Gaming - Page 423

343 Industries is selling Halo 5's microtransaction mascot in a $20 cosmetic bundle in Halo Infinite.

Halo Infinite's new weekly bundle is causing a stir within the community. Rather than stirring with anger, fans are now being shaken by laughter. It turns out the new monetized cosmetics are actually pretty funny to anyone who's played Halo 5.

The source for the irony-laden guffaws is how Mister Chief, the mascot for Halo 5's controversial (but extremely lucrative) lootbox system, is being sold in a cosmetic bundle worth 2000 Credits ($19.99). The Halo Infinite cosmetic bundle includes a Mister Chief AI who literally says "I'll make victory easier to obtain then a higher level requisition," a special AI skin, and various weapon trinkets and skins.

Path of Exile's big new 3.17 expansion has been delayed to February 2022, developer Grinding Gear Games has announced.

PoE's new v3.17 endgame update won't release in January as originally planned. The expansion has been delayed by "at least two weeks" and is now set to release in February 2022, the devs say. This also means the current Scourge League has been extended.

3.17 is anticipated by gamers and makes some big changes, including removing the Prophecy League and the full completing of the massive overhaul of the endgame Atlas system initiated in v3.16.

Reality star Paris Hilton will perform an electronic dance show within her own custom Roblox world, Paris World.

Paris World is coming back for a big New Year's Eve celebration, the star has told Reuters. Fans will soon be able to attend a special show in Paris Hilton's virtual Roblox world, where Hilton will DJ live music streamed over the internet. This show is a big step towards Roblox Corp's metaverse aspirations, which ideally sees users engaging (and spending) in special events from celebrities (like the Travis Scott Astronomical show in Fortnite).

Paris World was originally launched in October 2021 but was quickly made private after multiple hacks. Hilton's Roblox space includes in-game replicas of her lavish mansion and virtual representations of a celebrity lifestyle, including huge mansions, expensive clothing, beauty boutiques, and more.

Valve just released the top-earning Steam games of 2021 in both sales and in-game transactions. Here's a breakdown.

The new top-earning Steam 2021 figures give an idea of how certain games are performing on the PC's biggest sales marketplace. The games are separated into three tiers including platinum, gold, silver, and bronze, the latter of which includes the vast majority of games. A big thing to note is that this isn't a top-10 list that's organized by largest to smallest.

Everything has been randomized by Valve in an effort to protect actual Steam earnings data, which is not reported publicly. This is not a ranked list and just because GTA V is listed first doesn't mean it made the most. The list also includes full game sales and in-game purchases such as microtransactions and DLC. Still, though, we're able to glean a lot about traditional Steam staples and newcomers in 2021.

Final Fantasy XVI is the latest casualty of the COVID-19 delay season.

Square Enix and Yoshi-P's dev team have delayed Final Fantasy XVI's launch by half a year, or six months. Technically this isn't necessarily a delay considering the new high fantasy game never had an actual release date, but the team now says it will launch sometime in late 2022.

In a recent Twitter post, the ever-polite Yoshi-P outlined the main reasons for the interruptions. It's really the same as most developers: COVID-19 has scattered workers remotely across the globe, leading to a decentralized team. Different time zones makes collaboration with Square Enix's Tokyo office difficult and Yoshi-P says some assets have been delayed and even cancelled.

Tencent and Remedy inked a huge multi-year deal to expand its new free-to-play online game franchise.

Remedy Entertainment has found a partner for its new online game (codenamed Vanguard), and it happens to be the biggest games titan on Earth. The deal is an interesting one: Remedy will handling development and publishing across worldwide markets outside of China, and Tencent will localize the game for Asian markets. Both companies will have their own independent budgets--which is great for Remedy, who wants to self-publish more games--and will also share revenues with one another.

What's interesting is that Tencent gained licensing rights to create a mobile game based on Vanguard. This means the IP is pretty big, and likely set in the shared Alan Wake-Control universe. Having such a high-profile games giant interested in a new wholly-owned franchise is something special.

First George R.R. Martin helped with Elden Ring, now famed fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson is also helping another popular game studio make a new project.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most renowned fantasy writers in the business, having worked on The Wheel of Time and created multiple universes (or Cosmeres) with The Stormlight Archive, and Mistborn series of books. Now he's also helping write a video game.

Sanderson revealed that he's been working on a video game for the "past several years," but it won't be set in one of his franchises. The game is entirely new, similar to Elden Ring with George R.R. Martin's lore contributions. This means it's likely a brand new IP considering other established fantasy RPGs like Dragon Age (and even Elden Ring) all have their own established lore and fictional historical bases set in place.

Embracer Group's most important game-related acquisition in 2021 isn't an actual game developer.

Video game animation expert DIGIC is Embracer's most valuable acquisition of 2021. DIGIC has worked on cinematics for practically every game-related IP in the industry from Halo to Final Fantasy, and will bring its expertise to Saber Interactive's growing segment powerhouse. Under Embracer, DIGIC will continue its work-for-hire projects and also work organically with Saber Interactive and other Embracer-owned segments (including Gearbox) on both game projects as well as multimedia endeavors, including Gearbox's transmedia ambitions.

"This acquisition is unique because the skillset is so complimentary to what we do, and it's something that we're lacking, not only internally within Saber but within the Group as a whole," said Saber boss Matthew Karch.

Global investment banking firm Goldman Sachs now owns more shares in CD Projekt Group than the Polish company's longstanding president and joint CEO Adam Kicinski.

As reported in a new investor relations release, Goldman Sachs now owns 6.8% of CD Projekt Group voting rights or 4,224,065 of total rights. The financial institution is now the fifth leading shareholder in CD Projekt Group, beating out company president Adam Kicinski.

The breakdown of shares is: 2.07% from securities lending, 4.19% from equity-based swap contracts, and 0.53% voting rights assigned to shares. More voting rights gives the institution a greater foothold into corporate decision making.

Microsoft is bringing the metaverse to Xbox, but their approach will remain the same as it is now: Put gamers at the center of everything.

Microsoft has built a billion-dollar service empire out of one core concept: Gamer-centric delivery. First Microsoft used Windows to connect Xbox consoles to PC, then they created Project xCloud to deliver games to laptops, phones, and tablets. Now they're using services--what they're best at--to deliver games on multiple platforms. The ethos that drives this ever-spinning billion-dollar flywheel (Xbox gaming made $15 billion in FY21) is basically this: "What's good for gamers is good for a company."

This makes sense and is perfectly rational, if not obvious. Xbox is a gaming division, so it behooves Microsoft to put gamers first (and what are gamers anyway other than engaged consumers?). Microsoft is also applying this concept to its nebulous plans for the metaverse, a new emerging trend that should incorporate all of Xbox's core strengths into one virtualized ecosystem of products, services, content, and most importantly, connectivity.

Treyarch is the latest Activision-Blizzard game developer to speak out against harassment, issuing a statement that decries many of the things its parent is accused of.

As Raven Software and other Blizzard employees continue their labor strike protest and make moves to formally unionize, Treyarch is also joining the fray to denounce harassment.

While Treyarch doesn't explicitly mention Activision-Blizzard, it's not hard to read between the lines; the billion-dollar games publisher faces multiple serious allegations against it regarding workplace misconduct, including sexual harassment, pay discrimination, and decades of "frat boy culture".

NVIDIA has done something a little -- well, alright... a lot -- different these holidays. The company has created the world's largest virtual winter wonderland experience inside of Minecraft.

The visual masterpiece was built by specialist artist Ushio Tokura, using NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs for real-time ray tracing that takes the lighting in Minecraft to the next level. It enables reflections, shadows, and other realistic lighting effects inside of the winter wonderland.

The world's largest virtual winter wonderland experience was created by NVIDIA and "Built by specialist artist Ushio Tokura using NVIDIA's GeForce RTX GPUs. Real-time ray tracing stunningly simulates the physical behaviour of light, enabling reflections, shadows and other realistic lighting effects, as visitors are transported to a world offering a full winter wonderland and Santa's grotto experience. The world will offer an opportunity to raise funds for NVIDIA's charity partner, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity (GOSH Charity)".

The Matrix Resurrections is now hours away from release, with Neo and Trinity now inside of Fortnite -- in the form of some Matrix-themed emotes and some skins.

Fortnite now has Neo's infamous bullet-dodging from The Matrix in the form of a new Neo Bullet Time Emote, while there's also the Trinity Kick Emote. On top of that, we have the new Sentinel glider which you can earn through the Winterfest event, as well as a new gun wrap in two varieties: Ones and Zeroes.

It's very, very, VERY unfortunate that there's no official Neo and Trinity skin... I mean, Keanu Reeves is literally already in the game with an official John Wick skin in Fortnite.

AYANEO has just teased its next-gen AYA NEO 2022 handheld gaming device, and that the next-gneeration Windows gaming handheld will feature "High Performance AMD Cores".

In a new tweet the handheld gaming company teased a silhouette of its next-gen AYA NEO 2022 handheld gaming console, and along with the new high-performance AMD cores AYANEO tease that its new handheld will also have "cutting-edge innovations". We should expect some big upgrades in the SoC and display, with some new Zen 3 and RDNA 2 silicon grunt.

The current-gen AYA NEO 2021 has an AMD Ryzen 7 4800U APU with 8 cores and 16 threads at up to 4.2GHz, while the GPU side of things is handled by an AMD Radeon Vega 8 at up to 1.75GHz. It has 16GB of LPDDR4X-4266 RAM, 512GB and 1TB NVMe SSD options, and a 7-inch 1280 x 800 IPS-based display.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla will stretch into 2022, but Ubisoft has big things for the franchise in 2023 and beyond.

Today Ubisoft shared a special teaser to celebrate Assassin's Creed Day. The small hint is centered around Assassin's Creed Infinity, the next game in the series. Reports say Infinity isn't just a name, but an adjective that describes a never-ending Assassin's Creed game. Similar to Halo Infinite becoming a portal for all future Halo games, it looks like Ubisoft is doing the same with the Assassin's Creed franchise.

The teaser is short but sweet, telling fans that the series has an "exciting' future beyond Assassin's Creed Valhalla. That strongly indicates Infinity won't be ready until at least 2023, especially since Valhalla is getting a second season pass in 2022, starting with its huge new Dawn of Ragnarok expansion.

Halo Infinite's new $20 cosmetic pack looks extremely similar to Marvel's Iron Man.

343i is apparently trying to capitalize on someone else's billion-dollar IP, but unlike Fortnite, neither 343 Industries nor Microsoft have attained the rights to do so. The new $20 Fire and Frost cosmetic pack includes armor skins that are instantly recognizable to Marvel fans. The Vermilion Fire skin is an almost perfect match to the old-school red-and-gold Iron Man getup worn by Tony Stark in countless comics and a galaxy of films.

While this isn't exactly grounds for a copyright lawsuit, Halo fans seem eager to buy the cosmetic pack. Enticing players with fancy new armor coatings isn't new, but it also helps that Halo Infinite's base armor colors are faded and drab, while the premium Iron Man-esque skin is shiny, new, and visually impressive. Who doesn't want to play as Iron Man in their favorite shooter?

Horizon Forbidden West will reportedly require up to nearly 100GB of install space on PlayStation 5, database trackers report.

The amazing graphics and huge open worlds of Guerrilla Games' new Horizon sequel may come at a hefty storage cost. Reports from data trackers suggest Horizon Forbidden West may clock in at 96GB on the PS5, which is roughly 14% of its available 667GB of useable SSD storage.

This is par for the course for higher-end next-gen games, even with the PS5's built-in Kraken compression technology that's able to shrink file sizes (and the SSD's ability to load up assets as they're needed).

Embracer Group has made six major acquisitions in December 2021, rounding out its portfolio of content to include practically every medium that gamers, nerds, and fans know and love.

Embracer Group is one of the mightiest forces in the games industry. The company has expanded far beyond gaming, though, and includes film, TV, and now board/card games and comics. This month Embracer made a bid to purchase Asmodee, one of the largest producers of board and card games in the world, for $3 billion.

And just today Embracer bought Dark Horse Comics, the iconic company that sourced heavy-hitting series and films like Sin City, 300, Hellboy, Duckman, The Mask, Alien vs Predator, Timecop, and The Umbrella Academy.

Embracer Group just secured the founders of legendary sports game mavens at Tiburon Entertainment.

Embracer Group just purchased Shiver Entertainment, a 17-person indie studio located in Miami, Florida mostly known for making ports like Mortal Kombat 11 on Switch, and other work-for-hire projects. The buyout also includes two of the most influential people in the industry: John Schappert and Jason Andersen, who, in 1994, founded Tiburon. If you grew up in the 90s and loved sports games, odds are you're familiar with that name.

Shortly after leaving Visual Concepts, the team behind Madden NFL '94 and '95, Schappert and Andersen formed Tiburon. EA took a chance on the studio and gave them NFL '96 and '97, and Tiburon has handled EA's legendary sports licenses including seventeen iterations of the beloved NCAA Football series.

The Embracer Group has entered an agreement to buy the North American publishing arm of MMORG-maker Perfect World Entertainment for $125 million.

Shortly after its Asmodee acquisition, Embracer has snapped up another diversified games company. This time it's Perfect World Entertainment, a publishing division that's responsible for key free-to-play MMOs like D&D Neverwinter and Star Trek Online.

Embracer has offered Perfect World Europe $125 million ($60m in cash, $65m in Class B shares) for the Redwood City, California publishing division and Los Gatos, California-based Cryptic Studios, the team behind the aforementioned online games. Perfect World will join Gearbox Entertainment's publishing division as a new subsidiary.