Eurogamer

Elden Ring is the best-selling game of 2022.

Research firm NPD Group - which originally asserted Elden Ring was one of the top 10 best-selling games in history before retracting the claim due to "incomplete data" - reports in an updated statement that From Software's action RPG has "placed first in dollar sales in four of its first five months in market", is the best-selling game of June 2022, and remains "the best-selling game of 2022 year to date".

"Elden Ring repeated as the best-selling game of the month, and it remains the best-selling game of 2022 year to date," NPD said in the revised statement. "Elden Ring has placed first in dollar sales in four of its first five months in market."

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Sony has confirmed its acquisition of Bungie is now complete.

Sony announced it would buy Bungie for $3.6bn back in February. At the time, Sony boss Jim Ryan stated the purchase was "an important step in [Sony's] strategy to expand the reach of PlayStation to a much wider audience".

Despite a probe by the FTC that sought to review "the latest example of how aggressive the agency is becoming in reviewing mergers", the agreement has now formally "closed" and Sony has posted across its social media channels to "officially" welcome Bungie to "the PlayStation family".

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I'm not too far into Loopmancer, but I'm loving it. It's a beautiful 2D roguelite mounted in a glorious 3D cyberpunk world. You have great wonderfully nasty weapons, the controls are swift and precise, and the polish fails at the most charming moments - your character's hair is one, and the pleasantly stilted swearing of your enemies is another.

But there's already something about it that I am really becoming obsessed by. The pocket money. Downed enemies drop money for you to collect, money which you too will lose if you have it on you when you die. So instead, it's imperative that you invest it. Loopmancer: stylish, violent, and impressively prudent.

Luckily for us, you're investing your money in stylish violence. Scattered around the game's levels are terminals that allow you to put your money towards unlocking the fancier parts of the game's arsenal. Whenever I come across one of these terminals, even if it's a basic grenade I doubt I'll use, I end up dropping all my cash into it, because this is a roguelite and I lose my cash when I die, and - crucially - I have to assume I'll die pretty soon.

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Sea of Thieves' long-long-long-awaited Captaincy Update, first discussed prior to the game's release all the way back in 2018, will miss its planned launch later this month and is now due to arrive alongside Season Seven on 4th August.

In its originally envisaged 2018 guise, the Captaincy Update was an early victim of Sea of Thieves' rocky launch, with Rare ultimately making the decision to place it "on the back burner" while it refocused its development plans. Most assumed it was lost to time after that, but, to everyone's surprise, it suddenly resurfaced during Microsoft's not-E3 showcase this June.

This new iteration of Captaincy follows the same basic premise of the originally teased update, introducing a host of new features designed around the idea of becoming the captain of your own distinctive vessel. These will include the ability to name your ship, decorate its cabin, earn unique rewards, make use of special new cash-in points across the ocean, and more.

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Up until now, The Sims 4 has presented itself as an enthusisatically flexi-sexual world, where every Sim is open to at least considering all attempts to woo and WooHoo. That'll soon change, however, with an imminent update giving players the opportunity to define their Sims' sexual orientations in a way that better reflects the real world.

Arriving as part of a free update accompanying The Sims 4's next major expansion, High School Years, which launches on 28th July, the feature will add a new Sexual Orientation tab to the game's Create-A-Sim screen. Here, player will have the opportunity to tinker with three settings that will impact how Sims interact with others in-game.

The first option enables players to choose whether a Sim is romantically attracted to men, women, both, or neither, meaning they'll turn down romantic advances made by Sims that don't fit that profile. Incidentally, while discussing the feature during its latest livestream, developer Maxis explained it's currently using gender binary terms (despite making strides to add more inclusive pronoun options) for technical reasons relating to how The Sims 4, which is built on eight-year-old architecture, currently handles gender behind the scenes. It notes, however, that it hopes to expand the feature to encompass more gender identities over time.

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A new report has detailed a long-lost title from Totally Games, the developer best remembered for its work on the X-Wing series. Known as Knights of Decayden, it was planned as an early exclusive for the original Xbox before its cancellation and subsequent fade into obscurity.

Totally Games was, of course, a big deal back in the 1990s, having made a name for itself with LucasArts' hugely popular series of Star Wars space shooters, which included the likes of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing Alliance. Sadly, the studio closed in 2015, following a string of critically and commercially disappointing releases - but fans will likely get a kick out of a new Axios report detailing a fantasy flight combat game the developer was working on in partnership with Microsoft at the height of its success.

Knights of Decayden (other titles reportedly included alternative spelling Knights of Decadyn and Project Archipelago) was initially pitched to Sony under the name Knights of Utu for release on PS2, but eventually found its way under Microsoft's wing, with the plan being to release it as an Xbox exclusive in the year following the fledgling console's 2001 launch.

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Former Mass Effect writer Drew Karpyshyn has discussed some of BioWare's early ideas of how it would wrap up the game's iconic sci-fi trilogy - and also some of the issues the developer still had to iron out.

Karpyshyn served as lead writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, though left BioWare part-way through the second game's development.

Discussing the trilogy in a new reddit AMA, Karpyshyn said that when he was in the Mass Effect 2 writers room, BioWare had "some very ideas planned out".

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It's Weekly time, the podcast show where we recap last week on Eurogamer for you. Remember, premium supporters get these episodes every Friday, whereas everyone else listens from Monday.

Today on Weekly, I'm joined by editor in chief Martin Robinson and features editor Christian Donlan. We talk about the amazing space pictures pumped back from the James Webb telescope last week, which Christian is very excited about, and we dive into the Mothmen legend and new game Mothmen 1966, which again, Christian is very excited about.

Elsewhere, we take a look at the hulking beast that is Grand Theft Auto Online, we dip into Company of Heroes 3, and talk about the upcoming cinematic game As Dusk Falls, which I'm very excited about. And of course we whizz through all the other videos, features and news that stood out on the site last week.

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Valve's Steam Deck is an excellent portable machine for 720p gaming, packing last-gen console performance in a compact shell - but can we push the system further? With a 4K display as a target output we're going to drag the Deck as far as we can into docked, home theatre gaming. This may seem farcical but new second generation reconstruction techniques - FSR 2.0 and TSR - have just hit commercial games, providing massive performance gains for high-res rendering. Plus, there's a wide library of older and less technically challenging content that the Steam Deck may be able to accelerate to high resolutions on raw performance alone. So can we actually achieve a good docked TV experience with the Steam Deck on a modern 4K display - or are the demands of high-res gaming just too much to ask from the low-power, low-bandwidth AMD APU at its heart?

While you could of course simply scale up 720p to fill a 4K screen, the results often aren't flattering. Games at this resolution tend to look blurry and soft, with the scaling tech to preserve sharpness absent on many TVs. 1080p and above content fares better, so that's what we'll be targeting here - at a minimum, around double the pixels of the Steam Deck's internal display. A true native 4K is going to elude us except in simple titles, but we should be able to push image quality quite a bit regardless.

If you're someone who likes cats, video games about cats, and taking your cat on adventures in the real world - well, this Stray-branded cat carrier may very well be for you.

Or rather, for your cat.

Stray publisher Annapurna Interactive has announced this limited edition collaboration with pet accessories brand Travel Cat to commemorate the launch of Stray on PC and PlayStation next week.

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The bug-laden Sonic Origins will be improved, Sega has assured fans.

In a statement posted to Twitter last night, a Sega community manager stated that the publisher had heard fan feedback and was working on various fixes.

"Hey! Thanks for the patience!" Sega wrote. "The team's been listening and is working on fixing a variety of issues right now. We'll make sure to get some more official messaging out once we have more info for everyone."

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Online puzzle phenomenon Wordle is being turned into physical game.

Wordle owner The New York Times is partnering with Hasbro to release "Wordle: The Party Game" this October, priced $20 (around £17).

The project has been one of Hasbro's fastest ever launches, the company told CNN, with development, production and release set to be completed in less than a year.

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Unity boss and former EA exec John Riccitiello has been slammed for his comments regarding mobile developers who don't seek to squeeze monetisation from their smartphone games.

Riccitiello raised eyebrows when discussing developers who don't prioritise monetisation as part of their creative process.

"It's a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way," Riccitiello told PocketGamer.biz, "and some of these people are my favorite people in the world to fight with - they're the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They're also some of the biggest fucking idiots."

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: demons, nuking solar systems, and slackers versus zombies.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

Was I hard on Diablo Immortal? I keep thinking about this because I've gone back to it and started a new character and now I'm playing it fairly regularly every day. I really like it. And the things I worried about - the shop and spending money? I still haven't done that. What's more, I still haven't felt even remotely tempted to do that. I'm playing this game like a Diablo game and it's fulfilling everything I want from it.

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Pre-orders are now open for the many different editions of God of War Ragnarök - the most expensive of which, the Jotnar Edition, is priced at £230. This includes lots of fancy physical items and a digital code for the game - but no disc.

As detailed last week, Ragnarök will be available in four separate editions upon launch in November.

Slightly less expensive, and also without a disc, the God of War Ragnarök Collector's Edition costs £180. The Digital Deluxe edition costs £80 - as you might expect from the name, there's no disc there either. Finally, a standard digital/disc copy of the game costs £70 on PS5, or £60 on PS4 (where there's a £10 upgrade option).

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What do Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Cyberpunk 2077 have in common? The answer is obvious, you might reply: they are both video games. That is correct, but there is another, less obvious, answer which is that they both represent Realism. Specifically, the artistic movement of Realism that began in France in the mid-1800s and has, in one form or another, continued to evolve to this day.

The painter who first coined this expression was Gustave Courbet. He presented paintings that shocked the artistic elite of the time. His painting, ‘A Burial at Ornans’ (1850-51), was a portrayal of the funeral of Courbet’s great uncle; a peasant funeral and on a scale deemed excessive for such lowly subjects. The 315 x 668cm canvas was all encompassing, immersing the viewer in the hidden reality of the peasantry, which the art-viewing aristocracy would have never normally have acknowledged. Placing such an importance to the lives of the impoverished and rural populations unsettled and threatened the upper classes in post-revolutionary France.

Realism is an art movement term that can easily applied to triple-A video game titles with their advanced graphics and commitment to mimicking human nature and experiences and, in particular, to their photorealistic, visual excellence. Nonetheless, Realism elements can also be found in video games that are not celebrated for any photorealistic qualities.

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Developer Survios is teaming up with 20th Century Fox to create a new single-player, action-horror game based on the Alien franchise.

Details on the new venture - currently being referred to as "Aliens" - are pretty scarce right now, with Survios only saying it'll feature an original storyline set somewhere between the events of Alien and Aliens, with players taking on the role of a "battle hardened veteran [with] a vendetta against the Xenomorphs".

Given Survios' background as a primarily VR-focused developer - it's worked on the likes of Creed: Rise to Glory, The Walking Dead Onslaught, and Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey - it won't be much of a surprise to hear its new Aliens project is also be getting the VR treatment.

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Fans eagerly awaited fresh news of EA's highly-anticipated new Skate game have been given their wish, but it mighn't be quite what they were expecting. EA and developer Full Circle have shared a new 18-minute video, announcing, among other things, that their long-awaited skateboarding revival will be a free-to-play live-service game.

Despite having variously been known as both Skate 4 and a Skate reboot since its development was announced in 2020, Full Circle now says the game "isn't a sequel, it's not a remake, a reboot, [or] a prequel." Instead, it's described as an "authentic evolution" of the series - one whose last mainline entry arrived 12 years ago - that reflects "where skateboarding and gaming is in the real world".

Full Circle also confirmed a final name in the form of "Skate." (that fullstop is here to stay), and a new setting in San Vansterdam - described as a sister city to previous games' San Vanelona.

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Following its reveal last week, Ubisoft has now shown off three minutes of gameplay footage from its upcoming free-to-play mobile shooter The Division Resurgence in a new trailer.

Resurgence (not to be confused with Heartland, Ubisoft's upcoming free-to-play Division game for PC and consoles), will, like other entries in the series, be an open-world third-person shooter RPG set in post-crisis America - in this case, Manhattan - following a deadly virus outbreak.

It does promises a fresh story campaign, in which players once again take on the role of an agent allied to the Strategic Homeland, delivering a "new perspective on key story events".

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An engineer has built a real-life working SPNKR rocket launcher from Halo. Best of all, it also plays the Halo theme.

YouTuber Jairus of All is the person behind this engineering marvel, who in a nine-minute video explains how he got this thing to work (thanks, PC Gamer).

To add a cherry on top, Jairus handed over the launcher to "Master Chief" who fired it at a lake on the back of a Mongoose.

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast - also available in audio form! - it's all about Nintendo Switch, which is quietly having yet another brilliant year.

The last few days have seen confirmation of a new Kirby game and a Bayonetta 3 release date (finally!), adding to a solid year so far and a strong end to 2022 which will also see the likes of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, Mario Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. It's a bumper crop - especially compared to this year's lack of first-party launches on PlayStation and - most of all - Xbox.

At the same time, the way Nintendo is detailing these games is changing. Notably, there's been no big E3 week Nintendo Direct this year, as the company keeps information on Zelda and Metroid under wraps. Is this leading to an even bigger 2023 - perhaps with new Switch hardware too? Eurogamer's Tom Phillips, Ed Nightingale and Ishraq Subhan discuss.

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Ubisoft has updated Rainbow Six Siege's Year 7 content roadmap, and it's not good news.

Some of the main feature updates and quality of life improvements due to be released in Season 3 have been pushed back to Season 4.

This includes a new iteration of the Ranked mode, dubbed Ranked 2.0; restrictions on voice chat for players who are verbally abusive on mic; and the Reputation Score display beta.

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UPDATE 19/07/22: Mini Metro developer Dinosaur Polo Club has responded to the release of copycat game Mini Subway.

"As a small indie studio, we recognize that our own successes are, in part, due to standing on the shoulders of giants, and that part of the creative process involves taking inspiration from others and making it your own. Seeing people take inspiration from our games has been an amazing experience, but of course, there's a difference between inspiration and plagiarism," a spokesperson told Eurogamer.

"We owe it to our team to defend the work we've invested so much into, so we evaluate every report of copycat or clone versions of our games to assess whether they breach our trademark. While we always try to reach out to the developers first, if required, we will take legal action.

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A swathe of Dragon Age and Mass Effect DLC is now available for free via Origin, as EA finally retires its aging BioWare Points currency.

DLC packs for Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2, plus Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 (except for that game's multiplayer packs) are all now available without charge, EA has said in an email to fans shared via reddit.

Remaining BioWare Points can be spent on those Mass Effect 3 multiplayer packs (if you still have any points lying around), before they disappear forever on 11th October.

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Final Fantasy 16 doesn't have turn-based combat, in a bid to appeal to a younger audience.

That's according to producer Naoki Yoshida speaking to Famitsu (and translated by VGC) in an extensive new interview on the game.

"I'm from a generation that grew up with command and turn-based RPGs," said Yoshida. "I think I understand how interesting and immersive it can be. On the other hand, for the past decade or so, I've seen quite a number of opinions saying 'I don't understand the attraction of selecting commands in video games'.

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The global PC market has reportedly faced a sharp drop in shipments in the second quarter of 2022.

According to preliminary data analysed by research firm Gartner, sales fell by 12.6 percent year-on-year to 72.01m units.

Gartner puts the decline down to three main causes: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the cost of living crisis caused by inflation and steep downturn in demand for Chromebooks.

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Regrettably, Tony Hawk has announced a partnership with blockchain/metaverse/virtual world game The Sandbox.

This will add skating-based areas, and pixelly versions of Tony Hawk you can buy as NFTs. Confused? Here's a visualisation of how it'll look:

"What's up guys it's Tony Hawk, and we are building the biggest skate park in the metaverse," the skater says in the video. "You have never seen skating like this. I'll see you in The Sandbox."

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Rumbleverse - the free-to-play "brawler royale" from developer Iron Galaxy Studios - has, following a bit of a delay, been given a new release date, and is launching for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC (via the Epic Games Store) on 18th August.

Iron Galaxy Studios, which is perhaps best known as the developer behind the 2013 version of Killer Instinct, announced Rumbleverse during last year's Game Awards, describing the 40-person, melee-focused battle royale game as "big, hilarious playground where spectacular things are always happening".

It was initially due to launch into early access on 8th February this year, but Iron Galaxy opted to delay its release indefinitely, saying "there's more we want to do to perfect the experience."

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Sony has announced PlayStation Stars, a new customer loyalty programme which will launch later this year.

Access is open to all PlayStation owners, with additional benefits for PlayStation Plus subscribers.

If you're familiar with the Xbox's Microsoft Rewards scheme - well, this is a rough equivalent, with a couple of intriguing differences.

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It appears that Dino Crisis, Ridge Racer 2 and Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny are heading to PlayStation Plus Premium.

The PS1 and PSP games were strangely only mentioned on the Italian PlayStation Blog as part of the list of titles coming to the subscription service this month (thanks, Push Square).

But the games have now been removed from the post, suggesting that it was listed by accident.

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Following leaked footage of an early build, modders have now made EA's unreleased Skate game playable.

Despite the developers of the remake requesting players don't download the leaked build, modders have adapted it for multiplayer and are hosting their own servers.

The build already has a multiplayer capability, which modders have enabled.

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Nintendo has announced it will purchase Dynamo Pictures, the Tokyo-based visual production company behind a series of animated Pikmin short films.

The acquisition was detailed today, alongside plans to rebrand the company Nintendo Pictures Co Ltd.

Once fully part of Nintendo, the studio will "focus on development of visual content utilising Nintendo IP", documentation of the deal stated.

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Capcom's Resident Evil 2 Remake has now sold over 10m copies since its release in 2019.

Capcom shared the news on Twitter with a parody image of an endgame ranking beside a typewriter - it received an SSS of course.

The news follows the recent update to the game for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, adding 4k support, ray-tracing, and improved framerates.

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Last night, Red Dead Online fans came together to mourn the "death" of Rockstar's online service via a community-run "funeral" in-game.

Tributes to the online component of Red Dead Redemption 2 poured in all over social media.

https://twitter.com/luckyluki10/status/1547201956426485761

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Don't expect to see an Aztec setting for Assassin's Creed in the near future - despite a high-profile rumour to the contrary.

Yesterday, a claim the next Assassin's Creed game would be set in the Aztec era gained traction online, sourced from a Twitter user who had previously leaked details of fellow Ubisoft series Far Cry.

Now, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has debunked the Aztec claim - while also corroborating Eurogamer's reporting earlier this year that Baghdad would be featured in the franchise's next title.

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The Sega Genesis Mini 2 is heading to North America this October.

The mini retro console was revealed to Japan last month, with a release date of 27th October. That's now confirmed for North America too.

There's no confirmed release date yet for Sega fans in other countries - presumably the name will be changed to Mega Drive Mini 2 as well.

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It’s pretty staggering to think that GTA Online will be celebrating its ninth anniversary later this year. In that time, it’s jumped across three console generations and been bolstered by nearly 40 updates. As such, it’s a very different experience to when it launched, back when the term ‘games as a service’ was still a relatively new idea and Skrillex reigned supreme. Fundamentally, though, GTA Online is still the same game you will have played all those years ago. The shooting is clunky, the characters still control like small shipping frigates, and there’s a general toxicity to its online community that harkens back to the dark days of Modern Warfare 2 lobbies (my mother is a saint, I’ll have you know).

GTA Online in 2022 is a particularly strange thing then, and it’s also much unlike anything else in gaming. Its foundations are old, ancient even, but with the sheer barrage of constant updates from Rockstar, it manages to straddle new and dated ideas simultaneously, to predictably mixed results. The sheer breadth of things to do is where it thrives, however. Whether you want to run drugs around the city, roleplay as a business executive, or simply tune-up your cars and take them along to meets, there really is always something to keep you busy.

Perhaps the most pressing question surrounding GTA Online is how friendly it is to new players. There’s good news on this front, in that Rockstar recently streamlined the onboarding process, with a set of flashy new menus serving as a gentle guiding hand, shepherding the player through the opening hours.

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Immortality: An Interactive Movie Trilogy - the upcoming Hollywood-inspired investigative horror game from Her Story and Telling Lies creator Sam Barlow - has been delayed until 30th August to "ensure the experience is as polished as possible".

Immortality, which was initially due to launch on 26th July, tells the story of Marissa Marcel, a (fictional) actress who filmed three movies over the course of her career - Ambrosio in 1968, Minsky in 1970, and Two of Everything in 1999 - none of which were ever released.

As with Barlow's previous titles, it's a story presented in non-linear fashion that players must slowly piece together themselves by scouring through reams of FMV video. But while Her Story featured faux police interview footage and Telling Lies chose "hacked" webcam video as its medium of choice, Immortality asks players to dig through an archive of film and behind-the-scenes footage - using a machine resembling an old-fashioned Moviola editing device - to find out what happened to Marissa Marcel.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge - the critically acclaimed, retro-inspired beat-em-up from developer Tribute Games and publisher Dotemu has shifted over 1m copies since it launched a little under a month ago in June.

Shredder's Revenge has, of course, gone down a storm since its release on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC. Eurogamer's Christian Donlan was just one of many to be won over by its charmingly reinvigorated classic side-scrolling brawling action (which comes with a bunch of pleasing mod-cons, including online co-op support for up to six players), calling it a "wonderful thing, colourful, pacey, and filled with perfect Turtles music."

Clearly, with Shredder's Revenge having now officially surpassed the 1m sales mark - as announced on Twitter - plenty of others have equally been in the mood for Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael's retro return.

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Following rumours earlier this week, Sony has now confirmed the full, 17-strong line-up of titles joining its PlayStation Plus game catalogue on 19th July, with headliners including Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, Marvel's Avengers, and feline adventure Stray.

All three of those titles were leaked on ResetEra over the weekend, with the same poster, going by the name BlackBate, also correctly (it now transpires) revealing that Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag, Assassin's Creed Unity, Assassin's Creed Rogue Remastered, Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry, Assassin's Creed The Ezio Collection, and Saints Row 4: Re-Elected were also on the way.

Sony has now confirmed all the above as July's game catalogue additions on the PlayStation Blog, but that's not quite everything. Extra and Premium tier members can also play Saints Row: Gat out of Hell, Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition, Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure, Jumanji The Video Game, Paw Patrol, and ReadySet Heroes as part of their subscriptions.

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