Gaming - Page 489

With 667GB of useable SSD space, limited storage is the PS5's Achilles heel. Running out of precious SSD capacity becomes a problem way too quickly. Now Sony is finally doing something about it.

Months after the console's launch, PlayStation 5 owners will soon be able to store next-gen PS5 games on external HDDs and USB sticks. The new feature will be added in tomorrow's major PS5 firmware update, which also adds other significant improvements like being able to check PS Plus data syncs right from a game's quick info menu.

There's just one catch: PS5 games still can't be launched from an HDD. Think of this new feature as an old-school memory card that only stores data. You still have to manually copy/move the game back over to the PS5's SSD in order to play it (luckily this migration doesn't take a long time).

Blizzard has a ton of games in development right now, but one of them is a cross-platform shooter for consoles and PC. New evidence

Just like Mike Morhaime promised in 2018, Blizzard is working on a lot of new things. The company is currently hiring 55 developers to work on unannounced games across mobile, PC, and consoles. Some of these projects are exclusive to one platform, others are cross-platform.

One particular project is a multiplayer shooter game for consoles and PC. Blizzard is currently hiring three positions for this mystery console/PC game (see list below) and the listings don't give out much info. All we get is a brief mention the project could either be a first-person or third-person AAA title. That's a pretty big range that encompasses games from Overwatch to action-based titles like Assassin's Creed.

Vicarious Visions will have a hand in two major Diablo game productions: The hotly-anticipated Diablo 2 Resurrected, and the upcoming mainline sequel Diablo IV.

According to a new job posting, the Tony Hawk and Diablo 2 Resurrected dev Vicarious Visions is also helping with Diablo IV's development. The listing confirms the studio's involvement and calls for a temp writer to help flesh out the game's quests, dialog, and help shape the overall story. Other than that, there's not a whole lot more to go on.

Writer (Temp) - Vicarious Visions (Diablo IV)

Diablo II Resurrected's Technical Alpha test gave us our first look at the new Amazon, Sorceress, and Barbarian. Players aren't so happy with the changes.

The new Diablo II remaster gives the old-school ARPG a big 4K facelift, and that means new upgraded class models. Some of the new characters look rather...interesting. Changing the appearance of any 20-year game is bound to stir up criticism from the franchise's faithful, and the new Amazon is getting pretty badly roasted over on the Diablo Reddit.

The 'zon has traded in her old vivacious figure for a more gruff and survivalist look. Gamers aren't all that impressed. It's actually pretty brutal--the mockery ranges from comparisons to Michael Douglas and Donald Trump to good-natured ribbing. There's even a Space Balls reference thrown in there, as if Vicarious Visions accidentally captured the likeness of the original cast's stunt doubles. Hundreds of Diablo 2 players have chimed in to express their thoughts.

Microsoft's big new first-party games like Everwild, Perfect Dark, and Fable may not release in 2022, and the company might be making third-party deals to fill the void in its lineup.

It may be a while before the bulk of Xbox's new high-profile exclusives are ready--in fact, some of the games are a long ways away. That's according to GamesIndustry.biz writer Christopher Dring, who cites sources at Xbox's global studios teams.

"I've had a few conversations with a few friends at Xbox studios. Those games they've announced--Everwild, Perfect Dark, Fable--are so far away, as in there might even be a new Xbox by the time those games come out," Dring said in a recent VGC podcast (at the 27-minute mark).

Are you playing Outriders and noticing your HDD or SSD filling up faster than usual? You might want to check the game's crash report folder.

Outriders is crashing so much on PC that crash reports are taking up multiple gigabytes of space on HDD and SSD storage. One Redditor's crash report folder ballooned to 23GB, which is basically the size of a large update or expansion. That's roughly 32% of the game's advertised 70GB of require space taken up by crash reports. Other users also say their folders are in multiples of gigabytes.

Luckily you can easily delete these crash reports, just follow this file path to find the folder:

NVIDIA has teased that its magic DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology is coming to NARAKA: BLADEPOINT, driving performance through the roof. Check out a side-by-side comparison of NVIDIA DLSS technology on, and off in the game below:

NARAKA: BLADEPOINT enjoys some huge performance gains with DLSS enabled, with DLSS set to Ultra Performance mode (rendering the lowest resolution and upscaling it) sees performance on the previous-gen Turing-based GeForce RTX 2060 go from just under 30FPS average at 4K to 55FPS average.

The newer-gen Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3060 goes from 43FPS average to 70FPS average, while the GeForce RTX 3070 jumps from 66FPS to 99FPS and the GeForce RTX 3080 from 84FPS to 129FPS. The flagship GeForce RTX 3090 leaps from 101FPS average at 4K in NARAKA: BLADEPOINT to a huge 152FPS average with DLSS turned on and set on Ultra Performance.

Battlefield leaker and industry insider Tom Henderson is getting pretty busy with his tweets, giving us some juicy rumors on the next-gen Battlefield and now on Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6.

In a reply to someone tweeting him saying to give us an update on GTA 6, Henderson tweeted: "It's not set in the 1980's and is modern". @NerosCinema replied to Henderson, saying that an "80s GTA would actually be incredible" to which Henderson replied with "GTA Online + Modern + Wacky Shit = More Money".

@kryptzx replied to that saying "Do u think GTA Online will release at the same time Gta 6 releases?" with Henderson explaining "Yeah. They'll probably be some kind of integration - It seems like everyone is going this route now".

With the addition of four-player co-op multiplayer support, Outlast Trials is the most ambitious game Red Barrels has made yet. To make its nightmares a reality, the developer has had to double its workforce.

Red Barrels has expanded quite a bit for its new game, Outlast Trials, and now has 40 developers working on the project. The new team is a 200% increase over Outlast 2's production:

"Our amazing Red Barrels team has grown from 10 during the development of Outlast 1, to 20 for Outlast 2, and we are now over 40 teammates strong. We have adapted to keep the development of The Outlast Trials rolling while maintaining the safety and health of our entire team (above Murkoff standards of course)," reads a development update.

The next BioShock game could be an open world FPS with strong story elements--you know, like one of Irrational's original games.

2K's new Cloud Chamber studio is making a next-gen BioShock game, and job listings might tell us what to expect from the sequel. The studio is currently hiring 17 people, and based on the positions, the game might still be in early production phases. According to a senior writer position, the game could be set in an open world:

Days Gone 2 was never in production, and it wasn't actually greenlit by Sony. At a time where Sony is doubling-down on safer bets and bigger franchises, it's likely Days Gone 2 was shelved due to budgetary concerns.

In a recent interview with God of War creator David Scott Jaffe, Days Gone director Jeff Ross gives valuable insight on the games industry and discusses the game's development process. Ross also indicates that it was budget, not necessarily Days Gone's Metacritic scores or reception, that led to Sony scrapping Days Gone 2.

Shortly after shipping Days Gone in 2019, Sony Bend pitched a sequel to Sony. The team wanted to make a second chapter to fit in everything that wasn't possible in the first game. "When you're making tough decisions when making a game, you go, 'oh, the sequel,' this thing we can't get to this time we'll put in the next one," Ross said. The sequel was meant to be a kind of definitive Days Gone experience that carried over the learnings from the first game.

I don't think we're too far from an official reveal or teaser trailer to the new Battlefield, or Battlefield 6 -- with industry leaker Tom Henderson teasing a drawing of a new map inside of EA DICE's next instalment to Battlefield.

Henderson notes that the map is a "literal storm" or tornado is flying towards the island, taking things to the next level in the new Battlefield. Henderson teases to "refer to old tweets to theorise what happens next" where if we combine what we know: next-gen destruction physics + natural disasters = storm damaging the island and building, changing the environment thus the map and the way you play once that happens.

I'd dare say that most of that jungle would be gone, visibility would suck (snipers, long distance weapons rendered useless) and if you took shelter in the building then the walls would possibly be destroyed. This would change the way you'd approach the game, with an actual tornado flying into the island and changing the entire environment, inside and outside -- all upside down and destroyed.

Third-party game sales may have generated upwards of $795 million on the Epic Games Store since the storefront opened in late December, new Apple court documents suggest.

As the Apple vs Epic Games court case heats up, Apple today published a document that reveals tons about Epic's notoriously private business. According to the filing, Epic has paid out over $700 million to third-party studios in revenue shares since the store launched.

Since third-party developers keep 88% of revenues, and Epic keeps 12%, a quick bit of math shows that third-party game sales on the Epic Store have generated roughly $795 million to date. If the numbers are right, Epic has kept about $95 million of revenues.

New court documents filed by Apple reveal the Epic Games Store has yet to turn a profit, and the Fortnite titan could lose over half a billion dollars in total storefront investments by 2021.

According to Apple's lengthy new court document, the Epic Games Store hasn't been profitable since it launched in late 2018. Epic has reportedly sunken hundreds of millions of dollars into the storefront to secure publishing deals, payouts bonuses for developers, and timed exclusivity--not to mention the store's 88-12 revenue split that favors game developers.

The doc actually puts a total figure to the Epic Games Store's losses, which total up to about $593 million by the end of this year. The company spent many millions more on content deals than the storefront actually made; Storefront losses were $181 million in 2019, $273 million in 2020, and projections say losses will hit $139 million in 2021, the report states.

New court documents filed in the Apple vs Epic lawsuit show that Epic Games made over $9.5 billion in total revenues last year.

Apple's new court filings reveal interesting tidbits on Epic's business. Although the games titan isn't publicly traded, Apple reveals potential earnings figures for the giant. According to the documents, Epic Games made $3.85 billion in revenues in 2020 at a 40% profit margin.

Assuming this is accurate, a quick bit of math shows Epic Games made about $1.54 billion in total profits in 2020. Total business costs were around $2.31 billion, which leaves $1.54 billion left over for profits. This revenue puts Epic Games in the #8 slot in gaming's top 10 best-earning games companies of 2020, behind EA.

CD Projekt RED is no longer being accused as part of the anti-trust lawsuit against Valve, the company today announced.

In January, five gamers banded together and sued Valve for allegedly creating an environment that suppresses competition. The allegations surround a specific clause in the contracts that developers sign to put their games on Steam--the Most Favored Nations clause, which essentially requires devs to sell their games for the same price as they do on Steam. If a game is $19.99 on Steam, it needs to be $19.99 on PS4 and Xbox One. The suit alleges that the MFN clause restricts other storefronts and inhibits competition:

"If this market functioned properly-that is, if the Steam MFN did not exist and platforms were able to compete on price-platforms competing with Steam would be able to provide the same (or higher) margins to game developers while simultaneously providing lower prices to consumers," the lawsuit says.

Activision is gearing up for Call of Duty 2021 that is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, set in World War II the game is reportedly called Call of Duty: Vanguard. Well, Vanguard is a "f***ing disaster" says industry insider Tom Henderson.

Henderson started out by tweeting on April 8 that he was sure the Call of Duty developers, saying they have a "bowl full of "things they can fuck up" and they randomly pick one with their eyes closed ready for the next patch/update". He then added: "Honestly at this point, it's just embarrassing and there's 0 justification for why these things are happening".

"It just feels like the passion has been sucked out of every studio and working from home has made everyone lazy". So the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and the entire work-from-home situation is adding serious fuel to the fire of game development across the industry, and Call of Duty 2021 which from the rumors isn't shaping up well.

Well gosh, the new Battlefield is sounding better and better with each drip and drop of rumors on EA DICE's upcoming first-person shooter.

In a new tweet, leaker Tom Henderson has teased the new Battlefield (which some are referring to as Battlefield 6 -- Henderson believes it will simply be titled "Battlefield") will have robotic dogs you can control. This would be a great tweak to the mechanics in the game, with Henderson teasing the "dog is more like Boston Dynamics Mule that can run really fast and potentially has a weapon on it. But it looks like it could be a new vehicle type instead of a gadget".

Henderson has teased that the next-gen Battlefield would be a "accurate representation of 2030's military combat compared to Final Stand. Everything in [the next Battlefield] is developmental weapons and vehicles being developed right now". That's exciting to hear, as we should have some great tweaked weapons of today through to 2030, as well as advanced vehicles, planes, drones, robotic dogs now, and more.

The new Mass Effect Legendary Edition has gone gold, meaning it's 100% finalized and ready to ship and won't be delayed.

2020 was great for the games industry, but 2021 is shaping up to be a year of delays. Luckily the new Mass Effect remaster trilogy won't be pushed back. BioWare project director Mac Walters confirms the game is now complete and ready to be mass produced and shipped out to consumers.

The new trilogy makes big upgrades to the originals, including 4K 60FPS performance, ultra-fast loading on next-gen SSDs, improved shadows/lighting, and a bunch of quality-of-life improvements. This is especially true for the first Mass Effect game, which now has a ton of changes including sprinting outside of combat, individual controls over squadmates during combat, tweaked aiming, ADS, and more, and being able to use any weapon regardless of class type.

Using a new Expeditions feature, Fallout 76 will borrow expansion plans from Elder Scrolls Online and incorporate locations and content from other Fallout games.

Fallout 76's Expeditions feature sounds pretty ambitious. Bethesda says Expeditions will "take users outside the current map" and that they're "very excited to make them." This could be similar to how ESO will eventually incorporate the whole of Tamriel's locations--on a smaller scale, of course. Expeditions may be more bite-sized instances where gamers travel to other locations from the Fallout series. If this is accurate, then Fallout 76 is here to stay for a long time.

Now we have evidence that Fallout 3's D.C. region will be one of these explorable regions. Unfinished assets of the D.C. region have been datamined from Fallout 76 by user eckserah, all but confirming that Bethesda is in early stages of prototyping Fallout 3 locales. One of the images clearly shows the Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. complete with the Washington Monument in the background, which also showed up in Fallout 3. These are test cells and not finalized content, so they might not show up in Fallout 76.