Balatro’s taking over the world, and creator Localthunk is loving the view from the top.We’ve seen nothing but a string of successes from the poker roguelike (in the absolute simplest terms) since it launched back in February, going on to sell 50,000 copies in 10 days, and then a million copies in under a month, and double that by August. More recently, it beat out Stardew Valley and Minecraft on the mobile sales charts and was nominated for three different awards at the Golden Joysticks.Now we have a completely different metric by which to measure Balatro’s monumental success, as Localthunk is celebrating the fact that “Balatro has been cumulatively played for over 11,000 years across all platforms.” Balatro has been cumulatively played for over 11,000 years across all platforms 🍌October 8, 2024That is an absolutely staggering figure, and frankly Localthunk seems a little too eager to celebrate humanity losing that much collective time to a video game, even if it is their…

You never know when inspiration is going to strike, and for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom team, inspiration was found during a nine-day boot camp where, according to director Tomomi Sano, they were “working from morning until night” to get the story right.As part of Nintendo’s Ask the Developer Vol. 13 series producer Eiji Aonuma recounts the difficulty of taking creative liberties within the deeper history of Hyrule. This ultimately led to the aforementioned “boot camp” between him and the rest of the team to really figure the new Zelda game out. “It’s very difficult to balance how much to add or change,” says Aonuma. “At first, we were intentionally leaving any parts that might delve into Hyrule’s history vague, but partway through, we just couldn’t find a way forward that way… So, around last summer, we decided to hold a boot camp and work out the story there.”This lengthy excursion centered around the difficulties of touching the existing lore of the franchise and ke…

Ubisoft says Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the series’ “most ambitious entry yet” and that the last-minute decision to delay it to February 2025 was made to ensure its “execution is flawless”.During Ubisoft’s latest investor call, CFO Frederick Duguet shared some insights on the decision to delay Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game was previously scheduled to release on November 12, and according to Duguet, it is currently “feature complete” and was close enough to being finished that Ubisoft was preparing to offer preview builds to the press.”As you might know, we were about to run previews, so very close to shipping,” said Duguet. “What we see is that there is, with additional months, the possibility to really further polish the game so that the experience is really flawless and perfect to deliver the fantastic promise of the most ambitious entry in the franchise … What we want to do is really to bring quality to the highest level possible …. We really want to make sure execution is…

For now, at least, Concord is dead, and the dust has settled on the game community’s attempts to grind for its platinum trophy.When Sony and developer Firewalk announced last week that Concord would be taken offline while they attempted to find “the best path ahead” for the shooter, players realized that the potential was there for the game’s Platinum Trophy to become one of the rarest awards out there. With Concord only available for days before being pulled from sale, anyone who could grind their way to the Plat would be part of an elite club.With that in mind, Concord quickly became full of players throwing themselves off the map to grind XP as efficiently as possible and reach the level 50 spot required to earn that trophy. Concord servers went offline on Friday night, potentially preventing anyone else from earning the reward. Once the dust settled, it turns out that 69 players (via PSN Profiles) have secured the Living Legend trophy, a number that might never grow any l…