Gaming in Singapore. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

As Destiny 2's The Final Shape expansion hovers ever closer like someone gently nudged an absurdly large dodecahedron towards us in zero gravity, Bungie have gone and made three expansions free until June 3rd. For about a month, all players now have access to The Witch Queen, Beyond Light, and Shadowkeep along with the past four seasons of quests and things. Hey, that's pretty cool.

The franchise hasn't been afraid to shake things up over the years, and a rumor about the next new game in the series points to another franchise first on its way. Although every game is interconnected by unifying elements involving deadly viruses, various forms of the ruthless Umbrella corporation, and plenty of horrific enemies, there's a lot of room to do different things within that overarching lore. It's easy to jump into any mainline game and get a complete experience of its own, and the unique flavor provided by each can satisfy many different preferences.

Dragon's Dogma 2 performance issues may be caused by a baffling design decision, judging from some recent discoveries by modders.

Additional details about the setting of the rumored Resident Evil 9 might have surfaced.

A credible leaker has revealed that Resident Evil 9 will be set on a Singapore-inspired island in the Southeast Asian Sea. There has been a bevy of rumors surrounding the next entry in the Resident Evil series lately, and this is potentially one of the most significant.

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.

Take-Two publishing label Private Division has reportedly laid off the “vast majority” of its teams in Seattle, New York, Las Vegas and Munich.

The upcoming Donkey Kong Country-themed expansion to Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan has been struck by a delay.

Dragon Age: Pals Adventure is opening up for pre-registration today on mobile. This card-hunting title is hitting Android devices in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. Developed and published by Pixel Spirits, it currently supports English, Simplified Chinese and Thai languages.

CJI Chandrachud advocates ethical AI in legal research; AI investment to boost productivity and worker pay: BlackRock CEO; Instagram enhances content discovery with generative AI integration; Surat municipal schools to offer AI and coding courses- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

It didn’t take long for last year’s excellent Street Fighter 6 to take the fighting game world by storm. Capcom’s critically praised fighting game didn’t just revitalize the Street Fighter series, but reignited interest in the fighting genre as a whole. Capcom then focused on growing the competitive side of Street Fighter 6 by hosting a new entry of its tournament circuit, Capcom Cup, with a first-place prize of $1 million.

AMD seems to be preparing a 4nm refresh of its MI300 AI Accelerators known as the MI350 which is planned for later this year.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Microsoft is limiting Xbox Game Pass subscription extensions in certain countries to deter players from stacking their membership at a cheaper rate.

Supercell’s Community Manager Paula Baguena just dropped a video with some juicy details. So, they’re soft-launching Squad Busters on April 23rd, 2024. If you haven’t been in the loop, it’s a new squad-building action game with the most popular Supercell characters.

To celebrate the launch of Stellar Blade, we are organizing a meet and greet event featuring Rurusama who will be cosplaying as EVE, the main protagonist from Stellar Blade. Rurusama is a notable Tiktok influencer and cosplayer based in Singapore. She’s known for her passion for cosplay, fashion and love for cats, as well as super long queue at her booth in Singapore gaming and popular culture conventions. With her popularity in the local gaming scene, as well as her established reputation in cosplay, she is an ideal candidate to represent the main character of Stellar Blade in this one-day only event in Singapore. 

Popular K-drama aired a brand new episode 9 on Saturday, April 6, 2024, at 9:20 p.m. KST on tvN. The episode, also available on Netflix, documented the relationship crisis of a couple, chaebol heiress Hong Hae-In () and Baek Hyun-Woo (). The two navigated their awkward relationship after their divorce.

A new video gives a brief new look at Super Nintendo World's upcoming Donkey Kong Country-themed expansion. The theme park first opened as a part of Universal Studios Japan, first in 2020 as a soft opening and later a grand opening in 2021. The Super Nintendo World theme park has a number of Super Mario Bros. related items and attractions, including a restaurant, rides, and even photo opportunities with characters like Princess Peach. Shortly after the park's grand opening in Japan, Nintendo announced an expansion would be coming to the park that will open later in 2024.

Bitkraft Ventures — a games investor based out of Denver, Colorado, but with European founders — has raised its third fund, coming in at $275 million. The fund will make seed and Series A investments in gaming studios, and platforms to support game production. The moves comes at a time when games investments have actually declined 72 per cent year on year, according to a recent Pitchbook report.

Tencent Cloud is now the official server provider for Palworld. The Chinese cloud giant confirmed the news via a press release shared with TechRadar earlier this week.

Ubisoft has announced they are laying off 45 more employees.

Indian tourists and NRIs visiting the UAE can now make UPI payments using the PhonePe app. This development comes as a result of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) partnering with Mashreq Bank's NEOPAY, paving the way for UPI-based payments in the Gulf Nation. With a substantial Indian expat population residing in the UAE, the inclusion of UPI as a payment option simplifies financial transactions for Indian travellers.

Palworld could be getting dedicated servers sooner than expected for Xbox players, thanks to Tencent.

Gamers worldwide have been awaiting titles like , for nearly a decade. Capcom's new action-adventure RPG, has received rave reviews, bolstering the already impressive hype surrounding the game. But the success of the title arrives with a huge cost — literally.

 Skull and Bones has extended its first season by a week, re-enabled chat, and added opt-in open world PvP, a major community request.

Details of the Epic Games Store’s Spring Sale have leaked ahead of its official announcement.

Sea is “still making changes” and has yet to launch its popular mobile game Free Fire in India, more than six months after announcing plans to do so.

Fans are wondering if and broke up due to rumors about the same hitting the internet. Here is all you need to know.

Ubisoft's latest release, Skull and Bones, has seen its price reduced by $25 only three weeks after its release, though it has since returned to full price. Skull and Bones is Ubisoft's second $70 AAA title behind December 2023's first-person adventure shooter Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. As the price of video games has risen from the $60 standard over the past several years, many gamers have become more selective over which games they choose to spend money on, live service titles especially.

This week’s Famitsu review scores are in.

We are happy to announce that PlayStation®5 Console – Genshin Impact Gift Bundle​ will be available from 7 March (in Singapore) / 10 April (in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand). The console bundle will be available at suggested retail price (SRP) of SGD799/ IDR9,699,000/MYR2,499/THB18,690.

Skull and Bones, the live service pirate game that released just over two weeks ago on PS5, is already having its price slashed across the US and Europe. It was a full-price title at launch — your now-standard $69.99 / £69.99 — but it's currently down to as low as $44.99 / £49.85 (as reported by VGC). While that's certainly not what we'd call cheap, it's still a significant discount after such a short length of time on the market, and it suggests that retailers are struggling to shift copies.

In strangely fascinating news, the release of long-in-development piracy simulator Skull and Bones has caused a significant, sustained spike in the number of players revisiting Ubisoft's earlier effort, the corsair-filled Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.

Ubisoft may no longer be able to really claim that Skull and Bones is a AAAA game.

Ubisoft’s second $70 game, Skull and Bones, has seen its price reduced significantly less than three weeks after its release.

Ubisoft said that Skull and Bones is one of its most engaging titles to date. The company substantiated that claim by sharing the game's «record» daily playtime metric as part of the Skull and Bones Season 1 launch announcement.

Skull and Bones, the oft-delayed pirate game from Ubisoft that finally arrived earlier this month following almost a decade of development, has released its first season of post-launch content on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC — introducing, among other things, new world events, new contracts and bounties, plus a battle-pass-style progression track.

Ubisoft has launched Skull and Bones’ first seasonal update, Raging Tides.

A limited edition Hello KittyXbox console recently sold on eBay for a staggering price tag, with the winner paying over $10,000 USD for a console that doesn't even work. Since the iconic mascot character first debuted in 1974, Hello Kitty has become one of the most recognizable faces in media, spawning an empire worth billions. Hello Kitty currently stands as one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all-time, with the adorable cat featuring in everything from Hello Kitty video games, cartoons, and a plethora of merchandise. Now, an exclusive Hello Kitty Xbox has fetched a high price tag.

AI roundup: As the Mobile World Conference (MWC) 2024 has commenced, Qualcomm made a major announcement with its introduction of an AI hub that empowers 75 AI models for the Snapdragon platform. On the other hand, Truecaller announced its new AI call recording feature which can translate and summarize audio. Know more about what happened in the world of AI today, February 26, 2024.

Google has announced a significant change for its users in the United States - the discontinuation of the standalone Google Pay app. In a recent blog post, the tech giant revealed that the app will no longer be available after June 4, 2024. Instead, users are encouraged to migrate to Google Wallet, which will become the primary platform for managing digital payments and transactions.

Disney Realm Breakers is a new strategy game developed by JOYCITY Corp. It is now available for Android as a soft launch in select regions, including the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia.

While Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League falls short of WB Games’ expectations, Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones isn’t doing much better. Sources speaking to Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson report that it had around 850,000 players.

Between the confusing name changes and having two apps with a similar function, Google Pay will finally shut down in the United States later this summer. Google Wallet will replace it entirely.

In the U.S., Google's main app to manage finances and pay contactless is Google Pay and not Google Wallet. It always struck me as an odd choice because the rest of the world is using Google Wallet, but not the people in the U.S. Well, that is going to change soon as the company has announced the transition.

Ubisoft's newly launched Skull and Bones is not faring well on the review aggregate site Metacritic, where it has received overwhelmingly negative ratings from gamers. Prior to its full release, game testers had already complained about the game.

Honor of Kings, Tencent’s massively popular mobile game, has its eye set on the international market in 2024.

If you can believe it, Skull and Bones is actually here. The Ubisoft live service project, which had been hit with so many delays over the years, is playable right now on PS5. The question, then, is whether you're eyeing the open waters yourself.

I feel like it has been a while since we had an open-world pirate game, but we got one for 2024. Ubisoft and one of Ubisoft’s Original Games Skull and Bones which was first announced back in 2017 by Ubisoft Singapore at an E3 event. I remember because I was there when it first got announced and I was excited because I love video games that incorporate wooden ships and pirates. This game when I first heard about it, I remember when I was a kid I used to play a lot of Sid Meier’s Pirates which still to this day is one of my favorite pirate games ever. Even though Skull and Bones is nowhere on the same level as Sid Meier’s Pirates, it has some good elements, and that is something we will talk about right now.

Despite claims it is a «quadruple-A» live-service experience, Skull and Bones's user Metacritic score has taken a pummelling since the pirate ship game was released on Friday, 16th February.

WithSkull and Bones wrapping preorder head start and officially launching for all tomorrow, the Ubisoft Singapore team is detailing some fixes following beta feedback and testing data and what’s still on the way.

Before the world became fixated on artificial intelligence, thanks to generative AI’s advances, cryptocurrency was the darling of many investors. So when some venture capital firms started swiftly switching their focus between AI and crypto, the industry’s onlookers scorn their opportunism. Meanwhile, a wave of entrepreneurs emerged as fervent advocates for the convergence of AI and crypto. Vitalik Buterin, the core founder of the Ethereum blockchain network, posted an article last month musing on the four possible applications of “AI + crypto,” sparking enthusiasm among his Twitter followers. The use cases have yet to be proven at scale.

Shift Up’s upcoming PS5-exclusive action RPG Stellar Blade has been given an 18+ rating in Korea. This might not come as a surprise to many people, but it may render the game off limits for some players. In screenshots and trailers released so far, the game’s protagonist wears generally form-hugging outfits that don't leave much hidden, and the developer has even revealed that “special attention” was paid to Eve’s backside in Stellar Blade since players will spend most of their time looking at it.

Some gamers will soon be able to start playing Skull and Bones a few days early even without placing a pre-order or purchasing its higher-tier edition, so long as they have a Ubisoft+ Premium membership. This early access period is scheduled to kick off on February 13, three days ahead of Skull and Bones' official release.

Midjourney considers ban on Political images amid election misinformation concerns; Suffolk expert forecasts AI to takeover in coding within a decade; AI Pilot project saves lives by detecting heart attacks in Assam Hospitals; Adnan Sami supports positive use of AI in music creation- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

Disney Realm Breakers soft launches for Android users in select regions today. Developed by JOYCITY Corp., it’s free to play and offers in-app purchases. JOYCITY is known for a number of other popular titles, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Tides of War, Game of Dice, Rule the Sky and Gunship Battle: Helicopter 3D.

Continuing their great prank of pretending they plan to release Skull And Bones, Ubisoft today launched an open beta for their multiplayer open-world pirate boat game. The free beta will run until Sunday night, after which Ubisoft will presumably delay the game for another seventeen years while once again redesigning the whole thing. When you buy your great grandniece Skull And Bones for her 17th birthday, you'll be able to tell her you were there for the mythical open beta of '24.

After beginning development in 2013 and numerous delays later, Ubisoft Singapore’s seafaring pirate action RPG, Skull & Bones, will finally set sail next week. In the meantime, you can watch the launch trailer and even jump in early with the game’s open beta, which kicks off today.

Ubisoft's live-service pirate ship game Skull and Bones is a «quadruple-A» project, company boss Yves Guillemot has said.

Thar be no room for landlubbers here. Get ready to start a golden age pirate’s journey taking you from shipwrecked nobody to kingpin when Skull and Bones launches February 16 on PlayStation 5, with an Open Beta running from February 8-11*. The development team at Ubisoft Singapore has been hard at work ensuring that the Skull and Bones experience is as immersive as possible on PS5, thanks to features like 3D audio, adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, and more.

Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot has defended the $70 price tag for Skull and Bones, calling it a “quadruple-A game”.

AAA game pricing has been an ongoing controversy for some time, but Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot thinks the upcoming Skull and Bones has earned its $70 price tag. Skull and Bones launches on February 16, featuring live-service elements in addition to the full AAA price.

Greetings. This is Hyung Tae Kim, Director of Stellar Blade. After a long wait, I am pleased to present to you our new gameplay trailer.

After years of waiting, fans can finally play Ubisoft's Skull and Bones during its open beta beginning on February 7th. The beta features exclusive rewards that will carry over to Skull and Bones' full release.

Ubisoft has announced an open beta for Skull and Bones.

The much delayed, rebooted, and delayed live service pirate 'em up Skull And Bones actually pencilled in a release date not long ago. Just when you thought it couldn't get any more remarkable, Ubisoft have also announced it'll get an open beta before it launches. In only a couple of weeks, you'll be able to sail the seven seas with a purple rarity cannon firing off common rarity cannon balls that you bought off a rank 25 landlubber with your Skullbucks. Cool!

Ubisoft will hold an open beta for Skull and Bones ahead of the game’s release next month.

Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones has released a roadmap for the title’s first year and what players can expect in the endgame. The long-awaited pirate game finally got a launch date during the Game Awards 2023 ceremony and is scheduled to launch on February 13 for players subscribed to Ubisoft+ and on February 16 for everyone else.

Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones seems set to launch next month, with the developer releasing a new trailer on the end-game and Year 1 roadmap. The former sees players going against the Pirate Kingpins and venturing to The Helm to craft contraband.

While Ubisoft Singapore’sSkull and Bones will launch with an end-game, it will also receive new free content with post-launch seasons. Each season introduces legendary Pirate Lords for players to battle, new World Events, and more.

I've been tracking developer Ubisoft Singapore's naval warfare multiplayer game, Skull and Bones, since its reveal years ago, both as a massive fan of all things pirates and someone who specifically loved the high seas action of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. I wrote Game Informer's Skull and Bones cover story back in 2022, and have played the game several times since then in previews, betas, and more. 

It’s an interesting week for controller-users. REDMAGIC dropped the Shadow Blade GamePad 2. Now, I know we all love our mobile gaming, but let’s face it – sometimes, those touch controls just don’t cut it. 

The rumored Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake might have been in development since September.

Development on the rumored Assassin's Creed Black Flag Remake might very well have kicked off late last year.

Sightings of an «unannounced Assassin's Creed project» on LinkedIn are adding more fuel to the Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag remake rumors. The Assassin's Creed 4 remake was reported to be in development last year; however, it was claimed that the game was still in the early stages. These reports also asserted that Ubisoft Singapore, the team behind the upcoming Skull and Bones, is taking part in development.

Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl's release date is September 5th 2024, GSC Game World have announced, as the developers make some final adjustments to a post-apocalyptic FPS that was revealed way back in 2010 and has been racked by more than its fair share of setbacks and changes of circumstances. They've published a new trailer to mark the occasion, in which a group of the game's quarantine zone mercenaries squat around a campfire, supping mugs of what probably isn't cocoa, and listening to guitar music. It strikes a fitting note of world-weariness.

Skull and Bones is (finally) getting close to release on February 16th. Now, the latest edition of Ubisoft’s “Echoes of History” podcast, titled “Gangsters of the Seas” gets a first episode, featuring actress Michelle Rodriguez.

Tech industry faces layoffs surge amidst billions in AI investments; Google's AI outperforms doctors in diagnostic conversations; Executives exercise caution in gen AI investments amid societal pressures; SK telecom eyes global AI dominance through tech collaborations- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

Amazon-owned Twitch have announced that they will lay off "just over 500" people - almost 35% of their workforce - in the course of on-going plans to "rightsize our company", with CEO Dan Clancy conceding that the streaming service has been operating based on "where we optimistically expect our business to be in 3 or more years, not where we're at today."

Vistara plans to use virtual reality and augmented reality technologies for certain training activities for the staff, the airline's chief Vinod Kannan said on Monday and emphasised that there is always going to be a place for human intelligence as certain situations cannot be handled by bots.