With a custom internal SSD that Microsoft has designed specifically for speed, the Xbox Series X will be able to load games faster and suspend multiple games at a time for quick resume. Both of these features have been spoken about in the past, but two new demos show exactly how they will work.
Faster load times is easy to understand, but seeing it compared to the Xbox One is revelatory. The demo uses State of Decay 2 as an example, which takes notoriously long to first load into your procedurally populated world. On the Xbox Series X this initial load takes around 10 seconds, while the Xbox One takes five times long at 50 seconds.
Quick Resume expands on functionality in the Xbox One, with the Series X capable of suspending up to three Series X titles at once (Digital Foundry notes in their report that the console could suspend more backwards compatible games at a time). The demo shows this in action, with the player jumping between State of Decay 2, Ori and the Blind Forest, Forza Motorsport 7, and more all while suspending them safely in the background.
Gears 5 is a very impressive game on the Xbox One and Xbox One X as is, but the game is getting a makeover for Xbox Series X that comes with higher framerate and resolution.
Announced by Microsoft on March 16, Gears 5 on Xbox Series X will make use of the Smart Delivery system, meaning players who already own the Xbox One version will get it on the new console for free. The Xbox Series X will automatically know to download the improved version, while any Xbox One consoles will still download the old one.
Improvements on Xbox Series X include better textures and volumetric fog, higher particle count, and 60 frames per second during cutscenes for a smoother transition to gameplay. Shadows and lighting have also been improved, and the game is currently running at 100 frames per second with potential to hit 120 frames per second in multiplayer.
Microsoft’s online gaming network, Xbox Live, is experiencing increased demand as people stay home from work and school amid concerns around the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus).
Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirmed this in a tweet, saying Xbox Live “usage is up on almost everything.” He went on to thank his operations and IT teams, and those working for “all the companies” that supply online services at this time.
Given how many workplaces and schools are closed due to the virus outbreak, it makes sense that internet usage overall would increase, and this includes gaming.
Developers working on the highly anticipated RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 have taken to Reddit to answer some burning questions about the upcoming game. Many of these regard the game’s take on DnD 5th Edition, while other curious fans have sought clarity on how much Baldur’s Gate 1 and Baldur’s Gate 2 will impact the story.
Creative director Swen Vincke has addressed fans’ concerns that Baldur’s Gate 3 would have little to do with the first two games, which were both developed by BioWare. “We really don’t want to spoil anything but we wouldn’t call it Baldur’s Gate 3 if there wouldn’t be a link,” Vincke said. “Let me just say that we touch upon the story of BG 1 & 2 in meaningful ways, there are returning characters and what happened in BG 1/2/[Throne of Bhaal] leads to what happens into BG3. You won’t necessarily see that at the start of the adventure but you will quickly understand once you get further into the game.”
Both Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 were based on the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition, while Baldur’s Gate 3 will be based on 5th Edition: a more accessible ruleset that has led to a huge boost in DnD’s popularity.
Call of Duty: Warzone, the free battle royale game, has reached a new player milestone. Activision has confirmed that the game passed 15 million players on March 14, so it’s surely climbed higher since.
Celeste is one of the most critically beloved indie games of this console generation, thanks to its smart mechanics, beautiful soundtrack, and challenging-but-fair gameplay and level design. It’s the sort of small, polished experience that a lot of obvious thought and care went into–and now, thanks to a Twitter thread from one of the game’s designers, we have some more insight into how it all works.
Matt/Maddy Thorson, one of the game’s designers, has posted a thread of “game-feel things” that they built into Celeste, explaining the allowances the game makes for players and how they made the game more enjoyable to play. As Thorson admits in the first tweet, these aren’t necessarily new concepts or ideas they invented–just mechanics that fit into Celeste well.
A short thread on a few Celeste game-feel things 🙂 I don’t think we invented any of these. 1- Coyote time. You can still jump for a short time after leaving a ledge. pic.twitter.com/nMK9ZLYbhM
In their thread, Thorson shared a total of 10 examples of “game-feel” from Celeste. In the first example below, “coyote time,” players can still make their jump for a moment after leaving the ledge–just like Wile E. Coyote.
Sonic the Hedgehog has surpassed Detective Pikachu to become the highest-grossing video game movie of all time in the United States. After this latest weekend (which was the worst since 1998), Sonic has now made $145.8 million in the US, edging out Detective Pikachu’s $144.1 million.
On a global scale, it’s a very different story. Sonic has made $306.5 million worldwide, which is more than $100 million less than the $433 million that Detective Pikachu made during its run. A big piece of this story is that Sonic was delayed in China due to COVID-19, so it’s missing out a lot of money that Detective Pikachu had from the market. Detective Pikachu made $93.7 million from China alone.
Neither of those movies are the biggest video game movies, either, as Warcraft holds the record with $439 million worldwide. Warcraft had a very bad run in US theatres, making only $47.4 million, but it pulled in $391.7 million from international markets.
Westworld returns to HBO for its third season this week, with the series pivoting from its Old West theme park setting — as well as last season’s Shogunworld side trip — to the “real world” of the show. With Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) having escaped the park at the end of Season 2, she is now ready to take on humanity on her own terms in a near-future version of Los Angeles, even while Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) is on the run, accused of the massacre that took place at the Delos park, and Maeve (Thandie Newton) finds herself in an unfamiliar world herself.
IGN recently spoke with showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy about the changes they’ve made for Westworld Season 3, and what to expect as the season progresses. Read on for some highlights from the non-spoilery part of our chat (and check back next week for more)!
The first two seasons of the HBO series presented a near-future realm of amazing technology where lifelike androids could pass for human, but it was purposefully very limited in depicting the outside world beyond the Delos parks like Westworld and Shogunworld. Now, in Season 3, Nolan and Joy say it’s finally time to step outside the theme parks.
“The question for the first couple seasons was, when are we?” says Nolan. “The question for the third season, now that the hosts have caught up a little bit, is where are we? What is the larger world that we’re in? It’s also rooted a little bit in the perspective of our protagonists. In the first season, Dolores is not aware that she’s cascading through her own memories and conflating them with the here and now. In the second season, Bernard is trying to repair his own broken mind, which he’s come to understand. He’s deliberately scrambled himself to protect Dolores. In the third season, both Dolores and Bernard have a pretty good handle on where they are, and after a little bit of confusion Maeve figures out where she is pretty quickly.”
Aaron Paul as Caleb
One of our main ways in to the bigger world of the show this season is through the new character played by Aaron Paul, Caleb. A construction worker who also takes on criminal jobs by night — for the thrill as much as for the money — Caleb offers a different perspective from the robots and rich folks of the first two seasons.
“When we’re coming to explore the world in the first episode, we are with someone who thinks he understands his world,” continues Nolan. “And Caleb’s understanding of the world is not when is he, but it’s more a question of who is he? So with the show from the beginning, we wanted to ground it in the perspective of its characters. And we also wanted to use every season as an opportunity to reinvent the look of the show, the feel of the show, tracking a group of characters that we’ve come to love and invest in, or hate and invest in, as they journey from one world to the other. So there’s a formal quality to the show that we love playing around with a little bit.”
For now anyway, the producers seem content to let Westworld play out in a more traditionally linear manner than it did in the first two seasons. But it sounds like that’s not going to last forever.
“We’re not cascading through time this season,” says Nolan before adding with a laugh, “We will almost certainly return to that idea. If you think of two standing waves meeting here in the middle, we’re in the here and now for this season, and I can’t imagine we’ll stay there for long.”
It wouldn’t be Westworld without a little time-jumping, after all!
