Gaming - Page 949

A week ago we spotted a quick Halo 3 image on AMD's Ryzen event in Korea, hinting Halo 3: Anniversary could drop on PC sometime soon. But 343 Industries steps in to clarify that Halo 3 PC isn't happening.

343 Industries Community Manager Ske7ch squashed the rumor on Reddit, saying the studio has debunked Halo 3 Anniversary remaster multiple times--it wasn't true then, and it's not true now.

"I've been here just about 6 months now and haven't ever heard of one single mention of Halo 3 coming to Steam nor Halo 3 anniversary being made. In fact, it's been completely debunked multiple times over. Sorry to say but there's no plans nor any work underway to make this happen (though personally I can't deny it would be sweet)."

Expect Sony to counter Microsoft's Project Scorpio E3 2017 bomb dropping with a flurry of PS4 games, especially from devs like Quantic Dream, Housemarque, and Media Molecule.

Sony's XDev Europe branch recently showcased its upcoming PS4 games to Sony exec Shuhei Yoshida, teasing some surprises to its Twitter followers.

Remember that XDev coordinates with key indie studios to help build PS4 exclusives, working with devs like the aforementioned Quantic Dream (Beyond Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human), Hosemarque (Resogun), and Media Molecule (Little Big Planet), and other popular studios like Supermassive Games, Sumo Digital, Magenta Software, Climax Studios and Novarama.

Today is an exciting day for RTS players: Blizzard has not only released StarCraft and its Broodwar expansion for free in celebration of StarCraft: Remastered, but they've also revealed both the remaster and legacy versions support cross-play with one another.

Blizzard revealed a slew of new StarCraft: Remastered (SC:R) details In a recent interview with Team Liquid, confirming that the remaster uses the exact same client as the original--Battle.net 1.0--and is cross-compatible in every way.

"Players will be able to connect and play, watch replays, or share saved games seamlessly between free Brood War, and the SC:R upgrade. It's all the same client!" Blizzard said.

Ubisoft's newly formed Berlin studio is working on a new unannounced PC strategy game, and it may be a Heroes of Might and Magic sequel.

Ubisoft Berlin will co-develop a new AAA PC strategy game alongside Blue Byte, a studio headquarted in Dusseldorf known for free-to-play PC RTS games like Might and Magic Heroes Online, Settlers Online, and Anno Online, as well as single-player fantasy RTS games like Champions of Anteria and Anno 2025. Blue Byte also helped make online-based games like Rainbow Six: Siege and For Honor.

In fact, Ubisoft Berlin will actually be a Blue Byte studio, joining the Dusseldorf and Mainz studios: "Enjoy the trailer for Ubisoft Berlin, the newest Ubisoft Blue Byte studio opening in 2017," a reveal trailer said.

Ubisoft today announced it has opened two new studios in key European cities: one in Berlin, Germany, and the other in Bordeaux, France.

Ubisoft Bordeaux will be the company's fifth French games studio, and Ubisoft Berlin the dev's first in Germany. While both of the branches will work in tandem with Ubisoft's established bases to fuel development on big-name games, the two studios appear to have different expertise insofar as their core strengths, and that might indicate what games they'll develop.

For example, the Bordeaux studio is well-positioned to directly collaborate with the other French studios on games like Assassin's Creed: Empire and Far Cry 5, but Ubisoft Berlin will work directly with German games industry leader Blue Byte, which is known for PC strategy games.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) just posted up their 2016 games industry trends and sales data, revealing some not-so-surprising results: gamers care more about a game's graphics than its story, and shooters reign above all other genres in game sales.

According to ESA's report, most gamers are more likely to purchase a game if it has better graphics regardless of its story--which certainly explains the massive influx of casualized games on the market (looking at you, Mass Effect: Andromeda) Graphics scored 67% as the major deciding factor for purchases, and price was not far behind at 65%. Story/premise sits at just 59%, and online multiplayer/gameplay is below at 50%.

Shooters reigned in the best-selling game genre, making up 27.5% of all games sold in 2016. Action-based games sit at 22.5%, and the RPG genre sits at a paltry 12.9%.

Like DICE's original Battlefront game, Battlefront 2 will feature heaps of unlockables--weapons, skins, emotes, etc--to ensure players keep on playing months after launch. But will these unlockables be monetized with microtransactions and in-game currency?

We reported earlier that Battlefront 2 might have microtransactions to help fund new in-game content like maps, weapons, classes, heroes, etc. DICE's Bernd Diemer hinted that Battlefront 2 won't have a season pass and will instead opt for "something different" that won't "segment the community," which is usually code for suffusing a game with virtual currency and mTX (aka microtransactions). "I cannot talk about the specifics of this, but we have something different in mind that will allow you to play longer, be [more] invested in the game without having a fragmented community," Diemer said at the Star Wars celebration.

However, EA quickly jumped in to say that official live update plans for Battlefront 2 haven't been revealed yet. Now many saw this as EA trying to detract Diemer's bold statements, and that Battlefront 2 might have a season pass after all.

DICE is making an earnest effort to fold in player feedback into Battlefront 2 to create the Star Wars shooter we've always wanted. The first game missed tons of opportunities to really hit the mark, and blatantly ignored some of the major features the original Battlefronts offered, but DICE gives new details on Battlefront 2's multiplayer mechanics and what we can expect from the game this November.

Battlefront 2 will have many key changes to help improve overall multiplayer experience, including actual character classes that can be customized in specific ways. Players will unlock a slew of weapons and class-based gadgets and abilities tailor-made for their respective roles, facilitating more dynamic tight-knit team-based play. One of these gadgets will be a jetpack, which is not available to every class in the game (thank god). FPS elements have been overhauled dramatically, and players can even use ironsights aiming (ADS) to improve accuracy. Gunplay will be deeper, and the learning curve will be adjusted, too.

As the Star Wars Game Outpost reports, Battlefront 2 game designer Dennis Brannvall revealed quite a few details at a Q&A session at this year's Star Wars Celebration, confirming many of the changes and tweaks.

Just yesterday we reported on ABC's report "Nuts for Nintendo," which showed us the insane demand for NES games back in Christmas of 1988. In 2016, that age-old artificial demand spirit was resurrected with the NES Mini--and this year Nintendo is keen on doing the same with an SNES Mini.

Nintendo sources tell Eurogamer that the Japanese console-maker will release an SNES Mini this holiday season, and development on the microconsole is already underway. The SNES has a massive array of amazing games that herald an entire golden era of console gaming, and Nintendo absolutely has to get the games selection right this time. I fully expect them to do more of the same--limit to just 30 games, many of which probably won't be great, and go with cheaper hardware to boot. Sources indicate the SNES Mini is the major reason why the NES Mini was discontinued globally.

But the big question is will Nintendo undership the SNES Mini and create yet another holiday craze. I'd like to think Nintendo has learned, but history tells us otherwise. Expect these things to fly off shelves even faster than the NES Mini. Nintendo has yet to officially announce the SNES Mini, but we'll be sure to keep you updated once we hear more.

Turn 10's big tease of Forza running at 4K 60FPS on the upcoming Project Scorpio console from Microsoft was a massive deal for the upgraded Xbox, but how long did it take the team to get it working at the normally PC reserved resolution? Two days. One person. Yeah.

During a recent interview with Gamasutra, Turn 10's Software Architect, Chris Tector, said: "We didn't get to the right place with audio hardware. On all of Xbox One. And we were hoping that would improve, because that would really open up some CPU headroom for us. I don't know if I'm calling out something I'm not supposed to!"

He added: "But we do a lot of heavier-weight audio than some other games do, and it means we do a lot of real-time mixing of that. Because the way we generate an engine is more of a simulation based on a whole lot of loops. But it means that we're modeling the different subcomponents within the car. So not just the engine, it's actually transmission and an inner cooler and blah blah blah, all these little bits on the engine that we're building up, and then that's a final mix on one car. And then we've gotta go do it on the next one. So it's pretty heavyweight, and we have some heavy requirements around that. But we'll get there someday".

Zelda: Breath of the Wild players are some of the creative gamers in existence. We've seen so many different methods to turn Hyrule into a playground of fun, and players are constantly finding new ways to push the limits of its dynamic physics. Enter "turbosurfing," the fun way to exploit waterskimming by turning your raft into a rocket-powered blur.

So what is "turbosurfing," and how do you do it? Just grab a minecart--or a metal object that's biggish, a metal box should work too--and simply grab it with magnesis and jam it against a raft's sail. Voila! Now you're skimming in no time. This is a nice method to sail across the seas if you don't have a korok leaf.

Back in the 1980s, Nintendo captured an entire generation. Every household just had to have one, and every kid dreamed of the 8-bit splendor that only games like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 3 could deliver. But even back then Nintendo had massive problems keeping up with the demand...and fast-forwarding to today with the NES Mini and the Nintendo Switch, we see just how little things have changed.

Thanks to ABC new's 20/20 special "Nuts for Nintendo," we have a perfectly preserved time capsule of what it was like for shoppers (mostly disgruntled parents) trying to find two ultra-rare NES games of 1988's Christmas season: The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and Super Mario Bros. 2. The short answer? It was hell. Pure hell. There were just too few copies of the games shipped overseas, and the demand was insanely high.

"All this makes me wonder...is the supply shortage real? Or is Nintendo holding back supply to create a mystique?" ABC's John Stossel wondered during the report--a sentiment that millions of fans can relate to even today (just look at the NES Mini's discontinuation). Nintendo is infamous for limiting supply of specific games and hardware, leading many to believe Nintendo is using tricks to create artificial demand--not unlike Coleco did with its Cabbage Patch dolls during the 1980s.

Bandai Namco proudly emblazoned its namesake icon onto its debut slot machine, the West's favorite gambling tradition.

Japanese people love gambling on pachislot and pachinko machines: pachinko is a massive billion-dollar industry for Japanese game companies like Bandai Namco, SEGA, and Konami. In fact, SEGA made $1 billion on pachinko alone in a nine-month period. But in the West, especially in the United States, slot machines reign supreme. Keen on tapping this rich vein of ever-flowing cash, Bandai Namco is bringing slot machines to casinos in Las Vegas starting with the PacMan Wild Edition cabinet.

"PacMan once took the arcade world by storm and was recognized by Guinness World Records as the "Most Successful Coin-Operated Arcade Game", and now the series is back to take to the world as a casino cabinet," the publisher said in a press release.

Since Quantic Dream's new game Detroit: Become Human is slated to release this year, the studio could already be working on its next game.

Two specific LinkedIn profiles hint that David Cage's French studio Quantic Dream has begun preliminary work on an unannounced title. The profiles belong to Joel Janisse, scriptwriter of "Detroit and unannounced Quantic Dream projects," and Zachary Parris, screenwriter for Detroit and unannounced projects. Projects as in plural.

In fact, Parris' LinkedIn hints that the unannounced projects will be PlayStation 4 exclusive...which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Now it's worth noting that developers typically work on multiple projects at a time, but Quantic Dream is a smaller studio with some 160 employees, and their interactive video games typically take quite a bit of time to develop thanks to the sophisticated motion capture. This suggests Detroit: Become Human could be almost finished--at least its script and screenplay are.

Bandai Namco's new secret Prepare To Dine project has been leaked ahead of schedule: the game is called "Code Vein," and features a new kind of dungeon crawling with action RPG elements and a creepy, hallowed storyline with revenants and vampires.

According to Japanese blog Esuteru, Bandai Namco revealed Code Vein in a recent issue of Famitsu. The action RPG is being developed by God Eater's team, with devs like Keita Iizuka and Yusuke Tomizawa working on the project, and is built on Unreal Engine 4.

Code Vein is described as a "dramatic dungeon-exploring action RPG." and takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. Players take on the role of revenants--traditional vampires--with supernatural abilities involving blood magic and attacks. When players run out of blood, they transform into devil-like creatures called Lost--the monsters we see in the teaser. Code Vein has a unique co-op mechanic that allows players to take a "buddy" with them when exploring dungeons. Buddies are AI, but players will have to work together to survive the "tense and dangerous" dungeons.

Thanks to its impressive hardware and software synergy, Microsoft's new Project Scorpio console is able to hit amazing performance like native 4K 60FPS Ultra PC settings in games like Forza 6: Apex. But the system isn't just about 6TFLOPs of brute power--it has an optimized intelligence that automatically scales performance to ensure no power is wasted during non-demanding activities.

Most consoles scale their hardware with specific power states that reserve CPU and GPU perf for specific activities, dialing back resources while watching a Blu-ray or steaming Netflix. This keeps power draw down and reduces heat. Project Scorpio takes this dynamic performance scaling to a new level thanks to these optimizations: highly customized hardware that's specifically designed to compliment one another, a tailor-made cooling solution with a vapor chamber heat sink and a blower-style fan, fine-tuned voltage scaling via the Hovis Method, and the Scorpio Engine's built-in power states.

"The number of power states we have in the SoC - the Scorpio Engine itself - is eight CPU states, five GPU states, three for the memory," Leo Del Castillo, General Manager of the Xbox Hardware team, told Digital Foundry in a recent interview. "Naturally all of those will be maxed out if you're playing a high performance game, but for other modes of operation you want to minimise the amount of power the system is consuming."

Analysts predict that Nintendo will release a smaller, handheld-only version of its popular new Nintendo Switch system sometime in its next fiscal year.

Nintendo's new Switch system unifies both handheld and console gaming, but its 6.2-inch transforming tablet may be too bulky for children to use. That's why analysts predict Nintendo will release a smaller, dedicated Switch Mini handheld during the company's Fiscal Year 2019, which spans across April 2018 through March 2019.

"Although the Nintendo Switch can be used as a handheld device, we think smaller children could struggle to use it comfortably in that format due to its size and weight," Citigroup analysts like Minami Munakata, Kota Ezawa and Alicia Yap predicted in a recent report. "Accordingly, we think Nintendo will launch a lighter, dedicated handheld version of the Switch, possibly to be called the Switch Mini."

At TweakTown, we originally guessed AMD's new 8-core Ryzen CPUs would arrive in Microsoft's new 4K-ready Project Scorpio console. But the company turned heads by revealing Project Scorpio used a highly customized 2.73GHz Jaguar-based CPU instead, leading many gamers to believe the system would be bottlenecked by its beefier 1172MHz 6TFLOPs Polaris GPU, similar to the PS4 Pro. Now Microsoft reveals why it chose to build its own customized CPU instead of go with AMD's new tech.

Microsoft spent lots and lots of time making Project Scorpio: years of work running simulations, tweaking hardware, and hundreds of other optimizations went into this console. So much effort and time was spent customizing and optimizing the console that its main components simply can't be found anywhere else. That's really the most impressive thing about Project Scorpio, that it's capable of amazing perf like native 4K 60FPS+ due to its intimate hardware and software synergy, which sees no wasted resources and every component working together in an intertwined harmony. This is by design: Project Scorpio represents the culmination of everything Microsoft has ever learned about consoles, and is the union of scaled, high-performance technology with a kind of hard-earned wisdom.

Essentially, Microsoft didn't need to use AMD's Ryzen CPU tech to hit its performance targets: the highly customized and scaled "Jaguar evolved" CPU is specifically designed to compliment the super-customized Polaris-derived GPU on the Scorpio Engine's SoC silicon. In fact, calling Scorpio's CPU "Jaguar" is a misnomer: AMD's Jaguar microarchitecture is simply the foundation of the CPU, and the final result is so different that Microsoft apparently doesn't even call it a "Jaguar CPU" (the same misnomer is present in the system's "Polaris" GPU). There's other factors why Ryzen wasn't used: price and timing. Scorpio is a years-old project that likely began shortly after the Xbox One shipped, and Ryzen just wasn't ready when Microsoft began its testing and planning. And, of course, Ryzen is much more expensive.

Mass Effect: Andromeda has problems--lots of problems, and was humiliated on a daily basis shortly after its launch. Even now the game is synonymous with everything except for the space operas that Mass Effect is known for. So how do the devs feel about the game?

I've often wondered how key BioWare devs handle the ruthless ridicule of Mass Effect: Andromeda. According to BioWare's Ian Frazier, the lead designer behind Andromeda, the criticisms can be pretty tough--and so can the challenges that the studio faces to fix the game entirely.

"As far as my personal reaction. I won't speak for the other guys, but I spent quite a bit of my time on Twitter and various forums and such. And I won't lie, it's hard. It's hard to see the criticisms, some of the challenges that are out there," Frazier told IBT UK in a recent interview.

The development of Star Citizen is hitting its v3.0 update, which will include some massive game changing features like planetary technology, and huge performance optimizations.

CIG has added a new RenderTarget refractor to Star Citizen 3.0, which will see the game saving a massive 50% in video memory usage. DSOGaming reports that Star Citizen 3.0 includes "Area Lights with proper shadowing, new Light Controller for runtime light switches, highly optimized vertex and position format for all geometry, as well as Dynamic Physics Grid to support sparse space areas vs. dense areas like space stations".

Star Citizen's full v3.0 update is absolutely huge, with the full details available on the official Roberts Space Industries website.