Gaming - Page 930

Singer songwriter Dion DiMucci is suing Zenimax Media for their use of his song The Wanderer in a Fallout 4 ad.

DiMucci has filed a suit on July 2 against Fallout parent company Zenimax Media Inc. for the unauthorized use of The Wanderer in a live-action advertisement, and is seeking $1,000,000 in damages as well the removal of the video from all widespread video websites.

DiMucci claims that the live action advertisement harms his reputation and persona as a singer songwriter, and is seeking damages from Zenimax. The suit claims that the "repugnant" advertisement features "objectionable repeated homicides in a dark dystopian landscape where violence is glorified as sport," and is in direct violation DiMucci's rights as per his contract.

BioWare is making what appears to be a big AAA mainline Dragon Age game alongside its massive new IP, Anthem.

We've known for a while now that BioWare is developing a new Dragon Age game, and now we have more clues that the title will be a huge sequel that furthers the franchise. Dragon Age Creative Director Mike Laidlaw recent confirmed that a "new Dragon Age something" is in the works, echoing brief DA concept art teases from BioWare's Mark Darrah back in January.

Now we have our latest clue that the new Dragon Age game will be a massive RPG project in the vein of Dragon Age: Inqusition. BioWare's core Edmonton team is on a hiring spree to bring in new talent to specifically work on the new Dragon Age project. The developer currently has 14 positions open that are explicitly for the Dragon Age franchise, many of which are higher level jobs like lead cinematic animator and senior character and technical artists.

Valve Corp's Alden Kroll reveals key metrics of its titanic PC games storefront Steam, and highlights future updates coming to the platform at the Indigo showcase in the Netherlands.

Steam, Valve Corp's colossal digital PC gaming storefront that houses thousands of games from AAA juggernauts to indies, is getting bigger and bigger every year, and Valve is finding new ways to ensure the platform doesn't get too unwieldy in size and scope. According the latest data from Valve, Steam has absolutely massive DAU and MAUs to compliment gigantic sales figures: Steam currently has 33 million active users per day, 67 million monthly active users, and gamers are buying an average of 1.5 million new games per month.

Although North American gamers spend the most on Steam games, the marketplace has a strong grip throughout the world thanks to Valve's widespread localization efforts. Mr. Kroll revealed that Steam currently supports 26 languages across the globe, and accepts payments in 28 different currencies across over 70 types of payment methods. Valve has even peppered online servers throughout the world to spread resources across key regions.

Imagine having to download 100GB for a single game just 10 years ago... I just can't. Even though the Xbox One X version of Forza Motorsport 7 was revealed to be 100GB, thanks to all those beautiful 4K textures, the upcoming Windows 10 version of the game will be an "approximate size" of 99GB.

According to a Microsoft rep: "The team is expecting the install size to be 100GB, with the download size being a bit smaller". The exact download size of Forza Motorsport 7 isn't finalized just yet, but the team has "a continued focus on improvements to download experiences". For PC gamers without 4K displays, the massive 100GB download isn't going to go down too well. Microsoft could possibly change things for the 100GB download by splitting the high-res textures into an optional download, bringing the overall download size of Forza Motorsport 7 significantly.

Forza Motorsport 7 launches on October 3.

UPDATE: PUBG developer Brenden Greene has issued a statement to PC Gamer saying that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds may not be released by October after all, but the team will do everything they can to ensure the game comes out of early access in Q4 2017.

Check below for the statement:

Pokemon GO has currently made $1.2 billion in total revenues in a single year's time.

When it released in July 2016, Niantic's augmented reality-powered mobile game Pokemon GO took the world by storm: millions of mobile phone owners flocked the streets searching for digital Pocket Monsters. While the game's playerbase has slowed down a year later, mobile intelligence firm Apptopia reports the game is still quite popular and has earned an estimated $1.2 billion in lifetime global revenues in a year's time with 752 million total downloads.

Although Pokemon GO earned most of its revenue last year--AppAnnie estimates Niantic raked in $950 million and the end of 2016, and SuperData predicts the company flew out the gate with $206 million in earnings a month after its release--the game still has a strong active userbase that's constantly fed with new content. Niantic has strategically released new updates like its most recent anniversary update to drive up MAUs, which sit at 60 million users in June.

Today 343 Industries made good on its Halo tease by announcing 4K support for Halo 5, and that all existing Xbox 360 Halo games are now backward compatible on the Xbox One.

Halo 5: Guardians is getting an enhancement upgrade on Microsoft's new $499 Xbox One X console, but developer 343 Industries hasn't revealed much information. According to 343i, Halo 5 will support "true 4K" when the console releases in November.

Remember that the Xbox One X will play all existing Xbox One games better with native performance scaling, but any game must have specific patch upgrades in order to leverage the full brunt of the console's highly customized 6TFLOP AMD Polaris-derived graphics processor.

Nintendo today revealed new information about the Switch's smartphone app, which is required for online lobbies and voice chatting on the console.

Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid is missing one key thing: voice chatting. Instead of allowing a headset to be plugged into the Switch or the Switch Pro controller, Nintendo has moved voice chatting and friend parties to a dedicated smartphone app. As you'd imagine, online voice chat on the Switch is a mess, and Nintendo has announced key info about the app itself.

The Nintendo Switch Online mobile app will release on July 21 alongside Splatoon 2, and allows users to "send multiplayer invites to their friends via social media, as well as enables use of voice chat in battles." The Switch Online mobile app does a lot more than voice chatting, though: the app is a hub for online-enabled games, which have their own in-app companion modules.

Select PlayStation 4 games like Killzone Shadow Fall can now be played on Windows PCs via PlayStation Now.

In a bid to counter Microsoft's strongly received and affordable Xbox Game Pass subscription service, Sony aims to bring PS3 and PS4 games onto PC with PlayStation Now. Sony's move to PC was announced back in March, and now Sony has delivered its first batch of PS4 games that are playable on Windows PCs via the PS Now service.

Sadly, Sony's initial PS4-on-PC offering is quite sparse and doesn't have heavy-hitting exclusives like The Last of Us Remastered or Bloodborne--those games are likely to stay on PlayStation. The PS4 games lineup mostly includes third-party games and indies, but Sony did throw in Killzone Shadow Fall and God of War 3 Remastered as well as Resogun. Sony also has a number of PlayStation 3 games available for streaming onto PC, but key exclusives are likewise missing.

After more than two years, Ark: Survival Evolved is finally leaving early access next month...but Studio Wildcard has already raised the price.

Ark: Survival Evolved is slated to release as a bona-fide finished game on August 8, 2017, and like most new games, Ark will be priced at a $59.99 premium. Although Ark's full release is more than 30 days away, Studio Wildcard has just now doubled the game's price from $29.99 to $59.99 on Steam to "ensure retail parity for the upcoming launch." Ark's price had jumped to $60 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 while back.

Ark has been in early access since 2015, and despite its popularity, the developers have sparked ire over business decisions including charging $20 for a new DLC pack while the game was still in early access.

Bandai Namco today confirmed that Tekken 7's mysterious new mode will be Tekken Bowl.

Rather than include a recreational mini-game mode in the full release of Tekken 7, Bandai Namco broke the series long-lasting tradition by carving out the next mode to sell separately as DLC. The publisher has yet to reveal full pricing of "Ultimate Tekken Bowl," but it'll be free as part of the game's $25 season pass. Ultimate Tekken Bowl will be the only new mode coming to Tekken 7 via the $25 season pass, and other content includes new characters and stages.

$25 Tekken 7 Season Pass includes:

Halo fans may get something special this week. Could it be a big patch to the ill-fated Master Chief Collection, or perhaps a Halo: Reach remaster? Or is it just another community-catered playlist?

If you ask me, it hasn't been a good week to be a Halo fan for a long, long time. 343 Industries has taken the series into a strange direction and systematically torn the magic from the once-mighty sci-fi franchise. But 343 Industries developer and Halo vet Frank O'Connor teases an incoming treat for Halo aficionados.

What could it be?

Rocket League continues to amass gamers, with over 33 million players across all platforms that Rocket League is available on, something developer Psyonix announced today.

Better yet, the developer has announced that Rocket League's new Anniversary Update will be pushed out today, including the new freer area 'Champions Field'. There's also a slew of new content, including:

Microsoft is really talking up its upcoming Xbox One X console, with a big show at E3 2017 last month, the company is running head first into Xbox One X marketing hype.

Dave McCarthy, Head of Xbox Operations was interviewed by MCVUK, where he said that Microsoft wants to deliver a "premium PC experience" to the console space, for the first time ever. He said: "The way we look at it, choice feels like the right principle right now. There are consumers that really want to balance price against capabilities. But there will always be customers in your segment of gamers that want the best of the best, and I think that up until now the PC space was really the only place they could go to get that. They now have the ability to get that in the console space".

McCarthy continued: "We're all about the developer choice there overall. Different developers are going to choose to do different things for different game formats. But the good news is that the Xbox One SDK that everyone writes to will be able to handle that variation. You don't need a unique version for Xbox One X. It's just going to know if I'm running a One X, will take advantage of it and going to feel like a premium PC experience overall".

Total War fans will soon have an extra helping of ancient warfare to chew on.

Creative Assembly today announced Total War Saga, a new historical spin-off series of games that deliver standalone experiences based on "pivotal moments in history rather than whole historical eras." The developer affirms that the next big Total War is still coming, and that Total War Saga won't replace the mainline series of major releases.

According to series creative director Jack Lusted, each "saga" will often overlap with previous Total War periods and retain the same RTS action the franchise is known for. "Sagas won't be revolutionary new titles or introduce brand-new eras; they'll follow-on from previous Total War games and inhabit the same time-period, or at the very least relate to it. But these are certainly Total War games," Lusted said in the announcement blog post.

Nintendo is keen on learning everything it can to give its fledgling smartphone gaming business wings.

Rather than have any one set method to make money with its smartphone games, Nintendo has experimented with a number of different monetization paths. All of Nintendo's three mobile games use various payment plans with varying degrees of success. Super Mario Run uses a free-to-start model, locking full the game behind a $10 fee after players finish a demo--as a result less than 10% of players actually bought it. Free-to-play Miitomo allows players to buy items with premium currency.

With Fire Emblem Heroes, however, Nintendo has enjoyed the most success: the game racked up $5 million in its first week. The game uses the "gacha" model, a free-to-play method where players pay money to unlock in-game content--in this case orbs that can be used to unlock new characters, replenish stamina, and various other bonuses.

Microsoft has provided game developers with Xbox One X GPU benchmarks for nine different games, and that information has since been published to give players an idea of what the new 4K console "beast" can do.

Eurogamer's Richard Leadbetter got a hold of the Xbox One X GPU benchmarks list and has compiled a ton of data, insights, and explanations in a jam-packed article. The nine benchmarked games are anonymous, but Leadbetter has a few guesses on what they could be.

The data is based on GPU frame time captures from PIX, Microsoft's Performance Inspector for Xbox which captures game profiles that allow for developer-side optimizations. PIX samples are captured from games running on original Xbox One consoles to make a performance profile. The profile is then passed through the Xbox One X's Scorpio Engine to "port" the game to 4K resolution in the most basic way possible. Remember that the Xbox One X will natively boost performance of all Xbox One games by default without tapping any of the new hardware, similar to the PS4 Pro's Boost Mode. Leadbetter affirms the GPU benchmarks via PIX didn't tap additional console hardware features, and the data exists outside of gameplay so "30 or 60FPS caps are irrelevant."

Nintendo currently has no plans to bring its games to desktops or laptops.

The House of Mario has changed dramatically over the years and is now a big success again. The company spent years swimming against the current with its stubborn attachment to a clandestine business model, but has since turned everything around by embracing market trends. Nintendo traditionally has tried to make trends instead of follow them, and this approach worked quite well over the years until it hit a brick wall with the Wii U.

Now that the Kyoto-based games-maker has evolved by embracing a new age of technology and market trends, it's successfully done both: it's changed the game with its massively popular new Switch handheld-console hybrid, and swims with the current by bringing its world-class IP to smartphones for the first time.

Despite only releasing in March, the Nintendo Switch has topped Japan's domestic hardware sales and rallies the country's total console sales for the first half of 2017.

Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid has had a tremendous effect on Japan's console gaming segment. The new system, which launched in March and combines both handheld and console form factors, has only been available for four out of the total six-month sales aggregation period and has still managed to dominate Japan's 1H 2017 video games hardware sales.

Mobile gaming reigns supreme in Japan, but the Nintendo Switch has managed to spark growth in the country's console hardware market. Japanese games website Famitsu tracked hardware and software sales for the last 26 weeks from December 2016 to June 2017, showing substantial growth in hardware sales for the first half of 2017.

With a population that far exceeds 1 billion, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that China is the largest gaming market in the world, and is expected to be a $29 billion industry this year.

Gamasutra reported from IHS Market Technology that while consoles were illegal in China until 2014, mobile and PC gaming is massive in the country with 51% of the market. Xbox One and PS4 sales have only hit 500,000 - but will continue to grow, as they've only been on the market for just over 3 years now.

IHS said in the report: "This slow adoption is a reflection of having to compete with the entrenched PC and mobile games markets and existing grey market console imports from Hong Kong and Japan, which are often cheaper than the official versions of the consoles. Sony has experienced a mild increase in sales momentum in 2017 and will be further helped by the recent launch of the PS4 Pro, which has been priced aggressively to compete with grey market imports. The company also benefits from a well-established brand and its entrenched console lead versus Xbox in most Asian territories".