Gaming - Page 627

Raise your hands to the sky and give your energy to Bandai Namco because the release of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is almost upon us.

The release of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is almost here, and to get fans excited for its debut Bandai Namco has released a new trailer, but this time its in the style of the TV or anime show. The trailer shows fans what they can expect from the game in just over a minute and a half, recapping or teasing what is about to drop in the following week.

The trailer shows off classic characters such as Goku, Vegeta, Android 18, Frieza, Cell, Krillin, Raditz Gohan, Piccolo, Android 16, Trunks, Buu, and more. Dragon Ball fans will no doubt be shaking in their boots with excitement as I am. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is launching on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on January 17th.

In the middle of my tsunami of CES 2020 coverage I thought I would break it up with some more gripping news, with Ultimate Games releasing a demo of their new game -- Wanking Simulator, onto Steam. Check out the trailer below:

Yeah, Wanking Simulator is real and you can go for a tug on Steam right now -- getting out a blend of destruction and wanking in a place called Gay Bay. There are houses, a high school, garages, and more to roam -- and jerk off around. The aim of the game? Destroy as many things as possible before the authorities catch you.

But the swell thing here is that you get more points if you wank off to the carnage, so the more destruction you cause, and the harder and more you tug yourself, the more points you get. Got it.

The latest on Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 for 2020 is coming from a new photo of an alleged PS5 developer kit console, something that was being cleaned and then promptly leaked online.

In the above shot we can see that V-shaped PlayStation 5 being cleaned, with the developer kit rocking an LCD display to the right (which the final consumer version of the PS5 will not). The 4K Blu-ray drive is right there on show, as too are the LED activity lights and various USB ports for connectivity.

We get a closer look at the new DualShock 5 controller which looks a little chunkier than the current DualShock 4 controller. But apart from that there's nothing new here, with all eyes on Sony for CES 2020 where they could show off something about the new PlayStation 5. We don't know what, but Sony will be shouting something from the roof tops of CES.

Next-gen dominance will come down to the age-old equalizer: The retail price tag.

Reports indicate the PlayStation 5 could be weaker than the Xbox Series X's 12TFLOP GPU, with a possible shrunken MSRP to match. By all accounts the Xbox SX is a beast that "eats monsters for breakfast" that could carry a monstrous price tag to match. Analysts are starting to weigh in on sales predictions, with most agreeing on a $400+ price point for both, but what happens if there's a price difference? If the Xbox SX is more expensive, the PS5 could win.

"You know what's going to take the wind out of Microsoft's sales? Charging more than $400. That's a problem. I think far more relevant to the success of both boxes is if there's a price differential. If they're priced the same I think they have an equal chance of thriving. If they're priced vastly different, the cheaper one's going to win," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a recent episode of The Pachter Factor.

If George Lucas had his way, gaming history could be very, very different.

In the years before Interplay made Fallout, one of the most legendary cRPGs of all time, George Lucas had an idea: What if Lucasfilm Games and Interplay combined forces? According to Interplay founder Brian Fargo, Lucas not only wanted Interplay to merge with Lucasfilm Games, but the Star Wars director wanted Fargo to run the new studio.

Fargo ruminated on the possibility in a recent Tweet. In 1995 Interplay had just shipped Stonekeep, a very Elder Scrolls-esque first-person dungeon crawler that impressed Lucas. This was before Fallout's release in 1997 and if Fargo had indeed taken up Lucas' offer, we probably would never have seen Fallout come to fruition. We'd probably just have had more old-school Star Wars games...maybe a cRPG spin-off?

No Man's Sky has consistently been one of the top-played games on Steam since it's release in 2015.

Over the last four years Hello Games has redeemed No Man's Sky with seven free expansion updates. Every successive update has invigorated the playerbase on Steam, especially the latest Beyond update that even added VR support. This comeback story carries with it an important lesson for developers and publishers: Heavily monetizing a game with microtransactions isn't always the best way out. Sometimes when you just give to the community, the community gives back and keeps playing your game for years on end.

That's what happened with No Man's Sky. For four years running, No Man's Sky has been among the most-played games on Steam. In 2019 it amassed over 50,000 concurrent players, putting it alongside heavy-hitters like Red Dead Redemption 2, Rocket League, and Monster Hunter World. Not bad for an all-indie game.

Square Enix plans to embrace game streaming and cloud in a big way...and it doesn't get any bigger than Final Fantasy.

Photo: Seirra259

Square Enix has talked about game streaming, subscriptions, and cloud gaming for a while now. Final Fantasy XIV remains the biggest tentpole for its online endeavors, but most others have more or less floundered, relegating the games-maker to more traditional mainline dedicated game sales. Now with 5G tech on the horizon and a steady rollout of big platforms to tap 5G like Project xCloud, Google Stadia (which Square Enix is already supporting), and even Amazon's and Verizon's upcoming game-streaming platforms, Square Enix might finally be ready to make good on its cloud ambitions.

Like its heisting protagonists, Grand Theft Auto V just won't stop grabbing up all the money.

GTA V is a monster. It's the most popular entertainment property of all time with over 115 million copies sold. GTA Online managed to make over $1 billion in four years. And even in 2019, six years after release, it's still making more dough than Pillsbury.

Throughout 2019 alone, GTA V pulled in $595 million in digital revenues, analyst firm SuperData reports in its latest 2019 Year in Review sales brief. These numbers are driven strongly by GTA Online's microtransactions and cemented GTA V in third out of the top 10 best-earning games of 2019, just below Activision's new Modern Warfare reboot and EA's FIFA 19. The staying power of GTA V is just absolutely incredible.

Having already made a splash into virtual reality, Nintendo could bring AR to its mega-popular Switch system.

Nintendo is constantly experimenting with new hardware and technology. Some of it never gets released, and some end up being sold as gimmicky add-ons. The company's current attraction is Augmented Reality, the same tech that helped Pokemon Go rake in billions. It's likely the Switch will get some sort of AR attachment or add-on functionality in the future to inject new immersion and creativity into Nintendo games.

In a recent interview with Japanese magazine Nikkei, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa strongly hints interesting things are on the horizon. Nintendo is always looking for the next big thing, and it's really curious about AR.

Accessibility is the next forefront of gaming that will help spark growth in the 2020s era, NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella predicts.

Games-makers like Microsoft and Sony are breaking down barriers for a reason. There's lots of growth potential in unifying consoles, PCs, and mobile with services by virtue of instant accessibility by anyone, anywhere. Games and service ecosystems are transcending console hardware to tap a wider audience using subscription services like Project xCloud and Google Stadia as an avenue (not to mention the upcoming Amazon and Verizon game streaming services). Cross-saves and cross-play are huge forces of this new era that tie directly into this "play anywhere, with anyone" focus, and will continue being implemented by gaming's biggest multiplayer-driven publishers.

A recent report from the NPD Group's Mat Piscatella breaks down why accessibility is so important.

Massively anticipated games like Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and even Animal Crossing: New Horizons will propel 2020's premium gaming spend to record levels.

Next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and a slew of big games will drive 2020's gaming revenues to new heights, especially in the AAA games segment. Analyst firm SuperData predicts premium titles will deliver a record-breaking $19.8 billion in 2020, accounting for roughly 15.8% of the total estimated yearly earnings forecast.

"Premium games will have their biggest year ever with $19.8 billion in revenue thanks to major releases in the first half of the year. Highly anticipated games like Cyberpunk 2077, The Last of Us Part II and Animal Crossing: New Horizons will launch before focus shifts to next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony," SuperData writes in its latest yearly report.

The Olympics are coming to Japan in 2020 and Japanese game devs like PlatinumGames plan to take full advantage of the spotlight with a plethora of big announcements.

Bayonetta, NieR: Automata and Astral Chain developer PlatinumGames has ambitions plans for 2020. In a recent interview with Inside Games, Platinum CEO Kenichi Sato wants the studio running full steam ahead on new projects.

"This is the year of the Tokyo Olympics. I think the world will focus on Japan. Platinum Games, as Japan's leading game studio, will run at full speed again this year in pursuit of the user's smile so that it can be noticed by users all over the world," Sato said.

There's a new report going around that the next-gen PlayStation 5 will play PS1, PS2, and PS3 era games with noticable upgrades and enhancements. This seems unlikely outside of slight native perf boosts, and PS4 games may get more dramatic optimizations including various wizardy like variable rate shading, ray tracing, and a new era of upscaling tech.

According to HipHopGamer, Sony's PS5 has a "remastering engine" that will upgrade legacy PS1, PS2, and PS3 games with new features like supersampled graphics, improved anti-aliasing, and more. There's also mention of ray tracing being injected into old-school PlayStation games to revitalize visuals, similar to how NVIDIA optimized Quake and Minecraft with RTX. This dramatic level of enhancing probably won't extend that far, though.

What HipHopGamer is describing is basically the Xbox One X's Boost Mode functionality, a built-in feature that natively refines performance of specific games, namely with smoothing frame rates, improving texture filtering, reducing screen tearing.

Hideo Kojima's next project could be something unique. It might not be just a game, but a kind of interactive film experience not unlike Black Mirror's experimental choose-your-own-adventure Bandersnatch.

Kojima has been teasing a weird new project for a while now, and we actually have lots of clues of what it could be. Back in April, I predicted the auteur would make an innovative show-like interactive game for Sony's new PlayStation Productions entertainment branch. Death Stranding already has the production values of a movie, complete with a star-studded cast, an eerie and original storyline, and bizarre visuals.

Since then Kojima has been laying on more evidence that a movie-game hybrid could be in the works. Based on what's been said we've put together a good idea of what's next: A horror-based interactive experience with multiple outcomes (similar to P.T.) with AI-controlled sequences, all using streaming as the delivery mechanism. Which could indicate it'll be part of a PlayStation Productions subscription service of some sort and fold directly into Sony's PS5 services revamp.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake will require over 70GB of free space on PlayStation 4, leaked info suggests.

New details from the leaked Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo point to a rather sizable install size. Reports say it could take up to 73.7GB of space on the PlayStation 4, making it bigger than other games like Final Fantasy XV. Remember this is just the first chapter of the game and the full Final Fantasy 7 Remake will release in multiple volumes spread out across years.

Here's how FF7 Remake compares to some of the biggest PlayStation 4 games available today:

As if Xbox Game Pass couldn't get any better for $10 a month, Rockstar brings the biggest game of all time to the service: GTA V.

Grand Theft Auto V is now playable free as part of Game Pass, a move that will bring tons of ripple-down effects for Take-Two Interactive. Given GTA V's colossal sales, this is a tremendous win for everyone involved and should boost Game Pass subscriptions across the board. The service is one of the most accessible ways to sample a wide berth of games in the entire industry, making it a potent and transformative force for publishers.

The motivations here are crystal clear. Take-Two simply wants to make more money from a game that's already made billions. Game Pass is a proven avenue to spark full game sales, and it's no surprise that GTA V is also on sale for 50% off. This is clearly a tactical move to push more GTA V sales past the current 115 million lifetime peak.

NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella makes an excellent point about how the Nintendo Switch lives along consoles as well as rivaling them.

As a handheld, the Switch offers something current consoles don't. That's why roughly 40% of surveyed console gamers in the U.S. own a Switch as well as a PS4 or Xbox One, per NPD data.

This brief statistic underlines how the Switch simultaneously lives in between and on top of current-gen systems. Many gamers own just a Switch due to its portability, but a good portion of dedicated console gamers have also double-dipped on the Switch to take their habits on-the-go. And for mobile gaming, it doesn't get any better than Nintendo's handheld-hybrid.

So, we now know that STALKER 2 will be powered by the Unreal Engine -- something that Unreal Engine creator and game developer Epic Games pushed as we went into the New Year.

STALKER and STALKER 2 developer GSC Game World reluctantly announced the news over Twitter, explaining: "Frankly speaking, we wanted to hold this particular announcement for a while. But our colleagues at Epic accidentally made a New Year surprise for everyone, including us".

The developer then goes onto explain that yes, it will be using Unreal Engine for STALKER 2 and that it gives GSC Game World the chance to "make the game you wait for with the atmosphere of tension and mystery the flesh and blood of the STALKER universe". But it was the following part that was the surprise, that STALKER 2 will have a vast modding base thanks to Unreal Engine.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake should come to PC, but it won't happen until 2021.

The Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo has leaked ahead of schedule, and dataminers have combed through every inch of the code to find all kinds of spoilers and details from the game. One not-so-surprising tidbit shows direct mention of PC hardware in the code, strongly hinting the game is coming to PC...but not before the PS4 exclusivity deal ends in 2021.

The demo code has other traces of PC support too. Dataminers uncovered higher resolution settings than the base 1080p 30FPS PS4 demo perf target (likely native 1440p and 4K). Again the FF7 Remake coming to PC isn't really a surprise considering Square Enix is doubling-down on PC re-releases, especially with projects its spend tons of money developing.

Having transformed EA with huge mega-hits like Apex Legends, the publisher has conscripted Respawn's Vince Zampella to lead its DICE studio in Los Angeles, California.

According to The L.A. Times, Respawn CEO Vince Zampella will rebrand a former DICE branch into a new EA studio.

The Titanfall mastermind will effectively lead two studios at the same time--both Respawn and the former DICE team will be under his tutelage--but the teams won't cross over. Zampella was careful to say the new studio would be entirely separate from Respawn and DICE's main HQ in Sweden, and will work on their own projects.