Gaming

It wasn't long ago that Microsoft rolled out "This is an Xbox" marketing to demonstrate its future vision for the Xbox brand: that every device is technically an Xbox.

The marketing campaign generated more confusion than intrigue, as Xbox fans wondered why they would ever get an actual Xbox if Xbox titles are available on every platform. Microsoft and the Xbox brand are still suffering from that brand hit today, and now we have discovered that Xbox is attempting to silently remove that marketing from the internet as Game Developer attempted to revisit the "This is Xbox" landing page on the Xbox Wire website, which is Microsoft's Xbox-focused news repository.

Game Developer discovered that the landing page only provided a 404 error message and a bland screen. Upon searching Xbox News Wire for "This is an Xbox" within its search, the only article that popped up was one regarding the ROG Xbox Ally. The removal of this press release is somewhat telling considering the recent reporting that the "This is an Xbox"marketing campaign was championed by outgoing Xbox president Sarah Bond, and was one of the reasons for her departure.

Valve announced the Steam Frame and Steam Machine in November last year, and since then, users have been waiting to see where each device will land in terms of performance. Now, Valve has revealed the requirements for a title to receive the Steam Frame Verified and Steam Machine Verified labels.

For those who don't know, Valve has a Steam Deck Verified label, which means the title has been tested by Valve to run smoothly on the device. Additionally, the title would meet all of Valve's requirements, including full controller support, performance at the device's native resolution, and performance targets. The idea is that a Steam Deck owner can browse the Steam Store, discover a title with the Verified badge, and begin playing without having to worry about any settings tweaks or changes.

The same system is being expanded to the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, and according to Valve, the Steam Machine Verified badge requires at least 30 FPS at 1080p. The Valve slides reveal that Steam Machine Verified is simply an extension of Steam Deck Verified, and that titles that are Steam Deck Verified will also be Steam Machine Verified, as long as they maintain the same input expectations as the Deck. Additionally, the slide states that Valve will not be testing display resolution or legibility, and that an updated API to detect hardware is also required.

BlizzCon 2026 will see the in-person return of Blizzard Entertainment's long-running celebrations of its franchises, games, and community, later this year. With the event scheduled to take place on September 12-13 at the Anaheim Convention Center, there's some great news for fans of some of Blizzard's older, classic games.

With the company planning a robust "esports slate" for the event, the first competition-based announcement of the show is the confirmation that it'll be home to the first-ever Blizzard Classic Cup. This will include "all-star teams" battling it out across a wide range of classic Blizzard games, including the real-time strategy masterpiece that defined esports - StarCraft.

First released in 1998, StarCraft was the sci-fi-themed follow-up to the iconic Warcraft II, expanding the scope, speed, and intensity of the studio's real-time strategy games. And its robust multiplayer mode made it a phenomenon in Korea, where it drew large crowds and created celebrities. Professional StarCraft defined the modern era of esports, so it's great to see it making a comeback at BlizzCon 2026.

Crimson Desert developer and publisher Pearl Abyss has released the full PC specs and hardware requirements for the game's upcoming March 19, 2026, launch, and the good news is that it's a massive AAA-style open-world game that will be playable on a wide range of rigs. In fact, based on what we're seeing here, aside from unforeseen bugs or other performance-related issues, it's shaping up to be an optimized day-one release.

As expected for a game that will feature a 60 FPS Performance mode (with AMD FSR 3) on the ROG Xbox Ally X, the minimum PC GPU requirement for 1080p at 30 FPS (upscaled from 900p) is a GeForce GTX 1060 or a Radeon RX 5500 XT. Bump that up to running the game natively at 1080p with Low settings, and the GPU requirement changes to either a GeForce GTX 1660 or a Radeon RX 6500 XT.

Yes, even though the game ships with DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation support, and supports real-time ray tracing, it'll run just fine without upscaling. However, when it comes to playing at 1080p 60 FPS or 4K 30 FPS with Medium settings, the 'Recommended' spec, you'll need a GeForce RTX 2080 or Radeon RX 6700 XT.

With 25 years behind it, Xbox is targeting the "future of play" and is using deep analysis of player behaviors to help define the next generation of its gaming business.

At GDC 2026, Microsoft today revealed tons of new details about the future of its Xbox business. Starting with Project Helix, its next-gen hardware, the company revealed advanced tech upgrades like a high-end AMD chip with AI built right into the silicon, enabling new functionalities like GPU-generated workloads, potential reductions or eliminations of CPU bottlenecks, raytracing that's an "order of magnitude" better than current tech, and powerful new DirectX optimizations like Deep Texture Compression.

Throughout the keynote speech, Xbox VP of Next Generation Jason Ronald asserted that Microsoft is focusing on the "future of play," saying that gamers don't really attach their identities to a platform any more. "The days of people defining themselves as a console, PC, or mobile gamer don't really exist any more," Ronald said, as per IGN.

Xbox's Full Screen Experience (FSE) has been renamed, and it's coming to all Windows 11 PCs starting next month.

Released first on the ROG Ally and Ally X handhelds, the Full Screen Experience was a window into Microsoft's so-called "future of play," a vision that unifies Xbox and Windows together. While the hybrid Project Helix next-gen Xbox will be the physical manifestation of this plan, Microsoft is still rolling out its simulated Xbox environment to all Windows 11 users, likely in a bid to test and tweak the software in preparation for Helix.

Xbox Mode, aka FSE, will start to roll out to Windows 11 users starting in April, Xbox exec Jason Ronald says: "After debuting an early version with the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, today I'm excited to share that we are bringing the same innovation to Windows 11 with Xbox mode that begins rolling out in April, starting with select markets."

Valve is being sued by New York Attorney General Leticia James on allegations that in-game lootboxes break the state's gambling laws. Now the company has issued a lengthy response letter that presses back against the AG's allegations.

The NY Attorney General's lawsuit against Valve, whose press release loudly proclaims "Attorney General James Sues Game Developer for Promoting Illegal Gambling Through Video Games," seemed to come out of left field and caught the gaming world off guard.

It's been weeks since New York made the lawsuit public, and Valve has now published a statement refuting some of the claims and providing interesting context on the interactions that preceded the legal complaint.

Project Helix's earliest alpha versions won't be out until 2027, Microsoft has confirmed at GDC 2026.

Microsoft has revealed key technical details about its next-gen Xbox console, codenamed Project Helix, at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The company has re-confirmed the hardware hybrid was designed to play both Xbox console and Windows PC games in one device, and that it is powered by next-gen AMD silicon with advanced ML neural rendering as well as powerful new DirectX technologies like Deep Texture Compression.

It's also been revealed that Project Helix's earliest hardware iterations won't be sent out to developers until next year.

Microsoft's Jason Ronald reveals new details about the next-gen Project Helix console at GDC 2026, as per a recent live stream.

Microsoft confirming key details about its next-generation Project Helix console PC to game developers at this year's GDC event. During the keynote stream, Xbox hardware VP Jason Ronald highlighted some of the new features of Project Helix, revealing a high-end device that seems to empower developers with new hardware-based efficiencies and tools to craft their worlds.

Ronald confirmed that Project Helix would have next-gen raytracing performance, powered by a new AMD SoC that was co-designed from the ground up specifically with new, forward-thinking versions of DirectX in mind. Project Helix's main goals seem to be alignment on a hardware, API, and software level, complete with attractive features like Windows 11's powerful DirectStorage alongside Project Helix's new Deep Texture Compression technology--a combination that could be the key for true next-level texture streaming and loading times.

Microsoft has taken to its official X account to share three photos of what could be the next Xbox, and paired these images with the caption, "Xbox at GDC 🔥 Sneak peek".

The images showcase a shell of an Xbox console, which has the letters "XDK" embossed on the side. It's assumed these letters represent the "Xbox Developer Kit," which is a locked version of the Xbox console that is given to developers so they can design their game to the specific hardware specifications. Notably, users have pointed out that the images and the Xbox within them appear to show a console that's very similar to the Xbox One developer kit.

To add to the mystery, and what could perhaps make fans lean toward this being a tease of the next-generation Xbox console, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma teased last week that Microsoft's new Xbox, codenamed Project Helix will be discussed at "GDC next week". Additionally, Sharma said the new Xbox will "lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games."

Valve published its 2025 review, and in the large article, it outlines a variety of ways the company improved the platform, including some interesting stats on what it's now nearly 50 million peak concurrent users are getting up to.

Valve revealed that Steam has been steadily growing for the past five years, with growth being estimated at around 3.4 million additional users per year. Five years ago, Steam crossed the 25 million concurrent user mark, and in 2025, it reached 42 million peak concurrent users. With so many PC gamers now adopting the platform, Valve is required to provide those games with a steady stream of new titles they can download at maximum speed. Valve is and has been doing that, and the stats on those downloads are quite eye-watering.

According to Valve, in 2024, Steam users downloaded 80 exabytes of data, which quickly rose to 100 exabytes in 2025. To put that number into perspective, Steam users are averaging 274 petabytes of installs and updates per day, which equates to 11.42 petabytes per hour of downloads, or approximately 190,000 gigabytes of data per minute. Additionally, if you were wondering how many 1TB SSDs in gaming PCs 100 exabytes would fill up, it's approximately 100 million 1TB SSDs.

NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang has penned a new blog post where he gives his view on the future of AI from 20,000 feet, which includes him making an analogy to creating a 5-layer cake.

In the blog Huang describes the future of AI being a 5-layer cake, and each of these layers being a critical part of what makes up AI, with each of these layers being one key focus of the underlying infrastructure, yet independent from each other. Each of these layers are evolving exponentially, with Jensen writing the bottom layer categorized as "energy" is the "binding constraint" for intelligence and monetary figures. Given that AI cannot run without electricity that makes perfect sense, and above "energy" is chips, infrastructure, models, and then finally, applications.

Jensen goes on to write that around the world we are seeing the largest infrastructure buildout in human history with factories producing AI chips being constructed by various companies around the world, in order to get their own slice of the expanding cake. The NVIDIA CEO writes that "AI is one of the most powerful forces shaping the world today," and that "it is not a clever or a single model; it is essential infrastructure, like electricity and the internet."

On the heels of what was considered to be a very positive change for the long-time-running MMORPG RuneScape, the removal of microtransactions, developer Jagex has found itself in hot water after announcing a price hike for its membership subscription.

Jagex outlined that it will raise RuneScape's monthly subscription price from $14 to $15, which will, in turn, increase the yearly subscription price from $99.48 to $131.88. Notably, this price hike comes just two months after Jagex announced it would remove microtransactions from the game, and less than two years after it previously announced a membership price hike. The new membership price will be announced on April 9, and it won't affect players who are already paying the previous membership price.

After Galaxy Studios fueled speculation that they are working on a remaster of Fallout 3 by sharing an image from an internal pitch deck of the iconic "Please Stand By" loading screen, more leaks have popped up about a Fallout 3 remaster.

Unfortunately, Galaxy Studios shut down rumors that it was working on a remaster of the classic Bethesda title, saying the image of the loading screen was nothing more than a slide in a deck and that it has "nothing to do with anything Fallout being worked on."

However, that doesn't mean a Fallout remaster isn't being worked on somewhere else. A new figurine listing from McFarlane Toys has suggested there is a Fallout 3 remaster currently in development somewhere, as McFarlane Toys has listed the "ELITE EDITION 7IN - FALLOUT 3 REMASTERED - #13 T-45B NUKA COLA".

Sony is reportedly testing dynamic pricing on select first-party software sold on the PlayStation Store, cost analysis website PS Prices has found.

Sony may be testing a new way to price its games in a way that takes into account specific user metrics, including play time and location. Price-tracking site PS Prices reports that Sony has been conducting a dynamic pricing experiment since November 2025 in a bid to test price elasticity on the PlayStation Store, likely to determine price tolerance in specific geographies.

Sony is believed to be conducting A/B testing (aka split testing) with software prices. This effectively means that users may see different prices for the same games sold on the PlayStation Store. According to the data, Sony is testing both price increases and decreases of specific software.

The region-locked Switch 2 might have created a growing unprofitability situation for Nintendo, as one analyst believes Nintendo is losing money each time it produces a Japan-only console.

Nintendo has asserted that the Switch 2 is generally produced and sold at a profit, but that may not be true for all of its console variants. Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda estimates that the Japanese-exclusive, region-locked Switch 2 is currently unprofitable for Nintendo, and as the company sells more of these systems, the divide between profits and losses will expand. The company introduced the model in a bid to improve its domestic market share, and the losses are incurred strategically to help promote a cheaper, more affordable product.

"As a result, the Japanese market is experiencing a growing negative margin situation, where the manufacturing costs of hardware exceed the selling price, and the more the console sells, the worse its profitability becomes," Yasuda wrote in an analysis piece for Diamond Online.

Epic Games today raised the price of all Fortnite V-Bucks microtransaction bundles, reducing the buying power of the dollar and making each purchase more favorable for Epic.

Today, Epic Games announced a price hike across its V-Bucks digital currency--a move that could foreshadow other live service games in the near future. Although Fortnite has generated well over $20 billion in revenue since 2017, Epic says that the costs of running the world's most popular online game are increasing, and so too are the V-Buck prices.

"The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we're raising prices to help pay the bills," the company said. "Existing V-Bucks gift cards still redeem at their printed values."

Capcom reveals some of its post-launch plans for Resident Evil 9 Requiem, including additional modes and a new narrative-driven expansion.

The latest Resident Evil game will continue engaging players throughout 2026 with some new updates, including a fully-fledged photo mode to capture the impressive visuals of the RE Engine, as well as a new paid story expansion that will flesh out more of the game's mythos and lore.

"We are planning on adding more content. First, the much-awaited photo mode. On top of that, there's another surprise coming around May. We're planning to add a mini-game. One more thing: We are planning to make extra story content. In this story, we will delve deeper into the world of Requiem," game director Koshi Nakanishi said in today's update.

Bethesda could reveal Fallout 3 remastered sometime soon, with a potential release in 2026, new cross-promotional product listings indicate.

Season 1 of the Fallout TV series delivered some vim and vigor to the franchise's step, and helped sell tons of Fallout games. The Amazon Prime show actually translated into direct sales so efficiently that Xbox essentially took over PlayStation's charts for a period. Bethesda wants to do this again with Fallout season 2, and that means having products at the ready--like the recent Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, for example.

Now it looks like Fallout 3 remastered could be added to that list as well. The game was directly mentioned in a new McFarlane Toys' product inventory list: "ELITE EDITION 7IN - FALLOUT 3 REMASTERED - #13 T-45B NUKA COLA," the content reads.

At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) currently underway in San Francisco, NVIDIA has announced a new developer-focused feature for its GeForce NOW cloud streaming service. Cloud Playtest gives developers and publishers a way to securely conduct internal, external, and even press-related playtests covering early internal tests, quality assurance, and hands-on media events.

This is something NVIDIA has been developing for a while. During our pre-brief with representatives, Cloud Playtest is already being used by developers and publishers such as 2K, Activision, Bethesda, Frontier, Techland, Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Games, and even Xbox Game Studios.

NVIDIA has confirmed that the service is already being used for playtests for games that are still two or three years out from release, with Cloud Playtest democratizing the idea of testing and even quality assurance by giving testers access to ready-to-go builds playable on a wide range of GeForce RTX hardware, including GeForce NOW pods with up to GeForce RTX 5080 levels of performance.