Gaming - Page 600

The original game ArcheAge was released back in 2014 and quickly rose to success, garnering many loyal fans. However, many players were turned away from the Pay-to-Win aspects of the game, so the developers decided to offer something new and refreshing. With ArcheAge: Unchained there is no longer a subscription model, players simply need to purchase the game and they can play as much as they want!

Players get to experience the fantasy world they know and love but this time on equal ground. If you're looking forward to jumping into the game but you're not sure where to start, then we have you covered.

If you find yourself running low on storage you can buy the Otherworld Storage Chest from the credit shop. This chest is considered furniture and you can put it in your house. The chest comes with 100 slots where you can store all sorts of items that you don't want to carry around. The chest is also only accessible to you so you don't need to worry about another player sneaking into your house behind you, stealing all your gear, and selling it for ArcheAge Unchained gold.

Nintendo has released update 7.0.0 for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, adding the last fighter for the first Fighters Pass and adding a bunch of changes to a range of different fighters.

Firstly, this is a large update, which isn't surprising because every rounded number update (5.0.0, 6.0.0) are large and come with a lot of changes. Update 7.0.0 contains Byleth, the new DLC character (screenshots below), the Cuphead Hat + Outfit, Atair Hood + Outfit, Rabbids Hat, MegaMan.EXE's Helmet + Armor and X's Helmet for Mii fighters. There have also been a bunch of Spirits added to the Spirit Board as well as a tonne of changes to most of the cast.

Getting into the fighter changes now. It seem that majority of the cast have gotten "Increased shield size". Fighters that received changes are as follows; Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Dark Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox, Pikachu, Captain Falcon, Bowser, Ice Climbers, Sheik, Zelda, Dr. Mario, Pichu, Falco, Young link, Ganondorf, Mewto, Mr. Game & Watch, Meta Knight, Pit, Dark Pit, Zero Suit Samus and Snake.

If a game gets a lot of attention, there's only a matter of time before other developers rip off the core aspects of the title and create their own. So, why hasn't there been a good Pokemon rip off yet?

TemTem is that Pokemon rip off, and it's surprising that other developers haven't already tried to do this. Temtem developer Crema has taken everything great about Pokemon (besides the nostalgia), and applied it to Temtem while also giving the title a fresh visual art style.

The game starts with the players' mom waking you up on the day you are meant to become a Temtem tamer. Then the local professor gifts the player with their very first Temtem (sound familiar?). After that, players kick start their journey of battling wild Temtem, training and capturing them, and, of course, leveling them up to evolve. If you are a Pokemon fan and want to give a Pokemon-inspired game a shot, Temtem is currently available in early access on the Steam Store. A link to the Steam page can be found here.

DOOM Eternal will not have ray tracing support at its launch, and while that might disappoint gamers -- it will be coming. The team at id Software love new technology, but DOOM Eternal's launch will see ray tracing missed.

One thing that DOOM Eternal has for it over any other game is that it'll be the first game powered by id Tech 7, with developer id Software talking about the game in great detail through DOOM Eternal executive producer Marty Stratton. In a recent interview video with Stratton, he said the team at id Software "are the biggest fans of new tech".

Stratton said: "Our tech team, they are the biggest fans of new tech. So it was a little hard to pull everybody off of that because it was the shiny new toy, but when we're talking about getting the game out there and getting it out as close to on time as possible and at the highest polished quality, we kind of had to pull back on that effort".

Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2 are some of the best-selling games of all-time, but now developer Rockstar Games and publisher Take-Two Interactive have a gigantic milestone to celebrate.

The two games have a combined total of over 150 million units worldwide, which is a gigantic milestone in itself. Grand Theft Auto V is the best-selling video game of the last 10 years in US dollar sales alone, while Red Dead Redemption 2 is the top-selling game of the last 4 years in US dollar sales. Both of these games were made by the unstoppable Rockstar Games, which has been on a roll for over a decade.

Now for the sales split, we know that in November 2019 that over 115 million copies of Grand Theft Auto V had been sold, while Red Dead Redemption 2 sales numbers were hitting around 26.5 million units 1 year into its release. This means that nearly 10 million more sales between GTA V and RDR 2 have tallied up in the last 3 months alone.

The first early reports on the Taipei Game Show teased the Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED would be showing off brand new footage from the game, but an update to VG247's original post has squashed those rumors.

CD Projekt RED has said that there are "no plans for new content" at the Taipei Game Show, with VG247 adding that there will be "fresh presentation of content" that "we've seen before". CD Projekt RED has been slowly showing off more and more of Cyberpunk 2077 as time goes on, where I was personally privvy to behind the scenes footage from the game at E3 2019 last year and was blown away.

Cyberpunk 2077 was recently delayed until September 17, 2020 -- but we will see more of it at the Taipei Game Show, and again at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March, and then again at E3 2020 in June before its release in September.

EA and DICE teased the reveal of Battlefield V Chapter 6: Into the Jungle just over 24 hours ago, and now here we are -- the official overview trailer is available for your viewing pleasure below:

Battlefield V Chapter 6: Into the Jungle will see gamers thrown into a new map with Solomon Islands, which has been built from the ground up for close quarter combat. You'll be battling it out in a beautiful Frostbite-powered jungle environment with mangroves, water, and hidden bunkers.

It wouldn't be a new Chapter of Battlefield without new weapons and gadgets, so the team at EA DICE have teased the Type 11 LMG and Model 37 shotgun for the Support class. If you're an Assault class player then you'll be happy to hear you will get your grubby mits on the M2 Carbine, which is going to make for some messy fun in those jungle environments.

Google's new Stadia service is still technically in early access, but it's giving away free games that not everyone can get, creating a kind of gated-off exclusivity aimed at appeasing its userbase at the detriment of possible subscribers.

Stadia is kind of confusing. Right now the service is exclusive to those who bought the $129 premium editions. You can't just buy a $10 a month Stadia Pro membership and call it a day, nor can you play the upcoming free Stadia version. Both simply aren't out yet. Your only option is to buy the expensive bundle or sit and wait until the club opens up and lets you in. This is a tremendously disadvantageous business model for any kind of subscription service that's predicated on widespread accessibility and ease-of-use.

Moreover, those who bought into the Founder's and Premiere Editions also get access to monthly free games. The games rotate out though, just like Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Plus games, so you have to get them while they're still free. So anyone who purchases Stadia on February 1 doesn't get access to last month's free games (Rise of the Tomb Raider and Samurai Shodown). This is pretty rough for someone who bought the early access platform for $129, and annoying for those who just want to jump in and try the service without making a big commitment.

Pokemon Home has two tiers: a $16 a year premium plan, or a very limited free version. Here's what's included with both.

Today GameFreak revealed more details on Pokemon Home, a mobile app that's releasing February 11, and fans might not be too happy. Core features like the Global Trade System and exporting Pokemon from the Pokemon Bank are being locked behind a $15.99 a year subscription fee. That's almost as much as a year's worth of Nintendo Switch Online.

Pokemon Home actually has two software versions: A Nintendo Switch version and a mobile phone app. You'll need to download and use both of them to get access to all the service's features. For example, you can't trade Pokemon in the Switch Pokemon Home version, and you can't export Sword and Shield Pokemon in the mobile version (which makes sense).

Instead of buffering up its game development studios, Microsoft spent up to $30 million on Ninja's exclusive Mixer streaming deal.

In its continuing efforts to monetize engagement and establish digital dominance, Microsoft is spending tens of millions on exclusivity contracts for some of the industry's biggest influencers. The biggest, Tyler Ninja Blevins, joined Microsoft's Mixer platform in August 2019, and many other big fish have followed.

So how much did Ninja earn? According to Ader CEO Justin Warden, Ninja could've made up to $30 million from the Mixer deal. That's almost enough to fund development of a AAA game for Microsoft's Xbox Studios branch (certainly enough for a AA endeavor).

In the past five years, Nintendo's mobile games have accrued over $1 billion from microtransaction spending, analyst firm SensorTower reports.

Nintendo's mobile strategy is paying off big time. Since Super Mario Run's release in 2015, Nintendo has earned over $1 billion in worldwide revenues from its mobile titles. The lion's share of those earnings are from the mega-popular Fire Emblem Heroes, which has pulled in a tremendous $656 million in lifetime revenues, making up roughly 61% of Nintendo's total mobile earnings. The next in line is Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, which raked in just a sixth of those revenues with $131 million.

These games are mostly popular in Nintendo's native country of Japan, though, and haven't gained tremendous traction in other regions. Roughly 54%, or $581 million, of its mobile cash was generated in Japan, whereas the United States made up 29% or $316 million. This makes sense given Japan's appetite for mobile and handheld games.

An admittedly farfetched-sounding rumor says Resident Evil 8 will have zombies, wolf-like monstrosities, and keep the same first-person view from the previous game.

Anonymous unverified sources tell Biohazard Cast via email some interesting (yet outlandish) rumors about Resident Evil 8. The email, which could've been sent by anyone with any kind of info, claims the game will be a slight departure from the series with a focus on being "clever" (a pretty vague description).

The main tidbits say RE8 will star Ethan Winters from Resident Evil 7, hinting at a direct sequel timeline, and be set in an alpine climate with snow and ice. Wolf monsters haunt the nearby forests, the email claims, possibly even werewolves, and zombies return to chew on our brains. Eventually gamers find themselves in a medieval castle which takes on the role of the house in RE7 or the mansion in RE1, and there's a incorporeal female entity constantly haunting and chasing us.

The recent PS5 devkit console revision leak was just a fake, and not even a real one--it was all digital.

That new PlayStation 5 hardware leak was too good to be true. In fact, it was too good to be real. The console itself was rendered by a VFX specialist using Blender and injected into the footage. It wasn't actually physically there, there was no special 3D printed case or hardware mock-up. Just a digital render complete with a PS4-style lightstrip with blinking orange, blue, and white light transitions.

The creator, Oby 1, did a short making of video that confirmed the fake-out. We get to see a step-by-step process on how the bootup screen and the digital console render were made.

The United States and China have signed a new trade pact to dampen 2019's international tariffs while also eliminating the extra 25% tax on video game electronics.

A now-cancelled tariff could've substantially raised the price of next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, both of which may already be expensive enthusiast products priced at $499 each. The new regulations peel back original plans for extra import taxes on vital gaming components.

The previous regulations, which called for a hefty 25% ad valorum tax tacked onto select goods like video game hardware components imported from China, would've disrupted the critical supply chains of major console-makers like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. The Big Three banded together and warned the U.S. government that the tariffs could force costs to rise and affect the economy (higher prices could mean lower sales). Sony in particular delivered two warnings.

Since Microsoft's new pledge to become carbon negative by 2030, a study has surfaced online regarding how much the gaming industry as a whole impacts the environment carbon wise.

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory back in 2019 conducted a study that found that in the United States, the annual carbon emissions from the gaming industry were equal to that of 85 million running refrigerators. Another metric that is equal to that of the gaming industry's carbon footprint is 5 million cars.

Evan Mills, the study's lead author and a research affiliate at the University of California, Berkeley said, "Over time, as the technology marches forward, [gaming systems] become more energy-intensive." Grist.org also explains that even if gaming related devices become more energy-efficient, the devices' overall power consumption can still be increased as video games become more technically demanding. If you are interested in reading more about this, check out this link here.

We know that Sony will be unveiling its next-gen PlayStation 5 in February, but one of those important steps is trademarking the PlayStation 5 -- something that the Japanese giant just applied for in Switzerland.

Our friends at LetsGoDigital have picked up the story, noticing that Sony has applied for the 'PS5' trademark on January 27, 2020 with the IGE IPI (Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property). Sony submitted the application under Class 9, which includes game computers (obviously).

Sony has been step-by-step revealing the PlayStation 5 and has been far ahead of the curve with gamers compared to Microsoft, with far more buzz generated (for free) for the PlayStation 5 versus Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Series X console. The new patent application for the PS5 is yet another step towards Sony's full detailing and unveiling of the PlayStation 5 during the PlayStation Meeting in February, which is just weeks away.

Microsoft recently announced its carbon emission reduction battle plan that will eventually make the company "carbon negative".

According to Grist.org, Microsoft's largest carbon footprint device, out of every device the company makes, is the Xbox. Grist says that a spokesperson from Microsoft said that this is the case due to the amount of electricity people use while playing video games.

An example of just how much carbon this is, take the Xbox One X, each Xbox One X will produce more than 1 ton of carbon emissions over eight-years. 86% of the 1 ton is just from the Xbox One X being used, the remaining 14 percent is from manufacturing, shipping, etc.

Plague Inc has been in the news and making the headlines since the coronavirus outbreak, with the developer of the game having to (and I'm sure reluctantly) address the world about it.

But before that, Plague Inc has seen an infectious rise to the top of the top-paid iOS game chart -- and given that it's a game from 2012 this is quite the achievement. It has forced Plague Inc developer Ndemic Creations to release a statement, saying: "Please remember that Plague Inc. is a game, not a scientific model and that the current coronavirus outbreak is a very real situation which is impacting a huge number of people".

Plague Inc sees you creating the best virus you can, and wiping out the human population on Earth -- since the coronavirus has been spreading, so too has the popularity of the game -- and especially so in China.

The Terminator is making more appearances in games than ever before, with the T-800 featured in both Mortal Kombat 11 and Gears 5 last year -- but now it will be showing up in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.

Ubisoft took to their official Twitter account for Ghost Recon saying "The future is almost here. The Terminator arrives January 29". There's an update expected for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint at around the same time, which will fix issues with the game and introduce the Terminator at the same time.

We don't know how long the Terminator will be featured in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, but it should be similar to the introduction of the Predator in Ghost Recon: Wildlands. That was a limited-time event where gamers had to hide from the devastating Predator, and then had to battle it out in the end. The event with the Terminator in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint should be similar, but it's just too bad Breakpoint itself isn't the greatest game.

Battlefield V was released in November 2018 and the team at EA and DICE and since then the development team has been steady on pushing out content for the game.

Even with player counts not anywhere near as strong as another EA game in Respawn's Apex Legends. Up next, is Chapter 6: Into the Jungle. EA DICE will be detailing Into the Jungle on January 28 at 9AM EST, so bookmark this post or the embedded video above so you can check out the trailer once it drops.

We are to expect a full gameplay video and feature breakdown of Into the Jungle, and I'm sure an ETA of when Battlefield V Chapter 6 will drop, which hopefully won't be too far away. EA DICE won't have the next-gen Battlefield out for a while, so this will have to wet out appetite until 2021 at the earliest.