Gaming - Page 521

The PS5's SSD can theoretically shrink file sizes by virtue of its data-streaming efficiency and elimination of seek times, but launch PS5 games will still be pretty big.

New product listings for Spider-Man Miles Morales and Demon's Souls confirms PS5's launch games will still be pretty sizable. The PS5's SSD clocks in at 825GB, which translates to roughly 768GB of usable space. That's less with the OS installed, and shrinks even more with the inclusion of Astro's Playroom, which comes pre-installed on every PS5.

Spider-Man Miles Morales Ultimate Edition, for example, clocks in at 105GB and takes up roughly 14% of the available 756GB of SSD space. This edition includes both Miles Morales and the original Spider-Man remastered. The next-gen Miles Morales spin-off clocks in at 50GB on its own, which is roughly 6.5% of the SSD space. It's also worth noting Miles Morales is coming to the PS4 as well, so it's not a true next-gen exclusive that's fully built from the ground up for the PS5's SSD.

Unity's IPO is a smash success that closed at +32% on its first day of availability, boosting the company's market capitalization to roughly $17 billion.

Unity Technologies' new initial public offering launched yesterday for $52, roughly $10 over its initial price point. Shares closed at $68.35 on Friday, representing a healthy +32% spike. Unity's market capitalization now sits at $18 billion, which exceeds rival Epic Games, who sits at $17.3 billion after recent funding rounds.

Although Unity is one of the most popular games engines on the market, the company itself isn't all that profitable. In its recent S-1 filings, Unity confirms it has lost money "every period since inception," and it's operating losses in 2018 amount to $105 million, and in 2019 it lost $94 million. The company currently has a $569 million deficit.

Sony's new first-party PlayStation 5 games will cost up to $69.99, but not every game will be that much.

Sony recently confirmed the PS5's next-gen games lineup and price, which is varied in selection, length, and MSRP. Games like Demon's Souls will cost $69.99, but others like Spider-Man Miles Morales, which is a shorter spin-off experience, will only cost $49.99. Sony is clearly positioning its top-tier longform PS5 exclusives at a premium $69.99 price tag. Expect bigger games like Horizon Forbidden West and Ratchet and Clank A Rift Apart to likewise sell for this price.

This new $69.99 price seems to be the standard for AAA games going forward. Big publishers like Activision and 2K Games are charging $69.99 for frontline games like NBA 2K21 and Black Ops Cold War. Other developers like Ubisoft, EA, CD Projekt RED and SEGA are offering free next-gen upgrades for anyone who buys PS4 and Xbox One versions of their games. Sony is doing this too, and confirms anyone who buys Spider-Man Miles Morales on PS4 will get a free upgrade to PS5.

Cyberpunk 2077 won't require a beastly PC rig in order to run--but it'll definitely flex the new RTX 3000 series cards.

Today CDPR revealed the PC spec requirements for Cyberpunk 2077, and they're pretty lenient. The game covers a wide spectrum of GPU/CPU configs, ranging from a GTX 780 GPU and i5-3570K GPU at the minimum requirement spec all the way to a GTX 1060 and Core i7-4790K at the recommended level. We're not sure what kind of perf the minimum and recommended specs refer to, but expect them to be as low as 720p 30FPS and as high as 1080p 60FPS.

Cyberpunk 2077 requires at least 8GB of RAM and 70GB of install space, and ideally, CDPR wants you to play the game from an SSD.

The day has come: Crysis Remastered is here and now available for download on the PC through the Epic Games Store, and on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

Crysis Remastered weighs in at just 20GB, which is great to see in a sea of insanely huge games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare which is a mammoth 200GB download. The Crysis Remastered launch trailer is above for your viewing pleasure.

I just want to see what that 'Can it Run Crysis?' graphics mode is like, I guess we'll have to wait and see -- I've just purchased and downloaded it now and will be running it on my fresh new GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics card (my review on that here).

Sony is making huge progress with PS5's backwards compatibility, and now confirms that 99% of PS4 games are playable.

Back in March, Sony claimed the PS5 would play thousands of PS4 games by launch. Now it's official. Sony confirms the next-gen PS5 will natively support 99% of the PS4's games library. How many games is that? According to Wikipedia, there's about 2,870 PS4 games on the market. 99% of that value is 2,841, which means roughly 29 games won't be playable.

The news was confirmed in a recent Washington Post interview with Sony's Jim Ryan. In another interview with Japanese magazine Famitsu, Ryan confirmed the PS5 won't play legacy PS1, PS2, and PS3 games. The next-gen PlayStation is only backwards compatible with PS4 titles.

Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan re-confirms the PS5 won't support or play PS1, PS2, or PS3 games via backward compatibility.

The PS5's backwards compatibility support only extends to the PS4 era, and the next-gen console won't play legacy PS1, PS2, or PS3 games. Sony's Jim Ryan re-iterated the news in a recent interview with Famitsu:

"We have been building devices with a focus on PS5-specific engineering. Among them, PS4 already has 100 million players, so I thought that I would like to play PS4 titles on PS5 as well, so we introduced PS4 compatibility. While achieving that, we focused on incorporating high-speed SSDs and the new DualSense controller in parallel. So, unfortunately, compatibility with them has not been achieved," Ryan said.

UPDATE:Capcom clarifies the exact performance and resolution modes in Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition on PS5 and Xbox Series X:

Devs are finally talking about the PlayStation 5's ray tracing capabilities in length, and Capcom is putting the console's high-end specs to good use with a new Devil May Cry 5 re-release.

Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition will flex the entirety of PS5's hardware and shows what Capcom's RE Engine is capable of. Capcom confirms the game can hit 120FPS with variable refresh rates over HDMI 2.1 capable displays, and supports ray tracing at 4K 30FPS and 1080p 60FPS.

Sony isn't ready to flip the reset switch on the PlayStation 4's 110 million+ install base, and confirms the console will live alongside the PS5 until at least 2024.

The PS4 is too valuable to retire, and Sony plans to gradually pass the torch over to the successor PS5 in a span of multiple years. Sony's Jim Ryan says the PS4 will remain a big part of the PlayStation business at least until 2024. Previously, Sony said the PS4 would be supported until at least 2022.

"The PS4 community will continue to be incredibly important to us for three or four years. Many will transition to PS5, we hope, if we do our job well. But tens of millions will still be engaged with the PS4," Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan told The Washington Post.

Sony's new PlayStation Plus Collection is a golden ticket for subscription retention, and will anchor a new generation of console owners to the digital service.

The new PlayStation Plus Collection is a goldmine for retention, which is something Sony has struggled with. The PS Plus Collection is a vault of PS4 games included free with all active PS Plus subscriptions that mimics Microsoft's Game Pass. The addition adds tremendous value to the service, but it's exclusive for PS5 owners, and for good reason. PS Plus Collection is specifically designed to do many things at once--but all of them aim at keeping subscriptions active.

The PS Plus Collection only includes 18 PlayStation 4 titles. It's almost like an Xbox Game Pass lite. But unlike Game Pass, which includes a ton of live service-oriented games with microtransactions and monetization, the PS Plus Collection mainly serves up long-winded singleplayer-driven games (only 4 out of the 18 games have microtransactions).

Watch Dogs Legion is just over a month away from release, with Ubisoft now detailing what you'll need to run the game on your PC. Check out the PC requirements:

You don't need much to get the game running at 1080p on Low or High settings, with an Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400 processor required at a minimum -- alongside 8GB of RAM and 45GB of storage space. Ubisoft recommends an NVIDIA GeForce 960 or AMD Radeon R9 290X at a minimum when it comes to graphics.

The High settings at 1080p doesn't require much more grunt, but the 1440p High settings do jump the CPU up to an Intel Core i7-7700K or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 while system RAM goes up to 16GB and the GPU requirements increase to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER or AMD Radeon RX 5700.

Sony isn't ready to leave the PlayStation 4's 100 million-strong playerbase behind, confirms marquee PS5 games are also coming to PS4.

There's lots of life left in the PS4 platform and Sony isn't ready to give it up just yet. Sony's already confirmed the PS4 will live alongside the PS5 until 2022, and new PS4 titles are coming. Now Sony's Jim Ryan confirms a handful of PS5 games are also launching on the PS4 too.

Big games like Spider-Man Miles Morales and Horizon Forbidden West are also releasing on the PlayStation 4. Spider-Man will be available on both PS4 and PS5 on November 12, whereas Horizon Forbidden West is coming out sometime in 2021. Anyone who buys a PS4 version will also get a free upgrade to the PS5 version.

Sony today announced PlayStation 5 pricing and availability, and now they've confirmed pre-order dates.

Sony's next-gen PS5 will be available for pre-order as early as tomorrow, September 17, 2020 across select retailers. SIE exec Jim Ryan confirmed the news on the PlayStation Blog, and also announced a staggered release for the system. North America, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and South Korea will all get one-week early availability to the console:

The new Harry Potter RPG has finally been revealed, and it's a prequel set in the 1800s Wizarding World where you help write the history of the series.

Today WB Games announced Harry Potter: Hogwarts Legacy, a new next-gen game coming to PS5 in 2021. The game is a prequel and doesn't necessarily follow any established story arcs; instead gamers will make their own wizard and write their own story and help fill out the periods before the book series.

The combat is action-based and features spells and combos. You'll be facing off against rival wizards and gigantic bosses like dragons and other fantastic beasts. The game also lets you explore well outside of Hogwarts with open-world style roaming, complete with flying on pegasuses. We're not sure if there's multiplayer but that could be included too.

It's official: The PlayStation 5 will cost $499 for the standard edition, and $399 for the digital edition.

Sony today announced the PlayStation 5's price points, and the digital edition is $100 cheaper:

This is an aggressive price point that pushes the digital edition, and Sony is prepared to weather the production losses by locking gamers to its digital ecosystem. The digital-only system forces gamers to buy titles directly from Sony, which nets a premium for them, especially first-party games that give Sony 100% of all revenues.

Square Enix today announced Final Fantasy XVI with ultra fast-paced action combat that evolved from Final Fantasy XV.

The rumors were right: Final Fantasy XVI features a grand medieval fantasy style and scope (magitek is gone), but the familiar mainstays are there: Summons are now called icons, and the mother crystal oversees all things. The story is mysterious and centers around a blood rivalry against Joshua Shield, who may be the son of a king or a lord, who has the power to summon an icon. These summoners are apparently marked by strange tattoos.

The combat itself is stylish, fast, and resembles Devil May Cry mixed with Final Fantasy XV. It's obviously a pure enhancement of FFXV and likely has strong emphasis on combo attacks.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Masahiro Wakasugi predicts Sony could price the digital-only PlayStation 5 at $399, and the full disc-based system at $449 to counter Microsoft's Xbox pricing.

In a move that would likely conquer the 9th generation, Sony could prepare for a sizable loss on PlayStation 5 console hardware in exchange for more units sold. Bloomberg's own analysts echo the variable pricing scheme that sees the PS5 base model dropping as low as $449 and the digital-only model reduced to $399, the base price of

Sony is expected to sell as many PlayStation 5 units it makes available. That expectation is especially true at this price point. The prediction is centered around Sony once-again besting Microsoft's console prices. This worked out well for the 8th generation, which Sony dominated early on with a $399 PS4 compared to the $499 Xbox One.

Embracer's wide-reaching focus now includes the full spectrum of entertainment film, TV, console games, PC games, mobile games, and virtual reality.

With its recent acquisition of Vertigo Games, the Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic) pushes into VR and solidifies its diversified approach to gaming. Embracer bought VR games publisher Vertigo Games for 50 million Euros, with a 40 million Euro upfront cash payment and 10 million Euros in B stock. Vertigo can also earn up to 65 million Euros in bonuses across a 10-year period.

This acquisition represents tremendous potential for Embracer, and exposes their forward-thinking approach. VR is still a fledgling platform, however it was Embracer's missing puzzle piece. Vertigo Games is known for VR games like A Fisherman's Tale, After the Fall, Arizona Sunshine, and Skyworld. The company employs 50 people in the Netherlands, and 37 of them are developers.

Nintendo plans to use films to cross-promote its IPs and expand awareness. Now it says this initiative isn't just limited to movies--more content could be coming.

Nintendo is making a CG animated Mario movie with Universal's Illumination studio. The goal is to help boost exposure and ignite hardware/software sales. The film isn't due out until 2022, but Nintendo promises film isn't the only medium it's exploring. We could get TV shows, anime series, and maybe even interactive experiences that blur the lines between films and games.

In its latest shareholder's presentation, Nintendo confirms it's already investing in future projects outside of the Mario movie. We could finally see the oft-rumored Zelda TV show take off, maybe even a mature anime series based around Metroid, and a cute Animal Crossing TV show for all ages.

Today Hangar 13 and 2K Games revealed PC spec requirements for Mafia Definitive Edition, and they're not too demanding.

The PC hardware reqs for Mafia Definitive Edition are pretty similar to Mafia III, which makes sense as it uses the same engine and assets. Hangar 13's new remake uses DirectX 11 and calls for at least 6GB of RAM, runs on older 2012 GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660/AMD Radeon HD 7870, and second-gen Intel Core i5-2550K or AMD FX8120 CPUs. We're not sure what kind of performance you'll get here, but expect 720p or thereabouts.

Recommended specs are a bit steeper, but aren't all that bad. The devs ideally want you to have a rig with 16GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 1080 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 GPU, and an Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-8350 CPU. This should deliver 1080p 60FPS at the very least.