Gaming - Page 519

New info from PlayStation.com source code may reveal tidbits about the PlayStation 5's backwards compatibility support with PS4 games.

According to source code found on the PlayStation 5's console checkout page, PS4 game playback on PS5 may not always be a smooth experience. The code mentions many instances of the PS5 and outlines bullet points/info on specific features and warnings about the console itself.

The page specifically says not every PS4 game will be playable on the PS5, which is something Sony already confirmed. Sony's Jim Ryan said 99% of PS4 games would be playable on PS5. OS updates are required as more PS4 games are added to PS5's BC functionality. The full selection of these games may not be boosted, however; the code also says certain games are marked as "boost mode enabled."

Diablo IV is still in early phases of development and Blizzard still hasn't locked in key progression systems just yet. Now we get a glimpse at another experimental system that could power the final game.

Today Blizzard shared another Diablo IV quarterly development update that reveals a brand new skill tree. The main post is focused on skills, talents, and passives. At first glance the new skill tree is somewhat confusing and convoluted, but its branching paths still follow linear-style structure. There's three parts to the tree: Skills, Talents, and Passives.

The tree's branches are filled with unlockable main skills like Ball Lightning, Charged Bolt, and Blizzard, as well as Talents that buff specific skills. Skills and Talents are both on the branches of the tree. Then there's Passives, which are on the bottom and are denoted by red nodes. The upper portion of the tree has nodes that give you Passive points to spend on the bottom. These Passives can significantly change the viability, role, and efficacy of your character build.

The Xbox Series X is marketed with 1TB of included SSD storage, but only a portion of that will be available for games.

IGN recently confirmed the Xbox Series X's 1TB SSD only offers about 800GB of usable space for games. This means the system reserves roughly 14% of total SSD space for OS and other features like quick resume.

After partition formatting, a 1TB drive turns into a drive with 931GB of free space. A quick bit of math shows the Xbox Series X will have about 131GB of memory reserved for the operating system, virtual RAM data cache preparation via new Velocity Architecture technology, and quick resume functionality. All of these features are tremendously important for the Series X.

Xbox Series S|X SSD tech can significantly reduce loading times in backward compatible current-gen games right out of the box.

We know the Xbox Series X|S's SSD can hit up to 2.4GB/sec uncompressed data transfer speeds via a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drive. How will this affect games that aren't optimized? How will current-gen games play on the system?

Various websites are currently testing the Series X's SSD to find out. The data is pretty clear: Any game you play on the Series X or Series S will load faster. Some games will load in orders of magnitude faster on the Series X as compared to the slow HDDs in the Xbox One X. Control, for example, boots up in just 10 seconds as compared to 58 seconds on Xbox One X. That's an 82% reduction in loading times.

Picking up a PlayStation 5 this holiday season? You may want to re-up on PlayStation Plus, and now's the perfect time.

CDKeys is currently selling PS Plus subscriptions for just $30, which is about 50% off of MSRP. It's a great value if you're buying a next-gen PS5 this year: Not only do you get the free monthly PS Plus games on PS4, which should be backward compatible with the PS5, but you get access to a pool of some of the best PS4 games ever made with the new PS Plus Collection.

The PS Plus Collection adds lots of value to the subscription for PS5 users. It's a new free add-on to PS Plus that's exclusive to PS5 gamers and includes access to 18 high-profile PS4 games, including Bloodborne, God of War, Monster Hunter World, Final Fantasy XV, Persona 5, and Uncharted 4.

Tekken franchise sales have now beat Street Fighter on all platforms, Bandai Namco confirms.

The Tekken franchise has now sold over 50 million copies worldwide since 1995, Bandai Namco's Katsuhiro Harada recently announced. This number shows Tekken is the king of fighters and beats Street Fighter's total 45 million sales. The Tekken series has had many less releases than Street Fighter, too, with about 14 mainline releases on consoles and PC since inception.

Harada also announced Tekken 7 has sold 6 million copies since its launch in 2017. The fighting game is still going strong and received its latest DLC pack, which includes Kunimitsu and another mystery character, as well as a massive free update that adds in new moves for every fighter.

Final Fantasy XVI's debut trailer showed lots of bloodshed, chaos, and a brutal beheading in front of a child. So it's only natural it's rated mature.

New promo materials show Final Fantasy XVI has been provisionally rated PEGI 18, a rating that's typically reserved for more visceral and violent experiences. The trailer is rife with blood and mayhem, showing beheadings, battlefield slayings, and ends with the phrase "I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do." Obviously it's going to be a mature game.

This will be among the first PEGI 18 rated games since Final Fantasy Type-O HD, another dramatic game in the series.

Starfield has been in development for a long time, Todd Howard says, and Bethesda has kept the game mostly under wraps. New supposed leaked screenshots may give us a first glimpse at this mysterious space adventure.

Starfield is Bethesda's first new IP in 25 years and is one of the "big and crazy projects" the studio teased in 2016. Details are sparse. We know it's a singleplayer-only "space epic" and that Bethesda consulted with SpaceX's Elon Musk while making it. It's also had a long dev cycle.

If these new leaked screenshots are accurate, we have our first glimpse at an older 2018 build of Starfield. There's not a whole lot to see; just a third-person view, a basic stamina/HP bar, and an astronaut on the side of a ship--likely our own personal interstellar cruiser. The HUD is pretty interesting though, and shows oxygen levels, distance/elevation, what appears to be a radar, and phases of the moon. It could be fake but the insignia on the astro's shoulder matches the curious Constellation logo on the bottom left of the Starfield teaser trailer.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will have all the staples of a marquee AAA PC game: uncapped frame rates, VRR for high-refresh displays, FOV sliders, and ray-tracing support for RTX video cards.

One big change for Cold War is how the engine now runs on DirectX 12, which enables all kinds of new optimizations via the DX12 Ultimate APIs like Sampler Feedback Streaming (devs have more control how data is streamed to GPU), and accelerated DirectStorage APIs that power NVIDIA's new ultra-fast RTX IO data technology.

"The biggest change is that the Black Ops engine now runs on DirectX 12. This has led to a huge improvement in terms of performance and latency reduction. For players that prioritize immersive gameplay, we have a great partnership with NVIDIA to bring ray traced effects, performance-accelerating deep learning super-sampling, and Reflex latency optimization technology," Beenox UI/UX director Marc-Alexandre Milot said in a recent video.

Resident Evil VIIIage might not be next-gen exclusive after all, and Capcom says it's working on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One console versions too.

Resident Evil VIII is being developed from the ground up for next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X hardware and will flex the new capabilities of the new-and-improved RE Engine. There's just one potential issue with this plan: It restricts game sales to platforms that haven't really matured and skips the PS4's 110 million install base, and the Xbox One's 50 million+ base.

Apparently Capcom wants to remedy this and now says RE8 could drop on current-gen systems too.

The upcoming three-game Mass Effect remastered trilogy has been delayed to 2021, sources tell VentureBeat's Jeff Grubb.

EA and BioWare plan to re-release the entire original Mass Effect trilogy as a remastered collection for current-gen systems, complete with all DLC (a rare move). While EA has yet to reveal the trilogy, sources have been rumbling about it throughout 2020, hinting at a release sometime this year to help commemorate BioWare's 25th anniversary. Apparently that won't happen.

Sources now say both the reveal and release of the Mass Effect trilogy has been delayed to 2021. Earlier reports said BioWare was to originally announce the three-game collection on November 7 during N7 Day.

UPDATE: Microsoft has finally announced the Funimation promo:

Sony owns Funimation, but apparently that hasn't stopped a big digital deal with its main competitor.

Xbox Game Pass is so powerful that even Sony wants to ride the wave. According to reports from Comic Book, Sony-owned Funimation is offering two months of its Premium Plus all-you-can-play anime streaming service free for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. The promotion is to be part of the Xbox Game Pass Perks rewards system, which has included promos like free Spotify premium subscriptions in the past.

Microsoft gets around Apple's clandestine anti-game streaming policies by enabling remote play in the Xbox iOS app.

Back in 2019, Microsoft said Xbox owners would be able to turn their consoles into game streaming servers. The new Xbox mobile app made that promise a reality. Gamers can now use their Xbox One consoles to stream games to their phones across wireless networks. This includes iPhones, a platform that's been notoriously cut off from Microsoft's ambitious Project xCloud streaming service.

Sony has implemented remote play for years now and this is technically nothing new for the industry or for console gaming. It's still a clever little trick that allows Xbox gamers access to titles on-the-go, but you still have to own an Xbox console (and games) in order to play Xbox games on your iOS devices.

EA reveals the full scope of its new Star Wars Squadrons starfighter, confirming it's a live service game with rotating seasonal rankings, level ups, and in-game unlockables with multiple currencies.

Star Wars Squadrons is one of EA's most interesting new games. It's a live game that's not monetized. Let that sink in for a minute: EA, a company who makes billions every year from live service monetization, is making a live service game with online elements without any microtransactions. This is somewhat transformative for EA and could be a stepping stone for future games.

So what makes Squadrons unique? It has online PVP and PVE play, it's sold for $40, and has a massive webwork of unlockables, customizations, and a rotating seasonal ranking system. It even has daily challenges. Again, it's not monetized. The game is specifically designed to be massively replayable and has tons of unlocks, cosmetic customizations, and a myriad of earned currencies and XP. These things typically are made to promote engagement monetization; engagement grows as more people play, which spins the flywheel of mTX earnings.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer confirms Xbox hardware isn't going anywhere, and that Xbox Series X|S won't be the last lineup of Xbox consoles.

Xbox has been a service-first business for some time. Microsoft has spent billions to establish Game Pass and its new cloud streaming Project xCloud as a multi-platform, versatile service that links all devices together. Xbox is about delivering content and services to devices you already own, but that doesn't mean Xbox hardware will be phased out. Quite the contrary.

In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, VP of gaming Phil Spencer confirms that streaming and service innovation will continue to shape consoles. Hardware is an important access point to the ecosystem and will remain a part of the business for some time.

Microsoft clarifies how external hard drives will work on its next-gen Xbox Series X and Series S consoles.

The next-gen Xbox duo will support existing USB 3.1 external hard drives, but there's some caveats. Today Microsoft confirmed a bunch of new details on what to expect from cross-gen storage and next-gen performance, and how the new $219 expandable SSD memory card fits into the mix:

Read Also: Xbox Series X SSD is revolutionary, changes Xbox gaming forever

Doom Eternal, one of the best shooters of the entire generation, is coming to Game Pass on October 1. Sadly, PC gamers have to wait.

Now that Microsoft owns Bethesda, it's time all the publisher's first-party games start dropping on Game Pass. id plans to bring Doom Eternal over to gaming's most transofmative subscription service starting on October 1, but it'll come first to Xbox consoles. PC gamers will have to wait until "later in 2020". The new Ancient Gods Part I expansion won't be included.

This is pretty confusing since Doom Eternal was made to completely flex PC horsepower. Our latest RTX 3090 review shows just how optimized id Tech 7 is, with Doom Eternal capable of hitting a mind-bending 48FPS at 8K with Nightmare presets.

Amazon's new game streaming service is called Luna, and it's a game-changer that rivals Stadia and Microsoft's Project xCloud.

Amazon's new Luna (formerly Project Tempo) cloud service streams games directly from the cloud to devices like Fire TV set-top boxes, iOS mobiles, PCs and laptops, and soon Android devices. Luna will start out at $5.99 a month for two simultaneous streams at 1080p 60FPS (4K is only available for select games). The $5.99 subscription offers access to a variety of games across the Luna Plus channel.

The service has a unique business model. Instead of buying games separately like you do with Stadia, Amazon is going a recurring subscription route. Publishers will have their own "channels" that users can subscribe to, likely for a nominal fee similar to premium Twitch subscriptions. Channel subscriptions gives access to the full list of games available on that channel in an on-demand, all-you-can-play aspect similar to Project xCloud.

Sony is restricting access to Spider-Man's PS5 remaster to help justify purchase of the new Miles Morales spin-off game.

As many publishers like Ubisoft, EA, and CD Projekt RED offer free next-gen game upgrades, Sony is under fire for how it's handling the Spider-Man transitions to next-gen. In a statement to Kotaku, Sony clarified its somewhat confusing plan for the web crawler.

Sony is about to release two new Spider-Man games: Spider Man Miles Morales, which is coming to both PS4 and PS5, and a remaster of the original 2018 Spider-Man game on PS4. Turns out Sony isn't selling the remaster by itself. You have to buy Spider-Man Miles Morales in order to access the next-gen remaster of the first game. It doesn't matter if you bought the 2018 Spider-Man on PS4; you won't get a free upgrade to the remastered version, and you don't even get the option to buy the game.

Bethesda's top brass delves into the ethos that drives the company's success: Exposure, sales, and sustainability.

In a recent interview with Major Nelson, Bethesda's Pete Hines and Todd Howard gave key insight on what makes the company tick. It turns out Bethesda is after the same things as any publisher, including mass-market exposure, increased access, wide availability. These goals are a big reason why ZeniMax sold to Microsoft.

Turns out that Game Pass was a big motivator for the sale. The service checks all the right boxes that ZeniMax and Bethesda were chasing, like live service frameworks, successful monetization, widespread access and availability, huge organic exposure across an online ecosystem, and full game sales across multiple platforms.