Sony's recently appointed joint CEO Hideaki Nishino says consoles will remain at the "core" of the company's business going forward, but it will still continue to offer titles on other platforms as well.Nishino - who serves as CEO of the company's Platform Business Group - recently took part in an interview with Japanese publication Nikkei. Here, the company executive was asked to summarise the value of PlayStation consoles within Sony.In response, Nishino said: "I think that with mobile devices, there are many games that show advertisements, and PCs are difficult to set up, but with PlayStation, once you turn it on, you can experience the content you bought straight away" (translated by VGC). Read more

Microsoft has laid off a further 650 Xbox staff, though no games have been cancelled or studios have been closed this time.The news was shared by CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer in an internal memo obtained by IGN, with changes made to "organise our business for long term success".The layoffs follow the 1900 people who lost their jobs at the company in January this year. It means Microsoft has now laid off 2,550 staff in the last year. Read more

The Borderlands film has made headlines for, sadly, not the right reasons recently. The adaptation based on Gearbox's games of the same name failed to capture the hearts (and wallets) of audiences on its August release, and was widely panned by critics.And, now, we have a better idea of just how much of a commercial flop the Cate Blanchett -fronted film actually was. According to film industry data website The Numbers (via PC Gamer), the film's theatrical release has closed with just $30,975,300 to its name.While I certainly wouldn't sniff at a little shy of $31m in my bank account, from a Hollywood big screen release perspective, that figure really isn't great. To give more context, it was estimated Borderlands had a production cost of around $115m. Meanwhile, its marketing and distribution costs were said to be $30m. Read more

Hoyoverse has confirmed Xbox players will not need to purchase a Game Pass subscription in order to access Genshin Impact's online multiplayer mode.The confusion began soon after Hoyoverse announced Genshin Impact would be making its way to Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass. Initially, the game's Xbox store page listing stated: "Online multiplayer on console requires Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Xbox Game Pass Core (sold separately)."Those on ResetEra pointed out this is a different approach to other free-to-play games on the platform, such as Fortnite. Read more

Flappy Bird, the infuriating mobile game, is set to make a return later this year.The game grew to tremendous popularity with over 100 million people playing it, but in 2014 original developer Dong Nguyen removed the game from sale despite it generating a reported $50,000 a day in advertising revenue.A decade later and Flappy Bird will return this autumn, followed by dedicated mobile apps coming to iOS and Android next year, as well as other platforms. Read more

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has today received its ninth patch, which brings "substantial performance improvements" on PC and removes Denuvo DRM.EA promises framerate improvements for various hardware configurations, fixes for specific framerate hitching elements for smoother gameplay, and optimised CPU usage for ray-tracing.Importantly, Denuvo DRM has been removed, which is often criticised for hampering performance. Read more

Ballistic Moon's Until Dawn remake is set to release on PC this October. Ahead of this, the studio has shared its PC requirements for the upcoming teen-horror.When Until Dawn makes its PC debut, it will boast "advanced graphical features, customisability, accessibility features and run on a wide range of hardware," the studio said. You can check out Until Dawn's PC features trailer below. Now, without further ado, here are those all important PC requirements for Until Dawn: Read more

Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most interesting console games I've seen in a while. There's a clear PC focus, with the PlayStation 5 version featuring a trio of awkward graphics modes - none of which quite hit the target. I also get the sense it's a game tailor-made for the PlayStation 5 Pro, assuming that the features of the hardware are put to good use. Using the PC version of the game, I decided to look at 'BMW' on a number of fronts. Could the resources of the standard PS5 be better utilised for smoother gameplay? To what extent would PS5 Pro be a game-changer? And what of Series S: if Game Science had issues with the PS5 version, can Microsoft's junior Xbox hack it?First up, let's quickly recap what BMW is doing on PlayStation 5. Quality mode targets 4K and has a dynamic resolution between 1224p and 1584p. Frame-rate looks to be unlocked to my eye, so I'm curious how the dynamic resolution system may be working. Even so, I think this is the most competent mode in the current game. Next up, the balance mode: this looks like a hard-set 1080p resolution with no DRS but an utterly bizarre 45fps cap which makes it jerky on any display likely to be connected to the PlayStation 5. Finally there's the performance mode - this is using frame generation from 30fps to 60fps. It's fundamentally a bad idea as one of the key ideas behind a performance mode is to reduce lag, not increase it as is the case here.For my tests, I used the Digital Foundry Frankenstein's PC - a Windows unit built on a motherboard hosting the actual Xbox Series X CPU, paired with the Radeon RX 6700, an AMD graphics card that has much in common with the PS5 GPU. It's a mish-mash of console-equivalent parts, yet it's proven to be capable of delivering very console-like results. By using the balance mode with its fixed resolution, paired with graphics options matched to console equivalents, we can benchmark our set-up to see how close to PS5 performance we get. It turns out that the console is slightly faster - around seven to 10 percent in some scenarios. So, when we carry out our tests, we could likely expect console performance to actually be a touch faster. Read more

Planet Coaster 2, the sequel to the popular theme park management game, now has a confirmed release date of 6th November 2024.Developer Frontier first announced the game back in July, which adds water parks to its list of thrills, as well as various enhanced tools and quality of life changes.The release date is across all platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. The game is now available to pre-order. Read more

Unity has cancelled the controversial Runtime Fee for use of its game engine tools, which charged developers for each game install, with immediate effect.The pricing plan was introduced in September last year and was heavily criticised by game developers, calling it an "astonishing scumbag move" among other responses.Today, in a blog post from new president and CEO of Unity Matt Bromberg, the company announced it will revert back to a traditional subscription model "after deep consultation with our community, customers, and partners". Read more

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has revealed its next Premium Warbond, known as Chemical Agents.Chemical Agents comes complete with some "seriously deadly toys", including stratagems, utilities, emotes and more.On the Warbond's release, players will be able to get their hands on the likes of the TX-41 Sterilizer, the G-4 Gas grenade (which will "cover the whole area in a cloud of noxious fumes") and the new utility P-11 Stim Pistol. You can check out the gas-filled trailer for Chemical Agents below. Read more

The world of Assassin's Creed Shadows is beautiful. At Gamescom 2024 in Cologne last month, Ubisoft refrained from providing a fresh chance to go hands-on with its highly-anticipated upcoming epic - for that, we'll have to wait just a little bit longer. Instead, the publisher gave press a look behind the scenes at more of the game's visual prowess, via a presentation on Shadows' environmental upgrades and new graphical fidelity.Ubisoft's vast virtual version of Japan features in the first Assassin's Creed made solely for the current-gen of consoles - and it looks the part, with dense forests and towering mountains, dynamic weather and shifting seasons. The game's exact technical specs are still to be confirmed, but I was impressed by its clear upgrade from other Assassin's Creed games past, particularly in its eye-catching smaller details, such as rain running realistically down bamboo guttering, or stalls full of fruit you can topple, sending their contents scattering across a road.Online, however, some of the response to Shadows has been less pretty. In June, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot condemned "the malicious and personal online attacks" directed at the game's developers after its initial reveal. Separately, Assassin's Creed franchise head Marc-Alexis Ct has spoken about having to take "a step back" rather than respond to criticism of the game on social media from X owner Elon Musk. Read more

Tony Hawk has revealed he's "been talking to Activision again" about the Pro Skater series ahead of its 25th anniversary this September.The original Tony Hawk Pro Skater debuted on 29th September 1999, and would go on to receive four further numbered entries - alongside dozens of spin-offs - culminating in 2020's critically acclaimed (and record-breaking) remake of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 & 2.Unfortunately, plans to give Pro Skater 3 & 4 a similar remake treatment were reportedly scrapped after Activision made the decision to merge developer Vicarious Visions into Blizzard - so it could serve as a support studio for the Diablo franchise and other titles. Read more

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week we've been returning to the Dragon Age game that started it all, Origins; we've been revelling in Sony's latest PlayStation blockbuster, Astro Bot; and we've been returning to the tender times of teenage life in Until Then.What have you been playing?Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive. Read more

Last night, the industry was shocked to learn the entire staff at indie video game publisher Annapurna Interactive had resigned. This exodus followed after negotiations with Annapurna owner Megan Ellison met an impass.As Matt reported last night, these departures caused "chaos" among Annapurna Interactive's game developer partners. An Annapurna spokesperson confirmed all existing games and projects will remain with the company, while new president Hector Sanchez reportedly told developers all contracts will be honoured and that all Annapurna Interactive staff will be replaced.In the time since, many developers have taken to social media to assure their communities of the status of various projects tied to the publisher. Read more

Bungie has "resolved" a plagiarism accusation after an artist accused the studio of lifting their alternative design of an "iconic" Destiny 2 weapon.Earlier this week, Bungie revealed a physical Nerf LMTD blaster based upon Cayde-6's hand cannon, Ace of Spades.Shortly after the blaster was revealed, artist Tofu_Rabbit called out the developer on Twitter/X, stating the Nerf design was not merely "similar" to a design they did back in 2015, but essentially a carbon copy, down to the "same brush strokes and scratches/smudges". Read more

The Communications Workers of America union (CWA) has denounced Microsoft's decision to lay off an additional 650 video game workers yesterday as "extremely disappointing".In a statement, the CWA said that as one of the world's "largest and most profitable corporations", Microsoft could have achieved its goals for "long-term success without destroying the livelihoods of 650 of our colleagues".Whilst the union acknowledges that organising does not "always protect against layoffs", "collective bargaining does give workers a voice in the policies that affect them, including how layoffs are handled". Read more

Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game has been delayed.The upcoming cosy Hobbit life sim from Wētā Workshop and Private Division was initially slated for a release in the latter half of this year, across Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S."All of us here at Wētā Workshop are excited to have you join us in the Shire, a peaceful corner of J. R. R Tolkien's world. When a new Hobbit steps into Bywater for the very first time, we want that moment to be everything you're hoping for," the Tales of the Shire studio wrote last night, announcing the delay. Read more

Merciless. That's what this man is. Every enemy you encounter every identikit soldier in combat fatigues, their red, dead, bug-like masks obscuring the human faces beneath them will succumb to the same fate as you slip past, corpses hitting the ground before they even realise they're dead. Such is the life of a contract killer, I guess.I Am Your Beast is glorious. Gloriously brutal and bloody and brash and intense in that Superhot, Children of the Sun way that means I can only play in fifteen-minute bursts for fear of giving myself an aneurysm. You barely have time to breathe as blood and bullets fly past, let alone carefully plot your route, which means much of your initial playthrough will be a panicked scramble as you shoot, punch, parkour, and plunder anything and everything that gets in the way between your position and the hatch that leads you the hell away from here. With even the longest level in the entire three-hour-ish playtime clocking in under two minutes, there's no time for mistakes, either. Mistime, misthrow, or misfire anything, and it's over. This time, anyway.You fly through pulpy, comic-book shoot-em-up I Am Your Beast as Agent Alphonse Harding, an assassin born, and arguably broken, by the US military. Despite revelling in retirement and by revelling, I mean embracing his hermit era out in a frozen forest in the middle of nowhere handler Burkin asks you to do one last job one time too many. He doesn't take kindly to your refusal, and you don't take too kindly to that, either. To use his own expression, Harding "snaps", and for the next three-ish hours, you're on a one-man murder spree. Read more

Goichi "Suda51" Suda says game companies are too hung up on how their games perform on Metacritic.Talking to our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz, Suda said that whilst he will check scores when a game releases - "Sometimes a media outlet has given us zero. That makes me feel shitty - why go that far and give us zero?" - but apart from that, he "tries to avoid Metacritic"."Everybody pays too much attention to and cares too much about Metacritic scores. It's gotten to the point where there's almost a set formula if you want to get a high Metacritic score, this is how you make the game," Suda said. Read more

If you're looking for something to sink your teeth into this weekend (apologies), you could do far worse than take a look at developer Stunlock Studios' acclaimed vampire survival adventure V Rising - which is free to play on Steam for the next few days.V Rising launched back in May after two years of Steam early access development, presenting players (and their equally elegant friends) with a rich, more-ish game of isometric survival, where the goal is to assert your vampiric superiority across a gloomy, gothic open-world.It's got a bunch of neats twists on the survival formula, all playing into the whole vampire thing - including a blood-sucking mechanic that gives you specific abilities depending on the creatures you drain, and progress that involves sticking to the shadows during daylight hours (lest you sizzle to ash). Its most exciting feature, though, is that you get to building your own looming gothic castle - and who hasn't ever wished they had one of those? Read more

Just days after we learned that Flappy Bird is set to make a return later this year courtesy of the fan-made Flappy Bird Foundation, the original developer says he has "no relat[ion]" to the game.In a tweet posted to X/Twitter earlier today (15th September), original developer Doug Nguyen publicly distanced himself from the project and its leader, confirming he has played no role in the game's revival."No, I have no related [sic] with their game. I did not sell anything," Nguyen announced on X/Twitter earlier today (Sunday, 15th September). Read more

If it's freebies you're after, the Epic Games Store has another bunch for you to add to your calendar, with acclaimed photography puzzler Toem and zombie rogue-like The Last Stand: Aftermath both now confirmed to be getting the freebie treatment next week.Starting with Toem, it's a game of chill beats and quirky characters that sees players setting off on an expedition across a gloriously presented black-and-white world. Along the way, there are gentle problems to solve, all requiring creative use of your camera.Christian Donlan called Toem a "cheerful modern classic" in his Essential review, championing its "playful challenges and a warm sense of place". Read more

It seems odd, perhaps even unfair, to begin a review of a game grumbling about its technically wobbly launch. After all, the server issues that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has suffered with in its 'Gold Edition' early access period are hopefully fleeting in the context of the lifespan of the game, and nobody complains about the fact that it took Michelangelo a little longer than expected to get the Sistine Chapel right, right?The problem is that not mentioning it in the bit of the review you read before getting distracted by something on the sidebar would underplay just how spectacularly badly it's all gone. Even with only the relatively modest population of Gold Edition purchasers, the servers crumbled faster than a dunked Digestive. Often, you'd be held at the login screen, unable to start the game at all. If you were lucky enough to hit the tarmac on Hong Kong island, you might still be unable to start a race, even against AI-controlled opposition, because of a mandatory check in with the servers before every event. Worse still, you might actually finish a race and still lose that progress as the game pings the server again before the results screen. I found myself having to play the game exclusively between the hours of six and nine in the morning to ensure a reliable connection, squinting at apexes through bleary, tired eyes. And, just to reiterate, this all occurred before the floods of new players arrived on the game's official launch day.The other reason it bears mentioning early on in this review is that, even though the always-online service has become slightly more stable, it feels instinctively unnecessary. The game is perfectly capable of populating its races with AI cars rather than its preference of seamlessly adding other real world players, so why make the check for those players mandatory? What's more, unlike many games, including genre stable-mate The Crew, Test Drive Unlimited isn't hell bent on getting you to spend real money to top up your in-game balance, so it's not like there's a delicate real-to-pretend economy to doggedly police via a constant online connection. The lack of microtransactions should be something to be celebrated, but we've inherited a good chunk of the inconvenience that usually accompanies them. In fact the most damning thing is the existence of the original Test Drive Unlimited, which managed to handle the blend of online and online play far more elegantly nearly two decades ago in 2006. Read more

Close your eyes. It's an exercise we've all tried: navigating through touch, memory, and educated guesses. Invariably, we panic and open them immediately or run into something we were sure wasn't there. You can do the same in a video game and have a similar experience of playing chicken with obstacles, both real and imagined, in your path. Though that is the closest many sighted players will come to the realities of blind and visually impaired gamers.A clutch of games exist, however, in which this is not the case. It's not a crowded field, but it received a new entry last month in Periphery Synthetic. A nonviolent, undemanding space exploration designed as, according to its developer shiftBacktick, "primarily an auditory experience to be playable without seeing the screen."It's a meditative experience that sees the player roaming over vast plains in search of materials to visit other planets. All of which is represented visually by a succession of squares and audibly through the combination of two chords and their harmonics and inversions, to create a soundscape of over 100 simultaneous and unique sounds that make the game playable by sound alone. Read more

The first time I crawled into a vent in Star Wars Outlaws and the camera changed from third to first-person, I thought to myself, "why can't the whole game be like this?". The level of detail to the scenery, props and the many alien life forms that inhabit the games' multiple planets is incredibly impressive and it makes the areas you explore feel alive and, most importantly, in-keeping with the Star Wars universe. Even though I enjoyed looking it at all from my third-person perch above Kay Vess' shoulder, I was dying to inspect the assets in closer detail. It's such a well built world that I wanted to be in it, rather than observe it. While I haven't been able to manage that officially as, sadly, it's not an option in Ubisoft's game, that's exactly what I was able to do for this week's VR Corner thanks to a new update to Luke Ross' REAL VR mod.As you'll be able to see in the video, Luke's mod for Star Wars Outlaws is a little different to others that I've featured because this one has a first-person camera toggle. The game can also be played in third-person VR and in fact, parts of it still are. During climbing sections, stealth takedowns and the occasional in-game cutscene, the camera will pull back to show Kay Vess doing her thing, before pushing back in again so you can view the world through her eyes once more. Read more

Marking the game's biggest upgrade since its launch, Crytek's online FPS, Hunt: Showdown 1896 is retooled and even retitled for today's hardware. Fundamentally the game migrates to CryEngine 5.11, complete with a suite of visual upgrades, DirectX 12 support, and most crucially, a release for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S. At last, this means that consoles receive real time lighting via SVOGI - Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination - in an enhanced form that allows both diffuse lighting and a simulation of light across rougher, specular materials. There's improved hair rendering, noticeably in the game's loadout menu. We have support for upscaling technologies like AMD's FSR and Nvidia's DLSS - where FSR2 in particular is used on consoles. Plus, there's a 60 frames per second target this time, double that of the 30fps on all last-gen PS4 and Xbox One machines. So the questions here are simple: what's the state of this latest CryEngine effort on today's best consoles? How do the three versions compare? And how successfully does each hit a stable 60fps?In terms of the basics, PS5 and Series console owners get a free upgrade much like PC and this keeps all progress from last-gen machines. Much of its winning PvPvE design stays intact as well. As a bounty hunter, you're unleashed in an alternate USA with a supernatural twist. From Louisiana's bayou to the rocky mountains of Colorado, eldritch horrors fill out a large, desolate landscape; each mine, mill and pit teeming with zombies and giant spiders. The goal? To track down your target monster, defeat it, and collect a bounty token from its corpse - all while avoiding other online clans of up to three players.Hunt: Showdown effectively uses CryEngine to sculpt a photorealistic landscape, built on accurately lit materials - while its horror aspect adds genuine tension as you scan for clues, or avoid enemy players. It's earned something of a cult following for good reason. Playing today, I will admit there are rough spots on consoles though: texture and enemy pop-in are still noticeable. Also, the brightness level on PS5 is much too dark by default, and did need adjusting to be able to see anything at night. It has a few visual bugs in AI pathfinding as well, but the high points of CryEngine still shine through overall. Read more

Diablo 4 has reportedly earned Blizzard around $150 million from in-game microtransactions since it released in June 2023.That's according to senior product manager, Harrison Froeschke, who stated in a since-nuked LinkedIn account that they had led the "monetisation strategy of the store cosmetics, pricing, bundle offers, personalised discounts, and roadmap planning which have driven over $150m [microtransaction] lifetime revenue".Froeschke's LinkedIn account has now been removed from public view, but not before Game Pressure managed to snap a screenshot purportedly taken from Froeschke's account, which also alleges the product manager has overseen game sales "resulting in over $1bn total lifetime revenue". Read more

Nearly a decade after its first announcement, Ubisoft's Watch Dogs movie has finally finished filming.The commencement of filming back in July was revealed with a set photo with the caption: "Lights_Camera_Action.exe".The end was celebrated in a similar way, only this time the set photo was accompanied by the text: "run film_wrapped.exe(#watchdogsmovie.mp4) >Filming complete!" Read more

Palworld developer Pocketpair says it is "not changing [Palworld's] business model", assuring players it will "remain buy-to-play and not free-to-play or games-as-a-service".The company was forced to clarify its position after a recently-published interview led some players to believe the team was considering adopting a live service model."We are not changing our game's business model, it will remain buy-to-play and not f2p or GaaS," the company said in a statement posted to X/Twitter. Read more