Gaming - Page 6

Gaming handhelds are all the rage nowadays, but what if I told you a 15-year-old handheld can still play modern games? A homebrew developer has found a way to stream Xbox Cloud Gaming through Sony's discontinued PlayStation Vita, turning a 2011 handheld into an unlikely way to play modern Xbox titles.

The project is called GreenVita, built by a developer known as Day-OS. It's apparently not emulating any Xbox hardware at all. The Vita just receives video and audio from Microsoft's cloud servers and sends controller input back over Wi-Fi, the same way any other Xbox Cloud Gaming device works.

Under the hood, GreenVita is a native Rust application rather than something running through the Vita's browser, and it uses egui and SDL2 for its interface while leaning on the handheld's hardware H.264 decoder to process the incoming stream.

Microsoft is experimenting with a new console OS update that will help reduce the time it takes for games to download and install.

A recent Xbox update preview build introduces a smart client feature that aims to boost download speeds. Xbox insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead Ring (basically a fancy name for the Xbox users who test things out before anyone else) are currently testing OS Version XB_FLT_2608GE26100.9400.260719-2200, which adds the new intelligent download feature.

"Users will experience a new feature to optimize game install and update speeds by introducing a smart download client. Shortly after your game download begins, the client will check which content servers are available for the install or update. It will then test the connection speed to each server pool and select the fastest available connection for that install. The speed test will rerun periodically during the install or update to ensure that the client continues using the fastest available connection."

The memory crisis has pushed gaming hardware to price points that would have seemed absurd just a few years ago. The Steam Machine launched at over $1,000. The Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X have all seen price increases this year, and next-generation consoles are rumored to cross the $1,000 mark as well. For Amazon Games general manager Jeffrey Gattis, all of that is, at least potentially, good news for Luna.

Speaking with The Game Business and the BBC, Gattis made the case that cloud gaming's long-standing problem has been that consoles were cheap enough that there was never a compelling reason to look elsewhere. "Historically, cloud gaming has been a little bit of a solution in search of a problem," he said. "Consoles, for the most part, have been relatively inexpensive until now."

"We saw the Steam Machine opening at $1,000," Gattis told The Game Business. "We hear rumors about consoles, because of the RAM crisis, pushing up over $1,000 in Gen 10. So I do think you get to a point at which more people will be in the consideration set for a cloud gaming solution, just because of the sheer cost of buying dedicated hardware."

Electronic Arts is gaining more heated attention after introducing a $150 version of its annualized EA Sports FC sports sim.

EA is about to go private in the largest leveraged buyout in history. The $55 billion take-private share buyout was principally led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, and key markets like the EU have approved the deal. Ever since the privatization deal was announced, EA has been under fire for introducing controversial things like paywalling some progression features in College Football 27 by adding paid microtransactions to singleplayer modes (these were later removed).

Now the publisher is under scrutiny for the latest business tactic: a new edition that introduces a higher topline price for the definitive experience. The new EA Sports FC27 game has three editions: The standard edition at $70, the ultimate edition at $100, and then an ultimate plus edition for $150. That's a +50% price increase from the previous ultimate edition's $100 cap, and more than double the price of the base game. The value that's included is pretty staggering if you're a die-hard enthusiast, though, and includes nearly $100 worth of FC Points microtransaction currency spread across 5 months, as well as full season passes and more.

Rockstar Games co-founder and Absurd Ventures CEO Dan Houser isn't bothered by the ongoing debate on how software should be delivered, but also says that consumer demand should be met for physical games.

Iconic Rockstar alums Dan Houser and Lazlow Jones recently attended San Diego Comic Con to promote projects from their Absurd Ventures multimedia group, including a new comic book in the American Caper series. At the event, IGN interviewed the duo, and one of the questions was about disc vs digital.

"I don't know that I care," Houser said. "But, if people want that, companies should provide it. But I don't know that I personally care."

Sony had a busy Comic-Con panel for the God of War franchise. Santa Monica Studio confirmed that God of War Laufey, the spinoff starring Kratos' wife, now has a release date of February 16, 2027. That matches the release window that had already leaked ahead of Sony's official announcement. The studio also announced an entirely separate God of War game that puts Kratos back in the lead role.

Creative director Cory Barlog used the panel to fill in some of the gaps on Laufey. He called it an "expansion" rather than a spinoff, saying the studio wanted fans to "see how things connect" once the next mainline game arrives.

The game follows Faye after her death as she fights through Everywhen, a realm gods end up in once they die, taking on figures from multiple mythologies along the way. That mythological angle was actually rumored months before Sony confirmed the game existed, tracing back to early leaks pointing at a new title built around Kratos' wife.

Everybody wants to see more of GTA 6, but Rockstar has gone quiet on the trailer front after dropping the second one. However, Rockstar Games might be gearing up for another GTA 6 trailer sooner than expected. Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, appearing on a recent podcast, said he expects the third trailer to land around August 6, timing it closely to Take-Two's next earnings call.

He was clear that he doesn't have anything concrete pointing to that exact date, but he's basing the prediction on how Rockstar and Take-Two have handled marketing beats in the past, usually clustering big reveals around investor calls.

It's been well over a year since fans got a proper look at the game. Trailer 1 dropped in December 2023 and pulled in over 93 million YouTube views in 24 hours, a record for a non-music video reveal at the time. Trailer 2 followed in May 2025 and went even bigger, hitting roughly 475 million views across all platforms in a single day, though it fell short of Trailer 1's YouTube-only record. Both numbers happened before anyone could even pre-order the game.

Bethesda says that The Elder Scrolls VI won't be delayed, and the development roadmap is not affected by the recent layoffs that hit Bethesda Game Studios, ZeniMax, and Xbox as a whole.

The ongoing development process for high-profile games is expected to be impacted by Xbox's heavy layoffs, which amounted to 1,600 workers across multiple studios, groups, and divisions. Some games, like Bethesda's highly-anticipated sixth Elder Scrolls game, are apparently on track...or at the very least the roadmap remains intact.

Popular YouTuber MrMattyPlays recently passed a bunch of questions to Bethesda and received a few answers. When asked if TESVI could be delayed as a result of the layoffs, Bethesda replied: "No, the roadmap is unaffected."

Sony's decision to stop producing new PlayStation discs from January 2028 has drawn widespread criticism across the gaming industry. Ubisoft, however, does not appear to share those concerns.

Speaking during the company's Q1 2026 earnings call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and CFO Frédérick Duguet both suggested the move would not meaningfully hurt the industry, with Guillemot pointing to the growth of PC gaming as his primary evidence.

"What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market," Guillemot said when asked by an analyst whether the disc shutdown could create a demand headwind by eliminating the used game market. "There's also some pressure for the future on the cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help to have a more accessible machine, I would say. There are pluses and minuses, but we think it will not disturb the industry too much."

GTA 6's code-in-a-box approach to physical copies has apparently found a new way to frustrate players, this time in Japan. Rockstar's own support page for the game states that Japanese product codes will expire 170 days after the issuance date, citing "regional regulations" as the cause.

That math puts the cutoff at May 8, 2027. Anyone who buys an unopened boxed copy after that date could end up with a code that no longer works. The restriction appears to apply only to the PS5 version, since Xbox codes aren't region-locked the same way. Rockstar also notes that the code needs to be redeemed on a PlayStation account registered in Japan, and recommends buying from a retailer in the same region as the account to avoid activation issues.

The detail was first flagged by an X user, though the original post has since been taken down, and there's apparently some disagreement over whether the 170-day window applies to the base game or just to a pre-order DLC bonus. Rockstar hasn't clarified either way yet, so it's worth treating the exact scope with a bit of caution. Still, multiple outlets have read Rockstar's own FAQ wording as covering the base game code, not just an add-on.

It is well-known that Ubisoft has been struggling recently, and a big portion of its struggle seems to be centered around identity. However, Ubisoft appears to have found a formula it likes a lot more than expected. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced beat the publisher's full-year sales target in just two weeks, and that performance is apparently nudging Ubisoft to rethink its stance on remakes versus brand new games.

On Ubisoft's Q1 FY2027 earnings call, CFO Frederic Duguet was asked about the profit margins on a game like Black Flag Resynced. His response was blunt:

According to Duguet, remakes carry an inherent advantage because they reuse existing assets, need less marketing spend since the audience already knows the game, and tend to sell reliably from day one on nostalgia alone. Therefore, it is entirely possible that Ubisoft may lean more heavily towards remakes going forward, even over new releases.

Blizzard has fired a World of Warcraft GM (game master) for abusing their powers to help out a friend in a punishing endgame dungeon.

In the MMORPG World of Warcraft, game masters are these kind of omnipotent, god-like beings that oversee the in-game world. They tackle things like rules enforcement, support, and will also investigate cheating and do basic things like teleporting stuck players. They can even insta-kill enemies with a special death touch ability. There's one thing GMs aren't supposed to do, though, and that's using their powers to help out a buddy.

Blizzard has recently let go of one such GM who used their bestowed powers to insta-kill an enemy in a Mythic+ 23 dungeon, an extremely difficult endgame activity. "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro, can you please do a me solid? This thing has 20 million HP, bro please can you just one-shot it? Personally, I think it's harmless. I didn't expect him to do it. In hindsight, he shouldn't have done it. He was just doing me a solid," the affected WoW player said on stream.

Microsoft is bringing classic Xbox games to PC for the first time through backwards compatibility, but the technology isn't actually new.

To prepare for its new Project Helix console, Microsoft is taking a more universal approach to game access, aiming to create a kind of convergence of console generations and software. Original Xbox games are coming to PC for the first time via a new backwards compatibility initiative that seems well-timed to coincide with Positron, Microsoft's rumored disc-to-digital conversion program.

To pull off BC on PC, Microsoft is using old tech. The Xbox app uses the Xenon Fusion (aka XeFu) emulator that was first implemented in the Xbox 360. Interestingly enough, Windows PCs will load up an Xbox 360 environment first, and then run XeFu to emulate the original 2001 Xbox. There's basically an Xbox inception going on here as layers of emulation are taking place.

Ubisoft reiterates how successful the latest Assassin's Creed remake is, saying that the game has vastly exceeded internal sales forecasts.

Black Flag Resynced is significantly outperforming Ubisoft's original sales targets for the game. In the publisher's latest Q1'27 results, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot comments that the new AC remake has already beaten the company's full-year goal in just a matter of weeks.

"Strong launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced in July with 3.5 million copies sold-in to date, exceeding annual expectations within its first 14 days," the press release reads.

Whether it's for television or the cinema, video game adaptations have come a long way in regards to quality. From Fallout to The Last of Us to Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog, making the jump from pixels to live action or animation can not only work but live up to fan expectations. Naturally, this means that we're going to get a lot more video game adaptations in the years ahead, with perhaps the strangest being a new deal between Atari and Universal Pictures.

And we say strange because we're talking about the project adapting a bunch of video games from an era that few modern gamers remember, let alone grew up during, the 1970s. The classic Atari franchises and games reportedly include Asteroids, Adventure, Berzerk, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong, and Yars' Revenge. And they'll all be represented in a single movie.

The report over at Deadline, which broke the story, says that the movie will be based on all of these Atari IPs, produced by Entertainment 360, from a screenplay by Matt Reilly and Carl Hampe. Yeah, it's hard to imagine what it might look like other than it featuring some sort of homage to these classic retro games which don't feature much in the way of story.

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows installations include what is called a Global Device ID (GDID), a persistent, unremovable identifier that links a user to a specific Windows installation. This so-called GDID was a revelation that emerged as a byproduct of Microsoft assisting authorities in catching a cybercriminal, as Microsoft provided the GDID to authorities to help identify a suspect.

The GDID is assigned during setup or sign-in to a Microsoft account, remains even after updates, and cannot be edited or changed. It is stored in the Windows registry and on Microsoft's server side, and Microsoft has shown it's capable of identifying a user based purely on the GDID activity it can see on its server side.

For example, the cybercriminal was a 19-year-old who arrived at Helsinki airport in April 2026, where he was trying to board a plane to Japan. Before he could board the flight, he was stopped by Finnish police, and US prosecutors later revealed he was Peter Stokes, an alleged member of the Scattered Spider hacking group responsible for an $8 million ransom. Microsoft assisted the FBI in tracing Stokes, providing the authorities with a means of tracking Stokes' Windows PC across VPNs, proxy servers, and three countries - GDID.

Sony's decision to end physical PlayStation disc production by January 2028 has been public for about three weeks now, and according to a former Santa Monica Studio developer, no amount of pushback is going to change the outcome.

Alanah Pearce, who worked on God of War Ragnarok before leaving Sony, laid out the case in a recent video. According to Pearce, Sony already knew this would upset people, and made the call anyway because leadership believes it's the right long-term move for the brand.

She pointed out that most players have already shifted to digital purchases, even if the loudest voices online suggest otherwise. She also compared the moment to Microsoft's infamous Xbox One E3 backlash a decade ago, where consumer anger didn't actually stop the underlying industry trend from happening.

Sony has been cooking up something new for its next-gen PlayStation controller. A newly published Sony patent suggests the PlayStation 6 controller might ditch the physical potentiometers responsible for years of DualSense stick drift complaints, swapping them out for magnetic sensors instead.

As spotted by Cheat Happens and confirmed via WIPO's patent database, the filing describes an operating stick assembly that uses a non-contact tilting sensor to detect stick movement, paired with spring-based return mechanics and stabilization structures meant to keep the stick centered over time.

Since there's no physical contact point left to wear down, the design should, in theory, hold up far longer than the sticks currently packed into Sony's DualSense controller, which have been a source of persistent stick drift complaints since the PS5 launched back in 2020. Stick drift is notoriously hard to prevent and fix, so a design that eliminates contact altogether is the best bet to work around it.

Xbox has confirmed a new way to access and play games--in exchange for watching ads.

Microsoft has officially announced its new gaming monetization strategy that brings console games to other platforms. The company today confirmed that it will offer an ad-supported version of cloud game streaming that allows users to watch short pre-roll advertisements in exchange for 1 hour of free cloud streaming. No subscription is required for Xbox's free streaming ad tier, and it will function similarly to NVIDIA's GeForce Now streaming service.

The feature went into public testing in the Xbox Insiders program today (anyone can sign up) and testers can stream select games that they already own for free.

Why doesn't Bloodborne have a PS5 version yet? It's a good question, and one that has an ex-PlayStation boss scratching his head.

Wccftech reports that Shuhei Yoshida, who was previously President of Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment (before departing in 2019), talked about Bloodborne in a keynote session at CEDEC 2026.

Yoshida said: "This title has a massive fan base all over the world. However, a PS5 version hasn't been released, right? People point out that PlayStation's first-party teams keep pumping out remasters, so why haven't they released this one? Or why hasn't a PC version come out? I get asked 'Why hasn't it been released?' all the time myself, but well... that remains a mystery."