Gaming - Page 869

Bethesda's Skyrim Special Edition has recently received a slew of goregous 4K textures from Modder 'MystiriousDawn Pfuscher.'

The below images detail a selection of terrain landscapes that have replaced the vanilla textures with is titled as "HD Ground Textures - 4K."

MystiriousDawn Pfuscher is offering different variants of the mod, options include a low quality resolution of 1K, a high quality one at 2K and the ultra high quality at 4K.

The comedic value from Ubisofts upcoming Far Cry 5 release is honestly outstanding, there has been very few trailers that have made be laugh as much as this one, and its all due to the sheer amount of fun that bleeds the scenarios and lyrics seen in front of me.

The new trailer has been titled "Far Cry 5: Singalong - My Country 'Tis Of Thee" and the title really does mean what it says, starting the trailer in a subtle kind of fashion and then eventuating in to pure Far Cry chaos.

Far Cry 5 will release on PS4, Xbox One and PC on March 27th, will be downloading and providing benchmarks for this game as soon as its released, so stay tuned for some performance numbers.

Big publishers like EA and Ubisoft are exploring how new technologies like blockchain and AI will arm developers with new tools for game dev, and the French games-maker is confident this will be a boon to its worldwide studios.

Making video games is pretty much an overwhelming endeavor that takes countless hours of rote coding, animation, tweaking, fixing, and most importantly iteration. But what if devs could use, say, an advanced AI like IBM's Watson to cut development time while giving creators more control over the more vivid and interesting aspects of their games? That's Ubisoft's hope, and one of the many reasons why they're experimenting with new technology in their new Strategic Innovation Lab.

Ubisoft is looking at ways that AI can handle specific tasks such as monotonous animating and testing. According to Yves Jacquier, who heads Ubisoft's studio production services branch, using AI in this way will give developers much more time to innovative, iterate, and generally be creative and bring new ideas and content to the table. But the issue here is what's known as "feature creep," so giving every developer too much creative freedom could end up bloating the scope and pipeline of the game itself.

Last month Nightdive Studios put the ambitious System Shock reboot on hiatus, but just how long will it take the devs to ship the game? Two years give or take.

While developing the massively anticipated System Shock remake Nightdive Studios ran into an all-too-common problem in game dev: "feature creep". Essentially what happens is that as more and more people become attached to the project, everyone injects their ideas into the scope of the game, which eventually becomes so wide it barely resembles the project that gamers actually backed on Kickstarter. This is a natural issue in game dev and is likely responsible for the cancellation or outright recycling of many, many games (maybe Visceral suffered the same with their project Ragtag Star Wars game?).

As a result Nightdive says the game may not be ready to actually play until 2020 (remember games take a while to make).

Following the season 11 finale of The X-Files, showrunner Chris Carter lets slip that FOX is making a new X-Files game to keep the property going.

As a huge fan of The X-Files, I have mixed feelings about the new seasons. But whatever your opinions may be about Scully and Mulder's return to TV it appears that they'll also make another splash in the video game world. After three games--the last of which was a more interactive experience--Carter says the powers that be are ready to try again.

SPOILER WARNING: Huge spoilers for season 11 in the source article!

EA's Vancouver-based studio is hiring for an "open world Star Wars game," and it's probably Visceral's killed project. But a new job listing strongly suggests the game will have online-based elements, which points towards live services, engagement, and monetization strategies that EA is well known for.

One of the most disappointing things that EA has done recently was a two-fer: killing off Visceral Games, and then cancelling its ambitious-sounding Star Wars game only to have another studio recycle it. Everything I reported about the Visceral game made it sound pretty good, but EA wasn't convinced: the linear singleplayer action game just didn't mesh well with player feedback (and of course it probably didn't have a live services element that'd make the publisher tons of recurring cashflow).

EA's Patrick Soderlund explained the situation but let potential development issues off the table "Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design."

The team at CD Projekt RED has described Cyberpunk 2077 as the "biggest project we've ever made," and rightly so: the game is a massive investment in technology, manpower, and pretty much every facet of games development. But development seems to be going smoothly and the game should be out in at least three years time.

Back in 2016 we reported that CD Projekt RED plans to launch Cyberpunk 2077 and a new unannounced AAA RPG by 2021 as part of its five-year roadmap strategy. Now in its fiscal year 2017 results the company reaffirms this plan, which reinforces the assertions that Cyberpunk 2077's huge world-building is on schedule. In fact CDPR President and CEO Adam Kicinski said the sci-fi RPG hit a major milestone in the FY2017 report: "The development of our next flagship product - Cyberpunk 2077 - is on schedule, and has reached a major production milestone in late 2017."

Read Also: Cyberpunk 2077 should have online elements

The Witcher 3 is by far the most popular game in the White Wolf's fantasy trilogy, generating tons of revenue for CD Projekt RED over its three years of release.

During its 10th anniversary year the Witcher series sold a mighty 33 million cumulative copies across three games, but one of those games was a leading driver in sales revenues. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt not only represented a massive investment for developer CD Projekt RED in terms of technology and manpower, but is a critical milestone in the studio's current reputation as the masters of their craft. In terms of sales revenue, though, The Witcher 3 earned a whopping 15 times as much as The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in three-year cash generation.

CD Projekt RED's fiscal year 2017 results show just how important The Witcher 3 has been/is to the games-maker, and the title's game of the year re-release along with PS4 Pro and Xbox One X enhancements have ensured longer-term interest. "With regard to sales, The Witcher 3 again provided the largest contribution to sales revenues," said CD Projekt RED's Chief Financial Officer Piotr Nielubowicz during the FY2017 report.

The remastered rendition of the classic ARPG Titan Quest is now available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

In an age where action RPGs like Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, and Diablo III typically rule the market, it's great that companies like THQ Nordic reminding gamers about old-school hack-and-slashers that helped define the genre. While that mantle will pretty much be defined by the original Diablo game, Titan Quest was a big mover that provided a unique ancient setting infused with Greek mythology. And now modern gamers can experience what PC players in the 90s know quite well.

Titan Quest is now available on PS4 and Xbox One with newly enhanced graphics and online multiplayer action, but couch co-op isn't in just yet. The Nintendo Switch port is also on the way but hasn't been finalized just yet--it may even be the first real ARPG on the console unless Diablo III is actually coming to the system soon.

Nintendo's hybrid-handheld Switch console enjoys immense popularity through its first year of sales, especially in the United States.

Despite component shortages that limited hardware allocation throughout most of 2017, the Nintendo Switch has sold 14.86 million units as of December and overshot the company's internal 14 million sales target for the entire year. This consistent popularity has been driven by strong first-party and third-party software support along with the system's transforming on-the-go and home console hardware duality--and it's not something that should change any time soon.

It's no surprise the Switch is selling like gangbusters, but the NPD Group's latest findings put the console's success into perspective. According to NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella, the Switch has raked up the highest hardware install base in U.S. history within a one-year period.

PUBG players will soon be gifted with a very special mode from PUBG Corp, titled 'Event Mode' will bring to life a slew of different game modes and types for players in a rotative fashion.

At the moment 'Event Mode' is available on the test servers and has been described by PUBG Corp as "periodically changing preset Custom Game where we will be trying new things and experimenting with different game parameters."

Currently, players can be apart of the test server fun, joining as a eight-player squad that will be dropping into Erangel with double the drop rates for rifles. PUBG Corp has said that this is just the beginning for 'Event Mode', here is what they had to say "We know it's not a huge change from the public matches, this is just to get things rolling, the future of the Event Mode holds exciting things!"

Nintendo has decided to gift their Nintendo Switch owners with a eShop sales in both Europe and North America. The sales range from games that are well known on the Switch to amazing indie titles.

If you are interested in adding some new titles to your Nintendo Switch, you will be glad to know if you check the Nintendo eShop this week you will be bombarded with sales across the board.

A special thanks to Resetera user "Captain of Outer Space" for providing a full list of the titles that are on sale for not only the Nintendo Switch, but all other Nintendo eShop sale compatible products as well. Examples of some well known titles on sale are Rocket League, Steamworld Dig and Brawlout, check out the full list here.

If are not good at Sea of Thieves and notice that you are being resurrected quite a lot then sadly I have some bad news for you, Rare will soon be implementing a gold-fee charge for players to re-spawn.

Rare has addressed this new mechanic in their recent release notes which can be found here. The new change will usher in the Captain of the Ferry of the Damned asking players for a "small gold fee" once they perish.

Rare discusses that the "rates are dependent on the cause of death, so the more avoidable the death, the less patience the Captain will have when we enable this feature!" Many players are expressing concern about this update, saying that spawn camping could happen or even that this could be a incentive for players to purchase more gold through future microtransactions.

Electronic Arts have created a brand new AI that has the capabilities to self-teach, the AI has already taught itself how to play Battlefield and gets smarter and smarter with every game it plays.

Electronic Arts has a separate division called SEED, 'Search for Extraordinary Experiences Division' and the teams technical director Magnus Nordin has created a "self-learning-agent" that has the capabilities to teach itself Battlefield gameplay.

Nordin took to this blog post to explain what has exactly happened here, he begun by asking himself "how much effort it would take to have a self-learning agent learn to play a modern and more complex first person AAA game like Battlefield"

Grand Theft Auto V is a great looking game on its own, but there's a brand new remastered version of the already incredible NaturalVision mod for the game, and it's absolutely mind blowing.

The new NaturalVision Remastered mod features Enhanced Motion Blur, a Corona Modifier, Darker Nights, First-Person Depth of Field, Alternate Lens Flare Style, and allows to hide weapon reticle and damage overlay. It also improves the Extra Sunny and Clear weather at all hours, reworks cloud colors and and Clear weather.

The new GTA V mod increases procedural vegetation density throughout the world with nearly no hit to performance, while increasing the amount of litter and trash throughout the city. NaturalVision Remastered also features improved ambient lighting, fog haze colors and other fog-related settings in Rainy weather.

Epic Games had a bunch of new things to show off at the Game Developers Conference this year, but one of the best would have to be Siren.

Siren is a new "high-fidelity, real-time digital character based on the likeness of Chinese actress Bingjie Jiang", with actress Alexa Lee playing the character. Epic Games collaborated with 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, Tencent and Vicon on Siren. Together, they captured Jiang live and turned her into a digital character powered by Unreal Engine.

Vicon VFX product manager Tim Doubleday explains: "To create a realistic digital character requires more than just tracking movements, you need to be able to isolate and mimic everything down to the most minute details. There have been some incredible attempts to create realistic digital avatars recently, and so when Epic approached us, we were eager to get involved and help push the field even further".

A more harmonized and less fractured console market is an inevitability, says Epic Games' Tim Sweeney.

Microsoft has embraced cross-play for a few good reasons, the biggest one being the company's unification of Windows 10 PCs with its Xbox One console family to make a future-proof gaming platform. But what about Sony? What incentives do they have to open up cross-play and allow gamers to play freely with Team Green's supporters? After all, isn't the console war something that tremendously helped Sony absolutely smash Microsoft in terms of PlayStation 4 console sales? Why would they give it up?

But alas, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney is confident it'll happen...eventually.

The Witcher trilogy of games has sold through more than two dozen million copies to gamers, showing the strong pull of quality-driven AAA RPGs as well as CD Projekt RED's development prowess.

Geralt's saga remains one of the most unique trilogies on the market today, and the third chapter, The Wild Hunt, remains a strong sales driver for CD Projekt RED even three years after its release. Today the company announced that the games have cumulatively sold more than 33 million copies worldwide on all platforms as of 2017's tail end.

"With regard to sales, The Witcher 3 again provided the largest contribution to sales revenues," said CD Projekt RED's Chief Financial Officer Piotr Nielubowicz. The company pulled in about 460 million PLN in sales revenue, and based on internal charts, The Witcher 3 lead the other games by over tenfold.

Cyberpunk 2077 is built on high-end tech that's well suited for modern and future console hardware, CD Projekt RED confirms.

We've known for a while that Cyberpunk 2077 is the biggest and most ambitious game CD Projekt RED has ever made. The game should feature living breathing worlds with advanced AI and flying cars alongside unique open-world interactions, all built with incredible next-gen technologies refined from the studio's arsenal of tools. This huge investment will ensure Cyberpunk 2077 is not only ready for today's PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC hardware, but also the future of gaming systems as well.

But there's just one small issue: CDPR isn't sure what Sony and Microsoft are cooking up next, despite the evidence the former is working on a PlayStation 5 system. "Next gen hasn't been announced yet, so we can only speculate. Technology-wise, Cyberpunk is very advanced. Our technology is ready to interface with future generations," CD Projekt RED's president Adam Kiciński said in a recent financial conference call.

The newest title from Creative Assembly and SEGA, Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia has sadly been delayed due to the development team wanting to add another coat of polish to the title before releasing it.

SEGA and Creative Assembly announced today on their website and Twitter that their first title in the Total War Saga series will be pushed back a couple weeks, this is happening because the development team would like to add some quality of life features to the UI and other aspects of the game before its release.

To go with the quality of life features, Creative Assembly are also tweaking the difficulty of the campaign, these tweaks are honed in on the titles AI and how it will be reacting to the players movements on the battlefield. Some changes for the AI include: flanking tactics, armies that get recruited and more. For further information in the recent changes visit the official Total War website here.