Gaming - Page 764

Crytek today announced it's working on a new online-driven AAA game built with Cryengine and SpatialOS technology.

Crytek and Improbable, the company behind SpatialOS, are teaming up to make a new game. SpatialOS is a cloud-based infrastructure specifically designed to host and allow easy iteration on online multiplayer games, and currently powers a host of indie games like Seed and the 1000-player battle royale Mavericks: Proving Grounds. The goal of this partnership is to integrate a cohesive synergy between the games engine and cloud service to provide a new avenue for game developers to make projects. SpatialOS is already friendly with engines like Unreal, Unity, and soon Cryengine.

The Crysis dev will actually test out this integration with a brand new AAA game. Details are sparse, but we do know Crytek's new game is an online service-based game with multiplayer components (obviously, as it's using SpatialOS) and should be some sort of monetized, engagement-driven experience.

Capcom is in full swing preparing for the launch of the Resident Evil 2 Remake, we now have a very intense launch trailer as the release for the title is almost upon us.

For fans of Resident Evil that are out of the loop, Capcom has decided to re-build the classic Resident Evil 2 from the ground up. Above you will find a launch trailer showcasing each of the brand new textures, lighting, animations and everything else that looks simply incredible. The original Resident Evil 2 was released onto the PlayStation 1, PC, Nintendo 64, SEGA Dreamcast in 1998. The game was a smash hit at the time and sparked the slew of future games we now see today.

By popular fan request, Capcom has now re-built the assets in Resident Evil 2 and given a brand new view on the game via the changed camera angle. In the original Resident Evil 2, the game was played via a fixed camera in certain locations throughout each of the levels, in the Resident Evil 2 Remake players will experience the game from the third-person view, more on that here. If you aren't sure whether you want to immediately pick up a copy of Resident Evil 2, you can check out the free 30 minute demo that Capcom has released. Resident Evil 2 will release on January 25th for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The Steam listing for the title can be found here.

Most Super Smash Bros. Ultimate players are very curious towards how many units the game has shipped. Well, as we move closer to the date of Nintendo's fiscal year report some news has surfaced regarding the physical sales of the game.

Some sales results have been released by NPD group, a website dedicating to tracking the success of both hardware and software sales from game developers, console manufacturers and publishers. It should be noted before we jump into what the best-selling games of 2018 were, "NPD tracks physical sales at retailers, but it also gets digital data directly from publishers. But not every company participates. For example, Nintendo doesn't share its first-party sales, and Activision Blizzard does not provide its Battle.net sales."

Despite Nintendo not releasing the digital sales data for their titles, the Big N still has managed to get 7 Nintendo exclusive titles into 2018's best-selling games of December. Sitting at the top we have Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, followed by Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, then Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption II, DICE's Battlefiled V and at fifth 2K's NBA 2K19. Moving onto the best-selling games for the entire of 2018, Mat Piscatella, an analyst for NPD has said "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the best-selling game of December 2018 and the fifth best-selling game of 2018, despite digital sales not currently being tracked by The NPD Group."

Nintendo are on the side of indie developers and will be celebrating the release of so many indie titles on the Nintendo Switch platform with a video dedicated to 2019's coming indie games.

The announcement has been sourced from the official Nintendo Europe Twitter account. From the above link we can see that Nintendo Europe will be releasing the video onto the Nintendo UK YouTube Channel on Wednesday 23rd of January, 15:00 CET. This time equates to 2pm GMT / 3pm CET and 6am PST / 9am EST.

Also attached to this Twitter post is a link to the Nintendo UK wesbite, on the website you will find a list of games from independent indie developers. The list of games is what I'm assuming Nintendo will be showcasing in the video as some titles such as Children of Morta, Streets of Rougue, Slay the Spire, Night Call and Terraria don't have official release dates. My guess is that Nintendo will be announcing the release dates for each of the games that are fall under the '2019' release date umbrella. Screenshots for the listed games have been provided below, if you want to visit the official Nintendo website yourself, click here.

To celebrate the beginning of the new year in China, Blizzard are planning to release a slew of ancient Chinese themed skins in Overwatch. Make way for the warlords that carved Chinese history into what it is today!

Those that are unsure what the skins are referencing, here is a quick history lesson for you. Throughout the years of 220-280 A.D China was in complete turmoil, many of emperors that ruled each of the states claimed rule over the entire country of China. This forced each of the states into a bloodbath of a war, sparking what is now known as one of the most prominent parts of Chinese history. The skins that Blizzard are teasing us with today are of reference to the famous commanding warlords that battled throughout the era of the 'Three Kingdoms'.

It should be noted that I have provided screenshots for each of the skins in the entirety of this post, courtesy of DualShockers for the images. First off we have Reinhardt, Reinhardt will be acquiring the 'Guan Yu' themed skin who was a commanding general under the Liu Bei or Shu state. Guan Yu is cherished throughout Chinese history and is most known for his morality and righteousness, this was due to his extreme loyalty to Liu Bei. Quite a fitting skin for Reinhardt would you say?

Demon Souls was the game that sparked the very well-known and classically difficult series 'Dark Souls' by development studio FromSoftware. Now, the President of FromSoftware has been asked about a remaster for Demon Souls and he isn't opposed to idea.

In an interview with GameInformer, FromSoftware President, Hidetaka Miyazaki was asked a series of questions regarding some of his earlier game development work. While many fans may not know, Demon Souls which was released back in 2009 for the PlayStation 3 inspired what we now know today as the 'Dark Souls' franchise. Demon Souls served as a somewhat 'spiritual successor' to the Dark Souls games, and when Miyazaki was asked whether or not he would support the idea for the game to be remastered, he said he would if the correct studio was chosen.

From the interview, Miyazaki says "If it was a studio that really loved the original work and really put their heart and soul into realizing it again, then that's something I would enjoy."But it's really complicated because I have these fond memories. Thinking about the idea of a remaster gives me kind of butterflies in my stomach and makes me a little nervous, so it's complicated. But I understand there are many users and many players and fans out there who really love Demon's, so if that's something they could accomplish with a studio that loved the work, then yeah, I'd be okay with that."

Capcom will be bringing a completely free to play new mode to Resident Evil 2 after the game officially launches. The new mode will be titled 'Ghost Survivors' and will release in a series of parts.

The news has been confirmed on the official Resident Evil 2 Twitter page, and has been detailed on a post in ResetEra. The post on ResetEra says that 'Ghost Survivors' will be a free content update that will allow the player to play the mayor's daughter Katherine and USS member Robert Kendo. With hardly any details on the mode just yet, it is said to be of good replay value and will bring the addition of a new enemy and a in-game shop.

The in-game shop will not be microtransaction-based, but instead will reward players with a certain amount of points judging on ones performance throughout the mode. These points can then be accumulated and spent within the shop for what I can only assume would be skins for characters and upgrades. Resident Evil 2 Remake will officially be launching on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC on January 25th.

With its persistent online framework with continually unfolding events and a blend of action and RPG elements, Anthem is the biggest project BioWare has ever made. A month away from launch, the developer stands by its commitment to make an ever-changing world for players to explore.

Although Anthem has been in development since 2012 (then known as Project Dylan), one thing has always remained the same: the desire to make a living, breathing world that's always changing. BioWare will use the power of EA's online tools and infrastructure to make this happen, and thus armed Anthem will get tons of content updates, patches, and real-time shifts that create new and unique experiences. The live game structure affords all of these opportunities (and even more for monetization), setting BioWare's next big IP up for a long multi-year span.

Back at E3 2014, BioWare's Casey Hudson said this about Anthem, which became the game's actual anthem: "We're trying to build a fictional world that feels real and is alive and is constantly changing." Almost five years later, Hudson echoes these words in a recent BioWare blog post while going even deeper into what their new online game has to offer.

Nefarious Sith Lord Count Dooku will soon be playable in Battlefront II.

Tomorrow DICE will be adding Dark Jedi Count Dooku to Battlefront II's roster of Sith characters as part of its big prequel-based roadmap. The lightning-blasting menace will drop as part of the new Darth Tyranus update, which also adds the arid blastlands planet of Geonosis as a playable level. Oddly enough the official blog post didn't show off any assets for Dooku's appearance.

Insofar as abilities Count Dooku should prove pretty lethal. Darth Tyranus has three main abilities that afford interesting combat dynamics and squad tactics:

Mortal Kombat 11 is likely to have optional paid skins to help fund future updates and content.

Controversies have taught WB Games a lot of hard lessons about microtransactions, but that doesn't mean its biggest games won't have them. While nothing's been confirmed just yet, everything we've seen so far strongly hints Mortal Kombat 11 will be monetized with optional cosmetic microtransactions as part of the game's big emphasis on player customization.

A recent Angry Joe interview with Ed Boon brought up some interesting points surrounding cosmetic skins, leading me to extrapolate a few things about their potential for long-term monetization. The Mortal Kombat creator says MK11 will have tons and tons of costumes for players to unlock and use--all of which are separate from the gear skins that change up weapons, masks, helmets, etc.

Bethesda's online-only Fallout may be suffering, but it's not about to go free-to-play.

When live games fail to meet certain expectations, publishers and developers have to be able to react and adapt. This usually means morphing their games by adding more monetization features and/or going free-to-play to attract more gamers. We've seen big games like Elder Scrolls Online make big shifts, as well as Destiny, and now recent rumors said that Fallout 76 could make one of these big changes.

Rumor had it that Fallout 76 is going free-to-play, but Bethesda squashed this rumor. When asked by a fan if the premium live game would switch to a F2P model, Bethesda gave a curt: "There is no truth to this rumor."

If you plan on buying snazzy new Javelin vanity items in Anthem, you'll still have to actually play the game.

Anthem's cosmetic-only microtransactions are a necessary part to the current live service strategy used by EA, Activision, Ubisoft, and Take-Two. Microtransactions typically fund new content such as story modes, items, and engagement-driven missions to keep the playerbase active and spending more cash. If done right this mechanism delivers billion-dollar turnovers. But unlike other games, anyone who wants to pay real money for cosmetics in Anthem will also have to spend the "sweat currency" earned by in-game activities.

According to IGN, Anthem has two kinds of currency: Coins, which are earnable for free and only cost time to unlock (aka sweat currency), and Shards, the game's premium currency that can be bought with real money. Most of the time games let you just spend real cash on Shards and unlock whatever you want...but Anthem has a clever trick: a lot of the customizable armor pieces require both.

We have quite the slew of Mortal Kombat 11 news leading up the launch planned for April 23rd, but what about cross-play support since MK11 is coming to the Nintendo Switch?

WCCFtech has been lucky enough to be at the Mortal Kombat 11 press event in London, their on-site reporter Callum Agnew managed to get a hold of Game Designer, Derek Kirtzic from NetherRealm Studios. In discussion with Kirtzic, Agnew asked the designer whether NetherRealm Studios was considering the addition of cross-play support for Mortal Kombat 11. While Kirtzic didn't confirm anything as of yet, he did say that NetherRealm Studios was looking into it.

This could coincide with the planned new cross-play feature roll-out that Epic Games are doing to Unreal Engine. It also makes sense considering that Mortal Kombat 11 will also be coming to the Nintendo Switch, meaning that cross-play would of definitely been on the table for discussion. Since the fiasco of cross-play becoming more apparent throughout 2018, I'd no doubt say that Mortal Kombat 11 will feature support for it, but not on initial launch. I'd say it would be sometime after the game is accurately balanced and most importantly, Epic Games is ready with those Unreal Engine updates. Mortal Kombat 11 will be launched on April 23rd for the Xbox One, PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch.

We learned back in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate themed Nintendo Direct that players who pre-ordered Smash Ultimate would receive a completely free fighter. To everyones surprise this fighter was Piranha Plant, but when is the release going to be?

Originally, the many players that pre-ordered a copy of Smash Ultimate received an email with their download code if they grabbed the physical edition of the game. The email came with a short description of when to expect Piranha Plant to join the completed roster, the email read "Thank you for purchasing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. As a bonus for purchasing the game early, we are sending you a download code for the new fighter: Piranha Plant, which will be playable from around February 2019."

It should be noticed that the email clearly states that Piranha Plant will be released sometime "around February" which isn't a very accurate release date. Nintendo have now released a reminder to everyone on the 'news' section of Smash Ultimate, the above screenshot has been provided by our friends at Destructoid. From the screenshot we can see that Nintendo say that Piranha Plant is "scheduled for a February 2019 release", confirming that Piranha Plant will be released sometime through the month of February.

The Mortal Kombat 11 producer has confirmed that the Nintendo Switch version of Mortal Kombat 11 will come with significant downgrades and will also be co-developed by a third-party studio.

In an interview with NetherRealm Studios' producer Trevor Traub, the topic of the Nintendo Switch was presented to the producer and he was asked how the Nintendo Switch version of the game was progressing. In response to this question, Traub says "I actually really like the Switch build. I like the Joy-Con controller more than I thought. We're trying to reach as many people as we possibly can. So we're going to take that opportunity."

In continuation of that question regarding the Nintendo Switch version of Mortal Kombat 11, Traub is asked that since the Nintendo Switch has considerable hardware limitations when compared to the PS4 and Xbox One, how will the Switch version of the game be 'downgraded'. More accurately, Traub was asked how these 'downgrades' would take place without taking away from the games core or frame rate. Traub answers "There are special geometry reductions that happen to make it work on the Switch. The end product is actually really fantastic. We're actually not developing it in house; it's being developed by Shiver Studios. They're developing it at the same time as us so it's sort of a co-development. There is no lead SKU."

Bloober Team is back with another mind-bending sequel, this time taking us to a haunted cruise ship out in the midnight seas of weirdness.

The latest Layers of Fear 2 trailer shows some ultra-creepy gameplay footage that sparks our imaginations. Narrated by none other than the Candyman himself Tony Todd, the trailer highlights some of the cerebral visuals and sequences that clearly are the result of a broken mind. Infused with that psychedelic style and visual flair Bloober is known for, Layers of Fear 2 seems to throw players into a macabre stageshow aboard a lost cruise ship: as Tony Todd says, "Time waits for no man, actor. Do not waste ours. So act."

The game is based around classic horror themes and cinema, and even borrows from silent era masterminds like George Melies. The team also directly references Alfred Hitchcock as an inspiration for the sequel.

Back at the start of November we had the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Nintendo Direct. Throughout the Direct we were introduced to Piranha Plant, the pre-order fighter that must be redeemed if you purchased the physical edition of the game, how do you redeem it though?

Before I get into how to exactly redeem Piranha Plant, it should be noted that if you purchased a digital copy of Smash Ultimate then Piranha Plant has already been redeemed for you, and you can skip this entire process. Assuming you have a physical copy of Smash Ultimate, you will firstly need to go to your home screen on your Switch, hover over the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and press the + button on your Switch. This will open up an options menu where you will see at the bottom "My Nintendo Rewards Programme", select this option and then further select "Earn Points (game card verison only)".

Selecting this option will activate the redeeming process of Piranha Plant, which will then send a confirmation email to your email account linked to your Nintendo Account. From here you want to navigate to whatever email address you have linked to your Nintendo Account and find the respective email from Nintendo. Once that has been done, click the "redeem now" option provided in the email, this will redirect you to the Nintendo website where you will be asked to enter your Nintendo Account password. After this is completed Piranha Plant will be redeemed and you will await your download once the fighter is released.

Square Enix trademarks HD-2D in the United States, strongly hinting more classic pixel-style games are on the way.

Octopath Traveler's success on the Nintendo Switch prompts Square Enix to make more singleplayer-driven JRPGs for the platform. But a recent trademark for effectively means these new games should have SNES-like graphics just like the turn-based Switch RPG.

According to Gematsu, Square Enix coined the term HD-2D to describe Octopath Traveler's old-school visual flair. Now Square Enix will likely use the trademark as an instantly recognizable umbrella term for its future games, possibly kicking off a galaxy of new-but-old-looking turn-based JRPGs.

Nintendo wants to sell 20 million Switch consoles in a year, but analysts say it won't happen.

The sales momentum of Nintendo's handheld-console hybrid isn't enough to break the company's internal 20 million sales mark, key analysts tell Bloomberg. The average consensus of a dozen-plus analyst firms sees Nintendo selling about 18 million Switch units in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2019, missing the target by some 2 million consoles.

As of September, Nintendo was nearly 15 million sales shy of its goal. The Switch sold 5.1 million consoles in Nintendo's first two quarters, leaving 14.9 million sales to meet the target. Nintendo sold about 8.7 million Switch systems during the holiday period, up 22% year-over-year, analysts forecast, which leaves about 6.2 million systems to be sold.

If we remember back to the build up of "leaked" information for the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster before the game launched, we would remember several sources of information mentioning Decidueye. It turns out Decidueye was officially considered.

According to Source Gaming, Super Smash Bros. Director, Masahiro Sakurai revealed throughout an interview with Nintendo Dream that Decidueye made it to the final two spots of the games potential roster. Ultimately, Decideueye lost out to the fire-wrestling Pokemon Incineroar.

If we remember back to the slew of "leaked" information before the launch of Smash Bros. Ultimate we can remember the leaker Vergeben talking about Decidueye, but ended up confirming from his inside sources that Incineroar made the final cut. This claim was not taken seriously by the community as it was way back in September when Vergeben claimed this, it obviously turned out to be true. Vergeben must of had inside sources within Nintendo that had ears within Nintendo's internal discussion teams for what Pokemon character should be chosen.