Gaming - Page 454

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".

No Man's Sky is now five years old and Hello Games is still planning more free updates.

No Man's Sky has changed a lot in the last five years. This evolution is one of the games industry's most notorious comeback stories. At launch in 2016, No Man's Sky was underwhelming and kicked off lots of controversy for Hello Games due to missing features and unsupported claims. The team has redeemed themselves with a multitude of free content that's radically transformed the game.

After 16 content updates, No Man's Sky now has everything: multiplayer, base-building, mechs, exotic creatures that you can ride, huge freighters, and even fully-fledged VR on PS4 and PC. Even after five years of content, the team is still planning new ways to build out their sci-fantasy adventure. The next update is Frontiers, which is dropping sometime in 2021. Hello Games says they still have a lot of ideas they want to try in No Man's Sky:

Today Microsoft outlined its plans for a digital stream during Gamescom on August 24, confirming big updates from some of 2021's most anticipated games.

The Xbox Gamescom showcase will kick off with a pre-show on August 24 at 1PM EST, followed by the premiere show at the Opening Night Live celebration on August 25 at 1PM EST. Like E3 2021, the Xbox Gamescom event will be a 100% digital stream focused on the "latest updates and gameplay for some of the biggest games coming soon to Xbox." Bethesda is also hosting a MainStream event on Twitch starting August 26.

For Xbox, it doesn't get any bigger than Halo Infinite. Xbox's Phil Spencer says Infinite's release date hasn't been revealed because it depends on other games. The holiday 2021 period is stacked with huge FPS games like Battlefield 2042 in October, Call of Duty Vanguard (which has yet to be revealed) likely in November, and Halo Infinite, which should also release in November to help celebrate 20 years of the Halo franchise.

Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice gets a free next-gen patch that pushes the Xbox Series S and X consoles to their limits.

Ninja Theory just released a hugely ambitious new patch for Hellblade that supercharges performance and visuals. The game now has three modes, including a 4K 30FPS mode with ray DirectX 12 raytracing turned on and even an 120FPS option.

The modes use a combination of dynamic resolution scaling in order to achieve 60FPS and 120FPS gameplay, as well as 4K 30FPS RT. The optimizations add in higher texture resolution, increased light particle quality and environmental draw distances, and overall boosted levels of detail (LOD).

PlayStation Germany apparently confirms Grand Theft Auto V's next-gen version will hit 4K 60FPS on PlayStation 5.

A new PS Blog post says GTA V can run at 4K 60FPS on PS5. "You have never seen the criminal metropolis Los Santos so beautiful when the skyline shines thanks to a bold graphic update in crisp 4K resolution and you make the city extremely smooth and unsafe thanks to a smooth 60 FPS," the blog post reads.

Officially, Rockstar hasn't said much about GTA V's optimizations. The studio hasn't given out performance targets or confirmed other details like ray tracing, etc. The exact wording has just mentioned a "range of technical improvements, visual upgrades and performance enhancements," and both Take-Two and Rockstar promise GTA V's next-gen version will "take full advantage" of PS5 hardware.

EA has earned over $28 billion from digital revenues in the last 10 years as online earnings eclipse physical sales.

EA's digital empire has grown tremendously in the last 10 years with the expansion of live services and less reliance on physical game sales. Digital revenues, which include live services, subscriptions, and game sales made from online distribution channels, have grown 427% over the ten-year period: EA's FY11 digital revenues were $833 million and made up 22% of yearly net revenues, and by FY21, digital sat at a whopping $4.394 billion and made up 78% of earnings.

This represents a digital net revenues CAGR of 16%. EA's Ultimate Team model is a significant driver of yearly digital revenues, and has made the company over $7.9 billion in the last 8-year period from FY14 to FY21.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are making a new South Park video game as part of a new huge $900 million deal with ViacomCBS.

Viacom CBS just signed a $900 million deal for 14 new South Park direct-to-streaming films and multiple new seasons. The show has been secured for up to season 30 on Viacom's Paramount+ subscription service, and a new video game is currently in the works as well.

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker tell Bloomberg that a new South Park game is part of this agreement. Not much is known about the game other than it's a 3D-based experience and will be developed by the duo's internal studio.

Saber Interactive has delayed the new Evil Dead game until February 2022, but they're adding new features to make it worth the wait.

The new Evil Dead video game looks pretty ambitious. It's a lot like the Friday the 13th multiplayer game except with greater emphasis on PVE survival, and features characters, demons and locales from the entire Evil Dead franchise--as well as the Starz TV show. Add in the development team and online infrastructure of World War Z and the new Evil Dead game is ready for online chaos.

There's just one issue: The game has been delayed a bit to ensure higher quality. Evil Dead is also getting a groovy singleplayer mode so you can still actually play if your friends aren't online.

Ultimate Team is a big part of EA's yearly earnings, and the randomized card packs made the publisher over $1.6 billion in FY21 alone.

EA's Ultimate Team is one of the most powerful monetization forces in the games industry. The business model, which is delivered as part of annualized heavy-hitters like FIFA and Madden, currently represents a significant portion of the publisher's total yearly revenues.

Ultimate Team earnings have grown tremendously over the last decade. Over the last 8 years alone, UT revenues have jumped by over 400% from $318 million in FY14 to a whopping $1.632 billion in FY21. To put this another way, Ultimate Team made up 8.9% of EA's total net revenues in the FY2014 period, and by FY2021, UT made up 29% of net revenues.

Blizzard is still working on a ton of new games, including mobile ports, new IP, and sequels like Diablo IV and Overwatch 2. Some of them are planned to release in 2022.

Back in 2017, then-Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said the team's pipeline was bigger than ever. Now in Activision's Q2 2021 earnings report, key Blizzard executives reiterated that point. Blizzard is working on a number of new projects including fresh IP across new genres.

In Q2 Blizzard's operating margins were 33%, which reflects "investments in the product development against a rich content pipeline". Activision COO Daniel Alegre confirms some of these products will be delivered in 2022:

Activision-Blizzard is making a new Call of Duty mobile game that will "take the franchise to new heights."

Call of Duty Mobile has been a huge boon for Activision. The free-to-play mobile game made $500 million in less than a year, and helped the Call of Duty franchise reach $3 billion in earnings in 2020. COD Mobile is track to rake in over $1 billion in microtransaction spending in 2021. The company isn't satisfied, though. It wants more from the mobile market, and that's why Activision is making another separate Call of Duty mobile game.

"We have established a new internal mobile studio and are aggressively adding mobile resources across several teams, including Beenox and Activision Shanghai. Together, these teams are leading the development of an unannounced new mobile title within the Call of Duty universe that we expect will help take the franchise to new heights,"Activision president and chief operating officer Daniel Alegre said in a Q2'21 earnings call.

Take-Two Interactive has three unannounced remastered games in the works for FY22, and fans speculate Grand Theft Auto III remastered could be one of them.

Based on comments on Take-Two's earnings reports it looks like GTA 3 remastered may not be one of the upcoming games planned for the FY2022 period. There's two reasons for this: The first is the recent announcement of game delays, and the second revolves around Take-Two's expected earnings from Rockstar Games.

First let's tackle the delays. In the Q1'22 call, company CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed Take-Two will has delayed two "sub-core" games:

Take-Two Interactive hasn't adjusted its earnings forecast despite two new game delays.

Take-Two plans to delay two games to a later period in FY22. "As we continue to develop our pipeline, there's been movement in some of our planned releases, including two of our more sub-core titles shifting to later in fiscal 2022 than our prior guidance had contemplated," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said.

The company's unexpectedly strong Q1 performance has helped offset potential yearly earnings disruption from the pushback. Take-Two reiterates its current FY22 guidance of $3.14 - 3.24 billion. Regarding the delays, Zelnick says the teams "needed more time to polish them and make sure the best title they possibly can be."

Fifteen law firms are interested in represented affected shareholders in new securities fraud fraud lawsuits against Activision-Blizzard.

More law firms and attorneys are rallying investors for a new class action securities fraud lawsuit against Activision-Blizzard. The complaints allege the publisher possibly committed securities fraud by withholding information from investors about a new discrimination lawsuit that it's facing.

Following a two-year investigation, the California Dept. of Fair Employment and Housing has filed a discrimination lawsuit against billion-dollar games company Activision. Shortly after news of the lawsuit broke, Activision shares dropped, causing material harm to stakeholders.