Gaming

YouTube is now testing multiplayer on two of its casual Playables games, Ludo Club (which is basically Sorry!) and Magic Tiles 3 (a music game).

More new Playables features are on the horizon: “We’re just getting started testing out new features for YouTube Playables with more to come in the future,” YouTube says.

The company has announced that “the first games playable with the LG Magic Remote” are Cut the Rope and Thief Puzzle. Both puzzle games are available now and “optimized for seamless play” with the motion-sensing remote.

Anbernic left out some important details when it announced its GBA-inspired RG34XX handheld emulator last week. But according to @RetroGameCorps and Retro Dodo, we now know it will go on sale starting at 5AM ET on December 16th and will be priced at $70 and discounted to $64 for the first three days. The original Nintendo GBA debuted at $99.99 in 2001.

A Reddit user discovered that Panic has quietly introduced a 10W AC adapter that matches the Playdate handheld’s bright yellow aesthetic. It’s available now for $5 and works with the USB-C to USB-A cable that’s included with the Playdate, but I would have gladly paid more for a USB-C port and a matching yellow USB-C to USB-C cable.

Microsoft had stopped offering 24H2 to gamers with certain Ubisoft games installed, but now it will for Avatar: Frontlines of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws, Microsoft writes in an update spotted by XDA Developers.

Windows Update will offer the download within 48 hours of applying a “temporary” patch, the company says. Assassin’s Creed games like Valhalla remain affected and would preclude your system, though.

I’m still working on my GPD Win Max 2 review, and there’s now a more powerful model on sale. It’s pricier at $1,500 — but the 8840U version I’m using is now discounted to $1,000, so that’s great!

This is the best tiny Windows machine I’ve used, though I find I want a mouse. It’s also an OK handheld.

Rumors that a buyout of Ubisoft is imminent continue apace. According to a report in Reuters, the Guillemot family who founded and currently have a 15 percent stake in the company, is considering a buyout deal that will let them retain control of the company. Right now, Chinese developer Tencent is the likely choice of buyer for the Assassin’s Creed developer.

Steam Box? Gaming Chromebook? Take your best guess — but it sure looks like Johnny Deng, a Valve electrical engineer, is testing to ensure a powerful new “AMD Lilac” can properly control your TV (or vice versa) over HDMI.

It’s fascinating to think about. Why would Valve use ChromeOS instead of SteamOS? Valve did tell us it’d “love to work with third-parties” on living room extensions...

A Strands-maker website had also hosted an archive of The New York Times’ Strands puzzles, but the archive is gone now. The DMCA notice, which has been viewed by The Verge, was shared with the developer of the website yesterday.

Last month, I reported that the NYT sent a cease and desist letter to have an unauthorized Connections archive removed.

Nvidia has just released its latest driver (566.36) and it’s the first to include the optional Nvidia app instead of the GeForce Experience. It also includes Game Ready support for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and a fix for Forza Horizon 5 and God of War Ragnarök crashes. You can download it over at Nvidia’s website.

We pointed out yesterday that Bethesda’s original grid included some processors that don’t exist. You can see the corrected grid on Bethesda’s website.

Jim Kjellin, MachineGames’ CTO, also explained to The Verge why hardware ray tracing is required even at minimum specs:

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle uses a technique called global illumination to light the environment and characters. Our engine MOTOR, used by MachineGames, uses hardware raytracing to calculate this. While this isn’t what players may typically think of as “ray tracing,” the compatible hardware is required to do this is in a performant, high fidelity way.

Update December 5th: Updated quote attribution.

The developer of Stardew Valley (real name Eric Barone) shared a progress update about his next game, ConcernedApe’s Haunted Chocolatier, which he first announced more than three years ago. He’s still working on Haunted Chocolatier, but development was slowed down by the massive Stardew Valley 1.6 update.

“Regardless of dev blog timing, know that the game will eventually be finished and come out,” ConcernedApe says.

Genie 2 is “capable of generating an endless variety of action-controllable, playable 3D environments for training and evaluating embodied agents,” according to a blog post.

Check out the videos in a blog post in this X thread from project lead Jack Parker-Holder. They’re really impressive, though I have some concerns about if future models could take away work from human developers.

This year Microsoft highlights your preferred gaming platform, total time played, and number of games played for its Xbox year in review. You can see how you stack up against other players, how much gamerscore you earned in 2024, and a list of your favorite games. There’s even a little shout-out from Xbox chief Phil Spencer, too.

In the most obvious piece of merchandise in recent memory, you can soon buy a pack of actual Balatro playing cards. Not included: a pen to mark them up appropriately.

Sony is launching a fancy free demo for Gran Turismo 7 with the clever name My First Gran Turismo. It’ll be available on December 6th on both PS4 and PS5, and is aimed at newcomers to the franchise, and racing sims in general. And if you get hooked? You can transfer over your progress to the full game.

AMD could be about to announce its next-generation GPUs at CES 2025 in January, and now AMD’s own ROCm library is referencing two unannounced GPUs. The RX 8800 and RX 8600 have both appeared in the ROCm code, just as AMD’s graphics boss Jack Huynh has confirmed he’s holding a CES keynote. Nvidia is also rumored to be launching its RTX 5000 series GPUs at CES.

Fortnite’s new Japanese-themed season is excellent, but some players have expressed frustrations about changes to XP rewards that appear to make XP gains slower.

In response, Epic Games just announced a few adjustments to boost how much XP you can get, and it’s promising to make “further adjustments as needed.”