2025 was a fantastic year for Demon Slayer, mainly because of the hugely successful Infinity Castle movie. The film broke numerous records, becoming a massive financial hit, topping the Japanese box office, and making history. Its success also boosted sales of the Demon Slayer manga.
Neil Straley, studio lead at Wildflower Interactive, is a veteran game developer with a long history at Naughty Dog. He co-created The Last of Us with Neil Druckmann and directed Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. He started at Naughty Dog as an artist on games like Crash Team Racing and the Jak and Daxter series. Before that, he worked as an artist for the Gex series at Crystal Dynamics. In 2022, after 17 years at Naughty Dog, Straley announced the creation of Wildflower Interactive, a studio built on fully remote work and a commitment to being inclusive, equitable, and collaborative.
We’re taking a look beyond just the most popular open-world games and focusing on the developers who created them. This helps us recognize the studios with the strongest skills in the genre – the ones consistently delivering hit games that become classics, influence the industry, and keep players engaged for years. Their ongoing success clearly demonstrates their talent.
If you’re one of those fans hoping for that, you may want to sit down.
As the story of One Piece nears its end, Luffy is nearly finished assembling his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates. While several characters could potentially join as the final member – including Princess Vivi and Bonney – most fans believe Loki, the Prince of Elbaf, is the most likely candidate. He’s already been an important character in the story and is expected to play an even bigger role going forward.
Researchers demonstrate practical electromagnetic attacks can bypass modern smartphone security, even on devices with secure enclaves.
The Tomb Raider series first launched in 1996 and quickly became a hugely popular video game franchise, leading to numerous sequels and a complete reimagining. It’s also been adapted into three movies with Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander playing Lara Croft. Although a follow-up to the 2018 film was scrapped, a new TV series is in development with Prime Video. Created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, known for ‘Fleabag,’ the show aims to finally deliver a successful Tomb Raider adaptation for Hollywood, and early casting choices suggest it has a good chance of doing just that.
There’s a special feeling when you play video games late at night that you don’t get at other times. The peace and quiet make the experience more immersive and almost magical, especially in large, open-world games. Slow-paced, atmospheric games are particularly enjoyable at night, especially if the game’s world is dark and a little sad.
Even now, Borderlands 2 is considered the high point of the Borderlands series. It’s especially praised for its fantastic writing, and its villain, Handsome Jack, is often ranked among the best in video game history. The game remains incredibly replayable thanks to its fun gameplay and the wealth of downloadable content released after it came out, even 13 years later. While Borderlands 2 is often seen as the standard for the franchise, looking at the games that followed suggests its success might have been a unique case, rather than a sign of things to come.
On Tuesday, Nicholas Wealth, LLC, in partnership with Tidal Investments LLC, filed two bitcoin-linked ETFs with the SEC – a pair of products that combine quant-heavy engineering with the unmistakable energy of “crypto meets late-night television.” One fund plays bitcoin’s after-hours tendencies like a nocturnal DJ set, while the other is designed to dampen the blow when bitcoin’s volatility decides to reenact a roller coaster. 🎢