Gaming

The new $29.99 Atom Plus, shipping in late June, isn’t quite as compact or cheap as CRKD’s original Atom gamepad that launched in 2024 for $19.99. But it’s a massive upgrade that adds a pair of drift-resistant TMR thumbsticks, motion controls, vibration feedback, and button remapping through CRKD’s mobile app.

Later this week Xbox will hold its latest games showcase. Unlike the Developer Direct in January, which focused on titles from Xbox studios, this stream will cover upcoming third-party titles, including the upcoming Expanse game. You can watch it live on March 26th at 1PM ET.

Chessington World of Adventures is getting a new rollercoaster, “interactive adventures,” and, of course, a bunch of block-built attractions. There’s no exact opening date yet, but in the meantime, fans in Buenos Aires will be able to craft gear and explore “iconic Minecraft biomes” at Minecraft Experience: Moonlight Trail when it opens this May.

It’s a delightfully nerdy new handheld gaming podcast from The Full Nerd Network and Retro Game Corps… and I’m the first-ever guest! What’s that in my hand?? The episode airs Saturday at 9am PT (Update: you can watch it embedded below). I bring a future Today I’m Toying With item on the show, too!

A VideoCardz leak has the Arc Pro B70, with 32 Xe2 graphics cores, 32GB of RAM and a 230W TDP, launching next week alongside a B65 with 20 Xe2 cores. It’s not clear if we’ll ever get the B770 gaming variant; Intel deleted a tweet about it in December.

Vampire Crawlers will cost $9.99 on PC and consoles, and it’s coming to mobile later this year. There’s a demo on Steam you can try right now, it’s good!

The new $24.99 adapter plugs into the N64’s front ports and serves as a wireless bridge for modern Bluetooth controllers including Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch gamepads. The company also released a new $39.99 2.4GHz version of its 8BitDo 64 controller with a similar adapter for use with the N64 or Analogue 3D.

The studio, which is working on a remake of the first game and a new title and has announced a few sets of cuts in the past 12 months, is laying off 20 staffers, as reported by Kotaku.

The third iteration of the Triple-i Initiative Showcase, a showcase that’s dedicated to indie game news, will air on April 9th at 12PM ET. It will feature “45 minutes of back-to-back trailers.”

From the Xbox Wire post about Kiln:

The new game, Kiln, will also get an open beta on Steam from April 9th through April 11th, according to an Xbox Wire post. It looks like a smashing good time.

Team Cherry released a new patch for Hollow Knight: Silksong this week, and in the update notes, the developers say that it is “intended as the last significant update before Silksong’s upcoming major expansion: Sea of Sorrow.” The free expansion is set to launch sometime in 2026.

Microsoft announced some new features in testing for Xbox Insiders today, including settings to manage Quick Resume per game and more groups on the home screen, and newly-appointed Microsoft gaming CEO Asha Sharma says work started on the updates just “two weeks ago.”

Housemarque’s previous game, Returnal, used the DualSense’s haptic feedback and adaptive triggers to great effect, and Saros will take advantage of those features too, as shown in a new trailer. The game is set to launch on April 30th.

“The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS 5 fuses controllability of the of geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI,” Huang said, according to Tom’s Hardware, and he noted that developers can “fine-tune the generative AI.”

Meta announced last month it would be shifting its strategy to go “all-in on mobile” for Horizon Worlds, and today, the company shared exactly when the VR version of the app would be going away.