Gaming - Page 571

Guerrilla Games is ramping up its development teams to prepare for new projects, which could include a next-gen Horizon Zero Dawn sequel on PlayStation 5.

Right now Sony's first-party studio Guerrilla Games is hiring 24 developers across a myriad of disciplines including cinematics, AI, 3D art, animation, and programming. A huge portion of these positions were put up recently. From last month until now, Guerrilla added 16 new job listings to its board. Some of these are higher-level positions like the Senior Graphics Programmer or the Lead Game Designer.

So what's Guerrilla working on?

What's in a name? A whole lot, especially when there's a logo attached.

Microsoft just filed what looks to be the final trademark for the Xbox Series X's logo design, and it reminds me of a construction zone sign from a faraway alien world. The filing was submitted April 20, but it hasn't yet been examined or approved.

This design marks the second major logo for the Xbox Series X. The first one was shown during the Xbox Series X reveal in December 2019. Technically the console's name consists of two trademarks: this new submission is just for "Series X" and combines up with the existing "Xbox" trademark (oddly enough, Microsoft filed a new Xbox logo in November 2019, just a month before the Xbox Series X's reveal at The Game Awards 2019).

Fallout 76's NPCs are looting player corpses and stealing powerful weapons, and there's no way to get them back.

Fallout 76 has a great new bug that's once again misplacing players' hard-earned loot. The loot hasn't been stolen by other players, though: This time it's NPCs who are stealing it. The bug has been reported by numerous Fallout 76 Redditors and was actually captured in a YouTube video.

Here's a quick rundown: A player was using a powerful level 50 gatling plasma gun in an event, dies, and then resurrects to find the gun missing from their inventory. Turns out the NPC--Marion Copeland in this case--stole the gatling gun and can clearly be seen using the player's weapon in the video. Somehow the gun was yanked from the player's inventory and handed over to the NPC.

Until now, if you wanted to play Fortnite on an Android-powered smartphone or tablet you couldn't download it directly from the Google Play Store -- you had to use Epic's own software or you went through Samsung.

Well, not anymore -- Epic Games has made Fortnite available on the Google Play Store after its rather epic (if you'll pardon the pun) battle with everything giant Google. Epic has explained that Google used "scary, repetitive security pop-ups", Google Play Protect, and hostile characterizations to shove non-Play Store titles "at a disadvantage".

Epic added that it wants to see Google rethink its policies regarding the Play Store, so that developers from all corners of the gaming world can "compete on a level playing field" when it comes to Google and payments, and other services.

The Xbox Series X may not require intense optimizations to tap the powerful SSD tech, and some games were natively boosted four-fold by the PCIe 4.0 storage.

The Xbox Series X's SSD is revolutionary. It's a customized PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD that hits up blazing fast 2.4GB/sec transfers with a potent software stack to massively accelerate data flow. And now we have evidence that games will be natively boosted by the hardware without any code changes needed, similar to how the Xbox Series X will natively boost current-gen games to 4K resolution. The boost mode isn't just limited to graphics and extends to storage too; devs don't have to lift a finger to take advantage of the tech.

"With the Xbox Series X, out of the gate, we reduced our load-times by more than 4x without any code changes," The Coalition's technical director Mike Rayner told Windows Central.

COVID-19 combined with a new Animal Crossing is a perfect storm for Nintendo sales.

Nintendo lucked out with Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The game released just as the United States bunkered down for forced COVID-19 quarantines, so gamers could still go to stores and grab a copy. As a result of this accidental opportunism, Animal Crossing has skyrocketed as March's best-selling console game in the global and U.S. markets. It's a veritable beast that's taken a big chomp out of the competition--and Nintendo Switch availability.

Analyst firm SuperData says Animal Crossing has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling single-month game in console history.

UPDATE: Valve issues a statement that CS:GO hasn't been jeopardized and it's safe to play online. The source code was from an outdated build and will not interfere with the current version of CS:GO.

Valve makes a ton from CS:GO. The game has multi-million dollar eSports tournaments every year and pulls in serious revenue via skins and microtransactions. It's a heavily-guarded moneymaker that Valve regulates with strict anti-cheat software. That could be jeopardized with today's leak.

Source code for CS:GO and Team Fortress 2 have leaked out to the public via 4Chan, which could have big ramifications for Valve's money-making franchises. The code is actually outdated, though: the CS:GO code leak dates back to 2017, and the TF2 code is from 2018. The worry is the code could be used to create hacks and mods that circumvent the anti-cheat software embedded into both games. The code itself is licensed out by Valve and isn't available to the public for this reason. Many services and mod sites have gone offline in response to the leak as to not provide hosting for any game-breaking content.

The global games market earns a record-breaking $10 million from digital sales in March thanks to coronavirus quarantines.

The COVID-19 lockdowns have tremendously boosting the games industry, especially digital. The lockdowns have created a vacuum that consumers are filling with activities and games. The demand is soaring, but supply is scarce: now that most of the stores have shut down, consumers are choosing to buy games directly from digital storefronts. The result is a massive spike in monthly earnings for March 2020.

According to SuperData's latest report, the global gaming market generated a new all-time high of $10 billion from digital in March 2020. This was driven by the success of heavy-hitters like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which handily dominated the console charts, Doom Eternal, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Overall revenues are up 11% year-over-year from the $9 billion earned in March 2020.

Doom Eternal has sold an estimated 3 million digital copies at launch, eclipsing Doom 2016's May 2018 figures.

Bethesda says Doom Eternal is a rip-roaring with tons of sales and doubled launch revenue, but exact data is pretty light. Now SuperData jumps in to provide some color around the figures: The firm says Doom Eternal sold 3 million copies digitally on all platforms in March, which is over three times the 957,000 copies Doom 2016 sold digitally at launch.

Doom Eternal claimed two top 10 spots on the marketplace: it's the fourth best-selling game on consoles in March 2020, and the fifth best-selling game on PC.

The coronavirus outbreak is affecting almost every facet of every industry, and is now even affecting the release date for one of the most anticipated PC games this year, Death Stranding.

According to a new Twitter post by the official Kojima Productions Twitter account, the release of Death Stranding on PC has been delayed and will now release on July 14th, 2020. The Twitter post explains that this decision was made to allow for the development team to have more time to work on the port since everyone is now working from home.

Death Stranding will be arriving on PC with ultrawide and high FPS support, read more on that here. The release will also come to both the Epic Games Store and the Steam Store simultaneously, and if you are interested in pre-ordering Hideo Kojima's latest title a link to the Steam and Epic Games Store listings can be found here and here.

Good Guy NVIDIA is stepping in for gamers amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, emailing GeForce Now Founders gamers that they will not be billing them until June.

The company could be doing this as a one-two punch, as it looks good-as-gold (or should that be good-as-green) with gamers by not charging GeForce Now Founders subscribers. But the service has been bleeding out game publishers for a while now (GeForce Now lost Microsoft/Xbox games and Warner Bros. games just yesterday), so this move could be seen as a nice gesture as a distraction.

NVIDIA explains: "As you can imagine, we're experiencing a substantial increase in the number of GeForce NOW players and their amount of playtime. While the service continues to grow, we have decided to take this opportunity to show our early Founders members our appreciation, and will not begin billing until June 2020. Your first charge date has been extended. Please check account.nvidia.com for more information. Stay safe and happy gaming".

We knew that you'd need a beast gaming PC to run Microsoft Flight Simulator, but now we have the official PC system requirements to share.

Flight Simulator requires at least 150GB of storage space, and 8GB of RAM. You'll need an AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or Intel Core i5-4460 processor at a minimum, with 2GB of VRAM from a graphics card -- with Microsoft requiring an AMD Radeon RX 570 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 graphics card.

As for recommended specs, Microsoft bumps up the CPU to a Ryzen 5 1500X or Core i5-8400 with 16GB of system RAM. You'll need a Radeon RX 590 or GeForce GTX 970 with at least 4GB of VRAM. For what Microsoft calls Flight Simulator's "ideal spec" is a huge CPU boost up to the Ryzen 7 Pro 2700X or Core i7-9800X.

If the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X get pushed back to 2021, Ubisoft could delay some of its biggest games to ensure timed console launches.

Art: Peter Jackson

Console releases are rare events that bring massive waves of game sales. Every 7-8 years or so the games industry pushes out a new wave of consoles along with a batch of top-tier games. Tons of developers and publishers are working on PS5 and Xbox Series X games, including EA (who said Battlefield 6 on next-gen will "blow people's minds), Take-Two Interactive, Capcom, Square Enix, and Ubisoft.

GameStop CEO George Sherman today announced he'll be taking a pay cut to help off-set financial impacts from COVID-19.

Right now people are only going to stores to buy necessities. They're not going into GameStop to buy games. The ailed retailer, who already had big financial issues before COVID-19, is faced with the huge challenge of interrupted foot traffic and in-store sales. But the company has adapted and switched to curbside pick-up models that've kept sales going, but at the cost and risk of employee health. Curbside sales aren't the same, though, and corporate execs are now reducing their pay to help mitigate the sales drops.

"Today, we announced salary reductions for our senior management team and board of directors, as well as wage rate reductions for some other corporate and field support staff," Sherman said in an update to investors. GameStop's board of directors, which now employs Reggie Fils-Aime, has had their pay reduced by 50%.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is roaring success right out of the game with 3.5 million copies sold in its first three days. That's even with retail shortages.

Today Square Enix announced some stellar figures for Final Fantasy 7 Remake: The game has sold 3.5 million copies digitally and physically in its first three-day launch period. This figure includes shipments, which is sell-in to retailers and not necessarily sell-through to consumers, as well as digital purchases on the PlayStation Network. Despite being massively hyped and popularized through years of development, Final Fantasy XV is still the king of sales. Final Fantasy XV sold 5 million copies at launch and is still the fastest-selling Final Fantasy game of all time.

There's some important context, though. Final Fantasy XV sold on Xbox One at launch, where as FF7R is stuck to PlayStation 4 (for now). COVID-19 also massively disrupted physical retail availability of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The game was hamstrung by the pandemic, and shipping logistics were interrupted so badly that Square Enix actually launched the game early in Australia and Europe.

Black Ops 5 won't be happening in 2020. Instead, the game will be called COD: Vietnam and takes heavy inspiration from Sledgehammer's scrapped Vietnam-era shooter.

This year's Call of Duty game will be a bit different. It's a sort of spin-off Cold War-era prequel that sets up the Black Ops franchise. Sources tell The Gaming Revolution the game won't be called Black Ops 5, and sources also tell Jason Schreier the game is being referred to internally as Call of Duty: Vietnam (Schreier broke the news on the game a year ago).

This isn't a surprise. Rumors have been circulating on a campaign that spans the entire Cold War era including both the Vietnam and Korean Wars. It's now uncertain if the Korean War era will be included. The game is said to include titular Black Ops characters like Frank Wood and is drawing heavily on Sledgehammer's once-cancelled Vietnam project. Treyarch will be in principal development, but Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software will jump in to assist.

CD Projekt RED has been having a joyous week, with the tease of the custom Cyberpunk 2077 PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers by BossLogic -- and then the tease and official reveal of the custom Cyberpunk 2077 themed Xbox One X console that glows in the dark.

But now, Seagate has joined the Cyberpunk 2077 hardware hype train with the just-revealed Cyberpunk 2077 Game Drive. The new drive is designed as an external storage solution for the Xbox One, and is inside -- identical to Seagate's current Xbox Game Drives, but the new Cyberpunk 2077 infused one is offered in up to 5TB -- oh, and it looks awesome.

Seagate will be offering its new Cyberpunk 2077 Game Drive in two capacities: 2TB and 5TB for $99 and $150, respectively. They will be launching in June in limited qualities, so if you wanted one you're going to have to dive in very quickly.

If you remember all the back in February 2015, I wrote one of the first articles about Grand Theft Auto 6 reporting that Rockstar had said it had some "ideas" on what GTA 6 would be like.

Well, now there's new chatter from Chris Liberty who has said that Grand Theft Auto 6 has been in pre-production since 2014 -- months after my post on that where I reported that Rockstar Games President Leslie Benzies said: "We've got about 45 years worth of ideas we want to do. We don't know what GTA 6 will be, but we've got some ideas".

Liberty added that his sources have told him that last week's reports saying Grand Theft Auto 6 would have a "moderately-sized" map are wrong, and that Rockstar is working on a gigantic beast-sized map for the next-gen GTA 6 game.

NVIDIA has been losing game developers for its game streaming service GeForce NOW ever since it launched, with another two stepping away from GeForce NOW on April 24.

The company has announced that all games from Warner Bros. and Xbox Game Studios, as well as Codemasters and Klei will disappear on April 24. NVIDIA has lost games from publishers such as 2K Games, Activision and Bethesda -- while gaining CD Projekt RED and its upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 on GeForce NOW the day it launches.

The news of more publishers removing their games from GeForce NOW was included in a new update on 4/20 for GeForce NOW, where the post explains: "We're transitioning as many games to GeForce NOW as possible over this time. For those leaving, we'll give gamers as much notice as possible. Games from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, XBOX Game Studios, Codemasters and Klei Entertainment will be removed from the service on Friday, April 24. We hope they'll return in the future".

Skilled programmer Kaze Emanuar recreates Super Mario Odyssey with old-school retro N64 charm.

Love Mario 64? Wish modern Mario games kept that awesome polygonal style, mid-90s textures, and 3D platforming? Then we have something special for you. Introducing Mario Odyssey 64, a new demake fan hack created by Kaze, the same modder who brought you Mario 64 Land. The name basically says it all: It's Mario Odyssey with N64 graphics. signature Mario 64 character models, textures, and environments, and ye olde physics from the classic 64-bit adventure.

The levels are from Mario Odyssey, ditto with the moon-collecting action and enemy possession. It's pretty radical and hilarious. The only downside is you need a ROM file of Mario 64 to run the hack.