Amidst the growing merger and acquisition activity in the gaming industry a la Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, a few of Disney's senior executives want the company to dip their toes in an M&A with a gaming giant like Electronic Arts. Based on Bloomberg's recent report, Disney is facing significant losses due to their multiple box office flops. While the CEO, Bob Iger, feels "overwhelmed and frustrated" over the failures, the company's executive indulging in a merger and becoming a gaming giant might benefit Disney. 

While the executives are driving Iger to acquire major gaming industry giants, they have shown a significant interest in Electronic Arts. Bob Iger showed no interest in the executive's option of acquiring the industry's big names. While Bob played a crucial role in famous Marvel Entertainment and Pixar acquisitions, he won't be taking the same route with gaming publisher acquisitions.  

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Disney's Senior Executive Shows Interest In Acquiring Electronic Arts

 Electronic Arts has been in the gaming industry for more than four decades and has consolidated its position as one of the prominent gaming publishers. With their hands across various gaming genres like first-person shooters, role-playing games, and sporting games like FIFA, the publisher has a large player base. EA has shown interest in several esports titles like EA Sports FC (previously FIFA), Madden NFL Series and Apex Legends, which will feature a $5 million in the upcoming season. 

Despite having a mixed reaction from its fans, Electronic Arts has been one of the most profitable publishers thanks to its games sales, microtransactions, and live and esports events. While talking about their position in the industry, here is what Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA, said during last summer's earnings call:

I think we're growing across platforms, we're growing across business models, and we're growing across geographies. And in a world where gaming is becoming more important to the lives of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who will be the leading generation in terms of consumption, entertainment for the future, I don't think we could be in a stronger position as a standalone company.

With their strong stance in the industry, Electronic Arts launched EA Originals to support small teams and independent developers and help them bring their games to life. EA provides financial resources, mentorship, and publishing support so developers can focus on their games, while EA looks after the distributions. EA Originals has been a successful altruistic endeavour with popular titles like Unravel, A Way Out and Sea of Solitude. With EA Originals, Electronic Arts supports the gaming industry on a broader scale, with an opportunity to diversify its portfolio. 

FAU-G: Domination has been under work for a while now. Dot9 Games and nCore Games have been constantly working on making the game better. To take the players' feedback ahead, FAU-G: Domination's playtest was hosted in Gurugram and Mumbai. The developers had just one aim: to understand what the players preferred in the game and what changes they wanted the developers to incorporate. 

Also Read: FAU-G: Domination Pre Registration is Live Now

Key Takeaways from FAU-G: Domination Playtest

After the playtest, this is what the players' feedback entailed. Players had the chance to play multiple modes and then gave feedback that they preferred Team Deathmatch over other modes.

• Around 85% of players felt the visuals were an upgrade over the last playtest held in July 2024
• Nearly 90% of players believed the Indian environments and themes in-game are a standout feature
• 55% of players preferred the Team Deathmatch over other modes such as Arms Race, Deathmatch, and Search and Destroy
• Approximately 70% felt the gunplay was in the range of ‘good’ to excellent’
  24% felt their devices were overheating indicating the team has some way to go in terms of optimisation
• Versus the last playtest held in July, the overall quality has improved by about 23%

Talking about the game, Nitish Mittersain, Founder and CEO of Nazara Technologies said: 

We’re delighted to finally showcase FAU-G: Domination and open pre-registrations for the game after a period of public testing that verified what we knew — FAU-G: Domination can address the demand of Indian gamers for locally relevant content. We can’t wait to share more with you on the road to release through our marketing initiatives.

Pre-registration for the game is live right now, and those who register for the event will get attractive rewards like the Beast Collection, which includes a frame, banner, avatar, sticker, spray, and charm, as well as six gun skins: sawed-off shotgun, USP, Scout rifle, M4, Uzi, and Kabar.
 

With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 almost here, analysts have talking about the impact it’s likely to have on Xbox Game Pass, with some reckoning it could bring as many as 4 million new members to Microsoft’s subscription service.

Black Ops 6 will be the first COD title to launch day one on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, the move marking a critical test for the company’s subscription service strategy after its $69bn USD acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023.

And Black Ops 6’s Game Pass launch will lead to a surge of new subscribers according to analysts interviewed by GamesIndustry.biz. Wedbush Securities managing director Michael Pachter, for instance, believes Microsoft will see between 3-4 million new members following Black Ops 6’s Game Pass launch, although he reckons the move could result in up to 6m lost sales, based on the idea 25 percent of Game Pass subscribers may have bought the game anyway.

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Microsoft Betting Big On Black Ops 6

"Microsoft will be trading premium full-game sales in exchange for a bigger audience that can be monetized in-game instead," he continued, adding, "Call of Duty is increasingly a live-service game first and foremost that monetizes strongly in-game". This fact alone, he noted, raises questions about "how [Black Ops 6 will be] monetized and whether there is a bigger onus on in-game monetization compared to previous entries in the franchise."

"Nobody knows what Microsoft's expectations are for Game Pass growth past launch," Katan Games' Dr Serkan Toto added, "but if Black Ops 6 does not meet targets, things can become very grim very quickly. I also wonder if Black Ops 6 will be able to retain subscribers in the long run or if numbers will drop sharply again early next year after the initial hype runs out."

Besides, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 comes with built-in support for a third-party audio tool that charges $20 for improved sound. In a blog post, Activision said Black Ops 6 launches with an Enhanced Headphone Mode that makes use of Embody’s Immerse Spatial Audio technology “to increase the directional accuracy of sounds played in the world.”

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How Much Will Embody's Personalized Audio Cost?

Besides, Activision said, players can “choose to enhance this HRTF experience even further by creating a Personalized profile that takes into account the player’s physical attributes, such as the shape of their ear or head. This customization is accessed in-game and completed by using Embody’s personalization portal.”

What the company’s blog post failed to mention is that allowing Embody's personalized audio in Black Ops 6 costs real-world money, and it’s this revelation that has caught some Call of Duty fans off-guard, leading to complaints across social media and subreddits and accusations that the game is “pay-to-hear.”

After Blizzard’s announcement earlier this year that it was considering bringing 6v6 matches to Overwatch 2, having ditched them when it transitioned from Overwatch 1 to its sequel, the studio has now made its reintroduction official: 6v6 will come to Overwatch 2 in the form of two test modes next season, and Blizzard says it will be ‘watching the results closely.’

When the company revealed it was mulling over 6v6’s return back in July, it explained the original mode could have “really high, highs, but reaaaally low, lows” in Overwatch 1, and that 5v5 was ultimately selected for Overwatch 2 in a bid to "raise that floor, even though it was at the expense of some of some of those high moments."

Also Read: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Has Built-In Support For Better Audio

Blizzard Confirms 6v6’s Imminent Return

However, the studio acknowledged the changes had come "at the cost of match variety and player freedom" and so it was looking at how 6v6 could potentially be relaunched. And now, four months on from that announcement, Blizzard has confirmed 6v6’s imminent return.

In a new post on the Overwatch website, game director Aaron Keller said the studio will be introducing "two different 6v6 tests" as part of Overwatch 2's upcoming Season 14. The first of these is set to launch a week into the season and will be a variation of Open Queue -- requiring each team to have at least one of each role but no more than three, with players able to switch roles on the fly during a match as long as the limit isn’t broken.

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When Will Blizzard’s Second 6v6 Will Arrive?

Blizzard’s second 6v6 test will arrive as part of Season 14’s mid-season refresh, offering the classic 2-2-2 team composition while incorporating some of Overwatch 2’s "new principles", such as less crowd control and hero rework.

Both test modes will feature rebalancing specific to 6v6 - such as a reduction in the power and survivability of tanks - but they will still have their own card in Unranked alongside other modes.

"In the world where a surge of players join this mode and continuously play it, then we have the signal we need to do more with it," Keller said. "I think what that 'more' is depends on the level of excitement. Is there a world where both 5v5 and 6v6 exist permanently in Overwatch 2? If you had asked me a few months ago, I would have said no. As we've discussed Overwatch 2's future... we know our players can want more than one experience, and it would be something we'd need to consider moving forward."

Sony has brought a number of changes to its PlayStation Stars reward program which, among other things, will see earned points expire after a year instead of the 24 months they remained available previously.

PlayStation Stars, which was launched in October 2022 in the UK, is a part of the PlayStation App on mobile and rewards points based on the amount of money users spend in the PlayStation Store, as well as for completing in-app challenges. Points can then be redeemed against digital rewards, including “collectibles” and store credit.

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What Changes Has Sony Made To The Terms?

As of March 2025, Sony is making changes to its definition of “eligible purchases,” which means payments for subscription services such as PlayStation Plus, will no longer churn Start points.

Moreover, earned PlayStation Stars points will soon be required to be spent much sooner. From October 24 this year, Sony is reducing point expiration times from 24 months to 12, which means all accumulated points must be redeemed against a reward within a year of earning them.

Sony’s tern changes come along with reports of missing store credit redemption options in the PlayStation Stars rewards catalog. On the PlayStation Stars subreddit, some users report the ability to redeem points for store credit has been removed entirely, while some are only seeing limited Wallet credit options when browsing the PlayStation App.

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Sony Reportedly Chose AMD Over Intel For Its PS6 Console

Intel’s bid was blocked because they did not agree on how much profit Intel would make from each chip it would design as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) handled the manufacturing process.

Apart from the recent embarrassment of crashing Raptor Lake CPUs, Intel has been a bystander in the AI chip boom and ceded manufacturing of some next-gen tech to TSMC as it tries to rebuild its capabilities. The chipmaking division also racked up $7 billion in losses last year, and recently, the company announced 15,000 layoffs. Meanwhile, its upcoming chip plant in Ohio has been delayed, although it did secure Microsoft as a customer for its advanced 18A chip process.

While AMD has also trailed Nvidia’s leadership in the AI chip market and flagship GPUs its data center products now make up over half of its sales. During a recent interview, AMD exec Jack Huynh said that apart from merging its RDNA gaming graphics and CNDA data center efforts into a single “UDNA,” with its gaming priority set to increasing scale at lower price points.

A new patch has gone live for Star Wars Outlaws, and the key takeaway from this update is that the stealth mission experience would be much better. Developer Massive Entertainment says that it has focused on enhancing stealth to allow players to have more flexibility, and another welcome fix being introduced in the update is an improvement to speeder travel.

Stealth in the game was pretty underwhelming when the game first launched, although this has been fine-tuned over the last few weeks. The new tweaks aim to reduce the frequency of install-fail moments during specific missions, enabling players to have more options at their disposal to complete these sequences.

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Star Wars Outlaws Title Update 1.3.0 Patch Notes

Notable changes

• Implemented stealth changes to 'False Flag' and other missions to give players more flexibility in how they approach situations without the risk of failing
• Improved speeder travel by reducing collisions with objects in the environment
• Improved NPC combat behavior
• Increased auto-save opportunities in open-world hostile areas (Imperial Compounds and Faction Territories)
• Scaled 'Wanted' difficulty based on player progression
• Improved AI speeder avoidance

Performance and stability

• Fixed an issue where the game would crash when 'New Game' was selected
• Improved overall stability and FPS drops
• Fixed an issue where the game could crash when using the Electrobinoculars on PS5
• Improved stability with GeForce Now

General Gameplay
 

Increased and improved quest checkpoints
Improved manual and autosave features including allowing more opportunities to save in the open world, compounds, and syndicate territories
Removed autosave restrictions for combat/detection
Improved NPC and player animations
'Wanted' difficulty now scales based on player progression
Fixed an issue where Death Troopers would not spawn from search parties·
Improved enemy AI and combat behavior
Fixed an issue where the Stun Shot would miss if shooting from cover when unholstered
Fixed an issue where the Boonta Brawler Belt did not increase grenade blast radius
Fixed an issue where grappling hook haptics were not present on PS5
Improved camera detection for defeated enemies

UI, HUD, and settings
 

• Improved UI when detected
• Updated the key bind for the Hyperspace jump
• Added segments to the VRAM meter
• The equipment screen now has the option to mark all items as viewed
• Fixed an issue where the map cursor could disappear when using a controller on a PC

Audio
 

• Made NPC voice lines more consistent with player detection
• Fixed an issue where there was no music on Renpali station
• Fixed an issue where multiple sound effects would disappear after completing the game
• Improved ground wetness/snow footstep sound effect playback
• Improved air traffic sound effect playback
• Improved audio for collisions

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Cinematics
 

• Improved textures during cinematics
• Fixed an issue with blurred images during cinematics and dialogue scenes
• Improved the camera when interacting with vendors
• Improved camera re-center speed on the speeder

Photo mode
 

• Enabled splitting camera inversion from gameplay camera
• Added option to disable UI sounds in photo mode
• Camera speed applies to both panning and movement
• Enable switching between 16:9 and 21:9 modes
• Implemented a color picker UI·
• Added a black, white, and neon cyan Star Wars Outlaws logo
• Fixed an issue where some UI elements could be seen in photos

Accessibility
 

• Removed glitch effect while using Electrobinoculars
• Removed directional arrow for Kay's captions when in the standard gameplay camera view
• Added setting to show a visual reminder of the button used for Nix quick actions
• New settings from updates 1.2 and 1.3 added to accessibility presets
• Menu remapping section added, allowing some keyboard controls for navigating menus to be remapped
• The keys for the Hyperspace menu and Hyperspace jump are now remappable through the key bind menu
• Added settings to invert the X and Y axes of photo mode camera
• Moved menu narration to the top of the UI menu & top of the vision preset menu
• Added setting to stop voice lines interrupting menu narration
• Menu narration now reads negative brightness slider values, the heal button while low on health, new quest notification, reputation changes in the contracts menu, quest tracker 'more info' prompt, cloud upload/download notifications, that starting a Sabacc game requires a hold, and whether abilities of partially equipped gearsets are locked
• Fixed an issue where Nix sense was not affected by the protanopia color preset
• Fixed an issue where ND5 and Gedeek would not appear as allies in high contrast mode for some missions
• Fixed an issue where some inputs would have a double action if remapped