Gaming - Page 914

Bethesda has pledged to support Nintendo's new Switch console-handheld hybrid for the long run, and sees the system as a viable platform for some of their most popular games.

With so many third-party developers and publishers supporting it, the Switch has broken the terrible bonds of the Wii U. After many many years of avoidance, devs like Bethesda, who make the popular Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, see Nintendo as a partner. The publisher has made good on its initial promises to support the Switch by announcing two of the most mature, bloody, and adult-themed games for the platform: id Software's grisly demon-slaying FPS Doom, and MachineGames' upcoming Nazi-blasting Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. And of course there's Bethesda's perennial Skyrim which is also coming to the handheld-console.

But this isn't the end--in fact, these games kick off the beginning of a long-lasting union between Bethesda and Nintendo. The publisher is keen on building a solid business relationship with Nintendo--which in of itself speaks volumes in how much the Japanese games-maker has changed. "We're obviously excited about these two games, but it's not as if we're going to just do these two games and that's it. We want this to be the start of a relationship that we build with Nintendo and Nintendo fans," Bethesda Softworks VP of Public Relations Pete Hines told GamesBeat in a recent interview.

Following PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' massive success, key publishers and developers are chasing the battle royale market--and the indie studio may find itself eclipsed by more powerful games makers quite soon.

Bluehole is finding out sooner rather than later that it doesn't own the battle royale genre, and game developers are starting to cash in on the market. After all, you don't sell 10 million copies of a game without the world's most profitable publishers taking notice. The game has broken record after record, and is now the most popular game on Steam in concurrent players, and sees tremendous engagement via Twitch and YouTube streaming. It's a smash-hit juggernaut that shows no signs of slowing down--until, that is, other publishers step in and wave around big budgets and resources and ultimately flesh out the genre more efficiently than Bluehole can. The recent debacle between Epic Games and Bluehole is just the beginning, and the PUBG dev better get used to more battle royale iterations flooding the market.

The real problem that Bluehole is facing is that it literally can't keep up with its playerbase. PlayerUnknown himself Brendan Greene said that PUBG is expanding too fast and the team can't keep up with its millions upon millions of players that step into the game every day. In fact, if it weren't for Microsoft's massive team and monetary investment, PUBG wouldn't be coming to Xbox for quite a while.

Blizzard has formally revealed the full roster of teams in the Overwatch League, and an official season kickoff date for the big-money competition.

The Overwatch League is an incredibly important milestone in the franchise's rapidly expanding history. The shooter, which became Blizzard's most recent billion dollar franchise in May of this year, has been a transformative force in the games industry in terms of monetization strategies, engagement, and monthly active users. And like the dragons in Blizzard's World of Warcraft, the FPS juggernaut is set to grow to leviathan proportions thanks to eSports initiatives like the Overwatch League. The games-maker even created its own stadium-like venue to host the event, further adding a real sports-like feel to the experience. Fans and viewers will also buy tickets to watch the experience at the arena.

Blizzard has announced the Overwatch League will begin on January 10, 2018 with twelve global teams competing for the seven-digit grand prize. The pool will likely be funded with exclusive in-game loot purchases made by consumers to support their favorite teams, similar to Valve's prize funding for DOTA 2 competitions. The Overwatch League teams are:

PlatinumGames' tech-infused action RPG has enjoyed strong acclaim and sales across the globe, so much that Square Enix is committing itself to the franchise.

NieR: Automata has shipped and digitally sold more than 2 million units worldwide across PC and PlayStation 4, Japanese games publisher Square Enix today confirmed. Back in April we reported the grim action role-playing game hit 1 million shipments and sales, and now the game has more than doubled that milestone in the span of five months.

"NieR:Automata, which we released in February 2017, has proven a global hit far in excess of our expectations. It has not only reminded the world of the high quality of Japanese games, but also demonstrated significant potential for future franchise development," said Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda in the company's recent Annual Report 2017 filing.

Rockstar Games today posted up a simple advertisement promo for Red Dead Redemption 2, promising more content updates coming next week.

New info on Rockstar's massively anticipated Western sequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, will be announced and showcased next week on Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 11 AM EST, the developer announced today. In a very cryptic Rockstar fashion, no specifics accompanied the simple picture billboard, but it's possible the team will finally reveal the game's exact release date in 2018.

Red Dead Redemption 2's absence at E3 2017 and successive games industry trade shows was marked by gamers and industry figures alike, but Rockstar Games typically moves at it's own pace and doesn't need big showcases to draw millions of viewers. In fact, it's extremely simplified social media presence is enough.

France's Florange Law may arm Vivendi with enough shares to forcibly take over French games-maker Ubisoft.

The long-standing battle between Vivendi and Ubisoft's founding Guillemot family may conclude in November, the Financial Times reports. Vivendi, who currently owns 26.6% of Ubisoft's share capital and 25.2% of voting rights, may see its stake in the company doubled under France's Florange Law, thus boosting the company's stake in the games-maker past the 30% needed for a takeover.

Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot warns Vivendi that an aggressive takeover would be very risky. "The question is whether Vivendi will then make a tender offer or not. We feel it wouldn't be in the best interests of their shareholders because buying a company in our industry aggressively is actually very risky," Mr. Guillemot said during Ubisoft's Annual General Meeting of shareholders yesterday. The CEO goes on to say that being a part of a big conglomerate like Vivendi would essentially cut it's Achilles heel and significantly stifle agility--which Mr. Guillemot calls "a death sentence in our industry."

In wake of Steam's Review system being abused by gamers due to Dota 2 being blamed for killing Half Life 3 and gamers supporting PewDiePie regarding Campo Santo's DMCA, Valve have made some changes in how Steam's game reviews work. Valve hope to prevent incidences like the two mentioned don't reoccur as those reviews don't provide a true reflection of the experience with the game.

Valve have immediately introduced a new feature called Histograms, a feature that shows a histogram of the positive to negative reviews since the game was released on a daily basis. This data reflects dramatic increases in positive or negative reviews from a certain period, indicating a time where possible outside influences (eg. No Half Life 3 or Campo Santo's DMCA) have affected reviews. You can isolate days to read particular reviews for the day, or days of your interest.

"Starting today, each game page now contains a histogram of the positive to negative ratio of reviews over the entire lifetime of the game, and by clicking on any part of the histogram you're able to read a sample of the reviews from that time period," Steam UI designer Alden Kroll said in the Steam blog.

New heroes always add a new element to a game, too many new heroes too quickly can generally lead to balancing issues that can break a game. During a video withIGN's new Expert Mode, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan discussed Overwatch's next hero, referred to only as "Hero 26".

"Hero 26 is very playable and very fun internally, and that's all I'll say. It's not coming out as soon as you think, but Hero 26 is already amazing." Kaplan then further elaborated "I don't think there's such a thing as too many heroes, but I think we also need to come out with heroes at a good pace."

It's been a few months since we last saw a hero released, July 27 in fact when Doomfist was introduced into Overwatch. Blizzard have put their time and resources into their latest patch that saw a new game modes and map. Typically, Blizzard hype up and tease new heroes before their release. With Jeff's comments, it appears it may be an extended wait for Hero 26.

Cross-platform between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sounds like a complex dream, or perhaps it's as simple as setting a few parameters?

It was reported and later confirmed by an Epic Games representative, that cross-platform play between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for Epic's Fortnite was enabled over the weekend due to a configuration issue.

"We had a configuration issue and it has now been corrected" the spokesperson said.

We're still just under two months away from the release of Need for Speed: Payback, with publisher EA and developer Ghost Games releasing the PC system requirements.

Need for Speed: Payback requires a Core i3 6300 or AMD FX 8150 processor as a minimum, coupled with a GeForce GTX 750 Ti or Radeon HD 7850, which will be good for 720p @ 30FPS with low settings. If you want 1080p 60FPS at high settings, you'll need a Core i5-4690K or AMD FX 8350 along with the Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 1060.

NVIDIA is celebrating Need for Speed: Payback with a new 4K gameplay video, powered by a single GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. NVIDIA explains: "Check out our exclusive Need for Speed Payback Graveyard Shift PC gameplay in 4K running at 60 FPS, captured on a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti PC. Watch as Tyler heads to the airfield and takes on the street league Graveyard Shift, race down the runway, grab some serious air, and work his way up through Silver Canyon".

Project CARS 2 is about to slide onto the market, with news breaking that developer Slightly Mad Studios is working on a new Fast and the Furious game.

Eurogamer reports that the CEO of Slightly Mad Studios, Ian Bell, teased the game in a big way. Bell said: "Guess what the latest Need for Speed game is doing and have a think about which Hollywood film they're copying, and then I can tell you we have a six-year deal with that major Hollywood company that'll beat what Need for Speed is doing. For the next six years".

Considering the kind of money that Fast and the Furious makes with each movie, it makes sense for there to be a game to tie into it. What do you think about the Project CARS developer making a Fast and the Furious game? What would you want to see in the game itself?

2K Games is selling a $150 copy of NBA 2K 18 on the Nintendo Switch...which is half of the console's asking cost. Yes, really.

In today's industry the gaming world is inundated with expensive collector's editions, pre-order bonuses, season passes, and over-priced digital deluxe special edition gold-platinum mega editions, publishers it seems games-makers are all too eager to sell you anything but the base $59.99 copy of the game. One such explosively expensive digital version has popped up on the Nintendo Switch's eShop and is asking gamers to spend $150--or 50% of the Switch's $299 price tag--on a single game: NBA 2K18.

The NBA 2K18 Legend Edition Gold version costs a staggering $150, easily making it the most expensive game on the Switch's eShop. Yes, this kind of thing has invaded the Switch too--no longer is it the last bastion of hope against crazy expensive video game temptations. A quick cursory search showed that there are currently no other digital deluxe versions of games available on the Switch storefront. So what do you get if you spend $150 on this edition? 250,000 VC, which are units to spend on the game's massively lucrative microtransaction packs, 40 MyTEAM Packs--what you spend VC on--that are only doled out once a week, and a bunch of in-game digital jerseys and shoes.

Xbox division head Phil Spencer has now been promoted to a bigger leadership role at Microsoft, a move that strongly re-iterates the technology titan's support for gaming.

Phil Spencer, the man who's credited with essentially "saving" the Xbox brand and reversing significant damage incurred by the 2013 Xbox One launch, has now been promoted to a new role in Microsoft's executive branch. Mr. Spencer is now the Executive Vice President, Gaming at Microsoft, a promotion from his previous role as Head of Xbox

"Phil Spencer is executive vice president, Gaming at Microsoft. In this role, Spencer is accountable for leading Microsoft's gaming business across all devices and services," the company's leadership profile reads. "With his team and game development partners, Spencer continues to push the boundaries of creativity, technical innovation and fun across gaming genres, audiences and devices."

Nintendo will sell 130 million units of its Switch handheld-console hybrid in four years of availability, investment firm Credit Suisse predicts.

Japanese console-maker Nintendo has been lifted to "outperform" status by Swiss investment broker Credit Suisse, who now forecasts the company to sell around 130 million Switch consoles by 2022. This prediction, which would see the Nintendo Switch beating the mega-popular Wii and the 3DS' current 67.08 hardware sales by 94% in four years, is predicated wholly on the basis that the Switch will be accepted mainly as a handheld by consumers. However Nintendo has been adamant in defining the Switch as a "home console first and foremost," and the portability aspect is seen as a sidenote, despite the fact regions like Japan thrive on handheld gaming.

Credit Suisse analyst Keiichi Yoneshima explains the prediction by saying the Switch will hit its sales peak about three years after its launch, or 2022 during Nintendo's fiscal 2019 year timeline.

Capcom's new MMO-style Monster Hunter game gets an official release date, and it's sooner than we expected!

Monster Hunter World will see a simultaneous global release on January 26, 2017, Capcom today confirmed at this year's Tokyo Game Show. The game, which brings players from all across the world together with online-based co-op play, sees gamers entering an engaging and dynamic world replete with seamless map roaming, drop-in and drop-out multiplayer, and tons of monsters that're bound to a realistic food chain. In a recent article I admitted Monster Hunter World looks truly alive, and I can't wait to return to a proper console-based MonHun experience.

Launching this ambitious online game in January means the title will fall within Capcom's fiscal year 2018 timeline, which ends on March 31, 2018. This will ensure the publisher ends its fiscal year with massive earnings from the landmark RPG--not only is the game a mainline entry in the massively popular Monster Hunter franchise, but it's an online game which offers tremendous potential for monetization.

Square Enix today announced a brand new IP called Left Alive, a new "dark and gritty" survival shooter set in a war-torn world with mechs.

The new shooter was revealed at the Tokyo Game Show 2017 event in Japan, but official details are sparse. The publisher notes that Left Alive is a "survival action shooter," and mech suits are shown in the official teaser. Key Japanese developers including the game director for the beloved Armored Core series have joined the Left Alive team to give it a distinct style and flair.

Square Enix has recruited talented alums like Toshifumi Nabeshima (who directed the Armored Core series), and Takayuki Yanase (mech designer, Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Xenoblade Chronicles X) to flesh out the world and the survival mechanics. Last but certainly not least, Yoji Shinkawa splashes life into the game with the instantly recognizable style from Metal Gear artwork.

Rocket League's Autumn Update is shaping up to be a huge update with seasonal arenas, time-limited events, new battle-cars and items, transparent goalposts and the start of competitive play for Season 6.

Set for a Septmber 28 release, the Autumn Update features some PC-exclusive updates aimed at esports with LAN support and Tournaments mode being added. Tournaments mode will be a beta build before being released to consoles next year.

Tournaments mode will allow for custom tournaments to be created by users, with the major concept driven to expand Rocket League's already growing esports scene. On the topic of esports, new this update also features Director mode, a cinematic presentation that again enhances Rocket League's appeal towards esport viewing.

Larians Studios' epic ARPG Divinity: Original Sin 2 nearly didn't launch on its scheduled release date. In a Kickstarter update Larians Studios' Founder Swen Vincke, revealed that a power outage of not just the studio, but the entire city (Ghent, Belgium) caused some stressful hours prior to launch.

This power outage wasn't the only issue encountered by the team, Swen also reveals that the PC they had planned to use for uploading the final build to Steam refused to boot. In the end, Swen and his team were able to upload the build in time for a successful launch. There is some bad news with translations for other languages not available at launch, this is due to writers making late changes and not having time to voice other languages. However, this update should be released this week.

It appears the public are happy with D:OS2, with over 85,000 concurrent users recorded on Steam today. This is a huge achievement and I would expect this to push over the 100k mark, remember that D:OS2 is also released on GoG so there may already be over 100k concurrent players across both platforms.

If you've seen Oceans Eleven or The Italian Job, you would be familiar with movies based upon pulling off the perfect heist to steal precious cargo. In Milton Keynes, UK the perfect heist has been pulled off, if you're a fan of the Total War series that is.

Total War: Warhammer 2, set for release September 28, has fallen victim to the greatest heist of the century as a van transporting copies of its collector's edition was robbed.

"We'd like to reassure fans who have pre-ordered their Serpent God Edition that this incident will not affect them receiving their copy," Total War brand director Rob Bartholemew said. "Copies of the game obtained before launch will not be playable until the game is activated at 8am BST on launch day."

We don't have much longer to wait until EA releases Star Wars Battlefront II, with developer Criterion saying that "there is no VR" in the game.

The news came from Metro GameCentral, who talked with Criterion General Manager, Matt Webster, who said: "There is no VR. At some point we could sit down and spend a good number of hours talking about where VR needs to get to in order to work with that, because in something like this you're doing the job of a fighter pilot. And in the real-world that has a significant physiological effect on you, which would dramatically limit the audience".

Webster continued: "But making the VR demo absolutely informed the work we're doing now. So there's a lot of the VR mission's soul in Starfighter Assault".