Gaming - Page 557

The entire world of live sports was thrown into a black hole the minute COVID-19 restrictions started getting cemented into our reality, and now football's Premier League will be affected.

It returns on June 17 and has Sky Sports teaming with EA FIFA on providing digital channel viewers an option of something that has never been done before: a secondary audio track. This secondary audio track will boast fake crowd cheers, boos, and chants that have been used in FIFA games. Yeah, I'm serious.

Sky Sports MD Robert Webster explains: "With live sport on hold for over two months, we've spent a lot of time thinking about how we (can) broadcast in new ways to bring fans together, even if they can't meet up to watch the match. We want Sky Sports viewers to still feel it all and have the best possible viewing experience, even if they can't be in the stadiums or watch with their family and friends".

This Thursday, Sony will show off the first-ever PlayStation 5 exclusive gameplay footage. But it won't be representative of the high-end enthusiast hardware you'd expect.

In a recent post on the PlayStation Blog, Sony confirmed an interesting tidbit: The upcoming PS5 game reveal stream will be locked at 1080p 30FPS. Sony's next-gen console, conversely, can handle 8K resolution gaming. So why the big drop in fidelity? Sony wanted to make it as easy as possible for developers to capture, edit, and throw together the pre-recorded reveal.

"Now that the event is confirmed for June 11, I wanted to add that this pre-taped program will be broadcast at 1080p and 30 frames per second," said Sony's Sid Shuman. "This eased the show's production process during a time when many of our team and developers are working from home. The games you'll see on Thursday will look even better when you play them on PS5 with a 4K TV, as you'd expect."

Bungie is pulling some time-traveling shenanigans to bring back one of the most iconic end-level battles in gaming history.

Destiny 1's beloved Vault of Glass raid is coming to Destiny 2, but not in 2020. Game director Luke Smith today confirmed the news as part of Bungie's massive block of announcements.

The Vault of Glass raid wasn't ever really gone, though. It was just put into something called the Destiny Content Vault, which is Bungie's big content preservation initiative. The Destiny Content Vault, or DCV, is a new strategy that sees older content and destinations rotating out of the main game and being stored in the vault. Likewise, some old content will rotate back in when it's deemed fitting. In this case, the Vault of Glass' return will happen after Destiny 2's new Beyond Light expansion drops in September.

Naughty Dog director Neil Druckmann ruminates on the studio's next game, but we hope for their sake it won't be The Last of Us 3.

In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Naughty Dog exec Neil Druckmann gave an impromptu answer on what's next after Ellie's sequel of hate and brutality.

"As you start wrapping things up, creatively there are fewer and fewer responsibilities and my mind can't help but think about the next thing. So, yeah, the next thing could be a Part III, the next thing could be some new IP," Druckmann said.

Today Bungie officially confirmed Destiny 3 isn't happening. The future of the franchise will live on in Destiny 2, complete with three major new expansions that will carry the game all the way through 2022.

Bungie is making big moves with Destiny. Instead of following the sequel-ized roadmap Activision originally pushed, Bungie is making Destiny into a single continuous live game. There won't be any more mainline Destiny games going forward, only expansions and updates. Bungie pretty much hints this is how Destiny should've been from the start.

"We're not planning to make Destiny 3. We believe really strongly we want the future of Destiny to be inside of Destiny 2. So, you know, this is the way," Luke Smith said in a live Q&A session with Dr. Lupo.

Today Bungie outlined an ambitious plan for the Destiny franchise. Destiny 3 isn't happening, and Destiny 2 is the sole future of the IP. That means lots of growth, new expansions, and tons of content, but Bungie has a unique gameplan to keep things manageable.

Destiny 2 is getting three big new expansions alongside new seasons that carry throughout 2022. The game is about to get a lot bigger, and Bungie flat-out says the game isn't sustainable in its current state. That's why it plans to rotate specific content in and out of Destiny 2 to reduce the amount of downloads, work, and general upkeep its teams must do, similar to how movies and shows arrive and leave on Netflix.

But unlike Netflix, gamers will still be able to access the content that gets rotated out.

GameStop today announced its Q1 financials, showing a big $165 million net loss, and a portion of this drop was from the company's payouts during COVID-19 lockdowns.

GameStop closed all of its 3,000+ stores in the U.S. for weeks due to the pandemic. A portion of these stores remained open for curbside pickup, but a lot of employees had their hours drastically cut. GameStop promised to pay these employees limited wages during the closure, and now we know how much.

While scanning GameStop's latest financials I noticed something interesting. The company doled out $18.5 million to its employees during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and recorded $3 million in expenses from cleaning materials and other measure to combat the virus.

Can you believe we're just a few days away from (hopefully) getting the full skinny on Sony's next generation PlayStation 5 console? We have seen all sorts of designs of what the PS5 could end up looking like, from the iconic V-shaped design through to slick 3D renders and now the latest from LetsGoDigital:

This new PlayStation 5 design was made by Dutch designer Jermaine 'Concept Creator' Smit, who envisions a two-tone PS5 design that has strikes of the rounder PS3 design.

Sony hosts its 'The Future of Gaming' event on June 11 at 9PM BST, on the official PlayStation 5 website.

It looks like the new Far Cry will be announced in just over a months time, where we should see Far Cry 6 revealed during Ubisoft Forward on July 12.

The news is coming from Gamereactor.dk, which says that Far Cry 6 will be officially unveiled during the event. The site said (translated): "The last [Ubisoft] game scheduled to be released before April (unless Ubisoft decides it's this game that should be postponed due to COVID-19 or that there are too many AAA releases in a fairly short window) is set to be a Far Cry".

It continues: "I don't want to ruin Ubisoft's plans by giving you all the information, but I can say with certainty that those of you who didn't like Far Cry 5's North American setting are likely to find this game more interesting when it's officially unveiled during Ubisoft Forward on July 12".

Cyberpunk 2077 will be one of the best looking games of 2020 when it drops, but what about some early 8K screenshots of CD Projekt RED's upcoming open-world RPG.

CD Projekt RED has been pretty steady with gorgeous 4K screenshots of Cyberpunk 2077, but now Reddit user 'Compxs36' has delivered the goods with some upscaled 8K screenshots. The user ran the Cyberpunk 2077 screenshots through the Waifu2x neural network that upscaled them to 8K (7680 x 4320), as well as tapping the de-noising feature that removes film grain.

As you can see from the screenshots, it looks absolutely beautiful. The images are gigantic at around 20MB a piece, so I won't have them all here and will rather direct you here.

Bungie is working on two big projects right now: Destiny 3, and a new IP with Borderlands-esque humor. Now we have more details on this mysterious new IP. But to get a better idea of what's going on with Bungie, we have to take a look at a specific timeline of events.

Back in 2018, after it split with Activision and morphed into a developer-publisher, Bungie trademarked something called Matter. Everyone thought Matter was the name of Bungie's new IP.

Not long after the Activision split, Bungie received a huge $100 million investment from NetEase to fund their "bold new vision," which includes publishing and developing their own games, as well as branching off to other projects besides Destiny.

EA is finally embracing cross-play, the games industry's most potent new money-making strategy.

Cross-play is the future of gaming. Unifying consoles and PC in a new wave of platform agnosticism is the next billion-dollar step for gaming's biggest companies, and represents a brave new world for engagement and monetization. Here at TweakTown we've long talked about how instrumental cross-play is for service games. Just look at Warzone, which has quickly risen to become the most important thing Activision has ever done. EA is taking notice, and they want in on the action.

Today EA announced they're launching a new cross-play initiative starting with Need For Speed: Heat. This is just the beginning. Like Activision-Blizzard, we should expect EA to bake cross-play into all of its mainline games, especially juggernaut annualized sports games like FIFA and Madden. Another big use case is the F2P battle royale Apex Legends, which has generated tremendous earnings for EA.

CD Projekt RED aims to take Oblivion's radiant AI to a whole new level with Cyberpunk 2077.

According to new CDPR interviews, Cyberpunk 2077's new real-time AI systems will allow for incredible dynamism. Thousands of NPCs will have actual daily routines throughout Night City's six districts, including a ton of robust and varied characters with cyborg implants, unique designs and animations, and day and night cycles.

This isn't a surprise. We knew about this as far back as 2016, when CD Projekt RED filed for a grant with the Polish government (which it received). Back then, CDPR laid out its ambitious plans for the game's city creation: "Comprehensive technology for the creation of 'live' cities of great scale playable in real-time, which is based on the principles of artificial intelligence and automation, and takes into account the development of innovative processes and tools supporting the creation of high-quality games with open worlds."

Sony will reveal the PlayStation 5's next-gen games on Thursday, June 11 at 4PM EST, a new Twitch ad reveals.

A recent Twitch ad has outed the new timing for the PS5 reveal event for June 11. The stream was originally delayed so Sony could "stand back and let more important voices be heard."

We won't see Sony reveal the actual PlayStation 5 at the event. The company was careful to say this will center around next-gen exclusive PS5 launch games, not the actual console. The PS5's main housing is expected to be revealed months later.

The PlayStation 5's SSD is nearly twice as fast as the Xbox Series X's. According to Microsoft's Brad Stilwell, developers will use all sorts of tricks to help equalize this raw performance disparity.

Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X SSD's are revolutionary, and are similar in many ways. But they vary in possibly the most important spec: raw speed. The PS5's SSD can hit 5.5GB/sec base data transfers, and the Xbox Series X hits 3.5GB/sec. That's a pretty big jump. But rather than playing favorites, third-party developers releasing titles for both platforms are expected to find ways to help smooth out that SSD disparity in their games so the PS5 ports are massively better than the Xbox Series X SKU.

First things first. Let's talk about how important SSD speeds are for next-gen. Essentially the SSD is what feeds the system's beastly power--it's the fuel for the fire. Without streamlined, ultra-fast, and more importantly, ultra-efficient software and hardware synergy, next-gen performance falls apart. It's imperative the SSD delivers quick access to specific data through supercharged PCIe 4x lanes across custom memory controllers (like the PS5's 12-channel memory controller), IO blocks (hardware-based decompression on the 7nm SoCs), and specific APIs, like the powerful Xbox Series X's Velocity Architecture.

If you happen to be a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fan, and an Animal Crossing fan, then this is the post for you as someone has decided to add the entire Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster to Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Posted to the Animal Crossing subreddit, user DJ-Dez celebrated this massive achievement by saying that after 400+ hours, "Every smash bros ultimate character transported into the animal crossing world! Nintendo, this is my job application". This massive task was completed by the player using a variety of different hats and costumes, and all in all, most of the characters look fairly spot on.

This post was met with massive community support, and at the time of writing this, it has gained 36.5K upvotes and several different awards. If you are interested in shopping for any of the looks seen in the above image, the creator has provided his creator ID so you can download them for free. Here's the creator ID: MA-3790-6501-6469. For more information on Animal Crossing: New Horizon, check out the subreddit here.

Halo: Infinite isn't finished yet, but that hasn't stopped 343i from planning the next project.

343 Industries is hiring a senior producer for an unannounced Halo game within its engineering branch, specifically for Microsoft's Core Services team. "343 Industries is looking for a Senior Producer to work with our Core Services team to help develop a new project in the Halo universe," reads the job listing.

This is pretty much par for the course in the games industry. Developers always plan out future projects while specific games are still in development. At the same time though, Halo: Infinite is the biggest project 343i has done to date, and is being built from the ground up with a new Slipspace Engine. It's interesting to see the studio start hiring higher-profile developers for the next game.

The United States is still rife with protests, clashing, and civil unrest, so major publishers like EA have delayed their biggest gaming events to not detract from current events.

Like Sony and practically the rest of the games industry, EA has delayed their upcoming game reveal event to make way for protesters. EA has pushed back its EA Play 2020 event to June 18 at 7PM EST, and it's something you should definitely bookmark. This show could be EA's biggest yet.

"With the important conversations taking place and important voices being heard around the world right now, we're moving our time to come together in play," the company said on Twitter.

A new trademark filing adds even more evidence of a next-gen Gran Turismo launching alongside the PS5 in 2020.

Sony and Polyphony Digital just filed new trademarks for Gran Turismo on Argentina's National Institute of Industrial Property database, strongly hinting at a PlayStation 5 release. The filings were made on June 3, just a day before the originally-planned PS5 games reveal event. There were also filings for a Gran Turismo logo.

This development isn't the first time we've heard about a next-gen Gran Turismo. Back in 2018, Sony showcased Gran Turismo running on its new 8K CLEDIS display technology, which the PlayStation 5 will of course support. Polyphony Digital also said GT Sport's assets went beyond just 1080p and 4K. Some were made specifically in 8K and should translate directly over to the PS5 GT release.

Itch.io's new Bundle for Racial Equality packs in over 740 games and assets to help raise money for NAACP and bail funds to aid arrested protesters.

The latest Itch.io bundle gives you access to a metric ton of content for $5. The bundle offers $3400 worth of games, tilesets, and assets, many of which are tiny bite-sized amateur works. Labeling all of these things as traditional games is a tad misleading, though, and there's a lot of tabletop RPGs, comics, tools, game assets, and books. A good portion of the games that are included are actually free to begin with.

That being said, the bundle does include some awesome projects like Night in the Woods, Overland, Heavy Bullets, Oxenfree, Minit, Shipwreck, and Myth Bearer to name a few. If you have a passing interest in any of the games on the huge list then be sure to pick it up. All money raised from the bundle is split between the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund.