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This week is video game industry earnings report week, which means we get a sense of how well each of the major platforms is doing, like Nintendo Switch outselling the Wii and that Sony can’t make enough PlayStation 5 consoles. Amongst the news, one small nugget spotted in Sony’s earnings report was how the company is going to allocate the $3.6bn it spent on acquiring Bungie. In the report, Sony estimates that approximately a third of the money will be used for “deferred payments to employee shareholders, conditional upon their continued employment, and other retention incentives” (thanks, TweakTown)....

Spoiler sense tingling! This article contains Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse spoilers. Seriously, why would you click on this link without realizing that spoilers are going to happen? Like nearly any superhero movie from the past few years, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has stuff after the credits. It’s just that this one may have the best post-credits sequence of the year. At the very least, it’s on the level of the mid-credits stuff in Deadpool 2....

Splatoon 3 has had a hugely successful launch in Japan, with the highest domestic sales for any Switch game in the first three days. Since launching on Friday, the game has sold 3.45m copies in Japan both physically and digitally. It proves how popular the game is in Nintendo’s home market and how important the Splatoon IP is, outselling even Animal Crossing: New Horizons which had the previous best launch in Japan....

Square Enix will host a dedicated E3 conference in Downtown LA on Tuesday, June 16 at 9am PST, just hours before the E3 show opens its doors. “Start E3 right with a dose of some exciting news before the show officially kicks off later in the day,” says the publisher. “What news do we have in store? You’ll just have to wait and see.” You’ll be able to watch the conference live on Twitch and YouTube....

Today Square Enix announced that news about Star Ocean: The Divine Force will come in late June. The game (which is simply called Star Ocean 6 in Japan) was announced back in October 2021, but apparently, it’s taking longer than expected in the oven. The publisher took to Twitter to announce that it was expected to release in the spring of 2022, but the developers are sorry to keep the fans waiting....

Limited Run Games, a publisher that primarily releases physical versions of traditionally digital games, are working on special modern editions of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for NES and Game Boy and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for N64. There are a few different ways to buy these games, assuming that you’re one of the lucky few who actually manage to snag a copy of either (the publisher is called Limited Run for a reason)....

The original version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is heading to the Nintendo Switch this November. While it’s not to be confused with the recently announced remake, Aspyr are behind this version too. They’ve taken the 2003 original by Bioware and given it a spit and polish for Nintendo’s hardware. If you’ve never played it before, the story is set four thousand years before the Galactic Empire. Following the slaying of hundreds of Jedi Knights by the Sith, you wake up on a Republic ship with no memory....

Each month, the hosts of our Star Wars podcast, Megan, Paul, and Saf, take on the latest topics in the Expanded Universe, on television, and in the theater on Star Wars Blaster Canon. Lots of news this month as J.J. Abrams broke the serious secrecy around Episode IX just long enough to post a photo of the cast on the day photography wrapped. The Star Wars Blaster Canon podcast hosts have you covered with analysis of the new costumes, and we’ve hyped ourselves up for what might be the last movie in Rey’s saga....

The story for the in-progress Cyberpunk 2077 expansion may have been leaked online. As spotted by PC Gamer, a dataminer on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit supposedly found information that points to the entire story. In a recent earnings report, CDPR detailed multiple teams allocated to the development of an expansion for Cyberpunk 2077. It should release next year, barring any more delays. The files for Cyberpunk 2077 were possibly added in a recent patch, and leaked by a dataminer who had an apparent quarrel with a CDPR moderator....

A series of job openings at Rocksteady Studios, the developer behind the critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham trilogy, have indicated the firm is gearing up to announce its long-awaited new AAA project. The British-based developer is currently hiring for three marketing-related jobs, including Lead Brand Artist, Senior User Researcher, and Promo Artist (Video). While that might not sound particularly exciting at first glance, the descriptions for the roles are quite tantalizing....

The next instalment in the multi-million selling Assassin’s Creed franchise will take place in Greece, according to a report from Comic Book. Citing a ‘well corroborated’ source, the game has been in full production since the beginning of last year, and is (unsurprisingly) slated to launch for PS4, PC, and Xbox One. However, it appears Ubisoft has eschewed its traditional annual release schedule for the game, as it’s not due until 2019....

While fans of Euro Truck Simulator 2 continue to patiently wait for the release of the Iberia Peninsula map expansion, SCS Software has provided details for what’s coming even later on the horizon: the great expanse of Russia. This will be the next destination for the sim following the release of the Iberia expansion. Dubbed the “Heart of Russia”, this next map expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 will take the sim in a new direction — literally....

Who doesn’t love a good, bloody first-person shooter? Scathe looks a hell of a lot like the recent Doom games. Obviously, that pun couldn’t possibly be more intended (or basic, honestly). The game comes out in about a month and I got to put some time into it, violently blowing up scores of demons along the way. There are some things about it that put it above what contemporaries with small teams can recreate, but I’m honestly quite confused by its game loop and goals as of now....

The concept of two-versus-two is quickly becoming a common feature for fighting games, with many of the top-tier fighting series adopting the gameplay style. And while the newest Mortal Kombat wasn’t the first in the franchise to use the mode, it is the first one in the series to do it right. If you hadn’t had enough with the first Mortal Kombat tag team trailer released a few days ago, then maybe your bloodlust will be satisfied with this new, all-ladies tag team battle....

The imminent PS4 release of Shadow of the Beast will include a rather cool unlockable extra in the form of the complete original Amiga title fully emulated on Sony’s console. “As fans of the original, we wanted to offer new players to chance to experience first-hand the game that inspired us and offer fellow fans of the original a chance to re-live it. To that end, we’ve included a full emulation of the original Amiga game (we think this might be the first time an Amiga emulation has been published on a Sony console!...

It took 18 long years, but diehard fans of Sega’s Shenmue series finally got the sequel they’d been waiting for in 2019 with Shenmue 3. For many players the game felt like the sequel they should’ve gotten back in 2003, and that’s not necessarily a compliment. Some of Shenmue 3’s mechanics feel very outdated, particularly its slow and lengthy pace and unskippable dialogue. Gamers may have been fine with that stuff back in 2001, but now it’s time for Shenmue to enter the modern age of gaming with an update that adds some highly requested features....

EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson has stated the importance of single player games, despite multiplayer games dominating the company’s output. During the company’s first quarter earnings call yesterday, Wilson was asked how single player games fit into its portfolio. He described them as “really, really important”, although chief financial officer Chris Suh also followed up noting that live service games account for over 70 percent of the total business. Watch on YouTube Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - Official Teaser...

Earlier this year, we got a quick look at the promising Solar Ash by the Hyper Light Drifter developer Heart Machine. It was mostly a walkthrough, featuring the developer going over the world and systems the game will have. Today at Summer Game Fest 2021, we finally got a new gameplay trailer for Solar Ash. Skating, hacking, slashing, and a giant dragon boss await. The majority of the new Solar Ash gameplay trailer revolves around a massive boss battle....

Media Molecule’s latest title Dreams has finally released for the PS4, and players have been quick to try their hands at creating brand new worlds, as well as recreating some old ones. One player who had previously spent some time creating in the Dreams early access has shared a new creation that depicts a familiar scene from 2019. The player, going by Mystical_Vortex_ on the indreams.me community site, recreated one of the most iconic scenes from 2019’s Joker movie....

Sega announced in a livestream last week that the PC version of Sonic Mania has been delayed for two weeks. This moves the PC game’s release from August 15 to August 29. According to the steam, the PC version is getting ‘a bit more optimisation’, as the team are dedicated to not putting out a game that isn’t ‘the best it can be.’ The console versions are still on schedule for their release tomorrow....