Salutations and Happy Chinese New Year, fellow gamers – returning, casual, core, and even the hardcore. Welcome again to this week’s edition of Asia Gaming Beat, where we recap the best gaming news from all over the region and the rest of the world.
From the obscure to mainstream, join us as we keep you abreast of major talking points from the gaming world and anything in between. To the uninitiated, this effort is a collaboration between Twentytwo13 and Kakuchopurei.
Big Crossovers
In a very PlayStation-heavy news week, 2025 is set to be quite an eventful year for the blue brand. Buckle up.
A tentpole Xbox title is making its way into PlayStation waters as Xbox Game Studios and Playground Games have announced that the open-world racing game Forza Horizon 5 will launch for the PS5 sometime in spring 2025. Released on Nov 5, 2021, Forza Horizon 5 straddles arcade-style gameplay with a relatively technical element in driving controls, making it a perfect mesh of racing game experience; think of the middle ground between Need for Speed and Gran Turismo.
An olive branch move of sorts from Microsoft, we look forward to seeing PlayStation return the favour and make some PlayStation exclusives available to the Xbox. Helldivers 2 could really use some additional firepower from the Xbox battalion.
Still on PlayStation, Sony Interactive Entertainment has decided to not include PS4 games in its rotating carousel of free monthly PlayStation Plus games from 2026 onwards. Considering we are well over halfway through the lifecycle of the PlayStation 5, the move seems inevitable. Overdue, in fact.
PlayStation exclusive Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 finally swings over to PC, and it’s bad news for those still PC gaming on a potato PC. A machine running on an Nvidia GTX 1650 or AMD Ryzen RX 5500 XT will only give you the bare minimum visual quality and 30 frames per second on a 720p resolution. Rough. Our take? Get a PlayStation 5 instead if you really want to swing around the rooftops of Manhattan.
No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games has just released its latest update, Worlds Part II, which sees the addition of over a trillion new planets into the game. Yes, you did not read that wrong. To ensure each planet is unique, Hello Games has been tinkering with the universe’s algorithm to make planets more diverse and visually stunning. Not bad for a game that endured a very rough launch period.
The OTC Returns on the Cover
The Original Tribal Chief Roman Reigns will adorn the cover of WWE’s latest instalment of their annual video game, WWE 2K25. Reigns was last seen on the cover of a WWE game in 2019 for WWE 2K20 alongside Becky Lynch. Perhaps this is a sign of him regaining his Undisputed WWE Championship at WrestleMania 38. Let’s find out together since Netflix is streaming WWE content as part of its package anyway.
Child’s Play They Are Not
Following the huge success of the Sonic 3 movie, we figured the time is right to rank the highest-grossing video game movies of all time. Considering the first Sonic movie is ranked tenth with a haul of US$320.9 million, we doubt this trend of studios churning out movies riding on the popularity of certain video game franchises will stop anytime soon.
No surprises on which film tops our list, and good news as its sequel is already in the works!
Chinese New Year Special: Snake Charmer
With everyone still very much in the Chinese New Year mood, what better way to get into the spirit than by listing out our favourite snakes featured in video games? From literal snakes to metaphorical ones, snakes are abundant in video games – from Pokémon’s Steelix to Nokia’s Snake game. No extra XP for guessing which snake tops this solid list. Click here for the full list.
@twentytwo13news Wishing all of you a Happy Chinese New Year! Huat ah! #chinesenewyear #cny2025 #malaysia #twentytwo13 #twentytwo13news