Hyperkin unveiled a new Xbox controller called The Competitor at CES 2025. The twist with this officially licensed third-party peripheral is that The Competitor’s stick placement and general design looks a lot like that of the DualSense, the PlayStation 5’s controller.
The Xbox Wireless Controller typically features offset control sticks, a hybrid D-pad, and face buttons where the letters on each button are colored. Hyperkin’s new controller radically changes the stick placement and D-pad to match what the DualSense offers. Both control sticks are now located next to each other on the bottom part of the controller, while the D-pad has moved to the upper-left side of the controller, and each direction is an individual button.
On top of that, the controller is mostly white and its face buttons are clear, just like the DualSense. Hyperkin even added a mute button, which the DualSense has, but the Xbox Wireless Controller doesn’t.
Although Hyperkin does emulate the DualSense’s look and feel faithfully, it’s not totally the same. The Competitor does not feature a touchpad, adaptive triggers, or haptic feedback like the DualSense, but makes itself distinct in other ways. It’s a wired controller, and IGN reports that its control sticks are Hall Effect rather than Analog. Hall Effect sticks are known for being more durable than standard analog sticks and less prone to the drift problems plaguing this generation of controllers. It also features two programmable buttons on the back of the controller.
Hyperkin is clearly trying to appeal to people who enjoy the look and feel of the DualSense, but prefer playing their games on Xbox. You’ll have to go hands-on with it at CES 2025 or wait for it to be released to see if The Competitor lives up to that promise. Pricing and release date for the Hyperkin are not yet known.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.