Category: IGN

With the rocky launch of Cyberpunk 2077 firmly in the rearview, CD Projekt seems to have fully bounced back from where it was at the end of 2020 both in good will and in financials, celebrating its second-best earnings year in 2022 despite no new major releases.

Per CD Projekt’s earnings report, Cyberpunk 2077 revenues were up 18% year-over-year in 2022, with 94% of the units sold being digital. That’s a pretty unusual figure in video games, which typically release to enormous unit sales and then see a steady but consistent drop over time. CD Projekt attributes the sales to their long-term work on improving issues with Cyberpunk 2077, as well as the success of the companion Netflix series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. And having The Witcher 3 around doesn’t hurt either.

It’s a significant turnaround for a game plagued with bugs and glitches on the base PS4 and Xbox One at launch, which its own developers reportedly did not expect to be ready by its 2020 launch date. But multiple patches since slowly began to rebuild good will, and the one-two punch of a next-gen update in February last year and Edgerunners seems to have convinced people it was worth returning to night City.

CD Projekt expects to release a Cyberpunk 2077 expansion in the second half of this year, titled Phantom Liberty. One slide in the investor presentation indicates that a “marketing campaign” is planned to begin for the expansion in June.

Consolidated revenues for CD Projekt in 2022 reached 953 million PLN ($222 million), with 347 million PLN ($81 million) in net profit. Both revenue and net profit were the second-best in company history. CD Projekt says it has reinvested over 200 million PLN ($47 million) back into future development projects, including the recently “re-evaluated” multiplayer Witcher game codenamed Project Sirius from Molasses Flood.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Tim Sweeney isn’t a fan of what blockchain has done to game development. Epic’s CEO bemoans “a whole generation” of computer scientists focusing on technlogy such as cryptocurrency, which he believes is impacting the core technology needed to make truly revolutionary game experiences

“There’s been a lot of neglect, as everybody’s going off…we’re missing a generation of computer scientists who would traditionally be pushing forward that set,” Sweeney says. “So, we’re trying to fill in the gaps in building the research team we have here. I think there are new genres of games that will emerge from the technologies that are just in the pipeline being built right now.”

Saxs Persson, Epic’s executive in charge of Fortnite’s ecosystem, agrees.

“I think it’s non-obvious because it’s not like the thing you put on screen right now, but most… all game engines really… commercial game engines, their architecture is what it’s been for, I don’t know, 20, 30 years,” he says. “Nothing really has changed. It has to change, or you’re just trying to squeeze more blood from that stone. The fundamental programming model has to change in order to break into beyond what battle royale really can do.”

The pair is fresh off Epic’s State of Unreal presentation, which last week saw the company unveil Unreal Engine 5.2 while rolling out new creation tools and revenue sharing for Fortnite players.

Speaking with IGN in an interview conducted during the Game Developers Conference [GDC], they talked about the potential of the Unreal Editor for Fortnite [UEFN] toolset, which they liken to an evolution of the modding scene that has birthed a host of new genres over the years. They also reflected on state of gaming tech in 2023, which is so heavily driven by Epic’s Unreal Engine.

Looking toward the future

Both are planning ahead, as they so often do, with Sweeney regularly bringing up the concept of the metaverse – a term that tends to serve a punchline in gaming circles, but makes more sense when paired with Fortnite’s flourishing ecosystem. Epic’s latest developments, which empower Fortnite’s creators while giving them a share of revenue, are intended to make good on the common sentiment that Epic’s battle royale is the real metaverse, though Persson cautions against calling it a “platform.”

“It’s not a technology platform; it’s a place people go to get entertained and we need to entertain them, and more and more of them. That’s the challenge: how do we find a way for people that don’t care about shooters? They should be welcome too…The real challenge for us is, in the maturation of Fortnite, is to embrace that we are much broader than just the day one shooter that was launched,” Persson says.

Epic recently announced a new revenue-sharing plan, setting aside 40% of the game’s net revenue for creators. Payments are based on overall engagement with custom islands and other creations. It’s a major change that seeks to push Fortnite further beyond the bounds of the battle royale genre.

But even as Epic looks to grow Fortnite’s ecosystem, fans are looking back with growing nostalgia for the original battle royale. When the UEFN tools became available, players immediately scrambled to remake the original Fortnite Battle Royale as it existed in 2018. Asked for his reaction to this development, Sweeney said “we have nostalgia for it too,” but that for him it “immediately highlighted a topic about intellectual property.”

“You can’t just remake a Call of Duty map. And we were digging into what was happening with Fortnite Chapter One map, and we decided that was a really cool thing to happen because it was for Fortnite, so we gave permission to do it on a non-monetized basis. But I think the real innovations here have got to be an original new work, right?” Sweeney said. “Because some of these things… Works of nostalgia are cool, but most of the time they’re going to be other people’s work and they’re likely not going to give permission. And we really urge everybody to think about what can we really do to create news genres or games and really very original things”

Persson added that “nostalgia is often the first thing that comes to people’s mind when you get capabilities,” but that Epic “wants people to make their own [stories and characters].”

What they really want is something like what happened with Defense of the Ancients, better-known as DOTA, which was popularized by Warcraft 3’s map editor scene, or PlayerUnknown’s Battleground [PUBG], which sprang out of Arma 3. In fact, Sweeney says he recently ran into PUBG creator Brendan Greene at GDC, whom he credits with “really reinvigorating shooters.”

The problem, Sweeney claims, was that map developers on platforms like Warcraft 3 couldn’t easily profit on their creations, leading them to create standalone games elsewhere. It’s a problem that he claims Fortnite’s newly updated revenue-sharing system will solve.

“The tragic thing that happened there was, in order to succeed on their own scale, they had to leave their own ecosystem behind and build a new one. That’s a failure we don’t want to have in our system. We would love to be able to grow Fortnite and the financial opportunities for all creators, to the point where if you build a really successful game, you don’t have to leave and build it as a standalone game in Unreal Engine,” Sweeney says. “Now, you’ll be able to, and we’ll support you in doing that if that’s what you want. We really want the best opportunity to stay in this as we build the open metaverse together.”

‘Underestimating the opportunity’

Elsewhere, Sweeney says that he’s interested in further advances in proceduralism, calling the implications “really awesome.” He’s also impressed by the growth of content marketplaces, which are making it easier for game developers to obtain generic assets that allow them to save time. But there are still a lot of improvements to be made, he says.

“I think people are underestimating the opportunity for advances in the programming, language technology, and programming stack to improve the state of game development. Fortnite Battle Royale is 100 players because we can’t support more. That’s as many players as we can fit on a single server, on a single floor, on a machine,” Sweeney says. “We don’t have the technologies to scale up to lots of cores or a core data center. Nobody’s just built technology for doing that without really dire loss of quality in the programming model. I think there’s a lot of core computer-science level improvements that can be made there.”

With the release of Unreal Engine 5.2, though, Sweeney is hopeful developers will “jump right in” to the new tools.

“I start using this month, and of course the pipelines… building a game of the caliber that uses this kind of tools is generally pretty long. But I think people can immediately use the procedural systems, the MetaHuman animator capabilities and these things, and they’re all just designed to take away the existing flows developers already use, make them more productive and higher quality. I think what the big impact you’ll see is that just quality goes up without an increase in cost or development time,” Sweeney says.

Persson claims that developers are already reaching out to him about the possibilities of the tech.

“The first demo we did with the Rivian R1T demo… two separate indie developers that were in the audience that I know both texted, and one of them was like, ‘That’s the workflow that will enable us to make the game we want. Taking custom-built areas, but turning them into procedural assemblies.’

“And the second one had a comment about MetaHuman and how this is what was missing for them to unlock the last bit of how they can make a range of NPCs, not just the one NPC that they could afford. I think that’s the beauty of it. A lot of these tools they lay upon workflows that already exist. They just make them more productive.”

That’s ultimately one of the biggest themes in the games industry right now: streamlining game development in a way that makes today’s increasingly ambitious projects more achievable. Otherwise, game development teams will be forced to continue scaling up in a way that’s unsustainable.

In the meantime, AAA developers are still working to unlock the secrets of Unreal Engine 5. While several Unreal Engine 5 games are currently under development, with others pivoting to the technology, it has yet to reach mass adoption.

We’ll see it gain more of a foothold later this year, with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl and Ark 2 among the games that will utilize Epic’s tech. For now, Epic will try to realize its dreams for the future elsewhere, with its new Fortnite ecosystem serving as the starting point.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Microsoft has announced that the Xbox Games with Gold line-up for April 2023 includes Out of Space: Couch Edition and Peaky Blinders: Mastermind.

As detailed on Xbox Wire, the two Games with Gold offerings will be available to anyone with Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, with Out of Space: Couch Edition available first from April 1 to 30, and Peaky Blinders: Mastermind available later from April 16 to May 15.

If the title wasn’t obvious, Out of Space: Couch Edition is set in outer space. The aim of the game is to create resources and work out housekeeping systems to build a sustainable environment, all while dealing with a deadly alien infestation that has also settled in.

After exploring the vast cosmic arena, you might want to dive into the criminal underworld in Peaky Blinders: Mastermind. This puzzle-adventure game acts as a prequel of sorts to the first season of the TV show, with players taking control of Thomas Shelby and his cohorts.

New games approaching also means that March’s Games with Gold will soon leave the service, so be sure to download Lamentum, Trüberbrook, and Sudden Strike 4: Complete Collection before it’s too late.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Sony’s PlayStation VR2 is reportedly off to an underwhelming start with the virtual reality headset only expected to sell 270,000 units by the end of March.

As reported by Bloomberg, the figure comes from research firm IDC and, while 270,000 is still a lot of headsets, reports last year indicated that Sony was looking to produce two million PSVR 2 units to be sold by the end of March.

Vice president of data and analytics at IDC Francisco Jeronimo told Bloomberg that Sony would need to cut the price of the PSVR 2 to stop its launch being a “complete disaster”. The headset, which already sits at $549.99, is made even pricier by the additional $499.99 cost of the required PlayStation 5.

“Consumers around the world are facing rising costs of living, rising interest rates, and rising layoffs. VR headsets are not top of mind for most consumers under the current economic climate,” said Jeronimo. “I suspect a price cut on the PSVR2 will be needed to avoid a complete disaster of their new product.”

The headset launched on February 22 with 42 games, including headlining title Horizon: Call of the Mountain and a variety of virtual reality updates for critically acclaimed games like Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil Village.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “With top-notch visual quality and immersively tactile Sense controllers, PlayStation VR2 represents a quantum leap over its predecessor, setting a new standard for console VR gaming.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is right around the corner, but Guerilla rendered the expansion a PS5-exclusive because of clouds — literally.

Senior community manager Narae Lee wrote on the PlayStation Blog that the developers upgraded the clouds system so that the game’s open-world cloudscape would look more realistic — but only as much as the PS5 can handle.

Principal FX artist Andrew Schneider and tech programmer Nathan Vos expanded on the cloud system they developed for Horizon Zero Dawn in 2015 with voxel technology, which supports not only changes to the time of day and realistic animations, but now in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores it will allow players to fly through the clouds and complete side quests on their Sunwing as if they’re on Cloud 9.

“The cloud systems that we developed for Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West were fast because they didn’t store clouds as 3D objects, but rather instructions on creating 3D clouds from limited 2D information,” Schneider said. “The PlayStation 5 can handle larger datasets. So, after Forbidden West wrapped, we set to work writing a voxel cloud renderer prototype that could live up to our standards for quality, and actually allow the player to fly through highly detailed cloud formations.”

The devs achieved this by creating what Schneider called “Frankencloudscapes,” which contain large cloud formations that behave both as a background element and an explorable environment. Then they tested their quality and performance by compressing huge quantities of voxel data to expedite the cloud rendering process, and balancing them by optimizing the PS5 code to make the output less than or equal to the current cost of the cloud system.

The PS5 has the hardware that can handle that much cloud power, so don’t be too disappointed about the DLC’s absence from the PS4. It’s a 10-year-old console, after all.

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores comes to the PS5 on April 19.

Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications, including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions, and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.

There are a lot of reasons to love Resident Evil 4, but something that jumped out at me while playing through the remake is how it feels like a medley of homages to some of the greatest horror movie monsters and antagonists of all time. There’s no way of telling how many of these actually are deliberate nods to other fiction, and how much it’s my own brain jumping to conclusions, but it’s still fun to dissect the many weird parts that make up this masterpiece of a game.

It’s pretty safe to say The chainsaw-wielding burlap sack-wearing Dr. Salvador takes some inspiration from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface, and quite possibly Jason Voorhees’ baggier, less athletic look from Friday The 13th Part 2. Del Lago might be more salamander than shark, but that whole boss fight would be right at home in the third act of a Jaws movie. The lumbering El Gigante bears a striking resemblance to the cave troll in The Fellowship of the Ring. This seems even more apparent in the remake, as the later El Gigante encounters have the giants wearing armor that would absolutely fit the dress code of Sauron’s ranks. That one might not seem quite like an iconic movie monster, but bear in mind the Lord of the Rings movies were on everyone’s minds around the time RE4 was in development.

Las Plagas, the parasites that act as the connective tissue of Resident Evil 4’s menagerie of monsters, look like distant cousins of the face-hugging larvae made famous in Alien. We see the Plagas genetically engineered into all sorts of critters throughout the game, but a couple of them are especially Xenomorphian. The insectoid nature and hive-based society of the Navistadors mimic the bugs in Aliens, but there’s also the sleek, black, whip-tailed Verdugo, whose appearance and behavior bear more resemblance to the sole monster in the first Alien.

Meanwhile, every time one of Resident Evil 4’s Ganados reveals its inner plaga, there’s an explosion of flailing flesh, teeth, eyes, and claws, which is straight from the playbook of the titular critter in John Carpenter’s The Thing. Much like how The Thing has several increasingly imposing forms, so do RE4’s bad guys, both eventually taking massive final forms that are towering masses of tentacles that don’t even try to appear human.

Video games have been cribbing beats from action movies since forever, but Resident Evil 4 steering the series from tense, survival horror to faster-paced action horror feels a lot like James Cameron’s approach to sequels. Aliens turned Alien’s haunted house into a rollercoaster ride, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day is more fight than flight compared to the first film. Leon Kennedy utilizes quite a few tactics from T2, freezing the Verdugo with liquid nitrogen and dropping Los Gigantes into a vat of molten metal. On the other hand, Regenerators might not be able to turn into molten metal or impersonate members of the LAPD, but they’re almost as hard to kill as a T-1000.

Stephen Sommers might not be quite as well-known a filmmaker as James Cameron, but a few of his action-horror movies seem to have informed Resident Evil 4. The 1998 film Deep Rising features a phenomenally gross tentacled monster that at one point gets fended off with a shotgun blast to the eyeball, and the explosive climax involves a guy and a girl fleeing a collapsing structure on a jet ski. Sound familiar?

One horrifying boss that unfortunately (or maybe thankfully) didn’t make the cut for the remake is U-3, a chimera that blended human and scorpion anatomy, much like Dwayne Johnson’s first big screen performance as The Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns, another Stephen Sommers joint with CGI that might as well be pulled from a GameCube game. Coincidentally, the third Mummy installment, The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, has Brendan Fraser’s character sporting a fleece-lined leather jacket a lot like Leon’s and armed with a Thompson submachine gun, which Resident Evil fans might know better as a Chicago typewriter.

The influence of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft in pop-culture can’t be overstated, though the feature film adaptations of his work have rarely achieved more than a cult status (which is fitting, considering how much Lovecraft’s work involves cults.) One such adaptation, the 2001 Stuart Gordon film Dagon, seems to be the single biggest inspiration for Resident Evil 4.

Despite being named after the short story Dagon, it more closely follows the novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The film follows a guy trying to rescue his girlfriend, who’s been kidnapped by members of a cult that worships an ancient sea monster — many of whom are mutating into sea creatures themselves. Though the novella was set along the coast of New England, the movie takes place a Spanish fishing village named “Imboca” (which is cute, as boca is Spanish for mouth) which makes sense, as it was produced in Spain. Why the game also takes place in Spain is unclear, but hey, it works. That said, it would be funny to see Leon accosted by a bunch of longshoremen with thick Maine accents.

Without grilling the original development team about what was going through their heads while making the original 20 years ago, it’s impossible to say what parts of Resident Evil 4 were rooted in other works of horror fiction. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because no matter where in the individual parts of Resident Evil 4 come from, the way they come together creates something wholly unique and wonderfully nightmarish.

Hogwarts Legacy soared high on the charts as the best-selling game of February 2023, while The Last Of Us sales rose with it.

The sales numbers were shared by Mat Piscatella, executive director and games industry analyst at Circana (formerly known as NPD), showing Hogwarts Legacy ranked first in February sales for PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam. Not only is the game last month’s best-seller, but it is also the best-selling game of 2023 year-to-date, surpassing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the Dead Space remake, Madden NFL 23, and FIFA 23.

The sales of The Last Of Us games climbed up the charts last month as well, but still trailed behind the Wizarding World title. The Last Of Us: Part 1 ranked 6th on the sales chart (up from 11th in January), besting Wild Hearts, Like A Dragon: Ishin!, and Octopath Traveler 2 — all of which are new releases. Meanwhile, The Last Of Us: Part 2 ranked 18th (up from 41st in the previous month), trailing just behind Sonic Frontiers, which was released in November.

Last month, Warner Bros. Games announced that Hogwarts Legacy sold over 12 million copies two weeks after its launch. The company touted the game as its biggest global launch ever despite the controversy surrounding it well before it released.

Hogwarts Legacy’s sales success was due in no small part to the PS5, which drove hardware spending up to 29%. It was also named the best-selling console of the last month.

Hogwarts Legacy is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam. It will be released on PS4 and Xbox One on May 5, and on Nintendo Switch July 25.

Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications, including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions, and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.

2023 might finally be the year where 2TB PS5 SSDs might actually be worth the upgrade. Last year, prices for 1TB PS5 SSDs averaged around $150, whereas 2TB SSDs hovered closer to $300. This year, we’re seeing 1TB SSDs trickle below the $100 price point and 2TB SSDs are under $200. The reason PS5 SSD upgrades are pricey is that you can’t use any old SSD and expect it to perform well on the PS5 console. You’ll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive with a rated 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5’s internal drive. That means, for better or for worse, picking a top-shelf SSD.

Note that Sony recommends a heatsink attached to your SSD. Not all SSDs listed here have pre-installed heatsinks. For the ones that do, we’ll be sure to mention it. For the ones that don’t, all you have to do is purchase your own heatsink (we recommend this one for $10) and install it yourself. It’s very easy.

Adata Premium 2TB PS5 SSD for $112.50

This is easily the lowest price we’ve seen so far for a 1TB PS5-compatible SSD. The Adata Premium SSD boasts transfer speeds of up to 6,100MB/s, which is more than fast enough to surpass the PS5’s recommended minimum speed threshold of 5,500MB/s. It includes a thin aluminum heatspreader that will work fine with the PS5 console, but you can easily get a beefier heatsink (we recommend this one for $10) if you’re concerned about the heat.

Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PS5 SSD for PS5 for $131.99

Crucial’s newest M.2 SSD meets all the requirements for your PS5 SSD upgrade. It supports transfer speeds of up to 6,660MB/s which is well above the 5,500MB/s minimum threshold. Yes there are faster SSDs out there, but if your intention is to put this in your PS5, then that extra speed is worthless because you’re bottlenecked by the original PS5 SSD. If you’re worried about opening up your PS5 case, don’t worry it’s very easy. Crucial has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide to see you through the process.

Samsung 1TB PS5 SSD for $75

Samsung SSDs need no introduction. They’ve made some of the most popular and reliable PS5 SSDs on the market. The 980 Pro has been out for a while now, but it’s still one of Samsung’s fastest M.2 PCIe SSD, with only the newly released 990 Pro being faster. It is fully PS5 compatible in terms of form factor and performance, with blistering speeds of up to 7,100MB/s. It goes toe to toe with other well-known options like the WD Black SN850 and the Seagate Firecuda 530.

WD 2TB PS5 SSD from $159.99

Amazon is offering a 2TB WD Black SN850X with preinstalled heatsink for only $179.99. The SN850X is the successor to the SN850 SSD. It has newer flash chips (BiCS5 vs BiCS4) and an updated firmware, which combined offer improved sequential and random read/write speeds. For PC gamers, there’s also an updated Game Mode 2.0 utility that’s designed to tune the SSD for better performance during gaming sessions.

Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 2TB “Optimized for PS5” SSD with Heatsink for Only $154.99

Corsair is a very well known brand for DIY PC builders. Corsair makes some of the best gaming products on the market, and that includes solid-state memory like RAM and SSDs. The MP600 Pro is the same super-fast M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 Gen4 SSD that’s marketed for enthusiast gaming PC builds. This one is “optimized for PS5” because it includes a rugged preinstalled heatsink that is slim enough to fit in the PS5 bay without any issues. Performance wise, the MP600 Pro matches the best SSDs out there with its 7,100MB/sec sequential read and 6,800MB/sec sequential write speeds.

Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB PS5 SSD for $142.99

Amazon is offering the Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x 4 Internal Gaming Solid State Drive, which is compatible with the PS5 console, for only $142.99. This makes it definitely the lowest price we’ve seen for a brand name 2TB PS5 SSD, especially since this one even includes a slim aluminum heatshield. The VP4300 is an M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 x4 solid state drive with rated transfer speeds of 7,400MB/s read and 6,800MB/s write. That makes it well above the PS5’s recommended 5,600MB/s speed requirement.

More PS5 SSD Deals

There may be other SSD deals out there, but these are the PS5 SSDs we’ve tried ourselves and highly recommend. They also double up as outstanding boot drives for your gaming PC, in case you don’t need additional storage for your PS5 console.

How easy is it to install the SSD?

It’s extremely easy! Removing the case cover is completely toolless. In fact, the only screw you have to remove is the one that keeps the cover for the SSD bay in place. You don’t even put it back when you’re done. Sony has a quick and easy YouTube video guide.

What if the SSD I bought doesn’t have a heatsink?

Sony recommends you install an SSD that has an attached heatsink. If the SSD you purchase doesn’t include one, it’s simple enough to buy one for about $10 on Amazon and add it yourself. Most of these heatsinks are just attached using an adhesive like thermal tape.

For more deals, take a look at our daily deals for today.