Author: Game Infliction

Bethesda has delayed Starfield once again, as the game will now launch in September for PC and Xbox Series X and S. There will also be a Starfield Direct on June 11, right after the Xbox Games Showcase.

In a new official launch date announcement trailer (below), Bethesda’s Todd Howard confirmed that the highly anticipated game will release this year

“We have poured ourselves into this game and even I’m surprised how much we can pour. It is large. We’re playing the game all the time,” he explained.

The Starfield Direct in June will provide a deep dive into the game, as Howard continued: “There’s so much that we still have to show you. The game has many of the hallmarks that you’d expect from us, but it’s also a very unique experience.”

Earlier this year, Phil Spencer hinted that Microsoft and Xbox would have a presence around the E3, with his Starfield Direct lining up perfectly.

The game was originally set to launch on November 11, 2022, but was delayed into the first half of 202, and now, finally, has been confirmed for September 6.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

Wayfinder does not intend to be a brainless loot-grind or a dispiriting digital roulette wheel. Digital Extremes, the studio behind Warframe publishing this new fantasy RPG, is aware of all the pitfalls that tend to sink modern multiplayer games; how, more often than not, it feels like the designers are actively trying to take advantage of its players. But after a few hours with the game, and a gaggle of rollicking dungeon crawls and hubzone idle time, it’s clear that Wayfinder is trying to harken back to a more wholesome age of cooperative monster slaying. If you too grew up on World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and Final Fantasy XI, Digital Extremes intends to bring you home.

In its most simple definition, Wayfinder is an MMO. Players take control of a slew of heroes — known as, you guessed it, Wayfinders — which are subdivided into classic tank, healer, and DPS roles. These characters come pre-equipped with names, backstories, and a League of Legends-style tray of three abilities and an ultimate, which means you aren’t going to be nurturing a mute, enigmatic player-character towards the level cap. The combat itself is steeped in that quasi-RPG magic that defines Destiny, Borderlands, and yes, Warframe. (Expect a lot of white damage numbers to come flying out of your opponents, but you’ll also be asked to aim your weapons, time your parries, and dodge-roll out of attacks.) You’ll be outfitting your roster of characters with a huge, interlocking talent tree, which will juice the integers of whatever build you’re currently targeting. In that sense, Wayfinder is well within the thrall of some of the most popular video games on the planet, but in the couple hours I’ve spent on the live servers, I haven’t grown bored by that familiarity.

A lot of the appeal can be chalked up to Wayfinder’s character design. The studio behind the game, Airship Syndicate, most recently worked on Ruined King, the League of Legends-based RPG, and you can see the influence of Runeterra’s gorgeous cartooning bleeding through. I spent most of my time with Senja, a yoked gladiator donning a spiky blonde haircut and a heavy, Kratos-sized ax. She served as the tank for most of our expeditions, and is buoyed by a mechanic where her abilities increase in potency as an unseen audience is whipped up into a frenzy. Senja showboats, flexes, and gestures to the cheap seats before she lines up another blow. When it connects, the crowd goes wild. It’s hard to step behind Senja’s controls without immediately adoring her vibe.

This is what Wayfinder will undoubtedly hang its hat on. Like Warframe, progression here seems to be mostly built around unlocking new characters, and from the ones I played, they all immediately glimmer with charisma and potential just like Senja. (Another Wayfinder I played, known as Niss The Shadow Dancer, is outfitted with a cocktail of shinobi-esque mobility options that make quick work of her enemies.) You’ll be taking this crew into the Overlands — a shared adventuring space for all players, like Blizzard’s Elwynn Forest or Bungie’s Europa — as well as “Lost Zones,” Wayfinder’s parlance for randomized dungeons, where you will carve through the modulated corridors in search of treasure and glory. Airship has made it clear that players will be given a ton of control over the loot that pops up in these dungeons to avoid the soul-killing grind of repeating the same instance, indefinitely, while searching for a furtive one-percent drop. The studio has learned from the mistakes of its forebears.

Everyone involved with Wayfinder kept hammering one point home over and over again: That this game, at its core, is an MMO. If Airship’s dreams come true, they’ll have created a lively realm of bustling General Chats, breezy dance contests, and the tragedies and triumphs of tough, mechanically-rich boss fights. By the end of my demo, it became clear that the people who made this game miss the golden age of the genre, and are desperate to recreate the conviviality of sharing a dungeon with a party of friends. From everything I’ve seen so far, Wayfinder looks to be up to the task.

Update 03/08/2023: Discord voice chat is finally available to PlayStation 5 users, allowing them to share voice channel parties with users on PC, Xbox, and mobile.

Revealed in a blog post, the “cross-voice” feature is available once users have linked their Discord and PlayStation accounts. This can be done by visiting the Settings menu on Discord itself (on PC or mobile), then selecting Connections followed by PlayStation.

Discord voice chat was originally released in PS5 beta, meaning it was available to select users who tested new features, but is now available to all.

Original Story 02/02/2022: A new PS5 system software beta has added Discord voice chat and Variable Refresh Rate support for 1440p displays, among a number of other upgrades.

Announced on the PlayStation Blog, the new system software is available for beta participants in the U.S., Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, and France. Its main feature is the addition of Discord voice chat, which allows cross-platform calls through the popular Discord system. Users will need to link their Discord and PlayStation Network accounts to use the service, and then begin a call on the Discord mobile app before transferring it to their console. It seems a little more fiddly than a standard PSN party, but will no doubt be very welcome to those who frequently play with friends who are on Xbox and PC.

The other headline feature of the beta update is Variable Refresh Rate support for 1440p resolution displays. This allows smoother visual performance when using a VR-compatible HDMI 2.1 display, provided the game supports Variable Refresh Rate. VRR can be enabled from your Screen and Video settings.

The new beta also provides a variety of smaller user experience-focused upgrades. These include the ability to share you screen directly from a friend’s profile card; a “Friends Who Play” tile that shows who on your friends list also plays the game you’re looking at; a new manual upload function for sending specific gameplay captures to the PS App; PS VR and PS VR2 filters for the game library; a new PS5 to PS5 data transfer function (available over Wi-Fi or LAN); and a notification pop-up for PS4 games that alerts you to any PS4 save game data you have in the cloud.

There’s also a limited U.S. and UK release for video capture voice commands. This allows users to say “Hey PlayStation, capture that” to save a video clip of gameplay. It’s the Xbox Kinect days all over again.

For more from the world of PlayStation, check out the games coming to PS Plus in February, as well as the news that the PS5 PS Plus Collection is being removed entirely later this year.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.