Gaming - Page 772

Konami might've killed its iconic horror demo P.T. by removing it from the PS Store, but now it's been resurrected for PC.

The death of Hideo Kojima's ultra-creepy Silent Hills game was a big shock to the gaming world, ditto was the weird treatment the game's playable demo, P.T., got from the publisher. Shortly after cancelling the game Konami yanked P.T. from PS4, so the only way to play it is to have it already installed. It even rolled out an auto-update which stealthily deletes the game from your hard drive if you play P.T. while connected to the internet.

But now gamers don't have to jump through hoops to experience the macabre awe and mystery of P.T. Game dev Radius Gordello has recreate P.T. using the Unreal Engine, and everything from textures and models to animations has been built from scratch. Unreal P.T. took about nine months to develop and is now available to download for PC. Although everything was technically built from scratch, I don't think Konami will be very happy about this so you should download it fast if you want it.

Blizzard is turning a boring Diablo event into an annual tradition, and they didn't even fix the Wirt's Leg bug.

The Darkening of Tristram is back again for another round of lukewarm celebrations. The event, which I originally thought would be Diablo I recreated in Diablo III, instead only adds the original town of Tristam, a pixelated filter over the game, and locks players to a walk-only cycle. It's basically Diablo III re-skinned. Everything else--loot, monsters, etc--is straight from Diablo III. The content is rather drab and isn't a good effort on Blizzard's part as it is, but it actually gets a bit worse: the Wirt's Leg bug is still in.

In Diablo II, Wirt's Leg was used to open a portal to the Secret Cow Level and served as a great stomping grounds for XP and gear for low-level characters. The leg does the same function in Darkening of Tristram by opening said portal to a low-res Cow Level in Diablo III...when it works. Right now there's a bug that doesn't let players transmute the leg into the Map of the Stars, an item required to open the portal.

Slightly Mad, the devs behind Project Cars, are making a next-gen console...and we're still incredibly skeptical about the whole thing.

The gaming world is hyping up a new console called the Mad Box, but there's some big problems: the system is more than 3 years away, the team touts astronomical performance, and it's being made by a games developer who may not know what it's doing. The ambitious plan sees the Mad Box competing against Sony's, Nintendo's, and Microsoft's collective console clout, a battle which we think Slightly Mad could badly lose. Now Ian Bell, studio founder and CEO, has been steadily releasing small drip-feeds of info including some concept renders.

Predictably enough the renders resemble a PC and not a games console. There appears to be liquid cooling, suggesting serious specs and probably an even more serious price tag. We originally said the Mad Box would essentially be a Steam-box system that plays PC games due to necessity, especially since established devs and publishers would likely stick to PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch until the Mad Box proves itself (if it even can). A failed games ecosystem will tank the Mad Box, of course, as any console is only as good as the games it plays. Higher-end specs alone aren't good enough, and Bell says it'll be equivalent to PC perf in 2021 (another claim we're quite dubious of).

What appears to be a tease from the official Bayonetta Steam page has pointed fingers towards a possible future Catherine release.

The post is from the SEGA Dev team and simply features a photo of a sheep with the caption "baa". As simple as this image might be, many Catherine players would know that sheep are integral part of the adventure within Catherine. Not only is the a direct reference to Catherine itself, but it also could be in reference to the metaphor of counting down sheep to go to sleep, meaning there isn't a lot of time before the release of either the game or some information.

As always this is just pure speculation at this point, what is 100% true though is that there is a listing for "Catherine Classic" on the Australian Classification website. This listing and the image posted by the Bayonetta Steam page could suggest we are going to hear about a PC Catherine game sometime soon.

Pokemon GO has seen quite the slew of content rolled out onto the mobile hit game, and this content has resulted in developer Niantic to pull in a massive $795 million in worldwide revenue.

The mobile tracking website Sensor Tower has estimated that Pokemon GO has generated a staggering $795 million in worldwide revenue throughout 2018. Looking towards where large portions of the money is coming from, Americans spent the most with $262 million. Followed by the Japan spending which approximates to $239 million.

Not only was this $795 million a 35% increase in total revenue when compared to the previous year, but the daily spending average was also above average. Throughout 2018, Pokemon GO generated around $2.2 million per day up from $1.6 million in 2017. Most impressively, just throughout the month of December the app managed to bring in $75 million, up from $57.2 million during 2017. Now that we have passed into 2019 and the 2018 business books have closed, Pokemon GO, since its release in July 2016 has totaled $2.2 billion in revenue.

The moderately popular online indie game, Town of Salem has been subjected to a hacking over the Christmas and holiday break. The developer has now announced that 7.8 million user account details have been exposed.

According to the announcement which is featured on the BlankMediaGames' official forums details what information has been compromised and what players should do to keep their accounts safe. The post details that BlankMediaGames "don't store any credit card or payment info. At all" and that "all passwords were hashed and not plain text".

BlankMediaGames further clarifies that they "do not handle money. At all. The third party payment processors are the ones that handle all of that. We never see your credit card, payment information, anything like that. We don't have access to that information." Aspects of the hack that are compromised are the following; "username/hashed password, IP and email." Players that are worried about their password are advised to immediately change it, as whoever has hacked the Town of Salem servers could use programs to guess the hacked passwords.

Dataminers have dived into the files of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, surfacing what appears to be some name tags for the future DLC characters.

Above we can see that Jam1Garner has managed to datamine his Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to discover three labels for what appears to be characters. The labels that were found are the following; "fighter_kind_jack", "fighter_kind_packu (piranha plant)" and "fighter_kind_brave." While there is no official confirmation of this, we can assume that "jack" is in reference to Persona 5's recently revealed Joker and that "packu" is piranha plant.

What we don't know is who "Brave" is. While looking on the ResetEra forums, it would brought to my attention that Brave may be in reference to Dragon Quest. In Japan, the Dragon Quest hero class is called "Yuusha" which directly translates into "Brave" or person of bravery. As always with these types of speculative posts, please take the information with a grain of salt until we hear official confirmation from the Big N. Speaking of officiall confirmation, we should see a reveal of a DLC character at the next Nintendo Direct, recent rumors have suggested it will be held sometime in January.

We all know Mario Kart 64 is used for a million and one uses that aren't just player-vs-player battles but for drinking games, settling disputes, and in this Reddit posters family: a battle around the track of Mario Kart 64 decides who makes the tea for the day.

An interesting post turned up on /r/gaming by 'bork1138' who posted an image of his parents, explaining: "Every day my parents play Mario Kart 64 to see who will make a cuppa tea. They've done this religiously since 2001". The post has 123K+ upvotes, which for non-Redditors that's pretty damn big. As for the post, it's awesome to see parents play Mario Kart 64 daily for the last 17 years in order to decide who makes the tea for the day.

The poster says that his mom always races with either Wario for battle and Yoshi for Grand Prix, while his dad rolls out with Toad, always. His parents battle for who makes the tea for the day playing a round of Grand Prix, followed by a "best of 3" on Battle. Bork1138 talked about his mom and her love for Toad, where he explained: "Just a collision can lose a balloon". Yep, I know that pain, I think we all do.

We're a few days into 2019 and already being hit with what looks to be hype building for the new Call of Duty game, which is being tackled by developer Infinity Ward.

Infinity Ward's senior communications manager Ashton Williams has been cryptic on Twitter posting images that feature skulls, ghosts and other images that tease one thing: the next Call of Duty could be Call of Duty: Ghosts 2. But then according to Jason Schreier of Kotaku, Infinity Ward is not working on COD: Ghosts 2, so who knows what we should believe.

Treyarch was the developer behind Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, with the torch being passed to Infinity Ward who is known for the great work they did on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, before the studio was ripped apart and changed (with the IW founders leaving to create Respawn Entertainment that later released Titanfall and its sequel over at EA).

Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro owners will soon enjoy some improvements to PUBG with developer Bluehole to soon push out a new update that will usher in a Dynamic Resolution option.

PUBG is currently rendering at 1440p on both of the super-charged consoles (when compared against the slower Xbox One and PS4) and after the upcoming Dynamic Resolution update, we'll see the game render in 4K real-time with a variable frame rate.

Bluehole released a screenshot that shows Dynamic Resolution on and off for PUBG, with the data displayed in GPU Time and not FPS, so lower is better here.

Key former Blizzard developers are making a new game for Marvel, and it might be a mobile-based game.

Indie dev studio Second Dinner, which includes ex-Hearthstone game director Ben Brode and executive producer Hamilton Chu, is working on a brand new Marvel game. The team has been developing and prototyping the game for about six months, in which time they've secured a partnership with Marvel and even pulled a $30 million investment from NetEase. Since NetEase is involved I'd typically think the project is a mobile game, but remember the company also invested $100 million into Bungie's mysterious new vision (which could be a game called Matter), so it could be a decent-sized console-and-PC release.

The game will run on Unity and utilize Amazon's Web Services framework, and could be a AA release to help buffer Marvel's slate of games which include Square Enix's upcoming Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy games. Given Second Dinner's skillset and previous work, the project could end up being a mobile-based card game of sorts that utilizes franchises like X-Men and The Avengers.

South Korean gaming giant Nexon will soon be purchased by one of gaming's biggest earners.

Nexon founder Kim Jung-ju plans to sell off his enormous 98.6% stake in the company, Reuters reports, effectively leading a major competitor to come in and take over the reins. The stake, which is worth a substantial $8.9 billion, sees only the industry's biggest players vying for the buyout. Bidders include Chinese juggernaut Tencent and even Electronic Arts.

Nexon represents a lucrative asset for any games-maker, especially Electronic Arts, whose mobile presence isn't as gigantic as Tencent's. Nexon is mostly known for making free-to-play mobile games like Dungeon Fighter and Maple Story that make millions every quarter. The company has made over $1.2 billion in its current fiscal year and sits as the top 11 earning publisher in 2018, according to analyst firm Newzoo.

ZeniMax Online could release another huge expansion for their Elder Scrolls MMORPG this year.

2019 marks the fifth anniversary of The Elder Scrolls Online, and the devs behind the landmark MMO tease some big announcements to celebrate. In a recent blog post reflecting on the game's progress throughout 2018, ESO Creative Director Rich Lambert said this year will be quite massive for the game. We're betting another expansion will drop in 2019 that takes players even farther across Tamriel and it could actually be the biggest yet. The timing is right, too: ZeniMax rolled out Morrowind in 2017 and Summerset in 2018, so what better way to celebrate your MMO's birthday than with another grand chapter?

"2019 is almost upon us, and it's going to be a huge year for The Elder Scrolls Online. I can't say too much just yet, and it is incredibly difficult to have to hold back details, but ESO will be 5 years old next year - a huge milestone for us and the community!" Lambert said in the post.

Bethesda could be making a new game called Deathloop at some point in the future, but exact details remain nebulous.

ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Elder Scrolls and Fallout developer Bethesda, recently filed a trademark for something called Deathloop. The trademark is predictably classified as a video game that casts a wide designation across multiple platforms, including mobiles, consoles, and PCs via downloadable stores. As of December 26 the trademark has been accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and is now live.

Obviously the filing doesn't reveal any actual information about the game. But it doesn't actually mean it'll be a new game. If I had to make a guess, I'd say Deathloop is related to 2017's Prey reboot in some fashion. Prey is what I think of when pondering which game could actually make the frustration of a death loop actually work, given its mind-breaking weirdness and surreal horror elements.

Now that we have entered 2019, we can start to expect to hear about what Nintendo have in-store for us Direct wise and when that showcase will be. The rumors have begun flying, with the Direct already being spoken about for January.

According to Gaming INTEL, they have reportedly received exclusive information from a Nintendo insider who has confirmed to them that Nintendo will be conducting the Direct sometime in Janaury. The specific date was January 10th but has yet to be confirmed by the source.

Gaming INTEL does say that the insider has "proven correct on many other Nintendo Direct dates in the past". It should be noted that the rumor coincides with last years January Nintendo Direct Mini which shows that it wouldn't really be out of the blue for the rumor to be true. As always though, please do take this strictly as a rumor as there has been no official word from Nintendo themselves as of yet. When an official date is announced I will be sure to follow up with another story.

To celebrate the new year Blizzard Entertainment decided they would remove a large portion of Overwatch accounts from the South Korean playerbase for toxicity. Say goodbye to a staggering 18,000 toxic players.

For those that are unaware, each season the South Korean Overwatch team cleans out their player-base of those who have displayed toxic behavior. The numbers and names of the punished accounts are published online. This seasons data has come from the South Korean Overwatch forums and is detailed over three fully sized posts and also revealed that Blizzard Entertainment has wiped away exactly 18,188 Overwatch accounts. The reasons they were banned come under the various punishable offenses.

Back in July 2018, Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan said that the general initiative and methods Blizzard have of cracking down on player behavior has had quite a positive influence. According to Kaplan, abusive chat on American competitive servers was down 26.4 percent, and in South Korea it was down 16.4 percent. It was also mentioned that daily player abuse in America and South Korea falled down 28.8 percent and 21.6 percent. Blizzard just doesn't put up with the toxicity and props to them for doing so as well, no one likes a feeder or someone AFK in the competitive game.

A revision of the Japanese copy right laws have increased punishment for those that modify game save data and other aspects of their console. The punishments could now force those that are found guilty to spend up to 5 years in prison.

Japan has revised their "Unfair Competition Prevention Act" which serves as copyright protection for developers and manufactures of video game software and products. According to the revision which has been announced on the ACCS (The Association of Copyright for Computer Software) website, an exanpsion has been made to prevent the unauthorized copying or viewing of content that falls under the following categories; music, movies, game software, business software etc.

What has now been made illegal in Japan through the revision of the law are; the transfer of tools and programs to remodel saved data of game software etc. The generation of unauthorized product keys and proceeding to sell them online. Remodeling save data or game machines. If a user is found guilty of any of the above the person can be subjected to "Civil action (injunction request, claims for damages)" and "Criminal punishment (up to five years imprisonment or fine of not more than 5 million yen, or both)". 5 million yen is equivalent of around $46,360 USD.

There is quite a lot of new players jumping on the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate train, and surprisingly enough Elon Musk is one of them and he has already announced his main fighter.

Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO and co-founder, Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to reveal that he has picked up his very own copy of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and already has a main character. Despite running two separate multi-million dollar businesses, Musk somehow still manages to find some time to get some well deserved practice in Smash Ultimate, and more specifically as Zero Suit Samus.

Musk revealed this information from a basic question from a fan on Twitter, user "xi0n" asked Musk "elon who are you maining in smash ultimate" and Musk simply replied "Zero Suit". If you are interested in other news articles surrounding Elon Musk, check out this story about 6 new farting sounds being implemented into Tesla vehicles.

Now that we have entered the new year and 2018 is officially over, Amazon has released a tier list for the best-selling products across their website. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has spiked its way to the top of the gaming category.

Since Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's release back on December 7th, we have seen extreme popularity for the newest edition to crossover series. With over 3 million copies sold just within 11 days of its debut, Smash Ultimate has sored to Amazon's top ten list of best-selling video games of 2018. Nintendo's flagship title has beaten Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 for PS4, Super Mario Party and even Marvel's Spider-Man exclusively for the PS4.

Not only did Smash Ultimate take 1st place in the video game category, but also has managed to climb its way to the top of Amazon's best-selling video game products of 2018. Beating the likes of a standard $10 and $20 PlayStation Store Gift Card, Nintendo Switch screen protector and the classic neon red and blue Nintendo Switch system. I have provided a screenshot of Amazon's top 10 above but if you would like to visit the website itself check it out here.

Now that we're a few days into 2019 the hype train for next-gen consoles begins, with analysts talking with GamesIndustry.biz about what the potentials and predictions of the gaming market for 2019 will be. Some interesting things were said about Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo that tease new hardware releases this year, and into 2020 and beyond.

Dr. Serkan Toto of Kantan Games predicts that in 2019 we'll see Nintendo release a '2019 Switch Pro' as well as a 'Switch Lite' or a reduced price on Switch. As for the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett consoles, Dr. Toto said: "I predict no next-gen PlayStation or Xbox launches for 2019. However, Sony and Microsoft should officially reveal first details, including an increased focus on cloud and subscription models for their next consoles".

This is what I expect to see, with Sony's away-from-E3 2019 event being a huge PS5 tease as well as the last wave of PS4 games, before the PlayStation 5 is released in 2020. Sony will have their first Navi samples back from AMD by then and can start ramping numbers up to get them ready for 2020, as Sony is just now celebrating the fact that PlayStation 4 sales have hit 90 million units. The road to PS5 is nearly here, the same with Microsoft's next-gen Xbox.