Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is getting a physical edition, and it seems director Naoki Hamaguchi had to argue for it. He told Radio Times that he pushed Square Enix for a boxed release, while admitting the product lineup is the publishing team's call. On PS5 and Xbox Series X, the disc reportedly works as a key disc that holds the opening and downloads the rest, and the Switch 2 gets a game-key card. The game launches on April 8, 2027. Here's what Hamaguchi said:

In this day and age, as we've been talking about, there's a lot of pressure for disc-less editions, digital editions, and I used my position to put forth an argument for the physical version as much as possible. I completely understand there are those out there who may not really agree with that direction or approve of that direction. But I would just say that I hope you understand that I completely see where you're coming from, and that I did my best.

Steam reportedly just had its best September on record. Alinea Analytics estimates that the platform generated a hefty $1.7 billion last month, up 13% from September 2025, which held the previous record. The third quarter was also Steam's best to date at $5.5 billion, a 12% increase year over year. That puts the 2026 total at $16.5 billion after nine months, compared to $14.5 billion in the same period last year, and well past the $11.1 billion it made in the first half. Valve doesn't publish these figures, so all of this is Alinea's estimate. Bulkhead's early access shooter Wardogs was the top premium game with $86.9 million after launching on September 10, followed by Onimusha: Way of the Sword at $30.4 million and The Blood of Dawnwalker at $26.9 million.

Free-to-play is still a big part of the picture, however. Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, PUBG, and Dota 2 brought in almost $168 million combined, nearly 10% of the month's total. Alinea also noted that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, a free upgrade for existing owners, pushed the 11-year-old game to roughly 2.4 million daily active users across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox on its September 30 launch day, over ten times its 2026 average. All of this spending comes at a time when PC hardware is anything but cheap. Valve's own Steam Machine starts at $1,049, and Micron expects memory supply to be much tighter in 2027 and 2028. The analytics suggest people are buying games regardless, and Alinea expects Steam to cross $20 billion in a year for the first time. With the Q4 release slate still to come, that looks to be a safe bet.

Marvel's Wolverine is now touching 20 FPS on the KytyPS5 emulator, only days after it first booted to its main menu at around 2 FPS. X user @MizoChris shared a 10-second clip of Logan clawing around at roughly that frame rate, and the numbers match a longer test by YouTuber Unreal Gaming PC on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 4080. That run apparently used Senaxx's September 30 build of the emulator, and it ate up nearly all of the card's 16 GB of VRAM. The 20 FPS figure, however, is a peak. Most gameplay reportedly sits closer to 6 to 9 FPS, but occasionally spikes to 15-20 FPS, especially during scenes with less action. The important bit here is the speed at which the game is progressing toward playability. Apparently, the game was peaking at 3 to 7 FPS just a day earlier, though the earlier tests ran on different PCs, so I wouldn't compare them directly.

KytyPS5 has done this before. Last month, it took Demon's Souls Remake from 1 to 2 FPS to 30 FPS in a matter of days, and it also got the PS5 version of GTA 5 running at up to 60 FPS. Wolverine only launched on September 15, which makes its progress even more surprising. The game being a Sony PlayStation exclusive also matters, since Sony has stepped away from PC ports for the foreseeable future. Of course, this doesn't mean GTA 6 will be coming to PC through emulation any time soon. Wolverine is still far from playable, and other KytyPS5 games still deal with crashes and performance issues. It's an impressive technical feat regardless, and PS5 emulation seems to be moving much faster than most people, maybe even Sony, expected.

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.

NACON, a leading video game publisher and designer of premium gaming accessories, is pleased to announce the upcoming release of the Revolution 5 Unlimited (R5U), its new premium controller that is officially licensed for PS5 consoles. Building on the success of its Revolution range among competitive and professional players since 2016, the brand is reaching a new technological milestone today by unveiling its most advanced accessory yet for PlayStation 5 consoles and PC.

The Revolution 5 Unlimited is the culmination of years of research and continuous feedback from the esports community and the most demanding competitive players. This new high-end asymmetric controller, officially licensed for PlayStation 5 consoles, includes major hardware innovations.

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.

It seems as though Naughty Dog is looking to revive the Uncharted franchise after a decade of dormancy, according to a new rumor shared by MP1st. The report, which cites insider sources, claims that Naughty Dog is working on a new entry into the Uncharted franchise, explicitly not a remake, although not much else is known about the project's contents at the moment. It is alleged that the new Uncharted game will be Naughty Dog's next big release after Intergalactic: Heretic Prophet, whose development was reportedly resulting in crunch at the studio recently. Given Sony's recent pivot to exclusives, it also seems likely that whatever the next Uncharted game turns out to be, it won't be coming to PC anytime soon.

Of the few details shared, it was alleged that the new Uncharted game will feature Nathan Drake in some capacity, whether than be as a cameo—which is supposedly how Ubisoft will bring Ezio into Assassin's Creeed Hexe—or as a side-character of some sort is unclear. Another supposed confirmation is that Uncharted veteran, Shaun Escayag, who previously served as Creative Director on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Director on The Last of Us: Part I, will be returning to direct the upcoming Uncharted game. Given the aforementioned release schedule, it seems as though the next Uncharted game is still in the early stages of development, and with the video game industry in flux—see: Sony's recent cancellation of Kojima Productions's Physint—things may still change drastically before we hear anything from Sony or Naughty Dog directly.

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.

There's been a lot of chatter recently about Hideo Kojima's PHYSINT and the financial figures tied to its deal with Xbox. Chris Dring of The Game Business said on his podcast that Xbox's budget for Hideo Kojima's PHYSINT sits around $400 million. That number now appears to be disputed. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier says someone at Xbox with firsthand knowledge of the deal told him it was signed for "significantly less." Windows Central's Jez Corden says sources with direct knowledge of the contracts told him Xbox and Kojima Productions are working with a "fraction" of that figure. Dring has since said he has also been told Xbox is paying quite a bit less. Corden adds that $400 million is potentially what Sony and PlayStation were on the hook for before they canceled the deal.

Kojima said Sony dropped PHYSINT during a Zoom call and gave no reason, and Xbox then announced on September 9 that it would publish the game. Bloomberg's earlier report, citing PlayStation insiders, said the game was behind schedule and heading over budget, which Kojima Productions has since denied. Corden also says the Xbox deal includes movie and TV licenses for PHYSINT, plus enhanced terms for OD. There is no official figure from either company, and the game has no release date yet, although Xbox and Kojima Productions did reveal its cast and first poster at Tokyo Game Show. For now, readers should treat the $400 million figure as unlikely, and it may well belong to the earlier Sony deal.

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.

Sony has filed a patent for a PlayStation controller that can read payment details from a nearby credit card or phone, letting players pay for games without typing in card information. The filing, titled "Video Game Controller-Driven Information Transfer," was submitted in March 2025 and published on September 17, 2026. The controller acts as a go-between for a payment method and the console. When the system asks for payment, the player brings a phone, credit card, or gift card close to the controller, which picks it up via NFC, Bluetooth, or direct contact, then confirms the read with a light, sound, or vibration before passing the details along. One diagram shows a gift card being swiped to add funds to an account, skipping the usual back-and-forth of typing in codes.

Potentially, the same link could also transfer player IDs, let guests join multiplayer sessions, or send screenshots and clips to a phone. Another scenario describes trying a demo at a store or expo, then tapping a phone to the controller to add the full game to your library for later. This is just a patent, though, and Sony files plenty of these that never turn into actual products. The controller in the diagrams looks like a regular DualSense, with no mention of a new device specifically built for this purpose. Sony has filed several unusual controller patents in the past, including AI that fills in controller inputs and a fully touchscreen design, so this is another example of exploring ambitious ideas, even though they may never ship. There's no confirmation that this is headed for the PS5 or PS6.

Rumors recently appeared about Sony potentially delaying its digital-only future due to pressure from Microsoft's Xbox Helix, although they were promptly shot down by industry insiders and frequent leakers who said that Sony was dead-set on killing its physical media production—despite data suggesting a large chunk of the gaming audience still relies on physical media. Following this, however, Kenzo Saruhashi, CEO of long-time JPG developer who depends on physical media, suggested in an interview with Kotaku that there may still be hope for physical media at Sony.

Speaking for myself, I know that a big part of our business model, particularly with NISA, is producing our physical limited editions and that's an important part of our business and we, for our part, intend to continue making those physical editions and delivering the exceptional quality that our customers are expecting of us... In our discussions with Sony so far, I think that they're hearing a lot of the feedback from customers and so while that may be one destination that we arrive at, it's possible that the discussion may change in the future, so we'll have to see what happens, what comes of it

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.

Bungie has been in the news a lot lately, first for pulling development efforts for Destiny 2 and then because of the impacts the recent PlayStation layoffs have had on the game studio's capabilities and structure. Most recently, however, it seems as though Bungie is returning to the fan-favorite Destiny 2 in order to claw back some consumer trust after Marathon's middling reception. As it turns out, according to recent comments by Jason Schreier on YouTube, there was a game in the works at Bungie in 2024 that could have already served as "the future of Destiny."

According to the game journalist, the topic of Destiny 3 was repeatedly brought up in team meetings at Bungie, which were often rebutted with complaints about the potential cost of developing Destiny 3. As an alternative, Bungie was working on a game internally referred to as "codename Payback," run by Destiny veterans, Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy, until it was cancelled in 2024. Before the game's cancellation, Payback was seen internally as the future of Destiny, even though it took a different approach to the Destiny formula.

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.

NVIDIA has filed a patent for an AI tool that could help developers diagnose and optimize GPU performance issues through a plain-language chat interface. The application, published September 17 and first spotted by Respawn First, describes a system connecting an LLM-based chat agent directly to GPU profiling tools, letting a developer ask about a performance problem and get back custom-generated code that digs through diagnostic data to find the answer. The patent describes separate agents for general GPU questions versus report-specific ones, with a router sorting each query. It's framed as a general GPU optimization tool rather than something built only for games, though the same approach would apply to frametime issues and stutter in PC titles.

In theory, a developer could ask something like why a specific scene is dropping frames, and the chat agent would write and run a script to pull relevant telemetry from a profiler, then use that data to flag bottlenecks and suggest fixes. This could, in theory, help with game optimization. As always, a patent filing is not a product, and companies file plenty that never go anywhere. Still, it's a decent hint at what NVIDIA is planning for the future. The company already ships Project G-Assist, its AI assistant for tuning GeForce RTX systems, and this reads like a developer-facing counterpart of that. Sony has been circling similar territory too, recently patenting a cloud AI system meant to diagnose and automatically write firmware fixes for PlayStation hardware. Both companies seem to be betting on AI to cut down the guesswork in finding what's broken.

Thirty-five years ago, Alien Breed taught a generation of Commodore Amiga owners that the scariest sound in gaming is a door closing behind you. Commodore is bringing that feeling back in partnership with original developer Team17, and retro preservation platform Antstream Arcade, releasing the Alien Breed 35th Anniversary Collection on PC via Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store, along with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. A Nintendo Switch version will follow later this year.

Every game from the series' first era is here, six in all, along with the platform variations that separated OCS (Original Chip Set) machines from AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture) ones, original demos, and two decades of archival material that has spent most of that time in boxes and on hard drives.

Sony has a new patent that describes an AI model designed to help gamers with mobility issues. Spotted by Insider Gaming, the patent was published on September 17, 2026. The idea is that the system tracks how a player actually operates the controls, then generates the output needed to complete the action they were going for. The AI model looks at the timing and duration of inputs, movement patterns, and even the game context. It is pre-trained on control actuation and accessibility data, and the patent says the amount of compensation can depend on the user, the controller, and the game being played.

The abstract gives an example of an injury to the left hand causing less than 50% actuation on the left controls. It also seems like the system could run locally or in the cloud. In multiplayer games, the AI can be switched off automatically or by the player, and other players can apparently see an indicator when it is active. The patent also doesn't seem to tie the system to a PlayStation controller, and describes it as controller-agnostic. Sony already sells the PS5 Access Controller for players with limited mobility, and it also patented a buttonless controller earlier this year. As always, a patent is not a finished product, so this concept might never see the light of day.

Prominent AMD leaker Kepler_L2 says the chips for both the PlayStation 6 and Microsoft's Xbox Project Helix have taped out. Posting on the NeoGAF forums, he also put the PS6 at 40 TFLOPS and the Xbox Helix at 56 TFLOPS, which works out to roughly 40% more for Microsoft's machine on paper. Kepler was replying to a thread claiming the PS6 would hit 80 TFLOPS, which he dismissed before giving the new figures. Earlier estimates had put the PS6 at 34 to 40 TFLOPS, so 40 sits at the top of that range.

TFLOPS is only peak throughput, though. Kepler himself argued in the thread that TFLOPS is just a measure of FMA throughput and shouldn't be "normalized" across architectures, so these numbers probably can't be compared directly to PS5 or Xbox Series X ratings. Memory bandwidth, ray tracing hardware, and clocks all matter too, so 40% more TFLOPS likely won't translate into 40% more frames. Of course, this is just a leak, and Sony, Microsoft, and AMD have not confirmed any of this.

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.

Sony has filed a patent for an AI system that would let its devices, including PlayStation consoles, diagnose and fix software problems on their own. As reported by TweakTown, citing patent aggregator Patentlyze, the filing describes a cloud server that monitors connected hardware, uses a large language model to write a diagnostic program tailored to whatever issue it detects, and then either pushes a fix automatically or logs the issue for an engineer to review later. The patent covers Sony's broader electronics lineup, not just PlayStation, and also names TVs, cameras, and headphones as possible targets.

If something like this ever ships, it could potentially mean fewer support calls and error screens for PlayStation owners down the line. The bigger question is safety, since handing an AI model the ability to write and push its own firmware to millions of consoles sounds risky if the generated code isn't verified. AI models also have a big hallucination problem, which is a huge risk when firmware-level tweaks are being offloaded to AI. It's worth noting that the filing has already received a rejection from the USPTO examiner, so there's no guarantee it clears the patent office in its current form, let alone becomes a real product.

Bungie's new management has apparently suddenly seen the massive fallout that has come from its effective cancellation of Destiny 2, with a new video titled "The Next Chapter for Bungie" announcing several changes coming to the studio in the near future and seemingly suggesting that Destiny might not be over, after all.

Bungie's studio head, Poria Torkan, and Josh Deane, Marathon's new general manager and head of product at Bungie, effectively opened the video by admitting that Bungie "lost sight of" its heritage and of the communities that have formed around its games—Destiny being a perfect example of such a game. Torkan goes on to say that "we lost trust, we lost incredible colleagues, and our ambitions as a studio stalled."