Gaming - Page 510

Polyphony Digital's next-gen Gran Turismo 7 will be a spectacle on the PlayStation 5, and a new ad hints at a mid-2021 release date.

Gran Turismo 7 missed the PS5's launch, but according to a new Canadian advertisement, the game should release in the first half of 2021 as a next-gen exclusive. It's worth noting we can't verify whether or not the ad is true so take the window with a grain of salt. It does make sense to follow up the PS5's launch titles with a heavy-hitter like GT7 though.

Sony hasn't talked in length about Gran Turismo 7, but we do know the game will push the PS5 to its limits and stand as one of the exemplars of next-gen performance. The racing game looks absolutely incredible thanks to ray-traced 4K visuals and buttery-smooth 60FPS. There's also talk of pushing in-game frame rates to 120FPS and even beyond.

Bethesda's Todd Howard confirms the massive engine overhaul is the main reason Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 are taking so long to develop.

Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 are still a long ways from release. Both games are currently in development for next-generation hardware, including the Xbox Series X, and will both be powered by Bethesda's new revamped proprietary games engine. Right now Bethesda Game Studios is performing the biggest engine re-do in its entire history to ensure its internal first-party titles are fully optimized on the more powerful hardware.

"The overhaul on our engine is probably the largest we've ever had, maybe even larger than Morrowind to Oblivion," Howard told GamesIndustry.biz.

Treyarch just revealed install sizes for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War on consoles and PC, and they're pretty big.

Like Warzone and Modern Warfare before it, Black Ops Cold War will take up lots of storage space. The game's install sizes look like this on PC and consoles:

The great thing is console players can now choose what portions of the game they want to install. Campaign, multiplayer, and zombies are all separated. If you just want to play multiplayer, you can just install that portion and significantly reduce the storage size.

Valve's Gabe Newell is teaming up with New Zealand aerospace manufacturer Rocket Lab to

To thank New Zealand for its tremendous hospitality during his stay, Gabe Newell is donating a very special payload for a new rocket launch: A real-life Gnome Chompski. The infamous gnome cemented one of the most memorable achievements in gaming history (look it up if you're not sure what we're talking about), and now GabeN wants to bring that classic in-game moment to the real-world.

According to a press release announcement from Rocket Lab, Chompski will be the "mass simulator" on Flight 16. The 6-inch gnome will be attached to the Electron rocket's Kick Stage, or the last stage before the delivery vehicle falls and burns up in the atmosphere. Basically, Chompski is coming along for the ride and will actually see space before he sizzles.

The Xbox Series S won't actually have the advertised 512GB of free SSD space available to consumers. Instead, the storage availability will shrink quite a bit and only fit a handful of AAA games.

At $299, the Series S seems great on paper. But adding up all the disadvantages makes it a tougher sell--it's digital only, a tremendously weaker GPU aimed at 1440p 60FPS, and now limited SSD space. According to a consumer who got their Xbox Series S console early, the system only has 364GB available for games, apps, and data.

This is par for the course for hard drives and SSDs. No storage device has the advertised value because the drives have to be formatted. After formatting, the Series S' 512GB SSD turns into a 467GB SSD. Then the operating system, APIs, and other features reserve space and take a further bite out of available storage. The Series X's SSD is actually shrunken even more, and only has 800GB of free space on a formatted 931GB SSD.

Pokemon Go has raked in a whopping $4 billion in lifetime monetization revenues, analyst firm SensorTower reports.

Four years after its release and Pokemon Go is still a huge powerhouse hit. The game pulled in over $1 billion in earnings in 2020, pushing total cumulative worldwide revenues to $4.2 billion. The F2P AR sensation has been downloaded 600 million times on mobile devices, but Android made up 53% of earnings, or $2.2 billion, whereas iOS hit 47% with $1.9 billion.

Interestingly enough, the United States made up the most of the earnings. The U.S. generated 33.6% or total revenues or $1.5 billion. The consistent surge throughout 2020 owes to lots of in-game content and updates, including paid ticketed events every month, new raids, tons of in-game monetization, and more.

Friday the 13th has stagnated as a live game and Gun Media is turning off dedicated servers for the horror-survival multiplayer title.

Today Gun Media confirmed the "inevitable" news: Friday the 13th The Game is starting to wind down. The game is still playable, but dedicated servers have been pulled offline. Right now the game can only be played in two modes: Quick Play and private matches. Both of these are restricted to peer-to-peer matchmaking. Gun also confirms Friday the 13th won't get any future updates.

Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 DualSense controller has a ton of mechanical upgrades over the DualShock 4, but will still suffer the same drift issues as its forebear.

According to YouTube channel Tronix Fix, the DualSense uses the same analog sticks as the DualShock 4. This means the analog sticks aren't easily replaceable, and the advanced PS5 controller may eventually get the same stick drifting problems as the DS4.

"I was really hoping to see some upgrades here, but unfortunately it looks like they used pretty much the exact same analog sticks, so I do expect quite a few problems with stick drift on the DualSense just like the DualShock 4,"Steve from Tronix Fix said.

Activision-Blizzard has a handful of major franchises that it will double-down and focus on rather than expanding with risky and potentially unprofitable IPs.

Activision is making a killing right now thanks to COVID-19 lockdowns. Its digital-first business model is paying off big during a time where people are staying home. As such, the publisher doesn't really need to release new games every often to maintain its multi-billion dollar reign over other U.S. game companies. It's been this way for a while and it'll stay this way for even longer.

What new games that do get released will be part of an established webwork of franchises. The idea is to use network and live service foundations that already exist instead of starting out from scratch (it's the same thought process behind CoD games jumping to Battle.net). We'll see sequels, new F2P games, mobile ports, and content, content, content across this six main franchises:

Activision has an ambitious, yet rather simple plan to reduce marketing and advertising costs; Use their games as interactive billboards for new games.

The Cold War reveal event in Warzone represents a paradigm shift for Activision-Blizzard. Instead of putting its advertisements solely on the outside, it's now redirected that focus inward. Warzone was treated like a big venue for Black Ops Cold War with a playable event; complete the task and you get to see a reveal trailer. It's a perfect union of engagement and advertising.

This trend will extend to other franchises. Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick confirmed the news in a recent Q3'20 earnings call, saying that marketing will now tie directly into its games.

Apple TV will be on Xbox Series X/S consoles at launch, complete with an introductory free trial offer.

Sony recently detailed what streaming and content apps are coming to PS5, but Microsoft has them beat with the next-gen Series X/S offering. A big difference is the selection: The PS5 will have six apps pre-installed on the SSD, but the Series X/S consoles have fifteen. The next-gen Xbox consoles will have the same media apps as the Xbox One with the added bonus of Apple TV, which is coming November 10.

A big bonus of Apple TV is that subscribers can access various channels wrapped up in the service, including AMC shows, CBS All Access, and even Showtime.

Blizzard president J. Allen Brack teases new Warcraft projects for 2021, and they won't all be connected to World of Warcraft. We might see Warcraft 4 at some point.

Outside of WoW, the Warcraft franchise has kind of stagnated. The reality is Blizzard doesn't really need to release a new mainline game in order to make money. Blizzard can just rely on live service revenues from WoW and coast by with hundreds of millions every quarter. The franchise started out as a fantasy strategy game, but there hasn't been a proper Warcraft RTS in 17 years. That could change sometime soon, maybe as soon as 2021.

In Activision-Blizzard's recent earnings call, Blizzard's J. Allen Brack confirmed two big things: The Warcraft team is expanding, and Blizzard is looking at creating new Warcraft experiences outside of the current MMORPG.

Activision forecasts that 2020 will beat the $7.5 billion all-time record highs set in 2018.

COVID-19 is a boon for publishers like Activision-Blizzard who push lots of live services. Activision's business model is accelerating strongly thanks to stay-at-home lockdowns: Spending in Warzone and Modern Warfare is up, pushing Activision segment earnings up by 270% in Q3 to $773 million. Operating income is now at its highest point in the last 10 years. Revenues were up 29% to $1.954 billion. 90% of Activision-Blizzard's Q3 earnings were from digital, which is higher than any other publisher on the market today. To say Activision is well-suited to weather COVID-19 would be an understatement.

Things are going so good for the publisher that 2020 should be its best year ever. Activision-Blizzard expects to earn a record $7.675 billion in revenues in 2020, up $175 million from the previous records set in 2018. Right now, 2020 has the best operating income in the last 10 years, and has the second best net income as well.

Activision's Q3 2020 results bring the highest operating income the company has seen in the last 10 years.

Activision-Blizzard just released its Calendar Q3 2020 earnings to big fanfare. All the major metrics are up, but one is record-breaking: Operating profit. For the period ended September 30, 2020, Activision-Blizzard earned $778 million in operating income, a new all-time high for any quarter in the last 10 years.

The reasons for this record high are varied. Operating income is what's left when operating expenses are subtracted from revenue. In Q3, Activision-Blizzard made $1.954 billion in revenue (+29% YoY) and spent $1.176 billion on total quarterly expenses (-5.6% YoY). Since expenses were down and revenue was up, that left more left over for operating income. This is an important indicator of how well a company is balancing its expenses and earned revenues; the higher the operating income, the more streamlined a company appears to be.

CD Projekt RED co-CEO Adam Kicinski drew ire from internal developers for downplaying crunch during an investors call. Now he's apologizing to the people working intense overtime.

Reports say that CDPR developers are working 100 hour work weeks to finish Cyberpunk 2077. This harsh cycle of crunch has been going on for months now, and the game's recent delay to December 10 underlines CD Projekt's ultimate goal of perfection. It's been said time and time again that CDPR has a problem with crunch on its huge blockbuster games, and Cyberpunk 2077 is its biggest yet.

But for investors, analysts, and gamers listening in on a recent company call, CD Projekt RED co-CEO Adam Kicinski pretty much shrugged off years of crunch reports.

Sony's future plans with the PS5 depend on the PS4's past and present.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan confirms something we've known all along: The PS5's adoption depends on the current-gen PS4. We've long said backwards compatibility and seamless cross-gen transitions are the most important things for next-gen consoles. Turns out Sony thinks the same way. That's why the PS5 plays thousands of PS4 games at launch.

Since the PS5 will use the PS4 as a kind of springboard, Sony sees big things for the PS5's future. This confidence in the PS5 has led to a significant $945 million upwards revision (+35%) in projected FY2020 games earnings. Now Ryan explains why Sony is so bullish on the PS5's adoption rate, success, and how the PS4's 100 million-strong+ install base will be a launching pad for the next-gen successor.

It's finally happening: The Nintendo Switch is realizing part of its true potential by embracing cloud-based game streaming.

Long ago we predicted the Switch should have some sort of cloud streaming functionality. After all, the Switch is powered by the same Tegra X1 chip found in NVIDIA's Shield set top boxes, which are receivers for cloud-streamed games. A year after our predictions, Capcom and Ubisoft experimented with pay-as-you-play cloud streaming in Japan. Now cloud gaming on Switch is finally going mainstream.

Remedy's excellent game Control is the first game that'll be streamed on the Switch in mainstream markets. We don't know specifics on pricing or exact availability, but we do know a lot about the backend server tech. 505 Games has teamed up with Taiwan-based cloud expert Ubitus, who uses NVIDIA's GeForce Grid virtual PC environments to power its cloud-based GPU virtualization infrastructure. Ubitus' RTX GPU-powered streaming platform will stream Control in high-end perf including ray-traced visuals and enhanced quality settings.

Sony has confirmed its PlayStation 5 sales predictions for FY2020, and forecasts the PS5 to outsell the PS4's 7.6 million unit sales throughout the year.

In its recent earnings report, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki outlined PS5 launch year sales forecasts. The company expects the PS5 to beat the PS4's strong 7.6 million launch-year sales surge, numbers that would be even higher if supply permitted. Sony plans to ship as many consoles as it can and reports say up to 8.25 million PS5s could be shipped across the Q3 (holiday) and Q4 (Jan - March) periods.

"As for the unit sales of the PS5 this fiscal year, we are aiming to exceed the 7.6 million units we sold in the fiscal year of launch of the PlayStation®4, which achieved substantial market share and was a major success," Mr. Totoki said in the report.

Even though Microsoft now owns Bethesda and all of its IPs and studios, Todd Howard seems to hint Elder Scrolls 6 will still release on other platforms.

A bit ago Phil Spencer said games can stay contained to the Xbox ecosystem and still maintain profitability. It helps that Xbox now includes PC and mobiles instead of just consoles. There's been lots of back and forth about Bethesda games being held off of PlayStation consoles, especially big upcoming games like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI. We don't know about Starfield, but Bethesda's Todd Howard might be teasing a PS5 release for the next Elder Scrolls.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Todd Howard says that TES6 being an Xbox exclusive is "hard to imagine."

Crytek is apparently making Crysis Next, a F2P battle royale shooter set in the FPS series. Old reports suggest this project will be powered by Improbable's SpatialOS multiplayer engine.

Back in January 2019, Crytek confirmed they were working on a new online multiplayer game using Improbable's SpatialOS cloud infrastructure. SpatialOS is the same tech used to power gaming's first 1000-player battle royale game, and it's possible we could see Crysis Next push hundreds of players as well. Crytek's motivation is to integrate CryEngine into SpatialOS to help empower developers.

This new BR mode is likely a significant evolution of Crysis' original Warhead mode, mixed with live service elements and monetization. Crytek has pushed towards more competitive online-driven multiplayer games as of late with Warface and Hunt: Showdown, another PVP game that's built around SpatialOS. Before Crysis Remastered was announced we had originally predicted the new Crysis game could be a multiplayer-only experience of some sort.