Final Fantasy XVI Achieved Square Enix’s Goal of Attracting Younger Players, Says Dev

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:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

Final Fantasy is a long running series at this point — it's easily one of the most storied franchises in gaming. But when you're up to the sixteenth mainline entry, you must start wondering whether fresh installments still have the power to pull new players in. Indeed, audience growth will be an important metric for the suits upstairs at Square Enix.

The Rising Tide, the second and final expansion for Final Fantasy 16, is set to feature some of the game's most challenging combat scenarios. That's according to DLC director (and a lead combat designer for the base game) Takeo Kujiraoka, who, in an interview with Push Square, told us that the addition of DLC has allowed the development team to push the title's combat system.

For nearly two years, Microsoft's unprecedented $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard stayed in the news, mostly due to the Windows and Xbox company's battle with certain regulators (chiefly the US FTC and the UK CMA). That came to an end, even though the FTC is still trying to unmake the deal, on October 13, when Microsoft announced the closure of the acquisition.