Gaming News - Page 92

Rumors surrounding the upcoming launch of the still-to-be-announced Nintendo Switch 2 (if it ends up benign called that) have been ramping up in recent weeks. According to multiple sources, the new console was shown to developers at Gamescom in September, with demos showcasing 4K visuals thanks to new NVIDIA DLSS-powered hardware. And with that, several insiders and industry analysts are predicting a second-half of 2024 launch for the Switch 2.

Where does this leave the current Nintendo Switch? According to a new interview with Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa over at the Japanese publication Nikkei (translated via VGC), it's business as usual for the current Switch. For the current fiscal year ending March 2024, the company will focus primarily on the Switch, with support and game releases continuing to the next financial year ending March 2025.

"We are still working on software for the Switch for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025," Furukawa said in the interview. "In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, we hope to sustain the momentum of Zelda and the [Super Mario Bros] movie, with a focus on the holiday sales season. As for hardware, we will maximize not only new demand for the hardware but also for those buying second consoles and replacements."

Diablo IV's second season, the Season of Blood, is set to kick off on October 17 and is set to be alongside the massive Patch 1.2.0. Outside of details on Class and balance changes and new item details, Blizzard has lifted the lid on a big chunk of the new content coming with Season of Blood, including some big updates to the endgame.

With each new Diablo IV season bringing a character wipe (meaning you need to start leveling up with no access to existing items, some recent complaints about the game have centered on how grindy the late-game leveling feels and how there's not much variety to the endgame outside of running dungeons and picking up the same gear.

Well, Season of Blood is bringing new and returning 5 Endgame bosses and the Boss ladder, which will allow players to target farm Uniques and Uber Uniques with a higher drop rate at these boss battles. Blizzard notes that Legion Events and World Bosses will frequently spawn alongside other "endgame improvements."

When you think about playing a Blizzard title on PC, whether that's World of Warcraft or even something like the original StarCraft - you think of Battle.net, the developer's PC launcher and online service that it has been running ever since gamers first went online to matchmake in Diablo II.

And with the long-awaited release of Diablo IV this year, its PC release was naturally on Battle.net. However, in a surprising (and very cool) move, the game is officially coming to Steam on October 17, coinciding with the release of the game's second season, the 'Season of Blood.' And yes, this means Steam Achievements for the game are coming, and the option to invite Steam friends to play.

Blizzard notes that it's all about opening up the game to a wider audience, and with seamless cross-play and cross-progression, Diablo IV is playable on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. As with the game's console versions, those who purchase the game on Steam will need to link their account to an existing or new Battle.net account to enable the cross-play features.

Publishers and developers are using Xbox Game Pass subscriptions to help catalyze growth of newer monetization methods, signalling another disruptive shift across gaming.

Xbox Game Pass is kind of like a river of revenue, and like a major river, there's all sorts of smaller tributaries and streams that feed into the flow. The main draw of Game Pass is being able to access hundreds of games for a flat fee, but it's the myriad of smaller synergistic monetization paths that help turn the river's flow from a meandering waterway into white water rapids.

The temporary-access, all-you-can-play model behind Game Pass gives way to other avenues, two of which are being leveraged to what appears to be great success. These include early access and incredibly attractive pricing discounts.

A new hotfix has been applied to Baldur's Gate 3, the eighth one to be issued for the RPG (with some major patches in-between, too), and it has some important fixes - as well as a rather more off-the-wall tweak.

There are some cures for crashing here, including the resolution of a multiplayer crash that happens after listening to a dialogue following an active roll. The game could also fall over when re-assigning characters in split-screen play, and that issue has been cured.

Another important one is that Larian has fixed a problem which was causing saved games to be invalid - nasty indeed.

September marked the tenth anniversary of Grand Theft Auto V, and even though the game (specifically Grand Theft Auto Online) continues to be extremely popular, selling over 185 million copies - fans are clamoring for that official Grand Theft Auto VI reveal.

Developer Rockstar Games has acknowledged that it is working on the highly anticipated sequel. However, release windows, setting, and how it will look and feel - are all a mystery outside of leaks, suggesting a return to Vice City.

Rockstar is known for placing cryptic hints and teasers in games and other places, and some fans are convinced that Grand Theft Auto Online's Moon Festival event holds the key to when we'll officially get that big GTA 6 unveiling. Per the event's naming, the clues are about the moon and its connection to the Waning Gibbous phase.

Microsoft sees the path to achieve 100 million+ Xbox Game Pass subscribers by 2030.

The recent FTC v Microsoft trial leaks were some of the biggest in the history of interactive entertainment. The erroneously-uploaded files offer a candid look at upcoming plans for Xbox, including new mid-gen refreshes and a potential hybrid compute console that could change the future of gaming.

The leaked documents show that Xbox Game Pass is a big part of this plan. Microsoft eventually wants to lead the Big 3 hierarchy and help usher the industry into a new age of disruption, and it wants to use Game Pass to help make it happen.

A throwback post from one of PlayStation's former bosses gives a quick reminder of Sony's handheld production numbers.

There was a time when Sony challenged Nintendo in the handheld market. We all know how that went (while Sony has exited the dedicated handheld business, the spirit of the PSP and Vita live on with the new $99 PlayStation Portal remote play tablet), but gaming was way different nearly 20 years ago.

Sony's first handheld, the PlayStation Portable, was a big success. Official Sony shipment records show that the PlayStation Portable sold-in/shipped "over 76.4 million units." Now thanks to Shawn Layden, who was president of Sony Computer Entertainment America from 2014-2018, we know how many PSP units that Sony actually produced.

SEGA has officially cancelled its first Super Game, and it's possible that the new business model is now under question.

SEGA has an ambitious vision. The Japanese publisher wants to create an entirely new genre to provide long-term sustainability--not exactly an original idea, but SEGA did come up with a term to describe this new genre: Super Games. So what is a Super Game? It's kind of a spin on the live service/games-as-a-service model, but there's some criteria.

To qualify as a Super Game, a title will target $1 billion in lifetime revenues. That's a pretty lofty target that takes publishers years to achieve--however, some like Activision can achieve it in a single year--and the closest thing that SEGA has right now is Phantasy Star Online 2.

Meta's metaverse avatars have come a long, long way, showing that the company's billion-dollar loser is starting to look like a winner.

At the behest of Mark Zuckerberg, Meta has spent tens of billions of dollars on mixed reality. The company is trying to create the metaverse, a nascent concept that combines digital avatars with mixed reality peripherals to deliver realism in a digital space. For Meta, the goal is to create a new digital world that can be monetized over time through advertising while also linking up to entertainment services, content delivery, and social experiences.

Meta has lost over $33 billion on the metaverse so far, burning through Facebook revenue in an attempt to grow the new digital realm. In the past, Meta has faced ridicule for its cartoony metaverse avatars--the digital representations of people in that metaphysical space. Now Mark Zuckerberg shows off just how far Meta has come with its new hyper-realistic code avatars...and things are looking pretty impressive.