Gaming - Page 594

Square Enix wants to use AI neural networks and machine learning to help identify bugs and glitches and take some of the stress from QA testing.

While cruising Square Enix's job listings I found something rather interesting: The company's Advanced Technology Division, which is responsible for high-tech R&D, is hiring an AI-based QA automation researcher with the aim to "efficiently reduce the amount of manual labor on game QA."

Right now the listing is just for R&D, meaning we shouldn't expect it to translate to games any time soon. Given Square Enix's penchant for years-long development cycles and long-winded, expansive, and finely-articulated experiences, any effort to help QA will ship games faster. The sooner bugs are identified, the sooner devs can squash them and optimize the game, and the sooner it hits store shelves.

The release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's 7.0.0 update, which added the new DLC character Byleth also added some fan-favorite skins for Mii Gunner - Cuphead.

In celebration of Cuphead making it over to Nintendo's representative fighter, a new spirit board event is being held in their honor. The new event will run for five days and add four new spirits from Cuphead to the spirit board. Players will be able to pick up these spirits starting on February 14th.

In other Super Smash Bros. Ultimate news, a recent rumor surfaced online in regards to Kingdom Hearts' main Sora, not making it as a DLC fighter. The rumor suggested that it was Disney's fault and not Nintendo's for not letting Sora be apart of the games Fighter Pass. More on that story can be found here.

Epic Games has a new president with Adam Sussman joining the ranks of the Fortnite developer and Unreal Engine creator, with Sussman having held VP positions with some of the largest companies in the industry.

Sussman confirmed the news on his personal LinkedIn account, with a large resume that incldues VP roles at EA, Disney, Take-Two, and Disney -- and was the former chief digital officer of Nike. Sussman wrote on his LinkedIn post: "After 5.5 great years at Nike, I have decided to move on to my next opportunity as President of Epic Games".

He continued: "Nike is an amazing brand, I got a chance to work with many great people and I am so proud of what we accomplished together. While it's bittersweet, I am so excited to join Epic and honored to be part of the remarkable team that has built one of the biggest games in the world. 2020 will be a big year for me and my wife, 3 kids and two dogs...A return to gaming, a move to North Carolina and an opportunity to help change the future of gaming".

Overwatch has passed the 50 million playher milestone across all platforms, something we learned during Activision's recent Q4 2019 earnings report.

Blizzard's hit first-person shooter has now passed 50 million players, joining massive games like Apex Legends, League of Legends, and others with tens of millions of players across the PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo platforms.

Overwatch 2 was recently announced at BlizzCon 2019 but currently has no release date, it could be released later this year in 2020 or next year in 2021. Blizzard is currently building a cross-platform engine that will power future Blizzard games, a new engine that could power Overwatch 2 -- but nothing is sorted there.

Infinity Ward is rolling out a new system that'll let you custom install what content you actually want to save hard drive space.

Modern Warfare just got a huge 51GB patch on PS4, which skyrocketed up to 68GB on Xbox One. Needless to say gamers weren't happy to download an update the size of some full-length games. The massive patch included season 2 content, assets for the new Warzone battle royale mode, and an interesting new system that'll help save space in the long run.

According to Modern Warfare production director Paul Haile, season 2's patch came with a new delivery method baked in that will eventually streamline installation. As the game grows with tons of new content, Infinity Ward knows Modern Warfare will eventually swell and fill up storage real fast. So it and wants to give users options to help save space--the alternative is deleting MW to play something else.

A new Prince of Persia game is coming, but it's not something consumers can take home and play. Instead it's an interactive VR escape room game at VRcades across the globe.

Today Ubisoft announced Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time, the next installment in Blue Byte's interactive group-friendly VR games.

The new Prince of Persia VR escape room game sees a team of up to four players using time manipulation powers and critical thinking skills to solve puzzles and overcome obstacles. This kind of thing is exactly what virtual reality was made for and actually sounds like a total blast. Blue Byte promises the VR game incorporates the legendary time mechanic found in the original trilogy, allowing gamers to freeze, slow, and rewind time.

Today EA announced it's handing the Need for Speed game series back to Criterion Games, and is making some big changes to the current NFS devs at Ghost Games.

Ghost Games, the team behind Need for Speed Rivals, the 2015 reboot, Payback, and NFS: Heat, is no longer the developer of EA's racing franchise. Criterion Games (NFS Burnout Paradise, Most Wanted) will now take over the series at its Guildford, UK branch.

EA is also shaking up Ghost Games as part of the new plan and up to 30 people could lose their jobs. Right now Ghost Games has three studios: one in Guildford, UK, one in Gothenburg, Sweden, and one in Bucharest, Romania. The studio's UK branch is being merged with Criterion (the two teams work in the same office, so there's no real impact). The Bucharest studio's fate remains unknown.

Geoff Keighley today announced he won't be hosting this year's E3 Coliseum event in June, a move that will radically change the content and quality of the event.

The annual E3 Coliseum events are pretty huge for gamers and for writers like me. It's a series of long interviews with game-makers that brings new perspectives and tons of new info about upcoming projects. As the host, Keighley has a natural knack for leading the conversation in a way that's extremely informative and interesting; he's always lightly pushing, prodding, and trying to extract key info right from the source. And a lot of the time it works.

Now this year Keighley says he won't be at the show. He's simply not comfortable with the ESA's new re-branded focus for E3, which sees the once-industry exclusive event opening up to mainstream gamers. And today's info leak didn't help things either.

UPDATE: The ESA confirmed Nintendo will be at E3 2020 in a recent press release.

Today the ESA accidentally left the backdoor to E3 2020's website open and revealed the current exhibitor's list, which is missing some important names.

As it stands right now, only 18 game publishers and studios have confirmed attendance at E3 2020. The list, which was accidentally leaked out this morning, doesn't include heavy-hitters like Microsoft or Nintendo. This has led many to believe that Nintendo is joining Sony in skipping this year's E3, but the exhibitor's list isn't yet finalized, so the Big N could still show up (Microsoft has confirmed it'll be at the show).

A PlayStation 5 icon reportedly popped up on the PS Japan website, showing the V-shaped devkit design. This is most likely a Photoshop fake.

Next-gen fever has set in, leading to rampant speculation, faked images, mock-ups, and reports. The latest is a supposed photo of Sony's Japanese PlayStation website that has a very interesting-looking PS5 icon at the top. The idea is Sony accidentally updated the website to include the PS5, then promptly took it down. At the time of writing there is no PS5 listing in the PS Japan product page section.

There's some big issues with this story. Only one image exists, which is pretty fishy in of itself. If Sony had actually uploaded a PS5 icon, more than one person would've spotted it and we'd see it everywhere. I also combed over archived versions of the PS Japan mainsite from yesterday and there's nothing to be found. If it is accurate, and with the very slim chance that no one else spotted it, Sony must've updated it today before anyone archived the page.

YouTuber and self-proclaimed professional sweatlord SpudHunter annihilates the cyberdemon boss in Doom Eternal, showing us how buttery-smooth and chaotic the shooter can be.

Doom Eternal is absolutely bonkers. The game's slayer gates, which are basically contained arena slaughterfests, have a heart-thumping pace that's straight out of a Quake Champions match. A new bit of gameplay footage from SpudHunter exhibits the pure havoc of Doom Eternal's dance of death; all the mad dashing, double-jumps, circling, comboing with weapons, glory kills, and of course ridiculously powerful enemies at every turn.

Just like a deathmatch map, the environments are just tailor-made for you to bounce around and unleash carnage. The footage shows some rather explosive (and ridiculous) weapons like a four-barreled mini-gun, and even a super shotgun grappling hook mod that catches enemies on fire while yanking you towards them. And yes, there's a crossbow that shoots arcs of lava.

Well, Activision-Blizzard has just fired a gigantic warning shot towards NVIDIA by removing massive games from its just-launched game streaming service GeForce Now.

NVIDIA has announced that Activision-Blizzard have removed its entire catalog of games, something that includes massive favorites like the World of Warcraft franchise, the Call of Duty franchise, Overwatch, and more. NVIDIA said in a statement: "While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to reenable these games and more in the future".

It seems things have changed from the GeForce Now beta to the full launch, as NVIDIA was talking to the companies before its launch to make sure they were all good with their games being launched on its upcoming-but-now-launched game streaming service. It seems Activision-Blizzard could've made a last minute change, or screwed NVIDIA over completely. I don't think we'll ever know what happened here.

A new leaked image purportedly shows Modern Warfare's new battle royale mode, Warzone, and it might be free-to-play.

It looks like some internal promo images for Modern Warfare's Warzone BR mode have leaked out, punctuating the recent battle royale hints from Infinity Ward. Users speculate Warzone could be a standalone free-to-play version that won't require Modern Warfare.

This seems iffy to me, especially given the recent update's additions, but it's possible we could see Warzone offered within Modern Warfare as well as outside of it too, complete with bonuses for season pass holders. This would promote maximum engagement and reach via two of gaming's most potent moneymakers: free-to-play and cross-play. Right now Activision-Blizzard is doubling-down on live services and "new engagement models," and this cross-synergy could be big for the brand.

At one point Cliff Bleszinski's now-closed studio, Boss Key Productions, was in talks to make a brand new shooter based in the Alien franchise...and it sounds pretty damn cool.

Games are constantly cancelled, delayed, or put in cold storage for years. Most of the time we don't get to hear about these projects, but sometimes we get slivers of info that give us an idea of what could've been. Gears of War and Unreal developer Cliff Bleszinski just gave us an a glimpse at an interesting-sounding Aliens shooter that could've been absolutely huge.

Before Boss Key Productions shut down, Bleszinski wanted to make an FPS based around the Alien franchise. The game would've starred a grown-up (and fairly bad-ass) Newt from the 1986 Aliens film and took place on Earth. Ripley would show up, but she'd be a kind of mother that guided you through the game. Newt would also have her own android sidekick just like Ash or Bishop.

A new progress report from Naughty Dog confirms The Last of Us Part II is in the last leg of development.

A bit ago, Naughty Dog delayed their grisly post-apocalyptic sequel to May 2020 because they needed more time to polish and refine. Now the studio says the game is right on track for its new revised launch. Of course there was no talk of the intense crunch the studio is known for, or discussions about how difficult it may have been to make The Last of Us Part II run on the base PS4, the PS4 Pro, and optimize it for the upcoming PlayStation 5 (the latter of which probably inspired the three-month delay).

"We are thrilled to say that we've entered the final stretch of production and are putting the finishing touches on The Last of Us Part II as you read this. The end of development puts us one very large step closer to launch. We know all of you have been so patient over the last few years, so it's been thrilling to see our game taking on its final shape and knowing that means it will be in your hands soon," Naughty Dog director of communications Arne Meyer said in a PlayStation Blog post.

Modern Warfare's new 1.14 patch update is as big as a full AAA game, and may include assets for the upcoming battle royale mode.

Today Infinity Ward rolled out Patch 1.14 for Modern Warfare's big second season, and it's a doozy. The update clocks in at 51GB on PS4, 68GB on Xbox One, and 67GB on PC. A lot of the update replaces existing files in the game while also adding new season 2 content like maps (Rust is coming back), operators (Ghost is back!), weapons, modes, and more.

What's particularly interesting is the disparity between the 1.14 patch notes and the update file size. There's really no reason for it to take up this much space...unless it also includes Modern Warfare's anticipated (and leaked) battle royale mode. Infinity Ward placed several BR hints in the game, and there's a new section marked classified in the startup menu.

Today 2K Games finally revealed Michael Condrey's new studio, 31st Union, and gives brief details about the team's upcoming game.

2K's Silicon Valley studio has re-branded to 31st Union, a new games studio that ex-Sledgehammer dev Michael Condrey took over in February 2019. While not explicitly outlined in the press release, we know that 31st Union's first game is a multiplayer-driven project (2K loves engagement and monetization, after all).

The announcement confirms what we already know. The Call of Duty and Dead Space vet is making a brand new IP for Take-Two Interactive's 2K Games label, but job listings from June 2019 frame the dimensions of the new IP. "Our first effort is to build a multiplayer and multiplatform AAA action game which will thrill a diverse community of gamers and have fun while doing it," reads a now defunct listing.

Microsoft might have a magic ace up its sleeve, with the ability to upscale low-res textures in real-time using AI. This could become a big thing for Microsoft headed into the next-gen console battle between the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

The work is coming from Playfab, a company that Microsoft acquired back in early 2018, that worked on making tools for back-end games support in the cloud. Playfab founder James Gwertzman is working at the company as the GM, using the power of Microsoft's huge Azure network and has recently talked with GamesBeat on some of the things he and his team are working on.

Gwertzman teases: "One of the studios inside Microsoft has been experimenting with using ML models for asset generation. It's working scarily well. To the point where we're looking at shipping really low-res textures and having ML models uprez the textures in real-time. You can't tell the difference between the hand-authored high-res texture and the machine-scaled-up low-res texture, to the point that you may as well ship the low-res texture and let the machine do it".

The Switch isn't very powerful, but it doesn't need to be. It's versatility, utility, and mobility has sparked tremendous hardware and software sales while also pushing many of gaming's biggest publishers to squeeze their AAA games onto the limited-power platform. Now Nintendo talks about the idea behind compromising with a low-spec system.

In a recent Fiscal Year Q3'19 Q&A session with investors, Nintendo executives discussed key points about the Switch business. One of the more interesting tidbits sees the company arguing against a higher-end 4K-ready Switch Pro upgrade by emphasizing creativity, innovation, and uniqueness over raw performance and hardware specs.

Nintendo execs say the Switch simply wouldn't exist if the company put more importance on power. As the natural combined evolution of the 3DS and the Wii U, it's only logical for Nintendo to focus more on adequately joining the two platforms in any way possible, even it meant compromises in hardware performance.

Activision makes good on its promise with content blowouts in Modern Warfare, revealing an absolute metric ton of new goodies coming to the game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's season 2 content is pretty robust. Most notably we see Ghost returning to the game as a playable operator as well as the classic Rust map, complemented by a slew of new guns, modes, and maps across various gametypes.

There's a marked discrepancy between the free and paid battle passes though, and you'll have to spend 2400 CP ($19.99) on the premium battle pass to unlock Ghost. Other operators are coming to the game too via the Call of Duty Store.