Call of Duty fans who've been worried what Microsoft's pending $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard means for the future of that franchise on PlayStation can breathe easy. That series and other popular Activision Blizzard games won't be exclusive to Xbox — even after Sony's existing agreements with the publisher expire.
"Microsoft will continue to make Call of Duty and other popular Activision Blizzard titles available on PlayStation through the term of any existing agreement with Activision," Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote in a blog post. "And we have committed to Sony that we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love. We are also interested in taking similar steps to support Nintendo’s successful platform. We believe this is the right thing for the industry, for gamers and for our business."
According to Bloomberg, Sony struck a deal with Activision Blizzard before the blockbuster merger was announced to bring the next two mainline Call of Duty games and a sequel to Warzone to PlayStation. Until now, it was unclear whether subsequent Call of Duty games would be released on PlayStation or if Microsoft planned to keep them on Xbox and PC only.
Smith made the announcement while revealing a set of Open App Store Principles that Microsoft is establishing for Windows and future gaming marketplaces it's building for games. He wrote that the company is bringing in the policies as it seeks regulatory approval for the Activision Blizzard deal and as governments "move forward with new laws to promote competition in app markets and beyond. We want regulators and the public to know that as a company, Microsoft is committed to adapting to these new laws, and with these principles, we’re moving to do so."
Winter is a great time to catch up on your video game “pile of shame,” which makes Amazon’s latest deal either well- or poorly-timed depending on how you feel about having even more games to play. Right now it’s buy two, get one free on select books, movies and game titles, and there’s some good stuff to grab while supplies last.
You can expect newer games to be sold at full price, while a few older titles on the list may be discounted by 20 percent or more. As usual, the free game will be the cheapest title you put in your cart, so while Ring Fit Adventure is part of the sale, you’re still going to pay $70 for it but at least you can still snag a freebie elsewhere.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
Rockstar Games has revealed when Grand Theft Auto V fans will be able to get their hands on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions, while teasing what's next for the blockbuster franchise. The current-gen editions will arrive on March 15th. Rockstar previously delayed the release from November to some time in March.
GTAV and GTA Online come to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on March 15, with new graphics modes, technical advancements, and much more.
When GTA V and GTA Online hit their third console generation (putting aside the fact previous versions work on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S through backward compatibility), players will have new features to check out. Rockstar is adding several graphics modes, including a frame rate of up to 60 fps, up to 4K resolution, ray-tracing, HDR and upgrades to textures and draw distances. You can also expect faster load times and 3D audio, among other features. The developers are also taking advantage of the DualShock controller's capabilities to offer PS5 plasters "advanced haptic feedback."
Players will be able to skip the GTA V prologue and dive straight into GTA Online if they wish. There's a new tutorial for the multiplayer experience too. Newcomers can access a Career Builder, which allows them to start operating a business as a biker, executive, gunrunner or nightclub owner from the jump. They'll receive a "sizable" bag of in-game currency to kickstart their virtual life of crime as well. Veteran players will have the option to restart their character and hop into the Career Builder at any time.
Those playing the PS4 or Xbox One versions will be able to transfer their progress for both GTA V and GTA Online, as well as their characters from the latter. This is a one-time migration though, so don't expect to be able to bounce back and forth between console generations.
A standalone version of GTA Online is also coming to current-gen consoles on March 15th. PS5 players will have three months of free access. However, Rockstar hasn't revealed pricing for the new versions of GTA V or GTA Online. The upgrade path from the PS4 and Xbox One versions is also unclear.
Meanwhile, in the year's most shocking video game news thus far, Rockstar confirmed that GTA 6 (or whatever the next entry in the series will actually be called) is coming. It says that active development on the game is well underway, and it will share more details when it's ready.
In its press release for its fourth quarter 2021 financial results, Activision Blizzard has revealed that it has plans to release Warcraft for mobile sometime this year. Company CEO Bobby Kotick told investors a year ago that the developer made "multiple, mobile, free-to-play Warcraft experiences" that were already in advanced development back then. Blizzard has yet to reveal more detailed information about the games and a more concrete timeline, so it's unclear if its release plans include all those experiences or just few.
The only part of the company's earnings results that mentions the franchise on mobile reads:
"Blizzard is planning substantial new content for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including new experiences in World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players’ hands for the first time."
There have been rumors about a Warcraft mobile game since at least 2017. In 2018, reports came out that Blizzard was working on a mobile entry for the franchise that will be similar to Pokémon Go, which presumably means that it's an augmented reality title. According to a Kotaku report, it was being developed by an "incubation" team that was formed when co-founder Allen Adham returned to the company 2016. The team was also behind mobile game Diablo Immortalthat's coming out this year, as well.
As reports suggested last month, GameStop is getting into NFTs (non-fungible tokens). The company has partnered with Immutable X to build a marketplace for NFTs, which they expect to open up later this year.
People will be able to buy and sell NFTs linked to digital assets for use in various games. The items will include things like virtual real estate, character skins and weapons, according to The Verge.
Immutable X is based on the Ethereum blockchain, which requires significant energy consumption and high gas fees (a cryptocurrency payment that's required to carry out an Ethereum transaction). The platform claims to diminish those drawbacks by combining many NFT sales into a single Ethereum transaction and buying carbon offsets. As such, Immutable X, whose partners include some blockchain games and TikTok, promises zero gas fees and carbon-neutral NFTs.
GameStop and Immutable X are hoping to entice game developers to use the marketplace with the help of a $100 million fund. Whether developers and studios will bite en masse remains to be seen.
For its annual State of the Game Industry Survey, the Game Developers Conference polled more than 2,700 devs. It found 70 percent of them and their studios were not interested in NFTs, while 72 percent had no interest in packing cryptocurrencies into their games. Around 28 percent said they were at least somewhat interested in NFTs.
Over the last few months, some studios, publishers and industry figures have announced NFT projects, only to abandon their plans after a significant backlash. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2developer GSC Game World, publisher Team17 and prominent game voice and motion-capture actor Troy Baker all backed out of their NFT schemes.
Ubisoft brought NFTs to one of its games for the first time in December, but it seems sales have been slow. Last week, an Ubisoft executive argued that, for gamers, being able to sell virtual items to others is "really beneficial. But they don't get it for now."
Time will tell whether GameStop’s latest endeavor, which follows its emergence as a popular meme stock last year, proves successful. The signs aren't looking promising for the marketplace, though. It's worth bearing in mind that the Steam marketplace has allowed players to buy and sell in-game items for many years without the shadow of NFTs looming over it.
NFTs are designed as public records of ownership of digital assets. The notion is that NFT holders own the asset (which include things like music, digital artworks and in-game items), though in reality the NFT is a verified URL that points to the file. The owner of the URL's destination can alter or delete the file in question. This week, artists claimed that HitPiece, which has since gone offline, was minting and selling NFTs of their music without permission.
Yacht Club Games, the developer behind the popular throwback platformer Shovel Knight, has announced a brand new IP. It's a top-down "bone-chilling action adventure" entitled Mina the Hollower that's inspired by Gothic Horror and is set in a bizarre world full of monster. The company has announced the new game at an event, where it has also launched the Kickstarter campaign to help fund its development. According to IGN, Yacht Club Games director and designer Alec Faulkner said the developer is financing a majority of the project, but it's returning to Kickstarter to build a community and get feedback from backers.
Faulkner said:
"We want your feedback, collaboration, and support in making Mina the Hollower the best game it can possibly be. That's why we're returning to our roots and kicking off Mina the Hollower’s development as a Kickstarter campaign.
Though we're financing a majority of this project ourselves, we hope we can create a more expansive game this way. More importantly, we want to build a community around Kickstarter, much like we did with Shovel Knight."
Shovel Knight's Kickstarter campaign raised over $300,000 back in 2013. Yach Club has since released various DLCs, expansions and spinoffs for it and brought it to the Switch a few years after it was released.
Mina the Hollower will feature an 8-bit aesthetic in the style of Game Boy Color titles, with 60fps action combat. In it you play as Mina, an inventor who can burrow under her foes to pop up on the other side and take them down with her trusty whip. Mina belongs to Hollower guild, which is dedicated to studying the earth and its latent resources and which has members that can move faster underground.
Yacht Club has yet to reveal a launch window for Mina the Hollower, but it took over a year for Shovel Knight to make its way to backers. You'd have to pledge at least $20 for a digital copy of the game and at least $100 for a physical copy.
Bloodborne, a game famous for being notoriously difficult to beat, was released in 2015 for the PS4 with modern graphics and visuals. Over the past 13 months, though, game programmer Lilith Walther created a version of the title that makes it look like it was released way back in the 90's for the first PlayStation. Bloodborne PSX reimagines the Victorian city of Yharnam in the art style commonly seen in games from that console era. The blocky and pixelated graphics with the colored health bars would sure look very familiar to a generation of gamers who used to play on the PS1.
The demake only covers some parts of the whole game, but it does give players access to 10 hunter weapons they can use to slay enemies — some even slow down the game's frame rate as one would expect to happen on a real PS1 title. As Polygon notes, Walther posted updates about the undertaking on Twitter for over 13 months, including one wherein she revealed that the music creator for the project remade the Cleric Beast boss music using a real Roland SC-88 Pro for authenticity.
Bloodborne PSX is now available as a free download for Windows PC. Players can use a keyboard and a mouse for controls, but they can also dust off their old PS1 controllers and use that instead. Those interested can get a glimpse of the demake below.
Unpacking is a lovely, relaxing puzzle game made by a small team. It's beautifully designed and manages to tell a compelling story with very little text. Unfortunately, its core mechanic — unpacking boxes and placing items in a new home — isn't exactly difficult to copy. One clone quickly found an audience on iOS and Android before it was removed.
If you've happened to catch an ad for a suspiciously similar-looking game to Unpacking📦 on mobile recently, please know that this is not our game.
Unpacking Master, which was published by a company called SayGames, was said to be a near-identical copy of Witch Beam Games' title. It adopted a freemium model (users could pay a one-time fee to remove ads) and it briefly topped App Store charts less than a week after it was released. As Game Developer notes, Unpacking Master is no longer available on Apple's App Store or the Google Play Store.
Earlier this month, a spate of Wordle clones barged onto the App Store with copycat developers looking to cash in on the success of the viral hit word game. Those apps were removed as well. These incidents highlight a long-running problem that studios behind popular games (particularly indies) have grappled with.
In the case of Unpacking, Witch Beam suggested SayGames' clone used almost identical items and very similar level layouts. It said that while other clones failed to find much success, Unpacking Master took off in the wake of an ad campaign on TikTok and Instagram.
"It's demoralizing for a small team like ours to see content we spent literally years planning, refining and handcrafting be hastily reproduced in an opportunistic ad-riddled app a mere 3 months after our launch," the team wrote on Twitter. "We're a tiny indie team and even with the success we have achieved, we still don't have the resources to pursue companies trying to use our game's distinct look and feel to make a quick buck. We have to rely on storefronts like the App Store to better curate their content."
At least for now, the original Unpacking isn't available via mobile app stores, though you can pick it up on PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch and Xbox. It's on Game Pass as well, so you can play over the cloud if you're eager to check it out on a phone or tablet.
Uncharted has been a tentpole franchise for Sony ever since the first game arrived back in 2007, so it’s not surprising that the games have been remastered for newer consoles over the years. Developer Naughty Dog first brought the original PS3 trilogy to the PS4 in 2015 as The Nathan Drake Collection, improving visual fidelity and frame rates. Now, the company is pulling the same trick with the two PS4 games in the series: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection arrives for the PS5 this Friday, almost five years after Naughty Dog last released a new game in the series. The $50 collection features a number of technical and visual enhancements, but the games themselves are identical to the PS4 versions. I’ve spent the last week or so playing both games in the Legacy of Thieves Collection to see how they hold up and determine who this package is for.
Sony / Naughty Dog
There are three visual modes here, all of which improve over the original PS4 game. A “fidelity” setting keeps the frame rate at 30 fps but renders the games in full 4K resolution. Performance mode, on the other hand, runs the games at 60 fps while making no promises about the exact resolution. Finally, there’s a “Performance+” mode for people with 120Hz TVs — the games run at 120 fps with a locked 1080p resolution.
I don’t have a 120Hz TV, so I can’t say how that mode looked, but both the Fidelity and Performance modes looked simply spectacular. Uncharted 4 was beautiful enough when I played it in 1080p back in 2016; the cold snowy vistas of Scotland and the wild landscapes of Madagascar look even better in 4K with HDR. The improved resolution is also appreciated in the dark, shadowy opening of The Lost Legacy, as well.
Sony / Naughty Dog
Despite how great things looked on Fidelity mode, I spent almost all my time playing the game on Performance, as the improved frame rates simply offer a better gaming experience. I don’t have the most discerning eye, it seems, because I couldn’t notice the resolution difference between Fidelity and Performance, so sticking with the 60 fps mode was a no-brainer. Of course, your mileage and TV will vary. If I was playing on a TV larger than my humble 43-inch model, or through a projection system, I might have found Fidelity mode more valuable.
There are a number of other improvements that make these games feel native to the PS5, as well. First off, the games support the adaptive triggers on the PS5 controller, which adds resistance and a different feel when you’re firing your weapons (something you do frequently in both games). Combined with the improved haptics in the PS5 controller, the two games in Legacy of Thieves feel more immersive than they did on the PS4.
Load times are also blissfully short, thanks to the PS5’s SSD and more powerful hardware. If the game wasn’t already running, it still took less than a minute to load my progress and get back into the adventure. I never really thought about the load times when playing on the PS4, but I went back and confirmed the unsurprising fact that the PS5 is much faster.
As for the games themselves, both A Thief’s End and The Lost Legacy hold up well. They look gorgeous, the stories are engaging and more intricate than the earlier games, and the gameplay is more varied than the original trilogy as well. On the other hand, it remains extremely difficult to reconcile the lighthearted tone of Nathan Drake, the protagonist in A Thief’s End, with the massive body count he racks up throughout the game.
Sony / Naughty Dog
The stakes are high, but Drake is a charming and charismatic adventurer — despite the fact that he’s put in a tough situation, needing to pull off a huge heist to save his brother’s skin, he’s not a deadly serious lead hero. But he is deadly, killing dozens throughout his quest. It’s easy enough to just go where the game takes you and not overthink it, but it’s worth mentioning that six years on, the two sides of Drake still don’t sit particularly well next to each other.
The Lost Legacy puts you in control of another antihero, treasure hunter Chloe Frazer who appeared in Uncharted 2 and 3. It’s the first Uncharted game where Nathan Drake isn’t the main character, and it overall has a bit of a darker tone — Frazer and her companion Nadine Ross are just as lethal as Drake, but it fits their personalities and the story a bit better. While we’re discussing The Lost Legacy, it’s worth pointing out that the game originally sold for $40 and wasn’t intended to have the same scope as Uncharted 4; as such, it’s much shorter (a standard playthrough takes about seven or eight hours).
Sony / Naughty Dog
Putting aside any misgivings about the ludonarrative dissonance in these games (something that’s come up a lot with Naughty Dog’s games), they are fun, beautiful, sprawling adventures. If you haven’t played any Uncharted games before, you could pick up the Legacy of Thieves Collection and get a lot of gaming value for your $50. Sure, you won’t know Drake’s entire backstory, but A Thief’s End fills in the blanks well enough even if you don’t know every detail of his past adventures.
I’m a completionist, so I have slight misgivings about telling someone to jump right into it with the fourth game in a four-part series. I might recommend spending $20 on Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, which is a remaster of the three PS3 games in the series — but Uncharted 4 holds up well enough on its own. As for The Lost Legacy, its protagonists are taking center stage for the first time, so their roles in past games aren’t terribly crucial to the story at hand.
If you enjoyed the original Uncharted trilogy, but somehow missed these games on the PS4, the Legacy of Thieves Collection is a no-brainer. If you’ve played them before, though, it’s a little less clear-cut. Improved frame rates and visual quality are solid updates to bring the games into the PS5 era, but they don’t fundamentally change the experience. That said, Sony is offering the Legacy of Thieves Collection for only $10 if you previously purchased A Thief’s End or The Lost Legacy. For the many people who love the series, that’s $10 well-spent, as these games hold up well — and look and play better than ever on the PS5.
Blizzard, the studio behind Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft, is getting into a new genre with the announcement that it's working on a survival game. It seems the project is in the early stages of development, so don't expect a finished product (or even a splashy trailer) any time soon, but it's notable that the publisher is playing around with fresh mechanics and new worlds.
Blizzard's job post about the survival game says it will be "a place full of heroes we have yet to meet, stories yet to be told, and adventures yet to be lived. A vast realm of possibility, waiting to be explored." So, yeah, they're keeping things vague for now.
The studio has confirmed one detail about the project: It'll be available on "PC and console." It's hard to say if the use of the singular "console" is prophetic — after all, Microsoft just announced plans to purchase Activision Blizzard, and the cross-platform future of its games is uncertain. Operating as a subsidiary of Microsoft, it's possible that Blizzard would build a game just for Xbox consoles, leaving PlayStation and Switch players in the lurch.
It'll likely be at least a year before we hear platform details and concrete information about the game, but Blizzard is looking to hire a handful of people in art, design and engineering to fill out the team.
Activision Blizzard is currently facing a lawsuit and several investigations into allegations of systemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment at the studio, where CEO Bobby Kotick has been in charge for the past 30 years. One Blizzard employee went public with her experience, saying she was "subjected to rude comments about [her] body, unwanted sexual advances, inappropriately touched, subjected to alcohol-infused team events and cube crawls, invited to have casual sex with [her] supervisors, and surrounded by a frat-boy culture that's detrimental to women."
Blizzard head Mike Ybarra last week promised to rebuild trust in the studio and establish "a safe, inclusive and creative work environment" as it transitions to Microsoft's roster.
