Microsoft revealed new details on its next-generation console, text, on Monday morning, confirming specifications on what the company calls its "superior balance of power and speed" for its new hardware. From a report: The next-gen Xbox, Microsoft said, will be four times as powerful as the original Xbox One. The Xbox Series X "next-generation custom processor" will employ AMD's Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architecture, head of Xbox Phil Spencer wrote on the Xbox website. "Delivering four times the processing power of an Xbox One and enabling developers to leverage 12 [teraflops] of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) performance -- twice that of an Xbox One X and more than eight times the original Xbox One," Spencer said. He called the next-generation Xbox's processing and graphics power "a true generational leap," offering higher frame rates -- with support for up to 120 fps -- and more sophisticated game worlds.

That 12 teraflops claim is twice that of what Microsoft promised with the Xbox One X (then known as Project Scorpio) when it revealed the mid-generation console update back in 2016. Spencer also outlined the Xbox Series X's variable rate shading, saying, "Rather than spending GPU cycles uniformly to every single pixel on the screen, they can prioritize individual effects on specific game characters or important environmental objects. This technique results in more stable frame rates and higher resolution, with no impact on the final image quality." He also promised hardware-accelerated DirectX ray tracing, with "true-to-life lighting, accurate reflections and realistic acoustics in real time." Microsoft also reconfirmed features like SSD storage, which promise faster loading times, as well as new ones, like Quick Resume, for Xbox Series X.

Gizmodo shares the saga of a now-deleted video claiming to show Call of Duty's new "battle royale" mode: The YouTube video, initially posted by a user who goes by TheGamingRevoYT, was slammed with a copyright claim and ripped from the platform. Meanwhile, other gamers noticed that Reddit posts and Twitter threads even mentioning the upcoming release were being taken down for "copyright infringement." Last week, when one Redditor found a leak of what appeared to be the cover art for the new game, that got hit with a copyright claim too — and some other legal action. According to court documents obtained by TorrentFreak, Activision has spent the last week actively subpoenaing Reddit to uncover the identity of the Reddit user who leaked the initial artwork...

It's worth noting, as TorrentFreak points out, that there wasn't technically any "infringing content" posted to the thread itself — just an external link to a site that hosted the image in question.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Wired: In January, all seven of the most-watched YouTube Gaming channels weren't run by happy gamers livestreaming the game du jour. They were instead recorded, autoplaying videos advertising videogame cheats and hacks, sometimes attached to sketchy, credential-vacuuming websites, according to one analytics firm. The trend has continued into this month, with five of the top seven most-watched YouTube Gaming channels last weekend advertising cheats. Take one example: As of this article's writing, a video featuring a cracking teenage boy's voice promoting an unconvincing "money glitch" in Grand Theft Auto 5 boasts 11,000 concurrent viewers. "So basically it's about glitching Rockstar's online servers and makes them send out whatever amount of money," says the voice. The video encourages Grand Theft Auto 5 players to visit a website called "Perfect Glitches," type in their gamer tag and the amount of in-game money they want -- up to $9,999,999,999 a day -- and hit "generate." But, ho -- the user must first prove that they are human by filling in their personal information on two other websites. [...] After you fill in your personal information -- anything from your address to your credit card number -- these types of sites will often turn around and sell it. Other times, sites that promise cheats or in-game money will download malware onto your computer.

While several YouTube Gaming cheat channels have disappeared since January, a couple of long-time users remain and many more keep cropping up. One particularly psychedelic channel features a 3-D cat in a Russian hat advertising free in-game money, against a background of gaudy Russian text and a scrolling chat box. Stitch from Lilo and Stitch dances on the top left corner. With 10,000 live concurrent viewers as of this article's writing, the video buoys the whole category for a somewhat niche shooter game called Standoff 2. It's unlikely that the bulk of those eyebrow-raising view numbers are real humans watching this stuff. Instead, scammers drive bot traffic to them to push the videos to the top of YouTube Gaming directories, where they can get the most exposure for the longest period of time -- a better position from which to dupe unlucky viewers. "The prevalence of these game-cheating YouTube Gaming channels with what appears to be huge numbers of bots complicates the narrative of the so-called 'platform wars' between Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and Facebook Gaming," reports Wired in closing. "While Twitch's livestream directory might have a couple pirated sports streams or sketchy gambling streams, its top ranks aren't nearly as dominated by ads for cheats."

"If a chunk of YouTube Gaming's hours watched is due to this sort of behavior, then it may be a little longer until Twitch is knocked off its throne."

In a blog post today, Google announced that Stadia will work on some Android phones from Samsung, Asus, and Razer starting on February 20th. Up until this point, Stadia only worked on certain Pixel phones. The Verge reports: Here's the full list of the 19 newly supported phones, which includes the Samsung Galaxy S20 line that's releasing on March 6th: [Samsung Galaxy S8 --> Galaxy S20 Ultra, Razer Phone, Razer Phone 2, Asus ROG Phone, and Asus ROG Phone II.] These new additions -- combined with the current support for the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3A, Pixel 3A XL, and Pixel 4 -- mean that you can now play Stadia games on 26 different Android phones. Stadia's iOS app doesn't let you play games, though, so you will have to keep waiting if you want to play Stadia games on your iPhone or iPad.

Grandmasters and upstarts are reinventing the game online, becoming its most visible ambassadors and arguably its first entertainers. From a report: On Twitch, the most popular internet platform to livestream esports, time spent watching chess has risen by more than 500 percent since 2016, according to data from the company. With that consumption has come some money, mostly donations from viewers facilitated by Twitch but also in sponsorship dollars. That growth persuaded Botez in September to try livestreaming chess full time. She now has more than 60,000 followers on Twitch. And while streaming is offering players like Botez a new way to make a living from their chess skills, it's also giving new life to one of the oldest games in the world. "It's crazy to me to have this kind of support and this kind of viewership online for chess," Botez said. "Chess has always been a passion of mine, but it was never something that was popular. It was never something I would have imagined would have grown to what it is today."

Chess came to the attention of Twitch less than four years ago, when the company formed a partnership with Chess.com, the largest chess website, with almost 33 million members. "Across all the different various competitive games on Twitch, chess has seen some of the most substantial growth in the same period of time than any other esport in the world," said Justin Dellario, Twitch's vice president of global esports. The rise of esports -- both in terms of competitive gaming and more social online gaming -- first gained attention in the 1990s and the early 2000s before emerging in the past 10 years. The gaming and esports market research company Newzoo forecast that 2019 esports revenues would hit $1.1 billion. Twitch is by far the largest esports platform. Chess hasn't enjoyed similar growth. While the game has a young, marketable genius in world champion Magnus Carlsen, it has struggled to attract the kind of money that can help sustain its growth.

An anonymous reader quotes The Wrap: "Sonic the Hedgehog" is giving Paramount its best box office news in over a year, with a currently 3-day opening weekend of $55 million to become the best opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation... The delayed release of this film prompted by an intense rejection of Sonic's initial design is turning out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. Moved from last November to this extended Presidents' Day weekend, "Sonic" is standing out in the movie marketplace as a popular family offering with no major competition currently in theaters and none coming until Pixar's "Onward" arrives in three weeks.

Audience reception, driven by both families and hardcore Sonic fans, has been very strong with an A on CinemaScore, 4/5 on Postrak, and 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Even critics have been fairly positive with a 65% Rotten Tomatoes score... If this weekend's estimates hold, "Sonic" will have an opening weekend that's more than double any of Paramount's 2019 films, including the $29 million opening of "Terminator: Dark Fate." In fact, it has the highest opening weekend for the studio since "Mission: Impossible — Fallout," which opened to $61.2 million in July 2018.
The Wrap's article also includes a list ranking "all 46 videogame movies" from best to worst. They rank 2001's "Tomb Raider" just ahead of 2018's "Tomb Raider" (at #14 and #15, respectively), and also remember several forgotten early-1990s films based on videogames (including "Street Fighter," "Mortal Kombat" and "Super Mario Bros.")

CNN Business has learned that the once-popular live mobile trivia game "HQ Trivia" is shutting down. From the report: When HQ launched in 2017, its first game HQ Trivia quickly attracted millions of people across the world who stopped whatever they were doing twice a day to play the game on their smartphones. The company was profiled by The New York Times and its original host Scott Rogowsky became a household name, appearing on programs like NBC's "Today" show. But over the next year, the game's popularity faded and its parent company was hit with a series of setbacks. The company grappled with internal turmoil, including the death of HQ cofounder Colin Kroll, who died in December 2018 from a drug overdose.

CEO Rus Yusupov said in a company-wide email on Friday that "lead investors are no longer willing to fund the company, and so effective today, HQ will cease operations and move to dissolution." In the email, which was obtained by CNN Business, Yusupov also disclosed that the company had hired a banker "to help find additional investors and partners to support the expansion of the company." He said the company had "received an offer from an established business" and was expected to close the deal on Saturday, but the potential acquisition fell through.

Scarce components have pushed the manufacturing costs for Sony's next PlayStation to around $450 per unit, forcing a difficult price-setting decision in its battle with Microsoft, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing sources. From the report: The Japanese conglomerate is preparing to gradually replace the six-year-old PS4 console, releasing its PlayStation 5 the same holiday season its archrival debuts the upcoming Xbox Series X. Sony typically finalizes a console's price in February of the release year, followed by mass production in the spring. With the PS5, the company is taking a wait-and-see approach, said the people, asking not to be named because the details are private. The PS4, released in 2013 at a retail price of $399, was estimated by IHS Markit to cost $381 to manufacture. With the $450 unit cost and a similar gross margin, the PlayStation 5's retail price would have to be at least $470. That would be a hard sell to consumers, considering Sony's most expensive machine now is the $399.99 PS4 Pro and is often discounted, according to Macquarie Capital analyst Damian Thong.

Google is countering Facebook's Instant Games with its own bid to make web games more accessible. Its Area 120 experimental lab is introducing GameSnacks, HTML5-based casual games that are designed to load quickly and play well even on poor connections and basic smartphones. From a report: The combination of a lean initial web page, compressed media and just-in-time loading means you can start playing within just a few seconds, even on a phone with less than a 1Mbps connection (all too common in the world) and just 1GB of RAM. All titles work with both touch as well as a PC's mouse and keyboard, and are designed to run on virtually any platform and device. Like many casual games, they're designed to be playable with a minimum of instructions -- important when they're meant to reach people across many different languages. Some are not-so-subtle riffs on familiar titles like Puzzle Bobble and Tetris, but that's probably not a bad thing for gamers who otherwise couldn't play those games on their phones.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Valve's gaming marketplace Steam includes an opt-in hardware survey feature, and the results are published as percentages of surveyed users on a monthly basis. You'll find all kinds of data about Steam-connected computers every month, and this includes operating systems, video cards, VR systems, and more. In the latter case, that figure is counted out of all Steam users -- as opposed to a less-helpful stat like "70 percent of VR fans prefer Product A, 30 percent Product B." We were intrigued (but not surprised) to see a jump in connected VR devices for the reported month of December 2019. That's the holiday season, after all, and it's reasonable to expect Santa's deliveries of headsets to affect data.

What surprised us was the continued growth of that metric through the following month -- and a statistically significant one, at that. The latest survey, taken during January 2020, says that 1.31 percent of all surveyed Steam users own a VR system, up from 1.09 percent the month prior. By pure percentage points, this is the largest one-month jump in pure percentage since Valve began tracking VR use in 2016 -- by a long shot. (For perspective, the same survey indicated that 0.9 percent of Steam computers run on Linux, while 3.0 percent use MacOS or OSX.) Based on Valve's conservative January 2019 estimate of 90 million "monthly active users," Ars Technica estimates there are "1.17 million PC-VR users connecting to Steam."

"Drawing an exponential trend line of Steam's MAU between August 2017 and January 2019 would get us closer to a count of 1.6 million active VR hardware owners on Steam, and that doesn't include any estimate of Steam-ignorant Oculus users. However you slice it, the juiciest detail can't be argued: a 20.2% jump within a major PC-VR ecosystem in 30 days."

Nvidia's GeForce Now is a cloud gaming service that lets you play games stored on dedicated GeForce graphics-enabled PCs across a wide array of devices. While it lets you play PC games you already own, the game publisher must allow it on the service. "Today, Nvidia is revealing that Activision Blizzard is no longer playing ball, pulling down its catalog of games including Overwatch, WoW, and the Call of Duty series," reports The Verge. From the report: That means one of the service's biggest publishers, as well as its Battle.net catalog of games, will no longer be available just a week after the service's formal launch -- a launch that was already missing many games from Capcom, EA, Konami, Remedy, Rockstar and Square Enix, all of which seemed to have pulled out after Nvidia's beta period ended. Nvidia wouldn't tell us why this is happening now, but it's strange, because Nvidia previously told us it was contacting every publisher ahead of launch to make sure they were OK with their games staying available with the service. Did Activision Blizzard reneg on a deal, or did Nvidia fail to get permission? We're waiting to hear back from Nvidia; Activision Blizzard didn't respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Nvidia says it hopes to work with Activision Blizzard to bring the games back, but the company confirmed to us that things are pretty cut-and-dried for now -- you shouldn't expect them to magically reappear after a few days (or even a few weeks) thanks to a deal. Nvidia also declined to tell us whether it'd be open to sharing a slice of its subscription fees with publishers, citing the quiet period before its earnings. It's true that Blizzard, at least, has an EULA that specifically prevents users from playing a game on cloud gaming services, but that doesn't seem to explain this move. Activision's EULA doesn't contain anything of the sort, and again, Activision Blizzard didn't seem to have any problem with it during the GeForce Now beta.

An anonymous reader shares a report: "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" had just been released and Keanu Reeves was about to hit the big screen in "Speed" when Marcin Iwinski and high school pal Michal Kicinski launched their video-game company. It was May 1994 and the CD-ROM was still in vogue, so they called their venture CD Projekt and set out to distribute games for the Polish market. They struck deals with developers including Activision and Acclaim Entertainment, translating dialog, instructions and packaging into their native language. A quarter-century later, at Microsoft's 2019 Xbox conference in Los Angeles, Reeves shocked the video-game world, appearing onstage to present a demo of CD Projekt's "Cyberpunk 2077" -- a futuristic, role-playing game in which he'll appear.

Shares of Warsaw-based CD Projekt have surged 43% since the Xbox event in June and more than 1,800% in the past five years, the best performance by far in Poland's WIG20 Index, putting Iwinski, the 45-year-old co-chief executive officer, on the cusp of becoming a billionaire. He owns 12.6% of the outstanding stock, giving him a net worth of $992 million. Kicinski, who left the company several years ago, has a 10.9% stake worth $847 million. Both could soon join the rapidly growing ranks of video-game billionaires including Sea Ltd. co-founder Gang Ye, who crossed the threshold in November after the Singapore-based company reported that quarterly revenue tripled, as well as Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, who brought "Fortnite" to the masses.

ItsJustAPseudonym writes: "The number of Texas school districts with esports programs has exploded this school year, growing from about 20 to more than 300 in the span of a few months," reports KXAN-TV, citing the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA). "'It's been in colleges for the last few years, and now it's starting to move down into the high schools and in the middle schools,' said TCEA's executive director, Lori Gracey. 'Teamwork, cooperation, planning, problem-solving, thinking quickly,' Gracey explained, 'all of those are things we want our kids to be able to do. And you can do that through video games.'"

And, for the collegiate perspective on this: "High school is a really, really exciting place for esports to take root," said Austin Espinoza, president of Longhorn Gaming at the University of Texas at Austin. "Eventually, that's just going to trickle upwards into the college world." Yes, yes, it's VERY exciting. I'm sure the effect on grades will be *nothing* but positive, right? On the other hand, esports provides an opportunity for college students to earn some money to pay down their college debts, so that's a potential upside. Will colleges start recruiting and offering scholarships to esports competitors?

jowifi writes: NVIDIA officially launched its GeForce NOW earlier this week, making the streaming gaming service available to all with no waitlisting. It is advertising a free tier which allows 1-hour of game play at a session, and a premium tier that allows 6-hour sessions and preferred access to the streaming servers. The premium tier is being offered for a limited-time discounted price of $4.99 for 2020 with the first three months free. The service does not include any games, but provides access to games in your digital library (e.g. Steam) and free-to-play games like Fortnite. It supports Windows, MacOS, Android, and NVIDIA Shield (no mention of Linux).

Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games, is leaving the company in March after taking an "extended break" in the spring of 2019. "Rockstar Games was founded in 1998, and Dan Houser contributed prominently to the company's successful franchises, including Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Red Dead Redemption, and more," notes The Verge. From the report: Take-Two Interactive is the holdings company for Rockstar Games, and it hasn't officially announced the departure yet. Here's the snippet in full, straight from [an SEC document registered by publisher Take-Two Interactive, which first confirmed the news]: "After an extended break beginning in the spring of 2019, Dan Houser, Vice President, Creative at Rockstar Games, will be leaving the company. Dan Houser's last day will be March 11, 2020. We are extremely grateful for his contributions. Rockstar Games has built some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful game worlds, a global community of passionate fans and an incredibly talented team, which remains focused on current and future projects."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Cards Against Humanity, the card game company, purchased ClickHole.com from its owners at G/O Media on Monday for an undisclosed amount in an all-cash deal, BuzzFeed News has learned. ClickHole's employees will become the majority owners of the site. Although terms were not disclosed, the Wall Street Journal reported in November that the sale price was likely to be less than $1 million. The Onion, which created ClickHole, will remain a part of G/O Media. Max Temkin, the cofounder of Cards Against Humanity, told BuzzFeed News that the deal will allow ClickHole to bring on additional staff -- it currently has only five full-time employees -- and explore new revenue streams. He also said the site would operate independently, with financial support from Cards Against Humanity. ClickHole staffers will not be involved in writing any Cards Against Humanity content. "We're giving them funding, and if they ask us, we'll be an advisor," Temkin told BuzzFeed News, saying that the ClickHole team will operate independently, with financial support. "We just want to give them a chance to do their thing. They're really capable -- really smart and innovative. And I don't know if they've had that opportunity before to try all these creative [ideas for the site]."

Steve Etheridge, editor-in-chief of ClickHole, told BuzzFeed News, "we're leaving a place with a very robust editorial infrastructure to essentially go build a new digital media company from scratch. Cards is giving us total freedom to do our thing, but that freedom comes with a lot of new responsibility, and we really just want to get it right. Our goal is to make ClickHole better than ever before."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 21-year-old California man has pleaded guilty to hacking Nintendo's servers multiple times since 2016, using phishing techniques to gain early access to information about the company's plans. Ryan S. Hernandez, who went by RyanRocks online, worked with an unnamed associate to phish employee login credentials for proprietary Nintendo servers, according to an indictment filed in Washington state federal court in December and unsealed over the weekend. Hernandez used that unauthorized access to "download thousands of files, including proprietary developer tools and non-public information" about upcoming Nintendo products and "access pirated and unreleased video games."

That information (and discussion of Nintendo's internal server vulnerabilities) was leaked to the public via Twitter, Discord, and a chat room called "Ryan's Underground Hangout," prosecutors said. At one point, "RyanRocks" drew at least a little infamy in the Nintendo hacking community for allegedly leaking a Nintendo Software Development Kit that had a piece of hidden Remote Access Tool malware added to it. FBI agents confronted Hernandez about his hacking in 2017, according to a prosecution press release, and secured a promise from Hernandez "to stop any further malicious activity." But the hacking continued in 2018 and 2019, according to the indictment, until a June 2019 FBI raid that obtained hard drives with thousands of proprietary Nintendo files. The seized hard drives also included sexually explicit images of minors in a folder labeled "BAD STUFF," according to prosecutors. Hernandez has agreed to pay almost $260,000 to Nintendo as part of a plea agreement. Prosecutors are recommending a jail term of three years for Hernandez's crimes when sentencing is decided in April.

The Electronic Software Association is introducing tighter security measures around press registration for E3, following an incident last year in which sensitive personal information belonging to thousands of journalists, YouTube creators, and Twitch streamers was made public. The Verge reports: A new blog post published today details updates to the conference and its "media registration process," which the company says "received a lot of attention this past summer." "Earning back your trust and support is our top priority," the post reads. "That's why we rebuilt the E3 website with enhanced and layered security measures developed by an outside cybersecurity firm. This included updating our data management processes, including the handling of personally identifiable information, and we will no longer store that data on our site."

Changes to the registration process will also occur this year. The ESA will "collect the minimum information necessary" for attendees registering. The post doesn't state what those specific changes are. Last year's leak, which involved an unprotected file uploaded online and available for anyone to download, led to personal information like home addresses and phone numbers appearing on hateful forums like Kiwi Farms. After data leaked, multiple journalists -- including staff members of The Verge -- received texts and phone calls from complete strangers.

Nintendo says the Switch has hit 52.5 million sales in its lifetime, already surpassing that of the SNES. From a report: In becoming the company's fifth best-selling console of all-time, the Switch has helped to boost Nintendo -- the company reported a $2.75 billion operating profit, up from the previously predicted $2.38 billion. Previous forecasts had Switch sales for the fiscal year, ending March 31, at 18 million. That number has now jumped to 19.5 million. And, 10.8 million of those were sold during the holiday season alone, leading to a 22.5 percent increase by December of the previous year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As influential as Warcraft III was in the real-time strategy genre, the game's most enduring legacy might be as the basis for genre-defining, fan-made custom game spin-offs like Defense of the Ancients (aka Dota) and Auto Chess in its wake. Now, Blizzard is taking steps to ensure it retains complete ownership of any such custom games that originate from its titles in the future, including those that come out of Warcraft III's recently released Reforged update.

As noted by PC Gamer, a recent update to Blizzard's Acceptable Use Policy expands the legal rights that custom-game makers automatically assign to Blizzard (new language highlighted in bold; old language available on The Internet Archive): "Custom Games are and shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Blizzard. Without limiting the foregoing, you hereby assign to Blizzard all of your rights, title, and interest in and to all Custom Games, including but not limited to any copyrights in the content of any Custom Games." Blizzard's claim on custom-game copyrights is important because, while it's hard to effectively copyright the basic concept of a game, you can copyright the original characters, art, and writing associated with the game itself. "Under Blizzard's new legal language, any similar games created from the base of Reforged would be completely controlled by Blizzard," adds Ars. "While other developers would be able to copy the general gameplay for their own purposes, any derivative games that use the same name, art, or characters would belong to Blizzard."

"While Blizzard doesn't allow custom-game developers to engage in direct 'commercial exploitation' from their creations, those developers are allowed to accept donations to recoup the 'time and resources' involved in creating the game (with some restrictions). Blizzard also retains the right to 'remove Custom Games from its systems and/or require that a Custom Game developer cease any and/or all development and distribution of a Custom Game.'"