Hello and a happy new week to you all! If you don’t know the drill already, this is the Weekly Digest, in which we recap the highlights you might have missed over the last seven busy days on Eurogamer - now shifted to Monday morning to give you something to peruse while your brain slowly cranks back into working gear after the weekend. This time around, Chris wonders if there’s any danger GTA 6 might feel old hat by the time it eventually arrives following its latest delay; Ed investigates the billion dollar live-service question; Tom ponders Microsoft’s rubbish new Xbox Game Pass advert; Alex revisits Lionhead’s slighty forgotten classic The Movies as it turns 20, and a whole lot more. For the week’s full recap, read on...
Hello and a happy new week to you all! If you don’t know the drill already, this is the Weekly Digest, in which we recap the highlights you might have missed over the last seven busy days on Eurogamer - now shifted to Monday morning to give you something to peruse while your brain slowly cranks back into working gear after the weekend. This time around, Chris wonders if there’s any danger GTA 6 might feel old hat by the time it eventually arrives following its latest delay; Ed investigates the billion dollar live-service question; Tom ponders Microsoft’s rubbish new Xbox Game Pass advert; Alex revisits Lionhead’s slighty forgotten classic The Movies as it turns 20, and a whole lot more. For the week’s full recap, read on!
I hate the Ready Player One-ification of all our favourite media, but can’t resist The Simpsons in Fortnite
Image credit: Epic Games
Dom got things rolling this week by diving into Fortnite, which has been having a bit of a moment - or rather, even more of a moment than usual - thanks to the arrival of Homer, Marge, Lisa, Maggie, and Bart. Dom - who loves The Simpsons so much they even have a Simpsons tattoo - isn’t much of a Fortnite fan, but they came away pretty impressed by developer Epic Games’ efforts. It’s crammed with enough clever touches that it’s perhaps the “most complete and thoughtful” Fortnite tie-in to date. But is that enough to reconcile the fact Dom also reckons Epic Games’ battle royale behemoth has done “irreparable damage to the games industry”?
“It’s the little things that make this particular Fortnite tie-in feel smart,” Dom wrote. “You can ‘release the hounds’ via a button in Burns’ office. You can make your own couch gag (as I did in a team of Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson, Goku, and Bob from Bob’s Burgers, somehow) when you visit the family’s home. Nudge the Jebediah Springfield statue in the town square and his head falls off - a throwback to Season 1 of the show, and a very important teachable moment for Bart. You can prank call Moe. In the tire yard, there’s a buried Mr. Sparkle box. Blinky the three-eyed fish is swimming around in the ocean… I can’t get enough of this. It’s lowest common denominator stuff, sure, but god, it’s clever.”
Series-best combat carried me through Age of Imprisonment, but I think I’m done with the Breath of the Wild universe
Image credit: Nintendo
As for Alex Donaldson, he’s been face down in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment this week. In many ways, it’s business as usual for this latest Musou-style outing, but it does have a bit of a unique twist. Hyrule Warriors 1 brought a chaotic mash-up of Zeldas past; then came a non-cannonical take on Breath of the Wild in 2020’s Age of Calamity. But this time we’re filling in some gaps from Tears of the Kingdom’s backstory, and doing it canonically. The end result is “fine”, reckoned Alex as he went through the pros and cons, but is it, he wondered, perhaps time to move on from Breath of the Wild?
“You can probably sense from my tone that it didn’t work for me as much,” he wrote, “Don’t get me wrong, it’s all fine, and is one of the most in-depth Hylian narratives ever presented. Probably the best thing about this is that it is Zelda’s story first and foremost - a real chance for that character to shine as a lead in a truly narrative-driven game. But the more I played the more that I realised that I think I’m ‘done’ with the Breath of the Wild version of the Zelda universe; I’m ready for the series to tackle pastures new, as it often does. I didn’t realise it when I played it, but what I’ve discovered is that Tears of the Kingdom was a perfectly fine coda to that version of Link, Zelda, and Hyrule for me.”
I cannot work out what this terrible new Xbox Game Pass advert is trying to say, but I know Microsoft has once again missed the point
Image credit: Xbox / Eurogamer
Let’s be honest, Microsoft hasn’t really managed a memorable console advert since it fired a baby out the window and aged it to death, but even by its usual standards, its new Xbox Game Pass promo is a dubiously conceived one. As it attempts to sell the virtues of Game Pass, it posits an absurdist version of the past where Xbox fans could only get hold of new games by sitting in the return bin of a video store. And Eurogamer’s Tom Orry was not impressed. “I know it’s only an advert, he observed, “but it reflects Xbox’s muddled view of gaming today.”
“There was something wonderful about visiting a rental store, browsing the shelves with your friends, and walking away with something new to play for the weekend,” Tom wrote, momentarily lost in a haze of memories. “It was part of the entertainment experience - maybe grab some sweets and crisps while you’re there. I loved it, and I’d argue a big portion of the Xbox audience loved it too. I’m not offended by the depiction of the olden times here, but it just feels rather out of touch with an increasing nostalgia of physical media and all that came with it.”
If consoles are dead, how do we explain the phenomenal success of Nintendo’s Switch?
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Image credit: Eurogamer
Are consoles dying? With Microsoft shifting to a multi-platform strategy for Xbox, and PlayStation facing its own struggles, some have certainly made that argument. But, Eurogamer’s Bertie Purchese wondered this week, if that’s the case, how does Nintendo fit in? Because the Mario maker is having a pretty great time of it right now; Switch 2 is flying off shelves, Switch 1 is about to become Nintendo’s best-selling games machine, and it might even beat out the PS2 to become the best-selling console of all time. So what, if anything, can we make of all this?
“There’s significant change going on,” Bertie wrote, “and it’s needed as production costs continue to rise, audiences age and punitive import/export tariffs inflate prices even further. This is the first generation where the price of consoles has gone up after launch. They’re no longer the entry-level gaming device they used to be - phones are. It’s as though the heyday of console gaming seems to have passed. Or has it? Cue Nintendo cartwheeling into the po-faced industry sit-down having played hopscotch during break time.”
Europa Universalis 5 puts me to sleep, but I really wish it didn’t
Image credit: Eurogamer/Paradox
I cannot stress how much the idea of grand strategy games appeals to me. Like, a lot. The idea of cavorting across history and bending it to my whims sounds brilliant, and the depth and breadth of Paradox Interactive’s efforts - Crusader King, Victoria, and so on - strikes me as extraordinary. Yet every time I try to play one, the sheer concentrated mass of unfamiliar terminology quickly overwhelms me, and before I know it, my eyes are glazing, my mind is slipping, and I’m drifting off to sleep. I’ve tried everything I can think of to find a way in, and that included spending some time with Paradox’s newly released Europa Universalis 5 this week. Did I make any progress? Well, let’s see shall we?
“This, to be clear, is not a slight on any of these games,” I wrote. “I’m very well aware it’s a personal failing - a lethal combination of limited knowledge and an ageing attention span - but it’s also one I’d love to overcome. I’ve got a friend who adores Crusader Kings 3, and all I can do whenever he sends me intermittent updates on his conquests and crusades is nod enthusiastically, quietly jealous it’s all passing me by. I have tried - oh how I’ve tried! - watching hours upon hours of pleasant YouTube people patiently explaining the intricacies of Paradox’s games in ways that make sense in the moment, inflaming my enthusiasm anew. But when it comes time to put it all into practice, I’m snoozing again.”
Arc Raiders trials are the perfect way to do ranked in extraction shooters
Image credit: Eurogamer
Connor Makar has been all over developer Embark Studio’s Arc Raiders in the last few weeks, and it’s a love affair that shows no sign of slowing. This time around, he’s found himself thinking about the age-old problem faced by extraction shooters: “When so much aside from a player’s ability to aim and shoot can determine who is best in a one-on-one fight, how do you rank players?” And Connor reckoned Embark “seems to have figured this out” as he delved deeper - which is certainly an encouraging sign as Arc Raiders attempts to worm its way into a market dominated by a handful of live-service shooters and capture players’ precious screentime.
“The way the ranking system works itself is ingenious,” Connor opined. “You’re placed in a bracket with 100 people. The top 30 players in terms of points at the end of the week gain two ranks, the next 30 gain one, while the remaining slurry of unambitious so-and-sos are left where they started. During week one, I didn’t struggle to get rank one in my batch. Now, in week two, there’s this fella called Oom who is somehow sitting on 40,000+. That’s a ridiculous number. But, even if you aren’t too interested in climbing the ranks, achieving at least a three star rating for each trail will reward you with epic-tier loot. This means even casual players will want to push for this milestone. As such, there may be no such thing as a free ride through the ranks.”
The wait for GTA 6 has now been so long it must be some kind of record - right?
Image credit: Eurogamer / Rockstar / Adobe Stock
In a busy week for games news, one particular announcement dominated headlines: publisher Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games have made the decision to delay Grand Theft Auto 6 yet again. It’ll no longer hit its previously announced release date of 26th May, 2026, and is instead now due on 19th November next year. The reason? To provide “some additional time to finish the game with the high level of polish players expect and deserve.” But Bertie had other questions on his mind. By the time GTA 6 comes out, it’ll have been 13 years since GTA 5 - could that possibly mean it’s set some kind of development record? Determined to find an answer, Bertie popped on his sleuthing hat to learn more...
“The wait has seemed eternal but how long has it actually been in development for?” he wondered. “GTA 5 came out in 2013, 12 years ago - a gap that will extend to 13 years by the time GTA 6 comes out in 2026. If it arrives then. No other GTA game has taken anywhere near as long. The gap between GTA 4 and 5 was five years; the gap between San Andreas and 4 was four years; the gap between Vice City and San Andreas was two years; and the gap between Vice City and 3 was one year. This list reads like the games industry in microcosm, and how development times have skyrocketed over the years. Will the next GTA take 20 years to make?”
GTA 6 runs the risk of being totally outdated by the time it finally arrives - or does it?
Image credit: Rockstar / 2K / Eurogamer
But don’t think we’re done with Grand Theft Auto 6 just yet! Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell also had the game’s lengthy development on his mind this week, questioning if that massive gap between series instalments might ultimately work against Rockstar. Traditionally, the studio has been a trendsetter, each new iteration of its open-world formula showing exactly what’s possible with the right (massive) budget and the right amount of time. But could GTA 5’s decade of development work against it? Might it end up feeling outdated, Chris wondered, trapped in its own bubble of creation as the industry outside has marched on?
“GTA 5 was far more an expansion than an evolution,” Chris wrote. You can do more things, but they still all exist within the same basic structure. The shape of the game is the same, only enlarged. I remember a defining point of awe at the time of GTA 5’s launch being the fact you could, if you liked, just go and play some tennis. In that sense then, GTA 6 doesn’t have a hope… The odds of it landing any successful cultural satire are stacked against it - culture these days if anything seems to be accelerating, not only changing over time but changing faster as that time goes by, juiced up by the refracting, self-referring impact of social media and increasingly digitised life - while the shape of open world design has, surely, dramatically moved forward since development on GTA 6 started in earnest.“
Lionhead’s secret best game, and one of the greatest ever abandonware games - The Movies - turns 20 today
Image credit: Eurogamer
Things got a little quieter as we shifted into the weekend, so what better way to take a pause than a big helping of nostalgia? Alex Donaldson fired up the retro canon on Saturday to celebrate the 20th anniversary of defunct Fable developer Lionhead Studios’ best game (as far as I’m concerned at least), The Movies. One of the most interesting - and saddest - things about Lionhead’s wonderfully observed Hollywood management sim is that, despite its brilliance, it’s been all but completely abandoned, and there’s no easy, legal way to play it these days. Which makes it even more worth celebrating - perhaps enough noise might convince Microsoft to show it some 20th birthday love...
“It was its dedication to being both a game and a functional (if clunky) storytelling tool that set The Movies apart from other business simulation peers of the day - and even those today,” Alex reminisced. “It also in hindsight feels rather ahead of its time - a year before Gary’s Mod became a smash hit for making film with game assets, and releasing only six months after the launch of YouTube, meaning it of course couldn’t truly take into account how that website would utterly shatter the video-sharing landscape online.”
Fortnite’s Disneyland Game Rush is a slick celebration with great fan service, but I wish it didn’t come with the usual brain rot chaos
Image credit: Eurogamer/Epic Games/Disney
I, meanwhile, have been back in Fortnite to check out Disneyland Game Rush, an official 70th anniversary in-game celebration of the park and its most iconic attractions - which sounded right up my street as an occasional Fortnite player and full-time Disney theme park nerd. And I was also curious to see if it might offer something of a glimpse at the future, given Disney last year announced it had acquired a $1.5bn stake in Epic Games and was partnering to create a “games and entertainment universe” - basically a virtual theme park - in Fortnite. As it turns out, there’s quite a lot to like about Disneyland Game Rush and its fan service from the perspective of an ageing theme park fan, but it’s so festooned in the usual brain rot guff, I couldn’t help but wonder - not for the first time - who all this is supposed to be for.
“As companies desperately scrambled to please investors by proclaiming themselves all-in on the whole metaverse thing,” I wrote, “Disney announced it was acquiring a $1.5bn stake in Epic Games and partnering to create a “games and entertainment universe” in Fortnite. The accompanying concept art suggested it was working toward some sort of digital theme park where children and the young-at-heart could frolic in the IP fields, their lives enriched by endless experiential brand awareness. I wasn’t convinced back then, and now I’ve played Disneyland Game Rush, I feel like I’ve had a first-hand glimpse of that bewildering future.“
As viral hits like Escape from Duckov and Megabonk change the industry, Tomas Sala has found another way to survive
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Image credit: Eurogamer / Tomas Sala
Bulwark and Falconeer developer Tomas Sala has been releasing his own games for over a decade now, and has seen the games industry shift dramatically in that time. Bertie caught up with him this week to discuss the recently launched Falconeer: Revolution Remaster, and the conversation quickly turned to the differences between releasing a game back then - when Sala’s strategy was very much ‘‘make new games and hope’ to now, where the best chance of success seems to be to “get on the viral flywheel.” But Sala’s also taking a different approach by releasing his remaster for free - which, he reckons, could be the key to survival.
“’In 2025, you’re seeing games made to go viral,” Sala explained to Bertie. ‘It’s what you’re seeing happening on Roblox. It’s a certain easily digestible viral sensation.’ TikTok and its short-form video are another huge influencing factor, Sala acknowledges. Mix AI in as well, and you see the potential for potentially endless amounts of quick-made games, which can respond in a heartbeat to whatever’s currently trending. But Sala refuses to be swayed.“
Revisiting the weird Terminator 2 game you probably never knew existed (and how it connects to Terminator 2D: No Fate)
Image credit: Ocean Software
If you’re a fan of the ol’ murder-bots, developer Bitmap Bureau’s upcoming Terminator 2D: No Fate might already be on your wishlist. It’s basically a playable version of James Cameron’s beloved Terminator 2, promising plenty of old-school arcade action - inspired by Konami’s classic Super Probotector - and finished off with some lovely pixel art visuals. It’s a title Eurogamer’s Ian Higton is pretty excited about, but ahead of its arrival, he’s been thinking about another attempt to capture the movie in video game form - Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which released for the Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and DOS all the way back in 1991. In truth, it wasn’t very good, but Ian still managed to unearth some interesting stories about its chaotic creation.
*“*According to interviews in both Your Sinclair and CU Amiga magazines after the game was released,” he explained, “Ocean gave developer Dementia six months to complete the project. However, Dementia’s only access to the movie before release was a copy of the script that it received in January of 1991. Because of the secrecy surrounding the film’s production, all Dementia’s developers could do was pick a handful of scenes from this script alone and convert those into levels. It sounds like a rather daunting task, especially with such a big licence, but nevertheless, they cracked on with the job at hand. Then, two months later in March, the first trailer for the movie dropped and this was the first time that the devs were able to see what Cameron’s vision for the film actually was.”
How on earth do you find lasting, meaningful success with a live-service game? Developers answer the “billion dollar question”
Image credit: Eurogamer
And finally, a very busy week on Eurogamer wrapped up on Sunday with an absolute whopper from Ed Nightingale. As we all know, thanks to major success stories like Fortnite, there’s mega-money to be made in live-service games when the stars align, but launching and maintaining one is far from an easy task. For every League of Legends or GTA Online, there are countless failed attempts at breaking the market. Even a major company like Sony has struggled; its big budget 2024 gambit, Concord, lasted just two weeks before the plug was pulled. So, how do you find success with a live-service game? Why do some games succeed where others fail? Ed spoke to people all across the games industry to see if any answers emerged.
“To make those billions of dollars, monetisation is crucial,” Ed wrote. “The free-to-play model has become the norm for many live-service games, with additional microtransactions generating cash. As Candy Crush Soda Saga bosses note, though, you need to respect player time. And they should know: King is perhaps one of the biggest success stories in live-service gaming, with Candy Crush grossing over $20bn since the launch of the franchise. ‘Stay with us forever, and then we cannot ask too much,’ explains general manager Paula Ingvar. ‘We’re not asking for too much time. We’re not introducing any paywalls, or any pay-to-win mechanics. It’s free-to-play, free-to-win. You just make that part of your routine and a natural part of your life that gives you a bit of joy - without being a squeeze, or [generating] burnout.’”