May 2023

Yoshitaka Amano, an artist well known for his contributions to the Final Fantasy series designed a skin for Fortnite. Crossheart is a female character in a red latex dress who had previously been shown off walking and driving around the MEGA City map. Unlike other Fortnite collaborations with other video game creators, Crossheart is an original creation for Epic Games. It is available in the Amano’s Heart Bundle.

Here's a closer look at the Yoshitaka Amano Fortnite skin.
https://twitter.com/FortniteGame/status/1660269279890096128

As well as the new skin, the Amano’s Heart Bundle contains:

• Backpack: "Holo-Glow"
• Harvesting Tool: "Breakheart Blade"
• Glider: "Swoonsail"
• Wrap: "Blushing Red"

There is also an uncommon loading screen designed by Amano. The bundle is available now from the Shop for 1,800 V-Bucks.

Yoshitaka Amano is best known for his work with Square Enix throughout the Final Fantasy series. He worked as a character designer for many of the early games, with his artwork most prominently appearing on the Japanese cover of Final Fantasy VI. His work can also be seen in the logo illustrations for every main game, including the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI. He also worked on other series and was the illustrator on the Vampire Hunter D manga franchise.

Nintendo released more details about what Splatoon 3 players can expect in the upcoming Sizzle Season. This included two more weapons added to Ammo Knights, as well as a video showing them. There's also another Splatoon 3 video that showed the gear that can be obtained through the catalog.

The new weapons added with Splatoon 3’s Sizzle Season include the H-3 Nozzlenose D and the Rapid Blaster Pro Deco. The H-3 Nozzlenose D is a new variant of the H-3 Nozzlenose shooter, with a Splash Wall sub weapon and a Big Bubbler special. The Rapid Blaster Pro Deco is a variant of the Rapid Blaster with an Angle Shooter sub weapon and a Killer Wail 5.1 special. Previous confirmed weapons for Sizzle Season include the Painbrush and S-BLAST ’92.

https://twitter.com/SplatoonNA/status/1660631753541730305

As always new gear can be unlocked with the Sizzle Season catalog. Here’s what Splatoon 3 players can unlock this season:

A documentary about Hideo Kojima will be screened as part of the Tribeca Festival. Hideo Kojima – Connecting Worlds examines Kojima’s creative process and the launch of Kojima Productions as an independent studio. The screening will also be accompanied by an extended Q&A session with Kojima himself. The screening is set to take place on June 17, 2023 at the Indeed Theater at Spring Studios in New York City.

The documentary will feature appearances from several Kojima collaborators, many of whom worked with him on Death Stranding. These include movie directors Guillermo del Toro and Nicholas Winding Refn, actor Norman Reedus, and synth-pop band Chvrches. There are also appearances from Mad Max director George Miller, indie musician Grimes, and music video director Woodkid. The documentary was directed by Glen Milner.

Tribeca Festival is a film festival held annually in New York City. Since 2021, it has included a category dedicated to video games, which is usually included on the schedule for Summer Games Fest. The Hideo Kojima documentary will be one of this year’s video game events, including a talk on The Expanse: A Telltale Series and a games selection including Goodbye Volcano High and Stray Gods.

Hideo Kojima – Connecting Worlds will debut at the Tribeca Festival on June 17, 2023. Death Stranding is out now for PS4, PS5 and PC, with a sequel on the way.

Ikumi Nakamura, founder of game development studio Unseen and E3 conference fan-favorite, has designed three new skins for the popular asymmetrical survival horror game Dead by Daylight. The collaboration is part of a series of announcements developers made during the game’s Year 7 Anniversary Broadcast last week,…

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Much like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild before it, Tears of the Kingdom lets you wield Link’s iconic Master Sword. It’s not necessarily the most powerful thing you can swing at an enemy, but it does repair itself rather than breaking like most weapons in the game. While it’s a good tool to have and you won’t…

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Since The Legend of Zelda’s inception, Link and the Hylian princess have long been by each other’s side. That relationship has been considered platonic, with Link serving as Zelda’s knight in a green tunic. Tears of the Kingdom appears to change their relationship status by having Zelda move her stuff into Link’s…

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Final Fantasy XVI is due out on June 22, 2023 on PlayStation 5, following what could perhaps be best described as an identity crisis for the long-running RPG series. Promising a radically different tone for both storytelling and combat, FFXVI is ready to shake things up and, potentially, make a name for itself as a…

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Summer Game Fest is almost upon us, kicking off with a live showcase before splintering into a "season" of disparate publisher events in the absence of E3. But first that showcase, which is now confirmed to be two hours in length, and featuring at least a couple of "pretty big" things.

Summer Game Fest gets underway on 8th June, with a live show consisting of premieres, gameplay demos, and announcements. That's pretty much as far as details went in previous teases, but now, in an interview on the Epic Games Store, show host and producer Geoff Keighley has now shared a little more about what to expect from the format.

Alongside its now confirmed two-hour duration, Keighley suggests Summer Game Fest live will be a little more laidback compared to the bombastic Game Awards, offering a "chance to talk to the developers and showcase games and give a little bit more context around games". While the exact line-up still appears to be in flux, Keighley does say he expects the Summer Game Fest live show to feature three or four things that are "pretty big for this audience."

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The Epic Games Store Mega Sale is currently going on, offering major deals on a ton of big PC games. Plus some free ones. And an endless supply of 25 percent off coupons on top of existing sales for Cyberpunk 2077, Returnal, and Far Cry 6.

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Nintendo isn’t immune from the backlash against loot boxes, and now a recently filed lawsuit claims the video game company used “dark patterns” to trick younger players into spending money on Mario Kart Tour’s “immoral” microtransactions.

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An all-women Apex Legends tournament with a $100,000 cash prize was steeped in controversy last week when it disqualified a team with a transgender player after previously confirming they could participate in the competition.

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Right now you can pick up a great deal on a powerful RTX 4070 Ti gaming PC over at CCL, equipped with a Core i5 12400F processor, 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM, an MSI Pro B660M-E motherboard and 1TB Kingston NV2 NVMe SSD - all for £1260. That's an awesome spec for gaming at 1080p, 1440p and even 4K - such is the power of this mighty GPU!

To get this price, plus two freebies - a copy of Diablo 4 (£60) and a gaming headset (£30) - select the "No OS" option and use code GAMER40 at the checkout.

You can of course opt to get Windows preinstalled if you prefer, but you can also use a USB stick and any unused Windows keys you've already got, including those from previous versions of Windows, to install the OS yourself. And, as the Steam Deck proves, gaming on Linux is getting pretty damn good - and of course, Linux is completely free (as in beer and as in speech).

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China's antitrust regulator has approved Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The decision follows the EU's approval of the deal last week.

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For the last six years, my Skyrim wood elf has been stuck in some godforsaken cave in goodness knows what corner of Tamriel. I don't remember why they were there, or what goal they were trying to achieve. It was just 'one of those caves' that looked cool and interesting when I came across it and I thought, 'Yeah, all right, let's have a go then, shall we?' But while other Skyrim caves I'd come across could be easily polished off in an office lunch-time - as that was often how I played Skyrim back then - this one was different somehow. It was so large and twisty, so infinitely befuddling, that I seemed to be trapped down there forever. Sure, I could have probably turned back, but I'd been down there for ages, and felt like I'd come too far to simply not see it all through to the bitter end. But the end never came, and I eventually abandoned my save as a result, whisked off by the prospect of newer, more exciting games that didn't involve trying to figure out how to escape its narrow, bioluminescent hellscape.

Amid records losses and a raft of cancelled games, Ubisoft is reportedly aiming to release Massive Entertainment's long-awaited open-world Star Wars game in "early 2024".

Announced back in 2021, little is known about The Division developer Massive Entertainment's open-world Star Wars game, beyond the fact it's being helmed by The Division 2 director Julian Gerighty and will utilise the studio's Snowdrop engine.

With so little information currently out in the wild, many had assumed Massive's Star Wars project was still some considerable way off, but Kotaku is now reporting the title is, in fact, the mysterious "another large game" Ubisoft has previously confirmed to be launching during its 2023-24 fiscal year, with the publisher said to be targeting an "early 2024" launch.

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Over the weekend a small controversy erupted in board game circles when rumours began circulating that Quackalope, one of the scene’s more popular YouTube review channels, had supposedly ‘blackmailed’ the publisher of a game they had been covering over a series of videos.

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Final Fantasy XVI is the next mainline entry in the long-running RPG series and it seems to be going for a radically different tone compared to past entries. We definitely got some Game of Thrones vibes from past trailers. And in retrospect, that’s not surprising, as the developers working on the game were “required”…

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In today's Forza Horizon 5 livestream, developers Playground Games offered details of the open-world racer's free "Explore The Horizon" update. It'll launch tomorrow and includes six new cars, new photo mode features, and new pathfinder challenges.

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Inkbound is a co-op turn-based roguelike, a jumble of genres I've seen so many times in the past decade they no longer conjure any feelings for me. It's also from the developers of Monster Train, however, the uncommonly good card game about stopping an onslaught aboard a multi-storey train to hell. That pedigree means it's worth noting that Inkbound is now in early access.

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Capcom announced that a new line of Hololive merchandise featuring VTuber Sakamata Chloe will appear as prizes in the mobile game Capcom Net Catcher. The collaboration starts on May 26, 2023 and ends on June 8, 2023. The expected shipping date for the merchandise is late August and early September 2023. The lineup includes Sakamata Chloe acrylic stand keychains, mousepads, tapestries, and cushions with newly drawn illustrations designed by Japanese artists Hachi Mishima and Negi Rukawa.

The new Capcom x Hololive Sakamata Chloe merchandise will appear on Capcom’s mobile game Capcom Net Catcher, a service that allows users to play arcade crane games and win prizes from their mobile devices. Each item in the collaboration will be available in two variants, for a total of eight items. The goods will roll out daily as crane game prizes, starting with the acrylic stand keychains on May 26, 2023. Afterwards, the mousepad will appear on May 27, with the tapestries and cushions appearing on May 28 and 29 respectively.

You can take a better look at the new Capcom x Hololive Sakamata Chloe merchandise in the gallery below.

[gallery columns="4" ids="964442,964441,964440,964439" link="file"]

In other Hololive news, music group UMISEA recently released a new song titled “UMISEA no SACHIHAPPY!” Sakamata Chloe is one of the members who sings on the track.

Benjamin Ee is an artist from Melbourne, Australia who is currently art director at Summerfall Studios, the team working on Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical.

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It hasn’t been the best week at Blizzard, so let’s check in and see how things are going with something other than Overwatch 2 like...ah, the company’s management sending out emails about how AI tools are going to be help design character outfits and “generate concept art”. Lovely.

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Insomniac has dismissed growing reports its upcoming Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will feature co-op, confirming it's an "epic single-player adventure".

Some publications began reporting potential co-op support in Spider-Man 2 earlier this week after fans unearthed comments made by Miles Morales voice actor Nadji Jeter last September. When asked if Spider-Man 2 would feature co-op during a SacAnime Summer 2022 Q&A, Jeter replied, "I don't know if it's been announced or not, but I think so."

Co-op speculation has followed Spider-Man 2 ever since Insomniac announced Peter Parker and Miles Morales would both play a prominent role in the sequel, but the studio has now shot down co-op chatter once and for all. After a fan tweeted to ask if co-op was on the cards, it replied wrote, "Nope! It is an epic single-player adventure!".

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Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release: July 14, 2023
Rating: Mature

Exoprimal’s time-traveling, dinosaur-blasting premise firmly positions it as one of the strangest multiplayer shooters on the horizon. Players have gotten to sample its insanity in a previous open beta, but a recent hands-on preview gave me a chance to peek into the game’s storytelling structure and customization. 

NetEase Games has announced the founding of a new game studio based in Canada. The studio is headed up by Sean Crooks, a former Ubisoft producer with credits ranging from Just Dance and Driver to the Watch Dogs franchise. Other members of the team include developers who have worked on series like Splinter Cell, Army of Two, Far Cry, and Child of Light.

The team hopes its first project will kickstart a new franchise. The title is an open-world, story-driven action/adventure title that draws inspiration from '80s action and horror films. Bad Brain is using Unreal Engine 5 to develop its debut title, which will launch across multiple platforms.

"I'm honored to be leading this talented team of developers in Canada," Crooks said in a press release. "We're all passionate about creating memorable and meaningful experiences. NetEase Games has given us a warm welcome, with an abundance of support and creative freedom to allow us to do what we do best. Our first game is a passion project that gives us the opportunity to truly free our brains."

Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has said he thinks "Maybe it's time we removed the numbers" from Final Fantasy games. In an interview with GQ, he talked about the baggage that inevitably comes with having a 35-year-old series with soon to be 16 numbered mainline games in it (not including the sequels and spin-offs, I might add), and the confusion it continues to create with new players. "Every numbered title we release in the series, we have to go into it like, 'It's OK, you don't have to play the rest of them,'" he said, and removing them is "something that I've discussed with the higher-ups". It's an understandable problem, for sure, although I think I'd be quite sad to see the numerals go entirely. As long as they don't pull a Mortal Kombat and go back to 1, though, we're good.

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I bark and the humans obey, jumping, turning, floating into the great unknown. I am leading them toward something good, the orbs tell me. Something that grows stronger with every trial this endless parade of humanity completes.

Humanity is a VR-optional flowy puzzle platformer in which you, an ethereal shiba inu made of pure light, lead mindless hoards of “the people” into the light because a glowing orb told you to make it happen. Oh, and don’t worry if most of them end up marching off a ledge into the endless void below–those physical bodies are mere constructs and their minds will return to follow you again.

A̷̰͙̙͚͓̱̗n̮̲̣d̹͖͚̠ ̜̹a͏͇̱͙͈g͔̘͍̟a͍i̲͖̥̺͓n͘.̮̮͕̼̰ Ą͠͡nḑ̷҉ ̀͘à̧̛g̢͢ai̸͏n̡̛.̨͜͜

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Last july I was given the opportunity to play an early beta for Exoprimal, Capcom’s upcoming multiplayer shooter that pits you and a bunch of your mech suit-wearing buddies against unstoppable raptor hordes. In the nine months since I took command of a T-Rex and did a sick backflip, my life has not known peace. “I’m really excited to play Exoprimal” I’ll say to colleagues, unprompted, in important meetings unrelated to anything prehistoric in nature. “From what I've played, it blends PvE and PvP gameplay into a single multiplayer mode that feels very unique and hugely entertaining”. My tax return was voided because I drew a big stegosaurus on it. I have renamed the cat “Sniper Neosaur”, and I am disappointed that she has yet to emerge from a gooey purple orb.

It was my delight, then, to be given the opportunity to sit down with key members of the game’s development team to discuss Exoprimal’s inspirations, its inevitable comparisons to Dino Crisis and how Capcom plans to use it as a template for their live-service games moving forward. Alongside a fresh opportunity to check out the game, I hopped onto a Zoom call with Exoprimal’s director Takuro Hiraoka, technical director Kazuki Abe and art director Takuro Fuse.

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Blizzard's chief design officer Allen Adham has reportedly told staff to "prepare to be amazed" by the company's AI technology.

An email seen by the New York Times regarding 'Blizzard Diffusion' was sent to employees earlier this year. Blizzard Diffusion is the company's internal AI tool, which has allegedly been trained as an image generator on Blizzard's own titles (its name is a play on Stable Diffusion, another AI image generation platform).

Reportedly, this tool was being used "to help generate concept art for game environments as well as characters and their outfits". Adham also made mention of possible tools for "autonomous, intelligent, in-game NPCs," "procedurally assisted level design" and AI-assisted "voice cloning," "game coding" and "anti-toxicity" in his email.

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