Gaming - Page 420

Following the reports of Dying Light 2 being 10x as long as Breath of the Wild, Techland jumps in to add much-needed perspective on their new open-world game.

Dying Light 2 is a huge game--the biggest Techland has made--that can last up to 500 hours if you do and see everything in the game. If you're not a completionist and just want to play the main storyline, you're looking at around 20 hours of playtime. The developer also says that it'll take roughly 80 hours to beat the main story and complete all the side quests, which is about 60 hours worth of optional missions, quests, and content.

If you're a hardcore enthusiast then you can spend hundreds of hours in Dying Light 2. Techland says the 500+ hour figure comes from QA testers who have done everything possible in the game; every quest, side quest, multiple choice endings, uncovering the entire map and finding item and collectible within the huge world.

Take-Two Interactive made video games history with its recent $12.7 billion Zynga buyout offer. For context, we've compiled a list of the top video games buyouts and acquisitions throughout the years.

Today, GTA parent Take-Two decided to offer $12.7 billion for mobile games developer Zynga. This is the largest buyout in the history of the video games industry and would create one of the most powerful gaming powerhouses on the planet. To put things into perspective we've put together a list of the major billion-dollar video game company acquisitions and buyouts.

The data includes deals all the way back to 2005, when Namco bought Bandai for $1.7 billion, to the present day with Embracer's huge $3.1 billion offer for Asmodee and the record-breaking Take-Two-Zynga combine.

Take-Two Interactive is prepared to pay up to $12.7 billion for mobile games titan Zynga. The deal represents the largest acquisition buyout in video games history.

Grand Theft Auto and NBA 2K parent company Take-Two Interactive is planning to make video games history with the single largest buyout of all time. The publisher has made an offer to buyout Zynga's shares for $9.86, which implies a total price of $12.7 billion.

Take-Two's offer for Zynga beats Tencent's $10.2 billion buyout of Supercell in 2016 and Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax in 2021.

Indie game sensation Rust has now sold over 12.4 million copies on consoles and PC since release, developer Face Punch confirms.

Rust is putting some seriously good numbers. The game has sold over 12.481 million copies on all platforms since originally launching in December 2013, and a staggering 1.111 million copies of DLC have also been purchased by gamers across the globe. These are huge numbers for any indie game and put Rust behind behemoths like Stardew Valley. Other surprising stats include 1.1 billion hours of Twitch streams and 4.2 million hours broadcasted on the platform.

"2021 was an exceptional year for Rust in almost all regards, after 8 years of continuous development Rust has gone from strength to strength. In 2021 Rust blew up on Twitch, we saw record-high player counts, released Voice Props DLC Pack, World revamp, missions, freight trains, underwater labs, gestures, submarines, MLRS and so much more," the developer wrote in a Steam Community update post.

The Order: 1886 could be getting some sort of re-release on PlayStation 5, new trademarks indicate.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed a new trademark for The Order: 1886, possibly indicating a PS5 remake, remaster, or director's cut could be in the works. The new trademark was filed in December 2021 and is apparently separate from the original February 2015 filing designated for the PS4 release. Like the older filing, this trademark is for "downloadable video game software."

However it's just as likely the trademark was simply filed in order to continue selling the older PS4 game on the PlayStation Network. The trademark's specimen image shows a PS Store listing for The Order: 1886 on PS4. Previous SIE trademarks include God of War Ragnarok, which was recently confirmed as the name of the new GoW sequel, and the Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection, which is due out later this month on PlayStation 5.

Changing Halo Infinite's awkward armor core customization system could take many months of work and is no simple feat.

Before the game's release, 343 Industries was surprisingly transparent about Halo Infinite. Now the studio has stayed mostly quiet as it faces significant backlash from the community. Most of the controversy surrounds Halo Infinite's aggressive monetization system, which is built on a hamstrung progression system that takes freedom away from players to funnel them into piecemeal mTX purchases.

The armor core system is mostly to blame. Unlike previous Halo games, Halo Infinite's armor pieces are restricted to specific cores. Some helmets, shoulder pads, etc are exclusive to specific armor cores. Think of it like Fallout 4's Power Armor; there's a main body unit, or a "core", and various pieces that you can equip to the core frame. The result is a confusing system where gamers are buying and earning cosmetic armor pieces for cores they may not have unlocked or actually want to use.

Dark Souls designer Hidetaka Miyazaki will apparently lend his unique vision to the Armored Core series.

It looks as if FromSoftware's new Armored Core game is back on track. One ResetERA user claims to have taken a NDA consumer survey that showed screenshots and a snippet of gameplay, including boss fights and world exploration. There's a description that we've transcribed below, but it's worth mentioning the original purported screenshot has a spelling error, and the story also focuses on melange, which is the name of the spice in Dune. This could possibly result in copyright infringement.

The leak describes all the hallmarks of Dark Souls, including hulking bosses, an intriguing story arc with layered lore, and brutal survival combat. FromSoftware is also blending the distinct third-person action combat and customization the Armored Core series is known for, including a staggering array of swappable mech parts and gear.

The new Knights of the Old Republic remake will reportedly have action-based combat similar to Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Apsyr Media's upcoming KOTOR remake will apparently shed itself of the default turn-based dice-roll combat from the original 2003 game. Instead, the developers are eyeing at a more player-friendly mass-market approach to hack-and-slash Jedi combat and will mimic the upgraded combat systems used in action games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Final Fantasy XV, NiOh, God of War, and Devil May Cry.

The news comes from a recent episode of the Defining Duke podcast. Matty states that KOTOR remake will have action combat with multiple modes, similar to FF7R's active and action modes.

Evidence of a new Switch model capable of native 4K gaming output has been mounting for years now, however gamers may have to wait until 2024 before the console is ready.

Nintendo's next-gen Switch Pro 4K-ready console will release in 2024, not in 2022, analyst firm Ampere Analysis predicts. "I'm not expecting a Switch Pro in 2022. We have a next-gen Nintendo console in our forecasts for late 2024, so I'm not convinced a 'Pro' model is going to appear at all," analyst Piers Harding-Rolls told GamesIndustry.biz.

If Harding-Rolls is accurate, the new Switch could kick off a separate generation and may not be be an extension of the current Switch hardware environment. We've postulated that the new 4K-ready Switch could utilize NVIDIA's new 8nm Orin-based Tegra SoC that's used in its DRIVE autonomous vehicle platform.

Dying Light 2 is a massive game that will take up to 500+ hours to completely master.

Techland's new Dying Light 2 Stay Human sequel apparently features a staggering amount of content. Gamers can expect to play for multiple hundreds of hours (yes, really) to fully 100% the post-apocalyptic survival game. There's some real context needed here: Although Dying Light 2's complete rate is about 10x Breath of the Wild story runs, the developers say that simly beating the game will take a lot less time.

"To fully complete Dying Light 2 Stay Human, you'll need at least 500 hours-almost as long as it would take to walk from Warsaw to Madrid," Techland said today.

Half-Life, Valve's masterpiece that's regarded as the best PC game of all time, is getting reborn with a new raytracing mod.

Skilled modders are completely overhauling Half-Life's in-game visuals with a new raytracing mod, similar to the recent RT updates to old-school shooter Quake 2. The result is a radical change in overall interior and exterior lighting and shadow effects--some of which are as different as light and day.

343 Industries has been hiring for a new monetization designer for Halo Infinite since October, job listings indicate.

Halo Infinite's aggressive microtransaction storefront could be getting an overhaul. 343i currently wants to (and has been wanting to for months) hire a monetization designer to help create a more engaging and sustainable storefront. In other words, 343i may want to make some big changes to the game's current aggressively-priced cosmetic microtransactions.

The mTX specialist will "improve and develop new sustainable monetization systems in line with our vision for Halo Infinite and our respect for our players time as well as their monetary investment."

Five years after Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's release on Switch, Nintendo is reportedly planning a new Mario Kart reveal for 2022.

Mario Kart 8 is the top-selling Switch game of all time. It was originally released in 2014 on the failed Wii U platform, then re-released a month after the Switch's 2017 launch. In the past five years, the game has amassed over 37 million sales as of September 30f and has likely moved 1-2 million units on top of this during the holiday season. Despite these huge numbers, it's high time for a new Mario Kart.

According to Kantan Games analyst Dr. Serkan Toto, Nintendo is indeed working on Mario Kart 9 and it could be announced this year. "I am aware Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still selling very well on the Nintendo Switch, but Mario Kart 9 is in active development (and comes with a new twist) and Nintendo could tease it this year," Toto told Games Industry.biz.

A new South Park game is in development from a team that worked on The Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole, and it could be a FPS.

Question Games, the indie studio behind online multiplayer game The Blackout Club, is co-developing a new South Park game alongside South Park Digital Studios. Given Question Games' pedigree for FPS titles, it's likely that the new project could also be a first-person shooter, and if so, it could bring back the glory days of South Park 64's hilarious multiplayer (remember the cow gun?).

What's even better is that Question Games' dev team has past experience with South Park. The studio has Jordan Thomas, an ex-Ubisoft dev who served as Creative Consultant on Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole (with South Park Digital Studios), in its ranks. Thomas also designed the seventh level of BioShock at Irrational Games, and directed BioShock 2 at 2K Marin.

Halo Infinite's Big Team Battle mode is still broken...and yet the game keeps serving up BTB challenges. Now frustrated gamers are calling 343 Industries out.

Fortnite recently went down for a few hours and players received some nice freebies as compensation. Meanwhile, Halo Infinite's Big Team Battle mode has been broken for over a month and gamers don't get anything in return. In fact, they keep getting challenges for Big Team Battle that they can't really complete. The solution is to grind or buy challenge swaps from the in-game shop.

This bitter pill was recently brought up on the Halo Reddit and quickly received over 23,000 upvotes. Gamers would like something in return, of course, but more than anything they want the mode to be fixed and to have the challenge system overhauled. That last bit probably won't happen for a long while.

GameStop is going all-in on play-to-earn blockchain gaming and NFT trading.

Brick-and-mortar store GameStop is betting big on nascent and speculative digital technologies like blockchain in a bid to supplement its sluggish retail business. GameStop's new blockchain business segment has over 20 people, sources tell The Wall Street Journal, and the unit has been confirmed by recent company job listings.

GameStop has a multi-faceted approach to web3. The company plans to open an NFT marketplace where users can buy and sell digital non-fungible tokens on the popular Ethereum blockchain. Alongside NFT creators, which GameStop is currently trying to woo, the retailer would take a cut on every auction and sale.

Sony is powering the critical camera and virtual production technologies needed to build Epic's grand metaverse.

The metaverse is still many years away, but Epic Games and Sony are laying the foundations right now. Sony recently supplied the Epic Games Lab with its new high-end VENICE Camera and Crystal LED B-series panel to fuel the games-maker's virtual production initiatives. Epic's Unreal Engine is used for a number of productions including video games and filmmaking, the latter of which is largely transitioning to virtualized production that limits set-making and specific interactions during the global pandemic.

"What's been interesting to see is how believable the images you see on the new panels, because of the resolution, because of the color accuracy. When we see it through the VENICE camera, the fact that these two are matched well together, really does make you believe you're looking at a realm image as oppose to a total illusion...which is basically what virtual production is,"said Epic Games Chief Technology Officer Kim Liberi.

Sony's next-gen PS5-powered VR headset is coming soon, but the company isn't chasing megaton sales with its latest HMD.

PSVR sales data shows one clear trend: PS4 gamers aren't too eager to bite on virtual reality. From 2016 to 2022, the PSVR has sold 5 million units globally, comprising about a 4.3% attach rate with the current PS4 shipment volume. Adoption has been very slow for a number of reasons. The $349 bundle price is a major deterrent, as is the need for extra space and having to deal with a snake's nest of cords facilitated by an extra compute box needed for image processing.

Sony's next-gen PSVR 2 solves a lot of these issues. The PS5-powered headset has a single USB-C cord that plugs directly into the console. There's no extra breakout processing box or a bunch of HDMI cords this time.

Half-Life: Alyx is the very best VR experience I've ever had, and one of the best gaming experiences that I've ever had, too -- but now that Sony has announced its next-gen PlayStation VR 2 headset, new rumors of Half-Life: Alyx emerge.

A new rumor teases that Valve's VR exclusive Half-Life: Alyx could appear on Sony's new PlayStation VR 2 headset, with XboxEra co-founder @Shpeshal_Nick tweeting: "From what I've been told, they have. Not sure when it's happening though. I thought this was one of those open secrets?"

This would be a huge deal for Sony as it would instantly deliver them one of, if not the very best VR experience possible, all ready for their PSVR 2 headset release. On the PC you require a dedicated VR headset to play Half-Life: Alyx, but if you've already got the PS5 and then buy the PSVR 2 -- you're ready to rock and roll, and hold a crowbar -- in Half-Life: Alyx on PlayStationVR 2.

Techland released a new video showcasing Dying Light 2's new leaner and meaner skill trees.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human's skill tree is much more condensed than the first game that cuts a lot of the extraneous fat. The first thing gamers will notice is Dying Light 2's skill system only has two trees, Combat and Agility. The original Dying Light had three trees at the start--Power, Survivor, and Agility--with two more trees added with expansions.

Apart from the overall reduction in volume, the other big change is how the tree is mostly made up of actual activated abilities. There appears to be a lot less passive perks this time around and a larger emphasis on moves that actually have a more tangible effect in the game, e.g. bashing through obstacles and wall-running.