Microsoft has reportedly signed a deal that makes Xbox Cloud Gaming the only cloud service allowed to stream Grand Theft Auto 6 at launch, according to The Verge's Tom Warren, citing sources familiar with Microsoft's plans. The claim follows an internal town hall this week where Xbox CEO Asha Sharma apparently told staff that the company has something planned around GTA 6 that "no other platform holder is doing." Sharma doesn't seem to have described the deal herself, and neither Microsoft nor Rockstar has confirmed it officially yet. It's also unclear how long the exclusivity lasts, or whether streaming will require buying the game.

If it pans out, the deal would matter most to PC players. GTA 6 is set to release on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and Rockstar hasn't announced a PC version. Xbox Cloud Gaming works on PCs, so it could be the only official way to play there at launch without owning a console. Rival services such as NVIDIA GeForce NOW and Sony's PlayStation Plus cloud streaming would presumably have to wait, though the report doesn't name them directly. Meanwhile, Microsoft is introducing monthly caps on cloud play in November, with Game Pass Ultimate limited to 15 hours, Premium to 10, and Essential to just 5. Extra hours can be bought, and a pay-as-you-go option for non-subscribers is expected the same month. Anyone hoping to finish GTA 6 over the cloud would probably burn through those hours fairly quickly.

Warhammer Survivors is an upcoming bullet heaven game set in the grim-dark Warhammer universe. As the name suggests, the game takes inspiration from the recent flurry of games similar to Vampire Survivors, and it features similar pixel graphics, to boot. As per a recent announcement, Warhammer Survivors now has a November 10 release date on Steam, GOG, Xbox Series, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and mobile. The game will launch at £6.39, $7.99, and €7.49, although regional pricing is also in effect, so prices in other regions will vary.

Along with the release date announcement, Warhammer Survivors has also received an updated demo that gives players access to two new champions, new weapons, and improved gameplay, compared to the previous demo. The developer, Auroch Digital, was previously responsible for Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, Boltgun - Words of Vengeance, and Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!, so it's safe to say the studio has a decent background in sci-fi properties. According to the game's Steam page, it will launch with 40 playable characters from the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar universes, over 75 iconic weapons, and boss battles with notable Warhammer monsters.

Staff at Ninja Theory, the Cambridge studio behind Hellblade, have started posting on LinkedIn that they have been laid off or that their jobs are at risk. The posts were first spotted by journalist Chris Kerr, and they come from a technical director, a gameplay programmer, sound designers, and technical artists, among others. Senua, the third Hellblade game, was revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase in June with a 2027 release window on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 5. Xbox hasn't officially canceled it; however, gameplay programmer Katrin Mair wrote in her post that it was sad knowing "we won't get to finish what we were working on."

Ninja Theory was supposed to survive the 3,200-job Xbox "reset" announced in July. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said at the time that the studio had entered terms to join new ownership, with funding to finish Senua. That plan fell apart in September, when Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty told staff that "two separate agreements for Ninja Theory fell through" and that a consultation on a proposed closure would begin. He did add that Xbox would keep looking at other options for the studio, though there has been no update on that since. Neither Xbox nor Ninja Theory has said how many people are affected, and the closure itself is still officially a proposal. Xbox has an all-hands town hall scheduled for October 6, so more details may follow.

A jailbroken PlayStation 5 can now run original Xbox games, which is quite ironic, to say the least. Developer ZiZc3 has published XPSemu Alpha 1 on GitHub, a port of the open-source xemu emulator that runs as a native PS5 app. In the developer's own testing, an unmodified Halo 2 holds 30 FPS on average. With the community 60 FPS patch, it apparently reaches 51 to 60 FPS in the opening and 36 to 50 FPS during gameplay. Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex is said to run smoothly as well. The other results, however, are less impressive. Forza Motorsport drops to 15 to 21 FPS in races, and Fable: The Lost Chapters falls to 10 to 20 FPS in heavy scenes. It looks like the CPU is the limit here.

ZiZc3 says the emulated Xbox CPU thread stays at 85 to 97% load while the GPU sits mostly idle. That spare headroom lets you raise the internal resolution by 4x at almost no cost. You'll need your own Xbox BIOS, MCPX boot ROM, hard disk image, and games as XISO files, since discs aren't supported. Save states are missing, and audio DSP emulation is off by default because it hurts performance. Frame generation through an FSR 3 port is on the roadmap. XPSemu comes about a week after ProsperoEden brought Switch games to jailbroken PS5s and the Relapse exploit unlocked nearly every PS5 model, so more ports like this are probably on the way.

Sony has reportedly released a new version of the PlayStation 5 Slim console that addresses several issues and optimizes manufacturing. Historically, console makers make these smaller revisions throughout the manufacturing process, which spans years for consoles, involving minor cosmetic changes or internal redesigns. According to repair technician @Modyficator89 on X, who opened a console from the Marvel's Wolverine Limited Edition Bundle and shared photos showing a new board labeled EDM-051, Sony has made a few minor changes that should improve the console's longevity, thermal performance, and repair capabilities.

One of the most interesting changes is located right on top of the processor. Sony still uses liquid metal as the thermal interface material (TIM) between the APU and its heatsink, as it did with the previous PS5 Slim, but the way it's held in place has been reworked. The new barrier around the chip leaves less of the metal exposed. This new setup should help keep the compound where it belongs, essentially creating a seal around it, reducing the chances of it spreading to nearby parts, and ensuring efficient heat transfer away from the die. This is especially important as liquid metal is very conductive and can create potential problems in the future. The heatsink has also been rebuilt, apparently with different materials and construction than earlier units. Sony took a similar approach with the PS5 Pro, so it seems the Slim is inheriting a proven idea.

Sony today announced that it is extending its AI upscaling efforts to the base PlayStation 5 model, expanding beyond the flagship PlayStation 5 Pro. This new technology, called Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), was developed from Project Amethyst in collaboration with AMD. QSSR is a simplified version of the Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) used in the PS5 Pro. The neural network architecture has been streamlined in a way to get maximum visual fidelity, and its performance has been fine-tuned to maximize the computing capabilities of the base PS5 model.

Sony currently considers PSSR the "gold standard" for the PS5 Pro, while QSSR serves as a lower-tier option, but the only viable AI technology that can run on PS5. Both technologies will continue to coexist, catering to different console generations, and we may see an enhanced version of PSSR in future PS6 consoles. The first few titles to support QSSR include Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei, and game developers are working on updates to bring more titles in line with QSSR. You can check out visual comparisons below.

If your PlayStation 5 hasn't received a system update recently, it might now be open to usable jailbreak. A newly released jailbreak called Relapse works on firmware versions from 7.00 through 13.60, covering both the standard PS5 and the PS5 Pro. In simple terms, nearly every console is now exploitable, except for those updated within the last week. This release comes at a convenient time for Marvel's Wolverine. The game requires firmware 13.40, while patch 1.001.005 needs 13.60. A console on 13.60 can remain exploitable while running the game and at least some updates, although the latest download from PSN might require firmware 14.00.

Few jailbreaks target a title this recent, which is why researchers and PC emulation developers are closely monitoring the game. According to its GitHub repository, Relapse uses a combination of a browser exploit, and a kernel exploit to gain full read-write control over the system's core memory. From there, it can load additional payloads like etaHEN through a loader that listens on port 9021. To get started, follow two steps: first, change the Primary DNS in the console's network settings to 45.56.67.85. Then, either run the project's serve.py script on a local machine or open the Relapse Exploit website from the PS5 itself.

No one is exempt from the global DRAM shortage, and today Sony confirmed there might be a way for enthusiastic gamers to purchase the PlayStation 5 Pro console at MSRP. In Japan, Sony is running a lottery system that explicitly allows gamers with 60 hours of playtime to purchase the console. These playtime hours must have been earned in the two-year period between September 27, 2024, and September 27, 2026. The latter date marks a hard stop that Sony will track, preventing anyone from artificially increasing their playtime. Eligible gamers can apply to the lottery system by October 7, and those selected to buy the console at MSRP will be notified on October 26.

Once the notification email is received, the eligible owner must purchase the console by November 2, or these lottery spots will be returned for another drawing scheduled later this year. This is perhaps one of the strangest ways to purchase a console, but since DRAM shortages have been depleting Sony's stock for manufacturing new consoles, it at least allows gamers who are truly passionate about gaming and need to upgrade their hardware from any earlier PlayStation version to get better performance on the upcoming launch of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI game.

In recent weeks, likely much to the dismay of PlayStation's publishing division, there have been a number of PlayStation 5 games, including exclusives, that have become playable on PC via emulation or game porting projects, like AnyPS5. The latest game to come to PC—at least partially—is Marvel's Wolverine, a recent high-profile PlayStation 5 exclusive, and one of the first major single-player games to come out of Sony since the recent policy change on exclusives.

A brief screen recording of Wolverine booting was shared by Jose Coixao on X, showing the game starting up in KyTyPS5 on Linux. While the game boots and registers inputs—with even the settings menu being navigable—it seems to crash as soon as the modder tries to launch the game itself. While Wolverine is only just barely bootable now, it is still early days, and the community seems to be dedicating significant resources to porting games to PC, whether via repackaging, like AnyPS5, or emulation, like KyTyPS5, so it may be completely playable before long.

SharpEmu, an experimental PS5 emulator, now lists eight games as playable at 60 FPS. Developer Scarecrow (@CursedIfElse) said on X that 12 of 55 tested games can reach gameplay and six of those run at 60 FPS, but ever since their tweet, the compatibility page has been updated. The post came with v0.0.4-release.2, released September 25, but now the number has risen from 12 to 17, with eight being listed as "playable." The eight are Quake, DOOM + DOOM II, Castlevania Dominus Collection, Dead Cells, Dreaming Sarah, Void Terrarium, New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, and Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered. According to the developer, none of these titles have been tested from start to finish, and minor graphical or audio issues may remain. It looks like most are small indie or retro-style games, with Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered the biggest name.

While the progress is certainly commendable, SharpEmu appears to be far from running demanding 3D titles, and eight games is a small slice of a PS5 library of more than 9,000. Another PS5 emulator, KytyPS5, has shown more progress on heavier 3D games. It ran the PS5 version of GTA 5 at up to 60 FPS on a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Radeon RX 7900 XT, however, it only held that for a few minutes before crashing. It also got Astro's Playroom into gameplay, and showed rapid progress in Demon's Souls Remake. SharpEmu says it prioritizes accuracy and infrastructure over game-specific compatibility, while KytyPS5 says it targets wider compatibility and boot reliability. That could partly explain the gap in progress, but things could certainly change quickly. Nonetheless, it's certainly nice to see great progress in the emulator space in such a short time.

An unofficial port of the Eden Nintendo Switch emulator is now running natively on jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles. Developer BlackBearReloaded released ProsperoEden, which adapts Eden, itself a fork of the now-defunct Yuzu project, to run directly on Sony's hardware as homebrew rather than through Linux or another layer. The developer also shared compatibility results from the latest v1.000.010 build, and the numbers look better than expected for something still in alpha. Cuphead reportedly hits 60 FPS, Metroid Dread runs at around 40 FPS, and Super Mario 3D World is playable in tested sections. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe now boots into actual gameplay too, though it doesn't hold a steady 60 FPS just yet.

Some caveats apply, though. The port only supports OpenGL so far, with no Vulkan backend built for the PS5 side. Several of the frame rate numbers come from menu and title-screen testing instead of full playthroughs, and games like Pokemon Legends Z-A are still described as very slow with crashes on shutdown. Even so, going from nothing to playable 2D titles in one alpha release is a fast pace. Nintendo has shut down emulation projects before, Yuzu being the clearest example, so how long ProsperoEden lasts probably depends on how much attention it draws and how fast it progresses.

Resident Evil Requiem topped 6 million sales within two weeks of its initial launch, so it's no secret that it's been a hit for Capcom, and it has, by Capcom's own account, broken sales records for the series in the process. It's no surprise, then, that Alinea Analytics is reporting that the game has sold an estimated 8.5 million copies across PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series consoles.

Surprisingly, the analytics firm estimates that as much as 48.1% of the game's sales have been on PlayStation 5, while Steam accounts for 43.4% of sales, and Xbox Series X|S only accounts for 8.6%. Low Xbox series sales aside, it seems as though Resident Evil fans are still keen on physical media, with as many as 30.8% of PlayStation 5's Requiem sales coming from physical media sales. The report also claims that Resident Evil Requiem has surpassed $500 million in total revenue for its platforms combined.

A new open-source project called AnyPS5 aims to run PlayStation 5 games natively on Windows and Linux, without emulation. Its GitHub page describes it as a tool that relinks PS5 executables into the host system's native format and reimplements the console's system libraries for dynamic linking, similar in concept to Wine or Proton. Since the PS5 already runs on x86-64 Zen 2 hardware, close to a modern PC, AnyPS5 skips CPU emulation and recompiles shaders into SPIR-V for Vulkan instead.

As for progress, the developer says execution now reaches a game's main function, with exception handling built out, and the shader recompiler produces SPIR-V that validates cleanly. The repo's status notes claim a real game reaches its logo, main menu, and some gameplay with audio, though there's no public build to verify that yet. No releases exist, and the developer says one won't go out until a game fully launches through the tool. It's tempting to think about God of War Laufey or GTA 6 running on a PC through AnyPS5, but that's not realistic anytime soon. AnyPS5 hasn't run a full game yet, and going by how long PS4 and PS3 compatibility work took, that tends to take years.

The KytyPlus PS5 emulator has reportedly rendered the Unreal Engine 5-powered Silent Hill 2 remake on an integrated GPU. Reddit user Legal_Help_31 shared a test on an AMD Radeon 840M with 512 MB of dedicated VRAM plus shared system memory, paired with a Ryzen AI 5 340 and around 15 GB of shared RAM. Performance is still not where we would want it, of course. The game's content warning screen runs at around 4 FPS, and it looks like the game only starts and sits there for several minutes without crashing. The test includes no gameplay at this time. The developer's own GitHub page calls the work experimental and says it is not a playability claim. FSR upscaling can apparently be used as well.

KytyPlus is a high-level emulation (HLE) fork of the KytyPS5 project. It reportedly runs without Sony's console firmware and uses Vulkan for rendering. The original KytyPS5 reportedly still crashes when launching Silent Hill 2 Remake, even on stronger hardware, so KytyPlus is a few steps ahead there. It is also impressive that this technically ran on an iGPU, but a boot screen at 4 FPS tells us very little about whether this ever becomes playable. The emulation scene has moved quickly in recent weeks, though, with KytyPS5 showing tremendous progress in Demon's Souls Remake and Astro Bot, among other games. KytyPlus developers are apparently now working to improve the performance in Silent Hill 2 Remake.

The Moirai have woven a long thread - after roughly a year and a half of hard Early Access labor, that thread is finally nearing its final knot. Hermes, herald of the gods, has descended to the mortal realm to announce the decision of the Pantheon: the Olympians are pleased with the efforts of hundreds of thousands of mortal adventurers, who already faced their Nemesis. In their eternal, divine greatness, they are granting us: a release date! Hermes is pleased to announce that Titan Quest II will leave Early Access and launch into full release on January 19th, 2027, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

The Titan Quest II Odyssey has been long and full of epic adventures, right from ancient Greek mythology. Guided by feedback from a vast number of heroes during Early Access, Titan Quest II has been expanded through numerous updates that added new lands to conquer, new powers to wield, and new treasures to loot along the way. The developers at Grimlore Games have forged an ARPG like no other, with its unique mastery system that offers the players an immense amount of freedom while creating their own unique heroes. Version 1.0 pulls every strand together into the complete tapestry the Moirai had planned all along - plus a fair bit more.

Blizzard recently revealed that it is working on a new open-world shooter as a continuation of the StarCraft series, and, given the recent push from Xbox for Xbox exclusives, the expectation was that the StarCraft would be an Xbox exclusive of some sort. However, new information has emerged that this may not be the case for the RTS-turned-shooter.

According to a Blizzard representative responding to Kotaku, the studio "can only say for now that StarCraft won't be exclusive," although the representative declined to provide more specifics. For the time being, it's safe to assume that StarCraft will launch on PC and Xbox, at least—given the close relationship between Xbox consoles and PC, and the "hybrid" branding surrounding the Xbox Helix—but it's unclear whether the game will also launch on PlayStation 5.

Mere hours after it was leaked that Xbox would be continuing its recent slew of layoffs, Xbox Wire published an internal email, officially confirming those layoffs and providing a glimpse into the future of the Xbox game development landscape. As a result of the layoffs, which will see 268 employees out of work, there also will be changes to several studios at Xbox, including Activision, Bethesda, King, Playground, and Turn 10.

It seems as though all of the layoffs this time around came out of the Halo Studios team, and Microsoft has left Activision in charge of the next Halo game as a result. Xbox says that a small team at Halo Studios will remain in order to support Activision in the franchise's development. Meanwhile, Ninja Theory, which was previously in negotiations on deals to exit Xbox's ownership, will officially close down instead of being bought. The Hellblade/Senua franchise will seemingly be developed by another studio at Xbox, following the closure of Ninja Theory. Xbox claims that two separate buyout deals had fallen through. For the time being, it seems as though Blizzard has escaped its anticipated layoffs.

It was announced in February 2026 that Evil Empire and Motion Twin, the indie studios behind the massively successful Dead Cell franchise, is working with Konami on Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. Ahead of the game's October 15 launch, Konami just announced in a Tokyo Game Show livestream that it would be releasing a demo for Castlevania: Belmont's Curse on October 1.

The demo will be available on all platforms on which the game is planned to launch—that is to say PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch, and the demo will allow players buying the game on the same platform they played the demo on to keep their progress if they buy the full game. The demo will run at 60 FPS on PC and full-size consoles, but only 30 FPS on the Switch, and content and features will be restricted in the demo version. The full livestream with the demo details is available below (in Japanese).

PS5 emulator KytyPS5 has added another PlayStation 5 exclusive to its compatibility list, with Astro's Playroom now booting into gameplay. YouTuber Unreal Gaming shared footage of the pack-in platformer running on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 4080, the same rig used in KytyPS5's earlier tests. Astro's Playroom ships pre-installed on every PS5 and serves as an interactive intro to the DualSense controller, so getting it running is a solid emulation milestone, even if performance is still lagging. Apparently the game drops below 30 FPS fairly often, though the clip shows no crashes, which puts it slightly ahead of some other recent KytyPS5 tests.

The emulator has previously gotten the PS5 build of GTA 5 running at up to 60 FPS, and separately showed rapid progress with Demon's Souls Remake. Both titles, however, along with Astro Bot, have their own performance and crashing issues. Given that PS5 emulation is still in its early days, performance across these titles will probably keep climbing. Hardware demands remain steep either way. A Ryzen 7 9800X3D has become something of a baseline for these PS5 emulation runs, given how CPU-bound the process is. Still, the pace with which these updates are coming out suggests development isn't slowing down.

Valheim launched into Steam Early Access in February 2021 and quickly garnered attention, launching with over 500,000 peak concurrent players on Steam and still counting over 20,000 daily concurrent players at the time of writing. Now, over five years after the Early Access launch, the open-world survival-craft game is finally launching out of Early Access, with a slew of new content and a new biome in-tow.

Aside from new content, including weapons, new traversal options, a new dungeon type, and a new mount, among others, Valheim 1.0 also sees the game get an official Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5 launch, and it makes cross-play available for all platforms. The update officially launches on September 9 on all platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, the Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

It has long been thought that there would be a long delay between the console and PC launches of Grand Theft Auto VI—GTA V launched to consoles a whole two years ahead of the PC port—however, the unprecedented times facing the PC and console hardware markets may be enough to pressure Rockstar into moving the PC launch of GTA VI ahead, according to recent rumors.

In a recent appearance on the VGC Podcast, Andy Robinson mentioned during a discussion about the ongoing gaming hardware situation that he thinks "they'll push the PC version up," referring to GTA VI. He went on to say that "There's a bit of noise about that. That perhaps the PC version might arrive sooner than some people might expect, just because of everything that's going on," suggesting high demand—some of which is induced by GTA VI itself—may drive Rockstar Games to release the PC port sooner.

At the latest PlayStation State of Play, Sony and Konami announced an upcoming action game, Rhapsody in Scarlet, set in an alternate 1920s New York filled with magic, monsters, and mayhem. The game was announced via the State of Play and a post on the PlayStation Blog, but it will not be a PlayStation exclusive, although an official launch date has not yet been set. Rhapsody in Scarlet will be a single-player, third-person game, and it looks to be launching on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and the Xbox Series X|S consoles.

In Rhapsody in Scarlet, players step into the shoes of Ellie, a young mage with who has come to New York to pursue a jazz career before getting entwined in a mysterious mafia plot involving magic and conspiracy that could result in the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Konami says that its goal with Rhapsody in Scarlet was to offer a unique twist on the action game genre.

Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders jumped sharply after Rockstar's extended gameplay look aired on Netflix, according to new estimates from Sensor Tower. The analytics firm says pre-orders rose 436% on August 27, the day of the showcase, compared to the day before. That momentum carried into August 28, pushing the two-day increase to 572% against the prior 30-day average. PlayStation 5 accounted for the bulk of the surge, with PS5 pre-orders up 606% on the 27th alone, while Xbox Series X|S pre-orders rose a comparatively modest 127%. PS5 has led Xbox in GTA 6 pre-orders since Sensor Tower began tracking reservations in June, shortly after Rockstar officially opened pre-orders for the game.

Sensor Tower's cumulative estimate now stands at roughly 4.86 million pre-orders worldwide, worth close to $476 million, with PlayStation buyers accounting for about 77% of that total. Take-Two has not confirmed exact figures, though CEO Strauss Zelnick has previously said demand for the $100 Ultimate Edition has outpaced the standard $80 version. Rockstar has kept a tight grip on gameplay reveals since GTA 6's earlier trailers, so a 26-minute showcase was always going to move the needle. Sensor Tower's own analysts have also suggested the current Ultimate Edition divide is unlikely to hold once mass-market buyers start pre-ordering closer to release, which could shift these percentages again before launch.

As expected, there has been a lot of chatter online about The Witcher 4 since it was announced that the game was in full development at CD Projekt Red. Now, as per an interview Game Developer, CD Projekt Red's Michał Nowakowski has revealed what he meant when he said that the studio had learned from the launch of Cyberpunk 2077: The Witcher 4 already runs on all of the target systems—PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S.

Michał Nowakowski, co-CEO of CD Projekt RedYou come to the studio, you launch Witcher 4 right now. You can launch it on PC. You can launch it on PS5. You can launch it on Xbox Series X, and it's going to run...

It's been known for a while that Wizards of the Coast has been working on a new game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, and at Gamescom Opening Night Live, it revealed Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, a single-player, third-person RPG under development at Invoke Studios. The game follows Kaatri, a warrior who makes a pact with Tasha, The Witch Queen, in order to find someone she loves.

The pact the player makes with Tasha allows her to perceive raw magic throughout the world and access it and a new set of forbidden magic, spells, and weapons. As players embark on their journey, they will discover and develop those magical abilities, facing deception and peril along the way. In the eight-minute gameplay reveal shown off at Gamescom, we got a look at Kaatri's new supernatural abilities, which serve her just as well in combat as they do in traversing and exploring the world of Darkon and solving puzzles as she goes.