Gaming - Page 562

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:

Crytek's marketing and launch of Crysis Remastered on the PC and consoles has been an utter mess, but it seems all of the stars have aligned for the Nintendo Switch version of Crysis Remastered.

The above video is a Nintendo Switch technology trailer, showing off what Crytek and Saber Interactive were able to achieve with the modest NVIDIA Tegra SoC powering the Nintendo Switch. We have 1280 x 720 (720p) as the rendering resolution, while the frame rate is stuck at 30FPS.

That's not great for PCs in 2020, but hell it used to run at about 720p 30FPS on even good/high-end hardware back when the original Crysis was released. So the teams between Crytek and Saber have something quite magical with Crysis Remastered on the Nintendo Switch.

Anyone who works from home or has the ability to work from home, has most likely been busier than ever before. Personally, I'm busier than I've ever been and I'm a hard worker that has put 70-80 hours a week, every week, into TweakTown, for over 8 years.

Well, it's not just me -- but plenty of game developers are working harder than ever before during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Game Developers Conference recently polled around 2500 game developers, to see how the impact of COVID-19 has had on the gaming industry.

What they found was that less than 10% of developers said they were laid off or furloughed because of COVID-19. Around a third of game developers polled saw business increase, while another third of game developers saw business decrease.

In the most important gaming news today, developer Blizzard have changed their stance on charging gamers that wanted to change the gender of their character in World of Warcraft.

Those dark days are over, with Blizzard now making it free to change the gender of your character in World of Warcraft. The developer said after 11 years of charging to change the gender of your character that only now, is it "not the right message" to charge people to change the gender of a character in a fictional game.

Blizzard said during an interview with Eurogamer that in the next World of Warcraft expansion, the cost of changing the gender of your character would be removed. Once Shadowlands launches, the cost to change gender will be gone -- while you will see some new skin tones and ethnicities of the human characters in World of Warcraft.

Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have been billed as 8K capable, and Sony has confirmed the PS5 can support 8K gaming. But devs have been quiet on the topic. Until now, that is.

In a recent interview with Gaming Bolt, The Initiative gameplay engineer Franciso Aisa Garcia asserts both next-gen consoles can handle 8K gaming with trade-offs. Similar to how the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X handled 4K gaming, next-gen console will also have to compromise other performance targets to maintain any semblance of 8K. The new AMD SoCs might be powerful but native 8K gaming is far out of their scope.

"My specialty lies on gameplay and AI, not graphics, so I couldn't tell you for a fact, but I do know these consoles are capable."

No Man's Sky's new Desolation update is basically Dead Space 4 re-created in the space sim.

With the latest Desolation update, Hello Games just basically made Dead Space 4 with a nifty twist. The Desolation expansion is 100% free and adds haunted houses in space, complete with ultra-creepy interiors and freaky monsters. Gamers can explore derelict freighters strewn across the cosmos that're filled with atmospheric horrors and dark lit-environments straight out of Dead Space. Jump into first-person mode to channel Alien: Isolation's unsettling sci-fi visuals and Halo CE's old-school Flood vibes.

The best part about Desolation is that each freighter is procedurally-generated. Like the countless planets and star systems in No Man's Sky, every freighter's interior is randomized to deliver a unique experience each time. Search the derelict for secrets and loot to bolster your journeys through the stars. The stories are also randomized, making every single hallowed ship a completely new experience.

Sony teases new first-party exclusives coming to the PlayStation 4 in the years to come.

Sony re-confirms the PS4 won't be retired after the PlayStation 5 releases this holiday, and that new first-party games are still coming to the platform.

"PlayStation 4 is a big part of everything we do, and will continue to be a big part of everything we do. There's a lot more to come on PlayStation 4," Sony marketing exec Eric Lempel said in a recent Summer Game Fest stream.

Why does Sony believe in console generations whereas Microsoft doesn't? It's simple: Next-gen experiences require next-gen hardware.

In a recent interview with Geoff Keighley on a Summer Game Fest stream, Sony marketing exec Eric Lempel explained why the company believes in hard generational shifts. The answer is the kinds of games, experiences, and content that Sony wants to deliver just simply aren't possible on the PS4 Pro's lower-end 14nm Jaguar SoC. Sony's vision with the PS5 is ambitious and so is the tech that powers it. The kind of seamless, ultra-interactive, and dazzling experiences on the PS5 require higher-end hardware like the 7nm AMD SoC with its 10.3 TFLOP Navi RDNA 2 CPU, 8-core 3.5GHz CPU, 16GB of GDDR6 and ultra-fast PCIe 4.0 SSD capable of 5.5GB/sec speeds.

In the interview, Lempel says the PS5's generational leap is all about empowering developers. The PS5's new DualSense controller is a big part of that. The controller features programmable triggers that deliver tensile and dynamic haptic feedback, a new kind of rumble, and even sensors that measure air pressure so you can blow into it. The built-in speaker is also higher-end and there's a mic for communication, too.

In today's Summer Game Fest stream, Geoff Keighley confirmed the PS5's new DualSense controller has a built-in mic that measures sound fluctuations to translate to in-game interactions.

You can blow into Sony's new PS5 DualSense controller and it'll have an actual affect on in-game events. The functionality was shown in the new Astro's Playroom game that comes pre-installed on the PlayStation 5, which is a kind of multi-hour tech demo that really shows off the DualSense's capabilities. In one section, Geoff had to blow into the device to spin a fan to beat the level.

It's a pretty surprising new feature that wasn't actually announced during Sony's DualSense reveal and could breathe new life (pun intended) into games interactivity. This could be used in all manner of games in creative new ways, possibly even in Horizon Forbidden West when Aloy is swimming deep beneath the ocean waters.

Microsoft Flight Simulator takes flight on August 18, with the game requiring a gigantic 150GB of storage on your PC -- imagine it in physical form.

Yeah well, Microsoft is offering the physical edition of Flight Simulator in Europe on DVDs where it comes on an absolutely insane 10 discs. As soon as I saw this news it gave me a flashback to the 90s, where I remember Phantasmagoria hitting headlines then (before the internet, really) that it came on 7 CDs... but 10 DVDs? Wow.

Microsoft partnered with Aerosoft for the physical release of Flight Simulator, which is probably going to take a really, really long time to install from 10 physical DVDs. The digital version of Flight Simulator launches on August 18, while the physical version of Flight Simulator will drop on August 21 in Europe.

The Coalition is aiming pretty high for Gears 5 on the next-gen Xbox Series X console, with the big open doors of 120FPS multiplayer on the table.

In the recent Inside Unreal livestream, the team at The Coalition talked about some of the visual features coming to the upgraded Xbox Series X version of Gears 5. This will include a heap of the features the PC version packs in the Ultra specs, which includes:

The Coalition is working on Screen Space Global Illumination, higher particle counts and 120FPS multiplayer. Xbox One X cinematics were displayed in 4K 30FPS, but the upgraded Xbox Series X version of Gears 5 will render real-time cinematics at the much more glorious 4K 60FPS.

I wrote about Crysis Enhanced Edition back in early June 2020, but in those nearly two months, the mod is finally here -- and it looks way better than Crytek's own Crysis Remastered.

Crysis Enhanced Edition was made by the Remaster Studio modding team, and features HD grass, maximum immersion textures, upscaled vanilla textures and Rygel's textures modification. If you want those super-insane custom-created 8K/4K and 2K textures then you'll need to back their Patreon.

The team explains: "For this public release of our mod, we made the decision to use a mix of various textures packs found on the web, from Rygels textures mod, HD Grass, Maximum Immersion Textures, and upscaled (4x) Vanilla textures".

Firstly: It's funny, everyone knows me as a huge fanboy of Henry Cavill -- so I had 10+ notifications across Facebook, messages on Messenger, Twitter, a mate of mine from NVIDIA emailing me, and even another mate on LinkedIn telling me about this news... how could I not see it?! Thanks everyone who messaged me about this, haha.

If you didn't know it already, Henry Cavill is a total nerd. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the Man of Steel and Witcher actor was painting his Warhammer figurines -- and now, he's built a new gaming PC.