Gaming - Page 642

NASA has released a brand new stunning photo of our Milky Way galaxy, and its reflection over the world's largest mirror.

The image which has been released in NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day was taken by photographer Jheison Huerta. So, where is the 'world's largest mirror', and what is it exactly? The 'world's largest mirror' is actually not a mirror at all, it's the Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia. Since the salt flat is large and extremely flat, after rainfall, it begins to glisten and reflects any light that hits it, creating the mirror effect.

NASA also explains what Huerta has captured in this incredible image, saying " What's being reflected in the world's largest mirror? Stars, galaxies, and a planet. Many of these stars are confined to the grand arch that runs across the image, an arch that is the central plane of our home Milky Way Galaxy. Inside the arch is another galaxy - the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Stars that are individually visible include Antares on the far left and Sirius on the far right. The planet Jupiter shines brightly just below Antares."

Just yesterday, The Game Awards released their official list of the titles that are nominated to win prizes at its show this December. Not to everyone's surprise, Kojima Productions' Death Stranding is nominated.

While this usually wouldn't be a problem for a great title to be nominated, some fans of The Game Awards have expressed their concern over the showrunner for the annual ceremony being directly involved within Death Stranding. Death Stranding was nominated for eight separate categories, and The Game Awards showrunner Geoff Keighley also plays a cameo role in the game. As you can see, this raises some questions towards Keighley's influence in what titles get nominated for what categories and if there was bias at play.

Keighley took to social media in reply to some fans' concerns, saying that he doesn't personally vote on the nominee's and that there is a jury of 80 media that select them. "I don't vote on the nominees there is a jury of 80 media that select the nominees!" This is very much true. The Game Awards has a panel of 80 different media from around the globe, and these media outlets vote on each title for selected categories then the public votes as well. The public vote makes up 10% of the final count, meaning there are no outside influences such as Keighley. Don't believe Keighley? Check out the official Game Awards website for more information.

Epic Games is pushing out an update for Fortnite that will provide more performance for gamers with higher-end hardware, with the game getting DirectX 12 support.

Fortnite's new update will include DX12 support that will see "higher and steadier" frame rates, with Epic Games offering up better CPU performance and better distribution of 3D rendering tasks across multiple cores.

Epic isn't finished with the DX12 optimizatrions in Fortnite, with the developer promising to continue "adding features to Fortnite that are made possible by DX12. Allowing players to opt into DX12 before these features are added will give us valuable information in our development efforts and help us shake out any bugs".

The latest rumor on Sony's launch date for the PlayStation 5 is November 20, 2020 and priced at $499 -- but what games will launch with the PS5? According to the latest rumor we will see Gran Turismo 7 as a launch title for the PlayStation 5 on November 20, 2020.

The new rumor comes from Twitter user PSERebus, who reported the November 20, 2020 launch date for the PS5 -- the same day Gran Turismo 7 launches. All the tweet said was: "Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) will publish Gran Turismo 7 on November 20, 2020 for the PlayStation 5 (PS5)".

Back in April 2019 we heard that Gran Turismo 7 would be work on the next-gen PlayStation VR 2.0 headset, something that should launch with the next-gen PlayStation 5 console. This would be another huge win for Sony, getting a next-gen Gran Turismo from Polyphony Digital for its next-gen PS5 and PSVR 2.0 products in November 2020.

DICE's Frostbite engine is like an unwieldy weapon. In the right hands it's tremendously powerful, but for the most part it's heavy and hard to control. The engine is great for shooters, but not so much for the kind of RPGs BioWare likes to make. Now ex-BioWare boss Aaryn Flynn talks about how Frostbite both enabled and inhibited the studio during Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda's development.

In 2010, BioWare made the decision to switch from its internal Eclipse games engine over to EA's new standardized Frostbite from DICE. Frostbite was complex, potent, and had lots of potential, but it was a thorn in BioWare's side from the start. The engine is extremely powerful and can create some incredible atmospheric effects and physics systems wrapped in high-fidelity graphics. But there was so, so much that was missing from it: Frostbite wasn't built for RPGs, and BioWare had to create a lot of its UI, camera, and basic RPG systems from scratch. With how much work and iteration BioWare had to do on the new engine, it's a miracle that Dragon Age: Inquisition even shipped at all.

Now in a recent talk at Reboot Develop Red, Aaryn Flynn shares what it was like to use Frostbite to make games like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Destiny 2: The Collection has been rated by PEGI for consoles and PC, indicating an incoming release.

Right now Destiny 2 isn't sold as a complete package anywhere except for Stadia. To get everything Destiny 2 has to offer, you need to buy Forsaken at $20 and then Shadowkeep at $35. It's a bit confusing for new players who jump into Destiny 2's free-to-play New Light version and want to continue their progress, only finding out a good portion of the game is locked.

Now Bungie wants to remedy that with a GOTY-styled collection that gives buyers access to everything. The Destiny 2 collection comes with the base game, Curse of Osiris, Warmind, Forsaken, Shadowkeep, and the annual season pass. No pricing has been confirmed yet, but expect to see it for at least $49.99 (maybe full-price at $59.99).

Diablo IV is meant to be the penultimate Diablo game, complete with Diablo III mechanics, Diablo II's style, and never-ending gameplay. Endgame progression is a huge part of that and now Blizzard discusses what could happen with their macabre sequel.

In a recent development update, Blizzard strongly hints Diablo IV will have a paragon-like system that allows gamers to keep progressing well after they hit the level 40 cap. "We haven't decided whether the character leveling and experience system should be finite or infinite. We've been discussing the pros and cons of both," Diablo IV lead systems designer David Kim said.

"We have a couple reasons for having a different experience system in addition to a level cap. A level cap gives us the ability to grant players a sense of completion. But for players who want to go deeper into the game, a second experience system allows us to capture the fun of achieving those really difficult endgame goals and ranks."

We already knew Saints Row V was in development, but now Deep Silver confirms the game will be shown off in 2020.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Koch Media boss Klemens Kundratitz confirmed Saints Row V will be unveiled in 2020, possibly at E3 2020.

"Saints Row is very close to our hearts, and we'll talk about it next year. For the time being, we just wanted to get the word out that it's coming and it's going to be great."

Microsoft's beefy Project Scarlett console may match the PS5's rumored $499 price tag.

Project Scarlett is shaping up to be a beast of a console. Microsoft says Scarlett will deliver 4x the performance of the Xbox One X's 6TFLOPs of compute power, and even 40x more performance than current Xbox systems, all thanks to its boosted internal Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU specs. It may even deliver 4K 120FPS gaming, complete with adaptive sync support. Typically this kind of tech leap is accompanied by a steep price tag, but new reports say Scarlett could cost as cheap as $499 when it ships in 2020.

The info comes from Twitter user PSErebus, whose track record includes accurately predicting The Last of Us Part II's original February 2020 release date (which has been delayed). Nothing has been confirmed by either Microsoft or Sony, so this is speculation at best.

Stadia's a hog that rampantly consumes data. This really isn't a surprise, though, and signs were all there from the beginning. We originally reported Google's new game-streaming service is set to demolish data caps in no time flat, and that the service's launch lineup includes some of the worst games to stream across any kind of data-restricted environment. But now we have actual incremental data usage consumption to illustrate Stadia's voracious appetite.

According to VentureBeat, Google Stadia can consume over 100MB per minute when streaming games in 1080p 60FPS. After 13 minutes of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 1080p 60FPS, the outlet says Stadia had used 1.55GB of data. And honestly in an intensely grindy, slow-burn game like Red Dead Redemption 2, 13 minutes accomplishes absolutely nothing.

Obviously how much data you use depends totally on the resolution you stream at. Stadia's resolution settings can be changed on-the-fly only in the mobile app, and the service allows three settings: 720p 60FPS, 1080p 60FPS, and 4K 60FPS (which is only available on Chromecast Ultra streaming to your TV, not on PC or mobile).

Now that it owns some of the best RPG-makers in the industry, Microsoft is in a unique position to kick off an RPG renaissance. Apparently that's exactly what they plan to do.

Microsoft knows it needs more first-party games. This goes double for RPGs. The company's aggressive acquisition spree will bear fruit in this regard, especially now that Obsidian Entertainment and inXile now hail under the Xbox flag. Microsoft now pledges to double-down on RPG development for the Xbox family of consoles in an attempt to recapture those olden Xbox and Xbox 360 days of yore.

In a recent interview with Xbox On, Microsoft's gaming leader Phil Spencer assures fans that more RPGs are on the way. He also teases some big surprises for the XO event in 2020.

The developers behind Detroit: Become Human have announced that their critically acclaimed title will be arriving on PC next month.

Quantic Dream, the developers behind other well-known titles such as Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls have said that their previously PlayStation-exclusive titles would be making their way over to PC. Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls have already made the transition, and now its time for Detroit: Become Human to as well.

PC gamers might be worried about the port being rushed and not delivered correctly. Well, I can put your worries aside for you, as we have confirmation by Quantic Dream co-founder that this is no sloppy port. According to Quantic Dream co-founder David Cage, "Porting the game to PC has been a tremendous challenge, as we wanted players to get the original experience without any compromise. So we entirely redesigned the interface and developed a new engine to offer 4K resolution and high quality rendering on a wide range of PCs."

It looks like we have a final date for Sony launching its next-gen PlayStation 5 console, with a new rumor saying the PS5 will launch in the US on November 20, 2020 -- for a price of $499.

Gran Turismo 7 will reportedly be a PlayStation 5 launch title, with the game launching on November 20, 2020 as well. The new rumor is from the PSErebus Twitter account, which teased: "Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) will launch PlayStation 5 (PS5) in several countries in the holiday season of 2020 and will make PlayStation 5 (PS5) available in North America on November 20, 2020 at a recommended retail price (RRP) or $499".

Another thing is that Sony may have been a little too quiet at E3 2019 earlier this year, but the hype quickly ramped up for the PlayStation 5 and now it's being said that E3 2020 will be a hot spot for details on the PS5. Sony CEO Shawn Layden recently said in an interview with GameInformer: "Just because PlayStation is not at E3 2019 doesn't mean we won't be there in 2020".

Following up on my post from a few days ago, as expected The Game Awards have released the official nominees for 2019.

Just this past Monday, Geoff Keighley, the showrunner for the annual Game Awards ceremony, announced that on Tuesday, we would be receiving the full list of the games that have been nominated in their respective categories. Well, now that its Tuesday we have that list and it's quite a long one. To keep things short and sweet, I'll only be mentioning the titles in the first two categories, Game of the Year and Best Game Direction.

The titles that have been nominated for Game of the Year are as follows, Remedy's Control, Kojima Productions' Death Stranding, Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Capcom's Resident Evil 2 Remake, FromSoftware's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Obsidian's The Outer Worlds. For Best Game Direction, all the previously mentioned titles are nominated. The full list for each of the award categories is provided in the entirety of this article. If you want to participate in voting, a link to the voting website can be found here.

Microsoft has just debuted the second definitive edition for the Age of Empires series, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. So when are we going to get the third definitive edition?

The release of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition just happened, and if you are an Age fan then I highly recommend you picking up the game as its fantastic. I've personally been pumping hours into the title, and I can't express how much I've been enjoying reliving my childhood in HD graphics.

So now that we have Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, when are we going to get the third game? According to a recent rumor by FairyEmpire, who reportedly had a conversation with some Microsoft developers at XO19, Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition is planned for launch sometime through mid-2020. If this rumor is true, it will line up with the other rumor of Age of Empires IV being launched the following year.

Back at XO19, Microsoft revealed Age of Empires IV to fans, and now that the hype train has officially left the station, when should we expect the final stop?

Since the official reveal, fans have been teased with some facts about the game. We have got the confirmation that Age of Empires IV will feature next-gen AI and that the title is specifically designed for 4K on the PC. There is also the recent announcement that Age 4 won't have any microtransactions and instead follow a traditional DLC path for extra content.

Now the rumors are starting to fly. According to ResetEra user FairyEmpire, who reportedly managed to speak to some developers at XO19 and found out that Age of Empires IV has been in development for just three years. If that is true, a further two years sounds like an appropriate amount of time for the title to be completed and then released. Which means that we are looking at (most likely) a release date somewhere throughout 2021.

Halo: Reach is coming to PC in just a few weeks, but 343i will take a break before it starts testing out its next Halo PC project.

Once Reach ships on December 3, the next up for a PC launch is Halo: Combat Evolved. But don't expect to try out Master Chief's original FPS adventure on PC before 2020 (unless of course you play the old-school version).

"Once Reach comes out next month, after the holiday we will start to reset and we'll start to flight Halo CE. We're just going to keep going down the road until we fill out the rest of the collection," 343i's Brian Jarrard told PCGamesN.

Stadia's biggest drawback (or streaming in general) is latency and lag. They can interrupt gameplay tremendously in action games where reaction times are critical, which includes nearly the entire Stadia launch lineup.

Latency was always one of the biggest concerns about Stadia, Google's new game streaming service. But how bad can it get? Pretty bad. The Washington Post recently illustrated Stadia's potential latency issues in a few GIFs, and they're not too pretty.

Since your internet speeds are always in flux, there's no guarantee you'll have a constantly-stable session unless your connection doesn't dip below a certain threshold. Admittedly enough, though, we haven't actually played Stadia and are going off of second-hand reports. I did try Project Stream last year, though, and found it to be an amazing experience.

A recent Sony patent shows how the PlayStation Network could get much, much more socially interactive, complete with save state sharing and user-created game demos.

Sony is currently ramping up its services to prepare for its next-gen PlayStation 5 console, and PS Now is a big part of that acceleration. But how can PlayStation Now actually evolve? It already allows offline downloads, and just got a cheaper $10 a month price tag. Now all it needs is more innovative and interactive social features that allow subscribers to spread the word organically, and to do that, Sony is taking plays out of Google Stadia's playbook while making some interesting moves of its own.

According to a new Sony patent, PlayStation Now's game streaming service may eventually let users share their saves with other gamers. The idea is to create a save point in a specific game, then beam it to a friend via social media or even email, who can then click on the link and take over. This isn't exclusive to PS Now, either, and should work with any game sold on the PlayStation Store.

A new announcement from Square Enix says that PC gamers will be getting Dragon Quest Builders 2 by the end of the year.

Dragon Quest Builders 2, the block-building RPG title, will let PC players explore a brand new fantasy land that is under threat by an evil cult. Players will be jumping into a title that allows them to build structures, slay creatures, collect materials, improve upon skills, and be a fearsome warrior. Not only will players be able to play a single-player campaign, but they will also be able to enjoy a creative online open sandbox world with up to 4 other players.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 will be arriving on Steam, and it will include all the Season Pass content that was previously released on the console version. What is the Season Pass content? Packs included are Hotto Stuff Pack, Modernist Pack, Aquarium Pack, Designer's Sunglasses, Legendary Builder Outfit, Dragonlord's Throne, and more. Dragon Quest Builders 2 will be coming to PC on December 10th. For more information about the title, check out the official Steam Store listing here.