Gaming - Page 83

Nintendo has announced in its latest press release that it has sold more than 6 billion video games across all of its systems, and in total, has moved more than 870 million hardware units.

Nintendo announced the impressive statistics in the company's latest press release that details a bunch of offers it has running for Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2025. The press release states that on November 15 and December 13, participating Best Buy locations will be hosting demos of Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bonanza, and on December 6, GameStop locations will be hosting demos of both the aforementioned titles, along with Kirby Air Riders, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, and more.

Additionally, deals will be hitting the Nintendo eShop on both the original Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 from November 20 through to December 3. Deals of physical releases will begin on November 23 at select retailers. Nintendo will also be taking $20 off MSRP starting on November 30 on Samsung MicroSD Express Cards at Nintendo San Francisco, Nintendo New York, and select retailers.

There are two games that gamers simply cannot wait to get their hands on. The first is unsurprisingly Grand Theft Auto 6 from Rockstar Games, and the second is The Elder Scrolls 6 from Bethesda. Two titan franchises of the gaming industry have been keeping fans patiently waiting for many, many years for the next installment in their franchises, and now we have finally heard about the latter.

Speaking to GQ Magazine, Bethesda CEO Todd Howard, director of the Elder Scrolls franchise, has confirmed that The Elder Scrolls 6 is "still a long way off," and has asked fans for further patience as development at the studio continues. Howard was asked what he is currently working on, and the CEO said that hundreds of developers have been tasked with working on Fallout, "but The Elder Scrolls 6 is the everyday thing."

Howard was also asked about how it feels to be making a new Elder Scrolls game again, and the director went on to say that he enjoys having a break between installments to make different games, as he feels it's important to have a creative reset, and for the audience to have a break.

Sony has been bringing its first-party games over to PC for many years now, with the first cross-platform release being Helldivers 2, providing extremely lucrative results for the company. But what about cross-buying Sony games?

Leaks from the PlayStation Store indicate Sony is exploring the idea of enabling players to cross-buy its games, meaning a gamer could buy a PlayStation game via their PS5 and then have access to it on their PC.

Xbox already offers this feature across its various platforms, but as a result, it has somewhat lost its brand identity, as now everything has technically, and even according to Microsoft themselves, become an Xbox.

If you're looking for a new internet service, and fancy a Nintendo Switch handheld as a freebie, then select Verizon plans in the US are offering this (or an alternative in the form of a Samsung TV or tablet).

ZDNet spotted the offers for new customers who are signing up for a Verizon Fios plan, or alternatively 5G Home Ultimate or LTE Home Plus.

The choice is a free holiday gift of a Nintendo Switch, or a Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE 5G tablet, or a Samsung Q7F 43-inch TV.

A Valve leaker has shared a rendered image of what they believe will be Valve's Steam Controller 2, and according to the leaker, the controller is able to detect how far away a user's hands are from the handles.

The render comes from Valve leaker SadlyItsBradley, who explained in a recent X post that the above image showcases what the Steam Controller 2 is going to look like when it launches. Additionally, the leaker writes that he has been told by an undisclosed source that the controller can detect how far a user's hands are from the handles "using a simple capsense feature" similar to the Valve Index controllers.

Notably, the new Steam controller won't support full finger tracking in the grips, which differentiates itself from the Index controllers. Furthermore, the leaker writes in a follow-up X post that the above image was created with AI, but the original image he has of the new controller was used as training data to generate what is shown above. The leaker writes that he chose to showcase an AI-generated image based on the original because the original could reveal sensitive information about his source.

AYANEO is preparing for the launch of its powerful new NEXT 2 gaming handheld, powered by AMD's flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU with 16C/32T of Zen 5 CPU power, and a powerful Radeon 8060S integrated GPU.

The new AYANEO NEXT 2 gaming handheld uses the company's new custom hardware design, with the Strix Halo APU cooled with a dual-fan thermal system, a bigger high-capacity battery, an 8-inch display (at the least, we don't know specific specs just yet), and more.

We have controls that combine a floating 8-day D-pad, Hall effect triggers, dual intelligent touchpads, and customizable rear buttons with dynamic Chroma RGB lighting. The original AYANEO NEXT featured a far less powerful Ryzen 7 8840 APU, but the power of the Strix Halo APU mixed with its powerful 40 CUs of RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 8060S GPU mean you can be 120FPS+ gaming without an issue on-the-go.

Amazon's live-action adaptation of BioWare's Mass Effect is currently in production. As part of the latest 'N7 Day' update from BioWare's Mike Gamble, we've learned some fresh details about the show's setting and story. It seems that, like Amazon's successful Fallout adaptation, the Mass Effect TV series won't be retelling stories and narrative arcs from the games.

Yes, this means Commander Shepard and his crew will be a no-show as the TV series will be set after the original trilogy and focus on a brand-new story within the Mass Effect timeline. The TV series will be canon, in that events depicted will be official, as BioWare is working closely with Amazon on the adaptation.

"We've been partnering closely with Amazon on it, and we're really excited with what the talented team over there is coming up with," Mike Gamble, Executive Producer, Mass Effect, writes. "The writers' room is going strong, and we've got a lot figured out about how it fits within the Mass Effect canon, and where it sits in respect to the new game."

This is something you don't see every day: an ex-PlayStation 5 APU that comes in the form of the AMD BC250 APU, a cut-down version from the PS5 chip, being sold for around $120. And get this, it's more than capable of gaming, running Cyberpunk 2077 at around 40FPS.

YouTuber "Budget-Builds Official" ordered one of the BC250 boards, arriving as a server-style motherboard that featured power headers, I/O ports, a gigantic passive heatsink, as these BC250 boards were made for PS5-powered crypto-mining rigs.

Inside, the BC250 features a cut-down PS5 APU that is made up from Zen 2 CPU cores and RDNA 2 GPU cores, with 16GB of GDDR6 of unified memory that is split between the CPU and GPU. The YouTuber made a custom system for the BC250 board to be installed into, with a 1000W Corsair PSU, adding a CMOS battery, connecting to external SSD storage, and hooking up a mouse, keyboard, and monitor.

Blizzard is adding new digital money to World of Warcraft that lets players buy decorations and other housing items for real-world money.

World of Warcraft is officially getting a new virtual currency that can be purchased with real money. It's called Hearthsteel, and it's exclusively for WoW's new player housing system. Hearthsteel will become World of Warcraft's second paid currency, with the first being WoW Tokens.

"Hearthsteel is a new virtual currency for World of Warcraft being added in the Midnight expansion. It's purchased with real money using your Battle.net balance and used in turn to buy Housing items from the Battle.net shop and in-game shop,"Blizzard said.

Grand Theft Auto is one of the best-earning video game franchises of all time, and new data shows the series has made at least $10.2 billion since the launch of 2013's GTA V.

Take-Two's latest Q2 results give a quick refresh on the company's biggest games and confirmed some eye-opening numbers: GTA V has sold 220 million copies, and alongside Red Dead Redemption 2, Take-Two Interactive now has 2 of the 5 best-selling games of all time under its belt.

The report also gives a quick refresh on total Grand Theft Auto sales figures, and every quarter we cumulatively run these numbers with GTA V's huge $1.4 billion launch as a starting reference point. According to Take-Two's Q2'26 report, the GTA franchise has made at least $10.221 billion over the last 12 years since Grand Theft Auto V's release.

Nintendo tells investors that sales of its new Switch 2 console should maintain profitability even as individual component costs continue to rise.

Like its forebear, the Switch 2 was sold at a profit at launch. Nintendo management expects the Switch 2 to keep its current sales profitability "for the time being," even as individual parts, chips, and integrated circuits become more expensive.

In a recent Q&A with investors, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa says that the company will offset any rising costs by shaving off costs in other areas, not unlike what Sony did with its multiple PS5 and PS5 Pro hardware revisions. Other factors like further disruptions from tariffs are outside of Nintendo's control, and Furukawa appropriately warns investors of these risks.

Microsoft is officially retiring its free-to-play Halo game into maintenance mode on November 18.

Halo Studios is buckling down to focus on new Halo games, and has decided to move Halo Infinite aside while it works on multiple upcoming projects. The team has confirmed that Halo Infinite's upcoming Operation Infinite update will be the last major update for the free-to-play shooter.

"With multiple Halo titles in development, we'll need our whole team's combined focus to deliver new experiences with the same passion and care that our community has given us. While we remain committed to supporting Halo Infinite on the road ahead, Operation: Infinite is the last major content update currently planned."

AMD's older FX-9590 processor has been put through its paces on Battlefield 6, with a YouTuber trying to run BF6 on two older-gen CPUs: the Intel Core i7-2600K and AMD FX-9590 processors.

AMD released its FX-9590 processor over 10 years ago, with YouTuber "Fully Buffered" using the CPU with an AMD Radeon RX 5700 8GB graphics card in Battlefield 6. First, he tried the Intel Core i7-2600K processor, but the Intel CPU couldn't launch Battlefield 6 because there's no Secure Boot support, but the AMD FX-9590 fired the game out.

Fully Buffered discovered that the AMD FX-9590 + Radeon RX 5700 8GB combo was able to run Battlefield 6 at around 35FPS or so average, while sometimes it was pushing above 40FPS, at the 1080p resolution. CPU utilization

EA going private won't impact the next Mass Effect game, BioWare has confirmed.

BioWare celebrated N7 Day by giving an update on the next Mass Effect project, which still remains in development even as the developer's parent company prepares to go private in a $55 billion leveraged buyout.

Mass Effect executive producer Mike Gamble allays fan fears in the update, saying that the game is still very much in development and has not been cancelled. The studio is locked-in and exclusively focusing on Mass Effect--there won't be any Anthem- or Veilguard-styled interruptions this time--and we did get a bit of new teaser art showing a Krogan Civil War, potentially set after the events of the trilogy.

Mass Effect's Normandy ship is returning alongside the Beachhead Expedition, Hello Games has announced.

Starting today, the iconic SSV Normandy SR1 will swoop into No Man's Sky once again. Hello Games is re-running the Beachhead Expedition to celebrate N7 Day, allowing players to add the Normandy frigate to their fleet. Beachhead's second run will be from today, Nov 7 - Nov 18.

Take-Two Interactive now has 2 out of the top 5 best-selling video games of all time under its belt, and both of the titles are from Rockstar Games.

Take-Two Interactive is a strong force of the games industry, commanding some of the biggest franchises of the planet with Grand Theft Auto and the 2K Basketball series. The publisher's franchise slate is enviable, with annualized sports games churning out consistent revenue while colossal, multi-year releases like Grand Theft Auto V span multiple console generations and rake in over a decade of sales.

This diversified portfolio has given Take-Two a golden strategy for gaming: Sports games rake in thunderous yearly sales and microtransaction earnings, while marquee hits generate millions of sales per quarter (on top of GTA Online cash). When it comes to game sales, Rockstar shines brighter than the rest.

Borderlands 4's issues on PC have stymied sales targets, leading to lower-than-expected performance for the game.

Take-Two's latest Q2'26 earnings digest reveals key details about Borderlands 4's performance, showing that the game could have sold up to 5 million copies at release. Data gleaned from the investor report confirms the total Borderlands franchise has now sold an estimated 99 million copies to date.

Before Borderlands 4's launch, the series was at 94 million, and Gearbox's Randy Pitchford had confidently said that the sequel would push Borderlands franchise past 100 million units. That almost happened. While we technically don't know how many of those 5 million games sold are copies of Borderlands 4, it's likely the fourth installment takes up the vast majority of sales.

GTA 6 has been delayed for the second time, and now Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick explains why.

Yesterday, the most anticipated game in the last decade was delayed. GTA 6 is now launching on November 19, 2026, roughly six months after its original planned summertime release. Rockstar Games explains that they pushed the game back to deliver "the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve," (which is what they said last time), and now executive management delivers similar comments about the industry-defining aspirations of Grand Theft Auto 6.

In a recent Q&A with investors during Take-Two's Q2'26 earnings call, company CEO Strauss Zelnick says that delays are painful but necessary--and that the publisher has never regretted pushing a game back to focus on quality.

Rockstar Games has delayed GTA 6 to holiday 2026, a move that's sure to impact earnings forecasts. The six-month delay coincides with some interesting business moves that will help Rockstar earn in the meantime.

Yesterday, Take-Two and Rockstar Games delivered some bad news: GTA 6 has been delayed by six months, and is now releasing November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The good news? GTA Online is much cheaper to access as a standalone game, and GTA V is also coming to PlayStation Plus this month.

GTA V will be included in PS Plus Extra and Premium later this month, as reported by reliable Dealabs leaker billbil-kun. This will be the second time GTA V has been offered on PS Plus--the first introduction helped Rockstar make $190 million revenue during the holiday 2024 season.

On the heels of Grand Theft Auto 6 being officially delayed for a second time, Take Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has revealed Grand Theft Auto 5 continues to be an endless money cow for the publisher, with the twelve-year-old title now having sold more than 200 million units.

Rockstar Games officially announced that Grand Theft Auto 6 is being delayed to November 19, 2026, from its initial May 25, 2026, release date. The delay of GTA 6 marks the second time the title has been officially delayed from its announced release date.

The delay comes at a time when Rockstar is currently experiencing internal pushback from developers, with one anonymous developer revealing in a post on the GTAForums that morale at the studio has reached "rock bottom" following Rockstar's laying off several veteran developers in what the developers say is an effort to break up unionization.