Gaming - Page 80

Valve's new Steam Machine might be Microsoft's "worst nightmare" because it could lock the Xbox-maker into a very risky position.

To combat PlayStation's mighty lead over Xbox, Microsoft has reportedly put together a plan that leverages its strengths. The idea, as reports have it, is to combine Xbox and Windows in a seamless way and make the next gaming console into a PC. That way Microsoft could utilize the power and versatility of Windows 11, and its new AI toolsets, to generate engagement, revenue, and continued profit.

There's just one roadblock: Valve's new Steam Machine could end up eating Microsoft's lunch in this new PC frontier. The Steam Machine is a major contender to Microsoft's plans, and Valve already pretty much dominates the PC market with Steam. As a result, one analyst believes that Valve's small form factor PC could end up being Microsoft's so-called "nightmare."

New data from Circana reveals how well Battlefield 6 did in the United States.

Battlefield 6 was a huge hit with7 million copies sold in 3 days. EA's new shooter did so well that it became the best-selling game of the year in the US on release, and took commanding spots on both PC and Xbox insofar as full-year sales.

"Battlefield 6 debuted as the best-selling game of 2025 year-to-date. Battlefield 6 is currently the best-selling game of 2025 on both the Xbox and the PC aggregated storefront charts, while ranking 2nd year-to-date on PlayStation (behind only NBA 2K26)," Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said on Bluesky.

Play Anywhere is boosting playtime among PC and console gamers, Microsoft says.

Xbox is trying to boost two metrics right now: How much time and money that players spend in games. Subscriptions give direct revenue, and time spent is an investment that could lead to even more long-term sustained earnings down the line. To pull this off, and to prime its new plans for a merged Windows-Xbox PC-console ecosystem, Microsoft created Play Anywhere--a decisive deal that gives users access to both a PC and console version of a game for the price of one copy.

This gambit of giving out free game licenses is paying off. In a recent interview with Fortune, Xbox president Sarah Bond says that users are spending more money and a substantial amount of extra time playing titles that are Play Anywhere compared to those that don't support the promotion.

New tax filings for Ubisoft's overseas publishing division reveals key stats on game sales in the region.

Ubisoft Limited, the company's publishing group in the UK, gives a dour update on the state of physical game sales in the UK. According to the company's full-year earnings records, the physical games market in the United Kingdom has dropped heavily, with sales plummeting by -35% in FY25 compared to the year prior.

The group also says that console sales slid by -25% in FY25 (April 2024 - March 2025), indicating that Sony's expensive PlayStation 5 Pro, which was released in November 2024, may not have moved the needle much in the UK. It's also worth noting that this was before the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, which launched in June 2025, months after the document's cut-off date.

Now that console gaming is pretty much saturated, major businesses are now targeting PC in an attempt to grow the industry. Executives like Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick are taking notice and commenting on the new trends.

Microsoft's new Xbox console will reportedly be a merged PC hybrid. Sony is releasing games on PlayStation. Steam continues to grow, breaking concurrent player records with 41 million players while earning over $16 billion this year. PC gaming is growing, partly because of all the accelerated effort to make it grow, particularly because it represents a new frontier of focus for companies.

The games business is expanding and evolving, and in a recent interview with CNBC's Squawk Box, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick highlights his thoughts on the industry's new push towards PC and open platforms--the latter might be a nod to the new Xbox PC.

The hype for Half-Life 3 has been going from rocket-powered stride to rocket-powered stride, where it feels like we're closer than ever to Valve's industry-changing announcement of HL3... and we're nowhere near April Fool's Day.

Valve recently announced its new hardware in the Steam Machine, Steam Frame VR headset, and new Steam Controller ready for early 2026... but no system-seller like Half-Life 3 will be. But today, today is the 27th anniversary of Half-Life as it dropped on November 19, 1998 on the PC and changed everything.

We've had insiders and rumors that Half-Life 3 has been in development for years and that a reveal was really, really close... and today would have been the perfect day to celebrate Half-Life with the announcement of Half-Life 3.

Rockstar delayed Grand Theft Auto 6 (again) not too long ago, with a new release window of November 2026, but that delay could see the next-gen PlayStation 6 and Xbox consoles delayed as well, says an analyst.

In a recent article from GamesIndustry, Ampere Analysis research director, games, Piers Harding-Rolls, pondered if the late release of GTA 6 will have an impact on next-gen console releases. The analyst firm says they're forecasting a next-gen PlayStation 6 and Xbox to arrive in late 2027, lining up with rumors from the last year or so.

However, Sony and Microsoft could be "tempted" to get more from the current-gen consoles riding the GTA 6 wave and then waiting until 2028 for the new PS6 and Xbox consoles.

Rockstar Games is reportedly testing in-house if Grand Theft Auto 6 can be developed for the Nintendo Switch 2 according to new rumors.

In a new post by leaker @NateTheHate2 on X who has been reliable previously, there are rumors that GTA 6 could come to the Nintendo Switch 2 handheld, and that Rockstar has "made an effort" to see if they can bring Grand Theft Auto 6 to the platform.

In previous posts, Nate said: "I said a while ago that Rockstar was doing tests to bring it to the Switch 2, but tests don't always equal release. I know an effort has been made to see if they can bring it to the platform, I don't know the current state of that". He added in a follow-up post: "experimenting doesn't equal 'in development' and companies often test to see if a game is possible on hardware".

Sony has revealed its Black Friday deals for PlayStation 5 consoles, accessories and games, with the headline discount being $100 off all PS5 models in the US.

That means the base PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition consoles, and the PS5 Pro, are all knocked down by $100 from November 21 next week, when Sony's sale kicks off.

So, instead of paying $750 for a PS5 Pro, you'll be looking at an outlay of $650. The base PS5 price is reduced from $550 to $450, and the PS5 Digital Edition is reduced from $500 to $400 (yes, we're rounding up the cent here).

Xbox president Sarah Bond comments further on Microsoft's next-gen hardware plans, reiterating previous statements about openness of games libraries and storefronts.

Microsoft isn't giving up on consoles...but the new Xbox will break the mold. Reports indicate that the next Microsoft gaming hardware will essentially be an Xbox PC hybrid, with the device running Windows 11 and containing an "Xbox experience." In theory, the new melded system should be a major evolution of the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) on the Xbox Ally and Ally X handhelds.

While Microsoft won't officially confirm or deny the rumors, the public comments from top executive management, including those from CEO Satya Nadella, seem to align with the Xbox PC reports. Now in a recent interview with Fortune, Xbox president Sarah Bond reiterates some of her previous assertions about new hardware.

The nominees for The Game Awards 2025 were announced earlier today, with indie hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 leading the pack with 12 nominations, including Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, and Best RPG. Other big winners, nomination-wise, include Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, PlayStation's Ghost of Yōtei, and Hades 2 - all receiving nominations in multiple categories.

When it comes to the big award of the night, Game of the Year, it's going to be a highly contested category thanks to it being stacked with critically acclaimed and fan-favorite titles. The aforementioned Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and Hades II are all there, with Donkey Kong Bananza, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II all vying for the top award.

The Best Multiplayer game is also set to be highly contested, as it will see ARC Raiders go up against Battlefield 6 on the competitive side, with co-op titles Elden Ring Nightreign, Peak, and Split Fiction also nominated.

Steam has reportedly generated over $16.2 billion in sales this year so far, and Valve founder Gabe Newell is celebrating with a super-expensive $500 million superyacht.

Valve has been going from stride to stride recently with Steam hitting a record concurrent player count of 41.6 million users online all at the same time, but in a new report by Rhys Elliott from Alinea Analytics, Steam has reportedly pulled $16.5 billion in sales so far -- and we haven't even reached the holidays and its Steam Holiday Sales -- representing a 5.7% increase from 2024's estimated $15.33 billion in sales.

But remember that Valve takes a 30% in each sale until the product passes $10 million in revenue, a 25% slice between $10 million and $50 million, and a smaller 20% cut once the product passes $10 million in revenue. Steam competitors in the Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store have the company taking a smaller cut -- in order to get developers to their platforms and away from Steam -- with Epic and Microsoft only taking a 12% fee, giving developers 88% of the sale.

Fortune interviews Xbox president Sarah Bond, revealing some interesting potential connections between her words and what's happening with Xbox.

Xbox is changing. First there was Game Pass, then came Play Anywhere, and Xbox has further changed by fully breaking exclusivity to sell its first-party games on rival platforms. The biggest shift, though, is Microsoft's reported move to meld Windows and Xbox together to make an Xbox PC-console hybrid.

In a recent interview with Fortune, Xbox president Sarah Bond gives a candid response that could underline some of the thinking around Xbox and its future. Bond mentions how people in general "spend most of their lives trying to hold on to what's known right now," and that the world itself is constantly changing.

Rockstar recently announced a remaster for the first Red Dead Redemption game, which caused confusion among Red Dead Redemption fans, as rumors circulating for quite some time indicated that work was underway on a remaster for Red Dead Redemption 2.

The announcement of the remaster led many fans to believe the rumors of a Red Dead Redemption 2 enhanced edition development were misguided, and that it was actually for the first game. However, industry insider NateTheHate, who has quite a solid track record when it comes to knowing the happenings of the gaming industry, particularly with upcoming games, has put those fears to bed.

In a recent X post, the insider wrote, "This doesn't negate RDR2 happening," in response to an X user pointing out that RD1 has received the enhanced version, not RDR2. Notably, when asked about the timeline for the current-gen upgrade to RDR2, NateTheHate wrote that he was informed it would arrive "a few months after" the release of the Nintendo Switch 2. However, this information was given to him at the start of 2025. Since then, Grand Theft Auto 6 has been delayed, altering the release timeline.

Valve recently unveiled the Steam Machine, a new dedicated PC gaming system in the shape of a console, and on the heels of the announcement a Valve hardware engineer has revealed what the company was considering when designing the device.

In an interview, Yazan Aldehayyat, a hardware engineer at Valve, explained that one of the things Valve looked at when choosing the components for the Steam Machine was the Steam Hardware Survey. For those who don't know, the Steam Hardware Survey is an opt-in survey that Valve conducts on all Steam users, which amounts to approximately 147 million monthly active users.

The survey involves Steam scanning the hardware and software of the system it's installed on and sending the results back to Valve, which then turns them into data for public viewing. Valve updates the Steam Hardware & Software Survey every month. With it, the public can see interesting information such as which operating system the majority of Steam users are running, average RAM size, average CPU speed, most common GPU, primary display resolution, and much more.

Remedy's Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, released in 2003, saw the studio deliver a masterpiece of noir, crime, and bullet-time action. On PC, the game debuted with cutting-edge visuals that still look great in 2025, but are taken to the next level with full ray tracing or path-traced lighting thanks to NVIDIA's RTX Remix modding toolkit.

Currently in development by Darko9.13, Max Payne 2 RTX Remix is playable and available for download on Moddb; however, performance takes a massive hit, even when running on one of the most powerful GPUs on the market. Path tracing is incredibly hardware-intensive (as seen in Half-Life 2 RTX), and here we see performance in one area drop from around 1250 FPS in one scene down to around 40 FPS on a GeForce RTX 5080.

This figure comes from a Max Payne 2 RTX Remix visual showcase and performance video created by MxBenchmarkPC. The 40 FPS path tracing figure is obtained with DLSS 4's 'Performance' preset enabled, which means the game's internally rendered resolution is 1080p. Yes, this makes Max Payne 2 RTX Remix one of the most visually demanding mods currently available; however, the transition to realistic lighting, physically based materials, improved textures, and some updated geometry is impressive to see.

The rumors surrounding Half-Life 3 have hit fever pitch since Valve announced its new selection of hardware, with many fans of the franchise expecting the company to unveil the title sometime soon, as multiple industry experts have leaked information regarding its development. But, when will the reveal be?

Industry insider and Valve leaker "GabeFollower" said in an X post that, according to their source, Valve is aiming to launch Half-Life 3 sometime this year. This rumor was somewhat corroborated by Insider Gaming's Mike Straw, who reported Valve is planning on another big announcement, and it won't be at The Game Awards, which is scheduled for December 11, 2025. Adding more fuel to the Half-Life 3 before the end of the year fire is data miner Tyler McVicker, who stated he expects there will be another big announcement from Valve within the next two to three weeks.

In the same vein as Half Life 3 rumors, but not pointing to an unveiling by the end of the year, is Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, who said he has heard about a big game launching in March 2026, and that it makes sense it will be a title exclusive to the Steam Machine. Other small pieces of information that circle back to Valve still having a big announcement up its sleeve are the company's own listing on the Steam Marketplace, specifically under the "Upcoming Release" category.

Valve recently unveiled the Steam Machine, a mini gaming PC shaped like a console, scheduled to launch early next year. With the exact price of the device still unknown, many potential buyers want to know what the announced hardware specifications will be able to achieve in games and whether the performance they deliver can be improved through upgrades if they are unhappy with the result.

Gamers Nexus visited Valve and spoke with engineers about the design of the upcoming gaming PC/console, during which they showcased the Steam Machine without its shell. The interview with the engineer revealed that Valve actually began designing the Steam Machine with its thermals, specifically the fan. A Steam Machine system engineer explained they designed the fan first, as the laws of thermodynamics are "not flexible".

When discussing the design, Gamers Nexus shows that, by disassembling the Steam Machine, users can upgrade the system memory to SO-DIMM RAM sticks. However, they will likely be quite difficult to access, as SO-DIMM (laptop memory) sits flat on the motherboard and is likely located beneath the large heat sink. Additionally, Gamers Nexus said they aren't sure if it's one or two RAM sticks, but they can verify the RAM isn't soldered to the board.

Valve recently announced the Steam Machine, and on the heels of that announcement, we have caught some news about the Steam Deck 2, or rather, what Valve needs to release one.

The Steam Deck was released in February 2022, and then we got the Steam Deck OLED in November 2023. Since then, Valve has been quiet on when it plans on releasing the Steam Deck 2, but recently Valve revealed in a conversation with IGN that it intends the next Steam Deck to be a big step up from the original, and that it won't be releasing the second iteration of the console until hardware becomes available that makes it possible to enable a massive upgrade.

On the back of the announcement of the Steam Machine, Valve has said that it's "really interested" in what is next for the Steam Deck, but it won't be releasing an iterative model that is simply more powerful and has more battery life, as Valve wants something that truly differentiates it from the original handheld. Additionally, Valve said that it has been scanning the System-On-Chip (SoC) market for hardware that will enable it to create the new handheld it has in mind, but right now "there's no offering in that landscape".

Despite being one of the best-selling single-player franchises in Sony's lineup, the Horizon franchise had always been envisioned as a multiplayer project.

The surprise announcement of the new Horizon: Steel Frontiers MMORPG caught fans off guard. It's a new free-to-play MMO set in the Horizon franchise, and it's not coming to Sony's PlayStation 5. This has prompted lots of discussions among gamers about what's going on with the series, and now Guerrilla Games' art director Jan-Bart van Beek steps in to clarify that Horizon was always supposed to have multiplayer.

"From the first moment we imagined Horizon, we always thought about it as a multiplayer game," van Beek said on Twitter.