Gaming - Page 17

In April, 2026, the Indonesian Game Rating System (IGRS) confirmed Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred was coming to the Nintendo Switch, which at the time was only confirmed for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One.

The IGRS website listed "Nintendo Switch" under the new DLC, but didn't specify which one. It was presumed the listing referred to the Nintendo Switch 2, given the new hardware capabilities and the general intent to support Nintendo's latest platform. Now, another ratings board, the Taiwan Entertainment Software Rating Information, has rated Diablo IV for the Switch 2, specifically the Lord of Hatred expansion.

So, now we have two separate game rating authorities rating Diablo IV for the "Nintendo Switch," which will more than likely be the Switch 2. Two independent sources, particularly in this instance being official game rating authorities, is enough to soft confirm that Diablo IV is arriving on the Switch 2, and now it's just a matter of time before Blizzard Entertainment or Nintendo makes the official announcement. However, nothing is set in stone, and it may be some time before that announcement comes.

Rockstar confirmed that pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6 will open on Thursday, June 25, via the PlayStation and Xbox digital storefronts, as well as select physical retailers.

Following that announcement, rumors have begun to fly about the price of GTA 6, as Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, have yet to unveil it.

The price for GTA 6 is likely the most talked-about thing in gaming currently, as endless threads of price speculation populate both Reddit, X, and other various forums and channels. For quite some time, GTA 6 has received various pricing predictions, with some conflating the hype surrounding the title as justification for Take-Two/Rockstar to charge $100 for the standard edition, marking a significant jump from $69.99, the current standard for a AAA title.

Valve knows dataminers are reading its code, and now it's poking fun at them. A new variable discovered in a recent Dota 2 update by dataminer Gabe Follower is named "m_bHackWhyAreYouGuysReadingOurVariableNames." This means that Valve's developers are fully aware of the community combing through every Half-Life 3 update for references.

The variable does not confirm anything about Half-Life 3. It does, however, show how closely dataminers are tracking Valve's codebase, with even trivial internal labels being examined for possible HLX references across Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, and Steam updates.

For context, HLX has been the reported internal codename for a new Half-Life project. Dataminers have linked various references in Valve titles to a revamped physics engine featuring dynamic destruction, realistic vehicle behavior, and AI NPCs that react to environmental changes. None of this has been confirmed by Valve, and the company has not commented on the matter.

Sources at Bungie tell Forbes' Paul Tassi that the current Destiny 2 situation isn't the result of some kind of revenge-based culture war against the developer, and that what's happening with Destiny 2 is just business and not necessarily personal.

Recent reports said that Sony could be clashing with Bungie behind the scenes, and that Destiny 2's retirement is a result of the fallout. That's not the case. Sources tell Bungie expert Paul Tassi that what's happening with Destiny 2 is financially motivated, principally due to a major reduction to the value of its games.

"This is almost entirely financial. Destiny 2 simply cost more than it made. Math--cruel math, but math. No one at Bungie has any belief this is some revenge idea," Tassi said.

Halo Campaign Evolved won't get DLC content in the future, and there's no plans to add in major franchise features like Theater, the developers at Halo Studios have confirmed.

A bit ago, I identified an interesting trend that Halo Studios--and Xbox--might be able to capitalize on. The idea was simply to add new content to old games (well, newer versions of old games, to be exact). That's what Halo Studios is doing with the new Halo 1 remake, and they've added in three prequel missions that tell new storylines that have never been seen or played before.

Unfortunately, this trend won't continue. Halo Studios says there are no plans to add more prequel missions to Halo CE...or any DLC, for that matter. That means no Firefight, no Forge mode, no expanded story content. There isn't even a theater mode, and Halo Studios won't be adding one in. This is actually a big deal for hardcore Halo enthusiasts who do challenging speed runs and survival runs in the game, as theater playback allows gamers to study their plays and sessions for improvement.

No one knows how much GTA 6 will cost at launch, but the recent $90 listings aren't real--at least that's according to gaming's most renowned leaker.

Listings for GTA 6 were recently spotted on a Portuguese retailer's inventory in the FNAC marketplace, complete with a range of prices: €89.99, €119.99, €199.99, and even a SKU exceeding €200. This indicated that GTA 6 could cost $90 at launch, causing a wider discussion on video game prices, which already saw a baseline +$10 price hike in this generation.

Rockstar hasn't confirmed anything, and well-known leaker billbil-kun says that these prices aren't real, and instead represent arbitrary figures.

The price of Grand Theft Auto 6 has been one of the most debated topics in gaming over the past two years, and a new listing from a major European retailer may have finally answered the question. Portuguese branch of FNAC, a multinational retail chain spanning France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and several other markets, has reportedly listed GTA 6 at €89.99 for the base edition, as first spotted by user fdst1983 on the ResetEra forums.

The listing also shows a Premium Edition at €119.99 and what appears to be a Collector's Edition at €199.99. The screenshot reveals several Rockstar Games SKUs, all tied to the confirmed launch date of November 19, 2026, which adds some weight to the leak's credibility. That said, the listing is unofficial, and Rockstar has not confirmed any pricing yet. The real numbers will come when pre-orders officially open on June 25.

We've been tracking GTA 6's pricing situation for a while. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter was among the first to suggest a $100 price point, while Bank of America predicted an $80 launch price that would set a new industry baseline. Even Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick hinted at a $70 to $80 range, stopping well short of the three-figure mark many gamers feared.

Assassin's Creed Hexe has been in troubled waters recently, but a new rumor suggests that things may finally be getting back on track. According to leaker Rogue Tx on X, Ubisoft has reportedly accelerated development of the game, with an internal target now set for June 2027 rather than a holiday window later in the year.

The shift comes after a decidedly rough stretch for Hexe. We covered the game's development struggles extensively at TweakTown, starting with the back-to-back director departures in early 2026. Creative director Clint Hocking left in February, followed shortly by game director Benoit Richer, who departed to co-found an indie studio. That's two key creative leads gone within two months.

Then things got worse when the game's new creative director, Jean Guesdon, reportedly removed 50 developers from the project as a cost-cutting measure. Moreover, reports emerged that the new creative director also brought with him a new creative vision. Apparently, this meant reworking core elements deemed too ambitious, such as the player's cat companion. This led to speculation that Assassin's Creed Hexe was moving away from what it once promised to be.

We may have official confirmation of Sony's stance on PC ports, but Sony didn't hold a press conference for this one. The company recently filed its 2026 annual business strategy report, and we noticed that some important bits were missing. The 2025 version of this document explicitly stated that Sony would "continue its efforts to deploy its first-party titles to multiple platforms such as PC." That sentence is completely gone from the 2026 filing, with no replacement.

What took its place is a brand-new section dedicated to AI. Sony now says it is "utilizing AI to unleash the creativity of studios," framing AI-powered tools as a way to boost developer productivity and free up time for building richer game worlds. Now, we have previously known of Sony projects that have at least been assisted by AI, so this stance is not that new, all things considered.

There's more to it than just the development pipeline: Sony also plans to use AI to personalize PlayStation Store recommendations and route transactions more efficiently. This is a big change in tone from Sony's previous public stance, in which its leadership emphasized that AI should support creators rather than replace them. Now, it looks like Sony is using AI across much of its development pipeline, including software development, 3D modeling, and animation.

UPDATE: Halo Studios made the announcement in error. PS Plus is not required to play split-screen co-op on PlayStation 5.

Microsoft, Sony, and/or Halo Studios have kicked off another controversy during a time when absolutely none of them need it.

Unfortunately, it's now been revealed that Halo's 25th anniversary will be marred by what feels like an unnecessary hurdle for gamers. Halo is coming to PlayStation for the first time ever with the new Halo Campaign Evolved remake, but instead of just having a normal release that boosts sales, the game requires some extra steps in order to play with friends on PlayStation.

Activision has an interesting strategy to get past Sony's lack of native PlayStation 3 backwards compatibility on modern PlayStation consoles.

In an unprecedented move that's rarely seen in the video games industry, Activision has announced it will re-release Black Ops and Black Ops II on PS4 and PS5. The publisher confirms that these will just be ports, not remasters, and will have campaign, multiplayer, and zombies. Black Ops II remains the fastest-earning Call of Duty game in history with $500 million made in just 1 day of sales.

The strategy here feels obvious; Xbox is bleeding profits with a paltry 3% margin and needs more higher-margin earnings. These gen 7 Call of Duty games are still popular and Microsoft/Activision hope to capitalize on nostalgia as well as pent-up demand for these classics, as Sony has underserved PS3 games to its PS4 and PS5 generations because there's no direct PS3 software compatibility for today's PS consoles.

Black Myth Wukong has now sold more than 30 million copies, beating out entire video game franchises--a feat that few video games can pull off except for Minecraft, Call of Duty, or maybe Grand Theft Auto V.

A new document published by China's Belt and Road initiative--an infrastructure strategy focused on bolstering economic trade--has revealed some surprising sales figures for Black Myth Wukong. According to the figures, Game Science's myth-infused action game has sold an astounding 30 million copies in less than 2 years on the market.

To put those numbers into perspective, Call of Duty games used to sell tens of millions of copies upon release, and Vanguard, which was largely believed to have missed expectations, still sold 30 million copies in a similar timeframe. Other titles like Grand Theft Auto V typically ship 5 million or so units per quarter, leading to roughly 20 million copies shipped per year.

The new Steam Controller launched on May 4 at $99 and was gone in under 30 minutes. Valve's payment systems buckled under the load almost immediately, and before the dust settled, scalpers had already flooded eBay with units priced at $300 or more, with some listings climbing past $550. It was a chaotic launch by any measure, and Valve acknowledged the frustration pretty quickly.

The company moved fast and introduced a reservation queue shortly after, modeled on the system it used for the Steam Deck. To keep scalpers out, Valve capped purchases at one per account and locked out any account created after April 27, 2026, or accounts with payment disputes or bans. It was a reasonable fix for the chaos, but, as it turns out, the queue itself has become a much bigger problem.

Valve has now updated the Steam Controller page with three estimated delivery windows: by September 2026, by December 2026, or in 2027. New reservations placed today land squarely in that last bucket. The company says demand exceeded expectations when the controller launched last month. While reservations remain open, the current queue already exceeds Valve's production capacity for the rest of the year.

The rumors are coming thick and fast about the Steam Machine now, and it seems that Valve really could be shaping up to launch the PC before June is out.

The Steam Hardware Updates account on X has just posted what appears to be shipment details of Steam Machine units (and the Steam Frame, too) sent to Valve's warehouses in the US.

This is another hint (assuming it's genuine) that Valve is preparing the ground for the Steam Machine to hit the shelves very soon.

Thirteen years is a long time to wait for a video game. Apparently, it's long enough for someone just to say, "Fine, I'll do it myself."

Ziwen Xu, a 25-year-old founder of AI agent startup Hyperecho, kicked off the project with a post on X. "Day 1 of building GTA 6. Still feels fake typing that out," he wrote, and upgraded to Claude Max 20x specifically for the project. The first footage was exactly what you'd expect: a blue box wandering around an empty 3D plane. Not much, but every game starts somewhere.

He spent a week ignoring everyone who told him to switch engines before finally caving on day seven and migrating from Godot to Unreal Engine. The project, dubbed GT-Caliber, runs on daily public updates and an open GitHub repo, with AI agents continuously looping, taking community feature requests, and generating pull requests in real time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's no publisher, and no studio budget. Ziwen seems to be relying on whoever shows up for the project.

Epic Games kicked off controversy among game developers when it revealed gen AI tools for Fortnite concept creation, and now some partners might actually be pulling out of future collaborations because of it.

Before the big State of Unreal event kicked off, Epic Games shared a brief video that showed how its artists are using generative AI tools to help design concept assets for Fortnite. Epic further revealed that Unreal Engine 6 would have native support for AI tools like Claude Code and Gemini, only worsening Epic's position to specific groups.

The reveal caused a stir in the game dev community--gen AI is usually vilified for helping lay off thousands of video game workers--to the point where Epic might lose out on a collaboration with one of the most popular indie game developers of our era: Poncle, the team behind Vampire Survivors. Epic had just announced a Vampire Survivors crossover in Fortnite, but now that Poncle has learned about gen AI being used, it looks like Vampire Survivors x Fortnite may not happen after all.

Sony may have confirmed that its new first-party singleplayer games will be exclusive to PlayStation consoles moving forward, and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier says this policy won't be a 'case-by-case basis' like Xbox's exclusivity plans.

PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino recently spoke to Famitsu to celebrate the magazine's big 40th anniversary, and his comments lend strong credence to the reports that all future first-party singleplayer games from PlayStation Studios will be exclusive to Sony's consoles.

Nishino's response isn't a direct one and is laden with PR-speak, but the gist is that singleplayer games are meant to boost the value of PlayStation, and online live service games are meant to reach as many people as possible and will continue launching on PC.

GTA 6 pre-orders will begin next week on June 25, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Rockstar Games today confirmed.

Today Rockstar announced the pre-order dates for the most anticipated game in the last 10 years, GTA 6, while also unveiling the game's official cover art. The biggest question everyone has is how much the game will cost, and that hasn't been revealed yet. There's speculation that Rockstar could charge a $79.99 base price for the game, or potentially even a $99.99 version with GTA Online extras.

"Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI will officially begin on June 25 on digital storefronts and at other select retailers," Rockstar writes.

No Law is a new first-person shooter set in a cyberpunk world from the relatively small team at Neon Giant, the developers behind The Ascent. Although it's not a massive open-world game along the lines of CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077, the densely packed and detailed world of the game's Port Desire setting is reminiscent of how impressive CDPR's game was during its first big gameplay reveal.

At the State of Unreal 2026 event, developer Neon Giant took to the stage to talk about No Law and how it used Unreal Engine 5 to create some of the densest and most detailed environments ever seen in a game. Tor Frick, the creative director on the game, says that he and the small team wanted "extreme detail" everywhere you look, from messy apartments to alleyways and little things like stickers on electrical appliances.

The impressive thing is that it's all hand-crafted, with Neon Giant saying that Unreal Engine 5's Nanite technology is one of the key reasons the team was able to make No Law look the way that it does. And when it comes to density, it's next level, with the team using Mass Framework and Meta Human to simulate crowds of over 3,000 NPCs at once to deliver streets and locations teeming with life.

Epic Games has recently wrapped up its State of Unreal 2026 livestream, where it pulled back the curtain on the upcoming Unreal Engine 6.

Unreal Engine 6 was first teased during a recent Rocket League Champion Series, and in that announcement, Epic Games stated that Rocket League would be the first title to adopt the new version of Unreal Engine, which is quite a considerable jump, as Rocket League was built on Unreal Engine 3. Epic explained that it plans to merge Unreal Engine 5 and the Fortnite Unreal Editor to create Unreal Engine 6, and that this update will include integrating popular AI models, such as Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini.

The idea behind integrating these AI models is to multiply developers' creativity, as Epic believes teams will now be able to "focus their efforts on the essential creative and technical tasks of development rather than time on time-consuming manual tasks". Epic even went on to provide examples of how developers can increase their output by offloading trivial tasks to AI models, stating that AI models can handle "setup of levels, character rigs, particle systems, skinning bone weights, as well as adjusting lighting".