AMD has announced its numbers for 2023 and generally things look good. We won’t get into the weeds on the financials, but aside from AMD increasing its expectations of AI chip sales from $2 billion to $3.5 billion for 2024, the most interesting tidbit was that Radeon gaming GPUs sales are up. The problem is that AMD won’t say by how much.

AMD says that gaming revenue dropped by 17% in 2023 versus 2022. But that’s entirely down to slowing sales of games consoles, primarily the Sony PS5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X and S, all of which are powered by AMD chips and are now beginning to age.

According to AMD’s CEO Lisa Su (via Motley Fool), that declining console business, “was partially offset by increased sales of Radeon GPUs. In Gaming Graphics, revenue grew both year over year and sequentially, driven by strong demand in the channel for both our Radeon 6000 and Radeon 7000 series GPUs.”

But she didn’t say by how much. Without being overly cynical, we suspect that’s b…

After a career spanning more than 32 years and just about every game Blizzard ever made, senior art director Samwise Didier is calling it quits. Didier announced on Twitter that he is retiring, and that today is his last day at his “beloved Blizzard Entertainment.”

“Blizzard was never just a job for me,” Didier wrote. “I joined the company in 1991 and it immediately became my second home. I found out I had a family that I didn’t even know I had!

“I grew up there. I learned almost everything I know about art there. I learned how to use a computer (I only knew Atari 2600 and Nintendo), I learned how to use Photoshop, I learned how to create UI and make thousands of buttons. I learned how to create 3D models of my art, how to texture and animate them, and even make them shoot fireballs or lasers. I got to see my art come to life! Hell, I even joined my first band at Blizzard. And to top it all off, I got to work on some of the greatest games this here ol’ world has ever kno…

September 24, 2024: We added the remaining factions to the list.

Frostpunk 2 factions are a major part of the survival city builder, and managing them is just as important as managing your supply of food, oil, and other resources. But who are these factions? How can you gain their trust? And what’s the difference between a faction and a community?

In Frostpunk 2 you will contend with factions and communities from the very first moments of the game. Your citizens aren’t just working and surviving: some of them are on your council, which means they are voting on the laws you pass. Keeping their trust of you high and tension in your city low will depend on carefully managing these factions and keeping them as happy as possible—even though making everyone happy at the same time is impossible.

You won’t encounter every faction or community in every game you play, but here are the factions and communities y…

If you have fond memories of filling your walls with archers and defending against overwhelming odds, or perhaps of baking hundreds of loaves of bread despite constant raids on your village from four particularly annoying Mongolians, you’ll be pleased to learn that Stronghold, the classic castle sim from 2001, is being remastered.

While there was an HD version of Stronghold released in 2013 complete with cloud saves, higher resolutions, embiggened unit caps, and other tweaks, this will be a more dramatic update. Stronghold: Definitive Edition is adding a 14-mission narrative campaign in which players “march across the devastated English hinterland in search of Sir Longarm’s captured kin,” as well as a 10-mission Castle Trail based around famous castles of history including Warwick, Dunnottar, and Marksburg. 

The original game’s military and economic campaigns return as well, so there’ll be no getting away from that one objective to bake 300 loaves of bread, which yo…

Sons of the Forest continues its evolution from uncompromising horror survival game to playable meme generator with its latest patch, the headline addition of which is an electric unicycle. Named the Knight V (pronounced “Knight Five”), this discoverable vehicle lets players scoot around the game’s vast cannibal island at high speed, like a greyhound with worms. Quite why there’d be an electric unicycle on an uncharted island filled with cannibals is another question, but videogames have never allowed logic to get in the way of fun.

Highly impractical transportation isn’t the only new feature added by Patch 03. Players can also find a pair of night vision goggles in the wilderness, helping you navigate at night without attracting attention from the local people-eaters.  Meanwhile, the crafting system has been expanded to include solar panels, light-bulbs and electrical wiring, for those players who want to attract even more attention to their location.

Alongside the…

If you’re a fan of stealth games then you’re probably going to want to turn your attention to Steam, where for the next week the Steam Stealth Fest will be offering discounts of all sizes on sneaky games, and a free Steam sticker every day of the week.

As a fan of the stealth genre myself, I can say with authority that there’s a lot to like in this sale. You can get all three of the good Thief games for $1 each, for instance, and if you want to give the reboot a go, that’s just $3. The Splinter Cell games, individually or in a bundle, are also dirt cheap and well worth your time. 

If you’re in the mood for something a little newer, Outlast is $3, Heat Signature is $3, Aragami is $3, and in an attempt to break pattern here, Mark of the Ninja Remastered is on for $8. And I would be remiss if I did not note that Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole—one of my favorite videogame titles ever—is also marked down to just $1.

But the Stealth Fest is…

RPG fans have been eating good this year. Even setting aside monster releases like Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, and the second coming of Johnny Silverhand, there are tons of great games on Steam vying for our leftover attention. But only one of them lets you play as a treasure chest.

Just a Chest, from a small Chinese dev called 42TeaParty, stars a protagonist named Issac—standard stuff so far—but Isaac isn’t a valiant knight or devious demon lord. Isaac is a humble treasure chest. Joined by some wacky companions, he sets out on a journey to… well, I’m not exactly sure. Probably to find some gold to put in his belly or something.

As an unrepentant loot goblin myself, I approve of the choice of protagonists. Just a Chest looks like a mashup of various anime tropes and games—a slime companion that reminds me of That Time I Got Reincarnated (second best slime-affiliated anime after Campfire Cooking, come at me), a treasure chest crafting scr…

If you’ve ever thought to yourself that Team Fortress 2 would be perfect if only you could cram more players onto its maps, you are going to love today’s new update. It more than triples the maximum player count, from 32 to 100—and also, Valve says you probably shouldn’t do that.

Unlike the big content update that Valve released (but did not make) earlier this month, today’s update is a fixer-upper, because somehow people are still finding things to futz with in a 16-year-old videogame. It’s a testament to Valve’s commitment (although it’s not like it’s out there making new games or anything) but it also reflects TF2’s ongoing popularity: The game that launched in 2007 crushed its all-time concurrent player count record just two weeks ago, thanks in part to the addition of a fat seal, who joined the game in the fan-made map Selbyen, which was included in the summer update.

Still, with that many years under its belt, it can be tough to keep things fresh. That, presu…

If you’re looking for a new Wordle angle, hoping to refine your game or want to win today’s Wordle at all costs, then you’ve clicked through to the right place. You’ll find everything from our extensive Wordle archive to hints, tips, and clues just below. If you need the answer to the January 21 (581) puzzle, then that’s just a quick click away too.

I almost came unstuck at the end of today’s puzzle, as I found myself staring at four greens, and all of the most obvious consonants had already been used or eliminated. Luckily there’s no time limit on Wordle, so a quick break gave me the fresh perspective needed to finally see what I’d missed the first time around—and kick myself for not spotting it earlier.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Saturday, January 21

Today’s answer is used to describe a short piece of text often found on the back of books, usually praising the work and designed to attract someone’s attention and encourage them to o…

I love a Civilization reveal. The grand strategy series has been going for 33 years, and Firaxis always finds something to change with each new one, always controversially. Civilization 6 unraveled cities into districts that span multiple hexes, for example. Will Civilization 7 stuff them back onto one tile? Or revamp something else entirely, like combat or the victory conditions? Will they make another stab at a battle royale mode? (Probably not.)

We’ll have answers later this month. First, we’ll see Civilization 7’s debut gameplay trailer at Opening Night Live, the Geoff Keighley showcase that precedes the Gamescom convention in Germany. That’ll be on August 20 at 11 am PT, viewable on the Gamescom Twitch channel.

Immediately after that, Firaxis will stream a 20 minute showcase with “insights and deep dives across new features and innovations” in Civilization 7. That’ll be on Firaxis’ Twitch channel.

Firaxis’ press release sadly gives us Civ-heads little…

There are people of a certain kind who will play any game which is set in World War 2 and has hexagons at least once. I am one of them. Thus it is with excitement I tell you that Second Front, a tactical, turn-based WW2 strategy wargame from studio Hexdraw and publisher Microprose, will release on January 31, 2023.

Second Front will feature a laundry list of the best stuff in this genre, but emphasizes a competitive AI combined with a strong scenario builder. The AI is to be emergent, allowing it to adapt to player actions rather than to be set for any given scenario. Second Front will also focus on breadth of units, with 40-some infantry units of unique tactical function and 216 pieces of equipment from tanks and vehicles to mortars, anti-tank guns, and flamethrowers. It’ll launch with American, German, and Russian forces.

That might surprise you, because this one has flown mostly under the radar, but it has been in development since 2018, and is one of the revived Micr…

In December, Robin wrote that a rough launch hadn’t stopped Darktide from being the best Warhammer 40,000 game ever, and I agree—I played almost 100 hours of this co-op shooter over the past few months, even with its initial performance problems, bugs, and missing crafting system. Within its first few months those bugs were largely fixed, crafting was finally added, and the shooting held up to me running the same missions over and over again. But I’m definitely ready for something new, so I’m pumped about Darktide’s showing during today’s Warhammer Skulls event. Two new missions? Truly an Emperor’s Blessing.

The first, Archivum Sycorax, developer Fatshark describes as “a deep dive into the archives of the Administratum Offices.” I’m guessing offices in 40K aren’t quite like the ones I’m used to. The second mission is doing something different: Fatshark says the community “will unite to achieve three challenges,” with each challenge offering up some kind of rewar…