Blizzard names 2029 for Diablo 5 and 2030 for a StarCraft shooter. Xbox is cutting 1,600 more jobs over the next year.

The rest of the day

11 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

1. 02

   PlayStation buyers wait on a judge

   Sony has agreed to pay $7.85 million to settle a US class action over its PlayStation Store. [16] Until April 2019, shops like Amazon and GameStop sold download codes for PlayStation games and could sell them for less than the PlayStation Store charged. [16] Sony stopped supplying those codes, and buyers sued in 2021, saying its store became the only place to buy. [16] More than 4.4 million US accounts qualify, and credit goes into them only if a judge approves the deal after a hearing on 15 October. [16]

   Why it matters — The lead lawyer expects each account to get between 91 cents and $33.66, paid as store credit. [16] Sony admits nothing, and its store stays the only seller of digital PlayStation games. [16]

2. 03

   Intel processors expected to cost 10% more

   Intel is expected to raise the price of its processors, the main chip in a computer, by another 10% from 5 October. [17] The report comes from supply-chain sources who spoke to DigiTimes, a Taiwanese trade paper. [17] It is not yet clear which processors are affected. [17] Processor prices have climbed since the end of 2025, partly because circuit boards cost more and memory chips are short. [17] The same sources say Intel may cut 5 to 10% of its staff, leaving about 70,000 people. [17]

   Why it matters — Anyone building or upgrading a gaming PC pays this on top of rising graphics card prices. [18] It follows a report last month that desktop processor sales from Intel and AMD had slumped. [17]

3. 04

   Graphics cards cost more in China, again

   Makers of graphics cards, the part of a PC that draws a game's pictures, are raising prices in mainland China again this month. [18] Taiwan's United Daily News reports that Asus will add 150 to 300 yuan, about $22 to $45, to its RTX 5070 cards. [18] Gigabyte has already added 200 yuan to one Nvidia card, and AMD has raised several of its own. [18] PC Gamer links this to the memory chip shortage, and to Nvidia cutting its forecast for gaming card shipments by 15 to 20%. [18]

   Why it matters — PC Gamer says the rises in China could carry over to prices elsewhere. [18] PC Gamer thinks Nvidia may be moving production toward AI chips, whose business made $89 billion last quarter, though it says the full picture is less clear. [18]

4. 05

   A Neo Geo remake waits a year for memory chips

   The Neo Geo AES+, a modern remake of SNK's classic Neo Geo home console, will now ship on 16 September 2027 instead of this November. [19] Plaion Replai, which makes it under licence from SNK, blamed a worldwide shortage of memory chips driven by spending on AI. [19] The company said it would rather wait for enough parts than launch with very few consoles. [19] The price stays at $250, or $350 for an all-white anniversary edition. [19]

   Why it matters — People who pre-ordered keep their place in the queue, but wait ten months longer. [19] It is the same shortage pushing up the price of PC parts in the two stories above. [17][18]

5. 06

   Diablo becomes a Netflix cartoon

   Blizzard's president Johanna Faries announced at BlizzCon that an animated Diablo series is being made with Netflix. [15] There is no release date yet, and no animation studio has been named. [15] Faries said Blizzard plans to adapt more of its games. [9] In July, Xbox's chief executive Asha Sharma set out plans to take Xbox's games into film, television and merchandise. [15]

   Why it matters — Kotaku links the plan to the success of Amazon's Fallout series, which is based on a game. [15] The show gives Diablo a way to reach people while Diablo 5 is still years away. [3]

6. 07

   Level-5 apologises for AI in its showcase

   Level-5, the Japanese studio behind Professor Layton and Yo-kai Watch, used AI in the footage for its latest digital showcase. [20] One fan wrote on X that they had been excited about Level-5's comeback until they saw how much AI it used. [20] Chief executive Akihiro Hino apologised on 12 September and said it was done to make the show more spectacular. [20] He said the stories, characters and settings in released games are all made by people. [20]

   Why it matters — Hino said Level-5 is using AI to cut the time it takes to make a game from five years to two. [20] Eurogamer notes that Krafton, Square Enix and EA have also invested heavily in AI. [20]

7. 08

   Sony, Nintendo and Xbox skip PAX West

   PAX West, a big fan convention in Seattle, ran this month with Sony, Nintendo and Xbox all absent from the show floor. [21] Kotaku's reporter found fewer games, fewer big publisher booths and more space for merchandise than at past shows. [21] Japanese publishers including Bandai Namco, Sega and Konami still came. [21] The most visible game was Pikmin Bloom, a five-year-old walking game now run by Scopely, which covered Seattle's buses and train stations in ads. [21]

   Why it matters — Nintendo's absence stood out because its US headquarters is close by. [21] Its own online showcase, a Direct, came the day after Kotaku's report. [21]

8. 09

   Heroes of the Storm gets a new hero

   Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard's team battle game, is getting a new hero after four years without major updates. [14] Kotaku says Blizzard put the game into sleep mode in 2022: the servers stayed on, but only small fixes followed. [14] The new hero, Xal'atath, a villain from World of Warcraft, goes to a test server first and launches on 28 September. [14] On stage, Faries thanked players for sticking with the game and hinted that another hero may follow. [14]

   Why it matters — Players who kept the game going for four years without major updates get a new hero to play. [14] Blizzard has not promised a return to regular updates. [14]

9. 10

   Company of Heroes turns 20 at an independent Relic

   Company of Heroes, a Second World War strategy game, turns 20 this year, and PC Gamer visited its maker, Relic Entertainment, in Vancouver. [23] After Company of Heroes 3 had a rough launch, Relic lost a large share of its staff in layoffs in 2023 and 2024. [23] It has since split from Sega, the Japanese publisher it worked with, and runs on its own. [23] Last month it released Final Stand, a new mode where players hold off waves of enemies. [23]

   Why it matters — Relic turned down Dawn of War 4, from its own older series, because it had no spare people; German studio King Art Games is making it. [23] Chief executive Justin Dowdeswell said Relic took on more than it could finish in time with Company of Heroes 3. [23]

10. 11

    Most Dawnwalker players had played The Witcher 3

    Almost 58% of people playing The Blood of Dawnwalker have also played The Witcher 3, according to Alinea Analytics, a firm that estimates game sales from outside. [22] Rebel Wolves, the Polish studio that made Dawnwalker, is made up of many former Witcher developers. [22] The game sold over a million copies in its first three days, and Alinea puts about 410,000 of those on Steam. [22] Poland is its second-biggest market on Steam, with 11% of players, behind the US at 34%. [22]

    Why it matters — More than half of the new studio's buyers already knew its developers' last big game. [22] Alinea also found that 9% of Dawnwalker players had played Capcom's Onimusha: Way of the Sword. [22]

11. 12

    Fallout's co-creator says the cuts will pass, and come back

    Tim Cain, who co-created the original Fallout, posted a video last week on why the games industry is losing so many jobs. [24] He named three causes: a correction after heavy investment during Covid, hardware costs pushed up by AI data centres, and investors moving money out of games. [24] He said this bad period will pass and new ones will follow. [24] He pointed to the 1983 crash of the US games business to show it is not new. [24]

    Why it matters — Cain told younger developers that expecting a stable 30-year career in games was a mistake. [24] PC Gamer points to Blizzard workers' first union contract as one attempt to change those conditions. [24]