According to two separate and trustworthy sources, Microsoft is reportedly considering the merging of the Xbox Game Pass Premium console subscription tier with PC Game Pass. The Verge's Tom Warren heard that the plans are far from finalized, but that's what Microsoft is thinking right now, and Windows Central has subsequently backed up the reporting with its own sources. Here's a breakdown of the respective feature sets as they are currently available to users: Feature PC Game Pass Xbox Game Pass Premium Price $11.99/month $14.99/month Platforms PC only Console, PC, Cloud First-Party Day-One Access Yes No (added within 1 year) […]

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Today, AMD and Pearl Abyss have announced the Crimson Desert AMD Game Bundle. Purchasing select AMD hardware from eligible retailers will give you access to the upcoming open world action/adventure game for free on PC. The following AMD processors, graphics cards, and laptops that include an AMD Ryzen processor are eligible: Qualifying AMD Products Crimson Desert AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3DAMD Ryzen 9 9900X3DAMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D*AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3DAMD Radeon RX 9070 XTAMD Radeon RX 9070 *Purchases of this product prior to the Campaign Period are eligible to receive a Coupon Code. ✓ Select laptops that contain an AMD Ryzen […]

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To celebrate the Chinese New Year, which lands in exactly one week, game developer Game Science has released six minutes of in-game footage from the upcoming game Black Myth: Zhong Kui, a follow-up to the massively successful Black Myth: Wukong. The content doesn't actually include anything that will be in the game itself; it's been crafted just for the celebration. However, it provides an early look at the visual upgrades that we'll see in the upcoming title. Black Myth: Wukong quickly became a sensation after its launch in August 2024, jumping to the second spot of Steam's all-time concurrent player […]

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Yesterday, Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment announced its new CEO. As you may remember, the previous Chief Executive Officer, Tero Virtala, left in late October after nine years in the studio following the financial disaster that was FBC: Firebreak. The game, Remedy's first online multiplayer release, utterly failed to deliver a fun, replayable experience, a basic requirement for any successful online multiplayer game. The newly appointed CEO is Jean-Charles Gaudechon. He has over twenty years of experience in the industry, including senior leadership roles at CCP Games and Electronic Arts, although recently he was a Senior Vice President and General/Group Manager […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/remedy-new-ceo-control-resonant-most-ambitious-game/

A couple of months ago, independent developer Chaos Manufacturing unveiled its debut game, a sci-fi action roleplaying game titled SOL Shogunate. The game is quite different from your average science fiction setting: the developers describe it as a "samurai space opera". Essentially, the developers have imagined an alternate future in which humanity has colonized the Solar System, but society has somehow retained feudal Japanese culture. The game takes place primarily on the Moon, where the way of the sword is law under the rule of a powerful Shogunate. The Moon features artificial gravity-creating cities, each designed as an homage to […]

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Now that we're roughly one year away from the planned launch of EXODUS, the Mass Effect-inspired sci-fi action RPG in development at Archetype Entertainment, the developers are starting to share more about the game. Speaking with Gamesradar, Narrative Director Drew Karpyshyn (who wrote the first three Mass Effect games while at BioWare) stressed that side content in EXODUS will always feel tied to the companions and the game's overarching themes, rather than being tacked on as in some roleplaying games. We don't want things to feel tacked-on. We definitely don't want you to feel like you're doing it because you're […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/exodus-side-content-tied-to-companions-and-game/

A few days ago, during AMD's Q4 earnings call, CEO Lisa Su shared some comments on the launches of Microsoft's Xbox Next Gen console and Valve's Steam Machine. When it comes to the Steam Machine, she said Valve was on track to launch it in early 2026; however, in the span of a few hours, Valve told Steam users that it had to delay finalizing the shipping schedule and pricing due to the ongoing RAM shortage. Regarding the Xbox Next Gen hardware, Lisa Su stated that it was tracking well for a launch at some point next year. However, it […]

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The announcement of the highly anticipated Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag remake won't be at this week's State of Play broadcast, according to insider shinobi602, but it will be relatively soon, and the same goes for the game's release; both are "not too far off". It's now been more than two and a half years since we first heard that Ubisoft was crafting an Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag remake. The original rumor came from Kotaku, which also reported that Ubisoft Singapore, the studio behind the Black Flag-inspired game Skull and Bones, was likely involved in the development. The next […]

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[UPDATE - February 8, 2026] Epic Games Senior Communications Manager Brian Sharon reached out to Wccftech to provide Epic's official response to Santa Ragione. You can find it below in its entirety. Our team played the game and found it violated the Epic Games Store’s Content Guidelines, specifically the ‘Inappropriate Content’ and ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policies. We did a secondary check by filling out the ratings questionnaire for the game ourselves and the content got an Adults Only (AO) rating – which we do not allow on the Store. Because this wasn’t an official submission, we do not have […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/epic-games-have-ghosted-us-says-santa-ragione-horses-ban/

Remember when renowned game writer and designer Chris Avellone stood on the stage of Xbox's E3 2018 showcase to unveil Dying Light 2 and its choice and consequence system? That was the main way developer Techland signaled the shift from the first game's action-adventure genre to an action RPG. Avellone is famous for having written and/or designed some of the best Western RPGs, including Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Torment: Tides of Numenera. The goal was to create a narrative […]

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According to the French website Origami, Ubisoft has canceled a secret Assassin's Creed co-op game codenamed AC League. Origami, which has a solid track record, claims to have verified the information with six current Ubisoft employees before publishing the story. First and foremost, it should be clarified that this is not Assassin's Creed Invictus, the arcade Fall Guys-inspired PvP multiplayer game that was previously leaked to be in development. AC League was originally meant to be the rumored Assassin's Creed Shadows co-op mode, which later morphed into a standalone title. It was in development at Ubisoft Annecy, the studio that […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/ac-league-co-op-assassins-creed-game-canceled/

Deadline reports that a Baldur's Gate 3 HBO series is now underway, with Craig Mazin attached as creator, writer, showrunner, and executive producer. Mazin is primarily known for his acclaimed work on the TV shows Chernobyl and The Last of Us, the latter of which is particularly relevant because it's also an adaptation of a game. Previously in his career, he also co-wrote the screenplays for movies like Scary Movie 3 and 4, The Hangover Part II and III, and The Huntsman: Winter's War. The big difference compared to the adaptation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us is that the Baldur's Gate […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/baldurs-gate-3-hbo-series-announced-craig-mazin-creating/

Today, The Verge's Tom Warren has published some updates on the Xbox schedule for this year. In 2026, the Xbox brand celebrates its 25th anniversary, and Microsoft is trying to launch games in four of its biggest franchises: Forza Horizon, Halo, Gears, and Fable. We already know the date of Playground's Forza Horizon 6, which will be released on May 19, 2026, as announced during the recent Xbox Developer Direct 2026. Warren adds that his sources indicate Halo Studios (formerly known as 343 Industries) is targeting a Summer release for Halo Campaign Evolved, the single-player remake of the 2001 game […]

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Today, Guerrilla Games has finally unveiled its upcoming online co-op action game: Horizon Hunters Gathering. Announced over four years ago, the game indeed features the stylized, slightly cartoonish look players got a glimpse of in early 2023 with the footage leak. It's undoubtedly a big departure from the main series' trademark highly realistic visuals, and it remains to be seen whether it will resonate with fans. Visually, at least, the MMORPG Horizon Steel Frontiers, in development at NCSoft, certainly looks more similar to the main games. Anyway, first and foremost, Guerrilla's Game Director Arjan Bak reassured fans that they're not going to stop […]

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NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud gaming service is turning six this month. As you might recall, it launched right as the COVID-19 pandemic started spreading globally in February 2020. The service has undoubtedly greatly improved over the last few years, convincing more publishers to bring their games to the cloud and also continuously improving the backend technology to raise the bar for cloud gaming, as they did a few months ago with the RTX Blackwell upgrade. NVIDIA took the opportunity to confirm that GFN users have streamed over one billion hours of gameplay to date. Given the ongoing memory shortage, it […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/geforce-now-turns-six-users-streamed-over-1b-hours-to-date/

Exactly a week after dropping the first 'Features Overview' video dedicated to the open world and story of Crimson Desert, developer Pearl Abyss has released the second entry in the series. The new video dives deep into the action/adventure RPG's combat mechanics and character progression ahead of its March 19, 2026 launch date. The showcase reveals a combat system designed around fluidity, expressiveness, and player choice, combined with progression paths that, according to the developers, will reward exploration and experimentation. At the heart of Crimson Desert's combat are weapon variety and seamless skill chaining. Players can wield an arsenal of […]

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Sony has posted its own quarterly financial report, revealing that PS5 shipments have now reached 92.2 million units, up from 84.2 million units declared in the previous quarter. This means that Sony sold 8 million PlayStation 5 consoles in its fiscal Q3, a rather significant (-15.8%) decrease from Q3 2024. This is only slightly offset by marginally better PS5 shipments in Q1 and Q2 2025 compared to the previous year. Overall, in FY 2024, Sony had shipped 15.7 million units as of Q3, whereas this year, the total fiscal year sales to date amount to 14.4 million units, or -8.3%. […]

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Just a few hours after AMD CEO Lisa Su publicly shared that they expected the Steam Machine to start shipping in early 2026, Valve posted an update revealing there will actually be a slight delay. In a blog post dedicated to launch timing and other FAQs for the whole family of upcoming Steam Hardware products, Valve admitted they've had to revisit the shipping schedule and pricing due to the ongoing memory and storage shortages that have hit the tech industry hard. They had hoped to be able to share both the launch and price details by now, but that just […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/steam-machine-actually-gets-slight-delay-ram-shortage/

We've known that a new Mass Effect (which we'll call Mass Effect 5 in this story for the sake of simplicity) was coming ever since late 2020. At that year's edition of The Game Awards, developer BioWare shared a brief trailer showing an aged Liara T'soni and subtly hinting at a direct sequel to the original trilogy, skipping the latest franchise installment, 2017's Andromeda. More than five years later, we've still got very little to go on. Another brief teaser was published on N7 Day 2023, but BioWare was still very much focused on releasing Dragon Age: The Veilguard first. […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/mass-effect-5-should-be-bethesda-style-open-world-game-says-ex-skyrim-lead/

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked by GamesIndustry.biz whether developer Rockstar Games had used AI to build Grand Theft Auto 6, and the answer was negative: the state of Leonida, a fictionalized version of Florida, has been entirely handcrafted. That said, Zelnick mentioned that GenAI-powered tools are being used all across Take-Two's studios to "drive costs and time efficiencies". On the topic of AI, I've been enthusiastic since the very beginning. This company's products have always been built with machine learning and artificial intelligence. We've actually always been a leader in the space, and right now we have hundreds of […]

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Yesterday, Epic published the Epic Games Store year-in-review post, revealing new records for sales of third-party games (+57% over last year), total PC users (over 317 million), and monthly active users (MAUs; 78 million in December 2025, when the giveaway of Hogwarts Legacy added around six million users). That said, while playtime spent with third-party games increased by 4%, total engagement across all Epic Games Store titles dropped by 14%, signaling a decrease in first-party engagement of games like Fortnite and Rocket League. Website GamesIndustry.biz was able to interview Epic Games Store General Manager Steve Allison, who admitted that the […]

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The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Borderlands 4 has been officially canceled. The news was shared yesterday, when Take-Two Interactive deleted the game from its updated list of upcoming releases found in its latest quarterly report. Alan Lewis, a spokesperson for Take-Two, shared the following statement with Variety: We made the difficult decision to pause development on that SKU. Our focus continues to be delivering quality post-launch content for players on the ongoing improvements to optimize the game. We’re continuing to collaborate closely with our friends at Nintendo. We have ‘PGA Tour 2K25’ and ‘WWE 2K26’ coming out for Nintendo […]

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South Korean developer Pearl Abyss announced today that the upcoming open world action/adventure game Crimson Desert has been wishlisted by over two million users across all platforms. It is yet another strong confirmation of the mounting hype behind Crimson Desert. It's been a while since the market got a fantasy triple-A open world game of this scale (the world is said to be twice as big as Skyrim's), after all, and fans can't wait to get their hands on the game after many years of development. Thankfully, in addition to celebrating wishlist milestones, Pearl Abyss is still sharing little nuggets […]

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Funcom has announced that Dune: Awakening Chapter 3, the game's biggest update yet, is live now. This patch continues the main story following the events of Chapter 2 and significantly revamps the previously lackluster endgame content, introducing numerous new locations, systems, and gear. Wccftech watched a remote presentation by the developer to learn the key details and features of Chapter 3; you can read our in-depth report below. In This Article: New Landsraad Mission System To start, the Landsraad system has been completely overhauled. It is now a contest between the Atreides and the Harkonnen to gain support from minor […]

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