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Several exhibitors at Gamescom in Cologne reported stolen equipment from booths in the show's business zone, including developer Ryan Laley's new Alienware laptop, two laptops from publisher iam8bit, and two laptops plus a Steam Deck from Tessera Studios. The thefts occurred despite the area being restricted to press and industry badge holders, with organizers claiming 24/7 security was in place.
As the GameCube marks its 25th anniversary, its distinctive controller remains widely praised despite Nintendo trying newer input designs across later consoles. Every Nintendo home console since has officially supported the GameCube pad, and Nintendo has re-released it in multiple editions, including for use with Switch.
Chess.com quietly launched a free educational poker platform called Gambit in May, letting players learn poker and build an Elo-style rating without real-money stakes. The company says it's now developing similar rating systems for other classic games like go, backgammon, and mahjong, using AI-assisted coding to build these platforms faster with smaller teams.
A retrospective analysis argues that Nintendo's worst-performing console wasn't the GameCube or Wii U, but the Virtual Boy, a mid-1990s system that was discontinued in less than a year and sold far fewer units than either of those later machines. Despite its poor reception at launch, the piece notes a recent resurgence has made the Virtual Boy more accessible to try today than it has been in decades.
A leaked pre-release version of Nvidia's DLSS 5 DLL, discovered inside NBA 2K27's early access build, has been patched by modders in the RenoDX Discord to run on older RTX 30-series Ampere GPUs after earlier being enabled on RTX 40 and 50-series cards. Results are inconsistent: some titles hit 20-40 FPS with noticeably sharper, more photorealistic visuals, while others drop to single digits, and nearly all suffer from heavy input latency and visual noise.
Apple Arcade launched Retro Bowl College+ on August 6, a version of New Star Games' 2023 college football spin-off. The game lets players manage one of over 250 college teams using simple swipe-based controls for passing, running and kicking, while defense is handled by the game's simulation. Off the field, players must juggle roster morale, player ratings, facility upgrades and team budgets.
A developer has published free, GPL-licensed source code for three old Windows 3.1x-era programs: a limited implementation of Conway's Game of Life, a GDI object-cleanup utility called GDI Rescuer, and a Mastermind-style game called Code Breaker. The Game of Life program notably demonstrates mixing 16-bit C with 32-bit assembly via winmem32.dll and handling palette and DIB color translation quirks of the era.
Chess.com has launched Gambit, a free-to-play online poker site built to teach the game without real-money betting, following a beta test that started in May. The site mirrors Chess.com's design, including bot opponents, tournaments, review tools and lesson modes, plus its own rating system to keep gameplay engaging. The company says more companion games beyond poker are planned.
Playground Games has published official PC requirements for its upcoming Fable reboot, launching February 23, 2027. Entry-level 1080p/30fps play needs only an RTX 2060 or equivalent, but reaching 4K at 60fps on Ultra settings calls for an RTX 5080 or RTX 4080 paired with a Ryzen 9 7900X or Intel i9 13900K.
Beijing hosted the second World Humanoid Robot Games, a five-day event featuring humanoid robots competing in sprints, weightlifting, and cheerleading routines. Alongside genuine performance gains over last year's inaugural games, the event was marked by spectacular malfunctions, including robots losing limbs, catching fire, and crashing into judges' tables.
Gamescom, the world's largest in-person gaming expo, took place this week in Cologne, Germany, with attendance expected to surpass last year's 350,000 visitors. Major publishers like Xbox and Sega showcased upcoming titles alongside small indie teams, with highlights including a new Witcher 3 expansion and Alien: Isolation 2.
Court documents and industry estimates show major games like The Last of Us Part II and Horizon Forbidden West cost over $200 million each, while Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War topped $700 million across its life cycle. GTA VI, in development for nearly a decade, is expected to surpass all of these figures even before factoring in its eventual online mode.