Gaming News - Page 1

It took a minute, but AMD's FSR 3 Frame Generation is now available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles, with support added to EA and Ascendant Studios's first-person action game Immortals of Aveum. It's the first console game to support FSR 3 frame generation, a technology that inserts generated frames between natively rendered frames to boost performance.

The goal is to make a game feel like it's playing at 100+ FPS without impacting image quality or smoothness or adding tonnes of unwanted input lag. As part of their weekly podcast, the tech gurus at Digital Foundry have provided their initial impressions of FSR 3 on console - and they're mostly positive.

First up, performance. With an Xbox Series X playing a visually intensive sequence in the game with FSR 3 frame generation enabled and disabled, we see a performance increase from around 40-60 FPS to 80-100 FPS - a performance boost of 72% on average.

EA's annual racer, F1 24, is available today. The latest installment improves its realistic visuals and depiction of high-speed Formula 1 racing with multiple real-time ray-tracing effects. The F1 series has featured ray-traced reflections and ray-traced shadows for a few years now, but this year's addition of Ray-Traced Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination takes the game's lighting to a whole new level.

This more physically accurate and realistic version of global illumination produces a more lifelike image as light from natural and other sources reflects and bounces around from object to object. It's hardware intensive, doubly so when paired with RT reflections and shadows, so F1 24 supports DLSS 3 Super Resolution and Frame Generation to boost performance.

Partnering with NVIDIA, the official GeForce announcement for the game's release highlights the performance you can expect across a range of GeForce RTX 40 Series cards with DLSS 3 enabled and what you should expect with DLSS turned off. The results show that for F1 24 in 4K, with max settings and ray-tracing effects enabled, you'll need a GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER to hit an average frame rate of 61.1 FPS.

CD Projekt gives new updates on its new Witcher project.

Now that Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty is shipped out, CD Projekt is now full steam ahead on Polaris, their next big multi-game release. The Polish devs are working a new series of games set in the continuation of The Witcher universe, and the first game, Polaris, will kickstart an evolved saga for the landmark fantasy franchise.

While CD Projekt isn't yet ready to talk specifics, the company did confirm it most of its developers are attached to Polaris. The studio currently has 64% of its total workforce on Polaris, or 407 people, and CD Projekt is confident the game will enter principal development sometime in the latter half of 2024. This means the game will be in full production while CD Projekt also works on other games in parallel--titles like the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, Orion, and its new IP, Hadar.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 will release day one on Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft today announced.

It's official: Black Ops 6 is launching day one into Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft revealed the news ahead of its big Xbox showcase on June 9 at 1pm EST and confirmed multiple reports from The Wall Street Journal and Reuters in the process.

"We're excited to confirm that Game Pass members will be able to jump into Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6 on day one with Game Pass," Microsoft wrote on the Xbox Wire.

Total GTA franchise revenues have broken $9 billion since late 2013.

According to Take-Two Interactive's latest earnings report, Rockstar Games has generated over $9 billion in total revenue from the Grand Theft Auto series since GTA V's launch. Arranged figures indicate the mega-hit franchise has made cumulative earnings of $9.118 billion from GTA 5's original release in Q4'13 all the way through the end of March 2024.

These revenues include full game sales of GTA V across all 3 console generations, sales of the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition re-release from 2020, in-game purchases in GTA Online, and all other sales of previous games made available.

The total installed base of 9th generation consoles is expected to break 111 million by the end of 2024, new reports from Take-Two Interactive indicate.

Take-Two Interactive's latest Q4 earnings call revealed an interesting snippet on console market expectations. During the call, TTWO CEO Strauss Zelnick gave out IDG's console expansion forecasts for the current 9th hardware generation. These numbers combine both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S console sales.

IDG expects the installed base for the 9th console generation to reach 111 million by the end of calendar 2024, up +37% from the previous figure given by Zelnick. The most eye-opening figure is for 2027 and beyond, where the 9th gen console installed base is expected to jump to 175 million.

Microsoft has officially launched its Auto SR (Automatic Super Resolution) technology, its new system-level super resolution tech, which is available on new Copilot+ PCs powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite processor.

In order to use Microsoft's new Auto SR technology, you'll need a new Copilot+ PC powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite processor, which you can't even buy today. Microsoft has paper launched Auto SR, with Copilot+ PCs required to play it, unavailable to buy today.

You'll also need Windows 11 version 24H2, a 1080p display at a minimum, and automatic updated to be enabled. That is, once you've got your new Copilot+ PC powered by a Snapdragon X Elite processor. The 12 games that will work on the Copilot+ PCs with Auto SR supported out of the box include:

In the United States, the video game era in the late 1970s and early 1980s was defined by two consoles - the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. This rivalry predates the Nintendo versus Sega era by a decade and the current PlayStation versus Xbox versus Nintendo era. It even predates most gamers in 2024, who weren't even alive when the Atari 2600 was a thing that connected to a TV.

Atari and Intellivision aren't big players in the modern video game era, which makes today's announcement that Atari is acquiring Intellivision and its various trademarks and games more of a fun news story than the monumental news that something like PlayStation acquiring Xbox (or the other way around) would be.

What does Atari + Intellivision mean for gaming? The press release states, "Atari will seek to expand digital and physical distribution of legacy Intellivision games, potentially create new games, and explore brand and licensing opportunities."

Senua's Saga: Hellblade II is now available on PC and Xbox consoles and is part of the Xbox Game Pass or PC Game Pass subscription service. Built with the latest Unreal Engine technology, it's being praised as one of the most cinematic and visually impressive games ever made. From character detail to realistic-looking environments to the lighting and other effects - it's jaw-dropping stuff.

The game is also available to play on NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud streaming service, bringing the total number of cloud-supported games on the service to over 1,900. Best of all, GeForce NOW Ultimate members can stream the game at up to 4K 120 frames per second on a GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPOD.

Per NVIDIA's benchmarks for Hellblade II running in 4K with Max Settings and DLSS 3 enabled, the only way to experience the game with this level of performance is with a GeForce RTX 4080 or RTX 4090. This makes a GeForce NOW Ultimate subscription (with a stable connection) one of the best ways to experience the game.

Activision has taken to its official Call of Duty X, formerly Twitter, account to share a short teaser video that confirms the next Call of Duty.

The above teaser video was released only an hour ago, and it confirms the next Call of Duty will be called Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which Activision writes will bring in "a dark new chapter of the Black Ops franchise." The coming Call of Duty is rumored to be releasing this October on the following platforms: Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. The reason that's worth mentioning is because of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision, which led many to believe that Call of Duty was going to become an Xbox and PC exclusive, only to be released on PlayStation at a later date, but that isn't the case.

The current agreement Microsoft is under is to continue launching the Call of Duty franchise on multiple platforms. As for Black Ops 6, there isn't much officially known about the now highly anticipated game, but we are scheduled to find out more about it at the Xbox Games Showcase penciled in for June 9. Rumors indicate that Black Ops 6 will take players, at least in part, to the Gulf War.