Gaming - Page 556

Sony just officially unveiled the PlayStation 5's finalized console design, and it's weirder than we could've ever imagined. But the system will launch with a handful of very familiar peripherals and accessories, including a curious new camera that could be used for the upcoming PSVR 2.0 headset.

Sony's likely working on a next-gen PlayStation VR headset to complement the PS5's raw power boost. Nothing's been announced, but multiple patents hint a head HMD is on the way, possibly with wireless connectivity. Other patents hint the PSVR 2 could have inside-out tracking, alleviating the need for external cameras.

But why would Sony launch a new camera in tandem with the PlayStation 5? It's kind of a strange move. The PS Camera currently has a small place in the ecosystem and is mostly used with the PlayStation VR. It's also used for streaming, which might be a big thing for the new PS5 era.

Sony officially unveiled the PS5's console design today, showing a slight V-shaped thermal design in a form factor that stands vertically.

The PlayStation 5 is a very striking system, and has been designed with cooling in mind. Although it's presented vertically, it can also sit horizontally on its side. The ventilation system is the most advanced we've seen in a PlayStation console to date, and retains some of the original V-shaped design found in the devkits.

The vents have a light blue strip for accent lighting, and there's USB ports (plus a USB-C in the front for quick charging).

UPDATE: Insomniac has confirmed the new Spider-Man game isn't a sequel, or an expansion. It's a smaller standalone game.

Insomniac's next big game will be a Spider-Man PlayStation 5 launch game starring Miles Morales.

Today Sony announced a new PlayStation exclusive Spider-Man game launching alongside the PS5 in 2020. The new game is a direct sequel to Isomniac's mega-hit Spider-Man PS4 game and stars Miles Morales, Peter Parker's pupil who picked up the suit. The footage was captured completely on a PlayStation 5 and features some incredibly fluid cinematic sequences.

Today Square Enix announced Project Athia, a new next-gen PlayStation 5 fantasy game that's one part Final Fantasy and one part Devil May Cry.

Not a lot was revealed about Project Athia, but looks to mirror Dragon's Dogma-levels of scope and fantasy lore, complete with immensely streamlined action and death-defying jumps lifted right out of something like Devil May Cry or Gravity Rush. The game reminds me a lot of a supercharged Final Fantasy XV, and the main character, in this case a kind of ultra-quick sorceress (Athia), looks a lot like Noctics in the animations.

Rockstar Games is releasing GTA V on PS5 in 2021, complete with new enhancements and extra upgrades.

The second best-selling game of all time is coming to PlayStation 5, surprising no one. While Rockstar didn't actually show off how the game will look on PS5, they did promise GTA V will be "enhanced and expanded" on the next-gen system. This means a next-gen SKU with high-end optimizations, possibly including native 4K, higher frame rates, ray tracing, the works. GTA Online will of course be included with every PS5 copy of GTA V.

"With a range of technical improvements, visual upgrades and performance enhancements, GTAV & GTA Online will take full advantage of the PS5 hardware and its new features, making the game more beautiful and more responsive than ever," Sony said in a press release.

Mention of Lockhart, the rumored cheaper next-gen Xbox, has been found in Windows 10 code and ignites speculation about the system.

Back in 2018, we heard Microsoft's next-gen Xbox would be a family with two systems: Anaconda, the announced higher-end Xbox Series X with its 12TFLOP GPU and 4K 120FPS gaming; and Lockhart, a cheaper, more cost-effective system with a 4-6TFLOP GPU that targets 1440p 60FPS.

Microsoft has yet to announce Lockhart, but the company probably will at some point, especially now that it's listed in Windows 10 OS code. The snippet of code mentions codenames for all Xbox consoles, from Durango (Xbox One) to Anaconda (Xbox Series X) and Lockhart.

Today's the big day. Sony will show off new PS5 next-gen exclusives today at 4PM EST, complete with first-party and third-party games.

To say this event is hyped up would be an understatement. The PS5 games reveal event is still five hours away and the stream already has 10,000 people gathered together to speculate, ruminate, and keep the chat flowing at supersonic speeds.

Today's event will be streamed, but it won't be live. It's a pre-recorded reel of footage that'll run at 1080p 30FPS instead of 4K 60FPS, and will comprise of PlayStation 5 next-gen exclusives that're launching in 2020. Expect to see big-budget games from third-party publishers, and a number of heavy-hitting first party games like Gran Turismo, and possibly Horizon Zero Dawn 2 and maybe the rumored Silent Hills game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's new season is here for gamers across the world, but some Xbox One gamers were slapped directly across the face with an issue with their update: it was 84GB.

Yeah... 84GB for an update. The issue was so bad that "84GB" began trending on Twitter, because gamers were infuriated (rightfully so) with an insane 84GB patch. The patch rolling out to PC and PlayStation 4, and even some Xbox One gamers, was just 44.4GB in comparison -- still a crazy sized patch.

Activision customer support tweeted: "We're actively investigating an issue for #ModernWarfare where some players on Xbox are seeing a larger than expected download size for today's update".

Microsoft and 343i had big plans to conquer E3 2020 with Halo: Infinite

We still haven't seen Halo: Infinite gameplay footage, and there's a ton we don't know. 343i was planning to blow the lid off the game in the best way possible: On stage at E3 in a big explosive showcase. It would've been the triumphant return of the Halo franchise. At least that's according to 343i's community manager Brian "Ske7ch" Jarrard.

"I know it's a trivial, meaningless thing given the state of this country and much more important issues... but in a parallel universe I'd be at e3 this week. I'm bummed. This was to be our big year to own the show. Missing all my industry friends and the annual shenanigans," Jarrard said on Twitter.

Death Stranding is finally coming to the PC next month, so in preparation for Hideo Kojima's latest masterpiece, we have the PC system requirements for the game.

505 Games and Kojima Productions have unveiled the PC hardware required to get the game up and running, with some tame hardware required for 720p 30FPS and even 1080p 60FPS. It's unfortunate that the developer hasn't unveiled anything about higher resolutions, for a AAA game like Death Stranding on the most powerful gaming platform on the planet.

You need just a Core i5-4460 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400 at a minimum, alongside 8GB of RAM and 80GB of storage. You'll need Windows 10, and as for graphics the developer recommends a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB or Radeon RX 570 4GB graphics card. This is what you'll need for 720p 30FPS.

Battlefield 3 had some of the best multiplayer action of all time when it was released back in 2011, if you can believe it has been nearly 10 years since BF3, that is.

Well, now we have some rather interesting news in the form of a super-hot new rumor. Everything from here is the usual with rumor mill news, but there is supposedly a new Battlefield game in development: Battlefield 3 Remastered.

Battlefield 3 Remastered rumors don't get put out, they get super-charged when you have DICE executive producer on the Battlefield series, Aleksander Grondal, tweeting out that his lips are sealed on Twitter. We have no idea what is happening, no idea what is coming -- but a remaster of Battlefield 3 with next-gen Frostbite engine eye-candy and Metro with 64 players?

It should come as no surprise that we're going to see many more games hitting 120FPS on the next-gen consoles, but now we know Dirt 5 will offer 120FPS on the Xbox Series X console.

Dirt 5 developer Codemasters was intereviewed recently with Xbox Wire, with Codemasters' technical director David Springate talking about the beefcake hardware inside of Xbox Series X helped them craft Dirt 5. Springate said the team were surprised at "how quick" they were able to hit 120FPS.

Springate said: "More importantly, I was shocked at how quickly we could hit 120 fps! We hadn't done any optimization for it at this stage but the game was frequently hitting 120 fps".

Warzone is literally the biggest thing Activision has ever done. Luckily Infinity Ward is making good on its promise to start shrinking both Modern Warfare's and Warzone's massive install sizes.

Call of Duty is taking a serious toll on hard drive space. Warzone and Modern Warfare have a combined install space that's fast approaching 200GB, or almost 1/4th of a PS4's 1TB HDD. The culprit is both games' seasonal models, which see huge content patches and updates launched every few weeks.

A while back, Infinity Ward said it'd use new compression tech to help shrink the game's storage footprint. Now the developers are starting to implement their compression tech and reduce file sizes going forward. Starting with season 4's drop tonight at 11PM PST, all future content drops will be compressed and adjusted to drop the overall install size.

No Man's Sky adds cross-play before some of the industry's most popular service games, showing the strong dedication Hello Games has for its fanbase.

Today Hello Games announced No Man's Sky is getting cross-play on all platforms starting tomorrow. That means PS4, Xbox One, and PC gamers can all play, build, and roam the infinite celestial wonderverse together. This represents the biggest development since the game's ambitious Beyond update.

No Man's Sky is an oddity. It's a live service game that has absolutely no in-game monetization whatsoever. All of its content packs are 100% free, there's no paid expansions or microtransactions, and Hello Games only ever charges for the base game.

Microsoft's Jason Ronald confirms Hellblade II will use Epic's new Unreal Engine 5 technology for high-end performance.

Although Epic first showcased the Unreal Engine 5 running on Sony's PlayStation 5, the engine will of course support the Xbox Series X and PC as well. Now we have confirmation of the initial first-party Xbox game to use UE5.

"The team will be building the game on Unreal 5 and leveraging the power of Xbox Series X to bring the Hellblade franchise to levels never before seen. The footage shown was captured in-engine and reflects the power of Xbox Series X available to developers to deliver new universes, experiences and games in ways you have never imagined," Xbox Director of Program Management Jason Ronald said in a recent blog post.

A recently published Sony patent reinforces our previous coverage that the PlayStation 5 will support save states as well as in-game hints.

The patent was just published, but it isn't really new, and was actually filed in 2017. The topics aren't all that new either. Other patents have pretty much outed the PlayStation 5's own unique answer to Quick Resume via a novel save state feature.

The basic gist of the patent is a new UI system that relays key data to users. On the surface, the UI looks very similar to the PS4. But this patent includes lots of info, metrics, and UI features the PS4 doesn't have. For example, the patent shows panes to quick-launch a game at a specific point in time.

GameStop's Q1'20 earnings show a substantial $177 million comprehensive net loss due to COVID-19 closures, high expenses, and reduction in tax assets.

Retailer GameStop isn't doing well right now. The company was already on a shaky foundation, and the weeks-long COVID-19 closures put a serious dent in net income, and under-performance has diminished one of the company's most valuable assets: Deferred taxes.

GameStop's net sales for the Q1'20 period were $1.021 billion, down 34% year-over-year. But this is just revenue. After expenses, the company reported a total operating loss of $108 million, compared to a positive $17.5 million in Q1'19. The simple reason for this is GameStop spent more than it made.

Despite a substantial $177 million earnings loss in Q1'20 and an 80% reduction in its deferred tax assets, GameStop isn't down for the count yet. It might owe hundreds of millions, but the company is still alive and kicking for the time being.

Beleaguered retailer GameStop currently owes $417.2 million in total debts. Luckily its cash on hand outweighs its debts. GameStop has $570 million in cash right now, but even a portion of that--$135 million--was financed from credit. So GameStop is still at risk but it's not immediately going under.

To held buy it some time, GameStop issued a new debt note exchange offer. The company will pay exchange a 1:1 promise to all noteholders to pay them the exact value of their notes when the notes are due. But the catch is the notes won't mature until 2023, meaning GameStop won't have to pay everything back until that period.

Amazon UK might've leaked the PS5's higher $599 price tag for a 2TB SKU.

Apparently the PlayStation 5 will have two different models when it releases in 2020: One with an 825GB SSD, and another with a 2TB drive (or roughly 1.65GB, double the capacity of the base PCIe 4.0 SSD). The info comes from a shaky Amazon UK listing that's actually not live yet and only exists in a brief screenshot. Ordinarily this wouldn't mean much, but we've heard rumors of Sony launching both a PS5 Pro and PS5 base console in 2020, alongside rumors of a 2TB model.

It also helps Amazon UK is leaking out placeholder listings for upcoming PlayStation 5 games, including new games from Konami, Take-Two, and Koch Media (Deep Silver).

PUBG Mobile is making some serious money while everyone is under COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, correctly socially distancing by winning chicken dinners from a distance on their smartphones.

Well, according to SensorTower's new data PUBG Mobile was the #1 game in overall revenue for May 2020, with its new Top Mobile Games by Worldwide Revenue for May 2020 list having PUBG Mobile at the top by developer Tencent. The developer also has Honor of Kings in at #2 as well while Roblox comes in third.

SensorTower says that PUBG Mobile made $226 million in revenues from user spending in May 2020 alone, which is a gigantic 41% year-over-year increase from May 2019. Chinese gamers are pulling out their credit cards in droves, with 53% of the $226 million coming from gamers in China -- now compare this to just 10.2% from the United States, and 5.5% to Saudi Arabia.