Sony's social media team are having a rough week: anything they post is getting piled on by angry gamers who are outraged by Sony's plans to stop the production of game discs.

Many PlayStation owners are vowing to boycott the PlayStation Store, cancel their PlayStation Plus membership and never buy PlayStation products again.

It's a PR nightmare for sure, with pretty much any online PlayStation content becoming a place for gamers to protest, derailing any attempt to talk about anything else.

It reminds me of the response to Sonos' introduction of a new and hugely flawed app, which Sonos now admits was badly done.

Sonos' PR nightmare lasted for around 18 months, there is now optimism and rebuilt trust around the new changes it's bringing to improve the app. Could Sony learn from Sonos' experience and its attempts to rebuild customer trust?

I think the answer is: yes it could, but no it won't.

What Sonos got right and Sony probably won't

Speaking to TechRadar earlier this year, Sonos CEO Tom Conrad set out his views on how to try and make angry customers happy again. "You just have to show up in people's life with some humility and do the hard work of earning their trust back through great execution, great product, great software, great experiences, and never forget what you put people through."

So far, Sony isn't doing that: rather than respond to gamers' concerns, it's battening down the hatches and staying silent about its move to digital-only. And that's a shame, because there are genuine reasons for gamers to worry about Sony's decision.

There are three key concerns about digital-only. The first, and I think the most important, is cost. The PlayStation Store is ludicrously expensive: for example Spider-Man 2, a three-year-old game, is £69.99 digital today in the UK, where I'm based. Competition between retailers means it's around £37 on disc.

The second is second-hand gaming. I buy many games second-hand, and many gamers like to sell their games after they've completed them or got annoyed by them, so that they can spend what they recoup on more new games (a win for the industry overall). So I can buy Returnal for about £20 on eBay. I can't buy the digital edition second-hand, so if I want the digital version it's… you guessed it, £69.99.

To be fair, you can get both games, and others, on PlayStation Plus Extra. But not everyone wants or can sustain yet another subscription, and we know that all subscription services go up in price — often dramatically so, as we saw with Xbox Game Pass last year.

And the third is ownership. Sony's disc announcement came just days after it deleted customers' purchased copies of over 500 movies, making it clear that purchasing doesn't mean owning forever. And those movies cost a lot less than £69.99.

Sony may have to eat humble pie for a while in order to mimic Sonos here, seeking out customer views to talk about those concerns, and maybe thinking about how to address them — so for example it could tell us that digital codes would still be sold through multiple retailers, like Nintendo does with its key cards, or that we'd be able to resell our digital-only games (even if it hasn't developed the mechanism for this yet).

However, the reality is that for a firm the size of Sony, even a significant customer backlash such as 246,586 signatures on a petition represents a microscopic proportion of its 125 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, let alone the many more PlayStation owners — and it can afford to ignore them.

That's something of a gamble. Just ask Microsoft, whose Game Pass price hike scared off far more customers than expected — according to reports, it lost 4 million out of 34 million Game Pass subscribers when it was expecting huge growth instead, forcing a partial reversal.

But Sony's gaming business is far bigger, and that means it can still upset a lot of customers without feeling much pain.

I suspect Sony is going to take a different lesson from the Sonos situation: even at the height of customer anger, Sonos still sold lots of speakers, soundbars and subs.

Then again, maybe Sony is more rattled than it's currently letting on. Two days after the digital-only announcement, with customers raging online, Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki sold more than half of his Sony stock and Sony's chief strategy officer unloaded a bunch of Sony shares too.

If you love cinematic action games like The Last of Us, then there’s one upcoming release that should be on your radar. Summer Game Fest 2026 gave me the opportunity to go hands-on with Blood Message, which seems set to deliver a killer mix of gripping stealth, visceral melee combat, and intense set-piece moments.

Set in Ancient China, it follows a nameless hero and his son on an epic 1,000-mile journey through the scorching deserts of East Asia towards the historical city of Chang'an to deliver a vital message. The pair must survive against impossible odds, navigating vast sieges and escaping the clutches of relentless enemy forces.

An epic journey

Because this is the first single-player title by Naraka: Bladepoint developer 24 Entertainment, I had no idea what to expect when I sat down for my demo.

Showcasing an early segment of the game, the demo opens with our protagonist searching a house, desperate to recover an important letter as hostile soldiers comb through the surrounding town. The high production values are immediately apparent: everything here is rich in detail, with plenty of high-fidelity objects for you to pick up and pore over. The architectural style of the building around you is striking as well, with clay walls, sandy floors, and thatched reed roofs.

While Ancient China is certainly becoming a more common setting in games, I can’t think of the last time I saw its arid desert regions depicted. I’m desperate to explore more of its tantalizingly exotic environments and soak in the unique aesthetic.

Playing with a DualSense Wireless Controller, I also quickly appreciate how the movement feels very fluid and benefits from some impressive animation that, like The Last of Us Part 2, looks seriously cinematic and realistic without sacrificing responsiveness.

It’s not long until I find myself in combat against a group of foes, and it’s just as excellent. You have a heavy attack and a light attack, plus the ability to parry. This is by no means a unique formula, but the impeccably slick way that the protagonist interacts with the environment leads to some of the most gripping encounters that I’ve ever experienced. There’s a real meatiness in your swings, which realistically causes enemies to trip and stagger.

Attacking a foe next to a stacked wooden shelf will send them tumbling into it, knocking objects onto the floor and stunning them for a moment. Launch a heavy kick while your opponent is standing in front of a table, and they’ll be pushed right over it onto the floor, creating vital distance when you’re surrounded. Fail to deflect an incoming strike yourself, and you’ll often be forced onto your knees, tapping a button to pelt anything heavy that’s within arm’s reach to give you a few moments to escape.

Although my combat time was limited, I was still impressed by the variety of ways in which fights could unfold, particularly when there was an allied companion in the mix. There were definitely some moments that felt scripted, like when two enemies locked swords with me at the same time near the end of a brawl to trigger a climactic struggle. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it helps introduce unexpected and exciting moments.

I really enjoyed going in with my sword drawn, but most of the time, combat is entirely optional thanks to a robust stealth system. This is another area where Blood Message feels similar to The Last of Us Part 2, forcing you to scurry through long grass and crouch in cover to avoid patrols. Get behind one of your quarries undetected, and you can initiate a brutal takedown, though be warned that any wrong move risks thrusting you straight into open combat.

At certain points, getting seen is inevitable, triggering bombastic chase sequences that have you sprinting away from barrages of arrow fire, scrambling up ledges, and leaping over perilous gaps. The path you need to take always feels very intuitive, though there are a few little alternative routes sprinkled throughout if you want to experiment.

Everything I played could easily rival the output of a developer like Naughty Dog, and with Blood Message set to release on consoles and PC, this should be at the top of gamers’ wishlists.

• Take-Two Interactive has its next quarterly finanical report scheduled for August 7
• The report will take place before the market open, which is unusual for Take-Two
• Fans are hoping for a new GTA 6 update

Rockstar Games' parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has quite an important day coming up, and fans are hoping for a new update on Grand Theft Auto 6.

We are four months away from the launch of the most highly anticipated game of all time, and so far we've seen exactly zero seconds of in-depth gameplay.

So what's next? It's said that this summer will kick off the big GTA 6 marketing push, but aside from pre-orders going live and an updated Rockstar website filled with screenshots and detailed game features, we're still waiting for Trailer 3.

However, as spotted by GameSpot, Take-Two will release its next quarterly financial report on August 7, which suggests we'll learn at least something about the game.

Typically, these financial reports are followed by a Q&A session with investors and are usually held after the market closes at 4 PM ET.

This August 7 report, however, will be released before the market opens, at 9:30 AM ET, and will be followed by a conference call at 8 AM ET. This is unusual for Take-Two, but it hasn't explained why it's doing it this way this time.

Whether there will be a pre-order sales report or a date for the next trailer, we'll have to wait and see, but fans on Reddit are hoping the financial report could kick things into high gear.

"Rockstar said summer will be the biggest marketing for them I don’t see this happening so far," one fan said, with another writing, "Trailer 3 moment passed, if they were going to drop it, we would have seen it by now. I honestly think the next step is a gameplay trailer."

We also have Gamescom 2026 in August, which means another month of game announcements, so Rockstar may finally drop a new trailer during this time.

GTA 6 officially launches on November 19 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, but pre-loading begins on November 12 if you choose to pre-order.

A recent report claimed that physical copies of the game are flying off the shelves, despite the fact that they don't come with a disc but rather a digital download code in the box, which has caused some controversy.

• Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 were just ported to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5
• Aside from an upgraded picture quality, they seem otherwise identical to the original versions
• Some fans are convinced that they just don't feel right, however

Yesterday, Activision treated us to the surprise release of not one, but two Call of Duty ports. You can now buy the original Black Ops and its acclaimed follow-up, Black Ops 2, on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 for the very first time.

They upgrade the resolution of both games on these newer consoles (a substantial step up from the 608p native picture quality of the backwards compatible versions available on Xbox) but otherwise seem almost identical to their original incarnations.

Even some big features that many fans thought would be cut, like Black Ops 2's infamous emblem creator, are present and accounted for.

I picked up copies of the two games immediately with my own cash (there's currently an irresistible 50% discount on them if you have PS Plus) and spent the best part of yesterday evening playing on my PS5. Aside from the crisper picture quality, they're just as I remember.

I replayed the original versions of both games pretty recently too, via second-hand physical copies that I bought for my Xbox Series X to refresh my knowledge of both games ahead of the Black Ops 7 launch — this latest entry is a Black Ops 2 sequel, after all.

Some fans aren't as impressed, though, and argue that the games just don't feel right.

"Black Ops 1 PS5 has a serious controller input lag issue that needs to be adressed [sic] and fixed" argued one poster on r/callofduty. "It surely wasn’t this bad on PS3".

"Sounds like the original launch" another fan replied, with someone else chiming in: "The golden days" and a tongue-in-cheek sobbing emoji.

"BO1 always felt hard to aim in even in the old days compared to BO2. Pretty sure this is normal" added someone else.

Another post similarly reckons that "The responsiveness is terrible. I distinctly remember the original Black Ops 1 feeling way crisper than this". The top comment agrees, complaining that "I’m losing every gun fight because my gun doesn’t fire in time".

Although everything feels fine to me, there's definitely a chance that those playing specific resolutions, on specific TVs, or with features like VRR enabled might be having a much worse experience. I expect some patches will be released in the coming weeks if these claims hold water.

• Former Dragon Age lead writer and creator David Gaider says it's "unlikely" the beloved RPG will have a future at EA
• However, he would be open to working on the series again
• Gaider would return to the series' roots and make a "dark and dangerous" game

Dragon Age creator and former narrative lead David Gaider doesn't believe the beloved role-playing game (RPG) series has a future at EA, but would be interested in working on a new game if given the chance.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Gaider said it's "unlikely" we'll ever see another Dragon Age game made by BioWare under EA's control and explained how, while working at the studio, it always felt like "We were always one breath away from the [current] project being shelved."

"The thing that happened is that we kept releasing games, and it would sell much better than they thought it should, and it kept surprising them," he said.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the exception, which underperformed for EA. However, the publisher was also reported to have been pushing BioWare to incorporate live-service elements into the game, but when the studio stuck to its RPG roots, CEO Andrew Wilson called it a mistake.

Gaider suggested that the Mass Effect series was EA's golden child, and even if it didn't sell as well the team "got excuses, because it was an action-oriented game. They thought it should sell more. It was slicker."

While Gaider believes Dragon Age is dead under EA's ownership, he would be interested in taking on the series again and returning to what made the dark fantasy series so loved in the first place.

"If you'd asked me that in the past, I would have said absolutely not. That I’d done my time," he said. "I left the Dragon Age team before I left BioWare. After Inquisition came out, I went to [Dragon Age's creative director] Mike Laidlaw and I said, ‘I've told all the stories with mages and dragons and what have you that I have in me. And I could keep going, but if I keep working on this, it's going to become rote, and I think that would be a disservice to the team. So I should step aside, let fresher voices rise’. I don't know if that was the right decision, but it felt right at the time."

He added, "I do like a challenge. So if, out of some weird alignment of the stars, somebody handed the Dragon Age franchise back to me and said, ‘Breathe the life back into this baby’, that'd be a tough one, but I think that'd be an interesting thing to do. To go back to the basics of what made Dragon Age appeal to so many people in the first place. And go somewhere dark and dangerous, and do things that will make people upset. I think that’s what I would want to do with it."

• Senior Bethesda character artist Christiane Meister has been laid off as part of Xbox's restructuring
• Meister designed Skyrim's Khajiit and Argonian races
• Kevin LaChapelle, one of the lead developers behind Xbox's backward compatibility initiative, has also been laid off

As part of Xbox's most significant restructuring strategy we've ever seen, thousands of staff have been laid off, including two industry veterans who worked at Microsoft and Bethesda for decades.

As PC Gamer reports, Christiane Meister, a senior character artist who worked at Bethesda for 27 years on games like Morrowind and Skyrim, was laid off and is currently looking for work.

Writing on LinkedIn, Meister said, "I have recently been laid off from Bethesda Game Studios and I find myself in the novel position of looking for a job. I thought I would stay there forever because I loved making those games. Life had other plans as it so often does."

As Meister explained in a separate update on her page, she was "in charge of design, creation, and management of character art assets throughout all of The Elder Scrolls projects, starting with Morrowind to our latest title, Skyrim."

"This included drawing concepts and seeing the art piece through to the final stage of getting the object in the game as well as handing off concepts to other artists in the character group. I also oversaw outsourced assets from design to final in-game models," Meister said.

The veteran developer was responsible for designing the visual identities of the series' khajiit and argonian humanoid races, as well as some Fallout creatures and horses in Oblivion and Skyrim.

She also worked on UI, title design, and marketing materials in her early career at Bethesda, the iconic armor associated with Skyrim, and new armor sets and the key art for The Elder Scrolls: Blades.

Meister later moved on to creature work on Starfield "and had a great time balancing the extraterrestrial while grounding it with recognizable fauna that exist here on Earth."

She adds that she also worked on "The latest game of the Elder Scrolls series," which could mean The Elder Scrolls 6, where she oversaw "an important aspect of the game as well as continuing to create realistic creatures."

"I hope people will get to see them," she said.

Another industry veteran, Kevin LaChapelle, one of the lead developers behind Xbox's backward compatibility initiative, has also been laid off.

On LinkedIn (via VGC), LaChapelle said, "I will add my name to the list of people who were laid off today at Xbox," after working for Microsoft for 37 years.

"I have worked in many different parts of the company, and I will say my fondest memories are of leading the team of very talented engineers who built the Xbox Backward Compatibility program," he said.

"Sitting in the auditorium when Phil [Spencer] announced the program at E3 2015 was incredible. The audience's reaction was unbelievable. I followed that with leading the team who created our Cloud Gaming product. I am a firm believer that all entertainment will eventually become streamed to you wherever you are. I look forward to watching how Xbox evolves going forward and I wish the team nothing but success."

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma confirmed that 1,600 jobs were immediately cut and another 1,600 to come will follow before the end of the current financial year.

The company has also let go of four studios, including Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions, which are returning to independence, while Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are currently looking for new ownership.

Obsidian Entertainment is also reportedly working on a new Fallout game led by Fallout: New Vegas lead designer and project director Joshua Sawyer, in collaboration with Bethesda, after scrapping plans for an Avowed sequel amid Xbox's restructuring strategy.

• Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners says Sony ending physical disc production was inevitable
• He says it would have happened if not for the PS6, then the PS7
• Ahmad says Sony wants to create a "closed ecosystem with high margins"

Sony's decision to end the production of physical PlayStation discs in 2028 came as quite a shock to the community, but one analyst believes the move was inevitable given the rise in digital sales on consoles.

Sharing his thoughts in a long thread on X in a response to a fan likening the situation to Apple removing the headphone jack from its products, Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners said, "It's more like Apple removing the CD Drive from its laptops starting in 2008."

He explained that while there were many complaints at the time, there's "not a single person is complaining about it today," and there were not many people complaining in the early 2010s either. Ahmad puts Sony's decision down to digital PlayStation software performing better now than it ever did before the PS4 launched.

"The first thing to note about Sony's decision is that it would inevitably happen at some point for consoles. If not PS6, then PS7," Ahmad continued. "Full game digital sales on PlayStation have gone from less than 10% prior to the release of the PS4 to around 80% today."

He added, "On Xbox it's already over 90%, and if anything I'm surprised they weren't the ones to do it first. Yes, these numbers include digital only games, reflecting the current market environment, but they don't include DLC, microtransactions or subscriptions / free games."

Ahmad shared a bit more data to support his claims, saying that about 50% of the PS5 user base is subscribed to PS Plus and has built up a large library and/or has access to numerous digital games.

"The truth is that the console ecosystem is nearly entirely digital at this point," he said, pointing to how Sony also earns revenue through digital add-on content, like microtransactions and other in-game purchases, more than it does "from the sale of physical and digital full game sales combined."

Games like Fortnite, Grand Theft A 5, Minecraft, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Marvel Rivals, Battlefield 6, and Arc Raiders, Ahmad pointed out, had the highest number of players on PS5 in May, and half of them don't ship on a physical disc.

"Over 30% of PS5s sold to date do not have a disc drive (Meaning that 70% do, however)," the analyst added. "More importantly though, the current sell through rate of digital only PS5s is above 50%."

Ahmad also said Insomnia Games' sales figures, which have been presented as evidence that physical sales represent a good chunk of PS5 sales, are "out of date" and "people are looking at the sell in number rather than the sell through number."

He explained that one of the reasons retail is high for certain physical games is "because Sony counts bundles as retail sales, even if it's a digital code with the console."

A reason he believes Sony is going forward with an all-digital future is simple: "The economic argument." Because of the profit margins between physical and digital games, Sony can retain 100% of first-party games sold on the PlayStation Store, but it earns $21 (30%) from a $70 third-party title.

"When it [Sony] sells a third party game at retail, it earns around half that amount, even if the player spends the same $70," he said. "The difference isn't as stark for third party publishers, but they'd prefer to sell all games digitally if they could for the higher margins. That's why physical game revenue makes up just 5% of Sony's total game software sales revenue (incl. DLC / MTX), despite accounting a higher % share for units sold. When Sony said it would stop publishing games on PC, no one pointed out that it essentially earned the same from PC sales that it earns from physical disc sales, and the former was considered too little."

Ahmad said another reason is the market we're currently in, where console prices seem to be increasing regularly. Sony knows that the PS6 could enter a market where other hardware is over $1000, and players will think twice about upgrading on day one.

"While part of it is cutting costs, it's also a realization that consoles are no longer going to be $199 mass market devices and they will need to focus on hardcore gamers who are willing to spend more than ever," he said.

A third reason would be Sony wanting to create a "closed ecosystem with high margins."

"The retreat from PC is partly about this, the end of disc production is also about this, as is the exploration of different form factors. Right now you can resell, gift, or even refund physical games. With digital games, you don't have the same rights currently," Ahmad said. "As Sony looks to maximize spend per user, it is essentially ending the used market for PS6 software and ensuring all software sold is high margin and they capture a %. In other words, Sony controls the license in its entirety and access is dependent on them."

Ahmad concluded, calling Sony's lack of announcement around what will happen to PS4 and PS5 discs "a mistake," and had it "talked about a disc to digital program, or confirmed a disc add on for the PS6, the backlash wouldn't have been as strong."

The analyst also said it's "unlikely" that Sony will reverse the decision, but "wouldn't be surprised if they do end up clarifying certain aspects." However, Ahmad thinks it could support physical games for a few more years, perhaps through limited-run hardware or a more expensive PS6 compared to the digital version.

"I'm also of the belief that even if the PS6 costs $1k, used physical games helps increase overall affordability," he said.

Ahmad ended by saying the conversation needs to shift to "consumer rights" and what digital game ownership really means.

"Regardless of whether we're talking about bringing physical back, or embracing digital, the conversation needs to shift to consumer rights and what a license should enable. Stop Killing Games was one part of it, but gifting, family sharing, refunds, and other aspects are just as important," he said.

• Analysts suggest Sony won't reverse its decision to end physical disc production
• Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Kantan Games, says Sony will wait for the backlash to pass
• Toto adds that "Digital is just too lucrative" for the PlayStation company

Sony plans to end physical disc production in 2028, but despite pushback from fans, analysts suggest the PlayStation maker won't reverse its decision.

The announcement has caused a bit of an uproar within the community, and while fans online continue to urge the company to backtrack on its decision, including creating a petition that has amassed over 247,400 signatures as of writing, Sony remains silent on the matter.

Others are also PS5 users protesting the plan by cancelling their PlayStation Plus subscriptions, with many fans encouraging others to do the same.

However, according to Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Japanese game industry consultancy firm Kantan Games, the boycott won't change Sony's mind on the matter.

"I sympathize with physical media fans, but Sony will not reverse this decision," Toto said in an interview with IGN. "They of course knew what the online reaction would look like, and they now wait for this storm to pass."

Toto put it down to digital being more profitable, and the number of players cancelling their PS Plus subscriptions wouldn't be enough to persuade the gaming giant.

"Sony has over 120 million active PlayStation users," he said. "Around 50 million people subscribe to PlayStation Plus. As a thought experiment, let's say 500,000 cancel in protest, that would be just 1% of that business gone — of course not enough to Sony to start rethinking. Digital is just too lucrative."

The profit margins between physical and digital games is significant, especially when you consider digital sales for first-party PlayStation games.

As IGN calculated, a game like The Last of Us would offer Sony 65% of the profit from a physical copy, 30% to the retailer, and 5% to production costs. For digital sales made from the PlayStation Store, Sony would retain 100% of the revenue, but for third-party titles like Call of Duty, the company would keep a 30% cut of the asking price.

"Their current profit margin has been too weak for years now, so they feel like they must act," Toto added. "From an economic perspective, digital sales just make too much sense especially for platform holders."

• Obsidian Entertainment has cancelled an Avowed sequel and is now reportedly developing a new Fallout game
• The game is helmed by Fallout: New Vegas lead designer and project director Joshua Sawyer
• This comes as part of Microsoft's major Xbox "reset"

Obsidian Entertainment is reportedly working on a new Fallout game after scrapping plans for an Avowed sequel amid Xbox's restructuring strategy.

That's according to Bloomberg, which reports that the Avowed sequel and other unannounced projects were the studio's priority, but will now focus on a new Fallout game helmed by Fallout: New Vegas lead designer and project director Joshua Sawyer, in collaboration with Bethesda.

Sawyer was working on a different role-playing game (RPG) similar to Fallout, but it's unclear which one.

While Avowed 2 has been cancelled, a small team will continue working on the game in case the project is revived in the future; for now, Fallout is the new priority.

The report comes as part of Microsoft's major Xbox "reset," which recently saw thousands of layoffs, including 1,600 immediate cuts. It's said that Avowed 2 was to be announced within the next year, but Xbox CEO Asha Sharma didn't see it fitting into the company's new strategy.

Bloomberg said these layoffs included a quarter of Obsidian, with GameFile reporting that a WARN notice in California indicated it was 52 workers in total, including 43 in Obsidian's California offices and nine in-state remote workers.

Obsidian, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2018, released three games in 2025, including Avowed, The Outer Worlds 2, and Grounded 2. Bloomberg confirmed that the studio will continue developing content for the latter two titles.

On a recent visit to head-fi brand Audeze's headquarters in California, I had the chance to talk to the brand about the recent ReSkin feature it launched for its Maxwell 2 gaming headset.

This new feature for its excellent planar magnetic driver-powered gaming headset allows owners to customize their set by swapping in funky earcup designs to inject some colour, flair, and personality into their gaming accessory.

The earcups have been so popular that a bunch of the first designs have sold out, with marketing director, Peter James, telling me that "the one that's sold the most is the all-seeing eye. That one actually sold out of its first run."

Indeed, of the six designs or sets that Audeze launched in May, only one of them is available to buy as of right now on the brand's website, and two — the all-seeing eye and the very limited edition Dia De Los Muertos set — are not even listed at all.

However, there could be big things on the horizon with the PlayStation-owned Audeze having "some potential game studio collaborations" on the way in the future, according to James.

This could be an opportunity for a collaboration with a huge PlayStation series or two in the future, given Audeze is under Sony Interactive Entertainment's (SIE) roof now.

Could we see a spectacular God of War Laufey ReSkin featuring Faye? Could we, Maxwell 2 owners, be wearing some Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet artwork in the future? How about a profile shot of Wolverine adorning each earcup?

There are some truly exciting potential collaborations to consider given the relationship between Audeze and PlayStation.

And Audeze doesn't intend for the ReSkin designs to stop there: "We're really just getting started at this point.", James tells me.

"We're not intending this reskin program to be limited to Maxwell 2; that's just where it's starting."

I asked whether there might be a possibility of fans submitting their own designs in the future. "I don't think we're going to do 'design your own,' but we'll almost certainly be doing some things where people can submit designs and maybe run an online poll or competition to see what people vote on to select."

He went on to add that, as well as the exciting prospect of gaming collaborations, there are "more in-house designs that we'll be releasing on a monthly cadence."

Audeze has previous form with working with external collaborators from studio artists and musicians in relation to some headphones — when it comes to those super slick wooden rings that you can see on the likes of the LCD-2 and LCD-3 sets, for example — and it seems that the ReSkin program has the potential to unlock some big-hitting collaborations further down the line to continue that trend.

We’re hurtling towards the October release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and it seems like everyone has already forgotten about Black Ops 7.

Last year’s entry wasn’t perfect (I still stand by my verdict that it has one of the worst campaigns in the series), but if there’s one area where it seriously delivers, it’s the core multiplayer experience. It took the strong foundations established in its predecessor, Black Ops 6, and refined them expertly, augmenting the slick omni-movement system with a new wall jump and finally cutting the awkward tactical sprint to save us all from sore thumbs.

It was a compelling offering at launch, but over the last few months it’s become even better thanks to a steady stream of impressively expansive, high-quality updates. I can’t think of the last Call of Duty game I’ve stuck with this long after launch, and, having spent close to 400 hours playing now, I’m sad that it's coming to an end.

Quantity (and quality)

What’s made Black Ops 7’s post-launch offering so enjoyable? Volume, for starters. Seasons 1 and 2 came packed with a whopping nine core maps each, offering a good mix of new arrivals, remastered classics, and some favorites carried over from Black Ops 6.

Season 3 kept up the pace with another seven, adding to the massive 16 available at launch, meaning there’s no shortage of combat environments to master, even as things begin to slow down, with the current Season 4 bringing just five.

It’s not like “just five” is an insubstantial number either — it’s still more than double what most seasons of 2022’s Modern Warfare 2 would give you. They’re all well-made maps with a good mix of aesthetics, ranging from the brightly colored neon skyscrapers of a futuristic Tokyo in Yakei to the psychedelic corridors of an imagined hospital in Paranoia.

There’s just so much more variety than you had in previous games, which seriously helps stave off boredom after hundreds of hours of play.

You could argue that Black Ops 7 lacks a coherent visual direction and setting, and I would wholeheartedly agree, but, as disappointing as it is for someone who cares quite a lot about the series’ universe and lore, on a practical level the total abandonment of stodgy military theming opens the door to so many cool design possibilities.

You have maps filled with floating platforms to parkour off, buttons that open secret passageways to reward those who pay attention to their surroundings, or magic portals that teleport you to the other side of the map to help you get the jump on the enemy team.

I can’t remember the last time Call of Duty felt this experimental and free. It’s reinvigorating.

Broken, but in the best possible way

The developers took the same approach with the weapons, adding a boatload of them every season. They’re completely stupid and often massively unbalanced, but that’s what makes them so much fun.

You’ve got one-shot rifles galore, an SMG that loads with three magazines at once, a secondary that’s somehow a full-size rifle that fires homing bullets, and an energy weapon that shoots slow-moving, glowing balls that can take out entire groups of foes.

The unlockable weapon attachments are delightfully nuts as well. Earlier this month, I spent a weekend grinding through weekly challenges to unlock the latest attachment for the XR-3 Ion sniper rifle.

It’s a grip that transforms the unwieldy weapon into a literal minigun that shreds foes by rapidly firing high-power sniper bullets with a massive ammo pool, which I immediately deployed to rampage through the tiny Nuketown map in some public matches.

It joins a pantheon of unapologetically bonkers additions, like the high-tech magazine for the Carbon 57 SMG that literally 3D prints new bullets in between shots so you never have to reload or the customized barrel that converts the Maverick X9 assault rifle into a long-range harpoon gun.

At this point, I’m convinced the developers are trying to one-up themselves with something even crazier in every update — and make no mistake, I’m absolutely here for it.

Throw in a deluge of quality limited-time events with a strong line-up, free and paid rewards, some of the nicest-looking battle pass skins yet, countless progression systems to work towards, and it’s no wonder that I’m logging in every day for more.

As a frequent visitor to a handful of Call of Duty subreddits, I know that I’m not the only one having a great time either. “We are very lucky that we didn’t listen to the internet and bought Black Ops 7,” wrote one poster just last week, who praised the “huge” amount of content on offer. “We are so lucky that we experienced the best Call of Duty multiplayer and zombies since 2015,” they added.

“I’m also a little sad we only have 1 more Season left”, responded a commenter, with another calling Black Ops 7 the “Best COD of the 2020s”. Sure, the campaign underdelivered, but if we’re going off multiplayer alone, I’m inclined to agree.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is out for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

• PlayStation 5 exclusive Silent Hill: The Short Message is getting a physical disc release
• It's only available as part of a pricey deluxe version with some bonus physical items
• The game is available completely for free digitally

An incredibly short, free Silent Hill spinoff is inexplicably getting a pricey physical release in a new collaboration between publisher Konami and distributor Limited Run Games.

A listing for a physical PlayStation 5 version of Silent Hill: The Short Message has appeared on the Limited Run website, offering fans the chance to get their hands on a disc copy of the game for the very first time.

The PS5 exclusive title, which only takes about two hours to beat, was first released digitally back in 2024 and is completely free to own on the console. If you haven't got your hands on it yet, you can add it to your library in just a few clicks via the PlayStation Store.

Given the fact that anyone can claim the full game at no cost, you might assume that this upcoming physical version would be quite cheap, but that is not the case. It's priced at a full $69.99 (roughly £52 / AU$101), the same as recent major first-party PS5 releases like Ghost of Yotei or Astro Bot.

To be fair, it is only being sold as part of a special limited edition deluxe version that throws in some additional physical goodies (a collector's box, art poster, flower keychain, set of art cards, and certificate of authenticity), but this still seems like a pretty steep price for a title previously valued at, well, nothing.

Silent Hill: The Short Message is an entirely standalone experience set in a fictional German town. It follows a young girl who explores an abandoned apartment building while being pursued by an unsettling, cherry blossom-themed monster.

Despite being completely free, it didn't receive the best reviews when it launched with a Metacritic score of just 52 out of 100. Common complaints from critics were directed towards its clumsy handling of serious topics like suicide and self-harm.

If you are a massive Silent Hill collector and do really want to get your hands on the physical version, it will become available to pre-order on July 10, with shipping expected to begin early next year.

After almost 30 hours sailing the high seas in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, one of the series’ best games has its hooks in me all over again, and I can’t wait to play another 30 (or more) and complete every single activity a second time.

Embarking on a journey to remake one of the series’ finest entries and to ensure the story of one of the best protagonists stays true to its original, Ubisoft has largely succeeded with Resynced. The experience feels fresh and modern, but also has me feeling the same pirate-y feels that only the original ever could.

It’s not without flaws, though. Some particular bits of Black Flag remain that inject some unwanted repetition; some of the cut content is a little disappointing, and there are some rogue bits of oddness in the new additions, as well as overall balances of features.

But those are not huge complaints, and only apparent with close comparison to the original. Zoom out just a tiny bit, and it’s easy to appreciate what Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is: a fantastically fun version of a brilliant game.

One of the best to ever do it

Revisiting the story of Edward Kenway, chancer and dreamer turned privateer and then assassin — perhaps the only protagonist who can hold a candle to series legend Ezio Auditore da Firenze — Resynced has largely kept the core narrative, characters, and experience as it was with the original. Which is the right approach, as all were excellent.

Bouncing from Caribbean island to Caribbean island with Kenway and his crew on the Jackdaw is the backdrop for a time-enduring Assassin’s Creed story that still holds up today and makes for a great swashbuckling adventure. There’s a certain satisfying way that the game’s narrative weaves living in the golden age of piracy and core characters within that with its own lore of the enduring Assassin’s vs Templar battle.

Exploring mysterious, overgrown islands searching for hidden treasures or hunting down stashes from messages in a bottle, traversing the high seas in the Jackdaw ship, and taking on huge ships from the Spanish and British navies, and following Kenway’s desire for fortune and experiencing him tracking down age-old secrets is all still fantastically fun and ensures the core experience remains exquisite.

The most tangible and clearest way that this core experience has been elevated is naturally the visuals. I said that Assassin’s Creed Shadows was the best-looking game in the series when I reviewed it last year, but now there's a new kid on the block. Resynced is simply wondrous, verdant, gorgeous, and incredibly detailed in its presentation of the Caribbean, and my eyes can’t get enough of it.

Being a new version of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, it’s still an absolutely fantastic video game and is the same brilliant original under the surface. But “not all treasure is silver and gold, mate”: it’s not just the impressive visual upgrade which makes the remake a success, as there have been loads of improvements, and a few notable changes or omissions which really make up the meat and potatoes of the differences Resynced offers over its original.

A modern assassin

Each change itself isn’t huge, but when you factor them all in, there’s a huge collection of improvements that paint a bigger, better picture are aesthetic or functional changes, whereas others are much-needed modernizations that bring the game forward a decade and a half.

At their most basic, the changes to menus, controls, and the inventory screen are almost all welcome alterations and bring the game up to speed with the likes of Mirage and Shadows in the modern Assassin’s Creed pantheon. Everything is slick and smooth. The use of the newer Anvil engine and what that allows, such as dynamic weather, a day-night cycle, and so on, is also put to great effect.

In-game minigames like Kenway’s fleet have been overhauled too, and even with the removal of that fun and cartoon-y one in the original, these changes are largely slick and well done. There are also dedicated locations to interact with such things in Kenway’s manor and base of operations on Great Inagua, which has been expanded to include dedicated spots for upgrading the manor or interacting with the fleet.

The island’s upgrades — your Harbourmaster, general store, etc — all have more depth and levels of upgrade to invest in. It’s not as comprehensive as the base-building systems in Shadows, but it’s still very satisfying and drives you to plunder more to unlock the best for your island and ship.

Combat and parkour are both areas with substantial changes as well. Parkour doesn’t look or appear brand new — and once again not as transformative as the change that came after Black Flag with Unity, sadly — but it does genuinely feel smoother and more fluid than before; where there once would have been brief pauses or stutters mid-run, there now aren't.

Combat has definitely taken inspiration from Mirage and largely works as a new style for Kenway. It’s a shame to see some omissions, as Kenway sticks only to cutlass weapons (which sometimes feel a bit messy and button-mashy) but the heavy and light attacks and parries combine to make something more engaging than the parry and finish of the original games. Even so, after a while, it can drag a bit and get repetitive — especially when you’re having to board and take ship after ship after ship to farm upgrade material — and lacks the dynamism of the original at times.

Opening up more of the world has been a success in Resynced, at least. The ability to dive anywhere and swim everywhere in the ocean opens up more areas for discovery and exploration, and the simple addition of a crouch button means that you can explore enemy compounds and warehouse locations rather than just murder your way through them.

A balancing act

More substantial changes to content are more mixed, though, and in the face of so many great updates, upgrades, and enhancements, Resynced has to walk a tightrope of new additions and working with — or avoiding — the original source material.

I really enjoy the new endings that some of the best characters in the game get through new side quests, for example — and there are even new lines, scenes, and actions back at Kenway’s headquarters after those too, which is a nice touch.

The new officer recruitment missions are also good fun; as well as offering a tangible benefit for new ship features or weapons, these are some quite good contained missions. However, the pacing sometimes feels a little odd as you successfully recruit the new officer, midway through their story, and even when they seem unconvinced about joining you.

The most noticeable change to content, however, has been unsuccessful, in my view: entirely removing the modern-day sections is a shame and a missed opportunity. I find myself longing for these bits where you are deep-diving into Desmond’s DNA and scoping out the modern-day Templar offices; the change of pace worked with the original game and played its own robust part in the lore and narrative of the series. While removing tube content was largely welcomed by many and may have seemed like a good idea, in the context of playing the game, it feels a bit of a shame. With Resynced being positioned by Ubisoft as a remake that semi-reinterprets but also modernises and improves parts of the original, it’s a wasted opportunity not to give the modern-day segments the same treatment as other areas of the game and to instead jettison it entirely.

Some 2013-isms remain in this 2026 game, too. Notably, the AI and enemies are as dumb as ever. Being able to whistle and attract a whole heap of guards to a single stalking location and murder all of them in one big bloody pile is still too easy. And while the tailing missions have been changed to be less punishing, you can now just murder your target, loot the info, and scarper just like any other objective in the game.

Despite the drawbacks, though, as a long-time Assassin’s Creed fan, this remake is a blast, and I cannot wait to seek out every corner of the Caribbean and solve every mystery all over again. Those of us who yearn for more from the stories of the Assassins in every game will be extremely happy, I’d wager, with Resynced’s re-look at one of the best games in the series, with the extra story beats for some of the best characters being such examples.

Despite a few creases here and there that raise the eyebrow, this is a solid remake and a wonderful game, and could offer an interesting insight into Ubisoft’s future approach to its older games, which is very exciting.

Should you play Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

Ubisoft has done another great job of offering a whole host of accessibility options in its latest flagship game. You can easily alter difficulty settings with a number of sliders affecting different factors such as stealth, naval combat, and activities, and a number of playstyle assists are also present, such as aim assist, parkour assists, camera settings, and even unlimited oxygen to make swimming in the game easier.

The dedicated accessibility menu is broken down into five categories of accessibility presets: Motor (affecting number of actions or precision and timing), Motion & Camera (to reduce motion and camera effects like screen shake), Colors (text colors and so on, but also setting for Red-Green color blindness and Blue-Yellow color blindness), Vision (for changes to the HUD, and subtitles etc), and Hearing (volume, speaker names, etc). All offer substantial options, and accessibility needs are very well served indeed.

How I reviewed Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced

I played nearly 30 hours (and counting) of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced on a PS5 Pro teamed with an Acer X32QFS gaming monitor and SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni headset for this review. I used a standard DualSense Wireless controller, and I also spent many hours playing the game on my PlayStation Portal.

I tested the game thoroughly in all its graphics modes and found that the balanced mode (offering high graphical fidelity and a targeted 40 frames per second) was by far the most enjoyable and my personal preference.

Having followed the Assassin’s Creed series for years and years, and playing a whole heap of them straight for a year a short while ago, I am very familiar with the games and what makes a good one, a great one, and a less good one, so I am well placed to cast an opinion over Resynced.

First reviewed July 2026

• The Blood of Dawnwalker director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, wants the game to feel like a "pen-and-paper RPG"
• He says the game's big choices and consequences will deepen players' immersion
• He adds, "My biggest goal is to create a game that you will still remember in the next 10 or 20 years"

The Blood of Dawnwalker game director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, thinks the game's big choices and consequences will offer players a more immersive experience that he hopes will be remembered for years to come.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at an event where we went hands-on with the upcoming dark fantasy role-playing game (RPG), Tomaszkiewicz discussed its narrative choices and explained why he believes player freedom within the sandbox world Rebel Wolves has created will provide a deeper, immersive experience.

"We believe that as much freedom and different choices will add to the game and different playthroughs, so that we deliver for the players," he said. "It will be better because it will boost immersion, and it will show people that our goal is creating a narrative sandbox. We want an experience that is close to a pen-and-paper RPG, where the game master adjusts for what you are doing. That was our goal to show it from the very beginning in the prologue."

Tomaszkiewicz recalls playing Warhammer as a game master when he was 12-years-old and how, after hours of play, he couldn't remember the details of the room around him because the experience was so "intense." This is the feeling the director wants to mimic with The Blood of the Dawnwalker and believes the RPG's freedom can achieve.

"This is my holy grail: to create a video game with this kind of immersion," he said. "One that allows you to forget where you are sitting, gives you the feeling that you just lived through an adventure in a different world, with different skills, different people, and with real emotions.

"First of all, it's to give you freedom, because I believe that the freedom in the game is one of the big parts of the immersion. If we give you the freedom in your choices in the story, in your choices in the combat, because you can shape the combat as you want, and in different places, the immersion will be bigger and you will remember the game for a long time.

"My biggest goal is to create a game that you will still remember in the next 10 or 20 years."

The Blood of Dawnwalker arrives on September 3 for PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and PC.

• The Blood of Dawnwalker director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, says experience with The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 helped in the game's creation
• He says the team learned from CD Projekt Red's "complex" mechanics
• Tomaszkiewicz reveals that optimization was prioritized to avoid launch issues

The Blood of Dawnwalker might not exist if not for the experienced developers at Rebel Wolves who worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077.

That's according to game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who told TechRadar Gaming during a hands-on preview event that without the former CD Projekt Red developers' experience gained from these role-playing games (RPGs), "it wouldn't be possible to create a game like this."

"A game with so many complex choices and consequences, with so many unique mechanics. We build on what we learned and what we co-created in the past," Tomaszkiewicz said.

The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 famously launched with significant performance issues. They were so bad with Cyberpunk 2077 in fact that the game was temporarily removed from the PlayStation Store. Both games did eventually receive major improvements and are now considered two of the best RPGs of all time.

To avoid similar issues with The Blood of Dawnwalker, the director revealed that the team prioritised optimization at the start of development.

"We learned how to approach the optimization of the game," he said. "When we started work on The Blood of the Dawnwalker, we already had people working on the optimization of our game all the time, right from the beginning.

"We didn’t want to be in a situation where we deliver a great game, but there are problems when we release it on consoles or some performance problems."

The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on September 3 for PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and PC.

• The Blood of Dawnwalker director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz says the team knew the game's day and night system would be "expensive as hell"
• However, Rebel Wolves knew the concept would be "unique"
• The director says he was inspired by the werewolf tale, but from a vampire perspective

Rebel Wolves knew The Blood of Dawnwalker's day and night system was going to be challenging as well as costly, but wanted to deliver a "unique" experience for players.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at a preview event for the upcoming role-playing game (RPG), director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz likened The Blood of Dawnwalker to "two different games" because of its day and night cycle.

In the game, protagonist Coen can be played as a human during the day and a vampire at night, and each version offers different abilities and ways to complete quests.

According to Tomaszkiewicz, he was inspired by the concept of the werewolf, but from a vampire's perspective, and the dual gameplay loops allow for a unique structure within the open world.

"I have this idea to create a creature which is similar to the werewolf, but from the vampire side: they are human in the day and a vampire at night, and start from this," he said.

"We said, okay, this is the cool idea, but if you have a human in the day and a vampire at night, you know that you need to create two gameplay loops. If you create those gameplay loops and put them in an open world structure, we’ve decided that, basically, we're doing almost two different games, and it's crazy."

Tomaszkiewicz added that the team knew the idea was "expensive as hell, but we thought it's worth it because it's unique and different."

"It would deliver something new to the market and deliver something different to players," the director said. "That idea was from the beginning. When I started to think about the protagonist, and the company, and the setting, and the saga we wanted to create, let's create a protagonist who will be something different."

The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on September 3 for PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and PC.

• The Blood of Dawnwalker game director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, says the game's 30-day time system offers a "sense of urgency"
• The game will give players 30 days to rescue Coen's family, and the timer will add "emotional impact"
• Tomaszkiewicz says, "the world is living and it's not waiting for you"

The Blood of Dawnwalker game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz wants players to feel driven by a "sense of urgency" through the role-playing game's (RPG) unconventional time-limit mechanic.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at a hands-on preview event, Tomaszkiewicz explained why Rebel Wolves chose to include a time system that gives players only 30 days to rescue protagonist Coen's family.

Every time players take on a quest, time moves forward within the game's world, so choosing how to spend time is vital. It's a unique feature for an RPG because these games typically allow players to explore for hundreds of hours without consequence. However, as Tomaszkiewicz explained, in The Blood of Dawnwalker, "The world is living and it's not waiting for you."

"If you have some particular goal and you decide to go and do some stuff which is not connected with this goal, you have some consequences, right?" he said. "I think that in the games and the RPGs where time is not important, you lose this sense of urgency, and you lose this belief that this goal is real.

"If we give you the goal that your family is in the castle and something bad will happen to them, but if time wouldn't move and events wouldn’t move it forward, you wouldn't feel this sense of urgency and any emotions connected to it, because you know that they are there, and you will go there whatever time you want."

Tomaszkiewicz added that the timer also allowed the team to tell a story that has "a bigger emotional impact" and while it may look like a small thing, it changes almost everything and "changes your thinking about the content."

"It's not only giving you the feeling that you are there, but you need to think what you want to do, and sometimes, to decide when not to do something," the director explained.

"Going there and doing something is your choice, but not going there is also your choice, and it will have consequences. It adds to the non-linearity of the game, because you know the world is living and it's not waiting for you — stuff will just happen."

The Blood of Dawnwalker arrives on September 3 for PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and PC.

• The Blood of Dawnwalker director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz says the game was made by a team that "love" RPGs
• He suggests artists need to set "ambitious goals" to create something unique in the saturated genre
• Tomaszkiewicz praises Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for doing something new in the genre

The Blood of Dawnwalker is an ambitious open-world game made by a team that loves role-playing games (RPGs), according to director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz; however, he suggests developers need to push the envelope to create unique experiences in the saturated genre.

Speaking to TechRadar Gaming about creating an ambitious game for Rebel Wolves' debut title, Tomaszkiewicz said that he "loves RPGs so much in my heart" that if someone told him to create a racing game or a shooter, he couldn't do it.

"This is what I want to do, and so I’ve gathered a team who share this love for RPG games," he said.

"I think that we, as artists, need to set quite ambitious goals to create better things, to create a piece of art which is full of emotions. Without those goals, we are bored, and we stop creating."

Tomaszkiewicz explained that there are many RPGs in the genre that give players different experiences and "different emotions," and Rebel Wolves isn't the first to try to create something unique or reinvent the wheel.

He remarked on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Sandfall Interactive's first game that went on to make history by taking home nine awards at The Game Awards 2025, including Game of the Year, and how that game was also able to "take a genre and do it in a different and interesting way."

The director also touched on Dispatch, AdHoc Studio's superhero comedy that reopened the door to the episodic, choice-based narrative genre, calling it "something totally fresh", as well as the first two Fallout games, which impressed the masses with their narrative sandbox structure.

"The most important thing is to deliver something really unique and prove ourselves," Tomaszkiewicz added.

"It's really difficult and we iterate a lot. But, to be honest, the most important thing is to plan the story events to be close to each other, but on the other hand, to be far enough from each other so you have a fresh breadth between the activities you are doing.

"This is difficult, to be honest, really difficult, because only the first Fallout and the second Fallout have done something like this, with this narrative sandbox."

The Blood of Dawnwalker launches on September 3 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and PC.

Game intros are hard to get right. Many are boring and over-tutorialized. Most fail to get you invested in what you’re about to play. Some are random sections of action just to get something flashy in front of you. The Blood of Dawnwalker’s may not be perfect, but it does set out a very compelling snapshot of what Rebel Wolves has as a goal for its upcoming open-world RPG.

The opening hours I’ve played in the game’s prologue are an impressive mission statement for the studio’s debut game, distilled into a smaller and more approachable environment.

It’s clear that we’re in for a story-first and choice-driven adventure, and while some elements of the game feel a little rough, I’m more than willing to accept a few missteps for the sake of ambition and personality.

Unsurprisingly, given a large chunk of the talent involved in the game’s creation, the structure and pacing of The Blood of Dawnwalker’s first few hours are very reminiscent, in a way, of the introductory White Orchard segment in The Witcher 3.

It introduces Coen and his family, who are living in a small town as part of a kingdom that’s under the grip of a vampire lord named Brencis. His rule demands that the populace pay a regular blood tax at night, allowing him to feed from them, while they also take on his blood so they remain free of any sickness or disease.

Understandably, not everyone is too pleased with this forced arrangement, so there’s growing discontent among some of the townsfolk and a plan is hatched to strike back after this latest feeding to reclaim independence.

Try not to get distracted

However, my first task towards that goal is a much simpler one: collect some medicine for Coen’s mother so she can attend mass. Seems easy enough, but we’ve got The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 veterans working on this, so the small path through the town is littered with potential side quests and distractions — and the kicker this time is that I couldn't do them all.

Yes, The Blood of Dawnwalker has an ever-present timer, where certain actions and quest progress will progress time forward by a specific amount. So, when there’s only a set amount of time available, I have to decide where to focus my attention and what to ignore — and face the consequences of those choices.

Is it a nightmare for completionists? Maybe. But it did get me to think more about the choices I made, which quests I wanted to tackle, and how I spent my time in those opening hours.

Helping Coen’s family catch some fish for a nice family bonding moment and finding a stolen banner to prevent an innocent person from being murdered by Brencis and his lackeys? Yeah, those feel like good ways to spend my time. Hunting a lost pig and chasing down a local who’s going around calling people rude names? Maybe less so.

That was my view, though. And what I liked was that the game didn’t break down all these options as right or wrong, as good or bad, or as benevolent or evil. I just chose what I wanted to do with my limited time.

But there will be consequences. Speaking with a few others who played out this same section, it was interesting to hear what different outcomes were possible in the nighttime mass that serves as a pivotal moment in the prologue, with events unfolding differently and characters living or dying depending on earlier choices.

Naturally, at this early stage, you’re still being funnelled towards the same kick-off point for the main story, but it’s good to see that the quests you complete and the decisions you make are reflected right from the very start.

The challenge Rebel Wolves faces is carrying this choice system into a much larger and wider sandbox where events aren’t quite so focused.

And while I did get a chance to see what awaits beyond the game’s introduction, it was only a very small glimpse. What it promises right from the word go, though, is more choice.

Cut the head off the serpent

Somewhat similar to Shadow of Mordor’s excellent Nemesis system, Brencis and his lieutenants assert their control over different areas of the kingdom. It’s up to you to undertake various quests or participate in several different events to reduce their influence over a region and make rescuing your family easier — be that disrupting supplies, reducing their forces, and so on.

Obviously, they won’t stand idly by as you destabilize their rule. As you start to become more of a disruptive menace, they’ll enact edicts that will make it harder for you to continue your fight back, with more defenses or tougher enemies to stand in your way. But you’ll be gaining more power all of the time, too.

Another major part of The Blood of Dawnwalker is that Coen has two forms. During the day, he’s your fairly average RPG protagonist with some sword skills and a bit of hex magic. At night, he goes half-vampire mode, gaining clawed hands, surprising agility and a taste for blood.

While the game’s directional combat is the one throughline, it does feel different to fight or impact how you choose to tackle certain situations depending on whether it’s day or night.

In the darkness, I might choose to scale a wall in secret and try to take out guards from the shadows. During the day, conversation might be the better approach to explore an area and avoid combat.

Fighting fang and claw

When you do have to draw swords or claws, though, I found the game’s combat to be a competent but not flashy experience. The main gimmick is that small indicators on opponents tell you which direction they will attack from, so you can block, or when you need to dodge more powerful attacks.

Simple enough at first and not unlike many similar systems I’ve seen before, but with a few early upgrades, you elevate it a little beyond basic swordplay. There are perfect parries that reduce the stamina cost if you block right before an attack lands, which can also allow for powerful counterattacks when you swing in specific directions.

Mix in a few spells and some brutal vampiric powers and you have a combat system that’s fun enough to play but not something I found to be the main draw of The Blood of Dawnwalker. Maybe once there’s time to dive into the skill trees, find some good equipment, and get into more testing battles, it’ll open up more. In any case, it certainly hasn’t done anything to dramatically put me off the game.

I came away from these opening hours exactly how you want to feel after an introduction to a brand new game. I’m drawn into its choice-heavy storytelling, intrigued by how the constant timer will affect how events unfold and suitably teased by some of the exciting possibilities that await in the game’s open world.

Hopefully, the full game can raise the stakes even further and deliver on this promising start.

• Amid backlash surrounding plans to end physical game disc production, Sony is trying to advertise its new PlayStation fight stick
• The company has remained quiet amid fan pushback since announcing its plans
• Fans appear outraged by Sony's lack of response

PlayStation has just posted online for the first time since announcing its plans to end physical game disc production, but instead of addressing the elephant in the room, the company is trying to advertise its new fight stick.

From January 2028 onwards physical PlayStation discs will no longer be produced, and let's just say the reaction to the announcement has sparked overwhelming backlash.

While fans continue to urge the company to backtrack on its decision online, including creating a petition that has amassed over 170,000 signatures, PlayStation has remained noticeably quiet on the issue. But finally, after six days of silence, it looks like it's finally shared a new social media post.

Is it a statement addressing the issue? A response explaining its stance further? No. It's an advertisement for its new FlexStrike wireless fight stick.

As of writing, the post has been up for one hour, has over 4.5million views, and has received massive pushback, with fans flooding the replies to accuse PlayStation of ignoring them.

"Sony is completely ignoring the huge backlash for the killing physical media and ownership," one fan said. "Don't let them get away with it. Voice your disgust under every post they put out until they change course."

Another wrote, "No way THIS is the first tweet PlayStation puts out after 6 days," as another joked, "I don’t understand. This a physical product? How do I download it?"

The thread is also full of fans showing how much they care about physical media, with some proudly showing off their collections, others declaring they won't buy another console again, and of course, plenty of memes about the situation.

We'll have to wait and see if PlayStation eventually caves to the pressure, but for now, Sony's plan to stop manufacturing physical media is still going ahead.

• Sony has announced that it's ending physical PlayStation game disc production in 2028
• Fans are protesting the decision and have created a petition to urge Sony to change its mind
• It now has over 170,000 signatures

PlayStation fans have created a petition in a bid to urge Sony to reverse its decision to end physical game disc production from January 2028, and it's already reached over 170,000 signatures.

"On July 1, 2026, Sony announced it will end production of physical discs for all new PlayStation games starting January 2028," the 'Don't Kill the Disc' Change.org petition reads. "New games will be sold digitally, or as a box containing only a download code, with no disc inside."

The petition, created by the CEO of Canadian retailer PNP Games, also points out that days earlier, it was confirmed that Grand Theft Auto 6 physical editions will launch with no disc, but a digital download code instead, which many fans are disappointed with.

"When the market leader ends the disc, the rest of the industry follows," the statement continues. A disc is a real game you own. You can lend it, trade it, resell it, gift it, collect it, or pass it down to your kids. A box with only a download code is not the same thing. It is a digital license in plastic packaging. You do not own it. You are renting access that can be revoked, and people have already had purchased movies deleted from their libraries and games pulled from sale weeks after launch."

With a lack of physical games to sell in in-store retailers, there's also the risk of job losses and a weaker local economy, the creator added, and stressed that they're not against digital, but against digital being the only option.

As of writing, the petition has 172,204 signatures, and number which is growing by the minute, and many fans are being vocal about their disdain for Sony's decision.

"Physical media is what makes consoles the best place to play modern AAA games," one petitioner said. "It's the only decentralized local DRM solution that is both acceptable for publishers and provides sufficient ownership and user control to satisfy both sides. It is crucial for physical media to survive until digital ownership is sufficiently solved. My 30-year streak of supporting PlayStation depends on this decision. Don't betray your most loyal long-time customers Sony.

Another comment reads: "I've been a gamer on the PlayStation platform since the PS1 days, and many of my favorite games have been on PlayStation systems, whether as exclusives or simply a preferred platform. However, I'm a physical media gamer, and I refuse to support any gaming company that tells me I don't have the option to own physical media. I hope Sony will reverse this decision, but if not, then they will cease to get business from me after January 2028."

There are plenty more comments to cycle through, but while fans are voicing their concerns, Sony is notably quiet on the matter.

After posting the announcement, the company hasn't yet shared a statement in response to the outcry, so it remains to be seen if the PlayStation maker will cave under pressure.

• Xbox has shared plans to cut thousands of jobs as part of a restructuring initiative
• Several studios are also looking for new homes, while others are going independent
• The fate of Arkane Studios is undecided, but I'm desperately hoping it can be saved

If you missed the crushing news, Xbox has announced a major restructuring that includes job cuts for a total of 3,200 workers, as well as plans to ditch four studios as part of what CEO Asha Sharma is calling a "reset" of the gaming giant.

Those studios include Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions, which are going independent once more, while Senua and State of Decay 3 creators, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs, find new ownership.

The fate of other Microsoft-owned developers also hangs in the balance, namely Arkane Studios, which is "beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options," but due to French labor laws, the process of what happens to the beloved studio will be a longer one, meaning the outcome is unknown.

Following Sharma's lengthy restructuring announcement, Arkane Studios founder Raphaël Colantonio asked the CEO, "Regarding Arkane... how much? I'm asking for a friend."

While the post seems to be a joke, many fans are eager to see Arkane and its projects in the hands of a company other than Xbox, with Colantonio, who now runs WolfEye Studios as of 2019, being a top contender.

"Please do it -- Xbox and this incompetent leadership will absolutely destroy Arkane, try your best to save what's left of it," one fan said, while another replied, "I speak for the entirety of the fan community when I say we would support any sort of crowdfunding needed to help make this happen."

I'm inclined to agree with the masses because the result of Arkane going defunct would be another huge blow to the industry that absolutely needs to be avoided.

The Lyon, France-based developer is a one-of-a-kind studio that has produced some of the most memorable first-person action-adventure games ever. Chief among them is Dishonored, a rare gem and one of the best stealth titles you can play right now.

It's the sequel, Dishonored 2, that really made me fall in love with the studio back in 2016. While the sequel didn't perform nearly as well as its predecessor, it's by far one of the most underrated games of the 2010s and somehow managed to raise the bar even higher in terms of world-building and intricate level design.

It's a choose-your-own adventure that still comes to mind today when discussing my favorite gaming experiences of all time, thanks to its meticulously built world, exhilarating stealth combat, and incredible layers of environmental storytelling. Dare I say, Dishonored 2 is even better than the first game...

Then there's Prey, another game that didn't quite soar to popularity, but is another example of Arkane's ability to create stylish and intelligent worlds that feel totally unique and will stick with you longer after you've rolled credits.

The studio is currently making Marvel's Blade, though development updates have been few since its announcement in December 2023. It's a win-win situation for someone like me who is a huge Marvel and Arkane fan, and I'm eager to see what's in store; if the teaser trailer is anything to go by, it will certainly look as beautifully stylized as every other title from the studio, but I'm afraid of the outcome under Microsoft's ownership.

Given other recent events, namely the cancellation of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, acclaimed developer of Hi-Fi Rush, Tango Gameworks, which has thankfully now been acquired by Krafton, the closure of Redfall studio Arkane Austin, and not to mention the seemingly never-ending layoffs that have impacted Xbox since the start of the year, it feels inevitable that Arkane Studios will be hit next, but I'm holding out hope for a spin off instead.

If Arkane Studios wants to stay afloat in an environment that seems to be falling apart at the seams, Xbox should do the right thing and cut a deal with whoever is willing to buy and set the developer loose before it's too late.

• Xbox has announced that it is undergoing a "significant restructure"
• This will include the loss of 3,200 jobs over the fiscal year
• This includes 1,600 job losses today

Microsoft has announced that Xbox is to undergo the "most significant restructure" in the brand's history, with 1,600 jobs being cut today, for a total 3,200 jobs going over the coming months including four studios being jettisoned.

In another crushing blow for the people who make the games we love, these layoffs were strongly rumored to be coming this week — the sheer scale was unknown but predicted to be big. It turns out that was true.

In an email sent to Xbox employees that has now been made public via Xbox Wire, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma began by saying, "After careful consideration, I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our team by approximately 3,200 throughout FY27. This will include approximately 1,600 role eliminations today, and in addition, four studios will leave Xbox to new management."

Sharma added: "Our business today is not healthy. We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses. We entered Gen 9 with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected."

As well as the total of 3,200 jobs going this fiscal year, four studios are also affected. Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions are returning to being independent studios, while Ninja Theory and Undead Labs will gain new ownership with funding to complete their upcoming games, Senua and State of Decay 3.

Arkane — a studio many feared for in the run-up to this restructuring — is "beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options."

In a series of moves over the past decade or so, which has seen Microsoft acquire multiple studios, spend billions and billions of dollars, and make some curious decisions about Game Pass, prices, and more — all to take the brand from third in the console space to, well, third — this kind of feels like the bubble bursting before our very eyes. And the people who will pay the price will be the developers who make the games we all love playing.

• Hideo Kojima has spoken about the end of physical PlayStation discs at a festival
• He said he is "very sad" about the announcement and worries about what it means for ownership
• He warns that we might be heading towards a streaming future: "Some company will own the server and say, 'You can turn on the tap for a certain amount of money each month.'"

Celebrity video game designer Hideo Kojima has revealed that he is "very sad" about the recent news that Sony plans to discontinue the production of physical PlayStation game discs in January 2028.

Speaking at the Il Cinema in Piazza festival in Rome, Italy (remarks that we have machine translated), he said "I'm very sad about it, because I grew up with physical media" and mentioned that he is currently collecting Blu-ray discs and DVDs.

"Games are a little different because you download them to your hard drive, so the data remains on your hardware," he continued. "However, if games move towards streaming in the future, that will also disappear. It's like streaming subscriptions for movies. Like Netflix or Amazon, there's a server somewhere, and you only have the right to turn on the tap. When you turn it on, the data on the server comes out."

He fears that in the future many forms of media will only be accessible via subscription services "from the start" leaving us with no option other than to pay a monthly fee in order to access our favorite titles.

"If that happens, what will happen is that I won't own the data," he says. "Some company will own the server and say, 'You can turn on the tap for a certain amount of money each month,' [...] and it's certainly conceivable that the data will stop being distributed."

"When that happens, I won't be able to watch my favorite movies or play my favorite games, and that's what's scary."

The comments come as fans continue to grapple with the announcement, which has resulted in widespread backlash, though it seems unlikely that Sony will backtrack on the decision as the historic PlayStation factory that manufactured 24 billion gaming discs is already being turned into a micro-optics lab as production winds down.

As someone who loved Batman: Arkham Asylum back when it originally launched, it might surprise you that I never got around to playing Arkham City or Arkham Knight until very recently. Despite all the hype for Arkham City that you still read online, it was Knight that genuinely wowed me. It's a near-perfect Batman game, and believe me, that near is carrying a lot of weight.

Playing Arkham Knight is like being given a key to the DC vaults in game form. The cast is deeper and richer than a chocolate layer cake, with villains ranging from the Joker (somehow returning) to Firefly, all getting their moment in the sun.

Over the course of the many hours that you'll spend in Gotham, you'll fight all of them to some degree, and learn about their particular plans, foibles, and personalities through radio broadcasts aimed at riling up the Bat.

I'm like a bat, I always fly away

And what a joy it is to spend time in this depiction of Gotham. It's split across three large islands, each about as big as the entire Arkham City map, and you're given some fantastic traversal mechanics to help make your journeys easier. Chief among these is the Grapnel Boost, upgraded from its debut in City to make launching off platforms a way to gain significant altitude very quickly.

Then you have the Batmobile, which is, in my view, unfairly maligned. It's fine, as it goes, even if the vehicle handling is far from perfect, and it's also largely secondary to most of your traversal. When you do need it for a puzzle or a mission, it's easy to summon and then easily dismissed. Even the car combat, which many seem to hate, didn't bother me.

Sure, it's not as fun as the hand-to-hand stuff, not by a long shot, but it's a means to an end and never overstays its welcome.

There is one particularly sticky sticking point, however. One thing that almost ruins the game and that's the Riddler challenges, and how the game integrates them into the plot.

Everyone's least favourite genius has an entire mission tree dedicated to him, which is actually pretty fun. He's captured Catwoman, and you need to solve a series of challenges to set her free. Do so, and the mission is over, and you can hand him over to the authorities, right? Nah. Not by a long way.

The game seems to think that you'll love the Riddler challenges so much that just doing the 10 trials to free Catwoman won't be enough. If you want to clap the Riddler in irons, you'll need to find every Riddler trophy, solve all of his riddles, destroy every breakable object, and save every rioter who had a bomb implanted in his brain by the Riddler. That sounds ridiculous, but doable. Let me explain why it's not: there are so many of these. There are 243 challenges in total.

None of them are particularly difficult by themselves, but I didn't save Catwoman until I was close to the end of the game, and had found about 10 Riddler trophies and saved one bomb rioter. As I looked at the scope of the challenge ahead of me, the sheer time that it would take me to complete all of them, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. This game has just singlehandedly ensured that there is a boss fight that I will never see. I will never fight the Riddler mano-a-mano, and I'm quite okay with that, valuing my time more than a fight that many hail as a series highlight.

If only it ended there. I'd be fine missing a snippet of content, but no, it's worse than that. If you want to see the true ending of the game, the game that you've likely put 40-50 hours into by this point, you'll need to pony up a bunch more hours and complete all of the Riddler challenges. That's right: if you want to see all those hours converted into a narratively satisfying ending, you need to go on a hidden object hunt across the length and breadth of the map.

Or, you could do what I did, and just watch the true ending on YouTube and save yourself a lot of time.

Knight and day

It's a real shame that the game's decided to lock up its ending behind such a convoluted set of tasks that aren't even very fun to do. The riddles are tolerable, but not stellar, while the Trophies are just a collectible with a tiny puzzle attached.

It's as though Assassin's Creed Shadows hid the ending away until you'd found every shrine and painted every animal, and it is patently absurd. It's a far more serious sin than giving you vehicle combat that, while fairly tedious, never lasts that long.

None of this detracts enough from the otherwise towering highs of Arkham Knight. It's a brilliant game with the best traversal and combat mechanics in the entire series. It trades the tight, claustrophobic (and coulrophobic) spaces of Asylum for a sweeping open world that is packed with villains, without landing on an unsatisfying halfway house as City did. It's got a great big bad, a wonderfully diverse set of environments, several playable characters, and is now cheap as chips. I had a huge heaping helping of fun with it.

So please, play Arkham Knight if you've not already, as you're in for a treat. Just don't try to go for the true ending if you value your sanity. Savor the gameplay, then open up YouTube.

This week we saw the return of Anthropic’s Fable, and PlayStation set the gaming world ablaze by announcing the end of physical discs for its consoles in 2028.

To catch up on these two mega stories and several more scroll down to read our recaps of the biggest tech news stories from the past seven days. You’ll find links to the longer original stories under each entry if you need to know more — and for a longer look back at the last six months, you can also check out our guide to the best tech of 2026 so far.

Before you catch up with this week’s tech news, why not test yourself on last week’s seven biggest tech stories to see how good your memory is? Take the quiz below, or scroll on for the biggest tech news of the week...

7. Tidal hit back at AI-made music

Tired of music made by text-prompt infiltrating your recommended feeds? You're in fine company; it seems the tide is finally turning on AI-generated audio.

This week, in what must be hugely welcome news for recording artists (and their parents, landlords, loved ones, and just lovers of original musical works with human vocals and instruments) hi-res music streaming giant Tidal has drawn a line in the sand.

The platform published a new comprehensive AI policy with the strapline "Promoting Fairness and Economic Empowerment in the Era of AI-Generated Music". The key bit is that as well as working with what the platform told TechRadar is “an external partner to manage detection”, the site will also be excluding wholly AI-generated music from all royalty payments.

The news follows huge strides in this area made by Deezer, with its free AI-detection tool that works on any streaming platform, Bandcamp's strong and concise anti-AI stance set out in January, Qobuz’s announcement of a proprietary AI-detection system in February, Apple Music’s March-issue 'Transparency Tags' (which unfortunately rely on record labels and distributors to tag AI content), and Spotify's… er, Verified by Spotify badge, which certifies that an artist is human, but doesn't help filter the remaining AI slop from your playlists.

All of this makes Tidal's stance, while not before time, particularly firm.

• Read more: 100% AI-generated tracks won’t earn royalties on Tidal

6. Netflix got another hated account update

A handful of Netflix users have noticed a new in-app pop-up that requires each member in a shared account to add individual email addresses to their individual profiles, instead of using the account owner’s email address as the primary one. One of the most jarring parts about it is that the pop-up doesn’t clear unless the request is fulfilled.

Netflix households accounts have always been built on the traditional 'one email, one password’ foundation, but why Netflix has decided to roll out yet another crackdown is the question that everyone is asking.

Though Netflix says it’s to make room for more convenient log-ins and more personalized recommendations, users believe it will give the streaming giant another way to better distinguish between the activity of individual profiles, or even shift them to individual accounts later down the line.

Netflix said that the rollout began on June 15, we imagine a global rollout is in the way.

• Read more: Netflix subscribers are furious at the platform’s latest update

5. We ran with the Garmin Forerunner 70

We’ve taken this new Garmin running watch for a spin. While it offers some clear upgrades over the Forerunner 55 that came before it, these enhancements come at a cost ($249.99 / £219.99 / AU$399) which makes this gadget less budget or entry level and more mid-range.

The trouble isn’t with this smart watch specifically. In fact, with new training and smartwatch features, a vibrant AMOLED display, and with solid compatibility across Android and iOS the watch is pretty solid. What we’re concerned about with the Forerunner 70 is that at this price (or for only a handful of bucks more) you can snatch up watches from rival brands that boast richer features and newer hardware.

At four stars it’s definitely good, but if you’re after the best, or even simply the best at this price point, the Garmin Forerunner 70 might not be it.

• Read our full Garmin Forerunner 70 review

4. The Steam Machine sold out in Japan

The upcoming Valve gaming PC-console hybrid has launched and the reality is it’s a pretty terrible deal on the face of it — though that hasn’t stopped it from selling out in Japan, and from scalpers asking for ridiculous prices for their reservation spot (allowing people a better chance at snagging the device).

Instead of battling with preorder disappointment, or the high costs of the proper machine, some have looked to alternatives but you’ll need to be careful. For every Stim Machine which presents itself as a sensible alternative (with some admittable downsides) there’s a flurry of cheap alternatives propping online that are frankly too good to be true.

Boasting components that wouldn’t actually fit inside the pictured chassis, a combination of parts that wouldn’t function together, and the plethora of never before seen companies proposing Steam Machine alternatives at impossibly cheap rates hints that a majority of these options are likely some kind of scam.

• Read more: The Steam Machine is overpriced — but be careful about buying a cheap clone

3. Anthropic’s Fable 5 was allowed to release

Anthropic’s Fable 5, the public version of its Mythos model, is returning after the US government lifted export controls that had forced the company to suspend access to it, and Mythos 5, earlier in June. The models were pulled after officials raised national security concerns linked to a possible jailbreak, a method of bypassing an AI model’s safety restrictions.

Anthropic pushed back strongly, saying it believed the issue was “a misunderstanding” and arguing that it had not been shown evidence of a broad or universal jailbreak. The company said governments should be able to block unsafe AI deployments, but only through a process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts.

The return of Fable 5 matters because it shows how frontier AI launches may increasingly be shaped by governments, not just tech companies. Powerful models can now be launched, restricted, negotiated over, and restored within weeks.

• Read more: Anthropic’s Fable 5 is back after US shutdown it called 'a misunderstanding'

2. WhatsApp debuted usernames

WhatsApp has revolutionized its platform this week by introducing usernames — allowing you to build your contact information without sharing your phone number. They won’t take over completely for a while but folks are already reserving their username so that they’re ready for when the update goes live fully.

While many are fairly positive about the change, many fear this could increase the presence of cybercrime fraud and scams as bad actors reserve and use names that attempt to mimic politicians, celebrities, and businesses. This issue isn’t new to social media, but given the more direct nature of WhatsApp, and that businesses do use the platform to chat with customers, potential scams could have an easier time.

WhatsApp has hit back against this saying “only the legitimate account owners are able to reserve well-known public-figure names" however it’s unclear if, with enough imagination, people will find ways to reserve names that the Meta-owned platform hasn’t been able to account for.

• Read more: WhatsApp should freeze username rollout as it could ‘increase cybercrimes’, says India

1. PlayStation killed physical games

Just days after Grand Theft A 6 pre-orders opened with purely digital versions and code-in-a-box releases, PlayStation rocked the gaming world this week by announcing it is ending all releases of new PlayStation games on physical discs from January 2028. It also comes just days after Sony deleted select films from users' accounts that were bought digitally, and offered no compensation.

Claiming that the move “will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today,” Sony looks to be reflecting recent statistics which show the vast majority of game purchases are indeed digital.

The move has not gone down well with fans, gamers, and the wider industry, as it likely paves the way for an all-digital future, and possibly a critical, maybe terminal blow to the second-hand game market, the ability to share games with others, and from a game preservation perspective

It also means that the PS6 will likely be all-digital by default — perhaps with an optional disc drive — and won’t release until 2028 at the earliest. With rumours that Xbox could follow suit with its next-generation console, the future looks increasingly digital, and game collectors such as ourselves are deeply worried and sad about it.

• Read more: In a huge blow to game ownership, PlayStation confirms end of physical games — mere days after GTA 6's disc-less pre-orders

• Rockstar Games has been accused of enabling crunch conditions through employee contracts
• Union members say there is a lack of transparency around pay and bonuses at the Grand Theft 6 studio
• The union accuses the studio of scrapping initiatives aimed at addressing gender-based pay inequity

Grand Theft Auto 6 studio and industry giant Rockstar Games has been accused of unfair working conditions that include enabling crunch culture, failing to address gender-based pay inequity, and weaponizing bonuses.

Three members of the Rockstar Game Workers Union (RGWU) spoke to Game Developer in a huge interview - though they wished to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisals - and claimed that the studio attempts to normalize crunch.

"Crunch is prevalent enough that the company built into our contracts, as standard, an opt out of the Working Time Regulations that stops your employer being able to ask you to do more than about 10 hours extra each week," one source explained, referring to the UK protection that can be voluntarily relinquished by employees.

"The union successfully ran a campaign to inform people they could opt back in to the regulations at any time, which resulted in Rockstar management simplifying the process and removing the obligation to meet with HR," the source added.

"Part of the problem with crunch is that there is not an agreed definition, and now it seems the company thinks that offering specific and limited compensation as an incentive for overtime means it no longer qualifies as crunch."

While some teams at Rockstar never crunch, it's claimed that there are also departments that "seem to never get out of it — and often colleagues do not realize the opposite group exists."

The interview also includes claims that workers were forced to return to the office and relinquish hybrid or remote work benefits, a mandate which allegedly didn't apply to company leaders, and there is a lack of transparency around pay and bonuses.

A "considerable portion" of most employees' compensation packages comes in the form of bonuses that fluctuate, often without obvious justification. It's claimed that the compensation workers receive falls below the market rate when compared to adjacent industry work, with one source saying, "When the bonus is particularly good, it can be a windfall, but often the bonus is disappointing and one can end up being paid considerably less than expected for the year.

"The reasoning given for this is often nebulous, inconsistent between departments, even inconsistent between team members within the same department, and sometimes hinges on completely subjective or retroactive criticisms."

It's said promotions are also hard to secure at the studio because Rockstar regularly shifts the goalposts when career progression is discussed.

"The main problem is that [bonuses and progression are] all completely discretionary for the company, and they are under no obligation to show their working," the source added. "Employees want good pay, and if literally anything they do that year could affect it, they will naturally feel they have to be as pliable as possible to their boss's whims. Imagine [how you might feel if] a fifth of your salary could be withheld without any justification or based on a single surprise factor."

Gender-based pay inequity is another issue that the union members discussed, informing Game Developer that the gap between median wages for different genders has widened at Rockstar and that initiatives aimed to address that imbalance have been scrapped.

Union workers say all these issues have created a sense of imbalance and injustice at the studio and feel that employees are not adequately compensated for GTA 6, which is set to be the biggest game launch of all time.

A Take-Two Interactive spokesperson provided a statement to Game Developer in response to the claims. It reads: "We strive to make the best games possible by giving our talented teams world-class work environments and ongoing career opportunities. We have fostered a culture which is focused on teamwork, excellence, and kindness, and where we support and reward the team across all levels of the business through competitive compensation and benefits policies.

"We are proud that as a result, our employee retention is well above the industry standard. We have received a request from a union seeking to discuss voluntary recognition. We value an open and constructive dialogue with all stakeholders and will arrange to meet."

• Sony is already repurposing its Austrian disc-making factory
• It's the only physical media plant of Sony's that's left
• Existing staff will be retained to work with micro optics

We're still reeling from Sony's announcement earlier this week that it will stop releasing PlayStation games on physical discs from the start of 2028 — and now there's news that Sony's last remaining physical media factory is already being repurposed.

According to ORF Salzburg (via The Verge and Google Translate), production at the Austrian plant is going to drop to around 10% of its current levels by 2028. The factory currently makes 600,000 blank Blu-rays every day (half of which are used for PlayStation games), and Sony has made some 26.4 billion discs in total across its sites.

The existing 300 staff are going to be kept on though, as per Dietmar Tanzer, CEO of Sony DADC (Digital Audio Disc Corporation). They'll be retrained in micro optics — squeezing optical components into the smallest spaces possible.

Instead of discs, the plant's assembly lines will be producing optical microlenses instead. One of the uses of these elements mentioned in the report is for projecting car turning signals on to the street surface, but there are a multitude of potential applications.

'We own nothing now'

The report also quotes Markus Streibl, head of Micro Optics at Sony DADC, who says that the company recently invested €30 million (about $34 million / £26 million / AU$49 million) in the tech as it looks to develop this part of its business.

As spotted by The Verge, there's evidence that the plant in Austria has been making microlenses since at least as far back as 2024. These small components are actually produced on discs, so there'll be some crossover in terms of equipment and processes.

While Sony seems immediately ready to move on and look to the future, many of us are having a less easy time moving on: gamers are promising to quit the PlayStation platform over concerns about what these means for game ownership ("we literally own nothing now" was a comment left by one disgruntled user).

The news has tempered some of the excitement around the opening up of GTA 6 pre-orders, and it also means the PlayStation 6 is highly unlikely to have a disc drive built in. Sony has also announced the closure of the PS3 and Vita stores at the same time.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is utter joy in racing game form, and its depth, run-based structure, and deep vehicle customization options are going to keep me occupied for hours on end.

It was the game that made me grin from ear to ear the quickest out of all that I saw at Summer Game Fest 2026, and I am so excited for it. As soon as I took control of a racer and was on the starting grid, I was immediately smiling, and soon after, laughing to (or at?) myself — it really was that quick.

Blending some really excellent Burnout-style racing game features, with a level of depth and customisation that can get frankly mind-boggling, with the excellence that is Star Wars lore and settings, it has all the ingredients to be a hit this year.

Feel the burn

At the core of Galactic Racer is its Burnout-inspired racing experience, and let me tell you, this is fantastic.

The racers, be they landspeeders, speeder bikes, or podracers, on offer all have their own style, way of handling, and moves to master, and the team at developer Fuse Games has even added a brand-new vehicle to the roster — a whole new addition to the Star Wars universe — the Skim speeder.

Races feel intense and can get very enjoyable and chaotic very quickly. Collisions are not only a danger to you but can be of great benefit, allowing you to muscle your way through for track position or remove them from the equation entirely, so there’s always a balance to be had between taking evasive action or just going on the charge to create havoc.

The courses I tried were absurdly fun too, full of different routes to take, and plenty of opportunity for overtakes or other ways to try and gain an advantage over your competitors, crashing into your foes, and deploying skills. From inputting a series of button presses to get a bonus off the starting grid, which is a satisfying mini-game, to perhaps what is one of the best in-race features of slow-mo crashes of one of your foes — or yourself, which is amusing every time — each race is filled with moments of fun and a high overall level of sheer excitement.

It’s also incredibly beautifully realized, both on the track and off it: characters and cars look excellent, and the environments and race tracks, even though they’re passing at a high speed, are wonderfully detailed and evoke the style of Star Wars’ planets brilliantly.

The options are endless

Where Star Wars: Galactic Racer offers depth, however, is in, well, everywhere else: from in-race synergies between your vehicle and the environment, to the narrative, and to the amount of customisation and part combinations you can engage with, the game looks to be as deep as a Sarlacc is long.

The story here is about your racer’s rise through the ranks and is implemented in a runs-based, branching way where you pick the route of your races that are the map of your and the story’s progress. You can pick a route that’s higher risk-reward, or pick something safer to progress.

When it comes to how you can build, craft, augment, and customize your racer, we get into some serious depth. I was told by the devs at SGF that they think there are a number of vehicle part combinations that are in the order of ‘trillions’ in the game simply due to how many different things you can combine with other different things, from durability to boosts, from handling to abilities.

This gets further augmented by the fact that you can build specific racers for specific worlds, tracks, and conditions. Need a racer that won’t get slowed down by water? Check. Want to sacrifice durability to perhaps invest in a build which runs extremely hot for speed, but then rely on a racetrack’s water courses to cool it down? Absolutely.

The synergies between a racer’s parts and between a racer and the environments make the build possibilities seemingly endless.

As a result, Star Wars: Galactic Racer has shot up my list of anticipated games for the rest of the year, and I can’t wait for lights out when the game releases on October 6 this year, on PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC to dive further into everything it offers.

• Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden says Sony's decision to scrap physical discs is "fairly dramatic"
• Layden recalls a time when digital sales "were zero percent" because Sony didn't have a market
• He believes the move will also mean the PS6 won't have a disc drive

Former PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss Shawn Layden has shared his opinion on Sony's decision to stop producing physical discs and its plan to move all-digital, calling it "a fairly dramatic decision."

Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer following the bombshell news, the PlayStation veteran of 32 years confirmed that he had "no idea it was going to happen and "don't necessarily agree with it."

As for why he thinks Sony has made the decision, he suggested, "Maybe it's just too prohibitively expensive to stamp out discs," but believes that any big move to discontinue a product, feature, or model is "largely" a "straight spreadsheet [decision]."

"What are disc sales compared to digital sales? And I'm old enough to remember when digital sales were like 10 percent - I'm old enough to remember when digital sales were zero percent because we didn't have a digital market! And that number just grew over time," Layden said.

The ex-PlayStation leader suggested the COVID pandemic played a role in accelerating the purchase and consumption of digital games over physical, and believes that Sony's decision could mean the PS6 won't have a disc drive.

Analysts have also determined that the next-gen PS6 console will launch in late 2028 and won't have a disc drive, or at the very least, one will be sold separately "to play older PS4 and PS5 games on disc."

In fact, Layden revealed that ditching the PlayStation's disc drive was something the company considered for a year while he worked there.

"I've been asked this question every year for the last 20 years. 'When are you guys going to just give up on the disc drive?' My feeling with that was always: well, when I get to a place where I'm comfortable enough to believe that worldwide, broadband throughput is good enough to support that download experience, good enough to reach the majority of customers," Layden said.

He clarified, "Majority does not mean entirety, so there is a point, a tipping point, where if I have 80 percent of the opportunity, which represents 95 percent of the revenue source, what's my incentive to keep the lights on for the other 20 percent if it's effectively only 5 percent of the business? See what I'm saying? At some point, it just becomes obvious that we can't keep this whole thing running just for this very small slice of opportunity."

While Layden admits that Sony had always been "pretty good" at determining the risk of overestimating regional internet infrastructure, "because unlike Xbox, PlayStation had a wider global fanbase, and not just in the numbers, but in the reach, because Sony Corp had reach all over the world," there are also players who do not have access to the internet, such as people in military bases.

"The idea that they could still buy a PlayStation 4 game, throw it in a machine, and play was important. You don't want to leave those people behind," Layden said.

"I don't know what went on in those conversations, but it's a fairly dramatic decision."

As Sony plans to scrap physical discs, there are also concerns about the inability to resell games or buy them second-hand in the future, which Layden said "used to be a huge factor" in the business, but the rise of digital games "kind of quashed that used-game business, and made it hard for folks who were making a nickel in the secondary market by selling them."

However, he doesn't necessarily believe this drove Sony's decision because it's been happening over time, but thinks "we've reached some kind of homeostasis where it's in a weird sort of balance."

"Second-hand gaming still occurs, obviously, but it's not material anymore to the business to worry about, I think," Layden added.

Following Sony's announcement, new reports claimed that the company is testing a disc-to-digital feature for existing consoles and could also release a next-gen Project Helix console without a disc drive.

While there's no telling whether Microsoft plans to follow Sony's all-digital business practice later on, Layden believes the huge decision could influence other companies, including Microsoft and Nintendo, to follow suit.

"Certainly, this is an industry where if one company, particularly the leader of the industry, makes a decision of this magnitude, that's going to heavily influence what the other ones do," he said.

• Sony plans to stop producing physical discs by January 2026
• The announced has spawned an overwhelmingly negative reaction from many PlayStation fans
• Many are concerned about what this means for game ownership and the PS6 era

Sony has announced that it plans to stop producing physical discs by 2028, delivering a huge blow to the concept of game ownership, and the reaction from PlayStation fans seems to be overwhelmingly negative.

The company shared the bombshell news in a PlayStation Blog post, and as of writing, it has over 6,645 comments. The majority of responses are calling for Sony to reverse the decision and arguing that they won't technically own any digital game they purchase come January 2028.

"We literally own nothing now but licenses this is a horrible decision Sony," one user wrote, as another said, "I’m gonna be honest, I will quit buying games. I hope I’m not the only one seeing this trend license purchasing vs game purchasing and it is disturbing that you are ok with this. Or worse, you have many of us convinced it’s OK."

There are also concerns about the lack of options regarding purchasing second-hand games in the future, as well as being unable to resell or trade their titles later on.

Some fans are also considering skipping the PS6 generation altogether if physical discs aren't on the table, with others vowing the PS5 will be their last PlayStation console.

"Looks like this is where my journey ends with PlayStation then, goodbye," commented one fan.

"Well if you want people to stop buying new game systems, this is a choice I guess," a commenter wrote. "But this will mean I will never buy another Playstation as the way digital purchases are handled have shown me that it is a risk to pay a single penny for a digital game as one glitch on Sony’s part can get your account banned, and make you lose out on every digital purchase you have ever made."

Another said: "This is a terrible decision. As a long time PlayStation customer, this will cause me to re-evaluate my console choice for the next generation. Digital-only is not in the best interest of the consumer, and it’s something I am not interested in.

"This, along with the decision to proceed with releasing a “PS6” at a time when components are at record prices, is making this hobby unaffordable for many. You risk killing the industry with these short-sighted decisions rooted in greed."

Following the announcement, analysts have determined that Sony's decision telegraphs that the next-gen PS6 console will launch in late 2028 and "at a minimum" won't feature a disc drive, but an add-on disc drive could be available to play older PS4 and PS5 games

It seems that Microsoft is following a similar all-digital business plan, as new reports have claimed that the company is testing a disc-to-digital feature for existing consoles and could also release a next-gen Project Helix console without a disc drive.

Gaming has officially reached its worst state in decades after PlayStation announced it will ditch game discs for PlayStation consoles starting in 2028.

It comes very shortly after Rockstar Games and its most anticipated game, arguably of all time, GTA 6, opened pre-orders.

Why is that relevant, you may ask? Well, in case you've missed it, there will be no discs available for 'physical' copies of GTA 6. Essentially, buying the highly anticipated game digitally or the physical edition at retailers means you won't have a hard copy of the game, as the latter comes with a code in a box.

Frankly, it's a reach to even suggest that GTA 6 has a physical edition at all, as a code in a game case definitely isn't a physical copy — and that's what makes things even more ridiculous.

Rumors recently suggested that there would never be any disc of GTA 6, and after PlayStation's disastrous announcement, it's safe to say that those rumors are accurate. We're not focusing exclusively on GTA 6 here, but if you're wondering what the future of gaming will look like from 2028 and beyond, GTA 6 is the example.

The PlayStation 'monopoly-like' behaviour begins

To put it simply, that example of GTA 6 means that all of the games purchased from the year 2028 and beyond on PlayStation consoles will no longer be owned by consumers, because digital purchases are actually licenses.

That's a huge issue for several reasons. If PlayStation wanted to revoke a user's access to a game, it could do so at any time, which we've recently seen with the removal of over 500 movies from user libraries without refunds. If a user loses their account from an unwarranted ban (or even by being hacked), then their digital purchases are effectively gone for good.

With this in mind, Sony's behaviour feels very monopolistic. Of course, gamers can still choose to buy third-party games on other platforms, but since Sony has reportedly tried to make certain games like Crimson Desert a timed exclusive (reported by Forbes), and it's now cutting off another avenue of purchasing games, it comes across as unfriendly to gamers, even if its moves aren't exactly illegal.

Physical copies have always allowed consumers to buy, resell, or borrow games and get their hands on cheaper copies at retailers, whether brand new or second-hand.

The latter is what gives stores like CeX, Game (in the UK), and GameStop purpose, letting consumers find games that they didn't want to pay full price for at launch, or buy games for retro systems like the PS1 or PS2, since the libraries from those game consoles are severely limited on PS5 (and some are only available via streaming).

Since the PlayStation Store will soon be the only place to buy games on PlayStation consoles, consumers will effectively be forced to pay high prices for most titles — including both PlayStation exclusives and third-party games that have been available for years already.

The examples are clear to see above; GTA 5 is a 2013 game that has received multiple re-releases from PS3 to P55, and somehow still costs $39.99 / £59.99 / AU$89.95. The same applies to Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, a 2022 game, which costs $49.99 / £44.99 / AU$74.95, and the list goes on.

At CeX, GameStop, and multiple other video game retailers, games of their caliber will cost significantly less, without needing a sale or discount to make them affordable for consumers.

That affordability is seemingly what Sony is also trying to eliminate alongside game ownership. Streamlining all PlayStation game purchases to its PlayStation Store ensures you can't find a cheaper deal for a game anywhere else. If that doesn't sound monopolistic, then I don't know what does.

Sure, there will likely still be cheaper options via video game retailers for 'physical' games with a code in a case. However, the fact that discs will no longer exist for games will instantly discourage gamers from opting for those so-called 'physical' editions, since ownership will be out of the equation.

It's always been more expensive to pay for games digitally than it has been to buy them second-hand — especially with constant price increases and few steep discounts — and once second-hand games are gone in 2028, there will be no going back.

To make matters even worse, Sony is also shutting down the PS3 and PS Vita stores in 2027, leaving PS3 and PS Vita owners with no possible way to purchase any of the games on those two platforms.

Announcing such a drastic move at the same time as informing gamers that discs will cease to exist on PlayStation does the exact opposite of instilling faith in consumers that buying digitally is the right move.

When the PS5 or any other future PlayStation console eventually becomes a retro console, Sony may very well do the same thing and close the platform's store. Without discs or hard copies of games, you can essentially kiss them goodbye for good.

The warning signs have been there all along; physical media, specifically within the gaming industry, has seen a steady decline over the years, with publishers and game studios of particular games opting for digital releases, and on some occasions, later releasing physical editions.

As Hideo Kojima, a veteran gaming designer, once said, "eventually, even digital data will no longer be owned by individuals on their own initiative". That reality is now here — and unless gamers stand up to Sony's anti-consumer practices now, it'll be too late once 2028 arrives.

• Sony plans to halt physical game production by January 2028
• Analysts say the announcement telegraphs that the PS6 will arrive in 2028
• It's predicted that the console won't have a disc drive

Following Sony's announcement that it will halt production of physical games within the next two years, analysts have determined that the next-gen PS6 console will launch in 2028.

According to Ampere analyst Piers Harding-Rolls, PlayStation's all-digital plan "telegraphs quite a lot of information about Sony’s plans for its next-generation console, the PlayStation 6," including a release window.

"We believe this almost certainly guarantees that the PS6 won’t arrive until 2028 at the earliest," he predicted, adding that the "current expectation is that the console will launch at the end of 2028."

Harding-Rolls also suggests that "at a minimum," the standard version of the PS6 won't have a physical media disc drive because Sony will be looking for ways to reduce the cost of its next-gen hardware, and "this is an easy win."

"It’s possible that an add-on disc drive could be made available to play older PS4 and PS5 games on disc," the analyst added.

"Removing the drive will upset some gamers that don’t want to pay for an add-on disc drive (if available) and that want to access their game collections on disc. It may be too impractical or too complex, but some process of transferral for older physical media to a digital license could alleviate some of these issues."

Whether the PS6 will be a console like the PS5 is yet to be known; however, recent comments from Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino seem to suggest that the next-generation PlayStation console could be a handheld.

Nishino said, "For the next-generation platform, rather than simply serving as an alternative to PCs, we aim to deliver value that is unique to PlayStation," which would include "technological advancements but also an expansion of usage styles, enabling a seamless experience that can be enjoyed naturally beyond the living room."

New reports have claimed that Microsoft is also moving away from physical media.

It's said that the company is testing a disc-to-digital feature for existing consoles and could release a next-gen Project Helix console without a disc drive.

• The Blood Message trailer shown in the Summer Game Fest 2026 live show was a surprising highlight
• It demonstrated impressive visual fidelity and cinematic combat, which many fans praised in the comments
• Director of global publishing Jeff Hu says the team is "very excited" by the warm reception

For many, Blood Message was a surprising highlight of the Summer Game Fest 2026 live show. Its latest story trailer was extremely visually impressive, showing off a high level of visual fidelity and glimpses of incredibly cinematic combat.

The footage has now racked up more than three million views on the official Blood Message YouTube channel, with an extremely warm reception from fans.

There are hundreds of comments from viewers, with many praising everything from the realistic graphics to the Ancient China setting. "This looks incredible!" wrote one commenter. "Also, love the attention to detail on historical clothing, arms, and armor."

Another added that "If the gameplay graphics and combat are similar to this, it's going to be the game of the generation, period."

One simply put: "This is how I imagined next gen".

The trailer was soon followed by the release of 19 minutes of pure gameplay footage, which is now sitting at over 10 million views on YouTube.

It seems to have left some viewers in awe, with one writing: "The way the camera dynamically adapts to the environment and the flow of combat is unreal! The transitions are so seamless I can't even comprehend how they pulled it off. I’ve literally never seen anything like this before."

In an exclusive interview with TechRadar Gaming, senior director of global publishing Jeff Hu said that the team has been basking in the praise.

"We saw some YouTube reactions," he revealed. "We are very excited to see that they love this story, love our game, and love the combat itself. It gives us a very big confidence [boost]."

We'll have to wait and see whether this confidence is well placed when Blood Message launches on consoles and PC at a later date.

• Xbox is reportedly working on a disc-to-digital feature for existing consoles called 'Positron'
• The feature will allow Xbox users to insert a disc and convert their game to a digital format
• A separate report also claims that Project Helix won't have a disc drive

Like PlayStation, it seems that Xbox is moving away from physical games as new reports claim that Microsoft is testing a disc-to-digital feature for existing consoles and could release a next-gen Project Helix console without a disc drive.

According to The Verge, sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans claim that the company is currently working on a way for Xbox users to digitize their existing physical game library following a reference to "enable Disc2Digital" found in the Xbox PC app code in May.

The new feature, reportedly called 'Positron', will supposedly only work with Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs, not with Xbox 360 or original Xbox consoles. However, some Xbox One discs might not work with this new feature.

"It all depends on how and when the disc was manufactured and it may not have the features we need for this program," Microsoft told its internal Xbox testers.

To convert a physical game to digital, it's said that users would only need to insert a compatible disc, install, and play the game. A Microsoft account on an Xbox console will grant a digital entitlement for physical games, which are tied to a specific disc and can be moved between accounts if users swap the physical game with a friend or log in to a different profile and try to play a disc-based game.

The feature will also work for physical games bundled with a console and multi-disc titles. Players can still use the discs after converting them, but they'll lose their digital entitlement if they loan or sell the disc to someone else.

More information will arrive in the coming months, so it appears to be a feature that could be planned for before the next-gen Xbox console, Project Helix.

Speaking of which, it seems Microsoft is going all in on the digital market by releasing Project Helix without a disc drive, according to Windows Central sources.

No additional details were provided, but it's said that new details about the console will be revealed later this year.

The Xbox reports came after Sony announced that no new PlayStation games will be released on physical disc from January 2028 onwards.

The company shared a post, saying that the decision is "a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs," and will "enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today."

You could easily mistake upcoming action game Blood Message for a first-party PlayStation title. Set in Ancient China, it blends exciting set-piece sequences with brutal combat and cutscenes with a high level of cinematic flair.

I went hands-on with an early slice of the game at Summer Game Fest 2026 and had the chance to exclusively chat with senior director of global publishing Jeff Hu, who describes it as a "dream" for developer 24 Entertainment.

"We are all gamers. We grew up with so many great titles," he begins. "To make a AAA game is every team member's dream, and, after many years experiencing other titles, we thought it would be a good time for us to try to make a game like that."

He explains that the overall direction was chosen because it is "the way that's best to tell this story," but still doesn't shy away from mentioning a few inspirations.

"We are all fans of so many great titles, like Uncharted, like The Last of Us," he says. "Different members have their own favorites, but we're all inspired by different great titles."

Universal appeal

Blood Message follows an anonymous soldier in the late Tang Dynasty, roughly 850AD, but Hu argues that its themes are timeless and will resonate with players around the world today.

"This story happened just in the Tang Dynasty, and this story is so magical," he explains.

"[The hero travels with his son] from the Chinese West to the East to deliver a very important message about their victory to the to the capital of the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an, so we can use different landscapes and let players experience different elements.

"We chose a very unique angle in that we chose a nameless soldier itself to tell this story, and also combine that with the emotional bond between father and son. There are so many universal emotions."

In between the action-packed chases, tense stealth sections, and bloody, all-out brawls, I really appreciated the unique aesthetic of the game's world. The deserts of China are rarely explored in video games, and I imagine its clay huts and lightweight robes will come as a surprise to many players.

Hu is careful to clarify that the game isn't intended to be a history lesson.

"We picked this story not because we're trying to make a Western audience learn something or understand something," he says. "We believe this is a good story to connect with human nature."

Still, he does reckon that audiences less familiar with the setting will "have a better understanding of ancient China" after fully "experiencing the story."

You might have to wait a while before diving in, though, as Blood Message doesn't have a release date yet. The team has confirmed that it will come to both PC and consoles.

• Video game retailers have voiced concern over Sony's move to axe physical PlayStation game copies in 2028
• Game has stated that it 'won't sit idly by' and fully supports physical game ownership
• The move from Sony puts multiple video game retailers at risk of closure

Sony has dropped an absolute bombshell on the gaming industry, with the announcement that PlayStation will no longer produce discs for physical game copies starting in 2028, and that hasn't sat well with consumers or retailers.

Multiple video game retailers have reacted to Sony's PlayStation disc elimination, condemning the move in support of consumers and physical game ownership. Notably, the video game retailer, Game, released a statement on X (translated from Spanish), highlighting its frustration with the case.

"Regarding the latest news: our silence is over. Video game lovers, it is time to defend what matters to us," a relevant statement from Game, that comes amid the movement, Stop Killing Games, that coincides with the issue surrounding game ownership once multiplayer games go offline.

"The latest decisions we are seeing in the industry deeply worry us, because they affect everyone who understands video games as something more than a downloadable file. We are not going to sit idly by. Digital and physical [games] can coexist; in fact, they have been doing so for years."

Another video game retailer, Loot Box Gaming, has taken to X, stating: "Shall we start with PS+ cancellations for today? It's just voting with your wallet. These companies will feel the pressure if their finances drop."

It doesn't stop there, however, as yet another independent video game retailer, VGP Video Game Plus, said: "Oh f**k! To be continued", which sums up a lot of people's frustrations.

Sony's decision to end physical copies doesn't just impact consumers and the ability to own a hard copy of a video game, but it also severely impacts businesses such as Game, CeX (both primarily in the UK), and Gamestop.

It's just PlayStation for now, but the likelihood of Microsoft following suit is very high, especially with the rumors suggesting the next Xbox console will effectively be a gaming PC. This is a very dire situation for retailers and consumers, and if Sony doesn't reverse its decision, it could drastically change gaming forever.

Without access to physical game copies, consumers leave their ability to access their games at the discretion of PlayStation. This is problematic as Sony can revoke user access to media (in this case, games) at any time and has recently done so when it removed movies from user libraries.

This move also reduces consumer options - with physical games you could shop around, even buy a game second-hand. Now, it's likely that it will only be Sony that you can buy digital games from, which allows the company to set prices without competition.

What's worse is that in some cases (i.e game sharing), if you lose access to the internet, you can no longer play the games you've purchased, something that can be solved with a physical copy — and if that privilege is gone for good, any sense of video game copy ownership could be a thing of the past.

PlayStation has announced that it will end the production of disc releases after more than 30 years of physical games, confirming that everything that you buy will be digital-only from January 2028 onwards.

There will inevitably still be some new games on sale in stores, but likely only empty cases containing printed download codes. It's devastating news for physical game collectors and those skeptical of digital ownership, but also likely to sting for all PlayStation fans.

There's nothing quite like the feeling of getting your hands on a physical game and almost everyone will have a favorite, not to mention fond memories of scrounging money to buy them or receiving them as gifts as a kid.

That's why I've asked every PlayStation gamer on the TechRadar team to look back on some of their favorite physical releases for a final, teary-eyed send-off.

Hidden secrets revealed

I’m all for great cover art, but the PlayStation case I’ll always remember is that of the original Metal Gear Solid from 1998. That’s because the back of it contained a crucial clue for the game that stumped me for an embarrassing amount of time.

“You should contact Meryl by Codec,” Colonel Campbell says at one point during the stealth classic. “Wasn’t her frequency written on the back of the CD case?” It took a few hours (possibly days) for me to realise that he meant the game’s physical case, where a tiny screenshot reveals that life-saving frequency.

As much as I enjoyed fighting Psycho Mantis and creeping around under cardboard boxes, it was this moment that made me doff my cap to the game’s designers — and it’s sadly the kind of dovetailing between games and the physical world that just won’t be possible from 2028.

Mark Wilson, Managing Editor, News

Please insert disc 2

I've been on one PlayStation or another for around 25 years. I've got fond memories of unwrapping physical releases, poring over manuals and physical maps of digital locations, and I'm genuinely emotional at the prospect of the era of physical releases, buying resold games cheaply, and owning your own damn games (not just the license) coming to an end.

Perhaps my favorite physical disc memory is playing through Final Fantasy 9 while sharing a controller with my friend. I was around nine years old.

The party suffered Beatrix's ultimate move, the screen went black... and up came the "Change to Disc 2" message. We freaked out - I think both of us had forgotten this was a multi-disc game.

Matt Evans, Senior Editor, Fitness, Wellness & Wearables

Pour one out for the creamiest PS4 cover

I have an entire bookshelf of PS5 and PS4 games, but there’s only one with cover art that looks like a guy drowning in… cream. (I have been reliably informed that I will get in big trouble for suggesting it looks like anything else, so I leave that entirely to your own imagination.)

I’m, of course, talking about The Evil Within 2, with its striking front that depicts troubled detective protagonist Sebastian Castellanos immersed in a sea of milky fluid. He looks so peaceful, eyes shut as if asleep and his hands clasped together almost in prayer — a perfect reflection of the game's dream-world setting and undercurrent of religious themes.

It’s the kind of cover art with layers that you can only truly appreciate if you have it in your hands. There’s a creepy monster looming just over his shoulder, reaching up to pull him deeper into the nightmarish stew, and the outlines of floating skulls to really emphasize the threat.

It tells you everything you need to know about the game inside: this man is in imminent danger, and you need to get him out.

Even so, my absolute favourite detail is one that most would miss. The artwork is entirely monochrome aside from Sebastian’s wedding band, which glows gold on his ring finger. A little symbol of familial warmth and hope among all the sterile, creepy white. It’s only fitting; this is a game about going through hell to save your daughter, after all.

Dashiell Wood, Gaming Editor

Flushed to bits with Balatro Special Edition

Balatro was easily my favorite game of 2024, and even now I’ll dip in to play more — either to see how deep into a run I can venture, or to slowly chip away at Completionist++.

I picked it up digitally a little after launch, but when the Special Edition debuted with a physical disc and a handful of real cards from the game it was an immediate buy for me. Even if it meant I’d own it twice on PS5.

Admittedly the box is a little lackluster — the jokers are an odd selection, and considering it’s more of a collectible I would have loved a retro-style book insert to have been included — but I do love the cover art despite its simplicity, and I mostly saw picking up the game again as just a way to show the LocalThunk-made masterpiece some well-deserved extra appreciation!

(P.S. Bonus shoutout to the holographic cover art of Kingdom Hearts 2 on the PS2, that, combined with the Tetsuya Nomura-drawn art, was peak 2006-cool).

Hamish Hector, Senior Staff Writer

RIP Rockstar's iconic maps

Ironically, some of my favorite physical releases have been from one of the companies that’s being partially blamed for this disc-less future: Rockstar.

Rockstar’s move to not include an actual disc in the ‘physical’ release of GTA 6, instead just having a download code, means the biggest game of the generation, maybe even of all time, won’t really be having a physical release, and Sony’s announcement makes that seem especially bleak.

Buying a physical edition of a Rockstar game used to be a joy, as they often came with a fold-out map.

I used to love putting the disc in to install the game, then poring over the map, marvelling at the ever-expanding size of the titles and trying to figure out secrets and cool places to visit.

It was part of the experience, almost like you were preparing to vacation in the world. I remember doing it with the first ever GTA game on PC, right up to Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS4, which, sadly, is likely to be the last time I open a physical Rockstar game...

Matthew Hanson, Managing Editor, Core Tech

Even the ugly covers can be winners

Ico is a truly gorgeous game. The art style is absolutely perfect as an accompaniment to leading Yorda through the game’s world and fighting off the shadow monsters trying to kidnap her. And the box art in Japan and Europe nailed its atmosphere to perfection.

I owned the original cardboard case, which featured this gorgeous sleeve, an inner case with Yorda contrasted against a black tunnel and a range of art postcards conveying stunning moments from the game. Any time I slipped it open and removed the disc to place into the PlayStation, it was like I was entering the game’s mysterious castle step-by-step and made it feel like a living artwork.

Which is why it will never not be funny to me that this is the artwork Sony used to promote the game in the US. Rather than the tender, minimalist puzzler you’re actually getting, it looks like it’s advertising a straight-to-video 90s horror about a haunted windmill.

It’s the kind of embarrassing thing you whip up when you first discover Photoshop, decidedly not the kind of thing you release to a market of 300 million people, and for that I will always find it highly amusing.

Josh Russell, Reviews Editor

The best things in life are freebies

Cyberpunk 2077 is my favorite physical PlayStation game I own.

Outside of clocking hundreds of hours exploring Night City, I love it because it came with so much more than just the game’s disc, meaning my copy of Cyberpunk 2077 is a real collectors item for fans of the beloved RPG.

I enjoy collecting video game artwork and this release came with crammed with postcards, stickers, a game map, and a world compendium full of important lore. There’s something just so satisfying looking through all that whilst a game downloads, you’ve got everything you need to know about Night City in there without needing to even get out your phone.

This is a sad day for those of us who love physical video game collectibles, and even a freebie as small as a stack of postcards can make you feel like you’re buying something special. Cyberpunk 2077 has truly gorgeous aesthetics and so I’m glad I was able to get my hands on some free artwork back when I bought the game.

It’s a shame that future games might not get the same treatment.

Lucy Buglass, Senior Entertainment Writer

The last of these?

Having missed out on picking up any special editions over the PS3 and PS4 generations, it's the PS5 where I have really been able to treat myself to some special, and now favorite, physical editions of games.

Chief among them are both the collector's editions of The Last of Us titles on PS5: the WLF Edition of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, and the Firefly Edition of The Last of US Part 1.

Not only are these spectacular editions in their own right with wonderfully arranged boxes and layouts, fantastic steel books and a host of physical goodies to peruse, they mean more to me because I couldn't get special editions of both when they first came around.

They're in a box right now due to an impending house move, but these will be front and centre in my new office shelving units when I get the chance to display them in all their glory.

Hopefully, Sony finds a way to keep collector's editions like these going, though a large part of me will be very sad that there's no actual disc inside...

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, Gaming & Streaming

Unboxing a beating

I’ll admit I’m not really a big collector of physical copies of games these days thanks to the ease of digital downloads.

This was different back when games used to come in cardboard boxes or stuffed DVD cases, and had things like maps or chunky manuals with extra lore in them. There is a caveat though, as throughout the PS3 and PS4 eras digital downloads for games often cost much more than their physical counterparts, leaving me with a small selection of boxed PlayStation titles — my favourite being Bloodborne.

There’s nothing more than the disc and a leaflet touting Until Dawn and The Order 1886 inside, but it’s the stark cover art that stands out, with the ‘hunter’ facing away from the viewer, saw cleaver and blunderbuss in hand, against a contrasting white-grey background.

To me this represents the grim, dark journey Bloodborne takes you on: a blood-soaked path that marked a distinct departure from the Dark Souls series while still feeling like a game only FromSoftware could nail.

The physical box gained an almost ritualistic feel for me. In the odd event that the disk wouldn’t be in my PS4, I’d have to take it out of the box with the cold, grim hunter on the front greeting me with the familiar feeling that I’ll have to slash, parry, dodge my way through Yarnham time and time again as Father Gascoigne gives me a pasting. How I hated it, how I loved it.

Roland Moore-Colyer, Managing Editor, Buying Guides

Still hanging on to this one

Without a shadow of a doubt, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is my favorite video game cover of all-time. It will forever sit at the forefront of my memory when reminiscing about the PS3.

Not only is the game itself an all-time great, but its cover art represents so much of the game’s excellence, with the very train sequence that it’s depicting later inspiring games like and Stellar Blade and even movies such as Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (even though its director swears it's not, it definitely is).

It’s sad to say goodbye to physical games, and here’s hoping that the backlash forces Sony to rethink its choice — but I’ll never forget the Uncharted 2 cover art for encapsulating just how amazing the PS3 era of gaming was.

Isaiah Williams, Staff Writer, Computing

• Sony has announced that the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita storefronts will soon shut down
• They will close next month in some regions, and next year in the UK, US, and Australia
• The news comes as the company announces the end of physical disc production in 2028

If today's news that PlayStation will stop producing physical game discs in 2028 wasn't bad enough, the company has also quietly announced that it will be closing the PS3 and PS Vita storefronts soon.

On the official PlayStation Blog, the company argues that the decision was driven by the fact that these old systems "are no longer able" to support "modern commerce systems" and current payment processing standards.

"PS3 and PS Vita represent an important era in our PlayStation history, so this was not an easy decision for us to make" the post says.

The storefronts will not be wound down immediately. It will be discontinued next month in Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua, then "additional Latin American and Middle Eastern countries" later in 2026.

For those in the US, UK, and Australia, the PlayStation Store will go offline on PS3 and PS Vita in July 2027. That gives you roughly a year to make any final digital purchases if you still have those consoles lying around.

Importantly, Sony does at least say that "players will still be able to download previously purchased content" once the stores are offline for "the foreseeable future" so it sounds like you at least won't lose access to anything that you have bought.

The reactions to the news in the comments have been overwhelmingly negative, with one PlayStation fan writing that "This is why physical media matters. More and more proof that you’re just buying a license that can be taken away whenever companies feel like it."

Another wrote: "Just stripping out everything today from us huh?! How much money is enough for you guys to not make everything worse?"

• PlayStation has announced that it will not release games on physical discs from January 2028
• This comes days after GTA 6 pre-orders were digital or code-in-a-box orders only
• Decision looks to pave the way for a digital-only PS6, probably releasing in 20-28 at the earliest

PlayStation has today announced that no new PlayStation games will be released on physical disc from January 2028 onwards.

In a huge blow to the concept of physical ownership, the gaming giant has said this move is "a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs" in a new PS blog post.

It goes on to argue that, "This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today."

The move is unlikely to be popular with fans and particularly with game collectors, and comes just days after the disc-less GTA 6 pre-orders, which saw Rockstar ditch the disc in favour of code-in-a-box game box releases.

Not only this, but this decision also comes a matter of days after PlayStation removed some movies that console owners had bought digitally from their libraries with no compensation.

It all points to a digital-only future, with a physical disc drive only being useful for games released before January 2028 on PlayStation. Sony's next PlayStation console being digital only by default now seems very likely.

It's a far cry from Sony's famous dunk on the PS4's competitor, the Xbox One, at the beginning of the last console generation, when the latter appeared to be announced with a function that would block resale and sharing of physical games. Microsoft quickly rowed that back.

The under-30-second video clip published by PlayStation has been viewed millions of times and is part of a series of famous 'wins' for PlayStation's console over Microsoft's back in 2013 that set the scene for that generation — and beyond — and is part of gaming folklore.

Now, however, it's all changed. This decision will further bring the concept of owning one's own games under scrutiny when publishers and platform holders will simply retain the right and ability to pull the plug at will, with consumers not necessarily owning a copy of the game they bought.

How do you feel about Sony's decision to no longer release any new PlayStation games on physical discs from 2028? Vote in the poll below or leave a comment.

Fable is shaping up to be an absolute belter of a role-playing game. From deep systems like reputation affecting everything you do and stylish combat to funny talking pigs, what I’ve seen so far suggests a splendid fantasy role-playing game (RPG) that will be absolutely worth the wait.

Seeing a sliver of the game set in only one town, Playground Games showed what it’s like to carve my own path in the world, what impacts I can have on the locale and the people there, and how it can all affect me as the player.

From what I’ve seen, it’s basically a life sim, town builder, economy sim, RPG — and pig-fate-decider sim — all in one.

Systems on systems on systems

The main thrust of what I saw at the Xbox event around Summer Game Fest 2026 was how deep and rich some of the games’ systems were in how you interact with places and folk, and how your actions have consequences.

This allows you to play your own way, impacting the way people live and also carving your own lifestyle that doesn’t rely on a binary good-bad system, making things more interesting.

In the gameplay I saw behind closed doors, there was a talking pig whose fate we could decide, for example. But this wasn’t a one-and-done affair, as whatever you chose has consequences: save him, and the butcher is out of pocket, so you’ll need to cover his costs if you can — or get a job to earn the coin, and so on. And each of these steps, whichever route you take, will impact how you're perceived by everyone involved: some will think you're virtuous, some will be annoyed, and so on.

This leads to you garnering an array of reputation qualities for both the overall area and its inhabitants. And it can get very detailed and complex — in a good way — given every single fully-fledged non-player character (NPC) will have their own perspective. So while you may follow a path that gets you in with some local businesses that then give you better rates, for example, other shop owners may have totally differing opinions and make your life difficult later on.

Thankfully, the reputation is entirely local, though, so if you go berserk in one town, they won’t immediately be on the phone to the next area over. But even if they did, you can still turn things around and change people’s perceptions, but it will take a lot of work to win them back…

But, perhaps weirdly, this excellent chain of reactions, reputation characteristics, and events can abruptly stop. For example, in the midst of wooing a potential partner and going through the systems you require, including becoming a homeowner, you can just press a button to own a house. Or if you need money to buy gifts in the same relationship system and process, you can simply walk into any blacksmith and earn money at the press of a button.

This juxtaposition was the only thing that really raised my eyebrows, as it felt jarring: one moment you’re deep in a hilarious system rabbithole, the next you’re holding one button to solve or part-solve a problem. I’m very keen to see more of that and the impact it may or may not have on the experience on a larger, less isolated scale.

But could the sword be mightier than the pen?

Speaking of seeing more on a larger scale, the same goes for combat; what I’ve seen whetted the appetite, but I only saw a flash.

It was wonderfully slick, swift, fantastical, and elegant — and exciting — for sure, but over far too quickly. I’d love to see more of the options available to players in terms of builds, classes, and skills, and how to team them with weapon choices and magic, and more. It was all over far too quickly in my preview.

Plus, given how deep and rich the systems and reputation mechanics are, it feels like that same depth is needed in other areas like combat, in order to ensure a cohesive experience and feel.

Still, however, the fact remains that Fable was absolutely one of the very best things I saw at all the games events going on in June, and it’s set to be an absolute blast to experience all its systems — even if I only got a glimpse of them.

I can’t wait to dive in and explore all the shenanigans you can get yourself into when the game launches on February 23, 2027, on Xbox Series X and Series S, PS5, and PC.

• Playground Games confirms Fable uses Forza Horizon's tech engine
• The studio "built a ton of additional technology" on top of the base engine
• Creator of the Fable series, Peter Molyneux, wasn't involved with the game's development "at all"

Fable will utilize the same engine as the Forza Horizon series, which Playground Games says has been a "gift" for the upcoming role-playing game (RPG).

During a press Q&A at an Xbox event adjacent to this year's Summer Game Fest (SGF) attended by TechRadar Gaming, associate game director Craig Littler discussed how the team applied the Forza tech engine to create Fable's sprawling fantasy world, as well as how it evolved certain elements.

"In terms of synergies with Forza, so we're on the same technology base, the same engine, the Forza tech engine," he said, "and that's been a real gift for us, because it's the engine that we've been working on for over a decade at Playground, and it's the great engine that's produced the Forza Horizon series, and that's the engine that we're using for Fable as well."

It's not just the same reused tech, however. The developer explained that the team has "built a ton of additional technology on top of" the base engine and had to change from racing to a character-based game.

"We've had to invest heavily in locomotion and animation and also things like cinematics and quests," Litler added, "but really the Forza tech engine is incredibly good at extremely high fidelity graphics, as well as world-class streaming. And so for us, using that base for Fable is just a match made in heaven, combined with our experience, and honestly, a team that are just huge fans of this franchise."

He went on to confirm that Peter Molyneux, the creator of the Fable series, wasn't involved with the development of the new title "at all," saying, "He's a legend, and we played a bunch of his games, but this is very much Playground vision for Fable."

Fable will officially launch on February 23, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

Remedy Entertainment has hit the nail on the head with making an engaging and addictive sequel to Control, with Control Resonant. Gameplay from the original concept has been taken into Resonant and dialled up to 11, and that's heavily supported by Nvidia's technologies, enhancing the visual experience.

In my two hours playing, it didn't take very long for me to become fully immersed in not only our new protagonist, Dylan, and his incredible maneuvers and special attacks, but most importantly, in this case, the fascinating environments indoors and outdoors — and yes, a lot of this is thanks to the heavy lifting of Nvidia's ray tracing active during the demo.

Simply put, Resonant is an absolutely pleasant sight to the eyes, making every interior and exterior fight encounter blossom for greater immersion. It's a very colorful game, where enemy designs or attacks can shine bright in red (which isn't a surprise since the Hiss is mostly red), and I was blown away by everything on display.

Resonant takes a strong shift away from the third-person action-shooter aspect and dives into third-person fast-paced action-role-playing game (RPG) elements, and while my time with it was short-lived, I can't wait to see how its PC port handles later this year.

Resonant's ray tracing is amazing, but slightly heavy to run

It shouldn't come as a big surprise, but Control Resonant uses Nvidia's ray tracing technology and DLSS Ray Reconstruction, and the former is a huge demand for any RTX GPU.

Using an RTX 5090 at 4K with DLSS 4.5 Performance enabled and ray tracing preset on high, Resonant felt smooth in most playable combat sections of the demo — and while there was no evident frame rate counter, I suspect it was mostly at or above 60 frames per second (fps).

I'm a massive fan of hack-and-slash games like Devil May Cry 5 and the original God of War trilogy, where 60 fps during combat is effectively a must, which Resonant is quite similar to; the point being, I can tell when frame rates dip under 60, and there were certainly a few occurrences where heavier dips below that figure were noticeable.

However, this is an early build of the game, which is bound to be more polished once released, and high ray tracing presets still give the most powerful graphics card on the market a run for its money in any game (including Cyberpunk 2077 and Resident Evil Requiem).

Fortunately, DLSS 4.5 works wonders as usual. Using Performance mode on previous DLSS models wasn't ideal, as ghosting and poor image quality were clear to see. DLSS 4.5's Performance mode, on the other hand, features really sharp image quality that essentially outshines DLSS 4's Quality mode and can be compared to DLSS 4.5's Quality mode.

The downside of DLSS 4.5 is the performance loss (compared to DLSS 4), particularly on RTX 3000 and 2000 series GPUs, but considering how impressive Resonant is visually using ray tracing, it's worth using DLSS 4.5 Performance where possible.

Bear in mind, this demo wasn't using DLSS Frame Generation, and based on early system requirements, Resonant should run great on a wide range of hardware. There will be some systems that can't handle ray tracing or full path tracing, which should be expected, but even without those elements, it's still a very impressive game visually.

There's still plenty left for me to see in Resonant, a sequel that has taken its environments and locations to new levels entirely.

With that being said, I'm anticipating even more highly detailed areas to explore and enjoy using a less powerful but capable RTX 4080 Super for high ray tracing or full path tracing — and I'll certainly be playing when it launches on September 24, 2026, on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Grand Theft Auto 6 is currently a top seller on the PlayStation Store
• Physical copies are also the best seller of multiple retailers
• That's despite the controversy surrounding the game's physical edition, which includes a download code instead of a disc

The physical edition of Grand Theft Auto 6 is currently a top seller at multiple retailers, despite the game's download code controversy.

As spotted in a ResetEra post, multiple regional versions of the PlayStation Store, including the UK, USA, Japan, and more, have the digital version of GTA 6 listed as the number one best seller right now.

Between the Standard and Ultimate Editions, it appears that the more expensive $99.99 / AU$159.95 / £89.99 Ultimate Edition is the top choice as well.

That's just the digital version of the game for PS5 consoles, and it's harder to tell how well Xbox editions are performing.

That said, it looks like physical editions are flying off shelves at multiple retailers, too, with GTA 6 currently holding the number one best-selling spot in the PC & Video Games category at Amazon US and UK, as well as at GameStop.

That's despite the fact that physical copies don't come with a disc but rather a digital download code in the box, something that has caused a bit of a stir among the fanbase since it was revealed last week.

However, it appears that even amid controversy, players are willing to spend their money on the most anticipated game of all time.

Rockstar hasn't revealed why physical copies won't include a disc, but one reason could be that the studio is trying to minimize the potential for leaks as much as possible ahead of launch.

GTA 6 officially launches on November 19 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, but pre-loading begin on November 12 if you choose to pre-order.

A recent report suggested that retailers could run out of console stock during the holiday season due to high demand and ongoing issues surrounding hardware component availability.

• PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino has suggested the brand's next console could be a handheld ir hybrid
• He said Sony wants to break the perception that "PlayStation equals the living room"
• Nishino added that the next-gen console will offer "a seamless experience that can be enjoyed naturally beyond the living room"

New comments from Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino seem to suggest that the next-generation PlayStation console could be a handheld.

During a recent Q&A published by Sony (via IGN), Nishino was asked how Sony plans to bring back users who migrated to gaming PCs during the COVID period and if the company sees potential for significant changes with the next-gen console.

Nishino responded, saying that PlayStation "has long been strongly associated with the idea of playing in the living room." However, in recent years, gamers have been using personal monitors elsewhere in their homes, so Sony is now selling peripherals such as monitors and speakers "to break away from the fixed perception that 'PlayStation equals the living room' and to broaden usage scenarios."

This is when Nishino hinted at the next-gen console, which we expect will be the PS6.

"For the next-generation platform, rather than simply serving as an alternative to PCs, we aim to deliver value that is unique to PlayStation," he said. "This includes not only technological advancements but also an expansion of usage styles, enabling a seamless experience that can be enjoyed naturally beyond the living room."

It's this comment in particular that suggests that Sony is looking to shift gears and perhaps create a console similar to the Nintendo Switch 2.

The CEO made similar comments in a recent interview Famitsu, during which he said Sony wants to leverage tech "that can be used in various forms and locations."

Nishino confirmed that the company plans to continue focusing on consoles, saying, "My belief that a console is necessary for playing games hasn’t changed," adding that Sony "wants to continue providing its own game consoles."

He added that "pick up and play" is the most important quality for consoles nowadays, making one think of the Switch 2.

Rumors of a PS6 handheld have been circulating for some time. According to a reliable insider, Moore's Law is Dead, Sony will launch its next-generation PlayStation with three devices in 2027, including two consoles and a companion handheld.

• Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced will have three graphics modes on PS5 and PS5 Pro
• Performance, Fidelity, and Balanced modes will run at 60FPS, 30FPS, and 40FPS, respectively
• The PS5 Pro will offer extended ray tracing thanks to PSSR 2.0

Ubisoft has unveiled the PlayStation features for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, which is set to have three graphics modes across PS5 and PS5 Pro.

As detailed in a new PlayStation Blog post, Black Flag Resynced, which was rebuilt from the ground up and described as "an experience tailored for modern PlayStation hardware," will offer 60FPS performance options, HDR support, Dolby Atmos, and DualSense haptic feedback.

On PS5 and PS5 Pro, the game will have Performance, Fidelity, and Balanced modes, which will run at 60FPS, 30FPS, and 40FPS, respectively, with an upscaled 2160p resolution.

The game will also utilize the PS5 Pro's upgraded PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) upscaling technology, improving image quality and reconstruction, reducing the visual gap between performance and fidelity modes, and offering an "extended ray tracing support" including both Ray-Traced Global Illumination and Ray-Traced Specular Reflections

"This enables richer lighting and reflection quality while maintaining higher performance targets across Performance, Balanced, and Fidelity modes," Ubisoft said.

Fidelity and Balanced modes on PS5 will also offer extended ray tracing, but it will be "standard" in Performance mode.

The developer has also expanded strand-based hair technology on PS5 Pro and it will be available for Edward Kenway across all modes. In Fidelity mode, nearby crowd characters will also benefit from strand technology during gameplay, while cinematics use strand-based hair for all characters regardless of mode.

"Rather than relying solely on traditional hair cards, the engine can simulate and render individual strands for more natural motion and response to wind. All of this allows us to get a very realistic hair render for our characters," Ubisoft explained.

Thanks to Ubisoft's upgraded Anvil engine, Black Flag Resynced also simulates weather in real time through Atmos, the systemic weather simulation framework, which continuously simulates variables such as temperature, humidity, wind, and vapor density, instead of treating weather as an isolated effect.

"These systems evolve over time and influence one another, producing more coherent and dynamic weather," the studio explained, adding that the same simulation extends into gameplay and environmental interaction.

The game's water system has also been modernized using a new tessellation technique, volumetric foam generation, and dynamic bubbles, allowing the sea to respond more naturally to wind conditions, weather, and ship movement.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is set to launch on July 9, 2026, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC.

I recently visited Audeze’s HQ in California for a revealing behind-the-scenes look at how one of the most premium audio brands goes about its business, from the science and developments behind the tech to the philosophy, people, and culture driving it.

As someone who covers gaming hardware and tech, one of my most pressing lines of inquiry during my visit was to really nail down why Audeze believes that planar magnetic drivers are superior for gaming audio and in gaming headsets like the Audeze Maxwell 2.

And I got my answer: it’s the driver’s innate ability and technical functionality, but also what it allows a user to do afterwards.

All things transient

“Planar magnetic drivers have several fundamental performance advantages that benefit gaming,” Audeze marketing director Peter James tells me.

“One of those is better transient response … The driver is lighter, moves faster, reacts quicker to the changes in the signal, which means better precision and more realism.”

This can then equate to enhanced “immersion in a single-player game” or a “competitive advantage in a multiplayer game, where you're hearing more precisely and more quickly what's going on around you”, he says.

This is supported by the weighty opinion of Dragoslav Colich (or ‘Dr C’ for short), co-founder and chief technical officer of Audeze: “Transient response is much higher, so bass is much cleaner.”

If you’ve ever compared the likes of an Audeze Maxwell 2 to a competing dynamic driver gaming headset, then this is something you already know. I have had plenty of experience with overly muddy and thumping bass on many leading brands’ gaming sets, which are nowhere near as clean and detailed as the Maxwell 2’s.

The second major benefit of the drivers’ ability to offer lower distortion and the knock-on effects of that.

“Lower distortion, again, means versions of all those things you're hearing, [with] enhanced immersion and precision, regardless of whatever genre of game you're playing. But additionally, the low distortion enables better customization of the sound,” James argues.

This means planar magnetic drivers might not only sound better by default but can also allow you to tweak the sound profile more effectively than other sets.

“Because these drivers are so flexible and so low in distortion, they take EQ very easily and readily without creating even more distortion the way dynamic drivers often do, particularly when you boost bass,” he goes on. “This allows our headphones to be more customizable to people's individual tastes.”

So, better transient response for higher levels of precision and realism, lower distortion, and great flexibility in taking on EQs — and that’s on top of a level of audio quality that is, at least for me, incredible.

• Digital Foundry predicts that GTA 6 won't support 60FPS on console
• It's suggested that the game will launch at 30FPS, including on PS5 Pro
• A 40FPS mode could be on the table for PS5 Pro if 60FPS is absent

Grand Theft Auto 6 may not support 60FPS on current-gen consoles, including PlayStation 5 Pro, at launch, meaning 30FPS will be the baseline.

That's according to tech experts at Digital Foundry, who suggest that after the recent information drop on the game, pre-order screenshots, and other footage, they're still not convinced that GTA 6 will allow for a 60FPS mode.

The main concern is the game's CPU demand on current-gen consoles, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S, which will likely be extensive.

"In RPGs, dense city locations are the most likely to drop frame rates, and the GTA 6 world looks another level of magnitude more challenging than the likes of Dragon's Dogma 2 or Baldur's Gate 3," Digital Foundry said.

There's also the matter of traversal, whether it be by ground, sea, or air, and vehicles will "require their own computationally expensive physics, of the kind that normally forces console simulation games to 30FPS." For this reason, "60FPS feels like a bridge too far."

Digital Foundry also suggested that the PS5 Pro wouldn't be able to output GTA 6 at 60FPS, because "the console only offers a fractional CPU performance bump over base PS5, with most of its advantage deriving from better GPU horsepower, improved RT acceleration and support for PSSR upscaling."

The CPU limitations would mean that GTA 6 will launch at 30FPS on PS5 Pro; however, it notes that a 40FPS mode could be possible if 60FPS is off the table.

It's worth noting that GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 also launched at 30FPS on last-gen consoles, but Rockstar later released 60FPS updates for current-gen consoles, including PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S.

If GTA 6 launches at 30FPS, a 60FPS mode post-launch update could be in the cards.

Rockstar has yet to reveal the finer details, but GTA 6 pre-orders have officially begun.

The game will launch on November 19 and will cost $79.99 / AU$129.95 / £69.99 for the Standard Edition and $99.99 / AU$159.95 / £89.99 for the Ultimate Edition. Pre-loads begin on November 12.

• Fable will feature a repopulation system if players murder too many NPCs
• Playground Games originally thought about letting players live with the consequences of their actions
• It decided the absence of NPCs would ruin some of the game's other systems

Playground Games has confirmed that if Fable players, for some reason, decide to kill every non-player character (NPC) in a settlement, they will repopulate over time.

During a press Q&A at an Xbox event adjacent to this year's Summer Game Fest (SGF) attended by TechRadar Gaming, associate game director Will Kennedy discussed Fable's reactive world, including the permanence of player actions. As a role-playing game (RPG), decisions will impact the NPCs around you, and players will have a reputation that will be remembered through their actions.

Player actions will also have consequences and be remembered, but if players decide to go on a killing spree, NPCs will later respawn through the game's repopulation system.

In fact, Playground originally thought about letting players live with this decision; however, it ultimately decided that the absence of so many NPCs would spoil other systems.

"In terms of killing NPCs, you can kill every NPC in a settlement, and the settlement will stay empty for some time," Kennedy explained. "But we do have a system that begins to repopulate in a settlement as well, but the reason that we do that is, we thought about it, there was a school of thought where you just live with that consequence literally forever, but we also thought in doing that it would cut off a lot of systems to players.

"It would be cool [at] first, but then it might actually get a bit annoying, so we may make the choice to prevent that."

We followed up with Playground Games after the event and received the following from game director and general manager of Playground Games, Ralph Fulton, on how repopulation will work: "The new NPCs who, over time, repopulate a settlement to replace NPCs who have sadly died (i.e., were killed by you…) will be full NPCs like the ones they’re replacing. They’ll have all the elements that all our Living Population NPCs have – name, job, traits, home, clothing, appearance and yes, voice – and will be fully functional in all the same ways.

In the same Xbox event interview, Fulton revealed that Fable will feature over 150,000 lines of dialogue, and over 1000 hours of voice-over were recorded this year alone.

"We've had multiple studios set up running in parallel for over 1000 hours just this year alone, just recording VO," he said, "so it's a huge machine, because the vision that the guys have for this part of the game just requires that way of writing."

Fable will officially launch on February 23, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Grand Theft Auto 6 is selling eight times faster on PS5 than Xbox says IGN
• Xbox disputes this, however, in a statement to Windows Central
• This potential bad news comes just as Xbox announced console price hikes

IGN has reported that, based on its internal affiliate data, Grand Theft Auto 6 preorders on PS5 are surging ahead of Xbox preorders of the game at a rate of eight to one — Xbox is now saying this is far from the full picture. Though, I have a hard time believing Xbox is doing a heck of a lot better than this data suggests.

In a statement to Windows Central, an Xbox spokesperson explained that “This doesn’t represent pre-order data. We’ve had record orders. People should wait for real data and not clicks on affiliate links."

Now, I don’t doubt that GTA 6 is selling gangbusters everywhere it’s playable, leading to “record sales.” Grand Theft Auto 5 is considered the third-best-selling game of all time — trailing only Minecraft and Tetris (though not everyone counts Tetris, as the figures aggregate several versions of the game, and you might see some places calling GTA 5 the second-best-selling of all time). So it tracks that out of the gate GTA 6 would be hugely popular too, and I expect it will only get more popular when GTA 6 Online and the PC port eventually release.

However, Xbox seeing record orders and its preorders lagging behind PlayStation’s aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, it’s no secret that the PS5 has outsold Xbox consoles this generation, so you’d expect the Sony hardware to have more GTA 6 game sales — though with estimated sales figures sitting at around 95 million for PlayStation to 35 million Xboxes, you would expect a rate of two or three to one, not eight to one.

Is something more going on here as Xbox suggests?

What's going on with GTA 6 sales?

On Xbox’s side of the argument, there are reasons not to extrapolate too much from affiliate link data.

First, people might simply be picking the game up digitally directly from Xbox’s store rather than through typical affiliate partners like Walmart, Argos, and Amazon. Given that GTA 6’s physical edition is functionally identical to the digital version — as there’s no disc, just a download code in a plastic case — there’s little to no advantage to buying from a retail store.

And given Xbox's digital gaming focus with services like Game Pass and multi-platform gaming across consoles, PCs, and PC handhelds (even if GTA 6 doesn’t look set to be a Play Anywhere title at launch), it makes sense that Xbox gamers would be more comfortable (and possibly more likely to shop) at Xbox’s own store compared with PS5 gamers and PlayStation's store.

What’s more, affiliate data doesn’t necessarily mean sales. IGN hasn’t said much on what exactly its data is based on, but if it's affiliate link clicks (as the Xbox spokesperson suggests it is), then that doesn’t necessarily mean the PS5 version is selling eight times more copies, just that links for the PS5 version are eight times more popular.

Gamers could simply be clicking on them more but then not buying the game, or clicking a few times before making a purchase, though I’m not sure why you wouldn’t expect Xbox and PlayStation gamers to be equally flaky on a post-click purchase.

The only final piece of support for Xbox would be if IGN’s audience skewed more towards PlayStation at a rate disproportionate to the overall population’s two- or three-to-one.

Though as a general gaming outlet rather than one dedicated to either side of the aisle, I don’t see that being the case — all I could see happening is IGN’s audience of gaming enthusiasts could be more likely to own both an Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 console, and then with Sony’s promise that GTA 6 “plays best on PS5” they’d be more likely to pick up a copy for Sony’s hardware compared with Xbox’s.

All that’s to say, while IGN’s stats might not be entirely accurate to the final picture, I don’t doubt that PS5 sales of GTA 6 are blowing Xbox’s out of the water. And even if current sales aren’t quite eight-to-one, I wouldn’t be surprised if sales trend in that direction.

My argument here is Xbox consoles are set to get a major price hike effective August 1, 2026, putting the Series X at $749 for the all-digital, and $899 for the disc drive equipped model (price increases outside the US are yet to be confirmed) — a sharp raise on the previous costs of $599 and $649 respectively which are the identical to the equivalent PS5 models.

Sony may announce similar hikes itself — it isn’t immune to the cost increases hitting the whole industry, though its drastically better sales may help it weather the storm for a little longer — but until it does, the PS5 looks like a much better deal. If casual gamers still rocking a last-gen console finally want to upgrade so they can play GTA 6, there will be a clear winner: the PlayStation 5.

There’s still a lot of time before Grand Theft Auto 6’s eventual November 19 release date (I’ll be ready for another delay until it’s actually in my hands), but I don’t think Xbox’s fortunes will turn around dramatically by then.