Gaming - Page 793

Nintendo has announced that they will be removing the "racist" headdress on Mr. Game & Watch from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

A few days ago, the Super Smash Bros. community was quite divided on the recently discovered feathered headdress that appears on Mr. Game & Watch when he does his 'torch' attack. The division was based upon the headdress being seen as racist or not, the uproar from the community caused such a stir that Nintendo have now addressed the issue and decided to remove the feather.

For those that don't know what I'm referencing, Mr. Game & Watch has an attack in Ultimate where he pulls out a torch and is seen for the duration of the attack wearing a feathered headdress. The inclusion of the headdress aspect is a reference to 1982's 'Fire Attack', where Mr. Game & Watch is wearing a cowboy hat and is defending a wooden fort from Native Americans wielding torches. Here is what a Nintendo spokesperson said regarding the issue "Nintendo has been planning to distribute an update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that removes the feather from the silhouette of Mr. Game & Watch."

Grand Theft Auto V has now sold-in more than 100 million copies worldwide since releasing in 2013, making it the second best-selling game of all time.

Thanks to the massively popular GTA Online and continual engagement strategies, GTA V continues outpacing Take-Two Interactive's forecasts. The game once again beat guidance in the company's Fiscal Year Q2'19 timeline by breaking the 100 million sell-in barrier (shipments, not direct sales to consumers) and pulling in strong microtransaction revenues.

"Sales of Grand Theft Auto V also outperformed our expectations. The game has now sold-in more than 100 million units," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said during the FY Q2'19 earnings call.

Mass Effect isn't dead...it's just asleep. It'll wake up again. And when it does, BioWare should have something special to share with fans.

It's no secret Mass Effect: Andromeda was a bomb. While not a bad game per se, it had lots of broken elements and frustrating features that genuinely alienated some gamers. Despite this hurdle the series isn't over just yet. In celebration of N7 Day, key BioWare execs like Casey Hudson and Mike Gamble tease new horizons for the sci-fi IP.

"What does N7 Day mean? It means coming into the studio every day, dreaming of what the next Mass Effect game will be," BioWare general manager Casey Hudson said in an N7 Day video.

The PlayStation 4 has now shipped more than 85 million units worldwide, Sony announced in its Fiscal Year Q2'18 earnings.

Sony's PS4 has reached a cumulative global sell-in of 86.1 million units, the company revealed in its recent fiscal earnings (remember this is shipments to retailers, aka sold-in, not direct sales to consumers). The games-maker shipped 3.9 million PS4s in the quarter ended September 30, 2018, down slightly 7.14% year-over-year and up almost 22% quarter-over-quarter.

Earnings from raw PS4 hardware sales were eclipsed by digital game sales and DLC/add-on content, as is usually the case. The company made about 126 billion yen from hardware in FY Q2'18, which comprises less than 25% of the total Games & Network Services segment earnings. Game software made roughly 57% of total segment earnings with 317 billion yen, and digital game sales/DLC pulled in over 81% of software sales with 259 billion yen (roughly 47% of total G&NS revenues).

Death Stranding will be one of the strangest, but I'm sure one of the most awesome games ever released, and details on it are scarce even today.

The latest on Hideo Kojima's brain child comes from voice actor Troy Baker who recently spoke about Death Stranding at the Argentina Game Show 2018. Baker worked with The Walking Dead and Death Stranding star Norman Reedus for two weeks, adding that Kojima has put everything into Death Stranding.

Baker said that Kojima had Death Stranding in his head for two years and didn't even write a damn note down in that time. Baker said: "I was fascinated to know this, and I hope it's okay that I say this, he had the entire game in his head for like two years. Some ridiculous amount of time, I may be wrong about the exact amount of time".

Take-Two has announced that it has shipped 17 million copies of Red Dead Redemption 2 so far, adding that it has shipped more copies of RDR2 in the first 8 days of its release than the original RDR in all of its 8 years on sale.

It wasn't too long ago we reported that Red Dead Redemption 2 had made $725 million in just 3 days, making it the second-fastest entertainment product of ALL TIME, only behind Rockstar's other behemoth: Grand Theft Auto V.

Red Dead Redemption 2's success has driven Take-Two to increase its financial estimates for its financial year, with the company now expecting $2.55 billion to $2.65 billion in revenue, up from the previous estimates of $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion.

If it couldn't get worse for the Fallout 76 beta, developer Bethesda has limited the PC version of the game to just 63FPS and the field of view to 90 degrees.

Why? Well, Bethesda is still using its Creation Engine that is quite old now and can't handle everything the developer is pushing with Fallout 76. Firstly, the Creation Engine doesn't handle PC gamers pushing over 60FPS. Things start to break down at that point with animals and the environment acting up, making the game near unplayable.

Considering Fallout 76 is a multiplayer-only game, having a billion things go on at once in the game is going to happen, which makes sense as to why Bethesda limited it to 63FPS. The physics engine in the Creation Engine is a big issue and can't just be patched or fixed, it requires an overhaul at an engine level or an entirely new engine to be created.

Path of Exile is indeed coming to PS4, and will arrive by year's end with the latest Fall of Oriath expansion in tow.

The Taiwanese Entertainment Software Association didn't lie: Path of Exile is coming to Sony's PlayStation 4 on December 2018. As always the Diablo-like ARPG will be free-to-play and have optional cosmetic microtransactions, but there's no word on PC/PS4 cross-play or if your accounts will crossover. I'm guessing no on both (for now at least).

Releasing any big game on PS4 is a huge deal, especially a free-to-play experience that offers near-endless replayability and has a bustling community presence and trading economy. Sony's PS4 has now broken 85 million shipments worldwide so the install base is absolutely gigantic, and Grinding Gear Games has been able to expand to other platforms thanks to Tencent's healthy investment.

There certainly is quite a lot of Warhammer games, so many that it's quite hard to keep track of which developer made what game. Well, what if I told you that you could pick up a large portion of the franchise ridiculously cheap? Yes, that's right, Humble have made a Warhammer themed bundle and its live right now.

Humble never fails to disappoint price margin wise, sometimes they do have questionable choices for what they put on sale, but when a decent franchise is selected its hard to not pass up the deals. This time round we have the Warhammer franchise that is heavily discounted, pay $1 and you will receive titles; Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Game of the Year Edition, Talisman: Digital Edition + Expansions.

Moving onto the "pay more than average" section of the deals, we have: Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Collection and Blood Bowl 2. Finally, if you pay more than $12 you will receive Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III, Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide Stromdorf and Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. In the entirety of this post you will find the Steam ratings for each of the games, as well bullet points for which game falls in which payment category. If you want to check out the Humble Bundle for yourself, visit the official website here.

After the BlizzCon 2018 announcement of Warcraft III remastered under the title Warcraft III: Reforged many Blizzard fans are wondering whether this means we could possibly see a new original game enter the franchise. Warcraft IV?

While the hype for the Warcraft III: Reforged is barely beginning, Warcraft fans may want to tone down their excitement for another new installment into the franchise. Blizzard's Senior Producer, Pete Stilwell has said that the company is for the moment concentrating their efforts on Warcraft III: Reforged. As they believe the remaster deserves their first prioritory.

According to Stilwell, there is currently no plans for Warcraft IV, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. "I mean, I wouldn't rule anything out, but we don't have any plans around [Warcraft IV] at this point. Getting [Warcraft III: Reforged] right, I think, is our priority first and foremost." As expected, Warcraft fans might find this statement from Blizzard to be slightly discouraging, fret not though, depending on the popularity and response from us fans for Warcraft III: Reforged we could see a Warcraft IV sometime in the future.

The newly announced remaster of the classic RTS title Warcraft III has just had its official minimum PC requirements released by the developers Blizzard.

If you didn't know and happened to miss the news surrounding BlizzCon 2018, Blizzard took to the stage to announce a remaster of the classic 2002 released real-time strategy game Warcraft III. The remaster includes Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and also the DLC expansion 'The Frozen Throne.'

Blizzard also said that they would be tweaking the game ever so slightly in favor of new RTS players, the company further clarified that they would not be changing the fundamentals of the game but more so tweaking it to make it easier for newer players that plan on jumping into the mix. More on that story here. In the entirety of this post you will find screenshots of the PC requirements for Windows and Mac. If you want to visit the official Warcraft III: Reforged system requirements on the Blizzard wesbite, a direct link can be found here.

At the start of August, every Super Smash Bros. player was blessed with the inclusion of the Kremling King in Ultimate. Fans were so happy that thousands then decided to sign a letter saying thank you to Nintendo, and now Nintendo America has finally replied.

Fans of K. Rool collaborated in on a letter to personally thank Nintendo and more importantly Super Smash Bros game director Masahrio Sakurai. The letter was sent through the Twitter account Kremling Kampaigner, the account just posted to Twitter an image showing off the letter that Nintendo of America sent back to him.

Nintendo America says: "Thank you very much for the thoughtful letter you sent us. Our sincere apologies for the delayed reply. We were flattered to receive it! We also love the fan art that came alongside the letter. It's clear that plenty of care and effort went into both. While Mr. Sakurai is unable to reply directly due to his busy work schedule, rest assured that he shares your excitement and love for King K. Rool. He's hard at work making sure the Kremling king is ready to brawn when Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launches on December 7th, 2018."

Nintendo has just taken to their Twitter page to announce the addition of three more NES titles, Metroid, Mighty Bomb Jack and Twinbee.

Not only has Nintendo announced via their Twitter account but they have also released the above trailer onto their YouTube Channel. Clicking into the video we can see that quite a large portion of the community is not very happy about the Nintendo Switch Online service benefits regarding the games that are being added. After reading the comments and doing a quick summary of what people are criticizing, many users of the service are displeased about there being no SNES games available and only a handul of NES Classics.

Some users are calling for Nintendo to give them access to GameCube games, GameBoy games, Nintendo 64 games and just more in general. It seems the Switch community is quite divided on this one, which could lead to quite a lot of cancellations of the service. Nintendo will most likely have to react to this in some kind of fashion, either giving fans access to more games per month, or let users vote towards what games are to be added per month. For more information regarding the Nintendo Switch Online service, check out my breakdown of benefits and pricing here.

Last week, we heard about the numerous problems that the Fallout 76 beta was facing, some of the problems were so bad that they were even game breaking for some players. Now, Bethesda has dropped a 30GB update a day before the games next beta session.

This patch is massive in comparison to the games total file size. Fallout 76 beta weighs in at only 47GB, the patch that is being released has clearly not been compressed as much as it could have been, and has been pushed out so players that jump onto the beta tomorrow will have a much better experience within the game despite the download. It seems that Bethesda are truly under the pump for the launch of Fallout 76, with the games launch only a couple weeks away and the developer ushering out massive updates like this, only shows that the title may not necessarily be ready for launch.

Moving onto the patch notes now, we have the standard stability improvements that Bethesda have said are "significant" across the board, performance improvements and fixes for the hitching that was present during gameplay. Other changes include; enemy balancing, crafting requirement changes, quest changes, bug fixes for both graphical errors and enemies, and much more. If you want to check out the full patch notes for Fallout 76, visit the official Fallout 76 patch notes post here. Fallout 76 is planned for release on November 14th for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Digital Extremes has announced at TennoCon 2018 the 2nd massive open-world update to come to their free-to-play title Warframe. PC players will be blessed with the update sometime this week!

The update has been titled 'Fortuna' and will be taking players to the new world of Venus. Players will encounter brand new Corpus enemies, "subterranean mysteries and an ecosystem on the brink of destruction." Not only will there be new enemies and environments to look at, players will also be able to interact with a new group of characters called the Solaris who live in the underground city of Fortuna. I asked a PC Warframe player when they would expect the update to arrive, according to player "mainline updates usually come on Wednesdays." This is just a guess that has been based off previously released updates at this time.

Other new aspects included within the update are; new weapons, enhanced mining and fishing, wildlife tracking and of course new technology. It should be noted that this the second massive expansion to come to Warframe since last years Plains of Eidolon update. For further information about what is going to be included within Fortuna, visit the official Warframe 'Fortuna' blog post here. In other news about Warframe, a Nintendo Switch edition of the game will be arriving on November 20, Panic Button will be porting the title over, check that story out here.

Blizzard announced at BlizzCon 2018 that they will be doing a remaster of the classic Warcraft III, they developer has also said that when they are doing the remaster they will have new real-time-strategy players in mind.

For those that don't know, Warcraft III: Reforged is a remaster of the original 2002 Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and the 2003 DLC expansion titled The Frozen Throne. Now that you have a bit of background on the game, Lead Artist at Blizzard, Brian Sousa said in an interview with GameSpot that "Yeah, Warcraft III did not have the easy mode. It was either hard or really hard, and so now, even me, I remember playing missions over, and over, and over. This is a really hard game, so getting in there and making it a little bit more accessible for today's players, at least, to get into the RTS genre."

Sousa continues and elaborates further to make sure veteran players know that Blizzard won't be changing the fundamentals of Warcraft, but instead will tweaking the original foundations to make it more easily accessible to new RTS players. "This RTS has been around for 15 years. It's still around, people are still playing it, so we're not too worried about redefining the RTS because this already has a huge community, right, and we're not looking to change how Warcraft plays. We just want it to be a little bit more accessible and look better for today's players."

Blizzard has taken to their Hearthstone blog to announce that they have achieved over 100 million registered players. The company will be rewarding players with six completely free card packs.

In the above video, Hearthstone employees have taken time out of their day to thank the community for reaching such a massive milestone. In celebration of 100 million registered players, Blizzard will be throwing a give away party beginning on November 7 at 10:00am PST through until November 11th.

Players that log into Hearthstone will receive six completely free Boomsday Project card packs. All players will also receive the Celebrate the Players quest that can be repeated up to 5 times, the quest rewards 100 gold to the player when you compete in a friendly challenge. It should be noted that all introductory level quests will need to be completed to be eligible for the new celebratory quest rewards. In the entirety of this post you will find the requirements needed. For more information visit the official Hearthstone blog post here.

Nintendo will be releasing an 'Official Collector's Edition Guide' for the coming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the book will contain everything players will need to know to get the winning edge their battles to come.

At the moment the Collector's Edition Guide has a listing on Amazon and on that listing we get a short description of what is contained within the guide. According to the listing, the guide contains "Full Coverage of All Fighters: The biggest roster in Super Smash Bros. series history!", "Comprehensive Strategies and Move Sets: This 464-page book gives you all the in-depth strategy you need to succeed with every contender" and more.

It should be noted that the guide comes in two variants, one hardcover option which is usually priced at $39.99 but is currently 40% off and is only $23.99. Then a paper back option that was originally priced at $14.99 but is 10% off and is currently going for $13.49. From the descriptions, the hardcover variant contains 464 pages of in-depth analysis, the paper back only has 272 and also doesn't come with the option to make your guide digital. If you are interested in checking out the Collector's Edition Guide, visit the offical Amazon listing here.

Anthem, which launches at the tail-end of EA's fiscal year, could still affect the company's live services earnings...and that means it could launch with microtransactions.

As a service game it's no surprise BioWare's new action-based RPG Anthem will have microtransactions (something I predicted before Anthem was even revealed). The game was tailor-made to be an expansive online-driven PVE co-op experience that continually evolves over time, which is incidentally prime territory for live services. I originally questioned whether Anthem's cosmetic-only monetization would appear at launch, and now comments from EA may add new insight.

In EA's recent Fiscal Year Q2'19 earnings call, company COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen said something that makes me believe Anthem will have microtransactions when it launches in February. EA's current fiscal guidance shows 5% upticks in live services, which is conservative given two major service games, Battlefield V and Anthem, will release during 2H'19.

EA should continue delving deeper into live services and bundling them into its slate of upcoming games.

We've known for a while now that EA is all about live services, and the company's second quarter earnings highlight this trend even further. EA's recent Fiscal Year Q2'19 earnings show the company generated $328 million from live services (which includes microtransactions, subscriptions, DLC, add-ons, etc), or about 25% of total its total $1.268 billion net bookings for the quarter. Live services are up 6% year-over-year and represents the lion's share of 51% of total digital net bookings for the quarter, which means EA makes most of its digital revenues from online-based streams. It's worth noting mobile earnings are not included in this metric.

Digital full game sales are up a strong 37% year-over-year to $157 million, but are still eclipsed more than two-fold by live services. EA still makes most of its digital revenue from consoles--thanks to FIFA and wider hardware install bases--and $358 million was earned from the platform, up 27% year-over-year and representing a mighty 56% slice of the total digital earnings pie. The newly launched Origin Access Premiere subscription service boosted these numbers, but the primary driven is of course from microtransactions from Madden/FIFA Ultimate Team.