3 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
Skip to main content

Games Archive

Archives for September 2026

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
8BitDo gives two of its controllers a Tomb Raider makeover.

To celebrate 30 years of Lara Croft’s adventures, reskinned versions of the $119.99 8BitDo Ultimate 3 for Xbox and $79.99 Pro 3 Bluetooth Gamepad are now available for preorder with an official release starting on October 24th.

1/3Image: 8BitDo
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Rockstar’s GTA VI collectible box packs a “swizzle stick,” mirror, hat, and more for $399.99, but no game.

Not only is the price higher than the $90 GTA IV and $150 GTA V collectible sets, but this time around Rockstar says “Grand Theft Auto VI game sold separately,” for $79.99 or $99.99, respectively.

What you do get in that $400 box is a 6-inch figurine of Macca the Gator with a stash compartment, a matching spoon and magnetic mirror that are definitely not made to snort stuff stored in said stash compartment, plus GTA-branded Oakley sunglasses, hat, a crossbody bag, a shot glass, stickers, pins, and a souvenir poster.

Small figurine of a pink alligator in a hawaiian shirt holding a drink and smoking a joint
a box with GTA VI logos
GTA VI swizzle stick aka coke spoon
GTA VI magnetic mirror with a “macca” alligator on the front
promo image of a printed GTA VI Vice City map
GTA VI Oakley sunglasses on a pink background
GTA VI promo stickers
two GTA VI pins with logos from the game on them
a keychain with with vice city printed on the side
a shot glass with a vice city logo on it
a snapback hat with vice city and macca the gator
GTA VI branded crossbody bag
1/12Image: Rockstar Games
The Xbox reset gets uglyThe Xbox reset gets ugly
Tom Warren
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Remedy is patching Control Resonant to make enemies less “tanky.”

The hotfix will reduce the base health and amount of damage needed to stun “most” enemies. I just published an article about how I made liberal use of Resonant’s assist mode to make the combat less of a drag, but it sounds like these changes will make things a bit smoother.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Meta’s VR Glasses are getting updated versions of some hit games.

Next year, you’ll be able to play versions of Beat Saber, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — Dual Destinies, and Tetris Effect in VR on the glasses just with your hands — no controller needed. When the glasses launch in the spring, Meta says more than 75 hands-enabled games will be available.

A screenshot from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Dual Destinies VR.
Image: Capcom
Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
iFixit’s Steam Frame teardown finds Valve’s headset is surprisingly repairable.

Although accessing the cooling fan requires quite a bit of disassembly and swapping out the battery involves a brief battle with glue, iFixit says Valve has applied the same “repair-friendly thinking” to the Steam Frame’s design as it did with the Steam Deck helping to potentially prolong the headset’s lifespan.

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
CRKD’s tiny wireless gamepad with drift-resistant thumbsticks is now available.

First announced last March with shipping in late June, the tiny Atom Plus is finally available from retailers like Amazon for $29.99. It’s slightly wider than the 8BitDo Micro but CRKD’s palmable gamepad adds a symmetrical pair of tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) thumbsticks and two pairs of full-size shoulder buttons.

If you buy something from a link, The Verge may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

1/3Image: CRKD
Nobody does it like Remedy

With Control Resonant, the studio expands its range without sacrificing its style.

Andrew Webster
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
State of Decay developer Undead Labs announces layoffs as it goes independent.

While Undead Labs is avoiding closing as Xbox’s assortment of developers continues to shrink, the studio announced on LinkedIn that “Unfortunately, today we are also saying goodbye to a significant number of our colleagues. It’s difficult to reach this moment knowing that not everyone who helped get us here gets to make the rest of the journey with us.”

Its blog post earlier said that State of Decay 3 development “remains actively underway,” targeting a 2027 release on Xbox, Game Pass, PC, and PlayStation.

Xbox is barely Xbox anymore

Andrew Webster
Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Valve is beta testing a new high bandwidth, low latency video codec that uses your GPU.

It may not benefit every setup, the company warns, but Pyrowave is a new Steam Remote Play high bandwidth, low latency video codec now available in Steam beta on macOS, Windows, and Linux. It uses “5-10 times the amount of bandwidth of other streaming codecs,” but leverages your PC’s GPU to “encode and decode frames to achieve extremely low end to end latency with a good network.”