Gaming - Page 588

Reports say Microsoft's video streaming platform Mixer is having some issues internally, namely with keeping employee morale high.

Mixer is now under new leadership and employees may not be too happy with their bosses' new ethos, sources tell OnMSFT. Shilpa Yadla, who now heads the Mixer platform, has one rule: don't give up and stay positive through struggle. It sounds like good advice. But the way Yadla frames her speech in a recent clipped closed-door presentation makes it sound less like a guideline and more like a harsh decree.

In the video, Yadla repeatedly mentions how employees have a choice to either think positively, or to just "doom" everything. It's a strange thing to say to a group of people you're now leading...unless maybe there was a morale problem and you're trying to solve it by brute-forcing positive thinking and intent.

Sony may release two PS5 consoles in 2020: A more powerful, but more expensive PlayStation Pro, and a lower-end and cheaper base PlayStation 5 SKU.

Verified NeoGAF user VFXVeteran reinforces previous rumors of a dual-console PS5 launch. According to the user, who cites unnamed industry sources, the PS5 Pro is expected to match or exceed the Xbox Series X's 12 TFLOPs of GPU power, whereas the PS5 model is expected to hit about 9 TFLOPs.

No other specs were detailed for the base PS5, but if it's real, expect the console to use the same 7nm AMD SoC as the PS5 Pro, just dialed down quite a bit. The base PS5 should also have the same super-fast PCIe 4.0 SSD

Capcom will release a playable Resident Evil 3 demo next month to give us a taste of its new horror creation.

The upcoming Resident Evil 3 remake is shaping up to be the ultimate terror-fest, and thankfully gamers will be able to try it out sometime in March. Capcom confirmed a demo is coming but we don't know when exactly it'll launch, or if it'll be exclusive to one platform (likely not).

The game is a remake/re-imagining of the old-school 90s PlayStation classic, complete with amazingly revamped visuals, new streamlined mechanics, and a brand new anxiety-inducing Nemesis. The RE Engine looks better than ever and RE3make is a big step up from last year's RE2 Remake. Capcom has gone through great lengths to preserve the overall look and feel of the original, but upgraded the shooter mechanics, animations, and everything else.

Microsoft continues hyping its beastly next-gen Xbox Series X console and promises games will look, play, and feel better than ever before.

The Xbox Series X is shaping up to be the ultimate games console. Powered by a next-gen 12 TFLOP Navi GPU, an 8-core Zen 2, and a custom SSD, the system will allow 8K gaming, 4K 60FPS, and even up to 120FPS gaming--all with buttery-smooth variable refresh rates. Developers will use tons of new technologies like ray tracing, variable rate shading, and other software tricks to make games run incredibly well at all perf specs and resolutions. That's the theory at least. We haven't actually seen any games in action yet.

Now according to Xbox exec Jason Ronald, the Xbox Series X's in-game performance is unprecedented. The next-gen Xbox uses "bleeding-edge" tech from AMD to open a new dimension of high-FPS, high-resolution console gaming. It's basically a new era for the console market.

Microsoft's Project xCloud game streaming service will crush Stadia and other competitors for one simple reason: It won't make you re-buy games.

Project xCloud just keeps getting better and better. Not only will the service let you stream Xbox One console games you already own to other devices like mobile phones and laptops, but it'll do the same with PC games.

Sources tell Thurrot.com's Brad Sams that Project xCloud will let you stream PC titles over the cloud service, basically like GeForce Now. This is tremendously powerful and creates a unified link to your cross-platform Xbox games library and allows access wherever you go. There's probably some limitations here, and we don't know if Steam games will be included or if it's exclusive to Windows 10 games bought on the Microsoft Store.

Doom Eternal goes beyond even the craziest frame rate ambitions and can hit up to 1000 FPS of bloody, demon-slaying carnage.

The new id Tech 7 engine is absolutely mind-blowing and can run Doom games 300% faster than id Tech 6. The studio says Doom Eternal maxes out at 1000 frames-per-second thanks to the new engine optimizations--but only if you have the hardware might to throw at the game.

And that's only the theoretical limit; id is careful to say the game is future-proofed so that next-gen PC hardware can push the bar even higher.

UPDATE: GDC 2020 has been postponed, as per an official announcement:

This year's annual Game Developers Conference is likely to be cancelled as the biggest names in the industry skip the show.

Konami could be resurrecting Silent Hills from the dead and letting Hideo Kojima run the macabre show.

Kojima Productions might've just teased something Silent Hill-related on Twitter. Fans have scrutinized the Tweet and found some ties to Konami's stagnant franchise, and admittedly there's some reaching going on. The Tweet shows Kojima Productions' head of communications Aki Saito and says "sorry I've been so silent" (as in Silent Hills, of course) and the pencil has Pyramid stamped on it. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe it's a hint that Silent Hills is coming back. There's even mention of a reveal coming next week.

Konami might be firing up the Silent Hill franchise again and Kojima could help lead the charge. Recent reports say Konami is working on two new Silent Hill projects, but nothing has been confirmed. Konami has been noticably absent in the AAA space, but promised in September 2019 that it's not giving up on new sequels.

The Xbox Series X could upgrade and enhance games from legacy generations including the Xbox 360 and even original Xbox era.

Microsoft has high aspirations for the Xbox Series X's extensive backward compatibility. The next-gen Xbox will play four generations' worth of Xbox games. If it's playable on Xbox One, it's playable on the Xbox SX, the company says. And the new console will play all of these games even better thanks to an on-console boost mode that natively upscales resolution, frame rate, and performance of older games. But Microsoft could take this even further and bring higher-end upgrades like ray tracing to older-gen games (look at Quake II RTX, for example).

In a recent Major Nelson podcast, Xbox exec Jason Ronald says the backward compatibility team wants to push the bar higher than ever before and enhance games beyond their current state.

Two pieces of seemingly new artwork have been spotted on Rockstar Games' mainsite, prompting lots of speculation on new games like Grand Theft Auto 6 and Bully 2. But it's probably not what you think.

Rockstar's website shows two interesting images that have fans buzzing. The art can be seen in the background when clicking ondrop-down menu on the upper left hand side of the site, and randomly rotates across three separate pieces--two of which fans are trying to somehow tie to rumored games like GTA 6, Bully 2, or even Agent, the cancelled stealth game for PS3.

The visuals in question are quite captivating and thought provoking. One shows a futuristic 1980's-style gynoid robot from renown artist Hajime Sorayama, who did the cover art for Aerosmith's Just Press Play album. The robot is hugging the Rockstar logo and there's a bottle of champagne from 1998, the year the studio was founded.

Riot Games' new Overwatch-meets-Counter-Strike first-person shooter is called Valorant, and features at least three major heroes including Viper, Brimstone, and Sage.

Fans and Twitter sleuths have uncovered the name of Riot's new competitive shooter, Valorant, along with key details on the game's new Sage character. A few days ago, users uncovered the PlayValorant.com domain was registered by Riot Games. Now a screenshot from an early pre-release build of Project A has leaked out to give eager fans an idea of what to expect with the game's pretty robust hero abilities.

The screenshot--which was likely leaked from a recent Valorant demo shown to influencers earlier this month--reveals Sage, the game's essential Mercy class.

Polish officials prohibit audience attendance at IEM Katowice 2020, the ESL has announced.

The coronavirus outbreak continues disrupting some of gaming's biggest events, this time with the ESL's annual $500,000 international CS:GO tournament held in Poland. IEM Katowice, Counter-Strike's biggest global tournament held in Poland, won't have an audience due to coronavirus health risks.

Polish officials have pulled the ESL's license just hours before the event launched, and attendees will no longer be able to watch the playoffs on-site, nor can they roam around the expo hall.

In a bid to diversify its revenues and prop itself up for long-term earnings potential, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and NieR: Automata developer PlatinumGames will open a new Tokyo-based studio to work on live service games.

The third announcement in PlatinumGame's Platinum 4 reveals is a big one, albeit not as exciting as Kamiya's new Project GG game. The studio will open a new branch in Tokyo, Japan in April 2020 that's centered on sustainability rather than new and catalog game sales.

PlatinumGames plans to use online-driven live games as a consistent source of income via monetization to better diversify its earnings. This is a natural evolution for any developer-publisher in today's gaming landscape and will offer an opportunity to tap Japan's rich vein of live gaming revenues, which will be re-invested in new wholly-owned IPs. Tencent's major investment in the company helped spark this evolution of PlatinumGames.

We probably would've heard more detailed specs about Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 if the company attended the upcoming Game Developers Conference, but it pulled out -- along with Microsoft, Unity, and many others.

But with Sony pulling out of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) it didn't stop GameStop from listing some detailed specs on the upcoming next-gen PlayStation 5 console. GameStop has a new landing page for the PlayStation 5 console, which starts off by listing that the PlayStation 5 has "the ability to play physical & digital media".

This means the console has now been confirmed to pack a Blu-ray drive, and while the GameStop landing page doesn't detail whether it will be a 4K Ultra HD capable player, I would put good money down on it being a 4K-capable Blu-ray player. Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 will also be capable of digital games of course, so you can choose physical copies of your games or digital downloads on the next-gen PS5.

UPDATE: In a huge new live stream, Larian has confirmed Baldur's Gate 3 is turn-based only and won't have real-time wait pause mechanics.

French website JeuxActu just accidentally uploaded new Baldur's Gate 3 screenshots, revealing the inner workings of Larian's new RPG sequel.

The newly leaked Baldur's Gate 3 screenshots show two things: A mixture of Real-Time Wait with a Pause (RTwP) combat lifted straight from the original cRPG series, and turn-based combat similar to Larian's previous Divinity: Original Sin games. The two modes interact and complement each other during battles to allow for maximum strategic planning; the idea could be to mostly use RTwP to plan things out and then execute via the turn-based combat sequences.

The Xbox Series X's new Smart Delivery system isn't really new. Microsoft used similar intelligent delivery for the optional Xbox One X upgrades that boosted games to 4K HDR on the console. But the Xbox Series X will take things even further and give developers even more potential to breathe new life into older games.

A while back we predicted how the Xbox Series X's Smart Delivery system would work. The feature is designed around one purpose: Act as a conduit that carries current games forward to next-gen and boosts in-game performance. As with the Xbox One X, developers will have the option to roll out game updates that basically upgrade current-gen games and let them tap the Xbox Series X's raw 12TFLOP GPU, Zen 2 CPU, and synergized SSD and GDDR6 memory pool.

Smart Delivery will enhance backward compatible games and push them to new heights that simply aren't possible on the Xbox One family of hardware. Remember, next-gen is an extension and an evolution of current-gen, not a replacement.

The highest-ranking Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player is no longer a free agent, as he has just announced that he's signed with T1.

Leonardo Lopez Perez, also known as MkLeo in the Super Smash Bros. community, is the world's highest-ranking player for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. MkLeo has had a fantastic career in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate since it launched, taking out some of the other highest-ranking players with his notorious Joker play.

MkLeo was a free agent for a period of time, and being the world's number one player for Ultimate, it didn't take long for a sponsor to pick him up. According to MkLeo's personal Twitter account, he has now signed a new deal with T1 to create content under their banner as well as continue tournament play. The terms of the agreement were not revealed, but being the best player in the world, I'm sure MkLeo walked away from this deal happy.

Amazon is notorious for posting listings for games that aren't even on a specific platform yet, and just this morning that that very thing happened for Horizon Zero Dawn.

The listing was posted by Amazon France, and it claimed that Guerrilla Games' Horizon Zero Dawn would be coming over to the PC. Funnily enough, the listing also says that Sony is apart of the transition, and not too long ago Kotaku's Jason Schreier said that Sony was looking at bringing Horizon Zero Dawn over to PC. While this could easily be a coincidence, the correlation is still there.

Maybe Sony and Guerrilla Games are currently working on a PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn behind the scenes. It should also be noted that the third anniversary for Horizon Zero Dawn is almost upon us (Feb 28th), so maybe an announcement could come soon? Another fact to take away from this is that Horizon Zero Dawn is built on the Decima Engine, which was given to Hideo Kojima to build Death Stranding and Death Stranding is arriving on PC sometime later this year. So maybe Horizon Zero Dawn will receive the same treatment?

GOG extends its refund policy to 30 days after purchase regardless of play time, making it the most open store in the entire industry.

Today GOG announced a surprise update to how it's handling refunds. The storefront's money back window has been extended to 30 days after purchase, giving users an entire month to try out and play the game to see if they like it. This is a hefty jump over the previous 14-day refund policy.

It's possible this decision could be overturned soon, though. Considering GOG is a DRM-free marketplace, there's nothing stopping buyers from simply copying the game files and then getting a refund. It's a potential worry for developers. While GOG doesn't mention a hard limit on play time, the company says its reserves the right to deny a refund for any reason.

One of the Xbox Series X's biggest features isn't its raw GPU power, or its high FPS functionality. It's a small quality-of-life improvement that has massive implications.

The Xbox Series X is designed for speed and power, and more importantly, to link the two indiscriminately in a cyclic fashion. The Xbox Series X's brute hardware is complemented by flexible, adaptable, and powerful software that intelligently uses the system's raw strength--it's a marriage of brains and brawn. The console's synergized 7nm AMD SoC, PCIe 4.0 SSD, and GDDR6 RAM hardware are held together by a sophisticated software stack that enables developers to tap the beastly 12TFLOP GPU while delivering effects like Variable Rate Shading or ray tracing, boosting frame rates and immersion in the process.

One big part of this emphasis on speed is the console's new enhanced quick resume functionality. This feature lets you basically turn any play session into a save state that's preserved even after you turn off the console. The Xbox Series X lets you pause multiple games at once and come back to them at any point without having to load anything. It's kind of like how Netflix and Hulu save your spot when you stop watching.