Gaming

Batman: Caped Crusader - Chronicles lets you and up to three friends tackle mysteries based on the Caped Crusader Prime Video show. It’s a clear example of Amazon’s recent push to tie its gaming efforts more closely with its streaming properties.

As spotted by Android Authority, the new, unofficial Gen1Recomp port for the trio of classic Pokémon games also lets you easily add mods, like one that updates the games with cool 3D voxel graphics. You’ll need to use your own game ROM, though.

The servers for Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, which launched in 2024, will close down on October 30th, Kotaku reports. The shutdown follows an earlier announcement that the game would “progressively transition away from blockchain functionality.”

If you’re one of the folks who picked up a Virtual Boy headset for the Switch, Nintendo has a solid update coming your way: on August 4th two unreleased games are launching for subscribers, along with the option to adjust colors. Meanwhile, Super Mario Sunshine is being added to the Gamecube classics collection on August 13th.

Sony sold 1.6 million PlayStation 5 consoles, about a third fewer than last year at this time, and says it has plenty of memory for the foreseeable future:

Big Hops, an indie 3D platformer that launched earlier this year, was a blast solo, but now you can play the entire game co-op on Steam as part of a beta. As many as eight people can play at once, and it looks chaotic and wonderful.

In an SEC filing, EA said that as of today, it had obtained “all regulatory approvals required to complete the Merger.” The deal, announced in September, is expected to close “on or about the close of trading” on August 4th.

After announcing it’s shutting down Roblox Connect, Roblox said in its latest earnings report that it’s working on adding “integrated voice calls” and video chat, as alternatives to tools like Discord.

Apple recently started allowing alternative app marketplaces in Brazil following a long legal dispute, during which Epic originally announced that the store would be launching in the country.

Microsoft said Thursday that it’s been rolling the app out “over the past month” to supported TVs running Hisense’s VIDAA OS. The company announced earlier this year that the app was on the way.

The musical puzzler Lumines is making a return to smartphones with a new version billed as a remaster. It follows the excellent Lumines Arise from last year, and is available now on both Android and iOS; it’s a free download but costs $7.99 to unlock the full version.

Brandon Klayme was wrongly convicted for possession of child pornography after the investigation botched his Kik username, “fus_ro_dah,” in reference to Bethesda’s Skyrim videogame. The real suspect’s username — “fus__ro_dah” — included one additional underscore, a “subtle mistake that changed the course of my life,” Klayme said.

Maingear’s new Zero series of desktop PCs use 4mm-thick curved tempered glass for an airy, panoramic aesthetic. They come in Intel and AMD versions, starting at $2,699, with GPUs ranging from the RTX 5070 to RTX 5090.

I’ve heard Steam Remote Play is finally reaching parity with Moonlight when streaming games to your Steam Deck. Now, Steam Remote Play is getting AV1 for theoretically even better compression, and HDR for the Steam Deck OLED’s screen. I like streaming, but I’d also like more devs to embrace Dynamic Cloud Sync…

The new extended trailer for the first wave of Pokopia DLC gives us a much better look at all the water type monsters you’ll be able to befriend in Bubbly Basin beginning August 5th. It also looks like building underwater houses is about to get much easier.

“We don’t have the same problems,” Logitech’s new gaming boss Robin Piispanen tells me during our wide-ranging chat, when I ask if PC builders are delaying peripheral purchases like other parts of their build due to RAM prices. In fact, Logitech’s gaming sales are up 12 percent YoY and 21 percent sequentially in today’s Q1 earnings.

“Only the survival of our studio would ever make us consider such a painful action,” Double Fine founder Tim Schafer says in a statement. “Our transition to becoming an independent company also means becoming a size that we can sustain.”

The outage, which lasted for nearly a day, blocked people from playing some digital and disc games. You can read Xbox CTO Scott Van Vliet’s full explanation on X, but here’s a key part of it:

The new remake of Halo: Combat Evolved is out today, and it’s an excellent reimagining of an FPS classic. But it also comes at a very weird time for the Xbox brand and Microsoft’s gaming ambitions. You can check out my full review below.

Ubisoft announced that several of its biggest (and smallest) hits from the past decade are available on the Xbox PC app. Also, those who already own digital console titles listed in the Xbox blog post can play them on PC for no additional cost via the Ubisoft Connect app. Sounds like Ubisoft is positioning itself for Xbox’s PC-like Project Helix.

After a PS5 outage last week, now it’s apparently Xbox’s turn for problems, weeks after a massive wave of layoffs. The Xbox Live status page says an outage was first reported at 11PM last night and is still ongoing, preventing some account sign-ins and stopping people from playing their games, whether from a disc or a digital copy.

It’s rare for game studios to talk about unreleased projects, which is why it’s so cool that Cyan has put out this trailer for a cancelled Myst title dubbed “Anglerfish.” It’s a glimpse into what could have been — though the good news is that the studio says another Myst spinoff, codenamed “Mudfish,” is currently in development.

Game preservation group Does It Play? is encouraging console owners to give Sony “a small taste of their own medicine,” announcing a one-week PSBlackout starting on Sunday, August 23rd. Protest participants are being asked to avoid logging into, playing, or purchasing any content on PlayStation-related platforms during this period.