Cyberpunk 2077 has been out since 2022, but it seems as though CD Projekt Red's dedication to the game has not waned, with a new April 8 update bringing enhancements to the game on the PS5 Pro. As detailed in a new PlayStation Blog post, Cyberpunk 2077's PS5 Pro update will bring a slew of visual changes to the game on PlayStation 5 Pro. The biggest change is that it will now use PSSR to upscale the game to 4K, and it will feature ray traced lighting, shadows, and reflections on PS5 Pro. It will be a free update that will be available for players playing on a PlayStation 5 Pro.

Cyberpunbk 2077 PS5 Pro Enhanced version will feature three gameplay modes, giving gamers the choice to optimize their gameplay experience for visuals or the best performance. Ray Tracing Pro mode will enable all RT features, including RT reflections, ambient occlusion, skylight, shadows, and emissive lighting, with a frame rate target of 40 FPS on VRR displays or 30 FPS without VRR. Performance mode will feature the highest frame rate target, at 90 FPS with "high image fidelity," although it isn't specified which features are enabled in Performance mode. Meanwhile, Ray Tracing mode will target 60 FPS with "select ray tracing enhancements" enabled, although CDPR again doesn't specify resolution or RT enhancements for this mode.

2026 has thus far been a busy year for gaming mice releases, with hits like the Razer Viper V4 Pro and VXE's upcoming Logitech G305 alternative launching already. Now, SteelSeries seems to be making something of a come-back in the gaming mouse game, with an as yet unreleased Rival Pro and Rival Pro Mini, which have shown up on Reddit in what appears to be an accidental early leak. If the retail packaging shown off in the Reddit post is anything to go by, the mouse will have a couple of nifty features to set it apart from the rest of SteelSeries's line-up.

Despite the Rival moniker, the Rival Pro Mini looks a lot more like the SteelSeries Prime wireless mouse than the rest of the SteelSeries Rival gaming mice. The Rival Pro Mini will weigh in at 49 g and use the PixArt PAW 3950 sensor that has become ubiquitous in flagship gaming mice in recent years. The Rival Pro Mini's main clicks will be optical switches with a 100 million-click MTBF rating. One of the standout features is the "Infinite Power" swappable battery system, which is similar to those used by Angry Miao in the Infinity AM series and Glorious in the Model O3 Wireless. The Rival Pro and Pro Mini will also have 8 kHz wireless connectivity and 100% PTFE skates.

As the previously leaked launch date of Sony's upcoming PlayStation 6 approaches, leaks and rumors abound, with many claiming that the upcoming gaming console will launch later than initially expected. Now, reputable leaker, KeplerL2, has taken to the NeoGAF forums to dispel some of the doom and gloom surrounding the launch date and potential delays of the PS6. The leaker's reasoning stems not from some insider information, but rather from a simple application of logic, asking a fellow commenter "What copium? You think AMD is gonna waste resources doing validation on something they think will get delayed?"

The reasoning seems to be that, based on information like prior leaks, that AMD has already been working on custom APUs for both the living room version and the handheld model of the PlayStation 6, and that AMD would not continue validation of those APUs if it thought there were supply constraints that would lead to a delay ahead of the console family's expected launch date. It's also possible that AMD and Sony signed the supply contracts for the Canis and Orion APUs before the current DRAM crisis was in full swing, effectively making a launch delay impossible or at least less likely. However, this would mean that the console makers would have a batch of hardware ready for launch followed by intermittent or delayed supply—at least as long as the DRAM shortage holds. There have also been rumors that Sony will be drastically increasing the price of the PS6 consoles compared to the PS5 generation, although this appears to be at least somewhat contingent on Microsoft's Xbox Helix pricing strategy.

If you've been following the Stop Killing Games movement, you'll know that Ubisoft shutting down The Crew, a fairly modern video game by most standards, having launched in 2014, has ruffled some feathers. Now, as reported by Reuters, Ubisoft has been taken to court by French consumer action group, UFC-Que Choisir, who argues that the contractual practices that Ubisoft engages in when it sells games may be abusive and deny consumers their rights.

Ubisoft, as is the case with many gaming companies, argues that players buy limited licenses to play the games they pay for—not an actual product—and that the license can be revoked at any time. With lawsuits like the one brought against Ubisoft, UFC-Que Choisir intends to put an end to these "harmful practices," remove the relevant clauses from sales contracts, and make Ubisoft recognize the collective harm done to the collective interests of consumers.

After previously announcing an April 24 launch date, Capcom moved the launch of Pragmata forward to April 17 and subsequently celebrated hitting 2 million demo downloads and game wishlists. Now, in another stroke of positive news, Capcom has announced that Pragmata has gone gold, meaning that the game is in a stable, functional state and ready for launch on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows.

Pragmata was originally announced in 2020, with the release date originally slated for 2022. However, the game went through multiple iterations during that time and ended up being pushed back to 2026. Pragmata was Capcom's first new franchise since the launch of Dragon's Dogma in 2012, and it seems to be attempting to implement an interesting combination of third-person shooter combat and hacking mechanics, alongside sci-fi, narrative- and exploration-driven core gameplay.

ZA/UM, the indie game studio famous for the avant-garde Disco Elysium, has officially announced that its next game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, will launch on May 21, 2026 on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and GOG, with a PS5 release planned for later in 2026. The announcement was made alongside the release of an appropriately eerie release date trailer.

Zero Parades: For Dead Spies is a story-rich indie spy thriller RPG that follows a renowned spy, Hershel Wilk, on one last mission. According to the game's Steam Store page and the published imagery, it will have a customizable skill tree, a strong narrative in which choices matter, and a decent bit of tactical gameplay, all wrapped in a surrealist aesthetic.

There were rumors of a new The Lord of the Rings game in development late in 2025, but not much else was known about it other than that it had a sizeable budget of around $100 million and was to compete with Hogwarts Legacy when it came to game design and mechanics. Now, Insider Gaming has reported that the new The Lord of the Rings game is being developed by Crystal Dynamics, not Warhorse Studios, although the report claims that there may be another LOTR game in development at Warhorse.

The game said to be in development at Crystal Dynamics is a third-person action RPG that was claimed to be funded by the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, and it has already been in development for a while. Neither Crystal Dynamics nor Embracer Group have confirmed that the game is in development, but it may be welcome news to The Lord of the Rings fans that were looking forward to the Lord of the Rings MMO that Amazon recently cancelled.

Eidos Montreal announced earlier this week in a LinkedIn post that it was laying off 124 of its employees and that its studio director, David Anfossi was leaving. The studio explained that the layoffs are a result of necessary cost-cutting measures and evolving project needs. The layoffs would affect both production and support teams, and the studio says that they are necessary cuts to allow the studio to concentrate its efforts where it can be most effective. Now, new reporting seems to suggest that the layoffs may have been partially caused by a game whose budget had ballooned and caused financial strain in the studio.

Following the layoffs, Insider Gaming reports that Eidos, who had previously worked on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, has also cancelled Wildlands, an in-development open-source action-adventure game that the studio had been working on for seven years. The publication reports that WIldlands had had a somewhat troubled development cycle prior to its cancellation, with the team having gone through four different game engines and burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in budget. These reports are further backed up by Jason Schreier's comments on Reddit. Further, according to Insider Gaming's sources, the game was in the debugging phase and nearing completion before Embracer, Eidos's parent company, shut it down.

Since the launch of the Steam Deck and the subsequent competing Windows gaming handhelds, Microsoft has been working on improving its UI for gaming consoles, culminating with the recent adoption of the Windows Full Screen Experience, which was later renamed to Xbox Mode. The latest update to Microsoft's gaming experience, however, comes by way of the Xbox app and its overlay, as spotted by ROGAllyLife. These new features will be available to everyone using compatible hardware and the Xbox app, although they are still in the preview version of the app, so they may only reach mainline status in a few weeks. The biggest update is a new display widget that was added to the Xbox Game Bar overlay, which adds controls like display refresh rate, resolution, projection mode, and Auto Super Resolution, allowing users to test different display configurations without leaving their games.

Users can now also change notification placement in the Xbox app, allowing them to see notifications without completely disrupting the gaming experience. The Xbox app now allows for eight notification placement options—three positions along each screen edge—and this can also be customized from the Game Bar overlay instead of necessitating a potentially game-breaking app switch. These updates are just the most recent in Microsoft's efforts to make handheld gaming more feasible on Windows, but it remains to be seen how Microsoft will change the regular Windows 11 experience after its recent promise to address quality and usability complaints.

We recently heard from industry insiders that a $699 PlayStation 6 may still be theoretically possible, even with the current hardware market conditions resulting in steep prices for components like memory and storage. Shortly following that report, though, industry analyst, Matt Piscatella (via GamesRadar+) predicted that both the PlayStation 6 and the Xbox Helix consoles may cost as much as $999. He largely blames the AI industry demand and inflated hardware prices for the price increase, but noted that there isn't much certainty in the current hardware market, whether you're considering launch dates or pricing. Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Kantan Games, a consultancy firm, noted that, with the recent price increases to the PS5 line-up, Sony may have "baked in potential future fluctuations...instead of raising prices more frequently and over a longer period of time."

Toto goes on to say that "I think $999 at least for one variant of the PS6 is not impossible," potentially alluding to a PS6 Pro, if current industry prices are anything to go by, but Joost van Dreunen, a video games professor at NYU, argues that "we're quickly moving towards a world in which a $1,000 console will be the norm, and console gaming will be a luxury expenditure." Van Dreunen goes on to predict that we may see the next-gen consoles start at a 50% higher price than the current generation, which would mean a $600 starting price for the base PS6 digital edition and somewhere in the region of $750 for the disc drive model. On the Microsoft side of things, this would put the base model Xbox Helix somewhere around $450, while the "Series X" version would be around $750. Sony is also slated to release a standalone handheld game console that has been commonly referred to as the PlayStation Portable, but there is no indication of pricing on that.

Rec Room, a social VR game that largely revolved around user-generated content and social mini-games for fun, has been added to the long line of games that will meet their doom in 2026. According to the game's developer, Rec Room will shut down on June 1, 2026, due to issues with sustainability and profitability. This is after the studio behind the game announced earlier this year that it was laying off roughly 50% of its development team and scaling back the game's scope due to similar issues. As the game studio explains in the announcements, it "never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business," and its "costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue" it earned.

This failure to find profitability is in spite of some rather impressive claims regarding player counts for Rec Room. According to the game studio, Rec Room reached over 150 million players and creators, and players spent a cumulative 68 thousand years in Rec Room. The studio blames a "recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming," which have made profitability as a game studio all the more difficult. The game will officially shut down on June 1, 2026, along with the official website, servers, and player accounts, although players will be able to play the game until then, and all first-party content will be 80% off, while there will no longer be a requirement for a RecRoomPlus account for certain cosmetic features.

Microsoft recently revealed that Xbox Project Helix would be its next-gen gaming console and that it would play both PC and Xbox games, however, previous leaks tipped a rather high price tag for the upcoming console generation—some expect it to be upwards of $800. While this may have its effects on Microsoft's sales, it also has bigger implications for the wider console and gaming hardware market itself. According to notorious hardware leaker, KeplerL2, on the NeoGAF forums, the reduced pressure from Microsoft may be enough for Sony to raise prices on the PS6. There have also been rumors that Sony is planning a PlayStation 6 Portable, which would be a standalone device and could theoretically fill the gap left by Sony in the more affordable console space if this price prediction is true.

The leaker explains that their "current BOM estimate for PS6 is ~$760, so I would say $699 is still possible with a reasonable subsidy. The question is if Sony will even bother now that Xbox is not direct competition anymore." These comments come at a time when hardware prices have skyrocketed, and availability is low, thanks to the ongoing DRAM crisis largely caused by increased demand from the AI industry. This bill of materials cost estimate also assumes that there will be no decrease in memory or hardware costs, which is currently an unknown, with all the talk about AI being a bubble. Those same hardware shortages and price increases have been the justification for predictions of console delays and numerous cancellations by PC hardware manufacturers. It also recently came to light that Sony will be scaling back its PC port efforts, meaning fewer Sony exclusive games will end up on PC, giving players more of an incentive to buy the PS6, even if prices are somewhat inflated.

When Crimson Desert launched, its reviews—especially those from very early reviewers—were good, although less than stellar, however, the player retention figures painted a more positive picture. Now, it looks as though the reviews have caught up to those high early player counts, at least on Metacritic. As of the time of writing, the review aggregator site ranks Crimson Desert as the second highest-rated game of 2026 so far. With its 8.8 user score, Crimson Desert only trails Resident Evil Requiem, which has a strong lead, at 9.4 points. Following Crimson Desert are Pokémon Pokopia, with 8.5 points, Resident Evil Village Gold Edition, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Gold Edition, and Cairn, with 8.5, 8.4, and 8.3 points respectively.

When it comes to the Metascore, however, Pokopia still holds onto its number-one spot, with 89 points, trailed by Resident Evil: Requiem, at 89 points, and Mewgenics, with a score of 88. Meanwhile, Crimson Desert has not yet been reviewed enough for an overall review score, but it currently has a PC Metascore of 77, which is based on very divided reviews, some giving it as low as 50 points, while others give it as much as 100 points. It's clear Crimson Desert will have a lot of competition in 2026, though, given what a packed year it is stacking up to be in the gaming industry. Aside from the already-launched hits like Resident Evil, Pokémon Pokopia, and Slay the Spire 2, massive launches like GTA VI, Pragmata, and Gears of War: E-Day are also slated to launch in 2026.

It's no secret that the development of GTA VI has been a mammoth undertaking, but the exact figures have been a bit hazy, with previous estimates from early 2026 putting the game's total budget at around $2 billion. Now, thanks to an investigation by an internet sleuth, u/Due-Vanilla-8294 on Reddit, it seems as though Rockstar may have exceeded the $3 billion mark, with speculation putting the game's budget as high as $5 billion.

These estimations were based on recent financial filings by Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two, wherein it was revealed that Rockstar had spent as much as $2.1 billion on salaries alone at its Rockstar North location since GTA VI went into full-scale production in 2019. Given that this is only one location's figures and that Rockstar had already started work on GTA VI long before it went into full-scale production, it has been speculated that, by the time it launches, Rockstar may have spent as much as $5 billion on GTA VI. So far, it seems as though GTA VI's high budget may have been worth it, with the game's launch trailer racking up 275 million views since it launched in 2024. GTA VI is also expected to launch at a substantial price premium, with previous rumors floating a $90+ MSRP.

Microsoft has officially announced its next Xbox Summer Games showcase, which will take place on June 7, 2026, showing off the latest of what Microsoft has in-store for gamers in 2026. While it's not yet been revealed what will be shown off at the game showcase, Microsoft did confirm that there will be a Gears of War: E-Day showcase immediately after the Xbox Games Showcase, in which we're likely to see at least a new trailer and maybe a release date for the upcoming Xbox shooter, which was revealed at the 2024 Summer Xbox Game Showcase and hasn't made much noise since, despite its 2026 release date.

The Xbox Game Showcase is slated to start at 10 AM PT on June 7, which is 14:00 UTC. It's already been all but confirmed via the game's Steam store page that Gears of War: E-Day will launch for both PC and Xbox, although not much else is known about the game other than that it will be a prequel set 14 years before the original Gears of War, and that it will be built on Unreal Engine 5.

PUBG: Blindspot launched at the beginning of February as a new 5v5 top-down shooter from the same studio and publisher as the original PUBG, but now, less than two months after the launch of the game, the developer, ARC Team, has announced that the new free-to-play tactical shooter will be shutting down on March 30, 2026. ARC Team says that, although the developers had tried to explore ways to improve the game based on player feedback, the studio is "no longer able to sustainably provide the level of experience we set out to deliver through Early Access."

PUBG: Blindspot has a fairly acceptable 72% positive rating on Steam, but player counts are rather low, with an all-time peak of just 3,251 concurrent players and a 24-hour peak of just 236 at the time of writing. PUBG: Blindspot is already delisted from Steam, and players will no longer be able to access the game. This is only one of a number of recent game closures, with other notable additions including Highguard and a number of other games that were in development, like those that recently got caught up in the Ubisoft reshuffle. Further, Riot recently laid off a number of staff from its 2XKO fighting game due to sustainability reasons, all of which seem to suggest that game studios are fighting for revenue more than ever and are unable to make it work long-term if their games aren't immediately successful.