I honestly wasn't sure where to begin, or even how this is remotely possible, but here we are in 2026: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a 17-year-old game, now has full cross-play between PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC with absolutely zero modding required.

Developed by @ClassicsGG on X (formerly Twitter), the project is now live. For more details, you can join their Discord. It hasn’t been all smooth sailing, though. The original clip was taken down due to a copyright claim; whether that claim was legitimate or not, it's worth mentioning.

Modern Warfare 2 cross-play sounds impossible, but it works

I find this whole endeavor incredibly ambitious. There’s a full page dedicated to explaining how it works. For example, if you’re on Xbox 360 and want to join a cross-play lobby, you need to:

• Search for the Team Tactical Playlist.
• Or find the host’s gamertag (classicsgg) on Xbox Live and join their session.
• Or send Classicsgg an Xbox Live message or game invite, and they’ll send one back.

That said, joining their Discord seems like the best bet to get things working. Still, it’s incredible that this is even possible. I have fond memories of the older Call of Duty titles; they definitely helped shape my early years of online gaming.

I remember when cross-play between consoles was first being introduced during the Xbox One and PS4 era for Fortnite. It was rather exciting. Being able to play across platforms was pretty cool, even though Sony threw a fit at the thought of it, complete with its mandatory cross-platform revenue share system.

Now, whether this project was pushed through thanks to AI or not, I really don't know for sure, but AI is often the propelling factor with things like this these days. That said, seeing cross-play without the need for mods on a nearly two-decade-old game is a use case I can get behind. Fair warning, though: PC players are a bit out of luck and will require a subscription to the Classics Discord server to help deter and prevent cheating.

Let me know whether you find this as cool as I do by leaving a comment and taking part in our poll below:

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Final Fantasy fans on Xbox are eating good this month. Not only do we have the Final Fantasy Resonance (which I personally found to be amazing) coming out this week, but Microsoft has announced (via Xbox Wire) that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is finally coming to Xbox Game Pass as part of its latest batch of new games.

The batch also includes some more niche titles like Planets Vs. Zombies: Replanted and The Séance of Blake Manor, but Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is the star of the show.

Here's the full list of games coming and leaving Xbox Game Pass for the second half of October 2026.

Games leaving Xbox Game Pass (October 31)

• Day of the Tentacle Remastered (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Dead Static Drive (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Deep Rock Galactic (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Full Throttle Remastered (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Grim Fandango Remastered (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Wartales (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Wildgate (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Games leaving Xbox Game Pass (November 10)

• Football Manager 26 (PC)
• Football Manager 26 – Console Edition (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Windows Central's take

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is an action-RPG reimagining of the classic 1990s JRPG, Final Fantasy VII, that tells the beginning of Cloud's journey to save his planet from destruction at the hands of the evil megacorp Shinra and the megalomaniacal Sephiroth.

While I prefer the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade for its hilarious mods featuring Darth Vader, I can't deny that it coming to Xbox Game Pass finally feels like a satisfying full-circle moment.

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We've gone from speculating about rumors of an Xbox version for years, to Square Enix announcing Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade's Xbox port while shadow-dropping Final Fantasy XVI's Xbox port, to making the entire Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy available on Xbox, and now this.

With its inclusion in Xbox Game Pass, Xbox fans will now have more ways to enjoy Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade's thrilling combat, complex characters, and in-depth story.

Plus, it will serve as a great appetizer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's eventual inclusion in Xbox Game Pass and the epic finale of the FF7 Remake trilogy, Final Fantasy VII: Revelations, which will drop on April 8, 2027, for Xbox Series X|S (with Xbox Play Anywhere support), PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam.

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Xbox Ally and Xbox Series X|S consoles are about to get a big AMD-shaped boost.

Yesterday, AMD and Microsoft revealed that FSR 4.1 is coming to the entire suite of current-gen Xbox devices. That includes Xbox Ally (base model), Xbox Ally X, and Xbox Series X|S consoles.

FSR 4.1 is an upscaling technology that allows games to render images at a lower resolution, passing overhead to performance. Then, FSR 4.1 upscales the image to create a sharper image, granting the appearance of higher native resolution. Technologies like FSR and DLSS have been boosting the lifespan of older and less-powerful hardware for some time now, and given the on-going RAMpocalypse and component crisis, anything that extends the usability of more affordable hardware is a win in my book.

But, when can we expect to get our hands (and eyes) on it? Here's what our sources are telling us so far.

FSR 4.1 will become available to Xbox Series X|S game developers in the next couple of weeks. Some partner developers have already had early access in preview builds, and will enable FSR 4.1 earlier than others. In the AMD video above, the firm used Blood of Dawnwalker to demonstrates FSR 4.1 boosts on Xbox Ally devices, so you can probably expect that to be among the first batch.

For Xbox Ally X and the Xbox Ally base model, AMD and ASUS will ship updated drives to the Armoury Crate's new "Preview Update" segment by Friday, Oct 23. The new preview segment which lets users test out early builds if they don't mind risking some bugs and polish, similar to the Xbox and Windows Insider programs.

Developers that have enabled FSR 4.1 on existing PC games will automatically get enhanced when the drivers go live on Xbox Ally devices.

On Xbox Series X|S console, FSR 4.1 won't be retroactively injected into existing games. Developers will have to implement it into their existing games via updates, or support it out of the box in future games.

Sources tell me that there is a "handful" of FSR 4.1-enhanced titles slated for the holiday season on Xbox Series X|S, with a steady feed of new games gaining FSR 4.1 throughout 2027 and beyond.

FSR 4.1 should provide a meaningful quality bump for all sorts of games across Xbox Series X|S and Xbox Ally X and the base model, but perhaps more so on the lower-end devices. The Xbox Series S has been notorious for performance trade offs, with developers struggling with the irregular RAM allocation.

Games on Xbox Series X|S that presently trade resolution down for frame rates should get noticeably sharper even in performance mode when implemented.

People have been using apps like Optiscaler on Github to inject FSR 4 on devices like the Steam Deck, and the results have been impressive, but setting it up can be a chore. Native, official support should bring a ton of performance benefits for the Xbox range across the board without the headaches of using workarounds.

As soon as it's available, I'll be demonstrating how it all works in practice right here on Windows Central.

The big question is ... will GTA 6 support it? Time will tell.

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I’ve already seen Windows games running on Android, and while I found that impressive, it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. Android is a relatively open ecosystem, and it’s technically Linux underneath, so given that modern hardware is more than capable, the leap wasn’t as massive as it first appeared.

Running Windows games on an iPhone, however, is a different story. Apple’s ecosystem has opened its door a notch or two over the past few years, but I never imagined it had opened enough to allow Windows gaming to run directly on the hardware.

Fortunately, I just so happened to stumble across a GitHub repository, PlayPort. Created by playportdev with contributions from Claude — because of course, everything uses AI now, but regardless — PlayPort is able to run Steam, GOG, or Epic Games titles directly on your iPhone.

So far, Portal 2, Hollow Knight, and even The Witcher 3 are all working at relatively playable framerates. According to the project’s documentation, Portal 2 specifically hits about 60 FPS at 720p, with each 32-bit game getting its own 4 GB memory window to work with.

Playing Windows games on an iPhone isn't exactly straightforward

Installation is not the simplest process. You have to sideload the PlayPort app onto your device, enable Developer Mode, and be familiar with JIT to get it enabled. There’s also a catch: If you use a free Apple ID to sign the app, it only lasts for seven days. You’ll need to re-sign it once a week, though your games and saves remain on the phone.

Honestly, I am impressed. I was just as impressed to see Game Pass games working on a Steam Deck, which gives me hope that, who knows, maybe one day we’ll see Game Pass running on an iPhone with the ability to install and play games directly off the service. Heck, I doubt we’ll have to wait too long before something like that exists for Android at the rate things are progressing.

If all that eventually comes to pass, I’ll be sure to shed a tear, as I often do over what could have been for Windows Phone, but alas. Projects like these are super cool, brute-forced by AI or not. I’m all for more ways for people to play and access their library of games.

Let me know how you feel about this. Would you try it, or is it more so just cool to see? Let me know in the comments, and be sure to take part in our poll!

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The long-awaited second season of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has arrived on Netflix, ready to take viewers on another dark journey through Night City filled with violence, introspection, and vengeance.

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To celebrate, CD Projekt Red has announced that it will update Cyberpunk 2077 this week, on October 22, 2026, with a new patch called the "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 Update (2.5)".

All CD Projekt Red has revealed about the 2.5 update thus far is that it will bring new gameplay features like Cyberware customization and a dual-wielding playstyle to Cyberpunk 2077.

As for the rest of the update's content, you will tune in to CD Projekt Red's REDStream via their official Twitch and YouTube channels and Steam on October 21, 2026, where the developers will unload more details regarding the "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 Update (2.5)."

Are you ready for one more journey into Night City with this update?

Honestly, it's kind of shocking that the player couldn't dual-wield weapons in Cyberpunk 2077 until this update got announced, especially when many characters in the game (including our good old pal, Jackie Wells) are able to.

The closest approximation we had for dual-wielding weapons until now was the Mantis Blade Cyberware upgrade that granted the use of robot Mantis arms to stab people with.

Hopefully this update means I can finally get to gun down enemies while dual-wielding submachine guns or bash Adam Smasher's head in while dual-wielding hammers.

Either way, I'm curious to see what Cyberpunk 2077's update will bring and how it will tie into Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 2.

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Over the past couple of weeks, I've been investigating an apparent wave of undeserved bans across the Forza Horizon community on Xbox, particularly in Japan.

Japan has a strong and unique car culture, and Playground Games acknowledged that Japan has been the most-requested setting for their popular Forza Horizon franchise. Forza Horizon is now in its 6th installment, which is currently available exclusively on Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Indeed, general Xbox adoption in Japan has generally been anemic at best. Microsoft has historically struggled to compete against PlayStation and Nintendo in the region for a variety of reasons. Microsoft's U.S.-centricity has long prevented it from achieving reasonable penetration outside of its traditional English-first markets.

Forza Horizon set in Japan should've been a chance to change Xbox's fortunes in at least one region, but the RAMpocalypse has put a stop to that. But even beyond simply maintaining Xbox Series X|S stock levels, Microsoft has drawn the ire of some Japanese Forza Horizon players, who have once again put a spotlight on its haphazard community management systems.

Ban waves have been hitting some Forza Horizon 6 players in Japan and beyond over anime-styled skins

Japanese "Itasha (痛車)" user-generated liveries seem to be at the center of the ban waves Playground Games has been handing out for Forza Horizon 6 players.

Itasha is a car subculture, literally meaning "painful car," ironically celebrating overly flashy or "cringy" car liveries. The culture represents a nexus of sorts between car culture and anime culture, going all the way back to the 1980s.

As vinyl printing got more sophisticated and affordable, full-blown car skins became prevalent in Japan and even in the West, with otakus with more money than perhaps good taste (or armed with a strong sense of irony) jumping on board. Even major brands have been on the trend in recent years, too.

Naturally, since Forza Horizon 6 allows users to generate their own custom designs, Itasha car culture has proliferated within the game as well. However, sometimes the designs have fallen afoul of Forza Horizon's "E for Everyone" rating. Or at least, on paper.

Some of the skins that have caught bans are pretty clearly in violation of the policies like the above, but others seem relatively innocuous, making users wonder if Microsoft is being a bit heavy-handed.

One user told me that they had been banned for a month, potentially for the above livery, which they had designed and then kept in storage. I say potentially, because Forza doesn't exactly tell you why you've been banned or for which livery.

"This game has a forum for appealing penalties, and although I submitted a post there, I haven't received a reply in over a month," he said. "Consequently, I have no idea which livery caused my ban."

"Furthermore, there are people who received harsher penalties than I did—such as permanent bans or device bans—despite creating vinyls featuring female characters that were clearly less revealing than mine."

Other livery creators have seen their entire Xbox accounts permanently banned without so much of an explanation. If you live in the U.S. or UK and have ever had to deal with Microsoft's Kafka-esque AI-powered support systems, imagine how much worse they are outside of Microsoft's core markets. There's little viable recourse to appeal bans, seemingly, and Microsoft's systems aren't transparent enough about the reasons as to why a user might catch a ban, permanent or temporary.

Some users have speculated that Forza Horizon is using some form of auto-banning system, AI-powered or otherwise, handing out false bans. There are also conspiracy theories of mass reporting to trigger the automated ban systems. Forza Horizon's Code of Conduct claims that all reports are reviewed by a human moderator and now contains a segment regarding "Itasha-style" designs.

"Itasha-style designs are permitted; however, explicit sexual content and sexually suggestive content are forbidden. While we cannot show specific examples of suggestive imagery in this article, designs that depict provocative poses, associated gestures and facial expressions, and attention to specific body parts can be examples of suggestive imagery."

The problem here could pertain to a lack of "specific examples" more than likely. When it comes to art, what could be deemed "sexually suggestive" is subjective across cultures and demographics. But it also continues a general trend of Microsoft's opaque systems for enforcement across its platforms.

A former Xbox staffer told me that the teams that handle moderation within Forza and other games had effectively been gutted by Microsoft's layoffs, leaving a big gap for community management in general across Microsoft's platforms.

Indeed, even beyond the Itasha ban waves, I've been investigating hacked Xbox users being locked out of their accounts due to the way Microsoft handles account support for Xbox as well, and the above could just be symptomatic of overstretched staff unable to handle the workload placed upon them.

The situation underpins Microsoft's struggles in Japan, but also account management systems in general

Microsoft has struggled to get Xbox stock to its main markets, let alone some of its smaller markets like Europe, the Middle East, and indeed, Japan itself. But there's a cultural issue too. Microsoft generally doesn't make or publish games that have strong appeal outside of its U.S.-centric markets, and Japanese publishers have historically arrived on Xbox last.

The situation has improved over time with companies like Square Enix, Capcom, and Konami pledging greater support, but I would argue things still aren't where they should be.

Forza Horizon 6 is currently Xbox exclusive, and if the RAMpocalypse wasn't destroying stock levels, it might've been a good source of progress for the brand in Japan. Regardless, the situation with the Itasha liveries highlights, again, Microsoft's opaque systems for enforcement and account management.

Over the summer, a Brazilian user who was locked out of his account by a hacker actually sued Microsoft and won after the big M admitted he was hacked but claimed they couldn't do anything about it. Since then, Xbox has been working through a backlog to help users locked out of their accounts to regain access, but it shouldn't be this hard.

As more of our content goes digital, and with AI-powered mods and user-generated art becoming more commonplace, the systems that govern access to our digital platforms need to improve a ton. Losing access to years of content and hundreds or thousands of dollars of investment shouldn't come without a clear explanation of why you lost access. Nor should appealing those bans be so slow and difficult.

It'll probably end with some form of legislation, but that won't help today's users.

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Now that the early access period has begun for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ, so too has the camo grind. This year's is very different from the last two Black Ops games, with one big benefit being that a lot of it is global across multiplayer, DMZ, and Warzone.

In fact, you can unlock everything up to the Divergence completionist camo in any of the three modes before switching to each's dedicated Mode Mastery camos.

The early stages can be sped up a little, too. If you're playing DMZ already, you'll be working on the military camos, but you can also work on the special camos at the same time, which you may not have realized.

In Black Ops 7, you couldn't start on the special camos until you'd completed the headshot requirements for all the military-tier ones. In Modern Warfare 4, each special camo has a challenge requirement, such as kills with a suppressor attached, but it also has a weapon unlock requirement just like the military ones.

As I noticed last night, you can work on both military and special camos simultaneously, and this won't just apply to DMZ. I picked up a WZ.55 Striga SMG during a DMZ run and started using it and leveling it up.

Once I'd earned "19 more weapon unlocks" (and I'm not sure how many it needed because it looks like half the weapons I've used in DMZ were silently leveled up during the campaign), I was able to start working on the first special camo and get kills using a silencer. All while still having four more military camos left to unlock.

This is a pretty great way to help accelerate that early part of the grind before you get to the first completionist camo. So long as you pay attention to when the specials unlock and what their challenge is, you can work on them side-by-side with any remaining military camos.

For DMZ, an essential part of this is to get to DMZ Level 10 and unlock the Gunsmith station at the FOB. Because some of these challenges require using specific attachments, the easiest way to make sure you have them is by using the Gunsmith.

You can add attachments to weapons you find during your DMZ runs at the Gunsmith, too. It doesn't only apply to weapons you buy here. So if you extract with a weapon you don't have a manual for, you can still put on the necessary attachments and work on the special camos. Applying attachments does require DMZ Cash, though, so keep your bank balance high.

Of course the downside to DMZ is that if you die during a run, you could lose that weapon. But any progress is global, and while we don't know what the conversion rate is for progress in DMZ to progress in multiplayer or Warzone on these camo challenges, you can at least get a head start right now.

The final mode for Modern Warfare 4 to go live is multiplayer, and this begins on the global launch date, October 23.

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Microsoft's next-gen Xbox hardware lineup is beginning to come into focus. According to a new report from Fortune, the company is gearing up to ship new hardware in the form of a handheld in 2027, followed by a full-blown console in 2028.

It's unclear if the handheld project is a first party Xbox device, or a third-party device designed and manufactured by an OEM partner like ASUS and the ROG Ally X. The console is expected to be first-party, and is likely to run a specialized version of Windows.

The report claims that Xbox and Windows have been at odds about how the OS should run on Project Helix. Windows leaders wanted the consoles to run a modified version of Windows desktop, but Xbox leaders wanted a more boutique OS experience designed for gaming.

"Tensions ran high enough that a senior Xbox executive threatened to scrap the handheld project rather than adopt the Windows build ... Xbox is now largely controlling the direction of the operating system for the project" Fortune claims.

Microsoft's Xbox CTO, Scott Van Vliet has taken to X to refute Fortune's claims, stating that the report "misrepresents both the technical work and the relationship between the teams." But Windows and Xbox have a long history of clashing, and is the least surprising part of this report.

My own sources tell me that both Windows and Xbox teams have disagreed over the direction of the platform for certain gaming-specific experiences, but that doesn't mean the teams aren't still working together.

Windows already powers the current Xbox Series consoles, as well as Xbox One. It's a modified version of the OS that the Xbox team has customized, built on top of the Windows OS core that is developed by the Windows team.

It sounds like the Xbox team has decided to maintain this approach with Project Helix consoles, expanding and building upon it with new features and capabilities such as running PC games.

This is why you've seen an uptick in Xbox OS features for existing Xbox consoles over the last handful of months, as the Xbox org has started reinvesting in the OS experience they already control. This work will naturally also benefit the next-gen consoles.

Alarmingly, Fortune claims that Microsoft is currently expecting the next-gen Xbox console to cost somewhere between $1,200 and $1,800, making it the most expensive gaming console ever. It's possible that Microsoft may choose to subsidize the cost, which would bring it closer to $1,000, but nothing is confirmed.

Of course, these rumors are unconfirmed. Plans could change and schedules could slip, so nothing is set in stone until Microsoft is ready to formalize its plans officially. For now, we know that Project Helix is still in development, with first devkits expected to debut in early 2027.

Let us know in the comments what you think about Project Helix so far.

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