Gaming - Page 27

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick seems to indicate that Grand Theft Auto 6 won't get delayed again and will meet its November launch date.

Take-Two's latest FY26 earnings report just released, and in the prepared remarks, company CEO Strauss Zelnick reiterate GTA 6's release during the FY27 period.

"Our Fiscal 2026 performance was exceptional and exceeded our initial expectations at every label. We believe Fiscal 2027 will establish new record levels of operating performance driven by the November 19th launch of Grand Theft Auto VI, along with strong execution across our portfolio," Zelnick said in a press release.

Infinity Ward is poised to reveal Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 imminently, according to a new report that suggests the developer is nearing the announcement of its next major title.

The leak, originating from Insider Gaming, aligns with recent chatter on social platforms and gaming forums, where users speculate a June 2026 reveal is in the works, with a potential October release window. The developer has confirmed it is working on new content for the Modern Warfare series, despite the recent launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

This follows a pattern of annual releases for the franchise, which has seen consistent updates and expansions over the past several years, but has recently waned in popularity and public reception following the release of Black Ops 7. Additionally, Infinity Ward has been teasing the project on YouTube and Instagram with vague yet promising content hinting at a major seasonal update or a full reveal.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto 6's marketing campaign is set to begin "soon," with the rollout described as "astonishing" and reflective of where audiences and attention are today.

Zelnick revealed in a recent interview that Rockstar Games and Take-Two will be following its signature strategy of a short but high-impact marketing push, beginning close to the game's launch.

The CEO also confirmed that the plan aligns with Rockstar's past approach, which has focused on building intense anticipation by revealing as few details as possible about the title until it's perfectly ready. This strategy has historically helped maintain mystery and momentum ahead of major releases.

Subnautica 2 has passed another sales milestone, this time breaking 4 million sales in just a matter of days--all while in early access on consoles and PC.

Unknown Worlds' management looks to be well on their way to those bonuses after all as Subnautica 2 has proven to be a multi-platinum hit. The game has surpassed 4 million copies on PC and Xbox n just 5 days, the developers have announced in a new press release. These numbers indicate that the sequel now makes up more than a quarter of total Subnautica franchise sales--as per the studio, the series has sold more than 18.5 million copies worldwide, outselling other franchises like Silent Hill (17.1 million) and Dragon's Dogma (14 million).

"We're incredibly grateful for the response from players around the world. Seeing millions of players dive into this new world during Early Access has been an incredible moment for the team. Community feedback continues to help shape the future of Subnautica 2, and we're excited to keep building the experience together with our players," said Fernando Melo, Executive Producer of Subnautica 2.

Bungie is ending development of Destiny 2, and the game's final update will release next month, the developer today announced.

Destiny 2 will soon be content complete and put into maintenance mode, Bungie today confirmed in a somber news post. The game's final update will go live on June 9, 2026 as a kind of digital send-off from the developer. The studio confirms that Destiny 2 will still remain playable and it hasn't been revealed how exactly the content availability will work.

"As our focus turns towards a new beginning for Bungie, we will begin work incubating our next games. To that end, on June 9, 2026, we will release the final live-service content update for Destiny 2 to begin that new journey as a studio.

Sony's recent PlayStation Plus announcement wasn't just concerning an Essential tier price hike--all PS Plus tiers across the 1 and 3-month options now cost more.

Just a few days ago, Sony confirmed a price hike for PlayStation Plus subscriptions. The announcement had apparently been misinterpreted, as it was believed the increase would only affect the Essential tier. That's not the case, and both the Extra and Premium PS Plus tiers are also becoming more expensive across their respective 30-day and 90-day offerings.

Visiting the PlayStation Plus website shows the new prices in effect. The price increases range from $1-5, with increases in the tune of 10-13% across the various tiers.

Former Rockstar developers are still shackled by NDAs that can last up to 10 years - and in some cases, for life - making it nearly impossible to discuss the inner workings of the esteemed developer or any of the underlying technology powering its titles.

KiwiTalkz, a well-known game journalist, recently shared on X that many devs who respond to his questions either provide vague answers or outright decline to comment on potential legal ramifications. One former Rockstar developer told KiwiTalkz that even after a decade, they couldn't speak on specifics without risking legal repercussions. "Speaking about the RAGE Engine in any type of detail is an absolute no-no," the source said.

Rockstar has long been known for its aggressive legal tactics and tight-lipped culture, and these NDAs ensure that even after a project concludes, the details remain buried. And for good reason, too. Rockstar controls some of the most valuable video game IP on the planet, and part of the excitement fans have for Rockstar's projects is the lack of information the developer provides.

Sony PlayStation accounts are reportedly being hacked with ease, even when users have two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled.

A growing number of users have come forward claiming that their PSN accounts were compromised, with digital game libraries and in-game purchases wiped out in seconds. The vulnerability reportedly stems from a loophole that allows hackers to access an account using only one transaction ID from the target account.

Hackers are somehow obtaining a single transaction ID linked to the account and providing it to Sony as "evidence" of account ownership, which, once approved by Sony, enables them to change the email linked to the PSN account and bypass 2FA. This isn't the first time PlayStation has faced a data breach or security issue. In 2011, a massive hack exposed the data of 25 million users. Now that a new exploit has emerged, the company is rightfully under pressure to secure its platform before more users fall victim.

CD Projekt Red seems to have learned a thing or two from its disastrous Cyberpunk 2077 launch. After the immense success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, expectations were at an all-time high when CDPR teased its next project based on a futuristic dystopia. However, the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was riddled with bugs and performance issues that just left a sour taste in gamers' mouths. It now looks like CDPR is taking steps to make sure that doesn't happen again.

At the Digital Dragons panel attended by GamesRadar, CDPR technical writers Jarosław Ruciński and Adrian Fulneczek discussed some of the development challenges the team faced during The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, and how they have addressed them moving forward. Apparently, a key oversight during the development of those games was that not enough technical knowledge was preserved through documentation, which later became a huge hurdle.

The writers also stated that during Cyberpunk 2077's development, the team had over 8,000 documentation pages, which posed a new challenge. Maintaining these documents required a huge amount of time and effort, which is why they later became low priority. What's important is that CDPR has learned from these challenges and aims never to repeat the same mistakes.

Ubisoft's FY26 earnings show the results of the company's costly reorganization efforts, leading to the second consecutive year of annual losses at the company.

French games-maker Ubisoft recently posted its annual report for FY26, confirming a hefty 1.3 billion euro operating loss for the financial year. This is actually a reduction in losses--Ubisoft recorded a 1.46 billion euro loss the year prior in FY25.

The losses were driven by major expenses in Ubisoft's R&D segment, which spent 1.855 billion euros in FY26, of which 75% of that, or 1.402 billion euros, was related to accelerated depreciation of cancelled and delayed game software.

Researcher Andy Nguyen, aka TheFlow, has made it possible to turn a launch-era PlayStation 5 running firmware up to version 6.02 into a Steam Machine-like device running Linux. This setup allows the console to run PC versions of games, as Andy demonstrated by successfully running Grand Theft Auto V: Enhanced Edition.

Following that, the team at Digital Foundry caught wind of the PS5 Linux breakthrough and decided to run a path-tracing test on the system. They tested three titles: Quake II RTX, Portal with RTX, and Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive, each representing a different level of path-tracing load.

Quake II RTX was NVIDIA's first major path-tracing showcase, and even though the game itself is ancient by gaming standards, path tracing breathes new life into its visuals. Portal with RTX was the first game to use NVIDIA's RTX Remix, and Cyberpunk 2077's RT Overdrive mode is the ultimate path-tracing stress test.

Sony has announced a new State of Play showcase for June 2, and the event will highlight both upcoming first-party and third-party PlayStation 5 games.

Sony's new State of Play returns on June 2, 2026 at 2PM PST/5PM EST, offering a full hour of games and content from major developers and publishers.

As per usual, Sony didn't reveal the full lineup of its summer-timed event, but did confirm that Insomniac's new Wolverine game will be front and center with more gameplay footage and info on the visceral adventure, which is due out September 15.

Ubisoft will release multiple AAA games by March 2029, including new titles in its trio of biggest brands.

Ubisoft today announced its earnings results for FY2026, and nestled in the report is an update on its upcoming release plans. The company recently went through a hefty reorganization largely funded by a big $1.2 billion investment from Tencent that resulted in a restructuring of its business into units called Creative Houses.

The biggest of these groups, a subsidiary called Vantage Studios, handles Ubisoft's largest, most prestige brands: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Ghost Recon. It's now been revealed that Ubisoft plans to have new games in all of these franchises released by March 2029, coinciding with a significant boost in positive free cash flow--a critical metric of success for any company.

Microsoft has hired industry analyst Matthew Ball to help guide its Xbox games division in uncertain waters, especially as the company prepares its revolutionary Project Helix console.

In her quest to overhaul Xbox, Microsoft's new gaming CEO Asha Sharma has made some key hires to help facilitate key shifts at the segment. New reports from The Verge indicate that Xbox has hired games industry analyst Matthew Ball to help lead strategy at the group. Ball is well-known for his work at Epyllion, where has published multiple games industry-oriented reports and briefings.

"Matthew has been partnering with us on strategy since day 10 and will officially start this month, reporting to me," Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is believed to have said in a recent memo.

It's official: Warhorse Studios is indeed developing a new Lord of the Rings game, and the news was confirmed in today's spin-off announcement from Embracer.

The rumors were right, and Kingdom Come developer Warhorse is working on a new RPG set in the Middle-earth franchise. The info was announced by Embracer during its business strategy briefing. Embracer will spin off Fellowship Entertainment, which includes a ton of other IPs like Tomb Raider, Metro, and Dead Island, into a separate standalone group. Warhorse, and the Lord of the Rings franchise as a whole, are both part of this group.

"Warhorse is making a new game set in Middle-earth. The studio celebrated for its extraordinary depth, historical authenticity, and storytelling, is bringing that craft to the greatest fantasy world ever created--an expansive, deep, open-world experience. Warhorse demonstrated with Kingdom Come that they are one of the premiere open-world RPG studios on the planet," Fellowship Entertainment confirmed today.

Sony's upgraded PlayStation Super Spectral Resolution tech is seeing adoption in newer games, and developers are surprised at how easy it is to incorporate the boosted version into their projects.

Sony's new PSSR upgrade is apparently quite optimized and requires little tweaking when added into PS5 Pro titles. In the latest update on the PlayStation Blog, IO Interactive devs discussed their experience with the new PSSR update doing its magic within the new action -based James Bond 007 First Light game. The testimony was interesting and reflective of Sony's developer-first stance, where its hardware--and adjoining software/OS layers--are tailor-made to developer's needs and specifications.

"We integrated upgraded PSSR in about a day and were essentially happy with what we saw straight away. No per-scene tuning, no special-case work - it just held up across the whole game. That's not something we get to say very often about a piece of new tech," said Principal Render Engineer, IO Interactive Jon Rocatis.

Embracer Group is shedding some of the biggest video game companies in the business in a new spin off, leaving the fate of major franchises like Metro, Lord of the Rings, Tomb Raider, and more in the hands of the new separate entity.

It's an end of an era at Embracer Group; the once-mighty Rome of gaming is not splintering up even more, with some of its biggest and most valuable IPs being spun off into a new company. The group has announced that key franchises and game studios will be spun off into an independent company called Fellowship Entertainment.

Fellowship, the so-called "steward" of these legendary series, will be the home of powerhouse IPs and game dev studios alike, from Tomb Raider at Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal, Dead Island from Dambuster, and Metro games from 4A. All future Lord of the Rings games are also covered under the deal under the Middle-earth Enterprises label.

Warhorse Studios has confirmed it is working on a new, large-scale Middle-earth RPG, following rumors that the studio was quietly developing such a project.

The Czech developer, best known for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, took to social media to reveal "what we are working on". In an X post from the official Warhorse Studios account, the developer confirmed it was working on a new open-world Middle-earth RPG. Previous rumors pointed to Warhorse Studios quietly working on a new Lord of the Rings game funded by the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, with a $100 million budget.

For those who don't know, Warhorse Studios is owned by the Embracer Group, which also owns the rights to the Lord of the Rings games. So, it makes sense that Warhorse was selected to tackle the mighty task of bringing Middle-earth to life, especially considering the success of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

Forza Horizon 6 developers have mocked Nintendo's legal stance on Pokémon by including a direct reference to the franchise in the recently released game, seemingly poking fun at the company's long-running and extremely active legal team.

The move, discovered by fans and reported by Insider Gaming, sees a subtle but clear nod to Pokémon in an otherwise unrelated environment, likely as a joke about Nintendo's long history of aggressively policing its intellectual property by filing lawsuits against any party that it believes has infringed on its IP, regardless of the alleged severity.

While Forza Horizon 6's developers haven't commented directly, the in-game reference has already sparked viral reactions online. As for the specific reference, in the above video, we can see a player driving around Forza Horizon 6, and on the radio, we can hear instructions to "grab your camera, and snap 'em all," followed by, "It's like that Japanese collecting game where we were not allowed to name for legal reasons. Exactly." It remains to be seen if Nintendo will set its legal team on Playground Games for the tongue-in-cheek comment.

Microsoft has broken new ground on Steam as Forza Horizon 6 becomes the most popular racing game ever on the platform.

Forza Horizon 6 shows signs of being gaming's latest big hit as the racing sim achieves hundreds of thousands of players on Steam on launch day. New data from SteamDB shows that FH6 managed to hit over 273K players in the last 24 hours, setting a new all-time peak player count not only for Forza Horizon games, but racing games as a genre on Steam itself.

Other details indicate that Forza Horizon 6 may have already made over $140 million in revenue from its premium version alone, dwarfing our own analysis of the game's early advanced access sales on Steam. This could show that consumers are now more price tolerant for higher-end experiences, and that Microsoft's penchant towards FOMO-oriented early access is also working out quite well, as Forza Horizon 6's $120 premium edition is roughly equivalent of two full-priced games from the previous console generation.