Gaming - Page 643

Who doesn't love a bit of data mining, am i right? Well, I for sure do as we can see ahead of time what could be coming to a game.

According to That1MiningGuy, who recently data mined Apex Legends, a new SMG is on the brink of being released into the live game. At the moment, there are only three SMGs available to players: R-99, Alternator, and the Prowler. The data mine suggests that Respawn is currently testing the 'kick-back' of a new SMG, but what could this new be and where is it from?

Since Apex Legends is based in the Titanfall universe, this new SMG could be a weapon from the Titanfall games. GamesRadar says that it's possible that this new SMG could either be a CAR or the VOLT. The CAR is a fully automatic SMG that comes with decent accuracy, and the VOLT is an energy SMG that fires blue traces with its bullets. If I were to guess at which weapon they are going to add, I'd say the VOLT since the last new gun to come to Apex was the Charge Rifle with energy rounds.

Sony's latest PS5 patent reveals key features of the DualShock 5, including a built-in microphone, USB Type-C charging, and no lightbars for improved battery life.

A new controller patent from Sony gives us an idea of what to expect from the next-gen PlayStation controller. Overall not much has changed, but there are a few noticable differences. There's a built-in microphone fastened to a metallic strip on the bottom that's likely used for the PS5's new voice-activated AI assistant feature, complete with two(?) auxiliary headphone ports, and USB Type-C charging for quick and easy battery top-offs.

The lightbar has apparently been nixed to ensure longer controller battery life (thank god), too.

Nintendo is doubling-down on its mobile gaming monetization, this time adding another paid subscription to a free-to-play game.

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is getting not one, but two monthly paid subscriptions, Nintendo recently announced.

These two plans are part of the new Pocket Camp Club, and come on top of the randomized gacha-style microtransactions the game currently has and give access to extra in-game content. One subscription gives you an assistant to help you around the campsite, and the other lets you store furniture in a shed and gives free fortune cookies.

Stadia apparently won't streaming games in native 4K, instead opting for upscaled 1080p--at least in bigger games like Destiny 2.

A bit ago Google promised that every Stadia launch game would run at 4K 60FPS. But there's a catch: It won't always be native 4K. Some games use supersampling and upscaling tech to achieve the kind of 4K output by the PS4 Pro. One of the service's marquee games, Destiny 2, streams at 1080p resolution that's upscaled to 4K on PC and UHD TVs.

Bungie confirms to The Verge that Destiny 2 is not only upscaled from 1920 x 1080 to 3840 x 2160, the game only hits medium PC settings regardless of where you play it on (Chrome browser, Chromecast Ultra, or your phone).

What if Red Dead Redemption 2 were released in the 90s on the original PlayStation? It'd look a little something like this.

Thanks to LowSpecGamer, we have an idea of what Rockstar's beautiful Wild West masterpiece would look like if it were old enough to drink. The YouTuber managed to dramatically manipulate the game's textures and visual settings well past the low preset by changing up the settings.xml file with Notepad++, basically transporting us back to the early days of 3D gaming.

Weird polygons, fuzzy textures, heavily pixellated environments, and terrible draw distance are just a few things that early PlayStation gamers had to put up with back in the day. Needless to say not a lot of early PlayStation games aged very well.

Thanks to Game Pass, Microsoft no longer has to depend so much on microtransactions. That means not every game they release has to be monetized with cosmetics.

Microsoft is an interesting crossroads. Its Game Pass service, which charges $10 a month, is basically fulfilling the main function of microtransactions with recurring revenues. So many people are subscribing to Game Pass because of its tremendous value that games on the service can simply rely on monthly subs instead of piecemeal nickle-and-dime microtransactions.

This gives developers freedom to make the game they want to make, with or without live service elements or microtransactions. "You don't have to go make a service," Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg said in a recent interview with VG247. "Game Pass gives those creators a lot of flexibility. If you want your game to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and no DLC, and no other transactions, and just a single-player game, that's also fine."

The Nintendo and PlayStation rivalry is notorious, with both companies competing for the same player-base and refusing to work alongside each other. Putting all that rivalry aside, they are coming together for a friendly game of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

The Japanese magazine Famitsu is hosting a 'corporate' Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on November 22nd. Participants in the tournament are as follows; Sun-Star, Sugiko, and PlayStation. That's right. You are reading this correctly, PlayStation will have some employees joining in on a Nintendo IP tournament.

While the specifics of who the PlayStation employees were left out of the announcement, Nintendo Life do detail that the players attending will from Sony Interactive Entertainment. Imagine if team PlayStation takes home all the glory. Or better yet, imagine if team PlayStation has such a good time playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that they convince their superiors to let Nintendo bring Crash Bandicoot to Smash Ultimate. Now wouldn't that be a dream come true?

As another year rolls on past we can expect another Game Awards show, this time something extremely big is planned, but what's bigger than the nominees for 2019?

Back in early September, The Game Awards showrunner Geoff Keighley said that for 2019's annual event will be "celebrating the act of creation" by turning the "stage over to a group of visionary teams selected to share their new projects with you". Keighley concluded his teaser by saying that 2019 will be "very special" for viewers and that it will mark The Game Awards 5th anniversary.

Before jumping into what those special announcement could be, The Game Awards wouldn't exist without the amazing titles that are given its awards. Keighley took to Twitter last night to tease that next Tuesday will be the date when we get the list of official nominees for this year. At precisely 12pm ET / 9AM PT the announcements begin. Stay tuned as I will be doing a follow-up article with the full list.

Super Mario Odyssey released back in 2017, and we are still hearing about how the game was developed. New information has surfaced regarding the development of Luigi and his almost full costume change.

According to Super Mario Odyssey Character Art Lead, Sho Murata, in the recently translated 'The Art of Super Mario Odyssey', Luigi was teed up for a full costume change. Murata explains that he and his team were initially thinking of a "drastic costume change for Luigi at first, but we ultimately went with a simple look". This was because they thought his original color scheme would "work well against the background of this game's world".

Murata also dropped some cool new facts about Luigi's design, saying that if players hadn't noticed already, the balloons that Luigi is holding in-game are the "same colors as Super Famicom controller buttons". The art lead also says that the designers wanted to make it apparent that Luigi directly came from the Mushroom Kingdom, so they sported his satchel with "only stickers from the Mushroom Kingdom. One of the stickers is actually out of circulation..."

Just last week, Microsoft and Forgotten Empires revealed Age of Empires IV, bringing it back from shadows of what was assumed to be development death.

The reveal was held at the Microsoft event in London, XO19, and during the event, one critical aspect was discussed 'how is Age of Empires IV going to be monetized after its initial launch?' Age of Empires' Creative Director Adam Isgreen tuned in to answer this question, and luckily, microtransactions aren't on the table for the upcoming RTS.

Here's what Isgreen had to say, "The idea of microtransactions in a real-time strategy game isn't a thing. DLC, expansions - all of that is things that we're going to be exploring for Age 4." He continued and said, "While we definitely already have ideas in terms of where we want to go past Age 4, in terms of expansions and stuff, a lot of that is going to be driven by the community and the players, where they want to see the game going".

Activision is going big with Modern Warfare's future content, complete with a huge 200-player battle royale multiplayer mode with full cross-play.

A new Reddit leak confirms Modern Warfare will soon get a massive BR free-for-all with up to 200-players. The info was datamined from the game's source code, and contains references to playlists like solo, duos, and squads, and in-game maps.

The BR mode is designed to be a mix of tactical strategy and randomized chaos. It will have plenty of loot across all rarities scattered across the map including all weapons, attachments, and killstreaks from the base MW multiplayer, and it'll also have perks that boost efficacy in battle. There's even missions for teams to tackle during the 200-player warzone havoc.

A new report says Hangar 13 is working on the most ambitious Mafia game to date, and it picks off right where Mafia III left off.

Rumor has it Mafia IV is happening, and it'll take place during the 1970s when the mob ruled the casino-ridden streets of Las Vegas. The entire game centers around your ascension as a gang boss who eventually takes control over Sin City, building an empire of gambling, mayhem, and drug-fueled organized crime along the way. Apparently Hangar 13's fleet of studios is working on the project, and it'll be bigger than Mafia III but filled with more meaningful quests and activities--gone are the annoying repeatable missions from Mafia III.

All of this doesn't come from a reliable source, though. Jason Schreier, one of the most reliable sources in the industry, says the info sounds fake.

Dead Island 2 is still in development, but it could miss the original 2020 release date we had pegged for the sequel.

After years of development hell and trading hands, Dead Island 2 has found a new home at Homefront: The Revolution's Dambuster Studios. As for a release date, that's a bit more complicated. We've had no development updates on the game, and the only assurances it's still happening is from higher-ups at THQ Nordic and Deep Silver's Koch Media. But now it sounds like Dead Island 2 may not launch until 2021 at the earliest.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Koch Media CEO Klemens Kundratitz strongly hints Dead Island 2 may not release in 2020. The CEO says Dead Island 2 won't launch close to Dying Light 2, another competing zombie game that Deep Silver is publishing. "It would be conflict if we were launching on top of each other. But that's not going to be a problem."

Just a couple of days ago, Golden Joystick Awards were held, and Nintendo representative fighter took home the crown prize.

You might be confused by the fact that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate had won a 2019 award when it was released back in December of 2018. Well, that's because the release of Smash Ultimate fell short of the cut of time for the Golden Joystick Awards of 2018, which is why it was run in 2019 awards.

Even though it might be a year out from its release, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate still managed to scoop a really nice award up. According to Golden Joystick's official Twitter account, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate won the Nintendo Game of the Year award for 2019. This isn't the first time Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has got some decent awards, at the Japan Game Awards it got awarded the 'Grand Award', more on that here.

Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service is getting so good that I'm starting to feel bad for subscribing.

Game Pass is the best value in gaming right now: For $10 a month, you get access to over 100+ games across the entire Xbox spectrum, from the original Xbox all the way to Xbox One. Microsoft has invested tremendously with partners to bring some of the biggest games over to the all-you-can-play service, and now Square Enix is jumping into the fray with their beloved Final Fantasy series.

At the XO19 event in London, England, Square Enix confirmed that multiple big Final Fantasy games will be on Game Pass in 2020. The following games are coming to Game Pass on both consoles and PC:

The Switch has now sold over 41 million systems worldwide on the backs of a big quarterly surge.

Nintendo sold 6.93 million Switch consoles in the six-month period ended September 30, 2019, with 2.13 million systems sold in Q1'19 and 4.8 million sold in Q2'19. This brings total lifetime Switch sales to 41.67 to date, including the 2017 base model, the new Switch Lite handheld-only system, and the new Switch revision with improved battery life.

Total hardware sales made up 53.2% of Nintendo's total gaming platform sales, or roughly 214.961 billion yen ($1.99 billion).

343i has two weeks to fix some pretty big issues with Halo: Reach on PC, and if they can't, the game might not hit promised high-end performance targets.

Right now Halo: Reach on PC is locked at 60FPS for its beta testing flights. But it could stay that way when Reach launches in December, possibly even for an undetermined time after release. In a recent forum update, 343i's Tyler Davis says the team's work will carry over long after Reach's release with "more improvements beyond launch."

He also said the team still isn't happy about Reach's frame rates:

Nintendo platform holders are mostly buying first-party games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Mario Maker 2, and Link's Awakening over third party games.

Surprising absolutely no one, consumers buy Nintendo hardware specifically to play Nintendo games. The company's recent 2H'19 financials highlighted the continuing trend, showing that Nintendo's first-party games made up 75% of total software sales during the six-month period. Nintendo managed to sell roughly 58.54 million Switch software units in 2H'19, of which 43.90 million were first-party titles.

Nearly all of Nintendo's major first-party games have made it big on the Switch, especially newer titles. Super Mario Maker 2 has sold 3.39 million units so far, and others like Link's Awakening moved 3.13 million and Fire Emblem: Three Houses moved 2.29 million copies.

Nintendo is making big strides towards digital-based revenues, propelled by game sales, services, and add-on content.

Nintendo's recent financials show a huge surge in digital earnings. The company made 71.6 billion yen ($663.45 million) from digital in the first six months of Fiscal Year 2019, up a tremendous 83% year-over-year. Nintendo attributes this big jump in digital revenue to strong Switch Online subscriptions, massive add-on sales like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's fighter pass, and more direct consumer spending on digitally-delivered games.

Interestingly enough, the digital still isn't the preferred method consumers actually use to buy games. Retail box sales still hold the lion's share of Switch game sales. Only 36.2% of Nintendo's total 58.54 million software sales in 2H'19 were from digital--the rest were from physical sales.

Microsoft's Project xCloud might've just killed Stadia before it even released.

Google's new Stadia game streaming service is kind of a confusing mess right now. Google doesn't really know what it's doing. Stadia requires a $10 monthly sub at launch, forces users to buy their own games separately, is missing lots of key features like save state sharing at launch, and needs a mobile app to change basic settings. You'll also have to buy a Chromecast Ultra to play on your TV, and PC gaming is limited to 1080p 60FPS. It has a lot of hooks and gamers are dubious.

Microsoft's competing service is totally different. Project xCloud basically does everything Stadia does, but it'll include a pool of games for a set monthly fee, complete with total Xbox account integration. But it's the newly announced features that've basically just snuffed Stadia out before Google's service had a chance to compete.