Gaming News - Page 70

Call of Duty's annual 2024 release will be centered on the Gulf War, sources have told Windows Central's Jez Corden.

The next Call of Duty game will take place in the 1990s during the Gulf War, new reports indicate. COD 2024 is part of the Black Ops sub-series and has been in development by Treyarch for the past 4 years--the only game in the entire franchise to have such a long timetable according to Charlie Intel.

Info on Black Ops Gulf War was originally discovered in a 2022 content leak at Activision, where the game was mentioned under the codename Cerberus. A picture of an F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber was also part of the leaks, further lending credence to the Gulf War setting. U.S. forces used F-117 Nighthawks during the airstrike campaigns of Operation Desert Storm.

Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is set to launch on December 5, bringing the complete version of the game to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation, and PC - in physical and digital forms. This includes the heavily updated, improved, and overhauled 2.0 version of the base game and the critically acclaimed Phantom Liberty expansion starring Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves.

According to the developer and publisher CD Projekt RED, the Ultimate Edition includes "every update ever released," with the announcement making special mention of the new dynamic skill tree inspired by Diablo II, vehicle combat, enhanced enemy and police AI, and the fact that it includes a tonne of free DLC packs including cards, clothes, and new weapons.

Although Cyberpunk 2077 launched in 2020, it still feels as modern and fresh in 2023 thanks to the development team's time and effort. On PC, with the fully ray-traced and path-traced RT Overdrive Mode and NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 rendering, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is also one of the most incredible-looking games ever made.

Modern Warfare 3 may be one of the most polarizing Call of Duty games in history, but it's also delivering record-breaking performance along the way.

It's no secret that MW3 is in the crosshair right now. The game looks to have the worst review score out of any Call of Duty title and has been put on blast for its short campaign. Bloomberg reports indicated that Modern Warfare III was cobbled together in just 16 months, which is a far cry from the multi-year timeline that Activision developers typically spend on COD games.

Despite the negative pushback, Modern Warfare 3 is still setting a new high water mark for the the new MW trilogy. According to a recent update, MW3 has enjoyed more engagement than 2022's Modern Warfare 2 and 2019's Modern Warfare.

The UK's Competition Appeals Tribunal has denied Sony's request to strike down and eliminate an anti-competitive lawsuit. Now the appeals court wants more information from Sony before the courts decide what to do next.

Sony Interactive Entertainment is being sued in the UK. The $6 billion class-action lawsuit is on the behalf of 8.9 million UK gamers, and alleges that Sony has abused its position to negatively affect consumers.

Alex Neill, the lawyer representing consumers in this case, says that Sony has a "near monopoly" on digital game and content sales on PlayStation, and it uses this power to mandate "strict terms" that "allow Sony to set the price of digital games and in-game content" while charging a 30% fee for all games and DLC/microtransaction content sold on the PlayStation Store. Neill alleges that this practice leads to "excessive and unfair" prices for consumers.

Although Fortnite is a big breadwinner that makes billions of dollars a year, it appears that Epic Games pays a flat 30% commission to all platform holders as part of a blanket fee structure.

The ongoing Epic v Google trial has revealed quite a bit about the Play Store, Google's failed games aspirations, and the Fortnite-maker's business. We've learned that the Play Store has a 70% operating margin (such a high margine unheard of in the realm of gaming, especially for a company that doesn't actually make games...well any more, that is), that Google once floated the idea of actually buying Epic Games with Tencent's help, and that Fortnite has earned $20 billion in revenues.

Now we have some other information that could highlight Epic's current overspending. According to The Verge's live blog of the Epic v Google case, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has confirmed that Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox all charge a 30% commission for games. This isn't a surprise and is generally common knowledge. While on the stand, Sweeney answered questions from Google's legal counsel regarding each platform holder's share take, reiterating a general 70-30 split that the Big 3 charge in order to maintain profitable store infrastructures.

Minecraft isn't just a game where you can let your imagination and creativity run wild; it can also be used to demonstrate real-world projects, or at least that is what Japan's government appears to be doing.

A new report from Automaton Media has highlighted a video posted to a YouTube account that's linked to Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism. The video states it is a demonstration of the ongoing Tatsuno Dam project and is a recreation of what is going to be built in real life.

The construction for this dam is currently underway in Kumamoto, Japan, and the video shows off a birds-eye view of the entire project, with the video creators even factoring in the surrounding environment. Reports indicate the video has caused a stir in the online Japanese community, with some users praising the Minecraft world creators' precision in replicating the real-world location within the game. The Tatsuno Dam is expected to be completed and operational sometime in 2024.

Todd Howard inadvertently explains why consumers enjoy physical media in a new interview with Wired.

A bit ago, Todd Howard sat down with Wired to talk about the history of Bethesda and the games he'd worked on. The interview is a good watch and exposes Howard's overall humility as he repeatedly acknowledges the team efforts required to ship games like Daggerfall, Morrowind, Fallout 3, and Starfield.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is at the end of the video. Howard looks down proudly at the game boxes and really touches upon some of the biggest reasons why physical media is still so powerful: Emotional connection.

Starfield has a new patch and it brings in some useful advances on the performance front, including the official incorporation of DLSS for those with NVIDIA RTX graphics cards.

Update 1.8.86 is here and full DLSS 3 support is in the mix for PC gamers, after previously being tested in a beta patch for Starfield (and having various fixes applied for ghosting and other niggling issues).

The game also supports DLAA and NVIDIA Reflex (for reducing input lag), as well as DLSS Super Resolution.

DOS_deck is a new way to play classic games released for the MS-DOS operating system on the Steam Deck or PC browser with a controller. The UI follows the look and feel of the Steam Deck interface. So far, there are several classic game demos (which used to be called Shareware) and even full games to check out - including the original Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Syndicate, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Epic Pinball, and more.

Playing classic DOS games on a modern PC or via a browser extension is not new. Still, the simple and elegant UI and integrated controller support make DOS-deck an awesome experience, even on a PC with Chrome or Edge. All controls are already mapped, and you can select games or return to the main menu with a controller.

For PC purists, default keyboard and mouse controls are also here. Getting DOS_deck working on a Windows PC doesn't require anything other than plugging in a controller, but getting it to run on a Steam Deck via Chrome or Edge requires a few steps to ensure the controller works properly.

In 2007, Valve released the iconic first-person mind-bending puzzler Portal. Set in the clinical Aperture Science Laboratories, it introduced the 'Portal Gun' to create one of this century's most innovative and memorable gaming experiences.

Portal was/is a groundbreaking technical and design achievement and something that has sparked continued interest thanks to the recent release of the path-traced Portal RTX mod for the GeForce RTX 40 Series of graphics cards. But what if you went the other way - and tried to port or get the game running on ancient hardware like 1996's Nintendo 64?

That's exactly what N64 expert and programmer James Lambert has been doing for years, recreating and building a working version of Valve's Portal for the Nintendo 64. Right now, a dozen test chambers are playable and working with fully functioning portals and physics.