Latest News - Page 349

Bungie has unveiled its new extraction shooter Marathon and it has been received with mixed opinions from gamers, some calling it a project that's dead on arrival, and others saying it looks like an interesting take on the extraction shooter genre.

The contentious nature of the project has sparked a debate among gamers, with some comparing Marathon to Concord, the disastrous Sony title that launched to less than 2,000 concurrent players and failed to hit critical mass, resulting in Sony having to refund all buyers of the title and shelf the entire game. As a result, the developers of Concord, Firewalk Studios, were shut down.

Now, a former Concord developer has commented on the debate surrounding Marathon by taking to Reddit to plead with gamers not to judge Marathon too quickly without having first played it, while simultaneously saying not to punish Bungie for Concord's failure.

The impact of the Trump tariffs on the gaming market has already begun to be felt in select regions, as Sony has confirmed the price of its PlayStation 5 has increased by 25%.

Sony has officially raised the price of its PlayStation 5 console hardware in the following regions: UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, with the company saying it was a "tough decision," but cited "a challenging economic environment, including high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates." Sony manufactures its PlayStation 5 hardware in China, which is currently facing a 145% tariff on imports to the US, with the PS5 not being subjected to Trump's tariff exception that was announced on Friday.

The PS5 Digital Edition has been hit the hardest by the price increase, rising in all four of the previously stated markets to varying degrees depending on the region. Notably, the price of the PS5 standard edition is only increasing in Australia and New Zealand, and not by as much as the digital edition in other regions. Surprisingly, Sony has decreased the price of its add-on disc drive accessory. Below I have listed the all of the price increases, the percentage of which they have increased and the region.

The internet has been set ablaze by the leaks of Oblivion Remastered, especially since neither Microsoft nor Bethesda has officially recognized the title.

Despite the lack of official confirmation, the remaster of Oblivion is undoubtedly real, as the leaked images came from the developer of the game Virtuous's website. The images showed a side-by-side comparison between the old 2006 game and the upcoming remastered version. It should be noted this isn't a Remake, but a Remaster, meaning we can expect the same game with visual and performance upgrades, modernized combat, stealth, and many of the same original elements and engine quirks. That doesn't rule out the possibility of additional content, just makes it less likely.

So, where is Oblivion Remastered going to land when it launches? The leaks indicate it will be coming to PC, Xbox, and PS5. However, Bethesda hasn't confirmed that. But, we can assume it will at the very least be arriving on PC and Xbox via Game Pass, considering Microsoft now owns Bethesda.

Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II Remastered is available now on PC. It brings visual upgrades to the game alongside various optimizations for PC, including support for ultrawide displays and DLSS. It's one of the most impressive-looking titles out there, with incredible detail, art direction, and animation. However, as it's a port of the PlayStation 5 version of the game by Sony studio Nixxes, it doesn't feature any native ray-tracing features.

However, thanks to Beyond Dreams, we've got a look at the game with the 'Complete RT' ray-tracing mod. This mod, which uses screen-space lighting information to deliver ray-traced global illumination and ambient occlusion, offers an impressive look at what The Last of Us Part II Remastered with native ray-tracing might look like.

This custom ray-tracing mod looks stunning in the 8K gameplay video above, captured on a GeForce RTX 5090.

One of last year's most talked about and played games, Black Myth: Wukong, is finally adding DLSS 4 support. This includes the new transformer AI model for Super Resolution alongside Multi Frame Generation for the GeForce RTX 50 Series of cards. The update isn't available yet on Steam, though developer Game Science has noted that it will be rolling out to all storefronts in the coming days.

As part of its weekly DLSS article, NVIDIA has provided DLSS with Multi Frame Generation benchmark results captured at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p, covering the full GeForce RTX 50 Series line-up, including the new GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, which will launch tomorrow. With Full Ray Tracing and max settings, the new RTX 5060 Ti hits 149.2 FPS at 1080p and 99.7 FPS at 1440p.

Interestingly, the charts state that Multi Frame Generation was paired with the older CNN model for DLSS Super Resolution. This is a little strange, which probably means the performance we see here will be slightly lower with the new AI transformer model - as it's more computationally heavy than the CNN model.

One of the Nintendo Switch 2 launch titles is called Welcome Tour, a game designed to inform owners of Switch 2 how to utilize all of its features. While the game, or more accurately speaking, virtual manual was somewhat well-received during the presentation, the joy quickly turned to ash when Nintendo revealed it would cost $10.

Nintendo fans' uproar about the pricing of Welcome Tour has been anything but quiet. Many fans compare the launch title to Astro's Playroom from Sony, a free built-in game designed to essentially do the same thing - familiarize new system owners with all of the controls and its capabilities. Nintendo's decision to charge $10 for Welcome Tour has become a real point of contention for Nintendo fans, with many accusing the company of simply being greedy.

However, Nintendo has justified its decision to charge $10 for the title, with Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser saying Welcome Tour's mini-games have a lot of replayability. Below is the full quote from Bowser.

be quiet!, the German hardware company behind some impressive PC components is expanding into the peripheral market with a pair of new premium mechanical keyboards - the Dark Mount and Light Mount. The company has approached creating keyboards with the same focus it brings to all its products - precision, comfort, and durability.

Both the Dark Mount and Light Mount will ship with the company's in-house developed Silent Switches, available in linear or tactile variants. The linear style is for smooth keystrokes for gaming, while the tactile style is for those who want that bump without sacrificing accuracy or responsiveness. The switches and stabilizers both arrive pre-lubricated and are hot-swappable for customization.

They're called Silent Switches because of the three-layer dampening system, which includes silicone on the Dark Mount and foam on the Light Mount keyboard. The Dark Mount keyboard is the flagship model, and for good reason. It includes a hot-swappable Numpad and Media Dock, which we haven't seen before. It also features eight customizable Display Keys - eash with a 140x140 pixel resolution.

ASUS has unveiled a new ROG gaming monitor tailored to a specific type of gamer. Its stunningly fast refresh rate of 610Hz is a first for ASUS.

The ROG XG248Q5G-P is a 24.1-inch monitor that was unveiled at ROG Day. It features a 610Hz refresh rate, and as you can probably imagine, this monitor is geared directly toward gamers who essentially only care about the number of frames per second they can get in a game. The ROG XG248Q5G-P uses a Super TN panel to achieve this ridiculous refresh rate, which also requires a degree of overclocking. With it being a TN panel, color accuracy isn't fantastic, with ASUS stating the panel achieves 90% DCI-P3 color coverage.

Gamers considering this monitor, or anything that's equivalent, probably don't care too much about the color accuracy of their panel. Keeping to the specifications, the ROG XG248Q5G-P has a 0.1ms GtG response time, and actually features three refresh rate modes. The first starts at 240Hz, the second 480Hz, and the last is the overclocked mode at 610Hz. Wondering about the resolution? The ROG XG248Q5G-P has a 1920 x 1080p resolution, and features the following connectivity options: HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and an audio jack.

Rockstar Games has posted a new trailer to its YouTube channel, but it's unfortunately not the trailer everyone has been hoping for, which is, of course, the second Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer.

The developer behind the esteemed Grand Theft Auto franchise has announced GTA V Enhanced, a free update to all PC owners of the title that will come with a slew of technical improvements, including ray-traced shadows and reflections, and PC-only features such as ray-traced ambient occlusion and global illumination. Moreover, the enhanced version of GTA V will come with support for NVIDIA DLSS and AMD's FSR.

In addition to technical upgrades, GTA V Enhanced will include improvements to GTA Online, such as new vehicle upgrades, the ability to track progress and unlock rewards across all of GTA Online's updates with Career Progress, and more high-performance vehicles. Rockstar has also introduced Career Builder for new GTA Online players, which enables players to select from one of four different criminal career paths, such as "Executive, Gunrunner, Nightclub Owner, or Biker." More information on the GTA V Enhanced can be found here.

OneXPlayer has just introduced what could be the world's first gaming handheld with an Intel Core Ultra-H series processor, with the convertible debuting as the X1 Pro Gaming Tablet EVA Asuka Limited Edition.

Inside, we have the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor, with OneXPlayer introducing its new gaming tablet in the form of the X1 Pro Asuka Limited Edition with an anime-themed design on the exterior. Intel's new Core Ultra 7 255H processor features 16 cores, which is twice the amount of cores than Lunar Lake APUs, and a more powerful integrated GPU solution with Arc 140T graphics.

OneXPlayer is using a larger 10.95-inch LTPS display with a native 2560 x 1600 resolution and super-smooth 120Hz refresh rate, with up to 540 nits of brightness. This is a convertible tablet, meaning it can be converted into 3 different setups: a gaming handheld with controllers on the side, a laptop, or a simple screen with a kickstand if you want to play with detatched controllers.

Jagex has surprised fans by releasing its new RuneScape spin-off into early access today.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds, the MMO-adjacent 4-player survival sim from Jagex, is now available in Steam Early Access for $30. The new RPG mixes magic, player creation, hack-and-slash combat, and third-person survival crafting mechanics together within a fantasy world filled with lore, danger, and loot. Jagex says Dragonwilds is built on three main pillars: Exploring, surviving, and thriving.

Jagex's recent developer deep dive video highlights what sets Dragonwilds apart from other survival games, with the devs saying that magic was a core component to the game's formula. There's several abilities in Dragonwilds that are inspired by Runescape magic and are meant to offer convenience and save time--for example, in the footage we see a player summon a spectral axe and cut down multiple trees at once.

A major component supplier of the Nintendo Switch 2 has warned Nintendo to expect a price increase for the Nintendo Switch 2 as Trump's tariffs have impacted the supply chain.

According to Nikkei Asia, which VGC has corroborated, Nintendo has received a report from a major components manufacturer informing them to expect a significant hit in importing goods to the US due to Trump's 145% tariff on China. For those who don't know, Nintendo manufactures the vast majority of its Nintendo Switch 2 units in China, despite trying to relocate its upcoming console manufacturing to Vietnam. Nintendo currently manufactures Switch 2 units in Vietnam, but they only make up a small portion of the total manufacturing of the console.

When Nintendo fully announced the Switch 2, the company stated that the standard console would cost $449, with a limited-edition Mario Kart World bundle costing $499. Those prices have now been thrown into question as Nintendo officially delayed the pre-orders for the new console due to Trump's tariffs, which were first introduced only a day after Nintendo unveiled the Switch 2 price.

Rematch is a soccer game that's been causing quite a stir of late - comparisons drawn to Rocket League certainly haven't hurt - and it now has a launch date, price, plus we've had the announcement of an imminent open beta.

The game looks promising and is made by Sloclap (who developed Sifu, so this is quite a change in direction). It's coming on Xbox, PlayStation 5 and PC platforms on June 19, priced at $29.99, with the open beta starting on April 18 (and registration for that is live now, should you wish to sign up).

PC Gamer recently took Rematch for a hands-on (or feet-on, perhaps) spin and had some high praise for this soccer outing, which can be played 3v3 or 4v4, as well as 5v5.

Microsoft has confirmed that there's a bug in Outlook for Microsoft 365 - the classic version of the email app, that is - and it's an odd one that can ramp up the workload on your CPU.

Yes, for some business users, just typing an email message in classic Outlook can cause their processor fan to suddenly kick up a notch and spin faster to cope with a 30% to 50% usage spike, as Microsoft describes it.

Commonly users report around the lower end of that spike, but still, it's pretty alarming to have this happening when just typing some letters on your keyboard.

Alongside the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, NVIDIA has announced that the mainstream GeForce RTX 5060 will launch in May, starting from $299. With an MSRP of $299, NVIDIA is keeping the RTX 5070 price in line with the RTX 4060's launch price while also being cheaper than the RTX 2060 and RTX 3060 when they launched. In the current economic climate, this is impressive stuff; however, it remains to be seen how this translates to on-shelf pricing.

As for performance, the GeForce RTX 5060 is set to be a 1080p gaming powerhouse, delivering 100+ FPS in some of the most demanding titles. With max settings using DLSS Quality mode with Multi Frame Generation enabled, this translates to 114 FPS in Alan Wake 2, 130 FPS in Black Myth: Wukong, and even 130 FPS in the impressive Half-Life 2 RTX Remix demo.

NVIDIA notes that with Multi Frame Generation, the GeForce RTX 5060 can double the performance of the GeForce RTX 4060 while also lowering the latency. The following chart showcases the official GeForce RTX 5060 benchmark performance, with a couple of titles showcasing what to expect with Multi Frame Generation disabled.

NVIDIA has officially announced the GeForce RTX 5060 Series, with the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti launching on April 16. As the rumors have hinted, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti will arrive in two flavors - 8GB or 16GB of GDDR7 on a 128-bit bus that delivers roughly double the memory bandwidth of the RTX 4060 Ti. With prices starting from $379 and $429, these mainstream RTX Blackwell GPUs benefit from the new architecture and the arrival of DLSS 4.

NVIDIA has released a single performance chart for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, which you can see above. The chart compares its performance to the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 3060 Ti for 1440p gaming. Yes, the chart includes Multi Frame Generation, exclusive to the RTX 50 Series. Delivering 2X the frame rate with lower latency, it can deliver massive improvements to performance in games like Alan Wake 2, Black Myth: Wukong, and Cyberpunk 2077.

The chart includes two games running with like-for-like settings - Delta Force and A Plague Tale: Requiem. It shows a 20% or so performance improvement for the RTX 5060 Ti compared to the RTX 4060 Ti, which is good to see and a similar performance jump when looking at the RTX 4070 compared to the new RTX 5070.

Rumors continue to swirl about the potential Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake, and as well as some leaked screenshots (obviously add your own seasoning there), we've now heard something direct from Bethesda on X - and while it's far from confirmation, it's not a denial either, which has again prompted excitement from gamers.

Check the above post (flagged by The Gamer, via Rock Paper Shotgun) to peruse the exchange between a denizen of X called J Cosmic and the Bethesda Support account.

As you can see, the support rep believes the poster is talking about the existing version of Oblivion, when in fact they mean the remake.

Bethesda's highly anticipated remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been making headlines of late thanks to rumors that the game is set to get a surprise shadow drop announcement and reveal next week. Well, it looks like that's the case, as screenshots of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered have appeared online, showcasing the massive upgrade to the game's visuals.

The source of the leaks is Virtuos, a game development support studio that has worked on Dark Souls: Remastered, Dune: Awakening, Sea of Thieves, and many more titles. Someone spotted a bunch of screenshots and images for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered uploaded to the studio's website that weren't secured. Whoops.

The screenshots, which look to be from the announcement trailer and a dedicated page that will go up for the remake, showcase some of the stunning visual upgrades the 2006 original is getting. The difference to the Cyrodiil landscape is night and day, with fantastic lighting and detail everywhere.

It's no surprise the number of stolen phones is on the rise, considering how ingrained smartphones have become in today's society. With everyone depending on their device, much of a user's identity is attached to it, which means it can be stolen along with the smartphone.

Between April 2024 and April 2025, global monthly searches for "report stolen phone" increased by 3.5%, increasing from 2,900 to 3,000. While these numbers are relatively small compared to the number of people with smartphones, it's worth taking the necessary precautions to prevent identity theft if you ever become one of those statistics. Below is a list of hidden iPhone settings that you can enable to reduce the chances of your identity being stolen.

Phone snatching often occurs while the device is in active use and unlocked. Reducing your auto-lock time limits the window of opportunity for a thief to access your personal data.

Valve's Steam has been around since 2003, and my first memory of the app is installing it to play Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. However, it wasn't until around 2008 that it became widely used as a digital storefront for purchasing games and creating a digital library - subsequently exploding in the 2010s as the go-to platform for PC gaming.

Like many PC gamers who have been gaming for over a decade, my Steam library contains hundreds of games, with many acquired during some of the platform's legendary Steam Sales. And with my recent acquisition of the excellent Steam Deck OLED gaming handheld last year, that trend of buying new stuff to play isn't going to stop anytime soon.

As spotted by Reddit user trotski94 (via PC Gamer), there's actually a straightforward way to check how much money you've spent buying PC games on Steam. This isn't one of those tools that gives you the total value of your game library; it's a dollar sign number outlining all the money you've spent on the platform.