Halo is summer, Gears and Fable in fall, and the Fallout 3 remaster is still in development, according to a new report

The post Xbox Has Big Plans In 2026, But Is Also Trying To Avoid <i>GTA 6</i>‘s Launch appeared first on Kotaku.

Cortopia Studios and Beyond Frames Entertainment are bringing the Ninja Turtles into virtual reality for the very first time with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City.

Launching on Meta Quest, SteamVR, and Pico this spring and priced at $24.99, pre-orders are now live on Meta Quest, where buyers can take advantage of a 20% early-bird discount.

A brand new gameplay trailer has also been revealed, highlighting the ways players will scramble, leap, and sneak through and atop the sewers and roofs of an atmospheric, comic-style New York City, battling the infamous Foot Clan and their villainous leader, Shredder.

Designed from the ground up for VR, TMNT: Empire City focuses on immersion and optional co-operative play.

“Empire City isn’t about playing one of the Turtles so much as it’s about being one of the Turtles,” says Ace St. Germain, the game’s Creative Director. “Each Turtle has their different strengths, we don’t have traditional, pre-defined classes. Instead, based on your chosen builds, the gear equipped, and playstyle, you can freely organize how you want your sessions to play out.

The team has also released a new developer diary video which dives deeper into the way that combat, traversal, and co-operative play work in Empire City.

A time-limited single-player demo arrives February 23rd as part of Steam Next Fest, giving players the chance to experience the game’s first 15 minutes, and to play as each of the four Turtles. This demo disappears back into the ooze on March 2nd.

Check back as release approaches for more coverage of TMNT: Empire City.

Aerial_Knight’s upcoming game, a tribute to a late friend and collaborator, is a shooter that decenters guns

The post <i>DropShot</i> Is A Hyper-Stylized Shooter Whose Developer Isn’t Taking The Easy Way Out appeared first on Kotaku.

Beat Saber gets Me Porto Bonito (feat. Chencho Corleone) by Bad Bunny in the latest shock drop, now live.

This latest shock drop lands just four days after Bad Bunny’s Album of the Year Grammy win, and days before the Latin musician is set to headline the half-time show at the NFL Super Bowl, the USA’s most popular televised sporting event.

Out now on Quest and SteamVR, Bad Bunny’s track follows recent shock drops, including Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather, Eminem’s Houdini, Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us, and Lady Gaga’s Abracadabra.

Though not available on PlayStation VR and PS VR2, where Meta (who owns Beat Saber) is no longer releasing new content, Bad Bunny’s Me Porto Bonito is available now on SteamVR and the Meta Horizon Store for $1.99.

The company may have one stance, but Aaron Keller says the Overwatch team feels differently

The post Blizzard Is Open To GenAI But The <em>Overwatch</em> Devs Don’t Want It: ‘We Want This To Feel Like A Handcrafted Universe’ appeared first on Kotaku.

Apple acquired Q.ai, reportedly for $1.6 billion, a startup working on converting “silent speech” into text. The technology could be crucial for AR glasses.

If the $1.6 billion value widely reported by mainstream news outlets such as Reuters is accurate, it would represent Apple’s second largest acquisition to date, behind only Beats.

Since its founding in 2022, Q.ai has operated in “stealth mode”, staying very secretive about exactly what it’s working on. But the background of its three co-founders, as well as details in a patent filing, provide strong hints as to what the technology is.

Aviad Maizels, the CEO, previously founded PrimeSense, the company that Apple acquired in 2013 to build Face ID. PrimeSense also licensed some of its technology to Microsoft for the original Kinect. Dr. Yonatan Wexler, the CTO, is a world-class  computer vision expert who was the VP of R&D at OrCam, a company which miniaturized high-end computer vision into a tiny device that clips onto eyeglasses.

Alterego’s ‘Silent Speech’ Could Be The Answer To Dictating Text In Public

Alterego is a wearable device that promises to let you silently dictate text by sensing the subvocal movements of your speech muscles.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The idea of “silent speech” is to let you silently dictate text by sensing the subvocal movements of your speech muscles. You could therefore send a sensitive message while in public, completely privately, or direct an AI assistant without other people around you knowing.

The fundamental idea is not new, and another startup, Alterego, is working on a hardware-based approach that uses sensors attached to your jaw.

What makes Q.ai’s approach special, if its patents are any indication, is that it’s a computer vision approach, using cameras pointed at your jaw instead of attached to it.

For example, the patent Detection of silent speech refers to a “optical sensing head” located “in proximity to a face of the user” that “senses light reflected from the face and to output a signal in response to the detected light”.

Apple Smart Glasses Reportedly Set To Launch In Late 2026

Apple plans to launch its competitor to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses in late 2026, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Apple could potentially integrate Q.ai’s technology into future Apple Vision headsets, AirPods stems, and the smart glasses that Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claim the company is working on.

Meta, meanwhile, is betting on letting you scribble letters on a surface such as your leg, sensing it with an sEMG band worn on your wrist.

What’s clear already is that regardless of which technology wins out, the ability to enter text privately while wearing smart glasses in public will be crucial if the form factor ever hopes to supplant the smartphone.

Managing multiple devices on a workstation has never been easier.

The post Anker’s 8-in-1 USB-C Docking Station Crashes to an All-Time Low, Barely Any Margin Left at This Price appeared first on Kotaku.

Without a single original big-name reveal, the Switch 2 feels like the home of the afterthought

The post Today’s Nintendo Direct Was A Damning Display Of The State Of Switch 2 appeared first on Kotaku.

Set up this wired camera to catch potential intruders outside your home.

The post Ring Floodlight Security Camera (Newest Model) Drops to Its Lowest Price of the Year, With Motion-Activated 1080p HD Video appeared first on Kotaku.

Rumors have been bubbling about a 2.0 overhaul

The post <i>Starfield</i>‘s PS5 Release Date Might Have Just Leaked And It’s Not Far Away appeared first on Kotaku.

They might be different from what they’re used to, but they’re worth experimenting with.

The post SHOKZ Puts Its OpenRun Bone Conduction Headphones on Clearance at a Record Low appeared first on Kotaku.

Horizon Hunters Gathering will launch on PS5 and PC

The post The Next <i>Horizon</i> Game Is A Colorful Three-Player Co-Op Game appeared first on Kotaku.

Great for backup power or outdoor adventures, the BLUETTI Elite 100 V2 portable power station has come down by over $400.

The post BLUETTI Cuts the Elite 100 V2 Portable Power Station 51% Off to Compete With Anker’s Generators appeared first on Kotaku.

The 20-year-old game has no release date for Nintendo’s console

The post <i>The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered</i> Is Coming To Switch 2…Eventually appeared first on Kotaku.

The partner showcase focused on third-party games

The post Everything We Saw At Today’s Nintendo Partner Direct appeared first on Kotaku.

It’s perfect for using as a display, listening to music, and more.

The post Amazon Echo Show 11 Falls Below Black Friday Pricing, Hitting a New Record Low for the Latest Smart Display appeared first on Kotaku.

It’s out in June with a new ‘boost’ mode

The post <i>Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth</i> Wastes No Time Coming To Switch 2 appeared first on Kotaku.

Steam Frame is still shipping sometime in the first half of 2026, although now Valve says the current component shortage has led the company to revise both price and release date of the standalone VR headset.

Valve announced in a hardware news update that Steam Frame, Steam Machine, and Steam Controller are all being affected by the component shortage.

“When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now,” Valve says. “But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then.”

Due to a surge in demand from AI and data centers, RAM and storage prices have increased significantly since this time last year, with PCPartPicker data charting a 300 percent price increase in DDR5 RAM alone.

As component availability dwindles and prices rise, Valve says it “must revisit […] exact shipping schedule and pricing,” noting that both Steam Machine and Steam Frame have especially been affected.

Still, Valve says that its hoping to ship all three products in the first half of the year—ostensibly releasing sometime before July 1st.

Valve told Road to VR in November that it expects the price of Steam Frame to be ‘cheaper than Index’, although the company didn’t qualify pricing further than that. At its 2019 launch, a Valve Index ‘full kit’ was priced at $1,000 (headset, controllers, SteamVR trackers), while the headset alone was priced at $500.

While Valve hasn’t commented on what Steam Machine will cost, it confirmed with YouTuber ‘Skill Up’ back in November the PC won’t be subsidized like a console.

Price estimations are fairly scattered at this point. Linus Tech Tips has suggested the lowest configuration could fetch somewhere around $700, based on a custom PC built on comparable parts.

In early January, Czech retailer Alza may have leaked Steam Machine’s pricing, with the  512GB model priced around $950 USD and the 2TB model at $1,070 USD.

Looking for more Steam Frame news?

Valve Unveils Steam Frame VR headset to Make Your Entire Steam Library Portable: Valve shows off Steam Frame, the standalone headset that can stream and natively play your entire Steam library—with only a few caveats right now.

Hands-on: Steam Frame Reveals Valve’s Modern Vision for VR and Growing Hardware Ambitions: We go hands-on with Valve’s latest and greatest VR headset yet.

Valve Says No New First-party VR Game is in Development: Valve launched Half-Life: Alyx (2020) a few months after releasing Index, but no such luck for first-party content on Steam Frame.

Valve is Open to Bringing SteamOS to Third-party VR Headsets: Steam Frame is the first VR headset to run SteamOS, but it may not be the last.

Valve Plans to Offer Steam Frame Dev Kits to VR Developers: Steam Frame isn’t here yet; Valve says it needs more time with developers first so they can optimize their PC VR games.

Valve Announces SteamOS Console and New Steam Controller, Designed with Steam Frame Headset in Mind: Find out why Valve’s new SteamOS-running Console and controller will work seamlessly with Steam Frame.

Steam Frame vs. Quest 3 Specs: Better Streaming, Power & Hackability: Quest 3 can do a lot, but can it go toe-to-toe with Steam Frame?

Steam Frame vs. Valve Index Specs: Wireless VR Gameplay That’s Generations Ahead : Valve Index used to be the go-to PC VR headset, but the times have changed.

The post Valve Reconsiders Steam Frame Price & Release Date Amid RAM & Storage Shortage appeared first on Road to VR.

It not just offers stunning visuals, but also incredibly smooth performance for all your favorite titles.

The post LG 27″ UltraGear QHD Gaming Monitor Falls 50% to an All-Time Low on Amazon for a Limited Time appeared first on Kotaku.

MindsEye is teasing a fresh 2026 content roadmap

The post One Of 2025’s Biggest Flops Is Trying To Engineer A Big Comeback Almost No One Asked For appeared first on Kotaku.