PS5 and Xbox Series X Scalpers Have Been an Absolute Nuisance
There are many downsides of being an early adopter to a major gaming console. Usually when you buy a brand-new gaming console after it first launches, you're getting the buggiest version of that console before major quality of life patches are able to come out. It hasn't been out in the wild for very long so all of the initial bugs that haven't been discovered yet are still there. You also buy the console at its most expensive retail price it will ever be at, as sales and bundles generally come later as demand plateaus. You're also buying the console at the point of its life where it has the smallest library it will ever have, seeing as how development for the games has only been underway for a little while.
But perhaps none of these headaches even come close to the annoying power of scalpers and the shadow that they cast on every major consoles' launch. Buying up inventory while it's new and fairly scarce, jacking up the price as high as they can possibly get away with and selling them back out to the most impatient among us, raking in a good profit for themselves while taking advantage of others. Unfortunately, with advances in technology and a higher demand for gaming consoles generally the problem of scalping has without a doubt gotten demonstrably worse and more prevalent in recent years and most notably with the launch of the Xbox Series X in the PlayStation 5. It's a problem that most early adopters of major gaming consoles realize they'll be contending with to one degree or another, but with the launch of these newest consoles, has certainly reached new heights worthy of their own new level of scrutiny.
One of the basic tenets of business is that when supply goes down prices go up. At least assuming that demand is still there. With the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X that demand has gone nowhere but up since the consoles have launched yet the supply has plummeted. no matter where you go you are hard-pressed to find any of these consoles and physical stores or on reputable websites at their regular retail price. Going on to eBay or social media to find people who already have the consoles but are selling them is a different story though. These folks are called scalpers. They benefit from the high demand and low supply of things as well as their ability to snatch those things up before the Supply runs dry.
As mentioned, we've seen a lot of that with this generation of consoles and they're able to pull this off in different ways. The most basic way is just people with lots of capital on hand ready to buy as many consoles as they can possibly get away with. Sure, they may want one for themselves and maybe even a couple as gifts for family members and friends, but what really makes them scalpers is that the majority of what they buy their planning to sell back out into the market at an elevated price so they can run away with that extra margin in their pocket. But the things that separate a respectable business model and a shameless scalper is the degree to which they game the system and the motive behind it. Selling a game console back out at a similar price isn't nearly as big of a deal as tripling the price and doing it about 50 times. Where exactly the line is between those two things is hard to say but generally people agree on when it's been crossed.
The scalpers that really crossed the line are the ones that mechanized the process of buying consoles and do it a ridiculous amount. Buying 100 consoles all at once when everyone knows there's going to be a shortage is not something somebody can just do on their computer with ease. In order to do it that way they would have to compete with everybody else and they would end up feeling a lot of the time. So for those who are willing to take their scalping to the next level they use bots or software that tricks whatever website they're buying from into thinking that the transactions are coming from different people and/or buy consoles from multiple different websites all at once within the amount of time that it takes to buy one.
This is the part of scalping that I think everyone agrees is problematic and it's hard to say what the solution really should be if the software that the scalpers are using is continuously more advanced than what the retailers are using to protect those transactions. At the end of the day this is just a game that will likely never end, and scalpers clearly have more of a financial interest in staying ahead of the retailers then the retailers do of staying ahead of the scalpers. Think about it: even if it is scalpers buying those systems from the retailers, as far as those retailers are concerned, it's still sales. So perhaps that's not really the solution here at least not the long-term one.
One facet of the situation that also deserves a closer look is the fact that scalpers are selling these $1,800 PS5s to somebody. It's not like they're just buying the consoles and then listing them at many times their price for the fun of it. Somebody is keeping this business model alive and it's not just the scalpers themselves. If there wasn't a lot of money to be made in this business, then it wouldn't exist. There's no reason to invest all the time and money in gaming the system to end up with a ton of Xbox Series Xs if there are not people out there willing to pay exorbitant prices for them.
So at the end of the day the only thing that would ever really put an end to scalping is if that customer base changed its mind about how they go about buying their consoles. Say what you want about the scalpers or the retailers who failed to stop them, surely there's plenty of blame to go around, but until people stop prioritizing their insatiable appetites to have the latest and greatest consoles at any cost over the general well-being of the marketplace in which those consoles exist, there will always be shady characters willing to step in and profit from their impatience.
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.
Cyberpunk 2077 on PC Feels Like a 9th Gen Launch Title in All But Name
It's been eight years and two whole console generations since CD Projekt RED first announced Cyberpunk 2077. In the intervening time, we saw the CDPR transform into one of the most respected development houses in the videogame industry. CDPR's always aimed far beyond what their capabilities would lead to you to expect. Now, with the resources of a proper AAA studio, they've infused advanced tech, a remarkable degree of world-building and their signature storytelling to create the most significant 9th generation title till date. Cyberpunk 2077 is all kinds of achievements. But it stands tall, in particular, as a brilliant technical achievement. While it is a cross-generation title, much like Grand Theft Auto V, Cyberpunk 2077 on high-end PC and next-gen consoles offers us a glimpse of just what AAA developers could accomplish in the years to come once the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are phased out. We've all been waiting for that next-gen "wow" moment, and that time is now. But what exactly makes Cyberpunk 2077 shine at a technical level? What kind of techniques are CDPR leveraging here, and how does the maxed-out PC version stack up to the sky-high expectations and hype? Let's take a look.
NVIDIA RTX: the complete suite
NVIDIA has been pushing hybrid ray-tracing heavily for the past two years. The entire Turing GPU generation saw prices rise and raster performance flatline because of NVIDIA's heavy investment into AI and ray-tracing hardware on Turing dies. These first-generation ray tracing parts were, in a word, inadequate. Even with DLSS upscaling, all but the most capable of RTX Turing cards managed to hit 60 FPS in intensive ray-traced titles like Control. Other games compromised by making frugal use of ray-traced effects but the performance penalty, combined with the meagre visual improvements made this a net loss.
Two years down the road, NVIDIA's Ampere cards are out, and while ray-tracing still quite isn't there in terms of raw performance, the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 offer enough raw horsepower (and enhanced RT cores) for developers to seriously consider adding complex ray-traced effects to their games without utterly tanking framerates. Both the new ninth-generation consoles – the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – support hardware ray-tracing, too, meaning that ray-traced effects are likely to become a standard part of the gaming featureset in years to come. It's worth keeping this context in mind when we talk about Cyberpunk 2077's ray-tracing effects. CDPR's latest opus features, without a doubt, the most complete implementation of RTX effects we've seen in a hybrid rendering game. Barring Quake II RTX and Minecraft RTX, both of which are pure path-traced titles, there's nothing out there that competes with Cyberpunk 2077's RTX implementation, barring Control, which delivers a much more linear gameplay experience. Let's take a look at some of the RTX effects on display here.
Cyberpunk 2077 makes excellent use of ray-traced reflections. Night City's gritty neon-soaked environs are a perfect match up, with lots of glass and highly reflective metals that really benefit from a reflection pass. Reflections are the most easily-noticeable ray-tracing improvement to the game and can completely transform the aesthetics of certain locations. The floors can go from a murky grey-black to a riot of color, accurately reflecting multiple light sources. One drawback to Cyberpunk 2077's ray-traced reflection implementation is that it appears to cut out the player model. This is especially jarring when driving past windows while riding a motorcycle: The motorcycle reflects off buildings but not V! We expect CDPR to patch this issue soon but, for the time being, this could be a potential deal breaker for some.
Ray-traced ambient occlusion and shadows are another key addition here. This isn't the first RTX title to sport a great ray-traced shadow implementation. Interestingly, another cyberpunk game, Ghostrunner, beat CDPR to the chase in this respect. But just like in that game, ray-traced shadows add immense depth, really situating character models and objects in the game world, instead of "flat" feeling most games give off. It can be hard to notice all the additional self shadows and fine detail here while in action, but suffice to know, we're not dealing with approximations anymore. At least at close range, every part of an object will cast accurate shadows, including self-shadows. With complex high-poly models, this adds immense depth to nooks and crannys, in armor and pockets for example. There is an LOD cutoff to ray-traced shadowing. However, it's generous enough that the switch isn't too jarring.
Cyberpunk 2077 also makes use of NVIDIA's DLSS 2.1 AI upscaling technology. DLSS runs on the tensor cores on Turing and Ampere graphics cards. It isn't a simple upscale of low-res imagery: the AI algorithm recreates missing pixel information and in quality and balanced modes are at least as detailed as native resolution rendering. The heavy performance hit of enabling RTX effects in Cyberpunk is largely ameliorated by DLSS. Without the upscaling technique enabled, even the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 register dips below 30 FPS at times. DLSS has matured considerably: at this point, at least if you're sticking to the quality or balanced modes, there's no reason not to enable it and benefit from improved performance.
Animations and models: it's more than just the ray-tracing
While Cyberpunk's RTX effects are definite headliners, it's important to keep in mind that this is a AAA game that's been in development for over 8 years, with an eye towards next-gen platforms. While it does on everything from the Xbox One on up, high-end PC visuals give the distinct impression that CDPR was aiming to build a title that looked and played categorically better than just about anything on current-gen platforms. On a high-end PC, we see detail and fidelity that goes well beyond even next-gen "exclusive" titles.
Main character models, including V and Johnny Silverhand have poly-counts comparable to top-tier late gen PS4 exclusives: we expect this level of fidelity to become standard in ninth-gen open world titles. Character animations and behaviour scripting are, again, well beyond what we see in the likes of "cross-gen" titles. While Red Dead Redemption 2 arguably delivers more convincing AI routines, there's no surfeit of variety here. And compared to The Witcher 3, character animations themselves — especially in open-world sections are significantly more varied and blend better. CDPR's bespoke AI-powered lip-syncing tech makes character interactions significantly more convincing, too. What's particularly interesting here is that the AI-based approach means that different language dubs of the game all get accurate lip-syncing.
Particles and post-processing
Lastly, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't disappoint in terms of particle and post-processing either. Night City calls for a post-FX heavy aesthetic. Cyberpunk has a great per-object motion blur implementation, alongside a high sample-count DoF. With DLSS enabled, anti-aliasing becomes a non-issue, too. Alpha effects like explosion and fire are high resolution and really benefit from ray-traced reflections. Dynamic alpha effects receive accurate reflections on surfaces like glass, adding an extra layer of immersion during combat scenes.
Conclusion
Cyberpunk 2077 is practically a ninth-gen launch title. But we get the feeling that the top-end version of this game on PC will remain something of a visual benchmark for ninth-gen console titles to aspire to, for years to come. If this is CDPR's vision ninth-gen gaming, we're in for a truly remarkable decade.
Cyberpunk 2077 Is Already Profitable, Per Developer
It should come as no surprise that Cyberpunk 2077 has been a smash hit as it's been one of the most hyped games for pretty much an entire console generation, so it running to the top to be the best selling PC game ever should be no surprise. It also seems the game is already in the black, despite its long development cycle.
Developer CD Projekt RED issued a statement to investors to say that the game already passed the point of profitability for both its marketing and development costs off the whooping 8 million pre-orders it already had. No doubt that was bolstered by the fact that 74% of that was digital, which helped big time to the bottom line I imagine. While it may not be surprising considering the amount of sales we're talking about here, you should keep in mind this was a game that was in some form of development since around 2012 and was at various huge events though that time period. That should give an idea of just how successful that made this initial push.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Stadia.
PS5 Sold Over 107,000 In France; Xbox Series X/S Moves Around 37,000
Last month saw the launch of new consoles from both Sony and Microsoft: the PS5 and the Xbox Series X/S, respectively. Despite the pandemic, both companies managed to move their machines to the market, and the PS5 has been setting records in various regions. We now know what they did in France, and they aren't too far off from what you'd expect, though Sony went up while Microsoft dipped a bit.
As reported by Ludostrie, Sony sold over 107,000 units in the region, which would make it the biggest console launch in French history, managing to just beat the Switch's previous record of 105,000 and handily was over Sony's last system, the PS4, which sold 90,000. Microsoft cleared just over 37,000 in the region, which was quite a bit down from the Xbox One, which sold around 50,000. The ratio and trend is in line with another European country, Spain, which saw a similar console split as well as Sony up and Microsoft down (big thanks to Juexvideo for the numbers on previous console launches).
The PlayStation brand has traditionally been stronger throughout Europe, so it's not a huge surprise to see it selling more there in general, and it's always worth keeping in mind that both systems saw stock and supply issues, this year more so than usual, so the numbers also would maybe be slightly different had this been a normal year, though I imagine the overall ratio split wouldn't be drastically different.
Persona 5 Strikers Gets Over 30 Minutes Of English Gameplay
The Persona series has always had a pretty good following, but with Persona 5 and its enhanced re-release of Royal, that popularity has soared. Much like previous titles in the series, it's also already spawned several follow ups and sequels, including Persona 5 Strikers. The game originally released in Japan in February of this year and one year later will make its western debut. In the meantime, we got some English gameplay, a good amount in fact.
Despite this being provided by the French outlet JVFrance, we have over 30 minutes of gameplay completely in English. Since the game has already been out in Japan for a full year, there's a lot of gameplay out there, but this is the first extended amount we have seen with both full English voice acting and text. On the off case you also missed Japanese footage, this is a good preview of what to expect of the mousu-style sequel.
Persona 5 Strikers will release February 23rd for PlayStation 4, Switch and PC.
Cyberpunk 2077 1.04 Hotfix Update Aims To Improve Stability, Multiple Bugs, And Much More
It feels almost surreal to say that Cyberpunk 2077 is, in fact, now here after the better part of a decade since its initial reveal. Overnight, the game became the best-selling PC game of all time and largely reception has been positive. Even so, it's clear the game has a lot of technical issues and probably needed another delay in all honesty. However, CD Projekt RED has always been good about updating their titles, and we see the same here.
A hotfix update, 1.04, has been released for some versions of the game. You can see the list below or on the official website through here. The patch looks to update a lot of different things and aims at improving general stability as well as a lot of bug fixes. It also seems to tone down the flashing lights in the braindance sequences which was pointed out for potentially giving seizures. Some console-specific things, where the game is running the roughest, includes improving reflections as well as fixing a trophy issue on PS4 and a missing PT-BR VO for Xbox.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Stadia. The update is live now on PS4 and PC with Xbox planned to come soon.
PATCH NOTES:
Quests
- Fixed an issue with completing the final objective in Gig: Freedom of the Press.
- Fixed an issue with starting conversation with Johnny at the end in Life During Wartime.
- Corrected a rare issue with NPCs no longer calling V if A Like Supreme quest was abandoned mid-way.
- Fixed an issue with Nix not going into his default state in Spellbound and KOLD MIRAGE.
- Fixed issues blocking progress in I Fought The Law if the quest area is left.
- Fixed inability to find Delamain in Epistrophy.
- Fixed issues related to remaining in the second phase of the quest after finishing Pacifica fight with Ozob if played after Finals.
- Fixed an issue with Nomads no longer present if V leaves the quest area mid-combat in With a Little Help from My Friends/Queen of the Highway.
- Adjusted mappings and re-enabled quest tracker in M'ap Tann Pèlen/I Walk the Line/Transmission.
- Fixed constraints on freedom to get up and sit down if neither blueline condition is met in Violence.
- Fixed issues with time and space resulting from leaving the quest area or abandoning the quest in Following the River.
- Fixed an issue with conversation with Johnny not starting after leaving the hotel in Tapeworm.
- Fixed an issue with quest being blocked upon leaving the quest area before climbing the hill in Following the River.
- Fixed the objective "Go into booth 9" not completing if the room's entered too fast in Automatic Love.
- Fixed Jackie's issues with sitting still in The Ripperdoc.
- Other quest fixes
Gameplay
- Fixed the preview in weapon crafting.
Visual
- Reduced vehicle appearance pop-in.
- Speeded up switching first person perspective to third person perspective in a vehicle.
- Fixed issues with animations missing from important quest NPCs during cinematics.
Performance & Stability
- Improved stability, including various crash fixes.
Miscellaneous
- Modified the flashing effect on braindances to reduce the risk of inducing epileptic symptoms. The effect has been smoothed out and the flashes reduced in frequency and magnitude.
- Removed copyrighted songs incorrectly present in the game with "Disable Copyrighted Music" feature toggled on.
PC-specific
- Switching language to default in the in-game settings now correctly sets it to the language of your Steam client.
Console-specific
- Improved reflections quality on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 to eliminate the smudge effect.
- Fixed "The Wasteland" achievement being stuck on 97% after completing all relevant missions in The Badlands on Xbox.
- Fixed an issue with missing PT-BR VO for Xbox players in Americas.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Tops US Sales Charts for November 2020
Despite so many big releases last month, Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War soared to the top of software sales charts. The NPD Group's Mat Piscatella told VentureBeat that not only was the best-selling game for November 2020 but also of 2020 year-to-date. "Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War represents 2020's biggest launch. The title ranks first on both PlayStation and Xbox platforms for the month of November, as well as year to date.
"This is the 13th consecutive year a Call of Duty game has ranked as the best-selling game of its release month." Assassin's Creed Valhalla didn't fall too far behind though. It was the second best-selling game of last month and the seventh best-selling title year-to-date. While it set a new record for first week launch sales as per Ubisoft, Piscatella confirms that it also had the highest launch month sales for the franchise since Assassin's Creed 3 released in 2012.
In third place was Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales with launch month sales being the highest for superhero games on PlayStation platforms in the history of the US. It also ranked second for PlayStation, only trailing behind Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Check out The NPD Group's top ten best-selling titles of November 2020, with digital sales omitted for specific companies.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War
- Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
- Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Madden NFL 21
- NBA 2K21*
- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity*
- Watch Dogs: Legion
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- FIFA 21
- Demon's Souls
PS5 Sets New Record for Console Launch Month Spending in US
The NPD Group's November 2020 report is now available and while the Nintendo Switch led in terms of units sold, it was the PS5 that came out on top in terms of consumer spending. Unit and dollars for the console were actually the highest for any video game hardware in the history of the US. It's unseated the PS4, which set the record back in November 2013 as per analyst Mat Piscatella while speaking to VentureBeat.
Overall, consumer spending hit $1.4 billion on new hardware, which is an increase of 58 percent compared to a year ago. Year-to-date hardware spending hit $4 billion which is 34 percent higher than the same period last year. Once again, this is off the back of the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 launches.
The PS5 has done phenomenally well in the United Kingdom as well, with launch sales in the first 48 hours reportedly "far exceeding" the PS4's 250,000 units sold in 2013. In terms of upcoming release, Sony has confirmed that Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart will be releasing in early 2021 while Returnal was recently given a release date of March 19th 2021. Stay tuned for more details on the same in the coming months.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout – Season 3 Will Have 7 New Levels, Over 30 New Skins
Mediatonic debuted the latest trailer for Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout recently, showcasing Season 3: Winter Knockout, but it was somewhat lacking in gameplay. Don't worry though because there are plenty more reveals coming up. The developer tweeted that there would be seven new levels added along with more than 30 new skins.
It also teased "many more festive surprises" that were yet to be revealed. Some of that new content will be showcased via IGN so expect new gameplay footage. Then again, it's not like we'll have long to wait – Fall Guys Season 3 starts on December 15th after all.
Thus far, we've seen reindeer, snowman and penguin skins ringing in the holiday cheer. What else could be in store? Stay tuned for more details in the coming days. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is currently available for PS4 and PC – check out our review here for more details. Though it missed out on winning the Best Multiplayer Game Award, it's still sold over 11 million copies on PC thus far.
"Season 3 will add 7 new levels, 30+ news skins, and 'many more festive surprises yet to be revealed'. IGN will be exclusively revealing some of that new content later this week, so make sure to check back with us."
– @IGN#FallGuysSeason3 releases on December 15th! pic.twitter.com/I8fUbinVYR
— Fall Guys
(@FallGuysGame) December 11, 2020
Just Dance: Mobile Coming in 2021 for iOS, Android
Just Cause is coming to mobile devices next year in the succinctly named Just Cause: Mobile. Announced at The Game Awards, it's a free to play shooter with online co-op and competitive modes. Players can create their own character and partake in a new story campaign while teaming with characters from previous titles.
Co-op missions are a separate feature and involve playing with up to three other players for battling waves of enemies including tanks and mechs. Triple Threat is a 30 person mode with three teams of 10 players battling on a huge map with vehicles to secure bases. Finally, there's Challenge Mode which provides Destruction, Wingsuit and Racing challenges for getting the best scores.
Of course, all of the essential gameplay elements of Just Cause – like grappling, gliding, shooting and a large open world – will also be present. Check out the trailer below to see the game in action. Stay tuned for more details on a release date and potential closed beta in the future.