Anya Taylor-Joy is returning as the voice of Princess Peach in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, but she recently shared that voicing the character wasn't quite what she expected. During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Taylor-Joy said she threw up the first time she had a recording session for The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

"It's super fun," Taylor-Joy told Meyers. "But I will say the first time I ever did a session, I did not realize how taxing it would be because you're yelling continuously the whole time. I think the first time I ever did it, I threw up. I'm pretty sure, like, I drank so much water and I was like, 'Gotta do it.'"

Taylor-Joy went to explain that she had to take part in the "efforts" at the end of the session. That's the part where she had to act out Peach's actions with every yell, grunt, and gasp called for in the script. She said that it felt "really cool" to do them, before adding, "You kind of visit yourself back and you think, 'God, I hope no one ever sees this,' because they do film them."

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The Sims 4 (and its developers at Electronic Arts and Maxis) have come under fire recently for adding microtransactions and paid mods to the game, Bethesda Creation Club-style, with a new feature called The Sims 4 Marketplace. Naturally, players are unhappy that a game with over 100 DLC packs (that can cost you $1,600) is implementing more monetization tactics, but the problems with The Sims 4 Marketplace go deeper than player frustration with what they perceive as EA's greed.

To get a better idea of what exactly is going on in The Sims 4, I decided to take its new player-creation marketplace for a spin, and what I found was disappointing, but not surprising. Perhaps the first thing to note is that EA has now implemented a premium in-game currency, called Moola, which players must purchase before they can buy Maker Marketplace items. And it turns out, the Maker Marketplace is everything Sims 4 players don't want in a game update, but it's far from the first time EA has plugged its ears and yelled "I can't hear you!" in response to Sims players' complaints.

To understand how the game ended up here, we'll have to travel back to early 2025. It's been a strange year for The Sims, and the game's path to a paid mod marketplace has been a bumpy one. The franchise celebrated its 25th anniversary in February 2025, which EA and Maxis marked with multiple Sims 4 content creator collaborations, promises to fix game-breaking bugs that had gone ignored for years, and of course, the announcement of even more paid DLC. Naturally, players were excited to see long-standing bugs addressed, and were happy with new base game updates that fleshed out Sims' personalities and romantic aspirations, along with DLC packs that introduced romantic new locales and even new ways for Sims to kick the bucket.

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Middling reviews and plummeting stocks haven't prevented Crimson Desert from reaching a tremendous 2 million units sold merely a day after its release. However, a new controversy surrounding developer Pearl Abyss's massive RPG seems to be brewing, and it involves everyone's favorite subject these days: AI-generated art.

In the past few hours, a number of Crimson Desert players have taken to Reddit, Bluesky, and other social media platforms with images depicting what they suspect to be generative AI-created art. In each instance, it seems to be environmental art--like ornate portraits or medieval woodcut-inspired paintings--that is being called into question. In one example, Reddit user Ok-Error-403 explained their reasoning, writing: "Signs of AI: [T]hree fingers on the hand holding the bag and four on the left hand is the biggest giveaway. Also AI does linocut patterns this way where the strokes aren't consistent and has wonky folding for clothing. I could be wrong ... would love to be, but I'm 99% sure it's AI."

On Bluesky, user Lex Luddy shared a series of images of an ornate portrait which, upon closer inspection, depicts mushy-faced warriors atop many-limbed horses. It only takes a cursory glance to realize this picture doesn't suit Crimson Desert's more grounded art direction, and is far more in line with what we see in generative AI-created images. These images were also shared on Reddit, with user Rex_Spy writing that those who wish to see it themselves should go to "Oakenshield Manor, in the southwest part of the first city/town. It's the staircase in the back of the manor."

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World of Warcraft: Midnight is here, and with it the long-awaited arrival of player housing in Blizzard's two-decade-old MMORPG. It's a wildly impressive system that allows for boundless creativity, even if there's still significant room for improvement.

For my full thoughts on WoW's 11th expansion, check out GameSpot's WoW: Midnight review, but as Midnight's biggest selling point, housing is worth digging into in greater detail. With 20 years' worth of hopes and dreams attached to housing in WoW, Blizzard finally pulling the trigger on the feature is a big deal, and one that filled many players, myself included, with anxiety regarding whether Blizzard was up to the task.

Thankfully, Blizzard's vision for housing mostly delivers, avoiding many of the housing pitfalls seen in other contemporary MMOs. You get your house for free. You can put your house anywhere in the game's designated housing area as long as the plot you want isn't occupied, and if it is, you can just keep visiting identical instances of the same neighborhood until you find one where it isn't. You can make a neighborhood of just your friends or guildmates. You don't have to pay taxes on your home. You can easily move to a new plot or neighborhood. Players with millions of gold (or a higher credit card limit) don't get to buy a mansion while you can only afford a small shack. Everyone gets the same house, but both the inside and outside can be customized largely how you see fit.

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Assassin's Creed Shadows is celebrating its 1-year anniversary today, March 20. Below, we look back at how its dual protagonists could have made an even more meaningful impact.

It's been a year since Assassin's Creed Shadows launched, and I'm still thinking about it. My opinion on what the game is remains largely unchanged--I've talked about this at length in both my Assassin's Creed Shadows review and Claws of Awaji DLC review--but if I could take a moment to talk about what Shadows isn't, I fervently have one wish. Shadows' best idea, that it tells its story via a split perspective, should have been pushed further. In fact, that should have been the entire focus of the game's second act--I want Act 2 to have solely been about two distinct characters growing simultaneously, and perpetually being unable to see eye-to-eye with one another while still unified in a shared purpose.

Shadows has two playable protagonists: the shinobi Naoe and the samurai Yasuke. The former is fictional, native to Japan, and driven by vengeance; while the latter is a real person from history, an African outsider, and motivated by duty. The point is that they're very different people, reinforced by differing playstyles--Naoe primarily relies on subterfuge and stealth, while Yasuke is geared toward excelling in open combat as a powerful warrior. Save for specific missions, Shadows allows you to freely switch between the two as you explore 16th-century Japan.

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After Amazon's first effort in the smartphone market came up short more than a decade ago, it appears the retail and technology giant is trying again, and with the help of a former Xbox boss.

Reuters reported that Amazon is working on a new phone, known inside the company as "Transformer," and it will be AI-driven and meant to push people to Amazon's products and services.

Amazon is said to be developing this phone via its "ZeroOne" unit, which sources said is a team with the goal of creating "breakthrough" products. J Allard, the former Xbox boss who helped created the original Xbox and the Zune music player at Microsoft, is leading the team.

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FBC: Firebreak bombed. The multiplayer spin-off of Remedy's hit game Control, which imagines players as squads of gun-toting supernatural janitors meant to clean up the messes inside its eerie and magical setting, did not find the audience that the original game did. If the readily available Steam charts are any indication, it missed the mark by a sizable margin and Remedy itself has since confirmed that the title underperformed. And yet, the multiplayer title, which Remedy has spent the better part of a year tuning up and molding into something more appealing to players, isn't just disappearing from the face of the Earth after failing to connect with audiences. With its dying breath, it is actually setting a standard that the rest of the games industry ought to rise to meet.

When Remedy announced that it would be sunsetting FBC: Firebreak after one final update, I was prepared to see an expiration date: a finish line or resignation of sorts. Instead, I found this: "FBC: Firebreak will stay online and continue to be playable for years to come. We have done engineering work to ensure we can sustain the upkeep of the relay servers when the player volume is lower." This move, and the addition of a friend pass system--allowing one person to own the game and share it with others who don't--has assured that FBC: Firebreak will have legs for some time to come.

This is a shocking, and very welcome, development at a perilous time for multiplayer games. While titles like Marathon try to find an audience (let alone one the size of its most immediate competition, the viral sensation Arc Raiders), others, like Highguard, have come and gone seemingly in the blink of an eye. And when a game like these is deemed dead, the industry all but assures it stays that way. Like Concord, games are ripped off of physical and digital store shelves. They are delisted and pulled from libraries. Teams are laid off and studios are outright shuttered. The servers powering these games are given an end date and, before long, they are shut down and all we're left with is memories of them.

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Blizzard is aware it's hard to keep up with Diablo 4 when it receives foundational changes regularly, but that doesn't mean it's going to let "obsolete" parts of the game live on without being reworked or fixed.

Diablo 4 has been in a near-constant state of change since release in 2023, with major updates significantly overhauling loot, endgame bosses, monster behavior, and difficulty in the last few years. And that's on top of new seasons every few months that introduce limited-time mechanics and features of their own.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Diablo 4 game director Zaven Haroutunian made it clear that Blizzard knows the frequent changes to how Diablo 4 works isn't ideal, especially for casual players.

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Almost a year after it first launched for PS5, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has landed on PC, and so far, it's doing pretty well. At the time of writing, the game has reached 55,444 concurrent players on Steam, surpassing the peak player counts of the first game (32,515) and its Director's Cut edition (22,080).

That figure also puts it ahead of several other PC ports of games from PlayStation Studios, such as Marvel's Spider-Man; Miles Morales (13,539), Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (28,189), The Last of Us Part 1 (36,496), and The Last of Us Part 2 (30,690). Currently, Helldivers 2 holds the record for the highest CCU amongst PlayStation PC ports on Steam, at 458,079 concurrent players. One thing to point out here is that while player CCU is important, ultimately, that single data point isn't meaningful in measuring the overall success of a single-player game.

The number may rise even further, as the first weekend of a new game launch is usually responsible for its best performance. It's an impressive start for the game, as it'll be sharing the weekend with Crimson Desert. The Pearl Abyss-developed action-RPG is already off to a strong start, with 2 million sales, and a peak player count--so far--of 239,045.

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Mega Crit released the patch notes for v0.100.0, the first major post early-access launch update for Slay the Spire 2, as it enters testing on the game's beta branch. One of its most notable additions is a Phobia Mode toggle, which lets players adjust the art of things in Slay the Spire 2 that people are more likely to have issues with.

Within the roguelike's settings menu, players can turn on Phobia Mode. Doing so will turn off the animation for the infection affliction card overlay and swap in alternate art for hive backgrounds, The Insatiable, Phrog Parasite, Wrigglers, Terror Eel, and the Entomancer. The fundamental mechanics and gameplay of encounters with any of those creatures will stay the same.

Those are mostly bug and worm-related elements in Slay the Spire 2 that may prevent people from continuing to play the game due to their fears. As games like Grounded have previously shown, visual toggles to address or cover up common phobia triggers in video games go a long way to help certain players experience great games.

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The Witcher and Cyberpunk developer CD Projekt has teased that it has an unannounced game in the works that is set to release somewhat soon.

As part of CD Projekt's latest earnings report, the developer said it plans to "publish one of the heretofore unannounced gaming projects" at some point "in the coming quarters."

That's all the information that the company shared about whatever this project could be or when it may release. Fans are wishfully thinking that this could be a tease for the rumored Witcher 3 DLC that is said to bridge the gap between The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 4. There is no evidence of that, however.

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Eight years have passed since The Elder Scrolls 6 was first announced, and fans of Bethesda's fantasy franchise might be in for a very long wait. In a new interview, Bethesda's Todd Howard said that the company is in no rush to make the game, partly due to being in a position where it doesn't need to make it yet. Thanks to its vast library of games and active players, Bethesda is able to focus on its current games, like the upcoming PS5 port of Starfield, alongside new updates for the sci-fi action-RPG.

"We also, again, have that benefit of having so many millions of people playing our other games that we're actually trying to figure out how to serve those other audiences while we make a new one," Howard said to GamesRadar. Earlier this week, Howard discussed the decision to announce The Elder Scrolls 6 at E3 2018, joking that fans should forget about that reveal entirely. That same showcase would also lift the veil on Starfield, which officially launched in 2023.

Howard also noted that since The Elder Scrolls 6 reveal, Bethesda has faced some big changes in the industry, such as continuing work during the middle of a global pandemic and Microsoft acquiring the studio as part of its ZeniMax purchase. In previous conversations, Howard has pondered if announcing The Elder Scrolls 6 so early was the right thing to do at the time, and details on the game are still a mystery.

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Pearl Abyss's new open-world action-adventure game Crimson Desert has enjoyed a fairly positive reception, with one major caveat: Some PlayStation 5 users are saying the game looks really, really bad on Sony's current-gen console. Specifically, these players complain of blurry graphics that make it hard to enjoy the game's beautiful scenery and keep track of what's happening in combat.

The good news is the source of the problem seems to have been identified, and it's a fairly easy fix. The issue seems to be the game struggling with the PS5's 120hz mode when connected to a TV that doesn't support 4K120. If you're playing Crimson Desert on PS5 and everything looks like a blobby, melting mess, follow these steps to fix the issue:

1. Open the settings menu on your PS5
2. Select "Video Output"
3. Turn the "Enable 120Hz Output" setting off

Pearl Abyss's PR and marketing director Will Powers cosigned this method in a recent X post, agreeing that TVs lacking support for 120Hz output are likely the source of the problem.

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Assassin's Creed Shadows is celebrating its one-year anniversary today, March 20, 2025. Below, we look back at how its immersive and sometimes unfriendly open world makes it feel real.

We're so awash in open-world video games that they can all start to feel very similar, like theme parks waiting for you to activate the ride. They're often designed to be as frictionless as possible, promising that you won't go more than 30 seconds without finding something to do; it can make a meticulously designed world feel more like a playset than a place. Some games pull off open worlds better than others, though, and Assassin's Creed Shadows features my favorite open world in years. It feels like a place, not a theme park, and makes for an immersive play experience that feels like it actually fits the "open" in "open world."

Photo-real visuals have always been a big part of the Assassin's Creed series, which has featured realistic-feeling cities since the series' first entry. It's no different here, but the Ubisoft Quebec team took the visuals of in-game environments to a new level with Shadows, and it makes for maybe the most beautiful and natural-feeling world since Red Dead Redemption 2. Forests are dense and, even during the day, dark. Cities feel open and bright--a side effect of the shorter buildings when compared to most other Assassin's Creed titles. Roads are alive with civilians, soldiers, and the occasional bandit. Every square foot of the world is teeming with wildlife, from dogs and cats and all manner of ungulates to an incredible density of insects that comes to a head during summer.

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The Legend of California is a new project from former Overwatch director and Blizzard veteran Jeff Kaplan that gives off Rust and Red Dead Redemption vibes (but don't call it a survival game). So far, it's been confirmed for PC, with its first alpha test starting soon. But could The Legend of California ever come to consoles like PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S?

A spokesperson for developer Kintsugiyama told GameSpot that the team is currently "heads down" getting the game's alpha test set to begin on March 26. As for console plans, the team said "other platform and/or OS support is still TBD."

For now, The Legend of California is confirmed only for PC, and the upcoming alpha will take place on Steam. Kintsugiyama is targeting a 2026 release for The Legend of California's early-access launch on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

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Footage has emerged of Microsoft's AI-powered Gaming Copilot assistant in action, revealing how the AI agent can potentially assist players who use it in games. Similar to other large language models like ChatGPT and Claude, it's designed to respond to queries in a friendly manner, albeit with a tone that borders on sycophantic. This has been a common complaint with large language models used by the public, as the tools have been criticized for reinforcing confirmation bias and being overly flattering.

The demo for Gaming Copilot appears to follow that trend of generative AI being eager to please, and comments below the post suggest that people find an LLM to be annoying when it responds to queries with flattering talk instead of getting straight to the point. Beyond the overly positive responses, Copilot does show some potential for helping players dive into the nitty-gritty of games--like fine-tuning a car in Forza Horizon 5 or asking for tips on how to progress further in Diablo 4. It remains to be seen just how effective these suggestions will ultimately be, and where the information will be sourced from.

Microsoft shows off “Gaming Copilot” on Xbox
Here's what it sounds like when you ask the AI for help with Forza Horizon 5, Diablo 4 and Sea of Thieves.
Coming to Xbox Series X|S later this year. #GDC2026 pic.twitter.com/0bzWaMpmg2

— Idle Sloth (@IdleSloth84_) March 19, 2026

Microsoft announced during its GDC talk that Copilot will be coming to Xbox Series X|S consoles later this year. It's currently available in a beta form for the Xbox PC and mobile apps--as well as ROG Xbox Ally devices--and Xbox's gaming AI partner group product manager Sonali Yadav added that Microsoft will "continue to bring it to more services that players are playing."

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Crimson Desert post-intro and onward is absolutely worth playing, but the vague tutorial instructions in the first couple of hours can immediately leave a sour taste in your mouth. First of all, don't worry, we've got you. And better news, it’s not like this for the whole game, it mellows out after a while! So let’s walk you through step by step on how to navigate the opening hours so you can get into the meat of the game.

If you ever get soft locked, you can either use the escape feature or one of the three auto save slots. The game auto saves pretty regularly so if you had something catastrophic happen within the past five minutes you can roll back, but anything farther than that it might not be accessible anymore--just be wary and manual save as needed.

Start off by simply talking to the Graymanes from the frontside--it's straightforward here, just keep progressing. It’ll then throw you into a fight, and you’ll have to attempt to save your three Graymane friends here. No biggie.

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It's become a recurring theme, but the legal drama between the leaders of Subnautica 2 developer Unknown Worlds and its parent company Krafton isn't over. Lawyers for the reinstated CEO Ted Gill and founders Charlie Cleveland, and Max McGuire say Krafton set Subnautica 2's early access release without consulting them.

According to Game File, the legal team for Gill, Cleveland, and McGuire filed a complaint with the court alleging that Krafton's announcement potentially damaged "the game and [sowed] additional confusion among the Subnautica community."

The letter to the court goes on to note that Unknown Worlds studio head Steve Papoutsis had no authority to make the Subnautica 2 early-release announcement because it came after Gill was reinstated to his CEO position following a recent ruling. It further contends that Krafton's announcement occurred without the "significant marketing activity, fanfare, and community coordination" that would have normally accompanied such news. The filing also suggests that Krafton purposefully leaked the memo and later confirmed it in defiance of the earlier court order.

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Are you currently doing Renee's Request in Crimson Desert? This is an early-game side quest in Hernand, the first town that you visit in the campaign. It's also a task that grants you a pretty nifty reward.

Crimson Desert - Renee's Request guide

You can start the Crimson Desert Renee's Request objective by visiting the Butchery in Hernand. It's at the end of the alley just past the Inn. There, you'll meet the shop owner, Renee, who tells you about her plans to cook a seafood meal. Renee's conundrum is that she's been cooking meat her entire life, and she's never had a chance to cook fish before. She wants you to handle it instead, and she even hands you the recipe and the ingredients.

Be sure to pick Modest Fish Porridge since Renee doesn't want to get too fancy.

Your goal in this particular side quest is to cook 3x Modest Fish Porridge. Here's what you need to do:

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Are you wondering if there's a way to store items in Crimson Desert? Maybe there's an item chest or a player stash? Well, there isn't, at least not at this very moment. However, there are ways to help you manage all your loot.

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• Crimson Desert's lack of a player storage system

Crimson Desert's lack of a player storage system

There's currently no player stash or storage in Crimson Desert. That in itself is quite an odd decision, given that this is an open-world action RPG that has numerous items to collect and upgrade.

However, we've learned from the developers at Pearl Abyss that they're planning to introduce a storage system in the future. There's no definite timeframe for this update, but it won't be part of the Day 1 Patch. So, what can you do to manage all your items in the game?

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