In London last night, the 20th Bafta games awards celebrated a year that was stacked with critically acclaimed games. Taking place against the backdrop of an unprecedented year of layoffs and studio closures in the gaming industry, acknowledged by Bafta chair Sara Putt in her speech at the beginning of the evening, it was a much-needed night of recognition of the creative efforts of the video game development community. The sprawling Dungeons & Dragons-inspired role-playing game Baldur's Gate 3 won five awards, including the public voted EE players' choice award and best game, alongside music, narrative and best performer in a supporting role (won by Andrew Wincott for his role at the devilish Raphael). Nintendo picked up the family and multiplayer awards for the exuberant Super Mario Bros Wonder, and technical achievement for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Alan Wake 2, the arresting, idiosyncratic horror game from Finnish studio Remedy, won artistic achievement and audio achievement.

Bafta has announced the nominations for the 20th Bafta games awards, which will take place in London on April 11. Leading the pack this year are Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 with 10 nominations; Spider-Man 2 with nine; Alan Wake 2 with eight; and six apiece for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. Hi-Fi Rush, a colourful music-based action game from Japan's Tango Gameworks, picked up five nominations, as did Mintrocket's breakout hit Dave the Diver. Bafta has been celebrating video games' creative achievements alongside those of the film and TV industries since 1998, formerly as the Bafta interactive entertainment awards, launching the Bafta games awards in 2004 as its own event. The awards are voted on by a combination of Bafta's professional membership and by selected specialist juries, with the EE's players' choice award decided by a public vote.

The biggest news stories this morning: Engadget’s best gaming laptops, Threads’ new hashless tags are good for pranks, Time to get miserable about the COP28 declaration.

We've found plenty of PS5 Black Friday deals, including games, accessories, store funds and the console itself. Grab the disc-based PlayStation 5 system for $450 on Amazon or $50 off the PS5 Slim bundled with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. In addition, you can save on DualSense controllers and games from franchises like God of War, Assassin's Creed and Star Wars Jedi. If you're happy to go disc-free, Amazon has the month-old PS5 Slim console bundled with a digital code for Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which Engadget found to be "bigger and better" than the 2018 original, for $499 ($60 off). Sony's "Slim" PS5 console (officially called the PS5 Digital Edition) removes the system's disc drive but lets you change your mind later.

If you've been waiting to buy a new PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X or Nintendo Switch, Black Friday looks like a good time to pounce. To save you a bit of Googling, we've rounded up the best Black Friday game console deals we could find and laid out everywhere you can buy each device below. The offers include genuine discounts on both of the latest Xbox consoles and both the new slim and (non-slim) PS5, as well as a few noteworthy bundles for all three Nintendo Switch models. If you're looking for a new handheld gaming PC or VR headset, both the ASUS ROG Ally and Meta Quest 2 are seeing unusually steep discounts as well. The new slim PS5 is 10 percent off for Black Friday at Amazon, an surprising discount on the just-released console.

Last week, Microsoft completed its $69bn purchase of Activision Blizzard, sealing a deal that many called the biggest in video game history (although they are overlooking the 1965 merger of Nihon Goraku Bussan and Rosen Enterprises to form the glorious Sega Enterprises, but let's not get into that). Microsoft was keen to slightly downplay the significance of the moment in its own press release, pointing out that it will become only, "the world's third-largest [emphasis my own] gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony". However, we all understand the awesome power it now wields, with Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Candy Crush Saga under its command. How will this affect us, the gamers? Not much to begin with.

Spider-Man is easily one of the most recognizable fictional characters of the last 50-plus years, appearing in countless iterations across comics, movies, cartoons, video games and other media I am surely forgetting. Fans will argue about the best iteration -- but for my money, the Spider-universe Insomniac Games introduced in 2018 on the PS4 with Marvel's Spider-Man is an all-time great. It spent no time rehashing Peter Parker's origins, throwing the player into a vibrant and massive rendering of Manhattan. The city felt alive, with tons to do investigate and a horde of Spider-Man's most famous villains to contend with. It also skillfully introduced a world in which Parker would eventually fight side-by-side with a second Spider-Man, Miles Morales.

Spider-Man is easily one of the most recognizable fictional characters of the last 50-plus years, appearing in countless iterations across comics, movies, cartoons, video games and other media I am surely forgetting. Fans will argue about the best iteration -- but for my money, the Spider-universe Insomniac Games introduced in 2018 on the PS4 with Marvel's Spider-Man is an all-time great. It spent no time rehashing Peter Parker's origins, throwing the player into a vibrant and massive rendering of Manhattan. The city felt alive, with tons to do investigate and a horde of Spider-Man's most famous villains to contend with. It also skillfully introduced a world in which Parker would eventually fight side-by-side with a second Spider-Man, Miles Morales.

We are now entering what used to be the most exciting month for gamers (and for games journalists): June, the month of E3, where we would find out what gaming's biggest names had in store for the winter and beyond. It's all rather more diffuse now, since Covid did a number on the yearly gaming events rhythm and E3's big return was cancelled (as Keith Stuart wrote about in this very newsletter), so I've pulled together everything to look out for from the summer's gaming announcements in one place. Before we get into it, though: it is difficult to get tremendously excited about hour-long sequences of trailers, isn't it? Immediately after the live E3 press conferences of yore, games journalists would be running into side-rooms to interview executives and developers, often playing the games that had just been shown, and reporting back to readers and viewers with something more than mere marketing information. We could do a good job.

Sony issued a disclaimer ahead of Thursday's showcase that the next generation of PlayStation's virtual reality tech wouldn't make an appearance. Also absent was a much-anticipated update about the PS5′s expanded storage feature. Over the summer, Sony launched a beta program for the long-awaited feature, which allows users to expand their device's storage using specific M. 2 solid-state drives, for select users in the United States, Canada, France, Japan, Germany and the U.K. When it will roll out to the general public remains unclear.