Gaming - Page 722

If a recent teaser from Xbox is any indication, a new Game of Thrones game could possibly be in development.

Adapting George R.R. Martin's sweeping epic A Song of Ice and Fire has proven to be quite tough. HBO has only managed to do it over the course of 8 years. Video games are very different story. Sure there's a rather long-running board game, but actual games? There's only two: Telltale's excellent semi-interactive QTE simulator, and the one everyone seems to forget about (and for good reason), Cyanide's ill-fated Xbox 360 game (there's also a free-to-play browser game but it's not premium).

Now another game could be in the works, and Microsoft of all companies might be teasing it. Or possibly teasing it. After last week's big Game of Thrones episode, the official Xbox Twitter put up a mysterious clip of a Targyen three-headed dragon sigil alongside some scales. It's not much to go on, but it could indicate a big game reveal as part of Microsoft's promised E3 2019 explosion.

Ubisoft confirms a new Ghost Recon announcement will happen on May 9, and it could be a new game in the series.

In a recent Tweet, Ubisoft says a big reveal event for a new Ghost Recon project is set for May 9 at 2:30PM EST, validating recent teasers. Whether or not this announcement is for a brand new game or an extension of existing content roadmaps for Ghost Recon: Wildlands remains unknown, but we think it's a new game.

Originally released in 2017, Ghost Recon: Wildlands has had a long life. Not only was it one of the best-selling games of the year, but it made tons of earnings via microtransactions and live services. Wildlands may still have a strong userbase and after two years of squeezing out monetization, it's time for a new game. Luckily Ubisoft plans to release for major new AAA games this fiscal year (April 1, 2019 - March 31, 2020). One of them should be a new Ghost Recon title.

Nintendo just introduced Joker into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as the first fighter to be apart of the Fighter Pass. Even though he arrived with the version 3.0 patch which wasn't that long ago, could we already be seeing a tease for the next fighter in the pass?

Some reports have come out about a rumor that Nintendo are gearing up to reveal or at least tease the next character in the fighters pass. The rumors circle around the Super Smash Bros. YouTube Channel which a blue dot is located next to the channel name on YouTube. When clicking into a channel and viewing the channels video content the blue dot besides the name is supposed to be removed, this for some reason doesn't occur for the Super Smash Bros. channel.

It is believed that this is happening because the Super Smash Bros. channel has been updated with a video that has been categorized as private or unlisted. It is possible that if there is an unlisted or private video that it could be revealed within the near future. I personally doubt it will be a tease for the next fighter in the Fighters Pass as it is still not that long since Joker has been released.

The developers of the extremely popular and very successful Pokemon GO app have assisted communities around the world in support of the global Earth Day movement.

Niantic, the developer of Pokemon GO has ran a in-game event to encourage people to support Earth Day. The event rewarded players with an increase spawn rate for ground type Pokemon, the more people joined the bonuses were gained. Each of the reward levels were as follows; 2,000 players increased ground type spawn rates, 5,000 people shiny Diglettes would appear within 48 hours of the goal being reached. Lastly, 7,000 players joining made Groudon spawn in raids and stardust and candy would double.

Niantic has reported that a total number of 41,000 hours were put into the event and that 41 countries participated and cleaned up 145 tons of trash. 17,000 Pokemon GO players united across the globe, Niantic's responded to the success of the event by saying "We're astounded with how much everyone involved has achieved - an effort like this highlights how much impact people can have when they work together. Players worked in groups of 1 to 2,500, alongside government agencies, volunteer organizations, and fellow community members, creating incredible impact."

Remedy's new singleplayer-driven sci-thriller shooter Control promises to blend a number of big trends and genres.

Control looks to be a lot of Quantum Break, a little bit of Metroid, and a pinch of Dark Souls thrown in for good measure. At least that's the picture I get from this latest gameplay feature. The game has a lot of Quantum Break's shooter-and-powers mechanics, but also takes things to another level with more physics chaos and verticality. Like Metroid, Control won't be a linear game; there will be all kinds of avenues you can't actually get to unless you unlock certain powers, abilities, or solve puzzles. But unlike Metroid, the game takes place in an ever-shifting environment.

"What might be surprising is the game structure is very much in the vein of Metroivania," said Remedy's communication director Thomas Puha. "So the game takes place in the Oldest House, which is a massive location that you get to explore. You might find somewhere early on where you can't get to, and later on in the game when you unlock something like the levitation ability you can get there."

One of the biggest names in gaming suffers a rare monetization slip, but it's reinvesting strongly into more engagement-driven business models.

Activision-Blizzard may be hitting a monetization ceiling in its biggest games. Every quarter, the company makes hundreds of millions from Games-as-a-Service style tactics like microtransactions, DLC, and subscriptions. These revenues typically pull in a huge portion of digital earnings. But this latest quarter showed a rare drop both in total live earnings and the proportion of game sales to service-generated revenue.

The company's Q1 2019 earnings weren't particularly impressive. Total revenues, digital revenues, operating income and even net income were all down from last year. Given Activision-Blizzard's emphasis on live gaming, dgital is the most interesting of these dips. Digital comprised 76% of total net revenues, or $1.38 billion, down roughly 4.6% from 2018's first quarter. Digital includes microtransactions, subscriptions, DLC, and digital game purchases. The company says it pulled in $800 million from in-game purchases like skins and lootboxes, which means for the first time in a long time live service earnings were down. Microtransactions only made 58% of digital revenues this quarter, compared to the 68% split in Q1'18.

Borderlands 3 has all the major pillars of a service game: near-infinite replayability via a huge RPG-and-item grind, co-op online multiplayer, and a sprawling story arc that spreads across multiple locales. Gearbox is going all out on that last front and claims the sequel's campaign will last well over 30 hours.

Gearbox has been working on Borderlands 3 for a long time now, and has one major goal for the sequel: to go bigger, better, and farther than ever before. That includes 1 billion guns, new baddies, fresh characters with new skills and build opportunities, offworld exploration across multiple planets, and a substantial campaign mode. All of this new content will be pretty expansive and makes for a rather long-winded storyline.

According to the devs, Borderlands 3 will last 30 hours if you rush through the quests and missions. For comparison's sake, Borderlands 2's campaign took around 32 hours to beat if you took your time. "If you beeline it through, and I mean beelining it through, it might take you 30 hours to complete the main story," Borderlands 3 creative director Paul Sage told PC Gamer.

Infinity Ward's new Call of Duty game could get revealed later this month, with a big showcase planned for E3 2019.

Activision typically announces a new Call of Duty game every May or so, and this year should be no different. Company COO Coddy Johnson confirmed Infinity Ward's next Call of Duty shooter would be revealed during Activision's second quarter (from April - June).

"We continue to feel incredibly good about this year's game coming from Infinity Ward. The game's going to be revealed later this quarter. I think it's going to be really clear then why we're really so excited about the release," Johnson said in Activision's Q1'19 earnings call.

Blizzard is ramping up development on a bunch of new projects, and some of them could be ready for a reveal at Blizzcon 2019.

Blizzard is working on more new games than it ever has before, and some of them include Diablo IV, a possible Overwatch sequel, new IPs alongside mobile games. Diablo IV has already been rebooted once, and sources say it'll resemble Diablo II with a darker thematic scope. But it might be a long ways away and no one's sure when it'll get revealed. Now in a recent earnings call, Blizzard President J. Allen Brack says Blizzard is incredibly eager to show off these new games and teases some big plans for this year's annual Blizzcon event.

"I've said consistently that the Blizzard pipeline is larger and richer than ever before. It includes PC and console releases," Brack said in the call.

Every game in the Master Chief Collection PC's version could have a unified progression system with armor unlocks.

In a recent Halo Waypoint Update, 343 Industries confirmed a new progression system is coming to Halo: Master Chief Collection on PC and consoles. This new feature may employ Halo Reach-level Spartan customization, armor unlocks, level-ups and specific in-game rewards across all of the six Halo games.

The idea is to engage the online community with weekly/daily challenges, an expansive armory system with tons of options, and a linear ranking system with feats and accomplishments tracking.

Activision-Blizzard is ramping up to make new games and services, and will recruit more developers to fill in this robust pipeline.

Right now Blizzard is working on more new projects than it ever has. After not releasing a new product for years, the studio plans to release a fusillade of new games and content throughout the next year or so. This expansive roadmap includes Diablo IV, possibly a new IP, and mobile ports followed up by expanded updates for existing titles. To bring this new robust pipeline to fruition, the billion-dollar Activision-Blizzard duo are increasing development headcount by 20%.

A few months ago the company fired 800 non-game developers in a big restructuring move. The new business plan sees the publisher focusing strongly on existing, wholly-owned IPs (meaning more sequels are on the way) along with monetization and services.

Apex Legends was home to over 50 million people at one point so it shouldn't come as a surprise when you hear about the ban hammer being used, but developer Respawn has been busier than most developers are banning 770,000 cheaters in total.

Respawn is talking with gamers about what is going on behind the game itself, with Respawn executive producer Drew McCoy penning a recent blog post that talked about cheaters in Apex Legends. He said: "We can't share details on what we're doing so as to not give a head's up to the cheat makers. But what we can say is that we're attacking this from every angle: from improvements in detecting cheaters, to bolstering resources and tools, to improving processes and other sneaky things to combat sellers and cheaters".

Respawn is now showing some of these "high-level stats" on the progress into smoothing things out in Apex Legends when it comes to cheaters. This includes:

Rockstar is hard at work on the next-gen Grand Theft Auto 6 and while we don't know much about it we do know the developer "has some ideas" about the game and recently there was the mega-hot rumor that Sony paid "big money" be a timed exclusive to the next-gen PlayStation 5 console.

But now there is a new rumor from a purported leak on Pastebin that says that the next-gen GTA 6 will be absolutely huge and will feature "multiple big cities which players can travel across". The game will reportedly see you play a "kind of drug lord" that will start off as a small time player in Liberty City, but you'll work your way up through the ranks and become the drug lord.

The leak says that Rockstar is waiting to see how next-gen console sales go because GTA 6 won't work on the PS4 because of "memory restrictions", a strange part of this leak because Rockstar would be absolutely foolish not to release teh next-generation Grand Theft Auto 6 on previous-gen consoles (as well as the next-gen consoles).

Billion-dollar franchise Call of Duty has amassed more than 300 million copies sold worldwide, Activision confirms.

Call of Duty is one of the most popular and lucrative entertainment forces on the planet. Now in a recent earnings call, Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick revealed the series has pushed over 300 million sales across its 15 year lifespan.

"Call of Duty recently passed its 15th anniversary and is one of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time with cumulative sales exceeding 300 million games," Kotick said.

With the final season of Game of Thrones now rolling out fans of the show will be surprised to see that gaming chair company Secretlab have released three new gaming chairs themed absolutely beautifully in Game of Thrones style.

The new chairs come with three houses right now with the Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryens. Each chair is individually styled to their respective house, with colors changing between them and styles varying depending on the art used on the chair. Secretlab, as always, has put their heart and soul into these beautiful new Game of Thrones themed gaming chairs.

Secretlab's new Game of Thrones gaming chairs will be available in the OMEGA and TITAN gaming chair lines with the Game of Thrones themed OMEGA costing $389 while the TITAN costs $429.

RAGE 2 is right around the corner with Bethesda releasing the PC system requirements for the game, with the new id Software developed shooter requiring just modest PC hardware.

The game looks bloody good on high-end PCs but you won't need a new GeForce RTX 2080 Ti to play RAGE 2, as id Software requires just an Intel Core i5-3570 or AMD Ryzen 3 1300X processor, 8GB of RAM and either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB or AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB graphics card as well as 50GB of HDD space.

Minimum System Requirements:

Ubisoft could be getting ready to reveal a new game in the Tom Clancy franchise according to some new rumors and a leaked event, with an invitation for an event called 'Skell Con' planned for May 9.

The new event ties together with the Skell Technology 'civilian drone catalog' video that Ubisoft released late last year, which you can check out above. This teaser directed viewers to the Skell Tech website. Gamers are an inquisitive bunch, with some people finding clues that led them to work out the user namd and password to Skell Tech's website.

Once there, the username 'asantos' and password '10068' worked and resulted in the video from Ubisoft dubbed 'Skell Technology' that is embedded above, but you'll notice it's an unlisted video. The video has a voice over from Jace Skell, the owner of the fictional company that talks about what the world could be like with autonomous machines like drones that will "free mankind of its tedious limitations".

Indie sensation Risk of Rain 2 keeps racking up sales and becomes an early access force of nature.

With its 4-player chaos, insane bosses, roguelike replayability, and intense strategic co-op action, Risk of Rain 2 is one of the most entertaining games of 2019. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so: the game has amassed over 1 million copies sold on Steam while in early access. Hopoo has a bona-fide hit on their hands and the game has earned roughly $20 million in total revenues without even being released yet.

This milestone is tremendous. In just a month's time, Risk of Rain 2 sold as much as the original 2D roguelike Risk of Rain did in 5 years. The last we checked, Risk of Rain 2 sold over 600,000 copies in a single week. Three more weeks brought over 400,000 more sales. Hopoo could keep smashing barriers once it starts rolling out new characters, bosses, items, and maps throughout 2019.

Activision-Blizzard isn't just a games company any more, and hasn't been for a long time. Like most publishers, it's pivoted hard towards the billion-dollar live service market and has become the top games-maker outside of Tencent. While new games are definitely on the way, these fresh titles will act as gateways to more monetization for years to come.

Activision-Blizzard is unlikely to make a new game that doesn't have some sort of online hook, especially if its a first-party IP. The company is forging ahead with its new business model, which puts stronger emphasis on live services and successful, wholly-owned IPs like Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Diablo. Now in its latest Q1 2019 earnings report, the publisher reveals its four-pronged approach to future growth. Making new games is only one part of this plan.

In 2018, the same year it earned $7.5 billion in revenue, the company fired nearly 800 non-game dev employees so it could narrow its focus on a four-pronged plan built around engagement monetization, new games, live operations, and mobile ports. These jobs, mostly in marketing and publishing, were deemed redundant as the publisher ramps up dev on new games, new engagement models, and live services to wrap everything together.

Platinum Games are looking at how they develop their titles, and one of their franchises could be subject to massive design changes in its next installment.

That title is none other than Bayonetta 3. Studio head Atsushi Inaba spoke at Osaka revealing some details about the development process Platinum Games are taking with the coming title. According to Inaba, Bayonetta 3 will see a change in its design process which is based on the findings Platinum Games found with the first two games in the series.

Inaba continues and says that these changes that the studio is looking at doing will help establish a "new foundation" for the company as it moves to self-publish their own titles. If you are interested in the two new IP's that Platinum Games has in development, check out a break down of that here. Despite the design changes for Bayonetta 3, Platinum Games said back in September of 2018 that Bayonetta development is "on course", more on that here.