Gaming - Page 632

On the heels of shipping its big blockbuster Death Stranding, Kojima Productions just celebrated its four-year anniversary.

Hideo Kojima has come a long, long way in just four years. First his next game Silent Hills was cancelled, then Konami fired Kojima, kicking off a big industry-wide controversy. His name was scrubbed from Metal Gear Solid V and the alum was left to fend for himself. And fend for himself he did. Kojima fired up a new studio, Kojima Productions, and pulled a good portion of his old Konami team with him--including the president of Konami. After negotiating with Sony and getting the greenlight to use Guerrilla's Decima Engine, Kojima started work on Death Stranding, reining in big talent like Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen for the project.

Now four years after the studio was founded, Kojima Productions celebrates some pretty big milestones. It's shipped a AAA game. It's iterated on one of the best-looking games engines in the industry. It's solidified a multi-platform deal with 505 Games to bring Death Stranding to PC for long-term sales. And now Kojima is already planning his next series of projects.

Artist Giuseppe Spinelli recreates the PlayStation 5's DualShock 5 controller based on a recent patent.

Following a recent patent outlining features and a leaked photograph, we actually know a fair bit about the PlayStation 5's new next-gen controller.

It looks quite similar to the DualShock 4, but has a more ergonomic design that's closer to an Xbox controller. The lightbar on the back has been removed, it has a USB Type-C charging port, there's a built-in microphone (likely for the AI-powered PlayStation Assist feature) and new mic/external ports on the bottom.

Redbox, the last bastion for video game rentals, will soon stop renting and selling video games. Now it's clearing out its inventory with a big sale.

Redbox is permanently retiring its games section and is currently holding an everything must go sale on used games. Titles across PS4, Xbox One and Switch are deeply discounted, with newer games like Jedi: Fallen Order discounted to $25, Borderlands 3 is only $18, and Modern Warfare is priced at $30. Death Stranding can be had for $35 (it's also on sale at Amazon for the same price new) and Metro Exodus is only $13.

Once the games are gone, they're gone. Also remember these are used second-hand games that were rented out by Redbox, so there could be some scratches and defects. Your mileage will greatly vary here. If you're in the market for some cheap games, definitely hit up this sale.

The new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot has generated over $1 billion sales, Activision today confirms. That doesn't even include microtransaction revenues.

Modern Warfare is a gargantuan success for Activision. Not only did it pass $1 billion in to-date sales since its release on October 25, the game is the most-played Call of Duty game of this console generation, beating out other titles like Ghosts, Black Ops 4, and CoD: WWII.

"The award-winning title, which has sold more than $1 billion in sell-through worldwide, has surpassed 500 million multiplayer hours played since release with nearly 300 million multiplayer matches," the press release says.

Remember when Sony said the PlayStation 5 would support 8K? That wasn't just for video playback. The system's next-gen Zen 2 and Navi GPU-powered SoC will apparently play games in 7680x4320 resolution too.

Sony actually confirmed the PS5 will support 8K gaming back in October, where it also confirmed the PS5 would have an 8-core, 16-thread Zen 2 CPU as well as an RDNA-powered GPU (likely a second-gen Navi GPU because of native ray tracing support). "Up to 8K resolution output for games," reads the post.

This actually aligns with previous reports of PlayStation 5's 8K capabilities.

This coming February, hardcore gaming history addicts will be able to snag an unusual piece of gaming history, a Nintendo Play Station prototype.

Back in the 1980s, Nintendo and Sony were working on a deal for Sony to create a CD-based add-on to Nintendo's coming Super Nintendo. This console would have been called the Nintendo Play Station and act as a hybrid console that could play both CD games as well as cartridge games. That deal fell through, and both companies went there separate development ways, but out of the rubble of that deal were the prototype units, such as the one above.

After the deal ended, all prototypes of the hybrid console were meant to be destroyed, but former Sony executive Olaf Olafsson who was leading the deal between Nintendo and Sony, kept his. Olafsson then brought the hybrid console to a credit card company called Advanta, Advanta went out of business, and its assets went up for auction - along with the hybrid console. This is where things get really interesting. Terry Diebold, a former maintenance man at Advanta, placed a winning bid on the lot containing the hybrid console, and for some years, has refused to sell it.

Disney is ramping up with hype for its huge Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker movie, and joining in on that hype is Epic Games with some Star Wars fun in Fortnite.

Fortnite recently enjoyed a live Star Wars event over the weekend, with the developer dropping lightsabers into the game. Plenty of players are now ridding themselves of traditional weapons, and going for some of that classic one-on-one lightsaber battle action in battle royale goodness.

There's not just one lightsaber style either, with Fortnite featuring all different styles including Rey's blue lightsaber, Luke's green lightsaber, and then there's purple and red lightsabers for Mace Windu and Kylo Ren, respectively. There's only one more week of lightsabers in Fortnite, so you will want to jump in now if you want to play around with them in the game before they disappear.

New job listings for Respawn's Star Wars team strongly hints a Jedi: Fallen Order sequel is in development.

Three new job listings confirm Respawn is making another third-person action adventure game in the Star Wars brand. Jedi: Fallen Order fits the bill nicely with its Uncharted-meets-The-Force-Unleashed gameplay. The developer is trying to fill some serious high-level positions, indicating the project is still in early phases of development. All of these listings were opened recently so they're not old ones for the original Jedi: Fallen Order.

Right now Respawn is hiring for a level designer, a senior software engineer, and a senior character artist.

The new next-gen Xbox Series X is like a little vertical shoebox (or a fridge, or a humidifier) that's anything but flat. So how much room will it take in your living room? A new render gives you an idea.

Now that the Xbox SX's dimensions have been guesstimated, there's tons of renders and size comparisons floating around. Just a bit ago we saw a neat interactive render comparing the Xbox Series X to current-gen consoles, desktops, a Switch, and even a Mac Pro. But what about an actual environment? How big is the Xbox SX compared to your TV or entertainment center?

ResetERA user BrokenSwiftie answers these questions with a quick 3D mock-up.

Sony today announced a DualShock 4 controller add-on that gives you extra buttons.

The new add-on is called the DualShock 4 Back Button Attachment, and it tacks on two paddles on the back of your controller. It's basically designed for competitive play and lets users set custom button mappings for the paddles, which should help in intense shooters like Destiny 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

The peripheral plugs into the DualShock 4's expansion port and essentially transforms your DS4 into a budget Xbox Elite controller. For some reason Sony attached an OLED screen to it so the paddle add-on will leech battery life from your DS4's internal 1,000mAh battery.

The Xbox Series X name is confusing some, and it didn't help when Business Insider put out an article saying "Xbox" is the name of the new next-gen console. It's not. Microsoft's new next-gen console is called the Xbox Series X, not just Xbox. Here's why that distinction matters.

The Xbox Series X is the start of a new console family. It's a naming scheme that confirms an iterative cadence that will see multiple new Xboxes released under the new Series banner. It's not a new ecosystem--the Xbox Series X (Xbox SX) is backward compatible with all existing Xbox One games and peripherals--but the start of a new console hardware cycle set in a familial hierarchy.

Business Insider says Xbox is the make, and Series X is the model, but it goes deeper than that. There's three parts to this new naming scheme: make, family, and model.

Remember that exclusive RDR2 story content and DLC that's only available on PC? Yeah, it's now up on PS4 and coming soon to Xbox One.

Rockstar Games today announced that the previous PC-only Red Dead Redemption 2 content is now available on PS4. The new game update adds a convenient photo mode to capture those amazing in-game moments (something the game should've launched with over a year ago, honestly) as well as a bunch of new weapons, missions, hideouts, treasure maps, and more.

The following content is now available for PS4 and is coming to Xbox One on January 21, 2020:

Techland is the developers behind the parkour-based zombie title Dying Light, and if you are out of the loop with what they have been up to, they are currently working on a sequel expected to launch next year.

Dying Light 2 is easily one of the most anticipated games of next year, this is mostly due to the reveals showing off an extremely complex open-world. Players will reportedly need to replay Dying Light 2 several times to fully experience what the game has to offer, as choices throughout the world have 'ripple' effects throughout the rest of the play-through. This choice system is not unique to Dying Light 2, but the complexity of the choices are.

Techland's director Tymon Smektala spoke to the Xbox: The Official Magazine and answered some questions regarding today's game worlds and whether or not he thinks they will get bigger or not. Here's what he had to say, "I'm not sure they will get bigger. I think what will change is the fidelity of everything. I don't think people really need bigger worlds, they need worlds that are of better quality and that they feel more immersed in what surrounds them." The world's Smektala is describing seems to be very similar to that of Dying Light 2, as every choice that is made throughout that game affects the entire world around the player, creating a certain level of immersion and depth.

Sony is in the middle of getting everything lined up for the game changing launch of the new PlayStation 5 console, and a wave of next-gen games -- and while Sony has been going through some big corporate changes, another big change is happening. The last we saw on the PlayStation 5 was its new render, which looks great -- a big change to the previous renders, too.

The company has posted a new job listing looking for a new Head of Strategy for Sony Worldwide Studios, with the new staffer in control of growing the brand between 2020-2024. This new person would plan mergers, acquisitions, and see market trends as they're coming -- they'd also be working with the various leadership through Sony Worldwide Studios, reporting directly to the Head of Worldwide Studios.

This move says that Sony is about to expand in a big way, which makes sense given that the PlayStation 5 is going to launch 12 months from now. Sony will be putting its all into 2020-2024, so this new position is an exciting tease of things to come in 2020 and beyond.

Microsoft designed the Xbox Series X's SoC specifically with backward compatibility support in mind,

Microsoft confirms its new next-gen Xbox Series X console will natively support four generations worth of Xbox games when it launches in Holiday 2020. The system will play thousands of games from original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and new titles optimized specifically for the Xbox SX.

As it turns out, the Xbox SX was built from the ground up to support last-gen games all the way at the silicon level. Backward compatibility was never off the table and a major feature at the start (MS nor Sony want to displace games libraries and fracture user experiences). Even with the existing Xbox One BC games this task is a massive undertaking of incredibly tough work, but Microsoft's foresight and planning will make bringing older games to the new Zen 2- and Navi-powered behemoth a lot easier.

EA Motive is preparing the next Star Wars game for possible release in 2020, and it should be a departure from the current games on the market.

While helping its sister studios like DICE with Battlefront and Visceral with the now-canned Project Ragtag game, EA's Motive studio has been working on a new Star Wars game for years now. Motive's Montreal studio is helming the new project and exact info has been pretty scarce, but we did get a new tidbit from Motive's general manager Patrick Klaus.

According to Klaus, Motive Montreal is making "a very unique Star Wars experience." But how is it unique? Is it the setting, tone, or story that're unique? Or maybe the gameplay mechanics?

A new report says the PlayStation 5 will cost $600 when it releases on December 4, 2020, and the higher-end 4TB Pro version will cost $1,000. This is incredibly fake on so many levels.

It should be pretty obvious the latest PS5 info from Japanese games site Gamers Gate is 100% false clickbait. Sony even called it a "hoax". But just in case any sites pick it up and try to run with it, let's break down all the ways the info is fake.

The site says it got a hold of an official leaked advertisement for the PS5, with pricing, release date, and design of the system. The "final PS5 design" is simply a weird mock-up render that's accompanied by a Nacon PS4 controller. That's not a DualShock 5. Here's what the DualShock 5 should look like.

The Sega Saturn 2--or at least a devkit for one--actually existed, and the original Shenmue was first ported on it.

In a recent interview with IGN Japan, Shenmue game director Keiji Okayasu said something interesting about the game's early development. Shenmue was actually remade twice: Once for a new Sega Saturn with an acceleration chip, and once for the Dreamcast. Only one of these consoles ever saw the light of day and became the last Sega system on the market.

In 1996, Sega teamed up with Lockheed Martin to make a beefier Sega Saturn console. The system, described as Saturn 2, would feature Lockheed Martin's new 32-bit Real3D/100 chipset for more powerful consolidated graphics. These chips were also used in Model 3 boards for coin-op arcade machines. That plan never manifested.

Turn10, the same team that managed to hit native 4K 60FPS in Forza 7 with only 70% GPU usage on the Xbox One X, is currently optimizing the next Forza game for the next-gen Xbox. Expect absolute insanity.

It's no surprise that Turn10 is making a new Forza game. Not only was it shown in the Xbox Series X announcement, but big marquee Xbox console launches usually get their own Forza game to sell crazy high-def graphics. What is a surprise is all the new systems that're being baked into the "vastly different" sequel.

In a recent Mixer stream, Turn10 creative director Chris Esaki confirms the game is already playable on the Xbox Series X and has some nifty fine-tuned enhancements this time around. While we didn't get exact info on how the new Forza game will tap the Xbox Series X's 12TFLOP GPU or super-fast VRAM-buffering SSD, Esaki did highlight new pressure systems that add a new dimension to gameplay.

After the huge success of Magic Arena, the beloved CCG is expanding with a new MMORPG.

At The Game Awards 2019, Perfect World announced Magic: Legends, a new MMORPG set in the industry's longest-running collectible card game. Official details are light and we didn't get any gameplay, but we do know players can make their own custom planeswalkers and wreak havoc across the multiverse. The series has such a rich vein of decades-strong lore to tap so expect canon tie-ins as well as cross-promotional content for new card sets.

"A thrilling MMO Action RPG set across the iconic planes of Magic: The Gathering. In Magic: Legends, become immersed in the acclaimed fictional Magic multiverse as a powerful, spell-wielding Planeswalker," reads an official description.