Gaming - Page 514

I've had my eye on Teardown for quite a while now, with the game made by Dennis Gustafsson and Emil Bengtsson -- a game that has some of -- if not the best environmental destruction physics I've ever seen in a game. Check out some Teardown gameplay:

Teardown will be released on October 29 for a cost of $20, with both a Campaign and Sandbox mode. The game is interesting from its voxel-based graphics and design, but it's the physical destruction that is almost industry-leading. It looks out-of-this-world good.

Anyone that remembers the PhysX days, the game Red Faction, and some of better Battlefield games with great environment destruction but teardown really lets you tear everything down, and so realistically.

Players can now slice the storage-hungry behemoth that is Modern Warfare and reduce file sizes.

After months of increasingly gigantic patches that pushed the game to 250GB, Infinity Ward finally made good on its promise to shrink Modern Warfare's install size. Gamers can now carve up the game and only install modes they want to play. If you only play multiplayer, you can keep Warzone and Modern Warfare MP installed and remove campaign completely. Or you can keep campaign and nix multiplayer.

With the new season 6 update, users can modify existing installs or start a new install from scratch. The feature is similar to the custom install feature introduced with the Master Chief Collection on PC and Xbox One, which lets you select which games you want and which gametypes to install.

Halo Reach, Halo, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo 4 will all run at high-end optimized performance on Xbox Series X, with options up to 4K 120FPS in every game.

Today 343 Industries finally confirmed the Master Chief Collection will be significantly optimized on the Series X/S consoles. The massively ambitious Halo: Infinite may be delayed to 2021, but the Series X will basically open up a new dimension of play with classic Halo games running at an ultra-responsive 120FPS at up to 3840 x 2160 resolution. You'll need a TV that supports HDMI 2.1 and 120Hz to take advantage of this feature, though.

No exact details on performance were revealed--i.e. GPU equivalency like The Coalition's Gears 5 that ran at RTX 2080 levels of perf at High settings--but 343i confirms 120FPS will be available in both multiplayer and campaign. The optimizations will of course be free for anyone who already owns a copy of MCC on Xbox One.

P.T., one of the scariest games ever made, may be locked to PS4 and not transfer to the PS5, Konami hints.

Tis the season for fright and terror, and nothing scratches that particular itch like P.T., the playable teaser game demo for Hideo Kojima's cancelled Silent Hills game. Sadly it seems the game will be forever stuck on PS4 and may not be transferrable to PS5. The possible issue? Backwards compatibility.

Konami recently confirmed to GamesRadar that P.T. won't be available to re-download on the PS5. We've known this for a while. P.T. was de-listed some time ago on PS4 and wasn't redownloadable without some special tricks.

Microsoft's Xbox Series X and S external storage comes with specific requirements to launch games from external drives or USB sticks.

Finalized previews of the Xbox Series X confirm a few things about the console's storage options. The system's 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD has 802GB of free usable space after OS and formatting, which is about enough to five 8 big AAA games. Any games installed on the SSD will be supercharged with faster loading even if they're not optimized, but any games with updates will benefit tremendously from the 2.4GB/sec storage upgrade.

What's interesting are the stipulations behind expandable media. We knew the Xbox Series X and S consoles require USB 3.0 external hard drives or USB sticks in order to launch games. You can't store games on a USB 2.0 drive, for example, and launch them from within the console. Now we know these drives must be at least 128GB in size, which eliminates a good portion of smaller USB thumb drives.

Infinity Ward's new Haunting of Verdansk cross-over Warzone and Modern Warfare event might be the ultimate seasonal Halloween event in gaming history, complete with custom Jisaw and Leatherface skins and tons of content.

The ambitious Haunting of Verdansk timed event starts tomorrow across all platforms in both Warzone and Modern Warfare, and is part of the season 6 rollout. Infinity Ward has jam-packed tons of stuff to do and experience, from new Jisaw and Leatherface skin packs that unleash a distinct Halloween Horror Nights terror onto the battlefield, to the little nuanced Easter eggs that only appear every so often (weird ventriloquist dummies in Verdansk, as well as chainsaw ghosts).

The most exciting part of the Haunting in Verdansk event is Zombie Royale, a new zombies mode with a twist: When players die, they come back as zombies to take on other living players. Undead players can actually resurrect themselves by killing two live players and collecting special syringes.

Square Enix plans to bundle both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII Remastered on a single re-release cartridge on Switch.

Today Square Enix confirmed the FFVII + FFVIII twin pack on Switch will also release in other regions including Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, and Europe. The collection will include both classic games on a single GameCard, including the remastered Final Fantasy VIII with its enhanced graphics and visuals and new cheat modes.

The collection will retail on store shelves for 40 Euros and is set to ship on December 4, 2020.

Ubisoft confirms Watch Dogs Legion will be monetized with in-game microtransactions including cosmetics and other personalization items.

Like every Ubisoft game, especially those with live services or seamless online multiplayer, Watch Dogs Legion will have optional in-game purchases to help players unlock content early on. The great thing is the mTX isn't specifically pay-to-win.

The store will sell cosmetics and customizables, and will even sell operatives, or playable characters you can use in missions or while playing multiplayer. Legion has a premium currency called WD Credits with an exchange rate of roughly $1 per 100 WDC. This is a sharp contrast to Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey, who both sold powerful weapons, armors, and convenience items for real money.

Transitioning from work-from-home measures has significantly interrupted development on a number of games, especially Square Enix's newest titles. Now company CEO Yousuke Matsuda warns consumers and investors that this disruption will negatively affect future earnings.

Square Enix's latest Q1 gaming earnings were pretty good. Net sales, profit, and operating income are all up. Amusement closures incurred a 2.26 billion yen loss, though. These earnings spikes are a short-term result of COVID-19 lockdowns, which pushed many consumers indoors. COVID also took a chunk out of game dev progress, and now Square Enix says the real financial hit will come later as a result of this interruption.

In a recent interview with The Financial Times, Square Enix CEO Yousuke Matsuda says the company "couldn't develop anything" during COVID-19 lockdowns. The games-maker is faring better now that it's moved its teams to work from home, but during the initial period, game dev was stalled.

Youngblood might've just been the beginning of MachineGames' co-op ambitions, and the studio is interested in infusing more multiplayer components into its games.

Today MachineGames re-confirmed our suspicions: More co-op games are probably on the way. In a Bethesda.net post, the studio expressed desires to make another online multiplayer game of some sort whether it be co-op or traditional multiplayer. The studio is interested in taking its learnings with Youngblood and applying them to future games. Microsoft will be glad to hear this. Now that MachineGames is a first-party Xbox studio, it's only natural for its games to have live service-style hooks with engagement-driven mechanics, i.e. unlockables, co-op, and other online content specifically designed for Xbox Game Pass subscriber growth and retention.

The Wolfenstein developer started off with the standalone online co-op multiplayer game Wolfenstein Youngblood, which was actually monetized with in-game purchases. That move was part of Bethesda's push into live services, a push that's seen most of its big IPs transition into online-driven games (ESO, Fallout 76, etc). This live service focus was an attractive business model for Microsoft and helped add value to the recent $7.5 billion Bethesda buyout. It folds perfectly with Microsoft's emphasis on services.

Ubisoft's new massively ambitions Watch Dogs Legion game will hit 4K 30FPS on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X with ray tracing turned on, the developers confirm.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla runs at 4K 60FPS on next-gen consoles without any ray tracing effects, but Watch Dogs Legion is going a separate route. Legion is opting for more flashy graphical performance and will instead max out at 4K 30FPS with ray tracing turned on. It's possible the game won't hit 60FPS on next-gen outside of 1080p resolution. The developers have been kind of coy on the exact modes we can expect in Legion.

"Ray tracing, 4K, 30fps on PS5 and Xbox Series X,"Watch Dogs Legion live producer Lathieeshe Thillainathan said in a Reddit AmA session.

MachineGames plans to leverage next-gen PCIe 4.0 SSD tech to supercharge upcoming games including Wolfenstein 3.

In a recent Bethesda.net blog post, MachineGames gives some exciting clues on what to expect from future games. Right now the studio is working on new projects including Wolfenstein 3. These games should be built specifically for PCIe 4.0 SSD tech which can supercharge data flows like never before, removing seek times to eliminate asset reproduction, and significantly improving load times. No longer will games have to use sequences like long elevator rides to bridge level checkpoints. The result can radically and fundamentally change how MachineGames' titles are made and played.

Like most developers, MachineGames wants to use SSD storage to help usher in a new era of games development. The possibilities are exciting for devs and gamers alike. While no exact specifics were given from the studio, MachineGames says it sees SSDs as transformative for the future of its games--and the industry as a whole.

Rakuten Securities analyst Norio Imanaka makes bold forecasts on PS5's sales that border on the absurd, saying Sony's next-gen console will be the best-selling system in history.

Rakuten analyst Norio Imanaka predicts the PS5 could sell 200-300 million units in just 5-6 years' time. This figure is pretty outlandish for a few reasons. First, a bit of perspective: The PS5 would have to sell 40 million consoles every year for 5 years to hit 200 million. The PS4 has never broken more than 21 million sales a year, and in FY2016 the PS4 hit peak sales of 20.3 million.

Secondly, these figures would easily dethrone the industry's best-selling console of all time. The PS2 has sold-in 155 million units worldwide after 13 years on the market, as per Sony's official figures. These predictions see the PS5 eclipsing the PS2 by 45 million units in less than half the available market time.

The PS5's robust cooling system won't be static. Sony plans to use the internet to dynamically control fan speeds while playing specific games.

Cooling is a big focus for the PS5 and Sony has spent lots of money and time developing the console's three-part solution, which includes a massive 120mm dual-sided fan, a huge copper heat-pipe heat sink that mimics vapor chamber cooling, and for the first time ever in a games console, liquid metal thermal compound.

Hardware isn't enough, though. Sony literally re-designed how the PS5's SoC draws power in an effort to maximize cool and quiet performance under demanding loads. The PS5's GPU and CPU now run at variable frequencies, and the PSU now delivers a consistent stream of power to the SoC, system components, and the fans. Sony has another ace up its sleeve, though: Dynamic fan speed control using game updates.

No, Sony isn't recording, surveilling, or spying on your PlayStation 4/PlayStation 5 party chats by default. The company now clarifies on the new security feature and what it means for communications.

Sony is rolling out a new security and moderation feature to help curb abuse and harassment. The idea is simple: Gamers in a party can now record up to 20 seconds of a voice chat and send them to Sony via harassment reports. The voice clips add lots more evidence to the reports and will help deter gamers from inappropriate behavior.

Sony confirms that "only the most recent five minutes of a Voice Chat will be available for a player to use for this reporting function." This means the console is apparently recording the voice chats by default, similar to how the PS4 can automatically record the last 15 minutes of gameplay footage.

New Xbox Series X SSD memory card teardowns confirm our past suspicions; The SSD utilizes Phison's E19T memory controller alongside high-performance TLC flash memory.

GamesBeat recently tore down the Xbox Series X SSD memory card and revealed vital info about the PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe storage hardware. The SSD is the heart of the Xbox and everything from 4K 60FPS, 120FPS, ray tracing, and more is made possible by the high-speed storage. The expandable SSD card is manufactured by Seagate and is a perfect copy of the internal SSD inside the Series X console, so what's inside the card should reflect the actual storage configuration in the dedicated console.

As we predicted in our Xbox Series X SSD video, the SSD features a mid-tier Phison E19T memory controller with four channels, confirming PCIe 4.0 x4 lane performance. The card's CFX (CFExpress, a card interface used in digital camera storage) also supports 4x lanes and reflects portability, ease-of-use, and the overall comparatively mid-tier performance of the storage.

What if Xbox One owners didn't have to upgrade consoles to get Xbox Series X performance? What if they could just remotely stream next-gen games at 4K 60FPS? Microsoft is open to the idea.

In a recent interview with Kotaku, Xbox's Phil Spencer outlined one of the most forward-thinking strategies in gaming today: Merging current- and next-gen console gaming in a new way.

By way of powerful server banks and Project xCloud streaming, Microsoft can theoretically bring next-gen gaming to current-gen hardware. The idea is to use servers outfitted with Series X console hardware to beam next-gen gaming performance over to Xbox One, Xbox One S, and Xbox One X consoles. You'd fire up your current-gen system, connect to the cloud, and stream Series X games to your older system. It's a powerful tool for subscription retention and services--or the main drivers for the Xbox business.

Xbox management hints Bethesda's future games might stay exclusive to the Xbox platform (PC, Xbox consoles) and skip PlayStation.

Microsoft just bought Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion, roughly 3x what it paid for Minecraft, aka the best-selling video game of all time. It's only natural for Microsoft to want to recoup that cost over time. The main reason Microsoft bought Bethesda was to secure long-term content for its digital service-driven ecosystem. This model hinges on a certain level of exclusivity that offers options up to a point: You're free to play Xbox games on Xbox consoles, PCs, and mobiles...just not on competing hardware like the PS5 where Game Pass isn't available.

This level of exclusion boosts the value of the Xbox ecosystem and makes Game Pass more attractive. This is by design. Now Xbox's Phil Spencer asserts that Microsoft doesn't actually need to bring Bethesda games to PS5 or other platforms to "make the deal work for us."

The new $199 Analogue Duo aims to preserve the early days of CD-ROM and HuCards with a custom universal console that reads all NEC games.

The Analogue Duo is the optimum all-in-one system for old-school NEC console games. The Duo supports nearly every NEC game across all systems, including TurboGrafx 16, SuperGrafx CD, PC Engine, PC Engine CD, and Super Arcade titles. The Duo plays games on all media including HuCards, TurboChips and of course CDs.

The big upside is that the games aren't just preserved and playable, but upgraded to 1080p over HDMI. The Duo also supports built-in Bluetooth so you can connect wireless 8BitDo controllers, but also sports a single wired controller port for authentic legacy peripherals. There's also 2x USB ports for other devices too.

After years of development, planning, and optimizations for next-gen consoles, Ubisoft's new Viking-themed Assassin's Creed is now finished and ready to ship.

Today Ubisoft announced Assassin's Creed Valhalla has gone gold. The devs have put the finishing touches on the massive, conquest-driven action RPG and the game is now ready to meet its November 10 release on all platforms including PS5 and Series X. Valhalla represents a new frontier for Ubisoft that combines Origins' and Odyssey's RNG loot systems with more dynamism, exploration opportunities, and a robust settlement system that's designed to keep you playing as long as possible.

Valhalla offers more unique opportunities to meld history with folklore. Gamers will jump right into Norse and native English mythology and tackle fearsome beasts like Fenrir and the World Serpent, culminating in epic fantasy battles. Other sequences are more somber, grim, and historically accurate, such as having to build alliances with 873 AD kingdoms after conquering certain areas.