Gaming - Page 483

Nintendo wants to produce 30 million Switch consoles throughout FY2022 to meet growing worldwide demand, sources tell Nikkei Asia.

Nintendo plans to manufacture up to 30 million Switch consoles from now until March 31, 2022 to satisfy growing demand for the system. This is up roughly 5 million units from the previous 25 million unit production order in FY2021. This time Nintendo will be producing three Switch models: The base handheld-console hybrid, the handheld-only Switch Lite, and the new 4K-ready Switch model set to release this year.

Even in its fifth year on sale, the Switch shows no signs of stopping. 2020's numbers surged as consumers turned to video games to stay entertained during quarantines. Nintendo has sold a staggering 24.1 million Switch models from Q1-Q3, a new all-time record high, beating out last year's full sales in just three quarters.

There have been two new Battlefield images leaked onto the internet in the past hour, with Battlefield leaker Tom Henderson confirming the validity of the screenshots.

The two new screenshots from Battlefield show off the island with the flying vehicles and storm brewing off the coast, with a rocket about to take off -- while the second screenshot is from inside one of the helicopters, with the ability of blasting the rocket and its structure into dust.

Henderson confirms the Battlefield screenshots, which means he is also a damn talented artist with a pencil as his Battlefield sketches were pretty damn spot on.

First Epic Games acquired Oodle, and now it's acquired creative powerhouse ArtStation.

The ArtStation platform is now owned by Epic Games, and developers are mostly pretty happy about the situation. ArtStation serves millions of artists and creatives across the interactive entertainment industry, offering a way to share and connect across a dazzling smorgasboard of fantastic creations. From a layman's perspective, ArtStation offers a unique look at the inner workings of the games industry, but to an artist it's an invaluable lifeline to jobs, portfolio building, and growth. ArtStation is basically the LinkedIn for graphic artists and also lets users sell their brushes and expertise to learning students.

As part of the acquisition, all of ArtStation Learning's tutorials are now 100% free and the platform will remain autonomous outside of Epic. Another huge win for creators is more profits from marketplace sales. Creators now get to keep 88% of revenues from content and products sold on the marketplace (down from 30%), matching the Epic Games Store's favorable 88-12 revenue split for developers. Pro members get a bigger slice with the fee dropping to a meager 8%, leaving 92% of earnings to creators.

IO Interactive's new IP might be a massive departure from its World of Assassination, trading Agent 47's guns and garottes for spells and swords.

Hitman developer IO Interactive is apparently working on medieval fantasy game with dragons, spells, and an all-original lore. The game is AAA in production quality and is being crafted for Xbox, sources tell Eurogamer. Recent job listings hint this will be a large online multiplayer game with a "new concept".

The new IP won't release any time soon, though; right now IO is strongly focused on its big new James Bond game, Project 007, which is the most ambitious title the studio has ever worked on. IO has expanded to a new studio in Barcelona, Spain to gear up for Project 007 and its new unannounced IP.

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, Halo was a third-person shooter with a shaky reticle and some interesting weapons. Here's what classic iconic guns like the Halo CE magnum, sniper rifle, plasma rifle, shotgun and rocket launcher looked like in those old days.

Ex-Halo dev and series co-creator Marcus Lehto recently shared some prototype footage of Halo's early days. During that time, Halo was a third-person shooter--if it had stayed that way gaming would be very different today--and the weapons are familiar. Some, like the Pattern-2 Composite Sword, are not (yes, the UNSC originally game Master Chief a sword).

In the video, Lehto shows a bunch of these weapons in action. A lot of these weapons were obviously cut from the final game. Some of the guns were split up between Halos 1-3. There's the aforementioned sword, a flamethrower that made it into Halo CE on PC, and even highly-accurate assault rifle, an SMG from Halo 2. We may never get to play this build of Halo, but it's still an interesting little time capsule that captures the formative years of gaming's most influential shooter.

Konami is gearing up for big new projects and teases updates coming in the next few months...but it won't be at E3 2021.

Konami is making new games again...but it's latest, a remake of an obscure Japanese Famicom game, was kind of confusing and mystifying. Now the company says it's "deep in development on key games," possibly hinting at a new Silent Hill or even Metal Gear.

"We want to reassure our fans that we are in deep development on a number of key projects, so please stay turned for some updates in the coming months," Konami said in a Tweet.

There has been some confusion about Metro Exodus and it not receiving AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution support, with 4A Games issuing a statement to clarify things.

4A Games is about to release the new PC-focused Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, which has DLSS 2.1 support and is the first RT-only AAA game released. Well, that game won't support AMD's own DLSS competitor -- FSR or FidelityFX Super Resolution -- because FSR isn't out yet. Not only that, but 4A Games works with NVIDIA so they're not going to be testing the competitors' technology while baking in NVIDIA's next-gen DLSS 2.1 technology into Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition.

The developer reached out to VideoCardz, explaining: "4A Games has not evaluated the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution feature for Metro Exodus at this time. In our FAQ, we were referring to the AMD FidelityFX open source image quality toolkit which targets traditional rendering techniques that our new RT only render does not use, and noting that we have our own Temporal Reconstruction tech implemented natively which provides great quality benefits for all hardware, so do not currently plan to utilize any other toolkits".

Crytek has just pushed out its new PC Update 2.1.2 for Crysis Remastered, which adds in a new "experimental Ray Tracing Boost" mode into the game.

The developer took to Reddit to detail the new Crysis Remastered patch, with the new experimental Ray Tracing Boost mode enabling RT reflections on "nearly all surfaces in game" with "Ray randomization has enabled for proper support of rough surfaces" and "about 5% of specular reflectance has been added by default to all surfaces".

Crytek explains: "During the development of Crysis Remastered, the team came up with the concept of adding a boost to RayTracing. This boost mode is more of a fun/experimental feature that we wanted to bring to all the RayTracing enthusiasts out there, to give more effects with minimal impact on performance. This option has been added to the in-game Graphic settings menu and can only be activated when Global Raytracing option is enabled".

The Zelda franchise turns 35 this year (feel old yet?) and Nintendo should release a bunch of games to celebrate.

The Twilight Princess and Wind Waker remasters may not be the only Zelda games coming to Switch this year. There's speculation that Nintendo will also drop N64 hits Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask in 2021 as well. It's possible these games will launch as straight re-releases on the Nintendo eShop and won't get the remaster treatment and instead just launch as Virtual Console titles.

The tidbit comes from YouTuber NateDrake, but this seems like a no-brainer from Nintendo.

Halo Infinite will shine bright on PC as Microsoft and 343 Industries double-down on high-end optimizations for today's top enthusiast hardware.

343i is taking the PC version of Halo Infinite very seriously. The game will support a myriad of options and high-end optimizations on the platform, with tons of graphics settings, uncapped FPS, 4K resolution support with native UHD textures, and even support for 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios. There's 120 FOV options, dynamic resolution scaling, anti-aliasing and refresh rate toggles, etc.

The studio says Infinite will run on a range of PC hardware, from lower-end rigs with older GPUs and CPUs to today's high-end hardware including NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series and AMD's RX 6000 series graphics cards.

Xbox is breaking down platform barriers and Halo Infinite will have extensive cross-support on consoles and PC.

343 Industries is going all out with Halo Infinite. There's plans to optimize the shooter on two Xbox console gens and PC, complete with ultra (and super) wide monitor support, uncapped FPS, and high-end 4K textures. Apart from the performance, the game will have extensive cross-platform features to make multiplayer more accessible than ever.

Microsoft recently confirmed Halo Infinite will have cross-play between consoles and PC, as well as cross-gen saves and cross-progression regardless of which system you play on. The latter make sense considering all Xbox games save to the cloud network and all stats and unlockables are account-based and stored on online servers.

Microtransactions find their way into Doom Eternal a year after release, despite id's assurance no paid cosmetics would be in the game.

Shortly before Doom Eternal's release, game director Hugo Martin said there would be no store or paid skins. Now a year after launch, Bethesda has apparently changed its mind because Doom Eternal just got paid skin packs. There's two microtransaction packs available: the Doomicorn cosmetic pack for $4.99, and the Series One Pack for $8.99 that unlocks a ton of skins.

These skins, cosmetics, and customizables are unlocked by earning XP from challenges and secrets in the game itself. Before gamers had to spend time to unlock these items, but now they can pay money for a quick shortcut. The timing is quite interesting, especially now that Microsoft owns Bethesda Softworks. Microsoft is known for monetizing its games and baking in live service elements that line up with Game Pass.

UPDATE: Another SEC filing confirms Activision CEO Bobby Kotick's base salary is now $875,000 a year.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is among the highest-paid CEOs in the games industry. That's about to change.

A new 8K Form filed by Activision outlines the big changes coming to its CEO's payout. According to the SEC filing, both company CEO Bobby Kotick and the internal compensation committee have agreed to reduce Kotick's base salary by 50%. Kotick's yearly performance-based annual bonuses will also be cut by 50% , and Activision estimates this could slice as much as $3.25 million from Kotick's bonus.

The new v1.21 update for Assassin's Creed Valhalla fixes a ton of bugs, adds in a bunch of fish, and allows gamers to transmog Altair's armor.

A bit ago Ubisoft gave out Altair's armor for free in AC Valhalla. The armor looks rad, but the stats are pretty bad and it's not worth using. Now gamers can look like the OG assassin without sacrificing defense and other stats. As part of Valhalla's new 1.21 update, Altair's armor has been added as a template game's appearance transmogrification system, so now you can make any of your high-end upgraded armors look like Altair's cloak-and-hood combo.

The update also adds three new skills to the constellation tree that expand Eivor's combat prowess--two of which have uninterruptable attacks--and a metric ton of bugfixes for quests, textures, and other glitches/issues. Another gigantic change is the addition of all the game's missing fish.

Valheim publisher Coffee Stain has one clear goal with its games: Don't monetize players and dilute the core experience.

Valheim is gaming's most recent breakout indie sensation. The game has sold a staggering 6 million copies in little over two months (more than some mainline games sell in their entire lifetimes) thanks to viral community-driven success. It's to the point where the five-person team at Iron Gate Studios can barely keep up with the bug reports and quests.

The game's staggering sales has taught Valheim's publishing label Coffee Stain an important lesson about monetization--or more specifically, the lack thereof. Microtransactions are great for EA and Take-Two, but gamers respect indies that don't use them. According to CEO Albert Safstrom, this stance on mTX will continue with all future Coffee Stain games.

The Call of Duty franchise has sold 400 million copies to date, making it the third best-selling franchise of all time, Activision has confirmed.

Over the last 18 years, Call of Duty has grown into gaming's premiere shooter franchise. The powerhouse FPS generates billions every year for Activision from sales and microtransactions (it made $3 billion last year), and recently hit two major milestones: 100 million players in Warzone and a whopping 400 million lifetime sales.

These numbers solidify Call of Duty as the third best-selling franchise of all time. CoD sits at #3 out of gaming's 10 top-selling IPs, beating out other mega-hits like Pokemon (368 million), FIFA (325 million) and Grand Theft Auto (320 million). Activision has released 23 Call of Duty games to date and will continue its annual cadence for the foreseeable future with Sledgehammer's new Call of Duty Vanguard release for 2021.

What if Resident Evil Village was a public access puppet show from the early 90s? Capcom answers this obscure question.

Capcom just put out a video that opens up a strange doorway to an alternate universe, a place where Saturday morning kids shows converge with gothic horror. Introducing the Resident Evil Village puppet show, a hilarious and bewildering spectacle with singing, colorful puppets, and a cute Lady Dimitrescu that paints with a bucket of blood, drinks it, and goes into a murderous rage. At one point the Van Helsing look-a-like chainsaws the Igor-monster's butt, which then sprays blood everywhere.

There's even a technical difficulties cutaway sign from those old days of puppet shows.

A new wild rumor from a supposed insider has claimed that the Call of Duty: Vanguard's lack of development may cause Activision to release Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer Remastered this year.

The rumor comes from thesoapkai, who alleged that Sledgehammer Games' development of Call of Duty: Vanguard is lacking, and instead of releasing a brand new COD, Activision will follow up on the 2020 release of the remastered campaign of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, with a remastered release of Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer.

It should be noted that this rumor holds no credibility as of yet, but one thing that is eyebrow-raising is that Activision filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) against the original post claiming all of the above. Now, another thing to note is that just because the post has been legally taken down by Activision doesn't mean everything in it's correct. It very well could be just a part of the post is true, which is why Activision could legally take it down. This rumor should certainly be taken with a grain of salt, but it's something to definitely keep an ear out for.

Most people don't know but publisher THQ created an actual 24K gold-laden Nintendo Wii console that was delivered to Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace -- all as an elaborate marketing stunt that didn't go so well.

The marketing stunt for THQ was meant to be a big promotion for its game BIG Family Games, but now the 24K gold Nintendo Wii console is on eBay for a price of $300,000 -- and some experts have said it could fetch up to $1 million with the right buyer and trigger finger.

Collector Donny Fillerup has the console, with the 24K gold Nintendo Wii costing $300,000 -- but hey, you will have to chip in for the shipping at that price. You'll get the 24-karat-gold Nintendo Wii console, a golden Wii remote controller, and a copy of BIG Family Games as well.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is nearly here, with the first PC game to ever require a ray tracing capable GPU (GeForce RTX or AMD Radeon RX 6000 series) right around the corner.

The folks over at Digital Foundry have had some hands-on time with the new Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, putting it through its paces with high-end graphics cards. 4A Games recommends some serious GPU power for the game, where the entry cost GPU wise is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060.

If you want to game away at 1440p 60FPS with ray tracing on High then the developer recommends either the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT. Bumping things up to 4K 30FPS and ray tracing on High the GeForce RTX 3080 or Radeon RX 6900 XT is recommended while if you want to play at 4K 60FPS with everything maxed out the GeForce RTX 3090 is recommended.