January 2025 - Page 8 of 10 - Gaming Army United

Today’s Wordle answer for Thursday, January 9

Whether you’re after some specific advice for Thursday’s Wordle or are just hoping to read something that’ll make the game a little easier, we’ve got something here that can help. Take a look at today’s hint if you’d like some guidance, and make sure you use our convenient collection of tips to supercharge every single guess. And if you still need something more? No problem. The answer to the January 9 (1300) Wordle’s waiting a little further down this page.

I was perfectly correct in every unhelpful way possible today. Two yellow letters? Fantastic. So long as they don’t end up as two yellow letters in different spots on the next row. Four greens? Now we’re talking. So long as the gap isn’t a nightmarish black hole where dreams of quick wins go to die, anyway. Who knew there were so many alternatives?

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Thursday, January 9

Anything very, very, thin could be called this. Most often today’s answer refers to a dry sort of biscuit stuck into ice cream, or finely cut slices of smoked salmon.

Is there a double letter in Wordle today?

No, there is not a double letter in today’s puzzle.

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day

If you’re new to the daily Wordle puzzle or you just want a refresher after taking a break, I’ll share some quick tips to help you win. There’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day.

A mix of unique consonants and vowels makes for a solid opening word.
A tactical second guess should let you narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
There may be a repeat letter in the answer.

You’re not up against a timer, so you’ve got all the time in the world—well, until midnight—to find the winning word. If you’re stuck, there’s no shame in coming back to the puzzle later in the day and finishing it up when you’ve cleared your head.

Today’s Wordle answer

Wordle answers

(Image credit: Future)

What is today’s Wordle answer?

One answer, coming up. The answer to the January 9 (1300) Wordle is WAFER.

Previous Wordle answers

The last 10 Wordle answers

Keeping track of the last handful of Wordle answers can help to eliminate current possibilities. It’s also handy for inspiring opening words or subsequent guesses if you’re short on ideas for the day.

Here are the last 10 Wordle answers:

January 8: DRAFT
January 7: ATLAS
January 6: SPRIG
January 5: CYBER
January 4: RELAX
January 3: CHEAP
January 2: CHOSE
January 1: NERVE
December 31: LEMUR
December 30: STARE

Learn more about Wordle

Today's Wordle being played on a phone

(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)

Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes every day and the aim is to figure out the correct five-letter word by entering guesses and eliminating or confirming individual letters.

Getting off to a good start with a strong word like ARISE—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good tactic. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.

After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.

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Games News

AIB vendors getting the RTX 5080’s memory config wrong could mean 50-series Super cards have more and faster VRAM

While the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series cards that were announced this week at CES 2025 have initially wooed us with somewhat reasonable pricing and frame generation magic, they haven’t been showstoppers on the memory front. That’s especially the case given it looks like AMD’s RX 9070 graphics cards will have 16 GB of VRAM and presumably be cheaper than Nvidia’s 16 GB cards.

However, if a recent MSI packaging mistake (via Videocardz) and Gigabyte listing mistake (via Videocardz) are anything to go by, the milquetoast memory configs of most of the 50-series cards—not terrible by any stretch, but nothing to write home about—might have only been a recent change. And, moreover, these “mistakes” might signify future RTX 5080 GDDR7 configs.

Nvidia says: “Blackwell is equipped with the world’s fastest memory – GDDR7 with speeds up to 30Gbps.” The RTX 5090, 5070 Ti, and 5070 have 28 Gbps memory, while the RTX 5080 has 16 GB of 30 Gbps memory.

In a video which now seems to have been changed or shortened, MSI reportedly showed RTX 4080 Vanguard Launch Edition packaging that claimed 24 GB of GDDR7 RAM for the card—8 GB more than it actually has. Judging by the product page for this graphics card, MSI seems to have corrected this packaging to say 16 GB of GDDR7 memory.

Gigabyte, on the other hand, is listing its RTX 4080 cards with specifications that show a 32 Gbps memory clock. This is 2 Gbps higher than Nvidia’s claimed memory speed for the card.

So, what’s up with the confusion? Well, according to Videocardz, Nvidia delivered a final BIOS to board partners late, which led to them postponing the launch until January 30. This might mean that AIB partners were working with outdated information, and Nvidia originally planned different memory configs.

It’s important to note that 24 GB capacity, 32 Gbps speed GDDR7 memory should be available from Micron at some point, so this specific configuration—combining both MSI and Gigabyte “mistakes”—makes sense. This memory will use 3 GB modules to make up the 24 GB total, with a presumed 256-bit bus width (8x 3 GB modules, each 32 bits wide).

If this memory capacity and speed was initially planned but then scrapped—perhaps to keep prices lower or because the memory might not be in mass production yet—it could be on the table for a 50-series Super refresh down the line.

And if 3 GB GDDR7 memory does end up being used, it might not only mean an RTX 5080 Super with 24 GB of VRAM, but possibly even a lower-end refreshed card with 18 GB of VRAM. Perhaps an 18 GB RTX 5070 Super. All speculation, of course, but nothing beyond the realms of possibility.

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Games News

Jen-Hsun reckons Nvidia has driven the ‘cost of computing down by 1,000,000 times’

By virtue of its relentless pursuit of ever faster, ever more powerful GPUs, Jen-Hsun Huang has claimed that Nvidia, over the past 20 years, has driven the “cost of computing down by one million times”.

When you look at the rising costs of modern graphics cards compared with their forebears, that’s maybe hard to fathom. It sure looks like the cost of a GPU has just been steadily rising to most of us when we look at the objects of our silicon desires. But when you look at just what the graphics chips of today are capable of, the level of raw computational power at the disposal of even a lowly RTX 4060 would have seemed borderline mythical 20 years back.

A GeForce 6800 Ultra from 2005 delivered a whopping 6.4 GFLOPS, while the bottom of the Ada Lovelace generation comes with 15,100 GFLOPS of processing grunt. That’s a whole world of difference from a $499 card of 20 years ago versus a $299 GPU of today.

And that’s not even a card anywhere near the top of the stack, nor close to what you’ll get from Nvidia’s most powerful enterprise GPUs.

Jen-Hsun, at today’s morning-after-keynote Q&A session, compared what Nvidia has done in developing more powerful graphics silicon, pushing down the relative price of GPU computational power, to the impact of Moore’s Law.

“The reason Moore’s Law was so important in the history of the chip is that it drove down computing costs,” Huang remarks. “In the course of the last 20 years we’ve driven the marginal cost of computing down by one million times.

“So much that machine learning became logical: ‘just have the computer go figure it out.'”

Basically, there’s so much computational power available for such relatively little cash that you might as well just start throwing it at AI to solve all our problems. Or, you know, draw us a picture of a gold fish when you absolutely, positively just have to have a freshly generated picture of a fish.

There’s no getting away from it, the graphics card, and its constituent component, the GPU, have become the most important pieces of silicon in our modern time. There’s also no getting away from the fact that Nvidia is responsible for some of the most important silicon of our time, however you feel about the rise and rise of artificial intelligence and its potential impact on the world and humanity.

Does Jen-Hsun’s maths add up? I don’t know, he didn’t show his workings, but what is true is that since the birth of the GPU as we know it, the cost-to-performance ratio has only been going in one direction.

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Games News

Private Division’s ‘games and franchises,’ including Kerbal Space Program, are reportedly being taken over by former Annapurna Interactive employees

Take-Two Interactive said in November 2024 that it had sold Private Division, the “high-end indie” publishing label it launched in 2017, to an undisclosed buyer, along with “substantially all of Private Division’s live and unreleased titles.” The identity of the buyer was not revealed, but a new Bloomberg report (via Game Developer) says the division’s “games and franchises” will be taken over by former employees of Annapurna Interactive, the gaming-focused subsidiary of Annapurna Pictures that collapsed in September 2024 after its entire staff and senior leadership team resigned.

The former Annapurna Interactive employees were not the buyers of Private Division themselves, according to the Bloomberg report: Haveli Investments, a private equity firm, made the purchase and subsequently did a deal with the ex-Annapurna staffers to take control of the games. It sounds like the Private Division label will not be retained, as the newly-formed company does not yet have a name, and some of the roughly 20 employees of Private Division will be laid off.

Annapurna Interactive was founded in 2016 and quickly established a reputation for publishing offbeat but excellent games including Kentucky Route Zero, Outer Wilds, Sayonara Wild Hearts, What Remains of Edith Finch, Telling Lies, Neon White, and Stray. But the staff resigned wholesale last year after a leadership shakeup and the collapse of negotiations to spin the division off into a standalone company. Annapurna Interactive continues to operate under new leadership and staff.

As for Private Division, it apparently just wasn’t big enough for Take-Two Interactive to bother with. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said Private Division’s biggest games “were not big in the context of our core intellectual properties at 2K and Rockstar” when the sale was revealed, which was not a good fit for Take-Two’s status as “being a top-ten player.”

The Bloomberg report says the new company will take control of games including Tales of the Shire, which is set to launch on March 25, and maybe more interestingly, the Kerbal Space Program series. Kerbal Space Program 2 was expected to be Private Division’s flagship game when it launched into early access in 2023, but it flopped badly and hasn’t been updated since June 2024, leading many to assume it’s been abandoned.

I’ve reached out to Haveli Investments for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

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Decayed20

ASSASSIN’S CREED #1 | THE BEGINING OF EVERYTHING

Bem vindos a Assassin’s Creed!

Aqui foi onde tudo começou com Altair, não percam um segundo para perceber o inicio desta gigante saga Assassin’s Creed!

Acompanha os próximos episódios de Assassin’s Creed AQUI 👉 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDowRCnCZ6UKQc2aQAjBGNSYaiSgjKVsD

Espero que gostem, deixem o like, subscrevam, partilhem e ativem as notificações para não perder nenhum episódio!!!

Segue-me nas redes sociais 📲
LINKS TEMPORARIAMENTE APENAS NA PÁGINA PRINCIPAL DO CANAL!

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Games News

PUBG teammates not good enough? Nvidia’s new generative AI-led ‘Co-Playable Character’ aims to offer you an alternative

NVIDIA ACE | KRAFTON introduces PUBG Ally, first Co-Playable Character – YouTube

Watch On

Nvidia has announced a partnership with a handful of developers to create AI teammates, which is informed by Nvidia’s own generative and responsive AI. This is to say that the AI teammates here are a little more intelligent than those you may have come across before.

AI that is used to dictate what NPCs do and what paths they take is generally fairly different to the AI used in creating images with six fingers and generating documents. However, Nvidia is combining the two, alongside PUBG publisher Krafton to make PUBG Ally.

This new AI system allows you to chat with an AI-led teammate, who can take orders and fire at enemies. In the YouTube clip (via The Verge) showing it off, the player asks for some ammo and a better piece of armour, and the bot not only finds it and pings it, but says it has done so. So far, so good. It is already more communicative than the average player I come across in PUBG.

As well as this, the AI teammate spotted an enemy, let the player know, and laid down covering fire. Of course, this is just a proof of concept and highly scripted so we don’t know how it will shape out in actual games but this could be a genuinely good use for AI in games.

Just last year, Ubisoft announced the potential use of generative AI for NPCs in singleplayer games and I’ve always thought this feels like a gimmick, replacing the bespoke experience of talking to scripted NPCs with something I’d get bored of very quickly. However, being able to dynamically communicate with a bot could be good for when my friends are offline and I just want one more game. And adding a multiplayer chatbot doesn’t run the risk of pushing artists out of games like other uses of generative AI.

However, we don’t quite know how that will affect ranked mode and similar competitive play as having a teammate who is literally designed by AI to do everything you want it to could result in complaints of cheating. In the blog post for this new tech, Nvidia announced it would also be used for battle royale game Naraka: Bladepoint, AI characters in Sims-like Inzoi, and as smart enemies in MIR5.

Nvidia ACE, first announced at Computex 2023, is also powering conversational AI, like that in the Ubisoft post earlier on in the murder mystery game Dead Meat, AI People, a sandbox game, and ZooPunk, the follow-up to F.I.S.T: Forged in Shadow Torch.

Generative AI is worming its way into many facets of gaming and, though I rather dislike the prospect of AI-generated dialogue and art, slapping a chatbot onto multiplayer bots feels like it could work with some finetuning. Though Bladepoint’s AI companions are set to launch in March this year, we don’t yet have word on the rest.

We’ll need to test out this tech for ourselves to see if its gets close to the chaos of playing with a few buddies.

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Games News

Helldivers 2 is getting a film adaptation, even though Starship Troopers already exists

A Helldivers 2 film adaptation is in production, Sony announced at CES 2025 today. The collaboration between Sony Productions and Sony Pictures doesn’t have a release window or any other confirmed details, other than the fact that it’s happening. PlayStation Productions head Asad Qizilbash made the announcement during Sony’s CES press conference.

And because what better thing to announce at a major consumer tech-oriented convention than film adaptations, a Ghost of Tsushima anime was also revealed. Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini announced this one during the same conference. It’ll be directed by Takanobu Mizuno (Star Wars: Visions) and produced by animation company Kamikaze Douga (Batman Ninja). That won’t come out until 2027.

The elephant in the room is that Helldivers 2 is already basically a videogame take on Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, which is a great film whether you’re genius enough to detect that it’s satire or not. The 1997 sci-fi was based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein and follows the travails of some United Citizen Federation recruits as they annihilate droves of Arachnids. It was pretty divisive at the time for its seeming endorsement of fascism and its gratuitous ultraviolence, but that perception has shifted pretty dramatically since.

I’m not saying a Helldivers 2 film can’t stand on its own—it appeals to me more than, say, a Ghost of Tsushima anime—but it’ll be interesting to see, I guess, if it can manage to be more than a retread.

Helldivers 2 was our favourite multiplayer game of 2024, and to be honest, it’s probably got more potential for a film adaptation than any of the competition (especially Borderlands, which is a similarly “funny” co-op shooter). It joins an alarmingly long list of forthcoming game-to-film adaptations, which includes stuff like Minecraft starring Jack Black, Mortal Kombat 2 starring Karl Urban, and lots more besides including Angry Birds 3, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, and much more.

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Games News

Intel announces new mobile Core Ultra 200HX Series processors to power the next generation of gaming laptops

Intel has announced the new Core Ultra 200HX and 200H laptop chips here at CES 2025. The HX parts are the most interesting to PC gamers, as the chips most likely to power your next gaming laptop, so let’s get into those first.

There are six new HX models, with the top Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX offering up eight Performance-cores (Lion Cove) and 16 Efficient-cores (Skymont) for a total of 24 threads. Remember, there’s no Hyper-Threading on the Lion Cove P-cores used here, so what you see is what you get. The 285HX features a P-core Turbo of 5.5 GHz.

That equates to an increase in performance of roughly 5%, by Intel’s internal testing, for single-thread versus the last generation Raptor Lake Refresh chips. It also reckons we’ll see a big uplift in multithreaded performance of around 20%, which bears out with the desktop chips.

The HX-series will run at a base power draw of 55 W, though can ramp up to 160 W when required. That’s a pretty chunky power demand—that’s a Turbo power actually 3 W higher than the 14900HX. So we’ll have to see how that plays out in gaming laptop designs surrounding these chips.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Intel Core Ultra 200HX Series
Row 0 – Cell 0	P/E-cores (threads)	Max GHz (P-core)	GPU cores	NPU TOPS
Ultra 9 285HX	8/16 (24)	5.5	4	13
Ultra 9 275HX	8/16 (24)	5.4	4	13
Ultra 7 265HX	8/12 (20)	5.3	4	13
Ultra 7 255HX	8/12 (20)	5.2	4	13
Ultra 5 245HX	6/8 (14)	5.1	3	13
Ultra 5 235HX	6/8 (14)	5.1	3	13

What’s a little more interesting is that these chips support at least one exciting new memory form factor, CAMM2. CAMM2 is a like system RAM, only pancaked onto the motherboard for greater cooling. It’s still removable, though, so could make for some interesting applications in gaming laptops specifically.

In terms of integrated GPU performance, these are not equipped with the mighty powerful GPU that we’ve seen in Lunar Lake or its competitors. Just 4/3 Xe GPU cores across this lineup, which won’t be great for gaming. These chips will, of course, be paired with discrete GPUs instead.

When it comes to AI performance, which I know you’re all clamouring to find out about, the NPU within the HX-series is only capable of a middling 13 TOPS. That’s not enough to bag any sort of Microsoft Copilot+ certification.

Intel Core Ultra 200HX and 200H series chip renders.

(Image credit: Intel)

The H Series maxes out with fewer threads the HX Series, at just 16 threads total. The Core Ultra 9 285H has six P-cores (Lion Cove), 8 E-cores (Skymont), and 2 Low-power E-cores. Yep, it’s quite a bit like Meteor Lake in that regard, though the newer architecture still offers some benefits over Meteor Lake—15% single-thread and multithread versus Meteor Lake, according to Intel.

It also has a specially tweaked Xe GPU with more AI acceleration. Quite a bit more, in fact, up to 77 TOPS.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Row 0 – Cell 0	P/E-cores (threads)	Max GHz	GPU cores	GPU TOPS
Ultra 9 285H	6/8 (16)	5.4	8	77
Ultra 7 265H	6/8 (16)	5.3	8	75
Ultra 7 255H	6/8 (16)	5.1	8	74
Ultra 7 235H	4/8 (14)	5	8	74
Ultra 5 225H	4/8 (14)	4.9	7	63

We’ll probably see a wide mix of chips in the next-generation of gaming laptops, between these new HX Series, H Series, V Series, and then AMD’s options, including the Ryzen AI chips.

As for the HX Series gaming laptops, likely to make up a lot of gaming models alongside a discrete GPU, those are coming in late Q1. 200H chips will turn up “early Q1”, which should be any day now.

We’ll see more as CES 2025 unfolds. We’re at the show, so stay tuned for all that.

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Today’s Wordle answer for Monday, January 6

Scroll a little further down this page and you’ll find a helpful hint for today’s Wordle, designed to give you an extra boost while still leaving the fun part up to you. Feel free to use it right at the beginning and get your guessing off to a super start, or save it for later, using it to make a few stubborn yellow letters turn green. And if you need something more direct, the answer to the January 6 (1297) Wordle’s only a click away.

There were only two yellow letters in my first line, but they were the perfect two yellow letters. With those rattling around inside my brain, it only took a few more rows of careful poking around the alphabet to find today’s answer. It wasn’t a speedy win, but with every new guess a clear step in the right direction, it felt like a very satisfying one.

Wordle today: A hint

Wordle today: A hint for Monday, January 6

This is a small cutting or branch taken from a larger plant. Think of garnished herbs on food, or decorative floral arrangements.

Is there a double letter in Wordle today?

No, there is not a double letter in today’s puzzle

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day

If you’ve decided to play Wordle but you’re not sure where to start, I’ll help set you on the path to your first winning streak. Make all your guesses count and become a Wordle winner with these quick tips:

A good opener has a mix of common vowels and consonants.
The answer could contain the same letter, repeated.
Avoid words that include letters you’ve already eliminated.

You’re not racing against the clock so there’s no reason to rush. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Sometimes stepping away for a while means you can come back with a fresh perspective.

Today’s Wordle answer

Wordle answers

(Image credit: Future)

What is today’s Wordle answer?

Here’s your latest win. The answer to the January 6 (1297) Wordle is SPRIG.

Previous Wordle answers

The last 10 Wordle answers

Previous Wordle solutions can help to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer isn’t likely to be repeated. They can also give you some solid ideas for starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh.

Here are some recent Wordle answers:

January 5: CYBER
January 4: RELAX
January 3: CHEAP
January 2: CHOSE
January 1: NERVE
December 31: LEMUR
December 30: STARE
December 29: MAMBO
December 28: DECRY
December 27: GRAIN

Learn more about Wordle

Today's Wordle being played on a phone

(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)

There are six rows of five boxes presented to you by Wordle each day, and you’ll need to work out which five-letter word is hiding among them to win the daily puzzle.

Start with a strong word like ALIVE—or any other word with a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You should also avoid starting words with repeating letters, so you don’t waste the chance to confirm or eliminate an extra letter. Once you’ve typed your guess and hit Enter, you’ll see which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second guess should compliment the first, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you might have missed on the first row—just don’t forget to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the correct word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words and don’t forget letters can repeat too (eg: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.

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I’ve seen enough: No more forcing singleplayer studios to make mediocre live service games

We began this year with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and ended it with Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Both are new games from beloved institutions of 2010s triple-A single player games, their first outings in many years⁠—a full decade since Arkham Knight and the last Dragon Age game, while it’s been five years since BioWare’s Anthem-shaped failure. Both were⁠—at least for part of development, with The Veilguard⁠—attempts at making live service, persistent multiplayer games in the vein of Destiny.

After Anthem was critically panned and failed to maintain an audience, with BioWare and EA ultimately ending content updates for the game, Veilguard reportedly went through a soft development reboot from a Destiny-style experience back into a fully singleplayer RPG more in line with previous Dragon Age games. Suicide Squad was delayed an extra year after a poorly-received initial gameplay reveal, but crucially kept that live service model, with its campaign followed by repeatable missions, “endgame” content, and seasons of further support that have been unceremoniously cut off.

Trying to retrofit a singleplayer studio into a ‘live service machine go brrr’ moneymaker is not a smart bet.

I look at this and see The Veilguard pulling back from a disaster, while Suicide Squad charged into a trap that has burned many established, well-respected studios. Live service games are among the most popular out there, but they are resource-intensive and require long-term commitments from developers and publishers. Players have understandably high expectations of games that, by design, demand so much of their time, while that time demand incentivizes players to settle on a single go-to live service game to the exclusion of others, heightening the competitiveness of the space. The demands of a live service game are different from those of a singleplayer experience with a set ending, and many of the biggest success stories come from new, dedicated studios, or ones with strong institutional knowledge of making multiplayer games:

Escape From Tarkov: debut effort from Battlestate Games.
Roblox: First released in 2006 and is the only game developed by the Roblox Corporation.
Fortnite: Epic had a long multiplayer history with Unreal Tournament, as well as incredible resources from owning and licensing the Unreal Engine.
Final Fantasy 14: Dedicated MMO studio, “Business Division 5,” within publisher Square Enix.
Diablo 4: It’s Blizzard, man. They made World of Warcraft.
Path of Exile: To date, the series is the sole focus of Grinding Gear Games.

Among singleplayer studios that successfully transitioned to live service, I see only early adopters, edge cases, or extenuating circumstances. Digital Extremes and Bungie were the first formerly singleplayer-focused studios to find major success making MMOs with more action-heavy gameplay and a focus on smaller instanced missions rather than open worlds⁠—they were some of the first on this scene, and now even Bungie has run into significant difficulties while Digital Extremes has managed to stay the course.

BioWare’s The Old Republic was a more traditional MMO that came from a very different era of development. After explosive initial success, it’s settled into an⁠—admittedly impressive⁠—long, slow burn of popularity and updates. Valve is Valve, a company with no real direct parallels in the industry, and its successes with Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive were preceded by years of multiplayer hits in Counter-Strike, Half-Life: Deathmatch, and the prototype live service of Team Fortress 2, to name a few. Apex Legends was a middle period live service game, but an innovator and relatively early adopter of battle royale gameplay, and Respawn had its own prior multiplayer bona fides. Obsidian’s Grounded, meanwhile, might be one of the more extreme edge cases: A much smaller-scale live service survival game that proved modestly successful while the studio as a whole remained focused on singleplayer RPGs.

Dragon Age: Th Veilguard - Davrin crouches down to speak to a griffin — (Image credit: BioWare, Electronic Arts)

The late 2010s and early ’20s have seen a large number of failed live service games, particularly from highly-regarded singleplayer studios. Here’s a quick overview:

Redfall: 44% review score from PC Gamer, contributed to the closure of beloved studio Arkane Austin, Bloomberg suggests it had a contested, confused development.
Outriders: 63% review, failed to turn a profit within its first, most successful year, received a single expansion and does not appear to be getting updates anymore.
Anthem: 55% review, underperformed in sales relative to budget, BioWare/EA history, continued content updates and a planned 2.0 refresh canceled after two years.
Marvel’s Avengers: 69% review, official support ended after just over two years.
The Last of Us Online: Canceled before release as the studio believed it would “severely impact development on future singleplayer games.”
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League: 67% review, underperformed in sales, continued content updates canceled after less than a year.

Surely we’ve seen enough to know that trying to retrofit a singleplayer studio into a “live service machine go brrr” moneymaker is not a smart bet, nor the best use of these incredible amalgamations of talent, experience, and institutional knowledge. It’s like trying to make a sports car go off-roading: That’s just not what the machine was built for, and you’ll probably damage your suspension.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard seems to have polarized the series’ fanbase while its sales success remains an open question, but it largely landed with critics⁠—I personally loved it⁠—and it certainly doesn’t appear to have been any kind of disaster financially. I have no doubt in my mind that if Veilguard had released with a battle pass, seasonal content plans, and a halfhearted emphasis on repeatable missions, its reception would have looked more like Anthem or Suicide Squad’s.

PCG online editor Fraser Brown was on the money when he pointed out that the success of Fortnite is an industry aberration, not the future of games. And when you’re making decisions on what your successful singleplayer studio should make next, which do you think is more likely: That it will produce the next Destiny, a 10+ year dynasty of profit, or a polished but hollow MMO-lite that will need to be put out to pasture in one to three years, its headstone one of those embarrassing .jpeg apology letters thanking the community? Let singleplayer studios stick to singleplayer games.

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Today’s Wordle answer for Thursday, January 9

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Thursday, January 9

AIB vendors getting the RTX 5080’s memory config wrong could mean 50-series Super cards have more and faster VRAM

Jen-Hsun reckons Nvidia has driven the ‘cost of computing down by 1,000,000 times’

Private Division’s ‘games and franchises,’ including Kerbal Space Program, are reportedly being taken over by former Annapurna Interactive employees

ASSASSIN’S CREED #1 | THE BEGINING OF EVERYTHING

PUBG teammates not good enough? Nvidia’s new generative AI-led ‘Co-Playable Character’ aims to offer you an alternative

Helldivers 2 is getting a film adaptation, even though Starship Troopers already exists

Intel announces new mobile Core Ultra 200HX Series processors to power the next generation of gaming laptops

Today’s Wordle answer for Monday, January 6

Wordle today: A hint

Wordle today: A hint for Monday, January 6

I’ve seen enough: No more forcing singleplayer studios to make mediocre live service games

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