Where the AF are all the graphics cards?! It's not just the new RTX 50-series that's impossible to buy, finding any decent GPU in stock at the major US retailers right now is like staring into an abyss of nothing - Related to cards?!, stance, like, buy,, that's

Apex Legends sequel a possibility as EA CEO changes stance on live-service shooter's future

EA is working on a "bigger, more meaningful modification" to its live-service shooter Apex Legends, suggesting some form of sequel will be on the way.

During the organization's latest earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson responded to a question about the future of Apex, calling the game "one of the great new launches in our industry over the last decade".

However, he admitted the game has "not been headed in the direction we have wanted for some time", before acknowledging the development team is working towards a "meaningful improvement".

This upgrade, though, will not arrive "on top of a Battlefield launch" - the corporation's other major shooter - which is expected to release before April 2026.

"We do believe that there should be a more major improvement that will probably happen after a Battlefield launch just in terms of timing and the team is diligently working through what that would be," unveiled Wilson. "And then longer term, our expectation is that we'll continue to expand what this franchise is and how we support a core community of highly competitive players and new communities that want to come and experience all the greatness that Apex has to offer."

The organization's aim is for Apex to be a franchise that lasts for decades and for that, an "even bigger, more meaningful modification" would be required - "an Apex [website], if you will".

In the short-term, though, the organization is focused on supporting the game's community with strong anti-cheat and new content. "I would say we have seen some progress in that, but probably not as much as we would have liked," expressed Wilson.

Wilson's comments seemingly backtrack on a previous earnings call in October last year, where he discussed the possibility of an Apex Legends sequel.

"Typically, what we have seen in the context of live service driven games at scale, is the Version Two thing has almost never been as successful as the Version One thing,” he revealed at the time.

"Any time we cause a global player community to have to choose between the investments they've made to date and future innovation creativity, that's never a good place to put our community in, and so our objective will be to continue to innovate in the core experience, and you're seeing that from season to season now as our seasons get progressively bigger and we're changing kind of key modalities of play within those seasons."

Wilson's latest comments appear to be a slight backtrack with the mention of an Apex [website] in consideration, even if that remains some way off.

Elsewhere on the call, Wilson also backtracked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, suggesting that perhaps it should've been a live-service game after all.

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With GTA 6 looming, EA says it's willing to delay its "biggest ever Battlefield" to make its launch 'all it needs to be'

EA CEO Andrew Wilson had confirmed the publisher would be willing to delay its next Battlefield - currently expected to release before April 2026 - if "some things happening in the year" meant that "wasn't a great window for us".

Battlefield's lately unveiled launch window is, of course, absolutely stuffed with major releases, with the likes of Borderlands 4, Mafia: The Old Country, Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yōtei, and Fable all currently aiming to launch in the same timeframe. And that's without considering the juggernaut release of Grand Theft Auto 6, which is still officially arriving this "autumn" despite persistent rumours of a potential delay - a release window other publishers appear reluctant to commit to until Rockstar makes its plans known.

So there's fierce competition for eyeballs and wallets ahead - something Wilson acknowledged in response to an investor question regarding the new Battlefield's launch window during EA's latest financial call. "I do believe that this year might be a nuanced year relative to competition," he admitted. "There may be some things happening in the year that may cause us to think differently about our launch timing."

Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 1 Grand Theft Auto 6 is the biggest game in a massive year for [website] on YouTube.

Wilson also noted EA has "invested more in this Battlefield than any Battlefield before... We're looking for this to be the biggest Battlefield we've ever made." As such, the publisher "[wants] to make sure that we launch that into a window where we can deliver on the fullness of the promise of what Battlefield can be and grow the community to a level that is commensurate with the size of the game that we're making."

And while the publisher believes its new Battlefield "will be great and ready" for release in Financial Year 26, Wilson admitted, "If we got close to that timeframe and believed that this wasn't going to be a great window for us, then we would take a look at what an alternate window might be that would give us the appropriate time, energy, and player acquisition opportunity for this Battlefield to be all that it needed to be."

EA has, of course, been investing heavily in its new Battlefield instalment, with a huge group of developers spanning four of its teams - DICE, Ripple Effect, Motive, and Criterion - now working on the game. That's as it seeks to "get the community back on [its] side" following the poorly received Battlefield 2042 - which quickly became one of Steam's worst-reviewed games of all time after its launch in 2021, and was later acknowledged to have flopped.

EA has already promised a return to the modern era for Battlefield's next outing, alongside traditional classes and more focused maps as it attempts to win series fans back. And with so much riding on the new Battlefield if the franchise is going to survive, release timing will be a significant consideration. Even so, EA's hype machine is already gaining momentum ready for the new Battlefield's arrival, with the publisher not long ago unveiling its new Battlefield Labs community testing initiative alongside first footage of the game.

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Sci-fi battle royale Apex Legends is due a.

Nvidia RTX 50-series cards are about as ephemeral as Casper the ridiculously expensive ghost right now, with stocks having dipped to nigh-on zero with......

Where the AF are all the graphics cards?! It's not just the new RTX 50-series that's impossible to buy, finding any decent GPU in stock at the major US retailers right now is like staring into an abyss of nothing

You've perhaps seen our in-depth reviews of Nvidia's new RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 and decided that you're going to be more effective off spending your money on an RTX 40-series card instead. AMD's RDNA 4 cards won't be here for another month, too, so you've decided to go on the hunt for a nice RTX 4070 Super or an RX 7900 XT. However, if you stick with the major US retailers, you'll be served a whole load of nothing. Err, hello AMD and Nvidia? Where are all your graphics cards?

I've just spent the past two hours updating our GPU deals page, hunting through all the graphics cards listings at Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, Walmart, and B&H Photo to find the best offers on AMD Radeon, Intel Arc, and Nvidia GeForce models. Rather than go into detail about every model I've searched for, let me just show you this simple summary:

Yep, that's right. Almost the entire inventory of mid-range or higher-tier graphics cards is gone. There's zip out there, nothing, nyet, nada, nowt. Well, okay, there are some GPUs you can find, but they're either being sold at well over their MSRPs, or the retailers in question don't have confidence-inspiring reviews.

If I'm going to spend more than $500 on a graphics card, I want to be sure that the returns policy is as solid as steel and that I'll get my money back if I'm shipped a literal brick. The situation is not massively improved here in the UK, though you can still get an RX 7900 XTX or an RTX 4080 Super at a below-MSRP price.

So, what on Earth is going on? Why is there such a dearth of graphics cards? The reason is simple(ish): AMD and Nvidia decided to wind down production of their 'last-gen' cards well before a wealth of new models could replace them. The sell-through rate of distribution centres and major retailers has been extraordinarily high, probably because they were expecting lots of new cards to arrive in January.

But, what we actually got was almost a paper launch with the RTX 50-series, with such few numbers of RTX 5090 and 5080 cards that retailers' shelves were bare within mere minutes of the products going on sale. In some cases, the shelves were empty before that point because they had already been sold. AMD, on the other hand, teased RDNA 4 before our eyes at CES but then took weeks before finally announcing that the cards themselves wouldn't be ready until early March.

Meanwhile, budget-savvy PC gamers took one look at the prices of the Blackwell cards, blinked a few times, and then ran off to snap up the remaining stocks of higher-tier RTX 40 cards. Want to grab an RTX 4070 variant? Tough luck, I'm afraid, but you can get the rather nice RX 7800 XT for a reasonable price. That's a GPU I regularly use for testing game performance and it's a real trooper of a mid-range graphics card.

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The obvious question to ask at this point is, 'When will GPU stocks get more effective?' Unfortunately, nobody has a concrete answer to that query but I suspect it's not going to be for a while, with March being the very earliest. That's when we'll be able to get our hands on the Radeon RX 9070-series but if AMD and its partners can't meet demand, we're going to be right back to square on.

Nvidia's RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti are generally expected to be launched towards the end of February, but after the dearth of the 5080 cards on shelves (well, the dearth of sensibly priced 5080 cards), I'm not overly optimistic about 5070 stocks being good.

And don't look to Intel to save the day, as it can barely get enough Arc 580 cards out to meet demand, too. The slightly less potent B570 is available but that's a budget-tier card, though not budget enough compared to the similarly priced, but evidently superior Arc B580. Intel simply doesn't have anything to offer the mid-range/mainstream market and probably won't for a long time (if at all).

All of this means that whatever graphics card you currently have will have to suffice for a good while longer. I'd avoid going down the second-hand route if you have quite an old GPU and you're hoping to pick up a cheap RTX 30-series, for example, as prices have gone up due to the paucity of new models.

The truth of the matter is now that AMD and Nvidia make gazillions of dollars in the data centre market, gaming graphics cards are just hors d'oeuvres for the revenue sheets. Fancy new graphics architectures are good for headlines, but it's just not where the money is. Nice for the chip giants, rotten for PC gamers. Same as it ever was, I guess.

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