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The first Resident Evil Village gameplay demo went live yesterday on PS4 and PS5, revealing a world soaked in atmospheric horror and some freaky new enemies.

While I felt the RE Village demo was overall lackluster and tantalizingly short, the experience did leave something behind. The gameplay was decent--gunplay is fluid, doors are a bit finicky--but the atmospheric storytelling and grisly new lycans were the star of the demo (Of course Lady Dmitrescu wasn't on the stage in this demo, or she'd immediately steal the show).

The werewolf enemies are pretty unsettling to fight. They roam on all fours like beasts, exhibiting a kind of brutal feline grace. The first encounter is pretty memorable; you're in high snow-covered wheat and you actually hear them before you see them. The wheat shakes, something snarls, and you have a sense of dread. Then the monster pops up and smacks you around a few times.

Hitman 2016's sequels were supposed to be major expansions, not separate retail games, IO says.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak reveals the studio's original live game vision for Hitman. According to Abrak, IO wanted to make a "world of assassination" and roll out huge expansions similar to a live game like Destiny 2. The idea was to make one game and simply launch new expansions and updates in that game and allow players to pick and choose what content they wanted to install and play.

"I don't think a lot of people know this, but Hitman 2016 was supposed to be one ever-expanding big live product, just like an MMO or something. You would have this one executable, so Hitman 2 and 3 would just expand within this...you'd have Hitman world of assassination and just growing from there, it would be the same executable," Abrak said.

In the U.S., Spider-Man Miles Morales is more popular than other major PlayStation exclusives like The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima, the NPD Group reports.

In the NPD Group's March 2021 earnings report, analyst Mat Piscatella revealed U.S. game sales rankings for the last 12 months. The results show a trend that Sony's big-budget dramas don't always hold the largest appeal among U.S. gamers; the top spot goes to your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

According to the rankings, which include sales in last 12 months from March 2020 - March 2021, Spider-Man Miles Morales digital and retail sales beat The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima. This is no small feat considering Miles Morales had 5 months of sales, whereas TLOUII (launched in June) had 10 minutes and Ghost of Tsushima (launched in July) had 9 months to accumulate sales.

ESO's new Endeavors daily/weekly challenges will allow players to buy Crown Crates without spending real money.

ESO's new Update 30 in June will roll out a new mode called Endeavors that gives you a new currency for completing various daily and weekly objectives. The currency--Endeavor Seals--can be used to buy items contained in lootboxes. This is the first time that players are able to acquire these items without spending money.

Elder Scrolls Online's lootboxes--also called Crown Crates--feature cosmetics like tattoos, character appearances and mounts, as well as XP scrolls and potions.

Capcom aims to please Resident Evil 4 fans by resurrecting the game's beloved Mercenaries mode for Resident Evil 8.

Resident Evil Village is a kind of upgraded modern throwback to Leon's medieval supernatural fantasy adventure in RE4, complete with werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and horrifying monstrosities that roam a Victorian-style village. The style, themes, characters, and environments all connect back to the Gamecube-era survival shooter. Now Capcom confirms another connection: Resident Evil Village will also have The Mercenaries mode.

Mercenaries is kind of like a self-contained Firefight or horde mode where you have to complete objectives in a set amount of time, all while slaughtering enemies and fighting to survive. There's a nifty combo bonus system that inspires players to unleash total carnage.

Thanks to pandemic spending, software sales, and strong hardware adoption, last month was the United States' best-earning March month in history.

The NPD Group just published their results for March 2021 U.S. market earnings, showing growth over 2020's monumental highs. Last month, the U.S. market spent a record $5.6 billion on games, hardware, and accessories, up 18% from March 2020's previous record highs of $4.75 billion.

NPD analyst Mat Piscatella attributes this growth to increased game sales and content, which accounted for 82% of total monthly spending, or $4.6 billion.

Well, it looks like Elon Musk will have his chance of putting a "literal Dogecoin on the literal moon" with SpaceX awarded a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to build a lunar lander that will take Americans to the moon for the first time since 1972.

SpaceX won the NASA contract for the Artemis lunar lander, beating out the Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin (which worked with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and defense contractor Dynetics). SpaceX might still have 'splosion issues with its Starship but NASA is confident the Musk-backed company has it in the bag.

NASA also liked the idea that Starship can be reused, which was a major decision in the US space agency choosing Musk's own SpaceX for the Artemis. SpaceX is already working with NASA on getting astronauts up and off the Earth and onto the International Space Station -- speaking of which, the next trip up there is in a few days on April 22.

Acer looks to be ready to unleash its new EL491CRG9 gaming monitor, a new 49-inch super-ultrawide panel with Mini LED technology and DisplayHDR 2000 certification.

The Acer EL491CRG9 gaming monitor will pack a huge 49-inch super-ultrawide Mini LED-based display with a native 5120 x 1440 resolution and super-fast 240Hz refresh rate. We also have NVIDIA G-SYNC and AMD FreeSync technology here, 3 x HDMI (2.1) connectors and 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 connector.

The new monitor is already for sale in China with a price on Acer's new EL491CRG9 gaming monitor that works out to be around $2300... not bad for a gigantic 49-inch 5120 x 1440 super-ultra wide monitor @ 240Hz with Mini LED technology.

We're being told to expect some next-gen destruction and natural disasters that include earthquakes and tsunamis -- but what about gigantic avalanches after a firefight in the alps? Yeah, that sounds awesome.

Battlefield leaker Tom Henderson teased the news on his Twitter, saying: "Imagine you're fighting in the alps and a massive explosion causes a giant avalanche #BATTLEFIELD". He noted in a follow-up tweet that the 'splosions and avalanches won't be featured in the trailer for Battlefield when it drops.

EA will only be showing off the Tanegashima Space Center in the Battlefield trailer, with Henderson noting that the team will show off "what it needs to show off before June". Alrighty, hype meter is being set for a big reveal -- well, very, very damn soon by the looks of things.

It feels like we're hearing a lot about next-gen DDR5 memory right now, with news from today seeing Chinese memory and flash company Netac teasing some gaming-focused DDR5 RAM that has speeds that breach an insane 10,000MHz.

Netac has reportedly received their first batch of new DDR5 RAM from Micron, allowing the company to begin developing new DDR5 RAM for consumers, gamers, and everyone in between. Micron sent Netac DDR5 RAM with a product code of IFA45 Z9ZSB with ES ICs according to Micron's own website.

DDR5 RAM starts things off at 4800MHz so Netac teasing new gaming-grade DDR5 memory at speeds of 10,000MHz and beyond is alluring as hell. It might sound crazy but DDR4 kicked off at 2133MHz and is seen at up to 5000MHz and beyond these days.

We've been hearing about NVIDIA and its fight against cryptocurrency mining on its new Ampere range of GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards -- but here's a doozy: NVIDIA is preparing an entire new stack of GeForce RTX 30 cards with revised GPUs that have cryptocurrency mining limitations.

NVIDIA hasn't been shy about gimping its graphics cards from crypto mining, with NVIDIA being praised -- and pissing off gamers by limiting them from crypto mining. Well, it looks like entire new GPU revisions have been reportedly sent to AIB partners with their GPUs having crypto mining limitations.

Igor's Lab is reporting that the newly-teased GeForce RTX 3080 Ti qualification samples see AIBs required to update them with crypto mining limiters -- something that cannot be undone. We heard that it was being done with the newly-tweaked GeForce RTX 3060 but it seems it's being done across the board... so I guess we might see the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti (crypto mining limited), the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (crypto mining limited) and other GeForce RTX 30 series Ampere GPUs with gimped crypto mining released over the coming months.

It was only a few weeks ago that I was writing about GIGABYTE reportedly having no less than 12 custom GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards with 12GB of GDDR6X -- and now MSI not only has its own custom RTX 3080 Ti cards, but they're already on their way to the USA.

An entire shipment of MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti VENTUS 3X OC graphics cards are headed to LA right now, alongside other custom GeForce graphics cards from MSI including custom GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080, the even lower-end GeForce GTX 710, and the Radeon RX 580.

If there's one thing we can take away from this it's that we kinda now know that NVIDIA will have 12GB of GDDR6X memory on its new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card -- sandwiched in-between the 10GB of GDDR6X placed on the GeForce RTX 3080 and the monstrous 24GB of GDDR6X on the flagship GeForce RTX 3090.

The cRPG gurus at Beamdog are working on their next game, but it won't be a remaster or enhanced edition--it's a brand new IP.

Canadian game developer Beamdog is mostly known for helping make games in franchises that it doesn't own. That will change soon as the team gears up for its own intellectual property.

"While the door on remasters hasn't been totally shut, currently Beamdog is working on a new game, its own IP. No details have been shared yet," Community Manager & Social Media Manager Julius Borisov said in a forum post.

Amazon has cancelled its new Lord of the Rings game project due to clashes with Tencent, sources tell Bloomberg.

The new high-profile Lord of the Rings MMORPG has been shelved due to contractual disputes between Amazon and Tencent, who bought the game's co-developer Leyou Technologies in 2020.

Amazon confirmed the news to Bloomberg: "We have been unable to secure terms to proceed with this title at this time. We love the Lord of the Rings IP, and are disappointed that we won't be bringing this game to customers."

Ubisoft has slightly delayed Assassin's Creed Valhalla's first expansion in order to ensure quality.

Valhalla's new Wrath of Druids expansion has been pushed back by 2 weeks, and will now release on May 13 on all platforms, Ubisoft has confirmed. The devs say the extra time will allow them to "deliver a more refined experience."

Ubisoft also says it plans to reveal more about its development process in an upcoming post. This should be pretty illuminating and may highlight the rigors of making new Assassin's Creed content in work-from-home environments, and could also touch upon what's next for the second expansion, the massively ambitious Siege of Paris.

Capcom will release a new playable Resident Evil Village gameplay demo across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, but there's some restrictions. Here's everything you need to know.

Capcom plans to roll out a gameplay demo for its latest Resident Evil game. There are two playable sections in the game: One for the Village area, and one for the Castle. The Resident Evil 8 demo is only playable for a limited time, and gamers will only have up to 30 minutes per area. You can play either or both of the levels in any amount of gameplay increments that add up to 60 minutes. Combined, gamers will be able to play a total of 60 minutes of Resident Evil 8.

The demo will release on PS4, PS5, Xbox One/S/X, Xbox Series X/S, Steam, and Google Stadia. PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners get priority, and can start pre-loading the demo right now. PlayStation gamers can start playing before other platforms.

Capcom has significantly optimized its proprietary RE Engine to squeeze out high-end performance on next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles.

Capcom just released its revised Resident Evil VIII perf targets for current- and next-gen console hardware, showing how much care and attention they've put into the game. On the PS5, Resident Evil Village can hit 4K 60FPS at default, and then 4K 30FPS in high-resolution mode with HDR, which implies this is native 4K and not upscaled.

The most impressive target is RE8 running at 4K 45FPS with ray-tracing turned on, which is no small feat especially for a shooter (Devil May Cry 5, the first game Capcom shipped with ray tracing, hit 1080p 60FPS with RT on but that's an entirely different type of game).

IO Interactive finally spills more details on its unannounced new IP, and the game appears to be an innovative multiplayer game with a fresh concept.

Right now Hitman developer IO Interactive is working on three projects: Hitman 3 DLC (and possibly another Hitman game), a new James Bond game codenamed Project 007, and a new IP. We've known about IO Interactive's new IP since 2017, but not much info has been gleaned--until now.

Following a new studio expansion, IO is currently hiring 21 people for the new project, which will be spear-headed by its Malmo, Sweden-based studio. The job listings show the game is in very early stages, though; the roles range from higher-level executive producers to technical and gameplay directors. One listing in particular reveals potential scope for the project.

Hitman developer IO Interactive is gearing up and expanding its team to work on its most ambitious projects yet.

Today IO Interactive has opened a new studio in Barcelona, Spain, and marks the team's third major studio alongside IOI Malmo (launched in 2019) and IOI Copenhagen (main HQ site). The announcement comes little over a week after company CEO Hakan Abrak teased "maybe sometime soon we'll launch a third location."

IOI Barcelona will work closely with the teams in Malmo, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark on the company's trio of games, which include a new James Bond game codenamed Project 007, new Hitman content (IO says new Hitman sequel is possible), and an unannounced IP. The new Project 007 game will be the biggest title IO has haver tackled, complete with an all-original story arc and new in-game innovations.

Earlier this morning Bloomberg reported that multiple companies were interested in buying Square Enix. The news came from M&A expert firm CTFN who sourced info from two anonymous bankers. Now Square Enix has stepped in to set the record straight.

Square Enix has shut down rumors of a potential buyout, saying that it has no plans to sell itself or its gaming division. The publisher says it wasn't even approached by a potential buyer.

"Bloomberg has reported today that there is interest from several buyers to acquire Square Enix. However, this report is not based on any announcement by SQUARE ENIX HOLDINGS CO., LTD. We do not consider selling off the company or any part of its businesses, nor have we received any offer from any third party to acquire the company or any part of its businesses,"the company announced.