Gaming - Page 148

The launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 is right around the corner and for anyone that hasn't already pre-ordered the new console, maybe it's worth considering the luxury version of the Switch 2.

British luxury tech brand Truly Exquisite has officially unveiled the world's first customized luxury Nintendo Switch 2 consoles, which are arriving in three editions. Truly Exquisite is only making 250 units across the three models, of which two will be gold-designed and the third finished in platinum. The headlining edition is called "Aurum," and this model is plated in pure 24K gold. Next is the Platina Edition, which features a sleek platinum finish, and then the Luxe Rose Edition, which is an 18K rose gold finish.

Notably, each of these consoles is hand-finished and numbered, with the intention of turning a standard Nintendo Switch 2 into a highly sought-after piece of gaming history that is collectible. The launch of the three premium Nintendo Switch 2 editions marks the third luxury console launch by Truly Exquisite, with the first being the viral success of the 24K gold PS5 and Xbox Series X console. The first 25 customers to pre-order the gold-plated Nintendo Switch will receive free custom engraving, VIP first-in-line delivery, and a numbered limited edition badge.

Microsoft reveals what--or who--stood in the way of its Xbox mobile store ambitions in a new court filing.

With consoles stagnating, mobile represents a big growth vector for Xbox, and making a bigger splash on mobile was a big reason why Microsoft shelled out $68.7 billion to buy Activision in 2023. But things haven't gone according to plan for Microsoft, and instead of launching the dedicated Xbox app that it wanted to, the company had to settle for web-based mobile storefront due to restrictions.

Now in a new amicus brief filed in the Epic v Apple appeals case (Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 25-2935, 9th Cir.), Microsoft essentially holds Apple responsible for thwarting its mobile store ambitions.

Xbox Game Pass subscribers get a surprise perk with a new collection of old-schol games that can be played at no extra cost.

Microsoft today announced a unique partnership with Antstream Arcade, a company that offers its own retro game streaming service that offers over 1300 classic games. Antstream appeared on Xbox in 2023, and came to PlayStation in late 2024.

Parts of Antstream's legacy collection are coming to Xbox Game Pass for free. Game Pass subscribers can download a special app called Retro Classics that includes access to 50 legacy titles from the heyday of arcades and early home consoles. All Game Pass users will get access, including those who are subscribed to Xbox Game Pass Core, Xbox Game Pass PC, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Xbox conquered the sales charts for the month of April in the United States, not only topping the chart with Oblivion Remastered but also having 4 games in the top 5 best-sellers list.

NOTE: The data referenced below does not include the majority of digital sales on Nintendo platforms, and does not include digital sales for Nintendo first-party games on the eShop.

Microsoft's cross-platform strategy (aka Project Latitude) is working quite well. Once again, Xbox is overlapping the competition in specific geographies with its multitude of cross-platform releases. The staggered launches of Oblivion Remastered, Forza Horizon 5, and Indiana Jones on PlayStation 5 have helped propel Xbox to the top of the US charts for the month of April.

Oblivion Remastered is a mega-hit for Bethesda and Microsoft in terms of both sales and engagement, new data from Circana reveals.

Oblivion Remastered is doing incredibly well for Xbox. The new remaster was the best-selling game of April in the United States, according to new reports from Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, and the game also vastly eclipsed the sales of its 19-year-old predecessor in the region.

"The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Remastered was the best-selling game of the month, instantly becoming the 3rd best-selling game of 2025 year-to-date. It was the best-selling title across each of the PlayStation, Xbox and PC platforms," Piscatella wrote on Bluesky.

More chatter has been coming through from the grapevine about the dedicated Xbox handheld and it dispels any notion that Microsoft might be mulling an ARM chip, and will instead use an AMD SoC (as you might expect).

A regular hardware leaker, Kepler (often seen on X), made the revelation in a post on the NeoGAF forums as flagged by Wccftech.

By the 'real' handheld, Kepler means the true Xbox gaming portable Microsoft has in the works, as opposed to the Windows spins on handhelds which will be Xbox-branded. The latter includes 'Project Kennan' which is a collaboration with ASUS to bring in a version of the ROG Ally 2 with a dedicated Xbox button (and logo).

"In the long run, open source wins," Frank Azor says at the end of a lengthy conversation. At Computex 2025, we got the chance to sit down with AMD's Consumer and Gaming Marketing chief to discuss the evolution of FSR 4 and the latest FSR 'Redstone' announcement.

FSR 'Redstone' introduces new AI rendering technologies that will rival DLSS 4's impressive AI-powered Ray Reconstruction, Neural Radiance Cache, and Frame Generation for real-time Path Tracing in games. It's due for release in the second half of 2025.

"Look at G-Sync and FreeSync," Frank Azor concluded. "It took a while, but FreeSync won. And that's par for the course; it just takes some time." This is where our conversation concluded. He used the open-source nature and widespread adoption of FreeSync as a reference point for how FSR would one day kill DLSS as the go-to solution for Super Resolution and Path Tracing technologies. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that.

There's a mistake in the second trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 that recently emerged, and gamers have been quick to jump on it, threatening - in tongue-in-cheek style - to cancel their pre-orders for the game.

You can see the faux pas in the trailer as highlighted on Reddit above (hat tip to PC Gamer), and it happens in the scene where Jason is leaning out of a car and shooting a gun.

What should happen is the gunshot is fired, followed by the muzzle flash lighting up Jason's body and face, but what actually occurs is the lighting effect comes a smidge too early - just before the trigger is pulled. Whoops.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is set to be released on Sony's PlayStation 5 at some point this summer, the developer has confirmed.

Ninja Theory told us that the Norse-themed action-adventure sequel will debut on the PS5 at some stage in the next three months in the above post on X (flagged by Wccftech), with a slight tweak to the game's title, adding an 'Enhanced' on the end.

The announcement came on the one-year anniversary of the release of Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, which arrived back in May 2024 on Xbox Series X and S consoles, and Windows PCs.

Path Tracing or Full Ray Tracing is widely considered the end game for real-time lightning in games, and it's best to think of it like ray-tracing for everything: shadows, reflections, global illumination, indirect lighting, and more. Naturally, it's extremely hardware-intensive, to the point where, in 2025, it's only possible thanks to AI-powered technologies like DLSS 4.

This includes DLSS 4 Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, Frame Generation, and, more recently, with the introduction of the GeForce RTX 50 Series, neural shaders like Neural Radiance Cache. This isn't merely a case of AI boosting performance, as DLSS 4's Super Resolution offers a more stable and detailed image than natively rendering a scene. Ray Reconstruction is effectively an AI denoiser, and it dramatically improves the detail you see when turning on ray-tracing.

Frame Generation sits on top of all of that. It boosts smoothness and motion clarity while reducing latency, pushing performance into triple-digit territory. At Computex 2025, AMD announced FSR 'Redstone' for its RDNA 4 GPUs, which are due for release in the second half of 2025. It's the company's answer to DLSS 4 and NVIDIA's Path Tracing features.

Doom: The Dark Ages actually did exceptionally well in terms of player count, reaching more than 3 million people since launch, significantly beating player numbers for Doom Eternal.

Early reports suggested that Doom: The Dark Ages wasn't doing all that well, at least when it comes to Steam adoption. The game ended up having the lowest concurrent player count on Steam out of all the modern-day Doom trilogy games. The Dark Ages currently sits at #85 on Steam's concurrent user peak with little over 15,000 gamers playing--which is about half of its all-time peak of 31,470 users. This is just one very small sampling of The Dark Ages' user base, though.

Bethesda today confirmed that Doom: The Dark Ages reached 3 million players in around a week after the FPS' official launch: "Thank you for making DOOM: The Dark Ages the biggest launch in id's history - 7x faster to 3 million players than DOOM Eternal."

The Federal Trade Commission has set a date for a key part in its administrative case against the Microsoft-Activision merger.

Despite losing a case for a preliminary injunction in 2023, and despite Microsoft completing its $68.7 billion acquisition by integrating Activision Blizzard King into the company, the FTC will still pursue its challenge of the Microsoft-Activision merger in its internal courts. At the time of writing, the case is still pending.

Today the FTC has filed a motion that delayed the case's evidentiary hearing date from May 28 to July 2025. This will allow all groups (including the FTC, Microsoft, and even Nintendo of America) more time to compile information required for the evidentiary hearing. For reference, since it was held in a district court, the evidentiary hearing for the previous FTC v MSFT temporary injunction case was public, and both gamers and the press learned a multitude of information from these proceedings. Parts of these administrative proceedings will be made public, unless an Administrative Law Judge orders an "in camera" treatment to the evidence (Nintendo, for example, has requested in camera for its submissions).

Cyberpunk series creator Mike Pondsmith lets slip new details about CD Projekt's upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 sequel.

Project Orion, the codename for CD Projekt's new Cyberpunk sequel, will feature a new city that incorporates a unique style. Orion may be in early pre-production phases of development with just 84 developers on the project right now, but the studio is laying out the foundations for the game. This early iteration has been seen by Cyberpunk franchise creator Mike Pondsmith.

In a recent interview with Polish publication tvygry, Pondsmith said that Orion would take us to a brand new city that feels "less like Blade Runner" and more like "Chicago gone wrong." Interestingly enough, we'll still be going to Night City in Orion.

UPDATE: Fortnite is back on the App Store, Epic Games has officially confirmed, putting an end to a years-long battle with Apple.

Epic Games wants Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to order Apple to allow Fortnite back on the App Store. Now Judge Rogers is putting the burden on Apple to prove why the courts shouldn't enforce Epic's proposed motion.

Earlier today, we reported that Epic Games has prposed that the Northern California district court esentially order Fortnite back on the App Store. Over a week ago, Epic had re-submitted Fortnite to the App Store, which Apple declined. Epic's proposal reiterates that Judge Rogers, who is presiding over the case, found that Apple broke the court's previous injunction order. As relief for this violation, Epic proposes that Judge Rogers enforce the injunction partly by ordering Apple to accept a "compliant version" of Fortnite:

UPDATE: Fortnite is back on the App Store, Epic Games has officially confirmed, putting an end to a years-long battle with Apple.

Epic Games makes a new filing that asks courts to force Apple to allow Fortnite onto the App Store.

Despite Epic's technical win, the Epic vs Apple saga isn't yet over. Epic's formal submission of Fortnite has been rejected from the App Store, and Epic has responded by filing a motion for injunction enforcement which asks California's northern district courts to essentially force Apple to allow a rules-adherent version of Fortnite onto the App Store.

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford's comments on $80 game pricing has incensed some gamers who are critical of the new software MSRP.

Thanks to Nintendo's efforts with the Switch 2, video games now cost $80. Not all video games though--just a select few like Mario Kart World. But Pandora's box has been opened, and while companies are deciding to price their games on a case-by-case basis, the $80 tier has been established for mainline flagship games, at least on the Switch 2. And for games with simultaneous multi-platform launches, companies can now elevate pricing to $80 on other platforms to make things even. So which games will cost $80? Will GTA 6? Maybe. What about Borderlands 4, which is also getting a Switch 2 port?

One fan brought up the possibility of Borderlands 4 costing $80 to Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford in a May 13 Tweet, and Pitchford's response has agitated some gamers.

Samsung also wants to make high-quality panels for any potential Switch 2 OLED hardware that Nintendo may be working on.

It's been confirmed that the Switch 2's will use a custom chip built on NVIDIA's Ampere architecture, which is built on Samsung's 8nm process. In fact, NVIDIA's Ampere-based RTX 30 series video cards were built on this process, formally called 8N NVIDIA. The Switch 2's custom SoC (system-on-chip) will use this same 8nm process. But that's not the only thing Samsung wants to make for the Switch 2.

Samsung has expressed interest in securing a deal with Nintendo to make OLED panels for any successor Switch 2 OLED models, sources have told Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki. The report didn't mention that such a deal has been struck, however--only that Samsung had "pushed" for the opportunity. The original Switch OLED released in 2021 uses both Samsung memory and OLED panels.

Epic Games is facing union action from SAG-AFTRA due to Fortnite's recent introduction of an AI-powered Darth Vader, which delivers voice lines based on archived recordings of James Earl Jones.

The complaint, which was filed May 19, takes aim at the AI-powered performance. Not specifically due to its use of AI, but because the union's collective bargaining agreement outlines that performances involving deceased members must be notified or negotiated directly with the union.

The James Earl Jones Estate reportedly approved the use of the late actor's voice, expressing eagerness for the partnership to "allow new generations to enjoy the character." In-game, the AI recreation of Darth Vader allows players to interact with the Sith Lord, responding to users' conversational cues and even reading out their in-game usernames.

According to Baldur's Gate 3 director Alena Dubrovina, Baldur's Gate 3 went through several iterations before landing on its blended photo-realistic aesthetic. Originally, the game had a 'cartoony' art style, and it wasn't exactly early in pre-production that this direction was scrapped.

Speaking on the AnsweRED Podcast, Dubrovina sat down with CD Projekt Red game director Sebastian Kalemba to discuss the role of art direction in major game projects. According to Dubrovina, the creative process for Baldur's Gate 3 was a turbulent one - with the studio shifting gears multiple times before landing on a final aesthetic.

Most notably, Larian Studios placed a significant emphasis on stylized approaches early - exploring 'cartoony' art styles that more closely resembled indie D&D books and artwork.

The Borderlands franchise has been the latest subject of community backlash, with negative reviews bombarding the games' Steam listings due to recent changes to the End User License Agreement (EULA).

As widely publicised on Reddit, the review-bombing campaign began in response to the updated EULA, which reportedly grants Take-Two "root level access to users' systems, under the guise of anti-cheat software". As a result, users are concerned that sensitive information like passwords, IP addresses, and login details are being unfairly collected.

In addition to privacy concerns, the new agreement also raised fears in the game's modding community, with many users citing that targeting third-party applications could introduce unnecessary limitations to legitimate gameplay modifications.