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?