Gaming - Page 606

If you are a big Harry Potter fan and also find yourself spending hours in Minecraft enjoying some building, then you are in luck as you can go to Hogwarts if you like.

The Floo Network has posted a new video to their YouTube Channel that reveals what can only be considered as a Harry Potter fan's dream, but playable in Minecraft. Players can attend the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, cast spells, learn new ones, traverse the halls of Hogwarts, complete quests/puzzles, explore a Harry Potter-themed map, trade-in Diagon alley and find new items.

Players will also be able to explore famous locations that were present throughout the Harry Potter series, such as the Quidditch fields, Hagrid's house, the Weasley house, and more. This isn't just a small "map" added to Minecraft. This is more like an entire new Harry Potter game inside of Minecraft. It would have taken the creators of this map hundreds if not thousands of hours to create this map at this level of detail. At the moment, we don't know when it's going to release, but we do know that it will be released for free.

The bushfires that are currently sweeping across Australia have ravaged not only people's homes but many square miles of wildlife. Infinity Ward has recognized this and is going to be donating 100% of the proceeds of a DLC pack to the countries recovery.

In a new Twitter post on the official Infinity Ward Twitter account, the studio announced that as a part of their efforts to support the rebuilding of what the bushfires caused they will be "donating 100% of Activision's net proceeds from each purchase of the "Outback" pack." In the Twitter post, they detail that they have renamed the pack to the "Outback Relief Pack" and that until January 31st, all purchases from all platforms will be donated.

For those who have already purchased the pack, Activision has said that your purchases will be counted as a donation. So how much is the "Outback Relief Pack"? Activision has priced the pack at 1,8000 CoD points, which equates to about $20. The pack includes new skins such as the Bushranger operator skin, a koala charm, and some other cool little cosmetics. Please support the bushfires in Australia. They have caused terrible damage to not only people and their lives but also the land. Every little bit helps.

There's no doubt that online gaming has a big stigma that surrounds it; harassment, flaming online, hacking and bullying. Sometimes that isn't all that happens though, and sometimes online gaming can save lives.

January 2nd could of ended a whole lot worse for 17-year-old Aiden Jackson who lives in the United Kingdom town of Widnes. While he was gaming with his 20-year-old friend Dia Lathora who is located in Texas, they were speaking to each other in a call and then Jackson suddenly stopped talking. In panic, Lathora attempted to ask Jackson if he was ok, and there was no reply, she then proceeded to do something amazing.

Lathora decided to call emergency services in Jackson's area, "When he didn't respond I instantly started to look up the emergency number for the EU." She managed to get into contact with Jackson's local emergency services, which rushed to his house and surprised his confused parents. The police and Jackson's parents found Jackson upstairs having a seizure. Jackson said to Sky News, "Next thing I knew, I was waking up with police and my parents in my room, saying that I'd just had a seizure".

At the start of October 2019, the developers behind Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey had to opt-out of game development due to poor sales. Since then, the Mario & Luigi series has taken a bit of a back seat until now.

According to a new trademark filed by Nintendo America found by LetsGoDigital, the Mario & Luigi series might not necessarily be completely dead. The new trademark has been filed in Argentina for new Mario & Luigi "Computer game cartridges; game memory cards; computer game software; video game memory cards; interactive entertainment software to play video games; covers for mobile phones."

It should be noted that this trademark covers "mobile phones", which could mean that the next Mario & Luigi game (if there is one being developed) could be a mobile-based game that isn't arriving on the Nintendo Switch. Hopefully, Nintendo does bring back the series as its been going since the Game Boy Advance generation back in 2003. If Nintendo is making a new Mario & Luigi game, would you like to see it on the Nintendo Switch or mobile? In my personal opinion, I'd prefer it on the Nintendo Switch if it's still going to play like the original games.

Untitled Goose Game is one of those unique titles out there, and is a simple yet extremely effective creation from indie developer House House. But why is it so successful?

The games composer, Dan Golding is scratching his head at this question as in a recent interview he expressed that it is has been "kind of weird" since the game has reached extreme levels of success. The games co-creator Nico Disseldorp said after the game sold 100,000 copies that the studio can "go on and keep making video games as long as we like now". The title recently passed 10x those sales with 1 million copies sold.

In an interview with GamesBeat, Golding said that "It was this weird, several stage process where for the first few days, almost the first whole week, we're like, 'Yeah, cool, people like this game. That's great. It's getting good reviews'. Then I remember one morning I woke up and Chrissy Teigen had tweeted out a photo of her and John Legend [buying the game] and was just - I have no frame of reference to understand what's happening. And I still don't, really. It's just been kind of weird from then on out."

Today Sony confirmed it won't be at E3 2020, and neither will the PlayStation 5, lining up with inside sources and our suppositions. Instead Sony plans to host and attend hundreds of events to showcase PlayStation's present and future.

It's official: Sony is skipping E3 2020, making it the second time in the last two decades it missed the event. Sony announced the news to GamesIndustry.biz with a statement that promises big things for PlayStation throughout the year. It's just these things won't include E3. There was no announcement of the rumored PlayStation 5 reveal event in February, though.

"After thorough evaluation SIE has decided not to participate in E3 2020. ...We do not feel the vision of E3 2020 is the right venue for what we are focused on this year.

Those Assassin's Creed Ragnarok Amazon listings were made as bait to lure out "unprofessional games journalism".

Photo: Michael Weisheim Beresin

Twitter user xJ0nathan confesses to making fake Amazon listings for the new viking-themed Assassin's Creed. The bogus pre-order listing was made simply to see how many websites would report on it without tracing the image back to the source, who revealed the images were fake just a day later. The whole thing is a scathing critique on games reporting.

Game Pass is one of the most potent and transformative forces in the games industry right now. It benefits Microsoft by selling games and keeping subs active, but also has a massively positive effect for developers.

Game Pass gives developers one of the most vital pieces of the game-selling puzzle: Visibility. The subscription offers such a wide breadth of content and gamers are eager to sample everything from AAA hits to obscure indies they never heard of. This accessibility to games is extremely beneficial to independent developers because it actually helps them sell more games--Game Pass sparks full game sales--while earning money from being on Game Pass to begin with. This level of engagement affords a kind of freedom that fosters a new level of creativity and innovation.

According to Outer Wilds developer Mobius Digital, Game Pass allows devs to buffer risks while making the games they actually want to make. Having this level of exposure mitigates the potential downside of making weird and eccentric games.

Six months after launch, Bethesda optimizes its multiplayer-driven Wolfenstein game for NVIDIA's raytracing tech.

Raytracing is a game-changer that breathes a new level of immersion and visual quality in specific games. We've seen it in Control, whose reflections are absolutely dazzling with RTX on, and now the same enhancements are coming to Wolfenstein: Youngblood.

MachineGames today released a patch that not only tightens up frame rates and optimizations across the board, but adds in RTX support. The game is kind of a strange choice for raytracing--it's a game based around co-op multiplayer and engagement where fidelity doesn't necessarily matter as much as it would in singleplayer FPS titles--but it's nonetheless a shooter set in a kind of small-scale, verticalized world with a stylized Nazi-occupied 80's vibe. So there's plenty of opportunities to show off the new lighting and reflection effects.

Grand Theft Auto IV was pulled from Steam because of the now-defunct Games for Windows Live, but it's coming back to PC at some point.

Rockstar recently removed GTA IV from Steam, prompting lots of speculation on a remaster. That's not the case. Rockstar simply yanked the game because it was tooled to run on Microsoft's old Games for Windows Live platform. Now that Microsoft has abandoned G4WL, Rockstar can't actually make new game keys to sell on Steam. The devs have every intention to keep selling the beloved Liberty City-based sequel...but for that to happen they have to change things around.

"Grand Theft Auto IV was originally created for the Games For Windows Live platform. With Microsoft no longer supporting Games For Windows Live, it is no longer possible to generate the additional keys needed to continue selling the current version of the game. We are looking at other options for distributing GTA IV for PC and will share more information as soon as we can," Rockstar told The Verge.

Microsoft has a bunch of new Xbox IPs in development at its newly-fortified Xbox Game Studios platform, and most of them should be franchises rather than one-and-done experiences.

Microsoft has clear ambitions for its new wholly-owned IPs: To turn them into engagement-driven titles that can stretch across entire generations and easily translate to other platforms. In a recent interview with MCV UK, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty lightly discusses this new plan. Essentially Microsoft wants to invest in IPs that will carry across years similar to Halo and Minecraft, while tying into transmedia content to boot. This strongly hints new IPs from Obsidian and The Coalition could be heavy-hitters.

"We need to continue building characters, stories, and worlds that can transcend generations, devices, and platforms," Booty said.

There's a juicy rumor going around concerning the future of Star Wars, and Disney might merge films and games together in big cinematic universe-style approach.

According to reports from Making Star Wars.net, Disney plans to inextricably tie Star Wars films and movies together in an ambitious transmedia network centered around a new era. The plan is called Project Luminous, and its new timeline will be 400 years before the Skywalker saga and set in the High Republic timeline which predates the Old Republic saga, sources tell the outlet.

The theme of this new saga is largely based on grandiose exploration, and will be a series of films rather than a trilogy. The next Star Wars game will apparently be a direct tie-in to this new focus--which hints at a later release--that kicks off an expansive ecosystem of games, comics, movies, shows, and more. The idea is to mold this new Star Wars era into a sphere of products and content that can release over years and years.

Gaming's biggest speedrunning marathon celebrated its 10th anniversary this year and pulled in over $3 million for cancer research.

Every year the world's best speed runners come together to break games right before our eyes. Awesome Games Done Quick is an annual spectacle of prowess, skill, and determination, a kind of Olympics for video game speed runs that raises millions for charity in the process. This year was no different, and AGDQ generated over $3.13 million in 24 hours for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

To date, Awesome Games Done Quick has raised over $25 million for multiple charities including the Prevent Cancer Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, AbleGamers, and Organization for Autism Research.

Games industry analyst Daniel Ahmad warns that most of the current Assassin's Creed rumors and leaks are wrong. Case in point: The game isn't even called Ragnarok.

Photo: Caiomm

Earlier today someone posted up another "leaked" image from the new unannounced viking-themed Assassin's Creed game. The community ripped the insanely blurry photo apart (a predictable reaction) and some industry figures in-the-know stepped in for brief clarifications.

The batcycle is likely returning in Warner Bros. Montreal's mysterious Batman game--or was at least planned at some point.

According to concept artist Furio Tedeschi's LinkedIn page, WB Montreal's new unannounced Batman game may feature the batcycle for the first time since Lego Batman 2 in 2011. Tedeschi had a brief two-month stint at WB Montreal in 2014, hinting the project has been in development for quite awhile. This timing puts Tedeschi's work alongside the now-cancelled Suicide Squad game that WB Montreal was originally developing before moving on to the current Batman project, but the artist's CV explicitly states work was on an "unreleased Batman game."

The page says Tedeschi created concept art for the batcycle as well as 3D modeling for in-game use. It's unknown whether or not Tedeschi's work will actually show up in the game--lots of content is scrapped over the years as games continually get cut and shifted--and it's possible the game Tedeschi was helping shape no longer exists. WB Montreal eventually rebooted its planned Damian Wayne sequel into something more grand, but we could still see old concepts including the batcycle show up.

Konami, take note: This is what your next-gen Metal Gear Solid should look like.

Concept artist Furio Tedeschi's Metal Gear Solid-inspired work gives us a riveting look at what's possible with Konami's next mainline tactical espionage game (if there even is a next game).

The art itself is from last year, but is nonetheless a visually striking fusion of man and high-tech machine optimized for next-gen warfare. Most of the art reminds me more of Call of Duty mixed with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance--especially the last one with the wicked dual-katana wielding femme fatale. It's worth noting that this art isn't official and doesn't represent a new project that's in development, but instead is Tedeschi's musings on the landmark franchise.

ShankMods has done it again. First he made a Wii out of an Altoids tin, then a portable handled Wii with GameCube buttons. Now the modder has fabricated custom GameCube JoyCons that slide right onto the Switch's rails.

The Switch has so much untapped potential for interchangable retro JoyCons. Cut a controller in half, slap some rails on it and voila, the Switch is a time machine for old-school games. The biggest variant everyone wants to see is actual GameCube JoyCons. If Nintendo won't do it, modders will.

By adding attachable GameCube controllers to the Switch's sides, renowned tinkerer ShankMods has pieced together a fantastic Frankenstein gaming creation that merges past with present. The result is a fully-functioning GameCube-JoyCon hybrid that plays like an old-school controller with new-school tech like HD Rumble, gyroscopic tracking, and Amiibo support.

UPDATE: Sony confirms it'll be skipping E3 2020.

"We will build upon our global events strategy in 2020 by participating in hundreds of consumer events across the globe. Our focus is on making sure fans feel part of the PlayStation family and have access to play their favorite content. We have a fantastic line up of titles coming to PlayStation 4, and with the upcoming launch of PlayStation 5, we are truly looking forward to a year of celebration with our fans."

Sony plans to skip E3 2020 for the second year in a row, sources tell Video Game Chronicle.

UPDATE: Games analyst Daniel Ahmad asserts most leaked Assassin's Creed info is erroneous and based on Kotaku's reports. Take the following with a whole salt-shaker.

A new 4Chan leak may reveal some tidbits about Ubisoft's new Viking-themed Assassin's Creed, including a possible September 2020 launch date and other gameplay features.

Photo: Peter Jackson

Both Microsoft and Sony assert that they won't lock current-gen console owners out of first-party games when the PS5 and Xbox Series X launch in 2020.

Next-gen isn't a full step forward, nor will it instantly cancel out existing consoles. Instead next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are extensions of current-gen ecosystems, and will eventually claim ownership over services, software, and accessories. Synergy is a big theme of next-gen and the model is predicated on bringing the past forward. But the transitional period between current- and next-gen could last multiple years as developers gain more confidence in the new hardware, and as sales mature as gamers buy into the new generational leap. This hand-off phase between gens is very sensitive, and it's absolutely critical for Microsoft and Sony to do things just right. The best way to handle the transition is keeping next-gen exclusives at a minimum, at least when it comes to first-party titles.

Today Microsoft revealed that all of its first-party games will come to all Xbox consoles for the next two years. There won't be any games exclusive to the Xbox Series X for a long while.