Microsoft has officially announced a major change to its Halo franchise, as Activision will develop the next game in the series with a new, purpose-built team. A small team at Halo Studios will continue to support the Halo community and existing games. The new studio will also exist separately from the group of developers that work on the annual Call of Duty series.

“For Halo, our goal is clear: make the greatest Halo game ever, worthy of its universe and legacy, while staying true to what made players love it in the first place," Activision president Rob Kostich said in a statement. "It is a bold ambition, one that this franchise deserves. We have already begun assembling a purpose-built team, unique in capability and talent, ready and excited to deliver this next chapter with the community.”

Unfortunately, it's bad news for Halo Studios, as Microsoft has confirmed that it will be impacted by a new wave of layoffs that it had previously announced. In total, 268 people will be laid off across Halo Studios, other Xbox developers, and Xbox Game Studios management. As reported earlier today, studios are also being reorganized under Microsoft's biggest acquisitions, Bethesda and Activision Blizzard.

"The goal is to strengthen our franchises and games by operating fewer business units, aligning groups that already work closely together, and focusing our publishing expertise," Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty wrote in a letter sent to Xbox employees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LimYD3Ycwo

Alongside Halo Studios, World's Edge (Age of Empires series) and Rare (Sea of Thieves) will also fall under the Activision umbrella. Obsidian Entertainment and its projects--including a new Fallout game--will fall under Bethesda's remit, while Playground and Turn 10 will merge into a single studio after years of being creative partners on games like Forza and the upcoming Fable.

Rumors of Activision Blizzard being enlisted to help out on Halo began circulating earlier this year, when it was claimed that Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games had begun working on a Halo multiplayer prototype in June, but it was reportedly canceled in July.

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen has executed a gigantic trade, buying more than 1.1 million shares of his own company's stock and spending more than $26.4 million in the process. He now owns more than 40 million shares of the company, according to an SEC filing. He bought the shares at around $23/share.

Since the purchase was made public in a regulatory filing on September 21, GameStop's shares shot up, rising more than 3%.

This was just the latest massive share purchase by Cohen, as he bought 1 million shares of GameStop earlier in September, when the stock price was lower. Some of GameStop's directors also bought up shares this month.

The share-purchase disclosures filed with the SEC do not provide any details on why Cohen or the GameStop directors bought shares. There could be many reasons, but a CEO buying back shares of their own company is often taken as a signal that management is bullish on the company's outlook. Anthony Noto, the CEO of online banking company SoFi, bought back his own company's stock three times so far this year as the price fell.

When companies buy back their own shares, this can lead to an immediate boost in the overall share price, as fewer shares are available on the open market.

For his part, Cohen now owns about 9% of GameStop through his various buybacks.

GameStop and Cohen have been in the news a lot lately, as Cohen has pitched an ambitious bid to buy eBay. However, more recently, Cohen has seemingly cooled off. Bloomberg reported that Cohen was weighing his options going forward, including pulling the $56 billion bid for eBay entirely or partnering with the company instead of trying to buy it outright.

Cohen came up with the idea to buy eBay while he was on the toilet. He has also discussed an idea for re-selling digital game items, but has not explained how that could actually work in practice.

GameStop's business today is booming, though it's no thanks to video games. The company now earns the bulk of its revenue from collectibles, and that would be obvious to anyone who has set foot in one of their stores recently.

GameStop has turned its business around through its new focus on collectibles, as well as employee layoffs and store closures. However, GameStop recently announced that it is reopening some stores

Just what has NetherRealm Studios been up to since Mortal Kombat 1? All signs currently suggest that Injustice 3 is in development at the Mortal Kombat developer, and to add more fuel to the rumor-fire, a stuntworker's resume has indicated that they worked on the yet-to-be-announced game.

As spotted by MP1st, the stuntworker listed "Injustice 3" after performing motion capture sessions for two characters: Supergirl and Batwoman. Those two names make a lot of sense within the Injustice lore, as Supergirl played a big role in stopping Brainiac's invasion in Injustice 2. Batwoman is more of a mystery at this stage, as the character met a grisly fate in the pages of the Injustice comic book, which officially tied into the overall narrative of the fighting game series.

This alternate-Earth version of Batwoman--Katherine "Kate" Kane under the cowl and red wig--worked with Batman against Superman's regime, but in the fifth year of the rebellion, she sacrificed herself to manually activate a dimensional transporter that brought the DC Universe's Justice League heroes to the darker dimension. The Regime Superman apparently incinerated her with his heat vision at the last moment, seemingly killing her, but as any comic book reader will know, no one stays dead for long in that medium.

The last Injustice game was released back in 2017, and since then, NetherRealm ended the mainline Mortal Kombat universe with the superb Mortal Kombat 11 in 2019, and then gave it a soft reset with Mortal Kombat 1 in 2023. The recent entry in the fighting game universe received mostly lukewarm reviews upon release, and post-launch support ended in 2025 following the release of the game's Khaos Reigns expansion.

At the time, NetherRealm said that it needed to "shift focus" to its next game. The studio could also have new owners soon if Paramount's plan to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery goes through.

The second wave of Xbox layoffs could be imminent, as new reports claim that Microsoft is also looking to further restructure its gaming division by consolidating several of its studios. This would tie into previously announced plans by Xbox boss Asha Sharma to cut 3,200 roles from the division, which started with 1,600 mass layoffs in July.

According to The Information--which says that a Microsoft source briefed it on the company's plans--the second wave of 1,600 job cuts will start soon. Prolific leaker NateTheHate has also claimed that the Halo franchise is being moved to Activision Blizzard, and similar reorganizations will happen across the division.

If true, then 2026 will mark a year of major changes for Xbox. Since Sharma stepped in to run the division, the goal has been to make it more profitable as part of a "reset" initiative that has seen scores of jobs slashed over the last couple of months.

Xbox has also seen several of its first-party studios depart from the organization, with Double Fine Productions and Compulsion Games becoming independent studios again. State of Decay 3 developer Undead Labs and Senua's Blade studio Ninja Theory have also been sold off, while Arkane Lyon is also looking to divest itself from Microsoft once it finishes a mandatory consultation period with the French Local Works Council.

Xbox is now focused on its biggest franchises, with Bethesda recently confirming that Fallout 5 and remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are in the works. At the same time, various studios like id Software and Zenimax Online have been hit hard by layoffs, as part of Microsoft's plans to shed approximately 20% of its Xbox workforce.

With the new Minecraft update now live, players have been eagerly looking forward to the next Minecraft Live to learn what comes next for the sandbox game. We now know that the next stream will be this weekend. The Minecraft Live broadcast will begin on September 26, 2026 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET / 6 PM GMT / 7 PM CEST. It hasn't been communicated how long that broadcast will run for, but we have a tiny hint of an idea around what could be coming next.

The Minecraft Live broadcast date was revealed at the end of Tubbo's stream, after the Blue Creeper Battle concluded. This promotional event started on September 17, 2026 in person at the Tokyo Game Show, online through YouTube, and in-game in Bedrock Edition worlds.

The event saw the Illager High Council open rifts to the real world from the Sift--a new dimension being introduced in the upcoming Minecraft Dungeons 2. Soul-corrupted mobs poured in through those rifts to attack, and at TGS that included a huge Blue Creeper. To celebrate, 1 million Corrupted Creeper Cape codes were awarded to participating players, or to those watching via Twitch in the form of Twitch Drops.

The Minecraft Live announcement came at the end of Tubbo's stream.

After a showdown that saw players finally take down the Blue Creeper, a short cinematic played thanking players for taking part. That cinematic teased the Illagers finding a portal to the Sift. While we already know that the Sift is coming to Minecraft Dungeons 2, many are speculating that it could also be coming to the Minecraft base game, marking the first new dimension in Mojang's blocky sandbox since 2011's addition of The End.

If true, the next Minecraft update could be its biggest in 15 years. To find out, tune in to Minecraft Live this Saturday, September 26. You can watch the broadcast on the Minecraft Twitch channel, YouTube, or directly on the Minecraft Live website.

With Friday the 13th, Halloween, and other horror franchises getting video game adaptations in recent years, you might wonder when it'll be Freddy Krueger's turn, but according to Illfonic, the team behind those games, the task is harder than you might think. To do it right, one aspect of the films creates a big roadblock.

"There are plenty of IPs that people are like, 'Why aren't you doing this?' and 'Why aren't you doing that?' As much as I love Elm Street, [those movies are] about these big over-the-top kills," Illfonic's chief creative officer Jared Gerritzen told me in a Zoom call. "Same with Terrifier, where it's like these big, over-the-top kills that you would expect that you would have to do [in order] to do it right. That's the most costly thing, in some cases. You'd have to do hundreds of those to build that basis. You'd have to do all these other layers, and then it just becomes like, 'Well, shit.' Like, there are all these quagmires that we can't go into, and so for us, we're very diligent about the IPs that we choose."

With Freddy's dream world seeming like a great fit for a game, I'd long envisioned Elm Street as an obvious candidate for an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game akin to Illfonic's other titles, but listening to Gerritzen speak on the pitfalls, it occurred to me that he's right.

It's hard to imagine a game creating enough elaborate set-piece kills to keep them feeling fresh for players who may play for dozens or hundreds of hours, but neither does it make sense to rinse and repeat the same standout moments like Tina's nightmare that saw her crawling on the ceiling, or the way Glen's bed swallows him whole and erupts with a geyser of blood. 

Freddy doesn't usually catch up to someone and finish them off with his iconic glove in a way that maps well onto multiplayer. He makes a meal out of them, and that's hard to translate into a game built on replayability.

Gerritzen explained that his team has worked on so many games of this sort that, by now, it gives them something like a running start.

"We've been through this so much that when we start on a game, we already know what the pitfalls are. [...] And so we start off with a pretty good skeleton, and then we add those layers of the project that we love. We turn down a lot of stuff because it's just like, 'Hey, to do this, it doesn't make sense in a video game form.'"

Beyond those gameplay pitfalls, there seems to be a broader rights issue tying up the Elm Street franchise, too. Though Gerritzen didn't comment on that aspect, it's recently been reported that competing Elm Street movies may soon be in the works--one for US audiences and one for international audiences--because the ownership of the intellectual property is currently split. That sort of rights quagmire probably scares off some creators, following what happened to Friday the 13th.

Does this mean we'll never get a Freddy game? I don't think that's what Gerritzen meant, though it may mean a team other than Illfonic is the one to make it, or it could be that Illfonic finds a way to make it work in the future. 

For now, the team is focused on supporting Halloween, which launched on September 8 and has surpassed a million copies sold, alongside its cabinet of other asymmetrical multiplayer games, Predator: Hunting Grounds, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

For more on the team behind Halloween, here's what Illfonic said about why comparisons to Dead by Daylight are inherently flawed.

30 Best Horror Games To Play In The Dark In 2026 View Images

Halloween is the latest in a long line of asymmetrical multiplayer horror games to release over the past decade, and like all the others, it's faced lots of comparisons to Dead by Daylight (DBD), the decade-long leader in the genre. It's an "easy" comparison to draw, Illfonic chief creative officer Jared Gerritzen said, but ultimately it's inherently flawed.

"It's literally cricket versus baseball. It's so easy to see an image of cricket and say it's exactly like baseball; it's like, really, is it? No, it's not. Like, here are all these differences," Gerritzen told me in a Zoom call. Illfonic is no stranger to this space, having made Friday the 13th,  Predator: Hunting Grounds, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space all before Halloween. 

"We make a game bespoke for that franchise, for that group of horror fans, and for the people who love that monster."

Gerritzen said that "others" make something more like "mixtapes," which have their own merits, but the projects are too different to directly compare, as some players do.

"And it's like, how could you not want something that is built purely for Halloween? Like, if you're a horror fan, if you're a Halloween fan, how would you just be okay with it being a secondary piece? We build things for that love of that movie, and I feel like they deserve it. 

"I feel like when we choose IPs, we choose the things that we love, and that we feel could be something amazing, and it's cool that other games exist that put characters in as playable, but we don't want to make it [only] playable. We want to make it Haddonfield. We want to make it Michael [Myers]. We want to make Michael's abilities and put all these characters that were beloved into it."

Gerritzen's words hit on something I've been grappling with recently, when I tried to explain how very different DBD is from the field of bespoke, licensed, multiplayer horror games. I love DBD, but I love Halloween, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and most of the others that have filled this space, too. Though there's only so much time in the day, and sometimes one game of this sort does have to beat out another for my free time, I keep them all in my rotation. 

"If you're a horror fan, you should consume everything, you know?" Gerritzen added, imagining a similar sentiment in horror movies to prove how silly he thinks it sounds. "'Oh, I'm just gonna watch only movies from this director.' It's like, 'Come on. No, you're not. You're gonna watch everything.'"

As for the people who wrote Halloween's obituary before it had even been released, Gerritzen reminded players of Illfonic's track record. 

"How many Illfonic-published games [have shut down]?" he asked rhetorically. The answer is none, as he confidently implied. Friday the 13th was shuttered due to a rights issue, but Illfonic didn't publish it, and it remains a unique case in this space anyway. Meanwhile, the team's other games in this genre are still running today. 

Gerritzen explained how this talking point has become a refrain for players in this space, and how the team blocks out the noise.

"As soon as we started doing Predator, people were asking about it," he recalled. "Same in Ghostbusters, same in Killer Klowns, same in [Halloween], and it's like, cool. All we have to do is prove you wrong. Predator has 30-some-odd predators right now. You know, we're talking about doing some really cool stuff with that. Klowns has all this great stuff. Like, we slow things down for sure. But it's not like Illfonic has ever shut a server down [or] closed down shop. Halloween has a lot of really long legs, and we've got a lot of stuff ready, you know, and it's exciting. So we can only prove them wrong. That's literally all we can do."

Halloween: The Game is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. For more from Illfonic, here's why A Nightmare on Elm Street game hasn't happened yet.

30 Best Horror Games To Play In The Dark In 2026 View Images

The new Resident Evil movie from director Zach Cregger hit theaters on September 18, and it had a scary-good first weekend at the box office. The movie got great reviews but some people didn't like the ending specifically.

Cregger said in new interviews that he respects that, but doesn't agree--and the ending was almost totally different.

This story contains major spoilers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNd1gb19A-c

The Resident Evil movie ends by revealing that Austin Abrams' character, Bryan, becomes an infected demon after getting bitten by a child, and that the movie is actually the origin story of a monster that you might find in the games. The syringe carrying the cure to the virus shatters on the ground. In the original version, Cregger said the syringe with the cure also broke, but at that moment, Bryan simply went on a killing spree.

However, test screenings resulted in negative feedback, with people saying this was deflating and meant that the story was "over." However, Cregger told Collider that he filmed a second sequence as a Plan B, and that's the one that ended up in the movie where people root for Bryan to be cured. It led to a greater emotional journey for viewers, Cregger said, though not everyone agrees.

"I shot that shot of the scientist putting the needle in his pocket just because I had a feeling. I was like, 'I feel like I'm going to need that.' Then we were able to build a new sequence at the end. I shot a contingency of him going for the stab ... just like, if I need it, I should just get it. And thank God because that's what we ended up using," he said. "Because it keeps the stakes all the way until the end. It's like, 'Save him, save him!' Whereas before it was like, 'Kill them I guess? Kill them all?'"

In a separate interview with The New Flesh Horror Movie Podcast, Cregger said he liked the idea of Bryan reaching his "final form" as a mutant monster, especially because it's not what you'd expect.

"This whole movie wasn't this guy who saves the world. It was the origin story of a monster. It recontextualizes everything, and I like a movie that punches you in the face," he said. "I like a movie that does not give you what you want, but what it does give you is more impactful."

https://twitter.com/RENews_X/status/2102034866145726615

Some of the feedback Cregger said he received was that people enjoyed the movie up until the ending. If you're in that crowd, Cregger said he respects your opinion, but he made the movie he wanted to.

"That's too bad. I don't care. It does not bother me at all. If you don't like the ending, we just disagree. I respect it. But I would never in a million years change it."

Given how Resident Evil ended, it sure seems like there are more stories to told, and Cregger himself has said he does have sequel ideas in mind. That being said, Cregger has also said he is finished making franchise movies after getting lots of hate from fans of the Resident Evil games.

In addition to changing the ending, Cregger made other adjustments to the film based on screen tests, including removing a lot of jokes.

Bungie has admitted that it "lost sight" of what players loved about its games over the past few years, acknowledging that a series of broken promises and shifting promises caused the studio to lose the trust of its community. Now, the Destiny developer promises to refocus on its players, with plans to restore removed Destiny 2 content and evolve Marathon beyond its current extraction-shooter format.

In a new video accompanied by a blog post on the Bungie website, Bungie studio head Poria Torkan and Marathon head of product and general manager Josh Dean addressed the studio's recent struggles and outlined its plans for the future. Torkan acknowledges that Bungie's ambitions had stalled as the studio pursued too many different initiatives without enough focus on the things players actually want.

"We lost trust. We lost incredible colleagues. And our ambitions as a studio stalled," Torkan said. "We chased vision without enough focus on what players loved, and that's on us. We own that."

https://youtu.be/asnrQ1UoBQM

Bungie directly acknowledged the frustration surrounding Destiny 2--which received its last content update on June 9, 2026--including the removal of large amounts of content from the game in "sunsetting" processes.

"We haven't just heard your feedback. We understand the anger, the disappointment with us," Torkan said. "We're not asking for your trust, we know we have to earn it."

Bungie described Destiny as the foundation of the studio and stressed that it is "absolutely not done with Destiny." However, it wants to take its time with whatever comes next, starting with returning Destiny to what it describes as its original promise of mystery, discovery, and the community of Guardians facing seemingly impossible odds.

Before it shifts to new stories, Bungie plans to restore content that was previously removed from Destiny 2. That could include the Red War campaign, the Tangled Shore, or raids, including Leviathan and Crown of Sorrow. Bungie described the restoration as something that "never should have been ripped away to begin with."

Destiny 2's vaulted content will be returned to the game.

It's a notable shift for Destiny 2, which has spent years operating around the controversial vaulting of content. Bungie didn't provide a specific timetable for when the removed content will return, emphasizing that doing it properly will take time.

Bungie will also focus on the future of Marathon, where player numbers continue to dwindle. The studio plans to evolve Marathon beyond the genre constraints of an extraction shooter. Bungie's goal is to expand it into a "deeper survival experience." The studio says it wants to preserve the aspects of Marathon that players already enjoy while giving them more agency over how they play--including PvE and PvP.

Alongside its plans for Destiny and Marathon, Bungie says it has made internal changes intended to make the studio more focused. "Stability does not mean shrinking our ambition," Torkan said. "It means focusing on things that you want to see from us and making sure that our vision matches our reality."

With Bungie wanting to put players "above everything else" to rebuild the relationship between the studio and its communities, it also isn't expecting players to just accept their promises this time around. "We're not going to do it with words," Torkan said. "We're going to do it through the games that we make and how we show up for our players."

Bungie has made it clear that it has a lot to prove, but restoring Destiny 2 content that players--including me--have been longing for is a great start. But after years of promises, Bungie now has to show players that this time, it can deliver.

Fans recently discovered an odd-looking bathroom sign in Marvel's Wolverine, prompting people to wonder if developer Insomniac Games used generative AI.

According to Insomniac's community and marketing director James Stevenson, that's a bunch of baloney. The reason the bathroom image looks weird is because of a "UV map bug," he said. A fix is now in the works.

"There are no AI-generated assets in Marvel’s Wolverine," Stevenson said.

https://twitter.com/JamesStevenson/status/2101048325067751572

Insomniac's last game, 2023's Spider-Man 2, utilized machine-learning to help speed up development, and the company intends to keep doing this going forward. But for now, it sounds like AI-generated assets are off limits.

Marvel's Wolverine released on September 15 and became a swift success, reportedly exceeding the lifetime sales of Death Stranding 2 on PS5 right out of the gate.

While Marvel's Wolverine might not have featured any AI-created assets, that's not the case for every game. Activision's Call of Duty games use generative AI, as does Sega's upcoming Crazy Taxi: World Tour.

GameSpot's Marvel's Wolverine review scored the game an 8/10. Reviewer Tamoor Hussain said of the game, "At best, it’s a fun but forgettable experience that’ll entertain you for a few hours."

World Space Week kicks off on October 4, and if the idea of exploring the infinite horizon of the cosmos doesn't interest you, then maybe a world-famous Pokemon can inspire you to reach for the stars. As part of the event, the European Space Agency is teaming up with The Pokemon Company to shine a light on space exploration, and it'll feature a very special Pikachu. Back in June, French Astronaut Sophie Adenot traveled to outer space and back with a special Pikachu plush to lay the groundwork for the promotion, capturing several moments on camera.

https://youtu.be/mjkDwgStzuo

Back on terra firma, there'll be exhibitions at ESA facilities during ESA Open Days, and at museums during World Space Week. This will cover France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

While the goal is to both educate and entertain the next generation of explorers, there's a good chance that exclusive collaboration products will also be a big draw. These will include plushies, Pokemon Trading Card Game accessories, and a replica of Adenot's Pikachu decked out in astronaut gear and a bomber jacket. The ESA online shop will also offer special Pikachu-themed ESA apparel, including T-shirts, a tote bag, a notepad, and pins.

Look at all the cool Pokemon stuff you can't have unless you pay a premium for it on eBay.

And that's cool! It's also likely to attract the seedier side of the Pokemon fandom, as we've seen several times in the past, as just about everything with Pokemon branding is usually scooped up by scalpers and sold online to collectors who couldn't get their hands on those items. In one notable example, chaos broke out during a special exhibit at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam after people flocked to acquire a limited-edition Pikachu card, which ended with four workers being fired for alleged misconduct.

Not even perishable food items are safe from the Pokemon reseller hustle, as the recent Krispy Kreme collaboration saw people listing boxes of Pokemon donuts for sale. While most were empty, others contained delicious treats and an expiration date.

In related Poke-news, Japanese airline All Nippon Airways recently unveiled a Pokemon-themed airliner to celebrate 30 years of the franchise, complete with custom illustrations of popular Pokemon like Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Sprigatito.

Gaming legend Hideo Kojima was recently in the news when it was announced that Sony had dropped his new spy game Physint, with Xbox swooping in to sign it. In the aftermath of the shocking announcement, more information has come to light, including how Kojima thought Physint had major commercial appeal.

He told The Washington Post, "This is the biggest selling title I could possibly create." He went on to say, as reported by Kotaku, "I didn't think Physint would be on the list of being canceled."

Kojima's Physint stars Bill Skarsgard and Charlee Fraser.

According to veteran gaming reporter Jason Schreier, Sony abandoned Physint after Kojima Productions reportedly went over budget and missed deadlines. In response, Kojima Productions said people should be skeptical of what they read on the internet, though the Japanese studio did not refute the details of the report.

In an interview with IGN, Kojima said Physint is still in the concept phase. He is working out the game's systems, visuals, and design, and added that a "very small team" is working on it right now.

"The next cold war begins" is the tagline for Physint.

Despite this, Kojima believes a game like Physint has a lot of appeal because, "Anything espionage is going to be fun, period, no matter what game it is."

He went on to say that he got the idea for Physint in part due to the overwhelming fan demand for another Metal Gear game. He no longer works at Konami and couldn't make a new Metal Gear, but the interest from fans inspired him to make a "new action espionage game" that became Physint.

Physint stars Bill Skarsgard, Charlee Fraser, Don Lee, and Minami Hamabe. Kojima Productions is also working on the horror game OD, which is being made in partnership with Xbox.

Konami has revealed that a free demo for Castlevania: Belmont's Curse will become available on October 1. Even better, progress from this early taste of the metroidvania title will carry over to the game's full launch, which is on October 15. 

The Castlevania: Belmont's Curse demo will offer up the opening chapter, according to Konami. That likely means we see Rose and Trevor Belmont arrive in the burning city of Paris, before being split up. Then it's up to Rose to utilize her sword and magical tarot cards to take on classic franchise foes, like zombies and probably skeletons. The game will also let you turn tough bosses into powerful friends. 

This small bite of Castlevania: Belmont's Curse will take up between 3GB and 6GB of storage space, depending on your platform. The smaller size is for Switch, while the largest is for PS5. However, the game will only run at 30fps on Nintendo's hybrid console; meanwhile, it runs at 60fps on Sony's system as well as Xbox Series X|S and PC. Here's hoping a Switch 2 version is in the works, though there's nothing official on that front.

Evil Empire Studio and Motion Twin are behind this newest entry in the Castlevania series, with the former previously working on the franchise with Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania. The latest project from Evil Empire was The Rogue Prince of Persia. However, even with this pedigree, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse isn't a roguelite. 

Last month, Konami announced the voice cast for Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. Dracula will sound familiar to fans of the Netflix Castlevania series, since Graham McTavish is reprising his role as the elder vampire. 

Best Castlevania Games: Ranking The Top 15 Entries View Images

In a big twist, Sony just dropped Hideo Kojima's new spy game Physint, with Xbox swooping in to pick it up. But will Physint be exclusive to Xbox?

Kojima himself said in a new interview with IGN that he does not know. "That would be a question for Xbox. But I don't know for sure," he said.

Under former Xbox CEO Phil Spencer's leadership, Microsoft began releasing some of its major games on rival platforms. Even Halo is on PlayStation today.

New CEO Asha Sharma has signaled a return to exclusives. Choices about exclusivity will be made case by case. Kojima said Microsoft’s ambition is to help its games reach the largest possible audience.

"In previous updates from Xbox, I thought that they have this kind of stance where they want to deliver to as many gamers as possible, no matter what the platform is," Kojima said. "I think all of that will be announced at a later time. I'm not sure yet, and I can't really say."

https://twitter.com/HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN/status/2099387994188939599

Xbox is publishing not only Physint, but also Kojima's horror game OD. Both games will feature celebrities. Bill Skarsgard will star in Physint, while OD features Hunter Schafer, Sophia Lillis, and the late Udo Kier.

Physint was reportedly over budget and late, which contributed to Sony's decision to abandon it. Kojima Productions released a statement in response, saying people should treat the report with skepticism, though the company did not deny or refute the reporting. Kojima himself said he was "shocked" when he was informed on a Zoom call that Sony was dropping the game, especially because he believed it could be his best-selling game ever.

It is still early days for both Physint and OD, as neither game has a release date or much in the way of concrete information.

IO Interactive recently delayed the Switch 2 edition of 007 First Light yet again, and now the studio's technical producer, Cristina Vega, has shared more details on why the company had "no choice" but to postpone it a second time.

Speaking to Inven Global, Vega said the deal is "disappointing news for fans," but it was a decision "also made for their benefit." The game was originally due to arrive alongside the other versions in May 2026, but IO pushed the game to Summer 2026, and now again to March 2027.

First Light's Switch 2 edition is now coming in March 2027.

Explaining why yet another delay was necessary, Vega said the studio had been grinding hard for a while and "needed a brief breather." She also said there were "requests from marketing and various other factors" that resulted in a scenario where IO had "no choice" but to delay the Switch 2 edition to 2027.

"Ultimately, we decided on another delay because we want fans to experience the game in its most polished form on Switch 2, so we ask for your understanding," she said.

Vega went on to confirm that First Light for Switch 2 does not utilize the console's mouse functionality. She said the team didn't find a way to utilize this, nor does the studio believe it even "makes particular sense from a gameplay perspective."

Finally, Vega acknowledged that the Switch 2 is relatively less powerful than the PS5 or Xbox Series X|S consoles, so "some compromises are inevitable" from a technical perspective. One example is that object detail won't be as impressive on Switch 2, she said.

"We might slightly lower the detail on trees, but core elements the player looks at, and the central aspects of gameplay, must remain identical," she said.

First Light for Switch 2 will also have fewer NPCs, but not fewer enemies to fight, Vega said. "We haven't changed the gameplay itself, so players don't need to worry about the game feeling empty due to reduced NPCs," Vega explained.

In addition to the forthcoming Switch 2 version of First Light, IO is working on a new fantasy game. However, after Xbox pulled funding, IO laid off staff. Many also want to see IO work on the expected sequel to First Light, but no official announcements have been made.

Last year, Sony announced that it was partnering with Blackpink member and actor Lisa to promote the PlayStation 5, and that collaboration has resulted in an interesting spin on the PS5 DualSense controller. While previous limited-edition controllers for games like Marvel's Wolverine, Marathon, and GTA 6 have used bold, striking designs to capture eyeballs, the Lisa Limited Edition is something else entirely. See for yourself:

While it might look like the Live, Laugh, Love of DualSense controllers, Sony says this peripheral incorporates elements from the performer that hold personal meaning for her. The illustration of bangs and eyes on the touchpad are meant to reference Lisa's signature look, and you'll also find stars and "LL" lettering that has been set against her personal favorite DualSense colorway, Chroma Pearl. 

Like other limited-edition DualSense controllers, you can expect to pay $85 for it--or more if scalpers set their sights on it--and preorders start on October 2 on the PlayStation Direct store, before rolling out to retailers from October 30.

Alongside the DualSense controller, you can also grab a collection of PlayStation merchandise featuring Lisa's designs, with T-shirts, hoodies, caps, and keychains all sporting her illustrated gaze and hairline. This isn't the first time that Sony has partnered up with a celebrity to promote the PS5, as the PlayStation Playmakers program includes collaborations with comedian King Bach, NFL player Ja'Marr Chase, and even NBA legend LeBron James.

The new controller probably won't distract from all the public backlash that Sony has received throughout 2026. PS5 console price-hikes, the decision to cease producing game discs and go all-digital in 2028, the closure of Bluepoint studio, and canceling plans to fund Hideo Kojima's Physint have upset many PlayStation fans and gamers throughout 2026.

In the realm of gaming memorabilia, novelty items often serve as little more than dust collectors once the hype fades. However, Capcom's first aid kit popcorn bucket, launched as a collectible for the release of the Resident Evil movie, might actually be more practical than it first appears.

Instagram user pokicourtney has discovered the ultimate purpose for the green bag--storing physical copies of games from the Resident Evil franchise.

The popcorn bucket manages to hold a surprisingly dense amount of physical games across multiple console generations--13, in fact. There's a mix of Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, and deluxe steelbook editions of titles spanning from the Resident Evil Origins Collection through to Resident Evil Village.

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If you're accustomed to carefully organizing your grid slots in your Resident Evil inventory, seeing a physical copy fit so cleanly into the first aid kit is incredibly satisfying.

While it was originally meant to hold snacks for moviegoers, turning the bag into a dedicated Resident Evil media container seems like a pretty good alternative purpose.

Despite initial skepticism, the Resident Evil movie surpassed expectations at the box office this weekend, bringing in more than $108 million. In our review, Eric Frederiksen said, "Zach Cregger sheds the camp and artifice to give us a truly exciting, tense, and disgusting Resident Evil movie."

Sony's announcement that it would no longer publish Physint for PlayStation came as a shock, especially to the game's director, Hideo Kojima. While Xbox has since stepped in to save the project, there was still plenty of speculation as to why Sony was passing on it, with some people claiming that Kojima had begun to miss deadlines and was going over budget on his Metal Gear Solid spiritual successor. In a new interview, Kojima has revealed more details about the project and how Sony delivered the bad news back to him in June.

"So in June, Sony Interactive Entertainment said they wanted to have a Zoom call," Kojima said to IGN. "I was so busy at that time--I had just gone to New York for a Prada event and then to LA right after. But anyway, I came back, and we had this Zoom call. They said they can no longer fund development for Physint. I was shocked, and I said, 'What did you say?' I couldn’t quite process what they had said. I wasn't sure because I was in shock."

Kojima didn't elaborate on who he spoke to during that meeting, and he didn't say why Sony decided to cease funding the development of Physint. What Kojima did know was that he needed to move fast to protect his studio, Kojima Productions, which currently employs around 200 people. Initially, only Kojima, Kojima Productions president Shinji Hirano, and head of talent development Aki Saito knew about Sony's decision. This led to several months of Kojima looking to find a new partner for Physint, with Xbox eventually signing a deal with the veteran developer.

As for the aftermath? It doesn't sound like Kojima is holding a grudge against Sony, as he explained to IGN that he has "no bad feelings" towards the company. 

"Make no mistake, this was a serious situation for the studio with a range of potentially significant implications." Kojima wrote in an X post, possibly in response to Bloomberg's story about the game facing development challenges. "While we recognize that the article may have caused alarm, we want to reassure you all, for the record: that the studio is in a healthy, profitable state, development for Physint continues to move forward with Xbox, and our relationship with PlayStation remains strong."

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Physint closed out Xbox's Tokyo Game Show broadcast last week, with Kojima revealing that Bill Skarsgard had been cast as the protagonist of his stealth-action game.

The box office tallies for Resident Evil are in, and as expected, the new Zach Cregger-directed movie has been a big hit on its opening weekend. In North America, the film made $60 million, and globally, it brought in $48.3 million. That makes for a combined total of $108.3 million.

That exceeds the original prediction of between $40 million and $50 million by a comfortable margin. How does that current box office tally stack up to previous live-action Resident Evil movies?

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Cregger's new flick has already surpassed the lifetime box office totals of 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, and it looks like it'll be on track to earn more than the first three movie adaptations. It still has a way to go to beat the franchise's current record holder, 2016's Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, as the last movie to star Milla Jovovich in the lead role brought in a whopping $312 million at the global box office during its theatrical run. Here's a closer look at how the new Resident Evil currently stacks up in comparison:

Resident Evil Movies

• Resident Evil (2002) -- $102.9 million
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) -- $129.3 million
• Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) -- $147.7 million
• Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) -- $300 million
• Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) -- $240 million
• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) -- $312 million
• Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) -- $41.9 million
• Resident Evil (2026) -- $108.3 million (First weekend)

Resident Evil was already generating plenty of buzz before its general release, and it's currently the highest-rated video game movie of all time. It has earned a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 140 reviews, and on GameSpot's Sister site, Metacritic, the movie has a metascore of 80 from 32 reviews. Our own review was also positive, calling it an exciting--and disgusting--adaptation of the Capcom survival-horror games.

"By backing away from the stories and characters of the video games, Cregger dodges the giant bullet of 'that’s not my Leon Kennedy' and instead lets us finally experience Resident Evil ourselves, through our own eyes," Eric Frederiksen wrote in GameSpot's Resident Evil movie review.

Someone playing Refractive Entertainment's recently released action-RPG Luminary for less than an hour accused the team of using AI for the game's only voiced character. The player said the voice "killed it" for them. There was just one problem: It wasn't AI. It was actually the developer's wife doing her first-ever voice acting gig.

Refractive Entertainment launched Luminary into Steam Early Access on August 11. It's a resource-gathering action-adventure sandbox with an art style that's giving Fable meets Immortals Fenyx Rising. It's cute-looking and well-received, with a "Mostly Positive" rating out of almost 350 Steam reviews. But for an indie developer who says his game's success lives and dies by its Steam review score, one particular negative review caught the creative director's attention.

On September 10, user NyteKnyte posted a short Steam review after only 0.4 hours with the game to say that Luminary looked good but "the awful AI-generated voice killed it" for them. "Feels off, like an AI game," NyteKnyte said in their review. "Hopefully its temporary and gets better, but [the AI voice] killed it for me."

Not long after this review hit the game's Steam page, Refractive Entertainment responded, saying that the “awful AI-generated voice” that NyteKnyte decried was actually the creative director's wife.

"While my wife might not be the greatest voice actress out there (that was her first time), I can assure you she is a real person and not AI haha," creative director Keith Kolod said. "We don't use AI at all in our game, we're just some indie game devs doing our thing with the resources we have."

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Kolod even shared the negative review on X on September 11 to wonder publicly why people just "automatically assume" that every voice in an indie game is AI just because it doesn't sound like AAA quality. He also thanked those who played Luminary and complimented his wife's portrayal of the Temple Guardian.

In Discord DMs with GameSpot, Kolod said he doesn't have any issues with people using AI for any reason, especially in game development and for voiceovers. However, he doesn’t use the controversial technology because voiceovers are a way for him to "leave parts of me, my family, and friends" in the games he makes.

"That said, Mikell did NOT jump to the opportunity," Kolod explained. "She is shy, felt like it would be bad, and didn't want to hurt the game. I told her this part doesn't need a lot of 'acting.' It's an ethereal goddess who should feel calming to the player as though she has delivered this speech to hundreds of Luminaries over centuries, and that I believe she could do it. The first few takes of recording you could tell she was extremely nervous, even though it's literally just me and her at my computer and a mic. [She] stumbled on words, worried about all of her inflections and how certain words sounded, but with enough takes and only reading a couple sentences at a time, I thought we got a pretty decent run. She was happy it was over."

Kolod said the whole reason he built Luminary was so "me, my wife, and son [could] play together." As a Souls and Elden Ring fan, he wanted something that could introduce newer players to the action-RPG genre without the punishing difficulty of those games while creating something his whole family could enjoy together. Luminary is that for Refractive Entertainment. With no funding, no publisher, and no other job bringing in income, Luminary has a lot of expectations on its shoulders. For Mikell, lending her voice to the game wasn't about becoming a professional voice actor or saving money. She did it because she wanted to help her husband succeed.

"This was my wife's first time voice acting, she wasn't a huge fan," Kolod told GameSpot. "You know how it is--everyone hates hearing their own voice in a recording who isn't a professional. As [much] fun as we had together doing it, it may be a hard sell for me to convince her to do it again. She really just helped me out of love and wanting to see me succeed with Luminary, and helping in any way she could."

Despite the AI accusation, Luminary appears to be off to a promising start for the two-person team at Refractive Entertainment. Two weeks after its Steam Early Access launch, Kolod took to X on August 25  to share that the action-RPG had generated over $100,000 in sales in just one week, with the team pulling in approximately $70,000 in revenue after Steam’s cut. Not bad for a two-person studio with no funding and no publisher.

The attention surrounding Mikell's voice has apparently brought even more eyes to the game, too. Kolod told GameSpot that posts about the story on Reddit and elsewhere have generated views, likes, upvotes, and more wishlists, though he said the team has yet to see that attention translate into a comparable bump in sales. And perhaps nobody was more surprised by the whole thing than Mikell herself. Before Kolod pushed the update to the game containing her voice, she had one request for her husband (who will celebrate 15 years together in November):

“Ok, but I don't wanna hear if people hate my voice in reviews or on X. I did what I could.”

“Little did she know it would turn into our biggest story,” Kolod said.