Gaming - Page 948

Nintendo Switch owners will soon be able to share game updates locally without having to connect to the internet.

I noticed something interesting while checking out the games management section on the Nintendo Switch's home screen: console owners will soon be able to "exchange update data with local users." This feature isn't yet available, and Nintendo promises it will be available in a future firmware update.

How will this work exactly? Let's say one of your friends has the latest update for Zelda: Breath of the Wild on their Nintendo Switch, but you haven't downloaded it yet. Your friend can simply share their update patch with your Switch via wireless connectivity and update your game on-the-go.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild's early development started out as a top-down 2D adventure game just like Nintendo's old-school NES classics. Now one fan has answered the age old question: what if that prototype was actually playable?

Zelda BOTW is absolutely one of the best games ever made, but lots of Zelda fans wonder what the open-world adventure would be like condensed into a classic 8-bit adventure. To answer that question, game dev WinterDrake is making Zelda: Breath of the NES, a fan-made game that combines Breath of the Wild with the original Legend of Zelda on NES.

Breath of the NES features a dynamic day-to-night cycle as well as a physics system, and has a slew of new items for Link's disposal. You can try the demo out right now on the itch.io page.

I have strong confidence that Blizzard won't mess up Diablo II: Remastered, and my worries have been allayed.

When I first heard Blizzard plans to remaster classic games like Diablo II and StarCraft, I was very concerned. As a long-time D2 player, Blizzard's recent moves with Diablo III completely alienated me from the franchise.

Gone were the best features that made Diablo II such a great game: chat screens, trading, 8-player co-op, and game room lobbies, all of which were facilitated via the original Battle.net framework.

Rumor has it Creative Assembly might be developing a sequel to 2014's notorious thriller Alien Isolation.

According to Official PlayStation Magazine the devs at Creative Assembly could start earnest work on Alien Isolation 2. ''Our sources tell us that after work is finished on Halo Wars 2, a new Alien game may start development over at Alien Isolation dev Creative Assembly," reads a page in next month's issue of OPM. Halo Wars 2 has since shipped on Xbox One and PC, and SEGA has expressed interest

Creative Assembly recently expanded to almost 400 people after acquiring Crytek's Black Sea studio, the bulk of which worked on Halo Wars 2. However it's all up to SEGA whether or not Alien: Isolation 2 happens or not. The first game sold 2.11 million units in six months, which SEGA described as "weak".

Remember when Sony and Microsoft told us that installing game discs onto consoles would improve loading times? Well...that's only half true. Games like Bloodborne have poked holes in those assurances, and now the newly released Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 does the same. Even older ZX Spectrum games from the 80s loaded faster than Sniper Ghost Warrior 3.

According to Eurogamer, Sniper Ghost Warrior 3's initial startup takes almost 5 minutes to load up on PS4. No, really. But there has to be a trade-off right? Certainly making gamers wait that long has some sort of positive effect on future loading times? Kind of...but the five-minute loading sequence triggers every time you cross one of the game's four main zones.

The devs at CI Games have issued a formal statement addressing the loading times. According to the devs, the huge starting load times allow for quicker fast-travel and checkpoint loading.

Blizzard is currently planning to ramp up its mobile games offering, and is hiring new engineers to power the platform's dev toolset.

The news was gleaned from a new Blizzard job listing that calls for a software engineer for its mobile initiative. "Blizzard Entertainment is seeking a talented and enthusiastic software engineer to contribute to Blizzard's mobile gaming efforts," reads the listing. "In this role, you will create tools that will empower our talented designers and artists. The ideal candidate will be self-directed, and have proficiency with developing powerful tools and content creation pipelines."

NeoGAF's Nirolak posits that the new game could be related to Overwatch or Starcraft, and that makes sense, as Blizzard typically ties in its key IPs with its mobile-based titles. Blizzard's mobile gaming arm recently flexed with the considerable success of Hearthstone, and interestingly enough Blizzard actually released a StarCraft mobile game called Supply Depot 2.

Ubisoft is continuing to improve the experience for The Division players, with the company preparing its new v1.6.1 patch that will include the new loadouts feature, something that wasn't expected this early, but has been dragged up to May.

There are also two free expansions coming this year, but the first one won't drop until late July or August, but the new loadouts feature will make it into the v1.6.1 patch that's due next month - and is available right now in the Public Test Server (PTR). The new feature will let you "store up to six different character configurations, with each loadout reflecting the weapons, gear, skills, talents and mods you had equipped when you hit 'save'. You can swap between loadouts pretty much instantly from the menu, and pick from a established list of names ('Marksman', 'Assault' etc.) to help you remember which is which", reports PC Gamer.

The patch notes on The Division's upcoming v1.6.1 patch can be read here.

Cliff Bleszinski is preparing his own new game with Lawbreakers under his studio Boss Key Productions, but he is known for his work in developing Unreal and Gears of War, talked at the recent Dubrovnik's Reboot Develop 2017 saying that AAA games of today cost too much to make.

We know that game development costs are ridiculously high, with CliffyB saying: "$60 is still a lot of money to ask people for. And to ask them to make that bet multiple times per year? Gamers are picky, they're smart. This is a nearly unsustainable model, unless you're an Activision, 2K or a Sony". He even went as far to compare it to the restaurant scene in the US, saying: "They're not bad, they're not great, they're just there".

CliffyB said that this sees game developers wanting to imitate successful games or franchises, because big AAA developers can't afford for their game to fail. Instead of near guaranteed failure in the big AAA leagues, CliffyB said that developers could do something he calls AA game development, adding: "Games that look and play great but pick their battles in terms of budget and marketing".

Microsoft has crafted quite the technical wizardry for Project Scorpio, with a semi-custom chip made by AMD which includes 12GB of GDDR5 RAM that, according to Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has "no real technical limit on games".

Wardell was fielding questions on Twitter, where he said: "It'll take a couple years to make AAA level core-neutral game to fully utilize the power like Scorpio and APIs like DX12/Vulkan". He added that with Stardock's Ashes of the Singularity was their "first real test of Nitrous (our multicore engine). We love it but it's not AAA".

He added that "one big feature of DirectX12 and VulkanAPI that ppl don't hear much is that I can load gfx assets to the GPU from multiple threads", following this up a minute later on Twitter with "most of your loading screen time today is caused from processing textures and meshes. In DX12/Vulkan, this can easily be done in parallel".

The ambitious modding project to put Red Dead Redemption's in-game world into GTA V has been shut down by Take-Two Interactive.

Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive has forced the developers behind the anticipated "Red Dead Redemption V" mod to cancel the project. The mod itself aimed to offer a Red Dead Redemption experience on PC by bringing Red Dead Redemption's full in-game map into GTA V as a "story mode modification." The modders were extracting game assets--textures, models etc--from the Xbox 360 version of RDR using the .White (dot white) toolkit and importing them into a PC port of GTA V.

Sadly all of this work was for naught: Take-Two Interactive has reportedly issued a cease and desist letter to the team. "I know this is hard pill to swallow, but as you may have noticed we did get contacted , and we sadly have to say we are stopping this project," the project's leader Mr LeisureWear confirmed on the GTA forums. "So thanks guys, we were all so happy to see this, but it isn't going to happen, sorry."

Twitch is giving streamers even more ways to make money and key YouTube Gaming streamers and content creators could be pulled over to the platform.

Since the recent controversy that caused major advertisers to break ties with YouTube, content creators are weighing their options. Amazon's Twitch platform took advantage of the situation by announcing its new revenue sharing system, which allows viewers to tip streamers via "Cheers" that use "bit" emotes. These "bits" are a virtual currency that represent actual cash values that viewers buy; prices range from 100 bits for $1.40 to 10,000 bits for $126, and even a whopping 25,000 bits for $308. Streamers, however, only earn a cent per bit.

Twitch promises that more streamers will get access to its new tipping system next week. Apart from tips, Twitch also allows streamers to sell games on their streams and gives 5% kickback for any games purchased this way. These initiatives make the platform more and more attractive for key content creators and Amazon no-doubt hopes that big-name YouTubers will jump ship and cross over to the service.

Crytek's Shanghai studio has reportedly closed down because the company couldn't pay its rent.

According to Niko Partners games industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, Crytek Shanghai suffered a humiliating closure and was kicked out of its offices by the building's owner. What's even worse is that all of the company's remaining employees still remain unpaid despite promises of payment for their loyalty. Ahmad notes that employees hadn't been paid since September 2016.

An anonymous Crytek Shanghai employee corroborates Ahmad's claims with an older Reddit post. "After never been paid again in 7 months, today finally the landlord kicked us out as he must have not been paid either," the purported employee wrote on Reddit. "Thank you Crytek for destroying our lives."

Only yesterday Activision officially confirmed Sledgehammer Games' new Call of Duty is set in World War II, and today we have a fresh batch of leaked campaign and multiplayer info.

According to the leaks, Call of Duty WWII's campaign should be told through the perspective of the Allies, and touts a "gritty, intense journey through the battlegrounds of war" with higher-end "bold, lifelike visuals found in cinematic blockbusters." We also get a tease of the game's co-op mode, which will be a "high-octane" standalone experience with its own storyline. The info also says Call of Duty WWII will release November 3, 2017.

Planning on playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on-the-go with a friend? You might want to grab an extra Switch Pro controller.

Polygon has confirmed that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe doesn't support the JoyCon Grip in local wireless multiplayer modes. That means players can't combine two JoyCons into the comfortable JoyCon Grip when playing split-screen--even if one player uses the Switch Pro controller, the other player still has to use a single JoyCon. Why? Because every JoyCon counts as its own controller, so a JoyCon Grip counts as two controllers for one person, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe apparently only supports a two controllers max for wireless split-screen play in Tabletop Mode.

Remember that the Nintendo Switch's two detachable JoyCon controllers are meant to be split up and used by two players while in Tabletop Mode, facilitating the popular arcade style play the system is known for. In fact, the official Switch reveal video shows people playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in wireless splitscreen using two individual JoyCons. Interestingly enough, Polygon doesn't answer the more pertinent question--is the JoyCon Grip supported in two-player splitscreen when the Switch is docked?--and I'm pretty sure this restriction is in place for a good reason.

The recent leaks were spot on: Activision has officially confirmed Sledgehammer Games' new Call of Duty game will be set in World War II.

Call of Duty WWII is the official name of this years annual FPS, and Activision is set to reveal the game during a livestream next week on April 26 at 10AM PST / 1PM EST. Sledgehammer Games' Michael Condry confirmed the game would release in November, as every Call of Duty game has before it.

Sledgehammer Games has teased that their new Call of Duty will "return to its boots on the ground roots" and make us go "absolutely nuts" when its revealed. Call of Duty WWII is Sledgehammer's biggest game project yet.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 will feature a fully-fledged singleplayer campaign that bridges the 30-year gap between Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and Episode VII: The Force Awakens. While penning and plotting the story arc, EA's Criterion studio worked closely alongside Lucasfilm and analyzed the old original trilogy for inspiration, hinting the campaign should hearken back to the original Star Wars magic.

What interests me the most about Battlefront 2 is the singleplayer campaign. Spec Ops: The Line writer Walt Williams help plan out a 30-year multi-perspective story arc that shows the fall of the Empire from the eyes of the Imperial forces, and how they carried on, emperor-less, scrapping together the rubble and ruins to eventually make The First Order.

EA says the story is "emotionally gripping" and features "revenge, betrayal, and redemption." Players will literally be turned to the dark side for the campaign, humanizing a foe that's always been the villain...but the intrigue thickens as we take the role of characters like Luke Skywalker, and even Kylo Ren.

Starbreeze Studios has ascribed to a common trend in the games industry: moving away from traditional singleplayer-only experiences, and pushing towards multiplayer-based games. Why? Money, of course.

The games industry's biggest players have long been embracing the mega-popular FPS and action genres, leading to more casualized "genre-melding" video games that're typically built around online microtransactions. Today's games are less finalized shipped products and more of a continual service: instead of buying a finished game, players buy a kind of starter set that publishers expand with add-ons, microtransactions, and DLC, driving up recurring spending.

Publishers like EA and Activision have mastered this approach, and Ubisoft is doing the same with most of its games by incorporating online multiplayer in some way, namely The Division, For Honor, and Rainbow Six: Siege.

If Nintendo could only keep up with demand and supply consumers with enough hardware, its new mega-popular Switch console may very well de-throne Sony's juggernaut PlayStation 4 console.

It's no secret that Nintendo's new handheld-console hybrid is selling extremely well: the system has triggered a meteoric rise in Nintendo stock with over 2 million consoles sold across the globe. Japanese gamers are quite receptive to the Switch, with 330,637 units sold in Japan in the first weekend alone. But can the Switch topple the PlayStation 4's mighty reign on the console sales market? It actually kind of already has.

When comparing Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 respective launch sales in Japan, the Switch actually beat the PS4 by 20,000 units. In fact, in the total seven weeks of the Switch's availability, Nintendo's new console outsold Sony's juggernaut for six weeks. Japanese forum site 2ch recently compared the Switch's first seven-week sales with the PS4's respective early sales, showing the demand for the Switch is consistent over every single week.

Nintendo's investors didn't approve of the console's initial reveal in January, but the hybrid-handheld console has since enjoyed massive success across the globe. Now investors and analysts alike have warmed up to the Switch, and Nintendo has reaped serious long-term exposure and revenue.

The Nintendo Switch has not only smashed sales records left and right, becoming the Japanese console-maker's fastest-selling console in its entire history, and the console has completely changed Nintendo's once-dire situation. Following the Wii U's failure, Nintendo's stock was beleaguered and the company was used to constant quarterly losses. Thanks to the Switch those days are long gone.

In fact, Jefferies equity analyst Atul Goyal notes that Nintendo's stock has risen by almost 20% since the Switch's reveal on March 3.

It should be fairly obvious to most gamers that Nintendo's new Switch handheld-console hybrid hasn't been cracked yet, thus there's no emulators to simulate its games and hardware. But that hasn't stopped a fair bit of consumers being suckered by so-called "Switch emulators" that're actually malware-ridden scams.

The problem has caught the Federal Trade Commission's attention, and the FTC has even put out an official warning telling consumers that Nintendo Switch emulators don't exist.

"If you can't get your hands-on a Nintendo Switch gaming system, you may think an emulator is the next best thing. Think again," reads the warning.