Gaming News - Page 1

Nightingale is a highly anticipated survival adventure game launching this week on PC. Its blend of Victorian-era architecture and fantasy has pushed it to the top of gamers' most-wanted lists. And it looks stunning, with visuals set to take full advantage of modern PC hardware.

Ahead of the game's launch, developer Inflexion Games outlined that upscaling tools like NVIDIA DLSS or the Unreal Engine's own TSR are required alongside GPUs like the GeForce RTX 3070 or GeForce RTX 3090 to hit a playable frame rate.

The recommended GPUs for playing the game at 1080p with upscaling are the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER or the Radeon RX 5700 XT. With that, the game was going to launch with support for NVIDIA DLSS 3, AMD FSR 3, Intel XeSS, and the in-engine TSR for upscaling and frame generation. However, days before the game's release, FSR 3 support has now been removed by Inflexion Games.

Bethesda has announced a new Fallout collection for fans, with the new Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology including codes for seven Fallout games, including the most recent entries in the series and the old-school isometric games like the iconic Fallout 2. There's even the lesser-known Fallout Tactics, an obscure franchise offshoot focused on turn-based tactical combat.

The Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology is launching on April 11, 2024, with the physical collector's item including a replica Mini-Nuke (with Audible bomb sound') and seven collector cards representing the game's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. character attributes and Fallout 76's in-game Perk Cards.

And with seven in total, each arrives with a Steam PC game code printed alongside artwork representing Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. The release coincides with the debut of Amazon Prime's Fallout TV series, which sees Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks team up with Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (among others) to tell an origins story set in the Fallout universe.

Cyberpunk 2077 is already one of the best-looking games on the market... but man, with these mods (and running at the glorious 8K resolution)... it has never looked better. Check it out:

A new video shared by modder NextGen Dreams on YouTube earlier this month shows off Cyberpunk 2077 with a bunch of mods installed: NovaLUT, the HD Reworked Project by HalfHogan, and a custom photorealism Reshade mod, all applied and running at 7680 x 4320.

The modded cars look absolutely insane; photorealism is the word here, making the world of Night City that Cyberpunk 2077 developed CD PROJEKT RED, shine brighter than it ever has before. Every single detail looks out-of-this-world, from the detail on the external parts of the car down to the tiny details on the interior... it all looks incredible.

Crazy Taxi is being revived by Sega, and it will be cruising back onto the market as a "triple-A" title, according to Sapporo Studio.

Sega opened Sapporo Studio, a developer that's the company's first outside of Tokyo, and according to a report, Sega wants to secure a stable development structure with the new studio, and one of the titles it will be working on is the revival of Crazy Taxi. This satellite office for Sega is responsible for the research and development of programming games while also having a "QA department in charge of quality control," said Takaya Segawa, the studio's president and Sega's senior executive officer.

The new studio is already responsible for multiple titles, such as Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis and Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! Segawa also said that Sapporo Studio is participating in the development of "Triple-A titles, including Crazy Taxi". Notably, Sega announced at The Game Awards last year that it would be reviving a batch of classic titles for modern platforms, which is a list that includes Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, and Shinobi.

Microsoft has officially confirmed four Xbox first-party titles are coming to the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.

The decision to bring over exclusive Xbox titles to competing consoles is part of Microsoft's broader strategy to increase gaming growth beyond its own consoles. The news was confirmed by Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer during the latest episode of the official Xbox podcast.

Unfortunately, the Xbox officials didn't specifically mention the names of those four titles and only gave teasers as to what they could be. The Xbox officials said two are community-driven games, and the other two are smaller Xbox exclusives.

Sony's Chief Operating Officer (COO) and president of Sony Group Corporation said during the Q3 2023 earnings report that sales of the PlayStation 5 were slightly disappointing, and that sales targets of the current-gen console had to be revised.

While this may seem irrelevant to next-generation consoles, a part of the reason for sales of the current-gen consoles being slightly disappointing is the cost of the hardware that goes into them. Notably, Sony previously had a sales target of 25 million units for 2023 but had to revise that sales goal down to 21 million units.

Now, Genki Japan filtered this information from Sony into a refined post on X, "Sony COO Totoki said that it is harder to grow profits on the PS5 as the life cycle goes on in comparison to previous generations. With previous gens, as time went on, it became cheaper to produce them. But with PS5, the parts are becoming more expensive as the life cycle goes on."

New reports indicate when Nintendo is planning on releasing its next-generation console, which is slated to be the Nintendo Switch 2.

The highly anticipated successor to the immensely popular Nintendo Switch may not come to market until at least early 2025, according to outlets such as Bloomberg, VGC, and Eurogamer. Each of the aforementioned outlets has claimed via their own sources that Nintendo has sent out an internal briefing that has informed third-party companies of the console's delayed launch.

The reports state Nintendo's decision to delay the launch of its next-generation console was to provide the company enough time to gather a stronger launch line-up. Notably, the latest rumor surrounding when Nintendo will launch its next-generation console points to Q1 2025, which would align with the Nintendo Switch's release date, which was March 2017.

When we think about PC gaming platforms, the most recognizable and talked about is Steam. The last time we got word from Valve about monthly active users (MAU) was in 2021 when it reported that Steam had 132 million monthly active players.

Although it's been a couple of years since we've gotten an update from Valve relating to MAU numbers, Epic Games has just released its 'Epic Games Store 2023 Year in Review' which saw its monthly active users count hit 75 million in December 2023, a 10% increase from 2022.

The Epic Games Store is the home of Fortnite on PC, Rocket League, and other popular online titles like Valorant and League of Legends. It's also a Steam-like storefront with games from various publishers, with free games given away weekly. In fact, throughout 2023, users claimed 'nearly 586 million' free games.

The days of consoles getting substantially cheaper to produce the further into the lifecycle we get are over. As part of a new PlayStation financial presentation, PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki noted that compared to previous generations, it's increasingly more challenging to grow profits for the PlayStation 5 - one of the reasons being the price of components.

As summarized by insiders @Genki_JPN and @Kepler_L2 on X, costs relating to die shrinks and production of the complex chips and hardware found in consoles like the PlayStation 5 have remained flat - in that there's no way to create a more efficient and cost-effective console.

Usually, in the second half of a console's lifecycle, cheaper parts and more efficient nodes lead to more affordable consoles and increased hardware sales and profits. This is no longer the case and will most likely be the new norm in the lead-up to the PlayStation 6.

Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics is currently working on a new entry in the long-running franchise, and the new look of Lara Croft combines the different eras of the character. These are the original games for the PlayStation and PC in the 1990s from Core Design and the recent reboot trilogy from Crystal Dynamics.

Lara's iconic blue tank top is back alongside dual pistols with their dual thigh holders. From the recent modern reboot era, Lara's jade necklace references her beginnings as an archeologist. The artwork depicts the 'unified design' of the new game, built with Unreal Engine 5 technology, and comes via the recently relaunched Tomb Raider website.

It's been a while since we got 2018's Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but that's changing - starting this month with the release of the Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered for PC and consoles.