Gaming news: Saturday 3 October

Free Play Days kicks off a long weekend on Xbox, the Steam Autumn Sale is open, and fourteen trailers landed out of PlayStation and Xbox alone. Here's the lot, each one credited back to where it came from.

Free games

Free Play Days: FARCRY 6 and four more, free to try on Xbox

FARCRY 6, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull and Bones and The Crew Motorfest are all free to try this weekend on Xbox. No Game Pass needed, it's open to all Xbox members. The window runs from Thursday 1 October to Sunday 4 October. Each game is also discounted if you decide to buy it during the event, with savings up to 85% off depending on the title.

Source: Xbox Wire

Deals and sales

The Steam Autumn Sale is here

The Steam Autumn Sale is live, with discounts running across the whole store. Steam says it's on all week, covering everything from big franchises to small cozy shops and deckbuilders. As with past seasonal sales, you can pick up stickers by working through your Discovery Queue while it's on.

Source: Steam

News

AI upscaling is coming to the standard PS5

Sony's rolling out Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), a new AI upscaling tool for the standard PS5, built out of Project Amethyst, Sony and AMD's joint research effort. It's a lighter version of PSSR, the upscaling tech already on PS5 Pro, using a smaller neural network tuned for the base console's hardware. Marvel's Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei both picked up QSSR support in patches on 1 October, with both studios saying it sharpens environment detail and character clarity. Sony says more titles will get it over time.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Next week on Xbox: new games for 5 to 9 October

Gears of War: E-Day gets its full day one release on 6 October, alongside STAR WARS: Galactic Racer and the KINGDOM HEARTS Collection [I～III]. Later in the week brings Echo Weaver, a time-loop Metroidvania landing on Game Pass, and Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, a first-person survival horror game. A handful of smaller titles round out the week, including Hidden Dogs, Titanic Escape Simulator and Neon Abyss 2.

Source: Xbox Wire

Invincible VS open beta begins 13 October

Invincible VS opens its beta to everyone on 13 October, the same day Angstrom Levy joins as the game's third DLC fighter and 21st playable character. Levy's a zoning fighter built around portals, using them to control space on the battlefield for offence, defence and mobility. Invincible VS is a 3v3 tag fighter, out now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC and Xbox Cloud.

Source: Xbox Wire

IKEA and Xbox team up on gaming furniture

IKEA and Xbox have put out YXSTABY, a nine-piece furniture collection built around the shape of an Xbox controller. The lineup covers a gaming lounge chair, a monitor stand, a TV stand and side table on castors, a thumbstick stool and a D-pad cushion, among other pieces. IKEA says the thumbstick stool actually used Xbox's own 3D design files during development. It's in IKEA stores now, with the full range online later this year.

Source: Xbox Wire

Nintendo eShop highlights for 1 October

This week's eShop highlights lean on Switch 2: Minecraft Dungeons II, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered, a bundled OCTOPATH TRAVELER I and II, and a Middle-earth: Shadow bundle built around the Nemesis System all feature. Switch proper gets Keep Driving, an atmospheric road trip management RPG, plus TOEM 2 on both consoles. There's also a demo up for Castlevania: Belmont's Curse.

Source: Nintendo UK

Riot's own player count targets doomed 2XKO

PC Gamer reports Riot had set itself a bar of high hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of concurrent players for 2XKO to be called a success. That's a huge ask for any fighting game, let alone a new one finding its feet. The piece argues that bar made the game look like a failure almost no matter how it actually performed.

Source: PC Gamer

Trailers

Invincible VS: Angstrom Levy gameplay trailer

Angstrom Levy is the multiverse-hopping villain joining Invincible VS as its third Year 1 Character Pass fighter. He teleports in when Season 2 lands on 13 October. Invincible VS is out now on PS5.

Source: PlayStation (YouTube), also reported by Xbox (YouTube)

Elta: Defy All Gods demo trailer

A free demo of Elta: Defy All Gods is up now on PS5, sending you after your dragon-god companion through the icy world of Lerna. It's a taste of the game's traversal and combat up to the first boss. The full game is out 2 February 2027.

Source: PlayStation (YouTube), also reported by Xbox (YouTube)

Gears of War: E-Day enters early access

Gears of War: E-Day's early access opened 1 October for Premium Edition owners and Game Pass subscribers with the Premium Upgrade. Xbox marked it with a launch gameplay trailer set to Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls." The full release follows on 6 October.

Source: Xbox Wire

CONTROL Resonant accolades trailer

CONTROL Resonant is out now on Xbox Series X|S. Dylan Faden has to harness new powers to take back Manhattan and fight for control of the city. This trailer rounds up the game's launch accolades.

Source: Xbox (YouTube)

Gallipoli's Ali al Muntar expansion is free

The free Ali al Muntar expansion is out now for Gallipoli, adding a new map with tanks escorting attackers and four new weapons. Two paid DLCs land alongside it: Black Watch, with a Scottish subfaction, and Khaki, with a West Kent one. Gallipoli runs 50-player objective battles on the Ottoman front.

Source: Xbox (YouTube)

Satisfactory's Core Values expansion revealed

Core Values is the first paid expansion for Satisfactory, bringing new resources, biomes and challenges to the factory-building sim. Satisfactory itself is coming to Xbox Series X|S.

Source: Xbox (YouTube)

BrokenLore: Miki-Chan announced

BrokenLore: Miki-Chan is coming to PS5, spinning the virtual assistant first seen in BrokenLore: Don't Lie into her own first-person psychological horror game. Set in a Japanese school, she turns from assistant to jealous, obsessive stalker. Players explore a distorted school sim and use a tool called the Rewriter to alter reality around them.

Source: PlayStation (YouTube)

Signal Veil announced

Signal Veil is a classic-style psychological survival horror game coming to PS5. Aki inherits her late mother's old phone and starts seeing things no one else can, as her ordinary school hides a darker past. She has to work through grotesque spirits and fractured memories to get to the truth.

Source: PlayStation (YouTube)

Don't Fret teases a winter release

Don't Fret is a first-person mascot horror game set in a musical world, and it's coming to Xbox Series X|S this winter. You play as Fret, a guitar, solving puzzles and dodging foes through Harmonic Heights.

Source: Xbox (YouTube)

End of Abyss launches

End of Abyss is out now on Xbox Series X|S. You play Cel, a combat technician working out the truth of the facility she's trapped in, descending through a broken, abandoned world where the machines still talk.

Source: Xbox (YouTube)

Voidbreaker gets a release date

Voidbreaker, an adrenaline-fuelled roguelite FPS, launches on PS5 on 4 November 2026.

Source: PlayStation (YouTube), also reported by PlayStation (YouTube)

Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition launches

Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition is out now, bundling the standalone Ghost of Yōtei experience with a new story expansion, Echoes of Sekigahara, and a combat survival mode called Most Wanted.

Source: PlayStation (YouTube)

Moros Protocol launches

Moros Protocol, a pixel-painted sci-fi FPS roguelite, is out now on PS5. You survive alone or with allies aboard a decaying warship, stalked by horrors and guided by a voice you don't recognise.

Source: PlayStation (YouTube)

Gears of War: E-Day's official launch trailer

Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel set fourteen years before the original Gears of War, following Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago through the first day the Locust Horde surfaced. Emergence Day proper begins 6 October. Pre-ordering the Premium Edition gets up to five days of early access.

Source: Xbox (YouTube)