Gaming

Valve has recently updated Deadlock with some mentions of "HLX" inside of it, with HLX rumored as the codename of Half-Life 3, providing us with some more hopium fuel that it's on its way this year.

One of the biggest sources of Valve projects -- Gabe Follower -- confirmed on X that Valve's latest update for Deadlock includes mentions of the HLX project, who added that "HLX survived Valve's winter break".

One of the replies on the post said: "Gabe, i think that its getting to a point that HLX isnt half life X or 3. I think its just a new addition onto games that could be for moderation, making the games better, or something else completley. Stop giving us hopium that eventually turns into despairium. Thanks".

Blizzard isn't done with Diablo 2, and plans to launch new content for D2 Resurrected as part of the franchise's big 30th anniversary.

2026 marks 30 years of Blizzard's demonic dungeon-delving franchise, and to celebrate, the developers plan to refresh Diablo 2, Diablo IV, and Diablo Immortal with new content. There's no official details on what Blizzard has planned for Diablo 2--it could be a batch of new runewords or items, but something like a new paid expansion seems a bit iffy given the work involved.

Blizzard will reveal the new D2 update as part of the Diablo 30th anniversary stream, which goes live on February 11. The studio explains: "Join us at 2 p.m., February 11 to watch our Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight to witness a deep dive of what's next for Diablo II: Resurrected. As we head into Diablo's 30th year, there's a lot we want to share with you, and more to come."

Wolfenstein 3 is still a dream project for MachineGames, the modern stewards of the franchise, but the studio still won't announce any concrete details.

Bethesda has seen success with its modern reinvigoration of the classic Wolfenstein franchise, with the series having expanded across two mainline games, standalone DLC, and the experimental co-op spin-off Youngblood. Since 2019, though, the series has been on ice while MachineGames worked on their big-budget Indiana Jones and the Great Circle game.

Now that Indy's mainline adventure is wrapped up, it seems like a good time for MachineGames to tackle Wolfenstein 3. The group just recently expanded, opening another studio in Sweden that's just hours away from HQ. So what's next? Wolfenstein 3? More Indiana Jones? Studio leadership continues to tease a third BJ Blazkowicz adventure but won't make a commitment just yet.

Nintendo sounds like it is prepared to take a reduction in hardware profitability if it means growing the Switch 2's installed base.

After the failure of the Wii U, Nintendo came up with an aggressive plan to pursue hardware profitability, leading to the Switch handheld-hybrid releasing for $299 way back in 2017. The Switch was sold at a profit on day one, and since then, Nintendo's business has prioritized hardware profitability wherever possible. While Nintendo still plans to pursue this plan, the company may run out of wiggle room due to ongoing component shortages that threaten to drive up manufacturing costs, leading to a regression back to the semi-subsidized model where software helping offset the higher hardware production costs.

In a recent Q&A with investors, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa remarks on the Switch 2 pricing situation, saying that there are no immediate plans to raise consumer pricing. Furukawa says that many options will be explored insofar as maintaining profitability, but years 2 and 3 are the Switch 2's primary growth points and Nintendo wants to try to boost sales and fill out the system's installed base as much as possible throughout this time.

Nintendo has no short- or medium-term plans to raise prices on the Switch 2 console, despite the ongoing component shortages that threaten to drive up production costs.

AI datacenters are eating up all the RAM, leading to component shortages for consumer devices like video game consoles. The shortages have driven up costs; new reports indicate that Nintendo is now paying up to 40% more for chips like RAM and storage for its Switch and Switch 2 consoles. Nintendo has already raised the price of devices in its previous Switch generation--this usually happens the other way around, with costs driving down over time--and analysts believe a Switch 2 price hike is also coming in 2026.

Yet if this price hike is coming, Nintendo isn't ready to talk about it. In a recent Q&A with investors, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa says that the shortages haven't impacted or lowered Switch 2 sales profitability through Q3'26, a period which the company made nearly $1 billion in operating profit.

Although we didn't get a GeForce RTX 50 SUPER Series refresh announcement at CES 2026, and the current memory crisis is looking to delay that until next year, there was still plenty of goodness for GeForce RTX gamers at the show. Namely, the announcement of DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution (powered by a second-gen Transformer model), Multi Frame Generation 6X, and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation.

With DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution now available for all GeForce RTX gamers to enable via the NVIDIA App, it significantly improves DLSS's image quality. Some of the improvements are impressive, and as we went hands-on with the full DLSS 4.5 suite at CES, we're expecting to be equally impressed when DLSS 4.5's Dynamic Multi Frame Generation launches in April 2026.

This release date or window comes from German outlet Hardware Luxx, which recently went hands-on with DLSS 4.5 at an event in Munich. According to the report, NVIDIA plans to release Multi Frame Generation 6X and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation in April, and it's the Dynamic portion that's the one to get excited about.

Koei Tecmo's Nioh 3 is out this week and is one of the first major single-player releases of the year. The latest installment in the samurai action RPG sees players explore "various historical turbulent periods in Japanese history" as they take on monstrous yokai in a large open world.

Nioh 3 makes its PC debut with support for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation for GeForce RTX 50 Series owners, with all RTX gamers getting the benefit of DLSS Super Resolution. The 17-minute gameplay above showcases the game's dark tone and fast-paced combat in detail, but there's also a playable demo you can check out right now.

The next title getting DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support this week is Sea of Remnants from NetEase Games and Joker Studio. With players taking control of a puppet-like sailor in a vibrant, stylized world, this ocean adventure RPG looks absolutely massive, with a vast open world, naval combat, and a cast of 300+ characters, including a dynamic crew that you can recruit.

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su recently said that the semi-custom SoC in development for Microsoft's next-generation Xbox console is "progressing well to support a launch in 2027".

During AMD's recent Q4 2025 earnings call, Su said: "For 2026, we expect semi-custom SoC annual revenue to decline by a significant double-digit percentage as we enter the seventh year of what has been a very strong console cycle. From a product standpoint, Valve is on track to begin shipping its AMD-powered Steam Machine early this year. And development of Microsoft's next-gen Xbox featuring an AMD semi-custom SoC is progressing well to support a launch in 2027".

We've had plenty of detail on the custom Magnus APU that AMD is crafting for the next-gen Xbox from leaker Moore's Law is Dead, who says that the next-gen Xbox will feature a huge 68 CUs of RDNA 5 GPU power, which means the new Xbox has more RDNA 5 CUs than the PlayStation 6 which reportedly has 52-54 CUs of RDNA 5.

NVIDIA has announced that GeForce Now is six-years-old, and the "party's just getting started" apparently.

The service has seen over a billion hours of streaming since the turn of the decade, NVIDIA boasted in its latest weekly blog post for GFN Thursday.

Highlights in terms of fresh additions for GeForce Now include Delta Force, a tactical shooter with an extraction mode and a large-scale battle mode (warfare).

Sony reveals the next big PlayStation live service game: a 3-player co-op hack-and-slash action game set in the Horizon universe with cartoonish graphics.

Guerrilla Games today announced Horizon Hunters Gathering, a new online-driven game with an Overwatch-like roster with slick, action-based combat in a world filled with randomized loot. The new Horizon live game aims to capture multiple segments at once, using one of Sony's best-selling franchises as a wrapper, and the gameplay itself looks responsive and engaging.

"Horizon Hunters Gathering is something new, it stands on its own, but it's still very much Horizon. It's a very dynamic, co-op action game. We've tuned the combat so it works really well for a team of hunters, and we believe that works best when supported by an artstyle that really matches that energy," Guerrilla studio director Jan-Bart van Beek said in the reveal.

Sony's latest Q3'25 results allow us to tally an interesting metric for the company--how much money it makes from platforms other than PlayStation.

Sony's recent Holiday 2025 earnings add even more billions of dollars to the company's coffers, but there are some stats that stand out more than the traditional gauges of revenue and operating profit. A bit ago, Sony reclassified how it records earnings for its PlayStation division, adding in another segment called Other Software. As per Sony, the Other Software segment is defined as "revenue from sales of first-party titles, including add-on content, on platforms other than PlayStation consoles."

According to our findings, Sony has made at least $2.37 billion from selling games and content on other platforms than PlayStation, including both PC and Xbox. That's a cumulative total that runs from the first segment reporting period in Q1'22 all the way to Q3'25, Sony's present holiday quarter.

The PlayStation 5 has surpassed 92 million sales as of Holiday 2025, but the console is still trailing behind the PS4's strong pace.

Sony's new Q3'25 financials give an update on how well the business is doing, and based on the data, Sony delivered strong results. When it comes to hardware, Sony shipped 8 million PlayStation 5 consoles in Holiday 2025, down from the 9.5 million PS5s that it shipped in Holiday 2024.

On a launch-aligned basis, the PS5 is still playing catch-up to its predecessor. Data shows that in the first 21 quarters on the market, the PS4 shipped 94.4 million units compared to the PS5's 92.2 million in the same period. The PS4 has a 2.2 million lead over the PS5, which is substantial enough to account for an entire Q4 of shipments.

Earlier today, Valve confirmed that the planned early 2026 launch of its new Steam Machine has been upended by ongoing "memory and storage shortages" and "growing prices of these critical components." It went so far as to say it's not yet sure of an exact shipping date or pricing, but it's still targeting a first-half of 2026 launch.

As part of the same community post, Valve also included answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about its upcoming hardware releases, including the Steam Frame and the Steam Machine. For the Steam Machine, which will be powered by a desktop-class custom AMD RDNA 3 GPU with 28 Compute Units and 8GB of VRAM, many are wondering how this relatively low-power GPU will handle some of the most demanding PC games at 4K 60 FPS.

Especially when the GPU's closest desktop equivalent is the Radeon RX 7600, a card best suited to 1080p gaming. Well, the answer to that is upscaling, which Valve confirmed when it announced the Steam Machine late last year. However, the latest FAQ confirms that to hit 4K 60 FPS, you might need to use an aggressive FSR setting (upscaling from 1080p), and even then, you'll need VRR to maintain smooth performance when frame rates drop below 60 FPS.

Borderlands 4 was one of the more notable game releases last year, a new entry in one of the most popular PC gaming franchises, and it was generally well-received by critics and fans alike. That said, both the PC and console versions of the game were plagued by performance issues at launch, with developer Gearbox infamously telling PC gamers at the time to enable DLSS and Frame Generation if they were experiencing low frame rates.

Running on Unreal Engine 5, it was the latest high-profile release to demand pretty high-end gear just to play at 60+ FPS at a high resolution with high detail settings, like say, a GeForce RTX 5080. In the months following the game's launch, several updates aimed to improve performance, with the most recent arriving in December.

Amid issues with the game's performance, the Nintendo Switch 2 version was delayed indefinitely, and pre-orders were cancelled and refunds issued. Fast forward to 2026, and the publisher Take-Two Interactive has announced that development on the Switch 2 port has been "paused" as it focuses on "ongoing improvements to optimize the game."

Blizzard has just announced that Overwatch 2 is being renamed to a simpler Overwatch, after the headaches and troubles caused over the last four years.

Overwatch 2 still hasn't received its promised PvE mode that was one of the original pillars of making the "sequel" and then killing off the original Overwatch, with Blizzard using its recent Overwatch Spotlight on February 4 to announce the reenergized "Overwatch" without the "2".

Blizzard said: "Overwatch is a living universe that keeps growing, keeps surprising, and keeps bringing players together from around the world. This team is focused on continually delivering these great experiences for years to come. And with that, we realized, Overwatch is a game that transcends any single number. So moving forward, we're dropping the '2,' and continuing simply as Overwatch".

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick expects that Rockstar Games will support the current iteration of GTA Online even after GTA 6 releases in November.

In the latest earnings call for Take-Two's Holiday 2025 results, company CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked specifically what will happen to the version of GTA Online that's attached to GTA V once Rockstar launches GTA VI. Zelnick's response may give indications on Rockstar's plans, or confirm a unique situation of parallel live service content development at the studio.

In the webcast, Zelnick says that he fully expects Rockstar will continue to support GTA Online--that's the current iteration and the current version that's accessed via GTA V--after the release of GTA VI.

Market disruptions have delayed Valve's plans to reveal specifics on its new hardware, leading to an update without the most important info.

Valve has confirmed that it is not yet ready to reveal pricing or a release date for its new Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller hardware trio. The company released a new update that delivered the bad news to players, explaining that unforeseen market shifts like the ongoing global RAM shortage has interrupted Valve's plans.

"When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now. But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame)," reads the update.

Take-Two's latest results give an updated figure on Rockstar's best-selling franchise, including quarterly performance revenues that contribute to our cumulative tally.

For years now, I've been cataloging how much money that the GTA series has made, using the GTA V's seismic launch as a starting point, Based on the data provided by Take-Two, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has made at least $10.381 billion in net revenue since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V in September 2013.

On a quarterly basis, the GTA franchise did incredibly well throughout the Holiday 2025 period, earning $223.79 million, up 25% year-over-year and 30% quarter-over-quarter. The earnings were likely boosted by heavier GTA Online engagement thanks to Rockstar's successful Safehouse in the Hills GTA Online expansion, as well as the Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus freebies (GTA V still went on to ship 5 million copies digitally and physically through the quarter despite showing up on these services for free).

Take-Two Interactive's new Q3'26 results give an update on franchise sales, and Grand Theft Auto V continues its trend of shipping 5 million copies per quarter throughout the period.

Grand Theft Auto V has made history as one of the most-enduring games of all time, spanning multiple console generations and raking in billions of dollars along the way. Take-Two's latest Holiday 2025 results show that the 12-year-old game has now shipped 225 million copies across the globe, up +5 million from last quarter. Typically, GTA V somehow has been able to ship 5 million copies per quarter for multiple periods in a row throughout its lifetime.

This also means that Rockstar's genre-defining franchise has now sold over 465 million copies, including both mainline numbered releases, spin-offs, and sales of the new GTA remaster trilogy.

The CEO of Take-Two has clarified that Grand Theft Auto 6 won't use generative AI for any of its development.

Chief executive Strauss Zelnick was talking a lot about AI in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz (via Eurogamer), where he enthused about Take-Two being a 'leader in the space'.

Zelnick said: