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!
July 2nd: Installment pay provider Affirm announced that it had partnered with Xsolla to start providing buy now pay later plans on large in-game purchases, which would include interest on your microtransaction debt. I’m genuinely not in the position at the exact moment to dissect just how horrific this is.
July 7th: Romero Games released an unexpected update after canceling its Xbox-funded game project, revealing that the studio has not already closed down and is shopping with other publishers for funding to keep them alive and continue the game’s development after all.
Imran Khan announced that he is joining Restart, that game press site announced last December that’s owned by a marketing company and sponsored by Walmart.
In another new Square Enix Collective in all but name announcement, the publisher has partnered with Danish indie dev BetaDwarf to fund and support their action RPG Vaultbreakers, which was announced in January 2025.
July 8th: Outsourcing support studio Testronic was revealed by its employees at Secret 6 Madrid to be closing the Spanish subsidiary office and firing all 42 employees at the end of July. Workers accuse their parent company of massively violating their labor rights and intentionally setting them up for failure by firing their CEO and never replacing them, ignoring communications, and neglecting to provide more partners after acquiring the company in 2022 when it had preexisting partnerships on such major releases as Last of Us 2 Remastered, Diablo 4, and Kill the Justice League. Secret 6 Madrid says that Testronic wants to save money through exploitation by prioritizing its Manila office over the Madrid office, saying Secret 6 Manila has lower wages and worse working conditions. Workers then threatened to go on strike, which helped them secure satisfactory severance terms from Testronic in time for the closure on July 31st.
Ubisoft announced that it has fired 19 employees at the Red Storm subsidiary, which is currently focused on support development for VR games and Tom Clancy games.
July 9th: The other shoe dropped after the sudden ousting of Subnautica’s three cocreators, Subnautica 2 was officially delayed to 2026 by its publisher Krafton, which normally wouldn’t be that shocking on its own but it is with the other context we’ve now learned. One of those three co-creators, Subnautica 1 director Charlie Cleveland, spoke out to insist that the game is already fully ready for an early access release this year and that they were fired so that Krafton could take over and delay the game. Why delay a game that doesn’t need it? Because the Subnautica developer’s contract from its acquisition poised them to earn a bonus payout of $250 million based on Subnautica 2 making enough revenue by the end of 2025. Without a major release, Unknown World has almost no chance to secure a bonus it was otherwise likely to receive, and Krafton wanted to renege on this compensation to its workers.
Krafton soon fired back with a bizarre post on the main page of its website which directly criticizes Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, essentially saying they committed dereliction of game development duties and did not deserve the vast majority of the $250 million bonus they were set to receive. Jason Schreier was able to confirm that the contract was officially a 90/10 split where $225 million goes to the three co-creators and the other $25 million is divided amongst about 40 other staff, which adds up to a six figure bonus for each of the other employees. Those bonuses would have already made a huge difference to these workers.
On July 13th, the trio officially filed a massive lawsuit against Krafton, after Schreier first reported that they would three days earlier, accusing the publisher of a months-long campaign of sabotage and contract breaches in order to ultimately delay the game and avoid the large payout to the developer. Krafton is accused of intentionally withholding funding and support from marketing to localization in order to hamper development and force the 2026 delay. One employee outside the trio even accuses Krafton of instructing support employees like them to completely stop work on Subnautica 2 and stop communications with Unknown Worlds.
Krafton has resorted to other extreme public tactics in the wake of the lawsuit, seemingly leaking its own Subnautica 2 documents to fuel its narratives and definitely planting an interview with the replacement CEO of Unknown Worlds for right when the lawsuit went public. One accusation by the megacorp against the trio that does hold water is that Charlie Cleveland is more interested in making movies than continuing to be a game director, something which he has extensively documented on his podcast and his website full of AI-generated movie posters.
In other news, GSC Game World officially announced that Stalker 2 will launch for PS5 later this year.
July 10th: While the new agreement was first covered in my last roundup, SAG-AFTRA didn’t actually ratify the new video game voice actor/mocap contract until this date, after the roundup had already published.
The dedicated State of Play presentation for Ghost of Yotei had a lot of important info from the sequel: Rather than continue to hone in on swordfighting and stances, or the sword and gun dual wield seen in the reveal trailer, this game features a much larger arsenal of weapons to alternate and combine at leisure. Teammates can be acquired alongside the constant wolf companion, custom cosmetics are available, and now Miike Mode and Watanabe Mode have been added alongside Kurosawa Mode.
Lead developers for Donkey Kong Bananza appeared in new interviews with several major publications from IGN to Rolling Stone, followed by the official Nintendo Ask the Developer articles published on July 15th. These interviews uncovered many major behind the scenes details about the game, such as confirming that the new redesigns for Donkey Kong and other Kongs came from this project first and were passed onto the new Mario movies, not the other way around. A game all about the destruction mechanic was being concepted separately from the 3D DK project before they became one and the same, and the destruction game was originally prototyped with a Goomba that had magic fists. DK was always going to have a companion character and Pauline was in mind at that time, but her specific implementation was inspired first by the composer’s first draft of theme music for the Zebra Bananza transformation. The music was so popular that it made the team want to make music a main theme of the game and see that as Pauline’s way into the game design.
Most notably: like Mario Kart World, Bananza has been in some stage of development since 2017 after Super Mario Odyssey went gold, where the game’s inception was quite simply that executive officer Yoshiaki Koizumi asked the EPD8 division to make a new 3D Donkey Kong game in service of pushing the DK franchise forward. The game started with the original Switch in mind but in transitioning to Switch 2 it was able to use entirely new mechanics impossible on the Switch 1 including making absolutely everything destructible, along with far denser graphics and 60fps performance instead of 30fps.
A new team within EPD8 has been formed to be dedicated to the DK series, both its 2D and 3D games, in order to ensure that the series remains active without the hiatuses it suffered from both Rare and later Retro Studios moving on from it. This team shares much of its personnel with the other EPD8 team, the 3D Mario team, including some but not all of its leads, so these teams can work on separate projects at the same time but not necessarily both be at full scale AAA production simultaneously. So we can expect that the next 3D Mario is actively mid development and not starting, but it’s not necessarily almost finished already either, so perhaps a mid-generation game.
As discussed in The Future of Nintendo Switch 2, the way Nintendo’s internal Entertainment Planning & Development, or EPD, teams work is that you have sets of core team leads who near-exclusively work on their designated series, Mario platformers/Mario Maker, Zelda, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Pikmin, and more, and all of these teams share a massive pool of ground level development personnel who don’t stay in one division, they go where they’re most needed at a given time. DK and Mario Kart’s teams have been scaling back down and other AAA EPD projects like Animal Crossing are being prioritized now by the main group of developers.
On the same day, the FBI seized and shut down one of the major websites for Switch game piracy.
Inti Creates, the Japanese indie team behind Mega Man Zero, Blaster Master Zero, Gunvolt, and Bloodstained’s Curse of the Moon spinoffs, have fully revealed their brand new major game celebrating their 30th anniversary. Majogami is a 2D action platformer with a papercraft artystyle, scheduled to launch for Switch and Switch 2 on October 30th 2025.
Developer Gust and publisher Koei Tecmo announced that they’re rereleasing the Atelier Ryza games as Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe for PC and cross-gen Switches and PlayStations later this year, featuring new story content and performance upgrades on PS5 and Switch 2.
July 11th: Jason Schreier interviewed Kazutaka Kodaka for Bloomberg, where he confirmed that The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy has sold well enough since its April launch to end bankruptcy risk for Too Kyo Games after the studio took out loans to pay for the game’s five years of development. Kodaka also hopes to produce story DLC for the game in the future, adding to its many unique routes and 100 endings.
Nintendo announced that it is ending Game Voucher service on January 30th 2026, with any discount vouchers purchased by then being still good to use for 12 months into 2027, but can still only be used for Switch 1 games, not Switch 2 exclusives or editions. It’s another unfortunate blow to the already limited discount options for the Switch ecosystem.
July 13th: Square Enix is rumored to be releasing a Dragon Quest 7 Remake in 2026 to followup the 1 through 3 Remakes.
July 14th: A new report at MobileGamer.biz has seemingly confirmed something we all were already suspecting based on broader trends at Microsoft right now: that workers who were just laid off, in this case employees of Candy Crush maker King, were required to help build and train LLM AI-generation tools that are now being used to replace them. Anonymous sources who were fired by King say that most of their level design and copywriting teams were specifically targeted for these AI substitutions.
Mike Straw reported for Insider Gaming that ArcSystem Works has just canceled the sequel to Guilty Gear Strive and taken the fighting games’ longer term future “back to the drawing board.”
July 15th: With no proper advance announcement, Valve quietly updated its “What shouldn’t be published on Steam” guidelines, adding a new rule for “certain kinds of adult content” based on the “standards set forth by payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers,” which immediately caused the delisting of hundreds of porn games. Valve confirmed to PC Gamer that Visa and Mastercard caused this policy by threatening to withhold support for transactions, which could financially cripple virtually any company, even something as big as Valve. These companies leverage their position as a virtual monopoly into acts of financial censorship like this, previously targeting Patreon, Pornhub, OnlyFans, Paypal, and more, which was in turn exacerbated by congressional law like FOSTA-SESTA that was passed under the first Trump administration in 2018 and the UK’s more recent Online Safety Act. In no remotely
We can’t allow the fact that our crowd here generally don’t play these games or like the content in some of them to get in the way of the real problems here. All art of all kinds deserve to be protected from reactionary lobbying and corporate censorship, and if you don’t believe that, at least acknowledge the fact that so much else does get swept away under new strict rules, tons of great art including classic games like Silent Hill 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3.These edge case wedge issues are designed to be easy to collectively ignore at first to allow their reach to quietly creep further and further, affect all sexual content regardless of merit and all queer content regardless of sexuality, until we get to where we are now, at the culmination of a long term agenda where the government has publicly available plans to use anti-porn law to make being queer and trans illegal again.
Shortly after Steam’s actions and similarly with no warning whatsoever, Itch.io unfortunately joined Steam with an even more immediately extreme assault on sex and queerness in games by completely shadowbanning/deindexing all games with NSFW, adult, or erotic tags from being found at all through searching or browsing, cutting off support for more than 7000 games and completely delisting many as well, including completely safe for work queer and trans games. A few days later Itch.io then published new “non-exhaustive” adult content guidelines which completely ban adult themes and topics entirely whether they’re for kinky porn or serious art about serious subjects.
Itch.io comprehensively addressed concerns about as well it could in a post on July 28th, explaining how the its vulnerability and the very UGC-oriented nature of its platform forced it into more immediately extreme measures than Steam, how some preexisting policies have been taken out of context in the fervor, and agreeing that the adult content policy as written just doesn’t work. Furthermore, on July 31st, Itch.io restored all free NSFW content and confirmed that it would begin re-adding as many premium NSFW games as possible after adding new content warnings, seeking compromise from existing payment processors, and seeking new partners that will be more friendly to NSFW content. Itch is a small business that wants to keep being a safe haven for fringe gaming art, it has been backed into a corner by corporate corruption and bigoted campaigners and that’s why when I’ve spoken about this issue elsewhere, I’ve focused on speaking to the arms of financial power, the banks and payment processors.
Valve offered a new statement as well to confirm how the pay companies have acted:
To make matters even worse, the zombie Waypoint over at Vice was punished for doing actual good games journalism when Ana Valens did an extensive exposé about Collective Shout, the small group of Australian reactionary activists with powerful connections who successfully campaigned the pay processors to lay pressure onto Steam and Itch for these awful policy changes. Valens’ article was published on July 19th and Vice deleted the article a day later, prompting Valens, managing editor Dwayne Jenkins, and most of the other writers to push back and all ultimately leave the company over this incident. Waypoint was gutted once more as soon as possible after doing its job.
In other news, Roblox Corp announced that it was adding a new IP licensing platform to the game and partnering with companies like Netflix, Lionsgate, and Sega, who all plan to make Roblox spinoffs of their franchises from Squid Game to Like a Dragon.
Two years after initially launching the game on PC, the Szymanski brothers and publisher DreadXP announced that their hit indie horror game My Friendly Neighborhood will be releasing for PS4/PS5 and Xbox One/Series S|X/Game Pass on July 17th.
July 16th: The major contractor studio Virtuos, which most recently developed the Oblivion Remastered, Metal Gear Solid Delta, and the new Cyberpunk patch, was reported to be firing 270 employees out of its massive 4200 international staff, with the affected workers being mostly based in China and some in Europe. Oblivion Remastered is one of the year’s biggest sellers. French reporter Gauthier Andres was the first source for this story before Virtuos confirmed it a day later.
While releasing another trailer for Sonic Racing Crossworlds, Sega also provided new details on the Switch and Switch 2 versions of the game, most notably confirming that the publisher is changing its two main controversial policies for Switch 2 releases. There will be a $10 digital upgrade pack, and the game will not use a game-key card, the entire base game will be on cartridge for Switch 2 when it releases a few months after the game’s main launch.
Last year’s surprise final patch for Cyberpunk 2077 patch was, in fact, still not the game’s last patch, as CD Projekt Red unveiled Patch 2.3 and immediately released it for PC, PS5, Xbox Series, and Switch 2. Patch 2.3 was outsourced to Virtuos as I mentioned above, and it features new quests, new vehicles and vehicle services, new technical features like VRR support on consoles, and more. Posts from Virtuos on LinkedIn had leaked the existence of this new update in advance.
Nintendo officially announced the young lead actors for the 2027 live action Legend of Zelda movie, saying that Benjamin Evan Ainsworth will play Link and Bo Bragason will play Zelda.
July 17th: Tetris Effect developer Q-Games made announcements for its more experimental of two games coming this year, with creation shooter Dreams of Another launching for PC and PS5/PSVR2 on October 10th 2025. A brand new PS5 port of Pixeljunk Eden 2 will be bundled into the premium access special edition of Dreams of Another, as part of the game coming to PS4, PS5, and PC for the first time after originally launching for Switch in late 2020.
It was reported for MP1st.com that a multiplat Fromsoft game separate from Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods is scheduled to launch by the end of 2026, continuing the studio’s incredibly prolific reputation. If this is real, perhaps it could be an Armored Core addition, that could make sense as a separate dev branch.
Nintendo announced that throughout late July and early August it will host a larger second online playtest for the unannounced game Project Rockstock, a Minecraft esque MMO, after the first playtest last year. The new playtest started on July 28th and had many new features added from its first build, including native 4K support on Switch 2.
July 18th: IGN’s union announced that its parent company Ziff Davis is continuing to stonewall efforts to add other departments to the union, most notably including Humble Bundle.
Composer and sound designer Peter Connelly has been sentenced in the UK to 16 months in prison for Covid loan fraud. He exclusively worked on music and audio for video games, most recently Dead Island 2, and most notably Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, where he introduced full live orchestras to the Tomb Raider series.
Microsoft abruptly ended support for digital TV and movies on its Xbox platforms, 12 years after infamously pitching the Xbox One as more of a multimedia device than a game machine. Only previously acquired purchases will still be watchable.
July 20th: Game studio The Chinese Room has gone completely self-owned and independent after management bought it out from previous owner Sumo Digital. Two new IPs are in production at the developer alongside the long gestating Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which is currently in its polish phase and targeting an October launch. Sumo was planning to make The Chinese Room exclusively into a support team for partners as part of a total initiative to abandon internal games.
July 21st: After being first shown during Summer Game Fest, GameMill announced that its ugly Diablo-like Nicktoons and the Dice of Destiny will release September 30th 2025 for all platforms.
Moon Studio’s Thomas Mahler, who let’s never forget is an abysmal reactionary asshole, has detailed console release plans for No Rest for the Wicked. The game’s 1.0 version is planned to ultimately hit all three current-gen console platforms, but most likely not all at the same time due to market conditions. PS5 is the top priority and Xbox will come last due to their respective install bases.
July 22nd: Continued poor performance for Splitgate 2 after its June launch and “Make FPS Great Again” controversy has led to 1047 Games announcing costcutting measures and a plan to stop updating Splitgate 2 and relaunch the game in 2026 after an extended period of overhaul development. The costcutting entails completely killing servers for the original Splitgate and firing more workers after previously laying some off in June. All of this was announced by Ian Proulx, the same guy who wore that idiotic hat at SGF and who should probably at least be taking a paycut right now. The bungled marketing stunt didn’t help, but the game’s biggest issues are its microtransactions, missing content, and design changes from the successful predecessor based on live service trends, all typical live service issues.
British horror developer Supermassive announced that it was firing around 36 workers and delaying the game Directive 8020 from October 2025 to H1 2026. This is the studio’s second round of layoffs in two years.
Ex-Embracer conglomerate Saber Interactive and Evil Dead dev Boss Team Games have announced their next major game, another licensed title but one that escapes the asymmetric multiplayer trend unlike Evil Dead: Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is a single player story driven first person survival horror game based on the kinky classic, starring Doug Bradley himself as Pinhead and beloved indie developer Xalavier Nelson Jr (I Am Your Beast/El Paso, Elsewhere) as the player character Aidan trying to escape Hell. The game is confirmed to be coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X in the future, and its debut trailer actually has two versions, with the red band cut available only on the game’s website.
Ubisoft conducted its annual main shareholders meeting and its quarterly earnings call this month, making several notable comments related to the new Tencent division, including informal game announcements, in the midst of fielding confrontations from two separate protester shareholders, an “anti-woke” reactionary and a supporter of the Stop Killing Games movement. Yves Guillemot announced that the Tencent subsidiary will be operated by co-CEOs Charlie Guillemot (Yves’ son) and Christophe Derennes, who was previously an executive at Ubi Montreal, the publisher’s single biggest developer. The Guillemot family remains entrenched in power at this company no matter how badly they manage it.
Yves also offhandedly and repeatedly referred to Ghost Recon as an upcoming game that Tencent’s money is going towards, six years after the series having two consecutive failed entries in Wildlands and Breakpoint. Ubisoft also unexpectedly announced another major update for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora to release in December, two years after its failed launch and in time for the premiere of Avatar 3: Fire and Ash. The update features New Game+ mode and third person mode. In the later meeting, he said that they have unannounced games still to come for this year, including a Switch 2 release, and that Assassins’ Creed Shadows is coming to “other machines” soon. As Ubisoft touts the upcoming Switch 2 port of Star Wars Outlaws, Tom Henderson reported that a sequel to the game had been greenlit pre-launch but is currently on ice based on its first year of weak sales. The Switch 2 port would have to overperform to keep this game from being permanently canceled.
Veteran game developer Julian LeFay passed away from cancer at the age of 59. LeFay was best known for his tenure at Bethesda where he led development on three Elder Scrolls games, the mainline Arena and Daggerfall and the spinoff Battlespire.
Two years after hitting PC and PS4/5, developer Sad Owl Studios announced that their puzzle game Viewfinder will release for Xbox Series S|X on August 12th 2025 and is coming to Switch later this year.
Riot Games announced that its fighting game 2XKO will begin its first closed beta test on September 9th 2025, planning to keep the game online and public henceforth. Vi from Arcane, the popular Netflix show based on League, was also announced as a new character for the game.
Gearbox announced that Borderlands 4 for Switch 2 will release on October 3rd 2025, only three weeks later than the game’s initial launch date of September 12th.
Pokémon Presents July 2025: After the usual mobile, competitive, and multimedia updates, which included the new FTP game Pokémon Friends and the Aardman animated “The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d and Pichu”. Competitive arena focused Pokémon Champions received an extended gameplay reveal and a 2026 release window. Lastly, another trailer for Pokémon Legends Z-A made a few announcements: player character customization is returning more fully fleshed out than ever after ScarVi had the school uniform limitations, Mega Dragonite was announced, and a new $500 Switch 2 bundle featuring the console and the Switch 2 Edition of Legends Z-A will release alongside the game, taking the place of the Mario Kart World bundle for the holidays.
July 23rd: After much further panic, new trade deals were announced by the US for both Japan and the European Union, “reducing” the Trump administration’s tariffs on these important partners to “only” 15%, making consumer products more expensive for no reason but not as existentially terrifyingly expensive as they could’ve been. On July 31st, the current tariff rates for the rest of the world were re-announced, which for our purposes most importantly affect electronics suppliers at rates of 20% or 25% for Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, and India, along with the persisting 30% for China. But once again, the impact of this is far greater reaching and brutal for everyday life of working people.
Microsoft abruptly about-faced for The Outer Worlds 2‘s base price, reducing it from $80 to $70 after external, and likely internal, criticism. It’s now been confirmed that all holiday 2025 releases from the publisher, including Black Ops 7, will stick to a $70 base price, even though COD could obviously get away with it easier. We’ll see whether this policy continues for next year’s big releases and next-generation software. Another soft reversal was announced for several digital-only releases this year: Outer Worlds 2, Ninja Gaiden 4, and Oblivion Remastered will all get physical disc releases after all, but withhold judgment until their completeness is confirmed. Crazy that this company can adjust policy on these matters more easily than its huge blood money contract with the Israeli military.
Dragami Games announced that the success of last year’s Lollipop Chainsaw RePop remaster has prompted the greenlight of a Lollipop Chainsaw anime and a brand new sequel game over a decade after the original. The press release for the sequel touts that it will be anti-DEI.
ArcSystem Works announced that their Switch 2 exclusive adventure game Dear me, I was… will launch on July 31st 2025. This is from the same team as Another Code Recollection, who are rumored to now also be working on a Hotel Dusk remake.
Former Sega producer Lee Cocker has unexpectedly revealed on social media that his Mario & Sonic at the Olympics team was originally planning for the Tokyo 2020 game to become a broader Video Game All Stars crossover before third party deals all proceeded to fall through. Pokémon, Zelda, Street Fighter, Mega Man, Metal Gear Solid, and “some Sony and Microsoft characters” are all named as franchises that could have appeared.
WWE2K25 did officially launch on Switch 2 to a rave reception for content parity and technical performance on par with the PS5 port, with its one point of concern being that Nintendo had elected to remove certain user generated content options entirely rather than have to moderate them. The port was also revealed to be developed by none other than Shiver Entertainment, as the first new game for the Miami-based port studio since it became Nintendo’s newest first party subsidiary.
July 24th: EA released the official reveal trailer of Battlefield 6, which takes place in 2020s America being defended from a rogue private military company, takes heavy gameplay inspiration from the popular Battlefield 3 from 14 years ago, and which just received an extensive exposé on its troubled and bloated development. The far grander multiplayer reveal trailer presentation followed on July 31st, announcing that it will launch on October 10th 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X at $70 base, not the rumored $80.
Supergiant announced that Hades 2 will have one more pre-1.0 patch than previously planned, saying that it will receive a polish/QOL focused patch soon in advance of the 1.0 launch this fall.
From and Bandai Namco announced that Elden Ring: Nightreign has sold five million copies in its first two months of release, making it the latest success in the franchise. The Nightreign update adding the highly requested duo play option was announced at the same time, releasing on July 31st after a one day delay due to the tsunami that hit on July 30th. Shadow of the Erdtree’s sales were updated as well, to 10 million copies sold.
July 25th: What I just reported last month has direct evidence! A new job listing was discovered online for a Senior Director of Multiplatform Management at PlayStation Studios in California, describing the job as leading the strategy to deliver first party PlayStation software to “all digital platforms beyond PlayStation hardware, including Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo, and mobile,” including ensuring crossplay and cross-save functionality. Microsoft expanded multiplatform support faster but it was never going to be alone when Sony also needs to maintain stability and growth in the increasingly strained industry, and extend its multimedia ambitions for its franchises. The very nature of games industry competition is changing when PC, PlayStation, and Switch are all succeeding simultaneously right now and Xbox is becoming a third party non-factor as we speak. Its hardware probably won’t even require a separate development pipeline for much longer.
There are only so many ways to get more money out of the same customers and find new customers, and look at what reaching new platforms has already accomplished. This is way more than Patapon, more than Marathon and MLB and Helldivers. Sony is in the midst of a transition to not only more Day 1 PC releases and more smaller games Day 1 on other consoles, but most significantly starting to deliver main titles in the major franchises to all hardware as well. It might only be older titles like Uncharted Collection, Horizon Zero Dawn, 2018’s Spider-Man and God of War, Last of Us Part 1, Demon’s Souls Remake. But the more the door opens, the more likely it is to open further. It’s possible that later in the PS6 generation, future Marvel or God of War games might come to other consoles on a 1-year delay just like their predecessors did for PC. Astro’s Playroom, Astro Bot, and its inevitable sequel are the only current titles I’m less sure of the future for right now and that’s not about all of the PS specific content, it’s about the actual DualSense specific mechanics at work.
Youtuber SkillUp announced that he is launching This Week in Video Games, a new dedicated website for ad-free and AI-free gaming news and print journalism, which runs on a paid subscription like basically all of the other newer sites and which has a respectable lineup of staff out of the gate.
Techland delayed Dying Light: The Beast from August to September 19th 2025 for further polish.
11 bit studios announced that Frostpunk 2’s PS5 and Xbox Series ports will release both digitally and physically on September 18th 2025, a year after its PC launch.
July 27th: During San Diego Comic Con, developer Retroware announced that their beatemup Toxic Crusaders will launch for all platforms on December 4th 2025, while Tribute Games had a new trailer for their beatemup Scott Pilgrim EX, which is coming in Early 2026 and has physical releases handled by Limited Run.
July 28th: Spanish development studio Aheartfulofgames publicly accused their parent company Outright Games of arbitrarily planning to fire all 28 of their workers and moved to unionize under local game workers union CSVI to protect their rights. The makers of last year’s beatemup TMNT: Mutants Unleashed, a successful tie-in sequel to the 2023 movie Mutant Mayhem, say that their parent company abruptly started to withhold communications funding despite their game’s success and no financial cuts being made elsewhere at Outright.
Nintendo announced that it’s immediately adding Mario Paint to Nintendo Switch Online’s base tier SNES collection on both Switch and Switch 2 consoles, with the game fully using Joy-Con 2 mouse controls on the latter. The SNES NSO app on Switch 2 has also been updated with button remapping, native pixel scaled 4K/1080 handheld resolution, and mouse control support on select other titles.
July 29th: In the wake of announcing a new roguelike coming later this year, Swedish holdings company Thunderful Group, the owners of Steamworld who ultimately fired everyone from developer Image&Form last year, has now been bailed out of its financial spiral by Atari, pending approval from Atari shareholders. Atari will take ownership of Thunderful by buying over 80% of its stock for just over $5 million.
In addition to gleefully moving forward with a blockbuster TV show directly intertwined with the disenfranchisement of trans people around the world, Warner Bros has indirectly announced that WB Montreal, the makers of Gotham Knights, are making a live service game based on one of the main WB IP after the infamous failures of past live services Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and MultiVersus. Jason Schreier previously indicated that WB Montreal’s newest game pitch was based on Game of Thrones, so this is probably one and the same.
Developer Monomi Park announced that Slime Rancher 2 will finally leave early access and launch in 1.0 on September 23rd 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. Distributor iam8bit was announced to be handling physical console releases for the game with preorders already open for an early 2026 date.
A new patch for Mario Kart World applied dozens of bugfixes and quality of life changes, including including increasing the frequency of lap-type courses in multiplayer.
July 30th: Capcom’s quarterly earnings release acknowledged a big elephant in the room: after a massive launch of 10 million sales in February, Monster Hunter Wilds has had virtually no legs whatsoever, selling less than 500K additional copies between March and June, reaching 10.58 million at the end of June. It really doesn’t compare favorably to its predecessors World and Rise, with Rise selling almost as many copies this quarter in its fifth year. The game’s technical issues and mixed reception among long term fans seriously affected its word of mouth. As a result, Capcom is moving up Title Update 3 from September to August 13th, expanding the game’s endgame, quest difficulty, and weapon options. I think the MH teams’ biggest priorities now are helping Wilds’ PR with more post-launch support including the eventual expansion, and making a successor to Rise during the Switch 2’s lifespan.
July 31st: Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase: The presentation opened with Capcom announcing Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection for a 2026 launch on Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC. The previously leaked brand new game Once Upon a Katamari was revealed by Bandai Namco, featuring a time travel/historical setting theme, online multiplayer, new music, and customizable visuals for the Prince and his 68 other playable cousins. It’s launching for PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X on October 24th 2025. Ubisoft had Just Dance 2026, of course, coming October 14th. Bandai Namco also officially announced Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero! for Switch and Switch 2 after it previously leaked, coming November 14th 2025, and revealed Pac Man World 2 RePac, a 3D platformer remake coming to both Switches, PC, and the other cross-gen consoles on September 26th 2025.
After multiple leaks, EA announced a remaster of the 2009 Plants vs Zombies, Replanted, preserving the original art, featuring new local co op and PVP multiplayer, and coming October 23rd 2025 to Switch/Switch 2 and PS4/5 for the very first time, along with PC and Xbox. EA also brought the first gameplay footage of Football Club 26 and Madden NFL 26 in their new improved Switch 2 versions. Not-FIFA is coming September 26th 2025 to both Switches and everything else, and Madden NFL 26 is coming to Switch 2 and other current gen machines on August 14th 2025. The previously confirmed Final Fantasy Tactics remaster appeared, another cross-gen release. Atlus announced that Persona 3 Reload is coming to Switch 2 on October 23rd 2025, on a full price game key card with $35 DLC confirmed to still be sold separately.
Koei Tecmo brought a new trailer for Hyrule Warriors 3: Age of Imprisonment, with new gameplay footage but no release window update, it was brief enough to reassure me that there will be another presentation featuring the game sooner than later. Its biggest detail was the implication that Skyward Sword’s Fi might return. Oink Games (mainly a board game company, but most of their previous Switch releases have been in Directs) revealed campfire simulator Chillin’ by the Fire, shadowdropped on Switch 2 and featuring GameChat camera integration. EA and Respawn announced that an Apex Legends Switch 2 upgrade will arrive on August 5th 2025; Respawn are smart to support this port since it’s very popular in Japan. Indie developer Windup announced that their 3D open world adventure game Hela, the four player co op story of magical mice exploring nature and solving puzzles, is coming in 2026 to Switch 2 alongside PC, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series.
Ubisoft brought Star Wars Outlaws back, confirming that its ray-tracing is intact, but almost exclusively showing story scenes instead of gameplay even though the game is coming out as soon as at the beginning of September. Silent Hill 2 Remake developer Bloober Team newly announced that their original survival horror game Cronos: The New Dawn will launch on September 5th 2025, where it will come to Switch 2 at the same time as the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series versions. Bloober explained the game more clearly here than in past appearances: the player travels back and forth in time to investigate the cause of the apocalypse, battling mutants that evolve by eating their own corpses you leave behind, and your own progression causes you to experience hallucinations and lose sanity. Respawn and Bloober already having dev kits and releases ready to ship in the first months of launch is a very good sign for their other games, i.e. Star Wars Jedi, Silent Hill 2, and Bloober’s upcoming Nintendo exclusive.
Sega and RGG announced that Yakuza Kiwami 2, the third chronological mainline entry, is coming to Switch 2 on November 13th 2025 alongside a Switch 2 upgrade for Kiwami 1. The obligatory Sizzle Reel started with confirming Skybound’s Goodnight Universe for a November 11th 2025 release date, followed by NBA Bounce coming to Switch 1 September 26th, the Wheatflour Wonderland DLC coming to Hello Kitty Island Adventure this year, a shadowdropped Switch 2 Edition for Romancing SaGa 2 Remake, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance appeared with a new demo, and Borderlands 4 reappeared.
For the final announcements, Square Enix revealed two more HD2D projects by Tomoya Asano and team: a current gen exclusive and Asano’s first ever real time action RPG The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales coming in 2026, and Octopath Traveler 0 coming December 4th 2025 for all cross-gen platforms. 0 is essentially a remake of the previous Octopath mobile game, bringing many new features like a fresh expanded script, full voice acting, townbuilding, and larger groups for battles. Like previous Asano games, The Adventures of Elliot has an extensive demo out now and players will be surveyed for feedback later.
The Japan version of the Direct had several additional offerings, with a new trailer for Dragon Quest 1 & 2 Remake, a free Switch 2 upgrade for DQ3 Remake, a new trailer for Daemon ex Machina 2, and a brand new Momotaro Dentetsu game from Konami. And outside the Direct, a port of Hitman: Absolution was announced, coming to Switch 1 this year and Switch 2 next year, and a free 60fps patch was added to Fall Guys on Switch 2.
Right after the Direct was Nintendo’s latest earnings release for the new fiscal year, mostly covering the April through June 2025 quarter but including Switch 2 console sales up through July 24th for seven weeks total. 5.8 million Switch 2 consoles had been sold by the end of June and as of July 24th it had surpassed 6 million. Mario Kart World sold 5.6 million copies in its launch month as part of the 8.67 million total Switch 2 games sold in June, which is based mainly on physical Switch 2 exclusives and editions, no digital exclusives or upgrades. Meanwhile, the Switch 1 family sold over 24 million games but only sold .98 million consoles in the quarter, surpassing 153 million total.
Nintendo also officially announced that due to “market conditions (tariffs) the price of Switch 1 consoles will be increased for the first time ever in the US and Canada, alongside price increases for Switch 1 and 2 controllers and select accessories. The standard Switch now costs $340, the Switch Lite now costs $230, and the Switch OLED now costs $400. Switch 2 consoles and games and the NSO subscription service will not have any current price increases but could in the future.
For broader US sales data thanks to Mat Piscatella and Circana: The Switch 2 launch was of course a huge boost in general for sales after this gen started to slow down, and broke the record for US hardware spending in June that was previously set in 2008 by Wii, DS Lite, and Xbox 360. Game subscription spending also set a new record. The overall biggest sellers of 2025 so far include Monster Hunter, Oblivion Remastered, AC Shadows, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Elden Ring Nightreign, Split Fiction, and Forza Horizon 5 for PS5. Data is of course very early for Death Stranding 2 but it did immediately break into the PS charts. My favorite bit of trivia from this report was that Xbox hardware was still outsold by the Switch 1 even after its successor launched.
August 1st: Jason Schreier’s latest report for Bloomberg discussed the missing in action BioShock 4, which was first officially announced in 2019 and has only seen rumors ever since. The project first started production in 2014 before being rebooted by its current developer Cloud Chamber, where it just failed a recent assessment by 2K executives, who proceeded to fire studio head Kelley Gilmore, reassign creative director Hogarth de la Plante into publishing, and order an overhaul of the game, especially for its story since that has always been important to the franchise. Layoffs are likely to occur at Cloud Chamber. Schreier reveals that 2K was at one point working on a BioShock 1 Remake but it was canceled earlier this year.
THQ Nordic/Embracer Group Showcase: With the help of David Hasselhoff, the presentation started with the latest Spongebob Squarepants 3D platformer by Purple Lamp, who remade Battle for Bikini Bottom and Epic Mickey and now have the second new sequel to the former. Spongebob Squarepants: Titans of the Tide is about battling the Flying Dutchman’s ghostly army and allows you to instantly switch between playing as Spongebob and Patrick. It’s coming on November 18th 2025 as a current gen exclusive, for PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. Racer Wreckreation, Metroidvania Eternal Life of Goldman, and dynamic multiplayer oceanic adventure Tides of Tomorrow all reappeared. A remaster of the 2008 action RPG Sacred 2: Fallen Angel was announced by developer SparklingBit for a late 2025 launch of PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X with co op support on PC. Titan Quest 2 was shadowdropped into PC Early Access and is planned to reach 1.0 in 2026.
Developer Ashborne Games announced The Guild: Europa 1410, their new entry in the Renaissance-set life sim series, which is coming to PC in 2026 after 2022’s The Guild 3. Gothic Remake was announced to be launching in Early 2026, while all three Gothic Classic remasters were announced to be coming to cross-gen PlayStation and Xbox in 2026, after the first previously launched on Switch. This is the initial release of Gothic 3 Classic. Tarsier’s 3D horror adventure Reanimal is coming to all current-gen platforms in Early 2026. Paraglacial, a new subsidiary developer spunoff from the Titan Quest/Spellforce team, announced their first person action RPG Fatekeeper, which is scheduled to release on PC Early Access this winter. Lastly, Gunfire Games announced that development has begun on Darksiders 4 after finishing DLC for their last game Remnant 2. Darksiders 4 will have all four horsemen of the apocalypse playable at once for the first time, and is currently targeting PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.
Digital Eclipse confirmed more games for the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection and announced Limited Run physical editions for PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and Switch/Switch 2, including a complete game card for Switch 2.
EVO 2025: Sega and Rya Ga Gotoku offered the gameplay reveal trailer for Virtua Fighter 6, saying that more will be shown at Tokyo Game Show. They also announced that their new enhanced edition of Virtua Fighter 5 will launch for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X on October 30th and is coming soon on Switch 2. ArcSys announced that the first closed beta test of Marvel Tokon will occur from September 5th to September 7th, and that Guilty Gear Strive will receive a major 2.0 patch in 2026 alongside season 5 DLC, after guest character Lucy launches August 21st. Bandai Namco announced that Armor King will release for Tekken 8 on August 16th and a new original DLC fighter, Miary Zo from Madagascar, will follow later in the winter.
August 3rd: Koei Tecmo and Omega Force commemorated the 25th anniversary of their Dynasty Warriors series, and the success of this year’s Dynasty Warriors Origins, by announcing that a new remaster of a classic entry and a new major DLC for Origins are in development.
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