While quite a few issues have been addressed with the update, there isn’t really any headlining feature. The closest thing to a new feature added to WWE 2K24 as part of the update is a new tutorial that Faction Wars players get for how the mode’s rewards work. For more details, check out the full patch notes below.

WWE 2K24 was recently released to quite a bit of acclaimed, with our own review referring to it as a further refinement of mechanics and gameplay that originally showed up back in WWE 2K22. The game was released earlier this month with a massive roster that features more than 200 Superstars and Legends from throughout WWE’s history.

WWE 2K24 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. For more details, here are all the differences between WWE 2K24 and WWE 2K23. And here’s just about everything else you might want to know about the game.

WWE 2K24 Patch 1.04 Notes:

As it turns out, I am a colossal idiot, because the game industry wants to have its cake and eat it too. Earlier this week, news broke that NBA 2K21’s next generation versions will cost a neat $69.99 – which, yes, marks a $10 increase over the price new console games have held since 2005. A report shortly afterward confirmed that the entire industry was mulling a similar price increase, citing, yes, increased development costs.

Here’s the thing, though – I am sympathetic to the realities of increasing development costs. Like I said already, I get that the money needed to make games is magnitudes more than was needed to make a PS2 game. I get that publishers need their games to make money to justify making them. So I was actually fine with the whole idea of a one time price increase, but the whole point was that it would be a one time price increase. I pay extra money upfront and developers and publishers back off from forcing microtransactions and battle passes and whatever the latest monetization fad is into their games. The extra cost was almost supposed to be like an insurance policy – you pay it to cover you against the excesses of microtransactions.

The issue is that for this logic to hold, both things need to happen – a price increase and a commitment to not include microtransactions, at least until development costs are untenable again. If you’re just charging more while keeping all the other monetization methods in, then it feels like you’re kicking us to the curb and then running us over for good measure. You can’t have it both ways.

And yet, the first game franchise to announce a price increase officially is NBA 2K, a game franchise so blatant with its excesses when it comes to microtransactions that it literally advertised itself as a slot machine. “But wait,” you say, “maybe this is indicative of there being no microtransactions in NBA 2K21, right?” To which I laugh at the sheer naivete that might make you extend any kind of benefit of the doubt to the game that literally won’t offer you free upgrades to the next-gen version (something that even EA is offering with FIFA) unless you buy the $100 special edition. Once that fit of laughter has subsided, maybe I can direct you to the official site for the game, which very clearly lists Virtual Currency (the in game currency you spend real life money on) and boosts as being in the game.

This is a problem, because what in the world are we paying more money for? Yes, development costs have increased, but you are obviously making up for that by milking customers dry with your frankly abusive and exploitative microtransactions and monetization practices; so why raise the price? The only alternative explanation is that microtransactions don’t cover for the increase in development costs, which is why developers and publishers have to resort to a price increase for games. But if that’s the case, why are microtransactions still in? Clearly they aren’t working, so why are they still included? How greedy, exactly, does a publisher have to be to charge you more money while already charging you more money?

The whole attitude reeks of contempt and disrespect for customers. I’m not speaking in a capital G Gamers Rise Up sort of sense here, but in very basic consumer rights, and the relationship a customer has with the vendor of the product they purchase. While each party in a transaction is very clearly out to maximize their own self-gain, there is an implicit understanding of a level of respect and regard for the other party, because the whole system relies on that. You trust that the makers and sellers of what you’re buying won’t try to scam you, while they trust you’re not out to steal their product. Any transaction relies on that inherent, implicit trust.

And yet that trust continues to be abused in the video games industry. Until now, publishers have largely been able to get away with it (though there have certainly been notable instances of pushback, including against Battlefront 2, or against the whole concept of online passes, which was pioneered as a way to monetize used game sales). But at some point, something has to give, because the whole dynamic becomes untenable. That’s where we are right now. People aren’t made of money, they have a limited amount, and any game that demands that its players spend cash on it on an ongoing basis for the chance to maybe get something that they want, while already having charged an exorbitant price of admission upfront, is not going to find a whole lot of takers. Maybe this won’t happen right away, but it will happen, and it will happen sooner than you might think.

The whole world is in the throes of an economic crisis that shows no signs of letting up soon, and its effects will continue to be felt for years, if not longer. When people are cash strapped, they’re not going to want to spend $70 on a video game that they then need to spend more money on to be able to properly enjoy it. They’re just going to not bother with that game, either going to one that actually has a modicum of respect for them as a customer, or just not buy a game altogether. I’m not predicting that console gaming is doomed or anything, to be clear – but that this dynamic of games monetization that has taken root over the last decade is. It’s on its way out. Maybe not this year, and maybe not the next, but we’re going to soon see the market roundly reject it.

The ironic thing is that I can totally see developers and publishers dig their heels in and get more aggressive with their monetization as game sales shrink, to try and compensate for lost revenue, almost creating a vicious cycle of sorts. Obviously, I hope they don’t do that – why would I want them to do that? But frankly, does anyone actually have any faith in the publishers’ ability to have any regard for the customer whatsoever anymore?

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

It’s tough out there right now for a gangster, as it’s tough for just about everyone and anyone. But at the very least companies have been handing out free stuff hand over fist for this troubling and trying time. While we haven’t heard anything else about Hangar 13’s new ‘AAA’ title, we can enjoy their last title at a price almost too good to be true.

Mafia 3, the third entry in the mob series, is now free to play until next week via Steam. The game is set in the 1960s and follows a man freshly returned from the Vietnam war. He finds himself in the middle of all kinds of gang-related dealings and is sucked into a deadly conflict between several factions. If  you like what you play, there’s also a whooping 75% off purchasing the game.

Mafia 3 is free to play on Steam until May 7th, and it’s also available to purchase on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Definitive editions of both it and its predecessor, Mafia 2, have also been recently rated.

You know how Microsoft has been going around acquiring a whole bunch of major developers to try and bolster their first party, which has fallen immensely behind relative to Sony and Nintendo? Well, it looks like Sony may be gearing up to do something to regain their lead—if this newest rumor, which should be taken with a huge grain of salt, is to be believed.

Joel Kulina, head of technology and media trading at Wedbush Securities, has reported (via MarketWatch) that Sony is currently in high level discussions to acquire Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar and 2K Games—the publishers of titles such as Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, Civilization, XCOM, and NBA 2K. The deal is apparently going to be “mostly cash”, which sounds a bit absurd, because attempting to purchase a company valued as high as Take-Two in mostly cash would deplete a massive portion of Sony Corp.’s (not PlayStation, all of Sony’s) cash reserves in one fell swoop—but maybe Sony feels that’s worth the risk of having Grand Theft Auto be exclusive to their machine.

To me, this sounds extremely unlikely, especially given Take-Two’s previous assertions that they want to be everywhere where there are customers—which going exclusive to just one console would go against. Unless Sony were to allow Take-Two games on all platforms, in which case… what’s the point? Revenue, I assume.

For now, this is a rumor, and treat it as such. But hey, things are getting interesting regardless.

The game development culture, especially for AAA games, is toxic and unsustainable. It’s started to become increasingly clearer in the last year or so, given the 800+ people at Activision-Blizzard that were laid off in spite of the year being Activision’s best yet in terms of revenue; when Star Wars Battlefront 2 were branded as underperformers in spite of selling millions of copies ; when games such as Red Dead Redemption 2 famously needed upwards of 100 hours of development time for over a year just to be pushed out; when games like Fallout 76 and Anthem launched broken, in spite of years of development; when developers such as EA Visceral were closed down; when games such as Amy Hennig’s Star Wars title were cancelled; when games became a “live service” or open world game in order to be as commercially appealing as possible; when games was overloaded with microtransactions as publishers increasingly tried to maximize revenue per customer.

AAA gaming is headed for a catastrophic collapse. I’m not the only one who thinks so—Amy Hennig, the creator of Uncharted, who has decades of experience working in western game development, from Atari to Sega to Crystal Dynamics to Eidos to Naughty Dog to ultimately EA, thinks so too. She said as much in an interview publisher earlier this week—because of the increasing costs needed to develop games, the massive human costs necessary, she thinks that something has to give. Hennig has long experience in developing titles, as I said—and she herself has noted that the difference between how development is now versus how it used to be is stark.

But even if Hennig hadn’t said this, it would have been possible to perceive, based on all the examples I have highlighted above in this article. There are exceptions to the rule, for sure—look at Sony, for example, and their western studios, which engage in AAA development without falling prey to most of the alarming symptoms I have highlighted. But Sony enjoys the unique luxury of being a platform holder—this means that they don’t have to worry as much about justifying the expense of each individual title, and can write off an unprofitable or underperforming one as the cost of fleshing out their platform’s library and making it more appealing for the customer. And even then, even with Sony, we see issues—Naughty Dog famously has intense periods of crunch in the lead up to their games’ releases (it is important to remember that Naughty Dog is Hennig’s alma mater).

Let’s look at Nintendo—traditionally, they are not AAA (not in the conventional sense of the word), but for all intents and purposes, we can count them as among them. Nintendo, too, has the unique luxury of being a platform holder, which is probably why it can boast of the kinds of incredibly enviable working environment for developers as it is able to advertise. Even with Nintendo, however, Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Super Smash Bros. games, while a freelancer, feels it necessary to work through his illness with an IV drip to meet the pressures of development—which is perverse and obscene.

However, on the whole, we can expect Nintendo and Sony to be safe from the plague of AAA game development that is headed to one inevitable end, in spite of these exceptions. Also, interestingly, Japanese development seems to be safe, too. While it suffered greatly last generation from the sudden pulling-of-the-rug moment that was the transition to HD (we saw several shutdowns, acquisitions, and mergers in the Japanese space a decade or so ago), as well as several high profile failures as the developers flailed in an attempt to appeal to the west, Japanese developers seem to be doing great now. They’ve kept costs under control, which means they can have profitable games even when they sell comparatively fewer games, or have no microtransactions. I don’t just mean Nintendo—even third parties like Capcom or Atlus can sell 3 million copies of a game and still have it be successful.

So, what’s the end game here? The end game is that developers need to control costs. They need to not spend so much money on making every pore on their character’s face look realistic that they have to make the safest possible game, monetized it, with thousands of people working for years on it for 80 hour weeks, a game with so many moving parts that it launches broken, and manages to underperform relative to costs even after selling million. That’s what third parties need to do.

But they won’t, because the risk of stepping away from the latest and greatest is too much—the first one to do it cedes the advantage to their competitors (ironically, a dilemma similar to the one Nintnedo faced a decade and a half ago, when it decided to take the plunge anyway). They don’t want to hand that competitive advantage to their competitors.

So here we are—AAA gaming development is headed towards a contraction that will be imposed upon it by the market, because if developers aren’t willing to do it themselves of their own volition, the market will end up forcing it upon them. One can only hope that the next generation sees some stability in the development landscape around the world.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is set to release not long from now, and it may be one of the most anticipated games of the year. During their financial conference call for investors and analysts, Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive Entertainment’s President Karl Slatoff and Chief Executive Officer Strauss Zelnick discussed the upcoming release of the game, and what they expect out of it.

Given that Rockstar Games’ titles are some of the most successful titles out there, you may think that they don’t have to worry about competition. However, Zelnick stated that they do take the competition seriously, especially since the game is set to release during the crowded Holiday season. He stated, “We’re always worried about the competition and never take anything for granted, never claim success early. We do our best to create phenomenal entertainment and market it effectively, and then we explain what happened. We have enormously high expectations for October with the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2. We take the competition seriously and we’re really exited about the release. I would just note, you don’t need to look back too many years when Holiday seasons were just inundated. People basically released products in the Holiday season and this company performed well. So it all comes down to quality.”

That’s a good attitude to have. Analysts, for instance, have been predicting that Red Dead Redemption 2 might face some tough competition from other major games releasing during the year’s closing months. Rockstar, though, has some cross-promotion planned to get fans excited  for the release of their upcoming game. Zelnick commented on this by saying, “Rockstar Games has employed some creative techniques in cross-promotion. I think they’re pretty exciting. Social Club has an awful lot of members and they’re avid fans not just of Grand Theft Auto, not just of Red Dead Redemption, but also fans of Rockstar Games. I think it’s great that there is some cross-promotion going on.”

Karl Slatoff also stated that the game will feature an “all new online experience”, but he didn’t provide any details. We know that the possibility of a Battle Royale mode hasn’t been ruled out yet, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Zelnick also went on to talk about how they expect the game to perform, and it looks like all that can be said is that the game will exceed expectations in every way possible, at least based on what he said. Zelnick stated, “My view is that by their very nature hits are unexpected. That’s the goal. There is an expectation around the table. Of course, there is an expectation of Rockstar Games and there is an expectation on part of consumers, but our job is to exceed those expectations, and fingers crossed, that’s what we’re all setting out to do. We couldn’t predict and we didn’t presume to in regards to Grand Theft Auto V, and we wouldn’t presume to with Red Read Redemption 2. So we’re just hard at work, doing the very best job that we can.”

Red Dead Redemption  2 is set to release for the PS4 and Xbox One on October 26.

Many expect Red Dead Redemption 2 to be the biggest selling game of this year. They have good reason for thinking so- Rockstar games sell an insane amount, and Grand Theft Auto 5 is the highest selling retail game of all time. However, the analysts at Piper Jaffray, who today shared updated reports containing sales estimates for Take Two, EA, and Activision, don’t seem to agree with that assessment.

According to the analysis of Piper Jaffray’s analysts Michael J. Olson and Yung Kim, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will walk away with top honors this year, selling 21.5 million units by the end of the calendar year 2018 (the best case sales for it are estimated at 23.7 million, while worst case ones at 19.4 million). Battlefield 5, the upcoming World War 2 shooter by EA and DICE, is estimated to sell a good amount less, with projected sales of 16 million by the end of March 2018 (with a worst case of 14.4 million, and a best case of 17.6 million). Meanwhile, Red Dead Redemption 2 is estimated to be at 15.5 million units sold by the end of March (with a best case of 17.1 million, and a worst case of 14 million).

While I don’t know how much of their numbers I necessarily agree with, I do think that overall, Red Dead Redemption 2 may not do quite as well as many people seem to be expecting it to do- remember, the game’s setting is fundamentally more alienating to a worldwide audience over something like GTA, which is universal in its appeal. We’ll know soon enough how right (or not) this analysis is anyway- Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Battlefield 5 will all launch on Xbox One and PS4, with a PC release for Call of Duty and Battlefield as well, this Fall.

Thanks, WCCFTech!

Nintendo has managed to get some surprising third parties on board with the Switch, but the most surprising of these are probably The Elder Scrolls publishers Bethesda, and GTA parent company Take Two. Take Two has actually been a surprising proponent of the platform, putting out NBA 2K18 and WWE 2K18 on it last year, and also putting out LA Noire, plus NBA 2K19 being announced for it too (and Carnival Games…).

But it is entirely possible that future support for the Switch might not be as rosy, depending on how those games did. Nintendo fans are all too familiar, after all, with third parties bailing on their platform after citing less than satisfactory sales, right?

However, they don’t need to worry about that. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Take-Two CEO Straus Zelnick said, “What we’ve put out so far [on the Switch] has been successful”, also explicitly promising that more games from the publishing giant are coming to Nintendo’s hybrid.

You know what would be great, Take Two? No, I’m not going to ask for GTA 5 like everyone else does, I don’t actually care as much for that. But put out XCOM on Switch. Or Civilization. One or the other. Or both. I’d really like that. They’re already on iPad, so it can’t be that hard.

We’re at a point in time where games-as-a-service has become a major part of our industry, so much so that most developers and publishers are looking to actively make games that fall into that category. The advantages are pretty clear to see, of course- constant engagement by players leads to constant revenue, and so we see GaaS elements entering even most single player games at this point.

That, however, is not the approach Red Dead Redemption 2 will be taking. Recently, the Take-Two CEO talked about how single player games are nowhere close to being dead, and some more recent comments made by him seem to be going in that same direction. In an interview with Game Daily, Strauss Zelnick said that with Red Dead Redemption 2, they haven’t set out with the mentality that they want to make a GaaS game, because doing that, according to him, is missing the point. According to Zelnick, if you make a great game that people like to begin with, be it single player or multiplayer, keeping them engaged with future support is going to come naturally.

“Our interest is not games-as-a-service or single-player or multiplayer or episodic,” Zelnick said. “Our interest is in captivating and engaging consumers with the best entertainment anyone makes, of any sort, and if we do that and then we give consumers even more great stuff to engage with it should work out well, and naturally the revenues and the profits will follow.

“My concern is that, looked at upside down, ‘We want to make games-as-a-service’ sort of misses the point. We’re in the entertainment business, and there is no reason to believe consumers have lost interest in single-player if the single-player is good. There is no reason to believe you can create a service [that sells] if the service isn’t great.

“We’ve said that we want to engage with consumers after the initial release. That remains our goal. But you can only do it if the initial experience is great. If it’s not, then people [won’t] want more of it.”

Zelnick then went on to talk a little bit about the support Red Dead Redemption 2 will be receiving post launch, including things such as regular DLC releases, as well as Red Dead Online, which will be similar to the uber-successful online component that came with Grand Theft Auto V. 

“We have Red Dead online coming, and Rockstar’s announced that, so clearly that’s intended to be an expression of ongoing engagement after the initial sale,” he said. “What we haven’t talked about is any path to monetization because it’s just not our primary concern. Our primary concern is keeping consumers engaged.”

To be fair, what he’s saying makes complete sense. Sure, ultimately, when you think about it, the end result ends up being the same, but the approach Rockstar and Take-Two are taking with constant support for their game means that, hopefully, all the content we’re going to receive is going to be top-notch. And really, there’s no reason to doubt the developers either- their post-launch support for GTA Online speaks for itself, given how successful and popular it has been consistently over a period of years.

Red Dead Redemption 2 launches on October 26 for the PS4 and Xbox One.

The one amusing side effect we have seen of Red Dead Redemption 2‘s release date having been locked down for this October is everyone else scrambling around. Most games have decided to just move their launches into next year, with February especially becoming a hotbed of new game releases. Annual mainstays like Call of Duty have moved into an October release date as well.

Everyone seems to be worried about the monster in the room, and with good reason- GTA5 was Rockstar’s last major release, and it is the highest selling game of all time. However, it seems like even Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two isn’t taking this Holiday season for granted. Speaking to GamesIndustry, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said that the Holiday season is crowded, full of great game launches- and that Rockstar does not want to proclaim victory before it actually has won.

“We’re running scared too,” Zelnick said. “I think a healthy degree of paranoia and insecurity about releases is probably a good thing. I’m fond of saying that arrogance is the enemy of continued success. We don’t believe in our success until we deliver it. We never claim victory until it’s occurred. We have very powerful, smart, capable competitors bringing great products to market and we need to win – that means we have to work harder than the next guy.”

“I don’t think this is a numbers exercise around attach rates,” he continued. “I think this is a question of how phenomenal is the product, and does it capture people’s attention and imagination? The answer is clearly it’s going to do well, but it’s very difficult to say how well. It’s going to be a big success, but it’s a question of how big?”

Zelnick also added that the company doesn’t expect Red Dead Redemption 2 to do as well as GTA5– which, of course, is understood, given that GTA5 is the most successful anything of all time.

“It’s hard to expect anything to perform as well as the most profitable entertainment product of all time,” Zelnick observed. “I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation. Our hope, and also belief, is that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be an extraordinary creative product and that it will do incredibly well. Beyond that I can’t say – I don’t think anyone can say. We have to release it and see what consumers think.”

It’s nice to see this kind of humility from a publisher that, if you think about it, has every reason to be arrogant and take its success for granted. While Red Dead Redemption 2 will undoubtedly be the biggest game of the Holiday season, there still are enough other big releases- Spider-Man, Pokemon, Super Smash Bros.- that it should be a healthy time for the industry all around.