Gaming - Page 107

If you're a competitive gamer who enjoys playing shooters casually or seriously, odds are you jumped into the recent record-breaking Battlefield 6 Open Beta. With the hype surrounding the game growing steadily in recent months, by the time the Open Beta rolled around, the sheer number of players trying to join the action at once led to long queues and some matchmaking issues.

Granted, the team at Battlefield Studios (Criterion, DICE, Motive, and Ripple Effect) deserves a lot of credit for getting on top of things early and ensuring that, as the first and second weekend of the Battlefield 6 Open Beta continued, trying to get into a match wasn't a case of watching a five-digit number slowly count down.

Recently, we had the opportunity to sit down with Christian Buhl, Technical Director for Battlefield 6, to discuss the game, its upcoming launch, and the PC version. We also wanted to know, with millions of players jumping into the Open Beta, whether the game will be able to handle even more when it launches on October 10, 2025.

EA's Battlefield series has always felt like its home was on PC, partly because it wasn't until more recent entries that consoles were actually able to handle the franchise's iconic, large open maps with a vast number of players running around capturing points. With the upcoming October 10, 2025, launch of Battlefield 6, it definitely feels like the PC version is set to be the lead platform and remain the home of the Battlefield franchise.

With the recent success of the record-breaking Battlefield 6 Open Beta that saw over 420 million matches played out with over 92 million hours of gameplay, it was clear to many who jumped in early on PC that the state of the game from a polish, features, and performance perspective is already in a very good place. With the game able to hit a solid 60 FPS with recommended visual settings on the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GPU, featuring insane levels of destruction, it might just become one of the most polished releases of 2025.

This is also excellent news for those who jumped into its predecessor, Battlefield 2042, on day one. Ahead of the launch of Battlefield 6, EA and Battlefield Studios (comprising Criterion, DICE, Motive, and Ripple Effect) have confirmed additional details about the PC release, including the minimum and recommended specs, as well as confirming that it will feature over 600 customization options.

It appears that Roblox is bigger than Steam, with the platform recording a whopping 47.4 million concurrent users, surpassing Steam's record of 41.2 million. And yes, that's the entirety of Steam, a platform that encompasses nearly every PC game release over the past decade or so.

The 47.4 million figure is also impressive for Roblox, which held a record peak concurrent player count of around a quarter of this heading into 2025. The reason for the explosion in Roblox's popularity can be attributed to two user-created games: Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot. Now, if these are games you haven't heard of, that's probably because Roblox's player base is mainly comprised of gamers under the age of 13.

Of course, this news arrives in light of recent and alarming reports surrounding Roblox's security, privacy, and protection of its underage players.

When Epic first showcased the power of its latest Unreal Engine 5 technology, many were left impressed by how detailed and cinematic games were about to look. From the groundbreaking Lumen and Nanite technology to advanced ray tracing and other innovations, Unreal Engine 5 quickly became the go-to platform for both small and large developers as the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and modern DLSS and neural rendering GeForce RTX-powered generation of gaming began.

Fast forward to 2025, and as we've seen several high-profile Unreal Engine 5-powered games make their way to PC and consoles, there has been a lot of criticism surrounding poor performance and optimization in a range of UE5 games, with issues like stuttering and low frame rate, no matter the GPU it's paired with.

Just to name a few examples, there's STALKER 2, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Black Myth: Wukong, Lords of the Fallen, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Oblivion Remastered, and, more recently, Mafia: The Old Country and the Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater remake, with all titles releasing with notable and game-altering performance issues. And with all of the bad press, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has chimed in to point the finger at game developers.

We've got some full specs leaked on the purported PlayStation 6 handheld from a known leaker, confirming Zen 6 and RDNA 5 cores, PS5 + PS4 backwards compatibility, the tease of a docked mode, and more.

In his latest video leaker Moore's Law is Dead provides a FULL specs leak on the PlayStation "Canis" which is the new PS6 handheld. We can expect around a 135mm2 die fabbed on TSMC's new 3nm process node, 4 x Zen 6c cores and 2 x Zen 6LP cores with 4MB of L3 cache for the Zen 6c CCX.

AMD's new semi-custom Canis APU will feature a 192-bit LPDDR5X-8533 memory interface with support for up to 48GB of RAM, 16 CUs of RDNA 5 integrated GPU clocked at around 1.20GHz in handheld mode, and around 1.65GHz in docked mode. MLID says we can expect to see the PS6 handheld offering both PS5 and PS4 backwards compatibility, noting that there's "no mention of PS3".

Ken Levine and Ghost Story Games today revealed some surprising new tidbits about their new game Judas, and how the sci-fi shooter will go deeper than the BioShock trilogy.

BioShock had some pretty deep moments, especially the second game where you played as a Big Daddy. With his next game Judas, original BioShock series creator Ken Levine wants to amp up the meaningful character interactions and make the experiences more resonant, interesting, and impactful.

In a recent update, Levine briefly outlined Judas' villainy system and gave a bunch of new info about the protagonist and antagonists. The game has three principal characters that players can either make their friends or enemies. The Big 3, as it's called, is made up of a trio of characters with their own interests and motivations.

Gamers in the US are spending more on subscriptions in 2025 than last year, new data from Circana has revealed.

Now that games cost $70 or more, the value proposition of subscriptions like Game Pass and PlayStation Plus start to make more sense. Consumers are spending more on subscriptions, at least in the United States, where these services have generated $3.6 billion in 2025 so far.

According to the latest figures from Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, this year's cumulative subscription revenues are up 19% year-over-year.

Circana's latest games industry report shows the best-selling premium games of July 2025 in the United States, and Xbox had 5 out of the top 10 titles on the list.

Now that Microsoft owns a ton of publishers with mega-hit franchises, including Activision's $35 billion Call of Duty series, it's not uncommon to see Xbox as a kind of permanent fixture on best-sellers lists. That's the case for July's top-selling games in the United States.

Circana senior director Mat Piscatella recently published the US games market's results for July 2025, showing the top 20 best-selling premium games of the month. Microsoft populated 5 out of the top 10 spots with games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, Minecraft, Forza Horizon 5, and Grounded 2, which made its debut in the #8 slot.

Clair Obscur is now a video games franchise that will have multiple chapters, and Expedition 33 was just the beginning of what's to come.

Fans of the breakout RPG hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have something to look forward to. Developer Sandfall Interactive has confirmed that more games are on the way, with Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche clarifying that Clair Obscur is just the moniker, or the name, of the fantasy roleplaying series. The IP itself is becoming bigger than Sandfall had originally anticipated, Broche says, and the studio wants to keep its team relatively small.

"Clair Obscur is the franchise name. Expedition 33 is one of the stories that we want to tell in this franchise. Exactly what it will look like, and what the concept will be...it's still too soon to announce. What is sure is that this is not the end of the Clair Obscur franchise," Broche said in a recent interview with YouTuber MrMattyPlays.

A well-known leaker has chipped in to let us know that the next-gen consoles have a lot of nifty tech in store to facilitate better, smoother-running ray tracing - but that a full implementation of RT is still a long, long way out (unsurprisingly).

This came about thanks to a thread on X which was initially about NVIDIA's RTX Hair technology - for more realistic hair rendering (yes, it still sounds like an April Fool to me, but it isn't, in case there's any doubt) - but the discussion turned to the subject of ray tracing.

Specifically, LeviathanGamer - a well-informed enthusiast with a "passion for how computer architectures work and how video games use them" - started discussing the PS6 and next-gen Xbox and how both are targeting support for path tracing. They noted that AMD is "lagging behind" with this endeavor, before listing the biggest steps forward that Team Red could take in terms of tech that'd bring in better performance for RT.

Here's a stat that might or might not surprise you: Star Citizen, the epic everything space game from veteran designer Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games, has now raised over $1 billion in crowdfunding. Development on the game, and its single-player cinematic standalone campaign Squadron 42, began in 2012, with Star Citizen getting its first 'Early Access' release in 2017.

Even though we've been covering the progress of both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 for several years now, according to Chris Roberts, the finish line is in sight. Although Star Citizen 1.0 is on track for a 2027 or 2028 release, gamers can look forward to the launch of the star-studded Squadron 42 sometime in 2026 - next year. It's set to be released alongside the only other billion-dollar juggernaut on the horizon, Grand Theft Auto 6.

"It's Top Gun meeting Star Wars," Chris Roberts said when describing Squadron 42 to French-Canadian outlet LaPresse. Even though GTA 6 is set to launch on May 26, 2026, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, Chris Roberts and the team at Cloud Imperium Games probably know enough not to launch Squadron 42 anywhere close to that date.

Outside of the improved visuals delivered by its much more advanced NVIDIA hardware, one of the most significant improvements that the Nintendo Switch 2 has brought to Nintendo fans and gamers is much faster storage. This not only means games load fast, but navigating the OS and storefront is also vastly improved thanks to the faster internal flash memory. The only downside is that you can no longer expand the handheld's storage capacity with an affordable microSD card.

Instead, storage expansion is only possible with the latest microSD Express cards, which include PCIe Gen 3x1 technology, offering read speeds of up to 890 MB/s and write speeds of up to 810 MB/s. Compared to the read speeds of up to 100 MB/s that some of the best microSD card options for the original Nintendo Switch offer, the new microSD Express format is a literal game-changer, as it enables faster data streaming for features like textures and larger digital environments.

However, it's brand-new, and microSD Express cards with larger capacities are currently quite expensive. This is where PNY's new microSD Express card comes in - as the first 512GB option launching with a more wallet-friendly price of $99.99 USD.

Helldivers 2's new Into the Unjust update brings a new level of challenge to the game with a gigantic, claustrophobic cave system that cuts players off from their super destroyers.

Arrowhead is leaning into the horror with the new Helldivers 2 update, taking players into the freakish Terminid Hive Worlds. The update offers a unique new challenge to the game via its massive network of caves and tunnels that are interspersed across the planets.

While in the caves, players can't call down weapons from super destroyers, and they'll face unpredictable survival scenarios that can range from swarms of enemies in cyclopean cave chambers to high-tension cat-and-mouse moments in almost complete subterranean darkness.

Hollow Knight Silksong is one of the most anticipated games of the year, and some indie developers aren't willing to risk going up against it.

At least three independent game developers have moved their projects out of the blast radius of Silksong's expected megaton launch. Competition is always fierce in the games industry, and interest in indie games has grown particularly over the last few years, leading to some eclectic and unpredictable surprise hits. Everyone wants to be the next big thing, or at least make their money back, but that's hard to do if you're going up against fierce competition.

That's why some devs are delaying their games to avoid competing directly with Hollow Knight Silksong, at least on the game's September 4 launch day.

Activision today confirms that Black Ops 7 won't be compatible with the Carry Forward program after all, meaning your existing unlocks and skins from Black Ops 6 won't cross over to the new game.

Activision has changed its mind and canceled Black Ops 7's carry forward support. As Gamespot notes, this course reversal comes just a week after Activision made the announcement that Black Ops 6's unlocks would also be carried over to the new sci-fi FPS.

So what happened? The official reasoning is that Activision wants to preserve an authentic look and feel for the game. Basically, it doesn't make sense for the content to cross over. This, of course, also means users will need to play the game to unlock new skins and rewards while also buying new packs and passes. Call of Duty is a franchise that's generated revenue in excess of $35 billion, primarily from microtransactions, and it's also capable of earning $1 billion from game sales alone.

Major online games are starting to drop support on PS4, and Final Fantasy XIV could be next.

After earning over $100 billion from a prolonged console life cycle, it seems like everyone is ready to move on from the PS4. Two of the platform's biggest online games have announced they'll be dropping PS4 soon--PUBG in November of this year, and Genshin Impact in April 2026. Now a recent interview hints that Final Fantasy XIV might also be moving on from the PS4 soon.

FFXIV game director Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P) reveals some interesting details on how the game actually works on PS4. Yoshi-P tells games publication Feed4Gamers that Sony basically gives Final Fantasy XIV extra clearance to use more of the PS4's OS resources. But there's a limit, and that limit is close to being maxed out.

With the Battlefield 6 beta weekends now officially over, players are left needing to get that Battlefield fix, and judging by Steam's most-played charts, that fix is being gotten in Battlefield 2042.

Fans appear to be waiting patiently for the release of Battlefield 6 while in the lobbies of Battlefield 2042, as the SteamDB charts showcase an intense spike in concurrent player count since the BF6 open beta weekends came to a close. Prior to the open beta weekends for Battlefield 6, Battlefield 2042 was sitting at around 10,000 concurrent players, but since the closure of the open beta weekends, that figure has jumped up to more than 50,000.

So far, Battlefield 2042 has reached 74,000 concurrent players on Steam following the BF6 open beta weekends, which is just shy of the all-time concurrent player peak of 107,000 set nearly 2 years ago. Possibly one of the attractions to Battlefield 2042 is DICE's announcement that playing the game ahead of the release of BF6 will earn players numerous exclusive rewards that will carry over to BF6 when it launches. Quite a smart tactic by EA and DICE, and it seems to be working.

Call of Duty has officially responded to the community backlash following the recent gameplay reveal for Black Ops 7 at Gamescom 2025.

The community pushed back intensely after seeing the gameplay trailer released by Activision and Call of Duty developers at the show, with the video on the official Call of Duty YouTube channel currently sitting at 44 million views, but with 407,000 dislikes versus just 55,000 likes. Also, the top comment on the gameplay reveal is "This made me pre-order Battlefield 6."

One of the particular points of contention Call of Duty players raised in various social media posts is the integration of cosmetics in Black Ops 7, or more specifically, how they don't want Black Ops 6 skins and cosmetics to carry over to Black Ops 7.

Activision recently concluded its worldwide reveal for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at Gamescom 2025, and the new gameplay trailer published to the official Call of Duty YouTube channel now stands as a representation of how the Call of Duty community feels about the next addition to the Call of Duty franchise.

The "gameplay" reveal at Gamescom 2025 has been met with heavy criticism from the Call of Duty community, which has taken to dislike-bombing the YouTube video, which has gained more than 46 million views since its release. Using the Likes, Dislikes, and Views of the video, we can learn some insights using this public-facing data.

For example, of the 46 million views, only 1% of viewers actually clicked like or dislike, and the approval ratings for the video are as follows. 55,000 Likes ÷ 462,000 (Likes + Dislikes) = 11.9% Likes. As for Dislikes, 407,000 ÷ 462,000 = 88.1% Dislikes. Reactions relative to views are even more interesting, with 55,000 ÷ 46,000,000 = 0.12% of viewers liked the video. Dislikes landed on 0.88% of viewers.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is right around the corner, and ahead of its release, leaked details about the upcoming Modern Warfare 4 developed by Infinity Ward.

As always with leaks of any kind, take the information with a healthy amount of skepticism, as none of the information has been confirmed. A leak round-up for Modern Warfare 4 has been posted on X by @CODWarfareForum, which wrote the upcoming title won't feature any omni-movement, as apparently, Infinity Ward isn't a fan of it. Additionally, slide canceling will be included as it has never been removed from the builds of the engine; there won't be a melee slot, and players won't be able to aim down weapon sights while sliding.

Furthermore, CODWarfareForum writes that tactical sprinting will be returning, and that the visual recoil of weapons will be similar to the visual recoil on Modern Warfare II weapons. Lastly, CODWarfareForum pointed to @realityukl for the source of most of these leaks, while also saying that some of them were heard about as long as a year ago.