Gaming - Page 884

Not too long ago we saw Sony make their sign-ups for PS4 v5.50 firmware beta available, today the new firmware update goes live to those who signed up to the beta.

In this new firmware update Sony will be adding a slew of new quality of life features such as hiding apps, play-time management, library UI updates and background music availability.

Users that get selected for the beta will be lucky enough to be some of the first PlayStation 4 players to customize their console background, as Sony has added support for selecting new background images through USB.

Battlegrounds was undeniably the biggest game of 2017, but now developer PUBG Corp have released some statistics behind their Battle Royale smash hit.

Since PUBG's release early last year onto Steam Early Access, Battlegrounds has broken all of Steam's concurrent player records with it recently smashing 3.15 million concurrent players and over 26 million copies sold between the PC and Xbox One versions of the game.

PUBG Corp's infographic states that players have spent over 2.7 billion hours in the game, have scored over 130 million chicken dinners,r and broken things down into many other interesting facts. We know that 13 million PUBG players have been killed with frying pans, while over 10 billion bandages have been used.

Haven't gotten your hands-on a NES or SNES mini? Nintendo might have some good news for you (and scalpers too, unfortunately).

Following a short stint to gauge demand--which ultimately backfired on consumers the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1980s--Nintendo originally cancelled production of its ultra-rare NES Classic Edition. Then a year later it announced the SNES Classic Edition, which followed in its near-extinct predecessor's footsteps. But there's good news: the House of Mario isn't giving up just yet.

Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima has confirmed that the company will continue producing and selling both the NES and SNES Classic Editions throughout 2018. What was once a seasonal product will carry over throughout the entire year...but there's no word on stock or availability.

The Nintendo Switch continues its strong upward trajectory, and the Japanese games-maker plans to continue its fledgling DLC plan to extend the life of games and incentivize purchases.

Selling consoles and games is extremely important to companies like Nintendo. But what about those who already own both the console and the game? It's also important to keep existing players engaged in such a way that not only extends the experience over time, which organically bleeds over into other facets of the business--ie the more a person plays a game, the more likely they are to take it on the go, play it with a friend or stranger, and inadvertently advertise the system. One other thing, though: it's also important people pay to extend their games further.

Nintendo's DLC strategy is somewhat new insofar as major season passes, but this model isn't going anywhere any time soon. According to Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima, the company will double down on downloadable content for key games.

Nintendo's latest handheld-console hybrid keeps breaking records, and the games-maker highlights these impressive feats with a few visual aids.

In its latest earnings filings Nintendo predictably announced some big trends for the Switch, namely in hardware sales, software attach rates, and that the console has out-stripped the Wii in its first ten months of sales. "Nintendo Switch is establishing itself at a record pace, with the first 10 months of sales in North America exceeding even those for Wii, which had been our previous fastest-selling home console," Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima said in the earnings report.

But it's not enough just to say it: sometimes seeing is believing. Despite having supply issues at the chip level, the Switch has managed to closely follow the Wii's initial sales momentum throughout North America, and even rose above the Wii.

Sony delivers another strong holiday quarter thanks in no small part to the PlayStation brand.

Sony Corp's Games and Network Services segment, which includes games and movies sold on the PlayStation Network, PS4 hardware and physical software, as well as subscription services, has pushed the company's quarterly earnings once again. As far as Fiscal Q3'17 numbers the G&NS segment raked in 718 billion yen ($6.35 billion) in sales, up 100 billion yen and 16.3% year-over-year. Operating income sits at 85 billion yen ($752.21 billion), up 35 billion yen and 70% year-over-year.

But what's most impressive is that Sony's Network segment (digital game sales, subscriptions, streaming, etc) broke 300 billion yen in a single quarter for the first time ever.

Hot off the heels of Call of Duty WWII's monumental success, Activision is keen on keeping the staggering earnings going with a new entry in the series' most popular sequels: Black Ops.

Earlier we reported on a rumor from industry insider Marcus Sellars who said that Black Ops 4 is not only happening, but will be this year's annual Call of Duty game. Now sources close to the matter have confirmed to Eurogamer that Black Ops 4 is indeed 2018's CoD title, and that Treyarch will develop the shooter. This underlines the veracity of the original claims.

No exact details were given on the new Black Ops game, but it's worth mentioning that Eurogamer has been spot-on with source reports such as these, whether with last year's Call of Duty WWII or the Nintendo Switch's specs and feature set. Given the tremendous sales momentum of CoD: WWII due to the game's triumphant return to boots on the ground action, it's very likely that Activision will push Treyarch away from sci-fi and more towards visceral, old-school Call of Duty action.

Red Dead Redemption 2 could be one of the biggest games of all time, and now the latest rumor on RDR2 teases what could be an amazing feature: first-person view mode.

Not only would a first-person perspective be on offer, but Rockstar Games would be throwing in a big change to the multiplayer of RDR2 offering a Battle Royale mode. The rumors are coming directly from Trusted Reviews who received some "development documents" that tease that the Battle Royale game mode would be joined by 'Revive and Survive' and 'Money Grab' modes.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is said to drive the immersion factor much higher, with Trusted Reviews saying that "NPCs will decorate storefronts with amenities and pack things away once night comes". They continued that the towns in RDR2 are "populated with various NPCs including general store owners, gunsmiths and undertakers. You can also partake in gambling if you're hoping to risk it all for financial gain".

Shadow of Colossus will release tomorrow, we recently saw the trailer but now in celebration Sony has announced that there will be a livestream showcasing some of the gameplay.

In about 30 minutes or so Sony will be taking Shadow of Colossus live, showing off some gameplay of the new game and also a discussion reflecting on the first title.

The Shadow of Colossus livestream can be found here and while also what Sony said on Twitter "We're only a few hours away from the launch of Shadow of the Colossus on PS4! Watch live starting at 7 PM PT/10 PM ET for gameplay, reflections on the original, and much more"

Starbreeze Studios has posted on their blog, announcing that they have picked up the new Soren Johnson strategy game title 10 Crowns.

Johnson is best known for his work on the classic turn-based strategy title Civilization 3 and Civilization 4 which was developed by Firaxis Studios.

On Starbreeze's blog post they describe 10 Crowns to be "an epic-scale turn-based strategy game that lets players create the greatest dynasty in world history." The upcoming title has also had its development described by Johnson, saying that his team are "going back to our game development roots to make a classic historical 4X strategy game with some important and radical innovations to the genre."

Nintendo's Deputy General Manager of Nintendo EPD, Yoshiaki Koizumi, has taken to the Nintendo YouTube channel to answer some fan questions regarding Super Mario Odyssey.

Koizumi began by addressing the confusion surrounding if Toad is wearing a hat or if what is on his head is just his head, "So that, as it turns out, is actually Toad's head I'm going to have to leave it to all of you to figure out exactly how that works out. Maybe there's something inside..." answered Koizumi.

While Super Mario Odyssey was arguably an incredible game, fans were still confused at why Mario seemed to have nipples but didn't feature a belly button of any sort, Koizumi slightly touches on the subject, "I didn't really expect that to be a topic among fans. Once I heard that people were talking so much about Mario's belly button, it made me start to think about whether we should revisit the topic on the design side."

Activision's Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy is a remastered collection of the original Crash Bandicoot games, but now news has surfaced from a European supplier of licensed merchandise that the remastered Crash Bandicoot game is coming to the Nintendo Switch and PC.

According to the License Source Book Europe, a supplier of licensed merchandise named GB eye discussed the success of the N.Sane trilogy and explained that it triggered a long-term plan for the Crash Bandicoot games.

"The new game [the N. Sane trilogy] was a huge success at retail..." said Max Arguile, licensing manager of GB Eye. "Next year it will be going broader (Switch and PC) and there will be a new game in 2019. Activision have a five-year plan for this and GB eye is delighted to be fully on board for all products." said Max Arguile, licensing manager of GB eye.

One of Twitch's most popular streamers took a 7-week gap between streams and now those streamers are back in full force, with Dr. Disrespect returning to Twitch and PUBG and crashing Twitch in the process.

Dr. Disrespect went to launch his stream at 11AM PST, but the huge wave of Twitch viewers wanting to jump onto his stream smashed Twitch's servers. The Doc tweeted that he broke Twitch, where he most likely had anywhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people jumping onto his stream... all at once.

This situation is similar to League of Legends player Tyler1 who returned earlier this year and crashed Twitch, where he broke Twitch's concurrent viewer record with more than 400,000 people watching at once.

There are new rumors circling of the next Call of Duty game being a sequel to Black Ops 3, with COD: Black Ops 4 being teased to launch not only on the Xbox, PlayStation and PC but the Nintendo Switch as well.

KitGuru reports that industry insider and editor Marcus Sellars, says that the 2018 release of Call of Duty will be Black Ops 4. COD: Black Ops 4 will reportedly be set in modern times, with boots-on-the-ground gameplay - meaning wall running and jet packs are out of the picture.

Activision appears to be keen to get Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 onto the incredibly successful Nintendo Switch, where the Switch version of Black Ops 4 to reportedly pack new DLC map packs, HD Rumble, and support for the Joy-Con motion controls.

Capcom Vancouver has been hit with major layoffs that have dramatically affected the studio's future projects, sources say.

Capcom's main Osaka branch has decided to slice up its Vancouver-based studio to make it more lean and re-focus development on the next Dead Rising game, sources told Kotaku's Jason Schreier. Development on the following Dead Rising game was apparently getting out of hand and the shape kept changing, so this was Capcom's response to keep things in line (although the studio is still understaffed).

The anonymous source said Capcom laid off about 50 employees in the move, or about 20% of its once 250-strong workforce.

Mario Party 11 will come to the Nintendo Switch sometime in 2019, according to a new rumor, pinning one of the most successful franchises in the second year of the console's lifespan.

Nintendo insider Marcus Sellars has made another prediction/leak/rumor with his latest Tweet, which attests that the Japanese gaming giant will release the next Mario Party on the Switch within 2019. Sellars didn't specify whether or not the game would be part of Nintendo's FY'19 release slate (if the game releases before March 2019 it's part of FY19, if it releases after it'll be part of FY'20).

So why should we even care what some person says on Twitter? Sellars has been accurate a few times--he announced the Nintendo Direct date and was right on the money there--but there's no guarantee this prediction will come to fruition. Saying that Nintendo will make a new Mario Party for the Switch should be clear as day to anyone, and the release timing somewhat fits, but be sure to take this with a nice spoonful of salt.

Strong hardware sales and software adoption drove Sony's network sales to milestone heights in its holiday quarter.

While scouting through Sony's Fiscal Q3'17 earnings I noticed something interesting: the company says it made over 300 billion yen (or $2.72 billion) from network sales in the holiday quarter. In it's entire storied history Sony affirmed this is the first time it's made that much in a single quarter. Remember that network sales include digital game and entertainment product sales on the PlayStation Network, PS Plus subscriptions, PS Now subs, and all of its streaming services combined.

The Games and Network Services segment, which serves as the parent segment for network sales, was up about 16% year-over-year to about 718 billion yen ($6.52 billion), driven by strong PlayStation 4 hardware and software sales during the holiday quarter and foreign exchange rates. Sony shipped 9 million PS4s during the Q3'17 timeline. However, network sales were up by a mighty 40% year-over-year.

Sony's plan to attract more paying customers to its premium PlayStation Plus subscription plan is working out.

In October Sony promised to "implement measures" to retain PS Plus subscribers by making the service more appealing and persuasive. "For existing members we would like to make our service more attractive so that the retention rate remains high. That's going to be more important. It is not easy to retain [users] for a long time, but we have been implementing measures to retain them," said Atsuko Murakami, Senior General Manager of Finance Department at Sony Corp, in the company's Fiscal Q2'17 earnings call.

It looks like these measures, which include offering a plethora of AAA games month after month on PS4, have worked: subscribers have risen about 2.7% since last quarter.

Sony's PlayStation 4 continues its strong sales streak through Q3'17, selling almost 10 million units during the crucial holiday period.

In its Fiscal Q3'17 earnings filing, Sony has revealed that the PlayStation 4's total cumulative sales are now at 73.6 million units worldwide since the system launched in 2013. Sony says it has sold-in (shipped to retailers, not sold-through to consumers) 9 million consoles during the quarter from October through December 2017, bringing the total sell-in numbers to 76.5 million units. This effectively means Sony has sold about 96% of the systems it has shipped to retailers, and in Q3'17 it sold-in more than double than its previous quarters combined (Q2'17 saw 4.2 million shipments whereas Q1'17 saw 3.3 million).

The console-maker's Games and Network Services segment, which includes PlayStation hardware and software as well as streaming services, rose 16% year-over-year by 100 billion yen in sales thanks to the strong holiday gaming push. The segment pulled in 718 billion yen in sales and 84.5 billion yen in operating income, the latter of which was up 70% year-over-year.

In a recent interview with GameCentral, the director and CEO of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda has vowed to continue support for single-player titles.

When Matsuda was asked about what he thinks Games as a Service means to him he replied with: "The way we're looking at it, what it boils down to is... that idea of keeping people engaged with our games and enjoying them for longer periods of time. The way we use that expression, really... the whole idea, for a single-player game particularly, is the idea that you have the game released and you keep adding more content to keep the players engaged and enjoying the game."

Matsuda continued answering questions such as if Square Enix will continue making single-player games as well as his personal thoughts on the popular loot box system.