Gaming - Page 55

Microsoft has taken to its official X account to share three photos of what could be the next Xbox, and paired these images with the caption, "Xbox at GDC 🔥 Sneak peek".

The images showcase a shell of an Xbox console, which has the letters "XDK" embossed on the side. It's assumed these letters represent the "Xbox Developer Kit," which is a locked version of the Xbox console that is given to developers so they can design their game to the specific hardware specifications. Notably, users have pointed out that the images and the Xbox within them appear to show a console that's very similar to the Xbox One developer kit.

To add to the mystery, and what could perhaps make fans lean toward this being a tease of the next-generation Xbox console, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma teased last week that Microsoft's new Xbox, codenamed Project Helix will be discussed at "GDC next week". Additionally, Sharma said the new Xbox will "lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games."

Valve published its 2025 review, and in the large article, it outlines a variety of ways the company improved the platform, including some interesting stats on what it's now nearly 50 million peak concurrent users are getting up to.

Valve revealed that Steam has been steadily growing for the past five years, with growth being estimated at around 3.4 million additional users per year. Five years ago, Steam crossed the 25 million concurrent user mark, and in 2025, it reached 42 million peak concurrent users. With so many PC gamers now adopting the platform, Valve is required to provide those games with a steady stream of new titles they can download at maximum speed. Valve is and has been doing that, and the stats on those downloads are quite eye-watering.

According to Valve, in 2024, Steam users downloaded 80 exabytes of data, which quickly rose to 100 exabytes in 2025. To put that number into perspective, Steam users are averaging 274 petabytes of installs and updates per day, which equates to 11.42 petabytes per hour of downloads, or approximately 190,000 gigabytes of data per minute. Additionally, if you were wondering how many 1TB SSDs in gaming PCs 100 exabytes would fill up, it's approximately 100 million 1TB SSDs.

NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang has penned a new blog post where he gives his view on the future of AI from 20,000 feet, which includes him making an analogy to creating a 5-layer cake.

In the blog Huang describes the future of AI being a 5-layer cake, and each of these layers being a critical part of what makes up AI, with each of these layers being one key focus of the underlying infrastructure, yet independent from each other. Each of these layers are evolving exponentially, with Jensen writing the bottom layer categorized as "energy" is the "binding constraint" for intelligence and monetary figures. Given that AI cannot run without electricity that makes perfect sense, and above "energy" is chips, infrastructure, models, and then finally, applications.

Jensen goes on to write that around the world we are seeing the largest infrastructure buildout in human history with factories producing AI chips being constructed by various companies around the world, in order to get their own slice of the expanding cake. The NVIDIA CEO writes that "AI is one of the most powerful forces shaping the world today," and that "it is not a clever or a single model; it is essential infrastructure, like electricity and the internet."

On the heels of what was considered to be a very positive change for the long-time-running MMORPG RuneScape, the removal of microtransactions, developer Jagex has found itself in hot water after announcing a price hike for its membership subscription.

Jagex outlined that it will raise RuneScape's monthly subscription price from $14 to $15, which will, in turn, increase the yearly subscription price from $99.48 to $131.88. Notably, this price hike comes just two months after Jagex announced it would remove microtransactions from the game, and less than two years after it previously announced a membership price hike. The new membership price will be announced on April 9, and it won't affect players who are already paying the previous membership price.

Additionally, Jagex is removing the 6-month subscription option. For players currently on a 6-month plan, they will need to choose between a monthly and a yearly subscription once their current subscription expires. Currently the official RuneScape subreddit is being filled with posts from players expressing their frustration at the price hike.

After Galaxy Studios fueled speculation that they are working on a remaster of Fallout 3 by sharing an image from an internal pitch deck of the iconic "Please Stand By" loading screen, more leaks have popped up about a Fallout 3 remaster.

Unfortunately, Galaxy Studios shut down rumors that it was working on a remaster of the classic Bethesda title, saying the image of the loading screen was nothing more than a slide in a deck and that it has "nothing to do with anything Fallout being worked on."

However, that doesn't mean a Fallout remaster isn't being worked on somewhere else. A new figurine listing from McFarlane Toys has suggested there is a Fallout 3 remaster currently in development somewhere, as McFarlane Toys has listed the "ELITE EDITION 7IN - FALLOUT 3 REMASTERED - #13 T-45B NUKA COLA".

Sony is reportedly testing dynamic pricing on select first-party software sold on the PlayStation Store, cost analysis website PS Prices has found.

Sony may be testing a new way to price its games in a way that takes into account specific user metrics, including play time and location. Price-tracking site PS Prices reports that Sony has been conducting a dynamic pricing experiment since November 2025 in a bid to test price elasticity on the PlayStation Store, likely to determine price tolerance in specific geographies.

Sony is believed to be conducting A/B testing (aka split testing) with software prices. This effectively means that users may see different prices for the same games sold on the PlayStation Store. According to the data, Sony is testing both price increases and decreases of specific software.

The region-locked Switch 2 might have created a growing unprofitability situation for Nintendo, as one analyst believes Nintendo is losing money each time it produces a Japan-only console.

Nintendo has asserted that the Switch 2 is generally produced and sold at a profit, but that may not be true for all of its console variants. Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda estimates that the Japanese-exclusive, region-locked Switch 2 is currently unprofitable for Nintendo, and as the company sells more of these systems, the divide between profits and losses will expand. The company introduced the model in a bid to improve its domestic market share, and the losses are incurred strategically to help promote a cheaper, more affordable product.

"As a result, the Japanese market is experiencing a growing negative margin situation, where the manufacturing costs of hardware exceed the selling price, and the more the console sells, the worse its profitability becomes," Yasuda wrote in an analysis piece for Diamond Online.

Epic Games today raised the price of all Fortnite V-Bucks microtransaction bundles, reducing the buying power of the dollar and making each purchase more favorable for Epic.

Today, Epic Games announced a price hike across its V-Bucks digital currency--a move that could foreshadow other live service games in the near future. Although Fortnite has generated well over $20 billion in revenue since 2017, Epic says that the costs of running the world's most popular online game are increasing, and so too are the V-Buck prices.

"The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we're raising prices to help pay the bills," the company said. "Existing V-Bucks gift cards still redeem at their printed values."

Capcom reveals some of its post-launch plans for Resident Evil 9 Requiem, including additional modes and a new narrative-driven expansion.

The latest Resident Evil game will continue engaging players throughout 2026 with some new updates, including a fully-fledged photo mode to capture the impressive visuals of the RE Engine, as well as a new paid story expansion that will flesh out more of the game's mythos and lore.

"We are planning on adding more content. First, the much-awaited photo mode. On top of that, there's another surprise coming around May. We're planning to add a mini-game. One more thing: We are planning to make extra story content. In this story, we will delve deeper into the world of Requiem," game director Koshi Nakanishi said in today's update.

Bethesda could reveal Fallout 3 remastered sometime soon, with a potential release in 2026, new cross-promotional product listings indicate.

Season 1 of the Fallout TV series delivered some vim and vigor to the franchise's step, and helped sell tons of Fallout games. The Amazon Prime show actually translated into direct sales so efficiently that Xbox essentially took over PlayStation's charts for a period. Bethesda wants to do this again with Fallout season 2, and that means having products at the ready--like the recent Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, for example.

Now it looks like Fallout 3 remastered could be added to that list as well. The game was directly mentioned in a new McFarlane Toys' product inventory list: "ELITE EDITION 7IN - FALLOUT 3 REMASTERED - #13 T-45B NUKA COLA," the content reads.

At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) currently underway in San Francisco, NVIDIA has announced a new developer-focused feature for its GeForce NOW cloud streaming service. Cloud Playtest gives developers and publishers a way to securely conduct internal, external, and even press-related playtests covering early internal tests, quality assurance, and hands-on media events.

This is something NVIDIA has been developing for a while. During our pre-brief with representatives, Cloud Playtest is already being used by developers and publishers such as 2K, Activision, Bethesda, Frontier, Techland, Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Games, and even Xbox Game Studios.

NVIDIA has confirmed that the service is already being used for playtests for games that are still two or three years out from release, with Cloud Playtest democratizing the idea of testing and even quality assurance by giving testers access to ready-to-go builds playable on a wide range of GeForce RTX hardware, including GeForce NOW pods with up to GeForce RTX 5080 levels of performance.

Quake III Arena is an iconic first-person shooter from 1999 that cranked up the speed and intensity from previous installments, presenting one of the quintessential multiplayer arena shooters of the era. An absolute classic, and a game that is getting the RTX Remix treatment from modder WoodBoy with the Quake III RTX Remix mod.

And, GeForce RTX gamers can jump into a demo of the mod right now, which is available via Moddb. Free for all Quake III owners, like other RTX Remix mods, it presents a classic PC game in a new light with modern path-traced lighting effects and remade assets, and support for DLSS 4 rendering. And, as confirmed by NVIDIA, it's one of the first RTX Remix projects to incorporate new advanced path-traced particle effects, as well as make use of RTX Remix Logic.

The Quake III RTX Remix mod demo is quite a packed release, too, as the 15 remastered and reimagined levels also include an updated RTX Remix version of the NV15Demo map that was created to showcase the power and capabilities of NVIDIA's new-at-the-time GeForce2 back in the year 2000.

NVIDIA showcased its new RTX Mega Geometry technology when it announced the GeForce RTX 50 Series, and without getting too technical, it's all about dramatically increasing the complexity of a ray-traced scene with minimal impact to performance. And by complexity, we mean increasing the number of polygons from, say, 50 million, up to 500 million. And to top it off, improve FPS performance and reduce the VRAM required for ray-tracing.

And with that, at GDC 2026, NVIDIA has announced that it's collaborating with CD Projekt RED to bring the RTX Mega Geometry Foliage System technology to the highly anticipated The Witcher 4. In the brief demonstration we were shown, RTX Mega Geometry will be used in the game to render giant, realistic-looking forests with dense foliage and a level of detail that looks more like real-life or a movie than a video game.

As a follow-up to one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved games of the 2010s, The Witcher 4 promises to deliver an open-world RPG with massive scope and detail. Currently in development using the latest Unreal Engine 5 technology, the game doesn't have a release date or window, but it entered the "full-scale production phase" back in 2024. Employing new tech like RTX Mega Geometry will help the development team at CDPR realize its dream of presenting the "most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game to date."

2026 is going to be a big one for single-player games with path tracing or full ray tracing support. Capcom's Resident Evil Requiem has already set the bar pretty high with its incredible path-traced visuals on PC, accelerated by DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs. Walking down a rainy city street or through the abandoned hallways of a hospital with full ray tracing adds to the immersion and tension, and RT in Raccoon City is just the beginning.

With GDC underway in San Francisco, NVIDIA has announced a big batch of new game releases that it has worked with game developers to enhance performance with its new DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi Frame Generation technology. 007 First Light, from Hitman-studio IO Interactive, is a new cinematic third-person action-adventure coming to PC and console on May 27, 2026.

And the PC version will feature an immersive path tracing mode on day one, accelerated by DLSS. As detailed in a new gameplay presentation, path tracing in the game is set to enhance shadow accuracy and detail, as well as how reflections and other effects behave. It doesn't stop there, as another big 2026 release, Remedy's Control Resonant, is also set to debut on PC with path tracing support.

Announced earlier this year, NVIDIA's new DLSS 4.5 is all about enhancing and evolving its Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation technologies. DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution is already out in the world and supported in hundreds of games thanks to the NVIDIA App's DLSS Override feature. With its powerful second-generation Transformer model, it dramatically improves image quality, restoring detail and enhancing 4K gaming performance.

With GDC kicking off this week in San Francisco, NVIDIA has confirmed that the second half of the big DLSS 4.5 update, Dynamic Frame Multi Generation, is on track for release on March 31. And much like the arrival of DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution, it will be available in a wide range of titles via the NVIDIA App, for GeForce RTX 50 Series owners.

Although some of the chatter surrounding the initial DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Frame Multi Generation announcement focused on the fact that the number of potential AI-generated frames was increasing from 4 to 6, the big thing here is the dynamic part of the equation, not the whole Frame Generation 2X versus 3X, 4X, and now 5X and 6X debate. In fact, it's on track to be a potential game-changer for Frame Generation as a whole.

While Xbox's new leader Asha Sharma teases next-gen Project Helix hardware, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reiterates plans to expand and extend Xbox well beyond consoles.

Xbox has spent the last decade trying to move away from its unprofitable console hardware business, first branching into PC on a unified level with Windows 10, and then bringing Xbox games to mobile devices via Project xCloud. In more recent years, Microsoft broke exclusivity for good and all to ensure its software could be sold everywhere possible--even rival systems like the PlayStation 5. This plan has worked well for Microsoft in the short- to medium-term, leading to boosted revenues via expanded sales.

Microsoft isn't done expanding, though. In a recent internal town hall meeting with employees (per Windows Central), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed the future of Xbox, saying that the main goal for the division is to ultimately find the most broad, all-encompassing form of gaming. This sure sounds like Nadella is talking about some sort of new evolved medium for gaming (maybe something like Hideo Kojima's new cloud-powered horror game, OD?).

Horror master Shinji Mikami is attached to a new mystery project, and his involvement at the studio was not previously revealed until now, Video Games Chronicle reports.

Original Resident Evil and The Evil Within creator Shinji Mikami is now serving as representative director of Unbound Inc, a new game dev studio that's working on an unannounced AAA project. In 2024, Mikami founded Kamuy Inc, a new game dev studio following Tango Gameworks' closure, and it's unclear how or if the two companies are related.

Details are slim on the new project, yet Unbound's recent job listings give an idea on what to expect. The Japanese game dev studio is currently hiring for 9 positions ranging from art and animation to programming and management, with the listings confirming the game will be a high-end, AAA experience set in a never-before-seen IP.

EA is laying off even more workers as the company prepares to be taken private in a $55 billion deal principally funded by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

EA has already laid off multiple developers across its Battlefield teams, with job eliminations affecting all studios who work on the franchise including DICE, Ripple Effect, Motive Studios, and Criterion.

"We've made select changes within our Battlefield organization to better align our teams around what matters most to our community. Battlefield remains one of our biggest priorities, and we're continuing to invest in the franchise, guided by player feedback and insights from Battlefield Labs," EA said in a statement to IGN.

While Microsoft's next-gen console is undoubtedly new, Project Helix itself is a nearly decade-old plan to unify Xbox and Windows.

Microsoft recently confirmed that its new Xbox hardware will play both PC and console games, punctuating months of reports of a so-called Xbox PC. The reality, though, is that Project Helix isn't actually a new development--the strategy goes way back to the Xbox One era.

Back in 2016, Jason Schreier and Keza MacDonald first reported on Project Helix for Kotaku, describing Project Helix as a kind of convergence of Windows and Xbox. At the time, developers were said to be making two versions of their games--one for Xbox, and one for Windows, which is now the norm as Microsoft has refined its XDK environments so devs can deploy 1 version of their games across two mediums.

Capcom's latest Resident Evil game has performed incredibly well, and is now the fastest-selling game in the entire series.

Resident Evil 9 Requiem launched to major success, achieving 5 million sales in less than a week. This feat technically makes Requiem the fastest-selling game in the franchise's history, with the next runner-up Resident Evil game, RE5, having sold 5 million copies in 2 months' time.

Requiem's numbers help elevate Capcom's Q4 unit sales for the full year, with the company hoping to ship a whopping 54 million games this fiscal year. Capcom is almost there, having achieved nearly 35 million sales in the first 9 months of FY25, and Resident Evil Requiem's numbers have boosted this total to around 40 million or so.