Apple is increasingly focusing on building its own devices and expanding its ecosystem by taking steps towards a more native experience for users and relying less on third-party accessories. While the Cupertino-based tech giant's HomePod and AppleTV have left quite the mark in the smart home category, it generally relies more on outsourcing cameras and other hardware for smart homes. Now, a new report suggests that the company intends to create a fully integrated experience by developing its own smart home accessories. Gurman hints about Apple working on making smart home products like security cameras for a more integrated experience […]
We’re continuing our Best of Black Friday posts today with a look at the best current deals on power stations and their respective bundle options. Folks across the country and beyond have been steadily investing more and more in the industry for a vari...
Blizzard has announced that two decades after its release, World of Warcraft is finally going to let players build a home and live in it. The feature has long been requested by WoW players and now it’s finally coming in the game’s next expansion.Read m...
Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds will receive the Godspawn update, adding a new 50-player boss battle, a new 10-player raid, and a legendary spear. Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds is getting the first major update "Godspawn" on November 19th, expanding the story with new story chapters The MMORPG Guild Wars 2 by ArenaNet is receiving its first major update for the Janthir Wilds expansion soon. It's the first of three major updates, and it'll land on November 19. The update will add new content to the game for the players. The Janthir Wilds expansion DLC was released in August this year, […]
The WWE 2K franchise has spent the last couple of years finding its feet again after the disastrously received WWE 2K20, with last year’s WWE 2K23 being quite a solid effort in my estimation, even if it wasn’t quite the cohesive overall package I was hoping for. This year’s WWE 2K24 looks to build on that sturdy foundation with a wider array of new features than last year, including a new 2K Showcase celebrating WrestleMania’s 40th birthday, several new match types, gameplay updates like Super Finishers, and more (you can check out my full hands-on impressions here). As in the past, […]
It's not even the end of January yet and the games industry has already announced layoffs for several thousand employees, showing that 2024 could be even more problematic than the already troublesome 2023 in this regard. We reached out to MIDiA Research Senior Analyst and Strategy Director Karol Severin to discuss the state of the games industry in this post-pandemic, high-inflation environment. Sales were up 1% in the US and 1.7% in Europe for 2023, and Newzoo is forecasting growth for 2024 (although they believe it will be a lean year). At the same time, the games industry has been […]
Today, almost a year and a half after the modding platform's announcement, NVIDIA releases the highly anticipated RTX Remix creator toolkit Open Beta. While the runtime has been available for some time, the public availability of the creator toolkit should really kickstart the modders' work to easily remaster classic PC games with cutting-edge rendering features like path tracing, DLSS 3, and AI-upscaled assets. NVIDIA is also partnering with ModDB to make it easier for users to check out which games are compatible with RTX Remix and to get the optimized configuration files to run the mods. There's a series of […]
Estonian independent developer Fracture Labs aims to rectify one major shortcoming in the gaming market with its Decimated project: the current lack of any decent cyberpunk-themed online game. For several years, CD Projekt RED hyped up the multiplayer mode of its Cyberpunk 2077 game. Fans salivated at the mere prospect of being able to roam Night City with or against other 'Mercs'. Unfortunately, the Polish studio eventually changed its plans and canceled the multiplayer mode due to having to focus on improving the game's single player mode. Decimated cannot compete with Cyberpunk 2077 when it comes to budget and general […]
Following the MMORPG's 10-year anniversary celebrated last year, ArenaNet has picked up steam (partly thanks to joining Valve's namesake store) with the ongoing development of Guild Wars 2. The Bellevue-based developer released the fourth expansion, Secrets of the Obscure, in August, and there's more coming between free content and paid expansions with the new yearly model. Wccftech had the opportunity to access the studio's end-of-year blog post in advance, where ArenaNet confirmed Secrets of the Obscure has been a financial success and promised that the next update (which includes new story chapters, the Temple of Febe Strike Challenge Mode, nine […]
Around a month and a half ago, former Age of Empires, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends designer Greg Street (also known as Ghostcrawler) announced he partnered with NetEase to make a new triple-A fantasy MMORPG codenamed Ghost. Street leads a fully remote studio called Fantastic Pixel Castle, which was established earlier this year. Plenty of other industry veterans have been hired, including Gameplay Design Director Brian Holinka (Homefront, Transformers, World of Warcraft), Chief Technology Officer Cameron Dunn (L.A. Noire, Guild Wars 2), Content Design Director Candace Thomas (World of Warcraft, New World, Diablo IV), Principal Game Designer Graham […]
At the tail end of a historic six months for fighting game fans, after the releases of Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1, Bandai Namco is about to respond with Tekken 8. In a recent press tour, we checked out a near-final build of the game and also joined a press roundtable Q&A with Game Director Kohei Ikeda to ask for clarifications on various content and features. As a reminder, Tekken 8 is set to launch on January 26, 2024 for PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X. WCCFTECH: You are finally showing The Dark Awakens. Will that […]
Just over six years after the original announcement, Cygames is finally about to release Granblue Fantasy: Relink. This action RPG was originally meant to be a collaboration with PlatinumGames, but Cygames decided to split off around early 2019 and finish the game on their own, which led to a long delay. At long last, fans of the popular franchise will get the first RPG game on PC and consoles (after the fighting game Granblue Fantasy: Versus) in less than two months from now. Wccftech was recently invited to a press event featuring a near-final build of Granblue Fantasy: Relink; you […]
At The Game Awards 2023, Digital Extremes confirmed the final release date for Warframe's Whispers in the Walls update. Players will get the free patch on Wednesday, December 13, and it'll also mark the start of the long-awaited cross-save rollout. At the event, we also learned that Best Performance winner Neil Newbon (Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3) and nominee Ben Starr (Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy XVI) will join the voice cast with Whispers in the Walls, with Starr coming back for next year's Warframe 1999. Digital Extremes also took the opportunity to confirm the official dates for TennoCon 2024, […]
Swedish studio 10 Chambers is moving on from GTFO (albeit with the release of a major update) towards Den of Wolves, a newly announced corporate espionage sci-fi heist shooter game. The game's lore is quite interesting. In the mid-21st century, deep learning AI becomes an unstoppable hacking tool exploited by thieves, terrorists, and anarchists, bringing down entire economies. With the world desperate for network security, powerful corporations stepped in to offer salvation in exchange for no longer being bound by laws or ethics. They won and founded Midway City, the new capital of capitalism. With free rein in Midway City, […]
Nearly seven years after the game's announcement, Ubisoft Massive is finally about to release Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The first-person open world action/adventure game will launch on Thursday, December 7, for PC (Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X. It's the second game set in James Cameron's sci-fi universe after 2009's Avatar: The Game (which, interestingly enough, was also made by Ubisoft, albeit at the Montréal studio). That game was a mere tie-in, though, and was largely panned by critics when it came out despite selling over 2.7 million copies on brand name alone. Avatar: Frontiers […]
French developer DON'T NOD may be most renowned for its adventure games (Life is Strange, Tell Me Why, Twin Mirror, Harmony: The Fall of Reverie), but its first game, Remember Me, was actually an action/adventure game like the upcoming Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. In between the two, DON'T NOD also released Vampyr. The game might not have been a masterpiece, but it was certainly very interesting and sold enough to ensure the partnership with Focus Home Interactive on action/adventure games would continue. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is now set to debut on February 13, 2024 (following a brief […]
The WWE 2K franchise has spent the last couple of years finding its feet again after the disastrously received WWE 2K20, with last year’s WWE 2K23 being quite a solid effort in my estimation, even if it wasn’t quite the cohesive overall package I was hoping for. This year’s WWE 2K24 looks to build on that sturdy foundation with a wider array of new features than last year, including a new 2K Showcase celebrating WrestleMania’s 40th birthday, several new match types, gameplay updates like Super Finishers, and more (you can check out my full hands-on impressions here). As in the past, […]
It's not even the end of January yet and the games industry has already announced layoffs for several thousand employees, showing that 2024 could be even more problematic than the already troublesome 2023 in this regard. We reached out to MIDiA Research Senior Analyst and Strategy Director Karol Severin to discuss the state of the games industry in this post-pandemic, high-inflation environment. Sales were up 1% in the US and 1.7% in Europe for 2023, and Newzoo is forecasting growth for 2024 (although they believe it will be a lean year). At the same time, the games industry has been […]
Today, almost a year and a half after the modding platform's announcement, NVIDIA releases the highly anticipated RTX Remix creator toolkit Open Beta. While the runtime has been available for some time, the public availability of the creator toolkit should really kickstart the modders' work to easily remaster classic PC games with cutting-edge rendering features like path tracing, DLSS 3, and AI-upscaled assets. NVIDIA is also partnering with ModDB to make it easier for users to check out which games are compatible with RTX Remix and to get the optimized configuration files to run the mods. There's a series of […]
Estonian independent developer Fracture Labs aims to rectify one major shortcoming in the gaming market with its Decimated project: the current lack of any decent cyberpunk-themed online game. For several years, CD Projekt RED hyped up the multiplayer mode of its Cyberpunk 2077 game. Fans salivated at the mere prospect of being able to roam Night City with or against other 'Mercs'. Unfortunately, the Polish studio eventually changed its plans and canceled the multiplayer mode due to having to focus on improving the game's single player mode. Decimated cannot compete with Cyberpunk 2077 when it comes to budget and general […]
Following the MMORPG's 10-year anniversary celebrated last year, ArenaNet has picked up steam (partly thanks to joining Valve's namesake store) with the ongoing development of Guild Wars 2. The Bellevue-based developer released the fourth expansion, Secrets of the Obscure, in August, and there's more coming between free content and paid expansions with the new yearly model. Wccftech had the opportunity to access the studio's end-of-year blog post in advance, where ArenaNet confirmed Secrets of the Obscure has been a financial success and promised that the next update (which includes new story chapters, the Temple of Febe Strike Challenge Mode, nine […]
Around a month and a half ago, former Age of Empires, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends designer Greg Street (also known as Ghostcrawler) announced he partnered with NetEase to make a new triple-A fantasy MMORPG codenamed Ghost. Street leads a fully remote studio called Fantastic Pixel Castle, which was established earlier this year. Plenty of other industry veterans have been hired, including Gameplay Design Director Brian Holinka (Homefront, Transformers, World of Warcraft), Chief Technology Officer Cameron Dunn (L.A. Noire, Guild Wars 2), Content Design Director Candace Thomas (World of Warcraft, New World, Diablo IV), Principal Game Designer Graham […]
At the tail end of a historic six months for fighting game fans, after the releases of Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1, Bandai Namco is about to respond with Tekken 8. In a recent press tour, we checked out a near-final build of the game and also joined a press roundtable Q&A with Game Director Kohei Ikeda to ask for clarifications on various content and features. As a reminder, Tekken 8 is set to launch on January 26, 2024 for PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X. WCCFTECH: You are finally showing The Dark Awakens. Will that […]
Just over six years after the original announcement, Cygames is finally about to release Granblue Fantasy: Relink. This action RPG was originally meant to be a collaboration with PlatinumGames, but Cygames decided to split off around early 2019 and finish the game on their own, which led to a long delay. At long last, fans of the popular franchise will get the first RPG game on PC and consoles (after the fighting game Granblue Fantasy: Versus) in less than two months from now. Wccftech was recently invited to a press event featuring a near-final build of Granblue Fantasy: Relink; you […]
At The Game Awards 2023, Digital Extremes confirmed the final release date for Warframe's Whispers in the Walls update. Players will get the free patch on Wednesday, December 13, and it'll also mark the start of the long-awaited cross-save rollout. At the event, we also learned that Best Performance winner Neil Newbon (Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3) and nominee Ben Starr (Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy XVI) will join the voice cast with Whispers in the Walls, with Starr coming back for next year's Warframe 1999. Digital Extremes also took the opportunity to confirm the official dates for TennoCon 2024, […]
Swedish studio 10 Chambers is moving on from GTFO (albeit with the release of a major update) towards Den of Wolves, a newly announced corporate espionage sci-fi heist shooter game. The game's lore is quite interesting. In the mid-21st century, deep learning AI becomes an unstoppable hacking tool exploited by thieves, terrorists, and anarchists, bringing down entire economies. With the world desperate for network security, powerful corporations stepped in to offer salvation in exchange for no longer being bound by laws or ethics. They won and founded Midway City, the new capital of capitalism. With free rein in Midway City, […]
Nearly seven years after the game's announcement, Ubisoft Massive is finally about to release Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The first-person open world action/adventure game will launch on Thursday, December 7, for PC (Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X. It's the second game set in James Cameron's sci-fi universe after 2009's Avatar: The Game (which, interestingly enough, was also made by Ubisoft, albeit at the Montréal studio). That game was a mere tie-in, though, and was largely panned by critics when it came out despite selling over 2.7 million copies on brand name alone. Avatar: Frontiers […]
French developer DON'T NOD may be most renowned for its adventure games (Life is Strange, Tell Me Why, Twin Mirror, Harmony: The Fall of Reverie), but its first game, Remember Me, was actually an action/adventure game like the upcoming Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. In between the two, DON'T NOD also released Vampyr. The game might not have been a masterpiece, but it was certainly very interesting and sold enough to ensure the partnership with Focus Home Interactive on action/adventure games would continue. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is now set to debut on February 13, 2024 (following a brief […]