Gaming - Page 744

Microsoft typically cares more about services than it does selling its full games, and its Game Pass subscription is a big reason why. Now that all of its biggest first-party games are coming to Game Pass, Microsoft can now make money from new games without actually having to sell them. Throw in a bunch of microtransaction hooks and online play and you've got a game plan for revenue growth.

It's so potent that Microsoft's own games are now additive to its services and like EA, Microsoft doesn't focus intensely on full game sales. This plan's success hinges on one path, though: staying within the carefully curated Xbox-as-a-service ecosystem and not selling big games on competing platforms like Steam.

So why isn't it taking the same approach with The Master Chief Collection? Why is The Master Chief Collection coming to Steam and not staying as a Microsoft Store exclusive on PC? Simple: this is a rare instance where Microsoft cares more about full game sales than services, and it's all because these Halo games were made in a different era.

Microsoft might make games, but it isn't playing around. They've added a new feature that opens up tons of potential for the Xbox One by further blurring the line between consoles and PCs.

On the heels of The Master Chief Collection coming to PC, Microsoft drops another megaton feature that adds big value to the Xbox One: PC to console game streaming. Using the new Wireless Display app, Xbox One owners can play PC games from Steam or other clients on their consoles. The app essentially gives an Xbox One console remote access to your PC and casts the screen to your TV, effectively turning an Xbox One into a Steam Link.

The new feature isn't limited to gaming, though. You can watch videos, play music, browse the web, and even view presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint, all in the leisure of your living room. The app even lets you connect and cast an Android device's screen to your Xbox One.

To get the full Halo: Reach experience, Master Chief Collection owners will have to pay extra.

Yesterday Microsoft announced huge news for PC gamers: the entire six-game Halo saga is coming to both Steam and the Windows 10 store. Halo: Reach is coming too with 4K 60FPS support on both Xbox One and PC, but existing Master Chief Collection owners will have to buy Firefight and Campaign modes separately. 343 Industries will only include multiplayer and is carving up the other pieces to sell as paid DLC.

"On Xbox One specifically, Halo: Reach's multiplayer content (which includes Forge and the Theater) will be automatically included for everyone who owns Halo: The Master Chief Collection while Halo: Reach's Campaign and Firefight experiences will be offered together as a premium digital add-on," the company announced on the Xbox Wire.

Google is gearing up its new gaming division, and the billion-dollar search giant may have tapped key talent to lead the platform.

Industry veteran Jade Raymond today announced she's joined Google as a vice president, and the timing is pretty interesting. "I'm excited to finally be able to share that I have joined Google as VP!" Raymond said on Twitter.

Given her strong background in gaming it's likely Raymond is helping lead Google's new fledgling gaming platform. Raymond's long list of achievements include producing games like The Sims Online, Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, and Splinter Cell, and founding EA's Motive studio. Following Visceral Games' closure and an internal executive shake-up, Raymond left EA Motive in October of last year.

Microsoft will be adding another classic game to their Xbox Games Pass service, 'Minecraft' will become available for free for subscribers on April 4th, 2019.

The announcement was recently done through the Inside Xbox live stream and revealed that Minecraft will be joining the already fantastic library of quality games found on the Xbox Games Pass. Minecraft will be accompanying other titles such as; Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of Mordor, Saints Row: The Third, The Walking Dead, ARK: Survival Evolved, Mortal Kombat X and Sea of Thieves.

At the moment Minecraft manages to pull in around 91 million active users each month, and now that the title is about to debut to the Xbox Games Pass I wouldn't be surprised if that figure managed to get to around 100 million. If you are interested in what other games that are free once you subscribe to the Xbox Games Pass, check out the official listing for all of the available titles here.

It seems that Konami are cooking up a Castlevania Anniversary Collection to celebrate the anniversary of one of their longest running franchises. Who is ready for another play-through of Castlevania?

A new listing has been found on the Australian Classification website for what has been titled "Castlevania Anniversary Collection". Konami has sent the listing through and it has been classified on the 12th of March, 2019. It appears that the collection is planned for "multiple platforms" and will also be published by Konami themselves.

The Castlevania franchise will be 33 years old in 2019, with the first entry in the series hitting the Japanese market back on the 26th of September, 1986. Taking the series' longevity into account, it would appear that an anniversary collection would be more than welcomed, yet we still haven't had announcement. Perhaps Konami are going to surprise Castlevania fans? and how big will this collection be because there is quite a few Castlevania titles that could be included.

FromSoftware will be debuting their newest title 'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice' in a couple weeks, and earlier today the games official Microsoft's Store page has been updated with some new information for the game.

According to the Microsoft Store Page listing, FromSoftware has managed to squeeze Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice down to just 12.58GB. Now that file size for the Xbox One is more than impressive for a AAA title, especially when compared to other AAA titles such as Metro Exodus that comes in at 59GB.

FromSoftware have also voiced their opinions about wanting to possibly build a battle royale game. The developers CEO have said that they are "definitely interested" in building a battle royale game but it would be very different from that of Fortnite or Apex Legends, more on that here. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is planned for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on March 22nd.

We are just a couple of weeks out from the release of FromSoftware's latest title, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. To bring the hype to new heights the official launch trailer has been revealed.

Before I get into what we see in the launch trailer I would advise anyone that doesn't want to experience any boss spoilers to not watch this trailer as it does showcase a large selection of bosses. Now that the disclaimers are over lets jump into what FromSoftware have given us. We get some great early game cinematics that are combined with some fresh gameplay through a large variety of enemies.

We also see Sekiro's first death scene, a raging bull boss that looks like it could be a pain to fight and a bunch of other mini-bosses and level bosses. If you are interested in some more Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice content, check out the 'Lady Butterfly' boss that was teased by FromSoftware here. There was also some high-level gameplay released of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice throughout the PlayStation Japan event, check that out here. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will be released on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC on March 22nd.

If you've been playing Apex Legends you will have thought about a reconnect feature in the case that you get kicked, or the game crashes at some point. It makes sense, as I've been kicked or had Apex crash as I'm loading into the game or as I've just landed. But nope, it won't be happening.

Respawn community manager Jay Frechette posted on Reddit in /r/apexlegends to address some gamers' concerns, where he talked about a reconnect feature. Frechette said: "We've heard the suggestions from you folks asking for a reconnect to match feature. We are currently not pursuing this for a couple reasons:

I definitely think the game needs a reconnect feature, especially when you consider it is still buggy with disconnect issues and crash-to-desktop errors. Blizzard has a great method in Overwatch that lets you re-join matches if you are disconnected, but you're punished in certain ways as well if it happens more than once. Hopefully Respawn works on a reconnect feature for Apex Legends in the coming months.

I still remember the hype train from Microsoft and game developers around DirectX 12 and its push away from previous versions of Windows and into the arms of Windows 10. Yeah well, DX12 has just found a new home in Windows 7 and don't check your calendar, because it's not April 1.

Microsoft has announced that Blizzard is riding shotgun with DX12 being unleashed into Windows 7 with gamers now able to play World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth powered by DX12. Why? Because DirectX 12 has support for multi-threading so even gamers with older rigs will see a performance boost, which will start with Wow: Battle for Azeroth.

Even though Windows 7 will see its support end in 2020, 11 years after its launch, it's still a mega-popular OS. According to Net Applications, the aging operating system is still home to 36.9% of the desktop OS market, compared to a smidge more with 39.22% using Windows 10. Microsoft adds that "if you enjoy your favorite games running with DirectX 12 on Windows 7, you should check how those games run even better on Windows 10!"

Death Stranding is one of the most anticipated games of the last decade, and in some gamers' eyes ever, with Hideo Kojima's latest PlayStation exclusive being play-tested by a few other game developers and we're seeing nothing but the utmost praise for it.

During a recent visit to Kojima Productions, the creative director of The Division 2 shared some of his thoughts on the game. Julian Gerighty is about to see his own game launch this week, where during his visit to the offices of Kojima Productions he said: "Over the course of making #TheDivision2 we did many many awesome things and received support from many other developers".

He added to his tweet: "Hugely thankful to @Kojima_Hideo for having welcomed us to his gorgeous studio and shown us his mind blowing game. Trust me, #DeathStranding will be timeless". There you have it - Death Stranding will be "timeless".

DOOM Eternal will be released sometime this year and will be the second entry into a much revitalized and kick ass DOOM franchise, but did you know there was a new DOOM-related movie coming out? Yeah, me either but FWIW it's called DOOM: Annihilation, and it looks like a pile of sh*t.

There you go, I hope you enjoyed that 30-second teaser trailer to a 'movie' called DOOM: Annihilation. At the time of writing there were around 800 likes and over 11,000 dislikes with under 500,000 views. Instead of talking about how bad it looks, I'll let some of the YouTube comments do that for me:

I think the one I laughed at the most for far too long was the one that called this the Fallout 76 of horror movies. Ugh, I don't even know what to think about that, but as another YouTube comment said how the hell did Bethesda and id Software let this happen, using their IP and letting it turn into a movie that looks this bad in the year leading into the huge release of DOOM Eternal is beyond me. The hell, man.

EA recently updated its Origin app which now include the required asset files for the Battle Pass to Apex Legends which will kick off its first season, with @RealApexNews on Twitter tweeted out that @OriginInsider "accidentally added this image there. So the text might be real too".

After the tweet, Respawn community manager Jay Frechette said on Reddit that it is "not coming out today". Frechette addressed the various amounts of datamining that has happened with Apex since its launch, reiterating that "you should not treat any of that info as a source of truth. There's stuff in there that is very old, or things we've tried in the past and cut--remember our design process is to prototype and play lots of ideas--and some of it may be things we're still building for Apex Legends".

Frechette added: "Finding this stuff by no means confirms that it'll ever come out. At best you should treat any posts about this as a rumor and the real info will come from us when we're ready to show off what's coming next".

Gearbox and Take-Two have been teasing Borderlands 3 for a while now, but the co-op shoot-and-loot FPS should be announced this month during PAX East.

After years of development, Gearbox is finally ready to unveil Borderlands 3. Today the developer shared a very conspicuous and loud teaser proclaiming some big announcement on March 28, which coincides with Gearbox's big one-hour PAX East showcase. The developer has a storied history with PAX East so the timing makes sense.

Official details are light, but we do know the game is powered by Unreal Engine 4 technology and features dramatically improved lighting effects, textures, and atmospheric visuals. Unverified reports say classes like the assassin and siren will make a return in Borderlands 3, alongside a soldier who can call in mechs and a beastmaster who can summon and control in-game animals.

Update: The Master Chief Collection's Steam page is now live, but no price has been revealed.

Today Microsoft announced The Master Chief Collection is coming to PC, as well as Steam.

The Master Chief Collection is coming to PC, but not all at once. The game will arrive on PC via the Microsoft Store and the competing Steam platform, and will be optimized for PC with enhancements and tweaks. Halo: Reach is also coming to MCC on both PC and console.

Google invites consumers to gather around for its new vision of gaming at GCD 2019.

Reports indicate Google is developing a new gaming platform ecosystem similar to Microsoft's Xbox LIVE, complete with new hardware. The idea is Google's service will tie together its Google Play storefront, the planned game streaming Project Stream service, and a possible games console or low-cost set-top box. Supposedly the controller for Google's new gaming vision was leaked ahead of schedule, but reports now say it's not real. If real, we predict the controller will be compatible with mobile, desktop, laptop and Google's new games hardware.

Now Google teases its new gaming focus with a new video. The footage clearly highlights various genres of games from racing, to exotic RPGs, sports games, space sims, and medieval battlers, making us think it's for Project Stream. It prompts gamers to "discover a new way to play." There's also a curious little noise at the end that could be the noise Google's console makes when it's turned on.

Hype is always a double-edged sword. It can be used to cut through moneybags and spill cash everywhere via pre-orders and boost shares, or deliver vicious wounds to game developers and publishers. Two recent games in particular show that hype hits service games the hardest: Fallout 76 and BioWare's ambitious new IP Anthem.

Gaming hype is a very powerful tool. It excites and engages gamers across the world, creating strong buzz for a project, propelling tons of articles, videos, and threads about a project. Publishers feed off of this attention and developers use the positive energy to supercharge their work. Gamers discuss the possibilities for their favorite sequels, or what direction the new IP will take, or how the game will evolve with a new engine. But hype also builds tremendous expectations that can't ever be met, especially when the hype is built from bullshots and pre-alpha footage that simply don't represent the final game. This, as we've learned, can be very dangerous.

Both Fallout 76 and Anthem represent failed experiments who were overwhelmed by the burgeoning weight of hype. Fallout 76 was hit hardest due to Bethesda's mismanagement and misunderstanding of how live service games actually work, but BioWare also played Dr. Frankenstein with Anthem, which was once described as a potential Destiny-killer (instead, as GuerrillaDawg aptly said, it became a PS4-killer).

The industry has shifted. Games are no longer self-contained slices of interactive media, but have grown into sprawling, never-ending online games with tons of spending opportunities. Microsoft is such a big proponent of this live service model that they've formed their entire Xbox gaming business around it. Hardware, subscriptions, retail games--everything Xbox does serves the almighty engagement dollar.

So what does this mean for big marquee games like Halo: Infinite? Live service hooks, of course. Microtransactions, multiplayer progression grinds, community-driven updates, and Game Pass subscription conduits...all of these are now baked into first-party Xbox games. And since Xbox is a service now, these games are coming to PC too. The sooner gamers, investors, and consumers realize these points, the easier it'll be to understand the shifting marketplace and Microsoft's core focus. Big games like Halo: Infinite will adopt these structures for maximum recurring revenues.

But some games could innovate on this model. Using live services, 343 Industries could do something more interesting with Halo: Infinite's campaign. We could see an infusion of live aspects into the campaign itself to offer more replayability.

There is no doubt that battle royale games are the most popular game genre out there right now. With titles such as Apex Legends and Fortnite dominating the market, is there room for a new kind of battle royale? Perhaps one that captures the difficulty of Dark Souls?

In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Hidetaka Miyazaki, President of FromSoftware and developer of the Dark Souls franchise expressed his excitement towards the new genre. Miyazaki says that FromSoftware certainly do have their eyes on battle royale games and other 'live service' games such as Destiny and Anthem. While this may not impact the current development process for FromSoftware, the possibility of the developer creating one of these games is not entirely ruled out.

Miyazaki says "There's always the possibility. These games are definitely fun. And we're interested in the patterns they are taking. If we did it, it might be a bit different! But we're definitely interested and there's definitely that possibility in the future. We'd love to take a crack at them some day." This could mean that we might see a Dark Souls-like battle royale game in the future, as FromSoftware is known for their high-level of difficulty within their games I'm sure the developer would incorporate this within their battle royale experience.

The core fighting mechanics for Mortal Kombat 11 will be different to that of the previous games in the franchise ,and most importantly will be very different than Mortal Kombat X.

NetherRealm, the developer for the soon to be released Mortal Kombat 11 has given some details on the changes that have been made to Mortal Kombat's core fighting. At the same time the company also touched on the quality of the content that is going to be added to Mortal Kombat 11 after its launch. According to NetherRealm boss Shaun Himmerick, who talked to The Official Xbox Magazine, NetherRealm "plan to keep adding to the game and supporting the game well after launch. The features planned to be added to the game even in the first couple months are pretty awesome. There is more coming."

Himmerick also explains that there has been an altercation to the core fighting mechanics of Mortal Kombat, as the developer are "separating the players' meter and having Fatal Blows not require meter". In Mortal Kombat X players were required to manage their bar and choose what they wanted to spend their meter on (enhanced moves, combo breaks, special moves etc). Now players won't have to manage the meter as it grows over time and does not require an output of damage, or an absorption damage to increase. Fatal Blows has also been added to Mortal Kombat 11 which is a one-time-use catch-up mechanic that can only activated when the player is below 30% health. The full explanation from Himmerick has been provided below, Mortal Kombat 11 is planned for release on April 23.