2023-12

James McCaffrey, actor best known to video game fans as the voice of Max Payne, among other characters, has passed away. He was 65. TMZ reports that McCaffrey died on Sunday after a battle with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer. A rep for McCaffrey tells the outlet that the actor died surrounded by friends and family. McCaffrey's extensive on-screen credits include roles in Law & Order, Suits, and Blue Bloods, and video games such as 2008’s Alone in the Dark and 2005’s Area 51. However, Remedy fans knew him best as the voice of Max Payne in all three entries. Furthermore, McCaffrey voiced Thomas Zane in Alan Wake, Zachariah Trench in Control, and, most recently, Alex Casey in Alan Wake 2. We are deeply saddened to hear about the passing of our beloved friend and collaborator James McCaffrey, the iconic...

Sea of Stars took home the award for Best Independent Game at The Game Awards 2023 earlier this month and now, developer Sabotage Studio has revealed the RPG has surpassed 4 million players since launch. Sea of Stars is available on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC, launching back in August, and is free to subscribers on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, as well as PlayStation Plus' Extra and Premium subscribers.  Alongside Sea of Stars' TGAs win, Sabotage took home the Best Indie Game award at the Golden Joysticks and was recognized by the British Academy Film and Television Awards as one of the best games from 2023.  "Sea of Stars is the game of my dreams, and seeing its quest resonate so strongly with players and critics means the world to everyone at Sabotage," studio co-founder and...

The IGN Award winners have been announced, including our picks for Best Video Game, Best Movie, and Best TV series....

Netflix has announced that it is remaking the first saga of One Piece, and it's doing it with one of the best animation studios out there.  Over the weekend, Netflix released a minute-and-a-half video celebrating the 25th anniversary of the One Piece anime, revealing in it that Wit Studio, the team behind Spy Family and the first three seasons of Attack on Titan, is producing "an all-new anime adaptation of the One Piece manga starting from the iconic East Blue saga." It will come to Netflix, although the company hasn't said when to expect it.  Check out the announcement for yourself below:  Notably, the East Blue saga is the first sage of the One Piece manga and anime, covering 100 chapters and roughly 60 episodes, respectively. This remake, which will be called The One Piece, is an anime adaptation of...

As we eagerly anticipate IGN’s Best Game of 2023 announcement, we as the Podcast Unlocked panel thought we’d tell you what we think is the best Xbox game of this year....

Not just stellar. Interstellar....

In this IGN exclusive interview about Disney Lorcana, we learn how Mufasa's tragic death in The Lion King made for a fun new game mechanic....

More than two months after leaving Platinum Games, co-founder and The Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya has revealed why he left the studio. In a new interview with IGN, Kamiya told the publication he decided to leave "because I felt that the direction the company was heading in was different from my beliefs as a developer." "Without that element of trust, I couldn't continue working there, and so I left, so that I could continue working in what I consider to be the right way," Kamiya said. "I don't think of games as products, but rather as works of art. I want to put my artistry into games and deliver games that could only be made by Hideki Kamiya, so that players can enjoy Hideki Kamiya games exactly as they are. "I decided to leave the company and forge...

Rocket Arena, the multiplayer rocket-powered shooter, developed by First Strike Games as an EA Originals title, was removed from sale last month without warning or a word on why, as reported by RockPaperShotgun. Now, roughly a month later, First Strike Games has announced Rocket Arena will be sunset and its servers shut down in March.  More specifically, Rocket Arena will come to an end at Noon PT/3 p.m. ET on March 21, 2024. As for why, the team doesn't really address that in its announcement but presumably, it has lost the player count needed to sustain its live-service, multiplayer model.  Rocket Arena will be sunset on March 21, 2024 12:00 PM PDT. We’ll have some community events leading up to the date. Read more at https://t.co/B59QPBDLzk and https://t.co/7Okzpse1Ht. pic.twitter.com/hFnJViw8jz — RocketArena (@RocketArena) December 14, 2023 "It's with a heavy heart from all...

Naughty Dog has announced it has ceased production of The Last of Us Online, its long-in-development multiplayer title set within its popular post-apocalyptic universe.  In a blog post, Naughty Dog explains it made the “incredibly difficult” decision to cancel the project after it apparently became so big that the studio realized it would need to devote precious resources to support it post-launch for years to come. When faced with the reality of having to become a studio solely dedicated to supporting a live service game or to continue making single-player experiences, it chose the latter.  Here's Naughty Dog's full statement: We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online. There’s no easy way to say this: We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game....