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The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has announced that Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming and head of Xbox, will receive the AIAS Lifetime Achievement Award at the 25th Annual DICE Awards.

The annual awards show will be held on February 24 in Las Vegas, Nevada where Bethesda Game Studios game director Todd Howard will present Spencer with the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is joining Fortnite as a character skin. The man behind the mask of long-term character The Foundation will finally be playable for the first time.

Epic Games partner Shiina also revealed on Twitter that Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars will be playable in Fortnite on February 10, but winners of the Silk Sonic Cup on February 7 will get early access to the skins.

The Foundation skin is unlockable through the Chapter 3, Season 1 battle pass alongside his outfit, styles, emote, and other accessories. A full list of the quests required to unlock the items can be found below.

While a statue of The Foundation can be found on the Fortnite island the character hasn't really been featured in the game's story since the end of season two.

The Rock is on a roll in making gaming headlines as last week he revealed he was working on another video game movie. He claims it's "one of the biggest, most badass games", and the internet has been wildly speculating what it could be.

Good news, baseball fans -- MLB: The Show 22 is set to release for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on April 5. (Some editions will be available April 1, though). As you may have noticed, this year’s installment of Sony’s baseball game is landing on all the major game consoles -- not just PlayStation, or even just PlayStation and Xbox like last year. It’s available to preorder now in a couple of editions (see it at Best Buy). Below, you’ll find all the details about what comes in each edition, along with preorder links for where it’s available. Let’s get to it.

January couldn’t end with at least one more massive gaming acquisition it seems. Just a few short weeks after Xbox’s industry-shaking announcement of its plans to acquire Activision Blizzard, Sony has announced its decision to purchase Destiny developer Bungie; not as massive, but nonetheless monumental.

Immediately after the news, there was a lot of chatter framing it as an immediate, knee-jerk counter to Xbox, as if the two publishing giants were playing a game of tennis (of course, that's not how acquisitions work).

I see Sony’s acquisition of Bungie as a clear encapsulation of Sony’s ambitions for the PlayStation brand we have seen over the last few years, and will likely only continue to see as the years progress.

The last OlliOlli game, 2015’s OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood, was a breath of fresh air for the skating genre. Its stylised art, intense level design, and challenging trick system all helped it stand out. Seven years later, OlliOlli World has all those things going for it, too, but it also takes a huge step forward for the series by shifting into 3D, giving its skating a better sense of scale, speed, and dynamism without sacrificing the 2D perspective. At the same time, it builds significantly on Olliwood's technical gameplay by layering grabs, wall rides, and more atop the flip tricks, grinds, and manuals that were its foundation. And on top of all that, it goes out of its way to be more welcoming to players of all stripes, putting forth a host of changes that ensure just about anyone can have a good time without losing the fiercely high skill ceiling the series is known for.

OlliOlli World's colourful, cartoony look and character-centric approach is the first thing that had me saying "ooo" – not just because it’s very pretty in its own right, but because it’s also very reminiscent of one of my favourite cartoon locations, Adventure Time's Kingdom of Ooo. Whether we're talking about your character's skate wizard guide Chiffon, the ice cream-headed denizens of Sunshine Valley, the smiling trees of Cloverbrook, or the many “Skate Godz” that you're tricking across Radlandia to meet, there are too many homages to miss the inspiration. It’s also similar in its effervescent and eccentric personality but thankfully doesn’t feel derivative, striking out on its own with a world populated by endearingly offbeat characters and a story that doesn't take itself seriously, yet is enjoyably earnest at the same time.

The world of Dragon Age is home to many colorful characters, and Dark Horse Direct is working to bring some of them to three dimensional life. IGN can exclusively reveal the newest addition to Dark Horse's Dragon Age Statuette line, the Iron Bull.

Based on the character's appearance in Dragon Age: Inquisition, this Iron Bull features a detailed recreation of the commander of the Bull's Chargers, with all his mighty swagger intact.

The Iron Bull Statuette is made of polyresin and was sculpted by Bigshot Toyworks, with J.W. Productions handling prototyping and painting. The piece measures roughly 8 inches tall, with a base diameter of 4 inches by 4.25 inches.

Like the other characters in this line, Iron Bull is limited to 1000 pieces worldwide. He's priced at $159.99 and is currently available to preorder on the Dark Horse Direct website. The statuette is expected to ship between September and December 2022.

The Iron Bull is the third character announced for Dark Horse's Dragon Age Statuette line. The Varric statuette is also currently available for preorder, while preorder details for the Morrigan Statuette will be announced later.

Nintendo will celebrate Kirby's 30th anniversary this year with a "variety of projects" beginning with a free wallpaper being released on the game's official website.

Nintendo's latest financial results discuss the upcoming release of Kirby and the Forgotten Land before going on to talk about the series' anniversary.

"To celebrate that anniversary, we are planning a variety of projects in collaboration with the Kirby developer HAL Laboratory, aimed at sharing the charm of the Kirby series with many people," said Nintendo.

It’s the 30th anniversary of the Kirby series! 🎉

Download a special wallpaper from our website and stay tuned for news regarding #Kirby30 activities coming soon.

Get your wallpaper here: https://t.co/wxW73Ew1EG https://t.co/nAacQKxTiv

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) January 12, 2022

The report doesn't provide any further information as to what these projects will be, but Nintendo of America began the celebrations on Twitter by announcing that a free Kirby wallpaper is now available to download from its website.

The tweet said to "stay tuned for news regarding #Kirby30 activities coming soon."

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the second fastest selling Switch game in Japan, and stands a chance of achieving the same accolade globally.

According to new figures reported by Famitsu, physical sales of Pokémon Legends: Arceus hit 1.43 million copies within three days of release in Japan. This lags a little behind Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is the fastest-selling game in Japan thanks to moving 1.88 million copies in three days.

In comparison, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl sold almost 1.4 million copies, and Sword and Shield shifted 1.36 million in the same period.

Sales figures for other territories have yet to be announced, but other numbers do offer good signs that Pokémon Legends: Arceus may also be the second fastest-selling Switch game globally, too. Just a few days ago, it was reported that Arceus is the fourth biggest Pokémon retail launch of all time in the UK, at least in regards to physical sales. It debuted at number one in the UK sales charts, and accounted for almost 50% of boxed sales in the week.

Figures from NPD, which tracks sales in the US, will help further clarify Pokémon Legends: Arceus' performance when they are released.

The Nintendo Switch has become the fastest home console to sell 100 million units, and has now outsold the Nintendo Wii.

Announced in Nintendo’s financial report for the third quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2022, the company revealed that the lifetime sales of the Nintendo Switch is 103.54 million units as of December 31, 2021.

This pushes the Switch past the Wii, making it Nintendo’s best-selling console that you can plug into a TV. It has some way to go before eclipsing the Nintendo DS, though, which sold 153 million consoles across its numerous iterations.

Adding to the Switch’s accolades is that it is the fastest home console to hit 100 million sales, surpassing both the Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 4. A graph from Bloomberg reporter Takashi Mochizuki shows the continued uptake in Switch sales during the console’s fifth year of sale, while both PS4 and Wii experienced a slow down in sales at the same time during their respective lifetimes.

Switch has surpassed 100 million sales at fastest pace as home console. Nintendo's Furukawa said Switch is still at middle of its lifecycle and momentum for further growth this year is good. pic.twitter.com/e95rlQxare

Nintendo still isn't ruling out game company acquisitions, but it doesn't seem particularly interested in them, with the company president putting more priority on building its existing game development DNA.

With Xbox set to buy Activision Blizzard and Sony finalising a purchase of Bungie, it's no surprise that Nintendo's latest investor Q&A saw president Shuntaro Furukawa asked if he was also looking to buy video game companies.

Per Bloomberg, Furukawa seemed more keen on investing in the developers Nintendo already owns than buying brand new ones, citing the need for 'Nintendo DNA' in the company's creators:

“Our brand was built upon products crafted with dedication by our employees, and having a large number of people who don’t posses Nintendo DNA in our group would not be a plus to the company."

Last year, Nintendo announced plans to invest up to 100 billion yen in its development studios, and that remains the plan. At that time, Furukawa made clear that it wouldn't rule out acquisitions in future, but Bloomberg reports that Furukawa added in the latest meeting that Nintendo would only do that if it were 'necessary'.

Despite previously working on a Costume Quest cartoon, Double Fine and legendary game designer Tim Schafer has shared that he doesn't really see a future where any of his games are turned into TV or movies.

Speaking to IGN's Ryan McCaffrey after winning the New York Videogame Critics Circle's Andrew Yoon Legend Award, Schafer discussed that while he is often approached by Hollywood about turning one of his games into a film or series, it usually ends up being "just a distraction."

"We often get approached by people saying, 'Hey, can we turn this into a movie?' but, you know It’s usually just a distraction," Schafer said. "I think games are what I really care about and what I like to make and what I think are interesting. It comes up every once and a while, but it’s never turned into anything. I’ve had a lot of free lunches out of Hollywood."

When Psychonauts was brought up as an IP that would seem like a great candidate for a life outside of games, Schafer said that, while he agrees you could "do tons of stuff with Pscyhonauts," he thinks that "games are cooler than movies and tv, so it's already peaked."

Double Fine founder and legendary game designer Tim Schafer has confirmed that, now that Psychonauts 2 is out in the wild, he wants his next game to be an original property and not an existing IP.

Speaking to IGN's Ryan McCaffrey after winning the New York Videogame Critics Circle's Andrew Yoon Legend Award, Schafer said that he really wants this next phase of Double Fine post-Psychonauts 2 to be filled with "new, original stuff."

"There's been some technical other games that I’ve worked on that have been sequels, but the first real big follow-up to a big story was Pscyhnonauts 2," Schafer said. "I think it leads me to want to do new, original stuff for the next phase. Coming up with new ideas is really where my head is at right now."

Since Double Fine is now part of Microsoft, Schafer was then asked if any of Xbox's available IP or franchises have piqued his interest. After joking about taking on King's Quest to finally get his revenge, he shared that ex-Double Fine programmer and designer Brad Muir had suggested they take on Warcraft Adventures. However, Schafer reiterated that the studio's future is all about original IP.

"Brad Muir was suggesting that we take on Warcraft Adventures, you know the Full Throttle-era adventure game that [Blizzard] made, but no, we like to make up our own stuff at Double Fine, so they will not be handing us any IPs," Schafer said.

If you're wondering why you suddenly have a huge number of Car Mastery points to reassign in Forza Horizon 5, it's likely because Playground Games just released a large patch that fixes a multitude of issues, from persistent online issues to bugs that block progress in Horizon's story mode.

This x.422.400.0 update addresses many of Forza Horizon 5's most irritating bugs, such as blocked progress in the game's story campaign and crashes that can occur when taking certain actions.

Here are some of the biggest fixes:

• A crash could occur when the game was installed at a path that was too long (Steam only). An error message will now appear instead.
• Fixed a bug that could block progress on Horizon Stories, with later chapters not unlocking despite meeting their requirements
• Fixed a crash that can occur when deleting a Rival Notification in the Message Center
• Various fixes for server stability and bandwidth optimization to improve the reliability of all online game modes. You no longer have to restart the game to reconnect with Convoy members who were dropped during or after a race.
• Players will no longer lose their Skill Chain when they disconnect from Horizon Life

In addition to squashing bugs, there is also a bevy of improvements to multiplayer functions, including fixing persisting screens and notifications and adding cues in certain game modes, like an on-screen message when matchmaking in Horizon Open and audio cues to the Mini Mission HUD in Horizon Arcade.

On this week's episode of IGN's PlayStation show, Podcast Beyond!, host Jonathon Dornbush is joined by Jada Griffin, Mark Medina, and Matt Kim to break down the biggest PS4 and PS5 news of the week, namely the latest and biggest acquisition Sony has made in some time. Sony buys Bungie, and we discuss what's next, and the implications of that purchase in Podcast Beyond! Episode 734. We look at why Sony would be interested in Bungie, and Bungie want to join Sony, how Bungie is a unique acquisition and will not necessarily fall under the PlayStation Worldwide Studios umbrella. There's also the matter of potential Destiny TV shows or movies that seem of interest, Sony's increasing investment in live-service games and how Bungie allows for that to accelerate, and, with Jim Ryan's statements that Sony isn't done picking up companies, which development studios would make the most sense, or be good fits, to join Sony PlayStation's stable.

We also dig into all the other news in the world of PlayStation, like Ghostwire: Tokyo release date news, Suicide Squad's delay, Discord integration for PlayStation users, Cyberpunk's leak on the PSN, and more. Plus, Jada gives her thoughts on Dying Light 2: Stay Human!

Timestamps
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:25 Bungie Sony Acquisition
00:12:50 Activision/Call of Duty Followup
00:49:14 Recent News
01:01:09 What We’re Playing
01:09:02 Conclusion

And if you're looking for more places to enjoy this PlayStation podcast show, check out Podcast Beyond! on all available platforms: https://linktr.ee/podcastbeyond.

Can you hear that? I don’t want to jinx it, but it sounds an awful lot like Gran Turismo 7, just around the bend, in a white-knuckled, redline-tickling, last-lap dash for its chequered flag early next month. Of course, the granddaddy of all console racing sims has historically had a complex relationship with release dates so we’ll save the celebrations for when it’s officially doing its victory donuts. However, series creator Kazunori Yamauchi and Sony have just popped the hood for a new and lengthy deep-dive on what we can expect from GT7, so let’s take a look at some of the new things we’ve learned.

As you may already know, the Gran Turismo series is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and this important milestone really seems to be informing developer Polyphony Digital’s approach to Gran Turismo 7. After 2017’s very successful but nonetheless streamlined Gran Turismo Sport, Gran Turismo 7 is very much being positioned as a return to the traditional, pioneering GT experience.

That means the return of the world map and license tests. It means the return of classic tracks dating all the way to the 1997 original. It means the return of performance tuning. It even means the return of oil changes and all those little eccentricities that have been etched into the identity of Gran Turismo. All of this we’ve learned previously, however. But while it looks like GT7 will be a familiar experience for long-time fans, there are a lot of new features.

MLB two-way star Shohei Ohtani will grace the cover of MLB The Show 22, and a superhero manga version of the athlete will appear on the game's collector's editions. In a fun collaboration, the art was done by Afro Samurai creator Takashi Okazaki.

Revealed on the PlayStation Blog, MLB The Show developer Sony San Diego said it wanted to use the collector's editions as an opportunity to incorporate Ohtani's love of manga and anime. Fittingly, Ohtani grew up reading "Major", a manga series about a baseball pitcher who could also hit home runs. It also turns out Okazaki is a huge Shohei Ohtani fan, which led him to partner with Sony to create an anime-style superhero version of the MLB star for the steelbook cover. You can take a look at the result below.

NEWS: Afro Samurai Creator Takashi Okazaki Illustrates Shohei Ohtani for MLB The Show 22 ⚾️

Read on: https://t.co/i6Hh7Dgcjk pic.twitter.com/YOY8tKHxhq

Popping out for a bite to eat took on a brand-new meaning with 2015’s Dying Light, and now again with its bigger, darker, and even more dystopian sequel. Light and dark plays a big part in this vampiric tale, including ray tracing editions for new-gen consoles and higher-end PCs. So, let’s sample the bits and bytes of Dying Light 2 Stay Human.

Parkouring our way through the console & PC versions, we have a collection of modes and settings to work through. The last-gen versions weren’t ready in time for coverage in this review, so we instead will concentrate on the Xbox Series X, Series S, and PS5 along with our AMD-powered PC with an RX6800 GPU. First up, let’s examine the three modes Techland’s proprietary Chrome engine (or C-engine) offers – on Series X and PS5, at least.

Console Game modes

Two of the three modes are 30fps, with Quality mode boasting ray tracing that adds full-contact hardening sun shadows, enabling soft dithered shadows across both static and dynamic objects. These are a big increase in the quality and accuracy of shadows and can drastically change certain scenes due to the upgrade, but they are expensive. In addition, ambient occlusion of a screen space variety and screen space shadows all combine to create more accurate lighting and darker tones in recessed areas in both indoor and outdoor sections. Reflections also offer better quality than other modes, but are still screen space in nature. All these are identical in quality and coverage on Series X and PS5, but some other minor bugs do crop up.

Dying Light 2's day one patch will include more than 1,000 bug fixes on top of the thousand made since the game went gold.

Bugs present in the pre-release version of the game included dialogues that blocked story progression, regular crashing, and missing sound and voice-over audio.

IGN's review of Dying Light 2 came with a Bug Alert recommending players with a low bug-tolerance to avoid the game until it had received such updates.

Developer Techland said in a statement: "Within the last two weeks we added over a thousand fixes and improvements on all the platforms.

"You can expect the day one patch with another thousand tweaks to go live on consoles within the next few days, and of course, we are continuing our efforts to improve the PC version in real-time."

IGN said Dying Light 2 was "good", and "an ambitious zombie action adventure that's packed with top-notch parkour, an awesome open world, and every painful bug in the book."

Techland recently delayed the Nintendo Switch version of the game, saying it will no longer release on February 4 but instead "within six months".

It also promised that Dying Light 2 will receive five years of post-launch content on top of the supposed 500 hours it takes to fully complete the game.

The Pokémon Company has released an online sound library allowing users to listen to music tracks and sound effects from the original Pokémon Diamond and Pearl games.

The sound library has 149 different tracks and sound effects from the original 2006 versions of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl but doesn't feature any of the updated music from last year's remakes.

Users can select their six favourite songs to combine in a "party track", a reference to the Pokémon games' six-character party system. A number of curated playlists are also available to play, named Adventurous, Power-Up, Challenge, and Relax.

It's not clear if this is a one-off project, or if other Pokémon (or Nintendo) games' tracks could be released as their own libraries in future.

Users can also download the music to use in their own creative pursuits and performances, and a single from Japanese performer and DJ Alan Shirahama has already been released, which samples elements of the library.

Shirahama, who became popular in 2012 as a member of Japan's Generations pop group, has created a song from the music called "On my way to Glory" that was released alongside the sound library itself.

He said: "To be given an opportunity to arrange Pokémon game music like this is such a fulfilling and wild experience for me. My younger self would have been overjoyed by the very idea. I like my beats to roll with a story-like structure and momentum, so I started off by conceptualizing how a Pokémon Trainer's everyday life would play out."

Rocksteady's next DC game, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been delayed until 2023.

As reported by Bloomberg, the upcoming Suicide Squad game has been pushed back a year after initially announcing a 2022 release window. Warner Bros. Games is gearing up several releases for this year including Hogwarts Legacy and Lego Star Wars.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was first announced in 2020 and Rocksteady's first DC game since finishing the Batman Arkham trilogy. The title can be played single-player or as a co-op multiplayer game where players will work together as different members of the Suicide Squad to take on a brainwashed Justice League, including evil Superman.

The first in-game footage for Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League premiered at DC FanDome 2021. So far the Suicide Squad includes Harley Quinn, King Shark, Deadshot, and Captain Boomerang. Each character can be customized with unique weapons and abilities.

Sony says that Bungie wants to turn its games into multimedia franchises – and the PlayStation creator says that it could help the developer make movies.

A lot has been made of how much Bungie will offer Sony, after a $3.6 billion acquisition was announced this week. However, speaking during an earnings call Q&A, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki was asked what benefits Bungie itself saw in being acquired by Sony.

Totoki's answer covered areas such as hiring and employee retention, but moved onto Sony's position as a multimedia company: "[It's] not just for [the] gaming area, but the multi-using of IP and merchandising of IP – like a game title maybe put into movies.

"Bungie want to nurture the IP they have in a multi-dimensional manner, and that's their hope. For that, we believe we can help that – we have [Sony] Pictures and [Sony] Music, and Bungie can leverage our platform so that their IP can flourish and grow big."

It's not the first time we've heard about Bungie's multimedia aspirations. Last year, the studio began hiring for a development role to "drive projects that extend the Destiny franchise into new categories including TV, films, books, comics, and audio formats."

Sony is expecting to sell fewer PlayStation 5 units in the current financial year than previously forecasted. The company slashed its forecasts by millions of units due to ongoing component shortages.

Sony had previously expected to sell more than 14.8 million PS5s by March 2022 – a number that would have seen the console exceed PS4's on sales in its second financial year on the market. The company is now no longer expecting to be able to reach that level of supply, and is now forecasting 11.5 million sales for the year.

"Unfortunately," said CFO Hiroki Totoki in a Q3 earnings call, "due to limitations on the supply of components – especially semiconductiors – and an increase in delivery times resulting from the disruption of the global distribution supply chain, we have revised our FY21 unit sales forecast for PS5 hardware to 11.5 million units."

Totoki added that the supply constraints are likely to continue: "Limitations on the supply of components are expected to continue going forward, but we are continuing to exert every effort to meet the strong demand for PS5."

The weird, surreal tone of Dying Light 2 Stay Human combines very serious end-of-days themes with silly characters and minigames that have you smacking zombies off a skyscraper with a cricket bat is bizarre, but somehow it works extremely well. This zombie-smashing action game is a strong post-apocalyptic adventure with top-tier parkour movement, an expansive open world in which to put them to good use, and lots of great characters. What doesn’t work so well is how it combines a near-lethal case of bugs with a story centered around a protagonist so uninteresting that he’s all but (un)dead on arrival. I’m sure that when the developers at Techland set out to make this sequel they had no idea that they’d end up releasing a game about a global pandemic two years into a global pandemic, but it’s clear that trying to finish such an ambitious game under these conditions didn’t do it any favors.

Sticking largely to the plan laid out by its surprise-hit predecessor in 2015, Dying Light 2 takes place in an excellent, highly explorable city where the rooftops are home to eccentric survivors who have become masters of parkour, scavenging, and chopping zombie heads off with assorted sporting equipment. By day the zombies swarms crowd into buildings to hide from the sun, and by night they pour into the streets in daunting masses, but the real tension comes from managing the terrifying meter that counts down to you transforming into a brainless shambler. Like nearly everyone else you’re infected with the zombie virus, and staying in near-constant contact with UV rays is the only thing delaying the inevitable. The ever-present need to recharge that meter – which will deplete in a matter of minutes if you’re inside a building away from the light – is an excellent addition to Dying Light’s moment-to-moment gameplay that keeps up the pressure on every step of your journey.

A new, remote-first games studio aims to build a company built on the health of its employees and the world. This philosophy has attracted talent from across the industry including veterans who’ve worked on games like Marvel’s Spider-Man, What Remains of Edith Finch, Journey, Fallout 4, and more.

The studio is called Gardens and is co-founded by Chris Bell (Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch), Lexie Dostal (Dustforce), and Stephen Bell (Blaseball, What Remains of Edith Finch.). Gardens already has plans for its first game, which is set to be an online game where players will interact with each other within a mysterious and magical world. It will build upon the online games the team has built in the past including Journey, Ashen, and Blaseball.

Check out the concept art below.

This remote studio, with employees primarily based out of Portland, OR and Los Angeles, CA, was named after the kind of games the team is looking to create which are “artfully-crafted, living environments” primarily focused on online multiplayer experiences.

“With Gardens, we wanted to create a studio that cares as much about the health, happiness, and wellbeing of its team members as we do the craftsmanship of the games we create together,” says Bell in a statement on the studio’s founding.

PlayStation plans to release "more than 10" live service games by March 2026, a feat that will be helped by its acquisition of Bungie.

Speaking during Sony's latest earnings call, CFO Hiroki Totoki said, "Through close collaboration with Bungie and the PlayStation Studios, we aim to launch more than 10 live service games by the fiscal year ending March 31 2026."

Live service games are games that are updated with new content over time, often making the majority of their money through in-game purchases, rather than initial sales. Totoki pointed to a huge jump in revenue from these kinds of games as part of the reason for Sony pursuing the model:

"From calendar year 2014 to calendar year 2021, the size of the global game content market doubled, driven by add-on content revenue from live game services, which grew at an average annual rate of 15% during this period. We expect this trend to continue going forward."

Bungie's early investment into live service games with the launch of Destiny in 2014 allowed it to accumulate "a wealth of experience and superb technology in the space," Totoki said, something Sony sees as a major asset in acquiring the studio.

"The strategic significance of this acquisition lies not only in obtaining the highly successful Destiny franchise as well as major new IP that Bungie is currently developing," explained Totoki, "but also in incorporating into the Sony group the expertise and technologies that Bungie has developed in the live game services space.

"We intend to utilize these strengths when developing game IP at the PlayStation Studios, as we expand into the live game services area."

The winners of the New York Game Awards 2022 have been announced, with Psychonauts 2 scoring the top honor after triumphing in the Best Game of the Year category.

The 11th annual New York Game Awards took place overnight, with a virtual event that celebrated the best games, actors, journalists, and esports athletes of the past year. Psychonauts 2 emerged as one of the big winners of the night after being named Best Game of the Year while also receiving the Statue of Liberty Award for Best World.

Shedworks' Sable took home two trophies on the night, one for Best Music and the other for Best Indie Game, having been nominated alongside Death's Door, Genesis Noir, and several others. Capcom's Resident Evil franchise was also celebrated at the event, with Maggie Robertson being recognized for her role as Lady Dimitrescu in Resident Evil Village.

IGN is also thrilled to announce that investigative reporter Rebekah Valentine became the recipient of the Knickerbocker Award for Best Games Journalism, where she had been nominated amongst a top list of creative people for her distinguished contributions in the field during the most recent awards year.

The full list of winners from the New York Game Awards 2022 follows:

Sony's PlayStation 5 has already outsold Nintendo's Wii U, despite only being available for just over a year.

Announced in the company's most recent earnings releases, Sony revealed that over 17.3 million PS5s were sold as of December 31. 2021. The Wii U reached just 13.56 million sales in its lifetime.

The PS5 had a stellar year financially, outselling the PS4 in its first fiscal year, breaking the Nintendo Switch's 33-month streak at the top of US hardware sales, and being the fastest-selling console in U.S. history in both unit and dollar sales.

Its sales have also been restricted by the ongoing chip shortage that will remain very tight until at least September. Both Sony and Microsoft have suffered from a lack of chips that are found in graphics cards, gaming consoles, and more.

The PS5 still has a ways to go before it enters the best-selling consoles of all time list, of course. The PS4 has sold 116.9 million units (which will continue to rise), the Game Boy and Game Boy Color sold 118.69 million, the Nintendo DS reached 154.02 million units and the PlayStation 2 remains in first place with 159 million units sold.

Nintendo has suddenly removed thousands of videos from a YouTube channel that uploads soundtracks from franchises like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Kirby.

YouTuber GilvaSunner, who has over 469,000 subscribers, tweeted that they will be deleting the channel on February 4 after Nintendo removed 3,500 videos from the channel, as reported by Nintendo Life.

It is not permitted to upload copyrighted music to YouTube even if a credit is supplied but GilvaSunner has been posting Nintendo tracks for over a decade and does not monetize the videos. There is currently no way to legally listen to much Nintendo music outside of occasionally released original game soundtracks.

In the Twitter post, GilvaSunner said: "After thinking about this a lot over the past few days, I've decided that at this point it's not really worth it to keep the channel up any longer, and will therefore delete the GlivaSunner YouTube channel (or what's left of it) this coming Friday.

"There are many different opinions over what is happening and that's fine! I can understand pretty much all the sides. I know this is disappointing to read for a lot of you, but I hope you can respect my decision to want to move on."

1,300 videos were removed last week and a further 2,200 were taken down on February 1, and GilvaSunner said they expected more to follow. It's unclear what's spurred Nintendo into action on this recently – we've contacted the company for comment.

The newest Magic set, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is coming out soon, and it's certainly an exciting concept. It takes 2004's Kamigawa setting, which was inspired by feudal Japan, and hurtles it 1200 years into the future, into a world of neon cities and advanced technology, but one that also remains in touch with spirits and traditions.

In this set of 302 cards, a number of classic Kamigawa gameplay designs - such as Ninjutsu, Channel and double-faced cards - return, alongside the new mechanic Reconfigure, which allows creatures to equip themselves to other creatures. Similarly, the new cyber ninja Planeswalker Kaito Shizuki is joined by returning Planeswalkers Tamiyo and The Wanderer.

Today, IGN has four new cards to reveal from Neon Dynasty. The first is a Legendary Creature and Rat Ninja - Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion:

Sony has purchased Bungie, who has meant so much to Xbox and its history, that we can't help but discuss the deal. We look at what it means for the future of Bungie on Xbox, remember our favorite Bungie-made moments on Xbox, and more. Plus: our reactions to the Halo TV show's new trailer and release date, and more!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our new YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week's episode. For more awesome content, check out our latest IGN Unfiltered interview, where Joseph Staten – one of Halo's original creators and now the head of creative on Halo Infinite – discusses his fascinating career:

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Pokemon Legends: Arceus takes place in the Sinnoh region of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl before it was known as Sinnoh and hundreds of years before the events of the fourth generation of Pokemon. Naturally, some of the locations have corollaries, such as Jubilife Village to Jubilife City, but what's even more fascinating are the number of NPCs that appear to be the ancestors of characters in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl.

Some of the resemblances are more uncanny than others, and there are probably many more that require a trained eye to spot. But we've tracked down a number of the most interesting ancestors of Diamond and Pearl characters hidden in Arceus for you here.

Minor spoilers for Pokemon Legends: Arceus characters and story below.

Update 02/02/22: Mina the Hollower has already met its initial Kickstarter goal, just hours after the campaign launched.

At time of writing, the game has accrued more than $370,000 USD, comfortably passing its original $311,000 goal. No stretch goals have been announced as yet but, judging by Shovel Knight's campaign, we can likely expect some to pop up along the way.

The developer of Shovel Knight has announced a brand new game called Mina the Hollower, a top-down action adventure in a Game Boy Colour style.

At its Yacht Club Games Presents event, the developer launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the new project, promising a "bone-chilling action adventure" with an 8-bit aesthetic redefined for the modern era.

The studio's release of Shovel Knight in 2014 hurtled it into mainstream success and spawned several spin-offs, but it hasn't revealed a new franchise until today (Yacht Club has published non-Shovel Knight games, but never developed one itself).

Mina the Hollower will, like Shovel Knight before it, combine classic and modern styles – and will feature 60 frames per second combat in a world of mystery and horror.

Yacht Club Games director and designer Alec Faulkner said the studio was returning to Kickstarter to recreate the feeling of Shovel Knight's development, which was also funded through the crowdfunding service.

After previously expressing positivity about NFTs as a part of gaming's future, EA appears to be treading with a bit more caution in its most recent discussion with investors.

During the company's Q3 earnings call today, CEO Andrew Wilson was asked once again how he felt about EA potentially doing NFT and blockchain gaming sometime down the line. Wilson began his reply by reflecting on the fact that the investment trends gaming is seeing with NFTs are familiar, with similar investment including in the past around tech such as 3D, AR, and VR.

He continued by emphasizing the importance of "collectibility" as central to EA games, both in real and virtual worlds, saying he believes that will be an important part of EA's future one way or another. However, he wouldn't say one way or another whether that means NFTs.

"Whether that's a part of NFTs and the blockchain, well, that remains to be seen," he said. "The way we think about it is: we want to deliver the best possible player experience we can. We'll evaluate that over time, but right now it's not something that we're driving hard against."

Previously, Wilson had said that while the NFT conversation is "really, really early," he felt the tech was "an important part of the future of our industry."

While players have certainly been aware of the struggles Battlefield 2042 has undergone since its launch last November, publisher EA owned up to the game's trouble in front of investors today, saying it "did not meet expectations."

In the company's Q3 earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson said that Battlefield 2042 has always been an "ambitious game" for EA, noting that much of the game was made during COVID-19 lockdowns that ultimately impacted the final product.

"Developing this game with our teams working from home for nearly two years ultimately proved to be challenging," he said. "Through our process of testing and preparation we believed the experience was ready to be put in our players' hands. We launched with strong stability; however, as more players experienced the full game, it became clear there were unanticipated performance issues that we would need to address. Some of the design choices we made with the game also did not resonate with everyone in our community."

Wilson then reiterated EA's commitment to continuing to update Battlefield 2042 in the coming months, referencing the announcement early today to push back the first season of live service content to early summer while it works on improving the core experience.

Xbox will celebrate Black History Month by spotlighting Black and African American developers and creators for the entire month of February.

The company announced their plans in a blog post, where content developer and social lead Albert Dankwa said Xbox would be "celebrating gaming as a source of joy, connection, and self-care for many in the community."

The company has been celebrating Black History Since 2020, highlighting Black industry professionals and their contributions to the gaming industry.

Dankwa said he relates to finding joy through games: "I have fond memories of summer afternoons spent at a friend's home playing Halo and later enjoying Gears of War on my own first Xbox. was fascinated by the narratives, drawn to the worlds, and inspired by the heroes and the hope they represented. As a lifelong gamer, it's important to me to help inspire and uplift others to join the industry or to simply share their love of gaming."

Microsoft Reward members in the U.S. can earn and donate points to organizations supporting Black communities with Xbox, such as Cxmmunity, Black Girls Rock!, and Gameheads. Meanwhile, Halo will be adding a special emblem and nameplate, and Forza Horizon 5 will be hosting an in-game livery contest. Xbox itself is adding a new Gamerpic, profile theme, and avatar items for the occasion.

Battlefield 2042's Season One has been pushed back to early summer 2022 so developer DICE can focus on resolving current issues in the game. The decision was made "to bring the game up to the highest standards" according to senior producer Ryan McArthur, who published a blog post on the game's website.

Battlefield 2042 was released in November last year with a number of issues including server connectivity and UI problems. A seasonal Battle Pass will add new playable characters and maps, but DICE didn't confirm a timeline for when Season One will begin.

McArthur said, "We are heavily invested and committed to the future of Battlefield 2042 — working on taking action on multiple fronts to address feedback and implement extensive fixes to the game, key features that are important to you, and getting team play where it needs to be."

Pushing back Season One "gives us the time to focus on improving the Battlefield 2042 experience when finalizing the development for our seasonal content," he added.

The blog post gave an in-depth explanation as to how these improvements will be made, starting with features DICE wants to implement "as soon as possible".

The next update will include a refreshed in-round scoreboard that separates the player's and enemy's teams into two tables. Kill to death scoring and end-of-round reports will be coming in a later update.

The melding of tabletop RPG and Borderlands in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands almost feels like a Pimp My Ride meme. "You like RPGs in your RPG-based Looter Shooters?" Because at its core, Borderlands has always been heavily influenced by role-playing games, both the tabletop and video game varieties. The visible damage counters as you unleash a clip or three-hundred into your enemies is a direct nod to the damage counters in games like Final Fantasy, and the Gearbox main offices in Texas have an entire room set aside with what might be the greatest TTRPG set-up I've ever seen. Giving Tiny Tina her own Borderlands 2 DLC (which is standalone as of last November) as well as a spin-off game with Wonderlands feels like the perfect encapsulation of the DNA of Borderlands as a whole… and then they added spells and melee attacks.

Cast a Spell on You

The first big difference between this and your ordinary, non-imagined Borderlands campaign is the addition of spells to your arsenal. In some ways, they replace grenades from the mainline series, but they have such a distinct look and feel that they easily differentiate themselves from the grenades you're used to chucking at psychos. For one, they have a cool-down period rather than a set inventory. You can cast spells to your heart's content and never need to fill up on ammo like you do with grenades: you just need to let your spells recharge. There are weapons and items that can cut down on the cool down time, and you can link moves and spells together and create all sorts of chaos. I really, and I mean really, liked the way spells add to combat. While there aren't healing spells per se, there are Dark Magic spells you can cast that feed your hurting and hungry Fatemaker with hit points while doling out damage to whatever fanciful baddie happens to be on the receiving end of your arcana.

Supermassive Games seemingly has plans to release at least six more Dark Pictures Anthology games on top of its upcoming The Devil in Me.

The developer has trademarked six further titles in the franchise with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, as spotted by @the_marmolade on Twitter.

The six games trademarked, all under The Dark Pictures Anthology brand, are called Switchback, Directive 8020, The Craven Man, Intercession, Winterfold, and O Death.

Supermassive Games has already released three games in the series - Man of Medan, Little Hope, and Houses of Ashes - and has confirmed a fourth is on the way. The upcoming game, The Devil in Me, was announced by the studio in October and revealed to be a Season One finale for the series.

Ahead of the franchise's first release, Man of Medan in 2019, Supermassive Games said The Dark Pictures Anthology would span eight games with a release schedule of two per year.

If all the trademarked games are released, however, that would bring the total up to ten games, two more than the developer initially planned. There's no guarantee that Supermassive Games will develop all of the trademarked titles into full games, but it's likely some of them will be in the initially planned eight-game release schedule.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will reportedly be taking the reins on reviewing Microsoft's intended acquisition of Activision Blizzard – amid a more aggressive stance from the government agency on Big Tech mergers.

Bloomberg reports that a source pointed to the FTC taking the lead role in investigating the proposed takeover – a job it handles alongside the Justice Department. The role of the review is to determine whether the near-$70 billion deal could harm consumers, rivals, and partners.

On the same day as Microsoft's deal was announced, the Justice Department and FTC announced plans to rewrite merger guidelines, warning that US industries had become increasingly concentrated. FTC chair Lina Khan said that such concentration could lead to price rises and lower wages.

The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that the FTC is particularly concerned with Big Tech companies like Microsoft, and that Khan has been reframing the argument against major mergers not just by its traditional effect on consumers and rivals, but to partner companies – for instance those who are effectively forced to sell through the Apple Store, or Amazon's digital storefront.

Wordle, the browser game that makes all your Twitter friends post strange colored blocks to your feed, has been purchased by The New York Times.

NYT announced the deal Monday, saying they paid Wordle creator Josh Wardle, a software engineer, in the "low seven figures" for the rights to his game.

NYT also says the popular word game will remain "initially" free to new and existing players, suggesting it may become a part of the newspaper's subscription plan in the future.

Wordle is a puzzle game that asks players to correctly guess a five-letter word. Each failed guess potentially offers new clues as to what the true answer is using a color-coded block system. “New York Times Games play a big part in its origins,” Wardle said in the company’s statement, “and so this step feels very natural to me.”

Wardle previously told an NYT reporter that he and his partner got into word games like the NYT crossword and Spelling Bee during the COVID pandemic.

Wordle was originally published in October 2021, sporting 90 users on November 1. Millions now play the game, and numerous clones appeared on the iOS and Android app stores looking to ride its coattails.