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Bungie's new game Marathon won't have any sort of singleplayer campaign, but it will tell a story through its PVP multiplayer.

For the first time in a decade, Bungie has announced a new game. It's called Marathon, and no, it's not a sequel to Bungie's old-school 1990s shooter that predates Halo. It's a colorful and vibrant re-imagining of the series that's entirely focused on PVP. Marathon will have some "deep cut" lore nods to the original game, but this time around the revamp is an extraction shooter.

Instead of relying on a traditional storyline that unfolds through missions and progression, Bungie is leaning more on its core strengths for Marathon's storytelling: Atmospheric worldbuilding, environmental mystery and discovery, gameplay, and evolving world states that unlock as players do certain things in the game.

Capcom's fan-favorite fantasy series is back with Dragon's Dogma 2, a new chapter built in the powerful RE Engine.

Yesterday, Capcom made a splash in PlayStation's gaming showcase by heralding the triumphant return of its Dragon's Dogma series. The game looks to be a premiere highlight in Capcom's pedigree for high-quality games, delivering impressive visuals, visceral-looking combat, and a nice mix of mythical creatures and sword-and-sorcery tropes.

Interestingly enough, the game appears to be developed using artificial intelligence. Nestled in the official gameplay reveal on the PlayStation channel is the following line: "All of these elements are elevated further by the latest in graphics, artificial intelligence (AI) and physics technology to create a truly immersive fantasy world in Dragon's Dogma 2."

Remedy promises to deliver some mind-bending horror with Alan Wake 2, but it won't all be doom and gloom.

During yesterday's PlayStation showcase event, Remedy Entertainment was finally able to show off Alan Wake 2 gameplay. There's some distinct Resident Evil horror vibes going on, and rightly so considering Remedy says AW2 is a survival horror game. The new trailer highlighted some important story beats, like the classic 'writer's story comes true' that we've seen in Stephen King stories like Word Processor of the Gods, or The World of His Own episode of the old Twilight Zone series.

Less predictable is the psychological and positively cerebral transition sequences that were shown in the video, which underline the influence of Remedy's previous Control game. Things are certainly much more dire and horrifying this time...but Alan Wake 2's creative director Sam Lake says the game will have distinct contrast points to break things up.

Sony seeks to disrupt the PlayStation brand with the introduction of live service games and expand onto PC and mobile, but this could lead to identity issues with gaming's largest platform-holder.

Note: This is an opinion article based around specific trends, data points, and observations of the games industry.

Yesterday during its PlayStation Showcase 2023 stream, Sony announced three first-party live service titles:

Alan Wake II has sparked an interesting discussion in the gaming world: Are digital-only games okay if they are cheaper?

During yesterday's PlayStation showcase, Remedy revealed gameplay footage of Alan Wake II and confirmed an October release. The Finnish developer has been incredibly transparent about Alan Wake II and has confirmed the game will be 100% digital and won't have a physical disc-based version.

Alan Wake II becoming a digital exclusive comes as a shock to gamers and preservation enthusiasts, but Remedy justifies this in a number of ways, including the cost of the game. Alan Wake II will cost $59.99 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, which is $10 cheaper than the new $70 baseline price of games for these platforms. The game is also much cheaper on PC and will be sold at $49.99 exclusively on the Epic Games Store.

Surface Pro X owners have doubtless been scratching their heads after the cameras on these devices suddenly stopped working.

The problem? Apparently, Microsoft has been lax and let a security certificate expire, so The Register reports.

The tech site points out the plentiful complaints online (on Reddit, and Microsoft's support site, Answers.com) from users no longer able to use their camera for, say, an important video meeting. Or indeed logging in with Windows Hello.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060 Ti is now on sale, but the graphics card does not seem to be flying off the shelves - but rather trickling.

That's what we can piece together thus far from looking at online retailers, and a couple of things VideoCardz spotted.

The first of which is that the RTX 4060 Ti has already had a price cut below its MSRP in Europe (as flagged up by 3D Center in the above tweet).

SteelSeries has partnered with Blizzard to release a new collection of limited-edition gaming gear inspired by the Diablo universe to celebrate the release of Diablo IV. The gear sees award-winning SteelSeries products given the Diablo treatment, from the Arctis Nova 7 Wireless Headset to an Aerox gaming mouse, mousepad, and even a very cool Artisan Keycap.

With only 2,160 of the Diablo-inspired keycaps being produced, those will likely be snapped up quickly.

And those that purchase the Diablo IV-themed Arctis Nova 7 Wireless, Aerox 5 Wireless, or Thumbsticks Collector's Edition will get access to an exclusive in-game item - a Mount Trophy - explicitly created for this Blizzard and SteelSeries collaboration.

Microsoft is opening things up so more Android app developers can get their wares on Windows 11, if they wish.

Android Police spotted this announcement, which was rather buried in a whole flurry of revelations and changes Microsoft detailed in a lengthy blog post about its Build conference.

Those introductions include native support for dealing with RAR files (and other less common archive formats) and the big announcement of the Windows 11 Copilot AI.

Sony has officially confirmed the existence of a new PlayStation handheld, but it's a far cry from the PS Vita.

During its PlayStation Showcase, Sony confirmed and revealed its new Project Q (aka the Q-Lite) handheld device. Project Q is coming out later this year, and features an 8-inch HD screen (this could mean 720p or 1080p, it depends) and a split DualSense controller. No release date or pricing was announced.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan did confirm Project Q is meant to stream games from your PS5 via Remote Play, so we may not see any kind of PlayStation Plus streaming functionality on the handheld.

Bungie's next game is a new iteration of its old classic Marathon series.

Bungie is going back to the past and tapping one of its old IPs. Today during the PlayStation showcase, the Destiny developer announced a new PVP extraction shooter based in its Marathon series. It'll be a fully cross-platform shooter across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, complete with cross-saves and cross-play.

New data revealed by Sony indicates that most PlayStation Plus subscribers have yet to upgrade to the more expensive Extra and Premium tiers.

In a recent business strategy meeting, Sony highlighted quite a bit of info about the PlayStation brand. One interesting presentation slide revealed a breakdown of PlayStation Plus subscribers by each of the more premium tiers.

Sony confirms that its PlayStation Plus Premium tier is actually doing well, with 8 million Premium subscribers versus 6.1 million Extra subscribers. The Premium subscription, which offers access to hundreds of games as well as cloud streaming on consoles and PC, represents 17% of the total PS Plus userbase, with Extra making up 13%.

PlayStation's peripheral business is growing alongside record-breaking hardware and software earnings.

Accessories are typically an overlooked part of the games industry. Hardware sales and content revenues are at the forefront, but the peripherals market is surprisingly profitable for gaming's largest platform-holder.

Sony's efforts to expand the PS5's lineup with a range of optional accessories are paying off. The company says that its PlayStation 5 accessories range, which includes the $199 DualSense Edge controller, has become very profitable.

Sony is highly confident that the PS5 ecosystem will become the most profitable console generation in PlayStation history.

Sony Interactive Entertainment executive management has lofty ambitions for the PS5. The console remains the central anchor point to Sony's games business, and the company is accelerating its plans to provide significant worldwide console availability and deeper content expansion across the board. Sony is aggressively bullish on the PS5's success, and based on the system's performance, they have every right to be.

In a recent business strategy meeting, SIE exec Eric Lempel had very strong words to describe the PlayStation brand and the PS5 ecosystem itself.

It's official: Sony's second-gen PlayStation VR2 is drastically outpacing the original PSVR headset.

The PlayStation VR2 is off to a good start, at least when compared to first PlayStation VR headset. In a recent business stream to investors, Sony Interactive Entertainment's Epic Lempel confirmed that PSVR2 launch numbers have not only exceeded that of the PSVR1, but the new PS5-powered headset has sold nearly 600,000 units worldwide.

For reference, it took the PSVR1 headset five months to achieve 915,000 unit sales.

Once again, a Meteor Lake mobile chip has been spotted with a new name that contains 'Ultra,' backing up a previous leak and chatter from the grapevine that Intel is ditching its traditional Core naming format.

The CPU in question is the Intel Core Ultra 7 1003H, so the theoretical switch is to call the processor Core Ultra 7 rather than Core i7. Benchleaks spotted this on Twitter, and it's from a PugetBench result.

Previously, we saw a Core Ultra 5 (rather than i5) in a leaked Ashes of the Singularity benchmark, so this is the second time we've seen this potential 'Ultra' branding as mentioned.

Windows 11 now supports a whole new bunch of archive formats, to the relief of many who for years may have been frustrated by the lack of the operating system's ability to cope with the likes of RAR files.

We've all been there. Probably. Somebody sends you a bunch of files compressed in a different way to the standard ZIP archive, and you groan, heading off to try to find a third-party app to gain access to the contents. WinRAR was an old standby in the case of the mentioned RAR format, as many will doubtless recall.

Those hardships are now at an end, though, as at the Build developer conference, Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer and VP Microsoft Devices, announced that Windows 11 is getting support for RAR, TAR, 7-Zip and GZ formats. This will arrive in a new preview build later this week, we're told.

There's a lot of fuss right now about AMD and NVIDIA's new mid-range RDNA 3 and Lovelace graphics cards, with the RTX 4060 Ti just emerging today, and the RX 7600 set to be hot on its heels tomorrow - but what if you want a much more wallet-friendly GPU than either of those?

Well, maybe you should take a look at the third horse in the graphics card race, Intel, because the Arc A750 may not be new, but it has dropped to an all-time-low price.

Tom's Hardware spotted that the Arc A750 is on offer at Newegg currently for $199.99, knocked down from $250 where it was already a solid value proposition (the launch price was $290, you may recall).

Sabrent's new Rocket Q 2230 SSD, available in 2TB capacity, not only fits in Valve's Steam Deck but also delivers exceptional PCIe Gen4 performance and offers enough space to install several games. It's also compatible with the new ASUS ROG Ally PC gaming handheld, so it's a great choice for portable gaming fans.

Sabrent has put the new Rocket Q to the test inside a Steam Deck at its labs, and the results are impressive, with sequential read speeds of over 3,5000 MB/s and write speeds of over 3,200 MB/s. With Valve allowing for game installs to be copied over a network to a Steam Deck, you'll have enough speed to make a dent in the 2TB capacity in no time. Not to mention the benefit of faster load times to get into the action.

Specs-wise, the Rocket Q 2230 SSD offers speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s and 800K IOPS in a small package with 176-layer Micron TLC NAND flash and a fast 12nm Phison E21T SSD controller. Sabrent notes that the Rocket Q 2230 SSD has been designed with portable gaming devices like the Steam Deck, with an eye toward improving load times, capacity, and long-term reliability.

Microsoft has announced that Bing will be the default search engine for ChatGPT users.

The move isn't a surprise, given the partnership between Microsoft and the maker of ChatGPT - the software giant has a big stake in OpenAI, and ChatGPT powers the Bing chatbot.

Going forward, ChatGPT will integrate Bing search, which Microsoft notes will mean a "world-class search engine built-in to provide timelier and more up-to-date answers with access from the web."