The first week of 2023 and the new year has already been one loaded with pretty significant video game news. Somewhat unexpected since this is usually the time of year the gaming industry takes a break in preparation for the launch slate to fire back up in February. Not this year, at least not during the first week.
A new season of Marvel Snap has begun, Hitman isn't called Hitman anymore, and apparently, if you've been keeping your PS5 upright you should be worried. More on all of that and a few of the other big stories from the last week in video games.
Elden Ring Has Won More Awards Than The Last Of Us Part 2
It was only a month ago we were wondering whether Elden Ring or God of War Ragnarok would be the game 2022 is best remembered for. Fast-forward to this week and not only has FromSoftware's behemoth won more than four times as many Game of the Year awards than Ragnarok, but it has won more GOTY awards than any game ever. The Last Of Us Part 2 was the previous record holder, winning 322 awards in 2020. Elden Ring has now won 324 and counting, potentially on its way to setting a record that will never be beaten. Well, not until The Last Of Us Part 3 breaks it.
Hitman 3 Will Become World Of Assassination
Some games can get so many expansions and so much DLC that knowing what you need to buy if you come to a game late can be pretty confusing. IO Interactive is trying to change that when it comes to Hitman 3. Earlier this week, it was announced the final game in the trilogy will soon be known as Hitman: World of Assassination. The newly named game will include Hitman and Hitman 2's access passes, and best of all, if you already own the game, you'll get the World of Assassination update for free. Once the change is made later this month, there will only be two options when it comes to buying Hitman games. World of Assassination, or its Deluxe Pack.
Don't Keep Your PS5 Upright
A number of consoles in recent history have been designed so they can be stored vertically or horizontally, depending on what the owner prefers. The PS5 falls into that handy category, but two years on from its launch, repair shop owners are warning people not to keep their new-gen consoles upright. A number of people have been posting evidence claiming the liquid metal inside the PS5 has been leaking and dripping down the console's main board which unsurprisingly stops it from working. There has been no official word on whether this is a real issue or something that has been happening infrequently, but if you do keep your PS5 vertically, now might be a good time to make the switch to horizontal.
Marvel Snap's New Season And Battle Mode Coming Soon
Marvel Snap has kicked off the new year with a new season. The Savage Land has introduced a new handful of cards to the game with Zabu leading the way. Second Dinner has also detailed what the game's Battle Mode will include when the promised new feature arrives via a future update. Battle Mode will finally allow players to compete against their friends, each starting with ten health and having to use the same deck for all battles in a particular match, making strategy even more key to Marvel Snap than it ever has been before. Devs are also hard at work on nerfing Leader.
A First Look At The Gran Turismo Movie
PlayStation is well and truly on the adaptation bandwagon. The Last Of Us starts next week, Amazon is working on God Of War, and Netflix has Horizon. Arriving before those last two will be the Gran Turismo movie which hits cinemas this summer. PlayStation offered up the very first look at the rather odd choice for an adaptation this week when it debuted the movie's first trailer at CES. Starring David Harbour and Orlando Bloom, Gran Turismo's story is based on real events, but other than that, it still isn't all that clear how a racing series has been turned into a movie. I guess we'll find out how exactly that has been done a few months from now.
60 Percent Of Madden 23's Cloud Saves Have Been Lost
The Madden series has had its detractors in recent years, and a disastrous week for Madden 23 will not have helped that whatsoever. The game's servers went down at the end of December, and it turns out roughly 60 percent of franchises that were saved on the cloud were lost during those outages. EA confirmed this week that the team attempting to recover the lost data projected only 40 percent of those lost franchises can be recovered. Even worse, when the servers initially went down, players were encouraged to log in. If you did log in while the servers were down, you may be one of the many who is now left having to start from scratch.