Gaming - Page 649

UPDATE: It's been confirmed the barbarian has four weapon slots, not three.

After years of waiting, Diablo is back. Not only did we get a mesmerizing cinematic reveal trailer, but Blizzard also dropped first gameplay footage of Diablo IV, and it looks pretty good.

Blizzard's not messing around with Diablo IV. It's a brutal, gruesome, and supremely horrifying game that embraces Diablo II's old-school visual style and mechnical character builds while building Diablo III's more streamlined combat and graphics engine.

Diablo IV was finally confirmed today with a visually macabre trailer.

Diablo IV is what Diablo III should've always been. It's a warped mixture of Hellraiser with classic demonic Diablo overtones, but modernized with splendidly haunting and bizarre style that's straight out of Bryan Fuller's imagination. The new trailer confirms Lilith, the Daughter of Hatred and the Mother of Nephalem, as the principal demonic antagonist, and she looks absolutely nightmarish.

The footage shows four miscreant pirates walking into a demonic temple in search of gold. Little do they know they've stumbled upon the summoning grounds for Lilith...and her eldritch revival is so striking that it rivals most horror films.

Ubisoft plans to release up to 9 AAA games in the next two fiscal years, including Watch Dogs 3, a new Assassin's Creed game, and possibly even Far Cry 6. All of them should be optimized to push the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett next-gen consoles to their limits.

Like Electronic Arts and Capcom, Ubisoft is betting big on next-gen consoles with a huge slate of new games.

In its recent Q2'19 earnings call, Ubisoft confirmed an ambitious new line of titles. The company wants to launch as many as 9 big games throughout the next few years. This new slate will be broken up across two fiscal year timelines: 5 new AAA games in FY2021 (April 1, 2020 - March 31, 2021) and 3-4 AAA games in FY2022 (April 2021 - March 31, 2022).

As apart of Nintendo's quarterly earning financial results, the company shined a light on the sales for their flagship franchise, Super Smash Bros.

Nintendo revealed that the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate franchise has proudly hit a new milestone with over 15,710,000 units sold, making it the best-selling game in the Super Smash Bros. series. Before Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Smash Bros. For Wii U & 3DS held the title with 14,910,000.

Before Super Smash Bros. For Wii U & 3DS, Super Smash Bros. Brawl held the title with 13,270,000, then Melee followed with 7,410,000 and finally the original Super Smash Bros. with 5,550,000. Judging on the sales of the Super Smash Bros. series, it seems to ever-growing in popularity. Now all Nintendo need to do is officially recognize and push the competitive seen to get more players enticed into participating in some ultimate action.

Ubisoft clarifies mixed signals on The Division 2, saying the game is still a success that simply didn't break the bar set by the company.

The Division 2 sold tremendously well on all platforms and markets. The sequel was the best-selling game in the first six months of 2019. But in today's landscape game sales aren't everything. Ubisoft cares a lot more about what it calls PRI or Player Recurring Investment, or cosmetic microtransactions and season/battle passes. Game sales are just the beginning, and the aim is to keep monetizing gamers over time and offering free content in return.

If The Division 2 was a huge sales success, it's not too hard to see why the game missed Ubisoft's expectations. It apparently just didn't monetize as strongly as the company had hoped. A game moving massive units isn't enough for a digital-first developer like Ubisoft. The real money comes in with recurring live service microtransactions, and Ubisoft was counting on much more than what the game delivered.

Start saving your money folks for that GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for Halo Reach at 4K 60FPS... I mean, wait -- 343 industries has just released the official PC specs for Halo Reach and they are recommending just a GeForce GTX 770 for 4K 60FPS.

343 Industries official PC requirements for Halo Reach see you needing a mix of low-end CPUs in the 1080p 60FPS range with an AMD FX-4100 or Intel i7-870 processor, 8GB of RAM and either an AMD Radeon R7 360 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card. Yeah, that's not a typo -- an AMD Radeon R7 360 or GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

If you want to crank things up to 4K 60FPS then 343i recommends only modest PC specs as well, with an older and very much previous-gen AMD FX-6350 or Intel Core i5-3450 processor, the same 8GB of RAM, and either an AMD Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 770. Once again, that's not a typo -- you need only a Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 770 to run Halo Reach at 4K 60FPS.

It was only a few months ago that Crytek unveiled their CRYENGINE 5.6 Tech Trailer video which I've got embedded below. Check it out to refresh your memory before we dive into what could actually be very, very exciting.

At the end of the CRYENGINE 5.6 Tech Trailer video there are a bunch of shots from an island very similar to the one you first drop into in Crysis. It even featured parts of the original Crysis soundtrack, stirring rumors of a remake... well... about that. EA is now talking about remaking a bunch of its classic games.

During EA's recent earnings call, the company announced it has plans to launch "exciting remasters of fan favorites" in their 2021 fiscal year. EA's build up of remasters will include Command & Conquer and others, but surely... just surely... this has to include Crysis. Crysis is a fan favorite, right?!

It looks like we only have a few more hours to wait until the reviews of Death Stranding are unleashed, with the review embargo for Hideo Kojima's new masterpiece lifting November 1 at 12:01AM PT / 3:01 AM ET / 7:01 AM GMT / 6 PM AET. Check out the recently-launched, and freaking amazing 8-minute launch trailer to Death Stranding here.

There are reviewers who have already sunken untold hours into Death Stranding, with the author of Mecha Samurai Empire & Cyber Shogun Revolution, Peter Tieryas tweeting (too early) his thoughts on the game. He couldn't say too much about the game because of the impending embargo, but what he has to say is pretty damn good.

Tieryas said Death Stranding is "breathtaking, easily one of the most unique and stunning experiences I've had in all my years of gaming".

Kingston's gaming division has a lot to celebrate today, with HyperX hitting 3 huge milestones -- the first, it has sold over 65 million memory modules, 10 million gaming headsets, and 1 million keyboards.

HyperX has continued to fill out its range of products with a huge range of HyperX memory, all the way through to FURY and Predator families of HyperX DIMMs with gorgeous RGB lighting. Selling over 65 million DIMMs is a big milestone for HyperX and Kingston.

HyperX general manager Mark Leathem explains: "HyperX continues to exceed our expectations in market share, firmly established as both a leader in PC headsets and a pioneer in the gaming industry. Hyperx continues to exceed our expectations in market share, firmly established as both a leader in PC headsets and a pioneer in the gaming industry".

Can you believe that Death Stranding is finally upon us? I mean it launches on November 8 as an exclusive to Sony's current-gen PlayStation 4 and has optimizations for the slightly beefier PlayStation 4 Pro -- as well as the recent news of Death Stranding coming to the PC 'sometime in 2020'.

Now we have a huge 8-minute long launch trailer for Death Stranding (above) with the team at Kojima Productions putting their all into this trailer, and it shows. It looks absolutely phenomenal, and truly like nothing else that is on the market, or like anything I've seen in my 30+ years as a gamer.

Hideo Kojima will go down in history with Metal Gear Solid and now Death Stranding, which I'm sure is going to sell a butt load of copies. I do wonder if this was a PlayStation 5 exclusive, just how good would it look? Would we have in-game graphics as good as that gorgeous CG in the 8-minute launch trailer? Hmm.

Ubisoft has confirmed during its recent earnings call with investors that it is working on 5 next-gen AAA games for both the current-gen and next-gen consoles, and by next-gen consoles the company means Sony's new PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's codename Xbox Scarlett console.

During the call, Ubisoft talked about its Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) which runs between April 2020 and March 2021, where in this window we can expect those 5 new AAA games launched on all current and next-gen consoles. Sony will be launching its next-gen PlayStation 5 in December 2020 according to my exclusive report, while Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Scarlett should launch very close to it in the tail end of 2020.

We know that 3 of the new 5 new games will include Watch Dogs Legion, Rainbow Six Quarantine and Gods & Monsters -- while the two other games are a mystery right now. This also means we'll see a PS4 and Xbox One launch of Watch Dogs Legion in March 2020, while a next-gen version will be offered when the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett launch in the end of 2020.

Diablo IV's character classes will include some returning favorites from Diablo II.

After years of development and even more years of waiting, Diablo IV will be revealed tomorrow. We actually know a fair bit about the upcoming APRG, but now we know even more thanks to a bunch of new leaks from a trusted industry source.

According to the source, three Diablo IV character classes have been confirmed so far: The barbarian, who retains their signature warcries and power attacks, the druid, who can shapeshift into a bear and a wolf, and the wizard, who predictably blasts elemental attacks. In a weird move, every class will have a mount to zoom around the map with (likely another avenue for Blizzard's monetized cosmetics). The game will have four-player co-op like Diablo III, and seems to use Diablo III's more streamlined gameplay mechanics melded with Diablo II's brutal, grim, and bloody artistic style.

The Steam Library was famously a pain to deal with, it felt more like directory of your games than a library. Now that has all changed in the most recent update.

Back in late September, Valve announced that Steam would be getting a huge library update. Now that update has made its way out of its beta tests and moved to the live servers for everyone to enjoy. Valve have announced the news via their blog and have brought everyone up to speed on the new features they can enjoy.

Right off the bat, we can see that Valve have added a splash of color to the library giving it more of 'gamer' feel rather than the dictionary feel it had before. The landing page for the library has changed and gamers can now organize their games into separate categories. The update also allows for Steam users to more easily check out what their friends are playing the community content behind each title. For further step-by-step feature description head on over to the official Steam blog here.

Can you believe it's almost here? Rockstar Games is preparing PC gamers for the huge launch of Red Dead Redemption 2, with the game now pre-loading for gamers through the Rockstar Launcher.

The PlayStation 4 version of Red Dead Redemption 2 weighs in at close to 100GB, while the Xbox One version came in at around 110GB so the PC version scooping up 110GB isn't a big surprise. Well, it actually is a surprise given how much better the PC version looks, and that it doesn't use more HDD space.

So how the hell did the console versions of the game require 100-110GB of HDD space while the PC version requires the same HDD space as the Xbox One version and looks infinitely better than both the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Red Dead Redemption 2? It makes me want to spit my tobacco into a spittoon, or something.

Sony affirms its powerful next-gen PS5 won't be delayed, and that the console is meeting their expectations.

Sony has a lot riding on the PlayStation 5, and the company is taking the console very, very seriously. Not only is it significantly ramping up development of its games and services in prep for the mighty Zen 2 and Navi GPU-powered PS5, but it's also putting a hefty amount of time and money into the system's development. Sony has been coy about revealing official PS5 details to investors, but in its recent Q2'19 earnings report the company says the PS5 is currently on track.

"Development of the PS5 is progressing according to plan and we believe development of game titles by our software development partners is progressing smoothly. We anticipate providing the highly-engaging gameplay experiences that both current users of the PS4 and potential new users have come to expect," Sony said in the report.

Nearly six years after launch, Sony's PS4 has now sold-in more than 100 million units worldwide.

Today Sony announced its Fiscal Q2'19 financials, confirming a new total sales milestone for the PlayStation 4. As of the second quarter, PS4 shipments sit at 102.8 million, meaning the PS4 beats all other legacy consoles except for the PlayStation 2.

Sony shipped 2.8 million PS4s in Q2'19, down 28% year-over-year from Q2'18. The company expects hardware revenues to slow down throughout the rest of the fiscal year as it ramps up its next-gen PlayStation 5. The Games and Network Services segment, which includes PlayStation hardware, services, and games, only accounted for 21% of Sony's total revenues throughout Q2'19.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a huge success for Activision, raking in over $600 million in sales in its opening weekend on all platforms.

Modern Warfare is a sales juggernaut that beat Black Ops 4's and even Black Ops 3's opening weekend earnings, becoming the fastest-selling Call of Duty game on PS4 and Xbox One to date. The reboot still didn't beat Black Ops II's astronomical $500 million first-day sales, though.

Here's a quick historical breakdown of Call of Duty's opening earnings:

EA confirmed a new Battlefield game is coming by 2022 with optimizations for next-gen consoles, but until then Battlefield V will carry the franchise.

Battlefield V isn't going anywhere, and EA says the game will continue to get updates throughout 2020 and beyond as DICE prepares Battlefield 6 for next-gen systems. The publisher teases new dynamic modes and huge content to expand the experience and re-engage players. The main goal is to keep players busy, have a recurring revenue stream, and possibly even sell catalog copies while everyone waits for the insanity that is Battlefield 6 on PS5 and Project Scarlett.

"Our Battlefield franchise and its community are also a major focus for us, and we'll add new content and new ways to play Battlefield V in FY '21. Targeting new innovation that will be enabled by next-gen platforms and a growing install base on the new consoles, our next Battlefield game is set for FY '22," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in a recent earnings call.

No wonder Disney is happy with EA's Star Wars games: They're actually massively successful insofar as sales.

EA today confirmed their two Star Wars: Battlefront games combined have sold over a 33 million copies worldwide, and asserted DICE is committed to engaging with the Star Wars audience. This is actually surprising news, especially with the huge Battlefront II lootbox controversy that marred the game's launch in 2017.

Powered by live services that continually deliver revenue over time, both Battlefront games have kept gamers busy for years now and made consistent earnings while engaging players with tons of free content. Battlefront II saw an extension of life after EA shut down Visceral Games and cancelled its Star Wars action game, leading DICE to support the shooter with a massive array of tweaks and free expansions.

Blizzard have finally announced the beta for the highly anticipated Warcraft III: Reforged, and it should be arriving sometime this week.

Gamers who are excited about the beta for Warcraft II: Reforged and want to jump into as soon as possible should note that priority invites are being sent out to those who picked up the Spoils of War Edition. Not only does the Spoils of War Edition give buyers priority with beta invites, but it also gives some cosmetic bonuses.

Cosmetic skins include: Champion of the Horde Thrall, Emerald Nightmare Cenarius, Fallen King Arthas, and Daughter of the Seas Proudmoore. For those that didn't pick up the Spoils of War Edition and just decided to grab the standard one, invitations will be rolled out to you over the coming weeks. The beta will consist of orc and human races within a 1v1 and 2v2 matches. For further information visit the official Blizzard blog post here.