Games news

• Xbox Nano Controller Announced, And It’s So Small

  14-10-2026 18:04 via gamespot.com
  
  Microsoft has announced a new controlled called the Xbox Nano Controller, and it's smaller than the existing Xbox controller, and it costs less.Microsoft says the controller is designed to fit nearly every pocket and budget. "Its compact design offers a great option for younger players, smaller hands, or anyone seeking something portable for play on the go," the company said.The Nano is the smallest controller Xbox has ever released.The Xbox Nano controller is a bit over five inches in length an
  
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• Epic Is Overhauling Its Anti-Cheat So That Fortnite Can Finally Come To A New Platform

  14-10-2026 21:43 via gamespot.com
  
  Thanks to devices such as the Steam Deck and Steam Machine, as well as the ongoing issues with Windows, gaming on Linux looks a lot more attractive over the last few years. Its biggest hurdle is still multiplayer games and their anti-cheat systems, but Epic Games is committed to bringing one of the biggest around to the operating system soon.Epic Games has announced that it is working on a Linux version for Fortnite. It's going to act as a test for Epic's overhaul of EAC (Easy Anti-Cheat), its s
  
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• Xbox Survey About Exclusives Includes A Nuclear Strategy, But Wait Just A Minute

  14-10-2026 21:26 via gamespot.com
  
  Microsoft is reportedly surveying a subset of Xbox users about changing its plans for exclusive games going forward--possibly in a big way--and that's no surprise given Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has alluded to changes to the exclusivity strategy in the future.
  At the same time, a survey like this is not necessarily indicative of anything beyond Microsoft conducting research. After all, there is an entire team at Xbox called Xbox Research that ... researches all manner of things, and the results of th
  
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• GTA 6 Reviews: When They Could Be Released

  14-10-2026 20:53 via gamespot.com
  
  Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 releases on November 19, but when will you be able to read reviews? According to historical precedent and a new report, reviews for the open-world crime game should be available before launch.Insider Gaming reported that reviews for GTA 6 will be posted at some point before November 19, but the exact timing is unknown for now.A scene from GTA 6.What history tells usThe last GTA game, GTA 5, was released on September 17, 2013, and reviews for the game were published
  
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• Retro Handhelds Loaded With Unlicensed Games Could Face Government Crackdown

  14-10-2026 19:12 via gamespot.com
  
  The Electronic Software Association (ESA) has a serious bone to pick with retro handhelds that are packaged with tons of unlicensed pre-installed, calling these devices "superfakes" that should face some sort of suppression by the US government.According to an October 6 filing with the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR)--which monitors marketplaces that are accused of engaging in or enabling piracy and counterfeiting--the ESA is urging the government to clamp down on what it
  
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• Jeff Kaplan Says Seperation From Overwatch Was “Clinical”: ” I Never Go Back”

  14-10-2026 18:34 via gamespot.com
  
  Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch's former director, said he's not played the game he was the public face of since April 2021, when he left developer Blizzard after nearly 20 years to go indie. He called his relationship with Blizzard's shooter one of "clinical separation."Kaplan revealed this to GameSpot in an interview that dove into his history with Blizzard and the creation of his new game, The Legend of California. When asked if he had continued to play Overwatch or kept tabs on it in the wake of
  
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• Jeff Kaplan Says Separation From Overwatch Was “Clinical”: ” I Never Go Back”

  14-10-2026 18:34 via gamespot.com
  
  Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch's former director, said he's not played the game he was the public face of since April 2021, when he left developer Blizzard after nearly 20 years to go indie. He called his relationship with Blizzard's shooter one of "clinical separation."Kaplan revealed this to GameSpot in an interview that dove into his history with Blizzard and the creation of his new game, The Legend of California. When asked if he had continued to play Overwatch or kept tabs on it in the wake of
  
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• Ex-Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan Says He Never Wanted The Spotlight, But The Game Needed A Face 

  14-10-2026 18:34 via gamespot.com
  
  Being the face of a video game is a demanding role, as the people who step into these positions involved in these roles often find themselves on the receiving end of a lot of toxicity. Former Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan knows this all too well, as he promoted the hero shooter for several years and regularly interacted with its fans--albeit at a "personal cost." After leaving Blizzard Entertainment in 2021, Kaplan has been quietly working on The Legend of California, the in-developme
  
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• Minecraft’s Verity Is A Top Trending Halloween Costume For 2026

  14-10-2026 18:29 via gamespot.com
  
  Google has released its list of the "top trending costumes" ahead of Halloween, and Minecraft's Verity has made the cut.The Frightgeist list, as it's called, is based on what's trending on Google. The list is topped by Buddy the Unicorn from director Casper Kelly's horror movie. The character Nikki from Curry Barker's viral horror hit Obsession makes the cut, too.Verity ranks No. 7. For anyone just catching up, Verity is a horror web series from ThatMob, and it takes place inside Minecraft. The
  
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• PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium Games For October 2026 Revealed

  14-10-2026 18:04 via gamespot.com
  
  PlayStation has revealed this month's batch of new arrivals for the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog. Most of these games will be available starting October 20.Don’t forget, all PS Plus members can claim three freebies this month–F1 25, Hunt: Showdown 1896, and Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2–but you only have until November 2 to do so.Kicking things off in October is Mafia: The Old Country, a prequel to the original trilogy of Mafia games. If you're looking for somethi
  
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• Ubisoft’s Latest Restructuring Plan Puts Trials Developer RedLynx On The Chopping Block

  14-10-2026 17:02 via gamespot.com
  
  Ubisoft has announced that it plans to shut down Trials developer RedLynx as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts, as well as reduce the workforce of its Skull and Bones studio, Ubisoft Singapore, by laying off 72 people. The closure of the Finland-based RedLynx is in a proposal stage, and Ubisoft says that because the studio isn't currently working on a new project, it makes more economic sense to close it down and retrench its 52 employees instead.Under Finnish law (via Kot
  
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• GTA 6 Leaks Are Still Coming, Rockstar Labels The 2022 Hack “Weirdly Invasive”

  14-10-2026 16:57 via gamespot.com
  
  Rockstar Games has reacted to the mass GTA 6 leaks, which began in 2022, with a top developer at the studio saying it "feels like somebody's wading through your dirty washing." Bloomberg published these comments from Rockstar developers on the same day that GTA 6 leaker CyberLeek posted yet another gameplay leak, saying it could be the last."It feels like somebody’s wading through your dirty washing,” Rockstar North's Aaron Garbut said. “It’s like they’re inside you
  
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• GTA 6 Could Have Been Even Bigger And Released Years Sooner, But Then These Things Happened

  14-10-2026 16:02 via gamespot.com
  
  A big new report revealed more details about Rockstar's long-awaited GTA 6, including how the game's scope was originally much bigger and that the game could have released years sooner.Bloomberg reported that when a small team from Rockstar traveled to Miami in 2015 to begin planning GTA 6, they envisioned the game spanning "big swaths of land across both North and South America." It was in development under the codename Project Americas at this time.
  The report went on to say that Rockstar woul
  
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• Hideo Kojima Reviews 2026’s Most Divisive Movie, Digger

  14-10-2026 15:08 via gamespot.com
  
  After publishing his review of Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie, Hideo Kojima-who says his body is 70% made of movies--has posted his review of one of the most divisive mainstream films of the year. Yes, we're talking about Alejandro Iñárritu's satirical black comedy Digger, which stars Tom Cruise.Kojima said Digger is a "film that all of us living in today's world should see."He added: "It is a work that remains with the audience, provoking reflection and sounding alarms."Kojima
  
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• Take-Two CEO’s Response To Second GTA 6 Delay: “Please Tell Me You’re Kidding”

  14-10-2026 14:44 via gamespot.com
  
  Rockstar's GTA 6 is finally coming out on November 19, but the game was originally set to release in 2025. When the development team informed head of publishing, Jennifer Kolbe, that a delay to May 2026 was necessary, she made a call to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick to let him know. Months later, she had to make that call again, informing Zelnick that a second delay to November 2026 was required to deliver Rockstar's full ambition for GTA 6.His response? “I think he said, ‘You’r
  
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• GTA 6’s Nightclubs Have An Absurd Amount Of Detail, Right Down To The Lighting

  14-10-2026 14:28 via gamespot.com
  
  How much detail is too much detail? In the case of Grand Theft Auto 6, developer Rockstar Games put an obscene amount of work into making the fictional city of Leonida as realistic as possible, including the nightclubs that players can frequent in the game. Those locations couldn't be pulled from thin air, and Rockstar embarked on several research trips to Miami to help inform the design of their party hubs, right down to the smallest detail.Speaking to Bloomberg, artist Aaron Garbut reveal
  
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• Rockstar Says GTA 6 Didn’t Cost $1.5 Billion To Make, But Won’t Reveal The Real Number

  14-10-2026 13:42 via gamespot.com
  
  It's no secret that video game development is more expensive than ever before, and in a hit-driven industry, Grand Theft Auto VI is rumored to be the most expensive game ever made. Various numbers have been thrown around, with one report even claiming that $1.5 billion was spent--around the budget of Dubai's iconic Burj Khalifa skyscraper.Speaking to Bloomberg, Rockstar shot down that claim, but it hasn't confirmed just how much investment it has taken to get the game over the finish line for it
  
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• Rockstar Built An Entire Studio Just To Create GTA 6 NPCs

  14-10-2026 13:07 via gamespot.com
  
  Rockstar Games reportedly established an entire studio in Los Angeles dedicated to creating NPCs for Grand Theft Auto 6 after realizing the game's ambitious world would need far more production resources than initially expected.
  Speaking to Bloomberg, Rockstar development lead Rob Nelson explained that the team had struggled to meet its targets for the number of NPCs that needed to be written and animated. That makes sense when you consider how much more interactive they're reported to be, even
  
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• Rockstar’s GTA 6 Realism Experiment Started With Beer And Sandwiches

  14-10-2026 13:02 via gamespot.com
  
  Compared to previous games in the series, Grand Theft Auto 6 is aiming to add new layers of realism to the franchise. As the criminal couple Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, players will explore a city where actions have consequences, and it's not easy to shake the long arm of the law when you cause chaos. It continues ideas that developer Rockstar Games began experimenting with in Red Dead Redemption 2, but the studio says it initially struggled to figure out how realistic it wanted GTA 6 to be w
  
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• Xbox Is Getting Into AI Gaming, Even If It Won’t Say So

  14-10-2026 12:50 via gamespot.com
  
  Vibe-coded games playable in web browsers have exploded in popularity recently, and amid a deluge of ports and remasters created with generative AI, Xbox is responding by creating Xbox Labs. The new branch of Xbox is described as an initiative designed to get more people playing games--especially on web browsers--but curiously, there's no mention of AI at all in the announcement."In recent weeks, we've seen games rapidly decompiled and rebuilt to run on hardware they were never originally d
  
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• Rockstar Says You Won’t Have To Wait Another 8 Years After GTA 6 For Its Next Game

  14-10-2026 12:43 via gamespot.com
  
  Rockstar has spent more than eight years developing Grand Theft Auto 6, but the studio hopes its next project will arrive considerably faster. Speaking to Bloomberg, Rockstar's head of development Phil Hooker explained how the company expanded its team and developed its technology for the hotly anticipated upcoming game, and how that'll make it easier to build future releases.Hooker said the studio expects to benefit from the foundations established during the lengthy production of GTA 6. "The e
  
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• Hideo Kojima Reviews The Resident Evil Movie

  13-10-2026 21:42 via gamespot.com
  
  Writer-director Hideo Kojima has seen Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie, and he has now shared his review. Kojima, a true cinephile known for his public movie reviews, said he "wasn't particularly interested" in seeing the movie at first, but he did, and he sounded pretty impressed by what he saw."Right from the opening, it hits you with music reminiscent of The Thing. From there, it’s a relentless barrage of classic horror techniques, terrifying situations, and jump scares that never let
  
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• Battlefield 6 Now Lets You Instantly Unlock All Guns At 100% Mastery For $30

  13-10-2026 21:05 via gamespot.com
  
  It's a big week for Battlefield 6, as the game just launched its big Season 5 update, arrived on Xbox Game Pass, and ushered in a new Game of the Year Edition. That's not all, however, as the military shooter added a big new microtransaction in the form of the Ultimate Shortcut Kit.Similar to how these shortcut kits worked in past Battlefield games, Battlefield 6's $30 no-so-microtransaction instantly unlocks all of the game's guns for all four classes, and at 100% Mastery--this means they are f
  
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• Despite Huge Changes For The Series, Halo Fest 2026 Is Going Forward, And News Is Coming Soon

  13-10-2026 20:30 via gamespot.com
  
  The big Halo Fest event planned for December is going ahead as planned, despite mass layoffs and other major changes at developer Halo Studios.Halo Studios director of competitive engagement, Tashi, confirmed this and said there will be news about Halo Fest this week. Additionally, Halo Studios will release materials "celebrating the community and 25 years of Halo," while fans can also look forward to "relevant game info" about in-market Halo games.
  "There's a huge amount of Halo fans who are lo
  
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• Red Dead’s Shocking Twist Ending Angered A Lot Of People, But It Was The Right Call, Rockstar Co-Founder Says

  13-10-2026 19:52 via gamespot.com
  
  Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has recalled the controversial ending to 2010's Red Dead Redemption in which the main character, John Marston, is killed.
  He said in an interview that the game's lead designer, Christian Cantamessa was on board with the idea to kill off Marston, but Houser wondered about the production realities of, "How does an open-world game work if you've killed the protagonist?""So I said, ‘I think maybe we have to kill him.’ And he goes, ‘That's a great idea
  
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• Battlefield 6 Comes To Game Pass, Game Of The Year Edition Announced

  13-10-2026 17:59 via gamespot.com
  
  It's a big day for Xbox Game Pass, as developer Battlefield Studios has launched Battlefield 6 into Game Pass, and it comes at a big moment for the game.Battlefield 6 is now available for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ($23/month) subscribers on PC and console. It can also be streamed.The game's arrival in Game Pass is notable because Battlefield 6 was 2025's best-selling game overall in the US, and was released a year ago this month. The game had a very strong start, but player numbers have dropped. B
  
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• Battlefield 6 Comes To Game Pass, As $30 Microtransaction That Instantly Unlocks All Guns Is Now Available

  13-10-2026 17:59 via gamespot.com
  
  It's a big day for Xbox Game Pass, as developer Battlefield Studios has launched Battlefield 6 into Game Pass, and it comes at a big moment for the game.Battlefield 6 is now available for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ($23/month) subscribers on PC and console. It can also be streamed.The game's arrival in Game Pass is notable because Battlefield 6 was 2025's best-selling game overall in the US, and was released a year ago this month. The game had a very strong start, but player numbers have dropped. B
  
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• Xbox Is Testing A New Streak Feature That Could Make Gaming Feel (More) Like A Chore

  13-10-2026 16:49 via gamespot.com
  
  It looks like another new Xbox feature is in development, and this time, it's designed to encourage users to go on a hot streak--of using their console, not disrupting a sports event with a quick birthday-suit-run.Spotted by Game File's Stephen Totilo, a new number appears to be popping up on the dashboard of Xbox users who are signed up for the Xbox Insider program, suggesting that a streak counter is in development. Microsoft hasn't formally announced this feature yet, and it looks l
  
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• GTA 6 Will Reportedly Come To PC Much Earlier Than Expected

  13-10-2026 16:24 via gamespot.com
  
  The November launch of Grand Theft Auto 6 will leave PC gamers sitting out in the cold, but the wait for the yet-to-be-announced PC port might be surprisingly short this time. According to a new report, GTA 6 will launch on PC "within the first three months" of 2027.Speaking to GamesBeat, industry sources claim that Rockstar Games plans to launch the game just a few months after its console release. If the reports are accurate, this would mark a major departure for Rockstar Games, as previous PC
  
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• GTA 6 Fans Are Excited For Another Date In November, And It’s Not Release Day

  13-10-2026 15:18 via gamespot.com
  
  Take-Two has announced the details for its next earnings briefing, and as you might expect, GTA 6 fans are circling the date on their calendars.The next Take-Two quarterly earnings report will be released on Monday, November 9, with management holding a call at 1:30 PM PT / 4:30 PM ET that day to discuss the results and answer questions. Anyone can listen to the call online.The report is being released 10 days before GTA 6 launches on November 19, so it's expected that analysts and investors wil
  
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