May 5, 2025 at 3:38 PM EDT
*excited dolphin noises*
Hidden in an Xbox blog post today is the news that not only are remasters of the first two Ecco the Dolphin games in the works, but a brand-new entry is also in development. There aren't any real details yet, but series creator Ed Annunziata says that after the remasters are done, 'we will make a new, third game with contemporary play and GPU sensibilities.'
A Wave of Change: Celebrating Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month - Xbox Wire
[news.xbox.com]
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Digital Trends
a day ago
- Digital Trends
With $80 Xbox games on the horizon, it's time to stop equating game length to value
The threat of the first $80 video game loomed in the distance for months and was ultimately broken by an unlikely candidate in Nintendo. Regardless of which company took that initial leap, this price increase was always a matter of when, not if. I was one of the many who assumed GTA 6 would be the first game to raise the price, but it seems the industry needed to start flirting with a new standard sooner rather than later. While we haven't heard Sony's plans to increase any PS5 game costs just yet, Xbox didn't wait long to announce that it was going to embrace this new price point as early as this winter on certain titles. Well, that was the original plan, anyway. Recommended Videos The Outer Worlds 2 bore the unfortunate weight of being Xbox's first $80 game for around a month before the decision was reversed and refunds were issued. While that is a minor win for us gamers, make no mistake — we are going to lose the war. $80 games are coming, and besides becoming more discerning consumers, we also need to start having better conversations about what makes a game worth $80. Putting a price on art I think it is important to recognize that having a standard price for art is weird. We all kind of accept it for games because that's how it's been after the N64 era when pricing became standardized. Ask any gamer who lived through those times — and was buying games with their own money — and they will gladly tell you about some games costing over $100 at launch. The advent of digital games and a growing indie and AA scene has provided a space for some games to explore the pricing scale, but the rule of thumb for 'major releases' has always been the standard $60, $70, and soon-to-be $80 price tag. Dear Galactic Citizens!⁰⁰We have received your SOS via skip drone about the pricing. As an organization devoted to making sure that corporations do not go unfettered, we at the Earth Directorate have worked with [REDACTED] to revise the price of The Outer Worlds 2. While this… — The Outer Worlds (@OuterWorlds) July 23, 2025 And that's just such an odd thing to do. It treats all games as a singular product rather than individual works of art. It simplifies the process of having a publisher somehow determine how valuable its own work is for the consumer, plus makes it far easier for budgets and projections, but has conditioned us to view games as products rather than art. We believe a game should cost $70, so a game that costs more had better be something spectacular, right? Not everyone operates that way, but I think it has seeped into a lot of our thought processes when it comes to what games we invest in. Don't get me wrong, we all should be highly conscious about what games we decide to buy at full price. $70 is already a huge investment for the majority of people, so taking advantage of sales, cheaper games, or even ways to get free games is only natural. But when we're so accustomed to treating games as monetary investments, I think we start to lose sight of their primary value — art. Almost every discussion about game pricing will include a portion of the community attempting to qualify whether a game is 'worth' its price based on objective metrics. The main factor that never seems to die off is game length. I'm too exhausted to fully dismantle this argument, but if you're reading this, I assume you don't need me to. Basing any work of art's value on its length has never held up to scrutiny. There are games I've beaten in less than two hours that I would pay way more for than games I've sunk 100+ hours into. Length is about the only yardstick we can use to compare all games with. In that regard, it makes sense why some try to wield it as a tool to measure a game's value. While I disagree with that wholeheartedly, I do have to concede that sometimes length is an important factor. However, it shouldn't be talked about in isolation. We can't stop the discussion at 'X game is Y hours long, therefore it is/isn't worth the price.' How are those hours spent? Does the game justify its short or long duration? The tricky thing here is that the answer is different for every person and every game. Would The Outer Worlds 2 be worth $80? I can't say. I think for some people it very much would be, but not for others. This is where the value in having trusted reviewers lies. Reviews (at least good ones) don't view a game as a product and judge it as such. Instead, they should discuss the message the game is trying to communicate through its narrative and gameplay systems, and how successful or not it is in that. They should be subjectively examining its artistic merit and how it affected them. If you have a reviewer who shares your taste in games, or you at least trust to critique a game in a way that communicates whether or not you'd enjoy it, that's the second best way to determine if a game is worth $80. The absolute best way is to play it yourself, but most of us can't do that without paying upfront cost and hoping it ends up being worth it. There's nothing wrong with wanting to know if you will like a game before you purchase it. The feeling of spending $70 on a game only to be disappointed can be gut-wrenching, and the risk only gets higher when we talk about $80 games. It would be so much easier if there were a simple metric to know with certainty if a game was worth your hard-earned cash, but there simply isn't. Games are art, and art is nuanced and deeply personal. I know times are tough out there and your dollars are more precious than ever, so I'm not suggesting you be careless. In fact, I'm asking the opposite. Let's have deeper conversations about what makes a game worth $80 or not while also understanding that the answer is going to be different for everyone.
Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Tom's Guide
I test headphones for a living — let me tell you why you need a pair of wired cans and a mic instead of your gaming headset
Before I go anywhere further, if you want something compact that doesn't take up space, then one of the best gaming headsets is still a great option. They're space-efficient and comfortable, generally all things you want when you go to play some "Call of the Duty" or "Battlefield Man 3, escape of the guy with a gun." If, however, you're a connoisseur of all things audio and an avid gamer, I have a trick that not only negates latency but also improves the sound of your games — be that a split-second decision in an FPS, or a soaring score in an immersive RPG. Ditch that bulky, wireless gaming headset, and throw that wired option with a mic attached into the garbage — who needs those, they're for chumps*. Grab yourself a pair of really good wired cans and one of the best microphones. You'll thank me later. *Gaming headset owners aren't chumps, there's just a better life waiting for you beyond your Turtlebeach-flavored home Good news! You don't need the mega-expensive (and mega-good) Final D8000 DC headphones you see above to get better sound out of your games. All you need is a pair of top-notch wired headphones, a 3.5mm socket on your PC, Xbox or PlayStation, and the first step is good to go. This step will work with pretty much any system as well, although you'll need some kind of adapter for the PS5 or the Xbox Series X. Sorry, but no, you cannot use the 3.5mm headphone jack on the controller. It's ok. You'll get over it. PC players, Steam Deck users and Switch fans have 3.5mm sockets built directly into their systems, so they don't need a dongle. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Perhaps you'd like even better sound — grab yourself a USB DAC that you can plug your headphones into, and connect that to your gaming system. This will negate the need for a dongle as well, which is always good. Xbox players will need to rely on the optical port on the back of the system. You could even go one step further — grab yourself a USB headphone amplifier so that you can use the really premium headphones. That's getting costly, but you'll get the best sound possible from your system. Ok, so we've sorted out the headphone portion of the gaming headset replacement, but what about the handy dandy mic? Easy peasy — grab yourself one of the USB variants of the best microphones, and you're away. Just plug it into one of the USB ports on your PC or PlayStation, and you'll be chatting with your friends in HD before you can say "Ruh roh guys, I think there's a g-g-g-ghost!" Switch users are actually surprisingly well served by the system's built-in mic for on-the-go gaming, but when you sit in front of the TV and pop it in the dock, you'll have no problem plugging a mic into one of the USB sockets on the dock itself. Put your microphone near your face, slide your headphones on your head, and you and your friends are in for a much better night of gaming than when you used that gaming headset. Bad news for Xbox players, though. As a reminder that Microsoft hates you, you can't plug a USB microphone into your system. If in doubt, buy a PlayStation. I heard gamers like RGB, so I chose a mic with some of those lovely, flashy lights. This relatively cheap mic sounds excellent for voice, and thanks to its helpful stand you'll have no problem getting it near your mouth. Job done. This pair of entry-level open-backed headphones is perfect for gaming. They're super wide sounding, and their spatial imaging means you'll hear your foes approaching before they've got a chance to put a round in the back of your noggin. Gaming headsets are great, don't get me wrong. My faithful Audeze Maxwell is a great piece of kit that sounds good, and provides a good microphone to make sure that my friends can hear me bellow about the annoying try hard on one of those stupid flying bike things in GTA online. But they are still, in many ways, limited. They have too many jobs, and firms have started filling them with all kinds of wizz-bang wizardry to make them sound better for games. Spatial audio things, footstep amplifiers, quantum doohickeys that reveal where players are behind a wall. All that comes at a cost, especially with the wireless variants — latency. When you need to hear things instantly, so that you can counteract, the wireless connection can leave just enough time between trigger pull and noise that things become problematic. Use a cable, and simplify things down to "this is a pair of headphones, they maketh sound" and all that latency trickles down the drain like yesterday's spaghetti sauce. Then there's a mic. Your gaming headset is using one connection — be that Bluetooth or another wireless standard, thanks to a little USB dongle — and there's a lot of information for it to handle. The sound of the game itself, whatever extra jazzy audio features you're using, and then the sound of the mic. There's not really any such thing as a "good-sounding" wireless gaming headset microphone." There are those that sound fine, and those that sound bad, but nothing that sounds good. But you can sound excellent while playing your games. A USB microphone reduces latency again, but the cable is also capable of carrying a much better audio signal to your PC or PlayStation. You'll never be clearer crying in shock as you meet another gun-wielding digital sociopath wheeling around a corner at top speed. No. 1 concern here is going to be space. That USB mic is going to take up a whole lot more room, and you'll need a decent stand to make sure that it sits next to your face-mounted noise maker. Those are not only an extra expense, but also something you need to think about when you sit down for a nice relaxing session of "Virtual Crime Committer 3." PC gamers and their fancy gaming desks/stack of college textbooks and a deck chair are going to have less of a problem here, given they've got something to strap the mic to. Couch-based players might struggle, but where there's a will, there is a way. Move the coffee table closer, and clamp it to that. Or find a younger sibling to hold it, with the empty promise of a go on the PlayStation. PC players are also not going to have a problem with the length of the wires either, whereas living room players definitely will. There are plenty of ways to make a cable longer, thankfully, with headphone cable extenders easily accessible. There'll be a cable draped across the floor in the form of a braided/rubber trip hazard, another thing worth bearing in mind. Look, I know it's more of a pain than using a gaming headset, but the sound and latency gains are well worth the space, time and monetary investment. I refuse to play my Switch 2 without my USB DAC now, and the only way to play cinematic games on my PS5 Pro is with a pair of over-ear headphones. Just don't go the opposite direction. No, your best ANC headphones are not going to be a great way to play your games, no matter how many gaming modes manufacturers put in them. Don't do it. No, don't you press that button... Follow Tom's Guide on Google News to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Xbox Has a New Hollow Knight: Silksong Demo Playable at Gamescom
Long-awaited indie sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong will be publicly playable at Gamescom on Microsoft's Xbox booth, before its highly-anticipated launch, due sometime before the end of 2025. Silksong sounds like it will be one of the booth's biggest draws, alongside a first public outing for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X — the third-party portable Xbox consoles also out later this year. The Outer Worlds 2, Xbox's biggest first-party game for the rest of this year that's not Call of Duty, meanwhile gets a "theater experience", which sounds like it'll be hands-off demo. In terms of other playable stuff, well, Obsidian's garden sequel Grounded 2 will be there, if you don't want to just play the Game Preview version at home. More excitingly, Ninja Gaiden 4 gets a first public hands-on appearance, while Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is there with an "exciting city update". Keen to play the new Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLC? Us too, though on the Gamescom show floor Microsoft is simply showing the base game. (It's very good but, uh, we played it last year.) From non-Xbox studios, meanwhile, Microsoft has a long list of playable demos — including the likes of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater and Borderlands 4, plus the Xbox versions of Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade. If you're visiting Gamescom, the world's biggest video games show in terms of its public attendance, Xbox will reside in its usual home within Hall 7 of the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany from August 21 to 24. Alternatively, keep an eye on IGN for all of our coverage direct from the show floor. Silksong developer Team Cherry recently said that its game was on track to launch later in 2025 but before the holidays. Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ or find him on Bluesky @
