November 2023

Bandai Namco shared a teaser trailer highlighting the Tales of Arise Beyond the Dawn DLC pre-order costumes for Alphen and Shionne. There are formal wear outfits for both if people order the add-on ahead of launch.

The brief teaser shows the characters in a relaxed state, so people can see the outfits clearly. Both Alphen and Shionne are wearing matching suits. Each one has a vest and jacket. However, Shionne has shorts in her outfit, while Alphen is wearing pants. His clothing is called Showstopper, while hers is called Limelight. 

 Alphen and Shionne also get unique hairstyles to go with Tales of Arise Beyond the Dawn DLC pre-order costumes. Alphen’s is Loose Knot. It features his hair in a ponytail. Shionne’s is Gorgeous Updo. It puts her long hair in a bun.

Street Fighter 6 will soon be available in Japanese arcades, as Taito revealed that it is working with Capcom to release Street Fighter 6: Type Arcade in 2023. The companies will continue their cooperation after having previously released Street Fighter V: Type Arcade in 2019.

To prepare for its upcoming release, Taito will hold simultaneous location tests in Tokyo, Sendai, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka on November 11-12, 2023. It will also place playable demos at the Amusement Expo in Tokyo Big Sight on November 25, 2023.

The test build will feature the latest game balance from the existing console and PC releases of Street Fighter 6. It will also include Rashid and AKI, the first two DLC characters who are already available. However, it will only let players choose the characters' default costumes and colors.

Massive Entertainment is best known as the team behind Tom Clancy’s The Division, but it’s tackling a different beast in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. This open-world action game unfolds in a new section of James Cameron’s wildly successful Avatar universe, and this new chapter in the mythos graces Game Informer’s cover this month. 

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – Exclusive Coverage Trailer

We visited Massive’s studio in Malmö, Sweden, to play a couple of hours of the game set in the Kinglor Forest, one of Frontier’s three regions. Our 12-page story also includes an exclusive breakdown of the game’s other two regions, the Upper Plains and the Clouded Forest, which we got to tour during our visit. We interviewed the game’s key design leads to learn how Frontiers of Pandora came to be, what it was like working with James Cameron’s production studio Lightstorm, and get answers to some of the burning questions surrounding the game. Be sure to also visit our coverage hub by clicking the banner below as we'll have exclusive online features and videos throughout the month. 

Our cover art features the game’s customizable protagonist alongside their ikran taking the fight to the RDA. 

Cord Smith has worked at Compulsion Games, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Sega. He's now founded a new studio called Inevitable Studios and the team's first game is a narrative-based action platformer called Always in Mind. In it, players must escape their own mind using special powers gained from living out their family's stories of the past.

It's currently available to wishlist on Steam, indicating a PC release, but there's no word about consoles. However, the announcement comes with news that a Kickstarter for Always in Mind is coming soon.

Watch the Always in Mind announcement trailer below: 

As you can see, the world of Always in Mind is quite trippy, with a unique visual style to boot. Players control Teddy, a 12-year-old in the hospital in a coma whose only hope of waking up comes in the form of Proxy, a long-dormant AI implant. Teddy is aware of his situation because of Proxy, but in order to regain consciousness, he must "self-realize." 

At Apple's keynote event last September, everyone expected them to announce the new iPhone, but nobody expected them to announce that multiple Resident Evil games would be headed to the device. Resident Evil Village hit the App Store just last week, and today, Capcom has let us know when Resident Evil 4 Remake is coming to the platform: December 20. You can see some screenshots from the Apple port below. 

After almost two years in early access spanning 53 updates, sociable retro sci-fi FPS The Anacrusis has a 1.0 release date - 5th December 2023. The word "anacrusis" refers to a set of syllables that precede the first metrical foot in a line of poetry - an intriguing moniker for a game that is essentially Valve's Left 4 Dead, but set in a 1970s-styled high tech facility reminiscent of No One Lives Forever. I'll be honest, I haven't been keeping up with The Anacrusis, and assumed that it was one of those top-drawer philosophical puzzlers. Come on, there isn't even a pun in the title!

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Hello folks. I know we've barely broken out of spooky season, but over in the RPS Treehouse we're rapidly preparing to warm up our vocal chords and bellow "It's CHRIIIIIIIISTMASSSSSS" from the rooftops in the spirit of Slade's seasonal epic. That's right. Advent Calendar season is upon us, and we'll be voting for our favourite games of the year very shortly. So I thought I'd use this month's Letter From The Editor to give you a little behind the scenes glimpse of how we'll be doing this in the coming weeks, and how we generally go about putting it all together every year.

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Medieval multiplayer clangfest Chivalry 2 gets a free Reclamation update today, the cherry on the cake of which - knob on the coronet? Prong on the portculis? Ah wait, jewel in the crown! - is new 64-player map The Reclamation of Montcrux, in which the rampaging Agathians attempt to overrun a fort held by the Tenosians, pitting petard against bombard, battering ram against ballista.

Gosh, that's a lot of medieval words. The translation is that one side has to run up the hill screaming while the other side lobs big balls of fire at them. Bash your way into the castle and you'll be able to stop the aforesaid rain of fireballs, though you'll still have to worry about getting dinged upside the headbone by dudes in plate. Onward, friends to the next paragraph! We have nothing to lose but our limbs!

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Early on in The Talos Principle 2, one of your soon-to-be robot pals says to you with a completely straight face, "We're here to solve this puzzle, not to discuss philosophy." I can almost see Croteam's writing team now, chuckling inwardly to themselves as they do a big silent wink to camera from behind the robot's eyes. You're not fooling me, Croteam. I'm here to solve puzzles and discuss philosophy, and I know you are too. You can't stop talking about philosophy in this game, and frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Millenia may have passed since the events of The Talos Principle, but the problems faced by this new society of advanced robo-humans (of which you are number 1000 to be 'born' into this world) still feel all too relevant to the issues posed by the lives we're living today: what is the price of progress? Will we ignore the mistakes of the past and push the world toward irreparable destruction? And why have cats remained loyal to this new race of robo-people, cementing their status as the superior future pet, when dogs have devolved back into vicious wolves? There are some puzzles too, I guess. Those are pretty great as well.

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UPDATE 5pm UK: Ubisoft has responded with further details on this round of layoffs.

In a statement to Eurogamer, the company added more context to its reorganisation and confirmed it won't affect production teams.

"Over the past few months, every team within Ubisoft has been exploring ways to streamline our operations and enhance our collective efficiency so that we are better positioned for success in the long term," it said.

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Yesterday, Alan Wake II, the hotly anticipated sequel horror game from Remedy Entertainment, received its fourth patch since its release on October 27.

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Rumors of a Nintendo Switch successor have been circulating all year, and reports of private demos for developers at this year’s Gamescom and Activision getting briefed on the device only fueled the fire. Despite this, Nintendo pinky swears it never actually showed its next console (known colloquially as the “Switch…

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In a year full of video game layoffs, Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft Montreal is the latest to get hit by ongoing cuts. The publisher confimred to Kotaku that it will layoff 98 people across its Canadian offices today as part of a “reorganization” of its general and administrative teams, Ubisoft IT, and Ubisoft’s SFX…

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Square Enix released its latest financial results going over sales and profits, detailing the company’s performance across the first half of the financial year (March to September 2023). The results are similar to the Q1 2023 report, showing increased sales but reduced profit.

According to the report, net sales for the first half of 2023 brought in ¥172 billion. This is an increase from ¥163 billion in 2022’s first half. However, operating income reduced from ¥26 billion to ¥17 billion, while ordinary income reduced from ¥45 billion to ¥26 billion.

Much of the increase in sales was driven by HD games, which saw a sales increase from ¥29 billion to ¥43 billion. This was driven primarily by Final Fantasy XVI and the console releases of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series.

However, MMO income was down year-over-year from ¥59 billion to ¥54 billion. Mobile titles are also saw a reduction in profits, with revenue falling from ¥28 billion to ¥23 billion. Square Enix attributed this to newer titles failing to make up for weak performance from older titles.

The Zoids - Patlabor crossover model kit is now available to pre-orders. After previously holding early bird pre-orders at the Great Zoids Exhibition in October 2023, Takara Tomy opened online pre-orders for the Metropolitan Police Force Ver. Hunter Wolf model kit.

The 1/35 scale kit will cost 4,950 yen (~$33). Once completed, the owner will be able to insert a AAA battery and turn on the switch to make the Zoid walk on its own while opening and closing its mouth. The lamp wings' position before operation will also determine their behaviors during the automated movements.

Hololive EN Myth Vtuber Calliope Mori announced she is taking a break but only from solo, non-membership streams. The performer will still appear in both ones for members and during collaboration streams with other Vtubers.

Mori didn’t offer any explanation as to why she will be taking the break. There’s also no window for a possible return. She did note that she will remain active and appear online in some form. 

Here’s the official announcement Calliope Mori made regarding her upcoming activities alone and with other Hololive talents.

Crunchyroll announced and released its new Game Vault app for Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan subscribers. The addition allows people to play mobile games like River City Girls as part of their membership.

The Game Vault functions in the same sort of way as Apple Arcade or Netflix Games. As part of the subscription people pay, they get access to full games without ads or add-ons as long as they remain a member. The launch collection  includes five titles. In the case of River City Girls, Captain Velvet: The Jump+ Dimensions, and Wolfstride, this marks the first time all three are available on mobile devices. The other two games at launch are Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery and Inbento. 

Crunchyroll also noted this is only the first drop for the Game Vault. The company plans to add additional free games to the lineup as time goes on. There’s no release window for the second batch of titles, however. 

This is one of the second new initiatives by the company to be recently revealed. It also announced the Crunchyroll Channel. This will be a new TV channel that will appear on services like Amazon Freevee, LG Channels, The Roku Channel, and VIZIO WatchFree+ and air anime in English. 

Today, Ubisoft is the latest developer to join 2023's wave of layoffs. According to IGN, the company laid off a total of 124 employees. 98 of them were based in Canada, which IGN calculates as roughly 2% of the company's Canadian workforce. The cuts included administrative and IT workers, some of whom were employed at the Hybride VFX studio, a company that has worked on shows like Ahsoka and The Mandalorian.

"These are not decisions taken lightly and we are providing comprehensive support for our colleagues who will be leaving Ubisoft during this transition," the company told both IGN and Kotaku. "We also want to share our utmost gratitude and respect for their many contributions to the company. This restructuring does not affect our production teams." Another quote obtained by Kotaku claims that the layoffs are to allow Ubisoft to "to optimize its resources to be more sustainable in the long term."

If you subscribe to the digital edition of Game Informer, you can now learn all about Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora! Following the cover reveal our digital issue is now live on web browsers, iPad/iPhone, and Android devices. Alongside the cover story, you will also find big features on gaming and AI, accessibility in the world of fighting games, our holiday gift guide, and much more. We've also got previews Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Judas, a retrospective piece about the development and legacy of Papers, Please, and much more!

Individual issues are also now available for purchase at this link or in any GameStop store.

You can download the apps to read the issue by following this link.

If you tuned into our announcement earlier today, you know that this month's cover story is all about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. To kick off the month of exclusive coverage, we sat down with game director Ditte Deenfeldt and associate game director Drew Rechner and flooded them with questions: How does co-op work? Can your ikran be killed? What's the difference between an Avatar and a fursona? Get the answers to all that and more in the video below.

Watch The Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Interview:

For more exclusive coverage of Ubisoft's next big open-world adventure, check out the banner below. If you want to get a copy of the magazine later this month, you can do so here.

Crunchyroll, the popular Sony-owned anime streaming service, is doing a Netflix and offering mobile games as part of its subscriptions starting today, 7th November.

Game Vault, as the new offering is officially known, is only available Crunchyroll members who subscribe to the streaming service's Mega Fan or Ultimate Fan tiers. The former costs £5.99/$9.99 USD a month, while the latter is a US-only addition, priced at $14.99 USD.

Alongside their existing subscription benefits - which currently includes ad-free streaming of anime, simulcast shows, digital manga, and offline viewing - eligible members will gain access to a growing library of downloadable mobile games, albeit initially only available on Android (via the Google Play store), but with iOS support coming "soon".

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Developer Red Hook Studios has announced a first paid DLC pack for its acclaimed horror sequel Darkest Dungeon 2. It's called The Binding Blade and will introduce two new heroes - one who'll be familiar to fans of the first game - when it arrives in December.

Darkest Dungeon 2 left early access back in May this year, taking players on a grim Lovecraftian road trip that Eurogamer contributor Edwin Evans-Thirlwell called a "copious and often brilliant, if not quite unmissable reworking of a powerfully grim fantasy" in his Recommended review.

It's a solid foundation, then, and Red Hook will initially build on Darkest Dungeon 2's oppressive, tactical turn-based core by introducing two new playable heroes (or, perhaps more accurately, anti-heroes), along with a few other bits, when The Binding Blade arrives.

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UPDATE 11.30pm: After a bit of community head-gathering, the clues have been cracked and BioWare's full 30-second Mass Effect teaser trailer has been shared online.

It's not, admittedly, a whole lot more informative than the initial five-second fragment we got at the start of it all earlier today, but it does at least showcase a very nice trench coat emblazoned with the N7 logo, suggesting our masked mystery figure - the next game's protagonist? Villain? - is a member of the series' crack military squad. Or a coat thief.

That same trench coat resurfaced again in artwork shared on BioWare's Twitter/X feed, this time sneakily revealing - through a bit of the old 'ENHANCE' malarky - some tiny potential lore details.

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So many great video game websites have died, it’s nice to finally see some new ones being born. The latest is called Aftermath, a subscriber-funded venture by former Kotaku staffers. Full disclosure: I worked with all of these people for years and they are amazing.

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Link’s latest adventure, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, has already proven to be a massive success for Nintendo. The company announced in its November 7 earnings report that the open-world adventure game has sold nearly 20 million copies.

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If there is one game that stuck with me that I want to see return, it is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It offered a fantastic, segmented open-world, cyberpunk RPG experience with an exceptional style and possibilities. Its sequel didn’t do it any justice, but you know what game gives me those same vibes many years later? RoboCop: Rogue City.

I watched the RoboCop movies when I was a child so I don’t really remember much. However, RoboCop Rogue City made me care about this weird cyborg and human-hybrid police officer. The game essentially feels like an indie AA version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the modern age.

I’m not interested in just vaguely gesturing at what Slay the Princess, a horror, time-loop visual novel from Black Tabby Games, is actually about. Often there’s an assumption that a review will be a spoiler-free assessment of whether or not something is worth your time, keeping its distance and speaking in broad…

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We probably agree that “Modern Warfare III” is a bad name for a brand-new Call of Duty game. It doesn’t help that 2011 first-person shooter Modern Warfare 3 is, to this day, a fan-favorite title in the neverending war series, while series reboot Modern Warfare III, which releases officially on November 10, is…

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The next Mass Effect game has been shrouded in mystery since its 2020 Game Awards reveal. November 7 is N7 Day, when BioWare and fans celebrate the science-fiction RPG series. But this year’s a little different. The studio gave us a couple teasers for the next game, at the same time as laid-off QA workers are picketing…

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Revenant Hill, an adventure game about cute animals and shitty landlords, was supposed to be the next project from the makers of the critically-acclaimed 2017 GOTY contender, Night in the Woods. Today, indie collective The Glory Society announced it would effectively be canceled following unexpected medical…

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Revenant Hill, the next game from Night in the Woods co-creators Bethany Hockenberry and Scott Benson and the first project from their new studio The Glory Society, has been cancelled amid "serious health issues" impacting several members of the team.

Revenant Hill was officially unveiled back in May, teasing an adventure, set in the year 1919, that would follow Twigs the cat's attempts to make ends meet after an "owl from the next hill" began demanding she pay rent on her wet log near an abandoned graveyard.

There were hints of systems reminiscent of farming sims, with crops to be grown and a community to be built as the seasons passed, albeit with a cast of witches, demons, and ghosts, and more serious considerations on its mind. "Times are hard," The Glory Society wrote at the time, "Something big and dark is at work in the towns, the factories, in the forests and hills. At some point, someone is going to have to push back. And they can't do it alone."

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Capcom announced that the Resident Evil 4 Remake will appear on select iPhone and iPad mobile devices on December 20, 2023. The devices supporting the game are the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all iPads with the M1 chip or later.

Additionally, Capcom revealed that a demo for the game will be available at a later date. The game is now available for pre-order from the Apple App Store. Capcom alongside Apple originally revealed on September 12, 2023, that the latest Resident Evil 4 Remake will appear on various iOS mobile devices alongside Resident Evil Village.

This is not the only modern console game making its way to Apple mobile devices, as Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed Mirage will also come out for iPhone and iPad devices.

Nintendo shared the worldwide sales figures for various titles including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The Japanese publisher also revealed the number of Nintendo Switch units sold during the fiscal year ending in March 2024.

The latest Nintendo financial report showed that sales for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom reached 19.5 million units during the first half of the current fiscal year, with Pikmin 4 selling 2.61 million units. In addition, multiple Mario titles saw an increase in sales, thanks to the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie on April 2023. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe continued to show strong sales, achieving 3.22 million units shipped in 2023.

Juufuutei Raden, a Hololive VTuber who debuted as part of ReGLOSS, announced on November 6, 2023 that she would be taking a hiatus on her official social media account. She explained that the reason for this is her declining physical condition.

Raden apologized to her fans for not speaking up about her health, and she reassured everyone that she is still alive and well. She also apologized for not being present at the annual Hololive Sports Festival for 2023. She noted that her major physical discomfort that left her unable to attend.

She reassured fans that she is currently recovering, but this short break is very much needed. She apologized once again for worrying and inconveniencing any of her followers who were expecting to hear from her sooner. She says that she is beginning to feel much better and will return relatively soon, but didn't offer a window for when she may resume activities.

See her official announcement in the post below:

Revenant Hill, the next game by the makers of Night in the Woods, has been canceled. The reason is that the game's narrative designer and artist Scott Benson is battling a severe illness that has forced him to step away from the project.

Benson reveals on his personal X account that he’s been suffering severe heart failure over the past 12 months, which has greatly limited his ability to work. You can read his post below. 

So. Over the past 12 months or so I got very sick and it didn't go away. Eventually I was diagnosed with severe heart failure, most likely from a virus. It will continue to greatly limit me for the foreseeable future and as such I've had to stop working in the manner I once did.

Nintendo and Arad Productions Inc. have announced the start of development on a live-action Legend of Zelda movie. The movie will see Nintendo legend and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto return to the role of producer following The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was released earlier this year. He is joined in the producer role by Avi Arad, who has produced films like 2004's Spider-Man 2, 2008's Iron Man, and 2023's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Arad has also produced a couple of video game adaptations including Uncharted in 2022 and Borderlands, which is slated for a 2024 release.

Wes Ball, who directed the Maze Runner movies as well as Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, has signed on to direct the film The movie will be co-financed by Nintendo and Sony Pictures Entertainment (with more than 50 percent being handled by Nintendo), with the theatrical distribution being handled by Sony Pictures Entertainment. 

I have asked Avi-san to produce this film with me, and we have now officially started the development of the film with Nintendo itself heavily involved in the production. It will take time until its completion, but I hope you look forward to seeing it. [2]https://t.co/2H9lzzS5Pv

We’ve known for some time now that IO Interactive, the studio behind the fantastic Hitman games, is working on a new James Bond game. And while that team seems like a perfect match and a new Bond game seems long overdue, according to IOI, the team had to assure the folks who own the spy franchise that it wasn’t going…

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A live-action movie adaptation of The Legend of Zelda is finally happening. Nintendo announced the upcoming production will be helmed by both Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Marvel Studios founder Avi Arad in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment. The gang’s all here. All it’s missing is Chris Pratt.

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Christmas Massacre, an upcoming low-poly horror game, was initially planned to launch on Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation later this month. However, a few weeks before launch, the developer behind the spooky game revealed that Xbox and Nintendo won’t let the game release on their respective platforms, and they’re…

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Action role-playing game Diablo IV has so far been enjoying a fruitful Season of Blood, its second season, adding to the game a huge number of balance changes and quality-of-life features. Now a few weeks out from the season’s launch, developer Blizzard has released a follow-up patch with delectable fan…

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