The days of exotic, bespoke console hardware are almost certainly over.

In a limited-time promotion to rid itself of a load of PS4 thumbsticks, Polish retailer X-Kom threw in a free copy of Fallout 76. The retailer is still carrying Fallout 76 PS4 stock, but thanks to the promotion (presumably), it’s now all out of the thumbsticks, which were priced at $5/ £4. The page for the timed-out promo is still live, but Redditor u/Zupa84PL captured a screenshot while it was still available, and the bundle’s price was slashed from $70/ £54 for a short time.

It’s almost too good a story to believe, yet here we are in 2019 and it strains credibility to say any less: Path of Exile, the once-small crowdfunded game from the mind of Chris Wilson, has surpassed Diablo II as the greatest ARPG ever made, and it’s only getting better from here.

Neil Druckmann, director of the upcoming PS4 exclusive The Last of Us Part II and Vice President of Naughty Dog, has drawn the ire of some gamers for a recent Tweet of his. More specifically, this week Druckmann retweeted a piece of fan art showing Uncharted's Nadine and Chloe sharing an intimate moment together. And in doing this, Druckmann was criticized by some gamers for pushing an "agenda" and for politicizing the Uncharted series and The Last of Us.

If an investor was searching for the country’s most explosively successful commodity, they might look to the ground for natural resources or to Wall Street for some new financial instrument. But, the most meteoric success story can be found virtually all around us—in the booming video game industry. Growing by double digits, U.S. video game sales reached $43 billion in 2018, about 3.6 times greater than the film industry’s record-breaking box office.

Ubisoft announced they are planning to release at least three AAA new games from their studios before the end of March 2020. Through their latest financials earnings call which happened on February 14, Ubisoft talked about how multiple Triple-A games currently in development by the company’s studios should be released before the end of the fiscal year 2019, which is March 2020. Specifically, Ubisoft is planning to launch 3 of these games by then, and maybe 4 if things go well until then.

A sealed and graded copy of the original NES video game, 'Super Mario Bros.', sells at auction for slightly more than $100K.

You know when there’s a show you really like, but then it dips in quality and eventually gets canceled, and the creators say they want to make a new season someday or maybe a remake, but it’s stuck in production hell for several years, then Netflix or whoever sinks a bunch of money into it, and it eventually gets released and it’s not quite as good as you remember the original, but it’s still pretty entertaining and hey, you’re paying for Netflix anyway so you’re not going to complain about getting it for “free?” That’s Crackdown 3. It is video game as Netflix Original.

Teenagers who play violent video games are no more prone to real world aggressive behaviour than their peers, according to UK researchers who say their negative effects have been overstated. Fears that gory games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty might make children think on-screen behaviours are acceptable have been a major concern for parents and policy makers for years. Last year President Donald Trump said violent games were “shaping young people’s thoughts” in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Parklands, Florida.

Blizzard Entertainment has no “frontline release” planned for the 2019 fiscal year, the company announced today during its quarterly earnings call with investors, meaning there won’t be any new titles in the next 12 months — including a long hoped-for mainline entry into the Diablo franchise. “We expect materially lower financial performance this year,” said Activision Blizzard president Collister “Coddy” Johnson on the conference call, during which company brass discussed its 2018 fiscal year earnings. “2018 benefited from the release of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, whereas we are not planning a major frontline release for 2019.”

As part of Activision Blizzard's earnings report today, the company discussed its decision to split off from Bungie on the development of the Destiny franchise. President and Chief Operating Officer Coddy Johnson started off by saying Activision Blizzard is "confident" that it was the right decision for both Activision Blizzard and Bungie to go separate ways. Describing the breakup as a "mutual, amicable" agreement, Johnson said the deal is the "right path forward" for each entity.

Dear Bobby, Dennis, Coddy, Brian, Chris, et al., As a former Activision Blizzard employee, allow me to congratulate you all on posting a record $7.5 billion net revenue for the calendar year 2018, and on upending the lives of some 800 human beings that helped make that incredible feat possible.

There seems to be no stopping Apex Legends hitting fresh highs following its debut, and the latest revelation is that the game has reached 25 million players in its first week – and last weekend it exceeded two million concurrent players. The 25 million milestone was shared by the game’s official Twitter account, complete with the comment that the success of the past week has been beyond Respawn and EA’s wildest imagination.

The episodic questline The Lost Tales of Greece continues in Assassin's Creed Odyssey with the addition of episode 6, "A Brother's Seduction". Details on the episode are scarce, although players do need to travel to the Korinthia region and look for a quest called "Prodigal Son's Return". I also comes with one achievement that you can unlock from today, February 12th:

Do you like reading old video game junk? I do. I’ve got a Nintendo Power stack, an EGM stack, a GamePro stack, and when I get bored of those, I peruse magazines on archive.org or retromags.com . If that sounds lame, then it’s because you haven’t tried these things out. These treasures are full of predictions that, after 20 or 30 years of hindsight, are super precious. It’s fun to remember the glory days of now fallen giants.

"We were really very traditional. We didn't want him turning his daily rhythm upside down." Sitting in a cafe by his office at Oslo City Hall, Robert Steen describes how he used to worry about his son staying up late into the night. "In retrospect, I think we should have been more interested in the game world, where he spent so much time," says 56-year-old Robert. "By not doing so, we robbed ourselves of an opportunity that we didn't know we had."

According to a new Bloomberg report, Activision Blizzard is planning to announce a massive round of layoffs on Tuesday that will result in hundreds of jobs lost. The outlet cities multiple sources familiar with the matter, who reveal the cuts -- which come in the face of slowing sales -- are part of restructuring aimed at centralizing functions and boosting profit.

Quantum games could be the first area to achieve quantum advantage. In Helsinki, developers are getting set for another round of experiments. “When it comes to quantum programming, people think, ‘Whoa, it's some weird, magical thing done by weird magical people’. And then I say, ‘Well, I made battleships on a quantum computer’.” James Wootton is excited. He always gets excited when it comes to quantum computing or game design...

We only have a month plus to the official release of the Mortal Kombat 11, the game is said to launch on the 23rd of April, 2019 and it will be available for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. While we take a sit back and wait for the MK11 to arrive, a batch of of hidden trophies for the game has recently appeared on Steam Database, apparently teasing the comeback of MKX's E-tron Black.

Pennsylvania lawmakers have put forward a bill that would introduce an additional 10% tax on violent videogames. The money raised by the so-called “sin tax” would go to a fund called the “Digital Protection for School Safety Account,” in an attempt to raise security measures to help prevent school shootings. House Bill 109, which was originally put forward last year by Republican state representative Chris Quinn, would apply the extra tax to those games that the ESRB rates as M for Mature or Adults-Only. After sales tax, that would raise the cost of a standard triple-A release from around $60 to $70 (£54).