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
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.
Gaming
Blood of the Dawnwalker locks September 3 launch date
Rebel Wolves, the studio of ex-Witcher 3 leads, confirmed its debut RPG The Blood of the Dawnwalker launches September 3 on PC, PS5 and Xbox, a vampire-tinged open-world dark fantasy timed to dodge GTA 6.
Gaming
High on Life 2 lands on Switch 2 with its talking guns
Squanch Games' comedic shooter sequel High on Life 2, first out in February on PC, PS5 and Xbox, arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 in July 2026, bringing its wisecracking talking guns and Rick and Morty humor to Nintendo's new hardware.
Gaming
Mistfall Hunter Brings a Dark PvPvE Extraction RPG July 29
Mistfall Hunter, a new-IP PvPvE extraction RPG, lands July 29 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. It fuses class-based RPG progression with high-stakes extraction runs where getting out alive with your loot matters as much as the fighting.
Gaming
Capcom moves Onimusha: Way of the Sword up to Sept 4
Capcom pulled Onimusha: Way of the Sword forward three weeks to September 4, 2026. It is the first mainline Onimusha in two decades, a dark-fantasy samurai action game starring a Miyamoto Musashi modeled on Toshiro Mifune, with a demo already live.
Gaming
Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Resynced Rebuilds a Pirate Classic
Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Black Flag: Resynced brings the beloved 2013 pirate adventure into the modern era with rebuilt visuals and reworked systems, a remake of the game many fans still call the series' peak.
Gaming
Halo: Campaign Evolved Lands July 28 as a Full Remake
Halo Studios confirmed Halo: Campaign Evolved launches July 28, 2026, a ground-up remake of the original Halo campaign, with up to five days of early access starting July 23.
Gaming
Final Fantasy X remaster lands on Switch 2
Square Enix is bringing Final Fantasy X and X-2 to Switch 2 with the quality-of-life features PC players have had for years: enhanced visuals, a high-speed mode and a random-encounter toggle. It is a small release with an outsized lesson about how a 2001 classic keeps earning its keep.
Gaming
EA Sports College Football 27 Kicks Off July 9
EA Sports College Football 27 launches July 9, extending the franchise that revived college football gaming in 2024 and now runs on paid athlete likeness deals reshaping the genre.
Gaming
Xbox Layoffs Gut id Software, idTech Engine in Doubt
Microsoft's Xbox layoffs cut about half of id Software on July 6, hitting the idTech engine team hardest and raising fears the studio becomes a support shop.
Gaming
Granblue Fantasy Relink Gets Endless Ragnarok Content
Cygames is expanding Granblue Fantasy: Relink with Endless Ragnarok, a new endgame content drop that adds bosses, party mechanics, and playstyles to the co-op action RPG.