Gaming News - Page 1

MSI's Claw gaming handheld has received a new BIOS and GPU driver update, which boosts performance across the board by 5% to 40%, while 7 Ways to Die gets a huge 150% performance boost.

The company claims it has "smooth gameplay" across 100 of the most popular games on Steam, with MSI's new "106" BIOS also making it easier to update your Claw in the future. You will no longer need to use a USB flash drive to install a new BIOS, which is something you'd expect to be standard at this point... at least it's coming.

All of the benchmarks you can see in the image above are running on the Performance Mode on the MSI Claw at 1080p, with Low in-game graphics settings, XeSS upscaling set to Performance, V-Sync disabled, and the FPS limitation has been disabled.

MSI has made a much-needed move - actually two moves - to improve the performance of its Claw gaming portable.

Firstly, MSI has deployed an updated BIOS and complemented that with new Intel GPU drivers to give a claimed boost of up to 150%.

The updates give the MSI Claw the wherewithal to play the top 100 most popular games on Steam "smoothly" the maker tells us.

Roblox and Walmart are working together to change retail--and gaming--forever.

Today, Walmart announced that gamers can now buy real-world products right within Roblox. The feature is part of the Walmart Discovered experience on Roblox, which gamifies a visit to the big box retailer in a fanciful and colorful way.

Only this time it's more than a simulation--users can buy actual physical products directly within the Roblox client. Yes, you can actually shop for goods right in the virtual Walmart Discovered level. There's three items up for sale: a Sparkly Golden Tumbler for $15, a Fantastical Flower Bag for $20, and a pair of Radiant Headphones for $50. Each item comes with a "virtual twin," a more lavish and exciting digital version of the product.

Shift Up's new PS5 hit Stellar Blade is climbing Sony's best-seller charts.

Things are looking good for Stellar Blade, the latest PS5 exclusive from Korean developer Shift Up. The game just launched yesterday, and in that time span, Stellar Blade has now broken the top 5 of the best-selling games on the PlayStation Store.

According to the listings, which are publicly available on any PlayStation 5 console that's connected to the internet, Stellar Blade is currently the #4 top best-selling game on the PlayStation Store in the United States. The game had previously been on the 25 best-sellers list, but had not previously broken the top 10. Now that Stellar Blade is out on the market--to strong reviews, no less--U.S. gamers are buying it up.

Capcom's Dragon's Dogma 2, a massive open-world RPG, has been one of the years talked about and played games. On PC, the gameplay has been generally well received; however, poor performance and optimization for Capcom's impressive RE Engine going 'open-world' for the first time is one of the main reasons it's currently sitting on a "Mixed" user rating on Steam.

That said, if you're looking for a mod that takes the game visuals to the next level, the Graphics Suite ALPHA mod from EXXXcellent (download it at Nexus Mods) unlocks a hidden developer menu for the game that includes a path-tracing renderer for the game that is not available in the retail version.

Path tracing (also called full ray tracing) covers indirect lighting, global illumination, shadows, and reflections - where anything related to light is ray-traced. Dragon's Dogma already includes RTGI or ray-traced global illumination, but as we can see in Digital Foundry's video on the path tracing mod, the difference is night and day.

Capcom is set to deliver seven consecutive fiscal years of record-breaking operating income growth thanks to the overperformance of key games.

Capcom's games are selling so well that the publisher has significantly adjusted its earnings forecast. The company now expects to have made 152.4 billion yen (about $968 million) in net sales across the Fiscal Year 2023 period, which ended in March. This forecast represents an increase of +12.4 billion yen (about $78 million) over the last estimate.

Operating income is also expected to be up 1.8 points to 57 billion yen. If Capcom can hit this target, then it will have achieved seven consecutive fiscal periods of record-breaking operating profit results. Based on our findings, Capcom's operating income trajectory will have a CAGR of 20% when looking at results from FY17 through FY23.

When it comes to physics-driven sandbox games with community mods and creations, PC classic Garry's Mod is up there as an all-timer. It's been a Steam staple for decades, with the game's history tied to the release of Valve's own iconic Half-Life 2 from 2004.

And now, in a very strange and out-of-nowhere move, Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman and Facepunch Studios have confirmed that they have received DCMA copyright takedown requests from none other than Nintendo. At first, many believed this was a hoax orchestrated by a copyright troll, but Garry Newman has taken to X to confirm that the takedown requests are "legit" and have been "verified by Nintendo."

What does this mean? Any mod or creation for Garry's Mod, including Nintendo content, characters, or IP, must be removed. And when you're talking about decades and thousands of uploads, it's "an ongoing process" with "20 years of uploads to go through."

Valve has changed Steam's refund policy, which featured a loophole that was undoubtedly abused by at least thousands of gamers.

Steam's refund policy is quite straightforward; at its most rudimentary, a user can purchase a game and play it for up to two hours. Before the two-hour mark, the buyer was able to refund the game at zero cost, and as you can probably imagine, this loophole was easily abusable by the millions of Steam users. However, Valve has now changed its policy by partially patching up the loophole, specifically in regard to titles that are in pre-purchase and offer "Advanced Access."

For those that don't know, Advanced Access can be granted to a player that pre-purchases a title. Sometimes developers and publishers will give early access to a game to those who pre-order. The duration of this access can sometimes be as long as a week or just 24 hours. Steam's refund policy didn't count any hours played of an Advanced Access title, and only began counting after it was officially released.

Sony's gaming patents are now starting to coalesce into exciting new features for PlayStation consoles, and today's new addition could help pave the way for major next-gen upgrades on the PlayStation 6.

Community Game Help is now live on PS5, turning PlayStation users into tipsters along the way. The new feature is an evolution of the PS5's Game Help feature that gives users video and/or picture tutorials on how to complete certain activities in a game (e.g. boss fights). Think of it as a digital version of those old NES secrets books from the 1990s.

What does the Community Game Help feature actually do? How does it work? Sony explains: "Once you turn on the settings, your PS5 will automatically capture a video when you complete a certain activity in a game. Then, it will be reviewed by a moderator, and if approved, your video will be published as a Game Help hint for PlayStation players to watch, learn from, and rate."

Blizzard games have started appearing on GeForce NOW, thanks to NVIDIA's cloud gaming service supporting Battle.net. As part of its weekly GFN Thursday update, NVIDIA confirmed the addition of 16 new games to the GeForceNOW library. And there's more Blizzard love joining the service in the form of classic games from the Diablo and StarCraft franchises.

This includes StarCraft Remastered, StarCraft II, Diablo II: Resurrected, and Diablo III, all playable over the cloud with GeForce RTX hardware. And yes, you can stream games like the excellent Diablo II: Resurrected remaster/remake at up to 4K 240 frames per second if you've got a GeForce NOW Ultimate subscription - and access to a GeForce RTX 4080.

These Blizzard additions join Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, Call of Duty, and Hearthstone, which are all supported and available on GeForce NOW. Other new titles joining the library this week include Dead Island 2 (Steam), the retro-inspired shooter Phantom Fury (Steam), and the highly anticipated Manor Lords (Steam and Xbox/PC Game Pass).