Breggz, the premium audio brand founded by Dutch artist and songwriter Xander de Buisonjé, today announces the launch of Zohn 2, the brand's next-generation wireless earphones certified for IMAX Enhanced. Combining a five-driver acoustic architecture with Breggz Master Tuning and Sound Profiles, Zohn 2 is designed to bring listeners closer to the detail, depth and emotion of music and film as their creators intended.

Breggz founder, Xander de Buisonjé"I just want the world to hear what I hear. On stage and in the studio, I hear every layer of the music through my wired in-ear monitors. With Zohn 2, we want to bring that level of detail to everyday listening, whether you're listening to music or watching a film."

Ubisoft has made an offer to buy Arkane Lyon, the French studio behind Dishonored, Deathloop and the upcoming Marvel's Blade, according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier. At least two other gaming companies have put in offers of their own, though their names haven't come out yet. Apparently, Xbox is also weighing a sale to the studio's own management, much like how Double Fine and Compulsion Games went independent earlier this year. No deal has been agreed so far, and Xbox reportedly told Bloomberg that it is still exploring options ahead of a December deadline.

That deadline exists because of French labor law. Arkane Lyon's future was put under review in July as part of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's "reset," and France's Florange Law required Microsoft to look for a buyer before it could close the studio. The consultation was first set to end on November 13, but Microsoft extended it by a month to December 13. Around 217 jobs are on the line. Insider Gaming, which says it confirmed the bid independently, adds that Ubisoft had been interested "for some time," even before Arkane's situation became public over the summer.

Santa Monica Studio has delayed God of War Laufey by roughly three months, moving the PS5 exclusive from February 16 to May 20, 2027. The studio announced the change on X earlier today, and the only explanation it gave is that it needs extra time for finishing touches. It's a bit of a surprise, since the game was only around three months out and pre-orders opened back in late September. The Standard Edition sells for $69.99, the Digital Deluxe Edition for $79.99, and Sony also put up a £129.99 Collector Box for sale with the old February 16 date attached. Here's the studio's full statement:

Santa Monica StudioSince the reveal of God of War Laufey in June, we've been deeply grateful to see so much excitement for Faye's journey through the Everywhen. We don't take for granted the trust placed in our studio to make an extraordinary experience worthy of the passion and dedication of our fans. With this in mind, we've made the decision to delay God of War Laufey's release to May 20th, 2027. We will make the most of each moment until then by putting in the finishing touches and pushing the game to its fullest potential. On behalf of everyone on the team, we appreciate your patience and we'll be back to share more updates soon!

HARMAN Professional Solutions, the global leader in audio, video, control and lighting systems, today announced the JBL Professional 3 Series MkIII powered studio monitor family. Representing the most extensive redesign of the 3 Series platform to date, the new lineup includes the JBL 305P MkIII, 306P MkIII and 308P MkIII powered studio monitors, along with the JBL 310S MkIII powered subwoofer.

Building on the legacy of the JBL Professional 3 Series, the MkIII family introduces redesigned acoustic systems, new Class D amplification, simplified room optimization and integrated mounting options to support workflows ranging from compact stereo production setups to 2.1, surround and immersive monitoring.

The Elder Scrolls VI finally has its full name. Bethesda Game Studios revealed it as The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel at the end of a video celebrating the studio's 40th anniversary, with Todd Howard walking through Bethesda's history first. The short teaser that followed has no gameplay, just a stretch of desert, an Elder Scroll rising out of the sand, and the new logo. It also carries a line of lore text credited to Yazar, Moth Priest to High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell, dated 4E 206. Skyrim takes place in 4E 201, so it looks like Sentinel is set roughly five years later, in the Redguard homeland of Hammerfell. Sentinel itself is one of Hammerfell's major cities, sitting on the Iliac Bay. Both the name and the setting match what The Verge's Tom Warren reported last week.

It seems the name is all fans are getting for now. In a follow-up post on X, Bethesda said development is still ongoing and that it will be "some time" before the studio has anything else to show, adding that it's happy to have the name and location out in the open at last. There's still no word on a release date, launch window, or platforms. The game was first teased at E3 2018, and Bethesda said in July that it remains the studio's primary development focus, although reports suggested the Xbox layoffs could cause delays. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has also claimed on Bluesky that the game was at least two years out, so anyone hoping for a 2027 launch should probably temper their expectations.

The Elder Scrolls VI might finally get its full name soon. According to The Verge's Tom Warren, Bethesda is preparing to announce the game as The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel, and the reveal could come as soon as November. Warren expects it to be a name reveal only, so a trailer, gameplay, or release date probably shouldn't be expected just yet. The report also says the game is set in Hammerfell, the Redguard homeland seen before in Daggerfall, Redguard, and The Elder Scrolls Online, and that its story will dig into the history of the Elder Scrolls themselves. Bethesda has reportedly been showing gameplay internally in recent months, though it hasn't commented on the report.

The name itself won't surprise many fans. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma watched a live playthrough at Bethesda's offices back in August, and her post afterward used eight asterisks where the subtitle would go. Here's what she posted.

Asha Sharma, Xbox CEOLive playthrough of The Elder Scrolls VI: ******** this morning. The scale and grandeur are incredible. The story is even greater.

Not too long ago, the developers behind OpenMouse, the open-source, community-driven alternative mouse configuration suite, revealed that they were working on supporting keyboard customization alongside the myriad gaming mouse models the suite now supports. As per a recent announcement on the project's Discord server, the latest OpenMouse beta release has added support for a number of gaming keyboards from Logitech, Razer, SteelSeries, and Wooting. Initial support also appears to be in development for Wuque Studio and the Kochi Hummingbird 68.

So far, actual feature support also appears to be limited, and the implementation is very much still in beta, with the app connecting correctly to a Wooting 80HE in a brief test but failing to load the proper keymap and failing to adjust the settings correctly. However, the planned feature set appears to be competitive with most proprietary keyboard customization tools, with HE features like adjustable actuation, rapid trigger, toggle key, mod tap, SOCD, and DKS, all present in addition to robust RGB customization and support for layers and profiles. What is notably absent is the ability to remap keys, however.

Warhorse Studios, the Czech developer behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, has confirmed that it was hit by a cyberattack. In an official statement on its website, the studio says the attack involved unauthorized access to company systems and company data. Warhorse is working with cybersecurity experts to secure its systems and assess the full impact, and says it is coordinating with the relevant authorities, though it didn't name them. A much shorter message also went up on the studio's X account on October 27, telling players it was sorry to share the news and thanking them for standing with the studio.

CEO Martin Frývaldský called it "a serious incident for Warhorse Studios and everyone affected," adding that the priority is to secure systems, establish the full extent of the breach, and protect employees, partners, and the community. Other details are thin, however. Warhorse hasn't said when the attack happened, who is behind it, what kind of data was accessed, or whether anything was actually taken, and it isn't giving interviews or further comments while the investigation is ongoing.

Brandon Stirrup, a senior business strategy manager at Xbox, has stirred up quite a debate after posting on X that the games industry is dragging its feet on AI. Over the weekend, Stirrup shared a rough football game he says he "vibe coded" in about three hours of active work, despite never having made a game before, with an AI agent testing and iterating on it. He went on to say that studios not planning around AI are "planning for a fake future." He also said he'd happily take the hit if it meant hundreds of people at Xbox could stop pretending they don't use AI. Here's part of his X rant:

Look if I'm fired tomorrow it will be because I told you the truth that nobody wants you to know. You can make a game with a simple prompt and yes you can make custom, tailored games. Everything you want in a game is right there for the taking, for better or worse. Gaming is the only industry slow-walking the transition because users have negative sentiment. Everyone else accepts reality, Gaming is the only industry where leaders are afraid to talk about AI. Users want the truth. We're using AI.

Arc Raiders's Embark Studios has been busy lately, first dropping the Frozen Trail update and kicking off a free weekend, updating its anti-cheat systems, and then starting testing for the PvE game mode that is slated to run from October 13 to 20. Apparently, all of these changes have had an impact on player count, as Arc Raiders just recorded its highest daily active user count in six months, according to data from Alinea Analytics.

The analytics firm estimates that on the launch date of the Frozen Trail update, which was the same day as the start of the free weekend, Arc Raiders saw a sizeable bump in daily active users, from around 599,000 to 944,000, with that climbing to as high as 1.6 million DAUs by October 12, when the free weekend ended. Almost unexpectedly, however, the extraction shooter's highest daily active user count was on October 14, the day after the start of the test period for the new PvE game mode, suggesting that this may have been a strong driver for gamers who have previously picked up the game only to drop it again later.

Ever since the announcement that it would be laying off 1,000 workers, Epic Games has been working overtime to pull users away from its largest competitor, Steam. Following the announcement that Epic Games had, seemingly out of the blue, figured out how to get Easy Anti-Cheat working on Linux to the same standard as its kernel-level implementation on Windows, Epic Games announced a new version of the Epic Games Launcher, with some interesting performance claims.

By Epic's own admission, and in accordance with its latest proclamation of being an AI-first company with "no handwritten code," the new Epic Games Launcher is vibe coded, but Epic Games claims that the new Epic Games Launcher launches up to 46% faster than Steam—5.47 seconds vs. 10.07 seconds—and restores from the system tray 14% faster than Steam—0.36 seconds vs. 0.42 seconds. The test results are an "average of 5 tests on each of 13 machines, excluding the 3 lowest-end machines tested," and testing was conducted by Keywords Studio, an independent game studio contracted by Epic. The new Epic Games Launcher is available as a preview, and is admittedly still in testing, so there may be bugs.

Despite launching in early access in 2013, RimWorld's developer, Ludeon Studios has just started a switch away from the Unity game engine to its own in-house Waylith engine with update 1.7. In a new blog post, the developer notes that the switch away from Unity could result in performance improvements of "2-4×," while claiming an identical gameplay experience.

In the studio's in-house testing, game load time, startup time, world and map generation, and general tick-per-second performance all saw significant performance improvements. A stress test with a "late game colony" saw a performance improvement of 2.2×, although the studio didn't exactly share test parameters beyond that. Load times of a mod pack with 1,500 mods also improved from 14 minutes to 6 minutes. The studio notes that individual performance improvements on the new engine will depend on PC specs, but those are promising improvements if scaling holds up.

Almost since Embark Studios launched Arc Raiders, there has been a group of gamers calling for a greater emphasis on co-op PvE gameplay, with many asking the studio for separate PvE modes after the implementation of a new matchmaking system that prioritized player aggressiveness and matched players who were more likely to play co-op and avoid killing their fellow players. Ahead of a new PvE mode test, Arc Raiders executive producer, Aleksander Grøndal, has spoken in an interview with GamesRadar+ about the potential future of PvE in Arc Raiders.

In the interview following Arc Raiders's latest Frozen Trail update, Grøndal says comments that the introduction of a co-op-only game mode is potentially overdue, even if it is just a test for now, because the studio deliberated about whether or not it was going to "open this door" for a long time. When asked about a potential split between the PvE and PvP sides to Arc Raiders, the producer commented that "it's very possible." He continues, saying "I think the community is already split along those lines. If the game eventually will represent that? Quite possibly."

Xbox has hired a social media product veteran to run Mojang. In a memo to staff on October 8, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said Maria Angelidou-Smith, most recently chief product officer at Reddit, will join as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft. She starts on October 19 and reports directly to Sharma. Angelidou-Smith replaces Kayleen Walters, who moves over to lead XP, the new Xbox division for film, TV, merchandise, and live experiences. Walters had run Mojang since February 2025, and Xbox says Minecraft went from 350 million copies sold to more than 425 million in that time.

Angelidou-Smith's background is in community products, with no game studio role mentioned. According to the memo, she spent nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups along with Events, Creators, Search, Profile, and Monetization. She later led product and technology at HR software company Personio and joined Reddit in November 2025. Sharma wrote that Mojang already has an exceptional game development team, so Xbox went looking for someone who has "built products for communities at enormous scale" and understands how creators, technology, and monetization come together. Her first order of business, apparently, is to learn from the teams and the community.

Embark Studios has put in a decent amount of work maintaining and developing Arc Raiders in recent months, with the company recently announcing an upcoming co-op mode slated to launch into testing on October 13 while it continues to iterate on its anti-cheat processes and detection methods. In the meantime, however, Arc Raiders Frozen Trail, referred to as the game's "biggest update since launch," alongside a free weekend that will run until October 12.

The combination of the new update, which introduces a slew of new content to the game and makes a host of tweaks and changes to gameplay, and the free weekend has seemingly pushed Arc Raiders to a six-month player count high on Steam. Per data from SteamDB, Arc Raiders tipped the scales at 131,388 peak concurrent players on Steam within the first 24 hours of the update and free weekend going live. Some of the major updates in Frozen Trail include a new map, new weather conditions, new enemies and weapons, a revamped skill tree, a grappling hook and other new navigation and traversal tools, and a new customizable base called The Outpost, replete with the Research Bench and hundreds of furniture designs for gamers to craft.

Gravity Well Studio, a young indie game studio founded and headed up by several Apex Legends and Titanfall veterans, has just announced that it has had to lay off a majority of its staff, totaling over 40 workers, according to a recent LinkedIn post by the game studio. The studio executives explain in the post that the layoffs were necessary because Gravity Well lost its funding and has not managed to secure a new partner.

The studio notes that Gravity Well will continue to "fight for survival," but adds that the future is uncertain. Gravity Well calls itself an "independent AAA game development studio," and the layoffs come before the studio has even managed to launch its first game, which has been in development for six years but has yet to be revealed publicly—aside from two concept images shared on the studio's site.

The use of AI-generated art to accelerate video game development is becoming more and more common, with massive game studios like EA and Capcom openly acknowledging that they will be using AI to streamline their game development workflows, despite public outcry about quality and concern for the human cost in an industry already rife with layoffs.

Addressing a question in a recent interview with Nikkei regarding how game production will change in the face of AI, SEGA's senior executive officer and deputy chief business officer, Tsuyoshi Saito, said that the company is already using AI to improve efficiencies at the company, specifically when it comes to business idea generation and publishing processes, but that it will not be using AI for creative aspects of game development.

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.

The situation at Xbox and Halo Studios has been in the news a lot recently, starting with an announcement by the former that it would be gutting Halo Studios and putting Activision in charge of the next Halo game, with a "small team" at Halo Studios assisting Activision with development of the next Halo. It was later revealed that the small team left at Halo Studios was just 20 employees, and that Activision would be rebooting the Halo franchise with little to no semblance of the franchise's original history slated to be in the next game.

Now, thanks to a report by The Verge, it seems as though we have the justification for Activision starting from scratch on the new Halo game. According to the report, the next Halo being developed under Halo Studios was years away from shipping. Reports from ubiquitous leakers in the Halo scene report that several internal projects have been cancelled at the studio, including Halo 2 and three remakes and Halo 7. Despite the fact that Halo 7 appears to have been in-development already, Activision has decided to start from scratch, assembling a specialized team that will be in-charge of the next Halo game. However, by it also appears as though the earliest we can expect a new Halo game is 2030.

Meta has detailed Horizon Create and Horizon Studio, two generative AI tools that can let people build playable 2D and 3D games from text prompts. Horizon Create is a mobile app aimed at quick, on-the-go creation, while Horizon Studio is a web-based tool with more granular controls for editing details like difficulty, art direction, and progression systems. Both run on the Meta Horizon Engine and let creators publish across Meta's apps, including Facebook and Instagram. Describing what the tools can do, Horizon VP Saxs Persson said:

"You have an idea, you open the app, describe the game you want to build in your own words, and the system starts building it with you. It's not a sketch, it's not a prototype, you build playable 2D and 3D games with real depth. From there, everything is one prompt away; reimagine the environment, change the characters, make a new quest or a new level, tweak the difficulty so new players can stay with it."

Due to popular demand, Embark is expanding its support for PvE, co-op-only mode, which it started with friendly lobbies that which placed non-aggressive players together in the same servers after they had proved their dedication to the PvE grind. As per a recent update by Embark Studios, Arc Raiders will get a dedicated co-op/PvE mode for testing in October. This is according to a new blog post by Embark Studios, who says that the new PvE beta test will last a week, running from October 13-20.

Unlike the previous system, where players were matched based on their aggression, the new PvE mode will allow players to manually toggle either PvE-only or classic PvPvE gameplay, and PvE mode will completely disable friendly fire, meaning no accidentally downing a teammate with bad aim. PvE will be handled separately from PvPvE when it comes to matchmaking rankings, and it will feature the same Solos, Duos, and Trios gameplay, with all team structures playing alongside one-another in the same sessions. Following that test, Embark will evaluate whether a pure PvE mode has a place in Arc Raiders, and it specifically says that "this test is not a promise that there will be a PvE mode in the future."

Rumors and speculation about the future of the Halo franchise abound since Xbox announced its latest restructuring that resulted in Halo being under the purview of Activision. The latest in the rumors surrounding the Halo franchise is that the game series will be rebooted under Activision. This is according to insider sources cited by Halo leaker, TechnicalHalo on X.

In a series of posts on X, the leaker explained that Activision would be rebooting the Halo series, and that "the lore is not going to be continued." However, the leaker rebuffed the suggestion that Halo under Activision would be a multiplayer-only game, stating that it would have a campaign and multiplayer. This is supported by a recent statement from Activision president, Rob Kostich, who told The Game File that Activision wants to make a game that honors "what made players love it in the first place.

When Xbox confirmed the latest round of layoffs to come from its year-long Xbox Reset, it said that "a small team" would remain at Halo Studios in order to support Activision in the development of future Halo games. It seems as though "small" might have been the most apt description possible, as notable Halo influencer and occasional leaker, LaSinity, claims that, per an insider source, less than 20 employees remain at Halo Studios after the layoffs.

In addition to Halo Studios, several studios under Xbox have been subsumed or merged into other studios, with Age of Empires developer, World's Edge, being one notable example, having been placed under the purview of Activision, alongside the Halo franchise. One ResetEra user who goes by Tempus Chaoti, posted that "just under half the studio was let go," referring to World's Edge. The now-former Studio Creative Director at World's Edge, Adam Isgreen, also shared a message on LinkedIn confirming layoffs at the studio, and Andrew Martz, a Senior Software Engineer at World's Edge, also corroborated the layoffs and revealed that the layoffs and restructuring had resulted in the studio's next project being cancelled.

Xbox is reportedly gearing up for a second major round of layoffs this week, and this time Blizzard and Halo Studios appear to be in the crosshairs. According to The Information, which cited a source briefed on the plans, Xbox is set to cut hundreds of jobs and consolidate several of its game studios. The report doesn't name specific studios or a final headcount, but insiders believe the consolidation could touch Xbox's publishing arms, including Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, Activision, and Blizzard.

Blizzard's situation looks especially notable here. The studio was reportedly spared during Xbox's first wave of cuts in July, when CEO Asha Sharma eliminated 1,600 roles as part of a planned 3,200 reductions through fiscal 2027. That first round instead hit studios like ZeniMax Online and id Software. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has since said Blizzard layoffs are coming and imminent, despite the studio reportedly being Xbox's most profitable branch right now, and just weeks after a strong BlizzCon that revealed Diablo V and World of Warcraft Forever.

During the recent Xbox showcase at the Tokyo Game Show, Netmarble Neo showed off new gameplay for Bloomwalker, an upcoming cozy crafting game that it has been working on for PC and consoles. No release date has yet been attached to the project, but the official Steam page and the Xbox showcase revealed a number of gameplay details for cozy gamers to look forward to. One of the most notable aspects of the game is its anime art style, which is reminiscent of that of Studio Ghibli, that ties in well with its positive take on the survival crafting genre, which sees players roam around the world of Luminoa in a walking house—like a cheerful solar-punk take on the Baba Yaga's chicken-legged house of European folklore—cleaning the land and restoring life.

Luminoa was once a land shared by people and the spirits of nature. But its sanctuaries have been ravaged by pollution, and the guardians who once protected them have succumbed to madness, becoming incarnations of that pollution. Even the little nature spirits known as higgledies are under threat. You arrive as a traveler with a rare purpose: to restore this fading world alongside your moving house.