Gaming News - Page 59

According to reports, illegally-obtained confidential material stolen from Insomniac Games indicates the studio had pitched a live service Spider-Man game, but this project had been cancelled a while back.

Microtransactions are great for business. Sony's games division makes billions of dollars a year from its 30% commission on live service games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, and Genshin Impact. PlayStation sees how much money these games make and now it wants a piece of the pie. That's why Sony has embarked on an ambitious plan to release 6 live service games by 2025--it used to be 12, but Sony delayed half of these games.

Some games, like Naughty Dog's online multiplayer take on The Last of Us, have been cancelled. Other cut projects include a multiplayer Spider-Man game pitched by Insomniac Games.

This unsuspecting PlayStation 1 game was hiding a big secret for 23 years.

Alien Resurrection released in 2000 for the PlayStation 1 and was generally received as a competent first-person shooter. On the surface, there wasn't anything truly groundbreaking or remarkable about the sci-fi FPS, but the final game actually contained something it shouldn't have ever shipped with: an exploit that allows gamers to play burned PSX game backups.

For over 2 decades now, Alien Resurrection has been hiding a PlayStation 1 boot exploit which offers a nifty trick for playing pirated/burned games. Alien Resurrection's boot exploit is only accessible via a special cheats menu. The secret was revealed by original game developer Martin Piper, who broke his silence by informing YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer about the feature.

A new patent from Sony Interactive Entertainment could hint at dedicated AI processors in future PlayStation consoles.

Sony has filed an interesting patent (US20230405461) that may rely on AI tech in order to operate. The patent is for a robust "predictive assistance" solution that leverages artificial intelligence to study play patterns through a predictive lens, and then react accordingly, providing tips to players when needed.

For example, if a player is trying to beat a boss but repeatedly fails, the patented tech would give the user an on-screen hint on how to defeat the enemy. Sony already has something similar to this with the PS5's Game Help feature, but that isn't reactionary and is instead a series of static Wiki-style tips and tricks. Sony's patent would be more dynamic, smart, and highly conditional by contrast.

As Sony achieves 50 million units sold to consumers, Microsoft may be struggling to find market share in video games hardware.

Sony has high hopes for the PS5. The company hopes to ship 25 million consoles this fiscal year, and eventually beat the PS4's 117.4 million sales. Data shows that Sony is almost halfway there, having achieved hefty PS5 metrics like 50 million sell-through and over 46 million sell-in.

Microsoft, on the other hand, appears to be once again having trouble gaining market share. New estimates from analyst firm Ampere Analysis indicate that Microsoft has sold 7.6 million Xbox Series X/S consoles throughout 2023, compared to the PlayStation 5's strong 22.5 million.

Sony Interactive Entertainment management expects 2023 to be a record year, potentially even topping last year's $26.9 billion revenue.

Thanks to a lucrative billion-dollar digital ecosystem of games, services, and content, alongside profitable consumer-grade electronics that sell tens of millions of units, Sony PlayStation has remained at the top of gaming's Big 3 for years. That could change now that Microsoft owns Activision Blizzard King.

Even still, Sony still forecasts this year to break new records. The PS5 did just reach 50 million consoles sold through to consumers, moving 14 million systems in a 9-month period--a new PlayStation record.

The first Nintendo Switch flashcart may be ready to launch sometime in 2024.

Nintendo's current Switch handheld-console hybrid has been uniquely resilient to flashcarts due to tightened security. The Switch's GameCards are built with Nintendo's proprietary tech and have been tough to crack. The Switch actually features a dedicated ASIC that communicates directly with the GameCards through a custom protocol designed by Nintendo.

If recent reports are accurate, then big progress has been made. It appears that the first Switch flashcart is here, and it may be ready to release in January 2024. In a NickMoses05 stream, a guest from the modding scene speculates that the flashcart could be running via an exploit, potentially a GameCard-based exploit that no one currently knows about. It's also possible the flashcart requires a modchipped Switch in order to function.

Star Citizen's new Legatus bundle is out, and this time it costs more than 3x annual minimum wage salaries.

Star Citizen is famous for its wide monetization purchase structure. Roberts Space Industries offers a multitude of buy options for players including whole spaceships that can command thousands of dollars. There's also a big shortcut for gamers who want to sidestep a lot of that grinding.

The space sim sells whole ship packages in order to make money for development and maintenance of the game itself. The most notorious package is the Legatus bundle, a somewhat-annual collection that packs in 100+ ships and pieces of content for the game. RSI describes Legatus as the "definitive armada," so you're basically buying a fleet of ships for a set price.

The developers behind the beloved Dark Souls series announced the servers supporting online play for Dark Souls 2 would shut down in March next year on two old consoles - PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

FromSoftware took to its official X account to announce the news that has seemingly smacked dozens of gamers right in their digital hearts, with the company writing Dark Souls 2 servers on the PS3 and Xbox 360 will be shut down on March 31, 2024, which will result in online play being disabled and message popping up on-screen if a player attempts to connect informing them of such.

FromSoftware reminded gamers that servers being disabled won't affect offline gameplay, and PC, PS4, and Xbox One servers for Dark Souls 2 "will not be affected". FromSoftware didn't forget to thank the players of Dark Souls 2, as the now incredibly popular series began on the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation of consoles, and judging by the replies to FromSoftware's X post, many gamers have very fond memories of those servers and are sad to see them go. As I am.

Bethesda Game Studios has celebrated the success of Starfield by taking to the company's official blog to share some interesting stats about the recently released title.

The launch of Starfield was met with mixed emotions by the gaming community, with some players thoroughly enjoying the sheer scale and possibilities of the space exploration title and others who expressed the lack of open-world RPG feeling through hollow, disjointed world-building plagued with loading screens.

Despite the divisive launch, Starfield is still being enjoyed by millions of gamers around the world, and according to Bethesda, the average Starfield player spent 40 hours exploring the universe, which is likely a number much higher than you would expect considering the title's rocky start. Bethesda revealed in an infographic that 13 million players had enjoyed Starfield and the future updates it has planned for the title.

Digital dominates 2023's annual spending in the video games market.

GamesIndustry.biz's annual Year in Numbers datasheet has been published, revealing a dearth of information about the interactive entertainment's overall performance in 2023. The infograph, which includes a multitude of key metrics from the world's top analyst firms, underlines a trend that has been growing for some time: Digital gaming is taking over.

According to Newzoo, digital made up about 95% of 2023's video games revenues, or about $174.5 billion. This value includes both full game purchases made on storefronts like the PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, Steam, and the Xbox store, as well as in-game purchases and microtransaction spending across all platforms.