Xbox boss Phil Spencer has addressed lingering questions around the company stance on physical media following last year's leaks of an "adorably all-digital" Xbox Series X refresh, saying Microsoft continues to be "supportive" of the medium, and insisting "getting rid of physical, that's not a strategic thing for us."

An all-digital (and distinctly cylindrical) new Xbox Series X design first surfaced as part of a mammoth leak of official Microsoft documentation during last year's court battle with the FTC over its Activision Blizzard acquisition plans. However, when Spencer later acknowledged the leak, he called its contents "old emails and documents", insisting that "so much has changed".

But still, the possibility of an all-digital new Xbox has continued to loom, whether that be a mid-cycle refresh or a future console, particularly following news of major layoffs acoss Microsoft's games retail teams. And Spencer has now shed a little more light on Microsoft's perspective on physical media as part of an interview for journalist Stephen Totilo's Game File.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Games have always struggled a bit with the fundamental truth that we, as humans, need to eat in order to survive. The problem is that cooking and eating slow us down and take us out of the action, because theytake time. It wouldn't do for Nathan Drake to hang about making a sandwich before exploring a Nepalese temple, now, would it?

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I'm never quite sure whether I'm doing the right thing in Last Epoch, yet as I float around as an undead vacuum cleaner - hoovering up my enemies' health bars while my minions keep them distracted - I know that I'm at least having a good time.

I've opted for a lich build, and thanks to the flexibility of Last Epoch's skill trees, I've been able to dip into other subclasses to create my own personal playstyle. Is it a viable build for the hardest endgame battles? Almost certainly not, but I'm glad I haven't succumbed to the urge to Google the current meta.

That's because tinkering and experimenting with different builds is the point of Last Epoch, and trying to find short-cuts to this would mean skipping the very best part of the game. Which, for me, is the experimentation found in the levelling and build-creation process. As I discovered towards the later stages of the campaign and the start of the endgame, however, this is a strength that gradually loses its potency. When the rate of progression slows down and there is no longer an obvious supply of new abilities or rewards to keep you entertained, Last Epoch starts to feel like it's running out of fresh ideas.

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Elden Ring aficionados, it's finally almost time to unclench! Just shy of two years since the launch of FromSoftware's magisterial open-world action-adventure, publisher Bandai Namco has confirmed it'll be sharing more on the game's eagerly awaited DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, later today, with early rumours pointing to a June launch.

But first the confirmed stuff; over on its social media channels, Bandai Namco has formally announced Shadow of the Erdtree will be getting a first gameplay reveal as part of a three-minute long YouTube "presentation" today, 21st February, at 3pm UK time/4pm CET/7am PST.

And here we enter into less substantiated territory, with reliable Deallabs leaker billbil-kun (who has an impressive track record when it comes to accurately reporting unannounced PlayStation news) claiming Shadow of the Erdtree will launch on 21st June.

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Lady Gaga is coming to Fortnite, having famously once asked what "Fortnight" was all about.

Her arrival in the game marks something of a full-circle moment for the global music megastar, after her social media post in October 2019 simply asking "What's Fortnite" went viral. Five years on, Lady Gaga's account reposted her original message today with an image of her upcoming in-game character model, and the correction: "*fortnite".

The image is labelled with Fortnite Festival, which is the game's Rock Band/Guitar Hero-style rhythm game mode that launched late last year. Festival's second season kicks off this Thursday, 22nd February, following its first season that spotlighted The Weeknd.

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Two new photos from the upcoming Borderlands film have been released.

The photos, shared by People, both feature the Academy Award-winning Cate Blanchett - with some very enviable red hair - as infamous outlaw Lilith.

The first photo shows Lilith on her own, looking pretty close to her in-game character.

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Everywhere developer Build A Rocket Boy has confirmed a round of layoffs at the company, which was founded by ex-Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies in 2016.

An unconfirmed number of job losses were first reported yesterday by PCGamesN. Now, the studio has confirmed "the removal of a number of roles globally" in a statement to Eurogamer.

Build A Rocket Boy is headquartered in Edinburgh, though also operates offices in Budapest, Montpellier and in China. The company is backed by investment from NetEase, and last month completed a further $110m funding round.

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Microsoft has announced the next wave of titles headed to Xbox Game Pass, which are set to be added to the subscription service over the tail end of February.

This includes the excellent Tales of Arise, the epic role-playing game from Bandai Namco's Tales studio that originally launched to a warm reception back in 2021. "There are missteps and a few bumps along the way, but this soft reboot of a long-running series emerges a triumph," we wrote in Eurogamer's Tales of Arise review.

Younger subscribers (or Xbox Game Pass owners with kids) will likely be keen to know that Bluey: The Video Game comes to the subscription this Thursday, 22nd February. You can explore the Heeler House and playground, plus play keepy uppy and Chattermax Chase.

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The other day I read an old interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki, the FromSoftware director behind Dark Souls and Elden Ring, and it seems particularly relevant here. "I'm a huge masochist, so when I make games like these… this is how I want to be treated," he said. "'I want to be killed this way!' That's how I make it! It's just that sometimes other people don't understand it; it's for my pleasure." His interviewer interjects: "Really? You want to be killed deep in the forest, getting punched by a huge mushroom?"

"Yes, yes. And the curse area… When I get cursed–"

Interviewer: "You want to die from a barrage of arrows?!"

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Few outside of Nintendo foresaw how huge last year's Super Mario Movie would turn out to be. It was a proper blockbuster phenomenon, and a reminder that when it comes to video game characters, the Mushroom Kingdom remains home to the most universally recognisable cast around. Still, it doesn't feel like chance that Nintendo seems to have smartly scheduled its subsequent year of Switch game launches with follow-up adventures for all of that film's supporting cast: a Luigi's Mansion 2 remake, a new Mario vs. Donkey Kong, and - no less than 18 years after her last solo outing - a fresh vehicle for Peach.

If you played the slightly odd Super Princess Peach on Nintendo DS, there are happily few hangovers here. Gone, thankfully, is the need for Peach to power-up by picking one of four emotional states for her to display (joy! gloom! rage! calm!), replaced here instead by 10 costumes which, in a sort of Mario-like manner, bestow a limited range of extra abilities. Princess Peach: Showtime is set within a theatre, and the conceit of being able to star in 10 multi-act plays based around each of these costumes is a smart one. At its best, there are shades of Luigi's Mansion 3 here - in the themed stages lying behind different doors, accessible from the theatre's multi-level lobby hub - and even Paper Mario, as elements of each stage are constructed with charm from tactile scenery, such as wooden prop grass and trees.

But while the set dressing may seem somewhat familiar, the game's opening suite of levels feel something of a more amateur production aimed at a younger audience, especially considering how low the difficulty of said levels are pitched. Arriving at the Sparkle Theatre for a night out with her Toad footmen, Peach's evening is interrupted by the arrival of the game's villain, a sorceress named Grape, and her minions, the Sour Bunch. With most of the theatre locked down, Peach must clear each of its many stages and spread cheer to the Theets - the theatre's disheartened acting troupe - mostly with a simple button press. When powered up, Peach can also perform the appropriate themed action befitting her current costume with the same button press.

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Sony is expected to launch a souped up version of the PlayStation 5 later this year, analysts have suggested.

A new CNBC report notes that there was now "broad concensus in the game industry that Sony is indeed preparing a launch of a PS5 Pro in the second half of 2024," quoting Tokyo-based games analyst Serkan Toto.

However, the report cautions that Sony is unlikely to see a large uptick in PS5 sales year-on-year as a result of the Pro's launch, and is also unlikely to cut the cost of the base PS5 model as a result. (Sony, unsurprsingly, has not commented on CNBC's report.)

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The Need for Speed team is celebrating the franchise's 30th anniversary with another year of live service content for its most recent release, Unbound.

"Surprise! We're still here," developer Criterion Games shared in a new blog post, where it detailed Need for Speed: Unbound's year two roadmap. "NFS turns 30 this year, and with that huge legacy, we couldn't stand idle. However, this year will be a bit different from the previous one."

The studio said it hopes players will make "new memories" with the Need for Speed series this year, but admitted it "can't build everything everyone wants right now". What it can do, however, is work with its community to decide what the series should look like in the future.

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The clever beings at PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab know just how to keep us coming back for more. Not content with tasking us all with scrubbing Tomb Raider's Croft Manor or the Seventh Heaven bar from Final Fantasy 7, it is now setting us the challenge of cleaning up the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40K.

The PowerWash Simulator Warhammer 40K Special Pack will launch later this month, on 27th February across PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch. You can see a little teaser for it in the video below.

We first heard about this Warhammer 40K DLC last year, with the studio subsequently stating we could expect it to release sometime during Q4. This evidently did not happen, but the good news is that there isn't much longer to wait now.

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Cult 90s sci-fi film Starship Troopers has had a bit of a renaissance of late, which has been attributed to the releases of Helldivers 2 on PlayStation and PC.

According to online TV ratings tracker Television Stats, the 1997 release has seen its viewership stats, Wikipedia rank, and IMDB rank all see a significant rise over recent days.

A quick browse through social media will see several posts linking this renewed interest in Starship Troopers with the release of Helldivers 2 earlier this month, and this hasn't passed the game director by. Sharing some stats on X showing an increase in Starship Troopers' popularity, Johan Pilestedt said: "This is incredible!"

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There's no room for mistakes in Assassin's Creed Mirage's new Full Synchronisation Challenge mode, which arrives in the game via a fresh update due today.

The option essentially lets you try a permadeath run of the full game, which will end if main character Basim dies or commits any illegal actions (ie. killing civilians) that would normally see you kicked out of the Animus.

Full Synchronisation Mode will become available when you install today's patch 1.0.7 for Mirage, which launches at around 1pm UK time.

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A new Pokémon Presents digital event will broadcast next week, on Tuesday 27th January at 2pm UK time. That's 9am Eastern or 6am Pacific.

The showcase will contain "exciting news", a post on social media today teased, without going into further detail.

We're expecting to hear from The Pokémon Company on what the next Pokémon project to launch will likely be - and while it feels too early for a new generation of Pokémon, following 2022's Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, it seems likely that some sort of game will arrive in the next 12 months.

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Nintendo has announced a Direct Partner Showcase, which will focus on third-party games.

This showcase will go live tomorrow - 21st February - at 2pm UK time. It will be available to watch on demand via YouTube.

The showcase will last for "around 25 minutes", Nintendo said, and spotlight games coming in the first half of this year from the company's publishing and development partners.

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In this week's DF Direct Weekly, the Digital Foundry Team shares their thoughts on the Xbox business update podcast and attempts to fathom strategy from the PlayStation team in the wake of some ominous announcements that resulted in a 10 percentage point dip in Sony's share price. The bottom line looks stark and very straightforward: the audience for PlayStation and Xbox consoles is not increasing gen-on-gen, while the costs of making games to service that audience is increasing dramatically. Something has to change.

Let's deal with the Xbox business update first. My take on this is that Phil Spencer and his team really want to take a multi-platform strategy forward, and it's the obvious, logical solution to addressing the problem of the limit in total addressable audience. Not only that, with its ownership of Minecraft and now Activision-Blizzard-King, it's already one of the largest multi-platform publishers in the market. I can well imagine that the likes of Satya Nadella can't quite fathom why Microsoft is limiting its audience in the name of a legacy console model that seemingly isn't working for Xbox any more.

However, the pitfalls are obvious. Why buy an Xbox console if you can buy a PlayStation and get access to the next games from both platform holders? This concept of exclusivity as 'specialness' clearly resounds with the console audience, and I would imagine that the Xbox team spent a great deal of time honing its message for the business update because if the rumours were left unchecked, we could have been looking at another PR disaster on the level of the Xbox One debacle from 2013. On a more practical level, Microsoft does need to continue to make its consoles attractive, even in the wake of its 'every screen is an Xbox' messaging. A mechanism to make console sales attractive is required because - in the face of a less than stellar response from Game Pass PC - a home platform is required on which to focus its drive for subscriptions.

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Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year at the DICE Awards last week, and unlike at The Game Awards, the developers were actually allowed to take some time with their acceptance speech. And let it be known, Larian used that time wisely, addressing both the current state of the industry and the importance of player experience.

When Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse took to the stage, he acknowledged that while this is a "really human industry" it can also be very "bad sometimes at showing developers what they're worth". He then discussed the wave of layoffs that have affected so many people and game development studios over the past year.

"I want you all to know that you are talented and that you matter, and that you are the future of this industry. Don't let that flame be extinguished by our collective mistakes," Douse said. "I know everyone here is scared because shit's really fucked up."

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UPDATE 4.45pm UK: Consider me educated. I have looked into this further, and it turns out not only is Trinity the name of the military order in the rebooted Tomb Raider games, but it is also the code name for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, which was conducted by the United States Army back in 1945. And that could be what the Tomb Raider website is referring to. Whoops!

So, yes, the mention of Trinity on the Tomb Raider site may well be a coincidence that left the super fan in me a little too enthusiastic. Reader, I confess, I may have jumped the gun a bit here. I am going to send a message to the Tomb Raider team though and ask if they have any comment on the wording in the blog post, because my curiosity has now been piqued even more.

The original story continues below.

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Capcom has shared a post to celebrate the eighth anniversary of Street Fighter 5, where it apologised for the game's original state at launch.

"From the beginning to the middle of the release, there were network issues, lack of content, etc... We are truly sorry for the content that did not meet the expectations of many of you," Capcom's Japanese Street Fighter social media account shared over the weekend.

This is something we touched on in our own Street Fighter 5 review from 2016. As we said at the time: "Street Fighter 5's brilliant combat is let down by a barebones launch and server troubles."

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Nintendo shares have dropped slightly from a record high last week, following reports the company has internally delayed its expected Switch 2 release window into 2025.

Eurogamer reported last Friday that Nintendo was now looking to launch Switch 2 in early 2025, a change from previous, unannounced plans that had the new console pegged for later this year. Sources with knowledge of the delay told us it was designed to ensure the strongest possible line-up of launch games.

Bloomberg later corroborated the news via its own sources, and today noted Nintendo shares had now fallen 5.8 percent on the back of Switch 2's delay being made public. Nintendo is yet to comment on the reports.

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A Limp Bizkit mod for Fallout: New Vegas once thought lost has now been rediscovered.

The mod in question added Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst as an in-game companion. And, of course, he brought some nu metal energy with him, as he only spoke in lyrics from the band's discography. All very standard modding community stuff.

However, the mod had a very short shelf-life on Nexus Mods when it was first released around seven years ago, and there was very little evidence of it left online - an old Reddit post and YouTube video (which you can see below), were about all that remained.

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PlayStation-published Helldivers 2 had a hugely successful weekend on Steam, despite some continuing server issues, with a fresh player peak of 409,367 users yesterday.

That's a new record for Helldivers 2, according to official Steam figures, and puts the game's all-time player peak higher than Steam stalwarts such as GTA5, Rust and Destiny 2.

To say that Helldivers has been a hit on PC would be something of an understatement, especially in comparison to the middling popularity of some other PlayStation PC launches.

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The Convergence mod for Elden Ring is out now, offering an "exhaustive overhaul" of the game.

Available on NexusMods, The Convergence makes major changes from the very beginning of the game. Now players will need to choose from one of 27 new classes - each with its own unique progression path - that will determine the player's starting location in the world.

The original game features 10 classes, but these are starting points from which the player has freedom to develop in any direction. The Convergence, then, has a more formal structure for players to follow that cements typical builds.

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The upcoming return of Crazy Taxi will be a "AAA" game, Sega has said.

Sega first announced it was making a long-awaited new Crazy Taxi title in December last year, as part of a new wave of entries in many of its classic series.

Now, a Japan Times interview has shed more light on its scope, and revealed it is being worked on in part by Sega's relatively new Sapporo Studio, which was founded in the capital of Japan's Hokkaido prefecture in December 2021.

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Counter-Strike 2 is Counter-Strike. The formula hasn't really changed since the 1999 original - terrorists and counter-terrorists sparring to eliminate the other side or plant/defuse a bomb at one of two designated locations - but Valve's 2023 release runs better on modern hardware than 2012's Global Offensive and offers sparingly more gameplay possibilities too. Fundamentally though, the core combination of tactical, round-based 5v5 competition and satisfyingly difficult shooting mechanics remain as enrapturing and enraging as ever.

Competitive play is at the heart of the game, even more so than in CS:GO, with the Premier ranked mode taking centre stage. Here, solo and grouped players are placed into teams of five, go through a map veto process to select the stage and starting sides, then compete in a best-of-24-rounds match with their individual ELO rating on the line. These matches are a good deal shorter than CS:GO's best-of-30 contests, increasing the importance of the first rounds on each side and making it a little harder to stage a late comeback.

On the plus side, one-sided stomps are mercifully shortened, while still allowing for overtime in close matches and the exquisite economic interplay that differentiates the game from other shooters. Do you spend all of your hard-earned cash to try and steal a round against better-equipped opponents now, or save your money and accept you'll lose the next round in order to be on even footing in the round after that?

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Despite claims it is a "quadruple-A" live-service experience, Skull and Bones's user Metacritic score has taken a pummelling since the pirate ship game was released on Friday, 16th February.

Based on the 222 user scores recorded to date, Skull and Bones' user score is sitting at just 2.8 out of 10, making it the lowest-rated game of 2024 released thus far when ranked by user score alone.

Complaints are centred chiefly around its "underwhelming and lacklustre" gameplay, a "poorly designed" end game, and claims that it is "boring", with many players comparing it unfavourably to Sea of Thieves and even Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, the latter of which is now 11 years old.

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Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead says it has had to "cap" concurrent players to around 450,000 to "further improve server stability".

In a message posted to the game's Discord community, the team said it was "working around the clock to solve" the issue, and whilst it's been able to "mitigate" some of the causes, it was "still struggling to keep up with the scaling that is needed".

"Earlier tonight we had server-related issues with a concurrent player spike," the team said. "This lead [sic] to some mission payouts failing, some players being kicked to their ships, or being logged out.

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It looks like a demo for Dragon's Dogma 2 could be on the way.

According to a recent Steam update – and spotted by the eagle-eyed community on the Dragon's Dogma subreddit – an update to Steam's backend hints that a mysterious "unknown app" was added to Dragon's Dogma 2's Steam listing.

Furthermore, the app has been listed as "free on demand", which is often the text appended to Steam demos.

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DreadXP has confirmed its upcoming retro psychological survival horror game, Heartworm, will be released in 2025.

Designed for people who "love early console-era survival horror games with cinematic fixed camera angles and low-fidelity visuals", Heartworm is described as "a nostalgia-wrapped nightmare with a compelling narrative that tackles themes of grief and obsession, supported by a haunting soundtrack, surreal visuals, and pre-rendered cutscenes".

Heartworm developer Vincent Adinolfi had originally hoped to release Heartworm this year, but after losing its publisher, launching a Kickstarter, cancelling a Kickstarter, and then finding a new publisher in DreadXP, Adinolfi says "with the delays we have had there's no choice but to push things back - I hope you can understand".

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Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has apologised for ongoing server "capacity issues" and says it is working to "increase server capacity to accommodate all".

Following a pledge to give all players a 50 per cent XP and requisition bonus to compensate for "a problem" that's giving out incorrect rewards at the end of missions, Helldivers 2's concurrent Steam count continues to tick up, which has, in turn, seemingly had a significant impact on server stability.

"Despite our best efforts to increase server capacity to accommodate all of you who want to dive for Freedom, we are experiencing capacity issues," the team said in a statement posted to X/Twitter over the weekend.

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I never love defining one game with another, and not least a game like Harold Halibut, which wears its influences openly - stop-motion, Wallace and Gromit-style Aardman animations, mixed with maybe a bit of Wes Anderson and in all seriousness, Postman Pat - but which also so clearly deserves to be seen as its own thing.

In this case though it's hard to ignore: the setup for Harold Halibut is very similar to First Contact, arguably the most interesting mission in Starfield (and one itself heavily influenced by a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called The Neutral Zone), where - spoilers! - you discover a seemingly alien ship lurking in a planet's orbit, emitting weird garbled noises over the radio. You soon discover this is actually a ship from Earth - only one that's taken several hundred years to actually get here, leaving it populated by a load of slightly entitled generational descendents of the original explorers, who's only world is the ship's interior, and only understanding of humanity that which they can read about in the selected history books and classes they have on board.

As for Harold Halibut, Harold is a lab assistant-cum-janitor on a similarly stranded spaceship that has instead become an underwater enclave, after arriving at a presumed Goldilocks planet that actually turned out to have no inhabitable land. Having set off in the late '70s and since been totally submerged beneath this new planet's oceans, though, the ship has become a kind of strange, alternate-universe time capsule, filled with fuzzy CRT monitors, intercoms with wobbly sound, and very specific kinds of little England jobsworths. (Much of Harold Halibut, a narrative adventure game about completing largely mundane tasks as a wider, more existential mystery unfolds, feels like a trip to the local Post Office, where you're informed you can't send that letter because you've placed your stamp slightly too close to the label. And that's the wrong kind of envelope.)

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I will always have a soft spot for simultaneous turn-based games. These are the games, taking a cue from the likes of Frozen Synapse, in which I make my move in secret, my enemy makes their move in secret, and then both moves play out at once and there's nothing we can do about it. The pleasure of these games comes from intuiting your enemy's move and foiling it. The humour comes from failing to do that utterly.

Arco takes this idea and makes it sing. It feels a lot more real-time than these games often do. During a battle, I move a cursor around that highlights how far I can move, and I shift through options covering things like heal, shield, and various kinds of attacks. In the Steam Next Fest demo I've been playing, I'm often fighting frogs and bugs, and learning to anticipate when a frog is going to jump and try to squash me and when it's going to explode and do me massive damage.

I am as poor at these games as you might imagine, even though I completely love them. But what gives me an almost-edge in Arco is that running away and getting a bit of distance is a legit useful tactic, because it allows mana to recharge while putting you outside of the radius of enemy attacks. Running away is something I have a natural talent for, and so the first few levels of the game passed in a kind of familiar bliss: I would rush in, try to attack, fumble it, and then leg it again.

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Digital Extremes' fan-favourite sci-fi RPG, Warframe, is coming to iOS later this month.

Courtesy of the game's recently-launched cross-play and cross-save systems, players will be able to use – and switch between – platforms, which DE says offers the "same expansive, high-quality" experience on Apple devices as it does on PC and consoles.

Players can access their Tenno collection across the platforms, whilst new arrivals will be able to claim "Day 1" login rewards.

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Helldivers 2 is awarding all players a 50 per cent XP and requisition bonus to compensate players for "a problem" that's preventing players from receiving the correct rewards at the end of missions.

In a statement posted to X/Twitter, deputy game director Sagar explained that whilst the team was still "working on a fix for this", it wanted to "alleviate the impact" for players jumping into the action over the weekend.

That means that between now and the end of Sunday central European time (11pm UK time / 6pm EST / 3pm PST), players can expect an additional XP bonus on top of the base mission score.

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Journey developer ThatGameCompany has announced a "beautifully curated" book to celebrate the art of its 2019 "social adventure game", Sky: Children of the Light.

Set to launch on 22nd April, The Art of Sky will be an "extraordinary visual odyssey" and feature over 250 pages of ThatGameCompany's "trademark artistic excellence".

"The bewitching art book, now available for pre-order, compiles concept art illustrations spanning the game’s earliest days, heartfelt behind-the-scenes commentary, and never-before-seen imagery in a beautifully crafted, timeless first-edition hardcover volume perfect for devoted players and collectors alike," the description teases.

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Palworld developer Pocketpair insists it has no reason to be alarmed about the hit game's dwindling player count.

As Palworld's 24-hour concurrent Steam count peaks at around 535,000 players – a fair fall from the 2.1 million simultaneous players Pocketpair secured the weekend Palworld launched – community manager "Bucky" stated in a statement on Twitter that the "Palworld has lost X per cent of its player base discourse is lazy", insisting that it was "fine" for players to take a break and play other games in between content updates.

"This emerging 'Palworld has lost X per cent of its player base' discourse is lazy, but it's probably also a good time to step in and reassure those of you capable of reading past a headline that it is fine to take breaks from games," Bucky said.

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Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League developer Rocksteady has confirmed that addressing its login and server issues remain the team's "top priority", but warned that it may "not be able to fix all those issues right away".

In a statement posted to the official website, Rocksteady said it could "hear and feel your frustration" about the ongoing issues, and agreed it was "unacceptable for the players" affected by the persistent problems, but said that because the issues didn't stem from one particular issue, it was "several smaller issues affecting players in different ways".

"For our upcoming patches we are looking to address login issues and server issues," the statement, signed "Axel and the Rocksteady Team" said. "And while we might not be able to fix all of those issues right away, I want to assure everyone: This is the top priority for us. We hear and feel your frustration and we can only agree, it’s unacceptable for the players who are affected by this.

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Nvidia recently released a driver enabling RTX Video HDR - a driver side tool that automatically converts SDR video into HDR, with the help of real-time machine learning on an RTX GPU. Enable it and YouTube videos in SDR present convincingly as HDR, breathing new life into them. However, modder 'emoose' discovered something more within the driver - the ability to apply this to virtually any game. In effect, Nvidia has been working on its own, ML-based version of Microsoft's AutoHDR. We've tried it and it's simply stupendous.

To get it working, you need to download the NV TrueHDR mod from Nexusmods. Then, open up the provided .exe file. This brings up a command prompt. From here, you either type in the filename of the game executable you want to target, or better yet, simply drag and drop that .exe into the command prompt window and hit ENTER. From there, you choose your quality level and you're good to go. Your chosen game now presents in HDR.

So, why even use this in the first place when Windows 11 ships with AutoHDR, which basically does the same job? Put simply, RTX HDR is the superior option in virtually every way. AutoHDR only works on selected, whitelisted DX11 and DX12 games, while RTX HDR supports everything natively from DX9 onwards - and there are a lot of fantastic DX9 games that can benefit. But with control panel tweaks and help from other compatibility tools, you can go further - right back to adding HDR support of sorts to 3DFX Glide titles. I even get HDR working in the PS3 emulator RPCS3, allowing me to play an emulated version of Killzone 2 in HDR to convincing effect.

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Microsoft is reportedly set to slash more than a hundred jobs at Activision Blizzard's Cork office.

As first reported in the Irish Examiner, minister for foreign affairs, or Tánaiste, Michéal Martin – who raised the issue in the Dáil, the Irish government – revealed that 136 of the approximately 200 jobs in Blackpool, Cork, were expected to be cut, calling the redundancies "very serious".

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Look, I certainly wouldn't call myself a trucking nerd - I'm not even sure I could tell the difference between a carburettor and a carbonara - but I do like to truck. American Truck Simulator has long been my equivalent of one of those mindfulness apps that whisper gently evocative nonsense at you in the dead of night; a world of seductively monotonous rhythms and repetitions set against a soothing soundtrack of engine drones and indicator clicks. And for the eyes, the majesty of nature: lakes, mountains, forests (or at least a decent enough facsimile thereof), sprawling from hard shoulder to sky. So imagine my delight when I stumbled across Star Trucker – all that calm and the most expansive natural vista of all: space!

Ordinarily, these X meets Y comparisons feel a little trite, but in Star Trucker's case – going on the evidence of its Steam Next Fest demo, at least - you're going to struggle to find a more apt description than 'American Truck Simulator in space'. This is big rig cargo hauling on an interstellar scale, a stately back-and-forth between pick-up and drop-off set against an ever-shifting canvas of shimmering nebulae and screen-filling worlds.

For all its fanciful sci-fi flavour, though, Star Trucker plays the whole thing surprisingly straight, grounding its slightly ridiculous high-concept premise in the minutia of the mundane. Which isn't to say it doesn't have bags of personality – this is the far-flung future by way of Route 66, with an ever-present country and western twang on your radio, an incessant southern drawl on your CB, and just enough quaint Americana to give the endless void a distantly familiar sense of place - but its eye is firmly on the road, not on the stars.

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Over 700 unionised Ubisoft employees working across the company's French studios have taken part in an organised day of strike action after annual salary negotiations collapsed.

The strike, organised by French game workers union STJV (Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo), took place on 14th February across Ubisoft's Paris, Montpellier, Annecy, Lyon, and Bordeaux studios. The STJV had called for action at the start of this month, saying annual salary negotiations had reached an unsatisfactory conclusion.

"In recent weeks," the STJV wrote in a statement shared at the time, "Mandatory Annual Negotiations on salaries have taken place in several Ubisoft entities in France, and the STJV was obviously present. Despite concerted efforts by union organisations to find an acceptable compromise, negotiations hit a wall."

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UPDATE 8.45pm UK: Eurogamer sources can now corroboate the earlier reports that the Switch 2, once destined for release later in 2024, is now set for Q1 2025.

The console's launch moving into early next year - but still within the coming financial year - is designed to ensure Switch 2's launch line-up features as many titles as possible, Eurogamer understands.

Separately, VGC has also now reported on the move to Q1 2025, with publishing sources saying Nintendo recently briefed third-party game companies on the move from late 2024 to early 2025.

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Palworld developer Pocketpair has acknowledged the significant impact "cheating and the influence of fraudulent activities" is having on rule-abiding players of its hugely popular survival game, and has outlined some of the steps it'll be taking - including the introduction of an "external anti-cheat solution" - to tackle the problem.

Writing in a post shared on Steam, Pocketpair admitted that, while the studio has been "dealing with each issue on a daily basis and taking measures", there are "many cases where we are not able to keep up" with cheating and fraudulent activities - leading, it acknowledged, to "some players [being] unable to play the game properly."

Pocketpair apologised for "any inconvenience this may cause" and - expanding on a recent tweet promising a cheating-related patch "soon" - revealed it's currently working on a number of specific measures to deal with cheating and fraudulent activity "strictly and as a priority".

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we discuss Microsoft's business update that brought us confirmation Xbox will launch four console exclusives - for now - on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.

But why did Microsoft choose not to name those four games (even though Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded and Sea of Thieves were immediately reported to be the titles in question)? What happened to the previously-reported plans to include larger games such as Starfield? And where will Microsoft draw the line for what to launch elsewhere? Right now, these four feel like something of a soft launch for Microsoft's multiplatform strategy,

As well as all that, we also discuss the news nuggets Microsoft dropped for the Xbox faithful - including mention of new Xbox console hardware this year and the proper next-gen Xbox that's still years away. With me this week are Eurogamer's Ed Nightingale, Victoria Kennedy and Liv Ngan.

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One of the three upcoming Star Wars games in development at Apex Legends and Titanfall studio Respawn is reportedly a bounty hunter game where you play as a Mandalorian.

That's according to Insider Gaming, which said the project was still in the early stages of development, but was a first-person shooter starring a Mandalorian bounty hunter during the time of the Galactic Empire.

The report stops short of confirming the Mandalorian bounty hunter as Din Djarin, star of Disney+ hit TV series and upcoming Mandalorian movie. A time period set during the height of the Galactic Empire would also place the game prior to the TV series - making a Baby Yoda appearance unlikely.

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Helldivers 2 is one of the most refreshing - and straightforward - multiplayer games I've played in a while. It's a third-person bug-shooting blitzkrieg, offering simple sets of objectives and a broad armament to help satisfy them. The actual action of defeating the game's foes is a lot of fun, with hordes of enemies to shoot into gibs with a four-person player squad. But does all that multiplayer chaos come with strings attached? Few games try to achieve destruction at this scale, especially factoring in the unpredictability of multiplayer gameplay, so what kind of visuals and performance should we expect in the game's console outing on PS5 and how does the quality of the PC port fare?

Visually, Helldivers 2 hardly advances the state of the art, but that's not to say that its visual make-up - and its environments - aren't compelling. There's a typical mix of modern graphical staples, but they are deployed effectively. Volumetric lighting is heavily used, for instance, with shafts of light shooting through rocks and trees. The quality level is high, presenting without obvious aliasing, even on the PS5 in its performance mode. The clouds are also volumetric in nature, at least at lower levels of the atmosphere, and resolve without distracting artifacting. Low-lying fog also appears to be part of the equation, with ground-level fog often giving planets a certain ethereal quality.

Environmental density is impressive. There's a lot of scattered rocks, shrubs, and tufts of grass throughout the various planets. Given the size and scope of the game I have to imagine that procedural systems have been used extensively here, but the final results look quite natural. Foliage in particular can be generously placed, with some especially verdant garden worlds. I did note animation issues with the foliage on at least one planet but on a more macro level, lighting and assets come together to make each world feel distinct, giving each environment some nice vistas.

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Bandai Namco has revealed it cancelled development of "at least" five projects following a review to implement "stricter standards" and an "emphasis on quality" in its upcoming games.

The information comes from the company's latest financial report for Q3 of FY2024, which contained changes to its projections of profits and sales for the full fiscal year.

The Tekken 8 and Elden Ring publisher lowered its projections for profits due to "valuation losses". These losses include "loss on disposal of titles following a review of the composition of the titles within the next mid-term plan in mind", the company stated in its report.

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Epic Games will begin developing a mobile version of the Epic Games Store for launch on iOS in Europe, the company has said, now it has officially received an Apple Developer Account.

The store's launch will also herald the return of Fortnite to iPhones, years after its previous version was locked down after Epic Games added the abililty to make direct in-game payments, circumventing Apple's standard 33 percent cut.

Epic said today it planned to launch the Epic Games Store on iOS in 2024, operated by Epic Games Sweden.

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