While Xbox's new leader Asha Sharma teases next-gen Project Helix hardware, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reiterates plans to expand and extend Xbox well beyond consoles.

Xbox has spent the last decade trying to move away from its unprofitable console hardware business, first branching into PC on a unified level with Windows 10, and then bringing Xbox games to mobile devices via Project xCloud. In more recent years, Microsoft broke exclusivity for good and all to ensure its software could be sold everywhere possible--even rival systems like the PlayStation 5. This plan has worked well for Microsoft in the short- to medium-term, leading to boosted revenues via expanded sales.

Microsoft isn't done expanding, though. In a recent internal town hall meeting with employees (per Windows Central), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed the future of Xbox, saying that the main goal for the division is to ultimately find the most broad, all-encompassing form of gaming. This sure sounds like Nadella is talking about some sort of new evolved medium for gaming (maybe something like Hideo Kojima's new cloud-powered horror game, OD?).

Horror master Shinji Mikami is attached to a new mystery project, and his involvement at the studio was not previously revealed until now, Video Games Chronicle reports.

Original Resident Evil and The Evil Within creator Shinji Mikami is now serving as representative director of Unbound Inc, a new game dev studio that's working on an unannounced AAA project. In 2024, Mikami founded Kamuy Inc, a new game dev studio following Tango Gameworks' closure, and it's unclear how or if the two companies are related.

Details are slim on the new project, yet Unbound's recent job listings give an idea on what to expect. The Japanese game dev studio is currently hiring for 9 positions ranging from art and animation to programming and management, with the listings confirming the game will be a high-end, AAA experience set in a never-before-seen IP.

EA is laying off even more workers as the company prepares to be taken private in a $55 billion deal principally funded by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

EA has already laid off multiple developers across its Battlefield teams, with job eliminations affecting all studios who work on the franchise including DICE, Ripple Effect, Motive Studios, and Criterion.

"We've made select changes within our Battlefield organization to better align our teams around what matters most to our community. Battlefield remains one of our biggest priorities, and we're continuing to invest in the franchise, guided by player feedback and insights from Battlefield Labs," EA said in a statement to IGN.

While Microsoft's next-gen console is undoubtedly new, Project Helix itself is a nearly decade-old plan to unify Xbox and Windows.

Microsoft recently confirmed that its new Xbox hardware will play both PC and console games, punctuating months of reports of a so-called Xbox PC. The reality, though, is that Project Helix isn't actually a new development--the strategy goes way back to the Xbox One era.

Back in 2016, Jason Schreier and Keza MacDonald first reported on Project Helix for Kotaku, describing Project Helix as a kind of convergence of Windows and Xbox. At the time, developers were said to be making two versions of their games--one for Xbox, and one for Windows, which is now the norm as Microsoft has refined its XDK environments so devs can deploy 1 version of their games across two mediums.

Capcom's latest Resident Evil game has performed incredibly well, and is now the fastest-selling game in the entire series.

Resident Evil 9 Requiem launched to major success, achieving 5 million sales in less than a week. This feat technically makes Requiem the fastest-selling game in the franchise's history, with the next runner-up Resident Evil game, RE5, having sold 5 million copies in 2 months' time.

Requiem's numbers help elevate Capcom's Q4 unit sales for the full year, with the company hoping to ship a whopping 54 million games this fiscal year. Capcom is almost there, having achieved nearly 35 million sales in the first 9 months of FY25, and Resident Evil Requiem's numbers have boosted this total to around 40 million or so.

South Korea's National Tax Service accidentally exposed the mnemonic recovery phrase of a seized cryptocurrency wallet, leading to $4.4 million in crypto assets being stolen.

The stolen funds were stored in a Ledger cold wallet that was seized by local law enforcement during an operation targeting tax evaders. Law enforcement celebrated the success of the raid by releasing photos of the Ledger device containing the stolen funds, but failed to realize that the image also showed a piece of paper with a handwritten note containing the wallet recovery phrase. That phrase enables a user to recover the device's assets onto another device, and since it was made public, it was only a matter of time before the funds were stolen.

That's exactly what happened. Shortly after the press release was published, 4 million Pre-Retogeum (PRTG) tokens were transferred out of the confiscated wallet to a new address. Blockchain data analysis expert Cho Jae-woo, a professor at Hansung University in Seoul, commented on the theft of the digital assets, and said the mistake of law enforcement is comparable to the police finding a full wallet on the side of the street and advertising it to the nation that it's open and the money is free to take if they want it.

Direct messaging inherently comes with some degree of privacy for the user sending the message and the user receiving the message, but given today's climate of troves of data being stored in various scenarios where you wouldn't expect that to happen, it's becoming more commonplace to find out private messages aren't actually so private.

The latest to join that list is Arc Raiders and Discord, as computer engineer Timothy Meadows discovered that when a player linked their Discord to Arc Raiders, their private messages were being stored on their PC, and they could have been accessed with Discord tokens. This means that Arc Raiders developers, Embark Studios, could have accessed the private messages of players if they so chose.

The problem was quickly identified by Embark Studios, which released a hotfix and explained that "debugging features intended for developers building and testing Social SDK game integrations" resulted in "some players' Discord information from the game being stored locally on their device, and viewing it would require access to the device or the files themselves. Embark has released a hotfix for the issue, and we are providing guidance to developers and updating the Discord Social SDK with additional protections."

Arion Kurtaj, a British cybercriminal who was a central member in the hacking group known as Lapsus$, which performed several high-profile cyberattacks against major technology companies such as NVIDIA, Uber, and Microsoft, along with Rockstar Games, has revealed he has received a smartphone in a hospital where he was ordered to stay indefinitely.

Lapsus$ was responsible for the 2022 leaks of Grand Theft Auto 6, marking one of the most significant leaks in video game history as 90+ videos were released showing early gameplay, debug builds showing the title running on developer tools, footage of the game's Vice City-inspired location, early gameplay systems such as robberies, NPC AI, police responses, and weapon systems, and much more.

The hacker was Arion Kurtaj, who gained access to Rockstar's systems through internal Slack workspaces, as Kurtaj used compromised credentials belonging to a Rockstar employee. From there, Kurtaj accessed links to internal development servers where he then downloaded all of the gameplay videos, etc. Kurtaj claimed he possessed the GTA 5 and GTA 6 source code.

According to a new report from the YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead, rumors that Sony is planning to delay the launch of the PlayStation 6 to 2028 or even 2029 are unlikely. The reasons we began to hear about a potential PS6 delay comes down to the current memory and storage crisis affecting the entire consumer technology market, where rising costs and capacity constraints could see the price of a next-gen console skyrocket if it's released sooner rather than later.

According to Moore's Law is Dead (MLID)'s latest report, citing insiders, Sony's contracts and agreements with companies like AMD and TSMC are already in place, and PS6 mass production is on track for 2027, as early as the first half of the year. And with that, if Sony were to hold off on 3nm production for the PS6 for a year, it would cost the company much more than going ahead with the current timeline, MLID claims. And with that, even with the memory crunch, the console is still on track for a late 2027 launch, with a potential delay to early 2028.

And with that, the channel also reiterates the performance we can expect to see from the codename 'Orion' chip that will power the PlayStation 6. This monolithic chip built on TSMC's 3nm process will feature a 9 or 10-core Zen 6 CPU paired with 52 to 54 RDNA 5 Compute Units, and up to 40GB of unified GDDR7 system memory.

In a recent Q&A session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the future of the Xbox brand, the Microsoft CEO revealed how he jokes with NVIDIA's Jensen Huang about how neither Microsoft nor NVIDIA would exist without gaming.

The comment from Nadella comes on the heels of widespread concern about the future of the Xbox brand, particularly following the shake-up of high-level executives, which resulted in the departure of 25-year Xbox veteran and CEO Phil Spencer. Nadella sat down with new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, and both individuals put the concerns of Xbox fans to rest by publicly stating that gaming is a core identity to Microsoft and that Microsoft as a company will "always" be investing in the space.

Nadella emphasized that Microsoft wouldn't be where it is today without its previous investments in gaming, and how those investments haven't just created fantastic games for people to enjoy, but also accelerated the development of other technology sectors, such as cloud, Windows, and GPU-based servers. The last point is why Nadella jokes with Huang about how Microsoft and NVIDIA wouldn't exist without gaming.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 Series, built using a custom 8nm process from Samsung, rather than the custom TSMC process for the GeForce RTX 40 and RTX 50 Series, is set to return to production at the Samsung Electronics Pyeongtaek Semiconductor Factory. According to a new report by the Korean publication Hankyung, Samsung is prepping to recommence production of the 8nm GeForce RTX 3060, some two years after the last batch of RTX 3060 chips were manufactured.

The report doesn't set a timeline for production, other than that it'll happen "soon." With the initial media and insider reaction focused on NVIDIA re-introducing the GeForce RTX 3060 as a response to the current memory crisis and chip shortages, the report claims that the RTX 3060's return could be primarily for the Chinese market.

Due to restrictions on high-performance graphics cards sold in China, older GPUs like the GeForce RTX 3060 represent a way out for providing a cost-effective AI and PC gaming solution in the Chinese market. Of course, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang did say "it's a good idea to bring back old GPUs" at CES 2026 as a way to address current shortages, so this move could reflect a broader global strategy for 2026 and beyond.

Jon Peddie Research has posted its latest report on the fourth-quarter 2025 global PC graphics card market. Even though AIB (add-in-board) shipments decreased from the previous quarter due to the current memory crisis, they were up 36% year-over-year for the same period. When it comes to market share for graphics cards "largely supported by gamers," NVIDIA's share rose notably.

According to Q4 2025 data, NVIDIA's market share of total graphics card shipments reached a new high of 94%, up 10 percentage points from Q4 2024. As 2025 saw the release of the new GeForce RTX 50 Series from NVIDIA and the Radeon RX 9000 Series from AMD, this data shows NVIDIA pulling ahead, with AMD's GPU shipment market share dropping to 5% from 7% in the previous quarter and 15% in the same period the year before.

Intel's market share for discrete Arc GPUs remained flat at 1%. However, even though there are GPUs out there, Jon Peddie Research notes that the current high memory prices, driven by the AI boom and US government-imposed tariffs, are "killing the AIB market." In addition, more affordable laptops and notebooks with APUs featuring integrated GPUs alongside CPUs are putting additional pressure on the growing GPU market.

The decision for Xbox to bring what were once the biggest reasons to buy an Xbox console, like Halo, Forza, Gears of War, and what will be Fable, to competing platforms such as PlayStation has resulted in a slight branding crisis as fans now question if Microsoft is interested in advancing the Xbox brand or if it makes sense to offload it from their portfolio.

On the heels of Xbox postponing the launch of its upcoming console and the shake-up at the executive level, which saw 25-year Xbox veteran Phil Spencer officially depart from his position, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has conducted a Q&A session to shine some light on the situation at Xbox and how Microsoft is currently viewing its gaming brand. Nadella was joined by Spencer's replacement, Asha Sharma, where they both gave their 20,000-foot view on Xbox's future.

Nadella went on to list Xbox as one of Microsoft's "main identities" and that it wouldn't survive as a company if these identities didn't "continue to thrive". Additionally, Nadella doubled down on "gaming" always being a part of Microsoft, and honored Matt Booty, Phil Spencer, and Sarah Bond for their effort in building that arm of Microsoft over a 25-year period.

The fate of the Knights of the Old Republic remake remains clear, at least for now, and the game is still in active development.

Despite no real updates for quite some time, Saber Interactive asserts that the new KOTOR remake is still happening. "Yes, it is still in development. That's all I can say," Saber Interactive's chief creative officer Tim Willits told IGN.

Progress on the remake was halted in 2022, following a disappointing demo reel shown to investors. Following this development, the game was moved from Aspyr, who was originally handling the KOTOR remake, over to Saber Interactive's subsidiary studio Mad Head Games (who is also making the new Hellraiser: Revival game).

NetEase is distancing itself even further from investments, and has decided to pull the plug on funding for yet another studio that it helped create.

Japanese game dev group Nagoshi Studio will soon lose its funding from NetEase, putting its new game Gang of Dragon--and the future of the group itself--in jeopardy. Sources tell Bloomberg that NetEase's money tap will stop flowing to Nagoshi Studio starting in May. It's said that the studio is now facing impending closure.

NetEase's decision to stop financing Nagoshi Studio came after it was found that the team's debut game, Gang of Dragon, would require around $44 million in additional funding to complete. NetEase has given Nagoshi Studio permission to continue on its own without funding, however, the creatives would have to essentially buy back Gang of Dragon's IP and/or publishing rights (a similar situation kept Remedy from making an Alan Wake sequel until many years later, when they bought back the rights from Microsoft).

SEGA executives offer candor in their responses to an investor Q&A, admitting that high praise doesn't always lead to a boost in game sales.

If the entertainment industry is fickle, then the interactive portion is like a picky-eating child; oftentimes, there's no real rhyme or reason for the trends that occur, and games can come out of left field and amass millions of sales. This disparity also extends to well-reviewed games--just because a game is highly-lauded and beloved by reviewers or fans doesn't always mean it'll sell millions of copies.

SEGA's latest investors Q&A shows a frank and rather direct acknowledgement of the company's situation, at least when it comes to game sales volume, and how it hopes to spark more purchases through marketing and discounts. Capcom took this approach, and it's worked out quite well for them.

UPDATE: Valve now says that it will ship all three devices in 2026:

"We shared recently that there have been challenges with memory and storage shortages, but we will be shipping all three products this year. More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans."

Original article is as follows.

UPDATE: Valve now says that it will ship all three devices in 2026:

"We shared recently that there have been challenges with memory and storage shortages, but we will be shipping all three products this year. More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans."

Original story is as follows.

Nintendo of America has sued the US government over President Trump's illegal IEEPA tariffs, seeking refunds as well as interest.

As per Aftermath's Nicole Carpenter, Nintendo of America has filed a lawsuit against multiple US agencies seeking tariff refunds, including the US Department of the Treasury, US Department of Commerce, and the US Department of Homeland Security.

The 14-page complaint alleges that Nintendo of America has been "directly harmed by Defendant's unlawful actions related to the Executive Orders and IEEPA Duties," and the company asks the US Court of International Trade for a number of remedies, including an official declaration that the IEEPA tariffs are unlawful, as well as refunds for the duties that were paid by Nintendo with interest on top.

If recent numbers are any indication, Marathon may have missed targeted expectations on Steam insofar as peak players, however the game remains #2 on the store's best-sellers list.

Marathon has been out for a day, and we have some indication on how well the game has done. SteamDB's metrics estimate that the shooter peaked at around 88,337 players in its first 24-hour period. These numbers could improve over the weekend as more gamers jump in--Marathon did launch on a Thursday, after all, but that didn't stop the game's biggest rival.

Interestingly enough, the game's biggest contender at launch was Slay the Spire 2, which released on the same day and vastly eclipsed Marathon's reach--Slay the Spire 2 attracted over 430K peak players on day one, as per SteamDB.