Eurogamer

Today's Pokémon Presents livestream has provided a plethora of new details on the upcoming Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, due for release this November.

This includes the game's chief evolution gimmick, several new Pokémon species, and a name for its new region: Paldea.

Freshly-revealed Paldean Pokémon include Fidough, a chubby puppy that looks like it's made of oily bread and Cetitan, an icy whale with legs. We also got to see a Paldean Wooper, the game's first announced regional form - here, it's brown and poisonous from living in the area's bogs.

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Nintendo Switch exclusive Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has earned the biggest UK launch yet for the series, in terms of boxed sales figures.

But the critically-acclaimed RPG missed out on becoming the franchise's most lucrative launch to date - largely because it launched without its more-expensive Definitive Edition, GamesIndustry.biz reported.

As you may recall, the extra contents of Xenoblade Chronicles 3's Definitive Edition are now slated for launch later this year, due to "unforeseen logistical challenges".

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Elden Ring has been heavily criticised for its performance issues, particularly its PC iteration.

That's why one modder has taken matters into their own hands and taken drastic measures: chopping down the Erdtree.

For the unfamiliar, the Ertree is the giant golden tree that not only dominates the world with its shimmering branches, but dominates the narrative and the lives of the inhabitants in The Lands Between.

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NFL team the LA Rams may be feeling a little sheepish this morning.

Following an event that allowed the team early access to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, several images and snippets from the game have made their way onto the internet. You could say, these leaks are ram-pant.

The first image shows off the game's upcoming multiplayer lobby, which you can see in the tweet below. This image was originally shared by NFL player Cameron Dicker, although they clearly realised the error of their ways and swiftly removed the shot from their socials. This is the internet, however, and of course once it was out there, the Call of Duty community got wind of it and saved it for posterity.

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Valve has released SteamOS 3.3 along with a stable, updated version of the Steam Deck client.

The new version of SteamOS has plenty of new features as well as bug fixes.

Following Valve's warning a couple of weeks ago about the Steam Deck's performance in high temperatures, temperature notifications have been added which warn you when the console goes outside of the safe operating range. Fashionably late to the heatwave, but handy for anyone who's enjoying the last of the summer time.

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Final Fantasy 14 players are struggling to log in to servers due to a DDoS attack.

A new post on The Lodestone states "technical difficulties due to a DDoS attack", meaning players in North American data centre Worlds may be disconnected, have difficulty logging in, or difficulty accessing, sending, and receiving data.

"We are investigating the attack and taking countermeasures. Additional information will be provided as the situation develops," reads the post.

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Nintendo has blamed component shortages for a further slowing of Switch hardware sales, which have impacted the company's overall sales and profit for the past financial quarter.

It's not all bad news, however. Switch game sales remain brisk, with more games sold to consumers year-on-year and a solid start for Nintendo Switch Sports (which has now notched up 4.84m copies).

Nintendo highlighted several other first-party games to have sold well over the past three months: Mario Strikers Battle League shifted 1.91m copies, while Kirby and the Forgotten Land sold another 1.88m, taking it to a total of 4.53m and making it the best-selling Kirby game ever.

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EA's CEO Andrew Wilson has stated the importance of single player games, despite multiplayer games dominating the company's output.

During the company's first quarter earnings call yesterday, Wilson was asked how single player games fit into its portfolio.

He described them as "really, really important", although chief financial officer Chris Suh also followed up noting that live service games account for over 70 percent of the total business.

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Doug Cockle said something to me once that always stayed with me. He said when he recorded his lines for The Witcher games - he played the English Geralt of Rivia - he did them alone. He never recorded with any of the other actors - he barely met them. And I found that so strange - I still do. But I get it. I understand that in order to give meaningful dialogue choice, you need to cut performances up so you can stick them back together again in the way the player wants. And the greater the interactivity, the more you need to do it.

The problem with this is disjointedness: pauses in conversations where there would normally be none, mismatched tone where there wouldn't normally be any. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's not. And however good the performer - and direction and sticking back together - the result is never quite what it's aiming to be: natural. Because it's not.

South of the Circle got me thinking about this again. It's a smallish game that came out on Apple Arcade a couple of years ago and resurfaced on PC and Switch this week, and I'm very glad it did, because it has some of the best performances in a game I have ever witnessed.

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La Liga, Spain's top football division, has entered "a one of a kind, multi-year partnership" with EA Sports.

The league is home to some of the biggest football clubs in the world, such as Real Madrid and Barcelona.

The sponsorship deal, which Marca reports will cost EA €30m euros a year, will include "title-naming rights for all La Liga competitions" and a "complete rebrand of La Liga with EA Sports including all logos, graphics, fonts and other visual elements".

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UPDATE 4/8/22: War Gods Zeus of Child, the God of War rip-off which Eurogamer spotted on the Microsoft Store this week, has been removed from sale.

Eurogamer spotted the game had been pulled from the Xbox shop yesterday. When contacted, Microsoft declined to comment on the matter.

"Dinasaur Falling Survival", another game by the same developer which we noted below looked like a rip-off of Fall Guys starring Nintendo mascot Yoshi, remains online at the time of writing.

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Yes, E3 was cancelled this year, but do not fear. Another show has appeared.

Rising from the grave of E3 is EEK3, an annual indie showcase organised by Haunted PS1.

As the name would suggest, Haunted PS1 is a community dedicated to indie games that are reviving the 90s era of gaming with weird and uncanny aesthetics. EEK3 in particular focuses on retro horror games and has a penchant for the low-fi, low-poly offerings its community brings.

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Xbox has announced the next batch of games coming to its Game Pass subscription service this August.

Available from today is Ghost Recon Wildlands on cloud, console and PC, the Tom Clancy co-op military shooter from 2017 - we called it "beautiful yet callous" in our review.

The remaining games coming soon are headed up by Two Point Campus, the latest sim game from the makers of Two Point Hospital. It's out day one on 9th August across cloud, console, and PC and judging from our preview will be well worth playing.

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We Are OFK, the pop music narrative game, is set to release on 18th August.

The release will be episodic: the first two episodes will be out on 18th August, followed by episode three on 25th August, four on 1st September, and the final episode on 8th September.

A summer release for the game was announced at Nintendo's Indie World Showcase, but now we have the exact date of arrival across Nintendo Switch, PlayStation consoles, and PC (Steam and Epic).

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For those that were hoping to hear more about the next Mortal Kombat game at Evo, it looks like there is Sub Zero chance of that happening.

NetherRealm's Ed Boon has shut down reports that the developer would be making an announcement at this year's fighting event.

"It's time for Street Fighter and other great fighting games to be in the sun," he tweeted earlier today. "Let's enjoy that!"

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Diablo Immortal has stemmed the flow of falling Blizzard user numbers, and given the company a modest increase in monthly active engagement.

However, Activision Blizzard's latest financial results show Blizzard active users have only recovered slightly - to where they were just over a year ago - and revenue remains down slightly year-on-year.

After falling to 22 million monthly active users for the quarter ending in March 2022, Diablo Immortal has helped Blizzard back to 27 million for the quarter ending at the beginning of July.

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The open world of Halo Infinite was significantly scaled back compared to its original vision.

That's according to Joseph Staten, head of creative at 343 Industries, speaking on the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences podcast Game Maker's Notebook (thanks TechRadar).

Infinite was the first open world Halo game so it's understandable there were several changes during development, but in particular the scope and biome variety were heavily revised.

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A recent update for Hitman 3 added the tropical Ambrose Island map to the game. This map has a piratical theme, and so it is only fitting that Guybrush Threepwood from the Monkey Island series makes a showing on its shores.

Please note that there will be some spoilers for Hitman 3's Ambrose Island map below.

If you venture down from the Western Beach on Ambrose Island, you will come across a small nook in the coastline. Here, there is a gravestone set into the side of the cliff face.

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I spent five minutes with MultiVersus over the weekend, which turned into ten minutes and then an hour and then the best part of a morning. MultiVersus is great! If you aren't aware of it, it's a Warner Bros-themed Smash Bros-alike. You choose from a bunch of familiar characters, and then fight on 2D stages. Your aim is to get ring-outs by lobbing enemies off the screen, and the more damage you do, the further they fly when you hit them. Best of four wins. Simple.

Not simple, obviously, and here's where an admission comes in. I love the idea of Smash Bros - and I particularly adore the way that the games have become sort of Nintendo museums, beautiful virtual dioramas in their own right. But I am thick and slow and these games have always looked fast and complicated. All of these Nintendo characters, some of which I am happy to admit I have not really heard of, fighting it out in astonishingly swift battles.

I think there are two reasons MultiVersus clicked. Three actually, the bonus third being that I was playing alongside my daughter, whose enthusiasm for these things always carries me aloft with it. Anyway, the other two reasons: One, MultiVersus is new, so there's that sense of getting in on the ground floor. Even if people are turning up with Smash Bros experience - and they are, and it's helping them - the psychological toll is lightened, because this is a game that's been around for a few weeks at most.

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PlayerUnknown Productions has announced it has hired David Polfeldt as a senior advisor.

Polfeldt was managing director of Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment for 12 years. He left the company earlier this year in March, as he felt that he wasn't "the right manager for what the studio has become".

During his tenure at Massive Entertainment, Polfeldt worked on many of its leading titles and was part of the teams in charge of the delayed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and a mysterious open-world Star Wars project.

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Call of Duty fans are switching off from the franchise, Activision's latest user figures suggest.

Monthly active user data published by Activision shows player numbers have dipped over the past 12 months - from 127 million in June 2021 to just 94 million this year.

The details are part of a tough round of financial results for Activision Blizzard this quarter, despite the recent and highly-profitable launch of Diablo Immortal.

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Sega's Mega Drive Mini 2 console will only have a tenth of the supply compared to the previous retro console in North America.

What's more, Western customers will need to purchase the console through Amazon Japan's storefront due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage, reports Polygon.

The console was originally intended as a Japan-only product, but "by using Amazon's 'Japan Store' system, we found that at least a small number of units could be sold via Amazon.com, so a portion was allocated to make the North American version," says a Sega representative.

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Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered on Steam has been re-priced in a number of territories.

Specifically, this is affecting those who pre-purchased the game in the UK, as well as Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, and Switzerland.

The new price is £49.99, down from £54.99. Customers will now need to cancel their pre-purchase of the game to receive a full refund and then pre-purchase the game again at the new price.

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This weekend the Formula E London E-Prix took place at the ExCel exhibition centre, the only top-level indoor and outdoor track in international motosport. It may not quite have the prestige of F1, but the sport is rapidly growing in popularity.

And it's not just about electric cars, but virtual ones too. On Friday night the second Accelerate esports championship took centre stage at the London E-Prix. Streamed live on Twitch and YouTube, it saw drivers going head-to-head to win a share of €100,000.

The esports arm of Formula E grew during the pandemic and a need to engage racing fans online. Now that's shifted towards expanding the audience of the sport, enticing fans to watch the real E-Prix through a love of video games and esports.

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A few years back, in a bid to explain Fortnite's unexplainable world, Epic Games came up with the term "Snapshot" to describe, in-universe, why its battle royale matches can feature multiple people playing as the same Fortnite character, or why seemingly singular characters available in Fortnite - like Peely the banana, or The Rock, or Wolverine - can reappear under different guises.

What is a Snapshot? Why is it a Snapshot? Dear reader, these are questions for another time. But the general term, at least, has stuck with me as I try to sum up what Fortnite was, and is, and will be. If you'd asked me five years ago today, I'd say it was a distinctly average PVE base building shooter - and the first time Eurogamer ever really covered Fortnite in detail was a preview of this now long-sidelined mode.

If you'd asked me four years ago, as Fortnite's quickly-thrown-together battle royale was blowing up and footballers were doing its dances in World Cup matches, I'd say it was probably The Next Big Thing. Three years ago? Fortnite was established as a phenomenon, an industry-leading showcase of engine mastery and live service development that could pull off in-game stunts like no other. Want to blow up bits of the map in real-time with a giant volcano? No problem. Stage a giant monster versus mech fight and invite everyone in to see it live? You got it.

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This week marks the very long-awaited arrival of Sea of Thieves' captaincy update, and developer Rare has shared a detailed video breakdown of its new features - including ship owning, naming, and extended customisation - as part of its new Season 7 trailer.

Those who've been with Sea of Thieves for the long haul might recall that captaincy features were originally planned for the game's very first post-release update, back in 2018. A development rethink after a wobbly launch saw those plans put on the back burner, so it was a bit of a surprise when they finally resurfaced some four years later during this year's not-E3.

And now, with this Thursday's slightly delayed launch almost upon us, we have a much clearer idea of how the update will work, with Rare's new video suggesting at least one of the aims of captaincy is to answer player calls for more to spend their amassed in-game wealth on.

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Netflix is readying for the September arrival of its animated Cyberpunk 2077 series, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, with the release of its first full trailer, introducing some of the story's key players.

Edgerunners, which was announced back in June 2020, is a 10-episode collaboration between Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt and Japanese animation studio Trigger, which has previously worked on the likes of Little Witch Academia and Kill la Kill. It tells the story of a street kid trying to survive in the technology and body modification obsessed Night City.

"Having everything to lose," explains Netflix, "he stays alive by becoming an Edgerunner - a mercenary outlaw also known as a cyberpunk."

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DICE has detailed its imminent 1.2 update for the beleaguered Battlefield 2042, which will, among other things, herald its first batch of planned map improvements based on the player feedback it requested earlier this year.

This initial round of improvements will target Battlefield 2042's Kaleidoscope map, and will - as previously detailed - focus on adjustments to cover, intensity, line of sight, pathing, and traversal. These have been achieved by adding new flag positions, by placing new areas and assets around the map, and by raising terrain.

DICE says terrain changes will "break sightlines and let infantry move more purposefully around the map", while new assets will "bring more tactical destruction", giving players new options as the environment evolves throughout a game.

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Riot has announced its upcoming 2D fighter Project L, which is set in the world of Runeterra, will be free to play.

"One of our goals is to remove as many barriers as possible from you enjoying Project L," explained developer Tom Cannon in a new video, which can be watched below. "We want you to be able to play, no matter where you live, what your skill level is, or how much money you have to spend on a game."

Meanwhile, Cannon has said the Project L team will be "respectful" of its players' "time and wallet" when it comes to monetisation.

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Apex Legends' 14th season, officially known as Hunted, is right around the corner, and Respawn is currently in full-on hype mode ahead of its 9th August arrival. And now, following the official unveiling of new hero Vantage last week, the developer now confirmed a major overhaul for its original Kings Canyon map, alongside a level cap increase for players.

Kings Canyon has, of course, been around since Apex Legends' launch back in 2019, and Season 14's extensive overhaul aims to improve some of the ageing map's more troublesome issues. Before we get to the mechanical stuff though, there's perhaps the most immediately obvious change - upgraded lighting and a new skybox, both intended to make for a "more immersive, vibrant environment".

In terms of gameplay changes though, there's the new Relic point of interest, which is designed to help create a little bit more breathing space on the map in the early to mid game so squad battles are less likely to be interrupted by third parties. This has been achieved by filling the Skull Town and Thunderdome area sunk in Season 5 with sand and building a new series of winding, interconnected buildings for fresh skirmishes, complete with a giant skull centerpiece.

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EA has detailed FIFA 23's Career Mode, which lets you play as a famous manager for the first time.

In the manager career portion of Career Mode, you can use the likeness of a raft of famous managers from the Premier League, including Jürgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola, Antonio Conte and Thomas Tuchel.

"We've seen feedback from players wanting to play as some of their favourite managers, and we're happy to say FIFA 23 enables you to play as one of the 350+ authentic football managers, of which 30+ have star heads, in Career Mode," EA said in a detailed blog post.

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Welcome to the latest edition of DF Direct Weekly - the 72nd, in fact. This is Digital Foundry's weekly show, where the team down tools for an hour or so to discuss the latest gaming and technology news. After a couple of weeks away, myself and John Linneman have returned to the mics, discussing the latest PlayStation 4 firmware beta offering 1440p display support, along with sharing some thoughts on the latest The Last of Us Part 1 footage. VR is also a hot topic too, with Sony revealing new headset features in the same week that Meta ups prices on the Oculus Meta Quest 2 and the massive multi-billion burn-rate on its metaverse gamble comes into focus.

Kicking off with PlayStation 5's 1440p update, we'll be covering this more extensively, but the headline points are fairly straightforward - the beta firmware works fine with 1440p displays, with a new test option that puts any connected display through its paces at 1440p resolution in both 60Hz and 120Hz, and in both HDR and SDR modes. From there, everything works exactly as it should - typically, games are downscaled from their 4K outputs to 1440p, providing a form of super-sampling anti-aliasing. In the Direct, we talk about why this is a good thing and how responsive Sony has been to feedback in recent times - something we've not necessarily experienced so readily in the past. Quite how native 1440p game content runs with the 1440p display output is something we're testing right now, so look out for a piece on this soon.

Gran Turismo 7 will be dropping new in-game items in collaboration with French luxury fashion house Dior.

The collaboration was announced on 30th July at the World Series Showdown, a global online tournament for the Gran Turismo series.

The items were specially designed by Kim Jones, British fashion designer and Artistic Director of men's collections at Dior, for inclusion in the game. This marks the first time Dior has ventured into a "virtual space".

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A Brazilian governmental filing has given us a rare glimpse into Sony's thoughts on the impending $69bn Microsoft buyout of Activision Blizzard - and specifically, the fact that Xbox will soon own blockbuster first-person shooter franchise Call of Duty.

In Brazil, companies within the same sphere of any such corporate transaction are asked for their thoughts on deals of this magnitude. And, intriguingly for us, Brazil also posts all of these details online (albeit in some cases with redacted passages).

Sony's response is largely public, and contains a number of arguments which paint the potential of Xbox owning Call of Duty in a problematic light (as spotted by ResetEra, and translated for us by Eurogamer Portugal).

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The internet is quite the place. You can find everything on here, from how to boil an egg to, checks notes, make a toilet into a gaming PC. Huh.

But yes, it is actually a thing.

This recent computer creation was made by Basically Homeless, who turned their loo into a fully functioning "12700 & 3060 gaming PC".

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A new interview with Innersloth co-founder Marcus Bromander reveals just how close the team came to moving on from Among Us.

Bromander guested on the podcast Visionaries to discuss Among Us' rise in popularity, the impact it had on Innersloth, and what the company's next plans are.

Among Us first released in 2018 but didn't see mainstream popularity until 2020. During that time, Bromander stated that he, along with fellow co-founder Forrest Willard and mutual friend Amy Liu, were working full-time on Among Us.

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A Pokémon Presents presentation - like a Pokémon-focused Nintendo Direct - is due on 3rd August - this Wednesday!

We're expecting to hear more about this year's highly-anticipated Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, due for Nintendo Switch in time for Christmas, and hopefully another look at early fan-favourite Lechonk.

Wednesday's show will stream from Pokémon's official YouTube channel at 2pm UK time and will be 20 minutes long.

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UPDATE 03/08/22: Blizzard has responded to the Diablo Immortal player who found themselves unable to get into the battlegrounds after shelling out an eye watering $100k in the game.

In a new video, jtisallbusiness has revealed the developer will be releasing a fix for the issue.

"Blizzard did reach out to me," jtitsallbusiness said, before stating that a Blizzard representative told them the company had "approved a fix" which will be implemented in the "next coming days".

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UPDATE 02/08/22: Following yesterday's story, Valve has now registered with Kominfo. As such, Steam is no longer blocked by the Indonesian government.

PayPal and Yahoo services have also resumed in the country.

At this time, however, the Epic Games Store and its services, as well as EA's Origin, are still blocked. Industry analyst Daniel Ahmed has stated, "there is no official confirmation on whether [Epic and EA] plan to register yet."

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Early footage of Deadrop has hit the internet, giving us a look at the project backed by controversial streamer Guy Beahm, AKA Dr Disrespect.

However, fans of Beahm have given the footage a mixed reception - especially after the project was hyped up by the streamer and compared to Call of Duty. In June, a widely-shared comment by Beahm stated that Deadrop "blows out anything from the COD engine".

What we're seeing today is a look at Deadrop as it stands currently, for those who paid $50 for a Founders Access Pass (yes, that's the one which includes a procedurally-generated NFT for your character avatar).

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