November 2021

The title was originally scheduled to release in March 2022.

The post Marvel’s Midnight Suns Delayed to Second Half of 2022 appeared first on Siliconera.

Today, during Electronic Arts’ quarterly financial conference call for analysts and investors, chief executive officer Andrew Wilson talked about the reception to the Battlefield 2042 beta.

Wilson mentioned that on balance, the feedback from the beta was “overwhelmingly positive.” While there is some “conversation around some elements of the beta” that’s “not unnatural in a beta.” On top of that, the feedback will be used to improve the game. Ultimately EA Feels “really good” about the result.

Wilson believes that the early access numbers (over 3 .1million users took part in the early access within 7.7 million players that played the beta), and the engagement numbers should be read as the fact that there is “tremendous demand” for the game, which is “very appealing.” According to Wilson the setting is also very appealing, the modes of play, the innovation, and the creativity that the developers have put into the game have been received “very, very well” by the community.

He also explained that the teams have worked very hard in polishing and tuning the game, so they feel very really good about the game that players will enjoy on day 1. They also have “wonderful plans” for the future live service. The result is that EA feels confident about the future of Battlefield.

Later in the call, Wilson reiterated that while he’s excited about the launch of Battlefield 2042, he’s even more excited about the plan the team has to grow and expand the experience after launch.

This shouldn’t surprise, considering that live services are being touted more and more as a main factor for EA’s financial success, to the point that they have been described as a sort of secret sauce the publisher’s games have during today’s conference.

Today Take-Two Interactive Software announced new sales numbers for Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2 during its quarterly financial conference call.

It was revealed that Grand Theft Auto is at over 155 million shipments units worldwide with a recurrent consumer spending increase of 33% and an active player audience increase of 11%. Red Dead Redemption 2 is now over 39 million units sold worldwide with a 26% increase in active players and a 29% increase in new online player acquisition

Consumer spending for Red Dead Online was also stated to be notably above expectations.

Other notable figures include Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos for the Nintendo Switch selling 4 million units worldwide and WWE Supercard being downloaded over 24 million times, making it 2K’s highest-grossing mobile game.

Recently, we learned that Grand Theft Auto V is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on Nov. 11 with a slew of new features. The game is currently available for PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is currently available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. If you’d like to know why it’s is so well-loved by the fans, you can check out our review.

If you’re interested in Take-Two Interactive Software’s financial performance, you can read our dedicated article from earlier today.

Today Take-Two Interactive Software announced its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2022, which ended on Sept. 30, 2021.

Below you can check out a summary of the company’s performance.

• GAAP net revenue was $858.2 million
• GAAP net income per diluted share increased to $0.09
• GAAP net cash provided by operating activities for the six-months ended September 30, 2021 was $283.7 million
• Adjusted Unrestricted Operating Cash Flow (Non-GAAP) for the three-months ended June 30, 2021 was $29 million
• Net Bookings were $984.9 million, above guidance
• Company reiterates outlook for fiscal year 2022

The press release also included a comment from Take-Two Chief Executive Officer Strauss Zelnick, who boasted about the results again being above expectations while also being optimistic about capitalizing on positive trends in the industry.

“Our second quarter results were outstanding, highlighted by Net Bookings of $985 million, which greatly exceeded our expectations and increased 3% as compared to last year. We experienced consistently strong engagement trends across our key franchises, underscoring the durability of our offerings and the deep relationships that we have established with new, existing, and returning players.”

“As a result of our better-than-expected second quarter operating results, along with our updated forecast for the balance of the year, we are raising our Net Bookings guidance for the year to $3.3 to $3.4 billion.”

EA Sports PGA Tour won’t be hitting the green next Spring as promised. EA has announced its upcoming return to golf will arrive at a later date. 

When exactly? That’s not entirely clear. EA Sports PGA Tour never had a concrete release date, but EA’s statement simply states its shifting the launch to a later time and that it will tell us more about it later. The full statement reads as follows:

EA Sports PGA Tour represents the publisher’s comeback to golf after a years-long hiatus. The game already boasts exclusive rights to the Master’s Tournament and features the PGA Championship, U.S. Open Championship, and The Open Championship. The game will also highlight the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and feature one of their respective tournaments, the Amundi Evian Championship.

Take-Two revealed in its earnings call today with investors that it had cancelled a $53 million unannounced project. Sources tell Kotaku that game was intended to be a live service, third-person action game in the vein of Destiny, developed by Hangar 13 called Volt. The decision to cancel it took some developers at…

Read more...

Before I begin! You can join our team here! You can donate to Giant Bomb here!

Wow, what a year, huh? How's it been for you? Me? Oh, you know. Asi asi. But hey, even if this year hasn't been great for a lot of people, you know who it might get better for? The kids! We can help them out by raising a bunch of money for Extra Life with the Giant Bomb team!

Here is the official rap of Extra Life 2021:

raising money for the kids

in the zone, is where i is

streaming video games and having fun

but not as much fun as the kids at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital for whom we are raising funds this year!

From PS1 and PC classics to contemporary indie romps.

The post Final Fantasy IX, Celeste Lead November PS Now Games appeared first on Siliconera.

After an investigation into last month’s leaked data, it has been alleged that a group of hackers laundered almost $10 million in illegally-obtained funds by making a ton of tiny donations to Twitch streamers.

Read more...

Death Stranding is an objectively beautiful game, though sometimes that beauty isn’t found in its lush environments or character interactions but how players use the tools at their disposal to pull off amazing feats.

Read more...

The free update is currently available, a day earlier than scheduled.

The post Animal Crossing New Horizons 2.0 Update Gets an Early Release appeared first on Siliconera.

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ impending v2.0 patch, you can breathe a sigh of relief: Nintendo has apparently pushed the massive update live way ahead of its November 5 release date. Most folks were expecting to download it tomorrow night but, nope, Christmas came early.

Read more...

While the showrunners of the original animated series might no longer be a part of the project, Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender continues to show promise as the cast slowly gets revealed. According to a report from Deadline, Daniel Dae Kim has been cast as Fire Lord Ozai, the leader of the Fire Nation and antagonist of the entire series.

Ozai isn’t just the Fire Lord; he’s also the father of Zuko, one of the main characters of the show, and is known to be a harsh ruler and father figure that no one dares oppose. Daniel Dae Kim is known for playing Jin in the beloved TV series Lost, and has also appeared in other shows like Hawaii Five-O, The Good Doctor, and New Amsterdam.

Kim was also a part of the Avatar anime series, and has voiced General Fong in The Last Airbender, and the father of Asami Sato, Hiroshi Sato, in the sequel series, The Legend of Korra.

There’s no set release date for Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender just yet, but we’ll keep you updated as more details come our way.

The post Lost Star Daniel Dae Kim Will Play Fire Lord Ozai in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender appeared first on Twinfinite.

Today Electronic Arts released its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2021, related to the period between July 1 and September 30, 2021.

You can find a summary of the publisher’s performance in the table below.

Both revenue and net income showcased significant improvements year-on-year, overturning the income trend from the previous quarter.

The press release also includes a statement from chief executive officer Andrew Wilson, boasting that this quarter was the strongest Q2 of the company’s history.

“This was the strongest second quarter in the history of Electronic Arts, with more players around the world joining and engaging in our leading franchises, new launches and live services.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ October direct presentation did mention that the incoming massive update would introduce a new point of view, but if you forgot that was the case, I wouldn’t blame you. There was a lot in there, because this update—which is now live early—is massive. But even knowing it was coming didn’t…

Read more...

Today Spike Chunsoft released a series of new videos focusing on the upcoming Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp.

The videos showcase conversation scenes among the popular characters of the series. They’re in Japanese, but they’re still quite nice to see.

You can watch the videos below.

Atlus released another of its many trailers showcasing the over 200+ demons of its upcoming JRPG Shin Megami Tensei V.

This time around we get to see the gameplay of Chimera, a demon inspired by the fearsome hybrid beast from Greek and Roman mythology that debuted in the series in Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei.

You can watch it in action below.

The file size for EA DICE's upcoming Battlefield 2024 has been leaked, and it's smaller than expected. As posted by Twitter account PlayStation Game Size, the PS5 version of Battlefield 2024 will require 42.389 GB in the USA, and a marginally larger 42.717 GB in Europe.

While the leak only covers the PS5 version of the game, it can be assumed that the file size on other platforms won't be dramatically different. The account also notes that the listed file sizes are without a scheduled day one patch, which could push the file size up a bit, but even then the size is quite reasonable for a game on Battlefield 2024's scale.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons' last major free update, as detailed in October's Animal Crossing Direct, is live now--almost two days before it was originally scheduled to drop. While the 2.0 update was meant to arrive on November 5, the new content is now available to download for the Switch game.

The early update was reported across social media, when players received a surprise prompt to update the game after logging in. While the update wasn't loading automatically for all players, fans quickly found that it could be forced to load by pressing the + button while Animal Crossing was selected in the main menu, then selecting the update option.

The 2.0 update includes a number of new gameplay features, as well as expanding the ones already in the game. Probably the biggest new addition is the return of The Roost coffee shop, which will be opened up inside the Museum and once again will be run by Brewster. Like in other Animal Crossing games, players will be able to purchase coffee for 200 bells a cup, and will have the chance to encounter various characters in the space.

As part of Take-Two's earnings report, the company revealed that it has a whopping 62 games planned for release by the end of FY 2024, which is March 2024.

These games were listed off in a slide for Take-Two's FY22-24 pipeline. It includes 23 "Immersive Core" titles, six "Independent" games from its Private Division label, 20 mobile games, 4 "Mid Core" games, and nine "New Iterations of Previously Released Titles." You can see Take-Two's definitions of these five categories listed below.

The slide contains an important caveat that explains that this is only a "snapshot" of Take-Two's existing development pipeline. Not all will necessarily be seen through to release. "It is likely that some of these titles will not be developed through completion, or some, may be delayed, and we may also add new titles to our slate," Take-Two said.

As an example of Take-Two not seeing every game through to completion, the company just announced it canceled an unannounced game with associated costs of $53 million.

To help with Take-Two's ambitious plans, the company has been increasing its headcount in recent years. For the latest year, Take-Two had a development studio staff of 5,046, a number that has been been steadily growing in recent years.

Platinum Games has announced that it is delaying the release of Sol Cresta, its vertical shoot-em-up game, from its original December 9 release date.

In a stream titled, "Hideki Kamiya's Very Sorry Stream," Kamiya revealed the news that the title would have to be pushed back. It now has an unspecified release date, but he hopes to have a new one sometime in early 2022.

According to Gematsu, Kamiya also showed a new "Caravan mode, which is a five-minute score attack mode, as well as a vertical screen mode. Additionally, the game's opening movie was shown and Kamiya teased that a certain ship from previous games in the series will make an appearance too.

The game was announced this year during April Fool's Day--it's a sequel to the 1985 Terra Cresta game. Sol Cresta's gameplay uses a "dock-and-split" system, which consists of three ships that make up a Yamato fighter jet. Players can split and re-order the three individual parts to change Yamato's weaponry to fit the current situation.

As part of Take-Two's earnings report on Wednesday, the Grand Theft Auto parent company announced that it canceled an unannounced game. The publisher did not say what this game was, however, though it did disclose that the cancellation of the game came with related costs amounting to $53 million. Following the earnings report, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported that the game in question was a new title from Mafia III studio Hangar 13.

According to the report, the game was in development "in various forms" since 2017 and was codenamed Volt. "The current version struggled due to reboots, technological hiccups and challenges caused by Covid-19, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly," the report said, adding that the title was going to feature "superheroes competing in online game play."

Double Fine has announced a brand-new patch for Psychonauts 2 that will add various quality of life features to the game. The patch makes it easier to 100% the game for Achievement and Trophy hunters, especially by adding new tools for finding the remaining collectibles.

Lead designer Seth Marinello went through them in a new video. The first one is an Otto-Shot filter that is available for the psychic camera that Raz can get from Otto in his lab. This filter helps find collectibles after you've finished the game by highlighting them in yellow lines within the camera's vicinity. The filter can be purchased at Otto-matics for 75 Psitanium.

Additionally, fast travel menus inside mental worlds now have checkmarks. If you've found every collectible within an area, there will be a checkmark at the top right of the menu indicating so.

Lastly, there's a quest that involves Gisu asking you to vent Psychoseismometers around the real world. If you've finished that quest, it will now unlock an additional Psychoseismometer in Otto's lab. This allows you to engage in combat encounters over and over again. These fights include enemies that are associated with unlocking certain trophies and achievements.

The new Psychoseismometer will provide a nice challenge for those who've also reached Rank 102 as well as unlocked the final Clairvoyance upgrade, Limitless. This upgrade which removes all cooldowns for abilities.

As part of EA's earnings release on Wednesday, the company announced more details around Battlefield 2042, and specifically how many people took part in the open beta.

According to EA, the Battlefield 2042 open beta had 7.7 million players. That's a huge number, but it's well below the franchise's record for an open beta. Battlefield 1's beta, for example, had more than 13 million players, becoming the biggest beta in EA's history. The Battlefield 3 beta had 8.1 million players and the Battlefield Hardline beta had 7 million players.

None of these are perfect or complete comparisons, however, as each game's beta period ran for different periods of time and were impacted by other factors as well.

Battlefield 2042 launches on November 19, but Game Pass and EA Play subscribers can start playing a 10-hour trial on November 12; that's also when the game's Gold and Ultimate Editions unlock. Unlike past games in the series, Battlefield 2042 has no single-player campaign.

In other news, DICE just recently showed off Battlefield 2042's Portal mode and revealed more about what you can expect from the intriguing-looking mash-up offering.

Ahead of Call of Duty: Vanguard's release on November 5, Activision and Sledgehammer Games have released a new video that reveals Oscar-nominated cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema worked on the game. Van Hoytema is known for working with Christopher Nolan, and he was the cinematographer on Nolan's Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Tenet, and he also worked on the James Bond movie Spectre. He earned an Academy Award nomination for Dunkirk, and will re-team with Nolan for the movie Oppenheimer, which has been in the news lately.

For Vanguard, van Hoytema helped bring a new level of cinematic artistry to the WWII shooter. Specifically, van Hoyteman said he provided input in the area of helping the developers turn some dials down in an effort to make the atomosphere feel more genuine.

"We had a lot of discussions about how can we make things feel more real, and how can we make things feel as if they are a part of our real world," he said. "Sometimes you can create a beautiful sunset--just because you can--but maybe that sunset you should just tone down; make it grayer, make it a little more depressing, make it a little less flashy."

How you build your character in Genshin Impact is incredibly important for not only beating higher-level enemies and domains but also for team synergy. Some characters can be built for damage or defense, with plenty of options for your playstyle. The most important part of building characters in Genshin Impact is artifacts, which grant high boosts to different stats depending on the artifact. Here is everything you need to know about artifacts.

What are artifacts?

Artifacts are equipable items that give individual characters an increase to one specific attribute and up to four bonus attributes. These can include an increase in health, defense, attack, or other attributes, either in a base number increase or a percentage increase. Similar to weapons, artifacts are separated by rarity, going from one star to five -stars. Artifacts can also be leveled up, which will increase the artifact's main stat and either add an additional secondary stat or increase one of the current secondary stats.

All artifacts are also part of specific sets that offer bonus stats if you equip either two or four artifacts in the same set. There are five artifact types: Flower of Life, Plume of Death, Sands of Eon, Goblet of Eonothem, and Circlet of Logos. The Flower of Life artifacts always have HP as their main stat and the Plume of Death always have ATK. The rest of the artifacts can drop with different main attributes.

EA's new golf game, EA Sports PGA Tour, will not be released on time. The publisher said on Wednesday that EA Sports PGA Tour will not be out on schedule in Spring 2022.

In a brief statement, EA said it will share more information about the game's launch plans in the months ahead. However, no explanation for the delay was provided.

Whenever it's released, EA Sports PGA Tour will compete with the next PGA Tour 2K game, which looks like it will also launch in 2022 after skipping a release this year. EA Sports PGA Tour will be EA's first new PGA Tour game since Rory McIlroy PGA Tour in 2015.

Marvel's Midnight Suns, a new strategy game from XCOM studio Firaxis, has been delayed. The game is now scheduled for release in the second half of 2022.

In a statement, the studio said it needs more time to make Marvel's Midnight Suns the "best game possible." The extra development time will allow the studio to add more story, cinematics, and overall polish to the game, the team said.

While Marvel's Midnight Suns does feature a card-based battle system, Firaxis says the only microtransactions the game will have are cosmetic and that no, you won't be able to date Marvel heroes.

Marvel's Midnight Suns will launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via both Steam and Epic Games Store.

Many games have been delayed this year, due in part to the pandemic and other factors. For more, check out GameSpot's roundup of all the delayed games.

Apex Legends Season 11: Escape is now live, bringing new legend Ash, new tropical map Storm Point, and a brand-new battle pass. The new season also brings plenty of game changes and balancing adjustments, which you can see in the Season 11 patch notes, including some much needed buffs for Wattson. The new battle pass offers up tons of rewards across 100 tiers, plus a bonus reward at tier 110. Below you can check out some highlights of the items included in the battle pass and the best ways to level up.

Some of the less visually exciting items like quips, trackers, and Apex Packs aren't included below, to focus on more enticing items like legend and gun skins. The Season 11 battle pass includes eight legends skins, with three rare, three epic, and two legendary. The two legendary skins are for Mirage and Gibraltar. The legendary Desert Mirage skin has everyone's favorite trickster in a sci-fi-inspired outfit, including a silver face mask with antennas on the side. Gibraltar's Glorious Combatant skin is aesthetically similar to Mirage's, giving the large defender a mask over his face and miscellaneous armor pieces across his torso.

As part of Take-Two's earnings report on Wednesday, the company announced a new sales number for Grand Theft Auto V. The game has now sold 155 million copies, which is up 5 million copies in three months. The entire series has now passed 355 million units sold.

GTA V sales are expected to continue to grow in the future, as the game is scheduled for release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in March 2022. The game was expected to launch in November before Rockstar delayed the game to 2022. A standalone version of GTA Online is coming as well, and it'll be free for PS Plus subscribers on PlayStation 5 for the first three months.

Rockstar also announced a new sales number for Red Dead Redemption 2. The game has sold more than 39 million copies. The entire series has now sold 62 million copies globally, meaning the original has sold around 23 million units.

As for the NBA 2K series, Take-Two said more people played NBA 2K22 in its first month than any other game in the series. The game has now sold 5 million copies.

It wasn't all good news, however, as Take-Two announced that 2K's Marvel's Midnight Suns has been delayed to an unspecified point in the future.