According to a new report from Deadline, however, we do know who will play Ganondorf: Uli Latukefu, who has appeared in Young Rock (as a younger version of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), Black Adam, MaXXXine, and more.
Bo Bragason as Zelda (top) and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link
Deadlinealso reports, in a separate write-up, that the late Sam Neill (Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise) filmed a role in the movie prior to his death last month, and that Dichen Lachman (Severance, Altered Carbon, Jurassic World: Dominion) and Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid’s Tale, Dexter, and Miranda Lawson in Mass Effect) are set to film for the movie, too. Deadline reports that Strahovski’s role is a queen, with Lachman set to play Impa. None of this is officially confirmed by Nintendo or Sony, both of which are producing the movie, but Deadline gets its information from sources close to the project. The New York Times‘ Kyle Buchanan originally broke the news about Latukefu’s casting before Deadline further confirmed it.
Given this casting news, it’s still unclear what game the movie could be adapting, but we should learn more soon, considering the movie is due out in roughly seven months.
Nintendo has released its latest financial earnings report, covering the first quarter of the fiscal year, which encompasses April through June 2026. In it, the company has revealed that digital sales revenue is up 90% year-over-year, that the Switch 2 sold nearly 4 million units in those three months, and that, unsurprisingly, Mario Kart World continues to be the best-selling game on the console.
According to Nintendo, digital sales totaled 132.7 billion yen (or roughly $837 million), up 90% year-on-year, “mainly due to an increase in sales of downloadable versions of packaged software.” This figure arrives just weeks after Sony announced it will stop manufacturing discs for PlayStation games in 2028, sparking an uproar among players who want to purchase physical copies. With rumors swirling that Xbox may follow suit, Nintendo could be the last of the Big Three console makers to release its games in a physical format (though players argue whether Nintendo’s current go-to solution for physical releases, Game-Key Cards, is any different from a digital download key).
Elsewhere in the company’s earnings report, it states the “Nintendo Switch 2 hardware maintained strong sales momentum, with sales totaling 3.82 million units,” bringing the total up to 23.68 million. Software units total 58.17 million. Looking at Switch 2 software, the company says Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Star Fox, and Pokemon Pokopia “sold well” but stops short of giving exact numbers for this fiscal quarter. Nintendo did reveal that Switch 2 software sales totaled 9.46 million during this latest fiscal quarter, adding that Switch software in the form of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream reached 7.94 million units.
As a result of these earnings, Nintendo says it is not making changes to its original financial forecast for the fiscal year. “Nintendo Switch 2 is now in its second year since launch in June 2025 and sales continue to be strong,” the report reads. “We aim to maintain momentum for the hardware and see it delivered together with software into the hands of a wide range of consumers.” The company highlights recent releases and upcoming launches, including Splatoon Raiders (launched in July) and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (the remake) coming throughout the rest of the year.
To close out this look at Nintendo’s latest fiscal report, here are the sales numbers for various Switch 2 and Switch games released so far (in total):
Mario Kart World: 15.39 million units – Our Review
Donkey Kong Bananza: 4.78 million units – Our Review
Pokemon Legends: Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition: 3.99 million units – Our Review
Onimusha: Way of the Sword launches next month on September 4 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via the Epic Games Store and Steam. It will mark the first game in Capcom’s samurai action series in 20 years, and brings players to real-life locations in Kyoto, albeit through the lens of Japan’s early Edo period. A new trailer released by Capcom today features some of that Kyoto, as well as new gameplay footage highlighting a boss fight against the treacherous Rasho-gan.
If you’re looking for more Onimusha: Way of the Sword content, look no further than Game Informer’s exclusive hub for the game, where you’ll find behind-the-scenes features, interviews, videos, and more.
What do you think of this new gameplay trailer? Let us know in the comments below!
Ubisoft held a special livestream dedicated to Ghost Recon to mark the franchise’s 25th anniversary. The bulk of the presentation centered on a substantial free update coming to Ghost Recon: Wildlands today, but the publisher announced plenty of other goodies for fans, including confirmation of the next Ghost Recon title.
Ghost Recon Wildlands, released in 2017, is getting a free story update today called Last Rites. The narrative centers on a mysterious masked antagonist named La Llorona, who seeks revenge against Bolivia’s cartels, the CIA, and Unidad for wrongs committed against her. Players will battle La Llorona’s cultists, Los Penitentes, to reach her in missions that feature challenging terrain, low visibility, and limited support.
The update also introduces the much-requested 4K resolution and 60 fps gameplay on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. This also comes alongside graphical improvements and new customization options. For example, players can now customize time of day and weather for missions, and adjust specific difficulty parameters without changing the template difficulty. That means you can play the game on an easy setting, but adjust enemy damage output and durability to make combat specifically tougher.
Last Rites has new features previously exclusive to Ghost Mode and other PvE modes, such as authentic reloading, the choice of having 1 or 2 primary weapons, and optional friendly fire. You can now deactivate highlight glow for interactable objects and the preview sightline of throwable items. Sounds to hidden UI elements are also muted for immersion. Wildlands is also receiving tons of free items, including unreleased camos, items previously exclusive to Mercenaries mode, new 25th anniversary items, and more. Lastly, the popular Predator mission, in which players battle the legendary sci-fi hunter, is making a return.
Ubisoft has also announced extended free weekends for Ghost Recon Wildlands and 2019’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Both titles will be free to play in full beginning today and running until August 10. Breakpoint is also getting a 25th anniversary bundle filled with special rewards. Ubisoft is also giving away 2012’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for free; you can claim it by visiting Ubisoft Connect (you’ll need an account) and adding it to your library. You have until August 13 to do so. There’s also a 95 percent off franchise sale across PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and Ubisoft Connect.
Lastly, Ubisoft briefly confirmed that the next Ghost Recon game is in development. “For the past few years, we’ve been building the next chapter of Ghost Recon,” says Ghost Recon live producer Irina-Gabriela Popa. “I’m really excited to share with you that now we’re ready to put it to the test, because we want to deliver a fun, fresh experience that stays true to everything that defines Ghost Recon: tactical action, large-scale operations, credible military storytelling, and of course, the Ghost Unit.” To help shape the game, Ubisoft is launching an Insider Program that grants early access to the game’s closed test and allows users to provide feedback and receive development updates.
As part of that trip, we got to see a new section of Capcom’s samurai action game and meet one of its creepier villains: the mad scientist Dokyo.
Here’s how that underground lab level, and Dokyo herself, came to be:
We’ll be diving deeper into Capcom’s return to Onimusha as part of Game Informer’s month of Way of the Sword coverage. We’ll be publishing exclusive gameplay and behind-the-scenes videos (including a Rapid-Fire Interview) on the Game Informer YouTube channel as well. Keep an eye on the Onimusha: Way of the Sword coverage hub so you don’t miss any of it.
In the meantime, here’s some additional Onimusha: Way of the Sword reading for you:
Rockstar Games has announced today that it will be sharing an “Extended Look” at Grand Theft Auto VI on Netflix on August 27 in the afternoon. It will also be available on Rockstar’s YouTube channel later that day.
A press release for the announcement contains the image seen above and reads simply, “Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look will premiere on Netflix Thursday, August 27 at 3 p.m. ET and will also launch on the official Rockstar Games YouTube channel and the Grand Theft Auto VI site at 9 p.m. ET on August 27.”
How long this extended look will be and what exactly it will detail is unclear, but it sounds like it will be more than just a trailer and potentially share information about the game’s mechanics. Maybe we will even see proper gameplay with on-screen UI.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the latest game to grace the cover of Game Informer, and I traveled all the way to Osaka, Japan, to play the game for hours in Capcom’s HQ, interview the developers making it, and learn how the team was returning to this samurai action franchise that hasn’t had a new release in 20 years.
I spoke to director Satoru Nihei and animation team lead Hiroshi Yugen about the studio’s approach to reinventing and updating combat, and learned the biggest goal at Capcom was to take the action of the cutscenes in previous games and make that the gameplay of Way of the Sword. If my three hours of hands-on time with the game, including never-before-seen content I’ll be diving into in future features, is any indication, Capcom is on the right path.
Yugen says when Nihei asked him to join the project, one of the first things he did was look at past Onimusha games. He decided then that he wanted to take the larger-than-life moments from the cutscenes of those older titles and imbue Way of the Sword’s gameplay with those feelings. The next step after that was to look at all kinds of research materials to learn more about how samurai used swords in Edo-period Japan, the fundamentals of sword duels, and more. Then, he got into contact with sword fight choreographers to see swordplay in action, learn the reasoning behind different actions, swings, and poses, and more to “really get to the core” of it all.
Considering Toshirō Mifune is the face of protagonist Miyamoto Musashi, I wasn’t surprised to learn Yugen looked to Mifune movies to see how he moved both as a samurai (in Akira Kurosawa films, for example) and as Musashi in the 1950s Samurai Trilogy of films. “There was definitely some inspiration taken from [Mifune’s] movies, but not just his movies,” Yugen says. “We watched a lot of different movies in the samurai genre to really get a feel for what goes into those, what makes the samurai; and we didn’t just focus on the action in those movies but also the more human side of things. You know, like the defeated samurai escaping from battle – those elements as well are something we looked at really closely when reviewing a lot of these movies.”
Nihei tells me selecting Yugen to lead up the game’s animation and combat design was an obvious choice, calling him a “legend within Capcom.”
“I was very familiar with his name and really wanted a chance to work with him on this project, so that’s why I approached him,” Nihei says. “Getting to work with him and watching these movies and seeing how he picked apart the cool elements from them and figuring out what they wanted to achieve with this game, I feel it was a good choice. We have this legendary veteran on the project so we are definitely confident that we’ve created a really solid swordplay experience.”
Yugen has been at Capcom for 30 years, but this is his first time working on the Onimusha series, and he said yes immediately to Nihei when asked to join the project.
Yugen says Way of the Sword improves upon previous Onimusha games by making adjusting the Issen, which is a move pulled off by attacking an enemy at the exact same time that they attack you. It results in an insta-kill on smaller mob enemies and heavy damage on larger enemies, and remains the hardest move to pull off in combat in Way of the Sword, just as it was the hardest to pull off in previous games.
“Obviously, in the previous titles, Issen does feel great to use and pull off, but it happened so fast […] it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on in that moment and so one of the things that Nihei-san approached me about with this title was trying to make the Issen a little more realistic and a little more grounded – like what would that look like, what would it feel like?” Yugen tells me. He adds that there are around 10 different variations that Musashi can pull off depending on attacks coming from different angles and more.
One thing Yugen says Nihei threw at him that was challenging to implement was Musashi’s ability to black from dozens of angles. Not wanting Musashi to block unrealistically or look like he’s simply pivoting in place, Nihei tasked Yugen with creating an animation system that allowed Musashi to block from, for example, high-behind, mid-behind, low-behind, high-left side, mid-high side, and so on. “It was a difficult and time-consuming process, but now that it’s in the game and seeing it in the game and how it works and how it’s been received, I’m glad we put it in there,” Yugen says.
Speaking to the 20-year gap between Way of the Sword and the previous mainline Onimusha release, Yugen says it was important that the team pay attention to how the action space has evolved in those two decades, but only just so – Way of the Sword still needed to play like an Onimusha game. That’s why mechanics like the Issen and Chain Issen return alongside new moves like the Blade Barrage.
One of the more obvious additions to the game’s combat is the two control types: Aggressive and Defensive. The former puts Musashi’s main attacks on the face buttons, with blocks and the like assigned to Square – it’s the default control scheme and is designed for players familiar with action games that feel confident in their offense. The latter puts the block button on L1, amongst other changes, to make moves like parry easier for those less familiar with action games – it’s for players who want to play more defensively, as the name implies. Yugen says the team went back and forth on which one to include, but that ultimately, it decided on including both approaches.
You can actually test out both the Aggressive and Defensive control types in the Way of the Sword demo that’s available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Though the game will also launch on Nintendo Switch 2, a demo for that platform is not available.
I’ll be diving deeper into Capcom’s return to Onimusha as part of Game Informer’s month of Way of the Sword coverage. We’ll be publishing exclusive gameplay and behind-the-scenes videos (including a Rapid-Fire Interview) on the Game Informer YouTube channel as well. Keep an eye on the Onimusha: Way of the Sword coverage hub so you don’t miss any of it.
In the meantime, here’s some additional Onimusha: Way of the Sword reading for you:
Beast of Reincarnation, the action-RPG from Pokémon developer Game Freak, hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC yesterday, on August 4, and players are running into various issues from performance to story pacing to subtitle text size being too small (and unadjustable), and more. Game Freak posted on its X account that it is planning a “series of continuous updates” for Beast of Reincarnation based on player feedback, and the first patch is coming soon.
“Thank you for playing Beast of Reincarnation,” the Game Freak post reads. “We take your feedback to heart and are currently planning a series of continuous updates.” Here are the updates expected to arrive in the next patch, which Game Freak says will hit within a week:
Camera adjustments
Increased text size
Story pacing improvements (ongoing adjustments planned)
Changing the default setting from Cinematic to Performance mode
Other bug fixes
Game Freak says the contents of this patch are subject to change, and asks players to continue sharing feedback at the form here.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault has been coming together in PC Early Access since November of last year, and the dungeon-crawling action RPG/shopkeeper simulator is ready for its full launch. Developer Digital Sun has announced the game’s 1.0 launch date: September 2.
The sequel trades the top-down pixel art style of its 2018 predecessor for a fully 3D isometric aesthetic. What remains the same is the core gameplay loop: as adventurer Will, you’ll explore dungeons at night to slay monsters and find treasures, then sell your loot in your shop during the day.
The 1.0 launch will introduce new weapons, armor, and a new combat ability called Bomb Path that causes enemies to explode after taking enough hits. Additionally, the shop will reach its final level, unlocking additional Bloblet slots, new cosmetic options, and more space. Moonlighter 2’s story will also receive its conclusion.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S (launching day one on Game Pass), Switch 2, and PC. Digital Sun has also made the first Moonlighter free to own on Steam starting today and until August 9.
Last September, Electronic Arts announced plans to be acquired by a trio of investor groups, taking the once-publicly traded company private. That acquisition is now complete in a move EA claims will position it to “accelerate creativity and innovation to shape the future of entertainment.”
In a press release, EA shares that its acquisition by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, collectively known as the “Consortium,” has successfully closed. PIF is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (which already had a minor stake in EA for years); Silver Lake is a multi-billion-dollar technology investment firm; Affinity Partners is a Miami-based investment firm founded and run by CEO and former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump. The Consortium acquired EA for $55 billion, which is the largest all-cash sponsor take-private investment in history.
“This moment recognizes the extraordinary people whose creativity, ambition and passion have made EA one of the world’s leading interactive entertainment companies,” said Andrew Wilson, Chairman & CEO of Electronic Arts, in the press release. “We’re entering this next chapter from a position of strength with partners who share our vision and ambition. Together, we’ll invest boldly, accelerate innovation, and build the next generation of games and experiences for the hundreds of millions of players and fans who inspire us every day.”
Madden NFL 27
As previously reported, the completion of this transaction means EA stockholders, who approved the acquisition last December, receive $210 cash for each share of EA common stock they owned as of the closing. EA’s stock has been delisted from NASDAQ.
The future of Electronic Arts is unclear. While its annual sports franchises, such as Madden and FC, will undoubtedly continue as planned, the futures of other studios and projects remain in question. For example, it’s unknown how this acquisition affects BioWare and its upcoming fifth Mass Effect game or Motive Studio’s long-awaited Iron Man. A third Star Wars Jedi title is also reportedly in the works at Respawn Entertainment. In 2026, EA’s slate of upcoming releases includes Madden NFL 27, FC 27, NHL 27, and Star Wars Zero Company.
For more recent EA news, back in June, the company launched an advertising platform promising “non-disruptive” brand integration in its games
