Category: Gaming

Xbox just reported its Q4 and full year earnings for the period ending June 30, 2023, which included hardware revenue declines year-over-year of 13%. And while steady declines may seem expected enough for a console almost three years into its life cycle, its competitor Sony has recently been enjoying its best PlayStation sales yet.

Microsoft’s earnings are typically light on details, and these are no exception. The company reports an overall increase in gaming revenue for the quarter of $36 million driven by 5% growth in Xbox content and services, especially third-party content and Game Pass. This was offset by the 13% year-over-year decline in hardware revenue, which Xbox points out was simply due to a lower volume of consoles being sold than this time last year.

We don’t have a clear picture on how Xbox hardware revenue over the last year compared to the year prior, nor has Microsoft released numbers on exactly how many Xbox units it’s sold so far. But after a surge in sales last year thanks to relaxed supply chains, the last few quarters have been slower. Xbox hardware sales were down 13% in Q2, and then down 30% in Q3.

None of this would be entirely shocking for a console a solid three years into its life cycle, except that its direct competitor PlayStation has recently enjoyed some of its best hardware sales quarters yet.

In Q4 (ending in March of 2023), PlayStation reported hardware sales three times stronger year over year, and announced it sold nearly as many units in the previous financial year as it had in the one prior, bringing its total sales to 38.4 million units. Granted, this one was quarter ago, so it’s possible Sony reports similarly slowed sales in its own earnings on August 9, but the tonal difference between the two companies remains stark nonetheless.

More details on the recent year for Xbox are expected once Microsoft publishes the remainder of its earnings filings, as well as during the earnings call later today.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Voting is now open for the first ever Horror Game Awards. Fans can vote now in more than a dozen categories including Best Horror Trailer, Best Indie Performance, Best Character of the Year, and Horror Game of the Year. Part of Feardemic’s Fear Fest, the show will stream exclusively on on IGN’s YouTube and Twitch channels September 7. Winners will take home a coveted Golden Bat trophy.

Nominees for the inaugural edition include Amnesia: The Bunker, Bramble: The Mountain King, Dead Space Remake, Dredge, IMMORTALITY, FAITH: The Unholy Trinity, Resident Evil 4 Remake, SIGNALIS, System Shock, The Callisto Protocol, and more. Voting runs now through August 3.

The Horror Game Awards mark the culmination of a two-day event that kicks off with Black Summer 2023, a “three-hour showcase of 2023 and 2024’s most anticipated horror games with world premiere trailers, developer interviews, special guest appearances, and content creator reactions.”

Full nominees include:

Horror Game of The Year – Amnesia: The Bunker, Bramble: The Mountain King, Dead Space Remake, Dredge, IMMORTALITY, FAITH: The Unholy Trinity, Resident Evil 4 Remake, SIGNALIS, System Shock, The Callisto Protocol

Best Character of the Year – Elster (SIGNALIS), Olle (Bramble: The Mountain King), Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil 4 Remake), Jacob Lee (The Callisto Protocol), Isaac Clarke (Dead Space Remake)

Best Narrative of the Year – Burnhouse Lane, Decarnation, IMMORTALITY, SCP: Secret Files, SIGNALIS

Best Game Design – Amnesia: The Bunker, DREDGE, FAITH:The Unholy Trinity, Resident Evil 4 Remake, SIGNALIS

Best Art Direction – Bramble: The Mountain King, DREDGE, Layers of Fear, Saturnalia, Scorn

Best Score/Soundtrack – Amnesia: The Bunker, Bramble: The Mountain King, Resident Evil 4 Remake, SIGNALIS, The Callisto Protocol

Best Audio Design – Amnesia: The Bunker, Dead Space Remake, Scorn, System Shock, The Callisto Protocol

Best Performance – Nick Apostolides (Resident Evil 4 Remake), Manon Gage (IMMORTALITY), Charlotta Mohlin (IMMORTALITY) , Nola Klop (Bramble: The Mountain King), Gunner Wright (Dead Space Remake)

Best Indie Horror – Decarnation, DREDGE, FAITH: The Unholy Trinity, SCP: Secret Files, SIGNALIS

Best VR/AR Horror – Afterlife VR, Propagation: Paradise Hotel, Resident Evil Village VR, The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners (Chapter 2)

Best Horror Multiplayer – Evil Dead: The Game, Dead Island 2, Demonologist, Sons Of The Forest, The Outlast Trials

Best Horror Content Creator of the Year – Pastra, RagnarRox, Sagan Hawkes, Gab Smolders, The Sphere Hunter

Best Horror Trailer – SCP: Secret Files, Silent Hill 2, The Callisto Protocol, Silent Hill F, Scorn

Catch Fear Fest September 6 and 7, with The Horror Game Awards streaming exclusively on IGN September 7 at 11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern / 7 pm UK time on September 7.

I’ve greatly enjoyed the fighting game renaissance over the last few years. Between the success of Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter 6, and the general improvements to netcode across the board, the genre seems to be at its strongest since the arcade days. And after my time with the first weekend of Tekken 8’s Closed Network Test, it seems primed to bring the Heat to a new generation, despite a few hiccups that can hopefully be attributed to normal pre-release obstacles.

In our earlier preview, IGN’s Mitchell Saltzman covered the new mechanics introduced with the Heat system, noting that it doubled down on the uniqueness of each character. I’m happy to report that this holds true with the characters that have been added since the build he played, although they’ve simplified the Heat system just a bit. Instead of certain moves using stocks of your Gauge, both Heat Drives and Heat Smashes now just use the rest of your bar. It’s still a lot to wrap your head around, but thankfully the closed test included a quick tutorial to run down these changes.

Given the limited time available for the Closed Network Test, I’ve tried to focus on some of the newly added characters: specifically Lili and Jun. Sorry Hwoarang. No one’s got time for your nonsense.

Lili, my main from Tekken 7 – other than Armor King – is well known to be one of the most evasive characters in the series, with a fantastic side-step, tricky launchers, and even a command hop that can be followed up with either a low or mid attack, forcing you to guess if you need to block standing or crouching. Going into Heat mode in Tekken 8 boosts her evasiveness, letting you use your command hop twice in a row by holding the button down, and using these hops actually increases your heat meter, meaning you can keep your offense going for longer. She can also use her Heat Smash (the high damage ender you can use to end Heat mode) from her back-turned stance as a low attack, giving her multiple ways to land big damage.

Another character that stood out to me was Jun Kazama, returning in her first canon appearance since Tekken 2. She can use powerful attacks and strings at the cost of her own life bar. But if you activate Heat mode, you can use those moves freely without damaging yourself, and even do extra healing, giving her an extremely powerful toolset with no drawbacks for a limited time. I felt like I was barely getting a handle on what Jun could do in this first weekend, but I’m excited to explore more of her kit during the next test period.

Both characters gave me a lot of confidence that the Heat system is ultimately going to end up being a great change for Tekken 8. Finding new ways to activate my Heat, using the buffs it provides before it runs out, and then finishing it up with a Heat Smash, all made me excited to jump back into training mode as soon as I was able.

Unfortunately, what had me less excited across the board was the online performance. While about half of my matches were great, and this is very specifically a network test, some of the connections were downright rough, especially against WiFi warriors, with rollback artifacts and hitching both present. It’s hard enough to judge spacing when someone has a handle on Tekken’s complex movement, but when they suddenly appear to teleport, it made me feel like I was taking a counter hit to the face in real life. You can change the rollback settings to Prioritize Graphics or Prioritize Response (I chose Response), but it’s really just a pick-your-poison selection as you’ll be dealing with more delay as a tradeoff for less hitching. There was also an issue with stage transitions where they would hitch almost without fail. I’m not sure if this was a network issue or a performance issue, but it was very distracting nonetheless.

Thankfully, the connection screen gives a WiFi indicator, so you can avoid those players altogether if you wish, and I would strongly recommend plugging in an ethernet cable. But that won’t stop all the online issues, as matchmaking was also a bit spotty.

Long stretches of time would go by where matches would fail to connect repeatedly, or not match me with anyone at all. Game Director Katsuhiro Harada tweeted over the weekend that this was a known bug, and again, I must stress that this is a Network Test, and is designed to work out kinks they find with online play, so hopefully this will be remedied in the final release. But I can only relay my experience, which was not always optimal.

After a few days of learning a few things, getting the ever-loving tar beat out of me, and then managing to squeak out some wins, I’m even more excited for Tekken 8’s final release. Hopefully they can iron out the network issues, and if they do, I’m confident we’ll have a great new combatant for the King of Iron Fist Tournament.

Ronny Barrier is a gameplay producer for IGN. When he’s not playing fighting games or RPGs, he’s trying to get his rescue dog to stop eating dirt in the backyard. You can follow him on Twitter @Ronny_Barrier.

Bethesda Game Studios released three new animated stories for Starfield, focusing on the three major cities in the Settled Systems.

The first short film, “Supra Er Ultra,” is set on New Atlantis, which Bethesda previously confirmed is the biggest city the studio has ever made. The video focuses on a courier pilot, Kent, who “aspires to live in the most desirable part of the settled systems”.

The second animated short, “Where Hope is Built,” is set in Akila City and tells the story of an orphan girl searching for repair parts to fix a broken ship and live out her dream of exploring the stars.

The third film, “The Hand That Feeds,” is set in Neon and focuses on two street rats who steal from wealthy tourists and catch the attention of Ryujin Industries, a major corporation headquartered in Neon and one of the main factions you can join in Starfield.

With less than two months to go, official news on Starfield from Bethesda has been seldom since the dedicated showcase held in June, when we learned players can visit over 1,000 planets and the Xbox Series X/S versions are locked at 30FPS. Following the showcase, Xbox Games Studios Head Matt Booty claimed Starfield has fewer bugs than any other game made by Bethesda Game Studios.

However, some news has also surfaced from fans eager to play Starfield, such as one individual pointing out how pickpocketing in Starfield will be more intense if you decide to strip an NPC of their belongings, and another fan who thinks they worked out the entire skill tree.

Starfield comes out on September 6 on PC and Xbox Series X/S.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

An ambitious The Simpsons: Hit and Run fan remake is now complete, but its creator says it will never be released.

Creator Reuben “Reubs” Ward remade Radical Entertainment’s much-loved 2003 action-adventure from scratch, figuring out how the original Grand Theft Auto 3-inspired game was coded and remaking every little detail and feature in Unreal Engine 5.

In a new video published to YouTube, Reubs declared the project complete. This latest version began life a year ago after Reubs pulled an earlier version offline to avoid potential legal issues with Disney. That earlier version drew praise from Hit & Run lead designer Joe McGinn, who said at the time: “Amazing what you accomplished! Really gives a taste of what a full modern remaster could be. Impressive work!”

Eye-catching changes include remaking the Simpsons’ family car to fit better with the game’s art style, an obvious graphical bump, in-game cutscenes, and an explorable open-world.

It’s a project fans would love to see released, but Reubs has said that will never happen. In a disclaimer included in a video from 2022, Reubs said: “This is a fan remake for entertainment purposes, this game will never be available to download. Please do not pester my poor Discord mods for a download link!”

Calls for an official Simpsons: Hit and Run remake have cropped up from time to time in the 20 years since the original’s release, but it seems an unlikely project. In 2021 we spoke to Simpsons writer Matt Selman who explained why we might not see a remake anytime soon. Selman said that while he “would love to see a remastered version of [Simpsons Hit & Run]“, it would be “a complicated corporate octopus to try to make that happen”.
Developer Radical Entertainment, now owned by Activision, is busy offering other Activision studios support. Perhaps if Microsoft ends up buying Activision Blizzard Xbox boss Phil Spencer will sort the no-doubt nightmarish licensing issues out to get things moving.

What’s next for Reubs? On Twitter, he teased Mindscape’s 1997 Lego-themed open world action-adventure game, Lego Island, is his next target.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Elon Musk’s affinity for the letter ‘X’ is shared by least one Kingdom Hearts character: Master Xehanort, the overarching villain of Square Enix’s popular trilogy and the leader of the Real Organization XIII.

The connection has led to Kingdom Hearts fans changing their profile pics en masse to those of the hooded Nobodies of Organization XIII. It’s just one in the massive wave of memes as fandoms across the board poke fun at Musk’s strange decision to do away with one of the world’s iconic brands.

It seemingly began with a user named Letryx who urged Kingdom Hearts fans to change their bio pic, writing, “KH fans, it’s time to rise up.”

The trend quickly caught on among Kingdom Hearts fans on the platform, many of whom posted scenes from the game as well.

Others came up with their own spin on the familiar cloaked figure.

Some fans opted to reference other games entirely.

The trend is partly born out of the fandom’s ongoing passion for the Kingdom Hearts series, which famously melds Disney iconics like Donald Duck (who is no longer the most powerful mage ever) with familiar faces from Final Fantasy and other franchises. Kingdom Hearts’ twisting lore is a bit too complicated to recap here, but suffice it to say that it has managed to capture a large and dedicated fandom.

The last major Kingdom Hearts release was 2019’s Kingdom Hearts III, which wrapped a large chunk of the main arc. Development on Kingdom Hearts IV, which starts in a city resembling Tokyo, is currently underway.

In the meantime, the chaos continues amid Musk’s sudden and shocking Twitter rebrand. No doubt we’ll be seeing plenty more fandom’s getting in on the act very soon.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Over the weekend, fans of Ubisoft games underwent a minor panic as a rumor spread that Ubisoft might be spontaneously deleting inactive Ubisoft accounts, permanently destroying digital game libraries if users aren’t logging on often enough. However, Ubisoft has now clarified that this is false, and users’ digital game libraries are safe, even if their accounts are inactive.

The rumors were kicked off when a tweet circulated showing an email entitled “Ubisoft Account Closure Due to Inactivity.” The email instructed that the recipient’s Ubisoft account had been temporarily suspended, and would be closed permanently in 30 days unless the closure was canceled by the account owner.

The email was then confirmed to be legitimate by the official Ubisoft Support Twitter account, which reiterated the given instructions for canceling the pending account closure.

While all of this is legitimate, what caused people to panic was the context offered by the original poster, who claimed that “You will lose all your games purchased forever.”

In an email to IGN, Ubisoft clarified its stance on account deletions. The publisher confirmed it has “for many years now” deleted inactive accounts in accordance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on how long companies are permitted to store individual personal information. The company claims its policies are “aligned with legal requirements and with the standards of the industry” and that they also serve as fraud prevention.

However, Ubisoft also clarified its criteria for account deletion, noting that it absolutely does not include accounts that have purchased games attached to them. The publisher it takes the following into account:

• The gaming activity of the account since its creation
• The account’s libraries: accounts that include purchased PC games are not eligible for deletion [emphasis Ubisoft’s]
• The duration of inactivity of the account, meaning the last login to our ecosystem (including from Ubisoft games on Steam and other platforms)
  • In practice, as of today, we have never deleted accounts that have been inactive for less than 4 years
• The existence of an active subscription tied to the account.

Ubisoft added that emails such as the one circulated are sent to users 30 days prior to account deletion, and if a user tries to log in during that window, they will receive a notice and a link to reactivate the account upon login. You can read more about its policy on its official website.

So no, if you haven’t logged into your Ubisoft account in years, you’re not on the verge of losing your game library. Of course, there’s still plenty more to worry about regarding digital ownership of games or other media and the risk of losing those libraries at any time, especially at a time when digital game releases seem poised to push out physical any day now, but you can rest assured that at least in this situation, Ubisoft isn’t just obliterating accounts willy-nilly.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

One dedicated Starfield fan thinks they’ve uncovered the upcoming Bethesda RPG’s entire skill tree after spending 200 hours piecing together different gameplay clips, trailers, and other game snippets.

As reported by GamesRadar, asd8dhd on Reddit has listed each individual skill that’s identifiable by different elements of gameplay or developer commentary and put them together to create what they believe is the complete skill tree.

This includes things like the Equilibrium skill, which can be upgraded twice, pulled from zero gravity gameplay and a developer talking about how firing weapons in zero gravity will have different effects. Then there’s the martial arts skill, evidenced by gameplay showing the player locked in hand-to-hand combat.

These are all backed up and cross referenced with different elements too, like skills appearing in the background of other gameplay or when Bethesda has shown some parts of the overall skill tree. There’s also some easy hits for the Starfield sleuth like when the developer has blatantly shown the skills.

Thousands of minds are better than one, of course, so after sharing their work with the internet, asd8dhd got some feedback that’s helped them amend certain skills they’d originally got a tad wrong. And while the skill tree effort will likely continue between now and Starfield’s launch, the fan has said they also have “other projects” in the works.

Time is ticking on that front though, assuming Bethesda doesn’t delay Starfield again, as the game is due to launch in less than two months on September 6.

It’s perhaps the most anticipated video game release in recent memory and has therefore captured the attention of fans in some wild and wonderful ways. Virtual sandwiches got people talking about it being locked at 30 frames per second, for example, while an ESRB rating revealed drugs, in-game purchases, and jetpack sex.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Amnesia: The Bunker developer Frictional Games is looking to cut back on horror games “to give greater focus on other emotional qualities”.

Speaking to 80.lv, Frictional creative director Thomas Grip echoed the sentiments of fellow horror studio Bloober Team, which also recently said it was stepping away from the games it was traditionally known for.

“While all of our games have been horror in some way, what we really try to do is to get a kind of playable immersion,” Grip said. “We want to give the player some sort of immersive fantasy, be that being a [World War 1] soldier trapped in a bunker or a robot stuck at the bottom of the ocean.

“Horror games naturally are where emotions are front and centre. Games really excel at this. However, we are also exploring themes outside of making things spooky.”

Grip explained that Frictional has made games about non-horror themes, like caring for an unborn child in Rebirth or ideas of consciousness in SOMA, but just packaged them in a horror setting. “It’s not about the fear, it’s about the holistic fantasy we deliver in each of our stories,” he said.

“For future projects, I think we will cut back a bit on the horror aspects in order to give greater focus on other emotional qualities. I am confident that these games will still feel like Frictional ones. The immersion, the personal journey, and a holistic vision are what I see as defining traits of a Frictional game — not just horror as such.”

Bloober Team, the developer behind the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake and other horror games like The Medium, Blair Witch, and Observer, made the similar announcement in June. Instead of stepping away from the genre altogether, however, Bloober Team said it was moving on from psychological horror to something more “mass-market”.

Frictional had found significant success with the horror genre, with its most recent release of Amnesia: The Bunker being praised by fans (holding a 92% “very positive” rating on Steam) and critics.

In our 8/10 review, IGN said: “Amnesia: The Bunker is a smaller, more self-contained episode in the groundbreaking horror franchise that shows Frictional still has some chilling new tricks up their sleeves.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Tencent announced it’s buying Polish developer Techland, the studio behind the original Dead Island and the Dying Light series.

In a blog post, Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka announced that Tencent “is currently in the process” of becoming the studio’s majority shareholder. “Teaming up with Tencent will allow us to move full speed ahead with the execution of the vision for our games,” Marchewka explained. “We have chosen an ally who has already partnered with some of the world’s finest video game companies and helped them reach new heights while respecting their ways of doing things.”

Marchewka insisted that even though Tencent will own the studio, Techland will retain full ownership of its intellectual properties, maintain creative freedom, and continue operating independently.

Marchewka founded Techland in 1991. The studio found fame for first-person shooter series Call of Juarez. In 2011, Techland hit the mainstream with open-world zombie game Dead Island and its sequel Riptide. The studio then split from publisher Deep Silver, who owns the Dead Island IP, citing creative differences, and in 2015 released Dying Light, a spiritual successor to Dead Island. Most recently, Techland released Dying Light 2: Stay Human.

Tencent is on something of a spending spree. In 2022, the Chinese mega-corp bought Sumo Group, the developer behind Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Wake Up Interactive. In December Tencent announced its intention to buy Back 4 Blood and Left 4 Dead developer Turtle Rock Studios.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.