Gaming - Page 931

Project CARS 2 is looking to be one of the most expansive and detailed car games ever made, with Bandai Namco and developer Slightly Mad Studios announcing that Project CARS 2 will be home to 180 cars from 35 elite brands that are fully licensed models, approved, and tested.

The publisher adds that the car list will reflect 9 disciplines of motorsport, and 29 motorsport series in-game. Each in-game car has been selected to represent a specific moment in time, and has been built to exacting standards, with the architecture of the car approved by each and every carmaker. The handling has been tested and approved by a handful of real-world professional drivers.

The full list of cars for Project CARS 2 can be found right here, and if you want to compare against the first game, the original Project CARS had just 65 cars compared to the 180 in its successor. Project CARS 2 launches in September.

Blizzard has announced the official PC requirements of StarCraft: Remastered, with some tame requirements compared to the AAA games of today. You won't need a beefy PC at all, but StarCraft is also not a crazy high-end game either.

You'll need at a minimum, an Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor with 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 6800 or ATI Radeon X1600 Pro with 256MB of VRAM, and 2.8GB of HDD space. Recommended requirements are bumped up to an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 or an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ or better, 4GB of RAM, and the same 2.8GB of HDD space.

StarCraft: Remastered Requirements:

Fortnite isn't too far away now, with Epic Games revealing what resolution and frame rate it will be running at on both the Xbox One X coming in November, and the PS4 Pro - oh, and PC.

Epic Games changed things up with Fortnite, which blends the elements of sanbox, construction and survival into a game where you have to team with othe players to prepare your fortress during the day, for the monsters that will attack at night.

In an interview with GamingBolt, Fortnite Producer Zak Phelps talked about the graphics performance across the platforms, saying that the PC version will look the best if you have the hardware to enable all of the settings and ensure a smooth frame rate. He added: "Resolution and frame rate is all dependent on your PC and what you can run. PS4 Pro, Xbox X, it's going to look really good in 4K. We're going to allow the resolutions that we can support and frame rate at 30 frames per second. We've turned on several key PC pieces on Epic settings. We're able to run the game on Xbox One X, and PS4 Pro".

Monolith is now teasing the PC graphics settings of Middle-earth: Shadow of War, something the team teased during its recent live stream about the game. In the Game settings panel, you'll also see that there's a new 'Photo Mode' that will let you take shots from within the game.

The team were playing Shadow of War at 4K on a single NVIDIA TITAN Xp graphics card - but we're all here to find out what graphics settings we'll be able to tweak in the game.

As you can see, we have a few options to play with, and Monolith didn't even show all of the PC graphics settings. The scroll bar continues underneath what Monolith showed off, but we know that we have Lighting Quality, Mesh Quality, Motion Blur, Anti-Aliasing, Shadow Quality, Texture Filtering, and Texture Quality. I'm sure there are at least 4-5 more settings to play with, but we'll find out more on that soon.

PlatinumGames and SEGA might be bringing the fan-favorite action series Bayonetta to Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid.

PlatinumGames recently christened its new Japanese Twitter account with some fresh Bayonetta artwork from dev Yusuke Hashimoto that may or may not be teasing something interesting. The artwork, pictured above, clearly has red and blue to match the color schemes of the first and second Bayonetta games. Know what else has a red and blue color scheme? The Neon Red and Neon Blue Nintendo Switch JoyCons.

I have to admit that alone is pretty shaky evidence. But wait, there's more! A fan made the correlation and brought it to PlatinumGames' attention in this Tweet, which the developer favorited. Therein lies the teaser.

Phil Harrison, who's watched the console games industry evolve over decades, shares his insights on console exclusives--and why Microsoft's Xbox division has so few of them.

Games industry professional Phil Harrison has enjoyed key leadership positions in both Sony (President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios in 2005) and Microsoft (Microsoft Game Studios in 2012) throughout the years, and is in a qualified position to weigh in on the market's paradigm shift away from platform games exclusivity. There was a time where both Xbox and PlayStation thrived on their respective first-party IPs and franchises, but higher and higher costs have softened the once-essential strategy, leading console-makers like Microsoft to focus more on cross-platform integration, monetization of live services, and third-party support over its own core franchises.

There was a time not so long ago that exclusives were guaranteed system sellers--the Halo: Combat Evolveds and Metal Gear Solids of older eras. But now the console landscape is dramatically different: third-party games from publishers like Activision, EA, and Ubisoft typically dominate, despite being used as content that fills in the spaces between major first-party releases.

Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid transforms into a portable arcade machine with this nifty little custom build.

I've long thought of the Nintendo Switch's Tabletop Mode as "Arcade Mode" simply because it allows owners to simulate an arcade-like experience while on-the-go. But the Switch's kickstand is wonky, and it could use a case--or even a whole miniature cabinet. Maker and tecchie Shea Silverman has created one such miniature arcade cabinet for the Switch...and it's all kinds of awesome.

The Switch's tablet-like display slots into the cabinet, and users can then slide in their own custom-built arcade-style joysticks for authentic Street Fighter arcade action. Silverman's case is, of course, highly customized, but his Thingiverse page shows you how to make your own.

Call of Duty WWII's monetized supply drops will be cosmetic only, Sledgehammer Games' Michael Condry confirms.

Activision Blizzard are arguably the kings of microtransactions, and nearly all of the company's live games are monetized with in-game purchases in the style of random loot crates or packs.

The publisher's next Call of Duty game, Call of Duty WWII, will also be monetized in this way via "supply drops", or purchasable content packs that unlock random rewards. Developer Sledgehammer Games says that Call of Duty WWII's supply drops won't actually affect weapon and armor stats and will instead be totally cosmetic, meaning there won't be a pay-to-win element.

Destiny 2 isn't just a sequel: it's a hard reset for the Destiny franchise. It's an opportunity to do all the things Activision and Bungie wanted to do with the original, including a captivating story arc, a fully-fledged release on PC for the first time, and a strong, steady stream of new content for gamers to consume for months after release.

Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg wasn't happy with Destiny's post-release content roadmap. Destiny released two expansions--The Dark Below and House of Wolves--in the months after launch, but players quickly gobbled up the new goods as per the game's addictive nature. At it's core Destiny is a kind of MMO that rewards players for continually grinding missions and slaying foes, and as such, Bungie and Activision drastically dis-proportioned the DLC's lifespan. What was meant to stretch multiple months was chewed up and spat out in a week after release, and Destiny players wouldn't get another major injection until a full year after the game's release with The Taken King mega-expansion.

Activision doesn't want to repeat the same mistakes. The publisher knows Bungie has its hands full maintaining Destiny 2's development on all platforms (not to mention PC) so it has conscripted key developers like Vicarious Visions and High Moon to assist with additional content. While Destiny 2 will follow the original's dual-expansion roadmap, company CEO Eric Hirshberg affirms that the sequel will have a "robust pipeline of content."

Mass Effect: Andromeda's planned add-on singleplayer content has been cancelled, sources tell Kotaku.

A few days ago a Facebook post from a specific company called "Sinclair Networks" claimed that Mass Effect: Andromeda's DLC has been scrapped. BioWare has since confirmed the post was a hoax and led many to believe that the game could receive its planned add-on singleplayer content.

Unfortunately, BioWare Montreal won't be bringing any more singleplayer additions to the game: three key sources have told Kotaku's Jason Schreier that the game is essentially done insofar as campaign content.

Tomasz Gop, project lead on the original Lords of the Fallen and the upcoming sequel, has left CI Games for good, Polish website Graczipospolita reports.

The fate of Lords of the Fallen 2 may be in jeopardy as producer Tomasz Gop has been let go from Polish developer CI Games for the last time. According to recent reports, Gop is now working with Destructive Creations on its new RTS game Ancestors, a historical real-time strategy game set in the Middle Ages.

"I was released from CI Games. Probably [because of] the reduction of the so-called 'fixed costs'. In any case, the world at Gamescom will see Ancestors in action. Working on RTS is a huge challenge for me, because I do not know much about it," Gop told the Polish website.

It has been like this forever: PC gamers love their graphics and being able to turn every single in-game visual option to the maximum, and it's only just now getting to the point where consoles can push the kind of graphics we've enjoyed on PC for years and years.

With the upcoming Xbox One X, it looks like Microsoft is finally discovering that gamers do in fact enjoy high fidelity graphics. Xbox Director of Program Management, Mike Ybarra, said: "I always say to my game teams, 'Look, if you provide Dolby Atmos spatial audio, high-dynamic range, 8-million pixels on the screen, people will lose track of time because they'll be having so much fun. That immersion is really what we're after. When we created this box it was really about immersion more than anything else we wanted to do. I mean, you played Forza Horizon 3 on Windows at 4K, and we saw those images, and those things are breathtaking. When we set out, we started talking about these effects and how they impacted us. That's immersion; it is part of the magic of the entertainment industry that we're in".

Xbox boss Phil Spencer agrees with Ybarra, adding: "I was on the EA stage talking to Patrick Söderlund about Madden, and one of the things he commented on was how the grass looks, and how it moves. He said if you had somebody circle 10 things on the screen that are different about running on Xbox One X, nobody would ever pick up on that, but subconsciously, as visuals get more lifelike your brain notices when stuff like that isn't quite right. 4K can be just about the physics, maybe even just the way the trees move".

I've always found 4K gaming to be so 'meh' on the PC, unless you can hit 60FPS which isn't so easy - even on a super-fast NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. But, visual fidelity wise it's great - and 8K is even better thanks to its mammoth native resolution of 7680x4320.

YouTuber 'Thirty IR' have shown off videos running a few games at 8K 60FPS, including Assetto Corsa, Mad Max, Get Even, and The Witcher 3. You're going to need a pretty baller internet connection to load them up, as they struggled even on my 100Mbps fiber connection. Check them out below.

Thirty IR also has some 8K screenshots on his website, if you want some delicious 7680x4320 goodness.

Vivendi's impending takeover of French games-maker Ubisoft may end up costing the company big.

After forcibly acquiring Gameloft in 2016, Vivendi has eyed another Guillemot family business: the massively popular games developer and publisher Ubisoft. Vivendi actually laid the seeds to the Ubisoft takeover in 2015, where it began buying shares and increasing its stake in the company for two years. Vivendi currently owns 27% of Ubisoft's share capital and 24.5% of its voting rights.

The Guillemot family has repelled the takeover in the only real way it can: by increasing its stake thereby raising the amount Vivendi will have to pay to acquire the company. Following a recent boost, the Guillemot family now holds 13.6% of Ubisoft's share capital and 20.02% of the company's voting rights.

French media titan Vivendi has its sights set on Ubisoft, one of the games industry's most powerful players, but executives affirm Ubisoft isn't the only target.

Instead of satiating the titan's hunger, Vivendi's recent acquisition of Gameloft has only whet the company's appetite for video game earnings. Vivendi acquired Gameloft from the Guillemot family in 2016, buying the founders out of majority ownership in a takeover. Now Vivendi may repeat this strategy to pull ownership of Ubisoft away from the Guillemots. Although Gameloft earned 257 million euros in sales and 10 million euros in operating profit in 2016, Vivendi isn't satisfied. The media conglomerate seeks a lucrative anchor in the gaming sector, and if it inherits Ubisoft via a hostile takeover, it will inherit a digital games empire of profitable and sustainable long-term revenues.

However, Vivendi could pass on Ubisoft altogether. Gameloft CEO and ex Vivendi COO Stéphane Roussel told French press site Le Figaro that the company is weighing other acquisition targets, and although Ubisoft is the "most natural solution," it's "not Ubisoft or nothing." If Vivendi pursues another acquisition that costs more than 1 billion euros, Roussel says, then the company will cease any takeover of Ubisoft.

BioWare's new Dragon Age game is very likely a big mainline sequel in the massively popular RPG franchise.

We've known for a while now that BioWare is making a new Dragon Age game, and speculation hinted the game could be a spin-off style RTS game meant to fill out the gaps between Anthem, the studio's massive new online multiplayer IP, and the missing Mass Effect-shaped block in BioWare's release slate. But now the developers have strongly hinted the new Dragon Age is a big AAA endeavor and not a sideline project.

Dragon Age series executive producer Mark Darrah outright confirmed on Twitter that he's currently not a "Dragon Age Tactics" game.

Bungie makes a huge change to Destiny 2's loot finding system, removing the luck of the draw from weapons.

One of the main reasons to continue playing a game like Destiny is loot. The quest for better loot is at the heart of countless games from Diablo to Borderlands, and gamers ceaselessly grind and grind for the chance to get better gear. Drops are always random, and its this blind lottery that keeps players going. In an effort to better track and fine-tune weapon balances, Bungie has removed this key fundamental core tenant from its new high-profile Destiny 2 sequel.

Destiny 2 game director Luke Smith confirms that all in-game weapons have the same stats and no longer vary. "There aren't random rolls on weapons anymore. Better Devils is a Crucible hand cannon [in Destiny 2], and what it has on it is what it has on it. Period," Smith told Mashable in a recent interview.

Paradox Interactive has added another strategy games titan to its already potent arsenal of RTS mastery.

Triumph Studios, the developers behind the long-running Age of Wonders PC strategy game, has been acquired by Swedish publisher Paradox Interactive, joining the banner of acclaimed titles as Europa Universalis, Pillars of Eternity, and Crusader Kings. Paradox confirms that the acquisition is essentially in name only and is less of an acquisition and more of a kind of long-term partnership.

Triumph's full development team and executive leadership will stay on, including the original co-founders Lennart Sas and Arno van Wingerden, and all of the studio's current projects will continue and be fully published by Paradox Interactive.

If you haven't had your eyes on Unikrn, it's a company started by a man years ahead of his time in multiple businesses - with Unikrn itself being the first eSports betting company in the world. Unikrn lets gamers bet and then win or lose real money on eSports tournaments and games around the world, with games like CS:GO, League of Legends, and DOTA 2.

Unikrn then had another world's first when it launches Unikoin, a digital currency that could be used for eSports betting on its own site. But just last week the company announced UnikoinGold, Unikrn's own token that is designed as a decentralized ERC20 token on the hugely popular Ethereum blockchain. This means that you can buy, sell, or trade digital currencies on an exchange that supports Ethereum. This also means people can mine their own Ethereum at home and exchange them into UnikoinGold, betting on eSports games through Unikrn using mined Ethereum. That's pretty awesome.

I reached out to Rahul and asked him some questions:

As I predicted earlier this month, EA will monetized Star Wars: Battlefront II with a card-based microtransaction system in the form of blind loot crates, not unlike Halo 5's REQ packs.

If you've read our previous coverage then you have a good idea how this monetization system works. YouTuber Battlefront Updates reveals that Battlefront II features loot cases which contain 5 Star Cards of random quality which are denoted by color (White = Common, Green = Uncommon, Rare = Blue, Epic = Purple, Legendary = Orange).

These loot crates can be purchased with real money, meaning gamers will effectively be able to pay for the chance of earning powerful loot--not unlike Halo 5.