Warzone’s stadium explosion was officially revealed with today’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare trailer. The teased event will finally come to fruition with Season 5, which kicks off on August 5 across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
A bizarre saga of events played out on social media over the weekend, embroiling much of the close-knit world of scientists, academics, and researchers on Twitter. It started with accusations that Arizona State University’s actions had exposed one of their faculty members, an Indigenous woman and anthropologist, to an…
Today Sega released a brand new AC Scratch collection for the English version of its MMORPG Phantasy Star Online 2.
The collection is titled “Maestro Summoner” and it includes a mix of casual outfit and more sharp and elegant ones.
It launches tomorrow (August 5) at 12:00 am PDT and ends on September 1.
If you’re unfamiliar with AC Scratch, that’s basically the game’s loot box-like mechanic that you can get through tickets purchased with Arks Cash.
You can check out a trailer below and read the official blog post for a full list of the items.
Phantasy Star Online 2 is available in the west for Xbox One and Windows 10, with the Steam release coming on August 5 alongside the Episode 4 update.
In the meanwhile, Sega recently announced Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, which will basically be a new game operated in parallel with the original Phantasy Star Online 2.
Fortnite's latest season, Splashdown, released a few months back in mid-June. It's brought some significant changes to the battle-royale mode, most notably drenching the map with waters that have been slowly receding over the past several weeks. It's just about back to its pre-flood state, which means there's finally enough land to support another big addition: driving!
Epic has confirmed that the JoyRide update will be coming to the game on August 5, which adds the long-awaited ability to drive cars.
https://twitter.com/FortniteGame/status/1290391994842324992Sure, the game has featured a variety of four-wheeled vehicles over the years, but aside from shopping carts, golf carts, and quadcrasher ATVs, they've only been a resource for metal. This should add some much-appreciated utility to these things, and also give players another way to quickly get around the world.
The pictured Whiplash looks like a two-seater, but we'll have to wait until the update launches to see just how many other vehicles are coming to Fortnite and how many combatants can cram into each one. And, perhaps more importantly, will you be able to honk their horns at will?
Viko Menezes is an artist from Brazil who has done work for companies like Valve, Wizards of the Coast and Fantasy Flight.
Amateur games historian Eon Fafnir posted a clip of this 1990 local news story about LucasArts (then still known as LucasFilm Games) yesterday, and while it’s fascinating getting a look behind the scenes of the studio during some its golden years, Monkey Island fans can squint and see some stuff that never made the…
Cosplayer Zibartas—who we’ve seen here before with some top-tier Overwatch work—has truly outdone himself here, building a complete set of Mercy’s wings made out of steel and aluminium, that move and really light up.
30-day pre-orders will open later this month for Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time.
The post Limited Run Will Open Samurai Jack Switch and PS4 Physical Pre-orders on August 14, 2020 appeared first on Siliconera.
Every great horror story needs a monster. Whether it be a grotesque beast, a supernatural entity, or simply the horror that lurks within man, you need an effective, scary antagonist to get horror right.
But what if the script was flipped? What if you took a story like John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic The Thing, and placed the titular creature in the protagonist role? Chances are, you’d get something along the lines of Carrion, a “reverse horror” Metroidvania from Phobia Studio and Devolver Digital.
Carrion kicks off with a bang, as you, a fleshy, tentacled meat blob of a creature, escape from your containment tank and into the vents of a sprawling facility. It’s not long before you’re tearing open grates and snagging humans with your prehensile tentacles, dragging them into your fleshy, toothed maw. And as you eat your way through the facility, you’ll grow in size, gain new abilities, and become that much more of a threat.
Compile Heart just revealed two new trailers for its upcoming visual novel Date A Live: Ren Dystopia.
The first video showcases the opening cutscene providing a nice overview of all the familiar heroines that we’ll interact with, plus a new one.
The second is a gameplay trailer. Since this game is a visual novel, you probably know that the gameplay isn’t exactly action-oriented.
You can check them both out below.
Date A Live: Ren Dystopia will launch in Japan on September 24, 2020 exclusively for PS4.
Today Sony announced its financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2020, which relates to the period between April 1, 2020, and June 30, 2020.
First of all, we get an update on the PS4 units shipped during the latest quarter. 1.9 million units were purchased by retailers worldwide, which means that the grand total as of June 30 is at 112.1 million units.
[Update: Sony has made a sneak change to its PS4 sales figures for Q3 and Q4 of the fiscal year 2019, throwing the total calculation off by 100,000 units. The original article reported 112.3 million units and has been corrected to 112.2 million units.
Interestingly, the quarterly numbers add up to 13.4 million units for the fiscal year 2019, while the full fiscal year figure is reported as 13.5 million (while the previous report had a 13.6 million units figure). This means that the quarterly numbers are likely approximated downward, so we’re assuming the yearly figure is correct in our calculation of the total shipments.]
Below you can check out an overview of the performance of the Game & Network Services business (which includes PlayStation and PlayStation Network).
Both revenue and operating income have seen significant growth year-on-year due to a sizable increase in software and PlayStation Plus sales. On the other hand, PS4 hardware sales decreased year-on-year.
The forecast for the full fiscal year predicts a significant increase in software and hardware sales due to the launch of PS5. Operating income, on the other hand, should remain essentially flat year-on-year.
There was a time when everyone was obsessed with whatever version of Snake they had on their terrible, invariably Nokia mobile. Thankfully, since then nobody has been obsessed with phones or reheated retro games.
Snakelike combines two things I resent to create one I enjoy. Dastardly alchemy. It is a turn based roguelike in which you are a snake, from Snake. It’s clever and cute and I’m upset it isn’t better known.
Parsec is a well-known desktop streaming application, and it looks like Ubisoft is looking to double down on their streaming efforts by partnering up with the company. Announced this week, both companies have entered a long-term partnership to advance their own streaming efforts.
“You may have seen what we did with Ubisoft Forward earlier this month (they shared the story of the event on their blog too). Over the course of a few days, more than 1,000 game industry and media professionals were able to jump into some of the first ever demos of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs: Legion via an experience powered by our technology. It was a big achievement for our team: we played a significant part in a marquee moment of 2020’s gaming news.
This new partnership will allow Ubisoft to create more experiences like that, embedding Parsec into their own products to deliver full fidelity experiences back to people wherever they are or however they’re playing. Parsec’s poised to help advance and compliment Ubisoft’s efforts in game streaming, across titles, brands, and products.”
Especially with the COVID-19 pandemic going on at the moment, remote work has become increasingly important, so it makes sense that Ubisoft would want to make use of Parsec’s infrastructure to reach a larger audience through streaming.
The post Ubisoft and Parsec Announce Long-Term Partnership Focused on Streaming appeared first on Twinfinite.
This weekend I've been playing Grindstone, the wonderfully bloodthirsty puzzle game from Capy that just got an update on Apple Arcade. And the update is a doozy. A daily mode! Daily Grind! Four levels each day, slice your way through them and then compete on the leaderboards. It's thrilling - a game that is perfect for the daily challenge now has one.
I've been wondering why a daily mode matters so much here, and I think it's down to why Grindstone is not only a very compulsive puzzle game but a fiendish and sometimes devastating one.
Very basic gist: Grindstone is a colour matching game. You have a grid filled with different baddies of a handful of different colours, and you move around slicing them down as you go. You can only chain baddies of the same colour together, though, unless you pass through a jewel which allows you to switch - pink to yellow, say; green to blue.
As we draw closer to the release date of Crusader Kings 3 on September 1, Paradox has started a series of videos to get you up to speed with their grand strategy game. First up is a look at how characteristics shape your regal avatar. It begins with the story of Erik the Heathen, a greedy, brave, and zealous Viking. Despite ruling Sweden, he is not chill.
(more…)
Sony is hosting its financial conference call for investors and analysts, and chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki talked about the trends of sales of first and third-party games and more.
Totoki-san mentioned that during the first quarter (from April to June) of the fiscal year the stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 had a significant impact on the sales of both first-party and third-party games (18.5 units of first-party games and 91 million units of third-party games for PS4 were sold during the quarter, with a massive improvement year-on-year). Due to that, results in April were very strong while in May they partly normalized, but they were still very high compared to last year.
On the other hand, Sony expects demand to settle down to an extent during the second quarter and onward. The company then predicts to incur a certain level of marketing expenses for the launch of PS5.
Unsurprisingly, Totoki-san declined to mention any specific details on expected volumes and price for the new console, only providing a but of vague color.
With regards to the volume and price, right now I can’t talk about that. We have upside and risks, both sides. But at this point in time, we feel that this balance is good and we’ve shown a plan based on that.
Incidentally, Totoki-san also had a prepared remark explaining the investment in Epic Games and Bilibili. Interestingly, we hear that Sony is interested in proactively pursuing similar investment opportunities in the future.
While it’s not quite as that other Pokemon mobile game from Niantic, Pokemon Masters is still a pretty decent Pokemon battle game to check out, and it’s still receiving consistent updates. The latest update is, as you might expect, summer-themed and it comes with two new sync pairs and some extra features.
For starters, the Summer Superstars event will bring about a new string of story missions to play, along with two new sync pairs: Summer Steven and Alolan Sandslash, as well as Summer Lyra and Jigglypuff.
The following features have also been added with the new update:
Own the Road.
Gaming products love LED. If a company wants to make a gaming PC, a gaming keyboard, or a gaming mouse, light-emitting diodes are a constant. So these “gaming masks” should be no surprise.
This Fortnite season has been about two things: flood waters, and cars. Now, finally, with the map as dried out as it'll get and its new Atlantis-esque area revealed, it's time for those vehicles.
Fortnite doesn't usually name its updates, but has termed tomorrow's as "Fortnite Joyride". The introduction of drivable cars and trucks certainly feels big enough to warrant a title.
The game has had plenty of vehicles in the past, of course - hoverboards, golf karts, planes, helicopters - but has shied away from letting you get behind the wheel of the more realistic-looking cars which have sat stationary on its map.
Another Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone season, another massive update - but this time you can pre-download... on PlayStation 4 only.
I grabbed the 36.182GB update last night, and this morning it was sat on my PS4 with a 7am 5th August install lock - that's the date Season 5 of Warzone and Modern Warfare goes live.
Pre-downloading is welcome, of course, but unfortunately you can't do it on PC and Xbox One. Why? According to Activision: "Xbox does not support the ability to pre-download. Similarly, Battle.net does not currently support pre-downloads for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or Warzone."
Just like everything else this year, QuakeCon has also become an online event, probably not what Bethesda would have wanted for its 25th anniversary. But the show goes on as QuakeCon at Home kicks off from 7th to 9th August with a global 60-hour Super Stream from featuring developer panels, live concerts, influencer streams and much more. Coinciding with this are huge QuakeCon sales running on both GOG and the Xbox Games Store.
Running until 17th August, the GOG QuakeCon Sale offers up DRM-free versions of some of Bethesda's best FPS games and RPGs on PC. While it's missing a few of the more recent releases, there's still a lot of great deals there especially if you want to catch up on some classics. Some of our picks include the following:
The Xbox QuakeCon Sale only runs until 11th August, but among the bargains is Doom Eternal for just £27.49 while deals apply to both Xbox One and Xbox 360, the latter naturally backwards compatible. Here's what caught our eye:
The latest twist on the ‘royale’ genre, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, is out today. I had a quick run around it to write this post because I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was dragged into a colourful, bizarre obstacle course with 59 other people. The brief time I spent with it was more of a last-place simulator, sadly. I was humiliated.
Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku’s reader-run community: Late Review: Final Fantasy VII Remake • Kaiju Crush: Dev Diary - The Final Push, Day 16 • TAY Retro: Nintendo Entertainment System - Spot: The Video Game and Silver Surfer [TV Commercial, NA]
During the Edo Period (1603-1868) of Japan, sushi was between two and four times larger than it is today.
NBA 2K21 publisher Take-Two Interactive has defended its decision to charge $10/£10 more for the game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick told GamesIndustry.biz that the rise was designed to "reflect the quality of the experience" and that it was "an extremely modest price change given that prices haven't changed for a very long time".
Zelnick later added in an investor call that next-gen game pricing would still be decided on a "title-by-title basis", suggesting not every Take-Two release would see the same increase.
Forget the military mod origins and the Lost-style island lore. Deep down, Battle Royale belongs on TV at 7pm on a Saturday. In between a Simon Cowell putdown and the revelation that there's nothing in the fridge except chicken dippers of unknown provenance. Battle Royale belongs to the Expanded Cheggers Universe, and finally here is a game that knows it. Fall Guys wraps you up in foam and padding and then sends you across a bunch of soft play hellscapes (tautology?) in a fight to find the last Tic-Tac person standing. If this game was a building it would be on the edge of an industrial estate and they would give you grippy socks before you went in. And even then it would still smell of feet.
None of this is a criticism. Fall Guys made my daughter laugh so much and so quickly that it must be a kind of magic - snort-laughing, where giggles get backed up and then come out through the nose. You're dropped into a game with 59 other peanut people and you have to make it to the finish line, or stay out of the slime, or work together in groups to get a ball down an incline or something like that. Complicating things are rotor blades, see-saw platforms, huge plastic fruit tumbling towards you, or something like that.
People are knocked out of the competition after each round and by the end of it a single person, generally dressed as a pigeon or a carton of French fries, is the winner. You can spectate when you get iced, and in between games you can level up and spend in-game points on costumes and unlock stuff on a sort of Battle Pass. The shop rotates stock pretty regularly. It's all rather slick.
The Japanese voice actor known for voicing Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing tested positive for COVID-19.
The post Gundam Wing Voice Actor Toshihiko Seki Tests Positive for COVID-19 appeared first on Siliconera.
Aquaplus announced a Dokapon x Utawarerumono series collaboration game for PS4 and Switch.
The post Dokapon x Utawarerumono Collaboration Game Dokapon UP! Announced for PS4 and Switch appeared first on Siliconera.
The Sega Building 2 will be closing its doors for good in August.
The post Iconic Arcade Sega Building 2 in Akihabara Will Be Closing Permanently on August 30 appeared first on Siliconera.
Sony reached a pretty major milestone, when it comes to PS4 worldwide shipments. PlayStation Plus is doing well too!
The post PlayStation 4 Shipments Reach 112.3 Million Worldwide appeared first on Siliconera.
Have an Xbox One controller? Well, it will absolutely work with the Xbox Series X.
The post Xbox Series X Will Be Compatible With All Xbox One Controllers Across All Games appeared first on Siliconera.
Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is today launching the second season of the Journey, a progression system that was added back in April of this year and kicked off with a story about Geralt. This time around, Ciri is taking center stage with an all-new tale that’s set to be told in weekly chapters over the next three months.
Free for all players, Season 2 brings over 100 levels for players to work toward, each rewarding with unique ornaments and special points, which players can redeem for items available in GWENT’s in-game Reward Book.
And for those who own Gwent’s Premium Pass, there’s a new customizable Ciri legendary leader skin to unlock and upgrade. In addition to various different apparel (including the sexy Komono outfit used in the badass Ciri and the Kitsune statue), there are card kegs, titles, borders, animated cards and avatars, and more to unlock.
There’s also a special bundle that includes the Premium Pass as well as an instant Journey progression boost that should suit those who haven’t yet got on board with the Journey and want to jump right in. More detail on that can be found here.
For a full overview, developer CD Projekt Red has put together a launch trailer for season 2 that you can check out below.
Last month, Xbox announced it would be including access to its cloud-gaming suite (currently named xCloud) as a part of its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. Now, Xbox has detailed that subscribers will be able to play a library of more than 100 games when the service comes to the bundle on September 15. This initial roll out will include 22 markets across North America, Europe, and South Korea, and will enable players to game on Android phones and tablets.
The list of available titles includes Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Destiny 2, Forza Horizon 4, The Outer Worlds, Yakuza Kiwami 2, and more. Additionally, Xbox is hoping to make all first-party games from Xbox Game Studios playable from the cloud on day one, just as they will be playable locally at no additional charge through the Game Pass subscription.
As previously announced, if you're playing on a device other than your Xbox, your profile, friends list, achievements, controller settings, and save data travel with you. Microsoft has intentionally designed xCloud to work even in low-bandwidth situations, requiring a minimum 10Mbps wi-fi connection or LTE mobile connection.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate adds cloud gaming through xCloud on September 15.
Image: Funimation
