Gaming - Page 77

Saudi Arabia's PIF will have a 93.7% stake in Electronic Arts following the proposed $55 billion buyout, the Wall Street Journal reports.

If the $55 billion leveraged buyout goes through, Saudi Arabia will effectively become the new owner of EA, one of the largest video games companies in the world that is responsible for several billion-dollar franchises, including FIFA/FC, Madden, Apex Legends, and Star Wars.

Three groups have joined forces to buy EA stock and take the company private. The consortium consists of Silver Lake, Affinity Partners, and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the latter of which has been investing billions to buy up companies like Scopely. New filings from Brazilian antitrust regulator CADE reveals an ownership breakdown of EA if the deal is approved, with the Saudis taking nearly 94% of ownership of EA and funding most of the deal.

Skyblivion is not only one of the most ambitious mods currently in development, but it's a project that has been in development by a passionate team of Elder Scrolls fans for over a decade. The premise is simple: it's a built-from-the-ground-up remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in the Skyrim engine, including revamped dungeons, combat, leveling, and a complete overhaul of the game's Cyrodiil location.

Unlike Bethesda's own The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered from earlier this year, which presented the same 2006 game with only minor changes to gameplay alongside a complete Unreal Engine 5-powered visual overhaul, Skyblivion is essentially a remake of the classic RPG for a modern audience. However, this week the team behind the ambitious project has confirmed that it won't be able to hit its planned 2025 release - and has been delayed to 2026.

"Unfortunately, as we're getting closer to the end of this year, it pains me to have to announce that our initial goal of releasing Skyblivion this year is no longer possible," project lead Rebelzize says in the delay announcement video. "Despite the game being in the best state it's ever been, we still have some last challenges to overcome that are going to require a little bit more time."

Yacht Club Games needs Mina the Hollower to sell 200,000 copies, and if that doesn't happen, the studio could face some tough choices like being acquired by another bigger company.

It's been three years since Yacht Club Games released their latest project, Shovel Knight Dig. It's also been that same amount of time since they announced Mina the Hollower, the next big release from the studio. Mina was supposed to launch in October, but Yacht Club delayed the project indefinitely in order to boost the game's chances at making better sales.

If Mina misses the mark, Yacht Club is in trouble. Studio founder Sean Velasco tells Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that the new platformer is a "make or break" moment for the team. That's on top of the $1.2 million in funding raised by Kickstarter.

Arrowhead and Nixxes have massively reduced Helldivers 2's file size on PC from 154GB to just 23GB.

Helldivers 2 players on PC have some great news from the devs: Your install size is about to get a lot smaller. Arrowhead has released a new test build that shrinks the game's total file size by an astronomical -85%, dropping down to the low 20GBs in size. The studio says that this storage reduction was made possible by nixing all duplicated data within Helldivers 2's files.

Interestingly enough, this adjustment was expected to cause even longer loading times for users launching Helldivers 2 from hard disk drives--which Arrowhead notes is a small proportion of players. Apparently, the shrink only added a "few seconds in the worst cases" to mission load screens.

Original Halo co-creator and Bungie alumni Marcus Lehto takes fans back to the past to the early days of Halo CE, briefly touching on the design process for one of the most recognized protagonists in gaming history.

How do you create a media icon? By going through tons of iterations. That's the core message behind Marcus Lehto's advice to Kent State University students. Lehto went to Kent State before moving on to Bungie and creating Halo and the Master Chief, the latter of which he designed. That process was grueling, though, and didn't come easy.

"The creation of the Master Chief is something that I went through so many ringers to try to find the right look, the right feel, the right stature for such a character," Lehto told Kent State University in a recent alumni interview. "I built the Master Chief nine times before I finally got to the version that I liked for Halo Combat Evolved, the first installation of Halo."

Metal Gear Solid 4 is currently stuck on the PS3, and a big reason why it has never departed the platform may lie in the game's complex code.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has been a big success for Konami, selling 1 million copies on launch day. But what about other remakes? Fans have wanted a MGS4: Guns of the Patriots remake for over a decade now. The next best thing would be to port MGS4 over to other platforms and finally let Xbox and PC players try out the game.

Will Konami do it? The question might come down to how difficult it'll be to pull off, and from the sound of it, Konami had to implement some pretty unorthodox code in order to leverage the PS3's built-in Cell processor. This chip was a big reason why the PS3 failed to gain strong momentum, as devs had a hard time getting their games to play nicely with the PS3's complicated architecture.

Ubisoft is moving forward with its new Splinter Cell remake and has re-hired key talent to make sure the game is as authentic as possible.

The Splinter Cell remake was originally announced in 2021, however Ubisoft appeared to have stalled the project in recent years. Reports indicate the game has had a troubled and rocky development cycle--which makes sense, given Ubisoft's current financial situation, much of which is a result of the company's risky over-spending on investments during COVID-19. Ubisoft has since accelerated the project and has secured a game director for the Splinter Cell remake--in fact, it's the same game director that was attached to the project before.

"Today, I am very, very happy to announce that I'm rejoining Ubisoft Toronto as Game Director on the Splinter Cell Remake! It's a very special team and project to me," Grivel said on LinkedIn last week.

Two hard drives containing early beta builds of Fallout New Vegas have been discovered and compiled so that anyone with a modded Xbox 360 or a dev kit can play pre-release versions of Obsidian's beloved classic RPG.

YouTuber Games' Past has unearthed some surprising new prototype builds of New Vegas. The channel was able to recover two working prototypes for New Vegas--one from July, which is roughly a month before the game was gold mastered and feature complete, and the other from August 2010, after the game was finished. The prototypes are roughly 6GB in size, two gigabytes larger than the retail game. The August version comes with the added bonus of having console commands enabled in the Xbox 360 version.

The main differences between the pre-release and public versions are the lighting effects and model designs--the final game has complete lighting added to various areas. Discovery of New Vegas' PDB files could also lead to mods on the Xbox 360 version.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released for the Nintendo 64 back in 1998, but it's still one of those games that regularly pops up on various 'best of all time' lists. The reason for this is simple: it successfully translated the classic 2D Zelda action from the 16-bit era into a massive 3D game that laid the foundation for third-person action-adventure games that you can still see today.

This new The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "remake" is more of a reimagining of a specific section and area of the game, Gerudo's Fortress. Created by YouTube creator and artist RwanLink, it presents Ocarina of Time with a new look and feel that is more cartoon-like, blending The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker's cel-shaded look from the GameCube with a bit of Breath of the Wild and the N64 original.

Built with Unreal Engine 5 in three months, with a whole month of that time spent on animation, it's an impressive and cinematic look at a potential The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake that we'd love to play. If you're a Zelda fan, the 4K gameplay and cinematic video of the project in action is well worth a look.

AYANEO has officially lifted the lid on its next flagship PC gaming handheld, the AYANEO NEXT II. And yes, this is a Strix Halo machine with the powerful and impressive Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with 16 cores, 32 threads, and integrated Radeon 8060S graphics with 40 Compute Units and a 2.9 GHz clock speed.

The AYANEO NEXT II is also set to feature a massive (and custom) 9-inch OLED display with a QHD-style 2400x1504 resolution and the ability to switch between multiple refresh rates: 60, 90, 120, 144, and 165 Hz. The HDR-capable display also features a peak brightness of 1100 nits. And with a TDP of sustained 85W, this flagship handheld also features a 115Wh ultra-large battery.

Cooling-wise, the AYANEO NEXT II has two large dual fans on the rear, drawing in air with "high-efficiency" fins to help cool components, and hot air is exhausted through the top of the handheld. Spec-wise, it's a beast of a unit, and the sleek, minimalist design has several gamer-friendly touches worth highlighting.

A curious trademark for something called Control Resonant has popped up on the European trademark office database, and it could be Remedy's new Control sequel, or it could be a new TV show that propels the franchise into an expanded universe scenario.

Remedy Entertainment has big plans for its Control franchise. The first game was one of the most bizarre and artistic titles of 2019, selling 5 million units and re-establishing Remedy's reputation for action games. The group has since acquired full publishing and IP rights to Control and wants to expand the series with TV shows and films, so they signed a multi-year deal with Annapurna Interactive in 2024 to make that happen.

Control 2 has been in full production since August 2025, perhaps before, with former Remedy CEO Tero Virtala noting: "Control 2 development is on track towards meeting its next milestones. The focus is now on the gameplay, environments, and missions."

Light No Fire, the new multiplayer fantasy sim from No Man's Sky developer Hello Games, may be a long ways away from release.

Light No Fire took the world by storm with its reveal at The Game Awards 2024. The new sim sees Hello Games trading sci-fi tech for sword-and-board fantasy; instead of flying around in spaceships, players will ride dragons Targaryen-style in Light No Fire. And it's also quite sizable, with Hello Games saying that the game's world is set on a "planet the size of Earth."

Fans are excited about Light No Fire, but it could be a while before the game is out. In a recent studio update, Hello Games CEO Sean Murray says that there's a small group working on Light No Fire in the background while the core focus remains on No Man's Sky.

Claws of Awaji may be the only expansion coming to Ubisoft's latest samurai-based Assassin's Creed game.

Assassin's Creed Shadows won't be getting a second expansion any time soon. Ubisoft instead plans to focus more on smaller-scale content updates and tweaks, which coincides with two major changes at Ubisoft: First, the Assassin's Creed franchise itself is being handed over to an entirely new creative leadership team, and second, the publisher is still exploring the Assassin's Creed Infinity game launcher model to help wrap the series into a convenient one-stop shop for future titles.

The news was officially confirmed in a recent interview with YouTuber Jor Raptor, where Assassin's Creed Shadows post-launch content director Lemay-Comtois said there are currently no plans for an Awaji-sized expansion for Shadows.

Linus from Linus Tech Tips guesses that Valve's new Steam Machine could cost the same as a PlayStation 5 Pro when the mid-gen system originally launched.

Linus from Linus Tech Tips built a PC that mimics the Steam Machine's performance profile to give an idea of how much Valve's new mini PC could (comparatively) cost. Linus speculates that Valve's choice to go with a semi-custom chip for the Steam Machine and not a fully customized one like with the Steam Deck could indicate that Valve may not be targeting 10 million unit sales with the device--but that's based on reports involving AMD and Xbox's purportedly-canceled native handheld.

"Valve cares a lot about the perceived value of the experience using the Steam Machine, not just the raw specs," Linus said.

Ryan Montgomery, a renowned ethical hacker, penetration tester, and cybersecurity expert, revealed during an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show that an online group called 764 is targeting children online to force them into producing explicit content or even self-harming.

Montgomery explains the group known as 764 is a satanist cult group that focuses on extreme violence toward children. Law enforcement describes 764 as a "terror network" due to its immense size, harm it has caused children, and the lengths the group will go to impact children, such as sexual violence, self-harm, coercion, and threats of violence.

The hacker explains that 764 is a nihilist group, and the motive is recognition, with Montgomery saying whether it is positive or negative recognition. The hacker goes on to say 764 members extort children out of sexual material, which involves images and videos of self-harming, engraving names into the child's own body, animal abuse, bestiality, suicides, and more, many of which take place in front of live audiences online.

Capcom could have already dusted off one of the most legendary zombie IPs it has under its belt for another title. Reports indicate it's Dead Rising, and this time the game is set in Hollywood.

To be completely fair, Dead Rising hasn't been sitting on a shelf gathering dust, as Capcom did release the Dead Rising Remaster last year. But in terms of new releases, the franchise has certainly gathered some dust, as the last mainline game was Dead Rising 4 in 2016. However, MP1st.com has learned that a new Dead Rising project is currently in the works at Capcom, and it won't be a remaster or a remake. It will be a brand new Dead Rising game.

According to MP1st's sources, the new game has been in development since 2013 and is codenamed "Rec". Additionally, Frank West will be returning as the protagonist, and it currently appears the game will be a sequel to the first Dead Rising game. MP1st does state the latter point hasn't been confirmed by its sources, but it does appear to be the case.

Team Cherry, the developers of the esteemed Hollow Knight franchise, may abandon the third game to create something completely new, according to recent reports.

Team Cherry, a development studio that consists of three individuals from Adelaide, Australia, released Hollow Knight Silksong nearly three months ago, and the title was a massive success, topping the Steam charts and selling millions of copies. Now, Team Cherry co-founder Ari Gibson has sat down with Bloomberg's Jason Schreier to talk about what is on the horizon for Team Cherry. Gibson said the studio has "other games that we plan to make" after completing the DLC content for Hollow Knight Silksong.

Gibson said the big concern is how long it takes to make a game, with Silksong taking seven years to develop, and now the DLC content on top of the full release. "The only time concern really is - and we've talked about this before - death. It's not that far off if you spend seven years per project, and potentially add another two. So it'd be nice to do a few more games," said the Team Cherry co-founder

Activision has posted 3 job listings that point to Call of Duty's return to Nintendo platforms, one step in fulfilling an ambitious 10-year contract to bring future COD shooters to the Switch.

Activision's Call of Duty teams are seeking new developers that have experience making games on the Nintendo Switch. The publisher has published 3 job listings that mention Nintendo and/or the Switch platform, strongly indicating that the company is moving forward with its legally-binding agreement to bring the franchise to Nintendo hardware. In 2023, Microsoft signed a 10-year contract to bring future Call of Duty games to the Switch with full feature and content parity. This deal was struck in order to assuage worldwide regulators that Call of Duty would not be made exclusive and was a key development to get the world's largest tech acquisition--Xbox's $68.7 billion buyout of Activision--passed and approved.

Infinity Ward is hiring a principal engineer, which lists "console development experience (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo)" as a plus. Infinity Ward is also hiring a lead build engineer that lists "(PlayStation/Xbox/Nintendo/Windows)" as the multiple gaming platforms that go through testing and support in the role. Sledgehammer Games is currently hiring a senior technical animator that lists "AAA Mobile or Switch experience" as a bonus.

Xbox cloud game streaming expands to India, a core market that can be served by free ad-supported streaming options, and Xbox CEO Phil Spencer says usage is already up significantly over last year.

Xbox Game Pass is seeing increased engagement across cloud. Microsoft recently rolled out its game streaming program to India--a market that's uncoincidentally dominated by mobile gaming. Reports indicate that Microsoft is currently testing a free, ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming that could roll out globally, and India seems like a perfect market for the initiative.

Ahead of the expansion, Xbox's Phil Spencer gave some quick metric updates on Xbox Game Pass that confirm increased usage and engagement, both of which are typically precursors for what Microsoft will do next. Spencer says that cloud is ultimately a reflection of Microsoft's push towards choice-driven consumer gaming (a trend that's often synonymous with what Xbox is doing at the time, e.g. breaking exclusivity at the cost of its own personal brand image).

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is selling so poorly that Paradox has been forced to make a write-down and reduce the game's value on its accounts.

The latest game in the Vampire: The Masquerade franchise has significantly failed to meet sales expectations, and has triggered a value adjustment from Paradox. The publisher warned investors that it will take a 355 million SEK write-down on the project's capitalized development costs, which amounts to a roughly $37.4 million decrease in overall sales value.

"We've had high expectations for a long time, since we saw that it was a good game with a strong IP. A month after release, we can sadly see that sales do not match our projections, which necessitates the write-down," CEO of Paradox Interactive Fredrik Wester said.