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Microsoft's gaming top brass are expected to lay out their plans to publish some Xbox games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms via a business update released this week as a podcast.

The podcast episode will be made available this Thursday, 15th February at 8pm UK time - that's 3pm Eastern or noon Pacific.

Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer, Xbox president Sarah Bond and head of Xbox game studios Matt Booty - the company's top Triforce of gaming division decision makers - will share "updates on the Xbox business", according to a post from the platform holder on X.

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The Thaumaturge will now launch slightly later than planned, on 4th March, despite work on the game being complete.

Writing on social media today, publisher 11 Bit Studios said it had actively chosen to delay the game due to "February's busy launch period". This month's releases include Ubisoft's Skull and Bones (on the 16th) and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (on the 29th).

"The game is complete, but we want to give it space so it can be enjoyed the way we believe it deserves," the publisher wrote in a post on X. "See you in 1905 Warsaw and thank you for your patience!"

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You may not know his name, but Richard Wells is one of the most-heard voices in video games - and now he's blowing up on TikTok.

Wells' TikTok account, which he created last Friday, now has over 17m views - mostly on his first video, where he reveals himself as the voice of video gaming's PEGI logos.

Yes, Wells voiced the "PEGI 12" and "PEGI 18" logos that play before video game trailers - and now, he's told fans he was only paid €200 (£170) years ago to do it.

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Former lead designer and developer on Dead Cells Sébastien Benard has called the decision to end development on the game "the worst imaginable asshole move" by publisher Motion Twin.

Benard worked on Dead Cells until late 2019, before establishing his own one-man studio called Deepnight. Now, he's posted his thoughts on Dead Cells' development being ended on the game's Discord server, after being asked for his opinion (as spotted by PCGamesN).

After a quick check by Eurogamer, Benard's posts no longer seem to be available on the server at the time of writing, though many users are still discussing what he wrote.

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Palworld has its Pokémon (of the legally distinct variety); Ark has its dinosaurs; Enshrouded is like a third-person action-adventure in a survival game skin; Conan is Conan; Valheim immediately taps into the Viking fantasy; but even after eight or so hours with Inflexion Games' upcoming survival and crafting adventure Nightingale, it's not so easy to define its thing.

But let's start with the fae; in Nightingale, Inflexion – a studio founded by former BioWare bigwig Aaryn Flynn - has conjured up an alternative history of magic and Victoriana that's at least partially indebted to Susanna Clarke's sprawling novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Magic in Nightingale's version of Victorian-era Earth is, thanks to humanity's early brush with the fae, both real and commonplace, and Nightingale - the pioneering city of magical research and portal travel that gives the game its name - was the pride of mankind until calamity struck and the world was engulfed in a deadly miasma. Some attempted to escape through Nightingale's portals, but when the network collapsed, they were catapulted into distant fae realms – and you as a player count yourself in this unlucky group known as Realmwalkers – forced to fend for themselves in hostile climes as they seek a way home.

In this week's DF Direct Weekly, we spend some quality time with Helldivers 2, get to grips with the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo and say a lot of positive things about the upcoming Penny's Big Breakaway - but discussion is dominated by the big Microsoft story. Just what's going on with its multi-platform plans? Why didn't the Xbox team provide immediate clarity and shut down rumours that have clearly spiralled out of control? If a 'business update' is coming this week, does that mean that some or all of the rumours are true?

The rumours in question are suggesting that a number of Xbox-exclusive titles are on their way to other platforms. On the face of it, that's nothing new. A number of Xbox properties have transitioned across to rival platforms - including PlayStation. Acquired IPs such as Minecraft and Call of Duty have always been multi-platform and will continue to be. The notion of lower profile games such as Hi-Fi Rush or Pentiment moving over to other consoles also shouldn't be that much of a big deal. Indeed, by exposing more users to these games, Microsoft may even gain some converts to its ecosystem - whether it's on console or PC.

The bone of contention appears to be its higher profile exclusives, with the likes of Halo and Indiana Jones mentioned - and that's caused a spectacular backlash, particularly amongst the Xbox influencers on Twitter/X who have relationships with Xbox execs. The theory, as I understand it, is this: if the crown jewels of the Xbox experience are available on PlayStation, why would anyone need an Xbox? Buying a PlayStation would offer access to the best of both worlds, negating the need to buy an Xbox in the first place. In turn, this has led to conjecture that Microsoft may even exit the hardware market.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is getting a new leaderboard thanks to a "major unintended bug" which caused the Burn status to scale incorrectly.

Rocksteady became aware of the bug when players began reaching Mastery Levels during the postgame "beyond our wildest expectations", the developer said on the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Discord server.

"As Mastery levels increased, Burn's damage also increased," Rocksteady explained, adding this was not "what the game was balanced for at launch". The developer is fixing the scaling bug, it said, and once the fix is in place a new leaderboard will begin.

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When is the magical turning point in time that something considered old becomes cool again? I ask because I just enabled a CRT filter in Skald: Against the Black Priory and I squealed with joy to see it. Distortedly curved edges: phwoar - who knew? What's strange is that I can distinctly remember when I binned CRTs off in favour of flat screens, wondering in wide-eyed awe at the visible corners of my screen. I didn't think then that I'd ever go back. And yet now: squeal! So old it's cool again.

It's not the only element of old that Skald: Against the Black Priory plays on. Really, the whole thing is dressed to evoke exactly that feeling, specifically for the C64 crowd. If you played an RPG there, or thereabouts, you'll know this. You'll know the turn-based combat, you'll know the text-driven adventuring, you'll know the interface with the empty spaces, which yearn for companions to fill them. You'll also know the look, and as with the CRT filter, the game doesn't hold back - there's even the option to enable a faithful C64 colour palette if you wish.

But there's a cleverness underneath. This isn't a one-to-one recreation because, if it were, chances are you'd find it quite annoying to play. What's appealing is the emotional memory; your mind has worn away the aggravating edges of old experiences over time, like a stone tumbling smooth in the sea. That's what these retro games have to be: smoothed memories.

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UPDATE 13/2/24: The BBC has told Eurogamer there are no "current" plans for Doctor Who within Fortnite.

Yesterday, Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies appeared to pour cold water on a long-rumoured collaboration between the Beeb's top sci-fi show and Epic Games' metaverse. Now, the BBC has confirmed it.

"We have nothing in current development in Fortnite," a BBC spokesperson told Eurogamer today.

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The demo for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has been out a week and, beyond sharing piano covers, now players are arguing about yellow paint.

It's a familiar trope in many video games: essentially, developers indicate the correct path by adding bright yellow paint to scalable ledges and ladders.

It's also a debate that has raged for years. When the Resident Evil 4 remake demo was released, players complained about yellow paint being used on breakable objects. Now the discourse has erupted again.

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Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios has apologised to players for the "frustrating" issues they're facing in the game and said it was now "crucial" its team get some sleep.

The sentiment was relayed in a note posted on Steam following server maintenance yesterday, in which the developer released three "rapid-fixes". The issues addressed during maintenance were related to logins, server capacity, and progression and rewards.

However, the issues haven't been fully resolved and Arrowhead said it is "doing our utmost to make it right". "In order to do so," the studio added, "right now it is crucial that our team gets some sleep and we will be back at this again in a few hours".

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Sorry to get all TikTok MBA on you, but if you're employing the rule of three in your marketing, you really want to make that third element count. It needs to sing. It needs to be explosive, or at least thoroughly radioactive. More than anything, it needs to upend any breezy certainties that elements one and two have lulled you into. It needs to be an agent of rapid recontextualisation.

Thank you for attending my TED Talk. And look at the giant screen behind me and you'll see Ultros, a Metroidvania that mints pure gold from the rule of three. What are we in for here? Action, exploration, and gardening. Wait. Gardening? What? Where am I?

The first two of these elements, in Ultros' case, are relatively easy to get your head around. It's the third that, for me, took a while to make its influence - and its fascinating impact - clear. So let's discuss all of these pieces in turn. But first, let's talk about the art, because, the rule of three aside, the art is the primal draw here.

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Helldivers 2 creative director and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt believes games should "earn the right to monetise", adding that whilst players are welcome to "support this title" by buying microtransactions, Arrowhead is "never forcing anyone to do so".

The comments come in an X/Twitter thread in which Pilestedt responded to a tweet in which a player pointed out that super credits can be earned just by "playing the damn game".

"We really applied ourselves to not make it [pay-to-win] even though items are functionally different," Pilestedt said (thanks, PCGN). "The only item that's [pay-to-win] is the revolver – which will win you any 'cool gun' competition.

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Activision Blizzard is making "major changes" to Overwatch 2 as part of a "revitalisation" of the free-to-play shooter that hopes to "make PvP gameplay more rewarding and fun", as well as "provide greater transparency for players in-game".

In a candid blog, the team insisted it had "heard [the] feedback" from players about the competitive play over the last eight seasons, and has plans to introduce "big updates" to enable you to better build on your skills and "see how you progress through the competitive ranks".

"We built a better system that’s more accurate while also helping convey the meaning behind the mathematical complexity of a modern matchmaker and bring clear insights about what impacts your rank in every match," the team said.

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Viral co-op horror Lethal Company may only have released in early access in late October 2023, but it's already received almost 50 updates.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, developer Zeekerss says it is thinking of slowing down the rate and scope of updates in order to make them "really substantial" and "bigger and less frequent".

In a message posted to X/Twitter, Zeekerss – pointing out that the co-op horror game is currently 30 per cent off – admitted that they were "distracted by life right now", but version 50 was "slowly cooking".

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The Little Mermaid's Ariel has stopped by Disney Speedstorm, the hero-based combat racing game inspired by Disney and Pixar worlds.

Season 6, entitled Under the Sea, includes "brand-new content" inspired by Disney's The Little Mermaid. As well as a new track based on the fan-favourite animated movie, Ariel, Ursula, King Triton, and Prince Eric – plus bonus racer EVE – are all new racers that each bring "their own unique and powerful abilities" to the line-up.

That's not all, though. If you can't bear the thought of being under the sea without Ariel's friends, Flounder, Sebastian, Max, Flotsam and Jetsam, and even Scuttle are available as new crew members, too.

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Nintendo Switch 2 will be backwards compatible.

That's according to Universo Nintendo, a Portuguese website that claims the Switch 2 will not only have backwards compatibility with Switch titles currently available on Nintendo's handheld system, but developers will also be able to "enhance" these games thanks to the additional processing power.

The report – which hails from the Portuguese podcast X do Controle by PH Brazil and was shared across social media by Centro Leaks – further asserts that rumours about a Nintendo Direct coming next week are indeed true, and claims that we'll finally have confirmation about Nintendo's badly-kept secret system at a hardware reveal event sometimes in March.

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Helldivers 2 is now Playstation's biggest Steam launch, clocking up over 150,000 concurrent users on the PC platform over the weekend.

Until this point, Sony Santa Monica's God of War reboot held the record with 73,529 simultaneous users, which is less than half of Helldiver 2's current peak of 155,926.

The record was secured despite the issues that plagued the shooter's launch, which was causing crashes and preventing some players from matchmaking with others.

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For good or bad, temporal anti-aliasing - or TAA - has become a defining element of image quality in today's games, but is it a blessing, a curse, or both? Whichever way you slice it, it's here to stay, so what is it, why do so many games use it and what's with all the blur? At one point, TAA did not exist at all, so what methods of anti-aliasing were used and why aren't they used any more?

For around a full decade, from the late 90s until circa 2010, the best anti-aliasing you could get was SSAA - super-sample anti-aliasing. The principles are remarkably straightforward. To remove the jaggies, you deployed GPU resources to render the image at a much higher resolution, then downscaled. 8x SSAA on a 1080p screen effectively rendered internally at 8K (!), while 4x SSAA downscaled from 4K instead. It's the brute force method, delivering a stable image with little sub-pixel break-up and pristine edges. When the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X arrived, Sony and Microsoft didn't just sell gamers on the 4K dream, but also on the image quality benefits from SSAA by rendering at a higher resolution and then downscaling.

However, the brute force approach means that a tremendous amount of GPU resources are required. Using Crysis 3 on an RTX 3070, native 1080p runs at nearly 200 frames per second without it being CPU-limited. However, 4x SSAA takes that down to 70fps, reducing to just 19fps at 8x SSAA.

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Happy Steam Next Fest, Helmet-heads! I hope you've all been having a lovely time discovering exciting new games, both VR and in flat!

To celebrate this season of Steam-y goodness, I decided to try out ten Steam Next Fest demos of upcoming VR games to see what the future holds for PC VR. I was fairly random with my picks but I tried to include a few different genres in there so it wasn't all zombie shooting - but did I find anything worth getting majorly excited about?

Find out in this week's VR Corner (below) where you can watch me dip my toes into a gaggle of games that range from kayaking through some stunning scenery to cacking yourself in a pitch black living room!

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We've come a long way from the early days of esports, where video was rare and basic text or audio reports were the only way to follow along with a competition remotely. Now, it's possible to tune in at home and see a show as professional as any on terrestrial TV, with broadcast talent casting, experts explaining plays and comic interstitial segments to fill downtime and fulfil sponsor obligations - all cut with live views of LAN halls or arena stages showing competitors in the throes of sweet victory or torturous, heart-breaking defeat. Yet the advances in remote viewing can actually discourage live attendance - why spend hours or days travelling to an event in person when you can tune in on your phone, PC or TV anywhere in the world?

Clearly, the answer isn't to make the online experience worse - it's to evolve the live show by making it meaningfully different. It was this thought that I was struck with while attending the IEM Katowice Counter-Strike 2 tournament in early February, where it was clear that those attending the arena in person were being rewarded with a unique production that went well beyond the the other esports events I've attended in the past from ESL and its rivals.

Welcome back! Let's Get Evil is a monthly series for Eurogamer Supporters in which Bertie rampages through games being as evil as he can. It sounds easy, but is it? And how much freedom does each game afford in this area? There's only one way to find out.

Note, spoilers will naturally occur here as Bertie gets further and further through Baldur's Gate 3. Currently, he's dealing with events in Act 2, particularly those pertaining to the Dark Urge.

Oh you're back, and you've come to see what new evil I will wreak. Throaty cackle. Well settle in because this tale is going to be... transformative.

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Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios has confirmed that the "rapid patch" the team deployed to Steam yesterday is "now on PS5 as well".

The update comes after players lamented issues with matchmaking, as well as persistent crashes. There's also been criticism of the game's PC optimisation and its kernel-level GameGuard anti-cheat software, whilst others have taken umbrage with Helldivers 2's monetisation.

However, game director Mikael Eriksson did admit earlier today on the game's Discord channel that whilst "a full matchmaking solution is in works", it may take "a few more days" to test before it can be rolled out.

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Tekken 8's upcoming DLC characters have reportedly leaked online.

A dataminer who sifted through the game files of the fighting game claims to have uncovered the names of some of those who are appearing on the DLC roster.

Dataminer Shootmans says they "confirmed and debunked several leaks" during the Closed Network Test, and attests that their most recent exploration has revealed who may be coming back for the DLC.

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From Software parent company, Kadokawa, has confirmed that whilst the team is "currently working hard" on Elden Ring's DLC, there is still no release date to share "at this time".

It seems questions about the progress of the eagerly-anticipated DLC were anticipated, as this latest update was included in the FAQ section of the firm's latest financial report.

Tucked in between questions about net sales for Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon ("we do not disclose sales results and forecasts for individual titles") and "the trend of pricing per unit for paper-based books", the company said that whilst work continued on Elden Ring's DLC, it was unable to provide a release date just yet.

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A new report claims Nintendo Switch 2 is expected later this year and will feature a custom-made Nvidia chip.

According to Reuters, Nvidia is building an entirely new business unit to focus on designing bespoke chips for hardware firms and has designed a custom design for the next iteration of Nintendo's handheld system.

A source told Reuters that "Nintendo's current Switch handheld console already includes Nvidia's Tegra X1 chip. A new version of the Switch console expected this year is likely to include a Nvidia custom design".

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Xbox is still committed to making consoles, says boss Phil Spencer

Earlier this week, Xbox boss Phil Spencer called an all-staff townhall meeting to address the rumours suggesting that hitherto first-party Xbox games could be released on other platforms, insisting that this did not mean the company wasn't committed to the Xbox console.

According to journalist Shannon Liao, the meeting – which was held with all internal staff on Tuesday – confirmed that the company was indeed considering bringing first-party games to "multiple kinds of devices", and more would be revealed publicly next week.

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Palworld creator Pocketpair has acknowledged it is "overwhelmingly short" of developers to help the viral hit maintain momentum.

In a tweet posted to the company's Japanese-language X/Twitter account, the studio said it "still has a lot to do" and is looking for "people in all positions" who have experience in "any type of engine". Specifically, however, Pocketpair would like to talk to devs with expertise in project planning and engineering.

"At Palworld, we still have a lot to do, but we are overwhelmingly short of people to join us!" the studio said, as translated by PC Gamer. "We are looking for people for all positions, but we are especially looking for planning and engineers!

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Valve's Steam Deck garnered almost universal acclaim when it launched in 2022. It offered a powerful handheld experience, with well-designed software and plenty of hardware power. The screen, however, left something to be desired, with low contrast, poor colour reproduction and a decent amount of display lag. You could of course upgrade to Valve's Steam Deck OLED, which comprehensively solves those issues, or opt for a full display replacement in the form of the DeckHD, which offers a higher resolution and higher-quality LCD panel. Today we'll be evaluating each of those two options to see which upgrade path works best for original Steam Deck users.

First, let's take a deep-dive into the DeckHD. This is a $99 USD display replacement that's available for the original Steam Deck - aka Steam Deck LCD - and should be a higher-quality LCD panel with fewer weaknesses than the default screen. The DeckHD unit was provided to us fully assembled for the purposes of this review, but it's worth noting that you'd need to install the screen yourself if you were buying one.

With both devices set to the same settings and set side-by-side at 50 percent brightness, the main difference you'll notice is that screen elements appear smaller on the DeckHD due to its higher resolution of 1920x1200 versus 1280x800 on the Deck - though this can be altered if you like. Having 2.3x the pixels makes a big difference while gaming, although of course this comes at a performance penalty as we'll see later.

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Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is a game that I have been waiting a long time for. It's not quite the first 40k video game that I dreamed of - that'd be the Primarch fighting game my friends and I dreamed up at age 11 - but ever since getting over my youthful "wow, cool Space Marine" phase, I've wanted a 40k game that really gets into the finer details of the setting.

The Imperium, the form that human society takes in the grim darkness of the far future, is by far the best thing about 40k - but it's frequently obfuscated. 40k adaptations tend to either go all in on the action, or stick with the warfare and high level strategy of the tabletop game. On top of that, I suspect Games Workshop's need to market to children conflicts with how truly horrible the Imperium is. After all, it's much easier to get Little Timmy's Mum to splash out on toy soldiers when they're depicted as heroic defenders of humanity, instead of the brainwashed fascist enforcers they truly are. As a result, the darkly satirical elements of 40k tend to be buried in the novels and other ancillary media, making it all too easy to take the surface at face value.

Hideo Kojima dropped a bombshell at the end of January, announcing that - alongside development of Death Stranding 2 - he would also be returning to the action-espionage genre that put him on the map with the Metal Gear series, in the form of Physint for PlayStation 5. And now, in a new episode of his HideoTube web series, the designer has explained how a period of sickness and surgery - and thoughts of his own mortality - convinced him to 'change his priorities' and do something fans had been asking him to do for years.

During the hour-long episode (thanks GameSpot), Kojima explained how, after departing Konami and establishing his independent Kojima Productions studio, he "wanted to do something new with my own IP" and "challenge myself", leading to Death Stranding. "Then, to create a franchise," he continued, "I made Death Stranding 2. And I wanted to do something even newer, so I started working on OD. And since then, there have been a lot of new ideas."

However, Kojima revealed that during those eight years, "Every day on social media, from users all around the world, people have been asking me to create another Metal Gear and stuff like that." But it wasn't until he became ill in 2020, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, that those requests began to take on a more significant meaning.

The brilliant Baldur's Gate 3 will let you lock lips with your love interest better than ever before as part of its big Patch 6 update, due next week.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, your hero's affection for their romance option now includes more realistic smooching and a soft forehead kiss, as seen in a brief clip you can see below.

But that's not all, of course. Patch 6 also includes new idle animations for your party while in camp, plus new Legendary Actions if you're brave enough to tackle Baldur's Gate 3's Honour Mode.

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Dead Cells developer Evil Empire is no longer working on the game, bringing to a close five years of updates.

The roguelite Metroidvania has received four DLC expansions, 18 updates, and crossovers with Castlevania, Hollow Knight, and more, with Evil Empire acting as a subsidiary of developer Motion Twin to support the game long term.

In a statement from Evil Empire, it explained the team is now working in full on "secret projects" to be revealed "very soon".

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GTA 5 will soon pass the astonishing milestone of having sold 200m copies.

The game currently sits on 195m copies sold to date, with more than five million copies shifted over the past three months, publisher Take-Two revealed in its latest financial results.

If its current momentum continues, GTA 5 will pass the 200m mark before the summer. That's around 100m more copies sold than Tetris, and behind only Minecraft (which has sold around 300m copies, it's believed).

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Pikachu stars in the music video for Jax Jones' new single Never Be Lonely.

The single, which features German singer-songwriter Zoe Wees, was released today and accompanied by a music video. The video is a collaboration between Jones and The Pokémon Company International, and sees Pikachu being abducted onto a UFO-turned-stadium where Jones and Wees are performing.

Pikachu isn't that mad about being abducted though, as he happily greets the two and dances along before illuminating (or rather electrocuting) the entire stadium. Ceruledge also makes a sneaky appearance towards the beginning of the video, as a projection onto the sides of some buildings.

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Ubisoft's live-service pirate ship game Skull and Bones is a "quadruple-A" project, company boss Yves Guillemot has said.

Discussing the long-awaited project with investors last night, Guillemot justified the live service game launching with a £70 price tag as it being a fully-formed experience that was also supported by a battle pass, premium currency and an in-game store.

"You will see that Skull and Bones is a full-fledged game," Guillemot said. "It's a very big game and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. So it's a really full triple-A, quadruple-A game that will deliver in the long run."

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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth players are already sharing piano covers from the game's demo, just days after its release.

The demo takes place in Nibelheim where, as Cloud, players can snoop around in Tifa's house and play her piano - fans of the original will remember this is how you unlock her ultimate limit break.

Now, in Rebirth, the piano is freely playable in a little minigame, so players have been busy creating covers of Final Fantasy tunes and pop songs.

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The next game from Ori and the Blind Forest developer Moon Studios has been delayed slightly.

No Rest for the Wicked, an isometric action-RPG with darker visuals, is a departure from the Ori games. It was revealed in December at The Game Awards, and the developer gave an early access release window on Steam of the first three months of 2024.

However, the game's early access launch has now been delayed to Q1 of the financial year 2025 (or Q2 of the calendar year 2024), as revealed in Take-Two's earning report for Q3 2024.

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Beefy boxer Ed joins the Street Fighter 6 roster on 27th February.

The fighter was previously announced as the next DLC character, but now we have the release date along with a new gameplay trailer.

Ed will be the 21st playable character in the game, following the returning Rashid and newcomer A.K.I last year.

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Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has said the company won't be increasing its investment into VR due to poor sales of Assassin's Creed Nexus VR.

The Meta Quest exclusive released in November 2023, and lets players step into the shoes of series protagonists Ezio, Kassandra, and Connor.

Nexus VR isn't mentioned at all in Ubisoft's Q3 earnings press release, but the game was addressed by Guillemot during its conference call (as reported by VGC).

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