It takes a lot for me to get excited at the prospect of playing Shipment in Call of Duty again, but here we are. The original brainrot map has now landed in Modern Warfare 4.

And I am excited for it. But that's only because the first weekend of multiplayer has been hard. The launch maps are OK at best, the matchmaking makes every game feel like the Call of Duty League finals, and it just feels like hard work. Video games shouldn't feel like hard work.

While Infinity Ward can certainly fix it, for now, we turn to Shipment for some good old-fashioned brainless run and gun. For those chasing the mastery camos, it's definitely a welcome sight to speed up the process a little.

Even so, it's not perfect. The TTK feels too long for Shipment (in my opinion), and there's clear weapon balancing that needs to be done that will presumably not have a chance to happen until Season 1 starts next week.

But whether it's nostalgia or just the fact that the launch weekend has been absolutely mollywhopping you, Shipment 24/7 is live, and most of the game modes are available on rotation on the now smallest map in Modern Warfare 4.

After an incredible campaign, the debut of DMZ which mostly has been a great time (exfil campers aside), multiplayer has been a very mixed bag. Compared to the beta earlier this year, it just doesn't feel as, well, fun.

The maps are definitely not some of Call of Duty's best, though I have been enjoying Mumbai especially, and Cachette is pretty fun, too. But I also think the movement needs to be updated, because while being slower is fine, it feels too clunky and like you have to work hard just to get into and out of a gunfight.

But the gunplay, as in the beta, is really good, even if I think the TTK is still too high. Or maybe it's the weapon balancing that's off, as some, even on Shipment, feel like you're slapping someone in the face with a napkin from a little kid's birthday party.

But if you're camo grinding, go forth and rot thy brain in the name of Orion Reforged. May the shipping containers make your journey take a more profitable path.

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The passionate community fighting to rescue the Mass Effect franchise shows no signs of slowing down. Following a massive digital billboard activation in Times Square, the @WeAreMassEffect organizing team launched a GoFundMe campaign to fund further advertising efforts, and completely shattered their target in under 20 minutes.

The rapid success even took the organizers by surprise, and has made them temporarily pause donations as they plan their next move.

"We're raising funds for more billboards near EA HQ and The Game Awards!"

The crowdfunding campaign was set up to purchase additional billboards located near Electronic Arts' headquarters and at the upcoming Game Awards.

The fundraiser has pulled in $5,715 from just 89 donations, easily clearing its initial $5,200 goal before organizers officially hit the pause button on contributions. Beyond funding the physical protests, We Are Mass Effect have promised that any excess money raised over the target will be directed to the UVW-CWA Game Worker Hardship Fund to directly support the developers laid off during BioWare's recent closure.

The decision to halt donations so quickly was a sensible one, as the community plan their next move. The organizers over on the community Discord have stressed the need to take the campaign "one step at a time" to ensure transparency and guarantee that no one's money is put at risk. Apparently fraudulent accounts and copycat links are already appearing to pocket money from eager fans. Now that the goal has been met, the team is ensuring the funds are handled responsibly while they execute the promised billboards.

To keep the momentum going without soliciting more cash, the movement has established a dedicated home at SaveMassEffect.com. Organizers are also issuing a rallying cry to the community's creatives, urging YouTubers, podcasters, artists, and journalists to continue making content utilizing the #SaveMassEffect hashtag to maintain visibility. Fans have also been flooding EA social posts with #SaveMassEffect not unlike in the PlayStation physical disc debacle where anything PlayStation posted was met with fury.

With their petition still climbing and funding locked in for their next massive real-world stunts, the team promises they have "plenty more things in the works" as they continue to hold the line for Mass Effect and the BioWare studio.

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World of Warcraft's new housing system has provided a segment of the player base with things to do, collect, and create beyong the typical raiding gameplay loop, but already it is becoming egregious for its monetization layers.

World of Warcraft's Housing gameplay feature has acquired some decor items for sale for real money, which isn't a first.

The new bundles are called the Haunted Grimtide Estate for $25 on Battle.net and the Grimtide Decor Pack for $10 on Battle.net. However, selling items tied to a playable race in theme is indeed a first.

The items within these bundles are spooky furniture and decorations themed after the Kul Tiran player race, as these items have a pirate and Lovecraftian aesthetic. However, players are not happy about this arrangement, owing to Blizzard's previous promises about its microtransaction practices for housing.

X users and even famed content creators like @BellularGaming responded to this, pointing out that Blizzard Entertainment is contradicting itself, reminding us that the company swore never to sell housing decor tied to player races for real money.

The promise in question came from a developer blog post Blizzard made on November 6, 2025, where it said, and I quote, "Housing items tied to core fantasies of a player’s race or class, or that already exist in Azeroth, won’t be sold in the shop. Thematically important decor that players know and love will also not appear in the shop."

We've reached out to Blizzard for further comment regarding this situation.

We finally got player house after two decades, but at what cost?

Housing was one of the most requested gameplay features ever since the 2000s, as players wanted a place for their characters and guilds to call home.

Unfortunately, while the actual gameplay of Housing was good, it was marred by controversial housing cosmetic DLC items that cost just as much as an expansion. Add this betrayal of trust on Blizzard's part, and much of the hype and goodwill surrounding this long-awaited feature has been sucked away, much like the rest of this expansion.

So far, the vast majority of playable races in WoW don't have exterior decor options, some don't even have interior decor options in abundance. Getting items can be an absolutely monstrous grind, and unlike other similar games with housing systems like Fallout 76, you need to buy each individual piece, limiting creativity.

Personally speaking, World of Warcraft: Midnight has been a non-stop disappointment with its weak storyline, dishonor to the Horde, constant bugs, and rushed content, and this just adds more salt to the wound.

Here's hoping the prices drop on these cosmetics at least, and that the next expansion, World of Warcraft: The Last Titan, as well as World of Warcraft: Forever, turn out to be much better experiences.

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Infinity Ward is celebrating some glowing reviews right now for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, which has hit a comfortable 89 on PlayStation and 86 on PC. By extension, it should be a slam dunk for Microsoft, given that they, you know, own Activision.

Unfortunately, there is one glaring omission from that Metacritic infographic, and it's Xbox.

If you head over to Metacritic, the lack of mention of an Xbox score makes sense immediately. The Xbox Series X version of Modern Warfare 4 doesn't have an official Metascore at all. It sits at a bleak "tbd" based on a grand total of two critic reviews.

So Microsoft owns Activision. Microsoft owns Call of Duty. Yet when it comes time to aggregate critical acclaim for the biggest blockbuster under its banner, there aren't enough critic reviews on Xbox to even generate a baseline score. It's not a good look, is it?

I'm not going to lay blame with "Xbox tax" on this one, don't worry; the reality is far more banal. Platform preference isn't to blame here, but the review process itself on Xbox is unnecessarily painful, and Xbox needs to do something about it.

Game keys vs Whitelisting shenanigans

Most gaming journalists and creators will be offered a choice of platforms on which to review a game, and they choose the path of least resistance. That path is generally PC/Steam, where you get a simple game code or access to a pre-release beta branch, or PlayStation, where you can redeem a code and you're good to go.

On Xbox, however, the process is more convoluted. You have to give your Xbox Live Device ID, which is buried within developer and system settings, to a PR company and wait for the publisher to manually whitelist your individual hardware before a code or build will even register.

Many of us are working against tight embargoes under an influx of game releases, especially in this absolute storm of releases that is Q4, and any extra steps to take can mount up in the inbox. Even if someone wants to cover the Xbox version of a game, convenience almost always dictates picking Steam or PS5 instead.

Xbox had the forethought to take over everyone's Xbox dashboard for Modern Warfare 4, but not to secure any kind of Metacritic presence.

Even Xbox outlets struggle (like us!)

Here at Windows Central, we obviously try to play within the Xbox ecosystem, yet even we constantly run into this wall. Case in point: for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 specifically, our own review was conducted on PC simply because that was the platform offered for the official review event.

When covering major releases or updates, PC and Steam codes are almost always pushed first because beta branches make distribution painless for publishers. Meanwhile, getting early access on Xbox feels a bit like doing my tax self-assessment.

Some titles, like Gears of War: E-Day, have had a healthier ratio. It was accessible through an insider build on the dashboard and much easier, so yes of course while it wasn't on PlayStation, we've a healthier skew of 87 Xbox reviews to 83 PC reviews. This isn't the norm, though.

When reviewing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, I had to start my playthrough on Steam and wait a few days for the Xbox whitelisting to be completed before I could switch platforms (thank heavens for cross-save). I could have waited, sure, but when you're on a tight schedule, time is a luxury you don't have. I've had this exact same problem when checking out DLC for Goat Simulator 3, too.

When an outlet specifically dedicated to covering Xbox has to resort to playing pre-release games on PC just to hit embargo, what chance does the average reviewer at a multiplatform outlet have? Why would a critic jump through extra technical hoops for Xbox when a PS5 or Steam key is sitting in their inbox ready to download with a single click?

Xbox needs to fix this early access issue

Xbox already faces an uphill battle when it comes to hardware market share and media coverage. But allowing its own pre-release access to remain this cumbersome is self-harming to the brand.

When publishers don't distribute Xbox codes efficiently, fewer outlets review Xbox builds. When fewer outlets review Xbox builds, Metacritic scores sit at "TBD." This, in turn, creates a public perception that nobody is playing or caring about the platform, even when the game in question is published by Microsoft itself. Gamers looking for reviews may purchase on the platform where more coverage exists. It quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If Microsoft wants Xbox to remain a primary platform for game reviews and media coverage, it needs to make access to its platform for reviews much easier. Until redeeming an early-access Xbox code is as simple as punching in a key on PlayStation or Steam, we’re going to keep seeing Xbox-owned games celebrated everywhere except on Xbox.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is out, and honestly, it looks like the first truly good Call of Duty campaign in a decade. That’s impressive in itself, but the data tells a slightly more worrying story.

According to figures obtained via TrueAchievements and SteamDB, Modern Warfare 4 is reportedly down 32% from last year’s Black Ops 7 on Xbox. The game has also fallen short in player counts when compared to titles like Halo: Campaign Evolved, Gears of War: E-Day, and Forza Horizon 6, again on Xbox. Since all of those games were available on Game Pass, it makes sense why the numbers look the way they do.

What makes this even more interesting is that the situation doesn't appear to be much better over on Steam.

Steam numbers show a significant dip

According to SteamDB, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has peaked at around 215,000 concurrent players so far. That’s not terrible by any means, but it falls considerably short of previous releases.

For comparison, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 reached a peak of 306,460 concurrent players on Steam during its launch weekend in October 2024, despite also releasing on Game Pass. That means Modern Warfare 4 has seen roughly 30% fewer concurrent players so far on Steam.

I should mention that these figures are for Call of Duty HQ, which includes multiple Call of Duty games, as well as Warzone and DMZ.

Of course, there are several things to consider here. Modern Warfare 4 isn't available on Game Pass, meaning players who previously relied on the service for access now have to purchase the game outright. Naturally, that makes jumping into the latest Call of Duty considerably more expensive. Given the times we live in, you can’t blame people for not throwing down $70.

That said, lower player counts don't necessarily translate into poor sales; the game was the number one best seller on Steam when it released. But without official figures from Activision, it's difficult to determine just how successful Modern Warfare 4 has been.

We do have one figure to go by, though. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma recently took to X to reveal that the Call of Duty franchise as a whole has passed $40 billion in revenue. That means the franchise has achieved $10 billion in revenue since 2022, when it was last reported at $30 billion.

With all that said, let me know your thoughts. Are people feeling fatigued by the yearly Call of Duty release cycle, or is it just that other games are out and Call of Duty isn’t quite worth the $70 on release, especially with a Game Pass release expected a year later?

Leave a comment down below, and be sure to take part in our poll!

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Xbox Game Pass is, by far, the best deal in gaming, at least since the price cut earlier this year. While the future of the service remains a bit of a mystery with rumors swirling about potential transformations, I’ve always thought it was a shame that mobile users couldn’t play at least some Game Pass games natively on their phones. Heaven knows it would have been an amazing selling point for Windows Phone, but I digress.

Those on Android, and even iPhone, have had to rely on Xbox Cloud Gaming. We all know that service got quite the considerable nerf, no longer providing unlimited hours of play. Instead, Ultimate members are allotted just 15 hours maximum, with the ability to purchase additional hours starting at $3.99 for 10 hours.

Now, whilst iOS users are out of luck, at least for now, Android can now natively play Xbox Game Pass PC games thanks to the latest DroidDeck update. For now, the feature is in testing, but I’m rather impressed. In fact, we’re seeing a lot of things like this crop up lately; not long ago, we also got Xbox’s PC Game Pass on Steam Deck, thanks to Xodus Nexus, or heck, we even got Xbox One games running on iPhone.

How well do Xbox Game Pass PC games run on Android?

Performance-wise, having looked into it, you can expect pretty decent results, depending on the game, of course. Hollow Knight: Silksong runs at over 100 FPS on a device like the Ayn Thor, and Minecraft Dungeons 2 is hitting 30 to 40 FPS.

It’s still early days, with DroidDeck (which you can check out yourself on GitHub) only on version 0.6.0, but the app itself is coming along nicely. Beyond Game Pass support, you get access to Steam, Epic Games, GOG, Amazon Games, and even itch.io, making it pretty feature-rich.

I find this all extremely cool. I think playing these games on a handheld that actually fits in your pocket, instead of something that requires a backpack, is the future of portable gaming. As much as I enjoy my Xbox Ally X, I’d rather have games on something that, to me, feels like a handheld the way a Nintendo DS or PSP used to.

Maybe that’s just me, though. Let me know your thoughts on DroidDeck and Game Pass PC games on Android in the comments, and be sure to take part in our poll below.

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Back in July 2026, Microsoft announced via Xbox Wire that games from the original Xbox would get achievements implemented on modern consoles and PC. However, it seems that this long-requested feature has already been sneaking onto Xbox Series X|S for certain games without any official fanfare.

This has been confirmed by photographs taken by X users @xgramiliki and @PiquenoLoredo (via @CentralXBOX_) showing achievements for OG Xbox games like Destroy All Humans!, Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars: Republic Commando, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and KOF: Neowave.

However, it seems the update isn't finished, as each of the aforementioned games shows "0/0" achievements and zero Gamerscore earned. The possible explanation for this could be that these achievements have shown up on players' profiles by mistake due to a programming error before they were officially ready.

These achievements will probably be taken down shortly when Microsoft discovers this and brought back once they're fully ready so they can join the other OG Xbox titles that have achievements officially, like BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, Fuzion Frenzy.

Do note that if these achievements do show up again, Xbox's Vice President Jason Ronald has confirmed they will not unlock retroactively. This means you will need to play through each respective title again to unlock their achievements and Gamerscore.

Either way, this will be great news for Xbox Achievement hunters looking to get the prestige Xbox Mythic Achievement from their favorite OG Xbox titles and serve as the perfect excuse to replay them.

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It was only yesterday I was writing about how the #SaveMassEffect petition had hit over 170k signatures ahead of plans for a billboard outside EA headquarters. Today I am elated to report that not only has the petition surpassed 216K signatures, but a billboard has officially reached the glowing screens of New York City.

Coordinated by the @WeAreMassEffect team and content creator Kala Elizabeth, the massive #SaveMassEffect billboard is now live in Times Square all day today.

The digital display is prominently located at 1560 Broadway, situated directly above the Pelé store in Duffy Square. Fans currently in the area can catch the advertisement running for 15 seconds at 35 minutes past every hour.

The words "Keelah Si'yah" is actually amusingly a typo. Kala has admitted on social media that this was supposed to be the iconic Quarian phrase "Keelah Se'lai" ("by the homeworld I hope to see one day")

Kala explained that their original billboard design was rejected over copyright issues, forcing a frantic redesign where she had to learn to animate in 10 minutes, leading to the accidental misspelling. Despite the rushed typo, it serves as a fitting tribute for a game and studio that fans are desperate to rescue.

If you are just catching up, this huge community campaign stems from EA’s recent decision to shutter BioWare and cancel the next game in the series. The campaign went into overdrive recently after a former developer leaked a pre-production trailer for the cancelled project, titled Mass Effect Universe. The leak revealed a highly ambitious RPG featuring a Galactic Cold War and deep choice-driven autonomy, showing players exactly the staggering potential of what was taken from them.

With their message now broadcasting to one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in the world, fans voices just got even louder. The WeAreMassEffect team have a Discord where they are discussing extending the billboard by way of crowdfunding, and perhaps expanding to other locations. Organisers have urged the community to "HOLD THE LINE!" as the grassroots campaign continues to gain remarkable momentum across social media.

If you want to pledge your support to the #SaveMassEffect campaign, don't forget to head to the Change.org petition here.

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Xbox has officially announced that Game Pass is heading to eligible T-Mobile customers in the U.S. starting this November. Through T-Mobile's new "T-Mix" plan perks, eligible subscribers will be able to pick Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Premium as an included benefit, granting access across Xbox consoles, PC, Smart TVs, and cloud devices.

If you’re based in the UK, this announcement might seem like something of a nothing burger. EE has offered Game Pass Ultimate as an "Inclusive Extra" or an easy mobile bill add-on over here for absolutely years now. But across the Atlantic, this is actually the very first time a major U.S. wireless carrier has integrated Xbox Game Pass directly into its mobile plans.

Here's how T-Mix works

T-Mobile's new setup moves away from rigid pre-selected bundles and introduces a modular "Picks" system across three main plan tiers: Standard, More, and Loaded.

Depending on your plan tier and the number of lines on your account, you receive a bucket of monthly Picks to spend across partner streaming, tech, and gaming perks.

• Xbox Game Pass Premium: Requires 2 Picks.
• Xbox Game Pass Ultimate: Requires 3 Picks.

For single-line accounts, T-Mix More starts at $75/month and includes 2 Picks which is enough to cover Game Pass Premium. If you want full Game Pass Ultimate access, you'll need 3 Picks, which comes included with a single line on T-Mix Loaded starting at $95/month (or through multi-line account allotments).

T-Mobile is also letting subscribers "remix" and swap out their chosen partner perks four times a year, so you aren't permanently locked in if your gaming or streaming habits change.

Why is this a big deal? UK have had this for ages!

For years, U.S. mobile networks have thrown free Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, or Apple Music subscriptions at customers to push plan upgrades. Yet despite Xbox pushing cloud gaming so heavily on mobile devices, game subscription services haven't made it into the mix.

When I wrote earlier this year that the Xbox Game Pass problem could be fixed without dropping the price, my main argument was that Microsoft needed to tackle subscription fatigue by letting us consolidate our monthly bills. Bundling in with mobile contracts is a fantastic way to do that, but Xbox shouldn't stop there. Bringing that same modular approach to the subscription itself, by letting players swap out unused extras like Fortnite Crew or EA Play for perks they’ll actually use, would instantly soften the blow of that monthly fee. Yes the price hike was ultimately reversed, but my point still stands.

Either way, T-Mobile’s November rollout of T-Mix is a long overdue one for the US audience. If Microsoft wants Game Pass to keep expanding beyond traditional hardware, partnering with major telecom providers to absorb that out-of-pocket cost is easily one of the smartest moves they can make right now.

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Voting for the Golden Joystick Awards 2026 candidates for 21 categories closed on October 23, 2026. However, the Golden Joystick Awards Show has more in store, as it has announced the nominees for its "Ultimate Game of the Year" award.

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You can vote for the winner of this coveted award right now at GamesRadar, and the ballot will remain open until October 30, 2026, 5:00 PM PT / 8:00 PM ET/ midnight GMT.

Here are the Golden Joystick Awards 2026 nominees for its Ultimate Game of the Year award:

Golden Joystick Awards — Ultimate Game of the Year nominees

• 007 First Light
• Big Walk
• CONTROL Resonant
• Crimson Desert
• Dispatch
• Forza Horizon 6
• Phantom Blade Zero
• Pokémon Pokopia
• PRAGMATA
• Resident Evil Requiem
• STAR WARS: Galactic Racer
• The Blood of Dawnwalker

Golden Joystick Awards — Where can we watch the show?

The winner of the Ultimate Game of the Year category and the winners of the 21 other categories will be announced at the Golden Joystick Awards ceremony on November 11, 2026, at Troxy, London, United Kingdom.

Viewers can tune in to watch the awards show (which will be hosted by actress Alix Wilton Regan and several guest presenters) live on YouTube, Twitch, X, Future Games Show, GamesRadar and PC Gamer.

Who do you want to win Ultimate Game of the Year?

The Golden Joystick has a pretty stacked selection of Ultimate Game of the Year contenders, from AAA titles like 007: First Light to viral indie hits like Big Walk.

Personally, I'm placing my vote on Pragmata to win. Its strange melding of fast-paced third-person gunplay with hacking puzzles to weaken enemies without pausing works surprisingly well, and its story is a heartwarming adventure that I'd dare not spoil for anyone who hasn't played it yet.

But will Pragmata manage to beat out the competition? Who are you personally voting for to win? Tune in on November 11, 2026, to find out when the Golden Joystick Awards reveal its Ultimate Game of the Year.

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If you're still waiting for a reasonable price on next-gen consoles to upgrade for Grand Theft Auto 6, you'll be waiting a long time. That said, Argos have just made a surprise cut to the Xbox Series S 512GB model, taking it down to pre-RAMpocalypse prices of £299.99.

I can't believe I'm calling this a deal but at this point in 2026 with the current climate, it actually is the cheapest way to upgrade to current gen right now and I can't see stocks lasting much longer. In fact, I'd argue the even better deal is the 1TB model at £349.99, down from £519.99, as the extra storage is kind of essential nowadays.

This deal couldn't have come at a better time for UK consumers, given that Xbox stock is so dire right now that Xbox is begging lapsed users to trade in their consoles and make them available for new customers.

The Xbox Series S has always been the easiest and cheapest way to get into Xbox's eco system, and launched in November 2020 for £249.99 as an alternative to the beefier Xbox Series X, but it plays all of the same current generation games. I wrote a full Xbox Series S review if you want to read further, but I still love and use mine daily (and at current prices it will be a family heirloom.)

Those prices are now a thing of the past, and £299.99 is a bargain by current standards, with the price being recently hiked to a whopping £519.99. Thanks to Argos, we are now at a reasonable price point again, but that will be entirely dependent on your postcode and whether there are any in stock, so go fast!

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On October 23, 2026, the official X account of Stellar Blade revealed that the game is going to have a collaboration with Overwatch titled "Overwatch X Eve Protocol".

Like past collaborations with other franchises, Overwatch will no doubt create new cosmetic rewards based on Stellar Blade's main characters and pass them on to Overwatch's Heroes.

The date for this collaboration and its content have not been specified at this time.

For those unaware, Stellar Blade is a character action game where you play as EVE, a soldier dispatched to Earth to liberate it from monstrous alien invaders called the Naytiba.

It's gained quite the cult following and critical acclaim since its release in 2024 for its in-depth combat gameplay and appealing main character, EVE. Ever since it ditched PlayStation exclusivity and started releasing on other platforms like PC and soon Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox fans have been rallying for an Xbox Series X|S port.

With this expected collaboration with Overwatch, a first-party Xbox franchise, there might be a chance we could get an Xbox version of Stellar Blade down the pipeline.

Would you like to play Stellar Blade on Xbox?

I wouldn't mind giving Stellar Blade a chance if it lands on Xbox Series X|S, especially with Xbox Play Anywhere so I can play it while travelling on holiday.

Its gameplay looks fun and gives off the same over-the-top feel as classic combat-heavy titles like Nier: Automata and Bayonetta (it's even getting a crossover Bayonetta skin for EVE when the game lands on Nintendo Switch 2).

But what do you think? Could this Overwatch collaboration be hinting at an Xbox Series X|S port of Stellar Blade? Would you play it if it landed on Xbox? Do you think Stellar Blade's sequel, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, will come to Xbox as well?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, please let us know in the comments, poll, or Reddit.

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The fallout from Electronic Arts' (EA) decision to shut down BioWare continues to rage on as more about the planned Mass Effect Universe game has come to light in the passing days. The #SaveMassEffect petition has now surged past 170,000 signatures, and fans are escalating their efforts to get EA's attention, including talk of taking the message right to the publisher's doorstep.

Could fans manage to pitch a billboard outside EA HQ?

The push to "Save Mass Effect" has reached fever pitch following a devastating reveal that showed players exactly what they lost with the studio closure, a former developer released a pre-production trailer and gameplay details for the cancelled Mass Effect Universe, revealing a highly ambitious future for the franchise that will never see the light of day.

Channelling the community's frustration, passionate Mass Effect fan and lore content creator Kala Elizabeth took to X/Twitter to propose a fundraiser for a potential billboard outside EA's California headquarters to promote the #SaveMassEffect movement. The idea has quickly gained traction, with many prominent industry figures responding in support.

The movement shares a hashtag with the massive Change.org petition created by Joe Smith, but the billboard plans and additional upcoming initiatives are being coordinated exclusively by Kala Elizabeth and the @WeAreMassEffect team, completely separate from the petition's creator.

Kala confirmed that a coordinated effort is in the works, stating they are "working on a plan with multiple things for next week" and "won't let Mass Effect, Dragon Age and BioWare go down without a fight!"

Could Xbox #SaveMassEffect? Our sources say no.

A somewhat sour note has been added to the community's rallying cry by an unconfirmed rumour about BioWare's final days. According to a post by user @baundiesel, BioWare developers allegedly attempted to buy out the studio and the Mass Effect IP before the closure, but EA "showed no interest in a deal". While this claim should be taken with a heavy grain of salt, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the development team believed in the project they were building this much.

Whether a billboard in California, or whatever else the community plans, will be enough to sway fatcat executives remains to be seen, but Mass Effect fans are making it clear they won't go quietly. As the campaign grows momentum, many are discussing if another publisher could step in and save the day, earning infinite brownie points with the gaming community in the process. Theories are heavily circulating that Xbox could step up to the plate. A hope not too out of the realm of possibility, given they recently swooped in to save Hideo Kojima's Physint after it was unceremoniously dropped by PlayStation. Brownie points aside, acquiring and funding a new AAA entry would be a considerable financial risk for Xbox, and I'm not convinced they have the appetite for risk right now. Our sources at Windows Central suggest that Microsoft is not going to make a bid for BioWare or Mass Effect.

Alternatively, CD Projekt Red is being touted as the perfect replacement to help, with fans hoping the RPG masters could give the Mass Effect universe the meticulous treatment and attention to detail it deserves.

If another studio were to swoop in and save Mass Effect, who do you think would be the best choice? Let me know in the comments below, and don't forget to visit #SaveMassEffect and pledge your support if you care at all about this legendary IP.

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Late on Friday, it was revealed that former Minecraft lead Helen Chiang was leaving Microsoft, shared by CEO Asha Sharma in an internal email.

Helen Chiang had been leading at Xbox as its first ever Chief Operations Officer, and had only been in the post for a few months. As such, the departure raised eyebrows immediately.

"Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft today. I’m grateful for her years of service and wish her well," Asha Sharma said in an internal email shared by The Verge. Sharma noted that an update on the COO post would arrive later. Indeed, it doesn't sound as though the COO post is going away, suggesting that this wasn't a redundancy departure. People immediately began to speculate that Chiang had been removed over a clash or disagreement of sorts.

In a statement to Windows Central, a Microsoft spokesperson said: "We don't discuss individual personnel matters. We are grateful for Helen's years of service and wish her well," echoing statements given to other outlets.

We now have more detail on what might've transpired from Eurogamer, who suggests that Chiang was "terminated for policy violations," via one of its sources, although it said it wasn't able to gain additional corroborative sources.

Chiang has had a large, storied career at Microsoft. She joined all the way back in 2005 working on mapping software, and then began rising through the ranks of Xbox back in 2007. She's been working on Minecraft since 2014, and led the game's expansion across consoles, mobile devices, education services, merchandising, and more recently, movies and other transmedia opportunities.

Chiang is incredibly well-liked and highly regarded within Microsoft by every employee I've spoken to. She's known as supportive and helpful, described to me as going above and beyond for employees at all levels.

She has been one of Xbox's longest-serving leaders and her promotion to COO was celebrated. Her purported termination immediately struck me as odd, and not exactly something that would've been done lightly.

I suspect this isn't the last we've heard of this story, and certainly not the last we've heard of Chiang, who by all accounts was excellent in her role.

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Xbox's 25th anniversary is here, and it's been a wild ride with plenty of ups and downs, to say the least.

To celebrate such a momentous occasion, I'm looking back on how I was introduced to the Xbox ecosystem, what convinced me to stick with it above all the other consoles, and how it shaped my most fond gaming memories.

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My first meeting with Xbox

My first memories of the Xbox ecosystem were during the early 2000s, when my brother came home with his friends to play some strange new sci-fi shooter called Halo on the original Xbox.

We all had a blast playing through the single campaign in co-op (despite my brother constantly getting us killed with his grenade obsession and bad Warthog driving skills) and even spent some time in the PvP modes fighting in the iconic 'Blood Gulch' map.

Admittedly, as a kid, I didn't play much of the OG Xbox's catalog, like Halo 1 and 2, as I was more obsessed with Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube at the time.

Sadly, that meant I missed out on classics like Psychonauts, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire when they were brand new, and I wouldn't get to play them until decades later.

I certainly can't say the same for the Xbox 360 when it came out in the mid-2000s, as I was obsessed with it as a teen.

Hooked by the Xbox 360

While I was still enjoying the amazing games on the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, I found myself spending more time with the Xbox 360 and its library of iconic games like Gears of War, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and BioShock, and underrated gems like Kameo: Elements of Power and Lost Odyssey, just to name a few.

I got to the point where I played multi-platform games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Transformers: War for Cybertron, Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Saints Row series, and Devil May Cry 4 only on Xbox 360, as I enjoyed its controls more for 3D games than any other home console.

And, in case anyone's wondering, my Xbox 360 managed to escape the infamous "Red Ring of Death", but I remember having technical issues of my own to deal with, mostly of my own making.

I somehow jumbled several Microsoft accounts together due to my inexperience with email addresses as a teen, and it took my brother several months to fix. I owed him big time for that and repaid his service by doing the "Scan the Keeper" quest in Mass Effect for him whenever he played (which has sadly become a family tradition I'll never escape from).

Thriving on the Xbox One

When the 2010s rolled around, there came a huge turning point in my gaming career. I was starting to become bored of how stale Nintendo games had become and was tired of dealing with motion-control gimmicks.

Plus, I was sick of having to deal with Sony's poor cybersecurity, as it was getting hacked every few months, forcing me to constantly change my account details on my PlayStation consoles.

As a result, I found myself playing console games exclusively on the Xbox One despite its disastrous launch, which mandated always-online requirements while being forced to be bundled with the Kinect, which Microsoft quickly backpedaled on.

While I didn't play the Xbox One as much as I did the Xbox 360 due to me getting into PC gaming during the mid-2010s, the Xbox One era held some of my fondest gaming memories and triumphs.

The Xbox One brought back one of the few fighting games I ever liked, Killer Instinct, with an amazing reboot that lasted for several years. It had amazing AAA titles like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Devil May Cry V, and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, and cool indie retro throwbacks like Cuphead.

However, all of those memories paled in comparison to when I was introduced to one of my favorite games of all time on the Xbox One (even though it's not an Xbox exclusive), Monster Hunter: World.

With over 2,000 hours on my Xbox save file, I have never before (or since) been so maddeningly obsessed with a single game as I was with Monster Hunter World on the Xbox One. The in-depth combat system, the vibrant, interactable world laden with secrets, the cool and challenging monsters, the endless amount of gear to grind for — it was amazing.

Even dealing with Monster Hunter World's cumbersome multiplayer matchmaking system and story-locking was worth suffering through, as hunting giant monsters the size of buildings with my friends was some of the most fun I ever had, and no other multiplayer game has topped it since for me.

A shaky modern era and the unknown future

And that brings us to the current Xbox Series X|S era, and it's been a mixed bag, to say the least. While it's brought us some amazing games like Elden Ring, Lies of P, Psychonauts 2, and Baldur's Gate 3, this era has brought about some depressing situations that made me almost consider quitting Xbox altogether.

The controversial Xbox 'reset' that has laid off hundreds of people, Microsoft banning people's hacked accounts instead of trying to recover them, the rising cost of everything due to the RAM crisis, and the horrifying realization that if something were to go wrong with Xbox Live, both digital and physical discs wouldn't work.

Yet despite this bleak era we're currently in, I'm not giving up. If Xbox was able to survive the global credit crisis of 2007 and the COVID-19 pandemic that lasted for several years, then I believe it will weather this cyber apocalypse as well.

So long as my friends keep playing Xbox games, I will stay the course so we can make more precious memories together as we ponder what the Xbox Series X|S's successor, Project Helix, will be like.

Happy anniversary, Xbox, and here's to another 25 years of gaming!

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Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that AMD FSR 4.1 would be implemented on current Xbox devices, which will happen sooner than you'd think, according to our sources.

Well, that time has come for Xbox handhelds, as Reddit user "Sjknight413" has discovered that beta drivers for AMD FSR 4.1 have rolled out and are ready to download on Xbox Ally, Xbox Ally X, and Xbox Ally X20.

For those unaware, AMD FSR 4.1 is an upscaling technology designed to boost the graphical details of a game's image higher than its native resolution would allow. It accomplishes this by rendering games at a lower resolution, then using machine learning to generate sharper images.

This technique would allow the console to not spend as much on rendering a game's resolution and use the leftover overhead to boost its framerate performance.

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Our sources informed us last time that Xbox handhelds receive this update first, with the Xbox Series X|S to follow suit in the following weeks, so we'll keep an eye out and inform you when it arrives.

In the meantime, be sure to look forward to Jez Corden's personal testing of the AMD FSR 4.1 on Xbox Ally X, and see if its resolution and performance boost can match up to the Steam Deck's impressive usage of FSR 4, without the latter's complicated setup for it via GitHub.

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I fell in love with Call of Duty way back in 2009, when my friend group pushed me to make the jump from Halo 3 to Modern Warfare 2. While initially I was concerned I couldn't get a handle on certain mechanics, like learning weapon types beyond the simplified "AR" and "BR" I had grown accustomed to in Halo, I ended up really getting my footing in Modern Warfare 2 after a couple of months. It was the start of a fixation with Call of Duty that only 2016's Infinite Warfare could put at risk. I still quote several lines from MW2 (2009) to this day, even.

17 years after my first foray into Call of Duty's Modern Warfare subseries, my attachment to the franchise has only grown. For quite a while, I considered the 2019 reboot of the Modern Warfare franchise among my favorite games of all time. After completing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, however, I think that list has been shaken up — and I can finally tell you why.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 — Story, setting, and art

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is divided up between three different modes: a single-player campaign, the revival of the PvPvE experience in DMZ, and classic multiplayer.

Modern Warfare 4 was piecemealed out over the last week, with players who had preordered gaining access to the Campaign one week in advance, followed by an early access period for DMZ lasting a few days before the launch of MW4 multiplayer (which the team ended up releasing a few hours earlier than originally planned, as well).

Because of the staggered launch window, I went ahead and wrote a longer review explaining why I felt the campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is a cinematic masterpiece, as well as an individual article discussing my first impressions of the DMZ. But I'd also like to reflect on those modes as part of the full launch, too.

The singleplayer campaign for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is a cinematic masterpiece

I'm reiterating that headline because I don't think I can say it enough to stress how incredibly well done the campaign for MW4 truly is. In the very beginning, MW4 introduces a new squad — Sierra-1, a collaborative group of young soldiers consisting of South Korean conscripts and American Marines.

The narrative team from Infinity Ward really showed their chops with the opening sequence, as the American soldiers introduce the ROK members of Sierra-1 to Wu-Tang's rap classic, C.R.E.A.M. The team banter and poke at one another before side-questing into a convenience store to purchase junk food and stomach medicine for some light hazing of the squad's newbie.

The sequence feels like a video game's cold open and more like an expertly shot film, with care and attention to detail oozing from every neon light, every brightly colored and meticulously packed item on the corner store's shelves, all the way to the silly expression on the American corporal's face when you lie and tell him that a specific food item is, well — fish soaked in piss.

Modern Warfare 4 is a war game, though, not a shopping simulator, so of course things have to go awry for our charming young squad when they find themselves thrust into the front lines of urban warfare in downtown Seoul after North Koreans invade under the cover of night.

Fighting through this battle with this inexperienced squadron adds more risk to the invasion of North Korea, and as they are forced to retreat, we learn that the story here is not being told in a linear fashion. Instead, we're pushed back to 5 days before NK's attack on Seoul.

It's through these time jumps that Infinity Ward's narrative team weaves a complicated tale of brotherhood and comradery between squad mates, the weight of grief when a squadmate is lost in battle, and the consequences of how that grief is dealt with. Sierra-1's story intertwines with MW staple, Task Force 141, which has been severely affected by the loss of Johnny "Soap" MacTavish (at the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023).)

While the young squad of Sierra-1 grapples with loss in one way, TF141's leader, Captain John Price, has gone the revenge route. Now rogue after having killed American General Shepherd, Price finds himself at the mercy of his former enemy, El Sin Nombre (Valeria Garza.)

Every element of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign will have you pulled in, waiting with bated breath to see what happens next. For a franchise that has historically been considered a vapid first-person shooter without any sort of deep-rooted story to tell, Modern Warfare 4 pulls out all the stops and effectively proves anything uttered by detractors as wrong.

MW4 juxtaposes the actions of its younger, inexperienced squad against those of the battle-hardened TF141. Both bands of brothers tackle grief and motivations for continuing on in the face of a heavy loss, doing so in ways that affect the other squad without their even knowing it.

These parallels also appear in the campaign's other subplot, which highlights the brutality of the invading North Korean regime and its hunt against defectors. We get yet a third angle to study the issue of blind loyalty and defecting from the safety of what one knows because it is inarguably just the right thing to do.

The MW4 campaign is a gut-wrenching story that serves as the finale for the Modern Warfare reboot. While we see several known characters' storylines come to an end in one way or another, there are still some characters for the subseries that are left in the wind who do not have neat little ties to their loose ends.

The story continues with the tense, beautifully haunting DMZ

Modern Warfare 4's "third mode" is a return of the MW2 (2022)'s PvPvE experience, DMZ. Set in a demilitarized zone in Hajin, on the border of the Korean peninsula and Russia, players can infiltrate the region and carry out missions to check off objectives for several missions that expand upon the post-credits world of Modern Warfare 4.

DMZ differs from the single-player campaign in that it takes on the form of an extraction shooter, with players able to take an operator from one of the game's story characters and put that operator through their paces in the DMZ, completing story missions and dynamic ops to level up and loot for better gear.

Because the Modern Warfare campaign wraps up most characters for the subseries, we're given a varied roster of operators, many of which have previously served as multiplayer Operators for Modern Warfare titles past.

Hajin is visually stunning. The open-world map is mostly controlled server-side, so Infinity Ward has been able to introduce new mechanics like dynamic weather to the mode. All players on a server will see the way weather and other factors affect Hajin collectively, so you can't blame the weather for your untimely demise in the DMZ.

A classic multiplayer experience tries something new for Modern Warfare 4

In an interview with Infinity Ward's multiplayer team, I was once told that the battles that go down in multiplayer should be looked at as if they're happening a block or two over from the events that happen in the campaign.

You can see that philosophy very clearly in Modern Warfare 4's 12 launch maps, each of which features very noticeable elements from the campaign that are arranged in a way that makes them feel like they could have been nearby, but not quite the same.

Multiplayer's maps offer an impressive variety of biomes, from a small, tight bus yard to the dilapidated remains of an old coal mining operation. It would be easy to expect Infinity Ward to let the visuals for multiplayer lapse — after all, who would even notice if the paint cans spill when hit or that bullets impact surrounding set pieces?

But the team wasn't content to just let these maps exist. Instead, the multiplayer maps of MW4 are beautiful sets ripe for destruction that offer adequate flanking opportunities and enhance the sustainability of using non-meta weapons, even on small maps, through the power of good design and reasonable player movement.

Infinity Ward did not just stop with multiplayer's classic map structure, though. Modern Warfare 4 introduces a new concept for how to play multiplayer with the new dynamic map, Kill Block.

Kill Block rotates the available set pieces for the map and selects three to piece together to create one unique gameplay experience from mere pieces. Despite being pulled from a multitude of different styles from Modern Warfare's past and present, Kill Block still manages to be a cohesive (and addictive) new feature for MW4.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 — Gameplay

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is a first-person shooter with intense action at its core. Everything about the game is meant to make you feel like you're a war hero, fighting the good fight, across all of its modes. However, there are some notable differences in how each mode gets you to that point (or keeps it dangling in front of you like a carrot.)

Modern Warfare 4's campaign gameplay is a reminder that sometimes we have to get our hands a little dirty

"We get dirty, and the world stays clean" is a recurring mantra throughout the Modern Warfare subseries. The idea is that Task Force 141 may sometimes make decisions or act in ways that might seem questionable or otherwise dirty, but it's okay when the end will inevitably justify the means.

So then it should come as no surprise that Captain Price, who is clearly built to be a brawler, gets his hands dirty in the literal sense by carrying out some of his revenge plot.

Most sequences with Sierra-1 feature classic linear COD set pieces that put you in the heart of battle. But some of Capt. Price's appearances lean into his ability to take down friends and foes in some good old-fashioned fisticuffs, pushing the player into using LT and RT to block, counter, and attack.

Infinity Ward also breaks up the long linear sequences by introducing classical mechanics like rappelling down a skyscraper with night vision goggles, clearing stairwells and rooms where enemies are waiting to take you out under the cover of darkness.

One mission, "Stranded", deviates from the standard gameplay funnel by introducing a semi-open world with three objectives that players can interact with in any order they choose. In addition to the three main objectives, there are multiple secrets littered around, including yellow storage crates with loot and keypad puzzles to unlock for bonus gear.

DMZ gets a major glow up thanks to feedback from the 2022 Beta

When Infinity Ward first introduced the concept of the DMZ in 2022, I was intrigued. I was originally a fan of The Division's Dark Zone concept, and really fell for the extraction mode DLC "Survival". But few games had managed to recapture the excitement of that PvPvE experience that won me over in the Dark Zone.

When the DMZ Beta dropped, I actually spent quite a lot of time with my friends exploring but ultimately ignored the mode sometime before it began to receive new content updates like Building 21.

The things that I felt were lacking and failed to keep me engaged in the DMZ beta for the long term seem to have been addressed with MW4's Beta. Players select their operator, which can be leveled up by earning XP completing story missions and Dynamic Ops, or free roaming to take out lieutenants and other players.

Unlocking Trait Perks lets you spec out a skill tree for your operator, but should they succumb to an untimely demise without extracting their gear and loot, the operator becomes MIA. MIA operators require in-game currency to recover.

This system has proved to add a significant amount of tension to the DMZ, which also offers players a heightened sense of discomfort by introducing NPC characters that behave much more like players than any we have ever seen before. These NPCs drive recklessly, attempt to run players over or take off-road shortcuts, flank squads, and otherwise offer a formidable foe to the DMZ.

It's a challenging new mode, and the community seems to be at odds over whether PvP or PvE elements should reign supreme, but as it stands at launch, DMZ's a tense and exciting experience with friends that has managed to make loss and success both feel more gratifying than its predecessor.

The desire for nostalgia meets the push for innovation in multiplayer

Despite having reviewed every single Call of Duty that has launched in the last 5 years, I still find myself pointing out with each one just how much the development team has had to find a balance between half of a player base that longs for a nostalgic past and half of a player base that craves something new for multiplayer.

Modern Warfare 4 is no different, but I do think there's a chance that Infinity Ward has found a way to walk that line with precision. Launching into Modern Warfare 4's multiplayer when it went live, I immediately felt at home. Despite new menus that allow players to attach custom class loadouts to one specific operator, the system feels familiar and comfortable.

Many of the menus for Multiplayer have gone back to a vertical layout, making them more manageable and a welcome change of pace from the last few years of seemingly endless horizontal options.

Like how DMZ had a glow-up based on player feedback, so has Multiplayer. Many of the game's ills from its open beta earlier this fall seem to have been addressed. UAV spam, for example, led to the developers increasing the cost of all killstreaks by one to help lessen their frequency.

There is still some room for improvement, however. The Time-to-Kill speed was adjusted based on player feedback during the beta, but the open beta period only offered a core playlist. That means players who preferred Hardcore modes were unable to experience exactly what Hardcore had to offer before its launch.

As an avid hardcore fan, I find that there's definitely still wiggle room for some minor weapon balance passes in the mode, but those sorts of quality-of-life improvements are typically made throughout the game's post-launch lifetime. It wouldn't even surprise me if the TTK for Hardcore wasn't already addressed even before this review goes live.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 — Should you buy it?

Few games make it to the 4th entry in a subseries that has been rebooted from a franchise that has been running annually for more than 20 years. But here Infinity Ward sits with Modern Warfare 4. A game that blends the story of a nostalgic brotherhood coping with immeasurable losses with a fledgling brotherhood that is just forming under the burden of war and tragedy.

The nostalgia of the Call of Duty franchise oddly mirrors that of Task Force 141 in some ways. Similarly, the bright-eyed potential of Sierra-1 mirrors that of an Infinity Ward under new studio leadership and grappling with the loss of influential members of the team that are memorialized in the post-credits In Memorial screens.

And yet, from the heartbreak and nostalgia and changing of the guard, there's room for something new. Something exciting that reinvigorates a community that refused to give up on CoD. Modern Warfare 4 may be the final chapter for Task Force 141, but it's just the beginning of this new era of Infinity Ward.

So, do I think you should buy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4? I think you'd be crazy not to, truthfully. For anybody who has ever played Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 4 is the love letter that reminds us of what was special about the franchise in the first place and gives us hope for what it can be going forward.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 looks set to be the best Call of Duty this decade thus far, but I'd give this marketing stunt a 0/10.

Ads are annoying at the best of times. If you're reading Windows Central without an adblocker (thanks!), you're probably getting bombarded in all directions by ads right now (sorry. But also, no, us lowly writers have no control over that). But hey, they keep the lights on, and Windows Central is free without paywalls at least, right?

You know what isn't free? Your shiny Xbox Series X|S console. That wasn't free. You know what else isn't free? Xbox Game Pass, nor is Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Nor is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, in fact. And today, even if you already purchased the game, Xbox is making sure that your console has a very yellow theme this morning — whether you like it or not.

I get that Call of Duty is incredibly important to Xbox's bottom line these days, and funds from the franchise are effectively propping up a variety of other bets Xbox is making right now. I get that last year's "disappointing" Call of Duty pulled down Xbox's financials overall, heaping on additional pressure for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to deliver.

Reviews suggest that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 absolutely has delivered, by the way, with what fans and critics have been calling the best campaign maybe in a decade. It even has the top spot in sales on both Xbox and PlayStation as of writing, beating out GTA 6 itself (for now).

Does it really really need to take over my entire Xbox dashboard, though?

Today, Xbox fans woke up and noticed that Call of Duty not only has the entire spread of those loathed advertising tiles across the bottom of the dash, but also usurps your custom background. I went over to the Personalization settings and no, changing the background doesn't fix it.

You can actually disable this, however, (thanks Donkeyz) using the following steps.

How to turn off full-screen background ads on the Xbox Series X|S dashboard

• Open Settings via the Xbox guide menu.
• Navigate to General.
• Open Personalization.
• Go to My backgrounds. You might have to enter your pin.
• Disable "Show event-themed backgrounds."

Xbox's ads have long been a source of irritation. Sometimes they can be useful, helping discover new games (rarely, I might add), or deals and in-game events you might've missed. This, though? It's too much, IMO.

At least when Xbox was doing those full-screen pop-ups on boot, you could peruse and then dismiss at your leisure. It's not a big deal ultimately, you're not really on the dashboard for any length of time if you're just passing through to get to a game ... but it initially struck me as another annoying hint we don't actually own the shit we buy.

Big tech is aggressively fighting ownership

There seems to be a wider theme at play here. Yes it's just a temporary picture that will probably be gone by the end of the day, and yes you can disable it (for now ...) but it continues a trend of companies like Microsoft reminding us that we don't actually own or control the stuff we buy from them. Windows 11 itself has been blasted for the abundance of "recommended content" it comes with out of the box, and most don't know how to turn some of it off, or that they even can.

PlayStation has triggered a huge backlash over the summer by ending support for physical discs, with figures testifying in court that purchasing games grants you a license only — something many of us already knew, but they're increasingly testing the definition of this in recent years.

RELATED: How to turn off Windows 11 tracking and ads

Digital rights and even physical rights have been increasingly called into question in recent years. Whether it's companies like John Deere fighting against farmers' rights to repair their tractors, companies like BMW or Tesla charging a subscription to turn on features that already exists in your cars. What about companies like Apple intentionally making their laptops impossible to fix without specialist tools (offered by them only)? Companies are really really fighting against your right to actually own the things you buy from them.

Which comes back to the Xbox dashboard. Yes it's just a background today, no big deal right? But what happens tomorrow? Will Microsoft starting putting dashboard customization in as a premium feature? Microsoft is already charging playtime by the hour in Xbox Cloud Gaming ... is that the future of "ownership"? OpenAI's Sam Altman has been fully mask off with hopes that compute in general will be a rented accommodation in the future.

The Xbox Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 dashboard take over is irritating and inconvenient, and an pretty shameless reminder that Xbox can hijack your console whenever it feels like it, even if you paid the full recent $799 price tag ...

Am I paranoid? Maybe ... but maybe you're not paranoid ENOUGH! ... maybe.

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Xbox is ramping up to its 25th Anniversary celebrations on November 15th, but it’s looking even further ahead to the holidays. Hallmark has just dropped a brand new Christmas tree decoration honoring the holy grail of retro hardware: the original Halo Special Edition Xbox console.

It just went live on Amazon for $27.99, and if it's anything like the rest of the anniversary drops, it's going to sell out notoriously fast.

Deck the halls with merch from Xbox fa-la-la-la-laaa

Hallmark has made some awesome Xbox and gaming-related baubles before, including the original black console and this adorable mini Master Chief, but this one is the best I've seen so far because it's the transparent console everyone is reminiscing about right now (and unlike the Series X25 you can actually buy it.)

Even better, it plays the console startup sound and music from "Halo Theme Mjolnir Mix" from Halo 2.

Shockingly, it actually includes the batteries too and doesn't make you buy them separately (I hate it when that happens). I love Hallmark's decorations, and would love to make a whole gaming-themed tree, (Xbox ROG Ally at the top maybe, but at $27.99 a pop I may have to rethink my ambitions (or buy them on sale in January)

If you're hunting for more nostalgic merch, you can find a bunch of other collectible items to grab over on our full Xbox 25th Anniversary item roundup.

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Yesterday marked the end of an era as EA closed down BioWare, the legendary studio behind classic RPGs like Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age: Origins, and Jade Empire, to name a few.

In the wake of this tragedy, something miraculous yet sad happened. In a Mass Effect subreddit post, an EA employee with the username "rasengo727" mentioned that "There was a trailer ready for Mass Effect 5 that I saw a few months ago, so I’m puzzled as to how “early” they were."

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Then a day later, after that post was made, a former BioWare employee uploaded said trailer on Reddit for the now-canceled Mass Effect 5, which would've been called "Mass Effect Universe".

In the era of artificial intelligence, questioning the authenticity of trailers like this is the norm. While the Reddit mods can't independently verify the authenticity of this trailer, as they do not want any former developers or BioWare employees to be harmed, our own sources have confirmed for us that this one is, in fact, real.

The trailer shows the protagonist from Mass Effect 5's teaser trailer infiltrating a nightclub to take down some criminals in hiding, all with the cinematic presentation and storytelling of a spy thriller.

It also shows a montage of our protagonist's backstory, his adventures trapezing around the galaxy, romantic endeavors, meeting ancient aliens, and getting into intense firefights where our hero uses Biotic powers.

The trailer then ends with a fight breaking out and confirmation that Liara T'Soni, one of Mass Effect's most beloved characters, would be returning for this game, albeit much older than she was in the original trilogy.

A spy-thriller Mass Effect with Liara coming back? What a dark timeline we're living in right now

Like everyone else, I'm quite depressed over the closure of BioWare. Mass Effect was one of my favorite game series ever as a teenager. However, with the controversial ending of Mass Effect 3 and the disastrous launch of Mass Effect: Andromeda, the series was never able to recover.

So seeing this trailer makes the studio's end break my heart even more. An epic spy-thriller story calling back to the series' roots while bringing back Liara T'Soni (who was one of my favorite party members) would've been awesome.

Alas, we'll never know for sure now. All we can hope for now is another studio to buy BioWare's iconic franchises away from EA and give them the proper respect they deserved.

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Capcom has officially announced on its website that its CAPCOM ID account service has suffered a major data breach at the hands of a third party. While this breach doesn't affect CAPCOM ID users' ability to play games or access their multiplayer features, it has leaked private information from over 11.7 million accounts.

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This private data that's been leaked includes email addresses, IP addresses, account activity, account creation, and login information.

Capcom also states that over 43 Capcom ID users have had their date of birth, gender, country/region, and nicknames leaked. Plus, 193 CAPCOM ID accounts have had their login passwords changed without authorization.

So what's the good news and what do I do if I'm affected?

The good news is that the Capcom ID passwords for all affected accounts haven't been leaked and that users' credit card credentials haven't been leaked or changed.

Capcom has already identified and addressed the method used for this data breach to make sure it doesn't happen again and has begun contacting the victims to provide customer support.

In the meantime, Capcom suggests that if you have received any strange emails or messages after this breach, exercise caution and don't click on any URLs or attached files within them.

As a Capcom ID user myself, I'd personally recommend changing your password as well. Even if you haven't been noticeably hacked, I'd still suggest changing it just in case it got leaked but hasn't been reported by Capcom yet (there are always a few that manage to slip detection no matter how good a company's security is).

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So you've seen the title and think I've lost my mind, right? Of course the backpack matters when you're looting in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ. How else do you carry those sweet rewards?

But it's not just about having a backpack; it's about having the right backpack and using it in such a way that it can protect your rarest rewards. One of the biggest thrills and disappointments of an extraction shooter like DMZ is that at any point you could get rinsed by another player and lose everything you worked so hard for.

But you can also protect items in your backpack in case of emergencies such as this. Even if you don't make it out, your precious items can. Here's what you need to know about the backpacks in Modern Warfare 4 DMZ.

The first good backpack is unlocked at DMZ Level 2

When you reach DMZ Level 2 and unlock the 3D Printer, the first good packpack is one of the initial recipes you'll unlock.

While the Small Backpack is the easiest one to craft, you should only consider using it if you're going on an ingredients run. It doesn't hold much, and it lacks the key feature we need for rarer, higher-quality items.

That would be the Secure Slot, and the rare-tier Medium Backpack is the cheapest one to craft that has at least one of these. The Secure Slot is where you want to place the most valuable item you find, because if you go down, that item will still be sent back to your FOB.

As an example, just last night I found another recipe early on in one of my DMZ matches. I put it straight in the secure slot, which was a good thing because as I left the building that I found it in, I was run over by another player. I lost my weapons, I lost my backpack, and I lost my consumables, but the recipe made it out and was unlocked on my 3D Printer.

The only slight downside is that weapons don't have a secure slot. There are backpacks that have weapon slots so you can stash more than just the ones you're carrying in your loadout, but you can't add weapons to secure slots.

But you can put recipes and manuals in them along with all sorts of other rare items to protect them should you fail to exfil.

How to get better backpacks in Modern Warfare 4 DMZ

There are various ways to get backpacks in DMZ, and one of them is just finding them out in the wild while you're playing. Like all the other loot, such as parachutes, you can get lucky and find a better bag. Or take one from a player you downed!

In terms of crafting, there are two recipes you can guarantee you can add to your 3D Printer. The Medium Backpack is unlocked at DMZ Level 2, while the Large Backpack unlocks at DMZ Level 34. At DMZ Level 61 you also unlock the recipe to craft the Medium Weapon Backpack.

The rest require you finding their recipes while playing DMZ, so you'll need to put in some work to find them all.

Scavenger backpacks are good for looting runs, such as stocking up on 3D Printer ingredients. Secure backpacks are good for targeting higher-tier items. There's plenty to choose from, but if you always try and run with at least a Medium Backpack if you find a recipe, you can guarantee it gets out safely.

You can also get a new backpack in the FOB from the Vendor in exchange for DMZ Cash, and from Survival Kits. If an item pops up in the Vendor that you don't have a recipe for, it's always a good idea to add to your stash, assuming you have the funds. I've bought a Large Backpack already for 10,000 DMZ Cash.

Recipes and manuals are key items you want to get in DMZ and running a backpack with a Secure Slot is the easiest way to make sure you always get them out safely.

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The gameplay loop in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ is a little different from other modes in the game and even previous extraction modes such as the DMZ beta, Modern Warfare Zombies, and Black Ops 7 Endgame.

You start out with nothing. Well, almost nothing. But the idea is you have to go out and scavenge for better gear, be that through doing missions, defeating world bosses, or even other players.

But there is a way to get high-tier weapons without spending DMZ Cash and without having to run the gauntlet of Hajin's battlegrounds. There is a catch, though. Well, technically two. But essentially it involves weapon blueprints you acquire for Modern Warfare 4, because you can craft them at the Gunsmith.

• I went hands‑on with Modern Warfare 4’s new DMZ mode — and it was nothing like I expected

Once you reach DMZ Level 10 the Gunsmith Station unlocks, which allows you to craft weapons you've found manuals for and extracted successfully. But it also allows you to craft blueprints you own, regardless of whether you have the manual or not.

Better still, the first time you craft one of these blueprints, it's completely free. But the catch is that it's only the first time. So, as an example, if you got the "Beta Forged" Han 86 blueprint from the Modern Warfare 4 beta, you can craft it once for free in DMZ and get a legendary tier weapon to add to your loadout.

To do so, you choose the "Builds" option next to the weapon and select the blueprint you want to craft. After this first time you can still craft them, but there will be a substantial DMZ Cash cost depending on the blueprint.

If you're playing during the earliest days of Modern Warfare 4, another catch is that unless you bought the Vault Edition, you won't have as many blueprints to choose from, and as a result, fewer free weapons to craft. As the game rolls into its post-launch content, you'll be able to add plenty to your stash, including a bunch from just levelling up. But out of the gate, those who paid more have more to choose from.

A quick tip as well to try and protect your higher tier weapons and gear is to make sure you have a backpack with a secure slot on it. Assign the thing you don't want to lose to the secure slot, and if you go down and fail to exfil, this item will at least make it out.

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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV has revealed new footage and details on every single aspect of its gameplay, from its cinematic story mode to thrilling multiplayer modes.

If you've been watching the battle reports for the latest entry in Warhammer 40,000's iconic real-time strategy series and have been waiting for an overview of what it has to offer beyond intense RTS combat, this trailer will have you covered.

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It first goes over what we can expect to see from its single-player campaign mode. You will play as one of four factions fighting for control of the planet Krono — Space Marines, Adeptus Mechanicus, Orks, and Necrons.

The campaign will feature a cinematic storyline for each faction with branching paths depending on your choices across 70 missions and can be played either solo or co-op.

We then get a summary of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV's gameplay loop.

In this game, you build bases to generate units for your army, capture points on the map to generate resources for your forces, and engage your enemies in bloody, fast-paced RTS skirmishes with cinematic kill animations during melee combat.

Each faction has its own unique playstyle, unit roster, and strategies:

• Orks — an endless horde of greenkin brutes who overwhelm their enemies with sheer numbers of melee fighters and war machines that can be empowered by WAAAGH energy.
• Adeptus Mechanicus — a cult of cyborg soldiers, engineers, and priests who use advanced technology to scout out enemy positions and buff units and buildings, and summon building-sized mechs called Imperial Knights to devastate enemy lines.
• Necrons — an ancient race of living killing machines that deploy monoliths to infect maps with Power Matrix influence that heals their forces and teleports them across the battlefield.
• Space Marines — elite super-soldiers enhanced and trained to tackle any situation with a jack-of-all-trades style roster of units and deploy them behind enemy lines via Deep Strike reserves. They also have specialized units like the Blood Ravens, who excel in covert operations, and the Dark Angels, who charge into the fray with heavy armor and power weapons.

Beyond the Campaign, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV will feature a Skirmish mode with four game types where you can test your skills against AI-driven opponents.

There's also a Last Stand game mode where you and two allies must work together to survive 20 waves of enemies, each one more deadly than the last. Defeating each wave will grant EXP, which can be spent to upgrade your forces' abilities for a better chance of survival.

Last Stand will allow you to command five Commander units at launch and will add more in post-launch updates.

Next, the trailer goes over the competitive multiplayer portion of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4. This mode will let players face human or AI opponents in 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3 matches across 30 maps and three match types whose rules can be customized to your liking.

Lastly, the trailer highlights the Painter. This is a fan-favorite gameplay feature from previous Dawn of War games that allows you to customize the color schemes (including individual body parts) and cosmetics of your favorite factions so you can show them off in the Skirmish, Multiplayer, and Last Stand modes.

December cannot get here fast enough

I've been waiting for gameplay footage of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV's campaign for ages, and after watching many multiplayer-focused gameplay deep dives, this trailer did not disappoint.

The mission select screen brings back memories of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War's Dark Crusade expansion, the story looks just as over-the-top as previous games, and the multiple branching paths sound awesome for replay value purposes.

Not to mention it's awesome to see the Painter mode return once more while allowing players to customize each individual part of every unit to their liking (which is great for fans of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game who need help planning out their custom paint jobs for their miniatures).

After watching this trailer, I'm now completely sold on Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV and will play it when it launches on December 3, 2026, on PC.

Do note that if you purchase Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV's Commander Edition, you will gain 3 days of early access starting November 30, 2026.

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CD Projekt Red has finished divulging the full details of Cyberpunk 2077's 2.5 update coming to home consoles and PC on October 22, 2026.

The update will feature a new questline that acts as a prologue to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2, dual-wielding pistols, new Cyberware and cosmetic customization options, FOV sliders on consoles, mod support on consoles, and more.

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Additionally, Cyberpunk 2077 has just received Xbox Play Anywhere support, so it can be played on all platforms within the Xbox ecosystem, like Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and compatible handhelds like the Xbox Ally via Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Here are all the full details and patch notes for Cyberpunk 2077's 2.5 update.

Cyberpunk 2077 2.5 update — patch notes

• Edgerunners Content
  • Added a new side quest, Clampdown, set before the events of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2. To unlock it, complete The Heist and two gigs for Wakako, then wait for a message from her.
  • Added a new 5-piece gear set based on the character King, which can be obtained during the Clampdown side quest.
  • Added a new radio station, HKGN 102.0 FM, featuring a selection of tracks from the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners series.
    
• Show Off
  • A brand-new clothing collection has arrived in Night City! 5 new outfit sets can now be purchased from certain clothing vendors:
  • Maxiwear: available in Heywood, Arroyo, Little China
  • Jinguji: available in City Center
  • NetWatch: available in Kabuki, Japantown
  • IconAmerica: available in Pacifica, Badlands, Northside
  • And one more set that will hit Night City shelves just a little later...
  • The NUS Infiltrator clothing set can be now purchased from clothing vendors in Kabuki and Japantown.
  • 4 new TWINTONE skins for Quadra Turbo-R V-Tech are now available via Twitch Drops.
  • Some of the hairstyles that were previously exclusive to NPCs are now available for V. Please note that some hairstyles are available only to feminine or masculine body types.
  • Show off your chrome! You can now customize your hand cyberware. Equip your Mantis Blades, Gorilla Arms, Monowire or Projectile Launch System, and visit one of 5 Glamdocs (marked with a spray paint icon on the map) to give your implants a fresh, new look. Each Glamdoc is located in a unique shop, along with their own intro scene with voiceover and animations, and offers a unique catalog of cyberware skins with customizable colors.
  • Sometimes one gun just isn't enough. The new Double Trouble perk in the Cool tree (along with four auxiliary perks) introduces an entirely new playstyle, allowing you to dual-wield Pistols and Revolvers from the Power category.
  • Added frames from the Cyberpunk Trading Card Game to Photo Mode, allowing you to make your preem shots look like custom cards.
  • Added new poses in Photo Mode to show off your dual-wielding prowess.
    
• Mod the World
  • Added Cross-Platform Mod Support, powered by mod.io, a first step into cross-platform modding that allows you to easily browse and install a selection of player-created mods directly from the in-game menu. More mods will become available over time. The feature is available on PC, Mac, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro and Xbox Series X|S.
    
• Upgrading the World
  • Welcome to Paradise! Added a new side quest that takes you on a journey to uncover a mystery and explore Night City on a guided tour narrated by Richard Night. It unlocks after completing The Heist and reaching level 15 Street Cred.
  • Added 12 new Minor Arcana Tarot Cards to discover across Night City. The Tarot menu now has separate sections for Major and Minor Arcana. The new tarot cards are part of a new side quest, an extension of Fool on the Hill, which activates after scanning any of the new cards. Collect them all to get a special reward.
    
• Quality of Life
  • Saves in the “Load Game” menu are now grouped by separate playthroughs.
  • Added item filters to apartment and vehicle stashes.
  • Modded saves in the "Load Game" menu are now marked with a dedicated icon. Please note that achievements and trophies cannot be earned while playing on console from a modded save file.
  • Added an FOV (Field Of View) slider on consoles.
  • Updated the selection of AMD FSR options. FSR 3 upscaling is no longer included, while FSR 2.1, FSR 4, and FSR 3.1 Frame Generation remain available.
  • Updated the CD PROJEKT RED Account connection, My Rewards and telemetry consent menus.
    
• Technology
  • Added support for DLSS 4.5, including up to 6X Multi Frame Generation or Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, and the 2nd Generation Transformer Model.
  • Added support for glasses-free 3D effects on compatible Samsung Odyssey 3D monitors, along with a Motion Comfort setting that lets you balance 3D depth and viewing comfort.
  • Added support for MetalFX Frame Interpolation and Denoising on Mac.
  • Added a toggle in settings for FSR Anti-Lag 2.
  • Introduced various performance optimizations, including improvements specifically for Ray Tracing and for PlayStation 5 Pro.
  • Improved HDR rendering to provide more accurate colors, brightness, and contrast on compatible displays.
    
• Fixes
  • Fixed an issue on Nintendo Switch 2 where saving the game could result in a "Save failed - insufficient space" error.
  • Fixed an issue where adjusting HDR settings on PlayStation 5 had no effect.
  • Things Done Changed - Fixed an issue where the Delamain cab could get stuck after crashing into another vehicle, blocking quest progression.
  • Fixed an issue where enabling Film Grain had no effect.
  • Fixed an issue where tagging enemies while scanning could also cause V to crouch or stand up when using certain control schemes.
  • Fixed an issue where controller settings for the Third-Person Camera were missing.
  • Fixed several typos in various languages.
  • Added various other fixes for features and content introduced since Patch 2.1.

Dual-wielding pistols and FOV sliders on consoles? Sign me up!

Overall, all these new features sound cool. My favorite aspects of this update are mowing down enemies while dual-wielding guns and the FOV slider that will allow me to adjust the game's first-person view so it won't feel so cramped and claustrophobic on Xbox anymore.

Of course, mod support so we can customize Cyberpunk 2077 however we like, and customizing my cybernetic upgrades' looks is pretty awesome too.

But what do you think? Is this update worth another playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077? Will it motivate you to play it for the first time if you haven't already, or have you decided to move on and wait for Cyberpunk 2077's sequel?

If you have any thoughts on the subject, please let us know in the comments, on Reddit, or in the poll.

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A few weeks ago, Microsoft unveiled pretty huge limits on Xbox Cloud Gaming, which up until now has been unlimited for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate users.

Starting in November, Xbox Cloud Gaming via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will be limited to 15 hours, with Premium users getting 10, and basic users getting 5. The breakdown of the limitations can be seen below.

However, Microsoft just revealed that users will be able to move beyond these limits with new cloud playtime passes — which don't require Xbox Game Pass at all.

Xbox Cloud Gaming access via playtime passes

In a blog post, Microsoft says, "Cloud playtime packs provide an ad-free cloud gaming experience, including shorter wait times, high-quality streaming, and playtime that remains available until it's used."

Unlike some other providers, these playtime passes don't expire until they're actually fully used. You could buy the 50-hour pass and just keep it rolling throughout the year, for example, using it when needed. Some other services put a limit on when the passes can be used, i.e., they expire within the month.

For those on Xbox Game Pass, these are the current limits you get with Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Microsoft says that these new passes will go live for Xbox Insider Program members today, as well as a new free ad-supported tier. I'm told it comes with a 30-minute session limit for the Xbox Insider Program test run.

After 30 minutes, an ad will play, and then users will have to re-queue to resume their session. The ad-based option is, indeed, an option, and probably designed to on-ramp players to a more premium offering.

Is this all in preparation for Grand Theft Auto 6?

Recently, Tom Warren at The Verge reported that Microsoft has landed Xbox Cloud Gaming rights for Grand Theft Auto 6, although it led to a very curiously worded denial from Xbox. Microsoft said specifically that they won't be streaming GTA 6 on PC, nor exclusively ... but left the door open for console streaming. Perhaps Microsoft has landed some form of access for streaming GTA 6 via Xbox Cloud Gaming, specifically to Xbox consoles.

The Xbox One console range can stream Xbox Cloud titles, and there are still hundreds of thousands of users on the previous-gen console platform, given that games like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and others are still fully updated on PS4 and Xbox One.

RELATED: Best Xbox Cloud Gaming controllers

It's entirely possible that Microsoft has landed some form of cloud streaming deal specifically for Xbox consoles, offering Xbox One players a chance to join in on the GTA 6 fun without having to upgrade to one of the more expensive modern systems. Microsoft also has a few PC games on Xbox Cloud Gaming too ... perhaps World of Warcraft: Forever could jump on this bandwagon as well, given that WoW:F won't be native on consoles for now.

This is speculation for the time being, though. I'm also curious how well received the pricing tiers will be for users who are active on Xbox Cloud Gaming. As an Ultimate subscriber, 15 hours is already way more than I use cloud these days (since getting an Xbox Ally ... which will get even better with FSR 4.1 soon).

But Xbox consoles have become prohibitively expensive in some regions. Xbox Cloud Gaming has been a useful bridge for some, but perhaps not at these new prices. I'm curious what you think?

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Electronic Arts (EA) is officially closing the doors of BioWare, creators of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, as reported by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg. This comes as part of a corporate restructuring that will cut 400 jobs. The lay offs representing about 3% of EAs total workforce and include roughly 50 jobs at BioWare.

Rest in peace Bioware :(

BioWare, founded in 1995 and acquired by EA in 2007 leaves behind a profound legacy in the role-playing genre. Its future has been on shaky ground given the reception and well-reported behind-the-scenes issues surrounding its most recent title, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which missed sales expectations. This followed the failure of the overhyped Anthem. However, I was one of many hoping for redemption with the promise of an upcoming Mass Effect 5 that was in early development. Unfortunately, that has now been cancelled.

According to an internal letter from EA Chief Operating Officer David Tinson and Chief Studios Officer Cam Weber, the publisher is taking a "hard look" at its operations. The cancellation of Mass Effect 5 is included in a bunch of cancelled projects, as well as a planned The Sims game code-named Project Lotus, shifting focus instead to a venture called Project Evergreen.

These sweeping cuts follow EA's transition to a private company in August, prompted by a $55 billion leveraged buyout led by Saudi Arabia’s investment fund. The acquisition placed nearly $18 billion in debt on the publisher's books, triggering a directive to slash up to $700 million in research and development costs.

Despite the closures, EA reaffirmed its commitment to its sports portfolio, Apex Legends, and upcoming action-adventure titles, including the next Star Wars Jedi game and Marvel’s Iron Man. EA will also continue developing Skate, though the team behind it will be downsized.

Additionally, the Battlefield franchise will continue, with Respawn and DICE collaborating on a new project rumored to be another entry in the Star Wars: Battlefront series.

"These games became so much more because you played them."

BioWare have put out a heartfelt statement on social media reminding us of all the great games they've worked on, from Baldur's Gate to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. BioWare were truly legendary and this loss will be felt acutely across the community.

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One of the first things you may notice dropping into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ is that you don't have a parachute automatically equipped. I definitely didn't forget and die to fall damage early on and learn the hard way.

In fact, a parachute is one of the items that players must acquire, and even when you do, you may not be able to use it for long, and of course, if you fail to exfil, you'll lose it along with any of your other gear (I've definitely done this already).

There are a couple of methods to get a parachute in Modern Warfare 4 DMZ, but neither is particularly easy, at least in the early days of the game. But here's how you can go about finding yourself one.

How to find a parachute in-game in Modern Warfare 4 DMZ

The good news is that like pretty much everything else in DMZ, you can loot parachutes during a game. The bad news is that they're pretty hard to find. I've only found one so far as I write this, and I've played about 7 hours.

But you can find one as ground loot, and you can find one without having to go to any of the higher difficulty locations. While the more difficult the location, the better the quality of loot you'll find, it is still possible to find them just by searching.

For example, I found one in the first building I looted at the Russian Border Crossing part of the map in the far top left corner. A disposable parachute was just there inside one of the lockers. The rare tier parachute only has three uses, though, so use it sparingly.

Given the military nature of the item, it stands to reason that your best chance of finding one will be from locations like these. I was in a military outpost looking inside a locker, so it's likely you'll have a better chance here. I wouldn't expect to find a parachute inside a bag in a random residential building, for example. So hit the military locations often. Also Fire Station POIs are a good shout for finding a parachute or two.

Loot in Modern Warfare 4 DMZ has a theme and locations that have a better chance of dropping it. You can see this if you track ingredients for 3D Printer recipes in the FOB. Not always specific locations, but a type of location.

You can possibly find the legendary tier parachute around the map, too, though I haven't seen one. Higher-tier loot is rarer and usually requires being in higher-threat zones, but if you see something you can check for loot; don't run past it. Loot everything.

Also make sure you check the supply drops at the end of a Dynamic Ops mission. These drop various types of gear, and there's always a chance a parachute is inside one of them.

How to craft a parachute in DMZ at the 3D Printer in the FOB

You can also craft parachutes to take into the DMZ with you at the 3D Printer Station in the FOB rather than relying on finding one.

That's the good news. The bad news is that you can't do it right away.

To craft a rare-tier disposable parachute, you first need to increase your DMZ Level up to 55. This unlocks the recipe at the 3D Printer. Once unlocked, you can craft one for 30 Chemicals and 3 Rigid Synthetics. To get your level up as fast as possible, make sure you're actually doing missions inside DMZ. The more you do, the more XP you'll get. And don't forget to stick on a 2XP token if you have one available.

To craft a legendary tier reusable parachute, get your DMZ Level up to 69, one below the current cap. Once you have the recipe unlocked, you can craft one for 2 Turned Components, 5 Nylon Cloth, and 10 Rigid Synthetics. Again, though, it's not permanently applied to your Operator. If you don't manage to exfil, it's gone and you'll have to craft another.

For crafting, finding the ingredients isn't too difficult. By the time you unlock either of these, you've probably found a good stash just through naturally playing. But all 3D Printer recipes will tell you where you can find the ingredients you need. So check it out before you deploy and make sure you target the right areas.

Don't forget to check the Vendor Station

The last thing to do is always keep checking the Vendor Station in the FOB. This offers a rotating cycle of weapons and gear, so you might well see a parachute pop up in there.

You'll need to keep a good stash of DMZ Cash, but I've already been able to buy a legendary backpack and a durable gas mask from there inside the first full day of early access. So don't ignore it.

The pace of DMZ feels like it was designed without using a parachute, and that's OK with me. You shouldn't just be able to glide across the map for free. DMZ makes you earn your gear.

It means you just have to be a little more careful, because you could lose it at any time. But there's no denying having one will make some areas easier to navigate.

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Not long ago, Xbox unveiled Xbox Labs, an initiative created by CEO Asha Sharma to research and explore new and emerging technologies across gaming. It is, of course, a direct response to the wave of AI modding and game mashups we’ve been seeing online, whether it’s Minecraft in Elden Ring, Halo in Fallout, or Skate in Call of Duty. Xbox has clearly seen these projects and is wondering how they could benefit the platform.

While nothing major has happened on that front yet, Xbox Labs is still in its infancy. Scott Van Vliet, who has been tasked with leading the initiative, recently took to X (formerly Twitter) to show off what he’s been cooking, and boy, does it tickle my nostalgia bone.

Van Vliet has shared footage of the original Xbox 360 Blades dashboard running in a web browser on his PC, alongside the NXE dashboard from 2008 and the Metro dashboard from 2011.

On X, Van Vliet stated: “I've been cooking up retro vibes in XBOX LABS. Tell @asha_shar and I your favorite era!”

This actually prompted a response from Sharma, who quote replied: “Blades on web. Do we like this experiment?”

Could the Xbox 360 Blades dashboard actually return?

This isn’t the first time Sharma has mentioned the Blades dashboard, either. When she was first appointed as CEO, one of her earliest tweets asked fans if they “should bring the blade dashboard?” back, and yes, her wording was rather weird.

At the time, it seemed like just good PR, a way of letting fans know she was aware of the older days of Xbox. Now, however, this new Xbox Labs experiment is giving me, and many others, hope that maybe, next generation, we could get a more customizable dashboard experience.

Personally, I think dropping a retro Blades dashboard in honor of Xbox turning 25 years old would be pretty amazing. It’s probably a big ask, though, and I’m not sure how Xbox would fit the seemingly required ad spot onto a Blades dashboard.

That said, let me know: would you like to see the return of Blades, or do you have fond memories of a different dashboard? Let me know in the comments!

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Rumors that Microsoft was willing to sell off its entire Xbox division have been swirling for a while. While those reports never came to fruition, a new report from The Information reveals that there was indeed interest from private equity firms.

According to the outlet, Xbox was valued between $100 billion and $150 billion. The report does say that the discussions were short-lived and strictly exploratory, with no formal negotiations ever taking place. It remains unclear which specific firms were involved in the talks.

Fortunately for fans, this never happened. It’s hard to imagine private equity firms managing Xbox any better than the disastrous past few years have been. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Xbox seems to be back on track under CEO Asha Sharma, who recently dispelled concerns about the business shuttering during an interview with Fortune.

That comment feels like a direct jab at online folk who have long claimed Microsoft is exiting the gaming space. But I digress.

A $100 Billion Xbox Buyout Would Have Changed Everything

A future where Xbox was purchased for over $100 billion would have been a wild timeline. It’s also interesting to compare that valuation to what Microsoft paid for Activision Blizzard King in 2022, which was nearly $70 billion. If you subtract that acquisition cost from the current valuation, it suggests Xbox without Activision is worth somewhere between $30 billion and $80 billion. That is a massive figure, regardless of where on that spectrum you land.

It’s no secret that Xbox has been struggling these past few years. I’m glad Microsoft stuck it out and has seemingly started making positive changes. It really boggles my mind what was going on within the division during the Phil Spencer era. As much as I believe he did amazing work for the brand, the direction Xbox was heading felt like a recipe for disaster.

Let me know your thoughts. Would you have been happier seeing Xbox purchased by a private equity firm, or are you glad Microsoft stuck to its guns and appointed Asha Sharma?

Leave a comment down below and be sure to take part in our poll too!

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's full launch is imminent, but it's suddenly hit a technical roadblock that may hurt its chances of success with console gamers.

The developers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 have announced on X that its Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 versions must run on monitors with Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) enabled for Performance Mode support while players engage with its campaign and DMZ modes.

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This requirement for VRR monitors will also be in effect for Call of Duty: Warzone with Season 1. If you do not have a monitor with VRR enabled and with least 120Hz refresh rates, the game's framerates in Performance Mode will be locked at 60Hz.

Asking players to get a different monitor days before launching your AAA game is certainly a "choice", and a very wrong one at that

This last-minute change won't affect you as much if you don't mind playing the single-player campaign at 60fps in Performance Mode or Resolution Mode for 4K resolutions to achieve greater cinematic immersion.

However, hardcore competitive Call of Duty fans who need as many frames as possible to reduce input lag during intense multiplayer matches or just smoother gameplay in general are beyond angry in the replies to this announcement on X.

I can hardly blame them for getting angry. Asking console players to get a different and expensive monitor if their current one (even if it has a 240Hz refresh rate) doesn't have VRR to achieve optimal performance just days before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23, 2026, is just ridiculous, and they should've warned people months in advance.

What makes this worse is that gaming monitors have become more costly and rarer to find for gamers on a tight budget these days thanks to the worsening RAM Crisis.

Nonetheless, we're not going to leave our fellow console players hanging. So we've scoured the internet for some of the best gaming monitors with VRR to help you circumvent this last-minute requirement and enjoy this AAA blockbuster at its best on Xbox.

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AMD and Microsoft this week took the lid off plans for expanding FSR 4.1 tech to Xbox Series X|S, AMD Ryzen gaming handhelds (like the Xbox Ally X), Ryzen APUs, and older Radeon RX 6000 GPUs.

The official announcement comes after teasing the move earlier this month.

I can't help but see this as one of the most important things that Microsoft could possibly do for current-gen Xbox owners who likely just found out that their consoles will need to last longer than expected.

A longer life for your gaming devices? No better time than now.

To say I'm relieved about FSR 4.1 coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox gaming handhelds is an understatement, and I don't think the news could have come at a better time.

Xbox's next-gen Helix device has reportedly been pushed to 2028. That puts the current generation, which launched in 2020, at roughly eight years of required service before it "retires."

That's a long time to ask the flagship Xbox Series X to remain relevant, and the situation only worsens for the weaker (but more affordable) Xbox Series S.

In our new world of inflated hardware prices, caused by AI-fueled memory and storage shortages, landing a free performance upgrade of this caliber is an outright life preserver for the entire Xbox lineup, including consoles and gaming handhelds.

With so many gamers already feeling the burn of high prices within (and outside) their favorite hobby, improved upscaling is basically the cheapest hardware upgrade I can think of.

The Xbox Series S has the most to gain

Where I live, the Xbox Series S is essentially the only console I can buy for less than $1,000.

It's great for plenty of people, but it has undoubtedly always been living in the shadow of compromise compared to its Series X sibling. Less performance, lower resolutions ... you get the idea.

This is where an improved upscaler like FSR 4.1 that can work better with fewer pixels should make the most difference. But it's not going to be a magic bullet that solves every issue.

The reality of what to expect from the FSR 4.1 upgrade

I'm not looking to oversell FSR 4.1. It's not just going to suddenly arrive for every game. Developers need to patch the update into their games, and the timeline for that is still muddy.

My colleague Jez Corden believes it will be "sooner than you think," with FSR 4.1 becoming available for Xbox game developers "in the next couple of weeks."

The first wave of Xbox games with FSR 4.1 is expected to be small, with a "handful" of titles ready for the 2026 holiday season. More will then trickle out through 2027 (and beyond).

There's also the performance factor. Yes, FSR 4.1 is going to boost framerates on Xbox, but the Series S likely won't see the same boost as the Series X due to its weaker hardware that uses INT8 shaders.

We won't know just how well this change affects the Xbox devices until it arrives, but don't expect your Series S to suddenly feel like a Series X.

Xbox's future is becoming clearer

There's an overarching ecosystem theme here that I think many are overlooking.

With this update, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Ally handhelds, and PCs will all sit at the same upscaling table, making it easier for developers to implement.

Add this to the news that FSR Diamond will arrive as an upgraded upscaling technique for Xbox Helix, and it certainly feels to me like Microsoft is laying a strong foundation for developers who want to create across the entire Xbox ecosystem, now and in the future.

If that actually pans out as I imagine, Xbox Series S owners will continue to benefit from upgrades and updates intended for other devices, which is a great place to be.

What I'm keeping an eye on

The biggest hurdle now? Developers going back and adding FSR 4.1 support to their Xbox games. Once a steady stream begins, this will all start to feel a lot more real. Especially if they're games that already require performance mode to run at an acceptable framerate.

I'm not rushing out to buy an Xbox Series S with this news, but it is certainly heartening. If you're already a Series S owner, you should be feeling pretty good about your device.

Do you plan to stick with your Xbox Series S until Helix arrives? Are you no longer on the fence about buying a Series S in 2026? Let me know in the comments section below!

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I honestly wasn't sure where to begin, or even how this is remotely possible, but here we are in 2026: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a 17-year-old game, now has full cross-play between PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC with absolutely zero modding required.

Developed by @ClassicsGG on X (formerly Twitter), the project is now live. For more details, you can join their Discord. It hasn’t been all smooth sailing, though. The original clip was taken down due to a copyright claim; whether that claim was legitimate or not, it's worth mentioning.

Modern Warfare 2 cross-play sounds impossible, but it works

I find this whole endeavor incredibly ambitious. There’s a full page dedicated to explaining how it works. For example, if you’re on Xbox 360 and want to join a cross-play lobby, you need to:

• Search for the Team Tactical Playlist.
• Or find the host’s gamertag (classicsgg) on Xbox Live and join their session.
• Or send Classicsgg an Xbox Live message or game invite, and they’ll send one back.

That said, joining their Discord seems like the best bet to get things working. Still, it’s incredible that this is even possible. I have fond memories of the older Call of Duty titles; they definitely helped shape my early years of online gaming.

I remember when cross-play between consoles was first being introduced during the Xbox One and PS4 era for Fortnite. It was rather exciting. Being able to play across platforms was pretty cool, even though Sony threw a fit at the thought of it, complete with its mandatory cross-platform revenue share system.

Now, whether this project was pushed through thanks to AI or not, I really don't know for sure, but AI is often the propelling factor with things like this these days. That said, seeing cross-play without the need for mods on a nearly two-decade-old game is a use case I can get behind. Fair warning, though: PC players are a bit out of luck and will require a subscription to the Classics Discord server to help deter and prevent cheating.

Let me know whether you find this as cool as I do by leaving a comment and taking part in our poll below:

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Final Fantasy fans on Xbox are eating good this month. Not only do we have the Final Fantasy Resonance (which I personally found to be amazing) coming out this week, but Microsoft has announced (via Xbox Wire) that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is finally coming to Xbox Game Pass as part of its latest batch of new games.

The batch also includes some more niche titles like Planets Vs. Zombies: Replanted and The Séance of Blake Manor, but Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is the star of the show.

Here's the full list of games coming and leaving Xbox Game Pass for the second half of October 2026.

Games leaving Xbox Game Pass (October 31)

• Day of the Tentacle Remastered (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Dead Static Drive (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Deep Rock Galactic (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Full Throttle Remastered (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Grim Fandango Remastered (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Wartales (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Wildgate (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Games leaving Xbox Game Pass (November 10)

• Football Manager 26 (PC)
• Football Manager 26 – Console Edition (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Windows Central's take

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is an action-RPG reimagining of the classic 1990s JRPG, Final Fantasy VII, that tells the beginning of Cloud's journey to save his planet from destruction at the hands of the evil megacorp Shinra and the megalomaniacal Sephiroth.

While I prefer the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade for its hilarious mods featuring Darth Vader, I can't deny that it coming to Xbox Game Pass finally feels like a satisfying full-circle moment.

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We've gone from speculating about rumors of an Xbox version for years, to Square Enix announcing Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade's Xbox port while shadow-dropping Final Fantasy XVI's Xbox port, to making the entire Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy available on Xbox, and now this.

With its inclusion in Xbox Game Pass, Xbox fans will now have more ways to enjoy Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade's thrilling combat, complex characters, and in-depth story.

Plus, it will serve as a great appetizer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's eventual inclusion in Xbox Game Pass and the epic finale of the FF7 Remake trilogy, Final Fantasy VII: Revelations, which will drop on April 8, 2027, for Xbox Series X|S (with Xbox Play Anywhere support), PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam.

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Xbox Ally and Xbox Series X|S consoles are about to get a big AMD-shaped boost.

Yesterday, AMD and Microsoft revealed that FSR 4.1 is coming to the entire suite of current-gen Xbox devices. That includes Xbox Ally (base model), Xbox Ally X, and Xbox Series X|S consoles.

FSR 4.1 is an upscaling technology that allows games to render images at a lower resolution, passing overhead to performance. Then, FSR 4.1 upscales the image to create a sharper image, granting the appearance of higher native resolution. Technologies like FSR and DLSS have been boosting the lifespan of older and less-powerful hardware for some time now, and given the on-going RAMpocalypse and component crisis, anything that extends the usability of more affordable hardware is a win in my book.

But, when can we expect to get our hands (and eyes) on it? Here's what our sources are telling us so far.

FSR 4.1 will become available to Xbox Series X|S game developers in the next couple of weeks. Some partner developers have already had early access in preview builds, and will enable FSR 4.1 earlier than others. In the AMD video above, the firm used Blood of Dawnwalker to demonstrates FSR 4.1 boosts on Xbox Ally devices, so you can probably expect that to be among the first batch.

For Xbox Ally X and the Xbox Ally base model, AMD and ASUS will ship updated drives to the Armoury Crate's new "Preview Update" segment by Friday, Oct 23. The new preview segment which lets users test out early builds if they don't mind risking some bugs and polish, similar to the Xbox and Windows Insider programs.

Developers that have enabled FSR 3.1 on existing PC games will automatically get enhanced when the drivers go live on Xbox Ally devices.

On Xbox Series X|S console, FSR 4.1 won't be retroactively injected into existing games. Developers will have to implement it into their existing games via updates, or support it out of the box in future games.

Sources tell me that there is a "handful" of FSR 4.1-enhanced titles slated for the holiday season on Xbox Series X|S, with a steady feed of new games gaining FSR 4.1 throughout 2027 and beyond.

FSR 4.1 should provide a meaningful quality bump for all sorts of games across Xbox Series X|S and Xbox Ally X and the base model, but perhaps more so on the lower-end devices. The Xbox Series S has been notorious for performance trade offs, with developers struggling with the irregular RAM allocation.

Games on Xbox Series X|S that presently trade resolution down for frame rates should get noticeably sharper even in performance mode when implemented.

People have been using apps like Optiscaler on Github to inject FSR 4 on devices like the Steam Deck, and the results have been impressive, but setting it up can be a chore. Native, official support should bring a ton of performance benefits for the Xbox range across the board without the headaches of using workarounds.

As soon as it's available, I'll be demonstrating how it all works in practice right here on Windows Central.

The big question is ... will GTA 6 support it? Time will tell.

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I’ve already seen Windows games running on Android, and while I found that impressive, it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. Android is a relatively open ecosystem, and it’s technically Linux underneath, so given that modern hardware is more than capable, the leap wasn’t as massive as it first appeared.

Running Windows games on an iPhone, however, is a different story. Apple’s ecosystem has opened its door a notch or two over the past few years, but I never imagined it had opened enough to allow Windows gaming to run directly on the hardware.

Fortunately, I just so happened to stumble across a GitHub repository, PlayPort. Created by playportdev with contributions from Claude — because of course, everything uses AI now, but regardless — PlayPort is able to run Steam, GOG, or Epic Games titles directly on your iPhone.

So far, Portal 2, Hollow Knight, and even The Witcher 3 are all working at relatively playable framerates. According to the project’s documentation, Portal 2 specifically hits about 60 FPS at 720p, with each 32-bit game getting its own 4 GB memory window to work with.

Playing Windows games on an iPhone isn't exactly straightforward

Installation is not the simplest process. You have to sideload the PlayPort app onto your device, enable Developer Mode, and be familiar with JIT to get it enabled. There’s also a catch: If you use a free Apple ID to sign the app, it only lasts for seven days. You’ll need to re-sign it once a week, though your games and saves remain on the phone.

Honestly, I am impressed. I was just as impressed to see Game Pass games working on a Steam Deck, which gives me hope that, who knows, maybe one day we’ll see Game Pass running on an iPhone with the ability to install and play games directly off the service. Heck, I doubt we’ll have to wait too long before something like that exists for Android at the rate things are progressing.

If all that eventually comes to pass, I’ll be sure to shed a tear, as I often do over what could have been for Windows Phone, but alas. Projects like these are super cool, brute-forced by AI or not. I’m all for more ways for people to play and access their library of games.

Let me know how you feel about this. Would you try it, or is it more so just cool to see? Let me know in the comments, and be sure to take part in our poll!

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The long-awaited second season of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has arrived on Netflix, ready to take viewers on another dark journey through Night City filled with violence, introspection, and vengeance.

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To celebrate, CD Projekt Red has announced that it will update Cyberpunk 2077 this week, on October 22, 2026, with a new patch called the "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 Update (2.5)".

All CD Projekt Red has revealed about the 2.5 update thus far is that it will bring new gameplay features like Cyberware customization and a dual-wielding playstyle to Cyberpunk 2077.

As for the rest of the update's content, you will tune in to CD Projekt Red's REDStream via their official Twitch and YouTube channels and Steam on October 21, 2026, where the developers will unload more details regarding the "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 Update (2.5)."

Are you ready for one more journey into Night City with this update?

Honestly, it's kind of shocking that the player couldn't dual-wield weapons in Cyberpunk 2077 until this update got announced, especially when many characters in the game (including our good old pal, Jackie Wells) are able to.

The closest approximation we had for dual-wielding weapons until now was the Mantis Blade Cyberware upgrade that granted the use of robot Mantis arms to stab people with.

Hopefully this update means I can finally get to gun down enemies while dual-wielding submachine guns or bash Adam Smasher's head in while dual-wielding hammers.

Either way, I'm curious to see what Cyberpunk 2077's update will bring and how it will tie into Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 2.

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Over the past couple of weeks, I've been investigating an apparent wave of undeserved bans across the Forza Horizon community on Xbox, particularly in Japan.

Japan has a strong and unique car culture, and Playground Games acknowledged that Japan has been the most-requested setting for their popular Forza Horizon franchise. Forza Horizon is now in its 6th installment, which is currently available exclusively on Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Indeed, general Xbox adoption in Japan has generally been anemic at best. Microsoft has historically struggled to compete against PlayStation and Nintendo in the region for a variety of reasons. Microsoft's U.S.-centricity has long prevented it from achieving reasonable penetration outside of its traditional English-first markets.

Forza Horizon set in Japan should've been a chance to change Xbox's fortunes in at least one region, but the RAMpocalypse has put a stop to that. But even beyond simply maintaining Xbox Series X|S stock levels, Microsoft has drawn the ire of some Japanese Forza Horizon players, who have once again put a spotlight on its haphazard community management systems.

Ban waves have been hitting some Forza Horizon 6 players in Japan and beyond over anime-styled skins

Japanese "Itasha (痛車)" user-generated liveries seem to be at the center of the ban waves Playground Games has been handing out for Forza Horizon 6 players.

Itasha is a car subculture, literally meaning "painful car," ironically celebrating overly flashy or "cringy" car liveries. The culture represents a nexus of sorts between car culture and anime culture, going all the way back to the 1980s.

As vinyl printing got more sophisticated and affordable, full-blown car skins became prevalent in Japan and even in the West, with otakus with more money than perhaps good taste (or armed with a strong sense of irony) jumping on board. Even major brands have been on the trend in recent years, too.

Naturally, since Forza Horizon 6 allows users to generate their own custom designs, Itasha car culture has proliferated within the game as well. However, sometimes the designs have fallen afoul of Forza Horizon's "E for Everyone" rating. Or at least, on paper.

Some of the skins that have caught bans are pretty clearly in violation of the policies like the above, but others seem relatively innocuous, making users wonder if Microsoft is being a bit heavy-handed.

One user told me that they had been banned for a month, potentially for the above livery, which they had designed and then kept in storage. I say potentially, because Forza doesn't exactly tell you why you've been banned or for which livery.

"This game has a forum for appealing penalties, and although I submitted a post there, I haven't received a reply in over a month," he said. "Consequently, I have no idea which livery caused my ban."

"Furthermore, there are people who received harsher penalties than I did—such as permanent bans or device bans—despite creating vinyls featuring female characters that were clearly less revealing than mine."

Other livery creators have seen their entire Xbox accounts permanently banned without so much of an explanation. If you live in the U.S. or UK and have ever had to deal with Microsoft's Kafka-esque AI-powered support systems, imagine how much worse they are outside of Microsoft's core markets. There's little viable recourse to appeal bans, seemingly, and Microsoft's systems aren't transparent enough about the reasons as to why a user might catch a ban, permanent or temporary.

Some users have speculated that Forza Horizon is using some form of auto-banning system, AI-powered or otherwise, handing out false bans. There are also conspiracy theories of mass reporting to trigger the automated ban systems. Forza Horizon's Code of Conduct claims that all reports are reviewed by a human moderator and now contains a segment regarding "Itasha-style" designs.

"Itasha-style designs are permitted; however, explicit sexual content and sexually suggestive content are forbidden. While we cannot show specific examples of suggestive imagery in this article, designs that depict provocative poses, associated gestures and facial expressions, and attention to specific body parts can be examples of suggestive imagery."

The problem here could pertain to a lack of "specific examples" more than likely. When it comes to art, what could be deemed "sexually suggestive" is subjective across cultures and demographics. But it also continues a general trend of Microsoft's opaque systems for enforcement across its platforms.

A former Xbox staffer told me that the teams that handle moderation within Forza and other games had effectively been gutted by Microsoft's layoffs, leaving a big gap for community management in general across Microsoft's platforms.

Indeed, even beyond the Itasha ban waves, I've been investigating hacked Xbox users being locked out of their accounts due to the way Microsoft handles account support for Xbox as well, and the above could just be symptomatic of overstretched staff unable to handle the workload placed upon them.

The situation underpins Microsoft's struggles in Japan, but also account management systems in general

Microsoft has struggled to get Xbox stock to its main markets, let alone some of its smaller markets like Europe, the Middle East, and indeed, Japan itself. But there's a cultural issue too. Microsoft generally doesn't make or publish games that have strong appeal outside of its U.S.-centric markets, and Japanese publishers have historically arrived on Xbox last.

The situation has improved over time with companies like Square Enix, Capcom, and Konami pledging greater support, but I would argue things still aren't where they should be.

Forza Horizon 6 is currently Xbox exclusive, and if the RAMpocalypse wasn't destroying stock levels, it might've been a good source of progress for the brand in Japan. Regardless, the situation with the Itasha liveries highlights, again, Microsoft's opaque systems for enforcement and account management.

Over the summer, a Brazilian user who was locked out of his account by a hacker actually sued Microsoft and won after the big M admitted he was hacked but claimed they couldn't do anything about it. Since then, Xbox has been working through a backlog to help users locked out of their accounts to regain access, but it shouldn't be this hard.

As more of our content goes digital, and with AI-powered mods and user-generated art becoming more commonplace, the systems that govern access to our digital platforms need to improve a ton. Losing access to years of content and hundreds or thousands of dollars of investment shouldn't come without a clear explanation of why you lost access. Nor should appealing those bans be so slow and difficult.

It'll probably end with some form of legislation, but that won't help today's users.

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Now that the early access period has begun for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ, so too has the camo grind. This year's is very different from the last two Black Ops games, with one big benefit being that a lot of it is global across multiplayer, DMZ, and Warzone.

In fact, you can unlock everything up to the Divergence completionist camo in any of the three modes before switching to each's dedicated Mode Mastery camos.

The early stages can be sped up a little, too. If you're playing DMZ already, you'll be working on the military camos, but you can also work on the special camos at the same time, which you may not have realized.

In Black Ops 7, you couldn't start on the special camos until you'd completed the headshot requirements for all the military-tier ones. In Modern Warfare 4, each special camo has a challenge requirement, such as kills with a suppressor attached, but it also has a weapon unlock requirement just like the military ones.

As I noticed last night, you can work on both military and special camos simultaneously, and this won't just apply to DMZ. I picked up a WZ.55 Striga SMG during a DMZ run and started using it and leveling it up.

Once I'd earned "19 more weapon unlocks" (and I'm not sure how many it needed because it looks like half the weapons I've used in DMZ were silently leveled up during the campaign), I was able to start working on the first special camo and get kills using a silencer. All while still having four more military camos left to unlock.

This is a pretty great way to help accelerate that early part of the grind before you get to the first completionist camo. So long as you pay attention to when the specials unlock and what their challenge is, you can work on them side-by-side with any remaining military camos.

For DMZ, an essential part of this is to get to DMZ Level 10 and unlock the Gunsmith station at the FOB. Because some of these challenges require using specific attachments, the easiest way to make sure you have them is by using the Gunsmith.

You can add attachments to weapons you find during your DMZ runs at the Gunsmith, too. It doesn't only apply to weapons you buy here. So if you extract with a weapon you don't have a manual for, you can still put on the necessary attachments and work on the special camos. Applying attachments does require DMZ Cash, though, so keep your bank balance high.

Of course the downside to DMZ is that if you die during a run, you could lose that weapon. But any progress is global, and while we don't know what the conversion rate is for progress in DMZ to progress in multiplayer or Warzone on these camo challenges, you can at least get a head start right now.

The final mode for Modern Warfare 4 to go live is multiplayer, and this begins on the global launch date, October 23.

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Microsoft's next-gen Xbox hardware lineup is beginning to come into focus. According to a new report from Fortune, the company is gearing up to ship new hardware in the form of a handheld in 2027, followed by a full-blown console in 2028.

It's unclear if the handheld project is a first party Xbox device, or a third-party device designed and manufactured by an OEM partner like ASUS and the ROG Ally X. The console is expected to be first-party, and is likely to run a specialized version of Windows.

The report claims that Xbox and Windows have been at odds about how the OS should run on Project Helix. Windows leaders wanted the consoles to run a modified version of Windows desktop, but Xbox leaders wanted a more boutique OS experience designed for gaming.

"Tensions ran high enough that a senior Xbox executive threatened to scrap the handheld project rather than adopt the Windows build ... Xbox is now largely controlling the direction of the operating system for the project" Fortune claims.

Microsoft's Xbox CTO, Scott Van Vliet has taken to X to refute Fortune's claims, stating that the report "misrepresents both the technical work and the relationship between the teams." But Windows and Xbox have a long history of clashing, and is the least surprising part of this report.

My own sources tell me that both Windows and Xbox teams have disagreed over the direction of the platform for certain gaming-specific experiences, but that doesn't mean the teams aren't still working together.

Windows already powers the current Xbox Series consoles, as well as Xbox One. It's a modified version of the OS that the Xbox team has customized, built on top of the Windows OS core that is developed by the Windows team.

It sounds like the Xbox team has decided to maintain this approach with Project Helix consoles, expanding and building upon it with new features and capabilities such as running PC games.

This is why you've seen an uptick in Xbox OS features for existing Xbox consoles over the last handful of months, as the Xbox org has started reinvesting in the OS experience they already control. This work will naturally also benefit the next-gen consoles.

Alarmingly, Fortune claims that Microsoft is currently expecting the next-gen Xbox console to cost somewhere between $1,200 and $1,800, making it the most expensive gaming console ever. It's possible that Microsoft may choose to subsidize the cost, which would bring it closer to $1,000, but nothing is confirmed.

Of course, these rumors are unconfirmed. Plans could change and schedules could slip, so nothing is set in stone until Microsoft is ready to formalize its plans officially. For now, we know that Project Helix is still in development, with first devkits expected to debut in early 2027.

Let us know in the comments what you think about Project Helix so far.

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Before the DMZ Beta went live in 2022 as a bonus mode for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, it was widely considered one of gaming's worst-kept secrets. Pretty much everything about it had leaked in the months leading up to its launch.

When players did get their hands on it, the fledgling extraction mode was notably undercooked. The smarter AI for the time was impressive, but there was just not enough substance to keep a large player base active and excited.

Don't get me wrong, there were definitely DMZ die-hards in the Call of Duty community, but I was not among them. I liked the premise, and it certainly wanted to fill a void that had been left empty since I completed The Division's "Survival" DLC. But ultimately, I was convinced that I just wasn't meant to be an extraction shooter girly, and I made my way back to multiplayer and Warzone, where I belonged.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit Infinity Ward's studio and be among the first to see the reveal for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. This included the upcoming third mode — DMZ.

I'm not going to act like I wasn't surprised. Signs were pointing to DMZ's potential return, especially with the rise in the success of extraction shooters like Arc Raiders, for example, but I just wasn't sold on the idea that the previous DMZ Beta had warranted enough fanfare to justify spending 4 years of resources on this extraction mode over some other third mode like classic Spec Ops.

I grew even more nervous about the state of DMZ after the reveal, as launch inched closer and closer with absolutely zero marketing or reveals for the returning mode. No mention of DMZ during the MW4 Open Beta.

Finally, we had "DMZ Week", with a rush of information about the new mode flooding Call of Duty's marketing. When I returned to the studio to go hands-on with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 this month, it was DMZ that I was most looking forward to playing, surprisingly. I was starting to warm to the idea of the mode in general, at least.

For me, these hybrid PvEvP modes can be a hard sell. In the original DMZ Beta of yesteryear, I often felt like the AI combatants were more of an annoyance than an actual threat — just an obstacle in the way of finding the next squad to take down because I was thoroughly Warzone-brained. While there were tasks to complete on the inside, they felt menial and didn't really add much to the overall experience. Looting was an option, but it just didn't mean much at the end of the day.

We started our hands-on time in the Forward Operating Base, the opening hub world for all things DMZ. It's nicely designed, but I do find that overall the HUB itself is a bit disjointed. There's a laptop for every feature. Walk over to this side of the HUB to check your dog tag collection; go back to that side to buy intel on Lieutenants you can hunt. Certain features are locked until you reach the minimum level requirement. Once we were familiar with the layout, we were placed into teams and turned loose to explore Hajin.

Welcome to Hajin

Before I get too deep into overall gameplay, I want to talk about the design of Hajin. The map for DMZ is absolutely massive, especially when compared to the previous map used for the DMZ Beta, Al Mazrah. Al Mazrah felt spacious, but barren. Hajin, however, is a massive map that feels dense and alive. The large buildings tower against the DMZ's skybox, teeming with enemy AI that pose legitimate threats to your safety in the zone. Lush open outdoor areas offer plenty of trees with beautiful foliage and tall grass as cover, making it possible to take a stealthy approach when hunting targets.

The world of Hajin feels real. If you're looking for bandages, check a hospital. Need ammo? Head to a police station. This isn't a new concept, not even for Call of Duty. The original DMZ and the first attempt at Warzone 2.0 both relied on this mechanic of lootable items being found in areas that made sense instead of just stuffed in a box against the wall. For DMZ, it serves an added benefit of forcing players to explore areas outside of popular hot zones.

It's easy for communities to lock into certain areas of maps, especially ones this big, and only want to fight for control of a certain building or lootable box. But the most basic mechanics of Hajin are designed around that. If you're going to level up your operator, you're going to have to eventually go into dangerous areas to collect valuable gear and crafting materials.

Gameplay with meaning and depth

My biggest complaint with the original DMZ Beta was that completing tasks felt like they had little to no purpose. I'm happy to report that Modern Warfare 4's DMZ is overflowing with opportunity. From the story missions that continue the events of the campaign, to the dynamic ops that piece together new challenges with every deployment, to lieutenant hunts, and PvP encounters, this year's DMZ has plenty to offer players of all skill levels.

In my first attempt at DMZ during the hands-on period, I was paired up with a Sherpa from the development team and another player. We were pretty amenable to just exploring Hajin, taking in whatever came our way. Our Sherpa set us up with some dynamic ops that would let us get a little extra XP, and we dove in with the intent to free roam. We didn't start empty-handed; we had beginner-level vests and basic free loadouts to get us started.

Before long, we were collecting the necessary gear to take on bigger challenges, exploring areas with increased threat levels. Collecting gear and returning to the FOB gave us the opportunity to upgrade our operators' skill trees, making our progress feel even more meaningful than just "go in, grab things, get out." We became attached to our operators and their kits.

That is, until another team saw us heading for an exfil and opted to run us over with their trucks.

With my operator now MIA in the exclusion zone, I was left with a choice: Pay the ransom to get her back, or take the loss and go in as a fresh little newbie again.

I paid the ransom.

But then I decided to return to the DMZ for another run, this time solo. I'm too agreeable for my own good, and playing with a squad had left me following along with what they wanted to do. I wanted to see what happened if I went in and followed my own whims. I headed to a laptop in the base and ponied up $10,000 for intel on the location of a Lieutenant, a sniper with a ghillie suit and deer skull mask.

I didn't head straight for the marked lieutenant; I gave myself some time to look for important gear in case I ran into trouble. A med kit, some bandages, extra ammo. When I felt confident I could handle the fight, I headed that way. The lieutenant I had picked wasn't a particularly challenging one, but for a solo player with lower-tier weapons and armor, it certainly proved to be a challenge. I grabbed the dog tags when all was said and done and made my way to exfil, where I threw up a truce flag from the menu wheel and hoped for the best.

My next deployment into DMZ was once again with two additional players. This time our group took a more adventurous approach, diving into some of the more extreme areas of Hajin. We were grossly underleveled, but that didn't stop us from tackling the enemies that were coming at us. By playing it smart and working together, we were able to slowly fight our way through the mission and take down its in-world boss. We hadn't yet finished the mission in its entirety, and there was one other problem: the gas was coming.

We had a choice to hit the only exfil left, which was 900+m away, or we could attempt to finish the mission and hope that an in-place exfil would drop as a reward. Right as our helicopter took the air, the gas overtook the zone. We made it out, but only barely.

DMZ is an exhilarating addition to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4

Call of Duty's third modes have always been a bit of an enigma. Treyarch's Zombies mode is an actual gold mine, building up a completely separate world that still ties in with the mainline title it's attached to and creating an intense alternative to multiplayer and Warzone that you can easily get lost in for hours, both solo and as a squad. It's genuinely impressive, but Infinity Ward's third mode, namely Spec Ops, never quite hit the community the same way that Zombies did.

The DMZ Beta was a dice roll for Modern Warfare 2, and whether it genuinely paid off at the time is dependent entirely on who you ask. But if we scope out and look at how the DMZ Beta has evolved into the DMZ that is part of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, I think it is safe to say that Infinity Ward has finally struck third-mode gold.

And I've finally found something to fill the void left behind by The Division.

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I've reviewed loads of controllers in my time, but one particularly memorable one was the Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra as it was the first I'd seen with an in-built screen. Today Turtle Beach have announced a sequel in the Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra 2 and I'm intrigued on how they can improve on the previous model.

I originally walked away thoroughly impressed by how premium the OG version felt with its clicky micro-switch buttons. Still, the companion software was buggy at launch and the social notification capabilities felt a bit gimmicky and worse, kind of useless. Ironically, while the promo art looks like it was yanked straight out of a GTA 6 trailer, Turtle Beach seems to have dropped the social gimmicks entirely. So instead of replying to your real-life girlfriend on your gamepad, you can just focus on Lucia in peace.

The Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra II High-Performance Wireless Controller is available for pre-order today at $199.99 / £179.99 / €199.99 ahead of its November 12, 2026 launch, and Turtle Beach seems to have focused on some serious, meaningful hardware upgrades this time around.

TMR sticks and a 8kHz polling rate

The biggest change that stands out to me is the addition of TMR thumbsticks. The original had Hall Effect, which is perfectly fine, but TMR (tunnel magnetoresistance) sensors will be more precise and have improved power efficiency and I'm always glad to see manufacturers moving ahead with this tech (while Xbox still haven't adopted Hall Effect...) Competitive players also get an upgrade with the pad now supporting up to an 8 kHz wired polling rate and up to a 1 kHz wireless polling rate for ultra-responsive input tracking.

As for the Connected Command Display on the controller, it's making a comeback, but with some far more practical on-the-fly adjustments (meaning less fiddling with that software). From the screen, you will now be able to tune audio profiles, trigger modes, Pro-Aim focus sensitivity, button remapping, and RGB lighting. The list goes on. Turtle Beach seems to have pivoted away from phone notification gimmicks altogether and toward pure, functional controller customization.

Rounding out the package, you get tactile microswitch face buttons, adjustable trigger stops, four mappable back buttons, Bluetooth support for Android and Smart TVs, and up to 12 hours of battery life out of the box (extending to 34 hours in Eco mode).

Pre-orders are live today ahead of its November 12, 2026 launch. At $199.99 / £179.99 / €199.99, it remains an investment strictly for the hardcore crowd, but just like the first model, it comes bundled with a Rapid Charge Dock and a hard-shell charge-through travel case, which helps make the premium price tag that much easier to swallow.

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Surprise! Hot on the heels of PlayStation's own upscaling tech announcements, Microsoft and AMD just revealed that the firm's flagship FSR 4.1 tech is coming to the Xbox platform.

FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) is a technology from AMD that renders games at a lower resolution, and then uses machine learning to generate a sharper image. Since the hardware isn't working as hard, that overhead can be used for performance.

FSR 4.1 is a big leap over previous versions, and Microsoft has partnered with AMD to bring it not only to Xbox Series X, but also Xbox Ally X, Xbox Ally S and Xbox Series S — the latter two of which should benefit from very, very big performance boosts as a result.

"At Xbox, we're building a gaming platform designed to meet players where they are, and make it easier for creators to reach them," Xbox CTO Scott Van Vilet explained. "AMD has been an important partner in that journey for more than two decades. Together our teams have been pushing gaming forward, across Xbox and Windows. From the silicon at the heart of our consoles and handhelds, to technologies like DirectX, Advanced Shader Delivery, and AutoSR that helps developers get more from the hardware and deliver better experiences for our players."

"Today, we're excited to take another step forward together. With FSR 4.1 coming to Xbox. Now, we've worked very closely with AMD to optimize this technology, giving developers another powerful tool for great performance and visual quality for players. Now, whether you're playing on an Xbox Ally handheld, as well as coming soon to Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. And this is just the beginning. Our teams are continuing to work together across hardware and software, and there's even more ahead with Project Helix, leveraging FSR Diamond to power what comes next."

It's unclear exactly when these technologies will roll out to Xbox devices. It sounds as though FSR 4.1 will hit Xbox Ally X before the year end, but Xbox Series X|S are listed as "coming soon," with no exact window offered.

Sadly, it seems the Xbox Ally base model is fully incompatible with FSR 4.1, which is a bit of a shame, but it should prove transformative for those with the Xbox Ally X and the just-released Xbox Ally X20, as well as the Xbox Series S.

The Xbox Series S has historically been difficult for developers owing to its irregular RAM allocation, but if FSR 4.1 can do some of the heavy lifting, it should ease the pressure on developers to deliver a native 1080p image.

We're reaching out to Microsoft for some clarification on timelines for Xbox Ally and Xbox Series X|S consoles, and will get back to you if we hear from them.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is the epic conclusion of the Task Force 141 story, launching globally on October 23, 2026. Prior to this, the campaign went live in early access on October 16, followed by the extraction shooter mode, DMZ, on October 20.

This year's Call of Duty is made by Infinity Ward, coming after back-to-back years of Treyarch's Black Ops series. It's fair to say Modern Warfare 4 has a lot riding on it, but early reception has been excellent thanks to a return to form for the campaign.

Modern Warfare 4 is made up of three modes: Campaign, DMZ, and multiplayer, with shared progression across the latter two. Warzone will be integrated with Modern Warfare 4 on November 6, when Season 1 begins.

This year marks Xbox's 25th anniversary on November 15th, and over the last 6 months, we've seen more marketing from the brand than I've seen in the past decade. From a completely unexpected IKEA collaboration to the return of the Xbox Gear Store, Microsoft and third parties have teamed up to tempt Xbox fans with their hard-earned cash for some nostalgic goodies, as well as touring the globe with Xbox Fanfest.

I can't really complain, as there is some fantastic stuff available right now or for pre-order. Well, unless you wanted the limited-edition Xbox Series X25, of course, which got scalped in minutes. On the bright side, plenty of awesome collectibles won't cost you $900 buckaroos. Here’s everything worth checking out to help celebrate Xbox's 25th anniversary.

Even if you missed out on the $900 console, you can still get your hands on the official Xbox Series X|S Controller (X25 Edition) ($79.99). I’ve been practically begging Microsoft for an official transparent green gamepad ever since the Cipher series hit store shelves in Blue, Red, and White, but predictably, Xbox held out until the anniversary for the iconic Team Green aesthetic. Units start shipping on October 20, and like standard Xbox pads, it offers full cross-platform compatibility across PC, Android, and Xbox consoles.

If you’re looking for a slightly more budget-friendly route, the 8BitDo Ultimate 3-Mode Controller ($59.99 at Best Buy) is a stellar alternative. While it does require a wired connection when playing directly on Xbox consoles, it connects wirelessly to PC and Android, and it comes bundled with a charging dock right out of the box. It looks gorgeous on a desk setup, especially if you're pairing it with other retro-styled PC accessories.

Speaking of docks, the standalone 8BitDo Ultimate Charging Dock for Xbox Controllers (X25 Special Edition) ($39.99 at Amazon US) solves a very specific pet peeve of mine. I was so annoyed when my green 8BitDo controller originally shipped with a plain black charging cradle, so seeing them release a matching translucent green wireless dock for official Xbox Series X|S pads feels like a personal victory. Built specifically for official Xbox controllers, you simply drop your gamepad onto the magnetic contact points and charging begins automatically.

While not created strictly for the 25th anniversary, this green version of the 8BitDo Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard (Xbox Edition) $94 at Amazon matches the Team Green aesthetic too well to ignore. Since it’s been on the market for a while, you can often catch it on sale. It sports a matte finish, very clicky Kailh Box Jellyfish switches, and 8BitDo’s iconic programmable Dual Super Buttons that let you map custom shortcuts.

If you’re grabbing the keyboard, pairing it with the matching 8BitDo R8 Wireless Mouse (Xbox Edition) ($59.99 at Amazon US) is a no brainer. The big advantage here over competitor options is that it comes bundled with its own magnetic charging dock right out of the box. Its design leans heavily into chunky 2001 retro vibes too, just like the keyboard.

For gaming on the go, PowerA has created a delightful leatherette PowerA Xbox Sling Bag ($39.99 at PowerA) that’s custom-built for handheld PC gaming, and specifically sized to fit an ROG Ally. It would easily fit a Steam Deck or Lenovo Legion Go though, so pick your poison. There are four storage compartments, internal cable pass-throughs for charging, and 25th-anniversary green accents. It’s currently showing as out of stock on PowerA’s site, as it hasn't officially gone up for sale yet, but it should be available very soon (we've reached out to confirm an exact date because I want it!).

Razer has delivered some of the absolute best-looking gear for Xbox’s 25th Anniversary (see our hands-on with them), and predictably, some of the priciest, but hey, it's Razer, and you're worth it. The translucent green Razer BlackWidow V4 75% ($209.99 at Razer) is stunning and serves as a tactile, much quieter alternative to 8BitDo’s loud, chunky retro board. Thanks to the clearer finish across the keycaps, the Razer Chroma RGB lighting shines through with a neater glow. Pre-orders will officially ship from October 20 onward.

If you're looking for a matching mouse, the Razer Basilisk lineup has long been hailed as one of the best gaming mice in the business, and the Razer Basilisk V3 Pro 35K ($179.99) now comes Xbox-flavored. Beyond the shell, it packs up to 140 hours of wireless battery life, the customizable HyperScroll tilt wheel, and plenty of that all-important Razer Chroma RGB.

I wasn't completely sold on the concept of dedicated gaming earbuds initially, but having a lightweight pair for gaming, whether plugged into the Xbox or connected to my ROG Ally, has totally won me over. I'm currently using the SteelSeries Arctis Gamebuds, but these Razer Hammerhead V3 X HyperSpeed for XBOX ($119.99) look the business. They have up to 35 hours of total battery life (10 hours on the buds plus an extra 25 from the charging case) and offer seamless multi-platform compatibility across Xbox, PC, and mobile (oh, and PS5 if you like)

Backbone was one of the first to ever hit the mobile controllers market, making them a natural fit for Xbox Cloud Gaming. Rather than sticking purely to translucent green, the Backbone Pro XBOX 25th Anniversary Edition ($179.99) comes in the real deep cut throwbacks like Halo Orange, Smoke Blue, and Crystal White. It’s an awesome nod for those of us old enough to remember. The catch is they are in blind boxes, and you have no way of knowing which color you will get!

Then onto GameSir, which makes some of my absolute favorite handheld controllers. They are seriously hard-wearing, ridiculously good value for the price, and come packed with drift-resistant Hall Effect sticks to boot. The GameSir X5 Lite for XBOX ($44.99) wraps all of that into an anniversary special edition.

Finally, the IKEA x Xbox "YXSTABY" collaboration has some surprisingly tasteful gaming chairs and more in-your-face gear-stick stools to wall-mounted controller shelves. But if you just want a small, fun piece of memorabilia without redecorating your whole living room, the XBOX x YXSTABY D-pad cushion ($17.99 at IKEA) is an easy win. It’s cheap and adds a subtle splash of gamer flair to any couch.

The Xbox Gloss Sweater ($59.99) is just one highlight from the official Xbox Gear Store, which features a surprisingly understated line of official 25th-anniversary apparel. Alongside minimalist sweaters and graphic tees, there’s even a bona fide "throwback" bucket hat if you really want to embrace early-2000s fashion. While a few popular sizes have already sold out, remaining stock is expected to ship by the end of October.

Over on Culture Kings, streetwear label 73 Studio has dropped its own collection, offering a broader and much more imaginative lineup of anniversary gear. My personal fave is the 73STUDIO X XBOX 25th Anniversary Console T-Shirt ($39), featuring a graphic of the original 2001 Xbox console across the back alongside the chonky Duke controller. Unlike pre-order drops, 73 Studio’s collection is available to buy and ship right now.

Another pick from me is the 73STUDIO X XBOX 25th Anniversary Play More Zip Hoodie ($95), which might be the ultimate cozy gaming hoodie for Fall.

Could there be more in store?

Now that's a hell of a lot of merch to choose from, and with the anniversary itself just around the corner on November 15th, it makes you wonder if Xbox still has a surprise or two up its sleeve for the big day. We've just had the Xbox Nano Controller drop (but only in white, boo!), but what else could be in store?

My money is on a long-awaited Xbox Elite Controller Series 3, which would make fans thrilled regardless of whether it comes in translucent green. I’d also be happy if they just sorted out proper Xbox Gear Store shipping to Europe (shakes fist)! Either way, I'm pretty sure we're in for at least one more unexpected drop when the big day finally arrives.

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When I think of turn-based JRPGs where you explore vast worlds, Final Fantasy was once the first thing that came to mind. Yet for over two decades, Square Enix has deprived the Final Fantasy franchise of the gameplay style that made it a household name by taking it in an action-RPG direction with mixed degrees of success.

Over the years, I cynically grew to accept that Final Fantasy would never return to the classic turn-based gameplay style I loved and instead opted for Square Enix's other turn-based franchises like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler.

That is, until this year, when Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Resonance. This game is the franchise's first HD-2D JRPG, and it aims to bring back the classic turn-based combat and open-world exploration gameplay that made retro fans like me love it in the first place.

It felt too good to be true at first, but after being impressed by Final Fantasy Resonance's playable demo, I decided to give the game a chance when I was given an opportunity to review it on Xbox Series X with a code provided by Square Enix.

After playing it for the past few weeks, I can confidently say that, despite some minor issues, Final Fantasy Resonance (available for $49.99 on the Xbox Store) is a heartwarming return to form that players who grew up on Final Fantasy's 16-bit and PlayStation One golden age should not miss out on.

Final Fantasy Resonance launches on October 22, 2026, for Xbox Series X|S (with Xbox Play Anywhere support), PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Windows and Steam.

This review was made possible thanks to an Xbox Series X code provided by Square Enix. The company had no input nor saw the contents of this review before publication.

Final Fantasy Resonance — Story, setting, art

Final Fantasy Resonance is a home console adaptation of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius’s first story arc, a 2015 free-to-play mobile game that was shut down in 2024.

Like its source material, Final Fantasy Resonance tells the story of Rain and Lasswell, two noble knights hailing from the kingdom of Grandshelt, and a mysterious girl with magical powers named Fina.

They're on a quest to save their world's life-giving crystals from being destroyed by a group of evil knights who call themselves the ‘Sworn Six’. These despicable knights have dark, vengeful goals that they seek to accomplish by any means, regardless of collateral damage or casualties.

The story of Final Fantasy Resonance is a fairly standard JRPG fantasy adventure laden with tropes and clichés that players experienced in the JRPG genre will see coming (although it did a couple of admittedly surprising twists).

The story also has a couple of annoying moments that disrupted the pacing, which could've been fixed if they played out as cutscenes instead of pointless boss fights, but I won't get too deep into that as it's very spoilery.

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However, these are minor quibbles, as Final Fantasy Resonance's story beats, lore, and action set pieces are well put together with satisfying dramatic payoffs. Not to mention, its story is refreshingly easy to understand and follow, which is a blessing because many modern Final Fantasy games tend to have needlessly convoluted plots.

Additionally, Final Fantasy Resonance does have moments where it actually managed to make me laugh as the game snuck in some cheeky jokes that will tickle the nostalgia funny bones of long-time Final Fantasy fans like me.

As for its characters, Final Fantasy Resonance does have a cast of interesting villains once you start to discover who they are underneath their armor. Its playable heroes are also competently written and likable, with some decent character development but nothing too thought-provoking.

What helps Final Fantasy Resonance's story and characters resonate with the player is its presentation. This is the first Final Fantasy game to use HD-2D graphics, and Square Enix spared no expense in making them look absolutely STUNNING.

The pixel-art character sprites and 3D models look so immaculately detailed and animated with their charming facial expressions and epic battle moves. The HD-2D art style gets even more lavishly detailed during cinematic cutscenes and in-game boss battles to create some magnificent works of digital art.

Final Fantasy Resonance's presentation elevates its story further with some respectable voice acting in both English and Japanese and an incredible soundtrack that's filled with extremely catchy tunes, epic battle themes, and emotional melodies.

Final Fantasy Resonance — Gameplay

The gameplay of Final Fantasy Resonance follows the classic formulae set by earlier Final Fantasy games. You travel across a world map, visiting towns for quests, gear, and lore, exploring dungeons to loot treasure, and fighting monsters and bosses in turn-based combat.

It starts very linear, but the game opens up fairly quickly with plenty of side-quests to complete, optional dungeons to explore, and hidden areas you can only find with a trusty airship.

You have no idea how much this game filled me with nostalgic joy riding in an airship and exploring a world map to find all its secrets again after being restricted to grounded corridors for decades in modern Final Fantasy games.

Its dungeons, however, are somewhat disappointing, as Final Fantasy Resonance took a quantity-over-quality approach. Many dungeons in this game are painfully short, as they feature two or three rooms with very basic puzzles to solve.

I would've liked these dungeons to be made in-depth, with more labyrinthine layouts so the player could get into more random encounters to stress-test their dungeon-crawling and resource-conservation skills like the older games.

Let's move to the main reason that made me want to play this game in the first place: turn-based combat.

Like the first ten mainline Final Fantasy games, Final Fantasy Resonance's turn-based combat system has your party take turns to defeat enemies using weapons and magic, while keeping each other alive with healing magic and restorative items.

The turn-based combat is simple at first, but Final Fantasy Resonance quickly adds lots of fun mechanics to improve its complexity as you progress, keeping it from becoming stale.

These mechanics include Limit Bursts, which allow you to unleash a player character's ultimate attack if their Limit Gauge gets filled in battle by either getting hurt or stunning enemies; summoning Espers in battle to aid you for a few turns and also depleting an enemy’s Stagger Gauge by hitting their elemental weakness to stun them for a turn.

Once you stagger all enemies at once, you will be rewarded with a free round of turns to batter the stunned enemies for extra damage without fear of retaliation, culminating in a devastating super-move performed by your Visions.

What are Visions, you may ask? Visions are spiritual manifestations of heroes from previous Final Fantasy games and Final Fantasy Resonance-exclusive heroes who grant the player characters powerful abilities and passive traits to help them excel in battle.

Some of these abilities include being able to stagger enemies more easily, protect the entire party from incoming damage, prevent incoming status effects, perform multiple actions in a single turn, and so much more.

I love the Visions system because it offers so much character-building potential on par with Final Fantasy's classic Job System from previous games.

You can use it to double down on a player character's inherent skills (like turning the main hero Rain into an unstoppable tank) or turn a character into a jack-of-all-trades fighter (like giving a healer character a damage-dealing Vision so they can hurt enemies and heal allies).

Experimenting with Visions to create the ultimate party and using their newfound powers to stun-lock challenging bosses before they got a single turn was so empowering and cathartic.

Yet after playing the game for 75 hours, I still felt like I was scratching the surface of what the Visions system can do, so I can't imagine what will happen once pro JRPG players get their hands on it.

Granted, level-grinding the Visions to gain all their abilities can be pretty tedious and repetitive. But it's so worth it in the end, especially when you hit Final Fantasy Resonance's late-game and post-game bosses because they do not mess around.

They hit fast and hard, have tons of health, and are hard to stagger (especially on Expert Mode). Plus, these endgame bosses will often require you to change your Vision builds to defeat them due to their varying strategies and countermeasures that will punish players for being too aggressive or too passive.

They're extremely tough but so satisfying to beat once you figure out their gimmicks and get the right Vision abilities equipped.

Final Fantasy Resonance — Conclusion

Overall, I was thoroughly astonished and surprised by how good Final Fantasy Resonance was.

It's a loving tribute to Final Fantasy's classic turn-based era that's able to stand on its own merits with addictive combat, an in-depth Vision system, and an entertaining story with decently written characters. Not to mention it has a great wealth of side-quests and difficult optional bosses to take on even after finishing the main campaign as icing on the cake.

If you're an old-school Final Fantasy fan who doesn't like the action-RPG direction the mainline Final Fantasy games have been taking, or just love turn-based JRPGs you can play on go via Xbox Play Anywhere, then I highly recommend not sleeping on Final Fantasy Resonance.

If this game is just based on Final Fantasy Brave Exvius's first story arc, then I hope Square Enix makes more adaptations of this mobile game so I can see the rest of its story arcs in full HD-2D glory.

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The console industry continues to reel from the RAMpocalypse, and Xbox is certainly feeling it.

Circana analysis suggested a few weeks ago that Xbox hardware sales are at their lowest level ever, with PlayStation also suffering their lowest hardware sell-through situation since 2013. Without a doubt, the so-called RAMpocalypse is to blame, with companies like Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, and indeed, Microsoft itself buying up all the RAM for their AI-tinted ambitions.

That leaves little left over for "niche" consumer electronics scenarios, such as video game consoles ... ballooning Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo console prices to their highest levels ever in some cases.

The timing couldn't be worse really. Grand Theft Auto 6 launches in a month from now, and its mainstream appeal would've driven huge amounts of users to upgrade older consoles or perhaps enter the hobby for the first time. With global stock levels battered and prices otherwise impossible for most to consider, Microsoft is turning towards a novel approach to try to increase stock availability.

Spotted by users on X (cheers H!) and covered first by PowerUP, Microsoft is actually sending out emails to users who have dormant Xbox Series X|S hardware, recommending that they trade them in, offering links and advice on how to do so. The email specifically cites Best Buy, which has a trade-in system here you can explore for Xbox hardware.

It seems the emails are going out specifically to users who have hardware that they aren't actively using, including users who own multiple consoles potentially.

Indeed, the economics on console hardware is so bad right now that any user sitting on a dormant PS5, Xbox Series X|S, or Nintendo Switch potentially represents a big net loss for the big three. The margins are so bad, and the stock availability so low, that trying to convince users to move their consoles to others who might actually become more active players (and spenders) is more than preferable.

Ahead of Grand Theft Auto 6's launch, Microsoft and its competitors are working around the clock to source components for their hardware provisions. Call of Duty has also stopped shipping on past-gen consoles, and it seems fairly likely given how popular Modern Warfare 4 has been so far that many users would want to upgrade for that as well ... if indeed there was stock available.

Stock availability of new (and very pricy) Xbox Series X|S hardware has generally remains stable in Microsoft core markets like the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and so on. In Asia, mainland Europe, the Middle East, and South America Xbox console stock has been almost non-existent. Tariffs, the RAMpocalypse, and general global economic instability has left the console market in a precarious state ... despite an unprecedented density of high-quality games.

Some analysts expect the "RAMpocalypse" to last through to 2028, maybe even 2029, with consumer electronics expected to take a battering between now and then. Smartphone, PC, laptop, and of course, game console shipments are all down as a direct result of the AI build out. It doesn't look like things will change any time soon.

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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered launched last year to massive success, surpassing nine million players in its first three months and selling over two million copies on Steam, according to SteamDB.

Despite the sales figures, fans have been vocal about the game's performance. Stuttering, frame spikes, and poor optimization have been common complaints, often attributed to the use of Unreal Engine 5. However, one fan on Reddit decided to take matters into their own hands and "vibe code" a fix.

Yes, people are now using AI to generate performance patches for games. User u/LTSharpe, posting on the r/ChatGPT subreddit, explained that they are a huge Oblivion fan who was struggling with the game’s performance despite running a high-end PC setup featuring an AMD 9070 XT, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and a Ryzen 9 5800X processor.

Can AI really fix Oblivion Remastered's performance issues?

Opting to use Claude instead of ChatGPT, LTSharpe managed to boost the game’s average FPS by 37%. If you’re interested in trying the patch yourself, you can try the GitHub repository (using proper precautions, of course).

I played the Oblivion Remaster on Xbox, and even on that hardware, I noticed stuttering and frame spikes. While I’m usually cautious about how AI is used in development, I think this is a pretty clever use case, one that most people likely won’t mind.

Seeing someone take their framerate from 30 to a stable 60, while also fixing bugs that the developers missed, is impressive, even if an AI did the heavy lifting.

We are, of course, in the midst of an AI wave in the gaming space. Community-driven projects are cropping up everywhere thanks to these tools, whether it’s mashups between games or impossible ports. We’re seeing it all lately, and it’s enough for Xbox to take notice, having launched Xbox Labs to explore these emerging AI technologies.

Let me know if you agree or disagree with me on whether this is a good use case for AI. Both views are valid, so do share your thoughts in the comments, and be sure to take part in our poll below:

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