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Category: Video Games
Metaphor: ReFantazio, the high-fantasy RPG from Persona’s designers, now has a playable demo
Metaphor: ReFantazio is either a high-fantasy Persona or a Shin Megami Tensei with cool fonts and a warm heart. Edwin dug its hybrid combat system, while James was moved by its mad libs monster design. It has an October 11th release date, but you don’t have to wait until then to begin plotting it and you along these various axes. There’s a demo you can play out now.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Delay Puts It in Competition With Ghost of Yotei, but Ubisoft CEO Says There’s Room for Both
With Assassin’s Creed Shadows getting delayed into 2025, it is now in direct competition with Ghost of Yotei, the Ghost of Tsushima sequel announced during yesterday’s Sony State of Play.
The move begs comparison between the two, as they’re both games set in feudal Japan and feature classical images of ninjas, samurai, and ronin. But despite the similarities, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot says there’s room enough for two big open-world action-adventure games set in Japan.
“There’s a lot of space for very high-quality games, and those two games can sell very well,” Guillemot said.
On what differentiates the two, Guillemot focused on Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ dual protagonists, which allows players to take control of either a ninja or a samurai.
“The focus is to really make sure that we deliver a fantastic experience with this dual protagonist approach and two different and complimentary gameplays…. a setting taking place in feudal Japan should be really enticing,” he said.
One way or another, Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be facing a lot of competition now that it’s been pushed into February 2025, as it will be pitted against Avowed, Civilization VII, Monster Hunter Wilds, and a host of other high-profile games. Indeed, 2025 is shaping up to be a very busy year in general thanks to the expected release of the Switch 2 and GTA VI.
To try and give Assassin’s Creed Shadows a boost, Ubisoft plans to release it Day 1 on Steam in a shift from its previous strategy. It also confirmed that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will include PS5 Pro enhancements.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows releases February 14 on PS5, Xbox, and PC, and you can read our hands-off preview right here. As for Ghost of Yotei, we don’t have a release date yet, but expect it to come out closer to the holidays. In the meantime, you can read about the best video games of 2024 right here.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot: ‘Our Goal Is Not to Push Any Specific Agenda’
In a note to investors on Wednesday, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot acknowledged that the company’s “second quarter fell short of expectations” and vowed to launch “a review aimed at further improving our execution.”
But Guillemot also addressed some of the cultural conversations happening around the company lately, which have intensified around Star Wars Outlaws and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows (which was delayed to February 2025 today) in particular.
“Finally, let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately,” Guillemot said. “I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”
Otherwise, Guillemot stated an emphasis on “a player-centric, gameplay-first approach,” while focusing on “focusing on two key verticals – Open World Adventures and GaaS-native experiences.”
Read Guillemot’s full statement below.
Ubisoft last commented on some of the conversation surrounding Assassin’s Creed Shadows in July, issuing a controversial statement to its Japanese fans in which it apologized for promotional materials that “have caused concern” among its community.
Guillemot’s statement is one aspect of Ubisoft’s message to investors that’s been making headlines today. Elsewhere in the note, Ubisoft admitted that its most recent release, Star Wars Outlaws, had a “softer than expected launch,” and revealed that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will mark a return to the company’s releases hitting Steam on Day 1.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows delayed to 2025 as Ubisoft try to recover from “softer than expected” Star Wars Outlaws launch
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The AssCreed faithful have waited a thousand years for a sequel set in feudal Japan, birthplace of ninjas and samurai. Woe unto ye dreamers of Ubisoft takes on Tenchu, for you must carry that candle for a little longer. Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been delayed till next year. It was due to launch on 12th November 2024 – now, it will release on 14th February 2025.
Ranked Mode and a New Character in 3on3 Freestyle’s World of Street Ball
Summary
- Eye-catching new character update
- Variety in ranked modes
- Invite friends and play on Xbox Series X|S
Step Up Your Game with DJ Bagman, the Newest Character in 3on3 FreeStyle: Special Buff Ranked Season Now Live.
3on3 FreeStyle, the fast-paced street basketball game, features a diverse roster of 49 unique characters, each equipped with distinct skills and attributes. The latest addition to the lineup DJ Bagman, brings a fresh tactical dimension to the game and adds a new layer of unpredictability and excitement to the court.
Introducing DJ Bagman: A Mysterious Force on the Court
DJ Bagman is not just any new character; he’s a game-changer. With a unique skill set that makes him stand out from the crowd, DJ Bagman is designed to challenge and excite players on both sides of the court. One of his most remarkable attributes is his ability to create an illusion of himself every time he performs a dribble skill, adding a layer of unpredictability to his movements. This ability can be used to outsmart opponents, creating openings for aggressive offensive plays.
In addition to his illusion ability, DJ Bagman offers a diverse array of skills that make him a force to be reckoned with. He is immune to being knocked down while performing dribble moves, allowing him to maintain momentum in the heat of the game. Furthermore, DJ Bagman carries a special buff that increases his shooting success rate, making him a dangerous threat from all areas of the court. Whether you’re looking to confuse defenders with his illusions or capitalize on his increased shooting accuracy, DJ Bagman is the perfect addition for players looking to dominate the game with clever tricks and relentless offensive pressure.
New Competitive Season: Rotating Ranked Modes
The latest competitive season of 3on3 FreeStyle brings an exciting rotation of ranked modes, each offering unique challenges and strategies. The ranked modes now include the following:
- Normal Ranked Mode: A best of three format where players must win two out of three rounds. In this mode, ability cards, position buff effects, and freestyle moves are active, allowing for deep customization and strategic play.
- 3X3 Ranked Mode: An eight-minute match with only character stats in play. Ability cards, position buff effects, and freestyle moves are disabled, making this mode a true test of raw character skill and team strategy.
- Astro Buff Rank Mode : A fast-paced, three-minute single-round game where players benefit from a special ability buff on top of the standard ability cards, position buffs, and freestyle moves. This mode keeps matches short, intense, and full of surprises.
These rotating ranked modes provide fresh, engaging gameplay for every kind of player, whether you thrive on the depth of customization or prefer a purer form of competition.
Friend Invitation Event: Share the Fun and Earn Rewards
Now’s the perfect time to invite your friends to the court! The Friend Invitation Event allows players who are level 5 or above to invite up to five friends to join the game. Invited friends can use an instant code to claim special rewards, making it easy for new players to jump into the action. Returning users can also be invited, ensuring that everyone has the chance to reap the benefits of this event. It is a great way to build your team, strengthen your connections, and earn exclusive rewards that will enhance your gameplay experience.
Elevating Your 3on3 FreeStyle Experience
With DJ Bagman’s diverse skill set, the current ranked mode featuring Special Buff Ranked Mode, and the Friend Invitation Event, there’s never been a better time to dive into 3on3 FreeStyle. Whether you’re perfecting your competitive skills, customizing your characters to reflect your unique playstyle, or inviting friends to experience the thrill, 3on3 FreeStyle continues to push the boundaries of street basketball gameplay.
As the game evolves, we are committed to enhancing the overall player experience. In addition to new characters and modes, we are actively working on improving the user interface (UI) to make your time on the court even more seamless and enjoyable. With regular updates and a focus on user feedback, players can expect exciting new features and refinements in the near future to ensure the best gameplay experience possible. The game is now available on Xbox Series X|S, bringing its dynamic and strategic street basketball action to an even broader audience. Get ready for more exciting updates and keep honing your skills as we continue to improve 3on3 FreeStyle for our dedicated community.
3on3 FreeStyle
JOYCITY Corp.
Welcome to one of the most diverse and competitive but unifying sports in the world – street basketball.
3on3 FreeStyle features fast-paced real-time basketball match against live opponents. It is you with friends versus three of them!
You can play with your friends via online or at home. It is time for you to create your own style with turns you into a street basketball legend.
Features:
3 vs 3 Multiplayer Mode
1 vs 1 Multiplayer Mode
The post Ranked Mode and a New Character in 3on3 Freestyle’s World of Street Ball appeared first on Xbox Wire.
First-look report: PS5 Pro games
Kristen and I got a chance to go eyes on (and hands on) with the PlayStation Pro console for the first time, and first impressions are promising. Though we didn’t have to time fully investigate every one of the games at last week’s hands-on event, even a cursory review of the PS5 Pro Enhanced games on display revealed immediate and noticeable benefits compared to the current PS5 console.
It was interesting to see how different studios leveraged PS5 Pro’s advanced hardware. Many PS5 games currently allow players to choose between Fidelity and Performance modes to cater to players’ tastes. Some of the PS5 Pro games we saw seemed to combine the benefits of both high fidelity and high performance, taking the experience to another level.
This “best of both worlds” approach was fully apparent in Horizon Forbidden West‘s Pro Performance mode expected to land on November 7 with the launch of PS5 Pro. Compared to the stock Performance mode on PS5, the extra horsepower afforded by PS5 Pro allows for the same high framerate while massively improving image quality. Visual grittiness in fine environmental details like moss, leaves, and the red stealth bushes is banished, but even some textures and holograms looked noticeably cleaner and crisper. The Pro Performance mode also benefits the game’s volumetric effects; misty sunbeams were free of distracting shimmers and strobing we noticed in the PS5’s stock Performance mode.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth sported an impressive PS5 Pro glow up, sporting a high framerate and pin-sharp presentation in its new Enhanced Mode due out November 7. While exploring the countryside, we observed crystal clear vistas devoid of distracting shimmering and visual noise, particularly in classic trouble spots like far-off trees and structures. Then we visited the Gold Saucer’s high-contrast environments, where the neon lights resolved cleanly against the darker environment surfaces. Perhaps more importantly, the high framerate had tangible benefits for combat and traversal, making this a significant upgrade.
The Last of Us Part II Remastered gave another impressive demonstration of PS5 Pro’s vision of high visual quality married to a high framerate. Blades of grass and leaves resolved cleanly, without any distracting shimmering effects or visual noise. Similarly, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was observed running at both a high frame rate and crisp Fidelity-mode resolution and feature set, including its signature ray-traced reflections. It wove a gorgeous presentation overall, balancing small trade-offs to provide the best-looking Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 experience we’ve seen on PlayStation.
Which brings up another topic: ray tracing has seen a more than 2x performance boost on PS5 Pro. And while not every game leverages this unique technology, we’re seeing some very interesting results in early PS5 Pro testing.
Hogwarts Legacy is taking a unique approach for PS5 Pro by emphasizing ray tracing quality via its new Fidelity ray tracing Mode due out at the console’s launch. Based on what we saw, this new mode provides a big boost to the lighting system by adding raytraced shadows and enhancing raytraced reflections, all while targeting a stable 30 fps. Seeing your character realistically reflected in a suit of armor is a stunning demonstration of ray tracing’s potential, while the upgraded RT shadows bring another visual flourish to an already polished game. Though ray tracing seems to be the main focus for developer Avalanche, the game’s Performance Mode and Fidelity Mode will see quality enhancements too.
GT7 is targeting a November release for a new patch that will add several new PS5 Pro-focused rendering modes, including a Raytrace Priority mode that adds eye-catching new car reflections. F1 24 is upgrading its Quality mode to add new ray tracing effects that shined particularly on rain-soaked courses and made the tracks feel more realistic and immersive.
GT7 will also include an optional and experimental 8K/60fps rendering mode that emphasizes hyper-crisp, hyper-clean visuals (yes, you have to have an 8K display).
Those are just our first impressions. We can’t wait to get more time with PS5 Pro when it launches on November 7.
Learn more about how game creators are taking advantage of the PlayStation 5 Pro console.
Ray tracing and high frame rate gameplay features only available on select PS5 games that have been enhanced for PS5 Pro when compared with PS5. PS5 Pro enhanced features will vary by game. Enhanced features require a compatible display.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Delayed to February 2025
Ubisoft has delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows by three months.
The open-world adventure game was due out November 12, 2024. It now launches February 14, 2025.
In a statement, Ubisoft said it needs more time “to polish and refine the experience, pushing further some of our key features.”
Meanwhile, Ubisoft confirmed that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will release on Steam, unlike the company’s previous major release, Star Wars Outlaws. Preorders will be refunded, and all future preorders will be granted the first expansion for free.
In a note to the investment community, Ubisoft said that while Assassin’s Creed Shadows was “feature complete”, the “learnings” from the release of Star Wars Outlaws “led us to provide additional time to further polish the title.” Star Wars Outlaws had a “softer than expected launch,” Ubisoft said.
“This will enable the biggest entry in the franchise to fully deliver on its ambition, notably by fulfilling the promise of our dual protagonist adventure, with Naoe and Yasuke bringing two very different gameplay
styles,” Ubisoft contined.
Developing…
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Titanfall and Tribes fans, don’t miss skyfaring shooter Echo Point Nova
Not technically an Indiescovery-type deal, this, as Edwin already called attention to breathless FPS Echo Point Nova back when the demo came out. The full game has just released, though, and as someone with such chronic Titanfall withdrawal that I’ll ingest anything with a decent wallrun, I’ve bought it, played it, and am here to tell you why it rocks.
PS5 Pro’s Biggest Game Improvements, According to Devs
The PlayStation 5 Pro has officially been revealed, and developers will be releasing new-and-improved modes for their games that will take advantage of all that new horsepower. But what will it mean, really?
At a recent PlayStation 5 Pro preview event, we spoke with the technical leads of some of PlayStation’s biggest games, including Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us Part 2, and others, to discuss what improvements we can expect to see now that there’s a more powerful PlayStation 5 on the market.
There are three key features of the PS5 Pro as explained by lead architect Mark Cerny during the announcement presentation. The upgraded GPU will allow for 45% faster rendering for gameplay, advanced ray tracing will create better lighting effects, and the AI upscaler, PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or PSSR, will help further improve graphics.
All of which you’ll see in action in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 according to Mike Fitzgerald, Director of Core Technology at Insomniac Games.
“The first big improvement in the PlayStation 5 Pro is PSSR, which is PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, that lets us improve our old upscaling mode. We can render at a lower resolution, bring it up to a full 4K and get tons of extra detail out of the picture,” Fitzgerald says. “The second big thing is there’s new ray-tracing hardware in the PS5 Pro. We have really nice ray-traced reflections all across Spider-Man 2 and getting to run those faster and do more ray-tracing is a big deal.”
“And the third big thing altogether is these combined to make a new Performance Pro mode as we’re calling it on the PS5 Pro. You get the image quality and visuals of Fidelity Mode at the framerate of Performance Mode.”
Top of mind for several technical leads, including the folks at Naughty Dog, was how on the base PS5, players would often have to choose between Fidelity Mode, which offered better resolution at lower framerates, typically 30 fps, or Performance Mode which raised the frame rate to 60 at the expense of better graphical textures and ray-tracing. That choice is no longer necessary on the PS5 Pro, which can run games combining better resolution with higher frame-rates.
“Well the number one thing is gonna be the ability to play at 60fps in 4K, so that has been a huge deal,” Travis McIntosh, Naughty Dog’s head of technology says. “It makes it so we don’t have to compromise, so you don’t have to pick between high fidelity and good performance.”
The Last of Us Part 2 is one of the games that will be enhanced on the PS5 Pro, with the option to play the game with better visuals while still running it in 60 fps through a new Pro Mode. But McIntosh says that both the Fidelity and Performance Modes will also be improved on the PS5 Pro.
“There’s more than that, there’s also the fact that the high fidelity mode on the base PS5 actually looks even better when you’re on Pro. And there are some minor performance issues in performance mode on the PS5 base model that are also much better. Very solid 60 [fps], a lot less frame drops when you get to the pro.”
But McIntosh also says he’s personally excited for PSSR, which uses AI to upscale graphics.
“I would say I’m just really excited about the ability to use AI upscaling. Going forward as a developer, as a tech geek we spend a lot of time worrying about pixel throughput. It’s actually really tough to hit the targets of getting this many pixels through the game, and now we can focus on cool graphics stuff that we’re doing as opposed to just increasing pixel count. So that’s been a big benefit.”
McIntosh goes in-depth on the PSSR technology and how it upscales 1440p resolution to 4K, telling IGN that it, “produces just a way better result than previous upscalers because it can be trained not only on our game but on lots and lots of other games, and it learns and it improves at each iteration can improve and fix graphical errors, fix artifacting, and it learns how to make things look good. Foliage for instance is one example in our game that looks really good after the upscaler because the neural network is trained to do foliage really well.”
For Guerrilla Games World Lighting lead Roderick van der Steen, the biggest changes to Horizon Forbidden West all have to do with resolution and how improved they’ll be on the PS5 Pro, from better lighting to textures on characters.
“A big improvement that we could make by using the PS5 Pro is we could increase the resolution, increase stability of the image which is something we really focused on for this patch. And various other aspects like better filtering, better shadowing, and better volumetrics.”
Van der Steen says these improvements will be seen particularly in complicated models. “So fire, holograms, but also the skin rendering and the hair rendering where we could increase the shadow filtering to give a much more smooth and stable image.”
Lastly, ray tracing has been around for a few years now, but has often been sacrificed on consoles for anyone who prefers performance mode, which according to PlayStation is a majority of players. But the PS5 Pro is now able to add better ray tracing while maintaining a higher framerate. Just ask Jose Villeta, technical director at Avalanche Software, the developers of Hogwarts Legacy.
“So one of the few things we were able to improve on in our game thanks to the PS5 Pro is we focused on three areas,” Villeta reveals. “First we integrated PSSR – that gives a better upscaled image technology. And second we focused on ray-tracing, we tried to enable not only the best ray-tracing capabilities but improve the ray-tracing we had before. We were able to bring ray-tracing shadows, we were able to increase the percentage of ray-tracing reflections so they look sharper and have more content and detail.”
The improvements are a result of the better GPU which Villeta credits for giving Hogwarts extra heft. “The extra power we can actually make sure that all our visual modes, we have Fidelity, Fidelity with ray-tracing, and Performance mode, are all running at better framerate.”
Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us Part 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and Hogwarts Legacy are just four of the many games confirmed for improvements on the PS5 Pro, and we can expect to see even more Pro-enhanced games as we get closer to the new console’s launch on November 7.
For more on the PS5 Pro, check out our full hands-on preview, as well our interview on what more you can expect from the PS5 Pro.
Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.