AMD CEO Lisa Su indicated the next Xbox console may launch in 2027, suggesting Microsoft's next-generation gaming platform could arrive sooner than expected. PCWorld reports that AMD and Microsoft are collaborating on a new chip that will power both desktop and portable Xbox devices with advanced AI and machine learning capabilities. The upcoming Xbox is expected to feature a hybrid platform combining local hardware with cloud gaming technology for enhanced gaming experiences. AMD CEO Lisa Su says Microsoft aims to launch its next generation of Xbox in 2027. The information came in connection with AMD's latest quarterly report, in which Su says development of a new Xbox chip with Microsoft is on track for a launch that year, reports Engadget .

A very enjoyable family console. You might not have heard of the Nex Playground, but it's a tiny gaming system built entirely around Kinect-like games. With its camera and computer vision processing, the $249 Nex Playground can track up to four players as effectively as Microsoft's old Xbox motion tracker, according to Engadget's Devindra Hardawar. The hardware is cute and well-designed, there are plenty of games, and it works offline. The only issue is the ongoing subscription needed to access most games.

This $249 AI console has the best elements of the Kinect. Just be prepared for ongoing subscription fees. It's the year 2026 and the hottest game in my living room is . No, I'm not in the midst of an ill-advised retro mobile gaming kick. Instead, my family and I have been jumping around and slicing flying fruit in our living room using the Nex Playground .

PCWorld observes that Xbox appears to be losing ground as gaming shifts toward PC-based living room experiences, with handheld PCs and cloud streaming leading this transformation. Valve's Steam Deck shows 20% of users dock their devices for TV gaming, while rumors suggest Microsoft's next Xbox may actually run Windows rather than proprietary console hardware. This shift matters because it offers superior gaming experiences through services like GeForce Now on smart TVs and versatile handheld PCs that double as home consoles. While wandering the show floor at CES 2026, I was struck by the future of living room gaming. What was once the realm of gaming consoles seems to be turning into PC territory.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Not every upgrade noticeably enhances gaming fun, but some hardware improvements deliver immediate impact and stay impressive over time. Peripherals and accessories can unlock more potential than you might expect. In this article, we'll highlight the components that turn a solid PC into a noticeably better gaming system, whether you're into shooters, MMOs, or story-driven games. A programmable mechanical keyboard is one of the first underestimated devices.

To tap into the growing market of cloud gaming, whereby game graphics is rendered in the cloud and streamed back to the user as a video feed, network operators are creating monetizable assurance services that dynamically provision network resources. However, without accurately measuring cloud gaming user experience, they cannot assess the effectiveness of their provisioning methods. Basic measures such as bandwidth and frame rate by themselves do not suffice, and can only be interpreted in the context of the game played and the player activity within the game. This paper equips the network operator with a method to obtain a real-time measure of cloud gaming experience by analyzing network traffic, including contextual factors such as the game title and player activity stage. Our method is able to classify the game title within the first five seconds of game launch, and continuously assess the player activity stage as being active, passive, or idle. We deploy it in an ISP hosting NVIDIA cloud gaming servers for the region. We provide insights from hundreds of thousands of cloud game streaming sessions over a three-month period into the dependence of bandwidth consumption and experience level on the gameplay contexts.

Human networks greatly impact important societal outcomes, including wealth and health inequality, poverty, and bullying. As such, understanding human networks is critical to learning how to promote favorable societal outcomes. As a step toward better understanding human networks, we compare and contrast several methods for learning, from a small data set, models of human behavior in a strategic network game called the Junior High Game (JHG). These modeling methods differ with respect to the assumptions they use to parameterize human behavior (behavior vs. community-aware behavior) and the moments they model (mean vs. distribution). Results show that the highest-performing method, called hCAB, models the distribution of human behavior rather than the mean and assumes humans use community-aware behavior rather than behavior matching. When applied to small societies (6-11 individuals), the hCAB model closely mirrors the population dynamics of human groups (with notable differences). Additionally, in a user study, human participants were unable to distinguish individual hCAB agents from other humans, thus illustrating that the hCAB model also produces plausible (individual) human behavior in this strategic network game.

A little more than a decade ago, the video-game designer Davey Wreden experienced a crippling success. In October, 2013, he and a collaborator, William Pugh, released the Stanley Parable HD, a polished and expanded version of a prototype that Wreden had developed in college, and which he had made available, free of charge, two years before. Wreden and Pugh hoped that they might sell fifty thousand or so copies of the new version in the course of its lifetime. They sold that many on the first day. Wreden was twenty-five years old, and he had everything he'd ever wanted: money, success, recognition.

Graphical assets play an important role in the design and development of games. There is potential in the use of generative tools, to aid in creating graphical assets, thus improving game design and development pipelines. However, there is little research to address how the generative methods can fit into the wider pipeline. We conducted a user study with 16 game designers and developers to examine their preferences regarding generative tools for graphical assets. The findings highlight that early design stage is preferred by all participants (mean values above 0.67 and p < .001 for early stages). Designers and developers prefer to use such tools for creating large amounts of variations at the cost of quality as they can improve the quality of the artefacts once they generate a suitable asset (mean value 0.17 where 1 is high quality, p < .001). They also strongly (mean value .78, p < .001) raised the need for better integration of such tools in existing design and development environments and the need for the outputs to be in common data formats, to be manipulatable and integrate smoothly into existing environments (mean 3.5 out of 5, p = .004). The study also highlights the requirement for further emphasis on the needs of the users to incorporate these tools effectively in existing pipelines. Informed by these results, we provide a set of guidelines for creating tools that meet the expectations and needs of game designers and developers.

Released in 2010 and bundled with the Xbox 360, the Kinect looked like the future – for a brief moment, at least. A camera that could detect your gestures and replicate them on-screen in a game, the Kinect allowed players to control video games with their bodies. It was initially a sensation, selling 1m units in its first 10 days; it remains the fastest-selling gaming peripheral ever. However, a lack of games, unreliable performance and a motion-control market already monopolised by the Nintendo Wii caused enthusiasm for the Kinect to quickly cool. Microsoft released a new version of the Kinect with the Xbox One in 2013, only for it to become an embarrassing flop; the Kinect line was unceremoniously discontinued in 2017.