Latest gaming announcements, leaks, and stories
Yuji Horii confirmed via the KosoKoso podcast that a Dragon Quest 40th anniversary livestream airs May 27 with news on the next game — almost certainly Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate. The original podcast clip was pulled within hours.
EA's Season 3 update goes live on Tuesday, May 12 with Railway to Golmud — a Battlefield 4 remake that's four times the size of the largest existing BF6 map — plus a packed three-stage roadmap, a rebuilt vehicle damage model, REDSEC Solos, and the long-promised Ranked Battle Royale Quads.
Co-creator of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. Director of A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, and Yoshi's Island. Producer of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Pikmin 4. After more than four decades and over 150 credits, the 65-year-old Takashi Tezuka is retiring from Nintendo on June 26, 2026.
Sony's FY2025 results add another $565 million Bungie writedown on top of October's $200 million one, totaling $765 million in impairments — more than 20% of the original $3.6B acquisition price. Sony cited Marathon's failed March launch (currently 6,000-15,000 concurrent on Steam) and Destiny 2's continued engagement decline.
Playground Games' launch trailer landed overnight, exactly one week before May 15 Premium Edition early access and 11 days before the May 19 wide launch. The 90-second cut sneaks in two easter eggs the Forza community has already pulled apart frame-by-frame: a Ken Block Gymkhana NINE drift recreation at 0:48, and an Initial D Mount Akina face-off between a white-and-black AE86 and an FD3S RX-7 at 0:58.
Sony shipped 1.5 million PS5s in Q4 FY25 against 2.8 million a year earlier, blaming a global memory crunch driven by AI data-center demand. PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino spent the rest of the call pivoting to AI tooling — naming Mockingbird (facial animation, used by Naughty Dog and San Diego Studio) and an unnamed hair pipeline that converts video of real hairstyles into strand-level 3D groomed models.
Rare's Season 19 Act 3 update launches Thursday May 14 with Last Ship Standing — a sloop-only, six-crew battle-royale mode set inside the Sea of the Damned, running through June 18. The mode hands a meaningful Allegiance bonus to the surviving crew and is explicitly slated to return as a recurring live event beyond Season 19. Day-one on Game Pass, Steam, PS5, and Xbox.
Sony and Guerrilla just unveiled Closed Test #2 for Horizon Hunters Gathering, running May 22-25 on PS5 and PC (Steam) with sign-ups via the PlayStation Beta Program. The test adds two new playable Hunters (Ensa, an Oseram smuggler; Shadow, a Carja covert operative with a tame Stalker machine), a new region called Breakers' Bounty, an Ashwater Valley narrative episode, two new difficulty tiers (Hard and Merciless), and NPC-assisted solo play — quietly killing the cancellation rumors that have been circling the project for months.
Microsoft launched a recurring dev-focused show on May 7. Episode one made PlayFab Foundation Mode free for every Xbox game across seven service pillars, shipped DirectStorage 1.4 with Zstandard compression, opened the April GDK, debuted Xbox PC Remote Tools, and kicked off a multi-surface Marketplace rebuild. Project Helix got a closer look — Xbox Magnus AMD SoC, FSR Diamond AI upscaling, dev kits in 2027, late-2027 launch.
Nintendo announced sweeping price hikes on May 8, 2026: Switch 2 jumps from $449.99 to $499.99 in the US (+$50), with Canada and Europe seeing similar increases — all effective September 1. Japan gets hit harder and earlier on May 25, with the Switch 2 jumping ¥10,000 and original Switch hardware climbing 26 to 36 percent. Nintendo Switch Online subscriptions also rise in Japan effective July 1. Nintendo cited market conditions and the global business outlook without naming tariffs, semiconductors, or the yen.
Capcom shadow-dropped a free Resident Evil Requiem update on May 8 adding Leon Must Die Forever — a roguelike Extra Games mode starring Leon S. Kennedy. Five difficulty ranks, randomized routes through Wrenwood, the Rehab Ward, and Raccoon City Central Camp, an Ability Enhancer system with bronze/silver/gold perks, star-ranked weapon drops from Red and Blue enemies, and a Special Content shop for permanent unlocks. PS5, Xbox Series, PC, and Switch 2.
Cold Iron Studios and Daybreak just announced Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 with an IGN-exclusive reveal trailer on May 7, confirming Summer 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series, and PC with full crossplay. The sequel jumps from three-player to four-player co-op, adds a customizable Specialist class that mixes major and minor abilities from every other class, and ships with dedicated Horde maps at launch.