Gaming - Page 7

Grand Theft Auto 6 will cost $70 and not $100 at launch, former Rockstar animator Mike York predicts, with the rationale that there's simply no reason to damage consumer goodwill with such a dramatic price hike.

$70 games have been here since Sony and Microsoft kicked off Gen 9, and then Nintendo just raised frontline prices of its big tentpole Switch 2 games to $80 (although few games have actually launched at this price). Ever since Epyllion's Matthew Ball postulated on GTA 6 launching for a $100 base price, there's been lots of speculation that Rockstar and Take-Two could just follow through and actually charge that for the game.

The idea would generate tons of upfront revenue, sure, but that's already expected to happen. As we know from our GTA franchise earnings calculations, there's a lot of money to be made from GTA Online post-launch. It's believed that GTA 6 could have some sort of $100 edition, but the base standard version of the game would still retain normalized pricing. That's the thinking that former Rockstar Games animator Mike York has on the topic, with the developer telling Esports Insider that he believes GTA 6 will launch at $70 because Rockstar has no real need to be "greedy."

Microsoft has denied reports about a steep profit goal for its Xbox games division, telling CNBC that the recent Bloomberg reports aren't factual.

Microsoft has apparently delivered rare comments on the profitability of its Xbox business. The $3.61 trillion market cap company has denied rumors about profit target mandates within Xbox. Back in October, sources told Bloomberg's Jason Schreier and Dina Bass that Microsoft was pressuring Xbox to deliver a 30% accountability margin--Microsoft's own internal term for a profit margin. Now Microsoft tells CNBC that the profit margin reports are inaccurate.

Achieving that kind of margin would be a significantly high goal, especially considering Microsoft's now-inflated revenues. Buying Activision Blizzard King added several billions of dollars to Xbox's yearly earnings; Microsoft's gaming revenues went from $15.48 billion in FY23 to $21.52 billion a year later following the integration of Activision.

New reports indicate that Nintendo will not be resupplying stock of the Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle, which matches up with disclaimers on official sales promos.

If you want a Switch 2 as well as the new Mario Kart, now might be the time to buy. According to new reports, the Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle has been discontinued and will no longer be produced. The bundle was a launch year promo meant to drive sales adoption of the new higher-priced Switch 2.

The Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle is still on sale across major retailers and won't be pulled off of shelves. The best price right now is over at Best Buy where the bundle is currently $449.

Gran Turismo 7 is one of PlayStation's most successful live games in terms of player interactions, with millions of players engaged every month.

A new interview at the Gran Turismo World Series in Japan reveals some interesting facts around Gran Turismo 7, and the overall state of the five year-old racing game that Sony considers as one of its key games-as-a-service titles.

In a recent interview with GT Planet, Polyphony Digital CEO and series producer Kazunori Yamauchi confirms that GT7 still has around 2 million players a month. These are strong numbers that have a firm and established position among the PS5's user base, which was 119 million monthly active users throughout July - September 2025.

Valve has depleted its inventory of LCD Steam Decks, and the company has no plans to produce more.

The Steam Deck OLED has now become the base model for Valve's handheld-PC hybrid. It's been discovered that that the LCD model is now greyed out and listed out of stock on the Steam Deck order page. In a disclaimer below the product buy links, Valve says that once the Steam Deck LCD is gone, it's gone for good.

"We are no longer producing the Steam Deck LCD 256GB model. Once sold out, it will no longer be available," the site reads.

Gamers now have an idea of what to expect from Blizzard Entertainment as management outlines plans to launch one or two big pieces of content per year, whether it be a fully-fledged game or an expansion update.

Two years after Microsoft took the reins, Blizzard is moving to a more predictable cadence of games and content. Blizzard is known for taking multiple years in between big releases and primarily subsisted off of expansions, content updates, and microtransactions. In 2022, the devs released Diablo Immortal, spiking Activision's mobile earnings to all-time highs, and then enjoyed megaton sales with Diablo IV a year later, which has made over $1 billion in revenue.

So what's next for Blizzard? In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Blizzard president Johanna Faries outlines a basic business model that sees the company launching 1-2 digital products a year. There's just one catch: That doesn't mean just full games or sequels, and expansions like Lord of Hatred and World of Warcraft's new Midnight expansion also count.

EA's latest Battlefield shooter is a big hit with an estimated 20 million copies being sold since the game's October debut.

Battlefield 6 is currently the #1 best-selling game in the US by revenue, temporarily beating Call of Duty, which is a rare win for EA's franchise. The Battlefield brand, once prestigious, has fallen off in recent years in both sales and players, leaving little competition for Activision's billion-dollar war series. That battle has been reignited, and analyst firm Alinea Analytics predicts that Battlefield 6 has already sold more than 20 million copies.

"Battlefield 6 took the #1 [spot], marking a massive return to form for the franchise. Our data shows Battlefield 6 has now amassed more than 26 million players (also including free-to-play REDSEC). The base game alone has sold over 20 million copies. As we covered earlier this year, this resurgence was driven by listening to the community's wishes and returning to the franchise's roots," Alinea's Rhys Elliott notes.

Researchers have mapped the real-world movement of rats into DOOM, enabling these pesky rodents to move throughout the DOOM world and even fire in-game weapons.

The team explained that an entire VR setup was constructed from scratch to enable rats to play DOOM, and it involves a ball driver mechanism that the rats sit on top of, and when they move across the surface of the ball, the directional movement is input into DOOM. The first version of the setup featured minimal sensors and no panoramic screen, but the rats have received an upgrade in the form of upgraded sensors and a foldable AMOLED screen with 180 ° horizontal and 80 ° vertical FOV with Full HD resolution.

Additionally, the rats are now firing weapons within DOOM. As the researchers explain, the rats have the ability to pull a custom-built hand-operated lever that, when activated with one of their paws, fires a weapon in-game. Positive in-game actions trigger a liquid reward in the form of sugar water delivered through a precise dispensing mechanism. The results of this entire setup were that the rats successfully learned to navigate the virtual environment and trigger the shooting mechanism.

GTA 6 could turn into a huge MMORPG says an industry veteran, as it has all of the hallmarks of an MMORPG cooking in the ovens at Rockstar Games.

In a new interview between our friends at Wccftech and game developer Rich Vogel, who has worked on some gigantic games including Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, DOOM (2016), New World, Halo Infinite, and Gotham Knights, said that many of the planned features for GTA 6 -- if confirmed -- would make it more like an MMORPG.

Vogel and two other MMO veterans were asked if there's still an audience for big Western-made MMO games, to which he replied: "Yes, I believe a large audience is waiting for the right MMORPG to emerge. Consider the millions of players who have played and continue to play WOW, SWTOR, ESO, UO, EverQuest, Fallout 76, and others. The problem is that no publisher is willing to invest the money and take the risk at this time".

R-Type Dimensions III developer ININ Games prematurely reveals that lower-capacity Switch 2 cartridges are on the way, and then deletes the original post, clarifying that they have nothing official to announce.

Nintendo may be ready to release smaller Switch 2 cartridges in an effort to alleviate developer frustrations. Reports indicate that Nintendo only produces 64GB cartridges for the Switch 2, which are more costly to produce than the lower-tier models used on the Switch 1. This means developers who choose to ship full games onto actual physical Game Cards will typically have to pay a higher price, on top of having to deal with the slower memory bandwidth offered by Nintendo's ROMs.

Today, R-Type Dimensions developer ININ Games issued a lengthy post telling gamers that Nintendo had "announced two new smaller cartridge sizes for Nintendo Switch 2." The devs then deleted this post, later issuing a correction statement clarifying that Nintendo has not actually announced anything. Interestingly enough, ININ had originally said that the physical Switch 2 cartridge of R-Type Dimensions III was increasing in price by 10 euros to reflect the higher production costs associated with the lower-capacity Switch 2 carts.

The worldwide video games industry is expected to make $197 billion in 2025, a new all-time high that's driven in part by recent software and hardware price increases.

The global video games market will generate $197 billion throughout this year, analyst firm Newzoo predicts. 2025's revenue figures represent a significant 7.5% year-over-year increase, which can be attributed to a number of factors, including higher prices, wider content availability, and other things like accounting and revenue recognition practices.

The platform breakdown also underlines why Microsoft is pushing so hard into the PC space. According to Newzoo's estimates, mobile will lead the charge this year with a megaton $108 billion in revenue, representing more than half of the total--55%. What's interesting is just how close PC and console are to each other; console is to make $45 billion revenue, up 4.2% and representing 23%, where PC is close behind with $43 billion, making up 22% of the total.

Larian boss Swen Vincke issues multiple statements on the heels of a recent Bloomberg report, which says that Vincke is pushing the use of generative AI in future games.

Controversy has struck indie darling Larian, a studio that garnered tremendous goodwill with fan favorite RPG Baldur's Gate 3. The game creators are apparently using generative AI to make their next game, Divinity, which is said to be the group's most ambitious project to date.

Now studio head Swen Vincke has clarified Larian's position on generative AI, even going so far as to promise an AMA where users can directly ask questions to the team. Vincke tells IGN that Larian won't "trim down teams and replace them with AI."

The Legion Go Gen 2 is the company's latest flagship PC gaming handheld, powered by the new AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme Processor with integrated RDNA 3.5 Radeon Graphics, sporting 16 Compute Units. There are multiple SKUs available, but all of them include 32GB of fast LPDDR5X-8000MT/s memory and an impressive 8.8-inch 1920 x 1200 OLED display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, HDR-1000, and VRR support.

However, the current Legion Go Gen 2 is akin to the flagship ROG Xbox Ally X from ASUS and Microsoft in that it ships with Windows 11 and the new Xbox Full Screen Experience for accessing system features and games via controller input. According to a new report over at Windows Latest, Lenovo is set to unveil a new Legion Go Gen 2 model at CES 2026, one that will ship with SteamOS pre-installed.

SteamOS, Valve's Linux-based operating system on the Steam Deck, is widely considered one of the best platforms for PC gaming because it essentially transforms the Steam app into an intuitive console-like experience. Not only that, it's optimized for efficiency and performance, leading to games running faster on SteamOS than on the same hardware running Windows 11.

NVIDIA has just released what will likely be the final GeForce Game Ready driver of 2025, focused on fixing several issues and bugs. GeForce Game Ready 591.59 WHQL is available to download from GeForce or via the NVIDIA App.

Although the patch notes don't mention any specific new game support with this new driver release, NVIDIA does say that the new GeForce Game Ready driver "optimizes your experience in the latest titles featuring DLSS 4 and NVIDIA Reflex and ensures the best possible experience in your wider library of games and apps.

And with that, NVIDIA confirms that there are four new games with DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation support: ARK: Lost Colony, Ashes of Creation, SPLITGATE: Arena Reloaded, and Yakuza Kiwami 2. And with that, let's take a look at the full release notes, which include fixes for games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Dying Light: The Beast (which now has ray-tracing), and Enshrouded.

Hollow Knight Silksong is one of the best-selling video games of the year, and it only released three months ago.

Silksong is one of the most popular games of the year, amassing hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on Steam shortly after release. Now we finally have a sales update for the beloved indie: Team Cherry has confirmed that Silksong has sold over 7 million copies since its launch, firmly establishing it as one of the best-selling titles of 2025 and of recent memory.

"But firstly, and most importantly, we wanted to say a huge thank you to all the players who've braved Silksong's distant and dangerous lands. That's over seven million of you who've purchased the game, alongside millions more playing on Xbox Game Pass," the devs said in a blog post.

Naughty Dog's next big-budget PlayStation game is planned for a mid-2027 release on PS5, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, with the team now working longer hours to finish a playable demo of the project.

After making multiple Last of Us games back-to-back, Sony's premier first-party art house Naughty Dog is back with a fresh new game. It's called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, and it's set in a new IP set thousands of years into the future, with leaks suggesting Dark Souls-level challenges with God of War combat.

Earlier reports said that Intergalactic wouldn't launch in 2026, and now the latest from Bloomberg says that Naughty Dog wants to have the game out by the middle of 2027. Sources also paint a hectic picture of work life at Naughty Dog's Intergalactic team, with the studio reportedly pushing overtime onto employees and an increase to 5-day office work weeks.

Sony's copyright lawsuit against Tencent has ended, and both parties have agreed to settle for an undisclosed sum.

Back in July, Sony sued Tencent in a copyright lawsuit, alleging that the Chinese games-maker created a product that was too close to Sony's Horizon franchise to be a coincidence. Tencent's so-called 'Horizon clone' had been titled Light of Motiram, and Sony's original 48-page legal complaint laid out side-by-side comparisons that showed stark similarities between the two games.

Now it's been revealed that the case has been dismissed. Sony and Tencent have reached a "confidential settlement," the court filing says, and the Light of Motiram game is no longer available on Steam or the Epic Games Store.

New reports from Windows Central reiterate Microsoft's plans to release Starfield on non-Xbox platforms.

Months ago, there were rumblings that Bethesda is preparing to launch Starfield on Switch 2 and PS5. Now we have a possible release window for the RPG: sources tell Windows Central that the new Starfield port could launch sometime in the first six months of 2026.

That's a pretty wide timeline, but it's also worth mentioning that next year will be one of the biggest moments in Microsoft history: Xbox turns 25, and Bethesda also celebrates its 40th anniversary. The studio will want to capitalize on this momentous occasion, so a cross-platform release of Starfield in 2026 makes sense, and this also leaves the game plenty of clearance from the sales crater that GTA 6 will cause.

Legendary creative Hideo Kojima has an unsurprising take on AI: The dev doesn't want to use it to create any kind of visual art, and thinks the technology could be used for things like enemy responsivity in games.

Following record spending highs during COVID-19, the games industry has now simultaneously contracted while raising prices. Every publisher and developer is feeling the financial pressures, with many shedding workers en masse in an effort to improve margins and assuage shareholder fears. Everyone is looking for ways to save money and reduce labor costs; enter generative AI, new tech that could potentially even replace game developers.

AI has proven to be significantly controversial, and rightly so, because video games are a full conjunction of all creative arts--static art, animation & motion capture, audio. The industry's workforce is one of creativity and developers are pushing back against AI, however teams have embraced the tech in a bid not to be left behind. This kind of motivation seems to be the main driver of AI's global adoption; no one wants to miss out on the Next Big Thing.

The Game Awards has revealed the 2025 show is by far the biggest Game Awards ever conducted, with the social media account for the award show stating it had 171 million global livestreams.

The stat was revealed on the official X account for The Game Awards where the organization wrote that viewership for the award show was up 11% year-over-year, with more than 171 million global livestreams. Additionally, conversations about The Game Awards on X were up 12% year-over-year, and there were 23,000 co-streams of the event on Twitch & YouTube, marking a 50% increase year-over-year.

Furthermore, the 171 million viewership figure doesn't include the views the award show obtained through Amazon Prime Video. To put that level of viewership into context, the last Super Bowl held on February 9, 2025 pulled 127.7 million viewers, and peaked at 133.5 million during the halftime show.