Gaming News for 07.01.2020 #1

The average number of players in Dota Underlords has fallen by 80% since the release.

The trouble does not come alone: ​​after Dota 2, whose performance on Steam players fell to the level of January 2014, the Dota Underlords autobutter also lost its audience.

As Reddit user SharkyIzrod noted on Steam Charts, the game launched six months ago in Early Access lost the majority of players:

• The peak number of gamers Dota Underlords reached in the month of its release - then 202 254 people played at the same time. Over the past 30 days, the maximum number of players has been only 18,664 - 90% or less than in the best days.

• The average indicator for players also reached its peak in June 2019 - 76,388 users. Over the past 30 days, it turned out to be 11 530, which is more than 80% below the maximum.

Note that both the peak and the average number of players decreased every month. As in the case of Dota 2, the big November update “Aliens” of gamers did not help return.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath appears on Nintendo Switch on January 23

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath first came out back in 2005 on the original Xbox, after which it looked at PCs and past-generation consoles, as well as mobile devices. But the game did not attend modern consoles, which is going to be fixed by an early release on the Nintendo Switch.

Developers from Oddworld Inhabitants shared a fresh trailer revealing the release date of the adventure action on the hybrid console - January 23, 2020. The pre-order is already open - they ask for $ 30 for it.

Stranger's Wrath tells the story of a mysterious Wanderer, whose task is to send all the villains of Western Mudos behind bars. The protagonist keeps a secret of his past and needs an expensive operation. To survive, he needs to earn as much money as possible, for which he is taken for a special order from the dam owner, and his adventure takes an unexpected turn.

The gameplay is divided into two stages: first you track the target in third-person mode, and then the first-person shooter begins. One of the features of the game is live shells. For example, you can distract opponents with the help of chippunk, connect them with a network of bolamites and simply destroy them by means of pitfalls and explosive bats.

Critics and players liked the action - 82 points on Metacritic and 85% on Steam. The reviews praise the original setting, unusual gameplay and high-quality remaster, which pulled textures to an acceptable level. Of the minuses, uniformity of levels is distinguished.

Sony introduced the official PlayStation 5 logo.

The logo was shown at the Sony conference at CES 2020, but the company did not tell anything new about the console itself. The audience was only reminded of the key features of the PlayStation 5 hardware:

• three-dimensional sound,
• adaptive triggers with tactile feedback on the gamepad,
• SSD with very high speed,
• ray tracing support,
• Support for media format Ultra HD Blu-ray (up to 100 gigabytes).

President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Jim Ryan (Jim Ryan) promised that in the coming months we will learn a lot about the PlayStation 5. The launch of the console is scheduled for autumn 2020.

At CES, Sony's gaming division also boasted its latest achievements:

• 106 million sold PlayStation 4,
• 1.15 billion sold titles,
• 5 million sold PlayStation VR,
• 103 million monthly active users,
• 38.8 million PlayStation Plus subscribers.

PlatinumGames receives investment from Tencent

Tencent Chinese gamers have invested an unnamed amount in PlatinumGames. Money became the basis for cooperation between the two companies.

On the official website, PlatinumGames emphasizes that it will maintain its independence and current corporate structure. In other words, Tencent will not interfere in the affairs of the new partner.

PlatinumGames is going to use investments to consolidate its position in the business. Also, the studio is going to distribute its projects on its own. In addition, the deal with Tencent will allow the Japanese company to enter new markets - probably we are talking about China.

PlatinumGames is currently developing Bayonetta 3 for Nintendo and Babylon’s Fall for Square Enix. According to GameSpot, during 2020 the studio plans to arrange several announcements - both large and small.

Quake II RTX introduces advanced photo mode

The free Quake II RTX, which NVIDIA uses to demonstrate ray tracing, has received another major update: now the 1997 game has a photo mode by modern standards!

Photo mode is activated when you press the pause button in Quake II RTX. You can freely control the camera and adjust the depth of field, focal length, aperture size and other parameters.

Since this is an assembly from NVIDIA, then the implementation of the photo mode here is not simple, but advanced. Firstly, the depth of field is processed correctly through reflection and refraction and has no artifacts at the edges. In other games, this effect works differently, using tricky software tricks.

Secondly, the picture in the photo mode is built not in real time, but according to the principle of accumulation: the frame is calculated hundreds and thousands of times with different noise patterns, which are then reduced to the average value. Thus, high-quality images are obtained.

In addition to the photo mode, the patch added support for cut scenes - as NVIDIA writes, they often disappear from conversions, remasters and Quake II upgrades. Other changes include improved work with multiple monitors, increased user map friendliness, and displaying the selected item from inventory in the status interface.

Read more about the update on the Steam community and the NVIDIA Blog.

You can download Quake II RTX both through the Valve store and from the Greens website. You don’t have to buy the full version of Quake II, but without it you can only run levels from the demo. Of course, it is highly desirable to have a video card of the GeForce RTX line - a remaster from NVIDIA runs on the GTX 10xx, but you will not like the frame rate under such conditions.