Gaming - Page 488

As promised, CD Projekt RED released the first major patch for Cyberpunk 2077 that fixes a ton of bugs and major glitches.

Cyberpunk 2077's new Patch 1.1 update is out now and it brings some big changes. The most substantial change is more streamlined memory allocation for consoles, which improves in-game performance on every level. It turns out 8GB of GDDR5 unified memory hamstrings developers in console games.

The update also eliminates any possibility of the save corruption glitch on consoles and PC. The saves will no longer get big enough to become corrupted and CDPR even "trimmed the excess size from already-existing saves." Sadly the saves that are already corrupted can't be fixed and will remain corrupted.

Vicarious Visions used to be an Activision studio, but now it's been absorbed by Blizzard. This actually makes sense; Vicarious Visions has been helping Blizzard with various projects for a while now.

Vicarious Visions, the developer behind Skylanders, the new Crash Bandicoot games, Tony Hawk 1+2 remasters, has been moved over to Blizzard. The studio had been an Activision subsidiary since 2005, but is now a part of Blizzard Entertainment and has been relegated as a support team for Blizzard's projects. This is somewhat likened to Sledgehammer's change from a fully-fledged Call of Duty studio to assisting Treyarch and Infinity Ward on the franchise.

The truth is Vicarious Visions has been working with Blizzard"for some time" and is now "fully dedicated" to future Blizzard projects. Vicarious Visions has been developing a Diablo II remake for some time, having taken over development from Blizzard's own main internal teams. Rumblings of a Diablo II remake/remaster have been heard for years now.

Cyberpunk 2077 was the biggest launch of all time in digital revenues and sales, analyst firm SuperData reports.

Cyberpunk 2077 has sold a whopping 10.2 million units digitally on PS4, Xbox One, and PC after refunds, becoming the biggest digital game launch in history. That's according to SuperData, whose latest report highlights monumental figures for CD Projekt.

"Cyberpunk 2077 had the biggest game launch of all time based on digital revenue and digital units sold (10.2M)," the firm writes. PC Gaming accounted for a whopping 80% of these game sales and revenues, which is to be expected as PC games are primarily sold through digital distribution.

Xbox LIVE Gold pricing is going up by 50%, and will now cost $10 a month regardless of what option you buy.

Today Microsoft announced a substantial price hike for Xbox LIVE Gold. 6 months of Xbox LIVE Gold now costs $59.99, the old cost of the 12-month membership. This is a 50% price jump that doesn't include Xbox's most popular Game Pass service--only multiplayer and an allotment of free monthly games are included.

Here are the new pricing tiers for Xbox LIVE Gold:

Capcom finally reveals Resident Evil VIII's release date, and it's a ways away.

Today Capcom confirmed a bunch of Resident Evil Village details that fans will appreciate. The game will release on May 7, 2021 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC, complete with next-gen upgrades. Anyone who buys a PS4 copy will also get a free PS5 copy, and the game will feature Smart Delivery on the Xbox One/Series platforms. This is well after Capcom's FY2020 period ends in March.

Resident Evil 8 will also be the first mainline RE game to utilize Capcom's new next-gen RE Engine upgrades. The game will be optimized to harness the power of the PS5 and Xbox SeriesX/S systems, complete with ray-traced visuals, ultra-fast loading, 3D audio support, smoother frame rates, and "hyper-detailed" graphics. Expect the game to hit native 4K on both machines.

With the new REVIII Maiden demo, gamers will finally get to see Capcom's new RE Engine technology shine in the Resident Evil series.

Capcom just surprise released a playable gameplay demo for Resident Evil VIIlage on the PlayStation 5. It's called Maiden, and it's a standalone experience with it's own story that doesn't follow Ethan's arc in the main game. Maiden takes place in the gothic nightmarish halls of Dimitrescu Castle (named after the tall vampire woman, Lady Dimitrescu) and was originally made as a visual demo. Capcom then tweaked it to be a playable puzzler with story elements.

Sadly the demo is exclusive to the PS5 and can't be played on the PS4, but it does give a sampling of the developer's next-gen games engine, complete with ray-traced lighting, 3D audio, and ultra-fast loading on the PS5's SSD. Think of Maiden as a playable tech demo of sorts.

Gabe Newell really likes New Zealand--and why not? There's a lot to like. New Zealand was one of the most successful countries in curbing coronavirus spread and no longer has to practice social distancing. Life has returned to some state of normalcy in the country, and now GabeN plans to stay there for good. Some Valve employees could follow him.

In a recent interview with New Zealand network TVNZ, Newell said that Valve developers want to join their boss and help develop games overseas. That doesn't mean the entire company will uproot from its Kirkland, Washington HQ and move to New Zealand, though.

"There's a lot of interest at a grassroots level inside of the company to have some people move," Newell said.

While some games-makers like SEGA and Square Enix are on shaky grounds, Capcom has massive confidence in its 2020-2021 earnings and just upwardly revised its forecast to new heights.

Capcom today announced it has raised its Fiscal Year 2020 earnings forecast by as much as 17%. Below is a quick breakdown of the revision, and the yen to USD conversions are based on the going rate for December 31, 2020, which represent Capcom's Q3 period. Note that these conversions do not reflect the actual future exchange rates:

Revised FY2020 forecast:

Valve's Gabe Newell says new games are in development, but how many of them will actually release?

We've known since 2018 that Valve has numerous unannounced games in development. One of these projects was Half-Life Alyx, the preeminent VR experience. Before Alyx, though, Valve had a handful of projects that fizzled out, including a Half-Life 3 prototype with procedural generation and even Left 4 Dead 3. These projects were cancelled because Source 2 wasn't ready yet.

"Valve has many projects in various stages of production at all times," read a job listing from 2018.

PUBG will soon evolve from a singular battle royale game into a fully-fledged franchise with multiple releases...including a horror title called The Callisto Protocol.

Krafton, the parent company of PUBG developer Bluehole, has lofty ambitions for the BR franchise. Soon the billion-dollar FPS will transcend into other genres and even other mediums. The South Korean giant plans to release a PUBG animated television series, live action films, and a number of new games--in short, they're going for the transmedia approach that Capcom, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony have embraced for long time.

Krafton CEO Kim Chang-han says there's a bunch of new PUBG games in development--at least three, in fact.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is getting an animated TV show sometime soon. Will it be hand-drawn, or CGI like the old-school Beast Wars show?

2021 will be a big year for PUBG parent Krafton. Not only is the South Korean titan planning a huge billion-dollar IPO that could value the battle royale-maker at over $27 billion, but the PUBG franchise will soon cross-over to other mediums. PUBG company CEO Kim Chang-han tells Bloomberg that he has big plans for transmedia ventures.

For instance, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is getting an animated series that will premiere on streaming services. A web-based cartoon is also in the works too. Farther down the line, Krafton has roadmaps for feature-length films and possibly live-action shows centered around the brutal survival franchise.

Battlefront 3 is reportedly in development for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, a new rumor alleges.

It's been a long time since the last Battlefront game. Right now DICE is busily crafting a true next-gen Battlefield game that leverages the full power of modern PC hardware and the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles. DICE's Frostbite engine is being re-tooled, optimized, and upgraded to show significant in-game enhancements for Battlefield 6, including massively improved destruction, faster loading times, AI-based machine learning, and 128-player multiplayer.

Apparently DICE isn't done with Battlefront just yet, though. A new rumor suggests EA will release Battlefront 3 by 2023 and that DICE is currently laying out the early plans for the sequel. Battlefield 6 comes first (as it should considering it's DICE's baby), and the new Star Wars game should explore new horizons not seen in the previous games.

Krafton, the parent company of PUBG developer Bluehole, plans to go public sometime in 2021 with an IPO. It could be the biggest in South Korea's history.

According to a new report from Bloomberg, the billion-dollar battle royale titan behind PUBG will hold an initial public offering and start trading on the Korea Stock Exchange. Krafton plans to hold the IPO in mid-2021, CEO Kim Chang-han said. Some brokerage firms value the gaming giant as high as $27 billion. For comparison, Activision-Blizzard, one of gaming's colossal earners, has a market cap of $71 billion.

Bloomberg notes that Krafton's IPO could be the biggest in South Korea's history; the record is held by Samsung, who generated $2.4 billion in a 2010 initial public offering.

EA plans to bring Apex Legends to every platform known to man, including Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. Now we have an idea of when it's dropping on Nintendo's handheld-console hybrid.

EA might've accidentally leaked Apex Legends' impending Switch port for a February launch. The news comes from a now-deleted post from Apex Legends' Japanese YouTube video that said: "And on February 2nd, it will be possible to play on Switch at the same time as the start of Season 8!"

The last we heard about Apex's Switch port was back in October 2020. Respawn only confirmed the version was in development and said it was "coming soon." Neither EA nor Respawn have officially announced the launch date.

Bloober Team revealed the full PC spec requirements for their new ultra-creepy horror game The Medium, ranging from 1080p 30FPS minimum and 4K 30FPS with ray tracing.

The Medium is set to bring Beksinski-style terror to gamers later this month, and now PC users can see how their rig stacks up. The game requires a minimum R9 390X GPU or an GTX 1650 SUPER or GTX 1060 for 1080p 30FPS at low presets, complete with an Intel Core i5-6600 CPU or Ryzen 5, 8GB of RAM, and 50GB of install space.

Minimum specs for ray-tracing require an RTX 2060 Super with 8GB of VRAM, an AMD RX 6800 with 16GB of VRAM, an Intel Core i5-9600 or an AMD Ryzen 3700 X, and 16GB of RAM.

What if Naughty Dog talent had sway over the next Half-Life game? What if the next sci-fi shooter (maybe Half-Life 3) was incredibly dramatic and with over-the-top action sequences? Sounds far-fetched, but Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann wants to do something with Valve's franchise.

On Twitter, The Last of Us II and Uncharted director Neil Druckmann was asked what IPs he'd like to make games for. The answers are pretty surprising. There's Cowboy Bebop, The Punisher, Ghost Rider, Hotline Miami...and Half-Life. This probably won't happen considering how protected Valve has been over the franchise.

Then again, stranger things have happened in the games industry. We didn't think Microsoft would buy out Bethesda, and Valve themselves bought out Campo Santo, the indie dev behind Firewatch, years ago. What if Valve recruited Druckmann to help with a Half-Life spinoff project, maybe a VR sequel that also helps set the stage for Half-Life 3?

New Sumo Digital job listings have gamers guessing on a possible Crackdown sequel.

Crackdown 3 was hyped up for the Xbox One X, but the game came and went with little fanfare. Now it looks like Microsoft could try again, and Sumo Digital could be helping out. According to new job listings from Sumo Digital's Sheffield branch, the developer is hiring over 80 people for a handful of new projects. The positions range from higher-level senior leads to executive producers and hint these games may still be in early phases of development.

Various job listings confirm Sumo Digital Sheffield is working at least two new games: One is a AAA game set in an established open-world franchise, and another is a brand new third-person multiplayer IP. Fans speculate the former could be Crackdown 4 for Microsoft. The other is harder to define, of course.

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the best looking games ever made, but a new lighting mod wants to bring back the look and style that CD PROJEKT RED showed off... during the E3 2018 build of the game. This is what I'm talking about:

The new Cyberpunk 2077 E3 2018 Lighting mod uses unused files in the game, and attempts to restore the look anf style of the lighting from the E3 2018 build of the game.

The modder explains: "I made some changes to the main env, to bring the same look we had in 2018 (not everyone likes it) but, as usual, CDPR leaves many unused files within its builds and this helps us a lot in terms of modding. Before we had to use a command to have such lighting, but ner everyone could use it because of DLSS and several other problems, like mirrors, inventory etc. But now everyone can use".

EA DICE is hard at work at whatever Battlefield 6 eventuates into, but according to Tom Henderson in the video below, the game will be a "soft reboot" of Battlefield 3 and heavily inspired by it.

Battlefield 6 will not only be inspirted by Battlefield 3, but it will have huge large scale battles with support for up to 128 players -- something we heard rumors of a few months ago now. At the time, we heard that 32 v 32 would be the norm for BF6 while previous-gen console versions in the PS4 and Xbox One will only support up to 32 players.

It wouldn't be a new Battlefield game if DICE didn't add that all-important battle royale mode, which is another thing that Battlefield 6 will have. So we're looking at a Battlefield reboot + 128 player support + next-gen graphics + hopefully next-gen destruction + battle royale. The last few Battlefield games have been disappointing to me, so I'm hoping DICE actually blows us away and brings Battlefield back to the top with Battlefield 6.

YouTuber and known leaker Tom Henderson is back again with more Battlefield 6 info, and it's possible the game could also release on PS4 and Xbox One consoles alongside next-gen systems.

Battlefield 6 may not be a next-gen PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC exclusive after all, and could be a cross-gen release. "I was told the next Battlefield will also be coming to last-gen consoles, that being the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One," Henderson said in a recent video.

Henderson also says the 128-player mode will be only available for select maps, and 32v32 will be the standard. the 64v64 maps and game types will also be exclusive to next-gen consoles and PC; PS4 and Xbox One won't be able to support them. Sources also told Henderson that this year's Battlefield will have graphical downgrades and reduced destruction, which is to be expected from the limited Jaguar-based SoCs.