Gaming

As the World Cup nears its end, Apple Arcade is getting the surprise addition of Madden NFL 27 Arcade Edition, which hits the service on August 6th. It’s part of a big sports-themed update for Arcade which will also include NFL Retro Bowl ’27 and Retro Bowl College+.

The RPG franchise will have a Saturday session and is mentioned in the first paragraph of a blog post about the event’s schedule. Perhaps we’ll finally get a Kingdom Hearts 4 release date?

If you catch just one run from Summer Games Done Quick, watch this all-timer Balatro run.

The id founder isn’t thrilled with the layoffs at the company he left in 2013. He says, “You can’t rule out the possibility that executives are idiots,” but says we shouldn’t jump to that conclusion before dropping what certainly seems like a list of things Microsoft could have done better.

Great run out of Summer Games Done Quick.

The fast-paced racing game is currently on sale for $50 (usually $70) at Amazon, although you’ll have to add it to your cart to see the price. Air Riders features extensive customization and sharing features, and surprising depth considering its light-hearted vibes. This deal’s worth taking advantage of if you’ve been put off by the game’s original price.

The studio, which was hit hard by this week’s Xbox layoffs, says that it still has “the crew we need to build the games and tech we’re known for.”

Game Developer reports the OneBGS union is holding the rally in support of laid off developers on July 15th at ZeniMax offices in Rockville, Austin, Dallas, and Montreal, as the union announced in an email to members:

First, there was a Stardew Valley cookbook that was just as much about the game’s characters as the ingredients you can pick up during the life sim adventure. In early 2027, there will be an official amigurumi crochet book launching, with 25 patterns to let you build the game’s little critters to put around your house. Sounds chill.

The Xbox CEO, who announced mass layoffs at Xbox this week, will assess “the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve’s policy judgments.”

As noted by Push Square, the games also have separate season passes that cost $29.99, meaning the total for both titles with all of their content is just under $140. Oof. However, if you subscribe to PlayStation Plus, you can buy the games and their passes at a significant discount ($19.99 per game, $9.89 per season pass) until August 6th.

After first teasing them last November, months before the Steam Machine was released, Jsaux has shared updated designs for its screen-equipped front plates for the console. Pricing and availability haven’t been announced, but the accessory will come in three versions with E Ink, color E Ink, or dot matrix displays.

That includes “key, high-performing people in the trenches” working on The Elder Scrolls 6, IGN reports. One Bethesda staffer told the publication that the layoffs have had “a crushing effect on morale,” and one said that the QA department was “decimated.”

Bloomberg reported on Chris Barrett’s firing in August 2024, and Barrett sued Sony and Bungie that December. On Wednesday, Barrett said he is “very satisfied” with the settlement, and a joint statement noted that Barrett has been added to Marathon’s credits as the original game director, as reported by Kotaku.

$799.99 is how much Alienware’s AW3426DW costs at Dell’s site. It’s the successor to its original 34-inch curved 1440p QD-OLED gaming monitor from 2022 that debuted at $1,299.99. The new model has a Penta Tandem QD-OLED panel to make text look sharper and less aliased, plus other improvements (but the same 110 pixels per inch).

After announcing plans to end sales of the Switch in Europe starting next year, Nintendo tells IGN that “We plan to continue selling Nintendo Switch outside of regions where Nintendo of Europe conducts business.”

The trend isn’t new, but the only thing cooler than catching Nemophila’s performance last week at The Meadows in Brooklyn was seeing and capturing a shot of this person recording on their Nintendo 3DS.

96 of the layoffs were at the id Software office in Richardson, 40 of the layoffs were for remote workers that reported to that office, and 22 of the layoffs happened at the Bethesda Game Studios office in Austin, according to a WARN notice obtained by Game Developer.

Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, an FFVII spinoff game on mobile and Steam, will reach end of service status on October 6th, Square Enix says. The company also shut down the short-lived FFVII mobile battle royale game back in 2023. At least there’s the final remake trilogy game to look forward to next year.

According to Retro Dodo, the G02 is “officially dead” and has been removed from “every marketplace it was originally sold on.” The $60 handheld was spotted earlier this year, shipping preloaded with thousands of copyrighted retro games from Nintendo, SEGA, and others.

That’s the sound of Wario Land being added to Nintendo’s lineup of classic games available to Switch Online subscribers. It’s out now alongside shooter Fortified Zone, dungeon crawler The Sword of Hope II, and Dr. Mario & Puzzle League (if you pay for the more expensive tier).

The company is continuing to retreat from the mobile game space (with a few strange exceptions), this time by ending support for Mario Kart Tour in September. However, unlike Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, the game won’t be getting a microtransaction-free offline mode after support ends.

The Doom developer is reportedly the latest Xbox studio to be hit by Microsoft’s ongoing layoffs, prompting a new variant on an age-old question.

Today, from Summer Games Done Quick 2026, I’m recommending that you watch this race of Hey You, Pikachu! on the N64 — which, if you didn’t know, is a game where you talk to Pikachu with a microphone. It’s very silly.

I missed this yesterday, reported by Kotaku. The studio will apparently keep working on Grounded 2 and DLC for The Outer Worlds 2, but “plans beyond that are up in the air,” Kotaku says.

The Wall Street Journal reported the number on Monday. Bloomberg corroborated it on Tuesday, adding that the subscribers figure is “4 million fewer than it did when the company last publicly shared data in 2024.” At one point, Microsoft had hoped that the service would have 100 million subscribers by 2030 — it seems unlikely it’ll meet that bar.