Gaming - Page 524

I still remember working at Getright Computers, the old retailer here in South Australia (a couple of years before I joined TweakTown) back when Crysis was released in 2007.

I had all of my regular customers at the time coming in building new PCs for it, and I spent just over $10,000 AUD on a new gaming PC for myself to play it. It was incredible, I remember every single moment -- and the years of tweaking hardware, buying new GPUs as they were released -- just to run it.

The entire 'can it run Crysis' thing became a meme until really, only recently when games like Control and Flight Simulator were released and really began to strain even $2499 graphics cards like the NVIDIA TITAN RTX.

Kojima Productions have very silently pushed out a new update for Death Stranding, something that adds DLSS support for Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards.

The new update adds DLSS 2.1 support, which delivers support for 8K upscaling -- something that will be used for the GeForce RTX 3090 now that Death Stranding has a "DLSS 8K performance mode". As someone who has been benchmarking at 8K for many years now, I can't wait to test that out very soon.

The patch notes explain: "This update made the game able to recognize 8K resolution, it was previously limited to 4K. It also adds the Ultra Performance DLSS preset created specifically for 8K, it's not visible in the game because it requires an NVIDIA driver update".

Breath of the Wild 2 is still deep in development, and Nintendo cautions fans not to expect updates any time soon. For now there's a new BOTW prequel set in the Hyrule Warriors series to keep you busy.

Today Nintendo surprised announced a Breath of the Wild prequel...but it's not what you expected. It's actually a Hyrule Warriors game set 100 years before BOTW.

The new game, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, is being developed by Koei Tecmo and shows the grand chaotic battles that set up the events of the Switch RPG. This is a huge development for the franchise and solidifies the new arc as an expansive new series that carries across more than two games.

With any new console generation comes lots of talk about price, the magic number that makes or breaks a company's hardware sales. We still don't know the full price range of the entire 9th console generation, but that doesn't mean we can't take a look back at historical data to see how the industry has changed.

Microsoft just confirmed the Xbox Series S at $299, and we could see the Series X drop at $499. But how does this compare to the 8th gen? Or the gens that came before it? To reflect on pricing trends throughout the years, I put together a series of quick graphs that compare launch pricing of key consoles across nine generations of hardware. The list starts with the Atari 2600 in 1977 and ends with the Xbox Series S in 2020.

By no means is this list exhaustive, and it's not meant to be a perfect graph of every console ever released. That'd be a nightmare considering the dozens of Pong consoles released in the '70s. As you can tell by Atariboy2600's awesome timeline table, there's a lot of consoles missing from our list.

Microsoft finally reveals the Xbox Series S after last night's leak, confirming key specs we've known about for a while.

It's official: The entry-level Xbox Series S next-gen console will launch alongside the beastly Xbox Series X in November. The Series S is a lower-powered, all-digital console that features the same 7nm SoC as the Xbox Series X, albeit with dramatic reductions in GPU (the CPU is slightly down to 3.6GHz too). A big difference is the storage reduction: The Series S features a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD compared to the Series X's 1TB storage.

Microsoft confirms the Series S targets 1440p 120FPS gaming. It won't target native 4K 60FPS gaming like the Series X due to its lower specs. This corroborates reports of the Series S featuring a weaker 4TFLOP Navi RDNA 2.0 GPU.

The Xbox Series S final design was prematurely revealed in a leaked Microsoft announcement video, confirming a $299 price tag.

The Xbox Series S console design has leaked out, revealing a no-frills chassis that's mostly a big cooling vent. The console is rather basic and resembles an Xbox One S with a gigantic speak on the top, which is of course a vent to channel heat flow from the built-in 7nm AMD SoC. It also looks like the system will be digital-only and has no disc drive, which aligns with recent reports.

The leaked video confirms the Series S is half as wide as the Series X, which makes sense given the console's drastic reduction in power and heat output. The Series X's footlocker design is specifically made to channel intensive heat generated from 4K 60FPS gaming from the bottom to the top via a huge 140mm fan, but the Series S doesn't have that problem.

CD Projekt RED reminds gamers that Cyberpunk 2077's singleplayer won't have microtransactions. Only the separate online multiplayer release will be monetized.

Right now CDPR is working on two Cyberpunk 2077 projects: The singleplayer-only FPS RPG set for November 19, and a fully-fledged standalone online multiplayer game. These are two separate projects. The singleplayer release won't have any form of microtransactions, but it will be monetized with big premium post-release expansions (think The Witcher 3).

The multiplayer version will have microtransactions and in-game purchases, but CD Projekt RED says it won't be aggressive mTX. They want to 'make you happy to spend money' in their games.

Fortnite users on iOS have dropped over 60% since the game was de-listed on August 13, and now Epic requests courts to force the battle royale back onto Apple's storefront.

Epic is paying big for its anti-trust court case against Apple. In a new preliminary injunction filing, Epic Games notes that Fortnite daily active users on iOS devices is down 60% since the game was pulled off the storefront. This loss in players represents untold millions of potential lost revenues on the most lucrative platform; Epic has admitted iOS users spend 'significantly more' on microtransactions than Android users. iOS was the major contributor to Fortnite's recent $1 billion monetization record on mobile.

Epic argues that Apple's decision to keep Fortnite off the platform will cause it permanent harm. Epic is right, and this is already happening. Gamers are simply moving on from the battle royale.

Free-to-play juggernaut Fortnite made an estimated $4.3 billion in its first two years on the market, and mobile played a big part. Epic is losing lots of cash every week that Fortnite is off of iOS.

As the Epic vs Apple legal battle rages on, I thought it important to take a look back at Fortnite's earnings to give more perspective on how much this coup is costing Epic. According to analyst firm SuperData, Fortnite has raked in roughly $4.3 billion in microtransaction revenue across all platforms since launch in October 2017 through December 2019.

Here's a quick breakdown:

Beyond Good and Evil 2 could be Ubisoft's first major AAAA game, and rightly so, considering it's the biggest project the publisher has ever taken on.

Ubisoft hasn't talked about it for a while, but a LinkedIn bio for Ubisoft France senior art technical director Cyril Masquilliere delivers some new tidbits about Beyond Good and Evil 2. The online-only live game is targeting next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, which isn't a surprise. What's a big interesting is how it's referred to as a "AAAA" game.

This isn't the first time we've seen AAAA tossed around. The term was first used an in an old, now-altered job listing for Microsoft's The Initiative studio, which was branded as a AAAA game developer working on a huge project. Ubisoft's Beyond Good and Evil 2 is big in earnest, though, and has some far-reaching ambitions that could set the game up for a decade-long run of sales and monetization.

Today Sony announced a big week-long showcase on PSVR games. But new PlayStation 5 info won't be announced during this entire week, meaning we'll have to wait until at least September 12 for PS5 pricing, release date, and other technical info.

Sony's new week-long PlayStation VR event is all about new games. This is a curious move considering the company has been experimenting with next-gen PSVR tech, complete with inside-out tracking, and its R&D division has made big headway with new volumetric capture technology that makes 3D VR spaces much more immersive. This tech should be used in the next-gen PlayStation VR headset that's expected to accompany the PlayStation 5.

But this new headset won't be talked about during this week-long showcase. Neither will the PS5.

Modder foone sacrifices untold goats to the Icon of Sin to get Doom running on a pregnancy test. That's a result that's always guaranteed to make you happy.

Doom is playable on everything: Fridges, digital cameras from the early 2000s, ATMs, toasters, you name it. Practically anything with a digital screen can run Doom...event pregnancy tests. Twitter user foone recently got Doom up and running on a pregnancy test with a digital 128x32 pixel monochrome display. It's bizarre and mind-bending that Doom, the universal anti-Can it Run Crysis benchmark, is playable on something like this.

The results are rudimentary at best. The screen is made up of white X's and dots, which normally inspire a range of emotions from palpable relief, anxiety, or excitement. Now these little rendered bits are being used to play a demon-slaying FPS from the 90s.

Rockstar Energy is giving away a real-life recreation of Jackie's epic Quadra supercar featured in Cyberpunk 2077.

A new Rockstar Energy x Cyberpunk 2077 promotion has an epic grand prize: a customized 1970s muscle car built to look just like the in-game Quadra futurecar that tears up Night City's streets. To enter you just have to buy specially-marked Rockstar Energy cans and enter codes online (or enter with no purchase necessary via mail).

The car's final design hasn't been revealed (it looks like an old-school Mustang), but the sweepstakes confirms it's based on a vehicle from the 70s and is worth $40,000:

Somewhere in Nintendo's secret R&D vault lies a weird prototype GameCube that's basically an old-school Switch. We know the Wii, 3DS, and Wii U were successors to the Switch, but plans for the unique transforming handheld-console hybrid stretches back nearly 2 decades.

New leaked data sets confirm Nintendo was experimenting with a portable handheld GameCube that also allowed for at-home play. The leaks show NIntendo had schematics for a portable handheld Gamecube that would play discs, and could be slotted into a cradle. The dock/cradle had A/V output, GameCube controller ports, built-in wireless for online play, and USB ports.

Nintendo also experimented with Tako (part of Project Vegas), an innovative 6th-gen system that'd compete with Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Tako, which means octopus in Japan, would boast higher-end horsepower for the HDTV era and connected directly with existing Nintendo handhelds, including the proposed GameCube handheld, the DS, and the Game Boy Advance. There's not a lot of info on Tako or the GameCube handheld, but the ideas were pretty ambitious for the time.

Sony and Microsoft have yet to reveal PS5 or Xbox Series X pricing, and consumers are getting worried. But this waiting game trend isn't new for the industry--Nintendo's been doing it for the last three generations of consoles.

Everyone wants to know how much the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will cost. It's September already, two months before each console should launch, and we still don't know pricing. The info relay was scattered with E3's cancellation and COVID-19 temporarily disrupting hardware production.

This small two-month window between pricing and availability is historic for both Microsoft and Sony, who typically have 4-5 month spans between price/launch date announcements and release. The shortest for both is the Xbox 360, whose pricing/availability was announced in August 2005 and subsequently released in November 2005.

Witcher 3's next-gen re-release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X could help push 5 more years of sales, CD Projekt RED hopes.

Witcher 3's next-gen re-release in 2021 could lead to a decade of strong sales--or at least that's what CD Projekt RED wants. The beloved RPG has already sparked 5 years worth of strong sales across consoles, PC, and Switch, and now CDPR is shooting for five more.

The 2021 re-release will mark the fourth The Witcher 3 launch; first in 2015, then again in 2016 as a GOTY edition, then once more in 2019 on Switch. This time CDPR is pushing the game past its limits with new higher-end CPU, GPU, and storage tech.

New Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War multiplayer footage leaks out ahead of its planned September 9 reveal.

Black Ops Cold War's leaked multiplayer shows some tactical carnage set in a colorful 1980s Miami Vice style with neon-lit streets, palm trees, and old-school weaponry. The leak reveals a few things, including five classes, perk slots, and weapon types, as well as no tactical sprint or cumbersome doors. The footage was taken from alpha gameplay but we don't expect too many dramatic changes in the final release in November.

The footage shows a 6v6 VIP gametype match in a Miami-based map. It somewhat reflects the leaks we heard about months ago in June.

CD Projekt RED confirms it won't be developing the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X version of The Witcher 3. Instead the project is being handled by an external studio.

Saber Interactive, the team behind Witcher 3's excellent Switch port, has been tapped to make the game for next-gen consoles. Saber is leading development of the full PS5 and Xbox Series X retail re-release as well as the upgrade enhancements on PC.

Saber will leverage the full might of the PS5, Xbox Series X, and high-end PCs to enable ray tracing, ultra-fast loading times with PCIe 4.0 SSDs, 4K 60FPS perf targets, and more.

CD Projekt RED wants to make you 'happy to spend money' in Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming online multiplayer experience.

Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming multiplayer mode will have microtransactions and in-game monetization, and CDPR is taking a novel approach to in-game purchases. Instead of nickel and diming gamers, CDPR wants to inspire some joy when you spend money on in-game content. No details have been outlined on how the digital economy will work in CP2077 multiplayer, but the company says there won't be aggressive monetization and mTX won't upset fans.

"We won't be aggressive, but you can expect great things to be bought,"Adam Kicinski said in a recent earnings call.

Cyberpunk 2077's pre-order price won't change even though buyers get a free PS5 and Xbox Series X upgrade, CD Projekt RED confirms.

In a recent earnings Q&A session, CD Projekt Group SVP of business development Michal Nowakowski says there's currently no plans to raise Cyberpunk 2077 to $69.99 on next-gen consoles. The move contrasts Activision's $69.99 price hike in Black Ops Cold War, and aligns with CD Projekt's core tenants of treating consumers fairly and offering tremendous value with their games.

Cyberpunk 2077 will only be playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X in backwards compatible format, which will allow native boosts like faster load times and tightened frame rates, but the next-gen exclusive SKU won't launch until 2021. Alongside the re-release, CDPR will roll out a free next-gen enhancement upgrade for existing PS4 and Xbox One owners that boosts the game on PS5 and Xbox Series X, offering ray tracing, ultra-fast load times, 4K 60FPS perf, and more.