CRKD, the premium collectible gaming brand known for their highly popular Nitro Deck, and line of premium rhythm gaming products, announced today the ULT PRO, a next-generation professional wireless gaming controller featuring multi-platform connectivity and an array of state-of-the-art technology.

Ideal for professional or competitive gamers who demand precision, customization, and multi-platform compatibility, the ULT PRO sets a new standard in performance, yet is priced competitively, allowing any gamer to take advantage of its premium feature set. Compatible with Nintendo Switch 2 | 1, PC, mobile devices, tablets and Smart TVs, the ULT PRO offers exceptional versatility, seamlessly adapting to a wide variety of gaming platforms.

Asha Sharma has faced her fair share of criticism since stepping into the role of CEO of Microsoft Gaming earlier in 2026, but she has repeatedly made statements that she would try to guide the company in what she calls a "return to Xbox," with a focus on in-house hardware. According to a new report by The Information, one of Sharma's first moves as CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be to introduce a new lower-price tier of Game Pass in order to attract new gamers to the service and to make the service inticing to a broader range of consumers.

This comes shortly after Microsoft renamed the Windows Full Screen Experience to Xbox Mode, perhaps a rebranding in the name of unifying Microsoft's gaming offerings—a mission that is clearly part of Microsoft's plan, given that its next-gen console is confirmed to be a PC-console hybrid. Previously, there were rumors of an ad-supported tier for Xbox Cloud Gaming, but Microsoft also increased the price of Game Pass across the board as recently as October 2025. A Microsoft executive previously confirmed that Game Pass was profitable as a service, but that Xbox had to emphasize flexibility in its strategy, and introducing a cheaper Game Pass tier may be a viable way to draw in new Game Pass gamers, some of whom will presumably hop over to the more premium tiers, depending on Microsoft's implementation of the new entry-level tier.

One of the reasons players loved the original Splitgate game was its fast-paced, highly kinetic gameplay that relied as much on positioning as it did gunplay and tactics. Despite its somewhat rough start to life, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, featured many of those same mechanics. In a recent video announcing Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2, Ian Proulx, CEO of 1047 Games, announced that "a small section of the team" has started working on a new movement shooter that takes inspiration from Titanfall and Call of Duty Black Ops 3. While he doesn't share much more beyond that, Proulx did ask the community for feedback on what players would like to see from a game like that and has published a form for play-testers to apply to test the new game. The fact that the studio is already recruiting play testers suggests that the game has been in development for a good while. The studio was also sure to follow up the announcement with a post on X clarifying that 1047 Games is not abandoning Splitgate: Arena Reloaded now that there's another game in the works.

Proulx says that part of the reason for pursuing a new game is that 1047 Games has always had the dream of being a multi-game studio, and the timing of the announcement suggests that a second project may have been partly motivated by the recent backlash against 1047 Games following the middling launch of Splitgate: Arena Reloaded. For its part, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2 will launch before the end of March and introduce a number of new features, many of them based on community feedback, including a more cohesive theme, a new battle pass and accompanying skins, three new maps, a new biome that's a twist on a biome from Splitgate 1, and a classic Splitgate 1 TDM gameplay starts, which have been heavily requested by the community. Season 2 will also reintroduce time trial races from Splitgate 1, replete with user-created maps with their own leaderboards. Players will also be able to buy all of the Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2 battle pass with the Splitcoin in-game premium currency instead of needing to spend real money aside from Splitcoin they may already have.

Not four months ago, we reported on Steam breaking 42 million concurrent players, but much like Crimson Desert's recent success, Valve's gaming platform doesn't seem to be slowing down, even during an unlikely time of year. According to SteamDB, Steam has once again broken its own record for concurrent players, reaching 42,318,602 players on Sunday, March 22, 2026, at 14:20 UTC. Steam's own statistics report a peak concurrent player count of 42,282,922 players, which is a little less than SteamDB reports, but still a record high.

Compared to February 2026, which itself was a slower month for the gaming giant, Steam saw an increase of over a million players at its peak. This doesn't necessarily mean all of those players were in-game—in fact, SteamDB reports that there were only 13,731,783 players in-game at the time of the new record. The new player count record was set on a Sunday, which tends to be Steam's busiest day of the week both for players on the platform and in-game. This new player-count record comes in spite of a recent spate of layoffs and studio closures, which have historically signalled a downturn in the gaming industry.

Epic Games has just announced a round of layoffs in an effort to save costs following a downturn in engagement on Fortnite. A recent post to the Epic Games news page explains that "The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded," and Epic says that the layoffs are part of company-wide cost-cutting measures that aim to reduce expenses by over $500 million in order to stabilize the company's finances. These other cost-savings measures will affect contracting, marketing, and hiring at the company, and any staff affected by the layoffs will receive severance packages of at least four months of base pay—with that amount increasing depending on tenure at the company.

The Epic layoffs will affect 1,000 workers, and Epic seems to blame both industry-wide challenged and its reliance on Fortnite as its major cash cow for its financial troubles, with Epic CEO, Tim Sweeney emphasizing that "the layoffs aren't related to AI," and explaining that Epic wants "as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can." He also goes on to say that Epic has struggled to deliver "Fortnite magic with every season," and noting that the game is in its early stages of returning to mobile platforms, but that the goal going forward will be to focus on "fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events," while focusing on Fortnite's user-generated content and on upgrading from Unreal Engine 5 to Unreal Engine 6. The full statement regarding Epic's layoffs follows.

Today, at HP Imagine 2026, HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) announced its next evolution of high-performance gaming with the new HyperX OMEN MAX 45L, HyperX OMEN 35L, expanded OMEN AI game support, and new OMEN Gaming Hub capabilities. Together, these innovations combine advanced hardware, intelligent optimization, and creative tools to elevate how gamers play, compete, and create. The lineup brings HyperX's vision for the future of play to life across hardware and software, enhancing both player and machine capability to unlock greater potential. From elite desktop power and modular expandability to AI-driven optimization, HyperX continues to deliver high-end gaming experiences that are more adaptable, more personal, and more capable.

"At HP, we put gamers first in everything we build," said Josephine Tan, Senior Vice President and Division President of Personal Systems Gaming Solutions at HP Inc. "With the new HyperX OMEN desktops, OMEN AI, and OMEN Gaming Hub experiences, we're bringing together powerful hardware and intelligent software to deliver more performance, simpler optimization, greater control, and more fun."

When news broke about Ubisoft's recent layoffs at Red Storm, which saw 105 people lose their jobs and resulted in the studio being relegated to a support studio for other development outfits and for Ubisoft's Snowdrop engine, it was unclear whether any games would be affected by the layoffs and transition. Now, it has been revealed by Insider Gaming that Red Storm was working on 10 games at the time, including five new games: the next Ghost Recon game (Project OVR internally), a turn-based tactics game reminiscent of XCOM, Tom Clancy's The Division 3, Beyond Good and Evil 2, and a new unannounced project that was very early in the development stages. It's unclear what the studio's role in these new games was, or what their future holds, but Ubisoft has not yet announced any game cancellations or even acknowledged the changes at Red Storm.

Red Storm's full game list is as follows:

via Insider Gaming

• Beyond Good and Evil 2
• Brawlhalla
• Ghost Recon (Project OVR)
• Rainbow Six Siege seasonal content
• Rainbow Six's Slice & Dice
• Splinter Cell
• The Division 2 (audio work)
• The Division 3 conceptualization
• Watch Dogs Director's Cut (support development)
• Unannounced project in conceptualization

Crimson Desert has had an eventful launch, rife with backlash over the use of generative AI, a lack of Intel Arc GPU support, and somewhat mixed reviews painting a different story to the game's player count. Regardless of all the aforementioned issues that Pearl Abyss faced surrounding the launch of Crimson Desert, the game had an objectively strong launch weekend, topping 230,000 concurrent Steam players on launch day and reaching a peak of 248,530 concurrent players on Steam just three days later.

A stronger indicator of the game's success, though, especially a game with strong loot and exploration mechanics, is its player retention after the initial launch, and here, too, Crimson Desert seems to be keeping pace. On Monday, March 23, following the game's launch weekend, Crimson Desert managed a 205,834-player peak, according to SteamDB. Crimson Desert also maintained strong positioning on the Steam sales, where it currently occupies second place for revenue generated, following the seemingly unbeatable Counter-Strike 2. Of course, data on player retention on console platforms may be a different story altogether, but that data is not publicly available.

There's been quite the din about DLSS 5 since NVIDIA previewed the AI-powered tech mid-March, with some gamers calling it "AI slop," NVIDIA's CEO firing back a dismissive response, and an official NVIDIA statement that seems to call into question many of the earlier claims NVIDIA made about the technology's capabilities. Now, Chloe Appleby, a program curator at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, has weighed in on the issue in an interview with GadgetGuy, expressing concerns about the implications about the repeatability and state of a game when DLSS 5 comes into play.

Part of the driving force behind game preservation is that it allows gamers and researchers to go back and experience games throughout history, but technology like DLSS 5 may make that complicated, as Appleby explains: "If these new AI technologies become essential for making and playing games, it has the potential to not only add another layer of potential copyright complexity but bring into question what version of a game should be preserved. Do we preserve both DLSS off and on? Is the DLSS 5 version consistent amongst players and if not, what version represents the collective experience?"

More and more game studios are leaning into generative AI as a solution to speed up their game development workflows, with some using the tech in early development—as was supposedly the case with Crimson Desert recently—while others openly use generative AI for final game content. Capcom recently revealed in an investor briefing that it falls into the former camp, not the latter, claiming that the studio uses generative AI for in-game content, but that is experimenting with the tech in order to find ways to use it in a variety of fields in order to speed up game development.

"Our company will not implement the materials generated by our AI into game content. However, we plan to actively utilize this technology to improve efficiency and productivity in the game development process. Therefore, we are currently exploring ways to use it in various areas, such as graphics, sound, and programming." This is the same approach we have seen a handful of game developers use. Take-Two Interactive's CEO, for instance, recently mentioned that the company was "already seeing instances where generative AI tools are driving costs and time efficiencies," despite being adamant that no generative AI was being used in the creation of its game content. Capcom's approach seems to be similar to that of Sandbox Interactive and Pearl Abyss, both of which used AI-generated in-game assets during early development with the intention of replacing those assets before the game's release, albeit with varying degrees of success.

Square Enix previously revealed that it would be leaning into generative AI tech for coding and bug fixing, aiming to rely on the tech for as much as 70% of its QA and debugging by the end of 2027. It seems as though the game publisher is experimenting with AI in a much more public way, according to a new report by The Sankei Shimbun. The Japanese publication reports that Square Enix announced a new AI integration into the Japan-exclusive Dragon Quest X MMORPG, which will take the form of a ball of slime—appropriately named Chatty Slimey—in order to help players feel less lonely and guide them through the start of the game.

The AI chatbot will receive text input, combined with the context of the player's on-screen content as context, and will respond with a generated voice when called upon. There will also be instances where the chatbot will appear without being summoned, like when the player beats a particularly difficult enemy or obtains a rare item—presumably this will help players learn about the game's systems and loot. Square Enix says that, despite Dragon Quest X's large player base, the game has a particularly steep learning curve, which can be a barrier to entry for new players, which is why it was chosen for the AI chatbot. It's unclear if similar tech will be introduced in other games at the time of writing, but given the studio's previous interest in AI, it seems likely that this test, which is currently seeking beta testers, will inform future implementations.

Brook Gaming, the global leader in cross-platform controller solutions, today announced the global launch of the Wingman P5. This high-performance converter allows PlayStation enthusiasts to use their preferred professional controllers—including the Xbox Elite Series 2, PS4, and Switch Pro—on the PS5, PS4, and PC (X-Input) across all game genres with uncompromised precision.

While many market solutions rely on "Remote Play" workarounds that require complex network setups and introduce significant lag, the Wingman P5 utilizes proprietary Direct Connection Technology. By connecting directly to the hardware, it delivers a near-zero latency experience suitable for both casual and competitive play.

ASRock, the global leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, mini PCs, gaming monitors, power supply units and AIOs, today announced the launch of its latest Phantom Gaming monitors: PG27FFS2E, PG27FFS2E-W, and PG27FFS1A. These 27-inch FHD displays feature a 240 Hz refresh rate and 1 ms response time, delivering a smooth and responsive gaming experience. The PG27FFS2E-W introduces a stylish white design, adding a fresh and modern touch to desktop setups, while the PG27FFS2E and PG27FFS1A retain a classic black finish, offering a balance of performance and personal style.

Sleek Four-Side Slim Bezel Design for an Immersive Viewing Experience
The entire lineup features a four-side slim bezel design combined with a clean and minimalist aesthetic, creating a more seamless and expansive visual experience. Whether used in multi-monitor setups or everyday use, the displays blend effortlessly into a variety of desktop environments, delivering both gaming performance and modern style.

QCY is proud to announce the official launch of HEROAD, a disruptive new e-sports brand dedicated to redefining the competitive landscape. Built on the core philosophy of "For Gamers. For Winners," HEROAD arrives to bridge the long-standing gap between elite-performance hardware and accessible pricing, ensuring that every player has the tools necessary to carve their own path to victory.

The Story of HEROAD: Refine the Hero, Define the Road.
HEROAD was born from a shared vision between next-generation gamers and veteran engineers who were tired of the "compromise" inherent in the current market. For too long, players were forced to choose between overpriced flagship gear or affordable alternatives that failed to perform under pressure.

Crimson Desert just launched on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles after years of waiting and months of anticipation building up to the launch. Unfortunately, the game's launch seems to have been more divisive than Pearl Abyss anticipated. The first sign of what was to come was the first wave of pre-release critic reviews, which varied from the likes Forbes giving it a 5/5 score and calling it the "best in its class" to outlets like Insider Gaming and PCGamesN scoring it 7/10 and 6/10, respectively. Currently, the game's Steam Store reviews are "Mixed," with only 59.99% of the game's 4,049 reviews positive. Review scores aside, Crimson Desert still managed to attract a day-one peak concurrent player count of 239,045 players, which would later show signs of settling around the 100,000-player mark.

Common threads among many of the less positive reviews are the underwhelming narrative and the wealth of systems that aren't quite fleshed-out enough, although most do praise the game for its breathtaking environmental design and the variety of mechanics it implements and niches the game attempts to fill. Much of the community on sites like r/CrimsonDesert, have expressed indifference at these mixed reviews, stating that the game wasn't going to be for everyone and that some people will not get along with it, once more demonstrating the divide between gamers and critics. Part of what makes Crimson Desert's reception disheartening is the amount of build-up that surrounded the game—which has led to a rather steep 28.96% drop in Pearl Abyss's stock price following the launch.

Around the same time as Ubisoft's latest round of layoffs see over 100 employees lose their jobs, Crystal Dynamics, the game studio behind Square Enix's recent Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, has announced that it will be laying off 20 employees across its development and operations teams. This is the fourth round of layoffs at the studio in the last year, and in a recent LinkedIn post announcing the layoffs, the studio explains that "we continuously take a hard look at our team structures to ensure they align with our long term studio goals," and calls the layoffs "necessary."

Some of the comments in the LinkedIn post are from affected employees, including an environment artist and a senior animator with 15 years of experience. Crystal Dynamics confirmed in the post that its "current projects" are heading into the next phases of development, and it reiterated that "Crystal Dynamics remains fully committed to the future development of our already announced Tomb Raider titles," suggesting that there have been no game cancellations as yet. Tomb Raider: Catalyst is slated for a 2027 cross-platform launch, but even Crystal Dynamics admits that layoffs like these "can cause concern amongst our community."

Opera GX is now on Linux. The gaming browser from Norwegian company Opera now brings its signature performance controls, gaming integrations, and unparalleled options for customization to the platform. Demand for a Linux version of Opera GX has hit a breaking point across gaming subreddits, Discord and Linux forums, with gamers and developers consistently asking for the browser to support the platform in public communities and other forums. With this release, Opera GX delivers what many in the community have been waiting for: a gaming browser that aligns with Linux's privacy-first mindset while still meeting the high-performance expectations of modern gamers.

"PC gaming has long been associated with a single dominant platform, but that's changing. Bringing GX to Linux users - who are renowned for the control they like to exert over their tools - means gamers and developers can manage browser resources, customize their setup, and keep their system performing exactly the way they want," said Maciej Kocemba, Product Director, Opera GX.

Laptops powered by Intel's latest Core Ultra 200HX Plus mobile processors won't arrive all at once but will instead be released in stages, according to PC World. Intel is supplying its OEM partners with these chips in waves. Some OEMs are receiving the chips first, while others will have to wait weeks before their shipments arrive. For example, Lenovo and Razer are the only OEMs that can immediately ship their new laptops based on the Core Ultra 200HX Plus chips. Customers of other brands, such as Dell, will have to wait until the end of March, while MSI laptops will ship in the second quarter of this year. Perhaps the most delayed is ASUS, whose laptops will hit the market in late May, allowing ASUS fans and customers to get the new "Arrow Lake-HX Refresh" CPUs.

When considering the reasons for such limited availability at launch, we need to examine Intel's supply chain for the "Arrow Lake-HX." Since TSMC manufactures this generation, Intel's capacity allocation is limited to what the company set months ago. As a result, Intel is supplying these CPUs in waves as they come out of TSMC's fabs. If the process were internal to Intel, the company would likely manage manufacturing more easily with a predictable supply. If the launch involved a server-grade processor or something with a higher margin, Intel would likely allocate more TSMC capacity beforehand. However, since this generation serves the lower-margin mobile market, the current allocation is working adequately, just with a bit of a delay. Below is a complete list of design wins that Intel has secured from OEMs and its partners for Core Ultra 200HX Plus processor family.

According to Insider Gaming, Sony will soon be rebranding the PlayStation Network branding, including "PSN," by September 2026. This news comes by way of an email sent to developers in preparation for the branding shift—likely as a way to ensure that future game marketing messaging reflects the change. The email explains that the shift away from PSN and PlayStation Network "properly capture the breadth of our evolving digital service," but that the change is merely a branding exercise, so it seems unlikely that the actual functionality of the service will change. At the time of writing, it's unclear what will replace PSN and PlayStation Network, but it seems reasonable to assume some more generic branding will take its place. The full email follows.

Much has been said about NVIDIA's recent DLSS 5 announcement, with many criticisms of the tech stemming from how the neural rendering potentially alters the artistic vision and tone of the game. While NVIDIA insists that developers remain in full control, and that the game studios were involved in creating the promotional in-game imagery used to show off the neural rendering features, a new report from Insider Gaming suggests this might not have been the case.

According to game developers from both Capcom and Ubisoft who spoke to Insider Gaming, while the individual studios may have been involved in marketing DLSS 5, the teams who worked on them were just as surprised by the results as the rest of the gaming community. A Ubisoft developer is quoted as saying "We found out at the same time as the public," while developers at Capcom expressed similar sentiments, stating that it was surprising to see Capcom, who has generally been protective of its IPs when it comes to AI involvement, getting involved in the marketing for DLSS 5. Further, the Capcom developers expressed concern at how DLSS 5 might change how Capcom approaches generative AI and its role in game development.

The PS5 release of Starfield has long been rumored for 2026, but it was unclear when exactly the game would launch for Sony's gaming platform, but Bethesda has now confirmed that Starfield will launch on the PS5 in April 2026. Specifically, the launch is slated for an April 7 release. Starfield's PlayStation 5 release will coincide with the launch of a free game content update and a new story DLC, all of which was detailed in a recent developer deep-dive on the Bethesda Softworks YouTube channel.

Bethesda says that the Free Lanes update was heavily guided by player feedback, and that it will be the biggest update since the game's launch. Free Lanes will add a new vehicle and spacesuit, as well as new weapons to find and POIs for players to explore and interact with. It also adds a cruise mode to speed up interplanetary travel and allow players to interact with their crew and ship on longer trips. There are also a new material to enhance weapons and ships, and an expansion to the progression system to give players more to do in space and on the planets they encounter. Enemies have also received an update to make enemy encounters more challenging and varied.

Intel today announced the launch of its new Intel Core Ultra 200HX Plus series mobile processors, giving gamers and professionals new high-performance options in the Core Ultra 200 series family. Optimized for advanced gaming, streaming, content creation, and workstation use, the Intel Core Ultra 200HX Plus series introduces two new processors - Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and Intel Core Ultra 7 270HX Plus. These processors add new features and architectural refinements, including support for the new Intel Binary Optimization Tool, a first-of-its-kind binary translation layer optimization capability that can improve native performance in select games.

"With the introduction of the Intel Core Ultra 200HX Plus series, we're pushing mobile computing performance even further for the gamers, creators, and professionals who demand the best. With higher die-to-die frequencies and our new Intel Binary Optimization Tool, the new Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and Ultra 7 270HX Plus deliver meaningful, real-world performance gains so users can experience smoother gameplay, faster creation workflows, and more responsive workstation performance", Josh Newman, General Manager and Vice President of Product Marketing, Client Computing Group.

Acer today announced refreshed Predator Helios Neo series gaming laptops equipped with the latest Intel Core Ultra 200HX Plus series processors and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU, bringing the latest performance capabilities to gaming enthusiasts across a range of form factors and display options. The new Intel Core Ultra 200HX Plus series processors power a new class of gaming laptops with significant performance gains over the previous generation. These devices are built for split-second responsiveness, rock-solid FPS, smart tuning, and battery life that keeps players locked in across an extensive selection of games and apps.

Powered by NVIDIA Blackwell, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series Laptop GPUs bring game-changing capabilities to gamers and creators. Equipped with a massive level of AI horsepower, the RTX 50 Series enables new experiences and next-level graphics fidelity. Multiply performance with NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 and generate images at unprecedented speed.

Jeff Kaplan, formerly a Blizzard executive, recently announced both a new studio and a new game, The Legend of California, which is slated to launch in 2026. Since the game's launch, the reception has been somewhat mixed, but that seemingly hasn't dampened the spirits of the studio or its executive. In a recent 10-hour livestream of The Legend of California, Kaplan addressed some of the negative comments he'd seen online, mainly taking aim at players who were criticizing the game, but who he seems to think weren't the target market in the first place.

The specific demographic that spurred Kaplan's comments were Overwatch players who have had what he describes as a "nerd rage-out," and expressing their frustration at Kaplan's chosen genre, visuals, or game design for The Legend of California. In response to these players, Kaplan said "if a game comes out, and you don't want to play it, and you've never played it, shit the f**k up---no one cares. We don't need to hear that you aren't into it." He goes on to question the reasoning behind players voicing their opinions on a video game they're never going to play, asking "Who cares about my opinion if I'm not going to play it, and if I've never played it? Why does my opinion matter on that?"

NACON, a leader in premium gaming gear and parent of the RIG audio brand, today unveiled their latest release in their R-SERIES of headsets - the RIG R5 SPEAR MAX HD. Purpose-built for PC gaming, the R5 MAX HD features innovative GrapheneQ drivers from Ora, setting a new standard for studio-grade game audio.

"We're very excited to partner with Ora to bring their groundbreaking audio technology to our R-SERIES headsets," said Head of Audio Product at RIG, Michael Jessup. "The R5 MAX HD forms the next step in our mission to develop the ultimate range of headsets for competitive gamers."