Disney Lorcana has been setting the TCG world on fire, and the fifth set, Shimmering Skies, is right around the corner. In anticipation of the launch, Checkpoint Gaming has been given the opportunity to reveal a new card from the upcoming set exclusively: Prince Naveen, Ukulele Player. Check him out! This Legendary card features the Storyborn Hero version of Prince Naveen, of The Princess and the Frog fame. It’s a fairly fun, camp design from Rosa la Barbera, particularly accented by the confetti, dancing characters in the background and the Prince leaning over his own title to really pull yo ..read more

Powerhouse and First Nations social enterprise Awesome Black are collaborating on a new initiative, celebrating First Nations creativity and storytelling through video games. This unique collaboration is a two-year project that encompasses creative learning programs and events, industry growth and skill, in order to grow and foster the Australian games industry. To help support the learning and skill development of Awesome Black, Powerhouse will help in providing connections to industry partners and mentoring opportunities, along with supporting the team in attending relevant conferences, cour ..read more

The live-action Halo TV series starring Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief John-117 has been axed at Paramount+ after two seasons. The show’s producers have signalled an intention to find the show a new home on a different network, however its prospects do not seem promising. “We are extremely proud of this ambitious series and would like to thank our partners at Xbox, 343 Industries and Amblin Television, along with showrunner and executive producer David Wiener, his fellow executive producers, the entire cast led by Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief and the amazing crew for all their outstan ..read more

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it would be changing the pricing for its Game Pass subscriptions, discontinuing the Console Game Pass and increasing the price for all surviving subscriptions. The full details of the price changes for Aussie gamers can be found in our article about the announcement, but the long and short of it is that all Xbox Game Pass players will be forced to pay more for the service. The price changes took effect on July 10th 2024, while full details on the new “Game Pass Standard” are still forthcoming. The FTC (The US Federal Trade Commission) has now filed ..read more

Production for the upcoming Minecraft movie, starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, has gone underway and the designs for the video game film adaptation were leaked on the internet. These new images featured how the creatures of Minecraft would look in real life and it’s something to get used to looking at. The images within the leak were swiftly taken down for copyright, but not before the images were saved and distributed across the net. Images featured in this leak include Jack Black as Steve, as he dawns the blue shirt and pickaxe. According to the leaked character bio, it said that this ver ..read more

Returning after a successful 2023, the SMART Program is back, offering mentorship and experience to early-career game developers from underrepresented communities. This Melbourne-based program, formally run by the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA), is now being helmed by former IGEA staffer and business development consultant Ceri Hutton. IGEA’s Ron Curry said, “The SMART Program has empowered many early-career game developers in Melbourne to achieve career growth over the last few years and we’re confident that the program will continue to achieve success under Ceri’s ste ..read more

The recent mobile port of Capcom’s AAA survival horror game Resident Evil 7 has reportedly flopped hard in terms of sales, having been purchased by fewer than 2,000 players. With the initially free-to-play game being downloaded 83,000 times since it released on the 2nd of July, that makes the game’s conversion rate of free-to-paid players a meagre 2.4%. These stats come courtesy of mobilegamer.biz, which calculates that the game has made only $28,140 USD at time of writing. This amount doesn’t take Apple’s 30% cut of App Store sales into account. This means that the actual revenue the game has ..read more

Twitch Streamer Pokimane has offered her time in the name of charity. As part of a fundraising campaign for the Immune Deficiency Foundation, run by Podcaster and content creator CDawgVA (aka Connor Colquhoun), a set of items went for auction. One of the items listed was a gaming session with the incredibly popular Twitch streamer. But just hours after the listing was published, the bid skyrocketed to an astronomical amount, leaving Connor in disbelief. Colquhoun live-tweeted the auction results the moment the Pokimane listing went live. The content creator already expected that people would g ..read more

Every year at PAX Aus, there are various indie developers and tabletop creators who bring their creations to the public. While everything in the PAX Rising area is made with painstaking care, the winners of the Indie Showcase celebrate those creators who push the boundaries of indie development. There were several digital and tabletop games of high quality this year, leading to an unprecedented reveal of twelve winners. Six winners from each category were selected, giving each creator a better opportunity to share their projects with the community. The six winners of the Digital PAX Aus 2024 I ..read more

According to a series of posts on X by character designer and illustrator Nicholas Kole, who worked on Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time for Toys for Bob, a fifth Crash Bandicoot game as well as an unnanounced game codenamed “Project Dragon” by Dauntless and Fae Farm developer Phoenix Labs has been cancelled. If Crash Bandicoot 5 had come out, it would have been the first Crash game by Toys for Bob since the studio went independent earlier this year. Kole starts the thread by eulogising Project Dragon, confirming that all internal efforts to salvage the project have failed. He also hastily no ..read more