Gaming - Page 527

Bethesda's secretive new sci-fi RPG Starfield will remain a mystery for a while longer, company exec Pete Hines says.

It's been a long time since we heard about Starfield. Announced at E3 2018, the game is Bethesda Game Studio's first new IP in decades and is gearing up to be the next big RPG franchise. There's a fair bit we know about Starfield:

So when will get more news? Not for a while, Bethesda says.

Despite being teased 4 years ago with a mysterious red book in 2016, and a subsequent teaser in 2018, Dragon Age 4 is still in early development. How early? Concept art is still fresh off the presses, and BioWare is only just now working on early combat animations.

New Dragon Age 4 concept art gives us some clues on what to expect from the next installment, including locations, overall themes, and possible character teases. The art seems to show a bunch of locations, including the brutal dark wizardry of the Tevinter Imperium and the Grey Warden's majestic Weisshaupt Fortress in the Anderfels.

The art showcases everything from horrifying titanic bosses, some interesting character designs--that masked rapier-wielding rogue is amazing--, the flying ships of Tevinter, and more breathtaking scenes straight out of Dragon Age's deep lore.

Mediatonic's massive indie hit hits superstar sales with over 7 million copies sold on Steam.

Fall Guys is a massive success and has become the next big indie sensation. The hilarious, colorful, and rather challenging indie has enjoyed massive fame on the Twitch streaming charts, rising to the top slots of Steam's most-played games, and is now the most-downloaded PlayStation Plus game of all time. But it's also sold 7 million copies, making it one of the fastest-selling indies of all time.

In less than a month, Fall Guys has amassed 7 million sales on Steam. Fall Guys beats a handful of gaming's most-popular indies including Shovel Knight, Cuphead, and Hollow Knight. It's only 3 million copies away from Stardew Valley's 10 million sales, a figure which took 4 years of sales across a multitude of platforms.

Sony's next-gen PS5's release date is expected to launch after the Xbox Series X, sometime in mid-November, sources tell VideoGamesChronicle.

In a not-so-surprising revelation, key retail and inside sources think the PlayStation 5 will release sometime in mid-November. This aligns with everything we've heard so far and reflects Sony's traditional console launch timings, which revolve around Black Friday and pre-Christmas spending.

While no exact date has been given by Sony or other sources, recent game release dates may have outed the PlayStation 5's November launch. Two big next-gen games, Black Ops Cold War and SEGA's Yakuza: Like a Dragon, are slated to release on November 13, 2020. We believe the PlayStation 5 will also release on November 13.

As we predicted long ago, Halo: Infinite should be monetized with optional cosmetics, including weapon skins and even Destiny-like ornaments.

New Halo: Infinite merch unlockables confirm the biggest Halo game ever made will have weapon skins and special weapon "charms," which are likely similar to Destiny's ornaments. Certain Halo merchandise come with codes that can be entered online to redeem specific in-game skins for Halo: Infinite.

This pretty much outlines a straightforward cosmetic-driven monetization path for Halo: Infinite. Expect these weapon skins and ornaments to be sold piecemeal on an in-game store for premium currency. 343i already confirmed Halo: Infinite would have microtransactions, which is the entire basis for Microsoft's big live games, and also confirmed that REQ pack lootboxes won't be included.

Real-time-strategy players can finally rejoice as Microsoft has announced the release date for Ages of Empires III: Definitive Edition.

The announcement was aired at the GamesCom Opening Night Live show, which is a digital-only event that was originally planned to take place in Cologne, Germany. Above, you can find the trailer, and as you might have already suspected, the Definitive Edition for Age of Empires III comes with massive graphical improvements such as 4K support and a rebuilding of 3D assets.

Additionally, Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition also comes with a "modernized UI, cross-play multiplayer, and fully enhanced soundtrack and audio". Lastly, Age 3's Definitive Edition also comes with two brand new civilizations, which are going to be exclusive to the Definitive Edition. If you are interested in finding out any more news regarding Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, check out this link here. If you want to preorder the title, a link to that can be found here.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is coming to the PlayStation 5 and it could be one of the best launch titles for Sony's next-gen console, especially after you check out some new gameplay captured directly from the PS5:

The new footage is from the Gamescom Opening Night Live, where we get a juicy 7-minute video of next-gen Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on the PS5. The game sees developer Insomniac Games using the ultra-fast NVMe-based SSD inside of the PS5 that lets players "seamlessly warp around levels and even into other dimensions".

In the new Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart gameplay footage, we get our first look at some of the new weapons that Insomniac has planned for us with the Shatterbomb, Topiary Sprinkler, and the Enforcer. Overall I loved the trailer, there is a helluva lot of stuff going on at once with all those particle effects -- and while there's motion blur, it's not a Crysis 2 or 3 level mess.

BioWare celebrates its 25th anniversary with a special Dragon Age 4 tease at Gamescom 2020's Opening Night Live Ceremony.

Dragon Age 4 is still a long ways away. BioWare confirmed the game is only in early production phases right now, but teased a bunch of concept art and early gameplay/combat animation footage at Gamescom, all of which showed next-generation visuals. BioWare confirms Dragon Age 4 is being built from the ground up to target next-gen tech, so the game will likely be exclusive to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

"Since 2014, we've been looking at ways to use next-generation technology to bring the world and characters of Dragon Age to life," said BioWare general manager Casey Hudson.

Activision promises Black Ops Cold War will be fully optimized for PC on Battle.net, but Treyarch and Raven aren't developing the PC version.

The latest Black Ops Cold War press release revealed an interesting tidbit: The PC flavor is being developed by a quadraplex of studios including Beenox, Sledgehammer Games, High Moon Studios and Activision Shanghai.

Beenox, who has extended experience working on Call of Duty ports, is handling principal development of the PC version and the other studios, including the once-mighty Sledgehammer, are offering a helping hand. This somewhat contrasts with previous reports that indicated Sledgehammer, Treyarch, and Raven would all be working together on the same version of the game.

Halo lore master Joseph Staten has returned to the franchise to lead Halo: Infinite's campaign, 343 Industries today announced.

There's good news for Halo fans: Joe Staten is back and is now guiding what appears to be a deceptively-rocky boat. This move seems to speak volumes about the current state of Halo: Infinite's development, and reflects a larger part of Microsoft's game dev business practices. While coronavirus was a major factor for disruption, it's unclear it was the only thing that affected development.

"I'm thrilled to join Halo to help them ship Halo Infinite. As the project lead for the Infinite Campaign, I will be supporting the team's existing, great leaders and empowering them to do their best work," Staten said on Twitter.

I've been a big fan of Secretlab's unique SoftWeave fabric since its debut in 2018, but now the company has just unveiled its latest SoftWeave BLACK3 -- a "reimaginging of the popular Triple Black colorway".

Secretlab explains that there are a number of fans that work for the company itself that love the Triple Black colorway sneakers -- so they went ahead to create something similar with their new SoftWeave BLACK3 by incorporating the tri-color weave with three different, and unique shades of black.

The result is something that looks really slick, but I would love to see it in person with my own eyes -- my review sample is on the way. Secretlab is infusing the worlds of gaming and streetwear with the new SoftWeave BLACK3 -- and I'm really digging it. I can see this chair being super comfortable, while also rocking its own unique look.

Activision-Blizzard's net revenues for Q2 were $1.932 billion, the best second quarter earnings in the last 10 years.

Activision-Blizzard's recent Q2'20 performance saw astronomical spikes in net bookings, operating income, and the historic best Q2 net revenues in the last decade. The company raked in $580 million of net income (+76%) on the back of $1.932 billion in net revenues (+39%), and earnings per share jumped 11 cents to $2.36 for the period ended June 30, 2020.

Growth was driven by the Activision segment, which earned $993 million, or 50% of total revenues thanks to massive spikes in Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Warzone monetization. Warzone itself now has 75 million active players and in-game microtransaction earnings are up almost 500% from last year. Activision segment earnings were up 270% year-over-year.

Gamescom 2020 is almost upon us, and to get that hype train rolling ahead of the opening night, Bethesda has released a teaser for the coming DOOM Eternal DLC.

Back at the start of August, a teaser trailer was dropped for the first DOOM Eternal DLC titled "The Ancient Gods", Part One, and with that teaser was the confirmation that the full reveal would be at Gamescom 2020. Now, Gamescom 2020 is only around the corner, and what better way to kick things off than with a full reveal of what impossible challenge Doomguy is going to overcome next.

As a reminder to everyone, Gamescom showrunner Geoff Keighley took to his Twitter to post a time for the reveal, which is "#OpeningNightLive at 8 pm CEST / 2 pm ET / 11 am PT". More recently, the official DOOM Twitter page just posted their own reminder that the DLC would be arriving "tomorrow". If you have played DOOM Eternal and enjoyed the game's story then this DLC will most likely be for you as its an expansion of the main game. If you are interested in the full list of dates and times for Gamescom, check out this link here.

You might remember when id Software said that DOOM Eternal could handle 1000FPS, well -- someone has done just that, powered DOOM Eternal with enough PC grunt to power it at over 1000FPS.

Polish overclocking team 'x-kom' used an Intel Core i7-9700K processor and ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, both the CPU and GPU were cooled under LN2 -- and both were heavily overclocked. The Core i7-9700K was pushed to an insane 6.6GHz, while the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 Ti was cranked all the way up to 2.4GHz under LN2 cooling.

The team built a pretty kick ass PC, specced out with:

Microsoft has teamed with Warner Bros. on some gorgeous new Wonder Woman 1984 themed Xbox One consoles, inspired by the Wonder Woman armor, lasso, and villain of the movie.

We have the slick Cheetah-themed console, with Cheetah / Barbara Minerva played by Kristen Wiig. This custom console looks great with a snakeskin pattern, some awesomely-used faux leopard fur, and a themed controller.

Next up we have the Golden Armor Xbox One X console, inspired from Gal Gadot's golden armor that she wears later on in Wonder Woman 1984. The console is made of 24-carat gold leaves, and packs a gorgeous matching Xbox controller.

GUNNAR has just revealed what they're referring to as the "holy grail" of gaming glasses, with their new GUNNAR Lightning Bolt 360 range of glasses. Check out the video they've just posted on YouTube:

The new Lightning Bolt 360 gaming glasses comes in 3 different editions, with the GUNNAR, 6 Siege, and ESL varieties. They are priced between $130 and $140 -- depending on the version you go for.

You do get a "unique lightning bolt design" that doesn't just look cool, it also takes pressure away from your temples. GUNNAR provides 3 different temple options, interchangeable lens (for both indoor, and outdoor use), 3 nose bridge sizes, and a protective case and pouch.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and its super-popular, and very addictive battle royale mode Warzone has just had its Season 5 drop -- and then Season 5 Reloaded out of nowhere.

But now we're hearing about some upcoming changes to Warzone, and the newly-introduced train that runs through Verdansk. Warzone multiplayer director Joe Cecot explained to Red Bull in a recent interview: "We have lots of ideas around [the train]. We wanted to get it in there in Season Five and have it be a fun thing to interact with, where you have a lot of movie moments of vehicles chasing trains, people fighting over the train, [that sort of thing]".

Raven Software creative director Amos Hodge chimed in, adding that the team is working on "lots of ideas to update the train in general". He added that the developer wants to add more "interactive elements" to Warzone, in order to keep the game stay frosty.

Treyarch confirms the new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will fully harness the raw power of next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles.

Black Ops Cold War will be among the top-performing shooters on next-gen consoles and is being geared to tap the full potential of the new hardware. The next-gen 7nm Navi GPUs and Zen 2 CPUs will enable high-resolution, high-FPS gaming alongside instantaneous loading via new PCIe 4.0 SSD tech. There's also raytracing support baked in thanks to a newly revamped games engine built from the ground up for next-gen hardware.

"We want to make sure that the framerate is responsive, and that it feels like there's nothing on the technical side preventing you from having a good time,"Treyarch executive Dan Bunting told VentureBeat.

Ever the trendsetter in the games industry, Activision's new $69.99 price hike for next-gen PS5, Xbox Series X games could convince other publishers to raise prices too.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War should be the biggest game of 2020, and it'll be sold at a $69.99 premium on next-gen consoles. This is just the beginning for Activision's future games and we should expect its new next-gen titles to also jump by $10.

Call of Duty is among the biggest franchises in gaming and typically sets the bar for imitation--whether it's gametypes like Warzone or its billion-dollar live service business models, publishers are always trying to mimic the company's success. This imitation should extend to next-gen game pricing.

Activision revealed cross-gen SKUs of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and confirmed the finalized Xbox Series X game case design. It's kind of confusing, but luckily it doesn't matter if consumers get them mixed up.

The final Xbox Series X game cases are pretty similar to the basic Xbox One cases--so similar that everyday consumers may buy the wrong version. The next-gen case design in question is for the newly-revealed Black Ops Cold War. The next-gen Xbox Series X version comes with the Xbox One version by default so there's no worry of a mix-up.

The cross-gen cases are similar but have some differences. Namely the Xbox Series X label in the upper right, and the next-gen console is listed first on the Xbox Series X version, whereas Xbox One version has the current-gen console first. Now here's what's confusing: Activision says physical disc versions of Cold War on Xbox One won't include a free upgrade on Xbox Series X. That upgrade is exclusive for digital versions of the Xbox One port, and it'll cost you $10 extra to unlock.