Gaming - Page 82

Valve is entering the console market once more with its new Steam Machine PC-console hybrid.

Today, Valve announced its new hardware lineup including a revamp of its Steam Machines brand. The new Steam Machine is essentially a small form factor PC in a box that runs Steam games at console-level quality, complete with the plug-and-play convenience of a console. It also borrows major quality-of-life features from the Steam Deck, including suspend/resume and the features of the SteamOS environment.

The new Steam Machine is powered by a discrete semi-custom AMD GPU that Valve says can enable 4K 60FPS gaming with FSR enabled. The console PC is 6x more powerful than a Steam Deck, features an SD card slot, and also can run "whatever software you want, and works with all your favorite desktop accessories."

Arc Raiders has sold over 4 million copies and had the biggest launch in Nexon's history, the live service games giant has confirmed.

Embark's latest extraction shooter Arc Raiders is gaming's latest breakout hit with over 4 million copies sold and 700,000 concurrent players in less than two weeks. On a rough sales basis, that's around $160 million in gross revenue from Arc Raiders (which is less after Sony, Microsoft, Epic, and Steam take their cuts).

In a Q3 press release, Nexon president and CEO Junghun Lee says Arc Raiders did so well that it helped spike the company's revenue by +61%, and that it was the biggest game that Nexon has ever launched.

Grand Theft Auto 6 isn't the only news surrounding Rockstar Games as the UK studio abruptly fired thirty-one workers over what it described as gross misconduct, but if you asked those now former employees, many of whom are veteran Rockstar developers, the studio was merely union-busting.

Those fired employees are now protesting outside Rockstar North in the UK, with many voicing their opinions on why the studio let them go, stating that Rockstar didn't provide any evidence of their alleged gross misconduct and that they were fired without due process or proper representation. According to Rockstar, the now former employees were leaking confidential information on a public forum, but the employees who were fired said they had never been shown any evidence of such leaks.

The employees and the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) allege Rockstar simply wanted to break up the union that was forming, with the employees pointing to each of the fired employees being union members and the UK currently preparing to pass the Employment Rights Bill, which will provide elevated security for workers at the beginning of next year.

FromSoftware caps off Sony's latest State of Play stream by revealing Elden Ring Nightreign's first expansion, The Forsaken Hollows.

Just days ago, FromSoftware's owner confirmed that Elden Ring Nightreign would get DLC soon. Now it's official: The Forsaken Hollows is coming to all platforms on December 4 for $15, and it'll include two new playable classes, two new bosses, and a new shifting earth called The Great Hollow.

Anyone who purchased the deluxe or collector's edition of Elden Ring Nightreign will get The Forsaken Hollows for free, and those that pre-purchase the expansion now will get access to a digital artbook and a mini soundtrack via a special app.

The reports were right: Sony is indeed introducing a lower-cost, region-locked PS5 for the Japanese market.

Sony's latest business move should help spark PS5 adoption in Japan. The company today announced that it will offer a cheaper digital PS5 bundle that retails for 55,000 yen, or about $350. The console is region-locked, meaning it can't be played by users outside of Japan, and sees Sony directly challenging the Nintendo Switch 2's grasp on its home turf market.

"We are doing something very special for the Japan market. We are introducing a PS5 for players that can be exclusively enjoyed in the Japanese language. This PS5 Digital Edition provides strong value--its suggested retail price is 55,000 yen including tax," Sony's Hideaki Nishino said during the State of Play presentation.

Sony says that the PlayStation 5 will maintain its current sales profitability throughout FY2025, but that period ends quite soon in March, and after that period it's possible the PS5--and potentially the PS5 Pro--will be sold for less profit than it is now.

Hardware profitability is crucial for Sony and Nintendo (Microsoft never sold an Xbox at a profit, and that could be why they're now merging Xbox consoles with Windows). Right now, Sony is able to produce and sell each PS5 console at a profit, but that may change in the future due to rising storage memory costs.

Diminished hardware profitability will drag the company's margins and put more stress on software and services. This is something Sony is potentially planning for as it is now focusing on "monetizing the PS5's installed base"rather than expanding that said installed base.

Sony's new PS5 game Ghost of Yōtei was a success insofar as first-party sales, and the company has recognized Sucker Punch's latest samurai slasher as a "major hit."

PlayStation's new first-party release Ghost of Yōtei has resonated with PS5 owners. Sony has confirmed that Ghost of Yōtei has sold 3.3 million copies in the 32-day period from launch until November 2, indicating a strong level of sales penetration for a first-party game despite the higher $69.99 price tag. Given Sony's latest PS5 sales numbers of 84.2 million, Ghost of Yōtei had a nearly 4% attach rate on the platform. Yōtei's forebear, Ghost of Tsushima, sold 2.4 million copies in 3 days.

"In the single-player AAA title space, following the release of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach in June, we released Ghost of Yōtei in October. Ghost of Yōtei surpassed 3.3 million units sold globally as of November 2nd, becoming a major hit like its predecessor," Sony said in its Q2'25 earnings report.

Sony could support the PlayStation 5 with a 10-year lifecycle, and it's possible the system could last until 2030.

Five years after launch, Sony has officially acknowledged the PS5 is in the middle of its lifecycle. The company is embracing a longer lifecycle for its 9th generation of PlayStation consoles, primarily due to macro-economic forces like tariffs and rising component costs. That's not to say the PS6 won't release before Sony is done supporting the PS5--we expect there to be an overlap cycle with the PS6 generation.

In today's Q2'25 earnings Q&A with media, Sony Chief Financial Officer Lin Tao commented on how the company is framing the PS5's current livelihood, saying that each console generation is lasting longer and longer--including the PS5.

New DLC for Elden Ring Nightreign has been confirmed, and it will launch sometime in the first quarter of 2026.

FromSoftware's Elden Ring Nightreign is the latest in a consecutive string of mega-hits for Kadokawa. In the company's latest Q1-Q2 earnings report, Kadokawa confirms that Nightreign significantly outperformed their expectations, with many more copies sold and revenue generated than had originally been forecasted.

Thanks to these results, and the power of the Elden Ring brand, it's no surprise that FromSoftware is working on new expansion content for the co-op multiplayer adventure game. There's been no announcement of what the Nightreign DLC will actually be, however Kadokawa did confirm that DLC is happening in the report.

During Sony's most recent earnings call, the company confirmed that Destiny 2 has fallen short of its expectations since the title developer of the game, Bungie, was acquired in 2022.

The confirmation comes from Sony's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Lin Tao who said Destiny 2's level of sales and user engagement has not reached the expectation that Sony set at the time it acquired Bungie, and as a result Sony has recorded a ¥31.5 billion (approximately $204 million) impairment loss, which is on top of the ¥18.3 billion (about $118 million) expense total for Destiny 2 that is related to the title's development cost.

The CFO said Sony has now made these adjustments to reflect the title's current performance, which Sony attributes to a changing competitive landscape, market competition, and ultimately low player engagement. For those wondering what an impairment loss is, it's essentially Sony saying the asset, which in this case is Bungie's assets (Destiny 2, etc), is no longer worth as much as what the company originally recorded it for.

Roblox has been hit by another lawsuit, this time from Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, who has now joined the state of Louisiana in alleging that Roblox has perpetrated an online environment that enables child predators to thrive.

The lawsuits against Roblox came after the company banned child predator catcher and YouTuber Schlep for engaging in "simulated child endangerment conversations". The banning of Schlep caused a massive community uproar as YouTubers and other Roblox community members flocked to support the child predator catcher, who has been involved in the exposing of at least child predators on the Roblox platform.

The uproar created a spotlight that honed in on the child predator problem evolving on Roblox, and now it has caught the attention of lawyers, entire states, and Chris "To Catch a Predator" Hansen.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is only a few days away and if you are hanging out to sink your teeth into the latest Call of Duty, you can do so before everyone else by doing a very simple trick with your settings.

Black Ops 7 officially launches on Friday, November 14 in the US and Europe, but if you want to play it before everyone else in your region, you can simply change your location settings on your platform to New Zealand, along with your Call of Duty account. By doing this US and European players will be able to enjoy Black Ops 7 on Thursday, November 13 at 3AM PT / 6 AM ET / 11 AM GMT.

Below you will find steps for each platform on how to change your location to New Zealand, which includes Xbox, PC (via the Xbox App), and PS5. Unfortunately, if you purchased Black Ops 7 on Steam or Battle.net, you are out of luck as the New Zealand trick won't work on these platforms.

Sony has confirmed during its quarterly earnings call when Bungie's Marathon is expected to release, with the publisher saying it's still "fully dedicated" to launching the title.

The confirmation came from Sony's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Lin Tao, who said Bungie is still actively developing Marathon, and that players can expect a full release of the title by March 2026. Notably, Sony's fiscal year wraps up in March 2026, which means we can expect Marathon to release sometime between February and the end of March.

The road to Bungie launching Marathon has been plagued with issues, with the developer admitting to plagiarism of an independent artist, resulting in the studio having to comb through all of the game's assets to find more instances of plagiarism.

It wasn't long ago that evidence surfaced of six new game modes in development for Battlefield 6, and now dataminers have discovered three additional modes, bringing the total to nine upcoming game modes.

It was in early October that dataminers discovered six new game modes hiding within Battlefield 6's game files, which would be additional modes to the currently available: Conquest, Breakthrough, Rush, Domination, King of the Hill, Team Deathmatch, and Squad Deathmatch. Within those files were names for new modes such as Sabotage and Strikepoint, both of which have been confirmed by Battlefield Studios to be on the way.

Of the original six discovered in files, Raid, Payload, Squad Shootout, and Tank Hunt are yet to be confirmed, but given how Sabotage and Strikepoint were recently confirmed, it lends an aura of legitimacy to the remaining six, which will seemingly eventually come to the game. But now we have three more game modes to expect, with Insider Gaming reporting that they have discovered Convoy, Fantastic Four, Gunmaster, Touchdown, and Tug of War.

Long before it became a Call of Duty support studio, Raven Software released the well-received but controversial first-person shooter Soldier of Fortune in 2000. Built using id Software's Quake II engine, the game received considerable critical and even political backlash due to its GHOUL engine, which featured realistic violence and dismemberment of its human enemies.

Compared to the visual fidelity in modern FPS games, the blocky and chunky polygon characters of the original Soldier of Fortune look dated and a far cry from realistic. That said, as someone who played the game on a PC at the time, being able to blow off limbs with a shotgun was one of those 'whoa' moments that marked the transition of PC gaming to full 3D visuals and environments.

Fans of the original or those interested in the history of FPS games will be pleased to learn that modder 'Pathtraced Paradise' is working on an RTX Remix mod for Soldier of Fortune, which replaces in-game lighting with path tracing alongside physically based rendering for materials. According to the modder, it's "still very much a work in progress," which is evident in the following videos of the game's first two levels.

In a recent interview with GQ Magazine, Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard confirmed that the bulk of the team behind Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield is currently working on The Elder Scrolls 6. Even though the highly anticipated release of Skyrim's follow-up is the primary focus and still a "long way off," Bethesda Game Studios also has hundreds of people working on Fallout games.

"We have hundreds of people on Fallout right now, with 76 and some other things we're doing, but The Elder Scrolls 6 is the everyday thing," Todd Howard responded when asked about what he's currently working on. With the Fallout franchise more popular than ever, thanks to the success of the live-action TV series, this confirms that multiple Fallout games are currently in active development.

With Fallout 76, which is set to receive a significant, and free, expansion called Burning Springs next month, probably taking up a sizable portion of the "hundreds of people," the "some other things" comment implies that there are at least three Fallout games currently being worked on. And one of these is most likely the leaked and rumored Fallout 3 Remaster, which is reportedly in development.

ARC Studios had over 700,000 concurrent players across the weekend, with the milestone celebrated by developer and publisher Embark Studios.

In a post on the ARC Raiders account on X, the developer said that there were over 700,000 players across all platforms -- PC, PlayStation, and Xbox -- over the weekend. Most of the ARC Raiders players were on PC, with data from SteamDB showing that the game hit a new peak concurrent player count of 462,688 gamers playing ARC Raiders on Steam just yesterday.

ARC Raiders has sold over 2.5 million copies so far, with most of them from PC gamers on Steam, with concurrent player counts not dipping below 100,000 on Steam since the game launched on October 30. It has been a huge launch, a strong concurrent player count, and now a new peak of over 700,000 gamers playing ARC Raiders at once over the weekend.

Valve could be preparing to launch its next-gen Steam Frame VR headset alongside its new Steam Controller, with what could be the biggest announcement in years: Half-Life 3 dropping this week.

In some super-hot rumors posted from a reliable source for Valve-related hardware and display leaks, posted on X and on the "GamingLeaksAndRumors" subreddit, which states that comments were made on Brad Lynch's Discord, where he reportedly said: "I'm just going to flat out say it. I was told by a few sources, across a few weeks, to keep an eye out for this week. More specifically, Wednesday".

He continued: "and it doesn't seem to be out of the question for Valve to choose that day to just **announce** it. I have no idea but I get the impression they will need a week or two to explain the device to people before opening orders anyway".

To Bethesda's high disappointment, Fallout 4's dialog system is one of the most maligned features of the game. Now 10 years later, Todd Howard reveals the studio actually spent a lot of time putting the conversation system together.

Mechanically, Fallout 4 is among the best, having introduced helpful features like sprint. But there's one area the game falls flat, and it's a place where you'll spend a lot of time--dialog. Fallout 4 has a fully voiced protagonist alongside multiple choice responses, but the choices simply don't match up with what is actually said by the character. This can create a big disconnect.

Unfortunately, getting the dialog system to work in its currently-unpopular state took a lot of effort from Bethesda. In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Bethesda's Todd Howard says Fallout 4's conversations were tough for the studio to put together, mainly because of the attempt at making discussions more interactive.

Sony is holding a surprise State of Play stream for tomorrow that highlights upcoming games from Asia, including those from PlayStation's home country of Japan.

PlayStation will be hosting a special State of Play showcase tomorrow, November 11, that will focus exclusively on games from Asian game devs and publishers. While Sony hasn't confirmed which companies or games will be at the show, likely partners include Bandai Namco, Capcom, Konami, Square Enix, and even groups across NetEase and Tencent. The stream is 40 minutes long and we could get new glimpses at major upcoming games like Where Winds Meet, Resident Evil 9 Requiem, and maybe even Ghost of Yotei's upcoming Legends multiplayer mode.

"This Tuesday, we're bringing you a special episode of State of Play running for more than 40 minutes, focusing on games created in Japan and across Asia, alongside a few other exciting updates. From beloved series to distinctive indie creations, the show, hosted by voice actor Yuki Kaji, will be packed with great games, interviews, and new looks at anticipated titles."