Earlier this week, Xbox's new chief executive officer, Asha Sharma, took the first of what we'd later learn would be a couple of big swings with how the Xbox brand is evolving under her purview by decreasing the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and confirming that brand-new Call of Duty games will not launch directly into Game Pass anymore. But a new report claims that there will be more than enough of the long-running military shooter to go around. A report from PC Gamer claims that we'll start seeing older titles from the franchise make their way onto Xbox […]

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Today, April 24, 2026, is the one-year anniversary of the launch of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the game that immediately catapulted to being one of the most beloved and talked about games of 2025. It went on to earn more GOTY awards than any other game (the most recent of which was awarded last week) and has now reached over 8 million copies sold, according to developer Sandfall Interactive. Sandfall announced the milestone on the game's official X (formerly Twitter) account, thanking players for the support they have given Sandfall and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 since the RPG launched last […]

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The ID@Xbox Spring Showcase 2026 featured its fair share of world premieres of upcoming games and new looks at previously announced indie titles, across multiple kinds of games at different scales. Similar to our round-ups of the Galaxies Spring Showcase and the Triple-I Initiative Showcase, this article will round-up all of the news and announcements from today's show, so you don't have to miss any of it. You can also check out the show below to take it all in, or look at the list of announcements to see which catches your eye. Everything Announced at ID@Xbox Spring Showcase 2026

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Minutes after we reported that Asha Sharma would be dropping the Microsoft Gaming brand and renaming the division back to just Xbox, and the significance of that change, Sharma shared a new Xbox Wire blog post that not only confirmed the change, but did so much more by laying out her and Matt Booty's plan for the next era of Xbox. In a letter sent within Microsoft titled, 'We Are Xbox,' Sharma and Booty, who are credited as co-authors on the letter, begin by explaining how Xbox "has always been different" since it joined the industry at the start of […]

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Update 23/04/2026: Minutes after reporting on this change, a letter sent internally within Xbox, co-authored by chief executive officer Asha Sharma and chief content officer Matt Booty, was published on the Xbox Wire blog. It not only confirmed the name change and the sunsetting of the Microsoft Gaming brand but also laid out a new plan for the next era of Xbox. Read the full article here. Original Story: Asha Sharma, the recently installed chief executive officer at Microsoft Gaming who has already been taking some big swings by decreasing the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has reportedly just […]

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Project ATOM was first revealed last year as a new cozy free-to-play party platformer from developer JNG Studio. Now, during today's ID@Xbox Spring Showcase 2026 event, it's still a cozy free-to-play party platformer, but it has an official title, as it is now called Totopia. Developer JNG Studio also confirmed that the game's first public beta playtest will take place next month, starting on May 7, 2026. Totopia is really trying to be a flavour of an 'everything' game, as it combines life sim mechanics and a cartoon visual style with party platforming and a healthy dose of chaos to […]

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We've been hearing rumors of Halo Studios looking to add a battle royale mode to the Halo franchise, either as a new individual title or as a game mode in a larger game, for years now. Whether it was actually the case or not, to players, the idea of a Halo battle royale always seemed like Xbox trying to chase one of the most popular genre trends in the video game industry. That seems to be the same thing driving the latest rumor about what's coming next from Halo Studios, which claims that the battle royale mode has pivoted to […]

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After telling the video game industry that they should "embrace AI like Iron Man's suit" in one interview, in another, this time with MobileGamer.Biz, the head of Google Cloud's games division, Jack Buser is claiming that the industry has actually already embraced AI-powered tools. Buser claims that "roughly nine out of ten game developers" told Google "yeah, we're using it," in a survey Google conducted during Gamescom 2026, asking developers if they are using AI-powered tools. Buser even went as far as to claim that players just don't realize that the games they are enjoying and love to play "right […]

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NVIDIA has revealed the latest batch of games joining its cloud gaming GeForce NOW service, with the Vampire Survivors spin-off title, Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard leading the pack, but this week's batch isn't all about the games. NVIDIA is also adding a significant quality-of-life improvement to the service, making it a little more seamless and easier to use for players. Starting with the games, there are six titles either joining the cloud streaming service or getting updates for a better experience, like Crimson Desert, one of the year's biggest releases so far which joined GeForce NOW at its launch […]

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While 2026 has already seen some major releases like Crimson Desert, Resident Evil Requiem, and Marathon, to name a few, the biggest release of the year, and the biggest release the video game industry has seen for years is yet to come, as we all wait for GTA 6 to arrive later this year at its previously announced November 19, 2026 release date. But at the time of this writing in April 2026, there's still plenty of time for things to go wrong for Take-Two and Rockstar from now until then, and concerns of another delay linger each day. That […]

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The most controversial topic in the video game industry now and for the last few years has been Generative AI and its place (or lack thereof) in video game development. The most recent hot-button layer to that has been NVIDIA's introduction of DLSS 5. While the tech likely won't be impacting games coming later this year, projects further off than that, like Fragmentary Order, the new extraction shooter from Nikita Buyanov, the creator of Escape From Tarkov, are likely going to be able to implement the tech if they choose to. As for Buyanov and his new team at Rant […]

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At the beginning of March 2026, a report from Aftermath reveal that Nintendo had issued a lawsuit against the US government for what it claimed was "unlawful impositions of tariffs." Now, another lawsuit has appeared in relation to that suit, but it's not coming from Nintendo or the US government. Instead, it's directed at Nintendo from players in California and Washington, who claim that if Nintendo gets the money it claims the US government unlawfully charged, then that tariff money should make its way back to the players, who paid for the higher prices implemented because of those tariffs. This […]

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Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive confirms that it has laid off an undisclosed number of employees less than a month after it acquired the 7 Days to Die developer The Fun Pimps. After employees initially took to LinkedIn to reveal they had been suddenly let go, the studio released a statement to Game Developer to confirm the cuts. According to the statement from Behaviour Interactive, the cuts impacted members of its team that focused on "external development partnerships," and said that the decision to lay off members of that team was made due to Behaviour Interactive leadership seeing a […]

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Update 22/04/2026: Developer Poncle has since clarified that it has "15 new projects," which does not necessarily mean it has 15 new games in development. These projects can include anything from a new game, free updates for Vampire Survivors, DLCs, etc. The headline of this article has been updated to reflect the correct language. Original Story: Vampire Survivors was one of the standout hits when it launched in 2022, selling over a million copies in a matter of months and taking home Best Game at the BAFTAs. Its developer Poncle has grown to be able to publish other titles like […]

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Circana executive director and video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella has reported the US sales charts for the month of March 2026, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it's MLB The Show 26 that appears at the top of the charts, helping to drive a 12% spending growth compared to March 2025 alongside Crimson Desert and Pokémon Pokopia. While Piscatella cites Crimson Desert as one of the main spending growth drivers, when looking at the full top-20 list of best-selling games by dollar sales, including both physical and digital sales, the new open-world from Pearl Abyss failed to make the top 10. It […]

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Last year, Build a Rocket Boy released MindsEye, a game that was arguably the worst release of 2025 and one of the worst launches in video game history, something that the studio's leadership even acknowledged. But it didn't do so while bearing the full brunt of the blame. Studio leadership Mark Gerhard and Leslie Benzies have held that the game's poor launch was the result of internal and external corporate espionage and sabotage, which Benzies and Gerhard allegedly tried to combat by installing surveillance software on company devices. It's that attempt to spy on its own staff that has a […]

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After rumors coming from a leaked memo pointed to a price decrease coming to Xbox Game Pass, the company confirmed today that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is officially getting cheaper, and will go down from its current rate of $29.99/month to $22.99/month. The PC Game Pass tier is also getting a price deduction, and will be down from $16.49/month to $13.99/month. What's more is that new Call of Duty games will no longer launch into the subscription service, and instead arrive "about a year later." The news was revealed in a short Xbox Wire blog post, which was followed up […]

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Last year at Gamescom 2025, a new Advanced Shader Delivery feature was unveiled by Microsoft's DirectX team that would arrive first on the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X handhelds that launched in October 2025. The new feature was co-developed by Xbox and AMD, and is meant to tackle shader stuttering. Now, as seemingly spotted by tech programmer at MADFINGER Games, Ondrej Hrušovský, the feature's implementation into Unreal Engine 5 is "in progress." Hrušovský shared a screenshot of the code commitment to X (formerly Twitter), which you can see below. Shader compilation stuttering has long been an issue […]

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Ubisoft's chief executive officer, Yves Guillemot, personally confirmed back in 2024 that "players can be excited about some remakes, which will allow us to revisit some of the games we've created in the past and modernize them." Now, the first of those remakes is almost here with Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, and according to a new report, the rest of the remakes players might hope to see follow Black Flag won't make it out to store shelves if Black Flag doesn't fly off those same walls. According to Insider-Gaming, who has been part of why Assassin's Creed Black Flag […]

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A little less than a year ago from the time of this writing, Nintendo announced Splatoon Raiders, a single-player-focused spin-off of the popular multiplayer series. It was seemingly the natural next step from the single-player campaigns available in the mainline entries players had already enjoyed, and today, through the Nintendo Today! app, Nintendo revealed that it'll be arriving exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 later this year on July 23, 2026. The release date reveal came at the tail end of a new gameplay trailer that showed off plenty of combat and the world players will get to explore with a […]

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