Gaming - Page 590

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is asking Sony to "set a good example" and come back to PAX East.

Sony recently announced it would skip PAX East in Boston, Massachusetts because of potential coronavirus risks, cancelling big events like a hands-on gameplay demo of The Last of Us Part II in the process. Boston's Mayor Marty Walsh wants the billion-dollar games-maker to change its mind and come back to the show. Walsh's motivations are an attempt to re-vitalize the annual games showcase that brings lots of tourism to Boston, and to reverse the cultural stigma that the coronavirus has caused.

"As a large, international company, you have an opportunity to set a good example. As a leader in technology, you can show that you are motivated by facts, not fear. As a leader in gaming and culture, you can show that you believe in connection, not isolation," Mayor Walsh said in a letter to Sony's CEO Kenichiro Yoshida obtained by WCVB.

Bethesda is removing their games from NVIDIA's new game streaming service GeForce NOW, with some major games getting flushed away. NVIDIA also announced there are over 1 million people now using GeForce NOW.

NVIDIA's new GeForce NOW game streaming service loses the likes of many Fallout games, Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls 5, and more -- the only one staying is going to be Wolfenstein: Youngblood, something I benchmarked with RTX and DLSS features enabled. GeForce NOW will however lose all other Wolfenstein games.

Activision-Blizzard dropped its games from GeForce NOW in a move that NVIDIA called a "misunderstanding", with NVIDIA taking to its blog recently to explain: "As we approach a paid service, some publishers may choose to remove games before the trial period ends. Ultimately, they maintain control over their content and decide whether the game you purchase includes streaming on GeForce NOW. Meanwhile, others will bring games back as they continue to realize GeForce NOW's value (stay tuned for more on that)".

Magic: The Gathering Arena has been tremendously successful on PC, and Wizards of the Coast are eager to expand the game's reach to other platforms.

MTG Arena is likely coming to every single platform and addressable market in the games industry. The free-to-play online-based digital CCG, which puts an emphasis on monetizing randomized card packs, is prime territory for dedicated consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, or the on-the-go handheld Switch hybrid. It's even a contender for Stadia, Google's new cloud streaming service. But Arena's true potential for massive earnings is on the $68.5 billion mobile market.

Now in a recent Hasbro investor's meeting at ToyFair, Wizards of the Coast not only confirms Arena will release on mobile in 2020, but the game will see a dramatic expansion to other devices and services.

Gamers will get the chance to help shape Baldur's Gate 3's development with an early access build releasing in 2020.

Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to early access later this year, Wizards of the Coast President Chris Cocks confirmed in a recent investors presentation.

"Larian will be showing off the game to the public next weekend at PAX East before entering early access later this year," he said.

Nintendo sends mixed signals to fans who are disappointed with its clandestine and awkward approach to Animal Corssing: New Horizons save backups.

Nintendo just pulled an interesting move that has some far-reaching implications. The company just edited and re-uploaded the recent Animal Crossing: New Horizons showcase with one key bit of info omitted out--the rather draconian save recovery policy.

Before the edit, the Direct outlined the strict stipulations to getting back their precious save data. Users can only recover save data in the event of a lost or damaged console, only a single time, and only if they're Switch Online subscribers, indicating that Nintendo automatically backs up your saved data anyway but blocks off user access. (That's really the only way they could restore your data if you lose a system, whereas they could manually transfer the saves from your old broken system to a new working one in their facilities.)

EA has cancelled yet another Star Wars game, this time an interesting-sounding project that was in development at EA Vancouver.

Making Star Wars games is very, very hard, and no one knows that better than Electronic Arts. The publisher has now cancelled three consecutive Star Wars projects: Visceral Games' Project Ragtag bounty hunter game in 2017, then EA Vancouver's live-driven open-world Project Orca in 2019, and now Project Viking, yet another EA Vancouver title. This marks the second EA Vancouver Star Wars project that EA has cancelled in a row.

Sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier that Project Viking was an open-world game derived from the Battlefront series. Viking was meant to fill the large Millennium Falcon-shaped hole in EA's 2020 Star Wars games lineup and launch on the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. EA killed the project in early 2019, sources familiar with the game say.

Following the acquisition of Saber Interactive, The Embracer Group (also known as THQ Nordic) now owns a whopping 163 game series and franchises.

While scouting The Embracer Group's recent earnings, I found something quite interesting: Raw numbers that show just how massive the company's gaming presence is. The media titan currently has access to over 150 new IPs, and has a massive global dev pool of 92 teams worldwide across a multitude of wholly-owned studios.

The company's pipeline is just as big as its IP treasure. There's 96 total games in development at Embracer's studios, of which 52 have yet to be announced. A lot of these projects aren't AAA endeavors and are a long ways off. Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors says he wants to release at least two major AAA games by March 2021 (possibly Dead Island 2 and Saints Row V, both of which have been in development for years now).

Temtem, the popular Pokemon-like MMO, is off to a tremendous start with over 500,000 copies sold in its first month.

Crema's monster-catching MMORPG is an early access sensation on Steam, pulling in over half a million users in just one month. The hunger for a Pokemon-esque experience on PC is real, and backed with a mighty $573,000 Kickstarter and Humble Bundle as publisher, Temtem is now a bonafide success on Steam.

Temtem is largely familiar territory to Digimon and Pokemon players, featuring a plethora of catchable creatures with their own abilities, elemental affinities, and other traits. There's a stamina system instead of a PP system, and combat features unique 2v2 battles for tag team action. The biggest departure is that Temtem is online and allows for native team-based co-op at any time. Gamers can connect, play, and interact with other Temtem tamers, and tackle PVP battles to boot.

Today the District Court of California announced a settlement agreement between Crytek and Cloud Imperium Games, but no specifics were revealed.

After a long 3-year legal battle, Crysis developer Crytek and Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games have finally settled their legal dispute. New court documents filed yesterday confirm the news, and stipulate both parties have up to 30 days to outline the exact details of the agreement. These details probably won't be publicized.

"Pursuant to C.D. Cal. L.R. 40-2, Plaintiff CRYTEK GMBH and Defendants CLOUD IMPERIUM GAMES CORP. and ROBERTS SPACE INDUSTRIES CORP., by and through their counsel of record, hereby notify the Court that they have reached an agreement in principle of terms to settle this action in its entirety and are working to document the terms of their agreement. Following execution of the agreement, the parties will promptly file a joint stipulation of dismissal. The parties respectfully request that the Court allow the parties thirty (30) days to document and execute their agreement and to file the joint stipulation of dismissal."

On the heels of Fortnite's big season 2 reveal, analyst firm SuperData notes a marked drop in digital revenues through January 2020.

Still a titan of the industry with $1.8 billion earned in 2019, Epic's battle royale sensation Fortnite kicked off 2020 with reduced revenues. The weight of Fortnite's earnings slide has pulled down the entire free-to-play console segment by 42%, analyst firm SuperData notes.

"Console spending was down a steep 42% in the free-to-play segment (due to lower Fortnite revenue) and down 19% in the premium space," the firm wrote in its recent January 2020 worldwide spending analysis.

Square Enix today confirmed Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be playable at its PAX East booth from February 27 - March 1.

While Sony pulls out of PAX East, other Asian devs like Square Enix are excited to show off their biggest games. Right now, it doesn't get much bigger then the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. A fully-fledged playable FF7R demo will be hosted on-site at PAX East in Boston, giving die-hard fans an opportunity to try out the re-imagined RPG with its new real-time hack-and-slash combat system. This will be the fifth major city to get access to the demo after key events like E3, Gamescom, and Tokyo Game Show.

The news could also strongly hint at Square Enix releasing the public PS4 demo soon. A bit ago, the Final Fantasy 7 demo was leaked out, revealing key info about the game including characters, animations, file size info, and of course the actual gameplay itself. Considering how close we are to release (the Remake is just 7 weeks away) it makes sense to release a demo shortly after PAX East's hands-on event.

Coronavirus scare prompts Sony to skip GDC 2020 and miss a valuable opportunity to court developers for its next-gen PlayStation 5 platform.

Sony has confirmed it won't be at this year's annual Game Developers Conference to protect employees from potential coronavirus exposure. The news comes days after Sony decided to likewise skip PAX East. But missing GDC is a much bigger deal, and could have a more significant impact on Sony's next-gen plans.

GDC is a closed developer-centric event where the biggest names in gaming like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo come together to showcase new tech, talk about platform features, and overall try to inspire developers to make games for their systems.

THQ Nordic now has a whopping 8 dozen games in development, and more than half of them are unannounced.

The Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic) is an absolute powerhouse of gaming that has potential to completely revitalize dormant IPs. The company, which has access to a treasure trove of franchises, currently has 96 total projects in its lineup and only 52 of them have been revealed. This is a pretty big jump over the 80 projects that were in development as of May 2019.

The company's recent buyout of World War Z developer Saber Interactive adds tons of opportunity to this games lineup. Saber brings 9 IPs over to Embracer's staggering arsenal, complete with 8 unannounced projects that're currently in development.

Call of Duty's new free-to-play Warzone battle royale will be a playground for 200 players, sources tell Video Game Chronicle.

Activision's new Warzone gametype for Modern Warfare is a big deal. The incoming battle royale mode will support 200 players on a map that's twice as big as Black Ops 4's Blackout BR, complete with free access on console on PC. Warzone will be both a standalone free-to-play download as well as baked right into premium Modern Warfare versions, and is expected to support cross-play on all platforms.

It represents years of planning it could be the biggest mechanism for engagement the publisher has ever seen, with potential to make tremendous revenues from in-game microtransactions.

CD Projekt RED just hit a huge milestone for The Witcher 3 sales on PC's biggest platform, and now gets to keep more revenue from every sale.

The Witcher 3's game sales now meet Steam's new revenue split criteria, allowing CD Projekt RED to keep 80% of every game purchase. The game has made more than $50 million in sales revenue since Valve pass a new earnings model, making the acclaimed RPG an even bigger asset for CDPR.

Back in October 2018, Valve announced a new earnings split that favorite high-selling games. If a game sells $10 million, devs get 75% of revenues, and at $50 million, devs keep 80%. The Witcher 3 is one such game and CD Projekt RED will henceforth retain 80% of every copy of The Witcher 3 sold.

Guy "Dr Disrespect" Beahm is expanding into other areas outside of his domination in the streaming game. Now, reports are coming out about the doc signing a deal for a comedic "memoir" to be published.

According to an exclusive report by Hollywood Reporter, the doc has signed a new deal with Gallery Books for a comedic "memoir" titled "Violence. Speed. Momentum. A Memoir by Dr Disrespect". The new book will feature "never-before-told-stories" of the docs incredibly popular character, and "what it's like being the greatest gamer in the history of the universe, and possibly the best overall human being."

Right now, the doc has amassed one of the biggest live streaming followings on the internet, with more than 4 million followers and regular-stream viewers of 20,000+ people, there's no wonder that he wants to branch out into new fields. Back in early December, it was announced that the doc would also be getting a TV show revealing how the doctor became the doctor, more on that story here.

If you can't wait for the next-gen consoles and want to get your hands-on a sweet deal real soon, then Amazon has your back.

Right now, Amazon is running a deal for the most powerful PlayStation console, the PlayStation 4 Pro. At the moment, Amazon is selling the console for $299.98, which is 25% off of its original price of $399.99. If you can't do that math, it means Amazon is discounting the PS4 Pro by $100.01.

Now, if you don't want the full-size PS4 Pro, and would prefer picking up the slim version, Amazon has that discounted as well. The slim PS4 Pro was priced at $299.99 but is now going for $251.95. Amazon has slashed the slim price by 16%, equating to a $48.04 discount.

Modders love adding controversial aspects to the game just to see how far they can push the boundaries. Unfortunately, the games publishers don't really like that, and this is the case for the "Hot Coffee" mod.

Modders added the "Hot Coffee" mod to Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, which added a mini-game that allowed players to engage in animated sexual intercourse. These same modders decided to give Red Dead Redemption 2 the same treatment, enabling players to download and install the mod to have some "fun" in selected in-game locations.

Now, Take-Two Interactive, the publisher for Red Dead Redemption 2, is asking for the modders to take down the mod as it violates the games End User Licence Agreement and Code of Conduct. In response to this request, the modders said that the mod does not contain any nudity or nude models and only uses assets that are already present in the game's files. The full story can be read here.

In a world that is now dominated by the likes of Fortnite and Apex Legends, the grand daddy of battle royale in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds -- or PUBG, is still alive, and very much kicking.

The developers of PUBG have now announced cross party play functionality, which enables Xbox One and PlayStation 4 gamers to team up for a single party and play together. PC players are unfortunately left out of the loop for now, and can't play with their console friends in PUBG just yet.

PUBG's new cross party play feature is limited to the Public Test Server (PTS) right now, before the developer can iron out issues and insert it into the main game. PlayStation 4 gamers can find it in their "Purchased" section of their Library, while Xbox One gamers will discover it in their "My Games and Apps" menu, or the Microsoft Store.

Epic Games has just unleashed Fortnite Chapter 2 - Season 2, introducing a slick new style into the game that feels so much like The Incredibles in its new trailer. Check it out:

The new season of Fortnite has a huge infusion of spies, where gamers will be able to choose a side: Ghost or Shadow, and then complete missions to "earn a battle pass variant" for each of the new characters. There are a bunch of new covert operatives for you to play in Fortnite, something that includes a human-cat hybrid called Meowscles, and a customizable Maya skin that can be morphed to look like any other player in the game.

If you finish the Challenge Table missions and other in-game requirements, Epic says that you'll get 1500 V-Bucks. Not only that, but Deadpool is featured in Fortnite's new chapter, with Epic adding that Deadpool is featured as the "secret" Battle Pass skin, and he will have his own unique set of challenges, too.