The virtual reality market has grown over the years, and depending on your budget, there's probably a VR headset out there for you. But can your VR gaming budget stretch to over $1,000 for the entry-level Steam Frame headset, and is it even worthwhile? That's the question GameSpot's senior video producer Kurt Indovina set out to answer, and after spending some time with it, his main takeaway was that it's the best VR headset he's ever used, and possibly the last one he'll ever own.

https://youtu.be/NcypRmYfP5s

"Having used this solid piece of tech for a couple of weeks now, it's been great to replay things like Half-Life: Alyx or booting up Ghost Town, or fiddling around in Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades," Indovina explained. "It's also been a time of reflection for VR as a whole, from where it started, where it went, and where it currently sits now. I've been an advocate for VR for a while. I've made plenty of videos about VR. In fact, the first GameSpot video I ever appeared in was for Five Nights at Freddy's VR."

"But for all of the love I've given VR, my gripes with it seem to be never-ending. I've been very vocal about how companies have stunted the growth of VR and are trying to chokehold the market with their product. Meta putting out the most affordable and accessible headset only to commit, for lack of a better term, public suicide by investing everything into the metaverse, favoring a dystopian weird social life and alienating people who just want to play games."

But if you look at the Steam Frame in a vacuum? "It rules," Indovina said. "I'm sure this thing will get support for a lot of other cool games. It's great."

The Steam Frame isn't the first time that Valve has launched VR hardware, but compared to 2019's Valve Index, this standalone wireless headset is a major leap forward. It offers inside-out tracking, improved streaming support, onboard processing, and Android compatibility, but it is one of the pricier models on the market right now. It's still cheaper than Meta's next foray into virtual reality, as the Facebook parent company recently unveiled its new $1,300 Meta VR Glasses, with a flashy trailer that didn't even mention VR gaming.

But if you've got the cash to flash and you're purely interested in gaming, the Steam Frame is worth considering, if you can get your hands on one, since they've sold out surprisingly fast. If you wear glasses, you'll also want to double-check your frame and avoid making an expensive purchase for high-tech VR gear you can't use.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is finally out, and so far, it might just be one of the best Star Wars games ever made. The new racing game has an attractive MSRP of $60, but if you're looking to grab it for the low price of nothing, you can play it for free through Amazon Luna starting today.

Amazon has announced that Prime members can stream the single-player campaign for free through Amazon Luna. "We've always believed Luna players deserve to be in the action from day one, and Star Wars: Galactic Racer makes that a reality for the first time,” Jeff Gattis, Head of Gaming at Amazon, said in a blog post. "Luna players can jump into the single-player campaign today without needing to own a console or wait for a lengthy download. It's exactly the kind of experience we want to deliver on Luna, and we think players are going to love it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA3BrR245mo

If you're unfamiliar with it, Amazon Luna is a cloud gaming service and platform available to Prime members. A rotating selection of games appears every month through Luna, and members can also claim several downloadable PC games. These can be redeemed through storefronts like the Epic Games Store and GOG. Last month was particularly good, as members could claim several of Id Software's critically acclaimed Doom games, including the 2016 reboot and Doom Eternal.

Set early during the era of the New Republic, Star Wars: Galactic Racer follows players as they take part in the Galactic League, a high-stakes underground racing circuit. What sets the game apart from other racing titles is its roguelike gameplay mechanics, which evolve the standard racing formula into a dynamic experience. Developed by Fuse Games--a studio founded by racing veterans from the Burnout and Need for Speed franchises--Star Wars: Galactic Racer currently has a metascore of 88 on GameSpot's sister site Metacritic.

"Galactic Racer is those absolutely perfect 10 minutes expanded into a full game. Every moment feels joyfully fast," Jordan Ramée wrote in GameSpot's Star Wars: Galactic Racer review. "Every decision carries the weight of tension. And every run is a rewarding chance to learn, improve, tinker, and adapt, whether it ends in success or failure. I can’t wait to keep playing what’s been my favorite racing game in years."

Halloween's first paid DLC is coming on October 27 in the form of a new skin for the game's killer, Michael Myers, and it's pulling from a source you might not expect: Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. A free update on the same day will also add a fifth map, The Tower Farm, inspired by a location in the same film. 

It may seem odd to jump to the fifth movie for the game's first DLC, but it's not the only piece of new content coming that day. There's also a second skin coming for Big Mike, borrowing from his look in the legacy sequel Halloween (2018). Each skin will run you $10.

Survivor mains also have new things to look forward to, including two new characters, Michelle and Eugene, as well as Civilian Costumes Pack 1, which includes 14 outfits--one for each survivor character--and 42 colorings, or "tints." The new survivors will also go for $10, though that's for the pair, not for each of them, while the new styles and colors will be--you guessed it--$10 for the set. This content drop is the first of several coming to the game in its first year, development studio Illfonic said. 

With 13 movies in the series, there's still plenty of ground to cover for Halloween, which makes kicking off its post-launch roadmap with Halloween 5 such an interesting choice. The appropriately autumnal farm map is more open than the game's earlier maps, making it harder to break line of sight from Haddonfield's boogeyman. I suppose that moody setting was too picturesque to pass up as an update just days before October 31. 

Just days before Halloween, Halloween will look more like, uh, Halloween.

As much as I love the 1978 original, I'm not particularly fond of most of the Halloween sequels, though Halloween H20 is probably dearest to me; I fondly recall seeing it on the big screen as a horror-obsessed nine-year-old, so I look forward to seeing that one reflected in the game down the line.

In any event, I don't think the sequels' quality ought to keep the development team from bringing them into the game like this. Illfonic's game should be a museum to all things Halloween, and watching it become that over the next few years is an exciting prospect. I hope the licensing deal extends to the series' more oddball entries, like Rob Zombie's reboot duology and Halloween 3--the one movie in the series that doesn't involve Michael Myers. If the game follows the roadmap I've built in my mind, we'll see every version of The Shape on the character select screen one day.

In GameSpot's Halloween review, I wrote that it gives players "a vibes-heavy experience befitting the timeless film, while also offering a unique hook that keeps the game from feeling like a rehash of the many horror multiplayer games that came before it."

One of actor Nolan North's most famous roles is that of Nathan Drake in Naughty Dog's Uncharted franchise, but he wrapped things up with 2016's Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. There are rumors that Naughty Dog is making a new Uncharted game, and North has said he would "110%" be up for coming back in a new game in the storied series.

“110%. Absolutely. I think it would be one of the biggest games ever if they decided to do it. It just depends if Sony wants to make money," he said at Gamergy in Puerto Rico prior to the recent rumors of Uncharted 5 (via DomTheBomb). "I absolutely would. I try to stay in shape just in case. I can't see a scenario where I would say no. I always keep out hope."

Nolan North in the Uncharted movie.

North went on to clarify that he has not heard anything about a new Uncharted game where he might be asked to come back, but he thinks it would be a good business decision for Sony.

"It is a business-my god, can you imagine if they did? It would be the biggest announcement in gaming. I don't think that's hyperbole. I think that's true," he said.

North said he enjoyed working with Naughty Dog over the years on the four main Uncharted games, and that's part of why he would be up to come back.

His one caveat, however, is that he hopes Naughty Dog wouldn't make something that doesn't live up to the franchise's legacy. He cited Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as an example of a middling movie in an otherwise great series, and he doesn't want that to happen for Uncharted.

According to multiple sources, a fifth mainline Uncharted game will be Naughty Dog's next project after Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which is reportedly due for release in 2027. A third The Last of Us game could follow after.

Intriguingly, the report said Nathan Drake would appear in the hypothetical Uncharted 5 in some capacity. Uncharted 4 was positioned as the definitive end for Nathan Drake’s story when it released in 2016, but Naughty Dog has repeatedly suggested that it is not done with the franchise. 

When Uncharted 5 might release is anyone’s guess, but it’s more likely that it’ll arrive on the PlayStation 6 given that Sony is expected to release its next-generation console sometime in 2028. 

North played Nathan Drake in the four main Uncharted games, but not The Lost Legacy. He had a cameo in the Uncharted movie, too.

Gears of War: E-Day rolls out worldwide starting October 6, and thanks to early access players, The Coalition has identified several issues that it's fixing with the game's first patch. Focused mostly on overall stability and performance across the game's campaign, multiplayer, and Horde Siege modes, the Gears of War: E-Day update is out now.

One of the biggest fixes is the "Bilefrog-Kalona" error, an issue named after the gigantic subterranean Locust frogs encountered throughout the game, which regularly try to kill you by vomiting stomach acid at your position. Nasty stuff. The Coalition assigned several Gears-themed names to its network errors, and in this case, getting vomit-frogged is a specific split-screen multiplayer issue. This triggers when a split-screen player is automatically signed out of online services after the console or PC is suspended, then tries to use Quick Resume to hop back in.

The Coalition says it has also addressed an issue in Versus Social matches that results in players entering a waiting-lobby limbo, and fixed an issue that could prevent certain Siege Blitz Secure objectives from being completed. For the campaign, several pesky problems across Act 2 are being patched, while other game-wide instances of sticky turrets and unearned War Journal progress have been resolved.

These fixes come on the eve of the game's worldwide rollout on PC and Xbox Series X|S, and an influx of Game Pass subscribers are expected to enter Kalona starting tomorrow. While the overall story isn't the best Gears of War narrative, the game is still recommended for anyone who wants a big, dumb, and loud cover-based shooter that looks gorgeous on PC and Xbox Series X|S.

"For better or worse, E-Day is distinctly Gears, and I had a good time with it, even if the story is disappointing and the open areas are fairly dull," Richard Wakeling wrote in GameSpot's Gears of War: E-Day campaign review. "But that’s all it is: a good game, propped up by combat that hasn’t changed all that much over the past 20 years. That’s enough to skate by, but I wish Gears of War would dig deeper."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teClq4qYyzQ Gears of War: E-Day October 5 Patch Notes

Stability and Performance

• Made various stability, performance, hardware compatibility, and reporting improvements across the game

Online and multiplayer services

• Addressed an issue causing some Versus Social matches to remain on the “Waiting for players” screen
• Improved Xbox authentication handling when the system clock differs significantly from the correct time
• Addressed "Bilefrog-Kalona" error, where a split-screen player could be signed out after suspending and resuming the game
• Improved online-session stability when accessing session information

Campaign

• Addressed an issue where players joining an existing Campaign could receive War Journal progress and Forge rewards earned before they joined
• Addressed an issue where players could remain attached to turrets when a cinematic or gameplay moment began
• Addressed an issue where some join-in-progress players might not receive the expected Forge Discovery War Journal progress
• Act 2 Chapter 2: Addressed an issue where the objective could fail to update when entering Allfather’s Plaza after completing activities elsewhere in the mission
• Act 2 Chapter 2: Addressed an issue where the Heavy Gear in the Black Raven Down side objective could appear without a Vulcan
• Act 4 Chapter 1: Addressed an issue where certain side objectives could fail to start if players entered the objective area while introductory dialogue was playing
• Act 4 Chapter 2: Addressed one cause of the Power Station defense objective failing to complete after all visible enemies were defeated

Horde Siege

• Addressed an issue that could prevent certain Siege Blitz Secure objectives from being completed
• Addressed an issue where the extraction helicopter could fail to appear during a Downtown West Blitz mission

Versus

• Addressed an issue in Demolition where a bomb could become stuck in a defusing state if a player was eliminated while beginning the defuse interaction

UI

• Adjusted the size and appearance of Online Diagnostic text
• Addressed one possible cause of the UI repeatedly attempting to claim the same Challenge Mail reward

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser left the company in 2020 and now runs a new outfit called Absurd Ventures. Houser will be forever connected to the GTA franchise, and he's now weighed in on GTA 6.

He told Variety that he did not watch the "Extended Look" trailer and doesn't plan to. Why? He said he tries to avoid consuming things that are going to "disrupt me creatively."

"And given that I spend a large amount of time trying to make open-world games, and the rest of my conscious time trying to figure out innovative ways to market them, I don’t need to see what other people are [doing]," he said. "I’m always trying to think about new ways of doing it, not sit there in some kind of comparison of what I would have done differently.”

Also in the interview, Houser said he doesn't play a lot of open-world games anymore, for similar reasons.

"I find when I play them, I can almost deconstruct the strengths and weaknesses of the team in real time and it’s distracting. I’m always thinking, ‘Well, their animation team is weak, but I think this game design is fantastic.’ And, ‘Oh, I can imagine that meeting when they discuss this feature,'" he said. "I’m not a game designer; I’m a sort of creative director. So I’m trying to always find new things that haven’t been done before, or that I can steal from older media, quite frankly or just inspired me or things I always thought about.”

Jasona and Lucia in GTA 6.

It's not that Absurd Ventures is burying its head in the sand, however. Houser went on to say he has a team of people at his company who take the time to examine "what everyone else is doing."

He said when Rockstar began to develop Red Dead Redemption, he avoided watching any more Western films. For GTA, he said he avoided HBO's acclaimed mob show The Sopranos (1999-2007) because "it would have disrupted everything I did on GTA" if he had seen the show while formulating the GTA series, which was first released in 1997.

"So I really try and avoid things that I think are going to overly influence me," he said.

Houser is now working on multiple projects at Absurd Ventures, including an open-world comedy game that he will reveal further "in the next few months." Another is a dystopian sci-fi game about "video game development gone very wrong" when a rogue AI becomes sentient.

He said in the Variety interview that "there could be no greater compliment" than to be forever associated with GTA. At the same time, Houser said he hopes some of what he works on at Absurd Venture can be successful in its own right.

Dan Houser's brother and Rockstar co-founder, Sam Houser, remains at Rockstar and was involved in the creation of GTA 6. GQ writer Sam White recently posted a series of tweets (and then deleted them) saying an interview he had planned with Sam Houser fell apart at the last minute. That's notable because Sam Houser rarely gives any interviews at all, nor does he appear in Rockstar's official promotional efforts for the company's releases.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. In other news, Rockstar recently revealed some of its secrets and detailed how a game like GTA 6 gets made.

Games developed by Hideo Kojima typically have an air of mystery, but for his upcoming horror project OD, the veteran game director wants to both terrify and mystify his fans. On a new episode of his weekly radio show Koji10, Kojima briefly spoke about the game, avoiding the release of teasers, and ensuring that players get a proper shock when playing it

"It's still a mystery. That doesn't mean we haven't made the game," Kojima said. "I want to keep quiet and release it. That's unusual for me, isn't it? I normally put out teaser after teaser. This time I don't want to reveal much. A mystery. It's so new that it's a mystery. It aims to create a new experience and test the limits of what players can bear in terms of fear. The limits of fear, that's the idea behind the title. The critical point of fear."

https://youtu.be/YDTq8SeY9s0

OD was originally announced in 2023, with the game being described as an experiment on what it means to overdose on fear--hence the title, OD. As for Kojima's comments about marketing, the first Death Stranding was a prime example: There were several teaser trailers and extended gameplay previews, each leaving viewers with more questions than answers. Kojima isn't even sure OD will find an audience, as he believes the gameplay systems are unlike anything he's created in his career.

Alongside his Metal Gear Solid spiritual successor Physint, Xbox is supporting development on OD, and the game is reportedly safe from the studio closures, layoffs, and game cancellations that have hit Microsoft's gaming division throughout 2026.

The game features actors Hunter Schafer and Sophia Lillis, although it's unclear how much of a role the late Udo Kier will have in OD, following his death last year. Kojima previously said that the 2025 SAG-AFTRA strike forced the team to reschedule filming for OD until 2026, although Kier can still be seen in the early teaser for OD.

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 is one of the most highly anticipated game releases this year, or ever. The franchise is known for its massive scope and impressive attention to detail, but how is a game like GTA 6 actually made? In a new interview with Love magazine (via Kotaku), Rockstar North boss Rob Nelson said that part of the secret sauce with the GTA franchise is that many of its developers have been working together for a long time and have a "good sense of what they need to do."

In terms of actually building the game, Nelson said the process begins by creating assets and systems, and then "roughing in content across all areas of development."

More specifically, Nelson said GTA 6 was built through a series of eight-week milestones where select pieces of the game are compiled together. Then, the team evaluates those pieces, incorporates changes based on feedback, and then gets back to work on the next milestone.

"We work our way there, year after year, one obsessive day at a time, course-correcting as we go; always with the feeling we want the finished game to have firmly in mind, knowing that often we have to find that feeling, and trusting that, even if we haven’t found it yet, we will eventually," he said.

Another way Rockstar gets a game like GTA 6 out the door is by working with a lot of people. Anyone who watched the credits roll on Rockstar's last game, Red Dead Redemption II, is aware of just how many people worked on that game. For GTA 6, it wouldn't be surprising if the headcount is even higher.

GTA 6 writing director James Horton said, "There are no shortcuts when it comes to building a world like this."

“It’s a question of giving the right people the resources they need to build something that’s not only vast and varied as a whole, but where every part rings true no matter how small it is, or how closely you look at it," he said. "It needs to wash over you when you’re sprinting down the busiest street in the city, hearing snatches of a hundred different conversations as you go; and it needs to be totally convincing if you decide to stop and pay close attention to any one of those conversations."

Rockstar spun up a team in Los Angeles to work exclusively on NPCs, to help them feel more alive.

"Every room in the game, somebody thought about this," Rockstar's Aaron Garbut told The New York Times. "Who's sitting where, what they're drinking, the marks that are left on the table. The pictures on the wall will have the people that are in that room, with their tattoos on their arms and their family behind them. That whole thing has been made, and built, and photographed, and placed in this random room in a random building in a huge city, in a world."

Rockstar's developers also visited strip clubs in Florida and did ride-alongs with police to help get the details right in its recreation of Miami for Vice City.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. After a long period of silence, Rockstar has finally begun to reveal more details and show the game off. For lots more, be sure to read all of the new things we just learned about GTA 6.

Hideo Kojima's spiritual successor to Metal Gear Solid, Physint, doesn't just have a new home at Xbox; it also has a famous face attached to it, with Bill Skarsgard (It, Boy Kills World) playing the lead role. Thanks to Death Stranding 2: On the Beach composer Yoann "Woodkid" Lemoine, Kojima was introduced to Skarsgard, who would later be cast as the yet-to-be-named protagonist of Physint.

"He's been in some excellent films. Directors I know have worked with him and can't praise him enough," Kojima said on a new episode of the Koji 10 radio program. "I wanted to work with him for a long time. Then one day, Bill visited Woodkid's studio. When Bill went to his studio, he saw piles of Kojima Productions merchandise. He said, 'What's this? Why do you have all this!?' Yoann said, 'I worked with them,' and that’s how Yoann introduced us."

Kojima would later travel to Sweden to meet Skarsgard and his family. Skarsgard was a fan of the Metal Gear franchise, and Kojima pitched him the lead role in Physint, which Skarsgard accepted.

https://youtu.be/YDTq8SeY9s0

It's still early days for Physint, and Kojima says that Skarsgard is eager to get his hands on the game's script so that he can start preparing for the role. "We've finished his scan now. We have to scan actors early, because processing the data takes a long time," Kojima explained. "We'll film the performance much later. But he's so eager he doesn't want to wait. He keeps asking me for the script. I have the plot ready. But he wants to know the lines and how his character speaks. He wants to start preparing now. He's really eager. That's how deeply he gets into a role.

One other crucial factor in choosing Skarsgard was his chemistry with his fellow Physint actor, Charlee Fraser. "The poster we released the other day showed him with Charlee. Their chemistry is very important," Kojima added. "We tested their on-screen chemistry and did a camera test. We scanned them in full makeup. Their clothes were just for reference; these aren't the final costumes. The contrast between these two is striking."

Skarsgard also kept his involvement secret, as Kojima added that not even his parents knew he was going to be the star of Physint. "He's so serious; he hadn’t told anyone. It was confidential, of course, since we hadn't announced it," Kojima added. "Even his parents didn't know. That's impressive. He's a very conscientious person."

Physint won't be out for a long time, but Kojima has said that it's the "biggest-selling" game that he could possibly create. With Skarsgard and several other actors attached, it's likely also a very expensive game to produce, with unconfirmed reports that Physint’s budget at Sony was over $400 million. This figure has never been confirmed, but it is rumored that Xbox is paying a lot less to get it over the finish line.

2K Sports has announced that NBA 2K25 will be discontinued soon, and that includes delisting the product and server shutdowns that will make even the game's single-player MyCareer and MyTeam components unplayable.

In a post, 2K Sports said NBA 2K25 will be removed from sale on October 30, 2026 and then fully discontinued on December 31, 2026.

People who own the game can redownload it and play offline after the shutdown. However, as of January 1, 2026, all multiplayer games and access to every online mode will be removed. This means the single-player MyCareer and MyTeam modes will be unplayable, while players also won't be able to acquire any more virtual currency.

As for what will be available after January 1, 2027, 2K Sports confirmed that Play Now, MyNBA, The W, and MyWNBA modes will remain.

NBA 2K25 was released in October 2024, so it will have been fully online and full-featured for a period of about two years. The previous year's game, NBA 2K24, was discontinued on January 31, 2026, with NBA 2K23 going dark a year prior to that. It's become something of a set schedule for the NBA 2K series to keep its servers up and operational for about two years.

The impending closure for NBA 2K25--or any game--is a bummer for people who want to keep playing online, but this kind of thing is not uncommon in the world of sports games and beyond, for 2K and other publishers who shift resources to newer, more popular games over time.

For a game like NBA 2K, there could also be licensing and legal requirements, too, given how many real-world people and brands appear in the games.

People are particularly upset about only being able to play a mode like MyCareer for two years. They invest significant time into their teams, and two years just isn't enough for many people.

One of the most popular games in the entire world, GTA Online--which hails from 2K parent company Take-Two's Rockstar--has remained online and playable since 2013. That game reportedly makes many millions of dollars every month, so it makes sense that Rockstar would continue to update and support it.

The newest NBA 2K game, NBA 2K27, was released in September 2026, so if a similar pattern holds, it could be delisted in October 2028 and close down for good in January 2029.

New information about Grand Theft Auto 6 continues to be revealed. Game Informer's most recent issue included a number of new details, and we've rounded up some of the key things we learned below.

Story Setup

It seems like we'll start the game playing as Jason, since Lucia is still in prison. When Lucia gets out, the two get a score because they both want to live better, wealthier lives. It's supposed to be a simple job, but they get caught and an entire mystery that spans all of Leonida will unfold.

The GTA 6 map is the biggest one Rockstar has ever made. Map Size

While there has been a lot of speculation, leaks, and information around the internet about the GTA 6 map size, it's now been confirmed that Leonida in GTA 6 is twice the size of GTA 5. It's the largest map Rockstar has ever created by "some degree." It's difficult to fathom a bigger and more detailed world than Red Dead Redemption 2, but GTA 6 is about to deliver it. We're curious to see how all of the different areas of the map fit together to make one unified Leonida.

The Main Regions

The map is split into six different areas, and they are: Vice City, Leonida Quays, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia, and the Mount Kalaga National Park. Vice City is obviously based on Miami, and probably where you'll spend the most of your time. Grassrivers is GTA 6's version of the Everglades. Port Gellhorn, which represents smaller towns that double as tourist traps in Florida. Ambrosia is the "heart" of Leonida where a lot of factories and distilleries are, and we imagine there'll be plenty of seedy shootouts here. Mount Kalaga will have the off-road events, but also has some wealthier areas.

Rideshare App

The Rideshare app is called RydeMe. When you take one of these rideshares, you can chat with other NPCs and hang out, listen to music, and get from one point to another. GTA 4's cab hailing mechanic seems to have been expanded hugely here for GTA 6.

Weather

There's a lot of new detail about the weather. Florida has very turbulent weather, and it seems like Rockstar is trying to capture that. Weather is dynamic and localized--it doesn't just happen in your vicinity. If you're flying a plane you'll see thunderstorms in the distance or sunny spots. It'll all happen concurrently. If the conditions of the storms are right, a dynamic rainbow can be formed, but evidence of the rain will also be present. Puddles, wet pavements, and maybe NPCs with wet hair will all be clear signs of a recent rainstorm.

Wind has had an overhaul since RDR2, and Rockstar has ensured it is as realistic as possible. Clothes, hair, and items will all move in the wind. It's more localized, and depending on the weather, the wind can change. If it's windy over a body of water, you'll see ripples, and more of the wind's effects on the surrounding environment.

Hurricanes

Separate to the weather, hurricanes will be present in GTA 6. We don't know if there will be any gameplay implications, but we'd hope so. Maybe a strong gust of wind would affect driving, or there could be floods. Rockstar has said gutters can overflow and affect the nearby environment. Perhaps entire routes are impassable due to hurricane damage.

Jason and Lucia

Jason's story starts in Leonida Quays as he's driving around completing smaller jobs. Lucia is from Liberty City and has moved to Leonida, but the reason she ended up in prison is something to do with her family.

Wildlife

There are over 170 species, 60 of which are birds, over 30 land mammals, and a bunch of fish and reptiles. Some animals specifically called out are manatees, flamingos, pelicans, alligators, feral cats, king toads, armadillos, non-native monkeys, sharks, whales, rays, turtles, and jellyfish. There are probably more to be spotted in the trailers. Animal fur is reactive and can be wet, matted with dirt, or pressed down.

NPCs are more diverse than ever. Activities

A lot of these can be seen in the trailers, or called out in our GTA 6 activities guide. These include base jumping, billiards, working out in the gym, kayaking, racing, visiting the zoo, airboating, jet-skiing, and mini-golfing.

NPCs

Some of this we already knew, but GTA 6 has the most diverse cast of NPCs yet. Diverse body types and looks are going to be walking the streets of Leonida. Interestingly though, NPC appearances won't be entirely randomized. There are a lot of different factors at play, including location. Where are they from and where do they live? Different areas of Leonida have different clothing styles, different tattoos, and different haircuts.

Those are the biggest takeaways we found in Game Informer's article. If you'd like to read it in full, take a look at the current issue of the magazine that's out now.

Video games are the new battlefield for movie ideas, and after a reported bidding war, it appears Sony Pictures is the frontrunner to secure the rights to the Battlefield movie.

The Wrap reported that Sony Pictures was in the lead position to win the rights, and The Hollywood Reporter backed this up.

The Battlefield movie package reportedly includes Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie behind the camera, with Oscar-winner Michael B. Jordan in the mix to star and produce it. McQuarrie is also writing and producing.

Universal, Netflix, Amazon MGM Studios, and Warner Bros. Discovery (now operating under Skydance) all reportedly submitted bids for the Battlefield movie. The Wrap said the dealmaking process is "shaping up to be the biggest bidding war of the year." The report did not mention any dollar numbers attached to the bids, or any other particulars, however. For example, if Netflix closes the deal, many might expect the film to be released on streaming instead of theatrically (but even at Netflix these days that's not a certainty).

In the video game landscape, Battlefield and Call of Duty are rivals, and now they could become film foes, too. Skydance is making a Call of Duty movie, with Sicario's Taylor Sheridan writing and Lone Survivor's Peter Berg directing.

The latest Battlefield game, meanwhile, was 2025's Battlefield 6, which was the year's best-selling game overall in the US, surpassing Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. EA and Battlefield Studios will continue to support the game with more updates and new content into 2027.

In 2024, Battlefield boss Vince Zampella--who has since passed away--said EA had held discussions about a Battlefield movie or TV show already. A decade ago, Paramount bought the rights to make a Battlefield TV show, but it never materialized. In 2012, Fox was developing an hour-long comedy show based on the Battlefield: Bad Company series, with Adam Sandler's company signed on. This show also did not come to fruition.

Sony Pictures makes a lot of video game movies

If Sony Pictures succeeds in winning the Battlefield movie rights, it will be just the latest big get in the gaming space for the film studio. Sony Pictures was behind the recent release of Zach Cregger's highly successful Resident Evil movie, and that movie's co-producer, Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment, is producing Battlefield as well. Sony Pictures is also behind 2027's The Legend of Zelda live-action movie, which it's making in partnership with Nintendo.

Sony's PlayStation Productions division, meanwhile, was behind films like 2022's Uncharted, 2023's Gran Turismo, and 2025's Until Dawn, to name a few.

It hasn't been an easy year for the Love and Deepspace community after the Valko controversy left the fandom divided, but it looks like developer Papergames has brewed up new trouble for the gacha game. A few days ago, the developer posted cocktail recipes online, and followers quickly warned the studio that recreating those drinks could result in lethal concoctions.

"One taste of this Special Blend and you won’t forget it," the original post read, which was accompanied by recipes for the non-alcoholic cocktail mixes. Each one is inspired by an in-game slime--Artsyblobbu, Fiendyblobbu, Pilotblobbu, Snowyblobbu, and Stellablobbu--and the list of ingredients includes several items found inside of Love and Deepspace. Cute, wholesome fun, right? Not exactly.

https://twitter.com/Love_Deepspace/status/2104783385151656092

As people online pointed out, some of those ingredients include hallucinogens like Datura and other toxic elements like colchicine, which you definitely should not be consuming. Papergames released a follow-up post a day later. They stressed that the drink recipes posted above are "fictional" and for "in-game purposes" only.

https://twitter.com/Love_Deepspace/status/2105330449132474515

The replies to the cocktail tweets have been just as toxic, with several Love and Deepspace players quickly hijacking the thread to demand that the hunky werewolf Valko be finally added to the game--which is an entirely different can of worms. Long story short: Think twice before you start mixing drinks from a video game social media account, as it pays to double-check the ingredients so that you don't harm your body or start tripping the light fantastic.

I spent a few days playing Section 9 Interactive's creepy metroidvania and writing my End of Abyss review, and ultimately concluded it was a fun but inconsistent experience hindered by a few particular issues. Now, just a day after it launched on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via the Epic Games Store, the studio has already cleared up most of those issues with a newly released patch.

If you missed the review, my main concern was how the in-game map would sometimes share incorrect information, like telling me a door was locked when I had unlocked it, or failing to signify when I'd found the key to a particular door. In a metroidvania, this means a whole lot. End of Abyss is a game about exploration, including lots of backtracking via roundabout paths, so when I'd plan long treks across the world based on a faulty map, it was really frustrating to find out too late that I'd essentially been lied to.

But a patch has fixed that, among other problems, and it presents an uncommon issue for me. My review only went out two days ago. The game only launched yesterday. Now much of my review is already outdated. In this era of live-service games and post-launch updates, it's common for games to change shape over time, but for End of Abyss's patch to fix many of its lesser parts essentially right after the deadline isn't normally how it goes.

Usually big, important changes happen in one of two ways:

In one common scenario, a game that critics are playing for review may be patched during that pre-release review period. It's often the case that critics are made aware of bugs we might see, and we're usually told when they've been patched out, or that those fixes are in the "day one" patch that comes with the game's public launch, leaving us to confirm as much once the patch drops.

This even applies to End of Abyss. I bumped into a few bugs during my time with the game, and the very worst of them--in which a boss failed to drop a quest item--was patched just a few hours before I had to write my review, allowing me to beat the game on time. This made the issue irrelevant to my review, and thus I didn't even specifically call it out. 

If the public wasn't going to experience it, then I take it as my job to basically erase it from my memory of the experience--or at least, if I do mention it, I should explain how it's no longer a concern for players jumping in at launch.

In another common scenario, a game changes shape much later in its lifespan, and probably over the course of several updates. Games like Sea of Thieves, Overwatch, and Fallout 76 are great examples. These kinds of games often become the subject of re-reviews years later. But it's not just multiplayer games that do this. Games such as Starfield, Mass Effect 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 have been affected by such major changes that they merited follow-ups, too. 

But End of Abyss is a much rarer case. The game just came out. My review could only speak to my experience, and so it does, but I'd planned to revisit it once my biggest problems with it were addressed and write something like what I've written here--something that says, "Hey, it's better now!" when I could recommend it with more confidence. I just didn't expect that would be a mere 48 hours after I published my thoughts on the game.

Section 9's debut landed in a weird gray area, where some important fixes came neither early enough for my review to consider them, nor late enough for my review to feel like it accurately reflected the experience of playing the game for a reasonable period of time. As it stands, only the players who jumped in yesterday--likely a relative few compared to the many more who will play the game over the next several years--bumped into the map issue I had during my time with it. No one else will ever have to deal with it. 

That's good for players, and good for the studio, even if it leaves reviews like mine feeling more swiftly outdated than anything I can remember writing.

A new screenshot from Grand Theft Auto 6 has arrived, and fans immediately noticed that it appears to be referencing the iconic opening scene from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 crime movie Pulp Fiction.

The image was shared by Love magazine on Instagram. The GTA 6 Countdown social media account put it next to the diner scene from Pulp Fiction, and the similarities are there, especially in the framing.

In Pulp Fiction, Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer's characters, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, go on to rob the diner, and given that Lucia and Jason are criminals as well, it's not a stretch to think that could happen in GTA 6. Maybe they're just enjoying breakfast, but that seems unlikely given the image clearly shows both gripping their pistols, with Lucia seemingly ready to fill the empty duffel bag next to her with cash and other valuables.

https://twitter.com/GTAVI_Countdown/status/2106042257443049741

GTA 6 tells a Bonnie and Clyde-style story of two lovers who are also criminals. Things did not end well for them, and many are speculating as to how GTA 6's story could wrap up for both Lucia and Jason. It also wouldn't be surprising to see GTA 6 reference Pulp Fiction given how GTA games in the past have featured very overt references to movies, like how Vice City had Scarface references and GTA 5 had nods to Heat.

"We wanted both protagonists to be vulnerable, tough, flawed, right sometimes, wrong sometimes, able to learn from each other,”GTA 6 writer Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern told Love magazine. “That’s what we felt made them authentic, and a great team.”

Jason and Lucia in GTA 6.

Another GTA 6 game writer, Alexa D’Agostino, told the magazine, “When you are focusing on writing a fully realized person with their own wants, you’re going to get something perfectly imperfect--with clichés, but also undeniably real.”

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. On November 18, the Miami Heat will wear GTA 6-inspired jerseys and play on a court that references Vice City, the game's setting, and a stand-in for Miami.

GTA 6 will take players outside of Miami to other places in Florida, just don't expect to go to Rockstar's version of Walt Disney World.

Rockstar's GTA 6 is priced at $80 for its standard edition. Another voice has come forward to say they hope other teams follow suit and charge more for new games to help the industry at a time when developers are closing up shop, cancelling games, and laying off developers on a regular basis.

Martin Klima, the co-founder of Kingdom Come developer Warhorse, told PC Gamer that raising unit prices would "help a lot," but "everybody's scared to death" to do it.

"Now, hopefully, GTA will blaze the trail, and it will allow us to increase the cost," he said, adding that Rockstar and Take-Two are among the only companies who can "afford, or who can dare" to raise prices in this way.

He added that price increases for new games are "long overdue and also necessary for this business to survive."

GTA 6 should kick off a trend of games costing more, Warhorse co-founder says.

Take-Two was among the first big publishers to drive prices up from $60 to $70, kicking this off with NBA 2K21 in 2020. Numerous other publishers followed suit, and now $70 is the norm. Defending the price increase, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick said production costs increased by 300%.

Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden said in 2025 that the price of new games should have gone up with every new console generation for the past 20 years. That largely did not happen, and now the industry is worse off for it, he said.

“I think it’s because everyone’s afraid,” he told GI.biz. “No one wants to be the first one to raise the price, because you’re afraid to lose traffic. So what you do is you just end up eating into your operating income, your profit margin.”

“There were more sports cars in the parking lot in the PS1 era than there were in the PS4 era, because if you’re selling 20 million units at $60 for something that only cost you $10 million to make, that’s different than selling 20 million units at $60 for something that cost you $160 million to make.”

To help make up the difference, developers have hawked things like microtransactions, DLC, and battle passes. If more games go up in price, those trends will likely continue, too.

Before GTA 6's price was revealed, a Bank of America stock analyst said Take-Two should charge $80 to help spur other publishers to follow suit.

We already have $80 games, as Nintendo charges $80 for Mario Kart World, saying the game's ambition justifies the price tag.

Every game is priced differently, even within the same publisher, as Take-Two launched Mafia: The Old Country for $50–to great success. For its part, Nintendo's newly released Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave costs $80 for its physical edition or $70 for its digital counterpart.

GTA 6, which releases on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, also has a $100 Ultimate Edition and a $400 collector's edition that does not include the game. Zelnick said earlier this year that Rockstar could have leveraged the monumental demand for GTA 6 to charge a higher price to consumers, but chose not to.

In addition to the mountains of money Rockstar and Take-Two are due to make off GTA 6 game sales, the game is likely to eventually have some kind of new version of GTA Online, and that's no doubt going to print money.

Video games are usually a few steps removed from reality, but with Grand Theft Auto 6, developer Rockstar Games aims to reflect and amplify the current state of the world with an "over the top" experience. As seen in the trailers and gameplay previews so far, GTA 6 is a contemporary game about doing whatever it takes to make it to the top, and that pursuit of fame and glory is often bookended by shootouts, car chases, and explosions in its Bonnie and Clyde narrative.

"If you are going to put all this effort into creating a version of today’s world, it has to be more over the top, more insane, more in your face," senior VP of narrative Rupert Humphries said to Love Magazine. "Otherwise, you could just go outside and live in the real world."

Humphries also described the world of GTA 6 as "a pressure cooker for all kinds of insanity," as the protagonists, Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval, are polar opposites. Game writer Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern described Lucina as an ambitious go-getter who'll do anything to get the life she dreams of, while Jason is bound by life's circumstances. "We wanted both protagonists to be vulnerable, tough, flawed, right sometimes, wrong sometimes, able to learn from each other," Gauvey-Kern said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vlzIPpyJR0

GTA 6 is also making some big changes to the franchise formula, as getting out of trouble won't be as easy as hiding in an alley and waiting for your wanted level to drop. Actions have consequences, and with the cops being much smarter and more persistent, players will have to be more cunning before they embark on a crime spree. The relationship between Jason and Lucia is also surprisingly more nuanced and deeper than you think, and it'll be a major part of the overall GTA 6 experience when the game launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

With the wait almost over, the marketing machine for GTA 6 has begun to get into gear. Advertising has already taken over a Miami stadium, and the NBA's Miami Heat have announced they'll wear GTA 6-inspired jerseys when they face off against the Milwaukee Bucks on November 18. Rockstar Games also announced a $400 GTA 6 Collector's Edition last week; while it doesn't include the game, it does include various trinkets typically associated with users of the devil's dandruff.

GTA 6: 268 Screenshots To Ease The Wait View Images

The start of the month usually brings several new Xbox Game Pass titles for subscribers, along with confirmation of which games will leave the subscription service in the coming days. This month, at least nine games will be leaving, including one of the best games of 2025, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Other big departures this month include A Plague Tale: Requiem and-- inconveniently for horror fans during the spookiest month of the year--the Dead by Daylight spin-off The Casting of Frank Stone. Evil West is another great game you only have a few days left to play, with a solid 7/10 experience full of monster-slaying energy.

Pacific Drive was another one of our favorites when it was released a few years back, as this eerie roguelite driving game combined a tense atmosphere with themes of mystery and survival.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Leaving Xbox Game Pass on October 15

• The Casting of Frank Stone
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Crime Scene Cleaner
• Donut County
• Evil West
• Superball
• Nova Roma (Game Preview)
• Pacific Drive
• A Plague Tale Requiem

As a reminder, you can save 20% on these games if you decide to buy them before they leave Game Pass.

September was a pretty big month for Game Pass removals, with a total of 18 games packing their bags. The list included some big titles, like The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Sifu, and Frostpunk 2.

Netflix has been experimenting with video games for a while, but is the streaming giant going to eventually drop out of gaming? That's the question Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw put to Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos at the Screentime event this week.

Regarding whether Netflix will still host games in five years, Sarandos said, "I think so." He said Netflix's push into mobile gaming was "a gateway to cloud gaming," which is something Netflix is "much more interested in."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lsV9I2NDO8

Netflix hosts a variety of mobile games, including Red Dead Redemption, Sonic Mania Plus, and RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch, just to name a few. The games are included with a Netflix membership and have no ads. Netflix also hosts streaming games that can be played on your TV, and they are more family- and party-focused.

Netflix's gaming ambitions have bounced around over the years. At one point, the company wanted to make big, AAA games, and hired some big names to get it done. However, Netflix later wound down these efforts, closing studios and laying off staff in the process, leading many to wonder what Netflix's ambition for video games actually was.

Sarandos said cloud gaming makes more sense for Netflix "in a post-console world." He didn't elaborate here, but it sounds like he's talking about a future where more and more people play games without dedicated hardware like a PlayStation, Xbox, or Switch console. All of those systems have gone up in price in recent times due to AI-fueled component and memory issues, along with bigger global macroeconomic trends.

The cloud gaming market hasn't popped the way some have predicted, but Sarandos isn't the only person who is optimistic about the future potential. Strauss Zelnick, the head of GTA 6 owner Take-Two recently said, "I think we'll be in commercial streaming mode within three years."

Sarandos said there will be "all kinds of opportunities for gaming on the television," and the executive said Netflix wanted to be "early invested in that."

"I like it for IP extension. I certainly like it for brand value, for people who want to spend time on that screen gaming instead of watching, then we have an option for them," he said.

Also in the interview, Sarandos was asked if Netflix would again reach into its coffers to buy a large-scale gaming company to help its gaming ambitions become realized faster. The interviewer asked if Netflix could buy Take-Two or Xbox, and Sarandos said it doesn't have any specific plans to buy more gaming studios, though he's not ruling anything out either. For what it's worth, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma recently said Xbox is not for sale, while Take-Two selling itself would be shocking.

Sarandos said Netflix prefers to grow organically instead of buying companies to spur growth. Of course, this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, as evidenced by Netflix offering to buy Warner Bros. Discover for many billions of dollars before Paramount swooped in and made a deal. He said Netflix went after WBD because the company was "so clean" and contained only the elements and assets of the business that Netflix actually wanted, and that was rare.

Netflix will look at other opportunities to buy game studios if they complement the company's wider business goals, Sarandos said.

In other news about cloud gaming, Microsoft has reportedly canceled its new controller for it, ahead of price hikes to the service soon.

Netflix has also said it's still very early days for its gaming output, saying the company has “tons more work to do." Netflix's financial investment in gaming is minuscule relative to its other business areas, and management sees gaming as a "significant market opportunity." Netflix investors no doubt want to see Netflix find new ways to make money; after all, Netflix stock has crashed more than 25% in 2026 so far.

It looks like Sony has quietly revised the PS5 console once again, with new internal changes across the (mother)board. It's not clear when these new models came into service, but they seem to have entered circulation around the same time Sony released limited-edition Marvel's Wolverine PS5 consoles.

Spotted by Modyfikator89, longevity and repairability appear to be the key areas that Sony has focused on. The redesigned motherboard offers easier access to the CR2023 battery, the streamlined internal layout makes repairs less risky, and the hardware takes a page from the PS5 Pro playbook with refined liquid-metal containment and revised heatsink materials. In theory, the updated barrier around the processor die should keep the liquid metal better contained over time, ensuring stable thermal transfer performance even under intensive loads.

https://twitter.com/Modyfikator89/status/2105382987755814984

Sony has also moved to a newer, lower-cost HDMI retimer chip, which likely cuts down bill-of-materials costs and improves display signal stability. Overall, this will likely lower production costs while maintaining higher assembly yields, at a time when sourcing components has become more challenging. Companies routinely make stealth revisions to cut manufacturing costs, but unlike previous console generations that shrank and became cheaper over time, the PS5 has only gotten more expensive since it launched in November 2020.

When it first launched, the entry-level PS5 Digital Edition had an MSRP of $400, but in 2026, you can expect to pay $600 for one. The base model PS5 with a disc drive has increased from $500 to $650, while the PS5 Pro has shot up from $700 to $900. Sony is aiming to make the PS5 a better value proposition as it heads into the lucrative holiday season, after recently launching a new AI-upscaling technology for its base-model PS5s.

Only two of its exclusive games support it currently--Marvel's Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei--and the technology will be released to more developers soon. By enabling the base PS5 to deliver sharper visuals through Quick Spectral Super Resolution, Sony offers a visual upgrade in select games without having to splash out on the more expensive PS5 Pro.