While many are waiting to see if Rockstar Games decides to price GTA 6 at $80 or more, the video game market already has games at that price point, they've just gone more under the radar. Two more have been announced just this month but may have been missed amid the Summer Game Fest craze.

Back in June 2025, Nintendo was the first major company to ask $10 more than the standard $70 rate with Mario Kart World. It was included with a $500 bundle that also included a console, so the effective price of the game was lower, but it was $80 for anyone who bought the game alone. Now that Nintendo discontinued that bundle, everyone has to pay $80 for Mario Kart World. Nintendo said it charged $80 for the game because it has so much value.

Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida defended Nintendo's decision, saying people could not reasonably expect prices to stay the same despite rising development costs and larger scopes.

Mario Kart World.

The $80 price for Mario Kart World is for both the digital and physical editions. In March this year, Nintendo announced that it would begin a new pricing strategy whereby digital and physical games would cost different prices, beginning with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book in May. That game cost $60 digitally and $70 physically.

Explaining the price differences, Nintendo said this reflects the "different costs associated with producing and distributing each format," and it offers players choice, the company said. Nintendo also reminded everyone that individual retailers set their own prices--Walmart, for example, discounted the physical versions of Nintendo games already to match the digital prices.

More $80 games

So far in June, we've learned about two more games that will cost $80 when they release, and they're both also Switch 2 titles. Elden Ring for Switch 2 will be $80 when it launches in August with its Tarnished Edition physically and with a Game-Key Card; this is a physical cartridge with a download code. The Tarnished Edition includes the base game, the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, four new armor sets, two new starting classes, and other digital items.

The new Fire Emblem game revealed during the Nintendo Direct will also be $80 for its physical edition (though we don't know yet if it's a Game-Key Card). The digital edition, meanwhile, costs $70 as part of Nintendo's new pricing strategy.

"They will pay"

Former Nintendo PR manager Kit Ellis said Nintendo is charging $80 for the game because it can. "Nintendo knows fans of that series are as die-hard as they come; they want the game physical and they will pay the premium." Ellis said he expects 2027's Xenoblade Genesis to also cost $80 for the same reason.

What comes next

It is not a stretch to believe that other publishers will start charging $80 or more for new releases. After all, there is already data that says people are ready and willing to pay $80 for games. Analyst Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics said "the floodgates are now open.” He expects every publisher in video games that can raise prices to do so.

Microsoft, for its part, said in 2025 that it would begin charging $80 for its big new games in 2025, but the company canceled those plans and has never charged more than $70 for a big new release's standard edition. Sony, meanwhile, is holding steady at $70 as well for major new releases.

A Bank of America stock analyst recently said Rockstar should charge $80 for GTA 6 to help convince the industry at large to raise prices as well.

GTA 6.

Rockstar owner Take-Two was among the first to hike prices from $60 to $70, with the company pricing NBA 2K21 at $70 back in 2020, citing development budgets that have increased by as much as 300% in the past 10 years. The company later said it saw “no pushback” to the new $70 price being the new price for major releases at Take-Two and many other publishers.

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick said major new releases have actually come down in price over the years when you consider how inflation has affected pretty much everything else you buy these days. The $60 in 2013 dollars that GTA 5 cost at launch is now more than $85 in 2026 dollars, for example.

Games have held steady in the $60-$70 range for 10 years, and that “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Zelnick said, with many theorizing that what Zelnick meant here was that GTA 6 could be priced higher. That would not be surprising, but some believe it won't go as high as $100 because Rockstar is keen to funnel people into the game to push them to whatever the developer has in store for the next evolution of GTA Online that is surely coming.

Experts have said games not going up in price is causing major issues for the AAA game market. No significant increases help explain why publishers push DLC and microtransactions so much to help cover the costs of ballooning budgets, according to experts and industry veterans. Things like deluxe editions of games, meanwhile, can sell for $80 or more, and the included items--like extra skins and digital weapons--are basically free to develop. Publishers could also look to product placement to help manage costs, and that's a future people generally do not want to see.

Prices should have gone up already

Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden said in 2025 that the price of new games should have gone up with every new console generation for the past 20 years. That largely did not happen, and now the industry is worse off for it, he said.

"I think it's because everyone's afraid," he told GI.biz. "No one wants to be the first one to raise the price, because you're afraid to lose traffic. So what you do is you just end up eating into your operating income, your profit margin."

"There were more sports cars in the parking lot in the PS1 era than there were in the PS4 era, because if you're selling 20 million units at $60 for something that only cost you $10 million to make, that's different than selling 20 million units at $60 for something that cost you $160 million to make."

If more companies raise prices to $80 or more for new games, that doesn't mean developers will stop hawking things like microtransactions, DLC, and battle passes--these efforts will likely continue in concert with price hikes.

In life, products and services across all categories tend to get more expensive over time, and there is no reason to believe games would be any different. In fact, the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics just announced today, June 10, that inflation in May rose to 4.2%, the highest level in three years.

It was up from 3.8% in April, and it's the third month in the row that the Consumer Price Index has gone up. The ongoing increases to inflation are stoking the theories that the US Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in a bid to slow spending and bring down inflation. Inflation is going up, in part, due to the ongoing war in Iran that has sent oil and gas prices soaring.

Beyond the price of games, the price of gaming hardware continues to go up and up, due in part to the global macroeconomic environment. Microsoft and Sony have already raised console prices, and Nintendo will follow next with a Switch 2 price hike in September. Just recently, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said Microsoft will need to come up "radically different" business models to help mitigate rising hardware prices against the backdrop of Project Helix.

“We’ve reached a point where it will be hard to imagine that mass audiences can afford 1000s of dollars to spend on a console generation. We'll see radically different business models that we never expected start to come into orbit later this year," she said, without elaborating further.

No one likes to pay more, but increasing costs are easier to stomach when people are getting paid more to offset, or mitigate, the increased costs of things they need and want. But that isn't always the case, either. In fact, the federal minimum wage in the US is still $7.25/hour, though dozens of states have their own minimum wages that are significantly higher. Beyond all of this, the upcoming SpaceX IPO and the millionaires to be minted out of it is only furthering the growing wealth-disparity issue in America. For now, people should expect to pay more for games, hardware, and everything else in life. Hooray?

Yesterday's Nintendo Direct certainly got Kingdom Hearts players talking--but it's not the kind of discourse Square Enix was probably hoping for after unveiling a new Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer and announcing that native versions of the entire Kingdom Hearts trilogy are coming to Switch 2 on October 8. Instead, eagle-eyed players are focused on what appears to be AI-generated key art, which Square Enix shared on X shortly after the announcement of the Kingdom Hearts Collection [I-III]

As pointed out by artist and Kingdom Hearts fan Vexmyx, the image appears to show Donald with four fingers on one hand, but five fingers on the other--it's well known at this point that generative AI tools tend to struggle with hands and fingers, frequently generating images with subjects either missing digits, or having too many. As of his most recent appearance in Kingdom Hearts 3, Donald Duck has only four fingers, and knowing how protective Disney is when it comes to legacy characters like Donald and Goofy, it's hard to imagine they'd hire an artist who doesn't know how many fingers he has. Donald's feet are also shaped rather strangely, though that could just be a matter of perspective, as he's floating (flying?) through the air with one foot (flipper?) forward and the other behind him.

https://twitter.com/vexmyx/status/2064420981901230165?s=46

Other details, like one of the zippers on Donald's coat and the chain on Sora's beloved Keyblade, are also rather wonky and oddly uneven looking, as if drawn by someone who isn't quite sure how zippers or chain links work. But the fashion faux pas don't end with zippers--the treads on the soles of Sora's shoes are also off, sporting a close-but-not-quite-right pattern of raised squares, when his shoe treads have historically featured tiny, raised crown motifs that match the crown-shaped pendant around his neck. Goofy appears to be wearing steel-toed boots, but his right foot looks much longer than his left foot, and appears to be missing the steel toe.

Again, this could simply be a matter of perspective due to the way the characters are posed, but given how beloved the franchise is--and how strict Disney is about sticking to character designs--many Kingdom Hearts fans are wondering if the image was at least partially AI-generated.

"Either fully generated or AI-enhanced, I'm not sure," Vexmyx said, sharing an image highlighting parts of the image that feature the most obvious AI fingerprints. "But I'm disappointed. This is unacceptable if [the AI claims are] true, and needs to be addressed."

While human error might explain some of the strange aspects of the image, it certainly doesn't explain why the face of the franchise's iconic clocktower has hands that appear to curve and bend.

GameSpot has reached out to Square Enix for comment, but did not receive a reply in time for publication.

Popping Locust heads and active reloading has never looked better than in Gears of War: E-Day, but this prequel is also making some big changes to how you'll move through the campaign. Movement has received a massive overhaul in the prequel, as Marcus Fenix and the rest of his squad can get around all manner of obstacles to reposition themselves while in combat. The game technically has a jump button for getting over larger obstacles like display cabinets, but don't expect Gears of War: E-Day to turn the series into a platformer.

Speaking with GameSpot, The Coalition studio creative director Matt Searcy explained how Gears of War: E-Day fuses the traditional sticky cover-based systems established in previous games and evolves them to feel more organic. This was on full display in the Xbox Games Showcase, as the gameplay preview for Gears of War: E-Day showed Marcus Fenix moving between chest-high structures, mantling over taller structures, and using the environment to his advantage in surprising ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk2Uf2Th9aM

"How you move in, out, and along cover is a lot more natural," Searcy said. "We still kept cover like it was in Gears, and having that heaviness was important. But being able to move in and out, being able to transfer between different cover shapes more smoothly--you'll see us even interacting through car windows or through shelves--so there's a lot more organic sort of interaction with cover. It's such a core part of the game, we wanted to be able to expand it. You can slide under a car and blow up a guy, it's a really cool move."

"The mobility for us was more of a way to evolve the gameplay mechanics than a narrative device. Jumping in Gears, we will never be a platforming game. We don't have levels that are about jumping to get to somewhere. For us, we saw it as a way to add a new dimension to flanking. Just being able to climb onto that high mantle--which you can either do from cover or you can jump onto--and then, just jumping across to another place and flanking someone, it opens up all of our levels."

Gears of War: E-Day launches for PC and Xbox Series X|S on October 3--but there's no PS5 version--and an open beta kicks off in August.

• Gears of War: E-Day Standard Edition

  $70 | Releases October 6

  Preorder at Amazon
• Gears of War: E-Day Premium Edition

  $100 | Releases October 1

  Preorder at Best Buy

Fable isn't just offering a grand fantasy adventure for players to embark on, but also a chance to catch their breath between quests, thanks to a world populated with hundreds of distinct non-playable characters. Each NPC has a unique personality and goals, and according to Playground Games, each one can be romanced. In fact, it's possible to marry every single one--just not all at once, as Fable has a monogamous approach to love.

"There are over 1,000 handcrafted NPCs in the game, and you can get into a relationship with any of them--or all of them--indeed, if that's what you want to do. Might take you quite a while, but you could definitely do that," associate game director Craig Littler said to GameSpot. "One thing I would say, though, is that it really ties into the complex, nuanced morality system because yes, you could get into a relationship with anybody, but not at the same time, because you can't be all things to all people at the same time. One person might want you to be kind. Another might want you to be a murderer. That's just how it goes."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuJjIgntefE&pp=0gcJCTkLAYcqIYzv

"All 1,000 of them are handcrafted by our team," associate game director William Kennedy added. "The game design team put a bunch of effort into those goals, and as you saw in the demo, we had the ambitious Megan, and all of her goals revolved around having stuff. She wanted me to have a house. She wanted me to dress in fancy clothes. She wanted me to own my own home, and what the design team was doing with that handcrafting was making sure that each NPC was a cohesive character, that you could end up having different stories when you interact with them."

Originally scheduled to launch this year, Fable was recently delayed to February 23, 2027, for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. Last week's Xbox Games Showcase revealed some new details for the game, like the new character Isabel (played by Hayley Atwell), a brief tease of the original Fable's villain, Jack of Blades, and the confirmation of the game's first story-driven expansion, Order of the Hero.

Fable is now arriving in February 2027, but with some extra months to fine-tune the fantasy adventure, Playground Games looks set to release an impressive entry in the classic franchise. Older Fable games from Peter Molyneux's Lionhead Studios had lofty ambitions, but with Playground at the helm, the new title is taking the series in an unexpected direction: life-sims.

During Summer Game Fest, GameSpot got a closer look at Fable behind closed doors, with the game's developers showing off just how deep relationships are in the game. In one example, the player had to become a success story to woo their chosen romantic pursuit.

This involved dressing in fine clothes, starting a business, and ensuring that it was profitable, all to win the hand of a fair maiden. What makes this even more impressive is that the NPC chosen is one of hundreds who populate the game, and each one has a distinct personality.

https://youtu.be/Zzwz7KZNBzY

Is it possible to pursue a romance with every single one of them? Yes, says Playground Games, but not all at once because each NPC has their own idealized version of who their life-partner should be. "One person might want you to be kind. Another might want you to be a murderer. That's just how it goes," associate game director Craig Littler said to GameSpot. For more details on every new detail we just learned about the game, you can watch the video above.

Fable launches on February 23, 2027, for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. During last week’s Xbox Games Showcase, we saw the reveal of Fable's first story-driven expansion, Order of the Hero, and our first look at the new character Isabel, played by Hayley Atwell.

Halo: Campaign Evolved primarily serves as a full remake of the original Halo's classic campaign mode, but the development team also added a handful of bonus prologue missions. Now, the development team has explained its philosophy for this additional content, and it largely comes down to the bro factor between the Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson.

"As far as the new missions [go], we're really going for providing more context and backstory for Chief and Johnson's relationship," executive producer Damon Conn and creative director Max Szlagor said in an interview with GameSpot at Summer Game Fest. "You see them in [the original Halo] but you don't get a lot of context for who Johnson is and his history of being on missions with Chief."

Aside from providing more backstory for Johnson and Chief, the new missions also gave Halo Studios an opportunity to explore different environments, including a Covenant ship and--as you may notice from the brief gameplay trailers released thus far--space battles. These haven't been a major element of Halo games to date, though they were featured in Halo: Reach back in 2010.

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

Because of how the Halo timeline plays out, the prologue missions will not take place directly prior to Halo: Combat Evolved's story. Instead, they're set one year prior.

"So it sort of neatly helps you to understand some of these relationships and get this broader view into the universe, as well," the devs said.

The missions will be their own "self-contained story," but should serve as a bridge into the rest of the game.

"It's a story about Chief, and it kind of starts out as this smash-and-grab to get some intel, and it becomes something much bigger. And again, you get to explore the relationship between Chief and Johnson, the introduction of the Brutes and Prophets, the relationships between the Spartans and ODSTs--so there are a lot of different elements that kind of layer into there that are all kind of self-contained within that group of missions."

Though the missions are set prior to Halo: Combat Evolved and can be accessed via the game's main menu at any time, Halo Studios actually recommends playing them once you've already completed the campaign. They're going to be a little bit harder than the rest of the game, but if you're up to the challenge, there's nothing stopping you from playing them immediately.

Halo: Campaign Evolved launches for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC on July 28.

Resident Evil: Veronica--a full remake of the 2000 game Resident Evil: Code Veronica--was announced during Summer Game Fest Live earlier this month, but why was now the right time to remake the survival-horror classic? For Capcom, it came down to a mixture of technology and characters.

Speaking to GameSpot during Summer Game Fest, Capcom said that there is no set process in determining which game gets a remake next, but the pieces just seemed to line up because of which characters the recent games have focused on. Leon, for instance, has been the star or co-star of the Resident Evil 2 and 4 remakes, as well as Resident Evil: Requiem, in recent years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wAvJoWyfrM

Capcom wanted to explore a different character next, and chose Claire because of that. We'll also see Chris Redfield in Resident Evil: Veronica, who hasn't been the protagonist or co-protagonist in a Resident Evil game since 6 back in 2012. The development team is aiming to dig deeper into the characters' stories than it did in the original, as well, which should make it appealing to both longtime Code: Veronica fans and first-timers.

Alongside the characters, technological advancements played a key role in the decision to remake the game. The game will be played with the third-person perspective seen in the Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 remakes, which should make it much less frustrating than the original version. That game relied on the franchise's classic tank controls, which have not exactly aged well.

Resident Evil: Veronica launches in 2027 for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Switch 2, and PC. The development team certainly has experience with the series, with much of the team having previously worked on the Resident Evil 2 and 4 remakes.

Resident Evil: Veronica was announced during Summer Game Fest to plenty of buzz and excitement, as it's arguably the classic Resident Evil game most in need of a remake. However, while it is indeed a reimagined version of a game from more than 26 years ago, there is one major way Capcom is treating it like a mainline, modern game.

During an interview with GameSpot, Capcom explained that, because the other modern mainline Resident Evil games have one-word subtitles, this should apply to a remake of Code Veronica.

Thus, the "Code" was dropped from the title, and going by that logic, it's likely any future mainline Resident Evil games will stick to this trend. So far, we're three for three over the last decade, with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil Village, and Resident Evil Requiem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JNv2CwmoRA

Resident Evil: Code Veronica released back in 2000, initially as a Dreamcast exclusive. Because it didn't launch on the original PlayStation--where Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3 first launched--it was decided to not give it a numbered title. This would make it appear to be a spin-off game to casual players, but there's a very good case to be made that Resident Evil: Code Veronica is the real sequel to Resident Evil 2, while 3 actually functions more as a side-story spin-off.

Resident Evil Veronica launches in 2027 for PS5, PlayStation X|S, Switch 2, and PC.

Gears of War: E-Day made a big splash during the Xbox Games Showcase, as The Coalition dropped an action-packed preview on audiences. Not only is Gears looking better than ever, thanks to Unreal Engine 5 powering it, but several design choices are also adding up to make the game play better through fluid movement mechanics and levels that'll give you opportunities to put your skills to the test.

GameSpot had the opportunity to take a closer look at the game and sit down with The Coalition's developers to learn more about the prequel. You can check out everything new that we learned from this interview that wasn't shown off in the initial preview in the video below.

https://youtu.be/hh5Swf5p4jo

Gears of War: E-Day is a fresh start for the franchise, and according to The Coalition, the developer started with an "empty hard drive" to rebuild Gears in Unreal Engine 5. The key location for E-Day is Kalona on the planet Sera, a city that will be devastated during Emergence Day when the Locust rise up to attack humanity. The Coalition says that the destruction will be felt throughout the campaign as environments change, and while E-Day isn't an open-world game, its large-scale arenas are combat puzzles waiting for players to solve them through smoother cover transitions and ultraviolence.

Some missions will have tighter spaces to fight in, while others will give players access to entire neighborhoods to wage war in. The main goal is to make players feel like they're in a big-budget action movie as they slide and mantle over obstacles so that they can flank enemies.

Other interesting tidbits from our time with The Coalition include the studio mentioning that E-Day has the longest campaign that it has ever designed--with the studio estimating that it'll take around 14 hours to complete--how E-Day was the story the studio wanted to tell next, and owners of PC gaming handhelds should expect to see it run just fine on those systems.

Gears of War: E-Day launches for PC and Xbox Series X|S on October 3, but it’s not coming to PS5.

Gears of War: E-Day will once again see fan-favorite characters like Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago headline the next game in the franchise, but what about that unresolved cliffhanger from Gears 5? Will we ever see those lingering plot threads addressed? Developer The Coalition isn't spilling the beans on whether Kait Diaz and her team will be back in action, but the studio has revealed why it chose to craft a prequel instead of a sequel.

Speaking to GameSpot, studio creative director Matt Searcy said that the tale of Emergence Day was simply the story it wanted to tell the most, with passion for the project dominating discussions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk2Uf2Th9aM

"We've got an opportunity here to tell a story we want to tell. What story do we want to tell? We chose E-Day," Searcy said to GameSpot. "After Gears 5, we shipped a bunch of games back-to-back, and the pandemic hit at the same time. Everybody was evaluating their job, where they wanted to live, and it wasn't so different for us. As a studio, what do we want to do with our next game? And it lined up exactly with Unreal Engine 5. No matter what we do, we're going to be starting with an empty hard drive."

"So we looked at those two things, and the story we really want to tell is a story we've been talking about. And the opportunity to build all those things--not just our mechanics--but the Locust, our characters, all those things from scratch, was just too good to pass up. So we looked at that, and it's one of those things where the passion dominates like any other conversation. We love that story, but we went, 'if all we want to do is this,' then this is what we should be doing, and we just chose that."

Gears 5 introduced some big revelations about the Locust, their origins, and Kait's connection to everything. For now, it looks like the dark origins of the Locust won't be a central plot point in E-Day, but that doesn't mean that the campaign won't be grim. The Coalition revealed that players will see plenty of civilian casualties during the campaign--which the studio estimates will take around 14 hours to complete--and the city of Kalona will start to fall apart as Emergence Day becomes a global catastrophe.

• Gears of War: E-Day Standard Edition

  $70 | Releases October 6

  Preorder at Amazon
• Gears of War: E-Day Premium Edition

  $100 | Releases October 1

  Preorder at Best Buy

Gears of War: E-Day launches for PC and Xbox Series X|S on October 3, but it's not coming to PS5. Ahead of its launch, The Coalition has shown off how movement in the game has evolved and how the iconic Lancer will get an origin story. An open beta to test out the multiplayer will be held in August. 

GameSpot is back from Summer Game Fest, and one of highly anticipated upcoming games we got to try out is Halo: Campaign Evolved. The remake of the 2001 original that's releasing this July for the game's 25th anniversary, the game promises a faithful update to the classic FPS that fans know and love.

At SGF, GameSpot senior video producer Jean-Luc Seipke played two of the re-made missions, Assault on the Control Room and The Silent Cartographer. Their verdict?

Meh.

"I think every Halo game has felt very unique and special in its own way. Halo: Campaign Evolved, unfortunately, feels more like just an amalgamation of all the Halos, while lacking what makes Halo 1 specifically Halo 1. That's my real core issue with it. It's just generic Halo," Seipke said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZFVVcEM38c

Seipke gave Halo Studios credit for upcoming certain elements of the game since we saw it last year. Visors are green again. Grunts now have their classic purple skin and armor that's brighter and more orange than before. The Warthog can now be driven on a particular, important path on The Silent Cartographer. The OG loading screen from the original Xbox version of Halo has been added. And while Seipke acknowledged that Halo Studios listened to fans and made a number of key changes and improvements, it wasn't enough to tilt the scale.

"I just didn't feel wowed the way I want to. This is Halo. It's one of the greatest games ever made. I should be feeling goosebumps. I should be feeling chills," they said. "I should be feeling, 'Oh my god, look at the way they have reimagined this game. They have brought it to life 25 years later.'

"But instead, I was kind of just like, 'Yep. That's Assault on Control Room. That's Halo. I can get inside the Wraith now. I can use the Energy Sword now. I can sprint now. It's fun. It's OK. It's just now wowing me.'"

Halo fans who want to play the classic Halo game with modern updates may like what they get, Seipke said, but ... "I was just really hoping for something more special."

Seipke didn't play any of the newly added prequel missions, spanning the three-mission Operation Meteorite story arc, and they said maybe these new missions will offer something more exciting to convince people this is a remake worth playing.

Halo: Campaign Evolved launches on July 28 for $50, and in addition coming to the places you'd expect like Xbox and PC, it will also be available on PS5. People who pay more for the $70 premium edition can start playing on July 23.

The game does not feature multiplayer support.

If Halo: Campaign Evolved doesn't sound interesting to you, Halo Studios is developing another new Halo game. Though it has not been announced yet, it's rumored to be like Fortnite with a live-service multiplayer approach.

The realm of asymmetrical horror multiplayer games grows a little bigger with Saw: Genesis, Bloober Team and Anshar Studios' co-developed 3v1 game based on Lionsgate's Saw franchise.

I got to sit in on a roughly 30-minute hands-off preview of the game at Summer Game Fest 2026, and I asked the team about what it's like entering this crowded space, where it seems like Hollywood is seeing dollar signs and throwing its licenses at various teams, then leaving some game studios to pick up the pieces when the game doesn't become a big enough hit to continue development.

Bloober Team's head of publishing, Michał Gembicki, told me that the team knows the score, and admitted it does scare them. "We know this is a saturated market, right? There are many corpses in it, many cadavers [pointing to a prop dead body in the Saw-themed room]. We are afraid of that. We are humbled by it, so we know we need to experiment a lot."

Gembecki continued, "But at the same time, from the Bloober perspective, we have established first-party games like Cronos and Silent Hill, obviously, that specialize in storytelling in rather linear worlds, and this is an attempt to enter something new, a completely new division, and become a much broader company."

You can check out my impressions of Saw: Genesis below for a closer look at the upcoming horror multiplayer game.

Broken Mirror Games is Bloober Team's new internal alt-label, and Saw: Genesis represents the first game announced under the banner. Co-developed with Anshar Studios, Saw: Genesis will launch first on Steam Early Access later this year.

The Fable reboot has more than 1,000 NPCs that players can interact with. Given this scale, and the fact that they all speak, people are naturally wondering how developer Playground was able to pull this off, and if some kind of artificial intelligence system was used.

During a recent group Q&A attended by GameSpot at Summer Game Fest, Playground confirmed that there is "no generation involved in it" after being asked if the studio used an Arc Raiders-style text-to-speech AI system.

"We've got a really fantastic cast of actors who have come in and recorded tons and tons of dialogue, which is what you've heard today voicing our NPCs," the developer said.

"All of our NPCs are fully voiced. We cast around 100 actors to voice our Living Population alone," the developer explained.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzwz7KZNBzY&feature=youtu.be

The text-to-speech system in Arc Raiders was controversial because developer Embark used AI to simulate all manner of different things that the in-game characters could say. After the game became a huge hit, Embark brought the actors back to record more lines, and now Arc Raiders has more human-voiced lines than it did at launch.

The Fable reboot has a so-called "Living Population" of NPCs that players can interact with on their journey through Albion.

"As you play the game, you get to know the names of the individual NPCs. You get to know what they like, what they’re looking for in a partner, where they live, where they work, all that kind of cool stuff. It’s an extra dimension to traditional NPCs," game director Ralph Fulton said in January.

The Fable reboot launches in February 2027 for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. Marvel star Hayley Atwell plays the main villain.

Generative AI was a hot topic during Summer Game Fest, as more game development companies have been implementing it in upcoming projects. One game that isn't utilizing the technology is Gundam: Rogue Orbit, as the next entry in the decades-old mecha anime series has confirmed that its game is 100% human-created.

Speaking to GameSpot, Gundam: Rogue Orbit producers Yuya Tomiyama and Shinya Satake had a simple response when quizzed about the game and how it is being developed.

"For this title, we can say that there's no generative AI use," the producers said.

In contrast, Sega's reveal of Crazy Taxi: World Tour has been met with a mixed reception after the game's original creator, Kenji Kanno, defended the use of GenAI in its development. Following an AI disclosure on Steam, Kanno said that the game's artists use generative AI to produce reference material, and then they start to "draw the actual thing."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXtfc6DfBWc

As noted by the director of research and insights at Niko Partners for the Asia and MENA markets, Daniel Ahmad, GenAI technologies are more widely accepted in Asian markets, while the tools have received noticeable pushback in the West due in part to how they're trained on existing work produced by human artists. Creatives largely view GenAI as a plagiarism machine, due to how many of them find that their work has been used without their permission, credit, or compensation.

Games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have felt this blowback, as, despite being hailed as one of the best new games of 2025, the use of AI placeholder assets resulted in it losing one of its game awards. Developer Sandfall Interactive has said that humans will make all work in its future games.

Crimson Desert has also been criticized for its use of GenAI--which was quickly removed by Pearl Abyss after it was discovered--while the developers behind recent releases like Subnautica 2 and 007: First Light moved to reassure players that the technology was not used in the development of those games.

Nintendo's decision to host a Nintendo Direct this June befuddles me. The virtual showcase wasn't terrible, but it certainly didn't wow me either. Deltarune is very cool, so it was nice to see a release date for Chapter 5, and I'm sure plenty of folks are thrilled to jump back into Pokemon Pokopia with its new expansion pass. But the games that would have been this Direct's big hitters, Kingdom Hearts IV and a remake for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, got extremely short teasers that didn't drum up much hype (for me, anyway). The entire Direct felt somewhat lackluster, and I wonder why Nintendo didn't just hold off on having a showcase until later this year.

The current landscape of virtual game showcases owes a lot to Nintendo. While major virtual presentations being livestreamed were a major part of E3 when that was still a thing, Nintendo established the framework for how showcases should work with its Directs, starting back in 2011. Nintendo basically separated itself from E3 entirely in 2013, ditching its annual stage presentation to just host Directs. And because of that, Nintendo no longer needed to be restrained to summer for big announcements. The community understood that Directs were their own thing, and they could be hosted at any time.

This has been incredible for Nintendo as it's been able to have showcases whenever there has been something to showcase. While some Directs have been far more impressive than others, most of them--especially in recent years--have done a great job of getting the audience excited and talking about at least one game. Each one felt carefully curated and well-prepared.

The lack of substantial gameplay or news for Kingdom Hearts IV and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time leaves me wondering why Nintendo revealed anything about them at all. These announcements felt undercooked, like they both could have spent a bit more time in secrecy before their public unveiling to the world.

Comparing this Direct to more recent June Directs paints a stark contrast. In 2025, we got a substantial gameplay reveal for Donkey Kong Bananza; in 2024, we got the announcement and gameplay reveal for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and both a gameplay reveal and plenty of new info for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond; and in 2023, we got the announcement and gameplay reveal for Pokemon Scarlet/Violet's two DLC expansions, the announcement and gameplay reveal for the remake of Super Mario RPG, the gameplay reveal for Pikmin 4, and the announcement and a pretty big gameplay reveal for Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

When I compare those showcases to this year's Direct, it feels like night and day. Maybe something was happening behind the scenes that prevented Nintendo from being able to show what it planned to, or perhaps Nintendo thinks the mere mention of Ocarina of Time getting a remake for Switch 2 is an announcement on par with an entire gameplay reveal for Mario, Pokemon, Donkey Kong, Metroid, or any of its other first-party franchises. If anything, however, this showcase felt more like an act of obligation than anything else, as if Nintendo felt a need to showcase something, anything, to warrant being in the Summer Game Fest conversation. 

And, frankly, Nintendo doesn't need to be a part of the SGF conversation. It continues to draw viewership for its Directs and hype for its games, largely because its showcases for upcoming games almost always celebrate them with detailed looks at gameplay and fun insights from game directors or producers. If Nintendo somehow feels like it needs to host a Direct within the vicinity of SGF, I hope it ditches that philosophy soon. I'd much rather only have Directs when Nintendo has something it wants to show off, not when it feels pressured it has to show anything off.

Prior to this week, the only options that Switch owners had to play the Kingdom Hearts franchise was via the cloud versions offered by Square Enix. However, with the new Switch and Switch 2 versions on the horizon, Square Enix has announced that Kingdom Hearts' Switch cloud versions are being delisted.

The following titles will be affected by the decision and no longer playable after today, June 9.

・Kingdom Hearts - HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX - Cloud Version
・Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue Cloud Version
・Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind (DLC) Cloud Version
・Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece Cloud Version

Separately, those game collections ranged from $40 to $50, while Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece brought them all together for $90. The newly announced digital versions of Kingdom Hearts - HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX for Switch and Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] for Switch 2 are available for preorder now. Players who owned Switch cloud copies of previous Kingdom Hearts games are eligible to get a 50% discount on the following digital versions:

・Kingdom Hearts - HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX - (Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 version)
・Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue (Nintendo Switch 2 version)
・Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind (DLC) (Nintendo Switch 2 version)
・Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] (Nintendo Switch 2 version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldMqRmTwy80

There will be a physical version of Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] for Switch 2, but the discount will not be offered for that compilation. There is one bright spot for players who owned cloud versions of these games. Square Enix has confirmed that the save data from those editions will be transferable to the Switch 2 digital versions.

As for the future of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, Kingdom Hearts 4 received a surprise teaser during today's Nintendo Direct. That came with the news that the Switch 2 port of Kingdom Hearts 4 will arrive alongside its counterparts on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC. For now, the sequel doesn't have a release date.

The Guitar Hero series made be dead and gone, but in its place comes a new game called Stage Tour, and it's made by the latest evolution of the same studio that created Guitar Hero.

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

A critical component of any good music games is its tracklist, and the Embracer-owned RedOctane Games has announced the first seven tunes for Stage Tour. The officially licensed setlist includes songs from a range of genres, and features big-name bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, and Ghost.

Stage Tour songs, so far

• "RATATATA" by Babymetal & Electric Callboy
• "Get the Funk Out" by Extreme
• "Square Hammer" by Ghost
• "Mimi's Delivery Service" by Good Kid
• "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers
• "Terminator Oscillator" by Static-X
• "Island in the Sun" by Weezer

RedOctane will announce more artists and tracks later this summer ahead of launch later this year on console and PC.

Just like Guitar Hero and Rock Band before it, Stage Tour allows players to group up or play music solo on guitar, drums, keyboard, and vocals.

Some of the in-game guitars for Stage Tour.

In terms of peripherals, players can buy a specially designed guitar controller made in partnership with Gibson's Kramer, along with a modulator guitar kit. Additionally, Stage Tour features in-game guitars from Gibson, Epiphone, and Kramer, including the iconic Gibson SG.

The Monument of Triumph update is the final content update for Destiny 2. When I first began playing the game a decade ago, I was instantly hooked. Over the years I've made friends, experienced the best long-running narrative in a game ever, and cleared all of my plans to be able to experience the newest raid, dungeon, or next story beat.

This time around it's a little different. There is no race to be prepared for, and my clan hasn't been frantically discussing the best builds or possible strategies. We're all just going to log in one final time, see what Bungie has made for us, and enjoy it for what it is.

It seems we're not alone in that sentiment, as the Destiny 2 player count on Steam alone has shot up to more than 160,000 and climbing. Notably, the player count is peaking at almost double that of Marathon's highest recorded on SteamDB. It's not quite the lofty heights of the finale of The Final Shape, or the release of Lightfall, which saw 316,750 Guardians log in to discover what would happen after the Vanguard discovered the pyramid-shaped fleet of The Witness was approaching. Still, it's a statement to Sony that people do still care about Destiny. A lot.

As the player count soared, the old Destiny 2 traditions began to return in the form of server queues, error codes, and randomly getting kicked from an instance. It wouldn't be a Destiny 2 update without some technical issues, after all.

There is still a petition running to get Sony and Bungie to consider making Destiny 3, although the creator of that petition, Luckyy10p, says it's been made to "send a message" rather than a genuine belief that this could turn the tide of the game's future. But if any decision makers from those companies are reading this article, we do, in fact, really want Destiny 3.

I never played much Star Fox as a kid. Save for maybe a few minutes here and there at a friend or cousin's house, I've basically not played the series whatsoever. So I was safely out on playing the new one arriving this summer for Switch 2. But a funny thing happened this morning: We actually learned who is making it--something that oddly doesn't happen much with Nintendo games until we can watch the credits--and the answer has completely changed my plans.

The New York-based Velan Studios was delighted to announce today that it's the development team working with Nintendo on Star Fox, and that the game is built on Velan's proprietary engine, Viper. If you don't know it by name, Velan is a fairly young team, established in 2016, with several games to its name. Of those, the most important one to me is Knockout City. The 3v3 dodgeball game was an incredibly fun arcade sports game, and I've never really gotten over the game coming offline a few years ago. It's one of my favorite games ever.

I've followed the team since then and have been enjoying its more recent release, Midnight Murder Club, a PvP shooter set in a completely darkened mansion that demands players rely on flashlights and sounds to track down their opponents. 

What these two very different games have in common, beyond their novel gameplay mechanics, is their abundance of charm. Both games offer ample opportunities for players to showcase their skills, but they were also soundtracked by the frequent laughter from those playing. There's a childlike heart to both games that can't be missed--what better way to capture a youthful spirit than things like dodgeball and hide-and-seek? 

https://bsky.app/profile/velanstudios.bsky.social/post/3mnuig2crp225

I don't know much about Star Fox, but to me, that sounds like the perfect team to take on a Nintendo franchise where players fly through space and perform daring combat maneuvers on an adventure with colorful characters. To the extent I can get away with "rooting" for a studio, a relatively small team that made one of my favorite games but has since suffered some commercial struggles seems to qualify.

I assume the publisher and developer rekindled their relationship from earlier to make Star Fox happen. Believe it or not, the team's very first game was Nintendo's Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, an augmented-reality racing game. Velan would later go on to use the same tech in a Hot Wheels game, too, and has also released a virtual-reality pinball game called Bounce Arcade. This type of portfolio suggests a team willing to try unconventional things, and to bring Star Fox back, I think you need to think outside the box. 

I'm excited to see Velan get called on for such a major project. As many players are surely returning to Star Fox as longtime fans hopeful for a revival that feels like it was worth the wait, I come to it from a decidedly different angle, but suddenly eager to play it, too.

The upcoming Death Stranding movie from Backrooms studio A24 and director Michael Sarnoski remains in development, and now Sarnoski has provided an update on how it's coming along and what fans can expect.

Sarnoski, who is also writing the script, told IGN he is "almost done" with it. Hideo Kojima, who is producing the movie, has seen drafts of the script and has passed along revisions, but there is no word on the specifics of the changes.

"Kojima has been really generous in letting me play in his world but letting me tell a story with my own characters and my own sort of corner of this world, but keeping it honest to the game and doing something that fans will really like. So it's been a great process so far, and I'm really excited to share it," he said.

Sarnoski also said he was impressed that Kojima recognized some of the nods he put into the script, including a reference to the 1985 movie Come and See.

"He just knows movies incredibly well. So that's been very cool to see," Sarnoski said. That's not surprising to hear, as Kojima says 70% of his body is made up of movies.

Sarnoski is known for directing the movies Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One. His next movie is The Death of Robin Hood, which stars Hugh Jackman as Robin Hood and releases on June 19.

Not a whole lot is known about the Death Stranding movie and how it may differ from the games, but Sarnoski previously talked about how his aim is to capture the soul and themes of the game, while featuring new characters.

Kojima himself was approached to direct the Death Stranding movie, but he declined. Kojima won't be “involved too much” because if he were, he would “start saying a lot of things.”

It’s still early days for the Death Stranding movie and there is no word yet on a cast or a release date. Norman Reedus, who plays main character Sam in the Death Stranding games, has said he’s open to returning for the movie. A Death Stranding animated movie is also in the works, as part of the bigger Death Stranding universe.

As for the game series, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach came out in June 2025, and while Kojima has ideas for Death Stranding 3, he doesn’t plan to make it himself. Kojima is also working on the games OD and Physint.

A24 is also producing the Elden Ring movie, which is being directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Alex Garland.