Gaming - Page 524

Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X is in the hands of gamers now, and on pre-order lists for many months depending on the country -- while Halo: Infinite is nowhere to be seen.

But don't worry, the hype engines are about to be turned back on.

In a recent Halo Weekly Discussion Thread on Reddit, a 343 Industries representative said that Halo: Infinite would not be shown off at the Video Game Awards, or VGAs. But the 343i rep did say there would be a "high level" update on Halo: Infinite in early 2021.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War just launched last Friday, but the game has already set a new global franchise sales record for the most digital units sold on launch day -- Activision Blizzard would be celebrating for sure.

Blizzard executive Anna Malmhake said in a statement: "Friday's release of Black Ops Cold War set a new record as the highest first day digital sales worldwide in franchise history. Thank you to Call of Duty players everywhere".

"Launch is just the start This new title is releasing into the largest and most engaged Call of Duty community ever. We look forward to delivering an incredible amount of free post launch content, events and support for the entire community as Black Ops Cold War evolves just as we did last year following the release of Modern Warfare".

We're currently testing out the PS5 in preparation for our review, and apparently the system doesn't support Bluetooth audio devices.

Just like the PS4, you can't hook up headsets or external speakers via Bluetooth on the PS5. It's a big bummer for anyone who has a pair of quick headphones they want to hook up, including Sony's own premium WF-1000XM3 noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones.

Luckily the DualSense does have a 3.5mm headphone jack so you can plug in existing headsets into the console. I was using the HyperX Cloud II headset and it worked great.

Microsoft exec Tim Stuart confirms PlayStation gamers will still be able to play future Bethesda games. But they may have to wait, and some content may not be available.

Microsoft spent $7.5 billion to buy Bethesda for one reason: Content. Xbox is now a service-first ecosystem, and content drives services. How and where that content is distributed makes all the difference. Luckily for PS gamers, now-Microsoft-owned franchises like Doom, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout won't be 100% exclusive to Xbox. Microsoft confirms these games are still coming to PlayStation consoles.

But how, when, and in what capacity are still unknown. At the Jefferies Interactive Entertainment Virtual Conference, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Tim Stuart strongly hints that new Bethesda games like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI could come to Xbox consoles first, and PlayStation later. It may not stop there. Bethesda games could get extra features and content on Xbox and PC that are not available on PC, possibly including in-game performance optimizations and items.

Gamers are starting to customize their PS5 consoles, and it's amazing what a simple color swap can do.

The PS5's current two-tone color style has fans somewhat divided. Fans like me enjoy the new exotic and alien design, but others prefer the historical all-black chassis first ushered in by the PS2. So what would the PS5 look like if it were midnight black? Pretty snazzy.

PS5 owners have painted their consoles and controllers in matching shades of jet black. Reddit user Yazuka83 painted their DualSense black and even swapped in the DualShock 4's D-Pad and colored face buttons for some extra flair. The result is union of last-gen with current-gen form factor and design.

Western Digital reveals a new fleet of custom Black Ops-themed HDDs and SSDs, including a custom variant of its ultra-fast SN850 PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD.

Like any game these days, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War commands some serious storage real estate. It takes up to 133GB of space on the PS5, and can take up to 250GB on PC with Warzone installed. Gamers are simply going to run out of storage at this rate. Luckily Western Digital has you covered with its new Black Ops line of WD_BLACK storage.

The new Call of Duty WD_BLACK storage is a mix of external and internal devices. There's a custom P10 HDD with 2TB of space, a P50 SSD with 1TB of space that can hit 2GB/sec speeds, and the 1TB SN850 NVMe SSD with its monstrous PCIe 4.0 speeds.

Got a disc stuck in your new PlayStation 5? Here's a quick way to pop it out.

Manually ejecting a disc on the PS5 is similar to the PS4 and PS4 Pro. You'll need a screwdriver to turn a screw and push the disc out. Just like the base 2013 PS4, you'll have to pop off part of the system's covering.

To get your disc out you'll want to first lay the PS5 on its side with the disc drive facing up. Remove the face plate by slightly pressing left-to-right on the cover. The curved white collar should be on the left side as you push, and the bottom of the console on the right. The plate should pop right off.

A new bit of in-game Cyberpunk 2077 footage shows of a dark, gritty dystopian sci-fi city with tons of flair.

New never-before-seen footage of Cyberpunk 2077 shows the game will be well worth the wait. The footage comes from German website Das Erste and is woven into a company profile interview. There's lots of footage we've already seen thrown into the mix, too.

The gameplay is centered mostly on the environs of Night City. There's lots of dark shadowy areas of the metropolis we haven't seen, complemented by brightly-lit city squares, marketplaces, and futuristic avenues with cars flying overhead. It all looks like something out of a Blade Runner fan's dream.

Warzone, one of the biggest games on the planet right now, currently performs better on the Xbox Series X.

According to Digital Foundry, Call of Duty Warzone can now hit up to 120FPS on Xbox Series X on compatible HDMI 2.1 VRR displays. Warzone is still locked to 60FPS on PS5, however. The PS5 currently runs the PS4 version of Warzone in backward compatibility mode. It's possible the Xbox Series X version has been optimized in ways the PS5 version hasn't been yet (Warzone's MS Store listing directly mentions 120 FPS whereas the PS Store says it's still a PS4 title).

Warzone caps out at around ~115 FPS on Xbox Series X, and apparently there's no way to change the refresh rates for Warzone on PS5. The console has a global Performance Mode that targets optimum frame rates for games but there's no manual console-wide adjustments for FPS.

Microsoft cares most about software sales, services, and engagement. These metrics are the life's blood of Xbox...not console sales.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, Phil Spencer re-confirms something we've known for some time: Hardware purchases are in the back seat of Microsoft's big picture. Right now Xbox is a service, not a console--a service that bridges consoles, PCs, and mobile phones with a galaxy of games, subscriptions, and cross-platform social features. Thanks to the Xbox One's bad rep in 2013, Microsoft has diversified far beyond consoles to become a service titan. It's done very well for them.d

Spencer re-affirms this position in the interview, and says Microsoft won't give actual Xbox console sales figures ever again. The spotlight is now focused on player count, engagement, and revenues from subscriptions and services like Game Pass instead of hardware sales.

Sony made it way too easy to interrupt your PS5 gaming sessions by accidentally launching a new game.

The PlayStation 5 doesn't support quick resume. Only one game be active at once. Unlike the Xbox Series X/S, the PS5 can't have multiple save states of games running at the same time. That means if you're playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and decide to switch to Bugsnax, your Valhalla session is now closed.

Conversely, Series X would save both sessions so you could swap between them without losing progress or closing your game (the console will also overwrite resume slots without warnings, though).

Ubisoft Montreal has peppered all sorts of interesting world events throughout 9th Century England...but this killer nun takes the cake.

Exploring the newer Assassin's Creed games is like opening a present. You never know what's inside. There's all sorts of surprises that lay in wait like an emotional little girl named Mae who doesn't believe her father is dead. There's also a touching moment where you find camaraderie with children of an enemy Viking faction. And there's also the killer nun in East Anglia that dishes out brutal penitence in the name of the Lord.

While scouting East Anglia I came across a decrepit old monastery called Edmund's Hope. There was someone praying at the giant cross and speaking holy liturgy. Lots of dead bodies and gallons of blood lay around the figure along with countless swords. The holyperson was simultaneously asking the Lord for forgiveness and offering up "heathen souls".

Fall Guys has now sold more than 10 million copies on Steam, rivalling some of the biggest indies on the market.

Unity is now publicly traded, and that means its quarterly earnings reports can be seen by everyone. In its first public Q3 brief, Unity confirmed Fall Guys has sold over 10 million copies on Steam. Fall Guys is made by Unity, so the engine-makers are eager to tout these milestones.

To add perspective, this means Fall Guys has 3 million copies from August to November. That's about 750,000 copies sold per month. At 10 million sales, Fall Guys now rivals Stardew Valley, the gigantic indie farm simulator that's released on pretty much every modern gaming platform available. The numbers also see Fall Guys beating some AAA games like Final Fantasy XV, Battlefield V, and Resident Evil 7.

In a not-so-surprising outcome, EA earned 75% of its total Q2 earnings from live services (microtransactions, subscriptions, monetization, etc.).

EA is a powerhouse of monetization and engagement, and its annualized FIFA and Madden sports franchises pull in billions every year. FY2021, the company's current fiscal year, will be no exception. Q1 was off to a roaring start with $1.1 billion in live service earnings, and Q2 follows close behind with $869 million, (+13.15% YoY) from subscriptions and mTX.

EA's latest financials confirm that live services made up 75% of its quarterly revenues, or $869 million, driven by in-game purchases in FIFA, Madden, and Apex Legends (Apex is about to earn $1 billion). Conversely, EA sold half as many games in Q2'21 than it did last year. Full game sales made up 25%, or $282 million of total earnings.

The PS5's new Game Help feature is a nifty addition that gives you real-time hints and tips as you play, and it's supported in these next-gen games.

Game Help is part of the PS5's new functionally-layered UI and aims to replace walkthroughs.

As you play a PS5 game, you can summon on-screen tips and tricks by pressing the PS Button and selecting an on-screen pane. Game Help gives you a screenshot, a full video, and written info to guide you across specific challenges like levels, bosses, and more.

PS5 owners can't back up next-gen game saves without PS Plus. This effectively means PS5 game save backups are locked behind a paygate.

Unlike the PS4, the PS5 doesn't let gamers manually copy their next-gen saves onto a USB drive. The only way to safely back up saves for next-gen PS5 exclusives like Demon's Souls is to upload them to PS Plus. Users can't export their PS5 saves to an external USB stick or USB drive.

To be clear, you can still manually export (and import) PS4 saves on the PS5. This is true for any backward compatible game you play on the PS4. So if you have, let's say, the PS4 version of Assassin's Creed Valhalla installed on the PS5's SSD, you can still back up those saves on a USB device.

Gamers can install two versions of the same game on the PlayStation 5's SSDGamers can install two versions of the same game on the PlayStation 5's SSD: A next-gen version, and a current-gen version.

Today we learned how PS4-to-PS5 game upgrades are handled on Sony's new next-gen PlayStation. In the case of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, you can install both a PS4 and PS5 version of the game on the PS5's SSD. The two games live side-by-side to each other and can be launched independently. It's actually pretty interesting.

Simply select the game on the PS5's home screen, hit Options, and go to Game Version. There you can select whether to launch the PS4 version of the game, or the PS5 version. The PS4 flavor will be unoptimized and won't hit the full perf like 4K 60FPS or utilize the blistering fast load times (the game loads in 8 seconds from a save on PS5, for instance). The PS5 version is enhanced in so many ways and plays tremendously better.

The Xbox Series X/S debut is the biggest in Xbox history, and underlines a big turnaround for Microsoft's console division.

While Microsoft cares mostly about Xbox services, software, and digital earnings, the company is still eager to tout hardware milestones. The new Xbox Series X/S generation is a defining moment for the Xbox brand, and Microsoft today confirmed the next-gen duo has outsold any previous Xbox hardware launch in history. Given the Xbox 360's massive demand at launch, this is quite the feat. Apparently the Xbox Series S was the best-seller, which isn't surprising given its $299 cost.

Sadly Microsoft didn't reveal any actual hardware sales figures. Current Xbox One lifetime sales are estimated to be around 49 million as of June 2020.

The PS5 segregates saves across generations, and supports two different banks of save files: Those made on PS5, and those made on PS4. Things get confusing when moving PS4 games over to PS5.

I've already had issues with the PS5 recognizing my PS4 saves when playing backward compatible PS4 games. I'm not alone, either. I managed to solve this by re-uploading the PS4 saves to PS Plus, and then downloading them to the PS5's internal storage. This method works for PS4 games that don't have PS5 upgrades.

But what about games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla that offer free PS4-to-PS5 upgrades? That's where things get a little dicey.

The PS5 can record and capture up to 1 hour of 4K footage...but you'll want to use it sparingly.

Like the PS4, the next-gen PS5 can record up to 1 hour of your most recent gameplay footage. The console can automatically capture in-game footage and format it as a replayable/sharable video. The PS5 has seven different length formats: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and 60 minutes. Unlike the PS4, which caps out at 1080p, the PS5 can record footage in up to 4K resolution.

The 30m and 60m lengths should be avoided unless you're capturing in 1080p. 12 minutes of 3840 x 2160 resolution footage in Assassin's Creed Valhalla took up 3.12GB. The PS5's SSD only clocks in at 667GB so your storage space is at a premium. If you capture 4K or even 1080p footage, definitely be sure to export the video to an external USB stick or drive for use later.