Jump into the managerial hotseat this weekend with Football Manager 2023 now available to play for free. PC and Mac users will be able to try out FM23 on Steam completely free until 13:00 EST / 18:00pm BST on Monday, June 26th. Xbox Live Gold subscribers can access FM23 Console at no cost before 9:00am BST on June 26th. To continue your journey to footballing glory after the free play period, take advantage of both titles being available at 50% off until mid-July.

Football Manager 2023 provides you with the closest thing to being a real manager, delivering unmatched levels of detail and drama as you write your own headlines and dominate the competition. If you already have a Steam account, getting access to FM23 is straightforward. On Steam, head to the Football Manager 2023 page. Instead of there being a button labelled "Add to Cart," the game will be marked as "Free to Play" and the button will read 'Play Game'. Clicking "Play Game" will add FM23 to your library and it will remain playable until the free access period ends.

"I am the rising dawn... and I will lead us into a new age!" Check out our first Total War: PHARAOH gameplay showcase (below) and get better acquainted with our first faction leader, Ramesses - a young Egyptian warrior eager to fulfil his true destiny!

In Total War: Pharaoh, the newest entry in the award-winning grand strategy series, immerse yourself in ancient Egypt at the zenith of its power and experience the dramatic events that threaten its destruction.

Sega Sammy Holdings CEO Haruki Satomi and CFO Koichi Fukazawa were took part in a Q&A session last month, as a follow-on to the company releasing its financial reports for the past fiscal year. An English translation of the event's notes has only just become available this week, with news outlets picking up on a key item - computer game pricing. General life costs have been climbing in recent times, and games publishers have been adjusting MSRPs due to the rising expense of developing new content, especially in the AAA sector.

The Sega executive team has noticed this industry trend and is pondering over the options - the session notes state: "In the global marketplace, AAA game titles for console have been sold at $59.99 for many years, but titles sold at $69.99 have appeared in the last year...We would like to review the prices of titles that we believe are commensurate with price increases, while also keeping an eye on market conditions." Nintendo has recently joined the likes of Sony, Activision, 2K and Ubisoft in bumping up MSRP to $70, but this pricing decision has only affected the latest Legend of Zelda title - Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo of America's CEO Doug Bowser defended the move (prior to the game's release) - he argued that the direct sequel to Breath of the Wild would offer fantastic value for money.

Today Japan's Sega Sammy Holdings Incorporated declared its intention to fully acquire Finnish development studio Rovio Entertainment Oyj in a buyout valued at a cool $776 million. The Helsinki-based developer, responsible for creating the Angry Birds video game franchise, has agreed to Sega Sammy's terms - and Rovio share values have climbed as a result of this announcement. The deal is expected to be finalized in the late summer or early autumn of this year, and signals an ambition on Sega's part to gain prominence in the mobile gaming world. Rovio had previously turned down a proposed takeover by Playtika - an Israeli company specializing in digital entertainment - for $735 million, late last month.

Angry Birds was the first mobile game to be downloaded one billion times, according to figures released by Rovio, so Sega has acquired a solid intellectual property that has also expanded into the movie world (two animated features) and endless merchandising avenues (toys, clothing and other accessories). Commenting on the buyout, Haruki Satomi, President and Group CEO, Representative Director of Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. said: "Among the rapidly growing global gaming market, the mobile gaming market has especially high potential, and it has been Sega's long-term goal to accelerate its expansion in this field."

Hello everyone, Antoine here, those who recognize me know that I used to work on Humankind during the last few years. I'm now working as a Producer on Endless Dungeon, which means I'm helping to coordinate the Endless Dungeon team to make sure we can deliver a high-quality experience for you. We have some news to share regarding the release date of ENDLESS Dungeon.

We have decided to delay the release of the game to the 19th of October of this year, this includes all the versions: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox X/S. The Nintendo Switch version will have a release date announced later. After all the feedback we've received we believe that it's important to spend extra time working on the game. We hope that you understand that decisions like this are never easy to make.

The host and producer, Geoff Keighley, has confirmed that Opening Night Live will be returning this August. Opening Night Live is the pre-show presentation or an opening show for Gamescom, held in Cologne, Germany.

The announcement comes as a welcomed news after E3 2023 cancellation and it appears that Gamescom 2023 will carry on the torch, as the last year show was the first in-person event since 2019. Opening Night Live last year was a big event, going for over two hours and featured more than 35 games. Geoff Keighley briefly tweeted that the show returns live on Tuesday, August 22nd and that he is "excited to be back in Cologne with the fans and industry, streaming video game news directly to you".

Today Intel launched its 13th gen Core processors alongside the Z790 chipset, which in turn lead to a lot of new motherboards being available. However, it appears that ASRock is working on a special edition of its Z790 PG Riptide board that has something of an unusual twist. The board is known as the Z790 PG Sonic and appears to be some kind of cooperation with Sega, since the board carries clear Sonic the Hedgehog branding.

The board seems to be some kind of limited edition version of the Z790 PG Riptide, as we can't spot any features that have changed, at least not based on the pictures posted by @momomo_us on Twitter. The top of the board has Sonic themed heatsinks, as well as some of the printing on the PCB and the rear is adorned with a rather large Sonic in white on the black PCB. Obviously the packaging is also adorned with a Sonic print, but there doesn't appear to be any other connection to Sonic or Sega, which makes the whole partnership a bit of a mystery at the moment, but it's highly likely that we're looking at a limited edition product for the Asian markets here.

Arm announced today that its board of directors has appointed 35-year semiconductor industry leader Rene Haas as chief executive officer and member of the board of directors, effective immediately. Mr. Haas succeeds Simon Segars, who has stepped down as chief executive officer and member of the board of directors after 30 years with the company. In the near-term, Mr. Segars will support the leadership transition in an advisory role for Arm.

"Rene is the right leader to accelerate Arm's growth as the company starts making preparations to re-enter the public markets," said Masayoshi Son, Representative Director, Corporate Officer, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. "I would like to thank Simon for his leadership, contributions and dedication to Arm over the past 30 years."

In light of the cancellation of E3 2020 a new digital game showcase has been announced. The New Game+ Expo will feature new and upcoming releases from a coalition of developers from around the world and be streamed exclusively on Twitch June 23rd. The 16 companies from across Japan and America involved are: Acttil, Aksys Games, Arc System Works America, GungHo Online Entertainment America, Grasshopper Manufacture, Idea Factory International, Inti Creates, Koei, Tecmo America, Natsume Inc, NIS America Inc, Playism, Sega of America, Atlus West, SNK Corporation, Spike Chunsoft Inc, and WayForward

SEGA has confirmed that they are planning to use Denuvo on its future releases (subject to change, of course). The company's affirmation comes hot on the heels of the recent Resident Evil 2's executable release on Steam that didn't pack in the custom-tailored DRM solution, which saw users flying to test the impact of the Denuvo DRM on the games' performance. A difference of 4-12 FPS in the same game and system configurations (in favor of the DRM-less version) have been reported by users that benchmarked both releases, which does amount to a discernible difference in final frame output.

Following the public's reaction to this, SEGA has reaffirmed, in an answer of sorts, that their upcoming Total War: THREE KINGDOMS (May 23rd release) and Team Sonic Racing (May 21st release) will still be using Denuvo so as to protect early sales of the titles. It's interesting that the company has already removed the protection system from Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami and Sonic Mania, and has recently released Yakuza Kiwami 2 without the same tech. It seems that the higher profile the release, the more SEGA tends to opt for the anti-tamper tech - which does make some sense in the grand scheme of things.

Sega Games' latest entry to the Total War series was announced earlier this year, and now we know when it will be out along with more launch and order information. Total War: THREE KINGDOMS is, as expected, a turn-based real time strategy game and is set during the Three kingdoms time period in China (~190-280 C.E.). Fans of the Dynasty Warriors series will find familiar names and factions listed here, with players set to control one of 11 different factions led by warlords including Cao Cao, Lu Bu, Sun Jian and others. The game will launch first on Windows OS (on Steam) followed by MacOS and Linux support later next summer.

Despite the game being over 5 months from launch, we already have pre-orders available and that also comes with exclusive pre-order game content in the form of the Yellow Turban rebellion that precedes the main game and delves into the peasant rebellion against the Han dynasty. Whether you are a fan of this practice or not, you can check out the trailer below. The game itself is up forpre-order on Steam now for $60, and there is also a collector's edition for all of $160 which includes more content as seen here. As always, we caution against pre-ordering games- especially ones that announced pre-order DLC in advance.

SEGA Europe Ltd. today announced the launch of the new campaign DLC Empire Divided for Total War: ROME II. Empire Divided plunges players into the crisis of the third century, a do-or-die era for the Roman Empire. Players can embrace challenge of unifying the disparate Roman factions in glory - or playing as one of Rome's enemies, and dealing the killing blow.

Empire Divided breathes new life into ROME II, with 10 different playable factions, new victory conditions and new campaign features for players to contend with such as plagues, cults and banditry. Empire Divided also has a big narrative focus, as it chronicles the journeys of the characters and powers involved in this turbulent and fascinating time.

Sega is continuing to reach into its back catalog, and fans are loving it. The latest HD remaster from the house of Sonic is the Saturn classic, Nights into Dreams. The digital re-release will be available on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Windows PC this fall. The updated version adds widescreen HD graphics, as well as support for leaderboards, trophies, and achievements. The original game will be available to play in "Saturn Mode," just in case you're not fond of the sharper graphics and textures.

Electronic Arts (EA) Inc. announced today that SEGA will bring its most popular PC game titles to Origin, EA's direct-to-consumer gaming platform. SEGA's Total War Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai is now available for pre-order to PC gamers on Origin.

In addition to SEGA, other new publishers joining Origin today include Team 17 Software Limited, Rebellion, Kalypso Media Digital Ltd. and more, bringing the number of game publishers and developers on Origin to 35 partners. PC downloadable titles from each of these partners will be available on Origin in the coming months.

Today IGN is showing off their exclusive Aliens: Colonial Marines Cinematic trailer for the PC, Xbox360 and the PS3. Sadly no real gameplay is shown but its a beautifully rendered sequence that shows in essence a star ship or a foreign colony of Earth infested with Xenomorphs. From what is gathered of this trailer is as a player you will be playing with a group of people and not a lone soldier as previous games in the franchise have played out. Time will tell if the trailer holds true to the game with its creepy music and dark mood. One thing is certain, H.R. Giger would be proud.The cinematic trailer follows.

Valve, a company that operates solely online, takes its security pretty seriously and has a good reputation in this area. However, at the time of writing, its Steam forums are down, having suffered a hack attack earlier today. Visit the forums now and you see a message saying "The Steam Forums are temporarily offline for maintenance. Your patience is appreciated." This attack was apparently done by hackers who want to offer free game cheats (but one should be wary of stealthy malware payloads) since before the forums were taken down, they had planted this message:

Ever wanted to dominate the servers you play on with guaranteed results, but you were too afraid to cheat because of ban risks?

The rest of the message then recommends a website where one can obtain all sorts of illegal game cheats, hack tools and porn. Some Steam forum users even received an email with this text, such as this NeoGAF user. There's no indication that any user's account information has been compromised. However, if you haven't yet set up Steam Guard, now is a good time to do so, along with changing your password when the forums come back online. Also, be sure to use different a password for every login. Of course, many other gaming forums have been hacked in the past and just this year saw many hacks against such big names as Nintendo, Sega, BioWare, Epic Games and of course Sony, which was hacked many times over in protest at their business practices, such as removing the OtherOS feature from their PS3 console.

Game publisher Codemasters yesterday announced plans to acquire Sega's UK Racing Studio. Previous owner Sega recently announced its intent to close the studio, citing a mandate to ensure each branch remained profitable. "In seizing this opportunity, we have created additional resources to escalate our plans in the racing segment," stated Codemasters chief executive Rod Cousens. "We hope to welcome more than 40 people to the company ... We have enjoyed the full co-operation of our friends at Sega in making this happen," he continued. "It is good business for Codemasters, an exciting prospect and there will be more to come as we are not content to stand still." Most likely both publishers will concentrate their development skills in releasing a new versions of the well known Codemasters' Colin McRae and Race Driver racing games.

Sega and Valve today announced an agreement to deliver a lineup of new Sega titles to customers around the world via Steam. The new Sega games coming to Steam include Universe at War: Earth Assault, The Golden Compass, Sega Rally Revo, Sega Revo, Worldwide Soccer Manager, Futbol Manager and more. In addition to the new games, Sega titles previously released on Steam to customers in North America, such as Medieval II: Total War and Rome: Total War, are now available to Steam gamers in Europe and most of the world. For pricing information and release dates on these and other Sega titles, please click here.

SEGA has announced their latest release in the Total War RTS series, "Empire: Total War". The time period is set in the 18th century during the British Industrial Revolution and includes other epic historic events such as America's fight for independence and the conquest for control of the Eastern Trade routes.

Are you a fan of superhero video games? If so, I've got some good news for you! The Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Thor are all coming to various consoles. This is because Sega and Marvel have agreed to partner up to help milk the franchises to their limit make the best video games possible. With the comic genius of Marvel, and the programming prowess of Sega, we should see some seriously impressive games coming from Sega studios soon. Unfortunately, we're not going to see these games for a while. We're only at the "agree to hand over licenses of characters" stage. Actual programming of the games will happen over the course of the year, and we should start seeing new games by June 2008.

While some hardcore fans of the Sonic series would claim that Sega has already done this several times, Sega is claiming that they will re-invent Sonic. The main reason that they are doing this is very simple. While Sega is making a ton of money off these games, they feel like they are disappointing all the hardcore Sonic fans. And so, by completely redesigning the character in accordance with their fans' desires, they hope to regain the confidence of the hardcore-Sonic-fan crowd.