Gaming

In addition to creating acclaimed cinematic action games, Remedy is also known for pushing the boundaries of graphics technology, and the upcoming Control Resonant is set to be no different. With all of the summer game conferences wrapping up, we got a new story-focused trailer for the game during Sony's recent State of Play event, which confirmed a release date of September 24 for PC and consoles.

And for the PC version of the game, NVIDIA has confirmed it has once again partnered with Remedy, and that the game will launch with native DLSS 4.5 support and ship with full ray-tracing or path-tracing mode on day one. And when it comes to the game's ray tracing, as seen in the trailer above, the game will leverage NVIDIA's new RTX Mega Geometry technology to improve fidelity, as well as DLSS Ray Reconstruction, which is getting its own DLSS 4.5 version in August.

As a sequel to the popular Control, this new entry is different in that players control Dylan Faden, brother of the first game's protagonist Jesse Faden, as the action moves from the Oldest House to a corrupted Manhattan overrun by the "chaotic Hiss" and other paranormal threats. And instead of wielding firearms, the combat here is primarily melee-based.

Starting in 2026, Xbox will start to form new and innovative business models the likes of which we haven't seen before...and they could include free ad-supported streaming.

Xbox isn't in a great place right now. Following the departure of Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond, Xbox brought in a new CEO, Asha Sharma, to effectively reboot the business. We've already seen Sharma make big changes to Xbox, including reducing Game Pass' price and reversing course on Xbox exclusive games, but more shifts are coming.

At a recent Fortune Magazine event, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said that "radically new business models" will start to become future money-making strategies for Xbox. The firm is rumored to offer a free, ad-supported version of its xCloud game streaming service later this year, and this could be what Sharma is referring to.

SEGA Is reviving classic Dreamcast-era franchise Crazy Taxi with a brand new game set for a 2027 release, but the company is facing backlash over the project's use of generative AI.

In an effort to revitalize sales and spark cultural interest, SEGA is reviving core legacy franchises as part of its so-called Next Level marketing campaign. A new Crazy Taxi is among these revamped titles and the new game was revealed at Summer Game Fest as Crazy Taxi World Tour, modernizing the retro gameplay for new platforms.

The news was welcomed by fans--Crazy Taxi is back, complete with the signature rip-roaring chaotic driving, explosively bombastic colors, and of course, Offspring belting out punk guitar riffs on the soundtrack. There's just one fly in the ointment: the new Crazy Taxi's Steam page confirms that SEGA used generative AI to make the game.

Halo Studios may have innovated a new business model that could help the industry revitalize dormant brands.

One of Xbox's oldest franchises might be the source for an interesting new type of content model. The new Halo remake has been updated with a clustered trio of missions that are effectively like mini-DLC for the campaign. Set under the name Operation Meteorite, this designation could open the door to more operation missions further down the line, giving Halo Studios a way to continue expanding Halo lore in a sellable package.

The new Campaign Remix feature looks to be the most innovative addition to the remake, and if it works as Halo Studios describes it, the mode could open up a new way for players to experience old games.

It's officially happening: the old-school 90s classic is getting reborn on the Switch 2.

Nintendo today announced an official remake of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time for its upgraded Switch 2 console. The game was revealed at today's Nintendo Direct and is planned for a launch in 2026, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the franchise.

Only a short glimpse of prologue cinematic footage was shown, but we did get our first look at Link, and the visuals are just incredible compared to the original game--there's even light reflecting in Link's hair. No exact details or information has been revealed so far and Nintendo plans to unveil more in the coming months.

The upcoming Halo Campaign Evolved remake will have exclusive new missions where Master Chief basically crashes the Covenant's good time aboard a research/recreation ship.

Halo Campaign Evolved brings new missions to the classic Halo universe in a three-part story called Operation Meteorite. These prequel missions were co-written by sci-fi author Troy Denning, and one of them has a surprisingly humorous setup.

According to Halo Studios, the Operation Meteorite prequel missions center around Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson infiltrating a very specific Covenant ship--one we haven't actually seen in a Halo video game yet. According to games journalist Mr. Rebs, the ship is an agricultural research vessel that also acts as a kind of vacation ship for the alien invaders. It's a support ship that's not explicitly made for war, but instead a mix of business and pleasure, all while sinister things are going on underground.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is set to launch on July 28, 2026, for XBOX Series X|S, PS5, and PC, and it's a full remake of the original game's campaign rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5. It's also set to expand on the story with three new campaign missions focusing on Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson, with all three given a spotlight at the recent XBOX Games Showcase.

From a visual perspective, it's a massive upgrade over the 2001 original, with more detailed characters, environments, and special effects. Microsoft's official store page for the game also mentions ray tracing; however, there's no word on whether this is limited to, say, shadows or will be all-encompassing and include an RTGI solution. Either way, with the release around the corner, we've now also got Halo: Campaign Evolved's PC requirements for playing the game at 1080p, 1440, and 4K with a smooth 60 FPS presentation.

Based on what we see, the game should scale well across a wide range of hardware, but Halo: Campaign Evolved will be demanding, as the Minimum spec calls for either a GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER or a Radeon RX 6600 graphics card. Interestingly, the specs list 4K 60 FPS with High settings as the Recommended spec, and for that you'll need a fairly powerful GPU, such as a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or Radeon RX 9070.

Telltale Games made a surprise appearance at Summer Game Fest 2026 with a double announcement for The Wolf Among Us series. After nearly a decade of silence, Telltale Games unveiled a new trailer for The Wolf Among Us 2. The game now has a 2027 release window, along with a remastered version of the 2013 original arriving this holiday season.

The Wolf Among Us 2 takes place approximately six months after the first game's events, with players returning to Fabletown as Bigby Wolf. "Return to the role of Bigby Wolf, sheriff of Fabletown, as a deadly conspiracy tears apart the precarious peace among the exiled Fables. Betrayed, framed, and exiled, Bigby must work from the shadows to save a city consumed by corruption, vengeance, and fear."

The game is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. At the same time, the remaster brings back all five episodes of the original game with updated visuals, an improved UI, and accessibility upgrades, along with over an hour of bonus content, including deleted scenes, cast interviews, behind-the-scenes videos, and image galleries.

The 50% Game Pass price hike damaged the Xbox brand on a substantial level, and current CEO Asha Sharma says that the business still is not healthy...yet.

Last year, Microsoft made one of the most unpopular moves in gaming history by raising the price of Game Pass Ultimate from $20 to $30 a month. Game Pass' subscriber counts were scorched in the aftermath, with multiple millions of users leaving the service and not renewing their memberships.

The not-so-surprising info was revealed by new Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball, who told The Game Business that Microsoft lost millions of Game Pass subscribers after the steep price jump. No current Game Pass subscriber counts were provided, but as of February 2024, months before Ultimate was hiked to $19.99 per month, the service had 34 million subscribers. An update in June 2025 said Game Pass was at 35 million.

Exclusive games are back at Xbox, and leadership now says exclusivity is here to stay in a radical business shift aimed at fortifying the core value of the Xbox platform.

Yesterday, Microsoft surprised fans by announcing not one, but two Xbox console exclusive games: Gears of War E-Day, coming in 2026, and Clockwork Revolution, coming in 2027. But these aren't the only exclusives that Xbox plans to withhold from PlayStation and Nintendo--management says fans can expect more Xbox console exclusives in the future. And apparently Microsoft has already made a decision on what they will be.

Xbox's new chief strategy officer Matthew Ball offers more info and insight on the exclusivity plans, confirming that more games would be included in an effort to bolster the brand. "This is the start of a program," he said.

Nintendo has announced a new Direct showcase will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, June 9, 2026 at 7AM PST/10AM EST with nearly an hour of reveals and updates.

On the heels of Summer Game Fest, the Xbox showcase, and various events like IGN Live and the PC Gamer Show, fans are eager to see what Nintendo has in its hand of cards. The show begins tomorrow morning and is expected to include big reveals to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the group's heaviest-hitting franchises, including Mario and Zelda.

Rumor has it that Nintendo will release a new Zelda Ocarina of Time remake for the Switch 2 in celebration of the big four-oh. That project is believed to be coming this year, whereas a new mainline 3D Mario game isn't expected until 2027.

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is the latest and arguably the most impressive version of MSI's gaming handheld to date, and not just because it's been upgraded to feature the new Intel Arc G3 Extreme processor. At Computex 2026, we got to go hands-on with the new Claw 8 EX AI+, playing through the opening mission of Battlefield 6's campaign, and yeah, like our hands-on with Acer's new G3 Extreme Atlas 8 handheld playing Forza Horizon 6, it's extremely impressive.

Seeing this level of fidelity and 60+ FPS fluidity on a PC gaming handheld with in-game settings set to 'High' is pretty remarkable. It's a level of clarity that can rival modern-day consoles when viewed on a portable display, and thanks to Intel's latest Panther Lake architecture and next-gen Arc Graphics, the G3 Extreme processor takes full advantage of XeSS 3 and its AI-powered suite of Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation (MFG) technologies.

In fact, with a more capable GPU and XeSS, handhelds with a G3 Extreme processor easily outperform handhelds with AMD's Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor and its integrated RDNA 3.5 graphics. Thankfully, the Arc G3 Extreme processor is just one part of what makes the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ an impressive handheld, as the company has gone to great lengths to deliver a premium-feeling device.

NVIDIA introduced DLSS 4.5 at the beginning of the year, with a new second-generation transformer model that delivered a notable improvement in image fidelity when using DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution upscaling or DLSS 4.5 Frame Generation to boost smoothness. More than an incremental update, it even restored details that were otherwise lost when using similar technologies or the already-impressive DLSS 4.0. In a way, it lived up to the DLSS promise of delivering 'better than native' image quality more so than anything we had seen to date.

However, there was a missing piece. Without a new and improved DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, the full benefits of DLSS 4.5 are absent in titles with heavy ray-tracing and path-tracing modes. Thankfully, that's about to change, as NVIDIA has confirmed that DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction is coming in August as part of a new GeForce Game Ready and NVIDIA App update, and will be immediately available in all of the 25 to 30 games with native DLSS Ray Reconstruction support.

At Computex 2026, we got to see DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction in action in Remedy's Alan Wake 2, Capcom's Pragmata, and Machine Games' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, with NVIDIA providing several side-by-side examples to showcase the benefits compared to the existing Ray Reconstruction. But before we go through that, here's a quick primer of what exactly Ray Reconstruction is and what the new DLSS 4.5 version brings to the table.

Hideo Kojima, creator behind genre-defining titles like Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding, has been vocal about his stance on AI on numerous occasions. The boiled-down summary is that he believes AI belongs in the room as a tool, not at the table as a creator. But that position came under scrutiny recently when an AI-generated promotional film featuring Hideo Kojima sparked a wave of reactions online.

The film was created for the Satellites II exhibition, a collaboration between Kojima and Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, presented as part of Prada Mode New York. The six-minute short depicts the pair as space travelers crash-landing on an alien planet, and Refn confirmed it was made using AI. For many fans, seeing Kojima appear in AI-generated content felt at odds with the themes running through his games, particularly the Metal Gear Solid series, which has long warned against over-reliance on technology and AI-driven systems of control.

In response to the online discussion about the ad, Kojima reiterated his views on AI. Speaking with The Washington Post (via Kotaku) for a profile tied to the Satellites II exhibition at New York's Hotel Chelsea, he stated he does not believe AI will create meaningful art within his lifetime. "Art is life," Kojima said. "But in 50 years, 100 years, I don't know. Maybe AI could create art, but while I live, I don't think I'll see it. I'm not interested in it."

Visitors to the Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis Steam page recently spotted something most game listings don't have: an "AI Generated Content Disclosure." The notice, first reported by Eurogamer, explains that AI-assisted tools were used during development to support some early exploration and temporary development content, and that any AI-assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans later on in the development cycle.

On the surface, that sounds reassuring, but the phrasing is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The statement says assets were "replaced or refined by humans," and it's that "refined by humans" qualifier that gives pause, since it leaves open the possibility that AI-generated elements still exist in the final product in some form. Gamers going in should know that while Crystal Dynamics insists all finished content is human-crafted, the exact scope of AI involvement during production remains vague.

The backlash has been predictable. Some fans say they want nothing to do with the game following the disclosure, while others have pointed to previous rounds of layoffs at Crystal Dynamics as added context for why the situation feels concerning. This isn't an isolated incident. AI creep in game development is becoming a pattern, and studios are increasingly open about it. We covered how Ubisoft has been experimenting with generative AI in Far Cry 7, with an insider describing the early results in less-than-flattering terms.

Microsoft used the XBOX Games Showcase 2026 to announce a nostalgia-heavy hardware drop: the XBOX Series X25 Limited Edition, a special edition console dressed in translucent OG Green to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the XBOX brand.

The design pulls directly from the original XBOX, right down to the iconic "X" lighting up green when you power the console on. It's a detail longtime fans will recognize immediately, and it's a smarter tribute than just slapping a logo on a colored faceplate. The console carries 1TB of storage and features an "X25" logo on the translucent green chassis. Under the hood, nothing has changed. This is still a standard XBOX Series X, so you're paying for the look, not a hardware bump.

Alongside the console, Microsoft is also releasing the XBOX Wireless Controller X25 Special Edition in the same translucent OG Green finish. It brings back the original ABXY button colors and features black and white bumpers, a direct nod to the classic "Duke" controller's iconic face buttons. The controller will be sold separately as well, which is good news for anyone who already owns a Series X but still wants the throwback aesthetic on their desk.

Microsoft has changed its mind on exclusive Xbox games, and two new titles will stay on Xbox and Windows. Now Xbox management clarifies exactly how this approach will work.

The recent Xbox showcase really underlines Microsoft's clear-cut attempts to cater to its enthusiast fanbase. The event saw the highly-anticipated return of exclusive games at Xbox, with Gears of War E-Day and Clockwork Revolution confirmed as Xbox platform exclusives (they're coming to both console & PC). But what about other games? Selecting exclusives among Xbox Game Studios titles will be made on a case-by-case basis, leadership says.

In a recent interview with Gamertag Radio, Xbox's chief content officer Matt Booty says that live games will stay multi-platform, but other games have a chance at being Xbox platform exclusive. And if it's got a date, it's got a platform, the exec says.

Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma backed up her words with firm commitments to fans by announcing two new exclusive games.

Exclusives are back at Xbox. Today at the big Xbox summer showcase, the group confirmed two games would be kept exclusive to the platform: Clockwork Revolution, the new BioShock-like shooter from inXile with time-bending mechanics, and Gears of War E-Day, the next mainline game in the long-running series.

"Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution will be XBOX console exclusives. These are not timed exclusives. Games already announced for multiplatform releases will stick to that plan - we're committed to investing in and growing XBOX both on console and beyond," Xbox's Matt Booty said at the show.

Halo Studios today revealed new info on the new multi-platform Halo CE remake, confirming the game will have a bunch of guns from previous games in the series as well as specifics on the new prequel missions.

The new Halo Campaign Evolved remake is coming July 28, 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, with a price point of $50 for the base version and $70 for the deluxe. There's also a $200 collector's edition that comes with a Master Chief statue.

This version of Halo has been 25 years in the making, and the graphics really do show big enhancements thanks to UE5 overlaying on top of the authentic Halo Reach engine. Campaign Evolved is a kind of playground for old-school Halo fans, mixing in weapons from other games, from Halo Infinite's bulldog shotgun to Halo 5's railgun and even Reach's powerful needle rifle.

Studio MDHR's next game, Mighty Cuphead Adventure, is a pure blast from the past, CRTs, 8-bit graphics and all.

Indie developers feel like the intrepid creatives of our modern gaming era, and Studio MDHR's latest venture really goes above and beyond when it comes to passion projects. The devs are making their new game Mighty Cuphead Adventure specifically for SEGA's 40-year-old Master System, and will release a special version of the game on a physical cartridge that actually plays on the decades-old system.

The game is described as "a new, fast-action platform shooter with arcade-quality graphics," and will also launch on modern consoles as well as PC. Judging from the other Cuphead games, this new one could be pretty challenging and give old-school enthusiasts something new to try.