Intercept Games facing layoffs by end of June

NetEase Games will release free-to-play party battle royale game Eggy Party for Switch on July 19, the company announced.

Nintendo 64 – Nintendo Switch Online has added Perfect Dark with online multiplayer and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and Game Boy Advance – Nintendo Switch Online has added The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Four Swords and Metroid: Zero Mission, Nintendo announced.

Elden Ring creator and FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki has said he won't allow the devastating video game industry layoffs to affect his studio as long as he's in charge.

Nintendo is back with a Direct presentation that will feature the slate of Nintendo Switch titles coming to the hybrid console this year. The Nintendo Direct showcase will be livestreamed Tuesday, June 18, at 7am PT (7.30pm IST). The show will be roughly 40 minutes long and will focus on Nintendo Switch games arriving in 2024. The Nintendo Direct presentation arrives days after the Xbox Games Showcase, where Microsoft provided updates on its first-party titles.

This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

The most announcement-filled week of gaming has wrapped up. From Summer Game Fest to the Xbox Games Showcase and Ubisoft Forward, there was a ton of big gaming news. Many of the games revealed are coming to PlayStation 5, too. On top of that, Sony’s Days of Play initiative is still in full swing, which means some more PS2 games finally got PS4 and PS5 ports for the first time in several years. As a result, there’s no shortage of relevant games in the PlayStation Plus Premium and Extra catalog to check out if you’re looking for something to play this weekend.

We’re coming off a fantastic week for Xbox. Although this has been a rough year for the company and game reveals don’t make up for all the developers Microsoft has laid off, the Xbox Games Showcase did feature lots of promising games and helped reaffirm the feeling that Xbox is here to stay in gaming. As I returned from Summer Game Fest and wondered which Xbox Game Pass games to recommend this weekend, I looked to games that will give you more context to some of the best announcements from 2024’s Xbox Games Showcase.

The video game industry reached a grim milestone in 2023 as the year closed with more than 10,000 layoffs affecting programmers, quality assurance workers, sound designers, and artists — alongside countless other people and job titles. But the new year did nothing to stop the trajectory of layoffs. Just days into 2024, more than 2,000 video game industry workers were laid off from game engine maker Unity and streaming platform Twitch — and in the months that followed, that number continued to climb. Now, the industry has reached another unfortunate landmark event: Just six months into the year, the total number of video game industry layoffs in 2024 has surpassed 2023’s total of just over 10,000.

Sony has announced the new PlayStation Plus additions for June 2024, revealing the list of new games for Extra and Premium subscribers to enjoy starting next week.

Limited Run Games will host games showcase LRG3 2024 on June 20 at 11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET, the company announced. You will be able to watch it on YouTube and Twitch.

What new PS5 and PS4 games are releasing in physical retailers and as part of the PS Store update this week? As the industry turns its attention to not-E3, this is shaping up to be a particularly quiet week. Of course, there's still Monster Hunter Stories and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance to keep you busy. Click through the links for a full list of all new PS5 games release dates in 2024, all new PSVR2 games release dates in 2024, and all new PS4 games release dates in 2024.

Do you miss Westeros? Then you’ll be happy to know that Zynga is gearing up to drop a new GOT-inspired title for mobile. Game of Thrones: Legends RPG is the upcoming game that you can now pre-register on Android. The game has epic battles, legendary characters and puzzle-solving challenges.