Eurogamer

UPDATE 9.31pm: So it turns out Sony's PlayStation Blog update was only half the story (well, more like a quarter of the story if we're being mathematically inclined); an update on the official PlayStation Twitter account has now confirmed a total of 27 more games being added to PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium's game catalogue in June.

As June rolls along, both tiers will gain access to the following titles:

While Premium tier subscribers also get the below:

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It's been a year since Sony relaunched its PlayStation Plus subscription service with multiple tiers, and today there's word of an upcoming new feature: PS5 game streaming.

There's no release date as yet, just word that Sony is "testing" the technology for select PS5 titles, including those in the subscription's game catalogue, and others you may own.

And to be clear, this will be a Premium tier benefit - so you won't get it if you're on regular old PlayStation Plus Essential or Extra.

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Foamstars is to Splatoon what Fortnite was to Playerunknown's Battlegrounds - a rip-off, yes, but also an admirably brazen one. And one that might actually take a single game and turn it into a whole genre. If it's very lucky - and also very good.

Maybe unsurprisngyly to anyone who first clocked Square Enix's Foamstars during last month's PlayStation showcase, that one's still debatable. I played a few rounds of it out at Summer Games Fest and can confidently tell you it is not terrible. Like anything competitive played in a room with nine other players it's immediately engaging, at least, and it does also have quite a clever twist, just as Fortnite's building was to PUBG's one-on-one-hundred survival on a shrinking map.

Admittedly it's a bit less revolutionary: the twist with Foamstars is that it's purely a game of elimination, at least in the mode I played, and that in order to win you'll not only need to eliminate more players, but once you do, then eliminate the other team's best player, marked out with a star and then naturally, immediately surrounded by protective teammates.

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I liked the look of Last Train Home when it got its unveiling this week during not-E3. It's a wintery period piece from Czech studio Ashborne Games, based on real events following World War 1.

With the Great War over, you command a legion of Czech soldiers on a train bound for home via the Trans-Siberian railway. Their aim is to get back to the newly-created republic, but along the way there's trouble - the Russian Civil War.

Real-time battles are interspersed with management of your soldiers while aboard the train - which can of course be upgraded as you journey through Siberia - making sure your units are in good health and well fed.

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Rogue Legacy 2 is set to make its PlayStation debut next week when it's added to PS Plus.

The rogue-lite game was released in 2022 across PC and Xbox, followed by a Switch release.

From 20th June the game will be available on PlayStation consoles, and Sony's subscription service. Check out the new trailer below.

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Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida previously told Eurogamer that Game of Thrones was a major influence on the upcoming game - something that's now apparent from the many references to the series already obvious from the game's freshly-released demo.

"We wanted to create something that really resonated with a lot of people," Yoshida said previously. "And when we saw how Game of Thrones, and before that the Song of Ice and Fire series, has really resonated with players, we knew that this was something that we wanted to do as well."

The development team were required to watch the Game of Thrones Blu-ray boxset in order to keep the series' style front-of-mind - something that is now apparent more than ever. Did George RR Martin secretly pop over to the Square Enix office while writing lore sheets for Elden Ring?

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The Xbox Showcase 2023 might have been the most interesting presentation of the not-E3 season, with Fable, Forza Motorsport, Avowed and Starfield leading a pack of other titles coming to Microsoft Xbox consoles and PC. To discuss the proceedings, a trio of Digital Foundry members - John Linneman, Oliver Mackenzie and Alex Battaglia - sat down to provide some insight and analysis into the titles as shown for a special Digital Foundry Direct. There's plenty to get excited about here - alongside some more questionable decisions that also deserve a critical eye.

Note that this article focuses on the bigger games detailed in the conference in the interests of time and space, but the video embedded below contains our full reactions.

The Xbox presentation kicked off with the first footage of Fable, the long-awaited RPG sequel to 2010's Fable 3. The game is under development at Playground Games and uses the same engine as Forza Horizon 5 - the first time this engine will be used outside of a racing game! Given how lush FH5's environments were though, it makes a surprising amount of sense for an open-world RPG too.

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FromSoftware's Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon is a series reboot that marries the unique quirks of mech combat with the studio's game design philosophy: smoothness of controls, expansive and dynamic maps, and original, challenging action that demands player ingenuity.

Now, ahead of the game's release in August, we've watched a hands-off gameplay presentation from lead producer Yasunori Ogura to see how its mix of mech assembly and tactical combat looks in motion.

The demo was a single mission from an early part of the game, but gave a clear sense of how combat and exploration will unfold - and the importance of customisation.

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Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver have given us a peek at Dead Island 2's upcoming content.

In a new update, the team has unveiled two upcoming expansions. The first of these, known as Haus, will be released in Q4 of this year.

"How does a billionaire prepare for the zompocalypse?" the Dead Island 2 team asks. Why, with a "techno-death cult with a healthy splash of debauchery and gore", of course.

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Ready yourselves. Goosebump-inducing ghost hunting sim Phasmophobia is headed to PlayStation 5, including VR2, and Xbox Series X/S.

The game will release across consoles in early access this August, although a specific date has not yet been announced. Developer Kinetic Games has, however, teased some of what console players can expect.

A new trailer gives a look at the various ghost hunting tools that will be in our arsenal, including ouija boards, crucifixes and those blacklight glow stick things that I am sure have a proper name but I can't think of it right now. It is all suitably spooky, as you can see for yourself below.

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Diablo 4 players are adamant there's a secret cow level in the game, even though Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson has denied its existence.

In an interview with Kinda Funny from May, Fergusson said people should not spend time looking for a secret level that wasn't there. "We really wanted to ground [Diablo 4] as much as possible," he said.

"We've had some fun, but we wanted to make sure it felt authentic to the gothic, dark themes we had. And because of that, there's no secret level in Diablo 4 that people might be looking for, as per previous games."

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2K's unannounced Lego football game has popped up on the Korean game ratings website.

It's called Lego 2K Goooal! (with three O's).

The game's existence was first leaked last year by VGC, which reported the title as being developed by UK studio Sumo Digital, of Sonic Racing and LittleBigPlanet 3 fame. Now, the game has leaked again, via the ever-reliable Game Rating and Administration Committee of Korea (thanks, Gematsu).

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Xbox has announced two more games heading to Game Pass on release.

Sea of Stars was previously revealed to be coming to Xbox consoles in August this year (in addition to Switch, PC and PlayStation). Now it's confirmed to be coming to Game Pass on day one too.

Then there's Aggro Crab's Another Crab's Treasure, which is headed to all Xbox consoles and PC via Game Pass (alongside Switch and PC) when it releases in early 2024.

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Titanfall 3 was in development for almost a year before it was cancelled for Apex Legends.

Speaking with The Burnettwork, former Titanfall designer Mohammad Alavi shared the story of this "crazy cut" in his career.

"Titanfall 2 came out, did what it did, and we were like 'OK, we're going to make Titanfall 3'. And, we worked on Titanfall 3 for 10 months in earnest. We had the tech for it, and multiple missions going," Alavi revealed.

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The US Federal Trade Commission has suceeded in getting a temporary ban placed on Microsoft's $68.7bn Activision Blizzard buyout bid.

Word of the FTC's intent to file an injunction first broke on Monday this week. The development blocks Microsoft from making any kind of move on Activision Blizzard, and brings the matter to a federal court.

The FTC had previously set its own date for the deal to be debated by an internal administrative judge on 2nd August - after Microsoft's own deadline to complete the merger on 18th July expires.

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Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is Respawn's version of The Empire Strikes Back. As Jedi Survivor has the advantage of being a sequel, it can acknowledge the criticisms of its predecessor and iterate by adjusting certain gameplay elements.

"I like firsts. Good or bad they're always memorable." - Ahsoka Tano

Jedi: Fallen Order had serious accessibility barriers, from the lack of full button remapping to no toggles for hold inputs and on to a particularly indecipherable map. It was the only Star Wars game in the history of time and space that I was unable to finish, and the existence of accessibility barriers constantly made me contemplate turning to the Dark Side.

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CD Projekt has confirmed players will be able to skip straight to Phantom Liberty in Cyberpunk 2077, as long as it's unlocked in the story.

Gabe Amatangelo, game director and VP of the studio, further confirmed at which point the expansion unlocks and revealed there will be a new ending of the base game.

"No, this takes place in the midst of [Cyberpunk 2077]," Amatangelo told WCCFTech. "You get to a certain point in the game and this unlocks, but of course, we let you skip right to it much like it was done in The Witcher 3's expansions."

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Summer Game Fest's live showcase might have struggled to consistently entertain with its saggy middle and excessive runtime, but the overall season-wide event has apparently already done what it needed to - producer Geoff Keighley has now confirmed Summer Game Fest will return next year, live showcase and all.

Summer Game Fest is currently in its fourth consecutive year - having initially started amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, as a response to major in-person gaming events being shut down - and 2023's offering has been bigger than ever.

It was, of course, originally expected to have some competition from the returning E3 this year, but after that show's cancellation, Summer Game Fest swelled to fill the gap, hoovering up a number of publisher showcases and events under the Summer Game Fest banner.

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It's finally almost time to ready your nozzles and prepare for a trip to the briny depths: PowerWash Simulator's SpongeBob SquarePants DLC has a release date, and is launching for Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, and PC on 29th June.

PowerWash Simulator's SpongeBob SquarePants Special Pack was announced back in May but, beyond its Bikini Bottom setting, developer FuturLab didn't give much away.

Now, though, with a release in sight, the studio is finally ready to share more, confirming its Spongebob DLC will feature a mini campaign split across six new maps: Conch Street, The Bikini Bottom Bus, The Krusty Krab, The Patty Wagon, The Invisible Boatmobile, and The Mermalair.

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It's been a long old wait for developer Slow Bros' gorgeous stop-motion-style space adventure Harold Halibut - but now, some seven years after its initial reveal, an end is in almost sight, with its Xbox, PlayStation, and PC release set for "early" next year.

Harold Halibut tells the story of a young lab assistant (the Harold of the title) forced to live his life onboard the Fedora, a city sized spaceship still submerged beneath an alien ocean 250 years after it fled Earth to preserve the human race.

While some of its inhabitants have reconciled themselves to a life on the sunken ship, others still works tirelessly to find a way to leave the planet and reach a new, dryer home. Harold's story lies somewhere between all that, told in absolutely sumptuous style, part fully voiced stop-motion movie, part narrative-driven adventure.

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Shadowrun and Battletech studio Harebrained Schemes' extremely promising pulp-inspired tactical turn-based strategy adventure, The Lamplighters League, now has a release date, and is launching for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Game Pass on 3rd October.

The Lamplighters League unfolds in an alternative version of the 1930s, where players - taking control of the titular organisation's gang of misfits and scoundrels - travel the world in an effort to thwart the Banished Court cult's nefarious schemes.

It's an adventure that'll swoop from dockyards and other urban corners to far more exotic locales, including deserts and jungles. Here, players must battle the Banished Court's army using a mix of real-time infiltration, stealth, turn-based tactical combat, and team management.

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Tango Gameworks' sublime rhythm-action adventure Hi-Fi Rush is getting a great bit dollop of free new content on 5th July, including two new modes, new photo mode features, and more.

Everything included in Hi-Fi Rush's new Arcade Challenge update (as it's officially known) will only be available after beating the base game. Once that's done, a new arcade cabinet is added to the hideout, unlocking the new BPM Rush and Power up! Tower up! modes.

BPM Rush presents players with a series of encounters where the beat gets faster and faster as enemies are defeated, gradually rising all the way up to 200BPM. Tango notes that while this new addition is really designed for players in search of a tougher challenge, it'll actually feature an Easy and Casual difficulty setting too so everyone can give it a try.

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Acclaimed heavy metal rhythm shooter Metal: Hellsinger is taking a tilt toward pop in its new Essential Hits Pack DLC, which launches today on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Metal: Hellsinger's FPS action, if you've not yet made its acquaintance, sees players traversing eight musically infused Hells, armed with a blade and an appropriately devastating assortment of guns. The twist, though, is enemies take way more damage when an attack lands on the beat, turning its demon slaughter into wonderfully satisfying dance of bullets and steel.

To date, all music in Metal: Hellsinger and its earlier DLC has been firmly in the realm of heavy metal and written specifically for the game. However, its newly revealed Essential Hits Pack DLC sets its sights on a different crowd, taking things in a poppier direction with eight licensed tracks that can replace the base game's existing tunes.

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we're back to wrap up the end of a tiring but intriguing week of Summer Game Fest and not-E3 announcements, which offered us the usual mixed bag of presentations, CG trailers, and the occaisonal musical interlude.

What were our favourites? There was a real variety of things on offer, from Dont Nod's Jusant and Compulsion's stylish-looking South of Midnight to blockbusters like Star Wars Outlaws and Fable. And then, of course, there was the inescapable Starfield - which after nearly a full hour deep dive I still feel like we've only seen a small portion.

Microsoft did well, I thought. Ubisoft did pretty good. Capcom... put in an appearance to delay Pragmata. But what were our favourite games on offer, and how convinced were we by Todd Howard's marketing spiel? Joining me to discuss all that are Ed Nightingale, Victoria Kennedy and Liv Ngan.

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When Star Wars Outlaws was shown at yesterday's Ubisoft Forward, many fell in love with protagonist Kay Vess' companion Nix.

But while Nix is adorable and I've taken to calling him my land axolotl, the character that really caught the internet's attention was a certain droid commando, ND-5. Twitter, Tumblr, I've seen you.

The reactions to ND-5 I've seen are mostly "friends, please don't be horny for the Star Wars droid" or "friends, I am horny for the Star Wars droid". You either get it or you don't. So please, let me at least try to explain why the internet is horny for the Star Wars droid.

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Street Fighter 6 is a gargantuan project for Capcom. It's a game in three parts, between the World Tour adventure, the Battle Hub online lobbies and the classic Fighting Ground 1v1 battling - and it all combines to create a truly feature-complete game at launch. So how does the game look and run? What separates PS5 and Series X from the Series S experience and how do the PS4 and Pro versions slot in? And crucially, what about input lag - the time taken between button press and response? This is crucial for a fighting game and the good news is Capcom has innovative solutions here to reduce latency.

Starting at the top, both PS5 and Series X run with a 3840x2160 target - a full 4K resolution - at 60 frames per second, and both deliver all the bells and whistles. They're a feature match. We get crisp textures, screen-space reflections in every mode, along with Capcom's muscle deformation tech as characters deliver their finishing moves. Both also run at a fluid 60 frames per second in the arcade mode, with no problems for the classic 1v1 action.

However, the World Tour mode doesn't run well on its default settings on PS5 or Series X. This free-roaming adventure is a kind of Yakuza-lite as you take on missions, and challenge opponents on the street. However, engaging in 1v1 battles triggers a 30fps cap. It's an unevenly frame-paced 30fps, and feels unresponsive to control as a result. The fix is simple: go to the options menu and switch over to the performance mode instead. This mode change only allows the World Tour battles to run at 60fps by forcing the resolution down to 1440p rather than 4K for the rest of the package. And just to stress, the regular Fighting Ground mode - the traditional 1v1 battle - still runs at 4K and 60fps even with performance mode selected.

Video game mega publisher Embracer, which this morning announced a "comprehensive restructuring plan", says it must now "exploit" the fact it owns the rights to Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit "in a very signficant fashion".

Speaking via an investor call held in the wake of today's announcement that it would restructure the company, Embracer's newly-promoted interim exec Matthew Karch said the business must now prioritise pumping out Lord of the Rings projects ahead of other game ideas which might not perform as well.

"We own Lord of the Rings, and we know we need to be exploiting Lord of the Rings in a very significant fashion and turning that into one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world," Karch said. "And that's obviously something we're going to be doing.

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Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has finally appeared in the wild, and much the same as with Star Wars: Outlaws, Ubisoft's other big new open world game based on a big fantasy movie licence, we saw it in a bit more detail behind closed doors over in Los Angeles - and spoke with the game's creative director, Magnus Jansén.

At first glance, much of this gameplay reveal is what you'd expect from a Ubisoft Massive (and co.) take on an action movie licence: it's open world, it's action-adventure, it's got bows and arrows and assault rifles, outposts, wildlife, resource collecting, crafting and customisation. It's in a nice sunny, broadly exotic jungle. It's Far Cry, in a lot of ways - but there is one twist.

Frontiers of Pandora is trying to make its design feel a bit more "sustainable", as Jansén put it to us. Typically, games like Far Cry and its design cousins tend to feel, for lack of a better word, a little colonial: you turn up in a new place, and you go around harvesting as much as you can from that place - animal hides, plants, natural resources - until you've built up enough brute strength. It's a gameplay loop that sits in direct opposition to the ideals of James Cameron and his Avatar franchise - with its ultra-militarised humans rocking up on idyllic Pandora and burning it to the ground in search of Unobtainium and magic space ambergris. Environmentalism, naturalism, and generally not just rocking up somewhere to harvest as much of its naturally occurring stuff as you can for your own benefit is kind of the central message.

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Netflix is yet to air the first episode of its Tomb Raider animation, but it already looks to have renewed the series for a second season.

Additionally, it appears that Ncuti Gatwa - star of Sex Education and the upcoming Fifteenth Doctor in Doctor Who - will join the cast.

As reported by What's on Netflix, Gatwa will voice Eshu, a new character for the franchise. Gatwa's Spotlight profile has been updated to include this role under the casting site's 'further' section.

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Microsoft Game Studios head Matt Booty has said Starfield, at present, has fewer bugs than any other Bethesda game at launch.

Booty appeared on the Giant Bomb podcast with Xbox boss Phil Spencer to discuss the Xbox Games Showcase and Starfield Direct.

"We have an awful lot of people internally playing it," said Booty. "Working with Todd and the team, I see bug counts and just by the numbers, if it shipped today, this would have the fewest bugs that any game from Bethesda has ever shipped with."

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Climbing is just about my favourite thing to do in games. It took me a while to realise this. It took me a while to realise that the thing I love about Crackdown, say, and Grow Home is actually the same thing: they're both games that give you something massive to scale and an interesting way to do it. (I agree, incidentally: this probably should have been obvious sooner.)

Anyway, I was very glad to see that climbing games were a bit of a mini-trend during this year's summer showcases. Over on Xbox there's Jusant, Don't Nod's latest, and a game that sees you climbing through a rich, Gaudi-tinged sci-fi world, working your way higher and higher. Cannot wait. But what really snagged on my imagination was Surmount, which got a blisteringly fast introduction during the Wholesome Direct. And it turns out there's a demo now on Steam!

Go and play it. Srsly. This demo is wonderful. I'm pretty sure Surmount's going to be wonderful. I'm pretty sure it's my game of this year's summer showcases.

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BioWare has removed a bizarre statue of Mass Effect's dying Commander Shepard from its online store, following fan confusion and upset.

The statue appeared on the BioWare Gear Store yesterday, and features (yes, you guessed it) the dead female body of Commander Shepard floating around in space as seen in the opening to Mass Effect 2. The statue was priced at $135 and its store page stated only 2000 would be available worldwide.

Needless to say, a statue suddenly being sold that depicts a dying character is a bit odd to begin with. The posing of FemShep is also a bit much - why the slightly arched back? Out of context, it looks a bit like Shepard's death is being sexualised and fetishised. And why only FemShep? What about if I want a statue of male Shepard limply floating about?

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Blizzard has laid out more of its plans for Overwatch 2's Invasion update, which is due to arrive this August. This includes a paid-for add-on that includes "permanent access" to three story missions, which will cost $15.

As a quick recap, Blizzard has promised "new Story Missions, an all-new PVP core game mode, new ways to build on your skills with your favourite heroes... and a new Support hero" for Overwatch 2: Invasion.

These story missions will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, and Gothenburg, with each location featuring "massive maps" and "complex objectives". Players will find themselves taking on the series' Null Sector group, with the story set to continue in future seasons of the game.

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Embracer has announced a "comprehensive restructuring program" which will result in studio closures, project cancellations and job losses.

The Swedish umbrella company has grown enormously through acquisitions over the past five years, and now owns a swathe of studios such as Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics, Borderlands maker Gearbox, rights to franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, and an array of other publishers such as Plaion, Saber and THQ Nordic.

But while amassing its empire, Embracer is yet to see a big return. Last year's big bet, its Saints Row reboot, was a critical and commercial failure. More recently, the company suffered a body blow when a major unannounced $2bn deal fell through, prompting its shares to plummet by an eye-watering 40 percent.

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In Sunday's Starfield Direct, Bethesda took pains to join the dots between its established role-playing franchises and this year's mammoth space epic. For all the vaster playspace, with a thousand planets to roam and marvel at or at least, blow up for materials, Starfield will remain a Bethesda RPG "through and through" - pitched squarely at those, like myself, who shovelled hundreds of mortal hours into the furnaces of Skyrim and Fallout 3.

The footage showed off a lot of familiar ideas - level up points! Crafting! Romanceable NPCs! - carefully positioned to spark reassuring nostalgia amid ostensibly exotic surroundings. There was a huge emphasis on the same-but-more, with certain lines from studio director Todd Howard building on Bethesda presentations from over 10 years ago. See that moon? You can go there. Oh, and here's an Abandoned Mine, not actually abandoned, to waylay you en-route to the next story objective with the promise of a neat gun. And here's a lounging skeleton who wants a quick word in your ear about Ye Olde Environmental Storytelling.

As my snarky intro hopefully illustrates, presenting Starfield as a game for returning players overlooks that many of Bethesda's oldest disciples are also its biggest haters. Overfamiliarity with the developer's teeming, rough-edged open world RPG design breeds a strange mixture of intense admiration and contempt, which I don't think you see in responses to rival franchises like Souls or Assassin's Creed.

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If you've yet to experience Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Capcom's masterful 2011 paranormal puzzle adventure, now's the time to start your journey toward adoration: the publisher has released a free demo for its upcoming Ghost Trick remaster ahead of its 30th June arrival on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and Steam.

Ghost Trick, if you're unfamiliar, comes from Ace Attorney designer Shu Takumi and follows the adventures of Sissel, a sharp-dressing amnesiac who's surprised to wake up extremely and unequivocally dead at the start of the game.

On the plus side, Sissel's quickly learns his newfound spirit form grants him the ability to possess inanimate objects, enabling him to influence events and, in gameplay terms, progress to the next portion of Ghost Trick's wonderfully told story.

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Capcom has announced it'll be following up its HD collections of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles with a third collection.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy will bundle together Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, which were originally released across Nintendo DS and 3DS. The fourth, fifth, and sixth games in the series follow new protagonist Apollo Justice and old face Phoenix Wright as they continue their courtroom shenanigans.

Much like Phoenix Attorney: Ace Attorney Trilogy, the Apollo Justice Trilogy will also feature an updated UI and hi-resolution artwork.

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Capcom's oddball astronaut and small girl-starring Pragmata has been delayed yet again.

The mysterious project was first announced with a bizarre teaser back in 2020, when it was set for a futuristic-sounding 2022 launch. A year later, that release date was pushed back to 2023. And now, in 2023, it has been further delayed - this time, to a year unknown.

Tonight, during the Capcom Showcase, the publisher confirmed we'd need to wait longer once more - though we did get another teaser beforehand. You can watch that below:

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Arkane Austin has released a first major patch for its widely derided co-op vampire shooter Redfall, promising "incremental improvements" across a range of areas including gameplay, combat, and AI - but its promised 60fps mode for Xbox Series X is still nowhere to be seen.

Redfall released to a less-than-stellar reception back in May, with Digital Foundry calling the Xbox version a "sad tale of unfulfilled potential and profound technical issues", while its PC counterpart was so hampered by poor performance, technical problems, and bugs, Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia said there was the sense it "just isn't finished".

Launch was bad enough that Xbox boss Phil Spencer took the step of apologising to players, admitting, "We let a lot of people down this week", leaving many to wonder how - and if - Arkane Austin could turn things around.

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US antitrust agency the Federal Trade Commission is reportedly set to file an injunction with a federal court in an effort to temporarily halt Microsoft's $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The FTC sued to block Microsoft's proposed deal back in December, claiming it would allow the company to suppress its games industry competition. The hearing for that case - which will be deliberated by the FTC's own internal administrative law judge - is set for 2nd August, after Microsoft's 18th July merger deadline expires.

As reported by CNBC, citing a source familiar with the matter, the FTC is now taking steps to prevent Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal from going ahead before its internal hearing can take place, by filing for an injunction with a US District Court.

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