Gaming - Page 746

When's all said and done, The Division 2 will clock in at up to 92GB on PS4, which is almost double the install size on other platforms.

Today's games are absolutely huge, especially Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS4, and Halo 5: Guardians and The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One which are all roughly 100GB. Live games tend to get massive over time thanks to tons of updates and content drops, but some like The Division 2 will be absolutely huge right out of the gate. In a recent FAQ post, Ubisoft confirms retail PS4 copies of The Division 2 will require a huge day one patch that takes up between 88GB and 92GB. That's on top of the 44.97GB required for the game's base install.

Luckily the massive day one patch actually replaces lots of the original install files instead of compounding them into a glut of HDD-congested data. Ubisoft says The Division 2's total install size will take up anywhere from 88GB to 92GB of storage on PS4 after the update. Even still, The Division 2 will take up almost 20% of a stock PS4's 500GB hard drive.

Given the massive scope of CD Projekt RED's sci-fi magnum opus Cyberpunk 2077, it's easy to see why the game is taking so long, and the ETA status hasn't changed.

Cyberpunk 2077 is the biggest game CD Projekt RED has ever made, and given its stalwart history, that's saying a lot. The game is so incredibly ambitious that it could transcend the hype and become one of the most technically impressive games released this generation. The team has been working for over half a decade crafting its living, breathing world full of real-time dynamic AI, the bustling gritty metropolis of Night City with its flying cars and GTA-style driving sequences, and explosively chaotic FPS action blended with distinct RPG elements. And that's not even including the immersive, multi-faceted storyline whose choice-driven mechanics should put The Witcher 3 to shame in scope.

CD Projekt RED created all new toolsets to power the game, including higher-end visual fidelity, cutscenes, and motion-capture, as well as a new next-gen games engine to redefine what gamers expect from interactive experiences. So knowing all that...it's not exactly a surprise Cyberpunk 2077 still has a long way to go.

Roughly 209 people were fired from the frosty mead halls of Blizzard's North American branch as part of Activision-Blizzard's big restructuring plans.

Activision-Blizzard recently laid off 8% of its workforce, or about 800 employees, across all of its main branches in an effort to save cash. The publisher says the culling of these jobs will allocate 20% more revenue to make new games, a decision it made during the same year it pulled in a record $7.5 billion. We've gone into great detail into Activision-Blizzard's thought process behind this decision, but there's one thing we didn't know: just which branches were affected? All of these eliminations hit non-game development jobs, and now we have a better idea of how the company carved itself up.

According to PC Insider, who attained an official WARN document detailing the company's North American layoffs, Blizzard's IT department was hit the hardest with 41 layoffs. Marketing was hit second hardest with 29 redundancies (which makes sense given Blizzard isn't releasing new games in 2019, and it spent billions on marketing in 2018), but Live Experiences was also hit with 29 layoffs.

Improbable, the company behind SpatialOS cloud tech that powers various open-ended online games, today announced development of its own internal projects is underway, and has tapped well-known talent to lead its studios.

The online-tech pioneers announced two studios that will fuel its upcoming projects: an Edmonton-based branch led by ex-BioWare General Manager Aaryn Flynn, and a London studio led by former EA exec John Wasilczyk. Obviously Improbable's games will be online-based affairs, likely live service titles centered around engagement, recurring revenues via monetization, and action-oriented elements. It's possible Aaryn Flynn could bring some of that BioWare magic to his Edmonton team, too.

Here's what the former BioWare GM said about Improbable: "I was interested in making a game using SpatialOS from the very first time I spoke to Improbable. Building tools and content has been a great way for our Edmonton team to master SpatialOS, but a full game was always an opportunity myself and others had in mind as the Edmonton studio took shape. Now, after a lot of great hires and great progress, we're going to focus on creating that game using Unreal Engine 4 and building on SpatialOS' next-generation online games platform.

Battle royale games like Respawn's mega-hot Apex Legends, Epic's billion-dollar Fortnite, and PUBG will rake in over $20 billion in 2019, analyst firm SuperData predicts.

According to SuperData's latest report, the battle royale genre is set to explode in 2019 by earning $20.1 billion across all platforms. This represents a mighty 60% year-over-year increase over a year that saw tremendous BR growth; battle royale earnings skyrockted by 625% from 2017 to 2018.

Surprisingly enough, buy-to-play BR games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Black Ops 4's Blackout mode are expected to earn the lion's share of 2019's BR revenue with $10.2 billion, or around 50.7% of total earnings. Console will lead other platforms by raking in $10.4 billion, SuperData predicts, with PC coming in at second with $6.3 billion, and mobile, which typically towers above all others, checking in at just $3.3 billion.

EA is swapping out a press conference for a glut of live streams, interviews, and other sensory overload at its annual pre-E3 event. This decision isn't about giving gamers what they want, but keeping them entertained and engaged.

EA recently announced its EA Play 2019 plans to press and gamers, confirming a paradigm shift that reflects the current state of the games industry. Right now live streamers and "influencers" are the core focus of any publisher (just look at how much EA spent to promote Apex Legends), and that's great for the billion-dollar games-makers. Influencers can stretch engagement quite far and act as interactive advertisements for their biggest games (especially when they're paid to do so, versus games outlets). Now this model is seeping into how publishers are showcasing their new games.

EA's decision to scrap its annual press conference isn't just because they're often lampooned, nor is it just because they want to give "gamers more of what they want." It's about engagement, about keeping you glued to your seat for as long as possible while watching a live stream, about providing tons of information all while they collect metrics and viewership counts that may actually affect game development.

Live games are raking in billions every year, and every publisher wants in on the action. But independent devs like From Software also want a slice of the earnings pie.

From Software's next game could be a big jump from games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and the upcoming Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Seen as the bastion for hard-as-nails survival games, FromSoft's future projects could be online-only affairs that're monetized via live service models, not unlike EA's and Activision's titles. In a recent interview with The Telegraph, FromSoft boss Hidetaka Miyazaki expressed keen interest in making a live game and actually wants to put his spin on battle royale.

"There's always the possibility [we'll make a battle royale game]. 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," Miyazaki told the publication.

A recent announcement from NantG, the PC developer of H1Z1: King of the Kill has detailed that the game will have its name changed from H1Z1: King of the Kill to the much more simple 'Z1 Battle Royale'.

If you haven't heard about H1Z1: King of the Kill, it was a game that was left in the dust in the very early stages of the battle royale craze. The game picked up some extreme popularity, but then was quickly overshadowed by the release of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Former developer Daybreak Games handed the PC version of the game over to the NantG development who is issuing an update out that plans on bringing some of the older H1Z1 players back to the game.

According to the General Manager of Z1BR, Anthony Castoro, "[The PC update for Z1BR is] also huge because it represents the first big delivery on the promise that the new NantG team made when it took over development last September: Bring back the game that so many of you fell in love with in the classic 'King of the Kill' era around Preseason 3 at the end of 2016 and in early 2017. We still plan to address old weapon models, classic in-game UI elements, and more." For more information regarding the update, visit the official blogpost for Z1 Battle Royale here.

The release of Capcom's Devil May Cry 5 is almost upon us, only being merely hours away we have some new information regarding the difficulty of the trophy list. Simply put, it isn't going to be a walk in the park to achieve platinum status.

While there is definitely a large amount of gamers sitting there with their fangs bare ready to sink their teeth into the new Devil May Cry game, how many of those players game enough to attempt platinum status? Well, after seeing the requirements of platinum I can honestly say that I won't be achieving it, and perhaps it would be fair to say that its ALMOST impossible for anyone to achieve it.

Destructoid has managed to get their hands-on the trophy list ahead of the games launch and they reveal that each of the achievements besides one are quite easy to obtain. All except "Worthy of Legend". To get the trophy for this challenge, the player must beat every mission except for Heaven and Hell and receive an S rank on all difficulty levels. Meaning that the player will be required to play through the game five different times while maintaining the same level of efficiency at beating each level at a S rank. While this might sound easy enough at the lower ends of the difficulty, it will be come much more challenging at the higher ends of the difficulty spectrum as enemies have increased health and not to mention damage output.

E3 2019 isn't for a few more months but EA has today announced it won't be hosting its annual E3 press conference this year, putting its focus wholly into its own EA PLAY.

EA Play is an annual showcase that the company hosts, where this year it'll take place between June 7-9. EA explains it is skipping its E3 2019 press conference and "multiple live streams that will air during the first two days of the event, bringing you more of what you've told us you want - more gameplay and insights from the teams making the games".

EA PLAY 2019 will feature:

Remedy Entertainment is in the middle of developing its new game Control, where during an awesome interview with Game Informer we're finding out a bunch of new information about the game in a 94 rapid-fire question video.

First and foremost, the entire game takes place in a single location in New York City called 'The Oldest House' but Control's game director Mikael Kasurinen said that it's a "complicated, shifting" place. The world of Control is always in flux, with traits of previous games like Quantum Break influencing the development of this game.

Control will have absolutely no multiplayer, it will have DLC, there are not multiple difficulty, and the game is "not linear at all". The visuals of Control are inspired by legendary film director Stanley Kubrick, who directed 2001: A Space Odyssey (which is still impressive today, considering it was released in 1968, the year before men walked on the moon) with shapes and forms meaning a lot to the game.

Dead or Alive 6 is just a few days old now and it is already surrounded in controversy with the release of its first season pass, something that costs more than the actual game itself. Ridiculous, right?

The full game costs $40 while the season pass costs a whopping $93, over double the cost of DOA6. What do you get for $93 just doesn't seem worth it with 62 new costumes up on offer, with developer Koei Tecmo Games saying that we could see even more content released soon, outside of the first season pass, so prepare your wallets accordingly.

So even if you plonk down $40 for Dead or Alive 6 and then another $93 for the season pass, you won't receive all of the additional downloadable content that will be released between now and June. There will definitely be new content, costumes, and more for the game that hasn't been announced yet, outside of the first season pass.

In an age where aggressive monetization is found in everything from AAA to mobile titles, Nintendo wants to keep a level head about its free-to-play smartphone games.

Nintendo has warned its partners not to over-monetize its smartphone games with too many spending opportunities, The Wall Street Journal reports. According to The WSJ, the company would rather earn potentially less money from mobile games then become embroiled in controversy--a sentiment that most games-makers don't agree with. Nintendo is fiercely protective of its brand, and it wants to stray far away from negative press.

Despite making most of its mobile revenues from a game riddled with "gacha" style microtransactions, as well as advocating for lootboxes to drive engagement, Nintendo wants to be more careful in how its future games are monetized. In-game spending opportunities need to be limited and reflect the actual goal of its smartphone business, which is to primarily bring exposure to the brand and fold consumers into the ecosystem. Making money comes second.

Today Sony stealthily released a new PS4 firmware update that allows Remote Play console mirroring to iOS devices.

After a long, long wait, iPhone and iPad owners can now control their PS4 and play games from afar. Originally created as an extension to tether the now-dead PS Vita to the PlayStation 4 ecosystem, Remote Play essentially lets gamers use their consoles, play games, and interact with friends outside of a home network. It's a nifty feature that works surprisingly well on Android and PS Vita (provided both devices are connected to the internet), and it makes sense Sony would bring it to iOS to maximize exposure. The Remote Play app is currently available on the App Store.

The timing is particularly interesting, too. Sony is currently doubling-down on fortifying existing services and making new ones for its incoming next-gen PS5 console.

As promised yesterday, the legends at 3D Realms reveal a brand new shooter that hearkens back to the bloody days of early PC gaming.

Today 3D Realms announced Wrath: Ruin of Aeons, a new blistering hardcore FPS that taps the industrial horror of yore. The game was built with the original Quake engine, and every bit of scenery shows parallels to that distinct gritty colosseum hellworld style; blood oozes down walls, obelisks to strange gods piece the stone ground, half-eroded monasteries rise into the dark, red embers glow ominously, and strange sci-tech glyphs promise interesting secrets.

Wrath: Ruin of Aeons strives to recreate that classic look and feel of the golden Quake age of gaming, and sports the classic goretastic run-and-gun approach. 3D Realms crafted 9 unique weapons for maximum heart-pumping death-metal carnage like an arm-mounted blade saw, the old-school double-barreled shotgun, a wicked spike gun that makes mincemeat out of baddies, and even a weird disgusting semi-organic alien gun.

Blizzard is bringing a treasure trove of its classic PC games to GOG.com starting with the immortal tough-as-nails ARPG that started it all: Diablo.

For a red-hot $10 gamers can now experience the mayhem, wonder, and visceral thrill of the original Diablo. These hallowed halls are much different than the player-friendly games of today and Diablo will truly test your mettle. There's no auto-regen here, just cut and dry do-or-die; run out of potions? You're dead. Mismanaged your TPs? You're dead. Panic and aggro a huge group of enemies and accidentally cast the wrong skills? You're dead. And once you die, all your precious loot pops from your corpse like a human pinata. Diablo is ruthless, sadistic, and tons of fun.

The GOG version of Diablo 1 will feature everything the main game offered, including LAN, network play over Battle.net classic, and TCP/IP play. It's also been optimized for Windows 10 PCs too, but that particular mode doesn't yet have online multiplayer (but the base game actually works quite well). There's even instructions on how to configure your router for Battle.net too.

To compliment the release of the upcoming POKEMON Detective Pikachu movie starring Deadpool actor, Ryan Reynolds. The Pokemon Trading Company will be making Pokemon trading cards for a select amount of Pokemon seen in the movie.

In celebration of the new upcoming POKEMON Detective Pikachu, The Pokemon Company have announced a brand new selection of Pokemon trading cards that use images from the upcoming movie. In the trailers that have been released we have already seen some of the Pokemon that are coming to trading cards. There will be a total of 27 new cards released, 18 of which have already been showcased.

If you are interested in checking out the official Pokemon trading cards that have been announced, visit the official Pokemon website here. According to the Pokemon website, "booster packs for this special set will not be sold separately, so look for them in special collections starting April 5, 2019". In other news about POKEMON Detective Pikachu, Ryan Reynolds became a Pikachu through method acting, even claiming he lived at his height for a brief period of time, more on that here. There is also the first trailer that can be found here if you happened to miss that, as well as the second trailer that can be found here.

Most Dark Souls fans at least have an eye on FromSoftware's next project, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The game has attracted quite the attention and now some more gameplay of a new area has been released alongside a tease of an epic snake boss.

The new gameplay that has been released has been through GameSpot, and gives us a look at the Senpou Temple and the enemies that it inhabits. We see a great display of combat in a dense, but luscious jungle environment. The player uses stealth to utilize backstabbing on enemies to do massive amounts of damage, while also being very good on the blocking side of things throughout a large variety of different enemies. There is mini bosses such as the heavier club wielding ogre and the very agile monk.

On the FUN GAMES YouTube Channel we also have a new boss fight trailer for 'The Great Serpent' which can be found in the entirety of this post. The trailer gives us a quick 30 second look at what players are assuming they will be up against and it seems the boss will be no easy task. Being so damn big, I'd assume that players will have to use the environment to their advantage in this fight, with great use of the grapple ability we could see some snake riding action following by a solid sword to the back of its head. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is planned for release on March 22nd, Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Mortal Kombat 11 has swamped the gaming news sector, as NetherRealm Studio's gears up for the release of the next title in their iconic franchise a confirmed to what engine the game will be running on has been announced.

While Mortal Kombat 11 looks undoubtedly gorgeous on screem, the initial guess would that it is running the most recent version of Epic Games' Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 4. That guess would be in-fact wrong, as NetherRealm Studios Programming Lead, Jon Greenberg has confirmed on Twitter that the title actually uses a custom Unreal Engine 3 that has been specifically modified by NetherRealm. Greenberg continues and explains that the engine that they are using is "radically different from Epic's at this pt (point)".

Greenberg continues to respond to fans in the Twitter thread that the reasoning for the game still using Unreal Engine 3 is because this allowed the developers to start work on Mortal Kombat 11 straight after the release of Injustice 2. If the transition from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4 was made there would have to of been rebuilding of what is described as "years and years worth of stuff". Greenberg also touches on the fact that MK Mobile uses Unreal Engine 4 and that the developers for both games are interchangeable . Mortal Kombat 11 will be released on the 23rd of April for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC. For more information, visit the official Mortal Kombat 11 website here.

Valve has made a public annoucement regarding their thoughts towards allowing a rape-based game titled 'Rape Day' to debut on Steam. The company has declined the proposition due to "unknown risks".

Over the past week there has beens stirrings of an upcoming game to Steam library, the game is titled 'Rape Day' and allows for players to progress through a "visual novel where you control the choices of a sociopath during a zombie apocalypse." The game also allows players to "verbally harass, kill people and rape women as you choose to progress the story." Due to the explicit content of which the game contains, many people took to a petition created by Change.org to not allow the game to be published on Steam, the petition received over 8,000 votes.

Valve has recently taken to the official blog to talk about 'Rape Day' and how it will not be published on Steam. The company after "significant fact-finding and discussion" will not be debuting 'Rape Day' on Steam due to "unknown costs and risks". Valve also says that they "respect developers' desire to express themselves, and the purpose of Steam is to help developers find an audience, but this developer has chosen content matter and a way of representing it that makes it very difficult for us to help them do that".