Category: Gaming

Discord Nitro subscribers will receive a starter edition of Xbox Game Pass at no additional charge under a new partnership with Microsoft, adding a substantial gaming benefit to the paid chat and community service as both companies compete for deeper engagement among players.The offer gives eligible Nitro members access to more than 50 PC and console games, along with 10 hours of Xbox Cloud Gaming each month. The catalogue includes titles such as Fallout 4, Stardew Valley, DayZ, Deep Rock

Sony’s PlayStation business booked a $765 million impairment charge tied to Bungie, sharply weakening fourth-quarter profit even as the games division delivered record full-year operating income.The charge, recorded against Bungie’s intangible and other assets, amounted to ¥120.1 billion for the year ended 31 March 2026. It included ¥31.5 billion in the second quarter and a larger ¥88.6 billion hit in the fourth quarter, turning the acquisition of the Destiny studio into a more costly test of Sony’s live-service strategy.Game &

Nintendo plans to lift Switch 2 prices in Japan, the United States, Canada and Europe this year as rising component costs and softer profit guidance cloud the outlook for its flagship console cycle.Kyoto-based Nintendo said the Japanese-language Switch 2 would rise to ¥59,980 from ¥49,980, a 20 per cent increase, while price increases in North America and Europe are scheduled to take effect from September 1. The move comes as the company forecast operating profit of ¥370 billion, about $2.4

Blizzard has returned Warcraft III’s legacy client to Battle. net, giving owners of the game direct access to the original The Frozen Throne 1.29 build without requiring a Warcraft III: Reforged installation to launch it. The move reopens an official route to a version of the landmark real-time strategy title that many players believed had been effectively buried after the troubled 2020 remaster.Players can now select “Warcraft III - Legacy TFT 1.29” through the Game Version dropdown on the

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has won Best Game at the BIG Festival Awards during Gamescom Latam 2026, strengthening Sandfall Interactive’s claim to one of the most striking debut successes in modern role-playing games.The French studio’s title also took Best Sound at the São Paulo ceremony, giving it two honours at a festival that has become a major showcase for Latin American and international game development. The awards formed part of Gamescom Latam, where organisers selected 81 titles for the BIG

GamesIndustry. biz is set to return to Brazil next week to cover Gamescom Latam in São Paulo, as the event prepares for a five-day run from April 29 to May 3 at the Anhembi District, with April 29 reserved as a VIP day before the main public programme opens. The trip places the publication back at one of the gaming sector’s fastest-expanding regional gatherings, at a time when Latin America is drawing closer attention from publishers, developers and investors seeking

Forza Horizon 6 has reportedly crossed 500,000 pre-sold copies on Steam with about a month still to run before its full launch, a figure that, if borne out, would mark one of the strongest pre-release performances yet for a first-party Xbox racing title on Valve’s platform. The game is officially due on 19 May 2026 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Steam and Game Pass, with Premium Edition buyers getting early access from 15 May, while a PlayStation 5

Jagex is preparing to take RuneScape: Dragonwilds into the Asia-Pacific market later this summer, extending the survival-crafting spin-off beyond its existing footprint and giving the long-running franchise a new test of international reach as it marks its 25th year. The Cambridge-based developer said the game will launch in Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean, a move it described as the most significant international expansion in its history.Dragonwilds heads east this summer comes at a moment when Jagex is trying to

Microsoft has given its clearest account yet of how it plans to build the next Xbox, saying the teams that make its games are working alongside the engineers shaping Project Helix, the company’s next-generation console. The approach, outlined by Xbox Chief Content Officer Matt Booty, signals a tighter link between hardware and software as Microsoft tries to define what an Xbox machine should be in a market increasingly blurred by PC gaming, subscriptions and cross-device play.Booty said Xbox’s development

Britain has begun rolling out a £30 million Games Growth Package, opening a new phase of public support for the video games sector with £28.5 million channelled through the UK Games Fund and a further £1.5 million set aside for the London Games Festival over the next three years. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said applications to the fund opened on 14 April, with ministers presenting the move as part of a wider industrial strategy aimed at lifting

Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto VI is heading towards a 19 November 2026 release, but the loudest conversation around the title this month is not coming from the studio’s official marketing. It is being driven by a new wave of leak claims and online speculation that suggest major changes to the game’s story structure, character dynamics and wider design, even as Rockstar itself has confirmed only a limited set of details through its trailers, website and parent company statements.At

 Roblox has agreed to a $12 million settlement with Nevada and is rolling out broader child safety and age-checking measures across its platform, as the gaming company faces mounting scrutiny over how it protects young users from harmful contact and unsuitable content. The deal, announced this week, combines payments for youth programmes and safety initiatives with product changes that Roblox says will apply nationwide by June.The settlement stems from claims by Nevada that Roblox had not done enough to shield

Microsoft’s games division is facing fresh pressure over the cost of Xbox Game Pass after reports said Microsoft Gaming chief Asha Sharma told staff the service had “become too expensive for players”, signalling a possible rethink of one of the company’s most important consumer bets. Sharma’s appointment as executive vice-president and chief executive of Microsoft Gaming was announced by Microsoft on 20 February, giving added weight to the reported remarks even though they emerged through a leaked internal memo rather

Rockstar Games has confirmed that a data breach affected company information, saying a “limited amount of non-material company information” was accessed through a third-party incident and that the episode has had no impact on its operations or players. The disclosure lands at a sensitive moment for one of the world’s most closely watched game developers, with Grand Theft Auto VI still one of the industry’s biggest commercial events on the horizon.The company’s wording appears designed to calm investors, business

Amazon has drawn a hard line under Amazon Luna’s experiment with digital game sales, ending the purchase of standalone titles on the cloud platform and stripping out third-party store access and subscriptions as it pushes the service towards a fully subscription-led model. The change took effect on April 10, with Amazon saying users will no longer be able to buy individual games through Luna or sign up to outside subscriptions such as Ubisoft+ through the service.The shift goes further

Sony Pictures has handed fresh momentum to its long-gestating Metal Gear Solid film, attaching directing duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein to steer the adaptation of Konami’s espionage franchise, a move that signals the studio is trying again to bring one of gaming’s most cinematic properties to the big screen after years of stalled development. Trade reports say the project is set up at Columbia Pictures, with Avi Arad and Ari Arad producing, though no release date, start of

Gunzilla Games, the studio behind blockchain-linked shooter Off The Grid and the new owner of Game Informer, has been accused by current and former workers of failing to pay salaries for months, opening a fresh controversy around one of gaming’s more closely watched independent publishers. Multiple reports published on April 8 and April 9 said staff and contractors alleged they had gone unpaid since late 2025, while the company’s chief executive publicly pushed back on the claims and said the

Take-Two Interactive has reportedly cut its artificial intelligence team in a move that jars with the company’s own public language on generative AI and raises fresh questions about how one of the world’s biggest games publishers plans to use the technology ahead of a packed release slate. Reports over the past few days said the publisher removed its head of AI, Luke Dicken, along with other members of the group, while the company itself has not issued a formal public

Bit Reactor founder Greg Foertsch has praised Lucasfilm Games and Respawn Entertainment for backing Star Wars Zero Company, saying the decision to build a turn-based tactics title around one of entertainment’s biggest franchises stood out at a time when much of the games business is leaning towards safer, more familiar ideas. Foertsch said the two companies showed “vision and the courage and the conviction” by trusting a new studio with a genre they had not tackled before.The remarks come

Coffee Stain has shut its mobile-focused Malmö studio, ending a unit that was set up to bring the company’s irreverent game brands to phones and tablets and leaving fresh questions over how the newly listed Swedish group intends to handle mobile development. The closure was disclosed by Daniel Persson, the company’s vice-president of mobile, who said Coffee Stain had decided to close the office in Malmö and that his chapter leading the team had come to an end.The decision

Rec Room, the social VR platform that once stood among the most closely watched bets on the so-called metaverse economy, will shut down on June 1, 2026, ending a decade-long run that drew more than 150 million players but failed to produce a sustainable business. The Seattle-based company said the service will go offline at noon Pacific time after years of trying to turn broad user engagement into reliable profit.Platform’s final shutdown date setRec Room said popularity alone did not

Blippo+ has arrived as one of the stranger releases to gain traction across independent gaming, presenting itself not as a conventional narrative title but as a faux television service from an alien world. Built around channel surfing, short-form live-action broadcasts and a deliberately warped retro aesthetic, the project has drawn attention for turning the language of late-20th-century television into an interactive spectacle that feels equal parts parody, art installation and game.Published by Panic and developed by YACHT, Telefantasy Studios and

Ziff Davis has struck a new licensing agreement to launch a dedicated French edition of IGN, extending the global reach of its gaming and entertainment media brand through a partnership with European publisher eMense.The deal will see eMense operate IGN France under licence, marking the latest step in Ziff Davis’s strategy to scale its media properties internationally without direct ownership of local operations. The move builds on an existing relationship between the two companies, with eMense already managing regional editions

Capcom’s latest instalment in its long-running survival horror franchise signals a decisive break from its own mythology, as Resident Evil Requiem dismantles legacy narratives to reposition the series for a new era.Requiem arrives with a clear narrative intent: to close the chapter on a sprawling continuity that has grown increasingly complex since the early 2000s. By directly confronting the consequences of Resident Evil 6, the game reframes what had once been seen as an overextension of the franchise into a

A fresh controversy has emerged in the video game industry after a former Blizzard president argued that players should accept the growing use of artificial intelligence in game development, intensifying an already polarised debate over creativity, labour, and the future of digital entertainment.The remarks followed criticism directed at developers of Crimson Desert, who had apologised after acknowledging the use of AI-generated elements. The apology triggered widespread discussion among players and industry professionals, with concerns ranging from job displacement to the

Savvy Games Group has agreed to acquire Moonton, the mobile gaming studio behind the widely played title Mobile Legends, from ByteDance in a deal valued at about $6 billion, marking a significant expansion of Saudi Arabia’s ambitions in the global gaming industry.The transaction underscores a strategic push by Savvy, a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund, to deepen its presence in the fast-growing mobile gaming sector. Moonton, headquartered in Shanghai, has built a strong international footprint, particularly in Southeast Asia,

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has pushed back against mounting criticism of the company’s next-generation DLSS 5 upscaling technology, insisting detractors misunderstand its purpose and impact on creative control in game development.Speaking amid industry debate over the expanding role of artificial intelligence in graphics rendering, Huang said concerns that DLSS 5 overrides artistic intent are misplaced. He argued the technology is designed to enhance performance and visual fidelity without altering the core vision of developers. “The idea that it removes

Take-Two Interactive chief executive Strauss Zelnick has declined to offer advice to Microsoft’s newly appointed gaming leader Asha Sharma, expressing confidence that she will succeed without external guidance and highlighting her record as a seasoned executive.Zelnick’s remarks come as Sharma steps into a prominent leadership role within Microsoft’s gaming division, overseeing strategic direction for Xbox amid intensifying competition in the global video game industry. Addressing questions about her transition into gaming without prior sector experience, Zelnick pointed to his own

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 secured the Game of the Year title at the 26th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, marking one of the most significant recognitions yet for the role-playing game that has dominated industry accolades over the past year.The awards ceremony, held alongside the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, saw the title collect five trophies in total, reinforcing its reputation as one of the most influential releases in contemporary game development. Created by the French studio Sandfall Interactive

Nintendo’s newest Pokémon spin-off has delivered a powerful commercial debut, selling more than 2.2 million copies worldwide within its first four days and triggering a sharp rally in the company’s share price as investors respond to renewed momentum for the Switch 2 platform.The title, Pokémon Pokopia, launched globally on 5 March for Nintendo Switch 2 and rapidly climbed digital sales charts while physical editions sold out in several major retail markets. The company said the game crossed the 2.2-million mark

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has reaffirmed the company’s long-term commitment to video games, declaring that the technology giant will “always” invest in gaming as part of its broader strategy, even as the Xbox division undergoes a significant leadership transition and faces questions about its future direction.The assurance came during an internal discussion with the newly appointed head of Microsoft’s gaming business, Asha Sharma, as the company seeks to steady its gaming division after a major management reshuffle and speculation

Brendan Greene, the creator of the influential battle-royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, has issued a stark warning about the growing flood of artificial intelligence-generated material online, arguing that the internet risks becoming polluted by automated content that feeds on itself and erodes trust in digital information.Greene described the problem as a dangerous feedback loop in which large language models absorb machine-generated material and reproduce it as authoritative information. “LLMs are scanning this junk, and then that becomes truth,” he said during

Nintendo of America has taken legal action against the United States government, arguing that trade measures imposed under a sweeping tariff regime were unlawful and seeking reimbursement of duties paid on imported gaming hardware and accessories.Court documents filed at the United States Court of International Trade accuse federal agencies of improperly administering tariffs that the company says imposed significant financial burdens on its operations. The complaint seeks a full refund, with interest, for duties collected under executive orders issued in

 Roguelite strategy title The King is Watching has surpassed 500,000 copies sold worldwide, marking a notable commercial milestone for Serbian developer Hypnohead and publisher TinyBuild. The kingdom-building game, launched in July 2025 on the PC platform Steam, has gained steady traction among strategy enthusiasts and independent-game audiences, aided by platform policy changes, an expanding international player base and a focused push into the Chinese market.Sales data released by publisher TinyBuild indicate the half-million mark was reached within months of launch,