Technologies

Borderlands 4: Getting the Perfect Roll On Your Favorite Gun Might Be a Lot Harder

Between the new weapon parts generation system and decreased legendary drop chances, you better strap in for a grind.

The Borderlands State of Play stream made one thing abundantly clear: The next entry in the looter shooter series is redoubling its commitment to having more guns than ever before.

While Borderlands 3 had more than one billion guns for players to tote around the galaxy, Gearbox Software is making a fundamental change to the weapon parts system to allow the generation of even more weapons in Borderlands 4.

In previous games, weapons were only able to be generated with parts from a single fictional weapons manufacturer. This meant players could learn what weapons they enjoyed using based on certain trademark traits from different manufacturers.

For example, Vladof weapons were fully-automatic bullet hoses, Hyperion weapons became more accurate with continued fire and Torgue weapons fired explosive rounds. Each manufacturer had quirks and players knew more-or-less what weapon they were farming for, even if a particular drop didn’t have the perfect parts for the most desirable stats.

The State of Play revealed new weapon manufacturers, including Order weapons that charge up railgun-like shotgun blasts, fully automatic Ripper weapons that fire speedy flak rounds and reliable Daedalus weapons that allow you to swap ammo types on the go.

Now, randomly generated weapons can have parts from multiple different manufacturers. You might loot a weapon that has a Hyperion grip, a Tediore magazine and a Vladof barrel, allowing you to rip through enemies with increasing accuracy until you throw the gun away with an explosive flourish. It sounds very cool on paper, but in practice, it could make Borderlands 4’s endgame much harder.

Taking on Borderlands’ biggest challenges — especially raid bosses — has always been a challenge for the most dedicated players who spent time getting the best possible rolls on their loot. This meant farming the same enemies until they dropped the right weapon with the right weapon parts and perks to get the job done.

In Borderlands 4, a massive pool of weapon parts from other manufacturers is going to make it way harder to generate the drop you’re looking for. Legendary gun drop rates are already getting nerfed from the previous game — which means farming the right parts on a specific legendary weapon necessary for your build will be harder than ever before.

Borderlands 4 could potentially have the most interesting buildcrafting in the series, what with how many moving parts there are in the player arsenal. But it remains to be seen if strong builds will be easily accessible to everyone, or if the new loot mechanics will ensure that the strongest weapons only land in the laps of the most insanely dedicated (or luckiest) Borderlands 4 players.

Looting might be the biggest draw for Borderlands fans, but other big changes are coming in the next game, too.

Borderlands 4 is moving the series toward movement shooter territory, as every playable vault hunter will be able to dash, double jump, glide and grapple across the terrain. Certain areas also have ziplines that will let you shoot into the air to get a better view of the world, before you spawn the new Digirunner vehicle (which looks like a hybrid between Destiny’s Sparrow hoverbikes and Halo’s Ghost) to speed toward your destination.

The game will be fully crossplay-enabled at launch, which pairs well with the new co-op quality of life features. Your campaign difficulty and generated loot will be completely instanced from your friends, which means no one will have to fight over the world settings.

Perhaps most importantly, you’ll no longer have to reload an area to fight a boss again. Borderlands 4 boss arenas will contain a lever that respawns the encounter, so you can leap right back into the action without a mandatory trip to the main menu.

This is the perfect time to implement the feature, because between the weapon parts changes and the legendary loot drop nerfs, it’s safe to assume you’ll be fighting bosses over and over if you’re chasing a specific weapon roll in Gearbox’s next big looter shooter.

Technologies

Claude’s Research Feature Can Now Spend 45 Minutes Looking for Answers

Anthropic announced better research skills and new software integrations for its flagship gen AI tool.

Anthropic’s Claude generative AI model can now spend more time searching for answers to your queries — if you pay for the right plan.

Claude can also integrate with other apps, including PayPal, Cloudflare, Jira and Confluence, with more expected soon, Anthropic announced in a blog post on May 1. Anthropic also expanded the ability to access web search to include all paid plans.

This year, the AI industry has been in a race for new and more useful features, and research is a big part of it. Google’s Gemini has a tool called Deep Research that is available to all users for free. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Deep Research mode is available to anyone with a paid plan. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

These deeper research tools can search the web and pull together more complete answers to your queries. The AI models will often cite the source of information, although you should still verify it because of the risk of errors known as hallucinations.

Regardless of what AI tool you use, «the thing about this is you’ve got to check the sources. It’ll make up the sources too,» Alex Mahadevan, director of the MediaWise media literacy program at the Poynter Institute, told me.

Anthropic said its improved research function can spend five to 45 minutes finding and reviewing sources. Those sources can come from internal sources — like your own documents or apps you’ve connected — or from external sources it finds on the internet. The model breaks requests down into smaller parts and handles each separately, then compiles a full report.

The advanced research function is available in beta on Anthropic’s Max, Team and Enterprise plans. The Max plan starts at $100 per month. Anthropic said it will soon be available on the more affordable Pro plan, which costs as little as $17 per month, depending on how you pay.

Technologies

You’ll Pay More for Some Xbox Games, Consoles and More Soon

Microsoft is raising the cost of some games later this year.

Get ready to pay more for some Xbox games. Microsoft announced Thursday that it plans to raise the price of some new first-party games from $70 to $80 this holiday season, matching the cost of some new Nintendo Switch 2 games.

Microsoft said the price of games out now won’t increase, so Doom: The Dark Ages won’t see a price hike when it releases this month. The company also said it is adjusting the recommended retail pricing for Xbox consoles, controllers and headsets. «We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development,» Microsoft wrote online.

Microsoft’s recommended retail pricing for consoles and controllers is staggering. The company is suggesting an $80 price hike for the Xbox Series S (512GB), the most affordable Xbox console Microsoft sells. That takes the price of the five-year-old console from $300 to $380. The Xbox Series X (1TB) is getting a $100 increase, raising it from $500 to $600. And the Xbox Series X (2TB) Galaxy Black Special Edition now costs $730, which makes the eye-watering $700 price tag of a PlayStation 5 Pro seem reasonable.

Read more: Who’s to Blame for the Rising Cost of Nintendo Switch 2 Games?

The base Xbox wireless controller will have a new recommended price of $65 (up from $60), and the high-end Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 will have a recommended price of $200 (up from $145). Stereo and wireless headsets will have recommended prices of $65 (up from $60) and $120 (up from $110), respectively.

These prices aren’t just affecting gamers in the US. Microsoft is raising Xbox console and accessory hardware prices across the UK, EU, Australia, and the rest of the world. However, the cost of headsets is only increasing in the US and Canada. You could see console and hardware cost increases right now, but Microsoft isn’t increasing the price of Xbox Game Pass.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate — the most expensive tier of the gaming service — costs $20 a month but provides you with access to hundreds of games, including new day one releases. With the price of some major games rising to $80, that means you would have to buy four months of Game Pass Ultimate to match the price of one new game. That makes Game Pass Ultimate much more appealing, but there is the potential for Microsoft to raise the price of the service in the future.

Microsoft raised Game Pass prices in 2024 alongside the introduction of Game Pass Standard. But since the company raised the price of the service in 2024, and the year prior in 2023, it’s possible Microsoft will increase the cost of the service later this year.

Again, game prices aren’t going up until later this year, so you still have time to buy games at or below $70 apiece, but you could see the updated console, controller and headset pricing now. For more on Xbox, you can check out CNET’s reviews of the Xbox Series S and the Xbox Series X, as well as what to know about Xbox Game Pass.