Vishal Kamal has been covering video games for 7 years, writing about everything from hardware deals and new releases to esports and the business
side of the industry. He runs TheBadGamer, focused on gaming news worth your time.
Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returns for its third season on November 11, 2026, with a Fellowship of the Ring-style prologue designed to welcome new viewers after a two-year absence. The season jumps five years past the fall of Eregion into all-out war across Middle-earth, with Sauron's armies conquering everything in their path.
Helldivers 2's long-teased Warhammer 40k crossover warbond Castellan's Creed arrives on August 12th, bringing Cadian Kasrkin-inspired gear including meltaguns, meltamines, and two new armour sets. The warbond will be purchasable with super credits but not with premium warbond tokens.
Amazon has confirmed the Harfoots will take a backseat in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3, with co-showrunner J.D. Payne telling Empire the nomadic hobbit ancestors won't feature in a main storyline. The shift clears space for Sauron's forging of the One Ring, Galadriel's husband Celeborn, and Gandalf's full transformation, arriving November 11, 2026.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma acknowledged a $1.7 billion revenue drop in Q4 FY26 but insisted the business will return to growth by the end of FY27. Over 200 million new players joined Xbox in the past year, yet hardware sales fell 29% and content revenue declined 5%. Microsoft leadership frames the downturn as a necessary reset for long-term stability.
Nintendo Switch 2 consoles have dropped to £364 at Amazon UK thanks to a checkout discount, while Marvel's Wolverine preorders sit at £57.99 at Smyths. IGN's Robert Anderson warns UK buyers to act fast before a potential price increase mirrors the $50 US hike coming in September.
GPTRACK50 has confirmed that its stylish action RPG Stupid Never Dies launches on Oct. 21 for PlayStation 5 and PC. The studio, led by former Capcom developer Hiroyuki Kobayashi, also revealed a co-publishing partnership with Sega and a new trailer featuring the flamboyant Phoenix Zaza Hotfeathers.
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi is actively advocating for a physical release, but platform regulations and industry trends toward digital-only distribution have left the final SKU lineup undecided. The game launches almost a year before PlayStation's digital-only strategy begins in January 2028, yet titles like Grand Theft Auto 6 are already skipping discs entirely. Hamaguchi acknowledges the challenge but remains committed to delivering something tangible for fans.
IGN hardware editor Jackie Thomas spent a month with the Steam Machine and found it transforms living room gaming for existing Steam library owners. The $1049 device excels at local Steam playback and cross-device save progression, but its poor price-to-performance ratio makes it a hard sell for traditional console players.
Former BioWare producer Mark Darrah has confirmed that a remastered collection of the original Dragon Age trilogy is effectively impossible due to lost knowledge of the Aurora Engine. Unlike Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which was built on Unreal Engine, no current developers understand the proprietary tech behind Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Inquisition.
Publisher 505 Games has confirmed a sequel to the Ming Dynasty action RPG Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, with original creative director Xia Siyaun at the helm of a newly formed studio called Indolphinity. The announcement follows a turbulent period that saw the original developer Lenzee Games disband in April 2025, shortly before Digital Bros Group acquired the franchise IP.
