Best Buy's 4th of July Sale kicked off this week, making now a great time to shop for video games, electronics, and more. The site-wide sale, which runs until Sunday, July 6, offers major discounts on hundreds of products, both online and in-store. You can pick up PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch games for cheap, upgrade your PC gaming setup, or outfit your home theater with a new TV or soundbar. There are also deals on plenty of other electronics and accessories to explore--and to help you find the best deals in Best Buy's 4th of July Sale, we combed through the listings to put together this round-up of our favorites.

While all the deals and price cuts we've included are available to all shoppers, My Best Buy Plus and Total subscribers can unlock additional discounts and exclusive deals as part of their membership. This includes up to $100 on select TVs and home audio equipment, $25 on select Windows PCs, $20 on Nintendo products, and more. Most of these extra offers are available for longer than the 4th of July Sale, with most ending on July 13; the Nintendo offer ends on August 3.

My Best Buy Plus membership costs $50/year and offers free standard and 2-day shipping on online orders, an extended 60-day return window, early access to select sale prices, and exclusive member deals. The My Best Buy Total membership is $180/year and includes all the aforementioned perks, plus enhanced customer support, 20% off repairs, free protection plans, and more. Joining at either membership level grants you immediate access to the bonus deals.

Jean Grey aka Phoenix has been rumored to be Marvel Rivals bound for a while, and now it's official. NetEase has confirmed that Phoenix will arrive in Marvel Rivals Season 3 alongside Blade, the popular vampire hunter. But their mutual enemy won't be Dracula or any of the undead. Instead, the heroes of Marvel Rivals will be going up against one of Venom's deadliest foes: Knull, the King in Black and the God of Symbiotes.

Season 3 is subtitled "The Abyss Awakens," and it's going to launch on July 11. Phoenix will be joining the roster right away, and she will be classified as a Duelist. Even without the Phoenix Force, Jean is an immensely powerful telepath and telekinetic mutant. With the Phoenix at her command, Jean is fire and life incarnate, and imbued with the power of creation itself.

Marvel Rivals' new map, Klyntar: Celestial Husk, as a link to the Guardians of the Galaxy's favorite hangout, Knowhere. The entirety of Knowhere was constructed inside the severed head of a dead Celestial. The Celestial Husk is the rest of that Celestial's body.

The difference between real and generated frames is a hotly contested topic, especially when it comes to their prevalence in PC gaming. Nvidia and AMD have made big improvements to their own solutions for predicting and simulating frames that can be inserted in-between real ones spat out by your GPU, and now Steam is making it a little easier to determine the difference between the two.

In an update to its in-game performance tools, Valve has added the ability to differentiate between frames generated by your hardware, and ones generated by your pick for frame generation, whether it's Nvidia's DLSS suite or AMD's FSR toolset. A new frames-per-second counter can show you what frame rate you're currently seeing with frame generation on, and what is actually being rendered by the game, which can be useful to determine issues with the technology.

Usually, issues arise with frame generation when your base frame rate isn't high enough, creating a mismatch between the responsiveness of the game and the fluidity you see on-screen. Valve's approach lets you determine if your settings are still a bit too demanding for your hardware by letting you see the true frame rate at a glance, so that you can make adjustments to fine-tune this balance.

During a Destiny 2 livestream for The Edge of Fate, which is set for release on July 15, Bungie developers explained how they expect players to sequence break the new planet of Kepler--and that's intentional.

The new destination of Kepler is described as being similar in depth to the Rise of Iron content from the original game in 2016. It was complex with many puzzles and mysteries to solve. The Edge of Fate's content has been designed so that the campaign missions "slowly" lead players into unlocking different abilities and the varying levels of them, as well as uncovering more of Kepler's explorable areas.

There are puzzles to figure out, secrets to unlock, and particular routes that will be inaccessible without using abilities, such as Matterspark, to shrink down and traverse through vents or hidden paths. During the stream, Bungie developers explained that this was done in order to teach players that it's necessary to look at and think about the world around them in a different way.

Amazon has revealed the PC games that'll be coming to Prime Gaming in May, and this month, there are seven games that have been announced. Admittedly, this is a small selection when compared to previous months, and the majority of these games are probably ones that you haven't heard of before.

What is worth noting is that Amazon added bonus games last month--like Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, Toem, and Saints Row 4--as part of the lead-up to Prime Day, and Amazon is teasing that it'll have more great offers for subscribers on the titular day.

As a reminder, all of the free games that you claim through Prime Gaming are yours to keep forever, even if your subscription expires. If you aren't a member, you can sign up for Amazon Prime for as little as one month to take advantage of the subscription and the freebies offered through it. If you're looking to get some great deals on games, Prime Day 2025 will take place from July 8-11 this year.

The cast for the live-action Street Fighter movie continues to grow, as the project has just found its M Bison in the form of David Dastmalchian. The actor--who previously appeared in The Life of Chuck, The Dark Knight, and Late Night With the Devil--will be stepping into the boots of the iconic Street Fighter antagonist.

According to Deadline, Dastmalchian's reps have declined to comment, but this news comes amidst a flurry of recent casting news. Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Noah Centineo, Jason Momoa, Roman Reigns, and Orville Peck are all linked to the project, and last week, it was announced that Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson will play one of Bison's top enforcers, heavyweight boxer Balrog.

In the Street Fighter games, M Bison typically serves as the final boss. Not just one of the most powerful brawlers in the series thanks to his mastery of Psycho Power, Bison also runs the criminal syndicate Shadaloo--an organization involved in all manner of illegal operations--as part of his plan to rule the world.

Crash Bandicoot may not be as popular as he used to be, but three decades ago he was one of PlayStation's first breakout original characters. But when former Sony executive Shuji Utsumi attempted to get Hollywood interested in making a Crash Bandicoot movie, he was given the cold shoulder by film executives.

Utsumi--who is currently the CEO of Sega of America--told The Game Business about his attempt to bring Crash Bandicoot to the big screen. Despite the success of the games--from 1996 to 2010, Sony released a Crash-related game nearly every year--no one seemed to share Utsumi's vision for what the film could be.

"When I started to get involved in the video game business, I picked up Crash Bandicoot and started asking some of the movie studios if they were interested in turning that property into a movie," recalled Utsumi. "But I was treated like, 'hey, video games is like a toy business.' They didn't really take it seriously."

If you're a fan of piloting mechs around and blowing stuff up, you've probably had your eye on free-to-play shooter Mecha Break. This third-person action title features five classes and multiple chaotic modes, promising plenty of frenetic shootouts within an alternate future. It's fast, fun, and easy to dive into, so it's all but certain to remain a popular multiplayer option for fans of the genre.

And since Mecha Break is available on both Xbox and PC (with a PS5 version on the way at an unspecified later date), you may find that you want to team up with a friend who uses a different platform than you. That's where cross-platform functionality comes in. We've got some good news and bad news for you below, so let's dive in and take a look at how Mecha Break handles cross-platform play and cross-progression.

In a day and age where cross-play is becoming the norm rather than the exception, it would be somewhat of a shock to find that a free-to-play shooter doesn't have this beloved feature. Luckily, that's not a problem with Mecha Break. If you want to kick giant robot butts with your friends on other platforms, you'll be excited to know that Mecha Break fully supports cross-play between Xbox and PC.

Perhaps responding to economic uncertainty and narrowing job prospects, young people in the United States are significantly cutting back on spending on video games compared to this time last year. While 18- to 24-year-olds aren't buying as much across a range of different categories, losses are concentrated in games.

New data published by market research firm Circana and reported by The Wall Street Journal suggests that young adults spent nearly 25% less on video game products in a four-week span in April than in the same timeframe last year. Other categories also dramatic drops: Accessories (down 18%), technology (down 14%), and furniture (down 12%). All categories combined, the 18-24 age group spent around 13% less than last year.

This decrease is not reflected among older cohorts, whose spending has been mostly stable year-over-year. The WSJ report suggests that the economic context could be driving young adults to pull back; a tighter labor market, increased economic uncertainty, and student-loan payments restarting all may be contributing to an environment hostile to the spending habits of 18- to 24-year-olds in particular.

Gaming industry veteran Hideo Kojima has commented on the semi-recent trend of remote working in the video game business, saying it might not be the ideal way to work but forcing people back to the office isn't a good option either.

Speaking to The Guardian, Kojima said remote work is "almost like a fast food chain" in that people are "just concentrating on one thing instead of the whole project." The publication further reported that Kojima said working remotely as opposed to being in an office together with colleagues can be inefficient for a variety of reasons, including the lack of back-and-forth with people working at a desk next to each other.

"Only 1% of yourself is on show during [online] meetings," he said. "This is not like building a team. Think about football. You hire someone, he comes to your squad--but you can't play together remotely. So that person doesn't change the way they played before; they won't fit in."

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is set to have a full reveal later this year, but a new tease comes from a Treyarch developer who compares the upcoming Black Ops game to 2012's Black Ops 2. This includes a message for fans of competitive Call of Duty and maybe a hint of some of the maps arriving with Black Ops 7.

During the grand finals of the 2025 Call of Duty League Championship, Treyarch associate design director Lawrence Metten compared Black Ops 7 to Black Ops 2. "If you're a fan of Black Ops 2 back in the day, especially if you're a fan of Black Ops 2 competitive, you're going to have a good time with Black Ops 7."

Black Ops 2 is known for having some of the best competitive maps in Call of Duty history, such as Yemen, Raid, Standoff, and Slums. It's very possible Metten is teasing part of the map pool for Black Ops 7, especially as Treyarch is tasked with developing back-to-back Black Ops titles.

Early previews for Donkey Kong Bananza have been positive so far, with some describing the game as a potential Super Mario Odyssey moment for the DK franchise. That just might be the most apt description possible, because Bananza is being developed by the same studio behind what is considered to one of the best Super Mario video game of all time--Super Mario Galaxy fans might beg to differ here--Nintendo EPD Tokyo.

Nintendo had previously confirmed this during one of its Treehouse presentations, but beyond that, the company is being secretive about who is leading development on the project or who some of the key staff members are. This would also explain why we haven't seen a new 3D Mario game since 2017--but we have seen numerous other Mario projects since then--if the studio has been focusing heavily on creating this ambitious new adventure for DK. GameSpot has reached out to Nintendo for clarification, and we'll update the post as soon as we hear back from the company.

As noted by VGC, development on modern 3D Mario games has been led creatively by Kenta Motokura, Yoshiaki Koizumi, and Koichi Hayahsida, but their names haven't been listed in new EPD-developed games since Odyssey in 2017. Several of these games were developed in conjunction with other Nintendo divisions, and it is worth noting that Nintendo has a much higher retention rate of employees compared to other studios and publishers across the world, where mass layoffs have sadly become very commonplace.

Diablo 2 celebrated its 25th anniversary on June 29, and developer Blizzard celebrated the occasion with a cryptic tweet that has fans of the classic ARPG speculating wildly about what it could mean.

The tweet states, "Happy Birthday Diablo 2. Twenty-five years have passed since our first foray into the Burning Hells." It's the second part of the tweet, however, that has fans excited.

Happy Birthday Diablo 2.
25 years have passed since our first foray into the Burning Hells.
If you think you've seen and done it all, just wait for the chaos we've yet to unleash. pic.twitter.com/zqXTzc4mOL

"If you think you've seen and done it all, just wait for the chaos we've yet to unleash," the tweet concludes.

Remasters and ports are big business, and when Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Master Crafted Edition was announced, hardcore fans who played the original 2011 version were excited. That excitement quickly turned to frustration as the PC release contained a number of bugs, and Sega is now offering refunds to everyone who bought it.

Over on Steam, there are almost 100 "mostly negative" reviews citing buggy loads, ugly UI changes, and constant crashing, leaving fans disappointed. "Decided to pick up a copy after the price was reduced for Anniversary Edition owners as some goodwill was returned," one player wrote. "Have played less than an hour and got sent into bugsplat just navigating the menus, all of which are a downgrade compared to the original. No idea why Relic have decided to fix what's not broken here."

Sega dropped the price to $20 for anyone who already owns the Anniversary Edition, and as Kotaku is reporting, letting fans who already purchased it on PC get a refund through July 10. Sega also laid out improvements that Patch 3 was to implement, including "fixed softlocks, graphical glitches, and input issues in various screens" and more technical fixes like moving local user profile data to a different location to prevent certain crashes.

Mecha Break is the mecha shooter game by Kingsoft subsidiary Amazing Seasun Games. After initially being announced at The Game Awards 2023, the third-person shooter is finally in beta and open to the public, with Mecha Break cross-play enabled so you can play with your friends no matter the platform. While there have been Mecha Break codes available throughout the demo periods, we've got all you need to know on codes for the full release.

You'll take on the role of a mech pilot dealing with the fallout of a dystopian catastrophe in the year 2082, which led to an energy crisis on earth. You'll deal with polluted areas known as Fading Zones, where only mechs can operate. Throughout these zones, mech pilots need to clear the pollution.

Working in teams, you'll blast through different game modes. There are several different mech roles to take on: Attacker, Defender, Supporter, Brawler, and Sniper. Of course, the inclusion of Mecha Break codes is invaluable in a free-to-play game, so we've got all of them listed here, as well as how to find more codes, and other free rewards including free Corite and more.

Red Dead Online, the multiplayer mode for Red Dead Redemption II, just got a big update that adds a series of "Strange Tales from the West" missions, including ones where you fight zombies and weird little robot guys.

The "Strange Tales of the Plague" mission has players fighting against "shambling undead" who have been affected by a mysterious malady infecting the people of Armadillo. Players must take them down and retrieve their corpses and return them for scientific research to find out what happened.

The "Strange Tales of Modern Science" mission, meanwhile, has players investigating a nearby "man of science" who claims he created artificial life near Braithwaite Manor. "Bring the strange experiment to life by discovering its secrets and destroying any automata that put up a fight," reads a line from the mission's description.

System Shock 2's 25th-anniversary remaster recently launched for PC, and console owners won't have to wait too much longer to get their hands on it. Developer Nightdive Studios has announced that it'll land on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Switch on July 10, following its short delay for those platforms.

First released in 1999, Nightdive first teased that it was remastering System Shock 2 back in 2019. Since then, the first System Shock got a massive remake that blended the aesthetics and gameplay of the '90s with modern design features, creating a unique blend of old-school gaming with high-definition visuals. Essentially, it was System Shock almost exactly as you remembered it, but with sharper visuals, better sound, and some nice tweaks under the hood.

Nightdive's remaster of System Shock 2--previously known as System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition--proved to be a challenging project. The developer didn't have access to the game's complete source code, and piecing everything back together required "extensive reverse-engineering," the studio said.

Earlier this month, developers Surgent Studios and publisher Pocketpair shared an early look at the upcoming first-person psychological-horror game Dead Take. Now, Surgent and Pocketpair have revealed that the game will incorporate live-action footage and announced the first two members of the cast, both of whom are award-winning video game voice actors.

Baldur’s Gate 3 and Resident Evil Village's Neil Newbon will play Vinny Monroe, while Final Fantasy XVI and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Ben Starr will step into the part of Chase Lowrey. In the game, Vinny and Chase are actors, and the teaser video announcement mysteriously indicates that both of them are playing a character named Willie.

At the beginning of the game, Vinny has gone missing after attending a decadent party in Hollywood. Players assume the role of Vinny's friend and fellow actor as they explore the mysteriously abandoned Hollywood Hills mansion that was booming with life the night before.

Dead Take is not at all what I was expecting from the sophomore effort from Surgent Studios, the developer behind Tales of Kenzera: Zau. Whereas the studio's first title was a great search-action game with an emotional tale about grief set in a Bantu myth-inspired world, Dead Take is a first-person psychological horror game that delves into the untold stories and disconcerting truths that actors face day-to-day in the entertainment industry.

"So, to give you an idea of what this kind of game is, it's a psychological horror escape room, but it's like a reverse escape room. It's not necessarily [about] coming out of the space, but going in," Dead Take creative director Abubakar Salim told me. "[And] the deeper you go, the further in [protagonist Chase] goes into this mansion, the more the secrets are unwrapped and the darker reality [gets]. And that's sort of where I'm playing into [the horror]. There is almost a sense of understanding, but also a sense of disgust."

"[Dead Take is a reaction to] just things that are happening within the industry and what I've kind of experienced, what I've gone through. [While] also pulling from friends' experiences in the industry and talking about it," he continued. "This shift [in genre] is really a reaction, not only tied to what's going on in the world and in the industry, but also with the conversations I've been having with other actors, with other people in the world, both in film as well as in games, and being like, 'Yeah, let's tell this story. Let's do something here. I love horror, we love luring people down a rabbit hole. We flexed that muscle a bit with the Sabulana storyline [in] Zau and so we were like, 'Let's just go full force [in the next game].'"

It's been nearly six years since Borderlands 3 debuted during the previous console generation. This fall, Borderlands 4 is taking advantage of the power of the current consoles by thrusting players into a large "seamless world" that doesn't need many loading screens during the long hours it will take to explore it all. That's a major improvement over Borderlands 3's Pandora, which had enough loading screens to test the players' patience.

While speaking with Game Informer, senior project producer Anthony Nicholson noted that the Borderlands 4 team didn't initially set out to make Kairos an open-world environment. However, the power of Unreal Engine 5 "gave us other advantages to be able to do things and kind of went into being able to make a seamless world and things of that nature."

World-building director Jason Reiss added that there are "a lot more 360 combat areas where players can enter into spaces from any direction, including from the air--and we have to account for that now with all these crazy movement abilities. It's been all about, 'Let's create a large, dynamic, awesome place where players can feel like badasses.'"