Alessio Palumbo

As promised last week, Bethesda Game Studios has just released the second update for Fallout 4 Next-Gen, the latest version of the RPG originally launched in 2015.

Today, Austin-based studio Airship Syndicate (Battle Chasers: Night War, Darksiders Genesis, Ruined King: A League of Legends Story) announced a major shift for its online action RPG Wayfinder. The upcoming Echoes update will change the once free-to-play, online-only game to a premium game with a full-fledged offline option.

Around three weeks after the beginning of public testing, indie developer Iron Gate released the long-awaited Valheim Ashlands update on live servers. However, the Microsoft Store and Xbox versions have been delayed due to unforeseen issues:

Visionary game director and writer Yoko Taro is working on a game with Yosuke Saito and composer Keiichi Okabe, as revealed in the latest issue of the Japanese magazine Famitsu (via Gematsu).

Yesterday, Sony Interactive Entertainment revealed that its PS5 console had sold 59.2 million units as of March 31, slightly below Sony's own forecast.

In late January 2023, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Amazon was developing an interconnected Tomb Raider universe made of games, film, and TV.

Today, former XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns designer Jake Solomon announced the foundation of Midsummer Studios, a small indie company established with the help of several industry veterans who worked on games like Civilization (Will Miller) and The Sims (Grant Rodiek). This startup has already raised $6 million from investors like Transcend Fund, Tirta Ventures, Betaworks Ventures, 1Up Ventures, F4 Ventures, Krafton, and Day Zero Productions.

While the generative AI technology for NPCs (non-player characters) demonstrated at GDC 2024 by Inworld is very exciting for its potential applications in games, one of the main drawbacks is the cost associated with it. The simulation currently has to run on Inworld's servers, which comes at a price.

Crimson Desert might be nearing its release window at long last. The game was originally announced by Pearl Abyss (the South Korean developer behind Black Desert) at G-Star 2019 alongside DokeV and PLAN 8.

Today, alongside its financial report, Sony announced a new leadership structure for its PlayStation division (Sony Interactive Entertainment). Following the departure of Jim Ryan, they had been looking for a new Chief Executive Officer; as it turns out, they found two.

Following the release date leak, Assassin's Creed Shadows also got its pricing and season pass/DLC plan leaked, although through another source.

Shortly after generative AI became the hottest topic in pretty much every industry, Inworld started making headlines in 2023 with its Character Engine technology that was first implemented in a series of PC games (Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Grand Theft Auto V) by modder Bloc.

Today, Square Enix reported financial results for the fiscal year that ended on March 31. The results weren't great, as the Japanese publisher narrowly missed the revenue target and majorly missed the operating income target, with the latter also down 26.6% compared to last year.

The wait for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf has been extremely long for fans, but it sounds like the end of the line is finally in sight, and it might have been worth it.

Following Xbox's decision to close down three studios (Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog Games) and roll Roundhouse Studios into ZeniMax Online, Jeff Grubb's rumor that the Perfect Dark reboot was in rough waters made things look even more dire for Xbox fans.

It's been a rough week for Xbox following multiple studio closures decided by Microsoft and the severe blowback from fans and fellow developers alike, not to mention reports of Perfect Dark having a rough time, but a new rumor suggests State of Decay 3, at least, might be coming along well.

It's been a while since we heard anything about the continuation of the Shenmue series. Back in April 2022, there were some hints that Swiss publisher 110 Industries might be looking to partner with developer YS NET, but that didn't happen after all. Where does Shenmue IV stand right now, then? Series creator Yu Suzuki answered the question himself in a new interview with fan site Shenmue Dojo.

President of Xbox Sarah Bond announced during yesterday's Bloomberg Tech talk with Dina Bass that the long-awaited Xbox mobile store will debut this July via Web (to avoid the limitations of the App Store and Play Store while regulators around the world enforce new guidelines). The first games to be added to the store will be Microsoft-owned franchises, like Minecraft and Candy Crush, though the store will be opened to partners shortly afterward.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was already known to be commercially unsuccessful, but it's now facing a truly humbling comparison with last year's Warner Bros. hit, Hogwarts Legacy.

CAPCOM's yearly financial report has been released, showing that the Japanese company has registered a new record of $979 million when it comes to net sales. It's a major increase (21%) year-over-year, and it also comes with a boost in operating income ($366 million, up 12.3% compared to last year) and ordinary income ($381 million, up 15.7% year-over-year).

The news that Microsoft's Xbox division shuttered three studios and folded a fourth into ZeniMax Online is still ringing throughout the entire games industry at a time when layoffs and studio closures are almost a weekly certainty.

NVIDIA has just released a new Game Ready driver (version 552.44) optimized for Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut, a full week ahead of the game's release on PC (which comes four years after the original launch on PlayStation 4).

Earlier this week, Kingdom Come Deliverance II Game Director and Warhorse Studios founder Daniel Vávra uploaded a lengthy video on his personal YouTube channel where he briefly discussed the game's current level of performance.

The software Lossless Scaling has just received a major update to its universal Frame Generation component. Originally introduced on January 10, 2024, the FG feature is now considered in version 2.0 thanks to efficiency improvements and noticeable reductions in artifacts. The flip side is that the GPU load caused by Lossless Scaling's FG has increased, too, although there's also a new Performance mode that retains the performance of the previous version.

Following the unexpected move to shut down three game studios and merge another with ZeniMax Online, we learned that Microsoft is still planning more cuts to its Xbox division. But that's not the full extent of the company's re-evaluation of its gaming strategy.

Arkane Austin is officially no more, and Studio Director Harvey Smith, who has worked at Arkane for over sixteen years, shared all his emotions in a long and heartfelt thread on Twitter/X. Over the course of his 30-plus-year-long career in the industry, Smith was a lead designer at Ion Storm on Deus Ex, a director on Deus Ex: Invisible War, and a designer on Thief: Deadly Shadows. After a brief stint at Midway, he joined Arkane to be a creative director, designer, and writer on the first Dishonored.

Ever since last year, generative AI has been on everyone's lips as it promised to disrupt most industries. The highly tech-based games industry is, of course, no exception.

The popular vampire survival game V Rising has finally launched out of early access on PC, getting a flattering 9/10 score from our Francesco De Meo in Wccftech's review.

Today, in its Q1 2024 financial report, South Korean publisher Kakao Games revealed that both of its hotly anticipated UE5 powered action MMORPGs, ArcheAge 2 and Chrono Odyssey, are slated to launch globally next year.

Microsoft's Xbox division has decided to shut down four Bethesda Softworks studios, the most prominent being Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks.

Today, Codemasters has unveiled the track and driver updates fans can look forward to in the upcoming game F1 24. To begin with, Silverstone has undergone a significant update aimed at delivering authentic track accuracy on and around the track so that players may feel every bump, curb, and elevation change (11.3m!), just as the track's designers intended.

Today, publisher Mindscape Games and developer Aesir Interactive announced Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, a new entry in the equine-focused franchise that also features Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship (which is getting a remaster in June) and Windstorm: An Unexpected Arrival.

Today, Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment decided jointly with Tencent to cancel the cooperative multiplayer game they were developing.

Nearly two years ago, Swedish indie developer Stunlock Studios (mostly known for the action MOBA Battlerite) released a vampire survival game called V Rising on Steam Early Access. The game quickly rose to the very top of Steam charts, selling over a million units in just over a week since launch.

In a press release published on the Polish financial website Bankier.pl, CI Games confirmed to have reached an agreement with Microsoft to bring Lords of the Fallen and Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 to Game Pass.

Mere days after Skywind got its first progress update in a long time, the sister project Skyblivion was also shown by the TES Renewal team in the fifth entry of the developer diary series.

In late November, Blackbird Interactive revealed that the long-anticipated real-time strategy game Homeworld 3 would support NVIDIA DLSS 3. However, we've since received confirmation that this will not be the case.

Following the news that Helldivers 2 on PC will soon require a PlayStation Network account to play, the community reacted by review bombing the Steam page. Whereas the game previously enjoyed a Very Positive aggregate user score, it has now dropped to Mixed for overall reviews and Mostly Negative for recent reviews. In the span of a few hours, over 57K negative reviews have been left for Helldivers 2 on Steam.

It's been over two years since Crystal Dynamics announced the next Tomb Raider game. Powered by Unreal Engine 5 instead of the studio's Foundation Engine, it will be published by Amazon, which also has plans to create an interconnected universe of games, films, and TV based on Lara Croft's franchise.

Today, Helldivers 2 publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment announced with a brief Steam blog post that Helldivers 2 PC players will soon need to register a PlayStation Network account (unless they already have one) to keep playing the game.

NVIDIA has announced an update to the NvRTX branch of Epic's Unreal Engine 5. The major new feature is the addition of experimental support for ReSTIR Global Illumination, the ray tracing algorithm first discussed by NVIDIA researchers in the seminal paper Spatiotemporal Reservoir Resampling for Real-Time Ray Tracing with Dynamic Direct Lighting released at ACM SIGGRAPH 2020.

Yesterday, independent game developer Fun Dog Studios (composed of industry veterans who worked on such games as Horizon: Zero Dawn, DOOM Eternal, Killzone, Hawken, The Witcher 3, and Mass Effect) shared the debut gameplay trailer for their first game, The Forever Winter.

Whereas most FromSoftware received two DLCs, Elden Ring will only get Shadow of the Erdtree, FromSoftware president and Game Director Hidetaka Miyazaki confirmed to the Chinese website Campfire Camp, thus effectively denying previous rumors of a second expansion slated for 2025.

NVIDIA announced that GeForce NOW has a new beta installation method that automatically configures GeForce NOW's browser in Steam Deck's Gaming Mode. The installation script automatically installs Google Chrome to the device, then adds all the settings needed to help members log into NVIDIA's cloud platform and stream their favorite games.

Yesterday, Meta announced Batman: Arkham Shadow, a VR-only game coming exclusively to the Meta Quest 3. Batman: Arkham Shadow is in development at Camouflaj, a developer with offices in Bellevue, Washington, and Kamakura, Japan. Camouflaj was founded in 2011 by Ryan Payton, who had previously worked at KONAMI as Assistant Producer on Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

Around three months ago, a flurry of rumors suggested that Microsoft was preparing many Xbox exclusive games to go multiplatform, including heavyweights like Gears of War, Starfield, and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Shortly after those rumors, Microsoft broadcast a 'business update event' where Xbox executives revealed that a few games were indeed making the jump to PlayStation and/or Nintendo Switch consoles. These games turned out to be Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded, and Sea of Thieves. Phil Spencer labeled this an experiment and warned it didn't mean other, bigger games would definitely appear on other consoles:

Today, on the 22nd birthday of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the team behind the Skywind total conversion mod has shared the first first behind-the-scenes progress update video in three years (though last year we got a gameplay demo).

Today, Stardock and Ironclad Games have announced that Sins of a Solar Empire II will finally arrive on Steam this Summer after launching in early access Technical Preview around a year and a half ago on the Epic Games Store.

During yesterday's official live stream, Blizzard revealed that the much anticipated Season 4 of Diablo IV will be released on May 14 across all platforms. Titled Loot Reborn, the new season makes major changes to how players can obtain and improve equipment. So far, the community's feedback on the Public Test Realm has been very positive.

NVIDIA DLSS 3 has been added to the open world spaceship shooter game Everspace 2 with the major free Incursions update that dropped yesterday, adding new events, legendary gear and catalysts, new treasure boxes called reliquaries, and improved controller support. Developer ROCKFISH has also upgraded the game from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5.3, offering Lumen Global Illumination as an option for high-end PC users looking to improve the visuals.

During the lengthy Kinda Funny Gamecast interview mainly focused on Fallout, Bethesda's Todd Howard revealed a big Starfield update coming this week to the Steam beta branch. The first story expansion, Shattered Space, will be released this Fall.

Bethesda's Todd Howard was featured in an hour-long video interview on the latest episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast and, of course, the Fallout franchise was one of the most prominent topics.

Gray Zone Warfare, the tactical first-person shooter PC game currently ranked 7th on Steam's global wishlist, will launch tomorrow in early access. The news was shared this afternoon by Czech developer MADFINGER Games, formerly known for hit mobile releases like Shadowgun and Dead Trigger.

Today, CAPCOM announced that Akuma will join the Street Fighter 6 roster on May 22. The legendary demon fighter will be available across all main Street Fighter 6 modes; in World Tour, players will be able to learn more about his story, while in Battle Hub, they'll get to apply their moves to their own avatars.

Escape from Tarkov, arguably the game that popularized the extraction shooter genre, recently got itself embroiled in a huge controversy once again.

We've reported throughout the entire month that the excellent Fallout TV show (already renewed for a second season) spurred renewed interest in the whole franchise, with previous games clawing their way back to the weekly sales chart and setting new concurrency records.

A long time ago, an MMORPG called Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms was in development at Bigpoint and Artplant, who previously made Battlestar Galactica Online. Announced in 2012, it would have been a browser game focused mostly on Player versus Player combat, where players could form their own small houses (guilds, essentially) and align themselves with the Stark, Baratheon, or Lannister great houses. However, the game never saw the light of day.

It's been over four years since we last covered the Gothic Remake. As you might remember, it all began with the so-called Playable Teaser that appeared suddenly on Steam in December 2019.

GSC Game World has published a new trailer for STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Titled 'Not a Paradise', the trailer shows off the game's gorgeous Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals as well as the Ukrainian voiceover, the only one available in the full game alongside English.

There's still a chance for the Nintendo Switch 2 to launch this year. Exactly two months ago, the Japanese publication Nikkei wrote that March 2025 was the most likely release window for the new console as it allowed Nintendo to produce enough consoles to sell to consumers.

F1 24 is set to introduce some of the biggest changes the racing series has ever seen. Following the reveal of the massive physics update earlier this week, Codemasters has now unveiled the changes coming to Career Mode. For the first time, the developers will allow players to pick one of the current Formula One superstars or even a legendary driver like Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher. Here's an overview provided by Codemasters:

A new Dragon's Dogma 2 mod published earlier this week on Nexus Mods by EXXXcellent allows users to activate path tracing and/or tweak ray tracing in various ways.

Earlier this month, as spotted by Twitter user MauroNL, Polish developer People Can Fly decided to cancel the new action/adventure IP codenamed Project Dagger.

Today, Berlin-based developer Tarock Interactive announced Lost Legions as its debut title. This is another entry in the increasingly crowded open world survival crafting genre, but at least it has a decidedly different setting: the Roman Empire.

This GeForce NOW Thursday brings several major additions to NVIDIA's cloud gaming platform. Arguably the most important one is Manor Lords, currently the top wishlisted game on Steam by over three million users. To quell the hype, the solo developer behind Slavic Magic recently wrote a blog post to explain what the game is not:

The Fallout craze continues to pay dividends for Bethesda. Earlier this week, the studio announced that Fallout 76 surpassed one million daily players across all platforms for the first time since its launch in late 2018. The multiplayer game is one of the top sellers on Steam (and elsewhere), largely thanks to various promotions and offers that have, however, since ended. On Valve's PC platform, the game reached 73.3K concurrent players last Sunday.

While the long-standing curse of gaming adaptations has been broken for quite a while, the Fallout TV adaptation (just renewed for a second season) stands out from many others not only because of its sheer quality but also because it dared to progress the story further, taking place after the latest games instead of merely adapting existing storylines.

This morning, Finnish game developer Remedy Entertainment announced a couple of key changes to its core management team. First and foremost, Chief Operations Officer Christopher Schmitz has resigned and will leave the company on May 31.

Today, CCP Games announced EVE Online: Equinox, the next expansion of the sci-fi sandbox MMO, slated for release on June 11.

Today, NVIDIA announced that the upcoming tactical first-person shooter game Gray Zone Warfare will support DLSS 3 (Frame Generation) from day one, accelerating performance on GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards. As with any game with built-in DLSS 3 support, Gray Zone Warfare will also feature Reflex, which any owner of GeForce GTX 900 Series GPUs and newer will be able to activate for up to 50% reduction in system latency. Last but not least, the Unreal Engine 5 powered game will support the hardware accelerated ray-traced version of Lumen lighting to deliver cutting-edge visuals.

In a surprising move, Meta has announced the opening of the operating system behind its Quest mixed-reality headset. This means third-party hardware makers will be able to create their own mixed reality headsets; in fact, ASUS has already announced it is developing a high-performance gaming headset. S.Y. Hsu, Co-CEO of ASUS, said in a statement:

A few hours ago, Private Division and Wētā Workshop finally shared the first trailer and gameplay details for Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings game.

7 Days to Die, the survival open world first-person shooter zombie-themed game, will finally leave early access after over ten years. Developer The Fun Pimps announced the unexpected news during the weekend. The goal is to release version 1.0 in June for PC, while the console version will ship in July. Later, cross-play will be added to the game, probably with the first major post-launch update.

This morning, the Embracer Group announced a major transformation of the company, which will be split into three separate publicly listed companies: Asmodee Group, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends. The existing Embracer Group listing on Nasdaq Stockholm will be renamed to Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends, and shares of Asmodee Group and Coffee Stain & Friends will be distributed as dividends to shareholders of Embracer Group. The listing and distribution of Asmodee Group shares is expected to occur within 12 months, and Coffee Stain & Friends shares during calendar year 2025.

Codemasters is making some big changes to physics in F1 24 in what they are calling the series' most comprehensive update yet.

A very interesting rumor came out of the latest episode of the XboxEra podcast, with insider Shpeshal_Nick claiming to have heard that a Helldivers 2 Xbox port is currently under consideration at Sony.

Following the official reveal of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, IGN was able to speak with Tobias Stolz-Zwilling (Warhorse Studios's PR Manager) to get some extra details about the newly announced action RPG sequel.

As expected following the glowing reception, Amazon has renewed the Fallout TV series for a second season.

Fallout 76, the online survival game set in the Fallout universe, got a massive player base boost thanks to the combination of the Prime Gaming giveaway, heavy discounts, and the popularity of the Amazon Prime Video TV series (just renewed for a second season).

Helldivers 2 is an extremely popular game, far more than probably either Arrowhead or Sony hoped for. That said, it isn't perfect, and the developers are well aware of that.