Gaming - Page 543

In a move which I'm sure felt like forever, Microsoft is finally moving Minecraft onto its own Azure server infrastructure -- away from competitor Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Minecraft developer Mojang has been using AWS for Minecraft Realms since 2014, where gamers can create private play spaces in Minecraft without needing to set up and then host a private server, for an $8 per month subscription service.

But now, things are changing with Mojang Studios moving Minecraft away from AWS and into the warm arms of Azure -- Microsoft's cloud service. Also remember Microsoft acquired Mojang back in 2014 for $2.5 billion and now owns Minecraft.

Today the Epic Games Store has received full integration support into CD Projekt RED's GOG Galaxy 2.0 platform, a move that sees storefronts and ecosystems blurring lines and joining forces.

With GOG Galaxy, CDPR has an ambitious idea: To unify all storefronts in a universal launcher. Some stores are resistant to the idea--Steam, for example, and EA's Origin--but Epic has pledged their support. GOG Galaxy 2.0 can now link up with your Epic account and migrate, launch, and connect to your Epic Games Store content and games.

"We're partnering with our friends at Epic Games to bring you a more seamless and reliable experience while organizing, installing, and launching your Epic Games Store games via GOG Galaxy 2.0 thanks to the new official integration," CDPR wrote in a GOG update pane.

Logic might've quit the rap game, but he's not ready to give up gaming altogether.

Logic, the rapper behind the platinum album Everybody, has signed an exclusive streaming deal with Twitch worth seven figures. The move comes as more celebrities and artists are pivoting towards streaming due to COVID-19 disrupting tours, premieres, and shows. Twitch is likewise pivoting to attract mainstream performers outside of its typical gaming sphere.

Even still, Logic says he's just a nerd that loves video games. "I'm not this rapper guy, man. I'm just a nerd. I love video games," he said in a recent interview with The Verge. That doesn't mean he'll stop being a musician--despite announcing his departure from the rap world, Logic will still perform on Twitch.

During today's Summer Game Fest stream, Team 17 announced a huge new Stir of Dawn expansion coming to Blasphemous in August.

Get ready to jump back into the bizarre, hallowed world of Cvstodia, O' Penitent One. Team17 is rolling out a sizable free DLC for Blasphemous that adds a ton of content including the long-awaited NewGame+, new mind-bending storylines, and a new penitence system that's a more cruel version of the original Fallout's traits system.

Gamers will also get new maps, new enemies and NPCs, and a ton of new items and buffs/nerfs/balances. Essentially Blasphemous will take on a whole new scope with the free Stir of Dawn update.

Spider-Man Miles Morales may be among the first playable 8K resolution games on Sony's next-gen PS5.

Today Insomniac Games confirmed some surprising news: Their new Spider-Man game will run at 4K 60FPS on PS5 via an optional Performance Mode, hinting at higher resolution for the other mode. Insomniac didn't clarify if this was native 4K resolution, though.

Just like PS4 Pro Enhanced games, some next-gen PS5 games will have two modes: A performance mode that prioritizes frame rates and gameplay, and another that emphasizes resolution. The new Demon's Souls remake is another PS5 game that will have these two modes.

The PS5's new DualSense controller is somewhat chonky and outsizes the PS4's DualShock 4 in new side-by-side comparisons.

Summer Game Fest's Geoff Keighley recently went hands-on with the DualSense in the first-ever PS5 vs PS4 controller size comparison, and the results aren't too surprising. Keighley took a bunch of pictures of the new PS5 controller, but there's one that we're interested in most: the side-by-side shot.

Early images from Sony hinted the DualSense would be wider and taller than the DualShock 4, and that's indeed true. The controller has more fang-shaped handles and is somewhat reminiscent of a PS3 prototype and DualShock 4 mash-up. According to Keighley, the DualSense weighs more than the DualShock 4

The Morrowind Rebirth team just released a new v5.2 patch that eliminates a ton of bugs while tweaking features, textures, and more.

Who's still playing Morrowind in 2020? If you're on PC, you're likely using the ambitious Morrowind Rebirth mod, and you'll be pretty happy with the latest update. Rebirth v5.2 adds a lot of features and content, including a swath of tweaks to gameplay like speechcraft, combat, questing, and a lot of visual upgrades.

Some of the more noteworthy changes are traders letting you buy and sell goods if you have ghoul hearts, changing the early first-quest package to Caius Cosades into an actual package, new supply chests to other factions like Imperial Cult, Thieves Guild, and Morag Tong, making certain ingredients lighter, a new White Guard Hide ingredient, adding a brand new unique St. Meris Shield of Serenity item, and massive changes to the Speechcraft system where NPCs will stop talking if their disposition falls too low.

As we've said before, don't expect Xbox Game Pass to show up on competing platforms like the Nintendo Switch, and especially not on Sony's PlayStation ecosystem.

In a recent interview with German website Game Star, Xbox boss Phil Spencer discussed why critical services like Game Pass won't show up on other hardware platforms like the Switch, PlayStation, or even Google Stadia. The reason is pretty simple: Microsoft can't bring over the other Xbox ecosystem tidbits like achievements, friends, and more.

"The thing about other gaming console platforms is we're not able to bring a full Xbox experience on those platforms," Spencer said.

Nintendo has taken to their official Twitter page to announce that they will be posting a new Nintendo Direct video.

Above is the post from the official Nintendo of America Twitter account, and it says that Nintendo will be debuting what is called the Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase, which will be a Direct focused on titles from "our development & publishing partners". This will mark the very first Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase, but according to the post, this will be "series".

The video that will be posted will be around 10 minutes long and be pre-recorded. The contents of the showcase will also include "a few updates on a small group of previously-announced #NintendoSwitch games." Games that are suspected to be included in the video are No More Heroes 3, Shin Megami Tensei V, and more. If you are interested in viewing the video, it will be posted on the 7/20 at 10 AM ET.

If you're a World of Tanks gamer on console, you're going to be happy to hear that the developer will be making crossplay gaming possible between Xbox One and PS4.

The new crossplay feature for World of Tanks is coming on July 21, with developer Wargaming announcing the news on their website. Wargaming explains: "Cross-play is coming to World of Tanks on console, allowing Xbox and PlayStation Tank Commanders to play together or battle each other! Cross-play will be available from July 21".

World of Tanks is one of the most popular free-to-play MMOs on the market, and now with crossplay support between the Xbox and PlayStation consoles it's only going to continue succeeding.

Death Stranding has received its first patch on the PC, with publisher 505 Games and developer Kojima Productions pushing out the first patch now.

It weighs in at 5GB for the PC, with Death Stranding receiving AVX judgment to CPU check at startup, the usual stability improvements, and even more usual general bug fixes.

505 Games explained the new patch on the official Death Stranding subreddit, explaining: "This update just contains a lot of small fixes around bugs and stability issues. Nothing too major!"

The Xbox Series X's Velocity Architecture features many revolutionary new technologies and architectural optimizations, one of which is Sampler Feedback Streaming, which can dramatically reduce texture pack file sizes by eliminating redundancy.

The Xbox Series X is a game-changer. The sum of its parts--whether it be the higher-end Navi GPU, Zen 2 CPU, and powerful PCIe 4.0 SSD hardware or the new software/OS/architecture optimizations--are all massively synergized to work together. Sampler Feedback Streaming is one of these parts, and it's featured in the new Velocity Architecture, a banner that's focused on making the Xbox Series X fast and efficient.

We've already outlined the basics of Sampler Feedback Streaming in our in-depth Xbox Series X SSD video, but now we have a developer's perspective on the topic. Despite Microsoft's transparency on the console, devs have been markedly silent on how the Xbox Series X's new features will benefit them. But now Team Blur Games' lead designer Gavin Stevens offers some golden insight.

The PlayStation 5's SSD is set to destroy loading speeds this holiday, but the devs at Sucker Punch are finding new ways to massively speed up loading on the PS4's old mechanical HDD.

Compared to most open-world games on PS4, Ghost of Tsushima has some pretty fast loading times. Whether gamers are respawning from death or fast-travelling, Sucker Punch's new samurai adventure takes roughly 8-10 seconds to load sequences, and sometimes even less than that. This speedy loading is made possible by the team's storage and engine optimizations, which significantly reduce seek times on the HDD.

As Mark Cerny explained in March, mechanical hard drives like the one used in the PS4 spend 2/3rds of their time seeking rather than actually loading data. So developers are forced to work around these limitations, and Sucker Punch's art team found a unique way to massively shrink and compress assets to adhere to the strict memory budgets.

Sony's official PlayStation Direct storefront now mentions PS5 pre-orders in its source code, hinting a big price reveal is incoming.

Internet sleuths on ResetERA have uncovered some interesting new updates on the PS Direct Store. The website's source code now explicitly mentions the PS5, and HTML error message code confirms users will only be able to pre-order one console at a time.

"addtocartrestrictionvalidation":{"errorType":"commerce-api-error","errorMessage":"You can only purchase one version of the PS5™ Console: Disc or Digital. You have already added one PS5™ console to your cart.," the code reads.

Just Cause is a pretty big game on its own, so it should come as no surprise the open-world insanity-driven game is being turned into a movie.

Deadline is reporting that Just Cause is being adapted into a movie, directed by Michael Dowse, who was behind the camera for Stuber and Coffee & Kareem. The film is being co-produced between Constatin Film and Prime Universal.

Derek Kosland is writing the script, with his previous work being the super-successful and Keanu Reeves led John Wick trilogy. As for the movie itself, it will follow the events of the Just Cause game where we will see Rico Rodrigeuz in a "race-against-time mission to stop the mercenary group The Black Hand".

Microsoft is incentivizing its new all-in-one bundled Game Pass Ultimate subscription as the main avenue for Xbox online subscriptions.

Microsoft has stopped selling its 12-month Xbox LIVE Gold subscription on its digital storefront. The company is now only selling its 1-month and 3-month Xbox LIVE Gold subs for $9.99 and $24.99 respectively.

This wasn't a mistake, but a tactical decision to push people towards its new Game Pass Ultimate subscription plan. Earlier this month, Microsoft added tremendous value to Game Pass Ultimate by confirming its xCloud streaming service would be included free. Shortly after this announcement, the games-maker stopped selling 12-month Xbox LIVE Gold subs on its platform. This includes both on the Xbox One and the Windows Store on PC.

Sony's PlayStation 5 will come with a pre-installed packaged game that highlights and introduces all of the DualSense's new controller features.

In a recent Summer Game Fest stream, Sony and Geoff Keighley confirmed the PS5 will come with a pre-loaded game. It's not anything crazy like, say, Gran Turismo 7 or the new Ratchet and Clank game, but a smaller bit-sized experience that stars Astro,

Sony's new PlayStation robot mascot. Astro's Playroom is a quirky little game that basically teaches you how to use the PS5's new DualSense controller and shows off all its nifty new tricks. There's mini-games and areas that highlight the nuanced haptic feedback, including the tensile strength variance in trigger pulls, the new rumble tech, and even the DualSense's surprising mic feature that turns air friction into in-game functionalities as you blow into the controller.

Sony has probably been enjoying all of the free marketing buzz it has been getting over various PlayStation 5 pre-order leaks, pricing, and details -- but when they're ready, they'll let us know.

In a recent chat with The Game Awards host and creator Geoff Keighley, who also just shared the first hands-on video with the PS5 DualSense controller -- he spoke with PlayStation Head of Marketing Eric Lempel, who gave us some more details on PlayStation 5 pre-orders.

Lempel said: "I think it's safe to say [...] we'll let you know when preorder will happen. It's not going to happen with a minute's notice. We're going to at some point let you know when you can preorder PlayStation 5. So, please, don't feel like you have to go run out and line up anywhere until you receive official notice on how that will work".

It was only a few days ago that the team at CD PROJEKT RED teased Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima inside of the world of their upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077.

But now I've had more time to think about it, we all have -- and it makes total sense for CD PROJEKT RED to add Hideo Kojima into Cyberpunk 2077. I mean, first -- let's look at the single fact that Keanu freaking Reeves is in Cyberpunk 2077.

Reeves plays the role of Neo in The Matrix, which is about as cyberpunk as it gets. Add into that an even more classic in the fact he played the titular role of Johnny Mnemonic, which if you haven't seen -- check it out. Hideo Kojima has the same amount of geek value to gamers that Keanu does, so adding him to the most anticipated game of 2020 after he released one of the most anticipated games of 2019 on PlayStation 4 -- and then again as one of the most anticipated games of 2020?

NVIDIA has added a bunch of new games to its GeForce NOW game streaming service, which is hoem to over 1 milllion gamers and counting -- and I'm sure many more with the latest games added.

GeForce NOW has just become home to Hideo Kojima's new masterpiece Death Stranding, which launched on Steam and the Epic Games Store just a few days ago. Not only that, but GeForce NOW is now streaming Ubisoft's new battle royale game, Hyper Scape, which is in beta.

Here's a list of games that NVIDIA has just added to GeForce NOW: