Latest News - Page 297

Splitgate 2 developer 1047 Games is hit with layoffs shortly after releasing their F2P shooter, and studio co-founders have suspended their pay amid the reductions.

It looks like Splitgate 2 may not be having a successful launch, at least on PC. SteamDB numbers show Splitgate 2 had a peak of 25.7K on Steam, with about 10K players in the last 24 hours. Conversely, megaton shooters like Counter-Strike 2, PUBG, and Apex Legends accrue over 100,000 players each in a 24-hour period, and some reach over a million players each day.

Coupling this limited data with recent controversy mires things even further for Splitgate 2. The studio was recently criticized for launching the game with expensive microtransactions like an $80 skin bundle, and CEO Ian Proulx triggered backlash for a particular hat he wore this month at the Summer Games Fest.

Nexus Mods is now under new ownership, and the modding community is hoping the old adage "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" rings true here.

Premiere PC mod hosting site Nexus Mods recently changed hands and is currently being run by a new team, with site owner Robin Scott aka Dark0ne citing burnout as the reason for him stepping down. The new owners of the site recently introduced themselves to the community in an announcement post.

Nexus Mods is now owned by Chosen, a somewhat-mysterious figure, who has put together a triumvirate of leaders to run the site: Foledinho, Rapsak, and Taagen, as they're known by their website usernames. The team's reveal post aims to assuage community worries around monetization, ads, and premium subscriptions--will Nexus Mods be bogged down with money-making strategies?

Rumors stated that Xbox and Meta were planning to unveil an Xbox-branded Meta Quest virtual reality headset sometime next week, and now the first leaked image of the device has appeared online.

In an X thread that has since been removed, an image of the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition packaging has been posted, and while the thread no longer exists, it was far too late to stop the spread of the image, as it has been reuploaded now countless times across various social media platforms. The packaging shows a collaborative effort on the product, with it stating "Meta 3S Xbox Edition" on the front, along with "Meta Quest" and "Xbox" in the bottom right-hand corner.

Additionally, the VR headset, while being black, features green accents around the face panel edges, matching the iconic Xbox green hue. Following this leak, more details about the VR headset leaked online, with reports stating it will cost $399, come with three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and feature 128GB of storage. Furthermore, these recent leaks said that the new product will be announced on June 24.

Black Myth: Wukong, an extremely popular Souls-like game developed by Game Science, has finally had its Xbox release date confirmed, with a new trailer published to the Xbox YouTube channel.

Game Science released Black Myth: Wukong on August 20, 2024, and its reception was phenomenal. It gained massive traction on both PC and PlayStation, with players stepping into the shoes of the Destined One, a monkey protagonist based on Sun Wukong from the iconic story Journey to the West. Black Myth: Wukong was praised for its Souls-like combat and mostly linear progression, acquiring several accolades, including Game of the Year awards. Within the first month, it sold 20 million copies, making it one of the fastest-selling games of all time.

That was just on PC and PS5. Black Myth: Wukong is finally coming to Xbox exactly a year later, with the latest trailer confirming a release date for August 20, 2025. Black Myth: Wukong will get its first-ever discount soon, which will include Xbox as well. With a 20% discount from June 18 to July 3 on the PlayStation Store, from June 18 to July 11 on the Microsoft Store, and from June 20 to July 11 on PC (Steam and Epic Games Store). Xbox fans who want to take advantage of the 20% discount will need to pre-order between June 18 and July 11.

Sega has accidentally made public sales data for 11 of its major games in a recent presentation document for its annual management meeting.

The company tried to block out years of sales data for a selection of its titles, but, regretfully for the company, someone decided to just place a gray overlay on top of the sales figures and not erase what was underneath. The information was easily accessible and revealed game sale data of the last six fiscal years, which includes titles such as Sonic, Persona 5 Royal, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and the Like a Dragon franchise.

What was learned from this accidentally leaked sales data is that Persona 5 remains one of Sega's biggest franchises, it has under its umbrella, with Persona 5 Royal moving as many as 7.25 million units over the last six years. Other staple titles for Sega are Sonic Frontiers at 4.57 million units and Sonic Superstars at 2.43 million units. Notably, the sales data below stretches from Fiscal Year 2020 to Fiscal Year 2025 and features 11 of the company's titles.

Action Soulslike Lies of P has achieved noteworthy success with 3 million copies sold, publisher NeoWiz has announced.

Released in 2023, hack-and-slash action game Lies of P was instantly recognized among gamers for its fast-paced gameplay and imaginative, tough boss fights. It quickly became a breakout hit for Korean games publisher NeoWiz, and in less than two years on the market, Lies of P has now sold 3 million units across all platforms.

The news comes shortly after a new expansion, Overture, was released for Lies of P earlier this month. The Overture DLC is currently reviewing favorably among fans.

Chinese gamers make up more than half of Stellar Blade's breakout PC sales, analyst firm Alinea Analytics estimate.

Stellar Blade is smashing success on PC, with the game selling over 1 million copies on Steam within 3 days. The game's breakout performance on PC helped push total cross-platform sales to 3 million. This means that about one-third of the franchise's sales were made in this short PC launch window.

According to new data from Alinea Analytics, most of these new PC game sales were made in China, underlining the region's healthy appetite for action-based hack-and-slash games.

NetEase Games and 24 Entertainment have just unveiled a new cinematic, single-player, linear, story-driven, action-adventure title, and it takes players along a journey of survival and loyalty during the Dunhuang uprising. Introducing Blood Message.

Blood Message is currently in development for both PC and consoles and is powered by Unreal Engine 5, with enhanced proprietary tools from 24 Entertainment. As explained in the press release for the game, Blood Message is NetEase's first AAA single-player title, with the game blending brutal survival combat with Eastern storytelling. Players will step into the shoes of a nameless messenger and his young son, who are caught in the middle of a righteous uprising.

The nameless messenger and the son are driven by loyalty to both their family and their country as they begin a treacherous journey eastward to deliver a message that holds the fate of their homeland. The game is set during the final years of the Tang Dynasty, and players will journey approximately one-thousand miles to their destination of Chang'an, which is the heart of the Tang Empire.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the first game in the Onimusha series in decades, but that doesn't mean Capcom will chase the current modern gaming trends.

Just because Capcom's new Onimusha game has samurai fighting with swords in third-person combat doesn't mean it'll be a soulslike. Way of the Sword isn't about using grit, strategy, and luck to conquer bosses in a grueling gauntlet of skill. The new Onimusha game is more nuanced in its swordplay than dodge-and-attack mechanics, focusing on striking, clashing, and evading--and the series' trademark Issen critical strikes are also back for Way of the Sword.

"Onimusha: Way of the Sword isn't an open-world game, and it certainly isn't a punishing die-and-retry (soulslike) game either," game director Satoru Nihei said in a recent interview with Automaton.

It's official: Borderlands 4 will have a radar at launch.

When Gearbox revealed Borderlands 4, one of the biggest complaints was the lack of an on-screen radar that showed enemy locations. The other Borderlands games had a radar, so why not this one? Radars have slowly disappeared from the public eye over the years, but they're important tools for FPS games, and Borderlands fans apparently like the mechanic.

The studio is listening and decided to add radars back into Borderlands 4. Gearbox's Randy Pitchford revealed the news today in a lengthy Twitter thread while also discussing why radars weren't in the game to start. The feature will be off by default and gamers will have to toggle combat radar within the settings menu.

Developer ShiftUp says that Stellar Blade is the best-selling Korean singleplayer game ever, and shows the game sold one-third of its total copies in just 3 days.

Stellar Blade is a big hit for both Sony and Korean games developer ShiftUp. Thanks to the recent PC release, Stellar Blade has now sold over 3 million on both PlayStation 5 and PC combined. Over 1 million of these sales were made on PC in a three-day period, the developer has announced.

These sales metrics are explosive for ShiftUp. To put things into perspective, Stellar Blade's PC version sold as many copies as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 did across a 3-day span, but games like Elden Ring Nightreign moved 2 million copies in 1 day. Stellar Blade's sales also unlock an interesting milestone for Korea. According to ShiftUp, Stellar Blade is the best-performing singleplayer game that was made domestically, which makes sense, as online games are more popular in Korea.

In a recent interview, CD Projekt Red has claimed it's aware that fans are expecting big things from The Witcher 4, as there has been an entire generation of consoles between The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 4.

Jan Hermanowicz, the engineering production manager on The Witcher 4 tech demo that was recently showcased at Unreal Fest, explained to the publication that CDPR is adapting to the "generational shift when it comes to hardware, engines, and technology between The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 4." With new and much more powerful hardware at the disposal of the developer, Hermanowicz says CDPR intends to "take full advantage of it and really deliver the next-gen experience."

How is CDPR going to get there? Hermanowicz says that for the recent Witcher 4 tech demo, and specifically the part where the developer showcased how many NPCs can be in one small village at any given time, the team studied the inhabitants of Novigrad in The Witcher 3, with Hermanowicz saying that by looking at extensive footage of The Witcher 3's villages and cities they were able to determine what wasn't possible during the development of that game, and what they can now add to The Witcher 4.

Microsoft has been adding new features and quality of life improvements to Snipping Tool recently, and now a new feature is on its way - GIF making.

The new GIF tool is tied to the screen recording feature currently available in Snipping Tool on Windows 11, and will enable users to select an area of their desktop they intend to record and create a GIF. The feature will automatically record the selected area for no longer than 30 seconds and create a new GIF, which can then be shared onto social media platforms, or kept for personal use.

The new feature is currently being tested in the Canary and Dev Channels of Windows 11, meaning it will likely be rolled out to the public within the coming weeks/months. Notably, the new GIF maker will give users the option of selecting between "Low" and "High" quality GIF videos, which will change the resolution of the GIF from low to high, depending on the selected option.

Welp... one of the largest data breaches in history has just happened, with 16 billion (yes, with a 'b') accounts exposed.

Cybernews is the team responsible for IDing and cataloging a large number of major leaks in the past, assembling the datasets that make up the new 16 billion accounts leaked. Just a single dataset from the breach represents 184 million records, which was previously reported by Wired. The rest of them are all new from across the globe, including three distinct batches that had over 1 billion credentials in each of them.

The 16 billion accounts breached were uncovered by security researchers in January 2025, with the largest batch of the leaks sourced from Portuguese-speaking populations that contained 3.5 billion credentials, with other large batches named after Russian logins, Telegram logins, and a bunch of mostly generic names.

Xenia, an Xbox 360 emulator developer, has responded to the claims that it's working with Microsoft to bring Xbox 360 games to PC.

The leak comes from YouTuber Extas1s, who stated a source who he says works directly at Microsoft informed him that Microsoft is currently working on bringing Xbox 360 and original Xbox games to PC and handheld devices via a new advanced emulator. Extas1s also stated that Microsoft is currently working with Xenia, the creators of the open-source Xbox 360 emulator that is available on PC. However, Xenia has since responded to those claims and denied any involvement with Microsoft.

In the official Discord server for Xenia, members of the team stated, "It's not real. Microsoft has their own Xbox 360 emulator, they'd never even consult Xenia." Adding, "If it was real I'd be under an NDA." Extas1s has since doubled down on his claims, writing in a recent X post that Xenia is currently under an NDA, and "don't worry, we'll see it in 2026," which is in reference to the initial claim that Microsoft is going to unveil this advanced emulation platform next year.

Samsung is expected to unveil its new "Project Moohan" XR headset in the months ahead, a new XR headset created in collaboration with Google and Qualcomm.

The first appearance of Samsung's new XR headset codenamed Project Moohan was teased during Galaxy Unpacked at CES 2025, and again at Mobile World Congress 2025. Samsung went as far as offering live demos to select partners and media, in order to highlight its XR headset in its final stages.

In a new report from Korean outlet Newspin, Samsung is expected to unveil its Android XR headset codenamed Project Moohan, at its Unpacked event in South Korea on September 29, with a release in South Korea on October 13, after which we'll see the global launch of Samsung's new XR headset.

Google will announce its next-generation Pixel 10 family of smartphones later this year, the first time that it will power its Android-based smartphones with its in-house Tensor G5 processor, which will be mass-produced by TSMC and not Samsung, leaving Samsung scratching its head as to how it lost that big contract.

Google's new in-house Tensor G5 processors will be fabricated on TSMC's new N3E process node using InFO-POP packaging, and Samsung isn't happy about it. According to new reports from The Bell picked up by @Jukanlosreve, Samsung is now "intensively analyzing" why Google made the switch from Samsung Foundry to TSMC... yet it's not so surprising given the South Korean giant has been stumbling with its semiconductor process.

Samsung Foundry reportedly held a strategic meeting to focus on "Why We Lost Google" to TSMC, especially after Samsung and Google have long collaborated together, but then Google did something that Samsung didn't like: made its in-house Tensor SoC project with Samsung, motivated by Samsung's in-house Exynos chips.

OpenAI is cooking up its new AI model, GPT-5, for later this summer according to CEO Sam Altman.

The news of OpenAI's new GPT-5 model came directly from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during a new company podcast, where Altman said GPT-5 was coming this summer, without being specific on a date. OpenAI is facing increased competition from other AI models, with Business Insider reporting that GPT-5 will be a big upgrade over the current GPT-4 model, with early testers calling it "materially better".

OpenAI's main source of revenue comes from enterprise customers purchasing the more powerful version of ChatGPT, with the company's new GPT-5 model aiming to be the next big thing to maintain that momentum.

Battlefield Labs is getting a big upgrade today which introduces new features into the test version, including support for NVIDIA DLSS 4 upscaling and more.

The new Battlefield Labs update was reported on the official Battlefield subreddit, with the new patch pushed live a few hours ago. The update includes DLSS 4 support, the option to turn off the border around the capture zone, and more. The new update tweaks the watermark from "PRE ALPHA" to "ALPHA" as well as teasing new files related to the Battle Royale mode.

We are also promised some news coming soon about the class system in the game, which shouldn't be too much further away given that the next-gen Battlefield has moved from its "pre-alpha" stage to the "alpha" stage. We've seen plenty of leaked footage and gameplay of the game, where the new Battlefield will not only have its traditional multiplayer mode, but also a single-player campaign that has been developed by Motive Studios, the developer behind the Dead Space remake from last year, and will be influenced by TV shows and movies including Lioness and Civil War.

ASUS has just announced its new Pro WS Platinum series power supplies, available in 3000W, 2200W, and 1600W variants, capable of powering multiple NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series or RTX PRO 6000 graphics cards.

The new family of ASUS Pro WS Platinum PSUs features 12V-2x6 power connectors that have been upgraded with gold-plated copper pins for cooler operation, increased durability, and improved power delivery efficiency. Inside, the new high-end PSUs sport dual-ball fan bearings and extruding aluminum heatsinks for longer-lasting performance, all in a compact design, and a huge 10-year warranty.

ASUS says that if your workstation is in need of some serious power for 3D rendering or next-gen AI workloads, its new Pro WS Platinum PSUs each provide a different power ceiling -- 3000W, 2200W, or 1600W -- so you can choose the power supply specific to your needs. If you want the monster 3000W PSU, it'll handle 4 x RTX 5090 graphics cards, the 2200W model can handle 4 x RTX 5080s, while the 1600W PSU will support 2 x RTX 5090 graphics cards.