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 traits and associated matters from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s coated the trade for greater than 13 years. The second accommodates the online game tales from the previous week that you’ll want to learn about, together with some headlines from exterior of Engadget.
Please get pleasure from — and I will see you subsequent week.
Summer season Sport Fest 2025 shall be remembered as the one which occurred whereas the Waymos burned.
The SGF Play Days occasion house, the place video games media and influencers meet up with builders over a protracted weekend, is within the style district in Los Angeles, and this yr it was just a few miles from the guts of sprawling protests towards 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 battle — 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 referred to as within the Nationwide Guard, adopted by the Marines. Militarized LAPD officers attacked folks with horses and batons, and so they fired rubber bullets into crowds and instantly at one journalist. On Sunday night, protestors lit a line of unoccupied Waymos on hearth.
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 vehicles, 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 Sport. 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 part in the USA this yr. I’ve spent a big quantity of this time actively shutting down ideas about Challenge 2025, government-sponsored human trafficking, neo-Nazis and all method of hateful, bigoted insurance policies concentrating on the USA’ most weak 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 comparable these days. Now we have to deprioritize particular ideas at sure occasions, in an effort to get work carried out, keep relationships and make it by means of the day. Having to disregard these monumental issues in favor of, no 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 inner pressure. Video video games are a automobile for connection and expression, and so they’re deeply precious to society — however, as with anything, their significance is a matter of perspective.
The information
The whole lot — like, every part — introduced at Summer season Sport 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 printed over the approaching week proper on the prime of this text, so be at liberty to maintain checking again. Or, Engadget’s Gaming hub will maintain you coated.
Resident Evil Requiem is a factor
Arguably the most important bit of stories 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 sequence, 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, nevertheless it isn’t made by Xbox
After months of rumors about Microsoft and ASUS teaming as much as make an Xbox-branded handheld gaming system, we lastly have aid. The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are due out this vacation season, able to enjoying Xbox video games natively through the cloud or a distant console connection, and with help for different well-liked PC storefronts like Steam, GOG and Battle.internet. There’s no phrase on worth or a precise launch date but, however the Xbox handhelds are undoubtedly, lastly coming.
Relooted appears just like the sort of enjoyable we’d like proper now
In case you solely have time to examine one recreation from SGF 2025, acquaint your self with Relooted from South African indie studio Nyamakop. It’s a heist recreation about rescuing African artifacts from the Western colonizers who stole them, and it’s full of puzzles, motion and Afrofuturism. That is one to keep watch over.
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 printed a trio of tales instantly from the present, every another pleasant than the final. There’s a have a look at Lumines Come up, full with enter from director Takashi Ishihara; a preview of Patapon religious successor Ratatan; and Mat’s ideas on Supermassive’s sci-fi romp Directive 8020. There’s extra coming from Mat, too, so maintain that Engadget Gaming tab open.
Sword of the Sea is a return to kind for the artist behind Journey
I had a beautiful little chat at SGF with Matt Nava, the artist answerable for Journey, Abzû, The Pathless, and the upcoming sand-surfing recreation, Sword of the Sea. Nava has spent the previous decade or so working from his personal shadow, however with Sword of the Sea, he’s lastly following his instinct once more. This story consists of impressions of the sport — spoiler: it’s fabulous — and improvement perception from Nava.