Latest news with #VideoGamesWeekly
Engadget
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Video Games Weekly: Who put all these videos in my games?
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. If I end up reading one more story about how fantastic Death Stranding 2 is so long as you skip the cutscenes , I'm gonna hurl. At what point during 10 hours of cinematic interstitials do we collectively put the controller down and say, actually, this isn't a great game? Not because the game parts aren't any good — they're pretty fabulous, in fact — but because a significant portion of the experience isn't actually interactive at all. When does it become more accurate to describe a Hideo Kojima project as a CGI movie with moments of interactivity, rather than as a video game first? I'm not actually attempting to solve the 'video game of Theseus' riddle right now, but it's a conversation that's been on my mind, given recent headlines. Death Stranding 2 reviews are in, Neil Druckmann is out at HBO and returning to Naughty Dog full-time, and Emmy nominations arrived with 18 nods for video game adaptations. Meanwhile, layoffs are rocking the gaming industry yet again, with thousands fired at Xbox this month, alongside multiple studio closures and game cancellations. One of the most surprising titles to get the ax was Project Blackbird, a promising-sounding MMO from Elder Scrolls studio ZeniMax Online. Blackbird was reportedly canceled in favor of allocating resources to the development of Fallout 5 , a series with mainstream clout following the success of Amazon's Fallout TV show in 2024. The convergence of video games and Hollywood is not a new talking point — even for me — but it's only grown more relevant with time. Sony in particular is leaning hard into a cross-media strategy with notable investments in television, anime and film adaptations of its video game franchises, and it just published Kojima Productions' Death Stranding 2 , which serves as a lightning rod for this entire conversation. Kojima is easy to pick on because he's been so vocal about his desire to make movies, and fittingly, his games have only grown more cinematic over the years. Death Stranding and its sequel are stacked with mainstream Hollywood actors (and Kojima's favorite directors) across hours of drawn-out, non-interactive cutscenes. His next two projects, OD and Physint , are both described as having A-list casts and 'blurring the boundaries between film and games.' I'm a big fan of experimental horror games, and I deeply appreciate Kojima's eye for building tension and sneaky action sequences, but I'm hesitant to get excited about OD and Physint . The deeper Kojima dives into the world of Hollywood, the more he loses me. I don't download, install and boot up a video game to watch a movie instead, and I don't find it impressive when an interactive product is defined by cinematic terms. The constraints of filmmaking are vastly different than those of video game development, and it sucks to watch a talented creator try to force video games to conform to the boundaries of movies or TV, rather than exploring the mechanics that make interactive art so uniquely powerful. I feel like Kojima sees cinema as the goal, not video games specifically, and this perspective breaks my little pixelated heart. It's particularly painful in an era of raging instability for the video game industry. It's difficult to see so much money and creative talent being thrown at projects that end up feeling more like movies than games, at a time when it's increasingly difficult for fresh and original AAA projects to make it to market. Video games have not been maxed out as an art form — there's far more to discover in terms of mechanics, visuals, haptics and immersive interaction systems, and there are more stories that can only be told with these specific tools. Viewing game development through the lens of filmmaking diminishes everything that makes this medium so powerful. The only Hollywood trait the games industry should imitate is its powerful and functional unions. I enjoy things that exist in the gray space between definitions; in fact, I often prefer them. What I don't enjoy is misguided emulation that's sold to an audience as innovation. In the end, I guess what I'm really saying is… I'm still not over PT . One of the most eyebrow-raising details of Microsoft's sweeping layoffs earlier this month was the fact that King, the studio behind Candy Crush , was included in the firings. King is historically a money-printing machine with high per-employee returns, which tends to insulate it from layoffs, but this time around at least 200 people were let go from the studio. As it turns out, a number of fired developers spent the past few years training AI systems to do their jobs, which just adds a layer of shittiness to an already crappy situation. Has the FOMO gotten to you yet? After denying that you wanted a Switch 2 for a few noble and self-righteous weeks, have you cracked and admitted that you actually, really want one? Great — then get yourself to Best Buy on Thursday, July 17, when the company will restock its supply of Switch 2 consoles in all stores. This coincides with the release of Donkey Kong Banaza , too. I've had my eye on Judas , the BioShocky FPS from Ken Levine's Ghost Story Games, since it was revealed in 2022, and I lowkey love how little we still know about it today. That said, I'm happily devouring every bit of information about Judas , and the latest nugget comes from Levine himself in an interview with classic game publisher Nightdive Studios. With Judas , Ghost Story is focused on "telling the story and transporting the player somewhere," rather than building live-service or microtransaction features, Levine said. As he put it, 'You buy the game and you get the whole thing. There's no online component. There's no live service.' There's also no release date for Judas yet. The crazy kids at Summer Games Done Quick have done it once again and raised literal millions of dollars for Doctors Without Borders in a single weekend, simply by playing video games in silly ways without stopping. SGDQ 2025 wrapped up on Sunday with a total donation pool of $2,436,614. The organization's next event is another edition of Flame Fatales, a speedrunning showcase featuring women and femmes that runs from September 7 to 14. We'll see you there. The well of Subnautica 2 drama runs deep. Earlier in July the heads of Subnatica 2 studio Unknown Worlds Entertainment — Charlie Cleveland, Ted Gill and Max McGuire — were ousted by the team's parent company, Krafton, and the game's early access release was delayed to 2026. What's more, Bloomberg reported that the studio had been in line for a $250 million bonus if it had met certain financial goals by the end of the year, but those largely hinged on an early access release. Cleveland said on social media that Subnautica 2 was ready for early access, and Krafton responded to the whole shebang by accusing the fired developers of abandoning their responsibilities as studio heads. Cleveland and others are now apparently filing a lawsuit against Krafton. has a comprehensive timeline of the Subnautica 2 controversy right here.
Engadget
08-07-2025
- Business
- Engadget
Video Games Weekly: Every time this industry grows, it shrinks
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. In a 2024 interview with Chris Plante , just a few months after Xbox fired 1,900 employees in one blow , Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said the best way to prevent further layoffs in the video game industry was to ensure constant financial growth for major studios' shareholders. And the most logical way to do that, he intimated, was with layoffs. 'The thing that has me most concerned for the industry is the lack of growth,' Spencer said. 'When you have an industry that is projected to be smaller next year in terms of players and dollars, and you get a lot of publicly traded companies that are in the industry that have to show their investors growth — because why else does somebody own a share of someone's stock if it's not going to grow? — the side of the business that then gets scrutinized is the cost side.' He says it as if it's a natural and irrefutable fact of life. Of course the company has to continuously grow. Obviously the studio caters to its shareholders above all else. The only way to make the numbers go up is to reduce costs, which means slashing headcount. And Spencer is just a man in a Battletoads graphic tee who, clearly , has to do everything he can to make these investors, his fellow executives and himself richer. Poor guy. 'We're a business,' Spencer told Polygon . 'I've said over and over. I don't get any luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business inside of Microsoft. And we are that today. But just across the industry — you mentioned it, and in sitting here at GDC, I reflect on friends of mine in the industry that have been displaced and lost their jobs and how just, I don't want this industry to be a place where people can't, with confidence, build a career. So that's why I keep pivoting back to, how does this industry get back to growth?' He's already said the answer — layoffs — but it flies directly in the face of his stated desire to create a stable marketplace where his friends can thrive, so he watches the snake devour its own tail and shrugs, never once considering that the question itself is the problem. Fast forward to July 2, 2025. Microsoft laid off 9,000 people across its global workforce, and the Xbox division was rocked by thousands of job losses, multiple studio closures and notable game cancellations. The news came out in leaked memos, social media posts from fired employees and LinkedIn status updates, and I spoke to someone with knowledge of the situation at Halo Studios about the mood among developers. Overall, it's been a lot to keep track of. Here's all of the reported fallout, as it stands on July 8: Blizzard: Layoffs; Warcraft Rumble sunsetting Halo Studios: Layoffs affecting at least five people; we published a firsthand account of tension at the studio The Initiative: Studio closed; Perfect Dark remake canceled King: Layoffs affecting roughly 200 people, 10 percent of the studio Rare: Layoffs; creative director and Banjo-Kazooie creator Gregg Mayles is out after 35 years; Everwild canceled Raven Software: Layoffs Sledgehammer Games: Layoffs Turn 10: The Forza Motorsport team was gutted by layoffs and shut down; Turn 10 is now a Forza Horizon support studio ZeniMax Online Studios: Studio head Matt Firor is out after 18 years; Blackbird canceled Spencer said it in 2024 and it's still true today: The Xbox division is growing, with an eight percent yearly increase in revenue from Xbox content and services in the first three months of 2025. Still, for employees, it doesn't feel stable. This situation isn't unique to Microsoft, either: In May, Electronic Arts canceled its Black Panther game and closed the studio creating it, and this followed a previous culling at Respawn , which included canning a new Titanfall title, plus years of layoffs at BioWare. Meanwhile, EA CEO Andrew Wilson took home more than $25 million in the 2024 fiscal year. In 2024, 11 percent of developers across the industry were laid off, according to GDC's 2025 State of the Game Industry Survey . Statista reports the global games market is expected to grow yet again in 2025, generating more than $522 billion in revenue. Layoffs are a cruel solution to a shitty question, and at the moment , they form the backbone of the AAA industry. The world's largest studios function on a binge and purge cycle, with acquisitions , crunch and layoffs built into their business plans. This cadence is only becoming more chaotic as additional factors, like AI and consolidation, are converging to decrease hiring numbers and increase the scope of layoffs. At Microsoft, using the company's Copilot AI toolset is ' no longer optional ' for employees, and as one worker told me, 'They're trying their damndest to replace as many jobs as they can with AI agents.' Practices like these have helped propel unionization efforts across the industry, including at Xbox studios. 'We are deeply disappointed in Microsoft's decision to lay off thousands more workers, including union-represented CWA members, at a time when the company is prospering,' Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings Jr. said about the recent layoffs. He continued, 'Right now, we are living through a moment of profound corporate consolidation and disruption. In times like these, union organizing is not just a tool for protections in the workplace; it is essential to workers' survival, and one of the strongest defenses we have against unchecked corporate power.' In addition to this most recent round of 9,000 layoffs, Microsoft fired 6,000 people across its divisions in May. The Xbox segment specifically lost more than 2,500 employees to layoffs in 2024, and Microsoft closed Arkane Austin , Alpha Dog Games and Tango Gameworks (though Krafton eventually scooped up Tango for itself, thankfully). The scattershot vibe of the closures, cancellations and layoffs — affecting productive and low-overhead studios like Tango, exciting new projects like Blackbird , and multiple proven ZeniMax teams — drives home the notion that Microsoft was always more interested in controlling these studios' IPs than supporting the developers that worked there. Layoffs are an answer to the question, 'How does this industry get back to growth?' Mass firings are not a function of artistic integrity or technological innovation, and they're antithetical to the process of actually building fresh and powerful video games. I've never asked myself how industry profits can grow, as a player or a critic. Only a small and very specific group of people have, and they don't speak for me. Unfortunately, they move for all of us. Helldivers 2 is heading to Xbox on August 26, ending its tenure as a PlayStation 5 console exclusive after a little more than one year. Helldivers 2 is developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by PlayStation, so it wasn't guaranteed to come to Xbox platforms at all. To be clear, it's not due to be included in Game Pass any time soon. Since settling its launch issues in early 2024, Helldivers 2 has been quietly building up a sizable playerbase of intergalactic freedom fighters, with more than 15 million copies sold across PC and PS5. Naughty Dog co-founder Neil Druckmann is stepping back from the development of HBO's The Last of Us television series to focus on making games again. Druckmann is a co-creator of the show and he's been spending his time recently helping produce and write it at HBO, but now that the second season is done, he's returning his attention to the studio that started it all. 'Now is the right time for me to transition my complete focus to Naughty Dog and its future projects, including writing and directing our exciting next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet ,' he said in a statement. Welcome back, Druckmann — as Engadget deputy news editor Nathan Ingraham put it, the video game industry is happy to see you again . Former Ubisoft executives Thomas Francois, Serge Hascoet and Guillaume Patrux were convicted in France of fostering a toxic workplace with rampant sexual and psychological abuse. Former chief creative officer Hascoet was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended, and Patrux received a 12-month suspended term. Francois was additionally found guilty of attempted sexual assault and received a suspended three-year prison sentence. This wraps up a multi-year investigation by French authorities into complaints of toxicity and gender-based harassment at Ubisoft. Sucker Punch will show off about 20 minutes of Ghost of Yōtei gameplay on Thursday, July 10, at 5PM ET during a dedicated State of Play event. I can't wait to watch that wind move . I've been looking forward to Time Flies since I buzzed my way through the demo at Summer Game Fest 2022. It's a ridiculous little game that provokes poignant thoughts about human existence and pushes players to find joy in small moments, and it's finally coming to PC, Switch and PS5 on July 31. Make sure to give it a go, whenever you have some time to kill. Two days after news of the Microsoft layoffs broke, Xbox Game Studios Publishing executive producer Matt Turnbull made a post on LinkedIn offering 'ways to use LLM Al tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.' His suggested prompts included, 'Draft a friendly message I can send to old coworkers letting them know I'm exploring new opportunities,' and, 'I'm struggling with imposter syndrome after being laid off. Can you help me reframe this experience in a way that reminds me what I'm good at?' The tonedeaf post was met with appropriate ridicule and swiftly taken down. Have a tip for Jessica? You can reach her by email , Bluesky or send a message to @jesscon.96 to chat confidentially on Signal.
Engadget
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Video Games Weekly: Summer Game Fest ends when I say so
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. June has passed me by in a haze of air travel, mild illness, protests and Pride, and it's now officially time to close the book on Summer Game Fest 2025. We published more than 80 stories around this year's show and they're all worth a read, but before moving on for good, I wanted to highlight a final batch of games that I can't stop thinking about. This week, I present three mini previews straight out of SGF 2025 — and only two of them are horror games, which is a stupendous display of growth on my part. Crisol: Theater of Idols wasn't on my radar until I sat down and played it at the Blumhouse booth, but now it's pinging loud and clear, as if the booms were emanating directly from the blood-soaked bowels of Hell. It's a first-person survival-horror action game set in a demented version of Spain that's filled with monsters of modern folklore. Murderous marionettes and giant, ornately adorned skeletons hunt you through dark streets and towering gothic buildings, lamplight glinting off of every gross 3D detail. The whole demo felt like getting lost in a terrifying, nightmarish carnival, and I enjoyed every bit of it. In Crisol , blood is your source of ammunition, and you drain the corpses of humans and chickens to refuel your health bar as well as your guns. Crisol is tense and gorgeous, reminiscent of Dishonored or Resident Evil Village , and enemies are both robust and tricky to evade. Crisol is the debut game from independent Spanish team Vermila Studios, which received an Epic MegaGrant for the project in 2020. It's being published by Blumhouse and is due out this year on Steam , PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. There's something deeply wrong in Ashenridge, the idyllic rural village where Grave Seasons is set. At first glance, Grave Seasons is a cute, narrative-based farming sim with detailed pixel art, juicy romance options and layers of home-maintenance mechanics. You spend time planting, watering, harvesting, crafting items, picking up trash and chatting with villagers — and then you dig up a severed hand. Pilar, your flirty neighbor who runs the tailor shop down the road, says something ominous about the fate of your house's previous owner. The vibe shifts; the shadows start to look sinister. Night falls and the real horror is unleashed, sudden, violent and all the more shocking in such a peaceful setting. A supernatural serial killer is on the loose in Ashenridge and, in between planting crops, it's up to you to investigate (and maybe date) the murderer. Grave Seasons is a game that will live or die by its tone, and so far, developer Perfect Garbage has absolutely nailed the vibe of nefarious, creeping dread. Ashenridge is a beautiful little town with tons of people to meet and activities to complete, and the character avatars are sexy, sweet and super intriguing. A paranormal murder investigation is simply the cherry on top of a competent farming and dating sim, and I'm eager to take a bite out of the full game. At SGF 2025, developers said the complete Grave Seasons experience should take about 20 hours. Grave Seasons is being published by Blumhouse, and it's scheduled to hit Steam and consoles in 2026. Escape Academy is one of my favorite games of the past five years and I am inordinately stoked for the sequel, which turns the school into an open world of puzzles, riddles and cringey puns. With Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School , developer Coin Crew is going all-in on the student roleplaying vibe, and the entire campus is littered with mysteries. It's also playable as a split-screen, couch co-op experience, which is one of the series' greatest strengths. Frantically screaming solutions at your friend just feels better in person than over a Discord call, you know? I played the original Escape Academy with a local partner, so that's how I tried out the sequel at SGF 2025. I dragged Engadget EIC Aaron Souppouris to the iam8bit booth and we dove in, starting in a classroom covered in sneaky environmental clues. In Escape Academy 2 , the assignment is simple — get out — but the execution is complex, and we were soon throwing out names, dates and math problems, trying to solve a series of tricky, interconnected puzzles and leave the room. After getting just one hint from the developers, we made our way to the hallway, which was lined with locker-based riddles, and eventually reached the headmaster's office, which was a contained playground of puzzle gaming. We had to use a pen and piece of paper to keep track of a few sections, and overall, our interactions felt fresh. Coin Crew isn't just rolling out the same problems with different solutions for the sequel, and the new riddles were clever, innovative and super satisfying. (The same can't be said about all of the puns, but that's part of the charm.) Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School features both local and online co-op, so you'll be free to yell at your friends in whichever format you prefer. Coin Crew is still working on the game and there's no release date yet, but it's available now to wishlist on Steam . The only thing worse than not disclosing AI use in the creation of a video game is not disclosing it and then deploying it so sloppily that players immediately notice. Indie developer and publisher 11 Bit Studios learned this lesson firsthand with The Alters , a futuristic base-building game starring an astronaut and his alternate-reality clones. Within a week of the game's release on June 13, posts started popping up on Reddit and Bluesky showing AI-generated text in the game, across multiple languages. On June 30, 11 Bit released a statement confirming its use of AI in developing The Alters , saying it was utilized only in background text and to help with last-minute localization efforts. 'No matter what we decided, we should have simply let you know,' the studio wrote. I'd really love to stop writing headlines like this. Microsoft is preparing to lay off a large number of Xbox employees this week, as part of a planned 3 percent reduction in staff across the company. That's a loss of roughly 7,000 jobs in total, and according to Bloomberg , Xbox leaders are expecting 'substantial cuts across the entire group.' The firings follow a round of 1,900 layoffs at Xbox in January 2024, another 650 layoffs in September , and last year's closure of Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games and Tango Gameworks (the latter of which lives on under Krafton). Meanwhile, Microsoft reported a net revenue of $25.8 billion in the first three months of 2025, with an 8 percent yearly increase in revenue from Xbox content and services. Congrats? Netflix started beefing up its video games division around 2021, with the acquisition of Oxenfree studio Night School and the rollout of an in-app gaming library offering popular mobile titles at no extra charge to subscribers. Netflix currently supports more than 100 games, including Death's Door , Hades , The Case of the Golden Idol , The Rise of the Golden Idol , Braid Anniversary Edition , Katana ZERO and the Monument Valley series — but these are disappearing in July. A total of 22 games will be deleted from Netflix at various times in July, and the culling follows similar cutbacks in the company's interactive division, including the recent closure of an in-house AAA studio . Because we know you're going to get something — what are you picking up at the Steam Summer Sale this year? Share your spoils in the comments! If you're overwhelmed, allow me to humbly suggest Blue Prince , Home Safety Hotline , Look Outside or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 . On a related note, don't forget to check out (the nearly complete) Playdate Season 2. … but it's definitely not any more. Resident Evil: Requiem producer Masachika Kawata and director Koshi Nakanishi clarified in a video that their new game is an offline single-player experience, but they said that early in development, the team seriously considered making it online and open-world. This experimentation fueled rumors about Requiem introducing a new direction for the Resident Evil franchise, but it turns out the final product will be a familiar, self-contained horror romp with the ability to swap between first- and third-person views. Spooooky .
Engadget
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Video Games Weekly: Mario Kart World is the opposite of punishing
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday (or Thursday?), broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. I've been playing the Switch 2 alongside 3.5 million of my closest friends since Nintendo's new console came out on June 5, and I'm having an excellent time. Although to be perfectly transparent, a vast majority of my play has been dedicated to Mario Kart World , a game I've been looking forward to for months and that perfectly scratches the couch co-op itch I've been meaning to ask my doctor about. Mario Kart World is colorful, bright and infinitely replayable, and one feature that's getting a lot of attention is its elevated skill ceiling. This installment introduces new mechanics like wall riding and rail grinds, which significantly alter how the game is played at its highest levels, where shortcuts and strategic pathing are a must. There's too much variability in Mario Kart for it to be a professionally competitive franchise, but that doesn't stop people from getting extremely good at it , and players are already trying to milk the most milliseconds out of the new moves in Mario Kart World . It's going to take a while, since these mechanics are surprisingly complex, and I'm excited to see what secrets the community uncovers in the near future. While that's happening, I'd like to highlight something on the opposite side of the skill spectrum. Mario Kart World is far less frustrating in moment-to-moment gameplay than Mario Kart 8 , and I think this is one of its greatest strengths. I don't have empirical data here, but it's a distinct feeling I have every time I play: Getting hit with shells, running over banana peels and bouncing into obstacles is more forgiving than ever. These moments are less jarring than they were in Mario Kart 8 specifically, and it takes noticeably less time to recover and get back into the race after taking a red shell to the behind. Either the stun time is shorter, the post-collision acceleration is faster or there's some witchy combination of these factors happening, but whatever the cause, I deeply appreciate the effect. Mario Kart World is flow-friendly and accessible, and these subtle tweaks diminish some of the series' most annoying aspects, like resetting after a barrage of explosive bullshit gets hurled into your bumper. The only item in Mario Kart World that feels like a true hard stop is the lightning bolt, but at least that one affects every character around you with the same momentum-jamming force. Meanwhile, the tracks in Mario Kart World are so very, very pretty — looking at you, Starview Peak and Rainbow Road — the character roster is stacked with super adorable fresh faces, motorcycles are more stable than previous games, and the 24-player Knockout Tour is a fun test of skill. With the potential for 23 items to be aimed at your back, it makes sense that Nintendo would try to make recovery more seamless this time, and I just wanted to say that I notice it and appreciate it. Now, to figure out this wall riding thing. Xbox is preparing for a post-console world Xbox president Sarah Bond announced that the company's next generation of hardware will be powered by AMD, just like the Xbox Series X/S and the coming ROG Xbox Ally handhelds. That's cool, but it also offers some clues about the future of Microsoft's gaming division, and things are looking more decentralized with each new morsel. Xbox appears to be positioning itself as a platform-agnostic software provider, leaning into PC and handheld play, and running an all-inclusive storefront that follows you across devices. It really sounds like the next Xbox could be more of a PC that lives under your TV, rather than a dedicated, closed-system video game machine. Ouya was just 12 years too soon , it seems. Did you hear that sonorous, well-articulated sigh of relief? SAG-AFTRA suspended its strike against 10 major video game studios, following nearly a year of negotiations over AI use and actor compensation. The union and the studios signed a deal that includes wage increases for more than 24 percent of performers and protections around the deployment of AI and digital replicas. Maybe this is for the best. Bungie has indefinitely delayed Marathon , citing a need to overhaul the game as it currently stands. The delay follows a slew of bad news out of Bungie, starting in July 2024, when the studio laid off 220 employees , or 17 percent of its workforce. In May 2025, Bungie was caught using stolen artwork in the Marathon alpha and several former employees accused the studio of fostering a toxic environment . Whether Marathon really requires a revamp or Bungie just needs a moment to breathe, a delay feels like the right move. It will cost $70. It's official — Bloober Team is remaking the original Silent Hill for Konami. The project follows Bloober's highly successful reimagining of Silent Hill 2 , which landed in October 2024 and garnered oodles of acclaim from critics and players alike. There's no word on a release date for the new remake, but it's joining a trio of other in-development projects in the Silent Hill universe: Silent Hill Townfall from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, Silent Hill: Ascension from Bad Robot and Genvid, and Silent Hill f from author Ryūkishi07. Senior reviews writer Sam Rutherford is a beast for collecting all of his thoughts on the Switch 2 so quickly and with such fabulous insight, and it'd be a shame if you didn't get to absorb all of that delicious knowledge for yourself. This has been my review of Sam's review of the Switch 2 — a console that is also pretty fantastic, by the way. Summer Game Fest 2025 officially wrapped up on June 9, but the embargoed stories, interviews and our hands-on impressions from the show just keep on coming. Since we last spoke, Engadget's SGF 2025 crew has published articles about Resident Evil: Requiem , Mixtape , Mouse: PI for Hire , Onimusha: Way of the Sword , Grounded 2 , End of Abyss and Pragmata . Every Saturday morning on Engadget, contributing reporter Kris Holt publishes a roundup of fantastic-sounding and freshly available indie games, so be sure to check for that regularly. This week , the Kris list features The Alters , Dune: Awakening and Instants , among other shout-outs. In related new-game news, Remedy's extraction shooter FBC: Firebreak and Bithell Games' isometric action experience Tron: Catalyst are also available now. And finally, we're halfway through Playdate Season Two, which has already provided a firehose of oddball experiences — all lovingly parsed through each week by Engadget weekend editor Cheyenne Macdonald.
Engadget
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Video Games Weekly: The one that happened while the Waymos burned
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. Summer Game Fest 2025 will be remembered as the one that happened while the Waymos burned . The SGF Play Days event space, where games media and influencers meet up with developers over a long weekend, is in the fashion district in Los Angeles, and this year it was a few miles from the heart of sprawling protests against ICE. After months of inhumane and legally dubious deportations of LA residents by masked federal agents — emboldened by President Donald Trump's far-right extremism and equipped with weapons built for war — the bubble of resistance popped. Protestors hit the streets after ICE officers swept up dozens of people across LA in another round of coordinated raids on Friday, June 6. The protests grew over the weekend and Trump called in the National Guard, followed by the Marines. Militarized LAPD officers attacked people with horses and batons , and they fired rubber bullets into crowds and directly at one journalist . On Sunday evening, protestors lit a line of unoccupied Waymos on fire. The thick, black smoke was visible from the Play Days lot. I saw it as I was leaving the media lounge, heading toward the food trucks, and it stopped me in my tracks just in front of the Capcom booth. The low buzz of helicopters and the cries of police sirens had been a constant companion that weekend, but the smoke was new. I stopped and took a photo as upbeat reggae music pumped out of the speaker beside me. Around the corner, an actor dressed as a Fortnite banana in a suit was enticing passersby to play Ddakji as part of a cross-promotional effort with Squid Game . The dissonance made my head spin. The sickly pallor of encroaching authoritarianism has hung over every video game convention in the past six months — because it's shadowed literally everything in the United States this year. I've spent a significant amount of this time actively shutting down thoughts about Project 2025, government-sponsored human trafficking, neo-Nazis and all manner of hateful, bigoted policies targeting the United States' most vulnerable people, because if I didn't, the stress of these realities would consume me. I think most of us are doing something similar nowadays. We have to deprioritize specific thoughts at certain times, in order to get work done, maintain relationships and make it through the day. Having to ignore these monumental things in favor of, at least in my case, video games is a mindfuck. The smoke from the burning Waymos, visible from the main alleyway at SGF, felt like a physical manifestation of this constant internal tension. Video games are a vehicle for connection and expression, and they're deeply valuable to society — but, as with anything else, their importance is a matter of perspective. Our SGF 2025 roundup post is a comprehensive rundown of all the news from the show, from Day of the Devs to the big Xbox showcase. We'll be adding our hands-ons and interviews as they're published over the coming week right at the top of this article, so feel free to keep checking back. Or, Engadget's Gaming hub will keep you covered. Arguably the biggest bit of news out of SGF 2025, Resident Evil Requiem is due out on February 27, 2026. It's a mainline Resident Evil title starring FBI agent Grace Ashcroft, and it features familiar locations from the series, including Raccoon City's demolished police department. Obsidian's sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2 is heading to PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 29 — just in time for everyone to understand your fancy-man moon-head Halloween costume. After months of rumors about Microsoft and ASUS teaming up to make an Xbox-branded handheld gaming device, we finally have relief. The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are due out this holiday season, capable of playing Xbox games natively via the cloud or a remote console connection, and with support for other popular PC storefronts like Steam, GOG and . There's no word on price or an exact release date yet, but the Xbox handhelds are definitely, finally coming. If you only have time to read about one game from SGF 2025, acquaint yourself with Relooted from South African indie studio Nyamakop. It's a heist game about rescuing African artifacts from the Western colonizers who stole them, and it's filled with puzzles, action and Afrofuturism. This is one to keep an eye on. Engadget's UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith was on the ground at SGF 2025 and he's already published a trio of stories directly from the show, each one more delightful than the last. There's a look at Lumines Arise , complete with input from director Takashi Ishihara; a preview of Patapon spiritual successor Ratatan ; and Mat's thoughts on Supermassive's sci-fi romp Directive 8020 . There's more coming from Mat, too, so keep that Engadget Gaming tab open. I had a lovely little chat at SGF with Matt Nava, the artist responsible for Journey , Abzû , The Pathless , and the upcoming sand-surfing game, Sword of the Sea . Nava has spent the past decade or so running from his own shadow, but with Sword of the Sea , he's finally following his intuition again. This story includes impressions of the game — spoiler: it's fabulous — and development insight from Nava.
