2 billion yen, driven by a staggering 13.3 million games sold during the period. Resident Evil made up over half of these quarterly sales with 7 million units sold digitally and physically.

Taking a closer look at Capcom's top 5 franchises and we see clear trends that help define the company's long-term business. While the new RE Village mostly made up total RE sales growth, Capcom did sell a bunch of older games like RE5, RE6, and RE7. Meanwhile, sales of Monster Hunter World have slowed down to 500,000 units during Q1, bringing total game sales to 17.3 million.

Capcom's top-selling Resident Evil franchise moved a huge 7 million units in its Q1 period, the largest QoQ growth in the last 3 years.

With 4.5 million units shipped to date, Resident Evil Village has helped supercharge overall franchise sales in a critical post-pandemic period. Capcom's latest sales figures show the horror series has now sold 117 million units worldwide, with 7 million RE titles sold in the Q1 period from March - June 2021.

In fact, Resident Evil made up over half of Capcom's total game sales for the quarter. The company managed to sell 13.3 million copies of games during Q1'21, and most of the revenues from these sales were digital.

Diablo II Resurrected's upcoming open beta will kick off next week on all platforms, allowing console players to experience the legendary aRPG for the first time ever.

Diablo II Resurrected's release is right around the corner and the devs are holding two separate playtests this month: One early access test from August 13-16 that's exclusive to anyone who pre-orders the game, and another open beta from August 20-23 where anyone can join. The open beta will be offered on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S, and PC via Battle.net. Sadly there won't be any tests for the Switch.

These tests are multiplayer-only and offline singleplayer won't be offered. Necro and assassin classes won't be playable and only Acts I & II are playable, but console gamers will get to try Diablo II with a controller. This is a big deal for console players like myself who have always wanted to play D2 with a controller; Blizzard did it back in the day with Diablo 1 on the original PlayStation and again with Diablo III, so D2 was just the missing link.

Respawn confirms a next-gen patch for Apex Legends is currently in development on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles, but there's no ETA just yet.

In a recent Reddit AmA, Respawn confirms Apex Legends will soon run better on PS5 and Series X/S hardware. Exact details are light but we should expect better frame rates, resolution boosts, and ultra-fast loading via each console's respective PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

"Oh man, I wish I had an update to share but we can't say anything definitive at the moment-so can't spoil anything here. Trust us though, it's in the works and we're excited about it too," said Respawn's director of communicators Ryan Rigney.

I don't think anyone saw this coming but Dr Disrespect is making his own game development studio, with Guy "Dr Disrespect" Beahm having a job posting on his own Champion's Club website.

Before he became one of the biggest game streamers on the planet, Beahm actually worked for Call of Duty developer Activision, where he was a level designer. This is a funny tweak on the usual happenings: Dr Disrespect worked for a game developer, became a gigantic "mega influencer" and will now craft his own games at his own studio.

Studios over the last few years especially have been working with these streamers and "mega influencers" to help market their games. Now, not only will a game streamer and influencer have his own studio, but working with other "mega influencers" will only make for what should be one of the most-hyped games until it is eventually released.

Techland confirms Dying Light 2 will support variable refresh rates on Xbox Series X/S consoles and PC, but not on PlayStation 5 due to the system's lack of VRR support.

Dying Light 2 is on the horizon, and Techland re-confirms smooth frame rates on next-gen consoles. The studio now says the game can hit up to 120FPS on variable refresh rate monitors and TVs and even supports ray tracing with dynamic resolution scaling.

"We are developing several options for new generations," Techland Lead Level Designer, Piotr Pawlaczyk tells MP1st. The dev confirms Dying Light 2 will have a Quality and Performance Mode on Xbox Series X hardware that enables RT as well as 60FPS gameplay via VRR.

Halo Infinite may be getting a battle royale mode after all, and it could be somehow linked to the game's campaign mode.

According to new reports from Battlefield informant Tom Henderson, Halo Infinite's new BR mode is connected to the campaign story arc. Exact information is sparse, but sources haven't clarified to Henderson whether or not the battle royale mode has been scrapped. This hybrid approach follows games like Apex Legends and the new Battlefield 2042 that will tell a story with their respective online live services.

Dataminers found sound clips for battle royale in the Halo Infinite preview source code, despite 343i saying in 2019 and later in 2020 that the game wouldn't have a BR mode.

It looks like Valve's new Steam Deck might actually support Microsoft's next-generation operating system, with Windows 11 support teased for the Steam Deck.

One of the biggest hurdles of Windows 11 running on Valve's new Steam Deck is going to be TPM, or the Trusted Platform Module. You can read more on that here, but the news here is that the hardware inside: an AMD Van Gogh APU + RDNA 2 GPU -- can handle TPM, and thus Windows 11 on Steam Deck.

Greg Coomer, Valve Steam Deck designer explains: "There's work looking at TPM just now. We've focused so much on Windows 10, so far, that we haven't really gotten that far into it. Our expectation is that we can meet that".

I still remember pumping countless hours into Duke Nukem 3D back in the 1990s but man, what a mess Duke Nukem Forever turned into... but did you ever hear about Duke Nukem Begins?

Rewinding the clock back to 2008, director Gregor Punchatz was working for Janimation in Dallas, Texas when they were tasked by Gearbox Software to make a tease for Duke Nukem Begins. Duke Nukem Begins would've acted as a back story for Duke, which looks pretty damn cool.

Gregor Punchatz explained: "In 2008, when I was working for the good folks at Janimation in Dallas Tx, we were hired by Gearbox to create a vertical slice (an animated version of what the game will look like) for the game "Duke Nukem Begins", a Duke origin story".