The rumor mill has long been abuzz with estimations and updates about the supposed price of both the Xbox Helix and the PlayStation 6. The latest update from notable leaker, Kepler_L2 on X, suggests that Sony may have the upper-hand on pricing for the next console generation. According to the leaker, Sony's PS6 bill of materials cost is slated to be as much as $200 lower than that of the Xbox Helix, which will reportedly cost somewhere between $1,200 and $1,800.

This Helix price bracket theoretically puts the PlayStation 6 somewhere around the $1,000-1,100 price point, if Sony decides to price the PS6 as competitively as possible. However, it seems as though the pricing strategy for the upcoming console generation is changing, with Sony's Hideaki Nishino commenting in a June financial report that "we do not intend to sell hardware at significant losses," suggesting that the days of low console prices subsidized by subsequent game sales are behind us.

Since Sony announced that it would be ending physical media production for the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, there has been much discussion about the value of physical games media in the modern gaming landscape. Some argue that physical media is invaluable for game preservation and access to content in some remote parts of the world, while others argue that its value is limited, because the physical media market share is small for most games, and it has limited preservation value, thanks to day-one patches. Alinea Analytics recently posted some data about physical media sales on PlayStation, putting more numbers to the impact of physical games media on PlayStation.

Interestingly, despite the relatively high physical sales split of some games, like Resident Evil Requiem, with disc sales accounting for 30.2% of its sales, and Marvel's Wolverine, whose disc sales came to 32.3% of its total sales revenue, the total physical game sales revenue for games released in 2026 on PlayStation 5 and PS4 amounted to $655 million, which is less than 20% of sales revenue for the year. As the analytics firm explains, that revenue split itself is skewed by digital-only releases and pre-order bonuses, which are all digital sales. The data itself seems to tell a story of a split player base: those who buy first-party, single-player, narrative-driven games tend to skew more towards physical media, while sports and multiplayer gamers tend to buy digital more often.

PS5 homebrew developer Gezine has shown a working exploit on firmware 14.10, the latest PlayStation 5 software, just a month before GTA 6 launches. In a short video posted on X with the caption "Hello 14.10," Gezine opens the console's debug settings, and apparently it gets past the protections Sony added with the 14.10 update on October 1. The jailbreak is private for now, and there's no word on whether Gezine plans to release it. The timing is what makes this interesting. Sony's 14.00 update in mid-September disrupted the Relapse exploit that had been working on firmware 13.60, and 14.10 followed with more security fixes. Players are also reporting that Sony now requires 14.10 to sign in to PSN.

On top of that, datamining account PlayStation Game Size found that GTA 6 needs firmware 14.10 to run, though neither Rockstar nor Sony has confirmed this. However, this doesn't mean pirated copies of GTA 6 are around the corner. The hypervisor bypass that the scene uses to dump and run game backups doesn't work on 14.10 yet, and Gezine reportedly said a separate hypervisor exploit may be needed. Until then, backups, and by extension apps like Overdrive that allegedly hand out free games and DLC, seemingly aren't an option on the latest firmware. Some people in the community have asked Gezine to hold off on a release until after GTA 6 launches, since going public now would likely prompt Sony to patch it.

Anyone holding out for an affordable next-gen NVIDIA card might have a long wait. Hardware leaker Kepler_L2 claims on NeoGAF that the GeForce RTX 6060 will "launch much later," adding that, based on recent trends, he doubts it will even match the PlayStation 6. He was replying to a forum member who argued the PS6 would compete with the RTX 6060, in the same thread where he claimed the console's RAM and storage alone cost over $680. Kepler didn't give an actual date, and the 2029 figure going around seems to be an extrapolation. Both Kepler and kopite7kimi have placed NVIDIA's Rubin-based RTX 60 series in 2028, and the x60 cards usually trail the flagship by a few months. The RTX 5060 arrived under four months after the RTX 5090, while the RTX 4060 took over eight months to follow the RTX 4090.

With a flagship launch around mid-2028 or later, that could push the RTX 6060 into 2029. That said, the "much later" comment seems to be relative to the PS6, which is reportedly targeting late 2027, so the exact timing is still anyone's guess. Kepler didn't say why, but the ongoing memory shortage looks like the obvious suspect. NVIDIA reportedly postponed its RTX 50 SUPER refresh earlier this year to prioritize AI products that use the same GDDR7 memory, and the company recently admitted that RTX 5090 supply is tight. Of course, NVIDIA hasn't announced the RTX 60 series officially yet, so treat this as a rumor. Anyone looking to buy a new NVIDIA GPU should probably expect the current RTX 50 lineup to stick around for quite a while.

Driveclub, Evolution Studios' 2014 PS4 racer, now runs natively on Windows through DriveClub Recomp, a fan project released on GitHub by OverkillLabs3. While PlayStation emulation has been progressing rapidly, this one doesn't use CPU emulation. The game's own x86-64 code runs directly on the PC's processor, while the PS4 system libraries are reimplemented and GPU commands are translated to Vulkan. The port supports resolutions from 720p to 8K, ultrawide displays, and an unlocked frame rate that doesn't speed up the game. It also replaces the original anti-aliasing with NVIDIA DLAA on RTX cards or AMD FSR 3.1 on any GPU, both at native resolution, and RTX owners can swap between the two in-game with F10.

The developer says the game holds about 60 FPS at 4K in its heaviest scenes on an RTX 5070 Ti paired with a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and the v0.2.3 update pushed one 4K test race from roughly 62 to 71 FPS. It is still rough around the edges, however. Some reflections look too bright, shaders compile during the first few minutes, slower CPUs drop frames in busy scenes, and online features don't work. It has also only been tested on NVIDIA hardware so far. A second project, DCport by qnfn, takes a similar route with FSR 3.1 and FSR 4 support. Both need the player's own dump of version 1.28. It's in the same vein as how modders recently got Gran Turismo Sport running on PC. These recomps arrive a couple of months after a ShadPS4 patch let Driveclub run at up to 8K, quite the jump for a game that shipped at 1080p and 30 FPS.

Sony has a new patent application that describes its own take on frame generation, and the PlayStation 6 seems like the obvious target, though no console is named. Titled "Generation Super Sampling," the filing (US 2026/0320740 A1) was published on October 15 and lists Sony engineer Denis Dupeyron as the inventor. It describes an encoder neural network that turns a newly rendered frame into a compact embedding, and a decoder network that uses it to predict the next frame. Optional inputs include motion vectors and recent controller inputs, which help the model guess where the player is heading. That frame is displayed while the next real one is still rendering.

The filing points out that existing methods insert a generated frame between two real ones, which means waiting for both and adding delay. Sony's version predicts forward from a single frame, with the goal of smoothing out hitching in heavy scenes without lowering visual quality. It can also predict several frames at once, and there's a simpler non-AI fallback that shifts blocks of pixels along their motion vectors. Apparently, the model trains on the video stream itself, comparing each guess with the real next frame, so no human labeling is needed. However, the filing includes no latency or image quality numbers, and it remains pending, so there's no guarantee any of it ships.

Microsoft has posted a job listing for an "Xbox Games Supply Strategist," and the role revolves entirely around physical games. The full-time, Redmond-based position went live on October 14 and was spotted by users on X a few days later. The new hire will join the Xbox Supply Chain team to coordinate the launch of physical Xbox games "across all platforms," along with global supply planning, inventory, and retail sales. Oddly enough, the listing never mentions discs. The timing is interesting regardless. Sony confirmed in July that it will stop producing discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028, and its lawyers have since argued that digital game ownership "is not plausible." On the other hand, Microsoft's signals have been more mixed.

Team Green's Disc-to-Digital program lets owners of supported Xbox One and Series X discs claim a digital license, which many read as groundwork for a discless Project Helix, yet Microsoft later asked Insiders whether its next-gen console should install games from physical discs. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma also told the BBC in August that she wants players to have a choice between physical and digital, without committing to anything for Helix. Still, a job listing isn't a confirmed hardware roadmap. "Across all platforms" could simply cover Xbox-published games that ship physically on PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, and it says nothing about a disc drive on Helix. It looks like boxed Xbox games will stick around a while longer in some form, but anyone hoping for a disc drive on Helix should wait for Microsoft to confirm it.

The memory crunch looks like it is hitting the PlayStation 6 harder than expected. Hardware leaker KeplerL2 claims on NeoGAF that the RAM and NAND flash storage in Sony's next console alone cost over $680. He posted it as a reply to a forum member who floated $680 as a possible subsidized retail price, which pretty much puts that idea to rest. Keep in mind that figure covers only memory and storage, before the APU, cooling, power supply, and the rest of the hardware are counted. This is not the first time Kepler has updated his estimate. Back in March, he put the console's bill of materials at around $760, and by July, that had climbed to roughly $960.

Current leaks suggest the PS6 uses GDDR7 memory on a 160-bit bus with support for up to 40 GB, with 30 GB considered the more likely configuration. There have also been reports that Sony looked into cutting memory capacity to keep costs down, and the culprit is the same as everywhere else: AI data centers are soaking up DRAM and NAND supply, which pushes prices up for everyone. Sony has said nothing official about PS6 pricing, so it's reasonable to treat all of this with some caution. That said, if memory prices stay where they are, a PS6 that costs significantly more than the PS5 Pro seems likely, and a $1,000 price tag now looks quite possible.

Enshrouded, the open-world survival and base-building game by Keen Games, released to Early Access on Steam in January 2024, and now, more than two years after the Early Access release, Keen Games has announced its full 1.0 launch date. As per the announcement on Steam, Enshrouded 1.0 will launch on October 15, 2026 for both PC via Steam and on Sony's PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro. At its height, Enshrouded managed to attract as many as 160,405 concurrent players on Steam, and the expansion to PS5 is expected to grow its player count. The developer has yet to announce a firm launch date for an Xbox version, but has confirmed that an Xbox launch is planned for spring 2027.

The developer has not yet made any grand promises of content for the official 1.0 release date, but the announcement is accompanied by a release date trailer that hints at some of the updates, and the developer has promised news about "improvements, optimization, QoL changes," and new content ahead of the October launch. Some eagle-eyed users on the r/Enshrouded subreddit have noted that there appears to be a new floating island biome and improvements to the overall lighting and aesthetics. The full announcement and the release date announcement teaser follow.

Update Oct 15th: Enshrouded 1.0 has officially launched on Steam, with a slew of updates coming to the game at the same time. According to the update changelog, Enshrouded 1.0 fleshes out the map with new areas: Cinder's Cradle features barren lava fields and a series of floating islands with all-new enemies, fauna, and flora; two new Hollow Halls have appeared in Albaneve Summits and Veilwater Basin; and there are new areas to explore several other areas of the map. The player level cap has also increased, and there is a new Sparkworks logic system for creating custom areas, traps, and other interactions. The full update notes are available on Steam, and an update highlight follows.

Barring the upcoming launch of GTA VI, it's safe to say that the majority of the big game launches for 2026 have already taken place, and it seems as though Microsoft's Forza Horizon 6 will come out of 2026 as one of the year's big winners, per recent data from Alinea Analytics. According to the analytics firm, Forza Horizon 6 has handily taken the top spot as the most successful first-party game launch from Xbox and Sony for 2026 so far—and with quite a margin, to boot.

The research firm estimates that Forza Horizon 6 has earned a whopping $579.2 million in revenue from 8.8 million copies sold on PC and Xbox so far, even without a PS5 port, which is slated to launch in early 2027. This still puts it behind Forza Horizon 5, which earned over $1 billion in revenue across all platforms, but Horizon 6 only launched in May 2026, meaning it has only been on the market for around five months. The data suggests that Forza Horizon 6 generated 56.7% of its revenue on Xbox, with the rest coming from Steam, and estimated over 10 million gamers played Horizon 6 on Xbox Game Pass, with 1.3 million players opting for the Game Pass upgrade, generating $82 million in revenue for the platform.

New sales data shared by The Game Business suggests physical PS5 games still have plenty of buyers. According to Ampere Analysis, 35% of worldwide sales of Marvel's Wolverine in September came from boxed copies. Ampere estimates the game sold around 2.16 million copies in its launch month, which would put physical sales at roughly 756,000. Interestingly, Europe leaned even harder towards discs, with GSD data showing 51% of sales there coming from the boxed version. The split varies a lot by country, though. Two thirds of Wolverine's UK sales were digital, while in France more than two thirds were physical. Wolverine wasn't alone either, as over 45% of Silent Hill: Townfall sales were boxed, while The Blood of Dawnwalker on PS5 and Onimusha came in at 36% and 30%, respectively.

These numbers are interesting because Sony plans to stop producing discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028, and earlier data from Alinea Analytics pointed in a similar direction for Sony's biggest exclusives. Of course, these are estimates, and actual data available to Sony may be different. Moreover, these patterns can be affected heavily by factors such as pricing and availability. There have also been rumors that Sony could push its digital-only plans back, while Microsoft is asking Xbox Insiders whether its next console should support discs. For now, though, Sony's own messaging still points to a January 2028 cutoff.

Sony has announced a Midnight Black version of its Japan-only PS5 Digital Edition through the Japanese PlayStation Blog, and it goes on sale on November 19 for ¥55,000 (roughly $350) including tax. That's the same day GTA 6 launches, and Sony mentions the game right alongside the console in its announcement. Pre-orders open on October 20 at PlayStation retailers and online stores in Japan. The new model, CFI-2200B02S, comes with the same catch as the white Japan-only version from last November: the system language is locked to Japanese, and the console only works with PlayStation accounts registered to Japan. Other than that, it's a regular PS5 Digital Edition with an 825 GB SSD. A matching Midnight Black disc drive also launches on November 19 for ¥11,980 (about $76).

The pricing is the more interesting part. When Sony raised PS5 prices worldwide in April, the Japan-only model stayed at ¥55,000 (~$350), while the standard Digital Edition in Japan jumped to ¥89,980 (~$570). In the US, the Digital Edition now sells for $599.99, so the region lock seems to be there mostly to stop these units from being exported. Sony also used the announcement to repeat that new PlayStation games will be digital only from January 2028. That's a slightly awkward message to pair with a brand-new disc drive, especially since physical copies still bring in a sizeable share of revenue for its biggest exclusives. There's no word about a release outside Japan, and with US console prices sitting at record highs, it's reasonable to expect that this cheaper black PS5 stays a Japan-only affair.

In the weeks leading up to publication, a number of software engineers and modders have decompiled and recompiled games, unlocked mods, and accelerated game emulation, resulting in everything from a browser-based Fallout: New York game to full PlayStation 5 game ports using AnyPS5. It seems as though Microsoft has now taken notice of the uptick in these AI-accelerated game mods and unofficial port projects and launched Xbox Labs in response.

In a recent email shared by Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, she explains that the rapidly accelerating pace of game and mod development that has been a result of these AI "experiments challenge long-held assumptions about our industry," and that "it is easy to see the possibilities in making great games easier to access, giving old games new life and allowing more players to become creators and co-creators." The motivation behind Xbox Labs appears to be to get out ahead of these AI projects and "turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience."

A new app called Overdrive is making the rounds on X, and apparently it is a free game store for jailbroken PS5 consoles. Insider Gaming reports that a clip was posted on October 11 by Edigax on X, showing an app that works like the PlayStation Store but offers games and DLC at no cost. The listings show download size and a review score instead of prices, with titles like Battlefield 6 and Forza Horizon 5 reportedly in the library. We don't know who made Overdrive, where the files come from, or whether it works as smoothly as the video suggests, so take this with a pinch of salt. Initial accounts have been mixed, with one Redditor describing the app as "very poorly made."

It isn't the only such app. Orbit Store, an open-source beta from developer saawant12, offers a similar storefront with 147 games linked from Archive.org, though its developer says Orbit doesn't host any files itself. Both arrive shortly after Relapse, a public jailbreak for PS5 and PS5 Pro consoles on firmware 7.00 through 13.60. The homebrew scene has been busy since, with PS2 discs now loading and Halo 2 reportedly hitting 30 FPS via an Xbox emulator. Sony has been actively pushing back against the jailbreak, releasing firmware 14.00 that sits outside Relapse's range, and the October 1 update (14.10) added more security fixes. With no official downgrade path, updating currently means losing the jailbreak.

Nintendo isn't following Sony toward a digital-only future, at least for now. Videocardz reports that Bill van Zyll, Nintendo's Vice President and General Manager for Latin America, said the company has no plans to drop physical games on the Switch 2. He spoke to Brazilian YouTube channel Coelho no Japão at Brasil Game Show (BGS) 2026, telling them that Nintendo goes by what customers prefer and that the Switch 2 supports both physical and digital releases. His exact words were: "There's no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well." Apparently, physical games are especially popular in Latin America, Brazil included.

Nintendo's clarification is important, as Sony, on the other hand, confirmed in July that disc production for new PlayStation games will end in January 2028, although games released before then won't be affected. That decision drew plenty of backlash, and data from Alinea Analytics later showed discs still bring in a sizeable share of revenue for PlayStation's biggest exclusives. Nintendo's own numbers point toward digital dominance too, with 61.5% of its software sales coming from digital in the April to June quarter. The company has also been pricing digital Switch 2 exclusives lower than their physical versions since May. Of course, plans can change, though for the foreseeable future, cartridges seem safe on the Switch 2.

Developer Sword has added physical disc support to PS5SX2, a native port of the PCSX2 PlayStation 2 emulator for jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles. The feature arrived as a beta in version 2.01 on October 10, a day after Sword showed it off on X with a clip of a PS2 disc going into a PS5. Contrary to how it may appear at first, the game does not seem to run straight off the disc. According to the release notes, PS5SX2 copies the disc to storage the first time it is inserted and then launches the game from that copy. Sword adds that this has only been tested on one original PS5.

That said, the PS5's optical drive apparently cannot read CDs, so PS2 games that shipped on CD are out, at least through the internal drive. Version 2.02, out later the same day, adds an experimental, off-by-default option that builds on a community contribution for reading PS2 discs from a USB DVD or Blu-ray drive, which should help Digital Edition owners. The emulator renders at up to 6x the PS2's native resolution, although the README warns that some games are too heavy for 6x on a regular PS5. Sword isn't stopping at the PS2 either, confirming that PS3 disc support is planned for an RPCS3 port that is in the works. The timing is notable, as Sony plans to stop producing discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028.

A few weeks ago, we reported on an intriguing project called AnyPS5, which aims to bypass emulation entirely and run PlayStation 5 games natively on Windows and Linux. Today, the project reached a significant milestone by successfully translating 100% of the PlayStation 5 GPU shader instructions. This achievement means that the "Oberon" graphics processing engine within the PS5 has been fully decoded. All 1166 GPU shader instructions, based on the RDNA 2 GPU IP, are now covered under the AnyPS5 project. The project relinks PS5 executables into the host system's native format and reimplements the console's system libraries for dynamic linking, similar to Wine or Proton. Since the PS5 already runs on x86-64 Zen 2 hardware, which is similar to a modern PC, AnyPS5 skips CPU emulation and recompiles shaders into SPIR-V for Vulkan instead.

What is particularly interesting is that once GPU shader instructions are translated, all the system needs are PS5 libraries so they can be dynamically linked from a native PC port. This means the PS5 game will see the exact same system calls on a PC as it does on the console. However, the system libraries have not yet been fully translated, with current statistics showing 84.81% of system libraries translated. There are exactly 3034 system libraries native to the PS5, and currently, 2573 have been translated. Once the remaining 461 libraries are translated, we can expect PS5 games to run natively on PCs, bypassing emulation layers entirely.

Circana's Mat Piscatella recently published the analytics firm's 2026 gaming sales data that effectively shows reduced game and console sales, with total US market spend dropping across the board, despite rising prices of both video games and gaming hardware. More precisely, total video game hardware sales in the US for the 2026 year to date saw a YoY drop of 11%, from $2.856 billion in 2025 to $2.543 billion in 2026. Further, video game content, including physical and digital media, DLCs, microtransactions, and subscriptions, saw a 10% decline in August 2026 compared to the same month in 2025, but the year-to-date spend in the same category is down only 2%.

Perhaps expectedly, the August 2026 content spending data shows a 7% decline in US console content spending, while PC content spending increased by 13%, and subscriptions grew by 3%. Much of this PC growth is likely driven by increasing PC hardware prices caused by the ongoing AI data center demand squeeze, instead of an actual increase in PC adoption. Moreover, we are in the middle of a console generation, and the Nintendo Switch 2 launched long enough ago that its resulting bump in console sales would likely have flattened by now, although the Switch 2 was still the best-selling console in the US for both unit sales and dollar spend for August 2026 and the 2026 year to date.

Sony is seemingly pulling away from its XR ambitions, as the company has reportedly transferred 43 patents it holds in the United States to none other than Meta. In a large transfer between June and September this year, Sony's patents revolving around virtual, augmented, and mixed reality headsets have been transferred to Meta to strengthen its internal hardware team. These patents reportedly include things like head-mount displays, XR glass types, and much more that Sony has been working on since 2010 up until 2022.

However, not only patents in the United States are at stake here, as there are a total of 419 global patents that Sony will transfer to Meta. Around 180 patents out of these 419 will be those held in the United States, while the remaining 239 were filed in different countries where Sony has research and development teams like in Japan, China, Korea, Europe, and other regions.

Forza Horizon 6 will apparently reach the PlayStation 5 on January 26, 2027, according to billbil-kun, the generally reliable leaker at Dealabs. That would put the port a little over eight months behind the Xbox Series X|S and PC versions, which launched on May 19, and it would miss the 2026 window that Microsoft and Playground Games have been promising since January. The game is also said to be getting a physical disc release on the same day as the digital version. That is a change from Forza Horizon 5, which arrived on PS5 in April 2025 as a digital-only title. Pricing is reportedly set at €69.99 in Europe and £59.99 in the UK, the same as the Xbox version, and billbil-kun expects the US price to land at $69.99.

An official announcement is expected as early as this week, with pre-orders opening shortly after. Of course, neither Microsoft nor Playground Games has confirmed any of this. In early September, the studio's own blog still said the PS5 version would be out "later this year". The Verge's Tom Warren had been saying otherwise since late August, and he later reported that the port was being pushed to early 2027, apparently to coincide with the game's first expansion. It looks like he had it right. PS5 owners should keep an eye out for the official launch date and pre-order details.

GameStop is now reportedly asking $1,399.99 for a pre-owned PlayStation 5 Pro, which is $500 more than Sony's $899.99 list price for a new one. Consoles with the disc drive attached go for $1,499.99, and GameStop Pro members apparently get the base unit for $1,329.99. An internal memo shared on the r/GameStop subreddit, reportedly by a store employee, addresses the gap directly. It says "the preowned console will have a higher price than the new console," and calls this "intentional." The memo doesn't seem to spell out a reason, but it isn't hard to guess. New PS5 Pro units are largely sold out at list price, and the few listings left at big retailers are apparently going for around $1,500.

Contrary to how it may appear at first, then, GameStop's used price still sits under what a new console costs on the open market today. The same memo reportedly puts trade-in values at $800 for the Pro and $850 with a disc drive, which is more than the console's $699.99 launch price in 2024. Sony raised the PS5 Pro to $899.99 in April and blamed rising memory costs. With GTA 6 arriving on November 19 and the memory crisis in full swing, demand probably isn't going to ease soon. Although r/GameStop moderators have since confirmed the validity of the poster, readers should still treat it as an internal leak for now, not an official price change. GameStop hasn't commented on this incident yet.

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.