Three years after the Resident Evil 4 remake first dropped players back into its eerie European village, someone did some serious number-crunching with the Merchant's receipts. The gravel-voiced retail legend appears to be in serious financial trouble. And not just a little--we're talking trillions.

To mark the anniversary, Capcom (via IGN) shared an interesting set of global player stats, revealing just how much business has flowed through the Merchant's shadowy operation. Over the past three years, players have collectively bought a staggering 39.9 trillion pesetas' worth of weapons, upgrades, and gear. That's an economy powered by shotgun shells, sniper rifles, and the occasional rocket launcher. But here's the thing: Players didn’t just spend--they sold even more. Treasures like ornate crowns, eerie masks, and glittering butterfly lamps flooded back into the Merchant's inventory, totaling a jaw-dropping 43.2 trillion pesetas.

It's the 3rd anniversary of the Resident Evil 4 remake!
The Merchant’s debt has ballooned way past 3 trillion by now...
Total Losses
-3,337,279,919,290 ptas
(That's a lot of rocket launchers!)#REBHFun pic.twitter.com/wdzrNvxvT6

So, with that math applied, it's hard not to think of the Merchant deep in the red, sitting with a roughly 3.34 trillion peseta deficit. That's what happens when you offer generous trade-in deals to millions of opportunistic players armed with pockets full of loot. The remake, much like the original Resident Evil 4, encouraged players to hoard valuables, cashing them in for devastating upgrades--like the forementioned rocket launcher, which can obliterate most bosses in a single shot for a hefty 160,000 pesetas. Turns out, those deals add up… just not in the Merchant's favor.

Crimson Desert features tons of creatures for you to tame, pet, and ride. Alongside dragons and wolves, cats and dogs roam the world of Pywell, too, and thanks to the many systems developer Pearl Abyss has included, you can get the best companion ever: a fat, lazy feline.

The latest open-world high-fantasy action-adventure game from the South Korean studio lets you acquire companions. From the two playable characters to the various recruits, the game lets you build trust with creatures and people alike by talking to and giving them gifts. Once trust reaches maximum, these companions will give you discounts, increase their wares, or join you on the battlefield more. Cats function much the same way: Pet them enough, and they'll accompany you.

One such Redditor discovered this on March 24. In a popular post on the game's subreddit, user Ter-Lee-Comedy showed off their black-coated, yellow-eyed chunker of a kitty that "doesn't loot or anything, let alone walk on his own." In the approximately 40-second video, Ter-Lee-Comedy's masked Kliff can be seen walking Hernand with the nameless cat loaf on his right shoulder. It's adorably cute, but because Pywell's fat cats are prone to escaping, there's a method to taming them.

One advantage PC gamers have over console owners is that many games on that platform support ultrawide resolution. The shift from 16:9 to 21:9 feels magical, but ultrawide displays can be expensive. Fortunately, you can get a 42% discount on a 4K Samsung monitor during Amazon's Spring Sale, as this 40-inch display has dropped from $1,200 to $700. Even better, it comes with a free download code for one of this year's hottest games, Resident Evil Requiem, and your purchase can earn you more discounts.

The ultrawide monitor on sale is a 40-inch 1000R curved display with 21:9 4K resolution, a 180Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and HDR support. It also supports AMD FreeSync to reduce choppiness in game visuals, and you can play split-screen games since it has screen space to spare. For productivity, picture-in-picture lets you display two different inputs at once.

While there are ultrawide displays that offer better visual quality and even OLED panels, you won't find them at this price. For $700, you're getting a capable monitor that will make recent games like Death Stranding 2: On the Beach look even more cinematic when you switch to an ultrawide resolution.

The developer of the popular game Crimson Desert has seen its stock price surge on the Korea Exchange, recovering the losses that came after reviews for the game came out.

Crimson Desert has now exceeded 3 million copies sold, and it appears investors are happy about that, as developer Pearl Abyss is trading up more than 26% today. The stock crashed by 30% last week when reviews came out, but those losses have now been largely erased.

Pearl Abyss stock is now up 26% year-to-date and up 56% over the past year. Over the past five years, however, Pearl Abyss is trading down about 18%. Stock-price fluctuation is a normal thing, and ongoing geopolitical events are adding to volatility on the Korea Exchange and others globally.

Next month, Pokemon Champions will bring the turn-based action of Pokemon battles to Nintendo Switch 2--and later this year, to mobile devices. Champions will be making some impactful changes to the core battling mechanics of the Pokemon franchise, including the removal of one of the game's most long-lasting statistics: Individual Values, or IVs.

IVs are stat modifiers that every individual Pokemon is assigned at random once caught by the player, and they impact how that Pokemon's attack, defense, and HP grow as it levels up and evolves. Pokemon Champions will remove this randomization from the equation, though the reason for the change has not been fully explained.

Speaking with a roundtable of journalists over Zoom, development director and game producer Masaaki Hoshino says the decision to remove IVs was not taken lightly. In his words, it took a "heated discussion with [Shigeki] Morimoto," one of Pokemon's original designers, to get the change made, in the hopes of making the game's barrier of entry lower for new players.

Pokemon Champions will soon bring the heat of Pokemon battles to Nintendo Switch 2 and mobile devices. If you've been planning your perfect team of Pokemon for the occasion, there's a wrinkle you may not have considered, as development director and game producer Masaaki Hoshino has confirmed that Champions will only feature fully evolved forms of Pokemon with evolutionary lines at launch.

Speaking to a roundtable of journalists over Zoom, Hoshino confirmed the approach, though he did not dive into the specific reasons for the choice. "Yes, only final evolutions will be introduced at launch," Hoshino said, "[...but] at some point they might consider earlier evolutions."

The choice will have an impact on the competitive circuit, as Champions will become the featured game of the VGC (Video Game Championship) division as soon as it launches, replacing Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. This means the pool of Pokemon will feature fewer viable options, and competitive players will have to shift their strategies.

Pokemon Champions' development director wants to keep Pokemon battles around "forever."

This may seem like a weird thing to say given nearly every mainline game since 1996 has featured turn-based Pokemon battles. However, if last year's Pokemon Legends: Z-A is any indication, developer Game Freak isn't afraid to experiment with Pokemon's combat. In a surprising twist, Legends: Z-A ditched turn-based battles in favor of real-time combat. For many, this change breathed new life into Pokemon's combat, but it did leave others curious about the future of Pokemon battling. If Pokemon Champions is a success, then that future should be clear: Pokemon Champions will be the de facto way to compete in traditional Pokemon battles.

After nearly an hour of hands-on time with Pokemon Champions, development director and game producer Masaaki Hoshino sat down with a room of journalists over Zoom to talk about Game Freak's upcoming battle simulator. Set to release in April on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 in addition to mobile devices at a later date, Pokemon Champions aims to bring the depth of turn-based Pokemon battles to a free-to-play, live service model. As Hoshino puts it: "Regardless of what battle [mechanics] are introduced in the future[…] we wanted to make turn-based battles [always] available."

Epic Games recently conducted mass layoffs affecting 1,000 people at the Fortnite studio, and the cuts included the character artist who created Jonesy, one of the most recognizable characters in the game.

Vitaliy Naymushin said on LinkedIn that they were part of the cuts. The developer had worked at Epic Games for more than 11 years. "It's been a wild ride. Lots of ups and downs," the artists wrote. "Seeing Fortnite from pre-launch to today and being a part of making that happen was the experience of a lifetime."

Naymushin created not just Jonesy, but also Ramirez, Penny, and the majority of the game's original cast of characters, he said. He rose up to become the director of character art for Fortnite, and in that role, he hired and onboarded new artists and leads on Fortnite and also personally directed the art for 15 seasons of Fortnite.

With the 2026 World Cup coming up very soon, FIFA has announced a brand-new soccer/football game, and it's unlike any other FIFA game that's come before it.

The fast-paced, arcade-style FIFA Heroes is a 5v5 game featuring both real-world players and playable mascots and even people from mythology like Thor and Sun Wukong. Some of the real-world players in the game include people living and dead, including Diego Maradona, Harry Kane, Jordan Pickford, Eduardo Camavinga, Jack Grealish, Emiliano Martinez, and Lautaro Martinez.

FIFA Heroes releases on April 26 for mobile, and it will come pre-downloaded on new Motorola devices. The free game is developed by Enver, a studio behind games aimed at the Gen Z and Alpha crowd.

I like donuts and I bet you do as well, so it's exciting news today to learn that there are officially licensed donuts based on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie coming to Krispy Kreme soon.

The collab launches April 8 in Japan and runs through May 26. As part of the campaign, Krispy Kreme will sell donuts based on Mario, Yoshi, and Luma. There is also Question Block donut. The Mario donut has strawberry icing and red and blue sprinkles. The Yoshi donut includes a white chocolate coating and custard cream inside. The Luma donut is themed around space and has silver toppings and a blueberry glaze.

As reported by Dexerto, people can buy these donuts individually or in a six-pack that also comes with classic Krispy Kreme flavors, packaged inside a themed box for the movie.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is set for release on April 16, but thanks to a free demo in the Nintendo eShop, you can play it right now. Even better--any progress you make in the demo will carry over to the full version of the game at launch.

Living the Dream is the third game in the Tomodachi series, and sees you create a bunch of customizable Mii characters who will work together to improve to island's happiness levels. The life sim will also allow players to customize the island and its inhabitants, as well as featuring a drawing tool to create imaginative objects that the Mii characters can interactive with.

It's important to note that there will be "certain" restrictions on image sharing though, in order to maintain a "fun and safe" environment for everyone. Having said that, some players are already finding that the game's filter leaves a lot to be desired. One user on Bluesky has discovered that naming certain characters questionable names will not prevent NPCs from bringing them up in conversation, leading to some pretty chaotic interactions.

World of Warcraft has been around for 22 years, and a new music video in collaboration with singer Aurora will have players reliving every memory.

The song, titled A Place to Call Home, is accompanied by an animated music video crafted by Paris-based animation studio Brunch in partnership with Blizzard. It starts by showing a journey that will be familiar to longtime night elf players--the trek of a lone night elf from Teldrassil to the Eastern Kingdoms, requiring players to travel through the dangerous Wetlands before reaching the dwarven capital of Ironforge.

From there the trailer picks up the pace, as the night elf adventurer is rescued by a dwarf hunter and later teams up with a human paladin for a trek into WoW's iconic Deadmines dungeon. After defeating the Defias Brotherhood, the music video goes full montage, as the adventuring party travels through WoW's various expansions--through the Dark Portal into Outland to face Illidan, across the sea to Northrend to vanquish the Lich King, a showdown with Deathwing from Cataclysm, and more.

For those who have dreamt of a return to the world of classic EverQuest, but just don't have the time (or the number of friends) needed to progress in the infamously grindy MMORPG, the newly announced EverQuest Legends is offering a solution.

Everquest Legends is a new spin on the genre-defining MMO from 1999, one that will keep the game's original visuals, music, and world but has been "designed from the ground up" to appeal to casual players, according to developer Daybreak Games. Rather than massive, 40-man raids, EverQuest Legends is instead tailored for solo play, while still allowing for groups of four to eight players.

Taking on EverQuest's challenges solo will be possible due to the sheer amount of power Daybreak will let players accumulate. Unlike in original EverQuest, EverQuest Legends will let players select three different classes at a time, who will benefit from the stats, spells, and abilities of each. Players will start by selecting their race as normal, but have access to two classes from the get-go. A third class becomes available at level 10.

Dark Outlaw Games, the studio founded by former Call of Duty developer Jason Blundell, is shutting down amid bigger cuts to PlayStation overall, according to a report from Jason Schreier.

Blundell's previous studio, Deviation, was partnered with Sony and closed in 2024. As for the wider cuts, around 50 people are losing their jobs across PlayStation, including on the mobile teams.

An SIE spokesperson sent a statement confirming the changes and saying they were made "to support long-term sustainability."

Disney's top gaming boss, the veteran Sean Shoptaw, has outlined the company's vision for games amid what he described as a "massive disruption" in the gaming market today. Part of Disney's investments and efforts in gaming today are in Fortnite, but it goes a lot further than that.

Speaking at SXSW, Shoptaw--Disney's Executive Vice President, Global Games & Digital Entertainment--said Disney's ambition for games overall is that they can stand alongside Disney's film, TV, and theme park businesses in terms of drawing people to Disney's worlds.

Disney does not want to make "box-checky" games, as Shoptaw described them. He said Disney made a key strategic change to its gaming business about a decade ago with the aim of shifting away from licensed tie-in games that re-told the stories of Disney's movies to making games that told original stories within Disney's worlds.

It's been less than a month since Pokopia hit shelves, yet that seems to be all the time the charming Pokemon spin-off needed to take the world--and my Instagram feed--by storm. Whenever I'm not playing Pokopia, I find myself stumbling into conversations or posts about the game. Naturally, many of these revolve around the game's most vital, and creatively rewarding, component: building.

Though I'm fairly proud of my various flower shops and bathhouses, there's no denying that there are some seriously talented creators out there who push Pokopia's building possibilities to the next level. I've often found myself turning to their builds for inspiration and pointers, so I wanted to round up a few of my favorites to share in hopes that they might inspire you, too. Whether you're looking to build a ramen shop, a train station, or an underground city, here's a roundup of some jaw-dropping Pokopia builds that are sure to get your creative juices flowing.

The lighthouse you stumble across in Bleak Beach might be serviceable, but is it enchanting? With its gorgeous stone balcony, ivy-covered walls, and generally charming atmosphere, this lighthouse island looks like something out of a fairytale.

The second season of Netflix's animated Devil May Cry series is almost here, and ahead of its May 12 launch, a new trailer for the series has gone live. Building off of last season's cliffhanger, the teaser wastes no time in giving Devil May Cry fans what they've been waiting for--and a little more!--so if you haven't seen the first season yet, consider this your spoiler warning.

Unsurprisingly, Vergil is making his proper debut in Devil May Cry 2: Season 2, and he's not exactly brimming with brotherly love for his twin sibling, Dante. Rocking a look that references his classic Devil May Cry 4 outfit, Vergil even has time to reference one of his famous quotes from Devil May Cry 5, remarking on just how cruel fate can be.

Devil May Cry's first season set up the oncoming storm that is Vergil, while also putting a fresh twist on the lore of the game. Ending with a very unsubtle parallel to the 2003 Second Gulf War, Dante found himself trapped inside the demon realm by the invading forces of the US army. Don't expect him to remain in a stasis tube for too long, as showrunner Adi Shankar teased that Dante will start to level up and evolve into the legendary devil-hunter throughout the second season.

Xbox's newly installed CEO Asha Sharma was the driving force behind Microsoft's decision to quietly kill off the "This is an Xbox" campaign, according to a recent report by The Information.

All evidence of the campaign--save for a few YouTube videos--was scrubbed from the internet shortly after Sharma took the helm at Xbox earlier this month. According to "someone with direct knowledge of the move," Sharma was the one who made the decision to end the campaign and remove it from Xbox's various domains and social media accounts.

While Xbox is still pushing its "Play Anywhere" functionality, Sharma is also focused on rehabilitating Xbox's console sales--Xbox hasn't outperformed Sony and Nintendo consoles since 2008, after all. During her first town hall meeting with the team at Xbox's Redmond, Washington HQ, Sharma said she wanted Xbox to be a "reference console"--that is to say, the ideal console against which every other console is judged.

Hello Kitty: Island Adventure is about to get a lot more metropolitan. Sunblink and Sanrio have officially announced the release date for the cozy adventure game's next DLC, City Town, which sends players to a "a rainbow metropolis teeming with creativity and mystery." While those playing Hello Kitty: Island Adventure on Apple Arcade have already gotten the chance to explore City Town, the DLC brings the fun to PC, Switch, Switch 2, and PS5 players on April 16.

Along with City Town's sprawling new map comes a new Sanrio bestie, Usahana. Described as "cheerful and full of energy," Usahana is eager to welcome you, show you around, and introduce you her to adorable friends, Pannya-chan, Buppyu-kun, Wanwa-chan, Sora-kun and Nyako-chan. The press release noted that players should expect a "mysterious cameo guest" as well.

Yet City Town adds a lot more than just a few friendly faces. Over 30 hours of content and 90 quests, some of which take you above and beneath the city, are headed to the game as well. The expansion also adds seven new shops, including a plushie boutique, blooming orchards, and a fun-filled arcade, and allows players to design and customize their very own Imagination Cafe.

A new Payday has been announced for virtual reality platforms. As the first new game in the series since the disappointing launch of Payday 3, Payday: Aces High will certainly face a high level of scrutiny at launch.

Payday: Aces High, much like the PC and console games it's based on, is a four-player co-op heist game where players work together to steal from the rich. The game gets its title because the crew is made up of the Ace of Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, and Spades, each of whom players can choose to play as and equip with different guns and gadgets like a grappling hook. Players complete missions to earn cash, which can then be spent on skill and gear upgrades.

Starbreeze Entertainment CEO Adolf Kristjansson argues that Payday: Aces High is "not just an adaptation" but a "true Payday game built from the ground up for this medium," in the press release announcing it. From the trailer, the gameplay of Payday: Aces High certainly looks similar to the PC and console games rather than a brief VR experience based on a known IP.