Author: Garry Smith
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been asked how his company’s relationship with Activision has actually changed, after he previously told Microsoft staff he was “evaluating all aspects” of Xbox’s relationship with the troubled Call of Duty publisher.Spencer’s previous comments were made – alongside similar warnings from both PlayStation and Nintendo bosses – following the publication of last year’s bombshell report into alleged instances of sexual assault and harassment at Activision.Read more Source – eurogamer.net
I watched Die Hard this Christmas – as ever, on Christmas Eve, wearing my Nakatomi Plaza T-shirt. It’s a fantastic movie and, in this house at least, it’s a Christmas movie – the best Christmas movie. It’s also one of the most interesting architectural movies ever made – I am sure I have bored people with this before, but in Die Hard architecture is destiny. As the film unfolds you learn your way around the upper floors of Nakatomi Plaza. By the end of the film you know where everything is located – the final act kind of depends upon…
On the back of falling flash memory prices, SSDs have become significantly more affordable over the past few years. At the beginning of 2018, a 512GB Crucial MX500 drive cost around $140; now, the same drive costs $60. We’ve seen even more significant price drops for fast NVMe PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 drives, making them a much better value for money option than ever before. Before we get into the actual drives that we recommend, let’s cover the basics: why are SSDs actually worth their higher cost per gigabyte than traditional hard disk drives?There are quite a few good…
What would a Paradox Interactive game be without a ceaseless avalanche of accompanying paid DLC? Well, today is not the day to find out as the publisher has announced Cities: Skylines’ upcoming Airports expansion – which comes to Xbox, PlayStation, and PC on 25th January – will be accompanied by a four-strong batch of supporting paid DLC.Up first is a new Content Creator Map Pack, costing £3.99/€4.99/$4.99 USD and introducing eight new terrain maps created by Sanctum Gamer – as featured in the announcement trailer. Read more Source – eurogamer.net
Following a few vague teases (and some decidedly more specific teases) that Sam “Serious” Stone was prepping to return for another bout of explosive FPS action in the near future, publisher Devolver Digital has finally revealed all. A new standalone expansion for Serious Sam 4, titled Siberian Mayhem, comes to Steam on 25th January.Siberian Mayhem, as you might already have deduced, sees Sam trading the comparatively sun-drenched climes of Serious Sam 4 for some chillier action as he journeys across the Russian wilderness in search of the traitorous General Brand – an adventure featuring five “massive” new missions across Arctic…
Half-Life: Ray Traced is a new attempt to get hardware accelerated ray-tracing working in Valve’s first-person shooter classic – and you should be able to play it yourself later this year. For now, though, you can gaze below at roughly a minute’s worth of footage showing the project in action. It’s being worked upon by sultim_t, who previously put together a Serious Sam 1 ray-tracing mod, and is based on another previous attempt at Half-Life ray-tracing. Read more Source – eurogamer.net
Heavy Rain and Detroit developer Quantic Dream is reportedly working on a new project based upon The Dark Sorcerer, its 2013 PlayStation 4 tech demo.The demo featured a grey-haired sorcerer and a goblin sidekick attempting to cast a spell – until things went wrong, and it was revealed the whole thing was based on a video game motion capture stage. Read more Source – eurogamer.net
Hello! We’re going to start the year off with a handful of pieces looking forward to 2022. Sometimes we’ll be looking at trends we’ve spotted or themes that will probably be continuing to define things in games for a while. Sometimes we’ll just be thinking about things we’ve enjoyed and where they could lead. Have a lovely new year all! According to industry soothsayers, 2022 will be the year of NFTs in videogames. In case you’ve somehow yet to have the pleasure, an NFT or non-fungible token is essentially a glorified IOU bought with a cryptocurrency, an unregulated and “decentralised”…
Valve has once again hit an all-new concurrent user peak record – this time, topping 28 million users.It’s the latest in a long-line of record-breaking stats for Valve, which first saw the number of concurrent users climb at the start of the pandemic in 2020. The all-time peak now sits at 28,230,853 concurrent players. Read more Source – eurogamer.net
Amazon Studios has extended New World’s Winter Convergence Event by two weeks “due to the fantastic turnout” from players.In a brief update on the MMO’s official forums, community manager Luxendra explained that the seasonal event will now continue until 25th January, 2022 – two weeks more than the original 11th January end date – giving players an extra chance to complete the quests and activities available in the game’s first event since launch.Read more Source – eurogamer.net