Gaming - Page 86

The new Call of Duty movie now has a director, with Peter Berg signing on to direct, while Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan tasked as the writer.

Berg and Sheridan have been lifelong friends who previously worked on the Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water, which received four Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for Sheridan. In its press release, Paramount said that this partnership aims to bring the iconic Call of Duty universe to life on the big screen, "delivering an unforgettable cinematic event for fans worldwide".

The Call of Duty movie is based on the uber-popular game series, designed to "thrill its massive global fan base by delivering on the hallmarks of what fans love about the iconic series, while boldly expanding the franchise to entirely new audiences. Both companies are committed to honoring the brand's rich narrative and distinctive style, promising an authentic and exciting experience for longtime fans and newcomers alike".

Nintendo is known for having one of, if not the most active, legal teams in the gaming industry, with the company not being afraid whatsoever to try and shut down any form of creative endeavor that it may impact the sales or misrepresent its products.

An example of Nintendo's willingness to go above and beyond to protect its products is the rampant trademarking it has been filing to prevent other game developers, or anyone else for that matter, from replicating certain aspects of its games. One example is the capturing of monsters, for which Nintendo attempted to file a trademark with Japan's Patent Office, which, if accepted, would give Nintendo the legal right to file lawsuits against any other game developer that used a similar mechanic.

However, Nintendo has experienced a rare occurrence as it has been told "no" by the Japanese patent authority, as the application, 2024-031879, was rejected over its lack of originality. Japan's Patent Office cited games that already existed before Nintendo filed the patent in December 2021, such as ARK: Survival Evolved, Monster Hunter 4, Craftopia, and even Pokémon GO.

If you've been distracted by Google's playable Pac-Man doodle today - yes, check out the search engine for a Halloween-themed take on the arcade classic - there's something far spookier on the loose for PC gamers.

XDA Developers noticed that Welcome To The Dark Place has been released by Zeekerss, the improbably named creator of the well-liked Steam early access horror hit Lethal Company.

The Dark Place as I'll call it for short - not to be confused with the classic Quake deathmatch level, The Bad Place (aka the duellist's paradise) - is a single player effort for Halloween which is available as a free download on Steam.

The 1992 release of "Little Samson" is coming to the Nintendo Switch 2, according to an announcement by Limited Run Games.

Little Samson was originally released for the NES in 1992 and has become somewhat of a collector's item, with copies of the title going for hundreds, and even thousands of dollars, depending on the condition. For those who don't know, Little Samson is a side-scrolling title directed by former Capcom designer Shinichi Yoshimoto, and enables players to control four characters: Samson, a dragon named Kikira, a golem named Gamm, and a mouse named K.O.

Each of the characters is distinctly different by featuring different abilities, and players can swap between characters at any point following the completion of the first four levels. Nintendo Switch 2 owners will be able to enjoy Little Samson for the first time, or relive the experience on Nintendo's latest console when Limited Run Games launches the Switch 2 port sometime in 2026.

The crumbling of Amazon Games has revealed some interesting insider information about what the company was developing before it was hit with the recently announced widespread layoffs and studio closures.

For those who aren't caught up, Amazon Games announced major layoffs as it switches its focus away from MMOs to its Luna cloud gaming platform. According to the announcement, 14,000 employees were laid off from Amazon, and of those, an unknown number will be let go from Amazon Games and its studios. What is known is that Amazon Games will be hit quite hard by the layoffs, following the publisher's dismal track record of game releases and failed projects.

It was back in February of this year that we heard about Amazon's ultimate goal, and that was to compete with Steam, and it believed it could since it was far larger than Valve and possessed more resources. This revelation came from Ethan Evans, who was the former Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon until 2020, who wrote on LinkedIn that despite being 250x the size of Valve, Amazon was unable to crack the code.

A Microsoft Azure outage occurred only a week after the Amazon Web Services outage, which took down large portions of the internet. The Azure outage took out Microsoft services such as Microsoft 365, Xbox, and Minecraft, along with other companies you may not expect to be impacted, such as Starbucks, Capital One, and Alaska Airlines.

According to Microsoft, the outage was a result of an "inadvertent configuration change" and a DNS problem, which the company followed up with several messages on its various social media channels explaining that it's currently working to recover services. At 7:40 ET Microsoft wrote on its status page for Azure that 98% of the Azure Front Door (AFD) service is operating, and that "majority of customers and services are mitigated or seeing strong improvements".

Additionally, "We have revised our mitigation time and are currently tracking toward full mitigation by 00:40 UTC on 30 October 2025." It seems that goal has been somewhat achieved as Xbox Support wrote on its X account that Xbox gaming services have recovered completely. However, some Xbox owners have reported they were required to restart their console to access the service.

Microsoft has released its Q1 2026 earnings, noting that Xbox hardware revenue is down 29% year over year. Xbox hardware revenue, which covers the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles, has been in steady decline for a couple of years now, so this isn't all that surprising for those who have been following or keeping track of behind-the-scenes Xbox news.

What is alarming, at least from an Xbox console perspective, is that this 29% decline in revenue is identical to Microsoft's Q1 2025 earnings, which showed Xbox hardware revenue dropping by the same amount compared to 2024. And with Microsoft recently increasing the price of its Xbox Series X|S hardware to the point that the consoles are no longer competitive with Sony's PlayStation 5 lineup, the expectation is that this downward trend will continue. And possibly, accelerate.

However, it's worth noting that Microsoft's Xbox strategy has moved beyond Xbox hardware for some time. Its current marketing slogan for the brand, 'This is an Xbox,' emphasizes that every device can be an Xbox through Windows 11, Game Pass, and cloud gaming. For Q1 2026, Xbox content and services revenue was up 1%, which includes revenue from Game Pass and publishing first-party titles on PC, Xbox, PS5, and Switch - a better result and more reflective of the Xbox brand shift.

Rockstar has just updated its website with a slick new look, also teasing a new Grand Theft Auto 6 logo, which hopefully means we'll see GTA 6's third trailer ahead of the holidays.

We had Trailer 2 for GTA 6 earlier this year, but the year has flown past and we haven't had anything new from Rockstar regarding Grand Theft Auto 6, and now the developer has a flashy new website. It would be good to see this new website design from Rockstar lead into a new promotion of GTA 6 in the coming days and weeks ahead as we slide into the holidays and the end of the year.

Rockstar unleashed the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 in December 2023, following it up with the second trailer earlier this year with a promise of releasing GTA 6 on May 26, 2026. We're in the final two months of 2025, so to hype up the biggest release of all time on any medium -- movies, TV shows, games, etc -- Grand Theft Auto 6's third trailer releasing soon makes sense.

Duke Nukem was massive in the 1990s, thanks to the success of Duke Nukem 3D on PC and consoles. In addition to starring in one of the defining first-person shooters of the decade, Duke's other outings were limited to the Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation consoles. Yes, PC gamers missed out on what is widely considered to be one of the best Duke games from the era, the Nintendo 64-exclusive Duke Nukem: Zero Hour.

The third-person shooter saw Duke travel back in time to the Old West and Victorian London to save the world from a new alien threat, with the game being best known for adding a more nuanced plot to the franchise's trademark over-the-top tone. This included a depiction of post-apocalyptic New York, ravaged by nuclear war, as well as taking down Jack the Ripper.

Duke Nukem Zero Hour: Recompiled is an unofficial PC port of the game that adds native support for widescreen displays, higher frame rates, and the ability to remap and configure controls. There are even plans to add ray tracing to the game, as seen in other N64 ports for PC (Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) that decompile and recompile the game's source code to run on PC.

Although Valve and Steam dominate the PC gaming landscape, GOG is still widely considered the most consumer-friendly platform. Not only does the service continue to offer DRM-free games that can be backed up, installed, and played without a launcher or online access, but it's also committed to preserving gaming history through the GOG Preservation Program.

GOG, which stands for Good Old Game, is living up to its namesake with the Preservation Program. Basically, it's GOG's commitment to keep the games in the program up to date and compatible with modern PC hardware. This means that these classic PC games will run on Windows 12 and whatever the next Xbox console PC hybrid is, without issues.

And this month, GOG is expanding the Preservation Program with 16 new titles, including several well-known PC classics like the original Hitman and Splinter Cell, and some obscure titles like Clive Barker's Undying that would have otherwise been lost to time. Here's the full list.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick is already discussing future installments in the Grand Theft Auto franchise and how artificial intelligence will play a role in development.

One of the hottest topics in the gaming industry is how developers will adopt artificial intelligence into their workflow, and if the power of AI will be used as a tool to speed up game development without compromising the end product, and ultimately, making thousands of game developers obsolete in the process. In a recent interview with CNBC, the CEO of Grand Theft Auto's publisher, Take-Two Interactive, Strauss Zelnick, was asked if AI would play a role in the development of titles under Take-Two's banner.

Zelnick said that while he isn't a "naysayer" when it comes to integrating AI into video game development, he remains skeptical about its use, for several reasons. The first being intellectual property rights, and how creating any IP with AI automatically makes it unprotected. This point echoes a popular ongoing debate between AI companies, Hollywood, musicians, and other creative industries, as many AI models have gained the ability to create "unique" content by absorbing intellectual property.

Ex-PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss Shawn Layden cautions game developers to be careful about entering the live service arena, warning that the games industry is basically built on the bones of Fortnite contenders.

Breaking into the live service market is so hard that some companies just buy their way into it--Microsoft comes to mind with its Mojang and Activision acquisitions, so does Sony with its Bungie buyout. Here at TweakTown, we've been talking about live games for years and put together an Engagement Cycle that we think developers have to achieve and maintain to break into the market. It's an exhaustive list of things that a game must perpetually keep in motion, and for most companies, that's unsustainable. This is the message around ex-PlayStation boss Shawn Layden's recent interviews--that live games come with pitfalls.

"The highway is littered with people wanting to take on Fortnite, with people trying to do Overwatch with different skins," Layden said in a recent interview with Inverse.

Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer says that Forza Motorsport hasn't been sent to the junkyard for scrap--that franchise will continue, but even Spencer doesn't know when.

Xbox has two racing franchises that have been operating in parallel with one another for years now: Forza Motorsport, which is Xbox's answer to Gran Turismo, and Forza Horizon, an offshoot series focused more on recreational racing and exploration. The latter, Horizon, is much more popular than the former, solidifying Microsoft's focus and taking away attention from the Forza Motorsport series. This is only temporary, and the Forza Motorsport franchise will continue out, but there's no optics on the next release.

Microsoft recently downsized its Xbox games unit, eliminating key positions and significantly reducing the staff at Turn10, the developers behind Forza Motorsport, with priority given to the more profitable Forza Horizon. This repositioning is happening for a number of reasons: Microsoft is merging Xbox consoles with Windows PCs in a radical transformational business strategy, and the company is also facing the rigors of tariff-choked economics. Both of these things are financially sensitive and require careful accounting. Also, Microsoft's board of directors, CFO, and CEO are currently pressing Xbox management to deliver a steep 30% profit margin--on this topic, CEO Satya Nadella recently said the "best way to innovate in gaming is to improve margins."

History could have been very different if Konami had greenlit a Hideo Kojima-directed Matrix game.

Decades ago during the PS2 era of the early 2000s, the Wachowski sisters expressed interest in having Hideo Kojima make a game based on the Matrix series, which was mega-hot at the time. This little tidbit of retro gaming lore was unearthed by nostalgia news blog Time Extension, which followed up on a 25-year-old rumor. In an interview with former Konami executive Christopher Bergstresser, it was revealed that the Wachowskis approached Konami about the idea, but it ultimately died on the vine.

The project was essentially nipped in the bud and shut down before it could even really be mulled over, with then-CEO of Konami Kasumi Kitaue scrapping the idea. Kojima was just too invaluable to the Metal Gear series (ironically, the opposite would be true some 15 years later).

Halo Studios developers have a practical take on artificial intelligence, saying that it's a "tool in a toolbox" but ultimately the humans are the creators.

Days ago, a report from Rebs Gaming stated that generative AI was being heavily used in the development of new Halo games, including the new Halo CE remake. Windows Central's Jez Corden stepped in to clarify this isn't the case, and now Halo Studios developers are once again speaking on the controversial technology.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, two Halo Studios devs spoke about how AI can help games production, indicating that it may be being used for new Halo games, but not in the capacity of letting generative AI call the shots.

Microsoft's servers have hit trouble (again), as a major Azure outage has left Minecraft players frustrated, Xbox services down, and more besides.

Update (14:35 CDT): Microsoft has said that customers might now see the first signs of recovery. The company just posted on its Azure dashboard: "We initiated the deployment of our 'last known good' configuration, which has now successfully been completed. Customers may have begun to see initial signs of recovery. We are currently recovering nodes and routing traffic through healthy nodes, and as we make progress in this workstream, customers will continue to see improvement."

Microsoft 365 services are affected by the downtime as well as Minecraft, with the game showing a strong upsurge of reports on Down Detector in the last hour and a half (since approximately 10:30am CDT). Xbox servers and the official website have been hit, too.

Jumping into a vehicle and putting on the radio to listen to popular music has been a thing ever since cars and radios were combined. However, in the world of video games, it's something we associate with Grand Theft Auto-style open-world games, where hopping into a random car will start playing one of several random in-game curated radio stations as you drive to your next mission or simply roam the streets looking to make your own fun.

In-vehicle radio and music are not something we usually associate with multiplayer games like EA's Battlefield 6, which is why the "first-ever official Battlefield playlist for Battlefield 6" is noteworthy. In addition to being a Spotify playlist that you can stream, the Battlefield playlist is also an actual GTA-style in-game radio.

Yes, jumping into a vehicle while playing one of the game's various multiplayer modes will turn on the radio and start playing "tracks from legendary artists" covering a wider range of genres.

As a pure PC gaming platform, Linux has come a long way, thanks in part to Valve and its efforts with SteamOS and its Proton compatibility layer for running the latest DirectX graphics API. And with the popularity of its Steam Deck gaming handheld and third-party Linux builds focused on gaming like Bazzite, more and more gamers are looking for a Windows-free PC gaming experience, since games often run faster on Linux than on Windows.

According to a new report over at Boiling Steam, which monitors and tracks ProtonDB, gaming on Linux has never been more accessible, with close to 90% of Windows games launching and most running perfectly "out of the box." Valve's Steam Deck is primarily responsible for the rise in 'Platinum' and 'Gold' rated Windows games in recent years, which cover games that run well on Linux.

Although desktop gamers have Linux distros like Mint, Zorin, and Bazzite, many are waiting for Valve's controller-friendly and console-like all-in-one SteamOS to make the jump from PC gaming handhelds to more systems. SteamOS is optimized and limited to specific handhelds and AMD APUs, with the good news being credible rumors that Valve is planning to launch a full-fat version of the Linux-based operating system for PC gamers running a wide range of hardware.

Amazon is substantially reducing its presence in gaming, winding back its first-party game development and publishing divisions while also cancelling key projects along the way.

Amazon is preparing to lay off 14,000 workers, and the company's ailing games division will be hit hard. In a memo obtained by Bloomberg, an Amazon Games executive confirmed the cutbacks, telling employees to expect "significant role reductions."

Projects like the Lord of the Rings MMORPG have been cancelled, the report says, and the remaining in-house Amazon Games teams will focus on creating "casual and AI-focused games." New World, the division's most popular game at one point, has been sunset into maintenance mode and will no longer be receiving new updates, leading to an eventual shut down in 2026. This news comes shortly after the Season 10 update successfully attracted user engagement.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms that the next-gen Xbox will innovate in both the PC and console space.

Just yesterday, Windows Central's Jez Corden reported that the next Xbox would be a Windows PC that mimics an Xbox console experience, reiterating reports from The Verge's Tom Warren. Now Microsoft's leader comments on the new Xbox PC while clarifying and reiterating the company's gaming strategy.

In a recent interview with TBPN, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed how Xbox will make innovations in the synergies between Windows PCs and Xbox consoles. He also says that Microsoft considers Windows "the biggest gaming business," a nod towards all of the different stores available on the platform--Steam, Xbox Store, Epic Games Store, GOG, Battle.net, etc.