Gaming - Page 50

AYANEO has been teasing its flagship 'NEXT 2' PC gaming handheld for a while now, and last month the company unveiled the full specs alongside launching the Indiegogo campaign for the device. With its premium 9.06-inch OLED display, large 115Wh battery, and up to 'Strix Halo' AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with Radeon 8060S Graphics and up to 128GB of unified memory, it's poised to become one of the most powerful Windows gaming handhelds on the market.

However, due to rising component costs, specifically storage costs, AYANEO has announced it is suspending preorders for the handheld. "When we launched NEXT 2, storage prices were already at a very high level," AYANEO writes in the update, referring to the AYANEO NEXT 2's starting price of $1,999 USD.

"However, considering that many AYANEO fans had been looking forward to this product for a long time, we still decided to release it as planned and open pre-orders so as not to disappoint our supporters," the company continues. But, with prices now "several times higher" than what they were before the Chinese New Year, "the overall cost of the product has become far higher than our current selling price."

Marathon has sold an estimated 1.2 million copies on PS5, Xbox, and PC combined, Alinea Analytics has predicted.

Bungie's new extraction shooter Marathon may have sold 1.2 million copies in 19 days on the market, numbers which could fall short of Sony's expectations for the game. While Sony hasn't made its sales targets for Marathon known, the company has been quick to react to market trends and consumer whims. Marathon faced steep competition against Arc Raiders, and other new games like Crimson Desert and Slay the Spire 2 are soaking up player time and spending.

According to the estimates from Alinea Analytics, Steam was the biggest platform for Marathon. The game set an all-time peak of 88.3K players on Steam as per SteamDB, and sales-wise, it's currently #27 out of the top 100 best-selling games on Steam. On Sony's home turf, Marathon sits at the #30 best-selling game on the PlayStation Store.

Xbox and Netflix could have some sort of business collaboration in the future, potentially offering bundled subscription options.

Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma has wasted no time getting busy at Microsoft. New reports from The Information state that Sharma is exploring opportunities with other subscription giants such as Netflix, yet details on how this could work remain scarce.

Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters actually commented on his meetings with Sharma, telling The Information that he "kicked around ideas" with the Xbox leader, and that they "wouldn't eliminate any possibilities." That last part is interesting, particularly because Microsoft has technology that can stream games from the cloud at the ready, however Xbox Cloud Gaming has yet to become natively available on most TVs (this adoption is growing, though).

Epic Games has announced job losses of over 1,000 due to what's described as a downturn in engagement with its juggernaut of a game Fortnite.

Sweeney further observed that some of the challenges Epic is facing aren't unique to the company, but are industry-wide headwinds. That includes more difficult economic conditions across a number of fronts, as well as "games competing for time against other increasingly-engaging forms of entertainment".

The Epic CEO noted that the current market conditions for the gaming industry were the "most extreme we've seen since those early days", meaning the 1990s, when lots of factors changed the scene dramatically - from the rise of 3D shooters and game engines, through to the start of online gaming (ahh, QuakeWorld).

Microsoft is reportedly looking at ways to reduce the price of its Xbox Game Pass subscription, including the idea of lower-priced tiers.

Xbox's CEO Asha Sharma has supercharged the brand with new energy, signalling a vitalized era for the entertainment giant. With an enviable stable of talent and a slate of billion-dollar mega-hit franchises, Xbox has all of the IP that it needs to belt out products for decades, but its services, infrastructure, and hardware have to keep up.

The leadership transition at Microsoft has given way to new possible business decisions from Xbox's fresh-faced commander-in-chief. Sharma has already promised a new Xbox console, the hybridized Windows-based Project Helix, and ignited hype among fans. Now it's said that Sharma is seeking to grow Xbox Game Pass, but perhaps not at the cost of the entire Xbox business as it had before when the subscription had been part of Satya Nadella's performance compensation package.

Pearl Abyss's new IP continues to break sales milestones, with the game selling millions more copies in just a few days time.

Crimson Desert's success continues as the game gains momentum. South Korean developer Pearl Abyss confirms that the open-world action RPG has now sold 3 million copies in 5 days, up from the previous breakout sales of 2 million sold in its first day. Note that these figures are sell-through, and not just shipments, representing complete sales to consumers.

"We are grateful to share Crimson Desert has sold through 3 million copies worldwide. To everyone who has stepped into Pywel and shared this journey with us, thank you. Your feedback continues to help shape the experience, and we will keep working to make the journey ahead even more enjoyable for our players," Pearl Abyss wrote on Twitter.

After initially planning to sell 20 million units, Nintendo is cutting Switch 2 production by more than 30% this quarter. Bloomberg reports that Nintendo is revising its original plan to make 6 million units and is now looking to produce 4 million instead, with the reduced output set to begin in April.

Nintendo originally anticipated to ship 20 million units within the console's first year on the market, which ends later this month. The Switch 2 had a record-breaking launch, selling well over 17.3 million units (as of December 31, 2025), reported in February, far surpassing the original console's initial sales. Now, nine months on from launch, the hype may be beginning to dwindle as the company is seeing weaker-than-expected holiday sales, especially in the United States.

Nintendo could be making this move for several reasons. One theory points to Nintendo's upcoming Switch 2 revision, which would feature a replaceable battery to comply with new European legislation. The company is already taking a profit hit on its special Japan-only Switch 2 console, where the more units it sells, the more money it loses on a per-console basis.

Digital Foundry has posted an interview with PlayStation console architect Mark Cerny about the recent release of the updated version of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) for the PlayStation 5 Pro. The update, also referred to as PSSR 2, delivers a notable improvement in image quality, with results comparable to AMD's FSR 4.1.

In the interview, Mark Cerny confirms in more detail that PSSR and FSR Redstone share the same technology base. One of the more notable takeaways is how PSSR works compared to FSR 4.1 and how it leverages the PS5 Pro's less capable AI hardware to deliver a similar result.

"FSR Redstone and the new PSSR have somewhat different implementations due to the underlying hardware, e.g., FSR Upscaling uses 8-bit floating point, and PSSR uses 8-bit integer," Mark Cerny explains. "The MAC counts (i.e., the amount of math involved) also vary a bit, and training data is similar but not exactly the same. None of the above factors seems to make much difference in the results. The various flavors in the updated FSR Upscaling really are rather close to the new PSSR."

Sitting down for an extended discussion on the Lex Fridman podcast, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang responded (again) to the criticisms surrounding the company's recent DLSS 5 announcement. DLSS 5's reveal, which is designed to take game data and transform rendered images to deliver photorealistic lighting that wouldn't be possible with current hardware, has sparked widespread backlash over how the AI model seemingly changes the look of characters.

As seen in the example above from Capcom's Resident Evil Requiem, the main issue raised by the wider gaming community and media alike centers on how it makes characters look different. To the point where it's being referred to as an AI filter that gives characters like Grace a look similar to several AI-generated images circulating on social media depicting attractive people.

"I think their perspective makes sense," Jensen Huang said when asked by Lex Fridman about the response to DLSS 5. "And I could see where they're coming from because I don't love AI slop myself. You know, all of the AI-generated content increasingly looks similar, and they're all beautiful, so I'm empathetic toward what they're thinking. That's just not what DLSS 5 is trying to do."

AMD has released the AMD FSR SDK 2.2, now available on GPUOpen for game developers. This is a notable update because it adds the latest versions of AMD's FSR 'Redstone' technologies for RDNA 4 GPUs and the Radeon RX 9000 Series, with the arrival of AMD FSR Upscaling 4.1 and AMD FSR Ray Regeneration 1.1.

AMD FSR 4.1 is the latest version of the company's AI-powered upscaling solution, delivering image quality comparable to NVIDIA DLSS. FSR 4.1, already available for PC gamers in titles like Crimson Desert as part of the latest Radeon drivers, enhances image quality with sharper visuals and improved clarity and detail on moving objects. It also improves the ultra-performance preset, which upscales from a lower resolution, as well as the dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) mode.

FSR Ray Regeneration 1.1, which is an AI-powered denoiser similar to DLSS Ray Reconstruction, also improves the image quality and realism of ray-traced lighting, with Crimson Desert being the first title to implement the update. This feature is designed to enhance ray-traced reflections and global illumination.

Few games have gathered as much pre-launch hype as Crimson Desert has over the past few months. Gamers were excited to experience the vast open world with tons of interactive elements, and that excitement translated to sales as well. However, the excitement soon took a slight downturn as AI-generated artwork was found in the game.

The artwork depicted a battle scene filled with mounted soldiers; however, the horses' bodies were somewhat blended with those of the soldiers. This was a telltale sign that generative AI was being used, leaving many gamers with a sour taste in their mouths. More egregiously, however, Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss did not use Steam's generative AI disclosure on the store page.

After facing backlash, Pearl Abyss has issued a statement through the @CrimsonDesert_ X account. The company accepts that the artwork was AI-generated; however, it was created early in the development process for experimental purposes and was not intended for the final release.

Bethesda's paid mods program has been controversial from the start, and the publisher will continue leaning into its user-generated content business model moving forward.

Right from the get-go, Bethesda's Creation Club was heavily criticized among gamers. Mods are a big reason why Bethesda games are so timeless--the free player-created content can expand the game well past its original limits and unlock all kinds of new experiences that weren't possible at launch. Before it was acquired by Microsoft, Bethesda decided to get into mods, treating them as microtransactions that creators could sell, and the Creation Club was born.

The program has changed since it was introduced in August 2017. At the time, Bethesda made both free and paid mods available in Skyrim Special Edition and Fallout 4, initially separating the paid content from the digital mods that gamers could download for free. Now, however, free and paid mods are lumped together and the program is simply called Creations.

EA is delisting its cops-and-robbers Battlefield game on consoles starting in May, but the game will still be sold and remain playable on PC.

Battlefield Hardline will be sunset starting in May, EA has announced on its support forums. Starting in late May, Hardline will no longer be purchasable on PS4 and Xbox One, and a month after that, the multiplayer servers will also be taken offline.

Interestingly enough, Hardline is still being sold for a more premium price on Steam despite being an 11-year-old Battlefield title. The ultimate edition is being sold for $40 without an option for the cheaper standard edition, and EA is even still selling a $50 microtransaction bundle that effectively unlocks all multiplayer progression items at once. That shortcut bundle is actually more expensive than the game itself. Or gamers could also just get a month of EA Play for $5.99 to access the game, too.

Microsoft will show off a handful of third-party partner games coming to Xbox in a special showcase this Thursday, including a closer look at the next game from the creators of the Yakuza series.

The new Xbox Partner Preview stream will debut March 26, 2026 at 10am PST/ 1pm EST, giving players a glimpse of what's to come with key third-party games like Stranger Than Heaven, an ambitious and stylish new third-person action game from SEGA's famed Ryu Ga Gotoku studio (Yakuza), as well as new content and updates from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developer GSC Game World.

"The latest installment will include news on upcoming games from partners including Sega, GSC Game World and Owlcat Games, plus brand-new reveals, world premieres and Xbox Game Pass announcements," reads the Xbox Wire post.

Crimson Desert is one of the fastest-selling new IPs on the market with multi-million sales in its first day, but the game's strong initial launch performance hasn't entirely convinced investors.

Shortly after Crimson Desert's release, the share value of South Korean developer Pearl Abyss took a major hit. The company saw their stock drop by 40%, and the publisher's shares have yet to meaningfully rebound despite the game's breakout success; Crimson Desert managed to sell over 2 million copies on all platforms in its first day, making it among the quickest-selling new titles and new intellectual properties on the modern games market.

Today was the first new day of trading on the Korean Exchange after Pearl Abyss made the sales announcement, and unfortunately, the shares have yet to really bounce back. The company's stock did technically see an increase of +250 KRW (about $0.17), representing a smaller +0.60% boost.

After images and videos, Generative AI has found its way into video game development. Gamers and developers are trying to figure out whether the technology adds value or strips away authenticity from video games. Capcom has decided which side of the line it wants to be on and has clarified its stance on generative AI.

In a recent summary of its investor briefing session, Game*Spark spotted that Capcom addressed investor questions on how the studio is handling generative AI in its games. Capcom explained that it will not be using AI-generated assets in its titles for the time being.

However, that doesn't mean it plans on abandoning the technology entirely. The studio states it will use generative AI to boost efficiency in departments such as graphics, sound, and programming.

ASRock has unveiled three new gaming monitor offerings targeting budget-level PC gamers looking to upgrade from 144Hz or a standard LCD monitor to crisper IPS.

The three new models coming to market are the PG27FFS2E, PG27FFS2E-W, and PG27FFS1A, each with identical gaming performance because they all use the same panel. The differences lie within the design, as each rock a 27-inch IPS panel with a 1920 x 1080p resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate, and 1ms MPRT response time. As for color, all three cover 99% of the sRGB gamut, have a typical brightness of 350 nits, and include AMD FreeSync Premium and HDR10 support.

So, what's the difference? The PG27FFS2E and PG27FFS2E-W are the higher-end variants, as each model comes with an adjustable stand that offers height, swivel, tilt, and pivot adjustability. The PG27FFS1A is the more affordable of the three; while offering the same gaming performance, it sacrifices ergonomics to achieve a lower price point.

PlayStation lead system architect Mark Cerny has sat down for an interview with Digital Foundry, where Sony's next-generation graphics technology was discussed, and it involves AI.

During the interview, Cerny said that PlayStation platforms will eventually get some form of machine learning-based frame generation, which involves an AI scanning the frames within the frame pipeline and creating entirely new frames between the natively rendered frames, boosting the total perceived frames in-game. The technology, while still quite controversial among the PC community for these AI-generated frames being "fake" frames, undoubtedly provides extra performance headroom and enables developers more creative freedom when it comes to performance and visual fidelity.

The technology already exists in its infancy on the PlayStation, with PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), Sony's version of NVIDIA's DLSS, or AMD's FSR. This upscaling technology is currently used on the PlayStation 5 Pro, with the difference between PSSR and AI-powered frame generation being that PSSR upscales natively rendered frames, while frame generation creates entirely new frames based on past and future frames. Enabling frame generation improves motion performance by artificially increasing the frame rate.

CD Projekt plans to make big profit gains thanks to new releases like Ciri's new Witcher trilogy and the upcoming Cyberpunk sequel.

The latest FY2025 earnings report from CD Projekt outlines some ambitious profit targets that the company hopes to achieve. The growth targets are quite substantial, and the company expects to cumulatively gain 1 billion PLN (about $270 million) every 4 years or so.

By the end of 2029, CD Projekt hopes to make a record 5 billion PLN ($1.35 billion) in net profit, with the performance spread across a 4-year period from 2026 to the end of 2029.

Nintendo is preparing a new special Switch 2 variant with a removable battery that conforms to new EU tech laws.

Nintendo will release a new Switch 2 model that adheres to the EU's revised right to repair laws, allowing users to easily swap out batteries for the handheld-console hybrid.

Asian publication Nikkei reveals that Nintendo will manufacture these new systems exclusively for the European market. The EU has mandated that all portable batteries in new consumer electronics be easily removable and replaceable by consumers, as part of EU Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542.