Gaming - Page 569

Hackers were responsible for leaking The Last of Us 2's controversial spoiler cinematic sequences, sources tell games reporter Jason Schreier.

The recent Last of Us 2 leaks have been pretty disastrous for Naughty Dog, and it didn't take long for the internet to make up an urban legend centered around the studio's crunch culture. Legend has it the Last of Us 2 leaks were from a jaded and overworked employee who had their compensation withheld. Sony has since confirmed this isn't true, and now more internal sources close to Naughty Dog say it was hackers, not one of their own, who leaked the content.

Instead of the dramatic rumors, hackers found a weak spot in Naughty Dog's servers, exploited that weak spot, and grabbed a bunch of sensitive copyrighted data to publish online. This is usually the case with all leaks. The infamous Nintendo Switch info dump was caused by a hacker, who was caught and sentenced to hefty prison time.

Microsoft plans to bundle all of its gaming services together in one neat package. Project xCloud game streaming, Xbox LIVE Gold, and Game Pass will be combined in a new penultimate gaming subscription.

Today Microsoft confirmed something we've long expressed in our coverage: Project xCloud is an extension of Xbox Game Pass. In a move that's quite genius (but also quite logical), the company plans to unionize the two services into a single subscription. "Later this year our cloud game streaming technology, Project xCloud, will come to Game Pass-so you and your friends can stream and play the games you love together on your devices," Microsoft's Phil Spencer said in a recent blot post.

This one-two combo is a knockout punch for Microsoft's billion-dollar service empire. Game Pass is already conquering with over 10 million subscribers to date (the recent $1 promos helped boost those numbers) alongside a huge thriving 90 million Xbox LIVE userbase (not all of those are paying for Gold subs, and PC integration helps too). This is par for the course for Microsoft.

The new Summer Game Fest is set to transform how games are presented to consumers, and more importantly, how they interact with them.

Now that E3 2020 is dead, the biggest names in gaming are teaming up to make something new: A huge four-month event held from May through August that promises tons of reveals, interviews, gameplay demos, and most importantly, interactive slices that gamers anywhere can play. The Summer Game Fest is a new all-digital event that could kill E3 once and for all, favoring smaller digestible Nintendo Direct-style showcases rather than huge explosive on-stage affairs at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

With next-gen consoles on the way, the Summer Game Fest is a perfect opportunity to broadcast new high-end games far and wide. If publishers use the event to show off their new explosive next-gen games, the Summer Game Fest has incredible potential to be the biggest game event of our time.

Morrowind is now officially 18 years old. Do you feel old yet? Let's take a quick trip back to the past and uncover one of gaming's best RPGs.

Remember when Bethesda made those unique kind of RPGs? I mean real RPGs, not casualized games like Skyrim (which are admittedly amazing, but quite different). Back in the day, Bethesda redefined what RPGs could and should be. They did this with games like Daggerfall, and my favorite Elder Scrolls game of all time, Morrowind.

Morrowind was ahead of its time in many ways. It was unique, exotic, weird. It was actually the first game I saw on the original Xbox back in the day, and seeing the water effects and the lighting blew me away. Yes, I was a console pleb, but I honestly like Morrowind more on console...although I missed out on tons of mods. Even today the graphics aren't so bad (although those screenshots are pulled from my original Xbox 360 BC save of the game).

Sony confirms The Last of Us 2 spoilers weren't published by a Naughty Dog employee. Someone from outside Naughty Dog got access to the files and published them online, and Sony knows who did it.

The rumors and reports are all wrong. The urban legend around The Last of Us 2's spoiler motivations goes a little something like this: Naughty Dog withheld a developer's pay, so the dev took revenge by leaking the game's most controversial cinematic sequences online for all to see. This rumor was predicated strongly on Naughty Dog's intense crunch culture, which apparently sees employees being hospitalized from mental breakdowns and overwork.

Sony recently set the record straight and confirmed the allegations are untrue. Sony tells GamesIndustry.biz that it has identified the perpetrator behind the leaks, but hasn't said whether or not it was a hacker, which is the most logical conclusion if the leaks weren't an inside job.

The coronavirus pandemic may have a greater impact on software production instead of hardware, and could lead to some first-party Xbox Series X games being delayed.

Will the Xbox Series X be delayed? The games are more likely to get pushed back instead of the console. In an interview with CNBC, Xbox head Phil Spencer reiterated previous comments on the next-gen system's launch. Spencer says hardware is on track, but he's less confident in games production. Dev teams are working remotely in an industry built on a tight flow and synergy of office-based mutualism, and key things like motion capture and sound recording have been particularly disrupted.

"The teams are doing a really good job on keeping our hardware on track. I'd say the bigger unknown is is probably the game production. Game production is a large-scale entertainment activity now. You have hundreds of people coming together, building assets," Spencer told CNBC.

Respawn Entertainment has revealed who the next Apex Legends character will be and when she will be released into the live game.

As you might've expected, Respawn will be adding the new character into the mayhem-filled battle royale when the next season drops. According to a video released onto the official Apex Legends YouTube Channel, the new character we can expect to see in Season 5 will be Loba, the daughter of Marcos Andrade, who was murdered by Revenant in his reveal trailer.

Loba is out for revenge on Revenant, but as she grew up, she became an adept thief, which will no doubt coincide with her abilities in-game. At the moment, we don't know how Loba will play in-game, but Respawn does plan on giving the character a full reveal, as well as a Season 5 breakdown on May 5th. Courtesy of WCCFtech, we have some dot points below showing off what Season 5 will have. Apex Legends Season 5 will be fully released on May 12th. Prepare your weapons for the mayhem, see you in the arena.

Battlefield 6 is on the way in 2021, and it could be exclusive to the PS5 and Xbox Series X and push next-gen consoles the same way Battlefield 4 did in 2013.

EA and DICE are planning something big with Battlefield 6. The devs are retiring both Battlefield V and Battlefront II to free up teams for the next-gen Battlefield game, and we should expect DICE to push PS5 and Xbox Series X to their limits with a newly enhanced Frostbite engine. Thanks to this focus on high-level optimization, DICE might actually skip current-gen systems altogether. The underpowered Jaguar SoCs and mechanical HDDs will significantly hinder the explosive next-gen craziness that's made possible by the new Navi GPU and Zen 2 CPU-powered systems.

After the recent BFV and BFII announcements, we dug up some older comments that made us curious whether or not Battlefield 6 is coming to today's consoles. In an October earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said DICE is "targeting new innovation that will be enabled by next-gen platforms and a growing install base on the new consoles."

Microsoft is hosting an Xbox Series X games live stream event on May 7 at 8AM PST, but don't expect Halo: Infinite to be there.

Today Microsoft announced a big game reveal event set for next week. The show is centered around third-party partner games, though, and won't include first-party heavy-hitters like Halo: Infinite, the rumored new Fable game, The Coalition's mystery project, and the assortment of titles in development at the new Microsoft Studios banner. "So pumped to see our partners showing us a first look at Xbox Series X gameplay next week! Also know the Xbox Game Studios teams are hard at work on some big summer plans. More details soon," Aaron Greenberg said on Twitter.

So what can we expect from the show?

Curious what Ubisoft's next Assassin's Creed game will feature? Don't have the time to read 10 articles to piece together information? We compile all the info currently known about Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.

Today Ubisoft revealed an amazing cinematic trailer for Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, the long-rumored Viking-themed game with the "Kingdom" project codename. The game will be a next-gen launch release and stands as Ubisoft's most ambitious game to date, complete with dazzling graphics, brutal combat, a deep and robust RPG system, and a story arc set in the tumultuous 9th century when Vikings conquered Anglo-Saxon England.

There's a lot to dive into here, so let's get right to it.

Ubisoft confirmed what we already predicted: The big new Viking-themed Assassin's Creed will be a next-gen launch game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in holiday 2020.

Today Ubisoft revealed the official cinematic story trailer for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, confirming a ton of details like launch timing and what we should expect. Valhalla should look and play insanely well to say the least. This is Ubisoft's premiere next-gen console launch game so we should expect insane dazzling visuals in native 4K with HDR, insane lighting effects with raytracing, high FPS thanks to Zen 2 CPU power and VRS, and ultra-fast loading times with next-gen PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

Ubisoft also confirmed the game will be singleplayer (but with live services, similar to Odyssey and Origins), and a nifty build-your-own-settlement feature that allows you to slowly create a village over time. There's also dual-wielding, connections to Norse mythology (you see Odin throughout the game), the return of the hidden blade, and your bird companion is a raven. Players can go on raids to gather resources for their own settlements, and can foster new relationships with their clans--there's some sim management here, but Ubisoft says it'll be dynamic, evolving, and organic the overall third-person action feel. RPG aspects like randomized armor and weapons are included, too.

Capcom's big next-gen slate of games could include a new IP or two to help vitalize the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X install bases.

Capcom has been beefing up its RE Engine to handle next-gen consoles for a while now, and recently teased some ambitious projects on the new consoles. We don't know exactly what the company is working on, but now we have some hints that new IP are included. According to Capcom USA chief operating officer Rob Dyer, next-gen console launches are a perfect opportunity to launch a new IP.

"This is the best time to introduce a new IP. It's a big deal to bring something to market that is going to be new and different, that not only the publisher can get behind, but the platform can get behind," Dyer said in a recent GamesBeat 2020 Summit.

Ubisoft today announced Assasssin's Creed: Valhalla, the new Viking-themed game in the series that's due out in 2020.

After a lengthy and quite illuminating concept art live stream, Ubisoft finally confirmed Assasssin's Creed: Valhalla is on the way with a big world premiere trailer set for tomorrow, April 30, 2020 at 8AM PST/11AM EST. Tomorrow's footage will be cinematic and won't include any gameplay, so don't get your hopes up.

The game is set in the Viking era, but we don't know exactly when (the era technically spans hundreds of years). Early reports say the game will chronicle the Siege of Paris which puts it in the mid-800s after Charlemagne's reign. Other reports say mythical creatures from Norse mythology will be included like the world-serpent Jormundur alongside gods like Odin and Loki, culminating in epic boss battles and spiritual sequences.

Ubisoft is slowly revealing its new Viking-themed Assassin's Creed game, but we at least know what it'll be called now.

A new domain filing for Assassin's Creed Valhalla.com pretty much confirms the game's finalized name. The domain was filed with Gandi.net, which masks the original registrar's data (in this case it's Ubisoft) to protect privacy, so there's no official confirmation per say. But Ubisoft also used Gandi.net to secure Assassin's Creed Origins.com, which redirects to the main Assassin's Creed website. The Valhalla domain will undoubtedly do the same.

Ubisoft has yet to formally unveil Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. The company is currently hosting an unconventional live stream showing an artist creating concept art from the ground up. There's no flashy gameplay, no sizzle reel, no enigmatic logos. Just really beautiful art that slowly takes shape before your eyes and crystallizes the Viking era.

Techland just announced one of the most creative DLCs I've ever seen in the games industry. It's called Hellraid, and it pulls you into a cursed arcade machine straight out of hell.

Dying Light released in 2015, but Techland is still making awesome DLC for the game five years later. Case in point: The new Hellraid DLC, which basically transports you into a supernatural arcade cabinet to play Techland's unreleased Hellraid fantasy slasher. This idea is just plain fun and it had to be a blast for the devs. They got to dust off one of their old IPs and use Dying Light as a kind of bloody canvas to converge the two worlds. The Hellraid arcade machine will consume your soul and transport you to a world of mayhem and destruction.

This idea is pretty interesting and reminds me of the urban legend of Polybius, that infamous arcade machine planted by the government in the 1980s that supposedly turned people insane. There's also some inspiration from an old super obscure 1983 horror anthology film called Nightmares, where a gaming-obsessed Emilio Estevez got trapped inside of an arcade machine.

The next Assassin's Creed game will center around the bloody carnage of seafaring Vikings, Ubisoft today confirmed.

Ubisoft is doing something different with this year's Assassin's Creed reveal. Instead of revealing AC Vikings with an action-packed teaser or sizzle reel, Ubisoft is using art to slowly uncovering the game's setting in a live stream. The stream follows BossLogic as he crafts some interesting concept art that gives away the game's Viking-themed timeline in bits and pieces. The game's setting, time frame, and overall feel slowly come into focus as BossLogic adds more depth to the art.

The main image shows two scenes with a protagonist in the middle: On the left, there's Viking longships sailing the emerald seas amidst towering, frozen mountains in the back, obviously a nod to the Northern climes of Scandinavia. The longships have the Viking's signature decorated shields.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is now available on Google's Stadia streaming platform, and is free for Stadia Pro members.

Today Google confirmed it's not playing around with Stadia. The service is getting some of the biggest games on the market today, and Google secured billion-dollar titans like EA's FIFA, Madden, and Star Wars, along with the massive battle royale sensation PUBG.

Right now PUBG is available for free as a bundle for all Stadia Pro members, which is good news if you haven't signed up. Google is offering a free two-month Stadia Pro trial for all new members, but you have to use a credit card to sign up. If you forget to cancel, Google will charge you $10 a month.

Battlefront is being retired into maintenance mode and won't receive any new updates after Scarif, DICE today confirmed.

DICE is about to sunset two of its live games: First Battlefield V retires this summer, and then Battlefront II will be retired starting tomorrow.

"This means that we're moving away from delivering regular content updates. As the game lives on with the players and our community, we're looking forward to hearing your stories for years to come," DICE said in a blog post. The studio plans to go full steam ahead on Battlefield 6 for next-gen consoles.

Google isn't messing around with Stadia. Google just secured some of the industry's biggest billion-dollar earners for its fledgling game-streaming service.

Stadia might blow up big time, and in the best way possible. Today Google announced a huge partnership with EA to bring some of the industry's most popular and lucrative games like FIFA, Madden, and Star Wars over to Stadia. This move has tremendous implications for Stadia's long-term earnings and adoption.

EA plans to release five games across its titanic franchises to Stadia. The singleplayer-only Jedi: Fallen Order will arrive in 2020, and both FIFA and Madden will arrive by winter 2020. Whether or not the newer FIFA 21 and Madden 21 will release on Stadia wasn't confirmed. More games will launch in 2021, EA says.

How many chapters will gamers need to buy until they own the full Final Fantasy 7 Remake? Square Enix doesn't know just yet.

April's launch of Final Fantasy 7 Remake wasn't the full package, but only the first chapter in a multi-volume roadmap of games. Square Enix plans to release multiple full-sized volumes that are sold as standalone, full-priced games. We originally assumed the series would be a trilogy with 90 hours of content--one full game release for each of FF7's original 3 discs--but now Square Enix says the game could have more than three parts.

Topics covered here: