While Link's Awakening is the Game Boy title most fans would rank highest among the best Zelda games ever made, the Oracle games aren't far behind. Made by Capcom's Flagship team under Nintendo's supervision, Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages had a famously troubled development, but it's a wonder it got made at all given the contentious way the project had begun.

The partnership between Capcom and Nintendo was the brainchild of Yoshiki Okamoto, who had produced classics like Final Fight and Street Fighter 2 at Capcom. In the late '90s, he wanted his team to remake the original Legend of Zelda for Game Boy Color, then use those learnings to make a trilogy of original games for the platform.

Of those four games, only two were ultimately released: the Oracle games. All of this information is widely documented on various fan wikis, but a newly translated quote from Okamoto suggests that he was pretty audacious about his plans, and wasn't going to take no for an answer. Even if it meant threatening Shigeru Miyamoto himself.

"I especially like Zelda [1]. But Nintendo wouldn't port it to Game Boy Color," Okamoto said in a 1999 interview with the German magazine Total, which was recently translated by Did You Know Gaming. "So I told Mr. Miyamoto I'd produce it myself... but we couldn't come to an agreement. So in the end, I threatened him. I said if Nintendo's not up for it, we'll release an identical game with different characters and just call it something else."

I guess Miyamoto has a better sense of humor than Nintendo's lawyers, because this threat ultimately got the proper bargaining underway. Given how Nintendo typically treats products it thinks are similar to its own, well… I can only imagine the sassy, Palworld-style court drama headlines we'd have been getting back in the day.

Of course, Capcom couldn't truly make good on its end of the deal. The remake was canned when it hit development issues, so Okamoto's dream never really came true, and the planned trilogy was cut down to just two games. But Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages turned out to be great games, and Nintendo again collaborated with Capcom on The Minish Cap a short time later, so I suppose it all worked out in the end.

Check out our guide to the best Game Boy Color games of all time.

The developers of Dragon's Dogma 2 have confirmed the game will be getting a hard mode focused on giving those who have hit the level cap a challenge.

In a Q&A posted on the Dragon's Dogma 2 Steam Page, producer Naoto Oyama and returning Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen director Kento Kinoshita speak about the upcoming major update and the Dark Arisen expansion set to release in the coming months. The original Dark Arisen could be a bit of a nightmare depending on what point of the game you arrived at its content, and from the sounds of things, difficulty is part of the plan this time.

"Both the Forsaken Dominion and Lost Rites are expansion contents," Kinoshita explains, "so we've designed them to offer battles with an even greater sense of tension and challenge than the main game."

Confusingly, Kinoshita makes it sound like there will be some level of level scaling involved in the expansion, saying, "we're adjusting the balance so that everyone can enjoy the experience – whether they're just starting their adventure, still progressing through the game, or have already completed multiple playthroughs."

However, Oyama also adds that "the recommended starting level for Forsaken Dominion is 40, while that of Lost Rites is 20," and that while you can start the DLC content whenever, "ultimately, we'd like players to use those recommendations as a reference and choose their own path based on how they want to experience the game." To me, that sounds like it won't be level scaling at all.

Oyama says those levels aren't full-caps, either, as "these recommendations apply only to the beginning of each content. As players progress, the challenge gradually ramps up, and both experiences become increasingly demanding."

Speaking of more demanding, Kinoshita also confirms that a long-awaited feature is finally being added to the game, which should ease fears that the expansion content will be too easy: "We're working on a Hard Mode that will provide a satisfying challenge for seasoned players whose stats have reached, or are approaching, the level cap."

Unfortunately, neither can say when this will be made available, with Oyama saying: "Please stay tuned for further updates regarding the details of Hard Mode and its release window."

Capcom returns to its divisive RPG with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, and the dev leading the expansion says its friction will be preserved – "That is something that we offer so that players can make a decision on how to play."

Pragmata's supporting hero Diana has hair that's almost as tall as her body and apparently took a huge amount of effort to animate properly. In fact, Diana's head of hair was so demanding that developers working on this year's breakout action game actually considered giving her the cost-cutting, hair-cutting treatment.

As reported on by Famitsu and translated by Automaton, character artist Kenji Irie and animator Serina Ohara spoke about the game's various bad hair days during the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference 2026.

The duo reportedly explained how most games use something called hair cards, which are flatter hair textures where the individual strands aren't animated separately. For Diana, flat hair wouldn't suffice. The devs apparently animated each strand individually and had to work on 430,000 animation points to make her mane move properly.

To save on the exorbitant money and time it would take to produce, process, and animate Diana's hair, the developers toyed around with the idea of a makeover. A makeover in the form of a bob cut, I should add, right smack in the middle of production. The Pragmata team apparently even made a model to test her new bob.

In the end, Pragmata didn't launch with a blond Edna Mode following players around. Capcom's team felt that a longer and wilder hairstyle suited Diana's personality more, and a girl who's spent her whole life on the moon likely wouldn't be getting regular haircuts anyway.

Short hair or no, Pragmata's become a big success in just a few short months. Capcom recently hinted that chances of a potential Pragmata 2 are high, and it's all thanks to the game selling over 2.5 million copies without any brand recognition.

Bayonetta creator says Capcom might be thriving thanks to a constant push to create new IP like Pragmata.

Capcom's latest financial result is acting as a glass filled to the precise half-way mark in the physical media debate. On the half-empty side? Overall game sales are now more than 93% digital, and Capcom expects that share to grow even higher next year. For those who take a half-full outlook, though, the digital share of console game sales isn't nearly as extreme.

Capcom sold 1.6 million physical games in the three months running from April through June 2026, which included the launch of Pragmata, according to the publisher's latest financial report. That ain't nothing, but compared to the 22.2 million digital sales reported in the same period? Well, you might start to see why a financial analyst would suggest that digital is not just the future, but the present.

That means that 93.3% of sales for the quarter were made up of digital games, and the company expects the digital share to be even higher for the overall fiscal year, which concludes in March 2027. By then, Capcom expects a whopping 95.4% of sales to be digital.

But there's one big caveat: Capcom says that 60.4% of sales for this quarter were on PC, where digital is effectively the only option. The company reports that 6.7% of its sales are physical, and we can safely assume that all of those are on console. That would mean around 16.9% of sales on console are made up of physical games.

It's worth noting that Capcom has historically counted sales of game-key cards on Switch 2 as digital sales rather than physical units. So whether or not you consider game-key cards to be 'real' physical games, just know that Capcom is putting them in the digital column.

It's also worth noting that the vast majority of sales for the quarter – 89.3% – were back catalog titles, which benefit heavily from big digital sales on platforms like Steam.

So how do we interpret this data? Well, Sony's certainly looking at these kinds of figures and deciding that physical PlayStation games no longer need to exist. By the same token, I doubt any publisher would happily give up 6.7% of its sales – but I'm sure the theory is that former physical game buyers will simply migrate to digital stores.

The proportion of new game sales happening on physical media is likely a bit higher than a cursory glance at the numbers would lead you to believe, but there's no denying that the majority of gamers have already gone digital, no matter which way you slice it.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director wants "some kind of physical edition" for the RPG, but he can't promise it as Sony becomes the latest to "shift away" toward digital.

In what's becoming another strong year for Capcom, Pragmata stands out as a notable success. So much so, the third-person shooter is likely set for another installment, according to a higher-up at the long-running developer and publisher.

The company's first-quarter profits actually came in above estimates, according to a report from Bloomberg, and Pragmata was a strong contributor in that regard. The sci-fi adventure has sold over two-and-a-half million copies so far, an impressive turnaround for a game that only came out in April and isn't based on any existing properties.

Capcom corporate office Yoshikazu Shimauchi – the company's head of finance, accounting, IT, and the PR and IR division – mentions that Pragmata actually exceeded expectations, which isn't something you hear very often in this industry. As such, Bloomberg reports that Shimauchi stated that the possibility of a sequel is high, lining up with Capcom's previous comments about turning the game into a series.

Shimauchi puts Pragmata's sales reception down to a strong marketing campaign and having a distinctive protagonist in Diana, the female android you have to protect as part of the main narrative. It always helps to have a good face for your release, especially if it's slightly odd or creepy.

As a horror fan, it doesn't hurt that Diana immediately made me think of M3GAN, the killer android who became a slasher icon in 2013. I actually thought screenshots of Pragmata were a M3GAN-themed mod for something at first glance, before learning it was its own game. Such curiosity was enough to push me to add the project to my wishlist.

The ending leaves room for another installment, and the baseline concept – futuristic super-soldier protecting a small robot – is something that could be replicated in various scenarios ad infinitum. Wherever Pragmata 2 goes, there's clearly an audience ready to play it.

Bayonetta creator says Capcom might be thriving thanks to a constant push to create new IP like Pragmata.

Resident Evil 2 is now the series' best-selling game, while a new sales milestone sees the Capcom horror series pass Final Fantasy.

In Capcom's latest earnings report, the company announced that Resident Evil 2 – that being the 2019 remake, not the 1998 original with the same name – has sold an extra 1.42 million copies since the last report, sending the game to lifetime sales of 19.75 million copies. And despite Capcom's decision to split every different version of a game into different parts of its platinum titles page making it seem like this happened long ago, Resident Evil 5 has finally been dethroned (via DuskGolem).

Between the original Xbox 360 and PS3 game, its Gold Edition, the PS4 and Xbox One re-release, and Switch editions of Capcom's divisive horror title, Resident Evil 5 had sold 19.01 million copies the last time Capcom detailed its sales in an earnings report earlier this year.

However, Resident Evil 2's spot at the top is definitely under threat as Resident Evil 4 remake is already at 16.04 Million copies sold despite 2's four-year headstart. Not to mention Resident Evil 4 sold 2.43 million copies in the last three months, which is over 1 million more than 2 sold. Resident Evil Requiem is also killing it as it sold a further 1.14 million in the last three months, and with momentum like that and big sales down the line, it also has a chance to make it to the top.

Capcom also confirmed that the Resident Evil series as a whole has sold 213 million copies since it debuted 30 years ago. That means it has surpassed Final Fantasy, which Square Enix claimed had sold 212 million as of last month. This means that Resident Evil is the ninth best-selling game franchise of all-time, and the biggest-selling Japanese game series not published by Nintendo, and with sales like Mario and Pokemon have, I'm afraid that's probably the closest it will get.

"Resident not-Evil" is Resident Evil 2 director's joke cozy life sim pitch starring a retired Leon Kennedy fishing, baking, and "inviting his old friends over for barbecues"

Capcom is shouting out Pragmata's sales success as a big reason why the company's year-on-year profits have increased.

In the company's latest earnings report, Capcom notes an 83% increase in net sales year-on-year, and noting: "Unit sales of all-new IP Pragmata and catalog titles performed well, driving revenue and profit up."

Capcom confirms that – as of June 30, 2026 – Pragmata has sold over 2.5 million copies since it was released back in April 2026, while Resident Evil Requiem sold a further 1.14 million since sales were last reported, bringing the latest game in the series up to eight million copies sold. This mixed with strong sales for older Resident Evil titles, bringing the series to 213 million copies sold, and making it the best-selling Japanese game series not published by Nintendo or Sony.

In a press release, Capcom once again singles out Pragmata as a key factor in this increase in sales, saying: "Digital Contents business drove earnings with 23.81 million units in total sales volume, which exceeded sales of 14.16 million units for the same period of the previous fiscal year. This included sales of all-new IP PRAGMATA, which surpassed 2.5 million units worldwide following a positive launch reception due to increased brand awareness achieved through robust promotional activities."

Since launch, Capcom hasn't exactly kept its cards close to its chest regarding how it feels about Pragmata. It confirmed that it will consider "developing it into a series," after Pragmata hit two million copies within its first month and says it will continue making new IP. The push for new IP is something Devil May Cry and Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya credits Capcom's success with, while Pragmata director Yonghee Cho told us in May that he would "of course" love to make a sequel to the game.

In a games industry dominated by safe bets, Capcom keeps getting weird with it.

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.

The GOG store had its biggest bump in visibility thanks to Capcom's PS1 survival horror classics, the CD Projekt Red-owned store's staff say.

Marcin Paczyński, senior business development and partnerships manager at GOG, revealed last year that Capcom was initially hesitant to re-release the classic Resident Evil trilogy as Resident Evil (2002), Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 3 (2020) already existed and were – in its eyes – superior games. However, speaking to RPG Site, Paczyński says that the success of that trilogy's return – which led to it being released on Steam – has probably made it easier to convince Capcom to play ball with returning classics.

"The launch answered a lot of questions by itself," Paczyński says. "The classic Resident Evil games and Dino Crisis sit at over 90% positive user ratings on GOG, and it's worth remembering how seriously Capcom approached them: they were treated as full new releases, with complete QA and certification, per language."

Paczyński responds to the question of whether things have gotten easier since Resident Evil, saying: "We understand what it means for a company to hand over brands this iconic, brands that are truly its own. That takes real trust, and we're grateful Capcom gave us that chance." He adds, "We delivered. Perhaps that makes conversations with other partners a little simpler now, because there is a track record to point to.

"As for whether more of Capcom's legacy is coming: the top of the GOG Dreamlist is the most honest answer I can give." At the moment, Resident Evil Code: Veronica X is Capcom's highest ranking game on the Dreamlist, with 83,884 votes making it one of the top requests on the site.

Paczyński also credits Capcom's releases with giving the store a boost in visibility, saying: "Bringing back Resident Evil and Dino Crisis did more for GOG's visibility than almost anything else in recent years." He adds, "It showed players that the biggest classics can come back done right, and it showed rights holders, especially in Japan, what a classic release can look like on PC."

As for Capcom itself, he says the company has been a "fantastic" partner "through all of it, demanding in the best sense, and we would love to do more together. That is no secret." So hopefully we'll see God Hand and the Mega Man Legends games get a PC release soon… please.

"Resident not-Evil" is Resident Evil 2 director's joke cozy life sim pitch starring a retired Leon Kennedy fishing, baking, and "inviting his old friends over for barbecues."

Monster Hunter Wilds has had quite the turbulent journey since its 2025 release, grappling with a climb from negative to middling reviews and ongoing performance issues on PC – but there's good news regarding the action RPG now.

It's getting a permanent price reduction from Capcom, to be precise – and new DLC bundles.

The studio reveals as much in an exciting new post, writing, "Hunters, we are streamlining the available options for new and returning hunters joining Monster Hunter Wilds. We plan to discontinue sales of some of our existing bundle products and release new value bundle products." Folks can expect these to start rolling in on August 3.

Attached is a little infographic that explains the Deluxe Edition, Premium Deluxe Edition, and Cosmetic DLC Pass are goin' in the woodchipper later this summer to make way for the new bundles.

First up, there's the Monster Hunter Wilds Gold Edition, which includes the full game and DLC collection. Then there's the Cosmetic DLC Collection, which includes 10 DLC packs, including the Extras cosmetic DLC Pack.

Finally, there's the Extras Cosmetic DLC Pack (I think I've written "cosmetic" so many times I no longer remember what it means). This one boasts "select paid cosmetic DLC only previously available as standalone products."

Capcom clarifies, "The premium bonuses will be included in the new bundles above" – but that's not all. That price reduction I mentioned earlier on? Look forward to it on August 4.

"In addition," as Capcom reveals, "the Monster Hunter Wilds base game will receive a permanent price reduction starting August 4, 2026." That's pretty good news – although the team doesn't specify what this reduction will look like.

As it stands now, the base game costs a whopping $69.99. I suppose this figure might align more nicely with Monster Hunter World, which is a whole $40 less. Perhaps in the $50 or $60 ballpark?

There's no telling just yet, but for now, fans seem pretty thrilled. As one comment reads, "Oh wow, the permanent price reduction is nice." Others request more changes from Capcom – but I say, one step at a time.

At the least, the studio is heading in the right direction.

Monster Hunter World has sold over 30 million copies, further cementing its lead as Capcom's best-selling game and leaving Wilds in the dust after a year of performance woes

For six months after the March 2024 launch of Dragon's Dogma 2, Capcom had all hands on deck, mostly responding to issues and complaints via patches. Ever since, the RPG's dev team has been working on Dark Arisen, a major expansion meant to answer the fans who wanted to keep playing.

Dragon's Dogma Online head and original Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen director Kento Kinoshita joined the sequel's team around the middle of the project, and toward the later stages, he began to wonder what an expansion might look like for Dragon's Dogma 2, which proved to be a divisive RPG. About half a year after launch, work on Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen began in earnest, and now we're headed toward an October 8, 2026 launch for the long-awaited expansion.

"Sorry to keep everyone waiting," Capcom producer Naoto Oyama tells GamesRadar+ in an interview (via interpreter). "We started the project during the period where, after the release of the base game, we received incredibly passionate feedback from our players who expressed a desire to play more and continue exploring. They wanted to enjoy more combat in this game, so we really worked hard on answering these requests. We launched the project with the concept of providing a highly accessible brand-new adventure, more combat, and we're happy we were able to announce this and come back to the game again."

Kinoshita's return was a godsend to Dragon's Dogma 2 players who'd given up hope that the game would ever receive the same treatment as the original. Dark Arisen made Dragon's Dogma a noticeably better game, and there were hopes that the sequel would get at least the same style of expansion – in addition to the major title updates due this year, with one already released and another coming in August.

Kinoshita says, "I'm really happy to be back here as director for the new Dark Arisen. The motivation behind kicking off this project was the passionate feedback we received from players, so we really appreciate people's support and feedback received so far."

For the new Dark Arisen, Kinoshita explains, "I was thinking, if we can make an expansion for this game, how can we make it? What will be enjoyable? What will be fun? So I'm really positive that, finally, this is taking shape and we'll be able to deliver this soon to players."

This expansion is also called Dark Arisen for a few reasons, Kinoshita says. "We decided on the title after finalizing the content we were creating. It wasn't title first. We named it after consolidating the ideas of what we want to include in the expansion.

"There are three main reasons for the naming. One is a strong affinity with the story that will unfold in the new area. The second is the presence of a loot-based gameplay cycle similar to the original Dark Arisen. And for the third one, we chose a familiar name which we think is the easiest way to convey to everyone what kind of elements will be added. Some people have already experienced the Dark Arisen expansion in the first title and we're building something similar and more expanded in Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen."

Compared to the original game's expansion, this new Dark Arisen is less of a dungeon-crawler experience, instead bringing players to a new area of the open world in the Norgan region (with some dungeon challenges along the way, for good measure). "Also, an appeal compared to the original is that the story that unfolds in the Norgan area is really deep, and there is kind of a mystery you will chase and you have to solve, and there will be supporting characters around you," Kinoshita adds. "Compared to that title's dungeon-crawler experience, that will be pretty different."

To my delight, there will be a similar rhythm of uncovering relic-type equipment and essentially decrypting it back at your base, uncorking a whole crate of random end-game gear at once to see what will make it into your build. In the best way, this feels similar to Capcom's Monster Hunter games adding G-Rank or Master Rank gear in their expansions.

"For both existing players and new players, I hope people will enjoy Dragon's Dogma 2 more, that it will lead to the perfect shape of Dragon's Dogma 2," Kinoshita concludes.

Capcom returns to its divisive RPG with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, and the dev leading the expansion says its friction will be preserved – "That is something that we offer so that players can make a decision on how to play."

Even after several updates adjusting features like fast travel, Dragon's Dogma 2 remains a pretty exacting game. Capcom's modern RPG series is known for an eclectic mix of ideas that results in a texture that some players find irresistible, while others outright hate it. Director Hideaki Itsuno previously called the sequel a game that wasn't designed for everyone, and Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen director Kento Kinoshita seems to be of a similar mind as the long-awaited expansion approaches an October 8 launch.

Speaking with GamesRadar+ via interpreter, Kinoshita reflects on the friction in Dragon's Dogma 2's design. "That is something that we offer so that players can make a decision on how to play," he says. "If they have multiple options and decide what's the best way, that's giving players [choices]. This is the core essence of how we design the friction in the game."

I ask how the Dark Arisen expansion – which will add a new area, storyline, dungeon challenges, and many enemies and items – adjusts or preserves that friction. "We believe we're developing the game so that people can enjoy that kind of friction, having multiple options and making decisions," Kinoshita affirms. "We believe that's preserved in the expansion content as well."

To give players true choices in games, devs have to accept that some content will be ignored or unnoticed. They also have to make more content to flesh out whatever path is chosen, at least compared to a linear game in principle. How do you balance giving players more without making the whole thing too big? And for an expansion like this, explicitly made to answer requests for additional stuff to do, is it a good thing or a stressful thing to hear that players want more?

"That's a really good question," responds Kinoshita. "As [producer Naoto Oyama] answered earlier, my first impression was, sorry to keep everyone waiting. In terms of the balance, we have to consider how long we can take to develop the game and how much volume we can include in the expansion. If we have to put more content into the expansion, it means it will take more time to develop. But also, we were aware of the passionate feedback from players, especially that they want to enjoy the combat more. But we have to set a certain limit to the amount of content."

Capcom had a few goals with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen: more content, a more accessible game, and "great value," per Kinoshita. The question was how to align these goals with what players had demanded – more combat, more areas to explore, and more reasons to play in general after a pretty abrupt ending. The result is a more ambitious expansion designed "more like an adventure full of freedom" and, compared to the original Dark Arisen, less like a big dungeon full of loot (though I'm told there will also be smaller dungeons full of loot).

"The main focus in terms of the amount of content we decided to put in the expansion was answering that feedback, more combat, focusing on the amount of new enemies, how wide the new area is, how the story unfolds," Kinoshita adds. "That's how we balance volume and try to answer those requests from players ... So when balancing what we want to include in the expansion and how to answer the requests, that was also something we considered. So we hope that more and more people will enjoy the game."

After Monster Hunter Wilds, Capcom wants to redeem Dragon's Dogma 2: "performance improvements," Dragonsplague changes, and more in free updates 2 years after launch.

Resident Evil Requiem has all sorts of brilliant lines, especially from iconic protagonist Leon Kennedy – but there could've been even more, had Capcom not cut them.

Leon Kennedy actor Nick Apostolides reveals a few in a new discussion from Play, Watch, Listen+ on YouTube (below), including one that would've come up during the Titan Spinner fight – an arguably hair-raising battle against a huge arachnid.

"The one that they didn't use would have been my favorite," Apostolides explains, admitting that the cut line would've been his most beloved… had Capcom not removed it from the game.

"When you fight the spider, I wanted to say – and we recorded it, 'You know, you've been a real itsy-bitsy pain in my ass,'" the actor recalls, using his legendary Leon Kennedy voice while recalling the line. "It would have been a banger." Indeed, it would've been.

I'm not alone in agreeing with the star, either, as folks over on Twitter lament the cut dialogue. "OMG," exclaims one fan. "This would have been freaking incredible."

Quoted responses (if you click to view post activity) are just as amusing, with somebody shouting, "WE WAS ROBBED!" Another jokes, "Requiem Leon is definitely a father."

The actual video on YouTube has garnered some pretty great attention, too – considering that Apostolides used his Leon Kennedy voice while describing the cut line, folks comment on how it could be modded into the game itself now.

"Well, he just gave us the line right there to mod it into the game," as one person says – and, I mean, they're not wrong.

There are all sorts of Resident Evil Requiem mods out there, from those affecting gameplay to others targeting visuals. What's to say a boss fight line couldn't be the next to go live? I certainly wouldn't be opposed to it, and it seems like the community is already considering the possibility.

Here's hoping we get to hear the "itsy-bitsy" line in-game someday, then – Leon Kennedy can never have enough one-liners, if you ask me.

Yet to play Capcom's latest horror game? Be sure to read our Resident Evil Requiem review. You can also check out our guide to Resident Evil Requiem's safe codes to help you through the game.

The developers of Monster Fantasy have addressed comments that its upcoming title is perhaps a bit too similar to Capcom's Monster Hunter series.

Last month, the reveal trailer for Monster Fantasy was revealed from Jotoyo. The game is described as an action RPG with life sim elements, however, the trailer caught the eyes of many for another reason, that being some striking resemblances to another game with Monster in the title.

Now, the gaming community does have a bit of a tendency to be quick to label things a "ripoff" at the slightest similarity. Most new indie farming sims will be dubbed a Stardew ripoff (even if Story of Seasons heavily inspired Stardew), and we can even look as far back as the likes of Uncharted being dubbed a Tomb Raider ripoff and Digimon being called a Pokemon ripoff. However, I absolutely see the similarities when it comes to Monster Fantasy.

The game's trailer opens up with some landscape shots of biomes that look strikingly similar to the biomes from Monster Hunter Rise, and the music feels a few notes away from being the Capcom series theme song Proof of a Hero – with a similar build up to its main melody – as a Rathalos lookalike emerges. Fans have even noticed similarities with some of the weapon animations, specifically the bow and sword. The comments on the trailer aren't exactly shy about it either, with the refrain of "we got monster hunter at home" being a common comment.

In a Steam FAQ (via Automaton) posted by the developers, the team is facing the comparison head on, with a question titled: "The game looks very similar to Monster Hunter. Does it have its own unique features?" The developers respond: "Monster Hunter is indeed one of our sources of inspiration, and our core creators are big fans of the series. However, Monster Fantasy places greater emphasis on the new experiences created by the interaction between different gameplay systems."

It continues, "We understand that some of the combat demonstrations in the trailer may remind players of Monster Hunter. However, once players actually try the game, we believe they will find that the overall experience is quite different."

The post claims that the hunting "is only one part of our gameplay" and the developers really want to present "a fantasy world where, beyond hunting and combat, players can truly immerse themselves: building villages, enjoying a relaxed life, and forming friendly relationships with villagers."

The devs add, "Of course, the content we have shown so far is still from an early stage, and we understand that some footage may have given players the impression of a high degree of similarity. We have taken this feedback seriously and are already adjusting and improving the design."

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with games taking inspiration from others, we wouldn't have most of the games we love if not for that, but sometimes the similarities are a touch too blatant to ignore. Especially when we've seen instances like the Pokemon Palworld alleged patent infringement lawsuit, even when the survival game is a different experience than Pokemon, it maybe wore some of its inspirations a little too much on its sleeve for The Pokemon Company to ignore – and the massive success probably didn't help.

Monster Hunter Wilds fans collectively sigh as Ascendance expansion brings back hated elder dragon Kushala Daora: "I'm just really tired of seeing him."

In the wake of Pragmata's success, Bayonetta and Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya credits Capcom's success to its willingness to create new franchises.

After the last decade, I don't think it's a stretch to say Capcom has become one of the best AAA publishers on the planet. Since the release of Resident Evil 7 in 2017, the publisher has effectively been releasing a game of the year contender every single year – or multiple games, in the case of 2019, 2021, 2023, and, so far, 2026.

This has translated to sales success: every single game in the company's all-time top 10 best-selling games list was released since 2017. 2012's Resident Evil 6 is the first pre-2017 entry and comes in at 12th place.

Kamiya – who is now working with Capcom on Okami 2 after leaving the company back in 2007 – was asked by a fan on Twitter how Capcom is able to release hit after hit. Kamiya says (via machine translation) Capcom has a lot of talented staff under its banner. However, he also notes that Capcom management has a proactive approach to creating new series, like Pragmata is leading to good results.

While other new IP attempts like Exoprimal or Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess haven't exactly set the world on fire, Pragmata was a hit for Capcom receiving critical acclaim and positive fan reception, as well as selling over two million copies within 16 days of launch.

Capcom has also said it will "consider the possibility" of developing the sci-fi shooter into a series going forward, as well as saying it will continue making new IP.

Pragmata director Yonghee Cho told us in May that he would "of course" love to make a sequel to the game.

In a games industry dominated by safe bets, Capcom keeps getting weird with it.

If anyone deserves a nice, safe retirement away from the horrors inflicted by a variety of viruses, it's Leon Kennedy. To say the poor guy has really been through it in the Resident Evil series over the years is an understatement. When he's not being attacked by infected dogs, stalked by a hulking, hat-wearing tyrant, or dealing with men wielding chainsaws, he's rescuing the president's daughter, uncovering a conspiracy, and returning to a place of great trauma.

Isn't it high time that after all that, he gets to kick back and take it easy? This isn't me saying I want the iconic action man to step away from the limelight after Resident Evil Requiem. On the contrary, I want to experience the retirement Kennedy deserves, and to do that, I need Resident Evil 2 director Hideki Kamiya's joke conceptual pitch to be anything but a joke. The pitch in question? A cozy life sim starring a retired Leon fishing, baking, and having barbecues with old pals. Now that idea is in my head, I can't let it go. And as a scaredy cat who loves Resident Evil from a safe distance, I'd give just about anything for Capcom to actually make it into a reality.

Home over horror

Just like Kamiya, I'm definitely not a horror fan. Even so, I've always had a great fondness for Resident Evil. I love the over-the-top silliness, corny one-liners, and lore of the infected world, but I'll be the first to admit I still find it too scary to play myself. So how do I enjoy it if I'm not playing? Well, the way in which my relationship began with the series kickstarted how I would go on to experience it from then on: by watching others play.

Witnessing my dad play through Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube way back when is one of my favorite gaming memories. I loved Resident Evil 4 (and its bingo line) so much I even attempted to try it for myself, but I quickly came to the conclusion I just couldn't handle the creepy zombie villagers and scary atmosphere upfront. By watching someone else play, I could enjoy the story and action and put some distance between myself and the horror.

But what Kamiya jokingly pitched would deservedly put some distance between the horror for Leon, too, and better yet, it would bring to life a game set in the Resident Evil universe I could actually play. In the words of Kamiya, "it'd be a game where a retired Leon spends his days in the countryside fishing, gathering wild vegetables, baking bread, walking his dog, tending to his garden, driving 50 kilometers to the nearest general store, inviting his old friends over for barbecues, fixing his elderly neighbour's oven, and selling homemade lemonade at the local festival."

The sweet concept sounds like a laidback life sim with ingredients plucked right out of games like Stardew Valley, and as an avid player in the cozy game scene, that's really speaking my language. Not only could it bring a whole new audience into the world of Resident Evil, but Capcom could tap into the genre in such a novel way for longtime fans by bringing to life a cozy life sim experience led by an established character with such a rich history.

Handy man

Just think of all of the references they could pack in, with framed pictures and belongings dotted around Leon's retired abode in the countryside that nod to past encounters and meaningful moments. Not to mention cameos from other familiar faces who pop over for barbecues. I also love how the pitch so perfectly captures Leon Kennedy. He'd never be content to rest on his laurels completely, and I could see him getting very involved with the little neighboring communities. It's easy to picture quests, for example, that make him go out of his way to help others in more day-to-day ways.

After all, you don't have to fight zombies and put a stop to the schemes of a dastardly corporation to be a hero. I'm sure Leon is just as much of a hero to the elderly neighbor whose oven gets fixed as he is to Ashley Graham in Resident Evil 4.

Kennedy is easily my favorite character in the Resident Evil universe, and imagining him stepping into one of my favorite game genres sets my heart on fire. I mean, who wouldn't want to kick back in the countryside with the retired action man and sink into a relaxed routine of dog walking and bread baking?

I know I'm letting my imagination run away from me, and this is just a joke from Kamiya. Even so… what I wouldn't give for it to be made into a reality. Sure, Resident Evil has brought us many of the best survival horror games over the years (and will no doubt continue to do so with the likes of Resident Evil Veronica on the way), but I would love to see a spin-off that goes in a wildly different direction. And when it comes to a cozy life sim, there's undoubtedly a market for it. So, this is my open letter to Capcom: please bring to life an idyllic retirement for Leon Kennedy so we can both get a break from the scares.

Look back over the series' highlights with our ranking of the best Resident Evil games.

Capcom's pulled an old switcharoo on us. After announcing a release date for Onimusha: Way of the Sword and then pinkie promising that release date would definitely hold, Capcom's actually moved the samurai action game forward by a few weeks. Sike!

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is now coming out on September 4, 2026 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2. "Experience the beginning of Musashi's journey with the demo and pre-order for bonus items when the full game arrives." the publisher writes. That's three weeks earlier than its original September 25 launch, mind you.

What makes this reverse-delay somewhat curious is that a retailer listing recently suggested the new Onimusha game would, in fact, come out earlier than intended on September 4. Even more curiously, Capcom was very quick to shut down the speculation and double down on the original date, despite seemingly changing its mind a week later.

Capcom's road to this new release date has been slightly strange, but the decision makes total sense if you take even a cursory glance at the upcoming games calendar. Spoilers: Seemingly every publisher and their parents are rushing to launch games ahead of the inevitable behemoth that is GTA 6.

Late September and early October is absolutely jam-packed with heavy-hitting games, from Marvel's Wolverine and Gears of War: E-Day to Control Resonant and Silent Hill: Townfall – no one wants to be sucked up by Rockstar Games' black hole, which is set to start its rampage this November. Not only will GTA 6 dominate sales charts, but online discussion will also be dominated by the game, potentially making it tricky for other developers to break through the noise.

Mind you, Onimusha's new release date is also pretty tightly-packed, but there should be a tad more breathing room for the action series that's been dormant for years.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword brings God of War's blockbuster action to horror-tinged feudal Japan.

Pragmata developers have shared stories of the game's tumultuous development, with some particularly brutal internal criticism coming to light.

Pragmata was one of the first games unveiled for the PS5 back in 2020, and considering it only released a couple of months ago, it's safe to say that development was a bit troubled. Thankfully, it was all for the best as Pragmata is one of the most beloved games of 2026 so far and has gone down a hit with players, enough that Capcom is already considering moving forward with it as a series.

In a Pragmata livestream earlier this month (translated by Automaton), the developers revealed that the project started in 2019 when Capcom head Jun Takeuchi tasked a team of young developers with making "a game on the moon." However, shortly after the trailer debuted in 2020, the team ran into trouble as test stages were being rejected, with the team being told they were "unable to make compelling puzzles," "unable to make compelling action," and "incompetent at level design" in internal feedback.

This led to the creation of the hacking system that the game we know now features. Unfortunately, the hacking wasn't taken well at first, either, as the team shared more of the criticism it faced, like, "The game logic we worked so hard on building is completely broken," "This has fundamentally worsened the game, I am deeply disappointed," and "Give me back the two months I lost working alongside the team. Is this what you're trying to entertain your players with?"

However in the next presentation – the one where it would be decided whether the game would be canceled or not – it was a hit. And in the end it all worked out, as Pragmata hit two million copies sold within the first month.

Akihiro Togawa, a developer on the equally troubled The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, responds to this presentation on Twitter, saying: "Even though it's someone else's problem, I couldn't view it as such, seeing this made my stomach hurt."

He follows this up, saying: "When you're making games, unfair things and problems happen on a daily basis, and I think on most days it makes you feel completely beat down and exhausted." He adds: "If you keep facing those challenges honestly, you'll eventually be able to finish the game and release it to the world so that players can enjoy it. Let's keep that in mind and keep doing our best. We are all the next Pragmata."

Capcom had "no idea" how Pragmata would be received, Hugh actor says, but now the star of the 'Space dad' banger is getting touching messages from people considering their own relationship with family.

Modernity or authenticity: wich is more important in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced? It's a loaded question, and one I fully expected complicated answers to as Ubisoft's Jussi Markkanen and Nicolas Lopez ponder it in silence. Of course there's space for both in a game like this, one of such massive size and scope – a remake of a classic Assassin's Creed game, and one of the most non-Creed-like games of them all to boot. But the correct answer turns out to be something else.

Faithfulness is the word of the day. "From the gameplay perspective, it's still faithful to the original," technology director Jussi Markkanen tells me "But from the technical point of view, Black Flag Resynced is actually almost like a new product. It's built using the latest Anvil engine, the same we used for Assassin's Creed Shadows, and we even improved it further."

Like Capcom's own string of Resident Evil remakes, Black Flag Resynced is "fully remade from scratch" thanks to the power of the Anvil engine. "We have all the latest rendering technologies in place, so for example, we use ray tracing and micropolygon and things like that. It was super important that, even when we use these technologies, we retain the visual identity of the game. We wanted players to know exactly that right from the start, they are in the Black Flag that they remember."

Stone the crows

Balancing source material with the latest tech sounds ambitious enough, but the pressure is compounded by the popularity of remakes in 2026. Not to mention, Black Flag Resynced is Ubisoft's very first remake.

As Anvil Engine Architect, Lopez knows that there is a divide in expectation between the more action-adventure Creeds and the RPG ones "in terms of technology, not only in gameplay." Translated into a huge, uninterrupted open world experience, Resynced just might bridge that.

It speaks to the evolution of the series' formula over time – the original Black Flag was revolutionary for 2011, being both an immersive pirate fantasy and a stealth-action sandbox. It went on to influence newer RPG entries such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Odyssey, which each put their own spin on ship mechanics and naval combat to suit their own historical contexts.

Say goodbye to docking your ship and sitting through a lengthy loading screen each time you make port. "In Resynced, you can just throw your ropes down at the pier," Markkanen says. "The open world is fully seamless, so we merge all its locations together."

"Starting from Origins, we made it possible to build much bigger worlds – 60 x 16 kilometers – [but] at the time of Black Flag, it wasn't really possible with the old engine," Lopez explains. "Before it was like puzzle pieces split in different maps, but we had to put everything together, so you have to wonder all of a sudden, 'did you cheat on the scale in the original game? How do you turn the island so it fits right in the map?' There were a lot of little questions that can add up to make sure everything stays faithful, and at the same time is integrated in the open world."

Avast!

Part and parcel of that is delivering on that same pirate fantasy laid out in the 2013 original, and that includes Resynced's combat. Instead of blurring the lines too heavily by letting Edward whip his hidden blade out for each and every encounter, you'll only be able to use them for stealthy takedowns – or as a finisher move in combat.

"We modernized the combat to be more hitbox based, as modern combat games tend to be, and a little bit more reactive," explains Markkanen, making the combat "more fluid" with its hidden blade limitations. "It's very much at heart like the original game, meaning that it's based on your positioning and your timing. So, we have a parry system now – you time your parries, but it's free movement and hitbox-based, so it's still physically based and built on top of the fight system we had on Assassin's Creed Shadows."

"It's more like pure action," adds Markkanen. "Almost right from the start you have all the moves that you can use in the game, it's just about learning how you can really use those efficiently in the game."

Markkanen describes it as using your surroundings "in a pirate way". Some of these moves sound pretty technical – you can "pull enemies from rooftops" with rope darts, or use other environmental features to give you the upper hand in combat. But cutlasses aside, a huge part of a pirate's life is adventure, which is where the vast open world comes back into play.

"Right from the start we wanted to keep the original narrative," says Markkanen. "We knew that this is one of the things that players absolutely love, and we didn't want to change it. So, we still have the exact same narrative arc that Edward has, but of course, there is a lot of new stuff that we sprinkled around the map as side quests, and little small secrets and details that the players can find. So, whenever you feel like it, you can just diverge from your main path quest and do whatever you want, and then come back and continue Edward's story."

As well as new island encounters and side content, Ubisoft Montreal has been hard at work building Resynced's verticality – adding the ability to free dive into underwater environments. All of this is yours to interact with if you want it. "You can complete it maybe in 25 hours doing the main story," Markkanen suggests. "Or you can spend hundreds of hours in the world just exploring and having fun."

Check out some of the other upcoming Ubisoft games ahead of Resynced's July release date!

Resident Evil 2 director and Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya has jokingly detailed a concept for a cozy life sim game starring a retired Leon Kennedy.

Outside of series creator Shinji Mikami, you could make an argument for Kamiya being the most impactful person to be involved with the Resident Evil series. After the original game was the first game he was credited on, Kamiya then directed Resident Evil 2 which is still considered by many to be one of, if not the best game in the series. That second game is also the one that introduced us to Leon Kennedy, who has gone on to be the series' most beloved character.

But despite his massive impact on the series and the survival horror genre in general, Kamiya has openly said he hates horror, and earlier this year he pitched Capcom creating a "'non-scary' mode" for Resident Evil Requiem so he could enjoy the game's puzzles in peace. Now, over on Twitter (translated by Automaton) Kamiya has responded to fan requests for him to return to the Resident Evil series – which he hasn't been involved with since his Resident Evil 4 turned into Devil May Cry – by detailing what he would do with a new game.

Kamiya says if he made a new Resident Evil title, "it'd be a game where a retired Leon spends his days in the countryside fishing, gathering wild vegetables, baking bread, walking his dog, tending to his garden, driving 50 kilometers to the nearest general store, inviting his old friends over for barbecues, fixing his elderly neighbour's oven, and selling homemade lemonade at the local festival. Would you still be OK with that?"

Given how huge the cozy game market is, people naturally are still OK with that, with one comment saying they'd be interested in "Resident Evil Pokopia." Kamiya acknowledges the fan response, saying: "Capcom, there seem to be a lot of people asking for a Resident not-Evil game like this. If you ever have the time, please consider making it… I'd like to play it too."

Are you playing the latest game in the series? If so, be sure to browse through our roundup of Resident Evil Requiem safe codes for an easier time progressing.

Capcom has confirmed that Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen director Kento Kinoshita will be returning to the director's chair for Dragon's Dogma 2's expansion.

Dragon's Dogma was pretty liked when it launched back in 2012, but what really led to the game becoming the legendary title it is today was its expansion, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, which released a year later. Dragon's Dogma 2 then released a decade later and was seen as an all-timer by anyone who wasn't a coward, but 2025 came and went with no word of an expansion.

This, mixed with Dragon's Dogma series creator Hideaki Itsuno leaving Capcom in 2024, led some to believe a Dark Arisen-like expansion wouldn't be happening, but with Kinoshita still being at Capcom, there was a little bit of hope left. And during the Nintendo Direct earlier this month, we finally found out Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is happening later this year.

During last night's Capcom Spotlight stream, it was revealed that Kinoshita is once again taking on the director's role for Dark Arisen as he hosted the segment about the game. The expansion is set to feature a new region for the game in the form of Norgan, which is a snowy area at the north of the map with a new relic system, which allows you to create fresh weapons with unique class skills. The base game's map is also set to be expanded with 12 dungeons.

The segment also introduced the Fallen Dragon, which is set to be a major enemy found in the expansion, alongside the NPC we saw in the trailer called Eir, who is seeking out the dragon. Details about this part remained fairly light, but it seems like the main quest of this expansion will focus on these two.

Former Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma 2 director says he can't make "the kind of games I'd most like to" as "they'd be too out there" and "probably wouldn't sell."

When Rockstar announced that GTA 6 would launch in November 2026, seemingly every big game within a two-month orbit of that date began scrambling for a plan: release during the same general timeframe and risk being swallowed by the biggest game of the century, or get the heck out of the way. As you might expect, many developers and publishers chose the latter option, and coincidentally, September turned out to be a very popular alternative release month, apparently far enough away from GTA 6's tidal wake for them to feel comfortable launching their games.

Capcom was one of many companies who chose a September launch, earlier this month confirming at long last that Onimusha: Way of the Sword is coming out September 25. However, that date was thrown into question just last week when a retailer listing seemed to suggest Capcom was planning to shift the release date forward by a few weeks. The reasonable assumption was that so many games moved to late September due to a fear of GTA 6 that they inadvertently created a similarly challenging environment for themselves due to there now being such a crowded market for that specific window.

After three chunky paragraphs, I'm now realizing that was a very long setup just so say, Onimusha: Way of the Sword isn't getting a new release date, Capcom has confirmed. In the latest Capcom Spotlight, an unnamed English-speaking narrator seemingly responds to rumors of a release date shift, confirming, "Once more, Onimusha: Way of the Sword releases on September 25, 2026."

In case you're wondering about all of the games Capcom is going up against this September, I don't possibly have time to list them all, but some of the bigger ones include Marvel's Wolverine, Silent Hill: Townfall, Control Resonant, The Blood of Dawnwalker, and Shinobi Art of Vengeance. Needless to say, Onimusha has enough of a following to easily compete with those games, but we'll see which games emerge victorious when the dust settles, and more importantly, which will stand the test of time in a post-GTA 6 world.

Looking to lock in your copy early? You won't want to miss our guide to GTA 6 pre-orders.

Pragmata star David Menkin says the team had no idea how the game would be received, but is now receiving a ton of positive messages about the game.

Pragmata has been in development for a long time. In fact it was one of the first games announced when the PS5 was revealed back in 2020. But from the looks of things, the wait was worth it, as it has stood alongside Resident Evil Requiem and Monster Hunter Stories 3 to contribute to Capcom's absolutely massive 2026 lineup in a big way. Not only that, but Pragmata hit two million copies sold within the first month, and Capcom has confirmed that it will consider "developing it into a series."

Menkin, who plays Hugh Williams in the game, recently spoke to GamesRadar+ about his experiences during the making of Pragmata, and despite it being in development for half a decade, he only joined the project in 2024. Menkin says, "They gave us time, yeah, which is so unusual when it comes to games, because by the time you get to the voice, you're almost starting post production, and it just didn't feel like that. They wanted to get it done right."

Menkin adds, "When I finished, they sort of did say to me, you know, 'We don't know how this is going to be received, we have made what we wanted to make, and now we just need to figure out if the gamers like it.'"

But as we now know, it was received pretty well, and since it released back in April, Menkin has experienced that first hand. "Not just the reviews, the DMs that I get, and people here [at Summer Game Fest] when they find out who I played, like they just go, you know, 'Man, you made me cry, you made me think about my relationship with my father, with my daughter, with my niece, with my nephew.' That is amazing."

Menkin also says he's "just glad everybody wanted to be space dad."

"I really couldn't sleep": In an absurd year for Capcom, Pragmata creators did not want to be the first ones to drop the ball.

I get it. Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's adventure has a special place in our memory, but have you actually gone back and replayed the first Assassin's Creed? The repetitive mission structure was already a major point of criticism back in 2007 even in GamesRadar+'s glowing Assassin's Creed review. The parkour system – as novel as it was back then – was rather limited, and the original assassin's arsenal of weapons and tools couldn't even match the variety of the older Hitman games.

Assassin's Creed is a crucial part of modern video game history, but as a video game, it was quickly surpassed by its much superior sequel and often ranks low among the best Assassin's Creed games according to fans. Almost 19 years later, only unfiltered nostalgia can make anyone say it holds up beyond its immaculate vibes. With the buzz that surrounds Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced suggesting there's a big interest in more remakes, I think Ubisoft needs to revisit the series' beginning before an inevitable return to Renaissance-era Italy.

Structural problems with easy fixes

Like it or not, big-budget remakes from established publishers with vast IP libraries will continue to be churned out for the foreseeable. Personally, I don't have a problem with them as long as the original titles are readily available to purchase and they don't get in the way of new entries.

In the case of Assassin's Creed, with a new instalment on the way in Assassin's Creed Hexe, the opportunity to fully realize the original first game's ambitious vision shouldn't be skipped in favor of going after more popular old-school entries that have endured the test of time better.

Remakes are interesting to analyze. They often serve one of two purposes: to "rethink" already watertight games for a modern audience, adding a few improvements beyond graphics along the way, or to complete and polish up things that weren't quite right (or there at all) originally. No matter how iconic you think Assassin's Creed was and still is, getting to the game's best parts feels generally miserable.

Even as a 15-year-old, eager to simply play the latest technological marvel without viewing it as a critic, I wasn't impressed by Assassin's Creed's approach to investigations and side missions before the big assassination set pieces.

After the second city I visited, I began to worry. Most of the time and resources had clearly gone into cracking the tech required to bring bustling streets to life and make the player character seamlessly climb almost every surface in the game. This is the one thing a serious Assassin's Creed remake should completely demolish and rebuild. Learn from the best – ahem, the Hitman series – and put those gorgeous environments to good use.

We don't need anything too fancy, as I think AC1 should remain old-fashioned regardless of adjustments and additions, but I don't want to track down and stab an informant half a dozen times before the credits roll. I don't enjoy the meandering tasks that pad out the game's length in exchange for exhilarating 30-minute hunts. Instead, I can see it transformed into one of the best open-world games to justify its scope in between story beats.

Graceful aggression

My other main gripe with the original Assassin's Creed is that its combat encounters were never very good. Even if you'd rather stick with the traditional freeflow combat that the best Batman: Arkham games immediately improved upon, Ubisoft's first go at more elegant button-mashing didn't have much grace. Ezio's trilogy and the pre-RPG entries that followed delivered something better, but even Black Flag's refresh explored big changes to the system.

It remains to be seen how both longtime fans of the series and newcomers will respond to Black Flag Resynced's combat when they actually play it, but I think we all can agree: finnicky action RPG-style battles shouldn't touch past entries. I'd prefer smoother animations and more reactive combos, parries, and evasive moves instead.

We were supposed to believe Altaïr was one of the best assassins the Order ever had, yet he struggled to efficiently deal with four drunken guards due to clumsy controls and janky animations. Ubisoft veterans now have all the experience and tech required to make him a lethal warrior (with, hopefully, access to more weapons and items) too.

The Resident Evil effect

By now, it's abundantly clear Ubisoft is looking at past wins and mistakes to define the future of the Assassin's Creed franchise, which isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

The mix of old and new – both in design philosophies and as a profitable creative roadmap – falls in line with Capcom's approach to Resident Evil, which is paying off big time. The gaps between major new releases facilitate the existence of remasters and remakes, providing both the perfect testing grounds for new features and building up a substantial financial cushion between mainline entries. It's a win-win scenario, as long as the quality is there.

Still, triple-A development shouldn't be overly tied to the whims of the market. Nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia isn't a viable path forward for any IP, but there are cases where creatives and fans will agree a classic never quite reached its full potential. After all, classics needn't be masterpieces (or at least that's what I believe).

Assassin's Creed 2 is undoubtedly an industry-shaking touchpoint that should be studied to understand the evolution of an entire genre, but for actual entertainment purposes, there's a much better game waiting to be unearthed and cleaned up. Rumours suggest I might be right and an Assassin's Creed 1 remake is happening next. Will 2027 – the series' 20th anniversary – mark the return to the Holy Land? I'd bet a few coins on it.

With so few upcoming Assassin's Creed games that we know of right now, the future of the franchise has never been more mysterious...

2026 has been a busy year for Capcom. Launching hot on the heels of Resident Evil Requiem came Pragmata, a third-person "dad-and-daughter" shooter set in a lunar facility overrun by a rogue AI. Themes of duality run through the whole game, a series of pushes and pulls that somehow balance one another out – humanity versus machine, shooting versus hacking, and two little android girls created with a very specific purpose in mind.

The response from the community has been resoundingly positive. To learn more about Capcom's reaction to all the buzz, I managed to get some questions across to producer Naoto Oyama to fill in the gaps following our last interview with the Pragmata team.

Q: Capcom's known for a lot of really strong legacy franchises, but Pragmata is a fantastic brand new addition. What do you think is important to get right with a new IP like this?

Naoto Oyama, producer: Since the start, our focus was to create something genuinely distinct, which is crucial when making a new IP. With that in mind, for Pragmata, we challenged ourselves to make a game which meshes unique combat and puzzle-solving encounters within a striking lunar setting. Our aim was to create something new and fresh, but also intuitive to actually play once held in the player's hand.

Releasing a demo to showcase elements of the game was also beneficial, as it allowed us to communicate the game's core 'hack n shoot' mechanics for new players to understand.

I would also add that making the game tightly paced allowed for each individual system and narrative beat to have its time in the sun. For a new IP, this helped us deliver something neatly packaged, memorable and satisfying.

Q: The game features sectors of the space station that were constructed to resemble what an AI might build itself, as a digital mind that doesn't quite understand humanity. How did you approach this almost uncanny design challenge?

Naoto: Regarding environmental design, we aimed to create spaces that felt they could be designed by a near-future AI on the moon. These digital spaces, on first glance, contain items and structures which resemble what they look like in the real world, but on closer inspection actually contain oddities. This is where that uncanny aesthetic fits; these are places and things which look familiar, but are distorted in some strange and peculiar way.

In the New York inspired sector, taxis, for instance, are literally phasing through the floor, and buses protrude from the walls. We created structures and things which appear functional, but in some bizarre way, collapse when closely viewed. This is essentially how we've designed the game's sectors – from the perspective of a system trying to imitate human environments.

No generative AI was used in the design process - even the most uncanny elements you see in the game are all hand-designed by human artists!

Q: GenAI is a hot button topic at the moment. How has that influenced your approach to tackling AI as a core theme in Pragmata?

Naoto: We started development on Pragmata before generative AI became quite as huge as it is today, so we were surprised by this development. Perhaps the near-future world we envisioned is closer than anyone thought!

Q: Half the controller feels like it's for shooting, and half for hacking. It works really well on a controller. How challenging was it to make doing two things at once feel right?

Naoto: There are only so many buttons on a controller, so we've worked to ensure the controls are simple and intuitive. In the early stages we've limited the maximum number of enemies that appear at once and slowed down their approach speed, so that players can get used to the basics of hacking and shooting at the same time. As the game progresses and players become more accustomed to the controls, new weapons and actions are unlocked, while the number and strength of enemies change, so players gradually get used to performing multiple actions simultaneously.

Balancing all this was very difficult, and took a lot of playtesting and refinement, including regularly getting feedback from first-time players. I think this approach worked and we got great results.

A lot of reviews have compared Pragmata to an Xbox 360-era title as a compliment [a sentiment echoed by director Yonghee Cho]. Why do you think that is? What's your response to that?

Naoto: We take this as a compliment! We know many players from the Xbox 360 and PS3 console era resonate with compact action games which contain engaging gameplay mechanics. Each sector in Pragmata is designed to introduce new additions (weapons, hacking nodes) which layer themselves on previous mechanics, and this sort of design is something players from that era associate with the game.

As with other titles from that era, rather than opting for a dense open-world, each sector is a bespoke and tightly designed zone where combat encounters steadily introduce new mechanics that test the player and diversify their tactical loadouts.

Q: Do you see Pragmata as the potential start to a new series?

Naoto: We're very grateful for the positive reception from Pragmata and the responses we've seen from players. While we can't talk about future plans, the game has only just been released and we're going to work to get even more players to join Hugh and Diana on their journey.

Capcom has announced that it will be hosting a Capcom Spotlight later this week with updates on Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen and Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

Capcom is always a big presence at any of the many game showcases throughout the year, which this year's Summer Game Fest undoubtedly showed with the likes of Resident Evil Veronica, Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, Tifa Lockhart in Street Fighter 6, Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen being announced, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword's date finally announced for September 25th. However, despite a big showing, Capcom isn't done yet.

On its website, Capcom has announced a new episode of its Capcom Spotlight stream – which is its own version of a Nintendo Direct – to follow up on some of the announcements from Summer Game Fest. The stream will take place on June 25 at 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10pm BST on the Capcom YouTube channel and will last roughly 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, if you were hoping to find out more than the pretty much nothing we saw from Resident Evil Veronica or Tifa in Street Fighter, you're out of luck. Capcom has confirmed the stream will be "focused on Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword."

As for what will be shown, considering retailers have listed Onimusha: Way of the Sword as releasing three weeks earlier than its current date, I'd expect that change could be officially announced this week if it is in fact happening. Monster Hunter Stories 3 is a curious one however, considering it came out in March of this year. None of the games in the spin-off series so far have had meaningful DLC expansions, but perhaps Capcom is going to expand the latest entry.

Capcom made twice as much money on Steam compared to PlayStation in the last year as PC gaming continues to grow.

Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami believes that if a fan is satisfied with just watching a playthrough of a game, then it can't have been that good of a game in the first place.

With the advent of YouTube gaming content creators, popularization of let's plays in the late 2000s, and subsequent popularity of Twitch, people simply watching someone else playing a game has become a commonplace thing. While these streams and playthroughs have proven to work as great advertising in places – especially for the likes of Among Us, Five Nights At Freddy's, and Phasmophobia – for single–player games, some found that simply watching someone else play the game was enough for them.

As reported by Nikkan (translated by Automaton), comedian and YouTube creator Eiko Kano recently spoke on TV about an exchange he had with Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami after the popularity of his own streams of the series. When Kano asked Mikami about his stance on players streaming titles of his and potentially letting users get their fill of the game through someone else, he reportedly responded, "If viewers watch a playthrough of a game all the way to the end and are satisfied with just that, then it was only that good of a game."

Obviously, games are an inherently interactive medium, and as such you would miss out on a key facet of what it is by just watching it – the same way you would lose out on elements by reading a film's screenplay. Kano says Mikami explained: "Our job is to make games that leave people wanting to clear them with their own hands, even if they've watched someone else do it, so keep streaming."

Kano also recalls that Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii gave a very similar response to him when asked, while Final Fantasy 7 Remake series director Naoki Hamaguchi said recently that RPGs "need to be careful" about a lack of player agency otherwise they "might simply watch a stream and feel satisfied without ever playing the game themselves."

Resident Evil Veronica's first-person trailer was a deliberate misdirect, Capcom producer confirms the horror game is fully third-person.

2026 has been good to me. My Resident Evil Requiem review points to the staggering impact of Capcom's latest, charting the path forward for a survival horror legacy by bringing us back to where it all began.

The moment I rolled credits, I already had my suspicions about what might come next. Requiem's ending builds two futures at once, seeding what might transpire in the mainline series as well as hinting at which remake could come next. Now that the Code Veronica remake has finally been revealed, I'm even more excited to see how Resident Evil's past might influence its future – but in order for that to work, I'm all too happy for Capcom to rewrite itself.

New nightmares

Resident Evil Veronica is my most-anticipated upcoming horror game of the next year. A huge part of that is down to two words in the official game description: "reimagined story."

It's no secret that much of Capcom's older material hasn't aged well. Subtle changes in Resident Evil 4 Remake suggest that the developer itself is keenly aware of it. I fully expected that any remake of Code Veronica/X would have a few nip-tucks to update the humor for a modern audience, so I would be very surprised if Claire still calls Alfred Ashford a full-on slur in 2027. The bigger mystery is how the eccentric villain will be presented at all, since the original game's big twist plays on outdated shock tactics that are in dire need of an update.

I won't spoil the above for you, but it does leave me wondering if Resident Evil Veronica's "reimagined story" will update more than just a dicey script. This is Capcom's chance to alter who these characters actually are and keep the game in line with the modern day.

That idea alone might have you clenching your jaw, but hear me out. Following on from three stunning remakes created alongside the series' mainline entries, Resident Evil is running out of viable options to choose from. Resident Evil 5 is still one of the most controversial games of the bunch, while even the best Resident Evil game spin-offs are such an acquired taste (including my beloved Morpheus from Resident Evil Dead Aim) that many of those might be discounted on principle.

If Capcom wants to maintain pace with its rapidfire releases – and I really hope it does – it's time for all of us to call a spade a spade and admit when something just would not hit the same in the 2020s as it did in the early 2000s. We need small, meaningful changes that maintain the series' integrity, preserving pivotal plot points while reframing the supporting narrative.

It's something we already see hints of in Resident Evil Requiem. Wesker is miraculously "back" again, perhaps another clone, since he was supposed to be dead as of Resident Evil 5. More than that, the game's finale suggests that Oswell Spencer was potentially not quite the palm-rubbing psychopath many of us had him pegged as for 30 years. None of this makes sense given the current canon laid out by Code Veronica and Resident Evil 5, but maybe it will once Resident Evil Veronica sheds a little more light.

At this early stage, there's no telling how big or small Capcom's changes might be. Maybe the lengthier exposition with Claire seeking Chris out in Paris, as seen in the announcement trailer, will be all there is to it. Or maybe Capcom will take the opportunity for reinvention that so few developers ever get, soldering the future of Resident Evil in the process.

Check out our best Resident Evil games list for more to play while you wait!

Diana, the android girl from Pragmata who single-handedly stole the web's heart with her adorable demeanor, wasn't created by your everyday Capcom developers – in fact, the studio had a special team dedicated to her development.

Producer Naoto Oyama reveals as much during a recent Father's Day-themed livestream on YouTube – because what better theme could a Pragmata stream adopt in June, honestly (as translated by Automaton).

It's no secret that protagonist Hugh and Diana, his little android companion, have a father-daughter-like relationship, after all… but ensuring that Diana came across as a realistic girl was no easy feat for Capcom.

Capcom had what Oyama nicknames "Diana Police," who oversaw her development, making sure she had a natural, childlike innocence to her without becoming too "annoying" to players in Pragmata.

This special team included voice acting and motion capture direction, which game director Cho Yonghee describes in greater detail in an interview with Game*Spark. It was comprised entirely of women, apparently, as he says.

"It's easier for women to detect the 'cunning' kind of cuteness in female characters, whereas men would probably go, 'What's the difference?' So I'm pretty sure all of the Diana Police members were women," describes the lead.

Diana's Japanese voice actor, Nao Toyama, adds in the stream that she was told "not to make it too cute, but speak like a child would naturally speak" while recording her lines. I'd say Capcom might've failed there.

Diana's too cute (albeit not in any sort of negative way), if anything, sparking countless memes and discussions online about her character and relationship with Hugh – but not in any sort of unrealistic way. The devs still aced the whole "realistic child" thing, in my opinion, perhaps making the Diana Police worthwhile.

It's reminiscent of Resident Evil Requiem's own "strict" women designing Leon Kennedy… albeit more wholesome.

I'm so here for unique teams of devs working to perfect characters, personally – and hey, it clearly works out for the best when studios give it a go, if Pragmata and Resident Evil offer anything to go by.

Capcom learns all the right lessons from Pragmata's success: "The creation of completely new IPs is an important initiative" that "we intend to continue pursuing"

A retailer has updated the release date for Onimusha: Way of the Sword, suggesting that Capcom will be next to move out of the way of the late-September rush.

If you paid attention to Summer Game Fest's myriad showcases, you'll have no doubt picked up that September is an absolute nightmare. Marvel's Wolverine, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, and Velheim 1.0 already make the middle of the month pretty jam-packed. But then for the last week of the month publishers are going ham with Silent Hill: Townfall, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush, Control Resonant, and Switch 2 editions of Dragon Quest 11 and Shinobi Art of Vengeance all releasing on the 24th, then Onimusha: Way of the Sword drops a day later on the 25th (and that's not even mentioning how much comes out in the first week of October).

What started as games getting out of the incoming GTA 6-shaped behemoth has turned into a massive mosh pit, and we've already seen first-person soulslike Valor Mortis moving out of the week to mid-October. And now it looks like Capcom may be next to shift.

As spotted by Cheap Ass Gamer, retailer PNP Games has listed Onimusha: Way of the Sword with a release date of September 4, 2026 – 21 days before its announced release date. This, in turn, has caused speculation that Capcom will be moving the release date of its samurai hack-and-slash in order to avoid the flood.

There is precedent for this, after all, as earlier this year, Capcom moved the release date of Pragmata up from April 24 to April 17, presumably to avoid another major sci-fi shooter in PlayStation's Saros (even if it certainly feels like Pragmata ended up being the more popular of the two). If anything, this is the best case scenario, because Onimusha is the most interesting release of September, so giving it room to breathe so I can enjoy the likes of Control Resonant later in the month. Plus, Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is also in early October, giving it less competition, and a quieter end to September is probably a good move too.

Capcom made twice as much money on Steam compared to PlayStation in the last year as PC gaming continues to grow

Capcom says Steam accounted for almost double the amount of revenue than PlayStation in its previous fiscal year.

If you're old enough to remember the time before PC gaming was as big as it is today, you'll no doubt remember how much of a flip of the coin it would be whether Japanese companies would release their games on the platform. And typically, if they did, it would end up being significantly later than those on console. For example, Final Fantasy 13 took almost five years to release on PC. And it's not even too far in the past either; Monster Hunter World, Persona 5, and the Yakuza games all took a while to make the jump to PC. Hell, Vanillaware is bringing one of its games to PC for the first time next year. But thankfully, we're mostly in an era of day-and-date releases. And this is something that is definitely working out for Capcom specifically.

In Capcom’s securities report (spotted by Automaton), the company revealed that, through Steam, it generated 40.383 billion yen (approximately $252 million USD), accounting for 20.7% of its earnings between April 2025 and March 2026. For comparison, PlayStation accounted for 10.6%, with 20.741 billion yen (approximately $129 million USD).

Granted, this isn't exactly a surprise, given that Capcom announced earlier this year that PC sales make up about 50% of its game sales, with the other 50% split between PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles. So it's pretty natural that it is making a lot of money from Steam, as the leading PC storefront. Even so, PC sales doing that well in a year where Monster Hunter Wilds' PC port was a well-known disaster is somewhat impressive.

Devil May Cry and Bayonetta creator says he'd rather have a game canceled than release "something subpar"

Humanoid monsters line up to face my blade. I dodge and parry their incoming strikes, carving through each foe with relish. With my protagonist's supernatural speed and meaty swings, I briefly forget that I'm not playing God of War Ragnarök, before the eerily beautiful rendition of Edo-period Kyoto (fictional, of course) drags me back to my senses. Onimusha: Way of the Sword is an action-adventure title that instantly feels at home in the hands of modern-day Kratos fans, but trades Norse deities for Japanese mythology.

Diving into the latest demo at Summer Game Fest 2026, I'm enraptured by the world of Onimusha: Way of the Sword. This new slice of the game is larger, deeper and more immersive than the recent sampler shadow-dropped on PS5 after Sony's last State of Play. NPCs populate the map, existing out of sight of the genma, the demonic enemies that constantly find themselves impaled on my blade; while the map features more streets and buildings to explore.

Myths and monsters

The way in which Onimusha: Way of the Sword serves up an in-game world full of the supernatural and yet realistic in feel is impressive, and is in touch with the franchise's roots as an old-timey alternative to Resident Evil. The key difference compared to its contemporary, biohazardous cousin, though, is in the game's combat.

Main character Miyamoto Musashi wields his blade with a sumptuous smoothness, cutting down basic monsters with moreish fluidity, and savoring boss encounters like warm sake. It's a combat style that brings to mind Kratos, although Musashi's personality isn't quite a perfect match. Both characters are stoic, but where the Angry Spartan is often, well… angry, Onimusha's protagonist tends to be more tongue-in-cheek when met with antagonism.

It's shortly after eradicating a group of genma and helping myself to the nearby treasure chest that it dawns on me just how similar to God of War this new Onimusha is. The dynamic combat, mythological mobs and deific forces at play are all akin to Sony Santa Monica's epics, but set in a time and place that some may find more appealing. I'm not saying it's God of War Japan, but there's a welcome sense of that flavor.

This fictional version of Edo-era Kyoto is loaded with atmosphere, in part thanks to the presence of blood-red fogs that make parts of the map inaccessible to Musashi. The way enemies chase down civilians – some we can save, some not so fortunate – adds a grim reality to the world. The bleakness levels up when I talk to a one-legged man who cheerfully tells Musashi how his knee used to ache terribly before he was kindly separated from it. I pull the same dumbfounded expression as the sword-swinging hero as I digest what's just been said, before long encountering the cretinous being that offered the deal.

Named Rasho-gan, this medley of assorted limbs is the boss fight of the demo, and I eagerly face off against them. Slash, dodge, swing, parry, slice, kick; playing on Action difficulty (the game's harder mode) I'm bemused by the creature's poor offering. This thing is supposedly capable of extorting limbs from humans and yet can barely hold its own in a fight? Get your refunds, my friends.

My arrogance is dashed when Rasho-gan hits me through a dodge, knocking me to the ground and throwing me off my rhythm. As I try to regain my composure I'm hit again through a dodge, clearly not timing it correctly. I implore Musashi to stand back up, but he's already dead.

Attempt two starts much the same, only this time I know to parry instead of dodge certain attacks. I quickly put the wretch down but they have a second health bar. Fine by me, I'm enjoying the contest. Turns out Rasho-gan has figured out my strategy as they ignore my seemingly-ill-timed parry and body me, unleashing a flurry of blows that drains me to zero before I can think.

Attempt three proves to be the charm as I combine my previous learnings to best the abomination before me, smugly dodging, parrying and hacking through the boss with an earned sense of ease. The duel ends with Rasho-gan running away before being shot down by an archer with a golden, godly aura. Once again I'm reminded of God of War, as Musashi converses with this divine figure as both lesser and equal, as only a true hero can do.

As the demo comes to a close, I'm in awe. Capcom has produced a unique title that blends many of the elements behind the success of God of War with the developer's own expertise for crafting worlds teeming with horror and intrigue. It's a breathtaking cocktail, and one I can't wait to guzzle down when Onimusha: Way of the Sword releases on September 25, 2026, for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.

Capcom is "quite confident" Onimusha: Way of the Sword will give players a challenge after the demo was "too easy"

Devil May Cry 5 had its best sales year ever in the last year, following deep discounts and the release of the Netflix series.

Despite a seven-year silence, Capcom says it wants to build Devil May Cry into a "core IP" like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter, and over the last year, it's certainly looked like one, with the latest game in the series passing the 10 million sales mark. With a Nintendo Switch 2 version on the way later this month, that popularity is set to continue for the latest game in the series, despite no news of a sequel on the horizon and several key members of the team leaving Capcom since its release.

Interestingly, the last fiscal year (April 25 to March 26) was actually the best for Devil May Cry 5 in terms of pure sales figures ever. The game sold 2.1 million copies in its first fiscal year (which, granted, was about three weeks, as it was an early March release), with its second-best year coming in March 2023 with another 2.1 million. However, in this past year, Devil May Cry 5 sold 2.7 million copies, making it the top figure the game has seen.

Of course, Devil May Cry 5 is a game that consistently goes on a deep discount, with it reaching a new low of $7.49 | £5.99 on Steam (via SteamDB) at the start of April last year (with last month giving it an even deeper discount at $4.49 | £3.74), so the amount of money Capcom made would've likely been significantly less, but it shows the fanbase is still going strong at least.

And begrudgingly, I'd be remiss not to acknowledge the Netflix series, which also dropped at the start of the last fiscal year and undoubtedly affected how many people bought the game. Let's just hope Capcom doesn't take any cues from the writing of that for Devil May Cry 6. Otherwise, DmC: Devil May Cry will be threatened as the most 2000's edgelord game in the series.

Devil May Cry and Bayonetta creator says he'd rather have a game cancelled than release "something subpar"

Capcom is on a bit of a roll at the moment. Resident Evil Requiem, Monster Hunter Stories 3, and Pragmata have all landed with solid success, and we're not even done with the year yet. Part of the secret, according to Capcom itself, has been shifting away from auteur-driven development and trusting in the wisdom of a wider team.

"In the game industry, when a title becomes a series, it often ends up depending heavily on a particular developer, becoming what you'd call an individual-driven title," president and COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto tells Famitsu (thanks, Automaton). "If that person doesn't make one, there's no next installment. The direction of the series becomes tied to the ideas of a single creator."

He's not wrong, as the industry's history throws up plenty of examples. We've yet to get a new Metal Gear Solid game at Konami without Hideo Kojima in the picture, for example. You can also see examples within Capcom itself. The likes of Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Street Fighter are still going strong despite being created years ago – in many cases, with the original creatives having departed some time ago. For Capcom, shifting away from an individual approach meant they were caught out when that individual was no longer with the company.

“We discussed the issue with the central figures behind each franchise and ultimately agreed that we should abandon that approach," Tsujimoto says. "What we came up with instead was the idea that every title should essentially be rebuilt from the ground up. We didn't mind even if sales temporarily declined as a result, and by switching to a team-based approach to game development, Capcom changed dramatically."

Capcom's stance paints a hopeful picture for some of the games we haven't seen much of lately. The developer has said it wants to "nurture" games like Devil May Cry – with DMC 5 recently hitting a record number of yearly sales despite launching seven years ago. Creative lead Hideaki Itsuno's departure might be a hurdle to that, though it sounds like Capcom is more than prepared to trust a team to do the game right.

Resident Evil Veronica's first-person trailer was a deliberate misdirect, Capcom producer confirms the horror game is fully third-person.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is getting its own Dark Arisen expansion in October, so Capcom's rolling out the red carpet to perk up the game years after its polarizing launch.

This follows the Summer Game Fest reveal of the Ascendance expansion for Monster Hunter Wilds, another action RPG that struggled with performance issues (especially on PC) throughout a protracted comeback arc, as Capcom looks to paint over two troubled releases amidst an otherwise glowing lineup.

Today, Capcom revealed a laundry list of Dragon's Dogma 2 balance changes and quality-of-life upgrades – some out today, and some coming in an August patch.

Today's headliner is the Eternal Ferrystone, an infinite-use fast travel item, combined with additional Portcrystals around the world. Additionally, some dungeon loot will have improved stats, multiple fees and prices have been reduced, some quests will award more gold, and dashing will use less stamina outside of combat.

It's a lot of travel and economy stuff, for the most part, but we've also gotten a few bespoke changes like this: "Selecting Load from Autosave after defeat will no longer result in loss gauge accumulation."

Come August, we'll have three save slots, with each slot holding autosave, "interim save," or "last inn rest" save data. Each save will have date and time details shown on-screen, and loading an inn save "will no longer delete your autosave or interim save," bringing Dragon's Dogma 2 up to par with games that were released several decades ago.

The Dragonsplague, a divisive world hazard that proved disruptive to some but intriguing to others, has once again been toned down. A new item to "cure" the Dragonsplague, the Dragonsbaulk Draught, will be added as a one-stop solution for folks who just plain don't want to fuss with it.

The list goes on. In-combat flinch will be reduced, weapon skill slots will be increased from four to six (!), crawling makes you stealthier, wakestones will gain invincibility windows and stamina recovery items will be instantly, and virtually every vocation will be retouched.

In a Twitter post, Capcom confirms, "In the lead-up to Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, we'll be releasing two major Title Updates to improve and enhance the base game." The second update is also promising:

• Much-needed performance improvements
• Yet more action, Pawn, and enemy adjustments
• Myriad UI improvements
• Bug fixes

Performance improvements, the biggest absentee in today's patch notes, are the most exciting. On PC, Dragon's Dogma 2 was left to rot for years, an emblem of Capcom's PC foibles, barely functional on far too many systems. Even on console, the game doesn't always run smoothly. As tantalizing as Dark Arisen is, it's a lot more exciting knowing – rather, cautiously hoping – we'll get to play it with a better, more stable frame rate.

Capcom learns all the right lessons from Pragmata's success: "The creation of completely new IPs is an important initiative" that "we intend to continue pursuing".

Capcom remains surprisingly secretive about Resident Evil Veronica. Despite offering a behind-closed-doors presentation at Summer Game Fest, the company didn't show anything beyond what everyone got to see in the public reveal, but producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi did reveal a few details in a Q&A with members of the media. Perhaps most notably, this is a fully third-person game, despite the extended first-person segment we saw in the trailer.

Hirabayashi confirmed in the Q&A session I attended that the long-awaited remake will be a third-person game. Recent Resident Evil titles have typically included an option to switch between perspectives, and Resident Evil Requiem encouraged players to stick with first-person for Grace's horror-focused sections and third-person, but despite the fact that the original Code: Veronica also featured dual protagonists, there'll be no similar split here.

What, then, are we meant to make of the extended first-person sequence we saw in the announcement trailer? Hirabayashi hints that this scene wouldn't necessarily be the same in the final game, and Capcom wanted to build a bit of mystery to create some surprise for the trailer. He also suggests that this scene won't necessarily be at the very beginning of the game.

Hirabayashi notes that Capcom "loves surprises," and that includes the release date – sorry, there were no secret teasers about when in that vague 2027 launch window that Veronica will actually be released.

He also shoots down some speculation about the "REV" acronym that briefly appeared in the trailer, confirming that the V is not meant to be a Roman numeral. It does, indeed, stand for Resident Evil Veronica rather than Resident Evil 5. While this is technically the fifth entry in the remake series, Hirabayashi says that Capcom has no intention of trying to erase previous entries, including the original Resident Evil 5.

That said, Hirabayashi also emphasized that Capcom is treating Veronica as a full-fledged, main series entry in the Resident Evil story. Given just how gosh-danged weird the original Code: Veronica is, I'm desperate to find out what the devs will do with the remake.

Stick with us for more news on all the new games for 2026 and beyond.

For my money, Capcom couldn't have picked a better game to remake than Resident Evil: Code Veronica, the survival horror classic that made its debut on Sega Dreamcast all the way back in the year 2000. Capcom announced the remake during Summer Game Fest 2026, and I just about cried tears of happiness. Finally, after 26 long years, I'll get to experience one of the strongest stories in the Resident Evil franchise, hopefully through gameplay that doesn't make me want to chug a vial of T-virus serum and be done with it. Oh, and that voice acting. God, the voice acting.

In fairness to the English-speaking actors who brought characters like Steve Burnside, Alfred Ashford, and Albert Wesker to life, voice acting was universally bad in the late '90s and early '00s. But in the wake of the Code Veronica remake reveal, fans are lovingly revisiting some of the most egregious performances in the original game, a reminder of how far we've come in terms of video game production, and a moment of appreciation for folks like Nick Apostolides and Angela Sant'Albano, the actors behind Leon Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft in Resident Evil Requiem, a game whose top-notch performances make you feel connected to the characters and thus elevate the horror and emotional stakes dramatically.

Anyway, things were different back when Code Veronica came out, as evidenced by these, uh, memorable performances highlighted by a number of content creators and commentators. It's worth nothing that some of these clips contain story spoilers, so if you haven't played the original game and want to go into the remake completely blind, unfortunately you might want to revisit them later.

In this clip spotlighted by horror content creator DEERE, we hear Claire Redfield accuse bad guy Alfred Ashford of being a "cross-dressing freak," which I can only imagine won't make it into the Code Veronica remake. "Clair is a TERF confirmed," jokes DEERE.

Here's a compilation that I think does a really great job showcasing the distinct cartoonish quality of Code Veronica's acting. I simply can't watch scenes like the one with Alfred Ashford's ridiculously extended sigh of anguish and Steve Burnside's confused reaction and not laugh, which really puts a damper on the whole horror side of the game.

The grand finale of bad Code Veronica acting, seen in the video above, is the most infamous scene of them all. Another gem from the character Steve Burnside, in this clip we see a tortured son forced to shoot and kill his own father, which is objectively horrible, but again, any dramatic weight held by the situation alone is negated by the character's wildly inappropriate tone while screaming in agony.

Of course, plenty of fans want to see this masterclass in comedic acting preserved in the remake, but again, the idea is to scare people. You physically cannot be scared with scenes like these in the game, and thus, I'm pretty sure we'll have to keep watching them in clips online or, heaven forbid, by playing the original game.

ILL is the most violent horror game I've ever seen, it makes Resident Evil and Dying Light look kinda cute

Capcom has confirmed that not only is Dragon's Dogma 2 coming to Switch 2, but it'll be arriving alongside the long-awaited DLC expansion.

After many of us had lost hope that Dragon's Dogma 2 would get a Dark Arisen-like expansion for 2024's most underrated game, following the base game being series creator Hideaki Itsuno's last project at Capcom before leaving in 2024, some anniversary artwork earlier this year inspired a little bit of hope.

And in a Nintendo Direct of all places, Capcom has finally announced that Dragon's Dogma 2 Dark Arisen will be released on October 9, 2026. The footage showed off a new region to explore named Norgan, a snowy region not seen in the original game.

Capcom released another trailer for the expansion on its YouTube channel, showing some of the new beasts we'll be scrapping against in the land of Norgan, most notably a new ice dragon enemy and another that summons armies of the dead to attack you. This trailer also confirmed that the expansion will release as a separate DLC on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on the same day that the Nintendo Switch 2 edition releases.

A Switch 2 version of the game is set to release on the same day, Capcom confirmed, alongside the announcement that Onimusha: Way of the Sword will also be arriving on the console. And considering how much Dragon's Dogma 2 struggled performance wise on the base PS5, I'm concerned about the Switch 2 version, but optimistic Capcom has managed to update it to make it work.

The original Dragon's Dogma's Dark Arisen expansion took that game from a solid RPG to one of the best there ever was, so for a game as already as good as Dragon's Dogma 2, I'm already feral. And unfortunately for the 500 other games coming out in September and October, this is going to be my go-to.

Former Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma 2 director says he can't make "the kind of games I'd most like to" as "they'd be too out there" and "probably wouldn't sell"

Even with chunky headphones on, the desperate clack-clack-clack as I jab at an Xbox d-pad playing through the Chivalware demo is a constant drumbeat. This room in Paris is filled with high-end gaming PCs, and even with windows open, it's a desperate heat. As the last demo in a day filled with them, fellow players slowly abandon their posts and trickle out. Yet, I don't notice I'm the final one left in the room until I die at the end of a particularly lengthy roguelike run, glued to the intense action and so many biomes deep I'd been half-expecting a PR to cut me off anyway. Chivalware has the juice.

Clearly inspired by Mega Man Battle Network, any player of Capcom's real-time RPG series will be familiar with the constant maneuvering responsible for my d-pad twiddling in Chivalware. This roguelike takes the concept of summoning weapons on a grid that also contains enemies up a notch, having the tiles double as a color-matching grid. Chain together matches and you'll charge up your battery to spend on attacks, the most recent of your three colors dictating the weapon type you have in hand. Flub a match, and your energy is depleted, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks.

Caught in the net

Make no mistake, you will need to dodge for your tiny, armored little life – enemy attacks come thick and fast, though are telegraphed just clearly enough to leave you cursing yourself for making silly mistakes. The benefit of the tiled arena is that each square is clearly defined, meaning each enemy type's unique set of attack patterns are pinged red, leaving you to weave through and around them like you're doing an MMORPG raid boss.

Early on, dodging these attacks is simple enough. A slow moving projectile may track across a single line, or another may sword-slash a couple of squares in front of it at once. These grow more complex, with bigger foes sometimes having sequenced waves of attacks you need to actually time your way through, and bosses that have screen-filling attacks that get tighter with each phase.

Put them all together, and even those easier enemies can turn up the heat alongside larger ones, making me weigh up which to attack and clear off the board in real-time as I weave to stay alive. A mecha scorpion's laser turret targets the whole of my side of the battlefield in a zig-zag barrage, as I try to avoid the imminent explosion from a burrowing Dune-like room. Add in shields that make some enemies immune to certain color attacks, and it's like playing Tetris while doing Five Finger Fillet. Even Aliens' Bishop would struggle with that.

Like the best roguelike games, it's not just the enemies that get stronger. Your Disk Knight can equip new floppy disks that alter their properties. New weapons – swords, guns, hammers, and more – are the most obvious, all of which come with vastly different attacks and battery usage requirements that also have me quickly calculating which I should be aiming to summon to deal with the situation in front of me. These range from attacks from combos that reward using a large chunk of battery to get off more powerful final strikes, to ones that you can charge up to dish out more damage if you get enough breathing room. One grenade launcher gets me out of a lot of scrapes, but if I'm startled before I can charge it up enough the blast radius also includes my poor Disk Knight.

Chivalware also features numerous per-run buffs and passive abilities that, in typical roguelike fashion, feel like they court the edge of being game-breaking as you imagine potential builds. Some might reward you for sticking with the same weapon type for a while, or for swapping it in and out as much as possible, with lots of room to debuff enemies. One quirky power I don't have enough time to master even transforms me into a hulking werewolf at the cost of a bespoke rage meter, able to dish out huge damage with my claws but only directly in front of me, and only for a brief moment. This roguelike has the right mix of moreishness. The Chivalware Steam demo is already calling for me to hop back in to try it again – though I'm worried about spending too much time matching blocks and mashing enemies before its full release Q4 2024.

Chivalware's retro flavor has me itching to get back to the best GBA games. Plus, in the similarly old-school Mina the Hollower review we say that "classic Zelda vibes channel Bloodborne to create one of my new retro-style favorites"

Monster Hunter Wilds Ascendance has the fanbase hyped, but the return of the elder dragon Kushala Doara has them rolling their eyes.

Monster Hunter Wilds's "massive expansion" was finally announced at Summer Game Fest last week, with Monster Hunter Wilds Ascendance set to launch in 2027, which will undoubtedly bring back the Master Rank quests and introduce new and returning monsters. Given that Monster Hunter Wilds' base game brought back some long-time series absentees – with a ton of love being shown to Monster Hunter 4's roster – we can't wait to see all the returning monsters we'll have a chance to hunt for the first time in years… wait, it's Kushala, isn't it? It's gonna be Kushala.

Yes, the Steel Dragon, Kushala Daora debuted in Monster Hunter 2, and – aside from the third generation – has appeared in every single major Monster Hunter title to date. Kushala Doara may be metallic, but its main issue is its ability to manipulate the wind, which makes the fight against this massive Elder Dragon quite tedious.

Reaction to the trailer itself had fans gutted over its return – at least in lieu of announcing other monsters we haven't seen for a while – with one user in the Reddit announcement thread saying, "Looks beautiful, but I died inside a little when I saw Kushala."

Capcom has decided to poke the bear with a Twitter post about the monster. And the fans responded in kind, with multiple posts comparing his constant appearances to The Deep from The Boys, while another responds, "Kushala is more of an Elder that I want you to make tolerable rather than one I expect you to make enjoyable."

Although others are on the defensive for this Elder, with plenty pointing out that, with weather effects being a big focus in Wilds, it makes total sense. Plus, most of Kushala Doara's hate comes from World, but people are pointing out that fighting it in Rise was way better. Although even with those caveats, it's as simple as "I'm just really tired of seeing him is all" for some.

At the very least, everyone is pretty hyped to see the return of another Elder Dragon, the original Monster Hunter's Lao-Shan Lung who – aside from a return in the Smash Bros-style celebration that was Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate – hasn't appeared in the series since the second generation of games.

Monster Hunter World has sold over 30 million copies, further cementing its lead as Capcom's best-selling game and leaving Wilds in the dust after a year of performance woes

Capcom has announced that Monster Hunter World has sold over 30 million copies, further cementing its lead as the company's best-selling title of all-time.

Monster Hunter Wilds had a banner week last week with the announcement of Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance and confirmation that a Nintendo Switch 2 edition of the game is in development. But it's hard to ignore that Wilds isn't exactly doing quite as well as Capcom probably hoped. While it became Capcom's fastest-selling game almost instantly, with over eight million copies sold within its first three days, since then, sales have not been able to keep that momentum off the back of what was basically a year of performance issues. Throughout 2025, we saw Monster Hunter Rise perform better than the new flagship title.

But one monster's loss is another's gain, as Capcom has announced that 2018's Monster Hunter World – which was already the company's best-selling game since 2019 – has now sold over 30 million copies (or an entire Persona series' worth of sales). Capcom's last update to the game's numbers said it had sold 22.1 million copies, but with the Monster Hunter World: Iceborne Master Edition it was at 29.6 million, so presumably it's the latter that has helped it pass the new benchmark.

It's hard to overstate just how big of a deal Monster Hunter World was for the franchise. Before then, it was a somewhat niche (albeit, huge in Japan) series that was putting out bangers near constantly, but being confined to the 3DS's uncomfortable control scheme really held it back. World allowed Capcom to bring people in and show them what the fuss was about, and now we're at the point where World and Rise sit firmly at the top of Capcom's best-sellers list, ahead of every Resident Evil game.

After Monster Hunter Wilds' performance struggles, Capcom says it'll apply the lessons it's learned to future games.

There's something familiar about ILL. From a voice that sounds suspiciously like Resident Evil Requiem's Leon S. Kennedy (aka Nick Apostolides) to the gory first-person melee and shooter action, I watched the latest trailer of the upcoming horror game with rapt intrigue. It came out of nowhere during June's Playstation State of Play showcase, brushing the cobwebs off of a new game I've had my eye on for years and treating us the most violent display of the evening. It even gives Marvel's Wolverine a run for its money, and if you've seen Logan's brutality for yourself already, you'll know that's a bold (but fair) statement.

ILL, developed by Team Clout, looks like a hodgepodge of all my favorite horror games in one. It also seems to be taking from one of the best zombie games of the last five years when it comes to making a statement.

Gunslinger

Dead Island 2 totally changed the game when it comes to anatomical realism in horror games. Dambuster had its work cut out for it, inheriting the project from Dying Light studio Techland after a lengthy period of developmental hell, and it paid off in bloody spades.

Shortly before launch, I spoke with game director David Stenton about the dynamic FLESH system introduced in Dead Island 2. Each hack and slash has accurate anatomical payoff; you can melt away flesh to expose the bubbling yellow fat beneath, see the grey matter glisten on your knuckles after punching a hole through a zombie's head, and lay down the machete whacks with near surgical precision to lop off specific parts of a limb.

It was a new frontier for the physicality of zombie-slayage, refining the logic behind Capcom's precise gunshots and the force with which they knock zombies back in in Resident Evil 2 Remake.

I see shades of this technology throughout ILL as a decapitated head, pinned to a wall by a knife, sprouts tentacles out of the hole where its neck should be. A few seconds later, the protagonist punches what looks like a botchling from The Witcher 3 over and over again in its grotesque bloated head. A bullet rips through an eye socket, cheek tendons dangling from the wound like half-cooked strands of pici pasta. It's glorious, frankly, and I love trying to connect the dots in theorizing what drove Team Clout to go so hard on the gore.

Dead Island 2 is my first theory, so it's no surprise that, as the original Dead Island developer, I'm also getting echoes of Techland's Dying Light games. There's a shared sense of urgency as pockets of survivor militias pop up in the wake of a zombie-like emergency; ILL's protagonist has woken from a coma to find the hospital overrun by humanoid horrors, while Kyle Crane has pretty much the same experience in Dying Light: The Beast.

There are shades of Resident Evil 7, too – close-quarters scares in tight, dark passages as the protagonist seems to grapple with a firearm for the first time in his life – but I'll be honest that I might just feel that way because Nick Apostolides almost definitely voices the protagonist and I am deeply fond of his work as Leon S. Kennedy over the last 7 years.

It's heartening to see flavors of the games and horror series I love given a fresh coat of red paint. ILL is doing everything I think all the best survival horror games should do by not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Instead, Team Clout takes inspiration where it's due and runs with it, and the result looks like a thrilling new idea encased in familiar parameters for the perfect blend of novelty and nostalgia. Now if you don't mind, I'm off to squeal over the trailer one more time and start preparing my stomach for 2027.

Street Fighter fans are getting the exact thing Tekken players have been demanding for years: Final Fantasy 7's Tifa Lockhart is joining the roster in an official Capcom x Square Enix crossover.

Tifa joined the fun at Summer Game Fest in an anime-style trailer debuting Street Fighter 6's Year 4 roster additions. In addition to Tifa, who joins the roster early 2027, Street Fighter 6 is adding two new fighters, Yasmine and Arjun, as well as Bosch, who was a non-playable character in World Tour.

But let's be real, this is the Tifa show, even though I'm disappointed to say we didn't get to see any gameplay or even any real suggestions of what her move set might be. Just a cute little anime vignette that shows her smiling and clutching her right wrist.

At the end of the reveal, we see some official artwork showing Tifa in her iconic white-and-black crop top look from the games, rendered in Street Fighter 6 graphics. This is seemingly what she'll look like in the fighting game collab, although it's also safe to assume she'll have different costumes to choose from.

It's hard not to report this news without feeling some sympathy for the Tekken community, who have been hoping against hope for Tifa to become a playable character for so long that it's become a meme online. To see the game's biggest competitor secure the crossover without even trying has gotta sting. Maybe one day, Tekken fans, but realistically now that Tifa's coming to Street Fighter, probably not.

Find out where Tekken and Street Fighter rank on our list of the best fighting games to play in 2026.

Capcom announced Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance at tonight's Summer Game Fest live showcase, finally revealing the Iceborne-sized expansion that fans have been waiting for.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance will arrive in 2027. The "massive expansion" will introduce multiple new monsters, give our weapons some new tricks, and seemingly bring back an Elder Dragon first seen all the way back in the original Monster Hunter: Lao-Shan Lung. Oh, and Kushala Daora is back too. Yay?

For all intents and purposes, this expansion ought to be the second half of the game, if only because Master Rank hunts and gear will move the whole game up a notch. The Ascendance reveal trailer shows a new environment of floating islands, and features several special attacks seemingly tied to a new hunting gadget – a flaming gauntlet of sorts.

The greatsword lover in me immediately clocked the explosive parries and quick attacks provided by this new gauntlet gizmo, and gunlance also seems to have yet more ways to sling explosives around.

Another new Wilds monster appears early in the trailer, packing sonic attacks that can summon its smaller companions for dive bomb attacks. It almost looks like an updated, armored Qurupeco

In a Twitter post, Capcom says: "Introducing Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, the massive expansion to #MHWilds. Soar into a land above, wield new abilities, and hunt legendary monsters in Master Rank! Prepare for Elder Dragons. The next era of Monster Hunter begins in 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC."

Resident Evil Code Veronica remake is coming in 2027, Capcom reveals.

The next Resident Evil remake has officially been announced: The 2000 Dreamcast classic survival horror game Resident Evil - Code: Veronica is getting the RE Engine treatment and releasing in 2027.

Capcom kicked off this year's Summer Game Fest by announcing the Resident Evil Code Veronica remake and showing off a good 3.5 minutes of cinematic footage, ending with a shot of the iconic Gold Lugers, which shimmer beautifully in the new engine. The remake, titled simply Resident Evil Veronica, is due out in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

Check out the reveal trailer:

Code Veronica was the first Resident Evil game to launch on a non-PlayStation platform, and it was also the final full-blown survival horror game before the series took a turn toward action horror with Resident Evil 4, and then 5 and 6, before Biohazard took it back to its roots and scared the crap out of everyone.

The story of Code Veronica centers around siblings Chris and Claire Redfield and takes place about three months after the events of Resident Evil 2. After escaping Raccoon City, Claire is captured by Umbrella and imprisoned on an island in the Southern Ocean, which is experiencing a T-virus outbreak. Chris eventually shows up in search of her, and gameplay is split roughly equally between the two characters.

Code Veronica is one a lot of casual fans skipped out on due to the inaccurate perception that it's a spinoff due to it not being a numbered entry, when in reality it's very much a mainline title with a story that's crucial to fully understanding Resident Evil 5. The gameplay is rough, there's no getting around that, but that's why I'm so excited about the remake. It'll give a whole new generation of fans a very good reason to play one of the strongest games in the series, at least in terms of story, world, and atmosphere, and it'll give old fans like me a much smoother experience.

Capcom producer teases a Resident Evil based in Japan: "It might make an appearance at some point"

Capcom's learning all the right lessons from Pragmata's success, it seems, as the publisher doubles down on making more original games rather than simply relying on its good old reliable evil residents and hunter of monsters.

Pragmata proved to be an unexpected success when it finally launched earlier this year, having sold over two million copies in just 16 days. Together with a strong critical and fan reception, Capcom now reckons Pragmata might have what it takes to join the publisher's stable of ongoing franchises.

But Capcom's takeaway isn't simply that it now has another franchise to rely on alongside Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Street Fighter – it's that original games still matter to its long-term success.

"The creation of completely new IPs is an important initiative that supports our sustainable growth, and we intend to continue pursuing it," the company says in its latest financial briefing, recently transcribed in English. "In addition, the development and sales expertise that we have cultivated through our work on new IPs has also contributed to the success of Pragmata, and we will continue to leverage this knowledge in our future business operations."

"We are working to strengthen our development structure through hiring and other human resource investments and believe that our on-site training and development capabilities are steadily improving," it adds. "Pragmata is a good example of how fresh ideas from younger staff, combined with collaboration with experienced employees, led to successful results."

2026 is shaping up to be an absolute killer year for the publisher between its heavy hitters (such as Resident Evil Requiem and Monster Hunter Stories 3) and its upcoming retro revival in the form of Onimusha: Way of the Sword. But I'm glad a company as big as Capcom can still take risks and make room for fresher experiments in an era where large publishers are chasing games too big to fail.

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

Capcom says that it's considering the possibility of turning Pragmata into a series following the success of its new IP.

Despite being a banner year for Capcom with releases from its top-tier franchises like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter, and the imminent return of a fan favourite with Onimusha: Way of the Sword set to release on September 25, its newest game Pragmata has proven to hold its own. Not only did Pragmata receive critical acclaim and positive fan reception, but it also sold over two million copies within 16 days of launching, proving to be a financial success too.

In its latest financial results, Capcom was asked about the success of Pragmata and whether its intention is to develop it into a series going forward. The publisher responds by recalling its impressive sales numbers, and explaining that its success was "driven by strong recognition of our development capabilities, including its fresh gameplay that combines action and puzzles, as well as its compelling characters and world setting." Capcom continues, "Based on this strong start, we will continue our analysis and consider the possibility of developing it into a series."

Capcom also shouts out Pragmata as "a good example of how fresh ideas from younger staff, combined with collaboration with experienced employees, led to successful results." So clearly Capcom is pretty happy with how its sci-fi shooter turned out, even if it took around six years after its announcement to actually release.

The game itself definitely leaves things open for a sequel to be developed, so even if it's still not confirmed, it's clear that the team behind Pragmata is up for doing more with it in the future.

"I really couldn't sleep": In an absurd year for Capcom, Pragmata creators did not want to be the first ones to drop the ball.

Capcom is on a hot streak. With some slipups, the company has managed multiple consecutive years of excellent releases across several series, leading to record sales. On the heels of the likes of Resident Evil Requiem and Monster Hunter Stories 3 in 2026, the creators of Pragmata, a new IP that famously took four extra years in the oven, could feel the pressure. Nobody wanted to break the streak, and especially not Yonghee Cho, who made his directorial debut with Pragmata.

I spoke to Cho, and producer Naoto Oyama, about the making of Pragmata. A big focus was on the pre-release period, the calm before the storm. The night of April 16, even with strong positive reviews in hand, Cho was up late, anxious.

"It's my debut as a director in a game, so if this game didn't do well, that wouldn't be the best start for me as a director," he says (via interpreter). "But going beyond myself, I was also nervous for Capcom as a company. Capcom gave me a chance to do a new IP, so from that stance as well, I really wanted the game to succeed."

Cho says "I was so nervous I really couldn't sleep" the night before launch, so when positive user reviews began to roll in on April 17, he was thrilled and, like Oyama, relieved.

"Thinking back, there's so many points in time that are big steps," Cho and Oyama recall in joint comments. "First, media previews of the game came out, and we're happy to see how the media really liked the game. But in the back of our mind, we're like, we can't let our guard down. Because next is going to be reviews. Then reviews come out, and even if they're good, it's like, but the game's not out yet. We still have to wait for what the players actually think about the game. When we finally see the player score, that's the moment we actually feel, oh, we did it."

Cho compares Capcom's 2026 lineup to a baton race, with each new runner preparing to do their sprint and then pass the baton to the next teammate. "You don't want to be the one to trip and fall when it's your turn," he says.

In some ways, on top of heightened expectations or pressure, joining a sterling 2026 lineup also gave Pragmata a bit of a comfier position. Capcom already had momentum and internal morale was high; Pragmata didn't have to build things up, and it probably had more eyes on it than it would have in a weaker year.

"Because those were all positively received as well," Oyama says of Capcom's recent games, "[it's] not necessarily higher expectations, but we feel like we can add to that success when there's this instance where these games came out in a relatively short timeframe."

Capcom did not expect people to like the first Pragmata trailer so much, and like Todd Howard wincing at The Elder Scrolls 6, kind of regretted announcing it so early.

Capcom has finally confirmed that Onimusha: Way of the Sword is releasing on September 25, 2026.

After first being announced at The Game Awards 2024, Onimusha: Way of the Sword has been one of my most anticipated games, and after a ton of trailers that sadly ended without a release date, today's PlayStation State of Play trailer finally confirmed we'll only need to wait three more months to get our hands on the full game. Plus, the PlayStation Blog also revealed some info about what we saw.

The new trailer features an action-packed look at Miyamoto Musashi fighting through a castle on top of Mount Oe in order to reach its owner, "a colossal Genma" who "claims to be Shuten Doji, the Oni of legend." The boss taunts Musashi for rejecting the power of the Oni, and goes on to kick his ass easily, with the end of the trailer showing him taking on a Devil Trigger-esque Oni form, although we don't see this in action during any gameplay segments.

Well actually, we'll get our first hands-on even sooner, as Capcom also confirmed that a demo for the game is set to release later today, and will feature multiple combat encounters. This includes a boss fight against "Musashi's formidable rival, Saksaki Ganryu." Perhaps more importantly, you get a cute little trinket as a reward for playing the demo.

And, while the State of Play and Onimusha Twitter account didn't clarify, the Onimusha: Way of the Sword Demo will be multiplatform, in fact, it's already live over on Steam.

However, Capcom has also chosen the same date that everyone else has to avoid GTA 6, as both Control Resonant and Silent Hill Townfall have chosen release dates a day apart from each other.

Sometimes I don't know what I want until I know what I don't. It's been six years since Far Cry 6 dropped us off on the island of Yara, five of which I've spent wondering how developer Ubisoft might one-up on its greatest hit (cough: that's Far Cry 5) with Far Cry 7 in development as of 2021.

But I'm not here to argue about the best Far Cry games, despite how correct I am. I wish I had more positivity to share, but from Ubisoft's alleged use of generative AI to the harsh real-world time limits spoken of in various rumored "leaks", I have to be blunt about one of my favorite FPS series: the future of Far Cry sounds impossibly bleak.

Planting the Seeds

The most fun I have ahead of a major game launch is indulging myself in fan theories. Sometimes, they can be better than the actual thing – I still can't believe Capcom didn't actualize my wildest prediction about Resident Evil Requiem. When it comes to Far Cry 7, that rumor mill has been going haywire for years now.

It's not all been bad news. I could handle the heavier tilt toward online multiplayer, as was theorized five years ago. More recent leaks suggest a Taken-style plot, where the protagonist character must rescue their family in a certain real-world time frame, and I don't hate the idea as much as begrudge the prospect of rushing through a stunning open world just because the game says so.

Again, all of this is pure speculation at this point. But with recent news suggesting that Ubisoft has been using Far Cry 7 to experiment with generative AI, I have to kindly ask: has Ubisoft been huffing some of Hope Seed's psychotropic flowers, or is there something else in the water?

That "something" happens to be a massive company-wide restructure. The move, which is still ongoing, saw Ubisoft consolidating its brands under five creative houses, with the first seeing Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, and Rainbow Six Siege to be managed by Vantage Studios from hereon out. This change has led to "disappointing" short term financials, according to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot in the company's latest earnings call, with a sight to see a turnaround later down the line with major releases for these top IPs slated for 2027 and beyond.

All that to say, it's clear Ubisoft is taking its time with Far Cry 7 and Assassin's Creed Hexe as it cleans up house. The fact that we have zero details confirmed about Far Cry 7 at this stage wouldn't usually bother me too much (see above), but the silence paired with Ubisoft's restructuring has me feeling uneasy. Even if the developer is allegedly playing around with generative AI using its current build of Far Cry 7 to test out Teammates, its separate gen-AI NPC initiative is enough to make me balk.

Destination unknown

I'm not ready for generative AI in my Far Cry, and I'm less ready for whatever Teammates is. But if Ubisoft is comfortable enough to experiment with gen-AI in this capacity at all, it speaks volumes about what the restructure might bring.

Ubisoft's poor fiscal performance in the past two years has brought with it a desire for change, and what better way for it to leverage its newly-minted Tencent partnership by leaning into the Chinese company's penchant for AI-powered gaming solutions? Implementing something like Tencent's Giinex – which helps developers experiment with generative AI-powered NPCs – in a Far Cry game is suddenly an actual possibility, as is the use of GameGen-X in creating procedurally-generated AI open worlds.

Generative AI in video games is not my cup of tea (shock, horror), but it also sounds like a terrible move for Far Cry 7. This is an FPS series where Ubisoft has delivered some of its most inventive work, from Blood Dragon's ridiculous '80s camp to romping about Midwest America with a friendly bear called Cheeseburger. Then there are those Far Cry 7 leaks which, if true, point to it being the most adventurous take on the series' format yet. With rumors of timed conditions and numerous protagonists being enough of an envelope-push for the new game as it is, I'd hate to see Ubisoft play with its food too much on the hunt for novelty over a game that players actually want.

Surely with this much time on its hands, Ubisoft can find a way to actually make a game rather than let a machine generate one – even if it'll be hard pressed to top Far Cry 5. Like, ever.

Check out all the upcoming Ubisoft games that have been revealed so far, from Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe to the future of Rainbow Six Siege.