The term 'AI' has been used in games for decades. These non-playable characters (NPCs) traditionally follow strict rules designed to mimic intelligence, adhere to a guided story, and provide a scripted interaction with the player. However, with the rise of intelligent language models, game AI is primed for a truly intelligent overhaul. At CES 2025, NVIDIA is redefining game AI with the introduction of NVIDIA ACE autonomous game characters. First introduced in 2023, NVIDIA ACE is a suite of RTX-accelerated digital human technologies that bring game characters to life with generative AI. NVIDIA is now expanding ACE from conversational NPCs to autonomous game characters that use AI to perceive, plan, and act like human players. Powered by generative AI, ACE will enable living, dynamic game worlds with companions that comprehend and support player goals, and enemies that adapt dynamically to player tactics.

Enabling these autonomous characters are new ACE small language models (SLMs), capable of planning at human-like frequencies required for realistic decision making, and multi-modal SLMs for vision and audio that allow AI characters to hear audio cues and perceive their environment. NVIDIA is partnering with leading game developers to incorporate ACE autonomous game characters into their titles. Interact with human-like AI players and companions in PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, inZOI, and NARAKA: BLADEPOINT MOBILE PC VERSION. Fight against ever-learning AI-powered bosses that adapt to your playstyle in MIR5. And experience new gameplay mechanics made possible with AI-powered NPCs in AI People, Dead Meat, and ZooPunk.

It looks like the much maligned Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will officially join the likes of Foamstars in not-quite-abandonware purgatory after the upcoming Season 4 content update. The new update, titled "Season 4, Episode 7: Control" will be the game's penultimate episode, releasing on December 10. Episode 7 will add a long-promised offline mode to the game, as well as a new character, Deathstroke. In the same blog post announcing the arrival of the infamous DC villain, Rocksteady Studios and Warner Bros also announced that Season 4 will officially be the game's final season, with Episode 8: Balance, scheduled for 14 January 2025 being the final episode in the game's live service lifetime. As of the release of Episode 8, Rocksteady will no longer provide any more content updates to the game, although the silver lining is that online co-op will still be available. Co-op will notably not be available in the offline mode, suggesting that when the game's servers are inevitably shut down, there will be no co-op gameplay available.

Rocksteady and Warner Bros. will continue to sell Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, seemingly at full retail price, and all past seasons' content will become available, even in offline mode after the end of Season 4. This is a similar approach taken by Square Enix with Foamstars, when the developer announced last week that it would also stop supporting the PS5 game, despite leaving the online play servers and in-game items shop available after halting further development and support of the game.

Team Asobi's Astro Bot was released for PlayStation 5 on September 6, 2024, and it received many positive reviews and critics from fans. Recently, Team Asobi president Nicholas Doucet explained that he directly approached God of War's Cory Barlog and Eric Williams about getting Kratos' cameo for the game. And was surprised to see they were excited about what he was going to do with Kratos in Astro Bot.

Cory Barlog explained that for a dramatic game like the God of War IP, you have to be very careful with the world, and he was excited to see what Team Asobi would do with Kratos in Astro Bot, something different from the way it is in God of War at least. Nicholas said their expectations were to get 50 cameos, but they were shocked that they almost got everyone. The PlayStation partners expressed their support for Astro Bot and were excited to see their characters used in the game.