Xbox, the games industry’s most well-funded publisher and hardware maker, made almost 2,000 people redundant this morning. I’m not sure if you can visualise what a group of 2000 people looks like. Jump over to Google and have a look for a sec because it’s basically a small army. A mass of human lives, with dogs and kids and parents and hobbies and annoying habits and favourite shows and bills. And now, without a job. At the time of writing, we are hours out from the latest devastating wave of lay-offs hitting the video game industry. Microsoft announced approximately 1,900 job cuts across its ..read more

Xbox is back at it with another indie-focused ID@Xbox Digital Showcase next week, with updates on Vampire Survivors, Life Is Strange developer Don’t Nod’s Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, and a bunch of “indie goodness.” Xbox announced next week’s ID@Xbox Digital Showcase will premiere next Tuesday, 30 April (for us Aussies). According to the accompanying Xbox Wire blog post, the livestreamed presentation will feature “epic trailers, fresh gameplay, and new reveals.” So far, we know that Vampire Survivors, Dungeons of Hinterberg, co-op roguelike 33 Immortals, and Lost Records: Bloom & Rage ..read more

Open-world zombie survival game 7 Days to Die launched in Early Access on Steam in 2013. Three years later, the game arrived on consoles. And now, over a decade after its initial launch, 7 Days to Die is finally leaving Early Access with its 1.0 update. However, console players will have to re-buy the game to see the future of 7 Days to Die. The world was a much different place in 2013. For example, the concept of games launching in early access—with future updates adding more content over time—was still fairly new. It had been popularized earlier by Minecraft, which launched with limited fea ..read more

EA has been on a tear of releasing high-quality single-player titles the last few years, and perhaps no series has fared better than Respawn Entertainment’s third-person action-adventure Star Wars Jedi games. Starring Cameron Monaghan (Shameless) as a young Jedi survivor of Order 66, the series follows his character, Cal Kestis, as he deepens his relationship with the Force, wages a rebellion against the growing Empire, and decides how he looks with a mullet. Last year’s sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, was no slouch, and now it looks to be arriving on EA’s subscription service just ahead of ..read more

Welcome back to This Week In Games Australia, your look ahead at everything you’ll be playing in the next seven days (though statistically, if you’re reading this, it’ll probably be Stellar Blade). Though there’s a stack of interesting indies dropping, this week is going to be all about Stellar Blade, I feel. If you’re a fan of Bayonetta, I feel like you’ll probably get a lot out of this one. The discourse around it will be miserable on all sides and I do not plan to partake. I am simply choosing to stay off Stellar Blade Twitter for my own sanity and play a bit of it in my own time. I do hav ..read more

A Reddit user found something quite odd inside their dentist’s waiting room: An old McDonald’s N64 video game kiosk that had been converted into an Xbox 360 arcade complete with multiple controllers and games. The dentist’s office waiting room can be a tense place as you wait to start whatever procedure brought you there. Even a simple cleaning or check-up can cause a lot of stress, especially for younger kids who might have had a few bad experiences with the teeth cleaners. So instead of them playing games on your phone and killing the battery or making them read five-month-old issues of a r ..read more

Larian Studios may not be making Baldur’s Gate 4 and Hasbro is talking with new partners about the series’ future, but Baldur’s Gate 3 still has some juice left in it. The development team has released some new information about the game’s big Patch 7, and it sounds like it will be another substantial update with new endings for those who chose to be a bit more evil during their time in Faerûn. In a developer update, Larian revealed it will be expanding upon the game’s evil ending, which was notably underbaked when the game launched, and wasn’t expanded upon when the team released an epilogue ..read more

Starfield’s updates have been sporadic since it arrived over seven months ago. It’s clear the team at Bethesda has been diligently fixing bugs and adding small improvements, but it doesn’t feel like the open-world RPG has gotten the same amount of post-launch love as some of its peers. Director Todd Howard recently hinted that could be changing in the near future. The nod came during an interview about the new Fallout TV show. IGN asked if the post-apocalyptic shooter franchise’s recent spike in popularity meant Bethesda might prioritize Fallout 5 over The Elder Scrolls VI. Howard said the st ..read more

Larian Studios has given a few details on what it’s up to after Baldur’s Gate 3. And it’s projects plural! The team is apparently working on two new games after the success of its Dungeons & Dragons RPG last year. In a developer update on Steam, Larian detailed some of the new content coming in Baldur’s Gate 3’s seventh patch, including an expanded conclusion for the evil route. But it also divulged a few details about what else it’s working on. As the studio has already said, it’s not working on a big expansion or DLC for the game, nor is it working on a fourth game set in the Wizards of ..read more

Racing wheels are niche gaming accessories, which means their price tags can be pretty steep. But if you’re someone with high-octane blood and a gaming diet that is predominately consumed by titles like Gran Turismo 7 or Forza Motorsport, then a racing wheel could be worth the investment. If you’ve been on the fence about grabbing one of these controllers due to their price tag, you’ll be happy to learn that a few of Logitech’s steering wheels are currently on sale. As far as racing wheels go, Logitech is one of the go-to brands for quality and durability, making them a great choice if you’re ..read more