May 2022

A week after the announcement of the Genshin Impact 2.7’s delay, HoYoverse has now announced free rewards as compensation. In an official blog post, the developers confirmed that players would be rewarded with 400 Primogems, Fragile Resin, 7 Hero Wit, 16 Mystic Enhancement Ore, and 120,000 Mora every week.

The in-game items will be delivered on May 11, and players can collect the free rewards from their in-game mail section every Wednesday at 04:00 (Server Time). In case the period between the 2.7 Version update and the previous weekly compensation for the delayed update is less than a week, the final weekly compensation will be adjusted accordingly.

However, it’s worth noting that the mail will expire after 30 days, so be sure to claim the items before they get expired or at the end of Version 2.6. Moreover, travelers who have reached Adventure Rank 5 or above by May 11 are only eligible for this reward.

So far, the official release date of the Genshin Impact 2.7 update has still not been revealed. While we all wait for more info, you can catch up on all the confirmed details we have for the two new characters, Yelan and Kuki Shinobu, who will be joining the roster in the next update.

Frontier Foundry and KeokeN Interactive released the first developer diary video about the recently-revealed Deliver Us The Moon sequel Deliver Us Mars.

The video features the game’s developers as they talk about elements like story and music, on top of showing and explaining what we can expect in terms of gameplay.

Interestingly, the heroine of the game is fully voiced, unlike the previous game, and KeokeN Interactive is aiming to deliver a “huge jump in narrative presentation” with motion-captured performances.

Another very interesting aspect is the launch sequel, which the developers describe as “the coolest” we’ve seen in games.

You can watch it below.

Deliver Us Mars is “coming soon” with no release window on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

It has been over two decades since the release of the GameCube, and it’s no secret that it wasn’t Nintendo’s best-selling system. In its seven years of production, it managed to sell just under 22 million units worldwide, making it the company’s second worst-selling home console behind the Wii U.

Despite this, the GameCube was a beloved console to many. From series debuts like Luigi’s Mansion and Metroid Prime to continuations of popular franchises like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Super Smash Bros. Melee, there were plenty of gems for all types of players.

The games that came out during this era have seemed to grow in popularity, especially since many of them saw re-releases over time. And because the console didn’t sell remarkably well, many of the games have become scarce over time.

We’ve put together a list of the ten rarest GameCube games on the market right now that would cost you an arm and a leg and probably a kidney to buy. If you own any of these games, hold onto them tight, or consider selling them for a pretty penny.

All of the estimated prices are taken from the PriceCharting website in June 2023 and reflect the CIB (Complete In Box) prices of recently sold listings.

According to a recent operations report from the development studio People Can Fly, the online loot shooter Outriders didn’t make any profit by the end of 2021.

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Editor's Note: The views of the author of this piece do not reflect the views of the entire Game Informer staff. 

Build-A-Bear has revealed that you can now buy a plush of Grookey, the best Generation 8 Pokémon starter (easily and undeniably), in a new online exclusive bundle. 

This news comes by way of the official Build-A-Bear website, which reveals Grookey is now available to ship in the U.S. and U.K., as reported by NintendoLife. The bundle, which will cost you $65, includes a Grookey plush, of course, with a sound chip that includes the Pokémon’s cry, a matching “Leaf Shirt,” and a “Leaf Cape.” It’s basically a Grookey plush with a Hawaiian shirt on, and it looks awesome. 

Acclaimed photography adventure Umurangi Generation is making its way to Xbox consoles this month by way of its Special Edition.

The game first launched for PC in May 2020, and it puts you in the boots of a courier and photographer living in a futuristic city facing a world-ending crisis. As everything you know begins to fall apart, you’ll capture photos of these final moments to complete objectives and unfold the narrative. Thanks to various lenses, filters, and effects, you're allowed a degree of artistic freedom in how the final images turn out. The game has received critical praise, and we recently included it as one of the most intriguing photography games worth looking at. 

What makes this version special? It contains the base game and its Marco story DLC, additional modes, plus every quality-of-life update since launch. 

Umurangi Generation Special Edition comes to Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One on May 17 and costs $24.99. It will also be available on Xbox Game Pass.

In theory I'm rather partial to slash-em-up crowd fighting games, but I've never got on with the big names in the genre. Your Devil May Cries and your God Of Warses are the obvious reference points for describing Ultra Age, but it doesn't really feel like them, and I don't think it's trying to either.

The basic idea is that you're stranded on a jungle planet full of industrial ruins, and have to fight through robots and huge animals in small groups, switching between several (kinda samey) swords as needed. It's not really doing anything spectacular, but it's enough of its own thing to feel like more than just a budget God Of Cries.

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The first (and maybe last) season of Moon Knight is now in the books after six episodes of Egyptian deity hijinx. It had a different overall feel from past MCU since it contained nearly no references to past films or TV shows. Rather, the ways that writer Jeremy Slater and Director Mohamed Diab fit Moon Knight into the MCU were more subtle than the lingo we’re accustomed to like ‘the blip’.

Heads up before you go any further: there will be many spoilers for the full season of Moon Knight down below. There’s really no way to get into the specifics of this series and its place in the MCU without mentioning some key points in the series. From here on, any part of any episode is fair game.

Today Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida made an appearance during a livestream dedicated to NieR Re[In]Carnation and provided a small update on the upcoming game.

Thanks to a translation by Twitter user Audrey verified and integrated by yours truly, we learn that development is making good progress toward completion and time is now being dedicated to debugging and polishing.

On top of that, while there has been a delay in the reveal due to various circumstances, a new trailer is ready and should be released soon.

At the end of last year, we heard that the next big announcement should come in the spring, but considering Yoshida-san’s words, it wouldn’t be out of the question to expect the reveal at the Summer Game Fest showcase in June. Of course, this is just my interpretation, so you should take it with the traditional grain of salt.

Following comments last week that Final Fantasy 16 was in the "final stages" of development, producer Naoki Yoshida has offered a further progress update, confirming, among other things, that a new trailer for the long-awaited JRPG is expected to release soon.

Previously, Yoshida had told Uniqlo's UT magazine - where he was featured to promote a new Final Fantasy t-shirt line - that Final Fantasy 16 was "in the final stages of development" and that the team hoped to deliver a "comprehensive" experience "full of story and gameplay".

In new comments made during a Nier Reincarnation and Final Fantasy 14 crossover livestream, as translated by Twitch streamer Audrey (thanks Polygon), Yoshida joked to interviewer and Nier producer Yosuke Saito that Square Enix's American PR team "got mad" at him following the Uniqlo comments. Undeterred though, Yoshida was willing to speak a little further on Final Fantasy 16's progress, saying the game is "greatly coming together" but that he wants the development team to spend more time on polishing the experience.

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Nvidia, producer of graphics cards since prehistoric times, has just been fined $5.5 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to divulge to investors how much of its 2017-18 revenue came about from crypto-miners.

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Halo Infinite’s second season, which was supposed to be a much-needed phoenix down, is off to a rocky start. Three days after its rollout, the developer has acknowledged its pitfalls, promising to “review options.” Also: Every player is getting free stuff.

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Those excited to get their hands on the retro-flavored action RPG Souldiers will have to wait a few more weeks.  

Developer Retro Forge announced that Souldiers will miss its May 19 launch and now arrives on June 2. The delay gives the team additional time to iron out some lingering technical kinks, with creative director Alberto Hernández writing in a press release: 

Souldiers is perhaps best described as a 16-bit amalgamation of Metroid exploration, RPG progression, and Souls-like combat. As either a scout, caster, or archer, you’ll battle across a fantastical land that sits on the border between life and death. You can watch the original announcement trailer here to see it in action. 

You can play Souldiers on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. 

Evil Dead: The Game is only about a week away from launch, and if rewatching all things Evil Dead hasn't put you in the mood to blast apart Deadites with friends, the title has a new original song to treat your ears to. 

The Statik Selektah produced track is titled “Come Get Some” and features the vocal talents of Method Man along with PXWER and iNTeLL. In a nice touch, the beat samples Joseph LoDuca's original Evil Dead score. The song will presumably appear somewhere in-game, but you can listen to it now in the video below or seek it out on your streaming app of choice, including Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

Evil Dead: The Game is our cover game for the month of May. The asymmetrical multiplayer title pits four players in the roles of Ash Williams and his allies against one player-controlled demon. It launches May 13 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Be sure to catch up on a month’s worth of exclusive features on the game by visiting our cover story hub below. 

Today third-party developers had plenty of news and releases to share about add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

We start with another look at the Honda Jet by Marwan Gharib, with plenty of images posted on FlightFX’s discord server.

We already know that the aircraft will be priced at $24.99 on both PC and Xbox.

Ever since Crunchyroll and Funimation officially unified, anime fans have been treated to an abundance of new subbed and dubbed titles that have been arriving on the platform. Today, Crunchyroll revealed its full catalog of titles that are coming to it this month.

Below is the full calendar of anime that will be new to Crunchyroll:

May 3

• Shironeko Project ZERO Chronicle
• Kemono Michi: Rise Up

May 5

• RE-MAIN

May 17

• Trigun
• Link Click
• Link Click Special Shorts
• Black Lagoon (Seasons 1-2)
• Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Blood Trail (OVAs 1-5)
• Valkyrie Drive – Mermaid
• Initial D Second Stage
• Initial D Third Stage
• Nekopara

May 24

• Sonny Boy
• Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside
• DECA-DENCE
• The Gymnastics Samurai
• Heaven’s Lost Property (Seasons 1-2)

Alongside these new series, a full slate of new dubbed content are also making its way onto Crunchyroll:

May 3

• Shironeko Project ZERO Chronicle
• Kemono Michi: Rise Up
• 3,2,1…RUMBLE!

May 5

• RE-MAIN (MAPPA)

May 10

• Space Dandy (Seasons 1-2)
• Initial D First Stage
• Grimgar, Ashes and Illusions
• Lord Marksman and Vanadis

May 17

Today Square Enix announced a Final Fantasy XIV crossover coming to its popular mobile game NieR: Re[in]carnation.

The crossover will turn Rion into a White Mage, 063y into a Dark Knight, and Noelle into a Dragoon, and it’ll have its own quest that those who have played Final Fantasy XIV’s expansion Shadowbringers will certainly find familiar.

The trailer, which you can enjoy below alongside a look at the gameplay, also showcases a glimpse of a certain beloved antagonist, so I have a feeling many Final Fantasy XIV fans will be absolutely on board with this.

The collaboration will launch on the Japanese version of the game on May 10. At the moment, the date for the western version has not been announced, but it’ll most likely come down the line.

Despite having already cancelled one attempt at turning EVE Online into an FPS, developer CCP's enthusiasm for the project apparently remains strong: it's now confirmed that, two years after Project Nova officially got the chop, work on a new FPS continues at its London Studio.

EVE Online FPS Project Nova was initially unveiled in 2016 as a spiritual successor to CCP's long-defunct free-to-play PS3 shooter Dust 514. Almost two years went by with ne'er a peep on the project, but then October 2018 finally brought a more extensive reveal. Unexpectedly, though, just a month later, CCP announced its intention to "return to the drawing board" with Project Nova, and 18 months after that, the game was officially no more.

Despite that rollercoaster ride, CCP said it remained committed to releasing an EVE Online FPS and that work on a new sci-fi shooter, with expanded scope, would continue at its London studio. That was more than two years ago, though, leading many to assume that the project had also run its a course.

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During the keynote of this weekend’s EVE Fanfest convention in Reykjavik, Iceland, EVE Online creative director Bergur Finnbogason previewed an upcoming collaboration between the spacefaring MMO and Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet program in front of a crowd of dedicated fans. They ate it up.

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After two weeks of great episodes, the Halo series takes a huge step back during "Inheritance," the seventh episode of the Paramount Plus episodic adventure. Join us on The Game Informer Show as we break down and spoil the highs and lows of Kwan and Soren's journey and quickly touch on our thoughts on last week's episode, as well.

The regular crew of Alex Stadnik, Brian Shea, and Andrew Reiner are all back and, unfortunately, have bad news to deliver to fans of Master Chief, Cortana, and Dr. Halsey. "Inheritance" features none of those characters or the exciting storyline on Reach with the discovery of the actual Halo ring. Instead, we head back to Madrigal and the ongoing adventures of the reformed Spartan and his rebellious counterpart. 

After questionably getting out of her car and walking straight into a sand storm, Kwan meets the mysterious desert mystics that lead her to a revelation about what her family's legacy entails. While Kwan is making her discoveries, Soren is back home, gloating about past glories while kind of answering how he got off the planet in the first place. Eventually, our heroes reunite and face off against Vinsher in a fight for control of the planet. 

This week on All Things Nintendo, Brian sits down with former Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aimé. The two dig into his time at Nintendo, stories from his interactions with the legends of the company, and his new book Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo. 

If you'd like to follow the people from this episode on Twitter, hit the following links: Brian Shea (@brianpshea), Reggie Fils-Aimé (@Reggie)

The All Things Nintendo podcast is a weekly show where we can celebrate, discuss, and break down all the latest games, news, and announcements from the industry's most recognizable name. Each week, Brian is joined by different guests to talk about what's happening in the world of Nintendo. Along the way, they'll share personal stories, uncover hidden gems in the eShop, and even look back on the classics we all grew up with. A new episode hits every Friday!

Be sure to subscribe to All Things Nintendo on your favorite podcast platform. The show is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

On April 25, Overwatch League (OWL) graphic designer Zenofy took to Twitter, inadvertently recounting the drawn-out resurgence of Overwatch 2 and the severe recession of Overwatch 1 with three sobering sentences:

906 Days since the announcement.

767 Days since the last new hero.

1103 Days since the last new map.

Eve Online, the space MMO that’s so laden with consequence it’s frightening, is introducing multi-year story arcs to pull its NPC factions into the heart of the game. The finale of developer CCP’s first planned arc will launch before the end of 2022. The idea is to let capsuleers build meaningful bonds with their home empires by fighting for them in New Eden’s living universe - which has always been shaped by players, not NPCs.

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission has fined Nvidia $5.5m USD for failing to properly disclose the impact of cryptomining on revenue the company earned from the sale of its gaming GPUs - a failure the SEC says "deprived investors of critical information [needed] to evaluate the company’s business in a key market".

Announcing the results of its investigation, which specifically relates to Nvidia's actions during its fiscal year 2018, the SEC claimed that while the tech company had reported material growth in revenue within its gaming business at the time, it had failed to reveal to investors that - based on its own information - its gaming sales were driven in significant part by cryptomining.

Why's that important? As the SEC puts it, "These significant earnings and cash flow fluctuations related to a volatile business for investors to ascertain the likelihood that past performance was indicative of future performance."

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Looking online it seems there have been approximately 64,534 Star Wars games released since the first film hit theaters in the ‘70s. (Editor’s note: That’s incorrect.) But, while many of them are good, some are really, really good. These are the kind of games that are so great that even non-Star Wars fans can’t deny…

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Something bad is happening over in the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the year-old NFT collection owned by blockchain tech firm Yuga Labs. Bad things seem to happen almost daily in the NFT sphere and the cryptocurrency community at large, which are both unfortunately frequent targets of multimillion-dollar hacking initiatives…

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If you’ve visited Twitch lately, you may have noticed that the most-popular “Just Chatting” category and the front page have been dominated by one thing: the defamation trial between actors Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. What started on April 11 as an in-court battle recounting a toxic relationship filled with abuse and…

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Here in Minnesota, where many of the Game Informer staff is based, the weather is beginning to warm up. No more cold days and even colder nights, and, most importantly, no more snow! We've had quite the week at work, with Star Wars day bringing the force on Tuesday, Jay Guisao reviewed Switch Sports (give it a read here), and the biggest news of the week: Square Enix is selling off most of its western studios to the ever-growing Embracer Group. After this whirlwind of a week, we're ready to close our laptops and enjoy the sunshine and warm temperatures, or shimmy into a dark, cool movie theater and see what horrors lie in the Marvel multiverse. 

Here's what the GI staff has planned for the coming weekend:

Alex Stadnik – I was so ready to come in hot and talk all this mess about how I'm not playing games this weekend because of how nice it is in Minneapolis. But then my buddy Joe "King" Iverson put me on to this little game called Rogue Legacy 2. I've dedicated my nights to it since and plan to continue that trend into the wee hours of the weekend. Outside of that, I'll probably find a Dr. Strange showtime, and I'll be celebrating my mom and grandma on Sunday. Hot take: Mom's are pretty great.

Right, this is a bit of a weird one - a potential misprice at Currys sees two Halo Infinite branded peripherals made by Razer going incredibly cheap. Right now, you can pick up a full-size mechanical keyboard with Halo branding for £32 (was £120!) or a high-end gaming mouse with Halo branding for £20 (was £70).

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Today you can get the beginnings of a great mid-range gaming PC at Newegg. The American e-tailer is offering two Asus components for $460 today: an RTX 3060 graphics card and a ROG Strix 750W 80+ Gold PSU. That's a $100 discount compared to buying both components separately, and cheaper than you'll find most RTX 3060 graphics cards on Amazon right now.

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Today highly-praised third-party developer PMDG finally announced the release date of what’s arguably the most-anticipated aircraft add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the Boeing 737.

The aircraft will release on Monday, May 9, which is only a couple of days away.

If you’d like to know how much it’ll cost, that information is still pending, but we do know that each major version will be sold separately with the -700 being the first (including the passenger variant, the cargo variant, and the Boeing Business Jet variant), followed by the -600, the -800, and the -900 in this specific order, with approximately six weeks planned between releases.

Fo the moment, the release will be only for PC, but a launch on the official Microsoft Flight Simulator marketplace and for Xbox is planned. At the moment we don’t know when that’ll happen, as Microsoft needs to solve a relevant issue preventing some advanced aircraft (like PMDG’s own Douglas DC-6) from working on the console version of the simulator.

The announcement was made with the following video, in which PMDG CEO Robert Randazzo also speaks about what we can expect from the aircraft.

Microtransactions in games like Grand Theft Auto Online have become big business for video game publishers. And it’s likely this won’t be changing anytime soon. New details spotted in a recent contract extension for Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick explain that the CEO will earn a big bonus if more players spend more…

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