Gaming - Page 750

Backers of the crowdfunding project Outer Wilds have been shocked as the publisher has decided to convert the title into a timed Epic Games Store exclusive.

In a recent update to the official Fig listing for Outer Wilds, it is addressed to backers that the publishing team behind Outer Wilds have "welcomed helpful partnerships with Annapurna Interactive, Xbox, and Epic" to "keep our small studio running long enough to ship the game at the level of quality that it is today". It should be noted that Outer Wilds has been available to back since 2015 and that the title originally advertised to fans that it would be released onto Mac, Linux and Windows via Steam.

Many fans have turned on the title now, with dislike bombing occuring on the above Outer Wilds crowdfunding video and angry backers taking to Reddit to express their disgust. Reddit user Daear took to the /r/outerwilds sub reddit and said: "As of update #72 from the Outer Wilds team, the game will be a timed exclusive for Xbox One and PC via Epic Games store (source). Other platforms will be "coming later", and the team promises their goal is to "bring the game to your preferred platform as quickly as possible".

Some new sales data has recently been released by Sony on their PlayStation blog. The new sales chart indicate that Days Gone has taken the lead for best-selling game on the PlayStation Store for April.

On the PlayStation blog, it is showcased that for the month of April Bend Studios' Days Gone sits at 1st place, beating the likes of World War Z and Mortal Kombat 11. All three of these games released throughout the month of April and it seems they have all done quite well on Sony's online store front.

Alongside these newly released titles we have Rockstars Grant Theft Auto V going strongly at second place and for PS VR we have Beat Saber at first and Until Dawn: Rush of Blood at second. Moving onto DLC content, Fortnite's Laguna Pack, Lava Legends Pack, Save The World - Standard Founder's Pack and Inferno's Challenge Pack have taken first, second, third and fourth place. For more information visit the official PlayStation blog here.

With every new game release many PC gamers are asking whether or not titles will be heading over to the Epic Games Store as a timed exclusive or not. Wolfenstein: Youngblood will not be one those titles.

In a recent Reddit AMA with Wolfenstein: Youngblood developer MachineGames', many fans posed numerous types of questions to the developer regarding the coming title. Some fans asked questions such as the possibility of crossplay support, how long the title will be in comparison to New Order, the developers relationship with co-developer Arkane Studios and whether or not the title will be an Epic Games Store timed exclusive.

All of the above questions were answered by MachineGames, and even some extra detail was given about Youngblood. Here is what Jerk Gustafsson said about Youngblood; "Youngblood is different than our previous titles in many ways. Player progression is level-based and the game structure is non-linear, which means the experience is player directed in a way that we've never done before where players will be able to perform missions in any order they please. And while the storyline/campaign may be a bit lighter than New Order/New Colossus, the total gameplay time of Youngblood will exceed those titles.?"

Pokemon Detective Pikachu has finally released and has been met with some criticism by fans, but regardless of everyones thoughts of the movie the title has claimed a spot as the highest grossing video game movie in an opening weekend.

According to Box Office Mojo and the above Box Office Report, the Ryan Reynolds starred movie Pokemon Detective Pikachu has reached an estimated "$103.0M internationally since Wednesday". The source of the movies International revenue through Sunday includes; China - $40.8M, Japan - $12.9M, U.K. - $6.6M, Germany - $5.0M, Mexico - $5.0M, France - $4.8M, Australia - $3.5M, S. Korea - $3.2M, Italy - $2.8M and Spain - $2.2M.

Since Pokemon Detective Pikachu is now sitting at the top for biggest opening weekend ever for a video game based movie, who has the movie de-throned? According to MyNintendoNews, the second biggest opening weekend for a video game franchise movie was Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider only manged to pull in $47 million in its opening weekend. In total global standards, Pokemon Detective Pikachu has grossed $170.4M and only seems like its climbing higher.

I still remember late nights every weekend at LANs at my house when I was a teenager in the 90s playing games like Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Shadow Warrior, C&C: Red Alert and who can forget; Blood.

Blood is a classic 2D first-person shooter from the 90s that has been remastered by the talented hands of Nightdive Studios that has just announced and released Blood: Fresh Supply. The new game has a bunch of new technological features and support like 4K resolution support, Vulkan/DX11/OpenGL APIs, unlocked frame rates, and so much more.

Here's what you can expect from Blood: Fresh Supply:

If there was a game that would benefit from AI upscaled textures it would have to be Diablo 2, with its now low-res graphics being upgraded through AI. Yeah, AI is helping make old classics like Diablo 2 come back to life looking better than ever before.

According to Redditor 'Indoflaven' who has been "playing around with ESRGAN and decided to see how it would handle Diablo 2. This is done using the Manga109 model with a 1024x768 source image". The AI upscaling method 'ESRGAN' stands for Enhanced Super Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks which adds more detail to low-resolution images, making it perfect for low-res games from the 90s.

The team behind ESRGAN explains its tech: "By doing it over several passes with the goal of fooling its adverserial [sic] part, it will usually produce an image with more fidelity and realism than past methods. I have upscaled the textures in Morrowind to four times the vanilla resolution using ESRGAN. Below you can compare various models' results to the original (HR)".

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is the type of game that pulls in steady revenue while MachineGames crafts the next mainline sequel, and as such it's prioritizing long-term online play over strong story-driven singleplayer action.

We've known for a while that the latest Wolfenstein game, a co-op based shooter called Youngblood, is a service game based around two things: monetization and engagement. Youngblood not only has optional skin-based microtransactions, but it features online co-op play with a friend and sports the kind of level design found in Dishonored games. This is apt because Arkane worked heavily on the project. These environments will foster more long-winded play time with emphasis on exploration alongside chaotic, Nazi-blasting combat.

Now MachineGames talks more about Youngblood's design, what it's meant to do, and how it'll expand over time with steady updates, challenges, and content drops, service-game style.

Roadmaps are a big thing right now in gaming, but they're usually reserved for online games that divvy out digestible chunks over time to keep gamers playing. Very seldom do we see them for singleplayer-only games like RAGE 2.

Having failed to capture the live service market with Fallout 76, Bethesda is eager to change things up a bit. The publisher is using RAGE 2 as a means of combining both singleplayer gaming with online content similar to Ubisoft's strategy with recent Assassin's Creed games. As we've said before, RAGE 2 is a live game without multiplayer and keeps gamers static in their own controlled sessions while id evolves the game with updates. This could be a huge drawback as co-op play would spark engagement, which could then be monetized accordingly.

In a recent roadmap update--because every game needs a roadmap these days--id and Bethesda outlined how RAGE 2 will evolve over time. The cadence of free updates is quite slow compared to most service games that must rapidly expand weekly or even monthly, and shouldn't lead to an ever-shifting world.

Red Dead Redemption 2's PC port has been in development as far back as 2016, according to a LinkedIn resume from an ex-Rockstar physics programmer.

Like Old West outlaws after a robbery, evidence of a PC port of Rockstar's latest bit of open-world mastery is mounting up. First a Rockstar Leeds developer listed Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC on his LinkedIn page, and now a previous Rockstar Toronto physics designer did the same. We won't directly divulge their names, but the resumes hint the sequel-prequel's PC version has been in the works since 2016. The Toronto programmer left in 2016 and lists RDR2 as a game they worked on, whereas the Leeds dev left in 2017 and listed the same. Both developers left Rockstar before Red Dead Redemption 2 was shipped in October 2018.

Although Red Dead Redemption 2 was built from the ground up for the current generation of consoles, the game will likely come to PC to ensure maximal exposure, sales, and live service revenues from Red Dead Online.

A new Pokemon mobile game will release sometime before March 2020, DeNA announced in its recent fiscal earnings report.

Not content with Pokemon GO's massive billion-dollar earnings, DeNA and Nintendo plan to release a second Pokemon smartphone game that capitalizes on the franchise's core strengths: RPG aspects, search-and-capture action, and lots of live service earnings opportunities. Whether or not the new game will be an AR-based title like Pokemon GO remains unknown, but the two projects should live alongside one another.

It's very likely the mobile game will interact directly with Nintendo's latest mainline Pokemon: Sword and Shield games, which are coming to the Switch in late 2019. We should see cross-platform adventuring with Pokemon migration between mobile and Switch, PVP battles, and maybe even co-op action. Nintendo did something similar with its recent Pokemon Let's Go Eevee and Pikachu games and it did amazingly well as a form of cross-game engagement.

Hackers have had lots of fun with the Nintendo Switch, and the handheld-console hybrid is actually quite flexible. Now one modder gets the original Xbox emulator running on the Linux-powered system.

Ever since its Linux OS kernel was hijacked back in 2017, the Nintendo Switch has been hacked six ways to Sunday. Users have broken the firmware to allow tons of emulators, pirated software, and homebrews to run on the console. They've even broken through the Switch Online's NES emulator and enabled mass storage support. Now a new breakthrough just took place: Microsoft's first console can run on the Switch.

With a lot of tweaks, modder Voxel9 successfully got Xbox emulator XQEMU running on the Nintendo Switch. Of course the emulator didn't run amazing well and had lots of FPS drops, but it did actually start up and even played the original Halo. But playing Xbox games on the Switch is a different story, at least right now. Halo ran quite poorly, but Jet Set Radio fared somewhat better...even if it was a bit choppy.

Recent LinkedIn resumes strongly hint this year's Call of Duty will be Modern Warfare 4.

A number of high-profile devs have joined back up with Infinity Ward to help guide this year's Call of Duty game. The bulk of the devs joined years ago, presumably as development of Call of Duty 2019 was ramping up, and worked on numerous Modern Warfare games. The devs also held previous positions at studios like Respawn. Noted first by Gamespot, the listings suggest this year's big mainline shooter will in fact be Modern Warfare 4.

Activision has yet to announce the new Call of Duty game but a formal reveal should happen before E3 2019 (as is customary for the franchise). The publisher confirmed Call of Duty 2019 will have a singleplayer story-driven campaign with co-op elements to boot, and is described as a "giant step for the franchise" that is "deeply rooted in Call of Duty history."

The creator of Castlevania himself reveals some interesting tidbits about the original NES classic, explaining design decisions around boss fights and more.

Castlevania is one of my favorite series of all time and is a true testament of skill, patience, and grizzled gaming endurance. But there's a few things that I've always wondered about...especially that one hilarious moment when you knock Drac's head off his shoulders and send it to the moon, as the Angry Video Game Nerd so eloquently puts it. Turns out there's a reason for that and it's not actually meant to be that humorous--it's actually foreshadowing.

Japanese gaming translation site Shmuplations recently translated some older Tweets detailing what it was like working on the original Castlevania games. In a span of four years of Tweets, Sonna Yuumi, who worked closely with Castlevania creator Hitoshi Akamatsu on the games, highlighted specific things like the first boss battle, overall mechanics, and how Konami put the series on the back burner.

On the heels of their landmark success with the Friday the 13th game, Illfonic brings its survival PVP multiplayer prowess to the Predator franchise.

A bit ago Sony announced Predator: Hunting Grounds, a new online multiplayer game that aims to recreate the thrill of Schwarzenegger's 1980s action flick. The whole idea is to create that paranoid claustrophobic excitement of being constantly hunted by a monster--only instead of Jason, this time gamers will be picked off by a tribalistic alien from the stars. And instead of a campground, Hunting Grounds takes us to the deep heart of the jungle.

Predator: Hunting Grounds parallels Illfonic's previous slasher adaptation with two different perspectives. Players can roam the jungles as a spec ops force, collecting materials along the way and carefully scrutinizing every rustling bush in frantic paranoia, or take on the role of the predator, complete with high-tech arms and the infamous active camo.

The gaming desk market is about to heat up at Computex 2019 in two weeks time with Thermaltake announcing the ultimate desk for gamers that have no budget.

Thermaltake's new Level 20 RGB Battlestation Gaming Desk costs a huge $1199 and rolls out with a gorgeous RGB lighting strip on the edges of the desk that looks awesome in pictures, and I'm sure even better in person. The Level 20 RGB Battlestation Gaming Desk is fully height adjustable, with memory options to set particular heights.

The big difference here is the RGB lighting which can be tweaked through Alexa and Razer Chroma, with the entire surface built for your gaming mouse. The surface itself is semi-coarse with textured weave measuring 165 x 75cm with smart cable management built into the desk.

NVIDIA has released a new driver with optimizations for some of the latest games including RAGE 2, with the new GeForce 430.64 WHQL drivers release and available right here.

The new GeForce 430.64 drivers include optimizations for RAGE 2, World War Z, and Total War: Three Kingdoms. SLI owners will enjoy new or improved SLI profiles for both Imperator: Rome, and Insurgency Sandstorm. There are a bunch of issues fixed with the new drivers, including Shadow of the Tomb Raider freezing when launched in SLI mode, Hitman 2 crashing under DX12, and the high CPU usage in the NVDisplay.Container.exe that turned up in the 430.39 drivers.

Square Enix's massively anticipated new Final Fantasy VII: Remake isn't just one game. It'll release in a multi-volume trilogy and there could be years in between releases, and with pre-orders already up, it begs to question how much will the game end up costing altogether.

Right now the Final Fantasy VII: Remake is up for pre-order on Amazon and Best Buy for $59.99. But are we getting just the first volume for that price, or the entire three-game trilogy? Are gamers simply pre-ordering one game and then blindly buying into the other portions, season pass-style?

Other than saying the game will be split across multiple parts, Square Enix has been coy about how pricing will work. The store listings don't have any exact info on what you're actually buying. Each chapter of the FFVII: Remake is a full game with 30 hours of content, the publisher says, so it's possible it'll be sold separately and gamers will have to shell out $59.99 for each part.

Volition could announce the next big Saints Row game at E3 2019, or the publisher could just bring more games to the Nintendo Switch.

Today Deep Silver said something interesting on Twitter that could be taken a few ways. "Subscribe to the official Saints Row YouTube channel so you don't miss a thing...we have exciting things ahead for the Saints, you don't want to miss out!" reads the Tweet, prompting speculation of and incoming Saints Row V reveal. E3 2019 is on the horizon after all, and THQ Nordic and Deep Silver will be in tow with games and announcements.

Volition, the devs behind Saints Row, are also working on a new ambitious project, further lending credence to a possible reveal. In late 2018 THQ Nordic confirmed Volition is developing a "top secret AAA project." Nothing was confirmed but we're betting Volition is focusing on Saints Row after its experimental new IP Agents of Mayhem failed.

Up until now Tetris 99 was an online-only Switch Online exclusive. But with a new $10 DLC, the fast-paced battle royale goes offline and brings in new revenues to boot, covering all the bases.

Digital is extremely important to platform-holders like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. Subscriptions like PS Plus, Xbox LIVE, and Nintendo's Switch Online are a big part of these earnings--they not only generate revenue from paid subscriptions, but organically churn engagement that leads to game purchases, DLC sales, and long-term monetization in key online games. Nintendo is relatively new to this structure, but it's swinging right out of the gate with some smooth moves.

Nintendo today announced Tetris 99's new $10 Big Block DLC, which not only brings it offline, but allows normal Switch owners not subscribed to Switch Online to play.

Square Enix's latest Final Fantasy VII: Remake trailer is full of interesting combat tidbits that show a remarkable transformation of the 1997 classic.

The new FFVII: Remake isn't a turn-based RPG like the original. Instead, combat is entirely action-based in a three-dimensional space similar to Devil May Cry or Final Fantasy XV, complete with real-time battle sequences, combos, and more. This brings some massive changes and everything's been more streamlined for heart-thumping chaos versus properly sequenced strategy. The game represents a big win for Square Enix during a time when the publisher needs it most, and its first chapter could launch in 2019.

The latest Remake gameplay footage shows how far the game has evolved since we last saw it. Back in 2015, combat saw an ATB gauge that filled up when you struck enemies. This time around the game adds some interesting abilities like real-time manual blocking, limit breaks, and shortcut attacks--all of which provide a blueprint for stylized and dynamic hack-and-slash havoc.