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Source: Rockstar Games / GTA 6
Welp, many predicted this day was coming. GTA 6 was once poised to be the biggest video game release of 2025, but will now be the biggest release of 2026.
Rockstar Games confirmed many analysts’ and gaming journalists’ predictions when it officially announced today that it would be delaying GTA 6 by six months.
The video game studio confirmed the news in a statement shared on its social media profiles, telling disappointed fans that the game needs more time to cook and will not arrive on May 26, 2026.
“We are very sorry that this is later than you expected,” Rockstar announced on X, formerly Twitter. “The interest and excitement surrounding a new Grand Theft Auto has been truly humbling for our entire team. We want to thank you for your support and your patience as we work to finish the game.”
Games of this magnitude needing more time isn’t unusual, but with GTA 6 being YEARS in development, it’s not crazy for some eyebrows to raise and people to overreact. Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar Games parent company, saw its shares take a hit with the announcement of the delay, losing over nine percent in the market.
“With every game we have released,” the statement continues, “the goal has always been to try and exceed your expectations, and Grand Theft Auto VI is no exception. We hope you understand that we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.”
Bummer.
Take-Two Still Has Some Heat On The Horizon
While this news stings, Take-Two still has some big realeses to look forward to this year like Mafia: The Old Country and Borderlands 4 which just recently pushed up its release date due, and, of course, NBA 2K26.
But, we can’t front, GTA 6 was high on everyone’s list and now that we have to wait even longer to experience what could be the greatest game ever made not named GTA V, stinks.
Oh well, if these means we will only be getting a more perfect game, then Rockstar take as much time as you need to deliver us the game we have all come to expect from you.
You can see more reactions to the news in the gallery below.
1. Parris knew
2. Pretty much all of our reactions
4. Tears, also why does this account exist?
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Source: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / Getty / / Microsoft / Xbox
Welp, it’s going to cost you more if you’re still in the market for an actual Xbox Series X or Series S console.
Xbox announced today that it is raising the prices of the Xbox Series S and Series X consoles globally, except for accessories, which will see their prices increase in the US and Canada. First-party titles are expected to reach the $80 threshold by the holiday season.
The price hike will take effect beginning May 1. You can peep them below:
Xbox Series S 512 – $379.99 (up from $299.99)
Xbox Series S 1TB – $429.99 (up from $349.99)
Xbox Series X Digital – $549.99 (up from $449.99)
Xbox Series X – $599.99 (up from $499.99)
Xbox Series X 2TB Galaxy Special Edition $729.99 (up from $599.99)
Xbox Wireless Controller (Core) – $64.99
Xbox Wireless Controller (Color) – $69.99
Xbox Wireless Controller – Special Edition – $79.99
Xbox Wireless Controller – Limited Edition – $89.99 (up from $79.99)
Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 (Core) – $149.99 (up from $139.99)
Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 (Full) – $199.99 (up from $179.99)
Xbox Stereo Headset -$64.99
Xbox Wireless Headset – $119.99 (up from $109.99)
Here’s what Xbox had to say about the price hikes in an official statement:
We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development. Looking ahead, we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen and ensuring value for Xbox players.
A History of Price Hikes
This marks the first time the Series S has seen a price hike since its 2020 release. Xbox committed to the console’s current prices in 2022, following PlayStation’s price increase for the PS5 due to inflation.
The Xbox Series X experienced a price increase in 2023 in most countries, except the US, and Xbox Game Pass underwent multiple price hikes globally.
These new Xbox price increases should not come as a surprise, as PlayStation announced price hikes for the PS5 in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand three weeks ago.
Nintendo recently faced criticism after revealing that the Nintendo Switch 2 would cost $450, one $80 game (Mario Kart World), and price hikes for Switch 2 accessories following Donald Trump’s misuse of tariffs.
Somehow This Is Nintendo’s Fault
Speaking of Nintendo, gamers, of course, are BIG MAD about the price hikes and already pointing fingers at someone. Gamers should blame Donald Trump and his misguided trade policies, as well as his misuse of tariffs. Still, somehow, Nintendo is being blamed for what Xbox’s decision, with “Thanks, Nintendo” immediately trending after the news broke.
While we understand that Nintendo is not at fault for Microsoft’s or even a potential decision from PlayStation, we acknowledge gamers’ frustration with having to spend more money at a time when prices are increasing. There doesn’t seem to be enough money to cover these expenses.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
5. Lol, this is crazy
7. A thread
This analysis is part of Billboard’s music technology newsletter Machine Learnings. Sign up for Machine Learnings, and other Billboard newsletters for free here.
Last week, I had a drink with a source who works in music marketing. They showed me their latest handiwork: a TikTok page where every post features their client’s song paired with an AI-generated video of a scenic landscape. I promised them anonymity, so I can’t share these videos, but rest assured — all of them were convincingly realistic.
My source has started paying a fan to post hundreds of these AI videos — generated in seconds using OpenAI’s video tool, Sora — to TikTok to promote their artist’s new single, with the hope that at least one of the videos will go viral. And they’re not the only ones experimenting with AI to automate digital marketing. I also recently met with RHEI, a company that claims its proprietary AI agents — AI systems that can make decisions and take actions — can generate lyric videos and populate fan pages for artists without anyone lifting a finger. Already, music companies like Symphonic, Lyrical Lemonade and MNRK use RHEI’s products. Though this technology is still in its infancy, using AI agents or video generators is clearly the super-charged next step for what’s known as “fan page marketing,” which is the promotional method du jour in 2025.
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Music marketers have complained for the last few years that social media, especially TikTok, is oversaturated with content and music, and that breaking through the noise is becoming harder. Their response to this, almost universally, has been to combat the noise by turning up the metaphorical volume even louder. Nowadays, asking artists to post “did I just make the song of the summer?” videos isn’t enough. Now, marketers are promoting artists by circulating thousands of repurposed interview and livestream clips, user-generated content remixes, memes, live videos and — increasingly — AI-generated videos on “fan pages” run or paid for by the artists’ team. Typically, this is all still coupled with classic influencer campaigns where various content creators are paid to make videos to a song, often without disclosing that these are paid advertisements.
More is also more in the world of streaming. In 2018, Luminate reported that about 45,000 songs were uploaded to Spotify daily. Five years later, in 2023, Luminate said that number had grown to 120,000. In some ways, it’s a beautiful thing — it’s easier to release a song than ever before, allowing countless DIY artists chances at success they never would have had otherwise. But it’s also led to what Lucian Grainge, chairman/CEO of Universal Music Group, has called a “content oversupply,” of which he said, “AI has already been a major contributor.”
Major-label artists have some part in this too. Taking advantage of streaming’s infinite shelf, top artists have started to release longer and longer albums. Migos’ 24-track Culture II (2018), Rae Sremmurd’s 27-track SR3MM (2018) and Drake’s 25-track Scorpion (2018), are all popular, early examples of this phenomenon which is now common to see across all genres. More recently, Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, The Kid LAROI and Taylor Swift have all released projects that span more than 30 tracks — something which rarely happened in the days of CDs and cassettes, given those formats’ physical limitations.
Major artists are also trying to capture attention in the age of “content oversupply” by releasing alternate versions of albums and songs, and more remixes than ever. Take Republic Records signee Ariana Grande. She released 12 versions and remixes of her single “yes, and?’ last year (including sped up, slowed down, a capella, extended, and instrumental variations), five versions of “we can’t be friends (wait for your love),” five versions of “the boy is mine” and six versions of the album those songs are on, eternal sunshine.
This strategy has bled over to vinyl, too. Over the last year, Swift, for example, released 36 different vinyl editions of varying colors and contents of The Tortured Poets Department to continue to engage fans and to further its monetary (and chart) success.
In the end, for artists and their teams, there’s no strong downside to any of these marketing strategies on social media, streaming services or physical products, and thus, they’re likely to persist and keep growing. The more songs on an album, the higher the likelihood that fans will stream them — and generate the significant royalties that come with it. And if a single’s a capella version doesn’t do well, that’s not a problem: it’s virtually free to silence the instrumentals on a track and put that result on streaming services. Why not try? Even a few curiosity listens from major fans make it worth it. On social media, the main result of a big fan page and creator campaign push is the appearance of a groundswell of support for the artist. The only danger is that this appearance is a facade.
It’s true that constant promotion can wear out fans. I’ve seen it from time to time, especially with excessive vinyl variants, but really, with fans’ attention being pulled in so many directions at every moment, how many of them will notice just how big all the promotion has become? And how many of them are even aware that some of the fan pages and influencer co-signs they see are part of that campaign anyway?
Streaming services have started to take the effects of saturation seriously — Spotify is now curbing mass uploads and SoundCloud is de-monetizing AI tracks — but that’s not enough to stop the flood, especially not as AI music and content creation surges. Deezer reported last week that 18% of its daily uploaded songs are now fully AI-generated, nearly double the count it reported in January. Sora, meanwhile, became so popular after its release in December that, a few days later, it had to pause users’ ability to make new accounts, citing extremely high demand.
Surely, there’s some limit to how hard the music business can push these pro-saturation tactics. But I also believe this might just be the new state of the internet, where the rise of AI tools are making it easier to flood online platforms with various forms of content. Will the “dead internet theory” — the idea that there’s so much AI slop and even human-made saturation that nothing can be found or trusted — come to pass, or will music marketers continue to break through the exponentially growing noise by fighting back with even more noise?
After Sleepy Hallow‘s “2055” went triple platinum four years ago, Sony Music’s gaming-and-music team noticed something about the Jamaican-American rapper’s fans: They were gamers. And not just gamers, but Fortnite players.
According to the label’s internal research, Sleepy Hallow fans are 2.5 times more likely to play Fortnite than the national average and twice as likely to play games overall. “It stuck out,” says Alex Ciccimarro, vp of marketing for Sony-owned RCA Records. “Since then, every campaign we’ve worked on with Sleepy, we’ve tried to incorporate gamers.”
The latest project on this front is “The Hallow Heist,” an April 18 virtual-concert event on Fortnite in which a world designed by Sleepy Hallow with his team, employing Epic Games’ user tools known as Unreal Engine for Fortnite, led players to a new music video for “Girls Like Girls.” Hallow, 25, is a longtime Fortnite player who “came in with a bunch of ideas,” Ciccimarro says. The rapper built “The Hallow Heist” with help from his Winner’s Circle Entertainment managers, plus RCA and Sony Immersive Music Studios.
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Since the pandemic, a hit Fortnite experience can help an artist build a massive audience. Travis Scott‘s performance drew more than 12 million players in 2020, and 14.3 million experienced last December’s Remix: The Finale event starring Snoop Dogg, Juice WRLD, Eminem and Ice Spice. The user bases of Fortnite, Roblox and other gaming platforms are so potent for artists that one content producer told Billboard last year: “Just the way every artist has an Instagram account and a TikTok, eventually everyone’s going to have a Roblox presence.” Sony’s team has been especially aggressive in this space, including by arranging a virtual concert last October for British singer-songwriter Myles Smith.
“That intersection of gaming and music is a young-consumer-led trend — which obviously is super-important for us, because they’re so influential in breaking new artists,” says Dennis Kooker, Sony Music’s president of global digital business. “We’ve had a lot of young artists that have grown up playing games and know the space really well and have great creative ideas.”
Brad Spahr, senior vp/general manager of Sony Immersive Music Studios, says the Hallow world-creation team focused on a singular question: “What would Sleepy’s brain look like?” Very purple, as it turns out. In “The Hallow Heist,” the rapper’s avatar wears a puffy purple coat as evil robots armed with lasers put him to sleep, while the rest of the game involves players floating, jumping, zip-lining and racing cars through a futuristic purple cityscape. When they finally succeed, Hallow declares, “What a trip. I’ve got this song stuck in my head. Yep, studio time.” The game ends with a trip to a recording studio, where Hallow debuted his new single “Girls Like Girls.” A music video for the track subsequently came out on April 24 and landed 108,000 YouTube views in the first five days of its release. The track has streamed 1.2 million times overall, according to Luminate.
“He was involved the whole way,” says Spahr, whose Culver City, Calif.-based Sony Music team initially emphasized virtual reality when it started nearly 10 years ago, but now emphasizes Fortnite and Roblox in addition to other projects. “He gave us a lot of reference material — things we could work with to build the framework of a creative concept.”
As with all of the Sony team’s projects, Hallow’s Fortnite activation entailed a complex technology design but a simple idea: Reach gamers where they are. “It’s an ‘If you build it, they will come’ situation,” RCA’s Ciccimarro says. “The community wants to be there, and we just gave them something to do.”
Skaters who have dreamed of nosebone kickflipping the curb in front of the El Rey Theater or landing a 360 Varial McTwist under the venue’s iconic marquee can now live out that dream on Tony Hawk‘s Pro Skater 3 + 4. Both games are set to drop on July 11, according to game maker Activision Publishing, Inc. […]
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Getty Images / Elon Musk / Diablo IV
Elon Musk has once again been trolled for video gaming skills, or lack thereof.
Musk, who recently claimed he was cutting back his time with DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) because his company, Tesla, is flopping due to his involvement in ruining people’s lives, decided to share another video of himself playing Diablo IV.
The billionaire is still desperate to prove that he is the ultimate gamer, but in the process, he only invited trolls to clown him once again. Musk’s skills came under scrutiny when he was accused by gamers, including the popular problematic streamer Asmongold, of paying someone to play Path of Exile 2 for him or “fraudmaxing.”
Being the petulant manchild he is, Musk unfollowed Asmongold, stripped him of his verified status, and shared the DMs they exchanged with each other.
Musk would eventually admit to cheating in both Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2, but his lame behavior hasn’t stopped. He shared another stream of himself playing Diablo IV on his X account, but this time he disabled his comments, only allowing his closest friends to reply to the post, because people were once again clowning his skills.
This latest moment also follows Musk’s “rage quitting” when trolls took over his comment section during a test of his Starling service on his private plane, which United Airlines allegedly wants to use on its fleet of commercial aircraft.
Elon Musk’s Gaming History
Musk takes his gaming very seriously; he is so into it that he had a gaming rig installed in his DOGE office to get in some gaming time between laying off hard-working Americans.
It doesn’t sound very efficient, if you ask us; in fact, that sounds like a complete waste of government time and money.
Well, we hope Musk continues to get trolled; he deserves every bit of it.
Udio, a generative AI music company backed by will.i.am, Common and a16z, has partnered with Audible Magic to fingerprint all tracks made using the platform at the moment they are created and to check the generated works, using Audible Magic’s “content control pipeline,” for any infringing copyrighted material.
By doing this, Udio and Audible Magic have created a way for streaming services and distributors to trace which songs submitted to their platforms are made with Udio’s AI. The company also aims to proactively detect and block use of copyrighted material that users don’t own or control.
“Working with Audible Magic allows us to create a transparent signal in the music supply chain. By fingerprinting at the point of generation, we’re helping establish a new benchmark for accountability and clarity in the age of generative music,” says Andrew Sanchez, co-founder of Udio. “We believe that this partnership will open the door for new licensing structures and monetization pathways that will benefit stakeholders across the industry from artists to rights holders to technology platforms.”
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Last summer, Udio, and its top competitor Suno, were both sued by the three major record companies for training their AI music models on the companies’ copyrighted master recordings. In the lawsuits, the majors argued this constituted copyright infringement “at an almost unimaginable scale.” Additionally, the lawsuits pointed out that the resulting AI-generated songs from Udio and Suno could “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [the services were] built.”
Udio’s new partnership with Audible Magic stops short of promising to eliminate copyright material from its training process, as the majors want, but it shows that Udio is trying out alternative solutions to appease the music establishment. Suno also has a partnership with Audible Magic, announced in October 2024, but the two partnerships believes these deals hold key differences. Suno’s integration focus more specifically on its “audio inputs” and “covers” features, which allow users to generate songs based on an audio file they upload. With Audible Magic’s technology, Suno prevents users from unauthorized uploads of copyrighted material.
“This partnership demonstrates Udio’s substantial commitment to rights holder transparency and content provenance,” says Kuni Takahashi, CEO of Audible Magic. “Registering files directly from the first-party source is a clean and robust way to identify the use of AI-generated music in the supply chain.”
BeatStars has partnered with Sureel, an AI music detection and attribution company, to provide its creators with the ability to express their desire to “opt out” of their works being used in AI training.
To date, AI music companies in the United States are not required to honor opt-outs, but through this partnership, Sureel and Beatstars, the world’s largest music marketplace, hope to create clarity for AI music companies that are wishing to avoid legal and reputational risks and create a digital ledger to keep track of beatmakers’ wishes regarding AI training.
Here’s how it works: Beatstars will send formal opt-out notices for every music asset and artist on its platform, and all of the creators’ choices will be documented on a portal that any AI company can access. By default, all tracks will be marked as shielded from AI training unless permission is granted. Companies can also access creators’ wishes using Sureel’s API. It will also automatically communicate the creators’ desires via a robots.txt file, which is a way to block AI companies that are crawling the web for new training data.
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As the U.S. — and countries around the world — continue to debate how to properly regulate issues related to AI, start-ups in the private sector, like Sureel, are trying to find faster solutions, including tools for opting in and out of AI training, detection technology to flag and verify AI generated works, and more.
“This partnership is an extension of our longstanding commitment to put creators first,” said Abe Batshon, CEO of BeatStars, in a statement. “We recognize that some AI companies might not respect intellectual property, so we are taking definitive action to ensure our community’s work remains protected and valued. Ethical AI is the future, and we’re leading the charge in making sure creators are not left behind.”
“BeatStars isn’t just a marketplace — it’s one of the most important creator communities in the world,” added Dr. Tamay Aykut, founder/CEO of Sureel. “They’ve built their platform around trust, transparency, and putting artists in control. That’s exactly the type of environment where our technology belongs. This partnership proves you can scale innovation and ethics together — and shows the rest of the industry what responsible AI collaboration looks like.”
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Source: Nintendo / Nintendo Switch 2
After a delay, primarily due to Donald Trump’s blatant abuse of tariffs, Nintendo was forced to postpone pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch 2 for fans in the US. After some waiting, the day has arrived for gamers stateside to secure Nintendo’s new console, and as expected, things did not go smoothly.
Although people have been complaining about the Switch 2’s price, demand is still strong. Gamers had a frustrating time trying to secure a Nintendo Switch 2 due to several sites offering pre-orders crashing under the high volume of traffic.
Best Buy, Target, and Walmart all experienced issues with their websites on Thursday morning once pre-orders for the Switch 2 went live, according to Downdetector.
For about 45 minutes, starting around midnight, following the announcement that pre-orders for the Switch 2 went live, more than 2,000 customers reported experiencing issues while trying to connect to Target’s website.
Best Buy wasn’t any better. Even though they required customers to have an account on the website, a tactic to combat scalping, customers began encountering issues around 9 PM on Wednesday, which persisted until 2 AM on Thursday.
GameStop, remember them? Kicked off their Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders on Thursday at 11 AM; spoiler alert, it was also a hot mess.
Still, some were able to secure their Nintendo Switch 2 consoles, even though it required some searching. To those people, congratulations on your major accomplishment.
The Buzz & Discourse Around The Nintendo Switch 2
The Nintendo Switch 2 is set to launch on June 5, a date Nintendo says will hold firm. Since its announcement, there has been considerable excitement, as well as considerable discourse, particularly regarding the costs of its games.
Mario Kart World, one of the console’s launch titles, will cost $80, and that is not sitting well with some gamers.
Many were worried that Nintendo would raise the price of the console in response to Trump’s tariffs, but the company has recently announced that the console’s price will remain unchanged. However, they did raise the price on accessories.
Welp.
You can see more reactions to the Switch 2 pre-order situation in the gallery below.
1. Felt this
3. Gotta kill time somehow
8. Nature is healing
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Source: The Washington Post / Getty / Elon Musk
Phony Stark, aka Elon Musk, learned the hard way that it truly doesn’t pay to align yourself with Donald Trump and ruin people’s lives in the process.
Spotted on BBC, word on the street is Elon Musk has had enough of being involved in government because it’s tanking his bottom line. According to the website, Musk will “significantly” scale back his role in the US Government in response to Tesla’s profits sinking, a direct result of his dealings with Trump, and firing thousands of government workers as part of DOGE’s “cost-cutting” measures in an effort to cut government spending.
Per BBC:
Musk has led the newly created advisory body – the Department for Government Efficiency (Doge) – since last year, putting the world’s richest man at the heart of cutting US spending and jobs.
But Musk said his “time allocation to Doge” would “drop significantly” from next month, adding he would spend only one to two days per week on it after accusations he has taken his focus off Tesla.
His political involvement has sparked protests and boycotts of Tesla cars around the world.
Temporary government workers like Musk contracts are allowed to work only 130 days a year, and for those keeping count, since working from the day of Trump’s inauguration, his contract is set to expire.
It’s unclear whether Musk, who donated $250 million to Orange Mussolini’s campaign, will step down completely from his role at DOGE.
Social Media Vows To Not Let Up On Elon Musk
If Elon Musk thinks he can simply walk away as if nothing happened, social media is telling him to think again.
Users on X, formerly Twitter, are vowing to continue making life miserable for Musk due to his actions and the harm he has caused.
“Elon Musk says he is stepping back from DOGE in May, after having destroyed every government agency, the lives of 280,000 Federal workers, the support system for social security, not to mention thousands of lives overseas by the gutting of humanitarian aid. Don’t let the door hit you, dick,” one post on X read.
Another post read, “Boo hoo poor Elon, he really thinks he can just walk away after all the damage he did. The world won’t rest until everything around him crashes and he ends up the poorest man in the world. There will be no forgiveness. Musk should just flee back to South Africa.”
Welp, this is what you get, Elon Musk. Now deal with it.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.