Gaming - Page 516

Thanks to Microsoft's expansive backwards compatibility initiative, the Xbox 360 remains an important part of next-gen.

By embracing the past, Microsoft has forged a bright future for Xbox. The Series X/Series S next-gen duo has the widest games catalog because it plays for generations of Xbox games: original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and next-gen exclusives. I've often said this is the most important feature for next-gen.

Even 15 years later during a time that sees the most powerful, synergized, and advanced consoles ever made, Microsoft still isn't ready to leave the Xbox 360 behind. One of the most important features has been unlocked on the Xbox 360: game save preservation and easy migration.

Backwards compatible games get significant boosts on the new Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, opening up a new dimension of play on yesteryear games.

Today Microsoft confirmed the Series X/S next-gen duo can double frame rates in select backwards compatible games. Optimized titles like Fallout 4 get boosted from 30FPS to 60FPS on the new hardware thanks to advanced new BC techniques and higher-end CPU, GPU, RAM, and SSD components. Microsoft is careful to say not every game will get the 60FPS bump though.

This is a huge milestone that effectively changes how games can play. Titles originally restricted to just 30FPS on the weaker, Jaguar-powered Xbox One are now unshackled to mirror PC-esque performance on the new consoles. The jump to 60FPS is a big leap for specific games, especially games with shooting mechanics like Fallout 4. There's still a lot we don't know about this mode--like resolution targets, or what games support it--and like anything else with next-gen, there's lots of variability here.

Gears of War Tactics developer Splash Damage is currently working on a few mysterious big projects and plans to start aggressively hiring new developers.

Splash Damage is currently ramping up pre-production teams on sizable new projects. According to Splash Damage's lead writer Ed Stern, these include "laaarge secret game projects" that haven't been announced yet. Splash Damage is best known for its role in creating the PC version of The Master Chief Collection, developing Gears of War 5's multiplayer, and more recently, making Gears Tactics.

Google also teamed up with the studio to make Outcasters, a Stadia-exclusive arcade-style multiplayer game.

Finally... finally, finally, finally -- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is about to get a bit smaller on the PC with its new 1.28 update that will begin rolling out in the next few hours.

The new update will let PC owners of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare uninstall specific parts of the game, so if you're only playing Warzone or multiplayer in MW, you can uninstall the single player campaign and save some precious space on your HDD or SSD.

The news is coming from Paul Haile, who is the Production Director on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, announcing it over Twitter. We don't know what else the new COD: MW 1.28 update will include, or how big the patch will be -- but whatever is required to reduce the storage required for PC users since the game is weighing around 250GB -- a quarter of a terabyte.

Star Citizen has been in development for close to 10 years now, and between then and now it was split into factions -- one of them being the Hollywood star filled Squadron 42.

In a new development update on Squadron 42, developer Cloud Imperium Games talked about it all in the video above -- while Chris Roberts said that the game would be done, "when it's done". Roberts explained: "The best answer for your question is Squadron 42 will be done when it is done, and will not be released just to make a date but instead once all the tech and content is finished, polished and it plays great".

In full, Roberts said:

NVIDIA Reflex technology is slowly seeping its way into the largest esports games, with Reflex support now available in Apex Legends.

Apex Legends is the latest game to have NVIDIA Reflex support, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Valorant, and Fortnite already enjoying the system latency reducing technology. Reflex reduces latency and input lag in competitive games, which is a super-important deal for high-end and professional gamers.

These are the types of system latency improvements you're going to get with NVIDIA Reflex on and off -- look at the reductions on the lower-end GTX 1660 SUPER... it's impressive stuff.

Thanks to DLSS, Watch Dogs Legion can run at 4K Ultra with ray traced visuals...but it requires some hefty GPU horsepower.

Today Ubisoft revealed a revised PC spec sheet for Watch Dogs Legion outlining what kinds of hardware you'll need for ray traced gameplay. The game has three varying ray-tracing perf targets: 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, the latter of which requires an RTX 3080 (which is actually capable of hitting 30-60FPS at 4K Ultra with RT), and Intel Core i9-9900k/AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 65GB of install space (20GB of which is from a 4K texture pack).

The 1080p and 1440p spec requirements are reasonable, and you can skate by with some serious older hardware at 1080p with Low settings, including an NVIDIA GTX 970, 4GB of RAM, and in Intel Core i5-4460 CPU.

Razer has just unveiled its latest gaming mouse, with the Razer Viper Ultimate Cyberpunk 2077 Edition gaming mouse, check it out:

The new mouse was unveiled during Razer's own RazerCon event, unveiling a bunch of new products that included this kick ass new Viper Ultimate Cyberpunk 2077 Edition gaming mouse. We are told to expect around 70 hours of battery life between charges on the new mouse, with a 20,000 DPI sensor and maximum of 650 IPS (inches per second) and maximum acceleration of up to 50G.

You will of course have some slick RGB lighting through Chroma RGB, which can be tweaked through software -- while the mouse launches sometime in November 2020 for $160.

It looks like Digital Extremes is about to put in some huge graphical upgrades into Warframe, right after its 7th big expansion launched with Heart of Deimos.

Digital Extremes explains in a new post on the Warframe forums that they're moving away from their old rendering engine, with the new rendering upgrade providing the developers with a huge new playground of tools, improved graphics, and more to use in Warframe.

Destiny 2's Battle.net to Steam content transfers will end this December, Bungie confirms, so be sure to move your accounts over.

Destiny 2 hasn't been on Battle.net for a long time but anyone who bought the game on Blizzard's platform is still able to transfer their content, characters, and overall account over to Steam. Time to transfer is running out though. Bungie says the transfer will be cut off on December 1, 2020. After that, any un-transferred expansion content, unlocks, weapons, characters, and account data will be lost for good.

Bungie confirmed the news in a recent update, and also warned gamers that existing Steam progression will be overwritten if they migrate Battle.net data over. There's only one spot for Steam data.

Chinese gacha game Genshin Impact is a massive hit in overseas regions and has amassed a huge $100 million in less than two weeks.

Genshin Impact is one of the most popular new free-to-play games on the market right now and has taken the US, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese regions by storm. The gacha game has pulled in a monumental $100 million in monetization revenues via in-game purchases on all platforms in less than two weeks time--a feat that, according to Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, makes it the most successful new IP launch for a Chinese developer.

MiHoYo's open-world game has doubled its earnings in just a week (original 7-day revenues sat at $50m) and had over 17 million downloads in its first day on mobile.

Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X and Xbox Series X consoles are right around the corner, if you can believe it -- it kinda doesn't feel real yet -- but now we have a better list of 120 FPS-capable games on the new consoles.

The folks over at Windows Central have a full list of 120 FPS-supported games on the next-gen Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S games, including the new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War -- as well as the if-it-eventually-releases Halo: Infinite. Here's the list of 120 FPS-capable Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S games:

Final Fantasy XVI's core development and production has been completed, and now Square Enix is ramping up its dev teams to create awe-inspiring large-scale battle sequences for the next-gen RPG.

Final Fantasy XVI has been in development for years now and is currently in advanced stages of progress, a new recruitment page confirms. "Basic development and scenario production have already been completed, and we are continuing to create large-scale resources and build boss battles while expanding various development tools," the page says.

Even with this headway, Square Enix is still far from finished with Final Fantasy XVI. The project requires tons of optimizations for next-gen hardware and the team is currently working on cutscenes and ways to push the new Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU tech with expansive resources, huge boss battles, and dynamic wide-scale war sequences.

Frame drops in PS4 games may be a thing of the past thanks to the PS5's backwards compatibility boost mode.

Today Sony revealed more info on how PS4 games will be natively boosted on the PS5's new hardware. The next-gen console will raise the performance of all playable PS4 games in certain ways, ranging from faster load times for games installed on the PS5's SSD to streamlined/increased frame rates. Not every game will see a big native FPS boost, though, and Sony warns gamers they may need to download an update before certain PS4 games can be played on the PS5.

"Select PS4 games will benefit from the PS5 console's Game Boost, which may make PS4 games run with a higher or smoother frame rate," a new PS5 support article reads.

PS5's backward compatibility is staggering and the console will play nearly every PS4 game except a handful of lesser-known titles.

Sony has finally revealed the PS5's backwards compatibility list and confirmed which PS4 games are playable on the console. Actually that's not quite right--the list of backwards compatible PS4 games is so big that Sony instead confirmed which games aren't playable. The list non-playable PS4 is tiny and only includes 10 games. They're not notable and you won't miss them.

The following PS4 games aren't playable on the PS5:

CD PROJEKT RED recently announced Cyberpunk 2077 had gone gold, but now there's been some recent footage of the game showed off during the recent Night City Wire episode.

The new Cyberpunk 2077 - Night City Wire: Special Russian Edition was aired during the Igromir 2020 event, which was made for the Russian audience. The event had an all-Russian cast, with information provided to gamers on the localization process of Cyberpunk 2077.

We got to see some of the graphical and lighting improvements in Cyberpunk 2077 since its last few showings, with another video that I've got below that shows the footage of Cyberpunk 2077 at E3 2018, and then the Tokyo Game Show 2020 and now the Night City Wire: Special Russian Event. Check that out below:

Sony will sunset the digital purchase of PS3, PSP, and PS Vita games on mobile and PC desktop storefronts, sources tell Planet Vita.

According to a new unverified press release, Sony may stop selling legacy PS3, PS Vita, and PSP games on its digital PlayStation Store on its mobile and desktop web stores. Sony will also stop selling avatars, themes, and apps on mobile and web storefronts.

The change is coming as early as October 19, and the release says the only way to purchase this content is from within each respective device. PS3 games must be purchased from PS3 consoles, PSP games from a PSP, and PS Vita games from a Vita. PS4 users can still purchase avatars, themes, and apps via the console-based PlayStation Store on the PS4 system.

Square Enix is pushing into the most lucrative and consumer-friendly business practices as it readies next-gen titles.

Today Square Enix confirmed Outriders, the explosive new multiplayer sci-fi shooter from Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly, has been delayed to February 2021. The news comes with a welcome surprise though: The game will have full cross-play between all platforms, including PS4, Xbox One, PC, Stadia, PS5 and Xbox Series X. The game is also getting free next-gen upgrades, and anyone who buys Outriders on PS4 and Xbox One will get enhancements on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S at no cost.

Outriders is now the second Square Enix game to support cross-play and free next-gen upgrades (the first was Marvel's Avengers). The difference here is that Outriders isn't a live service game. It has online drop-in, drop-out co-op but it's not monetized with microtransactions--unlike Avengers, which has tons of cosmetic mTX.

Ubisoft's online medieval fantasy brawler For Honor is the latest game to get free upgrades on next-gen consoles.

Today Ubisoft continued its promise of free next-gen upgrades for current-gen players. The publisher's long-running For Honor will get substantial enhancements on PS5 and Xbox Series X including 4K resolution (1080p 60FPS on Xbox Series S), 60FPS gameplay, and a bevy of visual upgrades. Anyone who owns the PS4 or Xbox One version of For Honor will get these enhancements via online updates free of charge. Oddly enough, fast-loading wasn't highlighted in the announcement.

Any content that's unlocked on current-gen systems will also carry forward as Ubisoft confirms cross-save/cross-gen progression. Ubisoft has yet to confirm cross-gen support, but expect this to happen at some point. We're also betting cross-play will be available soon too in order to maximize player engagement.

aNetherealm confirms anyone who owns Mortal Kombat 11 on PS4 and Xbox One will get free next-gen upgrades on PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Mortal Kombat 11 is getting re-released for the third time with a $59.99 ultimate collection that bundles Kombat Pack 1 (Shang Tsung, Nightwolf, Sindel, The Joker, T-800, Spawn) and the newly announced Kombat Pack 2 (Mileena, Rambo, Rain) alongside the Aftermath expansion. Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate is coming to PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch, and as a next-gen SKU on PS5, Xbox Series X consoles on November 17.

The next-gen upgrades won't be locked to Ultimate purchases, and you don't have to re-buy the game in order to get the upgrades. Netherrealm confirms Mortal Kombat 11 will be optimized to support upscaled 4K res on next-gen systems, as well as utilize blistering-fast load times compared to the sluggish HDD transitions/startups. Cross-gen support is also added in "select modes" but we're betting classic online VS battles are supported.