Gamescom 2025 delivered exactly what I asked for: games. And from the look of what was shown off during the biggest gaming show of the summer, we can expect quite the year of gaming ahead of us.
With hands-on testing of the hugely anticipated ROG Xbox Ally, an all-new Nvidia GeForce Now sporting an RTX 5080 and crazy-fast latency, a premium pair of gaming cans from JBL and more, Gamescom impressed with its list of gaming gadgets — and it was hard to tear ourselves away from them all.
And that’s not even talking about the games. Being able to creep through the freaky frights of Resident Evil Requiem has shown why it should be at the top of gamers’ lists in 2026, and I couldn’t get enough of the Bloober Team’s upcoming Cronos: A New Dawn. Even Hollow Knight: Silksong was finally playable on the showfloor.
There was plenty on show (and plenty more long lines), and my team and I crawled the gaming grounds of Cologne, Germany to play a bunch of them. Without further ado, here's our list of the best gadgets and games at Gamescom 2025 you’ll want to keep an eye out for.
Best of Show: Nvidia GeForce Now
Once September rolls around, the next generation of Nvidia GeForce Now will drop. Of course, the big headline here is an RTX 5080 gaming PC being readily available in the cloud for you to play, but it’s so much more than that.
You see, Team Green has made big changes not only to the GPU, but given the entire server SuperPOD an overhaul with new tech boosting its performance, vastly increasing the bandwidth of transmitting gameplay, and streaming gameplay more efficiently.
The end result is cloud gaming that can go as high as 5K resolution at 120 FPS, and for the esports enthusiasts out there, you can get 1080p at 360 FPS. But what about latency? Well at its “worst” with all the fidelity settings maxed out, games will respond faster to your controls than they do to a PS5 Pro in your living room. At its best, I saw latency as low as 17ms.
Throw in the ability to install your own games onto cloud storage, improved Steam Deck support, both portable and when docked, and support for Logitech wheels, and this becomes a breakthrough in cloud gaming — a breakthrough that can be a viable replacement for a traditional games console.
Jason England
Best gaming handheld: ROG Xbox Ally X
After seeing the leaked ROG Xbox Ally benchmarks, I was nervous about Asus and Microsoft’s new handheld ahead of its October 16 launch. Now that I’ve gone hands-on with Ally and Ally X, I’m no longer worried.
Whenever I’ve played on Windows gaming handhelds, two gripes have always immediately stuck out:
- Ergonomics: Companies seem to work too hard to make them thin, which makes them look nice, but doesn’t really give you anything to grip onto.
- Windows 11: Tony Polanco said it best when he said Windows 11 “absolutely sucks” on a handheld. The desktop OS is clumsy to navigate on a small touchscreen, and it’s a real suck on valuable resource space with its background tasks.
With the ROG Xbox Ally, the teams seem laser-focused on fixing these two, and the results are spectacular. Taking inspiration from Xbox controllers, it may be on the thicker end of gaming handheld dimensions, but that results in the most comfortable portable I’ve ever laid my hands on. You’ll be able to play on this for hours, no problem!
Second, the Allies boot straight into an Xbox UI, which is a really nice-to-use frontend that gives it the console-esque experience Windows handhelds have so desperately needed for ages. But at the same time, it means that Microsoft can eliminate all the background tasks that are needed to keep the Windows 11 desktop running, since it's never opened.
The end result is mightily impressive frame rates in all your games (Doom: The Dark Ages at over 80 FPS at 1080p, for example). It makes the most of that Ryzen Z2 silicon, and this could finally be the moment the Steam Deck has real competition.
Jason England
Best gaming peripheral: JBL Quantum 950
I may have found my next favorite way to be fully immersed in games with the newly announced JBL Quantum gaming headsets, with the premium Quantum 950 looking to take on the best gaming headsets. At least, that’s what I’ve gained from simply putting the headset on.
This is a premium headset through and through, sporting 50mm carbon drivers, an upgraded JBL QuantumENGINE that delivers spatial audio, 3D head tracking and active noise cancellation, along with a hot-swappable dual-battery system that provides 25 hours each. With its wireless Base Station for charging and connectivity, that’s essentially an endless cycle of battery power, and I’m here for it.
I expect JBL to deliver a high level of pinpoint audio accuracy with booming yet clear sound in competitive titles and narrative-driven games alike, and not just due to its specs. The Quantum 950 is a pricey headset at £299 / €349 (around $59), but that’s where its £129 / €149 wireless JBL Quantum 650 and wired £49 / €59 Quantum 250 come in (no Base Station of ANC here) come in.
What I can say is that these Quantum headsets offer an extremely comfortable fit. The thick memory foam ear cushions wrapped around my ears comfortably, and with the hammock headband and breathable mesh suspension, they felt snug on my head. Plus, they’re lightweight without feeling cheaply made.
The JBL Quantum 950 already impressed me with its comfort, but now it needs to nail audio while gaming once we test this headset out — something I’m already very excited to do after my brief time with the headsets.
Darragh Murphy
Best game: Resident Evil: Requiem
Though I’m excited about GTA 6, the game I’m looking forward to playing most in 2026 is Resident Evil Requiem. If you know me, that’s not too surprising given my love for Capcom’s long-running survival horror series. But after I went hands-on with Resident Evil Requiem during Capcom’s “Gamescom in NYC,” I feel my hype is justified.
The Gamescom demo does an excellent job of showing you what to expect. Playing as Grace Ashford, you navigate through a dimly lit medical facility, trying to find a fuse to open a locked door. Compounding matters is the fact that there’s a giant, lanky monster stalking Grace the entire time. Spooky location. Environmental puzzle. Horrific creature. That sounds like Resident Evil to me!
One of the best things about the game is that you can switch between first and third-person perspectives on the fly. I plan to do full playthroughs in both modes since they each deliver a very distinct feel. If you want full-on on inescapable terror, first-person is the way to go. If you want a more traditional Resident Evil experience, third-person is for you.
Resident Evil Requiem drops on February 27, 2026 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and you’d better believe I’ll be counting the days until then. Bring on the scary!
Tony Polanco
Best sim racing rig: Asetek Initium
I’m the sim racing guy, so of course my time at Gamescom was mostly spent getting behind the wheel and destroying lap records (my apologies to the teams at Asetek and Nacon). And out of all of them, the Asetek Initium stands head and shoulders above as the best — packing impressive direct drive immersion for a low cost.
Funny story: this isn’t the first time I’ve talked about this wheel. Remember the wheel I tested at Computex that I wasn’t allowed to name? That’s this one. And now, I can finally talk about it properly!
The detail of the 5.5nm force feedback delivered through the wheel is incredible for the $599 price tag, the pedals have a great feel to them beneath your feet to really gather control of any oversteer, and if you want to get the full kit, that rig + a cockpit to attach everything to comes in at $1,049. It’s supreme value for money.
Jason England
Biggest surprise: Gamescom Opening Night Live
During the opening monologue of Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025, host Geoff Keighly declared that “E3 didn’t die, it just moved to Germany.” And while the death of the Electronic Entertainment Expo may have made Gamescom the de facto biggest gaming trade show of the summer, the Cologne-based event has yet to pick up E3’s slack in terms of surprises.
The two-hour Gamescom Opening Night Live event packed plenty of highly-anticipated upcoming titles from Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Ghost of Yotei and Silent Hill f, to our game-of-the-show pick Resident Evil Requiem, but was disappointingly lacking in terms of major reveals that really got the gaming community watching around the world abuzz.
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which appears to be taking a lot of cues from the Arkham series, was a pleasant reveal, but pre-show rumors robbed it of the surprise factor. Perhaps the biggest “shock” was the closer, the announcement of Black Myth: Zhong Kui, sequel to last year’s best-seller, Black Myth: Wukong. The CGI trailer was suitably epic, but with no gameplay and not even a hint of a release date, it’s likely years away from launch.
Hopefully, next year’s ONL event can pack a few more curveballs that no one sees coming.
Rory Mellon
Weirdest gaming gadget: OVR Omara Scent Display
It’s smell-o-vision for games. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s definitely weird, but there’s something interesting here. I never thought we needed more sensory inputs from games than seeing and hearing, but smelling the world does add a little something extra.
The Omara device sits by your screen and, through careful “neuroscience engineering,” spits out scent molecules at high levels of accuracy and speed, then removes them quickly to not distract for too long.
Do I see a lot of people using this? No, but it’s cool nonetheless! Whether it’s smelling the fresh air of rolling hills as you walk across the countryside, or gas as you fire up a car to go ripping around Silverstone. There’s a definite attraction here in the VR gaming space for sure!
Jason England
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