Latest News - Page 167

New reports from Windows Central reiterate Microsoft's plans to release Starfield on non-Xbox platforms.

Months ago, there were rumblings that Bethesda is preparing to launch Starfield on Switch 2 and PS5. Now we have a possible release window for the RPG: sources tell Windows Central that the new Starfield port could launch sometime in the first six months of 2026.

That's a pretty wide timeline, but it's also worth mentioning that next year will be one of the biggest moments in Microsoft history: Xbox turns 25, and Bethesda also celebrates its 40th anniversary. The studio will want to capitalize on this momentous occasion, so a cross-platform release of Starfield in 2026 makes sense, and this also leaves the game plenty of clearance from the sales crater that GTA 6 will cause.

Legendary creative Hideo Kojima has an unsurprising take on AI: The dev doesn't want to use it to create any kind of visual art, and thinks the technology could be used for things like enemy responsivity in games.

Following record spending highs during COVID-19, the games industry has now simultaneously contracted while raising prices. Every publisher and developer is feeling the financial pressures, with many shedding workers en masse in an effort to improve margins and assuage shareholder fears. Everyone is looking for ways to save money and reduce labor costs; enter generative AI, new tech that could potentially even replace game developers.

AI has proven to be significantly controversial, and rightly so, because video games are a full conjunction of all creative arts--static art, animation & motion capture, audio. The industry's workforce is one of creativity and developers are pushing back against AI, however teams have embraced the tech in a bid not to be left behind. This kind of motivation seems to be the main driver of AI's global adoption; no one wants to miss out on the Next Big Thing.

The new NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 72GB Blackwell GPU, which the company says is now available, offers a memory-focused configuration that will sit alongside the existing NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell GPU with 48GB of VRAM. The new variant is targeted at AI developers, scientists, and creatives who require hardware for "modern, memory-hungry workflows."

With generative AI and the rise of complex, multimodal agentic AI, NVIDIA notes that today's large language models (LLMs) and AI agents are growing in both complexity and size - necessitating the release of a beefier NVIDIA Blackwell GPU. With 72GB of ultrafast GDDR7 memory, 50% more than the current 48GB model, and a memory bandwidth of 1,344 GB/s, you're looking at 2,142 TOPS of AI performance.

Naturally, having access to 72GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit interface will allow AI developers to train, run, and tweak models locally. This adds an extra layer of privacy and reduces latency compared to a cloud-based solution.

The Game Awards has revealed the 2025 show is by far the biggest Game Awards ever conducted, with the social media account for the award show stating it had 171 million global livestreams.

The stat was revealed on the official X account for The Game Awards where the organization wrote that viewership for the award show was up 11% year-over-year, with more than 171 million global livestreams. Additionally, conversations about The Game Awards on X were up 12% year-over-year, and there were 23,000 co-streams of the event on Twitch & YouTube, marking a 50% increase year-over-year.

Furthermore, the 171 million viewership figure doesn't include the views the award show obtained through Amazon Prime Video. To put that level of viewership into context, the last Super Bowl held on February 9, 2025 pulled 127.7 million viewers, and peaked at 133.5 million during the halftime show.

There are only a few games that gamers cannot wait to get their hands on. The first is Grand Theft Auto 6, which might be the most anticipated game of all time, and the one that follows closely behind that is Elder Scrolls 6, the sequel to Skyrim.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released in 2011, and since then, we have only received a brief teaser trailer for the sequel to the acclaimed title, which was released in 2018. Following that teaser, we have only heard brief mentions of Elder Scrolls 6 from Bethesda's Todd Howard, who has said the title is the studio's focus and that it will take as long as it needs to meet fan expectations.

However, Kiwi Talkz, an interviewer known particularly for Bethesda and Valve interviews with developers and industry members, recently wrote on X that he expects we won't see Elder Scrolls 6 until at least 2028, with the more likely release window being sometime in 2029. According to Kiwi Talkz, Bethesda isn't giving a rough date as it will "do more harm than good," especially after the studio announced the game "too early".

If you've been tracking PC hardware prices, you've probably noticed that high-capacity DDR5 memory kits now cost more than a PlayStation 5. And with the DRAM crisis affecting any piece of hardware with memory, alongside rising storage costs, several analysts and companies are predicting that the situation will only get worse throughout 2026, potentially leading to historic consumer shortages.

Yes, even though the insatiable demand from data centers and AI is leading memory makers to focus on expensive, cutting-edge HBM with high margins, they're still unable to keep up. Micron, which recently shuttered its consumer-facing Crucial brand to focus on high-bandwidth memory for AI, recently noted in its latest earnings report that supply will remain "substantially short of the demand" for the "foreseeable future."

What does this mean for gaming, specifically high-profile AAA-style experiences with a focus on immersive and detailed visuals? Well, a fundamental shift in how game developers will approach making games for the "foreseeable future." And with that, game developers will be forced to optimize performance for systems with limited RAM and VRAM.

With the product page now live, AMD has quietly launched a brand-new variant of its mainstream RDNA 4 GPU, the Radeon RX 9060 XT. The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT LP graphics card is a low-power variant that lowers the TDP to 140W, 20W lower than the standard Radeon RX 9060 XT.

The Radeon RX 9060 XT LP is a 16GB model, so it includes 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit interface with a total memory bandwidth of 320 GB/s - the same as the current 160W model. The GPU configuration is also identical with 32 RDNA 4 Compute Units and Ray Accelerators, plus 64 AI Accelerators. It also sports the same Stream Processor count of 2048 with 64 ROPs and 128 Texture Units.

The Radeon RX 9060 XT LP also features DisplayPort .1a and HDMI 2.1b connectivity with hardware-accelerated H264, H265, and AV1 video encoding and decoding. The only thing missing from AMD's product listing is the Boost Clock speed of the new Radeon RX 9060 XT LP variant, so this might be where the difference lies.

We've seen multiple PCIe NVMe SSDs connected on a card connected via a traditional x16 host interface. Microchip Technology's impressive Adaptec SmartRAID 4300 Series RAID storage accelerator card is a little different. The Adaptec SmartRAID 4300 accelerator not only supports up to 32 NVMe SSDs but also provides each drive with a direct channel to the CPU.

This means there aren't any bottlenecks, and each SSD can operate at peak performance, delivering fantastic throughput and IOPS for data-intensive enterprise applications. And today we've got word that KIOXIA SSDs are now compatible with and supported by the Adaptec SmartRAID 4300 Series RAID storage accelerator card.

The verified and compatible list includes KIOXIA's CM7 Series and CD8P Series of data center storage, which are PCIe 5.0- and NVMe 2.0-compliant, as well as KIOXIA's CD8 Series of PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

2026 will be a huge year for Microsoft with some big gaming anniversaries: Xbox turns 20, Bethesda turns 40, and Blizzard turns 35.

Blizzard Entertainment will celebrate its 35th anniversary next year (it will also mark the third year that the games publisher has been a part of Xbox). The division has some pretty big plans set for 2026, including World of Warcraft's anticipated Midnight expansion, as well as a new playable hero with Diablo IV's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion.

Blizzard president Joanna Faries tells Variety that the group is aiming for 2026 to be their biggest yet--on a revenue basis, this is unlikely to happen, as Blizzard's earnings hit their highest point of all time in 2016 with $2.4 billion in revenue.

Earlier this year, KIOXIA introduced the world's first compact 250TB NVMe SSD with its new LC9 Series. As a storage solution that conforms to the 2.5-inch datacenter form-factor standard, KIOXIA achieved this thanks to its 8th Gen BiCS FLASH with CBA (CMOS Directly Bonded to Array) technology. Basically, this means you're getting 32 2-Terabit (Tb) dies stacked together in a way that hasn't been seen before.

Throw in PCIe Gen 5 speeds, and you only need a handful of these SSDs to have a whopping 1 Petabyte of data. This is how one of the latest videos on the popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips begins. Even though we were aware of KIOXIA's LC9 Series of SSDs and the underlying technology, seeing how an SSD like this is made and the sheer amount of cutting-edge technology and impressive engineering that go into it is something else.

With access to KIOXIA's massive Yokkaichi plant in Japan, Linus Sebastian presents an informative and entertaining look at how silicon is transformed into flash memory chips that power SSDs and the everyday tech we use, like smartphones.

Back in September, sources told Bloomberg that Nintendo was phasing out all Switch 2 ROM cartridges except for the expensive 64GB flash models. Now reports indicate that Nintendo has changed its mind and will start selling lower- and middle-tier capacity carts.

Nintendo will reportedly produce lower-capacity Switch 2 game cartridges for developers. Sources have told Nintendeal that Switch 2 ROM carts less than 64GB in size are being manufactured, but there are some downsides that may deter game devs: The carts will still be expensive, because they're made out of similar flash memory, and they'll also be a bit slower than the 64GB models.

"I can confirm that smaller capacity Switch 2 game cards are in production but due to chip shortages it will take time before we see widespread availability. Despite the smaller capacity, these cards will still be expensive due to rising cost of materials. Game-Key Cards are not going away," Nintendeal said on Twitter.

KIOXIA's open-source AiSAQ (All-in-Storage ANNS with Product Quantization) has been a game-changer for running complex AI models by offloading vectorized data from expensive DRAM to SSD storage. With memory limitations and costs playing a significant role in which AI workloads can or cannot run, AiSAQ delivers a low-latency, scalable solution for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines.

This week, KIOXIA announced that AiSAQ has been integrated into Milvus, one of the world's most widely adopted open-source vector databases. Starting with version 2.6.4, AI developers and enterprises can tap into the power of AiSAQ to scale AI applications with SSD storage. With the growth in RAG demands and the size of vector databases for inference, scaling DRAM is often not an option due to the exponential increase in cost.

KIOXIA's open-source AiSAQ is groundbreaking because it dramatically reduces DRAM requirements for running complex AI workloads, opening the door to large-scale system deployment that's more affordable and easier to scale, thanks to large capacity and fast SSD storage.

20th Century Fox has apparently greenlit another game set in the Alien franchise, and the devs of Deus Ex and Tomb Raider could be working on it.

Two Alien games could be in development, and both of them are said to be horror games. New reports from Insider Gaming indicate that a new unannounced Alien project has re-entered development.

The game is described as a singleplayer arcade-like experience with horror survival elements, and gameplay is said to emphasize tactical stealth and puzzle-solving. It's not all passive, though--gamers will get to take on enemies with direct combat as well as platforming elements.

Hogwarts Legacy is one of the fastest-selling video games of all time with 40 million copies sold in less than three years.

WB Games today announced that Hogwarts Legacy has sold 40 million copies across consoles and PC, making it one of the best- and fastest-selling single titles in modern gaming history.

So how does Hogwarts stack up against other games? The single Harry Potter title has actually outsold some entire video game franchises that have been on the market for decades, including the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, Kingdom Hearts, Devil May Cry, and even Sony's Horizon franchise.

Circana's latest games industry report reveals that Electronic Arts currently has 6 out of the 20 top best-selling games in the United States.

EA is enjoying success in the US, where it has captured a top position as the best-selling publisher for the year in terms of dollar sales. According to new data from analyst firm Circana, not only does Battlefield 6 reign as the top-selling game of the year, but EA titles represent nearly one-third of the best-selling games of 2025 in the US.

A quick comparison shows that EA made up 6 out of the 20 best-sellers of the year so far, which runs from January to the end of November. Microsoft/Xbox follow up in second place with 5 titles on the list, and both Take-Two Interactive and Sony Interactive Entertainment/PlayStation have three titles each.

The recent reports of an incoming Xbox PC hybrid system may be affecting current-gen Xbox console sales, at least in the United States.

Things aren't looking great for the games industry. On the heels of significant cutbacks, layoffs, and project cancellations, the US games market just had its worst November console sales in the last 20 years. Typically, this month sparks hardware adoption as the Big 3 will discount their respective machines--but economic pressures have changed buying habits of consumers.

As a result, people simply purchased fewer consoles during November 2025 than previous years. The Xbox Series duo was hit particularly hard, with US-based analyst firm Circana noting that Xbox console sales were down -70% year-over-year. This tidbit needs a bit of context.

The Fallout TV show takes place in the same world and timeline as the games, making it fully canon. This will also be the case for future games, including Fallout 5.

Fallout is everywhere right now with Amazon Prime's second season having just premiered, and Bethesda makes an interesting confirmation that locks the studio as multimedia stewards: The Fallout TV show will affect future Fallout games--and vice-versa.

In a recent interview with the BBC, Bethesda's head honcho Todd Howard confirms that the show will influence new games in the series: "In short, yes. Fallout 5 will be existing in a world where the stories and events of the show happened or are happening. We are taking that into account," Howard said.

Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls 6 seven years ago, and the studio says that it's prepared to spend as much time as it takes on development in order to make the new RPG adventure as good as it possibly can be.

Following Starfield's release in 2023, Bethesda Game Studios is now full steam ahead on The Elder Scrolls 6...but it still could be a while before we actually get to jump into the game world (it's Hammerfell or High Rock, depending on who you ask).

In a new interview with Game Informer, key Bethesda devs give updates on TESVI's development, with Todd Howard himself saying that project overlap and the studio's desire to have a strong creative foundational base of pre-production content and ideas are core reasons on why the game has taken so long to make.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has lost to Electronic Arts' Battlefield 6 for the best-selling game of 2026, with recent data from Circana indicating the latest Battlefield entry continues to top the charts.

The data was released by Mat Piscatella, the Senior Director & Video Game Industry Thought Leader at Circana, who published the above chart on BlueSky, showcasing that Battlefield 6 has maintained its top position on the most-sold chart since it debuted in October this year. The chart states the reporting period is between 1/5/2025 and 11/29/2025, and Battlefield 6 is sitting at the number one spot, followed by NBA 2K26 and then Monster Hunter: Wilds.

In the fourth position is Borderlands 4, followed by EA Sports College Football 26, Madden NFL 26, and then finally in seventh position, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Notably, Black Ops 7 has only been available to purchase since November 14, meaning Battlefield 6 has had more than a month more time to be sold than Black Ops 7. However, given the current climate and market sentiment surrounding Black Ops 7, it wouldn't be surprising if the title only crept up a few spots on the chart before the end of the year.

Steam Machine took the internet by storm when Valve surprised and announced it alongside the new Steam Controller, Steam Frame, and now the startup for the upcoming PC/console hybrid has emerged online.

In a recent post by Brad Lynch to his personal X account, the XR project manager for EOZ VR wrote, "Steam Machine's Startup Video," and in a separate post said the video is official and not a mockup as it was datamined from Steam.

When asked why there was no audio, Lynch wrote that he guesses the video wasn't finished yet. Since this video isn't directly from Valve, or has received multiple verifications from individuals who have seen Valve's upcoming PC/console hybrid boot up, we should still take it with a grain of salt.