Gaming

After deliberating with several companies, Apple has selected Google to provide the new "brain" for Apple's next-generation Siri slated to be released sometime in 2026.

Apple is incredibly far behind its competition when it comes to providing useful AI-powered software features across its range of products, with the company even failing to fulfill its promise to release a next-generation Siri capable of integrating throughout all of Apple's native applications. Apple even quietly removed an advertisement for the upgraded Siri that featured Game of Thrones and The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey.

Why is Apple so far behind in producing a competitive in-house AI model? Several technical difficulties, combined with the product not meeting Apple's exceptionally high standards for uniformity across its range of other products and services, are contributing factors. Apple has recognized that it's significantly behind the competition, such as Google's Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Anthropic, and in June 2024 the company announced it was integrating ChatGPT for any prompts that couldn't be completed by Apple's on-device AI model.

Over on social media, an account named XBOX INFINITE posted an alleged screenshot from Forza Horizon 5 that includes pre-order details for Forza Horizon 6, ahead of its big Xbox Developer Direct presentation next week. Apparently, the pop-up appeared in-game, and the pre-order information included the game's release date.

Sources close to gaming publication VGC and tech outlet The Verge have apparently confirmed the release date or release window for the game as seen here as accurate, even though this appears to be the only recorded instance of a Forza Horizon 5 player being shown this Forza Horizon 6 pre-order pop-up. The release date is May 19, 2026, with Early Access available on May 15 for Premium Edition buyers.

This date applies to the Xbox Series X|S and PC versions of the game, as Microsoft has previously confirmed that the PS5 version will arrive at a later date. Forza Horizon 6 is the highly anticipated new open-world racing game from Xbox and Playground Games, with this latest installment shifting the racing action to Japan.

The current DRAM crisis is affecting all aspects of the PC industry, and right now, the rising cost of components like DDR5 memory is making the prospect of building a new rig or upgrading out of the question for many. And with GPU prices expected to rise in the coming months, there's a sense that PC gamers are going to have to make do with what they've got or can pick up for a reasonable price.

Yesterday, we reported on a rumor that NVIDIA would focus on delivering more 8GB GPUs, such as the GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti, to the market this year. The big concern here is that 8GB will remain a bottleneck for gaming with higher graphics settings; however, the arrival of RTX Neural Texture Compression could be the relief the VRAM-constrained PC gaming market needs.

Part of NVIDIA's RTX Neural Shaders SDK for developers, the RTX Neural Texture Compression SDK leverages AI to "significantly" compress textures while maintaining image quality. And the latest 0.9 update from NVIDIA has sped up encoding by a factor of 6X, while reducing latency and saving up to 7X the memory footprint allocated for high-resolution textures.

Announced at CES 2026 and immediately made available as part of a Beta branch of the NVIDIA App, DLSS 4.5 has quickly exited its preview phase and is now available for all GeForce RTX gamers with the latest NVIDIA App update. DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution includes a second-generation Transformer model, five times as powerful as DLSS 4, that delivers notable improvements to lighting, motion clarity, and image detail.

NVIDIA notes that the app's DLSS Override mode has been updated with a new 'Recommended' setting that overrides Preset M with DLSS 4.5 Performance mode, and Preset L changes to DLSS Ultra Performance mode for 4K gaming. Due to the performance hit from using the newer, more complex model, NVIDIA notes that both the older and newer Transformer models are supported in both Quality and Balanced modes.

Although available for GeForce RTX 20 and RTX 30 Series graphics cards, DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution has "a heavier performance impact for these GPUs" due to the lack of native FP8 support. Although it's great to see this level of detail and control over which DLSS models to use for Super Resolution, there is a sense that the complexity will mean users will need to experiment to find the right balance between image quality and performance.

PS5 Pro owners, set your phasers to stun - as in a renewed and hopefully stunning level of image quality - because the next-gen version of PSSR is set to land in the next couple of months according to a new rumor.

As Wccftech spotted, the latest chatter on the subject of PSSR2 comes from Gust_FAN on X, who posted to say that the "update will be available between January and March".

In other words, Q1 2026, and this marries with what we've previously heard from another source, YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead. Gust_FAN is a Japanese insider and a generally reliable source with something of a track record, as Wccftech points out, and the same holds true for Moore's Law is Dead (at least in my book, although not everyone agrees on Reddit, ahem).

Rockstar Games may be testing a 32-player mode for GTA 6's online component, new court documents reveal.

The first details of GTA 6's online mode may have been inadvertently revealed as part of an ongoing court case. Rockstar North recently fired multiple employees for allegedly divulging information in a Discord chat room. The employees brought the matter before the courts, and it appears some of what was said by the fired employees has been revealed.

According to the court documents, which were viewed by People Make Games, one fired Rockstar employee had mentioned doing a playtest session of 32 players in the Discord. channel. The developer said: "Absolutely no idea, they mentioned the large session we did today 'being difficult to do' but that was 32 players, not sure how that was difficult."

The president of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa, has been questioned on the RAM pricing crisis and how that might affect the Switch 2 - and the swift answer is it won't, at least for the time being.

Furukawa was interviewed by Kyoto Shimbun, a daily newspaper in Japan (Kyoto, as you might guess) on a range of topics related to Nintendo, in a paywalled article translated by VGC (as flagged by TechRadar).

The Nintendo president was asked about the challenges posed by the lower profit margin on the Switch 2 compared to its predecessor, and noted that these things depend on "component procurement conditions" as well as the impact of global currency fluctuations and tariffs.

Call of Duty could be available on the Nintendo Switch 2 sooner than gamers had hoped, and it might debut on the handheld imminently based on a fresh rumor.

We know that Call of Duty is inbound for the portable, the main question is the timeframe, and apparently it's closer to hand than expected based on some fresh revelations courtesy of data mining.

As Eurogamer reports, Reality posted on X (see above) to say that the game is imminent for the Switch 2, and should be part of the next round of Nintendo announcements.

Valve's Steam just set a new concurrent player record with over 42 million users (42,042,778 to be exact) logging into the platform on January 11, 2026. Breaking the previous record of 41.6 million set in October 2025, this new milestone isn't tied to any specific game release, so, outside of it occurring during the tail-end of the holiday season, it's indicative of Steam's continued growth as the premier PC gaming platform.

Naturally, the record was set over the weekend, when most gamers jump in to play. The latest figures and records come from SteamDB, which also showcased Steam's growing user base mapped over the past decade. The chart shows that Steam's popularity has effectively doubled since 2020, rising from around 20 million concurrent users to over 40 million.

According to the report, out of the over 42 million users logged into Steam, over 13 million were playing games at the time.

Intel launched its new Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" CPUs at CES 2026 last week, and it looks like the new Panther Lake-powered gaming handhelds should offer performance close to what we'll see out of Sony's next-gen PlayStation 6 handheld.

In a new post on X by leaker @Kepler_L2 who posted: "PTL handhelds might be a great ballpark estimate for how PS6 Handheld will perform/how PS5 games can be scaled down to very low TDP. Z2E is too slow and Strix Halo is too fast, but PTL @ 30W should be very similar to Canis @ 15W".

Panther Lake has a fantastic integrated GPU in the form of the Arc B390 with 12 Xe3 GPU cores that provides some great performance, a good chunk of CPU cores, and the NPU. In its handheld SKU form, we should expect Intel to cut the fat (NPU) and keep the gold (CPU + GPU) and then it can be fully unleashed for next-gen gaming handhelds.

Baldur's Gate 3 would have come to the Nintendo Switch 2 if it was up to Larian Studios, but that much-wanted port will not be happening, the developer has confirmed.

You may recall that rumors were swirling late last year about such a port for the Switch 2, and the topic came up in a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' (AMA) session, as Gamespot noticed.

As you can see in the thread above, Larian's founder and CEO Swen Vincke chimed in to say:

GameStop is officially closing as many as 400 retail locations across the United States, as part of the company's stringent cost-saving method.

A GameStop may be closing around you, with a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing revealing the company is anticipating the closure of a significant number of stores in fiscal 2025. The same filing revealed that GameStop would pay out GameStop's CEO, Ryan Cohen, up to $35 billion in stock options if he is able to increase the company's market cap to $100 billion.

The US isn't the only place GameStop intends to make physical store closures, with plans also in place to reduce physical stores in both Canada and European countries. Since the stock spike in 2021, GameStop has really struggled to adapt to the exponentially growing digital landscape for video game purchasing, with many gamers now turning to services such as Steam, Xbox Store, and the PlayStation Store over making a trip to a local GameStop.

Valve revealed the Steam Machine in November last year, with the announcement stating the new device was to arrive sometime in 2026.

One of the biggest points of the Steam Machine's unveiling video and following interviews Valve conducted with the press was affordability and ease of use. Valve hasn't officially said how much the Steam Machine will be, and since the unveiling speculation has been all over the place with some hoping for approximately $500, and others warning that it will be a $1,000+ PC/console.

The latest leaks come from Czech retailer Smarty.cz, which lists the 512GB Steam Machine model for about $950 and the 2TB model for $1,070. It should be noted these prices are estimations, and were conversions, which means US buyers from local retailers may not have to incur some taxes or trade tariffs.

Microsoft recently officially confirmed it will be hosting the Xbox Developer Direct 2026 on January 22 at 10 AM PT, where the company will showcase three titles.

However, Shinobi602, a prominent leaker with a healthy track record for predicting reveals, said in a post on the ResetEra board that Microsoft has a surprise reveal, a "secret fourth game". Shinobi602 was asked what the game is and the leaker said they aren't too excited about the title as it doesn't match their personal taste. Other than that, no information was given on the secret fourth game.

So far three games have been confirmed for the Xbox Developer Direct 2026, Forza Horizon 6 from Playground Games, which is certainly one to keep your eyes on after the developers said the open-world experience within Japan will "blow fans" away. Next is Fable, which Playground Games has been working on for seven years. Fable was originally meant to release in 2025, but was delayed to a 2026 release window, and some insiders have even said it could possibly slip into a 2027 release window.

Rockstar Games has confirmed in court proceedings that Grand Theft Auto 6 has leaked to the public three times, resulting in three separate instances of employees being let go from the developer.

Rockstar cited its zero tolerance policy it has in place against leaks, and pointed to three instances where suspected individuals were let go from the company over leaks. Notably, Rockstar wrote that it "dismissed a Rockstar employee in Lincoln, UK in April 2025, who it alleged disclosed confidential information about GTA 6 to a third party who published the information to social media."

Additionally, Rockstar pointed to one dismissed employee in the US in November 2023, and another in India in November 2025. The last instance was dismissed for two separate acts of information leaking. The confirmation from Rockstar about a UK employee being fired in April 2025 lines up with a leak from X user GameRoll, which listed a bunch of information in a lengthy X post about the game's use of weight mechanics, "relationship bar," different gameplay options between male and female characters, dual protagonist option, details about characters, and more.

IO Interactive's 007 First Light recently got delayed to May 27, 2026, which is why it's a little strange that we're getting PC system requirements for the game so far ahead of the game's launch. What's also strange is that the PC specifications for the game only include the Minimum and Recommended specs, both of which target 1080p.

The specs details have arrived at CES 2026, where the developers also announced that they are working closely with NVIDIA to bring the latest RTX technologies to the game, including DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support. We're assuming this includes NVIDIA's new DLSS 4.5 update, also announced at CES, which improves image quality and detail, alongside the new Dynamic Frame Generation for the GeForce RTX 50 Series.

As for the game's recommended specs, targeting 1080p 60 FPS, IO Interactive recommends a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, a Radeon RX 6700 XT, or an Intel Arc GPU with similar performance. Interestingly, the VRAM requirement is listed at 12GB even though the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is an 8GB GPU.

Rockstar is slated to release Grand Theft Auto 6 on November 19, 2026, but following past delays fears are swelling that Rockstar may decide to delay the title again for further polishing.

It seems that may be more of a reality than you might initially assume as Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has revealed the last time he heard about the game from internal sources it wasn't finished, specifically "content complete". The reporter went on to say, "That is to say people were still finishing things up, still finalizing levels, and missions, and seeing what is going to make it into the game."

It should be noted that Schreier said that "content complete" is typically reached after the game is "feature complete" as developers will want to be adding new pieces of content to the game even when it's going through the bug fixing part of the pipeline. Schreier commented on release date, and said, "hard to say" and that its unclear if it will hit its target release date of November this year.

GeForce NOW, NVIDIA's cloud gaming platform, reached a milestone last year with the introduction of new RTX Blackwell pods, supporting 5K 120 FPS gaming over the cloud. On top of that, it saw a long list of new games hit the service, as well as the ability for PC gamers to stream their own games from their Steam library.

At CES 2026, NVIDIA has a few small but very cool announcements for GeForce NOW, including native apps for Linux (via Ubuntu 24.04 and later) and Amazon Fire TV sticks. In addition to this, the company is also adding flight stick support for a select range of 'HOTAS' devices. And, we got to test this out by jumping into clouds of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, over the cloud.

A highly requested addition, and it's not hard to see why, as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is a game that already streams in data over the cloud, and requires a pretty powerful GPU to run when connected to a high-end display.

Every year LG has a massive booth at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), as the company has many new products to showcase in various categories. This year, LG showcased the "Dream Setup" for gaming that had input from Reddit, and what they landed on was nothing short of a head turner.

The booth featured signage that stated Reddit gamers helped select the products that appeared in the setup from LG's catalogue, which was all detailed around the booth with individual product description cards. For example, LG went with an 83-inch LG OLED evo AI with a 4K resolution and a 165Hz refresh rate with VRR technology. The general aesthetic for the booth was "Ruined Castle," with the design leaning very close to being Elden Ring-themed.

Surrounding the incredible-looking TV was several gaming collectibles, including a statue. After spending some time at the setup I can say it was quite impressive, even the couches being a little bit lower than they should be made the setup feel roomy and comfortable. With the statues on the wall, lighting choices, and grey color aesthetic, the LG "Dream Setup" felt incredibly atmospheric, and is definitely something I would recommend you stop by and check out if you are CES 2026.

Blizzard might be ready to reveal a surprise new StarCraft project at this year's Blizzcon celebration.

Blizzard is reportedly working on a new third-person action shooter set in the StarCraft universe. The info was revealed as part of Jason Schreier's book on Blizzard's history, which said that the shooter had been greenlit at Blizzard. The game may end up being a high-profile AAA experience, as former Far Cry executive producer and creative director Dan Hay is said to be leading production.

Now there's another report from Windows Central that says this new mystery StarCraft shooter could be revealed at Blizzcon 2026 in September.