Gaming

Microsoft is working on UI improvements to the Xbox dashboard that will also include a new look and feel for Xbox achievements. Xbox Insiders can now test the new achievements, which have updated icons and animations when you unlock a classic or rare achievement. The notifications will also match your custom color. You’ll also be able to hide achievements from your Xbox profile later this month.

If you want one of the best AMD desktop processors for gaming, development, and creation then it’s going to set you back $899. That’s the price of AMD’s new Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, which is releasing on April 22nd. It has 16 cores, 208MB of total cache, and both chiplets have AMD’s 3D V-Cache. AMD is promising 5–10 percent performance gains over the 9950X3D in DaVinci Resolve and Blender.

Unity already powers the “majority” of the top-selling VR games on Meta’s platform, according to a statement from Unity’s COO.

You can now get the retro colored buttons featured on the classic grey version of the 8BitDo 64 controller for the other models. The company’s 8BitDo 64 Classic Button Set upgrade kit is available for preorder now for $3.99 and ships on May 15th. Installation doesn’t look too difficult.

Steam code screenshots posted by @gabefollower on X appear to show ‘SteamGPT’ and ‘SteamGPTSummary’ working on support-related tasks. Both seem to be internal tools used for things like task management or pulling account details, such as a player’s trust score and account age.

IO Interactive’s take on James Bond is launching on May 27th, but not everywhere: today the developer announced that the Switch 2 version will be out “later this summer.”

The space-faring sim turns 10 this year, and it’s getting one of its strangest updates yet. Called Xeno Arena, the new addition lets players collect, train, and battle alien creatures, Pokémon-style. It even has multiplayer. Maybe it’s time I bring back my travel diary.

While thousands of smartphones and cameras were trained on the sky on April 1st capturing the historic launch of Artemis II, Redditor Cambot72 recorded it on a Nintendo 3DS XL. The 0.3-megapixel footage has some retro Apollo vibes, and you can download the original version to watch in 3D if you’ve still got a 3DS.

The update includes three PS5 Pro-specific visual modes:

“This update improves network performance, allows streaming up to 4K resolutions, and allows you to dynamically adjust the curve of the display in panoramic mode,” Valve says. But the app doesn’t support VR content — it’s intended for streaming 2D games.

As part of a new initiative called The Playerbase, people can apply to have their likeness incorporated into PlayStation titles. Initially, one person will be selected to appear in Gran Turismo 7, but Sony says it looks forward to “expanding The Playerbase as additional PlayStation Studios participate.”

We’re into what we’ve seen so far of Pragmata, Capcom’s upcoming title launching April 17th. Newegg is the place to go if you want to save big on a digital preorder on Steam or Xbox. The $59.99 game is just $47.99 when you use the code 2XPM on either version.

Steam’s hardware and software survey says Linux users more than doubled from 2.23 percent in February, jumping to a record high of 5.33 percent of Steam users. Linux has been steadily gaining popularity on Steam over the past several months, previously peaking at 3.58 percent in December.

Glitchy lo-fi art. Inscrutable plot. Fake backstory about a 35th anniversary release. Kings. Swords in stones. Spaceships. Oh, and an absolutely killer soundtrack. You owe it to yourself to go spend a few minutes exploring the strangely beautiful (in an ugly sort of way) world of Ruin.

Luke Dicken posted about the changes on LinkedIn, as reported by Game Developer, saying that the team’s time “has come to an end.” Before becoming Take-Two’s head of AI, he held the role of senior director of applied AI at Zynga, which is owned by Take-Two, for two years.

Xbox’s Undead Labs will be hosting alpha playtests for the zombie apocalypse game starting next month, according to a video. You can sign up for the waitlist now.

This looks completely impractical, but is also awesome?

The latest addition to My Play Watch’s collection of gaming wearables is a $79.99 Mega Man version, available for preorder soon, with themed watch faces, sounds, and matching straps. Instead of distracting you with notifications it includes a custom version of the NES’ Mega Man 2 playable on the watch’s small touchscreen.

Via Amazon Luna, that is; EA Sports FC 26 is now be playable for Amazon Prime subscribers at no extra cost on recently-revamped Amazon’s cloud gaming service.

Sony says the team at Cinemersive Labs will join Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Visual Computing Group and “contribute to our broader efforts in advancing state of the art visual computing within games.”

I can’t wait for CKSS.

Sega launched an entirely real “Sanic Collection” for April Fools’ Day, which consists of three t-shirts that you can buy only on April 1st. The timing is spot-on, too: Sanic just turned 16 on Tuesday.

You can also pick up finger guns, ride llamas, and ride on the shoulders of your friends. This is a rare April Fools’ Day bit that’s actually good, IMO.

For April Fools’ Day, Capcom posted a video featuring Pragmata protagonist Hugh in an adult-sized Mega Man outfit. It’s goofy, but the game is only a couple weeks away from release — maybe it will actually be unlockable?

Back in November, the US Patent and Trademark Office decided to reexamine a highly controversial and confusing Nintendo patent related to summoning characters and making them fight. The patent examiner has since issued a non-final rejection of the patent, meaning that the patent isn’t yet KO’d and Nintendo can still choose to battle with new arguments.

Unfair Flips, the coin flipping game that garnered a vibrant speedrunning community, is getting a fun, temporary twist: all flips in the game will now be fair. “For the next 24 hours, YOU can test your TRUE mettle in coin flipping,” developer Heather Flowers says. “No more probability, just pure skill.”

MSI’s April Fools’ prank aims to solve the problem of your cat plopping itself directly atop your keyboard. It showed off an “MEG Cat Holder” that gives your furry friend their very own RGB bed attached to your monitor. As MSI puts it: “Your cat already acts like they own your setup, now they can complete it!”

Next week Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG is coming to the PS5 and getting a paid story expansion. But Starfield is also getting a major free update that adds a long list of features, including pets and a much-improved New Game Plus. You can get a rundown in this new trailer.

In celebration of April Fools Day, Pokopia is running a small, one-day-only event where pokémon will impersonate each other and ask you to figure out who they’re pretending to be.