We're back: The Meta Quest Gaming Showcase returns June 1 at 10:00 am PT on Twitch, Facebook, YouTube (plus YouTube in Japan), and in Meta Horizon Worlds.

This is a banner year for VR, and the third annual Meta Quest Gaming Showcase is our biggest celebration of the depth and breadth of content across the Meta Quest Platform yet. We'll have over 40 minutes of content, including a brand-new pre-show of game updates and debut trailers to help you count down before the Showcase kicks into high gear, as well as a post-show developer roundtable for a deep-dive conversation around some upcoming games. And as in years past, you can expect new game announcements, gameplay first-looks, updates to existing games, and more during the main event.

Experience the visually stunning world of Layers of Fear, one of the first games to utilize the power of Unreal Engine 5 and advanced technological tools. Come with us on an immersive journey as we explore how we incorporated these cutting-edge features to bring you one of the most visually striking horror games out there. With the latest engine, we expedited the development process and introduced a host of technical novelties that make this game a spectacular visual treat. The Lumen, Ray Tracing, and Niagara effects helped us create visuals and effects that are beyond words and feel lifelike.

The canvas awaits its final brushstrokes. The stage calls for its lead actor. The novel needs its final chapter. It's time to face your fears. One. Last. Time. The series, which has left a mark on narrative-driven first-person psychological horror games, returns to tell its final spine-chilling story in Layers of Fear.. The series' crowning work is the definitive way to experience the critically acclaimed franchise as it features Layers of Fear and Layers of Fear 2, as well as all DLCs (including the new 'The Final Note' DLC that will give you a new perspective on the Layers of Fear storyline) and the never-before-told story of The Writer, which will tie everything together. Built on Unreal Engine 5, Layers of Fear supports Ray Tracing, HDR and 4K resolution to make the stunning visuals, and your nightmarish experience, as immersive and realistic as possible.

The PARADOX UNFOLDS BEFORE YOU. A Mad King, a mysterious Drifter, and a color-shifting unreality as sublime as it is deadly combine in the latest addition to Warframe's ever-expanding universe, The Duviri Paradox! A landscape out of time and space - whether you are just starting with Warframe or have been playing for years, The Duviri Paradox will be available to all players. From the very beginning of your journey, all Tenno can choose to begin at the ending and play The Duviri Paradox. Experience it for yourself this April on all platforms and play through a brand new Cinematic Quest, a whole new space in the Origin System and Endless Mission varieties, as well as loads of new Customizations to personalize your Operator, Drifter and Warframes!

Depending on the mood of its ruler, Dominus Thrax, the color-shifting world of Duviri will appear differently - painting the swirling skies a poisonous green shade for Envy, or unleashing a wrathful red firestorm in Anger. As The Drifter, you are suspended in a never-ending cycle of life, death and rebirth for Thrax's entertainment. Each Spiral will present you with its own set of unique challenges, and lead you across some of the most varied and beautiful landscapes ever seen in Warframe.

The Sky UK news network has gathered intel from industry and government sources about an industry event that is due to take place next week at a very famous location - 10 Downing Street - the residence of the UK's Prime Minister. Sky News has been informed that Microsoft has been invited to attend the showcase by the UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) industry organization - best described as the main trade body for the nation's games and interactive entertainment sector. The American technology behemoth is expected to display and demonstrate their Xbox gaming product range in front of top politicians and key entertainment industry figures. There is no mention of representatives from Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) being invited to attend in a similar capacity. The timing of this UKIE organized event (to take place on April 26) is highly controversial as it will coincide with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority's statutory deadline to deliver a Phase-2 verdict on Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulatory body has already delivered a provisional approval of the aforementioned deal, but stated that it required more time to investigate the potential for irregularities in competition within the cloud gaming sector. The Phase-2 verdict, due to be delivered next week, is anticipated to include the antitrust watchdog's finalized judgement on cloud gaming market affairs. Sky's insider sources in the city of London have speculated that Microsoft could face a humiliating situation at the 10 Downing-hosted party, if by coincidence the CMA changes its opinion on the Activision Blizzard takeover bid. If the competition regulator stays consistent with its (earlier) provisional decision, Microsoft could be criticized for its extensive courting of government organizations - not only in the UK, but around the world.

It's time to tune into the next chapter. OXENFREE II: Lost Signals will launch July 12, 2023! Make sure it's on your wishlist so you can be among the first to play. This game has been a labor of love and we've been fueled by the passion of our community. We're counting down the days until you have the game in your hands. We cannot wait for you to finally meet Riley and make life altering choices while overcoming supernatural challenges that threaten to destroy her future.

Five years after the events of OXENFREE, Riley returns to her hometown of Camena to investigate mysterious radio signals. What she finds is more than she bargained for. In the small coastal town, unnaturally occurring electromagnetic waves are suddenly causing interference with electrical and radio equipment. Reluctantly, Riley Poverly, an environmental researcher, returns to her hometown to investigate the mystery. As you go on this journey with Riley, you'll shape every step of the story through your choices. How you choose to deal with the supernatural events at hand will forever alter the future.

In just over two months, players will finally get their hands on Final Fantasy XVI, the next mainline installment of the Final Fantasy series. The game follows Clive Rosfield as he harnesses powerful Eikons to overcome his tragic destiny. Today's State of Play not only explores intricate details of the story and world lore, but also gives a first glimpse into the game's party combat and colossal battles with new Eikons.

We hope today's broadcast was exciting for everyone, both for fans keeping up with Final Fantasy XVI updates, and those who are hearing about the game for the first time. Get a deeper look at combat, stunning Eikon battles, and the world of Valisthea before FFXVI arrives on PS5 June 22.

Explore the world of Ospolis and discover fabulous treasures in this comic book style FPS. The Explorator is a game inspired by oldschool FPS with a cell shading visual style, as an explorer you take your courage in both hands to set foot on the most dangerous island of the known world, Ospolis.

Legends say that the legendary city of Atlantis lies beneath this island, which has been suddenly overrun by goblins and monsters that have emerged from the bowels of the underground tunnels drilled by unwary explorers confident of finding this famous city. Explore mysterious counter-zones and brave dangers to discover priceless treasures buried beneath the ruins of Atlantis.

Ubisoft has reversed its February decision to be a presence at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, instead it will be holding a separate event in the city with coincidental timing. Ubisoft spokesperson Heather Haefner yesterday provided a statement to The Verge: "E3 has fostered unforgettable moments across the industry throughout the years. While we initially intended to have an official E3 presence, we've made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction, and will be holding a Ubisoft Forward Live event on June 12 in Los Angeles. We look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon."

Ubisoft had previously confirmed its attendance in a statement to Games Industry.biz earlier this year: "E3 is a special moment for our industry and we are excited to showcase our strong line-up in Los Angeles in June. We are still finalizing the details of our plans and look forward to sharing more soon." CEO Yves Guillemot has also hinted in the recent past that he wanted the company to attend E3 2023, but this was prior to the whole event being given the go ahead by co-organizers Entertainment Software Association and ReedPOP. E3 2023 is set to be the first in-person Electronic Entertainment Expo event held since 2019.

Hexworks and CI Games have shown off their upcoming RPG, Lords of the Fallen, as part of the State of Unreal GDC Showcase. The trailer demonstrates the team's ambitions and the use of Unreal Engine 5 has allowed them "to create the most immersive game experience possible". The game's character customization system is a cumulation of UE5 generated geometry and 3D scans taken from real life human models. The development team states that this allows players to "create unique faces and bodies by dynamically morphing between a huge range of shapes before finessing the finer details."

Unreal Engine 5's Lumen Global Illumination has been put to good use by the team - the game's complex and rich environments are lit in dramatic and atmospheric fashion, all in real time, with an added layer of technical accomplishment due to the player being able to swap between two parallel worlds. Hexworks devised its own custom toolset to enable the seamless shift from Axiom, the realm of the living, to Umbral, the realm of the dead: "This means our artists and designers can ensure these worlds feel intrinsically linked, like two sides of the same coin... even if one side is decidedly more horrific than the other."

Starfield's official launch date has been revealed in a brand-new enigmatic trailer, followed by a special message from Game Director Todd Howard. Players can look forward to the deepest dive yet into Bethesda Game Studios' latest epic at the Starfield Direct, coming June 11, 2023.
Xbox also confirmed its plans for an Xbox Games Showcase on June 11, 2023. It is set to air before the Starfield Direct.

25 years in the making, Starfield introduces an entirely new frontier to explore—space. In 2330, you join Constellation, the last group of space explorers seeking rare artifacts throughout the galaxy. Venture through the stars and get to know a memorable cast of characters on a quest to answer humanity's greatest question—what is out there? Where will Starfield take you?
Starfield arrives exclusively on Xbox Series X|S and PC on September 6, 2023. Play it day one with Xbox Game Pass.

Intel Arc Alchemist graphics cards span both gamer and creator/professional user market sector, where we witnessed Intel announce gamer and pro-vis GPU SKUs. Today, we are seeing the usage of the flagship Arc Alchemist SKU called A770 in Blender rendering with ray tracing enabled. The GPU is designed to have a DG2-512 GPU with 512 EUs, 4096 Shading Units, 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, and 32 Xe cores for ray tracing, be a powerhouse for games, and handle some professional software as well. At SIGGRAPH 2022, Bob Duffy, Intel's Director of Graphics Community Engagement, showcased a system with Arc A770 GPU running Blender Cycles with ray tracing and denoising.

While we don't have any comparable data to showcase, the system managed to produce a decent rendering in Blender 3.3 LTS release, using Intel's oneAPI. The demo scene had 4,369,466 vertices, 8,702,031 edges, 4,349,606 faces, and 8,682,950 triangles, backed by ray tracing and live denoising. We are yet to see more detailed benchmarks and how the GPU fares against the competition.

PowerColor today has finally taken the lid off most of its RX 6800 XT Red Devil graphics card. As expected, we're looking at a triple-fan custom cooling solution with black looks and red and orange LED accents (whether or not these can be customized according to your rig's color scheme remains unclear). The front of the card really does look like the teeth of some devilish creature.

Rumor place the PowerColor RX 6800 XT Red Devil as launching as early as next week, a very sort amount of time since the first, AMD reference-designed graphics cards hit the market (that's tomorrow, by the way). The RX 6800 XT has been painted by AMD as delivering comparable performance to NVIDIA's RTX 3080 graphics card at a better thermal design power and with a more robust memory subsystem, so PowerColor, as one of AMD's most recognizable board partners, should be in for huge demand if events so unfold.

ASUS has held its Republic of Gamers (ROG) day, and at the event, there was a special graphics card. Spotted there was a GeForce RTX 3090 GPU in the form of ASUS ROG STRIX GUNDAM edition. With an appeal based on a famous anime series GUNDAM, ASUS has decided to launch a new product line made up of a motherboard and a graphics card. The new ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 ROG STRIX GUNDAM Edition features the same specifications as the regular RTX 3090 edition, just with an increased clock speed of 1890 MHz, three 8-pin power connectors, and a maximum power limit of 480 Watts.

The card features a white triple slot body with three fans cooling the heatsink. When it comes to the availability of this card, it is said to be a limited edition only sold to the Asian market. The price tag will carry a premium over the regular ROG STRIX model, with a cost of 16,999 Yuans (~2530 USD). The standard ROG STRIX model comes at a 1799 USD price tag, meaning that you will pay 730 USD more for this limited edition product. The availability is supposedly going to be even worse than with current cards, meaning that only a few people will get their hands on these if the current situation is any reference.More pictures follow.

Sony today via a livestream finally showcased their hardware design for the next generation of consoles, and let's get one thing right out of the way: the company will be launching two console versions. This is a relatively unexpected twist - unexpected, because if anything, we were expecting two new consoles from Microsoft (remember the Lockhart rumors?), not from Sony. However, the PS5 will be eventually launching in two versions - a mainline console, and an all-digital spinoff.

For now, details are all but absent - the only thing we know for sure is that the digital version of the PS5 won't be carrying a 4K BluRay player. That will undoubtedly reduce the final pricing of the digital version compared to the mainline console. It's unclear whether this console has some sort of streaming integration with a service such as PS Now, offloading games processing to the cloud. If it doesn't, though, and if the only hardware difference between the two versions is the presence of the 4K BluRay player, we're likely talking about a $100/€100 difference - tops. Remember that the Xbox One S, which currently retails for around $250, too possesses a 4K Blu Ray player, so there's only so much that can be recouped from cutting that particular hardware piece. As you might've guessed by now, pricing is still being manifested as if it were a unicorn.