Audience News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

In a recent statement by CEO Lars Wingefors, it was revealed that Embracer Group plans to continue its «restructuring» model of cutbacks in order to prioritize shareholders above all else. Having just announced even more layoffs for Embracer Group, this latest statement by the CEO has left many fans in shock.

With his Dune movies, director Denis Villeneuve is trying to do what even Frank Herbert couldn’t: make Paul Atreides a villain

Netflix’s newest true crime documentary Lover, Stalker, Killer has proven to be a major success, climbing up the streamer’s rankings and landing a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. 

It’s a long, cold wait between seasons of Taskmaster, especially after an entry as stellar as series 16. Luckily, the hilarious British panel show has kept its growing international audience entertained between seasons by uploading episodes of one of its many licensed spinoff series to its YouTube channel. Taskmaster New Zealand’s first two seasons are now onthe official Taskmaster YouTube account, including the incredible season 2, which originally aired in 2021 and is one of the best seasons of any version of Taskmaster. If you consider yourself a Taskmaster fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

When Valve first announced The Steam Game Festival – the event which would eventually become Steam Next Fest – it was an answer to the damage wrought on exhibiting developers by the pandemic. Launched in June 2020, the Festival was billed to developers as "an opportunity to get early feedback from players and build an audience for future releases." That remains true today, even as Next Fest has grown into an industry-spanning event that Valve rolls out multiple times a year – but it's more true for some games than others.

NIKKE: Goddess of Victory, Korean developer Shift Up’s saucy gacha shooter, is one of the biggest mobile games on the planet, raking in upwards of $25 million per month according to Sensor Tower data. It’s always felt inevitable, then, that the studio will draw upon the game’s enormous audience to promote upcoming PS5 exclusive Stellar Blade – and quizzed on whether that’ll be the case, Game Director Hyung-Tae Kim cryptically confirmed in an interview with Push Square that it will.

The first trailer for Deadpool 3 just arrived during Super Bowl LVII – and its most NSFW moment has already been edited.

Final Fantasy 8 turned 25 over the weekend, prompting many fans to renew their pleas for a remake. However, it looks like they're out of luck, as Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, gives a firm "No" to the offer of spearheading another remake project.

There hasn’t been an elements-versus-humankind blockbuster from a major American studio since the 2017 Gerard Butler vehicle Geostorm. It’s not just a shame for fans of weather-related spectacle, but society has a whole. Considering theescalating climate crisis, now would be a good time to scare the bejesus out of unsuspecting movie audiences with the awesome power of nature (if it hits too close to home… that’s the point).

In a captivating turn of events at the Mathrubhumi International Literary Festival, viewers were treated to a unique encounter as an AI-generated replica of Shashi Tharoor took on the role of interviewer, engaging the real-life MP himself in a dialogue that blurred the lines between reality and technology. Here is what transpired at this engrossing encounter:

LG Display has unveiled its roadmap for this year, and it seems like the manufacturer will focus on revamping the IPS technology & unveiling new marvels.

Walt Disney is harnessing artificial intelligence to power a new advertising tool that will help brands tailor their commercials to fit the mood of specific scenes within a movie or television series.

In a talk during our GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit late last year, games industry comms veteran Cat Channon gave pointers about communication through change, and how to take into account the human impact of change when sharing information with staff, whether about layoffs, big M&A deals, or real-world calamities that might be affecting staff.

The recently released Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League attracted less than half the concurrent player base of Marvel's Avengers in its first 24 hours.

Back in 2014, California-based Night School Studio was set up by Disney and Telltale vets Sean Krankel (right) and Adam Hines (far right). The duo's debut was 2016's Oxenfree, with the company also releasing a mobile title based on hit television show Mr Robot that same year.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's ending is going to have a different impact than Remake's ending, according to the game's Creative Director.

Overwatch 2 has had a rough road following the early success of the first game. That game, which easily earned Game Informer's Game of the Year in 2016, started with such promise and a massive, enthusiastic audience, but following the 2019 announcement of Overwatch 2, support for the original Overwatch floundered, and so, too, did the community. Last year's release of Overwatch 2's PvE elements in its Invasion update pushed the hero shooter back in the right direction, but it didn't make the splash Blizzard had hoped for. With Overwatch 2 Season 9, which kicks off next week, Blizzard is making a ton of sweeping behind-the-scenes changes to make the game more approachable for players.

Do you remember the codename for the Wii?

Every so often, a new anime season will start and I’ll find one series, in particular, to latch onto like a vice. This season, that series is Sasaki and Peeps. In only a couple of episodes, this series has shown me edge-of-your-seat action and rapidly developing plots and has dipped its toes into so many genres that it’s hard to even know what to classify this series as. The point is that Sasaki and Peeps has something to please everyone!

Are you ready to explore the wonders of the Blue Hole with Dave the Diver? Join Dave, a professional diver, as he catches unique and delicious fish during the day and serves hungry patrons at a seaside sushi restaurant by night. We proudly bring the hit title to a new audience; Dave the Diver is coming to PlayStation this April featuring the enormous King of the Monsters, Godzilla.

Thirty minutes before a midnight screening of Tommy Wiseau’s Big Shark at Chicago’s Music Box Theater, the man sitting in front of me and my husband turned around with a sly grin and asked us “Are you cowboys?” I immediately guessed where this was going, so I played along and told him, straight-faced, that no, we were not cowboys. “OK, then. You might need these,” he said, offering me a box of tissues.

The new international trailer for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has finally landed, revealing the franchise’s fiendishly frosty return to New York City. Who you gonna call? Yep, the Ghostbusters are back – along with the iconic theme tune, Slimer and marshmallows galore.

Chinese technology giant Huawei has filed a patent for a handheld video game controller that can be modified into various shapes depending on the player's desired configuration. Huawei has previously released unique game consoles for Chinese audiences, along with a series of popular mobile phones, and the tech powerhouse is now entering the fray of customizable gaming controllers.

Game-streaming services like Xbox’s Game Pass Ultimate and Nvidia’s GeForce Now will face one less restriction on Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices. App developers can now “submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog,” Apple said in a developer update on Thursday.

Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War are some of the highest grossing movies of all time, so, as you can imagine, box office bonuses for its actors are bound to be hefty sums. 

Metallic Rouge, the latest original anime from director Motonobu Hori (Carole & Tuesday) and studio Bones, is as difficult to describe as it is impressive to behold. A “tech noir” mystery thriller that combines a futuristic cyberpunk setting with tokusatsu-inspired action, the series burns as slow as it does bright, doling out its story and universe at a deliberate pace. It’s an anime that asks its audience to take stock of every dazzling detail on display as they attempt to grasp the totality of its whole.

Wizards of the Coast and Resolution Games have announced their collaboration to bring Dungeons & Dragons to virtual reality.

Hytale, the spiritual successor to Minecraft, hasn't been impacted by the layoffs at Riot.

After hoping for a release toward the end of 2023, we now know when the Death Stranding Director’s Cut will be landing on iOS and Mac devices. 505 Games, the team handling the port, has confirmed the title will be delivered next week.

Palworld – the brand new, sort-of-Pokémon, open-world, third-person, shooting, action adventure, crafting, survival, animal collecting, and other popular buzzwords – game launched on Steam and Xbox on January 19. It immediately blew up, selling six million copies in four days and instantly becoming a force to be reckoned with while simultaneously opening the floodgates of discourse surrounding intellectual property theft in video games. Since being revealed two years ago, Palworld – created by a developer named Pocketpair – has been commonly referred to as “Pokémon with guns” by anyone who has looked at it for more than three seconds. But as people dig deeper, they are discovering that Palworld is both a game that does enough to distance itself from Pokémon mechanically while also being a little too close for comfort to Pokémon artistically. So let’s dig into this controversy and figure out exactly what’s happening with Palworld.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is the best-reviewed Yakuza game to date.

From body-horror battlemaps and soaring choral anthems to creative live visual and in-fiction language lessons, actual play last year had moments that shocked, delighted, and even instructed — inspiring waypoints for players and performers alike. As a professor who studies troupes performing Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, I’ve spent time with hundreds of shows across thousands of hours, watching and listening. These are the sounds, images, and ideas from 2023 that will stick with me for years to come.

For years now, pundits have been declaring that movie stardom is dead. Everyone from Jennifer Aniston to The New York Times seems to have agreed that we simply don’t make ’em like we used to.

WB Games Montréal’s Damian Wayne Batman game was canceled following a series of leaks that revealed much about the unannounced project, a voice actor who worked on it has said.

Avowed game director Carrie Patel says the RPG has a bunch of content that you can easily miss if you aren't careful, and although there are a ton of games with big chunks of missable content, it's nonetheless hard not to be reminded of what Larian Studios so masterfully accomplished with Baldur's Gate 3.

Various developers have spoken out against this year's Global Game Jam (GGJ) list of diversifiers and sponsors which incudes two AI tool websites. 

We have our first hit video game of 2024, and it’s a shocker. The eccentric Palworld, an early access game available now on PC and Xbox Game Pass, is smashing Steam records as developer Pocketpair sells millions of copies. That’s thanks in large part thanks to its bizarre elevator pitch, which is succinctly described as “Pokémon with guns.”

In 2021, One Shot blasted into action fans’ hearts, making full use of Scott Adkins’ varied skill set. It’s a high-octane tactical action movie with a fun gimmick: The whole movie is designed to look like one continuous take.

Palworld players have figured out that the easiest way to get airborne in the game is to stand on a Pal Sphere as it's capturing a Pal, which somehow sends you flying upwards.

Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

Visions of Mana's producer has wanted to make a new game for around a decade but wasn't sure anyone would care for it.

The British military is using Fortnite Creative as a recruitment tool, seemingly in a bid to appeal to younger audiences. The army plans to livestream the private map, Operation: Belong, next week.

Palworld, aka the upcoming 'Pokemon with guns' game, is already getting thousands of views on Twitch, despite not releasing until tomorrow. 

2015’s Until Dawn was an early stand-out PlayStation 4 exclusive. Developed by Supermassive Games, it effectively asked players to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to a horror movie. Everyone has yelled at characters not to run upstairs when pursued or split up to search for somebody, but Until Dawn let you make those calls.

Another Code: Recollection is perhaps the best kind of remake. It takes two well-liked yet obscure graphic puzzle adventures in 2005's Trace Memory for DS, and 2009's Another Code: R — Journey Into Lost Memories for Wii (which never launched in the U.S.) and gives them a graphical and mechanical overhaul to make them readily available to a new audience.

I skipped over Trace Memory when it was released on DS back in 2005. I wasn’t into the adventuresome puzzle-solving genre at the time because I was boring. So, I got to go into Another Code: Recollection with fresh eyes.

Last week, the Xbox community was sent into a tizzy over rumors that Xbox exclusives Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves might soon be exclusive no more.

Today, the organizers of the Game Developers Conference have announced the nominations for the GDC Awards 2024. To the surprise of nobody, Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 and Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have dominated them, achieving seven nominations each.

In exciting news, Paradox Interactive has announced Prison Architect 2, and the upcoming sandbox simulation game looks like it'll be bigger and better than ever before with some fantastic accessibility settings. 

If you have read or watched Hunter x Hunter, then this news is for you! DeNA just dropped a brand-new mobile game based on the awesome manga series! Hunter x Hunter RPG launches today for both Android and iOS devices in China.

Persona 3 Reload devs incorporated fan feedback in altering Tartarus, and knew it was a "top priority to change."

There’s a small moment in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon that fundamentally changed the way I viewed the entire story. The film, now streaming on Apple TV Plus, is a straightforward recounting of a painful time in Native American history — the infuriating true story of the 1920s Osage murders. But this one scene goes past simple history, and makes the movie something essential.

Ever since I got my hands on Persona 3 Reload over the summer, I've described it to folks as «Persona 3 redone in the form of Persona 5 Royal.» While that may be a gross oversimplification, it's also pretty high praise. Longtime fans of the Persona series point towards Persona 3 as the entry that changed the course of the series, pointing it down the path it's been on for nearly the last two decades. While Persona 3 may be the most important entry from a mechanical perspective, Persona 5 has the most mainstream relevance, particularly in 2024.

Digital media has seen massive growth over the last decade or so, and that’s something we’ve seen in the games industry as well. But even as digital purchases, subscription services, and streaming become increasingly popular, many have wondered what repercussions that’s going to have on game preservation- and the fact that we see all too many examples of games being delisted and made completely unavailable for sale (and at times, even for playing for those who’ve bought them) has only made those questions more pertinent.

The creator of the Portal 64 demake has urged fans not to direct their anger at Valve amidst the project's cancellation.

The new Jason Statham January action movie The Beekeeperis what it suggests on the tin: a tongue-in-cheek, bee-themed action comedy where Staths doles out punishment to any bad guy who has the misfortune of buzzing his way.

If you know anything about Baldur's Gate 3, it's probably that it lets you do it with a bear. This is all thanks to the famous pre-launch stream, in which Larian showcased some of the romance scenes, including that one with Halsin. The audience was allowed to vote on how the player responded to the druid's advances, so of course, they elected to be one with nature.

Kochava, the self-proclaimed industry leader in mobile app data analytics, is locked in a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission in a case that could lead to big changes in the global data marketplace and in Congress' approach to artificial intelligence and data privacy. The stakes are high because Kochava's secretive data acquisition and AI-aided analytics practices are commonplace in the global location data market. In addition to numerous lesser-known data brokers, the mobile data market includes larger players like Foursquare and data market exchanges like Amazon's AWS Data Exchange.

Recently, one of the more unique elements of gaming adaptations has been Netflix’s attempt to bring many gaming properties to life not via live-action but through anime. You might remember the story of the Belmonts being brought forth via two different series on the streaming platform, and they both were big successes. And now, they’re trying to do the same with a legendary lady of gaming via Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. The anime will bring Lara to a new audience and give her an epic style with an epic lady to voice the icon: Hayley Atwell.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has sparked debates among fans regarding the return of its cast members, like Patrick Stewart's Picard, with some arguing the characters should never return in future iterations despite recent reprisals.

In a follow-up livestream after a recent layoff announcement, CEO Dan Clancy confessed that Twitch is not profitable and has been relying heavily on support from parent company Amazon to sustain itself. Twitch just announced a massive round of layoffs, with roughly 500 people affected, and this subsequent statement regarding Twitch's financial stability has left many wondering if the platform's future is in jeopardy.

In an unexpected announcement, social platform Discord has announced that it will be laying off roughly 17 percent of its current staff to counteract inefficient growth. With other technology giants like Twitch laying off even more employees, audiences are growing increasingly concerned about the future of many online platforms.

AMD's Ryzen 8000G AM5 Desktop APUs are right around the corner and you better get some nice dual-channel DDR5-6000 memory to make sure you are ready for them.

Following the events of Tekken 7, the stage for Tekken 8’s story is set up to be perhaps the most over-the-top yet. In the six months since the defeat of Heihachi Mishima, his son, Kazuya Mishima, has installed a reign of terror over the planet using his devil powers. And while the setup is, quite frankly, a lot to take in, if the first four chapters I played are any indication, the level of spectacle and bombast reaches new levels in Tekken 8’s Story Mode.

There’s a newMean Girlsmovie out! Tina Fey, who scripted the original Mean Girlsback in 2004, wrote the script for the new movie based on her book for the Broadway musical version. But this time, the lead roles are played by Angourie Rice (Mare of Easttown), Reneé Rapp (The Sex Lives of College Girls), and Auliʻi Cravalho (Moana), The trailers make it look like a soft reboot of the 2004 movie directed by Mark Waters, but set two decades later. But that isn’t quite the case. While the 2024 Mean Girls includes a lot of references to the 2004 movie (and some returning cast members), it comes with a distinct new twist.

Echo, the latest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is probably going to fly under a lot of people’s radar. The urgency of the interconnected superhero setting has ebbed as Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. retool their offerings, and that goes double for a show that’s spinning off a minor character from a two-year-old miniseries into a five-episode miniseries on Hulu and Disney Plus, and making teases about another less-than-imminent show.

When Dimension 20’s hit Dungeons & Dragons actual-play series, Fantasy High, first premiered in 2018, the medium itself was just starting to come into focus. A decade after Penny Arcade got things started with Acquisitions Incorporated, the format had three distinct expressions: livestreaming weekly content in the style of Critical Role, a regular drop of podcast episodes à la The Adventure Zone, or prerecorded, short-form, gimmick-forward productions like HarmonQuest. Others had tried to get traction with fickle audiences, but long-form, prerecorded tabletop role-play — akin to the more familiar mediums of TV and film — failed to make a lasting impact.

Beef star Young Mazino is set to play Jesse in The Last of Us season 2.

Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki'  Yoshi-P' Yoshida knows exactly what he'd do if he were to be fired from his current position at Square Enix: he'd keep playing the MMO and just complain to the development team about the state of the game.

A Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player has spent six months and 1,855 hours collecting 999,999 Poe beneath Hyrule, all because they were curious.

Immortality, one of the most recent games from Sam Barlow, the creator of interactive film games Her Story and Telling Lies, has been announced for PS5. The interactive story will be available from January 23rd for Sony’s console. Immortality was first announced in 2021, and was then released in 2022.

Immortality, one of the most recent games from Sam Barlow, the creator of interactive film games Her Story and Telling Lies, has been announced for PS5. The interactive story will be available from January 23rd for Sony’s console. Immortality was first announced in 2021, and was then released in 2022.

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If you're looking to showcase your creativity and engage with your audience on via Instagram Reels, creating and sharing outstandingly unique and interesting content is an excellent way to do so. This step-by-step Instagram Reels guide will walk you through the process, making it easy for you to record, edit, and share compelling content.

The question of how Echo fits into Daredevil continuity is alive and well. As the series readies for a simultaneous premiere on the all-ages Disney Plus and the more grown-up Hulu, along with Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio reprising their roles as Matt Murdock and the Kingpin Wilson Fisk, some kind of continuation is expected.

Echo director Sydney Freeland discusses the importance of that epic Daredevil fight scene – and Maya Lopez's Daredevil origins.

CES 2024 is finally here and the hardware announcements are beginning to roll in thick and fast. However, even if you're not in the market for some new tech, those of you of a streaming persuasion and an Nvidia GPU may have some reason to celebrate today, as the company announced a raft of streaming features and Twitch integrations to be rolled out in the new Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting beta as part of today's Nvidia special address.

Five Nights at Freddy's star Josh Hutcherson has confirmed that the horror movie will be getting a sequel. 

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