At peak popularity after last year's customisable mums reveal, TennoCon 2025 tickets sold out in 35 minutes to the world's Warframe and Soulframe lovers - Related to magic, arpgs, throwaway, but, thinks

At peak popularity after last year's customisable mums reveal, TennoCon 2025 tickets sold out in 35 minutes to the world's Warframe and Soulframe lovers

I have a confession: I think I might like Warframe. Although in general I think of myself as a strict adherent to the singleplayer philosophy of Saint Moses of Scetis—to "sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything"—when it comes to videogames, I admit that's been chipped away over the last couple of years. I have no idea what's happening, every mission ends with me accruing about 37 different currencies, and my little guy looks like a band leader found themselves unexpectedly committed to a life of armed jihad. I think I love it?

Lots of other people seem to love it too, which must be why there have been nine TennoCons so far: events where Warframe fans and devs pile into a venue to mix, mingle, give updates, reveal things like last year's customisable Soulframe mum announcement and collectively try to figure out what the hell Warframe is about, probably.

This year I reckon they'll crack it. Tickets for 2025's TennoCon—held as ever in London, Ontario—went on sale at about 11 am PST / 2 pm EST / 7 pm GMT last Friday, per an announcement from Digital Extremes on Bluesky. Per a subsequent announcement, they were completely sold out 35 minutes later. That means all the $50 General Admission tickets, the $150 VIP tickets, and even the two (count 'em: two) $1,000 Legendary tickets.

Which, unless there were only like five other tickets available to the world's most dedicated Warframists, is pretty impressive. And pretty disappointing if you're a fan who wasn't able to beat the rush. On social media, more than a few fans are attributing the quick sell-through to scalpers.

"Very disappointed that you’re not looking into the clearly scalped tickets," remarked one upset player on X, The Everything App. "Can we please get an official confirmation if there are bot-claimed tickets or not?" begged another, "This is the first year I ever had the slightest chance to attend this event, it feels unfair that so many people missed their chances due to poor checkout experience." Others are just sad: "I'm never going to Tennocon then huh, awesome."

For its part, though, Digital Extremes seems adamant that the quick sales are just down to enthusiasm: "As we provide advance notice of ticket availability, this can result in a longer queue than the number of tickets." The studio also says anyone trying to scalp will be stymied at the door. "Please know that tickets are nontransferable and we diligently validate tickets at every TennoCon!"

Which, presuming the bit about validating tickets is true, does suggest to me that at least most of the ticket sales were legit. If they weren't, you've gotta think Digital Extremes would be a bit panicky about an upcoming and very empty TennoCon, which it seems not to be. Nevertheless, I've reached out to the studio and asked just how many attendees it's expecting at this year's event. I'll enhancement this piece if I hear back.

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And if, like me, you aren't attending, you can always join the virtual event. I'm hoping for custom uncles, personally.

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GTA 6 publishers think PC is of "increasing" importance in 2025, but still won't announce the magic date

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has hailed PC gaming's "increasing share of the market", in what you could optimistically interpret as the prelude to a GTA 6 PC release date announcement, and less optimistically, as a simple reassurance to investors who are fretting about the decline of console game sales.

The new Grand Theft Auto is slated to release on Xbox and PlayStation in fall 2025. As per Rockstar Games tradition, the PC release remains TBA. For context, GTA 5 released on PC around 18 months after hitting Xbox 360 and PS3, while GTA 4 took an extra eight months or so, and Red Dead Redemption 2 a year.

This strategy of releasing PC versions late persists despite Zelnick's comment in a recent interview with Ian Games that the PC version of a multiplatform game can account for over 40% of overall sales. "We have seen PC become a much more and more key part of what used to be a console business, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend continue," he told the site. "Of course, there will be a new console generation."

Here is some slapdash background on the console biz, which is undergoing something of an evolutionary slow period. Only Nintendo - who basically operate their own games industry nested matryoshka doll-style inside the regular games industry - have introduced their next big piece of hardware. We've yet to hear about PS6 and whatever Microsoft call the Nextbox, so there's a bit of a gap on the industry earnings forecast. In the meantime, the existing consoles are slowly petrifying like forgotten dragons, shifting fewer and fewer units between them.

Zelnick reckons the release of GTA 6 might help with flagging console sales, even in a year when the US presidency is picking lots of fights with trading partners. And if it doesn't, hey, there's always the apparently thriving PC market.

"When you have a big title in the market and we have many of them coming, historically that has sold consoles," he told IGN. "And I think that will happen this year. I don't think tariffs are going to be our friend, but I think there will be a meaningful uptick in console sales in calendar 25 because of the release schedule, not just coming from us, but coming from others. So I'm not concerned about that [console sales falling]. I think the trend that you'd want to focus on is this increasing share of the market that is reflected in PC."

OK, so, once more with feeling: GTA 6 PC release date when? Being a bear of little brain, I can't really explain Rockstar's tendency to show up late on PC, but I imagine it's not a resource question, given that Rockstar have thousands of developers and still earn megabucks from GTA 5 re-releases and GTA Online. The explanation that makes most sense to me is simply that shipping on PC "late" is an excuse to double-dip - max out the console sales initially, then polish up the tech for re-release on more capable PCs and, perhaps, the next generation of consoles.

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Blizzard co-founder and Diablo designer thinks new ARPGs have 'cheapened' the genre with fast leveling, throwaway loot and enemies

Speaking to VideoGamer, Blizzard co-founder and Diablo programmer/designer David Brevik expressed a dim view of the current state of Diablo-like ARPGs, arguing that inflated enemy numbers and a deluge of loot and experience have robbed the genre of the friction and weight present in the first two Diablo games.

“I think that ARPGs in general have started to lean into this: kill swaths of enemies all over the place extremely quickly," Brevik told VideoGamer. "Your build is killing all sorts of stuff so you could get more drops, you can level up, and the screen is littered with stuff you don’t care about.”.

By contrast, Brevik argues that Diablo 2 had a more "personal and realistic" feel with the amount of enemies onscreen and the powers you could bring to bear against them. “The pacing on Diablo 2, I think, is great. That’s one of the reasons it’s endured," stated Brevik. "I just don’t find killing screen-fulls of things instantly and mowing stuff down and walking around the level and killing everything very enticing. I just don’t feel like that is a cool experience. I find it kind of silly.”.

Brevik criticized the way players of newer ARPGs like Path of Exile or Diablos 3 and 4 are incentivized to level up their characters as quickly as possible to reach an endgame that constitutes the real draw of the experience, and argued that the true fun of ARPGs “actually isn’t getting to the end, it’s the journey." Brevik concluded by saying, “When you’re shortening that journey and making it kind of ridiculous. You’ve cheapened the entire experience, in my opinion.”.

This 100% hits the nail on the head of what puts me off these games: I'm just built for a slower paced, probably more singleplayer-oriented action RPG along the lines of classic Diablo, Torchlight, or FromSoftware's Soulsborne games. The current field of top-down, Diablo-derived ARPGs, by contrast, is geared towards seasonal, repeatable play and leveling up a character as quickly as possible to engage with it. I was honestly shocked when a coworker explained to me that you have to make a new character for each League (season, basically) in Path of Exile, with the "real game" being the endgame mapping experience after you hit max level.

PCG contributor Len Hafer really put a fine point on this feeling back when Diablo 4 first released: "The way I used to enjoy Diablo games has been replaced, and it sucks." At the same time, this definitely seems like a generational thing, or at least a question of taste: Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 are bigger than Jesus and maybe also the Beatles.

I also can't deny the raw lizard brain thrill of clearing waves of throwaway sickos Dynasty Warriors-style with Diablo's dark fantasy aesthetics, but I get those kicks from the wonderfully bite-sized, Diablo-coded Vampire Survivors riff, Halls of Torment.

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