S.O.P.H.I.A.
-
Posts
84,877 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
9
Content Type
Profiles
News & Announcements
Zombies Library
Easter Egg Guides
Intel
Forums
Posts posted by S.O.P.H.I.A.
-
-
One of the big draws of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is how the sequel is preparing to explore brand-new territory now that the original's Midgar portion has been completed. That doesn't mean that the established lore of the game is being abandoned, as one of the most pivotal moments from the 1997 RPG has been faithfully recreated and is available to experience in the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo.
For anyone familiar with the game, you'll know just how important Nibelheim is to the story of Final Fantasy 7. The destruction of this town set several events into motion, but it's perhaps best known for being the incident where Sephiroth has his heel turn, murdering the townsfolk and turning his back on the player in an iconic and fiery scene.
YouTuber FinalFanTV noticed the similarities between this scene and the original PS1 version and juxtaposed them against each other in a video. It's an almost shot-for-shot recreation overall, capturing some of the large and small moments from this flashback. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth expands on this chapter in greater detail, but it's fascinating to see the Nibelheim incident given a faithful remake, similar to how the first game in this trilogy remade the iconic Avalanche assault on Shinra from the Midgar train station.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth arrives on February 29 for PS5, and ahead of its release this month, Square Enix has been sharing more details on the game. You can check out GameSpot's Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth preview for a closer look at how this sequel expands on the first game with more activities, enhanced gameplay, and a Folio system that grants party members new battle abilities. One thing that Square Enix isn't talking about? The game's ending at the City of the Ancients and the fate of one character in particular.
-
You may not know his name, but Richard Wells is one of the most-heard voices in video games - and now he's blowing up on TikTok.
Wells' TikTok account, which he created last Friday, now has over 17m views - mostly on his first video, where he reveals himself as the voice of video gaming's PEGI logos.
Yes, Wells voiced the "PEGI 12" and "PEGI 18" logos that play before video game trailers - and now, he's told fans he was only paid €200 (£170) years ago to do it.
-
Nintendo Switch exclusives tend to maintain their $60 prices even years after release, and deals on many of them only crop up a few times each year. This is one of those times, as you'll find a handful of popular Switch games discounted to just $40 at Amazon. Both physical and digital versions of each game are included in the promotion.
Keep in mind that Target tends to sell out of its deals on Switch exclusives, so we recommend ordering soon. Note that most physical deals are eligible for in-store pickup or delivery, while digital codes will be sent via email shortly after purchase. Here's a look at the discounted games at Target.
Nintendo Switch games for $40 at Target
- Splatoon 3 -- $40 ($
60) - Splatoon 3 (Digital) -- $40 ($
60) - Kirby and the Forgotten Land -- $40 ($
60) - Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Digital) -- $40 ($
60) - Mario Strikers: Battle League -- $40 ($
60) - Mario Strikers: Battle League (Digital) -- $40 ($
60) - Super Mario Party -- $40 ($
60) - Super Mario Party (Digital) -- $40 ($
60)
One of the best games on sale is Splatoon 3. Offering one of the best multiplayer experiences on Switch, heaps of unlockable content, and an extensive cooperative mode, Splatoon 3 is a great family-friendly game that has very rarely dropped to this low of a price.
Nintendo Switch game deals If you're interested in the Super Mario Party deal, make sure to check out the Super Mario Party Joy-Con Bundle at Amazon (you can also get it at Target). This $99 bundle comes with unique red and blue Joy-Con controllers and a digital copy of the party game. Launched as part of Nintendo's Black Friday deals last year, this bundle remains a great way to pick up the game and a shiny new set of controllers, which retail for $80 on their own. Once this bundle sells out, it'll probably be gone for good.
Amazon originally matched prices for many of these deals, but the majority, including digital versions, have already sold out. That means you'll now only find Mario Strikers: Battle League (Digital for $40, with all other deals either sold out or no longer being offered at the discounted price.
First-party Switch titles rarely drop below $40, making these price cuts some of the best you're likely to see until later this year. Be sure to give them a look soon, as they seem to be selling out faster than expected.
- Splatoon 3 -- $40 ($
-
Former lead designer and developer on Dead Cells Sébastien Benard has called the decision to end development on the game "the worst imaginable asshole move" by publisher Motion Twin.
Benard worked on Dead Cells until late 2019, before establishing his own one-man studio called Deepnight. Now, he's posted his thoughts on Dead Cells' development being ended on the game's Discord server, after being asked for his opinion (as spotted by PCGamesN).
After a quick check by Eurogamer, Benard's posts no longer seem to be available on the server at the time of writing, though many users are still discussing what he wrote.
-
After months of rumors and speculation of an upcoming collaboration between Fortnite and the BBC's Doctor Who, the showrunner for the British sci-fi series has seemingly put them to rest, but not in the way fans might have hoped.
Per Eurogamer, Doctor Who boss Russell T. Davies addressed the potential pair-up on Instagram, after a commenter asked for any news on it. Davies responded simply that the collaboration was "a complete myth" and that there is no update on it at all.
Rumors about Doctor Who's arrival in Fortnite began last year, as the show was approaching its 60th anniversary special in November. Prominent Fortnite leaker iFireMonkey posted of their findings as early as April, as they mentioned a set of "2 Skins, 2 Pickaxes, 1 Glider, and 1 Emote" as part of the event.
The game's Chapter 5 started with one of the largest updates in its history, as it added Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival to its available playable options. Chapter 5 Season 1 also currently features three collaborations: Family Guy's Peter Griffin and Metal Gear Solid's Solid Snake are part of the season's battle pass, while the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are currently starring in a mid-season event along with Shredder and Splinter.
Fortnite is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile devices.
-
Helldivers 2's early success has exceeded internal expectations, and the developer is working on addressing the server issues it's experiencing.
Since its release on February 8, Helldivers 2 has already sold about one million copies so far, according to Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Johan Pilestedt. He also explained that the game's sales are "blowing through the estimates," but doesn't know when or if Sony will make a public statement on the official units sold.
The studio deployed three quick hotfixes aimed at improving the online servers. Players are experiencing issues such as rewards not being handed out properly, login troubles, and server capacity.
"I know the progression issue is frustrating, especially for newer divers that want to unlock sweet gear," Pilestedt explained on Reddit. "For now, please once again accept our sincere apologies for the issues you’re facing and rest assured, we’re doing our utmost to make it right."
The developer explained that it increased the server capacity from 250,000 total players to 360,000, but that wasn't enough as the concurrent player count jumped to the new maximum in less than six minutes after it was implemented. The missing rewards issue stems from high server traffic which leads to rewards not being properly tracked.
Helldivers 2 is Sony's biggest launch yet on PC and had a new concurrent peak on February 11 of just under 156,000. Helldivers 2 is available on PS5 and PC.
-
Our band of Victorian survivalists opened a portal to a swamp filled with vicious creatures, and then we went hunting. A magic spell created by one of our group pointed the way across the festering, waist-deep waters, which carried some unknown disease if you lingered in them for too long. Man-sized rats and frogs appeared at the fringes to slow our progress, but eventually, we found our prey: a fire-breathing beast called a Humbaba, big as a building, that lumbered across the landscape.
It took six of us, a whole lot of magic-infused rifle ammo, and a few deaths along the way, but before long, we toppled the beast. We skinned it and carried away its flesh to fill our stew pots and aid our crafting plans.
This is Nightingale, a survival game from developer Inflexion Games that goes into early access on February 20 on PC. We recently spent about six hours playing Nightingale in a preview event with developers, trying both the early game in a single-player experience and venturing out in co-op. It's a game about alternate dimensions: Rather than dropping you onto a massive map that spreads out over great distances and includes multiple locations and biomes, Nightingale is made up of smaller, procedurally generated "realms," each dominated by a single biome. You access these realms through magical portals, defining your destination by using special Tarot-like cards you can find or craft throughout your journey.
Where other games focus on generating a single map that you'll probably play on for most of your time with the game, whether you're alone or with friends, the idea behind Nightingale is that you have control of where you want to go and what will be waiting for you when you arrive. The cards you play at a portal define the biome of the new area, a major characteristic of what you'll find populating it (such as aggressive animals or NPCs you can talk to and trade with), and a minor aspect (like increasing the crafting supplies you find or setting the area's time of day). Each realm is procedurally generated depending on your parameters, allowing you to create adventures of exploration that let you try to achieve your goals. You can even use special machines to change the minor aspects of the realm while you're playing in it.
As is typical for the survival game genre, you have the usual progression up a crafting tech tree and the construction of a permanent settlement that can be your base of operations. Early on, you'll create your own personal Abeyance realm, where you can set up an "estate" to build up and expand over time. Inflexion mentioned that those realms are hosted on dedicated servers, so you can play together with friends and share an estate without requiring whoever "owns" that Abeyance realm to be online when you're playing.
Here, you'll do the usual tree-chopping and rock-gathering familiar to most survival games, building a new house to sleep in and constructing crafting tables that you can use to improve your tools and gear. There's a lot to do in your starter realm, and the idea of the portals is that, as you're hunting different materials, you'll travel to new realms to find what you need and bring that stuff back to further your development.
Generally, though, the survival elements of Nightingale seem pretty standard. Expect lots of trees to chop, boars to skin, and wolves to chase you around as you flee back to your house with darkness falling.
You also have to keep yourself well-fed and rested in order to stay alive. On that front, Nightingale mixes in a lot of common elements from other survival games. For example, eating anything will fill your hunger meter, but cooking and eating certain foods will increase your overall health or stamina for a set amount of time, which can be a major advantage.
Your overarching goal, however, is to find the city of Nightingale, and that endeavor leads to fun and exciting adventures through the realms. The underlying premise is of an alternate history that saw humanity discover and begin relations with the Fae--magical fairy folk, essentially, such as Pan from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"--and incorporate magic into its pursuits alongside science.
People have been exploring the Fae's portals and the realms connected by them ever since, but at the start of the game, you find yourself stranded in those realms after fleeing a deadly fog that poured out of one such portal and engulfed the Earth in 1889. You and other refugees are hoping to find your way to Nightingale, where you can live in safety, but until then, you'll spend a lot of time trying not to die.
GalleryNeil Thompson, director of art and head of audio at Inflexion, said the Victorian setting was an outgrowth of the original portal-hopping concept. Thompson said he and CEO Aaryn Flynn were inspired by Susanna Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. They liked the book's conception of magic being a force that existed in the world, but one that was treated as an understandable academic pursuit that anyone could learn. The novel also deals with the idea that humanity pierces the "veil" between the human world and the fairy world and the consequences that result.
"When we started thinking about that, we were thinking, well, we don't want to put it in the same time period, which is the Napoleonic era, not just because we didn't want to copy word for word what they were doing, but also because it's not necessarily the most interesting time in terms of technology that could be used in a gaming experience. So weaponry is not that great--it's not much fun to reload a musket because it takes hours," Thompson explained. "But push it forward to the Victorian period--which is known for exploration and adventure, technological advancement, academic and artistic pursuits--and then it starts to get much more interesting because you can introduce machinery that can plausibly be used to interface with magical items. You can have guns that are six-shooters and Winchesters that are fast-loading. So for that more action-oriented player, you can get something a bit more contemporary. And just the whole Victorian period is so rich culturally and visually it just seemed to really [be a] natural fit."
Nightingale supports up to six people in cooperative play, and that section of the game was the highlight of our preview. Inflexion jumped us ahead in the progression to the mid-game, where you'd be after about 30 hours, Flynn told us. Your strength is determined by your gear, all of which carries a numerical score to let you know how strong you are and what threats you can handle.
GalleryWhere the early part of the game gives you the usual survival genre equipment, like knives and axes, advancing up the tech tree will eventually get you the ability to make rifles, revolvers, and shotguns. We also had ammo infused with fire, ice, electricity, and poison and could pull magical spells from our enchanted gear to cast during fights to increase defense or heal teammates. There's a fairly deep combat system in Nightingale that mixes up-close melee battles and first-person-shooter elements that felt punchy and satisfying throughout.
There also seems to be a lot of interesting stuff to find out in the realms and even on your home turf. There are Sites of Power, mini-dungeons you can fight through to claim new cards for your portal; I found one in a destroyed pirate ship atop a mountain, which led down into a spiraling cave and culminated in a boss fight against magical robots.
Our group also explored a desert world full of loot-filled vaults, each guarded by a handful of threatening creatures. What was most interesting, though, was that the vaults also featured some light puzzle-solving in order to advance through them. One puzzle had us activating switches in a specific order dictated by chimes that rang out through the space; when we hit the wrong one, a bunch of enemies spawned to punish us. In another, we had to find a hidden switch high above the area, which required some deft climbing to reach.
Nightingale also includes some light story elements and questing--Thompson said the game originally began its life as an MMORPG, and some of that DNA still exists within it. You'll hear a lot from Pan, who leads you through the tutorial, and Inflexion mentioned you'll meet a host of other familiar historical figures and literary characters, including Mr. Hyde and Victor Frankenstein. More characters and quests related to them will be added as time goes on, too.
"Certainly as a survival crafting game, we're lighter on narrative--we're not trying to make a cinematic RPG or anything," Flynn said. "But we can't help but think there are cool characters out in these Realms that will offer players some fun and some interesting opportunities to adventure. And so those NPCs should be starting points for adventures, places to vault off and go. And we think they all blend into the world and they fit into the IP really well, and so we just want to bring more of those characters to life and into the world as the game evolves."
You'll eventually reach a social space dubbed The Watch, which is reminiscent of Destiny 2's Tower, where you can congregate with friends alongside vendors and NPCs. Flynn described the journey to the Watch as the game's first "act" and said you'll likely find characters there who will be fleshed out more over time. Flynn mentioned that Inflexion intends to add more beyond that, including "seasonal" stories later in Nightingale's life, so the Watch is likely to be a central point for characters to gather and those stories to start. But don't expect those quests to be expansive RPG-like narratives--more like starting points for your own experiences.
"Importantly for us, it's not that it's a narrative-led game where it has a start and an end," Thompson said. "It's more providing a really interesting premise and a depth of lore that maybe isn't as prevalent in traditional survival crafting games, so that players can play their own stories. And they can role-play their own adventures in the world that we've created."
Inflexion said they expect Nightingale to be in early access for around a year. It sounds like reaching the Watch and the end of the first act will be your primary goal in early access, with more content to come to the game later.
Head of production Leah Summers said that Inflexion's development has included working with players and conducting a lot of playtests to determine what resonates. The studio wants to use early access in a similar way to make sure it's driving Nightingale in the direction players want.
"As we go into early access, I think we see Nightingale as a really great stepping stone platform foundation to this awesome survival experience as a place," Summers said. "We all talked a lot about [how] its just enjoying building or going adventuring with friends or taking on big monsters or fishing, all that kind of good stuff. So I think the important part through early access is it gives us that opportunity to figure out, 'What is a great direction for Nightingale?' What are people loving about it?' And we're set up to be very flexible in terms of our development and our priorities to be responsive to that. And yeah, we just think Nightingale's a great foundation to start from with people."
As with our great hunt of that huge monster, it's the adventuring elements that seem like the most fun in Nightingale. Building up a Victorian estate that mixes Tudor and pagoda architecture is fine, but it's the weird things out in the realms that were compelling during our time in Nightingale. Elements like the destroyed pirate ship, the Industrial Revolution machines dropped into swamps or forests, and the hidden caves and ruins all give color to Nightingale.
If you enjoy the usual survival genre stuff, Nightingale has it, but where the game seems like it might stand apart from the pack is in venturing out to see what is waiting for you among the realms. I'm most fascinated to see what you can conjure up with your cards and what fearsome threats lie hidden. From the sounds of things, Inflexion Games only intends to expand the depth of Nightingale over time with more cards, more biomes, and more characters, so there should be plenty to discover.
-
If you're running out of space on your Steam Deck and you're not a fan of deleting games, it's probably time to upgrade to a high-capacity microSD card. In the grand scheme of storage formats, microSD cards are pretty darn cheap, but the price tends to jump dramatically once you go beyond 512GB. Right now, you can get a rare discount on SanDisk's highest capacity microSD card at Amazon. The SanDisk Ultra 1.5TB microSD card is on sale for only $120 (down from $150). This is one of Amazon's limited-time Lightning Deals, so you'll want to cash in on the savings fast.
The SanDisk 1.5TB Ultra microSD card is compatible with Switch, though 1.5TB is probably overkill for most users. Unless you buy a lot of digital AAA games on the eShop, you'd probably have more than enough space with the 512GB version of the SanDisk Ultra. Plus, it's on sale for only $37 (down from $60).
For a more budget-friendly high-capacity microSD, take a look at the TeamGroup A2 Pro 1TB microSD card, as it's just $60 (down from $73). Alternatively, you can grab the Lexar Play 1TB microSD card for $71 (down from $130) at Amazon.
-
Amidst reports of Microsoft bringing various first-party games to rival platforms, Xbox chief Phil Spencer reportedly assured staff that there are no plans to exit the console business. Microsoft plans to continue its console business, according to journalist Shannon Liao, and it's claimed that Microsoft's strategy will involve Xbox hardware and "multiple" kinds of devices.
"The company held an internal Tuesday town hall where Spencer told employees that there were no plans to stop making consoles, and that Xboxes would continue to be part of a strategy that involves multiple kinds of devices," Liao wrote.
This lines up with previous comments from Spencer, where he mentioned Microsoft's aim to expand the reach of its Game Pass subscription service.
The last couple of weeks have seen rumors circulating that Xbox games like Hi-Fi Rush, Starfield, Gears of War, and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle could be headed to PS5 after it launches first on Xbox Series X|S and PC. This would mark a radical departure from Xbox's strategy over the last few years to keep its first-party games exclusively on its consoles and PC, and last week, Spencer announced that there will be an update on Xbox's future plans this week.
"We're listening and we hear you," Spencer wrote on X/Twitter. "We've been planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox. Stay tuned."
Jeff Grubb of GameSpot sister site Giant Bomb recently mentioned that Microsoft originally planned to reveal its new game-release strategy at the end of February, although it appears this has been moved up to this week.
-
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is getting a new leaderboard thanks to a "major unintended bug" which caused the Burn status to scale incorrectly.
Rocksteady became aware of the bug when players began reaching Mastery Levels during the postgame "beyond our wildest expectations", the developer said on the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Discord server.
"As Mastery levels increased, Burn's damage also increased," Rocksteady explained, adding this was not "what the game was balanced for at launch". The developer is fixing the scaling bug, it said, and once the fix is in place a new leaderboard will begin.
-
Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies has responded to the long-running rumours of a full-on Fortnite collaboration, saying they are a "myth".
Responding to a Doctor Who fan via Instagram, Davies said of the long-expected Fortnite tie-in: "There isn't one! It's a complete myth, I'm afraid."
The news has come as a surprise to many Fortnite fans expecting David Tennant and current TARDIS incumbent Ncuti Gatwa to both stroll into Fortnite's metaverse sometime in the near future.
-
The demo for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has been out a week and, beyond sharing piano covers, now players are arguing about yellow paint.
It's a familiar trope in many video games: essentially, developers indicate the correct path by adding bright yellow paint to scalable ledges and ladders.
It's also a debate that has raged for years. When the Resident Evil 4 remake demo was released, players complained about yellow paint being used on breakable objects. Now the discourse has erupted again.
-
Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios has apologised to players for the "frustrating" issues they're facing in the game and said it was now "crucial" its team get some sleep.
The sentiment was relayed in a note posted on Steam following server maintenance yesterday, in which the developer released three "rapid-fixes". The issues addressed during maintenance were related to logins, server capacity, and progression and rewards.
However, the issues haven't been fully resolved and Arrowhead said it is "doing our utmost to make it right". "In order to do so," the studio added, "right now it is crucial that our team gets some sleep and we will be back at this again in a few hours".
-
Helldivers 2 creative director and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt believes games should "earn the right to monetise", adding that whilst players are welcome to "support this title" by buying microtransactions, Arrowhead is "never forcing anyone to do so".
The comments come in an X/Twitter thread in which Pilestedt responded to a tweet in which a player pointed out that super credits can be earned just by "playing the damn game".
"We really applied ourselves to not make it [pay-to-win] even though items are functionally different," Pilestedt said (thanks, PCGN). "The only item that's [pay-to-win] is the revolver – which will win you any 'cool gun' competition.
-
Activision Blizzard is making "major changes" to Overwatch 2 as part of a "revitalisation" of the free-to-play shooter that hopes to "make PvP gameplay more rewarding and fun", as well as "provide greater transparency for players in-game".
In a candid blog, the team insisted it had "heard [the] feedback" from players about the competitive play over the last eight seasons, and has plans to introduce "big updates" to enable you to better build on your skills and "see how you progress through the competitive ranks".
"We built a better system that’s more accurate while also helping convey the meaning behind the mathematical complexity of a modern matchmaker and bring clear insights about what impacts your rank in every match," the team said.
-
Viral co-op horror Lethal Company may only have released in early access in late October 2023, but it's already received almost 50 updates.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, developer Zeekerss says it is thinking of slowing down the rate and scope of updates in order to make them "really substantial" and "bigger and less frequent".
In a message posted to X/Twitter, Zeekerss – pointing out that the co-op horror game is currently 30 per cent off – admitted that they were "distracted by life right now", but version 50 was "slowly cooking".
-
The Little Mermaid's Ariel has stopped by Disney Speedstorm, the hero-based combat racing game inspired by Disney and Pixar worlds.
Season 6, entitled Under the Sea, includes "brand-new content" inspired by Disney's The Little Mermaid. As well as a new track based on the fan-favourite animated movie, Ariel, Ursula, King Triton, and Prince Eric – plus bonus racer EVE – are all new racers that each bring "their own unique and powerful abilities" to the line-up.
That's not all, though. If you can't bear the thought of being under the sea without Ariel's friends, Flounder, Sebastian, Max, Flotsam and Jetsam, and even Scuttle are available as new crew members, too.
-
Nintendo Switch 2 will be backwards compatible.
That's according to Universo Nintendo, a Portuguese website that claims the Switch 2 will not only have backwards compatibility with Switch titles currently available on Nintendo's handheld system, but developers will also be able to "enhance" these games thanks to the additional processing power.
The report – which hails from the Portuguese podcast X do Controle by PH Brazil and was shared across social media by Centro Leaks – further asserts that rumours about a Nintendo Direct coming next week are indeed true, and claims that we'll finally have confirmation about Nintendo's badly-kept secret system at a hardware reveal event sometimes in March.
-
Helldivers 2 is now Playstation's biggest Steam launch, clocking up over 150,000 concurrent users on the PC platform over the weekend.
Until this point, Sony Santa Monica's God of War reboot held the record with 73,529 simultaneous users, which is less than half of Helldiver 2's current peak of 155,926.
The record was secured despite the issues that plagued the shooter's launch, which was causing crashes and preventing some players from matchmaking with others.
-
Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios has confirmed that the "rapid patch" the team deployed to Steam yesterday is "now on PS5 as well".
The update comes after players lamented issues with matchmaking, as well as persistent crashes. There's also been criticism of the game's PC optimisation and its kernel-level GameGuard anti-cheat software, whilst others have taken umbrage with Helldivers 2's monetisation.
However, game director Mikael Eriksson did admit earlier today on the game's Discord channel that whilst "a full matchmaking solution is in works", it may take "a few more days" to test before it can be rolled out.
-
Tekken 8's upcoming DLC characters have reportedly leaked online.
A dataminer who sifted through the game files of the fighting game claims to have uncovered the names of some of those who are appearing on the DLC roster.
Dataminer Shootmans says they "confirmed and debunked several leaks" during the Closed Network Test, and attests that their most recent exploration has revealed who may be coming back for the DLC.
-
From Software parent company, Kadokawa, has confirmed that whilst the team is "currently working hard" on Elden Ring's DLC, there is still no release date to share "at this time".
It seems questions about the progress of the eagerly-anticipated DLC were anticipated, as this latest update was included in the FAQ section of the firm's latest financial report.
Tucked in between questions about net sales for Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon ("we do not disclose sales results and forecasts for individual titles") and "the trend of pricing per unit for paper-based books", the company said that whilst work continued on Elden Ring's DLC, it was unable to provide a release date just yet.
-
A new report claims Nintendo Switch 2 is expected later this year and will feature a custom-made Nvidia chip.
According to Reuters, Nvidia is building an entirely new business unit to focus on designing bespoke chips for hardware firms and has designed a custom design for the next iteration of Nintendo's handheld system.
A source told Reuters that "Nintendo's current Switch handheld console already includes Nvidia's Tegra X1 chip. A new version of the Switch console expected this year is likely to include a Nvidia custom design".
-
Xbox is still committed to making consoles, says boss Phil Spencer
Earlier this week, Xbox boss Phil Spencer called an all-staff townhall meeting to address the rumours suggesting that hitherto first-party Xbox games could be released on other platforms, insisting that this did not mean the company wasn't committed to the Xbox console.
According to journalist Shannon Liao, the meeting – which was held with all internal staff on Tuesday – confirmed that the company was indeed considering bringing first-party games to "multiple kinds of devices", and more would be revealed publicly next week.
.jpg?width=1920&height=1920&fit=bounds&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Microsoft May Add DLSS-Style Game Upscaling Tech To Windows 11
in Gaming News & Releases Feeds
Posted
Microsoft seems to be developing its own DLSS-like, AI-upscaling feature. X (formerly Twitter) user PhantomOcean3 posted screenshots (via The Verge) from the latest test versions of Windows 11, which shows a toggle for Automatic Super Resolution. In the menu, Microsoft describes the feature as follows: "Use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details."
Microsoft has not yet announced this feature, so there are no details regarding how it will work or if you'll need specific hardware to run it. DLSS requires a supported Nvidia graphics card, whereas AMD's FSR and Intel's XeSS run on competitors' GPUs. The basic idea behind DLSS and similar technologies is that the game runs on a lower internal resolution, which improves performance. The upscaling tech improves the visuals to minimize visible impact on graphical fidelity.
In this Windows Insider update, new color management tools were also included. With this update, you can add or remove color profiles and set new defaults. There's also a feature which automatically manages colors to ensure "accuracy."
Microsoft's gaming division has been in the news after rumors that some Xbox-exclusives like Starfield could be coming to PS5, raising questions about the future of Xbox in the console business. New sales data also indicated that the PS5 outsold Xbox at roughly a 2:1 margin. Xbox boss Phil Spencer reportedly told staff that Microsoft would be continuing to manufacture consoles. An update on Xbox's plans is coming this week.
View the full article