Microsoft laid off 9,000 employees earlier this week, cancelling games Everwild, the Perfect Dark reboot, and an unannounced MMO in the works at ZeniMax Online Studios in the process. Romero Games' new shooter fell victim to the massacre too. One game that apparently didn't get cancelled, though, is OD, the new thing from Hideo Kojima, with support from Xbox Studios, that was announced in 2023.You'd be forgiven for forgetting OD....

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced around 9,000 layoffs—many of which gutted teams and canceled games all over Xbox Game Studios—and it hasn't gone over great with, well, anyone whose conscience is intact. The Communications Workers of America, a major media union with several locals within Microsoft, took the moment to address its disappointment with a formal statement.“We are deeply disappointed in Microsoft’s decision to lay off thousands more workers, including...

This week, as part of an enormous round of cuts at Microsoft, the company closed down The Initiative and cancelled the ace-looking reboot of Perfect Dark it had been working on. The game had first been announced in 2020 but a "gameplay reveal" was shown in 2024's Xbox Games Showcase: and it blew us away.The "eco sci-fi" shooter that's "not just about shooting" looked like the imsim we've all been...

I love graphics cards. They're absolutely my favourite PC component. That's not a hot take; I'm a simple man and thing-makes-pretty-pictures-flow-faster-in-front-of-eyes is an easy thing to become obsessed with. And I've had a long time to get nerdy with them, too, having built my first PC in the early '90s and been professionally testing PC gaming hardware since 2005.This generation has been a bloody nightmare.But this year... well, this year...

It's become my solemn duty to keep tabs on the whole Silksong situation. The "we announced a game several years ago and barely talk about it" situation. The "we have people coming up with conspiracy theories including Napoleon" situation. The "every time there's a showcase, we bet it all on red and lose" situation.Imagine my surprise, then, when I walked into the r/Silksong subreddit this bright, sunny day only to...

Remember last year when leaked documents from a court case between Valve and indie dev Wolfire Games revealed that—per the calculations of its own data scientist Kristian Miller—Valve makes more money per head than Facebook, Apple, Netflix, and any other tech titan you care to name?That was remarkable, as news days go, but there was some info missing: Miller's calculations for Valve's net income per employee was redacted, meaning we...

During the pandemic, while most of us were stuck inside, the RocketWerkz dev team, including former DayZ creative director Brian Hicks and head honcho Dean Hall, were roaming around in Eco—an early access sandbox that Hicks describes as a "little educational game for middle-schoolers".Hicks was there at the birth of the modern survival genre, becoming smitten with DayZ when it was still an Arma 2 mod, before eventually leaving his...

I've played Marvel Rivals almost every day since launch, and while I'm far from the best, most consistent player, I've hovered around the Grandmaster regions in competitive, peaking at Celestial 2. At times, trying to take Rivals seriously and play competitively has been an act of self-targeted psychic damage, largely because the hero balance has historically been absolutely terrible.With Season 3 almost here, finally seeing Phoenix and the vampiric vampire...

Whatever Wordle help you need today, you'll find it here. If you're having fun and doing fine, our tips can still help polish up your word finding to a bright shine. If you've got some ideas but aren't sure where to go next, today's clue is bound to help you out. And if all else fails, the July 4 (1476) answer can save your game whenever you want it to.That...

The days are getting longer and temperatures are rising, which means it must be time to talk about the next Call of Duty. Activision is going back to the well with Black Ops 7 this year—a deviation from the CoD release pattern that hasn't gone unnoticed or without concern—but Treyarch and Raven are zagging away from the Gulf War antics of last year's Blops 6. Instead, we're going back to...