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!
June 2nd: Take Two and Zynga shut down their subsidiary developer Echtra Games, firing dozens of people before they could reveal their next game after Torchlight 3, before they released any game since their acquisition four years earlier.
Respawn founder Stig Asmussen has announced that his new studio Giant Skull with many other former Respawn teammembers is developing a AAA Dungeons and Dragons action game.
June 3rd: Tales of Kenzera developer Surgent Studios announced their new game Dead Take, a first person horror game published by Palworld’s Pocketpair, scheduled to launch on PC in 2025, exploring the dark underbelly of the entertainment industry while starring Neil Newbon and Ben Starr in live action roles.
The biggest part of Epic Games’ State of Unreal showcase was a 9 minute tech demo by CDPR running on a base PS5 to represent the target performance of The Witcher 4 while it’s still pre-alpha, revealing that the game is planned to run at 60fps with ray-tracing on, something fairly difficult to achieve right now, mainly achieved on console by IDware games Indiana Jones and Doom: The Dark Ages. In conjunction with that, Epic said that the next update for Unreal 5, Unreal 5.6, has optimized Nanite and Lumen ray-tracing to run “twice as fast”/with twice the previous performance.
Tom Henderson issued a new report, seconded by Jeff Grubb, about an upcoming first party PlayStation project that was expected to be officially announced by now, but is now said to be releasing in 2026 and being potentially revealed in a Fall State of Play instead. This game is a God of War spinoff and sidescrolling Metroidvania which will target a multiplat launch to bring the IP to new audiences like Lego Horizon Adventures on Switch last year. We don’t have a proper game announcement to cover here, but this does give me the opportunity to discuss how Sony is widely known to be mass hiring contractors and support developers as part of multiple new major strategies for first party development. I can formally report that Sony is further expanding its multiplatform strategy with smaller new games and with existing catalog titles: the next step in this initiative has already been officially announced on July 3rd by Arrowhead Studios: Helldivers 2 is coming to Xbox Series S|X on August 26th 2025 with full crossplay support, and unlike MLB the Show or something like the Patapon collection funneled through Bamco, Helldivers 2 on Xbox is actually published by PlayStation. I will detail the other new strategy below in a brand new report.
From multiple sources within or connected to first party Sony, I can hereby report that PlayStation is undergoing a new initiative for many, potentially all, first party developers to shift to near-annual release schedules as a solution to the publisher’s mass-cancelations and near-empty first party slate. That’s right, “PS5 has no games” has created a scenario where executives are pressuring their developers to make and release more games at a much faster rate and attempt to return to the virtually impossible days of sub-HD and early-HD development, or make it 2007 again by science or magic. Older excellent medium-scale games like Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart are about to be the new model for most first-party games, but in the worst possible way.
In order to achieve this strategy, Sony intends to rely massively on more contractor developers, co-development teams, and outsourced workers, who are all far easier to put into exploitative overcrunched and underpaid working conditions than high ranking internal developers, and to prioritize making far more AA or mid-budget projects after a decade of prioritizing its largest and most expensive games. Making more smaller games would be a very exciting prospect if it weren’t at the expense of working conditions and likely to be at the expense of the final quality of the product since these projects will be rushed and will entail developers attempting types of games they’re completely untrained for. We’ve only just started to see the products of this initiative as Lego Horizon Adventures and this new God of War game are both prominently codeveloped lower-budget projects. Another example of a specific game I’m aware of from this initiative is the next Uncharted, which has spent years in development hell with constant micromanaging and reboots but now with increased executive pressure on Naughty Dog and its codev to finally ship something.
June 4th: PlayStation State of Play: The presentation opened with the latest game from Enhance and Tetsuya Mizuguchi after this gen’s Tetris Effect Connected and Humanity: Lumines Arise, coming in Fall 2025 to PC, PS5, and PSVR2, and bringing Tetris Effect style presentation to the cult classic almost 20 years after its last sequel. Five years after appearing in the very first PS5 games event, Capcom’s brand new IP Pragmata finally returned with its gameplay reveal and 2026 release window; this sci fi action game follows an astronaut and his two companions, a surrogate daughter and a robot, who handle simultaneous shooting and hacking gameplay. Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture revealed their first major game since No More Heroes 3 in 2021, and I immediately knew it was Suda because tonally it might as well be another No More Heroes: Romeo is a Dead Man is a current-gen exclusive action game “maybe” coming in 2026. Konami had the newest trailer for Silent Hill f, showing much more monsters, combat, and puzzles, while announcing the release date as September 25th 2025. Later in the show Konami brought another Metal Gear Solid Delta trailer, fully showing off Snake vs. Monkey and unexpectedly teasing a multiplayer mode.
On June 12th, Konami hosted a livestream presentation showing full footage for the Xbox/Bomberman version of Snake vs. Monkey and detailing what was teased in the SoP: MGS Delta features the brand new Fox Hunt online multiplayer mode focused on stealth and survival, not a remake of Snake Eater Subsistence’s more shooter like Metal Gear Online. Konami Press Start also featured broad discussion of Silent Hill f and the proper announcement of Bloober Team’s next game with Konami after its greenlight was public confirmed in February: Silent Hill (1) Remake.
Artplay fully unveiled the next major entry in their Bloodstained series after informally announcing it a long time ago: a 16th century prequel with dual protagonists storming the floating castle of Demon Lord Elias, Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement is scheduled to launch in 2026 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X. A new trailer for Digimon Story: Time Stranger announced that it will launch on October 3rd 2025. Devolver and the developers of Baby Steps announced that it will finally launch on September 8th 2025. A long time after it first leaked, Square Enix announced the fully voice acted remaster of the original 1997 Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, which will launch on September 30th 2025 for PC, PS4/5, Switch and Switch 2, and Xbox Series S|X. It packages the game’s original version alongside the remaster, but only contains the 1997 content, not newer content from the 2007 War of the Lions version on PSP. First announced in the March Nintendo Direct, Sony’s first party game Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots was announced to be launching September 5th 2025. Bandai Namco announced that its origami 3D action platformer Hirogami will launch September 3rd 2025, featuring multiple shapeshifting options to aid exploration.
Koei Tecmo announced that Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound will launch for all platforms on July 31st 2025. The Game Bakers’ climbing game Cairn shadowdropped a demo and announced that it will launch on November 5th 2025. Atari and Digital Eclipse revealed the latest Gold Master documentary rerelease collection, and it’s a doozy: Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection will arrive later this year for PC, PS4/5, Switch/Switch 2, and Xbox Series S|X, featuring rollback netcode and a large variety of the series’ early games. The games confirmed so far: Mortal Kombat 1 2 3 and 4 in arcade, SNES/Genesis/Game Boy/Game Boy Advance/Game Gear/and 32X versions, and MK Deadly Alliance for GBA. Koei Tecmo revealed Nioh 3, Threeoh, coming to PlayStation 5 and PC in Early 2026, featuring new ninja combat on top of samurai combat, and new “open field levels” but not a single open world. Giant Squid announced that Sword of the Sea will launch August 19th 2025 and be a Day 1 PS Plus game, leading into several more PS Plus releases coming this summer: Deus Ex for PS2, Twisted Metal 3 and 4 for PS1, and the original PS1 versions of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, especially exciting for me, will all come to PS Plus Classics and the PS Store.
Vertigo Games revealed PSVR2 exclusive Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow, starring Stephen Russell as Garrett himself and coming this year. It’s the series’ first entry in a decade plus and its first since Embracer Group acquired it. Road 96 devs DigixArt announced their multiplayer first person ocean adventure game Tides of Tomorrow coming February 24th 2026 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. NetEase and Joker Studio announced a free to play pirate RPG called Sea of Remnants. IO Interactive debuted the promised full reveal trailer for 007 First Light, showcasing its mix of action and stealth gameplay, its fresh out of academy take on James Bond, and announcing its 2026 release window for PC, PS5, Xbox Series, and Switch 2. Turning to first party, Asobi announced that even more free DLC levels are coming to Astro Bot while Sucker Punch announced that Ghost of Yotei will receive a dedicated gameplay deep dive presentation in July. Lastly, Sony unexpectedly revealed a new collaboration with Disney and Arc System Works for the publisher’s first in-house fighting game since it bought EVO: Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls coming to PC and PS5 in 2026, a hyper stylized, hyper Japanese tag fighting Marvel game coming for Marvel vs. Capcom’s crown by being the first Marvel fighter since the failure of Infinite and the first ever 4v4 tag fighter.
June 5th: The end credits of Deltarune Chapters 3+4 announced that Chapter 5 will release in 2026.
Scottish mobile developer Outplay Entertainment announced 21 layoffs.
June 6th: Summer Game Fest: In my six years of covering this nonsense full-time, this was easily my worst experience with an SGF presentation, or any game marketing presentation I’ve seen full-stop. It wasn’t materially so much worse than its predecessors, a lot of it is that this current gaming generation has increasingly and intensely worn all of our patience thin, even mine. Its runtime didn’t have to physically be as long as your usual suspects in order to feel like it when you have this much repetition, tedium, naked trendchasing, poor presentation for even the most promising titles on offer, etc. There have been a lot of great dissections of what went wrong here and how difficult it is to engage in this ridiculousness against the backdrop of America’s fascist nightmare, especially as ICE actively began to assault Los Angeles where SGF is taking place. I recommend you go there since this article is already long enough. The best show of this summer season was Day of the Devs, but even that was largely an army of known quantities from already successful teams, reminding us just how painfully spread thin the indie gaming scene is.
The show opened with its first of many C-list Soulslikes, Mortal Shell 2, which now has guns and a closer camera. It’s coming to current gen hardware in 2026 after its predecessor launched in 2020. Next was an ad for the latest Fortnite Star Wars event and the driest Kojima appearance yet from Keighley, featuring a very straightforward Death Stranding 2 cutscene about the new Solid Snake esque character. Tom Hardy narrated the cinematic trailer for the very confusingly pitched Early Access game Chronicles: Medieval, an open world story driven RPG and a complex large scale… Anyway, Sega announced that Sonic Racing Crossworlds will launch on September 25th 2025 with ten free guest characters coming after launch alongside paid DLC, representing both other Sega IP and larger corporate crossovers: Jatsune Miku, Persona 5’s Joker, and Like a Dragon’s Ichiban Kasuga are the first free characters, while Steve, Alex, and Creeper from Minecraft are the first round of paid DLC. Sega also confirmed a native Switch 2 port of the game for Day 1. Bandai Namco revealed another Soulslike sequel in Code Vein 2, coming in 2026 to PC/PS5/Xbox Series with two characters controlled at once.
Section 9 Interactive, made up of former Little Nightmares devs, announced their debut game End of Abyss coming in 2026 with help from Epic Games Publishing. It’s a sci fi horror twin stick shooter with some Souls inspiration. Developer Playside had two announcements: their viral FPS Mouse: PI for Hire will star Troy Baker in the lead role when it launches later this year, and they are newly developing a Game of Thrones RTS titled War for Westeros coming next year, where the trailer was exclusively building up to the “twist” that White Walkers are a playable faction and evil factions…can win, which is how an RTS works? Atomic Heart creators Mundfish had three announcements with the first two from the “Atomic Universe”: Atomic Heart 2 and MMO FPS spinoff The Cube. Mundfish is also publishing ILL, a first person action horror game developed by Team Clout for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. Tribute announced two more characters for beatemup Marvel Cosmic Invasion: She Hulk and Rocket Raccoon. Capcom’s newest Onimusha trailer showed off giant scale boss fights among other gameplay footage. Lies of P prequel expansion Overture was shadowdropped as previously leaked.
Indie developer Sans Strings Studios revealed a very gimmicky and irritating Unreal 5 game: Felt That: Boxing, a boxing game starring puppets in an aggressively ironic melodramatic story. Developer Tactics Studios and publisher Square Enix* announced Killer Inn, a 24 player/two team multiplayer action game focused on social deduction within an Agatha Christie murder mystery pastiche, investigating and ultimately eliminating members of the enemy team, with a closed beta test coming soon on PC. If my reading demographic was younger I’d just call it bigger budget Among Us. *This was totally a Square Enix Collective game before that department got basically hollowed out. Hyped extraction shooter Arc Raiders had its launch date announced as October 30th 2025. Survival MMO Dune Awakening ‘shadowdropped’ its early access release on PC a few days before the previous official date; it’s scheduled to launch in 1.0 on current gen consoles next year. Korean publisher Kakao Games announced their newest MMORPG Chrono Odyssey with playtests already about to begin. Genshin wannabe Wuthering Waves had a new trailer. Metroidvania Mio: Memories in Orbit showed new gameplay footage and released a demo on PC. Take Two/Hangar13’s Mafia: The Old Country made another appearance.
Indonesian developer Eksil revealed a show highlight for me, 3D beatemup Acts of Blood coming next summer to PC. Four years after I covered its initial Day of the Devs appearance, stop motion indie adventure game Vokabulantis was rerevealed as Out of Words and announced as transitioning off Kickstarter into Epic Games Publishing; the sidescrolling co op adventure is scheduled to launch in 2026 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. Lego and its small arthouse game team Light Brick Studio announced the followup to Lego Builder’s Journey: Lego Voyages, a co op puzzle adventure with a Hazelight style Friend Pass, coming later this year to PC, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox Series. A second Lego game, a Lego party game aptly titled Lego Party!, is coming Holiday 2025 to PC, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series, with current-gen physical editions from iam8bit. Speaking of licensed games, the infamous GameMill and voice actress Carolyn Lawrence announced NickToons and the Dice of Destiny, a Nickelodeon crossover Diablo-like action RPG coming Fall 2025 to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series. Yacht Club Games finally announced a release date for Mina the Hollower, October 31st 2025 for PC with console date yet to be confirmed, with a demo out now.
Serenity Forge, the publisher of games like Doki Doki Literature Club, Lisa, Slay the Princess, announced a brand new internally developed psychological horror game that was very clumsily pitched but genuinely looks fascinating: Fractured Blooms, a first person farming sim where the cozy is illusion and the routine is a trap that’s driving you mad. Frontier revealed Jurassic World Evolution 3 for an October 21st 2025 launch on current gen hardware, featuring major new features like terraforming and dino breeding/rearing. The game’s original character portraits for its scientist NPCs used AI-generated art, but enough backlash ensued that Frontier agreed to remove all use of generative AI from the game.
A Meta Quest 3 exclusive Deadpool VR starring Neil Patrick Harris was announced for a late 2025 launch. And now a bunch of crap I struggle to cover even more than Deadpool VR: NCSoft’s Genshin-alike Blade & Soul Heroes will release internationally in September 2025, One Punch Man will come to the MMO Crystal of Atlan, Netmarble’s RPGs Mongil Star Dive (closed beta test June 19th-26th) and Seven Deadly Sins: Origins (based on the titular shonen anime), and there was a random recap montage of the State of Unreal show I already covered. Techland announced that Dying Light: The Beast will launch August 22nd 2025. Annapurna and developer Beethoven & Dinosaur, makers of game-I-vocally-hate The Artful Escape, had a new look at nostalgia fest narrative adventure Mixtape, revealing both gameplay and its big name licensed soundtrack.
Bandai Namco revealed Hades-like Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree coming to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series on September 19th 2025.Shredder’s Revenge developers Tribute Games revealed their next big beatemup after Cosmic Invasion: Scott Pilgrim EX, a fully new ‘universe-crossing’ sequel written by Bryan Lee O’Malley and focused on tag team Scott and Ramona with five additional player characters, it’s coming to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series in 2026. Live service shooter First Descendant announced its new season/major update Breakthrough will release August 7th. The now already infamous MindsEye made one last prelaunch appearance promising a preorder bonus followed by a Hitman crossover coming this summer, and while IO is at it they also have a new Elusive Target for Hitman, Mads Mikkelsen returning as Bond villain Le Chiffre, available from June 6th to July 6th, if completed unlocking a bonus in 007 First Light. Mads puttered around onstage for a while both during SGF and IO’s pointless hyped up standalone show. Guacamelee creators Drinkbox Studios announced their next big game: Blighted, a spooky isometric action RPG with hardcore action and in depth Metroidvania exploration, coming to PC in 2026.
Xbox exclusive multiplayer shooter Mecha Break finally had its launch date announced as July 1st 2025. Combining flight combat and first person shooting, Wildgate announced its latest open beta test. Cubit Studios and Epic Games Publishing announced Infinitesimals, an Unreal 5 third person adventure shooter about tiny aliens fighting big danger, coming in 2026 to PC via EGS, PS5, and Xbox Series. Chinese Soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feathers saw its launch scheduled for July 24th 2025. A stylized multiplayer capture the flag game Last Flag was announced by…a studio owned by Imagine Dragons, and it will debut with a closed alpha test this year. Speaking of incredibly strange news, developer Brass Lion Entertainment announced co op action RPG Wu Tang: Rise of the Deceiver, made in collaboration with Ghostface Killah as a retirement tribute for the legendary Wu Tang Clan, and I can’t help finding it in poor taste. Into the Unwell, a 3D third person co op roguelike with a Cuphead wannabe aesthetic, was announced by publisher Coffee Stain/Embracer Group and developer She Was Such a Good Horse.
Developer 1047 Games saw its director Ian Proulx appear onstage to promote their shooter Splitgate 2, shadowdropping the game and announcing its battle royale mode, but this was completely overshadowed by his decision to wear a MAGA style hat reading Make FPS Great Again in a live broadcast to 50 million people. He made marginalized people like myself feel unwelcome while being unnecessarily meanspirited to plenty of great current shooter games and devs. He ultimately admitted that it was an idea he and his marketing team came up with to make sure people remembered their game in a large sea of titles. This horrifically misconceived marketing stunt did not in fact benefit Splitgate 2’s launch, and 1047 Games fired some employees soon after.
Okay, moving onto better things! Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku brought the mysterious Project Century back from the latest Game Awards for a bigger unveiling as Stranger Than Heaven, following a noir detective in both 1915 and 1943 Japan, evolving Yakuza’s real time brawling with mercy choices and firearms, and being possibly RGG’s first current gen exclusive launch, depending on whether it or VF6 come first. Its current release window is “in or after fiscal year 2027,” which is to say April 2026 at the very earliest and 2027 at the latest. As big a fan I am of RGG’s work in Yakuza/LaD, the Imperial Japan setting will be a serious test of their storytelling and politics. I’m sorry to juxtapose such an exciting studio and project with something so unpleasant right before it, but this is what the show’s editing left me with.
A live action trailer featuring one of my favorite All Elite Wrestlers Kenny Omega announced the Season 3 DLC characters for Street Fighter 6, confirming an earlier leak: classic villain Sagat is coming later this summer, Street Fighter 4’s Crimson Viper is coming Fall 2025, while Street Fighter 3’s Alex and Capcom Fighting Evolution’s Ingrid are coming Spring 2026. Capcom kept rolling by bringing in producer Jun Takeuchi and actress Maggie Robertson to announce that Resident Evil’s 30th anniversary will be celebrated in March 2026, and saying that the next game in the series will need to wait a little longer to be seen. Eight announcements filled the interim between this segment and the showcase closing by actually revealing Resident Evil 9 after all, evoking the fakeout of the FF7 mobile game followed by Rebirth two SGFs ago, except it just felt more agonizing here because the overall show was worse and admittedly because I’ve finally lost all of my patience for these things.
Resident Evil Requiem (q, not IX like we all expected) is launching February 27th 2026 as the first current-gen exclusive RE and is already seeing playable demos for journalists and GamesCom attendees come August. The game stars FBI agent Grace Ashcroft as she investigates the death of her mother, Alyssa Ashcroft AKA the protagonist of old spinoff game RE Outbreak, and includes a return to the ruins of Raccoon City 30 years after it was bombed, though that won’t be the main setting. After RE Village clumsily implemented a third person option well after launch, Requiem will feature full immediate support for both first person and third person play with the ability to switch seamlessly at any time. Developers confirmed rumors that they explored an online component and an open world for the game very early on, but neither are in the final game.
Day of the Devs: 100ft Robot Golf developers No Goblin announced their new game Snap & Grab, a fully 3D photography heist adventure published by Annapurna, coming in Early 2026 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. Returning from the 2023 Game Awards, Untitled Goose Game creators House House offered a second look at Big Walk, a co op adventure game about friends exploring an open world version of the Australian bushland. There’s many puzzles to solve and unique forms of communication to use. Originally announced for 2025, the game is officially delayed to 2026 with unspecified console ports newly confirmed for its Day 1 launch. Sword of the Sea made a reappearance from the State of Play. Coin Crew Games revealed Escape Academy 2: Back to School, coming to PC in 2026. This sequel to the 2022 escape room hit takes place on an open world academic campus where the entire space is one big non linear puzzle. Mixtape and Blighted reappeared from SGF, with proper first gameplay footage for the latter. Outerloop Games, creators of my beloved Thirsty Suitors, fully unveiled what was previously announced as Project Dosa: Dosa Divas: One Last Meal, a story-driven 3D turn-based RPG about passionate chefs battling tasteless sludge, expanding on both Thirsty’s RPG systems and traversal. Dosa Divas is coming to consoles and PC in Early 2026.
Heart Machine’s newest game Possessor(s) reappeared, coming to PC and consoles later this year; it’s a spooky stylized sidescrolling Metroidvania about escaping an urban disaster zone and investigating the city’s corporate owner. Digital Sun discussed all the many ways Moonlighter 2 expands on its predecessor’s gameplay. Thomas Waterzooi, the creator of Please Touch the Artwork announced its successor Please, Watch the Artwork coming this fall to PC, Switch and mobile, where you closely observe and help classic art as it comes to life. Marvel Cosmic Invasion reappeared. Neverway is a dark life sim by developer Coldblood with music by Disasterpeace and funding from Outersloth, which is coming in the future to PC. Coming to PC and Xbox Series S|X in the future, Relooted was excitingly revealed by pan-African game developers at Nyamakop and tells a story near and dear to this anti imperialist’s heart: reclaiming African cultural artifacts from European museums in sidescrolling puzzle and action heist sequences. At Aftermath, Relooted‘s developers have openly and extensively discussed how the US government’s abominable racist anti-immigration policies have constrained their ability to travel and promote the game, leaving only one team member able to be at the SGF show floor.
The cult classic indie RPG remaster I’ve covered extensively, OFF, finally has its launch date for PC and Switch: August 15th 2025. Ratatan appeared with a demo shadowdropped and its Steam Early Access date announced as July 25th, before it was later delayed due to criticism of that demo. Warren Spector and Otherside’s Thick as Thieves offered a first early look at gameplay footage for its multiplayer thievery. Pocket Boss is a unique data management puzzle game where your charts and data come to life and must be tamed, and it’s coming later this year. A narrative adventure life sim about wrestling with dietary pressures, Consume Me was announced to be launching for PC on September 25th 2025. New developer GameTeam6 revealed their game Tire Boy, an open world 3D action platformer coming to PC in the future. Photography adventure Toem 2 closed out the showcase with its gameplay reveal.
June 7th: Future Games Show: Some highlights from the latest Future Fames Summer Showcase include: Osiris Reborn is an action RPG based on The Expanse. Okomotive’s Herdling was announced to be coming this summer. Horror game Sleep Awake was shown by developer Eyes Out and Spec Ops The Line director Cory Davis, coming in 2026. A Metroidvania about painting the world, Constance is launching for PC on November 24th 2025. Spanish indie team Out of the Blue revealed Call of the Elder Gods, a sequel to my 2020 GOTY Call of the Sea, as their third game. Starring Yuri Lowenthal, it’s “coming soon” to PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series. The Bureau of Fantastical & Arcane Affairs is a comedy sim about being a quality inspector for magical quests, coming to PC later this year. Puzzle platformer Fading Echo was revealed and features an all star voice cast. Retro RPG Sacrifire is coming to PC in Early 2026. Joe and Mac Retro Collection was announced, featuring all three original 90s minor cult classic action platformers. Gameplay was shown for Korean survival horror Ground Zero.
June 8th: Xbox Games Showcase: I cannot in good conscience engage in extensive coverage of Xbox marketing without first saying once again that Microsoft and Xbox extensively profit from the endless genocide committed by Israel against Palestine, including constant deliberate massacres of starving Palestinians funneled into traps to be shot at the few available food aid sites. Now Netanyahu is turning his violent gaze back to Iran and expanding the imperial warfare with impunity. The continued normalization of these horrors as background noise to our daily lives is erosion of the soul.
Though they don’t quite compare to genocide-profiteering, there are other things that add to Microsoft’s status as an ethical black hole, like engaging in many rounds of mass layoffs in only 18 months, with the latest reported to be a massive hit coming right after the end of their fiscal year with a focus on European departments, officially announced on July 2nd as over 9000 people fired across Microsoft, adding up to over 15,000 fired this year. This can’t only be considered within the context of Xbox, it’s within what’s happening to Microsoft as a whole where it’s making billions in profit right now despite near universally unpopular products thanks to its existing iron grip, while using said power for committing utter long term self destruction for itself and us all. Workers can’t actually be replaced by AI but the cultist true believers across the tech megacorp space, at Microsoft, Meta, Google, aren’t going to bail out from it quickly. These corporations and their leadership are gleefully nosediving into apocalyptic technologies, entering end-stage capitalism by actively and rapidly increasing the planet’s rate of destruction through the widespread use of AI technology and through facilitating the endless bombs dropped by America and Israel. I don’t believe in hell, but Satya Nadella and Phil Spencer belong there, objectively.
For Xbox, these layoffs are confirmed to include 200 people fired at Candy Crush’s King, over 800 people fired in Washington, Zenimax has been hit both in Europe and at its Maryland HQ, Blizzard has been hurt including almost everyone working on Warcraft Rumble, COD support team Raven has been hit, State of Decay 3 dev Undead Labs has been hit. Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 has lost over 70 people or almost 50% of its staff, reportedly killing the original Forza series in favor of becoming a support team for the more successful Forza Horizon. Rare has been hit including the cancelation of Everwild, which began development in 2014 and remained directionless for its very long gestation. Several Rare veterans have left the company after Everwild’s cancelation, most notably Gregg Mayles, who had worked there since the 80s.
A major project has been canceled for Zenimax and caused its entire team to be fired, a brand new MMORPG from the makers of Elder Scrolls Online and which had been in development for seven years. Both Schreier and Rebekah Valentine have since elaborated on the development of Zenimax Online’s Project Blackbird, which was apparently in very good condition. The CWA union has confirmed that unionized employees were lost in these mass layoffs and rightfully criticized Microsoft. Multiple other unannounced projects like Blackbird have been killed as well. Most shockingly, The Initiative has been completely closed and its Perfect Dark Reboot has been canceled after it spent the entire generation being publicly pushed as a major tentpole, including a well received gameplay trailer last year. The rollout of this news to those affected was also chaotic and abrupt.
Even a developer that is not Microsoft-owned whatsoever has been killed over this event: Microsoft was funding the next game at Romero Games from John and Brenda Romero, but has now completely pulled that funding, directly causing the studio to lay off over 100 people and be completely closed. And now, I reluctantly turn to the Xbox Showcase.
The presentation opened with Obsidian’s returning The Outer Worlds 2, announcing that it will launch on October 29th 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate. The trailer more clearly unveils the new story and status quo of the setting, going from unified Corporate Board rule in the first game to an all out years-long war between three main corporate factions. Also, a Giant Man style ability appears in the footage, which is neat, but the $80 pricepoint is less neat. The reveal trailer for Squanch Games’ Roiland-less High on Life 2 started off with skateboarding as a new traversal option, then showed off the game’s signature living/talking weapons, starting with the familiar and leading into several new ones like a flamethrower and bow/arrow. The game is coming Winter 2025 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate. Asobo offered a cinematic reveal trailer for a new prequel spinoff of their Plague Tale games, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, which will launch in 2026 and focus on the pirate supporting character Sophie in her fantastical Indiana Jones like escapades.
The leaked ROG Xbox Ally handheld gaming PC is officially shown off for the first time looking marginally less ugly than the leaked unfinished picture. The trailer confirms the most prominent part of the rumor, that the device supports non-Microsoft digital storefronts with Steam, Epic, GOG, and Ubisoft Connect all explicitly confirmed. The device is scheduled to launch in Holiday 2025 with both the aforementioned basic model and the enhanced ROG Xbox Ally X, both pretty straight conversions of the existing Asus ROG Ally models. The Verge’s Tom Warren reports that Xbox has canceled its plans for an internally developed Xbox handheld in favor of going all in on these partnered Xbox PCs. The trailer also heavily highlights Hollow Knight: Silksong as playable on the device at its launch, which some took to mean Silksong will launch alongside or have some sort of exclusivity, neither of which are true. Team Cherry explicitly reconfirmed that the game will release simultaneously for PC, Xbox, Switch/Switch 2, and PS4/5 “before this holiday.”
Before the segment was over, Sarah Bond led into the gameplay reveal trailer for vampire action RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker, coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X from publisher Bandai Namco and developer Rebel Wolves, which is led by Konrad Tomaszkiewicz who left CDPR after he was investigated for workplace bullying. Developer Team Meat unexpectedly revealed the next entry in their signature indie series: Super Meat Boy 3D, a fully 3D take on its signature hardcore platforming, scheduled to launch in Early 2026 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate. A second trailer for Ninja Gaiden 4 showed more story and gameplay and announced the October 21st 2025 launch date. Machine Games unveiled the promised paid expansion DLC for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, The Order of Giants coming September 4th 2025 to all platforms and returning to a new part of the base game’s Rome setting.
Pokémon creators Game Freak and publisher Fictions (the embattled Private Division rebranded under its new ownership) fully revealed what was first announced as Project Bloom in 2023 from Take Two’s iteration of Private Division: Beast of Reincarnation is a AAA Unreal 5 Soulslike action game set in post apocalyptic 4000s Japan, featuring a dog companion, scheduled to launch in 2026 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate, . A new trailer appeared for Bloober Team’s sci fi horror Cronos: The New Dawn. Elder Scrolls Online’s next season was announced to be its first sequel story to its original base game storyline, and feature its first full server wide battle event. Sister MMO Fallout 76 shadowdropped its new fishing-themed free major update Gone Fission. Don’t Nod revealed their next new game and Game Pass release Aphelion, a third person sci fi narrative adventure with a lot of climbing through snow and just a hint of alien creature.
Two third party announcements I had trouble processing were There Are No Ghosts at the Grand and Mudang: Two Hearts: both scheduled to launch in 2026, the former is a supernatural, spooky, musical-comedy take on sim games like Powerwash Simulator and House Flipper from developer Friday Sundae, and the latter is a Korean stealth action horror game from EVR Studio featuring a K-pop star.
The next two major first party announcements were the second trailer for inXile’s Clockwork Revolution, a five minute gameplay reveal with lots of details, and the very unexpected announcement of a third Obsidian game for this year, Grounded 2 which features a larger playground setting and rideable bugs, and launches in early access for PC and Xbox Series on July 29th. Clockwork Revolution is inXile’s first action RPG, featuring extensive weapon customization and gunplay, time control powers, and of course character creation and dialogue choices. It’s still only “coming in due time,” so…2027 or 2028. The next new Age of Mythology expansion was announced as Heavenly Spear coming in Fall 2025 to all platforms, featuring the new Japanese faction of samurai, yokai, and gods fighting across 12 new missions. Developer Wishfully and publisher Thunderful unexpectedly revealed a full sequel to their successful sci ficinematic platformer, Planet of Lana 2: Children of the Leaf, scheduled to launch in 2026 for PC, PS4/5, Switch, and Xbox One/Series/Game Pass Ultimate.
Netmarble announced a new edition of their action RPG based on the anime Solo Leveling, Solo Leveling: Arise Overdrive, bringing the game to PC in 2025 and Xbox Series S|X in 2026, now with 4 player co op. Pawprint Studio announced their 3D free to play Pokémon-alike Aniimo coming to PC and Xbox in 2026. Spiritfarer and 33 Immortals developer Thunder Lotus revealed their brand new game coming in 2026 to PC PS5 and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass, At Fate’s End, a gorgeously drawn sidescroller which combines the hubworlds and narrative/dialogue system of Spiritfarer with the intense action of Sundered and 33 Immortals. There’s also a brief giant-scale boss fight tease. Tony Hawk reintroduces Pro Skater 3+4 ahead of its imminent launch, shadowdropping a demo and showing playable Ninja Turtles and levels and the first footage of playable Doom Slayer on top of the previous Spongebob crossover level. A first actual trailer for Gears of War: Reloaded played next, providing little new info except that the strictly paywalled first multiplayer beta test would start a week later.
Sega and Atlus offered an astounding reveal teaser announcing Persona 4 Revival with no release window and only a split second of gameplay footage, accompanied by a social media statement essentially saying that this P4 Remake and Persona 6 are in simultaneous development and will get further updates in the future. It seems that despite the quick official announcement this remake has only been in development for a year after all, which was what was initially rumored last year. It was said to be greenlit off the success of P3 Reload’s February 2024 launch after that game spent four years in development, five counting the DLC, so even with asset reuse this baby could take a while. Sega later confirmed that it’s coming “in or after” fiscal year 2027, which is to say April 2026 at the very earliest and 2027 at the latest. P4 Revival is currently scheduled to release for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X including Day 1 Game Pass Ultimate. Rare announced that Season 17 of Sea of Thieves will release in August 2025 as the Smugglers’ Tide expansion, bringing new voyage missions based around cargo smuggling and a new dedicated character class/role for smuggling.
Robert Kirkman’s Skybound Entertainment announced its internally developed 3v3 fighting game Invincible V.S., fully voiced by the TV series adaptation’s cast of course, coming in 2026 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. After so many years of exclusivity, Square Enix did officially announce that Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade will launch on Xbox Series S|X in Winter 2025 alongside the already confirmed Switch 2 port, and Final Fantasy 16 was shadowdropped onto Xbox Series S|X right after the show. Double Fine reveals its first game since Psychonauts 2, a “story told without words” and 3D exploratory puzzle platformer where you play as a living lighthouse with spindly little spider-legs: Keeper, scheduled to launch on October 17th 2025 for PC and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate.
Phil Spencer shows up to wrap up and hype up the show as he does, before pointing to four first party blockbusters all coming in 2026: Fable 4, Gears of War: E-Day, Forza Horizon 6 which got its informal first announcement here, and “a returning classic that’s been with us since the beginning,” i.e., the rumored Halo 1 Remake arriving in time for its 25th anniversary. He then introduces the One More Thing before the Outer Worlds 2 Showcase: an excessively long, elaborate, and obtuse cinematic trailer starring Milo Ventimiglia as a returning character in a sci fi setting which eventually reveals itself to simply be Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, coming Holiday 2025 on PC, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series/Game Pass Ultimate. We have every reason to expect an $80 base retail price, but that’s not confirmed. The Switch 2’s general absence during Microsoft’s show has been confusing for many reasons but especially the famous COD contract Nintendo secured in 2023, prompting Ethan Gach to investigate and report back that “sources tell Kotaku that both Microsoft and Nintendo are still committed to getting the franchise on the latter’s hardware.”
My only comment is this: Black Ops 6 ran well enough on PS4, the Switch 2 is closer in power to Series S than the PS4, so the holdup can only be procedural. Devkit distribution has been funky, you have CD Projekt Red starting its port back in 2023 while Limited Run Games just* got its devkit in late May, so if Microsoft is one of these companies that only got devkits right before launch, that’s enough of an explanation even if it’s still arguably bad strategy on Nintendo’s part.
*On June 18th, a firmware update and a few individual game patches went out addressing some Switch 2 backwards compatibility issues, which included fixes for the majority of Limited Run’s Carbon Engine games, leaving only the just launched Gex Trilogy with problems on Switch 2. Gex Trilogy then received its fixpatch on the evening of June 24th.
PC Gaming Show: Highlights from the show include: Aspyr announced that its next remaster is the classic RPG Neverwinter Nights 2, its Enhanced Edition will release in July for PC/PS5/Switch/Xbox, the developer of Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley revealed a new Moomin game, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth coming in 2026, The Rogue Prince of Persia‘s 1.0 launch on PC was announced for August 2025 (it’s also already been rated for PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series), Edmund McMillen’s Mewgenics released a new trailer scheduling its launch for February 10th 2026, pushing it out of holiday 2025 mainly out of concern for competition, Gil Lawson’s abrasive and psychedelic FPS goblinAmerica announced it will launch in 2025 and it has a Steam demo out now, Game Awards standout and workplace comedy narrative adventure Dispatch announced its demo and recommitted to a 2025 release window, Messhof showcased the open world environments of Wheel World and announced that it will launch on July 23rd 2025, viral FMV indie game Blippo+ announced that it will launch this fall for PC and Switch, horror platformer Love Eternal is coming in late 2025, and Blumhouse Games revealed one of its next titles: Grave Seasons, a horror mystery farming sim coming in 2026 to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series.
June 9th: Late at night on Monday, SAG AFTRA’s voice and mocap actors officially announced a tentative agreement reached with game publishers. The strike was officially suspended on June 11th after nearly a year since it began. The union voted to approve the new contract on July 9th, days after this article had already published. Terms can be seen here.
Warner Bros Discovery officially announced its rumored plan to split only three years after the merger in order to offload its massive debt onto its less valued broadcast subsidiaries like Discovery, CNN, TNT Sports, and sadly Cartoon Network. The more advantageous other company will be WBD Streaming and Studios, containing WB Games, all movie studios, HBO Max, and streaming production studios, but still operated by the devil David Zaslav. This transition will complete in 2026. WB Games is also being reorganized into explicitly labeled and dedicated divisions to its “core IP” of DC Comics, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and the TERF one. And now it’s already been rumored that Sony wants to buy the entire Streaming and Studios division to shore up its movie, TV, and video game catalogs.
Among Us’ creators proudly celebrated the first anniversary of the successful Outersloth indie support initiative, announcing that it has funded 22 games so far across a variety of genres and budget sizes, and achieved a signing rate higher than the average game publisher. All games released so far after signing with Outersloth have received good critical reception.
June 10th: PlayStation’s Bend Studio was confirmed to have suffered major layoffs in the wake of their live service project getting canceled, with 40 people being newly fired and the studio being reduced by 30% as it heads into its next project, six years after its last fully new launch.
The long awaited launch of Leslie Benzies’ and Build a Rocket Boy’s game MindsEye has landed with a thud and a ton of controversy. The game sent out no review codes whatsoever, and it quickly became clear why when players saw its severely technically shoddy launch state and barebones open world/campaign, leading to mass refunds including on PS5, much like the infamous original launch of Cyberpunk 2077. The developer’s vision for a decade-long cycle of success driven by Roblox style user-generated content looks unlikely, and that already invited scrutiny after the studio’s chief legal officer exited right before launch. The other shoe dropped on June 23rd when mass layoffs began, with the entire 300 person core dev team based in the UK being alerted that they could be fired.
Exclusively through the Nintendo Today app, Nintendo made two major announcements for the Splatoon franchise: the very first Splatoon spinoff game will be the story-driven Switch 2 exclusive “adventure” Splatoon Raiders, following a custom player character, the Mechanic, accompanied by a robot companion and the Deep Cut band in the mysterious Spirhalite Islands. Plus, Splatoon 3 will receive patch 10.0 on June 12th to add Splatoon 1’s most iconic map, 30 new weapons, more compatible cross-play, and free upgrades to resolution and framerate for Switch 2 players. The hub and concert areas were changed from 30 to 60fps and overall gameplay runs mainly at native 4K60, which is awesome for what was already one of the better looking Switch games.
Later that night, Nintendo also officially announced launch sales figures for Nintendo Switch 2: the console had already sold over 3.5 million units in its first four days of sale, becoming the biggest global console launch ever by beating the PS5’s record of 2.5 million in its first two weeks, breaking both the US and Japan’s own records by selling over a million consoles in each country.
Embracer Group announced that Lars Wingefors, the man who led the failed Saudi deal and subsequent culling, will be replaced as its CEO by Eidos CEO Phil Rogers as of August 1st 2025, while Wingefors pivots to a board chair position.
As reported last month by Mark Gurman, Apple announced the dedicated Apple Games app coming later this year with iOS26 and featuring Apple Arcade, leaderboards, achievements, and more.
June 11th: AI image generator company Midjourney was decisively sued for copyright infringement in a joint suit by Disney and Universal that has assuredly been in the works for some time.
Jason Schreier published his inevitable and complete post-mortem on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, speaking to almost two dozen team members and former Bioware employees to paint a complete picture of just how devastatingly bad the odds were stacked against the team that shipped the final product. To start, we’ll look at David Gaider’s outside comments first, in which we learned that the early cancelation of DA4 1.0, Project Joplin, and ensuing live service reboot was less motivated by a desire for an extra live service project in 2017 and was actually an excuse to shrink the DA4 team and reassign them to the live service they were already pouring money into, the now infamous 2019 game Anthem. Now back to Schreier’s article: art director Matt Goldman took over as creative director for the live service iteration of Dragon Age 4 and led the game into a far more lighthearted tone that lingered into the version that ultimately launched and was one main source for its controversy. The biggest problem The Veilguard ultimately faced was that even though EA agreed to drop the live service elements, it only did so along with a strict deadline, a stricter budget, and a mandate to “aim for as wide a market as possible.”
The game basically needed another full reboot but it didn’t have the time or budget for that, this resulted in The Veilguard being unable to fully shed everything it inherited from the live service version of the game, which limited its ability do what fans expect out of Dragon Age. The Matt Goldman tone, the narratively simple combat focused missions, the lack of major narrative-altering choices, the lack of continuity with the previous games, everything that ultimately got criticized at launch was there and could only be mitigated so much. The alpha that was submitted for review at the end of 2022 led to a team of Mass Effect veterans being brought in to take over in 2023, which helped make some needed imrprovements but also reignited the tensions between the Mass Effect and Dragon Age teams over the favoritism that David Gaider has also talked about. The Mass Effect leads excluded the DA leads from meetings and were given permissions by executives to do things that the DA leads were told were too expensive and difficult, like revamping the entire climax of the game into a riff on Mass Effect 2’s Suicide Mission, which became one of the most widely acclaimed elements of the game post-launch.
These newest revelations of mismanagement before the recent gutting of Bioware have now been punctuated by the tasteless announcement of Mass Effect cosmetics coming to Battlefield, the overdue announcement of Anthem being fully sunset, and two more notable developments. 1. Stephen Totilo’s reported on the widening gap between compensation for EA’s CEO and for its ground level employees, which you simply have to see for yourself, by whatever means available. EA’s median income for full time employees dropped from $149,000 in 2023 to $117,000 in 2024 thanks to the firing of numerous senior workers, while CEO Andrew Wilson got a $5 million raise to a total of $30.5 million for the previous fiscal year. Totilo made a truly incredible large-scale chart to emphasize the problem here, which you can only see via Game File or in this BlueSky video.
2. Samuel Axion reported for Ars Technica on the state of the upcoming Battlefield sequel, which is currently in playtesting and scheduled to be fully revealed and launched by the end of March 2026. The previous entries Battlefield V and 2042 both floundered, leaving EA desperate to revitalize the shooter against competition like COD and Fortnite, bringing a huge horde of support teams a la COD and planning to reach a target of 100 million players in its first years of post-launch support, a milestone very few games can ever hope to accomplish. The budget and scope of the game has ballooned to back up its ambitious audience hopes, costing nearly $500 million to produce in order to offer a free battle royale mode, a six hour blockbuster campaign mode, traditional multiplayer match offerings, another FTP mode, and the UGC mode, all at launch.
Except that major campaign mode’s development imploded in 2024, forcing a full reboot that had still failed to reach alpha benchmark in June 2025. The game’s developmental difficulties and EA’s famously strict deadlines leave it very likely to launch unfinished, one of the biggest problems that cause new live services to stumble. Said issues are also causing record levels of employee burnout for what is already a demanding and difficult company. It’s all perfectly emblematic of the desperately unsustainable games industry as a whole.
June 12th: Dong Cao and Haze Fan reported for Bloomberg that Chinese gaming giant Tencent is exploring an acquisition of Korean games publisher Nexon on top of its recent massive investments in Ubisoft and Kadokawa, negotiating a buyout with the family that owns Nexon. Nexon is best known for Dave the Diver, MapleStory, and live service shooter The First Descendant. As of June 18th, Tencent has now officially denied this rumor.
The Chinese Room announced and released a paid story DLC for horror game Still Wakes the Deep, and also fired about 10 employees.
The Minecraft Vibrant Visuals was announced to be releasing June 17th 2025 for Bedrock Edition on PC, Xbox One and Series S|X, and PS4/5, eight years after a different major graphical upgrade for Minecraft was originally announced for last gen’s Pro consoles. The Chase the Skies Update releasing at the same time will reach all platforms including Switch 1. Minecraft will likely need a native Switch 2 upgrade to bring Vibrant Visuals to Nintendo audiences, based on the troubled state of Minecraft on Switch and in current BC on Switch 2.
June 16th: Preorders opening for Borderlands 4 confirmed that the game will base retail for $70, after all the hilarity from Randy Pitchford saying stupid shit about the prospect of the game being $80. Post-launch support is confirmed to include four major expansion packs and two smaller story DLCs introducing extra player characters, and some free content.
The creator and operator of number one game mods site Nexus Mods has sold it to an unknown buyer 24 years after it was first created, due to the physical and mental strain of managing it in its far bigger modern state. Current information about the likely new owners of Nexus is not encouraging.
June 17th: Shortly after pulling the plug on marketing, Bungie and PlayStation officially announced that their embattled extraction shooter live service Marathon has been indefinitely delayed from its previous September 23rd 2025 release date. Marathon is still targeting this fiscal year for launch and currently has its new release date announcement scheduled for Fall 2025, so Early 2026 is the most likely even if it’s almost definitely not enough time to salvage this disaster.
The Unseen Update was released for Hades 2, marking its final major content patch before the patch that brings it to 1.0 launch later this year for PC and cross-gen Switches.
Microsoft and Xbox made their first official informal announcement about the next-gen Xbox hardware, partnering with AMD for the third time in a row for a “platform not tied to a single store or device” and a “hardware lineup across console, handheld, PC, cloud, and accessories,”promising to further integrate Windows software and outside digital storefronts, and to maintain the existing backwards compatibility catalogue covering select Xbox/360 games and all One/Series games. This start of marketing makes it look more and more likely that this hardware is coming sooner than later, 2026 or 2027, after Xbox Series S|X became the least successful for hardware sales since the first Xbox. And nothing here really contradicts recent reporting that Xbox is fully pivoting to PC style hardware and software, especially amid rumors that said “backwards compatibility” will be mainly achieved using pre-existing emulators.
June 18th: Ubisoft Halifax filed to unionize with the Canadian division of the Communication Workers of America; this is a Ubisoft subsidiary which works on mobile games in core franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six.
Donkey Kong Bananza Direct: The presentation opens with a big reveal that became an open secret thanks to Nintendo of Korea posting an image too early right after the April Direct. DK’s previously seen sidekick Odd Rock is actually a younger version of Pauline, the iconic singer and mayor of New Donk City, now a lost, scared child who needs to find her way home. Nintendo’s inevitable riff on sad dad games has arrived, and it features shapeshifting, de-aging or time travel, and other craziness. DK stealing his bananas back from VoidCo is secondary to rescuing Pauline by delving deeper underground and bringing her to the planet core before VoidCo can harvest it. Also, during new hands-on previews that were published on July 1st, Nintendo finally officially confirmed to journos like Andy Robinson and Stephen Totilo that Bananza is made by “the team from Super Mario Odyssey.”
Pauline’s magical singing can guide the player to treasure and provide DK with powerful temporary transformations which provide super strength, super speed, and flight, and can be hot-swapped/actively chained into each other for more complex maneuvers, a huge improvement over Mario’s binary Captures. Progression is achieved both by sandbox exploration and completing standalone challenge levels, acquiring Banandium which DK eats to gain Skill Points, upgrading health and strength, adding extra abilities, etc. The game has more and more visible shared DNA with Super Mario Odyssey: Pauline is playable in a limited 2 person co op feature (which can be GameShared to both Switch 2 and Switch 1), there’s a shop to buy lots of new costumes for both DK and Pauline to wear, which now have different active gameplay effects. There’s a photo mode, a dedicated music player, a new amiibo, and most uniquely, a DK Artist mouse control minigame. There’s some kind of racing mode featuring Diddy and Dixie, some brief glimpses of New Donk City, and lots of deep cut references back through DK’s history.
In another major blow to the state of PSVR, Beat Games announced that they are ending support for Beat Saber on PSVR and PSVR2, one of the only true hits on the struggling hardware. New content will only come to PC and Meta Quest, and multiplayer on PSVR/2 will end in January 2026.
June 20th: Jay Tholen, the creator of Hypnospace Outlaw, announced on social media that its sequel Dreamsettler has sadly been canceled due to developmental difficulties and running out of funding. To paraphrase Tholen, the game was too ambitious for its own good, spending five years of development without getting close to the finish line. Money that had recently been gained from Patreon will be returned and two members of the Tendershoot team will be looking for new work.
A different major indie creator canceled their project as well, but this one thankfully didn’t result in layoffs: Adam Robinson-Yu, the maker of A Short Hike, announced he won’t be continuing with his Paper Mario tribute “Untitled Paper RPG” after losing motivation, but he released a free demo for the public to play what got finished. He announced the game all the way back in 2016, well before A Short Hike’s 2019 launch, in response to Paper Mario: Color Splash.
FuturLab released the gameplay reveal trailer of Powerwash Simulator 2, showing brand new features, from ways to navigate the mess like climbing harnesses and scissor lifts, a new cleaning tool, a customizable hub with pet cats, and “multi-stage jobs” where new dirty areas appear in the middle of the process.
The same Sega earnings release which gave those aforementioned release windows for Persona 4 Revival and Stranger Than Heaven, has also leaked lots of updated sales data that the publisher tried and failed to redact. As of the end of March 2025, Like a Dragon 8 has sold over 1.6 million copies, Like a Dragon 7 has sold almost 3 million, Persona 3 Reload and Metaphor ReFantazio have sold over 2 million, Sonic Frontiers sold over 4.5 million and Sonic Superstars sold 2.4 million, Persona 5 Royal across all ports has sold 7.25 million, and Shin Megami Tensei 5, original and Vengeance combined, sold 2.11 million.
June 23rd: Riot Games has once again canceled a major game and gutted the subsidiary behind it, announcing that the sandbox RPG Hytale and developer Hypixel Studios are both completely no more after the game was first announced in 2018.
June 24th: Little Nightmares Showcase: Bandai Namco offered three major announcements for the Little Nightmares series in this dedicated presentation, most notably that Little Nightmares 3 by Supermassive Games will launch October 10th 2025 for PC, Switch and Switch 2, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series. A new current-gen optimized remaster of the original Little Nightmares, Little Nightmares Enhanced Edition coming to PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series, will launch on October 10th as well and is available with the new game as a preorder bonus. And a new VR spinoff game, Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echoes, was announced with a vague teaser.
Nintendo continued its string of Nintendo Today announcements by confirming the release date of small digital-only online multiplayer title Drag X Drive as August 14th 2025. I also want to assert, while Nintendo continues to drag its feet, how many more big third party ports for Switch 2 are heavily supported by ratings boards and other sources but have yet to be announced: Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, Digimon Story: Time Stranger, Assassins‘ Creed Shadows, Red Dead Redemption 2, and more.
Saber Interactive/3D Realms and developer Anshar Studios announced that their new Painkiller game will launch October 9th 2025.
June 25th: Xbox and Ninja Theory announced that Hellblade 2 will launch for PS5 on August 12th 2025, and detailed the free Enhanced update which will arrive for the game’s previous platforms on the same day. The Enhanced update includes a 60fps performance mode for all consoles except Series S, developer commentary, the new Dark Rot mode where the game fully restarts from the beginning after enough deaths, upgrades to photo mode, and a Very High graphics preset for new high-end PCs. The game’s $70 digital deluxe edition on PS5 also includes a new PS5-optimized version of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which is also available as a free upgrade for existing PS4 owners.
Ark developers Studio Wildcard have finally directly acknowledged the state of Ark 2 after it was first announced five years ago with almost no updates since, saying that it’s been effectively on hiatus after a vertical slice was finished in 2023, prioritizing the Ark 1 Remake instead because it’s less complex. The studio intends to start shifting the bulk of the team and money on Survival Ascended back to Ark 2, but the soonest an early access version of the game could be ready by now is 2027.
June 26th: Riot Games announced that it is bringing sports gambling companies in as official sponsors for League and Valorant esports teams, claiming that this is financially necessary and that it will be implemented “with “”responsibly” with “guardrails.” With formal endorsement of gambling comes coercive marketing to push gambling onto audiences, this is a fundamentally corrosive and exploitative decision and I fear the further expansion of gambling in video games after this and the mainstream proliferation of gacha games.
Don’t Nod fired an unknown “not-insignificant” number of employees after layoffs last year.
Nicole Carpenter reported for Aftermath that a mobile developer has used stolen assets and made a heavily microtransacted and whitewashed ripoff of last year’s Venba.
Sex predator Chris Avellone and Quantic Dream writer (enough said) Adam Williams announced that they’re collaborating on a “golden age” dark fantasy RPG at a new studio backed by PUBG owners Krafton.
Super Mario Strikers for Gamecube was announced to be hitting NSO Expansion Pack on July 3rd.
Arc System Works Showcase: Multiple games were announced in this event from the makers of Guilty Gear Strive, but they didn’t discuss Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls since that’s exclusively under Sony marketing. The first reveal was Dear Me, I was…, a Switch 2 exclusive adventure game coming in Summer 2025 developed by the same team as Another Code Recollection, and which I covered extensively last roundup because it leaked in the ArcSys hack. Double Dragon Revive had a Switch port newly confirmed for its October launch. ArcSys announced that it will be publishing the RPG Demon’s Night Fever in 2026 for the new Japanese indie dev SuperNiche. Lastly, ArcSys chief creative officer Daisuke Ishiwatari revealed his next project as Damon and Baby, an isometric action game about a demon and child traveling together, and an effort for him and the company to branch out from fighting games and keep creating new IP.
June 27th: Mintrocket and Nexon observed the second anniversary of Dave the Diver’s launch with several announcements: a free Switch 2 upgrade is coming ‘soon’, the Dave the Diver in the Jungle DLC has been delayed from Holiday 2025 to Early 2026, and two licensed DLCs have been renewed and extended in availability, with the Godzilla DLC returning and remaining available through the end of 2026, and the Like a Dragon Ichiban’s Holiday DLC will also remain available through December 31st 2026 instead of October 2025.
Summerfall pushed through its failed Kickstarter and released deckbuilder RPG Malys in Early Access on June 25th, planning a 1.0 launch by the end of the year, and you can read more about it here.
June 30th: Halo Studios suggested in a new blog post that the franchise’s next major announcement will take place on October 24th 2025 during the Halo World Championship in Seattle. This is expected to be a Halo 1 Remake in Unreal 5.
July 1st: Unity senior employee Rod Stafford has been convicted for dozens of monstrous sexual offenses and sentenced to 22 years in prison in the UK. He was still employed at Unity as recently as April 2025 when the trial began, had been sent as Unity’s public representative to multiple events, and was hired after he had already been found guilty of sexual abuse in 2002.
Krafton has unexpectedly and without any official reason removed all three leaders of Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds and replaced them with Steve Papoutsis as CEO, who already runs Striking Distance and will now also oversee the production of Subnautica 2.
Take-Two and Visual Concepts made good on their previous commitment in the April Direct, announcing that this year’s WWE2K25 will launch for Switch 2 on July 23rd, four months after its initial release, featuring the current gen exclusive online sandbox Island mode. Both EA Sports and NBA2K have also teased bringing back their respective College Basketball games.
A new report by Luke Addison reveals that People Can Fly and Square Enix’s recently canceled Project Gemini was in fact Outriders 2, a sequel to the 2021 live service loot shooter, and it was nearly finished before Square abruptly pulled out of the project this year.
July 2nd: In a major and relatively positive development for games journalism, G/O Media has sold Kotaku off to Keleops, the company which also bought Gizmodo from G/O the year before. No staff have been fired, the union is not affected, and new hires are planned, and those connected to Kotaku are optimistic for it to not be trapped under private equity and the douchebag Jim Spanfeller any longer. This comes off the heels of Paste magazine also relaunching its games division as the expanded Endless Mode, which has hired Maddy Myers among others.
LOTR: Return to Moria developer Free Range Games canceled an unannounced project and fired its entire 80 person development team after four years of development, due to the game’s publisher pulling funding.
The trial of former Ubisoft executives has now concluded with all three being convicted and sentenced to suspended prison sentences ranging from 1 to 3 years and fines ranging from €10,000 to €30,000.
Bandai Namco announced the brand new 3D arena fighting game My Hero Academia: All’s Justice for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, adapting the anime series’ final arc.
July 3rd: A Polish business outlet reports that Dying Light developer Techland has just taken losses equal to almost $40 million after canceling two projects. It’s unclear as of yet which games have been canceled and which are continuing, but Techland was known to be developing multiple new Dying Light entries and a new IP, a dark fantasy open world action RPG.
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