Gaming - Page 87

It's been a little over two weeks since the release of Battlefield 6, and the title has attracted hundreds of thousands of players, but for those who didn't buy the game, EA has a surprise for you - the new free-to-play Battlefield 6 battle royale is now available.

EA has confirmed to me that as part of the first season of Battlefield 6, Battlefield Studios is releasing "Battlefield REDSEC," a "genre-shifting free-to-play destination built on Battlefield's iconic DNA". Players will be dropping into Fort Lyndon, Battlefield's biggest map in the franchise where 100 players in teams are pit against each other as they scavenge to find valuable loot, while also crafting unique game-winning strategies of taking out their opponents.

Players will be able to leverage the destruction seen in Battlefield 6, within the new battle royale mode, as Battlefield Studios writes, "The power of Tactical Destruction brings an entirely new level of strategy to the genre, as players create their own paths to victory or turn the environment into their own deadly weapon while crushing opposing squads."

Battlefield 6 getting a Battle Royale mode similar to Call of Duty: Warzone or Battlefield 5's Firestorm has been known for some time, with EA even confirming it was in development as recently as last month. A few days ago, we reported on leaks and data from within Battlefield 6 that hinted the mode was coming soon and would shadow drop this week alongside the launch of Battlefield 6 Season 1 on October 28.

Well, it looks like that's the case with EA officially teasing the Battlefield Redsec, a free-to-play Battle Royale mode for Battlefield 6. Unfortunately, neither EA nor Battlefield Studios is providing details on the mode or how it will interact with the definitely not free-to-play Battlefield 6. Will it be a separate game title on Steam and other platforms? Time will tell.

As for the setting, the short teaser showcases four soldiers in a suburban setting with a downed plane in the background and plenty of palm trees. We also see soldiers parachuting in the distance, a Battle Royale staple: jumping out of an aircraft to reach the surface. The map itself could be a potential version of Season 1's California and Eastwood map, which was recently detailed as part of Season 1's new content.

The console wars have been declared as over - if you listen to Gamestop commenting on Halo becoming a cross-platform title - and according to an Xbox exec, this is very much the case, and Sony is no longer Microsoft's biggest competition.

Neither is Nintendo for that matter, and in an interview with The New York Times, the theory floated by Matt Booty, who is Head of Xbox Game Studios, is that it isn't another console that Microsoft is really competing against.

We touched on this in our earlier report, which pointed out that Booty said: "Our biggest competition isn't another console. We are competing more and more with everything from TikTok to movies."

UPDATE: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms the new Xbox will "innovate" on both console and PC form factors on a system level.

Microsoft is making a major departure with its next-gen console: sources tell Windows Central that the new Xbox will be a PC that mimics the console environment and plays all existing Xbox console games from gen 9 and below.

New reports indicate that Microsoft will make radical changes to its Xbox gaming business in the coming years. Sources tell Windows Central's Jez Corden that the new Xbox will be a PC running Windows with a traditional console "experience" layered on top. As was rumored and inferred, the special console-ized version of Xbox/Windows on the Xbox Ally X handheld was essentially a test for the new console.

GameStop has taken to X to declare that the "console wars" are over now that Halo is coming to PlayStation, and has jumped into taking a stab at the community.

In the X post, GameStop says that the console wars are over, adding that "for the past two decades, the global gaming community has been engaged in an ongoing and increasingly petty conflict known as The Console Wars". The company says that the conflict originated in the early 2000s with the release of Halo: Combat Evolved as an Xbox-exclusive title.

It was announced a few days ago that Halo would be coming to PlayStation in 2026 with cross-platform play, with GameStop adding that the company is "acting under its authority as a "Neural Entity and The World's Retail Gaming & Trade-in Destination, hereby declares the official cessation of the console wars".

A publication has obtained leaked screenshots of a God of War multiplayer game that will never see the light of day, and it shows we would have been returning to Greece.

The project was being led by Bluepoint Games, the developers behind the remakes of Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls, and while the God of War multiplayer title was never officially confirmed by Sony, it was rumored to be currently undergoing development. Now, renowned publication mp1st has acquired a selection of screenshots that reveal aspects of the now-canceled title.

Notably, Sony cut two live-service titles from its first-party studios at the beginning of the year; one of those was this multiplayer God of War title. According to the publication, PlayStation "lacked confidence" in the game's long-term viability following the market's rejection of the big-budget live-service failure, Concord. The screenshots show that Bluepoint Games was planning on returning to Greece for the setting of the title, as showcased by the classic Greek artifacts, temples, and pottery.

Microsoft just revealed two major products releasing on PlayStation 5 and Switch 2, and that cross-platform support will continue as Xbox breaks down exclusivity for good and all.

Xbox is being pressured by Microsoft execs to hit a 30% profit margin, and that means expanding sales. The high margin target is the main reason Xbox has chosen to break exclusivity on its first-party games and bring key franchises like Forza, Gears of War, and--more recently--Halo over to PlayStation for the first time ever. This trend will continue over time as Microsoft aims to "expand operating leverage" of the Xbox brand and "bring it closer to those of Microsoft's other lines of business."

In a recent interview with Japanese games magazine Famitsu, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer reaffirmed Microsoft's commitment to releasing more games on rival hardware like the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2.

Bethesda's Fallout Day celebration didn't glean any major new game sequels, but Todd Howard confirms that won't always be the case.

Instead of being a mini-E3 just for the Fallout franchise, this year's Fallout Day delivered some very predictable announcements. Based on last year's success with the TV show, we predicted Bethesda would release a Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition to capitalize on the game's 10th anniversary and season 2 of the show. That ended up happening, and Bethesda also revealed new updates to Fallout 76.

There was no Fallout 3 remastered, or mention of Fallout 5, but Bethesda's Todd Howard did tease future projects. Reports indicate that the studio is working on multiple Fallout projects, one of which is said to be Fallout 3 remastered, and the other may be the aforementioned Fallout 4 Anniversary, as Fallout 5 has not even entered pre-production; in the past, Howard has said that The Elder Scrolls VI will come before Fallout 5.

UPDATE: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms the new Xbox will "innovate" on both console and PC, seeming to confirm reports that the new Xbox will be a Windows 11-powered PC device that simulates a console experience.

The next Xbox console will be a first-party system designed by Microsoft, Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer tells Famitsu.

PC manufacturers like ASUS may be involved with the Xbox Ally X, but that apparently won't be the case for Microsoft's next-gen console lineup. In a new interview with Japanese games outlet Famitsu, Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer says that next first-party hardware will be considered the "next console." This is an interesting phrase that may tie into reports of the next Xbox also being able to launch Windows PC games.

Demanding profit targets have driven the radical shifts at Xbox, new reports from Bloomberg indicate.

Racked by overseas tariffs and economic disruption, the video games industry has collectively downsized in an effort to make sure profit margins don't sink too low. Xbox, which made a $68 billion acquisition just years ago, has responded aggressively in ways in which the FTC had previously warned--mass layoffs for workers and price hikes for consumers.

The economic squeeze comes at a time when Microsoft's executive management and board of directors demand the best from Xbox, which now owns Call of Duty and 19 other $1 billion+ grossing franchises. Sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier and Dina Bass that Xbox is expected to target a substantial 30% "accountability margin," which is Microsoft's internal accounting version of a profit margin.

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Grand Theft Auto parent company Take-Two Interactive, has a level-headed take on AI and cautions the industry to see it for what it really is--a tool, not a creative magic wand.

AI is here, and it's not going away. Artificial intelligence is finding its way in pretty much all forms of technology, especially media content production. Gaming companies are using AI in the hope of accelerating games development, which on the surface seems like wizardry, but one CEO dispels all the buzzword trickery and exposes the technology in a more practical lens.

That CEO is Strauss Zelnick, a businessman who's had more reserved, conservative, and reasonable public takes on key video games industry trends--especially artificial intelligence.

OLED pixel technology is the pinnacle when it comes to gaming monitors, and every year it's pushed to a new limit, whether it be advancements in the sub-pixel arrangement to stamp out common issues such as text fringing, or simply increasing the refresh rate beyond what is currently deemed the maximum. ASUS is working on the latter, at least for now.

ASUS's China General Manager has showcased what the company is currently working on behind the scenes, a new 720Hz OLED gaming monitor that uses LG's latest 4th generation WOLED panel. ASUS unveiled the monitor a few days ago, and it's called the ROG Super Kill 27 Pro. It's a dual-mode monitor, meaning it can switch between resolution and refresh rate at the push of a button. According to the specification slide, the ROG Super Kill 27 Pro is capable of 2560 x 1440p at 540Hz, and 720p at 720Hz.

To push these high refresh rates, ASUS has equipped the ROG Super Kill 27 with DisplayPort 2.1a with UHBR20, providing a total bandwidth of 80 Gbps for uncompressed video output. It should be noted that to take full advantage of DisplayPort 2.1a with UHBR20, an owner will need to have paired this monitor with a graphics card that also supports this bandwidth mode, such as a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series GPU, and also a DisplayPort 2.1a-certified cable.

Battlefield 6 is expected to receive its Battle Royale mode on October 28 as part of the Season 1 content drop, and now we are hearing that it will have proximity chat.

It seems that Battlefield Studios is leaning into the content-generation side of things when it comes to its upcoming Battle Royale mode for Battlefield 6, as prominent Battlefield 6 leaker and first-person shooter leaker ModernWarzone has said the mode will be launching with proximity chat.

For those who don't know, proximity chat has made for some of the funniest moments in Battle Royale games, particularly Warzone, where players are able to communicate over the microphone with enemies when they are within a relatively short distance of each other.

Battlefield 6 is getting a Battle Royale mode, and now data mining has revealed when Battlefield Studios will be making it public.

Previous leaks from ModernWarzone pointed to the Battlefield 6 Battle Royale mode arriving on the 28th of October, and now data mining has backed up that date, with strings of code found within the games API indicating the upcoming mode is scheduled to release during Season 1 on October 28. Notably, the code states the mode "Granite," which Insider Gaming has verified as being the Battle Royale mode.

Notably, for those who don't know, the Battlefield 6 Battle Royale mode is going to be free-to-play, and feature one of the deadliest ring ever released in a Battle Royale game. Touch it and you will be instantly dead. Despite multiple sources now pointing to the release of the Battlefield 6 Battle Royale mode being part of the Season 1 content update scheduled to release on October 28, take this information with a healthy amount of skepticism until the news is officially confirmed by Battlefield Studios.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has responded to a question about AI being used in the development of titles under the Xbox banner.

Spencer was on a panel with Double Fine Studio Head Tim Schafer at the Paley International Council Summit in Palo Alto, where he was asked about the involvement of AI at Xbox. Spencer confirmed that the new technology is in use at the publisher, but not in the way that you may think. According to Spencer, Xbox "mostly" uses AI for security purposes, specifically for moderating voice and text chat on Xbox Live, as the service has grown too large for humans to feasibly moderate.

The Xbox CEO did touch on the use of AI in game development, saying there isn't a "top-down mandate" that development studios operating under the Xbox banner must use AI throughout the creation of their game. Recent reports claimed the new Halo game is being developed with AI, which has also been refuted by insiders.

Xbox is officially done with exclusive games, and that includes the once console-defining Halo series.

The newly announced Halo: Campaign Evolved isn't the only Halo game coming to PlayStation. Halo Studios has officially confirmed that future games in the series will also arrive on PlayStation, lining up with previous rumors of a cross-platform Halo live multiplayer game.

"It's really a new era. Halo is on PlayStation, going forward, starting with Halo: Campaign Evolved. We're just kind of knocking down walls. We're going to come together, we're going to sing Kumbaya, it's going to be great--Blue and Great coming back together again," Halo Studios community director Brian Jarrard said during today's Halo World Championship 2025 stream.

25 years after its original release, and after decades of defining core Xbox exclusives, Halo is officially coming to PlayStation.

Today Xbox announced Halo: Campaign Evolved, a fully-fledged 4K remake of the original Halo game that's coming to consoles--including PS5--and PC in 2026. Like the name says, the remake is campaign only and does not include multiplayer.

The remake actually features content not available in the original game, as well as missions that haven't been seen in any Halo game before. Halo: Campaign Evolved has two prequel missions to play, as well as nine additional weapons, including the energy sword from Halo 2, the battle rifle from Halo 3, and the needle rifle from Halo Reach. Gamers can hijack vehicles in the Halo CE remake, pilot the wraith tank, and the game has a ton of extra skulls.

"Electronic Arts is excited to announce a partnership with Stability AI to co-develop transformative AI models, tools, and workflows that empower our artists, designers, and developers to reimagine how content is built," the official announcement reads.

As generative AI becomes a core part of workflows everywhere, EA and Stability AI's partnership involves much more than simply leveraging existing generative AI tools to generate art and other assets. EA notes that it already uses AI and machine learning to assist with development tasks such as animation, physics simulation, and pathfinding. EA confirms that the first significant initiative from this new partnership will be to assist in creating Physically Based Rendering (PBR) materials through artist-driven workflows.

PBR materials represent the objects and materials you see in a game, covering real-world things like metal, cloth, and how rain and other elements can affect their appearance and feel. PBR also refers to the ability to create realistic lighting and behavior, and it's one of the key reasons why cutting-edge tech like real-time ray-tracing can dramatically change how a game like Cyberpunk 2077 or EA's own Dragon Age: The Veilguard looks.

Xbox president Sarah Bond lays out the future of Xbox, reiterating Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's comments about game exclusivity: "I have no love for that world."

Xbox is done with exclusives. That felt like a clear observation to most fans when, in February 2024, Microsoft brought four Xbox exclusive games to PlayStation and Nintendo platforms. That Pandora's Box moment has grown, and Xbox opened the gates on its games, breaking down the walls of platform exclusivity for good and all. The plan has worked so far, as Forza Horizon 5 became a big hit on PS5 thanks to stored up FOMO.

So where does that leave Xbox? Prepare for more of the same, just magnified. Executive management re-confirms that exclusives are essentially gone at Microsoft, with Xbox president Sarah Bond going so far as to say that exclusives are "antiquated" in a recent interview with Mashable's Timothy Beck Werth.

Switch 2 owners will have to wait a little while longer before playing Elden Ring.

Nintendo's latest Switch 2 is a new frontier for games that couldn't launch on the original system, games like FromSoftware's ultra-popular Elden Ring. It feels challenging to cram the huge open-world action game into a handheld-native format. Apparently that's the case, as FromSoftware delayed Elden Ring Tarnished Edition from its original 2025 launch into an indefinite 2026 launch.

"While development on Elden Ring Tarnished Edition continues wholeheartedly toward release, we have decided to move the launch to 2026 to allow time for performance adjustments. We apologize to players looking forward to the game and thank you for your patience and support," FromSoftware said in the announcement.