Gaming - Page 11

Ubisoft insider Rogue Tx, who has a solid track record on Assassin's Creed leaks, says a reveal for Assassin's Creed Hexe could be coming relatively soon. As evidence, Rogue points back to something he flagged weeks ago: a hidden cathedral tucked into Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, which players have since matched to a real church in Nuremberg.

Given Hexe's rumored setting during the German witch trials, that cathedral looks less like a coincidence and more like Ubisoft seeding its next game inside its last one. The timing also roughly matches up to when you would expect a reveal for a game that is rumored to be coming in 2027.

Rogue also shared new gameplay details alongside the reveal talk. Hexe's parkour will reportedly blend the classic pre-RPG Assassin's Creed movement style with mechanics from Assassin's Creed Shadows, giving players double jumps and swings for both exploration and escaping enemies.

A leaked render of the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold has surfaced on Telegram, offering a first look at the device ahead of its rumored August 12 launch, which, if you know anything about Google and unreleased Google products, this leak isn't surprising in the slightest.

Google has a long history of renders somehow making their way out onto the internet before the official announcement, and in this instance, the render was shared by leaker Mystic Leaks and then reported on by 9to5Google. The image reveals the back of the device in a new "Pine" colorway, with subtle but notable design changes from the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

The render highlights a smaller camera bar compared to last year's model, with the flash now moved to the upper left corner, rather than in the center on the 10. Some speculate this change could be for a new "Pixel Glow" notification system, which would use light and color to alert users when the phone is face-down, a feature that is similar to the multi-colored notification light that appeared on Google's Nexus line of smartphones. The Pro Fold 11 also doesn't fully adopt the all-black camera bar expected on the regular Pixel 11 lineup.

Sony announced it was ending production of PlayStation games on physical discs in January 2028, a decision that caused large portions of PlayStation gamers and gamers in general to turn against Sony. Now, it seems Sony won't only have angry gamers knocking on their door, but also Dutch consumer group Stichting Massaschade & Consument, who has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Dutch PlayStation gamers that is seeking $457 million in damages for violations of pricing practises on the PlayStation Store.

While these issues seem completely separate on the surface, the Dutch consumer group argues that Sony's decision to end production of physical PlayStation games reinforces its alleged monopolized position in the market, as Sony will be able to push prices even higher than they were prior to physical PlayStation games being discontinued. While the lawsuit predominantly focuses on pricing on the PlayStation Store, the recent decision from Sony has only given the consumer group's argument more credibility.

Notably, Sony's relationship with gamers currently is thin at best, as indicated by a petition that has since reached more than 300,000 signatures, which calls for Sony to reconsider its disc phase-out decision. Additionally, PlayStation gamers are canceling their subscriptions to PSN in droves, prompting Sony to begin to offer 50% discounts to gamers attempting to end their PSN subscription. Simultaneously, Sony confirmed that PSN price hikes aren't off the table, and soft confirmed the PlayStation 6 will be launching without a disc drive.

It seems that AMD is finally ready to deliver its answer to DLSS 4's Multi Frame Generation, as it has already begun to appear in the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.6.2 Driver. This news arrives via the Chiphell forums (via Wccftech), where references to FSR Multi Frame Generation have been spotted in the RadeonTuner tool, an open-source, user-created alternative to AMD Adrenalin Software.

With the tool's ability to expose or list technologies that aren't quite ready for launch but exist in the driver's codebase, it looks like FSR Multi Frame Generation is not only coming, but AMD is potentially going to support a Multi Frame Generation ratio of up to 8X, which would generate 7 additional frames in addition to the natively or FSR 4.1-upscaled frame. Currently, FSR Frame Generation only supports a single generated frame, otherwise known as the 2X mode.

The arrival of FSR Multi Frame Generation would see AMD's FSR Redstone suite of AI-powered technologies deliver Frame Generation feature parity with both NVIDIA DLSS and Intel XeSS. Also, an 8X mode would generate more frames than NVIDIA's DLSS 4.5 Multi Frame Generation update that introduced a 6X mode.

We all remember Ryse: Son of Rome, right? It launched alongside the Xbox One in November 2013 as a cinematic action game starring Roman centurion Marius Titus on a revenge quest against barbarian invaders. New details from former Crytek staff, reported by IGN, reveal the game was originally meant to be the opening chapter of a much bigger historical franchise, one Microsoft reportedly saw as its answer to Assassin's Creed.

According to the developers, planning for future entries started while the first game was still in production. The team discussed taking the series to Viking-era Europe, feudal Japan, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, with a loose connecting theme built around the rise and fall of civilizations. Sound familiar?

Some pitches even floated the idea of linking each game's story to the next. Sequels were reportedly planned to ditch the corridor-style level design of the original for a more God of War-like semi-open structure, along with real PvP and vehicle sections that never made it into the launch game.

ZeniMax Online Studios has been affected by Xbox's layoff spree, but as it stands, the studio still has enough manpower to produce meaningful content for the popular The Elder Scrolls Online MMO.

With over 26 million lifetime players, ESO remains an important part of Xbox's live game strategy. The MMORPG has kept the Elder Scrolls franchise alive and kicking as Bethesda continues its glacial pace on TES6, raking in millions of dollars in spending. Xbox's recent layoffs definitely affected ZeniMax Online Studios (and Bethesda in general), but new info helps clarify and contextualize what's actually going on.

The admins of the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP.net) attended the yearly Elder Scrolls Tavern event in Europe, where the ZeniMax team shared new information on the studio's current status. The details show that ZeniMax Online Studios is now the same size as it was when it put out Wrothgar in the Orsinium update as well as the major standalone Summerset expansion. This indicates that ZOS is still capable of putting out new expansions, DLCs, and updates for the game, warding off worries about team size.

id Software has issued a statement clarifying the current status of the team, confirming that it's currently as big as it was when it made Doom 2016.

Xbox plans to lay off a total of 3,200 people over the next year. The restructuring has already led to 1,600 layoffs across all divisions, including Texas-based Bethesda subsidiary id Software. Recent reports said about half of the studio had been let go, and that id was now relegated to a support studio, but that isn't the case.

id affirms that it still has enough people to make new games: "We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we're known for. The team today is about the same size we were when we made Doom 2016. We have always had a flat studio where everyone is a maker, and we will remain true to that philosophy moving forward."

EA Sports College Football 27 is the first game in the revived franchise to land on PC, and by most accounts, the on-field gameplay is a real step up over last year's entry. That improvement is, however, getting buried under a wave of Steam reviews, with the game currently sitting in "Mostly Negative" territory after only about a quarter to a third of reviews came back positive.

The anger is focused mainly on Dynasty and Road to Glory, the two single-player career modes that let you run a college program or take a created player through their career. Previous entries let players adjust XP sliders to speed up progression at their own pace. That option is gone in College Football 27, replaced with "College Football Points" that let you pay real money to skip the grind.

Reviewers say reaching the max coach level under the new default pacing could take well over a hundred simulated seasons without paying, and some estimate maxing out a coach through points alone would cost more than the game itself. A few content creators who got early access have also claimed these systems weren't present in their preview builds, making accusations that EA slipped the monetization in right before launch to avoid tanking early impressions.

Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki has sold 225,000 shares of company stock worth $4.7 million, just days after PlayStation made the controversial announcement to end game disc production in 2028.

Sony's decision to phase out game discs has not gone over well with PlayStation faithful. Meanwhile, amid the controversy, Sony executives are making millions by selling off company stock. The timing has added a bit of fuel to Sony's ongoing PR fire, as it was uncovered that Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki made a particular multi-million dollar stock disposal just 2 days after the PlayStation game disc announcement.

As it turns out, glancing at the company's EDGAR filings shows that multiple high-profile Sony executives have also recently sold stock; four members of Sony's leadership team including Chief Strategy Officer Toshimoto Mitomo, have all made sales of thousands of Sony shares. However, none were worth as much as Totoki's hefty $4.7 million exchange

Ubisoft has secured a hit with its latest Assassin's Creed remake as the company faces down an uncertain future.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is a multi-platinum sales success as Ubisoft confirms the pirate sim has now shipped over 2 million copies on all platforms. The milestone was achieved in a day's time, putting Black Flag Resynced up against the fastest-selling games of 2026.

These sales come at an important time for Ubisoft. The company recently restructured its business into five creative house subsidiaries, with the biggest one, Vantage Studios, being a joint venture between Ubisoft and Tencent. Black Flag's favorable performance will give Ubisoft momentum at a period when it needs it most, especially after layoffs, cost adjustments, and other market pressures force the group to make serious decisions about its future.

Ubisoft tells the critics of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced that the $85 worth of DLC is "never a requirement," and technically, they're not wrong. It's just that the optics of this DLC launch are downright terrible.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launched on July 9 to a genuinely strong start. It reportedly sold over five times as many pre-launch Steam copies as AC Shadows, and the remake earned solid reviews from critics for its combat overhaul and visual upgrades. For a couple of days, it looked like Ubisoft had actually pulled off a comeback.

Then, players noticed the updated Steam store page. Alongside the $59.99 base game (which is already a hard sell for a remake) sits roughly $85 worth of day-one DLC, ranging from $5 map packs to $10 cosmetic and time-saving bundles. Even the $70 Deluxe Edition only covers two of those packs, which makes it look even worse.

id Software is facing major layoffs, and the once-mighty FPS developer has been downsized as part of Xbox's restructuring. Original id co-founder John Carmack shares his thoughts and commiserates with the developers who lost their jobs.

Microsoft is laying off 3,200 people at Xbox, and half of those cuts occurred just a few days ago. The other half, which will see 1,600 more people lose their jobs, will take place from now until June 2027. id Software was hit hard by the layoffs, with Xbox shedding half of the studio while still somehow prioritizing id's Doom and Quake franchises.

The layoffs have captured attention from old guard veterans like John Carmack, one of the original founders of id and creators of Doom. On Twitter, Carmack shared his thoughts on id's current situation, lamenting the layoffs while also calling into question whether or not Xbox is actually a good steward for id and Doom moving forward.

New reports from Bloomberg say that Minecraft's profits helped fund other games in the Xbox software portfolio, indicating that proceeds from highly-profitable titles like Minecraft helped create other titles for Game Pass.

A recent Bloomberg article has caused a bit of a stir for Microsoft; the coverage says that profits from Minecraft were used to fund other games at Xbox. There's a lot to unpack here, especially since Minecraft is a huge driver for the Xbox business. In fact, when it comes down to it, Minecraft and Call of Duty are the most valuable properties insofar as sales and engagement--Minecraft is the second best-selling game of all time with 300 million copies sold.

It was also revealed that Minecraft was the highest-earning Xbox game pre-ABK, and that it makes significant profits. "Minecraft is one of the most profitable, if not the most profitable first-party game," Xbox CFO Tim Stuart said during the FTC v Microsoft trial of 2023.

Ubisoft's latest Assassin's Creed game has $84 worth of DLC available on day one, yet the game is being sold for $59.99 on all major storefronts.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is out now, and Ubisoft has launched the title with heavy monetization in tow. Like previous games in the series, Black Flag Resynced features a range of microtransaction options across multiple packs. The DLC ranges from $5 for the cheapest time-saving microtransaction, the map pack option, to a variety of $10 packs that include big visual and cosmetic overhauls to Edward Kenway's outfit and ship appearances.

Altogether, the DLC costs $84 when purchased separately, but you can get two of the $10 packs included in the $70 deluxe edition. While all of these things are optional, and gamers can flat out ignore the vanity items, the inclusion does underline a long-running part of Ubisoft's business model. Some time ago, Ubisoft opted to inject live service elements into all of its games, leading to singleplayer games with native microtransactions built right into the experience.

Fans of EA's racing franchises are in for some disappointment--the Need for Speed and Burnout series are apparently stuck in the impound lot.

Electronic Arts will soon be under new ownership, and that means some changes are happening behind the scenes--or in the case of Need for Speed, the changes were made previously and are now becoming more permanent. It's been revealed that Criterion is now exclusively on Battlefield and will lend its vehicular mastery to the FPS warfighter moving forward.

"We are solely focused on Battlefield," Battlefield studios Europe exec Rebecka Coutaz recently told IGN. When pressed on the future of Burnout and Need for Speed, Coutaz apparently said: "We're not here to talk about the past."

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launched this week to some of the best numbers Ubisoft has seen in years. However, it looks like Ubisoft still isn't content with its workforce, as 51 people just lost their jobs.

According to Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, Ubisoft Barcelona has been disbanded, with 51 employees let go days after the studio finished its work on the remake. Many of them had spent years on the project. Sources told Henderson the layoffs felt planned well in advance and were going to happen no matter how the game performed.

Apparently, Ubisoft typically lines up a new project for a team before their current one wraps, sometimes a year ahead of time. The Barcelona team reportedly raised concerns as far back as summer 2025 that no new assignment had come through, and nothing ever did. The studio's launch celebration was also reportedly downgraded to a small in-office gathering instead of a proper event.

Open-source Windows alternative ReactOS has finally reached a state where the operating system can play games. Discovered by Phoronix, a ReactOS user uploaded footage on YouTube of Half-Life 2 running on ReactOS at 1440p using a GTX 960 graphics card running on legacy NVIDIA 368.61 graphics drivers.

The game reportedly ran "basically perfectly" with 6x MSAA and 16x anisotropic filtering. Judging by the gameplay footage, the game appears to be running at 60 FPS or better with no apparent frame drops that we could count. Granted, we did not scrub through all 10 hours of the uploaded gameplay footage.

Playing a game that initially came out in 2004 might not sound significant, but it's a big deal for this specific OS. ReactOS is a 30-year-old project that has been written entirely from scratch as an open-source alternative to running Windows apps. Progress has been slow, but recent work has been done to get display driver support more aligned with modern versions of Windows by adding WDDM support to the OS. WDDM support has enabled ReactOS to run older GPU drivers designed for Windows, which is a key factor for getting games to run on the open-source operating system.

id Software was reportedly developing concepts for a John Wick-inspired "Gun Fu" game, a new Perfect Dark title, and a Western robot-driven survival shooter, all of which are now likely dead due to recent Xbox layoffs and instructions from Xbox management that big studios, such as id Software and Bethesda, need to concentrate on their mainline titles.

The studio, best known for its DOOM series, was exploring a variety of original and licensed IP, including an action game called Fury, which was described as being heavily inspired by the John Wick movies, a potential Perfect Dark sequel, and a concept inspired by the movie Westworld.

These ideas were detailed in a new GamesBeat report, but with over half of id's team laid off as part of Microsoft's broader "Xbox reset," which resulted in as many as 3,200 roles being cut, and the four studios being divested, these projects are unlikely to see the light of day, as they will be deemed too financially risky to pursue.

MindsEye developers are staging a public protest outside their Edinburgh studio this weekend as Build a Rocket Boy, the developer of the flopped title, hosts an all-expenses-paid fan event at the developers' offices in Edinburgh.

Reports indicate the fan event includes flights, hotel stays, and a meet-and-greet with studio staff, a lavish gesture from a studio that has laid off over 400 employees in three rounds of layoffs in under a year, following the disastrous launch of MindsEye, and the strange and tumultuous time following its debut. Union members with the IWGB are set to gather at 10AMto voice their discontent toward the studio, according to DualShockers.

The event has already drawn sharp criticism, with multiple outlets highlighting the perceived disparity between studio spending, worker conditions, and the fact that Build a Rocket Boy has let go more than 400 employees from the studio in cost-cutting measures.

It looks like people grew tired of the new RPG-style Assassin's Creed games, as the new Black Flag Resynced has garnered extraordinary interest since its announcement. The game is not even officially out yet, and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced already looks to be tracking well ahead of Assassin's Creed Shadows on Steam before launch, according to new estimates from games analytics firm Alinea Analytics.

The data shows Resynced had sold roughly 300,000 copies on Steam two days before its July 9 launch, worth close to $14 million in gross revenue. That's about 5.39x as many Steam copies as Shadows had sold at the same pre-release point last year, per Alinea's tracking.

Mind you, these figures do not represent total sales for Resynced and Shadows, but rather the sales made in the specific pre-sale period. For context, Shadows has gone on to sell 5.7 million copies globally, split roughly 53.6% on PS5, 23.8% on Steam, and the rest on Xbox, with Steam lifetime sales landing around 1.3 million. Black Flag Resynced is off to a strong start, but it will be some time before it catches up to those figures.