Gaming - Page 480

I mean here we are, just enjoying our day or night depending on where you are in the world, and Battlefield leaker Tom Henderson is making you think that EA could surprise us all and have us playing the new Battlefield inside of the next 2 months.

In a new tweet, Henderson shares EA's official Twitter post that announced EA Play Live is coming back on July 22 and to save the date. Henderson tweeted, saying: "We'll likely all be playing Battlefield on this date too"... uh... so EA could just surprise launch Battlefield onto the world like EA did with Apex Legends? Well then...

We might see EA unleash a beta of the new Battlefield, or as I suggested in my news yesterday about the possibility of a surprise trailer drop for Battlefield, where I said: "I could only imagine if EA and DICE had a marketing department that weren't chained to their Big Corporate style BS, could release a Wake Island style demo for the new Battlefield. Now that my friends would set fire to the internet".

Apex Legends has made over $1 billion from monetization in its lifetime with half a quarter to spare.

Apex is supercharging EA's live service business. The F2P battle royale titan has now made over $1 billion from microtransaction earnings faster than EA had originally expected. The game actually hit the milestone with half a quarter to spare, EA says.

"Apex Legends had extraordinary performance in live service revenues in FY22, with 12 million DAUs," EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said.

EA has officially laid the speculation to rest: Battlefield 6 will not be exclusive to next-gen consoles.

In a recent earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirms Battlefield 6 will not be exclusive to next-gen consoles and will also release on PS4 and Xbox One.

Wilson clarified that certain content and features are made possible by next-gen console hardware, but the game will still release on current-gen systems. Battlefield 6 will shine brightest on next-gen hardware thanks to massive improvements from the Frostbite engine, but it hasn't been built fully from the ground up exclusively around this hardware. Wilson says next-gen AI and in-game environmental effects will be made possible on next-gen systems.

It's official: DICE won't reveal Battlefield 6 in May, and the full reveal is set for June.

Today EA confirmed that Battlefield 6 won't be revealed with a surprise announcement or trailer drop this month. Speculation said DICE could stealth drop a new reveal today to underline EA's huge FY2021 earnings report. However, EA's CEO Andrew Wilson re-confirms the game won't be shown off until next month in June.

"Our biggest Battlefield team is working in lock-step for the definitive next-gen experience.

Valve could bring its old-school classics and new games over to consoles in some form...but the company plans to subvert all expectations.

After teasing more singleplayer Half-Life games are on the way, Valve's Gabe Newell is once again stirring up his fan base with soft-spoken words. This time Newell hints that Steam games could eventually show up on console platforms like PlayStation and Xbox.

In a recent on-stage event in what looks like a primary school, Newell was asked a particularly exciting question by a student: "Will Steam be porting any games on consoles or will it stay on PC?"

EA announces its EA Play Live showcase will return July 22 and we should expect heavy hitters to show up.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on games development, but it's also messing up annual game showcases. E3 2021 is all-digital now, and EA's own sizzle event has been pushed back by nearly a month. EA Play Live will now be held on July 22, over a month after E3 2021 premieres on June 12-15.

EA is clearly ramping up big things. We should expect some gigantic titles at EA Play Live including but not limited to:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an incredible game, a system seller for the Nintendo Switch... but what about BotW in the glorious 8K resolution with some enhanced ray-traced graphics. Check it out:

YouTube channel "Digital Dreams" has done just that: got The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild up and running on the PC through the Wii U emulator CEMU, on top of that they ran Revolvere's "REVO ReShade REDUX" shader that adds Pascal Glicher's "Screen-Space Ray Traced Global Illumination" shader for some software-based screen-space ray-tracing effects.

If you already loved Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch, which I found to be an incredible experience in portable mode and not docked -- then running it on the PC through CEMU and cranking the resolution to 8K (!!!) and flicking on juiced-up graphics is music to my ears.

The hype engines for Battlefield are still humming away, but they were injected with a big one today with the official Battlefield Twitter account teasing a June reveal for something Battlefield related.

But that's the official Twitter account... and we all know how bad the marketing department for Battlefield has been over the years, with the Tom "one-man-marketing-team-for-Battlefield" Henderson saying we could be hit with a surprise trailer drop... TOMORROW.

Henderson tweeted out a new poll, saying that tomorrow is a "big day" for Battlefield and that either we get a surprise trailer drop or a confirmation on the June release date.

Roblox Corp's first post-IPO earnings soar on strong daily active user and revenue surges.

Roblox Corp just posted up its Q1 2021 earnings, and the results are quite positive. The company earned $387 million in revenues, up 140% over Q1'20. Operating income is likewise up 140% YoY to $164.5 million, which takes the $51 million expensive of Roblox's direct listing into account.

Roblox DAUs hit 42.1 million), up 79% YoY, and DAUs outside of North America were up 87%. Average Robux spending per daily active user was around $15.48.

Naughty Dog celebrates Uncharted 4'ths fifth anniversary with an interesting retrospective on the game's development.

Uncharted 4 was a major breakthrough for Naughty Dog. The team optimized its internal games engine specifically for the PlayStation 4 and pushed the platform's capabilities to new highs (Naughty Dog did this once again with The Last of Us Part II in 2020). One of the biggest new frontiers Naughty Dog crossed was motion capture.

As confirmed in a recent 5-year retrospective post, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was the first time Naughty Dog used facial capture for its in-game mocap. At the time of writing, Sony's Visual Arts and Services Group is advancing AI-driven motion capture for PS5 using Sony's internal machine learning tech.

Sony's reported move to 6nm may not be enough to free up console stock in 2022 and supply is expected to be limited throughout next year.

The PS5 will be hard to buy from now through 2022, according to new reports from Bloomberg.

Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki recently held a closed-doors meeting with industry analysts and made the following statement: "I don't think demand is calming down this year and even if we secure a lot more devices and produce many more units of the PlayStation 5 next year, our supply wouldn't be able to catch up with demand," sources attending the meeting told Bloomberg.

aThe official Battlefield Twitter account teases a June reveal for the next-gen Battlefield 6, likely during the E3-timed EA Play event.

EA's next-gen Battlefield 6 won't be revealed before the company announces its Q4 earnings report tomorrow (obviously that'd mean the game would be revealed today). Instead, EA and DICE will let the hype and anticipation continue brewing for a few more weeks with a June reveal for the game.

The new Battlefield game is expected to be EA's biggest next-gen splash to date. DICE has been updating its Frostbite engine for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X support for quite some time, complete with next-level physics systems, rendering capabilities, and environmental interactions that will rival any other Battlefield before it. EA's R&D spending is also up to new heights to help power this next-gen push.

Gears of War developer The Coalition is moving to next-gen game development using Unreal Engine 5, and aims to push the new Xbox Series X/S consoles to new heights.

The Coalition today announced it's embracing Unreal Engine 5 to power its new next-gen games. This is a pretty big deal for Xbox and gaming as a whole. The Coalition is known for completely redefining the capabilities of Xbox hardware--they were able to push Gears 5 past PC Ultra settings on Series X, complete with raytracing and 120FPS support--and other Xbox studios will benefit from The Coalition's work thanks to the iterative nature of games development.

The devs say it'll be quite a long time before their next projects are ready, though. "As we look to future games, we're excited to start shifting our resources to next-gen development using Unreal Engine 5. Shifting to a new engine is a big undertaking, so we want to be clear that we will not be announcing any new projects or titles for some time."

Get ready to say Yippee Kay Yay (like the cowboys say) in Verdansk: 1980s supercop star John McClane is about to crash into Call of Duty Warzone.

Warzone is about to become a huge stage for 1980s macho heroes. Rambo is coming to Verdansk on May 20, and now Activision teases Die Hard's John McClane will show up at some point too. The devs put up a fake website for Nakatomi Duct Cleaning complete with an email address for john@nakatomiductcleaning.com.

Here's what the website says:

Activision just made it official: Rambo is coming to Call of Duty Warzone on May 20, likely as a paid skin for the free-to-play BR.

Legendary action hero John Rambo will soon wreak having in Warzone later this month, complete with his signature flaming arrows. Activision just put out a teaser that shows Rambo from First Blood nocking a fiery projectile of death in a jungle backdrop. Raven has yet to announce how Rambo will show up and what the pack will cost, but expect it to be a monetized skin pack of some sort.

Warzone's Verdansk looks like gaming's latest venue for retro 80s crossovers. A bit ago we talked about Activision's motivations for breaking the fourth wall and bringing 1980s action stars over to Warzone. The company essentially wants to follow Fortnite's model and create lots of buzz, in-game revenues, and hype. Activision wants to make its own splash in the Metaverse by using its 100 million-strong Warzone playerbase.

Sony has been working with Nike for a while on PlayStation-themed sneakers, with the companies recently collaborating on the recently-announced PG5 sneakers designed with the aesthetics and feel of the new PlayStation 5. Well, now it's time for Microsoft and Adidas to team up for some Xbox-themed kicks.

According to Complex the companies are collaborating on new Xbox sneakers that will see four different pairs of Xbox sneakers arrive later this year. Complex reports that leaked documents from Adidas tease work-in-progress sneakers designed with the Xbox look and feel in mind, with black/white/neon green colors and of course... the Xbox logo on the heel.

We're told to expect the first pair of Xbox sneakers sometime in June 2021, where they will act as part of a promotional version of Adidas's new Forum Tech Boost style. Later in the year in October, two new Xbox-themed pairs of Adidas Forum Mid will launch, while in November another pair of kicks of the Forum Tech Boost.

Apple is reportedly still working on its ARM-based game console which is something we heard about in July 2020, and now there's more rumor fuel for that fire with news of a Nintendo Switch-like hybrid console in the works.

The news is coming from Korean community website Clien which sees Apple using a new custom SoC with enhanced GPU performance and ray tracing support. This means Apple will not be using one of its current A-series or M-series processors, including the new Apple M2 chip that will be inside of next-gen iDevices later this year and into 2022.

Apple is reportedly negotiating a deal for future games on its portable hybrid console, teaming with Ubisoft according to the rumors. The developer has reportedly been sending out Apple TVs with A14X Bionic chips to developers for testing in preparation for its purported console.

Ubisoft could be gearing up its own Warzone-like ecosystem in The Division, complete with inter-connecting content and integrated cross-game features.

Since launching in 2020, Warzone has amassed 100 million players and made hundreds of millions in monetization. It's a monster for engagement and revenues, and all of gaming's major players are watching. Now it looks like Ubisoft may get in on the action with its own F2P Division game.

Ubisoft recently announced The Division Heartland, a new standalone F2P title on consoles and PC. Ubisoft says that Heartland will deliver a "new perspective on the universe in a new setting," so it'll run parallel to The Division 2 (which is also getting more content. On top of that, Ubisoft is also bringing The Division to mobile devices.

If this new Starfield leaked image is real, then Bethesda is taking inspiration from one of sci-fi's greatest artists.

A new bit of Starfield concept art may have accidentally been posted on Bethesda's content delivery network, giving us an idea of what to expect from the game. The image reveals quite a bit about Starfield's overall aesthetics. The game should blend a mix of old-school dazzling 1970s sci-fi splendor, paying homage to the likes of Kubrick and McQuarrie, but the biggest influence is clearly the legendary artist John Berkey.

The image shows a high-tech watch has the HUD from another purported Starfield leak alongside some very striking doodles. If these doodles are actual ships and crafts featured in the game then Bethesda has been inspired by John Berkey's exotic sci-fantasy art.

Square Enix's new Final Fantasy VII Intergrade game is exclusive to the PlayStation 5 for at least six months, but could come to last-gen consoles, Xbox, and PC after that.

Like the first Final Fantasy VII Remake, the new FF7 Intergrade spin-off starring Yuffie is also PlayStation exclusive. Only this time the game is exclusive to the next-gen PS5, a very hard-to-get system. The deal wasn't formally announced by Sony or Square Enix but instead revealed in a recent gameplay trailer for Intergrade. "Available on PS5 at least six months earlier than any other format," the trailer reads.

The move makes sense as Sony probably made a long-term contract for timed exclusivity for the whole Final Fantasy VII Remake series. What's curious is how the original FF7R still hasn't shown up on PC or Xbox despite the one-year PlayStation exclusivity deal ending in April. Square Enix will likely reveal a re-release of FF7R on other platforms at E3 2021 and leave fans wondering when Intergrade will launch too.