Gaming - Page 640

Rumor has it Rockstar's next game will be the fabled Project Medieval, a new IP that's set in the age of knights and bloody sworfights. But the details don't exactly add up.

(Art credit: Denis Rybchak)

Rockstar's next game might not be Grand Theft Auto 6 or Bully 2, but a nifty-sounding romp similar to Kingdom Come: Deliverance. At least that's what new rumors would lead you to believe. The rumors circle around the now-edited LinkedIn page of Pawel Saxenas, a character artist for Rockstar Games' India branch, who lists a new IP on the page. The original non-edited page mentioned "medieval architectural style," but this was later removed.

THQ Nordic announced a new Darksiders game earlier this year and its going to be taking a different route from the previous titles.

Darksiders Genesis will take a top-down approach in the new game and will take players to a fight in hell. Players will take the reins of the last of the four horsemen, Strife, and carve their way through hordes of demons on their hunt for Lucifer. War will also be accompanying Strife on his quest, and it should be noted that the events of this game are occurring after the War of Eden.

Moving on to the PC requirements for the game. PC players will have to be using Windows 7, 8, or 10 (64-bit only), at least a CPU that is an AMD FX-8320 or Intel Core i5-4690K, have 4GB of RAM and at least have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or AMD equivalent. How much space will it take up? Now, this is the most surprising part, Darksiders Genesis will only require 15GB of HDD space. Doesn't that sound tiny for a full game? I think so.

After Capcom saying that they would love for the Devil May Cry franchise to come to the Nintendo Switch, they have finally announced that the third game will be making its way over soon.

The good news has been pulled from the official Capcom UK Twitter account where they say that a 'Special Edition' of Devil May Cry 3 will soon be arriving on the handheld console. According to the announcement, Capcom will release Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition on the Nintendo Switch early next year for only $20.

Back in late June, Capcom announced the first Devil May Cry for the Nintendo Switch and while they originally said they have no plans on bringing the sequels (2 and 3) over, plans have since changed. Like I said back in June, Capcom was just waiting for some numbers to back up their decision on porting the two sequels, and now that they have those numbers, they have no reason to not bring them over to Nintendo's console.

Nintendo is pushing for Mario to become the most recognizable character in media, and while he is already the face of gaming, this isn't enough. Nintendo wants more.

Mario's creator Shigeru Miyamoto wants Mario to be Nintendo's character the leads the frontal assault on Disney. The eventual plan is for Nintendo to replace Disney's Mickey Mouse and for Mario to become the most recognizable character in media. Nintendo is planning on doing this with the Super Nintendo World currently being constructed in Universal Studios Japan, an upcoming Super Mario movie, and some personality changes. According to Miyamoto, Mario's personality will be changing a bit to combat those pesky parents who are still keeping their children from playing video games.

Nintendo has a problem with this because those same parents are much more likely to allow their children to watch Disney movies, meaning Nintendo is losing out on a huge market of character influence. To tap into that market, Miyamoto says that Mario's development will convert from being quite strict to more loose, opening the character up to more possibilities. This change in Mario's personality is a reflection of Nintendo's interest in "creating greater opportunities for a larger audience to enjoy [the Mario universe]."

Imagine lending out a game character you have worked hard on to a friend, and then for him to turn around and try and sell it back to you.

While this might sound like some silly game avatar that is basically worth nothing at all, it's quite the contrary. A man in China has spent more than $1.4 million on developing his character in the Chinese MMORPG, Justice Online. This man lent out his character to a friend who then attempted to sell it back to the man for $55,138 or 388,000 yuan. The man declined to be extorted, which prompted the now-former friend to turn around and sell it on the game's marketplace owned by NetEase.

The former friend sold the character on the marketplace for just $552 or 3,888 yuan. He said that this low price was due to an extremely long gaming session and was just a typo. Upon learning what happened, the owner of the account sued his former friend and NetEase. The case was taken to a judge and settled, with the account being returned to the original owner, but not before the owner was required to pay the purchaser of the account $12,789 in damages, or 90,000 yuan.

Valve surprised everyone with the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx last week, where it will be competing with our hearts at nearly the same time in 2020 with CD PROJEKT RED's huge release of Cyberpunk 2077 -- but is CDPR worried? Nope.

Cyberpunk 2077 launches in April 2020 and is built for traditional mouse/keyboard gameplay on the PC, and controller gameplay on consoles where Valve's big release of Half-Life: Alyx is exclusive to VR. No controllers. No keyboards. No mice. It's all in a virtual world and CDPR isn't intimidated by this at all.

In a recent earnings call, CD PROJEKT RED management discussed the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx, with CDPR saying: "Of course we've seen the Half-Life VR announcement. I think it was a surprise for everybody ... VR remains an extremely niche-y niche of the market. It's very, very small".

Black Friday 2019 sales are kicking off, with Microsoft seeing its Xbox One S 1TB All-Digital Edition Console discounted to just $149 -- while Sony has its PlayStation 4 available for $199 and includes 3 kick ass games bundled with it.

The Xbox One S comes with 1TB of storage and is disc-free but at $149 you can't complain, while the Blu-ray drive inside of the PlayStation 4 comes at $199 but includes 3 games. The 3 games aren't exactly crap either, with the PS4 bundle one of the best sales for Black Friday including God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition, and The Last of Us Remastered -- all including a PS4 for $199.

You can grab the 4K-capable Xbox One X console with the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Deluxe Edition for $350 -- a discount of $150. Not too bad at all if you wanted the fastest console on the market, and a new game to boot... oh and the 4K Blu-ray playback is a great bonus.

There's no games quite like Final Fantasy, and there's none like Final Fantasy 7. The beloved old-school RPG looks better than ever with these new FF7 Remake screenshots.

Today Square Enix released a metric ton of new Final Fantasy 7 screenshots, and they look absolutely gorgeous. The snaps show off potent character models and environments rendered with the Luminous Engine, detailing some obvious improvements from Final Fantasy XV.

The screenshots show Aerith's house (it's incredibly quaint and homely) as well as a breathtaking view of the outside, complete with brilliant verdant life blooming all around. There's some shots of explosive combat, a confirmation that the awesome interactive motorcycle segment will be in the Remake, and a showcase of minor characters like the Turks Rufus and Rude, Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. Oh, and chocobos will be a summon in the game, but it might cost you extra--the Chocobo Chick summon is currently offered as a pre-order bonus.

Battleborn isn't dead just yet, but Gearbox is winding down to prepare for the game's retirement in 2021.

Gearbox today confirmed that its failed hero shooter Battleborn will go offline in January 2021. As of now the game can no longer be purchased from any digital store, including Steam, PS Store, and Xbox LIVE, so if you want to play you'll need to find a physical copy.

Oddly enough, the devs are turning off Battleborn's microtransactions on February 2020 and the game will no longer receive updates. Battleborn will be playable until then, but once the servers are down, the game is dead for good. Gearbox and 2K tried all sorts of tactics to re-invigorate Battleborn's failing userbase, including a free-to-play trial mode (which is no longer available). Ultimately nothing worked and gamers simply stuck with established hero shooters like Overwatch instead.

Square Enix today revealed a bunch of new details on Final Fantasy 7 Remake's systems, including weapon upgrades and materia.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is shaping up to be the ultimate RPG, complete with massively replayable customization, progression, and action-packed battles. Square Enix wants to ensure the game keeps players busy for a long time, so they've devised a unique progression system around weapons and items. Each weapon has its own little tree of unlockables, complete with passive bonuses and extra materia slots.

It looks like every item has a "core" that can be leveled up. For example, upgrading the Core slot for Cloud's Buster Sword will give passive boosts like extra HP, more damage, and stronger attack power. This mechanic will be present for every weapon (and possibly every equippable item that has materia) for every character. If you've ever played the original Final Fantasy 7, you know there's a ton of items, so the possibilities here are huge.

Tetsuya Nomura confirms work on Final Fantasy 7 Remake's second episode is underway, and says it's incredibly ambitious.

The full version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake won't be out next year. Instead of releasing the game all at once, Square Enix has split it up until multiple chapters. Only the first episode is launching in March 2020, and it only takes place in Midgar. Luckily each episode is the size of a full game, and Square Enix is already working on the next chapter.

In a recent internal dev interview, game director Tetsuya Nomura teases incredible things for episode 2. "We've already begun working on the next one as well, but I'm confident that playing through this title will expand your expectations just like the world that extends beyond Midgar."

Samsung today strongly hints that its low-latency, high-bandwidth NVMe SSDs will power the next generation of consoles.

Both the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett next-gen consoles will use super-powered SSDs for fast loading times and optimized gameplay. We still don't know what the storage will look like--if it's custom hardware, software, or both--but it looks like Samsung is making the storage.

In a recent presentation, Samsung highlighted the evolution of its high-end memory chips and what's next on the horizon. It's possible both the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett could use a derivative of Samsung's new 6th generation V-NAND memory on an NVMe solution, but bear in mind this tech was also made for demanding enterprise workloads. Samsung's 6th gen V-NAND offers 1200 Mbps IO speeds and up to 512 Gb density per die, and it'll be out by 2020.

Both the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett next-gen systems may hit over 10TFLOPs of power thanks to new custom super-charged Zen 2 and Navi GPU-powered 7nm SoCs from AMD.

According to ResetEra user Kleegamefan, who cites a game developer as the source of next-gen console info, both the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett consoles will hit double-digit TFLOP performance. If true, the PS5 would effectively deliver 138% more compute TFLOPs power over the PS4 Pro, and Project Scarlett would hit see roughly a 67% increase from the Xbox One X's 6TFLOPs (the latter seems to be a stark contrast to Microsoft's assertions that Scarlett can deliver 4x power of the Xbox One X).

A lot of the info we already knew about, or suspected. We knew PlayStation 5 will use AMD's new RDNA core architecture in its 8-core, 16-thread Zen 2 CPU- and Navi GPU-powered SoC. Some rumors even claim the PS5's devkit sits at 13TFLOPs.

Hideo Kojima is already on an adventure to make source new inspiration for his next title, this time though he is forcing himself to watch horror movies.

Before Kojima left Konami and formed his own game development studio, Kojima Productions, he was in the middle of developing a brand new Silent Hills game. This new Silent Hills game had a demo called PT, and while Kojima can't continue development on Silent Hills, he can make his own horror game, and it won't be a breeze either.

According to Kojima's official Twitter account, he will be forcing himself to watch all the scariest horror movies in order to "awaken my horror soul". Kojima mentions a Thai horror movie called THE EYE, which is the movie he rented and tried to watch while he was making PT. Unfortunately, Kojima didn't have the guts to finish it but will be giving it another go for another hopeful dosage of inspiration. Does this mean Kojima's next title will fall into the horror genre? Perhaps, but plans do change quite quickly in early development.

The rumors on Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 console are flying thick and fast, and while there are questions around what exact type of storage the PS5 will have -- we know it'll be super-fast, but at what capacity? 1TB? 2TB? We know from the latest rumors that the PlayStation 5 will reportedly sell for $499 and launch on November 20, 2020.

PlayStation 5 leaker PSErebus tweeted a couiple of days ago that the next-gen PlayStation 5 will ship with 2TB of storage for $499, which is a big deal. I would've thought the regular PS5 with 1TB of storage would've sold for $499, while a larger capacity PS5 with 2TB of super-fast SSD storage would've sold for a higher cost like $599.

We know from PlayStation architect Mark Cerny that the ultra-high-speed SSD inside of the PlayStation 5 is the "key" to the next-gen console. Cerny said in an interview with the Official PlayStation Magazine earlier this year: "An ultra-high-speed SSD is the key to our next generation. Our vision is to make loading screens a thing of the past, enabling creators to build new and unique gameplay experiences".

Microsoft came out and said the Xbox Scarlett will kick the PlayStation 5's next-gen ass, but in development kit form the PS5 has the performance edge over Xbox Scarlett -- for now, that is.

According to a new leak that an insider posted on the Reset Era forums, who said that the PlayStation 5 is the fastest console behind the scenes right now which he says comes down to the "PS5 development hardware and software are in a more advanced state. I fully expect Scarlett to close that gap once they ship more mature dev kits and software".

The leaker added: "It must be said, since software, not hardware, is a traditional Microsoft area of expertise, it's very possible that they could ultimately deliver more advanced DirectX development software, in the end, allowing games to run better on Scarlett even if the hardware is less capable. I don't know this to be the case, but the possibility can't be discounted".

Valve surprised all gamers with the super-surprise announcement and mind blowing trailer to Half-Life: Alyx just a few days ago, but what will you need to run the latest adventure in the Half-Life universe?

First off you're going to need a VR headset as there is no non-VR version of Half-Life: Alyx planned, with Valve building the game for the virtual world of VR. As for the minimum requirements, Valve is asking for an Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 processor, 12GB of RAM and either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580 with at least 6GB of VRAM.

Half-Life: Alyx is powered by the current Source 2 engine, and sees Valve adding an entire new level of physics that is unparalleled -- as well as including a physical player body. You can freaking pick up individual shot gun shelves off shelves as you rummage for ammo... we're talking next level Half-Life in VR gameplay here.

Back in 2016, CD Projekt RED announced an ambitious five-year strategy that called for two games to be shipped by 2021: Cyberpunk 2077, which is on track to release in 2020, and a new unannounced AAA RPG, which has remained quite nebulous. Now CDPR hints the new RPG could be delayed.

CD Projekt RED has been developing an RPG outside of Cyberpunk 2077 for years now, but we don't know how far along the project is. The company hasn't updated its five-year strategy for years now, making the outward appearance that the unannounced AAA RPG is progressing according to plan. We don't know what CDPR is working on, and the company hasn't talked about it too much, but there's reason to believe the unannounced game is set in The Witcher universe.

Now in a recent earnings call, CDPR says it could refresh its strategy sometime next year after Cyberpunk 2077 is shipped.

Want to play The Witcher 3 or even Cyberpunk 2077 in VR? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that probably won't happen.

CD Projekt RED is skeptical on the VR market, at least in terms of overall sales. With such a small install base of headsets, the VR market just isn't big enough to justify the development effort and spending--at least right now. Valve's new VR-exclusive Half-Life game could kick off a big HMD spending spree and expand the userbase. But as it stands right now, CDPR doesn't see much value in adapting its sprawling singleplayer epics like Cyberpunk 2077 or The Witcher 3 for virtual reality headsets.

In a recent Q3'19 earnings call, CD Projekt RED execs were asked two big VR questions: Are they threatened by Half-Life: Alyx's launch in March, just a month before Cyberpunk 2077, and will they adapt their games for VR headsets? The answer to both is no.

Project xCloud will be powered by Xbox One S server blades when it launches, but Microsoft may eventually beef up its racks with Project Scarlett hardware.

Microsoft's new next-gen Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU-powered Project Scarlett console will power Project xCloud game streaming at some point in the future. Right now each of Project xCloud's server blades are powered by 8 Xbox One S systems, but that could change a few years after Scarlett's on the market.

"We designed Scarlett with the cloud in mind as well, and just as you're going to see our console product family evolve with that next generation, the cloud is going to evolve along with it," Microsoft cloud exec Kareem Choudhry said in a recent interview with Stevivor.