God of War Laufey was the big highlight of Sony's recent State of Play livestream, as plenty of gameplay was shown off for the first game in the series not to feature Kratos in a lead role. Naturally, the announcement of Kratos' late wife, Faye, as the protagonist didn't sit well with a small part of the internet, and since then, the game has received some oddly placed hate. Most of this has been directed at its star, Deborah Ann Woll, who provides the likeness and voice of Faye in God of War Laufey. Fortunately, the actress has adopted a very sound strategy for dealing with online hate.

"Genuinely, I thought I was going to be much more affected by it. But one, I'm like not on social media so that helps, and two, I don't know, I feel totally unbothered because I just know it's great," Woll said to TikTokker Quinnphobic at Florida SuperCon. "Like, it's okay if it's just not your cup of tea, but in no universe is it bad."

https://www.tiktok.com/@quinnphobic/video/7662451619644181774

Woll has been involved in the development of the game for several years, as developer Sony Santa Monica has been building up to its release for almost a decade. Contrary to what the rage-bait machine on YouTube says, Woll said that the game features story elements that don't have anything to do with gender or sex. "This is a story about a parent. This is a story about regret. This is about being a better person than who you were before," Woll said in a previous interview.

In addition to Faye, God of War Laufey also features The Boys star Jack Quaid as a gelatinous cube character named Phranque, who might be the breakout star of the game. God of War Laufey is coming to PS5, and since it is confirmed to have a physical release, it will likely land sometime in 2027, before Sony stops producing game discs in January 2028.

Everyone knows that Rockstar's GTA 6 is going to be an enormous hit upon launch in November this year, but just how big are we talking? A new report from research firm Newzoo makes several stratospheric predictions, led by an estimation that it could earn between $3.3 billion - $5.2 billion in global sales after just its first week. That is a big band, of course, but even on the low end, that would bigger than GTA 5, which made $1 billion after 72 hours back in 2013.

Newzoo said it's basing this on its proprietary Newzoo Game Performance Monitor. The bullish outlook is based in part on strong preorder numbers, with Newzoo estimating that GTA 6 digital spending came to $180 million in the final week of June in the US and the five largest European markets (England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain).

"To convert that into a global estimate, we can use GTA 5's lifetime console player distribution: around 69% of GTA 5's lifetime console players sit within those six markets," it said. "Applying that ratio bumps the $180 million regional figure to a global estimate of approximately $260 million for the first week."

GTA 6 arrives in November behind massive sales projections.

Newzoo said GTA 6 falls within the definition of a "Proven Sequel," and those kinds of games have stronger sales curves, historical data shows--and it's expected to be no different for GTA 6. A "Proven Sequel" kind of game is a "massively anticipated" entry in an established series, based on a "tried and tested formula," with a dedicated audience who aren't going to wait for reviews or a price drop to buy in, Newzoo said.

The firm estimated that preorder numbers for GTA 6 amount to about 5.8% of cumulative sales during launch week. So if first-week preorder numbers reached $260 million, that implies $4.5 billion in sales by launch week, Newzoo said. This works out to 51 million copies sold at an "assumed" $88 average selling point.

Even if GTA 6 were to fall into Newzoo's "Sequel with Performance Uncertainty" bucket for sales projections, the game would still have an exceptional launch with $3.3 billion in sales volume during its first week and 37 million units sold.

Arguably, the more front-loaded curve is likelier. But whichever you find more persuasive, it doesn t change
the core conclusion: GTA 6 is on pace to outperform forecasts. As a conservative check, the Sequel
with Performance Uncertainty curve books about 3.8% of revenue in week one, versus ~5.8% for the Proven
Sequel curve. If we instead assume GTA 6 front-loads far harder at ~8%, that produces $3.3 billion in
cumulative sales by week one (around 37 million units)… an exceptional result.

Newzoo also pushed back against the unconfirmed reports that GTA 6 drove more than $1 billion in preorder revenue over its first three weeks after preorders opened on June 25. "This is absurd," the company said.

Rockstar owner Take-Two has not announced any preorder sales data for GTA 6, but it's possible the company provides an update in August at its next earnings briefing.

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game is selling for $80 for its standard edition or $100 for a premium edition that also comes with numerous other digital extras, while all preorders include an auto-renewing membership to something you might not want. The game is a digital-exclusive, with no discs available, not even with the physical copies being sold at retailers.

Earlier this week, Twitch streamer and gamer Joshua Khane went viral with a post calling out Microsoft for deleting his account and OneDrive. Khane noted that Microsoft acknowledged that the account had been compromised, but it declined to help him recover "25 f***ing years of data, thousands of Euros [spent] on games" and his "son's baby pictures." Now, after a massive outcry, Xbox Support has changed course and reached out to Khane to help him regain access to his account.

In a message posted on X, a Microsoft representative apologized to Khane and stated that its team has "been working to restore access to your purchases and reached out with the next steps."

https://twitter.com/XBOXSupport/status/2077401588394529030

While Khane acknowledged the reply, other users have come forward to state that they've received the same form statement from Microsoft in the past. And unlike Khane, the company apparently didn't respond to their requests about restoring their accounts.

https://twitter.com/ThatHyperZack/status/2077533019783516214 https://twitter.com/Helpma2/status/2077463287969542652 https://twitter.com/DeadpoolCentral/status/2077441981710565689 https://twitter.com/Obaid_Ghubash/status/2077491908440740286 https://twitter.com/AsmadiGames/status/2077501079319674971

Microsoft was already suffering a public relations beating this month after another round of mass layoffs in the gaming division that affected 1,600 workers, with more to follow. The planned cuts will affect roughly 20% of Microsoft's Xbox workforce. Two of Microsoft's studios, Double Fine and Compulsion Games, are going independent as a result of the cutbacks. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are being sold to new buyers, while the fate of Arkane remains up in the air.

Senator Bernie Sanders slammed Microsoft for the layoffs in the wake of the company posting $100 billion in profit in 2025. He also called the company out for its plans to hike the price of Xbox consoles again later this summer.

Id Software was hard hit by the Xbox "reset" this month that saw scores of developers laid off--with more retrenchments on the way--and there's a big fear that the Doom developer could be reduced to a smaller role within the gaming division. Fans of the studio are also concerned with the future of idTech, id Software's proprietary engine that has powered its games through multiple gaming generations, with it possibly being binned in favor of Unreal Engine 5.

Officially, Microsoft's company line is that everything is just fine at id Software even after it lost 136 employees--around half the studio--while the developer also posted a statement online where it said that it has all the staff it needs to continue building games and working on id Tech. These statements have been cast into doubt by a new report, where one of the affected id Software employees has spoken out.

"They've just gotten rid of all the people who could ever fix or change [id Tech], so it's most likely going to end up in the trash can. That's where I just come back to: It completely feels like success is detached from your ability to keep a job, and I think that's basically provable," the anonymous former staffer said to The Game Developer. They added that five members of the VFX team were among the layoffs, leading to an "immense" loss of institutional knowledge.

So what's going on here? It's not hard to imagine that Microsoft is looking to do some damage control after sacking 1,600 people this month, and has roped in id Software to help strengthen that message. With another 1,600 layoffs on the horizon, the remaining developers likely don't want to rock the boat in case they're put at risk of losing their jobs. The anonymous source can cut loose with their statements, and the real proof will be seen when--and if--id Software announces a new game. 

If id Tech is on the chopping block, then that will be a major blow for gaming. The engine is known for being hyper-focused on creating fast-paced first-person shooter experiences, allowing it to be optimized for a specific purpose, render high-level graphics, and run games at a blisteringly fast framerate on a variety of platforms.

While Unreal Engine 5 is no slouch, the industry's continuing reliance on it also carries certain risks. CD Projekt Red has ditched its proprietary Red Engine for Unreal 5 to continue work on The Witcher 4, and the next Halo project is also being developed in it, but some of its technical limitations include hidden performance drains, demanding features that require the latest--and very expensive--hardware, and poor optimization.

Other concerns include games adopting a more homogenized design that some have dubbed "the Unreal look," and there's also a concern that the rapid adoption of Unreal Engine 5 could lead to the loss of in-house artistry. The other big concern is that Epic Games could be creating a monopoly. While its current licensing deals are fairly generous, there's no guarantee that the company won't change things in the future, which could leave many game studios in the lurch with no viable backup plan.

Another year, another Call of Duty, with this year's entry featuring Infinity Ward as the lead developer. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will once again be available across a wide variety of platforms, and Sony has dropped a few details about how the Microsoft-owned game will probably look best on its expensive PS5 Pro console.

In a new look at the game, Sony briefly confirmed that Modern Warfare 4 will benefit visually from the recently upgraded PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), and the game will support "increased graphics quality" from 120Hz and 60Hz, as well as an  unlocked framerate when VRR and 120Hz are enabled together. Both the PS5 Pro and the base PS5 will run the game at 4K, but Sony didn't mention if the games will be upscaled from a lower resolution, as is the case with most new releases on the consoles.

While it looks like the PS5 Pro may offer the best visual experience for this year's Call of Duty, that graphical bump isn't cheap. After Sony hiked console prices earlier this year, the PS5 Pro MSRP rose to $900, making it the most expensive home console of the current generation. While the hardware has become a lot more expensive, recent months have seen more games take advantage of the PS5 Pro and PSSR 2.0 to give their games a graphical bump. Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth are some of the notable examples, and Ubisoft also outlined the extra features that players could expect if they play Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced on the console.

Ahead of its launch on October 23, Activision also showed off Modern Warfare 4's ambitious new Kill Block map, which looks like someone kit-bashed together several popular Call of Duty maps to create a unique arena. With only a few months left to go before it arrives, more details on Modern Warfare 4 will be revealed at the Fanatics Fest this weekend. Infinity Ward studio head Mark Grigsby and Activision marketing executive Tyler Bahl will join a panel on the game alongside Obsession star Inde Navarrette and NBA player Kevin Durant.

From Software's upcoming game The Duskbloods looks be quite the departure from the studio's previous work, and if you want a chance to play it ahead of its official launch, you'll soon have your chance. The game will be running a closed network test in August, with registration for a chance to participate starting very soon.

The Duskbloods' closed network test will run from August 21-23, and will feature support for eight-player multiplayer sessions. An application period will run from July 22-28, and participation requires a Nintendo Switch 2 system and an active Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0ij2uQ87nc

From Software says the closed network test will be focused on a few key areas: server load, multiplayer problem-solving, and game balance. It's not clear exactly how much of the game will be available during this test, but given how different The Duskbloods looks compared to From Software's traditional single-player RPGs, it's a great opportunity to see if you want to buy the full version later.

The Duskbloods is planned to launch in 2026 exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2. Though looking at screenshots may have you convinced it's a similar game to something like Bloodborne, the focus on multiplayer should make it quite different.

If you watch anime regularly, you are certainly aware of Crunchyroll, a subscription streaming service owned by Sony that delivers many new and classic anime series to audiences across the globe. It's the biggest name in that space, regularly beating out Netflix and Amazon for rights to stream the medium's biggest hits. It's also got an online store where you can buy your favorite anime on physical media--which many devoted fans do, since streaming rights to shows can and do frequently expire. However, in a move that has familiar echoes to Sony's decision to end production of PlayStation game discs, the Crunchyroll store is being severely scaled back--and fans of anime on disc are very unhappy.

Some background: In 2023, Crunchyroll purchased The Right Stuf International, an Iowa-based online retailer of anime DVDs, Blu-rays, manga, and merchandise, to bolster their sales and merchandising presence. Right Stuf was folded into the Crunchyroll store, where it continued to be a source of physical anime media, offering discs of not just Crunchyroll-licensed anime but also shows and films from a wide variety of licensors.

Unfortunately, it seems that the time of the Crunchyroll store being a massive anime retail store with a broad selection open to all is coming to a close. According to a recent statement and FAQ posted online, the store will be dropping much of its current stock and transitioning to "a brand-new shopping experience that will be available exclusively for Mega and Ultimate Fans (subscription tiers)." Instead of physical discs, the Crunchyroll store will focus on "collectibles, curated drops, and limited-release products inspired by the anime series you love."

Reactions online to the announcement have been swift and angry, with longtime customers going back to the Right Stuf days particularly upset. Besides culling their product offerings and limiting the store to higher-paid subscription tiers, many have pointed out that Crunchyroll has dropped the ball on supporting popular series that Right Stuf initially licensed and distributed after the purchase, leaving physical releases of Gundam and Macross shows in the lurch and mishandling an ongoing Kickstarter to release the classic Dirty Pair anime on Blu-ray. Other fans had noticed that Crunchyroll was already severely cutting down on stocking releases from boutique licensors recently.

The transition leaves many anime fans without their go-to disc shop, and calls into question whether or not Crunchyroll-licensed shows will even see a physical release in the future. Taken with Sony's sudden decision to kill off PlayStation discs by early 2028, it's hard for many fans not to see this as another act of hostility towards the physical medium they love.

Yet another game is closing up shop. The developers of Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem have confirmed that the mobile game is shutting down, and soon.

The game is developed by juggernaut Scopely (Monopoly Go, Pokemon Go). The studio said in a blog post that it made the decision to cease operations for the game and close it down on October 15. The developers also said they arrived at this decision "after a great deal of thought."

World of Mayhem will completely close on October 15, 2026, after which it will not be playable at all. Players can continue to spend any in-game currency until August 16, and the game will be delisted for digital stores on August 23. The game's social channels will be disabled on August 16.

World of Mayhem is coming to an end.

"This isn’t an easy goodbye. For years, this community has built alliances that turned into real friendships, fought through wars together, and enjoyed plenty of laughs along the way," the developers said. "We’ve watched Toonsters grow from strangers into teammates, and from teammates into true friends. We don’t take that lightly, and it’s with real sadness that we say goodbye to this wonderful community."

Between now and when the game shuts down on October 15, the developers are planning to celebrate the game and the community with the following (as written by Scopely):

• Farewell Giveaways: Starting today, July 15th, we’re rolling out a calendar of daily giveaways, including toons, WB Charms, and other resources, as our way of saying thank you for every moment you’ve given this game.
• Free Toon Pieces: Alongside our regular weekly events, you’ll be able to claim free Toon Pieces for newly released Toons from the Store, a small thank-you for the unwavering support you’ve shown this community from day one.

Launched in 2018, World of Mayhem has players collecting famous Looney Tunes characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as they assemble a team and then go to battle against other people.

The impending shutdown of World of Mayhem comes at the same time that Warner Bros. Discovery is being acquired by Paramount. Attempts are being made to block the purchase, but experts believe the deal will go through.

Overwatch's Stadium mode, which transformed Blizzard's hero shooter into something more akin to a third-person MOBA, won't be receiving new heroes or maps moving forward.

Game director Aaron Keller announced the news in a blog post discussing the game's various formats, along the way revealing Stadium in both its ranked and unranked versions are Overwatch's least played modes by far. Only 3% of Overwatch's daily players dip into either version of Stadium, according to Keller. By comparison, 54% of daily players participate in unranked 5v5 role queue.

"Stadium, meanwhile, has settled into a dedicated, smaller audience," Keller said. "With this in mind, while we'll continue supporting Stadium with seasonal balance updates, rank resets, and rewards, we're not planning on expanding Stadium with new heroes or maps."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9tUpO0BTQY

Instead, Keller said the team will take lessons learned from Stadium and apply it to "future plans," though he did not elaborate on what those might be.

Stadium released in April of 2025, a few months after Overwatch's main hero shooter competitor, the third-person Marvel Rivals, seemed to be popping off. In addition to its third-person perspective, Stadium introduced a full on MOBA-esque item store, invoking Valve's still-not-technically released hero shooter/MOBA-hybrid Deadlock.

Not all of Overwatch's roster is playable in Stadium. Since each character needs to be able to be built in multiple ways, with a whole slew of unique items that radically alter their gameplay, Blizzard was slowly adding heroes from the main game's roster to the mode. As it stands, only 33 of Overwatch's 52 (and counting) heroes are playable in Stadium, and it seems it will be staying that way.

While Stadium is in essence winding down, Blizzard will still be experimenting with different modes and formats. In the blog post, Keller broke down two upcoming 6v6 experimental queues. One of the new queues will look to solve the game's tank problem, its current matchmaking-speed bottleneck, by allowing one damage player the ability to "flex" during a match and swap to a second tank if need be.

Overwatch's latest hero is the cyberpunk demon Shion, added as part of Season 3 in June. Following Overwatch's rebrand earlier this year (when it added five new heroes at once and dropped the "2" from its name), Blizzard committed to one new hero per season for the remainder of the year, for a total of 10 new heroes in 2026.

World of Warcraft's latest storyline is one of its most lore-heavy quests to date, and the revelations included within have left players scratching their heads trying to make sense of what all it means for Azeroth's ancient history.

Spoilers for patch WoW 12.07 below!

A story prologue introduced in patch 12.07 meant to lead into the game's major 12.1 content patch sees the haranir, the vaguely troll and elvish-looking playable allied race introduced in Midnight, invite the leaders of all the various troll and elf factions to their home to inform them about an important revelation--they are all related! According to a vision presented by haranir leader Elder Hagar, trolls and elves are directly descended from the haranir, thus making them all one big happy family who should get along.

Needless to say, the elves and trolls, who have a long bloody history in opposition to one another, don't exactly see things that way. Many of the faction leaders have a hard time accepting the haranir's lore dump. One of the Amani leaders, Zul'jan, storms away, looking to disprove the haranir's claims and in the process stumbles upon an ancient evil he will seek to use to restore the Amani trolls to power in patch 12.1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXtWJURokdE

The "news" that trolls and elves are related doesn't exactly feel like news at all to many in the WoW community. In-game hints and theories about the elves having descended from trolls go back nearly two decades, to WoW's earliest days. These subtle hints were later confirmed in things like (as Wowhead points out) the official World of Warcraft: The Magazine and the World of Warcraft: Chronicle books, the latter of which serves as a comprehensive history of Blizzard's Warcraft setting. According to those sources, it was a splinter group of underground dwelling trolls called the dark trolls who would eventually evolve into the night elves players know today.

The fact that the trolls and elves are blindsided by the news that they are ancient relatives is a little odd, since it doesn't exactly seem like an in-universe secret. While some characters, like Zul'jan, may not be up-to-date on their studies, highly-educated characters who have lived for hundreds of years like First Arcanist Thalyssra, Vereesa Windrunner, Lor'themar, and Queen Talanji (who notes that Zandalar is home to the oldest library in Azeroth) also seemed shocked and confused by the very concept of being related to one another.

What is really throwing players for a loop is how exactly the haranir fit into all this. When the haranir were first revealed, many players assumed based on their appearance that they were a "missing link" of sorts between troll and night elf evolution. Elder Hagar's vision, however, goes against that assumption, clearly stating and showing the haranir existing first before splintering off into two groups--one that lived underground and one that lived on the surface. These two groups then, over time, are shown to have evolved to become night elves and trolls respectively. She goes as far to call elves, trolls, and haranir "one people."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc9flwgEZMU

This does make sense, but also seems to contradict previously established lore of elves descending from trolls. Instead, both races appear to have evolved from two different groups of haranir. It also doesn't address the question of the dark trolls. Are the haranir actually dark trolls by a different name? Did the haranir evolve from dark trolls, or are dark trolls a step in between the evolution of haranir into night elves?

WoW content creators like Nobbel and Taliesin & Evitel have attempted to unravel the genealogy mystery, but so far Blizzard isn't giving curious fans a definitive answer as to where the haranir or previously established lore of the dark trolls fit in.

Senior WoW quest designer Kieth Riley did, however, offer some additional context via X about Elder Hagar's vision. He stated the vision is from the haranir's point-of-view and one they believe to be true, but that it doesn't necessarily represent Blizzard's official stance on the matter.

"It is NOT 'Blizzard's presentation on the absolute truth of haranir/elf/troll genealogy' (though I'm sure some of you would enjoy a BlizzCon panel titled as such)," Riley said. 

https://twitter.com/Boogily_Woogily/status/2076007096341192929?s=20

Riley said while the visions "don't lie," they also may be missing some information or be inaccurate. 

"There's no incontrovertible proof either way so it's up to debate," Riley said.

For now, the actual truth of troll, elf, and haranir ancestry will remain up for debate until Blizzard clarifies for all the lorehounds out there. WoW: Midnight's next patch, 12.1, may offen more clues but doesn't not have a release date just yet. It's expected to arrive in mid-August and will introduce a new troll-focused zone and raid to the MMORPG.

Gaming industry veteran Glen Schofield has announced that he is retiring from day-to-day game development, and he spoke to GamesBeat about his career, where a number of notable topics came up. Among other things, he talked about the canceled third-person Call of Duty game set in Vietnam, discussed Call of Duty's game budgets, and revealed the unlikely story of how Dead Space came to be.

On the subject of the Vietnam game, Schofield said he was working on this third-person game at Activision for about six months. He said management was "very hesitant" about the game, in part because "Vietnam was still an open wound in some people's minds."

"We were going through tunnels. We were doing some scary stuff," he said.

Another developer who worked on the game described it as “almost like an Uncharted-meets-Call of Duty idea.” Before this, former Sledgehammer boss Michael Condrey said the game, codenamed Fog of War, was aiming to be an Apocalypse Now-style Call of Duty game.

“In your head you instantly can imagine an Uncharted style of game, but done in the lore of Call of Duty,” he said in 2014. “You can see that. We built a prototype and it was cool. It was a true, gritty, Apocalypse Now take on Vietnam in an interactive way. We had a 15-minute demo, and there were some great moments.”

Call of Duty fans didn’t get Fog of War, but 2020’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War from developer Treyarch featured flashback missions set in the year 1968 during the Vietnam War.

Schofield also discussed something people in the industry normally avoid talking about: budgets. He said his horror game with Krafton, The Callisto Protocol, was made on a budget of around $150 million. The three Call of Duty games he worked on--Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011), Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014), and Call of Duty: WWII (2017)--cost more than $200 million. "Sometimes much more," he said.

For Dead Space, Schofield said EA was pushing him to make another James Bond game, "And I said no." He said he enjoyed working on 007: From Russia With Love, but it was a "pain in the neck," and he wasn't happy with the review scores.

So he gave his bosses his two-week notice after getting another offer from a different company. Then Paul Lee, the former president of EA, came to Schofield to ask him, "What's it going to take?" Schofield said Lee assumed Schofield wanted more money or stock options, but Schofield instead said he only wanted to make "my own game." That's when he pitched the idea that would become Dead Space, but Lee told him, "We don't make [sci-fi horror] at EA."

Schofield eventually convinced Lee to let him make Dead Space with a hand-picked team and with the understanding that his team would be left alone creatively. "The rest is, I guess, history," Schofield said.

Also in the interview, Schofield pushed back against people calling him the "co-creator" of Dead Space. "There’s this one string that says I was the co-creator of Dead Space. I am not. I’m the creator. It’s because somebody went in and adjusted the Wikipedia page. That kinda sucks," he said.

Finally, regarding his retirement, Schofield said it was the "hardest decision of my life" to call it quits because working in the business is a "dream job."

“It’s been a dream career. The people have been mostly kind to me. They let my games into their homes. The fans are everything. We’re nothing without the fans," he said.

Of the multitude of unusual characters that are playable in FIFA Heroes, there are some new additions that are absolutely my favorites. Dreamworks Animation's Shrek enters the fray as part of the new season pass, and I cannot stop giggling.

There's something pretty wonderful about watching the giant green ogre play a cross in to Messi, who passes it to Puss in Boots to finish. Sadly, the Shrek characters, consisting of Shrek, Fiona, Puss in Boots, Gingy, Pinocchio, and Lord Farquaad will only be playable until August 10.

It comes shortly after the release of FIFA Heroes on June 24, and coincides with the 25th anniversary of the first Shrek film. The franchise is still going, as Shrek 5 is set for release in June 2027.

I'm just disappointed I can't play as Donkey. Twice the legs must mean some sort of advantage, right?

Sony has revealed the latest games coming to the Game Catalog for PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers in July. Like last month, the release schedule for these games has now changed for US, UK, and Japanese subscribers, with an initial batch starting July 21 and the rest arriving in later waves. Here's a closer look at everything on the way:

PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium Games for July 2026

• Rise of the Ronin (PS5) -- July 15
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (PS5) -- July 21
• Firefighting Simulator: Ignite (PS5) -- July 21
• Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind (PS5, PS4) -- July 21
• Dying Light (PS4) -- July 21
• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (PS5) -- July 28
• Snow Bros. Wonderland (PS5) -- July 28

PlayStation Plus Premium PS Classics

• Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (PS5, PS4) -- July 28
• Indigo Prophecy (PS5, PS4) -- July 28

Available right now, Rise of the Ronin is another fun souls-like from Team Ninja. It's not as punishing as the other games that the studio has produced in this genre--like Nioh--and players will get to shape the future of Japan in this open-world adventure.

Kicking things off on July 21 is Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. A tie-in to the recent Avatar sequel movies, Ubisoft's trip to Pandora does a great job at capturing the alien world in all its natural glory, and as a human-raised Na'vi, players have all the skills they need to reclaim the planet from the destructive RDA.

Firefighting Simulator: Ignite hits the Game Catalog on July 21 as well, and it puts you in the fireproof boots of a firefighter. The game supports co-op for up to four players, and it features some impressive graphics thanks to the use of Unreal Engine 5. If you feel like a trip to Angel Grove, you can join the teenagers--with attitude!--in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind on July 28. A retro-inspired 2D brawler, the game features the classic roster of Power Rangers as they face off against their nemeses Rita Repulsa and her older form, Robo Rita. That same day, you can also grab the very first Dying Light game from Techland. Still spooky--especially at night--players will have to use crafting skills and parkour to survive in a city overrun with zombies.

Starting July 28, you can grab Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector and Snow Bros. Wonderland. Citizen Sleeper 2 evolves the TTRPG-inspired gameplay of the first game, giving players challenging contracts to pursue and difficult choices to make as they navigate through a hostile galaxy. Snow Bros. Wonderland picks up where the very first Snow Bros. game left off 30 years ago, and it shifts the 2D action to a gorgeous 3D isometric plane.

Speaking of retro treats, PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers can grab two new games from the PS Classics vault. The first of these is Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, a 2004 action-adventure game where you get to unleash telekinesis, mind control, and pyrokinesis powers in deadly combat scenarios and challenging puzzle sections. Fans of the developer Quantic Dream can check out the studio's very first interactive drama, Indigo Prophecy. A paranormal thriller set in New York City, players will experience a story about supernatural murders and strange motives from multiple viewpoints.

Don't forget, all PS Plus members can claim three free games -- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, For the King 2, and CrossCode.

Like any live-service game that has been around for a while, PUBG: Battlegrounds has faced the challenge of attracting new players to a world that has grown and evolved over several years. To combat this, publisher Krafton Inc. has released a new update for the game that introduces a revamped onboarding experience, improved team communication, and new modes to the longrunning battle royale.

Krafton says that the new Basic Training mode is designed to get players up to speed quickly and is comprised of 17 chapters. These cover the basics from movement to looting, and include more advanced lessons focused on combat and Blue Zone survival. An NPC partner will accompany players at all times to offer them guidance as they hone their practical skills.

Update 42.2 also adds improved team communication with a redesigned Message Radial System, which is designed to make messages easier and more intuitive to use. Players can now also drop markers in the field, while new Map, Mission, and Match Log tabs should help make the processing of in-game information more seamless. Arcade mode has gotten several quality-of-life tweaks, and on console, players can choose new graphics modes to suit their visual preferences.

Resolution Priority sharpens the game, while Frame Rate Priority does what it says on the box by focusing on frame rates. Finally, Taego and Rondo have received map-specific optimizations, and other content drops include the new Contender Glasya, the Fashion Exhibit Lobby, a new Progressive Weapon Skin for the SLR, and the introduction of the new Survivor Pass, Just Married.

PUBG has gone through several changes over the years, and recently, it introduced a Payday mode in the game that brought developer Starbreeze's popular heist-themed IP to its servers. Having been around for almost a decade, PUBG: Battlegrounds is one of the titans of the live-service genre and still attracts over 700,000 players a day on Steam alone. That success has proven elusive for several other games, as PUBG franchise director Taeseok Jang recently reflected on how games like Highguard and Concord had a run of mere weeks after launch.

17 Best Battle Royale Games To Play In 2025 View Images

GameStop has announced a partnership with Uber Eats to allow people to order things like games and collectibles through the delivery app.

Inside the Uber Eats app, you can navigate to the "Retail" or "Electronics" hubs and search for GameStop to see what you can buy. Local inventories will vary, but my Uber Eats app shows things like Ubisoft's newly launched Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a variety of collectibles, consoles like the Switch 2, PS5, or Xbox Series X|S, as well as Red Bull cans.

Like with Uber Eats food orders, you can select ASAP or your own specific delivery time, and from there, you can see your driver in real time. My app shows a $6 delivery fee.

GameStop is just the latest retailer to join Uber Eats' lineup of retailers. Others include Best Buy, Home Depot, PetSmart, Target, and many more.

In other news, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen continues to push for his ambitious buyout of eBay for $56 billion. eBay has said it does not plan to sell, but Cohen is still trying, and he has said he might pursue a hostile takeover. Cohen has also discussed how video games could play a major role in his plans for eBay, should he succeed in taking over the platform.

GameStop was also in the news recently after Sony announced plans to kill off physical game discs in 2028. Many theorized that this would be bad news for GameStop because it sells physical games. However, GameStop's stock price did not fall after Sony announced those plans--in fact, the stock price rose. Why? One reason could be that software is the smallest part of GameStop's business today, which is now more focused on collectibles.

The upcoming Far Cry anthology TV series from FX has added another big name to its cast. Joining Rob Mac and Lizzy Caplan is Steve Buscemi, the prolific, veteran, Emmy-winning actor known for many roles over the decades.

Buscemi is known for his roles in the movies Reservoir Dogs, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and Big Fish. In the world of TV, Buscemi played memorable roles in The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, and Miracle Workers.

The Far Cry games bounce around between settings and characters with each new installment, and the TV show will follow that format as well with its anthology setup. Each new season of the show will take place in a "new setting following a new cast of characters."

https://twitter.com/FarCrygame/status/2077122212100776070

Noah Hawley (Alien: Earth and the Fargo TV series) and Rob Mac (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) are the executive producers for the Far Cry TV show.

The show does not yet have a release date, but whenever it's ready, it will be available on FX and Hulu, along with Disney+ internationally.

Hawley ruffled some feathers recently when he said the traditional gameplay structure of a video game–gameplay and skippable cutscenes–does not make for a compelling TV show story.

Hawley said his aim with the Far Cry show is to “have a dialog” with the franchise but not adapt any specific game or story from the series.

“Games are built in a way that doesn’t make for the best drama,” he said.

As for the Far Cry game series, Ubisoft is reportedly working on Far Cry 7 right now. The game is in development under the supervision of the Tencent-backed Vantage Studios, which also controls the creative decisions for the Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six franchises.

After being previously announced as a new arrival for Xbox Game Pass this month, Microsoft has mysteriously pulled Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 from the July lineup. Microsoft hasn't provided an explanation for why it's doing this, with many left wondering as to the cause behind this.

The current theory is that the removal could be related to rights issues, as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 was first released almost six years ago and features a jukebox full of 2000s-era music, with a few '90s classics sprinkled in for good measure. The game also features numerous real-world skateboarding brands, all of which required a licensing deal to be included in the game.

It's worth noting that Microsoft owns the game and the Tony Hawk Pro Skater IP, as it acquired the game's publisher, Activision, back in 2023--a purchase that has contributed to several layoffs at Xbox, including last week's devastating round of "reset" retrenchments.

Meanwhile, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 is still available to play through Game Pass, as it was added to the subscription service when it launched last year. A replacement for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 has not yet been announced, and for now, the announcement image has been edited to only show off the other nine games that were previously announced.

Winds of Arcana, Tamashika, Ascend to Zero, and PBA Pro Bowling 2026 have already been added to the Game Pass library, and the rest of the month includes Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, Mavrix by Matt Jones, FixForce, The Planet Crafter, and Fogpiercer. Gears of War: Reloaded also arrived earlier this month, for the lower tier of Game Pass.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 first launched in September 2020, and it earned rave reviews for updating the classic Pro Skater games for modern platforms.

"Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 deftly recreates the original games' levels while implementing smart additions to the trick system and creating engaging challenges," Mat Paget wrote in GameSpot's review.

Beloved actor Sam Neill sadly passed away on Monday, July 13, leaving many fans shocked about his untimely passing. Neill had recently made a full recovery from cancer, and the actor leaves behind a body of work that stretches across multiple movies and TV series. To many, Neill is best-known for his role as Dr. Alan Grant in 1993's Jurassic Park, and to celebrate his legacy, multiple players in Path of Titans embarked on a dinosaur migration to pay tribute to him.

The turnout saw players transform into several signature dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park film series, including herbivores like the Triceratops and Brachiosaurus to carnivores like the infamous Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park 3. What makes the tribute extra-impressive is that isle servers in Path of Titans typically don't allow for so many mixed species to co-exist on them, and pulling off a migration of this magnitude required a lot of communication and coordination from players.

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Beyond Jurassic Park, Neill appeared in many other films and TV projects throughout his career. Throughout the '80s and '90s, Neill featured in big films like The Hunt for Red October and Event Horizon, and in 1998, he starred in the Merlin mini-series as the titular wizard, with the show being critically acclaimed for its unique blend of special effects and storytelling.

Neill would return to Isla Nublar--sorry, Isla Sorna--for Jurassic Park 3 in 2001, and in later years, he'd pop up in 2022's Jurassic Park: Dominion and the first two Jurassic World Evolution video games. In animation, Neill also made a memorable appearance as the cat burglar Molloy in The Simpsons episode "Homer the Vigilante".

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Outside of acting, Neill was known for his warmth and humanity. Since his passing, anecdotes about his kindness have been shared online, ranging from a story about how he requested the Australian flag on his uniform in Event Horizon be altered to show the Aboriginal flag instead of the Union Flag, as he imagined that's how it would look by the year 2047, the setting of the movie.

https://twitter.com/TwoPaddocks/status/1301085930531549184

Other accounts spoke of how he sought to inject a layer of humanity into his Jurassic Park character, while his exploits of running a farm and vineyard in his homeland of New Zealand made him popular on social media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAaKfOsju7s

In the wake of the news that Sony will end PlayStation disc production by 2028, a lot of folks are expressing their disgust at the idea of a digital-only game library. But players aren't the only ones sharing their frustration--today, GOG.com joined the conversation with a short tutorial showing players how to physically preserve their digital games.

https://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/2077037131751432515

"Download the offline installer of any of your games on GOG, save it to a disc, and it's yours forever," the digital gaming storefront shared in an X post. "You don't need a storefront's permission to play what you bought."

Of course, this doesn't perfectly solve the problem. Not every game is available on PC, not every game is available for purchase on GOG (like Ubisoft's game catalogue, for example), and some games--though they may be technically preservable on a disc--won't necessarily be playable.

"Unless it's an always-online game and they shut down the servers," one X user replied to GOG's post. "You own it, you have it, but you can't play it."

But that was already the case long before Sony began manifesting its vision of a discless future. Always-online games have always been beholden to the whims of whatever entity pays their server costs. The issue GOG is hoping to address here is the disappearance of online storefronts. When they go offline--as the PlayStation Store on PS3 and Vita will next summer--any digital games that players have purchased but don't have installed on the console will become inaccessible for them to download. (Although Microsoft, at least, seems to be toying with a disc-to-digital plan that would allow players to retain access to the games they've bought.)

GOG's do-it-yourself solution is a Band-Aid for a much bigger problem--one that might require lawmakers to intervene if players ever hope to truly own their digital games. But it's certainly better than nothing.

With MagicCon Amsterdam right around the corner, Wizards of the Coast has begun spoiler season for their next crossover set in Magic: The Gathering: Star Trek. While the legendary science-fiction franchise may seem like an odd fit for a trading card game that’s ultimately about wizards flinging spells at each other, space (aka the final frontier) is no stranger to the game. Just last year Magic went to space with the excellent Edge of Eternities set, and the gameplay design was so good it ended up being my favorite set of the year.

What’s odd about Star Trek spoiler season though is a particular card that’s being printed on its bonus sheet. As revealed earlier today, the set features a reprint of Sheoldred, The Apocalypse reskinned as Kahn from the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness. One of the main selling points of Magic’s Star Trek set is that Wizards of the Coast has obtained the rights to use the likeness of every actor they depict on the card, which means that Sheoldred--instead of being a female phyrexian nightmare being--is now just… Benedict Cumberbatch?

Outside of being a bit bummed that a reprint for a $80+ card is being sullied with art from a J.J. Abrams film, it got me thinking. There’s a lot of Benedict Cumberbatch in Magic: The Gathering this year for some reason. Not the actor himself, per se, but characters he’s depicted on screen. For example, the Marvel Super Heroes set just released a Doctor Strange card that has art very clearly influenced by his on screen depiction played by Cumberbatch.

Weird that it happened not once but twice, but what if I told you it’s actually happening three times? Following Star Trek, the next MTG crossover set is based on The Hobbit, and while a return to Middle-Earth is always welcome, it allows yet another character that Cumberbatch has portrayed to be depicted in Magic: The Gathering. The card this time is Smaug the Magnificent, and it actually features a chase printing that is the headliner card of the entire Hobbit set.

Theoretically, this means that if you build a Mardu (red, white, and black for non-players) deck, you can have every Benedict Cumberbatch card be playable in your gameplan if you so desire.

What other universes can Magic: The Gathering depict to add even more Benedict Cumberbatch? Is this secretly their way of testing the water for casting him in the announced Magic: The Gathering streaming adaptation? Who knows really. I just know that I’m tired.