New Steam game Dinoblade allows you to become a tweenage Spinosaurus capable of manipulating a colossal greatsword with its carnivorous mouth, so yeah, it's sold 36,000 copies in 24 hours.

"36,000 COPIES SOLD IN 24 HOURS," exclaims developer Team Spino's founder Jean Nguyen on Twitter. "The last 24 hours has been an emotional rollercoaster," continues Nguyen, who's also a senior gameplay animator at Ghost of Yotei studio Sucker Punch.

A AAA smash and certified indie Steam hit all in the same year? Nguyen's game developer bingo card must be fully maxed-out. Earlier this week, the developer shared on LinkedIn that Dinoblade had surpassed 600,000 wishlists on Steam – a huge feat.

One day after launch, Dinoblade had already earned a globally Very Positive rating on Steam, with 89% of its total 562 reviews expressing something like "Dinosaurs (Really Cool) + Blades (Really Cool) = Dinoblade (Hell Yeah)." Nguyen's already crossed two impressive milestones for an unconventional game about a scaly sword fighter.

Dinoblade's Steam description calls it "an intense action RPG set in a prehistoric world forever changed by a cataclysmic event." As the young Spinosaurus, who I'd name something powerful, like… Bill, you "confront rival dinosaurs, some armed with weapons of their own, all in a desperate fight to prevent a looming extinction."

It sounds existential, goofy, and most importantly for fellow dinosaur lovers, full of those big, prehistoric guys. There will be more to come soon – Nguyen says he's already "made a patch to fix controller issues. I'll be keeping my eyes out for more hotfix, tweaks, etc. Thank you all for making Day 1 unforgettable!"

I'm sure the rest of Dinoblade's days will be similar; it's about time someone made a game like it. I've always thought that, if we can't bring back the dinosaurs, we could at least give them swords.

Ghost of Yotei was such a hit that the actual Japanese region of Hokkaido is getting official merch amid a tourism rush highlighting areas from the game.

Former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida has explained that the company shut down Japan Studio in 2021 because its games didn't "drive console sales." He goes on to say that if you love the company's "creative games," then support the former developers by playing Slitterhead and Ratatan.

During his keynote speech at the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference, that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Yoshida says that he is frequently asked about PlayStation's closure of Japan Studio. "Players from around the world have said that it's unbelievable that Sony would shut down Japan Studio," he says. "Japan Studio released loads of games, creative games, didn't it? At that time I was saying something similar."

Japan Studio is responsible for some of the best and most innovative games in PlayStation's history. Ape Escape, Shadow of the Colossus, Siren, LocoRoco, Patapon, Gravity Rush, Astro Bot, and many more games come from the talented teams at Japan Studio. Essentially, if you fondly remember a PlayStation game with an ingenious hook, it was probably made there.

"At that time, as the head of development, I was worried about [Keiichiro] Toyama [creator of Silent Hill] and the other Japanese developers at Japan Studio," Yoshida says. "But while they came up with a lot of creative ideas, the games they made weren't big in scale. What we call AA games are a perfect fit for the PlayStation Vita, but we were slowly shifting to AAA on the PS4 and PS5, and sometimes it's difficult to scale up like that."

Despite the creativity of Japan Studios Vita and VR games, sales were poor compared to other PlayStation behemoths. Sony then decided to put its bets on AAA games. "As a company, PlayStation wanted to drive hardware sales with games like God of War and Uncharted, because that's the kind of game that's in demand," he says. "It's hard for Japan Studio to launch a new series on console."

He finishes by urging people who loved Japan Studio to continue supporting the developers who worked there. "Toyama also had a number of ideas which weren't able to be greenlit before Japan Studio shut down," he explains before encouraging PlayStation players to try his new game Slitterhead, and Patapon creator Hiroyuki Kotani's latest game Ratatan.

Even former PlayStation chief Shuhei Yoshida doesn't know why Bloodborne hasn't been remastered or released on PC: "It's a complete mystery."

Remember Craig? The ugly alien brute from Halo Infinite who immediately became subject to droves of online ridicule before eventually becoming a loveable internet meme? Halo: Campaign Evolved has now canonized the horrid internet icon, and perhaps even explained why he looks like that.

There are many hulking brutes stomping around the Halo games, but some fans are now convinced that they've had found Craig himself hidden in the newly-released Halo: Campaign Evolved because A) most brutes aren't completely bald and B) not all brutes are that unmistakably fugly.

In one of the remake's new prequel missions, Master Chief can stumble upon liquid-filled pods containing various brutes who have likely been experimented on by their Covenant overlords. Zoom in closely and you'll see that one of them looks very much like our poor old Craig, sad frown and all.

There you have it, then - Craig isn't ugly because Halo Infinite's first gameplay demo wasn't really ready to be shown off. Craig's ugly because he's the victim of genetic alteration and who knows what else? You bully. How he got out of that pod, survived the entire Covenant-UNSC-Flood war, and eventually became a Banished trooper getting whacked in the face by Chief on a faraway ringworld is still a mystery, however. Perhaps we'll need to wait for another Halo remake, which is looking increasingly likely, to find out the full story.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is still available in early access to owners of the Premium Edition only. The full game launches July 28, so be sure to check out what time Halo: Campaign releases in your region. You can also find information on how to pre-load Halo: Campaign Evolved with our handy guide.

Here's all the Halo Campaign Evolved changes and new features compared to the original Combat Evolved.

It's a very risky time to release a multiplayer video game. The 'live service' scene has become inundated with hundreds of titles trying to replicate the success that a select few established games have found. The likes of Fortnite and Call of Duty still dominate the scene, making it seem impossible for newcomers like Concord or Highguard to break in. That's not to mention the number of legacy games that simply can't sustain themselves with the rising costs of development, including Destiny 2, which received its final update earlier this year.

So much of the video game industry is increasingly dangerous and volatile, but one genre has flourished for decades – MMORPGs. As live service games try to hold onto their share of committed players for longer, the developers of the best MMORPGs have had to find new ways to evolve.

To better understand how, I spoke to the leads of three of the longest-running modern MMOs – Final Fantasy 14, Elder Scrolls Online, and Warframe – to unpack how the genre has changed amidst the landscape of multiplayer games.

Building a world

The MMORPG genre began its rise to prominence in the '90s and many developers have tried to play in the massively multiplayer online space since, but precious few have had any real staying power. It's the games which cleanly carve out a niches, and then double down on serving that fanbases, which have any chance at survival. It's a challenge that Nick Giacomini, game director of The Elder Scrolls Online, is well acquainted with.

"The MMORPG genre isn't going away any time soon. MMORPGs are homes for players in a way that most genres just aren't. It's right there in the name: they're massive. The sheer scale of these games gives you a space to truly inhabit, while the community makes it feel alive," says Giacomini.

"That said, the genre is challenging right now, particularly for new games. Creating an MMORPG is a monumental undertaking, and few new MMOs have been able to break through. And on the one hand, the rise of live-service games has made this more challenging. There are so many incredible games to choose from right now, so why should players choose your game when they have so many amazing options?"

That's a sentiment echoed by Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford, who feels there is a new window of opportunity for MMOs. First launched in 2013, Warframe's slow and steady growth has proven it as one of the juggernauts of the genre, able to carry on where others haven't. It might simply be good timing, but the idea of a game that players can "regularly" come back to, as a sort of daily, weekly, or monthly habit, has become more and more attractive in recent years – especially as the cost of everything goes up.

"There's really no place for confidence in the current ecosystem; nothing is guaranteed. The younger generations of gamers have not been exposed to the dominant MMO era, yet the strongest MMOs still stand. 'Interest' in genres comes and goes, but typically, the interest cycles happen much faster because games and hardware were iterated on more quickly," says Ford.

"This means people stick with their comfort games for longer, and devs can work on the same IPs longer. In another life, Warframe would already be on 'Warframe 4', but the conditions of our evolution mean we did not need to sprout gills, so to speak, to evolve. Other genres have certainly impacted interest, as have development costs."

Legacy MMOs like Final Fantasy 14, Guild Wars, Runescape, World of Warcraft are now ingrained into the fabric of online gaming culture and have established, loyal fan bases. The sheer size and nature of the time commitment MMOs have may, in turn, be the secret to their success. Players have to commit to an MMO to some degree, after all.

"MMOs still have several characteristics that could contribute to longer lifespans. For example, unlike games that run on peer-to-peer connections, MMOs have massive servers containing a tremendous number of assets – not just item and character data, but also game systems like player housing and friend lists," says Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida.

"When an MMO becomes a hit success, that boosts the number of long-term players and helps stabilize operations, so I can see how those factors often lead to MMOs having longer lifespans. That said, there are still countless MMOs that rose and fell. In the end, all online services have a common principle: they need to have long-term stability and an entertaining experience in order to endure."

It's no coincidence that Final Fantasy 14, The Elder Scrolls Online, and Warframe are undergoing massive shifts in gameplay or ideas at the moment. In accordance, all three of these developers see some kind of symbiotic relationship with live-service titles. Giacomini notes that live service games are helping the MMO genre by "expanding and normalizing the space," while Yoshida says the "boundaries" between MMOs and other genres are becoming more "ambiguous." The influence live-service games have had may not be obvious or tangible, but it's there nonetheless.

"Today, live service games are mainstream. They've normalized the idea of games as a hobby, a place to hang out with friends, and a world that evolves over time. They've introduced MMO-lite concepts to millions of people who may have never considered themselves MMO players," notes Giacomini.

But the other crucial piece of success to the future of MMOs, stressed by all three of these developers, is a passionate community – but more importantly a community that the dev teams themselves can sort of "work" with. The studios behind Warframe, ESO, and FF14 have all opted for transparency, keeping very little to the chest in favour of constant communication with the playerbase, and an open dialogue on what said players want.

"Our players know exactly what they want. They are our 'boss' at the end of the day, and our game is only ever as good as our last update. From the very beginning, we've been transparent and flexible with them, almost every month for nearly 200 announcement-filled Devstreams," says Ford.

She adds: "If we announce a feature and players hate it, we are prepared to scrap it or work collaboratively with them to find the Goldilocks version that feels right for Warframe. We as creatives will always try to take big swings with new things and cross our fingers that they land well. But if we miss the mark, we are always willing to hear our players out and iterate on the idea into something we all love, as devs and players."

"A balancing act"

There's a fine line to tread between retaining the experience players love, but still being experimental and ambitious enough to try new ideas. With a lack of growth, even a successful MMO can grow stagnant, or fail to attract new players. Change is often a scary word in the realm of tech and games, something that connotes that you're losing something, especially daunting when it's a game you've sunk days, if not weeks and months, of your life into.

But a particular, and noticeable, shift in MMOs has been to accommodate a wider variety of players. But a particularly fascinating part of this is these long-running games having to essentially "age up" with their players. Giacomini assets that, as live-service and multiplayer games continue to appeal to young audiences and new players, longstanding MMOs have had to adjust for players whose lives have quintessentially changed across a decade or two.

"If your design ethos doesn't change over ten years, you're going to get left behind," he explains. "Players who started playing with us a decade ago are at a different stage in their lives now, and we have to evolve to provide them with what they're looking for today. Player expectations have also shifted based on what successful new games are bringing to the table. Trying to make sure that every moment players spend in our world feels worthwhile requires change."

"It's definitely a balancing act. If you push too much unwanted change, the game becomes unrecognizable, and you risk alienating your core players. But if you don't change enough, you become formulaic and risk boring them. MMORPGs feel very different today than when I first started playing over 20 years ago. They're recognizable but fundamentally evolved. And I think that kind of continuous evolution is what innovation is going to look like for successful games in the genre."

Speaking to these key creatives, they've all reached similar philosophies in different ways. Both Ford and Yoshida note that the support and deep involvement of their respective communities is the key piece that keeps these games moving. All three stress the need for 'rewarding' experiences, ensuring the time players invest in their game feels well-spent. The development of each of these games revolves around player feedback, but trying to integrate that with the idea of experimenting and finding things that will surprise even players who have spent 10 years on a game.

Ford points to FF14 as a prime example of a game that's adapting to the needs of players, saying it's great to "see them [the FF14 dev team] focus on what they're good at, like Raids, at large scale." But she also stresses the need for integral change. Ford says there's one crucial way MMOs need to keep experimenting.

"Get weird! Go left instead of right, but always, always be ready to work with your community, not for or against them. Nothing is ever set in stone. Game design trends will always be in flux, whether that be due to advancements in technology or changes to player habits due to things happening in the world or their personal lives," Ford says. "We kind of joke about this. You don't want to see the current Warframe leads – me and Pablo Alonso, our design director – try and make a PVP mode again. Even if players think they want it, we simply aren't good at it, so we can't innovate with hero shooter genre appeal, so we have to try other things!"

FF14 is in the midst of one of those moments, with upcoming expansion Evercold making some of the biggest, most sweeping changes the MMO has seen since its relaunch as A Realm Reborn in 2013. And while Yoshida notes that his approach to developing FF14 has undoubtedly changed over the past decade, in a way, that's secondary to how the studio tweaks the game as a whole. Because the community has become such an ingrained part of FF14's identity, it's more about knowing when to hold off on major changes, and when to push forward.

"For our upcoming expansion, Evercold, I chose to steer FF14 towards 'change' in pursuit of creating even more enjoyment and evolving further. I felt that, in terms of mindset and time, we were prepared to update the gaming experience to be more enjoyable and comfortable for our players and their lifestyles," Yoshida says. "Our lifestyle routines are constantly changing, and the rate of change only keeps accelerating. But making sudden changes to try and keep up with that pace can be harmful to our operations, like how making sharp turns while driving fast tends to lead to accidents. Making these judgment calls is a constant part of overseeing FF14."

However, Yoshida says his approach might be completely different if he was making something from scratch, adding, "Incidentally, if I were to develop a new online live service title from scratch, I'd be challenging myself to tackle completely new game designs and values."

But cutting through all the noise, there seems to be one universal truth to the success of MMOs – something that none of these teams have forgotten even as they try to shift and adjust to changing player expectations. And it's especially attractive in light of so many multiplayer games that lean into short bursts of excitement, battle passes, and an ever-changing experience.

"The industry is more crowded now, but the desire for a world you can live in and escape to is stronger than ever," says Giacomini. "And if MMORPGs can evolve to meet players where they are and ensure the time they invest here feels worthwhile, the genre will thrive for decades."

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The director of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is looking into adding a challenge system to the pirateventure, like the one Assassin's Creed Mirage eventually got, but he's not promising anything just yet.

Asked about bringing back a series feature that let fans replay missions with new challenges and requirements, in an interview with JorRaptor, game director Richard Knight says he thinks it "would be awesome."

Assassin's Creed Mirage actually got a post-launch update with the same challenge system last year, which offered unique challenges for contracts and black box missions. One challenge might have disabled Eagle Vision for the entire mission or asked you to slide a hidden blade into your main target while going undetected - they were essentially cool modifiers that gave mission replays some extra spice.

"We've looked into this one quite a bit," Knight adds. "I can't promise anything on it just because it exists in Mirage, but it doesn't exist in the modern Anvil [Engine]. So, it's like new tech, right? They do have a solution. We do roughly see how it works, but it's going to take time to understand if it's something we can build or how long it would take."

Part of Knight's desire to add tougher mission constraints and replayable challenges to the stealth game comes from his time on the Hitman titles, a series renowned for those sorts of open, free-flowing, flexible assassination sandboxes. "You know, personally, as someone who used to work on Hitman and has played a lot of Hitman and likes seeing the speedrun timer on screen, I think it's a very interesting way to play a game," he explains. "But, yeah, no promises on that one."

Seeing a similar system implemented into Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced isn't entirely impossible. Ubisoft confirmed that a New Game Plus mode is on the way, and the team apparently have a bunch of other DLC ideas as well.

At 3.5 million sales, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced beat Ubisoft's full-year expectations in 2 weeks with "historical" PC performance

A new Final Fantasy 14 Evercold raid has been confirmed, and it features none other than a crossover with the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series.

As part of Final Fantasy 14's Fan Fest celebrations in Berlin, Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida revealed that an Evercold raid will be called Beyond the Lifestream.

If that's not enough of a hint, that does indeed mean the critically acclaimed MMO is getting a Final Fantasy 7 Remake series crossover.

As part of the reveal, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation lead Naoki Hamaguchi joined the stage to reveal more details. You're getting three tiers, with the first starting in update 8.01. Additionally, there will be three difficulty levels. The standard Normal and Savage difficulties, and a new difficulty that's new to Evercold that's designed to bridge the gap between the standard two.

Additionally, OG Final Fantasy 7 writer Kazushige Nojima is acting as story supervisor to make sure everything fits. Naturally, OG Final Fantasy 7 art icon Tetsuya Nomura is also getting involved.

Somewhat related, though amusing for sure, but we've also found out that Final Fantasy 14's version of the Gold Saucer is getting additional games, like a typing game that's Final Fantasy 7-related to start, of course. Brush up on your vocab, folks. There are outfits to be unlocked, starting with Tifa and Barret's duds.

That's about it for now, but you can expect plenty more details as we get closer to Final Fantasy 14's Evercold expansion, which releases in January 2027.

The Bastion is Final Fantasy 14's first new job for Evercold, a hulking tank with a shield and gun on each arm.

A new God of War game starring dad of war Kratos is already in development at Sony Santa Monica, and it's set to tie in to the events of the upcoming God of War Laufey quite deeply.

Speaking during a San Diego Comic-Con panel attended by GamesRadar+, Sony Santa Monica creative lead Cory Barlog seemingly slips up and mentions that he was recently chatting with "the director of the next Kratos game earlier this week about all the different things that are going on - oh, f***, did I just announce the next Kratos game?"

The Kratos-led God of War game didn't receive a title, an estimated launch window, target platforms, or any firm details, but Barlog did offer some light information: "Kratos is in another game immediately after this [that] directly connects to the events of the Laufey game, but don't say anything about it to anyone," he quips. "The franchise is going in some amazing directions"

"Everything we are doing in the Faye game is a continuation of what came before and to set up and expand what comes next," he adds. "Phranque [the gelatinous cube] has been around since the beginning. It's interesting to see how to build this world out. Everything in the game is setting up for something so amazing."

Just don't expect that next game to drop anytime soon since the studio is still finishing up God of War Laufey, which was also announced to be coming on February 16, 2026. The upcoming PS5 game follows Faye, Kratos' lover and Atreus' mother, who finds herself stuck in an afterlife full of some very hostile gods and visions of her god-killing husband. The game has apparently been in the studio's plans for nearly 10 years, though it intends to also "always tell stories about Kratos."

Sony Santa Monica confirms "God of War Laufey will be available on disc" despite PlayStation's war on physical

Quickly following an action-packed reveal a few short months ago, PlayStation has put a concrete release date on God of War Laufey: February 16, 2027.

Sony Santa Monica creative head Cory Barlog announced the PS5 exclusive's new launch date at a San Diego Comic-Con panel, which was followed by a short and sweet clip posted to PlayStation's official social media that shows a brief golden logo. While God of War Laufey is available to wishlist now on the PlayStation Store, pre-orders and pricing information aren't yet available.

For those out of the loop, God of War Laufey is the first game in the bloody action series to not have main man and titular god-killer Kratos in the driver's seat. We instead follow the wife he lost before God of War 2018's introduction, Faye, as she travels an afterlife for the gods and potentially bumps into deities her lover once butchered. (Awkward.)

PlayStation debuted the game with a lengthy look at its epic opening and aerial combat just earlier this summer, perhaps making a release date of next February quite surprising. And, yes, the studio is also working on a Kratos-focused game coming sometime after.

Despite Sony planning to axe physical disc production the following year, developer Sony Santa Monica have confirmed the game will launch on a proper disc, not a code-in-box.

Next February is also shaping up to be another scarily packed month for new games. God of War Laufey is joining a crowd of blockbusters hoping to find refuge after GTA 6's huge impending launch, which includes Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis (February 12), Persona 4 Revival (Februay 18), and Xbox's Fable reboot (February 23).

God of War's Cory Barlog has been planning Faye's story for a decade, says Laufey director, and her actor has "had to keep this under wraps" the whole time

The first new Final Fantasy 14 job of Evercold has been revealed, and it's a tank called the Bastion that blends high fantasy and mechanical aesthetics.

As part of the European leg of Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest, producer and director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida has taken to the stage once more to continue the drip feed of what's coming to the MMO in its next expansion. In this case, Final Fantasy 14 Evercold.

Back at the American leg of Fan Fest, we found out that Final Fantasy 14 would be getting two new jobs in Evercold – something for tank fans, something for DPS fans. Yoshi-P also revealed that these new classes would be something new to the Final Fantasy series, so no throwbacks here.

Now, we know what one of them is. As part of a new trailer, Square Enix has revealed that Final Fantasy is getting a new tank job that not only has a shield on each arm, but can also fire 'em both off as guns.

Our first glimpse of the new job in action came from an extended version of the Evercold trailer, which opened the Berlin Fan Fest keynote.

While Yoshi-P did appear in his cosplay to further tease the job, we had to wait just a little while longer for some more details, and it was worth it.

We first see a glimpse of some of its moves, blending up-close-and-personal combat with the ability to fire off its weapons from a bit of a distance. From vibes alone, it looks like it'll hit like a truck.

If you're keen to start Evercold as the Bastion, you'll want to make sure you're level 90 and around Limsa when the expansion releases in January 2027. Additionally, as touched upon at the last Fan Fest, this job will use the MMO's new streamlined moveset.

The job news might not be a total surprise to some clever Final Fantasy 14 fans. As is tradition, Yoshi-P teased what jobs were to come with a t-shirt he made everyone aware of at the last Fan Fest. Now, the t-shirts aren't typically an obvious giveaway. For Dawntrail, Yoshi-P wore a Ninja Turtles t-shirt to tease the upcoming artist job. It wasn't to tease that some sort of Ninja job was on the way – that'd be too obvious, and the MMO already has it – rather, the clue was that each turtle is named after an artist.

For Evercold, we got a picture of A Realm Reborn antagonist Rhitahtyn sas Arvina with a 'guess who's back' caption above it. Fans quickly assumed this was leading us to the tank job, with theories ranging from something obvious like a gunshield user to grander theories – like something hammer-based due to Ritahtyn sas Arvina's name translating to "judge" in the Roegadyn language. And, of course, the expansion being Norse themed.

Amusingly, Yoshi-P himself said that some fans already guessed what the jobs were back in Anaheim. Naturally, he didn't confirm which guesses were correct.

Regardless, that's one job down, and some were, of course, correct. When the Japan leg of Final Fantasy 14 comes around, we'll find out the other. Final Fantasy 14's Evercold expansion releases in January 2027.

Final Fantasy 14's Third Walk raid starts with FF11's most infamous boss being bodied in a cutscene because a raid designer wanted to show off the true strength of your first foe.

While its spirit lives on in the Xenoblade games, Monolith Soft's Xenosaga series has been dormant since the final game hit PS2 way back in 2006. Fans have been desperate for some sort of revival for years, and those hopes are rising again thanks to a new Xenosaga cameo in the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Momo from Xenosaga will be a new equipable Blade in Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. "Swap between two forms to change her appearance and elemental affinity," Nintendo says in a new trailer as her light and dark forms are demonstrated.

This is not the first Xenosaga character to appear as a Blade in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, as KOS-MOS and T-elos already had similar appearances in the game. But Momo is awakening a new round of hopes that Xenosaga might live again after a decades-long stay in IP hell.

Developer Monolith Soft built the Xenosaga games under Namco, which maintained control of the IP as it morphed into Bandai Namco. Monolith Soft would be acquired by Nintendo in 2007, and created the Xenoblade series as a sort of spiritual successor to Xenosaga. No entry in the Xenosaga series has gotten a modern remake, remaster, or rerelease since that split occurred.

But fans were quick to note some oddities in the wake of Momo's reveal for Xenoblade Chronicles 2. For one thing, Xenosaga no longer appears as one of Bandai Namco's owned IPs on the company's official website – a removal that occurred just last year. For another, there's no copyright or trademark notes attributed to Bandai Namco in the trailer that showed off Momo, unlike with trailers featuring other Nintendo crossovers with third-party publishers in games like Super Smash Bros.

For some, that's reason enough to believe that Nintendo has acquired the Xenosaga IP, reuniting the rights to the series with its original development studio. That's a mighty big conclusion to jump to, but clearly it's a compelling enough theory for some fans – though that may just be the desperation to see Xenosaga on a modern platform talking.

These are the best JRPGs you can play today.

If making video games the traditional way is like squeezing blood from a stone, then making Scarlet Deer Inn must've been like doing that using only your elbows. Developer Attu Games' newly released 2D adventure is a gorgeous mix of mediums that I have found no precedent for, and it's quickly enchanted players on Steam, where it sits at 87% positive user reviews days after launch. (Console versions are "set to follow as soon as possible," the devs say.)

Scarlet Deer Inn is officially described as "an embroidered dark medieval folk tale," and the devs mean that literally. Frame by frame, its sprites were stitched in cloth and then digitally brought into the game.

A lot of games have used this kind of embroidered or hand-woven art style. Yoshi's Wooly World and Kirby's Epic Yarn, both from Nintendo, come to mind. But in the entire history of video games, I don't know that anyone else has ever actually rendered every single frame of their sprites with physical embroidery that was then integrated into a game.

I've seen plenty of real models, sculptures, weapons, and even chickens used in games. We just saw a man turn photos of his wife into a horrible boss fight. Cuphead, with its pencil-and-paper animation, feels like a distant cousin. But I haven't seen anything quite like this.

This unorthodox, laborious approach to game art caused Scarlet Deer Inn to go viral online back in 2023, and now that the game is finally out, countless stitches later, the exact same thing has happened again.

"The last 4 seconds of this video made my mind explode," says an incredulous Twitter user sharing the game's trailer. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN EVERY FRAME IS HAND SEWN/EMBROIDERED ARE YOU JOKING????"

"This is hitherto unheard-of levels of creativity between mediums," adds another. "They have animation made from embroidering. Like, physically sewn thread and fabric. You're running around a character that was sewn into the game."

"What do you fucking mean they embroidered all the sprites," echoes a Bluesky post.

Back in 2023, I actually spoke to Eva Navratilova of Attu Games to ask, in so many words, why and how would you do this?

"Because we thought it was cool," Navratilova said at the time. "We simply wanted to give it a shot because we really enjoy various crafts and handmade stuff. A few people are using embroidery to create some amazing animation, but no one has yet made a real game with it. It's also exciting and fun. Even though there is a ton of 'unnecessary' extra labor involved, it is amazing to work on something new and creative.

"There is no connection between the embroidery and the story itself," she added. "We believe that it would change the feeling we want the game to have. We're trying to achieve the feel of the Studio Ghibli movies, not something like Paper Mario, Yoshi's Crafted World, or Kirby's Epic Yarn games."

Navratilova estimated that achieving this art style takes around "three times as long" as traditional animation. Main character Elise has hundreds of embroidered frames for her movements, and side characters may have dozens.

"The embroidery must first be prepared on a PC," she explained. "It means I take the finished frame-by-frame animation and basically redo it into vectors in embroidery software and decide a lot of different settings for threads, colors, stitch styles, angles, etc. The entire machine embroidery process is quite challenging."

The results speak for themselves. There's an inimitable texture to the thready silhouettes of Scarlet Deer Inn, adding eye-catching depth and detail to a short and simple-looking game.

Palworld studio Pocketpair is publishing a new indie game that mixes Factorio-style automation, town building, and more – and you can try it for free on Steam.

In a sea of conservative, market-researched games, a group of game development and publishing staff pointed to games like French JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, co-op adventure Peak, and roguelike card game Balatro as modern demonstrations of the "courage" that games should carry.

"We're moving fast and losing what made us good (creativity, craft & the future)," declared a 2026 DevGAMM Madeira Games Summit workgroup hosted by veteran indie dev and consultant Rami Ismail of Vlambeer fame, as GamesIndustry.biz points out.

Filled with designers, producers, publishers, and other game-orbiting staff, the group, as Ismail put it in a LinkedIn post, examined the "fear" chilling the games industry. In this fearful climate, they looked to four creative pillars: "creating coherence, identifying weaknesses, selling the dream," and "connecting the dots."

"Many of the more fearful reflexes of the industry aim to sand down the rough edges of creative work, creating homogenous and bland works that 'check all the boxes', but are nevertheless (or, consequently) insincere, uninspiring, and uninteresting," Ismail said. "Courage is a consistent factor of most hit titles; in funding, in publishing, in marketing, and in investment."

He added: "The industry’s fear of risk is currently the largest risk it faces."

The thrust, I gather, is to help and encourage more developers and companies to follow the example of games like Clair Obscur, Balatro, and Peak by un-learning the impulse to "make games for everyone" or "chase the algorithm," per GamesIndustry.biz's reporting.

However, there was also notable pushback among the group on the idea of auteur-led development that sees one creative figure dragging teams behind them like cans on string. Rather than a caution-to-the-wind embracement of creativity of all, the group seemed to push brave and sustainable decisions.

"There are too many cowards using all the wrong metrics controlling too many critical levers, and until we figure out how to put people - taste, creativity, and craft - back at the top, we're going to be stuck in the same loop that literally millennia ago people already understood and warned for: that acting from fear begets what you fear," Ismail says on LinkedIn.

This approach to making risk workable comes as many industry figures highlight overdone de-risking in games, particularly in the AAA space, often to the point of outright de-fanging projects in the name of safety or broader appeal.

Just last month, former PlayStation chief Shawn Layden argued that "we've lost a lot of the variety in games" thanks to the "rising cost" to make them. When costs go up, investment risks go up, so large, publicly traded companies often sand off risky elements to improve a project's outlook or try to reach a larger audience. But elements seen as risky are often the secret sauce that makes games fun and memorable, and without it, they may be reduced to a state worse than dead: sauceless.

And let's talk about those costs for a minute. Too often it's implied that these enormous budgets are unavoidable, that games must be this big and expensive (and treading a path strewn with discarded labor, but I digress) and this is just how much it costs to make them. I'm reminded of a quote from Strange Scaffold head Xalavier Nelson Jr, one of the dozens of developers who told GamesRadar+ why they don't want to use generative AI (as it happens, we also spoke to Ismail).

Nelson Jr. rather pertinently said: "For all the people who say it will let us finally make our big games faster and cheaper as the costs go exponentially up, the unspoken decision that has occurred is that rather than ask whether the size of the game is feasible, and whether it provides the thing that is most meaningful for a player, they have decided that the sheer scope is the god of their development process and it must be fulfilled at all costs."

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as a more mid-sized AA type of game, has been an especially relevant talking point on budgets. Reports from last year indicated its sub-$10 million budget clocked in around 3% of the likes of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 from Sony-owned studio Insomniac Games.

Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says $200 million AAA budgets mean publishers greenlight fewer games: "Something that has to be done."

Nintendo apparently obliterated any chance of Mario and Luigi experiencing brotherly affection in Wii U retro challenge game NES Remix, and I can't help but feel a bit disappointed in the developer's flagrant bias against toxic yaoi. Come on, Nintendo, don't you know we're in the middle of a male loneliness epidemic?

Mario blogger and connoisseur Supper Mario Brother explained in a Bluesky post, with information discovered by Bluesky user DavidPCM, the way "NES Remix contains a graphic that seems to be an 'anti-brother romance failsafe' for Mario and Luigi." Nintendo appears to have been preoccupied with the idea. So much so that it preemptively altered a scene between Mario and Luigi that should be "normally impossible to reach in-game" anyway.

I can't quite fault Nintendo for this – "NES Remix incest glitch" sounds like something I would learn about from the front page of Reddit, and then my eyes would start bleeding. But, to defend hypothetical affectionate Mario and affectionate Luigi, I really think the graphic Nintendo devs were so worried about could be interpreted as familial. Their concern was with the standard pink heart that appears between Mario and Pauline once Mario finally rescues her in Donkey Kong.

been digging through NES Remix lately. one thing I've never seen before is that they edited the heart at the end of Donkey Kong to "GOOD JOB!" in the remixed stages with Luigi. Luigi never reaches 100M in that game, so it's never seen. It's also completely omitted in the .fcb for Bonus-4's mission.

— @davidpcm.bsky.social (@davidpcm.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-24T19:58:28.111Z

Supper Mario Broth reminds us that, in stages Remix 14 and 17 in NES Remix, Donkey Kong is all wiggled around. The game is mirrored, and Luigi replaces Mario as the hero to protect him, not Pauline, from Donkey Kong. In these topsy-turvy stages, it isn't actually possible to activate the heart graphic like you would in a regular game of Donkey Kong with Mario and Pauline.

"The only stages visited are 25m and 75m," says Supper Mario Broth, and the pink heart only appears in the black void sky when Pauline is whisked away at the 100m stage. So, heartbreakingly, "Mario never actually gets saved," clarifies Supper Mario Broth. Another man lost to the loneliness epidemic.

But just in case Mario managed to extricate himself from Donkey Kong, enroll himself in psychotherapy, and gain a new zest for life with the help of hobbies, friends, and indeed, a brother's love, the NES Remix devs decided to change Pauline's pink heart to a graphic for Mario that says "GOOD JOB!"

While I'm glad Mario is at least being encouraged to express praise, you never see him tell Luigi GOOD JOB! since the conditions for him to do so are nonexistent in NES Remix, like we established.

Ultimately, "it is unknown why the graphic was added," says Supper Mario Broth. "The developers could have planned to have the full game playable in that mode, or they could have changed the graphic purely as a precaution in case someone managed to get to 100m (e.g. via a glitch) to prevent implications of romantic love between Mario and Luigi."

So sorry, guys, but if you want to give each other an encouraging kiss on the forehead, it's going to have to happen somewhere else.

Mario Kart Tour is shutting down after 7 years, but Nintendo isn't planning on an Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp-style offline version.

Sony's Playstation Store and PlayStation Network are down for many users, making purchases and some games and features unavailable.

PlayStation status detector reports "all services are experiencing issues" for both the US and UK. The issues began around 10:19am EST, according to a footnote in the status detector. Ol' reliable, Downdetector, shows the same.

When Sony says all services, it means it. On every platform, from PS Vita to PS5, the ability to purchase, download, browse, search, or redeem games is looking wobbly. Sign in, account details, PlayStation video apps, gaming trophies and widgets, and, perhaps most obviously, streaming may also be affected.

GamesRadar+ UK staff have ran run issues of our own, though some US writers have lucked into functionality. I was somehow able to claim and start a download for Crosscode, one of this month's PS Plus freebies, and a game everyone should play.

"You might have difficulty getting products on the PlayStation Store," Sony's official disclaimer reads. "We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience."

This, of course, comes on the heels of the news that Sony will end support for physical PlayStation games in January 2028. Among the many, many concerns around the move, an especially relevant one is the fragile nature of all-digital platforms and how outages or connectivity issues can obstruct access to games.

Provided there's no login wall – another wonderful tripping hazard of modern gaming, most recently demonstrated by Halo: Campaign Evolved – the only way a server crash will break a physical game is if that server stack lands on the disc and shatters it. But digital games are beholden to their platform holders, and those platform holders are powerless before the ruler of ethereal spaghetti code, culprit of all technical issues.

All PS5 error codes explained, with fixes and solutions

Bethesda has rumbled back to life. Nearly three years after Starfield and with The Elder Scrolls 6 nowhere in sight, the positive reception to the announcement of the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters is hardly surprising. With the help of Obsidian, between 2008 and 2011 Bethesda cemented itself as the rightful king of the open-world RPG, Fallout 3 and Skyrim bookending the kind of development run we'll probably never see again.

A long-awaited return to the Capitol and Mojave Wastelands is welcome, but while these remasters aren't quite too little, too late, they serve as a reminder of just how neglected one of the biggest and best RPG series has become.

This November will mark 11 years since Fallout 4, with Fallout 76's eighth anniversary falling just a couple of weeks before. And until last week, there was nothing to suggest another game was anywhere close to the horizon – based on Bethesda's previous release cadence, 2033 was a solid guess for a potential Fallout 5 release year. That's not far short of two full decades since the series' last traditional, single-player RPG launch – an unforgivable drought for a series that has over the past few years, been transformed into a mainstream, global franchise thanks to the critically-acclaimed Amazon Prime series.

In the last week, admittedly, the Fallout slate has filled up significantly. First up will be next year's "prequel story to Fallout 3" heading to Fallout 76. The Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas remasters seem likely to follow relatively soon after, potentially positioned around Fallout season 3 and the Fallout Shelter show. Fallout 5 is officially in pre-production, but could easily follow as many as five years after Elder Scrolls 6, which still feels a long way off. Obsidian's new Fallout project seems likely to plug that inter-franchise gap – perhaps some time in 2029 or the early 2030s.

Kick in the head

It's that last project that's currently most mysterious, but also the clearest indication of what Fallout and Xbox actually need: help from the wider ecosystem. Xbox and Zenimax are full of studios that could have, over the six years since the acquisition, been running wild in the franchise playgrounds that are currently open only to Bethesda. Clearly, the kind of AAA, open-world RPG that Todd Howard wants to make takes many years to complete, but I see no reason why no other studio has been allowed to do more than sniff in the direction of the Fallout and TES brands.

The possibilities are huge; a stealthy, Dark Brotherhood immersive sim made by Arkane Austin instead of shuttering it after Redfall; a Ghoul-led game using the State of Decay tech from Undead Labs, which just got sold off; an Age of Empires conversion from World's Edge, which has been diligently plugging away on DLC and remasters for that franchise. Xbox's affinity for beefy guys with guns across the Gears, Doom, and Halo series could have led to an amazing power armor shooter. There are certainly studios whose work doesn't mesh with Bethesda's oeuvre so neatly, but within the Xbox ecosystem, they're surprisingly few and far between. And all that is to say nothing of Obsidian, a studio that not only made one of the best Fallout games, but eventually took its fate into its own hands and made Avowed and The Outer Worlds as its own answers to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

That none of those studios have been given a Bethesda license is a mistake, but it's a mistake compounded by the fact that Bethesda isn't equipped to handle them at the pace that should be required. Its two most important IPs have been left to languish for more than a decade. Starfield is a primary cause for that, but so is Bethesda's size. The studio has remained deliberately small by the standards of a major studio, and at about 450 staff isn't capable of being a two-game studio, especially since switching between three different franchises means it can't pull off the kind of juggling act that the similarly-sized Insomniac - which has launched a whole suite of Marvel games over the time since Fallout 76 – has been able to achieve.

A hit of Jet

It's likely that the Fallout release cadence will pick up now. The remasters are the start of that process, and the Obsidian game and Fallout 76 expansion will help. But while Xbox's recent deluge of lay-offs have hit hard, the fact still stands that the publisher is sitting pretty on some of the industry's highest profile RPG brands and what remains of the studios that created them. With only the likes of CD Projekt Red as major competition, the question is whether new Xbox chief Asha Sharma will be able to do what predecessor Phil Spencer couldn't, even as the company haemorrhages staff. If CDPR is able to push out three major RPGs in quick succession, could the much larger Xbox be in a position to follow suit instead of squandering the opportunity? Or, is such a massive entity prone to slow manoeuvring, like trying to turn a Brotherhood of Steel zeppelin?

But, whether or not that all comes to pass, it doesn't change the fact that as a gaming series Fallout has been left behind by its creators for far too long, and no number of remasters will help speed up the ongoing wait for its next major iteration, especially as the years tick on.

The Elder Scrolls Online is struggling with "team bandwidth" after Xbox layoffs hit Bethesda and ZeniMax, leading devs to limit a store for in-game items.

Once you give players an ability, you really can't control how they use it. People can do whatever they like with a photo mode, as the devs behind Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced have discovered due to the amount of feet pics they've seen.

"There's just nothing like having one million or two million players playing a game at once that you can't replicate. The feet pics were very surprising," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, tells JorRaptor. "That's kind of what photo mode is there for – to take really interesting, sometimes unusual, photos."

I'm not surprised – internet loves doing things for the bit, and bizarre, slightly lewd photographs emerging from a new Assassin's Creed game is the exact kind of tomfoolery that goes over very well.

But I'm far too innocent for such things, because my most in-depth experience with photo mode was in Insomniac's Spider-Man games. I loved swinging around and making fake comic book covers. I've made dozens of them across the three installments.

Obviously, that's the wrong line of thinking. Pictures of Spider-Man are out, pictures of feet are in, apparently. "I never would have expected that one," Knight adds.

I have to imagine someone on the team thought it was a possibility, but what are you going to do? Restrict people's creativity? You've got to just let people do what they do, that's the real adventure of life.

At 3.5 million sales, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced beat Ubisoft's full-year expectations in 2 weeks with "historical" PC performance.

Oblivion Remastered and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth have been found dead in a puddle of T-virus – the Resident Evil 4 remake from 2023 has sold 16.8 million copies across all platforms, and games industry researcher Alinea Analytics infers that makes it the best-selling remake of this console generation.

"It’s also among the most successful single-player horror games in history," says market analysis lead Rhys Elliott in a Substack breakdown of the best-selling game remakes and remasters since 2020, "generating $560M in gross revenue for Capcom so far across the three platforms, split 53.1% PlayStation, 34.1% Steam, and 12.8% Xbox." Resident Evil 4 remake's competition comes nowhere close.

In terms of total copies sold, Resident Evil 4 is followed by 2023 remaster Ark: Survival Ascended, which moved a total of 7 million copies. The Last of Us Part 1 remake sits behind it with 6.3 million sold, while Oblivion Remastered, the Dead Space remake, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth lag in the race with a total of 4.5, 4.3, and 4.2 million copies sold, respectively.

Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake from 2024 is the worst best-seller according to Alinea, with a total of 3.2 million copies sold – though, as a huge fan, I'm at least placated by the suggestion that millions of people have now been exposed to buff Pyramid Head.

Elliot suggests, out of all these still very popular titles, Resident Evil 4 might have been especially suited to the new, industry-wide hobby of swanky remakes because "it's revered enough to guarantee demand and old enough that the remake feels new."

But the obvious flaw with this conclusion is that it applies to multiple titles in Alinea's collection of best-selling remakes. Silent Hill 2, for example, is even older than Resident Evil 4 and similarly revered, while Oblivion released around the same time as Resident Evil 4 and seemed to sell at a similar pace; contemporaneous reports estimate Resident Evil 4 sold 3 million copies within a year from launch, while Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said in 2025 that Oblivion Remastered outsold the original game's first 15 months on the market, which likely also existed in the realm of 3 million (2006 reports say Oblivion had already sold 1.7 copies by the end of its first week).

So what's really so special about the Resident Evil 4 remake? Well, Capcom's sales – you can currently purchase the game on Steam for $9.99 instead of $39.99, whereas Silent Hill 2 is currently $27.99 on sale, and Oblivion is an unrepentant $49.99. Elliott says, "Steam's share of total Resident Evil 4 revenue has grown from 28.0% in launch week to 34.1% today. There’s that Capcom catalogue flywheel again – a game earning a bigger slice of its lifetime revenue years after release, at the low end of the price curve (in markets consoles barely reach)."

Then, there's the irresistible charms of a formative game like Resident Evil 4. It has something for every player – revolutionary third-person shooting, a girl named Ashley, and parasites that look like someone sneezed on the floor. I, personally, couldn't imagine wanting anything more.

Only 7 PlayStation games have sold over 100,000 physical copies in the US this year, says analyst, as commenters demand discs without buying them.

Sega president Shuji Utsumi has promised fans of the Persona series that the teaser trailer for Persona 6 is just the start of what he believes will be a "truly memorable year" to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary. While Persona 4 Revival will be another hype moment for fans, Utsumi hints that there are more reveals on the horizon.

In an interview with Famitsu, that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Utsumi expresses how he's "very confident" that fans will be pleased with what Sega has planned for the series' 30th anniversary. A spin-off from Atlus' already popular Shin Megami Tensei series, Revelations: Persona added more of a narrative focus and emphasis on the character's relationships than its beast battling predecessor.

Originally released for the original PlayStation in 1996, the series has evolved well beyond its isometric pixel art roots. If you've only played the series' newer titles you might not be aware that it didn't always feature a spicy UI and ranked high school relationships.

As 2026 is the 30th anniversary of this game, it seemed natural that Sega would announce the next mainline entry in the series, the long-awaited Persona 6. "I think we were able to announce a truly memorable year for Persona's 30th anniversary," Utsumi says. "Hype for the series has been built by Persona 6's reveal.

"And I think Persona 4 Revival will spark fan excitement again," Utsumi continues. "I'm sure everyone will feel the same way, and I'm very confident we'll give the Persona series the lively 30th anniversary celebration it deserves."

Persona 4 Revival seemingly features more scenes with Marie, fuelling hopes she'll be integrated better than in Golden: "If they do that, the remake will have fulfilled its purpose."

The Halo Campaign Evolved Skulls and Terminal found in the first level, The Pillar of Autumn, aren't too difficult to find, for the most part. The main issue is that a couple of Skulls are found so early in the game that you'll no doubt run right past them the first time you play. So, to help you find them quickly, I've explained exactly where to find the Terminal and all Skulls in the first level of Halo Campaign Evolved below.

Halo Campaign Evolved Pillar of Autumn Skull 1

From Rally Point Alpha, the start of the level.

At the very start of the level as soon as soon as you have control over Master Chief, turn around and head over to the two large, round containers towards the left side of the back of the room. Climb on top of these containers, then jump across to the nearby upper walkway. Walk to the other end and you'll find the Speed Limit Skull.

Halo Campaign Evolved Pillar of Autumn Skull 2

From Rally Point Alpha, as soon as the marine says Cortana needs you at the bridge.

The next room the marine will lead you into is an armory, and the Magnified Skull is on top of the central weapon rack near the middle of the room.

Halo Campaign Evolved Pillar of Autumn Skull 3

From Rally Point Bravo, after the cutscene where Master Chief meets Keyes at the bridge.

After this cutscene finishes, turn around and head back into the bridge. Go to the main control area with the glass canopy and the two pilots in their chairs and drop down into the floorspace below them. This is where you'll find the Perspective Skull, and there's a ladder you can use to get out.

Halo Campaign Evolved Pillar of Autumn Terminal

From Rally Point Charlie, when going through the upper cryo room with the cracked windows.

You'll know you're in the right room if Cortana says, "it looks like the Covenant wanted to catch you napping". From here, carry on through the next door, then immediately turn left to find another open door leading into another room with red lights and lots of screens. The Approach Terminal is at the far end.

Finding all these collectibles also takes a while, so expect it to add a few hours to how long it takes to beat Halo Campaign Evolved. If you've played Halo CE in The Master Chief Collection, you will have noticed that all the Skulls are in completely different places to that, which is one of the many Halo Campaign Evolved changes.

This Halo 1 remake is out now in early access but the full Halo Campaign Evolved release time is still to come. In the meantime, make sure you've got your Halo Campaign Evolved pre-load sorted.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Halo: Campaign Evolved might be a remake of one of the best shooters to ever do it, but that doesn't mean it's entirely bullet proof. On Steam, the remake has debuted to an average 'Mixed' rating thanks to player complaints of crashes and server login issues that temporarily stopped people from playing the campaign-only game.

For context, Halo: Campaign Evolved launches in full on July 28, but owners of the $70/£70 Premium Edition get to skip the queue and jump in five days early. Despite paying extra, those fans have maybe been given the short end of the stick if user reviews are anything to go by.

At the time of writing, about 32% of Campaign Evolved's 1,666 Steam user reviews give it the thumbs down, with many reviews citing semi-frequent crashes and problems even connecting to the game's servers in the first place.

"Yes the game just came out, but it shouldn't be a trend for a game to always come out severely broken," one player writes. "Call me a boomer, but I miss when games came out in a playable state without patches needed."

"Login failed," another states. "Cannot play the single-player game as servers are overloaded. Screw your DRM." Halo Studios actually responded to that user review by promising that login issues should now be fixed, and judging by the almost 20 hours the fan has on record, it seems server issues are a non-issue for now.

Still, some other fans took issue with the fact that Halo: Campaign Evolved requires a login and a connection at all. The game is playable start-to-finish in online co-op, but there's no real reason why Spartans who prefer to go in solo should have to connect their Microsoft accounts before even reaching the main menu.

Technical issues and a bumpy launch aside, players who aren't being interrupted by crashes seem otherwise happy with the classic game's second remake.

"Finished the prequel missions. Barely any problems whatsoever, and so far it's been refreshing playing a "new" Halo game again," one fans says of the new three-mission arc.

"Well – it's Halo 1's campaign, but with a new coat of paint on top and some interesting and fun tweaks to mix up the gameplay, with the most comprehensive set of skulls the series has ever seen that offer tons of replay value," a second player explains. "Really, that's all I think needs to be said to justify the recommendation here."

GamesRadar's Halo: Campaign Evolved review had similarly good things to say about the remake, even if the package as a whole also felt like "a wasted opportunity for Halo Studios to put its own spin on a classic."

Want more? A secret Halo: Campaign Evolved ending strongly hints that another Halo 2 remake is in the works – "See you in the sequel."

It seems like things are looking up for Final Fantasy 14. After Dawntrail led to players gradually pulling away from Square Enix's MMORPG, new data suggests many are now returning, in anticipation of upcoming expansion, Evercold.

The information comes from Japanese outlet Lucky Bancho, which regularly posts numbers related to the MMO's overall playerbase. According to these numbers, since March, Final Fantasy 14's number of active players has grown to over one million, to a grand total of around 1,020,000.

That's a good sign, and a decent jump from Lucky Bancho's last survey of the userbase in March, where the numbers for those actively playing were closer to around 770,000. It's mentioned that some 80,000 new accounts have been started as well, double the 40,000 of the previous datapoint, suggesting more people are beginning their journeys through Eorzea.

It's been a long time since the MMO came close to one million, according to the site's numbers. It recorded 990,000 active players in March 2025, over a year ago.

These insights are built through looking over public information on achievements and the like. It's not the most accurate because it doesn't include private accounts and doesn't differentiate among people who have multiple accounts. But it's a good ballpark estimate that can give us some insight into the overall health of the game.

There have been concerns following the negative reception to Dawntrail over the future of Final Fantasy 14. One bad expansion isn't a death knell for a game that's already been going well for over a decade now, but a consistent drop in players is enough to cause some anxiety.

But anticipation is growing for Evercold. It arrives in early 2027, and kicks off the Godless Realms Saga, marking a new era for the MMO. There's even an Evangelion crossover on the way. The future is looking bright, as it tends to under the watchful eye of director Naoki Yoshida.

Final Fantasy 14's Third Walk raid starts with FF11's most infamous boss being bodied in a cutscene because a raid designer wanted to show off the true strength of your first foe.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake series director Naoki Hamaguchi understands open-world fatigue, which is why Revelation is seemingly trying to find a balance between Remake and Rebirth.

Rebirth's open world has been a point of criticism for the 2024 RPG, and despite the, ahem, revelation that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will have a bigger world than even Rebirth did, Hamaguchi tells Eurogamer that not overdoing it is on his mind.

He explains, "The world is even bigger than it was in Rebirth, so it is more important than ever for us to ensure there's enough guidance here, so people have no issues enjoying what this game has to offer."

"There are a lot of open world games out in the world right now, and [the idea of 'open world fatigue'] is a very important concept to me," Hamaguchi says.

Hamaguchi notes "it depends on personal preference and different perceptions, but for me personally, I know I've had the experience where I've been thrown out into an open world game and not known where to go, not known where to begin, and not known what to do."

As someone who is just playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth now after waiting for ages, it's pretty striking how different the layout of the game is compared to the first game in the Remake trilogy. While Final Fantasy 7 Remake did have little hubs to explore and get up to nonsense, it was very much funneling you forward through the adventure.

Rebirth, on the other hand, is very much an open-world game, full of distractions in each of the game's many areas. I've spent countless hours running through the maps to find all of the intel, fast forwarding through every bit of annoying dialogue Chadley is giving, with a few chapters still to go.

"For me personally, as a creator, I think it's very important to offer proper guidance for the players in open world games," Hamaguchi continues.

He says the Rebirth team wanted to "make it easy" for people to see how much content there is, and says "that design philosophy is applied to Revelation: players have all the guidance that they need. This is something that both myself and the development team were very careful about when we designed the game."

Hamaguchi also singles out the Highwind and parachute mechanic included in the next game, and stresses it isn't as simple as picking where to go and letting the cutscene drop you there.

"After you open the parachute, you kind of have to rely on your memory to ensure that you're actually dropping into the place where you want to go," he clarifies. This is billed as "another example of the guidance we're giving players, without directing them too much."

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation DLC includes "Story Expansion Pass," according to Epic Games Store database listings

PATCH NOTES: v24.09.2026 – Nintendo should have been taking a victory lap this week, following the release of Splatoon Raiders on July 23. At a time where discussion should have been focused entirely around the latest Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, attention on the platform holder's activities has been divided between two ongoing legal battles.

What's going on with Nintendo this week?

• The first Splatoon spin-off launched as a Switch 2 exclusive
• A patent infringement lawsuit hit a new roadblock
• Request was made to dismiss a class-action lawsuit

Why is this happening now?

• The legal system works in weird and mysterious ways
• Nintendo has been embroiled in a dispute with Pocketpair for two years
• Two battles on the same week as Splatoon Raiders is bad timing

Meta Shift

This should have been a straightforward week for Nintendo. After a year of anticipation, Splatoon Raiders finally arrived, giving the Switch 2 one of its most compelling first-party exclusives. At any other time, this delightful spin-off – a confident shift away from the multiplayer focus that has otherwise defined the franchise – would have dominated the conversation for days.

Instead, Nintendo spent the Splatoon Raiders launch window fighting legal battles on multiple fronts. Attention was repeatedly diverted by fresh developments related to the ongoing legal dispute against Palworld developer Pocketpair, as well as a new court filing in a US class action lawsuit over the impact of tariffs.

While none of these stories are directly related, they do provide a window into one of the challenges Nintendo faces in 2026: launching platform-defining exclusives while simultaneously fighting to defend its business priorities in courtrooms all around the world.

Known Issue

• Another strange twist in the Palworld lawsuit

The biggest distraction from Splatoon Raiders' release week was undoubtedly from Japan, with a new development from a patent dispute adjacent to Nintendo and Palworld developer Pocketpair's ongoing legal battle. Nintendo has been attempting to patent the 'in-game monster-capturing system' popularized by Pokemon, which the Japanese Patent Office has rejected.

This decision has prompted Nintendo and the JPO to enter into a pretty extraordinary back-and-forth of counterarguments that, frankly, are well worth your time if you have it to spare. While this fight isn't at the center of the legal battle with Palworld, it certainly doesn't help Nintendo's case at all.

Patent disputes are difficult to follow at the best of times, but that's why this story was so essential – it illustrates just how complex these types of legal proceedings can become, and how entertaining it can be when they boil over in public.

• And then there was the tariff lawsuit

Just as players started to lock into arguments over whether it's even fair for Nintendo to test the strength of gameplay patents in this way (hint: enjoyers of Palworld 1.0 would say that it is not), a legal story with some spice emerged from the United States. This may have flown under your radar, but Nintendo is actually engaged in legal battles over tariffs.

Nintendo filed a lawsuit earlier this year over what it alleges was an "unlawful imposition of tariffs" by the US. This prompted two individuals to file a class action lawsuit against Nintendo; the pair claim that if Nintendo is owed refunds on collected tariffs, then so too should be consumers who purchased Nintendo products at increased prices.

Nintendo bit back hard, suggesting that players were "free to abstain from purchasing the product or seek out competing products" and that they got "exactly what they bargained for and paid for." Ouch.

Patch Notes Summary

• One company, three conversations

Nintendo spent the Switch era cultivating an image that it was consumer-first and software-focused. To see three separate conversations kickstart within days of each other – one about a platform exclusive, one around Japanese patent law, and the other around US consumer litigation – has created the impression that Nintendo's priorities are now being pulled in different directions.

Lawsuits and legal filings landing the same week as Splatoon Raiders is unfortunate – the courts work to their own schedules, not to the hype cycles we spend our lives following. But the diverting of attention in this way has been fascinating to witness.

Nintendo will have plenty of other moments to celebrate this year, with Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and The Duskbloods all expected to land. Whether they will also converge with ongoing legal disputes remains to be seen, but one thing's for certain: Nintendo needs to pull the focus of players back to video games and away from the courts.

Still, regardless of all the legal drama that has (admittedly) been pretty entertaining to watch from afar, I'll be spending this weekend diving into Splatoon Raiders. What about you?

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The Inkling Squid amiibo was one of the first I ever had in my collection, far before I ever got almost 200 NFC figures deep. It came bundled with the original Splatoon on the Nintendo Wii U back in 2015, and I've been hooked on amiibo ever since - so getting the new Splatoon Raiders Deep Cut triple-pack was a no-brainer.

Here in the UK, the figures are available exclusively as a £49.99 (Nintendo) triple pack, which was a bummer as it meant my Splatoon Raiders expenses for the month almost reached the £100 mark as I grabbed the new game too. However, the cost felt more than worth it when I saw the floods of detail that have been poured into these new figures. Bandage textures, transparent goggle lenses, and bases that can be placed together to take up less space on your shelf - these new Splatoon Raiders amiibo are exactly why I continue to be obsessed with Nintendo's NFC collectibles.

One of the key features of this new amiibo set was that you could "combine the bases" as advertised by Nintendo of Europe. When I first heard that, I assumed that there would be an actual mechanism that connected the Deep Cut trio together, but it's actually a lot simpler. The fake wooden plank bases are all perfectly crafted so that you can push them altogether, with Big Man at the back, Shiver to the left, and Frye to the right.

While simple, it's a design element I wish other figures released by big-name brands like Banpresto took into consideration. So often I've collected statues from the same line-up, which all need to be spaced far apart on the shelf as their bases are all random in shape and size. The Splatoon Radiers' bases mean you can add to your amiibo shelf even if you're running low on space, which I definitely am, even though I don't yet have every Splatoon amiibo release to my name (there are a lot of them).

The detail on these bases is also pretty marvelous. There's still an air of 'this is definitely plastic' to them, but their tiny wood-grain effects and lines help these figures stand out from the older Splatoon releases sporting the plain gold medallion-shaped stands.

Textures are what these figures do best. It's not just the effect of wood that's been given some due attention by whoever sculpted these fantastic toys, but fabric like the bandages wrapping up Frye's hair looks so good they could be real. You can even make out the diagonal lines of her woollen socks and see how they stretch as she sits with one foot perched upon an orange sea buoy.

While I was flummoxed by the detail, it was the Big Man himself that impressed me the most. In the game, he's holding a myriad of items left over from your helicopter incident, including a large backpack with a solar panel, saucepan, and a walkie-talkie attached. Each of these items has been sculpted with their materials and fabric taken on board. The straps of the bag include that woven interlining texture that makes me reminiscent of my school days, and you can make out the curled wire that connects to Big Man's headset. The boy himself is made up of a translucent gray plastic. When light shines through it gives the amiibo a shiny aura that makes him look like a real-life slimy stingray and not a toy you can connect to your Nintendo Switch 2.

The figures are some of my favorites in the entire amiibo line-up, which is saying a lot as I fell just as much in love with the Super Mario Galaxy amiibo figures, which were released earlier this year. However, I was a bit disappointed with what they actually unlock in-game.

Once you enable amiibo functionality in Splatoon Raiders, you can tap Big Man, Shiver, or Frye to gain access to a series of three outfits for your mechanic to wear. They're all a variation of a similar-looking jumpsuit, each taking colors and elements depending on the character you tap. They're a little boring to say the least, and I would have preferred it if you could tap the amiibo again to get access to rare weapon drops, but alas, that's not the case. You can at least tap one other Splatoon series toy to get access to the Bite Waders outfit, which includes a pair of orange overalls similar to your Salmon Run gear used in Splatoon 3. But all in all, the unlocks of these figures aren't as interesting as the amiibo themselves.

Splatoon amiibo have an annoying habit of being hard to find after the initial wave of stock has sold out. If you have your eyes on this version of the Deep Cut team, I still recommend you grab them as soon as you can to avoid feeling like a fish out of water. At least in the US, you can grab each of them separately for $24.99 (GameStop) so you can space out your Splatoon budget more than I could. Hurry up, payday- a day where I definitely will be recouping my costs and not buying more amiibo - cough.

• View all amiibo at Nintendo
• Splatoon Raiders amiibo | $24.99 at GameStop

Our team's toy expert Benjamin Abbott, has rounded up the best Lego sets and the best Nintendo gifts that are full of more top-tier Ninty collectibles.

Jeffrey Gattis, general manager for games at Amazon, hopes to see more people try its cloud gaming service Luna as consoles and PCs become eye-wateringly expensive.

Speaking with The Game Business, Gattis weighs up the increasing costs of gaming today. Component supply chains decimated by AI data centers forced even Valve's wealthy hand (as it refuses to sell hardware at a loss), leading to a flagrantly overpriced Steam Machine that would've been a proper hit with a sticker in the high three-digit range.

Now even Xbox is preemptively talking about how consoles have to adapt to the memory and storage market, in roughly the same way that a dinosaur must adapt to being on fire.

Gattis inherited the difficult task of getting people to know and care about Luna, which was announced in 2020 and swiftly forgotten. By baking it straight into Amazon Prime Video, Gattis says "we've 5x-ed our player base, albeit on a modest base," which is the kind of corporate speak that reveals a very modest starting audience.

But Gattis is optimistic about Luna and cloud gaming's future, especially in a world where the Steam Machine and rumored new-gen consoles cost "well over $1,000."

Cloud gaming has long been "a little bit of a solution in search of a problem," Gattis reflects, but that was in a world where core gaming was relatively affordable.

"Consoles, for the most part, have been relatively inexpensive until now," he says. "So our business is more about reaching more players and expanding the market, not trying to get people to give up their consoles or their gaming PC.

"Having said all that, we've seen the news. We saw the Steam Machine pricing opening at $1,000 US. We hear rumors about consoles, because of the RAM prices, pushing well over $1,000 in gen 10. So I do think you get to a point at which a lot more people will be in the consideration set for a cloud gaming solution just because of the sheer cost of buying dedicated hardware."

Gattis reckons there are "3 billion people in the world who play video games, yet there's only, depending on how you do the math, 300 million to 500 million dedicated hardware devices out in the wild."

In that difference of roughly 2.5 billion gamers, he sees the potential cloud gaming market of tomorrow – folks who don't have the time or money for the latest consoles or PC games, but do want to play something. And as long as they're comfortable with the limitations of cloud gaming licensing.

"Games can be big investments – to go buy a $70 game, to go through the download experience, to pair a controller, and then make an investment of hundreds of hours of time, in some cases, to complete one of these games," Gattis reasons, perhaps exaggerating the arduous toil of pairing a controller.

"There's people like me who love that. That's how I choose to spend my entertainment time. But I think most people fit into more of a bell curve, a more normal distribution. They spend some time watching television, they spend some time watching movies, and they like to play video games. I think that's where we see an opportunity to serve a group of people who I might argue haven't really been well-served because the console and PC companies are mostly focused on those hardcore players."

The big problem, of course, is that Amazon has struggled to get anything right in games. Its once-roaring MMO New World is dead, its Lord of the Rings MMO is reportedly dead, and Amazon Studios' primary exports so far have been layoffs and cancellations. It turns out all the money in the universe can't just magic games into being, so even if Luna was always meant to be a third-party game merchant, it's in untrustworthy hands in the eyes of many players.

Meanwhile: Amazon Games gutted amid 14,000 layoffs: work on first-party games and MMOs in particular scaled back, "casual and AI-focused games" a continued focus.

One of the most exciting things about Beast of Reincarnation – the new action game from mainline Pokemon maker, Game Freak – is the adorably fluffy, but violently capable dog that'll follow you around for the entire adventure. And, yes, thankfully, you can pet the good boy.

Beast of Reincarnation flings us a couple thousand years into the future to experience a post-apocalyptic version of Japan, where we'll do battle with deadly automatons, frenzied beasties who hail from the natural world, and enemies that are a curious mix of both. There's hints of Nier Automata for sure, but the game's main selling point is easily the "one-person, one-dog" gameplay that arguably builds off the monster-befriending, apocalypse-proof loop of Pokemon.

Thanks to new footage courtesy of Denfaminicogamer, we learned that you can pet Koo, the blighted dog, back at your in-game home base and wash whatever blood or robot battery juice spilled onto his otherwise shiny white coat during combat.

Grooming and loving Koo, like he's the goodest boy who's ever boyed, isn't in the game only to appease the dog fanatics among us, however. Feeding or petting Koo will also impact your affection level that'll, in turn, improve your capabilities in other areas of the game (although, exactly how is still up in the air.) Should Koo fall in combat, then your affection level could drop, too.

Beast of Reincarnation also has more in common with Pokemon than simply taming an animal that would realistically chomp you down in most other contexts. Speaking to GamesRadar+ earlier in the year, game director Kota Furushima said his background as Pokemon's battle planner influenced much of Beast of Reincarnation's combat: "It allowed us to create a contrast between real-time actions requiring split-second decisions and command selections that involve a bit of deliberation."

Beast of Reincarnation launches August 4 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass.

Check out our new games calendar to see everything on the horizon.

Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto is on the long list of developers not planning on taking their hard-earned retirement when given the opportunity.

I don't know what it is about game developers, but a shocking number of them really don't want to retire. When Metal Gear Solid developer Hideo Kojima turned 60 a few years back, he pledged that he will never retire, while Bethesda's Todd Howard recently said that he used to think about what his retirement would look like, but no longer does after seeing the work being done at the studio.

Speaking to Famitsu (via Nintendo Everything), Miyamoto was asked if there is anything he is especially eager to pursue, and outside of saying "I would be happy if I could start a movement where 'everyone and their dog' joins in," he admits: "There's nothing that I feel like I'm going to see through to the end."

Miyamoto also adds: "My family is telling me, 'Isn't it about time you stopped?'"

Famitsu then asks if he hopes to be doing the same thing he's doing right now in 10 years time when he'll be 83 years old, and Miyamoto responds: "Yes, that's right. The feeling of 'I hope we can keep going' fits perfectly."

He appears to refer to the making of The Legend of Zelda movie when he says: "On set, we say things like, 'It wouldn't be surprising if I collapsed tomorrow, so make sure you're OK (laughs).' I just hope we can keep going without any problems."

And granted, Miyamoto's role at Nintendo has changed somewhat significantly, with the last game he was credited with a director role being Super Mario Run 10 years ago (and his last original concept credit being Super Mario Maker the year prior).

While he's still been involved as a producer on many games, Miyamoto has also been seemingly focused on leading the charge on Nintendo's presence outside of gaming, with him being involved in the Super Nintendo World areas at Universal parks and the production of Mario and Zelda movies. But regardless, it'll be sad to see him go when he does decide to hang up the moustache.

Shigeru Miyamoto admits Nintendo's been pumping out "a lot of remakes" as Ocarina of Time approaches, but says most people stopped playing the original games within 5 years anyway.

Your carry capacity and inventory in Dune Awakening starts off limited to 35 slots and 175 pounds of weight, which is a respectable amount, but clearly could be more, especially when you're going on long journeys around the Hagga Basin looking to acquire large amounts of resources. Sadly there's no way at time of writing to directly increase your carry capacity specifically in Dune Awakening, but there are options that can effectively serve a similar purpose, as I'll explain below.

Can you increase your Dune Awakening inventory?

While there's no way at time of writing to increase either the number of slots or the maximum carry capacity weight of your inventory, such as the various Dune Awakening Skills, you can at least move more items around at once by building greater Inventory Modules for various vehicles, and then using those vehicles frequently.

Pretty much all of the Dune Awakening vehicles have a built-in inventory that can be expanded even further by adding an Inventory module to it (researched as normal and then built in the Vehicle Fabricator). There are limits to this, but it serves as a way to transport far greater amounts of items.

The major limitation is that any vehicle with items in its inventory cannot be stored on you using the Vehicle Backup Tool. You need to empty its inventory before you can effectively pocket it, but if you feel brave enough to park your Sandbike or Ornithopter outside a bandit camp or crashed ship, you can then bring the loot you find back to it and store it in the trunk.

It's not been made clear if there'll be new ways to hold more items added to the game in the future, as the choice to make inventory so limited is clearly an intentional one that's part of the whole "struggling survivalist making hard choices" vibe.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

It would appear that the name of the next entry in the Kingdom Come series has been revealed. A trademark filing points towards a slightly different naming convention for the upcoming installment in the historical epic, though other details remain scant for now.

As spotted by The Phrasemaker, on the European Union Intellectual Property Office's online database, you can find an entry for a game called Kingdom Come Salvation. While not proof of anything in and of itself, the logo being stylized like the Kingdom Come Deliverance games definitely makes it seem like a potential spin-off, and then we have the information on who made the filing.

It was Warhorse Studios, on July 23, just yesterday in fact. This was handled by a representative, a lawyer named Dana Lukajová. According to the EUIPO's website, this is Warhorse's first trademark, hence getting third party assistance.

As if all that wasn't enough, Kingdom Come Salvation is listed as "computer gaming software" and "entertainment services for matching users with computer games." It all looks and sounds like an upcoming game, but what that means is another question.

Warhorse confirmed in May that another Kingdom Come game is in the works, and that it would be an RPG. Information is limited beyond that, but considering Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 only came out last year, the follow-up is likely still quite early in the process. Since the developer is now working on a Lord of the Rings project as well, there were questions over when we might see another quest set in the Kingdom of Bohemia.

It seems we may not be waiting all that long, but when we get more information is totally up in the air. The Game Awards seems probable for The Lord of the Rings, if that's in a state to be shown off at all, and I suspect we'll hear more about what they're doing in Middle-earth before we learn about this.

But I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Whatever Kingdom Come Salvation turns out to be, I'm ready.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's Hans Capon actor says the RPG's success hasn't led to more work, even though "Warhorse have been absolute gems."

The list of Halo Campaign Evolved changes is quite extensive, ranging from things like completely new missions and weapons that weren't in the original to smart-link aiming, sprinting, and accessibility options. While there are a lot of changes, many of them are quite minor and might not be so obvious if you've not played Halo Combat Evolved that much. So, if you're curious to know exactly what's new and what's different from the original, here are all the changes I've been able to find in Halo Campaign Evolved.

New Halo Campaign Evolved features

Halo Campaign Evolved includes several major gameplay features that aren't available in the original game or the Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary remaster in The Master Chief Collection:

• Operation Meteorite bonus missions: On top of the remade campaign, this remake features three new prequel missions that tell the story of Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson during Operation Meteorite, adding a few more hours to how long it takes to beat Halo Campaign Evolved. Taking place one year before the events of the campaign, this operation sees the duo infiltrate and investigate a Covenant research vessel. Brutes make an exclusive appearance in these missions, wielding Spikers and Brute Plasma Rifles.
• Campaign Remix: Campaign Remix is a new mode that lets you replay missions with randomized elements, including available weapons, enemy factions, and active Skulls. It is unlocked after you collect any three Skulls.
• Four-player online co-op: Halo Campaign Evolved is the only way you can officially play some form of Halo 1 with three other players in online co-op. The game also supports crossplay and cross-progression, so you can play with anyone on any platform and even play on any platform without losing progress. You can also play Campaign Evolved in two-player split-screen on consoles only.
• Difficulty and accessibility settings: The usual Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary difficulty options are still there, but you can also create difficulty presets that adjust things like friendly fire, damage resistance, and shield recharge rate – this is all on top of Skulls too! As for accessibility, there are plenty of changes you can make to the aiming crosshair, HUD, subtitles, input rebinding, and lots more.

New Halo Campaign Evolved weapons, vehicles, and enemies

The Halo Combat Evolved sandbox of weapons and vehicles, as well as the array of enemies you'll face, have been considerably expanded for this remake:

• Expanded weapon sandbox: The Energy Sword, Sentinel Beam, Fuel Rod Gun, SMG, and Needle Rifle have all been added to the main campaign. The Battle Rifle, Brute Plasma Rifle, and Spiker are exclusive to the new bonus missions, and the Needle Rifle is significantly more common in them too.
• You can drive Wraiths now: The Covenant Wraith tank is now pilotable in some levels, such as Assault on the Control Room. Most vehicles can also be hijacked now, but note that this works both ways, so the Covenant can hijack you right back!
• Equipment can be stored and used whenever you like: Unlike in the original where Overshields and Active Camo would activate as soon as you pick them up, Campaign Evolved treats them like Halo 3-style equipment pieces that must be deployed with a button press.
• Jackal snipers have been added (oh god): Jackal snipers are an infamously lethal foe in practically every Halo game except for the first one. Campaign Evolved rectifies this, adding them into plenty of missions.
• Flood Tank Forms join the fight: The large Tank Form Flood, first seen in Halo 3, appear in Campaign Evolved. They're rare and pose quite a serious threat, similar to a Covenant Hunter.

Halo Campaign Evolved gameplay changes

Halo Campaign Evolved also introduces some key gameplay change over the original that mostly serve to modernize the game:

• Sprint: As in Halo Studios' previous games, Master Chief has a dedicated sprint button in Campaign Evolved, letting him get around the ring a bit faster on foot.
• Smart-link aiming: While weapons like the Magnum and Sniper Rifle all had scopes in the original game, now Halo Campaign Evolved weapons benefit from some form of aiming thanks to the smart-link system that Halo 5 Guardians introduced. It essentially amounts to a small amount of zoom (usually 1.4x) that helps you more accurately shoot enemies that are slightly further away than is ideal.
• No health kits: Master Chief's health now regenerates like his shields. The original game's health kits that were necessary for healing Chief are therefore absent in Halo Campaign Evolved.
• Improved waypoints and objective tracking: Objectives and their markers are now almost always visible on screen, helping you stay on mission and navigate levels more easily. You can adjust how these appear if you find them getting in the way.
• Slightly redesigned levels: The Library has received the most significant changes to make it easier to navigate and more varied, with new areas and light bridge mechanics. Otherwise, most levels remain almost entirely the same in terms of layout, with some receiving small tweaks. As an example, the Forerunner cave that you drive the Warthog through in Halo no longer has that weird ramp section and is now just one continuous path.
• Skulls and Terminals: Collectible Skull modifiers and lore-based Terminals weren't in the original game but got added for the Combat Evolved Anniversary remaster. For Campaign Evolved there are even more of them to collect, with 42 Skulls (three per level for a total of 39 plus three Campaign Remix ones) and 13 Terminals (one per level). They're also all in different places compared to the Anniversary remaster, so your memories of those won't help.
• No PvP multiplayer: As the Campaign Evolved subtitle suggests, this game features only the campaign – no arena multiplayer.

Halo Campaign Evolved visual and audio changes

The most obvious change of all over the original is the visual overhaul, but there are plenty of other changes to things like dialogue and cutscenes that might go over your head:

• Updated graphics: Halo Campaign Evolved is a complete remake of the original Combat Evolved in Unreal Engine 5, so it benefits from the advanced graphical technology of that engine for stunningly rendered photorealistic textures and lighting. But, as I note in my Halo Campaign Evolved review, it does lead to some typical UE5 performance issues.
• New and altered dialogue and cutscenes: Narratively, Halo Campaign Evolved is the same as the original, but Halo Studios has added and adjusted plenty of dialogue and cutscenes. The new lines are mostly tutorials and explanation from Cortana and other NPCs. Some lines, such as "I don't keep it loaded, son, you'll have to find ammo as you go" from Keyes, and Cortana telling 343 Guilty Spark to "sod off", have been cut, however.
• The original Chief and Cortana voice actors are back…: Steve Downes and Jen Taylor, who voice Master Chief and Cortana respectively, have re-recorded their lines, including some new ones as mentioned above.
• …But Captain Keyes and Sergeant Johnson have been recast: Keith Silverstein, who you may know as Torbjorn from Overwatch, now plays Keyes, while Keston John, who stars in Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and 7 and Yakuza 0 Director's Cut, voices Sergeant Johnson.
• The Covenant now speak English: Elites have various combat barks in human languages that let you know how fervently they fight for the Prophets and the Covenant. It also sounds like Grunt dialogue from Halo 2 and 3 has been repurposed. Overall, there's a lot less "wort, wort, wort".

This Combat Evolved remake is out now in early access but the full Halo Campaign Evolved release time is still to come. In the meantime, make sure you've got your Halo Campaign Evolved pre-load sorted.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Razer is on a roll with its new cute releases, from its Pokemon Espeon and Umbreon Collection to its Pikachu and Eevee Collection - but now it's got Sanrio Edition keycaps out in the wild.

The new Sanrio Edition Razer Keycap Blind Box set was originally unveiled on Razer's community blog on July 12, 2026, but a new X (Twitter) post now reveals that it's available at Target stores in the US. These keycaps feature five designs of Hello Kitty and friends and can be swapped for your ESC key to inject it with that 'cute and cozy' factor. Only if you're okay with pressing a large replica of Sanrio's top mascot characters over the far easier-to-press original key of your gaming board.

Cute keycaps aren't exactly a new phenomenon. If you're as chronically online and immersed in the 'cute and cozy' world of gaming builds as I am, you've likely seen plenty of videos of them in the past and have been contemplating adding them to one of the best gaming keyboards you've got in your setup. However, these cute keycaps in particular include the likes of Hello Kitty and my personal favorite Sanrio character, Kuromi, holding real-life Razer tech.

While Razer doesn't state exactly what each character has amongst the palm of their paws, I could spot the white model Razer BlackShark V2 Pro that's perched on Cinnamoroll's head from a while away. It also appears that Pompompurin has managed to get his hands on the white model Razer Wolverine V3 controller. It's hard to decipher what laptop Kuromi has her hands on, but I at least hope she's got the Razer Blade 16, which currently sits on our best gaming laptops guide.

These keycaps are designed to fit MX cross-stem switches, which include the likes of the Razer BlackWidow V4 line-up. Their pricing hasn't yet been unveiled so I can't let you know what you can expect to fork out for these cute bling bags. However, if you're heading to a local Target near you to grab a few bags regardless, do make sure to check what board you have first to ensure it's compatible before spending a fortune on these randomized keycaps.

Talking of which, as you'd likely already surmised by now, they're available in blind boxes and cannot be purchased as a set. You have your "chance" to unbox one of the five designs and a secret chrome variant, which appears in one out of every 24 boxes, according to Razer. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of blind boxes, as you don't know what you're buying. There's every chance you could end up with just five Kuromi keycaps, and as much as I adore her, there is such a thing as too much Kuromi.

If you're in the same boat, you could alternatively grab Razer's Sanrio accessories from its Hello Kitty and Friends lineup starting from $27.99 at Amazon, no blind boxes included.

• View all Razer Sanrio PC gaming accessories at Target

Not a Sanrio fan? Our team has also rounded up the best gaming chairs, the best gaming headsets, and the best gaming mice if you're looking to refresh your PC setup.

Developer World's Edge has seemingly uncanceled an Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition DLC that it scrapped last year, but all is forgiven since the upcoming Baltic Powers expansion is bringing two new civilizations, over 25 new maps, and so much more on September 10.

Early last year, World's Edge said it was canceling an unnamed expansion that it revealed the year prior. The developer felt the project's announcement was "premature," and the team hadn't really built anything proper before sharing its plans with the player base.

At the time, we didn't know much about the then-scrapped expansion outside of a tiny hint production director Earnest Yuen gave in 2024 by showing off the flags of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark. (Thanks, PC Gamer!)

Who would've guessed? World's Edge have now revealed The Baltic Powers, an expansion that adds both the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the game as playable civilizations. While the developer hasn't outright confirmed that The Baltic Powers is, in fact, the same expansion it binned last year, all the signs point in one direction...

"The Baltic Powers brings two new civilizations, new Challenge Scenarios, new game modes, more than 25 maps, and over 50 hero customizations," the dev's announcement post reads. "More importantly, it is built around what Age 3 fans value most: new strategic problems to solve, new matchups to learn, new ways to master the map, and new reasons to return for a game they love."

The best part? You can try out the Danes and the Poles right now since The Baltic Powers' open beta is available over on Steam.

The only other thing to note is that Age of Empire 3: Definitive Edition's free trial is being retired on Steam come August 13. "We're grateful to everyone who discovered Age III through the free trial, invited friends into the community, tried rotating civilizations, and joined the battlefield," the studio notes. Should free trial players want to continue strategizing in-game, then you'll need to buy the full release by next month.

In the meantime, here are the best strategy games you can play right now.

Storage brands usually start with a standard model and wait a few years to launch a more premium version down the line, but not Samsung.

The Samsung 990 Pro has topped our best SSD for gaming guide for as long as I can remember, but now the Samsung 990 SSD has landed long after its premium predecessor. While bizarre, I'm appreciative to see any new drive hit the market. Especially one that provides speeds that aren't too far behind those of its Pro model, which has reached staggering prices in 2026 as a knock-on effect from the RAM Storage Crisis, which is still having its fun with pricing and availability of the best PS5 SSDs and PC drives alike.

I'm honestly thankful to see any new storage that's £212.19 / $269.99 (1TB) and £411.99 / $529.99 (2TB) launch prices have yet to be shaken up a notch. That being said, Samsung's newest 990 SSD shouldn't be your top choice if you're after the speediest drive, and if you can manage to find its Pro counterpart at a similar or cheaper price point, which is still achievable if you know where to look.

Design

There isn't anything that really separates this DRAM-less drive from others available today. Much like the Samsung 990 Pro SSD, this is your standard M.2 SSD with an all-black PCB and some Samsung branding pasted on top so you don't forget what drive you're inserting into your gaming rig.

I will note that this model is not yet available with a heatsink, so you don't get access to that swanky cyberpunk-looking red and black version which you can grab for the Pro model. However, both drives share the same M.2 2280 form factor, so nothing is stopping you from using it with this SSD, should you have one lying around.

Features

The 2TB Samsung 990 SD is a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe M.2 drive available in 1TB and 2TB capacities that utilizes a DRAM-less design that's powered by Samsung's V-NAND and HMB (Host Memory Buffer) tech. It has a 400 endurance rating and comes with a 3 year warrantly. As a DRAM-less SSD, it's not intended to be as speedy as its Pro counterpart, but the line as to what speeds it's meant to be competing with gets a bit blurry.

The 2TB model I was provided with for this review states the drive provides read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s. That's all well and good, but meanwhile the official Samsung product page and marketing for the drive state it can achieve sequential read and write speeds up to 7,250 and 6,450 MB/s. I'm going to guess the sticker on the box that was provided to me ahead of release might be a little inaccurate, but I wanted to state it here in case the images of the provided box made matters a bit confusing.

Besides its speeds, the 990 is designed to be more efficient and power-savvy than previous models in the 990 lineup. Samsung exclaims that it provides "up to 38% improved performance per Watt" over the 990 Pro and that it can handle large files with ease. The drive and its data can also be managed by Samsung's Magician suite, the brand's proprietary software, which allows you to transfer data and track the health of the latest solid-state drive.

Performance

After spending some time with our CrystalDiskMark benchmarking tool, it was the box sticker that was closer to the mark for the 2TB capacity model, at least where my testing was concerned.

The Gen 4 drive managed to achieve an average 7,094.84 MB/s and 5,851.1 MB/s read and write speeds after being put through a series of four tests. This is not quite the 7,250 and 6,450 MB/s as found on the Samsung website and not enough to take the 990 Pro down a peg, but it's still pretty impressive. Let's not forget, the 990 Pro achieved 7,462MB/s reads and 6,877MB/s writes during our older review, so I'd assume this DRAM-less release would be far, far behind its more premium counterpart instead.

As always, speeds need to be put to practice, so I dug out some of my favorite PC games to see what the 990 was truly capable of. There's only so much that numbers on a screen can tell you. My favorite team-based hero shooter, Marvel Rivals, loaded up in an average of 38.13 seconds (over a period of three tests) from its launch menu to its start screen. I was pretty happy about that, as Season 9 just recently dropped and the sooner I can get into the game and work my way through the new battle pass, the better. In comparison, the game loaded to its start screen in 39.5 seconds from the onboard PNY CS1030 drive of my testing rig, so there was a tiny improvement - though it was not all that noticeable in practice.

Counter-Strike 2 loaded in an average of 26.80 seconds on the 990 SSD, which was a few seconds behind my rig's onboard PNY drive. It was a similar case for Dispatch, which loaded to its start screen at an average of 17.11 seconds compared to the PNY drive's 15.21 seconds. Of course, as I was using a stopwatch to time each game, it wasn't an exact science, so there should be a little margin of error to take into consideration. Either way, I had no issue bouncing into a variety of my go-to PC games practically as fast as I'm used to, and the SSD didn't falter or have any issues throughout the entirety of my testing time.

When it came to actually running Marvel Rivals off the 990 SSD, the drive continued to thrive. These days, there's a lot of on-screen clutter now that we've got characters like Jubilee setting off a barrage of fireworks and bright lights everywhere, so I was more concerned about my graphics card giving up the ghost than this SSD. Yet, after many hours of matches under my belt, Samsung's 990 kept chugging along just fine, and I didn't notice any dramatic difference whether I was rumaging through the various event screens or trying to get to the character select screen to select my main, Invisible Woman, as soon as possible.

During testing, I regrettably did not have a DC meter to check the temperature of the drive. Yet after a few check-ins throughout my time loading up games and spending far too many hours diving back in Marvel Rivals, Windows 11 informed me that the 990 SSD sat around the 48-degree mark.

Should you buy the Samsung 990 SSD?

Recommending SSDs in this day and age is tricky. While there are still plenty of impressive drives to go around, and the 2TB Samsung 990 counts as one of those in my eyes, but it's pricing leaves a little to be desired.

The Samsung 990 SSD launched for £411.99 / $529.99, which is a lot to pay for a little bit of extra storage. Especially when you consider that the 2TB 990 Pro originally launched for $309. That's a little over a $220 difference in just a few years, and without jynxing the situation, I fully expect the 990 SSD to rise from its $529.9 MSRP in the future if current SSD prices are anything to go by. (Thanks RAM Storage Crisis.)

That being said, as of the time of this review, its price thankfully hasn't shifted. This is where I'd usually recommend you grab it now before stock is all gobbled up and gone for good, but you can grab alternatives like the WD_Black SN7100 for just $289.99 at Amazon, and even the 2TB 990 Pro is down to $389.99 at Amazon.

If you're browsing retailers at a time when its Pro counterpart is bouncing between eye-watering prices, and yet the Samsung 990 SSD is still at its original price? Then I'd absolutely recommend you grab it to give your PC a boost. However, if luck is on your side and the same-capacity 990 Pro is the same price or even cheaper, you might as well still go for the more premium (and faster) option, even if the speed difference is only marginally higher than this DRAM-less drive.

How I tested the Samsung 990 SSD

As with all of the SSDs that come past my testing bench, I put the Samsung 990 through its paces by hooking it up to the M.2 drive of my testing PC, and running it through the benchmarking tool CrystalDiskMark. With it, I ran the drive through a series of four tests and calculated an average from those speeds. That average was then compared to its advertised on-the-box speeds. Additionally, I downloaded titles like Marvel Rivals, Counter-Strike 2, and Dispatch t via Steam and timed how long it took to load to their respective start screens and compared this to past SSDs that I've tested so far. To read more about the ways we test SSDs and the rest of our gaming tech, have a look at how we test SSDs and our hardware policy.

Check out our guides to the best SSDs for PS5, the best PS5 external hard drive, and the best Xbox Series X hard drive if your gaming platform of choice could use a little boost.

Hideo Kojima still wants to go to space, but for now he's going to keep making games, and he says that's a good thing.

Metal Gear Solid creator Kojima really hasn't kept it quiet that one day he wants to go to space, so much so that Valve boss Gabe Newell tried to set Kojima up with a tour of SpaceX. Over on Twitter, Kojima recently posted a video of his comments during a panel at Il Cinema in Piazza – a film festival in Rome – where he explains (translated by Genki_JPN) his current thoughts about his space travel aspirations.

"I want to share this with all of you: We all want to make our dreams come true, right?" he begins. And obviously he isn't talking about his dreams with "voluptuous nude women," reanimated "decomposing bodies," and a very impolite coach, as he explains, "I want to go to space and I want to make a movie." However, he adds, "it wouldn't be good if those dreams just came true."

"That's because dreams are goals," Kojima explains, "The idea is to achieve the second, third, and fourth dreams along the way before reaching your ultimate dream." He adds that "for the time being, I think I'll keep on making games without going to space."

I would say perhaps he can go to space once he retires from creating games (although he said he has no plans to retire). However, at that same event, he also said he wants to die in a movie theater, preferably just after the trailers, so unless they build theaters in space, he's probably going to have to come back to Earth at some point.

The original Metal Gear Solid is free to play on Steam this weekend as Konami gears up for Master Collection Volume 2.

Halo: Campaign Evolved strongly hints that another Halo remake could be on the way.

Rumors have been swirling for a while that Halo Studios is planning to remake Master Chief's entire original trilogy – Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3 – in the same style as its newly-released revamp, Halo: Campaign Evolved. That means yes to sprint, no to multiplayer, and sweeping changes to the rest of the game (new levels, weapons, updated visuals, etc.)

For anyone crossing their fingers for Halo 2 and Halo 3 to get the same treatment, good news! Halo: Campaign Evolved rather explicitly pours fuel over the fire of those rumors in its secret ending, unlocked by completing the game on Legendary difficulty. (Don't worry, there's no hard spoilers here.)

Finishing the fight on the game's toughest difficulty rewards you with an alternative ending that's surprisingly different to Bungie's 2001 shooter. The part that's important here is a line uttered by our good old Sergeant Avery Johnson, who caps off the entire game with: "See you in the sequel!"

While that's not hard confirmation of a Halo 2 remake in itself, the implication is crystal clear since an inevitable Halo 7 isn't exactly a sequel to Halo: Campaign Evolved, and I doubt HD Johnson is telling folks to go back and play the original Halo 2 after the series' latest remake.

Halo 2 has also actually been remade once before in Halo 2 Anniversary, which came bundled with The Master Chief Collection, but that was the case with the series' first game too, so it's not exactly a deal breaker for Xbox Game Studios.

The iconic Xbox sequel was also infamously a victim of a turbulent development cycle that left tons of content on the cutting room floor. The "finishing this fight" line became so recognizable in the first place because Master Chief did not, in fact, finish the fight until an entire game later when Halo 2's cliffhanger ending was finally resolved.

My point is, Halo 2 perhaps stands to benefit more than its older sibling should it get another, more comprehensive remake. It's also worth nothing that Halo 2 Anniversary was beholden to the source material's exact level layout since you could switch between both graphical options on the fly – a Campaign Evolved-style remake would presumably allow for more dramatic changes.

Our Halo: Campaign Evolved review calls it a "faithful remake of the 2001 classic that highlights exactly why the original Halo holds up so well 25 years later," even though Halo Studios could've done more to put its own spin on the classic game.

Halo 3's final mission could have been a flying banshee scene inspired by Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

It would be easy to forget amid the whirlwind of Palworld 1.0 coming out just two weeks ago that Pocketpair handles other games as well. The latest indie project to emerge from the publisher is an island-builder that looks both incredibly clever and like it'll completely absorb all your time given half a chance.

The game in question is known as Clicky Islands, it's got an easy, pixelated aesthetic, and it comes from a pair of Polish developers known as Karrot Games. Pocketpair shares a new look at the release, which merges town management, clicker mechanics and the satisfaction of watching your creation gradually become autonomous.

"It's a really fun mix of clicker, incremental, automation and town building!" John 'Bucky' Buckley, head of communications and publishing at Pocketpair, says on Twitter. "It is, I promise, very addictive!"

He would say that, but he also points towards a new demo on Steam on the back of Pocketpair distributing the game, and I can tell you, there's definitely something here. Even after just a few minutes of playing, I could feel myself getting sucked in, which is a good sign for anything.

My first impressions were brief, but I'm immediately taken by just how quickly Clicky Islands gets you moving. The early game of city builders can be a little slow, as you're guided through all the menus and mechanics, but this is much more about just, well, clicking around and seeing how you go. The use of Factorio-type automation for how your civilization operates makes it immensely satisfying.

The clicker elements push you to make quick decisions too. I eagerly await more, and the full version is set for this year at some point.

Palworld lead promises "you will always be able to play" Pocketpair's survival game: "Why would you assume it had an 'end of service?'"

Ahead of Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 2 releasing next month, Konami is letting everyone play Metal Gear Solid for free this weekend.

2026 has been a landmark year for those of us who are still obsessed with the year 1998. Spyro is getting a new entry, Resident Evil Requiem felt like as much of a sequel to Resident Evil 2 as anything else, Pokemon Gen 1 returned, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is set to get a remake releasing later this year. So, not to be outdone, Konami decided to remind everyone what the real best game of 1998 was, and is letting everyone play Metal Gear Solid.

Over on Steam, the Master Collection Volume 1 edition of 1998's Metal Gear Solid is free to play for anyone right now, which grants you access to the PS1 classic, as well as its expansion pack Metal Gear Solid VR / Special Missions, and the Japanese exclusive Integral. On top of that there's a full screenplay and "Master Book" which features artwork, character bios, a series timeline and the like.

This free weekend also arrives alongside Metal Gear Solid Master Collection's deepest Steam discount to date at £24.99 | $29.99 (which it's only been at twice before in the previous two Steam Summer Sales).

The best part of this deal, however, is that Metal Gear Solid is not really all that long. You could absolutely beat the entire game as part of this free weekend and experience one of the all-time greats free of charge

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 2 brings 4K 60fps to MGS4 and Peace Walker, Konami announces, but Switch 1 still gets saddled with 30fps.

A World of Warcraft game master has been fired from Blizzard Entertainment after the community caught them using "development-only spells" to help their friends breeze through a dungeon and instantly wipe two bosses. Essentially, they were caught helping some mates cheat.

The cheating scandal first came to light earlier this week when a couple of Reddit users shared evidence that a game master had used insta-kill abilities usually reserved for Blizzard employees to demolish at least two bosses. A player from the group all but spelled out the situation in a stream with Yumytv, too: "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 million [health] bro, can you please just one-shot it?"

Things sort of escalated from there, with the community wondering how commonplace incidents like this were. "Now you know it exists, therefore the pandora's box is wide open," one Redditor writes. "Which make you question a lot of stuff." Were secret GMs all around, helping their pals achieve titles and record runs?

As PC Gamer reports, Blizzard has now investigated the incident, fired the employee responsible, and assured folks that GMs aren't regularly manipulating games in secret.

"As we mentioned, we internally monitored and confirmed a recent incident in which a World of Warcraft group gained an unfair advantage by abuse of access to development-only spells on a live realm," community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan writes in a recent forum post. "Our tools confirmed what was also surfaced in community discussions, and we have investigated the incident carefully. We can confirm that this was the action of a single Blizzard employee, in violation of our Code of Conduct. This employee is no longer with the company effective immediately. We are also taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation.

"It has always been the case that a small number of Blizzard employees can use developer tools and spells on live servers: this lets us test and make urgent fixes to the live game when they’re needed," Kaivax explains. "Every use of these internal spells and commands on live realms is logged and shared with our Platform Security team to help ensure that the occasional use of this access is warranted. The use of development tools for anything other than development work is against company policy. It's because of the process we have in place around use of these tools that we're confident this incident was isolated to one individual."

The community manager than thanks everyone who brought the information to light, alongside community-led sites. "When your findings line up with ours, it helps confirm that our own tools are catching what they should, and we're grateful for the way we work alongside you all to protect the game and each other."

"You'll never get another World of Warcraft or Morrowind in the current climate," id Software producer says as constant layoffs batter the industry.

AI vibe coding has done the impossible: make Nintendo fans unexcited for Mario Kart Wii on PC. A new static recompilation project promises to give us a fresh way to play one of the best Wii games of all time, but as with many similar projects, the sentiment soon soured once prospective players realized it was built using AI.

"Announcing Mario Kart Wiicompiled," developer patchzy exclaims in a tweet alongside a teaser trailer for the project. "The first static recompilation of a Wii game: Mario Kart Wii, rebuilt for PC. Releasing in beta this August, with online play and optional Retro Rewind support, bringing over 200 tracks!"

Wii games finally getting the static recompilation treatment would be reason enough to get excited, since that would, in theory, open the door for many more Wii titles to become playable on PC. Decompilations and recompilations have been a rallying point for the communities around many classic games, as with the upcoming Spyro project – whose developers proudly proclaim that "no AI" was used in its making.

But, as Time Extension notes, there are no such promises for Mario Kart Wiicompiled. In fact, the project's Discord explicitly confirms that AI was used "for code" – though "no ai art or assets were generated."

That's a distinction that might satisfy some players, but you can just scroll down through the responses to the original tweet to see there are plenty more ready to reject a AI vibe-coded project outright. Only time will tell if Mario Kart Wiicompiled will actually play well, but many members of the various fan development communities are ready to dismiss vibe coding completely.

Such is the case for PS3 emulator RPCS3, whose developers are begging contributors to "stop submitting AI slop code." It's also a key point for the developers behind Donkey Kong 64: Recompiled, who announced their project early in an effort to get out ahead of a vibe-coded rival. A poorly-made AI project can discourage traditional developers from putting in the effort to do it right, and that's a fear hanging over many potential PC ports for classic games in this new vibe coding era.

"It creates lesser games": Indie game studios are supposed to love generative AI, so why do the 25 devs I spoke to avoid it?

PlayStation might make the growing $7.2 billion second-hand games market shrink down to roly-poly size once it officially abandons physical discs in 2028, analysts say.

A CNBC report cites data from market researcher Dataintelo describing the video games resale market as worth $7.2 billion in 2025, though experts anticipated in March that it would expand to $13.8 billion by 2034. But that estimate might look dramatically different now that PlayStation has decided to stop feeding it.

"Brick and mortar game retail is doomed," Wedbush Securities managing director of strategic planning Michael Pachter tells CNBC definitively. He explains that at least one-third of sold games are used, and these sales help fuel new game purchases, too. Fewer discs from PlayStation lead to fewer opportunities to purchase games in general, whether new or old.

Morningstar equity research director Kazunori Ito likewise imagines the secondhand games market will "keep shrinking and eventually disappear" once Sony makes the transition to digital-only. PC games are already there with the help of major online shops like Steam, Epic, and GOG, and while Xbox technically hasn't renounced game discs yet, it's apparently headed that way, and it's practicing by testing a feature that digitizes entire disc collections.

Without new PlayStation and Xbox games to keep it freshly stocked, the secondhand games market will grow stale. We'll all be passing around the same 5,000 copies of Cabela's Monster Buck Hunter until they'll rot, and then I'll really have no chance at securing one of the world's highly coveted Silent Hill 2 discs for less than $300.

Ito adds, "There is an important difference between players accepting that shift [to digital] because they see value in it, and having it effectively forced on them by taking away the alternative." But it doesn't seem to matter to PlayStation.

PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not.

Tim Cain knows better than nearly anyone that the earliest computer RPGs – like Fallout, which he helped create – had a huge advantage over their feeble brethren on consoles, which were afflicted with hardware limitations for at least two decades. After that, we were living in a post-Morrowind society.

"In the '80s, console RPGs were incredibly primitive. I'm talking, stone knives and bear skins," Cain says on his YouTube channel in response to a fan question wondering about how consoles changed the RPG market over time. "I mean, tabletop RPGs were really the way to go if you wanted really in-depth rules, but even computer RPGs had more complex rules than console RPGs, because everything from the graphics, to the system mechanics, and sound effects all had to be really, really simplified and reduced to fit in that very limited memory storage that it had, and CPU bandwidth."

"To me, console RPGs were kind of like toys that you could kind of play," Cain continues. Their controllers demanded select screens rather than the point-and-drag you could accomplish on PC, and checkpoint saves were a necessity for preserving their limited storage. But "all of this changed in 2002," when Bethesda launched The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

"Morrowind came out on the Xbox. It was an open-world Western RPG that felt like it had none of the limitations of previous console games," says Cain. "It was a PC game playing on an Xbox."

"It stunned me when it came out, because I remember thinking, 'This…this is it,'" he adds. "Not so much because of what the game was, but what it represented, which was – from now on, there's going to be a lot more parity between these two things.

GamesRadar+'s Morrowind review apparently published in 2006 frothily declares "a new standard in role-playing games. [Morrowind is] astonishing in its depth and detail, and also sets a new benchmark in graphics."

Morrowind was an in-depth spectacle – and not easily replicated. Cain thinks that buggy launches became more common for console games by at least the mid-2000s, once the Xbox 360 and PS3 had established digital storefronts where people could directly buy and download their games, which "meant it was also easy to patch them."

"Maybe this was a coincidence, maybe it wasn't," Cain says generously, "but, suddenly, console games seemed to ship with bugs in a way they had never shipped with bugs before. They weren't as tight. Then, by the 2010s and 2020s, it felt like parity had been established and reached between PCs and consoles." With both of them covered in bugs, PC and console had reached equality at last.

"Unconscionable": The day of Bethesda's Fallout reveal explosion, its laid-off Montreal devs were told they "would receive the smallest severance legally possible" and "immediately" lose health insurance benefits, union says.

Even Ubisoft seems surprised you all wanted classic-style Assassin's Creed back this bad. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has sold 3.5 million units in 14 days, already beating the publisher's internal sales projections for the full year.

"The strong launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced in early July by Vantage Studios is an encouraging proof point" of Ubisoft's new corporate structure, CEO Yves Guillemot says in the company's latest financial report. That same restructuring has also cost numerous developers their jobs, including many of the very people who brought Black Flag Resynced to life.

Black Flag Resynced is the first Assassin's Creed game to reach over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. According to Ubisoft, "this translated into a historical proportion of sales for the franchise on PC, led by the US and Chinese markets."

As part of today's financial report, Ubisoft announced net bookings of €256 million for the first quarter of the fiscal year, "down 9% year-on-year and slightly above guidance." Notably, that does not include any boost from Black Flag Resynced sales, which launched just after the start of the second quarter. Instead, those first quarter revenues were "driven by a record performance for Invincible: Guarding the Globe," an idle RPG for mobile.

Clearly, though, Ubisoft expects investors to be pleased with the performance Resynced is going to show next quarter. "The game is the highest-rated Assassin's Creed title since the original Black Flag, and we are very pleased with the praise it received from players," Guillemot continues. "Two weeks in, the title has already exceeded the annual expectations we had. I would like to warmly thank the teams whose talent and dedication brought it to life. This launch illustrates the enduring appeal of the Assassin’s Creed brand, as well as the early benefits of our ongoing transformation and commitment to delivering very high-quality experiences."

Ubisoft CEO says ditching physical games "helped" PC gaming, and PlayStation ending discs won't "disturb" the industry much anyway.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot seems largely in Sony's corner regarding the scheduled end to physical PlayStation games, going to bat for some advantages of an all-digital future.

Guillemot fielded a question about the January 2028 discontinuation of physical PlayStation games during Ubisoft's financial call earlier today.

One caller asked how Ubisoft feels about Sony's decision and if it has any worries about its direct or indirect effects, such as the end of the used games market which can enable gamers to pawn games and use those funds to buy new games.

"What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market," Guillemot replies. "There's also some pressure for the future on the cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help to have a more accessible machine, I would say. As you said, there are pluses and minuses. But we think it will not disturb, too much, the industry."

There are a couple of points to unpack here. PC gaming has been functionally digital-only for decades, and the popularity of Steam proves that a lot of people don't have a problem with digital games, even if that means licensing rather than owning them.

However, other storefronts are also available on PC, whereas PlayStation only has the PlayStation Store. Additionally, since Steam isn't built for any one hardware specification, it won't up and vanish alongside aging, unsupported hardware the way the PS3 and PS Vita stores will soon enough, and even if it did, we'd still have the likes of GOG. And as general use machines, computers make it much easier to back up and preserve games, so in digital game debates, PC and console aren't perfectly equal.

We have seen digital-only consoles used as a way to lower price points, and with AI data center-induced component droughts continually pushing platform holders to raise console prices, almost anything that can lower entry points will be welcomed as we stare down an increasingly likely $1,000 console generation. But the idea of losing physical games to the AI boom has not gone down well with many.

Digital-only PS5s are outselling disc versions today, according to analyst Daniel Ahmad – but roughly 70% of PS5s sold do have a disc drive. Likewise, many of the games that are actually available physically see much greater diversity in digital and physical sales split compared to the lopsided, collective figures that Sony touts as evidence of the shrinking physical market.

Two truths exist: physical copies are important and can sell well, and relatively few people buy physical games globally. People have already voted with their wallets in the enormous shift to digital games, but a relevant audience of physical buyers remains – it's just not relevant enough in Sony's eyes.

Nintendo is now selling some digital Switch 2 games $10 cheaper than physical versions – building out a more enthusiast market for the minority of people who do want boxes – but it's unclear how Sony's digital future could see savings handed down to players, if at all. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it. The games industry's got multiple fires to put out and taking less money from players is generally not high on the to-do list. GTA 6 is digital-only, for instance, but it's still $80.

It's not just savings, either. Sony – and, let's not forget, publishers like Ubisoft – will earn more per copy from digital games, so it stands to earn a lot more if all game sales become digital, even if it does lose some users by abandoning discs. Obviously, this is also another reason digital PS5s are sold cheaper: Sony makes less up front, but much more off game sales, so it wants the digital option to be appealing.

Only 7 PlayStation games have sold over 100,000 physical copies in the US this year, says analyst, as commenters demand discs without buying them.

Xbox is testing a new "ad-supported" version of its game streaming service, which will frontload advertisements at the start of a session, folding additional monetization into gaming time.

Microsoft announced the program today, July 23. Xbox Insiders who signed up for the platform's early access features can now test ad-supported streaming for "a limited time."

"During this test period, XBOX Insiders with an XBOX account will be able to stream games they own for free with ads," the company clarifies. "Players will have one hour session limits across supported devices and regions."

Microsoft maintains that "the core game experience is unchanged" once you get through the initial ads. Additionally, this ad tier is "optional" and "players can choose other ways to play at any time."

Some games and gaming services have had ads for many years, and platform holders are increasingly experimenting with more ways to monetize screen time and space.

Microsoft reckons advertising in gaming "hasn’t always been built with the player in mind," but insists that, "when done well, advertising can help lower the cost of access," loosely echoing the ad-supported tiers of TV and movie streaming services.

After this test for streaming, Microsoft says it will "continue to improve it based on how players use it and what they tell us. Our goal is simple. Give more people more affordable ways to play."

The company lays out the core pillars for "ad-supported services across Xbox," indicating that this is not a one-off experiment.

In short, Microsoft says such ads should "not interrupt the flow of gameplay," must be held to "the same quality bar as our content," should be "clear" about what's being advertised, and ought to suit "what players expect on each platform."

In the starchiest bit of corporate speak, Microsoft stresses, "We start with the player. Ads should create value." Players: they love value.

Following eyebrow-raising comments last month, Xbox's new chief strategist Matthew Ball explained that in-game ads that interrupt gameplay would be a bad idea.

Earlier this month, EA advertising VP Alexander Dao argued that in-game advertising is a "huge opportunity" for many developers.

The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings is generally bad for you. Besides attracting Sauron's attention, the dark magic imbued inside doesn't yield many positive side effects. A particular piece of jewelry in Diablo 4 is garnering a similar reputation, since players are finding it causes them to die unexpectedly.

According to its stats, the Wendigo Brand is meant to make you more powerful the more kills you get. Specifically, getting 15 kills within 50 seconds makes you tougher and increases your life. What's not included is that wearing it could cause you to suddenly and inexplicably drop dead.

That's what fans across the community are reporting, anyway. Threads across Reddit, dating back months, have players saying their health is depleting rapidly after partaking in encounters wearing the ring.

One ring to rule them all. This ring will make you go crazy and eventually will kill you. from r/Diablo

This has led to people losing battles they really should be winning while grinding in the action-RPG. "One ring to rule them all," reads a Reddit thread. "This ring will make you go crazy and eventually will kill you."

The comments contain several more anecdotal reports of the equipment harming their progress. "Removed it from my build and random deaths just stopped," says the top commenter. What's happening, according to those who've experienced it, is that when you reach 50 stacks on the health effect, it starts draining your life instead.

Whatever's going on, it isn't good, and claims that it's a bug have been substantiated to an extent by Blizzard itself, as the developer is now investigating. "Thank you all for the reports, team is looking into this," Marcus 'Marcoose' Kretz, senior community manager on the Diablo games, said on the official forums.

I implore them to proceed with caution. We all saw what happened to Gollum. And Isildur. And Boromir. And Frodo himself. Patch it out quickly and effectively.

Diablo 4 hotfix makes it easier to farm Mythics as Blizzard confirms Season 15 will remove Mythic reroll crafting from the Horadric Cube, "adding a direct upgrade" instead

Former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, has no idea why PlayStation hasn't released a PS5 or PC version of Bloodborne, and as a mega fan, he personally hopes that a port, remaster, or even a special edition is on the horizon.

While speaking about Bloodborne during his keynote speech at the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference, that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Yoshida expresses his disbelief at Sony's decision to keep his favorite Soulslike as a PS4 exclusive.

"This game [Bloodborne] has a lot of fans all over the world, and it still doesn't have a PS5 version," Yoshida says. "PlayStation's first-party team is releasing a ton of remasters, so why don't they release this one? There's no PC release.

"I am often asked why these haven't been released, but it's a complete mystery. Maybe they'll come out in the future. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll make a special edition. Maybe they won't. As a huge fan, I hope it will come out."

Yoshida also boasts about his Bloodborne platinum trophy, though he complained about some of its more challenging bosses. He also jokingly called the "highlight of his career" defeating hell beast Watchdog of the Old Lords live on stage.

During the speech, he talks about almost 30 games he helped shape during his time at PlayStation, starting with Crash Bandicoot all the way through to Ghost of Tsushima and his work promoting indie games.

"I should have listened properly to Miyazaki": Ex PlayStation boss admits giving FromSoftware "the lowest number possible" for physical copies of Demon's Souls after getting stuck in its "demanding" starting area.

Indie adventure game Future? No Thanks! Has been delayed at the last minute thanks to Steam needing to look at some boobs and butts.

Molleindustria, the developer of satirical games like Democratic Socialism Simulator and New York Times Simulator has announced on Bluesky (spotted by PC Gamer) that its latest game Future? No Thanks! – which was supposed to be released today – has been pushed back.

The post says, "We were foolish to disregard the only authority on the matter: Steam, which has kept our game under review for more than three weeks in order to properly assess the scale and scope of the nudity contained within it."

As for the nudity involved, the post explains that "Future? No Thanks! deploys dozens of untextured polygons depicting ass and boobs. They appear statically on screen for several seconds. We understand that such sexually charged content warrants a very careful examination."

Molleindustria adds, "We are thankful to Valve's review team for its thorough work in keeping Steam free from obscene and horny content," which is very valid to say about the platform that features multiple NSFW games that very much breach what can be considered 'good taste' (thanks, Vice).

Of course, yes, Steam does platform adult games, something the replies to the post were quick to point out. However, Molleindustria does clarify: "Less jokingly: I believe the delay is due to the mild nudity not warranting an age verification plus Steam not accepting video documentation to examine the content, which is not immediately accessible in the game. Fingers crossed."

The dev also notes, "I literally had to submit a special build with a 'watch the sex scene' button," and that the demo – which is available right now – "is identical and passed the review months ago." However, Molleindustria promises "the game will be released whenever their assessment is complete."

Avatar: The Last Airbender fighting game delayed on Xbox just hours before release, but not on PS5 or Steam.

A group of investors led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund have received approval from the European Commission to go ahead with their proposed acquisition of EA, the blockbuster game publisher behind Battlefield, The Sims, and EA Sports titles.

Last year, EA confirmed it had entered a deal to go private and fall under the joint ownership of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners (a private investment firm led by US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner). Should the $55 billion buyout proceed without a hitch, Saudi Arabia's PIF will own 93.7% of shares, Silver Lake will have 5.5%, and Affinity Partners will hold onto 1.1% of the company.

That mega-deal is now one step closer to closing since the European Commission just concluded that the buyout wouldn't lead to significant competition concerns. (Good spot, Game Developer.)

"The European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the acquisition of sole control of Electronic Arts Inc. of the US by the Public Investment Fund ('PIF') of Saudi Arabia. The transaction relates primarily to the production and distribution of video games for mobile devices, PCs and consoles, as well as the organization and commercialization of video game competitions, commonly referred to as electronic sports events," the European Commission's website explains.

"The Commission concluded that the notified transaction would not raise competition concerns, given its limited impact on competition in the markets where the companies are active," the note continues. "The notified transaction was examined under the normal merger review procedure."

The buyout has been subject to much scrutiny in the months since it was made public. Several The Sims content creators quit EA's Creator Network earlier this year, citing long-term concerns over the ethics and history of the publisher's would-be owners. Saudi Arabian authorities, for example, have frequently been accused of countless human rights violations over the years.

For now, check out the new games of 2026 and beyond.

It's always fun to see what lurks just below what we can see in a video game through datamining and the like. You can find remnants of ideas that hit the cutting room floor, or perhaps suggestions of what's to come in DLC. A lead developer on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced respects the curiosity, but asks we don't put much stock in what's uncovered.

"Many games get datamined, it's very clever, I understand," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, says in an interview with JorRaptor (below). "Sometimes these are for assets that don't even exist yet, and sometimes they're placeholders that were done three years ago."

For projects as big as the Black Flag remake – or any triple-A game, really – all sorts of little curios and oddities tend to sneak into the finished product. Perhaps it was easier and faster to just cover something up than to take it out entirely, or, as Knight suggests, there was the kernel of an idea that didn't pan out, but you can still find a little marker, left however long ago in the game's past by god knows who.

They make for good discussion around the game's development, but holding people who worked on it to account for them is difficult. If they're placeholders, the devs genuinely might not remember what the point was, and if they're hints at what's coming, nobody will be allowed to talk about it yet.

Naturally, this comes up because JorRaptor asks about costumes that have been found in the game's innards. Multiple get-ups for Edward drawing on several entries from the storied franchise have been discovered, leading people to believe they indicate what's coming.

Knight is saying nothing, however. "This is my way of saying I don't actually know," he responds, remaining coy. "I can't spoil it because I don't know."

He does say whatever comes, the team will "support the brand legacy." Take that however you like.

If you're yet to set sail in the remake yourself, be sure to read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see how it compares to the best Assassin's Creed games in the series.

The length of Halo Campaign Evolved isn't really all that different to the original 2001 game, clocking in at roughly 10 hours. However, this remake packs in a few extras – namely a three-mission bonus prequel campaign and over 50 collectibles in the form of Skulls and Terminals – that will extend how long it takes you to complete the game, depending on what your definition of 'complete' is. With that in mind, here are some estimations for how long Halo Campaign Evolved is based on how you play.

How long is Halo Campaign Evolved?

The average playthrough for Halo Campaign Evolved is about 10 hours, but with things like difficulty, prior knowledge from the original, and collectibles to find, your completion time is affected by many factors:

• Main campaign: 8-12 hours
• Main campaign + bonus missions: 10-14 hours
• 100% completion: 20+ hours

As mentioned, the core campaign – that's the 10 main missions from The Pillar of Autumn to The Maw – should take you 10 hours, give or take a couple. If you're charging through each mission on Easy difficulty or have played the classic Halo Combat Evolved already, you may even be able to get through it much faster. Conversely if you're committing to a Heroic or Legendary playthrough, plenty of deaths will add up to a couple of extra hours.

The Operation Meteorite campaign, comprising three prequel missions featuring Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson, adds a couple more hours of story content, but you should still get through the whole thing in under 15 hours. I completed all 13 missions on Heroic difficulty in about 13 hours, having also played Combat Evolved a few times before.

Finally, those that commit to finding all 39 Skulls and all 13 Terminals spread across each mission, you'll be spending several more hours replaying and scouring each level. If you're going for the Platinum Trophy too, there are plenty of tough challenges that will likely take you multiple attempts to complete, so don't expect a quick walk in the park!

The game is only in early access at the moment, so make sure you know when the Halo Campaign Evolved release time is and ensure you pre-load Halo Campaign Evolved before then.

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