Sherbytes: Industry News Megathread, v.2

[Gingerdead Man]

R* grows, acquiring new developer house out of Australia:



Rockstar Games has acquired Video Games Deluxe, a Sydney-based development studio.

The studio will be renamed Rockstar Australia. Video Games Deluxe has worked on re-releases for LA Noire and GTA Trilogy with Rockstar in the past.

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Latest re Infinity Ward and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare IV is Warzone 3, which was understood to launch alongside MWIV next year (2026), is on the chopping block if current iteration WZ2 fails to up or at least retain current player count.

I have to think WZ has proven a massive headache to manage in step with Duty instalments across properties (just launching the darn thing via hub has been to many players' frustration, lol), and Activision doesn't think the data they're seeing justifies a third re-up.

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Rumor is the anticipated Gears of War Collection will launch day one on all platforms but one: Nintendo.

PlayStation, PC, and Xbox dawgs can all get their paws on the collection in 2026 with holiday season 2025 being a slim possibility.

 

[GearSolidMetal]

Interesting.

 

[TXstriker]

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Last valued at 15B USD, 2015 platform Discord may be going public this year. Direct read here from VGC team.

 

[Gingerdead Man]

2024 data for top publishers out with SEGA #1:



SEGA
Capcom
Aksys Games
Sony (PlayStation)
Focus Entertainment

 

[Gingerdead Man]

PlayStation sales monsoon hits domestic Japanese market with record 100K+ consoles sold in a week, largely driven by Monster Hunter Wilds players wanting the best possible experience:



In terms of the splits, the PS5 sold 75,070 units, the PS5 Digital Edition sold 26,362 units, and the PS5 Pro sold 7,546 units.

Capcom’s latest and greatest – which topped eight million units globally in just three days – sold 601,179 units on the PS5. It should be noted, this only represents physical sales; digital data, which is growing in popularity in Japan, is excluded.

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Newly launched couch-coop Split Fiction gets DF stamp of approval across platforms:





Today on DF - Split Fiction tested on all systems, and it's superb on all of them... and the split-screen mechanic and crossplay support made the cross-platform comparisons much easier than normal!

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Google moving AI closer to core search experience; now testing new AI mode, where user queries generate entire pages of artificially-intelligent returns.

Google said it would start inviting Google One AI Premium subscribers in the US to test the new AI Mode via Search Labs, adding that it had already become available to a few "trusted testers." It did not provide a timeline for a wider rollout.

(...]

Google is infusing AI into its major products while trying not to disrupt its primary cash cow, which is search. ChatGPT and other AI chatbots have been seen as an existential threat to Google's core search business, though data suggests they're not making a dent.

The new AI Mode, while still in development, offers a glimpse into a new approach to how Google's search engine may eventually work.

"With this new mode, people can ask nuanced questions that might have previously taken multiple searches — like exploring a new concept to comparing options and beyond — and get a comprehensive AI-powered response," Google said Wednesday in an accompanying explainer.

Full read here courtesy of Business Insider.

 

[method115]

PlayStation sales monsoon hits domestic Japanese market with record 100K+ consoles sold in a week, largely driven by Monster Hunter Wilds players wanting the best possible experience:



In terms of the splits, the PS5 sold 75,070 units, the PS5 Digital Edition sold 26,362 units, and the PS5 Pro sold 7,546 units.

Capcom’s latest and greatest – which topped eight million units globally in just three days – sold 601,179 units on the PS5. It should be noted, this only represents physical sales; digital data, which is growing in popularity in Japan, is excluded.

Wow that's massive. I really can't wait to see what GTA is going to do. Rumor is 2026 COD will also be next gen only so that will also move a lot of consoles.

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Having already worked together on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro GPUs, AMD and PlayStation again team up for big, platform-agnostic AI project to advance gaming with multidevice machine learning under name Project Amethyst:



Sony is furthering its partnership with AMD so they can create more AI-powered technology to make games look and play better — and not just on PlayStation hardware. The two companies are establishing a “deeper collaboration” to work on “Machine Learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay,” lead architect of the PS5 and PS5 Pro Mark Cerny announced on Wednesday.

Full read here courtesy of The Verge.

 

[Gingerdead Man]

2023's fan-favorite RoboCop: Rogue City is getting a standalone 'sequel' called Unfinished Business.

Enjoyed RC:RC myself but from what I can tell, sequel is charitable a word with narrow content direction making this more an expansion or DLC. I see new enemies, certainly, like airborne droids, but they need price this smartly, IMO – as in low, lol.

Trailer dropped:



cc: @Zer

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

Having already worked together on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro GPUs, AMD and PlayStation again team up for big, platform-agnostic AI project to advance gaming with multidevice machine learning under name Project Amethyst:



Sony is furthering its partnership with AMD so they can create more AI-powered technology to make games look and play better — and not just on PlayStation hardware. The two companies are establishing a “deeper collaboration” to work on “Machine Learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay,” lead architect of the PS5 and PS5 Pro Mark Cerny announced on Wednesday.

Full read here courtesy of The Verge.

It’s still not entirely clear to me if PS5/Pro will get FSR 4 support. I thought I had either read or heard from a talking head on YouTube that it would be exclusive to RDNA 4 GPUs, which is not in the PS5 or even the Pro, and yet I’ve heard comments about the PS5 (or maybe just the Pro) potentially getting FSR 4 support.

Or is FSR 4 support more likely going to be a PS6 feature? I’m confused.

 

[rikwebb]

It’s still not entirely clear to me if PS5/Pro will get FSR 4 support. I thought I had either read or heard from a talking head on YouTube that it would be exclusive to RDNA 4 GPUs, which is not in the PS5 or even the Pro, and yet I’ve heard comments about the PS5 (or maybe just the Pro) potentially getting FSR 4 support.

Or is FSR 4 support more likely going to be a PS6 feature? I’m confused.

PS5 standard no, PS5 Pro has a mish-mash of features from RDNA2, 3 & 4 plus SIE's own stuff and also PSSR.

FSR4 was trained on 8bit- Floating Point which PS5 Pro doesn't support, it uses INT8 so they would have to convert it some how to work on there.

But I would imagine FSR4 and future versions would be supported in some way on PS6 at least along with PSSR

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Tokyo's Team Ninja again tease upcoming Ninja Gaiden 4 with slick combat peek. Feeling it. Love the Sub-Zero slide at end in evasion:

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Pantoliano (Ralphie from Sopranos) expanding Eugene's story in HBO's TLoU S2:

 

[Gingerdead Man]

Split Fiction sells 1M units in maiden 48h, reports Swedish developer Hazelight. Wow...

 

[GearSolidMetal]

This just dropped, and the T-1000 looks awesome while kicking ass.

The issue is what is not shown - When he's getting his ass kicked its going to look ridiculous.

 

[Gingerdead Man]

This just dropped, and the T-1000 looks awesome while kicking ass.

The issue is what is not shown - When he's getting his ass kicked its going to look ridiculous.

They showed a truck fatality straight from T2 ditches-chase scene in an earlier teaser and it was so sick. Thanks for sharing this. Looks awesome and the audio FX for his moveset are too good; I love the various metal, polyalloy clangs.