One of the most exciting announcements of Summer Game Fest’s 2026 live show arrived near the end of the stage presentation when Capcom announced its fourth year of downloadable fighters for Street Fighter 6. After showing off Yasmine, Arjun, and Bosch, we learned that the fourth character is Tifa, the extremely popular Final Fantasy VII party member. While Tifa isn’t the first crossover character to appear in the Street Fighter franchise, she could very well be the most popular.
“Tifa is a character that is beloved by all sorts of different games like RPG fans and general gamers,” Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama says. “While she does come from an RPG background that’s completely different from a game like Street Fighter, she does utilize martial arts in her moves and skillset, so we always felt that she would be a good fit into a game like Street Fighter 6.”
The developers had a mutual friend who works at Square Enix, and they had been talking about how great it would be to get Tifa in Street Fighter 6 and collaborate in some way. Then, at Tokyo Game Show 2025, Nakayama had the chance to present on stage with Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi, and he broached the topic.
Those conversations led to the moment on-stage at Summer Game Fest 2026’s live show, when those two reunited on stage to unveil Tifa as a Year 4 character in Street Fighter 6. “We were able to build our relationship from [that TGS presentation] and we kind of naturally thought that Tifa would be a great fit for the game,” Nakayama says.
Tifa, as she appears in Final Fantasy VII Remake
But it wasn’t just Hamaguchi giving the green light to Nakayama; Square Enix remained collaborative throughout the process of bringing Tifa to life in Street Fighter 6. “From their perspective, they had a lot of different ideas of what Tifa would feel like and look like in Street Fighter 6 or a fighting game, since she hasn’t been in one before,” Nakayama says. “The feedback we received from the team has been very positive. They’re very fast-paced in terms of responses, so that shows a lot of enthusiasm from them, not just Hamaguchi-san, but even [artist, writer, and director Tetsuya] Nomura-san has been involved in the review process, too. […] He’s been very helpful, even with the announcement trailer that we had. He reviewed that and was very involved to the very last minute of the production of that.”
When the news hit, reaction videos spread rapidly across social media. “There’s been a lot of great reactions, both on the US and the Japan side, as well,” Nakayama says. “We actually just had a Capcom Pro Tour event in the Dominican Republic called Blink Respawn, and we saw a lot of videos of people watching the announcement at the event and getting super hyped and acting like kids over there. And these are players who are trying to focus on their event! But yeah, they showed a lot of excitement for that.”
Tifa is all set to join Street Fighter 6 as the third scheduled character in the game’s Year 4 lineup. Yasmine is slated to kick off the season on August 3, followed by Arjun in the fall, Tifa in early 2027, and Bosch in spring 2027.
The Fable franchise has always been about making choices and living with the consequences. These consequences ranged from reputational damage to actual physical changes. While the physical changes are a thing of the past with Playground Games’ 2027 interpretation of the long-dormant franchise, player choice and consequence seem just as integral with this new entry.
In the behind-closed-doors demo, I don’t see anything about the story and very little regarding combat. Instead, I watch the developers toy around with the various systems at play in Fable. The hands-off demo I watch takes place entirely in Oakshire, one of the six regions in the open world of Albion. This region is heavily inspired by the British countryside and features several settlements, but the session is centered on Silverbrook, a peaceful farming town.
“It’s a life-sim where you can start relationships and have families; it’s a social sim where you can play with the people of the world to your heart’s content; and it’s an economic sim where you can build wealth, create an empire, and manipulate the economic fate of entire settlements,” associate game director Will Kennedy says.
Over the course of the 30-minute demo, I watch as the hero, controlled by the developer, toys with the emotions of this peaceful village. After saving a talking pig from slaughter and handing some money to a down-on-his-luck beggar, the hero tries to romance the shopkeeper, Megan. He flirts with her, and she responds positively, but the hero doesn’t quite stack up to what she’s looking for. Since she’s an “ambitious commoner,” she has high standards: She wants a partner who’s an entrepreneur, who wears fancy clothes, and owns their own home in Silverbrook.
“We have over 1,000 handcrafted, fully voiced NPCs for you to interact with,” Kennedy says. “They have their own relationships, routines, homes, jobs, and memory. It’s not scripted; it is emergent behaviors powered by real-time systems. They go to work, they go to bed, they have hobbies and families. Sometimes, they just want to spend time in the pub. Albion feels alive because its people have lives.”
To meet the entrepreneurial requirement, the developer goes to a nearby pub and drops a hefty amount of coins to purchase it. Once he owns it, he can adjust prices and hire new employees to manage profits. To round out the pub’s efficiency, the hero hires the beggar he had donated to earlier. These businesses generate passive income, which can be collected from any owned business.
The hero’s next stop is the clothing store, where he buys the fanciest clothes on offer. Then, he picks up a blacksmith job to earn enough money to buy a house. With all the qualifications for Megan’s heart satisfied, the hero returns to her and takes her out on that date. They seem to have a great time, but suddenly, the dev decides to go down the route of cruelty. Without warning, the hero breaks things off, shattering Megan’s heart and leaving her wanting nothing to do with him.
From there, it’s a tour de force of meanness, including attacking civilians, resulting in the town’s security forces getting involved. As you take these actions, you accumulate distinct reputational qualities. These qualities follow you throughout the region, but if you go to another part of Albion, you get a clean slate.
“Every action you do, every choice you make generates a local reputation,” Kennedy says. “You become known for the reputations that you build, and everyone will judge you on them through their own moral lens. That’s really what’s at the heart of our updated, complex-yet-nuanced take on morality. Just like in real life, one person’s good is another person’s evil, and even being merciful could divide opinion.”
I love the life-sim elements I’m seeing of Fable, but there’s still so much to learn about this highly anticipated return of one of the original Xbox’s most exciting franchises. Playground Games is coming off one of the top-rated games of the year with Forza Horizon 6, and if Fable shapes up as well as it looks, the studio could further prove to be Xbox’s most valuable.
The Gears of War franchise was previously among the tentpole series for Xbox, but believe it or not, there hasn’t been a new mainline entry since before the pandemic. Gears 5 continued telling the story of a new generation of COGs in 2019, complete with wide-open exploration areas and an emphasis on Kate Diaz’s familial ties. While the next evolution of Gears brought some intriguing ideas, the story didn’t seem to resonate with the wider player base as widely as the original story focused on Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago. With Gears of War: E-Day, The Coalition is returning to the start, back years before the events of the first Gears of War, to tell the tale of the Locusts’ emergence on Sera.
The Coalition views this as a return to the series’ roots, giving players a chance to see how the events that have largely only been alluded to within the Gears of War games play out before their very eyes. Taking place over the course of three days, players get to witness the fall of Kalona in a way that The Coalition wants to make feel like an all-out monster invasion. Through the power of Unreal Engine 5, The Coalition was able to model the entire city, even if it’s not an open-world game. This means that you’ll see vistas off in the distance, and not only will you be able to visit them, but also watch them fall as the three days progress; the longer the game goes, The Coalition says, the more everything falls into chaos and destruction.
“It is a very linear game, so it has very classic Gears levels that are linear streets leading to arenas and combat arenas, but we do have sections that open up into a wide linear couple of blocks,” studio creative director Matt Searcy says. “You always have a main objective, you’re always going to the next thing. You don’t get to pick and choose what your quests are, and you can’t just re-traverse all over the game however you want. Our story re-traverses through the city, but we’re pulling you through a very linear adventure. We just wanted to find a way to really feel Kalona, and also the way the gameplay mechanics can experience E-Day.”
This time around, players control Bravo Squad, a team of COGs brought together by circumstance. Following the end of the Pendulum Wars, Marcus and Dom arrive in Kalona for a military ceremony. At this point in time, Marcus and Dom are only connected due to their service, as well as their shared love for the late Carlos Santiago, Dom’s brother, who had been killed in battle. It’s only been a few weeks following the end of the Pendulum Wars, which lasted nearly 80 years. However, while at the bar that evening, the peace they expected to follow the end of the war is violently interrupted, as holes open up all over the city and Locusts emerge, brutally murdering the majority of the human population; it’s brutal, dark, and very gory. Marcus and Dom spring into action straight from the bar, joined by Lucas Reyes and Mags Carter.
“They’re all returned home, and they’re all trying to figure out what life looks like next for them,” studio brand director Nicole Fawcette says. “Marcus and Dom are having this conversation when the ground starts to shake and chaos erupts around them, and these four people that were just kind of living their lives in the bar, basically get thrown together by their shared values of being a Gear and knowing that duty comes first. They run towards the danger rather than running away from the danger. […] Mags Carter is a former Gear veteran; she served previously in the Gears and was dishonorably discharged, and we’re not going to get too far into her story, but now she works at the Imulsion refinery. Both her and Lucas are from Kalona, and that’s really great when you’re playing through the game, because Marcus and Dom are not from the city; they’re here for a very special event. They basically get stuck in the city as Emergence Day unfolds, and Mags and Lucas are basically your guide to the city.”
Gears of War: E-Day features four-player online co-op throughout all modes, as well as two-player splitscreen co-op. On top of that, players can select any character they want from the start. And together, players can utilize the new suite of moves, including jumping, sliding, and the ability to perform high mantles to scale taller walls than before. There are other minute changes, including the camera pulling out instead of pulling in close when you sprint to allow for more spatial awareness. On top of that, the active-reload’s U.I. location has changed to be in the middle of the screen to be more intuitive with the player’s natural sightline.
Since Gears of War: E-Day takes place 14 years prior to the events of the first Gears of War game, I ask Searcy if he envisions using that added padding between these entries to turn this single game into a multi-game prequel saga. As you might guess, he’s guarded in his answer.
“When we look at telling Gears stories, one of the awesome things about working on Gears is it’s got a bunch of lore, a bunch of characters, all sorts of stuff,” he says. “We had this moment, I think we talked about it in 2024, where we just, at the studio, wanted to tell this story really, really badly. We decided that would be our next mainline entry, and we basically have been focused on that this whole time. And now, on this day, we’re still trying to land this one, right? We always look at it as we have all these opportunities to tell stories, whether they’re this time frame or other time frames, all sort of characters. We don’t really have a commitment to what the next one’s going to be right now, but it was really awesome to go back here, and I think there’s a rich amount of storytelling in all over the Gears eras.”
Though the gameplay session I witnessed was nothing beyond what was shown during the Xbox Showcase’s Gears of War: E-Day Direct, I appreciated getting additional insight straight from the team behind what I consider to be one of the most promising games on the calendar this fall. For me, Gears of War was once worthy of being mentioned alongside Xbox’s greatest first-party franchises, and though it’s been on hiatus for nearly an entire console generation, E-Day looks like it could very well signal a return to the greatness I once expected from the franchise. We’ll see if it delivers on that, when Gears of War: E-Day comes to Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 6.
The Xbox brand is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, a key theme of its summer showcase. However, the brand has not exactly had a ton to celebrate lately. Following a huge splash with the original Xbox, a dominant generation with the Xbox 360, and a strong turnaround during the Xbox One era, the Xbox Series X/S have struggled to find an audience. Despite a spending spree that saw the platform acquire major publishers like Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, it has not translated into console sales.
While blame could be placed on any number of questionable initiatives and decisions, including but not limited to removing exclusivity from nearly all first-party games and conducting mass layoffs, Xbox seems intent on course-correcting to kickstart the new era following the departures of Xbox CEO Phil Spencer and president Sarah Bond, and the appointment of Asha Sharma. Small adjustments, such as allowing fans to vote for the type of stylization for the brand (resulting in it now officially being stylized as “XBOX”) and restoring exclusivity to games like Clockwork Revolution and Gears of War: E-Day, show a willingness to listen to fan feedback, but that alone won’t restore the platform to its former glory.
Thankfully, I recently had the chance to sit down with Xbox’s chief content officer and former head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty to talk about lessons learned from the past few years as well as future plans for the Xbox brand.
First of all, congratulations on an awesome showcase. It was really terrific seeing all of the projects you have on the horizon. Do you have any projects that are particularly near and dear to your heart? I love all my children! [laughs] I would say it was really cool to see Gears of War get its day in the sun, right? The studio is just really special. There’s not a lot of new leaders there. The studio’s kind of been through a lot… just behind the scenes, they’ve been through a lot, and so, for them to really have this moment to show off everything they’ve been working on, I just think that’s really cool. And they’ve done a lot of things, and you’re probably somebody that picks up on this: One of the funnest things about watching the show is when you get those little, like, “Ah! Oh!” Those little “oohs” and “ahhs” on little gameplay things.
Like, in Gears, the team did so much work on the cover system. Things like vaulting and climbing and jumping – things that are just not really part of the Gears sort of movement vocabulary that they added. And when you’re watching the trailer, if you don’t play, you’re kind of like, “Oh, of course they do that.” But Gears people saw it! And, like, the whole incremental cover now, and the stuff we can do, and even in the trailer there’s stuff that didn’t really come through. So I was excited to see Gears. That was cool. It was a fun moment for the team. Then, obviously, having the Direct, too, was just a great opportunity for them to show off what they’ve been working on.
Gears of War: E-Day
As a huge Gears fan dating back to Day One, I am super excited to see it not only come back into the spotlight but also return to the team of Marcus and Dom, like in the early days. As much as I enjoy the new generation of characters, focusing on those two is such a nostalgic treat. Speaking of Gears, one of the big things to come out of the Showcase is that this Gears game, along with Clockwork Revolution, is part of this kind of revived sense of exclusivity with Xbox. What was the mission behind that? A couple of things. First, we want there to be a reason for people to get excited about Xbox, a reason to buy an Xbox, a reason to become an Xbox fan. It’s just, there’s got to be a reason, and we want to make sure that that’s there. Second, as a reward for people that have stuck with us, it’s the 25th anniversary, which is pretty amazing, exciting, and there are people who have been with us from the beginning that we want to give them something. That’s why we’ve got Gears of War: E-Day coming in 2026 and Clockwork Revolution from our studio inXile in Irvine just down the road coming in 2027.
Was there any concern with the fact that we just finally got Gears over on PlayStation 5. I’m assuming people played the remaster of the original game, became fans of Gears, and now, suddenly, it’s not coming to PS5. Was there a concern about alienating that or a sense of pulling back from the road the platform was seemingly heading down? Yeah, you know, we’ve had an opportunity with Asha coming in to really take a look at our strategy and, I’d say, put the focus on the future. I think that it’s that focus out of which that decision came.
Halo: Campaign Evolved
When you’re looking at the current state of Xbox, as you’ve mentioned, we’re entering this new era. We no longer have Phil. We don’t have Sarah here anymore. We have Asha, yourself, and a few other people who have been elevated into leadership roles. How would you define the current state of Xbox as a gaming platform? Well, I can speak from my point of view, which is the content in the studios, and the cool thing about being part of a platform and not just the publisher is that we’ve got a front-row seat on the development of all the hardware, we’ve got a front-row seat to the strategy, and it’s really cool having our game teams work to feed, sort of, what they’re seeing, what they need, into the hardware team, and then also get previews of what’s coming back from the hardware team.
So, I guess, a lot of excitement about the future, and also you’ve seen the cadence that we’ve been able to get some things out on the platform side in terms of features, and that’s also showing up behind the scenes in terms of how we work with that side of the house. I think everybody’s excited. There’s a lot of good energy and, like I said, also a focus on the future. But I think it’s been true about us all along, just the fact that we’ve got these great first-party teams that can work hand-in-hand with the hardware teams.
You mentioned how this new era can be a reason for change, such as exclusivity returning for the future. You said “We want to make sure people have a reason to own an Xbox,” but are there any other lessons you’ve taken from the recent history? We want there to be a reason to believe and a reason to buy Xbox, and for there to be a reward for our loyal fans, but the third one that brings together what you just talked about is clarity. We really want to get clear. So, we’ve [made] clear that we’ve got Gears of War: E-Day coming this year, we’ve got Clockwork coming next year. Our big multiplatform, multiplayer, live-service games, they’re going to stay that way. Commitments that we’ve made to ship games on other platforms that we’ve announced, of course, we’re going to honor those commitments. We’re not going to pull that back.
Going forward, we’re going to be really thoughtful about what we do. We want to make the right decision, not the fast decision. And I think, in general, you can look for us that when we put a date on something, we’re going to put a platform on it. So that’s going to be the approach. I think the thing that ties those two things together that you talked about is really a drive for that clarity.
Clockwork Revolution
To be clear, I think exclusivity is a smart decision for Xbox at this juncture. Though I was initially a fan of having the games everywhere, it does eliminate the need to have an Xbox in many cases. I think there’s a limit to it, but I also think it’s tough to put the toothpaste back in the tube after making a big show of eliminating exclusivity.
Looking at the Showcase overall, I’ve been doing this long enough to remember E3 press conferences and how Activision and Bethesda used to have their own distinct shows. Now, they’re all under the Xbox banner, which results in a fleshed out content offering and Showcase, but has also had some struggles like layoffs, how do you assess the studio acquisition spree we saw a few years ago now that we’re facing the results of that? We’ve been pretty sequential and deliberate about it. It’s been a thoughtful process. From where I sit, I really tend to focus on just where we are, which is the stewards of over 20 IP that have made a billion dollars in their lifetime. So, that’s quite a lineup of things, and if we think that games are becoming the foundation of modern entertainment, then I think that puts us in good shape, right?
My job is to wake up every day and think about what could be in the way of these guys making great games, and how can I get that out of the way? I mean, that really is my job at the end of the day, and so I just consider myself so lucky to work with all these leaders, everyone from Kayleen Walters, who runs Minecraft, and the team looking over Call of Duty, we’ve just got such great leaders everywhere here, so that’s where I get focused on. And I think that going forward that the IP and the slate of characters and worlds and stories is going to be really important, and I think we’ve got a great lineup.
So, when you talk about the acquisitions and then some other things, my job is on the content side, and I just say, “Boy, are we lucky that we have just got this amazing collection of studios and amazing collection of IP.”
On the studio side, I did want to bring up one that I think a lot of people were really excited for, and then we got some disappointing news about it. It was actually a homegrown studio: The Initiative. Can you talk me through what went wrong there and why we never saw anything come to fruition from that studio? Yeah, just out of respect for the team – and I really mean that – I’m not going to get into the gears inside the machinery on that one. I think let’s be respectful to the team, you know? We always have to evaluate projects, we’ve got a responsibility to run a business, and we’ve always got to look at things, and that was a decision that we had to make.
The logo for the now-canceled Perfect Dark game from The Initiative
With Asha taking over and there’s this feeling of change in the air around Xbox, do you see the future of Xbox Game Studios being more of those style of homegrown studios or more acquisitions? Right now I’m just focused on what we’ve got. We’ve got a really amazing lineup, and just, if you think about the year that we’ve had, and I’ll go back to everything that Blizzard announced starting out the year; it was really the spring of Blizzard. And then, we got into Forza Horizon 6, which has been doing really, really well. Great to see the fans resonating with that. We have Halo: Campaign Evolved, and Minecraft Dungeons II coming this fall. We’ve got Gears of War: E-Day, then an amazing Modern Warfare 4. It’s so great to see fans reacting to that positively.
I feel really good about that. And then, of course, we have the other stuff that we slated for 2027, starting with Fable early in the year, right? So that’s a lot, and that’s where my focus is right now.
As you list those off, I can’t help but notice a lot of these are beloved Xbox properties that maybe haven’t been in the forefront lately, like Halo, Gears, and Fable. Was that a deliberate choice to coincide with the 25th anniversary, wanting to pay homage to the brand’s roots, or was that a coincidence? Well, a little bit of magic, a little bit of mystery, right? [laughs] It always brings these together! Games are very complicated to make, you know. I think we’re fortunate that we had these things line up. I didn’t come up with this saying, but somebody pointed out to me, just as you did, that we’ve got Fable, Halo, Gears, and Forza in the same year. They called it the Mount Rushmore of gaming. I’m not going to be that presumptuous to say that it’s that, but it’s kind of cool that they all lined up this way, and it’s just a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the 25th anniversary.
Forza Horizon 6
Looking at Xbox currently, and I don’t know if you want to attribute this to the lack of exclusives or something else, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s been a bit of a downturn for Xbox in terms of console popularity. How do you compete going forward? Well, you know, Asha has laid it all out: It’s great that she’s got the vision. You just start to think about things like the return of Xbox, great games, celebrate the players and the fans, and that’s the recipe, right? And my job very specifically is to land the great games part, and also how we can help with the return of Xbox with things like Gears exclusive and Clockwork exclusive. But I think that’s the recipe.
Looking at the current landscape of gaming, it feels like the Xbox Series S finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Game consoles have been getting more expensive due to a confluence of factors. It’s great that Xbox has this less expensive option in the Series S, but as the technology has gotten older, we’ve seen more developers, like the teams behind No Rest for the Wicked and Baldur’s Gate 3, blame the Series S’s shortcomings for their games not coming to Xbox. What is the strategy for the Series S, because you probably want to keep that cheaper option for players, but does that end up costing Xbox some great games in the long run? You know, my job as the leader who’s got the privilege of working with our first-party studios is to really be, kind of, I’ll call it, like, a lighthouse, or lead the way. All our teams are committed to shipping great versions on Series X, great versions on Series S, great versions on PC, and on PC, doing our best to make sure that we can have settings that take the best advantage of the most killer rig ever, and also have settings that let a more average PC look fantastic. So, we’re pretty committed to solving those problems, and I hope that sort of shows a path for other developers to do the same thing.
Xbox’s upcoming slate of Game Pass titles
What is the strategy for Game Pass going forward? How do you preserve that value proposition and avoid having to raise the price like we saw last year? I think the great thing about us as a platform is that it just comes back to the fact that we want to have many ways to play. If you want to buy the game, great. If you want to subscribe, that’s also worked out well for us. We also have cloud, right? We’ve also got supporting handhelds. It gets a little bit back to what you were talking about: some of the challenges in the industry with affordability around hardware. I think that’s what’s important for us: to make sure we provide a bunch of options.
Since you mentioned cloud gaming, do you anticipate any further pullback on exclusivity that would impact things like cloud gaming on Smart TVs or mobile devices, or a withdrawal from PC? When we say “console exclusives,” it means Xbox console. It’ll still show up on all the normal places where we sell the PC version, and our cloud. Wherever you can get Xbox Cloud streaming.
If you missed Xbox’s big summer showcase, you can see our full recap here.
Stupid Never Dies is a pop punk-inspired action-RPG, and it’s one we’re excited to play. Now, we know we’ll be doing so later this year, as a new gameplay trailer has revealed it launches on PlayStation 5 and PC this fall.
There’s still no word on an exact date, but the nebulous “2026” has become the more defined “fall 2026,” and to satiate you for now, developer GPTRACK50 has released a new trailer to showcase more of what to expect. In Stupid Never Dies, you play as Davy, the weakest zombie in the monster world, who will embark on a journey of self-discovery to master the abilities of 10 different monsters.
Check it out in the Stupid Never Dies release window trailer below:
As you can see, this new trailer showcases all 11 of Davy’s styles: his standard Zombie form, plus Werewolf, Harpy, Golem, Vampire, Will-o’-the-Wisp, Cyclops, Snow Fairy, Merfolk, Lich, and Demon. In all of these forms, players will utilize Davy in all manner of 3D action-RPG combat arenas.
“Davy is not only considered the weakest among zombies – the lowest-ranked creatures in the monster world – but is also known as a complete coward,” a press release reads. “His goal is simple: to revive Julia, the frozen woman he fell in love with at first sight, and finally take her on a date. As Davy’s feelings for Julia intertwine with the motivations of his eccentric companions, the story gradually unfolds into an adventure where they must confront a common enemy together.”
Stupid Never Dies will launch sometime this fall on PlayStation 5 and PC.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a Soulslike action game from Team Ninja, the studio behind the Nioh series, set during China’s Three Kingdoms era, and it’s a great time. Team Ninja recently announced that a sequel, Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember, is due out on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027, but ahead of that, you can hop into the upcoming Switch 2 port of the first game this September.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty launched on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC back in 2023 and has since surpassed 5 million players to date (selling 1 million copies in the process). The Complete Edition hit those platforms in 2024 and will now bring the base game, all three major DLCs – Battle of Zhongyuan, Conqueror of Jiangdon, and Upheaval in Jingxiang – and new endgame content to the Switch 2 on September 3.
Check it out in the Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition Switch 2 announcement trailer below:
The new endgame content, which is also coming to all platforms, is called The Thousand-Mile Journey and lets players enjoy additional scenarios featuring characters from the armies of Cao Cao, Sun Ce, and Liu Bei, alongside extra weapon types such as cestuses, long swords, and whips.
Team Ninja says enhancements in this edition of the game include new difficulties, new stages, new Divine Beasts, and more challenging difficulty functions. It will also feature previously released collaboration DLC, adding equipment and stages from Nioh 2, Naraka: Bladepoint, and Lies of P. Plus, three in-game items included in the game’s initial launch – Baihu Armor, Zhuque Armor, and Qinglong Armor – will be available in the Switch 2 launch edition, too.
Finally, Switch 2 players will get the exclusive Xuanwu Armor set.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition hits Nintendo Switch 2 on September 3.
With so much to pore through, we decided to band together and create a list of the 25 most exciting games of SGF 2026, presented in alphabetical order. Let us know which ones you’re most stoked for in the comments below!
Burn-9
There are a lot of Metal Gear Solid-inspired games – even director Hideo Kojima borrows heavily from it in his post-MGS projects like Death Stranding and Physint. But usually, these games put you in control of the Snake parallel. Burn-9, however, has caught my interest by being a MGS-inspired game that doesn’t do that; instead, you play as the person in the chair, as it were. Described by developer 14 Hours Productions as a “Tactical Radio Action” game, another nod to MGS’s “Tactical Espionage Action” tag, in Burn-9, your job is to guide the last survivor of an elite black-ops team after a mission has gone terribly wrong.
“When a top secret military research facility in the Antarctic goes dark, an elite strike force of cybernetically-enhanced black-ops super soldiers is dispatched to investigate and secure Burn-9 at all costs,” the game’s description reads. “Minutes into the mission, the helicopter is shot down. There is one survivor… and you’re her only lifeline.” As the team’s Operator, you will need to guide her to safety while navigating the tension and demands of the top brass and the harsh reality on the ground. What you share, what you hold back, and who you trust is up to you. On top of that unique premise, Burn-9 launches this year on PC.
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse
Evil Empire made a name for itself working on Dead Cells, a game heavily inspired by Castlevania. Then, it made an even stronger impression with Dead Cells’ Castlevania DLC. With such fundamental love for the vampire-hunting series, the studio seems like the perfect choice to helm the first proper Castlevania game in years, so when we saw it was the team behind the upcoming Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, it almost seemed too good to be true.
And yet, the game is real, and looks as good as you’d expect. We see our new protagonist, Rose Belmont, wield a whip or sword and shield to destroy supernatural minions, harness magic to parry attacks and break through barriers, and use a map to explore her surroundings, just like the dozens of indie games the series has inspired. The bosses in this trailer also look terrifying and thoroughly designed. The art direction, in general, is a good look for the franchise – colorful enough to be interesting, yet dark, striking, and unmistakably gothic. It looks awesome, and it’ll be out on October 15.
Clockwork Revolution
The developers at inXile have years of experience crafting narrative-forward games with lots of choice layered in, but Clockwork Revolution appears to be an especially ambitious undertaking. Players navigate through the fictional steampunk city of Avalon, confronting challenges in any number of unique ways to reach their objectives.
While immersive role-playing experiences like this are often compelling without additional twists, Clockwork Revolution layers in a slick time-travel mechanic that lets players move back and forth through time. Make changes to the city decades earlier, and the results become apparent when you travel back to the present.
Clockwork Revolution is one of a small handful of games that see Xbox pulling back on its cross-compatibility approach from recent years; inXile’s new RPG will be an Xbox console exclusive. It’s one we’re watching with great interest in the lead-up to a 2027 launch.
Clutch
We’re in a bit of a renaissance for story-driven racing games. Don’t mistake this for strictly racing games – we’ve been excellent racers for years now, including Sony’s Gran Turismo and Xbox’s Forza Horizon, which took us to Japan in Forza Horizon 6 earlier this year. But you can’t deny that Forza Horizon 6, Gran Turismo 7, and similar racing titles are a bit lacking in the narrative department (not for lack of trying). Recent releases, like Milestone’s Screamer, and the newly announced Clutch, which comes by way of the new Maverick Games studio founded by Forza Horizon 5 director Mike Brown, aim to inject a story worth seeing through into the genre, and we’re here for it.
Clutch was revealed last week with a flashy trailer that details the story of sibling racers competing in a historic racing series called the R1K. In it, players take part in sanctioned events – legal, rule-following, boring! But the other side of the campaign is the Midnight Collective, an underground racing circuit that’s all about style. The hero of this story finds himself in trouble, and this new universe’s seedier elements tempt him into illegal (and dangerous) races.
Maverick Games promises shifting alliances, rival crews, a living PvPvE world, handcrafted missions, and a lush, detailed open-world sandbox that delivers cinematic action and emergent chaos on the asphalt. Given the pedigree of the studio and how great this first showing was, we can’t wait to get behind the wheel(s) of Clutch when it launches in Spring 2027.
Crossfire
We’ve all been wondering what That’s No Moon, a studio founded by shooter veterans in 2021, was up to for a while now. With a title like “That’s No Moon,” you’d be forgiven for predicting something related to Star Wars. Well, the team’s debut title, Crossfire, couldn’t be further from that universe. Crossfire might sound familiar, because it’s the massive online multiplayer shooter developed by South Korean studio Smilegate that received a not-so-great campaign in recent years from Control team Remedy Entertainment. Smilegate is determined to make Crossfire bigger than it already is and has enlisted That’s No Moon to do so. And if the game’s reveal during the Summer Game Fest Showcase, and senior associate editor Marcus Stewart’s impressions from a recent preview, are any indication, it might redefine the cover shooter.
At least, that’s what the studio is aiming to do with its Adaptive Cover system, which allows the player character to realistically interact with natural terrain elements to hide or maneuver around in a hyper-realistic way. The gunplay itself looks really neat, too, with a unique third-person ADS view that shows what a first-person ADS image would look like, and the mysterious sci-fi elements infused into it make clear this is more than just another military shooter.
Its leads are Layla Qassam, played by Claudio Doumit of The Boys fame, and Delroy Cross, played by Ricky Whittle of American Gods fame, and their antagonistic-turned-symbiotic relationship, as we see in the reveal trailer, has us ready to spend more time with the duo. There’s no release date in sight for Crossfire, but it’s due out sometime in the future on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Exodus
Many have taken to calling Exodus the most obvious spiritual successor to the Mass Effect series, and for good reason. Beyond a number of BioWare developers in key roles, Exodus features third-person exploration, a decision-focused narrative, third-person cover combat with powers, and a fantastical distant future setting with lots of unusual alien-like party members. With each new batch of info on the game, we’re growing more excited about its potential, including its most recent showing. If you’re intrigued, Exodus already has two fun sci-fi novels by Peter F. Hamilton to read, and a full tabletop game strongly rooted in the traditions of Dungeons & Dragons. For more on the video game itself, check out our recent preview.
Fable
This iteration of Fable, which has no number or subtitle to signal that this is a chance to start the franchise fresh, has been in development for a long time. We first heard about its existence back in 2020. But over the last year or two, Microsoft has been offering more and more about the game and every new look makes us a little more excited.
During Summer Game Fest, we learned more about the game’s cast of characters and that Hayley Atwell will be playing the antagonist, a hero who thinks they should be the only hero. We also learned that What We Do In The Shadows’ Natasia Demetriou will be in the game as a character named Jenny, and Jack of Blades, the original game’s villain, will be returning in some shape or form.
Fable has always been a series that is intentionally open-ended, letting players do basically whatever they want (within reason) and ensuring the game elicits some kind of reaction. This new Fable seems to be in line with that idea and we’re hopeful this new team (Forza Horizon’s Playground Games) knows what they’re doing. They certainly have the whole open-world thing down.
Cid’s Highwind is in the game, giving players the ability to freely fly around the planet and Fortnite-style drop onto the ground below; Cid is playable, a dragoon at heart, and so is Vincent Valentine (and you can switch between beast and human mode whenever you want); what is basically a Job system has been added in the form of outfits that transform the brawler Tifa into a Black Mage, for example; and Sephiroth has a new voice actor in the form of Travis Willingham. Perhaps more exciting than all of that, Queen’s Blood, the incredible card game from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, is back, this time with party member Red XIII as the protagonist.
There is so much to be excited about in Final Fantasy VII Revelation, and the fact that it’s launching worldwide simultaneously on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC – meaning nobody will have to wait a year for a port on their platform of choice while dodging spoilers – next Spring is the cherry-red materia on top.
Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave
Fire Emblem: Three Houses was a huge pivot point for the series, bringing the tactical RPG onto Nintendo’s home console for the first time in years. While some bemoan the loss of the old days of the series, Three Houses remains one of the most popular and influential entries the series has ever seen, and Fortune’s Weave is following in its footsteps in meaningful ways. At the most basic level, it brings back Sothis, an important, mysterious character from Three Houses, but after seeing a trailer in the recent Nintendo Direct, we also learned it will allow players to pick one of four protagonists they wish to experience the game as, harkening back to Three Houses’ choice between the titular houses.
But the elements that set Fortune’s Weave apart are also exciting, from its gladiator-style tournament to its intriguing cast of characters. One protagonist, Cai, even rides a new mount called an Ornius, which resembles an emu or ostrich, except it can fly. The Fire Emblem series has been consistently entertaining over the years, and the Switch era was no different, so we’re more than down to check out Fortune’s Weave when it drops this September.
Gears of War: E-Day
Gears of War: E-Day is coming home (after a very brief multiplatform excursion that saw the recent remake of the first game, Gears of War Reloaded, come to PlayStation 5). Despite speculation that E-Day would hit Sony’s console, Xbox revealed during its recent showcase that it is, in fact, an Xbox Series X/S console exclusive, which is to say it’s launching on Xbox and PC on October 6. It still retains the classic third-person cover shooter DNA in every mainline Gears entry before it, but E-Day is definitely more bloody and violent, and developer The Coalition is adding new movement mechanics that translate to a more dynamic experience overall.
Set 14 years before the events of the first Gears game, E-Day chronicles the events of Emergence Day, or, in Gears history, the day the enemy Locust hordes erupted from the ground below to lay siege on humanity. E-Day takes place in the shellshocked city of Kalona and stars original protagonist Marcus Fenix alongside Dom, a couple of other familiar faces, and a few new ones, too. The Coalition says E-Days’ story explores themes of burden, loss, and loyalty, and the campaign is played from the perspective of the new Bravo Squad: Marcus, Dom, Carter, a new Gear, and Lucas, a fresh cadet who never expected to be on the front lines. They must navigate wartime tensions and interpersonal relationships while trying to stop the Locust horde from destroying the city they love, and they’ll do so in a campaign that promises 4K resolution, 60 FPS gameplay, and hardware-based ray-tracing.
And in multiplayer, which returns with online classics and a new 12-player Horde Raid, you can expect 120 FPS action. This is a piece of Gears history that fans have long speculated on, and it’s exciting knowing we’re just a few months away from learning where humanity’s war against the Locusts began.
Gen Atlas
The wait for the next game from the creator of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian has been long. Fumito Ueda’s last game was released in 2016, and even that was after substantial delays. Ueda likes to take his time, but to date, the wait has always been worthwhile. No one makes games so full of intrigue, loneliness, scale, and emotion quite like Ueda and his team.
Cryptically teased in 2024 with the temporary name Project Robot, during the primary Summer Game Fest showcase this year, Gen Atlas was officially unveiled. We now have at least some idea of how the game works: a humanoid protagonist drives around a giant, flying robot head, which they can attach to seemingly abandoned giant robots to take control of them. In our interview with Ueda after seeing the game, he said, “The robot head is going to be many things to the player character. At times, it will be a means of transportation, like a vehicle. At times, it will be your navigator. At times, it is more functional to use it as a tool. But it’s also going to be your partner, as well. So it doesn’t just serve one thing. It’s going to serve multiple sorts of roles.” You also have a gun, which we have definitely never seen in a Ueda game.
We still have a lot of questions about Gen Atlas. Is it a sequel to Ueda’s previous three games (he implies that he doesn’t really know, but we’re skeptical)? Who is the protagonist? What happened to this world? Frankly, we don’t actually want to know before we have a chance to play the final game, but it’s exciting to theorize. We look forward to thinking about Gen Atlas for years to come after playing, just as we have for all his previous adventures.
God of War Laufey
The AAA video game announcement cycle typically follows a predictable pattern. Games are typically announced about 2 years out from their release dates with a short, CGI teaser. A year or so later, we’ll get another, more concrete look with in-game cutscenes and maybe a snippet of gameplay, and then three to six months out from release, we’ll get an actual look at the game. God of War Laufey wasn’t just surprising because it’s a game none of us knew existed – it turned that whole predictable cycle on its head by debuting with 20 promising minutes of gameplay.
God of War Laufey is a game all about Kratos’ late wife as she fights her way through the afterlife. Set in a dimension called The Everywhen, Laufey’s journey will see her cross paths with gods from all sorts of mythologies – we’ve already seen Mongolian and Egyptian deities – alongside whimsical characters like Phranque (a gelatinous cube played by Jack Quaid) and Rue (a sentient ribbon) that would feel out of place in a Kratos adventure. It also allows characters players have killed in past God of War games (there are many) to return, which is an especially exciting prospect.
The new combat looks fast-paced and exciting, the worldbuilding is intriguing, and Woll’s performance already has us hooked. We would have been plenty excited with a simple CGI game announcement teaser, but showing so much of the game from the introduction has us hyped through the roof.
Halo: Campaign Evolved
It’s been 25 years since Combat Evolved helped to usher in a new era for console shooters, and the newly redubbed Halo Studios is hard at work on a remake of that original game, which aims to celebrate and enhance everything players loved about the original. While we had previously seen some of the reworked original missions (which look beautiful), SGF offered a first look at some of the brand-new missions on the way to Master Chief, set roughly one year before the events that unfolded on Halo. In addition to offering some meaningful prologue to the core game, it also gives the team a chance to include some of the weapons and enemies that wouldn’t appear until later installments. Campaign Evolved looks very strong, and this new info has only further enhanced our enthusiasm.
The big surprise is that Kingdom Hearts IV will launch on Nintendo Switch 2, though we still don’t know when that launch will be. Plus, it will launch simultaneously not just with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, but also on PC. That’s huge for the series and ensures that as many people as possible will be playing Kingdom Hearts IV when it finally comes out.
Though we didn’t get a release date today, we did get a new gameplay trailer showing the return of the fan-favorite reaction-commands mechanic, along with a deeper look at this strangely realistic Sora in modern-day Tokyo. He uses these reaction commands and other action Keyblade staples to destroy heartless in the famous Shibuya crossing, and it looks beautiful. There is a lot of mystery in the trailer, too, with various characters from across the canon appearing alongside new faces, but we’ll leave the theorycrafting to you.
Marvel’s Wolverine
Insomniac has a sterling track record in handling comic book superheroes, thanks to its treatment of Spider-Man. That already has our expectations high as we watch for the impending launch of Wolverine. But the new gameplay showcase for the game further cemented that excitement, showing off Logan’s impressive environmental navigation skills, stealth capabilities, and most of all, his ability to absolutely decimate enemy forces with his claws. Insomniac also appears to be leaning heavily into the potential for cameos and other appearances from Marvel heroes and villains, including a first look at Jean Grey in this universe of characters. Wolverine looks bloody, violent, and intense, but also like it may be a ton of fun.
Persona 6
Nobody is patting themselves on the back for predicting that we’d see Persona 6 this year during the SGF madness, but that doesn’t make finally seeing it any less exciting. Admittedly, the reveal trailer doesn’t give us a lot to go on, but it ain’t nothing. We see a green-hued graveyard, some fingers pointing at something, and a headless statue atop a monument of sorts. The trailer and the logo that appears at the end of it make clear that the color theme of Persona 6 is, as many predicted, green (following Persona 3’s blue, Persona 4’s yellow, and Persona 5’s red). And the brief blurb about it that developer Atlus released following the reveal hints at something sinister, possibly harkening back to earlier entries in Persona and its Shin Megami Tensei origins.
“Live a double life in modern-day Japan, but beneath the surface of familiar streets and quiet neighborhoods lies something darker: strange rumors, unsettling urban legends, and occult incidents.”
Okay, yes, you could technically say this blurb matches pretty much every Persona game ever. And yes, you could argue that this teaser trailer might not represent the final game at all – look no further than the Persona 5 reveal and the actual game itself for evidence of that. But, assuming Atlus does stay true to this premise, Persona 6 could be the darkest entry yet. Unfortunately, there’s no word on when to expect it, but at least Persona 4 Revival launches in February to (hopefully) tide us over.
Alongside the remade levels and worlds, now in 4K/60 FPS, a brand-new world has been introduced, along with additional music stages. Plus, each world is endcapped with an exciting Star Fox-esque rail-shooter stage where Rayman must fend off foes while flying through a 3D space on the back of a dragon. With a brand new villain to make up for the anticlimactic finale of the original Legends, and an October 1 release date on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC, we can’t wait to jump back into this world.
Resident Evil Veronica
Capcom has found a good release cadence for arguably its most successful franchise. New game, remake, new game, remake, and so on. We knew a remake was up next after having a great time with Resident Evil Requiem earlier this year, but we didn’t know what was coming. Rumors and theories pointed to another remake of the original Resident Evil or following the path of 2 remake, 3, remake, and 4 remake, it seemed like 5 was up next. We were delighted, however, when it was revealed that Code Veronica would be the next game to get the treatment.
Arguably the most important but least-played mainline Resident Evil, Code Veronica was intended to be a numbered Resident Evil game during development, specifically 3. But business decisions and pessimism about the original release being a Dreamcast-exclusive led Capcom to give Nemesis (originally meant to be a smaller spinoff) a proper number, while Code Veronica received a non-numbered subtitle. As a result, it was inadvertently treated as a spinoff, despite starring Claire Redfield and exploring the important history of the founders of the evil Umbrella Corporation.
All of that is to say that it is arguably the Resident Evil most deserving of a revisit. It will fill in important story gaps many may have missed, and it’s a chance to spend more time with Claire, who hasn’t reappeared since the Resident Evil 2 remake.
Spyro: A Realm Beyond
For a character who came up as one of the great gaming mascots of the mid-90s, you’d think Spyro would have had a more reliable track record over the years. But after the original trilogy of PlayStation games, no one quite knew what to do with him. Between middling sequels, an unsuccessful gritty reboot, and a toys-to-life franchise that would eventually leave him behind, Spyro fans were left in the dust until the Reignited Trilogy reimagined his best games for modern platforms in 2018. Now, that same studio is picking the character back up for an original adventure, and after decades of patience and disappointment, this finally seems like a follow-up that will truly honor the character’s legacy.
The trailer shows mostly cinematics of Spyro running through vibrant, hyper-saturated rolling hills, but it ends with a slice of intriguing gameplay. This entry will finally allow Spyro to fly, not just glide, with no restrictions. Additionally, Tom Kenny returns to voice the purple dragon, just as he did in Spyro 2, 3, and the Reignited Trilogy, so it’ll feel like the adventure is picking up where it left off if you tackle it after the remakes. Even though, after all these years, this optimism might come across as delusional, we’re hoping this will finally be the sequel Spyro deserves.
Star Trek: Shadow Frontier
The wonderful thing about the Star Trek franchise is that it is malleable in terms of genre. It can basically be whatever it needs to be in order to tell a story about the close relationships that develop across alien species while living on spaceships. When the trailer for Shadow Frontier began making it clear it was a horror game, we weren’t sure if that’s what we wanted from a Star Trek game (even though plenty of episodes have dabbled in the genre), but when Ro Laren appeared as the game’s apparent protagonist, we were firmly on board.
For those unaware, Ro Laren was a popular character who appeared in later seasons of The Next Generation. She was brash and critical of Starfleet and a great opinionated foil to Captain Picard. She was so popular, in fact, that early versions of Deep Space Nine were built around Ro (and her performer, Michelle Forbes) before they pivoted to creating an original character, Kira. She was a character that always deserved more (and her brief appearance in Picard only left us unfulfilled), so to see her (and Forbes) leading this new game is exciting.
Add to that Bloober’s upward trend of quality with games like Cronos: The New Dawn and the Silent Hill 2 remake, and we’re excited to see what it does in the Star Trek universe with a beloved character.
Stellar Blade: Blood Rain
Stellar Blade surprised many players upon its release in 2024, featuring taut, challenging combat and breathtaking sci-fi visuals. After the success of the series debut, we were delighted in recent days to learn that South Korean developer Shift Up is already hard at work on a sequel. Blood Rain stars a brand new protagonist named Evie, who seems to eschew the sword combat of her predecessor for a classic martial arts approach of hands and feet. It’s a good bet we’ll be waiting a while before this game is ready for full release, but the early trailer looks amazing.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin
The premise of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that adapts the excellent Last Ronin storyline is already worthy of a place on this list. That it’s being made by Bayonetta, Nier Automata, and Astral Chain developer Platinum Games, doubly so. Look, yes, we all know about TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan, a 2016 game that Platinum also developed that was…not great. But 2016 was a different time, man. Or rather, Platinum really stepped into the premier action-development shoes it walks in today the following year, in 2017, when it released Nier: Automata and catapulted to new heights. Maybe we’re just coping and hoping Platinum’s best are on this project.
Nonetheless, the teaser trailer for this Last Ronin game, published by the newly announced Paramount Games label, doesn’t show much. If anything, it’s likely just a concept video, meant to get across the vibes of this eventual game, because it’s mostly just random Turtles-related places and things in NYC – a sewer, some buildings, a red moon. But hey, any new Platinum game is exciting. Pair them with something as great as The Last Ronin storyline and we’re stoked!
Secondly, the game will have a realistic art style, perhaps the most realistic the Zelda series has ever adopted. The teaser could potentially be the opening of the eventual game as a voiceover looking at a tapestry offers some limited history of the land, an introduction of The Great Deku Tree (who is probably the narrator), and explains that the Kokiri children, who live in a forest on the outskirts of the land, all have fairies… except for one. We then see young Link sleeping in his home, just as the original game began.
We love Ocarina of Time and will take any excuse to revisit its world, characters, dungeons, and story. We certainly want to see more of the art direction, as hyper-realistic Zelda might not be what we want from the visuals, but the mere implication of exploring Hyrule again is enthralling. We can’t wait to learn more.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis
Lara Croft, perhaps gaming’s most iconic heroine, is scheduled for a comeback next year. Between Sophie Turner’s live-action series and two new video games, we are excited to see the return of her archaeological adventures. The first one, called Legacy of Atlantis, is a full reimagining of the first game in Unreal Engine 5. Younger members of our staff have only played the Survivor trilogy (which began in 2013), so it’s giving them a chance to dive into an era of the character they’re wholly unfamiliar with. It also generally serves as a soft reboot to the series, reintroducing Lara as a seasoned adventurer with years of experience under her belt and twin pistols strapped to her legs.
Gameplay stays true to the original, and while we’re sure the new mechanics will make the game feel more modern, it still retains the series’ puzzle-solving and acrobatic combat against Lara’s foes (some of which are dinosaurs). This past week’s trailer technically serves as an unfortunate delay, pushing the game from 2026 into early 2027, but we look forward to its upcoming release nonetheless.
Genesis puts players in the shoes of a student of a magical military school, called Leukos, where they learn to be a Vasselai, one who performs magic using an Anima crystone (it wouldn’t be Xenoblade without a bunch of fantasy-themed proper nouns). They’ll explore a world on the backs of horse-like mounts, and the landscapes we see in the trailer curve upwards at the horizon, as if they’re inside of a spherical planet instead of walking on the surface of one. The snippets of conversation we’ve seen raise many questions, but they also appropriately pique our interest in the game’s launch, which is scheduled for sometime in 2027.
When Final Fantasy debuted in 1987, it did so on the Famicom (and later the NES in 1990), and Nintendo platforms would play host to the franchise all the way up until Final Fantasy VII. That pivotal entry was not only the series’ transition to 3D graphics, but it also spelled the franchise’s move to PlayStation as its primary platform. While some future entries would eventually arrive on other platforms, the mainline series has largely ignored Nintendo consoles outside of some side titles and spin-offs. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that a multi-part remake of the very game that signaled the shift away from Nintendo, Final Fantasy VII, is the very trilogy that is giving Nintendo fans more hope regarding the future of the franchise on its platform.
It all began earlier this year, as Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, an upgraded version of the first part of the Remake Trilogy, arrived on Nintendo Switch 2 in January. Then, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, part two of the trilogy, came to Switch 2 earlier this very month. Finally, during the 2026 Summer Game Fest live show, Remake Trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi took the stage to close out the show, announcing that Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the third and final part, would arrive simultaneously across all major platforms, including Nintendo Switch 2, when it arrives in the first half of 2027.
For Naoki Hamaguchi, the return to Nintendo through a remake of the game that originally moved the franchise away to PlayStation in the first place is fitting. “I think it’s definitely a meaningful moment for the franchise and for fans as a whole,” he says. “I was definitely a PlayStation kid when I was growing up playing games, but at the same time, I was also fond of the Nintendo hardware as well. The original FF7 is a very iconic title that represents the transition from Nintendo to PlayStation, but bringing that back and going with the multiplatform launch on day one with this title is very meaningful to me. I know it means a lot for [original director Yoshinori] Kitase and [original artist and writer Tetsuya] Nomura, as well – people who actually grew up with the Nintendo platforms. But it means a lot to me to be the one who actually brings the Final Fantasy series back on Nintendo platforms again on day one as both a fan and developer. I think this a meaningful full-circle moment.”
Interestingly enough, from Hamaguchi’s perspective, Japanese fans are much less accepting of games going multiplatform. “One thing I do want to be mindful of is the cultural different between the Western fans and the Japanese fans,” he says. “When you look at the Western fans, particularly the North American fans and European fans, they welcome the multiplatform approach with a more positive attitude. But when you look at the Japanese fans, they tend to have a little bit of a negative behavior towards it, and they post their stronger opinions online with that particular approach, so I do have to be mindful of the cultural difference there. But if we do continue to take this approach, launching multiplatform on day one, I think this approach would be accepted more globally.”
Dragon’s Dogma 2, a challenging, friction-filled fantasy adventure from Capcom, was one of my favorite games back in 2024. Today, during Nintendo’s big summer Direct, we learned that the game is coming to Switch 2. What was less clear from the Direct’s trailer, however, is that the Switch 2 version is actually Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, an updated release of the game that will come bundled with the Dark Arisen expansion. That expansion is also coming as paid DLC to every other console the game is currently on, and you can see the trailer for it below:
Dark Arisen’s main selling point are the frozen lands of Norgan, a new icy area to the far north that players can explore for powerful relics, which can be appraised to unlock new gear and skills. The expansion also adds 12 new dungeon challenges and new hair and tattoo options to customize players and their pawns.
There are also free updates on the way for the base game, and according to the new trailer’s video description, the first one arrives today. “The first arrives June 9 with quality-of-life improvements, including the addition of an Eternal Ferrystone and more Portcrystals,” it reads. “A second update in August brings framerate and performance improvements to all platforms, additional save slots, and many more adjustments and improvements.” The Eternal Ferrystone sounds like it will remove some of the fast travel restrictions that put people off from the base game, even though I think friction makes the game better, I don’t mind an update that might welcome new players.
Dragon’s Dogma II: Dark Arisen is out four months from today, on October 9, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X.S, PC, and Switch 2, and if you pre-order the game, you’ll get access to the Northern Attire fashion set. For more Dragon’s Dogma, check out our review of the base game.
With Nintendo’s Direct Presentation this morning, an argument can be made that Summer Game Fest 2026 has officially concluded. We can all take a breath and maybe a nap as we dream of all the games we will be playing later this year (mostly in September) and next year.
Xenbolade Chronicles 1 is available today for Switch 2 and adds high-speed vehicles for navigate=ing the environment.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will be available digitally July 30 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 releases digitally December 4. Physical versions of all the games will be available at later dates.
The game is an adaptation (but not a port) of the story and world from the first arc of Brave Exvius, a Final Fantasy-themed mobile game that was shuttered last year
Final Fantasy Resonance releases on Switch 2 October 22.
Pikuniku 2
A sequel to the goofy puzzle game is coming to Switch 2 next year,
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World
The Withered World is the next entry in the Dragon Quest Monsters series.
The game is coming to Switch and Switch 2 December 3.
Splatoon Raiders-themed Joy-Con 2 controllers are coming soon.
Deltarune: Chapter 5
The next chapter, chapter 5, in the Deltarune saga releases on June 24.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Metaphor: ReFantazio, the Atlus RPG from the makers of the Persona series is coming to Switch 2 on November 12.
Minecraft
Minecraft is coming to Switch 2 with all the content from the Switch version of the game (like the Mario biomes) and improved visuals.
Save content from the Switch version of Minecraft will work for the Switch 2 version.
Minecraft is coming to Switch 2 later this year.
Additional Game Switch 2 Release Reminders And Announcements
Atelier Karia: The Night Kingdom & The Guide Of Memories is coming to Switch 2 early 2027.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is coming to Switch 2 holiday 2026.
Observer: System Redux is coming to Switch 2 June 18.
DayZ is coming to Switch 2 in 2026.
Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 is coming to Switch 2 August 27.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is available for Switch 2 today.
Tales of Eternia Remastered is coming to Switch 2 October 16.
Snow Runner is available for Switch 2 today.
Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is coming to Switch 2 July 16.
Everbloom is coming to Switch 2 Spring 2027.
Final Fantasy XIV is coming to Switch 2 August 2026.
Kingdom Hearts Collection I-III For Switch 2
This new Switch 2 collection includes Kingdom Hearts – HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue and Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind DLC.
Kingdom Hearts Collection I-III For Switch 2 releases Oct. 8. Owners of the Switch 1 cloud version can purchase the Nintendo Switch 2 version at a discount.
A demo of Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind DLC will be available later on Switch 2.
The brief footage shown of the game showed Link in the game’s new visuals asleep in his home in Kokiri Forrest, which is how the original Ocarina of Time begins.
In a press release Nintendo simply wrote, “The Nintendo 64 classic returns for a new generation in 2026, reborn exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2!”
Nintendo did not reveal a release date, but offered a 2026 window.
And that’s everything revealed during today’s Nintendo Direct Showcase. Thanks for reading this recap! What was your favorite announcement?
