Amazon's October Prime Day, also known as Big Deal Days, runs from October 6 through October 7, with other retailers rolling out competing promotions ahead of it. The roundup lists gaming keyboard discounts including the NaughShark NS68 at $39.09, the Huntsman Mini at $69, and the ROG Azoth Extreme at $399.99.
CD Projekt Red shared the system requirements for The Witcher 3 Remastered, with Low at 1080p 30 fps needing only a GTX 1660, RX 550 XT 8 GB or Arc A580 alongside an i5 8400 or Ryzen 5 2600. Path tracing at 4K 60 fps requires an i9 13900K or Ryzen 7 9800X3D with an RTX 5080, plus DLSS and frame generation, 16 GB of VRAM and 24 GB of RAM. Owners of the original game get the remaster for free, and the Complete Edition is half off.
SteelSeries has released the Rival Pro, a 53 g competitive gaming mouse with a TrueMove 42K Pro sensor, ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless connectivity, and up to 8K polling, priced at $179.99 / £169.99 / €199.99. It ships with two hot-swappable batteries rated for 60 hours each and has no USB-C port, making it fully wireless. The review calls its palm-grip comfort excellent, though the lack of a cable for firmware updates leaves long-term reliability uncertain.
CD Projekt has released the full PC system requirements for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, a free upgrade for the base game, covering minimum, recommended, ultra, ray-tracing minimum, ray-tracing recommended and path tracing configurations. The Remastered edition launches on Tuesday 29th September. CD Projekt's blog post says the expected FPS targets come from QA tests and may fluctuate, notes a new SSD requirement and the end of Windows 10 support, and states players can revert to version 1.32 (Classic) or 4.04.
Amazon has dropped the price of the Pokémon Deluxe Character Guide to $39.84, a 34% discount and the lowest price yet for the book, which released only a month ago. The deal arrives a week before Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days sale and does not appear to require a Prime subscription. The book, released on August 25, gives every Pokémon an entry with stats and Pokédex-style details, plus more history for popular ones across games, the TCG, and the anime.
Coinbase announced in a September 28 tweet that it will launch a phone-based digital pack-opening service, with every pull backed by a real physical card that users can vault or have shipped. The post's image showed five Pokémon TCG card packs labeled "Pokémon," though the text did not name the franchise. Details remain sparse, including how Coinbase's crypto platform status will affect the service and how cards will be graded or ownership proven.
Sony is introducing a lottery system for PS5 Pro purchases on its Japanese online store to handle demand that outstrips limited supply. Applicants need a Sony account registered in Japan that has logged more than 60 hours of play over the past two years, and applications run from today until 7th October. If applications exceed available stock, a lottery will be held, with winners notified on 26th October and required to pay ¥137,980 within a week or lose their spot.
The Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2 remasters are at their lowest price yet on PC. Both on-sale versions are the remastered takes, with Part 1 featuring improved visuals and enhanced combat. The piece recounts Joel escorting Ellie in the first game and Ellie's pursuit of vengeance four years later in Part 2.
Analyst Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics said most of Gears of War: E-Day's Xbox revenue will be eaten up by Game Pass. The game has sold over 120,000 copies on Steam for more than $7 million, ahead of its October 6 launch, with paid early access starting October 1. Elliott also said E-Day has already sold more than 2X what Halo: Campaign Evolved did in a similar period, though it is unlikely to ever reach 1 million copies on Steam.
Pearl Abyss has delayed Crimson Desert's first major paid DLC, Charting the Unknown, from October 15 to October 29. The $25 expansion adds seafaring, home building, and new quests and storyline, and the studio said it needs more development time for a more polished and stable experience. The studio had previously shipped patches and updates rapidly after the game's March 2026 release and renamed it Crimson Desert Enhanced in August to consolidate 17 patches and content additions.
Pearl Abyss has delayed Charting the Unknown, Crimson Desert's first post-launch DLC, from 15th October to 29th October, a two-week delay, saying it needs more development time for a more polished and stable gameplay experience. The DLC is priced £19.99 / $24.99 and is available for all versions of the game except the Mac App Store version.
Polygon rounds up six PS5 games launching in October, ahead of Zelda and GTA 6 in November. The list includes Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition on Oct. 1, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve and Star Wars: Galactic Racer on Oct. 2, Valor Mortis on Oct. 13, Anomalith on Oct. 28, and Phantom Blade Zero on Oct. 29.
Global game content revenue is projected to grow from $204.4 billion in 2025 to $229.1 billion in 2030, a 2.3% CAGR, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan. The firm attributes the growth to publishers monetising existing players through live-service retention, premium content, subscriptions and in-game purchases, with PC and Asia-Pacific leading. Cloud gaming is expected to be the fastest-growing segment at a 9.7% CAGR, while console revenue is supported by Grand Theft Auto 6 and Nintendo Switch 2 sales despite a sharply weakened Xbox Series line.
Ahead of GTA 6's release, the PS5 Pro is short in supply in Japan, prompting Sony Japan to introduce purchase limits and a lottery. The system is limited to direct Sony Store purchases and requires a Sony account with at least 60 hours of playtime on PS4 or PS5 between September 27, 2024 and September 27, 2026, with one unit per customer, applications open until October 7, results confirmed by October 26, and delivery in the first half of November. Standard PS5 models remain in stock, and PlayStation sales in Japan have generally lagged behind Nintendo in recent years due to higher hardware prices.
Limited Run Games is distributing the physical version of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North - Legacy Edition for Switch 2. The standard copy pre-orders open on 2nd October 2026 for $49.99 USD and include a slipcover and Wayfinder's Ledger Booklet, while a Deluxe Edition at $79.99 USD adds a steelcase, cloth map and weathered letter with a foreword by Jed Brophy.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve's pre-order bonus, Ace Combat Zero, runs as a DLC executable rather than the standalone app the Steam store page once promised, drawing negative reviews. Players must install 140GB of data to play the 3GB 2006 game, and the Steam version lacks the console version's achievements and separate cloud saves. Among nearly 1,000 negative reviews, the bait-and-switch over the bonus is a common complaint.
Infinity Ward revealed the PC specs for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, split into Minimum, Recommended and Ray Tracing tiers, with a built-in Benchmark Tool and a 90FPS target at Recommended settings. The game supports NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR Redstone and Intel XeSS 3, with ray tracing in Campaign, Multiplayer and DMZ. The new Collateral mode has teams alternating between attacking and defending two bomb sites, starting with pistols and earning in-game cash to spend on upgrades between rounds, with respawns, killstreaks, automatic health regeneration and custom loadouts disabled. The game launches on Xbox and PC on October 23, 2026, and will not be on Xbox Game Pass at launch.
NBA The Run has launched Wave One – 2000s Legends, its first and biggest seasonal update since launching in June, free on Xbox Series X|S. It adds five historic NBA legends — Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett, Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady and Dirk Nowitzki — unlockable individually for 5,000 Cred or together as DLC for $9.99 in the Microsoft Store. The update also brings Drive Cam and Drive Flip Cam, 11 licensed Run Anthems tracks, Championship Belts, Practice Mode and Custom Matches, plus new courts, dunks and taunts.
Mobapad's C2 Lite is a $26.99 budget controller for the Switch 2 that the reviewer calls one of the best affordable pads on the market. It uses Hall Effect versions of the smooth-gliding sticks from the Chitu2 HD, offers three rumble levels, 6-axis motion, wake-up and a capture button, and is rated for 18-20 hours of battery life. It lacks amiibo NFC support and ships without a charging cable.
Early access to Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is available for Deluxe Edition owners, but the pre-order bonus Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War is now a DLC requiring the base game on Steam, while it remains a standalone app on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The Steam description was changed to state the base game must be installed, forcing players to download roughly 135GB to run a port under 4GB, and preventing standalone play on Steam Deck. Ace Combat 8 currently has a Mixed rating on Steam from over 1,350 reviews ahead of its October 2 release, and Eurogamer has contacted Bandai Namco for comment.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to launch on November 19, and while major publishers have moved their games away from that date, Fairy Mount's Flame, Forest and Flood and Devolver Digital's Volvy's Adventure: Reslimed are still launching the same day. Fairy Mount's CEO calls it a statement for the small gamedev scene, while Devolver points to GTA 6 not launching on Steam as a gap worth targeting.
Xbox and Prince St. Pizza announced a collaboration for the launch of Gears of War: E-Day, with the limited-edition Emergence Pie available at Prince St. Pizza locations across the U.S. and Toronto, Canada through November 1. Each purchase of the pie or a slice comes with a code for an in-game pizza emblem, and a limited-edition pizza cutter modeled after the game's Prototype Lancer is on sale at shop.princestreetpizza.com. Gears of War: E-Day launches October 6, 2026 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC and Steam.
Suri: The Seventh Note, in development for four years, launches on PS5 on October 30, 2026, with pre-orders now open. The game draws on Indian art and architecture, records 80 percent of its music with original analogue instruments, and sets a 480-millisecond gap between main beats to balance player input response with rhythm. A Standard Edition and a Digital Deluxe Edition are available, the latter including an exclusive Chandini Skin DLC and 3-day early access, with a 20 percent pre-order discount for PlayStation Plus members. The game is part of the PlayStation India Hero Project.
To mark Castlevania's 40th anniversary, Konami is giving away the original 1986 Castlevania for free on the App Store and Google Play until 24th October 2026. A series-wide sale is also running, with the Anniversary Collection at 80 percent off on the PlayStation Store until 7th October and on Steam from 24th September to 1st October. The new entry, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, is slated for 15th October on Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, with a demo arriving 1st October whose progress carries over to the full release.
Meta announced the Meta VR Glasses, priced at $1,300 and weighing about 100 grams, set to go on sale in Spring 2027. The device has no strap and needs no controllers, relying on hand tracking and passthrough, with a puck connected by an optical tether handling compute, battery and storage. Games revealed alongside it include Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies VR, Tetris Effect: Mixed Realities and Beat Saber: Flux, all slated for 2027 and also coming to Quest rather than being exclusive to the glasses.
Rockstar Games has announced a limited Goodtime State Vice City collection for Grand Theft Auto 6 priced at £349, which does not include a copy of the game and is available to pre-order now. The set includes a Macca the Gator figure, Oakley Frogskins sunglasses, a Leonida Keys crossbody bag, a New Era 9FORTY snapback hat, and other items, three of which — a magnetic mirror, razor blade keychain, and swizzle spoon — carry a suggestive combination.
Aion 2's global Steam PC stress test, which began on September 17, reached 73,000 concurrent players on SteamDB, with the full release set for October 5. The article recounts the backlash from its earlier Korea and Taiwan launch over stat-boosting items in loot boxes and core features locked behind paid memberships, and notes that NCsoft adjusted or removed some disputed items during the test. It also covers overseas discussion of differing male and female character outfits and NCsoft's broader push to move beyond traditional MMOs.
PC and PlayStation unit sales in Japan rose 13% year-on-year to 21 million in the first half of 2026, led by Resident Evil Requiem, according to Sensor Tower. Capcom was the top publisher by units sold, and Resident Evil Requiem had its strongest first-month performance on Steam with an estimated 2.6 million units sold. Mobile in-app purchase revenue in Japan declined 5.1% year-on-year to ¥1.56 trillion, with eFootball the highest-grossing mobile game from January to July 2026.
JSAUX's Steam Machine E-Ink and Pixel Matrix faceplates are now on sale for $100 and $90 respectively, undercutting the $104.50 component cost of building a panel via Valve's open-source Inkterface project. Both offer performance monitoring, clock, weather, calendar and photo frame modes switchable in SteamOS quick settings, with companion software due via Steam from early October. The E-Ink panel refreshes only once per minute, while the Pixel Matrix trades detail for colour and retro charm.
Nex Playground has expanded beyond the United States to Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany, with UK sales velocity beating internal weekly and monthly targets. Nex also secured $150 million in equity and debt financing and now makes hardware in Mexico as well as China to shorten lead times. The company says its subscription-driven model kept it profitable last year and is likely to do so again this year.
Sony appears to be testing a PlayStation rewards programme that gives wallet credit when buying certain games on the PlayStation Store. A Reddit user said they received $10 in PS Store wallet credit after buying The Blood of Dawnwalker, whose Standard and Eclipse editions showed an offer ending 29th September, and other users reported similar messages on recent releases. It is unclear why the offer appears for some players but not others.
PlayStation is releasing a DualSense wireless controller – Lisa Limited Edition designed with Lisa, featuring her bangs and eyes on the touch pad plus her signature stars and "LL" lettering in a Chroma Pearl colorway. It will be available in highly limited quantities at participating retailers in Southeast Asia from October 30 at a recommended retail price of SGD 115 / MYR 419 / IDR 1,549,000 / THB 2,890 / PHP 5,411 / VND 2,399,000, with pre-orders starting October 2 while supplies last. Her new EP, Press Play, arrives October 23.
Valve has opened a waiting list for its Steam Frame VR system, offering 256GB and 1TB models. The 256GB version costs $1,059 (£889) and the 1TB version $1,299 (£1,089), both with a 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 16GB of RAM, two controllers and Half-Life: Alyx included, but no power supply. Steam Frame will support Android games because it uses the same Android APKs developers already use to port mobile titles to Android-based devices like Meta Quest.
Why this: Valve opened the Steam Frame waiting list and published full specs and prices for both models, letting readers decide whether to join.
Valve opened sign-ups for the Steam Frame VR headset, with registration running for 72 hours until 1:00 PM ET on September 17 and the first wave of customers notified from September 18. The wireless headset streams VR and non-VR Steam games, ships with two controllers and Half-Life: Alyx but no power supply, and costs 1,059 USD for 256GB or 1,299 USD for 1TB. A 59 USD ergonomic accessories kit is also available.