Audience News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

From Oklahoma heartthrob to Hollywood legend, Brad Pitt has captivated audiences for decades with his dazzling good looks and undeniable acting talent in some of the best movies of all time. Since first bursting onto the scene in 1991’s Thelma & Louise, the bonafide superstar has shown incredible range across every conceivable genre – cementing his status as one of the most bankable and versatile leading men in the business. A far cry from his humble roots in Shawnee.

Last night, Sega announced new entries in the Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, Shinobi, and Streets of Rage series all at once, and it seems that the company is making a conscious attempt at returning to the rebellious energy it hasn't really displayed since the Dreamcast era. Frankly, it's about time.

Baldur’s Gate 3 had a huge night at The Game Awards 2023, winning Game of the Year and then just launching the game on Xbox Series X|S. Surprise!

When the film world gets one of its unexpected cross-studio theme pairings — the way summer 1998 offered two “impending planetary apocalypse” movies in Armageddon and Deep Impact, or 2022 gave us two major Pinocchio movies — it’s rarely clear on the surface whether the projects stem from corporate copycatting, divergent evolution, or sheer coincidence. Ultimately, it’s rarely worth debating: What matters is whether the films are enjoyable and well-made, and whether they screen better together.

Japanese games giant Sega is making new entries in a number of its existing franchises.

Twenty years ago, writer-producer Ronald D. Moore refused to give a crowd of angry, disappointed sci-fi nerds what they wanted.

“Morbidcore” isn’t an established subgenre, but it’s not hard to imagine what falls into this category. These are games exploring life’s darker moments. Not for the sake of simply disturbing an audience, but instead, they’re stories communicating the more unsettling aspects of humanity — the parts we shy away from or refuse to acknowledge.

This year's blockbuster sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse followed in the footsteps of the original film by once again pushing the boundaries of both storytelling and animation. As we joined our hero Miles Morales and co. on another adventure, we visited numerous dimensions including one which was rather brilliantly made with Lego. 

SEGA made a big splash at The Game Awards 2023 by finally giving its fans what they've been clamoring for over a decade: the revival of five of its classic, most beloved IPs, as reported a while ago.

Just like the original film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, this year's much acclaimed sequel Across the Spider-Verse featured an impressive ensemble cast of characters. Whilst the likes of Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, and Peter B. Parker returned, there were also several exciting new additions from Pavitr Prabhakar (a.k.a. Spider-Man India) to Jess Drew (a.k.a. Spider-Woman). 

Baldur’s Gate 3 had a huge night at The Game Awards 2023, winning Game of the Year and then just launching the game on Xbox Series X|S. Surprise!

Exoborne is an eye-catching new tactical open-world extraction shooter for PC and consoles, built in Unreal Engine 5 by team members who worked on Ubisoft's The Division.

At last year's Game Awards, actor Christopher Judge won the Best Performance award for his role as Kratos in God of War Ragnarök, and gave an acceptance speech so long it became a highlight of the show. Judge returned as a presenter at this year's Game Awards, and of course cracked a joke about his verbose speech—at the expense of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

The Walking Dead: Betrayal, a social deception-survival game about zombies and worse (the «worse» in this case being non-zombified other people), is coming to a premature end. Skybound Games and developer Other Ocean Interactive announced today that it has decided to halt development of the game, which just launched in early access in September, and remove it from Steam completely.

Nintendo's upcoming live event that was planned for early 2024 in Tokyo, Japan has been canceled by the developer. A press release translated by Japanese game news translator Genki reveals the cancellation was brought on in part by threats made against both Nintendo staff and attendees. 

The game was soft-launched in some regions under a different title, but will now be known as Civilization: Eras and Allies.

Sometimes a film doesn’t feel like a dialogue between audience and artist so much as it feels like a grand game. A dare, perhaps, with a filmmaker challenging viewers to pin down what kind of story they’re watching before they reach the end. William Oldroyd’s taut thriller Eileen feels like that kind of film: a dodgy psychological drama of small twitches and barely contained passions, furtively placing one foot on the ground, then asking you to guess where the next will go.

Nintendo Live 2024 has been canceled after Nintendo employees reported receiving threats ahead of the upcoming event. 

Rebel Moon's Netflix release has been brought forward by a few hours, meaning it'll be available to watch a day earlier – for US audiences, at least.

New Game Plus details for Alan Wake 2 have seemingly leaked online, and they actually contain some pretty hefty spoilers.

A man who believes he's been parodied by GTA 6's trailer has addressed the similarities between himself and an in-game character.

Google Forms are widely used by students and organizations alike for various surveys and questionnaires. It is a great tool to collect data for research papers and to better understand the employees in an organization. However, many times these forms are also shared outside the intended participant base, which can corrupt the data or its usefulness. Sometimes such forms also fall prey to troll attacks which can also negatively affect the results. To help users gain better control of their Google Forms, the company has announced that it will soon add granular control options when sharing to allow the maker to have better privacy control on their form and protect it from outsider influence.

Xbox Series X|S maker Microsoft has once again expressed a desire to release its membership service Game Pass on to PS5, PS4, allowing first-party titles like Starfield and Forza Motorsport to become available to a wider audience. Xbox CFO Tim Stuart made the comments during the Wells Fargo TMT Summit, stating it to be a «bit of a change of strategy».

The Game Awards air this week, and anticipation to see the year's big winners, as well as some exclusive game reveals, grows by the minute. Throwing kerosene on the flames of our hype is the official Geoff Keighley Hype Trailer, which our host with the most personally edited and released to a ravenous audience.

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Skyrim mods made available on the game's new Creations platform will not be allowed to contain any content produced through generative AI.

The Last of Us 2 Remastered's new roguelike mode is inspired by a "renaissance of roguelikes."

2K has announced Civilization: Eras & Allies, a standalone free-to-play mobile 4X social strategy game.

Nearly four and a half years after it began, One Piece’s Wano Country Arc has finished. The story is moving on to a new island, and One Piece itself is in a whole new world. In those four years, I personally have gone from One Piece curious to One Piece die-hard to professional One Piece pundit. And yet, when the new promotional image for the upcoming Egghead Arc graces my screen in January, it will be the first time ever that I will not be greeted by Monkey D. Luffy grinning in a well-worn kimono.

The Last of Us 2 Remastered's director has commented on remastering the original game after just three years, while speaking on what the 'Lost Levels' offer.

2023 has been a remarkable year to be a fan of good media.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate 3, Final Fantasy 16, Resident Evil 4 Remake, and so many more – 2023 has been a defining year for video games.

When the executive producer of Monster Hunter Now, Kei Kwai, opened his presentation on Monster Hunter Now by talking about what the franchise meant to him — his cousin marrying someone they met at the Monster Hunter table in the cafeteria — it struck a chord. My brother and I would always try to hide from the harsh Spanish sun on our family holidays by sitting under the biggest palm tree we could find, so that we could get the most shade and best see what we were fighting on our PSPs.

Last week, we speculated about whether or not Grand Theft Auto 6 will release on PC on the same day as consoles. Most of us predicted that Rockstar will once again wait a year or so after the console release date before dropping the PC version, and I regret to report that we were probably right.

Gortash is, first and foremost, a politician in Baldur’s Gate 3. When you find him at the Wyrm’s Rock Fortress, he has a deal for you: work with him to acquire the Netherstone from Orin and control the Elderbrain together.

Veteran UK developer Codemasters has suffered a round of layoffs following the launch of racing games F1 23 and EA Sports WRC.

Evil Dead frontman Bruce Campbell, AKA Ash Tucker, promises that more Deadite-filled movies are on the way, and next time we won't have to wait so long. 

The Comixology app, the mobile incarnation of the digital comics platform owned by Amazon since 2014, has finally shuffled off this mortal coil. On Dec. 4, individual Comixology libraries and Comixology Unlimited subscriptions were swept into users’ corresponding Kindle libraries, where those comics can now be read using the Kindle app or the read.amazon.com browser experience (still in beta).

Tommy's actor in The Last of Us has no idea if a third game in the series is happening.

Final Fantasy's founding figurehead was so obsessed with Final Fantasy 14 last year that at one point he was playing it for 12 hours every day.

US Commerce Secretary believes they need to adopt "more strict" implementations to thwart AI chips sales & semiconductor development in China.

Arc System Works has formed a capital alliance with AQURIA, the companies announced.

In the past few months, we have seen some drastic changes in WhatsApp in terms of bringing advanced features to its users. This year, Meta introduced channels, locked chats, screen-sharing video calls, email authentication, and more. Now, the company is working on a new WhatsApp feature which will enable users to share their status updates to Instagram. The feature is expected to work exactly like how we share stories on Facebook and Instagram at the same time. Know about the WhatsApp feature that Meta may roll out here.

Saltburn has shaped up as one of 2023’s most divisive love-it-or-hate-it movies. Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to her 2020 writer-director debut, Promising Young Woman, is radically different from that movie in look and tone, but her talent for pushing boundaries and demanding a response is still front and center, and Saltburn is the kind of button-pusher that generally either thrills people or makes them angry. Critics have responded both ways: “Superficially smart and deeply stupid,” Mick LaSalle grumps in the San Francisco Chronicle, while Entertainment Weekly’s Maureen Lee Lenker calls it “a triumph of the cinema of excess, in all its orgiastic, unapologetic glory.”

In a surprising turn of events, Google has decided to postpone the highly-anticipated launch of its AI model, Google Gemini AI. Initially scheduled for release next week, the company has now rescheduled the launch to January. The initial announcement had come months ago during the annual I/O 2023 conference, where Google, alongside Alphabet co-founder Sergey Brin, introduced Gemini, the latest addition to its AI portfolio. The decision to delay the launch was attributed to concerns about the AI model's non-reliability in handling non-English queries. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, personally opted for the delay to ensure the global language support is robust, aiming to surpass the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-4.

Happy December, Polygon readers! The winter holidays are only a few short weeks away, but don’t fret: There’s plenty of presents in the form of movies new to streaming to enjoy in the meantime. With November now behind us, we’ve combed through the latest movies to stream on Netflix, Hulu, Max, and more to bring you the best of what December has to offer.

Microsoft’s head of gaming has acknowledged the demand from fans for a new Banjo-Kazooie game.

While US fans have been watching the conclusion of Ash Ketchum’s journey in Pokemon Ultimate Journeys, audiences in Japan have already embarked on a new adventure, Pokemon Horizons. Fans excited for this new chapter are in luck, as the Pokemon Horizons Netflix release date has been announced.

Elon Musk's verbal assault on advertisers who have shunned X (formerly Twitter) threatens to sink the social network further, with the tycoon warning of the platform's demise, just one year after taking control.

Aika Online Global will officially relaunch under HanbitSoft and CBM Interactive on December 5th. The new global launch comes with an opening event, and some pre-registration bonuses.

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There’s nothing quite like the thrill of scouting wild monsters for your squad in Dragon Quest Monsters — except maybe the sheer joy of smashing together your existing collection to whip up an entirely new, one-of-a-kind creature with the Synthesis mechanic.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince lets the monster catcher in you run wild. However, with so many monsters roaming each area of the game, it’s hard to decide which monsters are best for the early game.

Bethesda Softworks stunned Steam users earlier this week when players discovered that Starfield developers were actively replying to negative reviews on Valve’s PC platform.

Lofi Girl studies a lot. It makes sense that she’d have a hobby that matches her studious nature: Lofi Girl, apparently, plays chess online — specifically, she plays on Chess.com. Lofi Girl launched a new partnership with the chess platform on Dec. 1, opening up yet another place to stream chill beats fit for a grandmaster chess player. The YouTube page has 20 songs, but can also be streamed on Spotify and elsewhere.

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In recent years Capcom has had a lot of success with Resident Evil remakes, with new versions of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 being major critical and commercial hits. Resident Evil 3 was slightly less successful, although it has its fans (I consider myself one of them). That said, the obvious candidates for Resident Evil remakes have all been done now, so will Capcom continue on with them? At a PlayStation event in Japan RE4 remake director Yasuhiro Anpo seemed to indicate there’s more in the works…

Capcom has been blasting through its Resident Evil gameography, delivering remakes that are arguably just as classic as the source material, and the company says more are on the way. 

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone considering the success Capcom has had with past Resident Evil remakes, but the company has plans for more.

Capcom has confirmed that it’s planning to release more Resident Evil remakes.

 The Witcher 4 director Sebastien Kalemba has sought to set expectations for fans on what CD Projekt RED is trying to do with the title.

Capcom confirms that it will launch more Resident Evil remakes beyond Resident Evil 4. This comes after the first three remakes have proven massively successful, prompting Capcom to keep the trend going and bring back more of its older titles.

After the success of the Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 remakes, Capcom has confirmed plans to continue the trend, although stopped short of announcing which Resident Evil game is next in line for the remake treatment.

At this year's New York Times Dealbook Summit, essentially a series of interviews with mega-wealthy CEOs, Jen-Hsun Huang of Nvidia was asked about why he constantly feels that his company may one day bite the dust. «I don't think people are trying to put me out of business—I probably know they're trying to,» he said. «I live in this condition where we're partly desperate, partly aspirational.»

The Witcher 4 developer CD Projekt Red wants the next installment of the RPG series to be an entry point for newcomers, as well as please long-time fans. 

Threads, the Instagram-powered text-based social media platform, has been receiving regular updates for a while, adding new features to the platform. Some of these features were frequent requests from users, and finally getting them has been a big delight to the user base. Now, adding another massively requested feature, Threads has finally rolled out keyword search globally, with support for all languages. This feature was earlier being tested in some English and Spanish-speaking regions, but now it has been expanded to all users.

In some great news for fans, Krafton's most popular game, Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) has won a prestigious title in the country during the Google Play's Best of 2023 Awards. While the game has suffered a lot due to a ban over security concerns, the game has finally climbed to the top position in the gaming industry and proved to be the best in the race in India. Krafton announced that BGMI and its Valor: Empires have made it to the list of Google Play's Best of 2023 Awards in India. Learn more about the award-winning game here.

The Furiosa trailer is here, and it gives audiences the first proper look at Anya Taylor-Joy, as Imperator Furiosa.

In perhaps the most casual TV announcement I've ever seen, Paramount+ has put the entire first season of the Halo series up on YouTube and has revealed that season 2 is set to begin on February 8, 2024.

Not many games have a story like Indika, a game about a 19th century Russian Orthodox nun journeying to the centre of her soul with an «unusual, horn-headed companion.» Drawing inspiration from Dostoevsky and Bulgakov and dripping with dark humour, Indika tells a tale of religion and authority, madness and belief. But also, not many games have a story like Indika, whose developer Odd Meter left Russia when the country invaded Ukraine in February last year. Calling the invasion an «insane crime» perpetrated to «satisfy the ambitions of an elderly, weak-minded dwarf,» game director and studio founder Dmitry Svetlow decided to up and move Indika's development—and the company behind it—out of Moscow to neighbouring Kazakhstan, even moving the «entire recording studio by truck.» And both of those stories make it, for me, one of the most fascinating games to grace this year's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted.

Someone in China created thousands of fake social media accounts designed to appear to be from Americans and used them to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the U.S. ahead of next year's elections, Meta said Thursday.

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Critical Role dungeon master Matt Mercer, who you may know as Cole Cassidy in Overwatch and Minsc in Baldur's Gate 3, has expressed interest in turning the hit Dungeons & Dragons actual play series into a video game.

CD Projekt Red is ramping up development on The Witcher 4 (AKA Polaris) now that Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is out. The hotly sought-after sequel is still a few years away from launching, but director Sebastian Kalemba has shed some light on what we can expect.

In a resounding triumph for Pokemon GO, the augmented reality mobile game developed by Niantic has clinched the prestigious title of ‘Best Ongoing Game' in the esteemed Google Play Awards for the year 2023 in India. This recognition underscores the remarkable journey of Pokemon GO, which has tirelessly engaged players for seven years since its inception. The game's unwavering success lies in its ability to deliver captivating augmented reality experiences, an innovative fusion of technology, and a robust sense of community interaction that resonates with millions of trainers both in India and around the globe.

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Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more.

Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more.