After much anticipation, Frostpunk 2 launched last week to near-universal praise. The strategic city-builder's success is underlined by the fact that the game has seemingly even exceeded its developer's expectations, with game sales for PC and macOS alone already surpassing the game's development and marketing cost just three days after launch.

In a post to the official Frostpunk 2 account on X, the developer celebrated that the game had officially sold over 350,000 copies. At $44.99 in the US, the new game costs $15 more than the original, which launched in 2018 and has generated an estimated total revenue of $53 million—since its launch. In contrast, Frostpunk 2 has supposedly already earned an estimated revenue of $3.5 million, according to Game-Stats.com, although estimates from Gamalytic put that closer to $10 million.

GeForce NOW makes gamers' fantasies a reality by bringing top titles to the cloud. This week, the award-winning FINAL FANTASY XVI is available for members to stream at launch. Catch 11 bit studios' city-survival game Frostpunk 2 before it launches with early access on GeForce NOW. It's part of seven new games joining the expansive GeForce NOW library.

Eikonic Adventure
Dive into the richly crafted world of Valisthea in FINAL FANTASY XVI, the latest mainline entry in Square Enix's renowned role-playing game series. This epic action RPG unfolds in a once-glorious land blessed by the light of the Mothercrystals that's now slowly succumbing to the mysterious Blight. Play as Clive Rosfield as he navigates a dark fantasy filled with political intrigue and magical battles against Eikons, powerful manifestations of elemental forces. Eikons are wielded by Dominants, individuals who possess incredible strength and abilities. Featuring exhilarating real-time combat, the game allows players to unleash devastating moves by chaining together attack combos with seamless fluidity. With its gripping story, stunning visuals and intense gameplay, FINAL FANTASY XVI offers an unforgettable experience for new and longtime fans of the series alike.

AMD today released a preview driver that provides optimization for a couple of new games, and fixes a few issues. Preview Driver version 24.20.11.01 adds optimization for "God of War: Ragnarök," "Frostpunk 2," and the DirectX 11 mode of "Sims 4." It also extends Radeon Boost support for "Final Fantasy XVI." HYPR-Tune support is extended to "Black Myth: Wukong," "God of War Ragnarök," and "Creatures of Ava." HYPR-Tune now autoconfigures Anti-Lag 2 in "Ghost of Tsushima Directors Cut."

The drivers also address intermittent driver crashes when playing "Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2," including crashes when loading maps on RX 5000 series GPUs. Driver crashes on "Final Fantasy XVI" have also been fixed. The bug that causes overly dark shadows in "Black Myth: Wukong" with medium-high global illumination settings, has been fixed. AV falling out of sync during AV1 codec playback has been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin Preview Driver 24.20.11.01

Welcome to the second half of September and what is nothing but a jam packed week of new game releases. The week kicks off with an almost two-year old PlayStation game that has something to do with Norse mythology gets launched on PC, although it does come with the DLC included and it's not capped at 60 FPS. As for the rest of this week's new games, we have a packed week starting with a lot of spell casting, another PlayStation game, but this time we're taking a JRPG of the highest rank, which is followed by a souls-like RPG game. Next up we have Dr Dr, which oddly enough isn't German at all, followed by another highly anticipated game that involves frozen punks. If there's nothing you like this week, you're most likely not a gamer.

God of War Ragnarök / This week's AAA release / Thursday 19 September
The sequel to the critically acclaimed God of War (2018), God of War Ragnarök picks up with Fimbulwinter well underway. Kratos and Atreus must journey to each of the Nine Realms in search of answers as Odin's forces in Asgard prepare for a prophesied battle that will end the world. Along the way, they will explore stunning, mythical landscapes, and face fearsome enemies in the form of Norse gods and monsters. As the threat of Ragnarök grows ever closer, Kratos and Atreus must choose between the safety of their family and the safety of the realms. Steam link

NVIDIA has released its latest GeForce WHQL Game Ready drivers, version 561.09, which brings optimizations for FINAL FANTASY XVI and God of War Ragnarök games, including support for DLSS 3 technology. It also adds launch support for EA SPORTS FC 25 and Frostpunk 2 games. The new GeForce 561.09 WHQL Game Ready drivers also add new GeForce Optimal Settings for Black Myth: Wukong, F1 Manager 2024, and Star Wars Outlaws games. Unfortunately, it does not fix any previously seen gaming bugs, but it does add several general bug fixes, including a fix for GeForce Experience where Performance Monitoring overlay could stop refreshing GPU information, a fix for NVIDIA App, where game filters may be missing when invoking the NVIDIA Overlay in-game, and a fix for performance issues in some workloads with Chaos V-Ray. Interestingly, there are no listed open issues with the latest driver either.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 561.09 WHQL Game Ready

Fall will be here soon, so leaf it to GeForce NOW to bring the games, with 19 joining the cloud in September. Get started with the seven games available to stream this week, and a day one PC Game Pass title, Age of Mythology: Retold, from the creators of the award-winning Age of Empires franchise World's Edge, Forgotten Empires and Xbox Game Studios. The Open Beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 runs Sept. 6-9, offering everyone a chance to experience game-changing innovations before the title officially launches on Oct. 25. Members can stream the Battle.net and Steam versions of the Open Beta instantly this week on GeForce NOW to jump right into the action.

Where Myths and Heroes Collide
Age of Mythology: Retold revitalizes the classic real-time strategy game by merging its beloved elements with modern visuals. Get immersed in a mythical universe, command legendary units and call upon the powers of various gods from the Atlantean, Greek, Egyptian and Norse pantheons. The single-player experience features a 50-mission campaign, including engaging battles and myth exploration in iconic locations like Troy and Midgard. Challenge friends in head-to-head matches or cooperate to take on advanced, AI-powered opponents. Call upon the gods from the cloud with an Ultimate and Priority membership and stream the game across devices. Games update automatically in the cloud, so members can dive into the action without having to wait.

We had a chance to briefly stop at Sapphire and it is one of the rare AMD GPU AIB partners that has something new to showcase at the Computex 2024. While it was announced earlier last month, we had a chance to check out the new Sapphire Radeon RX 7700 XT Pure Frostpunk 2 Edition graphics card, and it looks even better in person.

It could have something to do with the fact that we liked the original Frostpunk game and we can't wait to check out Frostpunk 2 when it launches on July 25th, but the card with white shroud and white fans with Frostpunk elements on its backplate certainly has its appeal. You also get a game code for the Deluxe Edition of the game in the box as well as some other goodies including custom keycaps and pin badges.In case you somehow missed it, the Radeon RX 7700 XT is based on the 5 nm Navi 32 GPU, packing 54 compute units for a total of 3,456 stream processors. AMD is targeting 1440p gaming with this card and it comes with 48 MB of Infinity Cache and 12 GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit memory interface. It needs two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and includes two DisplayPort 2.1 and two HDMI 2.1 outputs.

Sapphire today unveiled the Radeon RX 7700 XT Pure Frostpunk 2 Edition graphics card. The card is a branding collaboration with 11 bit Studios, which releases Frostpunk 2 this July. The city-building survival strategy game is one of this Summer's most anticipated game releases. Sapphire celebrates it with a variant of the RX 7700 XT Pure graphics card that has a game code for the Deluxe Edition of Frostpunk 2, a themed backplate, and some goodies in the box, including custom keycaps, and enamel pin badges. While the backplate is heavily themed on the game, the all-white cooler shroud, the white impellers for the three fans, and the rest of the card, sticks with the white color scheme that's characteristic of Sapphire's Pure brand. The card comes in a collector's edition box themed after the game.

Based on the 5 nm "Navi 32" silicon, the Radeon RX 7700 XT features 3,456 stream processors across 54 compute units. The GPU is based on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture, and AMD recommends it for 1440p gaming with maxed out settings. The card features 12 GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit wide memory interface, and features 48 MB of Infinity Cache memory. The card draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include two each of DisplayPort 2.1 (featuring UHBR 13.5), and two HDMI 2.1 connectors. The card will release to market in July, probably alongside the game's July 25 release date, pricing isn't known yet (we asked Sapphire).