Today, during the latest Xbox Partner Preview broadcast—as a surprise for Xbox gamers everywhere—GSC Game World launched the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Legends of the Zone Trilogy for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S (via backwards compatibility). That's right - it's available today! The Legends of the Zone Trilogy bundle—available on the Microsoft Store for $39.99 USD—includes all three iconic games that make up the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Trilogy: Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat—or you can pick up each of the games individually for $19.99 USD each. Every element from the original games has been maintained and faithfully ported to console thanks to the hard work of GSC Game World and their partners at Mataboo. This all makes for a great opportunity for Xbox gamers everywhere to get some foundational knowledge of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s universe in the lead-up to the launch of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, coming day one to Game Pass on September 5, 2024.

But translating these hardcore PC games to an Xbox controller has been no small feat. For a series that is known for blending a variety of genres like horror, first-person shooter, exploration, and immersive sim, it was important for the team to get it right. Speaking with GSC Game World PR Specialist Zakhar Bocharov, we wanted to learn more about what this process was like, bringing these cult-classic, hardcore PC titles to console, and some of the innovative design and UI adjustments the team had to make to bring all three games to Xbox.

Dear stalkers, last year, during Gamescom 2023, we finally had the chance to meet in person. We gathered around the campfire with you to share something valuable that we have been creating for you for all these years—a small part of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Publicly, for the first time ever. Our one-time initiative then transformed into a journey from campfire to campfire across France, Brazil, Singapore and other countries. Thousands of players were able to play the game themselves and give us the much-needed feedback afterwards. And as true friends always do, you shared your honest thoughts about the game. Both positive and negative, and we are thankful for that. From your insights, we figured out two key points: the one to celebrate and the one to consider seriously.

The first one: the Zone remains the Zone. In its true beauty and after our likeness. The game absolutely feels and plays like S.T.A.L.K.E.R, the atmosphere, hardcore style, harsh and unwelcoming environment are ready to cook, and we can't be more grateful for these words, as they basically sum up both the key intention and the main inspiration for the project from the very beginning at the same time. The second one was: the gear in the backpack should be checked one more time to be completely sure it will not fail us in the most needed moment. On the technical side of things—the game needs more time.

GSC Game World has been busy showing of a preview build of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl at this week's Gamescom trade fair, and non-attendees have been treated to a new trailer—Bolts & Bullets—but the Ukrainian development (now primarily operating out of Prague, Czech Republic) has quietly shifted the release of their highly anticipated survival shooter from December 2023 to some point within the first quarter of next year. This was spotted by a couple of news outlets when perusing the latest press kit—this small detail is buried right at the bottom of the document (under "distribution"). The game's official website has also been revised with a Q1 2024 launch window.

The development team touts the sequel's: "unique combination of first-person shooter, immersive sim, and horror is back. Immerse yourself in the intricately detailed open world, accompanied by next-gen graphics (courtesy of the Unreal 5 engine) and a rich narrative, all enveloped within the intense atmosphere of a deadly adventure." The game seems to be getting a positive reception at Gamescom, although players were limited to only 15-minute long hands-on sessions with the demo. A few folks were already familiar with aspects of this preview version—a hacker group acquired an older build of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 earlier this year, and leaked it onto the internet.

Powerful AI technologies are making a massive impact in 3D content creation and game development. Whether creating realistic characters that show emotion or turning simple texts into imagery, AI tools are becoming fundamental to developer workflows - and this is just the start. At NVIDIA GTC and the Game Developers Conference (GDC), learn how the NVIDIA Omniverse platform for creating and operating metaverse applications is expanding with new Connectors and generative AI services for game developers.

Part of the excitement around generative AI is because of its ability to capture the creator's intent. The technology learns the underlying patterns and structures of data, and uses that to generate new content, such as images, audio, code, text, 3D models and more. Announced today, the NVIDIA AI Foundations cloud services enable users to build, refine and operate custom large language models (LLMs) and generative AI trained with their proprietary data for their domain-specific tasks. And through NVIDIA Omniverse, developers can get their first taste of using generative AI technology to enhance game creation and accelerate development pipelines with the Omniverse Audio2Face app.

GSC Game World has released a defiant statement, in the face of threats of ransomed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 data. It provides an update about one of its employee's accounts being compromised by hackers, and as a result of this, the studio is now threatened with blackmail. A statement was posted, March 12, on the GSC Game World's official Twitter account. The developer is urging that fans refrain from sharing leaked material and spoilers, and warns that the final product should not be pre-judged in a harsh light, based on any of the leaked work-in-progress material.

It is not unusual for hacker groups to threaten game developers and publishers. Rockstar Games was the victim of a leak in 2022, when videos of its in-development and upcoming video game Grand Theft Auto 6 were uploaded to forums. The in-game footage was spread across social media and the internet, and shortly thereafter, a hacker wanted to "negotiate a deal" with Rockstar Games. Source code for GTA 5 & 6 was used as leverage.

According to the description of NVIDIA's session for GDC 2023, we will finally get to see S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.

NVIDIA will be holding a session at GDC 2023 on March 23rd together with GSC Game World's 3D Animator, Anton Riabchuk, where it will give an exclusive look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.

While GSC Game World released a few screenshots as well as an official trailer for the game, GDC 2023 could be the perfect place to show an in-engine gameplay. The description of the GDC session also reveals that GSC Game World is working closely with NVIDIA and the session will also include an introduction to Omniverse Audio2Face AI SDK.

GSC Gameworld is hard at work on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. As a highly awaited sequel to some of the most acclaimed games, the company is naturally looking to cash in on as much awareness for the game as possible. And since one of the hot buzzwords in the market are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), the company has now announced that these will be present, in some forms, in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. One such NFT will be particularly special: its holder will have the digitally-recognized, intamperable right (and that's what NFTs are mostly about, in theory) to become a "Metahuman" - an in-game character modeled after the actual NFT holder.

"The idea of the related NFT is to give the right to recreate its owner's identity within the game through one of the NPCs," clarified GSC. "The person will need to come to our studio for a detailed scanning procedure and after that, we will have everything to make this person appear in the game world as one of the characters." The feat is being pulled with the help of NFT platform DMarket. DMarket will be holding an NFT auction dubbed the "STALKER Metaverse" in January 2022 through its partnership with GSC; there, users will be able to bid for an NFT offering that prize. Like any NFT, it can then be traded - up until a deadline specified by GSC, which will lock the prize to whoever has blockchain-verifiable possession of the NFT at the time.

GSC Game World announced the second chapter and latest entry to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The survival horror FPS made its debut in 2007 at a time when PC graphics were taking a technological leap. The Kiev-based game studio since dished out the "Clear Sky" prequel and "Call of Pripyat" sequel last decade, but has since been a recluse to the AAA gaming scene. The development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 appears to be already underway. The game will leverage Unreal Engine, and there's a fairly high possibility of it being Epic Games Store exclusive given its sweet revenue-sharing model that directs 88% of the sales to the game publisher.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 developers (or at least a Twitter handle claiming to represent them), posted two key tweets. One shows a teaser screenshot of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in development; and another with a message from the developers to fans of the game franchise. "The second chapter of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. saga will be our most ambitious game so far. It will live to the legendary legacy," the statement reads. The developers didn't, however, state any timelines. "Consider it (the teaser screenshot and announcement) our humble present, with more to come in 2020," the statement concludes.

Developer GSC Game World announced S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 almost eight years ago in 2010. To say that the game has been on a wild roller coaster ride is an understatement. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was cancelled back in 2011 and resurrected later on in the same year. Then GSC Game World cancelled it for a second time in 2012. Now, six years later, it appears that the developer is willing to give it another go. The official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 website went live today with the "2.0.2.1." inscription suggesting that the game is scheduled for a 2021 release. Sergiy Grygorovych, CEO of GSC Game World, has confirmed on his Facebook that GSC Game World is currently working on the title. Not much is known about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 at this point other than it's built on Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4.

With game studio GSC Game World shutting down, all hope for the much anticipated addition to the franchise, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is lost. The studio abandoned development of the title. It said in a statement: "The reason we cannot continue with the development of Stalker 2 is we and our new investors we unable to come to an agreement with the IP rights owner. The entire team that was working on Stalker is now working on a new project called Survarium. We are so grateful for the support over the years and despite our best efforts we have to move on from Stalker which is as hard for us as it is for you. However, we feel that our new studio and project will be something unique and fill the void left by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well as add a lot more!"

GSC Game World, publisher of the highly-acclaimed Survival FPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R. title, is glad to announce today that a new project in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is on its way - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat for PC. Call of Pripyat is the working title of the game, so it might change before the final game is released. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat will become the third stand-alone game from the series. The events in the game unfold shortly after the end of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. Having discovered about the open path to the Zone center, the government decides to hold a large-scale military "Fairway" operation aimed to take the CNPP under control. However, the operation becomes a major fail, and a team of Ukraine Security Service agents is sent to collect information on reasons behind the operation's bad ending. Players will take on the role of an agent, and write their own story from that point on. The title is slated for release in fall 2009. Below are some of the main features of this new exciting game.

GSC Game, developer of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, released a new video of the next S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game dubbed Clear Sky. Posted on PC Games Hardware, this DirectX 10 video shows lots of new effects like god rays, soft water, volumetric fire, dynamic and volumetric fog, dynamic wet surfaces, shadow textures for a special rain effect, water drops and physically correct water effects on surfaces. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky will arrive worldwide on August 29th in both retail and online stores like Steam. Here's a link to the original post in German as well as the new exclusive DX10 in-game video.

GSC Game World today announced the planned release date for its upcoming survival FPS title S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. According to the agreed plan, the game will ship worldwide on August 29, 2008. Set before the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the prequel provides insight into the events that led to the atmospheric first-person shooter. The title will be available through both traditional retail channels and as a Steam-exclusive digital download. "Our intention to deliver the game simultaneously worldwide is both a challenge and big responsibility to the many fans of the game around the globe," said GSC World Publishing CEO Sergiy Grygorovych. "We are looking forward to achieve this ambitious goal in August." said Sergiy Grygorovych, GSC World Publishing CEO.

According to ComputerAndVideoGames.com, GSC Game World is working on releasing the next S.T.A.L.K.E.R. chapter next year. Titled S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, the game is said to be a prequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, fleshing out the story of one of the main characters of the first game. The environment in Clear Sky will be far more hostile than the first game, adding 50 percent new territory, more anomalies and new monsters. GSC also said that there's a slight chance to release a DX10 version of the game.