Call of Duty fans might want to start looking into taking some time off around Halloween. The next entry in the franchise, Modern Warfare II, will be released on October 28th. It's the sequel to 2019's Modern Warfare, which was a reboot of the blockbuster series.

Activision Blizzard released a teaser video that doesn't show any gameplay. Instead, it reveals artwork for some of the characters who'll be featured: John “Soap” MacTavish, Simon “Ghost” Riley, Captain John Price, Kyle “Gaz” Garrick and Alejandro Vargas.

A gameplay reveal (if you really need one to know what a modern Call of Duty game looks like) may not be too far away, though. The teaser includes a quick flash of text reading "J-8-22." That may be hinting toward a broader reveal on June 8th, just ahead of major gaming showcases from Summer Game Fest and Xbox and Bethesda.

It's Infinity Ward's turn to release a Call of Duty title and the studio has its hands full, since it's also responsible for Warzone. A "massive evolution" of the battle royale will take place later this year in line with the release of Modern Warfare II. Both games will have a new engine, for one thing.

Modern Warfare II is arguably the most important Call of Duty title for Activision Blizzard in many years. The series is the company's crown jewel. While the most recent release, Call of Duty: Vanguard, was the biggest selling game of 2021 by some estimations, it saw "lower premium sales" at launch than the previous year's entry, Black Ops Cold War.

In the first three months of 2022, the Activision side of the business (which Call of Duty falls under) saw a big drop in engagement year-over-year from 150 million monthly active players to 100 million in the wake of the company's misconduct scandals. With the Microsoft takeover pending and reports that there may not be a new Call of Duty game in 2023, Activision Blizzard will be hoping that Modern Warfare II performs strongly.

One of the biggest takeovers in the history of the gaming industry is complete — Take-Two now owns Zynga. The companies announced the $12.7 billion acquisition in January. The two sides have cut through all the red tape and, after shareholders gave the thumbs up last week, the deal is done.

Zynga has joined the likes of Rockstar Games and 2K under Take-Two's umbrella. As s result of the deal, Take-Two now has a bigger stable of well-known mobile and casual gaming franchises, including Words with Friends and Farmville. Among the games Zynga is working on is Star Wars: Hunters, a free-to-play arena shooter for mobile and Nintendo Switch that's supposed to arrive this year.

“As we bring together our exceptional talent, exciting pipelines of games, and industry-leading technologies and capabilities, we believe that we can take our portfolio to another level of creativity, innovation, and quality," Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. "Each of our teams has a strong history of operational execution, and together, we expect that we will enhance our financial profile through greater scale and profitability, paving the way for us to deliver strong shareholder value.”

Take-Two's buyout of Zynga is part of a major wave of consolidation across the gaming industry. In January, Sony announced it was buying Destiny 2 studio Bungie for $3.6 billion. That news came just days after Microsoft said it planned to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Both takeovers are pending regulatory approval. Activision Blizzard shareholders voted in favor of the Microsoft deal last month.

More than a month after revealing the revamped version of PlayStation Plus, Sony has shared the initial lineup of games heading to its new service, covering everything from original PlayStation classics and PlayStation Portable titles to modern hits. The new PlayStation Plus has three tiers, each at a discrete price point and offering varying levels of goodies, and it’s all set to go live on June 13th in the Americas.

Now that we know which games will be included in each tier — PlayStation Plus Essential, Extra and Premium — it’s easier to directly compare Sony’s service with that of its biggest competitor, Xbox Game Pass from Microsoft.

The new PlayStation Plus

Sony’s subscription service is segmented into three parts, with different games and features available depending on how much you pay. PS Plus Essential costs $10 a month or $60 a year, and it’s basically the Plus we know now, offering two games to download each month, access to online multiplayer features, cloud storage and discounts.

PS Plus Extra costs $15 a month or $100 a year, and provides everything in the Essential tier plus a library of up to 400 downloadable PS4 and PS5 games.

Bluepoint Games

The final option, PS Plus Premium, costs $18 a month or $120 a year, and adds up to 340 games from the original PlayStation, PS2, PSP, PS3 and PS4 eras. This is also where streaming comes into play: Sony is folding its existing cloud service, PlayStation Now, into the new Plus ecosystem, but only at its most expensive level. Premium adds the ability to play a selection of PS3 titles from the cloud, and stream or download lower-tier games from original PlayStation, PS2, PSP and PS4 eras (cloud play is only available in territories where PS Now is already live). Streaming will work on PS4, PS5 and PC, while native cloud gaming on mobile devices isn’t possible on Sony’s network.

Now, the games. Sony confirmed just over 100 titles heading to PS Plus Extra and Premium, including Demon’s Souls, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Remastered, Gravity Rush Remastered, The Last Guardian, Tokyo Jungle, Ico, Tekken 2, Asura’s Wrath, Ape Escape and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. That last game is included in the list as part of a deal to offer a few dozen Ubisoft+ Classics games to Extra and Premium subscribers.

Most of the games on Sony’s list are from the PS4 and PS5 generations, which is good news for Extra subscribers. However, Sony’s initial lineup of old-school games feels thin, even though they’re a crucial feature of the Premium tier. There’s an emphasis on PS3 games, with 29 available to stream, and relatively few titles from earlier eras. While there are some PS4 remasters of PS2 games on the list, including Rogue Galaxy and the Jak and Daxter series, so far Sony’s service has zero original PS2 games.

There’s still hope for nostalgia seekers out there — Sony said its list of classic games is an “early look at a selection of games that will be available,” so there should be more to come.

Japan Studio

However, don’t look to PS Plus for new, blockbuster Sony games. PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan told gamesindustry.biz in March that new, first-party titles won’t hit PS Plus on day one, meaning subscribers will have to pay separately for them. This is notable because Microsoft has made a big deal out of offering its in-house titles to Game Pass subscribers at launch.

Ryan said his stance on day-one drops could change, but for now, don’t expect titles like Spider-Man 2 or God of War Ragnarök on PS Plus at any tier.

Xbox Game Pass

On the surface, Game Pass has been a successful endeavor for Microsoft, with 25 million monthly subscribers and counting. Game Pass unlocks access to a large library of old and new games, including day-one releases of first-party titles like Halo: Infinite and Starfield (eventually); it functions across Xbox consoles and PCs, and it includes cloud features that make the included games playable on mobile devices.

The Game Pass library has around 300 games, even though Microsoft continues to market the service with a lowball figure of “over 100” titles. The lineup spans the original Xbox to current-gen, and the main tier adds Xbox Live Gold and access to EA Play. Game Pass has heavy hitters like Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo: Infinite, the original Doom and its modern follow-ups, Forza Horizon 5, Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Microsoft Flight Simulator, as well as indie games including A Memoir Blue, Kentucky Route Zero, Outer Wilds, Death’s Door and Spelunky 2.

Microsoft has sole access to some of these games because it owns a significant portion of the video game industry. Xbox Game Studios comprises 23 development teams, including id Software, Bethesda Softworks, Arkane, Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Double Fine and Mojang. All of this ensures Game Pass has a bank of exclusives to draw from — in practice, PS Plus won’t get games from these studios unless Microsoft allows it. The inverse is also true for Sony’s roster of exclusives, but Microsoft simply has more to work with in this regard.

343 Industries

Game Pass has PC-only and console-only tiers providing access to the library and not much more, and these cost $10 a month each. Neither option includes cloud gaming or Xbox Live Gold, which is necessary to play some titles online and costs $10 a month on its own. Microsoft doesn’t do much to market these standalone tiers, instead directing players to Game Pass Ultimate, the main focus of the Xbox subscription scheme.

Game Pass Ultimate costs $15 a month and offers Xbox Live Gold, cloud gaming features, and access to every game in the console and PC lineup. This is the all-inclusive option, operating on Xbox consoles, PCs and mobile devices via the cloud.

PS Plus vs Game Pass

There are a few glaring differences between the new PS Plus and Game Pass. Sony’s subscription plan has fewer games (for now), it doesn’t include mobile streaming and it won’t provide day-one access to new first-party titles, meaning serious PlayStation fans will have to pay for these big drops separately.

In terms of pricing, let’s focus on the top tiers: PS Plus Premium runs $18 a month or $120 a year, and Game Pass Ultimate is $15 a month. The cost is comparable, but at its most flexible pricing level, Sony’s plan is $3 a month more than Microsoft’s. That’s an extra payment of $36 a year. Annually, though, PS Plus Premium is $60 less than Game Pass Ultimate. 

Of course, cost isn’t the only consideration here. With rival subscription services, Sony and Microsoft are doubling down on exclusives as a main source of momentum, and maintaining a rich and unique library will be key to the success of these schemes. Xbox may own more than 20 studios, but Sony can still provide games that Microsoft can’t, and titles like Demon’s Souls, Gravity Rush Remastered, Tokyo Jungle, Ico and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are a significant draw for longtime PlayStation fans.

That said, the decision to not include first-party games day-one in PS Plus could lose Sony subscribers, as well as some goodwill. The new PS Plus also seems to be missing some meat from its classics catalog, a move that could turn off potential Premium subscribers, but Sony is just getting started and there’s plenty of room to grow. That is, if Jim Ryan and his team see the value in adding content to the service.

Genshin Impact developer Hoyoverse is working on a new project. On Friday, the studio shared the first trailer for Zenless Zone Zero, an action RPG set in a modern urban setting. Reminiscent of titles like The World Ends With You and Scarlett Nexus, the game pits players against Ethereal, monstrous creatures borne from another dimension. In a nod to Neon Genesis Evangelion, the action takes place in New Eridu, one of the few cities to survive the devastation wrought by the Ethereal.

As a “Proxy,” you’ll need to organize a disparate party of characters to battle the monsters. Hoyoverse hasn’t explicitly said how it plans to monetize Zenless Zone Zero, but it sounds like the game will employ a similar system to the one found in Genshin Impact. In other words, expect to use real-world money to improve your chances at obtaining some of the game’s most powerful party members. Zenless Zone Zero does not have a release date yet, but you can sign up to take part in the game’s closed iOS and PC beta by visiting its official website.

EA is releasing the remake of Dead Space on January 27th, 2023. Motive, the EA studio behind the game, made the announcement at the company's Crafting the Tension Art Developer Livestream. The classic sci-fi horror survival game is being rebuilt from the ground up using EA's Frostbite game engine and will be available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

The original Dead Space was released back in 2008 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC. Motive is upgrading its visuals and made its audio crisper for a more immersive experience on modern consoles. The studio remade all the in-game props, tools and environments for more modern hardware and platforms, and it used "dynamic, volumetric lighting with atmospheric and environmental VFX rendered in full-HDR" to capture the creepy atmosphere of the game.

In Dead Space, you play as engineer Isaac Clarke who's on a routine mission to fix the mining starship USG Ishimura. What he didn't know was the the ship's crew had been slaughtered and infected, transforming them into creatures known as Necromorphs. To find his girlfriend who worked as a medical officer onboard, he has to fight these monsters while also grappling with his growing psychosis. 

In addition to announcing the remake's release date, the Motive team has also given us a look at the development of the game in the livestream. You can see how they incorporated lighting changes and new elements in the video below:

Nintendo held its latest Indie World stream today and, as is often the case at these events, a few games that were shown off suddenly popped up in the Switch eShop. One of those is Mini Motorways, a puzzle strategy game that debuted on Apple Arcade in 2019 before making its way to PC last year. Dinosaur Polo Club's follow up to Mini Metro (which is also available on Switch) is making its console debut.

The core idea is that you'll build out roads to keep traffic flowing in a growing city. Things will naturally get more complicated as demand grows. You'll also be able to compete against other players in daily and weekly challenges. The Switch version of Mini Motorways costs $14.99.

Three other indie games landed on Switch today: Soundfall, OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition and Gibbon: Beyond the Trees. Soundfall is a rhythm-based dungeon crawler with dynamically generated levels that are based on the music you select. There are more than 140 tracks to choose from and there's support for local and online multiplayer. OPUS: Echo of Starsong is a visual novel-style puzzle game, while Gibbon: Beyond the Trees is a slick-looking 2D platformer.

It was also revealed that We Are OFK is coming to Switch this year, as are Cult of the Lamb, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator,Ooblets and ElecHead. One of the other games that caught my eye in the showcase was Gunbrella from Doinksoft and Devolver Digital (which recently released the terrific Trek to Yomi). It's a "noir-punk adventure" in which you wield a gun that's also an umbrella. However, you play as a woodsman who's seeking revenge rather than a Batman villain. 

Another game that looked intriguing was Another Crab’s Treasure from Aggro Crab. It's a soulslike (meaning it takes inspiration from FromSoftware titles such as Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls) that takes place in an undersea world. You play as a hermit crab who has to use trash as makeshift shells to protect yourself from enemies. Like Gunbrella, this one should land on Switch in 2023.

The Indie World stream shone a spotlight on several other titles, such as Wildfrost and Wayward Strand, but there was sadly no sign of Hollow Knight: Silksong. You can check out the showcase in full below.

It's been 11 months since Microsoft confirmed it's making a dedicated game-streaming device and a smart TV app for the Xbox ecosystem. The company hasn't announced many more details about either since then, but a new report suggests they could arrive in the coming months.

The streaming device, which can be plugged into a TV or monitor, will have either a stick or a puck design, according to GamesBeat. In other words, it'll look like an Amazon Fire Stick or a Chromecast. It's believed that you'll not only be able to stream games from Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with the device, but also use it to watch movies and TV shows.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is said to be working with Samsung on an Xbox app for that company's TVs. Some of Samsung's 2022 models support game streaming services like Google Stadia and NVIDIA GeForce Now. It wouldn't be surprising at all to see an Xbox Cloud Gaming app on those TVs too.

Both the TV app and streaming device are expected to arrive within the next 12 months. They form part of Microsoft's Xbox Everywhere strategy. The name is self-explanatory — the company wants to reach gamers wherever they are, even if they don't have an Xbox console or a capable gaming PC.

The project took another step forward this week with the addition of Fortnite to Xbox Cloud Gaming this week. That offers people a way to stream the all-conquering battle royale on smartphones (yes, even iPhones), tablets and PC.

What makes this different from other streaming games from Xbox is that it's free. You don't need an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription to stream Fortnite — just a Microsoft account. Microsoft says it's interested in offering more free-to-play titles via the cloud, so perhaps the likes of Apex Legends, Call of Duty Warzone and the multiplayer side of Halo Infinite will be available at some point.

We might not have to wait much longer to hear about the next steps for the Xbox Everywhere initiative. A big Xbox and Bethesda showcase will take place on June 12th, and there could be more than game announcements and trailers in store.

In the fall of 2018, tucked away in a side hall at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, seven-time Classic Tetris World Champion (CTWC), Jonas Neubauer, found himself against the ropes. 37-year-old Neubauer, the Tony Hawk of Tetris, was two games down to teenage rookie Joseph Saelee. To stage a comeback, he now had to win three games in a row, a monumental task that would require every last drop of focus.

As his third game came to an unsuccessful end, Neubauer’s strained expression appeared to dissolve from frustration to the realization that his long reign as champion could be over. Neubauer may have lost in three straight games to 16-year-old Saelee, but the real defeat – for the Tetris old guard at least – was the arrival of a new era for the world’s most played game. An era that would upend over 30 years of convention and redefine, quite literally, how the game is played.

Saelee’s disruptive victory, or one like it, was inevitable. Neubauer played Tetris just like you or I do – holding down the D-pad to move the pieces (a technique called “delayed auto shift/DAS” in competitive Tetris lingo). He just happened to do it with a level of skill beyond almost anyone else. Saelee played differently. He used a style called “hypertapping” – a contorted mix of fingers and thumbs designed to sidestep the game’s built-in speed limit – and it allows you to move pieces much faster than DAS.

Saelee didn’t invent the technique, but he coupled it with enough skill to secure his victory over Neubauer and, with it, would kick start its popularity in competitive play. “So 2018, it was just Joseph [tapping]. 2019, honestly, it still hadn't quite taken over yet.“ Adam Cornelius, CTWC Co-founder told Engadget. “2020 was the year that it totally flipped, by then, there was like, 100 kids who were tapping.”

Tetris, invented in 1984 by software engineer Alexey Pajitnov, is considered by many to be the perfect puzzle game – easy to learn, difficult to master and endlessly playable. It exploded in popularity in 1989 after its debut on the NES and release as the pack-in title for the Game Boy. Tetris has since been officially released on over 65 platforms and holds the Guinness world record for the most ported video game. Despite all that, there’s possibly never been a more exciting time for fans of the game than right now.

“Classic Tetris” usually refers to the NES port of the game. It’s considered the gold standard original and is the version played in the CTWC tournaments. This means original NES consoles, controllers and big old CRT TVs. “A lot of people make fun of us in the comments. They're like, can’t you afford new TVs?” Cornelius told Engadget.

This not only ensures authenticity, it creates a level playing field. Other competitions, like Classic Tetris Monthly are more relaxed about what hardware/emulation you can play with, but CTWC and any world records will usually be played on original Nintendo consoles. There’s a slight concession allowing for a special version of the game that’s modified to allow for higher scores (often done with a Game Genie) and you’ll understand why later.

Saelee’s victory at the 2018 CTWC finals may have surprised everyone, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Interest in the game had been steadily growing since the tournament’s inaugural event in 2010, which was also the subject of a documentary: Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters (directed by Cornelius). The film followed a rag tag bunch of high-ranking players toward the climax of the first CTWC event. The winner? Jonas Neubauer.

CTWC soon found a home at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo and grew in size every year. In 2016, another newcomer found their way to the final against Neubauer, who was competing for his 6th title. That player, Jeff Moore, was having the run of his life, scoring repeated Tetrises much to the amazement of the commentators. “Boom, Tetris for Jeff” they yelped every time he slid a long bar down the right hand side of the screen.

“The commentators got so overly excited about this new dark horse candidate, Jeff, that they kind of said, ‘Boom, Tetris for Jeff’ maybe a little excessively. And people just stumbled across the video [on YouTube]” Cornelius said. Cutdowns were made and t-shirts were printed. “Boom, Tetris for Jeff” was just the right sort of silly in the right sort of venue (YouTube) to pique the interest of younger eyes and kickstart a growing appetite for competitive classic Tetris videos.

“There are a lot more young players getting into the game, especially since Joseph Saelee won the world championship, because he kind of blew up the scene in terms of teenagers and stuff.” Christopher “Cheez” Martinez, told Engadget.

Cheez, as he is known in the Tetris community, is one of those teenagers. He found the game via Saelee’s world championship win video and then another recommendation about Tetris Effect. At 16 years old, he’s exploring a game that was already twice his age. Like many other of the new, teenage players, his progress has been remarkably fast.

Greyj/Getty Images (modified)

Before there were competitions like CTWC, there were two white whales for elite classic Tetris players. The main one was the “maxout.” The NES version of the game only has a six digit scoreboard meaning 999,999 is the highest score obtainable, but reaching that was difficult, not least because of the second elusive goal: beating level 29 (aka the “kill screen”).

As anyone who has played any version of Tetris will know, one of the main dynamics is that you clear lines to advance to the next level, as you do the blocks fall faster than the level before. In NES Tetris, level 29 is when the game reaches its maximum speed and was widely considered impossible to beat when DAS was the only play style. This, in turn, meant that if you were playing for a maxout you had to get there before level 29.

The maxout was officially first achieved by Harry Hong in 2009, but it’s widely accepted that another old school player, Thor Aackerlund, achieved it earlier, but in a time long before video phones, YouTube and social media. Aackerlund also claimed to have reached level 30 (albeit briefly) but myth about the achievement meant it'd be many years before the kill screen was truly considered beaten.

After Hong’s maxout in 2009, a slow trickle of players started achieving the goal each year. Until you get to 2019, at which point the number exponentially accelerates. “It took me a year, I progressed pretty slowly compared to a lot of the players now actually. People are maxing in like four or five months. It's kind of ridiculous.” Cheez said. He achieved his first maxout in 2019 and was the 65th player ever to do so. Today, around 400 people have reached the magic million points..

As for passing the level 29 “kill screen.” This was, at one point, considered almost impossible. A hard wall that could not be surmounted due to how the game was designed. DAS simply cannot move the pieces to either edge fast enough, meaning that once the “stack” is above a certain height math takes over and failure is guaranteed. Despite that glimpse of level 30 by Aackerlund, kill screen’s reign of terror truly ended when Saelee reached a verified level 33 just months after winning his first world championship.

Yet, despite the two main goals of high-level Tetris no longer being out of reach, these achievements seem almost quaint by today’s standards. As DAS gave way to hypertapping, the once impossible soon became a a rite of passage for elite players. But with the limitation of the kill screen now removed, the theoretical score limit was also eliminated. While level 29 probably was intended to be the last level (the level counter breaks once you hit 30 and the speed no longer increases no matter what level you reach) hypertapping was perhaps still not quite fast enough to allow players to progress much further.

Cheez had other ideas.

Greyj/Getty Images (modified)

While he had made a name for himself as a player with hypertapping, Cheez eventually found a video of someone using a technique that doubled the inputs for one press. “They would put their thumb down, and they would hit on the bottom and the top into their other thumb, and you would get two inputs with the same motion pretty much. So I kind of took inspiration from that in like, late 2020. And rolling became a thing.”

"Rolling" is a strange technique to watch. Most players rest the controller on their thigh or knee, many wear a single glove and then “strum” the controller from below with one thumb on the D-pad. However you get there, though, you can move pieces left and right even faster than with hypertapping. It’s such an efficient technique, Cornelius says, that some fans consider it cheating. It’s entirely legal in CTWCs eyes as it is done with unmodified NES hardware and nothing but your hands.

Rolling is so effective, it’s allowing players to dismantle the current limits of the game. Remember how Saelee achieved the first level 33 in 2019? Well when I interviewed Cheez for this story the new record for the highest level was 63 – kill screen and then some. By the time I clicked publish, that record has been smashed again, with an eye-watering level 95 now the goal to beat.

This rapid advancement isn’t just about new world records, it’s fundamentally changing how the game is played, strategically and physically. Competitive classic Tetris is all about the score. Not the number of lines or how many Tetrises you make, just who scores the most points in a best of three game.

In the old world, the kill screen’s hard limit forced players to focus on efficient play, scoring as many Tetrises as possible before level 29. In the era of rolling, pros are training by starting at level 29. This is where the Game Genie comes in as the original version of the game just can’t count above 999,999 which you’ll definitely need it to once you get to this level. If you hone your skills on the fastest level possible, that becomes the new normal and you can theoretically play indefinitely. That’s how we can go from the impossible kill screen to a level 95. But this also presents some challenges for the burgeoning esport, something Cornelius is all too aware of.

“I predict that in, maybe it's this year, maybe it's in five years, but sometime very soon, everyone's always going to max out on level 28. And they're always going to get to level 50. And tack on another million points. And it's really just going to be this… who flinches first, who messes up first, is really all that matters” he said.

This is already happening, at least on the record-setting circuit. Shortly before I interviewed Cheez he had recently set a world record for the highest score: 2.3 million which casually included a level 61 and a total of 551 lines cleared – both also new world records at the time. All of these have since been beaten, and by considerable margins. The game is now at the stage where players are looking to more niche or specific goals and records to break – such as the highest score achieved with a level 29 start – because these are the areas of the game yet to be broken wide open.

In early 2021 something unexpected rocked the Tetris community. On January 5th, at 39 years old, Neubauer collapsed and died of a sudden cardiac arrhythmia of undetermined cause. The game’s most iconic character was gone, and with him the last champion DAS player. “Jonas' passing is a big part of the story and he was a friend of mine” Cornelius said. “Obviously, nothing compares to the loss in general. But for the Tetris scene, it was really cool to have one person from the old guard who could really hang with all the kids.

Despite renewed interest in the game from a much younger generation, Tetris is still somewhat of a fringe esport. You’ll find games featured on ESPN and it has obviously been growing in popularity, but prize pools remain modest compared to more popular games like Counter-Strike or League of Legends.

“The highest paying tournament is CTWC right now. And the first place prize is $3,000. So it's no Fortnite but it's kind of a decent sum of money anyway.” Cheez said. When I asked him if he’d consider doing this full time should that become an option, he was diplomatic. “Honestly, it's hard to predict the future of the scene but like if the money gets good, I might try to make it a job at some point, but I don't know how stable it would be.”

Cornelius is a little more optimistic about where the future could lead. “You know, when you watch an Olympic sport, you don't watch to see someone beat everyone else by double, you're seeing people winning by these tiny, tiny, tiny margins that are almost imperceptible,” he said. “I think that's where Tetris is headed, where the players are all going to converge on a point where they all play exactly the same. And there is one ideal way to play and we're witnessing them try to just add, just push it a little bit further every year.”

Cheez, for his part, made it to the semifinal for April’s Classic Tetris Monthly event and will no doubt be looking to beat his 2020 top seven placing at CTWC after finishing 21st in last year’s event. One thing’s for certain, whoever wins will likely be a roller meaning Cheez’s mark on the tournament and the game in general is indelible.

Thanks to the pandemic, CTWC was forced to take the competition online. This year’s plans aren’t confirmed yet, but the hope is to return to an in person event if possible. Current world champion Michael "Dog" Artiaga is set to return to defend his title. After Saelee’s 2018 victory, he won again in 2019. Dog took the title the next two years and there’s a host of players ready to take his crown. Dog is widely considered the one to beat, especially after recording a 2.2 Million high score on a level 29 start. Because today’s Tetris begins where the old game left off.

Warcraft fans can look forward to a new mobile game in 2022. Blizzard today released the trailer for Warcraft Arclight Rumble, a free-to-play, single-player strategy game that is due later this year. The game features collectible Warcraft Minis that players will be able to control in order to defeat evil leaders in the Warcraft universe.

The game’s Google Play store description states that players will have the choice of building armies with five playable families: Alliance, Horde, Beast, Undead and Blackrock. Players can opt for single-player mode or going head-to-head in PvP battles. Arclight Rumble will feature multiple modes, including Conquest, Dungeons, Raids and Co-Op. The game features over 60 Warcraft Minis and characters in total, with the ability to unlock new skills and upgrade the characters as you level up. The game’s website features even more details on the upcoming title, including the option to pre-register for more details (including the release date, which hasn’t been announced yet).

With Activision’s ongoing workplace sexual harassment lawsuits aside, it’s been a mixed couple of years for the Warcraft universe. As PC Gamer notes, the Shadowlands expansion had problems that left some devoted WoW fans in a tizzy. Last month’s trailer on the Dragonlandsexpansion let down some fans too. But a new mobile game offers up a fresh opportunity for fans to get excited about Warcraft again with relatively low stakes. You can watch the trailer for Arclight Rumble below:

Swedish game company Embracer Group has just made a blockbuster deal to acquire Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal and Square Enix Montréal for what seems like a bargain $300 million price, the company confirmed in a press release. The deal includes a "catalogue of IPs including Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, Legacy of Kain and more than 50 back-catalogue games from Square Enix Holdings," it wrote. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval. 

Those studios represent around 1,100 employees across eight global locations, the company noted. When the deal is finalized, Embracer will have 14,000 employees, 10,000 game developers and 124 internal studios. It has more than 230 games in development, with 30 of those being AAA titles. "This acquisition will bring additional scale to Embracer’s current AAA segment, and Embracer will have one of the largest pipelines of PC/Console games content across the industry, across all genres," it said. 

As part of the deal, Eidos Montreal plans to revive Deus Ex and use new Unreal Engine 5 technology, the studio said during the acquisition conference call, as Shack News reported. "At this time, we are crazy people who have decided to revive the Deus Ex IP as our first game," Eidos Montreal Studio Head David Anfossi said. "A new team, a very complex production, a new tech, and a new studio, an easy challenge." Anfossi noted that Deus Ex console sales have exceeded 12 million units. 

Last month, Crystal Dynamics announced that it was developing a new Tomb Raider game, also based on Unreal Engine 5, with plans to "push the envelope of fidelity." The studio also developed Marvel's Avengers, among other titles. Eidos Montréal created Thief 4, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and more, and is "working on a host of AAA projects including both new releases from beloved franchises and original IP," according to the Embracer press release. 

As we detailed in a feature last year, Embracer is perhaps "the biggest games publisher you've never heard of," founded by Swedish entrepreneur Lars Wingefors. It made a string of acquisitions over the last couple of years, most significantly purchasing Saber Interactive for $525 million and Gearbox Software for $1.3 billion.

It now own quite a list of iconic franchises, particularly in the classic category. On top of the newly acquired IP, it controls Saints Row, Goat Simulator, Dead Island, Metro, TimeSplitters, Borderlands, Darksiders, MX vs ATV, Kingdoms of Amalur, Satisfactory, Wreckfest, Insurgency and World War Z. For some of those like TimeSplitters, the company has promised new titles from the original developers.