The long-rumored Wolfenstein 3 has been officially confirmed to be in development at MachineGames. The news follows many hints and rumors of a third game in MachineGames' planned Wolfenstein trilogy, the franchise's first new entry since Wolfenstein: Youngblood in 2019 and its first mainline title since 2017.

Xbox CEO Asha Shar posted the announcement as part of Xbox's 25th anniversary celebrations, and Bethesda also shared the news in its own post.

https://bsky.app/profile/bethesda.net/post/3n25q3afshc2v

In a move borrowed from the film industry, the game announcement was accompanied by a look at Wolfenstein 3's script, showing that protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz is back and more fearsome than ever.

Bethesda also shared a photo from a mocap session, confirming that actors Brian Bloom and Debra Wilson will return to reprise their roles as B.J. and Grace Walker, respectively.

MachineGames has said that it always planned for a trilogy of Wolfenstein games featuring B.J., meaning Wolfenstein 3 will continue the story that started with The New Order in 2014.

MachineGames, alongside Bethesda, has also released three Wolfenstein spin-offs: the prequel The Old Blood in 2015, 2019's Youngblood, which featured B.J.'s twin daughters as protagonists, and the VR experience Cyberpilot, also released in 2019. The studio took a break from the Wolfenstein franchise to develop 2024's critically acclaimed Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

We don't have any more details on Wolfenstein 3 at present, including a release window, but we'll likely hear more soon.

2026 is the 25th anniversary of Xbox, and it's been a tough year for the brand with mass layoffs, studio closures/divestitures, and game cancellations. But the celebrations are still going ahead, including an event from the Xbox-owned Candy Crush mobile game juggernaut.

Announced today, Candy Crush Saga is marking the Xbox anniversary with a "Game On" season that brings items and elements from Halo, Fallout, Sea of Thieves, Forza, Doom, Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro into the game through a virtual pin-collection event. Additionally, the popular and recognizable music from some of those games is coming to Candy Crush in "unmistakable Candy style," developer King said.

Behold, the Candy Crush Xbox anniversary pins.

The Game On event runs now through December 6. Players earn the themed pins, including Master Chief's iconic helmet, by progressing through Candy Crush's various levels throughout the season. The pins are being released physically, too, and people can enter a contest at the Candy Crush website for a chance to win.

In terms of the updated music, Candy Crush Saga is adding "Candyfied" versions of music from Halo, Fallout, Sea of Thieves, Forza, Doom, and Banjo-Kazooie.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6ZlwYppUhxU1q459vpmJVw

You can check out a neat behind-the-scenes video below to see how composer Federico Truzzi worked with the developers at King to remix the songs with a Candy Crush flavor. The music was recorded by the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg and the Bulgarische Orthodoxe Chor Berlin e.V. choir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3l0omtP6jI

In other Xbox anniversary news, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma released a statement marking the milestone, and referencing how the future of gaming could be focused on AI and vibe-coding. Microsoft also released a new hub called Xbox Playback where you can see your biggest Xbox accomplishments over the past quarter-century.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has announced that id Software is officially working on a new game, believed to be another Doom title. This is happening after Sharma oversaw id Software losing half of its staff to layoffs that were part of the Xbox "reset."

Id Software replied to Sharma's post on Twitter to provide a few more details on the new game, which the team didn't say was a Doom game, but everyone suspects it will be. The studio said it's "incredibly excited" about the new game, which is in the works at id's studios in Texas and Frankfurt. Hugo Martin, an id Software veteran, is directing the game--don't expect to see or hear about it soon, though.

"It'll be some time before we're ready to share more but we can't wait for you to see what we're working on," the developer said.

A scene from Doom: The Dark Ages.

Reporter Tom Warren said in July that id Software was in the "early stages" of developing a new Doom game, so this news today isn't totally surprising.

Sharma cut staff at id Software (and numerous other Xbox studios around the world) earlier this year as part of a "reset" of the Xbox business. Marty Stratton of id Software recently said the studio is "doing great," despite the mass layoffs.

Id Software's latest game was 2025's Doom: The Dark Ages. The game's newest update is coming on November 16, adding the new wave-based Slaughter mode.

It's no secret that the market for physical video games is drying up, but don't expect physical media for gaming to go away entirely anytime soon, or ever, according to Take-Two's Strauss Zelnick.

He told The Game Business that it "may not be the end" for physical media entirely in games, even with Sony killing off PlayStation discs in 2028. He said there will "always be some physical business" for gaming, but it will be a "very small part of the business."

Lucia and Jason in GTA 6.

He likened the scale of it to the vinyl business for recorded music. Most people might stream music today, but the market for vinyl is still there--and it's growing.

For Take-Two, however, Zelnick said its business today is 98% digital. Going all-digital has a lot of benefits for publishers, but it's mainly about making more money. For GTA 6, the most highly anticipated game release ever, Rockstar is not offering the game on a disc, but the game will appear in stores via a code-in-a-box version.

GTA 6's $400 collector's edition comes with a range of physical goods (but not the game), and Rockstar is also releasing GTA 6's score on CD and vinyl, but the game itself remains a digital-only experience.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. A PC edition and online multiplayer are both rumored to launch in 2027.

On November 25, two entirely separate games called Piece by Piece are releasing on Nintendo Switch. It's no coincidence, but the circumstances that led to this unusual situation certainly stem from a coincidence.

Publisher No More Robots launched Piece by Piece, a cozy sim game full of cute animal characters, on Steam back in March. Two days later, studio Neon Polygons self-published an unrelated puzzle-platformer where you jump through literal puzzle pieces that you connect together--this game is also called Piece by Piece.

What could have been a conflict between indie developers turned out to be the beginning of a wholesome business relationship. Both games were bundled together on Steam, and now No More Robots is publishing the Switch ports of both titles.

https://bsky.app/profile/mikerose.bsky.social/post/3mzzqdmjqjs2m

According to No More Robots co-founder Mike Rose, Neon Polygons "couldn't afford to bring their game to Switch," so No More Robots stepped in to publish the game for them. As with Steam, you can buy both games together in a bundle.

It's undeniably a heartwarming and unique story, though one would assume that having to figure out the logistics behind launching two games that not only have the same name, but the same release date and publisher as well, was a nightmare on the backend of the Nintendo eShop.

"And yes, Nintendo have ABSOLUTELY HATED THIS," Rose said in a social media post, adding that the publisher was questioned why it had two games with the same name "many, many times." At least the bundle doesn't also include the Pharrell Williams Lego movie Piece by Piece as well.

The Game Awards will air on Disney+ this year, and along with that, Disney has teased "major announcements and surprises" for its own games at the event. To be sure, The Game Awards will stream in other places, too, like YouTube and Twitch, so you won't need to sign up for Disney+ to watch.

"As the evening unfolds, viewers can expect major announcements and surprises from some of Disney’s most anticipated titles in gaming," the company said.

That's all that Disney had to say on the matter, but the tease has gotten people excited to theorize about the possibilities. For starters, Disney is already a big player in the world of video games, with nine different gaming franchises that have each generated at least $1 billion. One such franchise is Kingdom Hearts, and many are expecting news about Kingdom Hearts 4 soon.

Beyond that, there are ongoing rumors about a new version of The Simpsons: Hit & Run. Another possibility is that Disney shares more about its partnership with Epic Games and Fortnite.  “A number of launches coming up over the next two years … are going to demonstrate the value of this partnership,” Disney executive Dana Walder recently said.

Disney could also share new details about its upcoming Star Wars gaming projects, including Star Wars Eclipse, or possibly the rumored Jedi 3 or Battlefront 3. Or Disney could show off some of its new Marvel projects, including the upcoming Iron Man game. Marvel's Blade also remains in development amid uncertainty about its developer, Arkane Lyon.

Disney’s new CEO, Josh D’Amaro, is a big believer in games and has suggested gaming could be Disney’s next big growth-driver, after the company’s stock price has been flat over the past decade. Some have theorized that Disney could buy Epic and Fortnite to help grow the business, but nothing has materialized as of yet.

The Game Awards are set for Thursday, December 10 from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Keep checking back with GameSpot for more.

It's the 25th anniversary of Xbox, and to celebrate, you can see how much time you've spent--or wasted, according to my parents--playing games on Xbox hardware over the years. Not to be confused with the end-of-year wrap-up that Xbox usually offers, Xbox Playback looks at your entire history, from when you first booted up a console to your current-day Achievements.

It's a neat little celebratory feature, complete with a customized video and graphics that you can show off. In addition to the date you started playing on Xbox, it includes the first Xbox console you used, the first game you booted up, your total hours played, a breakdown of game genres, and more. (There are some limits on data during Xbox's early years, though.) You can try it out by signing in to your Xbox account through this link.

I'm disgusted by the lack of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on my list.

Other stats you can check out include the games you spent the most hours on, which ones you got a 100% Achievement rank in, and your longest streak of consecutive play days. Xbox says you can share your record online by scanning a QR code at the end of the video that plays--just in case you want to share how many hours you've sunk into Viva Piñata over the decades.

While this is a fun way to look back at your Xbox history, it does come at a bittersweet time for Microsoft's gaming brand. This year has been brutal for Xbox employees amid a grand "reset" spearheaded by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, as scores of jobs have been lost and several game studios have left the company. Xbox is now focused on chasing big hits across PC, consoles, and mobile, with an ambitious goal of becoming more profitable than its biggest gaming rivals, Sony and Nintendo, by 2030.

Sharma has also written about what the next 25 years for Xbox could look like, with her open letter suggesting that artificial intelligence will play a greater role in the future of video game development.

The Final Fantasy 14 community is in mourning following news that Eikichi Iwai, the bassist for the game's house band, The Primals, has died at the age of 57, and is taking to the MMORPG's main hub cities to honor his legacy.

An "Important Announcement" post on the official FF14 website from developer Square Enix on November 11 broke the news, and stated the development team was "deeply saddened" to inform the community of Iwai's passing.

"Having witnessed his truly unforgettable performance on stage at the recent Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival in Japan, the sudden news of his passing has come as a profound shock," the statement reads. "The members of The Primals and the entire FF14 development and operations team are overcome with deep sorrow. 

"As we reflect on all that Eikichi-san has left behind, our thoughts are with him, and we offer our heartfelt condolences." 

The Primals, with Eikichi Iwai second from the left.

The Primals, composed of Iwai on bass, composer Masayoshi Soken, localization lead Michael-Christopher Koji Fox, and band members Tetsuya Tachibana and GUNN, are behind some of FF14's most memorable tracks. Iwai's bass in particular stands out on songs like Shadowbringers' To the Edge and Stormblood's Amatsu Kaze. The band performed worldwide at various FF14 Fan Festivals, as well as at a UK rock festival, earlier this year.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1xtygrg/rest_in_peace_eikichi_iwai_vigil_in_siren_limsa/

Final Fantasy 14's community has a reputation as being one of the best, and most welcoming, in gaming, so it's no surprise it took the time to honor Iwai's passing. As spotted on Reddit, the game's playerbase has come together to pay their respects Iwai, with large gatherings of players holding firelight vigils in his memory across the game's various servers and cities.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1xtgw3a/memorial_to_eikichi_iwai_on_omega_chaos_rest_in/

"It's so good to see everyone come together, he deserves it for playing such a big role in the music we've fallen in love with. May he rest peacefully," one community member wrote.

More of Iwai and The Primals' music will be heard in Final Fantasy 14's next upcoming expansion, Evercold, set to release on February 23, 2027.

As Xbox celebrates its 25th anniversary, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has shared her thoughts on where gaming is going over the next 25 years, and people are saying her message is really more about pushing AI.

Sharma said modern games demonstrate the "heights of human craft in ways unimaginable just decades ago." However, the costs, resources, and risks that companies need to take on have "grown just as dramatically," she said.

"As a result, too many ideas never become games, and too many games fall short of what their creators imagined. For decades, this has been the unavoidable tradeoff of ambition. We must change this," she said.

The 25th anniversary of Xbox has been rough for the company.

Historically, to create anything at scale required immense resources, but Sharma said that's changing. Without saying AI, Sharma said it won't be long until a single person can "wield capabilities that once required entire nations."

"A small team will be able to build worlds that today demand hundreds of developers and hundreds of millions of dollars. And our largest studios will be able to pursue ambitions as far beyond today’s games as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is from its first entry in 1982," she said.

Sharma went on to say that the future of gaming "will look more like its beginning," which is to say that a small team with a bold idea can make a real impact. "Our responsibility is to deliver great games, unmistakable hardware, and give more people the chance to make something the world has never seen," she said.

Xbox recently launched Xbox Labs, which is a pretty obvious push into the world of vibe-coded games. Sharma has promised that she has "no tolerance for bad AI." She added, “We will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop.”

Sharma became Xbox CEO earlier this year, replacing Phil Spencer. Sharma immediately made lots of big changes to "reset" the business, including mass layoffs, game cancellations, and studio closures/divestitures.

Sharma comes from an AI background, having previously been an executive on the CoreAI team at Microsoft. She may be bullish about having smaller teams make big games going forward, but it's not an all-or-nothing approach. After all, Xbox continues to own and fund large-scale, expensive productions like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Forza just to name a few.

AI is a big push for Xbox's owner, Microsoft, so it makes sense to see Sharma undertake efforts to increase Xbox's own efforts in that department. This is happening after a study of game developers found that more developers than ever think generative AI is bad for gaming.

It's the end of an era for Nvidia, as its founder and longtime CEO, Jensen Huang, has resigned effective immediately. The face of one of the largest companies in the US and the growing AI boom, Huang's retirement comes after news broke of his two extramarital affairs, one of which was with a suspected Chinese spy.

Nvidia has appointed its Chief Financial Officer, Colette Kress, to serve as interim CEO and Harvey C. Jones as Chair of the Board, but Huang's departure will leave a void that won't be easily filled, as he was heavily involved in Nvidia's day-to-day operations.

The news is also expected to complicate things for Nvidia's stock price, as it has been in decline for over a month. The internet is already having a field day with Huang's departure, with hot takes and memes dominating the discourse right now. Huang's days of pulling on his signature leather jacket and hitting the stage to show off Nvidia's new hardware are now over.

https://bsky.app/profile/zaaack.bsky.social/post/3n24ng6vzak2c https://twitter.com/MorningBrew/status/2120885382690558328 https://twitter.com/limewire/status/2120882209749901505 https://twitter.com/SoundDobad/status/2120675281421619612 https://twitter.com/MorningBrew/status/2120887634553618762 https://bsky.app/profile/ditzkoff.bsky.social/post/3n24n7bbn6s2n https://twitter.com/kevinxu/status/2120682063682806184 https://bsky.app/profile/richycraven.bsky.social/post/3n24qeysiek2h

What's next for Huang? Only he knows, but he'll likely retire with a pretty substantial golden handshake. As the largest shareholder in Nvidia--a company currently valued at trillions--Jensen's stock is also worth billions if he ever decides to sell.

Nintendo has announced its 2026 Black Friday deals, with a Mario Kart World Switch 2 hardware bundle as the centerpiece for $500.

The Switch 2 launched in 2025 with a similar bundle for the same price, but it was discontinued at the end of the year. It later returned, but at a higher price point--$550. Now, the bundle is on "sale" again, though it's the same price as it was in 2025 before the price hikes. In addition to a digital copy of the game and the console, it comes with a three-month Nintendo Switch Online membership.

The Mario Kart World Switch 2 bundle is back to its 2025 price.

The bundle goes on sale November 22 and will be available through December 5. It's not the only hardware bundle that people can buy, as Nintendo also offers a system with a digital copy of Nintendo Switch Sports Resort and three months of Switch Online for $530. This bundle is not on sale for Black Friday, though.

Get the Mario Kart World Switch 2 hardware bundle here:

• Amazon
• Best Buy
• Walmart
• Target

Additionally, for just one week--November 22-29--Nintendo will offer games like Donkey Kong Bananza and Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 for $20 off.

What's more, Nintendo announced that the Nintendo eShop and the Nintendo Store will offer a range of deals November 19-December 2, but it hasn’t yet detailed what you can expect.

Black Friday used to be just one day of deals--the day after Thanksgiving in the US--but now it's an entire season of savings. Keep checking back with GameSpot for more Black Friday deals in the days ahead.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 looks like it will have an impressive attention to detail, and that includes how one of the main characters, Jason, can drink a beer and eat a donut at the same time. Now that's living.

Rockstar boss Rob Nelson geeked out to The Guardian about GTA 6's finer details, including this one. According to the report, Jason can "take bites of a donut with one hand while sipping a beer with the other."

Drink up.

It’s unclear whether this is under the player’s active control or it just happens. In any event, the report also mentioned how Rockstar paid close attention to "the way that Jason eats a hot dog." These are very important details.

GTA 6 features a body-shaping system, so if Jason, or Lucia, drink a lot of beer and pound hot dogs and donuts, they'll likely gain weight. But that weight can then be transformed into muscle by hitting the gym and pumping out sets.

Another example of Rockstar's attention to detail in GTA 6 is how Jason can buy a six-pack of beer, then start jogging, holding the beers in the crook of his arm. The game shows you the liquid sloshing around in the bottles as he runs.

GTA 6's attention to detail is a little ridiculous, with Rockstar seemingly going all out to create little details that players may never even notice.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Preloading is underway now, but the game itself doesn't unlock until November 19 at midnight local time.

After years of post-apocalyptic survival stories and archaeological adventures, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet looks like a fresh opportunity for Naughty Dog to showcase a new sci-fi universe. Visually, the game draws on '80s sci-fi movies with analog technology and ancient hardware like CD players, but you can also thank a genre-defining anime film for shaping Intergalactic's look and feel.

In an interview with Patton Oswalt during the Comic Creators Block Party 2026, Naughty Dog director Neil Druckmann said that Akira inspired Intergalactic on multiple levels, alongside other big anime properties like Cowboy Bebop.

"For Intergalactic, we actually took a lot of inspiration from anime. Akira--everybody loves Akira--just like the animation, the big ideas, the kind of philosophical sci-fi ideas within that," Druckmann said. "We took a lot of inspiration from anime, stylistic inspiration, how they approach the story. The big kind of philosophical questions and ideas. We really want to tackle that, and surprise players in interesting ways. By the time you get to the end of Akira, it just goes on this wild ride. And we want to take someone on a similar wild ride."

https://twitter.com/IntergalacticES/status/2120653537847742808

Druckmann mentioned that he grew up with the laser-disc version of Akira, the landmark 1988 anime film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo. It's not hard to see that influence visually, as the protagonist Jordan A. Mun wears a jacket that looks like it was pilfered from the wardrobe of Akira lead Shotaro Kaneda, and her spaceship also looks like it was manufactured by the same company responsible for the hotheaded biker's iconic motorcycle--maybe we'll even see an Akira slide in the game.

Philosophically, Akira covers a wide range of topics explored over the decades, with the film primarily centered on themes of human technological overreach, spiritual immaturity, and the cyclical nature of creation and destruction. Those ideas have been debated for decades, and Naughty Dog has proven adept at balancing heavy themes with engaging gameplay, particularly in The Last of Us, which balanced a tale of vengeance with shootouts and stealth.

A closer look at its themes isn't too far off either, as Druckmann confirmed that Naughty Dog will have more to share about the game in 2027.

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet developer Naughty Dog has been largely radio silent about its upcoming sci-fi game since it was first revealed in 2024, but it looks like 2027 will bring a lot more information.

Speaking to Patton Oswalt during the Comic Creators Block Party 2026, director Neil Druckmann teased that the game is entering its "final stage" of production. "We've only teased it, so I can't talk too much about it," Druckmann said. "But we're kind of like at the last stages of production, where we can play it, and we're refining and polishing it, and I can't wait to show it to the world."

https://twitter.com/IntergalacticES/status/2120653537847742808

Druckmann also said that after 20 years of relatively grounded games set on Earth, Intergalactic represented an opportunity for the studio to combine everything it learned from its biggest franchises into an experience that blends "cinematic" storytelling with deep gameplay.

"Something we've been really hungry for is to go sci-fi. We used to have another game franchise, called Jak and Daxter. We wanted to take everything we learned from that franchise--which is sci-fi, fantasy, the kind of pulp-action adventure stuff we learned with Uncharted, the kind of serious drama we got from The Last of Us. It really is a combination of those three franchises, and we really wanted to expand our deep gameplay systems. Like, can we sustain the kind of cinematic storytelling we're used to doing, and go even deeper with gameplay systems?"

So when will we actually get to see the game in action? "We're going to show a lot next year, Druckman said. "We're going to show gameplay, more of the story. I think we’re going to really surprise people with what they think the game is and what it actually is."

Previously, reports said Naughty Dog has entered a period of crunch to get the game over the finish line. Focused on the protagonist Jordan A. Mun--played by Tati Gabrielle--a bounty hunter who becomes stranded on a planet called Sempiria, this will be Naughty Dog's first new IP after two decades of Uncharted and The Last of Us games, as well as its first original PS5 release. In addition to Intergalactic, Naughty Dog is reportedly also working on The Last of Us: Part 3.

Amid multiple delays and radio silence, a rumor that Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra had been canceled began circulating this week. Developer Skydance quickly said the game is on track and nearly done—but it might not be what you expect.

According to Kotaku, executive producer Lu Gigliotti told Skydance employees that he had spoken with the studio's executive leadership team, and that the game had not been canceled. "They asked me to make sure you all hear that directly. There is no truth to these claims," Giglotti reportedly wrote in the Skydance Slack group. Kotaku added that the game is approaching its Alpha milestone and is "close to done," but after reportedly running significantly over budget, the vision for this project has been scaled back. Marvel 1943 was also originally envisioned as a Netflix game before it was announced for PC and consoles, but most of its action is apparently mapped to a single button, and it's "lacking significant interaction" during gameplay.

https://youtu.be/_T0j_rKZhT0

Essentially, the game might be structurally similar to Quantic Dream's interactive stories like Detroit: Become Human, rather than a meaty brawler like Insomniac's Spider-Man games. "We're continuing development on it, but Amy and the team have big ambitions for the level of quality that they want to hit. They are a relatively small team considering the AAA quality that they're delivering,” senior executive Shawn Kittelsen said earlier this year about the game's lengthy development. "What you've seen in previous footage is what the game looks like, and we're making it with a fraction of the resources that you see on other AAA games of the same type, and really trying to push a new development model that's a lot more responsible and sustainable."

First announced in 2022 and fully revealed in 2024, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra drew attention for its good-looking graphics and a storyline featuring multiple characters, including Captain America and Black Panther. The new report comes in the wake of layoffs at Skydance's parent group, Paramount Games Studio, which is also changing following Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. While live-service Marvel games like Marvel Rivals and Marvel Snap continue to draw in players, the same can't be said for the big-budget Wolverine game that was released earlier this year. Despite a strong start in September, the game quickly lost momentum and has sold 2.4 million units so far.

Things look dire for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, as his future at the company may be in jeopardy. Recently, it was revealed that Huang had been involved in an extramarital affair with a suspected Chinese spy, and this week, news broke that he'd been involved in a second affair with one of his executives.

According to The New York Times, the Nvidia board of directors is meeting to discuss the situation, just days after launching an independent investigation into him. After the affair was first exposed, Nvidia quickly issued a statement saying that none of the company's secrets, or US state secrets, had been compromised. Huang also issued a letter to Nvidia employees, apologizing to his wife and children.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

With AI technology taking off in the last couple of years, Nvidia has become a major supplier of the crucial hardware components powering this boom. While the company is best known for its graphics cards, its fortunes have risen exponentially as it has focused more heavily on AI chips, with Huang becoming the face of the AI boom in the US. Huang is also Nvidia's founder, having started the company in 1993 and run its day-to-day operations for decades. With a 3.56% stake, he's also Nvidia's largest shareholder.

Removing him could also have huge ramifications for the company, given how involved he is in running it and the reportedly lack of a succession plan. The revelation of a second affair has seen Nvidia's stock tumble, and the company's board may feel pressured to remove him as CEO to do some damage control.

"If Jensen Huang is ousted as is expected, an already challenging environment for Nvidia investors and employees will become considerably more difficult," chief market strategist at JonesTrading Mike O’Rourke told CNN. "Nvidia is currently the most important company in the world. "The new CEO will need to make an extensive appraisal of the company, and Jensen’s successor will not have the same latitude or deference to pursue circular deals and pursue aggressive sales tactics."

Steam's growing backlog for approving game builds appears to be getting worse, as yet another studio's game is stuck in the purgatory of the platform's review program. Australia Did It: End-of-the-World Railway Defense Business, a post-apocalyptic game about keeping a cargo railway running after society has collapsed, was originally scheduled to launch on November 10, but it's stuck waiting for Steam's mandatory QA review before it can be published.

"Unfortunately, we're stuck waiting for Steam to review and approve our launch build. We have been waiting for a few weeks now and sadly don't know when they will finally get around to it," Australia Did It publisher Mystic Forge wrote in an update. "We're hoping to be able to launch as soon as possible and will update all of you the second we get an update. We really appreciate all of your continued support and apologize for the situation. We can't wait for you to check out the final game and hope to be able to get it into your hands soon!"

https://youtu.be/pX7HVir6l2o

Australia Did It co-developer and game designer Rami Ismail said the game was originally submitted on October 20, and a minor controller issue caused it to fail. That bug was fixed the same day, but since then, Ismail and Aesthecian Labs have been stuck waiting for Steam approval.

"We've been in the queue again ever since, and have followed up with Valve several times to no result," Rami explained in an email to GameSpot. "The issue was that our in-game feedback functionality does not allow you to send feedback--from a keyboard text input--via controller. I'm used to this kind of hold-and-wait pattern on console, but not really on Steam. 10-14 days pre-launch is usually enough to fail twice over, and usually you only get failed on serious issues."

With reviews for Australia Did It already out, and the game on plenty of wishlists, not having it ready for its scheduled launch isn't doing it any favors. "Pre-emptively delaying the launch would've hurt, as did not doing so," Ismail added. "We decided to take that gamble and trust in Valve's willingness to come through for developers - it seems we bet wrong."

Is a deluge of AI slop to blame for Australia Did It being stuck in QA limbo? Ismail explained that Steam can set its own policies and host "slopware" games on its own servers, but it's also having a negative effect on developers.

"At 30% off of every game sold on the platform, I have to admit I don't really care what the reason is. It's likely slopware is a part of the issue, but the fact that slopware can exist on Steam is their own policy. Whatever the situation, Steam losing the agility and access for developers to launch with minimal friction will mean developers have to treat it more like a console - which means we have to be more careful about launches."

While releasing the game on another platform like the Epic Games Store could be one solution, Ismail noted that the "commercial potential" is much lower than on Steam, which accounts for the lion's share of PC game sales. "With Epic, we're just trading the one billionaire for the other, and the commercial potential is also much lower. For now we're stuck with Steam for commercial game releases."

Ordinarily, every game submitted to Steam undergoes a series of checks to ensure that it'll work on the launcher, a process that used to take a few days. Lately, multiple developers have been complaining that this process now takes up to two weeks, and in some instances, longer, as Steam is reportedly battling to work through a backlog of submitted games. Several studios have blamed a flood of AI slop games, which regularly fail QA and are then resubmitted for review, gumming up the works and creating a bottleneck.

Recently, Valve introduced new measures to help speed up the process, but it's unclear if they've had any real impact. Under the new guidelines, games submitted for QA are required to be run through the Steam launcher for a minimum of five minutes; there will be stricter enforcement on images so that players aren't misled; Steam will run automated checks to flag broken or incomplete achievements; and advertised features will need to be included.

Rockstar's long-awaited open-world action game Grand Theft Auto 6 finally releases on November 19, and among the many things people are excited to find out is how the game will score with reviewers.

Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is currently the No. 1 most highly rated game of 2026 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic, but could GTA 6 dethrone it?

You can make a prediction of your own via GameSpot's parent company, Fandom, and score a chance to win a gift card for up to $500.

Make your pick.

Now through midnight on November 17, you can submit your prediction for GTA 6's score on Metacritic by dragging the slider on the GTA 6 Metascore Prediction page. Selections are editable up until the contest closes.

There are three prizes up for grabs in the form of Visa gift cards. The first-place prize is a $500 gift card, with $250 going to second place, and $150 for third. Winners will be drawn at random from eligible entries whose prediction exactly matches the GTA 6 Metascore on November 25.

You can see the full terms and conditions of the contest here.

For some context, here's how some of the recent GTA games have fared on Metacritic over the years:

• GTA 5 (2013) - 97
• GTA: Chinatown Wars (2009) - 93
• GTA 4 (2008) - 98
• GTA: San Andreas (2004) - 95
• GTA: Vice City (2002) - 95
• GTA 3 (2001) - 97

Sony has canceled the upcoming live-service shooter Fairgame$, but there will be no job cuts connected to the game's closure. This is according to a report from Bloomberg today.

The game was in the works at Haven Studios in Montreal, a team founded by former Assassin's Creed veteran Jade Raymond. She left the studio back in 2023, and Fairgame$ was delayed to 2026 at the time. Now the game is scrapped entirely.

According to the report, Haven "reworked" the Fairgame$ concept several times in the past three years. The studio was reportedly planning to re-reveal it with a new game. Going forward, Haven staff will support other PlayStation projects, the report said.

You can watch the original CGI reveal trailer for Fairgame$ below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Jp4K02L1I

Fairgame$ was officially canceled following a playtest that didn't show strong results.

“While the test demonstrated strong operational excellence, live ops readiness and community engagement, player feedback and retention results were mixed and fell short of the goals we had set,” PlayStation executives Sean Decker and John Doyle said in a memo seen by Bloomberg. "Combined with challenging market conditions in the PVP shooter genre, we have made the difficult decision to cease development on the game.”

Creative director Mathieu Leduc said in a blog post that Haven was founded with the goal of making games that its staffers wanted to play, and that’s why the team chose a competitive multiplayer game.

“Fairgame$ came from a desire to create a new type of PvP game with emergent sandbox gameplay. We want to deliver a fresh multiplayer experience that rewards creativity and mastery and delivers surprising stories each and every time you play,” Leduc said.

“In a nutshell, this is a thrilling competitive heist game where you join an underground movement to rob the ultra-rich and rebalance the scales,” Leduc said.

As you can see in the announcement trailer, Fairgame$ has players going after billionaires who have “too much money and too much power.” In the trailer, we see a squad of players infiltrating some kind of compound, working together to take down security guards with the apparent aim of sticking it to the man.

“Fairgame$ will give you an opportunity to break the rules as a modern-day Robin Hood, a thrill seeker, or just someone who wants to collect cool loot,” Leduc said. “Trespass inside forbidden locations around the world, fill your pockets like a kid in a candy store and unravel the nefarious plans of untouchable billionaires.”

Back when Fairgame$ was announced in 2023, Sony was in the midst of a huge push and investment into the live-service market. At one point in time, Sony wanted to release 12 live-service games over the coming years (alongside its commitment to single-player games). However, in May 2023, Sony announced that it was halving its planned live-service game output, with management stressing it wanted to focus on quality over quantity. After this announcement, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game was canceled in December 2023.

At the beginning of 2024, though, Sony found its biggest success to date in the live-service market with Helldivers 2–the game went on to smash sales records and become the No. 3 overall best-selling game of 2024 in the US.

In July 2024, Sony’s Destiny developer Bungie announced mass layoffs and major structural changes. A month later, Sony launched the multiplayer game Concord. It had such a dismal performance out of the gate that Sony quickly took the game offline and refunded all players. Its developer, Firewalk, was later closed.

At the end of 2024, Sony confirmed that it canceled multiple projects, including a live-service God of War and another live-service title from Bend.

It was reported in 2023 that PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who left Sony in 2024, had a mandate that Sony’s teams should make more games-as-a-service titles. A number of PlayStation developers were reportedly upset with this, and the blame was said to have fallen not on Ryan but Connie Booth, one of the most important and veteran PlayStation developers, leading to her eventual departure.

Another former PlayStation boss, Shuhei Yoshida, said the chance of finding success in the competitive live-service market was “small,” but his replacement, Hermen Hulst, was given the resources to fund both single-player games and live-service titles at the same time. However, had Yoshida stayed in that role, he said he would have “tried to resist” the push into the live-service market. He joked, “That’s one of the reasons they removed me.”

A new Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer debuted today, November 10, and the video showed off a race car driver doing a backflip. The animation looks smoooth.

That's notable because the Extended Look trailer that debuted back in August showed Jason doing a backflip and people online quickly roasted it for looking ... off. Other said it looked totally fine. Whatever the case, some are saying this new backflip animation being featured in the latest trailer is an example of Rockstar taking feedback seriously, but it could be more nuanced than that.

That's a nice backflip.

That's because it subsequently came to light that the backflip animation in GTA 6 is controlled by the player and isn't locked to one specific animation. However, we don't know who is doing the backflip in this newest clip.

If the character in the trailer is an NPC, as people on Reddit are surmising, then the animation could have been motion-captured as opposed to being player-controlled, hence why it looks less janky.

In any event, this backflip stuff becoming a "controversy," if you can even call it that, is yet another example of how ramped-up people are for GTA 6. People are so jazzed for the release that they are poring over even the smallest details, which you may never even notice when playing the game for yourself.

https://twitter.com/TheCassiniGames/status/2120163720198594774

GTA 6 releases on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and preloading is live now. The game unlocks at midnight local time on November 19, and that means people in the US will be among the last in the world to play.