Gaming - Page 492

Insomniac Games is using machine learning to enhance in-game visuals on the PlayStation 5, and the studio could be working alongside Sony's AI division on experimental new technology.

Insomniac Games recently turned heads by confirming the PlayStation 5 can support machine learning. The team is using it in creative ways, starting with a new PS5 update for Spider-Man Miles Morales that significantly changes muscular appearance in the game. The new technique creates more realistic "muscle deformation," a term used in animation to describe how models are transformed and manipulated in 3D rigs.

According to Lead Character Technical Director Josh DiCarlo, the technique is using machine learning inference, which means Insomniac is feeding the algorithm data in real-time that's running on the PlayStation 5. DiCarlo says this technique doesn't come at a graphical hit.

Outriders might only be 2 days old, but some players are already farming endgame content. These gamers are curious: Will there be post-launch DLC? Maybe.

People Can Fly's new shooter Outriders isn't a week old yet, but the studio already has ideas for future playable missions, quests, and more. Outriders isn't a live game, so it won't get tons of tweaks and regular content updates like, say, Fallout 76. Instead, the studio says Outriders is a "complete" package. But that doesn't mean they're giving up on the franchise.

In a recent interview with Forbes, Outriders Creative Director Bartek Kmita says if the game does get DLC, it'll be in the form of meaty expansions, not piecemeal updates. New content isn't guaranteed though and is contingent on whether or not people like it (so far they do).

Outriders game developer People Can Fly asks fans not to judge their game too harshly due to the ongoing server woes.

Like any online game, Outriders is suffering from server instability at launch. The game released two days ago and has had connectivity issues ever since, with scores of players losing story progress and loot as they rubberband from servers. Tens of thousands of gamers are trying to play Outriders at once, and the servers are buckling under the weight.

Amidst tons of updates on server stability/progress and regular updates, People Can Fly is asking for players' understanding and patience: "As developers who have been working super hard for the last 5 years to make this game awesome, we really hope that you will judge the game rather than those teething troubles related to server issues. I tis frustrating for you and it is frustrating for us," the devs said on Twitter.

Outriders is now Square Enix's top Steam game in peak players, beating all other franchises and releases.

People Can Fly's new shooter-looter Outriders is exceedingly popular and has broken a big milestone on Steam. The game peaked at 111,953 players on Steam on its first day and is now Square Enix's top game insofar as peak users. Based on SteamDB numbers, Outriders had over 300% more peak players than Marvel's Avengers.

At first glance, it's hard to pinpoint why Outriders is so popular. Closer examination reveals popular player sentiment garnered by specific business decisions. One, the game doesn't sell anything. There's no microtransactions or battle passes. Once you buy the game, you get the full game--there's no monetization thrown in. Avengers, on the other hand, was widely panned for its excessive monetization.

Timi, the developer behind mobile's #2 game Honor of Kings, has made more money than Activision, NetEase, EA, and Take-Two Interactive.

A single Tencent developer has made more money in 2020 that some of gaming's reigning titans. According to a new report from Reuters, Tencent's Timi studio (Call of Duty Mobile, Honor of Kings) has generated $10 billion in revenues in 2020. This eclipses 2020 revenues of heavy-hitting games-makers like Activision ($8 billion), NetEase ($7.9 billion), EA ($5.6 billion) and Take-Two Interactive ($3.2 billion).

Tencent generated a whopping $23.01 billion in yearly revenues, beating out Sony and becoming the industry's top-earning company in games revenues. Timi generated 43% of these earnings. Taking a quick glance at how its games performed gives more context. Honor of Kings pulled in $2.5 billion in earnings worldwide.

Old Xbox games are now playable directly from the cloud and will retain all performance and visual upgrades delivered on new Series S/X consoles.

At a time when Nintendo and Sony are leaving the past behind, Microsoft is propelling its gaming history forward. Xbox backwards compatibility is one of the most compelling reasons to stay within Microsoft's ecosystem; the Series X being able to play four generations of Xbox games is a big selling point. The Series X is just one part of the ecosystem, though, and backward compatibility is now available to mobile devices.

Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can now stream old-school Xbox and Xbox 360 games directly to tablets and smartphones. Right now the list only includes 16 games (Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout New Vegas among them) but more are coming. One surprising part is how these games will still play better on mobiles than they do on their original hardware, benefiting from extras like FPS Boost.

With ray-traced lighting, native 4K textures, and boosted frame rates, Resident Evil 8 will shine brightest on PS5 and Xbox Series X. It's still a looker on last-gen, though.

Resident Evil 8 was first announced as a next-gen exclusive, but Capcom is now releasing a PS4 and Xbox version too. This is a smart (and arguably necessary) move since no one can buy next-gen consoles right now. Capcom wants to sell 10 million copies of RE8 on all platforms and to do that they'll need to release the game on hardware that people can actually buy (or already own).

Releasing a cross-gen port brings stress, but Capcom has risen to the occasion. New footage from IGN shows RE8 actually looks great on the PS4 Pro. There's no distinct FPS drops (at least in the footage we've seen) and the combat looks quite smooth.

The ESA had tentative plans to monetize E3 2021 by charging viewers a fee for certain interactive content, sources tell VideoGameChronicle.

What's going on with E3 2021? Will it be digital? Is the ESA charging money to view content? Yes, and no. The Los Angeles Department of Convention and Tourism previously said E3 2021 was cancelled, but it now says E3 2021 will be "mostly digital".

Now what about having to pay to watch E3 2021? That won't happen. The ESA confirms E3 2021 won't be pay-per-view. "E3's 2021 digital show is a free event for all attendees. We're excited to fill you in on all the real news for the event very soon," the ESA said on Twitter.

Secretlab is getting into the April Fools Day spirit with something that I think the might end up having to make: a gaming chair for pets and kids. Check out the Secretlab TITAN XXXXXS gaming chair:

Secretlab explains on its website to "start them young" and to "train your kid to carry you", adding: "Be the best parent you can be. Support your kid the right way today with a seat that's been proven to help them aim better and react faster. They'll soon be a walking highlight reel".

The company says that its new chair has "+69 nap quality" with the TITAN XXXXXS gaming chair being "plush and supportive" and that it's "perfect for sleeping 20 hours a day". It has "+420 comfort" that is "targeted ergonomic support for your little ones" while it has "+9000 happiness" with the Secretlab TITAN XXXXXS the "first ever gaming-grade accessory for pets and children".

Ubisoft is eager to scale its game-making tools to harness upgraded PS5, Xbox Series X console power.

The new console generation is incredibly exciting for game developers, who have been had to strategically scale, compress, and dilute their games to fit on outdated tech. Now those shackles have been broken thanks to the PS5's and Xbox Series X's Zen 2 CPU, Navi GPU, 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, and PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Developers are happy they can start properly scaling their games closer to PC-level performance, and curious to see what the new consoles can handle.

Ubisoft is one of many publishers excited about new hardware. According to Ubisoft Massive technical associate producer Timothy Dansie, Ubisoft is currently updating its engines to flex the new console generation's SoC power. We've seen evidence of this with Watch Dogs Legion's native 4K gaming (and raytracing), as well as Assassin's Creed Valhalla's incredible in-game textures, frame rates, and performance.

Elder Scrolls Online's next-gen Console Enhanced upgrade releases this June, and it looks quite impressive.

ESO looks like a new game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X hardware. The game's next-gen visual upgrades are pretty dramatic, showing a stark contrast over last-gen thanks to the new Navi 2X GPU tech. Textures are much more defined with higher resolution, shadows are more pronounced, lighting pops more than ever, flora is green and vibrant and fauna is much more realistic.

Apart from the cosmetic appeal, ESO is getting some performance jumps too. A new Performance Mode will double frame rates from 30FPS to 60FPS, and there's also the 4K 30FPS mode for higher fidelity (we've reached out to Bethesda to see what resolution the game hits in 60FPS). Load times have been sliced in half thanks to the PCIe 4.0 SSDs in each system, which is a big deal for any MMORPG.

Nintendo is making the baffling move to stop selling Mario 3D All-Stars on digital stores today. On closer examination, the move is actually strategic.

While Nintendo is a games company, it has been associated with economics throughout the years. The company has had issues with supply and demand since it debuted the NES in the 1980s. Traditionally, the issues have been outside of Nintendo's control. In the late 80s, Nintendo ran out of copies of key NES games. In 2020, Nintendo ran out of Switch consoles to sell to hungry consumers as chip manufacturing facilities struggled to keep up with demand.

But sometimes Nintendo has seemingly withheld or artificially manipulated these market principles. For instance, the company restricted 2016's NES Mini to incredibly small shipments, with some retailers only getting less than a dozen units. Now the company is removing a game from its digital storefront for no real reason other than to spike game sales.

Remedy is working on Alan Wake 2 with funding from Epic Games, sources tell VentureBeat's Jeff Grubb.

Remedy is currently working on two projects that will be published by Epic Games. One is described as a huge AAA game that's more ambitious than anything Remedy has ever done before. The other is a smaller-scale experience. Remedy says both of these games are set in the same franchise.

According to industry rumblings heard by games journalist Jeff Grubb, the bigger project is Alan Wake 2. If this is accurate--and it likely is--Remedy is possibly making two new Alan Wake games.

Game developer Michel Ziegler peels back the inky curtain of his dark horror game Mundaun, revealing influences and goals with the strange title.

Mundaun is a lot like a Robert Eggers film with distinct Lynchian overtones. The game is fully hand-drawn by Michel Ziegler, a dev who spent a long time capturing the Swiss countryside in sketches to use in his game. Rather than taking pictures, Ziegler recorded what he saw in the old-fashioned way: With pencil and paper. In a recent behind-the-scenes video, Ziegler talks about his journey in making Mundaun, and how The Shining played an important role in shaping the experience.

"My goal wasn't 'I'm going to make a scary game' at the beginning. I wanted to create a certain atmosphere that was very dark and very thick," Ziegler said.

PC peripheral-maker Razer has finally turned a profit for the first time since it debuted on public markets in 2014.

Similar to Sony, Ubisoft, Take-Two, Activision, and the rest of the games industry, 2020 was a big year for Razer. The company pulled in $1.2 billion in revenues in 2020 (+48% year-over-year) and made $800,000 in profit. Hardware, which includes PCs and peripherals, accounted for nearly all of Razer's revenues with $1.08 billion in sales.

2020's peripheral sales were up a massive 73% over 2019, accounting for a staggering $773 million in total revenues for the year. PC systems made less than half of that, or $310 million. Razer boasts that it has over $600 million in available cashflows on hand with zero debt, which it plans to use to make new hardware and invest in services. It will make use of the cashflow to also bolster R&D of its core gaming segments.

AMD had its new Radeon drivers release around 24 hours ago enabling DXR ray tracing support in DIRT 5 for its RDNA-powered Radeon GPUs and now it's NVIDIA's turn for some new drivers to do the same for GeForce GPU owners.

NVIDIA's newly-released GeForce Game Ready 465.89 WHQL drivers add support for DIRT 5's new ray tracing update, as well as new games in Outriders, Evil Genius 2: World Domination, and the KINGDOM HEARTS series on the Epic Games Store. Not only that, but it adds Resizable BAR support for GeForce RTX 30 series desktop and notebooks GPUs.

We also have some SLI profiles for Shenmue III and The Medium, both of which will only have SLI support on NVIDIA Turing GPUs -- so the GeForce RTX 20 series with the flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. There's also beta support for virtualization on GeForce GPUs which is an interesting and unexpected thing from NVIDIA with these drivers.

A new Witcher game is planned to enter development in 2022 alongside Cyberpunk 2077's multiplayer, CD Projekt RED said today.

CD Projekt RED wants to become more agile and improve how it makes games. Under a new strategy dubbed RED 2.0, the studio aims to create an infrastructure where it can simultaneously develop two AAA RPGs at the same time. Traditionally, CD Projekt has principally developed one game at a time. The plan will go into effect next year, and in 2022, CDPR will start simultaneously working on new games in both The Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises.

CD Projekt wants to unify its future games under the newly-optimized RED Engine technology that powers Cyberpunk 2077. For years the studio has been ramping up its internal game-making tools to prepare for next-gen console hardware, facilitating in new technologies like the revamped RED Engine and advanced new motion capture capabilities.

CD Projekt RED announces a long-term plan to infuse online elements into all of its future games, but it promises not to compromise singleplayer focus.

Online components are coming to CD Projekt's upcoming games, which include new entries in the Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises. The company is ramping up its internal network infrastructure to power online features in new titles, and GOG Galaxy will help wrap everything together into a neat, cohesive ecosystem.

CD Projekt's President Adam Kicinski confirms that online components will be added "where it makes sense," but the developer will still focus primarily on AAA singleplayer RPGs. The plan is for online features to be additive to the core RPG experience, and not serve as the main basis for games (like EA's penchant for live services).

Cyberpunk 2077's controversial release has taught CD Projekt RED what not to do. Now it's changing how it communicates and showcases new games.

CD Projekt RED promises to avoid potentially misrepresenting its games with early demos and builds. The company today announced its marketing campaigns will be much shorter. CDPR will only show gameplay and deep dive videos of its upcoming projects close to their release. The goal is to promote a game that will actually release--not a concept build that's dramatically different than the final product.

"Going forward, our campaigns will be much shorter. We'll wait until much closer to our game's launch before we start showing things like trailers, demos, or going in-depth about the mechanics," said CD Projekt's SVP of business development. Michal Nowakowski said in a recent presentation.

CD Projekt RED says it is working hard to combat crunch in its workplace, but also announced it will start developing two major AAA games at the same time starting in 2022.

Following reports of overwork during Cyberpunk 2077's development, crunch has been a sensitive topic for CD Projekt RED. The developer has become known for its high pedigree of games at the cost of its employees.

Now CD Projekt President Adam Kicinski promises to reverse this trend. The company says it is working hard to create a caring, sustainable workplace where its employees can thrive. The plan includes multiple parts like mental health workshops and support, and even a new developer-appointed representatives that will act as middle-men to help the dev teams communicate directly with the decision-makers on CD Projekt's board of directors.