Gaming - Page 583

The Xbox Series X's beefy 8-core, 16-thread Zen 2 CPU will enable it to hit 4K 60FPS in bigger AAA games, says 3D Realms co-founder Frederik Schreiber says.

Next-gen consoles like the Xbox Series X is set to transform the games market, complete with enthusiast-grade hardware powered by AMD's ultra-synergized new 7nm SoCs. The console's 12TFLOP Navi 2X GPU will enable 8K gaming, hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, and insane graphics with its RDNA 2 architecture, complete with a custom-designed Zen 2 CPU to enable high FPS. Finally we have both a console GPU and CPU that've been built from the ground up to complement each other. When the two are paired together, magic like 1080p 120FPS, 4K 60FPS, and high-perf 1440p gaming is made possible.

But the question remains: Will the Xbox Series X really be able to hit 4K 60FPS in most games? Maybe, with some trade-offs like dynamic resolution scaling. The potential to hit that kind of perf is available now more than ever, at least that's what 3D Realms says.

Call of Duty: Warzone keeps breaking player records, amassing an insane 15 million players in just three days time.

Call of Duty's new free-to-play Warzone battle royale is growing faster than Apex Legends and Fortnite. Thanks to a tremendous signal boost from streaming titans like Ninja and Dr. Disrespect, the 150-player BR has attracted 15 million players in 3 days. The BR was at 6 million downloads in its first day. Warzone has now grown by an incredible 9 million players sequentially in just two days.

To put those numbers into perspective, Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad delivered some quick figures. Warzone is beating other free-to-play battle royale games in comparative timelines: Apex hit 10 million in three days, compared to Warzone's 15 million in three days. At its current rate, the Call of Duty BR is accelerating 50% faster than Apex Legends.

Blade Runner was a classic game on the PC when it was released back in 1997, requiring some nightmare specs at the time -- and now we can expect a remastered edition.

The developers at Nightdive Studios have been busy with making classic games like System Shock and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter in remastered goodness, and now it is time for Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition. Nightdive has teamed with film company Alcon Entertainment for the remaster.

Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition will be powered by the KEX Engine, with Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick explaining that the graphics engine will help "elevate the gaming experience in a way you've never seen before" while keeping the work that Westwood Studios did with Blade Runner in terms of their vision and gameplay.

Today PlatinumGames announced a new proprietary games engine that will help developers streamline their workflows on next-gen games.

Now that PlatinumGames is a developer-publisher that owns its IPs, it's time the company create a new future-proofed games engine for the new console generation. The new games engine, dubbed the PlatinumEngine (name not finalized), is being made from scratch. The engine has been in development for the past two years and has many goals, including high res graphics, but it's mostly focused on simplifying development.

"Our goal with this new engine is to reduce, as much as we can, the amount of effort that goes into game development. The idea is to take all the unnecessary work away from our game development teams," said R&D group leader Tsuyoshi Odera.

343 Industries could reveal bits and pieces about Halo: Infinite's matchmaking system during two multiplayer-focused GDC 2020 talks.

343 Industries engagement lead Josh Menke will hold two developer talks during the new GDC 2020 Twitch livestreams. The first, which goes live on Tuesday, March 17 at 12PM PST, focuses on the lessons the studio learned when developing Halo 5's multiplayer. Expect a deep dive on Halo 5's matchmaking infrastructure, probably including TrueSkill 2 optimizations and discussions, and maybe even hints or brief tidbits on Halo: Infinite's systems.

"What should matchmaking worry most about? Latency? Skill? Streaks? Wait time? There are several commonly held best practices on how to matchmake for engagement across the industry, some of which contradict each other, but little to no data-driven evidence to support them. The following will show how to effectively test matchmaking approaches and show real examples and data from a popular first-person shooter. The results show that not all practices are actually important, while others are critical."

The games industry's biggest publishers are gearing up projects for next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, and Square Enix in particular teases big things for the systems.

Next-gen is an exciting time for the industry. Every developer is eager to show off new games to push the boundaries of what's possible. Devs want to take advantage of the PS5's and Xbox Series X's raw power, flexibility, and new feature sets like variable rate shading, ray tracing, and 120FPS gaming. Square Enix will be among these devs and the company has some big games set for 2020 and beyond.

In a Tweet revealing its plans to host a digital-based E3 stream, the Final Fantasy dev says their 2020 and next-gen lineups are "stronger than ever," asserting there's more next-gen games in the works that haven't been revealed yet.

The PS5 and Xbox Series X are likely to be delayed outside of 2020 due to coronavirus disruption, analyst firm DFC Intelligence predicts.

Analyst firm DFC Intelligence just sent out an email newsblast that updates their 2020 gaming hardware forecast to reflect the world's current economic disruption. The firm expects COVID-19 to force Microsoft and Sony to delay their next-gen systems in 2021 as critical supply and manufacturing chains are disrupted. These predictions reflect the delay prediction I made in February.

"The conclusion is that coronavirus is likely to have a major short-term impact on the delivery of both systems. There is a strong likelihood one or both systems will not make a 2020 launch. If the systems do launch supply will likely be constrained and initial pricing could be higher than expected," the firm wrote in the email.

One ex-Naughty Dog animator exposes just how intense the studio's crunch can get, including hospitalizations from overwork.

The games industry is kind of like a vampire that drains those who work in it. Many studios suffer from hostile work environments with fatigue runs rampant. To get a game shipped, developers have to work months of ruthless crunch time, leading to mental and physical breakdowns, emotional outbursts, and general malaise and depression. Naughty Dog is one such studio.

In an eye-opening expose, sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier about Naughty Dog's culture of crunch. It's a brutal one. The general consensus among workers is a simple question: "How long can we keep doing this?" Crunch takes a serious human cost, and making games often requires prolonged periods of overwork. Those amazing AAA interactive experiences that blow us away demand sacrifice from the all-mighty Crunch God. Developers have to give up their time, their soul, and their minds for the billion-dollar games industry.

If you thought 150-player matches in Call of Duty: Warzone was big, then you are about to get a big shock as that number will soon be increasing.

Call of Duty: Warzone currently has one of the bigger battle royales with 150 players dropping into one map to wreak havoc on each other. But what if 150 isn't enough? Do we want more players? The answer comes from the developers of the game, Infinity Ward, and they certainly do want more players as they are planning on upping the anti very soon. According to Infinity Ward co-head, Patrick Kelly, soon players will be experiencing matches with 200 players.

Kelly spoke to USA Today, and said the following "Actually, I can tell you we are already playing with 200 players. We are going to release that a little bit later." On top of adding more players to a single match, Kelly also reveals that the development team is also testing larger squads. Here's what he said, "I can tell you we have four-and five-player squads we are already playing with. But we want to launch with something we know works really well and we have tested to the nines and then play around with these different team sizes."

If you are into battle royales, then you have most likely heard about Call of Duty's newest installment into the genre -- Call of Duty: Warzone.

If you have already heard about it and are wanting to jump into the action, then I must tell you to be prepared for a large download. The standalone Warzone client weighs in at anywhere between 80gb - 100gb, depending on your platform. The download can be smaller than that if you already have Call of Duty Modern Warfare installed as Modern Warfare shares some of the same assets as Warzone. But why is the new mode so large in general?

According to Production Director, Paul Haile who works at Infinity Ward, the developers for Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Warzone, the reason behind the file size being so large is because its "just a tone of content". Haile went into more detail behind why the file is so large, and partially blamed the size on Infinity Ward's production pipeline. Here's the full quote, "And also in this case since Warzone shares progression with MW every weapon and character asset from MP needs to also work in Warzone. Our pipeline isn't perfect but even if it was it's still a mountain of data to ship."

Call of Duty: Warzone has been out for 48 hours now, and players have already figured out a way to win games from within the deadly gas.

Originally found on the Call of Duty Warzone Reddit, players in the above video seem to be on the last round of their game. What is interesting is that instead of going for the other team in a guns-blazing fight, they decided to stick to staying in the gas, and while you might think that's a stupid idea, you will be surprised at what happens. Communicating with each other, one teammate gets dropped by the gasses damage, then his teammate picks up him.

Both teammates go back and forth rinse and repeating this same cycle of reviving each other in an infinite loop. The enemy team eventually cannot find the team that is reviving each other and seems to have been caught in the gas but didn't get the revive. This causes the team that was simply just back-and-forth reviving each other to win the entire game. It should be noted, MightyKonsti the user who posted the video to the subreddit, did mention that both he and his teammate had the TuneUp perk equipped, which speeds up revives by 25%.

The Division 2 will be Google Stadia's first crossplay-enabled game, with Ubisoft pushing right into Stadia with upcoming releases that include The Crew 2 and Monopoly.

Ubisoft will be including crossplay support with PC gamers on The Division 2, as well as Stream Connect support -- something that lets you check your teammates' gameplay, all on a single screen. Ubisoft is following up with The Division 2 dropping on Google Stadia on March 17 with The Crew 2 and Monopoly.

Here's what to expect on Google Stadia from Ubisoft in the next few weeks:

The new Super Mario Lego lineup is basically like a real-life Mario Maker...just a lot more tame.

Today Lego and Nintendo announced a new round of interactive Super Mario Lego sets to be released later this year. Unlike traditional Legos, these let kids (and a bunch of adults) make their own little Mario stages straight out of a Mario game.

The Mario figure has built-in speakers and even tiny LCD screens that allow him to change expressions, and Mario that interacts with special sensors on the bricks. You can literally create your own real-life version of a Mario stage complete with goombas, obstacles, helpful buddies like Yoshi, and time limits. Mario can even collect coins.

System Shock remake developers Nightdive Studios are working on a new remaster: An enhanced edition of 1997's beloved Blade Runner PC game.

Westwood's old-school Blade Runner game was MIA for a long time before popping up on GOG.com, but now it's about to be reborn altogether. The new Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and Steam sometime in 2020, complete with remastered graphics, visuals, and effects for modern hardware.

Using their proprietary KEX engine used in the System Shock remaster, Nightdive will revitalize the classic with upgraded textures, environments, and character models. The team even plans to use AI machine learning to upscale in-game cutscenes. All the new bells and whistles won't betray the original gameplay, though, and Nightdive will ensure the remaster remains authentic.

The composer behind The Last of Us video game has been announced to also be working on the coming TV show.

The legendary composer behind both The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II, Gustavo Santaolalla, has been confirmed to be doing the soundtrack behind the coming The Last of Us HBO series. The series' co-creator, Neil Druckmann recently took to his personal Twitter account to confirm the news, saying "Well this is exciting! Beyond lending his incredible musical talent to The Last of Us Part II, Gustavo Santaolalla is joining us to bring over The Last of Us to HBO!".

At the moment, there's no word on when HBO will be releasing The Last of Us series, but judging on how long it takes for a normal high-budget TV series to produce, I'd say we can expect a release either closer to the end of this year/start of next year. As for the video game franchise, the second installment in The Last of Us series, The Last of Us Part II will be launching on PlayStation 4 on May 29th.

Call of Duty: Warzone released yesterday, and since its debut players have flocked to the new battle royale shooter.

According to the official Call of Duty Twitter account, the new game mode has already amassed a staggering 6 million+ players just within its first 24 hours of being live. That number is definitely still growing as more and more players finish their downloads. Speaking of downloads, if you have already begun playing Warzone, then you know there is a hefty download of anywhere between 18-22GB, depending on the platform you are downloading on.

So, if there are already 6 million players playing Warzone, that means that 6 million players have downloaded a minimum of 18GB each, which equates to 108,000,000GB, or more accurately - 108 petabytes. That is a ridiculous amount of data that has been downloaded from Activision's servers in just 24 hours. It should also be noted that 108 petabytes is the minimum that has been downloaded as different platforms have a different required download totals. So, the true number is much higher and likely exceeds 150 petabytes of data in 24 hours.

When the Nintendo Switch launched, fans were upset to know that the charging dock didn't include built-in GameCube controller ports, but there's now a simple mod fix for that.

Reddit user i_AM_hank took it upon himself to solve this issue and judging by the photos and Hank's comments, it certainly seems he has found a reliable fix. Hank decided to mod his Nintendo Switch dock with the external GameCube controller adapter. More specifically, the GameCube controller adapter is a third-party product from Mayflash, and according to Hank "turned out to be a good choice because the controller ports are on a board separate from the main circuitry which ultimately allowed it to slip between the inner and outer casing of the dock".

This mod would be particularly useful for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate players who would like not to have to carry around an external GameCube adapter. While the process to get the adapter integrated with the Switch dock seems a little difficult, there's a step-by-step guide that can be followed for anyone who is game enough to give it a go. I wish Nintendo included the GameCube controller adapter with the Switch dock. It would have saved a lot of players some considerable transportation trouble.

Halo: Infinite is currently in development for the next-gen Microsoft Xbox Series X console, and while mere mortals like us haven't played it -- some of those in the industry have been lucky enough to play it, and now we have an early report on it.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker's Creative Director at Owlcat Games, Alexander Mishulin, was interviewed by Wccftech at PAX East 2020 and had some interesting things to say. He was asked about what his thoughts were about Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X consoles were.

Mishulin talked about seeing Halo: Infinite on the Xbox Series X and said: "I would definitely get those. I set aside a hefty sum of money for that. I really like the fast loading times. For example, I played Marvel's Spider-Man, it's a great game, but eventually when hopping between the regions, I was getting tired of [riding] the metro. I don't expect a great difference in terms of graphics because when Microsoft was presenting the newest Xbox and new Halo, I actually caught myself thinking that I personally don't see a difference now. For our artists, there is a great difference, but not for me".

CD Projekt RED plans to work on a new Witcher game after Cyberpunk 2077 ships this year.

It turns out CDPR has been working on a new Witcher game all along, and once Cyberpunk 2077 is released, the company will shift towards full production on the next game in the gritty medieval series. We should also expect it to be fully optimized for next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

"We have already been working on another single player game, we have created a relatively clear concept that is waiting for further development," CD Projekt Group President Adam Kicinski said in a recent press event in Poland.

Activision hires ex-Google sales whiz Daniel Alegre as its new president and chief operating officer, the company today announced.

Activision is shaking up its senior leadership. The company just made a very interesting hire with Daniel Alegre, a former Google executive with strong background in ecommerce and sales. Coincidentally, Activision just signed a huge multi-year deal with Google to use its servers to host its online games. Alegre is basically second in command and will report directly to Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. The way Kotick talks about Alegre gives lots of clues in what we should expect from the new president's leadership:

"I was deeply impressed by Daniel's entrepreneurial drive and broad and deep experience in driving global growth across a variety of businesses in a rapidly changing industry," Kotick said.