Onimusha: Way of the Sword is one of many, many games due to launch in the September/October period in 2026. As developers and publishers flee as far away from GTA 6 black hole as they possibly can, the resultant squeeze in the earlier (or later) months is resulting in a veritable feast of triple-A and indie games on the horizon.

But, whilst GTA 6’s unavoidable presence may result in a wealth of choice for eager gamers this autumn, there is pressure on developers: the reason many moved away from Rockstar’s anticipated sandbox adventure is to ensure their own sales aren’t impacted, but moving into a release window where you’re competing with a plethora of other titles creates the very same squeeze – you’re just jostling with other games, instead of GTA 6.

That doesn’t seem to phase the developers behind Onimusha, though. In June, the developers announced a 25th September release date for the title, which puts it smack in the middle of one of the busiest release schedules we’ve seen in years. “We’ve already said we’re releasing it,” laughs Capcom producer, Akihito Kadowaki, when our own Chris Tapsell asked about the timing of the launch, “we can’t back out now!”

Oniumusha was actually one of the first games of this year’s blowout ‘E3 period’ to get a release date. It appeared in the Sony State of Play at the beginning of June, and set a trend for games sliding either side of the GTA 6 event horizon (anything falling after Rockstar’s launch typically fell to February 2027 or later). Over on VGC, Kadowaki expanded a little bit on how he feels about this unusually busy period.”We were pretty surprised,” he told the site. “We probably expected a lot of titles would be in that window, but we were still surprised to see just how many games were there.” The producer is not afraid of how this squeeze may impact sales, though, noting Onimusha’s unique combat, setting, and characters will all hopefully make it stand out from the pack.

A little while back, a preview build alone was enough to convince me ‘OK, yeah, I’m going to Platinum this one’: there’s something particular about action-oriented samurai games that speaks to me. “Nioh may have won my heart with its bombastic, jackhammer-like approach to its brutal combat,” I wrote last year, “but there’s something in the precision and artistry of Onimusha’s mechanics that makes me sit here, days later, yearning for more.”

‘It was utterly heartbreaking, to be honest, and it certainly didn’t help with my drinking. I’ll leave it at that.” Cliff Bleszinski is recalling the launch of LawBreakers, the arena first-person shooter he put out in 2017. It had been his first project as the CEO of his own studio, Boss Key Productions. Before that, he was the creative figurehead behind hugely successful sci-fi shooter series, Gears of War, when he was known to millions of gamers as CliffyB.

“I retired from Epic and all of it, and I missed making neat stuff,” he says. “And my agent at the time was needling me: ‘Come on, you want to get back in, have your own studio? Look at what [Hideo] Kojima’s doing.’ And I was like: ‘OK, if Kojima can do it, so can I.’ Such hubris, right?”

LawBreakers melded low-gravity movement with cooldown abilities for its cast of heroes, and was well liked by critics. But it couldn’t compete with the defining hero shooter: Blizzard’s Overwatch. “Blizzard came along and just completely stomped pretty much everyone else, including us and Gearbox’s Battleborn,” says Bleszinski. “The amount of hero shooters that came and went is just ridiculous.”

Liked by the critics … LawBreakers. Photograph: Boss Key Productions

As it turned out, Bleszinski didn’t much like being the boss of a struggling game studio. “You’re the one looking at the spreadsheet on your screen, and you’re seeing how much the company has in the bank versus the salaries everyone’s getting, and you’re not making money,” he says. “And then, as the CEO, you have to hide that from the company, act like everything’s great. You meet these employees’ significant others and their kids. They come to your house for crawfish boils, and you go out and get drunk with them.”

In the aftermath of LawBreakers, the studio scrambled desperately to survive. Fortnite, the battle royal from Bleszinski’s former employers at Epic, was then in the ascendance. And Boss Key launched its own 80s themed take on the genre, Radical Heights, in a state of “X-Treme Early Access”, which some critics judged to be half baked.

“Those who played it seemed to dig it,” Bleszinski says. “And then the hackers dug in.” Radical Heights was so barebones that it didn’t have cheat protection – a fact that hackers took advantage of to ruin the experience, with exploits such as aim assist and noclipping through walls.

Barebones … Radical Heights game. Photograph: Boss Key Productions

When Fortnite servers were down for emergency maintenance, superstar streamer Ninja had switched over to Radical Heights, bringing tens of thousands of viewers with him. But the boost didn’t last. “Fortnite Battle Royale was just like: ‘Nope, we can’t be having any competitors, Ninja can’t be playing this’, says Bleszinski. “Then they grabbed all the streamers, and we were left holding the bag.”

Boss Key Productions shut down in the summer of 2018. “It ultimately broke me, and it made it even worse that the internet thought the entire thing was hilarious,” Bleszinski says. “I was just like: ‘You know what, I’m taking my ball and I’m going home.’”

. Then he struck up a social media friendship with Alex Boniello, the actor who played Connor Murphy in the Tony award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen. “I’m a big Broadway fan,” says Bleszinski. “I was a drama nerd in high school.” Lifting his right arm, he reveals a tattoo that reads “comedy and tragedy’, in tribute to the dramatic genres first invented by the ancient Greeks.

Boniello told Bleszinski about a Broadway musical that he thought the Gears of War designer might be a good fit to produce. “I was like, you know what, stranger things have happened,” Bleszinski says. He read the story of Hadestown, an ambitious blend of two myths: Orpheus’s descent into the underworld to rescue Eurydice, and Hades’ entrapment of Persephone. He listened to an early recording, which was jazzy and folksy and altogether brilliant. “I was like: ‘They might really have something here.’”

Bleszinski signed up as a co-producer – a hands-off role in which he was funder and cheerleader, using the money and audience he had built up in game development to ensure Hadestown made as big a splash as possible once it hit Broadway.

As with an online game, initial reception can determine whether a musical runs for months, years or decades – and crucial last-minute tweaks can make all the difference. “It’s a miracle that a video game even ships,” Bleszinski says. “And when you look at Broadway, they do previews – it’s essentially an alpha or a beta where they modify or rearrange parts of the musical.”

Games and musicals have a lot in common, Bleszinski believes, as two forms that bring a number of arts and disciplines into harmony. “It all has to come together in this perfectly synced thing,” he says. “And you look at video games being the perfect balance of art and science.”

Tweak time … Eva Noblezada (Eurydice, centre) and Reeve Carney (Orpheus, right) in the Broadway press preview of Hadestown at the Walter Kerr Theatre, New York, March 2019. Photograph: Walter McBride/Getty Images

If Hadestown had failed, the parallels with the fate of LawBreakers and Radical Heights would have only compounded the loss. Yet the musical not only survived its initial Broadway run, but was acclaimed for it. In a Broadway landscape dominated by movie adaptations, Hadestown stood out as strikingly original.

In April 2019, Bleszinski was woken by a call from his former Epic boss, Mark Rein: “Oh my God, 14 Tonys! You’ve been nominated for 14 Tonys!” Bleszinski and his wife attended the ceremony at Radio City Music Hall in New York, where Hadestown was the most awarded musical of the season.

In the final moments of Hadestown, Orpheus turns to glimpse Eurydice as they rise from the underworld, and she is plunged back into darkness, in accordance with the deal the pair have made. “See, someone’s got to tell the tale,” sings Hermes. “Whether or not it turns out well. Maybe it will turn out this time. It’s a sad song; we’re gonna sing it anyway.” It’s a call to continue fighting in the face of failure, and it resonated with Bleszinski.

“It felt like redemption,” he says of the musical’s success. “I felt like Orpheus, and I didn’t turn around.”

Dbrand, a company known for making phone cases and vinyl wraps for electronic devices, will not be shipping the Companion Cube wrap it announced for the Steam Machine. Concept art for the project was initially shared on social media shortly after the Steam Machine unveiling in November last year, but pre-orders didn’t actually go live until 22nd June.

The design is based on the weighted Companion Cube from the Portal series, so you might have thought that Dbrand had licensed the intellectual property from Valve before starting on the project. It turns out, however, the company did not, as it revealed in a Reddit post. As a result, the Companion Cube will not be shipping, and anyone who pre-ordered it will be getting a full refund.

Image credit: Dbrand

“As you’ve probably noticed, the Steam Machine Companion Cube was eviscerated from our website, YouTube, and other social media platforms last week,” Dbrand said. “The blunt version is that we made the Companion Cube without a license from Valve.”

The Reddit post recalls the excitement around the initial concept, which Dbrand says “went moderately viral, with over 15,000 people signing up to be notified in the first day.”

“In the months that followed, we built the idea into something real without ever asking Valve if we could,” the company went on. “We’re going to regret that decision for a very long time.”

Image credit: Dbrand

It may not surprise you to learn that Valve wasn’t okay with that. Its legal team contacted Dbrand and requested the product and all promotional material be taken down immediately. Dbrand complied, but attempted to appeal; asking Valve if there was any way to keep the project alive. Dbrand even asked to acquire a license, but Valve once again refused.

“Given our backwards approach of building first and asking permission later, it was a fair answer,” the company admitted.

While not entirely the same thing as a full console wrap, Valve has promised to share design documentation for the Steam Machine’s magnetically-attached front plate, allowing anyone with a 3D printer to create their own.

This is far from Dbrand’s only public fumble; in fact, it’s such a regular occurrence that there is even a ‘controversies’ section on its Wikipedia page. The one Dbrand is most likely to be remembered for is the PS5 faceplate incident, where, in 2021, the company publicly challenged Sony to sue it for creating custom replacement PS5 plates. Dbrand’s design featured what it called “a familiar-but-legally-distinct apocalyptic spin on the classic PlayStation button shapes,” which Sony didn’t take kindly to, threatening to sue Dbrand and forcing it, once again, to pull the product from sale.

Virtua Fighter Crossroads – the new mainline instalment in the Virtua Fighter series – got a new character trailer last night, with the mysterious Bakunawa Killer taking the stage as the next roster reveal for the upcoming fighter.

Shown off at Evo 2026, the world’s biggest fighting game tournament, the trailer is a short blend of story moments and a brief move list demonstration.

You can watch this new Virtua Fighter Crossroads trailer here!Watch on YouTube

However, who this Bakunawa Killer actually is remains a mystery! Another character in the game, Pai Chan, is seen to have knocked their mask off and expressed disbelief at the identity of this fighter. Us viewers, sadly, don’t get to see who it is.

That hasn’t stopped Virtua Fighter fans from speculating. The first prominent guess is – against all odds – this was Lau Chan. Another legacy character, Lau Chan knows a similar looking style of martial arts and as Pai Chan’s dad, would cause such a reaction in them. Some fans even pointed to a previous clash in the series between father and daughter as being closely referenced with this new trailer.

There are problems with this being true, though. For one, Lau Chan would be very old, and judging by their dexterity and hair colour they don’t appear to be an aged fighter. On top of that, Lau Chan was battling a seemingly incurable, life-threatening illness in previous games. Unless J6 (the in-universe baddie group) bailed him out or juiced him full of plasma.

An alternative is Lei-Fei. A Shaolin Monk, Lei-Fei was trying to learn the secrets of Lau Chan’s fighting in Virtua Fighter 5. Hoping to become his student, Lei-Fei eventually got bored waiting around and tried to kill Lau Chan. He failed to do so, and Lau vanished, leaving Lei-Fei frustrated. Given the leap forward in time with Virtua Fighter Crossroads, maybe they patched things up.

Other than those two main guesses, we’re talking about a video game so it could be anything – a long-lost sibling to Pai Chan; Lau Chan sent back in time, who knows? This new fighter does look mighty cool though, especially on the rain-slicked rooftop stage they’re coming with.

I suppose we’ll all be able to find out when Crossroads releases, which sadly isn’t until next year at some point.

We’re less than two months away from Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls’ release on PS5 and PC, and Marvel Games, PlayStation, and developer Arc System Works are ramping up the trailers and new announcements. At Evo 2026, the game’s final team has been revealed.

The Samurai Outriders lineup includes Robbie Reyes’ Ghost Rider (already revealed), Blade, Deadpool, and Loki – an unlikely alliance that’s arguably the game’s most stylish canon team. The trailer, which you can watch below, shows them all in action, and Deadpool is also being extremely silly and meta as usual.

MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls | Samurai Outriders TrailerWatch on YouTube

With this announcement, the full launch roster – that’s 20 characters – has now been confirmed: Storm, Magik, Wolverine, Danger, Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Star-Lord, Peni Parker, Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther, Hulk, Doctor Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, Carnage, Ghost Rider, Blade, Deadpool, and Loki. We’ve got no clue about who might arrive post-launch, but that’s a really attractive day-one lineup, if you ask me.

The trailer also confirmed an open beta for PS5 and PC following fan demands, and Blade will be part of the limited roster alongside new stages and extra modes. The developers’ post on X promised more details soon, but for now, mark 24th to 26th July on your calendar if you’re down to start perfecting combos ahead of the game’s launch. Also, if you’re wondering about the size of that launch roster versus other modern fighting games, Street Fighter 6 enjoyed 18 characters, and Tekken 8 got a massive 32.

Though Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls’ focus is on competitive multiplayer, the 4v4 tag team fighter will also feature a single-player Episode Mode which includes deep dives into “team dynamics and lore”. It remains to be seen if other offline/solo modes beyond versus will be included for those afraid of brutal online matches, but Eurogamer’s preview last year stated Marvel’s new fighter was “exceptionally accessible”.

UPDATE 5PM BST: I contacted Fernando Rizo to see if I could find out more about what he shared on his podcast. In response, Rizo said: “I definitely don’t want to oversell what I know – not privy to any internal Microsoft conversations. But I had spoken to a number of devs that had Game Pass deals in various stages of negotiation who were told the deals were on hold. I don’t personally think this is the death of Game Pass or anything, probably just a new CEO wanting to get her feet under her desk and everyone aligned on strategy before the Game Pass team starts cutting cheques again.”

ORIGINAL STORY 4PM BST Microsoft might have hit pause on signing any more third-party Game Pass deals. Presumably it’s doing this while restructuring Xbox, as it’s reported to be doing, but will it open the cheque book again after?

The news comes from former Raw Fury sales and business development officer Fernando Rizo – now a parter at game commercial advisory company Caboodle – talking on a podcast he co-hosts called The Business of Video Games (episode 59). Rizo was at a trade show in Italy recently and heard that “word on the street was that loads of people who were in the frame for Game Pass deals – ie. nothing was inked yet but the deals were in advanced discussions – everybody got the rug pulled out from under them.

“I don’t think Game Pass is over given that the new incoming leadership have talked a lot about Game Pass,” Rizo added. “I think they’re on pause; I think they’re figuring it out – that’s my read anyway. For the time being, it seems like Game Pass deals: we just did one at Caboodle earlier in the year and I get the feeling that [we] might have been one of the last ones that did.”

Xbox is currently being “reset” by new boss Asha Sharma, who took over in February from Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond. One of her first big moves was to significantly discount Game Pass, most notably dropping the Ultimate tier from £23 a month to £17 – the tradeoff being that Call of Duty would no longer be included from day one.

But Game Pass seems to remain a key part of the business. The Xbox Summer Showcase in June consistently reiterated the Game Pass availability of games being shown, and as Xbox pivots back to exclusivity being important, some strong Game Pass signings could present an alluring attraction.

However, Xbox is also feeling the pressure to return to profitability after spending exorbitant amounts acquiring gaming studios – the biggest among them, Activision Blizzard, for an eye-melting $68.7bn. Perhaps it’s too expensive to keep paying out for third-party Game Pass games; maybe it’s more cost effective to shrink the net and focus on access to homemade games instead.

Meanwhile, most recently, Xbox substantially increased the price of its Xbox Series S/X consoles. The new prices will come into effect from 1st August.

Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron – the three largest manufacturers of RAM and fast storage in the world, are being targeted in a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit broadly alleges that all three are involved in price-fixing and intentionally limiting supply to maintain exorbitantly high prices.

More specifically, it alleges the companies have intentionally limited the supply of DDR3 and DDR4 RAM, while shifting the focus to HBM RAM. The former are more traditionally found in consumer electronics, including PCs and consoles, while the latter is mainly designed for AI datacentres.

The lawsuit, which was filed on 25th June in a federal court in California, was spotted by Law360 (via VGC). It argues that consumers have borne the brunt of that alleged squeeze, forcing them to pay “supracompetitive prices” for devices that incorporate DRAM, further boosting the companies’ profits.

Image credit: Crucial

The crux of the lawsuit’s argument is that, in a competitive market, higher prices attract companies willing to meet the demand, thereby offering more supply. In this case, that didn’t happen. Making matters worse is that almost the entirety of the supply is controlled by the three companies, and they’re not likely to be challenged by a newcomer because of the sheer financial cost and time required to build these advanced fabrication facilities.

This is not the first time SK Hynix and Samsung have faced these kinds of charges. In 2005, both SK Hynix and Samsung pleaded guilty to price-fixing DRAM prices. The US Department of Justice fined the former $185 million, and the latter $300 million. Samsung’s fine was the second-largest “criminal antitrust fine” in US history at the time. Micron, notably the only American company of the trio, managed to evade charges by reportedly helping prosecutors bring the case forward. There’s an excellent Gamers Nexus documentary that’s well worth watching if you’d like to learn more about it.

The class action lawsuit called attention to that ruling, as well as a more recent investigation by the Chinese government, which accused all three companies of similar dealings between 2016-2018, a period where RAM prices rose sharply – though nothing to the degree we see today.

Image credit: Corsair

The rising costs of RAM and fast storage (SSD) have affected almost every company that makes consumer electronics. Anyone from hobbyist creators of retro consoles, to giants as big as Apple have all had to raise prices in recent months as a result. Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo have similarly jacked up the prices of their consoles on several occasions, with more expected to arrive.

Despite obscene prices, stock remains low, which makes it difficult to even make the products for the people who can afford them. Valve learned this the hard way in the lead-up to the recent launch of the Steam Machine, which the company admitted is priced much higher than it originally anticipated, and won’t even be available in quantities large enough to meet demand.

Valve may have succeeded in preventing scalpers from ruining the launch of the Steam Machine, but the company can’t stop people from selling their devices. Or, in this case, their future devices.

Like some sort of digital version of the midnight launches of old, a number of players have already listed their spots in the queue to buy a Steam Machine on eBay for varying markups.

The listings Eurogamer viewed include nothing more than screenshots of email confirmations from Valve that the seller in question is in the queue to buy a Steam Machine. This partly explains why most of them are of the 512GB base model, since Valve said the best way to get one is to sign up for multiple models.

Image credit: Eurogamer

In order to limit scalping, Valve introduced a system whereby customers can sign up to indicate their interest in buying a Steam Machine. Valve would then email players who got through to let them know they’re in a queue to buy it. The actual purchase itself happens later, which is what makes these listings extra silly.

One such listing shows the item has already been sold. The listing had the 512GB model with a controller – officially priced £938 ($1,128) – for £1,030 ($1,363) instead, a £92 (or $235 when accounted for the difference) markup. Perhaps the reason it sold so quickly is because it’s among the most reasonable. Most other listings have far higher markups. This one has the 512GB model, without a controller, for a cool £1511 ($2,000) or “best offer”. One of the few listings offering the ultimate 2TB with controller bundle, is asking for £1,823 ($2,412), a staggering £615 ($984) markup.

Many of the sellers behind the listings have hundreds of eBay buyer reviews, and some over a thousand, most of them positive – though others are clearly first-time scalpers.

The Steam Machines in those listings will start shipping sometime in July, and some resellers indicate that on the page. Because of the fluid nature of Valve’s queue system, many will almost certainly get their units much later, at which point it would take even longer for them to ship them to their aspirational eBay buyers.

Image credit: eBay, Eurogamer

It’s a shame to see things get to the point of people essentially selling the promise of getting a device, rather than the device itself, for a quick buck. The safeguards Valve put in place with its queue and ordering system have clearly helped, however, as you’d otherwise have a much higher volume of eBay listings.

If you’re curious what all the fuss is about, you should hear it from someone who spent quite a bit of time using the Steam Machine the way it was intended. Chris Tapsell talks all about their experience in the Eurogamer review, which covers what the machine actually feels like to use. If you’re not swayed, maybe one of those Steam Machine knock-offs have what you’re looking for instead.

A trailer for the second series of Netflix’s animated Cyberpunk television series Edgerunners has been released at long last, giving us the first proper look at the new cast of characters and their adventures through Night City.

The teaser trailer shows plenty of violence, as expected, blended with some clear mental and emotional trauma impacting the four main characters it highlights. A cool touch is that many shots we see are captured through one of these characters’ video camera, and as such have a retro anime style to them.

You can watch the new teaser trailer here!Watch on YouTube

We don’t actually see (or hear) any of these four main characters speak to each other in this teaser trailer, so their relationship remains unclear. However, the high-intensity music and action-focus is one hell of a tone-setter.

What little can be seen with these characters sets them firmly apart from the tragic crew of the first season, but they nonetheless seem primed for a bad time. The young boy especially, with a camera and a clear desire to point it at gnarly stuff happening in the Cyberpunk setting may have the largest, brightest death-flag hovering over him I’ve ever seen in a fictional work since the Carmines in the Gears of War games. That, or he’ll be the most crooked of the crew.

The initial season of Cyberpunk Edgerunners proved to be an outstanding success winning multiple awards. It was an emotional rollercoaster, one that proved not only critically successful but commercially successful too. As such, this follow-up season has big shoes to fill when it releases on Netflix later this year.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is one of those indie games – much like Terraria – that’s refused to stop growing since its birth more than a decade ago. Fast-forward to 2026 and an astonishingly good Steam Summer Sale discount has elevated it to new heights.

At the time of writing, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is 90 percent off on Steam, which isn’t only a cracking deal, but also the cheapest the game – and its massive expansion DLCs – has ever been on Valve’s platform. For £3.70 you can grab the Complete Bundle and gain access to one of the finest modern roguelikes, I believe.

Repentance Plus Trailer!Watch on YouTube

Rebirth’s concurrent player count rocketed after the deal was deployed a few days ago, up to almost 131k players. Its previous highest peak was 70,701 players in April 2021. As recorded by SteamDB, the total player increase in the last 30 days is 394.9 percent – how’s that for an upward curve?

A quick glance at Steam’s Most Played chart confirms it’s currently the 10th biggest game on the platform, topping recent hits like Path of Exile 2 and Slay the Spire 2. It’s also surpassed another enduring title that reached new heights recently: Dead by Daylight.

This top-down dungeon crawler full of biblical references, hidden routes, and all sorts of chaotic item synergies remains a blast with enough content, unlocks, and raw replay value to stay fresh for hundreds of hours.

Following the gigantic Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ expansions, released in 2015 and 2017 respectively, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth grew again with 2021’s community-inspired, sequel-sized Repentance DLC. That was meant to be the last content drop for real, yet 2024 gave us the free Repentance+ DLC, which finally added online co-op to the disturbingly charming roguelike.

Original Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen’s most recent game, Mewgenics, also made quite a splash earlier this year, and fans are currently waiting for console ports. On that note, it’s worth pointing out The Binding of Isaac: Repentance+ will also get a (pricey) Nintendo Switch 2 physical release in Q3 2026.