Gaming - Page 607

There's a ridiculous rumor floating around the Xbox Series X will have a "Windows Mode" that lets you natively run a PC version of Windows 10, complete with access to programs like Steam and the Epic Store. This won't ever happen.

First off, all Xbox consoles technically run Windows 10. It's just a pared-down version built on the OneCore OS platform complete with an Edge browser built right in. There's limitations, of course, and for good reason, because Microsoft still wants you to subscribe to its productivity services outside of the console space. Consoles are for gaming and multimedia, not productivity. The Xbox Series X will carry these limitations forward and focus on gaming, streaming, and media-oriented subscriptions--that's the whole reason Xbox even exists.

Secondly, I don't think this really needs to be said, but there's no possible way Microsoft would allow access to competing storefronts on its own first-party hardware. That's an absolutely terrible recipe for lost profits and revenues. Yes, Xbox is much more open than it used to be in the old Unified Windows Platform days where Microsoft tried to lock its PC games behind a special new format. And yes, Microsoft has unified PC gaming and console gaming together using Xbox as a bridge. But they're still two separate platforms. Microsoft doesn't care about selling consoles to PC gamers any more, and instead it wants to sell access to PC gamers: Access to services like Game Pass and games sold on Steam and the Windows Store.

If you happened to miss it, Steam just ended their annual Steam Winter sale, but don't get sad because there is another major sale around the corner.

The benefits of being a PC gamer is the rolling sales and Valve is here to represent that fact. Valve has sent out a message to their partners regarding the Steam Lunar New Year sale. According to the message the sale is planned to start on January 23rd and will end on January 27th.

Unfortunately the message didn't come with any information regarding what specific games/genre would be on sale when it begins. All we can hope for is major discounts across all titles and genres and a chance to snag some great deals on some great titles. When the sales start I will follow up with a summary on the best deals you can buy.

After the massive success of Resident Evil 2 Remake, Capcom has decided to keep the success ball rolling with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis Remake. Will the game be exactly the same as it's 1999 counterpart?

For a short answer, no, it will not. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis will be arriving with a majority of the same features that the original game possesses, but some select features will be dropped. What will be arriving with the game is a full remake of the original story, and a new multiplayer experience called Resident Evil: Resistance.

According to the latest issue of Official PlayStation Magazine UK, Capcom Producer Peter Fabiano was asked whether the remake would have multiple endings like the 1999 original. In short, Fabiano simply said "no", but he didn't clear up whether or not players will be able to have multiple paths towards the single endings or whether or not it would just be a linear path. Mercenaries mode also didn't quite make the cut, as it was replaced with Resistance.

If you're an old school gamer like me you would've spent countless hours destroying your keyboard (no mice were for gaming back then, nubs) playing Doom and its sequel, Doom 2.

But now, Bethesda is upcoming the original Doom 1 and Doom 2 with a bunch of new features including the ability to crank right up to the where-glorious-gaming-begins 60FPS. The company will be adding in a bunch of community-created content features, where Bethesda will be curating, and approving them before they're made available.

Doom and Doom 2 will see the community-driven updates and 60FPS goodness delivered through the Bethesda launcher. You'll get glorious 60FPS support as well as improved support, and quick save and quick load functions.

Niantic gripped the mobile gaming world with its gigantic release of Pokemon GO, which has been a money printing machine since its launch. But how well did the game do in 2019? Very well.

Pokemon GO been downloaded over 1 billion times so far, with 55 million downloads in 2019 alone and has made over $3 billion since its release -- but it made a record $894 million in player spending 2019 alone. Niantic has an approximate valuation of $4 billion back in December 2018, where they raised $200 million in capital.

Over 1/3 of the player spending for Pokemon GO is coming from the US, with $335 million spent by players in the game. Pokemon GO is super-dominate in the location-based game world, where it makes more than the 6 other location-based games on the market, combined.

Gamespot recently said the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo would release alongside the main game on March 3, 2020. This isn't accurate and Gamespot later dialed back its claims. The truth is no one really knows when it'll drop...but history tells us it'll launch before release.

Square Enix can't be happy about the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo situation. Not only do we know a demo is on the way, but files for the demo were leaked out and extensively datamined to uncover spoilers, character images, file size info, and much, much more. At this point the cat's out of the bag, right? It might be time to launch the demo for PS4 gamers to sample especially with the game's release in just two months.

Since the leak, Square Enix has been silent on the demo. There's been no announcements, confirmations, or reveals, just radio silence. All we know for sure is that it's probably not dropping on March 3. So when should it drop? Pretty soon, given the publisher's past handling of demos.

GameFreak confirms Pokemon Home is coming next month, and it'll be a paid service just like Pokemon Bank.

Pokemon Home is basically Pokemon Bank 2.0, and the cloud service will also cost money like its predecessor. Pokemon Bank was super cheap at just $5 a year so expect Home to reflect that pricing. The service has extensive exporting and importing support across multiple platforms and games: Pokemon Home is compatible with and allows transfers between Pokemon GO, the Pokemon Bank, and soon Pokemon Sword and Shield.

The new $30 Pokemon Sword and Shield expansions add over 200 existing Pokemon to the Galar region, so users will be able to import pocket monsters from the Pokemon Bank and inject them right into the Switch RPG. You won't have to own the new expansions to play your classic Pokemon in Sword and Shield though. As long as the Pokemon are actually included with the update, you can import your existing Pokemon for free.

We've got some bad news for Prince of Persia fans out there: Ubisoft isn't making a new game any time soon.

According to a purported leak, Ubisoft will reveal a new Prince of Persia game during Sony's rumored PlayStation 5 reveal event in February. The leak goes into light details on the game's setting--a somber Babylon--and touches upon villains and even a God of War-esque ability system. Too bad it's totally fake.

Games analyst Daniel Ahmad, who has knowledge of goings-on in the industry, says this is completely fake. Honestly it's not too hard to make that assessment. We avoided covering it because it was beyond shaky to begin with--it reads like one of those "my uncle works at Ubisoft" posts--and only has traces and snippets of info.

GameFreak reveals a solution to the devastatingly disappointing Dexit fiasco, and it's wrapped around DLC.

Today GameFreak announced a $30 Pokemon Sword/Shield expansion pass and its plans to further evolve the new Switch RPG. The expansion pass comes with two DLCs, the Isle of Armor (June 2020) and the Crown Tundra (Fall 2020), both of which add new Pokemon, Gigantamax options for starters, new items, and new areas to explore. But the most ambitious feature is the inclusion of more classic existing Pokemon in the Galar region.

Pokemon Sword and Shield launched with lots of missing Pokemon. Now GameFreak reveals its plan to fix some of those holes in the massive lineup. Pokemon Home, the new multi-platform Pokemon Bank cloud service, will go live in February and allows users to export pocket monsters they've caught from 3DS, Pokemon Go, and even Switch games. Using Pokemon Home, gamers will be able to import Pokemon they've caught right into Sword and Shield when the expansion pass goes live. There's some limitations though and not every Pokemon will be supported.

Steady progress is being made on Atari VCS testing and it should meet its set March 2020 launch for Indiegogo backers.

Atari's new PC-like VCS console might be an iffy proposition in a landscape dominated by the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch, but the project isn't swirling development hell. After multiple delays, Atari now says the Ryzen-powered is in the late stages of testing and validation.

"The Atari VCS engineers and factory teams are in the later testing and validation phases of production and are returning to China this month to oversee ongoing production efforts," reads a recent update.

UPDATE: WB Montreal has uploaded yet another teaser image that hints at six different factions or "sides" in the game. There's also four circles on the inside which could indicate four playable characters, hence the Arkham Legacy rumors with multiple characters.

WB Montreal gives more cryptic signals for its new Batman game, calling on gamers to capture the Knight.

Today WB Montreal dropped another random teaser for its new Batman game accompanied with the French tagline cape sur la nuit, which roughly translates to "cape of the night" and alludes to the Dark Knight's shadowy resolve. The studio shared separate pieces of the image across its Instagram and Twitter which were then combined to form a very righteous-looking sigil promising law and order over Gotham. Speculation says it could be Gotham P.D.'s clandestine crest.

Sony has been holding back some big PS5 surprises, and SIE president Jim Ryan teases the console's most differentiating features have yet to be revealed.

Sony's actually revealed quite a bit about the PlayStation 5 already. The next-gen PS5's most dramatic jump over the PS4 is raw graphical and compute power and blinding-fast loading speeds, both of which are made possible by a powerful new Navi GPU- and Zen 2 CPU-outfitted SoC and custom SSD storage. On paper, the PS5 is similar to the Xbox Series X in terms of functionality.

But apparently there's a lot more to the PlayStation 5. Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan hints the best is yet to come, and the PS5 will have "special appeals" not found in any other system.

In their new developer's update video, Rare has announced that Sea of Thieves has been played by more than 10 million players.

In the new developers update video, which has been released onto the official Sea of Thieves YouTube Channel, Sea of Thieves' Executive Producer, Joe Neate said that Sea of Thieves had been played by more than 10 million players. The player count has been accumulated across Xbox Game Pass, Xbox One, and PC.

The videos also states that Rare will soon be rolling out a new content update to Sea of Thieves. This update is called "Legends of the Seas" and will feature a game-wide celebration of the games community. Players will be able to jump into the action between January 15th and 22nd to claim limited-edition custom sails, emotes, and more. Sea of Thieves is available on Xbox One and PC.

Australia's biggest gaming retailer chain, EB Games, has unfortunately announced that it's closing down numerous stores.

According to Kotaku, EB Games has said that due to revenue margins not meeting the required marks, they will be closing down 19 of their stores across Australia. In a statement given to Kotaku, EB Games has said that "Where possible, staff were offered the opportunity to work in surrounding stores." EB Games also stresses that they will be opening more "large format" stores that will combine their pop culture outlet 'Zing' with their gaming side.

EB Games expects that these stores around Australia will be closed down by the end of January 2020, throughout this closing period discounts on stock will range from 20-60%. If you didn't know, EB Games is the Australian subsidiary of major US retailer Gamestop, as of late Gamestop has had to lay off many of its workers, but the company still has plans to turn things around in the long run.

Steam has announced that its enabling new functionality support for gaming soundtracks on Steam. Steam customers will now be able to purchase game soundtracks in a new app.

Originally, Steam didn't have a soundtrack app, and the closest thing that consumers could get to purchasing soundtracks from games was via DLC's. Now, Valve has announced via their community blog that customers will now be able to purchase and download soundtracks without having to own the whole game.

Customers will also be able to manage their owned and downloaded soundtracks in one simple Steam library folder instead of having to find the files across multiple game directories. This new update also helps developers of games as they can now sell their soundtracks separately from their game. If you are interested in reading more about this new update, check out Valve's blog post here. Valve plan on rolling this new feature out on January 20th.

Back in May, we heard a rumor about Ubisoft's next Assassin's Creed game and what era in history it would be focussed around. Now rumors are flying again, but this time circling around an Amazon listing.

The original rumors indicated that Ubisoft was working on a vikings-themed Assassin Creed title. Images were leaked online but were later proven to be fake, and there was also an "easter egg" found in The Division 2. The images were debunked, and then news went dead about the new game, and Ubisoft hasn't made any official announcement so far.

Now, on the German version of Amazon, a listing for Assassin's Creed Ragnarok - Valhalla Edition. While this listing can certainly be fake, it's still very interesting to see rumors starting up again for a vikings-themed Assassin's Creed game. We will have to wait for an official announcement from Ubisoft to know for sure what they are working on. Would you like to see the next Assassin's Creed game go into the vikings era?

CES 2020 - Acer unveiled its Predator Thronos Air 'gaming chair' last year for an eye-watering price of $29,000 and now it is coming to the US. The first-gen units weren't available in the US, and had everything built-in -- the new chairs are much cheaper, dropping a bunch of now optional upgrades and no more built-in Acer Predator gaming PC.

The expensive Acer Predator Thronos Air gaming chair has received a bunch of changes to get down from its original price of $29,000 when fully equipped. The new Predator Thronos Air starts at $13,000 and drops the fully-motorized, remote-controlled arm, a built-in chair in the pod itself, an an Acer Predator ready-to-rock-and-roll gaming PC. The new one, doesn't have any of this.

Acer will sell all of these parts separately, which is why the price is down from $29,000 to $13,000 -- as it doesn't have any of that gear, and a full gaming rig, built-in. If you want to throw your own, and most likely much more powerful gaming PC into the Acer Thronos Air, then it'll only start from $13,000. You can still mount 3 x large 27-inch monitors into the Acer Predator Thronos Air, and is still "modular, adjustable, and customizable".

CES 2020 - Sony reveals just how big its PlayStation 4 platform is with some gargantuan figures, including over 1 billion games sold to date.

Sony didn't drop the big PS5 reveal we wanted at CES 2020, but it did clarify the enormity of the PS4's current dominance over the games industry. Since the PS4's original launch in 2013, Sony has sold over 106 million consoles worldwide, putting it just 49 million away from usurping the PS2's long-standing reign.

Hardware isn't everything though (especially when you sell the hardware at a loss). Consoles are just the beginning and serve as the entry point to an ecosystem. The real money is in software sales, and the PS4's numbers are just outrageous. In 7 years, gamers have bought an incredible 1.15 billion PlayStation 4 games. Rough estimates show the average PS4 owner has 9 games.

Ex-Xbox VP Mike Ybarra won't be buying an Xbox Series X console. The reason? He can play all Xbox exclusives on PC.

Mike Ybarra's recent Twitter comment is brief but speaks volumes about Microsoft's service- and software-first gaming business. Ybarra says he'll buy a PlayStation 5 because he's already a PC gamer, hinting it'd be redundant to own both a gaming PC and Xbox console. Honestly it's pretty true. All first-party Xbox exclusives are coming to Windows 10 PCs day-and-date of release, and that goes with Game Pass too.

This isn't a new development though. As far back as 2016, I said Microsoft's cross-platform synergy basically talks a portion of consumers out of buying Xbox hardware--namely existing PC gamers. This is a point of strength for Microsoft simply because it no longer cares that much about Xbox console sales. It's no longer trying to win over PC gamers by fighting with them, and joining the two platforms and making Xbox into a service rather than a console has been tremendously beneficial.

Interactive 3D renders of the Xbox Series X give an extensive look at the console's current case design, complete with ventilation, ports, and dual-orientation setup.

On the heels of AMD's recent Xbox blunder, key sources recently clarified info on the Xbox SX. Yes, the Xbox Series X has back and bottom thermal vents, and no, it doesn't have two HDMI ports with HDMI pass-through (at least currently).

The info has now also been independently verified with Windows Central, who made a nifty 3D render you can actually rotate and zoom in on. From what we can see, the Xbox SX has a pretty robust vertical-optimized cooling solution that mirrors the thermal cooling found in cases like the Phanteks Evolve Shift X.