Gaming - Page 753

Blizzard has been going through a tremendously stressful time, well at least the 800 laid off staff have, but Overwatch is still being treated well with the new Paris map moving out of the PTR and into the live game.

The new Overwatch map is now live on all platforms: PC, Xbox One, and PS4 and arrives with a new update that sees Blizzard fixing a bunch of bugs and other issues. If you haven't looked into Paris yet, the new map is another Assault map (the fifth one now) and is set in the city of Paris, France. This means you're confronted with narrow streets for tighter battles, corridors to get stuck in, and storefronts that will see a bunch of ultimates, and ultimately mad players, battling it out for that ever-so-precious SR.

Blizzard has a huge list of bugs that it fixed with Overwatch's various heroes, something that you can check out here. Now that Blizzard has got the new Paris map into the wild, is it time for a new hero? Yeah, I really think it is. We need some new healers, so it would be good to see another healer join the ranks in Overwatch... eh, Blizzard?

Respawn has just pushed out the second update for mega smash hit battle royale game Apex Legends, with the new update concentrating on overall stability and various crashes on consoles.

All versions of the game including PC and consoles have had their slow-walking issues fixed, which was an issue with people reviving team mates and then seeing them move slowly afterwards now fixed. Mirage's abilities would sometimes crash the entire of Apex Legends, another issue that the developers at Respawn have now fixed inside of the update.

PlayStation 4 players have received a bunch of love, with GPU issues being fixed so it doesn't crash after pressing one of the buttons on the controller in the loading screen while the Xbox One version has been patched up for Gibraltar's Epic skins crashing matches when they were equipped. Small but super annoying bugs, now fixed for Apex Legends.

Anthem is the latest big-budget AAA game to leverage the Xbox One X's boosted GPU and CPU for higher-end visuals.

Armed with the brunt of the Xbox One X's higher-end 16nm Polaris GPU, 8-core Jaguar 2.3GHz CPU, and sizable 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, the team at BioWare brings a host of new console enhancements to their massive new IP, Anthem. The developer confirms Anthem can run at native 4K resolution with HDR on the Xbox One X--an impressive feat for any open-ended live game heavily reliant on online servers--but there's other optimizations included too. The in-game world will look better than ever with improved shadows and lighting effects, as well as boosted textures across the sci-fantasy landscape.

"The Anthem team has been able to leverage the power of the Xbox One X to deliver enhanced graphics to our players. The added GPU power of this console allows Anthem to render at native 4K and with HDR," BioWare's Scott Neumann told Xbox Wire. "To complement the increased image quality of 4K, we have also increased the resolution at which we render shadows in the game, and we have enhanced the rendering of in-game terrain."

Square Enix will shake up and combine its myriad of dev teams to help optimize and organize games development, the company today announced.

Square Enix hasn't been doing too well lately. Sales of Just Cause 4 didn't meet launch targets, and its Q3 smartphone games didn't take off, resulting in lower than expected earnings. Now the company plans to restructure its business divisions to help streamline how it makes games.

The publisher currently operates with 11 different business departments that all handle development of various games, from big-budget Final Fantasy titles at BD1 to smaller-scale mobile games. CEO Yosuke Matsuda says this number shrink dramatically down to just 4 teams during Square Enix's next fiscal year.

After a few delays and tons of tweaks, Path of Exile finally has a concrete PS4 launch date, and it's quite soon.

Path of Exile will arrive on PS4 on March 8, 2019 alongside the game's new Synthesis expansion, Grinding Gear Games today announced. The PlayStation 4 flavor will release with all previous expansions and content baked in alongside the Synthesis update, complete with console-friendly controls, chat systems, and everything else the previous games are known for (including excellent action RPG mechanics straight out of Diablo).

Like previous updates, the latest Synthesis expansion has a bunch of new additions including a fresh league for ladder-like competition, a new NPC called Cavas that opens up a unique questline, new skill gems, a ton of new items, and an interesting new Fractured item type that can be earned from synthesizing Cavas' memories. Just when I think GGG can't top their previous expansions they find new ways to re-invent the wheel.

Monster Hunter: World conquers Japan's 2018 game sales with 2.85 million copies sold on PS4.

Capcom's online-based Monster Hunter: World multiplayer game has exploded since launch, spiking company profits by sixfold and ushering in a new steady influx of cash for the publisher. The game, which has sold more than 11 million units worldwide, is a huge success in its native land and actually outpaced big hits like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Pokemon Let's Go in 2018's game sales.

Although Japan is typically ruled by mobile and handheld gaming, Monster Hunter: World is a big driver of the country's dedicated console sector. According to new figures from Famitsu, 2018's top five best-selling games in Japan include: Monster Hunter: World (2.85 million), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2.66 million), Pokemon Let's GO Eevee and Pikachu (1.36 million), Splatoon 2 (1.19 million) and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (1 million). It's worth noting eight out of the ten top games are on Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid.

Activision and Treyarch add a familiar feature to Black Ops 4: lootboxes.

Black Ops 4 is already monetized with battle passes and COD Points (even reticles cost cash), but now lootboxes are coming back too. Starting with its new Operation Grand Heist update, Black Ops 4 will have purchasable lootboxes filled with randomized cosmetic loot. A new vendor, Blackjack, will peddle these seasonal-style wares in the game's Black Market microtransaction storefront. Not surprisingly, Activision never explicitly calls its lootboxes what they are--instead they're referred to as "Cases".

"Blackjack's Reserves: New Reserve items include playable zombie Blackout characters, Vacation Hudson sporting a Hawaiian shirt and tie, Mastercrafts for the KN-57 and Outlaw, and much more. Items from Reserves in past Operations will be available in Blackjack's Reserves, including the Mozu Replicant and SG12 Boombox Mastercrafts. Additionally, Cases containing Blackjack Reserves can be earned by playing Multiplayer or Blackout, or they can be acquired in the Black Market," reads a Treyarch blog post announcement.

Japan, ruled by handhelds and mobile gaming, has no place for Microsoft's Xbox console.

According to hardware sales figures gleaned from Famitsu, the Xbox One is still doing poorly in Japan. The self-described "all-in-one" console can't gain traction on foreign soil, and is being absolutely annihilated by the Nintendo Switch and PS4 on their home turf. This is despite Microsoft's heavy investment in JRPGs and courting devs from overseas to help bolster the system's flagging first-party lineup.

The Xbox One barely managed to sell 100,000 units in Japan throughout 2018, whereas other dedicated consoles like the Nintendo Switch hybrid sold 6.8 million and the PlayStation 4 hit 7.5 million. But Nintendo's 3DS handheld absolutely dominated sales charts with 24.3 million units sold throughout the year, largely driven by strong catalog games and content.

Google's been working on a big gaming platform for years now, and the company should be ready to show it off at GDC 2019 in March.

Google's new Project Stream game streaming service may just be a part of its ambitious plans. The company is one of the many tech giants stepping into the streaming arena (Apple, Verizon, Microsoft and EA are all working on streaming), but the billion-dollar search mogul needs more than a singular service. The company will likely unveil its comprehensive, multi-faceted platform that incorporates Project Stream and other software and services, the same way Microsoft's Xbox LIVE online is the framework for its rich bedrock of subscriptions and services.

It's possible that new Google gaming hardware will be part of the plan, too. Project Stream aims to use cloud servers to beam high-quality gaming to any device via Chrome, whether its laptops, PCs, tablets or phones. But we should also see the company roll out small, cost-effective mini-consoles or set-top boxes to receive Project Stream's cloud-streamed games.

Jagex should be more than proud with their efforts they have thrown into Old School RuneScape. The game has taken off once more and has reached a new all-time high popularity wise, and now we have the statistics to prove it.

Since Jagex decided to re-roll the RuneScape servers back to the glory days of 2007, the Old School RuneScape community has been on nothing but an upswing player-base wise. The classic game powered by a democracy of community decisions recently debuted to mobile as well, which resulted in the title catapulting itself through records set back in 2008 for 'most total paid memberships at once'.

How possible do you think it would be to get The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt onto the Nintendo Switch? At first thought, I would say that would be quite an achievement for CD Projekt RED or any porting company, but not entirely impossible.

CD Projekt RED is the developer behind the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, and also the developer behind the critically acclaimed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The news of CD Projekt RED dipping their toes into the Nintendo Switch pool come from YouTuber 'Doctre81', who claims to have found a recent job listing for a GOG Galaxy software engineer.

The listing which is for a position of 'Head of Software Engineering for GOG Galaxy' asks potential applicants to imagine a place where all gamers would be able to connect regardless of their platform, more specifically it also lists Nintendo Switch as apart of that. CD Projekt RED owns GOG and seems to looking towards the Nintendo Switch as a potential platform, what game would we see if the polish game developer decided to venture there? Most likely, I would think Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is most realistic even though CD Proejekt RED has said they have 'no plans' for a Switch port.

There is absolutely no doubt that Sony take 1st place in terms of having exclusive titles on their platform, with big names such as God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn and Detroit: Become Human the publishing studio really has hit the nail on the head story game wise. But what of multiplayer?

In a recent interview with Business Insider, PlayStation CEO, Shawn Layden was asked some questions regardining the weakness of Sony. Most shockingly was how honest and straightforward Layden was, and props to him for doing so as honesty at those high levels of position is very much respected. Layden said; "I think all those things we do [story-driven games] really well. What we don't do so much in is multiplayer."

Layden was asked a follow-up question whether he was referring to online multiplayer or local multiplayer (couch co-op), his response was this; "Couch co-op - I mean, that's a whole category I think the industry needs to look back at. We have that with sports titles, and some racing titles, but not with much else. And I think that speaks to the power of the internet on the one hand, but otherwise we might wanna revisit that to get more family engagement in the gaming experience."

Two of Marvels popular T.V shows on Netflix's platform 'The Punisher' and 'Jessica Jones' have had some quite unfortunate news announced.

According to a statement issued to Deadline, there will not be a third season of 'The Punisher' despite the second season just releasing on Netflix in January, 2019. Accompanied in this canceled deal between Marvel and Netflix is that Marvel's 'Jessica Jones' will be on its last season, the show will run its third season but that will be the final one.

Despite both of these popular shows having future seasons canceled, Netflix will still keep the shows on their service for subscribers to enjoy. It is unknown how long those show will stay on the platform, but we can imagine it would be enough time for people to enjoy it. Marvel's TV boss Jeph Loeb gave a statement on the decision, he said that Netflix was the one to drop each of the characters' shows and not Marvel, he further teased that Marvel is not done with characters and could still use them for future projects whether it be in TV or movies.

Some new Nintendo rumors are kicking around the gaming websites as reporters have picked up on the story surrounding Game Informers Senior Editor, Imran Khan.

Khan was on the Kinda Funny Games podcast that ranged for almost an hour. Throughout the podcast everything that has been happening within the gaming industry was discussed and of course Nintendo's Direct was one of those topics. Since the podcast was held on February 13th before the official Direct was streamed, many of the questions posed to Khan were predictions for what we could see in the Direct.

When Khan was asked if he had any leaks or rumors regarding future Nintendo games, the Senior Editor replied with "Let me hint at something, I guess. This is a thing that I'm going to write up at some point as soon as I get some more sources on it. But there's a game that's thought to be dead that Nintendo's reviving, and it's not one that people would expect. It was very much a title that was dead and buried - very officially cancelled." Many Nintendo fans have speculated that what Khan was talking about was the recently announced Link's Awakening remaster, but I would disagree.

Metro Exodus is one of the best-looking games of the last few years, with it smashing all of our GPUs in our benchmark test, and now developer 4A Games is talking about the technology behind the game and whether we'll see it in next-gen consoles.

During an extensive interview with Digital Foundry, 4A Games talked about everything it put into the 4A Engine for Metro Exodus. The developer talked about the future of ray tracing on hardware that doesn't feature specific ray tracing cores (like the RT cores on NVIDIA's GeForce RTX graphics cards). The subject of next-gen consoles was talked about, with Rendering Programmer Ben Archard saying that fast compute cores are also another possibility.

Archard said: "It doesn't really matter - be it dedicated hardware or just enough compute power to do it in shader units, I believe it would be viable. For the current generation - yes, multiple solutions is the way to go. This is also a question of how long you support a parallel pipeline for legacy PC hardware. A GeForce GTX 1080 isn't an out of date card as far as someone who bought one last year is concerned. So, these cards take a few years to phase out and for RT to become fully mainstream to the point where you can just assume it. And obviously on current generation consoles we need to have the voxel GI solution in the engine alongside the new ray tracing solution. Ray tracing is the future of gaming, so the main focus is now on RT either way".

Star Citizen is one of the most ambitious games ever made and its creator Chris Roberts is no fan of consoles and told TweakTown exclusive that he does "not care about consoles".

So much so that the game is a PC exclusive, but what about new GPU technology that has made its way onto graphics cards in the last 6 months, and will shape the future over the coming years like real-time ray tracing, etc. One of the Star Citizen forum members asked the developer "Do you, as I, believe that RTX tech will save you devs so much work farther along and look absolutely spanking?"

Cloud Imperium Games developer Ben Parry replied: "Not in the slightest. I expect, if we use it, it'll be a massive headache and time-sink but might give us some subtle improvements in looks or performance if we get it right". He added an explanation for what he meant by 'massive headache', replying with: "The added headache is that whatever we offered would have to be an "as well" feature rather than an "instead", developing a feature for a single manufacturer's top-end cards means also maintaining feature parity for everyone else's hardware. Personally I'd like to use it to make the shadows crispier".

Razer will shutter its digital game storefront on February 28, and warns customers to retrieve their uPlay and Steam game keys.

Now that the PC Game Store Wars have begun in earnest with giants like Epic Games and Discord battling it out against Steam, Razer has decided to retreat and shutter its game store. The PC-maker's store was kind of doomed to fail. Razer's game store was more of a reseller for uPlay and Steam games, and was a weird experiment mired in its tiered zVault rewards system. The idea was you bought games from Razer and got their own digital currency as a reward to spend on other stuff, including keyboards, mice, and even laptops.

But ultimately it didn't work too well. The company says it'll shut down the Razer Game Store as part of its new realignment plans, which pretty much says the store wasn't a success. Razer warns gamers to retrieve and use their game keys before the store closes, but doesn't outright say the keys will be invalid:

Nintendo will use Labo cardboard kits as a way to make cheap VR headsets, a source tells Go Nintendo.

Nintendo has been experimenting with virtual reality for a while now. Patents filed in 2016 showed the Switch's tablet slotting into a HMD similar to mobile-based VR headsets like the Samsung Gear VR. Now sources say Nintendo will make a Google Cardboard-like accessory via its Labo kits for Switch VR capability.

This could work if the Labo kits are sturdy enough, but we're still a bit reticent about the whole idea. A Labo VR kit would be cost-effective and widely accessible on the Switch's huge 32 million install base, but it seems rather risky.

Anthem's persistently long and numerous loading screens could be a big problem for the IP in the long run.

Loading is a reality for any online-only game (or any game, really), but some titles handle it better than others. The major consensus is that Anthem's loading screens are long, cumbersome, and immersion-breaking. The game recently launched in early access on Origin/EA Access and Origin Access Premiere, and like the two previous demos, the game is plagued with arduous and frustrating loading that can last as long as multiple minutes.

Loading zones are everywhere in Anthem: its open-ended environments have lots of transition points, there's catch-up points that teleport you to your team, story and plot scenes require loading--pretty much everything you do outside of combat has some sort of wait time. This could end up pushing gamers away due to annoyances and frustrations at least in the short term. Remember engagement (and in effect, monetization) is extremely reliant on fun. If a game isn't fun, it won't properly engage its audience and earn money over time. Anthem's loading zones could be roadblocks that interrupt fun, and thus throw off the entire game's business model.

During this week's D.I.C.E Summit 2019, Insomniac Games' Creative Director, Bryan Intihar was interviewed by CEO on Insomniac Games, Ted Price. The interview revealed some thoughts the developers had about Spider-Man before it was released.

There is no doubt that Spider-Man was a massive hit on the PS4, Insomniac Games truly did out-do themselves from a developers stand-point but that doesn't mean there wasn't internal doubts before the release. Insomniac's Creative Director, Bryan Intihar expressed some of the developers doubts regarding the comical level of the games story. "When the story was still not totally there, I think there were concerns about 'was the story gonna be funny enough?' And do we have to add more humor? We knew more was coming, it just wasn't in the game yet, and I said 'no, we're gonna be totally fine'."

Intihar also mentioned that coming to the end of the shooting of Spider-Man, Sony allows the studio to reshoot some scenes to add some small qualities. "We had the story we wanted, then some things weren't there, but we actually went back and did some reshoots, and we actually found moments that were already in the game where we could literally just add a 15-second sequence to the end of a certain scene, or something at the beginning. That helped at the end of the day."