Vince Zampella, known for co-creating the Call of Duty series, among many other roles, has died. Zampella, 55, died in a car crash in Los Angeles on Sunday. The fatal crash killed him, along with the occupant of his car.
Hello and Happy New Year - is it okay to say that now? I'm not sure where the cut-off point is. Some people still have their Christmas trees up. We had ours out before New Year. Welcome back to What We've Been Playing! Or as I like to call this particular edition of it: What We Played Over Christmas, because it's been a couple of weeks since we've talked.
The top five games played on the PlayStation in 2025 by US players were exactly the same as in 2024, according to Circana's Player Engagement Tracker.
Troy Baker, one of the most well known actors working in video games, believes generative AI could have a positive effect overall on performing arts. Baker thinks it'll cause a reaction whereby people will seek out "authentic" experiences more - live shows, live theatre - and turn away from "gruel that gets distilled to me through a black mirror".
Toshiyuki Itahana, character artist for the Final Fantasy series, including games like Final Fantasy 9, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, and Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, has left Square Enix.
It's a big year for gaming anniversaries. There are five massive series that turn 40 years old in 2026 - The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Dragon Quest, Kid Icarus, and Castlevania - whilst Sonic the Hedgehog turns 35, and Persona and Pokémon both turn 30. There's probably a lot of celebratory stuff coming over the next 12 months, but let's start with a franchise we know is getting some attention this year before anything else: Persona.
Former Rockstar technical director, Obbe Vermeij, has commended Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios for walking away from the hugely successful Dungeons & Dragons series, calling it a "bold move".
The emulator just got even more simplified, which will make it convenient to run games directly from the ISO files. ISO-Based Disc Loading Comes to RPCS3 Emulator, But Only Decrypted ISOs Are Supported The popular PlayStation 3 emulator, RPCS3, just got a big update. Usually, one would need to extract the contents of the game ISO files to allow RPCS3 to run the game, but the new update just eliminated this step. Contributor Functionable submitted the code, which removes a long-standing inconvenience for users who had to extract the disc images into folders to run the game. This might look […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/rpcs3-adds-direct-iso-loading-for-ps3-disc-games/
A Sega PS5, PS4 game has been removed from the PS Plus Extra and Premium catalog without a warning. We’re not sure when Endless Dungeon: Definitive Edition disappeared from PS Plus, but we’ve checked several regions’ PS Store pages to confirm that it’s not currently part of the catalog.
Endless Dungeon: Definitive Edition was added to PS Plus Extra back in June 2025. While Sony does have six-month deals with some publishers, it’s unusual for a Sega game to leave PS Plus in that span of time, especially without notice.
We’re not sure if Endless Dungeon has been removed in all regions or not, but at the time of writing, it’s not available to claim in U.S. and U.K. PS stores. I looked around on gaming forums to see if anyone else noticed the game missing in the Extra catalog, and saw a few comments from players who said they were only able to play Endless Dungeon because they had previously downloaded it. Those who didn’t claim it are not able to download it for free.
This leads me to believe that Endless Dungeon’s removal is a temporary PS Store glitch. We’ve seen this happen before when Sony updated SKUs for games on the storefront. In the case of Sayonara Wild Hearts, the game disappeared from PS Plus Extra for a week as Sony updated its SKU after its native PS5 port was released.
Here’s hoping that’s also the case with Endless Dungeon.
We’ll update our readers when we have more information.
The post Sega PS5, PS4 Game Removed From PS Plus Without Notice appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.
You know what South Park feels like to me? It feels like randomly waking up in the middle of the night, looking around your bedroom as you think "cripes, it's still not morning yet?" A feeling of waiting for the inevitable, the end, or the beginning. Not so much the contents of the show, none of that needs all that much thought, more so its very existence, which is now apparently transplanting itself into Fortnite.
If there were ever a dead horse that didn't need so much flogging, it might be the Life is Strange series. Undeniably beloved by many, it has fallen victim to that whole franchising thing, having received an entry only in 2024 via Life is Strange: Double Exposure, a sequel game that was perhaps a little bit too messy. And here we are, in 2026, with PEGI potentially spoiling the reveal of a new entry in the series subtitled Reunion. Spoilers ahead for the game!
Fallout 3's at its best during your first trip into the war-torn ruins of downtown DC. Rather than an open and desolate expanse, you're navigating tight underground passageways by Pip-Boy light, occasionally emerging into the daylight to fight through patches of ruined city often littered with battered landmarks. Bethesda had initially envisioned this urban jungle to be even more of an expansive labyrinth, and a group of modders have now had a crack at resurrecting the cut areas to create their own version of that more expansive DC.
While it hasn't taken as commanding a stranglehold over the world's collective consciousness as its debut series did, the second helping of Amazon's Fallout TV show is succeeding in helping drive a number of extra Steam players back to the wasteland. That said, a number of said wastelands being heavily discounted as part of the platform's recently concluded winter sale likely hasn't hindered those efforts.
GTA 5 voice actor Ned Luke - aka Michael de Santa - got swatted for the eighth time over Xmas. I don’t mean that somebody belted him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. I mean that somebody put in a hoax call to emergency services in a bid to have armed police sent to his house. The latest incident happened this December while Luke was streaming GTA Online with Rob Wiethoff, the voice of John Marston in Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2. YouTuber IceBladeNinja has the whole clip for you to watch below.
Vince Zampella, the co-creator of Call of Duty, founder of Respawn Entertainment, and head of EA's Battlefield franchise died in a car crash on December 22nd. He was 55 years old.
"We're heartbroken by the passing of our founder and dear friend Vince Zampella," Respawn Entertainment said in a statement on Twitter. "Our hearts are with his family, friends, and all who love him."
Skyblivion, the massive mod remake of Oblivion in Skyrim's engine, won't be making its previously announced 2025 release goal, the team behind it have confirmed. Instead, the mod'll be coming out at some point in 2026, giving the team behind it extra time to overcome the final few hurdles and get it polished up.
This news comes a few months after ex-Skyblivion level and world designer Dee Keyes called the 2025 release goal the mod's team set in 2023 "pointless and unachievable". Keyes also accused Skyblivion project lead Kyle 'Rebelzize' Rebel and implementation lead Heavy Burns of rushing the project out the door and mismanaging communication within the team, subsequently sharing more of his perspective on the project in a video interview with RPS sister site Eurogamer. In a response to Keyes' original claims, Heavy Burns asserted that "many of the statements in his post are either misrepresented or just untrue".
