Gaming - Page 721

Starbreeze is in trouble. Its financial woes continue to worsen following the huge sales miss of Overkill's The Walking Dead and subsequent cancellation on gaming's biggest console platforms. Starbreeze has filed for reconstruction, a form of bankruptcy protection, and is now seeking financial aid to keep itself afloat.

To stay alive, Starbreeze has cut away everything that didn't make it money and will now focus exclusively on games. The publisher currently has one sure-fire bet with the Payday IP, and it plans to hold onto the series for dear life as it's rocked by big quarterly losses. The gaming focus has narrowed all the way down to to Starbreeze's only money-maker, Payday, and the company will bank hard on the IP for its future--a future that seems quite bleak indeed.

"We are in a challenging situation. I stand united with the entire Starbreeze team in the efforts to get the business in order. We have a very strong asset in Payday, which is the foundation upon which we will build Starbreeze future," said acting Starbreeze CEO Michael Nermark in a recent Q1'2019 financial report.

Nintendo has announced that three more NES titles will be added to the Nintendo Switch Online library of NES games. These new NES games will be Donkey Kong Jr., VS. Excitebike and Clu Clu Land.

This addition of these three new games has pushed the libraries total number of games to 40. Donkey Kong Jr., VS. Excitebike and Clu Clu Land will be joining the selection of other online enhanced NES titles such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda. While it is cool that Nintendo are adding classic golden aged gaming titles such as the ones listed above to the Switch Online library, many fans are begging the company to skip over them and steam roll straight into SNES titles.

The Nintendo Switch Online community has been quite divided on subscription, some users have said that "It's a bit of a disappointment that it's only nes games at present, and the majority of gamers that were not even born around these original releases are going to struggle to get into them." I can certainly agree with this point, many Nintendo Switch users will be late twenties and below, which is a little out of the age range for the release of the NES.

Leading up to the release of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum in cinemas we have a new officially-licensed John Wick game that is titled John Wick Hex. Combine strategy with John Wick skill in serving death and you get John Wick Hex.

John Wick Hex has been created by Mike Bithell, who developed the critically acclaimed titles Thomas Was Alone and Volume. John Wick Hex has also been officially announced by both Lionsgate and Good Shepherd. Meaning, a license of the John Wick IP was approved for Bithell, which I think is pretty awesome considering Bithell is an indie dev with a creatively unique spin on game development. Within the description of the above video, John Wick Hex has been described as "John Wick Hex is fight-choreographed chess brought to life as a video game, capturing the series' signature gun fu style while expanding its story universe."

The description continues, Players must choose every action and attack they make, while considering their immediate cost and consequences. Every move in John Wick Hex feels like a scene from the movies, and every fight contributes to your progress on the job and requires precise strategic thinking." John Wick Hex is a turn-based strategy game, so XCOM or Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden players will be loving life with this announcement. For players who haven't played either of those games, take a leap into a new genre and see what you think. Expand those gaming horizons!

If you thought Minecraft looked good with ray tracing-style effects through path tracing, have a look at what the new ReShade mod for Crysis does when it adds in some beautiful ray-traced Global Illumination.

Digital Foundry did a break down in the video above, with the new ReShade mod adding ray-traced Global Illumination in Crysis. Pascal Gilcher is the developer behind the ReShade mode where he explained about his new Crysis mod: "I'm working hard on a ray traced Global Illumination method for ReShade. This means you can have GI as drop-in in every game you want, with a few clicks. Work on such a feature started over a year ago, I posted some screenshots on the ReShade forums but eventually discarded it, due to other projects having more priority".

The new ReShade mod for Crysis can be supported on the ReShade Patreon for $20 tier, for die hard Crysis fans who want an injection of graphics into the still-great looking game.

Gamers planning to double-dip with The Master Chief Collection on PC won't have to start from scratch.

After years and years of waiting, PC gamers will soon be able to play the early six-game Halo saga. 343 Industries is taking the PC port very seriously and plan to optimize it for the platform, including high resolution and frame rate support, multiple aspect ratios, and tight control schemes on mouse and keyboard to name a few. To ensure a smooth transition the team will also add progression parity between both Xbox One and PC flavors of the game.

Everything you do in The Master Chief Collection will carry back and forth between the PC and Xbox One versions. This includes campaign game saves, multiplayer rankings, unlocks like skulls, and other content tied to your Xbox LIVE account. All data is saved to the cloud and can be retrieved on both Xbox and PC.

Ubisoft plans to release a new Ghost Recon sometime this year, and now some fresh details may have leaked out.

According to recent reports, the next Ghost Recon game is called Breakpoint and could be a sequel to 2017's mega-popular Wildlands. The publisher accidentally posted up an image of Breakpoint on its store, revealing some details in the process. The game's central antagonist will be Wildlands' Cole D. Walker, portrayed by The Punisher's Jon Bernthal, who's betrayed his team and gone off the grid.

Set in the fictional island of Aurora (of Aurora Operation fame), the game will reprise Wildlands' strong focus on four-player co-operative play for strategic team-based action. Story should also be emphasized throughout the open-ended shooter, complete with live service elements that're monetized over time and a season pass to bolster post-launch expansions. We should see tons of free updates, tweaks, and content drops throughout the life of the game.

New U.S. regulations would outlaw lootboxes and free-to-play monetization schemes in games tailored towards minors.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is waging war on the lucrative billion-dollar lootbox market. With a new bill entitled The Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act, Hawley wants to ban the sale of manipulative microtransactions in games aimed at minors, namely free-to-play mobile titles. Activision-Blizzard's Candy Crush's psychological pay-to-win mechanics are cited as a direct example.

If passed, the state-wide bill will be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission who would deem the sale of these microtransactions as unfair trade and bring steep penalties to violating companies. The FTC is currently scrutinizing lootboxes and microtransactions, and a recent North American study found buying digital in-game items could lead to problematic gambling disorders.

EA has big confidence in Jedi: Fallen Order's yearly sales performance, and projects some hefty earnings from the game.

Jedi: Fallen Order has been in development since 2014, and everything we've seen and heard about it sounds fantastic. It's an ambitious singleplayer-only adventure through the heart of Star Wars magic, which is a huge departure from EA's typical focus on billion-dollar live services. Respawn's new game is a "Jedi power fantasy" with a strong emphasis on characters and third-person action combat. In many ways it looks to be the saving grace to the tumultuous line of EA Star Wars games that saw two major titles cancelled.

Even though Jedi: Fallen Order can't be monetized over time like Battlefront II via microtransactions, EA is quite enthusiastic about the game's performance. The publisher is eager to capture the growing resurgence of singleplayer-only games. In its FY2019 earnings report, EA predicts robust sales for Respawn's massive Star Wars game. "Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order we are modeling in the sales range of 6 million to 8 million," EA Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said in an earnings call.

Yesterday we got an announcement out of Capcom for a new title to arrive on the Nintendo Switch, this title was none other than the first Devil May Cry game.

The announcement came from the official Devil May Cry Twitter account and said "Relive the adventure that introduced the legendary Dante to the world with the original Devil May Cry, coming to NintendoSwitch this Summer." Since this announcement was made the next questions that are being asked is - will the Nintendo Switch version release in a physical form? and will there be more ports to follow after this one?

The first of the questions can be answered by looking towards the official UK and US website listings for the title. According to both of the websites, Devil May Cry for the Nintendo Switch "is only available as a download. There are no plans to release a physical edition". This statement on the websites seems to have thwarted any plans of a physical release which is slightly disappointing but mostly expected. It could be possible that Capcom are planning on porting over all of Devil May Cry games, and are saving a physical release for Collectors Edition that would combine all the titles into one game cartridge.

In wake of the recently revealed Borderlands 3, developer and publisher Gearbox Software has taken a hit when it comes to internet rumors through wild accusations.

While these are some quite crazy accusations, I would like to remind our readers that just because the accusation is big doesn't mean that its necessarily true. I would also like to remind our readers that due to the seriousness of these claims, to come at what has been said in a non-biased and fair standpoint for both parties. Now with the disclaimers out of the way, lets get into what has been said. If you have played Borderlands you might remember Claptrap, the voice actor for the character, David Eddings has soon left his role but not without a saying a few things.

Eddings was asked by a fan if he was returning to the role of Claptrap for Borderlands 3, Eddings replied to this question by saying that he was replaced after he insisted on being paid for his performance. In response to Eddings tweet, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford fired off a tweet of his own, claiming that Eddings is "just bitter and disgruntled about having been terminated" and that he was offered "2x scale" and "he refused".

Dead Cells, one of the hardest indies on the market right now, will soon turn your phone into a roguevania torture device.

Having already conquered the Nintendo Switch, developer Play Motion is bringing their immensely challenging indie sensation Dead Cells to mobile phones, starting with iOS first.

Other than a Summer release window, exact details are light. We expect the full indie to be pushed onto smartphones and tablets, complete with touchscreen controls and optional Bluetooth gamepad support. With permanent death, Dead Cells is already hard enough...I couldn't imagine playing it without a joystick or buttons.

EA could enjoy lots of extra revenues by bringing its all-you-can-play subscription to PlayStation 4.

EA today confirmed that its EA Access service is coming to console gaming's biggest platform: the PS4. The 90 million-strong PS4 userbase will be able to sign up this July, bringing a bounty of potential earnings to both EA and Sony by proxy, who takes a 30% cut of everything sold on its platform.

The subscription, which offers access to 50+ games across EA's varied catalog for $4.99 a month, was previously barred from the PS4 as Sony pushed its own buffet-style PlayStation Now service. PS Now is actually starting to kick up a bit and is the most-subscribed console service, so Sony has relented on EA. This change comes at an interesting time for Sony as it shifts towards a more service-based model under John Kodera, former Sony Interactive president who stepped down to exclusively focus on PlayStation's online future.

Monster Hunter: World has now topped 12 million units shipped worldwide, Capcom announced, making it the reigning king of the publisher's sales.

Capcom is absolutely killing it lately. Not only are its profits up to record highs for the second consecutive year to $113.17 million, but its biggest games keep on growing. Monster Hunter: World has become a monumental breadwinner for the company thanks to its huge online-driven approach that fosters engagement and monetization, as well as game sales. But Capcom's attitude towards service games has been extremely healthy, garnering tons of goodwill to millions of Monster Hunter fans across the globe.

Now Capcom reports the monstrous online game is up to 12 million shipments, up 2 million since August. But only by comparing Monster Hunter: World to Capcom's other big hits do we see how massive the title actually is. The second best-selling Capcom game is Resident Evil 5, which sits at 7.4 million copies sold. This means Monster Hunter: World eclipses the runner-up by 4.5 million units. The game also sold 5 million copies, or about 67% of RE5's lifetime sales, in just 3 days.

A new listing on the EBGames website has suggested that there is a Deathinitive Edition for Darksiders 2 coming to the Nintendo Switch.

While this is certainly a leak, the source is a decently reliable one. Game store leaks with Amazon or Best Buy are usually fake, EBGames on the other hand has served quite reliable. This Deathinitive Edition for Darksiders 2 on the Nintendo Switch has appeared on the Canadian EBGames website and has listed the title with images to look at and a price of $29.99 CAD. Thanks to Lbabinz we have the link located on his tweet.

This hasn't been officially announced so nothing is confirmed as of yet, but the Nintendo Switch getting a Deathinitive Edition of Darksiders 2 really does make sense and wouldn't be that surprising. Darksiders Warmastered has already released on the Nintendo Switch, if you want to check out a trailer for that title you can visit this link here.

A new collaboration has been announced between The Pokemon Company and Pokemon GO developer Niantic. The collaboration will see some uniquely themed Detective Pikachu themed content arrive in the Pokemon GO app.

In celebration of the upcoming release of the live-action Pokemon Detective Pikachu movie starring Ryan Reynolds, Niantic will be bringing a bunch of Detective Pikachu themed content to Pokemon GO. The Pokemon Company is pleased to announce that from May 7th until May 17th, the Pokemon GO app will feature fresh new content that will allow players will be able to capture Pokemon from the movie. Bulbasaur, Jigglypuff, Psyduck, Aipom, Snubbull and many more will appear more frequently for players during the run time of this event.

Other pieces of new content are special raid battles and field research. Players will be able to challenge Pokemon with starring roles in the film as well as acquire movie-themed field research. There will also be a bunch of new avatar items that players will be able to collect, including a detective hat with Pikachu ear and a t-shirt with the Pokemon Detective Pikachu logo on it. Players will also have to watch out for Detective Pikachu photo-bombing images in GO Snapshot. If Detective Pikachu is spotted photo bombing then there is a chance that the player can catch the Pokemon.

I've had my eye on THQ Nordic and Experiment 101's Biomutant title since way back in early November when THQ Nordic grabbed the rights for the title.

Biomutant is one of those titles that has massive potential to penetrate the gaming market in a unique fashion. The game gives me Jak and Daxter kind of vibes, with the fast-paced combat, diverse range of interesting enemies and cartoonish-like art style. The downside? When I last took a look at the game back in late 2018 and early 2019 the title seemed very unfinished, which led me to believe the game that we were being showcased was a very early version of a project not yet completed.

My suspicions turned out to be somewhat true, as THQ Nordic delayed Biomutant until the Summer of 2019. I would assume that this extra time would be needed to smooth over the development side of things for Biomutant, or perhaps create a Nintendo Switch port? EB Games Canada may have jumped the gun on the last point as their website has listed a Nintendo Switch Biomutant release when originally the game was only planned to be arriving on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Capcom has begun the process of bringing their very well-known hack n' slash franchise Devil May Cry over to Nintendo's portable console. The first Devil May Cry will arrive on the Switch this Summer.

The announcement comes from the official Devil May Cry Twitter account, where Capcom have revealed that Nintendo Switch players will be able to step into the shoes of the legendary Dante in the original Devil May Cry. This announcement has come after both the producer and director of the Devil May Cry franchise expressed their love for the Nintendo Switch, saying that they want to see "everything on Switch".

This will just be the start of Capcom bringing over the Devil May Cry franchise, as after the release of the first game onto the Switch Capcom will follow with the sequels in the franchise. This is not officially confirmed and is purely my personal speculation, but I find it extremely hard to believe that Capcom will just stop the ports at the first Devil May Cry and not aim to eventually bring over the recently released Devil May Cry 5. Dante will be arriving on the Nintendo Switch in the first Devil May Cry sometime this Summer. When a more accurate release date is revealed I will be sure to update you with a follow up post.

Update: The leaked images have been debunked and proven fake.

We are starting to hear about the next edition to the Assassin's Creed franchise, this time round we will be journeying to the Viking era as players ally with the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok.

This isn't the firs time we have heard about the next Assassin's Creed game to feature a Viking era setting. Back in early April we learned from sources that confirmed to Kotaku that the next Assassin's Creed game will be based around the Vikings and will be released in 2020. A teaser image was found within Ubisoft's Division 2 of a Charlemagne Crusader holding an Apple of Eden, more on that here.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Remedy CEO Tero Virtala declared singleplayer games are pretty huge. But that hasn't stopped the developer from chasing the rich goldmine of online microtransactions.

As an independent developer, Remedy Entertainment has to do certain things to survive and turn a profit. Some of these things include embracing various business models. Known for making singleplayer games like Max Payne, Quantum Break, and its new IP Control, Remedy has moved on to fold live services into its repertoire. I find it particularly interesting that the company's CEO talks up singleplayer games, all while Remedy's smaller Vanguard team is working on monetization-driven games like the free-to-play CrossFire 2.

"When we were discussing with publishers three years ago, many of them were quite doubtful about what would be the single-player game's future. Now, with the success of many of Sony's games, the success that Ubisoft has shown, we are seeing that single-player games are stronger now than they have ever been," the CEO said.

A new study finds purchasing lootboxes puts consumers at higher risk for gambling behaviors.

Lootboxes and other similar randomized monetization schemes help the global games market earn billions every year, particularly through freemium mobile games. Companies like Tencent, Activision-Blizzard, and EA rake in incredible sums from these practices. But this industry could be impacted with stringent regulations quite soon, as medical studies find correlation between gambling behavior and lootbox purchasing.

According to a new research paper from the University of British Columbia's Center for Gambling Research, there's a common link between video game monetization and risky gambling behaviors in adults. The study itself was conducted via an online survey, not in a laboratory setting, and collected information from 144 North American gamers and 113 university students. Data suggests consumers who cumulatively spend more and more money on lootboxes are at higher risk for developing gambling disorders, and results showed that 10% of North American gamers, or 14 respondents, spent roughly $50 a month on lootboxes.