Global Electronic Component Shortages Will Continue Until Mid-2022 – Foxconn
Starting with the beginning of the COVID pandemic last year, manufacturing of electronic devices and hardware has been throttled all over the world across pretty much all relevant industries, and the significant shortage of electronic components that are crucial for manufacturing has been one of the primary reasons for that. And while many have estimated that those shortages might end soon, it doesn't seem like that might be the case.
Foxconn is the supplier and manufacturer of many tech heavyweights around the world (including Apple, Microsoft, and Google, among others), and in the company's recent investors call (via Nikkei), CEO Young Liu said that though supply of components in the first couple of months of 2021 has been relatively better, it's going to become more constrained going forward, and that the shortfall is actually going to continue until at least mid-2022.
Considering the fact that both the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S have also seen their supplies being constrained (while similar issues have also been faced by PC graphics cards), partly due to the component shortages, this obviously affects prospective consumers. The scale of these shortages is going to be much more widespread though, and will be felt outside the games industry as well.
Mortal Shell Runs at 1800p on PS5, But Performance is Better on Xbox Series X
Cold Symmetry's Soulslike action RPG Mortal Shell launched not too long ago for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S with an enhanced edition, boasting improved resolution and frame rate as compared to the game's PS4 and Xbox One versions. But how do the two new next-gen versions compare with each other? Thanks to a technical analysis done by VGTech (reported by Twisted Voxel) we have a clearer idea about that.
On the PS5, Mortal Shell renders at a constant 1800p after its latest patch, with the UI being shown at a native 4K resolution. This does, however, come at the cost of performance issues. While the game targets 60 frames per second, it often drops to the 50s, occasionally to the 40s, and can even fall as low as the mid- to high-30s. In comparison, the Xbox Series X version does a pretty good job of maintaining a solid 60 FPS- though something that that version has working in its favour is its usage of dynamic resolution, which the PS5 version doesn't have. Here's hoping that gets added to the PS5 version soon.
Mortal Shell is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Since they first started talking about it, People Can Fly have maintained that even though Outriders is a looter shooter RPG, unlike other games in the genre, it is not a live service game. Something else they have said, however, is that while that means the game itself is going to be a complete experience at launch, that doesn't mean it's not going to receive any post-launch support whatsoever.
So what exactly will that support looks like? The answer is still a little unclear, but in an interview with Forbes, game director Bartek Kmita provided a little more details on that. Kmita explained that Outriders will receive more content based on fan feedback, and that People Can Fly have a lot of ideas and stories they want to explore in future content. According to Kmita, any new content that the RPG shooter receives will be "significant" expansions that will tell self-contained stories.
"We never said that we would abandon the game," Kmita said. "This isn't a games-as-a-service, but if people like it, we will definitely be doing more things in the Outriders universe. We have so many more stories to tell, and a lot of ideas we want to explore that we couldn't fit in the original game, so we're happy to create more content in the future. Anything we would make would be in the form of significant expansions with self-contained stories."
The Outriders developers recently also said that any post-launch content that Outriders receives will add new elements to the game, rather than adding something that should have been in the experience to begin with but was cut out for the purposes of post-launch support. Read more on that through here.
Outriders is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia.
Apex Legends Will Get "A Ton of" Titanfall Content in Season 9
The success of Apex Legends has been great to see, but at the same time, it's also come at the cost of the Titanfall series being put on hold. Whether or not a new Titanfall game gets made anytime soon remains to be seen, but it seems fans of the series will have at least something to look forward to one way or another.
In a recent stream hosted by BrownGirlGamerCode (spotted by Dextero), Apex Legends' game director Chad Grenier confirmed that Apex Legends will be receiving a significant amount of Titanfall content in the upcoming season 9, and that fans of the latter are going to want to keep an eye on the same.
"Next season, Season 9, you're actually going to see a ton of Titanfall coming back into the game, in one way or another," Grenier said. "I've told some people before, if you're a Titanfall fan, hang on for Season 9 because there's gonna be some really cool stuff there."
So does this mean Titans might be making their way to Apex Legends? Unfortunately, no (Even though arecent datamine of Apex Legends seems to suggest quite the opposite). As reported by @TitanfallBlog on Twitter, Grenier has also said that currently, there are no plans to add Titans to the battle royale game- though he did say that someday that could happen, perhaps as part of a separate mode.
Apex Legends is available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits might not have the name of a major AAA developer attached to it, but it's generated a lot of hype since it was revealed last year, and one of the primary reasons for that is just how good it looks. Whether or not it plays as well as it should remains to be seen, but visually, the game is shaping up to be an impressive accomplishment. What's been impressive to see is how, in all the footage so far, the game seems to be maintaining a largely similar level of visual quality across both cutscenes and gameplay, and in a recent interview on the official Unreal Engine website, co-founder of developer Ember Lab Mike Grier spoke to that a little bit.
Grier explained that on top of using the same assets in cutscenes and gameplay in order to breathe greater life into environments, something else that works in the game's favour is the visual style adopted by the game. Grier also went on to state that Kena's quality of animations in gameplay and in cutscenes also deserves a special mention.
"We spent a long time developing the look of the environment and the world," Grier said. "Those efforts were focused around a visual style and the goal of environmental storytelling. All of this work in developing a world carries over to the cinematics because we leverage the same assets. So that visual style really helps carry the same feeling between gameplay and cutscenes. But one area I think may be sometimes overlooked is the quality of our gameplay animations. Kena and the characters move and feel great in gameplay and the cinematics which really unifies the gameplay and cutscene experiences."
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is releasing for PS5, PS4, and PC on August 24.
Dying Light 2 Developer Ensuring "The Highest Quality" for PS4 and Xbox One Versions
The launch of Cyberpunk 2077 has affected more than just CD Projekt RED, and the poor state that the game launched in on PS4 and Xbox One has led many to question whether similar issues are going to be faced by other upcoming games that launch as cross-gen releases. Most upcoming games, of course, are going to be cross-gen, and one of those is Dying Light 2. With modes supporting 4K resolution, 60 FPS, and ray-tracing, the game seems to be preparing to fully leverage the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but what about its last-gen versions?
Speaking in an interview with Wccftech, the game's developers assured that owing to the fact that optimization for Dying Light 2 on PS4 and Xbox One began long ago, the game isn't going to run into any issues on older hardware, and that the developer is ensuring the highest possible quality for the game on the consoles.
"The 'main' consoles have long been our priority," said rendering director Tomasz Szałkowski. "We make every effort to ensure that the game's quality on PS4 or XBO is at the highest level. We started testing on the older generation consoles much earlier than in other projects. This was related to the scale of changes to the engine and ambitious plans to create an even larger and more complex game than DL1."
Dying Light 2 is scheduled for launch some time later in 2021 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. In the same interview, the open world title's developers also spoke about the transition to a new engine, and how much content players can expect to find in the game. Read more about both through the links.
Final Fantasy 14 Receives News Gameplay Footage for Upcoming PS5 Launch
2021 is going to be a big year for Final Fantasy 14. Square Enix's MMORPG has only gone from strength to strength over the years, and by the end of this year, with a new expansion, it's going to (hopefully) reach even greater heights. At the same time, though, Final Fantasy 14 will also be releasing for PS5, and with its beta launching on the console not long from now, Square Enix have released plenty of new footage of the version for fans to look at.
In a recent livestream, the game's producer and director Naoki Yoshida spent over a dozen minutes showing the game in action on the PS5. Final Fantasy 14 will boast 4K resolution, improved assets, faster load times, and more, and the footage here gives a pretty good idea of what that's going to look like. Check out the timestamped video below.
Final Fantasy 14 is available on PS4 and PC, and launches for PS5 this Fall. Before that, it will receive a beta on the PS5 on April 13. Meanwhile, the Endwalker expansion is also launching this Fall.
The MMO also recently received a new path that added new story content and quests. Read more on that through here.
Final Fantasy 16, Resident Evil Village Rank High in Famitsu Most Wanted Charts Once More
Famitsu has released its latest weekly charts for the most highly anticipated upcoming games as decided by votes from their readers, and if you've been following these on a weekly basis, all of this will seem pretty familiar to you. Monster Hunter Rise, which has been topping these charts on a weekly basis, topped them once again, with voting having taken place before the game launched.
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 16 and Resident Evil Village have both also been permanent fixture around the top positions in these charts, and both figure high once again, taking the second and fourth spots respectively. Between the two is Bandai Namco's Tales of Arise, which has also been ranking high in these charts for a while now.
All the other games in the top 10 are upcoming Nintendo Switch exclusives, and all of them have been taking their place in these charts on an almost weekly basis, including the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's sequel, Bayonetta 3, Rune Factory 5, Shin Megami Tensei 5, and New Pokemon Snap.
You can check out the full top 10 below. All votes were cast by Famitsu readers between March 11 and March 17.
1. [NSW] Monster Hunter Rise – 991 votes
2. [PS5] Final Fantasy 16 – 666 votes
3. [PS4] Tales of Arise – 663 votes
4. [PS5] Resident Evil Village – 463 votes
5. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 – 445 votes
6. [NSW] Bayonetta 3 – 341 votes
7. [NSW] Rune Factory 5 – 329 votes
8. [NSW] Shin Megami Tensei 5 – 316 votes
9. [NSW] New Pokemon Snap – 212 votes
10. [NSW] Ushiro – 198 votes
[Via Nintendo Everything]
Sony Has Made A Horrible Decision With The Recent Closure Of PSP, PS3, and PS Vita Stores
Last week, Sony finally confirmed the rumors and announced that the PSN Stores for PS3, PSP, and PS Vita would be taken down in just a few months from now. For a number of reasons, this ended up being an extremely problematic announcement, one that stands as the culmination of all the bad decisions and tendencies Sony has developed over the last few years, as they have found themselves with an uncontested lead over the game console market.
The biggest issue, according to a lot of people, has been the discontinuation of sales for a lot of this legacy software. This is a valid concern – there are quite literally almost ten thousand games spread across these three storefronts, spanning the PS1, PS3, PS3, PSP, and PS Vita. A lot of incredible classics were released digitally only (particularly for the Vita, the market failure of which made retail releases untenable very early on). Multiple PS1 and PS2 classics were sold for affordable and cheap prices on these stores, rather than the literally hundreds of dollars physical copies of them command on auction sites such as eBay. There are great PlayStation exclusives, and titles that were defining for the platform and its legacy, such as Metal Gear Solid 4, Suikoden, Xenogears, Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Resistance 3, inFamous 2, Persona 3, and many, many, more, that are now going to be lost in the ether. Your option is either to splurge obscene amounts of money on getting physical copies of these, or just never play these games. They will be lost.
Contrast this approach, for a second, to the competition's. Xbox's legacy with games is not even a fraction of PlayStation's, and yet Microsoft is more respectful of it by literally magnitudes upon magnitudes. Microsoft has made a concerted effort to not only maintain compatibility across now four generations of Xbox consoles, but to honor your purchases across all of them (so the user never has to rebuy their games), and most impressively, give these games enhancements and boosts when played on new systems – free of charge. Where Sony is unwilling to let you even play Persona 3 on your PS5, Microsoft will not just let you play Fallout 3 on your Series X, they will also give it enhanced performance, so that it looks and runs substantially better than it did originally – and this is done without charging the user a dime. Can you imagine Sony, the company that made you buy PS2 classics on PS4 again even after you had already purchased them on PS3, charging a premium for minor "enhancements" such as Trophy support, doing something like that? The contrast in the two approaches is severe and stark, and Sony's efforts look particularly disdainful of their legacy, and of their users' investment, in light of how Microsoft has been handling compatibility.
Sony has claimed it approaches video games as a medium for storytelling, a legitimate avenue for human creation and expression. Art like that is not meant to be ephemeral and disposable, it's not something that is made obsolete because something newer came along, it's something that is meant to be treated with respect and made accessible to as many people as possible. Can you imagine if Steven Spielberg had never allowed any distribution of Schindler's List after 1994 because Jurassic Park was here, and it was newer and shinier? Can you imagine J.R.R. Tolkein and his publishers deciding to never give any reprint runs to The Hobbit because The Lord of the Rings was now out, and it was newer and better anyway? If games are actually art, then why are they not being treated as such?
The issue with Sony's announcement goes even further than just the loss of these games (which is in and of itself an intangible profound loss) too. The PS3 and PSP are extremely old – they are 15 and 17 years old respectively, and honestly, their stores being shut down makes at least some sense. It still hurts, because Sony has made no attempts to ensure compatibility with or access for those games on newer platforms, which is what makes the situation spectacularly terrible – but you can at least understand that decision, even if you don't like it. But then there's the Vita.
The Vita is less than ten years old right now from its original release (less than nine for western territories). Shutting down the store for a platform not even ten years old is horrific, and sets an awful precedent for the rest of the industry. Yes, the Vita didn't do too well in terms of hardware sales, but it has a dedicated community of owners and developers (we'll get to this one in a bit), and software routinely overperformed on the platform. In spite of Sony's best efforts to bury the Vita alive, the platform continued to chug along. It continues to get routine releases every month even into 2021 (which makes sense, given that the Vita is less than ten years old). Shutting down the store for a system that isn't even that old is unacceptable. It's unacceptable for a bunch of reasons.
One part of that is the notice given. The PS3, PSP, and Vita stores are not the first console online stores to be shut down – the DSi and Wii stores were. However, in spite of how legendarily bad Nintendo tends to be with online services, they had the foresight and the consideration to make the announcement quite literally years ahead of time, giving everyone involved plenty of time to get prepared for when it happened. Nintendo also made the process a phased one – they announced the stores would be shutting down a couple of years down the line, but that balance purchases for the stores would be suspended a year down the line. Again, this approach, while not ideal – those games are still lost to time, and they're not compatible with Nintendo's newest platform either – at least exhibited a level of consideration for those ecosystems, and the users and developers who may still be invested in them, however few they may be. Sony's notice period is… four months for the PS3 and PSP, five months for the PS Vita. That's all we get. And rather than do everything in properly laid out staggered phases, Sony has taken the webstore that users used to make purchases for these systems (because the stores on the consoles themselves are, let's face it, terrible) down without any notice or warning at all. This reveals how little they care for not just the PS3, PSP, and PS Vita, and the legacy associated with those systems and the games they had, but also for the users who may still be invested in those platforms, and the developers who may still be invested in those platforms.
Yes, developers. As it turns out, Sony's spectacularly bad communication and lack of transparency isn't just for their users, it's also for their developers. Multiple developers who were still working on Vita games that were due to release this year did not know that Sony would be pulling support for that platform's store (because, I remind you, the Vita is less than a decade old). In fact, Sony was selling dev kits – presumably worth thousands of dollars, judging by how much dev kits are typically known to cost – to developers as recently as a few months ago with no warning associated. Meaning Sony was willing to take developers' money for games that they were just going to be starting development on for the Vita, without letting them know that they would soon have no way whatsoever of actually selling those Vita games, because the Store was about to close soon, and Sony had stopped manufacturing cartridges for the Vita years ago anyway (plus as mentioned already, physical Vita releases haven't been tenable for a long time).
This basically throws these developers – and these developers are typically smaller indie outfits, not the big developers (whom, reportedly, Sony did give notice to) – under the bus. They are out of the money they used on the dev kits, and they have no way to recoup those games they spent time, money, and resources on unless they can get them out in the next five months and hope to recoup all costs in that truncated period. How will they get the games out by then? They may have to crunch, they may have to enlist help they can't afford, or they're just going to be losing a lot of money.
PlayStation became as huge as it did on the back of amazing developer relations. Before the PlayStation came along, the market was dominated by Nintendo and Sega, and both platform holders were known to be, to put it bluntly, bullies to third party developers for their consoles. Sony managed to make the PlayStation such a rousing success because developers of all kinds – the big blockbuster publishing houses, and western ones, yes, but also smaller ones with few credentials, and Japanese ones working on niche titles not guaranteed to be blockbusters – felt welcome in the fold. Sony took decades to build this reputation for developer relations, and it's why, for so long, the PlayStation was almost a default platform for console developers.
In the last few years, Sony has done its best to destroy this confidence and longstanding relationship with developers. Sony still rolls out the red carpet for you if you're a western publisher, or if you're a Japanese one who puts out huge blockbuster hits like Final Fantasy and Resident Evil – but otherwise, as we have seen, Japanese developers are increasingly being marginalized and alienated by PlayStation, and smaller indie developers from across the world have felt jilted by the console too – no wonder, by the way, if Sony will do things like take their money and then discontinue the store they could have sold their games on without warning or notice just weeks later.
This slow erosion of developer relations is not something they should expect to get away with forever. PlayStation is doing great right now, off the back of well earned and deserved goodwill from audiences and developers alike accrued over decades. But if Sony continues to be hostile to smaller pockets of developers it deems as being so small that they won't have a choice but to support PlayStation, then it may soon start losing out on their support (among indie developers, PlayStation is already now taking a backseat to Steam and Switch, and several huge indie hits either come to PlayStation late (such as Hollow Knight), or don't come to PlayStation at all (such as, as of right now, the award winning Hades). Among Japanese developers, we are already seeing multiple smaller developers and games going to the Switch exclusively (such as Shin Megami Tensei V), or coming to PlayStation later, or not at all.
And that kind of loss of support from smaller developers will matter. None of those games may sell millions of software copies or hardware units by themselves, but collectively, they add depth and dimension to the console's library, which has helped PlayStation stand out and have a more exhaustive and comprehensive library than the competition for 20 years now. Losing those games, and only getting the big Japanese blockbusters and western multiplats, gives the PlayStation the kind of library that Xbox consoles were known to have until very recently – and that kind of library is sorely lacking in the character and texture that helps consoles appeal to all demographics.
This only exacerbates the broader problems that Sony's discontinuation of these stores, and utter lack of compatibility and continuity efforts, will have. Yes, PS5 is selling great right now, and it's well deserved – but customers who are burned repeatedly on their purchases by Sony will eventually learn not to trust the company. The fact that probably hundreds of dollars' worth of digital purchases will now be lost to the ether will probably give a lot of pause to many before they spend money on Sony's digital stores again (and this company has the audacity to sell a digital only console right now). This kind of loss of confidence is already something Nintendo struggled with with the Switch for years, and digital adoption for their consoles only started to pick up recently, after almost a decade of Nintendo trying.
Yes, one might make the argument that the broader public doesn't care – which in and of itself is a stupid and unfalsifiable statement, since there is no way to actually prove that – but the enthusiasts and engaged fans of PlayStation do, and they're the ones who will be most jilted by this move, and will be the loudest in expressing their displeasure. And as we have seen previously, the enthusiasts making noise about something does leak into the broader public and color perception, affecting sales. The enthusiasts were the ones most opposed to the Xbox One when it was revealed – and that ended up influencing that console's fortunes for the rest of its life cycle, as well as the brand's up to now. If Sony continues to burn bridges with its development partners, and its most engaged fans, then the goodwill and success PlayStation enjoys right now could find itself be punctured severely – and they would do well to remember that. It feels like they take their success for granted right now.
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.
Resident Evil Village – 15 New Details You Need To Know
The hype surrounding Resident Evil Village is palpable, and it grows with every day. We've certainly been looking forward to it in giddy anticipation. As you may have noticed, we here at GamingBolt have taken every chance we get to talk about all things Resident Evil of late, but thankfully, there's still plenty left to talk about. With the clock ticking down to Resident Evil Village's launch, in this feature, we're going to go over a few more key details you should know about the survival horror megaton.
OPENING DETAILS
Resident Evil Village's story is looking very promising so far, and though Capcom are keeping things close to the vest (as they should), we do know plenty about how the game begins, thanks to an interview with the developers and Famitsu from last year. Following the apparent murder of Mia at Chris' hands, the rogue agent kidnaps Ethan's daughter Rose and heads to the game's titular village, forcing Ethan to give chase and head there as well. Upon arriving in the village, Ethan quickly realizes that something is wrong, with its denizens seemingly involved in a strange cult of some sorts. Meanwhile, several characters that we've seen a glimpse of but don't know much about – such as the old shaman lady with the skull staff – are apparently going to have a pretty important role to play.
STORY CONNECTIONS
Something that Capcom have mentioned a couple of times now is the fact that Resident Evil Village's story will be tying in quite a bit with the series' larger narrative. In a recent stream, the developers said that players will want to replay all the mainline entries in the series before heading into Village, since apparently there's a lot of narrative connections to older games in Village's story. Given the fact that Chris Redfield is playing a major role in the story, on top of other things like the Umbrella logo appearing in trailers, it does seem like the story is going to be more closely linked with the series' larger overarching narrative than Resident Evil 7 was.
CONSISTENCY WITH LORE
From werewolves and vampires to witches and giants with sledgehammers, we've seen a lot of different kinds of enemies in Resident Evil Village so far, and it's fair to say that they're fairly off-beat for a Resident Evil game. But according to producer Peter Fabiano, all of the enemies in the game are going to not only be rooted in science fiction rather than supernatural stuff the way RE monsters tend to be, they're all also going to be consistent with the series' lore. In an interview with the Official PlayStation Magazine, Fabiano said, "We don't want to spoil too much of the story but what I can say is that the creatures all fit within the context of Resident Evil's world. We can assure you that Resident Evil Village takes into account the overall world and history of the series."
MORE FOCUS ON ETHAN
Ethan Winters returning as the primary protagonist in RE Village is significant for a number of reasons. This is the first time ever that a protagonist is going to return in a direct sequel immediately after making their debut in the series, while the only other time we've seen a character being featured as a playable protagonist back-to-back was with Chris in Resident Evil 5 and 6. So why is Ethan, who was so unremarkable as a character in RE7, coming back? Well, clearly, Capcom didn't think he was unremarkable, and they want to expand upon his story. Something that they've made clear (and that rumours have doubled down on as well) is that Ethan is going to have a much larger presence in Village, so here's hoping he is a much stronger protagonist here than he was in his debut.
RE4 INSPIRATIONS
With things such as the briefcase inventory management, the merchant, and its whole aesthetic, it's been clear for a while now that Resident Evil Village is leaning heavily on the RE4 influences. And Capcom haven't shied away from that, clearly, and have even said as much in as many words. Speaking in an interview with the Official PlayStation Magazine, producer Peter Fabiano said, "You'll notice we took a lot of inspiration from Resident Evil 4. The team has put a ton of effort into creating a truly authentic feel. There are plenty of surprises to keep you on your toes; players will find a balance of combat, exploration, and puzzle solving."
INTENSE HORROR
Whether or not Resident Evil will go back to focusing more on action than horror is something that series fans are always concerned about. Village certainly does seem to be a lot more action-packed and explosive than RE7 was- but Capcom have promised that this is still very much a survival horror experience. In an interview with Edge, game director Morimasa Sato said that Village isn't going to de-emphasize horror elements, in case fans were worried. He said, "As you know, one of the central themes of the Resident Evil series is horror or fear, and I would just warn you not to take anything you've seen so far as an indication that you can relax in terms of horror content. There are plenty of intense and horrifying scenes in the game, but we've chosen to leave those for you to experience by yourself."
DIMITRESCU AND HER CASTLE
Lady Dimitrescu a.k.a. everyone's favourite Tall Vampire Lady has been the talk of the town for a while now, but though she clearly seems to be dominating most conversations about Resident Evil Village, the game itself is obviously going to have a lot more going on than her, her daughters, and her castle. According to the developers, she and her castle are just one section of a much larger game. Said art director Tomonori Takano in an interview with IGN, "What we've shown so far — Lady Dimitrescu, the village, and the castle — encompass just a section of Resident Evil Village."
LOCKPICKS
Conservation and smart usage of depletable resources such as ammo and health are obviously going to be crucial in Resident Evil Village, and apparently, there's going to be more similar things to worry over as well. For instance, it's been confirmed that lockpicks will be returning in Resident Evil Village. Lockpicks have been featured in RE titles as a limited and depletable resources, so it should be interesting to see how they're used in Village and how much of an emphasis the game will put on them.
THE MAP
It's been made abundantly clear by now that Resident Evil Village is going to be significantly larger than RE7, but exactly what do we know about its map? Thanks to a map of the game's setting that comes with the game's collector's edition, we know quite a bit. Castle Dimitrescu seems to take centerstage, and it's clear that it's going to be a pretty big location. The village itself is pretty large and spread out, and from a suspension bridge and mills to a sluice gate and windmills, there's quite a bit of landmarks here as well. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other locations that seem interesting that will likely play a part in the game, such as House Beneviento and Heisenberg's factory. Meanwhile, it also looks like there's a lake to the south of the castle, next to the factory, that's locked by the aforementioned sluice gate, and based on the map's artwork, seems to house a massive aquatic creature. Are we in for a boss fight that'll call back to the Del Lago encounter in RE4? It certainly seems that way.
CAPCOM'S HIGH EXPECTATIONS
Capcom have been quite bullish about how Resident Evil Village is turning out, and they've been all too happy to let that show. Whether it's in terms of the game's critical reception or how much they think it'll sell, they certainly seem to have high expectations. Producer Peter Fabiano said in an interview with the Official PlayStation Magazine, "Since we are constantly sharing information across Resident Evil teams, that really helped inform us in making what we consider the best survival horror game to date." Meanwhile, speaking to GamesIndustry, Capcom's EMEA and UK marketing director Antoine Molant said, "Our main ambition for this year, although there's so much going on at the same time, is to make sure Resident Evil Village will be the best-performing Resident Evil title, both in terms of quality as well as business."
SECOND DEMO
Resident Evil Village's Maiden demo has been available exclusively on PS5 for some time now, but as effective as it was at giving us a glimpse of the game's audio and visual capabilities, it was pretty light as far as gameplay was concerned. Thankfully, a second demo is coming as well, which will be releasing for every platform the game is coming to. The second demo, due out in the Spring, is going to be much meatier and will also include combat. In fact, Capcom have confirmed that this demo will include a section of the final game itself, so players will get a much better sense of what the final product is going to be like.
FILE SIZE
Resident Evil Village will be a cross-gen game, and while we don't know much about what its file size (or even its resolution and frame rate) will be on last-gen consoles, we do have those details for its PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions. On Xbox Series X/S, the game will require 35 GB of free storage space, which will go up to 50 GB if you include Resident Evil Re:Verse. Meanwhile, the game's file size on PS5 is 27.3 GB, which can probably be attributed to the console's efficient compression tech. All of this, of course, doesn't take into account any updates and patches the game may receive on day 1.
PC REQUIREMENTS
What if you're planning on playing the game on PC though? Well, system requirements have also been revealed. At minimum settings for 1080p/60 FPS gameplay, you'll need either an Intel Core i5-7500 or an AMD Ryzen 3 1200, 8 GB RAM, and either a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB VRAM or a Radeon RX 560 with 4GB VRAM. Recommended settings stipulate 16 GB RAM and either an Intel Core i7 8700 or an AMD Ryzen 5 3600, along with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700. If you want ray-tracing, you'll need either a GeForce RTX 2070 or a Radeon RX 6700 XT or a Radeon RX 6800 for 4K/45 FPS. For ray-tracing at 4K/60 FPS you'll need either a GeForce RTX 3070 or a Radeon RX 6900 XT.
EDITIONS
Resident Evil Village will also be launching with various special editions in addition to the standard one. The Deluxe Edition will include the game itself and the Trauma Pack DLC, which includes the Samurai Edge, an in-game "Found Footage" filter, safe room music from RE7, tape recorders as save points instead of typewriters, the Mr. Everywhere weapon charm, and the "Village of Shadows" difficulty. Also included is the "Tragedy of Ethan Winters" artwork. Then there's the Collector's Edition includes everything from the Deluxe Edition, in addition to a Chris Redfield figure, a 64-page hardcover artbook, a reversible microfiber cloth map, and a steelbook case, all of this will come in a suitably large box. Finally, there's also the Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 7 Complete Bundle, which, as its name suggests, will include both games, as well as the Trauma Pack DLC.
STADIA
Resident Evil Village is going to be releasing for a ridiculous number of platforms right out the gate. In addition to PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, it's been confirmed that the game will also launch for Stadia on May 7, simultaneously with the other versions. Meanwhile, Resident Evil 7 will also have been available on Stadia for a while at that point, with a release date for the cloud service of April 1. Google may have abandoned any and all efforts of supporting Stadia with first party developed exclusive content, but hey- at least it's still getting some pretty major third party releases. That's something, right?