On Wednesdays we wear pink.
After 105+ minutes of gameplay and breakdowns, we have finally arrived at the launch week for Masahiro Sakurai’s latest joint, Kirby Air Riders.
The game is mere hours away from boosting onto Switch 2 on 20th November (that’s tomorrow!), and that means that it’s time to take a look at the reviews and give you a summary of all the different opinions out there.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
We spend more time than ever scrolling, swiping, and streaming. Most of it passes by in a blur, and habits like doom-scrolling fill the time but leave us feeling empty. But there’s one type of entertainment that feels different – one that gives back, turning moments into meaning – and in a way that our social feeds rarely do. Gaming.
That’s the story behind The Culture of Play Report, a new look at why play feels different and why so many people say it’s time well spent. To get a truer picture of how players feel about gaming, we partnered with Edelman Data & Intelligence to survey 1,500 adult video game players in the U.S. – representing a broad mix of play styles and perspectives, from core players to casual participants, across diverse demographics and backgrounds (you can read more about the report’s survey below).
The findings reveal three key reasons players keep coming back: meaning, connection, and self-expression. It’s something you’ve known for years, and now the world is catching on: gaming just might be the most fulfilling, socially connected, and powerful form of entertainment today.
Nearly 68% of players surveyed say gaming is more emotionally fulfilling than their other hobbies, and three in four reported feeling that they’re doing something meaningful when they play. At Xbox, we think that’s for good reason: games don’t just entertain us – they ask something of us. When we build, explore, or compete, we create our own joy. The reward isn’t passive. It’s personal.
Six in ten players in our study made lifelong friends through gaming, and more than half say their communities have supported them in tough times. In a world of fleeting interactions, gaming helps build something lasting – real connection. Connection so real, in fact, that three in four players we talked to hope to pass their love of play on to the next generation.
Over the past 12 months, 46% of our players on Xbox chose to game together across titles like Call of Duty, Forza Horizon 5 and Fortnite that consistently deliver these shared experiences.
Everywhere else online, algorithms decide what we see next. But in games, we decide who we are, what we do, and how we play. That freedom matters. But freedom doesn’t mean going at it alone. Nearly half of players surveyed say they often feel overwhelmed by too many choices in gaming, almost nine in ten find curation useful, and eight in ten say they’re open to smarter ways to discover what to play next.
That’s why we’re exploring new tools like Gaming Copilot to keep discovery simple and make every session feel a little more personal, without taking away the choices that make play yours.
Every day, millions of players are building more than just games. The meaning, connection, and self-expression they find through play have reshaped how we tell stories, share ideas, and see ourselves. When people are fulfilled by play, they create, share stories, connect, build worlds, remix trends — and that creativity is now part of our collective culture.
Gaming’s influence shows up everywhere: in the movies we watch, the music we stream, the clothes we wear, and the communities we form. It’s proof that play doesn’t just reflect culture — it helps build it.
Everyone has a moment that reminds them why they play – a favorite game, a shared win, or a friendship that’s lasted long after the game ended. For nearly 25 years, Xbox has been about bringing people together through play –and creating moments and experiences that turn players into friends, teammates, and even family.
As we enter our 25th Anniversary year, we’ll celebrate your stories and connections that define the heart of Xbox. These insights will help us keep shaping what comes next, because we believe everyone should have the chance to create those moments – playing the games they love, wherever they are.
Microsoft commissioned Edelman Data & Intelligence to conduct a 20-minute online survey among 1,500 video game players in the United States, between June 25 and July 2, 2025. The panel of survey respondents were carefully selected to closely match U.S. population demographics and the respondents are representative of American men and woman, ages 18 and older.
The audiences analyzed in this report include three distinct segments: Core Players (who spend most of their entertainment time gaming and following gaming news closely), Enthusiastic Players (who spend a quarter to half their entertainment time gaming and casually follow trends), and Casual Players (who primarily play on mobile or tablet and rarely follow gaming news).
The post Gaming: Time Well Spent appeared first on Xbox Wire.
On November 24, a free patch* for all Ghost of Yōtei players will introduce New Game Plus, allowing you to replay Atsu’s quest for vengeance from the beginning with everything you earned throughout the campaign. Yes, that means it’s time to bring a gun to a sword fight, with all of the armors, abilities, and weapons from your first playthrough available from the start of the game.
New Game Plus will unlock after you’ve finished the main story, and will add new harder difficulty options and two new Trophies. There’s also a new currency called Ghost Flowers that you can exchange with a new vendor for more than 30 new cosmetics including new armor sets and weapon dyes, plus 10 new charms. You’ll also be able to earn an additional tier of upgrades for your existing armor sets and weapons.
Beyond New Game Plus, we also have a host of new features coming for the base game. Starting with this new patch, you’ll be able to replay content in the post-game after you’ve completed the main story, including a new stats display. We’re also adding new accessibility options including directional button remapping, and new Photo Mode features including shutter speed, a composition grid, and new filters.We’re happy to close out the year with these new features and excited to see what everyone creates in Photo Mode! We’re extraordinarily grateful for all of the support you’ve shown Ghost of Yōtei since our launch last month. Whether you revisit Atsu’s story in New Game Plus or jump in for the first time this holiday season, we hope you enjoy your time in Ezo, and we can’t wait to introduce you to Ghost of Yōtei Legends in 2026! Thank you for playing!
Hot off of dozens of hours reviewing the sweatiest kind of game imaginable in ARC Raiders, wading into the cozy waters of Disney Dreamlight Valley once again was like stepping into a warm bath at the end of a hard day’s work. I’ve managed to mostly keep up with this charming, Disney-infused life simulator for the past three years, which has been content with adding a handful of new areas and characters here and there rather than innovating in that time. But with its latest expansion, Wishblossom Ranch, developer Gameloft Montreal promised a massive new region to explore atop the back of various recognizable steeds that seemed like a perfect reason to return for an extended stay. It’s without question the most ambitious update yet, with some interesting mechanical tweaks, like the focus on riding and building bonds with horses to unlock new abilities – but that ambition comes at the cost of this being the most buggy version of Disney Dreamlight Valley so far. Similarly, the new map has some of the most creative and unique regions I’ve seen in any cozy game, but that’s offset by new characters that I had a hard time connecting with and the usual, completely unnecessary grind to get through its main quests. All-in-all, I’m still glad to be back in the comforting embrace of this incredibly zen game, but the admirable risks Wishblossom Ranch takes only pay off some of the time.
If you’ve yet to visit Dreamlight Valley’s colorful, cartoonish world, this is a life simulator that’s centered around reconnecting with Disney characters from your childhood and the hopeful, optimistic sense of wonder you presumably had beaten out of you in the years since. You’ll run around performing low stress activities like gardening, cooking, and fishing while hanging out with the likes of Simba from the Lion King, Elsa from Frozen, and Goofy from… well, y’know, it’s Goofy. Wishblossom Ranch is the latest made up compound word followed by a location noun to be added to the mix, and it asks you to solve a mystery surrounding a place where one’s wishes are granted that seems to have run out of magic. While hot on the case, you’ll meet a handful of new Disney characters to befriend, explore and settle the biggest regions Dreamlight Valley has seen so far, and, most importantly, unlock a roster of iconic mounts to ride around on. When all of that is working, it’s some of the best-spent hours this chill adventure has offered me yet.
As the name Wishblossom Ranch implies, the main attraction this time around are the four-legged creatures you’ll tame, each with their own special ability to help you navigate the world and solve simple puzzles. The brave and bold Maximus from Tangled will let you leap across large gaps, while the mighty and battle-tested Khan from Mulan can kick apart physical barriers, and the goofy looking Pegasus from Hercules lets you fly to the highest heights of the mountainous area. You’ll also get to customize and name your own horse (mine was called Neighthan), which has the ability to push around heavy objects with its head like a big ol’ dummy. The puzzles you’ll solve using this suite of ponies are extremely basic, mostly serving as reminders that you can and should switch between mounts instantaneously and use their unique skills to push heavy blocks onto weighted pressure plates or kick obstructions to pieces, but they do a good job at giving you a reason to toggle between each of the loyal stallions and a good reason to level up your bonds with them.
The best part of these new companions, though, is the fact that they solve one of my least favorite things about Disney Dreamlight Valley since the very beginning: how insanely slow you move. I’ve had a bone to pick with this game for many years now on how painfully sluggish it feels to move around, even when aided by fast travel from zone-to-zone, but hopping atop a mount makes travel times so much faster it’s completely resolved that issue. And since you can also train your mount to help with things like stomping on ore deposits to mine for gems or dig holes in the ground for gardening, you can do lots of activities without ever having to dismount, which is a great touch. Really the only issue is that now the old areas feel so claustrophobic and small because you can sprint across them so quickly, and they could already be fairly tough to navigate on foot. Thankfully, the new areas have been designed with mounted travel in mind and are properly expansive, and getting caught in small environments in the old regions is still a lot less annoying than spending minutes on end slowly crawling through them.
Unfortunately, the process for actually improving your relationships with each of these guys can be a bit of a slog, and represents the biggest timegate you’ll find in Wishblossom Ranch, which otherwise does a pretty good job of getting rid of annoying grinds like the one found in A Rift in Time. Every time you unlock a new mount, you’ll have to spend an increasingly long amount of time leveling up your relationship with them until you unlock their unique ability that’s needed to get through the next step in the main story, and the primary way to do that is by waiting for real-life days to go by so that you can feed, pet, and brush them for large XP boosts… or do what I did and spend hours riding around aimlessly, jumping over random objects in the world to brute-force your way through it. I’m sure it would’ve been far less annoying if I would have just played more casually over the course of a few days or weeks as is likely recommended, but I’m really not a fan of arbitrary obstacles to progression that have no point beyond padding out how long it takes to finish the story, and this one is particularly silly. I’m okay with having to earn my social links with each of these quadrupedal friends, but it shouldn’t prevent me from unlocking the next area until I do, especially if the only way to speed it up is by doing meaningless busywork.
The good news is that once I did get through the grind and proceeded to the next region, I was rewarded with some of the most interesting places that Dreamlight Valley has featured to date. For example, the Pixie Acres is a magically-infused garden area with golden honey waterfalls in the distance and waterballoon fish swimming in the rivers, while my personal favorite area, Glamour Gulch, is entirely fashion-themed, and has pincushion fruit growing on trees, flowers that are made out of needles and thread, and mushrooms on the ground that are actually little buttons. The flavor and themes of these places are easily the most clever and compelling yet, and would probably even top the list of some of my favorite locales in any cozy game. It’s especially cool when you start gardening with seeds found in these areas to grow things like a vegetable made out of silk thread or cooking recipes out of those ingredients to whip up an entree called button stew. This is exactly the type of over-the-top goofiness Dreamlight Valley really needed, as opposed to the quite grounded options in the first area where you were harvesting regular ol’ tomatoes to cook tomato soup.
On the other hand, I personally was less enthused about the new characters than the environments themselves. Snow White, Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians, Tigger from Winnie the Pooh, and Tinker Bell are the four new besties to befriend, only one of which didn’t completely annoy me over the course of the story. Snow White’s creepy cheeriness and impossibly high-pitched voice gave me the willies, Cruella de Vil was just straight up mean to me for several hours while I was forced run errands for her when I would have rather just told her to take a hike, and Tigger’s stretch of the story is so untethered from reality that I was just confused about what the heck I was doing the whole time, like one part where I had to reunite a family of balloons with faces drawn on them for some reason. Tinker Bell was genuinely the only one who was consistently helpful while also not boring into me with unnerving, wild eyes. I think this is probably the cast of added characters I connected with the least so far, even though Cruella de Vil did make me laugh by being such an irredeemable monster (as she should be). Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure lots of folks will enjoy adding these icons to Dreamlight Valley’s already impressive roster, and you can always just bring along an existing character you prefer, but man, Snow White is just not for me.
The main thing holding Wishblossom Ranch back, however, is the fact that it’s definitely the most unstable version of Dreamlight Valley so far, and that’s coming from someone who started playing during a preview period slightly before its Early Access debut back in 2022. I encountered all sorts of issues: I phased through an elevator that broke my ability to progress until I quit to the dashboard, my horses regularly hopped inside objects in the world in a super awkward and noticeable way, menus would randomly stop responding to me until I closed them and tried again, and quite a few other bizarre problems. And of particular annoyance, the absolutely atrocious camera problems Dreamlight Valley has always suffered from are amplified by the existence of bulky horses you spend a lot of time trotting upon, whose unwieldy nature cause the camera to clip through all sorts of pieces of the environment and cause a ton of issues. I appreciate that Wishblossom Ranch takes some really neat risks to make these maps bigger and add cool horse mechanics, but that seems to have come at the cost of everything feeling really janky at launch.
At one point I even found myself locked out of a critical quest line that would have resulted in me not being able to see the ending were it not for a developer-provided debug option that let me skip past the blockage. Were it not for the fact that I was working on this review, my journey would have come to a disappointing end right there. There were a few moments during the course of my adventure where it felt like I was walking on eggshells around the expansion’s bugs, and if I did a part of a quest too early or too late, I’d hold my breath hoping it wouldn’t result in a catastrophic error like the one I ultimately fell prey to. The devs at least know about this particular bug now, so hopefully they can fix it at some point, but I would recommend waiting for a round of polish or two before diving in yourself.
On Monday, Hypixel co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme revealed the good news that he’d followed through on saying he’d chat to Riot Games about buying the rights to the Minecrafty sandbox game Hytale by buying the rights to said game. Now, with an independent team back working on the game following the closure of itsoriginal studio, Collins-Laflamme and co have shared a 16 minute look at what Hytale’s currently like to play.
Months after Riot Games pulled the plug on Hypixel’s Minecraft-esque sandbox game, Hytale, a new 16-minute trailer is showcasing how the game currently plays as the original co-founder fights to keep it alive, starting with an early access release.
This week, League of Legends developer Riot Games confirmed it had sold the rights to Hytale back to one of the original co-founders after it acquired the game back in 2020. Riot said that after considering “a range of options,” it decided to sell the IP rights back to Simon Collins-Laflamme as this “gives players the best chance to one day experience a revised version of the game they’ve been waiting for.”
Development on the game had been stagnating despite its sale to Riot, but Collins-Laflamme is set on resurrecting the dying IP, confirming he has “rehired more than 30 developers who know this game inside and out, with additional returns expected in the coming days.”
As part of the revival efforts, Collins-Laflamme also shared a chunk of “raw and broken” gameplay taken on the “original legacy engine,” which he then shared on YouTube.
fuck it 16 minutes of new hytale gameplay on the timeline pic.twitter.com/KTqrk8n5Ie
— Myne (@not_mynes) November 19, 2025
“This Hytale footage reflects the latest chapter in the game’s revival,” the video description said. “Recorded in a single morning and put together by Simon. No bells or whistles. Just the game as it is. Raw and broken, but still beautiful. There’s a long road ahead, but early access is coming soon.”
Collins-Laflamme left a personal note to would-be players, too, writing: “I promised players videos, screenshots, and blog posts. One day after the acquisition, I’m keeping that promise. Now that you’ve seen the first gameplay footage in a long time, I’m heading back to work on the early access launch. The team will share more clips and screenshots as we go.
“It mattered to me to release raw footage today so we break the curse once and for all.”
In a blog post celebrating that Hytale had been “saved,” Collins-Laflamme wrote: “Transactions like this are rare in the games industry. Thank you to everyone for keeping hope alive.”
Hytale was announced in December 2018 with a trailer that has an incredible 61 million views on YouTube. Here’s the official blurb, as it was back then:
Hytale combines the scope of a sandbox with the depth of a roleplaying game, immersing players in a procedurally generated world where teetering towers and deep dungeons promise rich rewards throughout their adventures. Hytale supports everything from block-by-block construction to scripting and minigame creation, delivered using easy to use and powerful tools.
Excitement around Hytale was fueled by the experience of the developers themselves, who co-founded Hypixel, one of the most influential Minecraft servers in the world. Riot invested in the project and eventually bought the studio.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Microsoft have delivered a timely reminder that AI isn’t just effective at injecting ugly, soulless anti-art and nonsense robochat into your games – it also has the power to ruin your entire PC.
MS recently updated a support article explaining the ‘agentic AI’ features they plan to roll out for Windows 11, which involve creating a separate desktop instance and allowing AI ‘agents’ to perform supposedly menial tasks (like file sorting and email sending) within it. All while you kick back on your main workspace, online shopping for the third yacht that the AI revolution has surely enabled you to afford. Unfortunately, among the agents’ capabilities is the risk of installing malware.
If you’ve been spending time with Dispatch and feeling that Malevola’s practically humming with early 1990s supermodel energy, it turns out you’re absolutely right.
Talking to IGN, Adhoc art director Derek Stratton explained how a ’90s Pepsi advert starring supermodel Cindy Crawford was the inspiration for the “sexy demon lady” voiced by former IGN host, Alanah Pearce.
The iconic 1992 Pepsi commercial features Cindy Crawford in a white tank top and denim shorts, popping open a can of Pepsi by her red Lamborghini at a gas station as two awestruck young boys look on. It was a huge hit for Pepsi, and went on to cement its place in pop culture history.
“Malevola, so she represents ‘sexy demon lady,'” Stratton said in the video interview, below. “There was a commercial — it was a Pepsi commercial. Out comes Cindy Crawford in a white bodysuit and cut-off jean shorts, and high heels — everybody lost their mind. And that’s what Malevola was based off of.”
That’s not all, though. While Crawford inspired Malevola’s signature look, inspiration for her ripped body came from someone else: influencer LeanBeefPatty.
“She is Cindy Crawford from that commercial meets that sort of, like, hot rod demon lady, and the body type of LeanBeefPatty, who is an influencer who’s ripped,” Stratton explained.
As one fan lamented, responding to the story on YouTube: “Bro combined Karlach, Patty and Cindy Crawford, and didn’t give us an option to romance her?” They then appended a crying face emoji.
Dispatch — hailing from AdHoc Studio, which was founded by several former Telltale Games devs — is a superhero workplace comedy where choices matter. You manage a dysfunctional team of misfit heroes and strategize who to send to emergencies around the city, all while balancing office politics, personal relationships, and your own quest to become a hero.
It stars a solid mix of traditional Hollywood actors and video game- and streaming-adjacent talent including Aaron Paul and Laura Bailey, as well as Jeffrey Wright, Erin Yvette, Jacksepticeye, Moistcr1tikal, Alanah Pearce, Travis Willingham, Joel Haver, Lance Cantstopolis, Matthew Mercer, and Thot Squad.
IGN’s Dispatch review returned a 9/10. We said: “Dispatch is a sharp-witted workplace comedy that charms with its smart dialogue choices, great writing, and lovably aggravating cast.”
And we’re not the only ones who had a good time with Dispatch — it’s been nominated for Best Debut Indie Game at next month’s The Game Awards.
Photo by Pepsi/Getty Images.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Further down the page there are horrifying phrases like “makes Europa Universalis seem limited” and “every planet and moon and asteroid, all orbiting in real time”, woven through a fascinating account of a game that is sort of XCOM, but you’re organising a whole Earth’s worth of competing countries and factions to repel solar system invaders who may not even materialise for dozens of hours. But of course Hooded Horse are publishing it. This was one of their first signings, I believe. Those sickos.
Air force one.
Kirby Air Ride, I think it’s fair to say, didn’t receive all that warm a welcome when it launched back in 2003.
With lucky GameCubers already marinating in the delicious driving juices of Mario Kart: Double Dash and F-Zero GX, Kirby’s cute and chaotic style of racing just didn’t seem to stick with the mainstream, and, as a result, it’s become known as one of those Marmite efforts. You either gelled with its new approach to slinging yourself around tracks or you didn’t.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
