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A brand-new Borderlands story is now available for fans to experience. Borderlands Dead ECHOs is an official audio drama set in the Borderlands universe and follows two original characters, Watts and Junie, on an adventure across Pandora. Borderlands Dead ECHOs even features cameos from fan-favorite characters like Claptrap, Sir Hammerlock, and Wainwright Jakobs. View the full article

The Relic: First Guardian launches later this month for PS5 and PC with Xbox and Switch 2 to follow. View the full article

Steam Train Fest is chugging along through July 27th at 10 a.m. PT! Score deals on train games of all kinds: Building train stations and train tracks, managing entire lines, or riding the rails in general. Join us for Steam Train Fest and get your Steam Library on track. (Eh?) Have fun! View the full article

Steam Train Fest is chugging along through July 27th at 10 a.m. PT! Score deals on train games of all kinds: Building train stations and train tracks, managing entire lines, or riding the rails in general. Join us for Steam Train Fest and get your Steam Library on track. (Eh?) Have fun! View the full article

As some fans are filled with dread following Bethesda's confirmation that both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 are being developed using the shiny new Creation Engine 3, words from New Vegas lead Josh Sawyer from six years ago might provide some reassurance. Since Bethesda's flurry of news last week about its upcoming projects, there have been many concerns raised about the studio using Creation Engine 3 – an updated version of its proprietary engine – for the two biggest RPGs on its slate. Fans worry about bugs and the devs potentially prioritizing modders over the games themselves, but according to Sawyer in 2020 that's now doing the online rounds, it's actually a very easy engine to work with. During an old stream of Fallout: New Vegas (below), Sawyer was asked if he had "a hard time" developing New Vegas thanks to Fallout 3's "buggy engine," to which he was quick to respond: "No, not at all." He continued: "I will criticize other stuff in Fallout 3 and 4, [but] this engine is incredibly easy to make content for. Look into my eyes – without GECK [New Vegas' official editor and modding tool] and without the pipeline of this engine, we never would have finished this game in 18 months." [Hidden Content] Sawyer reiterated that "this is the best content creation pipeline of any game that I've ever worked on, easily," but that doesn't mean it's without its issues. "It's buggy, you're right, it's very buggy. It's buggy and unstable and it's frustrating, but it's incredibly easy to make content for. Like, no one's gonna sit here and say, like, 'No it's not that buggy.' Like, yeah, it's pretty buggy, but it's fine. Like, that's a trade-off." He went on to talk about the GECK tool, too, calling it "fast" and saying that "searching is super easy, finding references to things is super easy, scripting is very powerful," and that "iteration loops are super fast." All that made it "awesome." In fact, Sawyer said that "the only shortcoming of the tools was the dialogue tool." He explained: "We built our own dialogue tool to sit on top of that, and that was fine. Like, it took a little bit of investment for us, but that was it." Looking back about what Sawyer had to say about the ease of Creation Engine and how quickly things could be made with it, I can't help but wonder if that might be on Bethesda's mind today. After all, last month, it was reported that Xbox is apparently pushing for faster development on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises – something which might prove even more difficult now that a number of Bethesda staff have been laid off. Needless to say, if a familiar-feeling, easy-to-use engine can help facilitate the demand for more games, it's little wonder that that's the one that's been chosen. 16 years after Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian is returning to the post-apocalyptic RPG series and Todd Howard "could not be more excited." [/url]View the full article

Destiny 2 players can now easily farm one of the most annoying Dungeon bosses in the game completely solo and AFK. Destiny 2's sudden and unceremonious death was announced on May 21, stating that the game would get one final update on June 9, called Monument of Triumph, and stop all development thereafter. Developers at Bungie tried their best to deliver a good experience for new and veteran players alike, dramatically improving all aspects of the game, while giving fans ample room to make all the builds they wanted. View the full article

Coralum Ore is used for a ton of late-game items, and finding it isn't as straightforward as most other resources in Palworld 1.0. Read the full story on PCGamesN: Where to find Coralum Ore in Palworld 1.0 View the full article

The Sims 4 is starting the summer season with a bunch of new outfits! There are a bunch of chic, upcycled fashion pieces that can be added to your game through the all-new Coach RePurposed Capsule. These outfits are meant to be itimeless, with lots of neutrals throughout the collection, looking very inspired by thrifting […]View the full article

What constitutes worthwhile evolution in RPG design is a contentious subject. For every player who prefers the action-oriented route of modern Final Fantasy games, you've got those who want a return to the turn-based days of yore. The same is true for Diablo and action-RPG fans, as Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson explains how more modern, intuitive character progression is less fun to genre diehards. Wilson went through the logic in a new YouTube video. He says the key problem for ARPG players stems from what are known as breakpoints – the benchmarks for when a particular action stat actually changes or improves. For instance, you don't automatically get quicker in spellcasting each time you move up a level. Instead, your ability goes up by increments after you reach a certain number of levels. "There are arbitrary sweet spots of attack speed, cast speed, and hit recovery that players want to reach, because the jump in animation speed happens all at once," Wilson explains. [Hidden Content] As a response, Diablo 2 "players created tables of speed breakpoints and optimize their characters around these thresholds," Wilson says. "Many of them had a lot of fun doing so, and it was an important part of the game for them." The Diablo audience is such that I don't think there's any struggle in imagining players putting together spreadsheets of information on how each build can best level up. I've not done it for this series, but I've definitely been known to open up Excel or get out a pen and paper for a Dark Souls game over the years. In my experience, Wilson is correct: it's fun. Strategizing your build brings a more tangible element to what you're doing and lets you test just how far the developers went with their balancing. Where Wilson's perspective also holds water is in the fact that other action-RPGs fail to capture the Diablo 2 playerbase. They have less of these breakpoints, thus disappointing people who live for a good graph. If you want old school players, you've got to play by old school rules. It's that simple. 25 years later, Diablo 2 director still hasn't gotten over how much the stamina bar sucks: "It's like a newbie tax almost." [/url]View the full article

Wuthering Waves: Elysium is Kuro Onroad's debut project and it is an animated series based on the world of Wuthering Waves. View the full article

An unofficial Castlevania: Symphony of the Night PC port has finally emerged from its crypt, but it's based on the Xbox 360 edition of the game rather than the original. Recompilation efforts have made a big wave in the industry over the last few years, and so far – a few outliers like Sonic Unleashed and WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 notwithstanding – have mostly focused on the fifth generation of consoles, with most of the all-time N64 classics having brilliant PC versions available right now. Super Mario 64 was the first time I'd heard of it happening, but impressive ports for Banjo Kazooie, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask have been big hits among fans. When it comes to iconic games from the fifth generation, there's far too many to mention, but one of them is undoubtedly Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – the reason that genre is called Metroidvania and not just Metroid-like. [Hidden Content] And would you look at that, the newest game to join the long line of recompiled PC ports is Symphony of the Night. NocturneRecomp was released by birabittoh (thanks Time Extension) earlier this month, and ends an almost 30 year wait for a PC port. However, it's not the PS1 original, the Saturn version that featured exclusive content, or the PSP release with a new translation that was later adapted for its PS4 port. Instead it's the Xbox 360 edition from 2007, which is the version I first played the game on and still has the iconic intro voice acting, so not a bad version at all, but a hindered one. It lacks the CG cutscenes and ending theme from Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater singer Cynthia Harrell. Of course, you'll need to have dumped your own copy of the Xbox 360 version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to use it, but considering that version is still readily available on the Xbox Store (and backwards compatible) that shouldn't prove too difficult. With that said, you could just play it on one of those consoles if you have it, but thanks to the power of modders, the prospect of restored Saturn content potentially coming to the PC port is certainly exciting, alongside those CG cutscenes. Fans have waited 12 years for a new Castlevania game, but Belmont's Curse is an even greater gift for swine like me who have never played the series. [/url]View the full article

Footage from the intro of the canceled Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link game has surfaced online. The now-defunct Kingdom Hearts mobile title was set to bridge the gap between Kingdom Hearts 3 and Kingdom Hearts 4, but development was stopped, and the project shut down back in 2025. However, the game's intro cinematic has now leaked, giving fans a chance to see how the game's story might have unfolded, and it's truly something bizarre, even for Kingdom Hearts. View the full article

Critical Role's latest Daggerheart mini-series gets its own tie-in campaign frame, Wargamer can exclusively reveal. Road to Nowhere takes place in the Sallowlands, the desert-like site of the second Age of Umbra adventure. The zine will be available in print at Darrington Press' Gen **** booth for $5, and a free digital PDF is available on its official website from August 12. Read the full story on Wargamer: Exclusive: Critical Role reveals tie-in Sallowlands Daggerheart adventure View the full article

I didn't realize I'd stopped playing new releases until my wife pointed it out one day. "You've been playing a lot of super old games lately," she remarked to me, and I didn't think much of it at first. But her words echoed long enough to make me stop and ponder exactly why I'd been snubbing new games in favor of old. I've come to the conclusion that I'm using them as a security blanket of sorts. Writing about video games for a living in 2026 means generative AI and mass layoffs consume up to 100% of my headspace on any given working day. Whether it's another big company like Xbox announcing hundreds of redundancies or a C-suite executive extolling the dubious virtues of artificial intelligence, I log on for work each morning fully expecting to learn about something terrible to research and communicate to you, dear reader. Don't get me wrong, the gravity of a story about corporate restructuring is usually offset by something fun, like a Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Balatro crossover. But as upsetting stories continue to take up a greater share of my workload with every passing week, it's no wonder that I'm escaping the horrors of gaming's present by losing myself in its past. Take the pain away (Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment) Round table (Image credit: Annapurna Interactive) "It creates lesser games": 25 indie devs speak out against genAI in video games My recent retro gaming phase came about organically. I hurt my back the other week and spent several days faced with a very physical dilemma. I could stay lying down, or exist in a state of perpetual agony. There's not much you can do in that situation besides watch TV and play video games, and I found myself doing a lot of both. But what surprised me was my instinct to exclusively play very old games. As in, games that launched at least 15 years ago. In a mild state of sedation from over-the-counter painkillers, I reached for what was most comfortable: games from my childhood, like Pokemon Leaf Green, Diablo 2, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It feels markedly different from the casual, inconsistent relationship I've had with the best retro games up until recently, fueled by an impulse to comb through my Switch Online subscription a few times a year and play something from the N64 collection. I'm sure many people resort to the same thing out of convenience, boredom, or lazy curiosity. But my current fixation on retro games is borne from something much more intentional, decided by whatever subconscious part of my brain is in charge of protecting my inner peace. (Image credit: Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, Game Freak) I can't be the only one whose sense of inner peace feels constantly threatened by games news headlines. The industry has always had its ups and downs, but 2026 is proving a uniquely challenging year. Universally-acclaimed releases like Crimson Desert are weighed down by varying degrees of controversy. Marathon, Bungie's genuinely great new extraction shooter, has been saddled with responsibility for the death of Destiny 2. I had a lot of fun playing Highguard for the 90 minutes it existed before being permanently shut down, and then I just felt bad for the dozens of developers who worked on it that were suddenly out of a job. I was excited about Subnautica 2 for years, but after extensively covering the legal drama between the original developers and publisher Krafton, it became harder and harder to immerse myself in its world. Old games let me detach from that misery. When I'm playing Dragon Quest 8, I'm not worried about whether that Dancing ****** or Fencing fox was conceptualized using AI-generated art. My friends and I can go a few rounds in Halo 2 without worrying about the livelihoods of everyone who made the game. I can save the world as Tidus in Final Fantasy 10 and not even once think about phrases like shareholder value or operating margins. What's even better is finding old games I'd never played or revisiting those I bounced off years ago, which I'm ashamed to admit was the case with Skyward Sword – a game I now regret ever saying anything bad about when I was young and stupid. A link to the past (Image credit: Nintendo) Playing older games in 2026 has had the ironic effect of sparking optimism for the future A lot of what bums me out about today's games also existed 10, 20, even 30 years ago (EA has been shutting down beloved studios long before Microsoft) but it wasn't at the forefront of the zeitgeist like today. Circumstances appear so exacerbated right now because seemingly very little has been done to address the industry's fundamental issues. There are fewer and fewer places for laid-off developers to safely land. Startup studios consistently struggle to establish a footing due to the increasing scale of development. Meanwhile, billion-dollar companies appear slow to learn from their mistakes, buying companies and IP only to cut staff and shutter studios when sales don't measure up to investor expectations. The games industry feels less sustainable than ever. I don't know how we're going to fix it, but playing older games in 2026 has had the ironic effect of sparking optimism for the future that I haven't felt in a while by reminding me how far we've come. (Image credit: SIE) Real progress has been made for better representation in games. Investigations into workplace toxicity have resulted in high-profile departures and institutional changes. Workers are successfully unionizing at an encouraging scale, and the impact of crunch culture has been put under a spotlight like never before. We've a long way to go in each one of those aspects, but I'm choosing to believe the same collective drive for a better industry will fuel worthwhile movement in areas causing so much strife today. In the meantime, I'll dutifully continue keeping y'all informed of the latest atrocities in the hopes that one day I'll find myself writing more about BOGO indie RPGs and less about people losing their jobs. But in my free time, you'll find me curled up under a warm, fuzzy mountain of retro games, whisked away to a simpler time. Check out all the best N64 games to re-explore if you also want to lose yourself in the good old days. [/url]View the full article

I'm not sure who thinks we need a Call of Duty movie, but it's officially a thing, and it's coming out on June 30, 2028. It's "an authentic and exciting experience for longtime fans and newcomers alike." While this tidbit was confirmed earlier in the year, Activision and Paramount gave us little more than that in the months since. The big question was whether it will be set in the Modern Warfare or ****** Ops universe, or something more unexpected, like WW2, Advanced Warfare, or Infinite Warfare (although probably not that last one)... Read more.View the full article

GameSir has issued an update to its Connect software, which removes a big point of friction for people who regularly use the app to customize their PC controllers, but the update could also be really helpful if you've never been up to speed on your controller terminology. The GameSir Connect app is what you'll use to personalize the GameSir G7 Pro 8K PC model as well as a few of the other more recent GameSir products. Until now, we've been forced to uninstall each obsolete version of the application when a new one arrives, before finding the latest one on the Windows Store. As of now, those days are officially done. Now on version 1.14.4, the application will update the version you already have instead of forcing you to find an entirely new app. [Hidden Content] This will definitely go some way to cutting out confusion, especially since, depending on what GameSir controller you have, there are different apps you need to use. The original GameSir G7 Pro for Xbox and PC uses the older GameSir Nexus app, for example. Either way, if you have a compatible controller, the latest version of Connect will allow for less foot-dragging in the Windows Store and more streamlined customization. I'd guess that most pro controller owners probably use their gamepad's controller software a total of once, on average. Beyond the initial setup when you unbox it, though, companion software can offer you loads of versatility and value for money for whichever gamepad you've opted for. GameSir's apps have always been great, but a streamlined updating system isn't the only improvement the brand has made to Connect. (Image credit: Future / Duncan Robertson) Perhaps most helpfully, a new information feature has been added that'll explain what some of the settings actually change. So if you've never been sure of your jargon controller terms, all you'll now have to do is hover a cursor over an information symbol next to each section header to get a brief description. So if you have trouble distinguishing between deadzones, polling rates, hair trigger mode, or more, you can now rest easy knowing that using an in-depth customization app like Connect isn't going to take you out of your depth. I'm sure for some, not knowing these terms is a reason they've avoided using companion apps to begin with. (Image credit: GameSir) With the latest firmware update for the G7 Pro 8K PC, you can also receive a latency improvement, which GameSir says will be narrowed down to less than 250 milliseconds. Furthermore, if you want a more granular way to modify the settings on your thumbstick deadzone curves, the new version of Connect will allow you to input coordinates of 100x100. Beyond the aforementioned GameSir controllers, the Connect app is also going to be the settings home for the GameSir Tarantula Pro, Cyclone 2, Super Nova, Tegenaria Lite, and Nova 2 Lite. Older controllers may still use the GameSir Nexus app. In the summary video about the software update on GameSir's YouTube channel, the upcoming GameSir Tarantula Pro 8K PC was also mentioned, which likely points to this controller using Connect when it hits the shelves. GameSir also makes some of the other best Xbox controllers, best Switch 2 controllers, and best mobile controllers. [/url]View the full article

Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity boss Swen Vincke says he doesn't expect any of the staff at Larian's Barcelona studio to show up for work following Spain's win at the 2026 World Cup final. While it wasn't exactly a great match by any means, the final of the FIFA World Cup 2026 took place last night and saw Spain win its second title after going 1-0 against defending champions Argentina. It felt like – as far as social media was concerned – everyone was in Spain's corner, and after an at times agonizing 120 minutes, Spanish fans in the stadium and especially back home got to celebrate the country's win for the first time since the 2010 World Cup. Given that the final was on a Sunday, it does make the afterparty a bit more of a risk, as many in Spain are likely in the office hungover as we speak. But thankfully for those working at Larian's Barcelona studio, the Divinity developers are getting a bit of time to celebrate. The best team in the World Cup won the World Cup. Not expecting anyone in the Barcelona studio to show up for work tomorrow. Congratulations!!!July 19, 2026 Over on Twitter, Vincke posted reacting to the final game, saying "The best team in the World Cup won the World Cup," and that he's "Not expecting anyone in the Barcelona studio to show up for work tomorrow. Congratulations!" In fact, that's not the first time Vincke has given props to the Spanish team, as Vincke's home country Belgium was knocked out by Spain on July 11. He posted, "Thank you for all the good emotions you gave us Red Devils! And congrats to the Spanish team. Larian Barcelona studio [is] going to be partying." Now I'm a bit of a fair-weather fan; I'll watch any tournament Scotland makes it into (so as you can tell, I'm not watching often). But now I'm just curious if I could've taken a day off for a more important sporting moment… like when John Cena won his record-breaking 17th WWE World Title last year… Larian offers free Baldur's Gate 3 copy to My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way after he tells a stadium of fans he hasn't played it despite loving classic RPGs [/url]View the full article

Much of the growth can be attributed to younger buyers, but here's the unexpected part. According to the market research firm, roughly half of Gen Z and Millennial CD buyers don't even own a CD player. So, why are people buying CDs without a way to listen to them? Read Entire Article View the full article

Palworld continues to prove that it's more than a flash-in-the-pan novelty. The survival crafting romp with legally distinct pokémon just had its second weekend since it hit 1.0, following a couple of years in early access, and it's only getting more popular... Read more.View the full article

Thanks to newly released official documents, there seems to be more evidence suggesting that Take-Two and Rockstar Games might have a much more aggressive microtransaction plan for Grand Theft Auto 6 Online. Many fans are already worried about the future of GTA 6 Online after seeing some changes made to GTA Online with the Kortz Center Heist update. However, those changes might only be the tip of the iceberg. View the full article

Nightstar Sand is needed for several mid-game Palworld items, including the Beam Sword and the Metal Detector; here's how to find it. Read the full story on PCGamesN: Where to find Nightstar Sand in Palworld 1.0 View the full article

Palworld's franchise seems like it's no way near slowing down after a successful 3.5 million sales of its card game before it even releases Read the full story on PCGamesN: Palworld's official TCG hits 3.5 million pack sales worldwide, and it hasn't even launched yet View the full article

Inspired by the likes of Starfox and Armored Core, the space shooter Rogue Eclipse looks bright and full of action with it planned for launch on August 7th. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Sketchy Fables is a first-person explorathon in which, if you kill things with homing butterflies, the world will grow more beautiful, whereas if you kill things with shotguns, the world will slowly succumb to "dark layers filled with loss, decay, and the end of lives". Sure beats Paragon/Renegade. In a pinch, you can also batter creatures with the stickerbook housing all the bizarre artefacts you've discovered. I'm not sure how weaponising the very inventory contributes to the landscape's transformations, but I do know that I'd like to see this kind of diegetic design in, say, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which has menus made of solid wood. Read more View the full article

It is an old story - told to me nearly a decade ago by those who lived it - but it bears repeating now. Fallout was invented only because its paymasters weren’t paying attention. Developed in the bowels of Interplay during the publisher’s 90s heyday, the classic RPG benefited from a chaotic and noisy company atmosphere, in which developers divided themselves into cliques reminiscent of high school. Fallout’s team was like the AV club on the periphery - given a vague mandate to start a project based on a tabletop ruleset. Lead producer and programmer Tim Cain would send out emails saying, “I’m in Conference Room Two with a pizza,” and those who wanted to come on their own time could, to spin up ideas. The Fallout team quickly rejected high fantasy. They considered concepts for time travel and generation ships, and in a way, the setting they ultimately landed on folded in aspects of both those premises. A post-apocalyptic world that was rooted in both the culture and futurism of the 1950s; where a ********* of humanity was preserved in vaults, while the rest muddled through an irradiated wasteland as best they could. Fallout was never properly pitched to Interplay’s superiors. The publisher was distracted by shinier prospects: sports games, an online division, and a newly won Dungeons & Dragons license. While nobody was watching, the Fallout team instilled its game with a pervading moral greyness, and a commitment to mapping the consequences of player actions. It simulated drug addiction, and blowing up NPCs with dynamite. It introduced a faction of militant hoarders called the Brotherhood of Steel. The resulting RPG was decidedly odd - and only once it became an unexpected hit did Interplay start to consider Fallout a hot property. There is no chance that a series like Fallout could be kickstarted at Xbox today. Yes, CEO Asha Sharma is evidently interested in continuing the blockbuster franchise that Fallout has become; a recent Bloomberg report suggested that Obsidian’s upcoming sequel to Avowed had been cancelled in favour of another Fallout. But whatever Xbox’s next Fallout might have been - the oddity in the corner that thrives without oversight and unexpectedly becomes beloved - will have died on July 6, when Sharma announced “the most significant restructure in Xbox history”. Over what is sure to be a painful and fearful year for Xbox employees, 3,200 people are set to leave the company. 1,600 have already lost their jobs, and four studios have been shown the door. Double Fine and Compulsion will return to independent status; Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have found new homes. A fifth studio, Arkane Lyon, is likely to be handed off to a new owner too. The alternative, too grim to contemplate, is that Lyon will go the same way as its Austin counterpart, cut down like the Sycamore Gap tree. If Xbox wants to find the Fallouts of tomorrow, it needs to incubate strange new ideas. The reasoning behind both the acquisition and departure of these studios is fairly clear. For a long time, under previous CEO Phil Spencer, the prevailing Xbox strategy was to fuel Game Pass with the widest possible variety of irresistible games. During this push to make Xbox a subscription company, even something as marvellously esoteric as Obsidian’s Pentiment had its place - signalling that Game Pass was home to both bombastic shooters and monkish ******* investigations. But Game Pass hasn’t quite worked out, and Xbox’s priorities once again resemble those of a traditional big-budget publisher. “It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio,” Sharma said. “We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio; in a typical year, we lost 64 cents for every dollar we invested.” Nobody expects Xbox to steer unprofitable studios through the games industry’s most dramatic downturn in decades (though let’s be honest, it absolutely could, were Microsoft not hell bent on shovelling billions into its AI furnace and chasing never-ending growth for shareholders). Still: Sharma has made an overcorrection. The funding of developers like Double Fine and Arkane has not been a favour nor a subsidy, but an investment in the new ideas that Xbox desperately needs. These studios have proven themselves to be dizzingly creative. In its history, Double Fine has only made two sequels - Costume Quest 2 and Psychonauts 2 - amid a wildly original catalogue that includes a sentient lighthouse simulator, a body-swapping Metroidvania, an XCOM-style riff on feudal genealogy, and precisely one RTS tribute to heavy metal album art. Arkane Lyon, meanwhile, is widely acknowledged as one of the medium’s leaders in dense, engrossing world design. That’s evident to anyone who’s played Dishonored, Deathloop, or Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Arkane’s worldbuilding has combined industrial Victoriana and bohemian witch covens; subarctic fishing villages and immortal party people. These unlikely mashups haven’t felt jarring in their juxtaposition, but instead grounded and believable. Much the way Fallout was, when Cain’s team married Atomic Age kitsch to wasteland horror. Not all of Double Fine or Arkane’s games have been breakout hits. In fact, most haven’t. But if Xbox wants to future-proof its output, to find the Fallouts of tomorrow, it needs to incubate strange new ideas. To take the relatively inexpensive risks which, over the long run, can produce behemoth franchises. Instead, it appears to be doubling down on series that are more than two decades old. Few would disagree that Halo’s best days are behind it; the very existence of Halo: Campaign Evolved is tacit acknowledgement of that fact. Gears of War: E-Day looks like chunky, old-fashioned fun - but the novelty of having straightforward cover shooters back in the age of live-service will not hold forever. The original creators of these games have long since moved on, and their successors are beholden to old formulae. Eventually, these ancient husks will disintegrate into dust, and Xbox will be left with nothing new to turn to. Eventually, these ancient franchises will disintegrate into dust, and Xbox will be left with nothing new to turn to. “We are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what’s next for each independent studio to one that focuses on our strongest franchises,” Bethesda head of studio Jill Braff wrote in a recent email to staff. “From there, we’ll align the right talent, technology, and resources across the organisation to deliver on those priorities.” It’s a statement that provides a glimpse into Microsoft’s new mindset: a return to the dying days of the Xbox 360, driven by top-down mandates, and intended to ensure the company’s hardware is backed up by killer apps. Even by its own stated goals, however, Xbox seems to be setting itself up to fail. Inarguably, one of Bethesda’s strongest franchises is The Elder Scrolls. Yet in the wake of Sharma’s layoffs, “as much as half” of the team behind The Elder Scrolls Online is gone. What’s more, over 50 employees at Bethesda Game Studios have been let go, an outcome that will have a “substantial and cascading effect” on the making of The Elder Scrolls 6, according to multiple employees at the studio. Meanwhile, id Software has been so dramatically drained of talent that one laid-off worker told GamesBeat they were “not convinced there is a viable way forward”. If Xbox is to double down on venerable series like Doom and Quake, you would imagine it might need the help of the developers who have successfully reinvented Doom on three separate occasions since the millennium. Are these the acts of somebody throwing resources behind sure bets? Sharma’s talk of streamlining, simplifying and flattening Xbox’s organisation more closely resembles the startup mentality of Silicon Valley - a worldview that values mobility over stability. It echoes Elon Musk, whose typical approach is to yank wires out of the machine, and discover afterwards whether any of them were essential. It’s not a way of thinking that necessarily belongs in the big-budget game business. Listen to developers, and they’ll tell you that great games are built by teams with a shared shorthand and institutional knowledge that can only be fostered over long years in each others’ company. Every time an outfit like id Software or Bethesda Game Studios is wracked by layoffs, that bond is damaged, and the scars show in subsequent projects. If Obsidian is now beginning work on its first Fallout game in a decade and a half, it does so at a disadvantage - minus a quarter of its staff. The studio has long produced great work under dire circumstances, and I’m sure will do so again. Over the course of its fraught history, uncertainty and instability has sadly been the norm rather than the exception. But as for the franchises that will follow Fallout? The ones that will ensure Xbox can survive for another two decades, and sell its consoles far into the future? It’s unclear where they’ll come from. The incubation chambers are broken, and nothing new grows. Jeremy Peel is a freelance journalist and friend to anyone who will look at photos of his dogs. View the full article