Corsair acquired Drop in December 2023 in an effort to expand its peripheral business beyond the basic gaming keyboards and audio gear it offered at the time, and it has since adopted some of Drop's keyboard expertise into its new Corsair MAKR 75 DIY keyboard kits. Now, Drop has announced that Corsair will be fully absorbing Drop, closing down the online storefront and turning Drop.com into a showcase for all of the collaborations Drop has done in its time making premium peripherals.

The announcement makes it clear that Drop.com will no longer be an operational storefront by March 31, and anyone looking to place an order on Drop will need to do so by March 25. The announcement states that "many Drop products will continue to be offered directly from Corsair and partner channels," and while Drop says that buyers can "expect exclusive announcements, limited runs, and products shaped by partnerships and creativity," it seems like Drop's operations will be scaled back as a result of the change—by how much is unclear, though.

Nintendo has officially announced Pokémon Winds and Pokémon Waves as the latest installment in its never-ending creature-capture series. The two new games will introduce Generation 10 Pokémon and be available exclusively for the Nintendo Switch 2 sometime in 2027. It will be the first Pokémon game exclusive to the Switch 2, and there's no word on whether it will launch for the original Switch or Switch OLED later down the line. An exact launch date was not revealed, although late 2027 seems likely based on previous launches.

The reveal trailer—which is not actual gameplay footage—shows a continuation of the 3D aesthetic, revealing the usual selection of biomes, including oceans, grasslands, rock outcroppings, dungeons, and forests. The trailer also gave us a glimpse at the three new starter Pokémon, Browt, the Grass type, Pombon, the Fire type, and Gecqua, the Water type. The trailer also teased underwater exploration, and what looks like an island resort or town sort of in the style of hut-over-water buildings typically found in calm tropical waters.

It was revealed in January that the PlayStation 5 Pro would get an upgraded PSSR 2.0 scaler in Q1 2026, finally unlocking the full hardware potential of the PS5. It was announced in a recent PlayStation Blog post that the aforementioned PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) update would start rolling out to the PS5 Pro globally starting on February 27, with Resident Evil Requiem being the first game to use the more advanced PSSR version. Sony says that the upgraded PSSR scaler will soon also be usable with any of the over 50 games that have so far implemented the original PSSR games. A system update will be shipped in March that will let players enable an option titled "Enhance PSSR Image Quality," to apply the upgraded model to older games.

Sony says that the new PSSR "takes a very different approach to not only the neural network but also the overall algorithm," and Masaru Ijuin, Capcom's Senior Manager of Engine Development Support Section, R&D Foundational Technology Department, explained that "With Resident Evil Requiem, we focused on enhancing the presentation quality of the protagonist through an upgraded version of RE Engine to deepen the player's immersion in horror. For example, each individual strand of hair and beard is rendered as a polygon, allowing it to move realistically in response to body motion and wind," going on to explain that the level of fidelity Capcom was able to achieve was made possible by the upgraded PSSR features, since things like hair and similar fine textures are difficult to upscale.

The hype for Marathon has been building leading up to the free server slam event on February 26-March 3, with all that excitement coming to a head at the start of the Marathon free test weekend, which kicked off with a sizeable peak player count of 143,621 players just under two hours after the start of the event. Given that the server slam event started on a Thursday, it seems likely that many of the players who have since stopped testing the new extraction shooter had real-world responsibilities to attend to. Those numbers also only represent the game's Steam market share. Accounting for players on Xbox and PlayStation 5 would likely lead to significantly higher player count figures.

Despite this success, online discussions surrounding the new shooter seem to be surprisingly divided, with players both praising and criticizing Marathon for everything from its art style and UI design to the gunplay, lack of tension and PvP action, and the NPC AI being challenging. Character balance was also a common topic that featured in critical reviews, with some players complaining that certain characters are too overpowered while others are not capable enough. While some of these complaints, like the UI being difficult to read and certain performance issues, seem to be somewhat more widespread and valid, the Marathon development team at Bungie has responded to and acknowledged almost all of the common complaints in a recent post on X, either offering some advice to improve the player experience or requesting more detailed feedback so that issues can be dealt with ahead of launch or in post-launch patches.

It was recently revealed by Komodo Station, Valve's official retail partner for Steam hardware in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, that prices for the Steam Deck OLED prices will increase by as much as 17% in March. However, as the storefront explains in the announcement, these price increases are as a result of "increases in logistics costs and increased exchange rate volatility," not as a result of the ongoing memory shortages and price increases. It specifically notes that prices in Hong Kong remain unchanged, which should be a positive indication for western audiences that Steam Deck prices aren't about to skyrocket—yet.

While neither Valve nor Komodo has provided any indication that prices are about to increase for the Steam Deck, it has been revealed that Valve's supply chain is affected by the current memory crisis as much as any other hardware company. The gaming giant recently postponed announcing pricing for the Steam Machine and Steam Frame due to increased uncertainty and skyrocketing memory prices. The Steam Deck may still be somewhat exempt from these price increases because of Valve's pricing structure that follows the typical console model instead of a PC pricing strategy—that is to say that Valve has priced the Steam Deck very competitively in order to attract buyers to its platform and storefront. However, if Valve is already eating the cost of inflated Steam Deck memory and storage costs, it almost seems inevitable that it will eventually have to increase the price of the Steam Deck. Currently, even Nintendo is considering price increases for the Switch 2 after its LPDDR5X cost price increased by as much as 41%.

While Xbox seems to be completely behind the idea of multi-platform day-one game launches, Sony has had a number of hit single-player games come out on PS5 in recent years, only for them to mosey over to PC years later. Now, according to notable gaming journalist, Jason Schreier (via the Triple Click podcast), even these slow PC ports may take a back seat going forward. Schreier, who is notable for his frequent insider insights, says that Sony's strategy for PC seems to hinge on its live-service games, adding that "I think the sense I'm getting is that they're backing away from putting their exclusive console stuff like traditional single-player stuff on PC." This news comes in spite of recent comments from former Sony executives who clearly believe that there is money to be made from PC ports and Sony's own planned Cross-Buy feature that would go a long way to unify game libraries across PS5 and PC.

He goes on to say that he believes that major upcoming future single-player titles may not make it to PC at all. When asked about the upcoming Wolverine game, slated to launch on September 15, he said that he "wouldn't be surprised if it never came to PC, but even if it does, you have a strong idea of what that is, and that you need a PlayStation to play it, at least for the indefinite future." Schreier, commenting on the commercial success of the PC ports we have seen come out of Sony, said that "I'm not sure how super successful those PC releases were," implying that Sony may not miss out on a lot of profit as a result of ditching PC ports. He would later take to the ResetEra forum to comment that his statements in the podcast were not speculation, saying that "I mean, it's not speculation, but sometimes topics come up on the show before I'm quite ready to publish a story about them. More to come soon I'm sure." Schreiers implication that the commercial success of PC ports may have been limited does hold some water. Aside from some of Sony's biggest hits, it's easy to see how interest in a game would wane after it has already been on the market for over a year—as much as that may be self-inflicted on Sony's part. Additionally, he mentioned in the podcast that Sony, unlike Microsoft, has never made any commitment to cross-platform game releases.

Highguard's abysmal launch and rapidly declining player counts are well documented at this point, but it recently came to light that Wildlight was not the indie darling it was portraying itself to be. According to a report by Game File, Wildlight, and by extension Highguard's development, was being funded by TiMi Studio Group—whose Montreal studio working on unannounced open-world AAA games was recently shut down. Now, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports that Tencent pulled funding from Wildlight shortly after the game's launch, with management breaking the news of the pulled Tencent money to staff in a meeting on February 11.

This sudden loss of funding may explain why Wildlight was forced to lay off as much as 80% of the Highguard dev team so soon after the game's launch—the studio simply no longer had the financial backing to work on a game that was not an immediate success. According to inside sources, staff were under the impression that continued funding would only be guaranteed if certain player count and retention metrics were met. Former Wildlight developers put the onus for the game's failure on management, citing hubris and a misguided belief that Wildlight would be able to emulate Apex Legends's success, since the management team had previously been involved in that launch.

Surgent Studios, the game studio behind EA's acclaimed platformer, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, has revealed its latest game, FixForce, a 3D "extraction platformer." As the developer's genre-bashing description of the game suggests, FixForce is a co-op platformer that puts players into a bright, post-apocalyptic world and makes them solve environmental and movement puzzles, fix broken machines with nearby scrap and parts, and get back to the repair van before the character's battery or time runs out. The only dangers in FixForce are the water and rogue bots that either undo your work or outright attack you, and if you happen to take enough damage, your head pops off, whereupon other players can simply retrieve it and pop it onto a new body, so that you can finish the job.

The developer is targeting the same group of players who love "chaotic co-op games," like Peak and Lethal company, as well as gamers who appreciate classic physics games, like Portal, Garry's Mod, and Ratchet and Clank. FixForce features simple colors and graphics, and the minimum spec echoes that, asking for a Ryzen 5 2600 or Intel Core i7-6700K and a GeForce GTX 1060, Radeon RX 580 8 GB, or Intel Arc A580. Each round can feature up to six players in co-op. The game was originally meant to launch under Pocketpair Publishing, but the founder of Surgent Studios said that "We saw the pure chaos and hilarity FixForce unleashed as it came together, so we made the decision to move quickly and publish it ourselves," adding that FixForce is unlike anything the studio has worked on before, since it's all about chaos and fun whereas the previous two games the studio was responsible for were about abuse and grief. FixForce will launch on Steam and Epic games on March 12 in early access.

RedOctane, a relatively new game studio started by rhythm game veterans with the mission to "to bring rhythm gaming back with more power, more precision, and a deeper connection than ever before," has officially announced its first game, Stage Tour, which is slated to release on Steam and begin alpha testing in "summer 2026," or sometime around June or July. Console support is also planned, but there have been no concrete announcements of specific platforms or release dates. Stage Tour will feature instrument designs from Gibson—specifically the Gibson, Epiphone, and Kramer brands—with whom the studio says it has a multi-year partnership to license and feature designs.

Stage Tour follows the typical note highway rhythm game style that was popularized by games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The game studio says that Stage Tour is being developed as a "love letter to rhythm gaming," and that it is meant to "feel familiar and authentic," while also evolving the genre in what it calls "the right way," by using modern technology. The announcement itself doesn't make mention of custom peripherals beyond calling out plastic instruments, but there is a FAQ page that confirms that players will be able to buy the game bundled with a Gibson Kramer guitar controller, which has been a popular design in the rhythm game space—it's unclear if the Kramer's hardware will be updated for the game's launch. RedOctane is also actively recruiting for music to add to the game, although it has not revealed what music will feature in Stage Tour, aside from a mention of a "variety of music around the Rock and Metal genres."

Riot Games, the developer behind massive games like League of Legends and Valorant, recently suffered a round of layoffs after the middling console launch of 2XKO, its new 2v2 fighting game. Now, just over two weeks later, the studio has confirmed to Game Developer that it has laid off "around 12" more employees, this time in its publishing division. This round of layoffs doesn't only affect a single team after an ailing launch though, with the publication reporting that three teams have been affected by the layoffs.

Riot Games has been owned by Tencent since 2015, and it was recently revealed that Tencent shuttered a newly formed studio, TiMi Montreal, which was working on AAA, open-world, cross-platform games, but had yet to release or even announce any of those games. Tencent's other hulking Chinese rival, NetEase, also recently implemented a round of layoffs at another studio that had yet to announce or release any games, and it seems like that studio may not be in it for the long haul, if the employees posting about those layoffs are to be believed.

Windrose, formerly Crosswind, is an upcoming PvE co-op pirate survival crafting game that recently made waves during the Steam Next Fest, attracting over 22,000 concurrent players during its demo period. The Discord server for the game also ballooned to well over 20,000 members, and the hype for the game's expected release date reveal was so intense that the development team felt the need to temper expectations when it released the Raging Seas trailer for IGN Fan Fest. In the announcement following the trailer release, the developer behind the game explained that the game's potential scope made it impossible to announce a realistic launch date at the time, adding that "the full EA version of the game could be several times bigger in content and scale than the demo. Like x10 islands, x10 points of interest, more ships, enemies, crafting and building, etc."

In short, the developer asked fans to "let us cook more," explaining that the priority needs to be delivering a quality experience and shipping the game "on time and in best condition possible." The message goes on to promise fans that a release date will be revealed as soon as the development team is confident that it can deliver on all of its goals without having to delay the game. Windrose combines crafting mechanics, adventures on the high seas, and Souls-like combat in an ambitious new project. The demo offered players access to three islands, a ship and crew, early quests and boarding, and a limited selection of weapons, enemies, and survival mechanics. Obviously, the game has a pretty vast scope, and it's being developed by an indie team, so it makes sense that the developers would ask players to be patient for the release date and other information.

The build-up for Bungie's new survival extraction shooter, Marathon, may be coming to its peak ahead of the upcoming server slam event and imminent launch in the following week. The new game has built up so much hype ahead of the play test that Marathon has officially blown past all of its similar competition in the Steam bestsellers chart. At the time of writing, Marathon sits in third place in Steam's official chart, which ranks game sales based on revenue earned. To reach that, it had to climb 58 places in the last week alone, surpassing both Arc Raiders and the ever-popular Warframe.

SteamDB reports that Marathon is the 35th most wishlisted game, which may not sound like a lot, but it also reveals that over 10,000 people have added Marathon to their wishlists in the last seven days. If Marathon continues on its trajectory, it will have come a long way since its early 2025 lukewarm reception, which resulted in a delay from its original September release date to March 5. Players will be able to test Marathon in an upcoming server slam event on February 26-March 2.

Aside from its recent side-quests, like the new K2 HE Concrete and Resin Editions, Keychron has been updating its Q- and V-series mechanical keyboards with the new Ultra designs, featuring new ZMK firmware and Silk POM switches, and the latest installments in that series are the V10 Ultra and the V0 Ultra, which have just been released with those same enhancements. The Keychron V10 Ultra, an Alice layout mechanical keyboard, retails at $124.99, while the V0 Ultra, a standalone wireless mechanical num pad, is launching at $69.99. Being part of the V-series means that both the V10 Ultra and V0 Ultra are made of ABS plastic, and, being part of the Ultra family means they will both feature 8K polling—although the usefulness of this is debatable on a mechanical keyboard. The V0 Ultra is a standard num pad with a row of four macro or navigation keys above the 10-key portion and a column of five macro keys to the left of it. It also has a programmable knob in the top left corner.

The Keychron V10 Ultra 8K features a 75% Alice layout, which is meant to improve ergonomics by allowing users to angle their hands inwards, opening up the chest and shoulders, and it has an additional column of macro keys and a programmable knob along the left edge of the keyboard. Both the V10 Ultra and V0 Ultra have south-facing per-key RGB backlighting, and the V10 Ultra has a claimed 660 hours of battery life from a 4,000 mAh battery on 2.4 GHz with the backlighting disabled. The V0 Ultra packs a smaller 1,800 mAh battery but still claims up to 360 hours of battery life with the backlighting disabled. Both the V10 Ultra and V0 Ultra feature double-shot PBT keycaps in the OSA profile, and they are available with Keychron Silk POM Red linear, Brown tactile, and Banana tactile switch options. Both keyboards are also hot-swappable with any Cherry MX-style switches. Both of the new releases also use poron gasket mounts, which help reduce negative auditory feedback and soften the typing feel. Both the keyboard and the num pad also offer Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C wired, and 2.4 GHz connectivity.

Despite recent concerns about driver updates, Lenovo's Legion Go has been a staple in the handheld gaming space since it launched, thanks to a large 8.8-inch display and the detachable controllers. Still, that large display can't compete with devices like the 11-inch OneXPlayer 2-in-1 devices as a portable general computing device. A new foldable Legion Go concept, leaked by Windows Latest, may be in development to potentially address users who want a handheld that can pull double duty as a handheld gaming device and a laptop. According to the leak, the Legion Go Fold will use a foldable POLED display that unfolds from a 7.7-inch form factor to 11.6-inches. The controllers will also allegedly connect wirelessly, enabling the display to be used in 7.7-inch mode in landscape mode or in either portrait or landscape mode while attached to the controllers in 11.7-inch mode—such a portrait mode display could conceivably be split to function somewhat like a Nintendo DS. Of course, there will also be a detachable keyboard accessory to use the Legion Go Fold as a mini laptop in 11.7-inch mode.

The specifications for the Legion Go Fold will also be nothing to sneeze at, featuring an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, 32 GB of memory, and a 48 Wh battery. Lenovo will also keep the vertical FPS mode from the Legion Go and Legion Go 2 for the Legion Go Fold Concept. While the Legion Go Fold may launch as nothing more than a concept, Lenovo is one of a few laptop makers that brings these foldable compute concepts to market, with recent examples of this including the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable. So it's not entirely impossible that Lenovo will bring something like a Legion Go Fold to market at some point. That said, it would be a niche within a niche, so it doesn't seem entirely likely that we will see a commercial version of the foldable handheld at any point soon. Regardless, Lenovo will allegedly show off the concept at MWC 2026 on March 2, 2026.

Awekeys, one of very few companies making metal keycaps for mechanical keyboards, has just announced the Awekeys Air as its latest addition to the line-up. The Awekeys Air keycaps are low-profile keycaps designed for slim mechanical keyboards, like the Iqunix Magi65 Pro, NuPhy Air series, and even split ergonomic keyboards, like the ZSA Voyager and MoErgo Go60. The Awekeys Air series is available for both cross stems—for Choc V2 and Gateron switches—and Choc V1 stems, which are common on niche low-profile split keyboards, and Early Bird Kickstarter pricing starts at $109 for a 68-key DIY kit, $139 for a 95-key 80% Base kit, and $159 for a 113-key 100% kit. These prices are only for the Ivory White and Obsidian Black, with the Titanium Black and Satin Copper coming in slightly more expensive and the limited edition Satin Silver and Satin Gold costing as much as $249 for the 80% Base kit. These prices will also increase when the keycaps hit retail. The Kickstarter campaign lists MSRP of the Ivory White and Obsidian Black 100% kit colorways as $249, but keyboards and accessories often cost less than anticipated when moving from a Kickstarter to regular retail.

The Awekeys Air keycaps come in six different colors—Titanium Black, Ivory White, Obsidian Black, Satin Copper, Satin Silver, and Satin Gold—and Awekeys is offering a hand-finished brush finish on the Gold, Silver, Copper, and Titanium colorways. The keycaps themselves are made from a recycled alloy called cupronickel, which is predominantly copper and nickel, which resists corrosion, offers some anti-microbial benefits, and is considered low allergy risk—although you may want to avoid it if you have a known nickel allergy. The keycaps are also available with legends or as blanks, and the profile has a uniform height with spherical tops and a total height of 5 mm.

Sony is one of the gaming giants that's still stubbornly holding onto the idea of console exclusives, and Gran Turismo is one of the franchises that still sticks to Sony's living room gaming console. This isn't due to a lack of time or technical know-how, though, as is evidenced by a tidbit recently shared by industry insider, Jeff Grubb, on his podcast, Jeff Grubb's Game Mess. According to Grubb, Sony has an internal version of Gran Turismo 7 that runs on the Nintendo Switch 2, although it will seemingly never be released on Nintendo's newest handheld gaming console. This echoes previous rumors that there were other versions of Gran Turismo games with internal builds running on Windows and Linux as well as a version of Gran Turismo 6 with full VR support.

Speculation suggests that these internal, non-commercial builds of games like Gran Turismo are likely to be testing platforms for Sony's own future hardware endeavors, which the hardware and game development teams can use to gauge things like minimum required hardware specs, optimization, and even graphical fidelity options for smaller screens. The timing of this information lends credence to the existence of GT7 on the Switch 2, since Sony has allegedly been working on a full-fledged gaming portable console that is slated to launch alongside the PS6 somewhere between 2027 and 2029, depending on the state of the ongoing PC hardware shortage.

AMD announced its Ryzen AI 400 series "Gorgon Point" mobile APUs based on Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores at CES 2026 earlier this year, simultaneously showing off the AM5-based Ryzen AI 400-branded desktop APUs at the same show. Now, according to a new leak by Moore's Law is Dead on X, AMD will allegedly launch the new Ryzen AI 400-series desktop processors for AM5 in the first half of 2026. MLID adds that the launch may even happen as early as Q1. He also released what he claims to be a short promotional video of an AMD Ryzen AI 400 Pro processor in an AM5 socket to lend credence to his leak.

Exact specifications for the AM5 APUs are unconfirmed, but if they're anything like the laptop counterparts, it is expected that the new APUs will launch with the same silicon as Strix Point but with adjusted power management and increased clock speeds. This means we can expect to see the Ryzen AI 400 desktop processors top out with a 12-core (4× Zen 5; 8 × Zen 5c) CPU cluster tied to a 16 CU RDNA 3.5 iGPU, and a 60 TOPS NPU.

EA's Full Circle studio published the hotly anticipated Skate, a free-to-play live-service installment in the popular franchise, just six months ago, and to a booming 134,901 peak concurrent players. However, those figures quickly dropped to the little-over-2,000 daily players we see today, and it seems as though the dwindling player count may have been an indication of what's to come. According to a recent blog post put out by Full Circle, the studio will be "reshaping" itself, making changes to better support Skate's long-term future, and those changes mean that "some roles will be impacted," which is to say that the studio is laying off staff.

Neither EA nor Full Circle have commented on how many developers or team members are being laid off, but the studio says that these are individuals who helped build the foundation of Skate, suggesting that they were part of the core development and art teams. This announcement comes not too long after EA was bought out by a group consisting of PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, who subsequently announced a cost-savings plan that would see EA pivot to AI in order to increase efficiency, manage debt, and cut operating costs. The news of layoffs is also only the latest in a recent slew of layoffs and studio closures across the ailing gaming industry, which has seemingly hit the live-service genre particularly hard.

The State of New York's attorney general, Letitia James, has officially taken gaming giant, Valve, to court in a state court in Manhattan, alleging that the combination of games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and Dota, wherein players can earn and use real money to buy loot boxes, and Steam's Community Market, where rare skins and items can be sold, often for exorbitant prices, amount to "quintessential gambling." There are reports of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins selling for as much as $2.5 million, with the game touted as having the biggest in-game economy of any video game. Valve previously adjusted the way it presented loot boxes and their rewards to players, seemingly specifically to avoid EU gambling regulations.

The lawsuit, spotted by Reuters, alleges that "Valve's loot boxes are particularly pernicious because they are popular among children and adolescents," going on to state that these mechanics put children at risk of becoming addicted, with the complaint adding that children are four times more at risk of becoming addicted to gambling in adulthood if they are exposed to gambling before the age of 12. The lawsuit seeks restitution for players and a fine of three times Valve's earnings from any activities deemed to be illegal. Loot boxes are largely looked down on by gamers and lawmakers alike, because players are encouraged to spend money on them, and they provide no guarantee of any return or specific value. If James succeeds against Valve in the lawsuit, it could set a precedent that may result in sweeping changes across both Steam and the gaming industry at large.

NuPhy is known for making some of the best mid-range low-profile mechanical keyboards, having recently launched the Node series, a $99.95-109.95 low-profile mechanical keyboard family shortly after releasing the V3 update for its Air series keyboards. Now, adding to its growing list of accessories for its aforementioned low-profile keyboard collection, NuPhy has released a NuPhy x Riel Aquarium nSA profile keycap set, which is available on the NuPhy site for $49.95.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the NuPhy Air 60 HE is live]

NuPhy designed the Aquarium keycap set in collaboration with Riel, and the set will be manufactured by KeyTok, but it uses NuPhy's low-profile, uniform-height nSA profile, which can also be found on its pre-built low-profile keyboards. The keycap set employs a whimsical sea-life theme, featuring various shades of blue and off-white alphanumeric and modifier keys and orange navigation accent keycaps. There are also alternative white and blue modifier keycaps featuring aquarium doodles. The Aquarium nSA keycap set is made of five-sided dye-sublimated PBT, and the set has a total of 159 keycaps. Given that nSA is a uniform-height keycap set, compatibility with ortholinear and small form factor keyboards with split spaces should actually be quite high.

Back at CES 2026, we got a brief look at Keychron's resin and concrete K2 HE Special Edition wireless TMR keyboards, but the company has officially launched both the Concrete Edition and Resin Edition K2 HE keyboards, with both keyboards launching via Keychron's direct-to-consumer online store for $199.99. Both keyboards are based on the K2 HE, which has been one of Keychron's more popular models since it launched, and there isn't much by way of technical improvements over the original K2 HE aside from the design update. The resin edition features a smoky translucent case with an almost marbled aesthetic that shifts in the light, while the concrete edition has a simpler brutalist design, with color-matched keycaps and a solid gray aesthetic.

Both the K2 HE Concrete and Resin Editions are based on the same MCU, TMR sensor, and switch architectures as the original K2 HE, meaning they use the same Gateron Double-Rail Magnetic Nebula switches as the original—with 4 mm total travel and enabling all the typical analog features and online customization via Keychron Launcher—and feature the same 1 kHz polling rate and wireless connectivity via Bluetooth 5.3 and 2.4 GHz. It also goes without saying that both keyboards have the same 75% layout as the previous K2 HE keyboards. The material changes have also resulted in different dimensions. The K2 HE Resin Edition measures 321.13 × 131.3 mm, with a 27.06 mm listed front height and 4° typing angle, while the Concrete Edition comes in at 322.13 × 132.13 mm with a 27.39 mm front height and 4° typing angle. Both also use an aluminium switch plate and have a tray-mount design.

There has been a lot of talk about the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, since it was announced that she would be taking over from Phil Spencer, and she has even made a handful of statements about her intent for the future of the Xbox platform—even if some of those have simply led gamers and commentators to the conclusion that she is there to usher Xbox into the night. However, in a recent interview with Windows Central, Sharma and the new Xbox CCO (Chief Content Officer), Matt Booty, have commented on the immediate future of Xbox and what Sharma previously referred to as the "return to Xbox."

According to the two executives, the next steps revolve around the next-gen Xbox hardware platform, which is rumored to launch around 2028 as a PC-console hybrid, and Microsoft's first-party development efforts. Sharma said "For me, the spirit of 'Return to Xbox' is about returning to the spirit that the team was founded on... It's that spirit of surprise, it's the spirit of building something nobody else is willing to try," going on to explain that "I think that our core Xbox fans and players have invested up to 25 years of themselves in these universes and our console. I want to make sure everybody knows I'm committed to Xbox, starting with the console. We're going to keep meeting players where they are—the world continues to evolve and change. We're going to make sure Xbox is a great place for developers and players. We want to invest in reducing the artificial divide between different types of devices that they want to use with us. I think that's going to mean a lot more investment in breaking down the barriers, in helping developers build once and show up across different hardware experience."

Valve has steadily been adding features to SteamOS and the Steam Client since the release of the Steam Deck and leading up to the Steam Machine, but the latest Steam Deck Beta client update aims to address two main issues that have apparently been prevalent in the Steam Hardware Survey, which should result in more accurate GPU data reporting. The first change fixes incorrect VRAM reporting on some GPUs, although Valve doesn't provide any explanation about which GPUs are affected by this bug, while the second change makes it so that the Steam Client automatically detects the display adaptor with the most VRAM—therefore likely the most performant or the least likely to be an iGPU—when collecting Steam Survey information.

Aside from weird edge cases, like users running both a workstation GPU and a gaming GPU in one system, these changes should result in more accurate data from the Steam Hardware Survey. It's unclear how widespread these reporting issues were or how far back they go, but the changes are unlikely to have an effect before a wider roll-out, and it's unclear when the wider roll-out will happen. The beta client update also includes two minor updates to Steam Input. The update adds a multi-button selector for the button chord activator, which Valve says will improve compatibility with extra grip buttons on modern controllers. Valve has also changed the way the Gyro to Joystick Camera output works, matching the Gyro to Joystick Deflection behavior, which it says is useful for "identifying a game's internal joystick deadzone." Polishing both the Steam Hardware Survey results and Steam Input might be steps to prepare for the launch of the Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame.

Blizzard's recent rebrand of Overwatch 2 to just Overwatch also saw the game studio announce a series of new heroes coming in the first season of Overwatch's new era, one of which is Jetpack Cat, who quickly became a fan favorite. In a recent appearance on The Omnic Podcast, Overwatch's associate director, Alec Dawson, said that the popularity of Jetpack Cat, and other unorthodox characters, has led the development and design teams to consider more "oddball" heroes for future releases. Blizzard has promised to add one hero to the game every season for the first year—meaning a new hero every two months—but there was no word on whether the plan was to continue at this cadence indefinitely. In the podcast, though, Dawson clarifies that this is the goal as long as it's sustainable and there's no big gameplay event or similar to get in the way. He also says that this release cadence also gives the developers "a lot more opportunities to take some chances" on gameplay differentiation, different roles, and "something a little bit different" so that players can find characters they enjoy playing with or whose design they enjoy. He adds that the response to Jetpack Cat has been heard in the Overwatch team, and it "helps us think about what sort of characters and heroes we want to do in the future, as well."

At the same time, in a recent interview with PCGamesN, Dawson commented that Jetpack Cat is the most banned character in Overwatch at the moment, and that is a situation Blizzard would like to address so that she can be used more frequently in competitive matches. "We love the cat, but we are going to tone down a little bit of her aggression," he continued to explain that Jetpack Cat's ability to dive a backline will likely be somewhat suppressed in an upcoming nerf: "When she gets both her minor perk, Claws Out, and her major perk, Territorial, the combination allows her to be an absolute menace that's diving backlines and taking 1v1s. So we're going to tone that down just a little bit and see how that goes, but the cat won't be scratching as much as she is currently." He added that the hero ban feature has been helpful to guide the balance and development of heroes, which will likely only become more complicated with the new hero release cadence. Notably, Blizzard has also been responding to community feedback on topics like hero design, as was the case with another new hero, Anran, who was criticized for looking generic after her announcement.

The disappointing launch of Highguard has been well documented by now, but the game has just hit a new low, despite recent developer efforts to keep things afloat following a round of layoffs. According to SteamDB, Highguard's player count has continued to trend downwards, reaching a new low of just 743 peak concurrent players in the 24-hour period preceding publication. February 23 marked the first time the game dipped below 1,000 peak concurrent players in a 24-hour period—down from a launch peak of 97,249—and player counts haven't recovered since then.

No Man's Sky had a similar launch trajectory, releasing with a massive 212,000+ peak player count which quickly dwindled to just over 1,000 in 2018 before the game's surprise resurrection—it now sits at around 20,000 peak concurrent daily players. Highguard's dwindling player count is despite recent content updates reportedly bringing a bit more excitement to the gameplay—recent reviews show an uptick in positive feedback and a reduction in negative reviews.

One of the simpler solutions manufacturers have come up with to mitigate the ubiquitous 12v-2×6 GPU power connector meltdowns is colored cable terminations that simply give the user an indication that the GPU power connector is properly connected. According to a recent post on r/MSI_Gaming, those colored connectors are both doing their jobs and causing concerns among MSI PSU users. The original poster shared an image of the stock 12v-2×6 power cables of an MSI MPG A1000GS ATX 3.1 PSU that had slowly been creeping out of both the PSU and PNY RTX 5080 GPU connectors over the course of two months, exposing the colored yellow connector end that is meant to serve as a warning against thermal meltdown events.

While the slowly loosening connector had not yet resulted in a meltdown, it had seemingly started causing instability in the user's system during heavy gaming loads. What's more concerning is the multitude of comments in the Reddit thread echoing the OP's story, saying that they had properly connected both ends of the cable until there was a positive click, but despite this, the cable seemed to be creeping out at one or both ends. Some commenters hypothesized that part of the reason for these meltdown events that happen so long after the system was first built is that repeated thermal cycling causes the plastic connector to expand and contract, resulting in the cable slowly coming loose. The redditor was eventually told to request a replacement unit through Amazon, but if the number of similar reports in the same thread are anything to go by, the issue appears to be at least somewhat widespread with MSI's cables.

Sony's upcoming Horizon Hunters Gathering three-player co-op game was revealed earlier this month, but it seems as though Sony is deeper into development than it let on during the announcement, because the gaming giant is apparently already ready for its first Horizon Hunters Gathering closed beta test. Sony announced the beta test via a post on the game's official X account, linking to a website where you can register to try out the game ahead of its official launch. The Horizon Hunters Gathering closed beta will take place from February 27 to March 1 for both PS5 and PC players (via Steam).

The closed beta will be limited to three playable hunts—Axle, Rem, and Sun—two game modes—Machine Incursion and Cauldron Descent—and just one environment—Colorado Springs, and only players from the USA, Canada, and much of Europe will be eligible for the closed beta, and the US play test will be limited to 4 PM-7 PM PST, while EU players will be allowed to play at 7 PM-10 PM CET. Players will also be subject to selection by Sony, so applying via the PlayStation Beta Program will not guarantee access to the beta. PlayStation players will be allowed to bring along two friends, for a full party of three, but PC players looking to test the beta with friends will need to apply separately—no free invites for friends on Steam. The play test will also be under strict NDA, which means players will not be able to share any gameplay or opinions outside of Sony's beta tester Discord server, nor will they be allowed to share screenshots or stream gameplay.

Shortly after Discord announced a plan to expand its use of Persona age verification globally as part of its new "teen-by-default" account settings, it has confirmed in a recent FAQ page update that it will not require age verification for "90%+ of users" after facing significant backlash. The social media platform explains that it will be going ahead with its teen-by-default, but that most users just don't access age-restricted content or because the internal age verification systems will be able to automatically determine age without any user action. Discord's CTO, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, said in a blog post that "we knew this rollout was going to be controversial. Any time you introduce something that touches identity and verification, people are going to have strong feelings," but effectively explained that the original announcement was misinterpreted or explained badly. He goes on to say that Discord was evaluating Persona for biometric age verification data in an experiment in January, but has since decided not to proceed with the Persona partnership because it did not meet the bar of requiring on-device verification. He does, however, say that Discord will require age verification via k-ID in countries like Australia, Brazil, and the UK, where laws require it and do not allow Discord's internal estimation system. Discord will also be introducing a new "spoiler" channel option, which will allow communities to stop using age-restricted channels to avoid discussions about spoilers and politics.

At the same time, however, it was revealed in a post on Bluesky that Twitch has adopted Persona as an age verification system for Twitch Partners in order to receive payment. The age verification process required users to submit a selfie along with an image of a government ID card, passport, or driver's license. This report of mandatory Persona age verification on Twitch comes shortly after it was reported that hackers had discovered an exposed frontend for Persona that both demonstrated the platform's lackluster security and revealed ties to the US government and a potential mass-surveillance apparatus, although these were partially explained as an upcoming partnership with the government to verify the identities of remote federal workers. It's unclear how widespread Twitch's use of Persona is at this point in time, but a number of creators have made their voices heard via an open letter in Twitch's User Voices feature in light of the recent controversies surrounding Persona.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is slated to launch on March 19 for PC after almost nine months as a PS5 exclusive, and Nixxes and Kojima Productions just revealed the minimum PC hardware requirements, as well as the supported upscaling and graphical enhancement options, in a PlayStation Blog post. According to the blog post, the absolute minimum spec, which gets you 30 FPS as 1080p with low settings, requires an AMD Ryzen 3 3100 or Intel Core i3-10100, 16 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 or AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8 GB. Medium, or 1080p with medium settings, requires an RTX 3060 12 GB or Radeon RX 6600, and an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 or Intel Core i5-11400. Stepping it up to High (or recommended specs), which gets you 1440p at 60 FPS with high settings, requires an AMD Radeon RX 6800 or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X or Intel Core i7-11700. Very High, or 4K resolution at 60 FPS with very high settings, calls for an upgrade to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 or Radeon RX 9070 XT, while the CPU and memory specs remain the same as for the High tier. All spec tiers require 16 GB of memory, Windows 11 or Windows 10 1909 or up, and at least a 150 GB SSD.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will also offer PC players support for both 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide aspect ratios, and players with 16:9 displays can simulate a cinematic experience by opting for a 21:9 aspect ratio with black bars on the top and bottom of the display—this option will also be introduced for PS5 at the same time as the PC release. PC players will also get support for upscaling tech from all three GPU manufacturers: NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 2, with both frame generation and upscaling options available. These upscaling options can be used in conjunction with Dynamic Resolution Scaling, and players will be able to adjust upscaling quality. The game will also see the debut of Pico—Progressive Image Compositor—on PC. This is the upscaling technology used by Death Stranding 2 on PS5 and developed by Guerrilla Games for the Decima engine, and it can also be used alongside all available frame generation options and on all available graphics card manufacturers. The game will also offer native AA options for those not interested in upscaling.

Marvel's Wolverine has been on Sony's release roster for ages, with Sony having released a brutal trailer for the game as far back as September 2025. Insomniac Games, the Studio at the game's helm, just confirmed on X that Wolverine will launch on September 15, 2026, which is right in the middle of the previously promised "fall 2026" release window. Unfortunately, as expected, Marvel's Wolverine appears to be a console exclusive, at least at launch. There is no mention of a PC or Xbox launch date anywhere on the PlayStation Store or in the release date trailer.

Marvel's Wolverine will follow the titular character as he "searches for answers about his past," and the trailer reveals that players will revisit Logan's complex history as an anti-hero, fighting against and potentially alongside the likes of Sabretooth and Mystique, with scenes from the trailer teasing locations ranging from the American west to Japanese back alleys. The PlayStation Store page also confirms that Marvel's Wolverine will be single-player only and will feature offline play. Marvel's Spider-Man 2, another Marvel game developed by Insomniac for the PS5, initially launched on PS5 in October 2023, but only made it to PC in January 2025; if that game is any indication, it'll be a little over a year after launch before Marvel's Wolverine makes it to PC.

Shortly following the recent announcement that Phil Spencer would be leaving as the head of Xbox Gaming, the division's new CEO, Asha Sharma, released a long statement expressing her distaste for AI slop and her belief that, although "AI has long been part of gaming and will continue to be," games "are and always will be art, crafted by humans and created with the most innovative technology provided by us." Many gamers have been skeptical of these and similar statements now and in the past, but it seems as though industry veteran and founder of Xbox, Seamus Blackley, seems to be convinced that those are empty words, whether Sharma believes it or not. In a recent interview with GamesBeat, Blackley said about Sharma that he believes "her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night," going on to say that assurances like the aforementioned one by Sharma are "just what occurs to people to say when they bring in someone from an outside business into games."

In Blackley's view, Microsoft's bet on AI will result in a lot of the non-AI businesses being sunsetted, and that is what is happening to Xbox under the new CEO. He says that, just like AI has taken over "everything else," it will take over gaming as well, at least at Microsoft, going on to say that "Asha's background is entirely in software as a service and AI. The implicit thing here is that games is going to be AI-driven software as a service." Part of his justification for this belief is that, despite gaming industry veteran, Matt Booty, acting as Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer, Sharma is an outsider to the gaming industry and doesn't necessarily understand the industry. His concern is that such an outsider, especially one coming from an AI background, can only see gaming in an abstract way. That said, he does admit that there have been outsiders that have succeeded in gaming, but those that have understood that gaming is a content business. He also jokingly says that her statement about the future of Xbox "reminded me of that meme 'Hello, fellow kids!'" and that she would have to figure out what's interesting about gaming.

We previously covered how enterprising gamers managed to bypass AMD's FSR 4 restrictions to get Redstone frame generation tech working on older RDNA GPUs with OptiScaler. Now, it seems as though OptiScaler has managed bypass another one of AMD's limitations that restricted FSR 4 implementations to DirectX 12 games. According to the build notes uncovered by a Reddit user u/eduhfx, OptiScaler is testing adding Vulkan support in a new test build v0.9.0-pre10. Notably, OptiScaler is using a compatibility tool to work around FSR 4's lack of Vulkan support, similarly to how Linux translates DirectX, calls to Vulkan with DXVK or VKD3D. This also means that FSR 4 on Vulkan should work on Linux systems, as well, where games often run better under Vulkan than DX12—although at the time of writing, FSR 4 w/DX12 currently has issues running on Linux due to a Mesa issue that seemingly cannot be solved by the OptiScaler team.

Added Vulkan w/DX12 support - FSR 4 VK w/DX12, FSR 2.1 VK w/DX12

Currently, known issues:
FSR 4 VK w/DX12 has issues on Linux due to missing Mesa extensions
Not interested in reports as nothing we can fix on our side as far as we know

Just last week, we reported on the closure of Spliced, a newly formed NetEase game studio that suffered layoffs even before it had announced or released any games. Now, that same misfortune has come for TiMi Montreal, a division of TiMi founded in mid-2021 to create AAA, open-world, multi-platform games. The studio's closure was revealed in a now-removed LinkedIn post (via Game File) by a programmer at the studio, who said that "Today, TiMi Montreal is officially closing its doors," and goes on to lament the fact that the "the public will never get to experience what this team was capable of producing."

While TiMi Studio Group has been responsible for a number of high-profile mobile and cross-platform titles, including Call of Duty Mobile, Delta Force, Arena of Valor, and Age of Empires Mobile, among others, TiMi Montreal had not even announced any projects. The studio and its parent company, Tencent, also have yet to address the alleged closure, but several other employees sounded off in the comments of the original LinkedIn post, suggesting that the news of the closure is more than just hearsay. This news also comes shortly after Sony shuttered Bluepoint games, serving as yet another indication of an ailing gaming industry. Of course, without an official statement or more information, it's difficult to know how many employees were affected by the closure or how many will go on to work internally at Tencent or other TiMi studios, for example.

Shortly after news broke that Ubisoft is, in fact, working on "several" Assassin's Creed launches after its controversial Creative Houses reshuffle, the company has published an official Reddit post detailing the newly appointed lead for the Assassin's Creed franchise as well as giving gamers a taste of what's in-store for the future of the franchise. The most notable take-away from the announcement is that the Assassin's Creed franchise will be led by Martin Schelling as Head of Brand, Jean Guesdon as Head of Content, and François De Billy as Head of Production Excellence.

All three members of the Assassin's Creed leadership team have previously worked on Assassin's Creed games: Schelling was Producer and Senior Producer of Black Flag, Origins, Revelations, and Valhalla; Guesdon was Creative Director of Black Flag and Origins, among other franchise credits; and De Billy served in a number of roles on Revelations and Black Flag and as Production Director on Origins and Valhalla. Ubisoft says the new team "marks the beginning of an exciting and ambitious new chapter" for the franchise, although it will be picking up where previous leaders left off in the aforementioned Assassin's Creed projects Ubisoft already has in the works. Appropriately, given the history, it seems as though the first Assassin's Creed project that will be released after the new leaders take over is the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake. That said, the remake is likely all but complete, especially when it comes to more meaningful gameplay and artistic elements, meaning the new team likely won't have contributed much to that, if anything.

A new patent application by Sony may provide players with an alternative to pausing a game that would ostensibly prevent halting gameplay execution by putting the game into an alternate gameplay state while players deal with momentary distractions or decide whether they want to fully pause the game to deal with something like a message. The patent, (US20260021411) filed with the USPTO, explains a number of potential ways to achieve this, seemingly with the idea that different games and genres could implement different versions of Soft Pause. Sony touts Soft Pause as particularly useful for VR use cases, in which a jarring pause and cut to a menu screen may cause nausea or dizziness

The Soft Pause concepts include everything from having the game slow down while the feature is active, making the game easier, guiding the player towards objectives or enemies, boosting player assist features—features like aim assist or stretching time windows for certain inputs—or even having a machine-learning tool take over from the player entirely while Soft Pause is active. It's unclear if that ML model would be trained on player data or if it will offer more generic support. It remains to be seen if or when this will be implemented at all, and, realistically, it could go either way. If it is implemented, it will also be interesting to see how each game implements it, especially in competitive games. Currently, being AFK in a competitive game can be disastrous, and, while something like Soft Pause might be able to provide something of a solution to short AFK moments, although games like Paladins already have an AI that takes over gameplay when players are disconnected. Other recent Sony patents include an adaptive controller of sorts that puts all controls into a touch interface.

With Marathon and its upcoming server slam event almost literally just around the corner by now, details have started to emerge about the game's server and anti-cheat configurations. In a new post on the @MarathonTheGame official X account, Bungie has explained the details of Marathon's anti-cheat system. Aside from both kernel- and user-level anti-cheat on clients, it was confirmed that Marathon will have server-side fog of war that will protect against wall hacks, ESP cheats, and loot revealers. The game will also use dedicated servers with authority on key combat and looting actions, meaning the servers will be protected against client-side interference. The anti-cheat announcement also mentions that in the case of a crash or connection loss, players will be able to rejoin the game as soon as the connection is re-established, although they will have to rely on teammates to protect their character.

Most notably, though, Bungie announced that any cheaters caught cheating in Marathon will receive a permanent ban from the game. While an authoritative stance has been well received by the community, there are concerns over BattlEye potentially tagging false positives and banning players who weren't guilty of cheating—an issue that was recently brought up by the Apex Legends community when a player was falsely banned after the new Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike seemingly triggered a ban threshold for gameplay automation.

Mozilla announced in early February that it had implemented its "AI kill switch" in a nightly build after severe community backlash, with the full release slated for Firefox 148. As of February 23, Firefox 148 is officially available for download via the download server ahead of the officially announced February 24 launch date. According to Mozilla, the AI features will remain disabled through updates once they have been disabled via the kill switch.

The AI kill switch isn't the only new change coming to Firefox 148, with Mozilla also slated to add features like a split view and HDR video streaming on Windows, with both features seemingly leaving experimental in build 148. Hardware acceleration is also expected to speed up PDF load times, and the sidebar will be getting a visual update with convenient access to bookmarks, history, AI tools, and the settings menu. As with other Firefox UI elements, the new sidebar is fully customizable in the settings menu.

The Stop Killing Games initiative announced not too long ago that it had accrued and validated the necessary number of signatures to be heard out by the EU parliament via the Stop Destroying Videogames EU citizen's initiative. According to a new video put out by activist and spokesperson for the movement, Ross Scott, key players in the movement have been hard at work in the background since that announcement, and that there has been progress since that update, although not all of it positive. The first important note is that the Stop Destroying Games citizen's initiative already has a date secured to present its case to the EU Commission, but despite this, it seems to have already had an impact on EU lawmakers.

According to Scott, in October, it seemed as though the EU was considering adding protections for videogames to the Digital Fairness Act, which is a new set of laws that aim to regulate digital ethics and consumer rights—however, it seems as though video game industry lobbyists had gotten to lawmakers first, since they parroted arguments about discouraging small indie developers, who would ostensibly have a hard time keeping games running indefinitely, but this allowed the movement to clarify to the EU that the movement doesn't seek to force publishers to maintain games indefinitely, but only to provide a way for gamers to play the games they have purchased after support is ended. Despite this, the representatives at the meeting seemed to think that the commission didn't favor adding laws surrounding gaming to the Digital Fairness Act.

It was revealed in a recent leak that the next-gen AMD Zen 6 Ryzen CPUs would be delayed until 2027, and it has now emerged, that the upcoming Intel "Nova Lake-S" Core Ultra Series 4 CPUs may be joining AMD for an early 2027 launch, when previous reports placed the launch in late 2026. The news comes by way of ubiquitous leakers, HXL on X and Golden Pig Upgrade on Weibo, who say that a CES 2027 launch seems likely for both new CPU generations.

Previously, we got a taste of what to expect from Nova Lake-S in a series of leaks and rumors, which pointed to increased NPU performance as well as core counts that range from 12 on the low-end (4 P-cores, 4 E-cores, 4 LP-cores) to 52 on the high-end (16 P-cores, 32 E-cores, 4 LP-cores). Obviously, these are early leaks, and the official launch is still a way out, so dates may still change, but it seems as though the current silicon and DRAM shortages may result in the lengthening of product launch cycles across the PC industry in general—an outcome that was previously predicted.

It was recently revealed that Xbox Gaming's long-time CEO, Phil Spencer, would be leaving Microsoft after nearly 40 years at the company, with Asha Sharma taking over as CEO of Microsoft Gaming after her role as chief of the company's CoreAI platform. Shortly after the announcement of his departure, Sharma released an internal statement with comments about the future of Xbox Gaming and her views on topics like AI, monetization, and art. In short, Sharma says she wants to prioritize creating "great games" with unforgettable characters, stories that resonate, and creative, innovative gameplay. In the latter part of the statement, she addresses the inevitable questions and concerns about a former AI leader taking over the gaming division. She makes a number of comments about AI and the future of gaming, stating that "As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or floor our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us."

Later, in a statement to Variety, Sharma reinforced these statements, stating that she wants to "earn the right to be trusted by players and developers," and noting that "AI has long been part of gaming and will continue to be." She again emphasized the importance of "deep emotional resonance" in games, and reiterated her stance that she has "no tolerance for bad AI." It's worth noting that CoreAI, the platform Sharma was previously in charge of at Microsoft, is a suite of AI-powered developer tools designed for "the AI era," with a significant focus on agentic AI. If Sharma's statements are to be believed, it seems reasonable to assume we will be seeing more AI trickle into first-party Xbox games, but it may not be the AI-first approach that companies like EA have recently adopted in the name of efficiency.

In late 2025, ASUS announced the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti Dual Evo graphics cards, which touted a slimmer, shorter design for improved compatibility with small form factor PC builds. Now, it has silently expanded the Dual Evo line with the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 5070 Evo and Evo OC, both of which stuff an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB GPU into a package measuring just 229 × 120 × 50 mm. ASUS has not yet publicly announced the GPUs, and they don't seem to be available via retail channels just yet, but the spec sheets and product pages are available in full on the ASUS site. As such, pricing is not yet available at the time of writing.

The OC model steps up the standard boost clock from 2,512 MHz to 2,542 MHz and the OC mode clock speed from 2,542 MHz to 2,572 MHz. Both GPUs feature the same 2.5-slot shroud and cooler design, and it seems unlikely that the OC Edition has any additional changes other than a slight vBIOS tweak to achieve the higher clocks, suggesting that you can likely get similar clock speeds with a bit of tuning in GPU Tweak III. This 2.5-slot design is thicker than the 2.0-slot design of the 5060 series Dual Evo cards, but still notably thinner than most other RTX 5070 models, like the 3.2-slot ROG Strix GeForce RTX 5070. The GPU shroud design is also somewhat more reserved than some of ASUS's recent designs, with just an angular, black, dual-texture shroud housing dual axial fans, while the GPU heat sink has a flow-through design for the rear fan. Much like the 5060 variants of the same series, the PCIe power plug is located almost centrally on the side of the GPU, instead of the traditional rearward position.

With the launch of Resident Evil Requiem merely a week away, it's expected that gameplay and story leaks would start to show up online and subsequently be shared online. Capcom, however, has taken to social media platform, X, to decry the early gameplay and story leaks, asking players not to share the leaks. The gaming giant says that it wants "everyone to enjoy the game's story and experience as much as possible." Capcom adds that its legal department is working to issue DMCA take-downs of any leaks posted online, "in order to preserve your day-one experience."

The gameplay leaks in question have revealed major plot points and twists, as well as potential endings to the latest installment in the Resident Evil franchise. One Reddit thread—which fortunately is covered with spoiler tags—has collated the vast majority of the leaks, including gameplay footage of part of the game's ending. It's easy to see why a game studio would want to keep a lid on such extensive leaks about a story-driven game. Another post in the subreddit was removed by the moderators, so it looks like Capcom's take-down requests or social media plea has had some effect already.

Given the similar form factors, it's unsurprising that many gamers turned to their Steam Decks to emulate Nintendo Switch games, but that era seems to be drawing to a close, as RetroDECK, a Linux emulation platform capable of emulating multiple game systems, has just confirmed that it will be removing support for Ryubing, a fork of the now-infamous Ryujinx Switch emulator, from its available emulators. The developer behind the emulator explained in a February 19 blog post that Switch emulation would be removed in a minor update. This comes after support for Ryubing was added in a November update.

The blog mentions two main reasons for the removal of Ryubing, stating that "Switch emulation has consistently been the source of the most issues within the project, generating the highest volume of warnings, bans, toxicity, and support tickets," and adding that the questionable legality of emulators like Ryubing and Nintendo's aggressive protection of its intellectual property exposes the volunteers and community involved in the RetroDECK project to undue legal exposure. As of an upcoming update, indicated in an edit to an old blog post to be 0.10.4b, Switch emulation will be removed from RetroDECK "forever," and discussions about Switch emulation will also be banned from all of RetroDECK's communities and social platforms effective immediately.

Yves Guillemot recently made an appearance in an interview with Variety, in which the Ubisoft CEO spoke about both the ongoing cost-cutting measures and in-development projects at the French gaming giant. When asked about upcoming projects in the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry franchises, Guillemot responded that there are "several" Assassin's Creed titles in development at Ubisoft, and that those titles will involve both single-player and multiplayer gameplay. Similar is true for the Far Cry franchise, in that Ubisoft currently has two Far Cry projects in development, although Guillemot declined to specify any further on what those projects were. One of the upcoming Assassin's Creed projects is almost certainly the much-rumored Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake that is slated to launch sometime in 2026.

This interview and the promises of new Far Cry and Assassin's Creed games comes the same week as Ubisoft confirmed a round of layoffs at its Toronto studio as part of its heavily criticized company-wide restructuring and cost-savings plan that will likely see up to 18% of the company laid off in order to save €200 million in five years. That same plan has seen Ubisoft divide development efforts into five creative houses, each of which will be responsible for a handful of IPs. When asked about this and the necessity for the cost reduction, Yves Guillemot blamed rapid post-COVID growth and flat-lining demand where continued growth had been anticipated. He goes on to say that "our priority today is to build a more focused, agile company, with stronger teams that strike the right balance between senior expertise and young talent and who are well positioned to deliver the highest quality games." If recent game cancellation trends at Ubisoft are anything to go by, nothing is set in stone, and the projects that have been in the pipeline for the longest seem to be the most likely to be cancelled or delayed, as was the case with the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake.

Thermal Grizzly announced its TG Delidded CPUs, which would see the company sell delidded AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs for enthusiast use with direct-die cooling solutions. The program started with the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and has since expanded to include the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, with the latest addition being the recently released AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D. The delidded 9850X3D comes in at $876.33 on the Thermal Grizzly store, which is a marked increase over the $500 MSRP, but it also includes a warranty in the case of any manufacturer defects or issues that might arise during the delidding process. The aforementioned warranty is valid for two years and covers material defects of the CPU and even extends to overclocking within manufacturer spec, as long as adequate cooling is provided. It does not cover any physical or liquid damage to the silicon, SMDs, or the PCB.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D is now live]

Roman Hartung, aka Der8auer, famous overclocker and CEO of Thermal Grizzly, published a YouTube video demonstrating the delidding process and documenting potential performance and thermal improvements as a result of delidding and direct-die cooling. In the video, Hartung tests the 9850X3D in Cinebench R23, demonstrating a 90.2° C peak temperature on one CCD, with the average die temperature getting as high as 88.1° C with a peak power draw of 182.35 W in the 10-minute CPU benchmark run. Individual peak CPU core temperatures ranged from 78 to 88.2° C, whereas after applying liquid metal and a direct-die cooling solution resulted in peak CPU core temperatures of 66.1-75.3° C and a peak average CPU temperature of 75.3°C—temperatures were down around 15° C across the board following the delid. Power draw was slightly lower during this test, at 178.09 W peak package power, although the same settings were applied in BIOS ahead of the tests. Hartung also goes on to test the overclocking capabilities of the delidded CPU on the direct-die cooling solution, which can be seen in the video below.

Wildlight Entertainment, the studio behind ailing free-to-play raid shooter, Highguard, has had a rough time since the game's launch and middling reception, with mass layoffs casting doubt on the game's future, despite the studio's assurances that there is content planned for the future. In a recent post to X, Wildlight announced that it will soon be releasing the first content update for the game since the aforementioned layoffs. The update, which is slated to launch the same week as the announcement, will almost certainly include bug fixes and changes to the game, but Wildlight has highlighted two important new pieces of content coming to the game.

The first bit of content is a new base, Cloudreach, which is an airship base with an airship docked high above the ground and the Anchor Stone target inside the airship itself. Players will face off in and around the airship, where gameplay will range from long-ranged sniper engagements to close-quarters combat in tight corridors. The update also introduces the Lockpick, a new Raid tool that fires darts at doors and windows to open them, temporarily disable them, and give control to your team. The Lockpick will use a new ammo type, Darts, and the tool itself can be equipped in the start loadout menu or found in red chests.

Hot on the heels of the MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Lightning Z launch, it seems as though the hardware maker is planning yet another special edition GPU launch. MSI recently teased in a Bilibili post on its official GPU account that it is planning a limited edition launch in collaboration with popular fantasy anime, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. It may also be the case that the GPU is part of a special edition bundle, although there's no evidence to back this up. Given that it is a limited edition, it seems reasonable that the GPU will be an RTX 5090 or 5080.

Not much else is known about the upcoming launch, although speculation suggests that the new GPU will be based on one of the brand's designs with a white shroud and a Frieren-inspired theme, purely because white is a consistent color for the character in the anime. It's also almost guaranteed to be an NVIDIA GPU, since MSI only makes GeForce GPUs. This is hardly the first GPU design or collaboration to lean into non-gaming properties, with the recent ASUS x Hatsune Miku Astral GPU and hardware series being a notable example of one such collaboration. Frieren has also been featured in a Starforge prebuilt PC design, which was also an almost entirely white build.

PMM is a mouse mod maker that provides commercially available custom ultra-light shells for popular gaming mice, like the Razer Viper V3 Pro and the Endgame Gear OP1 8K, often shaving off upwards of 15 g from the stock weight. The latest mouse on the PMM mod radar is the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike, which weighs in at a hearty 60 g in stock form. The custom shell designer revealed in a post on X that an ultra-light G Pro X2 Superstrike shell is in development, asking for community feedback on a target weight and design in the process.

Throughout the thread, there are implications that the mouse modder may be able to get the mouse weight as low as 35 g, with PMM going so far as to comment that 39 g may even be possible with a solid shell with no weight-reduction holes. Replies to comments also indicate that a final weight as low as 29 g—over 50% reduction from stock—may be possible, if somewhat challenging, while 33 g would be "ambitious" while also retaining the battery. PMM also suggests that a mod kit with a different battery position could solve the forward weight bias that some users have complained about. It will likely be a while before PMM actually launches a mod kit for the Superstrike, since the design process involves 3D scanning an existing mouse and then optimizing the design from there.

Slay the Spire is a beloved single-player indie roguelike deck-builder that debuted on Steam in 2019 and has somehow maintained an active community of over 24,000 concurrent daily players, even seven years after its initial launch. The game's sequel, Slay the Spire 2 has been hotly anticipated, and, according to an update to the game's Steam Store page, the developer will be adding four-player co-op to the game. The updated Steam Store page also revealed that the game now has a launch date of March 5, 2026 and a new Early Access trailer.

The original game's format and unique hand-crafted world will make a return in the sequel, but the world has evolved for the second installment, offering new monsters, characters, abilities, and secrets to discover. The four-player co-op mode is likely the biggest change to come to the game, though, and according to the description of the multiplayer features, there will be team-specific cards and team synergies to explore and test out. Of course, the classic single-player mode will also be an option for players who prefer to go alone or simply need to play at their own pace. The total roster of playable characters will also grow to five, offering players some added flexibility in how to approach the gameplay. Slay the Spire 2 will be launching in Steam Early Access initially, so expect the game to change as community feedback is submitted.

It's no secret that GPU prices have skyrocketed lately as a result of increased AI data center demand. This has been especially true for any GPU featuring more than 8 GB of VRAM, like AMD's Radeon RX 9060 and 9070 series. However, while AMD GPUs were previously seen as a viable alternative when NVIDIA GPUs were unaffordable or unavailable, that increased demand resulted in price spikes of up to 40% by December 2025. This is based on Japanese data collected by Gaz:Log, who also found that, since that massive price hike, reduced demand has forced retailers to drop prices for both the RX 9070 XT and RX 9060 XT 16 GB GPUs by as much as 15% and 20% respectively.

Obviously, this is just one market, and it can't be guaranteed that events will play out similarly in other regions, but it is an indication that hardware pricing may be reaching a tipping point, after which we may see prices stabilize or fall slightly in response to reduced demand. It's also worth noting that AMD and NVIDIA have both been rumored to be planning to effectively increase MSRP in early 2026, which would result in price increases of at least 10% across the board. This is on top of a late 2025 price increase of $20-40 on both 8 and 16 GB GPUs.

In a rather unfortunate throwback to the early days of the Hall effect gaming keyboard boom, it seems as though the new Haptic Inductive Trigger System in the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike gaming mouse is resulting in players getting permanently banned from Apex Legends for cheating. This is according to a new post on X by Iaroslav Mamalat, who shared a screenshot of an Apex Legends ban report that claims the player used gameplay enhancements.

An email received by the same player reads: "We observed: Gameplay enhancement. This means using unauthorized methods to enhance in-game performance by removing gameplay constraints or improving in-game abilities (e.g. weapon, movement, or item enhancements)." This potentially refers to the use of rapid trigger technology in the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike, but there are other reports in the replies to the X post that suggest it may simply have been a false ban, since similar has happened to other players who weren't using the new Logitech gaming mouse. Curiously, EA doesn't actually ordinarily ban rapid trigger keyboards in Apex Legends, but it isn't uncommon for game studios to ban SOCD, especially in competitive FPS games. Some theories online suggest that EA's anti-cheat may be using timing as a way to detect macro inputs, and that rapid trigger on the Superstrike may be resulting in click spamming that exceeds that timing threshold, resulting in a ban.

Update Feb 23rd: It has been confirmed by a Respawn team member in the r/apexlegends subreddit that this was a false ban, although it was seemingly still the result of the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike triggering a minimum threshold.