Activision has released a new Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War video demonstrating the PC version’s Nvidia RTX ray tracing features. Nvidia confirmed on Tuesday that the next Call of Duty title would support RTX ray tracing, as well as DLSS 2.0 and its Reflex low-latency technology. 2019’sModern Warfarealso supported RTX, but only for ray-traced shadows. OnPlayStation 5andXbox Series X,Black Ops Cold Warwill also feature hardware-based ray-tracing, according toActivision....

Tencent will shut down Call of Duty Online in China on June 05, 2025. Citing an officialannouncement, Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad said “declining revenue and lack of renewal” fromActivisionwere behind the decision to close the game. Developed byRaven Softwareand officially launched in 2015, Call of Duty Online was the first free-to-play entry in Activision’s blockbuster franchise. Players will be offered items inCall of Duty Mobileas an incentive to move over to Activision’s newer free-to-play series entry, which is developed byTencent’s TiMi Studios and has been downloaded over 500 million times since launching in November 2019....

UK regulator the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally agreed to allow Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The CMA has remained the last major roadblock to the deal closing, and initially blocked the acquisition in April due to concerns about its impact on the nascent cloud gaming market. Microsoftattempted to restructure its proposed acquisition byagreeing to sell cloud streaming rights to Ubisoft, leading the CMA to launch a new merger inquiry....

Tony Hawk has discussed how his partnership with Activision on its billion-dollar skateboarding game series might never have been. In an interview withThe Diary of a CEO podcast, Hawk was asked if there were any “close calls” that might have scuppered the deal he eventually signed withActivision. Hawk said he may have chosen to endorse a rival skating game that was more technically challenging to play had Activision not come knocking when it did....

Two thirds of CD Projekt are now working on the next game in the Witcher series, codenamed Polaris. As revealed during an earnings conference for the publisher’s FY 2023 earnings, the development team now sits at 403 staff. Joint CEOMichał Nowakowskiexplained that following the release ofCyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the number of staff working on that game has now dropped to just 17, with others being distributed to other projects....

Activision has detailed Call of Duty Warzone Season 5’s content roadmap, which includes the addition of the game’s first exclusive Perks. The upcoming season of content,which launches on August 12, will also include new Verdansk points of interest, the 50v50 Clash mode, plus fresh weapons and Operators, among other features. Promising to “shake up the meta” are new Perks Combat Scout and Tempered. Combat Scout provides players with “a burst of in-field intel, as damaging an enemy briefly highlights the foe in bright orange and automatically pings them”....

Blizzard has announced plans to add player housing to World of Warcraft in its next expansion, Midnight. A teaser trailer for the expansion and the new feature, which premiered during a Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct stream on Wednesday, is viewable above. Ion Hazzikostas, senior game director onWorld of Warcraft, toldGameSpotthe feature has been in development for several years. “We’ve known we’ve wanted to do it for real for some time,” he said....

2K Sports has revealed the final playable roster for WWE 2K24, and it appears to be missing Vince McMahon and Brock Lesnar. The final rosterconsists of 204 playable superstars – including 70 ‘Legends’ wrestlers who are no longer on the current roster – and eight managers. However, former WWE CEO and chairman Vince McMahon, and 7-time WWE Champion and 3-time WWE Universal Champion Lesnar, are notably absent from the list....

Microsoft has confirmed its big summer Xbox showcase will return, with a live stream set to take place on Sunday, June 8. TheXboxGames Showcase 2025 will be livestreamed from 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK time, followed by a second showcased focussed onThe Outer Worlds2. The Games Showcase will include “looks at upcoming titles from across our first-party studios, in addition to incredible new titles from our third-party partners across the globe”....

Summer Game Fest 2024 is here and the biggest companies from across the industry have descended upon Los Angeles. While the hype and chaos of E3 hasn’t quite returned, this weekend will still see dozens of new announcements and trailers for the biggest games of the year. While there will be some heavy hitters at the show, however, when the dust settles next week we’ll realise there were plenty of games that were missing in action....

Nearly 330 developers are working on the next mainline The Witcher game, which is codenamed Polaris, CD Projekt has confirmed. The company provided an update on the size of its development teams engaged on current projects as part of its quarterly financial results on Tuesday. “The [Polaris] team is steadily growing, having reached almost 330 developers at the end of last month,”CD ProjektCEOAdam Kicińskisaid during the company’s third quarter earnings conference on Tuesday....

Amazon’s team shooter Crucible has retired two of its three game modes and delayed its first season indefinitely. The move, shared onthe game’s official website, follows a slow start for the free-to-play game, which at the time of publishing has less than 100 viewers on streaming platform Twitch – which its parent company owns. According toSteam Spy,Cruciblehad a peak concurrent player count of less than 1,000 this weekend, which is less than expected for a free-to-play title backed by a major corporation....

The annual subscription option is priced at $49.99 in the US, $59.99 in Canada, £49.99 in the UK and €49.99 in Europe, according to9to5Mac. VGC has askedAppleif the offer, which was originally spotted byiFun.deand saves users about $10/£10 over the course of a year, is a permanent one or a time limited promotion. Apple Arcadelaunched in September priced at $4.99/£4.99 a month, although new users can sample the subscription service free for one month....