Gaming News - Page 4

The parent company of Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, which owns the rights to Dungeons & Dragons, reported the licensing agreement with Larian Studios, the developers and publisher of the immensely popular Baldur's Gate 3, earned the company $90 million, and is being viewed as an indicator of the demand for more D&D-based games.

Hasbro's financial report, while being somewhat somber with the admittance of a 15% revenue dip, contained some nice statements for fans of D&D-based video games. Looking at the financial report, we can see Wizards of the Coast and digital gaming segments increased its revenue by 10%, which was "driven by [an] increase in licensed digital gaming revenue behind Baldur's Gate 3 from Larian Studios and Monopoly Go! from Scopely."

Hasbro's chief financial officer Gina Goetter said during an investor call that Baldur's Gate "had another healthy quarter" and earned "around $90 million of revenue" for the year in totality. Goetter went on to say that its expected revenues from Baldur's Gate 3 will taper down throughout 2024, but there is the expectation that revenue will continue to trickle in for many years to come. "We expect a long tail into 2024 and beyond for this mega-hit."

The AYANEO Flip DS blends a retro design inspired by classic Nintendo hardware with a cutting-edge PC gaming handheld running the latest AMD Ryzen 8840U APU. With mobile Radeon 780M graphics and an 8-Core Ryzen 7 CPU with a Boost Clock speed of up to 5.1GHz, AYANEO puts this power to good use, powering two screens - a 7-inch 1080p 120Hz IPS main display and a smaller 3.5-inch 640p secondary display.

Announced ahead of CES 2024 and with availability expected in March 2024 (via Indiegogo), YouTube channel ETA Prime went hands-on with the AYANEO Flip DS, putting to the test with modern AAA-style PC gaming as well as emulating the classic hardware the physical design is inspired by.

Ahead of gaming benchmarks, the hands-on looks at the dual-screen design, where we see some impressive features. Using it as a pure Windows 11 portable, the analog sticks, optical mouse, and touchscreen look super intuitive - with the second screen (also touch) providing system info or displaying anything you want.

You probably haven't heard of Tuplar, don't worry neither have I, but the UK-based gaming company has just shown off its new gaming handheld at the recent IEM 2024 event in Poland. Check it out:

The new Emdoor EM-GP080MTL gaming handheld features an 8-inch screen with a native 1920 x 1200 resolution, with a standard layout: two joysticks, a D-pad, buttons, and triggers... everything you'd expect on a gaming handheld. Tuplar has Intel's new Meteor Lake CPU inside of its new Emdoor gaming handheld, marking another gaming handheld contract win for Intel and its Meteor Lake architecture.

Intel Gaming shared a few photos of the new Tuplar gaming handheld, with RGB lighting on the joysticks -- which looks nice -- and an overall pleasing aesthetic. We don't know the exact display configuration -- refresh rate, VRR support, etc -- nor do we know the price.

Immortals of Aveum was released in August 2023 and was met with hardly any attention, and the attention that it got wasn't what EA was expecting.

The game was released at a time when many heavy hitter titles were also released, such as Diablo 4, Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, and more. This release window certainly contributed to the game's lack of attention and its eventual failure, as indicated by EA's decision to lay off about 45% of the workforce behind the studio. Furthermore, the studio's CEO, Bret Robbins, blamed the poor performance of the title on the busy release calendar, but that may not be the only reason it failed.

An anonymous former employee at the studio that developed the game spoke to IGN and explained the general idea for the game, combined with the development costs, marketing costs, and the fact that it was a new IP releasing among established IPs was the real reason it failed.

The Switch platform has generated over $77 billion in lifetime revenues for Nintendo, new company financials indicate.

The Nintendo Switch family of products has achieved incredible success across its 7-year span. Nintendo radically transformed its video games business in March 2017 with the release of the Switch, a device that represented decades of experimentation combined into one hybrid.

It's not just a handheld, it's also a console. The combination of a Wii U and a 3DS, if you will. The Switch unified Nintendo's once-separate hardware divisions and created a synergistic ecosystem that allowed more rapid development of hit first-party games. This led to a high volume of must-play games releasing onto the device that were quickly bought up by consumers.

Nintendo needs to avoid resetting the console generation and displacing over 130 million Switch owners in the process.

Moving to a new console generation is a tricky thing to pull off. Asking customers to buy a whole new wave of hardware and software can be a tough prospect. Some companies like SEGA can even exit the market entirely during these transition points due to a combination of factors. Hardware-makers also have to worry about low migration rates to the new system due non-compatible games.

While the core problems of cross-gen navigation remain the same, the proposition of completely resetting game libraries is even more off-putting these days. No one wants to have to buy all new games on top of a $300-500 console. Backwards compatibility is a must for new consoles (I argued it was the single most important feature for the PS5 and Series X/S), and Nintendo isn't exempt from these pressures.

Microsoft's next-gen Xbox console isn't being built by the team that led the charge with Xbox Series X/S consoles, but rather the Surface team is building the next-gen Xbox, according to the latest rumors.

During a chat in the latest episode of the XboxERA podcast, according to XboxEra's own Nick Baker, that the person responsible for leading development of the Xbox Series X/S hardware -- Jason Ronald -- is not in charge of Microsoft's next-gen Xbox gaming device and that Microsoft's own Surface team replaced his team.

There's lots of news about Microsoft's next-gen Xbox hardware right now, with previous rumors that AMD won't get the contract for the new Xbox and that it's already got the contract to build an APU for Sony's next-gen PlayStation 6 console. Intel is reportedly stepping up into the ring and is thirsty to win a huge contract like building a chip for the next-gen Xbox, which would be a huge deal for the company -- a major win for a semi-custom SoC -- and it could be built in the United States.

Helldivers 2 is rapidly establishing itself as a cracking PC shooter of the online coop variety, and it has easily overtaken God of War to become the biggest Steam launch ever for a PlayStation title.

A simultaneous PS5 and PC launch, Helldivers 2 hit just over 155,000 concurrent players on Steam over the weekend.

To put that in perspective, God of War previously held the record amount of concurrent players for a PlayStation PC published game at 73,000 - so Helldivers 2 has more than doubled this, which is quite the achievement.

Ever wanted to own a Pokedex - a real one? Your reaction to that will either be a fervent yes, or an equally fervent more negative response, but even in the latter case, you're likely to admire this project.

YouTuber Abe's Projects had the idea to build a real-life version of the Pokedex. The theory was to produce something that looks and works like the device in the Pokemon cartoon, identifying creatures correctly from pictures or toys.

A further goal was to make the Pokedex talk in a similar voice to the one used in the TV show.

NASA has recently launched its latest mission to study the "invisible universe" on and around Earth, with the ultimate goal of studying the microscopic aspects of our planet that go unseen every day.

The new mission is called PACE, or the Plankton, Aerosol, Climate, ocean Ecosystem satellite (PACE), and it was launched into Earth's orbit on the back of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The space agency was able to confirm a signal from PACE approximately 5 minutes after launch, and according to NASA, the satellite is operating nominally.

So, what will PACE aim to achieve? NASA's newest satellite will study the impact of "invisible things," such as "microscopic life in water and microscopic particles in the air". The PACE satellite is equipped with a hyperspectral ocean color instrument that will enable researchers to scan bodies of water across the spectrum of ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light.