Gaming - Page 96

Microsoft is experiencing backlash after announcing a price hike for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate by 50%, and now the director of gaming and platform communications for Microsoft has come out to defend the decision to increase the price of the subscription.

Dustin Blackwell spoke to The Verge regarding the 50% price increase on the Ultimate subscription plan, and said that Microsoft understands that a price increase is "never fun for anybody," but Microsoft is attempting to make swallowing the hike easier by adding more value to Game Pass Ultimate. Blackwell admits the backlash from the community is "something we don't take lightly" and that "we're listening to the feedback of players and the community".

What value is Microsoft bringing to the new, now-overhauled Game Pass tiers? Blackwell explained that Microsoft has decided to give subscribers access to more than 75 day one releases each year, which is a "50 percent increase over the day one titles we provided last year." In addition to day-one access to titles, Blackwell pointed to additions to Game Pass such as Ubisoft+ Classics and Fortnite Crew.

A new leak has suggested that Sony is working on a new PS5 DualSense wireless controller that will feature a removable battery, which is slated to be released sometime this year.

The rumors come from the publication PPE, which, to add some credibility to the source, predicted the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 coming to the PS5. As for the new controller, the publication states the new DualSense controller, internally referred to as the "DualSense V3" will launch alongside a revised PS5 Pro in November, and replace current PS5 controllers.

While the controller will be very much identical to current PS5 controllers, the big difference the DualSense V3 will be ushering in will be a removable battery, which, if true, means Sony has taken a page out of Microsoft's book with its Xbox controllers. For those who don't know, current PS5 controllers come with a built-in rechargeable battery that gets power through a USB cable or docking station. However, these rechargeable batteries aren't removable.

Xbox Cloud Gaming is no longer in beta, entering v1.0 and is now being carved up in various Game Pass subscription tiers.

Xbox has achieved a major milestone as its cloud game streaming service has now officially launched. The news was included in today's Xbox Game Pass restructuring announcement, which saw Game Pass Ultimate increase by 50% to $30 per month.

Microsoft is bringing cloud streaming to all Game Pass tiers, but it's also treating the user experience as a commodity to leverage added value. Each of the Game Pass tiers has different wait times--cloud gaming isn't instant, at least maybe not any more--with the Ultimate tier getting priority fast-lane treatment. Ultimate has shortest wait times at the best quality (up to 1440p), Premium has shorter wait times, and Essential, the cheapest tier, is the slowest. All three clearly mention "unlimited cloud gaming," but the experience will differ among each.

Microsoft has announced a significant price hike for Game Pass, along with an overhaul of the names of each tier, which follows the company's increase in the price of Xbox consoles.

The three tiers are now referred to as Essential, Premium, and Ultimate. As for the price hike, Microsoft has specifically targeted Game Pass Ultimate, which is now $29.99/month, or $360 per year. This price hike is accompanied by a rebranding of the Game Pass tiers, with "Core" now renamed "Essential" and "Standard" renamed "Premium".

Notably, when Game Pass Ultimate first launched in June 2019, it was priced at $14.99, which increased to $16.99 in July 2023, then to $19.99 in July 2024, and is now $29.99 as of October 2025. Ultimate has doubled in price since launch.

When it comes to cloud gaming, which involves streaming games over a network to a wide range of devices, the two names that consistently come up regarding game support, features, and overall quality are NVIDIA's GeForce NOW and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming. Other services exist, like Amazon Luna (which is available for Prime members), which is relaunching as a cloud gaming platform "for everyone."

This means that, in addition to being able to stream modern titles like EA SPORTS FC 25, Assassin's Creed: Shadows, and Fortnite, Amazon Luna is being "completely redesigned and reimagined" to support a renewed focus on social party games that don't require traditional hardware, such as a controller, to play.

These new cloud-gaming experiences will be located in a new section called GameNight, which will feature a collection of these "social party games" where your smartphone serves as the controller. "All GameNight games are designed to be played together with family and friends for maximum laughter and connection," Amazon writes in the announcement.

Ubisoft's new Tencent-backed subsidiary is named Vantage Studios, and it will oversee the company's largest-value assets.

Today, Ubisoft revealed Vantage Studios, the new group that will lead the future development of high-value Ubisoft franchises including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. The subsidiary was formed as part of a billion-dollar partnership between Ubisoft and Tencent; in exchange for a substantial $1.2 billion investment, Tencent would receive 25% stake in this new subsidiary, whose assets were valued in excess of $4 billion at the time.

"Following the recent announcement of Ubisoft's new subsidiary and its two co-CEOs, the company today announced the launch of Vantage Studios, the newly created "creative house" now responsible for some of Ubisoft's largest franchises: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. Led by Charlie Guillemot and Christophe Derennes, Vantage Studios will take on development and expansion of these brands, building on the foundation of Ubisoft's experience and expertise, sharing services and technical resources, all while giving developers more hands-on control over the games they are building."

Microsoft has announced another price hike for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate since launch, and the service is now $30 a month or $360 per year.

Game Pass Ultimate is becoming more expensive, and it's happening right before the release of Black Ops 7. Microsoft today announced a Game Pass rebrand, raising prices of its top-tier Ultimate subscription along the way.

This is the third price increase for Game Pass Ultimate; since it was released in 2019, the cost of a monthly Game Pass Ultimate subscription has increased by 100%, from $14.99 per month in July 2019 to $29.99 per month in October 2025.

Battlefield Studios has just announced that Battlefield 6 Season 1 will kick off on October 28, providing gamers with free new content. Let's dive into it.

Season 1 starts on October 28 with Rogue Ops, which features a new map called Blackwell Fields, a new 4v4 mode called Strikepoint, and some new weapons. The second phase starts on November 18 with California Resistance, featuring a new map called Eastwood that's located in Southern California, as well as a new 8v8 mode called Sabotage. Meanwhile, the final phase of Season 1 is called Winter Offensive and begins on December 9, including a new seasonal map update to Empire State and a themed event.

Blackwell Fields includes support for all combat sizes, land, and air vehicles, with the backstory being that at the end of the single player campaign of Battlefield 6, double agents from antagonist faction Pax Armata launch a bunch of attacks on NATO targets, starting at the recommissioned American air base in the California badlands.

BioWare veteran Mark Darrah, known for being a producer across the Dragon Age games, has posted a new video discussing EA's $55 billion private acquisition, saying BioWare's future is very uncertain as the games the studio makes the new company may not be interested in producing any more.

Darrah explains in the new video seen above that EA is now not incentivized to take risks, and the company's focus could now switch to generating as much revenue as possible, especially considering the $55bn acquisition, $36bn is in equity with the remaining $20bn in JPMorgan debt, which EA is required to cover. With looming debt and new owners, Darrah suggests that EA will probably be very hesitant to greenlight the revival of dormant IPs it has under its belt, and may decide to sell off a bunch of them to shave off debt.

The BioWare veteran also suggested EA could close down some of its existing studios, or even sell them off to other publishers. Darrah even went as far as to say that EA could simply sell off all of EA Entertainment to a buyer with "deep pockets," leaving just EA Sports for the publisher to focus on. Ultimately, Darrah says he doesn't know what EA is going to do exactly, but "It's incredibly unlikely that EA stays exactly as it currently is in a private structure, especially carrying £20bn worth of debt".

If you thought your standard Game Pass subscription would give you access to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 when it releases, that sadly isn't going to be the case, as some fine print indicates Black Ops 7 is locked behind a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, and won't be available on Day One to Essential and Premium subscribers.

This seemingly small but vital piece of information may be something many gamers didn't realize when signing up for Game Pass ahead of the Black Ops 7 release, as it only states in a few places that an Ultimate subscription is required for access to the latest Call of Duty title. One place where it's stated is in a recent X post by the official Xbox Game Pass account, where it reads at the bottom of the image in fine print, "*Excludes Call of Duty titles. **Requires Game Pass Ultimate."

Why this might be confusing for some is that many gamers pick up Game Pass when a new big title releases to be able to play it at launch, as it's much cheaper to buy Game Pass than to purchase the full game. Day One releases are included in both Game Pass tiers, but Call of Duty games are excluded from the lower tiers of Game Pass and are exclusive only to Game Pass Ultimate.

Achievement and trophy hunters will be glad to know the full list of to-dos has been released for Battlefield 6, and there will be 42 boxes to check off.

Battlefield 6 launches on October 10, and while most players will be heading straight to the all-out warfare of multiplayer, some will be working their way through the achievement and trophy list. Luckily, that full list has already been released by Battlefield Studios, which outlines the majority of what players will need to do to earn the achievements and trophies.

Notably, PlayStation 5 players will have a 43rd trophy to unlock, and that is, of course, the famed Platinum Trophy, which is awarded after all other trophies are obtained. Battlefield Studios didn't reveal the description for all of the achievements within its post on the official Battlefield X account, as some are labelled "Classified" and "Top Secret".

Bethesda's Fallout 76 is getting a massive new update and expansion this December with the release of Fallout 76: Burning Springs. Not only is it the most significant update to the game since 2020's well-received Wastelanders overhaul that added NPCs to the game, but it features an impressive tie-in with the popular Amazon Prime Video TV series.

Yes, players will have the opportunity to engage with one of the breakout characters from the show, The Ghoul, voiced by Walton Goggins and featuring his post-apocalyptic likeness. The big selling point for Fallout 76: Burning Springs is that it introduces a brand-new region to explore, post-apocalyptic Ohio.

This "war-torn desert landscape" will see players battle Deathclaws and Raiders, while introducing new factions, quests, and activities, including fishing. As for The Ghoul, he'll engage with players as part of the new Bounty Hunting missions that will send players on bounty hunting missions throughout the Burning Springs for rewards that include the character's iconic gun from the TV show.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is right around the corner, and in this year's upcoming title, players will be able to copy the weapon build directly from the kill cam.

If you have played Call of Duty, you know the feeling of being absolutely gunned down within a matter of seconds by an enemy opponent, and sometimes it happens so quickly or so impressively fast that you are curious what weapon could cause so much damage.

Black Ops 7 will enable players to not only view the weapon the enemy was wielding, but also copy the exact loadout via a shareable weapon build code. Players will be able to import the code from the kill cam and add it to their own loadout, saving time manually going into all of the attachments and making sure all of the same ones are equipped.

EA is going private in a megaton $55 billion deal--the largest leveraged buyout in history. The publisher could become very different in the coming years as a result of the deal, as the new buyout comes with high levels of debt and responsibility.

When EA goes private in the current deal, the company will be saddled with $20 billion in debt, with JPMorgan making a standalone commitment to raise funds. According to new reports from Bloomberg, the loan is expected to have a single-B rating, indicating a risky loan with higher interest rates.

There's speculation that the new privately-owned EA will tighten its belt even more in order to pay back this debt, which could lead to more layoffs, project cancellations, and hasten the work towards direct-to-consumer AI implementation.

Halo Studios confirms the next Halo game will be revealed at this year's Halo World Championships in October.

Halo is making a triumphant return to the mainstream. Last year, 343 Industries rebranded into Halo Studios and announced multiple new Halo games built in Unreal Engine 5. Next month, the studio will finally show off their creations to the world.

Halo Studios had already confirmed more than one game was in the works, and reports indicate that the games include a Halo CE Remake with new-and-improved mechanics like sprint, and an always-online multiplayer game. Both of these titles are expected to be cross-platform, but the Halo CE Remake may be campaign-only and not feature multiplayer.

Capcom has made it clear that when Windows 10 reaches its imminent end-of-support deadline in mid-October, Monster Hunter games are also shuffling off into the realm of unsupported software.

PC Gamer spotted Capcom's announcement on Steam, which states that the publisher will "no longer guarantee" that titles from the Monster Hunter franchise will run okay on Windows 10 going forward.

In other words, Capcom's coders will be tinkering away and might break something for Windows 10 gamers, but they won't know that, because the Monster Hunter programmers will not be testing or checking these games on Windows 10.

The developers behind Terminator 2D: No Fate have blamed President Trump's trade tariffs for the title now being delayed.

Terminator 2D: No Fate was scheduled to release on October 31, but now its launch is being pushed back to November 26, with the developers of the title, Reef Entertainment, writing in a statement that due to the ongoing global trade tariff changes shipments of the components for the Day One and Collector's Edition have been delayed. Reef Entertainment has delayed the launch of Terminator 2D: No Fate as it intends on releasing all editions of the game at the same time.

President Trump's trade tariffs have had a widespread effect on the gaming industry, with Xbox recently announcing another price hike of its consoles, marking the second price increase in the same year, while Sony followed suit as well with a price hike of its consoles.

If you ask fans of both the original and the sequel, Blizzard's StarCraft franchise has been missing in action for far too long. Unlike Warcraft, which has successfully transitioned from its RTS roots into the world of massively multiplayer games, mobile experiences, movies, and competitive card games, StarCraft has rarely moved beyond its RTS origins.

Which is why it's always exciting to see news from Blizzard with StarCraft in the title, even if it's the announcement that the sci-fi franchise is crossing over into the world of another Blizzard IP, Diablo. Yes, the studio has just released a batch of new premium paid-for skins for Diablo 4 inspired by the iconic characters, races, and units of the StarCraft universe.

'The Rebel Marshal' skin for the Barbarian sees the melee-focused character get a Terran makeover inspired by Jim Raynor. The 'Overqueen of the Swarm' skin for the Necromancer class takes its inspiration from Broodmother and the second-in-command of the Zerg Swarm, while the 'Queen of Blades' skin for the Spiritborn takes its inspiration from the Queen of Blades herself, Sarah Kerrigan.

NVIDIA's Audio2Face technology is a part of its push to create lifelike or realistic 3D avatars powered by generative AI. As part of the pipeline, Audio2Face enables the creation of realistic digital characters that can be used for games or even customer service agents by leveraging generative AI for real-time facial animation. You can see it in action in the video below.

Audio2Face works by taking a speech audio track to create an animation by analyzing speech patterns and sounds, as well as the emotion or intonation. The latter is crucial, as it helps separate Audio2Face from simple lip synching, as the animation attempts to capture and visualize the emotional intent or details in the speech audio track.

For game developers, Audio2Face could become an invaluable tool for animating numerous digital characters - speeding up development time and opening the door to a new level of fidelity for smaller teams. And with that, NVIDIA has announced that it is open-sourcing the Audio2Face models and SDK so that "every game and 3D application developer can build and deploy high-fidelity characters with cutting-edge animations."

Electronic Arts just announced plans to go private in the largest leveraged buyout in gaming history. EA CEO Andrew Wilson, who will stay on to lead the publisher after the deal, tells employees this is a "new era of opportunity."

EA will soon be under private ownership. Saudi Arabia's PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners raised $55 billion to buy all Electronic Arts shares at a $210 premium, and if approved, the deal would take EA private.

One of the conditions of the deal was that Andrew Wilson would continue as CEO. A new memo from Wilson may give clues on the direction that this new EA will take moving forward, as Wilson's words can typically add vital context into what's on the horizon (for example, EA's four main business tenants, Play, Watch, Create, and Connect, were first revealed by Wilson).