I grew up with the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, and when I watched Spider-Man 3 for the first time, I instantly fell in love with the final antagonist, Venom.
Of course, looking back now, that iteration of Venom wasn’t the best, but nonetheless, Venom as a character became one of my favorite villains of all time.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder introduced the Elephant Fruit, a strong power-up capable of turning Mario and his friends into elephants. As the portly pachyderm, Mario and co. can spray water from their trunks and dash across two-block-wide gaps.
Animal-related power-ups are nothing new to the Mario franchise, for example, Super Mario 3D World had the Super Bell. This equipped Mario with a cat costume and the ability to climb walls, scratch enemies, and run faster. Inspired by both Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s elephant Mario, and the franchise’s more traditional animal costumes, here are 6 more animal transformations Mario should have and what their abilities could be.
2023 has been an amazing year for sequels, especially sequels that have taken a decade or more (looking at you, Dead Island 2). Alan Wake 2 continues this trend and gives a unique experience wrapped up in familiar mechanics. The game doesn’t seek to reinvent the wheel but wants you to ride around and enjoy a hefty splash of that Remedy Entertainment charm.
The opening of the game feels like something out of Death Stranding. You play as a naked guy who washes up on a beach. I don’t mean a little bit naked; his ass is basically always in frame. For fun, I turned the ‘Show Nudity’ setting off and restarted the game to see what changed. It put the guy in some horrific, ratty underwear. So, honestly, I don’t know what’s worse. This is a short but memorable section, the least of all, because you must look at his naked body for important story stuff several more times after it ends.
If the recent reveal of Dragon Ball Daima left you a little less than hyped for the franchise’s future, rest assured that you’re not alone.
The series’ premise of all the major characters being turned into younger versions of themselves left many a fan unsure of the creative direction. After all, Dragon Ball found the popularity that it did with the framework of constant battles, self-improvement, and all the other core aspects of a Shonen anime. To stray away from that for a cutesier, lighter tone would only risk damaging the product’s longevity.
Unlike most of the other collectibles and side activities in Spider-Man 2, the little Spider-Bots won't naturally show up on your in-game map. You'll need to rely on the colorful spheres that pulse from these 42 collectibles to find them—unless you use a thorough guide. Collecting all the Spider-Bots leads to a unique side mission with a pretty big deep cut reference for Spidey fans. You also get 150 XP and 100x Tech Parts for each bot, which is actually a pretty amazing early game bonus!
IGN's complete guide on Spider-Bot Locations includes screenshots of each item's location on the in-game map plus images of it in game, so you can see exactly where you need to look. Use the checklists on the page to keep track of which ones you still need—there's even a drop-down menu at the top to quickly see the full checklist.
With the ups and downs of long-running live-service games like Destiny 2, you can hardly be blamed if you’re one of the many people wondering if now’s a good time to jump in. My passionate love-hate relationship with this iconic Bungie shooter is well-documented, but the question of whether I’d recommend it to others has varied wildly over the years as the game has redefined itself time and time again. Whether you’re someone who’s never played before or a former player considering jumping back in, here are our thoughts on whether or not it’s worth playing Destiny 2 in 2023.
Though many Destiny players have been blasting Hive in the face since 2014, if you’re considering jumping into the fray in 2023, you’ll want to consider how good the game is at onboarding new players, and unfortunately it’s pretty terrible.
Why? Well, firstly, Destiny 2 is a complicated game with dozens of currencies, hundreds of weapons and pieces of armor (including many that can no longer be earned), a massive laundry list of things to chase, and the “new light” onboarding questline does a poor (not to mention incomplete) job at bringing players up to speed. I recently completed the New Light experience and while it’s added cutscenes and context that do a much better job of introducing players to the ongoing story, it leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to giving players additional reasons to play, and because seasonal content overlaps with main expansions, there’s a lot of added confusion surrounding what’s essential to play and what’s the flavor of the week content that’ll disappear after a time.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has only been out for a week, but fans who already beat the game and stuck around for the end credits might have noticed actors Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk listed in unspecified roles. Now, their roles have been confirmed, and they're pretty silly.
After some suspicion among fans, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, senior creative director Bryan Intihar has officially confirmed that Fillion and Tudyk's mysterious roles are none other than... the duo of rivals both wearing cat mascot suits and Spider-Man masks while arguing outside a bodega.
During Spider-Man 2, players receive a side mission to find photo ops and capture various happenings around New York City. Players can find the duo in the center of the northern side of Little Odessa as part of this mission, and when they do, they'll be drawn into a heated argument over who stole whose outfit.
The duo is excited to see Spider-Man, and taking a picture of them to complete the mission will lead to dialogue where their argument awkwardly continues, with one asking, "And also, am I prominent in the picture? Because I do represent a larger customer base."
Robbie Robertson even dubs the duo's feud "The Bodega Beef." You can read our complete guide to the Bodega Beef photo op right here.
Respecs are about to get a lot easier for top-level Diablo IV players. According to patch notes released by Blizzard, Diablo IV's 1.2.1 update will deliver a long list of fixes and quality of life improvements, but perhaps none more notable than changes to respec.
Anyone who's reached Diablo IV's endgame will be familiar with the complex and satisfying Paragon Boards, which drive much of the late stage buildcrafting that becomes necessary to take down the game's most challenging bosses and dungeons. But the inflexibility of that system — namely that resetting the hundreds of perks on the board requires a ton of time and resources — has become a sticking point for many of Diablo IV's most hardcore players.
Thankfully, Blizzard is poised to relieve this particular pain, as the very top of the patch notes reads, "Added a Refund All button to Paragon Boards."
In a more detailed developer's note just below, it goes on to say "Players communicated that reworking all or most of their Paragon Points was a common occurrence. We've added this button to make it easier to do big respecs, along with the increases to Gold income from Whispers in Season of Blood."
With a single button that refunds all Paragon points and more gold to pay for the respec, Blizzard hopes to answer the cries of their players, an especially important adjustment after the most recent changes to the meta likely will require most players to augment their builds.
Update 1.2.1 will also make plenty of other changes including a training dummy to test your builds on and reduced search areas for Tree of Whispers bounties that have you hunt down a monster.
Last December, the NVC crew pondered if 2023 could be Nintendo’s biggest year ever. Between the launch of games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Wonder, I think it’s safe to say that 2023 has earned a spot on the short list of the greatest years in Nintendo history.
But beyond just games the company is celebrating just as many — if not more — successes in the entertainment space. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Super Nintendo World’s opening in Hollywood, and the Nintendo Live fan event should all be considered as successful as the enormous launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser said as much himself in my interview with him.
While I will always remember Zelda, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Pikmin 4, I will remember 2023 more so as the year Nintendo turned the corner in its long-running mission to transform from a video game publisher into a full-blown entertainment brand.
Ever since Insomniac first announced that it was working on a Wolverine game for PlayStation, fans have wondered whether it is set in the same universe as Spider-Man 2. There's been plenty of speculation that they're all together, not the least because the original teaser contains a "1048" nod, but otherwise there's been no official word one way or another.
In an interview with Kinda Funny, though, Spider-Man 2 director Bryan Intihar confirmed that the two games do in fact exist in the same world.
"They're all 1048," Intihar said, then added, laughing. "I think I got that right."
Spider-Man 2 was previously confirmed to be universe 1048 in Across the Spider-verse. This means that Wolverine has the potential to tie into Spider-Man's ongoing story, though direct references and other easter eggs have thus far been relatively few and far between.
In our own interview with Intihar, we asked whether there were plans to include more teasers for Wolverine, which has thus far remained heavily under wraps.
"We wouldn't be true Marvel fans if we didn't have discussions like that, but I think for us it was, 'Hey, working on these games is really hard. They're really complicated.' And I think it was just like, 'Hey, let's let the Wolverine team cook.' Let's let them cook and if something ever happens in the future, great," Intihar said.
Exodia The Forbidden One is one of the most powerful card combinations in all of Yu-Gi-Oh! because assembling all five pieces in your hand automatically wins you the game, but pulling off such a feat isn’t so easy at a competitive tournament. That’s why the crowd went wild last weekend at the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series (YCS) Indianapolis 2023 when player Jeffrey Leonard pulled it off not once but twice on a streamed feature match.
Leonard started the tournament with an impressive 3-0 record piloting his Exodia Dracoslayer FTK (First Turn Kill) deck. Exodia is, of course, beloved by Yu-Gi-Oh! fans because it’s how Yugi Moto won his first duel against Seto Kaiba in the first episode of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime (“Exodia, OBLITERATE!”), but it’s considered one of the worst FTK decks in the competitive scene. Essentially, you either win the coin flip to go first and pop off with an extended combo that lets you summon Exodia in one turn, hoping and praying that your opponent doesn’t have a way to counter it, or you lose. This YCS was a major tournament with almost 2000 duelists competing, so Leonard winning three matches in a row with Exodia got him noticed and put on camera for the fourth round of the tournament.
Earlier this week, Mortal Kombat 1's community was incensed after publisher Warner Bros. Games revealed that it will sell a seasonal Fatality for real-world money. Now, this Fatality is available in the shop with a confirmed price, and players are up in arms once again, with many vowing to boycott the Fatality (and some abandoning the game entirely) because of its cost.
Today, the Halloween Fatality was added to MK1's Premium Shop for the price of 1200 Dragon Krystals (1250 of which can be bought in a bundle for $10). The move came after players noticed that patch notes vaguely mentioned a "Halloween Fatality added to the Premium Store," which was later confirmed by Warner Bros. Games.
You can watch the Fatality below, which involves slapping a jack-o-lantern over your opponent's head before creepy crawlers emerge.
Players have expressed shock at the Fatality's $10 price tag, especially because it's added on to the game's $70 cost (or $110 for players who bought the premium edition). Many community members are now criticizing the move as an indication that MK1 is shifting toward a freemium model despite not being free.
"Are you having a laugh? Can I get a refund for this full price freemium model game?" Reddit user u/BarnsleyLad posted.
Markiplier is currently directing and starring in a film adaptation of Iron Lung, the short 2022 horror game that sees a convict exploring an alien moon's blood ocean in a cramped submarine. But, if that isn't enough, he's now also the star of a strange new mode of the original game.
On Monday, Iron Lung developer David Szymanski announced The Cheats Update via a Steam announcement. The update introduces a few useful cheats, but it also adds Markiplier Mode, which turns most of the submarine's textures into, well, Markiplier. When this mode is activated with the command "chmark," quite literally everything in the submarine (save for a few buttons and indicator lights) is overlaid with low-quality images of a few memes of the YouTuber.
Other cheats added in the update activate a "rave" mode that adds colorful lighting, a speaker, and the ability to see out of the submarine's front porthole. Along with the update, Szymanski also announced a price increase from $6 to $8 — though the game is currently on sale as part of Steam's Halloween sale, and future updates and DLC (including behind the scenes photos that Szymanski plans to release after the movie is released) will be free.
Markiplier helped popularize Iron Lung after playing it last year, but this wasn't the only event that propelled Iron Lung to relative indie stardom — earlier this year, the game saw a spike in sales (which Szymanski said "feels so wrong") after the disappearance of the Titan submersible due to the game's similar premise.
Epic Games has revealed that Fortnite’s next major update will see the perennially popular battle royale return to its Chapter 1 roots, while retaining its popular sprinting and mantling gameplay mechanics.
Earlier today, Epic posted an image of the classic Fortnite battle bus to X/Twitter, alongside the words “Sprint (or Mantle, your choice) back to Chapter 1….see you soon 11.2.2023," alongside the hashtag #FortniteOG. The post echoes a similar teaser from Epic vice president and co-founder Mark Rein, who yesterday revealed that the word/theme for the next season of Fortnite was set to be “rewind."
Sprint (or Mantle, your choice) back to Chapter 1....see you soon 11.3.2023. #FortniteOG pic.twitter.com/4LnTksppRp
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) October 27, 2023
My word for the next season of @FortniteGame is: rewind!
As Black Friday 2023 deals start to kick off, PlayStation fans should gearing up to seize some incredible savings during this holiday sales season. But, it's also worth noting that we've already started to see some of the best deals sell out. There's no telling how long the rest of the deals will last as they have gone live incredibly early compared to previous years.
For instance, PS5 slim model stock is still quite unreliable at the moment, but we have had some good news with the Spider-Man 2 and Call of Duty bundles coming in stock at Amazon and Best Buy. These cost $499.99, so you're getting a free game, but are also very popular so we recommend securing one ASAP if you're interested. Plus, we're going to be getting additional PlayStation deals this week as Sony has confirmed their official Black Friday sale will commence on November 17. This will feature deals on consoles, accessories, and there's also going to be up to 30% off PS Plus memberships for new and current users.
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To quote an excellent Tekken player who happens to be a friend I train with: in Tekken, “the simple act of moving backwards properly requires practice.” Fighting games are notoriously complicated, and that can intimidate new players or keep them away entirely. Even if you’re an oldhead, learning a new game takes time. But Tekken 8 looks like it’s trying to flatten that curve by providing some of the best teaching tools in the genre. So, listen up, people: class is in session.
In Tekken 8, picking up a character and having a good time is as simple as picking your character and turning on Special Style. But say you want to explore everything that character has to offer. What then? Well, you’ll want to head to training mode. And that’s where you’ll notice the first major change in Tekken 8. Previous Tekkens, including the excellent Tekken 7, only listed a character’s entire movelist – which could total more than a hundred moves – in a single, numbered list. Not so in Tekken 8. Like SoulCalibur before it, Tekken 8 has that same movelist that Tekken fans are used to, but it also has a separate tab for “Main Techniques” – your character’s go-to moves, from pokes, pressure strings, combo starters, and launchers. Better yet, it’ll tell you what they’re good for and if they’re a combo starter, they’ll give you a sample combo to do (with an accompanying demo you can access at any time).
This isn’t new, but Tekken 8’s combo trials are particularly good at walking you through your character of choice’s combo routing. By the time you’ve finished them, you should have an idea of how your character’s moves fit together — and how to construct your own combos.
It can be difficult for an MMA game to balance two seemingly contradictory halves: being both a satisfying sports simulation as well as a satisfying fighting game. Lean too hard toward simulation and you could alienate all but the most dedicated fans – but, move too far toward the crowd pleasing violence of something like Mortal Kombat, you might stray from that “as real as it gets” tagline instead. Finding the perfect mix of both sides is what makes EA Sports UFC 5 the best MMA game to date. It deftly balances these approaches into something much more fluid and life-like than past entries while also raising the stakes of every hit thanks to an impressive new damage system, which makes matches more exciting, risky, and rewarding.
Disney Dreamlight Valley will exit Early Access and have its official launch on December 5, 2023. It will also no longer launch as a free-to-play game so the team can "continue delivering on a premium game experience for all players."
In addition to all this big news, it was revealed that Disney Dreamlight Valley's first-ever showcase will take place on November 1 at 10am PT/1pm ET/5pm GMT. This stream will reveal details on A Rift in Time, the game's first paid expansion that will cost $29.99, will get you an extra 5,000 Moonstones (in-game currency), and will require the base game to play.
The team will also be giving a glimpse at future updates during the stream and will "unveil much-anticipated multiplayer features."
As to the decision to no longer become free-to-play, the team shared their reasonings and why it was important to do so. "As we look ahead to the official launch, with the learnings we've gained from Early Access, we’ve made the decision to remain a paid game for the foreseeable future," Disney Dreamlight Valley developer Gameloft Montreal said in a blog post. "This means we will not make the transition to be a free-to-play game when we leave Early Access on December 5th. This choice ensures that Disney Dreamlight Valley will be able to continue delivering on a premium game experience for all players.
Insomniac has opened up about the development of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, revealing a huge amount of insight into how it made the record-breaking PlayStation 5 exclusive in a new, spoiler-packed episode of Beyond.
Warning: Spoilers for Spider-Man 2 follow. Read on at your own risk.
In the special episode of Beyond, Insomniac senior creative director Bryan Intihar revealed the developer created a concept for a Venomized Sandman who would appear in Spider-Man 2, but decided against moving forward with the idea in order to keep production within scope.
Spider-Man 2 kicks off with an amazing setpiece that sees both Peter Parker and Miles Morales battle an enormous Sandman across New York. It’s a battle packed with epic moments, fast-moving cutscenes, and, at the end, the subjugation of Sandman himself. Check out the Sandman fight in the video below:
Sandman is then incarcerated, leaving the game’s primary villains, Kraven the Hunter and Venom, to do their thing. But Insomniac explored the possibility of letting the alien symbiote latch on to Sandman himself, if you can imagine such a thing.
“I will tell you… I haven't told anybody this,” Bryan Intihar told IGN, “we did have a Venomized Sandman concept.”
We all know what everyone's favorite part of being Spider-Man is, right? Not the thrilling web-slinging, or the hanging from buildings, or the monstrous symbiote powers. It's dressing up in cool Spidey suits. But unfortunately, some of the suits from the original Marvel's Spider-Man are missing in Spider-Man 2. And IGN has the opportunity to learn exactly why.
We spoke to Insomniac senior creative director Bryan Intihar on a spoilercast episode of Beyond to learn more about the suit situation. While the podcast itself was a spoiler-cast, never fear - this article only talks about suit availability, so you can read on safely knowing we've kept all story spoilers quiet on this page. Just don't listen to the podcast itself until you're ready for it all to be laid bare.
First off, Intihar explains, moving suits from Spider-Man 1 to Spider-Man 2 isn't as simple as just pushing a button and making them magically appear. "A lot of those are PS4, and then even the ones that showed up in the remaster, they have to be basically PS5-sized or whatever," he says. "They have to be upgraded. So there's a work factor to get it in there."
What's more, he continues, the web wings and capes present in Spider-Man 2 made things wonky with some of the suit designs, and would have required a lot more work to make every single suit function on a basic level with the game's mechanics, look, and feel.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has seen critical and fan acclaim in the week since its release, but one element that hasn't been universally beloved is the return of Mary Jane's stealth missions from the first game. While these missions were almost universally hated in Marvel's Spider-Man, some tweaks to the formula have made them far more divisive in Spider-Man 2. And we recently spoke to one of the creative directors on Spider-Man 2 to learn exactly why they're in the game at all.
So why have these missions been upgraded from loathed to merely divisive? Well, one big reason is that MJ is OP now. Her stun gun makes short work of enemies that take Peter and Miles multiple hits to beat up. For some, this change of pace is awesome, even John Wick-like. For others, it sucks the energy out of a game that's otherwise fast-paced and wide-open.
Recently, we brought Insomniac senior creative director Bryan Intihar onto a spoiler-packed episode of Beyond to talk about everything Spider-Man 2, and he had plenty to say about the studio's decisions for MJ. Warning: Spoilers for Spider-Man 2 follow. Read on at your own risk.
According to Intihar, Insomniac was well-aware that MJ's missions hadn't been anyone's favorite bit of the first Spider-Man. And they did ponder foregoing them entirely in the sequel. But instead, the team went a different direction:
PlayStation players are lamenting the removal of a popular bug in Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2, which caused the web-slinging protagonists to manifest as a small white cube during extended play sessions.
Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 boasts an impressive collection of 72 unlockable cosmetic skins, ranging from Peter Parker’s Venom-infused symbiote suit to Miles Morales’ costume store disguise ripped straight from 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
However, in the days following the launch of Spider-Man 2 evidence began to circulate of an unofficial 73rd appearance, born of a bug that had slipped Insomniac’s attention. Some players reported that, following prolonged play sessions, the character models for Miles and Peter would fail to load, and in their place would appear a small, white cube, which would take the place of the Spider-Men as they swung and fought their way through New York City.
The best Spider-Cube gameplay you’ll ever see in Spider-Man 2 pic.twitter.com/nJOlzBB6bQ
— Fizzy 💀 (@FizzyBizzz) October 24, 2023
✨I'm calling him Spider-Cube, based on a glitch I got in Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 on PS5 earlier today✨ pic.twitter.com/UlLOq1FvlI
Veteran fans of Insomniac’s Spider-Man series of games may have noticed the absence of a fun Easter egg in Spider-Man 2 that at first glance might have been a developer error. It turns out this small map change was very much deliberate, and may even allude to future content.
As IGN’s Spider-Man 2 Easter eggs guide explains, players who explored the previous Spider-Man games could discover Nelson and Murdock's plaque on a building in Hell's Kitchen, suggesting these Daredevil characters ran their law firm from there. Interestingly, in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 the plaque remains but all text is gone, perhaps implying the duo relocated elsewhere.
We spoke to Insomniac senior creative director Bryan Intihar on a spoilercast episode of Beyond to ask about the removal of Spider-Man’s Daredevil Easter egg. His answer certainly suggests Insomniac is up to something.
“That's a good question,” Intihar said. “Stay tuned. Good find though.”
Front Porch developer Oak Grove Games has organized a Games for Gaza bundle on Itch.io to raise money for the UK-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The bundle sells for $10, and includes 48 video games and 197 tabletop games, as well as other soundtracks, books, and game assets.
Among the games featured in the bundle are Necrosoft Games' Gunhouse and Hyper Gunsport, Fiction Factory Games' Arcade Spirits, PQube's Muddledash, Noodlecake's Nuts, and Heather Flowers' Extreme Meatpunks Forever.
Sony Interactive Entertainment executive Connie Booth has reportedly left PlayStation.
As reported by game developer David Jaffer, the information was verified from sources outside of Sony.
Sony or Booth did not provide a reason for the exit.
This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.
Discord this week rolled out a new approach to tackling toxicity on its platform. This is a problem that has bedeviled online games and communities pretty much since there were online games and communities, so let's see how Discord plans to solve the problem.
QUOTE | "We really want to give people who have had a bad day the chance to change." – Discord senior director of policy Savannah Badalich explains the company's new content moderation policies, which will avoid permanent bans in an attempt to rehabilitate bad actors.
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Securing real footballers' names and likenesses is essential to the success of any title dedicated to the sport.
That's according to Tower Studios CEO and creative director Jon Hare, best known as the designer of the classic Sensible Soccer series.
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With the Activision Blizzard acquisition finally going through and the news that Starfield was the top-selling game of September, Microsoft's games ambitions are in a stronger place than they've been for years – arguably, since the first few years of the Xbox 360 era.
The Xbox division, whatever else it may be, is now a publishing juggernaut; it may have cost the GDP of a small country (and the largest acquisition in the history of both Microsoft itself and the games business as a whole) to do it, but Microsoft has gone from being an also-ran in game development and publishing, with a sorely neglected studio system, to being one of the world's biggest videogame publishers on any platform.
Xbox has changed its leadership structure, announcing the promotion of four executives and one departure.
As reported by The Verge, Sarah Bond, Matt Booty, Takeshi Numoto, and Yusuf Mehdi have been promoted to new roles.
Bond is now Xbox president, overseeing Xbox hardware and software platforms, including "player and creator experiences, platform engineering, strategy, business planning, data and analytics and business development," Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer explained in an internal memo.
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Sony is confident it's heading into one of its best holiday periods to date as it declares that the supply chain issues that have been hindering PlayStation 5 sales have been fully resolved.
The platform holder confirmed plentiful supply of its current console to both the BBC and Barron's, the latter spotted by VGC, meaning the PS5 will be widely available in the run up to Christmas.
Ubisoft released its first-half earnings report today, posting revenue growth, which the firm attributed to its latest releases and back catalog performances. Here's what you need to know for the company's six months ended September 30.
Ubisoft's revenue growth was attributed in part to the September launch of racing sim The Crew Motorfest and pre-shipments for the early October launch of Assassin's Creed Mirage.
The firm highlighted series record unit sales for the racer, while it said that Mirage has had a solid launch with user numbers in line with Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
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Meta released its financial results for the three months that ended September 30, with its VR division performing at a loss. Here's what you need to know:
Meta may have done well overall in the third quarter, but the AR/VR division Reality Labs continues to be a drag on the company.
Hungary-based animation studio Digic has laid off 35 members of staff.
As reported by Forbes Hungary, the Embracer Group subsidiary cut approximately 10% of its workforce following an internal reorganisation earlier this year.
"Due to the market changes of the past period, economic challenges and the long-term arrangement for hybrid work, it has become necessary to review our operation," the company said in a statement.
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Capcom has released the results for the first half of its fiscal year, with net sales rising to $498 million – thanks in part to the launch of Street Fighter 6.
The publisher's Digital Contents division, which handles its video games business, saw net sales of ¥61.3 million ($407.6 million) for the six months ended September 30, 2023. This marks a new H1 record for the company, as well as a year-on-year increase of 70%.
Why I Love is a series of guest editorials on GamesIndustry.biz intended to showcase the ways in which game developers appreciate each other's work. This entry was contributed by Pete Wicher, audio director and lead writer at Jukai Studio. Jukai's new game Stray Souls launched this week on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Nine years ago, Sony unceremoniously launched a mysterious horror game on the PlayStation Store. Enigmatically titled P.T. It launched with little fanfare as a surprise "shadow drop" during a Sony press conference.
When the first person completed the game on stream a mere few hours after it launched, P.T. immediately went viral when the end credits revealed its true purpose: the whole thing was a promotion to announce a new Silent Hill game! To this day it remains one of the most ambitious and original ways to announce a game: through the use of another game! While Silent Hills was tragically canceled, P.T. remained ingrained in the public consciousness.
Die Gute Fabrik's Saltsea Chronicles is a story that documents the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
The game takes place generations after sea levels have risen, focusing on how communities rebuild and survive a flooded world.
It was only fitting, then, for the Danish developer to publish a report alongside the release of its latest title, sharing its carbon impact during development, from January 2020 to the launch of Saltsea Chronicles this October.
Valve is changing the currency used for sales in Argentina and Turkey on Steam to USD next month due to "exchange rate volatility."
From November 20, two new pricing regions will be implemented, LATAM-USD (including Argentina) and MENA-USD (including Turkey), Valve announced on Steamworks.
Over 25 countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa will receive regionalised pricing (a full list of the countries can be found at the end of this story).
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Polish developer CI Games has revealed that its latest hit, Lords of the Fallen, was its most expensive project to date with total costs of PLN 281 million ($66.2 million).
The figure was shared during an investor call, as reported by Polish site Bankier and spotted by Game World Observer. Total development costs were came in at PLN 178 million ($41.9 million), although this does not include licensing fees paid to Epic Games for the use of its Unreal Engine.