Gaming - Page 509

Nintendo's Q1-Q2 performance was so strong that the company has upwardly revised its hardware, software, net sales, and total profit forecast by up to 51%.

Nintendo's Fiscal Year Q1-Q2 2021 earnings saw all major metrics skyrocket to high levels. Throughout April - September 2020, Nintendo made $2.01 billion in net profit (213.1 billion yen) on $7.8 billion (769.5 billion yen) in net sales (+73% YoY).

Operating profit was likewise up triple percentage points of 209% YoY to $2.75 billion (291.4 billion yen). This spike was driven by COVID-19 lockdown spending surges on hardware and digital software.

Respawn's big Jedi action-adventure epic is jumping onto its newly-designed EA Play subscription this November, adding tremendous value to the already-appealing service.

2019's acclaimed Jedi: Fallen Order will be included free in EA Play's games vault on PS4, Xbox One and PC, EA recently announced.

The move comes days before the service goes live on Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X/S consoles, where EA Play will be included with all Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. So if you subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate, you can get Jedi: Fallen Order and all the other games included in EA Play for free.

Today BioWare re-confirmed it's working on a new Mass Effect game. We put all the clues together so you can gauge what to expect from the next big space opera.

In a recent post, BioWare GM Casey Hudson said a team of studio vets are working on a new Mass Effect project. The game is in early development stages (likely pre-production planning) and won't be out for some time. We also get our first glimpse at ME4 concept art, which is called the "mud skipper." EA execs haven't relayed any info about the new ME to investors. Even still, we have an idea of the new project's scope, and it could be the most ambitious project BioWare has ever made.

"Meanwhile here at BioWare, a veteran team has been hard at work envisioning the next chapter of the Mass Effect universe. We are in early stages on the project and can't say any more just yet, but we're looking forward to sharing our vision for where we'll be going next,"Hudson said.

BioWare finally announces the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a current-gen remaster of all three original Mass Effect games.

The Mass Effect Legendary Edition packs Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3 complete with all add-ons, DLC, and content packs (a rare move from BioWare). The collection is due out Spring 2021, BioWare says, and is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The big selling point of the re-release is enhanced performance on current- and next-gen hardware. BioWare says all three original games have been upgraded with 4K UHD resolution textures as well as "faster framerates and beautiful visual enhancements." No specific performance targets were revealed though, so we're not sure if 4K 30FPS or 1080p 60FPS will be the standard perf.

BioWare has something special planned for tomorrow's N7 Day, but it's not entirely surprising.

After years of rumbling rumors and reports, BioWare is apparently ready to finally announce the Mass Effect remastered trilogy. Sources have leaked out the developer's plans to US Gamer's Kat Bailey, who says an announcement will happen at 8am PST tomorrow on the BioWare Blog. GamesBeat's Jeff Grubb, who previously revealed details about the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, posted up a fuzzy picture of the collection's key art on Twitter.

Previous reports say the Legendary Edition has been delayed into 2021 due to issues with the first Mass Effect game. The collection features full remasters of the original RPGs with upgraded visuals and enhancements to reflect the more powerful current-gen hardware.

British racing game developer Codemasters has received a buyout offer from Take-Two Interactive, the publisher behind Grand Theft Auto.

According to a new press release, Take-Two is prepared to offer 485 pence-per-share (roughly $973 million) to acquire the entirety of Codemaster's shares. The buyout cost will be split up between $240.8 million in cash and the remainder in Take-Two stock.

This would give Take-Two 100% stake in the company, and it's likely the GTA-maker would fold Codemasters strategically in its labels to position the publisher at the top of the racing genre. Codemasters recently bought Slightly Mad Studios, the developers behind Project Cars, for $30 million.

P.T. is now forever locked to the PS4 and can't be played on the PS5.

Konami has made the decision to block P.T. on PS5, despite the demo previously being able to run on the next-gen console. P.T. was apparently playable in early press kits as of late October before Konami asked Sony to block the game. The game can be transferred to the PS5's HDD, and is recognizable on an external HDD, but it can't be launched on the PS5.

P.T. might be restricted on an account level, and it simply can't boot on a PS5. Users report that P.T. wasn't updated and neither was the firmware, hinting Sony manually adjusted game privileges on an PSN level.

Nintendo has sold 456.49 million Switch games to date across a library of 710 games, the company recently announced.

There's lots of good news in Nintendo's recent Fiscal Year Q2'21 earnings report. Hardware is up to an all-time Q2 high of 6.86 million unit sales, and total games earnings are up to $3.67 billion. Software, however, is a more interesting trend.

Nintendo sold 49.82 million Switch games in Q2 FY2021, up 39% from last year. This brings first half software sales (Q1-Q2 FY2021) to a massive 100.25 million game sales, which eclipses the year-ago period by 41.76 million sales.

Epic Games announces Fortnite's next-gen upgrade will be available day one on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, complete with 4K 60FPS and more.

Just like Epic promised, Fortnite is coming to the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles this year. The optimizations include some hefty boosts like native 4K 60FPS on both Xbox Series X and PS5 (just 1080p 60FPS on Series S), ultra-fast loading thanks to SSD tech, 60FPS split-screen, and drastically improved physics, effects, and lighting systems. Full cross-play is preserved as well.

The initial upgrades will be powered by Unreal Engine 4 and not the newer Unreal Engine 5. Epic plans to roll out UE5 integration sometime in 2021, including supporting for the engine's powerful new Nanite graphics and Lumen lighting tech. Also remember Epic is working closely with Sony to ensure UE5 runs best on PS5, but it'll still of course be compatible with the Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Sony warns Japanese consumers that all launch day PS5 stock is completely sold out across all retailers and storefronts.

As COVID-19 lockdowns push more consumers towards gaming, demand for the PS5 is tremendously high. Even with the reported 8.25 million PS5 shipment target, Sony may have a hard time meeting this demand across key worldwide markets. This is doubly true for its home country of Japan where launch consoles will be unavailable for anyone without a pre-order.

"The release date of PlayStation 5, Thursday, November 12, is approaching. Due to the high interest and many orders from users, the release date is sold out by the reserved amount," Sony said on a PlayStation Blog Japan post.

Sea of Thieves is a gigantic game for Microsoft and the Xbox (and PC) with over 15 million people playing the game, but now the company is teasing the upgrades Sea of Thieves have on the next-gen Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles.

Rare has detailed that the upgrades we can expect from the Xbox Series X version of Sea of Thieves is pretty big, with 4K 60FPS on the best-specced Xbox while the Xbox Series S chugs away at 1080p 60FPS. Both versions of the game on the XSX and XSS will have improved load times, too.

I would've thought all that Zen 2 + RDNA 2 + PCIe 4.0 SSD grunt would've had Microsoft pumping 1440p at the very least at 60FPS on the Xbox Series S, but I guess not. 1080p 60FPS is alright -- but it's a big drop from 4K 60FPS.

We are on the eve of both the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S consoles with EA using this time to tease how it's next-gen Battlefield game is going.

During its recent investors call, EA said: "DICE is creating our next Battlefield game with never-before-seen scale. The technical advancements of the new consoles are allowing the team to deliver a truly next-gen vision for the franchise. We have hands-on playtesting underway internally".

As for its release, EA teases that the next-gen Battlefield game "is set to launch in holiday 2021".

Nintendo Switch sales swell to 68.3 million worldwide on the back of strong Q2 purchases.

Today Nintendo announced its FYQ2'21 earnings, and the results are stellar. Switch hardware sales in particular showed a strong uptick by 43% year-over-year, pushing Q2'21's Switch sales to the highest levels of any second quarter since the system debuted in 2017.

Nintendo sold a record-breaking 6.86 million Switch units from July - September 30, 2020, bringing total FY2021 console sales to 12.53 million. This performance period also represents another milestone for Nintendo. FY 1H'21's Switch sales (Q1 + Q2) far exceed any other like-for-like period, beating first-half FY2020 earnings by more than 80%.

If you're one of the lucky ones who managed to secure a PlayStation 5 pre-order ahead of next week's release date, here's how to prepare to move your existing PlayStation 4 library across and save data. If you've got a brutally-fast internet connection, you might not be too worried about re-downloading your current library. For the rest of you, there's plenty of other options.

Sony offers a Data Transfer feature to transfer your data via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

You will be able to continue using your PS5 while the Data Transfer runs in the background.

The next-gen PlayStation 5 console won't be compatible with expandable M.2 SSDs at launch, Sony re-confirms.

A while back, PS5 architect Mark Cerny confirmed Sony's next-gen system wouldn't support M.2 expansion drives right at launch. The PS5 is compatible with third-party PC-grade PCIe 4.0 SSDs, but there's lots of compatibility testing involved, especially considering the PS5's SSD features a custom 12-channel memory controller. Cerny also confirms the expansion SSD has to be at least as fast as the PS5's 5.5GB/sec, which is absolutely feasible--there's SSDs that now hit up to 7GB/sec transfers.

"The NVMe scheme is pretty nice, but it only has two true priority levels. Our SSD has six. We can hook up a drive with only two priority levels but our custom I/O unit has to arbitrate the extra priorities rather than the M.2 drive's flash controller. And so the M.2 drive needs a little extra speed to take care of issues arising from the different approach," Cerny said in an early March presentation.

Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 won't be available to buy in-store at launch, and will be sold exclusively online.

Today Sony revealed an interesting tactic to help counter COVID-19 exposure: restricting all PS5 sales to online-only purchases. The PlayStation 5 won't be sold at any physical store or retailer on November 12. There will be no PS5 consoles on store shelves at launch (although there's plenty of DualSense controllers out and about) and Sony warns consumers not to line up outside of retailers in hopes of securing a system. Anyone who pre-ordered (or ordered) a system will still be able to pick it up at the store, though.

"In the interest of keeping our gamers, retailers, and staff safe amidst COVID-19, today we are confirming that all day-of launch sales will be conducted through the online stores of our retail partners," Sony's Sid Shuman said on the PlayStation Blog.

The latest PS5 innovation proves these next-gen consoles are more like PCs than ever.

The PS5's OS has a nifty little addition that gamers will appreciate: A global preset toggle that favors higher resolution or higher performance in boosted PS4 and PS5 games. The option is in the PS5's settings pane and can be changed at any time.

Basically this will let PS5 owners select one setting and the console will automatically prioritize either mode. The global preset will make it so players don't have to change the perf/resolution settings on a game-by-game basis. Feel like playing Spider-Man Miles Morales in 4K 60FPS? Turn on Performance Mode. Want to enjoy eye-popping visuals? Change the console to Resolution Mode to hit 4K 30FPS with ray tracing enabled.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was an experience forged out of fearlessness and a rare devil may care attitude, and it paid off big time.

Morrowind saved Bethesda. Before Morrowind, Bethesda was teetering on the edge of ruin. While creating Morrowind, the developers at Bethesda Game Studios were convinced the company would go under.

So why not create something new, unique, and tailor-made for fans? Why not make something that's unconstrained by certain marketing limits and go all out? That was Bethesda's rationale at the time, and it helped create one of the best RPGs in existence.

Games are getting bigger and bigger, with the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War requiring 133GB of storage space on the PlayStation 5 -- knowing that you'll only have around 667GB usable space kinda sucks.

We heard the rumor weeks ago, but now PlayStation 5 review units are going out and reviewers are reporting that the PS5 has just 667GB of usable space out of the box. Sure it's more than the 500GB storage inside of the PS4 at launch, but that was many years ago now and games are way, way bigger.

But if we're looking at 130-150GB per big AAA next-gen game... then you're only going to be able to install 4-5 games before running out of space. We'll have to see how things go when the PlayStation 5 launches on November 12.

SEGA no longer wants to operate amusement arcades and plans to shift away from its once-lucrative pachinko, pachislot, and arcade business.

Today SEGA announced the end of an era. Amid disastrous losses due to COVID-19, SEGA will sell off the majority voting rights in its SEGA Entertainment amusement games division to GENDA, a private Japanese arcade operator, for an undisclosed sum.

SEGA will sell off 21,000 (roughly 85%) of its arcade operations shares to GENDA Inc, a company that has 3x as much capital stock value as SEGA. The Japanese games-maker will retain ~15% of its shares and surrender voting rights to GENDA. SEGA currently plans to keep making games for arcades, but it will no longer operate the Amusement Center Operations division as part of its Entertainment Contents branch.