Eurogamer

Creative Assembly has outlined the next 12 months of Total War: Warhammer 3, and revealed there's more to come beyond that.

In a post on the Total War: Warhammer 3 Steam page, the developer detailed Update 3.1 (final week of May), Update 4.0 (summer, includes fourth DLC Shadows of Change), Update 5.0 (winter, DLC Thrones of Decay), and Update 6.0 (spring 2024).

Creative Assembly also committed to further support, with "ongoing performance, optimisation, gameplay and mechanics improvements". The developer has ideas for 2024 releases and will reveal more as it gets closer to each update.

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EA has added a rather unique warning for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor players who try to bypass its story elements.

Many out there enjoy the challenge of exploiting games in such a way that will allow them to progress through a story quicker. Speedrunning communities exist to share tricks and glitches that sometimes see entire areas skipped - because someone managed to crouch next to that one specific bit of wall while holding that one specific sword in their left hand (or something like that).

EA is clearly aware of this, and has implemented an in-game message that triggers if a player reaches an area that should be, in theory, unreachable at that point in the game. Should this happen, a warning will pop up on the player's screen stating "an unexpected error" has occurred.

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Japanese game company Capcom has reported record sales.

It sold 41.7m games during the financial year ending 31st March 2023, the highest in the company's long history.

Revenue was up 14.4 percent year-on-year, with profit up 12.9 percent.

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UPDATE 12TH MAY: Two hours it took me to read through all of your memories! I've laughed, I've wiped away a tear or two (which feels appropriate), and I've been reminded of many happy memories of my own. If anyone ever asks you why people play games, point them to this comments thread. I hope someone from Nintendo sees the memories their series has helped create.

Here, you've reminded me of the power games have to connect parents and children, then, years later, when those children grow up, the power they have to share the connection all over again - and Zelda is one of those series that's been around long enough to span it. I adored CaptainTrips' memory of narrating Zelda games to their young child in place of a bedtime story.

You've also reminded me how cheeky we can be as kids who are eager to play games. More than one of you managed to hoodwink your parents and get to Christmas presents early. Tat_Sun and their brother even managed to finish Ocarina of Time before Christmas Day! Respect.

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Nintendo has released a new advert for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and on my first watch through I had my video game news reporter hat on, looking closely at the gameplay moments for fresh clues.

My efforts didn't really bring up much new. I now know that for your Ultrahand-made raft to not topple over in the water, you need to make sure it is balanced by some support logs on either side. But that really is about it in terms of gameplay analysis.

Then I watched it again, and this time my mind was drawn not to Link gadabouting through the sky, but to the real life, "everyday" man the advert actually focuses on. It is quite clear what (or who) Nintendo is trying to paint a picture of here.

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Bearded Ladies describes Miasma Chronicles as a "story of chosen family, mutant killers, sweeping post-apocalyptic American landscapes and powergloves". Like Mutant Year Zero, the studio's acclaimed game from 2018, it's another turn-based tactical RPG. At the very start of the story, players meet Elvis, a young man brought to the mining town of Sedentary, Kentucky as a baby, where he was left by his mother.

Elvis has a 'brother', a robot named Diggs, who was reprogrammed by Elvis' mother before she left her son in his care. Together, this duo will have to solve the mystery of the Miasma, a strange entity that I'm told "threatens the last vestiges of humanity and turns all who come in contact with it into barbaric corruptions of their former selves". As the brothers make their way through the world, they will be joined by a motley crew of outlandish characters. Additionally, Elvis has use of that mysterious powerglove, left to him by his mother, that can control the Miasma.

Set in New America, some 200 years in the future, Miasma Chronicles is clearly engaged with the climate crisis and late capitalism of today's world. "There are a lot of things that are related to ecological storytelling, and the current status of the earth's ecology," Miasma Chronicles' lead producer Mark Parker says, while showing me the game in action. "The planet, at one point, was a perfect place, where there was no pollution, and there was no hunger and the world's problems were solved. That was called The Great Stability... but something bad happened, and the world looks like it does now."

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We'll have to wait a little longer for the highly-anticipated Hollow Knight: Silksong, its developer has now confirmed.

Team Cherry had planned to launch Silksong before July this year. Spokesperson Matthew Griffin last night admitted via Twitter that development was "still continuing" and the team wanted to "take the time to make the game as good as we can".

Another reason for the delay? Silksong has also now "gotten quite big", Griffin said.

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FIFA 23 launches on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play on Tuesday 16th May.

The addition of the latest (and last) FIFA game from EA to EA Play and therefore Game Pass Ultimate follows the pattern established by EA in recent years.

FIFA 23 has done remarkably well for EA, with financial fourth quarter revenue just for the FIFA franchise up 31 percent year-on-year.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters. It's a series about highlighting some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also a series about you having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Dungeons - absolutely not the thing you want to see when looking on Rightmove, but absolutely the thing you want to see while playing a game. I can't even imagine many of the games I've played without dungeons - I've been in so many over the years. But what, specifically, is a dungeon? Does it have to be the stereotypical cave with multiple descending floors? I don't think so. Yes, some of the examples here are, but I think you can extend it to cover any self-contained area in a game you enter, and then fight through and re-emerge victorious from, so let your mind wander!

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EA has released its latest financial earnings report, confirming record net bookings of $1.95B for its most recent quarter - and, alas, that developer BioWare's highly anticipated Dragon Age: Dreadwolf won't be out until at least April next year.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, which has been in some form of development since at least 2017, has never been given an official release date, but reports last year suggested BioWare was targeting a late 2023 launch for the long-awaited title.

Hopes for a 2023 release among fans remained unabated when, last October, the studio confirmed Dreadwolf had reached the alpha stage of development and was playable "to the very end" - but those hopes have now been dashed through omission, via EA's newly revealed release schedule for the current financial year.

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Pokémon developer Game Freak has signed a deal with Private Division, the indie-focused publishing arm of Take-Two, to publish a new "action-adventure IP" codenamed Project Bloom.

Details of the title are limited, but the companies have shared an unexpectedly moody bit of concept art to accompany today's news, showcasing a character adorned in something like traditional Japanese garb amid a forest of towering trees.

"We're thrilled to have the opportunity to create new IP that is bold and tonally different from our prior work," Game Freak director Kota Furushima said in a statement. "From the beginning, Private Division was the publisher we wanted to work with on our new game. Their track record and global expertise give us all the confidence to create a sweeping new action-adventure game that we can't wait to share more about in the future."

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Developer Ironmace Games has delayed the early access release of its mediaeval extraction looter Dark and Darker as it remains embroiled in a legal dispute with Korean game publisher Nexon over "copyright infringement".

Dark and Darker received a hugely positive reception when it made a Steam Next Fest appearance earlier this year, but things went quickly awry.

In March, Nexon accused Ironmace of "using materials and assets they worked on during their time" at Nexon to create Dark and Darker, soon after issuing a cease and desist demand which resulted in the game's removal from Steam. This has forced the developer to get creative as it continues to release new playtest builds to players.

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Bungie's winning streak against Destiny 2 cheat sellers continues with the news it's now been awarded $6.7m USD in damages following a ruling in its lawsuit against LaviCheats.

Bungie filed its claim against LaviCheats owner Kunal Bansal back in 2021, alongside lawsuits against two other cheat sellers: Elite Tech Boss and VeteranCheats. Elite Boss Tech agreed to settle last July, paying $13.5m in damages, and a court ruled against VeteranCheats earlier this month, ordering it to pay Bungie $12m USD in damages.

That just left the developer's case against LaviCheats and (as spotted by TorrentFreak) a federal court in Washington has now issued a default judgment against the India-based Bansal - as requested in a motion filed by Bungie earlier this year - after he failed to appear in court.

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Activision Blizzard has reportedly hired high-profile UK lawyer Lord David Pannick KC - whose client list has included Queen Elizabeth II and Boris Johnson - to help lead its appeal against the Competition and Merger Authority's recent ruling against its proposed merger with Microsoft.

The CMA recently made the shock decision to block Microsoft's $68.7bn acquisition of Activision following its months-long investigation, citing concerns over the deal's impact on the cloud gaming sector, which it said risked "stifling competition in this growing market".

In response, Microsoft announced it would be appealing the CMA's decision, while Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick told staff the move would "stifle investment, competition, and job creation throughout the UK gaming industry", insisting "it is far from the final word on this deal".

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Call of Duty fans have heavily criticised Activision for a newly-released "pay-to-win" bundle deemed the most egregious so far.

The Roze and Thorn bundle includes the Thorns Out Roze operator skin. This skin spawns players with a free UAV bonus effect for the popular extraction mode, DMZ.

In Call of Duty, a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) reveals enemy locations on the mini-map for 30 seconds - a particularly useful ability in a game that involves player versus environment versus player elements. The effect is potentially pronounced in squad play, where up to six can team up.

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HBO's TV adaptation of The Last of Us may have concluded in March, but the show is clearly still doing the numbers for the network.

In its recent financial report, Warner Bros. Discovery revealed The Last of Us is now averaging nearly 32 million cross-platform viewers per episode in the States.

In addition to this, the company stated The Last of Us is the "most-watched show in the history of HBO Max in both Europe and Latin America". This data is all based on figures from market measurement firm Nielsen, as well as first-party data.

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Horizon Forbidden West has sold 8.4m copies, Sony has announced.

In a PlayStation Blog post celebrating developer Guerrilla's 20th birthday, studio director and studio art and animation director Jan-Bart van Beek confirmed the sales milestone for Sony's flagship exclusive was achieved 14 months after it launched in February 2022.

As of 16th April 2023, the Horizon franchise sold more than 32.7m units, van Beek said. Those sales are described as "sold through", which means genuine sales to customers. "Millions more" have played a Horizon game via PlayStation's subscription services and other offers, including PlayStation Plus and Play at Home, Sony's 2020 free games offer to help entertain people during Covid lockdowns.

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Niantic's cute new virtual pet app Peridot is a very different beast to Pokémon Go, and all the better for it. Simplistic on the surface but stuffed full of bleeding-edge AR technology underneath, the Tamagotchi-like app is born from years of progress by Niantic's creative and technological halves, resulting in the developer's most interesting project since Pokémon Go in 2016.

Pokémon Go's lightning in a bottle launch inspired a string of cookie cutter follow-ups from Niantic itself and other competitors, to mixed success, featuring familiar riffs on real-world exploration gameplay. Peridot offers something quite different: an inverse of the typical map-based experience, where the app's AR component is now the main interface.

At its most basic level, Peridot is more Nintendogs than Pokémon: a gentler experience featuring adorable creatures that use your real-life surroundings, wherever you are, as their playground. Powered by Niantic's latest advancements in AR, your Peridot pet recognises and reacts to the world around you - outside on the grass, indoors on the sofa, hanging out with friends, or alone watching TV. Peridot is smart enough to recognise where you point your phone camera and have your creature explore accordingly - jumping atop tables or worktops, or momentarily disappearing out of sight when passing behind foliage or trees. One of the most impressive examples of this can be found when playing fetch with a tennis ball - which, when thrown, will bounce naturally off any nearby walls or other obstacles.

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Itch.io has released a mega bundle comprising of over 200 games, as part of its efforts to support Turkey and Syria following February's devastating earthquake in the region.

This bundle is available now, and can be scooped up for as little as $10 (the platform says the bundle is valued at over $750, so quite the deal).

Titles in this bundle include puzzle game A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, roguelike stealth furniture eating simulator Not the Robots and eco-adventure Gibbon: Beyond the Trees (pictured above), to name but a few. Here's the link to the whole lot.

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Hello there! I wanted to flag a new feature on Eurogamer which makes it easier for you to keep up with your favourite games. You can find it underneath the byline on certain articles, and let you "follow" specific games, topics or companies.

If there's a current game you're interested and want to know everything about (hello, Zelda), or a far-off game you're waiting for a crumb of news on (Beyond Good & Evil 2, where are you?!), this feature should hopefully prove useful. And yes, you can follow things other than video games, for example articles on specific topics (like AI, such as Chris Tapsell's recent brilliant long-read), or anything related to a specific developer, or console platform.

Every game that Eurogamer has ever covered is in our database, we think. You can even flag games from yesteryear, in case any of those get covered in the future (I'm still hoping for that Skies of Arcadia remake announcement).

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Nintendo does not expect to launch any new or upgraded Switch hardware in the coming financial year, set to end on 31st March 2024.

That's according to Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, who spoke with investors this morning following the company's most recent financial results (via Bloomberg).

The Switch has now passed its hardware sales peak, with console sales down 22 percent over the past 12 months. Nintendo forecasts a further fall over the coming year.

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Thanks to digital downloads, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor's launch sales are over 30 percent greater than those of its predecessor, Fallen Order.

That's according to GamesIndustry.biz's Chris Dring, who revealed Jedi: Survivor's digital downloads accounted for almost double the amount Fallen Order managed.

Dring noted that even though Survivor's physical sales were down on Fallen Order's, overall sales were markedly up from EA's 2019 release.

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Starfield, following in the footsteps of the Fallout games, has cheesy post-sex pillow talk.

Confirmation comes from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which in its Starfield rating summary spilled the beans that Bethesda's next game not only lets players have sex, but splutter lines of dialogue after the deed.

This "suggestive material", as the ESRB puts it, includes moral panic-inducing lines such as "Life is a sexually transmitted disease that's a hundred percent fatal"; "I'm all for getting a little wild, but next time let's try it without the jetpacks"; and "Talk about seeing stars, whew... that was amazing".

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Nintendo Switch console sales dropped by almost a quarter over the 12 months ending 31st March, though game sales remain strong.

Nintendo painted a mixed picture in its latest financial results, with hardware sales now definitively past the console's peak as the Switch enters its seventh year of life.

That said, game sales remain strong - down only slightly on the console's last two years in terms of first-party software like Pokémon and Splatoon, and still well up on 2020 and everything before that.

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After years of anticipation, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's release is now only a few days away. In order to make sure everyone is up to speed on what happened across Hyrule ahead of the sequel's debut, Nintendo has released a video recapping Breath of the Wild's story.

If you have a spare six-and-a-bit minutes, this video is a nice digestible way to relive the game's plot. After all, Breath of the Wild did release six years ago, so a little refresher perhaps wouldn't go amiss.

As you would expect, Nintendo's video covers everything from the four champions, some of the various enemies that Ganon has doing his bidding, and Zelda helping Link out in Breath of the Wild's final confrontation. But that's enough from me. Go and make yourself a quick brew and have a watch of Nintendo's Breath of the Wild recap for yourself below.

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Hi-Fi Rush just got its fourth update, and it's clear developer Tango Gameworks is having fun with the patch notes.

While the update is light on improvements, we do have a few standouts, such as "adjusted couch pillow softness in the hideout to better refresh Chai when relaxing in between missions".

Hi-Fi Rush players will be familiar with Chai's couch, on which he can snuggle robot cat 808, have a snooze or have a little chat with himself as he decompresses from the action-packed missions.

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Following a fairly glitchy release - particularly on PC, with Digital Foundry going so far as to call Star Wars Jedi: Survivor "the worst triple-A PC port of 2023 so far" - and an initial day one update, EA is continuing its efforts to fix Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

This week sees the arrival of the game's fourth patch, which addresses a variety of issues, both platform specific and across all versions of the game.

With this patch in play, PC users can expect to see updated occlusion behaviour for raytracing, which will reduce idle time stalls. EA has also updated its PC streaming budgets, something the developer says will help alleviate traversal hitching. The team has also implemented general performance improvements for "some VFX" (this update will also be coming "soon" to console versions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor). Lastly on the PC specific updates (for today, at least), EA has updated the data handling when toggling raytracing, improving non-raytraced performance.

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A Street Fighter 6 open beta is set for 19th to 22nd May, Capcom has announced.

Specifically, the open beta runs from 8am UK time on 19th May to 8am UK time on 22nd May.

The open beta includes everything featured in the recent closed beta that ran in December. The included modes are:

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It's remarkable to me how a series like Zelda, which stretches back to the beginning of gaming time, can somehow be more popular now than ever. Breath of the Wild sold an order of magnitude higher than any previous Zelda game, even the really famous ones, and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom looks poised to surpass that. It's terribly exciting!

Given Zelda's importance to gaming, it's no surprise we've written quite a damn lot about it over the years - and we've been around for a while now. So I thought I'd go spelunking into the archives and try to resurface some of those pieces for you. Here, then, for your convenience, are some of the loveliest Zelda pieces we've written.

Apparently Omar Hafeez-Bore only writes about Zelda, I am now discovering! But if you've read his breathless love-letter to Zelda trailers, then you'll already know how entertaining he can be on the subject. An given his general Zelda excitement, it probably won't surprise you to hear Zelda Wind Waker inspired Omar to build a boat. Like, for real.

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Minimalist traffic management sim Mini Motorways and its subterranean predecessor Mini Metro are getting "one of the series' biggest updates ever" on 24th July, as part of developer Dinosaur Polo Club's tenth "Miniversary" celebrations.

More specifically, Dinosaur Polo Club is marking ten years since the studio first hit upon the idea for Mini Metro during a Ludum Dare Game Jam, creating an early iteration of the game that would go on to make a major splash when a fully formed version released the following year.

Since then we've seen a successor in 2019's majestic Mini Motorways, and Dinosaur Polo Club is now preparing a sizeable crossover update for the two games, bringing three Mini Metro maps into Mini Motorways and sending three maps in the other direction.

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I find it almost as hard to summarise Darkest Dungeon 2 as I do to survive within it. It has a way of engulfing my mind, much as its squalid landscapes of rot and flame are always threatening to swallow up the lonely stage coach that is, to all intents and purposes, the game's star. I'd say I can't see the wood for the trees, but it's more that I can't see the rancid fleshpits for the piles of skulls. Still, here's a tentative, top-down perspective: this is more remake than sequel, an engrossing new version of 2016's nastiest town-and-dungeon RPG, which swaps overseeing a small army of fragile anti-heroes for leading just four along branching, apocalyptic roads towards an ominous mountain and its retinue of Lovecraftian bosses. What was once a kind of hellish workplace simulator has become the world's worst commute.

It always seems like a uniquely long time between Zelda games. I know they have good reasons for taking an age to develop, because games like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are gigantic and ingenious. But it feels to me like there's something else at play too - an emotional aspect that makes the wait feel even longer. It feels like we see Zelda's cast much less frequently than we see a lot of other characters. They have rich lives, presumably, that they live elsewhere. To put it another way, Mario turns up in a lot of games that aren't the main platform adventures he's known for. Zelda's characters, though. Zelda...?

It's an unfair comparison. But maybe it's unfair in an interesting way. Mario does a lot of sports in between all the platforming. Over the years, he might do a bit of education, and might have an excellent line in RPGs, but most of the time if he's not stomping on goombas, he's kart-racing or playing football or golf or somesuch. This makes sense! As much as Mario is anything, he's a sense of energy and weight. He's the guy who can walk left to right but can also run left to right if you hold down the correct button. All that running! From early days, Mario was practically an athlete!

With the Zelda series it's a lot more complicated. And I think this is because Link is not a mascot in the same way that Mario is. Mario is Nintendo's Mr Peanut. Link and Zelda feel more like ghosts that haunts the mansion Nintendo lives in. Ghosts with whims and strange demands. Ghosts that make their presences felt in unusual ways.

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Details surrounding the settlements for Activision and Riot Games employees have revealed that more than 1500 current or former workers at Riot Games workers have received payments as part of previously announced settlements following a discrimination lawsuit.

According to Axios and a recent court filing, 1548 women have received a payment of between $2500 and $5000 (£1977 - £3950) at Riot, whilst hundreds of Activision employees are also receiving payouts for a separate, but similar, settlement.

It's thought that in some instances, the terms of Riot's agreement also sees "additional payments of up to $40,000 depending on employment status and tenure".

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Good news, Pokémon fans – we finally have a release date for Pokémon TCG Live: 8th June 2023.

That means that we also have a closure date for the app Pokémon TCG Live will supercede, Pokémon TCG Online, which is set to be "sunsetted" on 5th June.

"The Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) Online app will be removed from the App Store, Google Play, and Pokemon.com on June 5, 2023, at 9 a.m. PDT prior to the official global launch of Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) Live on June 8, 2023," The Pokémon Company announced earlier this week. "Pokémon TCG Live is currently available in beta to players around the world on iOS and Android devices, as well as PCs and Macs."

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A trailer for the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy's movie has leaked online.

Whilst there have been efforts to contain the leak – including a fairly successful community boycott and takedown notices from NBC Universal – the teaser is still available if you're prepared to look.

"I got emails about this early in the day but was at an amusement park with my kids and was unable to see what had happened," series creator Scott Cawthon said in response to a thread added to the Five Nights at Freddy's subreddit.

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A VR horror game that's not set in a mental asylum? What a refreshing change! And it's not just a shonkily put together, cheaply made, unscary and unintelligible jank-fest? Unbelievable!

That's right, on this week's episode of VR Corner I take a look at Propagation: Paradise Hotel, a new VR horror game that released this week on Quest and PC VR that is actually fairly decent!

Now look, I'm sorry if I sounded a bit jaded in those opening sentences there but in all honesty, I am. I've played so many VR horror games in the past and a large portion of them have been utterly underwhelming and just terribly, terribly made. Case in point is the recently released Afterlife VR which I streamed on my personal YouTube channel a few weeks ago. It was probably one of the worst PSVR2 games I've played so far and it featured every negative point that I described at the start of this post.

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Bohemia Interactive has revealed that its upcoming sci-fi FPS/RTS hybrid, Silica, is now available as an early access title.

Developed through Bohemia's Incubator initiative, Silica is "a crossover of FPS and RTS" where up to three factions battle for control over the planet Baltarus.

"Lead from above as commander, or experience the action first-hand, either alone, or with friends. Join one of two human armies, or hunt them down as the territorial aliens," the blurb teases. You can see it in action in the trailer below:

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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) has once again smashed its all-time concurrent PC user peak.

According to SteamDB, CS:GO topped 1.8m concurrent users over the weekend, smashing not only its own simultaneous user record, but cementing itself as one of Steam's biggest-ever games.

With 1,818,773 CS:GO players online at once yesterday, that means only PUBG: Battlegrounds now sports a higher concurrent count – no other game ever released on Steam comes close.

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Respawn wants you to decide which Limited Time Mode (LTM) should get its "own dedicated playlist" when season 17, Arsenal, drops next week.

Players have until tomorrow, 8th May, to register their vote for either Control, Team Deathmatch (TDM), or Gun Run.

"We’re letting the community decide which Limited Time Mode should get its own dedicated playlist during the first in-game event coming in Arsenal!" Respawn explains in a tweet.

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The best thing about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is its emptiness. It landed back in 2017 at the perfect moment: the Ubification of the open world genre was more or less complete, we were all utterly sick of trundling along breadcrumb trails to waypoints while fending off swarms of sidequests, and here was this game made up of mile upon mile of relative nothing - not so much an open world as the artful devastation of an open world, trimmed back to its towers, dungeon mouths and campsites, a world that lets its misty, muddy, cartoon geography do the talking. In practice, there's as much to do here as in any Assassin's Creed or Elder Scrolls. But the possibilities are scattered and overgrown, secrets to find or realise through experimentation, rather than Content that thrusts itself upon your attention.