Gaming News.
The games, consoles and industry shifts that define how we play, decoded past the hype cycle. We cover major releases, hardware, and the business moves reshaping the biggest entertainment medium.
Gaming
Australia's Age Law Kicks In, Steam Accepts Only Credit Cards
Steam now requires Australian users to link a valid credit card, and only a credit card, before it will show R18+ games, enforcing a mandatory age-assurance deadline that hit every app store in the country on September 9, 2026.
Gaming
Xbox Rescues Kojima's Physint After Sony Quietly Canceled It
Xbox Game Studios announced on September 9, 2026 that it will publish Hideo Kojima's action-espionage game Physint, after Sony Interactive Entertainment told Kojima Productions in mid-June it was cancelling the project; the new deal also extends the studio's Xbox relationship into film and TV.
Gaming
Valheim Hits 1.0: Deep North, PS5 and Switch 2 Launch
Valheim officially left Steam Early Access on September 9, 2026, shipping version 1.0 with the new Deep North biome, its first console release on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2, and full crossplay across all six platforms.
Gaming
Zelda 40th Anniversary Switch 2 Is $520, Out October 29
Nintendo confirmed a Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition Switch 2 today: a $519.99 console and a $99.99 Pro Controller, both launching October 29, 2026, on top of the standard console's September 1 price hike.
Gaming
Halloween: The Game Launches With Michael Myers and Rough Edges
Halloween: The Game, Illfonic and Gun Interactive's 1v4 asymmetrical horror multiplayer starring Michael Myers, launched today, September 8, 2026, on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Early reviews call it the studio's best asymmetrical horror title yet, though still clumsy and buggy at launch.
Gaming
Xbox Cloud Gaming Cuts Ultimate to Just 15 Hours a Month
Microsoft is capping Xbox Cloud Gaming at 15 hours a month for Game Pass Ultimate, 10 for Premium and 5 for Essential starting in November, ending a year of unlimited streaming and adding a pay-as-you-go option for people without any subscription.
Gaming
LEGO's 1,911-Piece PlayStation Set Launches October 1
LEGO and PlayStation unveiled a 1,911-piece brick replica of the original 1994 console, with a pluggable controller and two hidden game dioramas, going up for order October 1 at $179.99.
Gaming
Windows 11's October Update Turns On a Feature That Slows Games
Starting in October 2026, Windows 11 quality updates will automatically switch on Memory Integrity and, on some machines, Virtualization-Based Security, a kernel-protection feature Microsoft itself has acknowledged can cost gamers frames.
Gaming
Netflix Closes Night School and Moonloot Game Studios
Netflix confirmed on August 13, 2026 that it is closing Night School Studio, the Oxenfree developer it bought in September 2021, and Helsinki studio Moonloot, plus additional games roles. The shutdown lands about four weeks after co-CEO Greg Peters called Night School's newest game one of Netflix's two most successful cloud game debuts.
Gaming
This ESPRIT Student Team Built a 2D Game Where Every Hazard Doubles as a Quiz
Abdelhamid Ellab and his team at ESPRIT built The Carthagenian Eagles, a 2D adventure game in raw C and SDL with no game engine underneath. Every hazard collision triggers a trivia quiz or a spot-the-difference puzzle, correct answers let you keep going, wrong ones cost a heart.
Gaming
Switch 2 Sales Fell 34% but Nintendo Profit Jumped 150%
Nintendo shipped 3.82 million Switch 2 units in the June quarter, down 34.4% from the console's launch quarter, yet operating profit rose 150.5% to 142.6 billion yen. Software attach and a $300 million tariff refund did the work hardware volume used to.
Gaming
Xbox Prices Jump Up To £170 In The UK And €200 In Europe
Microsoft's Xbox price increase hit Europe and the UK on 1 August: the disc Xbox Series X is now £669.99 and €799.99, and the entry Series S rose 43% in a single day. Microsoft blames memory and storage costs it says have risen more than 2.5x.
Gaming
A Gacha Crossover and a Netflix Season Are Reviving Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 just posted its highest Steam player count since 2023 and crossed 40 million copies sold, and neither number came from anything CD Projekt Red shipped this year. A June crossover inside the gacha RPG Wuthering Waves and the confirmed Fall 2026 Netflix return of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners are pulling a five-year-old game back into the spotlight, the same playbook that tripled its player count in 2022.
Gaming
Xbox Outage Blocks Disc Games, Not Just Digital Ones
Xbox services went down late on July 26, 2026 and were still listed as a major outage more than twelve hours later. Beyond sign-in and the store, the failure stopped players launching games off a disc in the tray, because a modern Xbox treats the disc as proof of entitlement and still asks Microsoft's licence service for permission before the installed copy will run.
Gaming
PSN Outage Locks Players Out of Games They Already Bought
PlayStation Network went down worldwide on July 24, 2026, and beyond breaking sign-in and multiplayer it stopped digitally purchased games from launching at all, because consoles that are not set for offline play must reach PSN to verify your licence before a game will start. Sony had not explained the cause hours in.
Gaming
Xbox Tests Free, Ad-Supported Cloud Gaming
Microsoft began testing a free, ad-supported tier of Xbox Cloud Gaming for Xbox Insiders this morning: watch a short pre-roll ad, then stream a game you already own in one-hour sessions, no Game Pass subscription required.
Gaming
Xbox Backward Compatibility Finally Lands on PC
Microsoft brought Xbox backward compatibility to Windows today, with four original Xbox games playable on PC and Windows handhelds through the Xbox app, included in every Game Pass plan and free to anyone who already owns the console version.
Gaming
Steam Hit a Record $11.1B in the First Half of 2026
Steam generated an estimated $11.1 billion in gross game sales in the first half of 2026, its highest-ever half-year, up 14.5% on H1 2025 and 8% even on the holiday-heavy back half of last year. The surprise driver is old games: back-catalogue titles now make up 79% of revenue, as a surge of new Chinese players buys deeper into existing libraries. The figures come from Alinea Analytics, since Valve does not disclose financials.
Gaming
Mario Kart Tour Dies September 30 With No Offline Mode
Nintendo will shut down Mario Kart Tour on September 30, 2026 at 2:00 AM ET, seven years after launch, and confirmed in its FAQ that an offline version is not scheduled for release. Ruby sales stopped on July 7, the day before the announcement. There is no refund program.
Gaming
Bungie Cuts 292 Jobs as Destiny 2 Development Ends
Sony-owned Bungie laid off at least 292 employees in Washington after ending Destiny 2 development, cutting most of the Destiny team, pushing total losses past 600 across three rounds since Sony's 2022 acquisition, and leaving only Marathon in active development.
Gaming
Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit Brings the Ghost Bears Back
Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is the sequel to the 2021 cult life-sim, sending players to a new island to help ghostly bears find peace, customize a campsite and reunite a lost scout troop, keeping the daily-play, low-pressure loop that defined the original.
Gaming
Monster Hunter Wilds Gets Permanent Price Cut, DLC
Capcom is giving Monster Hunter Wilds a permanent price reduction alongside new DLC bundles, a move that signals the game is shifting from launch sales to long-tail lifetime value and a bigger active player base.
Gaming
Moss: The Forgotten Relic Brings Quill Off VR at Last
Polyarc's acclaimed VR series Moss arrives on flatscreens July 16 as Moss: The Forgotten Relic, reworking the two VR games into a single non-VR adventure for PS5, Xbox, Switch, Switch 2, and Steam, no headset required for the first time in eight years.
Gaming
Star Fox Returns as a Full Series Reboot on Switch 2
Nintendo is rebooting Star Fox on the Switch 2, the first major entry since Star Fox Zero in 2016, launching in most markets in late June 2026 and in South Korea on July 2, a fresh start for one of Nintendo's dormant franchises.
Gaming
Rhythm Paradise Groove Revives Nintendo's Beat Series
Nintendo is reviving its long-dormant rhythm series with Rhythm Paradise Groove, a colourful collection of minigames featuring original music by producer Tsunku, ending a nearly decade-long gap for one of the company's most beloved cult franchises.
Gaming
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 Skates Onto Game Pass
Xbox is adding Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 and Palworld 1.0 to Game Pass in July 2026, a crowd-pleasing lineup that arrives in an awkward week for Microsoft after it cut five studios and thousands of gaming jobs.
Gaming
Echoes of Aincrad Makes Sword Art Online a Survival Game
Echoes of Aincrad, a Sword Art Online open-world survival game, launched July 10, 2026, finally mapping the franchise's death-game premise onto the survival-crafting loop it always resembled.
Gaming
Control Resonant Gets a Date as Remedy Dodges GTA 6
Remedy's Control sequel, Control Resonant, has a confirmed release date after Summer Game Fest, and like every other major 2026 title it is carefully positioned away from Grand Theft Auto 6.
Gaming
Brazil court forces Microsoft to restore hacked Xbox library
A Brazilian court ordered Microsoft to restore a gamer's suspended Xbox account and entire digital library, plus pay about $400, after support told the hacked user to re-buy his games.
Gaming
Final Fantasy VII: Revelation ends the remake trilogy in 2027
Square Enix closed Summer Game Fest 2026 by revealing Final Fantasy VII: Revelation, the trilogy's finale, arriving Spring 2027 with an open world, an airship hub, a new Job System, and a first-ever simultaneous launch.