Amidst mounting fears of Xbox closures, Todd Howard says Arkane is ‘doing a really, really good job’ on Blade

The ongoing regime change and reorganization at Xbox hasn’t given much cause for confidence in the state of its studios—particularly Arkane Lyon, which has stayed almost entirely out of the public eye since announcing Marvel’s Blade at the 2023 Game Awards. The studio was once again absent at this month’s Xbox Games Showcase, and the…

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After upsetting everyone by threatening to ruin Diablo 4’s most powerful loot in its next season, Blizzard has decided that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all

Diablo 4’s upcoming season was shaping up to be a big disappointment after the excitement around its latest expansion. Blizzard threatened to completely flatten the identity of the most powerful loot with a change that—while healthy in the long run—spoiled the fun of having ultra-rare items to chase in an action RPG. But after holding…

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EA exec says AI has helped drive ‘a real rise of creativity’ at its studios

Electronic Arts’ president of enterprise development Laura Miele says the rise of artificial intelligence in game development can bring about “a real rise in creativity” by removing tedious grunt work and enabling faster development processes overall. Miele expressed her thoughts on the matter earlier this month during a Game Business Live showcase at Summer Game…

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Fan revolt forces RPG studio to kill its new launcher just 19 hours after release

After an incredibly brief existence, Owlcat has completely rolled back a controversial new launcher from Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. Introduced yesterday, the Owlcat Launcher was intended to be a pre-game space for collating news and updates about Owlcat’s various games. “Instead of searching across multiple platforms for updates, news, and announcements, now you can find…

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The grim industry summer continues as EA lays off staff ahead of $55 billion sale to Saudi Arabia, likely to soothe the sting of its $20 billion debt

It’s looking like another grim summer for the videogame industry. Microsoft is eyeing up several studios to shutter, and the CEO of Epic Games says there’s a tidal wave sweeping over the AAA business, which I’m sure is fine. The next step in this macabre march comes from EA, which will reportedly be laying off…

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Final Fantasy 14 has done something I did not expect—it’s actually fixed one of the most annoying things about its newest ultimate raid

Loving someone means putting up with all their flaws. In Final Fantasy 14’s case, that’s shrugging my shoulders and going “classic server tick moment” every time something that is definitely not supposed to happen does, in fact, happen. That’s been happening an awful lot more lately as I’ve been progressing through Dancing Mad (Ultimate), the…

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