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According to analysts from market research firm TrendForce, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) prices are expected to rise 5-10 percent in 2025 due to exceptionally high demand from the AI sector, leading to a price increase for other types of DRAM. Unfortunately for PC builders, this will also affect the DDR5 market,... Read Entire Article View the full article

Sam Barlow, head of Half Mermaid studio and one of the creative minds behind 2022’s critically-acclaimed Immortality, is working on not one, but two secret projects. Both of them look weird, and creepy as heck. What are they? He’s not saying. But they both have something to do with “kaleidoscopic freedom.” Earlier this year, Half Mermaid quietly dropped two new store pages on Steam for two different games: Project C and Project D. Both projects have cryptic descriptions and imagery that suggests Barlow is returning to the horror genre, but few other details. Barlow confirms to me that C and D are two separate projects made by two separate teams within Half Mermaid, and that one of them is being made in Unreal Engine. But for now isn’t saying much more than that. So we talk around the projects instead, discussing ideas and philosophies he and Half Mermaid have been playing with. One of these ideas is what Barlow calls “kaleidoscopic freedom.” In a previous conversation with me, he described Immortality as a narrative metroidvania – it has “exploration, backtracking, re-traversing, unlocking some ability to navigate, or just to understand.” Just as someone might unlock a double jump in a metroidvania and return to a previously-visited room to try it out, so too does Barlow want players to revisit scenes, ideas, or places in his games with renewed understanding of what’s going on in them and draw new conclusions about the story. In earlier iterations, like in Her Story, the player had full control over this process. But Barlow has been experimenting more and more with the idea of asking players to cede control a bit, and what that can mean for a story. If it works for something like Diablo – which has randomized loot – why couldn’t it work for narrative? “You see the thing where people are like, ‘I made the moral choice here, I should be rewarded for it.’ We want this very predictable, but that's a very boring way to experience the story. If you do the thing and you get the thing you expected, it's almost the opposite of what I expect out of a good story. So the fact that the world generally at large loved Immortality and took to it, and embraced that aspect of this kind of kaleidoscopic freedom, the next game's just like, okay, how do we… just really, I feel like that, regardless of genre or control style, that's the thing I'm really married to now.” Another element Barlow wants to experiment with is the idea of simply dropping a player directly into the action with minimal explanation or tutorial. “I was playing a game with my kids recently,” he says. “We just got a PS5 in the house, so I was working through a bunch of games that I need to play for a jury online. It was a lot of big name AAA games. And one of the games we sat down, 50 minutes in, we were still doing this tutorial, still walking and talking and doing these other things. And my **** was like, ‘Just let me play the game.’ And I feel like a grumpy old man, the older I get, the more I'm like, ‘Just put me in the game. Let me figure ***** out. I'm not an ******.’” The older I get, the more I'm like, ‘Just put me in the game. Let me figure ***** out. I'm not an ******.' Barlow illustrates this with the Zelda series: Skyward Sword, he says, had very “didactic tutorials,” but then Breath of the Wild asks players almost instantly to “go figure it out.” “That's, to me, what as a player is really exciting about something like Immortality, where it is daunting, but slowly finding my way through this thing and giving it form. It also means that when different players play, they get very different experiences that are personal to them. I think that should almost be like the baseline for a video game. If it's an interactive thing, it should really matter who's playing it, right?” One final tenant Barlow has in mind on Project C and D is simplicity. He’s not a fan of games that are stuffed with tons of gameplay systems just for the sake of having them. Rather, he wants to use “subtractive design,” trying to find the simplest possible thing that gives the most enjoyment. No open world bloat, no endless array of collectibles and side quests. But Barlow is insistent that simple, or even short, does not mean low-quality, nor low value, nor does it mean that a game is or should be cheap to make. “What I understand about The Last of Us dev process, it's not the graphics that cost $220 million. It's the fact that they are allowed to iterate and throw away levels seven to eight times,” Barlow says. “I spoke to someone that worked on one level on Uncharted. And we were like, ‘Oh, how long did you spend to make this level?’ In my head, I've made levels in a couple of months on other games. And they were like, ‘Two years. We had two years, as a team, with an embedded coder, animator, all these people. We had two years to try things, discover things, have the code, to come up with a cool idea, figure out if there’s a way of incorporating it. Doesn't work, throw it out, try again.’ And I don't want to critique that. Because obviously, it lets them get to a place where they're coming up with loads of cool *****. “There's probably a more efficient version, if they had to be efficient, where you actually commit to some decisions early on, and are more specific about what this game is going to be. But Last of Us did not cost $220 million because they said the hair has to look great. It cost that because they spent all this time on it, and because they allowed themselves to keep throwing stuff out, to try and make the most perfect, most epic single player game. And things like the hair looking great falls out of that, because there's artists spending years tweaking and stuff.” That probably shouldn’t be taken to mean that Project C or D will cost $220 million or anything. But Barlow does say Half Mermaid was “lucky” when it came to getting Projects C and D pitched, funded, and locked in. “You had all the devs who were making ******* games, whose stuff got massively screwed up by COVID and delayed, and then all their games came out last year. And I know that, now, it's really, really hard apparently to sign things, and now is a really hard time to get funding. I think we got in just before that, or we're just weird and the stuff we make is safe.” But he also tells me that his success and relative stability can still feel precarious. Even with the critical acclaim for Immortality and acknowledgement that his name has some industry clout, Barlow worries it could all collapse any second. "It's like we're in a big ocean and it's choppy, choppy waves. And there's these giant carriers, the Titanic is sinking, and there's Fortnite coming past us, and some of these things are capsizing, and people are falling off the decks. And we're in our little indie boat, managing to dodge everyone and skirt around it. If these handful of companies decide not to do this anymore, we're screwed. “I think the scary thing is how dependent indie games can be now on platforms,” he continues. “When you start realizing that like, ‘Oh, I'm banking on getting a deal,’ whether it's a Netflix or a PlayStation or a Game Pass. That's almost become an important part of getting to sustainability of your indie game. If these handful of companies turn around and decide not to do this anymore or change their minds, then suddenly, we're screwed." Despite the industry’s precarity and Barlow’s stated fears, Barlow and Half Mermaid are choosing to continue their unique pedigree of, as Barlow puts it, “those weird experimental cinematic games.” Fundamentally, Barlow wants his work both past and present to constantly challenge the very definition of what a video game is. Whatever they’re doing, whatever Project C and Project D turn out to be, Barlow is committed to always asking the same question: “how far can we push that definition?” Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected]. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

I didn’t mean to take the boat all by myself and leave my friends for *****. I really didn’t. I thought I was just getting in the boat, and then starting it up. I thought we would all leave together. Oh, no. No, no, no. I was signing ****** warrants, damning them to the Klownpocalypse. Oops. But as I sped away on my little outboard, I couldn’t help but laugh. They couldn’t either. And moments like that, where you’ve accidentally just left your teammates to **** and everyone is laughing about it while trying to escape a group of demented space Klowns, are how you know you’re having a good time. They made it out anyway. Well, most of them. ******* Klowns from Outer Space is the latest in the asymmetrical horror multiplayer survival genre that you should be intimately familiar with if you’ve ever played ***** by Daylight and its myriad imitators. ******* Klowns differentiates itself from the competition in a couple ways, though. First, there are just more players: three ******* Klowns and seven Humans, which makes for more exciting (and frequent) skirmishes than a one-on-four game. The humans can also ****** back: crowbars, baseball bats, two-by-fours, knives, revolvers, and my personal favorite, shotguns are scattered around the map and yours for the taking, though you’ll have to work around ammo and item durability. And this isn’t just a “slow the Klowns down and run away” kind of proposition. You can send these demonic space Klowns to the great circus tent in the sky – at least for a little while. Once you knock a Klown down, you can either stab ‘em in the nose with a sharp object or pop it like a balloon with a **** to knock them right out of their oversized shoes and back to the “waiting to respawn” screen. I’ve seen fights turn on a dime because someone showed up at the right moment, something broke, or someone made a good play. The Klowns, however, aren’t defenseless. They’re armed with Cotton Candy Rayguns that can turn you into the biggest cotton candy cocoon you’ve ever seen, boxing gloves, balloon dogs, a rubber mallet, and so on. The Klowns tend to dominate in up-close-and-personal combat unless the humans roll up with a shotgun or overpower them with sheer numbers, but humans are faster – though sprinting is noisy, and risks telling the Klowns where you are. It makes for some tense, exciting, and strategic combat encounters, especially when you’re playing a human, you knock a Klown down, and your ****** breaks before you can pull off the ********** and you’re running for your life. Alternatively, you can be beating down a human as a Klown and then have his buddy show up with a shotgun and punch your ticket for a one-way trip on the ***** Klown Express, population: you. It’s really good stuff, and I’ve seen fights turn on a dime because someone showed up at the right moment, something broke, or someone made a good play. Things escalate further as the match goes on and the Klowns gain the abilities like Jump, which allows them to instantaneously jump across the map, and Hypnotic Lure, which, well… lures humans to you. When you absolutely, positively need a human to eat a Mortal Kombat-style Klowntality, which can range from launching them into space with your mallet to serving up a heaping helping of pies to their face and ****** them instantly, no cotton candy cocoon required, accept no substitutes. And, in a particularly nice touch, you can change them on the fly mid-match. In general, the Klowns want to cotton candy the humans up, hang them on Klown hooks as, one presumes, a dark offering to some Particularly ****** Space Klown ****™ to speed the arrival of the Klownpcalypse. Humans want to avoid that and escape before the game clock hits zero and the Klownpocalypse, long foretold, finally happens. But escaping isn’t easy. Not only will you need to find the exits on a map, you’ll need to find the stuff you need to open them up or make them work. Remember that boat I was telling you about earlier? To use it, you’ll need to find gas and a spark plug. I also found another barricaded exit over a rickety bridge. To get out, you need a strong melee ******* to bust open the barricade and then a key to unlock a gate. What you need for an exit isn’t always immediately obvious when you’re looking at it – I was running from a Klown and only had the key, so that ended about as well as you’d expect – but it also never changes for that particular exit. If you know how to do the boat, you know how to do the boat. After a few matches, you’ll know how everything works. There are little mini-games you can play while you're down that reward other surviving players with items to help them out. But even if you’re like me and you get cotton candied, hooked, and more or less packed up, that doesn’t mean you’re out. Your teammates can always rescue you, but if you do buy it, there are little mini-games you can play that reward other players (or you, more on that in a second) with items to help them out. Whether you’re playing Klown-themed whack-a-mole, ********* baskets, popping balloons, or whatever else, there’s always something to do, and you’re always helping out your team. And then there’s the Resurrection Machine, a one-use revive that calls every ***** human back from the afterlife for a last-ditch shot at glory. And, of course, near the end of the game, new exits, like an ice cream truck that literally crashes through the level, come into play. Both of these things came into play during my sessions, so it truly isn’t over until it’s over. Last-minute comebacks are a thing for both teams. Clowns are supposed to be funny, and ******* Klowns from Outer Space nails the humor that comes with adapting such an absurd cult classic while also carving out a unique space for itself in the asymmetrical multiplayer genre. I’ve played ******* Klowns twice now – at PAX East, and for this preview event – and I have never not had a blast with it. It’s the kind of game I can see myself squadding up for, and it has real potential to stand out in a crowded market. During our multiplayer session, the fine folks at Illfonic told me they were confident they’ve made the best Klowns from space game in human history, and however ******* Klowns shakes out, it’s a hard claim to dispute. As for me, I can’t wait to get some friends together and survive the Klownpocalypse. Next time, I won’t leave them on the pier, watching me sail into the sunset. Probably. View the full article

I first started playing V Rising almost two years ago now, not long after it launched into Early Access back in May 2022, and immediately it became an obsession. My friends and I would jump online every week and stay up until the early morning to work on our cute little vampire castle together, like we were playing a macabre version of Animal Crossing... Read more.View the full article

Life by You, a new life simulation game, is finally coming out in early access later this year. It's being developed by Paradox Interactive, creator of such richly detailed and impressively customizable simulation games as Cities: Skylines 2. Paradox is one of the biggest names in simulation and strategy games today, so Life by You has both a storied legacy to live up to and a lot of new ground to break. View the full article

CD Projekt will release its official mod editor for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt this month. Titled The Witcher 3 REDkit, it’s billed as a comprehensive modding tool that lets users customise and expand the game as they see fit, “from overhauling terrain to creating new quests, animations, characters, and more”. Starting on May 21, 2024, it will be available free for everyone who owns a copy of the game on PC. Read More... View the full article

You won't be surprised to know that after two years in early access, V Rising's 1.0 launch hasn't seen Stunlock Studios drastically change the V for "Vampire" to V for "Venetian Blinds" or "Vienna Sausage". From a top-down view, you still play as a newly awakened vampire on PVE, PVP, or private servers, and you're still tasked with becoming the most powerful bloodsucker around. It has, however, streamlined some things and added in an endgame zone. All of this combines to form a survival game that was great back then and is even better now, with thrilling MOBA-esque fights and little in the way of faff. Read more View the full article

Microsoft are shutting down multiple game studios including Redfall developers Arkane Austin and the creators of Hi-Fi Rush, Tango Gameworks. The news was delivered via an email to staff from Xbox boss Matt ****** which has since been seen by IGN. ****** calls the decision a "consolidation of our Bethesda studio teams, so that we can invest more deeply in our portfolio of games and new IP." Read more View the full article

It looks like Pokémon Go’s May 2024 Community Day Pokémon is Bounsweet, following an accidental early in-app notification that spilled the beans. The early reveal means that for the first time in Pokémon Go Community Day history, Niantic has broken its habit of releasing new starter Pokémon every two months. Rowlet released in January 2024, Litten in March 2024, and Popplio should already have released in May, but it seems it won’t until at least next month—unless Niantic pushes it back further. The horror. View the full article

Hades 2 has got a little more steamy than its previous entry by introducing a whole new system of interaction with the various NPCs. When you unlock and use the Crossroads Hot Springs in Hades 2, a sprinkling of Bath Salts can go a long way to winning favour.How to unlock the Hot Springs in hades 2The Crossroads Hot Springs can be unlocked by using the Cauldron in Hades 2. You can add it to the crossroads by combining 2 Moly, 2 Nightshade, and 2 Lotus using the Rite of Vapor-Cleansing incantation. You will also be given one instance of Bath Salts.What to do with the Crossroads Hot SpringsThe Hot Springs are a way to not only pass the time but also increase your affinity with certain characters. Almost all the NPCs hanging around the Crossroads can be invited to join you in the lovely warm bath. It will increase your friendship, but you will have to charm them into it first. Once your friendship is high enough, you can invite them in. Using the Hot Springs in Hades 2...View the full article

With huge Hollywood hits such as the Sonic the Hedgehog movies and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it’s safe to ... Read more View the full article

With Hades 2 releasing in Early Access, you should expect a variety of minor and major glitches. One of the issues players have been facing is Hades 2 crashing on launch, so how can you fix this?Hades 2: How to fix crashing on launchSome players online who were excited to jump into Hades 2 have met the roadblock of seeing a strange ****** notice pop up on launch. Since Hades 2 isn’t on consoles yet, Steam and Epic Games Store players have to live with some annoying Early Access problems. While there’s no single proven answer to fixing Hades 2 crashing on launch, here are some possible solutions that could aid you.Run as administratorWhen games have trouble launching it can occasionally be fixed by running the program as administrator. Here’s how it’s done:Right-click Hades 2 in your Steam Library.Under “Manage”, select “Browse local files”.Scroll down to find the Hades 2 application.Right-click the applicat...View the full article

In Hades 2, enemies will soon begin to develop armor, and the game isn’t shy about handing it out. The armor is incredibly irritating as you delve deeper to get to Chronos.Breaking ****** armor in Hades 2You’ll know when an ****** has armor in Hades 2 as their health bar will be yellow. This doesn’t reduce the amount of damage you’re dealing, but it will act as a secondary health bar, essentially providing the enemies will double their health.Whilst an ****** is benefitting from armor, however, you’ll find that they will not get stunned upon being hit. So you can keep striking them, but they’ll keep up their attacks and keep moving forward. Enemies with armor become especially dangerous when you can hardly stop their advance.Screenshot: PC InvasionTo break ****** armor, you simply have to keep smacking them until you reduce their yellow health bar to zero. Once you’ve done it, their health bar will show their regular health, and...View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Enlarge / Nintendo will eventually gift us Switch 2 information, hopefully in time for Christmas. (credit: Aurich Lawson) [/url] While the past few months have included plenty of informed speculation about the so-called Switch 2, Nintendo hasn't given even a bare hint that the system is in the works. That changed at least somewhat last night, as Nintendo President Shinto Furukawa shared on social media that "we will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year," which ends on March 31, 2025. In his pre-announcement announcement, Furukawa warned that an upcoming Nintendo Direct presentation planned for June would include "no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor," suggesting more information may be coming closer to the end of the fiscal year than the beginning. Furukawa notes that the eventual announcement will come over nine years after Nintendo first alluded to the Switch's existence with the March 2015 announcement of a console then called "Project NX." Nintendo didn't show that hardware publicly until 19 months later, with a three-minute preview trailer that dropped in October 2016. Hands-on press previews for the Switch came three months after that, and we then had to wait almost two more months for the console to finally hit store shelves in March of 2017. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Nvidia is reportedly planning to launch its new Blackwell lineup of gaming GPUs with the GeForce RTX 5080 later this year, rather than starting with the RTX 5090, according to a prominent tech leaker. This completely contradicts earlier reports that the RTX 5090 would be the only Nvidia Blackwell gaming graphics card to launch this year, but it's not unprecedented - Nvidia did, after all, launch the RTX 3080 before the RTX 3090 as well, and the RTX 2080 came out before the 2080 Ti too. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: RTX 5090 is Nvidia's only hope for 2024, ***** suggests Nvidia RTX 4090 GPUs can ****** your password in seconds Get this Nvidia RTX 4060 gaming PC now for just $999 View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The breakthrough, demonstrated in a recent video by Displaced Gamers, takes advantage of the infamous "***** screen" and a quirk in how the ********* Famicom version of Tetris handles controller inputs to manipulate the game's memory in an unexpected way. To learn more about how this ***** screen is triggered,... Read Entire Article View the full article

Hitting Early Access today is Nerobi, a gorgeous looking platforming adventure that blends in what the developer says are "several elements typical of a graphic adventure". Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Xbox has reportedly shut down Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Studios, and Roundhouse Games, with members of the latter team being folded into ZeniMax Online Studios. Layoffs have been a harsh reality of the video game industry these past couple of years, with companies of all sizes laying off significant portions of their staff or shutting down studios entirely. Xbox itself has engaged in multiple waves of layoffs this past year. View the full article

The perfect power bank to use with your Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch is back on ***** in the *** right now. We are, of course, talking about the INIU 65W 20000mAh Fast Charging Portable Charger, available on Amazon for just £19.99 right now. Being able to take your Steam Deck or Switch anywhere with you is undoubtedly great. We all know that terrible feeling. We've left the house in a hurry, grabbed our phone or Nintendo Switch in the rush, and we when we go to boot it up...nothing. *****. Oh if only we had a power bank! This power bank is perfect for portable gaming systems like the Steam Deck or the Switch with its super-fast charging abilities, healthy battery capacity, and sleek design. If you need a cable to charge your console with, then you're in luck there as well. You can grab a 2M, 100w USB-C cable from INIU for £6.99. The cable usually goes for £9.99 so that is a nice little saving. Otherwise, if you don't need as much wattage, there's also the Anker 310 60W USB C Cable for just £3.02 at Amazon right now as well. If you are buying any power solutions for your Steam Deck though, just keep in mind that it's powered like a laptop, so don't go using anything below 40W. Don't say we didn't warn ya! If you need a smaller power bank that's just for your phone, then you have options there too. There's the INIU Power Bank, Portable Charger 10000mAh for £8.99 with listed voucher and code ZBR6EM7Z, or the 22.5W INIU 10K Power Bank with digital display battery percentage for £10.92 with listed voucher and code DBWG8FYH. And, lastly, there's the Acmaker Portable Charger 10000mAh is going for just £7.79 right now. Much like with the INUI power bank listed above, make sure to tick the box next to the listed voucher to get the 40% discount. All of these power banks will get you out of a pinch, so fill your boots, go crazy, and never get caught short with a ***** phone or gaming system again, because, one day, it'll happen at an inconvenient time. For more gaming and everyday deals, ensure you're also following @IGNUKDeals on Twitter/X. Joe O'Neill-Parker is a freelance writer and audio producer. He is the owner of O'Neill Multimedia. He writes commerce, sports, and audio-related tech articles for IGN. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

A little while back we were graced by 25-minutes of Metaphor: ReFantazio footage, from which I gleaned some chunks of info. Honestly, a new press release doesn't unveil a whole lot of hotness we didn't catch a glimpse of before, but it does give us a better idea of how the battle system works in Atlus's upcoming JRPG. Read more View the full article

Well, this sure is a terrible time for the gaming industry isn't it. Now it's Microsoft turn again to close multiple studios. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

If you've been eager to see a multiplayer game set in the Remedyverse on PS5 and Xbox, then I have bad news for you. According to a fresh announcement from the studio behind smash-hit Alan Wake 2, its upcoming game Project Kestrel has been canceled as Remedy Entertainment "refocuses on existing franchises" like Control and Max Payne. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Alan Wake 2 rewrites its price in unmissable Xbox Spring ***** deal If there's any game deserving of a roguelike mode, its Alan Wake 2 Now that Remedy owns Control, it's time to reclaim Quantum Break View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa finally admitted there is a Switch 2 in the works today, but the firm has no plans to discuss the new console anytime soon. While Furukawa only referred to the console as the “successor to Nintendo Switch”, we’ll keep calling it Switch 2, for now, until the platform’s actual title is revealed. The company president also stated that Nintendo will “make an announcement” about “the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year.” Just today, the firm released its fiscal results for the year ending March 31, 2024, so “this fiscal year” could mean an announcement anytime between now and March 31. 2025 - so don’t get too excited. Read more View the full article

Image: The Verge In an email to staff sent this morning, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt ****** announced the closure of several game studios, including Redfall developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Studios, and more. According to the email, as first reported by IGN, ****** wrote the reason for the closures was due to a “reprioritization of titles and resources.” Some staff at the affected studios will be relocated while other studios will completely shut down. Redfall developer Arkane “will close with some members of the team joining other studios to work on projects across Bethesda,” says ******. Redfall’s previous update will be its last as Microsoft is ending all development on the game. Servers “will remain online for... Continue reading… View the full article

After 20 hours with Hades 2, this isn't a sequel you should wait on the 1.0 launch to play. There are already so many new characters to meet, story beats to experience, mechanics and weapons to try, regions to explore, and bosses to ******. Supergiant's many twists on Greek mythology are back, so don't sleep on the ****-like roguelike. Supergiant even says it's already ******* than the first game, too. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Where to get Myrtle in Hades 2 Hades 2 Chronos boss ****** guide Hades 2 Hecate boss guide View the full article