Gaming, in brief

Xbox held its own broadcast at the Tokyo Game Show, a big yearly games fair in Japan, on 17 September. [9][1]

It ended with Hideo Kojima, the Japanese designer who made Metal Gear Solid, talking about his two games now published by Xbox, OD and Physint. [1][4]

Kojima named Bill Skarsgard, the actor who played the clown Pennywise in the film It, as the lead of Physint, a spy action game. [3][4]

Physint was announced as a PlayStation game in January 2024. [8] Kojima says PlayStation told his studio in mid-June 2026 that it would cancel the game. [8]

Xbox then agreed to publish Physint instead. [4] A report cited by Eurogamer says Sony left over the budget, the likely profit and the exclusivity terms. [4]

Kojima's last game, Death Stranding 2, has sold about 2.5 million copies, by the estimate of the research firm Alinea Analytics. [8] The analyst Serkan Toto points to that drop in sales from the first Death Stranding. [8]

Physint has no release date. [1] In 2025 Kojima guessed it was still five to six years from being finished. [8]

Kojima said OD, his horror game, is on schedule. [4] Its actors' recording had been paused by the 2025 strike of SAG-AFTRA, the US actors' union. [4]

The show also carried the campaign trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, with the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen as a villain and a war in Korea in the story. [2][1]

Modern Warfare 4 goes on sale on 23 October. [2] People who pre-order some editions can play the campaign from 16 October. [2]

Activision, which makes Call of Duty, calls the game the "epic conclusion" of Modern Warfare. [7] IGN says it is unclear whether that ends the story begun in 2019 or the whole series. [7]

Treyarch, another Call of Duty studio, said this week it is ready to make something new after two Black Ops games in a row. [7]

Most of the rest were games from Japanese and Asian studios, such as Persona 4 Revival, Crazy Taxi World Tour and Wo Long 2, due on 4 March 2027. [1]

Several of them, including Wo Long 2 and Persona 4 Revival, will go into Game Pass, Xbox's monthly subscription that gives players a library of games. [1]

Japan has long been a hard place for Xbox to sell, because Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies with a home advantage. [6] Xbox has still been there for 20 years. [6]

Why it matters. Watch whether Xbox gives Physint a release year; until it does, the only Xbox game here with a date is Modern Warfare 4 on 23 October.

The Dragon Quest series has sold more than 100 million copies in its 40 years, its official account said on 16 September. [11] The first game came out in Japan on 27 May 1986 from Enix, which is now Square Enix. [11] There have been 11 main games, plus spin-offs, novels, manga and cartoons. [11] Dragon Quest 12 was started again from scratch after it hit what its producer called a lot of hurdles, and it now has a new subtitle, Beyond Dreams. [11]

Why it matters. Polygon calls it one of the most influential role-playing series ever made. Its next main game, Dragon Quest 12, still has no release date or even a year. [11]

Nex Playground, a small console that uses a camera to follow players' bodies, goes on sale in Germany later this year for 319 euros. [12] It has sold over a million units and is close to a million paying subscribers. [12] Its president Thomas Kang says every major publisher has asked it to look at their old Kinect and Wii motion games. [12] A 2013 Kinect game, Freefall Racers, reached 150,000 families in its first month. [12]

Why it matters. Games that had no machine to run on are earning money again. The console's US price rose from $249 to $299 this year because memory chips cost more, and the company says even that does not cover its costs. [12]

Bruce Straley, the game director behind The Last of Us, told Edge magazine that big-budget games bore him. [10] He said every picture in God of War Laufey is amazing, but what the player does is not exciting. [10] He blamed a lack of room for new ideas in the most expensive games. [10] Straley left Naughty Dog, the Sony studio, in 2017 after Uncharted 4 and a long burnout, and now makes smaller games at his own studio, Wildflower Interactive. [10]

Why it matters. He helped design the style of game that Sony's studios now repeat. An IGN columnist made the same complaint this week, saying Sony's new games play much like their PlayStation 4 versions. [8]

The Blood of Dawnwalker came out earlier this month from Rebel Wolves, a Polish studio started by former Witcher 3 developers. [21] Its hero has 30 in-game days to save his family, and time moves only when he finishes a quest or learns a skill. [21] Polygon says the clock stops the game feeling too long, but not every player likes it. [21] Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz told Eurogamer the system may not return in later games, saying the studio will not force it where it does not fit. [21]

Why it matters. Polygon says the clock is what sets Dawnwalker apart from The Witcher 3 and other big open-world role-playing games. [21] So the one new idea in a well-reviewed first game is the part most at risk in the sequel. [21]

Capcom, the Japanese maker of Monster Hunter and Resident Evil, showed a longer trailer for Ascendance, the coming expansion to Monster Hunter Wilds, at the Tokyo Game Show. [13] It brings back Teostra, a fire-breathing monster first seen in Monster Hunter 2 in 2006. [13] The expansion adds a Boost Bracer, a new way to attack harder. [13] Many players had complained that Wilds was too easy when it launched. [13]

Why it matters. An expansion is sold to people who already own the game, so it has to answer what they disliked. Eurogamer reads the harder fights as Capcom answering the complaints about difficulty. [13]

Moza, a maker of steering wheels for racing games, showed its first PlayStation-licensed wheels at the Tokyo Game Show. [14] The range has an entry package, a more powerful one, and a wheel base for people who already own a Moza rim. [14] PlayStation support has to be built into the wheel base itself. [14] From launch the wheels work with Gran Turismo 7, and Moza is now working with its maker, Polyphony Digital. [14]

Why it matters. Until now, Moza's wheels did not work on Sony's consoles, and racing fans had asked for years for a licensed range. [14]

PAX Australia, a fan convention, runs in Melbourne from 9 to 11 October. [15] Sega will bring four games to try, including Total War: Warhammer 40,000 and Alien: Isolation 2. [15] Modern Warfare 4's online mode will be playable before its 23 October launch. [15] Square Enix will let visitors play Final Fantasy 14 on Nintendo's Switch 2, and more than 90 small independent games will be shown. [15]

Why it matters. Shows like this let publishers put unfinished games in front of players weeks before launch. It is the next stop after Tokyo for several of the same games, including Persona 4 Revival. [15][1]

Diablo 4's new season, Hell's Legacy, went live more than six hours late on 15 September because players could not log in. [16] Blizzard said the season was delayed while it fixed the problem, and some features stayed switched off afterwards. [16] The season marks 30 years of Diablo and brings back Deckard Cain and three old villains. [16][17] The same day was Diablo 4's launch on Nintendo's Switch 2. [17]

Why it matters. For people who bought it on Switch 2, the outage was their first sight of the game. [16] A season is the free update meant to bring old players back, and this one began with hours of login errors. [16]

Poncle, the small studio behind the hit Vampire Survivors, is making a game from the anime Jujutsu Kaisen. [18] It was announced in June for 2026, and a new trailer now says 2027. [18] That is also when the anime's next season is expected. [18] The game will have more than 20 fighters and online matches for up to eight players, where the last one standing wins. [18]

Why it matters. A game based on a cartoon sells best when the cartoon is on screen. The new date puts the two in the same year. [18]

Blizzard's team shooter Overwatch added Doctrine, a vampire support hero who both heals and does damage. [19] Players could try him for a weekend from 12 September. [19] Its next season starts on 6 October, and two heroes, Roadhog and Sombra, are being redesigned. [19] Blizzard and CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio behind Cyberpunk 2077, said Overwatch will get outfits from the Netflix anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners in 2027. [20] Edgerunners 2 comes to Netflix on 20 October. [20]

Why it matters. Overwatch is free to play and earns its money from outfits, so a crossover gives fans of a show something to buy. CD Projekt Red is also putting The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 on Blizzard's Battle.net store. [20]