The Verge’s gaming section brings the latest video game news, reviews of the most exciting releases, and interviews with the industry’s biggest names. We cover everything from PlayStation and Xbox blockbusters, to quirky Nintendo games, to the cool indie gems on PC and Android that you might otherwise miss.
New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma continues to make her mark.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is bringing more technical expertise into the Xbox platform team.
With the files, people can more easily make accessories for the hardware. “Feel free to use these to make your own Puck holders, Controller sweaters, or whatever else you want to create!” Valve says on the GitLab page with the files.
Can’t wait to see what folks come up with. (And if you’re doing something cool, let me know!)
The Arctis Nova Omni succeeds its best-in-class Arctis Nova Wireless from 2022. It’s more of the same (good!), but with wireless hi-res audio support (24-bit/96kHz) like the $599 Elite from last year, plus Xbox support built into every model. I’m testing it now against the Turtle Beach Stealth Pro II, which also offers wireless hi-res audio and swappable batteries for $50 less. Stay tuned.
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According to Valve:
Steam Controller ran out faster than we anticipated, and we hate that not everyone who wanted one was able to get it. We’re working on getting more in stock and will have an update on expected timeline soon.
The Controller went on sale on Monday, but before long, it was going in and out of stock. For the moment, it seems like it’s totally sold out.
Brockman said that focusing on the game was his idea, in a project worked on by several people, later explaining that DeepMind was working on something similar with a different game but “had nothing” yet, contributing to their decision not to open-source the technology.
The most notable part of the project, however, is how its development led to understanding that increasing the scale of their compute could rapidly advance the AI capabilities. “…the first Dota bot Jakub Pachocki trained was on 16 CPU cores … every week they had 2x the CPU cores, and the AI got 2x better. There was no limit. We kept increasing the scale, thinking this would peter out, but it never did,” said Brockman.
After losing its contempt appeal in its ongoing dispute with Epic, Apple has asked for a stay in a mandate that would let the US Northern District Court of California court determine the fees Apple can charge for purchases made outside the App Store, 9to5Mac reports. Apple also plans to petition the Supreme Court to look at the case.
Call of Duty games have released on the PS4 since 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts, but the upcoming entry in the series won’t launch on Sony’s last-gen console, according to the Call of Duty X account. A recent viral X post claimed that the game, rumored to be subtitled Modern Warfare 4, was being tested on the PS4. Last year’s game, Black Ops 7, did launch on last-gen consoles.
We’ve asked Valve if it can share more details about the overall stock situation — as I write this, Valve’s website says the controller is out of stock.
In an interview in April, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais told The Verge that, “We have significant quantity built up and production capacity,” but noted that “Whether what we consider ‘significant’ lines up with the world at large and how many people might want this controller, I guess we’ll find out. But, we think we’re ready.”
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Valve’s $99 Steam Controller is up for purchase exclusively at Steam. We’ve spent a bunch of time with it recently, so check out our review if you’re still on the fence. Also, read our deep dive on how the new model compares to competitors, and catch up on the replies to the AMA we held last week for Verge subscribers.
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Good: Running PC copies of two specific games (Wukong, Crimson Desert) performance can meet or barely beat native PS5! Control at 1080p50-60 with checkerboard RT reflections instead of 1440p30!
Bad: Only Phat consoles with ancient firmware qualify; only 1080p; glitches and stutters; memory management issues seemingly caused severe issues in some games. Read more.
Former Chewy and current GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen says he plans to somehow create a competitor to Amazon “...worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
GameStop said it has a commitment letter from TD Bank for $20 billion in debt financing, but where the rest will come from is unclear, with WSJ sources citing Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds as a possibility.
Lego has released plenty of Nintendo renditions, but Jay’s Brick Blog highlights that on June 1st, a buildable $39.99 Sega Genesis / Mega Drive set will join the party, complete with controllers and a Sonic 2 game cartridge. It can swap between the nameplates depending on which version you prefer.
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But it won’t have apps from other developers at launch. Right now, only Epic’s own Fortnite and Rocket League Sideswipe are available due to the Core Technology Commission.
Epic is also pushing for Apple to reduce the number of scare screens when installing the store. Currently, there are 9.
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[Epic Games Newsroom]
Endless Mode wasn’t even a year old. In a post, former editor-in-chief Garrett Martin thanked those involved, and there’s been a big outpouring of support for Martin and Paste Games on Bluesky.
In a statement to Kotaku, an A.V. Club spokesperson said that the publication eliminated three roles and that “We will continue to have some games coverage, but we cannot sustain a full-time staff covering it with our smaller team.”
Update: Added statement.
Even though Valve says the Steam Controller is built for “anything running Steam,” out of curiosity, I paired my Steam Controller review unit to my iPhone 16 Pro this afternoon. Most native iOS games I tried didn’t recognize the controller. When they did, there were problems, like not being able to move my Fortnite character at all.
I’ve pinged Valve and Apple to see if this situation might change. As expected, the controller worked with games streamed over the Steam Link app, though!
Update: Noted that the controller is designed for devices running Steam.
Among the evidence released publicly, there’s this email exchange (Exhibit No. 844) between Valve cofounder Gabe Newell and Elon Musk about, of all things, trying to get a SpaceX tour and OpenAI introduction for Hideo Kojima.
Musk also wrote that he’d lost confidence in OpenAI competing with “Google/Deepmind” and decided to attempt that through Tesla instead, while pumping up Neuralink’s progress. Newell has since launched his own BCI company, Starfish.
During Roblox’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday, CEO David Baszucki commented on the photorealistic upsampling tech he’d shared a demo of earlier this week:
“...I do want to highlight, we’re right on the edge, really, in the whole AI space of running real-time photoreal video models in 2K at 60 hertz. ...This will not be free. This will use cloud compute. We will have some kind of way of subscribing or paying for this.”
‘Realism is not interesting to pursue,’ and other lessons from the PlayStation studio.
Nintendo added a new epilogue to the storybook. It doesn’t tie the game to the movie or add much to the story. It’s mostly just left players confused. If you don’t feel like firing up the game to unlock the new bit, you can watch it below.
There’s an obvious joke here but I’ve used it about this game already. Twice. Anyway, the game looks great.
I know what you’re thinking, and yeah we probably don’t need another Resident Evil reboot. But the next film comes from Weapons director Zach Cregger, and its new trailer makes it look 1) extremely creepy and 2) like it’s pulling inspiration from the more recent entries in the survival horror franchise. I’m in.
The group is accused of using stolen cookies to hijack accounts, targeting profiles with high amounts of in-game currency and items, according to a press release spotted by Bleeping Computer. The hackers allegedly earned around $225,000 after selling the accounts on a Russian website.
[BleepingComputer]
Possessor(s) was a bit of a slow burn for me when I reviewed it last year, but I’m glad I stuck with it.
In addition to Switch 2, it’s also available on PC and PS5, and the game has received a permanent price drop on all platforms to $9.99.