That said, it is a triple-A title and that reportedly extends to the budget. Forbes’ Paul Tassi claims that its budget is “over $200 million” and may even be closer to $250 million. The kicker is that it allegedly doesn’t include maintenance or new content. Are end-game activities like Ranked Mode and Cryo Archive, which launched several weeks after, included? We can’t really say.

However, it’s very likely that the mid-season balance patch and new Implants fall under new content, as will any new maps, Runners, weapons, cosmetics, and much more.

A lifetime peak concurrent player count of 88,337 on Steam and less than 30,000 in the past 24 hours would sound disastrous with that kind of budget. After all, Marathon costs $40, and if it reportedly sold 1.2 million, that’s nowhere close to breaking even. However, Sony could be playing the long game and relying more on recurring revenue from a dedicated hardcore player base.

We’ll find out in the coming months, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out our review of Marathon here.

And burn it did, thanks to a controversial launch by CD Projekt RED that also led to one of the most significant redemption stories in gaming. In September 2023, it felt like that story had come full circle. Update 2.0 fully revamped the game, allowing it to achieve its potential in every way, and Phantom Liberty delivered a stellar narrative with an unimaginable yet fitting narrative catharsis. CD Projekt RED got their win, finished their story, so on and so forth. Roll credits.

Except it didn’t stop. Granted, supporting a game for almost three years after launch was already notable, but it’s now April 2026, and Cyberpunk 2077 has finally received PS5 Pro support. You know, the same feature that the developer said there were no plans for back in 2024.

The best part about this update isn’t that it supports the regular PSSR for dynamic 4K. No, this is the Upgraded PSSR, which offers better image quality. It could have stopped there, but it went even further and implemented 8-way Bounding Volume Hierarchy to further improve the ray-traced lighting, reflections and shadows. That’s on top of Variable Rate Shading, and improved ray-tracing cache and object queries.

Which probably would have been enough on its own, but it also went a step further and added three different modes. You can opt for Performance Mode if a higher frame rate is most important, except now it can run at up to 90 frames per second on displays with Variable Refresh Rate support. Ray Tracing Mode delivers “only” 60 FPS but ensures ray tracing for all shadows. Ray-traced reflections are available with transparent objects and vehicle paint.

However, if you want the full Night City experience, then Ray Tracing Pro Mode is it. Alongside everything else, you get ray-traced ambient occlusion, emissive lighting and skylights at 40 frames per second on high refresh rate monitors. Even if you don’t have the latter, hitting 30 FPS with such fidelity and image quality is pretty impressive.

I know, I know – there’s no New Game Plus, no third-person perspective, and nothing for other platform holders to really latch on to. It’s a bummer, but the fact that CD Projekt RED is still supporting Cyberpunk 2077 to this extent is insane.

You could argue that it’s because this is their highest revenue earner, and you would absolutely be right, with over 35 million copies sold as of November 2025 (even reaching that milestone faster than The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt). However, it achieved those sales even without giving anyone any reason to believe that PS5 Pro support is on the way. Even if adding support did nothing to boost sales, it recognized that it’s a feature that a subset of players, however small, wanted for a long time, and set about delivering something it never promised.

Furthermore, despite the game still selling extremely well, it’s removing any barriers to entry. Last year, Cyberpunk 2077 was added to PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium’s Game Catalog. Last month, it debuted for Game Pass Ultimate and Premium, allowing even more players to carve out their legend in Night City.

Even when it released the Nintendo Switch 2 version last year, it didn’t simply port the Ultimate Edition over and call it a day. It delivered solid performance in both handheld and docked modes while adding motion controls, Joy-Con 2 mouse support, gyroscopic aiming, cross-saves, and even touchscreen support for the menus. If that wasn’t enough, the entire base game and Phantom Liberty shipped on a cartridge rather than a Game-Key Card. You bought it, you owned it. No additional shenanigans.

Then again, all of this – the PS5 Pro update, Game Pass and PS Plus releases, and Switch 2 Edition – is just born from a love for the game and the players who brought them to the dance. It’s one of the reasons why CD Projekt RED continued releasing new updates even after dropping the biggest yet.

Features like the Metro System, listening to radio stations on foot, replayable car races, gangs that actively pursue you in the open world if you annoy them enough, vehicle paint jobs, brand new vehicles, an overhauled Photo Mode, Auto Drive – things that you’d otherwise take for granted. Did it have to add all this and more in, even roping in Virtuos? No, but it went ahead anyway and made it all free.

Given everything that happened at launch – the lying, the deception, the disappointment (even when the game had several excellent qualities that held up over the years) – it’s understandable to be cynical about CD Projekt RED. There are still many people who won’t quote-unquote forgive the developer for what happened, and no amount of support will get them to change their minds.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the team put their hearts and souls into this game, and then a little extra on top for more than five years. There was no guarantee that all of this would recoup any goodwill, much less build excitement for the studio’s next projects – The Witcher 4 and Project Orion, aka Cyberpunk 2. Look at the sheer number of titles that are cancelled, month in and month out, despite pouring years and millions into the drain, never mind those that can’t even make it to market.

And yet, here we are, with currently an 88 percent “Very Positive” rating on Steam (94 percent if you consider the recent reviews), a presence that works hand in hand with transmedia like Edgerunners, and near-universal acclaim by those whose story in Night City changed them in ways they could never imagine.

It gives new meaning to the phrase “City of Legends.” Even if the megacorps run rampant, making people’s lives miserable, or crime is at an all-time high, or consumerism has led to all kinds of brand new societal nightmares. Even if it seems Johnny is right about dropping just one more nuke, it all comes together in a way where the player – and their encounters with everyone else – really mattered.

Of course, nothing says that CD Projekt RED has to stop here. With plans to scale its teams to over 450 developers by 2027 for Cyberpunk 2, there’s still plenty of room for additional updates and support. If The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt can supposedly receive that long-rumored free DLC, especially with The Witcher 4 next up on the developer’s release docket, then there’s nothing that says it can’t return to 2077. Maybe it’s a new tactic – using its existing games to hype up their sequels (and making some money in the process). Since the PS5 Pro update is finally here, perhaps that bit about no plans for additional DLCs or expansions won’t hold water for much longer.

We can’t really say for sure until it happens. Until then, we’re returning to Night City – slightly older, perhaps slightly wiser, with fond memories and a drive to make new ones. Because if The City of Dreams has proven anything for fans, it’s that some legends will never fade away.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Aside from being free, we don’t see a reason why you wouldn’t want to get into this one. The unique visuals and a very fun vibe underline the absurd premise of spirits having the ability to craft and inhabit clay pots. These will then partake in 4v4 battles where you try to douse your opponent’s kiln with water. You do that with basic attacks but also have access to special moves depending on your pot’s shape.

Preorders are now live, and you get a generous amount of goodies, which includes Stickers, Glazes, and Sword and Ink Lids, all of which are cool ways to make the pots you craft truly your own. Of course, there’s an in-game store with a lot more options, and Double Fine Productions has promised microstransactions locking you out of getting them.

All in all, it looks like this one’s going to be quite the entertainer if you’re in the market for something different. The trailer’s below if you want to take a look.

Kiln launches on April 23rd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC.

While the release build may have been hard to put down for a significant number of you, there’s no denying that there was room for improvement. Bandai Namco is building on the momentum from previous patches to bring even better performance to the game on all platforms. The gameplay is also getting a few touch-ups, with changes to balancing in combat that buff enemies and make them hit harder in additional playthroughs, but with the rewards of increased Haze.

You’re also going to find a lot of new things to do with the Affinity System, with three different categories to build across all characters and UI changes that make tracking it all a lot easier. There are also new customization and character creation features – check out some of the patch notes below and the full changes here.

For our part, we believe that these changes are going to be quite welcome and could make Code Vein 2 even better than what it was when it came out.

Patch Notes

Optimizations for All Platforms

• Optimized the collision data for certain objects and structures in the field to reduce processing load.
• Optimized the initialization process that occurs when enemies spawn to reduce processing load.
• Reduced the processing load of several partner outfits.
• Optimized enemy spawning to reduce stuttering while riding the motorcycle.
• These consist of further improvements to the optimizations implemented in Ver. 1.0.6.
• Reduced the processing load of attack effects for certain boss enemies.
• Reduced the processing load of effects used in certain weapon formae and magic formae.
• Reduced the processing load of hit effects for certain weapon formae and magic formae.

Feature additions and improvements

1. Addition of a difficulty selection feature for additional playthroughs.

• We have added an Enhance Enemy Difficulty During Replay option to the Game Settings. This setting is enabled by default.
• When you replay the game using your save data, enemies will be stronger and you will earn more Haze when defeating them; however, turning this setting off will restore enemies to their original strength and Haze drops to those of the first playthrough.

2. Addition of an Affinity display and adjustments to the mechanic; additions of Trade and Gift features.

2-1: We added a UI that displays your Affinity with your Partner.

• You can check your Affinity in the Change Partner and Gift screens at a Mistletoe.
• For some Partners, the Affinity is hidden at the start, but it will become visible once you reach the point in the story where you can give them gifts.
• Affinity is divided into three categories: Exploration, Story, and Gifts, each with their own maximum limit. To reach 100% Affinity, you must raise all three categories to their maximum limits.
• Exploration Affinity increases by adventuring with your partners and defeating enemies. Affinity increases more slowly when defeating enemies weaker than the player’s level.
• Story Affinity increases by completing Quests received from your partners and advancing each of their individual episodes. Lou gives no quests; her Story Affinity increases by progressing through the main story.
• Gift Affinity increases by giving your partners food or valuables.

Headlining the cast is Troy Baker (Death Stranding, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle) as Jack Pepper, a soldier turned private investigator who ends up tumbling tail-first into the corruption surrounding Mouseburg. Wanda Fuller, the “resident” journalist of the city, is voiced by Florian Clare, who acted in The Strangers Chapter 1 and 2.

Tammy Tumbler, who assists Jack in upgrading weapons, is played by Camryn Grimes, whose resume includes roles in NCIS, The Mentalist, and even Swordfish. Then there’s Fred Tatasciore (Invincible, Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Dark Ties) who plays John Brown and runs the Little and Big bar. Finally, Frank Todaro of Code Vein 2 and People of Note fame voices Cornelius Stilton, a politician who’s keen on helping Jack.

It’s an eclectic cast, and we can’t wait to see what role they’ll play throughout MOUSE: P.I. For Hire when it launches on April 16th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. Check out our feature for more details in the meantime.

These are rumors that remain unconfirmed at the moment, as Gamersky reports on whispers among leakers that the team behind the game has been laid off after the studio was dissatisfied with the game’s reception. Producer and director Xia Siyuan is apparently a notable one among them. He reportedly registered his own company, although other employees apparently haven’t fared as well. There’s talk of unpaid salaries and legal action – more trouble for a studio that faced extensive controversy when the game was released, owing to its shaky performance dominating much of the initial discourse.

A fair amount of additional content was also allegedly ready to go for Wuchang, which could have helped it gain a little more traction, but might now remain unused courtesy of the team’s exit. That’s a shame, as this is certainly a title that many among us would’ve loved to dive back into to take on new threats and explore more visually stunning levels.

The PS6 handheld, while running on a cheaper APU, also has to contend with including a display and a battery, bringing its BOM up to $493.69. The main PS6 home console—Orion—will seemingly cost $743 to manufacture thanks to its more expensive APU die, which sits at $110.50, as well as a $48 board. Moore’s Law is Dead uses a hypothetical PS6″S” for the sake of comparison – a low-powered console that could be sold alongside the handheld and home consoles which could end up being the least expensive SKU of the lot. Its BOM, when taking the PS6 handheld’s screen and battery out of the equation, comes in at around $404.38.

For contrast, the slim model of the PS5 with the disc drive costs Sony $507.03 to manufacture. Before the recent price hikes, the console was priced at $499, before going up to $649 earlier this month. This new price tag takes 30 percent import tariffs into account.

The PS6 handheld will seemingly cost $499, allowing Sony to make a minor profit off the hardware. Tariffs bring this price tag up to $649. Orion will be the most expensive of the bunch with a $749 price tag. However, if import tariffs continue by then, it will likely end up being priced at $949. The hypothetical PS6S would  work to counter this massive price tag by being priced at around $399.

The host of Moore’s Law is Dead, Tom, has noted that he used to estimate prices like this professionally when he still worked as an engineering account manager. However, as is the case with all rumors, until we get an official announcement by Sony, all of this should be taken with a grain of salt.

However, while memory prices have certainly played a major role in the BOMs for the upcoming consoles, it looks like Tom is expecting import tariffs to play a much larger role in deciding the pricing of the console. He also reiterated that the PS6 will likely cost around $750, and it is very unlikely that Sony will bring its price tag up to $1,000. “The longer people think the PS6 is $1,000, the more they’re going to claw their eyes out when they see it’s not because it’s not. It’s not going to be $1,000. It’s not,” he said.

Even taking the current geo-political landscape into account, and with the assumption that DRAM prices don’t come down by the time Sony wants to launch the consoles, Tom still predicts that the price will likely sit somewhere between $600 and $800.

This prediction runs counter to what analysts believe might happen, with some believing that the recent PS5 price hikes might lead to the PS6 costing 50 percent more.

“From the start, our goal was to create a narrative detective where knowledge is the key,” explains Sergi in the trailer. “We wanted you to experience the same genuine ‘eureka’ moment that we all had in titles like Outer Wilds or The Forgotten City, when everything finally clicks, and the path forward seems clearer than ever.”

Sergi also showcases some of the fancy tools that players will have access to throughout their time in the game, like the SONAR and the vault. These tools can be used alongside each other to give the player a clearer idea of what kind of mysteries they might be dealing with. When it comes to the main setting of the game, Sergi confirms that players will get to explore areas that range from the submerged forest of New England to the city of R’lyeh.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is being developed for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Its story revolves around occult investigator Noah, who is looking into the mysterious disappearances of miners at an underwater facility in the Pacific Ocean.

The game got a trailer back in February that gave us a look at its opening moments. It helped establish the general atmosphere of the upcoming game quite quickly, and also provided a clear look at the kinds of threats players will have to deal with during their investigations.

Another trailer was released last month, providing an overview of the gameplay in Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. This includes things like underwater exploration and how analysing clues works. The protagonist’s companion—an AI assistant named KEY—was also shown off in the trailer.

Interestingly, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss isn’t the only Lovecraft-themed game published by Nacon. ACE Team’s The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu was unveiled back in November 2025 and offers a different take on the Cthulhu mythos by focusing on co-op gameplay rather than a single-player experience.

The title involves teams of four players setting off to a mysterious island that is seemingly filled with treasures (and strange horrors). While players have the simple goal of getting their hands on as much treasure as possible and escaping from the island, things start getting complicated when strange creatures appear. Players can also start suffering from hallucinations, which can range from simply being jump scares to larger-scale ones that can convince you to kill your allies. It’s out on July 15th.

As for Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, it’s coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on April 16th. A free demo is available now on PC.

This means that, in total, the PS5 family of consoles saw 13,539 units sold. The number is dwarfed by the Nintendo Switch 2, which sold 59,543 units in the same week.

The triple-digit sales figures of the PS5 and PS5 Pro in Japan bring the consoles surprisingly close to the Xbox Series X/S. In the same week, the Xbox Series X sold 803 units, while the Xbox Series S sold 129 units. This brings the total number of Xbox consoles sold in Japan in the same week up to 932 units.

When it comes to lifetime sales, the Nintendo Switch 2 has sold 5,011,059 units in Japan since its launch. The PS5 console family, on the other hand, has sold 7,500,537 units since 2020. Xbox Series X/S, comparatively, hasn’t yet cracked a million, having only sold 696,936 units so far.

It is worth noting that the PS5 has gotten quite a bit more expensive in Japan, with the base model now priced at ¥97,980. The PS5 Pro is the most expensive Sony console available right now, with its ¥137,980 price tag. The relative success of the PS5 Digital Edition likely comes down to the fact that there is a more affordable Japan-only version of the console, priced at ¥55,000.

Japan hasn’t been the only country affected by these price hikes, however. The US, UK, and Europe have seen the base PS5’s price go up to $649.99/£569.99/€649.99, up from $549.99/£479.99/€499.99. The PS5 Digital Edition has gotten more expensive as well, priced at $599.99/£519.99/€599.99. Even the game streaming handheld PlayStation Portal hasn’t escaped unscathed, with its price going up to $249.99/£219.99/€249.99. The PS5 Pro was the hardest hit, now priced at $899.99/£789.99/€899.99.

“We know that price changes impact our community, and after careful evaluation, we found this was a necessary step to ensure we can continue delivering innovative, high-quality gaming experiences to players worldwide,” said Sony when it announced prices going up, which came into effect on April 2nd.

Interestingly, Sony’s recent moves to raise the prices of its consoles have led analysts to believe that Nintendo will be following the PlayStation-maker’s lead to do the same thing with the Switch 2. While Nintendo hasn’t yet made any announcements, analysts have noted that rising memory costs will inevitably lead to the company needing to recoup some of its costs through a price hike.

Notably, even a former Nintendo sales lead has expressed similar sentiments. “Unfortunately, I think eventually the hardware price is going to have to go up,” he said. “I think that there’s things that they can and seem to be doing to try and mitigate that, but I also look at this move on software, if I’m reading it correctly, as a way to make a hardware price increase a little bit more palatable.”

You might think that a bunch of people who liked the game as much as we did would obviously be okay with its problems. But that’s far from it. It’s just that we think that love it or hate it, Starfield doubles down on the kind of experience it wants to be, for better or worse. It’s a divisive title not because it falls into the binary viewpoint of good or bad, but because it chooses to be strong in ways that come with specific trade-offs.

Its very strengths are a double-edged sword, the magic of what it truly is clashing with the frustrations that its formula brings to the table. Wondering how that could be? Join us on a trip through Starfield’s star-studded landscape and find out why it has been praised and belittled for just being itself.

The Grand Scheme of Things

Let’s start with Starfield’s size and scope. Its “world” is a literal galaxy just waiting for you to engage with it. As a sci-fi adventure aimed at letting you carve out your own name in the stars, it’s astoundingly large, and deliciously grandiose. Its ambitions rival its size, and perhaps even help define it with the magic of hopping between systems as you engage with the many factions you come across, their quest lines and other distractions making your time with it an adventure that even you can’t really predict from moment-to-moment.

There’s also its emphasis on player agency, with the world at your fingertips and a ton of things for you to do at any given moment. There are factions to choose between, ships to build, planets to scan and learn more about before you visit them, smuggling, mining, and, of course, the RPG side of things to allow you to truly make your character feel like an extension of yourself, a small but shining speck among the stars. It’s a fantasy that truly puts you at the center of it all while still impressing upon you that you’re only a part of a larger universe.

That’s all well and good but we can see where players who didn’t resonate with these strengths are coming from. The game’s scale should have felt seamless, but its systems dictated that the massive universe you’re let loose in was fragmented into menus that got in the way of hopping between planets, loading screens pulling you out of the spell that it cast on you. Its universe felt like a collection of different maps, none of which fed into each other for players who were unable to find their footing.

The very freedom that we loved so much could feel like the game refusing to connect with its spacefarers. Players diving into it around the time of its release were used to their games easing them into whatever the experience was selling, instead of leaving them to discover it all on their own terms. Where other titles provided carefully curated journeys, Starfield was about the journey itself, a distinction that would take time many of its players did not really have at their disposal to make.

The game’s size, meant to inspire a sense of awe and wonder, felt like it was deliberately placing walls that its players had to get past. The freedom that was meant to allow players to craft their own adventure felt like they were left adrift among the stars, without a clear path to the destiny they knew was waiting for them in the blackness of space.

It was a game that asked for time that many of its players could not, or would not, choose to give it.

Learning To Love It

We’ll be honest, we’re pretty clear on why so many of you didn’t click with Starfield right off the bat. Its systems can get overwhelming at first glance, and it does take a bit of time to settle into a routine that works for you. But once you get there, the game opens up into something you might have even adored. The faction questlines we mentioned earlier? We couldn’t get enough of them. The same goes for the slow burn of building our characters from the ground up, engaging with the side content, and the sense of just existing in a world outside of the real one, but just as diverse and unpredictable.

Of course, all of this must factor in the knowledge that Starfield was a game from Bethesda, whose track record of great titles meant that all of these factors were a given. But it also meant that this was a game that needed patience, and a willingness to endure its learning curve. You could even say that we stuck with the game for the sake of a thorough review, and you would have a valid point. But the fact that all of us continued to play it long after we put down our thoughts should speak to that argument.

But as we looked deeper, we began to see a few split seams in the experience, with Bethesda’s usual quirks coming into play. There was a definite stiffness to some parts of our time in the Constellation, and a lack of polish in certain areas. Conversations in which the person we were talking to lacked enough expressions to make it feels real immediately come to mind, along with a bunch of systems that could feel outdated when games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 were already out there.

But again, this was a game from Bethesda, a studio that was known for the eccentricities that its games had in play. Did we think that the fact that Starfield had them felt oddly reassuring in a way? Sure. But did we also think that their presence in a game as ambitious as this one felt like the studio was clinging to its old ways in a world of video games that were rapidly evolving? Also yes.

That’s because to the average gamer, who in all probability has a limited amount of time to engage with a game, first impressions can be hard to shake off. Starfield does take too long to reveal its depth, and it’s very likely that for many gamers, it asked too much of them too early. It demanded patience from a modern audience that was quite unwilling to wait when there were other games that came out with far more accessibility than this one. Understandable, of course, but it was also sad to see so many potential fans miss out on all the fun.

But what exactly were they missing?

Living In The Moment

To us, Starfield was clearly better enjoyed as an RPG sandbox, despite it coming across as a game that was all about getting lost in space. We found joy in engaging with its many factions, navigating the complexities that arose from such interactions along with choosing between all the possibilities for our characters that were laid out in front of us like a very enticing buffet. We bought homes and ships, choosing to express ourselves on the ground while our forays into space were designed to serve specific goals that we had in mind.

But we can see how people who expected to be flying off into the unknown could have felt let down by a lack of organic discovery in the early hours of the game, and in how its moment-to-moment gameplay seemed geared towards keeping their metaphorical boots firmly on the ground. To those players, the pull of gravity on the planets they were exploring might have felt too strong for them to shake off, and rightly so. It was a matter of mismatched expectations that was a major source of the backlash it received.

And with the game finally dropping on the PS5, we expect that the same old arguments are going to be hashed out between all of the newcomers diving into the adventure for the first time. It’s a situation that’s oddly similar to Crimson Desert, another title that doubles down on its identity and dared to take an approach that earned it some backlash even as others have been unable to put it down.

The divisive discourse around Starfield isn’t going to fade because it’s baked into the game’s very foundations, and not from temporary chatter. It may not be the universally loved RPG that many of you might be wanting it to be, but that very divisiveness points to a game that’s special in its own right thanks to how committed it is to a specific vision. The way in which the very facets of its experience that appeal to its fans can be reasons for its others to train their guns on it has made it a fascinating source of conversations around games that make demands of their players, instead of the other way round.

But for those of you who meet it on its terms and tune it to its wavelength, you’re in for a romp through space that’s going to stay with you long after you move on to other titles. And for that, we’re glad that Starfield exists.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.