Gaming - Page 619

Ever wanted to bring a friend along into your Outlast nightmare? Red Barrels has you covered.

A new Outlast game is on the horizon, but it's pretty different than what we're used to. Instead of a totally singleplayer mind-bending horrorfest, the new Outlast lets you bring along some friend. It's called The Outlast Trials, is set during the Cold War and it features four-player co-op for tantalizing terror.

This time around there's no camera. Test subjects (aka players) have night-vision goggles strapped to their heads and are apparently trapped in an underground chasm. You could be American soldiers captured and subjected to nightmarish tortures--or the reverse, a Communist put through mind-breaking experiments on American soil.

Qualcomm may have launched a trio of new SoCs at its annual Snapdragon Summit, including the new Snapdragon 765, 765G and flagship Snapdragon 865 -- but mobile gaming and esports are a huge focus, too.

Let's start with the fact that gaming accounts for a gigantic 43% of all smartphone use, but an even larger (and more eye-opening) 74% of all app store spend. ThIs is serious business, and there are tens of billions of dollars per year to be made -- and it is all continuing to grow.

When it comes to esports, Qualcomm noted during its Snapdragon Summit that they expect 518 million esports viewers in 2020, which is a huge deal.

Starting in June 2020, CD Projekt RED's Witcher card game Gwent will no longer be playable on PS4 and Xbox One.

Today CD Projekt RED announced it will retire Gwent on consoles in summer 2020. The studio plans to copy all console Gwent progress to GOG.com, but there's a catch: Your console data will only be copied if you haven't played Gwent on GOG. If you play Gwent on GOG and consoles, then you're out of luck and your console data will be inaccessible. CDPR won't merge your data.

"Since we do not support the "merging" of accounts, we will only be able to copy progress to existing GOG accounts that do not have any GWENT progression on them at the time the request is made."

Yesterday Bungie announced Season of Dawn, Destiny 2's big new seasonal update that brings back Saint-14. Now they've revealed more specifics on when the content is coming.

Season of Dawn looks to be Destiny 2's most ambitious season yet, complete with a new 6-player Firefight-like horde mode called Defend the Sundial, as well as a ton of new weapons, gear, PVP maps and the return of the Rusted Lands, and a story based on time-traveling. But everything won't be available all at once. Instead, Bungie is staggering the content to last up until March 2020, and it looks like there's no raid and trials isn't returning.

The Sundial will have three big Cabal Psion bosses, and there's a bunch of little public events strewn across the solar system called Obelisks. The Sundial mode will have matchmaking, and there's also a new artifact called Osiris' Lantern. Season of Dawn will introduce a new event/mode? called the Empyrean Foundation in February that's free for all Destiny 2 players. There's also exotic quests thrown in there too.

Nintendo hits it big with U.S. Switch Black Friday sales, amassing a huge 830,000 unit sales during the week-long period.

The Switch won't stop breaking records. On the heels of its big 41 million global sales milestone, Nintendo today announced a huge holiday sales jump driven by Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. The company sold 830,000 Switch consoles in the United States, pushing total U.S. hardware sales to 17.5 million, and breaking the record for the best sales week in Switch history.

The sales spike was driven by introduction of the cheaper handheld-only Switch Lite for $199, as well as strong first-party software like Pokemon Sword and Shield (75% of all Switch owners buy the console just to play first-party games). Discounts and sales were also big drivers to the jump.

Sony has two main goals with the PlayStation 5: To make games as available as quickly as possible, and to make them look great.

The next-gen PS5 is built around power and accessibility, at least that's what developer sources close to the system tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier. The idea is to make a console that delivers tremendous power and speed.

This matches up with everything we currently know about the system. The power aspect is handled by a beefy new CPU and GPU combo built specifically for the console. The PS5 leverages a high-end customized AMD SoC with an 8-core, 16 thread Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU, which should enable 4K 60FPS and higher frame rates in 1440p and 1080p.

Microsoft plans to release two next-gen Xbox consoles in 2020: A lower-power, discless system that's more economically priced, and the enthusiast-grade Project Scarlett.

Lockhart isn't dead after all. Sources tell Kotaku that Lockhart is still in development as a cheaper version of Project Scarlett, complete with a dialed-down Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU SoC and a discless box.

Back in December 2018, rumor had it Microsoft was making two next-gen Xboxs: an Xbox One S successor codenamed Lockhart, and Anaconda, the Xbox One X successor which is now called Project Scarlett. That plan is still underway, sources tell Kotaku.

The Switch is coming to mainland China on December 10, and Nintendo stands to make a killing in the region.

Nintendo just won the jackpot. In association with Tencent, Nintendo will release its Switch handheld-console hybrid in China for RMB 2,099 (roughly $300) this December with a single localized first-party game, Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe. Other titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario Odyssey are coming in 2020. Game cards will also be region free.

The infrastructure will be hosted by Tencent's flexible and powerful servers, including WeChat social media integration. Major AAA publishers like Konami, Square Enix, Bandai Namco, and SEGA have pledged to localize their games for the Chinese Switch platform. The newer 16nm Tegra X1 refresh SKU will launch in China, and there's no word on a Switch Lite release.

Halo: Reach launched on PC yesterday, and just within the first hour of its launch players flocked to the game knocking some big names down the ladder of Steams most-played.

According to the Steam Stats website, Halo: The Master Chief Collection reached an impressive 160,000 concurrent players. Just within the games first hour, it reached 100,000 players, and at the time of writing this post its currently sitting around 130,000 still.

The Master Chief Collection isn't 1st on the Steam charts, Steam's big boys like Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2 are still quite far ahead of Bungie's game. But considering how old this game is, and all the other games that are contained in the collection, this is a pretty nice achievement. If you are after some more information about Halo: Reach for the PC, check out this article here.

It has almost been a year since the launch of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and to celebrate the anniversary, Nintendo is running a special in-game event.

This in-game event will be none other than a Spirit Board that will be starting this Friday on the 6th of December. So what's so special about this Spirit Board? Nintendo will be giving participants triple to the SP and experience earned in battle, and a 50% damage item will also be provided.

Nintendo has said "Thank You! 1st Anniversary" to the community and has also said that they will be releasing the full list of spirits before the event commences. If you happened to miss out on the most recent Super Smash Bros. Ultimate news, check out the update 6.1.0 going live and Nintendo's latest addition to the roster, Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury. More on that can be found here.

Twitch has been losing some key streamers over the course of this year, with Ninja and Shroud moving over to Mixer another streamer has announced his departure.

The king of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Gonzalo "ZeRo" Barrios quit his competitive career to take up streaming and full time content creation. Since then, he has branched out from just streaming on Twitch to making daily content on YouTube, quickly amassing 818,000 subscribers as of writing this. ZeRo also lead the pack of Smash Bros. streamers (520,000 followers), but has since branched out into streaming different gaming content, which he finds more fulfilling.

ZeRo took to the Tempo Storm YouTube Channel and his personal Twitter account to announce the news that he's leaving Twitch to go to Facebook Gaming. He says throughout the video that he is excited for the move over to Facebook, as it will open up more opportunities for him to play with other streamers, and do more collaborations with other gamers and games. Basically, the transition gives ZeRo many more options for his future career in streaming.

Despite the Nintendo Switch's strong sales, Sony has no plans to make another PlayStation handheld.

In a recent interview with Game Informer, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan confirms they're out of the handheld business for good. "PlayStation Vita was brilliant in many ways, and the actual gaming experience was great, but clearly it's a business that we're no longer in now," Ryan said in the only mention of the Vita in the entire 25 years of PlayStation article.

This isn't the first time Sony has made these kinds of remarks. Sony has said loud and often that it won't make another PlayStation Vita, first in 2017 and then in 2018, but gamers still didn't give up hope.

Sony just won a Guinness World Record for the most consoles sold in the history of gaming.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Sony's entire PlayStation line of consoles has cumulatively sold more than 450 million units worldwide since 1997. This huge milestone beats competitors like Nintendo and Microsoft, the former of which was in the game for two generations for the PlayStation, and the latter who jumped in during the PS2 era.

Nintendo isn't too far behind with 322.54 million home consoles sold, including the Switch. But this is only home consoles, not including handhelds. With handhelds like the DS and Game Boy included, Nintendo has sold a monstrous 670.7 million units of hardware, eclipsing Sony quite easily.

It's happening, folks. As confirmed by some officially leaked promo art, Resident Evil 3 Remake is on the way.

Today Sony accidentally leaked out Resident Evil 3 Remake key art on the PlayStation Network, stealing thunder from the big announcement (presumably at The Game Awards) and validating months of rumors. The art, which has since been taken down, was crawled by a stat-tracking website.

The art is pretty simplistic, showing protagonists Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliviera framed by the ominous Nemesis, and underlines one simple point: Resident Evil 3 is getting reborn in the RE Engine's potent graphics engine, complete with overhauled lighting, character models, animations, and amazing environments. Expect RE3 Remake to mirror RE2 Remake's impeccable visuals and incredible sound design.

With the help of some Back To The Future time-bending antics, Saint-14, aka the best character in the Destiny mythos, is coming back.

Today Bungie announced Destiny 2's new Season of Dawn, which brings a ton of new content and systematically builds off of the Season of the Undying and Vex Invasion events. Season of Dawn sees Guardians manipulating time to resurrect legendary Titan Saint-14, who's only really been seen in small flashbacks and lore books.

The season takes us back to Mercury for a big planet-wide event. This time the Cabal are our targets, and they're trying to alter history so they actually win the Red War. Osiris built a special time-machine called the Sundial, which was literally made to save Saint-14, aka the most badass Guardian that ever lived. Osiris failed, Saint-14 died...but now we have a shot at preventing his death and bringing him back.

According to documents acquired by Vice, a PlayStation gamer was using Sony's online PS Network to set up big drug deals.

A brave gamer was apparently using his favorite past-time to sell substantial amounts of cocaine. The documents reveal the suspect, Curtis Alexander, had used the PlayStation Network's in-game voice chat and messaging system to orchestrate hefty drug deals. A source reveals Alexander allegedly sold up to kilograms of cocaine at a time, and used PSN to communicate with buyers.

The informant told the FBI, who then sent a warrant to Sony that demanded tons of info on Alexander including any recorded messages sent or received on the PlayStation Network, and his gaming habits. We still don't know what game Alexander used to contact buyers on, but it's probably a big online game with tons of players--maybe Call of Duty or Destiny.

Riot Games has settled their gender discrimination lawsuit for $10 million, the LA Times reports.

Riot Games has a big problem with how it treats women. A huge 2018 expose from Kotaku revealed the billion-dollar League of Legends maker is endemic with sexism, harassment, and sophomoric behavior which fostered a hostile work environment for its female workers. Riot has since pledged to change its ways, but it's worth mentioning leadership hasn't shifted much. The news was followed by a huge gender discrimination lawsuit filed against the developer months after the reveal.

Now little over a year after the expose, Riot Games is settling the lawsuit. The company has agreed to pay $10 million divided up to all current and past women employed by Riot since 2014. The studio has employed 1,000 women since that time, but full-time employees will receive a bigger chunk than outside contractors.

CD Projekt Red isn't holding back at all for Cyberpunk 2077, and one of the aspects the developer is honing in on is the NPC's that are present throughout the world.

If you are a fan of CD Projekt Red games, you might have played the critically acclaimed title, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In that game, players could experience extensive dialogues with NPCs (non-playable characters). CD Projekt Red is planning on going above and beyond The Witcher 3 with Cyberpunk 2077, and according to Story Director, Marcin Blacha, the game's dialogue takes up "two thick books" worth of writing.

Blacha also talks about how Cyberpunk 2077's game dialogue compares to The Witcher 3, and he says that Cyberpunk 2077 has much wider scale stories than The Witcher 3. This is because the problems that are being discussed by NPC's aren't small human squabbles, but instead, they are bigger problems that are more relevant to the entire world. Having this level of dialogue in a game will create a high level of atmospheric immersion for players, and I think that's what CD Projekt Red is aiming for.

Remember 1997's Starship Troopers? Well, that movie concept is being converted into a real-time strategy game that you can enjoy.

The culture classic movie Starship Troopers is receiving its very own real-time strategy game adaptation, players will be able to assume the role of the humans and slaughter billions of bugs. Judging from the above trailer, the game appears to be a lot like Earth Defence Force spliced with Command and Conquer aspects.

The developers of this coming title are The Aristocrats and judging by the titles Steam Store listing says, players will be involved within planetary campaigns that will pit them against the bugs. Campaigns will be "dynamically generated"and will be take players through a storyline where missions will change depending on the hard choices that will be presented to them. The Steam page also mentions that there will be dozens of unique unit types and abilities, extensive technology tree, heroics, explosions, gore and of course bugs. It has a "out in 2020" release date.

Since Sony own Insomniac Games, and the fact that Marvel's Spider-Man was an overwhelming success selling over 13 million copies, fans can expect there will be some kind of sequel.

There is no doubt that Sony and Insomniac Games are cooking up some form of sequel behind the scenes, and according to former Games Informer news editor, Imran Khan, they already are. Khan said during the latest Kind Funny Gamescast video that "I know too much about [Marvel's Spider-Man 2], so I can't speculate too much".

Imran continues and says that while players of the first Spider-Man might think that it will still be some time before they receive a sequel, "I think a Spider-Man 2 will come sooner than we think". This is promising news for Spider-Man fans are a sequel is definitely most welcomed. What won't be appreciated though is if Sony and Insomniac re-skin the first Spider-Man and just sell it back to fans as Spider-Man 2 with no new improvements. The sequel will have to feel new, more mechanics, more suits, new enemies etc.