Xbox:
Ahead of the final match at today’s 2024 Halo World Championship, we saw an unexpected video. It depicted landscapes you might expect from the Halo series – Forerunner architecture jutting from dramatic landscapes inspired by the Pacific Northwest, gorgeous fields of ice, even a vista blighted and consumed by The Flood. We of course saw glimpses of the Master Chief, and his iconic enemies, even a Banshee arcing past the camera. But what we saw wasn’t a look back – this was something entirely new.
In the end, how did the Marathon Closed Alpha go? There are two components to this, how the game felt and how it was received more generally.
Nintendo has announced its financial results for the full fiscal year, alongside an update to Nintendo Switch shipments and more data, including a prediction for Switch 2 hardware and software.
well, the switch 2 has two holidays in the us, thanksgiving and Christmas.
so id say its fairly possible. the rest of the world will also grab them
Yeah doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility as long as they have enough supply.
Do people buy each other games consoles for Thanksgiving? I’m in Europe and always assumed it was just Christmas where gifts were exchanged.
That time is often referred to as the start of the Xmas shopping season. For the last few years, retailers would do 'black Friday' deals at various times throughout the year. While many still prefer to start their shopping in the mid to late November, others will just buy when they feel the time (and prices) are right for them.
Switch and Switch are a different kettle of fish. A sell out at launch by the diehards, strong sales, then the non diehards will be put off by the £75 ($99) games, including the stupid download cards which are topping £65 ($85). Not rocket science to work out how the Switch 2 is going to pan out. The PS5 has sold well, but games at £70, sales have been low. As game sales drop, prices will rise. Sony could knock out all their games for £40 and still make a killing selling more games. There's no denying that a gaming crash is looming.
I agree, I don't see the Switch 2 selling anywhere near the numbers that these predictions suggest or what the general buzz is implying. While the initial sales will likely be strong, driven by diehard fans, I anticipate a gradual decline. It may not drop off immediately, but over time, sales will inevitably taper.
Not paying for something that's not worth more than the price it was advertised, which is $449 - $499.
Today, Bandai Namco announced its financial results for the fiscal year between April 2024 and March 2025, alongside its future strategy.
The best thing they can do in my opinion with the name and engine change is completely reboot it, start from scratch with a clean slate and get back to basics.
The unreal engine 5 reveal is surprising because there was a rumour a couple months back that talked about a Halo Combat Evolved remake using UE5, now was that a coincidence or is there more to it. If true I’m kind of hoping it’s more of a remake-reimagining where they get to tel a familiar story but in a new way,
“As gaming evolves, and players increasingly point out how long it takes to see new games from their favorite series, the team at Halo Studios felt the need to react“
Waiting wasn’t the issue, it was the quality of the game after waiting so long. If you start just pumping Halo game after Halo game out you run more of a risk at giving us lower quality content while also over-saturating the market with Halo stuff.
At the end of the day I feel like they haven’t really done anything jaw dropping with Halo to earn that “Halo Studios” name to be honest, guess time will tell.
Well, told ya, they were/are considering switching to UE5.
https://n4g.com/news/262591...
https://n4g.com/news/262601...
Got downvoted as usual
...
Anyway, now if the new 'Halo Studio' can just port the lone Halo 5 to PC as well just to complete the collection.
Microsoft has practically abandoned their own software which I personally feel is yet another terrible long term decision. Now they are fully reliant on Epic to provide them what they need to develop their games. And we are half way through this generation and they are just now rolling out the hardware implementation of Lumen, and have yet to complete and refine their texture and geometry engine.
And on top of this, the benefit of having in house software especially for a hardware manufacturer is that they can use software to implement their own custom hardware features.
For the future you have to image they are going to make very standard hardware, which is what they did this gen where the S/X are basically just stock AMD hardware crammed into a console form factor. Conversely, Sony has their own custom IO with Kraken and Oodle their own custom 3D audio with Tempest and now their own AI upscaling with PSSR, these are supported by their own custom in house software development tools.
And you look at this generation, Microsoft made the more expensive console with 54 CU the most expensive part on the console but all generation they have largely been outperformed by a cheaper to produce 36 CU PS5 due to the custom nature of the co-processors. Which again, texture decompression in direct store is done by the GPU meaning 10-15% of those CU are dead weight just doing decompression when compared to PS5 which just uses its own Kraken co-processor, and on the audio side any 3D audio or HRTF is done on the CPU where as on the PS5 those resources are free because Tempest co-processor does that.
As long as it has taken, this is what I wanted to hear.