Gaming - Page 920

Early Access titan PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds shows no signs of slowing down, and has now become the top game on Steam in terms of peak player count.

Bluehole's battle royale shooter PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a bonafide gaming sensation. The game, which launched in early access in March for $30, has smashed all expectations to consecutively beat Valve's top all-time hits like DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike: GO in terms of playercount. At the time of writing, PUBG sits at the top of the concurrent player watermark with 877,844 concurrent players logging in and playing today, beating out Valve's first-party games on its own storefront. In fact, PUBG is beating DOTA 2's all-time peak players by 39,325 players, or 4.68% more than DOTA 2's numbers.

As this article goes live, PUBG's active playercount has dropped by 53% of today's peak to 410,391 users. In fact, 6.35% of the 13.82 million peak Steam users who signed in today played PUBG.

With less than 3 weeks until the launch of Divinity: Original Sin 2, Larian Studios prove they're still hard at work making their turn-based RPG as epic as possible.

Kickstarter Update #42 heavily focuses on the audio aspect of the game, Larian Studios are really striving to immerse players in the game and create an unforgettable experience. Swen Vincke, founder of Larian Studios, introduces their composer, Bobby. Who talks about recording an orchestral music score in Budapest with fantastic results. Check out the video below that includes a documentary of Bobby working with the orchestra.

The biggest inclusion in this update however, is the announcement that Divinity: Original Sin 2 will be fully voiced! Swen explains; "About halfway through production, we realized just how big this game was getting. We thought there would be no way, either time or budget-wise, to voice it all. So, we started small, hoping to improve the soundscape by voicing some one-liners and voice barks. But it just didn't feel right. We wanted to hear our beloved characters talk. Really talk. So, we crunched some numbers, poured some coffee and decided: Oh heck, why not. Let's fully voice Divinity: Original Sin 2!"

It was just two weeks ago that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds reached 617,000 concurrent gamers on Steam, but since then there have been hundreds dof thousands of people who have purchased the game, pushing those peak users up to a huge 810,000.

PUBG has now reached a new peak of 810,668 concurrent users on Steam, getting to the edge of the peak where Dota 2 reigns king with 839,424 concurrent users. At this rate, PUBG will have more concurrent gamers playing at once than a massive eSports champion like Dota 2. PUBG's numbers dwarf CS:GO now, which is home to only 537,578 concurrent users at once.

AMD has pushed out its latest drivers, with the launch of the new Radeon Crimson ReLive 17.8.2 drivers, something that include support for the upcoming Destiny 2 beta.

There's also performance improvements for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and F1 2017, and the usual bug fixes and more. PUBG improvements see the Radeon RX Vega 64 on a Core i7-7700K CPU (stock CPU clocks) running PUBG at 33.6FPS at 4K, compared to 28.5FPS under the previous drivers. F1 2017 moves by around 2FPS with the new drivers, to 56FPS average.

Grab the new AMD Radeon Crimson ReLive 17.8.2 drivers right here.

Microsoft's new $499 Xbox One X console sold out special edition pre-orders in just a day's time, and the company's marketing division is positively jubilant. But there's more that meets the eye here.

The Xbox One X's limited Project Scorpio edition is the "fastest-selling pre-order in Xbox history," Microsoft touts proudly on a new Xbox Wire blog post. But what does that actually mean? Without solid pre-order numbers for the Project Scorpio edition or even a hint of hardware allocation, this milestone may actually not be that impressive.

Xbox's marketing division is quite creative at cleverly obfuscating information and technicality-filled PR-speak. Just look at how the company re-defined the world "exclusive" at E3 2017, misleading gamers with terms like "console launch exclusive", as well as saying that games are "Xbox exclusive", a term that loses its merit now that Xbox is a service that includes Windows PCs and Xbox One consoles. Xbox executive Aaron Greenberg recently said that

The demand for Microsoft's new high-end 4K-ready Xbox One X console has surprised the Redmond-based company, with pre-orders of the machine selling out in less than a day's time.

Despite Microsoft's original assertion that the mid-range Xbox One S would be the most popular system this holiday, gamers are apparently very hyped about the new native 4K-capable Xbox One X system. The first batch of pre-orders for the Project Scorpio special edition of the Xbox One X sold out much quicker than Xbox execs planned--in fact company executive Aaron Greenberg said that Xbox One X pre-orders sold out in less than a day.

"We sold out at Amazon in less than 25 minutes. We expected our inventory to last for about a week, and we sold out in less than a day," General Manager of Xbox Games Publishing Aaron Greenberg said in a recent interview with Rocket Beans TV.

Square Enix will breathe new life into the SNES RPG classic Secret of Mana in early 2018.

To celebrate Secret of Mana's 15th anniversary, Square Enix today announced the golden age JRPG will be fully remastered for release on PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and PC in 2018. The Japanese games-maker will breathe new life into the old-school title with fully remastered HD graphics--I personally like the bit-style sprites myself--along with updated sound effects, voice overs, and a new musical score. For some reason Square Enix is skipping the Nintendo Switch despite the game being an absolutely perfect fit for the device, and is yet another major classic remaster/collection that's passed the system by.

Secret of Mana will be re-released on PS4, PS Vita and PC on February 15, 2018 for $39.99. Pre-orders will include a day one pack including three in-game character costumes.

Marc Laidlaw, ex-Valve employee and lead writer on Half-Life 2, today stirred up some old ghosts by publishing the plot summary for Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

These days Half-Life might in fact be dead, but back in the days before Marc Laidlaw left Valve, the series was very much alive. As we all know Half-Life 2: Episode 3 was never released and remains a curious part of gaming history, and today that history transitions from campfire legend to indisputable fact.

Mr. Laidlaw exposed the scrapped game's plot with an illuminating blog post that discusses Gordon Freeman's continued journey after the events of Episode 2. Of course the publishing of this outline probably means Half-Life 2: Episode 3 will never ever release, but that's something most of us came to terms with long ago.

With the recent announcement of Age of Empires IV, Microsoft continued the good news for RTS fans by announcing a release date for the upcoming Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, October 17 2017.

This coincides with Age of Empires 20th year anniversary, which graced our PC's back on October 15, 1997.

Age of Empires: DE will be a fully remastered version of the original with enhanced 4K graphics, remastered soundtrack and improved gameplay including attack move commands, increased population cap, contextual rally points, unit queuing and right-click scrolling.

Frontier Developments have announced their upcoming release, Jurassic World Evolution. Along with this exciting news, Frontier also included an announcement trailer for your enjoyment.

Frontier explain how every choice impacts the game by leading the player along different paths. You will also be responsible for every aspect of your Jurassic World including construction of attractions, containments and research. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is being responsible for bio-engineering of new dinosaur breeds, this could explain the 'spectacular challenges' Frontier have mentioned.

All this chaos will take place on the legendary island of Isla Nublar and the surrounding islands of the Muertes Archipelago. Information is rather limited at present, with only PC, PS4 and Xbox One releases scheduled for summer 2018.

Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene teased a new image of Battlegrounds upcoming new map, which rocks an awesome-looking desert style, and a dense city center with a heap of buildings that are up to eight stories tall.

The development team at Bluehole have been working on Battlegrounds' new maps for a while now, with an earlier work-in-progress sketch including a look at the entire map.

The new map will change the dynamics of Battlegrounds up, offering players more vertical gameplay inside of the buildings. Or on the outside, or on top, or inside the buildings and working their way up, or down. It's going to be a fun ride, but we don't know when the new map will go live just yet.

FIFA 18 is going to be a kick ass game on the Nintendo Switch, with a FIFA producer confirming FIFA 18 will run at 1080p 60FPS when the Switch is docked, and 720p 60FPS when it's in portable mode.

The Supervising Producer on FIFA 18 told website Nintendo Everything: "We spent a lot of time actually understanding what the console is. In dock, what we're seeing right now, for example, is 1080p run running at 60 frames per second", confirming a 1080p resolution in docked mode. "When you plug out and you play in handheld it's 720p".

The team spent considerable time nailing optimizations to hit 60FPS in both handheld and docked modes, with the FIFA 18 producer adding: "We spent a lot of time making sure that transition happens seamlessly and you still get 60 frames per second".

EA released their 4K 60FPS footage of Need for Speed: Payback running on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti powered gaming PC from Gamescom 2017 yesterday, and now we're getting some 4K 60FPS footage of Forza 7 from Gamescom, and it looks great... for a console.

It was all captured from an Xbox One X console, and for an APU-powered small console, the 4K 60FPS goodness is still great. It doesn't look as good as a high-end PC would, with the obvious textures popping up and Medium-like graphics... but then we can blame YouTube compression, and more.

Developer Turn 10 have been pumping some serious work into Forza 7, so you can expect support for UltraWide 21:9 resolutions, a built-in benchmark (THANK YOU, Turn 10) and more when it launches on October 3:

Square Enix has provided us with an official statement that specialization requirements for Final Fantasy XV's incoming Windows Edition on PC were published in error.

Earlier we reported that Square Enix is tailoring Final Fantasy XV's PC version for enthusiast hardware. The specifications, which the publisher informs us were erroneously posted on the initial press release, incorrectly stated that the game recommends high-end hardware like an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, 16GB of RAM, an Intel Core i7 or Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, and a whopping 170GB of HDD space.

"The recommended specs text that accompanied the Windows Edition trailer were posted in error and have since been removed," a Square Enix representative told us. "The specs listed were not final as the game is still in development. We will officially publish both minimum and recommended specs for the game once we finish development, so that they are fully accurate."

Square Enix and Ubisoft have teamed up for a surprise crossover promotion, a move which improves visibility and engages players on the respective IPs.

The new promo sees a special Assassin's Festival event being injected into Final Fantasy XV, adding key Assassin's Creed franchise content into the game in a free timed event. Gamers know that FFXV is no stranger to in-game advertisements--ahem Cup Noodles--and some may see this move as Square Enix "selling out." But these cross-overs are mutually beneficial for sure: Ubisoft arguably needs no help advertising Assassin's Creed: Origins, as it's the triumphant return of the beloved franchise, but this promo reminds FFXV players about the game while engaging them with new content to boot. In a sense, Square Enix has hit two birds with one stone: achieved an interesting new partnership with one of the most powerful forces of the games industry while providing new content that will pull players back into game, and possibly even spark game sales.

But what about Final Fantasy XV? Surely there will be magical in-game content and weapons crossing over to ancient Egypt too, right? Ubisoft has yet to confirm that AC: Origins will have FFXV-related content, despite the reveal art showing the game's protagonist, Bayek, wielding weapons inspired from the series. I've already predicted that Assassin's Creed: Origins will be monetized via loot-based microtransactions, and it's possible this cross-over could extend into that monetization path. I expect some items will be free, and more premium cross-over items will be monetized in loot boxes in some form.

Ubisoft today announced its sixth Rainbow Six: Siege expansion, Operation Blood Orchid will be delayed until September 5. Siege's latest update was scheduled for an August 29 release.

However, Ubisoft will instead release Operation Blood Orchid onto the Technical Test Server on August 29 with the official release one week later. To soften the pain, Ubisoft announced that Rainbow Six: Siege will be free to play this weekend for all platforms (PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) and on sale at a discounted price.

With the Ubisoft's previous announcement to focus on performance, stability and improving the base game in May, this led to Ubisoft's previous update, Operation Health. Despite the feedback regarding lack of new operators, gadgets and maps, Operation Health was deemed a success.

Overwatch's season 5 of competitive play concludes on August 28, meaning competitive season 6 will be upon us very soon, August 31 at 5PM PDT to be exact.

A new season means new and improved changes, with Blizzard releasing a Developer Update in which Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan elaborates on the major changes that will impact Season 6. Blizzard have noticed that as a season progresses, player engagement and competition declines.

Blizzard has decided to decrease the season length from three months, to two months, with Kaplan saying that the team will continue to monitor feedback regarding season length and this could lead to further tweaks in future seasons. With a shorter season length, this means end of season competitive points will be less.

Quake Champions has hit Steam Early Access, offering up the first-person gibfest for $29.99 - even though it's a free-to-play title. What do you get for $30? Well, you get access to all of the upcoming fighters through to the end of 2018, and a little more.

The $30 entry price into Quake Champions on Steam Early Access will get you the aforementioned Champions through to the end of 2018, but you'll also get an exclusive look at Ranger, and three boxes that you can open for cosmetic items, yay.

What you'll get in the Sample Package:

Bungie is showing that PC gamers really are important, working with NVIDIA very closely on making the PC version of Destiny 2 the best version on any platform.

The new video showcases the Inverted Spire Strike mission in Destiny 2, something that will be featured in Destiny 2's upcoming PC beta which kicks off on August 28 for those on Early Access, and August 29 for everyone else.

Destiny 2 is launching onto the PC in its best form, offering up HDR support, as well as SLI for those with multiple GeForce graphics cards. UltraWide display owners will enjoy 21:9 aspect ratio support, and more when Destiny 2 launches on the PC on October 26.

UPDATE: Square Enix has provided us with an official statement that specialization requirements for Final Fantasy XV's incoming Windows Edition on PC were published in error. "The recommended specs text that accompanied the Windows Edition trailer were posted in error and have since been removed," a Square Enix representative told us. "The specs listed were not final as the game is still in development. We will officially publish both minimum and recommended specs for the game once we finish development, so that they are fully accurate."

Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition should get mods at some point, opening up a massive wealth of pontential for PC gamers.

Just yesterday I wrote up an opinion piece that Final Fantasy XV is the new modern-day Skyrim. Now that game director Hajime Tabata says we should expect mod support for Final Fantasy XV's newly announced Windows Edition, that comparison is even stronger. Earlier this year Mr. Tabata said he'd love to include mod support in Final Fantasy XV's PC version, and at Gamescom 2017 he's sticking to his words.