February and March have been absolutely packed with new video game releases this year, with Buy Now and Buy Now already standing as early game of the year contenders, but neither game had a launch as large as Ghost Recon Wildlands. The latest Ghost Recon game had the biggest week-one sales of any game in the U.K. this year, and it’s among the best starts for any game to bear the “Tom Clancy” brand name.
Ghost Recon Wildlands, which released on Buy Now , Buy Now , and Buy Now on March 7, was able to displace the PlayStation 4-exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn. The latter game beat out the Wii U and Switch’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, though Nintendo stated that it’s still the best launch for any game in the series.
The only Tom Clancy game with a launch bigger than Ghost Recon Wildlands was last year’s massively successful The Division. That game managed to set sales records for Ubisoft, with a bigger launch than Watch Dogs, and it continued to improve over the year with additional content packs, changes to player-versus-player areas, and free updates.
Previously, the biggest launch for a Ghost Recon game was 2012’s Future Soldier. The tech-heavy third-person shooter sold better than publisher Ubisoft had expected, but its critical reception didn’t stack up to the older Advanced Warfighter games. Wildlands follows suit, with its open world often getting in the way of the action instead of enhancing it, and a story that often seems scatterbrained and inconsistent in tone.
We’ll see how long Wildlands is able to hold the sales title, and if the U.K. sales will be indicative of its worldwide performance. It has been almost four years since the launch of Splinter Cell Blacklist, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see Ubisoft announce a follow-up at this year’s E3 presentation.
Remember when transparent gadgets were the coolest things you could own? Sony is bringing that late '90s aesthetic back with its new PS5 Prism Collection. The gorgeous lineup gives your DualSense controller and PS5 console a glossy, see-through makeover in three eye-catching colors.
https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/2115459064981512662?s=19
For years, Call of Duty’s campaign mode has used big, scripted set pieces to tell the overarching story amid all the adrenaline-pumping action. The 2023 Modern Warfare 3 tried to shake up the established formula by introducing a handful of short open combat missions, and I genuinely liked the idea, but the game's overall negative reception seeped into how those missions were received.
I feared the next iteration might abandon the idea because of the backlash, but I am glad it didn't. MW4’s “Stranded” mission uses the same approach, but instead of fragmenting it across the campaign, it puts it all in a single large-scale open-world mission.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.