The story that caught my eye this week was Sean Hollister’s interview with Valve on The Verge, where the company revealed that any successor to the existing Steam Deck would concentrate on quality of life functions like battery life and an improved screen, as opposed to delivering much in the way of extra performance. Improved performance is always a good thing but in this case, I think the decision is a sound one: it sets a baseline for all Steam Deck users, it keeps the current hardware in the game, and it addresses the key issues have with the existing model....

Beyond the seismic Microsoft/Activision news, the team also cover the bizarre GPU that is the Radeon RX 6500 XT (see Will’s more fully featured review right here. The product’s attracted a lot of flak, lacks key features and performance is not great but it has led me to think about how GPUs are reviewed. The standard MO is simply to whack everything up to ultra then compare the new GPU to existing ones....

The GamesIndustry.biz interview with Jim Ryan paints a picture of a company looking to acquire the personnel and the skills to compete in the lucrative games-as-a-service arena, while a snapshot of 860,000 Destiny 2 active users during the course of one day in a relatively quiet period, meaning that while the game doesn’t dominate discourse, it’s clearly got a large, committed audience: good business for Sony then, and one where you probably wouldn’t want to lose the 32 percent gaming on an Xbox console....

Blizzard’s free-to-play dungeon crawler was set to launch in China on 23rd June. Yesterday, that no longer became the case, as local publisher NetEase claimed in a brief statetement that it now needed to “optimise” the game’s experience. The last-minute delay has raised eyebrows, especially in the wake of headlines surrouding Diablo Immortal’s monetisation practices. More curious, the delay follows a ban for Diablo Immortal’s official Weibo account - China’s major social network site....

A thread on the game’s subreddit community - complete with examples and screenshots - is claiming that “there’s a bug that reduces the XP earned on a significant portion of kills and XP globes”. “We don’t fully understand why or when it will happen,” explains u/staplepies (thanks, NME), who’s one of five players “looking at this on and off for the last month or so”. “It seems to vary in frequency/impact from zone to zone, and possibly based on the time of day, but we’ve yet to be able to discern any reliable pattern or cause....

Available for free on Steam, Dota Underlords is similar to its peers as a strategic unit management game, but with particular quirks and differences that separate it from the rest. Like any Auto Battler, Dota Underlords comes with a daunting learning curve that might make getting to the real meat of the game time consuming and frustrating. While the game does have a tutorial to help explain some of the very basic mechanics like how to buy XP, it doesn’t tell you why or when to do so....

We know the game is codenamed Canis Majoris and will be built in Unreal Engine 5, but that’s all we know. We don’t know anything about how, or whether, the game’s content will change. We don’t know how far CDPR is willing to go. I was speaking to Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle about this during the latest episode of One-to-One, my podcast series, which is available to everyone now (search for “Eurogamer Podcasts” wherever you listen to them)....

In the Xbox 360 remaster of Rare’s groundbreaking N64 shooter, fan-favourite NPC Dr. Doak was replaced with “Dr. Rakhmanov”. Dr. Doak was based on David Doak, one of the real-life developers of GoldenEye 007 at Rare and actual real-life doctor. Prior to working at Rare, Doak was involved in scientific research, using what were for the time high-end graphics workstations on protein structure determination. (Work on these Silicon Graphics machines helped Doak got an in at Rare....

While most of the show was taken up with slightly laboured reminiscences of things past as launch looms (ie. the previous five livestream episodes), Techland did managed to squeeze in one notable bit of new gameplay in the form of a co-op sneak peek. Co-op will enable up to four players to work through the game together from beginning to end, sharing undead slaughtering duties and story progression too. Friends can vote on key story decisions whenever narrative choices are presented as part of a co-op play-through - although the host will always get the final say on how things play out - and players will be able to take any items earned and character progress made back to their own games once a session ends....

First announced back in 2016, the live-action Dynasty Warriors movie is being produced by China 3D Digital Entertainment Limited and, like the video games, draws inspiration from the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. It’s being directed by Roy Chow, based on a script by Christine To, and will pit game heroes Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei - as played by Tony Yang, Geng Han, and Justin Cheung respectively - against the powerful Lu Bu (Louis Koo)....

Alongside concrete press conference details already announced separately by certain companies (Microsoft, Ubisoft, Nintendo), there are mentions of various publisher presentations which will slot into E3 2021 programming. Hopefully we’ll get a clearer timeframe for everything over the next week. Saturday, 12th June will include “press conferences from Ubisoft and Gearbox”, with a pre-show livestream starting at 6pm UK time. Ubisoft dated its E3 week Ubisoft Forward several months ago....

In a company “Town Hall” meeting with employees, EA acknowledged the disappointing launch of Battlefield 2042, and discussed plans to improve the game and the franchise going forward (thanks, Xfire). Laura Miele, EA’s chief studios officer, said the company “failed to meet the expectations of our players, and also clearly missed our own expectations”. Identifying the reasons for the game’s failure, Miele attributed part of the blame on the huge ambitions for the project, combined with the global pandemic which created unexpected variables in the development process....

The league is home to some of the biggest football clubs in the world, such as Real Madrid and Barcelona. The sponsorship deal, which Marca reports will cost EA €30m euros a year, will include “title-naming rights for all La Liga competitions” and a “complete rebrand of La Liga with EA Sports including all logos, graphics, fonts and other visual elements”. A statement from La Liga also details the league’s interest in technology and grassroot initiatives with EA to “truly immerse fans into the world of football” both in reality and virtually....

This week, Wright slammed a judge’s lenient sentence for a teenager who hurled racial abuse at the Arsenal legend on social media last year. 18-year-old Patrick O’Brien lost a game of FIFA after playing with the Ian Wright icon card in the Ultimate Team mode. The Irish teen then sent real-life Ian Wright awful racist abuse on Instagram, amounting to 20 messages in May 2020. O’Brien apologised and was spared a conviction after pleading guilty, leading Wright to issue a statement saying he was “disappointed” by the verdict....

Zampella revealed EA’s plans to create a multiple-game “connected Battlefield universe” in an interview with GameSpot, explaining it would feature an interconnected world with shared characters and stories, and “the player at the center”. The aim of the move, Zampella claimed, is to “grow Battlefield and meet players where they play through various experiences and business models”, including the upcoming Battlefield Mobile. Alongside that mobile instalment, which is in development at Industrial Toys, Ripple Effect (formerly DICE LA) is reportedly working on a new title as part of EA’s fledging Battlefield universe plans, while the recently announced Seattle-based studio founded by Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto is said to be focussed on world-building and narrative across a “variety of experiences” in the Battlefield franchise....

However, provided you know where to look, it’s possible to find multiple armor sets without much playtime or facing any bosses - perfect if you have yet to significantly level up. There will be some death-defying trips into dungeons, high level areas or completing short quests, but if you want to find the best early armor to give you a fast defensive boost, the following will be of use. Our list of the best Elden Ring armor sets you can find from easy early locations: Looking for some direction?...

There are a range of Keepsakes to choose from, such as a Golden Seed, which reinforces your Sacred Flask, and Fanged Imp Ashes - one of the many Spirit Ash summons found throughout the game. Keepsakes offer a useful boost, especially in the early stages of the game, so it’s important you pick the right one for your playstyle. To help you make this decision, we cover what is the best starting Keepsake item in Elden Ring below....

Starfield dominated Microsoft and Bethesda’s E3 event and was arguably the biggest game on show over the fortnight, though praise was hardly unanimous. It looked like a Bethesda RPG, many said, somehow not expecting exactly just that. Between the news you can’t fly to space and won’t have a voice, was it really as disappointing as some have made out? Finally, with this main glut of not-E3 conferences done and dusted, talk turns to next year - when 2023 will see the return of both E3 and Summer Game Fest as in-person events....

(Unfortunately we didn’t see the likes of Final Fantasy 16, the next entry in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series, nor Street Fighter 6 - perhaps I was the only person holding out hope for that last one!) State of Play kicked off with the announcement of Exoprimal, a new 2023 co-op action game from Capcom in which you fight loads of dinosaurs. No, it’s not Dino Crisis. Perhaps that’s a good thing....

As previously announced, it includes a brand-new round, over 40 variations for existing game types, and more - some of which make an appearance in Fall Guys’ typically raucous Season 3.5 launch trailer below. Additional details on bug fixes and the like are available in developer Mediatonic’s accompanying patch notes. ORIGINAL STORY 1/2/21: We’re just shy of seven weeks into Fall Guys’ third season - which has given the knockabout multiplayer game an appropriately wintery “icy fresh makeover” - and the time is now right for developer Mediatonic’s mid-season update, which arrives tomorrow, 2nd February....