2025 is now officially in full swing, and while the nights are still long and the days still short, there’s hope on the horizon for those who like their weather just a tad warmer.
There’s also plenty going on in the world of gaming, which is beginning to boot back up again after the holidays, so say goodbye to that period of inactivity we bemoaned last time around.
Once again, then, let’s get into our very short-range time machine and take a look at what’s been happening in the gaming world this week!
Resident Evil 4 is now the fastest-selling Resident Evil game
Lest you wonder whether remakes are a successful gamble for the companies that make them, wonder no more, because the Resident Evil 4 remake is now the series’ fastest-selling title.
According to analyst and author Alex Aniel, Resident Evil 4, which had sold nine million copies as of December, must have sold a million copies between October and December, making it the fastest-selling game in the franchise.
To be honest, we can’t say we’re surprised, given that we’ve played it and enjoyed the heck out of it. Still, we’re very happy indeed for Capcom and its success!
The Fantastic Four come to Marvel Rivals for Season One
Marvel Rivals’ first season was announced this week, alongside the arrival of four new superheroes in the form of the classic Silver Age family, the Fantastic Four.
That’s right: Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Thing, and the Human Torch will all make their debut in Marvel Rivals, and the game gets new maps as part of this first season as well.
Also in Marvel Rivals news, the arrival of this first season appears to have made the use of mods much more difficult, with players reporting that their favourite skin mods for certain characters no longer work.
Sony is making three new visual media adaptations
If you’re a fan of Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon, or Helldivers, then you’re in luck. Sony announced this week that it will be making visual adaptations of all three of these properties.
The Ghost of Tsushima adaptation is an anime based on the game’s multiplayer Legends mode, and it’s being created in conjunction with anime streaming service Crunchyroll, which is a Sony subsidiary (through parent Aniplex).
Horizon and Helldivers, meanwhile, are getting live-action movies, although they’re very early on in the development process, so don’t expect to see trailers anytime soon.
Call of Duty’s budgets appear to be getting ridiculous
According to a report that was released by Stephen Totilo of Game File this week, Call of Duty budgets are ballooning out of control, with 2020’s Black Ops Cold War reportedly costing more than $700 million to make.
Obviously, the game will have made more than that back in terms of cold, hard sales, as well as DLC and other purchases, but that’s still an astronomical amount of money.
That’s the budget for 2020’s Call of Duty, too, so the figure for last year’s Black Ops Cold War is likely to be even higher than that. We wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that Black Ops 6 had somehow broken the billion mark.
Ex-Starfield designer says players are tired of long games
Will Shen, a designer on Bethesda’s hundred-hour monstrosity Starfield, has come out in support of shorter games, saying that he believes players are “fatigued” with longer experiences.
Shen says that a “growing section of the audience” of games is getting tired of “investing 30-plus, 100-plus hours into a game”, and that they would rather play shorter games like horror title Mouthwashing or platformer Astro Bot.
He also suggests that shorter games tend to attract more players who finish them, and so the discussions around these games are more community-focused as more players have actually engaged with “the entirety of the product”.
Xbox Game Pass’ first 2025 haul is…a bit sad, really
Signing up to Xbox Game Pass can sometimes feel like a bit of a lottery. Will you get an incredible haul of AAA monsters and indie hits alike, or will you get a damp squib of a lineup?
Sadly, the first Game Pass haul of 2025 is in the latter camp. Four of its games are already on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass: My Time at Sandrock, Rolling Hills, Lightyear Frontier, and Robin Hood: Sherwood Builders.
Two other games are being added this month in the form of Diablo and EA Sports UFC 5, so technically, you’re getting a paltry two games in the first half of January. We guess we had to pay the price for Indiana Jones last month.
A new Xbox Developer Direct will air this month
Xbox announced a new Developer Direct show this week, and it’s airing on January 23rd, giving you new looks at upcoming Xbox games set to release in the next year or so.
The presentation will focus heavily on Doom: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, and turn-based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, all of which will get deep dive-style looks at their development processes and gameplay.
However, we’re also getting a rather tantalising new mystery announcement from “a surprise location”. Will it be an existing Xbox studio or a new outfit? You’ll have to tune in on January 23rd to find out!
Lords of the Fallen publisher says no “DEI” in its games
The conversation around the spectre of “DEI” in video games continues, as Lords of the Fallen publisher CI Games says it won’t embed any “social or political agendas” in its games.
CI says that including such things involves a “high risk” of games failing commercially, pointing to “a number of high profile releases underperforming commercially during the last year alone”.
It seems a touch reductionist to us to pin that entirely on “DEI” (a term that is, to our minds, itself massively misunderstood and misused across the industry), but we suppose that CI Games is free to do whatever it likes in its own games.
