For years, some dedicated World of Warcraft players have been "multi-boxing," a term that refers to utilizing multiple accounts and machines to play several (or droves of) characters at once.

In the before-times, this was commonly known as "dual-boxing," when players would have two PCs (or a laptop and PC) next to them, allowing two characters to quest together. But over time multi-boxing became a cottage industry for gold farmers, altering the course of Auction House prices and in some cases, the open world experience. Now, Blizzard is taking a stand before the launch of the Shadowlands expansion.

In the innocuously titled post "Policy Update for Input Broadcasting Software," Blizzard directly calls out "third-party input broadcasting software, which allows a single keystroke or action to be automatically mirrored to multiple game clients," using the term "multi-boxing" by name. Blizzard says that this is now an "actionable defense," and will start warning users before suspending/banning them if they detect this activity. They couldn't have put it more plainly: "We strongly advise you to cease using this type of software immediately to maintain uninterrupted access to World of Warcraft."

As someone who has played WoW since the start, this was a long time coming. Although I've known many people with multiple accounts, multi-boxing has always been sort of a grey area, and has gotten much worse in recent years (particularly during Legion into Battle for Azeroth) as software has made it easier to have armies of bots running around.

You might remember we recently reported on an eclectic range of Persona 5-themed teas, which are launching in Japan this December. Well, it looks like your Phantom Thieves tea-party is almost all set to go, with the arrival of this new range of Persona 5-branded cakes, on their way from Japanese patisserie Priroll Bakery.

Returning after a successful run in the 2019 holiday season, these Persona 5 Christmas Cakes come packed with strawberries and one of two flavors of cream: chocolate or vanilla. This would immediately discount them as "Christmas Cakes", here in the UK, where said seasonal dessert is generally a sad-ass fruit cake covered in bland hard frosting.

Did you know that the Worms franchise was coming back? Team17's rambunctious take on the classic artillery-style game is scheduled to launch in just three weeks, but you can get in the beta this weekend and enjoy the action until Monday. Worms Rumble is launching on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC on December 1st, but you can play in the weekend beta on PS4 and Steam. The beta is free on Steam, or obtainable via PlayStation Plus.

This open beta session includes a new map to play on, Transforming Towers. The aptly named arena features a giant tower that transforms into a giant robo-worm, because why not? You can also play in several different game modes, from traditional Deathmatch to battle royale options such as Last Worm Standing or Last Squad Standing.

The PS5 remake of Demon's Souls will newly add a Japanese voice cast, featuring famous voice actors such as Ken Narita and Saori Hayami.

The post Demon’s Souls Japanese Voice Acting Will Appear in the PS5 Remake appeared first on Siliconera.

Now that the PS5 embargo has ended, we can finally talk about (most) of the inner workings!

Amid numerous leaks, one of the big questions we're here to answer is "how much SSD space is available on PS5 by default?" The answer? 667.2GB. By comparison, the Xbox Series X has 802GB of usable SSD space

The most frequent I've asked in my various talks with the developers of Digital Extremes is, "Do you have any information on the next-gen versions of Warframe for me?" As the world crept closer to the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, I kept at it, dying to know how a game that looks so good on the Switch would look with the power of next-gen technology.

But they never had an answer for me. "Nothing to announce on next-gen platforms," they'd say. In fact, they'd act like it wasn't even in their plans. After getting shut down multiple times, I thought maybe Warframe wouldn't see enhancements for next-gen consoles until a few months after release. Turns out, I thought wrong.

Any Warframe players planning on picking up a PS5 will be happy to know Digital Extremes has confirmed the looter shooter will launch this year on the console with an Xbox Series X/S version planned for sometime after. If you like the look of the game on your PS4 already, get ready to see just how much better it can be.

Today Ys Net finally announced the release date of Shenmue III for PC via Steam.

The game will hit Valve’s marketplace on November 19. The listing is already up and you can find it here.

In case you missed it, Shenmue III is already available for PS4 and on the Epic Games Store that had the exclusive for the PC version until now.

If you’re unfamiliar with Shenmue III you can read an official description below.

“The brainchild of award-winning game director, Yu Suzuki, Shenmue is commonly known as one of the most ambitious game projects in history, which captured the imagination of players from around the world. Shenmue established the open-world format for action RPG games. An awe-inspiring world with an immersive story, featuring cinematic sequences, a realistic fighting system, and entertaining mini-games, Shenmue garnered acclaim and adoration all over the world.

Shenmue III sees the eagerly anticipated continuation of the epic story-driven saga. Take control of Ryo Hazuki, a teenage martial artist, determined to unravel the mystery behind his father’s murder and to exact revenge on the killer.

Explore a vibrant, colorful open world, meet intriguing characters and endeavor on a cinematic adventure which will take you further into enemy territory and deeper into the mystery of the Phoenix Mirror.”

You can also read our review and see if it’s worth picking Shenmue III up when it launches later this month.

NetEase Games has announced that the mobile version of Koji Igarashi's Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is almost good to go. The Gothic adventure title, shrunken down into pocket-sized form, will launch on the iOS and Android platforms in December, priced around $10.

Developer ArtPlay has managed to squeeze the entire kingdom of Hellhold, complete with all of its post-release DLC into the mobile port, claiming that it has made "no compromise" on visual quality of graphical fidelity. Bloodstained for mobile will utilize an overhauled interface and control scheme, complete with redesigned icons to benefit the reduced screen size. Ain't technology grand?

You can check out a new trailer for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on mobile below. In other recent news, Team IGA announced that boss character Bloodless will be added to the playable roster on all platforms at some point in the coming weeks.

Dicebreaker Recommends is a series of monthly board game, RPG and other tabletop recommendations from our friends at our sibling site, Dicebreaker.

A criticism sometimes levelled at board games in comparison to video games and their tabletop cousin, the pen-and-paper RPG, is that they lack variety. It's only natural - with the people around the table handling the rules and pieces in place of code or the limitless human imagination, keeping the possibilities short enough to fit on a player reference card is necessary to avoid turning game night into six hours of administrative work.

This means many board games specialise in doing one or two things, and how well you perform them round after round becomes the grading factor for your final score. Pandemic? Move and remove cubes. Catan? Trade and build. Literally any dungeon-crawler? Move X squares, roll Y dice. There are some exceptions, but these tend to edge back into that foreboding territory of "two hours to learn, 12 hours to play" - your Twilight Imperiums, Campaign for North Africas, Game of Thrones: The Board Gameses. Few board games find the sweet spot between breadth and depth.

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D3 Publisher finally brought Onee Chanbara Origin to the west, and we’re celebrating this momentous occasion with a brand new giveaway.

With this giveaway, you can win one of five PS4 or PC codes for the game, kindly offered by D3 Publisher.

The way to get involved is really, really easy.

All you have to do is comment on our articles, everywhere on the site. The more you comment, the better your chances. We want to hear your opinions and insight, and there is no better way for that to happen than sharing your comments with us.

An important caveat is that comments on this post are not eligible for the giveaway. Of course, you’re welcome to comment here, but in order to participate, you need to comment at least on one other article.

On November 5 at 11:59 pm EDT we’ll randomly select five comments made after this post has been published, and the authors of these comments will win digital download codes for Onee Chanbara Origin.

Of course, spam comments and throwaway one-liners will be disqualified, as we’d like to promote interesting commentary and conversations among our readers.

The winners will be able to select platforms and regions between PS4 and PC (via Steam), North America, or Europe.

Today Square Enix announced its financial results for the first haf of the fiscal year, related to the period between April 1 and September 30.

Speaking of the whole company, both net sales and operating income increased sharply (+43% and +98.9% respectively) year-on-year.

Speaking of the Digital Entertainment business, which includes games, growth year-on-year was even more relevant (+66.8% net sales and +102% operating income).

I’ve already put myself on record as being obsessed with the Ace Attorney series. Comparison can come off as a backhanded compliment, but Aviary Attorney is a game so clearly inspired by Capcom’s courtroom series that comparisons aren’t really avoidable. Aviary Attorney carries across so much of Ace Attorney’s template, from gathering and presenting evidence, to the threeday time limit for each case.

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Today Capcom released a brand new trailer of Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition to celebrate its upcoming release.

The trailer provides an extensive look at the gameplay features of the special edition narrated by Hiroaki Hirata, whom you may know as Vergil’s Japanese voice actor.

Considering that Vergil is playable in the Special Edition, that’s quite appropriate.

You can watch the trailer below.

If you’d like to see more about Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition, you can check out the original announcement, some gameplay showcasing the new features, even more on PS5, and another gameplay trailer featuring a song by Hyde.

Here’s how Capcom describes the games and the improvements it brings.

Today Bandai Namco announced its financial results for the first half of the fiscal year, related to the period between April 1 and September 30.

While both net sales and profits were slightly down year-on-year, they were actually higher than Bandai Namco predicted mostly due to “brisk repeat sales of key titles in network content and existing home video game titles.” and sales of Gunpla models.

You can check the results in the tables below.

Sega released its financial results for the first half of the fiscal year, related to the period between April and September 30, 2020.

The situation for the whole company was rather negative, as showcased by the slides below. The impact of COVID-19 was certainly felt and the structural reform centered on the drop of the arcade business did not help.

Sales dropped sharply year-on-year (from 165.5 to 110.2 billion yen) and Sega recorded a 3 billion yen operating losses for the six-month period.

That being said, the only light in this bleak scenario was the strong performance of the Consumer field of the Entertainment Contents business, which includes video games (mobile, free to play, and PC/consoles).

Video game sales increased from 55.8 billion yen to 61.4 billion yen for the six-month period, while operating income grew from 9.7 billion yen to 20.3 billion yen year-on-year.

Specifically, repeat sales (of games released in the previous quarters) were strong, especially outside of Japan. The performance of new free to play titles was also solid.

Sega expects the strong performance of its video game business to continue for the rest of the fiscal year, including both repeat sales and the free-to-play segment.

Check out new character images and Maglam Lord marriage details. The demon lord craves souls, but who will be your soulmate?

The post Maglam Lord’s Marriage System Characters Revealed appeared first on Siliconera.

Developed by Respawn, best known for their work on the Titanfall games, Apex Legends is one of the more popular free-to-play battle royale games available on the market right now. Similar to Fortnite, this game makes use of a Battle Pass system as well, which incentivizes players to pay for the Pass and level it up to unlock new cosmetics and other rewards.

However, players haven’t been too pleased about how slow progression can be with the Battle Pass, and Respawn is addressing the feedback by lowering the required XP for each Star on the Pass.

In addition to that, Respawn also mentions in the same tweet that from next week onwards, weekly challenges will “take much less time to complete.” These changes have been made with two goals in mind: to keep the game feeling fresh for the entire season, and to encourage players to keep experimenting with different characters and play styles.

Apex Legends is now available as a free-to-play game on PC and consoles.

During today's fiscal year 2021 Q2 Electronic Arts report, the company revealed that a new Battlefield game is on the way, and it's actually not that far away. According to prepare remarks in the EA report, the next game in the Battlefield franchise arrives holiday season next year — and we'll have much more information about it next spring.

From the prepared remarks portion of the earnings report from Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson: "DICE is creating our next Battlefield game with never-before-seen scale. The technical advancements of the new consoles are allowing the team to deliver on a true next-gen vision for the franchise. We have hands-on play testing underway internally, and the team’s been getting very positive feedback on the game as we’ve begun to engage our community."

Game Informer scored the previous title, Battlefield 5, with a solid 8. "Battlefield V is a good, if safe game that feels more iterative than innovative. Its legacy will likely be defined by how steady and interesting the stream of new content is moving forward." Check out the entire review here.

NIS America has a new survey collecting data about the Trails of Cold Steel IV PSN issues keeping people from downloading a game they own.

The post Another Trails of Cold Steel IV PSN Lockout Issue Is Being Investigated appeared first on Siliconera.

Kerbal Space Program 2 has been delayed again, Take-Two Interactive announced in its second fiscal quarter report. Kerbal Space Program 2 is now scheduled for the fiscal year 2023, which is as early as April 2022 or as late as March 2023.

Notably, KSP 2 creative director Nate Simpson took to the game’s official forums to inform the community, saying the game would now arrive in 2022.

"I know this is frustrating, especially considering that this isn’t the first time we’ve adjusted our schedule,” Simpson wrote. “We knew we were taking on an immense technical and creative challenge when we started this project. We’ve heard time and again from this community that quality is paramount, and we feel the same way. It’s not enough to deliver a bunch of new features – those features have to be woven together into a stable, polished whole. We’re creating a reliable foundation on which players and modders alike can build for another decade or more. That involves solving problems that have never been solved before, and that takes time.”

When the technical enhancements for Gears 5 on the Xbox Series X were announced, they included a PC Ultra visual feature set, PC Ultra HD Textures, 4K 60fps including during cinematics on the Series X, 120fps in versus multiplayer, and a plethora of other visual improvements. After having spent a considerable amount of time with it myself, I’m left wondering what’s more impressive: the fact that they succeeded on these promises, or that Microsoft has set such an impressive standard for itself in terms of what we can expect from the Series X in the future.

The Series X offers a wide array of options in the ‘performance vs visual quality’ toolkit of the console, and putting this new hardware to the test on day one is the ‘enhanced’ version of  The Coalition’s Gears 5. This is our performance analysis of Gears 5 on the Xbox Series X. Watch the video below or scroll down to read the full deep dive.

FRAMERATE

The Coalition has succeeded in creating something truly remarkable: achieving native 4K at 60fps throughout the campaign with a visual quality that matches the PC version of the game at Ultra settings. With cutscenes rendered in real time using the Unreal engine, Gears 5 manages to hit 4K 60fps, even during in-engine moments like the Hammer of Dawn sequence which the team admitted was incredibly taxing to develop. It uses technology like Variable Rate Shading which only renders a portion of the screen at full resolution (like a characters face) which is where your eye would naturally go, but the depth of field background for example would be rendered at a lower quality as it doesn’t need to take up that processing power. They also use Temporal Upscaling which will dynamically change the game's resolution as needed every 4 frames.

Much ado has been made about the guts of the Xbox Series X and S, two new next-gen consoles Microsoft will release next week. It’s all “velocity architecture” this and “teraflops” that—technical stuff Microsoft says will cut loading times dramatically. But lingo and lofty promises are secondary to the one thing that…

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Netflix’s animated series is nuanced, until the last scene

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Capcom issued a statement on Thursday saying it was the victim of a cyber-attack by a third party. The company confirmed that at this time there is no reason to believe customer data was breached.

Capcom stated that the attack occurred in the early hours of November 2 and affected access to certain systems, including email and file servers. Capcom has confirmed a third party was responsible for the attack, but has yet to provide any information regarding the third party’s identity. As a result of the attack, Capcom says it has halted some operations of its internal networks as of November 2.

“Capcom expressed its deepest regret for any inconvenience this may cause to its various stakeholders,” Capcom wrote. “Further, it stated that at present there is no indication that any customer information was breached. This incident has not affected connections for playing the company's games online or access to its various websites.”

Capcom says it is coordinating with law enforcement and “other related authorities,” as well as carrying out an investigation and working to restore its systems.

• 00:00:00 Welcome!
• 00:01:35 An update from Casey
• 00:03:30 Metroid Prime 4 discussion
• 00:30:27 Nintendo's latest sales numbers
• 00:33:15 More news
• 00:49:35 What we're playing
• 00:57:19 Question Block!

NVC is available on your preferred platform!

Since the reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, we've been wondering — just how would the new game work with Call of Duty: Warzone, the free-to-play battle royale offering injected with tons of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare trappings? As of today, we finally have a good idea on how integration is going to work. The result is that Warzone essentially stays its own game, and will be direct fed from both Modern Warfare and Black Ops Cold War, in terms of player progression. Yep, it's pretty wild. Activision breaks it all down in a lengthy blog post today, but lets go over the important points here.

Players are already used to working on progression in both Modern Warfare and Warzone at the same time. With the launch of Black Ops Cold War, you have a unified progression path that you can feed into across all three titles. This image makes it simple to visualize. While your rank will be reset in the name of this unified progression path, don't worry — everything you've unlocked stays unlocked.

LEGO IDEAS, the ALL CAPS website where fan designs, including licensed ones, can get voted on and turned into official LEGO sets, currently has a very nice Among Us playset up for discussion.

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Earlier today during the Take-Two Interactive Software Q2 earnings call, CEO, Strauss Zelnick expanded on the company’s thought process behind increasing the price of certain next-gen titles.

First, it’s important to note that not all Take-Two titles will be seeing the same price jump as NBA 2K21 from $60 to $70 in the US. As Zelnick stated, “…pricing is determined on a title-by-title basis.”

Zelnick continued by explaining, “…the price that we set for NBA 2K21 for next-gen reflected the fact that there hasn’t been a frontline price increase since 2005.”

Besides the fact that he brought up there, Zelnick also dug into some details on the increased cost of producing a video game, “And production costs have gone up two or three hundred percent.” Comparatively, the cost of NBA 2K21 for PS5 and Xbox Series X is increasing by slightly less than 17 percent.

Zelnick also talked about how, “…the US has the lowest pricing of frontline games anywhere on Earth.” And even at $69 per game, the US will remain lower in cost as the UK and EU pricing will be £69 and €79 respectively.

Zelnick finished his response by saying, “…we think it made sense and we believe consumers are fine with that as a result.” For now, we’ll just have to wait and see how the numbers roll in with the new price for some Take-Two next-gen games.

If you would like to check out the financial details from Take-Two’s Q2 meeting, then you can find them right here.

Today, during the presentation for the upcoming Fuji TV anime lineup, good news were shared for Muv-Luv and anime fans.

The previously-revealed Muv-Luv Alternative anime series will debut in October 2021 as part of the +Ultra programming, which narrows down the window from what we knew before.

We still don’t know the exact airing date, but that will likely be announced in a while.

At the moment, most aspects of the anime are still being kept under thick wraps.

If you want to see more about the anime, you can check out the awesome trailer which debuted a few weeks ago.

It's a veritable jamboree of next-gen news tonight, and now developer Digital Extremes has revealed the various PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S enhancements coming to celebrated free-to-play space shooter Warframe "this year" and "later" respectively.

On the basic fidelity front, Warframe's next-gen update will deliver "up to" 4K resolution and 60fps on Xbox Series X/S and PS5, and Digital Extremes is also promising "drastically improved" loading times. However, the sexier updates come in the form of a game-wide "texture remaster", which is said to add increased levels of detail and colour, and will reduce required hard-drive space in the process. Additionally, Warframe will receive swish new dynamic lighting through its Enhanced Renderer.

"From the neon underbelly of Fortuna, to our newest landscape on the Infested moon of Deimos," says Digital Extremes, "there's no better place to see the stunning differences. The light from the sun now casts long shadows through the trees, foliage creates dynamic shadows as you stalk through it, and the reflections of the dense Cetus market can be seen across your Warframe as you stroll through."

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During Electronic Arts’ financial conference call for investors and analysts, chief executive officer Andrew Wilson and chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen talked about the partnership between EA Play and Xbox Game Pass and what they see coming for the next generation of consoles.

Wilson mentioned that the objective is to make sure that players can access EA play on any platform in any way that makes sense.

He added that EA has a strong partnership with Microsoft, Sony, and Steam, and they saw an opportunity to build an access point to the EA plat subscription on Microsoft’s platform.

According to Wilson, we’ll continue to see EA working to making the subscription available on any platform.

Jorgensen added that while he can’t give details on the economics of the deal with Microsoft, it obviously has a positive economic impact for EA.

“The real goal is how do we grow our subscription and also help Microsoft grow their subscription. This is a great partnership with them.

We’re in the very early days of the industry for subscription and we’re doing everything possible to help consumers understand why it’s a great potential for them to either be introduced to new games, play the games they love, or play games for a great value.

He added that EA doesn’t do anything for free, and together with Microsoft they have figured out a day to make the economics work for both. “

Speaking of free next-gen upgrades for the games, Jorgensen mentioned that in the past people have delayed purchases of titles to wait for the next-generation version.

Earlier today during the Take-Two Software Interactive earnings conference call, the CEO of the company, Strauss Zelnick, talked about his thoughts on subscription services in gaming.

During the Q&A section of the call, Zelnick responded to the following question, “…just curious if your stance on the subscription model has changed at all.”

For those unfamiliar, Zelnick has come out in the past talking about his lack of faith in the subscription model when it comes to gaming. And yet again, he stuck to his guns Zelnick stated the following:

We’re highly skeptical that subscriptions will be the only way or the primary way that interactive entertainment is distributed. And that’s because the way people consume it and the price point for owning a title. Which is very reasonable, very very low per our basis.

Zelnick continued by talking about how Take-Two supports other subscription services with their own titles, but they don’t see it as the right course of action for their company.

I think it’s unlikely that subscriptions supplant frontline video game sales as a primary business model. Subscriptions can play a role in delivering catalog.

It’s abundantly clear that at the very top of Take-Two, there’s absolutely no desire to go in the direction of EA, Microsoft, or Sony by offering subscription services for their catalog of titles.

At the same time, this should not serve as any indication that Take-Two is planning on removing their games from other subscription services. Zelnick finished his answer to the question by saying the following.

Ah, this is the kind of delay I like to see. None of this “month or two” shit like Cyberpunk is pulling. If you’re going to delay a game, do it like Kerbal Space Program 2 and make it substantial.

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