Gaming - Page 691

Respawn Entertainment, the developers for the highly popular battle royale shooter Apex Legends have announced that they will be holding a Preseason Invitational eSports event.

The announcement has come from the official Apex Legends Twitter account, and it says that 80 global teams will face off against each other in an epic battle for $500,000. In total there will be 240 players competing in the competition and the tournament will be held in Krakow, Poland, from the 13th of September until the 15th.

If you are interested in testing your luck against some of the best players around the world, you can sign up here which will cost $150. There is also a bunch of terms and agreements that must be signed for you to enter the competition, as well as an age requirement of 16 years old. Apex Legends is currently available on the PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Sony today confirmed its PlayStation 4 system has sold-in 100 million units in the six-year period since launch.

Sony's recent Fiscal Year Q1'19 financials show a subtle decline in the PS4's overall potency. The system, which has now sold-in (shipped, not sold-through to consumers) exactly 100 million units across the globe, still tops the charts but will soon be overshadowed by its mighty PS5 next-gen successor. Sony's figures reflect the company's decision to start ramping down the PS4's lifecycle so it can live on through the next console.

In the three-month period ending June 30, Sony sold 3.2 million PS4s, roughly even with last year. News of the upcoming PS5 has deterred gamers from buying PS4 hardware, Sony says, so the plan is to double-down on services, digital subscriptions and game sales. Sony also knocked 1 million PS4s from its sales projections, and now expects to sell 15 million consoles in FY2019, the lowest in a four-year period.

As the Switch continues making nearly all of Nintendo's sales revenues, the hybrid system cements itself as Nintendo's gaming future.

The Switch is basically Nintendo's sole system right now and will instead become a platform that branches out to multiple form-factors. Case in point: the new $200 handheld-only Switch Lite. Mobile gaming is ancillary, and the 3DS is all but dead (sales declined by a further 40% in the quarter). The only place to carry on Nintendo's dedicated gaming brand is the Switch. And carry on it does: the Switch made over 90% of Nintendo's recent quarterly revenues.

In its latest Fiscal Year Q1'19 financials, Nintendo confirmed two things: the Switch has now sold 36.87 million units worldwide since launch, and the system made up a whopping 94% of its total net sales for the quarter.

Nintendo's ever-popular Switch has now sold more than 36 million units worldwide.

Nintendo today reported its Fiscal Year Q1'19 earnings punctuated by the obligatory Switch sales update. The results aren't bad, and Nintendo kicks off the new fiscal year with 36.87 million handheld-consoles sales since launch in March 2017. The company managed to ship 2.13 million Switches from April - June 2019, up 13.2% year-over-year, and a mighty 22.62 million software units to accommodate (up a sizable 25%).

But the Switch sold more units last quarter (Q4'18's 2.47m versus Q1'19's 2.13m) and Nintendo moved an astronomical 9.42 million consoles last holiday period.

Thanks to an exchange rate dive, Nintendo's Q1'19 earnings profits plummet by almost 50%.

Nintendo today reported its earnings for the Fiscal Year Q1'2019 period, and the results are quite good despite a foreign exchange rate hit. Against the U.S. dollar, Japanese yen saw dropped roughly 3% to 107.75 yen/1USD in the three-month period from April to June 2019, causing Nintendo to lose roughly 12.062 billion yen ($111.94 million) from exchange rate drops (reported as non-operating expense losses).

By raising expenses, this exchange hit affected Nintendo's Q1 total profits, which were down by 45% year-over-year to 16.6 billion yen ($154.09 million).

Obsidian's new singleplayer-only sci-fi RPG shooter is coming to the Nintendo Switch, but we don't have a release date just yet.

Obsidian is working with outsource dev Virtuous to port The Outer Worlds on Nintendo's handheld-console hybrid. The Switch port will delayed to an undetermined period and won't launch in October alongside the PS4, Xbox One, and Epic Store flavors, the devs confirmed.

This could be an iffy gamble on Obsidian's part, but I'm betting Private Division, the Take-Two Interactive spin-off label funding the project, has final say in the matter. Running games on the Switch usually involves significant compromises in frame rates, visuals and graphics, and overall performance, so we can expect The Outer Worlds to mirror similar trade-offs (maybe ~600p 30FPS handheld, 720p 30FPS docked?). Sure the Switch is getting a 16nm Tegra X1 revision to improve thermals, battery efficiency, and shore up a backdoor hardware fault that led to hacking, but it's not getting any kind of CPU or GPU boosts.

Call of Duty players are accustomed to the reward of getting multiple kills via killstreaks. Infinity Ward, has just confirmed that killstreaks will be included in the updated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

According to the announcement on the official Call of Duty Twitter page, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players will be able to enjoy killstreaks in the form of White Phosphorus, Infantry Assault Vehicle and Juggernaut. The White Phosphorus gas brings smoke down on the marked area and confuses and disorientates enemies. The Infantry Assault Vehicle is quite self explanatory, it has a .50 caliber gun on top and can be operated by players.

The Juggernaut suit can be called down via a Care Package and will give players access to the famous heavy suit. This tease comes just before the official full reveal of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer reveal that is scheduled in just a couple of days. Infinity Ward and Activision will be releasing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on October 25th, 2019 and it will be available on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Remedy has less than a month before it releases Control into the world, with the developer releasing a new story trailer that oozes Hollywood cinematic feels and a huge conspiracy that I want to be dunked in, all in RTX.

The new trailer is oozing with style and a huge conspiracy which I'm loving the look of both, with Remedy Entertainment wanting to tell their story more and more over the yewars. It began with one of my favorite games: Max Payne, continued into Alan Wake and Quantum Break, and culminates with one of the most interesting games of the last few years; Control.

Control will also be a huge showcase for RTX features on compatible NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards, with real-time ray tracing looking out of this world in Remedy's latest title. I went hands-on with Control and its RTX features at E3 2019 for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX SUPER reveal event in LA, and it had me blown away. Control with all of its RTX bells and whistles enabled looks next-level good.

Microsoft's goal in the industry isn't to oust competitors like Sony and Nintendo, but rather work with, innovate from, and generally coexist with them.

Microsoft has a very healthy attitude when it comes to rival games companies. The current gaming landscape has shifted tremendously and brands are no longer so hostile or closed-off--we're seeing Sony team up with Microsoft to use its Azure servers for the competing PlayStation Now service, and Nintendo is adding in Xbox LIVE integration on the Switch. Cross-play is becoming a new trend. Services are taking off and the walled gardens will soon be open to everyone. Times are a-changing, the console wars are nearly over, and this newfound era of maturity and growth could foster all sorts of exciting innovations in the industry.

According to Xbox's Phil Spencer, this kind of mutualism is important. It's never been about eradicating the opposition with cut-throat tactics. The industry would be a far worse place without competitors like Sony or Nintendo around, Spencer says.

Even with cloud game streaming on the rise, Microsoft has no plans to kill off Xbox consoles.

In a recent interview with Fortune, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reiterates that Xbox consoles are here to stay. And rightly so: consoles are massively important to the Xbox brand as a whole. Project xCloud streaming is just a part of a whole and compliments the ecosystem. It won't replace consoles.

Microsoft's next-gen Project Scarlett aims to push the bar with high-end specs like a Navi GPU and Zen 2 CPU from AMD. But it's not the end of the Xbox hardware brand, Nadella says. "The living room is not the only place where people play games-the living room is a super important place where they play games," Nadella said. "We still love our console, we're going to have another console. We're going to keep at it, because we think that there are people who want to play games on the console."

Microsoft's yearly gaming earnings performance continue to underline its strengths (services) and weaknesses (hardware).

Microsoft recently reported its Q4 and yearly earnings for the Xbox division, and despite a quarterly dip, the results aren't too bad. Xbox gaming made roughly $11.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2019, once again accounting for less than 10% of Microsoft's total revenues for the period ($125.84 billion). Xbox's Q4 revenues dipped by 10% year-over-year to $2.05 billion, but Xbox One hardware sales crashed tremendously by nearly 50%.

There's a silver lining though. Xbox LIVE monthly active users are now up to 65 million, a new all-time high for the company. This is Microsoft's real bread and butter. The company cares mostly about services, game sales, and recurring subscriptions driven by online engagement--microtransactions, multiplayer, the Xbox Store, etc--simply because they're more profitable in the long run. The entire Xbox business has multiple hooks like Xbox Game Pass, Play Anywhere, and soon game streaming via Project xCloud, and is set up to be one big cycle of online playing and paying. It's the main reason the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition even exists.

Nintendo recently teased that they will soon be holding a livestream with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai as he gives us a breakdown about the games next DLC character 'The Hero'

The Hero represents 4 characters of the Dragon Quest series and according to yesterdays announcements, Sakurai will be taking fans through in-depth look at the coming fighter. The demo presentation has been scheduled for July 30th, shortly after, according to Nintendo Europe, version 4.0.0 system update will launch and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate replays won't be compatible with the new system.

This could mean that The Hero is apart of the version 4.0.0 update and will sneak in as a fast surprise for us, right after the livestream reveal ends. This would be pretty cool and I'm sure many fans would encourage that level of surprise. I cannot confirm anything officially as of yet, but if I believe this is a safe assumption especially when considering Joker arrived with version 3.0.0. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is exclusively available on the Nintendo Switch.

We should expect to hear more about Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 console in the coming months to wrap up the year, before the full hype train begins in 2020 -- but what about the most important thing... price?

MediaMarkt Sweden has the new PlayStation 5 up for pre-order now for $1050, and is most likely a placeholder, but a high placeholder that I think is for good reason. Sony is putting its all into the PS5 and with it most likely rolling out with 4K 60FPS gaming thanks to the massively more powerful Zen 2 and Navi architectures from AMD both on 7nm.

This won't be cheap, and nor should it be cheap if we're truly talking high-end PC gaming at 4K 60FPS, a $1000 price point would be a helluva deal. Console gamers might be used to the $300-$400 sweet spot for consoles, but we're in a different age now where people are more comfortable spending $1000 on an actual great console (hardware wise) versus the potatoes they've had in the last 10 years.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate players will gather around as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director, Masahiro Sakurai reveals information about the games coming DLC character 'The Hero'.

According to an announcement out of Nintendo Versus, Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai will be sitting down on a livestream to give an in-depth look at the upcoming DLC character 'The Hero'. Sakurai will begin the livestreaming on 30th of July, and we will be given some in-depth details and presumably some gameplay will be shown off during the presentation.

The presentation has been called a 'demo' and will last 22 mins and from the image that we see on the Twitter post we could assume that perhaps Sakurai himself will be picking up a controller to show off his skills. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is exclusively available on the Nintendo Switch.

Now that QuakeCon 2019 is over, id Software's latest game has been detailed in a gloriously evil 48-minute gameplay video of DOOM Eternal. Check it out:

It's shaping up beautifully, with great graphics and beyond smooth movement even compared to the first game. It feels like id Software has taken in the super-slick movement style of RAGE 2, and infused it into DOOM Eternal. We have even better, much more powerful weapons to choose from and totally new environments all detailed in the id Tech 7 engine.

Speaking of id Tech 7, the refreshed engine will be powering DOOM Eternal and its 10x higher geometry detail, as well as more texture details than any game that id Software has made, ever. DOOM Eternal will have real-time ray tracing and is being touted as the best ray tracing ever, but this will be missing from its launch with DOOM Eternal launching on November 22.

Epic Games has just finished up with its huge Fortnite World Cup which saw a $30 million prize pool, two cheaters battling it out and the crowd going so crazy they muted the audio, with 16-year old Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf taking it out winning himself $3 million.

Bugha won the first of six games, continuing on to score himself high places and more eliminations which took him to the top. He continued playing well throughout the day and then took out the last game, taking home a gigantic $3 million. At 16 years old to win a huge $3 million in the hottest game in the world right now must've felt like a helluva moment for Kyle, good on him!

On the Saturday there was the Duos tournament where Emil "Nyhrox" Bergquist Pedersen and David "Aqua" W. from Europe took it out, taking out two of the six games, seeing them secure the most points out of the 50 teams in the Duos tournament. They also won a huge $3 million between them.

Epic Games is continuing to inject Fortnite in every place it can, with the huge Fortnite World Cup kicking off at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York.

The Fortnite World Cup had its opening ceremony at 12:30PM, which was quickly followed by the Creative Finals at 1PM and then the Celebrity Pro-Am at 4PM. The Celebrity Pro-Am sounds fun, as it will have some celebrities and pro-gamers that will be fighting for a huge $3 million prize pool that will be donated to charity.

Pro Fortnite player Damion 'XXiF' Cook qualified for the Fortnite World Cup and played at the Fortnite World Cup, with fans not happy about it at all. XXiF was found guilty of cheating by Epic Games during the Fortnite World Cup qualifiers, banned from the game for 14 days, and yet qualified for Fortnite World Cup, and competed in New York.

When the PS4 launched it didn't have a lot of games. Some were good, some were great, and some like The Order 1886 were technical marvels with amazing graphics but short-sighted mechanics. Now Ready At Dawn could get a second chance.

Ready At Dawn's ill-fated The Order series could get revived with a sequel, and it could be another PlayStation-exclusive. Assassin's Creed dev Jordan Lemos heard the iconic supernatural 19th century shooter might get a second chapter. Right now Ready At Dawn is indeed working on a new AAA console game that's yet to be announced...and it could very well be another cinematic-driven experience set in lycan-infested London.

"I think it's one of those games that got hyped up before launch, or people thought it was going to be a different kind of game than it was, so when they played it and it was four hours or something...they thought it was crap. But if you play it now, it's really good. I like it. Everyone should play The Order 1886. Especially since...I guess they're making a sequel--I don't know if it's The Order 1887--the last I heard, yeah, they were actually doing a second one," Lemos said in a recent interview with Gamer's Head Podcast.

Doom broke the mold for PC gaming as a whole, introducing the world to a demon-infested cataclysm of blood, hellish molten lava, and utter chaos. But as time went by it got more and more humorous, creating a mystique around the seemingly-immortal Doom Slayer.

Today's Doom games really blend that ultra-brutality of the original series with a kind of hilarious tone that never takes itself too seriously. The games are always games first, putting entertainment above immersion and never let you forget you're playing a high-octane power fantasy. That was actually part of the design process from the start. According to Doom Eternal creative director Hugo Martin, id drew inspiration from Sam Raimi's darkly funny Evil Dead horror movies.

"We met Adrian Carmack a bit ago along with the team, and he told us that we can't take Doom too seriously. 'Evil Dead, that was a big inspiration for us,' he said," Hugo Martin said during a QuakeCon 2019 panel. "We've been studying the things they were interested in from the beginning but it's just those little elements have to be in place to make something that special that resonates with people."

With its swappable components, Intel's new modular compute tech could change the face of gaming.

Intel brought something special to last weekend's IEM Chicago event: two futuristic concept designs that may revolutionize both productivity and gaming. I saw the unique Honeycomb Glacier with its folding hinges and dual-screen design, as well as Intel's new futuristic modular compute tech. The latter has some far-reaching implications that could usher in a new era of convenience for gaming as a whole.

Intel's vision with its compute tech is simple: swapping between multiple platforms without having to buy them individually or sacrificing performance. This is made possible by Intel's unique compute platform. What if you could take the guts out of your desktop and slap them into a laptop at will? That's the idea here. Essentially Intel packed a computer in a blade-like form-factor that can be detached and slotted into multiple modular designs.