Gaming

Nearly eight years after Epic took on Steam with its own Game Store and launcher, the Fortnite maker is deploying a new tool to give it an edge over Valve: vibe coding. In announcing the new publicly available “Preview” build of its Epic Games Launcher, Epic writes that “programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher that’s way faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look.” And while that might sound a little tongue-in-cheek, Epic Games Store General Manager and VP Martin Keely told PC Gamer that the team “started from scratch” and used AI as “a tool to write and review new features and new capabilities from the ground up in a different tech stack than what we had previously.” The goal, Keely said, was to “look at functionality that existed [in the current Epic Games Launcher] and [say] we want to replicate that, but not the code itself.”

Gray also made a brief pivot late in his career to casual games such as the Luxor series after FPS maker Ritual Entertainment was acquired by new parent company MumboJumbo. “It does seem sort of a shock at first, from the outside, for sure,” he said of the surprise move in a 2007 interview. “Remember, though, making games is making games, a dream job come true! … To be honest? …we’re enjoying the hell out of doing something different than hardcore shooters, and the variations within the casual game market makes us even more enthusiastic!” Tributes from friends and colleagues have poured in across the Internet since Gray’s death was announced. 3D Realms founder Scott Miller called Gray “a stellar talent” and “a relentless hard worker, a fun teammate, and an overall great human. His levels in Duke Nukem 3D and Sin will live on forever.”

This month, descend into the criminal underworld of early 20th-century Sicily in Mafia: The Old Country, brave a deadly frontier filled with awe-inspiring machines in Horizon Forbidden West, or take on hordes of fungal enemies with an outrageous arsenal of futuristic weaponry in the fast-paced co-op action Mycopunk, releasing day one into October’s PlayStation Plus Game Catalog lineup. Meanwhile, PlayStation Plus Premium welcomes Dino Crisis 2 and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. The full lineup will be available to play from October 20, unless otherwise noted. And with spooky season upon us, PlayStation Plus members can enjoy a selection of exclusive offers as part of our Horrorfest celebrations. Find the full rundown at the bottom of this post.

Hey everyone, we’re excited to share news on Gran Turismo with you today. For starters, we have full details on today’s Part 1 of the Gran Turismo 7 Spec IV update. Plus, we celebrate 30 years of Gran Turismo with the first look at the Gran Turismo Limited Edition DualSense wireless controller! Read on for full details. Today, all players will receive Part 1 of the Gran Turismo 7 Spec IV update. Whether you’re chasing lap times, discovering automotive history, capturing the perfect photo, building your dream collection, or simply looking for something new to drive, Spec IV adds new ways to explore the world of cars with six new vehicles, the Sportsland Sugo circuit, new events, Scapes locations, gameplay features, and more.

For years, Chinese hardware manufacturers have carved out a market niche with an array of handheld Android gaming devices focused on retro emulation and/or more modern game-streaming capabilities. Now, though, a major game industry trade group is targeting one of those manufacturers, Anbernic, asking the US Trade Representative (USTR) to add the company to its list of “Notorious Markets” that “engage in or facilitate substantial copyright piracy or trademark counterfeiting.” TorrentFreak was among the first to notice the request from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which was submitted to the USTR last week. In it, the US trade group—which represents major publishers including Nintendo, Microsoft, PlayStation, Amazon, Epic, EA, Ubisoft, and more—notes that Anbernic devices “are routinely offered or shipped with removable memory cards preloaded with hundreds or thousands of unauthorized copies of copyright-protected video games published by ESA members.”

Picture this: A chilly autumn breeze ripples through the forest as a battalion of Automatons amble towards an outpost. They move together like cogs in a larger wheel, chanting in their electric tongues as they march, when a peal of thunder breaks their mechanical trance. But it’s not thunder. It’s you, Helldiver– Liberty’s sharpest shooter taking aim from inside the tree line, busting them down to bolts and puddles of bubbling oil. On October 20, the Ministry of Defense will authorize deployment of the Scope of Authority Premium Warbond* – the next leap forward in long-range and clandestine combat solutions to guarantee your squad never misses the mark.

Hello Puzzlers and PlayStation fans! The team at Coin Crew Games is excited to share that Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School will be coming to PS5 on November 5. To celebrate, we are sharing some deep-dive information about what players can expect in this sequel that expands the first game from a more linear narrative to a whole new open-world campus. Of course, you can also expect couch or online co-op play available from the get go between the full campus, story and all of its puzzles. Whether you played the first game or not, Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School is open to everyone and represents a more fully-realized campus experience. We want the Academy to feel like a place players can get lost in, filled with characters, quests, secrets, and plenty of reasons to explore between escapes.

Epic Games is shifting to an “AI first” development strategy for its collaboration with the Walt Disney Company, letting AI models write all the code and guide all the artwork for an upcoming shooter. That’s according to a Bloomberg report, which cites unnamed people familiar with the project who commented on the significant pivot in internal development at the Unreal Engine maker. Human developers will be tasked with managing and guiding code and art assets generated by models such as Anthropic’s Claude, according to internal Epic employee messages viewed by Bloomberg. That means “no more hand-written code” and art assets “generated with full AI workflows,” according to the report.

Just over 10 years after its initial release, space exploration and survival crafting game No Man’s Sky is making its way to the iPhone and iPad, Apple and developer Hello Games announced today. It will run on devices as far back as the iPhone 11 and the third-generation iPad Air. No Man’s Sky might not have the most cutting-edge AAA graphics (though they’re still strong, and they’ve come a long way since launch via updates), but the game’s uncommon method of generating galaxies of incomprehensible scale on-device, and consistently for all players from a single-seed, happening on a phone is remarkable for those of us who remember phones performing far behind consoles or desktop PCs.

Although Xavier admits to using AI tools in developing this port, it doesn’t seem like he simply followed the recent retro-gaming trend of asking a coding agent to decompile the game. On social media, Xavier said that he has “spent years studying P. T. and Fox Engine” in developing the port and only uses AI tools “for debugging, troubleshooting and investigating problems.” “I’m a solo developer making a free P. T. port because I love the game,” he added. “Nobody hired me or asked me to spend countless hours on this. I’m sharing something I worked incredibly hard on, simply because I want other people to enjoy it.”

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or download here Hey, y’all! O’Dell and Kristen are back this week to talk about games we recently wrapped up, our newest adventures, and check in on listener letters (email us a pspodcast@sony.com). Plus, Jim and Gillen return to interview Fuse Games co-founder Matt Webster and Creative Director Kieran Crimmins about the recent launch of Star Wars: Galactic Racer.

Last week, we asked you to share moments with allies and villains across Marvel’s Wolverine using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. Here are this week’s highlights: call_me_xavii  shares Wolverine facing off against Omega Red

“Rendering Doom in a database is obviously a bad idea,” Lukas Vogel writes in a lengthy blog post explaining how exactly he managed to render Doom using an SQL database. OK, that’s not entirely accurate. The SQLDoom project uses a small Python client to handle input and output, drive the game’s timing, and display each frame to the screen. Behind that, a series of CedarDB tables tracks the game geometry and state, while about 1,300 lines of SQL queries spread across 89 common table expressions implement the game logic and generate 35 bitmap framebuffers per second.

For a long time, PC gamers could access many PlayStation 5 games only if the publisher invested in a bespoke port (something Sony has recently said it will be scaling back). Now, though, rapid advancements in PS5 emulators and other tools are making recent PlayStation titles increasingly playable on generic PCs. SharpEmu was the first of these emulators, advancing from a “very early alpha stage” in May to a current state that can “load the eboot.bin of real games, execute native CPU instructions, and partially handle GPU-related functionality.” The most recent release boasts 10 tested games that reach a “playable” state, including six that developer CursedIfElse says are “fully playable at 60 fps.” That includes simple 2D games like Tetris Forever but also 3D titles like Astro Bot and the PS5 Demon’s Souls remaster running at playable frame rates.

It’s your console, use it how you need it New exploit works on all but the most recently updated consoles.

In the world of more RPG-infused Xbox games, Obsidian—the studio behind games like Fallout: New Vegas, Avowed, and The Outer Worlds—will now become part of Bethesda. There, the team will continue work on a new Grounded game and a “new Fallout project made in collaboration with Bethesda Game Studios,” Microsoft announced. Elsewhere in the company, Microsoft Casual Games (which still publishes former Windows pack-ins like Solitaire and Minesweeper) will now report to Candy Crush studio King. Playground Games (Fable, Forza Horizon) and Turn 10 (Forza Motorsport) are also being merged into a single team.

For Griffais, the goal is for gamers to be able to consider Arm-based hardware without having to say, “Oh, this device is good, and the specs are good, the value is good, but I have to leave a portion of my catalog behind if I’m even considering it.” The second new compatibility layer hitting Steam is Lepton, an expansion of the pre-existing Waydroid project focused on getting standard Android APKs to run on SteamOS through a software container. This layer is especially necessary for the Steam Frame, since many of the standalone VR titles players will be running on the device were originally designed for the Android-based Quest headsets.

Valve’s new $1,059 VR hardware tries to revive an abandoned VR “revolution.” Hey, wheres all the wires and stuff that are supposed to connect to my computer?