Calling Steam a storefront has always felt a little inadequate. It is a library, a marketplace, a social network and, according to one former Valve writer, something closer to an MMO. The comparison is not as strange as it first sounds, and it has apparently been part of Gabe Newell’s thinking for a long time. The case rests on what an MMO actually is. The genre is defined less by swords and levelling than by persistent shared spaces, long-term identities and social systems that give people a reason to return. Steam has all three. Profiles, friends lists, achievements, reviews, community hubs and a marketplace all add up to a place where people spend time rather than simply pass through. The point underneath the comparison is that players are not merely consuming. They are articulating their identities. A profile, a review, a curated wishlist, a badge or a screenshot can all say something about who...
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Store listings have a habit of spoiling announcements, and this week’s example concerns a licensed game from the mid-2000s. A remaster of 2004’s Shrek 2: The Game is reportedly in the works, based on an Xbox.com entry that appears to have been published before anyone was ready to talk about it. That page has since been taken down, which is the usual sequence of events. A listing goes live, players notice it, details travel around the internet, and then it quietly disappears while the publisher works out how and when to make the news official. None of that confirms a date, a price or a full reveal, but it is a strong hint that something exists and is far enough along to have store assets prepared. What the listing reportedly indicated was modest but clear: improved textures, an upgraded user interface and 4K resolution. Higher resolution artwork means surfaces and characters hold up better...
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There is a long-running joke among PC enthusiasts that any device with a screen and a processor will eventually run Doom. Every so often, someone proves the joke right. This week the device in question is a coffee machine. The Fellow Espresso Series 1, an appliance built for brewing rather than gaming, can apparently operate 1993’s Doom on its small, round display. A Reddit user going by FullExtraction demonstrated the vintage first-person shooter running on the machine, and the control scheme is where the novelty really lands. The brew button starts the game, the steam button fires, and the scroll wheel moves Doomguy left and right. It is a silly thing, and it is also a neat piece of improvisation. Doom has been ported to an extraordinary range of hardware over the decades, from calculators to office equipment, largely because its engine is well understood and its requirements are tiny by modern standards. That...
Read MoreWorld of Warcraft: Forever is opening its beta to everyone next week, but only for a limited stretch of time. The free window is aimed at players who want to see the updated edition of Blizzard’s long-running MMORPG without paying the $60 that beta access has commanded until now. Paid beta access has become a familiar arrangement in the MMO space. Charging for early entry filters the audience, funds development and gives a studio a committed group of testers who are invested enough to report problems rather than simply look around. The trade-off is that a large portion of the curious audience stays outside the door until launch, which is exactly the group a free period is designed to reach. For anyone on the fence, the appeal is obvious. It is a chance to see how the new version plays, how it looks and whether it recaptures whatever pulled you into the game in...
Read MoreGrand Theft Auto 6 is due on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and the expectation around it has been building for years. Arguably no other game in development carries the same weight of anticipation, which makes the commercial side of its launch almost as interesting as the game itself. Predicting that it will make an extraordinary amount of money is close to the safest bet in the industry. The reasons are not complicated. A mainline entry in this series arrives rarely, it lands on two enormous install bases, and each previous entry has raised the bar for what a blockbuster release can earn. When supply is that limited and demand is that broad, the maths takes care of itself. What records might actually fall? Launch-day revenue is the obvious one, since the combination of digital sales and pre-orders can produce figures that rival major film openings. Fastest-selling entertainment product is another...
Read MoreA recent hands-on demo of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has left us with more questions than answers, which is an unusual place for a preview to end up. The third chapter of the remake trilogy is being positioned as a conclusion, and conclusions carry a different kind of pressure from middle chapters. Part of that pressure is structural. The trilogy has spent two games establishing a version of a familiar story that deliberately deviates from the original, and the final entry has to resolve threads it created while also landing the moments people have been waiting years to see. A demo can show tone, pacing and combat, but it cannot show whether those two obligations fit together. Openings are revealing in their own way. The first hour of a game sets the rules: how quickly it hands you control, how much it explains, whether it trusts you to remember what came before, and how...
Read MoreThe Blood of Dawnwalker is getting a substantial PS5 patch next week. Rebel Wolves has detailed version 1.1, which promises over 1,100 “enhancements and corrections”, and the studio has published an infographic highlighting the most significant of them. A number that large invites scepticism, so it helps to understand what it represents. Patch notes of this kind count everything: crash fixes, typo corrections, animation blends, audio levels, quest flags, collision issues, menu behaviour. A thousand small changes can add up to a noticeably smoother game without any single item being dramatic. The infographic exists precisely because a list of 1,100 entries is impossible to read, and the headline figure is best taken as a sign of effort rather than a score. This is the update the studio signalled last month, when it said a more accessible difficulty setting was on the way alongside adjustments to combat and controls. Those are the changes most players...
Read MoreNo Rest for the Wicked has a new release window. After being pushed back from its originally scheduled October launch on PS5, the game will now arrive in March 2027, and the studio has shown off version 1.0 gameplay to mark the news. Delays have become so common that it is easy to stop reading at the word. The context matters here, though. This is not a small slip for a finished game. It is the debut of version 1.0, the point at which an early access project is considered complete, and the difference between the current build and that release is being described as substantial. The headline claim is that 1.0 roughly doubles the size of the game. That is a meaningful statement for a title that has been playable in early access on other platforms. Doubling the size can mean more areas, more encounters, more systems, or simply a longer critical path,...
Read MoreThe Shrek 2 video game is getting a remaster, and the news arrived the way so many announcements do these days: through a store listing rather than a press release. A page on the Xbox Store appears to have revealed Shrek 2 Remastered ahead of any official word. For anyone who missed it, Shrek 2 arrived on PS2 during an era when almost every major film came with a tie-in game. Most of those adaptations were rushed, cheap and forgotten within a year. This one was remembered more fondly than most, imperfections and all, largely because it offered cooperative play at a time when that was a reliable way to get friends together. That co-op focus is the heart of its reputation. Sitting on a couch with a second player and working through a campaign together was a defining pleasure of the generation, and licensed games were often the easiest way to do it....
Read MoreThe weekend has arrived, the days are getting shorter, and the weather is turning colder, at least here in the UK. That combination has always been good for gaming. There are countless games to play, and this week the team has plenty on the go. One entry worth noting: Control: Resonant now has a physical edition. That is a welcome development for anyone who had been waiting to pick it up in a box rather than as a download, and it is exactly the sort of thing this feature tends to surface. Physical releases have become something of a niche pleasure, but they still matter to collectors, to people with slow connections, and to anyone who likes the idea of owning something they can put on a shelf. A disc also has a way of making a game feel finished in a way a download does not. The rest of the list is as...
Read MoreAtelier Karia is adding a weight mechanic, and it is doing so because fans voted for it. The PS5 role-playing game, the latest entry in Gust’s long-running apothecary series, is set to include a system inspired by Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where what a character eats affects how they look and perform. The idea is not as strange as it first sounds. San Andreas treated food as a resource. Eating too much changed CJ’s physique, eating too little had its own consequences, and keeping him in shape took a little management. It was a small system that added texture to a game about building a life, and it gave players one more thing to think about between missions. Atelier Karia already has a reason to care about meals. When the game was unveiled, dining was confirmed to play a significant role, which fits a series built around gathering ingredients, crafting and cooking. Adding...
Read MoreAnother weekend, another chance to try something without paying for it. Xbox Free Play Days has returned for October 15-18, and this week’s selection runs to six games in total. The headline name is NBA 2K27. The basketball simulation series sits at the front of the promotion, and there is an extra reason to pay attention this time: the franchise is supporting Xbox Play Anywhere for the first time in its history. For anyone who has not kept up with the programme, Free Play Days is a recurring promotion that opens up a rotating set of titles for a short window, usually running from Thursday through the weekend. It is a low-risk way to sample games that might otherwise sit on a wishlist indefinitely, whether you are curious about a genre or simply waiting for a price drop. Play Anywhere is worth explaining, because it changes what a purchase means. A supported digital game...
Read MoreIGN Fan Fest: Fall Edition 2026 has wrapped, and as usual the event packed a lot into its runtime. Announcements, unveilings and trailers arrived from across the entertainment industry, with films and television sharing the stage with games. For anyone who follows Xbox closely, the games were the main attraction. Showcases like this have become one of the main ways publishers communicate. A dedicated event gives a project room to breathe: a trailer can set a tone, a developer can explain an idea, and a release window can be confirmed without the noise of a larger conference. The trade-off is that the news arrives in a rush, spread across an evening, and it is easy to miss the details that matter. That is the case for a roundup. Rather than asking you to scrub through a long stream, we have collected the Xbox-relevant material in one place: the reveals, the trailers and the smaller...
Read MoreFriday has arrived, and with it the last release roundup of the week. Ten games are launching on Xbox today, October 16, and the schedule is led by one of the biggest names of the year. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 opens its Campaign Early Access today at approximately 10am PDT / 6pm BST. That gives players who have taken part in the early access offer a head start on the single-player portion of the game, days before the full release arrives. Campaign early access has become a familiar part of the Call of Duty launch routine. It is a way of staggering the audience across two moments rather than one, letting the story-driven side of the package have its own window before multiplayer takes over the conversation. For players, it means the first impressions of a new campaign now arrive earlier, and spoiler discussions start sooner. The time zone detail is the...
Read MorePEAK is finally making the jump to Xbox. The co-op game, which arrived on PC in June 2025, will be available on Microsoft’s console next week, closing a gap that has been open for well over a year. That gap is worth dwelling on, because it says something about how releases work now. A game can build a substantial following on one platform and still take a long time to reach another. Ports are not automatic, and the order in which platforms are served often depends on the size of the team, the technology involved, and where the audience is expected to be. When PEAK launched, the question of an Xbox version came up almost immediately. At the time there was no firm indication that it would happen, or when. The answer, it turns out, was yes, but later. That is a familiar pattern for independent releases that find success faster than anyone planned....
Read MoreThe Galaxies Autumn Showcase 2026 aired last night, and it delivered a broad sweep of Xbox content. Current releases and forthcoming titles shared the runtime, with a handful of global debuts among the highlights. Among the games shown were Stuntman: Hollywood, There are No Ghosts at the Grand, Spine and Guns of Eschaton, alongside many others. The mix is telling. A showcase that can put those names in the same broadcast is aiming for range rather than a single audience, and that is usually a good sign for anyone tired of seeing the same handful of genres promoted. Global debuts carry a particular weight at events like this. A first look is the moment a project stops being a rumour and becomes something concrete, and it often sets expectations that the developers then have to manage for months. Trailers are built to create that first impression, which is why they tend to lean on...
Read MoreFirst 4 Figures has unveiled its new Zelda figurine, and pre-orders are set to open next week. The reveal lands in the middle of The Legend of Zelda’s 40th anniversary celebrations, which have been running throughout the year. The statue is being released as an “Exclusive Edition”, following the Link sculpture that arrived earlier this year under the same label. For collectors, that pairing is likely to be the main draw: a Zelda piece that can sit alongside the Link release rather than standing on its own. First 4 Figures has built its reputation on large, detailed collectibles based on established game characters, and its releases tend to be aimed at people who care about presentation as much as the subject. The company typically shows a figure well ahead of release, then opens pre-orders, then spends months in production before anything ships. Anyone familiar with that cycle will know not to expect the statue...
Read MoreNintendo Music has added another Game Boy soundtrack to its library. The Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 album is now part of the premium service, arriving in a fresh update this month. It follows last month’s addition of the WarioWare: Move It! soundtrack, which means the app has now spent two consecutive updates on Wario’s corner of Nintendo’s catalogue. For anyone who has been following the service’s additions, that is a notably focused run. The new album brings back “That Smells!” and other tracks from the Game Boy title, giving the platform’s early portable era another representative in the app. Nintendo Music has gradually been building out its archive across generations, and the Game Boy has been one of the more intriguing sources precisely because its music had to work within severe hardware limits. That constraint is part of the appeal. Composers on the Game Boy had a small number of channels to...
Read MoreNintendo is raising the cost of hardware repairs in Japan. The change takes effect on 16th November 2026 and will apply to both the Switch 2 and the original Switch. The announcement comes from Nintendo’s Japanese site, and it follows a year in which both consoles have already seen price increases around the world. Repair pricing is a separate matter from the cost of buying a console, but the two tend to move in the same direction when the pressures on manufacturing and logistics persist. For owners, the practical effect is straightforward: fixing a damaged console in Japan will cost more after the middle of November than it does now. Anyone with a repair already planned has a window of about a month to act before the new fees apply, though the details of how the adjustment is calculated have not been spelled out in the announcement. It is worth separating the regional picture...
Read MoreA replica N64 box is being offered as a reward in France, tied to the upcoming Switch 2 release of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It is the latest in a growing line of retailer incentives surrounding the game. The item is a piece of packaging rather than the game itself, which is exactly why it has attracted attention. Replica boxes appeal to the part of the audience that remembers the original shelf presence of N64 releases, and they sit comfortably alongside the trend of collector-focused extras that have become common for high-profile re-releases. France is not alone in seeing this kind of promotion. As the launch approaches, merchants around the world have been revealing midnight openings and exclusive bonuses, each trying to secure pre-orders with something the others do not have. The result is a patchwork of offers that varies by country and, often, by retailer. That patchwork is worth understanding before ordering. A...
Read MoreEternal Anima has been a long time coming. The project was first disclosed in 2023 under the working title Project Life is RPG, and at the time Marvelous kept the details deliberately vague. What the publisher did say was that it was building a new IP intended to honour the classic titles of the genre, supported by concept art that suggested a strong sense of place. That combination, a veteran Japanese publisher with a nostalgic brief and a willingness to show artwork before gameplay, set expectations without pinning down what the game would actually be. Previews now offer a clearer view. The idea of returning to the past to build something modern is a familiar one in role-playing games, and it is easy to see why developers are drawn to it. The genre’s foundations are well understood: a party, a journey, a system of combat that rewards planning, and a world that opens up...
Read MoreThe creator of DayZ, Dean Hall, has delivered a blunt assessment of the games business: in his view, the industry is “rotting from its core.” The cause, as he frames it, is greed among the biggest companies rather than any single genre, platform or business model. The immediate targets of his criticism are Epic’s Unreal engine and Unity, the two technology platforms that underpin a huge portion of modern game development. Both are used by studios of every size, from small teams building a first project to large publishers shipping annual franchises, which is why criticism of them carries weight. An engine is not a neutral choice. Once a team commits to one, its tools, hiring, workflows and long-term support all tend to follow, and switching later is expensive. When a handful of companies control those foundations, the terms they set ripple outward through the whole industry, affecting budgets and schedules far beyond their...
Read MoreFew names in games carry as much accumulated history as Castlevania. The series has been associated for decades with gothic horror, the Belmont clan and a whip swung at Dracula and the inhabitants of his castle, and any new entry inherits that weight. Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is the latest game to carry the name, and a full review has now been published. For anyone weighing it up, the useful question is not simply whether it is good, but whether it understands what made the series endure in the first place. The ingredients are well known. A sprawling castle, rooms that reward a second look, enemies placed with intent, and a difficulty curve that asks the player to learn rather than simply endure. Later entries added exploration and character progression, but the core remained action, timing and a certain grim atmosphere. Sound and presentation matter as much as mechanics here. Castlevania has long been known...
Read MoreRockstar Games has released a trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, and it arrives with the release date of 19th November now firmly in view. The publisher has kept details close for years, so any new footage is treated as an event by a fanbase that has waited a very long time. The trailer leans into the series’ familiar mix of crime, spectacle and dark humour. A shower scene, a tense police chase and high-flying heists all feature, each one a reminder that Grand Theft Auto has always been as interested in tone and provocation as it is in shooting and driving. Heists in particular have become one of the franchise’s signatures, elaborate set pieces that turn planning into tension and then into chaos. A good heist mission is a small story with a beginning, a complication and a getaway, and the brief glimpses here suggest that formula remains central. The police chase is...
Read MoreNintendo and Intelligent Systems have launched an expansion pass for Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave. The package brings a series of downloadable additions to the tactical RPG, beginning today and continuing with further content stretching into 2027. Fire Emblem has always been a series about consequences. Units die permanently in the classic mode, maps punish careless positioning, and every deployment decision carries weight. That structure makes additional content particularly appealing, because more maps and more characters mean more of the thing fans come for. Expansion passes have become a common way to support a game after launch, and they suit a strategy title well. A campaign can be extended without asking players to start over, and new scenarios can explore corners of the world that the main story rushed past. The staggered schedule is worth noting. Spreading releases across a long period keeps a game in the conversation, gives players a reason to return, and...
Read MoreGrand Theft Auto 6 will be eligible for The Game Awards 2026 by a single day. That narrow margin is the kind of detail only awards season produces, and it turns a release date into a small piece of strategy, with the game landing just inside the window rather than just outside it. Eligibility usually depends on when a game becomes available to the public, not when it was announced or previewed. A title that misses the cut-off by a day is treated as a 2027 release, no matter how close it came, which is why publishers pay attention to these calendars. The distinction matters more for a game of this size than for most. Grand Theft Auto 6 is the sort of release that shapes the conversation around it, and being part of a given ceremony changes the shape of that year’s field. It also means the game will be discussed alongside everything...
Read MoreCastlevania: Belmont’s Curse once had a Dark Souls “vibe,” it turns out, but the experiment was judged “just too hard.” It is a revealing detail, because it shows how quickly a design idea can move from promising to punishing once it meets real players. The comparison is easy to understand. Dark Souls established a template built on deliberate combat, costly mistakes and checkpoints that force a long walk back. Plenty of action games borrowed pieces of that formula, and for a while it seemed every new release with a sword was being measured against it. What often gets lost in the borrowing is the support structure. Souls-like difficulty works because the world is built around it: shortcuts open up, summons exist, and the level design teaches you what is coming. Strip those supports away and the same combat becomes exhausting rather than exhilarating. There is also the question of pacing. A slow, intense encounter...
Read MoreAn ex-Valve developer has weighed in on Epic’s updated Steam rival, and the verdict is not flattering. The criticism lands alongside Tim Sweeney’s latest public dig at Gabe Newell, continuing a rivalry that has played out in interviews, social posts and storefront policy for years. The suggestion is that Epic Games might do better to talk about what actually makes its store appealing, rather than framing every argument around its larger competitor. It is a fair point in principle: a platform ultimately has to stand on its own offer, not on the failings of the market leader. Steam’s advantage is not a single feature but an accumulation of them. A vast library, community features, workshop support, reviews, forums and years of accumulated user habit all reinforce one another. Competing with that means offering something meaningfully different, not merely equivalent. Epic has tried. Exclusive releases, a regular schedule of free games and a more generous...
Read MoreA major community decompilation tool is shutting down, and the reason is a wave of low-effort AI-generated submissions that its maintainers can no longer absorb. The closure is a stark example of how a shared resource can be worn down by people who never intended to contribute to it. Decompilation is painstaking work. It involves reconstructing readable source code from a compiled game so that the result can be studied, modified, ported or preserved. Done well, it can keep old software alive long after the hardware it ran on has disappeared, and it underpins a great deal of modding and research. The work has always depended on trust. Contributors follow conventions, document their changes and accept review, because the value of the project comes from many people building on a shared foundation. Anything that floods that process with noise makes the whole thing harder to maintain. AI tools have made it trivial to produce...
Read MoreThe new Street Fighter film arrives in cinemas this Friday, and its Rotten Tomatoes score has already revived an old conversation about what happens when a beloved game is adapted for the screen. The early reception suggests the movie is closer to the bad old days than anyone hoping for a turnaround would like. Aggregate scores are a blunt instrument, but they are a useful signal of consensus. When critics line up on one side, it usually reflects something structural rather than a matter of taste: a script that cannot decide what it wants to be, or a production that treats the source material as a licence rather than a foundation. Street Fighter has the ingredients for a good film. A global cast of fighters, clear rivalries, a tournament structure and a villain with a personal stake in the hero’s defeat. The arcade games were built on broad archetypes, and broad archetypes travel well...
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