Gaming - Page 508

NPD Group publishes its December and full-year 2020 sales, showing record growth in U.S. games industry earnings.

U.S. gamers spent a record $56.9 billion on games, hardware, and accessories in 2020, up 27% over 2019, NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella reports.

Hardware was up 35% over 2019 and generated $5.3 billion, the "most since $5.6 billion was reached in 2011," Piscatella notes. The Switch absolutely dominated the competition in 2020 as the best-selling hardware in 2020. In fact, the Switch's 2020 annual dollar revenues were the second-highest in the history of U.S. hardware sales.

Despite massive controversy, Cyberpunk 2077 took the #2 spot in U.S. game sales earnings charts.

CD Projekt RED made a very risky move with Cyberpunk 2077, and it seems to have paid off in the short-term. Cyberpunk 2077 is a mess on PS4 and Xbox One, but no one knew that until after they bought and played the game. CDP even bragged about the game's sales at launch, boasting it was already profitable before it even released. Instead of delaying CP2077 or telling consumers, CD Projekt let everyone find out for themselves (although CDP says the glitches didn't show up in their playtests).

While this move backfired in the long-term and has led to multiple class-action lawsuits and even investigations from the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, CD Projekt has reaped big dollar sales in the United States. According to analyst firm the NPD Group, Cyberpunk 2077 was the number 2 best-selling game of December 2020 in terms of dollar sales revenues. Those figures only include physical copies, most of which were likely PS4 and Xbox One versions. Digital sales weren't tracked.

A multitude of U.S.-based law firms have filed class action lawsuits against CD Projekt Group S.A. that allege possible securities fraud.

CD Projekt's apology video and Cyberpunk 2077 update roadmap may not be enough to dissuade angry investors. A multitude of law firms are coming out of the woodwork and giving spurned CD Projekt investors and opportunity to sue the company for incurring material losses from the Cyberpunk 2077 controversy. Following the big bruhaha surrounding the game's performance on last-gen consoles, CDP shares dropped by over 30% and have yet to recover. The lawsuits allege that CD Projekt willfully hid and/or neglected to inform investors and consumers about the state of the game (which, by CD Projekt's own admission, is partially true).

According to our searches, CD Projekt is now being sued by thirteen U.S.-based law firms, per Yahoo Finance:

Valve has been steadily making changes to Source 2 for a while now, but this new rumor is pretty juicy -- the Source 2 engine could soon have RTX/ray tracing support.

The news is coming from new evidence found and posted by Twitter user @thexpaw who noticed the latest Artifact beta has "Raytracing Shader" and "RTX" strings. Now consider what NVIDIA is showing off with Quake II RTX and its awesome ray tracing-boosted graphics, could we expect similar RTX treatments to Half-Life and Half-Life 2?

Does this mean Half-Life 3 has RTX or ray tracing support? Well, I'd dare say if Valve was working on Half-Life 3 it would be the most next-gen game ever released with every bell and whistle the team could turn on... would be turned on, including ray tracing and all its visual glory.

Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment reveals more details about their upcoming Star Wars game, promising to deliver a story replete with new iconic characters.

The Division developers at Massive Entertainment have lofty ambitions for their new Star Wars game (to be fair, so did Visceral Games, and we know how that turned out). According to creative director Julian Gerighty, the studio wants to make an impactful experience that affects gamers for years to come. Whereas Respawn's goal with Jedi: Fallen Order was to deliver larger-than-life action-adventure, Massive's main goal is to unify a completely original story, unique characters, and powerful next-generation performance in one package.

"We want to bring both lifelong and new fans on an immersive and outstanding journey that will stick with them for years," Gerighty said. "We want to invite players on a journey they never experienced before in this beloved lore. First, we want to make it a unique game in the saga with a captivating story and set of characters that players can relate to and connect with. We want to take what is familiar and resonant about Star Wars and tell the stories of new characters who have their own motivations and stakes."

Steam's monthly active users for 2020 skyrocket thanks to COVID-19 lockdowns, and game sales are up a substantial 21% over last year.

Steam's MAUs surged to a massive 120 million in 2020, up 15 million players since 2019 and representing a sizable 26% year-over-year increase. DAUs, or daily active users, hit 62.6 million and Steam had a whopping 24.8 million gamers online at the same time during the year. COVID-19 is no doubt the major motivator for the user spike as more consumers stayed indoors and turned to gaming when quarantining and social distancing.

Steam's Monthly active players have risen nearly 80% from 2017 - 2020 as more gamers adopt PC hardware and buy into the ecosystem.

Capcom will finally show off extensive Resident Evil 8 gameplay footage on Thursday, January 21, 2021 at 5pm EST, the company today announced.

A new Resident Evil VIII gameplay walkthrough is on the horizon from Capcom that will show off the game's macabre tone. We should get a good look at the horrifying castle-village environment, teases at the mythical monsters like werewolves, and maybe even a glimpse at the ultra-creepy witch coven too. The devs should highlight multiple story beats and touch upon Ethan's current plight, and we should also see more info on the gameplay mechanics--although they shouldn't vary too far from RE7's first-person action.

We should also see the higher-end PS5 and Xbox Series X/S optimizations in action, complete with tighter frame rates, ultra-fast loading (this was already showcased by Capcom a bit ago), and other RE Engine tweaks and upgrades.

CD Projekt just shipped Cyberpunk 2077, but it's been plotting out future games for a while. Its next game could return to the fantasy world of The Witcher.

In a recent apology video, CD Projekt Group co-founder Marcin Iwinski teases new projects outside of Cyberpunk 2077. "Beyond Cyberpunk we have many more plans for the future, which we will share when we're ready," Iwinski said in the explanation video. It's highly likely one of these projects is a fully-fledged Witcher singleplayer game.

We've speculated about a new Witcher game for years, and in March 2020, CDPR pretty much confirmed it was happening.

Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment studio is working on a new open-world Star Wars project for Lucasfilm. So what's up with the Avatar game?

After Ubisoft Massive's big Star Wars announcement I had a simple question: Is the Avatar game still in development? In 2017, Massive Entertainment announced they were making a new Avatar game that would tie into James Cameron's new Avatar films. It's being made with the Snowdrop Engine (just like the Star Wars game). It's also been a while since we've heard any updates.

We now know the Avatar game is still in development. Ubisoft Massive is still hiring for the Avatar game; last night I spotted a quick LinkedIn post from Michael McDonald, who recently joined the team as a senior lighting artist for the game.

CD Projekt RED blames Cyberpunk 2077's dismal PS4, Xbox One console performance on lower-end hard drives and says the game's multitude of glitches took them by surprise.

Apparently CD Projekt RED was just as surprised about Cyberpunk 2077's bad console performance as gamers were. According to a recent update from CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski, the company performed rigorous playtests after each Cyberpunk 2077 build iteration and wasn't able to re-create many of the glitches and bad performance that're now immortalized as internet memes.

"Every change and improvement needed to be tested, and as it turned out, our testing did not show a big part of the issues you experienced while playing the game," Iwinski said.

The Switch is slowly sparking sales in China, and shipments have reached 1 million units in the overseas region.

China is a billon-dollar goldmine for the games industry, and every major player wants in on the revenues. Nintendo is one such player. Since being introduced in 2019, partner Tencent says the Switch has shipped 1 million units in China. beating out the PS4 and Xbox One in the region.

These might be impressive numbers for China, a market that typically restricts and thoroughly vets gaming content, but the sales don't stack up to other markets. Japanese consumers purchased 6.2 million Switch units in 2020 alone, and the Switch accounted for 87% of Japan's console sales. United States gamers purchased 6.92 million Switch consoles as of November 2020.

WB Games has delayed Hogwarts Legacy into 2022 to make "the best possible experience for all the Wizarding World."

Avalanche's new Harry Potter RPG will now release in 2022 on PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC, the developers today confirmed. The innovative Hogwarts Legacy was supposed to re-write a new Potterverse era in 2020, but Avalanche needs more time. This should be the first of many delays in 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic continues raging worldwide. Avalanche is set in Salt Lake City, Utah and its workers are making the game remotely.

Hogwarts Legacy has been in development since 2017, and is one of the more ambitious games WB has put out. It's set in the 1800s era of the Wizarding World and fleshes out important precursors to the Harry Potter saga, complete with unique adult themes, RPG character progression, interactive environments, and magic-oriented combat.

Respawn patches Jedi: Fallen Order for next-gen consoles that adds more performance mode tweaks.

Jedi: Fallen Order now plays better than ever on PS5 and Xbox Series X. The update is pretty small at about 800MB, but it brings some big performance gains. Respawn's Uncharted-like Jedi adventure game can now hit 1080p 60FPS native on PS5 and Xbox Series X on HD displays, and there's also improved dynamic resolution for UHD displays. The Series X can push dynamic res between 1080p - 1440p in performance mode, and from 1512p - 2160p in normal mode. Post-processing res has been boosted to 4K in the normal mode too.

On PS5, JFO now runs at a 60FPS frame rate and post-processing has been boosted to 1440p. The game no longer has dynamic resolution and now renders at 1200p, an up to 48% increase over the previous rendering range.

Amid massive pressure from stakeholders, gamers, and the industry as a whole, CDPR says it's trying to get Cyberpunk 2077 back on the PlayStation Store as soon as possible.

It's been nearly a month since Cyberpunk 2077 was removed from the PlayStation Store by Sony. The game's dismal performance on base PS4 consoles triggered a big controversy that led to mass refunds (even Sony, a company that hardly ever offers refunds, gave consumers their money back for CP2077) and the game being pulled from digital sale to some 113 million PS4 owners. CD Projekt now says it's working hard to get the game back on the storefront.

"We have no knowledge of a specific date to return to the PlayStation Store. We are in constant contact with representatives of Sony Interactive Entertainment and we are working to ensure that our title returns to the Sony store as soon as possible," CD Projekt Group president Adam Kicinski told the Polish Agency Press.

CD Projekt RED reveals a roadmap for Cyberpunk 2077 updates and bug fixes that carries into 2021.

CDPR solidifies its commitment to fixing Cyberpunk 2077 with a new year-long roadmap. The company still plans to release two big PS4 and Xbox One optimization patches back-to-back in January and February, along with a host of hotfixes and other updates throughout the year. Based on the spacing on the roadmap, we can guess the free DLC won't release until May, which aligns with out predictions that the content has been delayed so CDPR has enough time to fix Cyberpunk 2077's last-gen game performance.

The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S upgrades may not release until August or September 2021. CD Projekt promises that existing PS4 and Xbox One owners will get free upgrades to next-gen consoles, but they haven't detailed what kind of performance upgrades gamers can expect on PS5/SeriesS/X hardware. Expect better frame rates, faster loading times, reduced glitches, and possibly ray tracing support.

EA no longer has exclusive reign over the Star Wars games license, but that doesn't mean it'll stop making games in the sci-fi series.

Today Lucasfilm Games confirmed multiple publishers are working on Star Wars games, including The Division developer Ubisoft Massive, who's making an open-world game. Disney apparently hasn't renewed EA's Star Wars exclusivity contract.

Even still, EA still has multiple new Star Wars games in its pipeline--it's just no longer the star of the show. "We're really proud of the games we have created with EA," Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly says."We will continue working with them and our relationship has never been stronger. While we may not have a lot of details to share at the moment, we've got a number of projects underway with the talented teams at EA."

Ubisoft today announced that it's making a new Star Wars game. Based on market trends and Disney's big new Jedi series, we can make some educated guesses on what to expect from the new project.

Note: This article is speculative, but it's based on Ubisoft's business practices and the current trajectory of the Star Wars universe.

The Division 2 developer Ubisoft Massive is developing a new story-driven, open-world Star Wars game. That sentence alone is enough to give most gamers an idea of what the game could offer--wide exploration, lots of busywork and questing, tons of icons on a huge map, grinding, and slick third-person action.

The Division developer Ubisoft Massive is making a new Star Wars game, Lucasfilm Games today confirmed.

Lucasfilm Games was only just resurrected, but the new label has been busy. First Lucasfilm announced a new Indiana Jones game is in the works at Bethesda's MachineGames. Now they've announced EA has lost exclusivity to the Star Wars license, and Ubisoft is jumping on board.

The new Ubisoft-developed Star Wars game will be an open-world title with story-driven beats. The Division 2's Julian Gerighty will be the creative director on the project, and the Star Wars game is being developed in Ubisoft Massive's proprietary Snowdrop engine--the same engine that powered The Division games.

According to now-deleted listings on retailer websites, the Mass Effect trilogy remaster will launch in early March.

EA plans to finish out its FY2021 timeline with a hefty catalog boost from BioWare. Retailers may have accidentally leaked a March 12, 2021 release for the new Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which is a strategic launch for EA. The remaster should launch before the Fiscal Year 2021 timeline ends on March 31, giving EA a few weeks of sales before the period closes. Big publishers tend to release games in Feb/March to help bolster Q4 sales, which typically slumps after the Q3 holiday rush.

Neither EA nor BioWare have officially confirmed a launch date for the remaster trilogy. Right now Spring 2021 is the targeted release. The trilogy is getting big upgrades for current- and next-gen hardware, including better frame rates, boosted resolution, and lots of optimizations and tweaks. EA also confirmed the game will receive free PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X upgrades.

Razer is being Razer with its new Project Hazel, a new gaming-infused N95 face mask for the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.

The new Razer Project Hazel is a full plastic N95 face mask that features a silicone membrane that makes a seal over the wearers' nose, chin, and jaw. Razer has included removable filters on each side of the mask which also pack some (actually really nice looking) RGB lighting -- you'll stand out in the crowd, that's for sure.

This wouldn't be a Razer face mask without some cool tech, right? That's why Razer has used a built-in microphone and amplifier, which will help others hear you speak instead of being muzzled and muffled behind a traditional face mask.