Gaming - Page 15

A new Qualcomm job listing suggests future Xbox hardware will use ARM Snapdragon chips.

During the FTC v Microsoft trial, we were privy to a lot of behind-the-scenes information that we shouldn't have seen. A particular document had been accidentally attached to an exhibit file, and suddenly some of Microsoft's internal plans and ruminations on future Xbox consoles had been leaked--alongside reams of other data. The leaks suggested that Microsoft could have picked ARM to make future next-gen Xbox hardware in some form.

Now according to a new Qualcomm job listing, that might actually happen. Qualcomm is hiring a director of sales for its Surface team, and interestingly enough, Xbox is directly mentioned as well: The role is to "support the sell-in activities for the next generation of Surface and Xbox products built on Snapdragon solutions."

Hideo Kojima has revealed during a recent interview that he has a USB stick full of game ideas for after he dies, describing the thumb drive as "kind of like a will."

Legendary video game director Hideo Kojima has sat down for an interview with Edge Magazine, where he revealed that the sickness he endured during the pandemic, along with his eye operation, made him seriously consider what he wants to do with the remaining years of his life. Kojima said he was unable to create at the time of his sickness and watched many people around him die, and through being confronted with death, he began planning ahead with what to do with his remaining years.

Kojima turned 60 during the production of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and now the director is thinking about locking down the future of his studio, Kojima Productions, beyond his involvement. Kojima said that he has given a USB stick to his assistant, which contains all of his ideas for future projects, with Kojima describing the USB stick as a proverbial will for future games.

A known industry insider has claimed he has gained information regarding the internal development schedule for an upcoming Sony console and what Valve is working on behind closed doors.

The insider posted to the NeoGAF forums, revealing purported details about a PlayStation portable console that is currently in development at Sony. The leaker states Sony is intending to release the new portable device around the same time as the PlayStation 6. Notably, the insider is well-known Xbox-leaker "HeisenbergFX4," who states Sony is working on a fully portable device, not just a revision of the PlayStation portable - this will be an entirely new console competing with the likes of the Nintendo Switch 2, Steam Deck, and other handheld consoles.

HeisenbergFX4 claims to have sources that have informed them about this rumored console's existence, and that it's expected to launch sometime in 2026/2027, or whenever Sony decides to release the PlayStation 6. Notably, nothing has been officially confirmed as of yet, with many timelines currently up in the air due to US tariffs against China causing the entire global tech market to be in a somewhat limbo state.

Ubisoft has wrapped up its latest earnings call, during which it revealed what it intends to do with the new subsidiary that now manages the publisher's major franchises, such as Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six, and Far Cry.

The subsidiary was formed between the publisher and a significant investment by Tencent, and now the company is saying that the goal of the business will be creating "ecosystems capable of becoming evergreen, billion-euro franchises." How will it do that? Ubisoft has outlined some areas the new company will be focused on, which include improving the quality of narrative-driven solo experience titles and expanding the live service offerings with richer multiplayer features and more frequent content updates to the respective titles.

Other areas the new company will focus on are leveraging Ubisoft's technological stack to significantly enhance content creation and pursuing "underpenetrated" markets such as mobile and China. That last point is hardly surprising as Tencent is a company that operates out of China, so it makes sense that, following its significant investment in Ubisoft, it will be assisting the publisher in breaking further into that market.

Santa Monica Studio just wrapped up its 20th Anniversary celebration, bringing together developers, cast members, and fans to honor two decades of God of War. As part of the event, the studio hosted the "Pantheum Punnel" - a tournament-style showdown to determine the fiercest villain in the franchise.

As detailed on the studio's official website, the bracket launched in March and followed a format similar to NCAA's March Madness. It featured 32 villains from both the Norse and Greek eras of God of War, whittled down week by week through community votes.

Over 250,000 fans cast their ballots, narrowing the lineup to a final four: Zeus, Thor, Odin, and Cronos. From there, it came down to a brutal All-Father face-off - Zeus versus Odin.

Ubisoft has announced it will be delaying the release of some major IPs and games to improve the game quality of some of its biggest franchises.

The publisher announced the delay during its end-of-year financial earnings report, where it mentioned the success of Assassin's Creed Shadows and how it can be attributed to the extra time the publisher gave to its developers via the delay.

Ubisoft wants to take that same approach with its other titles, and according to Insider Gaming, the delay will be affecting the next installment in the Far Cry series, which has now had its release date internally pushed to late 2026, and the Assassin's Creed pipeline.

Square Enix has released screenshots for Kingdom Hearts IV, posting a collection of in-game images to social media, along with an update from the development team.

As shared on X, the image contains the first official screenshots of Kingdom Hearts IV since the project was announced, including a glimpse at Sora, Mickey Mouse, Strelitzia, and the in-game world. The images arrived alongside a message from the development team, stating that they have been "pouring themselves" into the game-and that more news will be available "when the time is right."

Preceding the new screenshots, Square Enix posted an update to the Kingdom Hearts official website stating that Kingdom Hearts Missing Link, a mobile RPG that was also announced in 2022, had officially been cancelled.

Ubisoft has revealed during an earnings call today when it plans on releasing the remake for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

Ubisoft has stated that it intends to release the remake for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time by the end of March 2026, which means it will be releasing in the fiscal year 2025-26. Notably, Ubisoft had previously stated the game was to arrive sometime in 2026. The remake was announced by the publisher in 2020, and since then, it has undergone a bumpy development process as it switched developers a few years ago after experiencing fan backlash over the original trailer, and it missed a launch date.

The announcement for the Prince of Persia release date is amid Ubisoft's continuous plan to consolidate spending at the publisher and concentrate on its main franchises: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six Siege. The publisher also announced it will have to continue implementing cost-cutting measures into the near future, with Ubisoft also announcing the delay of several of its titles out of the current fiscal year. Moreover, the publisher is concentrating its efforts on improving the experience and quality of its narrative-driven solo experiences.

The specifications for the highly anticipated successor console to the original Nintendo Switch have now been confirmed by the tech experts over at Digital Foundry.

For about the last four years, we have been hearing rumors and rumblings about the hardware that Nintendo selected to power the Nintendo Switch 2. After leaks of the motherboard within the console, Digital Foundry is able to confirm exactly what gamers will be getting and, more importantly, what developers will have available to them with the Nintendo Switch 2.

The original Switch featured an NVIDIA Tegra X1, a 4x ARM Cortex A57 chip, and by comparison, Nintendo and NVIDIA have agreed upon the ARM Cortex A78C, an eight-core CPU running the ARMv8 64-bit instruction set with cryptography extensions enabled. Notably, 32-bit is not supported by the SDK.

CyberMP, the mod aiming to bring multiplayer to Cyberpunk 2077, has received a video showcase and a major development update.

As detailed on the project's Discord page, CyberMP has received a recent beta patch, detailing advancements in syncing player appearances, vehicles, and in-game assets throughout the world. The full changelog is available online, detailing how these improvements move the mod closer to a fully-fledged online experience. The project's lead, S1nger, highlights that multiplayer is currently being refined as it moves from beta to a full release.

Calling back to a time when Ubisoft was determined to reinvent the formula for the Splinter Cell series, storyboard art has surfaced on Reddit calling back to the game's original vision.

When first showcased in 2007, Splinter Cell: Conviction was a significant departure from anything we'd seen in the series prior. It featured a rugged, unkempt version of Sam Fisher, a stronger emphasis on hand-to-hand combat, and leaned into the theme of "hidden in plain sight" rather than the high-tech stealth operative we'd been accustomed to.

Approximately thirty minutes of footage is available online, and the game more closely resembles a rugged Watch Dogs than it does the John-Wick-style 2010 release. Early gameplay, which leaned into hand-to-hand combat, environmental interaction, and blending into crowds, also reflected that 'fugitive' style theme.

There has been a flurry of reports of leaked older text messages that were previously sent to Steam users, with Valve writing a news post explaining that the company has examined the leak sample and determined "this was NOT a breach of Steam systems".

Valve says it is still digging into the source of the leak, which was "compounded by the fact that any SMS messages are unencrypted in transit, and routed through multiple providers on the way to your phone". The Half-Life developer says that the leak included old text messages that included one-time codes that were only valid for 15-minute time frames, and the exact phone numbers they were sent to.

Valve says that the leaked data "did not associate the phone numbers with a Steam account, password information, payment information or other personal data". Old text messages can't be used to breach the security of your Steam account, and whenever a code is used to change your Steam email or password using SMS, you'll receive a confirmation through e-mail and/or Steam secure messages, says Valve.

DOOM: The Dark Ages has officially entered early access and to go along with the release NVIDIA has dropped it's latest drivers, enabling DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation for spectacular performance increase.

If you are diving into the blood-soaked action of The Dark Ages, be sure to update your GeForce drivers to the latest version, as you will get a considerable performance jump after enabling Multi Frame Generation. As for The Dark Ages, developers id Software purpose-built the title for the new idTech8 engine, which runs The Dark Ages in a ray traced mode natively, meaning players will get to experience incredible lighting effects, intense detail, and naturally illuminated and darkened regions while carving their way through hordes of seemingly endless demons from hell.

Additionally, The Dark Ages has ray-traced reflections, which enhance the detail of reflective surfaces by enabling them to mirror their surroundings, adding to the overall immersion felt by the player. Notably, NVIDIA writes in an update DOOM: The Dark Ages will be receiving an update that will add Path Tracing and DLSS Ray Reconstruction for even further graphical improvements. As for how The Dark Ages plays, check out the link below for our thoughts on the gameplay itself and how it compares to the previous game in the franchise, DOOM Eternal.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey has been out for almost two months now, and while Ubisoft has celebrated sales milestones for the title, it appears to be consistently losing players, with metrics now indicating it has less players than Assassin's Creed Odyssey over a 24-hour period.

The statistics are sourced from SteamDB, a website that tracks all of the games played on Steam, and according to the source, Assassin's Creed Shadows had a 24-hour peak of 4,654 players, while Assassin's Creed Odyssey, released in 2018, has 5,642 players. It should be noted that Odyssey was three Assassin's Creed games ago, with the last two before Shadows being Mirage and Valhalla, both of which have less than 3,000 players over a 24-hour period.

These metrics suggest that Shadows is failing to maintain a consistent player base. The data indicates that approximately 16,000 people were concurrently playing Shadows on April 20, but this number has now dropped to 4,654 as of May 14. Why is this happening? One could argue the difference between the two titles is the content on offer, with Odyssey having a very fleshed-out and substantial amount of content to offer gamers, while Shadows is still quite new and slated to receive its first DLC, The Claws of Awaji expansion, later this year.

Extremely well-established industry insider and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has suggested Grand Theft Auto 6 could be delayed again, as nothing is set in stone.

It's been well known that developers and publishers other than Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive are concerned about the release date of Grand Theft Auto 6, as many of these publishers/developers are having to make sure their titles don't release alongside Rockstar's behemoth title to avoid being swallowed up in what will be a monsoon of attention directly solely at GTA 6. Publishers don't want the release of their titles to be overshadowed by the release of GTA 6, which means they have to time the release of their game accordingly.

Schreier has commented on this problem developers and publishers are currently facing, with the Bloomberg reporter writing that the delay of GTA 6 was enough cause for some of these companies to panic. Schreier said that he spoke to one developer of a big multiplayer game, and they said they previously delayed the release of the title from Fall 2025 to Spring 2026 in order to allow developers more time to work on the game, but also to get as far away as possible from the release of GTA 6. But now GTA 6 is releasing in Spring 2026.

One of the fastest ways to kill a battery is to overcharge it, which, unfortunately, many people tend to do with their smartphones and other devices. It's common practice to put your phone, or any other necessary device you need, on charge before you go to sleep, so when you wake up, they are fully charged and ready to go for the day.

Unfortunately, this isn't the way to maintain battery health, as overcharging a battery causes cells within the battery to slowly deteriorate and eventually die off, resulting in the total capacity for the battery to reduce and the user to experience the device losing charge a lot faster.

Judging by the lifespan of the original Switch, Nintendo wants owners to have the Switch 2 for many years to come, and to keep users happy with the amount of use time with the console, the company is implementing a new feature to reduce the inevitable deterioration rate of the battery.

It was recently we got confirmation on when Nintendo began working on the Switch 2, and now we are starting to hear about when the company finalized the hardware chip that's within the upcoming console.

Findings by Geekerwan and Kurnal, who managed to get their hands on a Switch 2 motherboard, sourced from an online retailer in China, put the board and the chip under the microscope, revealing that the hardware Nintendo decided on was finalized at least four years ago. The chip powering the incredible performance of the Switch 2 is the T239, which closely resembles NVIDIA's T234 but comes with a number of changes. Analysis by the tech experts over at Digital Foundry indicates the chip is running on an 8nm processor, which features that stretch up to a 10nm.

As for comparisons, the Switch 2 chip measures 40mm2 larger than the Steam Deck's. The size of the chip is the main factor as to why the Switch 2 has increased in size so significantly compared to the original Switch, with the Switch 2 being 75% bigger than the current-gen console. So, if the hardware was finalized four years ago, does that mean Nintendo could have revealed the console four years ago? Well, technically it could have, but simply it didn't need to.

Nintendo announced GameChat when it officially unveiled the Switch 2 in a dedicated Nintendo Direct. GameChat is one of the many features coming with the new console, enabling players to speak to each other over Nintendo's Switch Online service.

GameChat is such a prominent feature on the Switch 2 that it has received its own dedicated button on the face of the console, located under the home button and labeled "C." Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa recently spoke to investors about the new feature and said that it will "inspire consumers to play games in new ways that we never imagined."

While we can't say for certain if gamers will be playing games in ways that Nintendo has "never imagined" until the Switch 2 launches on June 5th, what we can say is that Discord has been around for many years now, and has become such a prominent piece of software that the company behind it has been valued at an estimated $15 billion.

With Valve's Steam Deck gaming handheld running SteamOS, the company introduced a Deck Verified rating for games on the platform that confirms two things. The first is that the game runs as intended on Valve's Linux-based SteamOS gaming-optimized operating system, and the second is that Steam Deck's custom AMD APU with integrated RDNA 2 graphics is powerful enough to run the game at a playable frame rate.

With the arrival of the Legion Go S, the first non-Steam Deck portable gaming handheld to be powered by SteamOS, and rumors pointing to a wide release for both SteamOS and potential powerful mini gaming PCs shipping with the operating system, Valve is expanding its ratings. Per a Steamworks community post, Steam game listings are also set to receive a SteamOS Compatibility rating.

This feature is rolling out as we speak, with Valve noting that it's designed to show "whether a game and all of its middleware are supported on SteamOS." This includes things like launchers and anti-cheat support.

The National Museum of Play in New York has announced the latest additions to the World Video Game Hall of Fame, with two iconic shooters joining the lineup - Rare's GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 from 1997 and id Software's Quake from 1996.

Although both games are considered classics in the FPS genre, GoldenEye 007 proved that the genre could work on consoles thanks to its streamlined controls, objective-based mission design, advanced enemy AI, and mix of stealth and gadgets. On the other hand, Quake evolved the gameplay popularized by id's Doom by moving to a fully 3D world with fast-paced keyboard-and-mouse controls that added a big dose of verticality.

These two iconic shooters are joined by Atari's Defender, an arcade and home console game from the early 1980s, and Tamagotchi, the portable pet in your pocket gadget from the 1990s.