Gaming - Page 20

Xbox has been on a media rampage recently, with new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma expressing in several interviews that Xbox is about to go through big changes, which the executives have described as a "reset".

Xbox has been enduring quite a bit of headwind, as Sharma and Xbox Game Studios CEO Matt Booty described in a recent co-authored letter; the current Xbox business model isn't sustainable, and other factors are at play, such as the ongoing memory and storage crisis caused by the boom in AI. The concerns around the hardware shortage driving up prices have fallen on the next-generation Xbox and PlayStation 6, as Sony isn't immune either.

In a recent interview with The Game Business, Christopher Dring spoke with Xbox CSO Matthew Ball about the condition of the console market amid Xbox's declining revenue despite multi-billion investment.

Halo: Combat Evolved is a built-from-the-ground-up remake of the first game's iconic and memorable campaign, and it's out next month for PC, Xbox consoles, and PS5. As the first game in the Halo series to be built on Unreal Engine 5, the latest story-based trailer that focused on the remake's brand-new prequel missions was generally well-received from the community, with many highlighting its impressive visuals.

Earlier this week, we reported on the game's PC requirements and specifications from Halo Studios, which outlined some pretty powerful GPU hardware and even 32 GB of system memory to run the game at High and Ultra settings. Today we've got a new hands-on video from FPS-focused YouTube channel jackfrags, which offers hands-on impressions and even early performance information for the game's PC build.

As the release is still several weeks away and we can expect day-one drivers from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, what we see here could improve. For the most part, it's great news, in that Halo: Combat Evolved seems to run smoothly and without stuttering across indoor and outdoor missions, and on and off vehicles. The only downside is that the GeForce RTX 5090 seems to top out at around 120 FPS when playing the game at 1440p with Ultra settings and DLAA.

Xbox management continues hinting at ads coming to its games and services in some form, and new comments from management emphasize the importance of making things non-invasive.

Ads are coming to gaming, and apparently soon. But how this will actually happen remains unclear; will companies show ads during loading screens? Will real-life restaurants like Pizza Hut and products like Monster energy drinks show up more often in games? And what about interstitial ads--do those have a place?

Xbox is currently testing a free ad-supported tier of Xbox Cloud Gaming, and it could lead to new monetization avenues. Users watch a few ads and in exchange they get hours of playtime game streaming in return. Now Xbox's new chief strategy officer comments further on how ads could help stabilize the group and fund new games--including Xbox console exclusives.

Microsoft plans to deliver at least one Xbox console exclusive game a year, and the first two have already been revealed--Gears of War E-Day and Clockwork Revolution.

Microsoft is resurrecting exclusivity to help spark interest in Xbox consoles. It's all part of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's plan to reset the brand, and two exclusive games have showcased. More will follow and Microsoft now says fans can expect at least one new Xbox-only title per year, a rhythm that will be affected by upcoming layoffs.

"Players can continue to expect signature exclusives from us every year," games CEO Asha Sharma told employees in a recent memo.

Microsoft says that its next-gen Xbox console will require partnerships in order to release, hinting at a reference and OEM hardware scheme similar to the PC graphics cards market.

Things are bad for gaming right now, and particularly so at Xbox. Consoles are so expensive to make that Microsoft can't afford to make them--Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma says that storage costs will be up more than 7x since the time she arrived by holiday 2027. This puts a unique squeeze on Microsoft because it fully subsidizes its Xbox hardware, meaning it makes no actual money on each console sold. So if Microsoft were to start making consoles again, the losses generated by each unit would be up 5x to 7x over previous years.

What can Microsoft do? In a recent memo published on the Xbox Wire, current games division CEO Asha Sharma lays out the sobering reality of Project Helix: Microsoft needs help to make the console. The costs are just too high, and signs show that they will continue rising into next year.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty have co-authored a new blog post detailing the next 100 days at Xbox, which outlines the company's hurdles in the coming future. Some will be much easier to navigate than others.

The post on Xbox Wire put some harsh realities into the public eye, such as Xbox ending the year at about a 3% accountability margin, and that being down year-over-year. Additionally, the post states that over the past five years Xbox has spent $20 billion on ongoing investments, which includes content development (games), platform improvements, and a hardware subsidy, yet its annual revenue has declined "nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue". Notably, that $20 billion total doesn't include the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.

Another struggle is the ongoing hardware component crisis, spurred by AI companies' endless lust for more compute. AI is consuming the world's hardware for dedicated data centers, etc., straining other electronic markets, particularly gaming hardware, as components within those devices become scarcer as manufacturers shift to making components for AI-specific hardware.

Ubisoft is being hit with another round of layoffs as the publisher is reportedly closing two more development studios, resulting in hundreds of employees being laid off.

The news comes from Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, a well-known and credible source on Ubisoft's internal workings. Henderson took to X and wrote that Insider Gaming has received email confirmation from Ubisoft employees that upper management decided to close two development studios. The reporting from Insider Gaming prompted Ubisoft to contact the publication and confirm that the layoffs were planned, saying the information about them was under embargo.

Now, reports are surfacing that Ubisoft has closed Ubisoft Winnipeg and Ubisoft Belgrade. The closure of Winnipeg resulted in approximately 65 staff members being laid off. Ubisoft Belgrade is the next studio to be hit, which has resulted in around 100 employees being let go and the total closure of the studio. So, why the layoffs and closures? Ubisoft shutting the doors to two more development studios comes after what seems to be a years-long restructuring plan to bring the company back to its former glory after catastrophic performance following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although its delay into early 2027 was probably the direct result of trying to avoid Grand Theft Auto 6, Playground Games' Fable reboot is still one of the most highly anticipated game releases on the horizon. And this week, in addition to the cinematic story-focused trailer that debuted at the recent Xbox Showcase event, we've now got one of our best looks at the game to date, with an uninterrupted 30-minute deep dive that showcases a wide range of gameplay and moments.

This includes traversal, engaging with NPCs in a small village, and how the questing works. For fans of the original Fable games, the blend of high-fantasy, fairy tales, and a distinctly British sense of humor is the standout. Early on in the video, we see an amusing side quest or story involving a talking pig, with branching dialogue and choices to make. Playground Games notes that this is one of hundreds of smaller side stories with choice and consequence to discover in the game, separate from the two-plus hours of motion-captured dynamic cinematic sequences in the main quest.

The new gameplay deep dive does a great job of showcasing the game's new morality system and how it's much more complex than a binary good-or-evil label for your actions. One of the more interesting aspects of this is how it's based on your actions and surroundings, so whatever you do in one particular town will shape your reputation in that area and how the town's citizens react and interact with you.

Valve has officially confirmed that it will not be shipping out any more physical Steam gift cards to retailers after this year is up.

2026 is the last year for users to buy physical Steam gift cards in stores. A new Steam Support page, Valve is besieged by scammers and fraudsters that keep finding new ways to pull a fast one on the company.

"As we have continued to put more and more restrictions in place, scammers have adapted. They continue to have an impact on Steam customers and other unsuspecting individuals. So we've made the difficult decision to end the Steam Gift Card program at retail stores,"Valve said in the update.

It's been over 7 years since Bethesda revealed The Elder Scrolls VI, but it might not be much longer until the game is ready for a full-on reveal.

Xbox management has seen The Elder Scrolls VI in action, and the game is apparently progressing well. In a recent interview with Variety, Microsoft's gaming chief content officer Matt Booty says that Todd Howard is currently playing the hugely anticipated RPG and that it looks simply fantastic.

"So I can tell you, having visited Bethesda and sat with Todd and seen 'Elder Scrolls' playing, it looks amazing, and it's coming along well," the Xbox CCO said.

Doom usually gets all the glory when it comes to unusual ports, but Argentine developer Dante Leoncini has just made a strong case for Half-Life. He has successfully ported Valve's 1998 shooter to a Nokia N95, a 2007 slider phone running the long-defunct Symbian OS, and it runs at around 30 FPS with full Bluetooth mouse and keyboard support.

The port is built on Xash3D FWGS, an open-source engine designed to make the original Half-Life compatible with modern and not-so-modern platforms beyond the PC. Leoncini handled the Symbian-specific work himself, building a native port rather than relying on emulation. The result runs on a 240x320 screen, which is admittedly tiny, but the single-player campaign is working, including sound, weapons, and dedicated server creation.

The hardware gap between the Nokia N95 and a late-90s gaming PC is smaller than you might expect. The N95 packs a dual ARM11 CPU running at 332 MHz and 128 MB of RAM in its 8GB model. Half-Life's original PC requirements called for a 133MHz Pentium and 24MB of RAM, meaning the phone actually clears those specs comfortably. What it is missing is a dedicated graphics card, but Leoncini has made it work regardless.

UPDATE: Microsoft has confirmed the layoffs, publishing the memo on the Xbox Wire. Xbox's CEO Asha Sharma confirms that the division will have a 3% accountability margin (similar to profit) for the entire Fiscal Year 2026 period.

Xbox will conduct significant layoffs as part of a major business reset, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

Not so long ago, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said that Microsoft will reset the gaming business. The CEO has gone to say that Xbox has to look at ways to make the next console more affordable, stressing how much hardware production costs have increased--over 7.5x, Sharma says. Now it's been revealed that Microsoft is planning to hold heavy layoffs at Xbox as part of this reset.

Microsoft is making big changes to Xbox and is now specifying what's going to happen moving forward.

Exclusives are back at Xbox and Microsoft has now re-committed to shipping two Xbox console exclusives by 2027. But what does that actually mean? The term is somewhat misleading, and really just means "not on PlayStation or Switch." It means that the content is being excluded from other consoles, but not entirely from other platforms.

In a recent interview with Game Informer, Xbox's chief content officer Matt Booty defines the terms for gamers: "When we say 'console exclusives,' it means Xbox console. It'll still show up on all the normal places where we sell the PC version, and our cloud. Wherever you can get Xbox Cloud streaming."

Anthropic recently announced its latest state-of-the-art AI model, Claude Fable 5, and with the release of this extremely powerful model, we are beginning to see the creations people are coming up with due to its increased capabilities.

In a new Reddit post on the r/ClaudeAI subreddit, user FiLo420blazeit shared a short video showcasing how Fable recreated Microsoft's Minecraft in HTML. The video shows the user navigating terrain, placing blocks with the appropriate sound effects, pulling up their inventory, detonating TNT, and much more. The original poster described the result as "really, really good," adding, "it even added background music."

Additionally, the poster wrote that they aren't sure of the exact cost, which is a reference to how many tokens Fable had to use to generate the Minecraft test, but they believe it was somewhere around $30.

Xbox recently announced that it has selected Asha Sharma, the company's new CEO, and under her leadership, along with a bunch of other executive-level departures and entries, Xbox will be entering a genuine strategic reset. But what does that mean exactly? And how long will this newfound directional change last?

Windows Central's Jez Corden has reported from the ground floor at Summer Game Fest, speaking with several Xbox executives and developers. Corden admits he was somewhat pessimistic about Xbox's new direction, given the company's history of empty promises and various strategies that have hurt Xbox fans. However, Corden reports that after speaking with Xbox executives and developers, he believes there is a genuine desire to rebuild the Xbox brand to its former glory, and one way to do that will be through exclusives.

The report states that Microsoft's push to make everything an Xbox significantly hurt its brand and weakened the Xbox ecosystem as a whole, but now, with the shift toward exclusivity, having two titles already announced and on the way, new Xbox leadership is viewing exclusivity as not a financial burden, but as a means of rebuilding the Xbox culture, community, and fan trust.

Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma has sat down for an interview with Fortune Conversations, where she was asked a series of questions about Xbox as a brand, it's future, and where it stands versus the competition.

Sharma is stepping into the CEO role at Xbox during a time where the company's lost most of its identity through extensive marketing campaign that was pushed by former Xbox leadership that "everything is an Xbox". With that messaging, along with the end of exclusivity for titles, many Xbox fans felt there was very little reason to own an Xbox.

Sharma has recognized this, and many other problems with Xbox, saying in the interview that it's been difficult to balance Xbox as a publisher, and Xbox as a platform. In an effort to reignite the Xbox brand, the publisher recently unveiled Gears of War: E-Day and inXile's Clockwork Revolution will be "signature exclusives" to Xbox, and that if the Xbox brand becomes healthy more exclusives will be considered.

Nintendo shares have dropped nearly 7% after the most recent Direct show as investors express their disappointment with the event.

Following the outperformance of the original Switch, shareholders are expecting big things from Nintendo. But the company has carefully informed investors about the Switch 2 generation's myriad of problems, including rising costs eating into profits. One thing that hasn't changed, though, is Nintendo's conservativism around software, which sees the group carefully scheduling and spacing out its games across multiple years.

Right now, investors believe the Switch 2's pipeline is missing something big for this fiscal year--a new 3D Mario game. The latest Nintendo Direct apparently disappointed shareholders because it didn't include more new Switch 2 games, leading to a reduction in share demand and causing stock prices to drop more than 7.4% in next-day trading (currently at 7,215JPY, -6.76%). Nintendo only revealed two new first-party Switch 2 game at the show, and neither was a Mario game.

Kingdom Hearts IV is the next mainline game in Square Enix and Disney's long-running action RPG, which is pegged to follow Sora after the events of Kingdom Hearts III.

Reports indicate the new game will launch a new saga called the Lost Master Arc, marking a transition away from the Xehanort/Dark Seeker storyline. While still retaining the most iconic Kingdom Hearts characters, Kingdom Hearts IV is reportedly set in Quadratum, a realistic Tokyo-like city with more grounded visuals than the whimsical, fantastical world seen in typical Disney content. Additionally, Sora's design has changed, appearing more realistic to fit this world.

Kingdom Hearts IV was recently announced for the Nintendo Switch 2, which means it's coming to all platforms, including the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via the Epic Games Store and Steam. However, the release date has yet to be revealed by Square Enix or Disney, but according to one Australian retailer, it may be sometime next year.

FromSoftware's The Duskbloods will be playable on the Nintendo Switch 2 this summer, as Nintendo has confirmed during a recent Direct.

FromSoftware has developed The Duskbloods with a focus on multiplayer, with the setting being inspired by the studio's iconic title Bloodborne. From the above trailer, we can see Duskbloods is shaping up to be a gothic, action-packed experience, as players will be taking on not only other players but also the environment.

The title is expected to leverage the Switch 2's enhanced hardware to deliver a smooth experience in a portable package, and while we don't have any performance metrics yet, The Duskbloods is a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, meaning it has been specifically developed for the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware, as opposed to being a port.

Xbox's new strategy boss, Matthew Ball, recently sat down with The Game Business to discuss how he and his team, led by new CEO Asha Sharma, are looking to turn the business around. In addition to talking about the return of Xbox exclusives, with the new Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution set to be 'Xbox console exclusives,' he also touched upon the future of the brand and Xbox hardware.

Namely, Project Helix, the upcoming console-PC hybrid device from Microsoft and Xbox, has been officially announced. Although details such as hardware specs and the architecture of the internal AMD CPU and GPU are still to be confirmed, the company has stated that Project Helix is being positioned as a premium, powerful gaming device. And in the meantime, it's focused on restoring Xbox's status as a premium console brand in gamers' eyes.

The only problem is that skyrocketing prices for memory and storage are making things difficult for Xbox (and others) to deliver both affordable and readily available console hardware. And with demand for Xbox Series X|S consoles exceeding supply, the company is rethinking its approach to Project Helix as "the crisis is not yet getting better."