Split Fiction, the newest co-op game from writer-director Josef Fares and his Hazelight Studios, released on March 6 and had a gigantic opening weekend.The game reached a peak of 259,003 concurrent players on Steam on Sunday, March 9. That makes it the No. 2 game of all time published by EA in terms of Steam concurrents, surpassed only by the free-to-play battle royale game Apex Legends. These data points come from SteamDB and were first spotted by Twisted Voxel.The top five EA games on Steam ranked by peak concurrent players are:Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Lego Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart (1,972 Pieces) $170 | Releases May 15 Preorder at Lego Store Preorder at Amazon Lego celebrated Mario Day by revealing its latest Nintendo display model for adults: Mario & Standard Kart. The 1,972-piece replica of Mario and his iconic red racing kart releases May 15 and is available to preorder now at the Lego Store for $170. Like several previous Nintendo display models for adults, Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart is exclusive to the Lego Store at launch, but the exclusivity window appears to be shorter this time. Amazon was briefly taking preorders for the upcoming set with a launch date of July 1; we'll update this article if Amazon or other major retailers list the Lego Mario Kart display set. Lego Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart (1,972 Pieces) $170 | Releases May 15 At nearly 2,000 pieces, the Mario Kart display model is one of the largest Super Mario Lego sets. Compared to the smaller-scale Mario Kart playsets for kids that launched in January, the finished build has a lot more detail. This is the most realistic recreation of the mustachioed character's modern design--his head and arms are posable--and the kart looks ripped straight from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.The completed model measures in at approximately 12.5 inches long, 7.5 inches wide, and 8.5 inches tall. The set can be displayed flat or at a drifting angle with the included, buildable display stand.Like other Nintendo display models, Mario & Standard Kart comes with a physical instruction booklet and support for an interactive guide in the Lego Builder app on iOS and Android. With the free app, you can watch each step of the build process in 3D and manipulate the diagram to look at the work-in-progress from any angle you desire. Preorder at Lego Store Preorder at Amazon The new display model will bring the total number of Mario Kart-themed Lego sets to six. As mentioned, the five existing building kits are playsets geared toward kits. Mario's Standard Kart is one of those five kits, though the $20 build is substantially smaller and less detailed at just 174 pieces.In addition to the six retail sets, there's a Lego Store-exclusive Toad Pit Crew figure set that's available through March 11 to all customers who spend $40 or more on Lego Super Mario sets. The freebie promotion excludes preorders, so you'll need to buy kits that are already available to take advantage of the offer.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Sony Santa Monica and Gallery Nucleus are collaborating on an exhibition to celebrate God of War's 20th anniversary later this month, but don't expect any new announcements."With such a stellar lineup and all the anticipation we’ve seen around the anniversary, we do want to be clear that there are no planned announcements for this event," Sony Santa Monica clarified on Twitter.The exhibition runs between March 15-23, with a panel cast and game dev taking place on March 15 and 22. While there won't be any new announcements, attendees will be able to check out and grab limited edition prints, Phantasy Arcade Cabinets, God of War-themed donuts from Moonbridge, and a Kratos beach towel.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Following a big showing at SXSW, Death Stranding 2 now has an official release date of June 26. Preorders will open on March 17, with three different versions of the game available to pre-purchase, each fo which includes a selection of bonuses items you'll get for securing your copy in advance. The most exclusive edition is the Collector’s Edition, which is sold exclusively at PlayStation Direct and comes bundled with heaps of physical goodies, but standard and Digital Deluxe Editions are also available.Death Stranding 2 Preorder BonusesDeath Stranding 2 Preorder BonusesPick up any version of Death Stranding to get the following in-game bonuses:Quokka HologramBattle Skeleton: Silver (LV1, LV2, LV3)Boost Skeleton: Silver (LV1, LV2, LV3)Bokka Skeleton: Silver (LV1, LV2, LV3)Along with these bonuses, the Death Stranding 2 Digital Deluxe and Collector's Editions will also include up to 48-hour early access to the full game starting June 24.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

A new ESRB rating for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle could indicate that the game's PlayStation 5 launch is just around the corner. Though the ESRB rating itself doesn't provide a release date for the PS5 port, its timing does line up with the roadmap previously laid out by Microsoft and Bethesda. Last year, the companies stated that the action-adventure title was scheduled to release on PS5 in Spring 2025. A report from Dealabs, meanwhile, states that The Great Circle will launch on April 17. Last month, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle had a strong showing at the 2024 DICE Awards, winning three major categories: Adventure Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Story, and Outstanding Achievement in Character. For the last one, Harrison Ford has also praised Troy Baker for his work to bring Indy to life in the video game. Ford has played the character on the silver screen in five different movies since the 1980s. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has seen over 4 million players already across PC and Xbox Series X|S. It's also not the only big-name Bethesda (and Microsoft) game planned for PS5 this spring. Doom: The Dark Ages will launch May 15 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

With a new Professor Layton game on the way this year, now is a great time to get reacquainted with the crime-solving sleuth. You can do just that with Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, which is finally coming to Blu-ray in North America later this year. Scheduled to be released on May 27, you can preorder this for $25 through Amazon. Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva $25 | Releases May 27 The new Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva Blu-ray includes both the original Japanese language track and its English dub. That includes Christopher Robin Miller as Professor Layton--a role that he first took up with the original Nintendo games--and several other familiar voices from the games. While the film has been available on streaming platforms before, this is the first time that it has received a US Blu-ray release. You'll also get the original trailers as extras. Preorder at Amazon For those unfamiliar, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva is the first animated feature based on the popular detective series. "Shortly after taking the young Luke under his wing, the world-famous Professor Layton finds himself humming along to the tune of an age-old mystery," the official plot synopsis for the film reads. "When an old student calls upon the professor for help, his investigation leads him to a night at the opera. But what starts off as a riveting night of song is quickly transposed into a game of eternal life or death. Can Layton and Luke solve this deadly puzzle in time? Or is a devious dissonance lying in wait?"If you're interested in more animated adaptations of popular video game series, you'll want to check out Ace Attorney: Complete Season 1 - Essentials on Blu-ray, which is on sale for just $26.24 at Amazon (was $35). Based on Capcom's popular series of courtroom adventure games, the anime is set in the early days of lawyer Phoenix Wright's legal career and sees him slowly learn what it means to be a defender of justice. All 13 episodes from the first season are included on this Blu-ray, alongside clean credit sequences, trailers, and outtakes.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Remedy Entertainment has released a new 1.30 update for Control: Ultimate Edition on PC today. The update will also come to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S at a later date.The main draw of the update is that the mission, Dr. Yoshimi Tokui's Guided Imagery Experience, will now be available when players pick up the Dr. Tokui Tapes collectibles in the Extrasensory Lab of the Research Sector. This mission features voiceover by Hideo Kojima, and was previously exclusive to the PS4 digital deluxe edition of Control.There were several suits that were locked away as a preorder bonuses or rewards for completing certain tasks, but now they're available to all players by equipping them from the Control Point in the Central Executive area. They are the Astral Dive Suit, Tactical Response Gear, Urban Response Gear, and Extradimensional Suit.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

There's a hot new machine from Nintendo that everybody's talking about that just received a major update, and you know we don't mean the Switch 2. Yes, Nintendo's motion-activated alarm clock got a free update recently that adds scenes from the original NES Super Mario Bros. to the proceedings.According to the social media post announcing the move, you can receive these new scenes by connecting your Alarmo to the internet and linking it to your Nintendo Account. These scenes are the first from a retro Nintendo game, as the rest of those with scenes featured are all on the Switch. Those games include Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 3, Pikmin 4, and Ring Fit Adventure. Connecting your Nintendo account will also give you access to scenes from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.Retailing for $100, the Alarmo is a motion-activated alarm clock with sleep tracking features. It offers a variety of alarms, including "Gentle," which keeps the tone at one set volume, and "Steady," which makes the alarm increasingly louder. The Alarmo does not interact with other Nintendo devices and is not a limited-time or limited-edition product, unlike some other Nintendo devices from over the years.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Progression in Diablo 4 will slow down and become more challenging in Season 8, according to Blizzard, citing player feedback as the reason behind the change.In a recent Campfire Chat livestream going over the changes coming to Diablo 4 next season, Blizzard revealed a number of statistics around the currently ongoing Season 7, namely how quickly players can complete it. On average, it took players only around nine hours to reach max level in Season 7, half the time it took players to reach the same point in Season 6. Additionally, Blizzard found that 50% of players are reaching the game's max difficulty of Torment 4 within 15 hours of hitting level 60, much faster than was the case in Season 6. According to Diablo 4 design director Colin Finer, there are a few different reasons for the unintentional increased pace of Season 7. Part of it is the new Season 7 powers that give players even more ways to tear through armies of demons. The new seasonal content, Headhunts, are also quite lucrative in the amount of XP and items they reward, as is the seasonal journey.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Kaitlyn Dever joins the cast of HBO's The Last of Us as Abby for its upcoming second season, and anyone who's played the game or knows the game's story understands how central Abby is to the story. When The Last of Us: Part II came out in 2020, the response to Abby was extreme, with actress Laura Bailey receiving death threats, including threats against her newborn child. Dever said in an interview that while she is aware of the stigma surrounding Abby, she remains focused on doing service to the character and making fans proud."Well, it's hard not to see those things on the internet. It's hard not to stop myself from looking at it every once in a while, especially going into this, for sure," she told ScreenRant. "And I want to do this character justice and make the fans proud by bringing her to life in this kind of way."Dever went on to say she worked with showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann to make sure she was "getting to the core of" who Abby is as a person and what drives her. "Her anger and her frustration and her grief and all of that. I wanted to make sure that that was what I was focusing most of my energy on," she said when asked how much she paid attention to the online chatter about Abby.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Diablo 4 Season 8 will be all about taking on the game's endgame bosses and channeling their powers, Blizzard revealed, along the way confirming the return of one of the franchise's biggest bosses ever.As part of a recent Campfire Chat livestream, Blizzard discussed what players can expect from Season 8. Alongside a slower pace, difficulty changes, and class balance updates, the theme of Season 8 will revolve around a revamped endgame boss system that will make channeling them more straightforward and rewarding. Three new endgame bosses in total will be added as part of Season 8: Urivar and the Harbinger of Hatred from Diablo 4's Vessel of Hatred campaign, and a third that will be familiar to Diablo 3 players. That boss is none other than Belial, the Lord of Lies, who will serve as the game's new pinnacle boss. Players may remember him from his multi-phase Act-2 battle in Diablo 3, the final phase of which his massive form took up the majority of the screen.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Last of Us Season 2 is almost here, and the showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are assuring fans that they have plenty of surprises in store. Season 1 of the show expanded certain elements of the story and switched things around to make it more palatable for television. Season 2 will be no different.While we know some of the story of The Last of Us Part 2 will be used, the game's playtime is at a minimum of 25 hours--double that of the first game--so there's a lot of story to spread out. Talking to ScreenRant, Mazin said he's confident with the changes made and lots of swerves to surprise even the hardcore fans."There are things where we think, 'We love this, but it's worth expanding on or changing to fit the new medium,' and there are things that we think actually wouldn't translate well," he said. "I think you probably should expect the unexpected. We won't always do the things you think we're going to do. Sometimes we do the things you thought we were going to do in a different way, at a different time."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

One year ago, Disney invested $1.5 billion into Epic Games to create a massive Disney x Fortnite experience that has yet to come to fruition. But at South by Southwest, one of Disney's Imagineers teased the way that this online experience may be able to play off of a guest's trip to a Disney theme park.During the Disney parks panel at SXSW, Walt Disney Imagineering's Asa Kalama--who oversees interactive experiences at Disney theme parks--used a ride in Star Wars Galaxy's Edge as an example of how the real-life trip at the theme park can affect the Disney x Fortnite game for visitors."Imagine... what if you could go to the park and have an experience in Smuggler's Run [and] go on this amazing mission, but then have that affect or connect your gameplay at home," said Kalama.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Seth Rogen shared a surprising bit of PlayStation trivia during a red carpet interview at SXSW. When asked what the funniest note he'd received on a script was, Rogen said it was a note from Sony on the screenplay for 2007's Superbad, which Rogen co-wrote.According to Rogen, a scene in which Evan (Michael Cera) can be seen playing a game on a PlayStation 2 was originally meant to show Seth (Jonah Hill) using the console--but Sony wasn't having it."Jonah Hill's Character, Seth, was so reprehensible to the studio," Rogen explained, laughing. "They were like--there's a scene where [Cera and Hill] are playing video games--and [Sony's] like, 'Jonah can't touch a PlayStation.' They were like, 'We can't have him interact with our products as a character, because [he's] too vile a character.'"Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

It's going to be a few months before Death Stranding 2: On the Beach arrives, and if you really want to feel like you're part of that game world, then you can start saving up some cash for a very fancy Hamilton watch that'll be arriving alongside the game. It's only $1,600, but it is the exact same model worn by the Solid Snake-like character Neil in the SXSW trailer.The Hamilton watch as it appears in Death Stranding 2: On the BeachGallery As spotted by Automaton (via GamesRadar), this is a new timepiece from Swiss watchmaker Hamilton that was revealed shortly after the 10-minute Death Stranding 2 SXSW trailer went live. Priced at $1,583--or 1,395 Swiss Francs so be prepared for some exchange rate fluctuations--the "American Classic Boulton: Death Stranding 2 Limited Edition" watch is a pretty good-looking piece of equipment even without its links to the video game.Limited to 2,000 pieces, it features a full titanium case, automatic mechanical movement, and seven different pieces of sapphire glass, so it might survive one or two Timefall sessions if you ever find yourself stuck in a Death Stranding apocalypse.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com