Sony has realised that the key to market dominance, may be a bigger stake in Epic Games. A stake that cost them $250 million.

Epic Games’ next move might be their ballsiest one yet, as the company targets the legion of Total War fans who flock to digital stores the moment a new entry in that series is released for sale. SEGA and Creative Assembly’s next title, A Total War Saga: Troy, will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store for the first year of its life once it launches on August 13…and also free to own for the first 24 hours after launch.

Having recently shown off a good-looking tech demo (that will function just as well on Xbox Series X!), Epic reckons that the PS5’s ability to render content at an amazing clip will create a revolution in how games are designed.

The Unreal Engine 4 has been the foundation that many a game was built with, and it’s about to get a sequel. Unreal Engine 5 will power the next generation of video games, with Epic Games showing off its brute force and more subtle effects in a brand new tech demo called Lumen in the Land of Nanite.

Ubisoft’s Victorian era stealth ‘em up will be hitting the Epic Games Store on February 20, bringing the ninth game in the main series to cheapskates on PC.

Stadia’s just been dealt another kick in the teeth. Nvidia’s officially launched its GeForce Now streaming platform. It’s a similar service in that it allows players to stream games they buy through GeForce now from just about any PC, removing the need for expensive hardware. As with Stadia it’s a tiered service. There’s a free tier that lets you access your games from anywhere, but limits game sessions to just an hour. There’s a $5 per month service that gives you priority access and extended session length, but also uses top tier hardware in the cloud, even enabling advanced features like RTX.

Who needs another PC game launcher? Absolutely goddamned nobody, that’s who! Despite that, I’m going to recommend you install one, because GOG Galaxy 2.0 is now in open beta, and unlike GOG Galaxy when it first launched, it’s not complete and utter trash.

When Fortnite’s previous chapter ended, it sucked the game’s entire map into a vortex. It was a fantastic bit of server maintenance and game overhaul disguised as a marketing stunt, and it was sheer genius all round. Unfortunately, a bit of the event’s impact was lessened, thanks to a series of leaks. The game’s second chapter was unceremoniously leaked by the Italian Apple store, but it’s an earlier leak that Epic is taking umbrage with.