Gaming - Page 653

Nintendo has made a tremendous transformation since the Wii U days. Not only is it generating billions of revenue every year from hardware and software, but the company is shedding the shackles that tethered it to the old ways of games development. The Switch isn't just new hardware: It's the start of a new Nintendo, one that's going to experiment and take some risks. One of those risks is playing around with new ideas for its massively popular first-party franchises.

Nintendo has made lots of changes under the leadership of current Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa. First off, the company is now much more forthright with its earnings, its upcoming plans, and its overall trajectory. Furukawa regularly goes into express detail with sales figures and is refreshingly open about the company's business. Secondly, Furukawa is taking Nintendo's changing of the guard even further; the Switch's marketing, presentation, and overall feel is the result of a renewed vigor sparked from original plans set forth all the way during Iwata's presidency. As a natural evolution of the Wii U and the 3DS, the Nintendo Switch was always meant to embrace Nintendo's youth and pass development down to a new generation.

In a recent interview with TIME, Nintendo's acting president says he's giving first-party development teams lots of room to explore diverse new ideas and paths for Switch games. Things could get pretty weird, original, and quite different than what we're used to, similar to Zelda: Breath of the Wild's radical departure from the series original formula.

EA has announced a new DLC pack for Sims 4, this time round players will be able to take their Sims back to school. More accurately, university and all the fun that surrounds it.

This new DLC pack will open up a new chapter for Sims as they can enroll in different classes in different schools such as engineering, education or law. Sims also have the ability of being able to decorate their dorm room, join extracurricular activities and make friends with all different types of other sims.

According to Michael Duke, Senior Producer of The Sims 4, "Easily the most requested piece of content by our players, we're excited to reveal The Sims 4 Discover University and can't wait for everyone to make the world of Britechester their classroom. Players can have their Sims live out whatever college experience they choose and create unique memories during an opportunistic chapter of their lives."

THQ Nordic have revealed the release date for the next Darksiders game, Darksiders Genesis. The release date was showcased through a new cinematic trailer that has gone live.

Above we have the official Darksiders Genesis cinematic trailer, which is centered around the the last of the four horseman 'Stife'. Strifes primary weapon of choice is two guns Mercy and Redemption, and with these weapons players will carve their way through hordes of demons, monsters angels and everything else that stands in their way.

It should also be noted that Stife is portrayed as quite humorous, which is really refreshing since the previous Darksiders games have had characters that are much more on the serious side of things. I think that if Darksiders Genesis mixes a certain element of comedic value into its hack n' slash combat, players could easily develop a great bond between them and Strife. Darksiders Genesis will release on PC first on December 5th. Console gamers on Xbox and PS4 will have to wait until February 14th.

Back when Nintendo hosted their most recent Nintendo Direct event it was announced that they would be pairing DOOM 64 with DOOM Eternal as a pre-order bonus. Now things have changed.

Fans of the DOOM series were a bit salty that only Nintendo Switch users were getting the DOOM 64 pre-order bonus with their copy of DOOM Eternal. But now Bethesda has changed their stance, giving ALL pre-order purchases of DOOM Eternal a copy of DOOM 64 no matter what platform.

DOOM Eternal pre-order will not only get a copy of DOOM 64, but also the "Rip and Tear Pack" which includes a DOOT Revenant player skin, Throwback Shotgun Weapon Skin, Cultist Base Master Level, a remix of the main game's Cultist Base Level and some other stuff. DOOM Eternal will be arriving on PC, Xbox One and PS4 on March 20, 2020.

As the years continue to move on, old games that were once thought of a new releases become more and more valuable. This is particularly relevant for those games that were released back in early 1990's.

A new study out of SafeStore that was published just last month has measured the price inrease of a selection of old retro videos and compared them to what they are worth today. The study shows percentage increases from the games' original prices to what they are going for now. This gives buyers an indication of what they potentially have stored away in their dusty old collections.

Some of the titles that have had their prices equated and their percentages measured are 1992's Sonic the Hedgehog, 1998 Metal Gear Solid, 1991 Street Fighter II, 1996 Pokemon Red and Blue, 1996 Super Mario 64, 1991 Super Mario World and more. If you are interested in checking out the image provided from the study, it's located in the entirety of this article. Not that long ago, a super rare Pokemon trading card worth $60,000 was lost in the mail, more on that here.

Borderlands 3 is doing extremely well for both developer Gearbox Software and publisher 2K, with the biggest Epic Games Store exclusive killing it in September.

According to SuperData's new worldwide earnings chart, Borderlands 3 was the second highest-grossing PC game of September, losing out to Dungeon Fighter Online. Borderlands 3 beat established money printers like League of Legends, World of Tanks, Fortnite, and Roblox.

There were 3.3 million copies of Borderlands 3 sold in digital versions in September 2019, so with each copy at $60 this means the game grossed $198 million in that 30-day period alone.

NBC has announced a new esports-focused comedy securing a gigantic TV star in Johnny Galecki, who played Leonard Hofstadter in the super-popular and even more successful The Big Bang Theory.

The new show is called 'The Squad' and centers around a group of friends who love esports, with The Hollywood Reporter describing the series: "The Squad revolves around a new group of friends (and sometimes enemies) who find companionship and common ground in their mutual love of esports. The potential series explores what it means to finally find 'your tribe' after years of feeling like an outsider".

Anthony Del Broccolo is writing The Squad, having worked on The Big Bang Theory as a producer and writer for the series. There's no other details on the series other than Warner Bros. TV producing the show for NBC, with WBTV producing The Big Bang Theory for CBS so it is kinda still in the family with some of the stars, writers, and companies connected to The Big Bang Theory.

With the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare right around the corner, NVIDIA has been working day and night to get its new GeForce drivers ready for what should be one of the biggest games of 2019. You can grab the new NVIDIA GeForce 440.97 drivers here.

NVIDIA's new GeForce 440.97 drivers are now ready to be downloaded and are fully optimized for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, as well as The Outer Worlds. There are the usual bug fixes and added or updated SLI profiles, with multi-GPU gamers getting support in the Darwin Project, and The Outer Worlds (for Turing-based GPUs only).

The new drivers also now support G-SYNC for OpenGL and Vulkan-based applications when run in a window, while the bug fixes are plenty ranging from one of my most-hated bugs in Apex Legends -- the 'random flickering occurs on the screen' now fixed.

The PC Game Store Wars are in full swing, but both consumers and developers stand to benefit from this big conflict--at least that's what Wolfenstein developer MachineGames believes.

There's a big benefit to Steam and the Epic Games Store's big brawl, at least when developers are concerned. The Epic Games Store signs multi-million dollar deals for six- or twelve-month exclusivity rights, and by doing so, puts pressure on Steam to retire its antiquated 70-30% revenue split model. Devs get to stay in business (especially indie devs) and keep making games rather than being buried under Steam's saturated storefront. The down-side is consumers ultimately have to use multiple launchers to play specific games--something that's already a trend thanks to uPlay and Origin.

Obviously devs are more excited about the Epic vs. Steam battle. MachineGames, the devs behind the excellent new Wolfenstein shooters, is no different, despite not having signed a deal with Epic themselves. "Competition is good for the industry. It's good for everybody, because competition just makes us be better," senior level designer Kristoffer Kindh told PCGamesN.

21-year-old Cayla Campos was shot to death while fleeing after witnessing an armed robbery.

Police say Campos was in her car playing Pokemon GO at 1:30am at nearby Bianchetti Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico before witnessing an attempted armed robbery. Campos drove away, but the assailants shot at her car, striking her in the neck and causing her to crash in a nearby house. She later died at the hospital. The murder happened right outside of Campos' apartment.

"Her and her boyfriend always make a loop around this park before they go home and play Pokemon Go because their apartment is literally right there," Campos' friend Cody Bell told KRQE.

Ken Levine's latest game might be a first-person shooter with immersive simulation elements, a job listing hints.

BioShock studio Irrational Games is no more, but a core handful of the old team lives on at their new studio Ghost Story Games. This new team has been developing a game since 2016 or thereabouts and we actually knew it'd be an immersive sim way back when. But new job listings hint the unannounced project could stick to BioShock's roots, which makes sense given the team's experience with shooters.

A producer job listing at Ghost Story games calls for experience with FPS, RPGs, or strategy games, hinting at a hybrid focus for the new project. "The ideal candidate for the producer role has owned areas of production for one or more PC and/or console titles in the shooter, RPG or strategy genres," reads the listing.

If children can't gamble offline, then they shouldn't be able to do so online, UK Children's Commissioner Anne Longfield says.

Today the Children's Commissioner's Office published a new report that analyzes gaming habits in children from 10-16 years old. The results found some significant harming effects of online gaming, from negative social interactions with strangers and over-spending with lootboxes.

The report takes a closer look at the psychological mechanisms of games like FIFA, which pressures children into buying packs for the chance to get better teams, and Fortnite, whose cosmetic monetization brings an intense peer pressure to buy skins to fit in with others. Longfield's main finding is that children simply don't have the power, sense, or adequate knowledge to control this type of spending, which may develop into financial management issues later in life.

If you can remember back to E3, Xbox Head Phil Spencer said that the next-gen Xbox console will have backwards compatibility across previous generations. We now have a reaffirmation about how that will play out.

Recently, a fan named 'Parris' took to Twitter to ask James Shields, Product/Marketing Manager for Xbox accessories at Microsoft if the next-gen Xbox would have support for the Xbox One controllers. Shields replied to the Tweet confirming that "all Xbox One controllers!" are forwards compatible with the coming console.

It was also explained at E3 by Spencer that Microsoft want to move towards combining the PC and Xbox platform into one big family and by doing this their companies initiative is to start "respecting the purchases gamers have made on our platform." Allowing for previous generation controllers to work on the newest generation hardware is certainly a great step towards achieving that goal. As it lowers the purchasing barrier for the next-gen console, as buyers will know that they won't have to pick up a plethora of different accessorizes that would ultimately render their already owned Xbox One accessories 'useless'.

Valve has said that Steam users can update their clients to install a brand new feature that will remove the hassle of not being able to play local multiplayer games online with friends.

This new feature is called Remote Play Together and Steam users can opt into Steam's newest beta to download and begin playing. Remote Play Together traverses local multiplay only titles, and lets Steam users who want to play a local play only title (Samurai Gunn, TowerFall Ascension) with their friends online. This is done through streaming, beta users can invite up to four friends to a game that lacks online multiplayer support through a simple right-click on their friends list.

The best bit about Remote Play Together is that its completely free and most importantly, only one player out of the group needs to own the game in order for everyone to play, not every player in the group. If you are after a more in-depth tutorial on how to update your Steam client to the new beta and begin Remote Play Together with your friends, head on over to the official Steam blog post explaining it all here.

Back in late September, Gearbox announced that the first new content to come to Borderlands 3 will be the Halloween event titled 'Bloody Harvest'. We now have the official trailer for the event.

From the above trailer which has been released onto the official Borderlands YouTube Channel, we are introduced to what players can expect from the upcoming event. Bloody Harvest will be adding a new area for players to enjoy, as well as Halloween-themed enemies, a challenging boss, new missions, cosmetics and more.

The new area will only be accessible to those players who have collected a certain amount of Hecktoplasm, which is an item that drops from slain Haunted enemies. These enemies are all over the galaxy and will drop through the duration of the Bloody Harvest event. Once players have collected enough Hecktoplasm, Maurice will open a portal to new area called Heck aboard the Sanctuary III. Borderlands 3's Bloody Harvest event will be running from October 24th to December 5th. Borderlands 3 is currently available on PC, Xbox One and PS4.

Epic Games is celebrating Halloween for the first time ever since their release, and to do that the company is slashing prices for a large selection of games.

Epic hasn't just honed in on a specific genre of games to reduce pricing on, they have instead decided to hit almost every genre and diversify their sales catalog so everyone has a bit of something to enjoy. World War Z, Control, Beyond: Two Souls, Hades, Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series are just some of the titles Epic has got discounted.

If you aren't really into the titles mentioned above, Epic also has Darksiders III for half-price, Rainbow Six Siege for quarter of its normal price and For Honor heavily discounted. Not to mention the likes of Alan Wake being extremely cheap, Limbo and a large selection of The Walking Dead Telltale Games slashed. If you are interested in picking up some new titles this Halloween check out this link here.

So you are a lover of the GameCube controller and just don't want to pass up on using it, but you want to use your Nintendo Switch in handheld mode. SADES has your back with the GameCube-style Nintendo Switch Joy-Con's.

While it might not be the real deal when it comes to GameCube controllers, the GameCube-style JoyCon's from SADES is the closest your going to get in hand-held mode. SADES has announced this new controller in attempt to tap into the more than apparent GameCube market, and as someone who absolutely loves GameCube controllers they certainly have my attention.

The new pair of controllers come in at a cost of $59.99 which is about $10 more than your standard Nintendo Switch Joy-Con's. SADES has left no features out as well, the GameCube-style controllers come with NFC for amiibo and gyro support, a micro-USB charging cable, dock charging and HD rumble. While SADES Joy-Con's offer no extra utility when compared to normal Joy-Con's, they are more so aimed at a consumer who loves the GameCube aesthetic and wants that on their Nintendo Switch.

The Coalition is probably working on Gears 6 right now, with Gears 5 now out the door and in gamers' hands the next iteration of Gears 6 could have a very interesting source to be inspired by, at least visually.

Gears 6 could be pulling visual inspiration from A Handmaid's Tale, the popular Hulu series, according to Iran-based vidoe game composer Hamidrez Nikoofar. He runs a podcast series called Wassup Conversations, where he chats with different developers. In a recent chat with Gears 5 art director Aryan Hanbeck, it was revealed the Hulu series is an inspiration.

Hanbeck said: "One thing - the guys here will probably laugh if they see this - but I've been telling all the artists nonstop to go watch Handmaid's Tale... The composition, the color, and just the cinematography and symbolism is just off the charts. So, I watched that and I'm like, 'Wow we gotta find a way to get more of this stuff in Gears 6".

Rockstar Games blew gamers away with the not-so-surprising reveal of Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PC, with uncapped FPS, 4K (and beyond) support, UltraWide monitor support, and so much more. But what does it look like compared to the console version? Check out the video below:

The comparison video does a good, but not perfect job, of showing us the differences between the console versions of Red Dead Redemption 2, and the upcoming PC version of the game. RDR2 on the PC boasts some great upgrades in resolution and monitor support, textures, and most importantly draw distance.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is already one of the best-looking games on current-gen consoles, but it definitely loses out to the PC version. The PC version on the other hand looks great, but it's not a mind-blowing upgrade from the console version which already looks good. The textures don't pop with super amounts of detail, but the increases in detail levels itself mixed with the higher draw distances really do look superior on the PC without a doubt.

We know that the semi-custom designs that AMD is providing in its Zen 2 and Navi chips for the next-gen Xbox Scarlett and PlayStation 5 consoels will provide a huge injection of performance... but 4K 120FPS is a big call.

It wasn't too long ago that I personally did some testing between two of NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards in SLI/NVLink, which enabled 4K 120FPS gaming on Ultra quality. But now, Aaron Greenberg who is the GM, Xbox Games Marketing at Microsoft, is teasing that the huge CPU upgrades inside of Microsoft's next-gen Xbox Scarlett console will open the doors for 4K 120FPS gaming.

In an interview with the Xbox Official Magazine, Greenberg said: "But, with the next-gen, I think you'll see a big upgrade in CPU, because we really want to make sure that you don't have any compromises with the framerates. Yes, we can do 4K, but we can also do 120 frames per second. So I think that type of capability will be something that people don't see today".