Laura Fryer, who helped launch the original Xbox console in 2001, shares insight on the current Xbox fiasco and indicates that Microsoft could just be experimenting to see what works.

Xbox isn't very popular right now. After heavy layoffs, project cancellations, and studio closures, Microsoft seems to have burned the other end of the bridge by raising prices on Xbox consoles and Xbox Game Pass. As a result, there's now a modern generation that includes a $800 games console.

Original Xbox founding member Laura Fryer has a particularly interesting take on the situation. She says that it's entirely possible that team Xbox simply doesn't know what they're doing--not in a derogatory way but more of an assessment. The higher-ups at Xbox might be trying everything to see what does and doesn't actually work. After all, Fryer says, no one really knew what they were doing when the original Xbox released decades ago.

Dead Space has made a comeback, but gamers aren't happy about it.

Dead Space is a cult classic franchise beholden to many. It's been dormant for a while: EA's refusal to greenlight a new sequel led original series creator Glen Schofield to make a spiritual successor, The Callisto Protocol, which was ironically hamstrung by EA's own Dead Space remaster. So when Dead Space shows up anywhere, it can be a big deal for fans.

The franchise has popped up in an unlikely location: EA's new Skate game. Dead Space protagonist Isaac Clarke has been shoehorned into the new free-to-play Skate game as a paid skin. It's not just Skate using Clarke's likeness that has disgruntled fans, but the game's microtransaction conversion scheme means players will pay $35 minimum for the cosmetic bundle.

Project Amethyst is evolving, and it looks like Sony and AMD are creating a runway for the rumored PlayStation 5 handheld.

Today, Sony and AMD revealed three new tech breakthroughs coming to future PlayStation hardware as part of their multi-year Project Amethyst collaboration. The advancements, which are theoretically substantial, have interesting potential to carry over to other devices--not just new consoles like the PS6. Project Amethyst's new tech takes strain off CPU, GPU, and memory in a number of creative ways, which is great for comparatively weaker mobile chips that are used in handhelds.

PlayStation architect Mark Cerny specifically mentioned something that caught my ear during the presentation, affirming that these three technologies in conjunction could lead to "lower power consumption," which is also quite ideal for a handheld device. Maybe like Sony's rumored dedicated PlayStation handheld that's reportedly capable of natively playing PS5 games.

New reports indicate that Ubisoft had cancelled a new, all-original Assassin's Creed game based on the Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War in the 1870s.

Ubisoft had been developing a new Assassin's Creed game with a rather unique story. Sources close to the matter tell Game File reporter Stephen Totilo that the new Assassin's Creed would take place during 12-year-long Reconstruction Era after the Civil War. This period, which saw the United States abolish slavery and recognize freedoms, was fraught with violence and brutality.

Five sources reveal the plot of the game, highlighting a cinematic scope for the project. The cancelled AC game would've seen players take control of a black man who had been freed, chronicling his journey as he goes out West, exposing one of the most turbulent times in American history in the process. Eventually, players join the ancient assassin clan and even take on the Ku Klux Klan at one point of the game.

Sony has unveiled a new special edition PS5 controller that is inspired by the blue lighting associated with the PlayStation brand, which was introduced during the PS4 era of the consoles.

The new special edition controller is called the Icon Blue, and as you can probably imagine, the entire controller features different hues of the iconic lighting blue. The controller will be released on October 20 in the United States and Canada, and then it will debut in Mexico and Chile on October 28. Sony has priced the Icon Blue Special Edition at $84.99 USD, CA$109.99, MXN $1,899, and CLP $93,490. As for where you can buy the Icon Blue, the upcoming controller will be sold exclusively at Walmart stores and through Walmart's official website.

The Icon Blue features different shades of the iconic blue hue, with the grips and outer shell of the controller featuring a darker hue, and the inner shell and trackpad featuring a lighter blue. It should be noted that there isn't anything functionally different about the Icon Blue, and that it's simply a new PS5 controller intended to pay homage to the legacy of PlayStation consoles; it still has all of the same features as a standard PS5 controller.

Today, Sony and AMD outlined experimental new technologies in their multi-year Project Amethyst initiative that will be utilized in future PlayStation consoles, including Sony's next-gen PS6.

Sony and AMD have announced three new technologies for next-gen PlayStation hardware: Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores, and Universal Compression. All three features are built specifically for efficiency, optimization, and performance, with emphasis on offloading work from the CPU and GPU via dedicated blocks, smarter features, and drastically improving the rate of speed for data rendering. In short, Sony and AMD have created a trio of features that will supercharge the PS6 and maybe even Sony's rumored PlayStation handheld.

Perhaps the most immediately useful of the three is Universal Compression, which should have a net benefit to all games that are built on the new PlayStation systems, not just those that use ray tracing or machine learning features.

AMD has scored one point over NVIDIA after company CEO Lisa Su confirmed that its next-generation MI450 AI accelerator will be built on a 2nm silicon process, beating NVIDIA's upcoming Vera Rubin architecture built on 3nm silicon.

Su confirmed the nanometer size in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, where she was discussing the recent partnership announcement with ChatGPT-creator OpenAI. For those who don't know, OpenAI and AMD recently announced a new partnership that involves AMD providing OpenAI with its next-generation GPUs until it has completed the agreed-upon 1 gigawatt of power. In exchange, AMD will provide OpenAI with approximately 10% of its company.

During the interview, Su revealed that AMD's upcoming AI accelerator, scheduled for release in 2026, will utilize 2nm technology, which means it will leapfrog over 3nm. Notably, NVIDIA's upcoming next-generation AI GPU architecture, Vera Rubin, will utilize 3nm silicon, giving AMD a competitive edge over Team Green in this regard. Why does the nm matter? Typically, a reduction in silicon process size leads to performance gains in the form of increased efficiency and raw performance.

The 2025 Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit, which kicks off next week, is all about the industry coming together to showcase the latest advancements and share their insights in open-source hardware and software. Taking place at the San Jose Convention Center from October 13 to 15, as an Open Compute Project contributor and inventor of NAND flash memory, KIOXIA will be on hand to showcase its flash storage solutions and optimizations for data centers and AI.

From storage devices built using the company's latest BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology with PCIe 5.0 speeds, through to new open-source software optimizations that can improve the lifespan and performance of existing systems. Hardware-wise, the company will present its portfolio at its booth (#A51) with live demonstrations.

This includes KIOXIA's LC9 Series Enterprise SSDs, XD8 E1.S Data Center SSDs, and CD9P Series Data Center SSDs. The LC9 Series will be used to demonstrate fast retrieval of large datasets for AI with high-capacity QLC storage. XD8 E1.S Data Center SSDs will be used to showcase KIOXIA's new open-source RocksDB plug-in that improves the performance and lifespan of SSDs, while CD9P Series Data Center SSDs will showcase power-efficient data center NVMe SSDs.

KIOXIA's new RocksDB plug-in is designed for multi-SSD RAID configurations, which are becoming increasingly prevalent in the era of generative AI, cloud computing, and data centers that store massive datasets. The free and open-source plug-in is designed not only to improve the performance of these modern RAID setups but also to increase and enhance the lifespan of the flash storage being used.

KIOXIA notes that in a 4-drive RAID setup, the RocksDB plug-in reduces the write amplification factor (WAF) by 46% while increasing throughput by 8.22 times compared to MDRAID. Even in a 2-drive RAID setup, WAF is reduced by a third. Write amplification is a common issue with SSDs or Flash Storage, where more data is written than intended; reducing this is a significant win for both performance and SSD health.

RocksDB is also a widely adopted database for both generative AI and cloud applications, so KIOXIA's open-source plug-in seems like a must-have for systems with large amounts of historical data that require high-performance searches.

Apple's new M5 series processors are going to be an interesting change from the current-gen M4, with the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips to have a new chip design that separates the CPU and GPU blocks.

This is particularly useful for Apple as it can offer a chip with less CPU cores but maxed-out GPU cores, or vice versa, maxed-out CPU cores and less GPU cores. Apple looks to be using TSMC's new SoIC-MH advanced packaging, as well as fabbing its new M5 series processors on TSMC's new 3nm "N3P" process node, just like its new A19 and A19 Pro chips.

The regular M5 chip won't be using the new SoIC-MH advanced packaging, but the higher-end M5 Pro and M5 Max processors would be using it.

The release of Battlefield 6 is only a matter of hours away, and the technical director has revealed what could be considered the "magic trick" behind Battlefield 6's impressive in-game destruction.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Christian Buhl, the technical director on Battlefield 6, explained that what could be the "only magic trick" behind Battlefield 6's fully destructible environments is that developers weren't required to get the game to run on PS4 and the Xbox One.

Buhl said that by dropping the previous generation consoles, developers were given far more headroom when it comes to memory and CPU speed, essentially raising the performance floor of the game, enabling better performance in general, and giving the developers access to a wider variety of destructible environments.

Discord has responded to the recent reports that an unauthorized party stole 1.5 terabytes worth of age verification images from a third-party customer service provider. The claims were that the group responsible for the hack stole 2 million images of Discord users.

Discord has responded to these reports, with a spokesperson informing Insider Gaming that 2 million age verification images isn't an accurate figure, and that Discord has identified around 70,000 users "that may have had government-ID photos exposed, which our vendor used to review age-related appeals."

Discord also notes that this hack was not a breach of Discord itself, but a breach of a third-party customer service provider that has since been severed from Discord's ticketing process.

Left 4 Dead 2 RTX NTD, created by the Nostalgia Drive Team, is a new RTX Remix project that aims to give the iconic co-op shooter the full ray-tracing or path-tracing treatment, similar to Portal RTX or the still-in-development Half-Life 2 RTX. What makes this project interesting and something that shouldn't take too long to develop is that it focuses on the 'No Mercy' campaign.

This is the iconic first mission from the original Left 4 Dead, and the sort of level or campaign that fans know back to front and back again. The first playable build of the Left 4 Dead 2 RTX NTD project is available now over at Moddb, and although it's incomplete, the new PBR (physically-based rendering) materials, 4K textures, and ray-traced lights, shadows, and reflections, present Valve's iconic shooter in a, well, new light.

Literally, as the developers note that RTX Remix cannot capture native lights, the team has had to manually go in and add lights to every scene and location. In fact, one of the issues with the current work-in-progress build is that some areas are too dark or shadowed, as this process is ongoing.

Nacon has announced its latest gaming headset, the new RIG R5 SPEAR PRO HS, which is officially licensed for use with PlayStation consoles. Thanks to the custom-tuned 40mm graphene drivers, which the company claims eliminate "virtually all audio distortion," the wired gaming headset delivers a "studio-grade audio experience" for $69.99 USD.

As an officially licensed PlayStation product, in addition to the RIG branding, you've also got the official PlayStation logo on both earcups on the all-black design. The PlayStation logo is featured on the headset's magnetically removable SNAP+LOCK 'Mod-Plates,' which the company plans to use in future headset designs, alongside releasing limited-edition 'Mod-Plate' designs.

In addition to the "studio-grade" audio that has been built, tuned, and optimized for competitive gaming and first-person shooters, Nacon also notes that the 6mm boom microphone (with its 50Hz-15kHz frequency range) is also "broadcast-grade" in quality.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64 might have come out all the way back in 1998, but it's still widely considered as one of the best games of all time. It's a legendary game, and this ambitious and impressive-looking Unreal Engine 5 remake from 'CryZENx' is something we've covered in the past.

It's a project that Zelda 64 fans should definitely be watching, especially since it's been receiving playable builds. The project aims to recreate and remake the entirety of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time using the latest Unreal Engine 5 technology. The latest Unreal Engine 5.7 release includes the Lake Hylia and Zora Fountain areas of the game.

The playable demo locks the performance to 30 FPS (with developer CryZENx offering a 60 FPS version to their Patreon subscribers), but it allows gamers to explore these iconic Zelda 64 locations with modern, updated visuals and lighting effects.

Although going for featherweight and ultra-lightweight builds is the latest trend for gaming mice (check out our various mouse reviews here), high-speed optical sensors with impressive sensitivity have been a thing for years. Corsair's SABRE v2 PRO features a 33K or 33,000 DPI optical sensor. The premium Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro Wireless ups the ante to an astounding 45K, while the more affordable PowerColor ALPHYN AM10 Wireless Gaming Mouse still boasts an impressive 26K optical sensor.

Thanks to a new AI-powered and fascinating tool called Mic-E-Mouse, any mouse with an optical sensor and at least 20K or 20,000 DPI sensitivity can be used as a makeshift microphone to eavesdrop on people and record their speech, and is described as a "critical vulnerability" by the team of researchers from the University of California that developed Mic-E-Mouse.

If you're wondering how a high-performance optical sensor in a mouse can be used to not only detect speech but decipher what's being said with an accuracy of 80%, it sounds like the sort of thing you'd see on TV and roll your eyes thinking, "no way that's possible."

Intel has been trying to kill NVIDIA for 33 years, says NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, but now they're BFFs.

In a new interview with Jim Cramer and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, we get some further insight into the NVIDIA + Intel history from 30+ years ago. There are some readers that might remember there was always a strained history between the two companies, with some of you even using nForce motherboards many years ago... that was just one part of this journey.

Intel was a much bigger, confident, and more commanding company during the 2000s, leaving NVIDIA to be "just" a graphics card company. NVIDIA was making bigger and bigger waves during the 2000s and into the 2010s, to its leadership position now in GPUs, AI GPUs, and everything in between.

We are only a few days out from the launch of Battlefield 6, and NVIDIA has confirmed EA's upcoming title will launch with DLSS 4, NVIDIA Reflex, and Multi Frame Generation.

For users looking to push Battlefield 6 to its maximum graphical fidelity, and achieve the highest frame rate possible, DLSS 4 will be available to utilize alongside Multi Frame Generation, with NVIDIA writing in a new blog post that at 4K Ultra settings, with DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation and DLSS Super Resolution enabled, GeForce RTX 50 series frame rates increased by an average 3.8x.

The GeForce RTX 5090 managed to push in-game FPS to over 470, while the RTX 5080 reached 330FPS, RTX 5070Ti hovering around 300FPS, and the RTX 5070 achieved 230FPS.

Bungie has kept the lid sealed on Marathon since the title was revealed a few months ago and met with a mixed reception, but it was only recently that the developer announced it was opening up sign-ups for a Closed Technical Test, where participants would have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) to enter.

That Closed Technical Test is scheduled to take place on October 22, but ahead of that event, a well-known leaker called Colony Deaks, who is known for providing accurate Marathon details in the past, which some publications have independently verified, has shared new details on Bungie's upcoming title.

According to Deaks, Bungie will be pricing the base game of Marathon at $40, and the Deluxe Edition will be $60. Deaks also states the Deluxe Edition will contain approximately $30 worth of "season pass tokens," which we currently don't have an explanation for what those tokens will be used for, presumably to purchase cosmetics. Deaks also writes that the Season Pass for Marathon will cost about $10 and will be cosmetic-only, meaning there will be no pay-to-win elements.

ChatGPT users will soon be able to launch apps without leaving the prompt window, effectively turning the AI model into a budding ecosystem.

OpenAI is bringing native app integration to ChatGPT. The new feature was demoed at OpenAI's DevDay 2025, showing how the apps will work within ChatGPT in real time.

Users query the app directly--in this case, Coursera--and the app responds, even going so far as to automatically pin video content to the top of the screen. It's all made possible by OpenAI's new apps software development kit (SDK), which allows ChatGPT to directly communicate with the apps. Essentially, ChatGPT is a kind of interpreter and fetcher of information that's provided directly from the app, all within the context of user queries.