Soulmask, an open-world, base-building, survival-craft game, launched to Steam Early Access almost two years ago, and after many iterations, CampFire Studios and Qooland Games have officially released the 1.0 version of the game, calling it a "complete reinvention of the game itself." The update notes on Steam list a number of revolutionary changes, including a new onboarding flow, refreshed combat, a new tribal AI system, and new settlement management. The game also now includes an encyclopedia, called the Mask Knowledge Base, so that players no longer need to leave the game to check a Wiki for information about a system or item.

There is also more endgame content, thanks to the new Mask Mimicry Ascension system, which expands the capabilities of the game's masks beyond previous limits. More importantly, players now have access to three distinct game modes: Survival, the original, classic, challenging struggle; Tribe Mode, which is designed for players to enjoy building and developing their civilizations and facing off against other political threats and enemy invasions; and Warrior Mode is there for players who like Soulmask for the combat, with tougher enemies, less forgiving combat mechanics, and weapons that don't take damage or break. The Soulmask 1.0 trailer follows.

Gateron, now ubiquitous in the world of mechanical, Hall-effect, and TMR gaming keyboards, has officially announced a new magnetic switch that promises a unique switch feel with an effectively perfectly linear switch weight. With a traditional mechanical or magnetic keyboard switches, the key gets progressively more difficult to press as you go through the travel, but Gateron claims that the new Magnetic Jade Attraction HE switches have both initial and bottom-out operation force values of 30 gf, making them a perfectly linear switch. Incidentally, the method Gateron used to make this force chart possible also seems to have reduced the standard deviation of the actuation force to ±2 gf, instead of the usual ±5 gf.

Gateron's new switch design is an iteration of the recent Dual-Drive stem design it showed off previously in the Gateron Magnetic Spark switches, which should make the stems stable and make reading the travel very accurate, but the Jade Attraction adds three small permanent magnets in the bottom of the switch housing. Those magnets in the bottom housing help compensate for the increase in spring rate that occurs when you typically compress a spring, giving it that uniquely linear switch feel. The Gateron Magnetic Jade Attraction HE switches are available for pre-sale on the Gateron online store for $47.60 for a pack of 70 switches.

Following the recent news of the $80 Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition for Switch 2 showing up on Amazon, Gematsu has reported that Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy 2 may be coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 sooner rather than later, based on a recent age rating by the Taiwan Digital Game Rating Committee. According to a screenshot of the rating, it will be PG-12, and it is explicitly rated for the Nintendo Switch 2.

There is no launch date approved for the game just yet, so, while this is evidence that a launch is incoming, it may still be a while before it's available. Notably, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is already playable on the original Nintendo Switch, but it's a cloud-only title, meaning none of the game is processed locally. The fact that the Switch 2 version is explicitly rated for the Switch 2 suggests that it will not have the same cloud-only limitation, likely as a result of the Switch 2's more powerful internals.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Cloud Version is currently $59.99 on the Nintendo eShop, but pricing for the new version may be higher, especially for the physical version.

Keychron recently launched the K3 Ultra and K3 HE wireless, low-profile mechanical and TMR keyboards on Kickstarter, both featuring the same plastic, metal, and wood construction and slated for a full launch around June. However, if you're looking to get in on the low-profile action and don't mind losing some of the specialty features of the K3 HE and Ultra, Keychron has just announced the K3 Max SE, a new QMK-powered keyboard that features a nearly identical design to the K3 Ultra. Unlike the K3 Ultra and HE, the K3 Max SE is available as of the time of writing for a relatively affordable $104.99 on the Keychron store, which is $5 cheaper than the pre-order price of the K3 Ultra and $15 cheaper than the HE.

Obviously, the K3 Max SE doesn't have the same analog input features as the K3 HE, but it is nearly identical to the K3 Ultra but for one small distinction—the battery life and firmware. The K3 Max SE is a traditional QMK keyboard, like Keychron's traditional Max keyboards have long been, while the K3 Ultra is part of Keychron's move to ZMK firmware, which is known to be significantly more efficient than QMK. The end result is that, while the K3 Ultra and K3 Max SE have the same battery capacity of 1,550 mAh, the K3 Ultra is rated for 550 hours on a charge, and the K3 Max SE is only rated for 120 hours. The other measurable difference between the two is that the K3 Ultra has 8 kHz polling, where the K3 Max SE tops out at 1 kHz—not that this is particularly important on a mechanical keyboard, anyway.

Like many single-player games, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach has been playable on the Steam Deck since it launched on PC, earning itself a Gold rating on ProtonDB, however, there have been user complaints on ProtonDB about poor text legibility, UI scaling issues, and performance and stability. According to the game's latest patch 1.3 notes published on the game's Steam Store page, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is now verified for Steam Deck. Players have tools like XeSS, FSR 3, and the proprietary Pico upscaler, as well as frame generation, in order to improve motion smoothness in the game.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth performance review of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is now live]

The other update notes include performance improvements, stability and bug fixes—specifically hitching and frame drops when using the sniper rifle—and minor graphics related bugs. The update notes also mention implementing "various input and user interface related improvements and bug fixes," some of which may be responsible for the game's Steam Deck Verified status, along with a number of changes that have been mentioned in prior game updates. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach's "Portable Mode" is designed for systems like gaming handhelds, but tests still reveal that the game dips below 30 FPS in some situations.

This year's Triple-I Initiative has already seen the Early Access launch date announcement of Windrose, an ambitious co-op pirate survival game, but now, joining Windrose is SpaceCraft, an open-world indie space exploration sim in development at Shiro Games. SpaceCraft will officially launch into Steam Early Access on May 20, and it features a combination of co-op survival, exploration, and base-building mechanics. Players will be able to explore space and distant planets, exploit planets for resources, and research and craft different materials, spaceships, bases, and weapons. The base-building systems extend to mechanics like automation and logistics, allowing players to set up multiple outposts across the galaxy for resource extraction, production, and research.

SpaceCraft hosted a demo event in early 2026, with over 70,000 players hopping into the game to check it out, and ultimately resulting in 300,000 wishlists by the end of the event. The game's ProtonDB listing also claims a Platinum rating, and the lightweight system requirements—8 GB of RAM, an Intel Core i3-8350K and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060—mean that SpaceCraft will seemingly be reasonably playable on handheld game consoles like the Valve Steam Deck, Legion Go S SteamOS, and ASUS ROG Xbox Ally.

We recently reported on Nintendo's pricing changes for physical and digital game media on the Switch 2, with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book coming in at $59.99 on digital and $69.99 for the physical edition. While that price difference was a bit of a shock to the system for many Nintendo fans, but, according to a recent post by u/mason2393 on Reddit, showing off an Amazon listing for Elden Ring Tarnished Edition for the Switch 2, that game may come as even more of a shock to players, with the listing showing an apparent retail price of $79.99 for the physical edition game key card.

Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition has not yet launched, with the Amazon listing showing a December 31, 2026 release-day delivery option, but it will feature the base game as well as the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, new weapons, armor Torrent skins, and other additional content, according to the Nintendo eShop. At the time of writing, the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion costs $39.99 on Steam, alone, with the base Elden Ring game coming in at $59.99.

The development team behind Windrose, the co-op pirate survival game that went viral as Crosswind, has just announced the game's release date and simultaneously dropped a new trailer for the game on YouTube. The Early Access launch date announcement comes shortly after the studio asked players to "let us cook more," after murmurings of a release date announcement were causing increased anticipation in the community. According to the latest announcement, Windrose will launch to Steam Early Access on 14 April, 2026 at 8 AM UTC.

Pricing has also been revealed, with the base game coming in at $29.99 alongside a $39.99 Supporter Bundle, which includes the game's soundtrack, a few sea shanties recorded by Seán Dagher, and game wallpapers for your desktop. The developer plans to use player feedback during the Early Access period to shape gameplay on the way to the full 1.0 release, but there's no prospective 1.0 release date just yet. The Early Access launch date trailer follows.

Aside from SteamOS being more tailored to the gaming handheld form factor, one of the Steam Deck's major differentiating factors is its trackpads, which make navigating desktop mode significantly less painful than it would otherwise be. While this trait is shared by the likes of the Lenovo Legion Go, it is not present on the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, making navigating Windows more challenging. Finally, though, as spotted by ROG Ally Life, the Xbox Game Bar has introduced an option to use the left thumb stick as a mouse cursor in desktop mode.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X is now live]

For the time being, this feature is limited to the Xbox Game Bar Insider Program, but it should make it to the mainline release version soon enough if no major bugs are spotted. After the toggle is enabled in Game Bar, players can move the cursor with the left analog stick and click with the A button on the controller. This is also only the latest in Microsoft's recent efforts playing catch-up with the competition on the Windows front, with the company recently announcing both a new initiative to improve the quality of Windows 11 and beginning to implement better RAM management across the operating system.

Thermalright, generally known for making cooling hardware and DIY PC gear, has just announced the AI HydroNous R1, a 2.6 L mini PC powered by AMD's mighty Strix Halo Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU and cooled by a custom closed-loop water cooling system, which is said to be able to handle up to 176 W of TPD, thanks to a 180 mm radiator. Thermalright has so far revealed the mini PC (via IT Home), but it doesn't seem as though it is commercially available just yet, at least not outside of China.

The Thermalright HydroNous R1 has a fully CNC-machined aluminium chassis decked out with a full-color 4.6-inch LCD on the front for system monitoring. The IT Home post makes mention of dual USB4 ports and 10 Gb Ethernet, but no other ports are visible in the teaser images shared by the publication. Presumably, the rest of the I/O is on the back of the tower, which itself is designed to stand upright in a vertical orientation, sucking cold air in from below and from the left side and exhausting via the right side panel, where the radiator is located.

Nexon subsidiary, Neople, launched The First Berserker: Khazan on 27 March, 2025, and despite the game's impressive critical reception, it seems as though the ARPG never quite managed to reach the commercial heights expected by Nexon. According to a recent report by Korean news outlet, Yonhap News, the development team that was responsible for supporting The First Berserker: Khazan has been reassigned by Neople, due to the game's poor commercial performance. The development company says the project is in "completion stage" and the reallocation of workers is in the name of efficiency. The workers previously responsible for the ARPG will be working on other projects that require additional human resources.

According to SteamDB, The First Berserker: Khazan peaked at 32,929 concurrent players on Steam around the game's initial launch, but that number quickly fell to around 2,000 daily concurrent players, dipping to as little as 1,013 concurrent daily players more recently. Despite the low player counts, The First Berserker: Khazan still has a "Very Positive" 90% rating on Steam, and it generally scored well with critics, with a 78 Metacritic score and a user score of 7.9 on the same site.

It has long been rumored that an Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake is in the works at Ubisoft, and those rumors have continued to surface, despite the recent shake-ups at the French gaming giant. The latest rumor out of Insider Gaming and a certain ResetEra user, BlackBate, who say that Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced would launch at an event on April 16, with the official retail launch not too long after that. That said, a recent online art book retail listing suggests that Black Flag Resynced was already pushed back from an initial launch date of March 31. It may be the case that the recent turmoil at Ubisoft has resulted in Black Flag Resynced being pushed back further to mid-April.

Despite having a rather rough launch period, No Man's Sky has since earned a loyal fan base thanks to consistent updates that have dramatically increased the quality of the game. The game's latest update steps things up again, introducing a whole new gameplay loop for players to get into. The No Man's Sky Xeno Arena update allows players to collect the myriad alien creatures they encounter on their travels throughout the universe, raise, train, and battle them in turn-based combat arenas. The No Man's Sky Xeno Arena update is already available on all platforms, and Hello Games seems to have put a decent amount of thought and depth into the new game mode's mechanics.

Much like Nintendo's Pokémon, the creatures in No Man's Sky will have a specific type, which will here be dictated by the creature's native habitat and climate and their species. Abilities include attack, support, healing, and even the ability to transmute opponent creatures into more vulnerable forms. Players will also be able to see and augment their creatures' genetic profiles and breed different creatures to prioritize certain traits. The update also increases the number of creatures a player can tame from 18 to 30, allowing players to build a sizeable roster of battle monsters. Players will also have access to daily battle challenges with an online leaderboard, and players will also be able to survey wild creatures' battle capabilities with creature survey mode ahead of capturing them.

It seems as though Epic Games is working on a way to increase player time and interest in Fortnite, following a massive round of layoffs at Epic Games that was blamed on a downturn in spending in the battle royale shooter. In the announcement of the layoffs, Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney, said that the studio would be looking to deliver "Fortnite magic" in upcomig updates, and shaking up the game with a handful of new game modes to see what sticks, and potentially diversifying the player base in the process, may be one way of doing that. According to frequent leaker @Loolo_WRLD on X, who data-mined a recent Fortnite update and discovered references to at least seven new game modes coming to Epic Games's flagship game.

The references, which are codenames, include "WickedSmoke," a social-first game mode similar to the previously available Delulu game mode that relied on proximity chat and on-the-fly co-operation or rivalries; UnableRoman, a team deathmatch game mode; Rivalry, a Lego mode with mechs; CurioBox, another Lego game mode; MatchMist, a new map or mode for the fast-paced Reload game mode; BabyCorgi, a new game mode seemingly related to the tactical FPS, Fortnite Ballistic; and Bulldog and Husky, which is related to Disney mode. It's unclear when these new game modes are slated to launch, if at all, but it stands to reason that if they're already in the Fortnite update logs, they should be making their way to the mainline game at some point soon.

With the early access launch of Morbid Metal, an indie-developed hack-n-slash roguelite, just around the corner, the game's lead developer, Felix Schade, has taken to X to confirm that players will not need an Ubisoft+ account or the Ubisoft launcher to play the game, despite the game being published by Ubisoft. Apparently, it had been a frequent question asked of the developer, given that the game is being published by Ubisoft.

Third-party launchers can be a pain at the best of times, but they tend to be particularly maligned when combined with an online account requirement. They also potentially hamper a game's compatibility with Linux devices, which is a particular sticking point for Valve's Steam Deck. At the time of writing, Morbid Metal has a Platinum rating on ProtonDB, suggesting that Linux compatibility will not be an issue at launch.

Since the launch of Marathon, there have been a number of reports and complaints about cheating in Bungie's PvPvE extraction shooter, and in response to these complaints, Bungie has taken to social media site X to detail its anti-cheat systems and explain what the development team plans to do to improve the situation going forward. Bungie starts off by reiterating its zero-tolerance policy for cheating in Marathon, confirming that once a cheater is detected, they will be banned from the game forever, but it goes on to explain that cheating is a "continuous cycle of monitoring, improving, and responding."

Bungie goes on to say that it has already implemented some improvements to its anti-cheat systems, but that the development team is working on several new features that will make it easier to report cheaters and easier to provide evidence of that cheating. For starters, it is making it easier to report cheaters both in-game and with web tools, and it is working on tools to give players feedback when their reports result in actions from the anti-cheat system. Bungie is also working on tools, like username privacy options, that will make tactics like stream sniping in competitive matches more difficult. The studio encourages players to report cheaters and toxic players with as much evidence as possible, including clips and VODs. The increased complaints of cheating in Marathon come despite the game's use of BattlEye anti-cheat, which has incidentally locked out Steam Deck and Linux users from playing the game.

The Apple MacBook Neo has been a bit of a shock to system in the laptop world, thanks to its low barrier to entry and surprisingly solid performance for everyday tasks. However, one of the biggest criticisms levelled against the MacBook Neo is its mobile A18 Pro chip and limited 8 GB of RAM. According to recent rumors, though, Apple may upgrade the internals in the MacBook Neo in 2027, bumping it up to an A19 Pro, which is the SoC featured in the latest iPhone 17 Pro smartphones.

The A19 Pro is still a mobile SoC, and it is slated to use the same 5-core GPU configuration as the A18 Pro in the current MacBook Neo, but that SoC upgrade also means that the MacBook Neo would no longer be limited to just 8 GB of LPDDR5X. Instead, as the rumors suggest, the MacBook Neo 2027 will see a 50% memory increase to 12 GB total memory. So far, the MacBook Neo seems to have been such a hit in sales that the Cupertino giant has already started increasing production of the laptop.

It's no secret that prices for electronics are skyrocketing across the board, and shortly after it seemed as though there may be some hope on the horizon, it has been revealed by VideoCardz that the ASUS AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPUs have seen a significant price increase in US markets. All three ASUS RX 9070 XT models listed on PCPartPicker have seen a substantial price increase in recent days, with the average increase coming out to around 17%.

The ASUS Prime OC Radeon RX 9070 XT saw its price go from $819.99 to $959.95 at both B&H and ASUS's own online store. It currently retails for the same $959.95 at Amazon, too. Similarly, the black version of the Prime OC RX 9070 XT and the ASUS TUF Gaming OC Radeon RX9070 XT have increased from $799.99 to $939.99 and $849.99 to $989.99, respectively. Curiously, the ASUS Prime OC RX 9070 XT can still be had at Newegg and Amazon for its lower $799.99 price, suggesting that this is effectively a pricing change that was implemented by ASUS when new GPUs were sent out to retailers.

When Blizzard rebranded Overwatch 2 to just Overwatch, it also announced a slew of new characters coming in 2026. One of those character designs, Anran, sparked upheaval in the community over her design being generic and a stark deviation from the character previewed in cinematics leading up to her introduction. Blizzard acknowledged the community feedback, announced an upcoming redesign, and has now subsequently shown off Anran's final design ahead of her launch in Season 2 on April 14.

The character's new look features a number of changes, mostly focussed on the facial shape, in order to make her design match her personality, which Overwatch game director, Aaron Keller, describes as "confident, determined, fierce, and a natural-born leader." The changes include giving her a more focussed expression, darkening the shading on her face, giving her a more defined jawline and a wider mouth and smile, and changing her posing to make her appear more confident. In general, critics of Anran's initial design seem to be appreciative of the changes, although, as is the case with anything related to gaming, there are still complaints about her looks.

A little over a year after the release of Assassin's Creed Shadows, Ubisoft has shipped the Title Update 1.1.10, which, aside from the usual bug fixes, adds PSSR 2 support to the game for PS5 Pro players and a number of quality-of-life updates and gameplay changes across all of the game's platforms. The full changelog is available via an Ubisoft news post.

Ubisoft has not detailed the exact visual upgrades wrought by the addition of PSSR 2, but we can likely expect smoother, higher frame rates with sharper upscaling, as has been seen in other games, like Resident Evil: Requiem and Cyberpunk 2077. As of the new update, all players will be able to access the Bo staff, which was previously locked behind the Claws of Awaji expansion. The Switch 2 version of Assassin's Creed Shadows also now features mouse and keyboard support, and the laundry list of bug fixes include UI fixes for damage indicators, a fix for an unintentional +100% stat cap in some cases, issues with fast travel points not being available, and progression getting stuck at 97.89% despite all content being completed.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been out since 2020, 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.