First four compatible titles can be run with an 11-year-old graphics card. For years, Microsoft has leaned heavily into extensive backward compatibility across multiple generations of Xbox hardware as a major selling point for its consoles. Today, that effort expands past the console ecosystem, making select original Xbox titles…
Analysis of bestseller charts shows an 80 percent dip from 2025’s sales rate. Since its 2022 launch, the Steam Deck has consistently been at or near the top of the company’s “top selling products by revenue” charts, with brief dips outside of the top 10 treated as newsworthy events.…
Used discs are often cheaper than even deep digital discounts. Since Sony announced that it was planning to stop producing physical PlayStation discs in 2028, many people have been justifiably worried about how they will maintain ownership and long-term game access in a disc-free world. But halting production of…
Union wants to halt a “perpetual cycle” of layoffs, get back to contract bargaining. ROCKVILLE, Maryland—Hundreds of Bethesda Game Studios and Zenimax Online Studios employees and their supporters braved nearly 100°F temperatures to protest sweeping layoffs across Xbox during a lunchtime rally in front of parent company Zenimax’s headquarters…
Clever coding and graphical compromises get a classic game on more classic hardware. Last month, we passed along Modern Vintage Gamer’s (MVG) confident assertion that Doom is functionally impossible to run on the Neo Geo, owing to the console’s sprite-based display hardware and lack of a frame buffer. We…
Dozens of titles too taxing for Steam Deck are still unrated for the new hardware. About a month ago, Valve announced that it would expand its long-standing Steam Deck Verified program to the now-shipping Steam Machine, offering a separate rating of Steam games’ compatibility and playability for the fresh…
As much as 50 percent of some teams affected by reductions, and more could be coming. In announcing plans for 3,200 layoffs across the Xbox division yesterday, CEO Asha Sharma focused on discussing cuts to the Xbox platform team and redundant layers of middle management. Now, though, word is…
Ars analysis suggests the 9-year-old console could keep selling for years. On Monday, Nintendo announced that it will stop selling the original Switch in Europe next February. That decision comes in response to European regulations that will soon require easily replaceable batteries in most consumer electronics. Rather than redesigning…
Move affects ~20% of the gaming division, which will refocus on its biggest franchises. Last month, Xbox executives laid out some “hard truths” about Microsoft’s struggling gaming division that they said would require a difficult “Xbox reset.” This morning, Microsoft revealed the brutal shape of that “reset,” announcing plans…
C:ArsGames takes a look at the time Chris Roberts more or less made a whole movie. If I had to pick a chunk of the 1990s that feels the most 90s-ish to me, it’d be the two-year stretch between 1996 and 1997. 1996 saw me graduating from high school…
