Sony showed new footage of its next big game, Horizon Forbidden West, running on a PlayStation 4 Pro today — its first demonstration of the action-adventure on something weaker than a PlayStation 5.

Why it matters: Today’s footage, shared three weeks before Forbidden West’s release day, gives millions of players a more realistic glimpse at what the game will look like for them.

• Forbidden West will ship for PS4 and PS5 platforms on Feb. 18, but there are far more owners of the former (116 million+ PS4 systems sold) than the latter (13+ million).
• It was shown running on PS5 last May.
• The game appears to be a jaw-dropper on the newer console. Today’s PS4 Pro graphics aren’t too shabby, either.

The big picture: Marketers tend to show games running in the best possible conditions, often avoiding showing how they'll perform on inferior systems. But players and media have become more critical of those who don’t demo how their games will truly perform.

• In late 2020, game maker CD Projekt RED infuriated players who only discovered how poorly Cyberpunk 2077 performed on PS4-era consoles after it was released. The studio had repeatedly showcased the game running on much more powerful PCs and has since said that was a mistake.
• More powerful tech can be used to make games look sharper and run smoother. If a game isn’t optimized for older hardware, its frame rate can stutter and objects drawn into the virtual world may only appear at the last second, among other issues.

What’s next: The old-gen gameplay reveal is a trend in the making.

• This month, development studio Techland took a break from showing next month's Dying Light 2 on high-end hardware to show it running on some older consoles: the original PS4 and the Xbox One X.

Yes, but: Publishers will still invite questions about how the games run on the old hardware, unless they demo them on the weakest machines of that gen, the original PS4 and Xbox One.

An independent investigation of misconduct at the 500-person Ubisoft development studio in Singapore has concluded that “past reports were handled appropriately,” the game publisher said in a statement last night.

Why it matters: That is the first public update regarding a rare governmental investigation into a major game studio.

Details: In July, the Singapore government’s Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP), began looking into allegations of sexual harassment, bullying and unfair pay.

• Those details appeared in a July expose on the website Kotaku, which quoted multiple local developers who described a “culture of fear and intimidation” at the studio.
• The studio has developed large portions of Assassin’s Creed games and is leading the development of a repeatedly delayed pirate adventure called Skull & Bones.

Pay issue, too: Kotaku's sources also said that local workers were regularly paid less than French or other white employees.

• Ubisoft now says a third-party consultancy reviewed salaries and, along with the government group, “confirmed that the company has reasonable justifications for any disparities, such as employee experience or seniority.”

Between the lines: The findings of the investigation emerged from the game company’s statement to reporters, not from the agency investigating it.

• A Ubisoft rep said that TAFEP’s findings were presented in its statement and that there “isn’t a report to share.” TAFEP didn't immediately reply to an Axios request for comment.
• In a statement, Ubisoft Singapore’s recently installed studio chief Darryl Long said: “We’ve put best practices in place at Ubisoft Singapore to ensure a safe, respectful, inclusive and equitable workplace for every member of our team.”

The big picture: Ubisoft has been under particularly intense scrutiny since mid-2020 when allegations of sexual misconduct and other toxic behaviors at several of its studios emerged.

• The company's apologies and commitments to improve have been coupled with criticism from many workers that management has not taken sufficient action.
• Last fall, Ubisoft's head of people ops Anika Grant told Axios the company’s handling of misconduct had diminished some workers’ trust in its leaders. She said the company was working to turn that around.

Animal Crossing New Horizons (Switch) global launch date: March 20, 2020

• The game's final "major update": Nov. 5, 2021
• Length of support: 595 days

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp (mobile) global launch date: Nov. 21, 2017

• The game's most recent major update: today.
• Length of support: 1,528 days and counting

🎬 A "Mortal Kombat" movie sequel is moving ahead, Deadline reports.

🔍 Archaeologists believe they’ve dug up a 4,000-year-old board game, Ars Technica reports.

💰 The union working with Activision Blizzard workers is calling on the SEC to investigate “inaccurate and misleading” disclosures in a filing about its proposed acquisition by Microsoft (was it something I tweeted?).

💊 Akili Interactive, a health company that aims to use interactive gaming as cognitive medicine, plans to go public later this year, thanks to a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. The valuation is targeted at $1 billion.

🤔 Ubisoft’s head of its NFT division told Finder that the company will “let each project's team decide” if they want to use the tech in their games or not.

How ‘Vampire Survivors’ Went From Obscurity to 27,000 People Playing at Once [Patrick Klepek, Waypoint]

On January 5, the game hit a peak of 14 players simultaneously. The next day, January 6, it suddenly had 1,143 players. [Its] popularity grew exponentially from there as 1,000 quickly became 2,000, then 3,000 and 4,000 and 5,000. A little over two weeks later, the game eclipsed 10,000 simultaneous players.

What happened? As with the sudden explosion of many indie games these days, Galante is pretty sure it’s because of a YouTube video.

We received several intriguing guesses from readers trying to figure out what video game-based movie Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will announce later this year.

Most bizarre: Pac-Man, from reader Henry Robbert, who provided the image above.

Most fervently hoped for: Gears of War’s Marcus Fenix (Reader Tamara Braunstein writes: “Please, please, please, please, please let it be Gears!!!”)

Most confident pick: “The Rock is definitely Brick from Borderlands. [The Rock’s reference to] 'Biggest, most badass game' is on brand for the Borderlands games. Also, Brick is a huge, muscular guy and the Rock is a huge, muscular guy.”