Gaming - Page 702

Capcom's Devil May Cry has released on the Nintendo Switch, and we now have some great side-by-side comparison footage that compares the Switch version with the PS2 version, and an Xbox 360 version.

The footage comes from Direct-Feed Games and gives us a great example of what we will be working with on the Nintendo Switch graphically wise. This comparison shows that the Nintendo Switch version of Devil May Cry sits somewhere in-between that of the Xbox 360 and PS2 - from a graphical perspective.

Some scenes we can we see that the Nintendo Switch version shines better than the Xbox 360, and others it looses out. The PS2 version has completely fallen behind and is easily the worst out of three examples. Overall, if I was to crown one of the platforms king, I would have to give it to the Nintendo Switch version. This is because the color gradient that is used throughout the game seems to be more balanced in the Switch version, and doesn't have a film of whiteness layered over the top that the Xbox 360 one has.

Just last Friday Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled raced onto consoles and now that gamers have gotten their hands-on the new title we have confirmation for what framerate and resolution it runs at.

The above video is by VG Tech and gives us a great side-by-side comparison between Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled running on the PS4/Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. Right off the bat we can see that Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled is locked at a measly 30FPS across all systems.

While some could argue that it might not seem necessary for a racing game of this type to exceed 30FPS, I think it still would of been good if the beefier consoles supported 60FPS for a smoother experience. We also find out from the video's description that the Nintendo Switch version of the game runs at 720p in docked mode and only 480p in handheld.

GOG has unleashed its new GOG GALAXY 2.0 into closed beta with a bunch of new features that all gamers will love, including the ability to import ALL of your games across the PC and consoles into one master collection.

The team explains: "GOG GALAXY 2.0 is an application designed for all gamers, that will allow to combine multiple game libraries into one and connect with friends across all gaming platforms, PC and consoles". This is a very cool feature, as you can also keep track of all of your achievements, hours played in a game, and the games you own -- all in a single location. Your entire library can be customized down to the use of game backgrounds in GOG GALAXY 2.0 which is really cool.

You can sign up for the beta right here.

The new Avengers game is a huge undertaking for Crystal Dynamics, representing a massive series of Herculean trials that'll last for years to come.

Service games are very difficult to make, but the real headache comes after launch, when developers have flexibly adapt to gamers' whims. This means tons of adjusting, balancing, and new content rollouts at any given time. The new Avengers game is a live service project with emphasis on cinematic-driven singleplayer merged with an always-evolving co-op multiplayer scope. It's a hybrid of gaming's two most lucrative and powerful experiences, which means Crystal Dynamics has to work twice as hard.

In a recent interview with Games Industry.biz, Crystal Dynamics' studio lead Scott Amos says Marvel's Avengers is the biggest game they've ever made, and talks about the massive amount of manpower that's going into the project.

The new Final Fantasy VII: Remake won't feature all of the same materia from the 1997 JRPG classic, Square Enix confirms.

In a recent interview with Japanese games magazine Famitsu, game director Tetsuya Nomura confirms new materia will appear in the Final Fantasy VII: Remake. The downside is new materia is trading places with some old materia, meaning some spells and abilities from the old-school version won't be included. Neither Nomura or Square Enix has confirmed which spells will and won't be included in the Remake.

The rationale behind this materia change-up is centered around the game's new intricate action-based combat mechanics. Rather than a full turn-based affair like its predecessor, Final Fantasy VII: Remake is a blend of Final Fantasy XV's frenetic hack-and-slash combat with the original's ATB battle sequencing system. The game uses a new Tactical Mode that slows down time, along with an ATB gauge that fills up as you strike enemies. Strategy and finesse is required and players will consistently have to manage resources and plan their next moves carefully.

Nintendo is stocking up on lots of memory from chip-maker Macronix, the Taipei Times reports, but this doesn't necessarily mean a new revised Switch is on the way.

Taiwanese memory-maker Macronix, one of the leading suppliers of non-volatile memory on the market, just reported a strong surge in purchases from Nintendo, one of its best clients. Macronix noted this was "highly unusual," and that Nintendo's orders "has exceeded our expectations in the past two months. Demand is better than we thought." Speculation sees this move as Nintendo's preparation for a new Switch console revision, possibly a new model that uses the same Tegra chip as NVIDIA's new refreshed Shield set-top box, or even the rumored Switch Mini system. But how Nintendo uses Macronix chips gives context to the buy up.

Macronix chips aren't actually used in the handheld-console hybrid's main components. The Nintendo Switch currently only uses Macronix's CMOS flash memory in its JoyCon controllers and its dock stations, as per iFixit's teardowns. Macronix does indeed make LPDDR RAM chips that could theoretically be used in the Switch, but the device actually uses two of Samsung's K4F6E304HB-MGCH 2 GB LPDDR4 DRAM chips.

A new report has come out by a French publication website regarding some unrelease Blizzard titles, Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2. The report says that both of the titles have been shown to a select amount of Blizzard employees.

The report was published by Le Monde, and concentrates on the struggle Blizzard Europe has had by laying off 30% of their employees. As the article goes on, more of Blizzard current situation was revealed and according to the following translation the "Teams at Blizzard Entertainment have already been presented with the long-awaited Diablo 4 and know that a new Overwatch game is in development".

The translation continues and says that "neither of these two games will be released before 2020, at the very best, and employees at Versailles have no idea if they will still be around when they eventually release. Activision Blizzard will be making less of a profit, but this will still amount to a lot of profit , says a veteran employee." It seems that the BlizzCon this year will be quite eventful as we could certainly get some teasers for both of these titles.

Ever wondered what it would be like if Super Mario went battle royale? Well, now that curiosity can be fulfilled with DMCA Royale, a Super Mario parody battle royale game.

InfernoPlus, the developer behind DMCA Royale released his parody game sometime last week and it allows players to join a 75-player race where players could eliminate each others progress. DMCA Royale when it was first released was originally called Mario Royale, that was before Nintendo's lawyers got involved. The game then re-released as DMCA Royale and all of Nintendo's assets were replaced with seal team six's original content.

DMCA Royale now features the characters Infringio and his brother Copyright Infringo, instead of Mario. DMCA Royale is quite popular as well, at the time of writing this I was getting full lobbies of players and there was about 1,000 people online battling for first place. If you are interested in some battle royale action in your web browser, check out DMCA Royale here.

Cloud streaming games is going to be a massive part of gaming future and SEGA has said they are more than excited for the arrival of new platforms such as Google Stadia and Project xCloud.

In an interview with GamesIndustry, COO/President, Gary Dale and Executive VP of Publishing, John Clark sat down to discuss why SEGA has an interest in the coming cloud streaming platforms. Clark said "The thought of people on low-end laptops being able to play games like Football Manager and Total War is something we really embrace and support, so we're really interested to see how all the players push forward with significant streaming announcements and services."

Clark continued and said that "bandwidth is a very important thing, just to see how the services function. So we'll look at Google Stadia's rollout with a lot of interest to see how that maps out. And for the future, we're all interested to see how economies of streaming are going to work, the business models, etc." Clark reiterates that streaming and cloud have been around for quite some time, but now it seems that the technology is picking up to the point where the platforms can be more utilized.

Nintendo showcased some more of Luigi's Mansion 3 at this years E3 but didn't give a solid release date and for good reason. Luigi's Mansion 3 is in careful and not rushed development.

We saw some Luigi's Mansion 3 gameplay at the Nintendo Treehouse livestream (located above), where we got to see Luigi turn from Goo Luigi to normal Luigi and some ghost busting action. Luigi's Mansion 3 is being developed by Next Level Games and in an interview with Polygon, Nintendo's product marketing manager, Bill Trinen said that Next Level Games is "putting a lot of care into the game".

The development process seems to be a meticulous, and that Nintendo isn't pressuring Next Level Games to rush the game out. Trinen continued and said "We want to let them put the care into it they want, so we're waiting on them to let us know and we'll solidify the release date." This is simply great to hear, gamers love when development studios decide to take their time with a title rather then release a game that is half-baked and full of issues.

Blizzard has just lost its global esports director after 13 years on the job, with Kim Phan leaving the Warcraft, Starcraft and Overwatch developer in pursuit of a "new endeavor" in the gaming industry.

Phan's resignation was effective as of June 14, with the news coming in less than a month after Overwatch League Commissioner Nate Nanzer departed Blizzard, taking a job with competitor Epic Games. In her departure post, Phan said: "As I hang up my sword and shield, I look forward to a bright future and wish all my Blizzard friends and family the very best".

With both Phan and Nanzer leaving Blizzard in the middle of rumors of low morale and mounting resignations from Blizzard, it seems the company and its future in esports is being questioned.

Fortnite is still making oodles of money with analyst group SuperData showing us that Epic Games made a swift $203 million from Fortnite across all platforms (PC, console, mobile) which is up from April but "down 38% from May 2018".

SuperData notes that the console version of Fortnite "continues to contribute the largest share of players and revenue".

But it is PUBG that continues to shine with SuperData showing in its Top Grossing Titles by Category, with the game absent from the top 10 on all platforms but the analyst firm notes that PUBG "quietly continues to sell millions of units". SuperData notes: "We estimate that PUBG has sold 4.7 million digital units across PC and console year-to-date through May, maintaining its position as one of the best selling shooter titles on any platform despite losing much of the spotlight to EA's Apex Legends and Fortnite".

A few months ago I wrote a story about ray tracing-style effects through the use of path tracing in Minecraft with incredible results, but I feel like the game has taken another gigantic leap in the graphics department with a new video below combining the Stratum 2048x2048 textures, 'ray tracing' at 4K, realistic graphics mods and oh-so-much more. Check it out:

Modder 'Hodi' has a Patreon page where he concentrates on making textures only, and to goo effect - I mean, that video above sells the entire thing easily, right?! Powered with an Intel Core i7-6700K, 16GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti we have the results above, a glorious-looking Minecraft that seems out-of-this-world good.

Hodi used the following mods, textures, and tweaks:

At one point Cyberpunk 2077 was envisioned with some sort of online multiplayer in mind, but CD Projekt RED says singleplayer comes first.

Cyberpunk 2077 could get a multiplayer mode at some point, but lead quest designer Pawel Sasko says the sci-fi FPS RPG will be 100% singleplayer when it releases in April 2020.

"Yes, 100 per cent [Cyberpunk 2077 will be singleplayer at launch]. We're not really working on multiplayer, our sole focus is single-player. We'll do that, then we'll see. We're not saying no but we're not saying yes. If something does happen it will definitely be post-launch and that's as much as I can say right now," Sasko told Eurogamer.

Developers like PlatinumGames may not be impressed by next-gen consoles, but Ubisoft sure is.

Ubisoft is making one of the most ambitious games in the entire industry right now. Watch Dogs Legion is a fully-fledged RPG that merges GTA-level cityscape mechanics with an insanely in-depth party-management system, coupled with the added bonus of being able to play as anyone in the entire realm of futuristic London. Making a game like that is quite taxing on current-gen hardware, and will likely squeeze out every last drop of the PS4 Pro's and Xbox One X's power. So it's no wonder that Ubisoft is quite excited about the new duo of next-gen consoles with their beastly specs.

In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Ubisoft's EMEA director Alain Corre expressed strong enthusiasm for the PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett systems.

The United States will become the best-earning country in the global games market in 2019, analyst firm Newzoo predicts.

China, which typically reigns in games revenue charts, will soon be usurped by the United States. Analyst firm Newzoo forecasts the U.S. to earn $36.9 billion in 2019, beating China by some $400 million. These figures show a 11% uptick for U.S. earnings and will make up 26% of total global games revenues in the year, compared to China's 24%. The firm says China's recent game approval freeze has stunted growth and will have a major impact on yearly cashflows.

Total global games revenues will rise to $152.1 billion, up a strong 9.6% year-over-year, driven mostly by free-to-play mobile titles with microtransactions.

Square Enix caters to gamers on a tight schedule with shortcuts in Final Fantasy 8's upcoming remaster.

Final Fantasy games are huge, sprawling affairs with tons of unlockables that can take 100+ hours to attain. But not everyone can or will spend that kind of time on an RPG, so Square Enix is embedding cheats, shortcuts, and convenience features in Final Fantasy 8 Remastered to speed things up.

Yoshinori Kitase, who directed the original PS1 classic back in 1999, confirmed Squall's adventure comes with time-saving options like triple speed for movement and battles, full HP and ATB gauges for easy combat, and a no-encounter option that was previously only unlockable with Diablos' No Encounter ability.

Breath of the Wild is getting a sequel because all of Nintendo's ideas wouldn't fit into the small parameters of DLC.

Breath of the Wild's upcoming sequel should be pretty ambitious, or at least ambitious compared to the 2017 epic RPG. We don't know much about the game, but we do know Nintendo's plans simply didn't fit in the realm of possibility for DLC. These ideas were too grand, too big to be defined by the base game itself. So rather than do post-launch DLC, Nintendo consolidated most of its ideas into a Breath of the Wild sequel that expands on the first game.

In a recent interview with Kotaku, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma confirmed that substantial changes to Breath of the Wild wouldn't really fit in the tight boundaries of DLC. To achieve their vision, Nintendo would need to make a whole new game.

Renowned fantasy writer George R.R. Martin, the man behind the Red Wedding, Ramsay Bolton, and a myriad of other grim and twisted events in literary history, is writing the grand sweeping lore for FromSoftware's big new RPG.

FromSoftware's ambitious new darkly enchanting RPG, Elden Ring, has some serious power behind it. Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin represent the dream team of macabre fantasy weirdness, combining their bizarre powers to craft a new open-world Souls-like with an all-original story arc. But Martin didn't actually craft Elden Ring's story, just the mythology behind the magic-infused world.

In a recent interview with IGN, Miyazaki confirms George R.R. Martin was responsible for Elden Ring's deep arcane lore and crafting the ruined world's history.

Microsoft has an idea of how much Project Scarlett will cost, but the system's price tag hasn't been locked in just yet.

Although it's slated to release Holiday 2020, Project Scarlett is still in early phases of development. Announced at E3 2019 with explosive specs, the system that "eats monsters for breakfast" sports a custom AMD SoC outfitted with next-gen Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU architecture, allowing for 8K resolution and 120 FPS. Right now Microsoft is working on the foundational silicon with AMD and the finer details like design, form factor, and price are a ways off. Microsoft has a ball park figure, but that price could inflate thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed tariffs on China-imported goods.

Whatever Scarlett will cost, these higher-end specs could put it firmly in the Xbox One X's $499 range. Scarlett is 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One X and could even cost $549 or thereabouts. In a recent interview with Xbox On, Xbox VP of Gaming Phil Spencer says there's still unknowns with Scarlett's retail price tag.