Welcome to Video Video games Weekly on Engadget. Count on a brand new story each Monday, damaged into two components. The primary is an area for brief essays and ramblings about online game developments and associated matters from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s coated the business for greater than 13 years. The second incorporates the online game tales from the previous week that you’ll want to find out about, together with some headlines from outdoors of Engadget.
Please take pleasure in — and I will see you subsequent week.
Summer season Recreation Fest 2025 shall be remembered as the one which occurred whereas the Waymos burned.
The SGF Play Days occasion area, the place video games media and influencers meet up with builders over a protracted weekend, is within the vogue district in Los Angeles, and this yr it was a couple of miles from the guts of sprawling protests in opposition to ICE. After months of inhumane and legally doubtful deportations of LA residents by masked federal brokers — emboldened by President Donald Trump’s far-right extremism and geared up with weapons constructed for warfare — the bubble of resistance popped. Protestors hit the streets after ICE officers swept up dozens of individuals throughout LA in one other spherical of coordinated raids on Friday, June 6. The protests grew over the weekend and Trump known as within the Nationwide Guard, adopted by the Marines. Militarized LAPD officers attacked folks with horses and batons, they usually fired rubber bullets into crowds and immediately at one journalist. On Sunday night, protestors lit a line of unoccupied Waymos on fireplace.
The thick, black smoke was seen from the Play Days lot. I noticed it as I used to be leaving the media lounge, heading towards the meals vans, and it stopped me in my tracks simply in entrance of the Capcom sales space. The low buzz of helicopters and the cries of police sirens had been a continuing companion that weekend, however the smoke was new. I finished and took a photograph as upbeat reggae music pumped out of the speaker beside me. Across the nook, an actor dressed as a Fortnite banana in a go well with was engaging passersby to play Ddakji as a part of a cross-promotional effort with Squid Recreation. The dissonance made my head spin.
The sickly pallor of encroaching authoritarianism has hung over each online game conference up to now six months — as a result of it’s shadowed actually every thing in the USA this yr. I’ve spent a big quantity of this time actively shutting down ideas about Mission 2025, government-sponsored human trafficking, neo-Nazis and all method of hateful, bigoted insurance policies focusing on the USA’ most susceptible folks, as a result of if I didn’t, the stress of those realities would devour me. I believe most of us are doing one thing related these days. We’ve to deprioritize particular ideas at sure occasions, as a way to get work accomplished, preserve relationships and make it via the day. Having to disregard these monumental issues in favor of, not less than in my case, video video games is a mindfuck.
The smoke from the burning Waymos, seen from the principle alleyway at SGF, felt like a bodily manifestation of this fixed inside rigidity. Video video games are a automobile for connection and expression, they usually’re deeply useful to society — however, as with the rest, their significance is a matter of perspective.
The information
All the things — like, every thing — introduced at Summer season Recreation Fest 2025
Our SGF 2025 roundup put up is a complete rundown of all of the information from the present, from Day of the Devs to the massive Xbox showcase. We’ll be including our hands-ons and interviews as they’re revealed over the approaching week proper on the high of this text, so be at liberty to maintain checking again. Or, Engadget’s Gaming hub will hold you coated.
Resident Evil Requiem is a factor
Arguably the largest bit of reports out of SGF 2025, Resident Evil Requiem is due out on February 27, 2026. It’s a mainline Resident Evil title starring FBI agent Grace Ashcroft, and it options acquainted places from the collection, together with Raccoon Metropolis’s demolished police division.
The Outer Worlds 2 launch date
Obsidian’s sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2 is heading to PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection X/S on October 29 — simply in time for everybody to know your fancy-man moon-head Halloween costume.
There’s an official Xbox handheld, however it isn’t made by Xbox
After months of rumors about Microsoft and ASUS teaming as much as make an Xbox-branded handheld gaming gadget, we lastly have aid. The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are due out this vacation season, able to taking part in Xbox video games natively through the cloud or a distant console connection, and with assist for different common PC storefronts like Steam, GOG and Battle.web. There’s no phrase on worth or a precise launch date but, however the Xbox handhelds are positively, lastly coming.
Relooted appears to be like just like the type of enjoyable we’d like proper now
For those who solely have time to examine one sport from SGF 2025, acquaint your self with Relooted from South African indie studio Nyamakop. It’s a heist sport about rescuing African artifacts from the Western colonizers who stole them, and it’s crammed with puzzles, motion and Afrofuturism. That is one to control.
Enter the world of Mat Smith writeups
Engadget’s UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith was on the bottom at SGF 2025 and he’s already revealed a trio of tales immediately from the present, every another pleasant than the final. There’s a take a look at Lumines Come up, full with enter from director Takashi Ishihara; a preview of Patapon non secular successor Ratatan; and Mat’s ideas on Supermassive’s sci-fi romp Directive 8020. There’s extra coming from Mat, too, so hold that Engadget Gaming tab open.
Sword of the Sea is a return to kind for the artist behind Journey
I had a stunning little chat at SGF with Matt Nava, the artist liable for Journey, Abzû, The Pathless, and the upcoming sand-surfing sport, Sword of the Sea. Nava has spent the previous decade or so operating from his personal shadow, however with Sword of the Sea, he’s lastly following his instinct once more. This story contains impressions of the sport — spoiler: it’s fabulous — and growth perception from Nava.
