Xbox Consoles And Games Get A Price Hike, Borderlands 4 Gets A Showcase, And More Of The Week's Top Stories

The video game website Polygon has been sold to click-farm powerhouse Valnet and much of its masthead has been laid off, Kotaku has learned. The sale was subsequently announced in a press release. Multiple staff members have posted online about losing their jobs or about colleagues now being out of work. - Ethan Gach Read More

Giant Bomb’s future is uncertain following a showdown with parent company Fandom, which also owns GameSpot, over editorial interference. Creative director Dan Ryckert announced on a recent livestream that he would no longer be appearing on the Giant Bombcast and co-host Jeff Grubb confirmed on social media on Thursday that he’s no longer with the company. Giant Bomb content is currently on hold while Fandom engages in a “strategic reset and realignment of our media brands,” it confirmed to Kotaku. - Ethan Gach Read More

An Xbox Series X with 2TB of storage now costs more than a PlayStation 5 Pro. The next Call of Duty could be Microsoft’s first $80 game. Microsoft announced major price hikes for the entire Xbox ecosystem on Thursday and fans are in shock. - Ethan Gach Read More

Microsoft has announced it will be raising the prices of all Xbox consoles, accessories, and games, and the increases are huge. Console and peripheral prices will go up today, May 1, by an enormous amount, while new first-party game prices will all hit $80 by the holidays. - John Walker Read More

The Nintendo Switch received a major firmware update today that paves the way for its integration with the Switch 2 and institutes a less than stellar new regime of virtual game sharing. But firmware version 20.0.0 also made some other equally notable but less advertised changes, including a major shift to how Nintendo ranks best-selling games in the eShop. The result could have big ramifications for how games are discovered on one of the biggest console install-bases in history, and could help alleviate some of the platform’s “slop” problem. - Ethan Gach Read More

Today, we learned a lot more about Borderlands 4 during a roughly 20-minute PlayStation State of Play dedicated exclusively to Gearbox and 2K’s upcoming sci-fi looter shooter sequel. - Zack Zwiezen Read More

A greatest hits collection of Star Wars PC games are currently on sale right now on GOG, just a few days ahead of May the 4th. And some are now part of an awesome preservation program that will help keep them playable for years to come. - Zack Zwiezen Read More

The Nintendo Switch just got a major update to prepare for the arrival of Switch 2 in June. Ver. 20.0.0, released overnight, adds system transfers to Switch 2 as well as support for the new console’s GameShare feature and the sharing of virtual game cards. Players have quickly discovered a major caveat for that last part: when using virtual game cards, you can’t simultaneously play a game online across two separate Switches. It’s a confusing hang-up with significant consequences. - Ethan Gach Read More