AlexanderTheGreat

Rumors have been swirling for a while now that Xbox’s flagship series, Halo, might be making the leap to PlayStation in the near future. There have also been rumors about a remake of the OG game. Now, Halo Studios, formerly 343 Industries, has stepped forward to explain that it will provide actual information later this year.

Earlier this month, Xbox boss Phil Spencer ended the company’s Summer Showcase with a tease for what’s coming in 2026, promising a new Fable, a new Gears of War, the next Forza, and hinting at Halo by saying: “and the return of a classic that’s been with us since the beginning.” This followed reports that Halo would leap to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025. Gears of War is making that leap later this year, so it seems plausible Halo might do the same. The rumors and speculation have grown so large that Halo Studios has directly addressed them in a new blog post.

On June 30, Halo Studios Esports Lead Tahir “Tashi” Hasandjekic shared a blog post about the Halo World Championship happening in October and how people can buy tickets for the event. But the blog post also addressed all the speculation about Halo.

“Over the past few weeks, there’s been a fair amount of speculation about when and where more details might emerge about any of the multiple projects Halo Studios is actively working on,” said Tashi. “We don’t usually comment on such matters, but this time we want to enter the chat and share a little more perspective for Halo fans who might be on the fence about whether to attend this year’s event.”

Tashi explained that last October, during Halo WC, the studio unveiled “A New Dawn,” a short video revealing the news that 343 was becoming Halo Studios and shifting to Unreal Engine. He further explained that “A New Dawn” was “just the beginning” and that at this year’s Halo WC, the team “look(s) forward to continuing the conversation.”

“Speculation is always fun, but if you want the official scoop on what Halo Studios has been working on, you won’t want to miss this year’s Halo World Championship,” said Tashi. “We really hope you’ll join us in Seattle this October!”

So Halo might be coming to PS5. There might be a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved happening. There might be more to share beyond that. But we have to wait until October to find out. Ironically Tashi’s post, meant to address speculation, will likely lead to even more speculation and rumors appearing online. October can’t come soon enough.

A founding member of Team Xbox caused a stir on social media over the weekend after posting a video on YouTube criticising the state of the brand in 2025, and particularly the strategy over the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally handheld.

Laura Fryer, who worked as director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group back in the 2000s (as well as being an executive producer on the likes of Gears of War and Too Human), spent much of the 12-minute video questioning why the ROG Xbox Ally exists when it doesn't play any exclusive games or offer anything particularly major to set it apart from Xbox consoles, PCs and even other existing PC handheld devices like the Steam Deck and standard ROG Ally.

As part of this, she claimed the "Xbox Anywhere" message will make the ROG Xbox Ally a hard sell:

"The Xbox Anywhere message sounds great on the surface, but in reality it's just marketing. It's style with no substance. Unfortunately, I don't think marketing is going to be enough. There is literally no reason to buy this handheld."

Fryer went on to explain that she's not happy with the way things are going at Xbox in 2025, particularly when it comes to hardware - and she even suggests Xbox's first-party hardware might be "dead".

Here's a bit more of her closing statement:

 "Obviously, as one of the founding members of the Xbox team, I'm not pleased with how things are today. I don't love watching all the value that I helped create, slowly get eroded away. I'm sad, because from my perspective it looks like Xbox has no desire or literally can't ship hardware anymore, so this partnership is about a slow exit from the hardware business completely. Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead."

Not everything she says here is negative, but it's admittedly pretty brutal for the most part! Her more positive outlook centres around Xbox Game Pass, pointing out that it has great value, while also acknowledging that Xbox can make a lot of money from their "deep portfolio" - using remasters of titles like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as an example.

And, with the 25th anniversary of Xbox coming up, she questions whether 2026 could "maybe" be the year that the "fog will clear and all of us will see the beauty in these latest announcements". Again here's a bit of what she says about this:

 "Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the Xbox, and I'm sure they will have some big announcements and plans for honouring the milestone. Maybe next year is the year? Maybe next year is the year that the fog will clear and all of us will see the beauty in these latest announcements. I guess we'll just have to wait and see."

So, there you go. The full video is at the bottom of the article if you want to hear Fryer's thoughts in full, and it's definitely an interesting watch. We're certainly more optimistic than she is right now, so here's hoping 2026 changes her mindset!

Personally, I can't agree that there's "no reason" to buy the ROG Xbox Ally handheld — it's going to be an ideal entry point for Xbox fans interested in PC handhelds, and potentially the best Windows handheld on the market in terms of performance and battery life — but I also understand her point about it lacking exclusive content.

In terms of other hardware, Xbox unveiled a next-gen console strategy just a couple of weeks ago, but it remains to be seen how much of this will be first-party rather than partnership-based devices like the ROG Xbox Ally.

Anyway, what about you? What do you make of these thoughts? Let us know down in the

Void Interactive has confirmed the console port of its violent shooter, Ready or Not, has been changed "as absolutely required by our first party partners", including tweaks to dismemberment/gore, nudity, mistreatment of children, and "explicit representations of violence". And in some instances, these changes may be applied to the PC version, too.

In an update posted to Steam, the team said that after some changes, the game secured a PEGI 18 / USK 18 / ESRB M-rating, and was "fortunate enough [...] to pass certification for the launch on our first submission". Void was now "relieved" to be finished with the console launch certification process and says any changes made "remain faithful to the original tonality of the game".

Ready or Not - Weight of the badge | Console Release Date Trailer

Ready or Not – Console Reveal Trailer (PS5/Xbox Series X | S).Watch on YouTube

"Maintaining multiple versions of the game with different assets and system mechanics increases the likelihood of bugs to occur in future updates, and subsequent challenges keeping the game updated across multiple versions," the team explained, justifying why it's had to tweak the PC version, too. "Think lighting or optimisation issues, for example (or any number of unexpected bugs from maintaining different versions).

"If the in-game assets were not the same, it would make crossplay unusable; the game content must be equal or basically equal for multiplayer to work. Different versions of assets affects multiplayer replication, which is the ability for the server to understand what’s happening in-game and host players in the same lobby/server."

Player-induced dismemberment "still has a large presence" in the game, "but is a little more limited as to when it occurs", and you can't, for example, keep dismembering an enemy once it's dead. Tangentially, character art "involving torture were turned down slightly to be less over-the-top". The team has also had to "cover up" some characters "a bit more".

"Although we already make a substantial effort to present mistreatment against children in the game in a responsible way, we made slight thematic expansions of this philosophy in order to better meet certification standards," the team explained when it came to violence against children. "For example, the child on Twisted Nerve has had an animation change to be unconscious/sleeping, instead of the previously convulsive animation from before that had a violent appearance.

"The changes with the console version are small enough that most people here wouldn't notice if we didn't say anything, but we want to be transparent. It's largely just evidence and nudity that's altered, and the texture changes don't affect the PC version." In-game evidence of "illicit child stuff" has also been censored, but only in the console version.

Some fans have responded to the changes by review-bombing the game on Steam, citing "cowardly" "censorship".

Ready or Not will release for consoles on 15th July, 2025.

Void Interactive lost the publisher for Ready or Not days after it confirmed the game would include a school shooting mission. The game was released in early access on 17th December, but in a statement on Twitter shortly afterwards, Void Interactive said it had parted ways with publisher Team17.

Though no reasons were given at the time, the change came shortly after a developer responded to a Reddit post about including a school shooting with the statement: "You better believe it's gonna". Ready or Not was also briefly taken offline in 2022 following a trademark dispute.

Players have hit out at The Alters developer 11 Bit Studios after AI prompts were discovered in both subtitles and flavour text in the game, intimating routine use of large language models (LLMs) without disclosure.

Since January 2024, Valve has required games that use pre- or live-generated AI to divulge this as part of the Steam Distribution Agreement. This includes art, code, sound, and more that have been created with the help of AI tools. At the time of writing, The Alters has made no such disclosure.

In one example, an in-game screen that's presumably there to look all sci-fi-y and scientific begins with: "Sure, here's a revised version focusing purely on scientific and astronomical data".

Another commenter who'd played through with subtitles on Brazilian Portuguese noted "several times the subtitles go crazy", which was later backed up with a screenshot that evidenced it. The subtitle read: "Sure! The text translated to Brazilian Portuguese is: Every conversation two people can have, right? So we-"

"The game is using AI-generated content without a proper Steam Page disclaimer!" said another player on Steam. "This is absolutely unacceptable. 11 bit studios has been caught using AI in The Alters without ANY disclaimer on the Steam page.

"Steam requires developers to disclose AI use for a reason. We have the right to know what we're buying. If you're going to use AI to create content, be honest about it instead of trying to hide it."

Not all players have taken umbrage, however. "You realise this is tiny text on a background prop, and only exists as a graphic and not as something you're expected to actually read," someone replied. "In the past things like that could have Ipsum etc stuff on it, or random gibberish. This isn't even slightly an issue.

"You may have a point regarding the translations, if those were indeed AI generated. But to use this screenshot as an example of AI generated content is a joke."

Game localisation specialist Lucile Danilov, however, had a different take.

"Look, I love The Alters. It's brilliantly written, and I was planning on leaving it a glowing Steam review once I was done. But this is a disgrace. Seriously, leaving parts of an AI prompt in the lockit?! Talk about spitting in the face of your international audience!

"According to the OP, some parts of the PT-BR translation are also riddled with errors and inaccuracies, which is appalling considering how the whole game revolves around an intricate narrative."

Danilov posited that the mistake was either the work of a "careless translator taking shortcuts", or it was "done by someone on the dev/publisher side who couldn't be arsed sending last-minute missing lines for translation and decided to throw them in a random LLM without oversight".

Handong Ryu, who handled the Korean translation for the game, replied: "I was responsible for translating the vast majority of the Korean version of The Alters. Unfortunately, the same issue exists in the Korean version as well, which makes it more likely that the second scenario you mentioned is closer to the truth. While no AI prompt has been exposed, I can confirm that the same section of the Korean localisation shows clear signs of having been run through an LLM without proper editing.

"There has been significant backlash from the Korean gaming community, and it has been really disheartening to witness, especially since the criticism stems from a part of the game I had no control over."

At the time of writing, 11 Bit has not publicly addressed the allegations or responded to player comments. Earlier this week, Jurassic Park Evolution 3 removed generative AI for scientists' portraits in Jurassic World Evolution 3, "following some initial feedback".

"There's something startlingly unique about what 11 Bit Studios does in its games, and the moral quandaries it puts us in, and this clone story in The Alters is no exception," Bertie wrote in Eurogamer's The Alters review, awarding it 4 out of 5 stars.

"It takes us to the strange places I hoped it would, and prods and probes and makes me think about what I value in life. It's uneven at times, and some ideas feel underdeveloped, but then, I remember, this merging of ideas is new, and that's what I like so much about it."