This week on Zerocade

The ESA wants Anbernic on the US government's Notorious Markets list over handhelds sold with preloaded game libraries, calling them the 'functional equivalent of superfakes'. Anbernic's devices cost roughly $38 to $300, about ₹3,600 to ₹28,500 converted. Here's what it means.

Qualcomm says reports of its 5 GHz Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 overheating in Samsung's tests are inaccurate. Its marketing chief says there are no systemic thermal issues. Here's the full statement, what it does and doesn't rule out, the Exynos leaks since, and what Indian buyers should watch.

Reviewers have now tested Nvidia's first laptop chip in the Surface Laptop Ultra, ASUS ProArt P16 and HP OmniBook Ultra 16. The GPU impresses, AI work flies, games lag a regular RTX 5070 laptop, and there's still no India launch for these $2,599+ machines.

Emulators are generally legal; downloading games you don't own isn't. Here's the difference between an emulator, a ROM and a BIOS file, the court cases that drew the lines from Connectix to Yuzu and Ryujinx, where fan ports and handhelds fit, and the legal ways to play old games in India.

BGMI Lite is now BGMI Air, and over 10 million people have pre-registered. It's a free, roughly 1GB version of BGMI for phones with as little as 1.5GB of RAM, due in India by the end of 2026. Here's how it differs from BGMI, and what we still don't know.

Square Enix's pixel-art Final Fantasy RPG launched October 22 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, Switch and PC, and critics like it: 86 on Metacritic and 97% positive on Steam. It's ₹3,499 on Steam in India ($49.99 in the US). Here's the story, the combat, every edition, PC specs and what reviewers loved and didn't.

A known Intel leaker now says the four-digit Core Ultra 4000 name will cover Nova Lake desktop and laptop chips alike. It's unconfirmed, the chips aren't expected until early 2027, and there's no India pricing.

A well-known leaker says the PS6's RAM and storage alone now cost Sony over $680. That points to a price above $1,000, or roughly ₹95,000 before Indian taxes, when the PS5 disc model already sells for ₹69,990 here. Here's where the numbers come from, why memory got so expensive and what Sony can do.

Final Fantasy Resonance is the latest HD-2D game and the first Final Fantasy in the style. Here's how HD-2D mixes old-school sprites with 3D worlds and modern lighting, why it looks like a tiny model set, where it came from, and how Resonance's reviews landed.

Xbox and IGN's ID@Xbox showcase on October 20 showed 21 indie games with dates. Mouthwashing and The Wolf Among Us Remastered land October 29, Shrek 2 Remastered on November 10, and Croak, Red Kiss and No, I'm Not a Human head to Game Pass. Here's every game, its date and Game Pass status.

India's smartphone shipments fell 26% to 35.8 million in July to September, the weakest third quarter since 2016, as memory costs push phone prices up. Samsung is back at No. 1, vivo fell hardest, and Omdia expects price pressure until at least mid-2027.

Fortune reports Microsoft's internal price projection for the Project Helix console at $1,200 to $1,800, roughly ₹1.14 lakh to ₹1.71 lakh before Indian taxes, with an Xbox handheld planned for holiday 2027 and the console in 2028. Here's what's reported, what's official and how much to trust it.

Xbox has never made a profit selling a console, and the PS5 started out below cost too. Here's how the console business really makes money, what Microsoft and Sony have said on the record, and why rising chip and memory costs point to $1,000+ next-gen prices.

AMD's machine-learning upscaler, FSR 4.1, is coming to Xbox Series X and S, but each game has to add it. Developers reportedly get it within weeks, with a handful of games this holiday. Here's what it does, which devices get it and why Series S stands to gain most.

EA is shutting BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic, and cancelling the next Mass Effect. Bloomberg reports about 400 jobs cut across EA. Here's what's closing, why it happened and what it means for the games you own.

Xbox now lets some players buy cloud gaming time in 10, 25 or 50-hour packs without a Game Pass plan. Here's how the packs work, the cost per hour in rupees, how they fit with Game Pass's new monthly cloud caps, which regions keep unlimited play and what it means for India.

Capcom says an outsider got into its account system and saw the email addresses on 11,774,247 Capcom IDs. Passwords and card details weren't exposed, but 196 accounts had their passwords changed. Here's the full timeline, what leaked and how to protect yourself from the phishing that usually follows.

Circana's September report puts Marvel's Wolverine at number one in the US, with Sony's biggest launch month since Helldivers 2. PS5 dollar sales rose 43%, Switch 2 slipped, and Xbox Series hit a record September low. Here's the full top 10, the console numbers, what consoles now cost on average and what it means before GTA 6.

Valve music designer Mike Morasky said "HLX", the rumoured codename for the next Half-Life, on stage at GameSoundCon. It's the first time a Valve employee has used the name in public. Valve still hasn't announced anything.

Sony now blocks PSN on older PS5 firmware, and GTA 6 reportedly needs 14.10 to boot. Days later, a developer showed kernel access on 14.10, though nothing has been released and games can't be dumped. Here's the full timeline, what the hack can and can't do, and what PS5 owners should do before November 19.

Sony Japan has marked the UBP-X700/K as discontinued. In Japan, a disc-drive PS5 is now Sony's only way to play 4K Blu-rays, while the PS5 Digital Edition and PS5 Pro need a separate drive.

Claude Duet watches your email, calendar and work apps, sends a morning brief and does tasks in its own cloud computer. It's a US-only research preview for Pro ($20, about ₹1,900) and Max users. Here's how it works, what it can and can't do, its safety rules, and how it compares with OpenAI's dots and Meta's Muse.

Every month, Circana tells us what sold best in the US. Here's where those numbers come from, why the chart ranks by dollars instead of copies, why some positions are partly estimates, and how to read a headline like 'console units down 27%' without getting it wrong.

Phone, console and GPU chips are sold on numbers like 8nm, 4nm and 3nm, but those numbers stopped being real measurements decades ago. Here's what a process node is, which one is inside your PS5, Switch 2 or graphics card, and why Samsung's new 8LPU+ has people talking about a cheaper Switch 2.

AMD's Ryzen 5 5500F is a $99 six-core Zen 3 chip for the old AM4 socket, with PCIe 4.0 and a cooler in the box. Tom's Hardware found it about 8% faster than the Ryzen 5 5500 in games. Here are the full specs, how it compares, what it costs, India availability and whether AM4 still makes sense.

An AMD engineering sample with six Zen 6 cores and 24GB of fast LPDDR5 showed up in a benchmark database, weeks after a leaker named a Steam Deck 2 chip 'Gainsborough'. Here's what's in the listing, how it compares to the Steam Deck, what Valve has said and how much to trust it.

Microsoft has given the Dishonored studio one more month, moving the deadline from November 13 to December 13. About 217 jobs are at risk, and Marvel's Blade is reportedly far along. Here's what's confirmed, what French law requires and what could happen to the game.

A Puck report says Netflix offered about ₹4,750 crore ($500 million) for seven years of exclusive Xbox film and TV rights, and Xbox wanted about ₹7,600 crore ($800 million). The talks collapsed. Here's who was involved, what Xbox said and why its games are suddenly worth so much on screen.

The Switch 2 and PS5 have both made jailbreak headlines this month. Here's what userland, kernel, hypervisor, tethered and custom firmware mean, why some hacks can be patched and others can't, how the 2026 PS5 and Switch 2 hacks fit, and what's at risk for players.

Modern Warfare 4's multiplayer launched to complaints about sweaty lobbies, and SBMM is getting the blame again. Here's how skill-based matchmaking actually works, what Activision's own tests found, and why loosening it isn't the easy fix it sounds like.

CD Projekt Red's free Edgerunners 2 update adds a prequel side quest in a Night City prison, dual-wielding pistols, mod support on consoles, a new radio station and DLSS 4.5. Here's everything in update 2.5, how it ties into the new anime, and where Cyberpunk 2077 stands six years on.

A leaked Geekbench 6.5 result shows Samsung's Exynos 2700 scoring about 13,000 in multi-core, ahead of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and its faster Extreme version. Here's where the numbers come from, how they compare, what the Exynos 2600 already does, which Galaxy S27 phones may use it and how much to trust it.

Days after launch, iPhone Duo owners posted inner screens cracked along the hinge. Apple has now confirmed an issue with 'a small number' of units and says affected owners can get a replacement through AppleCare. Here's what's known about the cause, what iFixit found, and what to do if you bought one.

Footage from Chinese workshops shows brand-new RTX 5090s having their chips and memory moved onto server boards for AI work. Here's how it works, why it's happening, and why custom cards in the US now start at $8,500 (about ₹8.1 lakh), more than four times launch price.

Variety reports EA told staff that DICE and Respawn will work together on a future project, and several sources say it's Star Wars: Battlefront 3. EA and Lucasfilm haven't announced anything. Here's what was said, why these two studios, what happened to Battlefront II, and what to expect.

A fan-made port gets the PS4 Nathan Drake Collection running directly on Windows, with 120 FPS, DLSS and FSR 4. Here's how a 'native' port of a console game works, what it can do, where it fits in a wave of PlayStation fan ports, and the catches: you need your own PS4 copy, and Sony hasn't said a word.

Helen Chiang, Xbox's first chief operating officer and former head of Minecraft, left Microsoft on October 23, about three and a half months after taking the job. A Eurogamer source now claims she was terminated for policy violations. Here's what's confirmed, what's reported, and what it means for Xbox.

Battlefront 3 reportedly has two developers, one publisher and a licence holder above them all. Here's who does what on a big game, who pays for it, who gets the final say, how the money splits, and why it matters when games slip, change or get cancelled.

Every new chip shows up in a leaked Geekbench score months before launch. Here's where those leaks come from, what single-core and multi-core numbers mean, why early results from engineering samples mislead, and a quick checklist for spotting one worth trusting.