Alessio Palumbo

Square Enix is planning a major internal restructure of its game development system, as reported by Bloomberg Japan. The news came directly from Representative Director and President Takashi Kiryu, who spoke at the financial results briefing for analysts held on Monday.

The best-selling game of 2023, Hogwarts Legacy, has sold over 24 million units to date. The news came from Variety, which also outlined the ambitious plan Warner Bros. Discovery has for growth in the gaming space. The company values Harry Potter (the IP behind Hogwarts Legacy), Mortal Kombat (which has sold three million units since its debut last September), DC, and Game of Thrones franchises $1 billion each for their gaming potential, and it plans to capitalize on them all.

HITMAN maker IO Interactive has lofty aims when it comes to the quality of gameplay animation they want to achieve in Project 007. The game developer is hiring animators, and the studio's Twitter account has shared a few statements from members of the Animation team to intrigue would-be candidates. Joshua Andrew Gleaves, Senior Gameplay Animator, said:

Following the huge layoffs (over 1,900 employees) announced yesterday by Microsoft across teams at Blizzard and Xbox, it was also revealed that Blizzard's survival game Odyssey had been canceled.

The big Honkai Star Rail 2.0 update has been detailed by developer HoYoverse today. This new patch is being dubbed 'If One Dreams At Midnight' and will be released on February 6 on all platforms.

Today, Bloomberg has reported that the Nintendo Switch 2 console might launch this year equipped with an 8-inch LCD screen, according to Omdia analyst Hiroshi Hayase.

Apple has finally decided to allow game streaming services on iOS. The news came yesterday with a press release where Apple highlighted that the change came about due to developers' feedback.

Fortnite is coming back to iOS this year, at least in Europe, Epic Games announced today. It will do so by taking advantage of the Digital Markets Act law passed by the European Union, which will let the Epic Games Store on iOS.

The latest game to introduce AMD FSR 3 support is Mortal Online 2, the Unreal Engine 5 first-person sandbox MMORPG developed by Swedish studio Star Vault.

French game developer DON'T NOD has uploaded the official PC system requirements for the upcoming action RPG Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. You can find them on the game's Steam page, and they're not high at all, especially the minimum requirements.

Here's your daily Palworld sales update: the open world survival crafting game with monster collection mechanics has now surpassed eight million units sold on Steam alone in less than a week from the early access launch. It also broke the two million concurrent players milestone on Valve's platform, a feat that was only ever managed by PUBG: Battlegrounds back when the Battle Royale game was at its height. There's still over a million difference between the two, but it would not be wise to discount Palworld at this point.

Game developer People Can Fly has laid off around thirty developers from an unannounced Square Enix game codenamed Project Gemini. The news was broken yesterday by Kotaku, which obtained an email sent by Development Director Adam Alker to his fellow employees. Alker chalked the layoffs to budget limitations and a decision to shrink the game's scope.

The Chinese Room has published a new Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 developer diary where Creative Director Alex Skidmore discussed the game's visceral and immersive combat system.

Today, Resolution Games and Wizards of the Coast announced a collaboration on the world's first D&D virtual reality game, now in production for a future release.

Today, NVIDIA has released a new Game Ready driver (version 551.23) to support the launch of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER graphics card. As usual, you'll be able to download the driver either via the official website or the GeForce Experience software.

Yesterday, the New York Videogame Critics Circle (NYVGCC) announced the winners of the 13th annual New York Game Awards in a dedicated ceremony streamed live from the SVA Theatre, with Baldur's Gate 3 once again emerging as the big winner.

The dream continues for independent Japanese developer Pocketpair as Palworld has now sold over seven million units in just five days since its early access launch. The open world survival crafting game with monster collection mechanics had sold one million in eight hours, two in twenty-four, three in forty, five million in three days, and six in four days. What's even more impressive is that, according to Geoff Keighley, these sales are for the Steam version alone. They do not account for sales on the Microsoft Store via PC/Xbox, nor do they account for Game Pass player numbers.

Let's be real: 2023's sheer quantity and quality of game releases are likely to remain unmatched for a long time, so 2024's most anticipated games list might look a bit puny by direct comparison. However, despite some lingering unknowns (will Dragon Age: Dreadwolf launch this year after the planned Summer reveal? Could Metroid Prime 4 be released as a Nintendo Switch 2 launch title?), even if nothing else happens, the calendar already offers a solid schedule of new games to look forward to. Here's our Top 10 most anticipated games of 2024.

If there were any lingering doubts about the multi-device future of PlayStation, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida dispelled them in a video interview with the Norges Bank Investment Management. The executive said PlayStation would remain on console, but the gaming experience will be expanded to PC, mobile, and cloud.

Palworld just keeps going on an absolutely incredible ride toward the top. The 'Pokémon with guns' survival crafting game released last Friday by Japanese developer Pocketpair has now sold six million units in just four days. It has also surpassed 1.5 million concurrent Steam players, inching ever closer to the second spot on the all-time chart. Counter-Strike 2 managed 1.8 million nine months ago, around the time of its launch, but it's a free-to-play game. Moreover, at this rate, Palworld could very well blaze past it during the next weekend.

Riot Games announced another big round of layoffs for the second year in a row. This time around, the studio mainly known for the League of Legends franchise plans to remove 11% of its large workforce. Around 530 employees will lose their jobs, although they will get benefits such as six months of severance pay at minimum, cash bonuses, and others.

Today, almost a year and a half after the modding platform's announcement, NVIDIA releases the highly anticipated RTX Remix creator toolkit Open Beta. While the runtime has been available for some time, the public availability of the creator toolkit should really kickstart the modders' work to easily remaster classic PC games with cutting-edge rendering features like path tracing, DLSS 3, and AI-upscaled assets. NVIDIA is also partnering with ModDB to make it easier for users to check out which games are compatible with RTX Remix and to get the optimized configuration files to run the mods.

German developer Piranha Bytes might be the latest studio to end up on Embracer Group's chopping block, although it's not over yet.

CAPCOM has added the Enigma DRM to Monster Hunter Rise with the latest update, as reported by Twitter user DakaR:FT. The DRM is being slowly introduced to older titles, causing a ruckus with Resident Evil Revelations, where people reported various performance issues. The Japanese publisher eventually reversed the update after a wave of review bombing on Steam.

By far, the biggest reveal at the second Xbox Developer Direct was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The new first-person action/adventure game in development at MachineGames looked great in its first presentation and isn't too far off, either, since it is slated to launch later this year on PC and Xbox Series S|X.

Palworld developer Pocketpair (previously known for Craftopia) must feel like they are on top of the world right now. Their new game, the so-called 'Pokémon with guns' survival crafting game, is topping Steam charts and breaking record after record. They sold one million units in eight hours, two million in twenty-four, and three million in forty hours since the game's launch this Friday.

The 2024 list of our most anticipated multiplayer games is hugely dominated by the survival genre, which is bleeding into all kinds of franchises and settings nowadays. It's worth noting that we focused on brand new titles here; for the upcoming expansions and DLCs to existing multiplayer games, head to this list.

2024 looks fairly similar to last year for shooter games fans in that there are very few big names on the list. We still don't know exactly what id Software and The Coalition are doing, while DICE's next Battlefield isn't launching any time soon. There will be a new Call of Duty game, of course, but it's hard to get too excited about it after Modern Warfare III.

As promised last week, Bethesda Game Studios has pushed the beta of the next Starfield update, version 1.9.47.0, on Steam. Anyone can switch to this build by selecting the beta tab on the Steam client.

MachineGames unveiled Indiana Jones and the Great Circle during yesterday's Xbox Developer Direct with a rather impressive presentation. The developers also seemed genuinely psyched about the project, believing it to be a great match for their own game-making chops. Speaking to the Bethesda blog, Senior Animator Rebecca Elfstrӧm Hidén said:

The grand strategy game Ara: History Untold, originally announced in June 2022, finally has a release window: Fall 2024.

During the second edition of the Xbox Developer Direct, Obsidian Entertainment finally showed the first gameplay deep dive of Avowed, its first-person action RPG set in the world of Pillars of Eternity.

Like clockwork at this time of the year, ZeniMax Online Studios has announced Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road, the MMORPG's next Chapter. Wccftech attended a remote press presentation to get the full lowdown on what's on the way.

Newly established Cyprus-based developer KEK Entertainment announced Armor Attack, an upcoming tactical vehicle shooter game.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic may have launched over seventeen years ago on PC, but its status as a cult classic remains cemented in the hearts of many fans. Arkane struck gold with the excellent first-person melee-based combat, which remained the benchmark in action RPGs for quite a while.

It's been nearly a decade since Supermassive Games released Until Dawn as a PlayStation 4 exclusive. The British studio has since moved on to other franchises, chiefly their The Dark Pictures horror anthology. Before the release of Man of Medan, Supermassive CEO and Executive Producer Pete Samuels commented on the many requests for Until Dawn 2:

Expansions and DLCs have long been part of the gaming industry as developers and publishers continuously seek ways to monetize a successful release beyond the initial purchase. While some gamers may scoff at the mere thought, the best examples of expansions and DLCs have delivered truly incredible gaming experiences that built upon an already great foundation and elevated it even further.

Today, NVIDIA released a new Game Ready driver (version 546.65) for its GeForce graphics cards. Its main purpose is to provide support for the newly released RTX 4070 SUPER GPU, but it is also optimized for the imminent release of Palworld. The 'Pokémon with guns' open world monster collection game is due to launch this Friday on Steam Early Access, and it will feature support for NVIDIA DLSS 2 (Super Resolution).

Aaryn Flynn's Inflexion Games is currently polishing its debut game, Nightingale, ahead of the planned February 22 release date on early access via Steam and Epic Games Store. Meanwhile, the Canadian studio is ramping up its marketing, as evidenced by a new 20-minute gameplay video published exclusively by IGN.

On paper, 2023 perhaps wasn’t a landmark year for action games, at least of a more traditional hardcore variety. That said, if you really look at this past year’s release calendar, you’ll find a diverse array of action games both big and small, including the much-anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, big-budget superhero sequel Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and scrappy underdogs like Hi-Fi Rush. Limber up and get ready to battle through Wccftech’s Best Action Games of 2023!

Boxed Super Mario Bros Wonder sales beat those of Spider-Man 2 in the UK last week, thereby overtaking the first spot on the sales chart.

Insomniac Games has deployed Spider-Man 2 patch 1.001.003 for PlayStation 5, which fixes the apparent Cuban Flag error within the game.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is almost here, and it sounds like fans will have a very full-featured adventure to jump into, although there will be a few minor things missing at launch. According to Insomniac community director James Stevenson, Spider-Man 2 won’t have a New Game+ mode or the ability to replay missions at launch. Thankfully, you shouldn’t have to wait too long for those features, as Stevenson says they should arrive via an update “before end of year.”

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is almost here and Wccftech’s Alessio Palumbo has given his overall thoughts on the game, but what about the technical nitty gritty? Insomniac Games are known for their technical prowess, and according to the folks at Digital Foundry, they’ve come through again. Spider-Man 2 looks to be pretty much a best-case scenario for a boundary-pushing current-gen console game, avoiding some of the issues we’ve seen with a lot of other recent titles (low native resolution in Performance mode, unstable framerate, ect.) No, it seems Spidey has his cake and eats it too. You can check out the full Digital Foundry video below, provided you have around 20 minutes to spare, our you can scroll on down for our recap of the most salient points.

A new Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty graphical showcase has been released, showing CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 expansion running with more than 30 mods with path tracing in 4K resolution.

Ascendant Studios and EA have detailed tomorrow's Immortals of Aveum update 3 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.