The Verge’s gaming section brings the latest video game news, reviews of the most exciting releases, and interviews with the industry’s biggest names. We cover everything from PlayStation and Xbox blockbusters, to quirky Nintendo games, to the cool indie gems on PC and Android that you might otherwise miss.
Educational games meet motion capture.
Today’s Nintendo Direct showed a release date gap that appears to be shrinking.
From the makers of TinyTV: the $50 Thumby Color and $30 Thumby. Raspberry Pi Pico chips run at just in the low hundred MHz, displays are 0.85 or 0.4 inches respectively! But that’s enough for MicroPython games you can code in a web browser, or even real Doom on the OG Thumby (find installers here). More in my full story.
After being officially announced a week ago, Battlefield 6 now has a release date: October 10th. Going along with the news is the debut trailer for the game’s multiplayer mode.
Square Enix closed out today’s Nintendo Switch 2 partner showcase with a game that features names liable to send you into fits of confused laughter. Launching next year, The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is an HD-2D action RPG with a silly but acceptable name. (Elliot? Really?)
But Philabieldia, the name for where the story takes place, is truly one of the most ridiculous fantasy names I’ve ever heard. Philabieldia, wow. You know what, I’m in. The ridiculous name signals to me this is the exact kind of high-fantasy, low-stakes silliness I enjoy in not-Final Fantasy Square Enix games.
Square Enix’s gorgeous throwback RPG series is making its way to the Switch 2 with Octopath Traveler 0. The title makes it sound like a prequel of sorts, and the publisher says players will “experience a story of restoration and retribution over the divine rings — an epic saga that unfolds across the realm of Orsterra.” It’s launching on December 4th.
Star Wars Outlaws, the open-world sci-fi adventure that originally launched a year ago, is making its way to the Switch 2 on September 4th. Finally, you can take Nix on the go.
We got another look at the upcoming remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, this one focused on the strategy game’s sweeping story. It won’t be long now before you can play it, as the game launches on September 30th. (It’ll be on both the Switch and Switch 2.)
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, the hack-and-slash-style spinoff of the Legend of Zelda series, covers the canonical events that led to Tears of the Kingdom. Most importantly, the game covers what Princess Zelda was up to hanging out in the past with the very handsome Goat King of Hyrule.
Frustratingly, there’s still no release date, with Nintendo sharing that the game will release some time “this winter.” Regardless, I’m looking forward to beating the bacon off an army of bokoblins.
EA’s battle royale shooter got a performance bump once the Switch 2 launched, but during the Partner Direct showcase, they announced the August 5th update for Apex Legends will include a Switch 2-native edition, with enhanced resolution and framerate.
The new season also brings Wildcard, a new permanently added game mode on all platforms that has tweaks to speed up gameplay, lets teams have more than one of a particular hero, and includes second chance respawns once your team is eliminated.
Persona 3 Reload, the remake of Atlus’ Persona 3, is coming to the Switch 2 October 23rd. The game released last year to rave reviews on PC, PS5, and Xbox. Now, Atlus is finally ready to release the game on the Switch 2, because why should the other consoles get all the devil-summoning fun?
To start off today’s Nintendo Direct partner showcase, Capcom showed off the latest entry in the Monster Hunter Stories series. Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is coming to the Switch 2 next year.
Try as I might, I can’t get into the mainline Monster Hunter games. Since Monster Hunter Stories are more structured, turn-based RPGs where I’m riding the monsters instead of trying to fight them all the time, I might have to give this one a try when it comes out in 2026 and see if it finally sticks.
At 9AM ET, Nintendo is airing its next Direct showcase, but this time the focus will be on titles from third-party developers. Are we finally going to see Silksong again? You can watch it all live below.
Incube8 Games, which sells new games that run on cartridges in old Game Boys, has dropped prices across almost all its titles by an average of 22.5 percent, “to keep retro gaming accessible” as prices rise elsewhere. It insists the price drop is permanent, attributing it to “improved production management and ongoing process optimizations,” and says product quality won’t be changing.
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The latest Mario Kart World update increases “the frequency of lap-type courses” that appear during online races.
The change seems to address concerns over Nintendo’s decision to nerf the “random” track trick last month, which allowed players to avoid having to drive to their next track location, and instead have a traditional three-lap race.
Why reboot your whole SteamOS handheld to desktop when you can visit the desktop from inside the gaming mode? Nested Desktop does have limitations (no file management, no Steam-within-Steam) but gosh are there times this’d come in handy. Jacob at XDA calls it “the best Steam Deck feature you aren’t using”.
Setup: In desktop mode, tap Steam logo on taskbar > scroll down to Lost and Found > Right-click “Nested Desktop” > “Add to Steam.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s latest patch adds an option to retry battles right after you’re defeated. The game’s checkpoints were already pretty forgiving, but this new pop-up will make jumping back into a battle to practice your parries a little bit faster.
Drag x Drive, the Switch 2’s 3-v-3 wheelchair basketball game, is coming out next month and Nintendo has shared a new trailer. The game, the first exclusive to make extensive use of the Switch 2’s mouse controls, will test more than just your hoopin’ skills.
The trailer showed off a ton of other things you can do like wheelchair races, skills challenges, and more. You can also create pick-up games with your friends, customize your player and their wheels, or practice against the computer when Drag x Drive comes out August 14th.
Thousands of games and media have been delisted from two major platforms. Here’s how that happened.
Nintendo previously let you remap your controller buttons while playing classic N64 and GameCube games through the Switch Online service, but that functionality has now been expanded to Super Nintendo games, too, as spotted by Nintendo Life.
Although the new View/Change Controls option in the SNES app was briefly seen in the Nintendo of America Mario Paint video released yesterday, the Japanese version goes into more detail about how it works.
The controversy over Itch.io’s NSFW game delisting isn’t cooling down, but the platform has tried to address some of the most common questions in a new FAQ, including its next steps:
“We are actively reaching out to other payment processors that are more willing to work with this kind of content. We have suspended the ability to pay with Stripe for 18+ content for the foreseeable future. Our immediate focus has been on content classification reviews and implementing stricter age-gating on the site.”
And Riot Games is hoping you won’t even notice, apart from the big download. Today’s update moves Valorant from Unreal Engine 4.27 to Unreal Engine 5.3, and there might even be some small performance improvements on some systems. While other PC games using Unreal 5 have run into stutter issues, Riot says its switch shouldn’t even be noticeable for most players.
System update 3.0, which Panic says is coming later this year, will let you make folders for your games, adds a Game Library app, and brings support for “storing hundreds of games on your Playdate.” Seems like a great update, especially if you have a lot of titles from the Catalog or need to organize after finishing the second season of games.
Now all Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can stream games they own (including some console-only titles) from the cloud through the Xbox PC app, just like they can on other devices, which is a feature that has been in testing with Insiders program members.
Also, now Microsoft’s new blog post confirms that Insiders with Game Pass Ultimate can preview play history that follows them across devices, letting them pick up right where they left off -- which could come in handy with a new Xbox handheld device.
Not to be outdone by GPD, which teased a handheld so powerful it’s begging to be plugged into the wall, Ayaneo is teasing its own Strix Halo handheld — alongside a mountain of other product. There’s so much you’ll need to scrub through not one, but two “strategy sharing session” videos to see it all. The Strix Halo device will be the Ayaneo Next 2, and it’s promising its battery will be internal unlike the GPD one.
