In a post on Facebook, the famed Japanese developer said he recently founded Itagaki Games. This is not Tecmo, nor is it Valhalla, Itagaki said. Itagaki, of Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden fame, revealed the news as part of a self-published Q&A interview between himself and Bloomberg that didn’t make the cut for a January article on the original Xbox. Itagaki has a long history of working with Microsoft....

However, these plans were scuppered when Activision merged developer Vicarious Visions into Blizzard - a move which saw the studio re-named to Blizzard Albany and re-emerge as a support studio for the Diablo franchise and other Blizzard titles. Hawk spoke of the now-scrapped plans in detail for the first time last night, while a guest on a fan Twitch livestream. “That was the plan,” Hawk said, referring to a potential THPS3+4....

A change to the way bans work on the platform meant that banned accounts were automatically removed as a follower. However, Twitch has rolled back on this change a day later. “While working to curb followbot abuse, a product feature was inadvertently released early,” Twitch tweeted. “As a result, accounts that were banned in a channel were automatically removed as a follower. We’ve rolled back this change and bans should now be functioning as expected....

On 7th December, Twitch announced it had added “tens of thousands” of new global charities to its charity tool for streamers. The feature was added in July in a US-only beta, and became available to all partners in August. Twitch and Paypal Giving Fund do not take a cut of donations raised through the charity tool. “We added tens of thousands more Paypal-vetted charities from the US and dozens of different countries,” Twitch stated in its blog announcement....

The challenge, set earlier this year by streamer Charlie “Cr1tikal” White, was that someone had to complete the entirety of the Halo 2 Anniversary campaign without dying on Legendary difficulty, with all “Skull” modifiers on. The effect of the modifiers range from increasing the health of enemies to all enemies being permanently cloaked. The only modifier that must be kept off is “Envy” skull, which replaces Master Chief’s torch with an active camouflage system (because that would make things too easy)....

Boost has been available as a test since last December and allows viewers to pool free channel points to boost a streamer to a front page slot for extra promotion. Now, instead of channel points, viewers will be able to pay money to achieve the same. However, streamers will not receive any share of that money. Twitch product manager Jacob Rosok explained the new feature during the latest Patch Notes video on 30th September....

GSD chart data reported by GamesIndustry.biz shows that 67 per cent of UK game sales were made through Nintendo eShop, PSN, Steam and Xbox Live last year, up from 52 per cent in 2019. The shift to digital game sales has been ongoing for years, and 2020’s results are just the latest step along that path. The fact 2020’s figure is so high is unsurprising, with many bricks and mortar shops shut for much of the year while in lockdown....

The name change comes as Ubisoft attempts to recover from the botched announcement of the game last year. The announcement was criticised by Tom Clancy fans for straying too far from the franchise’s serious military themes and formula. The trailer revealed graffiti-filled maps and specialists with attitude. The rebranding appears to have been hastily deployed, with the XDefiant landing page lacking any images or a fleshed-out logo compared to the previous page....

Although we knew Polfeldt was planning to step down from his senior post to “pursue other challenges” at Ubisoft, originally he had planned to take “a long break” before “embark[ing] on a new adventure in Ubisoft” after a six-month sabbatical. Now it seems he’s leaving the developer/publisher altogether, having reportedly submitted his six-month notice at the beginning of the year. Polfeldt had been leading the Sweden-based team responsible for the upcoming Avatar game as well as leading on titles like The Division and Ubisoft’s new Star Wars game....

Prior to today’s announced, the Sands of Time remake was being developed by Ubisoft Pune and Mumbai, but the project has been dogged by setbacks since its unveiling in September 2020. Shortly after its announcement, Ubisoft moved its launch date from January 2021 to March that same year, but February brought a second delay, this time indefinitely, while the team worked on delivering “a remake that feels fresh while remaining faithful to the original”....

This bundle, known as the Hazel Bundle, will allow players to “suit up” as Umbrella Acadamy’s other time travelling assassin Hazel (the clue was in the name there), thanks to the new legendary operative skin. It comes with the pink dog head and all, and is available now. “Everything happens like it’s supposed to… including your enemies getting eliminated,” reads the teaser for this latest Call of Duty collaboration, which you can see for yourself below....

If you’re picking up the collectibles while playing through the game for the first time, they’re all listed as they occur in our full walkthrough (linked below). But if you are hopping around the game mopping the collectibles up after completion, then you might find the guides in this article more useful. On this page, we present a full list of Treasure locations, in the order they appear in the in-game menu....

The Neutral and Pacifist endings are both very similar in terms of outcome and what needs to be done to achieve them, but saving everyone and solving the mysteries are not the only way to get things done - you can always kill everyone instead. We’d strongly recommend you complete Undertale on Pacifist before taking on a Genocide run as it will have some subtle effects on any future playthroughs you make....

Breaking from the traditional “find red key, use red key to open red door, repeat” formula of most first person shooters, Unreal Tournament instead puts you up against a series of AI bots, which are designed to mimic real human players. And they do it pretty well. In fact, at a (somewhat premature) launch party back in September, UT’s bots passed the Turing Test by fooling me into thinking they were real players for almost half an hour!...

You can probably see where this is going already, but look at a game’s Steam page and you’ll see several prominent fields in the info panel to the right. A game’s customer rating, displayed in bright blue if positive, is easy to spot at a glance, and it’s likely to be the first place many Steam users look when opening a page. Crucially for this story, however, there’s some other similarly presented information nearby, in the form of developer and publisher fields....

The video, below, is a straightforward summary of the features of Valve’s upcoming handheld, and succinctly makes the case for the device. Introducing Steam Deck as “the most powerful gaming handheld in the world”, Valve talks up the controls, fidelity and integration with Steam. “Your Steam games are already on your Deck,” we’re told. “Just sign in and play.” Oh, and don’t forget you can expand the included storage with a Micro SD card, and stream games from your PC....

The video below, from People Make Games, includes a raft of interviews with former BioWare developers who discuss the events leading up to the release of Mass Effect 3 in March 2012, the backlash to its ending, and the decision to update the game to address the complaints. Mass Effect 3 contained one of the most controversial endings in video game history. It presented players with three choices - each resulting in a different end state for the galaxy - but in gameplay terms there was little difference between them....

This category is without a doubt part of the list of Vanguard’s best weapons. It packs more than just a punch and is deadly in close quarters, guaranteeing single or double shot kills in many scenarios. This page will cover how to unlock the Combat Shotgun in the fastest way possible, and the best Combat Shotgun loadout and Combat Shotgun class recommendations to enhance its capabilities even further. On this page: In order to unlock the Combat Shotgun, you have to reach Player Level 14, which can be done easily without too much of an effort....

Featured during The Haunting, Ghosts of Verdasnk features a total of nine challenges to complete. As well as a reward for each, you will obtain the new LAPA SMG for completing them all. This guide explains where to answer phones to complete one of the aforementioned challenges, as well as how to operate them so you can complete the Ghosts of Verdansk event fast. If you’re looking for more help with the event, see our Sacred Ground locations explainer....

Our Watch Dogs 2 walkthrough gives you a complete step-by-step guide through the game’s story missions, while this Watch Dogs 2 guide page will also inform you of the many other activities you can get up. If you want to delve into any story stuff, then the DedSec app is your best bet, while the Nudle map will also point the starting locations of quests you’ve unlocked. There’s also Cooperative Operations that show up in the app - more on online activities later on - but since these are randomly generated, we don’t have specific guides available to help....