Sony has patented the ability to add trophies to older, emulated games, potentially allowing the rewards to be added to titles that pre-date the Trophy system. The patent was published on March 18 and spotted by the Bartman013 on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit. The patent is described as a "Method and apparatus for awarding trophies," and describes how an emulated game could still trigger trophies "by comparing a memory value of the emulated game to a predetermined value and assigning the one or more trophies to the user based on the detected trophy trigger." The patent's description talks about how the technology will allow Sony to award trophies in "previously released or sold video games, without modifying the original game." Essentially, this could allow for older titles to be retrofitted with trophies, so players can earn them in games that pre-date the feature, which was introduced with the PlayStation 3. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/11/06/playstation-5-review"] It also mentions how the system would perform validity checks on the code of older games to determine if criteria has been met to award players with trophies, by tracking disk access in-game and monitoring strings and frames. It also mentions Cloud computing, suggesting this technology could interface with the PlayStation Now service. One of the most interesting parts of the patent is a section which talks about physical rewards. In describing the trophy awarding process, the patent says the following: "This may be done by transmitting an electronic trophy or sending a notification that a physical award, such as a T-shirt, accessory or other physical merchandise, has been earned by the player." This isn't the first time Sony has produced a patent for this kind of thing - as far back as 2013, we saw patents that could add Trophies to PS1 and PS2 games, although those were specifically for disk-based games. Given that that tech never emerged, it may be that this new filing is simply an update to that original idea. As always, patents don't necessarily mean a feature is on the way, but do offer us a glimpse at what companies are considering behind the scenes. In and of itself, the mention of PlayStation game emulation will be of interest to many, after unconfirmed rumours suggested that the PS3, Vita and PSP stores could be permanently closed in a few months, potentially cutting off access to many older games. In other PlayStation news, Sony recently acquired the Evolution Champion Series, the world's largest fighting game tournament. We also learned that Assassin's Creed creator Jade Raymond will be making a new game for PlayStation, and got a first look at PSVR 2's brand-new controllers. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Mortal Kombat director Simon McQuoid has detailed the extent of the brutality in the R-rated reboot of the film series, which is set to debut in theaters and on HBO Max in April. Speaking to SFX Magazine via GamesRadar, McQuoid discussed how his upcoming Mortal Kombat movie lives up to its ultraviolent roots in order to deliver a faithful adaptation that brings the blood and gore strongly associated with the series to the big screen in a way that pushes the limits of the MPAA's R rating without completely overstepping the boundaries. "We wanted to push the [blood, gore, and fatalities] right to the limit," McQuoid explained, speaking about the fatality-filled flick. "Obviously, there's a point where the film becomes unreleasable if you push it too far, and that would be a very unwise return on investment for the studio but from day one it's been, 'Okay, we're doing this and we're going to do it properly.'" [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/18/mortal-kombat-movie-official-red-band-trailer"] According to the MPAA, Mortal Kombat has been rated R for "strong bloody violence and language throughout, and some crude references." Producer Todd Garner said that the movie's R rating had been one of their top priorities from the very beginning. In fact, he revealed that he addressed it in his first meeting with studio executives, though they quickly assured him that there would be "no other way." McQuoid previously spoke to IGN about the execution of the fight scenes, saying, "We didn't have to hold back on the fights. If there was a fight going on, someone got stamped through the head, blood probably would burst out the back, and we could do that. New Line deserves a lot of credit because they always wanted to do it justice as well." Warner Bros. will release the new James Wan-produced live-action adaptation of Mortal Kombat to theaters and HBO Max simultaneously on April 16, 2021. The movie's distribution plan was reconsidered due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has impacted several studios and their release calendars over the past year. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=meet-the-cast-of-the-mortal-kombat-reboot-movie&captions=true"] For more Mortal Kombat action, check out our deep-dive into the history of its bizarre movie and TV adaptations and read more about how the upcoming movie will be grounded in realism. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Mortal Kombat director Simon McQuoid has detailed the extent of the brutality in the R-rated reboot of the film series, which is set to debut in theaters and on HBO Max in April. Speaking to SFX Magazine via GamesRadar, McQuoid discussed how his upcoming Mortal Kombat movie lives up to its ultraviolent roots in order to deliver a faithful adaptation that brings the blood and gore strongly associated with the series to the big screen in a way that pushes the limits of the MPAA's R rating without completely overstepping the boundaries. "We wanted to push the [blood, gore, and fatalities] right to the limit," McQuoid explained, speaking about the fatality-filled flick. "Obviously, there's a point where the film becomes unreleasable if you push it too far, and that would be a very unwise return on investment for the studio but from day one it's been, 'Okay, we're doing this and we're going to do it properly.'" [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/18/mortal-kombat-movie-official-red-band-trailer"] According to the MPAA, Mortal Kombat has been rated R for "strong bloody violence and language throughout, and some crude references." Producer Todd Garner said that the movie's R rating had been one of their top priorities from the very beginning. In fact, he revealed that he addressed it in his first meeting with studio executives, though they quickly assured him that there would be "no other way." McQuoid previously spoke to IGN about the execution of the fight scenes, saying, "We didn't have to hold back on the fights. If there was a fight going on, someone got stamped through the head, blood probably would burst out the back, and we could do that. New Line deserves a lot of credit because they always wanted to do it justice as well." Warner Bros. will release the new James Wan-produced live-action adaptation of Mortal Kombat to theaters and HBO Max simultaneously on April 16, 2021. The movie's distribution plan was reconsidered due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has impacted several studios and their release calendars over the past year. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=meet-the-cast-of-the-mortal-kombat-reboot-movie&captions=true"] For more Mortal Kombat action, check out our deep-dive into the history of its bizarre movie and TV adaptations and read more about how the upcoming movie will be grounded in realism. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Fan favorite ex-Bethesda Director Ikumi Nakamura has announced that she is opening her own indie studio, and is developing a new game. A short documentary from GameSpark and Archipel (which is available on YouTube) follows Nakamura as she tours abandoned buildings in Japan. Nakamura revealed that she left Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks due to health troubles. "I started wondering whether there wasn't a way for me to make games while feeling better," she says. "I took the decision to quit before it was too late." After leaving, Nakamura received over 2000 messages on LinkedIn offering studio visits and support. She used these opportunities to understand "what made a good working environment." "I decided to use that experience to open my own small studio and build my IP," Nakamura says. Later in the documentary, Nakamura adds that she wants to build a diverse team, noting that after her E3 presentation, 80% of the messages she received were from women "happy to see a female game creator getting on stage and showing her game." Nakamura rounds off the documentary by adding that she wants to make a game "full of dark jokes," and compares herself to Deadpool. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/06/10/ghostwire-tokyo-full-presentation-reveal-e3-2019"] Ikumi Nakamura left Tango Gameworks in September of 2019 after nine years as a creative director, her last project being Ghostwire: Tokyo. This came shortly after Nakamura stole Bethesda's E3 show with an on-stage presentation of the upcoming game at E3 2019. Nakamura says that she initially thought that her talk had gone badly, but a colleague later showed her how the presentation was blowing up on Twitter and in the media. "I realised how important it was, to be honest to oneself," Nakamura says. Nakamura also talks about the games that motivated her to pursue a career in the games industry such as Devil May Cry and provides an overview of her career so far. Describing Ghostwire: Tokyo, Nakamura says "I really like urban legends and everything that touches the occult. Fringe science as well, using science to solve ghost mystery series. There was the 'Fringe' series as well, which I liked a lot. I was thinking that we could make a game that was mixing all of these." Ghostwire: Tokyo is aiming to arrive for PS5 and PC in October, and will remain a timed console exclusive, despite Microsoft's purchase of Bethesda and, by association, Tango Gameworks. In June 2020, Nakamura told IGN Japan that she has plans to pitch a new Okami game to Capcom, after teasing a potential collaboration with PlatinumGames' Hideki Kamiya in October of 2019. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Fan favorite ex-Bethesda Director Ikumi Nakamura has announced that she is opening her own indie studio, and is developing a new game. A short documentary from GameSpark and Archipel (which is available on YouTube) follows Nakamura as she tours abandoned buildings in Japan. Nakamura revealed that she left Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks due to health troubles. "I started wondering whether there wasn't a way for me to make games while feeling better," she says. "I took the decision to quit before it was too late." After leaving, Nakamura received over 2000 messages on LinkedIn offering studio visits and support. She used these opportunities to understand "what made a good working environment." "I decided to use that experience to open my own small studio and build my IP," Nakamura says. Later in the documentary, Nakamura adds that she wants to build a diverse team, noting that after her E3 presentation, 80% of the messages she received were from women "happy to see a female game creator getting on stage and showing her game." Nakamura rounds off the documentary by adding that she wants to make a game "full of dark jokes," and compares herself to Deadpool. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/06/10/ghostwire-tokyo-full-presentation-reveal-e3-2019"] Ikumi Nakamura left Tango Gameworks in September of 2019 after nine years as a creative director, her last project being Ghostwire: Tokyo. This came shortly after Nakamura stole Bethesda's E3 show with an on-stage presentation of the upcoming game at E3 2019. Nakamura says that she initially thought that her talk had gone badly, but a colleague later showed her how the presentation was blowing up on Twitter and in the media. "I realised how important it was, to be honest to oneself," Nakamura says. Nakamura also talks about the games that motivated her to pursue a career in the games industry such as Devil May Cry and provides an overview of her career so far. Describing Ghostwire: Tokyo, Nakamura says "I really like urban legends and everything that touches the occult. Fringe science as well, using science to solve ghost mystery series. There was the 'Fringe' series as well, which I liked a lot. I was thinking that we could make a game that was mixing all of these." Ghostwire: Tokyo is aiming to arrive for PS5 and PC in October, and will remain a timed console exclusive, despite Microsoft's purchase of Bethesda and, by association, Tango Gameworks. In June 2020, Nakamura told IGN Japan that she has plans to pitch a new Okami game to Capcom, after teasing a potential collaboration with PlatinumGames' Hideki Kamiya in October of 2019. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

It's not often that an earnings call -- usually intended for shareholders and full of boring jargon and numbers -- draws a crowd, but after the three months GameStop's had, its 2020 full year earnings call was an exception. Unfortunately, it was far from the spectacle that listeners might have been hoping, even if it and other related events did provide ongoing context on the gaming retailer's direction. If you tried to tune in, you might have struggled to even hear what was going on due to the fact that the event was at capacity -- very much a rarity for an earnings call in the gaming space. And if you did manage to squeeze in, you may have noticed another oddity. Normally, calls of this nature are about an hour long, with the first half being an overview of the company's financials and any announcements executives want to make that are of interest to shareholders. The second half is taken up by a Q&A where shareholders can ask questions of the executives and receive answers of a kind, even if they tend to be vague or indirect ones. But this earnings call, which again was a call to give shareholders an overview of the company's situation across the entirety of 2020, was a whopping 20 minutes long, and included no Q&A or meaningful announcements of any kind. It's understandable both why people might have expected more from GameStop, but also why it was so tight-lipped. The company was already having a god-awful year between its already declining revenues and lack of meaningful investor support before COVID-19 decimated the business. Next-gen didn't do nearly enough to help matters either. Then, in January, an absolutely wild short squeeze sent stock into the stratosphere. All the while, behind the scenes, a group of activist investors have slowly been taking over the board, bringing in new visionaries like Chewy CEO Ryan Cohen as old names, like CFO Jim Bell, departed. So what did we learn from this weird, truncated earnings call?

Things Are Getting Better for GameStop... But Very Slowly

First, it's worth considering the actual financial results GameStop was reporting. The results it shared were for the fiscal year of 2020, meaning from February 2020 to January 2021, as well as the Q4 results: so from November 2020 to January 2021. It's worth noting that even if the stock surge ended up having some kind of actual, meaningful, material impact on how GameStop conducts its business, we probably wouldn't have been hearing about it during this call anyway, as it came in at the tail end of the numbers the company was reporting on and the impacts -- if there were any -- would hardly have been realized yet. GameStop's fourth quarter was supposed to be a big turnaround for the company -- for two years now, it's been building up the notion that much of its decline has been due to the end of a console generation. But Q4 wasn't quite the gangbusters sales bonanza GameStop might have hoped for. For example, its net sales were $2.12 billion, compared to $2.19 billion at the same time last year. GameStop says it sold less than it did last year due to the fact that it closed a bunch of stores, and thus had fewer locations to move inventory (and also fewer expenses as a result). That may be true, but it's also worth noting that last year's Q4 sales were also pretty disappointing, and were also partially blamed on a smaller store base. Basically, GameStop has been saying the same thing for a few years now on this front and nothing seems to have changed. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=All%20this%20is%20to%20say%3A%20nothing%20GameStop%20is%20doing%20now%20is%20making%20it%20more%20money."] Its full-year net sales were in a similar boat, at $5 billion compared to $6.47 billion for the entirety of 2019. Again, GameStop does have some excuse here: fewer stores and the end of the console cycle are a tune we've heard for some time now, but 2020 was also the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and temporary store closures due to that rocked the company for months. Still, again, that $6.47 billion was down 22% from the year before that, so this is hardly the lift GameStop may have been hoping for. All that said, one other figure worth pointing out is that GameStop's cost-cutting measures do seem to be having an impact. In 2018, GameStop posted a net loss of $673 million. In 2019, that was improved to a net loss of $471 million. And in 2020, that net loss was improved again to $215 million. All this is to say: nothing GameStop is doing now is making it more money, and while its cost-cutting measures have worked out for it so far in slowing the bleed of cash, it probably can't conceivably cut too much more without a significant strategy change. That's where the board comes in.

Doing the Executive Shuffle

We've known for a while now that GameStop has been undergoing a board shake-up, beginning with a string of executive departures and appointments taking place over 2019 and 2020, and more recently with the additions of Alan Attal, Ryan Cohen and Jim Grube. CFO Jim Bell resigned last month, And then, on the same day as it posted its full-year earnings, another GameStop veteran took his leave: Frank Hamlin. Hamlin has served as GameStop's CCO since 2019, and has been the primary architect behind the company's attempt at concept stores with a focus on being community gaming spaces, which it trialed in Tulsa, Oklahoma unfortunately right before a deadly global pandemic. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/07/how-gamestop-plans-to-save-itself"] Interestingly, Hamlin's contract (publicily visible via SEC filing) states that his termination happened for one of five reasons: his salary was reduced, his authority was reduced, GameStop breached his contract somehow, he was relocated, or GameStop was sold. It isn't clear which of these reasons Hamlin departed for, but it is clear that he's getting a significant pay-out as a result -- at least $2 million, just for leaving the company. Jim Bell previously received around $2.8 million, which may give us some indication. And there are more board changes afoot. The previously-vacant COO position (emptied after Rob Lloyd departed in 2019) has now been filled by Amazon veteran Jenna Owens, and two other executive hires have been announced too: Neda Pacifico as senior VP of e-commerce, and Ken Suzuki as VP of supply chain systems. Any one of these changes on its own would likely be a fairly uneventful executive move, but the large payouts to departing old guard combined with a significant board reshuffle and brand new hires just lends even more credibility to the idea that winds of change are blowing, even if GameStop still (still!) hasn't said precisely what those changes will be.

E-Commerce, Eventually

Even without clear statements from GameStop as to what's happening, there are clues. More and more signs are pointing to a big e-commerce shift coming. Pacifico's appointment, as well as various vision statements from people like Cohen and other new executive board members have indicated that's what's on the mind. But there were a few more clues dotted about its full-year earnings that solidify this theory. For one, online sales are just about the only division of GameStop that can be said to be doing well. To go back to its financials again, e-commerce sales were up 175% year-over-year for November through January, and up 191% for the whole year, representing 30% of the company's total net sales. 30% may not seem like an overwhelming percentage, especially given how likely that number is to have been driven up by the pandemic, but it's a pretty significant amount for a company that has historically been known as mainly a brick-and-mortar business. It's also worth pointing out that GameStop is still talking about closing more stores. As of last count, it's closed over 1,000 stores worldwide in the last two years, or 12% of its total global stores, including its entire Nordic business, and GameStop says it's pushing to move those lost sales online. Though no one on the earnings call gave any specifics about future closures to come, it was indicated that GameStop was considering future closings in its European business. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=GameStop%20wants%20to%20see%20itself%20as%20a%20broader%20technology%20company%20that%20is%20specifically%20relevant%20to%20gamers."] But the closest thing to a hint about GameStop's further direction came from a jargon-filled quote from CEO George Sherman during the call: "Overall, we're pleased with the work we've accomplished to achieve our objectives and stabilize and strengthen our business operations. That work will continue, particularly as we explore options for our European businesses, which may include further store closings, exiting unprofiting businesses, or investing in e-commerce capabilities. As we go forward, we are focused on transforming into a customer-obsessed technology company that delights gamers. We are working to create a differentiated customer experience that positions us to access new customers, further engage with existing ones, and reactivate former ones." That's a lot of PR speech, sure, but what he's basically saying is that he's happy with how cost-cutting has gone so far (which, again, required closing over 1,000 stores and laying off all those employees) and intends to do more of it in the future, while also investing in online sales infrastructure and tech. GameStop, he says, wants to see itself as a broader technology company that is specifically relevant to gamers -- something he further emphasizes a bit later by mentioning that GameStop also wants to start selling more gaming-adjacent products, like monitors, TVs, and mobile gaming items. He also went on to reiterate the importance of investing in technology, as well as GameStop's need to improve its distribution network -- aka how it gets games people buy to them -- and reduce its reliance on console cycles. Many people clearly had hope for more concrete, exciting news out of GameStop's conference call, and many were clearly disappointed given that GameStop stock dipped in after-hours trading (it's still at $181.75 a share at the time this piece is written, though, so not all that significant a dip). Ultimately, GameStop's message is the same as it's been for a year or so: dramatic changes are clearly happening behind the scenes, and a critical pivot to something e-commerce related is in the works. Both will be necessary to save the company long-term. But for now, GameStop's sticking with its ongoing endurance test, buoyed by a surge of renewed faith from new executives, activist shareholders, and a whole lot of people perhaps more interested in its trading stock than the stock on its shelves. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine. A previous version of this article misstated GameStop's fiscal year dates. They have been amended above.

It's not often that an earnings call -- usually intended for shareholders and full of boring jargon and numbers -- draws a crowd, but after the three months GameStop's had, its 2020 full year earnings call was an exception. Unfortunately, it was far from the spectacle that listeners might have been hoping, even if it and other related events did provide ongoing context on the gaming retailer's direction. If you tried to tune in, you might have struggled to even hear what was going on due to the fact that the event was at capacity -- very much a rarity for an earnings call in the gaming space. And if you did manage to squeeze in, you may have noticed another oddity. Normally, calls of this nature are about an hour long, with the first half being an overview of the company's financials and any announcements executives want to make that are of interest to shareholders. The second half is taken up by a Q&A where shareholders can ask questions of the executives and receive answers of a kind, even if they tend to be vague or indirect ones. But this earnings call, which again was a call to give shareholders an overview of the company's situation across the entirety of 2020, was a whopping 20 minutes long, and included no Q&A or meaningful announcements of any kind. It's understandable both why people might have expected more from GameStop, but also why it was so tight-lipped. The company was already having a god-awful year between its already declining revenues and lack of meaningful investor support before COVID-19 decimated the business. Next-gen didn't do nearly enough to help matters either. Then, in January, an absolutely wild short squeeze sent stock into the stratosphere. All the while, behind the scenes, a group of activist investors have slowly been taking over the board, bringing in new visionaries like Chewy CEO Ryan Cohen as old names, like CFO Jim Bell, departed. So what did we learn from this weird, truncated earnings call?

Things Are Getting Better for GameStop... But Very Slowly

First, it's worth considering the actual financial results GameStop was reporting. The results it shared were for the fiscal year of 2020, meaning from February 2020 to January 2021, as well as the Q4 results: so from November 2020 to January 2021. It's worth noting that even if the stock surge ended up having some kind of actual, meaningful, material impact on how GameStop conducts its business, we probably wouldn't have been hearing about it during this call anyway, as it came in at the tail end of the numbers the company was reporting on and the impacts -- if there were any -- would hardly have been realized yet. GameStop's fourth quarter was supposed to be a big turnaround for the company -- for two years now, it's been building up the notion that much of its decline has been due to the end of a console generation. But Q4 wasn't quite the gangbusters sales bonanza GameStop might have hoped for. For example, its net sales were $2.12 billion, compared to $2.19 billion at the same time last year. GameStop says it sold less than it did last year due to the fact that it closed a bunch of stores, and thus had fewer locations to move inventory (and also fewer expenses as a result). That may be true, but it's also worth noting that last year's Q4 sales were also pretty disappointing, and were also partially blamed on a smaller store base. Basically, GameStop has been saying the same thing for a few years now on this front and nothing seems to have changed. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=All%20this%20is%20to%20say%3A%20nothing%20GameStop%20is%20doing%20now%20is%20making%20it%20more%20money."] Its full-year net sales were in a similar boat, at $5 billion compared to $6.47 billion for the entirety of 2019. Again, GameStop does have some excuse here: fewer stores and the end of the console cycle are a tune we've heard for some time now, but 2020 was also the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and temporary store closures due to that rocked the company for months. Still, again, that $6.47 billion was down 22% from the year before that, so this is hardly the lift GameStop may have been hoping for. All that said, one other figure worth pointing out is that GameStop's cost-cutting measures do seem to be having an impact. In 2018, GameStop posted a net loss of $673 million. In 2019, that was improved to a net loss of $471 million. And in 2020, that net loss was improved again to $215 million. All this is to say: nothing GameStop is doing now is making it more money, and while its cost-cutting measures have worked out for it so far in slowing the bleed of cash, it probably can't conceivably cut too much more without a significant strategy change. That's where the board comes in.

Doing the Executive Shuffle

We've known for a while now that GameStop has been undergoing a board shake-up, beginning with a string of executive departures and appointments taking place over 2019 and 2020, and more recently with the additions of Alan Attal, Ryan Cohen and Jim Grube. CFO Jim Bell resigned last month, And then, on the same day as it posted its full-year earnings, another GameStop veteran took his leave: Frank Hamlin. Hamlin has served as GameStop's CCO since 2019, and has been the primary architect behind the company's attempt at concept stores with a focus on being community gaming spaces, which it trialed in Tulsa, Oklahoma unfortunately right before a deadly global pandemic. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/03/07/how-gamestop-plans-to-save-itself"] Interestingly, Hamlin's contract (publicily visible via SEC filing) states that his termination happened for one of five reasons: his salary was reduced, his authority was reduced, GameStop breached his contract somehow, he was relocated, or GameStop was sold. It isn't clear which of these reasons Hamlin departed for, but it is clear that he's getting a significant pay-out as a result -- at least $2 million, just for leaving the company. Jim Bell previously received around $2.8 million, which may give us some indication. And there are more board changes afoot. The previously-vacant COO position (emptied after Rob Lloyd departed in 2019) has now been filled by Amazon veteran Jenna Owens, and two other executive hires have been announced too: Neda Pacifico as senior VP of e-commerce, and Ken Suzuki as VP of supply chain systems. Any one of these changes on its own would likely be a fairly uneventful executive move, but the large payouts to departing old guard combined with a significant board reshuffle and brand new hires just lends even more credibility to the idea that winds of change are blowing, even if GameStop still (still!) hasn't said precisely what those changes will be.

E-Commerce, Eventually

Even without clear statements from GameStop as to what's happening, there are clues. More and more signs are pointing to a big e-commerce shift coming. Pacifico's appointment, as well as various vision statements from people like Cohen and other new executive board members have indicated that's what's on the mind. But there were a few more clues dotted about its full-year earnings that solidify this theory. For one, online sales are just about the only division of GameStop that can be said to be doing well. To go back to its financials again, e-commerce sales were up 175% year-over-year for November through January, and up 191% for the whole year, representing 30% of the company's total net sales. 30% may not seem like an overwhelming percentage, especially given how likely that number is to have been driven up by the pandemic, but it's a pretty significant amount for a company that has historically been known as mainly a brick-and-mortar business. It's also worth pointing out that GameStop is still talking about closing more stores. As of last count, it's closed over 1,000 stores worldwide in the last two years, or 12% of its total global stores, including its entire Nordic business, and GameStop says it's pushing to move those lost sales online. Though no one on the earnings call gave any specifics about future closures to come, it was indicated that GameStop was considering future closings in its European business. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=GameStop%20wants%20to%20see%20itself%20as%20a%20broader%20technology%20company%20that%20is%20specifically%20relevant%20to%20gamers."] But the closest thing to a hint about GameStop's further direction came from a jargon-filled quote from CEO George Sherman during the call: "Overall, we're pleased with the work we've accomplished to achieve our objectives and stabilize and strengthen our business operations. That work will continue, particularly as we explore options for our European businesses, which may include further store closings, exiting unprofiting businesses, or investing in e-commerce capabilities. As we go forward, we are focused on transforming into a customer-obsessed technology company that delights gamers. We are working to create a differentiated customer experience that positions us to access new customers, further engage with existing ones, and reactivate former ones." That's a lot of PR speech, sure, but what he's basically saying is that he's happy with how cost-cutting has gone so far (which, again, required closing over 1,000 stores and laying off all those employees) and intends to do more of it in the future, while also investing in online sales infrastructure and tech. GameStop, he says, wants to see itself as a broader technology company that is specifically relevant to gamers -- something he further emphasizes a bit later by mentioning that GameStop also wants to start selling more gaming-adjacent products, like monitors, TVs, and mobile gaming items. He also went on to reiterate the importance of investing in technology, as well as GameStop's need to improve its distribution network -- aka how it gets games people buy to them -- and reduce its reliance on console cycles. Many people clearly had hope for more concrete, exciting news out of GameStop's conference call, and many were clearly disappointed given that GameStop stock dipped in after-hours trading (it's still at $181.75 a share at the time this piece is written, though, so not all that significant a dip). Ultimately, GameStop's message is the same as it's been for a year or so: dramatic changes are clearly happening behind the scenes, and a critical pivot to something e-commerce related is in the works. Both will be necessary to save the company long-term. But for now, GameStop's sticking with its ongoing endurance test, buoyed by a surge of renewed faith from new executives, activist shareholders, and a whole lot of people perhaps more interested in its trading stock than the stock on its shelves. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine. A previous version of this article misstated GameStop's fiscal year dates. They have been amended above.

M2H and Blackmill Games have announced Isonzo, the follow-up to the World War I first-person shooter Verdun. It is in development for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PS4, and Xbox One. Take a look at the announcement trailer in the video below. Isonzo will take place on the Italian front of the first Great War and will feature "Alpine warfare." The developers describe the FPS's setting as such: "The fighting takes place among the scenic peaks, rugged valleys and idyllic towns of northern Italy. The brand new Offensive game mode puts players right in the middle of key historical offensives on the Italian Front, from high-altitude combat in the Alps through to the ferocious battles for the Isonzo river." Take a look at the first screenshots in the gallery below. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/24/isonzo-follow-up-to-ww1-verdun-announcement-trailer"] Isonzo, like Verdun and Tannenberg before it in the WW1 series, aims to be as accurate in its details as possible. Weapons, uniforms, and specific settings have been accurately recreated, say the developers, who describe all three games as being "built on a base of thorough research." While Verdun focused on trench warfare, Isonzo will take things well above the trenches into the Alpine mountains. "The Italian Front was the perfect opportunity for us to elevate the WW1 Game Series, both figuratively and literally," said M2H co-founder Matt Hergaarden. "Alpine warfare in Isonzo brings lots of fresh game mechanics to the series, along with the all new Italian army, facing off against Austria-Hungary." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=isonzo-screenshots-march-2021&captions=true"] For more on Isonzo, stay tuned to IGN as development on the game progresses. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.