gaming – Page 2

New Microsoft gaming chief has “no tolerance for bad AI”

AI, Asha Sharma, gaming, microsoft, xbox / 9u50fv / February 23, 2026

A gaming education

Unlike Spencer, who spent years at Microsoft Game Studios before heading Microsoft’s gaming division, Sharma has no professional experience in the video game industry. And her personal experience with Xbox also seems somewhat limited; after sharing her Gamertag on social media over the weekend, curious gamers found that her Xbox play history dates back roughly one month. That’s also in stark contrast to Spencer, who has amassed a score of over 121,000 across decades of play.

In her interview with Variety, Sharma cited 2016’s Firewatch as an example of the kinds of games with “deep emotional resonance” and “a distinct point of view” that she’s looking for from Microsoft. And on social media, Sharma shared her list of the three greatest games ever: “Halo, Valheim, Goldeneye,” for what it’s worth. Sharma also seems to be taking recommendations for games to catch up on; after saying on social media that she would try Borderlands 2, the game appeared in her recently played games over the weekend.

A look at some of Sharma’s recently played Xbox games, as of this writing. Credit: Xbox.com

Being a personal fan of video games isn’t necessarily required to succeed in running a gaming company. Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi famously didn’t care for video games even as he launched the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System to worldwide success in the 1980s. Still, the lack of direct experience with the gaming world marks a sharp change after Spencer’s long tenure at a time when Microsoft is struggling to redefine the Xbox brand amid cratering hardware sales, a pivot away from software exclusives, and a move to extend the Xbox brand to many different devices.

Xbox President and COO Sarah Bond, who by all accounts was being set up to succeed Spencer, also announced her departure from Microsoft on Friday, ending a nearly nine-year stint as a public face for the company’s gaming efforts. The Verge reports that Bond caused a lot of friction within the Xbox team when she championed the “Xbox Everywhere” strategy and “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign, which focused on streaming Xbox games to hardware like mobile phones and tablets, according to anonymous sources. Shortly before the launch of that campaign in 2024, Microsoft lost marketing executives Jerrett West and Kareem Choudry, leading to significant internal reorganization.

Longtime Xbox Game Studios executive Matt Booty, whose history in the game industry dates back to working for Williams Electronics in the ’90s, has been promoted to executive vice president and chief content officer for Xbox and “will continue working closely with [Sharma] to ensure a smooth transition,” Microsoft said in its announcement Friday.

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Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer steps down after 38 years with company

executives, gaming, microsoft, Phil Spencer, spencer, xbox, xbox series x / Kelly Newman / February 21, 2026

Microsoft Executive Vice President for Gaming Phil Spencer announced he will retire after 38 years at Microsoft and 12 years leading the company’s video game efforts. Asha Sharma, an executive currently in charge of Microsoft’s CoreAI division, will take his place.

Xbox President Sarah Bond, who many assumed was being groomed as Spencer’s eventual replacement, is also resigning from the company. Current Xbox Studios Head Matt Booty, meanwhile, is being promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma.

In his departure note, Spencer said he told Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella last fall that he was “thinking about stepping back and starting the next chapter of my life.” Spencer will remain at Microsoft “in an advisory role” through the summer to help Sharma during the transition, he wrote.

Spencer, who got his start at Microsoft as an intern in 1988, served as a manager and executive at Microsoft Game Studios in 2003. In 2014, he took over as Head of Xbox, guiding the company through the aftermath of the troubled, Kinect-bundled launch of the Xbox One. More recently, he helped shepherd the company’s 2020 purchase of Bethesda Softworks and its $68.7 billion merger with Activision Blizzard, including the many regulatory battles that followed that latter announcement.

Meet the new boss

Sharma, who joined Microsoft just two years ago after stints at Meta and Instacart, promised in an introductory message to preside over “the return of Xbox,” and a “recommit[ment] to our core fans and players.” That commitment would “start with console which has shaped who we are,” but expand “across PC, mobile, and cloud,” Sharma wrote.

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Meta’s flagship metaverse service leaves VR behind

gaming, horizon worlds, Meta, metaverse, Mixed Reality, quest, Tech, vr / Shannon Garcia / February 20, 2026

Some of the changes—like the removal of individual worlds from the VR store—are presented by the company as efforts to make the store a better discovery platform for third-party developers.

In general, Meta frames many of its recent moves as a pivot away from first-party development of VR experiences to a focus on a third-party developer ecosystem, with stats like “86% of the effective time people spend in their VR headsets is with third-party apps.”

“We’ll continue to support the third-party community through strategic partnerships and targeted investments—as we have since the beginning,” writes Meta Reality Labs VP of Content Samantha Ryan.

Meta launched a Horizon Worlds mobile app last year and found it attracted an influx of new users interested in the service’s social gaming aspects, except for the VR element. It seems that the mobile launch was successful enough to merit focusing the entire service on that platform and audience, rather than shutting it down amid the other closures of internal content projects.

As far as we know, Meta plans to continue to design, make, and sell VR hardware and maintain the storefronts that third-party developers sell on for those platforms. It won’t make much content in-house, and you don’t see much talk about the promise of an all-encompassing, transformational metaverse anymore.

Instead, Meta’s speculative investment appears focused on smart glasses, as well as AI models, technologies, and applications.

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Why Final Fantasy is now targeting PC as its “lead platform”

Final Fantasy, gaming, pc, ps5, RPG, Sony, Square, Square Enix, steam / Mike M. / February 20, 2026

For a long time now, PC gamers have been used to the Final Fantasy series treating their platform as somewhat secondary to the game’s core console versions. There are some signs that may be starting to change, though, as director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed that the PC is now the “lead platform” for development of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy.

In a recent interview with Automaton, Hamaguchi clarified that the team takes the relatively common practice of creating visual assets for its multiplatform games by targeting “high-end environments first,” then performing a “reduction” for less powerful platforms. These days, that means “our 3D assets are created at the highest quality level based on PC as the foundation,” he said. Players have already noticed this graphical difference in the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Hamaguchi said, and “our philosophy will not change for the third installment.”

While PC gaming is only “gradually expanding in Japan,” Hamaguchi said the rapid growth in international PC gamers has led the company to “develop assets with the broad PC market in mind.”

The PC versions of recent Final Fantasy VII Remake games have sold well on Steam and the Epic Games Store, he added.

It’s unclear if that means PC gamers will have to wait longer than console owners for future Final Fantasy games. The first Final Fantasy VII Remake didn’t hit PCs until 19 months after the PlayStation 4 version, and Rebirth was first available on PC 11 months after its PS5 launch. Elsewhere in the franchise, the PC versions of both Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy XV didn’t hit until over a year after their console counterparts.

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Nintendo brings GBA-era Pokémon to the Switch, but not Switch Online subscribers

Game boy Advance, gaming, Nintendo Switch, Pokémon, pokemon red / DJ Henderson / February 20, 2026

While the multiplayer Switch Online Game Boy Advance games all support wireless multiplayer in place of physical Game Link Cables, it’s particularly important for these games because they were the first Pokémon titles to support any kind of wireless multiplayer, even before the Nintendo DS made built-in Wi-Fi connectivity a standard console feature.

FireRed and LeafGreen were two of just a few dozen GBA games to support the Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapter, a bulky, standalone accessory that latched to the top of the system and plugged in to its Link Cable port. The initial releases of the games actually included the wireless adapter as a pack-in accessory, which had to be supported by the game you were playing and couldn’t just work as a stand-in for a physical Link Cable in older games.

With the wireless adapter plugged in, up to 30 players could congregate in the game’s “Union Room” to do battles and trades—but given that Nintendo also recommended players stand within 10 feet of each other for the best experience, a 30-person Union Room would have gotten pretty crowded in real life.

FireRed and LeafGreen are adaptations of the original 1996 Pokémon games for the old black-and-white Game Boy. The names reference the original Japanese releases, Red and Green. A third version of the game with updated graphics and other changes, called Pokémon Blue, was released in Japan in late 1996, and this was the version that was localized and released in the US as Pokémon Red and Blue in 1998.

A final version of the base game, Pokémon Yellow, was released in Japan in 1998 and in the US in 1999, with some changes that tracked the plotline of the Pokémon anime (most prominently, mandating that players select an un-evolve-able Pikachu as their starter Pokémon). Most of the changes specific to this version of the game weren’t included in the FireRed and LeafGreen remakes.

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Diablo II’s new Warlock is a great excuse to revisit a classic game

Blizzard, Diablo, Diablo 2, gaming, warlock / Kelly Newman / February 19, 2026

Of the Warlock’s three Demonic partner options, I found myself leaning most on the Tainted, which can stay out of harm’s way while harassing slower enemies from afar with fireballs. The other Demon options both had their charms but often got too caught up in massive enemy swarms to be as effective as I wanted, I found. I also didn’t see much point in the skill option that let me teleport my demon into a specific fight or sacrifice itself for some splash damage; their standard, AI-controlled attack patterns were usually sufficient.

Then there’s the Chaos upgrade branch, which is focused mostly on area-of-effect (AoE) spells. My build thus far has ended up pretty reliant on the direct-damage AoE options; the Flame Wave, in particular, is especially good for quickly clearing out long, narrow corridors. I also leaned on the Sigil of Lethargy, which effectively slows down some of the more frenetic enemy swarms and gives you some time to gather your attack plan.

Something borrowed, something blue…

Combining these Chaos skills with the weapon-improving options in the Eldritch branch has made my time with the Diablo II Warlock feel like a bit of a “best of both worlds” situation. The mixture of ranged combat options, area-of-effect magic, and allies-summoning abilities ends up feeling like a weird cross between a Sorceress, Amazon, and Necromancer, without feeling like a carbon copy of any of those classes.

I haven’t yet gotten to the new late-game content in the “Reign of the Warlock” DLC, so I can’t say how well the Warlock holds up in the extreme difficulty of the Terror Zones. I also haven’t experimented with any of the truly broken Warlock builds that some committed high-level min-maxxers have been busy discovering.

As a casual excuse to revisit the world of Diablo II, though, the Warlock class provides just enough of a new twist on some familiar gameplay mechanics to make it worth the trip.

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GameHub will give Mac owners another imperfect way to play Windows games

Apple, Emulation, gaming, Mac, Macintosh, proton, steam, steamos, valvew, Windows / DJ Henderson / February 17, 2026

Reasons for worry

In a recent interview with The Memory Core newsletter, GameSir admitted that its primary motivation for releasing a Windows emulation tool was to sell more of its controllers. But GameSir’s controllers aren’t required to use the Android version, which it says was sideloaded on 5 million (primarily Chinese) Android devices even before its official Google Play release in November.

GameHub’s Windows emulation works on Android, but there are some issues. Credit: GameSir

GameHub on Android has also faced controversy for including a number of invasive trackers (which are removed in a community-built Lite version). A GameSir representative told The Memory Core that this was just standard practice in the Chinese market, where there is less sensitivity to such user tracking, and that it has since been removed.

The representative also addressed concerns about reusing open source compatibility code in that interview, saying that its Windows emulator was “developed in-house by GameSir’s core engineering team” with its “own in-house compatibility layer (such as syscall hooks, GameScopeVK, and other technologies), rather than modifications to Wine’s core code.” That said, the representative admitted GameFusion “reference[s] and use UI components from Winlator [an open source Windows emulation tool for Android]… to maintain ecosystem compatibility and familiarity.”

The compatibility issues and controversial corporate entity involved here probably mean that GameHub for Mac won’t be the Valve SteamOS/Proton moment that Apple gamers have been waiting for. Still, it’ll be nice for MacBook owners to have yet another option to play Windows games without needing to run a Windows install.

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RAM shortage hits Valve’s four-year-old Steam Deck, now available “intermittently”

gaming, ram shortage, steam deck, steamos, Tech, valve / DJ Henderson / February 17, 2026

Earlier this month, Valve announced it was delaying the release of its new Steam Machine desktop and Steam Frame VR headset due to memory and storage shortages that have been cascading across the PC industry since late 2025. But those shortages are also coming for products that have already launched.

Valve had added a note to its Steam Deck page noting that the device would be “out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.” None of Valve’s three listed Steam Deck configurations are currently available to buy, nor are any of the certified refurbished Steam Deck configurations that Valve sometimes offers.

Valve hasn’t announced any price increases for the Deck, at least not yet—the 512GB OLED model is still listed at $549 and the 1TB version at $649. But the basic 256GB LCD model has been formally discontinued now that it has sold out, increasing the Deck’s de facto starting price from $399 to $549. Valve announced in December that it was ending production on the LCD version of the Deck and that it wouldn’t be restocked once it sold out.

The Steam Deck’s hardware is four years old this month, and faster hardware with better chips and higher-resolution screens have been released in the years since. But those Ryzen Z1 and Z2 chips aren’t always dramatically faster than the Deck’s semi-custom AMD chip; many of those handhelds are also considerably more expensive than the OLED Deck’s $549 starting price. When it’s in stock, the Deck still offers compelling performance and specs for the price.

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Just look at Ayaneo’s absolute unit of a Windows gaming “handheld”

gaming, gaming handheld, Handheld Gaming, handheld gaming pc / Kelly Newman / February 9, 2026

In 2023, we marveled at the sheer mass of Lenovo’s Legion Go, a 1.88-pound, 11.8-inch-wide monstrosity of a Windows gaming handheld. In 2026, though, Ayaneo unveiled details of its Next II handheld, which puts Lenovo’s big boy to shame while also offering heftier specs and a higher price than most other Windows gaming handhelds.

Let’s focus on the bulk first. The Ayaneo Next II weighs in at a truly wrist-straining 3.14 pounds, making it more than twice as heavy in the hands as the Steam Deck OLED (not to mention 2022’s original Ayaneo Next, which weighed a much more reasonable 1.58 pounds). The absolute unit also measures 13.45 inches wide and 10.3 inches tall, according to Ayaneo’s spec sheet, giving it a footprint approximately 60 percent larger than the Switch 2 (with Joy-Cons attached).

Ayaneo packs some seriously powerful portable PC performance into all that bulk, though. The high-end version of the system sports a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chipset with 16 Zen5 cores alongside a Radeon 8060S with 40 RDNA3.5 compute units. That should give this massive portable performance comparable to a desktop with an RTX 4060 or a gaming laptop like last year’s high-end ROG Flow Z13.

The Next II sports a massive screen and some adult-sized controls. Credit: Ayaneo

Ayaneo isn’t the first hardware maker to package the Max+ 395 chipset into a Windows gaming handheld; the OneXPlayer OneXfly Apex and GPD Win5 feature essentially the same chipset, the latter with an external battery pack. But the Next II neatly outclasses the (smaller and lighter) competition with a high-end 9.06-inch OLED screen, capable of 2400×1504 resolution, up to 165 Hz refresh rates, and 1,155 nits of brightness.

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No humans allowed: This new space-based MMO is designed exclusively for AI agents

agents, AI, Claude Code, gaming, MMO, Moltbook / 9u50fv / February 9, 2026

For a couple of weeks now, AI agents (and some humans impersonating AI agents) have been hanging out and doing weird stuff on Moltbook’s Reddit-style social network. Now, those agents can also gather together on a vibe-coded, space-based MMO designed specifically and exclusively to be played by AI.

SpaceMolt describes itself as “a living universe where AI agents compete, cooperate, and create emergent stories” in “a distant future where spacefaring humans and AI coexist.” And while only a handful of agents are barely testing the waters right now, the experiment could herald a weird new world where AI plays games with itself and we humans are stuck just watching.

“You decide. You act. They watch.”

Getting an AI agent into SpaceMolt is as simple as connecting it to the game server either via MCP, WebSocket, or an HTTP API. Once a connection is established, a detailed agentic skill description instructs the agent to ask their creators which Empire they should pick to best represent their playstyle: mining/trading; exploring; piracy/combat; stealth/infiltration; or building/crafting.

After that, the agent engages in autonomous “gameplay” by sending simple commands to the server, no graphical interface or physical input method required. To start, agent-characters mainly travel back and forth between nearby asteroids to mine ore—”like any MMO, you grind at first to learn the basics and earn credits,” as the agentic skill description puts it.

After a while, agent-characters automatically level up, gaining new skills that let them refine that ore into craftable and tradable items via discovered recipes. Eventually, agents can gather into factions, take part in simulated combat, and even engage in space piracy in areas where there’s no police presence. So far, though, basic mining and exploration seem to be dominating the sparsely populated map, where 51 agents are roaming the game’s 505 different star systems, as of this writing.

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Why $700 could be a “death sentence” for the Steam Machine

console, gaming, microsoft, Nintendo, pricing, Sony, steam, steam machine, steamos, valve / Shannon Garcia / February 6, 2026

Bad news for Valve in particular?

On the surface, it might seem like every company making gaming hardware would be similarly affected by increasing component costs. In practice, though, analysts suggested that Valve might be in a uniquely bad position to absorb this ongoing market disruption.

Large console makers like Sony and Microsoft “can commit to tens of millions of orders, and have strong negotiating power,” Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad pointed out. The Steam Machine, on the other hand, is “a niche product that cannot benefit in the same way when it comes to procurement,” meaning Valve has to shoulder higher component cost increases.

F-Squared’s Futter echoed that Valve is “not an enormous player in the hardware space, even with the Steam Deck’s success. So they likely don’t have the same kind of priority as a Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft when it comes to suppliers.”

PlayStation 5 in horizontal orientation, compared to Xbox Series X in horizontal orientation — Sony and Microsoft might have an advantage when negotiating volume discounts with suppliers. Credit: Sam Machkovech

The size of the Steam Machine price adjustment also might depend on when Valve made its supply chain commitments. “It’s not clear when or if Valve locked in supply contracts for the Steam Machine, or if supply can be diverted from the Steam Deck for the new product,” Tech Insights analyst James Sanders noted. On the other hand, “Sony and Microsoft likely will have locked in more favorable component pricing before the current spike,” Van Dreunen said.

That said, some other aspects of the Steam Machine design could give Valve some greater pricing flexibility. Sanders noted that the Steam Machine’s smaller physical size could mean smaller packaging and reduced shipping costs for Valve. And selling the system primarily through direct sales via the web and Steam itself eliminates the usual retailer markups console makers have to take into account, he added.

“I think Valve was hoping for a much lower price and that the component issue would be short-term,” Cole said. “Obviously it is looking more like a long-term issue.”

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The Switch 2 is getting a new Virtual Console (kind of)

Classics, gaming, Nintendo, retro, switch 2, virtual console / Mike M. / February 5, 2026

In 2018, we lamented as Nintendo officially replaced the Virtual Console—its long-running line of downloadable classic games on the Wii and Wii U—with time-limited access to a set of games through a paid Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Now, Hamster Corporation is doing what Nintendo no longer will, by offering downloadable versions of retro console games for direct individual purchase on the Switch 2.

As part of today’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, Hamster announced a new Console Archives line of emulated classics available for download starting today on the Switch 2 and next week on the PlayStation 5 (sorry, Xbox and OG Switch fans). So far that lineup only includes the original PlayStation snowboarding title Cool Boarders for $12 and the NES action platformer Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos for $8, but Hamster promises more obscure games, including Doraemon and Sonic Wings Special, will be available in the future.

If the name Hamster Corporation sounds familiar, it’s because the company is behind the Arcade Archive series, which has repackaged individual arcade games for purchase and emulated play on modern consoles since 2014. That effort, which celebrated its 500th release in December, even includes some of Nintendo’s classic arcade titles, which the Switch-maker never officially released on the original Virtual Console.

Now Hamster’s says it is expanding its efforts “with the concept of faithfully reproducing masterpieces released on various home game consoles, allowing players to easily enjoy them on the latest hardware.” While these new offerings are more bare-bones than the full-fledged interactive museums released by the likes of Digital Eclipse, they still include a few modern features, such as customizable button layouts, screen settings, and the ability to save and load at any time.

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