It's been almost two-and-a-half years since a video game has made as big of a splash at US retail as Pokemon Legends: Z-A. A new report states the RPG put up unit and dollar sales for a boxed game that haven't been seen since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in May 2023.

Circana's Mat Piscatella pointed out Pokemon Legends: Z-A's "massive US launch at retail" on BlueSky. This comes just days after The Pokemon Company announced the game had sold 5.8 millions copies in its first week. Piscatella did note that the US figures don't include copies bundled with Switch 2.

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Stranger Things VHS Diorama: Eleven vs. Demogorgon

$30 | Releases November 30

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The final season of Stranger Things kicks off on November 26, and unsurprisingly, the series is getting some cool new merch to celebrate its ending. If you're a Stranger Things fan--or you're looking to do some easy shopping for the Stranger Things fan in your life--then you'll want to check out this new Stranger Things VHS Diorama recreating the pivotal moment in the first season when Eleven faces down the Demogorgon creature. The collectible releases on November 30--just a few days after the first batch of the final episodes hit Netflix--and preorders are available for $30 at Amazon.

Stranger Things VHS Diorama: Eleven vs. Demogorgon $30 | Releases November 30

The Stranger Things VHS Diorama: Eleven vs. Demogorgon is a transforming display that resembles a VHS tape when closed, and opens to reveal a highly detailed 3D classroom scene, where Eleven has the Demogorgon pinned to the wall with her telekinetic powers. Fans will notice plenty of fun details, like Eleven's classic season one appearance, realistic wear and tear on the VHS label, and several accessories. The collectible is manufactured by Console Heroes, who previously made several Sega Genesis console dioramas for games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Altered Beast.

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For more Stranger Things gift ideas, there are lots to choose from currently. For something pocket-sized, Funko's Itty Bitty Pops are quite cute, and they come in a playset modeled after the Byers' house. Priced at $24.84 (was $28), this comes with figures of Upside Down Will and Eleven with Goggles inside of a multi-room display that's mirrored by its Upside Down version. You can have a little house party with a few more Stranger Things Itty Bitty Pops, as this four-pack offers regular Will, Barb, and the Demogorgon together for $14.89. A mystery Pop figure is also included, and they're all packaged inside a cute display shelf.

Funko has also released a Stranger Things advent calendar for $57, and this lets you celebrate the festive season with 24 unique Funko Pocket Pops. Each day lets you add another resident of Hawkins--or the Upside Down--to your collection. Looking to do some model-building? This replica of the Creel House for $33 is an easy-to-assemble 3D model that you'll build from 20 EPS foam sheets. You don't need any glue or tools, and the instructions show exactly what you need to do to bring the creepy mansion to life.

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Actor Liam Hemsworth takes over the role of Geralt from Henry Cavill for the upcoming fourth and fifth seasons to close the show out, but Hemsworth originally had some reservations about joining the cast.

He told RadioTimes that he was feeling "pretty reluctant" to sign on after he was first approached for the part. "[I had] a lot of concerns and questions about it all. I was a big fan of the video game and then I watched the series, and was a fan of the series, and I read the books," he said.

What specifically was he hesitant about? Hemsworth said it had to do with how the Netflix series already had an established and passionate fan base that enjoyed watching Cavill in the role.

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Obsidian Entertainment's space-RPG The Outer Worlds 2 launches on October 29 for consoles and PC, but if you shelled out $100 for the Premium Edition, you're probably playing the game right now. You also probably got an in-game message mocking you for your consumerist habits, with the game citing a "flaw" in you.

As spotted by GamesRadar, Redditor disenchantor took to the game's subreddit to share a hilarious pop-up they got. For buying the Premium Edition, disenchantor revealed they have a "consumerism flaw," as the game dragged them for spending so much money.

"The Earth Directorate found a flaw in you! Consumerism," the screenshot disenchantor shared reads. "You're the reason our marketing works. Promotions and sales have riddled your brain, and you're more interested in buying the next big thing than financial planning."

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Microsoft revolutionized online multiplayer in the console space with Xbox Live in 2002. And ever since then, playing games online has come at a cost for Xbox owners. But that might not be the case going forward with the next-gen Xbox system, according to a new report.

Windows Central states that "the current plan is for the next Xbox specifically to have no paywall for multiplayer." This would be a notable change, as an (at least) Xbox Game Pass Essential subscription is needed for online multiplayer for Xbox at this time. However, Microsoft doesn't charge for access to free-to-play multiplayer games, like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone--two of the most popular games in the world.

Another reason for this possible change comes from the fact Windows Central reports that the next-gen Xbox will offer a console experience combined with a full Windows PC interface, if desired. As such, like the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, the next-gen Xbox would then allow access to various PC storefronts, such as Steam and Battle.net. If Microsoft were to keep charging for online multiplayer, then the theory goes those owners might just forgo the Xbox Store and utilize Steam instead on the device.

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The new Battlefield battle royale game has been officially confirmed. The game, called Battlefield: RedSec, will launch on October 28 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET. As rumored, it will be free-to-play.

Battlefield Studios announced a battle royale game or mode based on Battlefield 6 a long time ago, and has allowed testers to play it already, but this is the first time the developer is revealing its name, release date, and business model. All of these key details leaked already.

The name RedSec appears to be a shorter version of "Redacted Sector," based on the teaser art.

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Next month's PlayStation Plus games for November 2025 are expected to be revealed on October 29, but it looks like one of them may have leaked early. According to Dealabs' billbil-kun, PS Plus subscribers who missed out on grabbing Stray the last time it was available through the subscription service will have a new chance to do so from next week.

The Annapurna Interactive-published game was a day-one release for PS Plus Extra in July 2022, and it was removed from the PS Plus library one year later. Developed by BlueTwelve, the game is set in a dystopian future where humanity has seemingly vanished, and as a stray cat that has become separated from its family, players explore a city full of robots and other hostile organisms on their way back home.

"Stray expertly embodies the abilities of its feline protagonist to create a captivating puzzle adventure in an engrossing post-apocalyptic world," Alessandro Barbosa wrote in GameSpot's Stray review.

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Fortnite's long-awaited and heavily rumored collaboration with The Simpsons is seemingly right around the corner. The official Simpsons account posted a video today of the fictional aliens Kang and Kodos invading the world of Fortnite, reminding people to look out for an in-game event on November 1 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET.

This is just the latest tease for the upcoming Simpsons collaboration. The official Fortnite social media channels recently posted an image of the Fortnitemares logo, but altered with graffiti to say "Fartnitemares" and the message "Eat my shorts." It was signed "El Barto," which is Bart's alter ego.

Kang and Kodos have arrived in Fortnite with a message for all of you humans, be sure to tune in-game on Nov 1 at 11AM ET. pic.twitter.com/vPtecL3LDN

— The Simpsons (@TheSimpsons) October 27, 2025

Previous leaks have suggested that Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart, Moe, Krusty, Ned, and Kang and Kodos are all coming to Fortnite in the new season. There may also be a whole new Fortnite map for the event, featuring popular Springfield locations like the nuclear power plant and Moe's Tavern.

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With the reveal of Halo: Campaign Evolved arriving next year for consoles and PC, developer Halo Studios has come forward to say that, while no one on the development team was required to use generative AI, they're not opposed to using it as the "tool" that it is.

In an October 24 interview with Rolling Stone, executive producer Damon Conn and game director Greg Hermann spoke about the development of Halo: Campaign Evolved. When asked whether Halo Studios used AI in any capacity, whether that be retouching assets or rebuilding environments, Conn explained that AI can streamline workflows, but people create the games.

"I want to be very clear … People are creative. People make games. AI can improve workflows. It can do things for the game," Conn said. "But I want to be very specific and clear that the people are the ones who are creating the game, and there’s an opportunity to improve a workflow, or something along those lines, we’ll look at it again. It really should be additive to the creation of a game."

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Halo coming to PlayStation 5 is "a win for the future" of the series, according to one Xbox employee. Senior social marketing manager Josh Stein made this remark after Halo: Campaign Evolved was announced recently for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. He added, "More Spartans = More Fun."

"Halo on PlayStation means bigger battles, stronger community, and more love for the franchise. This is a win for the future of Halo and those that love it, new and old," Stein said, sharing green and blue heart emojis meant to signify Xbox and PlayStation.

Halo: Campaign Evolved will mark the sci-fi franchise's debut on a PlayStation platform, and people have a lot of strong feelings about this. One of the original Halo developers is embracing the remake, while another says it has issues. The response has gone all the way to the White House, with the office posting a meme of Donald Trump as Master Chief wielding an Energy sword. Trump has jokingly taken credit for ending the so-called "console war," with Halo now finally coming to PlayStation.

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Activision has released a new entry in its "Replacer" series of Call of Duty ads, this one featuring Terry Crews and Nikki Glaser play forensic agents who attend a crime scene because the real forensic teams is off playing Black Ops 7. Actor Peter Stormare originally brought the Replacer character to life, but a previous ad shot him into space with Jake Paul, so Crews and Glaser are stepping in for the time being.

Things go pretty sideways in this new video, as the characters played by Crews and Glaser are obviously in way over their heads. Crews finds a severed thumb on a table and freaks out when he sees a dead body. Check out the video below.

This video is titled "Crime Scene," and we're expecting there to be many more of these videos in which Crews and Glaser step in to "replace" a bunch of other people in their occupations.

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Marcus Lehto, who co-created the Halo universe and designed Master Chief himself, has weighed in on the recently announced Halo 1 remake. In short, he's loving what he's seeing.

For Lehto, he said the game is "gorgeous" and "feels genuine" to the original, which was released back in 2001 for the Xbox.

"My honest impression of seeing the new Halo Campaign Evolved is this: I absolutely love where this is going. The game looks and feels genuine. It's gorgeous in a way I wish we could have built it originally back in 2001. It warms my heart to see Halo CE like this," Lehto said.

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Following the announcement that Halo: Campaign Evolved will be coming to PS5 as well as Xbox Series X|S and PC, GameStop has leveraged its position as a "Neutral Entity" to declare the decades-long console wars officially over.

According to a tongue-in-cheek statement posted to X by GameStop, the company attributes the beginning of the "ongoing and increasingly petty conflict known as The Console Wars" to the release of Halo: Combat Evolved as an Xbox-exclusive title in 2001. Now that Microsoft has announced that a remake of that title, Halo: Campaign Evolved, will come to PlayStation 5 in 2026, GameStop has called the official end to the infamous console wars.

"All claims to exclusivity are hereby dissolved. Console loyalists are instructed to cease hostilities, disband militias, and enjoy this new era of gaming," the directive from GameStop reads.

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Last week, a major AWS outage took down gaming behemoths like Fortnite and Roblox and caused wide chaos by also impacting important services and programs outside of the gaming world. The cause of the outage has now been identified, revealing that the massive outage was the result of a single software bug.

As initially reported while Amazon was trying to figure out the cause of the 15-hour outage, the problem originated in DynamoDB, AWS's DNS management system. As reported by PC Gamer, the issue originated with DNS Enactor, a component of DynamoDB that constantly updates domain lookup tables to stay on top of load balancing as conditions change.

The bug started when the DNS Enactor started to lag, and "experienced unusually high delays needing to retry its update on several of the DNS endpoints." The DNS Planner continued to generate new plans, and while the first Enactor was delayed, a second DNS Enactor began to implement those plans.

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The Halo franchise is turning 25 next year, and Halo Fest is being revived with a convention and concert to celebrate the milestone. The event is set to take place next December in Seattle, with tickets going on sale soon.

Halo Studios announced the event at this year's Halo World Championship, promising a convention that will cater for twice as many attendees as the HWC usually allows for. Halo Fest has been held three times before: the first in 2010 as an event hosted by GameStop to promote the release of Halo Reach, the second in 2011 as part of Pax Prime 2011, and the third as a standalone event in 2014.

The plans for Halo Fest 2026 are far more ambitious than any of its previous iterations--it's set to be a three-day event, with the first day being an official Halo concert held at the Benaroya Hall, followed by a two-day convention held at the Seattle Convention Center's Summit Building. The convention plans to tie in many of the community attractions usually hosted at the Halo World Championship, including the "Community Stage, voice actors in attendance, cosplay contest, meetups, and more."

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Raven Software has released its plan for Call Of Duty: Warzone's year ahead, as Season 01 alongside Black Ops 7 draws closer. The studio has some exciting new and reworked features in the works for COD's battle royale spin-off, including large map rotation, the new Blackout experience on Avalon, and some new modes that will test experimental features like wall jumping and grappling hooks.

In a news update posted to X, Raven leads with the news that large map rotation for Battle Royale will arrive early next year. "While it wasn't previously realistic for us to host multiple large maps, we've since taken the steps necessary to support it," the developer says. The feature won't launch with Black Ops 7 unfortunately, but it is being targeted for early 2026.

Resurgence is due for a shakeup, with Raven acknowledging that the mode has "started to feel a bit stale." As part of the refresh, the new Haven's Hollow map will launch for Resurgence in Season 01, with map rotation to be added shortly after launch. While the initial rotation will include just Rebirth Island and Haven's Hollow, the developer plans to bring back past maps--including an improved version of Fortune's Keep. In response to complaints about Rebirth Island, the map will also be getting a refresh in Season 02.

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In a move that would have shocked the gaming world just a few years ago, Microsoft has announced that the upcoming Halo remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved, will be available on its rival console, the PS5, and Halo will be on PlayStation moving forward. An Xbox exec explained that the decision is the result of a changing media landscape, where TikTok provides stiffer competition for the Xbox platform than other consoles do.

President of Xbox game content and studios Matt Booty told The New York Times about the company's changing priorities in an interview. "We are all seeking to meet people where they are," he said of the decision to put Halo on its competitor platform. "Our biggest competition isn't another console. We are competing more and more with everything from TikTok to movies."

Booty explained that Microsoft hopes to bring more players into the Xbox ecosystem by bringing its flagship franchises to a new audience, adding that consumers no longer feel strong attachments to the devices they use to play their games.

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There's been a lot of hype among Halo fans surrounding the long-rumored remake of the first game, Halo: Campaign Evolved. For one thing, It's the first Halo game to arrive on PlayStation 5. However, Jaime Griesemer--a designer for Halo: Combat Evolved and the design lead on Halo 2 and Halo 3--isn't happy about some of the changes that were made for the remake.

In a series of posts on X, Griesemer lamented the trailer's sequence where the Warthog vehicle moved past obstacles that were placed in its path to prevent plays from being able "to steamroll the Hunters." "When you can just smash the crates out of the way it wrecks the encounters," added Griesemer. "But the worst part? They put trees in the landing area of the WooHoo Jump. Lame."

Griesemer went to tag Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto (who is a big fan of the remake) before asking the following question: "What have they done to beloved B30?!"

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It looks increasingly likely that you'll soon be able to access Xbox Cloud Gaming for free by watching ads, Microsoft has confirmed.

The Verge dropped a report on the upcoming feature earlier this month, suggesting that the new plan will start public testing soon, with a full launch in the coming months. Writing about Xbox's overall business plan following the news that Halo will soon be coming to PlayStation consoles, The New York Times delivered confirmation of the rumored ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming tier. "A Microsoft official confirmed that the company was also conducting internal tests for free ad-supported cloud access to some games through a program separate from Game Pass," the New York Times article reads.

The original report from The Verge was more thorough on Microsoft's plans for Xbox Cloud Gaming with ads, with the current version of the program being tested internally by Microsoft employees. In its current iteration, users can access some games they already own through cloud gaming, along with eligible Free Play Days games and Xbox Retro Classics games.

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Almost a week after high-profile Twitch streamer Emiru was assaulted during a TwitchCon meet-and-greet, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has posted a statement apologizing to the streamer and acknowledging the multiple failures that allowed the incident to happen.

While Twitch posted a statement about the assault shortly after it happened, the company's version of events was strongly disputed by Emiru's own statement about the incident. Clancy has also been called out for his comments on the assault during an interview with Taylor Lorenz, where he seemed to put the onus back on creators to "control [their] community."

Clancy has now posted a personal statement on the Twitch X account, apologizing directly to Emiru and taking responsibility for the incident. "It shouldn’t have happened and we take that very seriously," Clancy said in the statement. "We failed, both in allowing it to occur, and in our response following. We mismanaged our communications about the incident, and that includes the comments I made. I apologize to Emiru for all that took place."

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