Gaming

Ubisoft has quietly released PC system requirements for Rayman Legends Retold on the game's Steam news page, and they're far friendlier than you'd expect from a game built on a completely new engine compared to the 2013 original.

To achieve 60 FPS at 1080p on low settings with FSR or XeSS upscaling set to Quality, Ubisoft only demands an NVIDIA GTX 1660 (6GB) or AMD RX 5500 XT (4GB), both low-end GPUs from 2019, paired with just 8GB of RAM and a Core i3-8100 or Ryzen 3 3100 processor. Upgrading to 1080p high settings at 60 FPS brings it to an RTX 2060 SUPER, RX 5700, or Intel ARC A750, which is still reasonable by modern standards.

At 1440p, requirements bump to an RTX 3070 or RX 6750 XT, and its 4K Ultra tier is a different ballgame entirely, asking for an RTX 4080 or RX 7900 XTX, showing that Ultra settings ramp up much more aggressively than the basic experience does.

Meta is introducing generative AI tools that let users quickly and easily create, share, and play customized 2D and 3D games.

Meta has introduced new disruptive technology that could have long-reaching effects on the entertainment industry. The company has revealed specifics on its new Horizon Create and Studio tech, a suite of software tools that use generative AI to instantly create playable games. The interactive slices can then be shared on Facebook and Instagram.

"Horizon Create and Horizon Studio put all your workflows in one place. No exporting, no importing, no switching apps, no separate pipelines. It's a place where you can play what others have built and start creating in the moment,"said Horizon VP Saxs Persson.

Two prominent developers are using an unusual mix of technologies to hit a 60 FPS performance target in their Nintendo Switch 2 ports. Basically, the teams are combining NVIDIA's custom version of DLSS Super Resolution to hit 30 FPS, and then AMD's FSR 3.1 Frame Generation to run their games in an interpolated 60 FPS mode. The two games in question are Stellar Blade from Shift Up and Dragon's Dogma 2 from Capcom.

In Stellar Blade and Dragon's Dogma 2, Shift Up and Capcom both offer 30 FPS and 60 FPS modes. Digital Foundry discussed this in the latest Q+A episode of its DF Direct podcast, noting that the Nintendo Switch 2's Stellar Blade demo features this 60 FPS mode that blends DLSS with FSR Frame Generation, and the results are mixed at best.

They note that, naturally, the combination doesn't deliver an experience that feels like playing the game at 60 FPS, and it introduces issues with particles and animations rendered at 30 FPS that are then put through Frame Generation. Also, because the game is still technically rendered at 30 FPS, the controls and input latency still feel like you're playing at 30 FPS, and performance stutters and issues are more noticeable with Frame Generation than without.

Xbox has stepped in to clarify that it's actually quite happy about GTA 6's pre-orders on Xbox Series consoles, which may be healthily aligned with Microsoft's overall share of the console market.

A recent report from The Verge's Tom Warren, who has been quite accurate about Xbox's behind-the-scenes plans with past reports, mentioned that GTA 6 pre-orders were heavily skewed towards PS and that this was ringing alarm bells about the console ecosystem. Xbox CSO Matt Ball has responded, clarifying that Xbox is actually quite elated about GTA 6's pre-order performance on Xbox.

"We are very happy with GTA VI pre-orders. The title is breaking records for XBOX, we expect even more records will be broken throughout the fall, and our internal analysis shows our share of pre-orders to be matching our share of the console market,"Ball said on Twitter.

A fork of the KytyPS5 emulator called KytyPlus has rendered the Silent Hill 2 Remake boot screen on an integrated GPU, specifically an AMD Radeon 840M paired with a Ryzen AI 5 340 and around 15GB of shared RAM.

The game reached its content warning screen at around 4 FPS, held there for several minutes without crashing or producing visible corruption, and then the session was ended manually. No gameplay was tested. Audio and controller input were not evaluated.

This is a boot screen, not a playability claim, and the developer's own GitHub documentation frames it as experimental accordingly. FSR 1.0 support is present in KytyPlus, but the internal resolution reduction isn't connected yet, so that is another piece still being wired up.

Sony may be quietly reconsidering how firm its stance on ending physical PlayStation discs really is. According to leaker Tom of Moore's Law Is Dead, speaking on the Broken Silicon podcast, Sony recently sent developers what he describes as one of the largest surveys the company has ever distributed, and hidden inside it was a question hinting at whether studios see "an issue with how we sell games physically."

Tom argues the survey's existence and unusual scale suggest Sony may be checking whether enough resistance exists to justify some form of walk-back, even if only to some extent. He also hypothesised that the company could be weighing a "mea culpa" if developer feedback comes back strongly enough. However, he was careful to frame that as his own guess rather than anything official.

Marvel's Wolverine makes the theory even more interesting. The game reportedly moved around 1.9 million copies in its first three days, with roughly 23% of its $130 million launch revenue generated directly from disc sales. That's a significant chunk of revenue for a format Sony is already dead set on retiring, and it's not just limited to the company's latest exclusive. Data shows six of seven major first-party Sony titles sold between 32% and 47% of copies through physical retail.

Rockstar today revealed a $400 collector's edition-style merch box for GTA 6 that comes with some...interesting items including a replica coke spoon and a razorblade, but no actual copy of the game.

GTA 6's new unofficial collector's edition is up for pre-order now, and the $400 price tag positions it as a high-end and limited premium product. The merch box is called The Goodtime State Vice City Collection and comes with a ton of real-world goodies that are inspired by GTA 6's in-universe TV show, Macca the Gator.

Buyers will get their very own replica coke spoon--technically referred to as a swizzle stick--razorblade, and mirror combo, alongside wearable merch like sunglasses, a trucker hat, and a fanny pack. There's even a double-sided post with a map of Leonida on the back, so this might be Rockstar's way of continuing its tradition of releasing physical maps with every GTA disc release (unfortunately, GTA 6 will be the first game that ships disc-less).

Left 4 Dead writer and former Valve developer Chet Faliszek adds perspective to the current state of gaming, saying that teams are too big these days and it's leading to a lot of wasted time and money.

Valve is massive in terms of earnings and influence, but its teams are small compared to other publishers. The reality is that large teams often cause massive inefficiencies; having too many cooks can crowd the kitchen, so to speak. Having smaller, more agile teams with people who are all on the same page was the key to making games like Left 4 Dead.

Over on his YouTube channel, former Valve writer Chet Faliszek shares his industry take, expressing with first-hand experience as to how big game development teams can ultimately cause more problems than they solve. Faliszek's words ring with truth, especially as practically every game-making team in the industry has shed workers in an effort to reduce some of the very costs associated with things like wastage and indecision.

Xbox has restructured its business to find synergies within its studios. We've seen racing game studios Turn10 team up with Playground Games, and Bethesda is teaming up with Obsidian. On paper, the Fallout New Vegas studio will be under the organizational purview of Bethesda's publishing label.

Behind the scenes, though, not a whole lot is changing. According to a memo acquired by Aftermath, Bethesda has no plans to dispel Obsidian's magic; the studio's leadership teams will remain. The changes are "primarily a change in reporting structure," Bethesda president Jill Braff says in the memo. This is interesting because ZeniMax Media technically joined Microsoft under a limited-integration merger, which means Bethesda itself has a certain level of autonomy.

The Bethesda president affirms that Obsidian won't have its creative identity or creative strengths altered or shifted by management. Obsidian's current CEO, Feargus Urquhart, will stay on to lead Obsidian--the only change now is that Obsidian reports directly to Bethesda, instead of maybe someone like Xbox Game Studios lead Matt Booty.

New specification details for AMD's next-generation RDNA 5 "AT2" GPU have emerged from Kepler_L2 on the Anandtech forums, a leaker with a strong track record on AMD's roadmap. In a September 23 post, Kepler_L2 shared the new AT2 specs, which appear to be a significant step up from AMD's current flagship, the Radeon RX 9070 XT. An earlier post from the same leaker also said AT2 will be the only new GPU AMD or NVIDIA will sell in 2027, with the rest of both companies' next-gen releases delayed to 2028.

Looking at the specs, AT2 is reportedly built with 70 compute units, six more than the RX 9070 XT's 64, a 9.375% increase on paper. Kepler_L2 also claims that RDNA 5 targets clock speeds between 3.1 and 3.4GHz, which would be 4.3% to 14.4% higher than the RX 9070 XT, depending on the exact bin. Together, those increases put AT2 somewhere between 14% and 25.1% faster than the RX 9070 XT, and that's before AMD's rumored architectural improvements to ray tracing and AI workloads are even considered.

Microsoft's new and upcoming "Project Helix" console is also rumored to use 68 of 70 available AT2 compute units, closely linking the hardware to next-gen Xbox consoles and AMD's PC lineup. Separately, other leakers have reported that AT2's AI rendering hardware could reach RTX 5080-class performance, though that comes from a different leaker, expanding on Kepler_L2's numbers, and remains unconfirmed by AMD.

While gamers struggle to keep up with rising prices on current-gen consoles, details about next-gen hardware are already piling up on the other side. The latest comes from prominent AMD leaker KeplerL2.

Posting on NeoGAF, Kepler confirmed that the chips powering both the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix have taped out. Tape-out means the final chip design has been submitted to manufacturing, effectively locking in the hardware. At this stage, major specification changes are essentially off the table. Minor silicon revisions can still happen if testing surfaces bugs, but the overall architecture and capabilities are fixed.

Along with the tape-out confirmation, Kepler shared GPU compute estimates. The PS6 comes in at 40 TFLOPS and Xbox Helix at 56 TFLOPS, giving Microsoft a roughly 40% theoretical advantage on paper. For context, the PS5 sits at 10.28 TFLOPS, the PS5 Pro at 16.7, and the Xbox Series X at around 12. Previous rumours pointed to 80 TFLOPS of FP32 performance for the PS6 and RTX 5080-beating performance, but as we said before, that was likely a double count of RDNA 5's Dual Issue capability.

Map images alone make it hard to grasp how big Vice City in GTA 6 will actually be, but a new video shared on r/GTA6 by u/HawkGuy gives fans the clearest sense of scale yet. Instead of placing two maps side by side, the video overlays the outline of Los Santos onto a reconstructed version of Vice City, and the difference is striking. Vice City appears to swallow up the space Los Santos occupies.

Based on the shared video, Vice City's land area, excluding water, comes in at about 16.6 km², spanning roughly 4.07 km by 4.07 km. Los Santos in GTA 5, measured at the same scale, covers around 9.1 km², or about 3.02 km by 3.02 km. That makes Vice City's city footprint nearly twice the size of Los Santos on land area alone, before accounting for anything outside the city limits.

It is worth noting that the Vice City outline used in the video is not extracted from an official Rockstar map. It is based on the community-run GTA 6 Mapping project, so the actual proportions might look different once Rockstar's real in-game map is available. The video also compares only the two named cities directly, ignoring that GTA 6's full map extends far beyond Vice City alone, covering large parts of the fictional state of Leonida, just as GTA 5's map expanded into the rural expanse of Blaine County.

id today announced surprise changes to Quake Champions amid Xbox's new layoffs and restructuring plans.

Quake Champions has dropped its free-to-play status and is now being sold as a paid game on Steam. The pricing is pretty reasonable, with the online shooter listed at $9.99, and id has also removed all paid microtransactions from the game while unlocking all playable characters and cosmetics from the store.

Existing players are grandfathered into the free-ninety-nine price tag, meaning if you played Quake Champions F2P, you can still play this version for free. "We're transitioning Quake Champions from a free-to-play game to a paid title on Steam only. Good news to anyone who's played the game on Steam: you've already been automatically upgraded to this paid version for free!"

Rebel Wolves is preparing the first major post-launch patch for The Blood of Dawnwalker, and game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz laid out much of what's coming in a chat with Eurogamer. The update is expected in early October, though there's no confirmed date yet.

The headline change is a new, easier difficulty tier. The current Story mode is getting renamed, likely to something like "Demanding," and a brand new Story setting will take its place as the easiest option in the game. That leaves five tiers total once it ships: Story, Demanding, Fair, Challenging, and Duelist. Tomaszkiewicz said the team heard from a lot of players who wanted an option focused purely on the narrative without the combat getting in the way.

Speaking of combat, that's getting tweaked too. Right now, stunning an enemy causes the camera to snap to a different target immediately, which players haven't been fond of. After the patch, that switch will only kick in after three consecutive hits. Escape mechanics are also being reworked, with a nav-mesh fix meant to make fleeing feel less clunky, and aggressive wildlife will be toned down so animals won't relentlessly chase players down.

Steam has added a new codec to its Remote Play streaming feature that was made by a single person from scratch, aimed specifically at reducing latency for game streaming across two PCs on a local network. The new codec is called Pyrowave, and requires at least 100Mbps of bandwidth to operate through Steam's game streaming Remote Play feature.

Pyrowave reportedly uses five to ten times the amount of bandwidth other streaming codecs use, but runs with an "extremely low" end-to-end latency on a good network, using the GPU to encode/decode each frame. Exact performance numbers were not given, but it is very likely Pyrowave provides lower latency than AV1 and H.265, two codecs that Remote Play already supports. Pyrowave also supports YUV 4:4:4 and HDR, keeping its functionality on par with AV1 and H.265.

For perspective, typical recommended bitrates for AV1 encoding range from 4Mbps to 50Mbps for 1080p, 1440p, and 4K video encoding and decoding. But with Pyrowave, the minimum bitrate you can set in Steam is reportedly 100 Mbps, with a maximum bitrate of 500Mbps.

Xbox is getting its own platinum trophy equivalent, and it's called the mythic achievement.

Microsoft is entreating Xbox fans with more ecosystem milestones, this time in the form of updated achievements. The new mythic achievement will be unlocked when a player 100% masters a game, completes all of its achievements, and attains max gamerscore. This update will add a new dimension to "cheevo hunting," a longtime practice of racking up Xbox gamerscore.

The info was actually found via the Xbox app, and Microsoft hasn't revealed official details about the mythic achievement just yet. These systems are a way to keep players engaged in games and content in a tangible, quantifiable way that can be shared and celebrated within Xbox social circles. Microsoft's new approach with Xbox is to deepen relationships with fans by giving them what they want and paying close attention to feedback.

New reports from a Halo leaker with a proven track record say that Activision's surprise Halo game will be a reboot.

Xbox is changing. Following years of controversial Halo releases, Xbox has now handed Halo over to Activision. The house of Call of Duty is taking this Mantle of Responsibility seriously--Activision says they want to make the best Halo game in the series. So...what does that look like?

Activision's new Halo game will reboot the series in some way, says insider TechnicalHalo, whose Halo leaks have been accurate in the past. "This is a reboot, a new chapter, lore is not going to be continued," they said on Twitter.

Undead Labs has made the unfortunate decision to conduct a "significant amount" of layoffs following its split from Microsoft.

State of Decay developer Undead Labs is now free from Xbox. They're an independent developer now and can run their own business. Microsoft chose to divest key studios like Undead Labs rather than shut them down, giving groups opportunities to find new deals with other partners. While Undead Labs has found a publisher for State of Decay 3, the Seattle-based studio is still making drastic cuts to stay operational.

"Undead Labs is becoming an independent, employee-owned studio. Unfortunately, today we are also saying goodbye to a significant number of our colleagues. It's difficult to reach this moment knowing that not everyone who helped get us here gets to make the rest of the journey with us," the studio writes on LinkedIn.

Ahead of Modern Warfare 4's October 22 launch, Activision's Team Ricochet published a breakdown of the global video game cheat economy. Citing research from threat intelligence firm Intorqa, it estimates the industry at between $5.1 billion and $13.8 billion annually, with a median of $8.5 billion.

Cheat subscriptions across just 15 popular titles generate around $3.5 billion per year. The remaining $5 billion comes from account trading, boosting services, hardware ID spoofers, and evasion tools, all sold through organized distributor networks that Activision describes as a "sprawling multi-billion-dollar marketplace". One case involved a single cheat developer earning an estimated $77 million from a service targeting one game.

Cheating tools aren't limited to simple aimbots and wallhacks anymore. DMA-based cheating hardware, external manipulation devices like Cronus, XIM, and Titan, generative AI-assisted cheats, and real-time problem-solving tools are all part of the modern cheating toolkit. Account theft has also become a significant business in its own right, with one in three gamers reporting their account was hacked within the last two years. The ongoing wave of bans has created strong demand for stolen accounts, Ranked Play-ready accounts, and boosting services.

At one point things were so bad that SEGA almost pulled the plug on Sonic the Hedgehog as a franchise.

It's hard to imagine SEGA without Sonic, but a recent interview with One More Game, Sonic series producer Takashi Iizuka reveals that he actually had to fight SEGA from cancelling the game series.

"There had been good times, and there had been bad times... during the worst times, I was told by the higher-ups that we should cancel the entire franchise. I had to fight within the organization to keep the franchise as long as possible," Iizuka, who has been working on the franchise since the 1990s, told the publication.