Since taking over as CEO of XBOXearlier this year, Asha Sharma has wasted little time outlining an ambitious new vision for Microsoft's gaming business. Sharma has acknowledged that XBOX was not in a "healthy spot" when she took the reins, prompting what she describes as a broader reset of the business aimed at positioning the brand for long-term success. View the full article
We knew when we gave the original Half-Life a 97% way back in 1998 that it was something special that gamers would be playing years from then. But I don't think we ever thought someone would play it on a Nokia phone at 30 FPS, with mouse and keyboard support. Oh, technology can be a wonderful thing... Read more.View the full article
Mastery Monday is live in Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3, offering a great opportunity to go Sprite hunting. If you’ve been seeking the rarer Sprites without luck, you’ll want to make the most of this new event. This guide has everything you need to know to max out the event. Table of contentsFortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 Mastery Monday timingsAll Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 Mastery Monday bonuseshttps://embeds.beehiiv.com/a8d62108-86ed-4039-bf49-44877ba62c15 Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 Mastery Monday timings The first Mastery Monday went live earlier today, Monday, June 8. This will be a weekly routine as part of the ongoing season unless Epic states otherwise. The event began at 6am PT/8am CT/9am ET and will continue for the next 24 hours. The next Mastery Monday (the second one) will go live on June 15 at the same time mentioned above. Now that we know the time and date, let’s find out what to expect from the event. Image via Epic All Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 Mastery Monday bonuses When the Mastery Monday event is live, you’ll enjoy the following benefits. Increased Legendary and Mythic Sprite Spawn Rates: This is the best time to look for the rare Sprites like Burnt Peanut. All Mythic and Legendary Sprites will have a double spawn chance from a chest as part of the event. Double XP for all Sprites: This makes leveling up Sprites quicker, as you’ll take half the actual required time. This means that you get to enjoy all the benefits you obtain from higher-level Sprites. Double Sprite Dust from Extractions: When you extract a Sprite, you’ll get double Sprite Dust. This allows you to spawn the rarer Sprites more frequently. Hence, you should look to make the most of the next 23 hours to improve your Sprite collection. There will be more events coming out weekly, with the next one being the New Sprite Day on Thursday. /wp-content/themes/destructoid2025/assets/img/icons/likes-off.png0 The post Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 Mastery Monday timings and bonuses appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article
You didn’t think they’d go quietly into the good night, did you? Nintendo just announced that it will be broadcasting a Direct tomorrow at 9am CT, following in the footsteps of PlayStation State of Play and Xbox Showcase to close out this year’s not-E3, Summer Game Fest-ish season. Join us on June 9 at 7am PT for a #NintendoDirect followed by Nintendo Treehouse: Live! The Nintendo Direct will be roughly 50 minutes and Nintendo Treehouse: Live will be 95 minutes. Watch here: [Hidden Content] [Hidden Content] — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) June 8, 2026 [Hidden Content] The Direct will run for about 50 minutes but be followed by a Nintendo Treehouse event that will run for a whopping 95 minutes, so it sounds like there will be at least one big, new game announced during the showcase. Outside of potential new announcements, Nintendo already has Star Fox in June and Rhythm Heaven Groove and Splatoon Raiders dropping in July already on the calendar. Games on games on games. It’s been a pretty solid year for Nintendo already, with games like Pokémon Pokopia, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Mario Tennis Fever, Pokémon Champions, and Tomodachi Life releasing in the first half of 2026. October will mark the return of Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles with Modern Warfare 4 on the Switch 2, so there’s plenty to look forward to already. We could even see CoD appear during the show in some form. I’d suspect we may finally hear about The Duskbloods tomorrow, From Software’s upcoming Switch 2 exclusive. It hasn’t been heard from or seen since last year’s announcement, and the game was revealed with a 2026 launch date. I have no info other than speculation and hope, though, so don’t quote me. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is another title we could hear more about, too, on top of any potential “one last thing” surprises. What are you speculating will be shown at tomorrow’s Direct? Mario? Zelda? Let us know int he comments. /wp-content/themes/destructoid2025/assets/img/icons/likes-off.png0 The post Don’t forget the OG: Nintendo Direct drops tomorrow to close out 2026 not-E3 season appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article
***** unveiled Crazy Taxi: World Tour at the Xbox Showcase yesterday as an all-new installment of the classic driving action series. Original creator Kenji Kanno showed up at the Summer Game Fest to talk about why he’s making the game 27 years after the first game. Crazy Taxi: World Tour is slated for release in 2027 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Steam, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2. [Hidden Content] Watch the announcement trailer here: [Hidden Content] In a press briefing at SGF, Kanno spoke through a translator about how the game will take players on a high-octane adventure to five cities around the globe. In the new World Tour story-driven campaign, players will play as Axel, chasing down mysterious masked villains who stole his beloved taxi all while tackling extreme missions and challenges. Kanno’s lead designer played the game while Kanno talked about it. Kanno, who is serving as creative producer, said he couldn’t talk too much about the game’s details as it’s not coming out until 2027; he confirmed it will have multiplayer but he could say much more. You will be able to play against friends or go online with the multiplayer. You can revisit the original games in Arcade Mode, and you can unlock a variety of vehicles and customize your taxi to create your own ride. Kenji Kanno is making Crazy Taxi: World Tour, 27 years after he created the original Crazy Taxi. Source: GamesBeat/Dean Takahashi Back in the 1990s, racing games were popular, but Kanno said he didn’t find them to be that fun. Yet he was a big fan of movies and loved shows with car chase scenes. “Everyone would be very excited in the theater. So I thought to myself, ‘Wait, if I make this into a video game, it will be a hit,'” he said. He wanted to make a game in a city that really felt alive. He showed off his driving skills in the old Dreamcast version of Crazy Taxi. (That game came out in 2000, a year after Crazy Taxi debuted in the arcades. After the first Dreamcast version, Crazy Taxi 2 came out on the Dreamcast in 2001, followed by Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller on Xbox in 2002, Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride in 2003 on Game Boy Advance, Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars in 2007 for the PlayStation Portable, Crazy Taxi: City Rush on mobile in 2014, and Crazy Taxi Tycoon in 2007 on iOS and Android. Of the original, Kanno said he wanted to make it feel like you were driving in a city that felt alive with real people, who proceeded to dive out of the way of the taxi to stay alive. “You can hear people talking, you can hear people calling out to you, and we arrived at the conclusion of having a taxi be the main part of the driving and having it be an open car, like with no roof, a convertible, so you can just hear everyone talking to you as you drive around,” Kanno said. He wanted people to have positive feelings while playing, and he didn’t want to tell people they ewre playing the game wrong. The Crazy Taxi way of cutting through traffic. Source: ***** “No, I want everyone to be able to play the game how they want to, and would still be praised, would still be told, ‘Hey, you’re cool, you’re wicked, you’re slick,’ while you play the game,” he said. The games all came with a lot of music, and the song in the trailer for the new game is All I Want from The Offspring. Kanno said that the game is coming now because ***** announced a few years ago that it was going to revive its legacy intellectual properties, and this is one of them. Kanno said fans have been asking for a new one for a while, and he’s happy to oblige. Back in the 1990s, it wasn’t possible to provide much backstory for the characters or lore. But now it’s possible to have an expansive story mode. The main character here is Axel. His beloved taxi gets stolen and he goes to different locations to try to retrieve it. “That’s all I can say today. Before the marketing people get angry at me, so, but as soon as I can share more details, I will,” he said. Kanno showed that you can drive into the ocean in the new game and you can even pick up passengers in the water. You can also drive onto a pier and go fishing, where a passenger stands up in the back seat, casts the line into the water, and you drive forward and back to reel in a fish. You can reel in a big fish or, if you’re lucky, you can reel in a big shark. Dynamic jump in Crazy Taxi. Source: ***** “We really wanted the game to be fun for both old and new fans of Crazy Taxi,” Kanno said. He noted that the dev team is multi-generational, with a lot of young folks in their 20s as well as older members like himself. You can pick up a stack of pizzas to deliver and you have drive in a way so that they don’t fall over. Each of the five locations has their own missions — some standalone, some story-baed. “With the game being called Crazy Taxi, you gotta have some crazy missions in there as well, and this is one of them,” he said. There will be a night and day system. You can undertake a variety of side missions like fishing. You can make the car do a “crazy dash” or a “crazy drift,” or give it nitrous boost. “We want each player to be able to express their own identity and how they want to play the game, so we don’t want to limit them to just one play style,” he said. “We have unique customization.” Questions and answers Extreme drifting in Crazy Taxi. Source: ***** Asked how the devs are using generative AI, Kanno said the team uses it as a “reference.” “So our artists would like pull up, generate some of their ideas, like they wanted some ideas, and then they would look at that generative image, and then they would draw the actual thing,” he said. “Everything from programming to assets, everything is made by the actual human, like it’s only used for as a reference for them to look at, and then they would actually create the actual thing that would go into the game,” said Kanno. Riding with Axel in Crazy Taxi. Source: ***** I asked why it took a long time to make the game. Kanno said he couldn’t comment on the actual time frame, but he said, “I think relative to like current game development timelines it wasn’t that long, relatively, for us to develop this game.” Another questioner asked how the team weighs the benefits of using generative AI versus the pushback that a lot of games are getting right now from the public. He said the extent of the use of generative AI is limited to what he mentioned, where it is used just as a reference. “Moving forward in the future, it is probably going to be more of a hot topic,” he said. “That’s all I can say right now of how we use generative AI for this game.” The post *****’s Crazy Taxi: World Tour will take wacky driving to 5 cities | Kenji Kanno’s briefing appeared first on GamesBeat. View the full article
Board partners speaking with Dutch outlet Tweakers pointed to a broad window, with some expecting new cards to surface by mid-2027, while others said availability could slip into late 2027 or even early 2028. As is often the case, an announcement and an actual retail launch may not line up,... Read Entire Article View the full article
Iron Gate Studio has confirmed that its popular survival game Valheim is set to leave early access on September 9, 2026. The developer first released Valheimback in February 2021, so it will have been well over five years by the time the game exits its early access ******* later this year. View the full article
For more than a decade, Minecraft fans have speculated about what an official sequel might look like. While Mojang has continuously expanded the original game with major updates, new biomes, mechanics, and features, many players have remained curious about the possibility of a fresh start built with modern technology and a new creative vision. View the full article
After nearly two and a half decades, a brand new Crazy Taxi game is finally coming next year. A trailer for *****’s reboot was revealed during Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, confirming that it will be called Crazy Taxi: World Tour and will be released in 2027. While the trailer also hinted that the player will be travelling to numerous cities around the world (hence the game’s name), all of the footage focused on gameplay taking place in the city from the original Crazy Taxi. Read More... View the full article
Ace Combat Series Brand Director Kazutoki Kono has been involved with the iconic dogfighting franchise for over 30 years now. Working on a single game series for so many years requires not just dedication, but a level of obsession with the material. Ace Combat 7's difficult development is well documented, while Kono has mentioned the long hours he's putting into the upcoming Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve on social media. Clearly, Kono's fire still burns as fiercely as it did three decades ago. Read the full story on PCGamesN: Ace Combat 8's Kazutoki Kono has been burning the midnight oil, and fan support is keeping him going through the late nights View the full article
I want to talk about the idea of a 'Prologue' versus a 'demo.' Let me start with a definition: per the Cambridge English dictionary, a prologue is "a part that comes at the beginning of a play, story, or long poem, often giving information about events that happened before the time when the play, story, or poem begins." I'd like you to keep that in mind. Read the full story on PCGamesN: 1666 Amsterdam's prologue is taking a beating from Steam commenters. That just seems unfair. View the full article
Season 20 is shaping up to be a huge moment for Sea of Thieves as Rare is preparing to hand the keys of the game to players with the free Custom Seas update. Over the course of 8 years, Sea of Thieves has seen massive changes and evolutions, while also managing to keep the core gameplay loop of exploring the dangerous open seas as a pirate largely intact. View the full article
Clever Plays, a Montreal-based indie game studio, showed off Happy Bastards, its irreverent open-world tactical RPG, with a new combat trailer during Sunday’s PC Gaming Show at Summer Games Fest. In conjunction with the showcase, the studio also posted a playable combat demo on Steam to provide a hands-on look at the turn-based combat highlighted in the trailer. “We’ve really been having fun with the combat aspect of the game, working closely with our insider community and playtesting to get the feel of the combat just right,” said Mattieu Bégin, creative director for Clever Plays, in a statement. “So we didn’t want to wait to share the combat demo with a larger audience. That said, we’ve planned a more robust demo that shows off all aspects of the game, including the real-time open-world exploration, toward the end of this year.” Previously revealed by the Future Games Show during Summer Game Fest 2024, Happy Bastards is an open-world tactical RPG with turn-based combat in which players assemble an unruly squad to help make them a legend through reckless adventuring, bloody fights, lucrative looting, and dirty dealings. Let the bastards do the dirty work while you give the orders, reap the rewards, and enjoy the high life. This morally bankrupt mercenary sandbox with tactical combat, RPG progression, and a world that reacts to player choices encourages players to become famous by any means necessary. Happy Bastards delivers all the gameplay and features that fans of the turn-based tactical RPG genre expect — enlisting, evolving, and equipping a group of combatants to take part in a campaign of turn- and grid-based battles with plenty of strategic options; resource management, and an abundance of classes, stats, and abilities and upgrades; and an open-world filled with choices, and a large variety of enemies, NPCs, locations and treasures to encounter. All of this is set against a bawdy and boisterous backdrop and the quest for fame at any cost. When fame is the prize, everything’s fair game. While much of the game is yet to come, the demo released today simulates a dungeon delve, including combat and exploration. Here are four main features that make Happy Bastards’ combat system deep and unique: ● Tactics-heavy battlefields – Turn-based combat takes place on small terrains with a square grid, with tactical options such as elevation, line of sight, positional bonuses, control zones, tile effects, traps, shoving and falling, and orthogonal targeting that make positioning and facing really meaningful. ● Commands – While players control their mercenaries as in any other game, here they do so from the sidelines as the main character, barking commands, and contributing to combat from a shared pool of abilities – several of which can be used each round in addition to the mercs’ abilities, creating a lot of tactical flexibility. ● Tag-team system – One Command, the Tag-Team Swap, redefines squad building and combat dynamics by letting you swap specialized combatants mid-fight, so you always use the “right tool for the right job” even with only three mercenaries on the field at once. ● Living characters – Despite the name, the Happy Bastards are NOT perfectly docile soldiers who stoically accept their fate. Quite the contrary! They will react, speak their mind, and impose their battle whims – from simple quips and combat modifiers, to panicking or fleeing. It’s a viable strategy to try to make the enemy team implode in panic. “We’re looking forward to sharing more of the game in the coming months, but hope people will join us on our development journey,” said Bégin, in a statement. “People can still sign up for our Insider Program within the Discord, so they’ll be the first to know when we begin testing the open world play. Wishlist and download the Happy Bastards combat demo on Steam. Founded in 2013 as a husband-and-wife team, Clever Plays is a 10-person indie development studio based in Montreal. The team is driven by a mission to create innovative games that combine solid gameplay and unique worlds, while striving to conquer new challenges with each game. Clever Plays’ most recent title was Operation: Tango, a stylistic co-op espionage game that won numerous Best Multiplayer Awards and accolades for Art Direction, Game Design, and more. The studio’s previous game, the 2016 Leap of Fate, a fast-paced rogue-lite in a magical cyberpunk setting, earned a Metacritic score of 80. The post Clever Plays shows off Happy Bastards open-world tactical RPG appeared first on GamesBeat. View the full article
FIFA and Gamefam, the gaming and media company for Gen Z and Alpha communities, today announced the launch of the official FIFA World Cup 2026 event on Roblox. The activation brings the biggest sports event of the year to life on one of the most influential platforms for the next generation of fans, marking one of Roblox’s biggest official sports events to date. FIFA Super Soccer, the official home of FIFA on Roblox, will be transformed into a FIFA World Cup 2026 event hub featuring all 48 participating national teams, a FIFA World Cup 2026 stadium, gameplay quests, exclusive player rewards and connections to the tournament, including live standings and scoreboards. The action in FIFA Super Soccer will be extended across five other games, forming a six-game crossover event that will transform Roblox into a global FIFA World Cup destination where fans can play, compete, collect rewards and celebrate the tournament – all amid the action on the real-world pitch. All 48 FIFA World Cup 2026 National Teams: Every FIFA World Cup 2026 national team, including reigning FIFA World Cup 2022 champions Argentina, will be playable in FIFA Super Soccer, giving fans the chance to represent their country on Roblox. Image credit FIFA / Gamefam “FIFA World Cup 2026 will be the biggest FIFA World Cup ever, and we want fans everywhere to feel part of that excitement before, during and after the matches. This Roblox event gives a new generation of fans a fun, accessible and interactive way to connect with the tournament – from being able to play as one of the 48 national teams in FIFA Super Soccer to celebrating real-world moments with friends through live events, quests and rewards. FIFA is excited to collaborate with Gamefam and continue to expand our exciting football gaming portfolio,” said Christian Volk, director, Gaming and Esports at FIFA, in a press release. The platform-wide event will bring FIFA World Cup 2026 content into six of Gamefam’s Roblox experiences, including some of the platform’s biggest franchises. The six unique games, which record a cumulative 28 million gameplay sessions per week, were selected to reach different audiences with wide-ranging interests. “The FIFA World Cup is one of the few moments where the entire world comes together – across countries, cultures and languages – and Roblox gives that global audience a shared language of play and community,” said Ricardo Briceno, CEO of Gamefam, in the same press release. “As the action unfolds on the pitch, Gen Z and Alpha fans will come together across Roblox to participate in the action, represent their nations, and celebrate with friends in real time. That’s what makes immersive gaming so powerful: it turns global tentpole moments from passive to participatory, at massive scale.” The FIFA World Cup 2026 event across Roblox will begin on Friday, June 5, 2026 and run through Friday, July 31, 2026. While the event will conclude, FIFA Super Soccer will continue to be live operated as the home of soccer on Roblox. Fans across the world can join the action across these six games on Roblox for free on consoles, PCs, mobile, and tablets. The post FIFA and Gamefam launch FIFA World Cup 2026 event in Super Soccer and Roblox appeared first on GamesBeat. View the full article
Few franchises inspire as much debate over official canon changes as Star Wars. Whether it's a new Disney+ series, a novel, a comic book, or a video game, fans will scrutinize every miniscule detail added to the galaxy to figure out how it fits into the larger timeline. While some embrace new worlds, characters, and lore as exciting ways to expand the universe, others are much more critical, especially when new material introduces locations or concepts that could reshape established canon. View the full article
Oh wow - we're getting a real treat now. Atari / Nightdive Studios announced Thief: The Dark Project Remastered bringing the classic up to modern standards. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article
Chapter 7 Season 3 brings plenty of new Sprites to discover in Fortnite, and some of them have game-changing abilities. Some of these abilities will significantly raise your chances of success on the island. However, few of them are not as useful as you might think. This guide will help you understand how every Sprite works and which ones are the top choices. Table of contentsComplete Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 Sprites tier listS-tierA-tierB-tierhttps://embeds.beehiiv.com/a8d62108-86ed-4039-bf49-44877ba62c15 Complete Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 Sprites tier list I have used three tiers to differentiate between the available Sprites. I have also ranked them based on the standard variant. Gold variants will offer you more experience, so you should always use them if possible. S-tier Sprites are the best possible choices in the current meta. A-tier choices are suitable alternatives to S-tier options. However, their abilities are slightly weaker or more situational. B-tier choices are poor options to use. Their in-game abilities aren’t strong enough to be considered in the current meta. S-tier Screenshot by Destructoid SpriteEffectReason****** SpriteGrants shields and health upon eliminationsThe ****** Sprite suits all types of players due to its powerful ability. Whenever you eliminate someone, you’ll get extra shields and health. This can be crucial towards the late game when you’re engaged in gunfights. The recovery amount raises when you level up the Sprite. Ghost SpriteGrants cloak for a duration upon reloadingWhenever you reload, you’ll become invisible for a short window. This can be crucial in an intense gunfight as becoming invisible will make it harder for your enemy to aim. Zero Point SpriteSpawn a Shield Bubble Jr. when you use a healing item on yourselfWhenever you heal during a fight, the Sprite will generate an extra shield to absorb damage. This is immensely useful since it’s like having two layers of protection at all times. You can rely on the shield to heal yourself, and then recharge your shields if required. A-tier Screenshot by Destructoid SpriteEffectReasonPunk SpriteOffers random items and a small chance at getting infinite ammoWhile this Sprite offers some great freebies, it’s RNG-based. Hence, you might end up with an item that you don’t need. Having infinite ammo is always useful, but that’s also not a guaranteed outcome. Duck SpriteGrants you shields when you’re emoting or jammingYou can regain shields by simply jamming or emoting. This works well when there are no remaining enemies around you. However, emoting to generate shields with an enemy nearby is impractical at all. Earth SpriteHigher chances of getting rare loots from chestsThis is perhaps the best starting Sprite to pick. You’ll have better chances of finding those rarer loot items and powering up quicker. Burn Peanut SpriteOffers a chance to find extra loot after eliminating someoneThe Sprite offers you a 20% chance to get extra loot when you eliminate someone. The rate goes up when you level up the Sprite. This is the rarest Sprite to find, which is also a contributing factor to this being in A-tier. B-tier SpriteEffectReasonKing SpriteBoosts Pickaxe damage Yes, there’s not much we can do (unless you want to run at everyone with the Pickaxe trying to clobber them). Dream SpriteGet extra loot every time you level upThe extra loot you get is nice, but the requirement isn’t. The Sprite also works only when you level it up, and the perks it provides aren’t unique. Water SpriteGenerates shields when you’re standing in waterStanding anywhere in Fortnite is a bad choice. Doing that when you might be taking fire isn’t a great idea. Fire SpriteCreates something fiery when you damage enemiesYes, you get a ring of fire when you’re attacking an enemy. However, chances are that you will also get burnt. /wp-content/themes/destructoid2025/assets/img/icons/likes-off.png0 The post Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 Sprite tier list—Best ones to use appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article
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