Gaming, in brief

Computer parts getting dearer

Intel is expected to raise its processor prices by another 10% from 5 October. [17] Graphics card makers including Asus and AMD have raised prices in mainland China again. [18] The maker of a Neo Geo console remake pushed it back a year to find enough memory chips. [19]

Job cuts at big game companies

About 1,600 more jobs are due to go at Xbox, which owns Blizzard, over the next year. [1] Relic, the studio behind Company of Heroes, lost a large share of its staff in 2023 and 2024. [23] Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says this wave of layoffs will pass and another will follow. [24]

Old games brought back

Blizzard is bringing back StarCraft, which has had no brand-new game since 2015. [6] Heroes of the Storm, a Blizzard game left without major updates since 2022, gets a new hero. [14] Company of Heroes turned 20 and got a new mode last month. [23]

Companies running their own shows

Sony, Nintendo and Xbox stayed off the floor at PAX West, a fan convention in Seattle. [21] Blizzard held its own convention, BlizzCon, for the first time since 2023. [10] Level-5, the Japanese studio behind Professor Layton, showed its games at its own online event. [20]

1. 1Blizzard names 2029 for Diablo 5 and 2030 for a StarCraft shooter. Xbox is cutting 1,600 more jobs over the next year.
2. 2PlayStation buyers wait on a judge
3. 3Intel processors expected to cost 10% more
4. 4Graphics cards cost more in China, again
5. 5A Neo Geo remake waits a year for memory chips

Blizzard, the studio behind World of Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft, opened BlizzCon in Anaheim, California, on 12 September. [13][6]

The next test is whether Blizzard keeps both dates while Xbox cuts about 1,600 jobs over the next year. [1][2]

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]

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]

A company at its own show chooses what the crowd sees and hears, so the crowd's complaints have only one company to go to.

It could not choose how the crowd took the news that StarCraft is now a shooter, and with no rival on the stage, that reaction was about Blizzard alone.

The three console makers stayed off the shared floor in Seattle, and Nintendo held its own online Direct the next day.

Level-5 announced its comeback at its own online event, so when fans spotted AI-made footage the complaints went straight to its chief executive, who apologised himself.

Sony stopped shops selling its download codes, which made its own store the only seller, so buyers who felt overcharged had only Sony to sue.

A viewer at home meets a new game the way its maker chose to show it, with no rival's game shown beside it.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]