Gaming - Page 10

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has given some new details about an Xbox gaming handheld during an interview with Bloomberg.

According to the Xbox head, Microsoft is currently developing an Xbox gaming handheld device, with Spencer confirming internally the company is "working on prototypes". Spencer said Xbox and Microsoft, by extension, are also investigating the market sentiment regarding handheld devices in an attempt to find the right vision for hardware that could be on the horizon. Spencer was enthusiastic about Xbox building a handheld device, which is something Spencer has expressed love for in the past.

Bloomberg writes that any Xbox handheld device would still be a "few years out" and that much of the concentration of the Xbox engineers is taken up by making improvements to the Xbox app. Notably, Microsoft has been openly discussing its plans to create an Xbox handheld device for quite some time, but nothing seems to have come of it besides rumors and teasers. Keeping to hardware, Spencer finished off the interview by throwing a slight dig at Sony for its decision to launch the PlayStation 5 Pro at the $700 price point.

Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has sat down for an interview with Bloomberg, where he commented on bringing more Xbox games over to PlayStation.

The Xbox head said during the interview that it was too early to rule anything out, but he doesn't see any "red lines in our portfolio," and that even goes for the next Halo game. According to Spencer, it's too early to make a decision on whether the new Halo will launch on the PS5. These comments from Spencer leave the sentiment that anything is the table when it comes to making cross-platform launches -- even Halo, the franchise that made the Xbox what it is today.

As for what is known about the next Halo, Microsoft announced in September that multiple new games are in development, and they will be using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5. Unfortunately, that is most of the details, as none of these titles have been officially announced or unveiled. Microsoft has already tested the waters by bringing Xbox games over to PlayStation with the release of Sea of Thieves, Grounded, and others.

Project Borealis is a fan-made Half-Life 3 currently in development by a global team of developers, based on the plot synopsis of the game outlined by Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw. As PC fans of the franchise know, Valve's iconic FPS series abruptly ended after the release of Half-Life: Episode Two in 2007.

Of course, we got the excellent Half-Life: Alyx in 2020. However, that was a VR-only release that felt more like a spin-off than a true Half-Life 3. Interestingly, Project Borealis is being developed using Unreal Engine 5, not the Source Engine (Valve's internal engine that has powered every game in the Half-Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead series) - with the team aiming to faithfully recreate the "iconic Half-Life 2 movement and gameplay mechanics."

On the plus side, Unreal Engine 5 gives developers access to powerful visuals, and Project Borealis: Prologue is now available to play (for free) on Steam. You can now fire up what is a fan-made version of Half-Life 3.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition is a 2021 compilation that includes the franchise's first three iconic open-world games: Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002), and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004).

However, these highly anticipated remasters were not received well at the time and felt like the opposite of 'Definitive' thanks to bugs, poor AI-generated textures, and visuals that felt like a massive departure from the original games.

Two main criticisms echoed by fans and critics alike were the dramatic shift from stylized lighting and the complete removal of all fog effects. With no fog and an increased draw distance, the previously massive open world of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas felt small. On top of that, the yellow and orange look of the GTA's West Coast was missing.

Two gamers are accusing Ubisoft of "duping consumers" into purchasing The Crew without informing buyers the game's servers would be shut down, thus making the online game unplayable.

Ubisoft announced in December last year that servers to The Crew would be shut down, and those who "recently" purchased the game would receive refunds. Due to the age of the title, many gamers were unable to receive refunds. The lawsuit claims Ubisoft deceived players in two different ways, and because of the deception, the company has violated California's consumer protection laws.

The first is Ubisoft allegedly duped players into thinking they were purchasing the game when they were merely licensing it, despite them physically owning the disk. Second is the accusation that Ubisoft "falsely represented" that game files for The Crew were freely accessible on the physical disk and not "a key" for the game. The two players have submitted the lawsuit in a California Court.

Running games at the highest end graphics can be even demanding for some of the most expensive graphics cards on the market.

One of, if not the best-looking engine on the market right now is Epic's Unreal Engine 5.4, and that has been used to create Project Borealis - A Prologue to Half-Life 3. The fan-made project was created using the latest version of Unreal Engine (5.4), and it was run on an NVIDIA RTX 4080 at 4K, 1440p at Very High settings with DLSS 3.7 and Frame Generation on and off. The results were quite interesting, as the RTX 4080 could not provide 60 frames per second at native 4K.

However, with DLSS Ultra Quality and Frame Generation, the experience improved significantly, pushing the fan-made project above the 60 FPS mark. The video demonstrates the power of NVIDIA technologies such as DLSS and Frame Generation with heavier graphical engines such as Unreal Engine 5, and the necessity of having these performance-improving tools available to developers so graphically intensive titles can run on the widest variety of hardware possible.

Sony has officially launched the PlayStation 5 Pro, and while the announcement of the console was met with criticism from fans regarding its price and touted graphical improvement, Sony has already said it is exceeding sales expectations and even beating the pace of the PlayStation 4 Pro during the same period.

Unfortunately, Sony didn't convey the graphical / performance improvements of the PS5 Pro compared to the standard model very well during its announcement, which was in part due to the explanations Sony gave and also the limitation of viewers looking at the showcase through devices with low-resolution displays. Regardless of where you may think the fault lies, the PS5 Pro has made it into customers' hands, and now we are starting to get independent graphical comparisons between the new console and the old one.

A new video by Cycu1 showcases The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 demo running on the PS5 Pro much better than the standard model. Additionally, the PS5 Pro version doesn't have a dedicated patch, which means there is even more performance to be gained here once one is released, as the beefier components within the PS5 Pro will be fully utilized.

Alright, this is kinda cool to see from Pizza Hut Canada: introducing the PIZZAWARMR, a new 3D-printed download for your PlayStation 5 console that sits ON TOP of the console and keeps your pizza warm using the heat generated from the PS5. You can grab your own PIZZAWARMR here.

Pizza Hut Canada announced its new PIZZAWARMR that will fit on your PS5 and take "several slices" of pizza, with some inspiration pulled from Pizza Hut's iconic red roof.

Pizza Hut Canada explains its new PIZZAWARMR: "Upgrade your console with the hottest pizza warming technology. Using the warmth from your gaming system to keep your slices warm while you play. Pulling inspiration from Pizza Hut's red roof, the lid seamlessly opens like a laptop for easy pizza access".

Valve is launching a Steam Deck OLED: White Edition PC gaming handheld that will be available in limited quantities beginning November 18 at 3:00 pm Pacific Standard Time. This will be a custom version of the 1TB model, priced at $679 USD, with a white and grey color scheme that extends to the all-new white carry case.

With white-colored peripherals becoming increasingly popular, this custom Steam Deck OLED will undoubtedly sell out quickly. Valve is allocating stock to every region where the Steam Deck is officially available - including Australia, which just got it in November 2024 - to give everyone a fair chance of picking it up.

Gamers in the US, CA, UK, EU, and the AU region can order one - and that's one literally, as Valve is restricting Steam Deck OLED: White Edition purchases to one per customer/Steam user.

Myths and prophecies about the moon stretch way back into the annals of history, but in the digital age, it's now being used for predictions relating to Grand Theft Auto 6.

The game has obviously hit the headlines in a big way with news that Take-Two Interactive has finally confirmed a fall 2025 release, but fresh speculation has fired up over some promotional material for GTA Online.

Eurogamer reports that all the fuss is around an image (see the top of this article) showing a character leaning on a car, in front of a factory, with the moon at the top-left of the pic. The moon is shown as waning gibbous, and the phase depicted corresponds to how the earth's satellite will look on November 22 in the real world.