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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In late 2025, screenshots surfaced of a cancelled multiplayer, live-service God of War game that had been in development at Bluepoint Games, the studio responsible for a number of high-profile remakes, like Demon Souls and Shadow of the Colossus. It seems as though that game's cancellation may have been a sign of the times for the Sony-owned studio, as the gaming giant recently confirmed that it has closed Bluepoint Games. According to Bloomberg, this studio's closure will affect 70 employees, who will be laid off at the time of the studio's closure in March 2026. This news comes amid a slew of closures and layoffs, including 40 workers at Ubisoft Toronto losing their jobs to cost-cutting measures and NetEase closing an entire studio before it had even released or announced a game. Game Developer reports that Sony confirmed the studio's closure and issued a statement explaining that the decision to close the studio was made following a business review.

"Bluepoint Games is an incredibly talented team and their technical expertise has delivered exceptional experiences for the PlayStation community. We thank them for their passion, creativity and craftsmanship." -Sony via Game Developer.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today announced the Razer Huntsman Signature Edition, a flagship keyboard created for users who want both peak performance and a refined desktop centerpiece. Positioned at the very top of Razer's keyboard portfolio, the Huntsman Signature Edition distills years of research in switch technology, acoustics, and materials into a single, meticulously crafted form.

Every unit is the result of a demanding multi-stage process including CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machining, anodizing, hand-polishing, PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) finishing, and rigorous unit-level inspection, reflecting Razer's commitment to crafting top-tier products without compromise.

Rocket League, the popular competitive vehicular soccer game, will soon be getting an anti-cheat implementation, nearly a decade after its original launch. Psyonix announced on the game's official X account that it would be implementing Easy Anti-Cheat in Rocket League in an April update. The justifications for anti-cheat is to prevent DDoS attacks, improve bot detection, and more effectively ban cheaters in games. The announcement comes with a few caveats, though—specifically relating to how the addition of anti-cheat will affect competitive gameplay, offline LAN multiplayer, and gaming on Linux.

Unlike many high-profile EAC implementations, Rocket League will maintain compatibility with the Valve Steam Deck, and by extension other Linux gaming PCs and the upcoming Steam Machine via the Proton compatibility layer. Players will be able to disable EAC for offline play, in cases like local LAN multiplayer, or split-screen multiplayer. Additionally, the EAC implementation will eventually allow players in custom tournaments to run tournament-specific mods, and players will be able to run custom community content with EAC enabled at launch. The announcement also mentions "custom mod-inspired content" coming to Rocket League in the same April update.

Considering almost everything PC related seems to be going up in price this year, Dell has surprised with a pair of very affordable 240 Hz gaming monitors. The two models are the SE2726HG and SE2726HGS, both sporting 27-inch IPS panels. The not so good part is that both monitors only have 1080p panels, which might appeal to some gamers, but it's not that great for a multipurpose monitor. The only difference between the two models is that the SE2726HGS comes with a height adjustable stand.

The IPS panel delivers 300 nits of brightness, a 1000:1 contrast ratio and is said to deliver 99 percent of the sRGB colour gamut. The standard response time is 5 ms, but this can be tweaked in the menu settings down to 0.5 by switching to the extreme mode. AMD FreeSync Premium is also part of the package. Connectivity is quite sparse, with two HDMI ports with VRR support as well as a single DP 1.4 port. Dell lists a standard power draw of 19.7 W, with a maximum power draw of 40 W, suggesting that these are pretty power efficient displays. The SE2726HG comes in at US$130, with the height adjustable stand of the SE2726HGS adding an extra US$40 for a price tag of US$170.

Virtuix Inc., a leading developer of full-body virtual reality systems, today announced that it has joined the Made for Meta program of Meta Platforms, Inc. Through the program, Virtuix plans to make its "Omni One" 360-degree treadmill compatible with Meta Quest headsets and games, broadening Omni One's reach to the world's largest XR user base.

"Joining the Made for Meta program expands our addressable market to millions of active Quest users who already own and love their VR headset and games library," said Jan Goetgeluk, CEO of Virtuix. "We look forward to collaborating with Meta as we continue to scale our consumer business and bring our immersive, full-body gaming experience to a mass audience."

Ready for the next level? Weighing just 59 g and with a high-resolution 12,000 DPI sensor, the SKILLER SGM25W will always keep you in control of the action. In addition, the mouse's dual mode offers wired or wireless operation, giving you the freedom to play the way you want, while the gaming software ensures that you can tease every last ounce out of your game.

Classic Black and Ocean Design
The black design of the SKILLER SGM25W is a classic among gaming mice and blends in particularly well with dark or high-contrast setups. The maritime color design of the SKILLER SGM25W Ocean will be a real eye-catcher in your setup. The design is also a matching complement to our SKILLER SGK50 S3 Ultimate Rev2 bundle.

Engineered for gamers who demand both extreme performance and portability, the HE30 one-handed keyboard embodies the "ready-to-fight-on-the-go" philosophy, packing professional-grade esports capabilities into a lightweight body. Featuring a compact 30% layout, it also boasts advanced features like 0.01 mm adjustable Hall effect triggers and DKS/SOCD support, all aimed at helping players break records and set new benchmarks in mobile esports.

Ultimate Portability Design
The HE30 is crafted with a lightweight body and a detachable wrist strap for ultimate portability. Its 36-key ultra-compressed layout retains the F-key row while expanding the TGB key area, accurately covering the control needs of FPS, MOBA, and other mainstream esports games. The compact 30% layout leaves ample space for low-sensitivity mouse movements, especially suited for high-paced games like FPS. The innovative removable wrist strap design ensures the keyboard can be easily attached to a gear bag, making it highly portable for travel, tournaments, or casual gaming sessions.

Pulsar Gaming Gears (AplusX Inc.), a leading developer of high-performance esports peripherals, and VAXEE Corporation, a respected innovator in gaming hardware, today announced the official launch schedule of the new Pulsar eS series of esports equipment. This highly-anticipated product line is the result of the strategic exclusive partnership and joint development work between the two companies, aimed at delivering unparalleled innovation and performance to the esports community.

The initial launch wave includes the Pulsar eS FS-1 Mouse, the Pulsar eS PD170 Mousepads, and the Pulsar eS Armsleeve (Arm Long XL, L, M). All products are in running production and are not limited editions, confirming Pulsar's commitment to making this reference-standard equipment widely available.

Highguard, the new free-to-play raid shooter from Wildlight Entertainment, launched in late January to high player counts that quickly dwindled after a lukewarm reception, despite bringing some unique concepts to the table. Since its launch, daily concurrent player counts have fallen from a peak of 97,249 players on Steam to around 2,000-3,000 concurrent players on a daily basis. According to an announcement from the official Wildlight account on X, the game studio has officially started laying off developers who were working to develop and support Highguard.

Another post on LinkedIn by Alex Graner, now-former level designer at Wildlight, confirmed that "most of the team" at Wildlight has been laid off, adding that there was a lot of unreleased content that the development team had been working on, which also makes it seem as though the layoffs were unexpected. Many attribute the game's surprise launch and lack of play testing and community feedback ahead of launch for the game's commercial failure. At launch, aside from performance problems, Highguard was widely criticized for poor pacing and a dearth of content in matches, largely owing to the oversized maps and small teams. Wildlight did attempt to address these complaints with a 5v5 game mode in a recent update, and, according to reviews, that helped make things feel more energetic, but it seems like it was too little too late. Wildlight will supposedly keep working on Highguard with "a core group of developers," although it's unclear what the studio's plans are for content in the long term.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a leading brand in gaming PC components, gaming laptops, and Hi-fi audio products, announces the upcoming launch of its new COLORFUL EVOL P15 gaming laptops, expanding the EVOL lineup with next-generation NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series graphics. Designed for gamers, creators, and performance-focused users, the EVOL P15 series combines modern processors, high-refresh-rate displays, and refined industrial styling in a versatile 15.6-inch form factor.

The EVOL P15 series will be available in two configurations, featuring NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5050 Laptop GPUs. Both models emphasize smooth gameplay, responsive multitasking, and color-accurate displays, supported by DDR5 memory, PCIe SSD storage, and advanced cooling solutions. With Windows 11 Home pre-installed alongside WPS productivity software, the EVOL P15 laptops are built to deliver balanced performance for gaming, content creation, and everyday computing.

Back at CES this year, ASUS ROG announced the Strix OLED XG34WCDMS with an RGB QD-OLED panel and now the company has announced a variant of that same monitor, called the Strix OLED XG34WCDMTG, which oddly enough seems to be available ahead of the model announced at CES. The TG appears to stand for TV Google or something along those lines, as the XG34WCDMTG is ASUS's first gaming monitor with built-in Google TV support. We've already seen several monitors from both LG and Samsung that integrate TV functionality, but this appears to be one of the first, if not the first gaming monitor with Google TV support. The XG34WCDMTG comes with a version of Google TV based on Android 14 and comes with GeForce NOW as a pre-installed app, although we're unsure who would buy this to use the game streaming service over their PC.

Other Google TV specific features include Wi-Fi 6 support, a remote control, voice control and wireless projection. As far as the monitor specifications are concerned, the XG34WCDMTG sports a 34-inch, 3440 x 1440 RGB QD-OLED panel with an 1800R curvature with a typical brightness of 250 nits, but it can peak at 1000 nits in HDR mode. The panel has a maximum refresh rate of 240 Hz and it has a 0.03 grey to grey response time. The port selection consists of two HDMI 2.1 ports with FRL support, one DP 1.4, one USB Type-C with DP Alt mode and 90 W USB PD support, a pair of USB 2.0 ports and a headphone jack. The stand supports tilt, swivel and height adjustment. The XG34WCDMTG is currently sold on Amazon in the US for US$1,199, which according to Notebook Check is a US$200 premium over the XG34WCDMS.

With the increasing price of gaming memory and silicon in general, it was only a matter of time before we saw gaming laptop manufacturers lean into hardware rentals as a business model, for better or worse. HP seems to be leading the pack with a newly announced hardware subscription service, called the Omen Gaming Subscription, that offers gamers rentals of HP Omen gaming laptops and even gaming accessories, like monitors, headphones, microphones, USB hubs, and HyperX gaming mice. The subscription is charged monthly, but HP locks you into a 12-month minimum contract term, with cancellation fees between $549.99 and $1,429.99 after two months of use with a device return. If you want to keep the device, you'll need to pay a flat rate of $1,199 for the Victus 15 and $3,299 for the Omen Max 16, seemingly regardless of how long you've been subscribed to the service.

The subscription starts at $49.99 with the "Everyday Gaming with Great Performance" HP Victus 15 with an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, 16 GB of DDR5-5600, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU; the $79.99 "Immersive Gaming Experiences" plan gets you an Omen 17 laptop with a Ryzen AI 7 350, RTX 5060 8 GB Laptop GPU, 32 GB of DDR5-5600 memory, and 1 TB of PCIe storage; and the $129.99 "High-End Gaming with no Compromises" plan comes with an Omen Max 16 with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, NVIDIA RTX 5080 16 GB Laptop GPU, 32 GB of DDR5-5600, and 1 TB of PCIe storage. Subscription requires a soft credit check, and the service renews annually, with new hardware available with each renewal. HP also offers a 30-day trial and an ongoing warranty, all of which is very reminiscent of HP's infamous All-In printer subscription, which starts at $7.99 per month for 20 pages of printing with a two-year commitment. Needless to say, the whole hardware subscription model has largely been met with criticism in online spaces like r/pcmasterrace, with some users calling it a scam and others recalling the time when NZXT was ripped to shreds online for a similar business model.

In our previous reviews of Zowie gaming mice, like the EC3-C, we praised the company for its low click latency, but the company recently released a firmware update to its DW-series wireless gaming mice, adding an optional performance mode to the relevant gaming peripherals. Performance mode can be enabled by holding down the left mouse button while turning the mouse on, and by all accounts, there are measurable improvements to click latency thanks to the new firmware.

AimAdept, a popular mouse reviewer, tested the new firmware mode on his Zowie ZA13-DW in 4 kHz polling mode with an Xlat latency tester and measured a click latency as low as 0.468 ms compared to 3.898 ms on the previous firmware with "Fast response" mode enabled. Whether this will make a measurable improvement to in-game performance is questionable, but at least Zowie users will know that it's not their mouse click latency causing them to miss headshots. This new firmware comes shortly after Logitech officially released the new G Pro X2 Superstrike, which uses inductive switches that can reduce click latency by a claimed 30 ms compared to traditional mechanical switches.

On February 28, Monster Hunter Wilds will celebrate its first anniversary, and Capcom will be marking the occasion with a sizeable new content update that will introduce performance improvements and a slew of in-game events throughout February and March. Update 1.041, which lands on February 18, delivers the new missions, monsters, weapons, and rewards, alongside the aforementioned anniversary events. Monster Hunter Wilds producer, Ryozo Tsujimoto, announced the new update in a video posted on the official Monster Hunter YouTube channel. Tsujimoto also announced that Capcom is working on a new expansion for Monster Hunter Wilds that is on the same level as Iceborne and Sunbreak for Monster Hunter Worlds and Rise. Given the direct comparison, it's likely that this will also be a premium paid expansion coming in at around the same $39.99 price point as the aforementioned Worlds expansions. Aside from sharing that more details will arrive "this summer," meaning between June and August, no details have been shared about the contents of the new update, but the comparison also suggests we will see it launch with a new locale with a new hub, missions, and enemies.

The February 2026 update will add a new boss, the Arch-tempered Arkveld, a monster available to hunters above rank 100, in its own 10-star event quest alongside special 10-star quests featuring all four previous Arch-tempered monsters and rare rewards. Completing the Arch-tempered Arkveld quest will unlock a special optional hunt-a-thon quest pitting players against all four Arch-tempered monsters in a single quest. The update also makes the winning sword and pendant from the weapon design contest available to everyone as a special event quest reward. There will also be a collaboration with Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, and the anniversary events will make all previous time-specific event rewards available again through a weekly rotation of previous seasonal events. The anniversary events and collaboration will feature new and fun twists on existing quests to match the Festival of Accord vibes, with matching Stories rewards. The event festivities will last for a month, from February 18 to March 19, and there will be special one-time event rewards. The development team has also analyzed game data and prepared a special limited-time event featuring a buffed version of the least-hunted monster in the game, with the quest again delivering special cosmetics and rewards. Tsujimoto says that Capcom still has more in-store for Monster Hunter fans that it will reveal closer to the anniversary event start date.

Kysona is known for its affordable, high-performance gaming peripherals, having previously launched the Jupiter and Mercury wireless symmetrical gaming mice, which weigh in at 40-46 g, and the brand has now announced the Saturn series gaming mice, which bring the same sensor and MCU hardware found in the aforementioned symmetrical models into an ergonomic shell. The Saturn series comes in two flavors: the more expensive Pro model, which comes with a PixArt PAW 3395 sensor and a bigger 500 mAh battery, and the Saturn SE, which uses the PixArt PAW 3311 sensor, ditches the 8 kHz polling, features a different coating, and comes in around 2 g lighter for it—56 g for the SE, 58 g for the Pro.

The Saturn gaming mice use a shell design reminiscent of something like the Razer Basilisk V3 or the more recent Mchose G7 series—that is to say, the Saturn shell is a right-handed ergonomic gaming mouse with a thumb rest. Kysona suggests that the shape is optimized for palm and claw grips and that the "ice-feeling coating" is resistant to sweat and helps maintain grip during intense gaming sessions. The Saturn measures in at 126 × 75 × 41 mm, making it 4 mm shorter than the Aforementioned Razer Basilisk and 5 mm shorter and 4 mm narrower than the venerable Logitech G502. The Saturn also looks to have slightly more palm support and a pronounced curve to the right near the back of the mouse shell. No specific switches or encoder are mentioned, but an image on the site suggests that the Saturn mice will use Huano 100M Transparent Green Shell White Dot switches, which are a medium force mechanical switch with an MTBF of 100 million clicks. Aside from the main click buttons, the Saturn features two programmable side buttons, and both models feature wired, 2.4 GHz, and Bluetooth connectivity. The Saturn Pro comes in black, pink, and white, and is available for $35.99 after a 60% launch discount, while the Saturn SE is available in white or black and comes in at $24.99 after that same launch discount, but this model includes a charging dock that doubles as a receiver extender.

Control Resonant is slated to launch later this year, and with the gaming industry what it is in 2026, there were bound to be questions about the use of generative AI in the upcoming third-person shooter. In a Q&A session during a recent earnings call, Remedy CEO, Markus Mäki, confirmed that Control Resonant will not feature any content with generative AI: "I can say that, for example, Control Resonant does not use generative AI content at all." However, he goes on to explain that the exclusion of AI at Remedy may not last very long into the future. Mäki said that "making far-reaching promises about the future is pretty hard at this point," and that the company is following the development of generative AI tools to evaluate whether "there is anything that is really ethically in the right place, and is something that can add player value and that our teams want to use."

He also mentioned that there is "varied interest in different crafts at Remedy into investigating these AI tools," signalling that there is some internal interest in different departments. This somewhat echoes a recent survey of game industry workers, which found that as many as 81% of game industry workers use generative AI for brainstorming and 35% used it for prototyping. At the same time, only 7% of those game industry workers surveyed by the GDC Festival of Gaming thought that generative AI was having a positive impact on the game industry. A number of gaming giants have also recently thrown their weight behind AI tools in the name of efficiency or novelty, including Take-Two, whose CEO similarly said that GTA VI will feature no generative AI, but hinted that future games likely would include the controversial technology. Ubisoft, likewise, is exploring the possibility of AI teammates in games, while EA has announced a full-scale AI pivot. These announcements are in spite of the recent DRAM crisis resulting in unaffordable PC hardware, delayed product launches, and severe strain on the supply chain.