Another week in the gaming world has gone by, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s coinciding with yet another heatwave that’s hitting the UK right as this humble missive is being typed.
Luckily, gaming news is weather-agnostic, so while households up and down the country might be sweating it out right now, that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of gaming news to pore over, as usual.
Draw up a chair, grab a drink, and let’s take a look at what’s been occurring in the world of gaming over the past seven days or so!
Metroid Prime 4 delay speculation builds
We’re in August now, and the lack of a Metroid Prime 4 release date has been worrying fans. Initially, a press release from Nintendo appeared to mollify those fears, but that press release seems to have been altered since.
According to Eurogamer, the press release, which looks forward to Fan Expo Canada, once promised fans could play Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which would be “available later in 2025”, at the event.
However, accessing the press release at time of writing shows that the text proclaiming the game’s availability has been removed. If that’s the case, a delay could be incoming.
Xbox announces its Game Pass lineup for the first half of August
This week, Xbox revealed the games coming to its Game Pass service for the first half of the month, and while it’s a relatively slim haul, there’s still plenty to enjoy.
Subscribers to the service’s Ultimate, PC, and Standard tiers can enjoy the likes of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Rain World, and Aliens: Fireteam Elite this month.
Meanwhile, if you’re a Standard subscriber, your lineup will be bolstered by Citizen Sleeper 2, Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders, MechWarrior 5: Clans, and Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap in August.
Genshin Impact soon won’t be playable on PS4
If you’re still enjoying HoYoverse’s open-world RPG Genshin Impact on your PS4, you may want to pay attention to this one, because the developer is ending support for the game on Sony’s last-gen console soon.
Support for the game on PS4 will end on April 8th next year, but you’ll no longer be able to download it starting from September 10th if you’ve never downloaded it on PS4 before.
If you have, however, you’ll be able to continue playing until the shutdown date, even though in-game purchases will be disabled on February 25th.
The new Humble Choice lineup is here
Humble Choice is a monthly bundle that gives you access to a number of pretty high-profile games for a darned reasonable price, and this month’s lineup was revealed this week.
For just £11.49, you’ll get games like Persona 5 Royal (which, in itself, offers more than 100 hours of gameplay), Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, and My Time at Sandrock this month.
That’s in addition to the Humble Vault, which includes indie games like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy and The Corridor, and discounts from the Humble Store as well.
The PS5 has now sold over 80 million units
If you’re wondering just how popular the PlayStation 5 is as a console, look no further than Sony’s latest financial report, in which the company confirms that the PS5 has sold over 80 million units.
When the PS5 was first released back in 2020, it suffered from supply chain issues, meaning many customers struggled to obtain a console for at least the first year or two of its life cycle.
Considering that, the PS5’s sales numbers aren’t too shabby at all. It’s clearly won this generation’s console war, although it’s probably also fair to say Xbox isn’t playing any more.
Nintendo’s Indie World showcase brings Switch indie news
After Nintendo held a third-party publisher showcase last week, it was time this week for an Indie World show, in which we learned about indie games heading to the Switch and Switch 2 soon.
The show brought glimpses of some pretty cute-looking indies, including the likes of Metroidvania Well Dweller, lonely-looking herding game Herdling, and post-apocalyptic underwater RPG Glaciered.
It wasn’t perhaps the most surprising show, but it still gave us a glimmer of hope that Nintendo’s Switch 2 will build itself around indie games in the same way the first platform did.
Contraband has apparently been cancelled
Contraband, the game that is (or was) in development at Just Cause’s Avalanche Studios, has reportedly been cancelled, if Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier is to be believed.
We hadn’t heard anything about the game in the four years since it was revealed, so it’s perhaps not much of a surprise that it’s been shut down, but it’s still sad.
The cancellation comes after various high-profile Xbox projects, including Everwild by Rare and Perfect Dark by The Initiative, were shut down in July.
It looks like Bithell Games might be closing down
Bithell Games, the studio behind the likes of Thomas Was Alone and John Wick Hex, looks like it might be shutting down, according to an announcement made by the studio this week.
In the statement, the studio’s Mike Bithell says that his company is letting “the majority of our full-time staff” go, following a failure to “secure a new larger-scale project”.
Bithell Games is just one of many studios suffering from layoffs, downsizing, or closure in the last year or two, as the industry continues to haemorrhage jobs.
A Far Cry TV series appears to be in development
Ubisoft apparently accidentally revealed the existence of a Far Cry TV show this week, and although the studio hastily deleted the news, it wasn’t fast enough for Reddit not to pick up on the announcement.
The show will apparently take an anthology approach, so each season will focus on a different character and take place in “a new world with a different cast of characters”.
That’s a neat way to follow the structure of the game series. Let’s hope that we get to see more of the franchise’s signature charismatic villains than we do in the games themselves, eh?
