The report has noted that Microsoft has a “novel console prototype” referred to internally as Project Green Leaf. Through this prototype, Xbox is working on offering more Windows features for systems that might have strict hardware considerations, be it making use of a mobile platform or even just having battery constraints. A document shown off by Moore’s Law is Dead notes that the Xbox GDK will feature (PO)—Power Optimized—and (PO+)—Power Optimized Plus—which act as identifiers for “intelligent, software-driven efficiencies.”

“These optimizations are designed to lower energy draw during periods of inactivity, background execution, and navigation layers,” reads the document. “For a significant number of products, these enhancements will be simple to integrate, though we acknowledge that suitability may vary by genre.”

The document also notes that games developed that make use of these efficiencies will get (PO) or (PO+) markers on their technical details page on the Marketplace, which will give users more options to filter games out depending on what kind of battery life their chosen hardware is capable of.

It is worth noting that Microsoft hasn’t really revealed any details about the hardware specifications of Project Green Leaf, and whether it is even slated for a public release at some point remains to be seen. In the meantime, however, developers will likely find these new features useful when it comes to optimizing their projects for release on handheld systems that often have to deal with slower hardware when compared to desktop computers, as well as battery life.

While the reasons behind why Microsoft halted development of its own handheld system remain unknown, a report from October 2025 has indicated that it came down to chip-maker AMD wanting the company to commit to more than 10 million units of the chip powering the system. AMD seemingly wanted to justify its own research and development investments that would be required for such a chip. Microsoft, on the other hand, had trouble committing to the high sales figures after taking a look at industry-wide trends. The Steam Deck, for example, had sold 5 million units at the time.

In the meantime, Microsoft has revealed more details about its next-generation console, dubbed Project Helix. In a recent Game Dev Update, VP of Next Generation Jason Ronald confirmed that it will make use of deep texture compression while “leaning in very heavily” to Zstandard. Coupled with DirectStorage, the console will be able to stream game assets directly from an SSD, rather than having to first load them into RAM or VRAM before pushing them to a player’s display. Microsoft has also confirmed that Project Helix will offer ray tracing performance “an order of magnitude” beyond the capabilities of Xbox Series X/S.

According to MultiverSusie, who also alleged a new DC superhero fighting game to be in the works at NetherRealm, it seems Angstrom Levy and Agent Spider will arrive in the Fall and Winter, respectively. Agent Spider’s an interesting one, with the obvious Spider-Man comparisons backed up by Omni-Man calling the character a “public menace” in one of his datamined voice lines. They join the likes of Universa and the Immortal, already confirmed to release this Summer.

While things aren’t officially confirmed at this point, the game’s handle has responded to the tweet in question, stating that leaked content is rarely representative of the studio’s final plans. Though the team “can’t unspoil the surprise,” it is excited to reveal “finished gameplay” in the early Summer. Whether they end up true or not, we’re quite certain that the new characters will fit very well within the game’s narrative and technical frameworks, making an already awesome title even better with their presence.

Invincible VS is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Check out our review, where we scored it an eight out of ten, for more details.

The pressure is seemingly due to the ever-increasing costs of manufacturing Nintendo Switch 2 consoles, which have, in turn, eaten into the company’s profit margins. “Many now believe that Nintendo simply must raise prices when it reports earnings this Friday, to guard against escalating costs and appease an anxious investor community,” notes the report.

Aside from hardware, however, Nintendo has been seeing a few successes in recent times with projects like Pokémon Pokopia and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Despite this, however, investors are seemingly “concerned” about the profitability of keeping the Nintendo Switch 2 at its current $450 price tag. Things will likely end up worse as more of the world’s memory supply is bought up, alongside other disruptions due to geopolitical situations.

Toyo Research Advice analyst Hideki Yasuda noted that stock prices are falling due to the market “punishing” stocks that “lack inflation-hedging power.” On the other hand, Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities believes that “they would be foolish to raise prices.”

“The consumer is hurting — people are paying more for gasoline and food, and when prices go up, entertainment budgets are one of the first things to go.”

If a price hike for the Nintendo Switch 2 is announced, it’s believed to be either $50 or $100. Yasuda, however, believes that such a minor hike is unlikely to make the console profitable. Rather, it will likely be perceived as being less of a burden.

Equity analyst Pelham Smithers noted that a major price hike this early in the console’s life cycle will have major negative effects on software sales moving forward. “If they make a mistake on pricing, whichever way it goes, we run into the Wii U problem — the situation will just get worse and worse,” he said.

Questions about Nintendo potentially raising the price of its new console have been popping up ever since the company first unveiled it last year. Back in February, another report noted that Sony and Nintendo have both been paying close attention to RAM prices.

“People familiar with the company’s thinking” had indicated that the state of memory prices will have a major role to play in Sony’s next-generation console aspirations. Similarly, Nintendo was noted to be discussing raising the price of the Switch 2.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa had said similar things about keeping an eye on memory prices and tariffs in an interview back in January.

“Hardware profitability depends on factors like component procurement conditions, cost reductions through mass production, and the impact of exchange rates and tariffs,” Furukawa said. “It’s difficult to generalize. Fundamentally, we aim to address this by advancing component procurement over the medium to long term.”

“We procure from suppliers based on our medium- to long-term business plans, but the current memory market is very volatile,” he continued, discussing memory shortages. “There is no immediate impact on earnings, but it is something we must monitor closely.”

While Assassin’s Creed Invictus had previously been described as being similar in structure to Fall Guys, the report notes that it will instead revolve around characters from throughout the franchise engaging each other in combat. Henderson has noted that the footage included an arena from Assassin’s Creed Mirage and another one from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

As for the playable characters, no details have been revealed aside from the fact that the video features “several iconic Assassins from the franchise.”

A Ubisoft developer was discovered to have criticised Assassin’s Creed Invictus all the way back in February. According to leaker xj0nathan, the developer said that “I don’t know a single colleague who likes Invictus. Only the managers will probably keep smiling and singing the praises of this project.” They allegedly went on to say that Invictus had “ridiculous animations, hideous and cartoonish characters” and “idiotic sound and visual effects”, among other things.

“’It’s awful: ridiculous animations, hideous and cartoonish characters (their faces are just as awful), idiotic sound and visual effects, combat arenas… the concept is just plain dismaying. I wonder who this game is even for and why it was made. Maybe it’s only meant for kids… six-year-olds? I have no idea. If that’s the case, I pity the parents of those kids who are going to be hounded for money to fuel a fresh wave of microtransactions.’”

Interestingly, the arena-based combat would also set Assassin’s Creed Invictus apart from the multiplayer modes we’ve seen from the franchise in the past. The first mainline entry to get a multiplayer mode was Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, which had players set up their assassins with tools and perks and tasked them with finding and taking out opposing players. This system, along with the ones we saw in other titles, focused quite a bit on the franchise’s stealth systems.

Assassin’s Creed Unity left the competitive mode behind to instead offer a co-op mode where players, alongside allies, could take on distinct missions that take place throughout the main story of the game.

However, since Unity, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has largely left multiplayer game modes behind. More recent entries like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Valhalla, and even Shadows offered an asynchronous style of multiplayer where players could see where other players died, and could opt to take revenge on their behalf in exchange for rewards.

In the meantime, the latest single-player entry in the franchise was 2025’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Ubisoft is currently working towards the July 9th release of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. In the longer term, players can also look forward to Assassin’s Creed: Codename Hexe, which is noted as also bringing in some darker elements to go with the Assassin’s Creed gameplay.

A notable part of the current issues faced by Xbox as a whole, according to the report, is the general lack of console hardware being available in the market. In his report, Corden wrote that the “aspirational” profitability metrics led to the company sacrificing hardware stocks by essentially ordering too few units. This meant that, despite there being demand for Microsoft’s current-gen console hardware, there wasn’t any way for consumers to actually buy one. This is also important since the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 is expected to further drive up hardware sales, and a lack of Xbox Series X/S consoles on store shelves will likely play a major role.

The subject of the 30 percent “accountability margins”, which are essentially Microsoft’s internal way of referring to profit margins, first came to light back in October. The same mandate has reportedly led to the company raising the prices for its Xbox hardware, as well as Game Pass subscriptions. The mandate has also had far-reaching effects, including the closure of studios and the cancellation of several in-development projects. At the time, the report compared the gaming industry’s average profit margin as sitting between 17 and 22 percent, while Xbox’s had fallen by between 10 and 20 percent. The margin target was seemingly set by Microsoft CFO Amy Hood.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Xbox has said that the 30 percent target isn’t universally applied to all companies under the Xbox banner, and as such, not all projects are expected to hit it.

“We look at the business as a whole, balancing creativity, innovation, and sustainability across a diverse portfolio of offerings,” they said. “As with any creative business, sometimes that means making hard decisions and stopping work on things that are no longer working for a variety of reasons, and shifting resources toward the projects that are more aligned with our direction and priorities.”

In the meantime, after quite a bit of backlash from its user base, Xbox announced that it is reducing the price for its Game Pass subscription. However, as a notable side-effect, new entries in the Call of Duty franchise will stop appearing on the service on day one of their release. “Our players cover a wide breadth of geographies, preferences, and tastes, so while there isn’t a single model that’s best for everyone, this change responds to a lot of feedback we’ve gotten so far. We’ll continue to listen and learn,” said Microsoft in its announcement.

Microsoft is also getting ready to reveal more details about its next-generation console, dubbed Project Helix, with a game development update this week.

As spotted by GameDeveloper, combat designer Dylan Ralston said on LinkedIn, “I was informed today that Survios as it currently stands will be essentially shuttered, with all of the team members responsible for development being let go, including myself.” He called the company “wonderful” to work for and provided “much-needed security to my family during a very rough moment in not only my life, but the games industry as a whole.”

Senior game designer Alissa Smith was also impacted “along with the majority of the development team.” “I have been working there for the past 3 years, and was fortunate enough to work on the release of Alien: Rogue Incursion, not only on all major VR platforms, but also on the flatscreen adaptation and subsequent console ports.”

Tim Schumann, who worked as a senior technical sound designer, added, “Unfortunately, today is my day to post about losing my job in the games industry. It’s a sad day, and I wish the best for everyone who worked at Survios…As for me, I saw this coming a while ago. I am going to take a bit of time to re-evaluate my position in the games industry. Games are still my first passion and hobby, but I’d be lying if I said the last couple of years didn’t have me re-evaluating my place in this industry.”

It’s a surprising turn of events, coming hot on the heels of a Switch 2 port for Rogue Incursion, which was to be followed by a sequel that continued its story after the first title ended on a cliffhanger. However, it’s disappointingly likely that we might never get to see how things pan out for Zula – or the recently announced PS4 report – if reports of Survios shutting down are true.

It would be quite a shame, considering that Rogue Incursion: Part One was pretty entertaining in its finest hours, and a reasonably good package overall. There is no official confirmation or denial from Survios of its status at this time, but stay tuned for more updates in the meantime.

The list includes the Mauler Twins, Agent Spider, Damien Darkblood, Oliver, Angstrom Levy, Dinosaurus, and Volcanikka. The post was accompanied by a video clip featuring alleged voice lines for many of the characters listed. Interestingly, the potential addition of Agent Spider to the Invincible VS roster might make many happy, since the character’s incarnation in Amazon’s animated series is essentially an homage to Marvel’s ever-popular superhero Spider-Man. The character’s voice lines could be heard in the video clip at about the 1:30 mark.

Adding further fuel to this is the fact that Omni-Man’s interactions with Agent Spider can also be heard, which include references to the character’s actor from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films—J.K. Simmons—who calls Agent Spider “a public menace”.

However, until Quarter Up makes an official statement confirming these characters, the list should be taken with a grain of salt. The studio has previously only confirmed that Universa and The Immortal will come to the game in Summer 2026, and two more characters part of its Year 1 pass will arrive in Fall 2026 and Winter 2026, respectively.

Quarter Up and publisher Skybound Games celebrated the launch of Invincible VS with a trailer. It focuses primarily on the hard-hitting, violent gameplay of the fighting game, with a variety of characters showcased, including Dupli-Kate and Allen the Alien.

Leading up to its release, Quarter Up had also released a trailer revealing some of the details of the fighting game’s single-player story mode. The story revolves around Omni-Man’s return to Earth as part of his goals of conquest, bringing along his Viltrumite allies. The trailer itself started off with Invincible facing Omni-Man, before quickly cutting away to show us some of the other characters engaging in fights as well.

MultiverSusie has been making a name for themselves with fighting game leaks, with a recent social media post indicating that NetherRealm Studios, while working on a new fighting game based on DC’s superheroes, might be moving away from the Injustice branding.

While this move would make sense, especially since it has been close to an entire decade since the release of Injustice 2, the decision would also allow NetherRealm Studios to focus on other DC storylines, such as its ongoing Absolute Universe comic line, which reimagines just about every mainline character in the DC line-up in new, darker ways.

The original Injustice: Gods Among Us was released back in 2013 on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Its story revolved around Superman becoming evil due to a series of events orchestrated by Joker and Harley Quinn, prompting Batman to reach across to the mainline DC universe to seek help from the more heroic versions of the superheroes. The title was followed up in 2017 by Injustice 2, which brought in further expansions to the in-game story, as well as the roster, and came out on PC, PS4 , and Xbox One. Versions of both titles were also made on Android and iOS.

“I was told that the Microsoft Gaming entity was a temporary legal thing that they set up specifically to facilitate the Activision Blizzard acquisition.” While far from an outright confirmation, this would indicate that the rebranding would have happened regardless of whether it was still Phil Spencer at the helm or if current Xbox CEO Asha Sharma had taken the reins.

The rebranding was announced last month, with Sharma and CCO Matt Booty discussing how it will affect the company’s plans moving forward. In a joint statement, the duo said, “‘Microsoft Gaming’ describes our structure, but it does not describe our ambition. So, we are going back to where we started and changing our team’s name. We are Xbox. We are a high agency culture where wild and wonderful ideas thrive. Our job is not to smooth over our differences, but to connect everyone into something greater than any one studio or product.”

As for its ambitions with the next-generation Xbox, dubbed Project Helix, Booty and Sharma spoke about wanting to “lead in performance” and confirmed that the console will be able to play PC and console games.

The rebranding was followed up by Xbox unveiling a brand new black and green logo that served as a call-back to the original Xbox branding in 2001, when the first console in the line-up was launched. The new logo was revealed in a social media post, accompanied by a simple message proclaiming that “We Are Xbox”. The announcement drew plenty of comments from a host of gaming-adjacent companies, including Razer, Mountain Dew, and Discord.

Sharma’s “Return to Xbox” initiative was first brought up back in March, where she reportedly spoke about the future of Xbox as a brand, and how the company will refocus its efforts on making sure that its consoles become an attractive place for gamers once again.

“I have three commitments that I laid out. We will deliver great games,” she reportedly said. “Everything is downstream of great games, that means empowering studios to do our best work. The second thing is the ‘return to Xbox,’ we are going to start with console, and make sure that we understand that this is our reference experience. We will meet players where they are, and build experiences that are instant, seamless, and accessible. And third, we are living through an unprecedented era of change. We will build for the future of play.”

Insider @xj0nathan is back with another report following some tests for the title on April 30th. Unfortunately, it seems things haven’t improved, with one source telling him that it was “really f****** awful.” “It’s supposed to come out by the end of the year, but there’s a good chance it’ll get delayed or even canceled.” He also solicited further impressions from those who went hands-on with the title.

So what is Invictus anyway? When you think of a multiplayer Assassin’s Creed title, then something like Black Flag’s competitive multiplayer or even Unity’s co-op missions would come to mind. However, it seems that it’s more like a Fall Guys-esque title with “cartoonish characters.” The alleged visual style has been further described by @xj0nathan as “somewhere between realistic and cel-shaded” – similar to Fortnite but less “cartoonish.”

Of course, Jean Guesdon, head of content on the franchise at Vantage Studios, confirmed in March that Invictus is still in the works, calling it “a new approach to multiplayer in the franchise.” Interestingly, he added that it “isn’t quite what the rumors have suggested” and that with player feedback, the team is “exploring ways to bring the community in earlier so we can shape the experience together.”

If it’s indeed launching this year, we probably won’t have to wait long to find out what that means. Also, given the alleged removal of magical elements and 50 developers from Codename Hexe, it wouldn’t be surprising if Guesdon has mandated severe changes to Invictus since Ubisoft’s big reset. As always, stay tuned for more details as they’re revealed.

Of course, the next mainline Halo is also reportedly in development on the same engine. But what about the rumored remakes for Halo 2 and 3? Those are reportedly early in development in parallel to Halo: Campaign Evolved, and they’ll release regardless of the latter’s success. Apparently, they were under consideration from the beginning, which would make sense, since rumours of their existence began fairly quickly.

Aside from embracing sprint and lacking multiplayer, it seems there will be some tease of the remakes in Campaign Evolved’s new prequel missions, specifically involving the alleged Brutes. These reportedly appear in the three new prequel missions (alongside an apparent new Covenant faction) with designs based on original art from Halo: Reach.

Neither Xbox nor Halo Studios has confirmed the existence of the Halo 2 and 3 remakes. However, it could announce a release date for Halo: Campaign Evolved on June 7th at the Xbox Games Showcase. It’s apparently out on July 28th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC with early access beginning on July 23rd.