Gaming - Page 10

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released for the Nintendo 64 back in 1998, but it's still one of those games that regularly pops up on various 'best of all time' lists. The reason for this is simple: it successfully translated the classic 2D Zelda action from the 16-bit era into a massive 3D game that laid the foundation for third-person action-adventure games that you can still see today.

This new The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "remake" is more of a reimagining of a specific section and area of the game, Gerudo's Fortress. Created by YouTube creator and artist RwanLink, it presents Ocarina of Time with a new look and feel that is more cartoon-like, blending The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker's cel-shaded look from the GameCube with a bit of Breath of the Wild and the N64 original.

Built with Unreal Engine 5 in three months, with a whole month of that time spent on animation, it's an impressive and cinematic look at a potential The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake that we'd love to play. If you're a Zelda fan, the 4K gameplay and cinematic video of the project in action is well worth a look.

AYANEO has officially lifted the lid on its next flagship PC gaming handheld, the AYANEO NEXT II. And yes, this is a Strix Halo machine with the powerful and impressive Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with 16 cores, 32 threads, and integrated Radeon 8060S graphics with 40 Compute Units and a 2.9 GHz clock speed.

The AYANEO NEXT II is also set to feature a massive (and custom) 9-inch OLED display with a QHD-style 2400x1504 resolution and the ability to switch between multiple refresh rates: 60, 90, 120, 144, and 165 Hz. The HDR-capable display also features a peak brightness of 1100 nits. And with a TDP of sustained 85W, this flagship handheld also features a 115Wh ultra-large battery.

Cooling-wise, the AYANEO NEXT II has two large dual fans on the rear, drawing in air with "high-efficiency" fins to help cool components, and hot air is exhausted through the top of the handheld. Spec-wise, it's a beast of a unit, and the sleek, minimalist design has several gamer-friendly touches worth highlighting.

A curious trademark for something called Control Resonant has popped up on the European trademark office database, and it could be Remedy's new Control sequel, or it could be a new TV show that propels the franchise into an expanded universe scenario.

Remedy Entertainment has big plans for its Control franchise. The first game was one of the most bizarre and artistic titles of 2019, selling 5 million units and re-establishing Remedy's reputation for action games. The group has since acquired full publishing and IP rights to Control and wants to expand the series with TV shows and films, so they signed a multi-year deal with Annapurna Interactive in 2024 to make that happen.

Control 2 has been in full production since August 2025, perhaps before, with former Remedy CEO Tero Virtala noting: "Control 2 development is on track towards meeting its next milestones. The focus is now on the gameplay, environments, and missions."

Light No Fire, the new multiplayer fantasy sim from No Man's Sky developer Hello Games, may be a long ways away from release.

Light No Fire took the world by storm with its reveal at The Game Awards 2024. The new sim sees Hello Games trading sci-fi tech for sword-and-board fantasy; instead of flying around in spaceships, players will ride dragons Targaryen-style in Light No Fire. And it's also quite sizable, with Hello Games saying that the game's world is set on a "planet the size of Earth."

Fans are excited about Light No Fire, but it could be a while before the game is out. In a recent studio update, Hello Games CEO Sean Murray says that there's a small group working on Light No Fire in the background while the core focus remains on No Man's Sky.

Claws of Awaji may be the only expansion coming to Ubisoft's latest samurai-based Assassin's Creed game.

Assassin's Creed Shadows won't be getting a second expansion any time soon. Ubisoft instead plans to focus more on smaller-scale content updates and tweaks, which coincides with two major changes at Ubisoft: First, the Assassin's Creed franchise itself is being handed over to an entirely new creative leadership team, and second, the publisher is still exploring the Assassin's Creed Infinity game launcher model to help wrap the series into a convenient one-stop shop for future titles.

The news was officially confirmed in a recent interview with YouTuber Jor Raptor, where Assassin's Creed Shadows post-launch content director Lemay-Comtois said there are currently no plans for an Awaji-sized expansion for Shadows.

Linus from Linus Tech Tips guesses that Valve's new Steam Machine could cost the same as a PlayStation 5 Pro when the mid-gen system originally launched.

Linus from Linus Tech Tips built a PC that mimics the Steam Machine's performance profile to give an idea of how much Valve's new mini PC could (comparatively) cost. Linus speculates that Valve's choice to go with a semi-custom chip for the Steam Machine and not a fully customized one like with the Steam Deck could indicate that Valve may not be targeting 10 million unit sales with the device--but that's based on reports involving AMD and Xbox's purportedly-canceled native handheld.

"Valve cares a lot about the perceived value of the experience using the Steam Machine, not just the raw specs," Linus said.

Ryan Montgomery, a renowned ethical hacker, penetration tester, and cybersecurity expert, revealed during an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show that an online group called 764 is targeting children online to force them into producing explicit content or even self-harming.

Montgomery explains the group known as 764 is a satanist cult group that focuses on extreme violence toward children. Law enforcement describes 764 as a "terror network" due to its immense size, harm it has caused children, and the lengths the group will go to impact children, such as sexual violence, self-harm, coercion, and threats of violence.

The hacker explains that 764 is a nihilist group, and the motive is recognition, with Montgomery saying whether it is positive or negative recognition. The hacker goes on to say 764 members extort children out of sexual material, which involves images and videos of self-harming, engraving names into the child's own body, animal abuse, bestiality, suicides, and more, many of which take place in front of live audiences online.

Capcom could have already dusted off one of the most legendary zombie IPs it has under its belt for another title. Reports indicate it's Dead Rising, and this time the game is set in Hollywood.

To be completely fair, Dead Rising hasn't been sitting on a shelf gathering dust, as Capcom did release the Dead Rising Remaster last year. But in terms of new releases, the franchise has certainly gathered some dust, as the last mainline game was Dead Rising 4 in 2016. However, MP1st.com has learned that a new Dead Rising project is currently in the works at Capcom, and it won't be a remaster or a remake. It will be a brand new Dead Rising game.

According to MP1st's sources, the new game has been in development since 2013 and is codenamed "Rec". Additionally, Frank West will be returning as the protagonist, and it currently appears the game will be a sequel to the first Dead Rising game. MP1st does state the latter point hasn't been confirmed by its sources, but it does appear to be the case.

Team Cherry, the developers of the esteemed Hollow Knight franchise, may abandon the third game to create something completely new, according to recent reports.

Team Cherry, a development studio that consists of three individuals from Adelaide, Australia, released Hollow Knight Silksong nearly three months ago, and the title was a massive success, topping the Steam charts and selling millions of copies. Now, Team Cherry co-founder Ari Gibson has sat down with Bloomberg's Jason Schreier to talk about what is on the horizon for Team Cherry. Gibson said the studio has "other games that we plan to make" after completing the DLC content for Hollow Knight Silksong.

Gibson said the big concern is how long it takes to make a game, with Silksong taking seven years to develop, and now the DLC content on top of the full release. "The only time concern really is - and we've talked about this before - death. It's not that far off if you spend seven years per project, and potentially add another two. So it'd be nice to do a few more games," said the Team Cherry co-founder

Activision has posted 3 job listings that point to Call of Duty's return to Nintendo platforms, one step in fulfilling an ambitious 10-year contract to bring future COD shooters to the Switch.

Activision's Call of Duty teams are seeking new developers that have experience making games on the Nintendo Switch. The publisher has published 3 job listings that mention Nintendo and/or the Switch platform, strongly indicating that the company is moving forward with its legally-binding agreement to bring the franchise to Nintendo hardware. In 2023, Microsoft signed a 10-year contract to bring future Call of Duty games to the Switch with full feature and content parity. This deal was struck in order to assuage worldwide regulators that Call of Duty would not be made exclusive and was a key development to get the world's largest tech acquisition--Xbox's $68.7 billion buyout of Activision--passed and approved.

Infinity Ward is hiring a principal engineer, which lists "console development experience (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo)" as a plus. Infinity Ward is also hiring a lead build engineer that lists "(PlayStation/Xbox/Nintendo/Windows)" as the multiple gaming platforms that go through testing and support in the role. Sledgehammer Games is currently hiring a senior technical animator that lists "AAA Mobile or Switch experience" as a bonus.

Xbox cloud game streaming expands to India, a core market that can be served by free ad-supported streaming options, and Xbox CEO Phil Spencer says usage is already up significantly over last year.

Xbox Game Pass is seeing increased engagement across cloud. Microsoft recently rolled out its game streaming program to India--a market that's uncoincidentally dominated by mobile gaming. Reports indicate that Microsoft is currently testing a free, ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming that could roll out globally, and India seems like a perfect market for the initiative.

Ahead of the expansion, Xbox's Phil Spencer gave some quick metric updates on Xbox Game Pass that confirm increased usage and engagement, both of which are typically precursors for what Microsoft will do next. Spencer says that cloud is ultimately a reflection of Microsoft's push towards choice-driven consumer gaming (a trend that's often synonymous with what Xbox is doing at the time, e.g. breaking exclusivity at the cost of its own personal brand image).

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is selling so poorly that Paradox has been forced to make a write-down and reduce the game's value on its accounts.

The latest game in the Vampire: The Masquerade franchise has significantly failed to meet sales expectations, and has triggered a value adjustment from Paradox. The publisher warned investors that it will take a 355 million SEK write-down on the project's capitalized development costs, which amounts to a roughly $37.4 million decrease in overall sales value.

"We've had high expectations for a long time, since we saw that it was a good game with a strong IP. A month after release, we can sadly see that sales do not match our projections, which necessitates the write-down," CEO of Paradox Interactive Fredrik Wester said.

It's becoming more challenging to find something new in the world of experimental gaming - also known as 'playing Doom on an insert-improbable-device-here' - but this is definitely a striking new first: playing Minecraft on a printer.

A receipt printer to be precise, and YouTuber Smill managed to pull this off, as Tom's Hardware flagged up.

The YouTuber beat Minecraft with a speedrun that took up less time than needed for the printer to churn through the five rolls of receipt paper that was all he had to hand. You can see the run in the video above (which has some colorful language and jokes - be warned).

Ubisoft confirmed that it was bringing Assassin's Creed Shadows to the Nintendo Switch 2 with an announcement trailer published around a month ago, and with the release only a few days away, the publisher has revealed the graphical features and performance Switch 2 owners can expect from Shadows.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has a much smaller performance envelope than competing platforms, such as the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC, and, due to its limited performance headroom, Ubisoft has had to make dramatic changes to Shadows to get it to run on Nintendo's latest handheld. According to Ubisoft's Project Lead Programmer, in many ways, Shadows has been redesigned for the Nintendo Switch 2, specifically in how the world is rendered, and many of the fundamental in-game systems.

Despite these changes, Ubisoft says it has maintained the core systems, such as clouds and cloth rendering, but they have been heavily optimized, meaning they have been downscaled to free up more hardware resources. Additionally, Shadows on the Nintendo Switch 2 will ditch ray-traced global illumination in favor of a baked solution used by lower-end PCs and the Xbox Series S, significantly reducing RAM usage.

GeForce NOW, NVIDIA's cloud gaming service, is also having a Black Friday Sale by offering new members 50% off the first three months of a GeForce NOW Ultimate subscription. This is the tier that gives you access to GeForce RTX 5080-class servers, which include full DLSS 4 support and low-latency cloud gaming at up to 5K at 120 frames per second.

With this deal, NVIDIA has also announced that the RTX Blackwell upgrade for GeForce NOW is now "fully live across all servers," with Stockholm being the final region to get the new RTX 5080-class performance. This means that wherever GeForce NOW is available, the brand-new RTX Blackwell technology is also available for Ultimate members.

Games that support the new hardware, which includes new releases like Battlefield 6, Borderlands 4, and The Outer Worlds 2, feature a tag on the GeForce NOW interface to confirm you're getting GeForce RTX 50 Series performance. GeForce NOW's Black Friday Sale ends Sunday, November 30. And with that, let's get to the new games added to the GeForce NOW library this week.

The new Witcher trilogy is still planned to release in a six-year period starting with the first game's launch, CD Projekt has reiterated.

CD Projekt's Q3 results give a quick update on the business and what's next for the group. Cyberpunk 2 is accelerating development alongside The Witcher 4, the latter of which is currently in full production phases. In the transcript, company co-CEO Michal Nowakowski says that the plans to launch Ciri's full Witcher trilogy in a six-year span have not changed, and that the switch to Unreal Engine 5 is the key to making this happen.

There's been no confirmation of a release date or release window, however CD Projekt does say that The Witcher 4 won't be out in 2026, so that means the full Witcher trilogy will be complete and released after 2032. Nowakowski also mentions that the teams have been using UE5 for roughly four years and are quite impressed with the engine's capabilities.

CD Projekt executive management makes a quick connection between subscriptions and game sales, saying that introducing titles on services like PS Plus can lead to overall lower sales of the game for a period.

Since CD Projekt only has two franchises, The Witcher and Cyberpunk, the group has to get very creative to continue making money well after its game products are released. The Polish game-makers pull this off with a unique flywheel model that incorporates a strategically-timed series of promos, licensing deals, and transmedia content. Subscription services are a part of this model.

In a recent Q3'26 earnings report, CD Projekt leadership made an interesting concession by acknowledging that subscription services can lead to fewer games sold, but that's a trade-off the company made as part of its planned business strategy. Basically, CD Projekt will rotate older catalog games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 into subscription services in exchange for upfront revenue from Sony and/or Microsoft, thereby boosting revenues for the period and also elongating engagement for the franchises. CD Projekt notes that the PS Plus deal contributed to a strong +53% revenue spike in Q3.

CD Projekt is enjoying the success of some particularly interesting trends for Cyberpunk 2077 after introducing the game to Sony's PlayStation Plus subscription service.

CD Projekt's latest Q3 results touch upon a topic that most publishers don't really talk about: Subscription trends, and more importantly, how these services are affecting sales. According to co-CEO Michal Nowakowski, putting Cyberpunk 2077 on PS Plus helped boost license revenues for the period and contributed to a mighty +53% boost in total revenue.

Another eye-catching trend is happening as a result of Cyberpunk 2077 on PS Plus, though. Data shows that users who access Cyberpunk on the PlayStation service are more likely to buy the Phantom Liberty expansion. This actually gives us dual optics on both Sony and CD Projekt; subscribers are willing to buy an expansion for a game that could rotate out of the service, indicating that the users may be subscribed for longer periods, and for CD Projekt, it means a potential additional sale for the Cyberpunk base game if users want to keep playing after the game moves out of PS Plus.

Cyberpunk 2077 has reached a new milestone with 35 million copies sold globally on all platforms, and the game's performance helped CD Projekt boost third quarter revenues by 53%.

CD Projekt's latest Q3'26 results show that the company's flywheel strategy is working quite well. Cyberpunk 2077's continued sales performance helped deliver a strong +53% spike in revenue throughout Q3, with earnings reaching 350 million zloty ($96 million) for the period.

All-told, Cyberpunk has now reached 35 million sales, up 5 million copies from the last update in November 2024. The surge in volume sales and overall revenue could be attributed to Cyberpunk 2077's launch on Switch 2 (although this period only includes roughly one month of sales) as well as well-timed discounts and promotions on all platforms--which are strategic parts of CD Projekt's flywheel business model.

CD Projekt has established a core leadership team at its Boston studio to helm Cyberpunk 2's development

The latest results for CD Projekt RED's Q3 period give a quick update on Cyberpunk 2, the upcoming sequel to the best-selling Cyberpunk 2077. Company co-CEO Michal Nowakowski confirms that Cyberpunk 2's foundational senior leadership team is now in place at its Boston group, with 80 developers currently at the studio.

The Boston-centric Cyberpunk 2 team will continue to grow throughout the next two years and more developers from other groups will start attaching themselves to the sequel, including those from the Canadian and Polish subsidiaries.