Gaming - Page 978

Nintendo's new Switch handheld-and-console hybrid is a fresh new take that unifies multiple platforms together. It's original, unique, and bold--and it was designed by a younger generation of Nintendo employees, not the company's clandestine old guard.

Nintendo's old guard doesn't really understand the industry any more--we saw evidence of this with the Wii U's terrible failure, and the strange obsolete business models that the company is only starting to break today. The biggest way Nintendo is breaking these outdated shackles is with the Switch transforming console-and-handheld hybrid. But the Switch itself was actually designed and pushed by a new younger blossoming generation that will help Nintendo catch up with the times.

"We have these younger people in the company who are taking the lead on Switch development and it's really been them that have put this forward and designed this system," Nintendo alum Shigeru Miyamoto said in a recent interview with Glixel.

Ubisoft's excellent-looking medieval game For Honor is an always-online experience, and can't be played offline--gamers have to stay online in order to play all modes, including the solo singleplayer campaign.

Despite having posted that For Honor's solo mode would be playable offline, Ubisoft has now confirmed the visceral fighter is online-only, confirming recent rumors.

"We can confirm that For Honor is an always online experience. Some elements of progression, which is hosted online, are shared across story and multiplayer modes. Players will need to be connected to the Internet at all times to play For Honor," an Ubisoft spokesperson confirmed.

Sony really needs to pay more attention to its firmware patches. The company has just rolled out a new console firmware patch that killed one of the major benefits of the PlayStation 4 Pro, which is being able to play games at 4K 30FPS over HDMI 1.4 on older 4K HDTVs and monitor displays.

Before now, you didn't even need a newer 4K display with HDMI 2.0 to play games in 4K on the PS4 Pro. Having to buy a new $500-700 4K display on top of the PS4 Pro's $399 cost was a deal-breaker for some, so the console's ability to play games in 4K over the older HDMI 1.4 spec was a welcomed addition.

Until Sony literally broke that functionality.

Sony might have its 4K-ready PS4 Pro out right now, but Microsoft has been enjoying success with the Xbox One S thanks to its 4K Blu-ray player (what's going on, Sony?) - and now we're hearing about Microsoft's confidence in its new "monster" Project Scorpio console due in 2017.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer was fielding questions on Twitter as always, where he teased: "Looking forward to E3. We build our Xbox plans for Xbox customers, not in response to others. I think 2017 will be a good year". Then @MasyerGaming asked Spencer "are you guys keeping the promise of 6 teraflop GPU on scorpio rumors are running its been dropped to 5 tell me its not true."

Spencer replied: "Nothing has changed since our announce," so we're safe - Project Scorpio still has 6 TFLOPs of GPU performance, and Microsoft asserts it will enable native 4K console gaming, which the PS4 Pro has trouble sustaining.

Valve has pushed out a new Steam client update, with a bunch of tweaks, optimizations, and new features - including higher bandwidth options for those wanting to blast around 4K in-house streaming.

There's also new controller options, as well as a Steam Configurator support for Sony's DualShock 4 controller, improved downloading and patching speeds when games are being downloaded/updated on a mechanical HDD (seriously, buy an SSD). The full update log is below:

General

Dying Light and Dead Island dev Techland is making a massive new open-world fantasy RPG with the help of Damien Monnier, a lead ex- CD Projekt RED dev who helped build The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Damien Monnier has joined Techland to work as lead designer of the studio's new IP, which was teased back in May. According to Eurogamer, Techland's new RPG is an open-world fantasy experience with online co-op multiplayer and singleplayer elements. Here's what Monnier had to say about the game in his own words: "Today I joined Techland as lead designer on a new exciting IP that got me all *___*," he said on Twitter.

If the IP has impressed Monnier, who worked on the masterpiece that is The Witcher 3, then we can only imagine what the studio is cooking up!

The maker/modder community is always cooking up some awesome homebrew tech: we've covered the the SNES Pi Boy Portable, and the tiny 70's themed Gameboy that fits in your pocket--but now a DIY tecchie has made his own NES console out of a classic Nintendo cartridge.

Since Nintendo has done such a horrible job getting the NES Mini out to consumers, leading to insane $200-300 eBay auctions from scalpers, many gamers are looking for ways to get their nostalgic gaming fix.

Introducing the Pi Cart, a fully-fledged classic gaming console packed into an old NES cart. The Pi Cart was made by Zach from Howchoo, and is (you guessed it) powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero as well as RetroPie software. You can actually make one yourself with about $30 and a bunch of emulated games, and Zach even shows you a step-by-step guide with all the tools you need to make your own Pi Cart.

Since 4K HDR gaming is something you have to see to believe, marketing it can be very difficult: you literally can't see the differences unless you already own the requisite 4K HDR displays, making the next resolution jump quite nebulous for Sony and Microsoft to sell. Due to this roadblock and difficulty, Microsoft exec Albert Penello says companies "have to fudge things a bit" in order to sell 4K HDR gaming.

Like it or not, consoles are forging ahead to the new realm of 4K HDR gaming. Sony's pushing into this territory with its new 4K-ready mostly-upscaled PlayStation 4 Pro, and has even enabled HDR for base PS4 consoles. Microsoft, however, has two consoles for 4K HDR gaming: the new $299 Xbox One S, which upscales regular Xbox One games to 4K on UHDTV screens and supports HDR, and its "monster" Project Scorpio, which will enable native 4K gaming with its (likely) AMD Vega GPU. But when Sony announced the PS4 Pro in September, it was very difficult to actually sell the console on its merits, as you literally can't even its main selling point unless you already have the required 4K display hardware.

So how will Microsoft and Sony get around this very obvious roadblock? By "fudging" the details. "Showing people what 4K and HDR looks like is really hard when you're not watching the thing in 4K or in HDR," Microsoft exec Albert Penello said on Major Nelson's recent podcast. "How do we market that and be honest. You have to fudge things a little bit to show the differences, but you want to do it in a way that's honest. So even telling customers what it looks like, we have to go through that journey."

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) announced that it will spend $15.7 billion on a new facility to create 3nm and 5nm chips.

The new facility will be based in Taiwan, and may use the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography process to fabricate 3nm and 5nm chips. Back in July of this year, TSMC affirmed it's made strides in its EUV technology, implementing 125W EUV source into its ASML NXE:3350 equipment.

"We're asking the government to help us find a plot that is large enough (123 to 197 acres) and has convenient access so we can build an advanced chip plant to manufacture 5 nm and 3 nm chips," TSMC spokesperson Elizabeth Sun told TechPowerUp.

Awesome things are happening on the Sony front: Hideo Kojima's new Kojima Productions studio is collaborating with Guerrilla Games to foster an amazingly powerful and dynamic new games engine called Decima, which will push Sony's new 4K-ready PS4 Pro to its limits.

The Decima engine is powering both Kojima Pro's new Death Stranding game and Guerrilla Games' excellent-looking PS4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn. In other words, two dev teams are pouring their heart, soul and know-how into a single unified engine. "It's a full blown collaboration. They are using a merged code base, it's the same code," PS4 architect Mark Cerny affirmed in a recent interview (see above).

Kojima is so impressed with the Decima engine and the collaboration that he says Death Stranding will fly way past its original goal: instead of landing on the Moon, Kojima will take his new mysterious game all the way to Jupiter. "We decided to make the rocket by reforming their engine. And by doing so it enables us to go to Mars but even to Jupiter," Kojima said in a series of metaphorical Tweets.

Sony has been making moves throughout 2016 to secure more of the gaming console space, with over 50 million PS4s sold, you could definitely say they're making the right moves.

Lead Architect of the PS4 and PS4 Pro, Mark Cerny was interviewed with IGN alongside Guerrilla Games' CEO Hermen Hulst and Hideo Kojima where he said: "I think one of the things you're seeing is just the benefit of focus on a single platform".

He continued: "You can know the technology down to the tiny hardware details and then take advantage of them in your engine. And that really pays off. I mean, I was sitting there this morning at the keynote at PSX 2016 and it's clear that Guerrilla and Naughty Dog have somehow found the button you push that makes more polygons come out".

Oh, Ubisoft - you can't catch a break, and there's no one else to blame. Watch Dogs 2 was released onto the PC two weeks after its launch troubled launch on the PS4 and Xbox One, but the numbers aren't looking good at all.

According to the latest report from our friends at GitHyp, Watch Dogs 2 player base is suffering already, falling behind the concurrent players of even The Division and Rainbow Six: Siege. Paul Curtin from GitHyp writes: "Watch Dogs 2 debuted one week ago with a peak of 18,113 players in a single hour (less than half of the original's 47k peak) and the player counts have already dropped 47% to a peak of only 9,604 players today. The players per hour average is brought down even further with the game dropping to slightly under 5,000 users per hour when factoring in prime after school/work hours in the U.S. each day".

Ubisoft is trying to put out the fire, explaining to PC Gamer: "We expect both week-two and week-three sales to be above traditional sales patterns. There is a trend toward games, especially high-quality games, having stronger and longer 'tails' as favorable reviews and word of mouth spread. Watch Dogs 2 is already considered a tremendous addition to the open-world action adventure series and we're confident that millions of players are going to love it".

Studio Wildcard has been hard at work on ARK: Survival Evolved since it was released, with the game finally hitting the PS4 earlier this year after enjoying great success on the PC.

Now the developer is talking about Sony's new 4K-ready (but mostly upscaled) PS4 Pro console, as well as possible PSVR support in the future. Before that, what type of experience are we getting on the PS4 with ARK? During a recent interview with WCCFTech, we now that the developer is aiming for: "30-45 FPS for the regular PS4 (which renders ARK's environment at either at 680p or 720p depending on whether you have "Detailed Graphics" selected)". As for the PS4 Pro: "60 FPS at 720p,or 30-60 FPS at 1080p, depending on "Detailed Graphics" setting".

The team was asked about their thoughts on the performance of the PS4 Pro, where Lead Programmer and co-founder of Studio Wildcard Jeremy Stieglitz replied: "Very impressed with its performance, at a very reasonable price. We estimate it would cost at least $900 to build a similarly powerful PC, and that's if you were custom-building it with extreme cost control. We estimate its raw GPU performance is similar to an NVIDIA 970, and along with CPU improvements and overall more memory, it's a really high benchmark for console performance. Hats off to Sony for "crossing the Rubicon" of console hardware updates (bonus that it tends to improve performance in just about every existing title in the PlayStation 4 library)!"

Crytek have been through a few financial troubles over the years (that's what you get when you abandon PC gaming and want some of that console cash) and here we are again - Crytek developers are saying they haven't been paid in over 3 months. There were big issues in June 2014, which you can check out here.

Sources from Let's Play Video Games have said that Crytek employees haven't been paid in the last 3 months, with the studio informing their staff the issues would be resolved with a bank loan in Germany, where Crytek HQ is. This was meant to be done over a month ago, and it hasn't happened yet.

The payment delays are affecting all staff, ranging from entry-level through to management. Another alleged Crytek employee has taken to Reddit, saying they work at the German-based studio and haven't been paid in 6 months. The user said: "I'm not sure where else to turn at this point. This has happened in the past a few times, but never for this long. Management never gives anyone a heads up, and it isn't clear to me if they are getting paid or even informed from the owners".

Tired of mashing buttons in Final Fantasy XV? Pull off some awesome attack, but not sure exactly how you did it? Luckily we have your back: in this helpful how-to guide, we break down the anatomy of Final Fantasy XV's combat and teach you everything you need to know to pull off epic combos in every single battle.

For expediency, we won't cover every facet of FFXV's combat, including Link-Strikes, Breaks, Blindsides and all the other dynamics. We're just trying to teach gamers not to mindlessly button mash to beat their foes!

With Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix broke the mold and introduced a dynamic action-based combat system. The game's combat now feels more like Devil May Cry than a traditional turn-based Final Fantasy game, complete with combos, timed strikes, effects, and directional blows. In many ways the game takes on the scope of a fighter like Tekken, with reaction time and consistent understaning of combos and weapons being incredibly important throughout.

Mario's creator and Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto stops by The Tonight Show to play a tune we all know and love.

In this time of instant information, speculation, and constant flow of news, sometimes it's nice to take a little break and just have a little whimsical fun. Don't worry--we're not going to break away from our usual blast of Nintendo Switch news any time soon--but I thought I'd share something with you guys that really lightened up my day.

I caution to say that Mario's theme song is one of the most iconic jingles of all time. When it plays, everyone cracks a smile and is instantly transported back to those NES days of yore, the days where Mario's platforming exploits danced endlessly on our CRT TVs and Nintendo pretty much owned the gaming world.

Nintendo has confirmed that its first-ever smartphone game, Super Mario Run, can't be played offline. Even the free demo mode requires an online connection.

Nintendo made huge waves with its first major mobile game starring its famous eponymous platforming plumber, with the company's stock surging 30% shortly after the game's reveal. Super Mario Run is expected to rake in serious revenue for Nintendo thanks to its purchase scheme--the game is free to play up to a certain point, and requires a purchase to continue onward--and attract tons of mobile users across the globe--in fact, the game is launching in some 150 countries around the world.

But there's just one small problem: Super Mario Run requires a persistent internet connection in order to play. Nintendo says that this was by design, and will not only make the game much more secure and thwart piracy, but allow the game's three different modes to constantly work in tandem with Nintendo's servers and allow easy updates.

UPDATE: Pewdiepie didn't delete his massive 50 million-strong YouTube channel, and it turns out the entire thing was just a big joke. Instead of deleting his main channel, Felix deleted a secondary account--Jacksepticeye2--that only had two videos.

"I am going to delete my channel right now. But you know when you make a joke and it just blows up way bigger than you ever imagined? This was covered by media everywhere. That was it, that was the joke."

Original article is as follows.

We've already reported that Nintendo's new Switch handheld-and-console hybrid rocks a 6.2-inch multi-touch 720p display, but we really haven't had much perspective on the system's actual size. That's until we saw a full grown man hold the Switch, and as you can see, it actually looks pretty small.

The Nintendo Switch showed up on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and we got our first real good look at the hybrid handheld system out in the wild. Nintendo's promotional Switch demo announcement reel was pretty clear about its size, but Jimmy's monstrous man-hands shows us a more in-depth look at the Switch's scale--especially when handled by adults.

This perspective is very important. While I wouldn't say the Switch is tiny to the point where we should be concerned--it mostly looks like an all-round good fit for on-the-go gaming--it's important for people to understand size and scale specifics. While Nintendo has said the Switch is a "home console first and foremost," it's pretty much sized as a portable handheld.

The fifth free update for Doom is out now on all platforms.

Continuing on recent efforts, it enhances multiplayer with a new mode called Infernal Run, which is basically a twisted take on soccer. In it, you fight for control of an eyeball that must be carried or thrown into the opponent's goal. Additionally, bots have been added to Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, the level cap has been increased, Marine Armor (Praetor Suit) is unlockable by hitting the cap (Echelon 11, level 50), and SnapMap receives another slew of improvements.

Coinciding with the update is a double XP multiplayer week that ends on December 12.