Gaming - Page 637

About two weeks ago, Feral Interactive announced that it would be releasing the port of Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation on the Nintendo Switch. Now that the title has released, could this be the best Nintendo Switch port yet?

Digital Foundry has put the Alien: Isolation port for the Nintendo Switch under the microscope, and what they have found is truly impressive. Usually, porting companies like Panic Button do a great job at porting over heavy games such as DOOM to the Switch, but with these ports are obvious downgrades in visuals and performance.

Alien: Isolation is an outlier in this regard, as Digital Foundry has found many parts of it that are better than the original releases on the Xbox One and PS4. Digital Foundry says, "in reality the Switch version looks substantially cleaner in motion, and this is due to a reliance on a more modern accumulation temporal anti-aliasing solution. This approach massively reduces in-surface aliasing and edge shimmering to the point where it looks flat out better than the original console releases."

While Red Dead Redemption 2's map is already massive, what if it could get bigger and maybe even traverse into the Mexican region?

Well, that could actually happen as Red Dead Redemption 2 players have data mined the game and found some quite peculiar game files that point directly to that. Posted this past Tuesday on the GTAforums, VideoTechUK decided to data-mine the PS4 version (1.0.0) to see if he could find some unused locations. To his surprise, he managed to find a slew of Mexican map models that are disabled by Rockstar, but left in the game.

Not only were models of Mexican locations found in the game files, but another user, WildBrick142, was able to find "references to map region outlines in the minimap scaleform, unfortunately, the actual outline graphics for them were deleted". Now the juicy question should be asked -- did Rockstar initially plan to use these Mexican locations and then decided to scrap them? If so, why leave the models inside the game files to take up more HDD space? Another theory could be -- Rockstar is planning on expanding Red Dead Redemption 2 at some stage with a brand new region.

Nintendo answers your holiday pleas with some new retro Switch Online games...including Crystalis on NES.

The only reason anyone buys the $20 a year Switch Online service is to play old-school NES and SNES games. Nintendo knows it, and that's why we're getting six new games on the service--that's six total, not six for each platform.

The lineup is a nice eclectic mix that has something for everyone, especially if you love classic RPGs like Crystalis (which just so happens to be one of the best games on the platform).

It seems that just before Christmas kicks off and this decade ends, hype for the PlayStation 5 has kicked off again with some online retailers offering up sign-ups to the pre-orders on the next-gen PS5 console.

Now while this won't be an actual pre-order, it acts as the retailer more or so saying "so the PlayStation 5 pre-orders will begin soon, get your name down now so you can pre-order it when we're ready". It's another tidbit of news, and it seems this generation the hype is being driven 100x more than the previous-gen consoles.

As for the stores offering sign-ups to the pre-orders, we have Best Buy in the US, GAME in the UK, Dustinhome in Norway and then Game Mania and Ned Game both in the Netherlands.

Walking around the demo rooms at the Snapdragon Summit here in Maui, Hawaii -- I found something really interesting. Qualcomm had a Snapdragon 865 powered pinball machine on display, and it was kinda really cool.

The pinball machine has a huge LCD display in place of all the mechanics and physical parts of a real pinball machine, physically hooked up to a reference design Qualcomm Snapdragon 865-powered smartphone.

Qualcomm housed the Snapdragon 865 smartphone inside of the skateboard on top of the pinball machine, something that looks nice at the front -- but I snapped some photos on the back, too.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer brought home a Project Scarlett console and it's now his primary gaming system. This bodes extremely well for the system's backward compatibility.

Today Phil Spencer sent out a curious Tweet. The Xbox exec has a functioning Project Scarlett console at his home (like a devkit, or a very early consumer prototype build) that works well enough that it's replaced his other Xbox hardware. If it's replaced current-gen hardware, and no games have been released for next-gen, this practically means Scarlett's backwards compatibility is stable enough to run Xbox One games. Phil of course has access to all kinds of pre-release demo builds that gamers will never get their mitts on, but the observation still sands.

"This week I brought my Project Scarlett console home and it's become my primary console, playing my games, connecting to the community and yes, using my Elite Series 2 controller," Spencer said in the Tweet.

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.