Today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft held a panel discussion during which Xbox next-gen VP Jason Ronald shared new insight into the company's plans for the future of the platform, including the recently announced Project Helix console/PC platform.

Xbox executive Jason Ronald announced that alpha versions of Project Helix devkits will begin to go out to developers in 2027. Devkits are early versions of new consoles that developers often get access to prior to launch so they can starting building games for the final system.

"We're continuing to push innovation for our next 25 years with our team hard at work on our next-generation first-party console: Project Helix is designed to play your Xbox console and PC games, delivering leading performance and ushering in the next generation of console gaming," Ronald said.

Resident Evil Requiem can be fairly challenging on its higher difficulty levels--they don't call it Insanity Difficulty for nothing--but if you're looking to increase the challenge, then this mod will dial the challenge up to an armpit-moistening level. Some of the user-generated content for Resident Evil Requiem has focused on cheats, moustaches, and turning Leon's Porsche into a lawn chair, but the Bites Matter mod from Veoxys0910 will turn zombies into a proper pain in the neck.

Essentially, the mod makes it so that you really want to avoid being bitten by one of the infected. Once they sink their teeth into Leon or Grace, they'll be afflicted with a stack of infection that drains their health. The more stacks, the quicker their health falls, and the only way to delay their demise is by applying some green herbs.

While you can remove infection stacks, you can't cure it outright, and herbs will only buy you 30 minutes of relief. You can cure your infection by crafting a med injector, but this option requires you to enable it from the menu. If you feel like challenging yourself, you can grab this from Nexus Mods, and if you don't have the game yet, Fanatical has it on sale for $57.39 (was $70).

Employees at 2K Games' Petaluma, California studio have formed the first-ever union for motion-capture performers in the US, called the RPG-IATSE (Rights & Protections for Games Workers arm of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees). Employees initially voted to unionize back in November and have now unanimously ratified their first contract with parent company Take-Two Interactive.

The recently ratified contract guarantees workers a number of protections and benefits, including wage floor minimums and yearly increases, annual bonuses, protected benefits, a framework for promotions, preserved remote work policies, leave allowances, improved crediting for performances, and AI/likeness reproduction protections.

"This agreement shows what workers can achieve when they stand together and bargain for the future of their craft," IATSE international president Matthew D. Loeb said of the union's contract (via IATSE). "These workers made history when they organized, and they have made history again by ratifying the first union contract for motion capture video game workers in the United States."

Hot on the heels of its GDC panel divulging some of the first details on its next-generation console, Project Helix, Microsoft has confirmed that the Xbox Full Screen Experience is set to launch on Windows 11 desktops in April.

In a blog post on Xbox Wire, Xbox's Vice President of Next Generation, Jason Ronald, confirmed that the gaming-optimized mode for Windows 11 will start appearing for users in select regions starting this April. The visual overhaul, which makes navigating Windows easier with a controller and provides some performance improvements, is now simply called Xbox Mode, after launching as Xbox Full Screen Experience on the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X late last year.

Xbox Mode not only makes it easier to use Windows as just a gaming device, with better controller navigation and an interface for living room gaming, but also cuts down on unnecessary background tasks that take up valuable RAM and processing resources that could be put to better use when running a game. The interface also attempts to unify all your gaming libraries, pulling in titles you've purchased on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and more and giving you one place to launch them all from. It's a similar approach to what Valve has done with SteamOS, albeit built using Windows instead of Linux.