Gaming - Page 13

Gaming has once again been taken over by an indie game, and this one has a unique premise: blend yourself into your surroundings like an artistic chameleon while other players try to snoop you out.

Meccha Chameleon brings new viral life to one of the most ancient games in human history: Hide and seek. The $6 indie is a mega-hit on Steam, where it became Steam's #1 top seller (currently #3). Social word-of-mouth has elevated this indie to superstar status; the game recently broke 15 million copies sold in less than a month.

As Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad notes, this milestone makes Meccha Chameleon the fastest-selling and best-selling game of 2026 so far.

The new Halo CE remake will have a LASO playlist that is confirmed to be beatable by players, but it's not true LASO.

Halo Campaign Evolved launches this month, bringing Xbox's seminal FPS to PlayStation for the first time. The Halo 1 remake will have a bunch of extra features including enhanced graphics, the ability to sprint, and even new guns from other Halo games. It also has 42 skulls, more than any other previous title in the series. Enthusiasts have been dying to know if the remake will have the mythical LASO challenge intact--Legendary All Skulls On, which offers a grueling experience for hardcore fans.

The remake will indeed have a LASO mode, but it's not full LASO. Halo Studios calls it LAASO, or Legendary Almost All Skulls On. The mode is so named because only a portion of the 42 skulls will be active. And yes, it can actually be completed. This was a big point that Halo pro player Jervalin brought up (he became famous for beating Moist Cr1tikal's $20K Halo 2 LASO deathless challenge), saying that it would be outrageous for Halo Studios to make a LASO playlist that couldn't be beaten.

One of gaming's most dedicated visionaries laments the loss of physical PlayStation discs at a recent event in Italy.

Hideo Kojima, whose body is made mostly of movies, recently attended the Il Cinema in Piazza Film Festival in Italy, and publicly discussed his thoughts on the loss of physical game discs. It's an end of an era for all gamers and developers alike, yet Kojima in particular has a strong affinity and love for physical media--he's always sharing pictures of some new CD, DVD, or Blu-ray disc he just bought on his Twitter account.

At the film festival, Kojima says that he's woeful for the loss while also warning the audience about the dangers of a digital-only future, especially when it comes to subscriptions. This is interesting because Kojima's next game, OD, is believed to be one of the first cloud-native games that's been made for the nascent delivery method.

Ubisoft's highly anticipated Black Flag Remake, which the company has been clear is a full remake and not just a remaster, is now days away from launch on July 9. Steam Deck gamers who have been waiting to find out whether they will be able to sail the Caribbean on the go finally have their answer, and it is a good one.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is Steam Deck Verified at launch. Ubisoft confirmed the news in a post on Steam, saying its teams worked hard to make the game playable in as many places as possible. A Steam Deck Verified rating means the game runs well out of the box with default settings, controller configuration, correct controller icons, and legible text on the handheld's screen.

Ubisoft has not confirmed specific frame rates for the Steam Deck version, which likely means the game targets 30 FPS on the handheld. That said, Steam Deck Verified status is also a decent indicator of broader PC performance. If the game runs stably on Valve's modest RDNA 3-based hardware, most modern gaming PCs should have no trouble with it. It is also worth noting that Steam Deck Verified games carry over to the Steam Machine, which runs the same underlying SteamOS software and features stronger AMD hardware.

Reading between the lines, Sony's decision to move to an all-digital future for PlayStation was always in plain sight.

Last month on June 5, Sony published a Q&A centered on its PlayStation business. Looking through that document in hindsight after Sony announced it would be cutting game discs for new titles after 2028 adds new context to what was said.

PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino mentioned something particularly interesting given the new developments: "At the same time, most of the value of our ecosystem is driven by third-party publishers, who benefit from our large install base, strong community engagement, and monetization tools. This supports a shift toward a true digital platform business.".

Ubisoft has hired 2K Games co-founder Christoph Hartmann to lead the future of big Tom Clancy franchises like The Division.

Some of Ubisoft's biggest franchises will now be overseen by a proven games industry veteran. The company recently restructured into five different segments called Creative Houses, with each overseeing a domain of franchises. Now Ubisoft has found leadership for Creative House 2, which handles Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, The Division, and the recently-acquired March of Giants MOBA.

2K Games co-founder and former president Christoph Hartmann will lead Creative House 2, Ubisoft has announced. Hartmann helped bring to market multiple games in his tenure at 2K including Borderlands, BioShock, XCOM and NBA 2K. Hartmann will now lend that expertise to Ubisoft and its titles.

Sony PlayStation has officially declared AI as one of the core ingredients of its future strategy, with leadership emphasizing its role in improving game development and player experiences, at no cost to the end product or user.

In a recently translated Q&A from a PlayStation internal meeting, CEO Hideaki Nishino described AI as an "important foundational piece" of the company's long-term vision. He noted that AI is already being used to enhance development efficiency by removing repetitive tasks that developers would otherwise have had to complete. Nishino also highlighted PlayStation's global IP library and how an integrated ecosystem leveraging AI will benefit the company.

Sony says its approach to AI is less about cost-cutting and more about accelerating development, while maintaining the exponentially growing standards of game development. A joint response from Nishino and PlayStation studio leadership emphasized that AI is being used to reduce repetitive tasks and enable developers to iterate faster than before, with examples including the development of synthetic assets and placeholder voices. They also mentioned that AI is being used to create more immersive in-game worlds and characters.

CD Projekt Red has officially confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 has crossed 40 million copies sold, and perhaps surprisingly, it beat The Witcher 3's pace to get there. The studio confirmed the milestone on X, with joint CEO Michał Nowakowski calling it proof of the game's "lasting strength" and teasing that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 is coming this fall.

The number covers the base game plus the Ultimate Edition bundle, and it comes just seven months after CD Projekt announced 35 million, a jump TweakTown covered back in November when the game was also driving a 53% revenue increase for the company. It looks like Cyberpunk 2077 has been on a real redemption arc over the past couple of years.

For comparison, CDPR's older RPG, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, sold around 30 million copies in its first six years on the market. Cyberpunk 2077 has now hit 40 million in that same six-year window, a full 10 million ahead of its own predecessor's pace. That's a really impressive turnaround for a game that launched in December 2020 in decidedly rough shape, got pulled from the PlayStation Store, and became a punchline for months.

A new internal document from Sony outlines how its controversial disc phase-out will affect third-party publishers and partners.

Sony plans to stop physical disc production of new games by January 2028. This means that any game that comes out after that timeframe will be digital-only on PlayStation. But games that had already been released on the market before this cutoff date can still get physical disc releases.

Sony's official messaging to publishers was obtained by Game File's Stephen Totilo, offering more clarification on what to expect. The report states that publishers "will still be able to place re-orders for existing PlayStation disc games," confirming that these specific games can still get printed onto discs even after the January 2028 cutoff. There will be some adjustments to how discs are ordered, Sony says.

Nintendo's latest Q&A with investors shows the company is operating under the assumption that the current component crisis does not abate.

The ongoing chip squeeze has triggered price hikes across nearly all consumer electronics, including consoles from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. Gamers have had to adapt to multiple increases on both PlayStation (two price hikes) and Xbox (three hikes). Nintendo plans to raise the price of its Switch 2 console on September 1, pushing the system from its original tariff-insulated $459 price to a more profit-friendly $499.

In the latest annual shareholders meeting, Nintendo management was specifically asked how skyrocketing chip prices will affect the group's future plans. Company president Shuntaro Furukawa responded by saying that Nintendo is currently outlining its plans and predictions for Fiscal Year 2028 (April 2027 - March 2028) based on the belief that memory and storage could continue increasing in price. This falls in line with Microsoft's own expectations, as Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says chip prices will continue to jump through the end of 2027: "As we plan for the 2027 holiday season, we expect another significant increase, taking us over 5x the prices we paid only two years earlier," Sharma said at the time.

UPDATE: It's been revealed that this messaging is not new, and has been on the PlayStation Direct storefront for over a year.

Sony is limiting orders of the PS5's $80 disc drive to 1 order per person following its controversial decision to kill game discs in 2028.

Sony recently shocked the gaming world by announcing it would stop producing PlayStation game discs for new games by January 2028. The PlayStation community is vexed and incensed like never before--and that's saying a lot after the PS3 woes and the infamous 2011 PSN blackout. This has led to one of the most significant consumer backlashes in the history of the video games industry.

Microsoft has subtly fired shots at Sony over the company's recent announcement that it will be ending production of physical PlayStation game discs in January 2028, and that all new games released following that date will still come in a plastic case, but instead of a disc, it will be a redeemable code for the title.

As you can probably imagine, PlayStation gamers aren't thrilled about the news, and thousands have even expressed their rejection of the idea in a poll that called for Sony to reconsider its decision. To add more fuel to the fire, the Microsoft-owned GitHub has taken to X to announce, "We heard you. And we agree. In light of recent developments in physical media, GitHub is proud to announce that you can now obtain your public repo on CD-ROM."

"Keep it. Lend it to friends. Pass it on to your children. Your code is physically yours, forever. Until you lose it, let's be real." GitHub explains on the website that it's a burned copy of your own GitHub repo, and that supplies are limited, as only the first 1,000 eligible submissions will receive one. Additionally, burned GitHub CDs are limited to one per person, and availability may be limited by country or region.

Sony's stock went up by as much as 7% following its controversial announcement to stop producing game discs.

Investors may approve of Sony's decision to cut production of new PlayStation game discs by January 2028. Since the company broke the news on July 1, Sony's stock has gone up as much as 7%, trading from 3232 JPY at the lowest point of the day of the announcement to a high of 3486 JPY on July 3. At the time of writing, Sony's stock is currently at 3380 JPY.

Sony justified the market-shaking decision by saying that the "general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs." The move to an all-digital environment will let the platform-holder better serve its users in a way that they prefer, the company says.

Sony is preparing to raise PlayStation Plus prices, a decision that comes only a few days after the company announced it will be discontinuing the production of physical PlayStation game discs.

The company confirmed that new subscribers are already facing higher costs and is exploring ways to increase profitability, including through pricing. In a translated Q&A during a June meeting, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino, along with Hermen Hulst and Lynn Azar, said the company is actively working to improve the balance between the value each PSN subscription tier offers customers and the cost of accessing each tier.

They emphasized that PS Plus remains a key profit driver, with record profitability in FY2025 and 40% of users now in higher-tier subscriptions. The price hikes come as the gaming industry wrestles with rising hardware costs, specifically components such as RAM and storage, which are both being gobbled up by the endless demand from the AI sector.

Contractually bound to do so, Krafton has agreed to pay developers at Unknown Worlds a bonus worth up to $250 million after management allegedly tried to use ChatGPT to find a way out of the situation.

Thanks to huge sales, Subnautica 2 developers at Unknown Worlds have won their bonus. Bloomberg reports that the fiasco with Krafton has been settled, and the publisher will pay out up to $250 million to the seaworthy game developers as part of contract terms.

As part of the legal settlement, current Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill plans to leave the studio under mutual terms. Krafton had previously fired Gill (and the rest of Unknown Worlds' key management team), which ultimately led to a lawsuit and the eventual payout. In that lawsuit, it was revealed that Krafton's CEO allegedly used ChatGPT in an attempt to find a way out of the bonus situation.

Is Baldur's Gate 4 ever going to happen? Hopefully, yes, but the problem is that Baldur's Gate 3 is such a tough act to follow that it's seemingly difficult to find a dev team up for the challenge of making the next instalment.

PC Gamer reports that after Baldur's Gate 3 was a storming success, and Larian decided to leave the franchise (which wasn't an immediate departure, if you recall, and Larian did actually begin work on BG4 for a short time), Hasbro looked around for someone to take up the next iteration in the heavyweight RPG franchise.

The second person Hasbro asked to take on BG4 was James Ohlen, an ex-BioWare developer who headed up Archetype - the development studio making Exodus for Hasbro (Wizards of the Coast) - who was a co-lead designer on Baldur's Gate 2. Indeed, Kevin Martens, the other co-lead designer on BG2, was also at Archetype.

Beloved Fallout New Vegas studio Obsidian Entertainment is reportedly safe from closure in Xbox's upcoming layoffs.

New reports say that Obsidian Entertainment may be one of the studios that could be sold--or even shut down--as part of Microsoft's impending Xbox layoffs. Now trusted Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has clarified that this isn't the case.

"Despite a report this morning, I can confirm that Obsidian is *not* in negotiations to avoid shutting down. Plenty of details are still up in the air surrounding the layoffs (picture will be clear on Monday) but Xbox is keeping Obsidian, according to people familiar with the situation," Schreier said this morning on BlueSky.

Sony's decision to cut production of physical game discs by January 2028 was in the works for a while, sources tell Österreichischer Rundfunk's local Salzburg branch.

New reports indicate that Sony's plans to kill off PlayStation discs may not be easily reversible. According to ORF's Salzburg news org, Sony's DADC (Digital Audio Disc Corporation) is retraining staff at an Austrian-based media production facility in Thalgau, with various restructurings happening behind the scenes. The plant will now produce Sony's advanced Micro Optics technology instead.

According to ORF Salzburg, people close to the matter say that this process has been planned for "some time," however it's unclear how long Sony's plan to cut game discs has been mulled over. It's possible that this decision was years in the making, as Sony started to cut Blu-ray disc production as early as July 2024. At the time, the decision only affected recordable media like BD-R discs.

Rockstar Games has put out a bunch of new job listings as the developer ramps up to the highly anticipated launch of Grand Theft Auto 6, and some of these job listings have revealed what Rockstar describes as a "Creator Platform".

It has been rumored and speculated for quite some time that Rockstar will significantly expand GTA Online in Grand Theft Auto 6, with some theories even suggesting the online service will receive the Roblox treatment, allowing players to host and customize community servers. By doing this, Rockstar will have created a user-generated content ecosystem, which ties directly into its acquisition of FiveM and RedM, two standalone online versions of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption Online.

Rockstar then created a storefront called the Cfx Marketplace that sells digital content, such as items and cosmetics. Essentially, Rockstar recognized the value of the GTA Role-Playing community and community servers in general, and is now officially bringing them into the fold under what it describes as the "Creator Platform". Job listings on Rockstar's website are calling for multiple positions under the "Creator Platform," which may just be an internal name and not what it's called within GTA 6.

Oblivion Remastered is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on August 11, 2026, following rumors dating back to April that claimed the title would debut on Nintendo's latest console.

Bethesda confirmed the release date following a delay, now positioning the UE5-powered remake as one of the major RPG titles to make it to Nintendo's next-gen system.

The physical version will include the full game on cartridge, a welcome change for Switch 2 owners tired of hybrid cloud/digital releases, and certainly a breath of fresh air for any Nintendo Switch 2 owners who also own a PlayStation, as Sony only recently announced the end of physical PlayStation games.