Gaming - Page 64

Little over three years on the market, Valve is releasing a major new update that will benefit all Steam Deck owners.

The fine-tuned balance between battery life and performance is the struggle of gaming handhelds everywhere. Efficiency is incredibly important any handheld PC, and typically, gamers always want to preserve battery life whenever possible, eliminating wasteful usage. That's the thinking behind the Steam Deck's new update, which adds a low-powered mode that turns the screen off while downloading content--particularly useful for OLED models with brighter and more power-hungry screens.

"Today we are adding a new feature to Steam Deck, enabling it to complete all active downloads in a new display-off low-power mode, before going to sleep," Valve wrote in the announcement.

Fallout 4 is getting a major new patch update that overhauls its Creations paid mod system, and Bethesda warns players that this process will unfortunately break some mods.

Seasoned modders all know this universal truth: Bethesda almost always breaks mods when it updates one of its RPGs. Usually, dedicated modders are on the case and quickly update their mods to be compatible with the latest version of the game, but sometimes there are mods that fall through the cracks. It can be a frustrating endeavor that only affects a smaller sect of highly-dedicated players. In any case, Bethesda has put up a new patch notes advisory on what to expect with the so-called Fallout 4 Creation Menu Update.

The studio tells players that mods that affect the main menu screen will likely be broken with the new update. To avoid any issues, players should disable these mods from the in-game menu before the update rolls out next week. "The Fallout 4 update on November 10th will require adjustments to the main menu screen. So, prior to November 10th, please disable any mods which change the main menu, as these may break with the patch."

World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas once again confirms the MMORPG won't be coming to consoles any time soon.

WoW's upcoming Midnight expansion has proven to be somewhat controversial among fans, what with the expansion's limiting of helpful add-on tools and simplifying classes. Some enthusiasts believe the new changes are the beginning of Blizzard essentially "casual-izing" the hardcore MMORPG aspects of the game in the bid of reaching more players. This intuition led fans to suspect Blizzard's motives with Midnight are to pave the way for a console launch, which would theoretically open WoW up to millions of new users.

That's not happening. In a recent interview with the Unshackled Fury podcast, World of Warcraft senior game director Ion Hazzikostas was asked if it is Blizzard's intent to use Midnight as an on-ramp for a Game Pass launch, or perhaps a console release: "It is not."

Sony is making good on its promise to add native cloud game streaming to the $199 PS Portal, expanding key functionality of the device.

Starting today, PlayStation Portal owners will be able to streamover 2,000 games via the cloud...but you'll need a PS Premium subscription in order to do so. The PlayStation Portal isn't just a Remote Play handheld--today's update transforms it into a receiver for cloud games, too.

"We're excited to share that PS Portal is receiving one of its biggest updates yet. Starting on November 5 at 6pm PT / November 6 at 2am GMT, Cloud Streaming for PS5 Games officially launches on PS Portal for PlayStation Plus Premium members, along with a variety of new features that enhance how you can play," Sony said in the update.

Sony's PlayStation brand may be readying its own answer to Xbox's Play Anywhere with a simplified cross-buy initiative.

Sony might bring back cross-buy for the modern PlayStation era. Dataminer Amethxst has purportedly uncovered some interesting new graphics that could indicate at a PC/PS5 dual-entitlement cross-buy feature coming to the PlayStation Store. The idea is simple: Buy 1 game, and play it on 2 platforms, PC and/or PS5--one purchase, two licenses.

Technically, cross-buy isn't new for Sony. The company offered cross-buy between its handheld and console hardware lineup during the PS Vita, PSP, and PS3 days. Microsoft took the idea and ran with it, spending years and millions of dollars better connecting its console and Windows PC ecosystems, eventually facilitating anext-gen device that merges the two together.

Battlefield 6 sales could be as high as 10 million across consoles and PC, with Steam users in particular gravitating towards the release.

EA's latest shooter has become a mega-hit with 10 million copies sold--at least that's the latest estimates from number-crunching firm Alinea Analytics. According to head of market analysis Rhys Elliott, the firm has Battlefield 6 sales at just over 10 million in less than a month. This estimate is reinforced by the game's consistent placement on each platform's top-sellers' list; at the time of writing, Battlefield 6 is the #1 best-seller on both PlayStation and Xbox; however the game has dropped to #4 on Steam (after weeks at #1).

While Battlefield 6 is doing incredibly well out of the gate, the mighty maw of Call of Duty is expected to overshadow EA's franchise. Black Ops 7 is still expected to reign supreme, with Xbox capitalizing on decades of top-selling game releases and the franchise's engaged audience composed of tens of millions of users.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is launching on November 14, and Activision has revealed the full list of launch times on both PC and consoles.

This year's new Call of Duty has probably the most competition it has had in quite a while, as EA's Battlefield 6 is already available and has reportedly moved as many as 10 million copies. Not to mention, Battlefield 6 REDSEC, the title's Battle Royale mode, has already launched, pulling players away from Call of Duty: Warzone.

The official system requirements for Black Ops 7 have been made available, and PC players will be glad to know they can get away with playing the upcoming title with a GPU and CPU as old as a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 / AMD Radeon RX 470, paired with an AMD Ryzen 5 1400 / Intel Core i5-6600, and 8GB of RAM.

Thanks to the success of Vampire Survivors, there are at least a dozen or so 'roguelite survivors' games that have found success in recent years. The simple, fun, and addictive blend of action-RPG and bullet hell mechanics with an almost "the game plays itself" feel is perfect for quick gaming sessions at home or on the go. Although the game's developer and publisher, Poncle, continues to create new content for the game, we're finally getting a legit official spin-off in the form of Warhammer Survivors.

Watch the trailer above, and you'll definitely get the sense that it looks and feels like Vampire Survivors, but Warhammer. Although Poncle isn't behind this, the indie studio is collaborating with developer Auroch Digital (Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun) and Games Workshop on the project, and it's also being built on the same engine and technology.

Warhammer and Vampire Survivors fans will definitely want to put this one on their radar, as it will feature characters from the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar universes. Even the game's description reads like a fusion of these two things.

Keanu Reeves would like to come back to the Cyberpunk 2077 world as Johnny Silverhand, with Cyberpunk 2077 series creator Mike Pondsmith hearing this, saying that he "has ways to do that, Keanu. Contact me".

First, let's rewind the clock back to September of this year, Matrix and John Wick star Keanu Reeves was asked if he'd return to CD PROJEKT RED for Cyberpunk 2077, and play Johnny Silverhand again. Keanu said that he would "love" to play Johnny again, but now Cyberpunk series creator Mike Pondsmith has put Keanu to the test.

Pondsmith recently said that: "not that long ago, I saw that Keanu would like to find a way to come back from the dead and play Johnny again". He continued, saying: "I have ways to do that, Keanu. Contact me".

The full PC specs and requirements for the November 14 launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 have been revealed, and the game will be playable on pretty much any gaming PC built in the last decade. The reason for this is that the game is optimized for PC gaming handhelds, specifically the ROG Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X. This means that the game only needs a GPU with 3GB of VRAM to run, with 8GB being the recommended spec.

For the game's 'Minimum' specs, Activision and Xbox list the mid-range Radeon RX 470 4GB graphics card from 2016, and the GeForce GTX 970 4GB graphics card from 2014. Of course, playing with the recommended specs is where you want to be, as you'll need a GeForce RTX 3060, Radeon RX 6600 XT, or Intel Arc B580 to hit 60 FPS with all graphics options set to high.

Based on the game's PC specs, it appears to be well-optimized for the platform, as the 4K 'Ultra' or competitive triple-digit performance GPU requirement is listed as either the Radeon RX 9070 XT or the GeForce RTX 5070. Regardless of the settings, as previously reported, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 requires TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot for its security and will be unplayable without them.

The rapper Soulja Boy has been called out by retro handheld company Retroid for reselling its console as his own without an official licensing deal.

Soulja Boy began informing his followers that he was selling the "SouljaGameFlip" on the souljaboygame Instagram account, with the artist recently posting a video explaining that the console is gaming-capable and also comes with apps. Soulja Boy can be seen in the video holding one of the consoles and saying, "Sonic, TikTok, Instagram, and everything ya need."

However, in a statement to Retro Dodo, the Retroid Team said, "I didn't know about this. This is not any kind of official licensing deal. He does not have permission to rebrand our products and sell them as his own. The Retroid Pocket Flip 2 is patented in the U.S by ourselves".

A design lead at Electronic Arts (EA) has confirmed that aim assist in Battlefield 6 will be getting nerfed, making it easier for controller users to aim.

While a "nerf" in gaming typically means something is being made worse, or at the very least reduced, in the instance of aim assist, a nerf will actually make the feature feel better to use, or at least that is according to design lead at EA, Matthew Nickerson. Some Battlefield 6 players have reported that, currently, aim assist feels "terrible" as the experience is that the player has to "fight the aim".

Nickerson wrote, "Far less stickiness, so it does not create that rotational persistence that is currently live," and there will be a "consistent slowdown, no ramp". Notably, the 25% recoil reduction isn't being touched by the developers, but players can expect some more fine-tuning in the future when the update is rolled out, altering the other aspects of aim assist.

Nintendo has confirmed via its new financial results that the Switch 2 is outselling its predecessor, and since its release, more than 10 million units have already been sold.

According to Nintendo's quarterly and half-year financial results for 2025, which span the period from April to September, the Nintendo Switch 2 has sold 10.36 million units as of September 30, marking a sales pace that is outpacing the original Nintendo Switch, which took approximately 10 months to reach the same 10 million unit sales mark.

Additionally, the report reveals that 20.62 million software units have been sold on the Nintendo Switch 2, meaning that, on average, each Nintendo Switch 2 owner purchases two Switch 2 games digitally. More specifically, the software sales were largely made up of Mario Kart World copies, which moved as many as 9.57 million units, along with Donkey Kong Bonanza, which moved 3.49 million units between July and September.

Activision has confirmed Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will require Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 technologies to play, which isn't the case for the currently available Call of Duty titles.

In a new blog post, Activision has explained that Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM 2.0) and Secure Boot will be required to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 when it launches on PC on November 11, and that previous Call of Duty titles don't have these new security requirements, but the upcoming Black Ops 7 does.

For those who don't know what these technologies are, TPM 2.0 is a dedicated microchip built onto a motherboard or CPU that provides hardware-level encryption and security functions that verify a system's firmware and operating system haven't been tampered with.

With the recent release of the ROG Xbox Ally gaming handhelds, we got our first look at Windows 11's 'Full Screen Experience' for Xbox and PC gaming. Designed for controllers and PC gaming handhelds, it's designed to offer a "clean, distraction-free interface for handheld gaming." And now, as part of the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7051, the 'Full Screen Experience' is available for MSI Claw handhelds.

The MSI Claw gaming handhelds are available in both Intel and AMD form, offering powerful portable gaming on par with the competition. As Windows 11 devices, access to the 'Full Screen Experience' should not only make it easier to navigate settings, apps, and games, but also improve performance as the mode minimizes and stops non-essential background tasks.

Enabling FSE is straightforward and can be found in Windows 11's 'Settings > Gaming' section, where you can select 'Xbox' from the 'Choose home app' drop-down menu. You can also set your handheld to boot straight into the 'Full Screen Experience' on startup. Although rolling out today on YouTube, the gaming handheld-focused creator ETA PRIME was able to test the full-screen Xbox experience on an Intel-powered MSI Claw 8 AI and found it to be a fantastic update.

Dan Houser officially confirms that Rockstar Games was working on a medieval fantasy game at one point, but the project never actually took off and entered production.

Back in 2019, rumor had it that Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar could make a huge departure with their next game--a new knight sim that traded Grand Theft Auto's guns for swords and shields. Rockstar had been in the throes of crafting Red Dead Redemption 2 for years, and after that project shipped, the team threw together a few rough concept ideas.

One of these was Project Medieval, a game that had been set in a new IP focused on gleaming armor and knight errantry. Up until now, Project Medieval has always been a somewhat dubious rumor, but Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has officially confirmed that it was in concept phases at one point.

If Rockstar had shipped GTA 5's singleplayer DLC, then there's a possibility that Red Dead Redemption 2 may never have been made.

In a recent interview with Lex Fridman, Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser revealed a bunch of interesting details about the studio, canceled content, and what it was like working on some of the most lauded video games in history. One of the more critical decisions is deciding on what Rockstar does and doesn't work on--in this case, GTA 5's singleplayer DLC had to be scrapped to make way for Red Dead Redemption 2.

Houser confirms that the GTA 5 DLC would have starred Trevor had it actually come out, but the content was only about halfway done before it had been canceled altogether so that devs could prioritize RDR2.

Battlefield 6's new Strikepoint mode, which arrived with Season 1 last week, reportedly has a serious glitch which could allow for farming a ton of XP - though some action appears to have been taken to stop this already.

Eurogamer (via TechRadar) brought our attention to the supposed XP exploit (XPloit for short), and the fact that the Battlefield Comms account on X has posted about an issue pertaining to experience gain - and a hotfix of some kind therein.

However, the post on X (see above) doesn't mention an XP farming exploit specifically, just that: "We've identified an issue that was affecting the amount of XP earned in the Strikepoint mode. To maintain fair and consistent progression, we've made some temporary adjustments to XP in this mode while we investigate a longer term solution."

NVIDIA's RTX Remix toolset, which allows modders to remaster and even remake older PC titles with access to modern path-traced lighting and technologies like DLSS, has been used to great effect to breathe new life into classic games. And now we can add Grand Theft Auto IV or GTA 4 to the mix, with a new RTX Remix version of the game showcasing Rockstar's 2008 classic in a new light.

Coming from experienced modder xoxor4d, this project is a little different than some of the others we've seen because it required some reverse engineering of the game's code and how it handled DirectX to be compatible with RTX Remix. Currently playable for xoxor4d's Patreon subscribers, the mod is on track for a full free release once completed.

For those wondering how it looks, even without updated assets like higher-resolution textures and new models, the path-traced lighting enhances GTA 4's distinct look. As expected, path tracing in the open-world GTA 4 requires powerful GeForce RTX 50 Series hardware to run, but part of this is due to the game itself.

In a recent interview with The Escapist, Jay Klaitz, the actor who played Lester Crest in Grand Theft Auto 5, said that considering the amount of money that has been poured into the development of Grand Theft Auto 6, Rockstar would be correct in pricing the title at $100 for the standard edition.

Klaitz said that Grand Theft Auto 5 was "heavy on the mocap," and that he assumes Grand Theft Auto 6 will be no different. Additionally, the actor mentioned how many years it takes to develop a new Grand Theft Auto title, with Klaitz saying that after the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, Rockstar immediately began work on GTA 6. For those who don't know, GTA 5 released in 2013, making the development for GTA 6 thirteen years in the making by the time it releases in May 2026.

The actor also points to the additional content players will be getting once the game releases, including the content aspect. "You're almost buying multiple games when you buy the one". With that being said, Klaitz does recognize the sentiment of making GTA 6 as cheap as possible to make it accessible to more fans, saying, "maybe there's a way to split the difference." However, Klaitz said that he lands in the camp of the $100 price tag, "this game warrants that price tag."