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UPDATE 2pm UK: Between first publishing this story a few of hours ago and now, Black Myth: Wukong's player numbers have continued to climb.
Now, over two million players have taken to Steam to give the game a whirl. Its concurrent player peak as it stands is currently 2,125,077.
As a result, Black Myth: Wukong is now the second most played game of all time in terms of concurrent player numbers on Steam, having bopped both Counter-Strike 2 and Palworld down a place.
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Black Myth: Wukong is nothing if not ambitious. As many of its early trailers and tech demos implied, this was a game punching above its weight. It wasn't just a lavish retelling of the epic Chinese novel Journey to the West, a work that games have rarely engaged with outside of Asia (Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West notwithstanding), but it also seemed to be demonstrating a level of technical mastery and visual pizzazz we hadn't quite seen before. It immediately put developer Game Science on the map, even if it wasn't always for the most savoury of reasons.
But now, after spending upwards of 40 hours retracing the steps of its titular simian hero as the silent but deadly Destined One, Black Myth emerges as a game that frustrates more than it delights. Its plentiful supply of grand, sweeping boss battles set the heart alight at regular intervals, its mythological menagerie bristling with the same kind of malicious energy and intent as their FromSoft equivalents. They are the tentpoles that hold this game aloft, their sharp claws, vicious fangs and powerful hoofs often tearing up the screen in exquisite and sumptuous detail. Indeed, they're the kind of bosses that will probably go down as some of the most dramatic of this generation, with its glistening dragons that rage across icy lakes and rippling pools, muscular tigers that sup in temples of blood, and giant bears, wolves, rats and spiders that command the elements to devastating effect.
But outside of those pulse-racing encounters, Black Myth is an altogether more mind-numbing experience, its thrilling highs undone by baggy world design, an uneven difficulty curve and disjointed storytelling. Ostensibly, this is a quest about reviving the legendary Sun Wukong, who scattered himself to the wind in the form of six relics after being defeated in battle centuries earlier. As the Destined One, you'll travel through forests, sand, ice, ash and more to bring them back to your mountain home, winding your way through its alternately narrow and wide linear environments until you reach the big bad in possession of it.
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MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will reportedly launch for PlayStation 5 in the early half of 2025, following an Xbox Series X/S and PC release at the end of this year.


That's according to industry insider Nate the Hate (one of the first people to break the news of Microsoft's multi-platform plans at the start of this year) who made the claim on social media. "MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will release on Xbox & PC this holiday (Dec) as a timed console exclusive," they wrote. "After this timed-exclusive window expires, Indiana Jones & the Great Circle is planned to come to PlayStation 5 in the first half of 2025."


Nate the Hate's claim tallies with a report by The Verge back in February, which said Microsoft was planning to go beyond its initial slate of comparatively low-key multi-platform releases by launching some of its flagship games on competing consoles. These were said to include Starfield and MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, with the latter supposedly due to arrive on PS5 "some months" after its Xbox and PC release.

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Nintendo's 135-year history will soon be brought to life inside the walls of a new purpose-built Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, Japan - and ahead of its opening on 2nd October, legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed some of its intriguing exhibits in a new video tour.


The Nintendo Museum has been built on the site of the factory where Nintendo originally made its Hanafuda cards, and which was later used for quality checks during the Famicom era. That building and its unremarkable carpark are no longer standing, however, now replaced by a shiny two-floor monument to Nintendo's history and a Mario-themed plaza.


Miyamoto's 13-minute tour begins on the second floor of the museum, where several huge curved glass displays - containing many of the products Nintendo has released since its founding in 1889 - can be found. This whole area is intended to chart the evolution of Nintendo's approach to entertainment, from its earlier non-video game products - including copy machines, baby strollers, RC cars, and pitching machines - into more familiar territory, beginning with 1977's early video game forays, the Color TV-Game 6 and Color TV-Game 15.

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Ever since its reveal in 2020, Black Myth: Wukong has been an alluring project. Developer Game Science has been surprisingly open in comparison to other AAA studios and the game's apparent ambitions have been reinforced with each and every press release: a hero-focused action game retelling the story of Journey to the West, and a graphical tour de force using the latest Unreal Engine features. In fact, on PC Wukong uses the Nvidia branch of UE5 to enable full ray tracing, promising an even more impressive presentation. With the full game in hand, it's time to see if Game Science has fulfilled the graphical promise of that first trailer, how the RT features work on PC, and what optimised settings can be used to deliver a smooth experience on a range of hardware. Enough monkey business then, let's get right into it.
From the moment the game starts up, it's clear that Game Science has delivered a level of graphical fidelity that surpasses that of the initial trailer. The dazzling intro to the game dazzles, with titanic mythical beings looming over you and an entire area replete with unique volumetric rendering that's unfortunately rare in the modern age.
With each and every dash, staff swipe and bit of movement, the main character and his nemesis distort and move the physical volume of fog that they find themselves in. Beyond Housemarque's Returnal and some legacy PhysX titles, real physicalised particles like this are rare, and Game Science made sure to use this GPU-intensive effect effectively to add a mystical flourish to game moments and character entrances.
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Nintendo and Level-5 have announced a delay for Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, which was originally due to launch for Switch on 10th October.
"To all of you who have been looking forward to the release, we apologise for any inconvenience caused and sincerely appreciate your understanding," Level-5 said in a statement sharing news of the delay. "Thank you for your patience."
Level-5 hasn't yet suggested when Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time might now release, nor did it offer any reason for the delay. Could the studio be waiting for Nintendo's next generation of hardware, tentatively dubbed Switch 2? I suppose time will tell.
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Final Fantasy 16 will launch on PC on 17th September across both the Epic Games Store and Steam.


The PC version has been long-awaited since the game was released as a PS5 console exclusive last year.


Today's news comes with a new PC specific trailer, see below. A demo is available to try out now.

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Heroes of Might & Magic, Ubisoft's long-running turn-based strategy series, is returning for an eighth mainline instalment in 2025, just in time to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary.


Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era - which will be the first new core series entry in nearly a decade - serves as a prequel to the entire fantasy saga, exploring its origins across a non-linear campaign as players journey to Jadame, a "mysterious continent in turmoil" that's been mentioned but never explored in previous games.


"Traverse a vibrant and living fantasy world full of wonders and dangers," teases Olden Era's announcement, "build magnificent castles, raise
massive armies and clash in epic and highly tactical battles of heroes and mythical creatures."

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MySims, the unexpectedly decent The Sims spin-off that first hit Nintendo platforms back in 2007, is reportedly heading to Switch "soon".


MySims, in case you're unfamiliar (which would be perfectly understandable given that it's now a frankly upsetting 17 years old), initially released on Nintendo Wii and DS. Developed by Dead Space studio EA Redwood Shores, it presented players with a vaguely Animal Crossing-like take on The Sims which successfully managed to be about as far removed from the actual Sims as you could possibly get without entirely changing genres.


It tasked players with redeveloping a run-down town, attracting new residents, building them homes, and then furnishing them using items crafted from blueprints, in turn gained from helping residents and bolstering your relationship with them. "MySims is pretty much perfect for what it is," Eurogamer contributor Keza MacDonald wrote of the Wii version back in 2007. "At once accessible and complex, kid-friendly and adult-pleasing, and full of personality."

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Those lucky enough to secure a ticket to visit Nintendo's museum are in for a bonus treat: all eligible tickets will include a portrait of their Mii character.
As anyone accepting a museum ticket must have a Nintendo account in order to accept and use it, Nintendo is automagically customising tickets with each account holder's Mii.
"If tickets are assigned, upon entry to the museum, each visitor will receive a play ticket with the Mii character set to their Nintendo Account printed on it," Nintendo explains, although it does stress that you'll need to set up your ticket in advance on the ticketing website first.
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Diablo 4's March of the Goblins event is making a return next week.
Blizzard hosted a March of the Goblins event across both Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal in June as a thank you "for being part of the Diablo community through another year of fighting back the demonic forces of Hell". And it seems the event was so successful Blizzard is bringing it back again.
From 27th August to 3rd September, you'll be able to seek out "hordes of these treasure hoarders to pilfer their loot bags for increased gold and coveted drops".
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[Administrator]

It was looking a bit touch-and-go for real-time stealth-tactics fans after developer Mimimi Games shut up shop following last year's superb Shadow Gambit. But thankfully it seems there's more than a little life left in the genre, what with the imminent arrival of the promising Sumerian Six and now this: a new Goya-inspired stealth-tactics adventure from The Game Kitchen, the studio behind the wonderfully moody Blasphemous series.


The Stone of Madness, as it's known, transports players back in time to an 18th-century Spanish Monastery - serving as both a prison and an asylum - located somewhere in the Pyrenees mountains. Here, five prisoners plan their escape through its gloomy corridors, which, of course, is where all the real-time stealthy stuff starts to come in.


As the adventure unfolds - well adventures, given it promises two fully fledged campaigns, each with unique stories, objectives, and characters - players will alternately control five distinct characters: Agnes, Leonora, Eduardo, Amelia, and Alfredo. Each has their own unique upgradeable skills, enabling them to - among other things - cast spells, distract and kill enemies, stun evil spirits, and access hard-to-reach areas.

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Obsidian is targeting 30fps on Xbox consoles for its fantasy RPG, Avowed.
In conversation with the Iron Lords podcast, Obsidian art director Matt Hansen said the studio is "core targeting 30 frames per second, bare minimum" for the upcoming release, adding since "it's a first-person, single-player game, you don't necessarily need that 60 frames".
Explaining further, Hansen said this will allow the Avowed team to "get a lot juicier with VFX and lighting and all this other stuff".
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Black Myth: Wukong has sold 10,000,000 copies across all platforms since it released on PC and PS5 just three days ago (20th August).
As we reported yesterday, Black Myth: Wukong continues to attract record-breaking numbers of players, establishing itself as the most-viewed game on Chinese livestreaming platforms on its first day of release.
This additional 10m milestone now cements Black Myth: Wukong as one of the most successful video game launches of all time.
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World of Warcraft boss Holly Longdale says Blizzard has learned from its controversial Shadowlands launch, acknowledging the expansion "wasn't enough" and "wasn't the right stuff", admitting the team should have "listened more" to its community.
Talking to PC Gamer, Longdale reflected back over World of Warcraft's storied 20 years, partly as a player, and "as a very humble and lucky leader on this team".
"I think we should have listened more to the player base," Longdale said. "I think quite often in earlier times, game design wasn't even a job, really," she said. "It was a bunch of super incredibly passionate geeks figuring out how to make tabletop gaming into 3D. So, I think there was a lot of going on their best instincts."
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