Welcome back to your monthly report of game news, where I do my best to compile everything into one convenient ad-free place, so you don’t have to worry about the pesky cracks that info can fall through at other publications.
Thanks and credit for the banner image as always goes to the Avocado’s one and only Space Robot!
April 17th: Something that slipped through the cracks last time from the same Star Wars Celebration Japan as that tactics game: Ubisoft announced that Star Wars Outlaws for Switch 2 will release on September 4th 2025, while the game’s newest DLC released on May 15th.
April 22nd: The GamesBeat division of VentureBeat announced that it was splitting from its parent company into an independent venture owned and operated by CEO Dina Joseph and editorial director Dean Takahashi, with undisclosed investors also having an ownership stake. This decision didn’t go down well with everyone at GamesBeat, as Imran Khan was unfortunately fired in the transition less than a year after joining GamesBeat.
April 24th: The launch of the long awaited Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was marred by SNK’s final announcements leading up to launch which showed a deleterious and heavy influence from SNK’s new owner the Saudia Arabian Crown Prince. Famed rapist and soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and DJ Salvatore Ganacci were unexpectedly announced as the final fighters in the game’s base roster. Ronaldo plays in the Saudi Pro League and Ganacci is a personal friend of Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The game has sold poorly, and SNK CEO Kenji Matsubara has since announced that he is stepping down into a smaller advisor role.
May 2nd: As first reported in Videogamer.com, Interplay cofounder Rebecca Heineman has revealed that she possesses the complete source code for the original Fallout and Fallout 2 CRPGs and every other game she worked on there, having created private backups and defied corporate orders to delete assets upon leaving the company. She needs permission from Bethesda and Microsoft to publish that source code, but if they come to terms, the games could be free and preserved for all and also useable for updated rereleases.
In a Famitsu interview, Level-5 CEO Akihiro Ino revealed that the company now AI-generates the vast majority of programming code used in its games, having employees scrub the code for errors afterwards. He believes that this is a widespread practice, which makes me skeptical, but this would certainly help explain why Level-5’s development cycles are so extended and fraught. Level-5 also revealed that its first Switch 2 Edition upgrade (for Fantasy Life, ahead of Professor Layton) will only cost $2.69.
May 3rd: Tom Henderson gave another report on future plans for the Assassins’ Creed franchise after the major success of AC Shadows, saying that Clint Hocking’s witchy entry AC Hexe is targeting a 2027 release after two years of post-launch support for Shadows, followed by a second mainline game in 2029 and a third in the 2030s, with smaller spinoff games and remakes supplementing the gaps between the main games. The respective multiplayer and mobile spinoffs have previously been discussed, Black Flag Remake has already been discussed, but now two more undefined remakes have been greenlit with the first entering full production after Black Flag Remake launches later this year. The very first two games with Altair and Ezio are my best guesses for further incredibly pointless remakes.
May 5th: Microsoft announced Gears of War Reloaded, a second brand new remaster for 2006’s Gears of War after the previous 2015 Ultimate Edition remaster, scheduled to launch August 26th 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X/Game Pass Ultimate, officially bringing yet another marquee first party Xbox series to PlayStation for the first time. The game features a 4K60 campaign mode with all loading screens removed, 120fps and crossplay/cross-save support in multiplayer, and all DLC content. The game is a free upgrade for all digital owners of the aforementioned Ultimate Edition. Based on the offerings, I see the value in a fresh remaster instead of the old one, but just doing a single widely available and previously rereleased game for $40 after almost 20 years is patently ridiculous, at least it make it the entire original trilogy.
And I’ve grown to really dislike the cowardly way this multiplat strategy has rolled out: those four games announced together last February, then Doom in the June Showcase, Indiana Jones waits until GamesCom in August, and now Forza and Gears and Age of Empires just haphazardly happened throughout this spring. Back in that first podcast, they actively lied about Indiana Jones, they really pretended like they weren’t porting everything eventually, and now the last dominos waiting to fall are Halo and Fable. By the time Doom was confirmed to be Day 1 PS5, I think they should have just made one of their self congratulatory little montage videos where they explicitly outlined all of the major first party IPs coming to PS5, from Indy to Gears. You can still have your other little marketing plans by simply saying “this is happening in the future” without further specifics, it rips the bandaid off and prevents time wasting for both those of us who don’t really care, and those who care way too much and still act outraged each individual time.
In an Xbox Wire post for AAPI Heritage Month, Ecco the Dolphin creator Ed Annunziata revealed that he is developing remasters of the original two Ecco games and a brand new sequel. His website has a countdown to April 2026, presumably when the remasters will either be revealed or released.
May 6th: Right after officially delaying the launch of Grand Theft Auto 6 into 2026, Rockstar released the story-focused second main trailer for the game at long last, where all footage is natively captured on base PS5 and “comprised of equal parts of gameplay and cutscenes.” Official character descriptions and descriptions of the game’s setting, covering surrounding keys and national parks along with Vice City, were published alongside the trailer.
Take-Two’s latest earnings release was accompanied by multiple major announcements, these two for GTA along with the gameplay reveal and launch date trailer for Mafia: The Old Country, confirming the leaked August 8th 2025 date and showing that the game is a smaller and more linear experience than its open world predecessors, which also means it’s only $50. Take-Two is newly rumored to have two Rockstar-developed multiplat rereleases coming this year or next: a Grand Theft Auto 4 port/remaster and a Switch 2 port + PS5/Series X upgrade for Red Dead Redemption 2; this lines up with reports from several years ago that those very projects did exist but had their development paused in order to focus everything at Rockstar on GTA6, a game which is finally nearing completion.
Bungie officially announced the next four smaller expansions and the start of the new narrative saga for Destiny 2, which includes a Fortnite style Star Wars crossover event scheduled for December. This occurred against a backdrop of further troubles for the PlayStation studio, from mixed reception to Marathon‘s ongoing public alpha tests, to setbacks in a copyright infringement lawsuit concerning content from Destiny 2’s launch story and its very first expansion, in which Bungie’s case was weakened by the since-retired vaulting strategy leaving them only able to provide wiki articles and short videos as evidence, not the entire campaign materials.
Bungie has now also been forced to confess to extensively plagiarizing art assets for Marathon from a freelance artist’s 2017 portfolio without her permission, trying to pin the blame on a former employee and insisting that this will never happen again despite this not being the first time it’s happened, and the fact that all of Marathon’s leads have been proven to have been directly following the artist since the game started development in 2018. A pre-scheduled very uncomfortable stream for Marathon on May 16th couldn’t use gameplay footage because it was being scrubbed of all the stolen art first. Paul Tassi reported for Forbes that this revelation has created chaos and depleted morale inside Bungie, and that poor reception to the alpha test has led Bungie to heavily revamp its marketing campaign and potentially its launch date. It won’t go up for preorders in June as originally planned, and its planned August beta test will possibly be reframed as a larger roadmap of prelaunch playtests. Tassi says that leadership has spent the entire dev cycle ignoring warnings from ground level developers, especially the widespread belief that the game needed PvE.
In the latest patch notes to fix an amusing glitch in Outer Wilds, developer Mobius Digital informally announced that their next game is in early development.
The Creators Voice video for Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade on Switch 2 features director Naoki Hamaguchi explicitly confirming that the entire remake trilogy is coming to the console and that when he was first shown the system he knew that the Switch 2 is powerful enough for the entire trilogy. Previous reporting suggests that the Rebirth port is already in development for a 2026 release. We won’t know for sure how Part 3 will be released until marketing starts and any timed exclusivity is disclosed, but I don’t expect the Switch 2 and PS5/6 ports to release very far apart.
Payday 3 developer Starbreeze arranged to buy the game’s publishing rights from Embracer Group to streamline the logistics and process of post-launch support for the game.
May 7th: Game publishers negotiating with SAG-AFTRA voice actors announced that they had submitted their “final offer” on April 30th and claimed that the onus was on SAG to not walk away from the deal, before SAG publicly responded to say that demands on AI protections have still not been met and that this framing is intentionally misleading. SAG accuses the publishers of underhanded tactics, threats of outsourcings and recastings in attempt to force voice actors to concede without what they need. SAG also struck out at Epic with a labor complaint for using an AI-powered Darth Vader voice in Fortnite. Obviously I hate that thing as much as you do, it won’t go anywhere considering the late James Earl Jones signed an AI contract with Disney before his passing.
Sony and PlayStation Studios officially, publicly announced their new internal studio that was previously reported as spun off from Bungie, now known as TeamLFG. TeamLFG’s game is Project Gummybears, an “ambitious” early dev/incubation project, live service, and family friendly multiplayer action game which takes “inspiration from fighting games, platformers, MOBAs, life sims, and frog-type games.” No, I have no fucking clue what a frog type game is. My general understanding of the game based on previous reports is that it has two teams competing who take Smash Bros style damage percentiles and knockbacks, and then bounce around into each other during knockback, hence Gummybears.
Indie developer Toukana Interactive announced that their game Dorfromantik will come to more platforms after previously being exclusive to PC and Switch for three years: PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, and mobile ports are all coming in the future.
Stephen Totilo interviewed Remedy’s CEO Tero Virtala and discussed the prospect that Control 2 is working with a somewhat smaller production budget than Alan Wake 2’s in order to keep the company sustainable in the midst of an industry where AAA studios have explicitly hit a ceiling on how much their games cost, and each COD costs close to a billion dollars. Virtala also discusses how Remedy spread itself too thin and needed to cut down their project slate, leading to the other, non-Firebreak multiplayer game getting canceled last year. With Firebreak about to launch, a new game has been greenlit to come after Max Payne and Control 2.
Netflix confirmed that on May 12th it is deleting the last of its remaining interactive specials, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt vs. the Reverend. Some episodes have been recut to remove the interactive elements and returned to the service since the previous delistings.
May 8th: As extensive preview coverage begins for Death Stranding 2, Hideo Kojima said in a VGC interview that there are ideas and possibilities for Death Stranding 3 and future sequels, but he personally will not be directing any future games in the series as he continues a full workload on xCloud game OD, bucket list game/multimedia project PhysInt (which is now officially targeting a launch in the 2030s), and the Death Stranding movie. PhysInt was greenlit after he faced mortality with health scares in 2020, and he has continued contemplating the end of his career since, saying that he has a USB stick of pitches for Kojima Productions to use after he passes away.
Maddy Myers said on the newest episode of her Triple Click podcast that as the continued editor in chief of Polygon under its new owner, she will try to rehire everyone that Vox fired. And speaking of those wonderful staff, Nicole Carpenter joined Aftermath and released an excellent piece about video game sex scene production.
Nintendo fiscal release: Nintendo held its earnings report for the January-March ’25 quarter and end of the previous fiscal year, most notably making its first projections for the Switch 2’s launch year and detailing how the Switch’s downturn quickened as soon as the Switch 2’s marketing cycle began in earnest with the January reveal trailer. Nintendo sold 1.26 million Switch 1 consoles last quarter, down from 1.96 million in March 2024, for a total of 152.12 million sold in eight years, which is an underperformance of last year’s projection despite it being reduced multiple times. Nintendo forecasts that the Nintendo Switch 2 will sell 15 million units between June 5th 2025 and March 31st 2026, which is virtually equal to what the Switch 1 achieved in the same timeframe, 14.86 million by December 2017.
Remember the Switch 1’s shortages? Considering Switch 2’s preorder demand and longer mass production cycle/higher production output, this is a fairly conservative estimate. Nintendo explicitly clarified that it is based on the hardware and software’s higher pricepoint combined with the obvious more turbulent general economic conditions, and that in terms accounting for tariffs’ impact on costs, it’s currently operating on the notion that the 10% on Japan and Vietnam and 145% on China remain in effect.
Nintendo also forecasts 45 million units of Switch 2 software sales, 4.5 million units of Switch 1 hardware sales, and 105 million units of Switch 1 software sales for the new fiscal year. Even these small units numbers would actually increase its profit from 2024. It’s apparent that Nintendo has already prepared for the same strategy as Sony in the PS5 generation, compensating for stagnation in total sales by increasing the total revenue per sale and per customer, along with extending sales of the previous generation’s software further than usual with incentives like upgrades/BC and GameShare. Nintendo has also clarified some quirks of its Switch 2 data tracking: the initial Switch 2 games forecast doesn’t account for the massive amount of Mario Kart World console bundles already sold, and only the retail copies of Switch 2 Editions will be counted as Switch 2 game sales. Full Switch 2 Editions bought digitally will count as Switch 1 game sales, and Upgrade Pack purchases will go under DLC.
Turning to last year’s software performance, the biggest new headline is that Donkey Kong Country Returns HD managed to sell 1.3 million copies in its launch quarter, bringing that game to almost 11 million copies total sold across three platforms. A barebones full price remaster did very well on the strength of IP and genre demand. Meanwhile, last holiday’s Super Mario Party Jamboree and Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom continue to do well, with Jamboree hitting an impressive 7.5 million sold as the year’s biggest Nintendo game, and Zelda surpassing 4 million. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still the Switch 1’s biggest evergreen, selling over 6 million more copies over the year, while Switch Sports, Mario Wonder, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros Ultimate, and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet all continue healthy growth as well. I was saying for a while that Gen 9 was on track to outsell Gen 8 and take the #2 behind Gen 1, and it did actively occur this past quarter.
Limited Run Games and Square Enix announced that Gex Trilogy will launch on all platforms June 16th 2025, with physical edition preorders open for one week in mid-May. Xbox ports and a Summer 2025 release window for Shantae Advance were also announced by LRG and WayForward. Two things are important to emphasize for me right here: it’s still fucking insane that Square sold all of Crystal Dynamics’ more respected IPs but kept Gex, and also, there’s no actual good reason for LRG to continue using its extremely limited release model when it has literally belonged to a multi billion dollar publisher for three years.
May 9th: Another major union has formed within Microsoft-Xbox: Blizzard’s core Overwatch team, like the WoW team before it, has fully and immediately unionized as a subset of the Communication Workers of America after a vast majority of almost 200 workers gave approval. Microsoft is known for obstructing union negotiations, but the various in-house Xbox unions have been able to protect members from mass layoffs, and it was the mass layoffs at Blizzard last year that inspired this decision.
Developer Arc System Works was struck with a cyberattack which leaked the source code of and further development roadmaps for Guilty Gear Strive, along with plans for some small side projects, and some very important data related to the Switch 2. When ArcSys publicly addressed the hack, it confirmed that player accounts and data were unaffected.
For Strive, the entire Season 5 roster is now confirmed, before it’s even been announced or Season 4 has finished. Two small digital-only games for Switch consoles have been revealed: Project Watari and Project Life, both of which are built in Unreal Engine 5. Project Watari is cross-gen with few other details available, my theory is that it could be the Switch versions of Double Dragon Revive, which never announced a Switch port. Project Life is an hourlong Switch 2-exclusive narrative adventure game, with an artstyle reminiscent of Hotel Dusk, with puzzles designed around Switch 2 exclusive hardware features, and a story told exclusively through visuals and character animations instead of text. It was originally a launch title scheduled for March 2025 before both the game and hardware were delayed. Multiple delays in the leadup to reveal does explain a lot about just how weird Nintendo marketing has been lately.
The ArcSys hack revealed very important info regarding Switch 2 software thanks to data related to the company’s devkits: Switch 2 cartridges were confirmed to only come in the Game-Key and 64GB-on-cart variants with no other size options, just as I reported last month, and Game-Key Cards were also shown to only require any WiFi connection rather than a specific eShop account due to the eShop’s absence in some regional markets. Nintendo is clearly sticking with the eShop for the foreseeable future, but this is still a marked improvement over other digital game options that are fully dependent on ephemeral digital storefronts.
Revenue is falling at Hoyoverse after oversaturating its corner of the market, as Zenless Zone Zero has underperformed due to competition from its predecessors, and Honkai Star Rail directly cannibalized some of Genshin’s revenue and playerbase. There simply isn’t enough fans and new players to support all of the games simultaneously. Hoyoverse cofounder Cai Haoyu is expanding into every tech sector imaginable in an attempt to keep revenue up, with priority for his AI startup. This was first reported by Cecilia D’Anastasio for Bloomberg; I do not condone D’Anastasio due to her harmful handling of sources during her time at Kotaku.
After almost a decade of development and five years of post-release success, developer RyseUp Studios announced that they are ending support for their game Roboquest, saying that they simply can’t do endless live service support for the game. They are moving on to a new game and will end their time on the last game after releasing VR and PS5 versions this year.
May 10th: In one of the most pleasant surprises in this industry’s recent history, as announced at PAX East, games press outlet Giant Bomb is not dead because Fandom has sold the company to its most recent full-time staff, Dan Ryckert, Jeff Grubb, Jan Ochoa, Jeff Bakalar, and Mike Minotti. That’s right, Giant Bomb is still going, fully worker-owned, and completely independent, true to its origins of going independent from editorial interference at GameSpot and starting under the small company Whiskey Media, before getting sold to and jerked around by multiple companies in the past decade plus, CBS Interactive, Red Ventures, and Fandom. The buyout was finalized on Saturday May 10th right before the announcement. Quick Looks have already coming back and collaborations with former Giant Bomb staff like Jeff Gerstmann have already begun.
As explained in a video on May 12th, extracting the giantbomb.com domain and its wikis will be difficult due to already being integrated at a software level with the rest of the Fandom online network. GB may have to become fully Youtube-based, but they’re doing what they can to keep the website.
I also want to unexpectedly give a quick shoutout to Dwayne Jenkins at Vice’s new Waypoint, who just did a piece promoting the new independent Giant Bomb and calling for the protection of the trans woman in his staff who is being viciously harassed right now. As one of the many who criticized Jenkins last year, I want to give credit where it’s due, despite the way he did derail the article with his attempts to address criticisms of new Waypoint.
May 11th: Sega’s Virtua Fighter Direct livestream premiered, with developer Ry Ga Gotoku announcing that classic character Wolf Hawkfield will be in Virtua Fighter 6 with a new design, and announcing that the latest remaster of Virtua Fighter 5, VF5 REVO, will be coming to PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and Switch 2 at the same time in the future, after launching on PC in January 2025.
Moon Studios director Thomas Mahler, who is notorious for leading a harmful workplace culture at the studio, has lashed out at critics of the developer’s current Early Access game No Rest for the Wicked, for which he recently bought back the publishing rights. He is openly asking for positive reviews to counteract what he frames as review bombing, and saying that the negative reviews could cause the studio to go under by affecting the game’s sales. He then basically and arbitrarily took back the claim that the studio could be gone within months, and tried to frame coverage of it as bad reporting. From what I can tell, the negative reviews in question pertain exclusively to the game’s design and its latest patch and do not show any ulterior motives, let alone politically motivated ones like he so claims. He is clearly very sensitive to the negative reputation he’s gotten since GamesBeat reported on the workplace issues, and is getting even more openly reactionary in the process, unconvincingly proclaiming that he and the game are apolitical and trying to blame trans people for the consequences of his actions.
May 12th: The Trump Administration reached terms with China’s leadership to deescalate the trade war he started, reducing the news tariffs against China from 145% to 30% and reducing China’s duties on US goods to 10% for the next 90 days while further negotiations ensue. To be clear, an extra 30% on top of the tariffs issued in Trump’s first administration is still extreme, and nobody should ever trust anybody in this godforsaken government. This will forever be an evolving story in such unstable times.
And boy did it continue to evolve on May 28th when the Court of International Trade fully ruled against all of the tariffs from the second Trump administration, both the worldwide Liberation Day tariffs and the previous Mexico/Canada/China tariffs, finding them to be illegal and ordering that the government stop enforcing the tariffs within ten days, banning both the tariffs themselves and any attempts to modify them. “Anybody that has had to pay tariffs will be able to get them refunded,” a headline Ethan Gach called Trump’s Concord moment. An appeals court has already ruled in favor of the tariffs and this story remains ongoing in the most exhausting ways imaginable. The government does have procedural routes toward reenforcing them, but those routes would generally force the tariffs into far greater legal oversight that the original executive mandate was meant to avoid, which is exactly the problem the Court has with it.
After controversially introducing mission timers which reduce sandbox exploration in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 Remake, developer Iron Galaxy has now announced that the mission timer can be extended up to an hour to balance out this problem.
May 13th: Grant Stoner reported for IGN that gaming’s leading disability nonprofit AbleGamers has been wracked with bad leadership and abusive behavior from founder Mark Barlet for the past 20 years. The first woman ever employed at AbleGamers says that through ten years at the nonprofit, she experienced consistent unacceptable treatment by Mark Barlet, from sexual harassment to being forced to serve as the head of HR without any training just because she was the only woman there. Any employee there was subject to his verbal abuse, and any accessibility representative outside of AbleGamers was subject to bullying and threats to suppress their work because he wanted no competition in the space. Mark Barlet would brag that he “own[s] the pond” of gaming accessibility.
Barlet also severely mismanaged the finances of AbleGamers as its president, making the nonprofit vulnerable and unstable by spending wildly on non-essentials like first class travel and accommodations, Tesla equipment, a van that went unused, etc. at the expense of the org’s actual mission. Barlet controlled salaries, overpaying himself and created employee inequality by paying more based on favoritism instead of workload. The CFO left late last year over these issues. The charity’s board of directors failed to protect employees from all of these issues because Barlet intentionally kept them unaware and out of contact from the rest of staff. The pay and HR entity ADP conducted an investigation of AbleGamers in 2024 and recommended that Barlet be terminated immediately, only to be ignored until an EEOC investigation and an internal investigation found the same problems, eventually leading to Mark Barlet stepping down at AbleGamers on September 25th 2024.
Once that process began, staff got essentially no direction on work whatsoever and had no leadership because Barlet withheld all resources and infrastructure from anyone else. The board of directors proceeded to award Barlet with severance pay despite the nature of his removal, while punishing and firing those who filed reports and got the investigations to finally happen. AbleGamers’ former COO Steven Spohn began to contact former employees and urge them to not “ruin the charity’s reputation” by speaking publicly. Mark Barlet founded a new org in AccessForge and still insists that the investigation found all allegations untrue, not unlike Bobby Kotick. Barlet and the AbleGamers org soon issued responses to the article.
Microsoft announced that it will fire at least six thousand employees in a new round of mass layoffs reducing the total workforce by 3%, its largest since January 2023. The impact on Xbox staff is currently unknown.
After voting down a “last, best offer” from AAA publishers over the ongoing strike, SAG-AFTRA voice and mocap actors published their counterproposal, providing comprehensive detail and plain language on desired policies regarding AI rights and secondary performance payment.
Skydance Games announced that Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra is delayed from the holiday to an Early 2026 launch for further polish.
Stephen Totilo announced plans for further supporting freelance writers in games journalism through his self published Game File newsletter, most notably including a cut of new subscriber revenue.
During the annual Upfronts, NBCUniversal revealed the final title of the Mario movie sequel as Super Mario World, info which was soon retracted as it evidently did not follow Nintendo’s marketing plans.
May 14th: Proudly continuing its reputation as industry villain, Electronic Arts announced a full return to office policy and end to remote hiring, with all existing remote workers expected to comply within the next two years after temporary exemptions to ease transition. This was first reported by Rebekah Valentine. Despite annual mass-layoffs, EA was found by Stephen Totilo to have unexpectedly and consistently grown its overall headcount. Totilo’s assessment of the circumstances found that EA has focused on hiring outside the US for lower salaries, and this growth was benefited by EA’s remote hiring practices which are now set to end. EA has also insisted it won’t need to raise the base price of premium games from $70 to $80 anytime soon, since its extensive microtransactions compensate enough already.
During Sony and PlayStation’s latest earnings release, PS5 sales were updated to just under 78 million consoles sold, returning the system to falling behind PS4’s pace after an unexpectedly strong holiday, with software prospects strong this fall but hardware continuing to slow. Sony officially elected to not currently raise the PS5’s price in the US but can’t rule out it happening down the line as it faces Trump tariffs potentially costing 100 billion yen/$680 million US.
During its latest earnings release, Ubisoft declared that it will “provide additional development time to some of its biggest productions in order to create the best conditions for success,” delaying unannounced major games like Far Cry 7 because delaying Assassins’ Creed Shadows was rewarded with the publisher’s biggest new success in several years, right after Star Wars Outlaws’ unfinished launch deepened the company’s crisis state. However, the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake has not been delayed again and is still scheduled to launch in Early 2026, five years after it was originally supposed to be release. Ubisoft also detailed its arrangement with Tencent, which has paid $1.8 billion to co-own and fund operations in the new spinoff subsidiary, with around $560 million going directly toward Ubisoft’s debts.
During Square Enix’s latest earnings release, the publisher canceled its mobile game Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link after beta testing, recommitted to its multiplatform strategy in the wake of bringing previously Sony exclusive games to Switch 2, and announced a brand new original IP game made in collaboration with Japanese TV network TBS Television, which has produced shows like Takeshi’s Castle, Ninja Warrior, and Ultraman. Square also released a few new screenshots of Kingdom Hearts 4 in our first new look at the game after three years. It doesn’t exactly look close to launch, shocking nobody.
Indie developer Digital Happiness revealed their newest horror game, DreadOut 3 coming to PC in 2026 and “definitely after GTA releases.” DreadOut Remastered Collection was also shadowdropped for PC after previous coming to Switch and PlayStation.
May 15th: In an emergency damage control PR blog post, Microsoft officially responded to the BDS boycott and outright admitted to its extensive business dealings with the Israeli military, confirming that the AI and cloud tech is sold to the IDF for use in Gaza while still insisting that it totally isn’t being actively used in the genocide of Palestinians, despite evidence to the contrary. Microsoft also admitted to censoring employee emails about Palestine. This “investigation” by Microsoft into how the tech it sells is being used, it has all the cadence of an autopsy for a police shooting victim.
This news arrives against the backdrop of plans for concentration camps and expulsions to Libya, thousands of starving children and infants being denied desperately-needed aid (except for a sliver used as propaganda outside and a trap to kill inside), soldiers surrounding hospitals, boasts about the total destruction being committed. What more could we possibly need to know now, to recognize the degree of the crimes that are being committed here, the blood money being exchanged, and the least we can do to resist it?
It was four years ago that corporate interests challenged IGN’s ability to do something as simple as provide charity links for Palestine and display the black white and green flag. I’m all the more grateful that my work is able to operate safely and independently in a supportive environment like this one.
In a very bad sign for one of the few surviving PlayStation live services, FairGame$, Jade Raymond has left the first party developer Haven Studios four years after she founded it and led the game’s production. Now rebranded FairGames, the project is said to have received poor reception from a recent assessment by Sony leadership. This was first reported by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg; I do not condone Schreier due to his harmful handling of sources and mistreatment of other journalists. Another blow to PlayStation’s live service future came the same day as Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead announced that their next game will be 100% self-funded and unrestricted by platform partnership.
Devolver Digital and developer Team Lazerbeam revealed the brand new game Shroom and Gloom, a first person deckbuilder coming to Steam Early Access later this year.
The OG idle game Cookie Clicker was announced to be coming to consoles for the very first time, hitting PS4, PS5, “Xbox”, and Switch on May 22nd, and Switch 2 on June 5th. Wilmot Works It Out was also announced to be arriving on Switch May 22nd.
Sony and Shift Up announced that the PC port of Stellar Blade will release on June 11th, after the announcement trailer previously leaked. New content is in the PC port and will be patched in on PS5 at the same time. Shift Up has also confirmed plans to bring Stellar Blade to “more formats” while developing the sequel, so don’t be surprised to see it on Xbox and Switch 2 sooner than later.
Rare’s Killer Instinct Gold was announced and released for N64 Classics on Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. On May 22nd, four new Game Boy games were added to the basic tier of NSO, The Sword of Hope, Kirby Star Stacker, a Gradius game, and Survival Kids, which just got a new entry on Switch 2. Nintendo Switch Online has now also confirmed that custom controls/control remapping will come to Nintendo 64 games on Switch 1 and not be exclusive to Switch 2.
May 16th: Digital Trends and Ziff Davis-owned publications like IGN and Eurogamer were reported to have abruptly slashed their budgets and cut freelancer rates right before peak game news season in June, culminating in Eurogamer editor in chief Tom Phillips leaving after 15 years and transferring to IGN.
Epic Games submitted Fortnite to the US IOS App Store on May 9th, and resubmitted on May 14th to keep up with new content, without ever receiving approval from Apple despite the normal 24 hour turnaround time on appstore approvals. On May 16th, Apple confirmed that it was intentionally ignoring the attempt to return Fortnite to the appstore until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rules on Apple’s appeal of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ ruling, even though that obviously violates the legal obligation to comply with the ruling in the meantime. Thusly Epic filed to Judge Rogers asking her to find Apple in contempt again and directly order Apple to actually follow procedure by reviewing the game without delay. Judge Rogers did give this order to Apple on May 19th, leading to Fortnite’s return to the US App Store on May 20th 2025 after it was first banned back in August 2020.
While my fondness for walled garden digital stores has only further decreased since when I first covered this story years ago, I continue to fear for the precedent these developments will establish, for where they might lead for console storefronts. And it’s safe to say that Fortnite being back on iPhones in the US is only going to exacerbate the now widely known issue of the rest of the games industry facing steep competition in lost time and revenue to the biggest live services.
Xbox-Activision announced that Call of Duty Warzone Mobile would be immediately delisted from stores, end seasonal support, and end MTX after underperforming since its March 21st 2024 global launch. The game remains playable.
May 18th: Microids announced that their cult classic adventure game will return as Syberia Remastered, coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X in Late 2025.
May 19th: Summerfall and former Dragon Age head writer David Gaider announced their new game Malys, a demon hunting roguelike deckbuilder scheduled to launch on PC this year. Speaking to Austin Wood at GamesRadar, Gaider was frank about the state of things for the indie studio. They turned to Kickstarter after failing to secure any external support for the game in the current indie funding drought, and the new game is where all remaining time and effort has been invested into keeping Summerfall alive.
During an interview on the Press X to Continue podcast, Neil Druckmann revealed that he is serving as producer on a second active game project at Naughty Dog while directing Intergalactic. The developer was previously working on Intergalactic and Last of Us Online simultaneously before the latter was canceled in 2023. Taking the recent doubts cast on Last of Us 3 at face value, and it is so hard to take what this man says at face value, perhaps Naughty Dog has returned to the Uncharted franchise at long last after alienating everyone else who took a whack at it with constant micromanagement.
May 20th: Embracer Group subsidiary Campfire Cabal unexpectedly revealed it survived an order to close the studio two years ago during Embracer’s disastrous mass-culling. Many workers were laid off and production on their debut game slowed to a crawl with a small team until March 2025, when Embracer officially greenlit new hirings and a return to full-scale production on a brand new entry in the Expeditions tactics RPG series.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and HR director Marie Derain have been summoned to testify in the sexual assault trial against three former Ubisoft executives, which will begin on June 2nd, due to Ubisoft’s complicity and enabling toward violence in its workplace.
Avowed director Carrie Patel announced that she was leaving Obsidian after 12 years to become a director at Oxenfree developer and Netflix subsidiary Night School Studio.
Indian company Nazara Technologies announced that it acquired indie game publisher Curve Games for $29 million after previously buying Sportskeeda and Fusebox Games. Curve Games has published titles like Human Fall Flat, Dungeons of Hinterberg, and Lone Survivor: Director’s Cut.
Lost in Cult’s physical game publishing initiative was fully unveiled with three starting games, Sam Barlow’s Immortality for PS5, Thank Goodness You’re Here! for PS5 and Switch, and The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow for Switch. All three games will have large-scale basic retail releases and more premium and limited special editions.
Developer Stray Fawn officially scheduled the 1.0 launch date of their game The Wandering Village as July 17th 2025 after a long early access period on PC and Xbox. The game will newly come to PS4/5 and Switch with physical releases.
GSC Game World added current-gen hardware optimizations to the classic Stalker remastered trilogy on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
May 21st: Yooka-Laylee creators Playtonic laid off multiple employees while putting others on notice of being “at risk of redundancy.”
Microsoft announced yet another major first party port for PS5: Senua’s Saga Hellblade 2 will come to PS5 in Summer 2025, eight years after its predecessor launched as a timed PS4 exclusive. Hellblade 2 for PS5 offers unspecified new features (which will also come to Xbox in a patch) and PS5 Pro optimizations. Hellblade 2 will get a physical release for PS5 and Xbox Series from Limited Run, its best chance to actually be complete on disc. While covering this, TheVerge’s Tom Warren formally stated that some first party Switch 2 ports are in development at Microsoft. Halo, Age of Empires and Mythology, Sea of Thieves, Microsoft Flight Sim, and an upgrade for Grounded have all been previously rumored for Switch 2 by multiple sources.
A new preview for the expansion DLC Lies of P: Overture detailed major new features like difficulty settings, both boss rush mode and a more balanced way of refighting old bosses,
Microsoft announced a new partnership with Anstream Arcade for the Retro Classics library on Game Pass, which currently features over 50 old school Activision games like Pitfall, with more Activision and Blizzard titles coming in the future.
Nintendo published its latest Ask the Developer article series, this time discussing Mario Kart World with team leads including Kosuke Yabuki; this confirmed a variation on what I speculated about the game, that Mario Kart World started development in 2017 on the original Switch console but transitioned to exclusively targeting Switch 2 in 2020 due to the game’s basic project plan (open world, 24 player races) being so ambitious it couldn’t run on Switch 1 without severe compromises. The Booster Course Pass DLC was indeed developed as a stop-gap to extend World’s development and take advantage of 8 Deluxe’s massive success, which hadn’t yet become apparent when it first launched. The team first received Switch 2 devkits in 2021, but based on other recent interviews, that first wave of devkits were just overclocked and modded Switch 1 consoles, Switch Pros if you will, with the real internal hardware not finalized until 2022 and external hardware finalized in 2023.
World was designed to revolutionize Mario Kart after 8 Deluxe perfected the classic series formula, and if it had been just a basic extension of 8’s design, they would’ve called it MK9, a severe blow to my trademark harangueing about Mario Kart Tour being mainline/MK9.
May 22nd: Embracer Group fully detailed the corporate restructuring it previously announced which will retire the Embracer Group name while keeping all assets under CEO Lars Wingefors. AAA IP label Middle Earth and Friends has been renamed Fellowship Entertainment, while ‘indie’ label Coffee Stain & Friends has been fully spun off into its own company.
Indie developer insertdisc5, makers of the acclaimed In Stars and Time, announced a new visual novel Truth Scrapper coming to PC.
After being previously rumored this year, A24 officially announced that it is producing an Elden Ring film written and directed by Alex Garland, who made the incredible Annihilation and the infuriating Civil War. It’s increasingly obvious that Garland’s filmmaking is far more based in imagery and vibes than cohesive narrative or themes, which is honestly not a bad fit for adapting any Hidetaka Miyazaki game, and could work with Wolfman’s pitch of a movie focused on backstory war The Shattering. I just wish Garland hadn’t already turned out to be an Andy Ngo supporter.
A Warhammer 40K focused presentation featured several video game announcements, including Dawn of War: Definitive Edition for PC and Space Marine Master Crafted Edition for PC and Xbox Series S|X, new remasters of the 2004 RTS and 2011 third person shooter, and the brand new reveal of FPS Boltgun 2, coming in 2026 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.
Jeff Grubb reported that a PlayStation presentation is coming in June, likely in the form of a State of Play.
May 26th: Acclaimed indie FPS I Am Your Beast is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series S|X on June 26th after first launching on PC in September 2024; this was first leaked by a PSN listing.
May 27th: Mark Gurman reported for Bloomberg that Apple is further expanding its gaming ambitions by launching a new dedicated gaming app that will be preinstalled on all upcoming devices, set to be announced at a developer conference on June 9th. The app will replace Game Center, highlight games and Apple Arcade, and even support non App Store games on Mac computers. At the same time, Apple made its first gaming acquisition by buying a two person indie studio named RAC7 Games, the developers of Sneaky Sasquatch, an Apple Arcade hit.
More than 250 Brazilian game developers wrote and published an open letter criticizing the GamesCom LatAm 2025 conference for high pricing and mistreatment, including no provided food, transport, or chairs or rest areas.
Square Enix announced that Dragon Quest 1 &2 HD2D will launch on October 30th 2025, with Switch 2 added to the launch platforms. Square Enix also reached a settlement with the developer of mobile game Metal Storm, after the developer agreed to remove all assets related to their canceled Front Mission game.
The Switch 2 Backwards Compatibility testing page was updated, confirming that 70% of third parties are now fully tested without issues, and also confirming new fixes for several of the incompatible titles, from Pizza Tower to Doom Eternal and Travis Strikes Again.
May 28th: As reported by Rebekah Valentine for IGN, EA decided to close down new subsidiary developer Cliffhanger Games and cancel its open world Black Panther project, along with firing some employees in “mobile and central teams”, marking yet another wave of layoffs for the infamous publisher. It was only months ago I was celebrating Cliffhanger as the home of many former Monolith Productions developers who WB Games chased away with mismanagement or recently laid off upon the death of Wonder Woman. Some story and gameplay details and concept art for Black Panther soon leaked via social media and Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier, suggesting that the ex-Monolith crew was using a Nemesis system-alike for developing the player character’s relationships with multiple kinds of enemies, both Skrull shapeshifters and their own rivals at home in Wakanda competing to be Black Panther. When it was canceled, the game still hadn’t left pre-production after almost four years of development.
Ethan Gach says that many within the company learned of the studio closure from IGN and not from leadership. Between the studio closure and random other firings, there isn’t an exact total number, but it is understood to be less than the 300 fired in the last round. In the internal email announcing this closure, executive Laura Miele said that EA’s priority franchises going forward are EA Sports, Battlefield, Apex Legends, The Sims, and Skate, with support also continuing for Star Wars Jedi 3 and Iron Man at EA Motive. EA was supposed to have a third contracted Marvel game along with Black Panther and Iron Man, but there’s no evidence it still exists.
Game Freak and TPC officially announced that Pokémon Legends Z-A will launch on October 16th 2025 for Switch and Switch 2, with preorders opening on June 5th while retailing for $60 on Switch and $70 on Switch 2. The next Pokémon Presents news livestream was also announced to be coming on July 22nd. Pokémon almost always launches in November, but X&Y did launch in October twelve years ago, making this a cute little parallel. This also raises further questions for Nintendo’s holiday lineup.
A P4RE.jp domain name was registered, reminiscent of the Persona 3 Reload domain that was found ahead of that game’s announcement. Initially there was no proof of the domain belonging to Sega, but then it began receiving updates exactly like the ones the other got right before reveal, suggesting that yes, this is really happening. We’ll almost certainly see it at the Xbox Showcase again. Now even more fuel is on the fire after two actors from the original P4, Yuri Lowenthal/Yosuke and Erin Fitzgerald/Chie, both openly said on social media that they won’t return for the remake, which is consistent with the completely new 3 Reload cast. Lowenthal went further to say that he “begged, but they don’t want me to come back.”
CDPR announced that Cyberpunk 2 has officially advanced from concepting into full pre-production with around 100 developers on it compared to the 400+ on Witcher 4.
Square Enix and Forever Entertainment announced that Front Mission 3 Remake will launch for Switch on June 26th. The remake was later revealed to extensively use generative AI for replacing background art, character portraits, and more.
Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest 2025 published its list of over 60 event partners right before it premieres next week, and I’ll get to the full list in a second, but the biggest headline here is that Nintendo has officially joined the event as a partner after largely ignoring it for several years since its inception and mostly avoiding the Game Awards in recent years as well. Things really do change with a new console generation. My understanding is that at minimum this means Nintendo will have a floorshow presence in Los Angeles and have some active event connection, whether that be branding for the inevitable June Direct or an announcement in the main SGF Kickoff livestream. Switch ports and little sizzle reel ads have always been appearing at these shows before without a listed partnership. I also want to note the report that the main SGF showcase will feature a PlayStation announcement that you’re surprised isn’t in the State of Play also expected for June. Keighley has gotten the last thee Naughty Dog announcements, so they’re always a safe bet, and last year’s SGF had Lego Horizon Adventures as well.
The full current list: 1047 Games, 2K/Take-Two, 505 Games, Annapurna Interactive, Amazing Seasun Games, Amazon Games, Annapurna Interactive, Atari, Bandai Namco, Bellring Games, Blumhouse Games, Capcom, CD Projekt Red, Coffee Stain/Embracer Group, Day of the Devs, Devolver Digital, Digital Extremes, Dotemu, Dreamhaven, Embark, Enhance, Epic, Focus Entertainment, Frontier, Funcom, iam8bit, IO Interactive, Kakao Games, Kinetic Games, Kuro Games, level Infinite, Magic the Gathering, Megabit, Meta Quest, Mundfish, NCSoft, Nekki, Neowiz, Nexon, Niantic, Nintendo, Nuverse, Pearl Abyss, Playside, Playstack, PlayStation, PM Studios, Raw Power Games, Rzer, Sega, Soft Rains, Square Enix, Steam, Supermassive Games, Techland, Xbox Game Studios, Xsolla, Yacht Club Games.
May 29th: Like I had already suspected, Leslie Benzies and his studio Build a Rocket Boy have now effectively confirmed that their previously announced creation platform Everywhere was shut down and folded into the about-to-launch shooter MindsEye as a smaller creation mode.
May 30th: The Zenimax Workers United QA team union has successfully won their finalized contract with Microsoft-Xbox after threatening to go on strike. Over 300 Quality Assurance testers for every Zenimax subsidiary within Microsoft have secured wage increases, salary minimums, and crediting procedures in the US’ very first ever AAA gaming union contract. The contract will be reviewed and voted for on June 20th. ZWU, and every other AAA union that has recently emerged, has faced extended obstruction and opposition from their corporate masters, and we can only hope that this momentum continues.
Ubisoft posted a new teaser image of the long dormant Splinter Cell franchise on social media, suggesting that the Splinter Cell Remake, or some other development for the series, will emerge during this imminent Summer Game Fest news season.
June 1st: Developer People Can Fly canceled two more projects in its ample software slate and announced plans for more layoffs after canceling a game last year as well. VR game Project Bifrost has been newly canceled due to a lack of funding while a Square Enix game, Project Gemini, was canceled due to poor communication from the partner publisher. The company continues to work on a PlayStation project, Lost Rift, and two other games, as well as being co-developer on Gears of War: E-Day.
Tatsuya Kando, co-director of both The World Ends With You games, announced his departure from Square Enix after 29 years.
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