Gaming, in brief

Mojang, the studio that makes Minecraft, held its Minecraft LIVE show on Saturday 26 September. [7][1]

Its biggest news is a new dimension, a whole separate world that players travel to, called the Sift. [1][3]

Minecraft has had three dimensions since 2011: the Overworld, the Nether and the End. The Sift is the first new one in more than 14 years. [1][3]

Players meet the Sift first in Minecraft Dungeons 2, a spin-off where friends fight through dungeons together. It goes on sale on 29 September. [5][2]

Dungeons 2 comes out on PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2 and PC, and on Game Pass, Xbox's subscription, on the same day. [6]

The Sift reaches Minecraft itself, in both main versions of the game, in 2027. Mojang said almost nothing about how it will work there. [1][3]

The next update, which Mojang calls a game drop, adds ice caves underground. They bring a new enemy, the frozen zombie, which throws ice balls. [4][2]

More sound effect packs come to the Minecraft Marketplace, the game's own shop, by the end of the year. Kotaku expects them to cost money. [1][2]

Minecraft itself comes to Nintendo Switch 2 on 27 October. [1][2]

Asha Sharma, the new head of Xbox, wrote that more than 300,000 people play Minecraft for the first time on an average day. It has sold more than 425 million copies. [3][22]

The show came four days after Xbox cut 268 more jobs across its studios. [1][22]

Why it matters. Watch what the Sift turns out to be in Minecraft itself: Mojang showed only a glimpse, so Dungeons 2 on 29 September is the only full look players get this year. [3][2]

Insomniac Games, the Sony studio behind Marvel's Wolverine, released update 1.001.006 on 25 September. [10][9] It adds switches that turn off three kinds of hints: scent trails to whiskey bottles, sound clues for crates, and roots pointing to doors. [10] Players had complained that the game, out on PlayStation 5 since 15 September, holds their hand too much. [9] An update on 18 September had only made the trails fainter. [10] Hints the studio calls story-critical stay on. [10]

Why it matters. The game's hints were changed twice in its first ten days on sale, both times after players complained. The same patch fixed a bathroom sign that players had taken as a sign of AI-made art. [9][10]

Embark Studios will test a version of its shooter Arc Raiders with no player-against-player fighting, from 13 to 20 October. [11] In the normal game, players grab loot and try to get out with it while other players can attack them. [11] Embark says about 37% of its players play as friendly teammates, a share that has grown since launch. About 34% mainly fight other players. [11] Loot in the test will be worth less, because the danger is lower. [11]

Why it matters. Embark built the game around the risk of other players, and a large share of its players chose not to take it. Embark says the test is not a promise of a permanent mode. [11]

TinyBuild, the publisher of Hello Neighbor and Graveyard Keeper, said its revenue rose 18% to $20 million in the six months to June. [15] Games already on sale made 68% of its game money. [15] Games whose rights TinyBuild owns made 85%. [15] Its gross profit fell 5.7% to $9.8 million, because it paid more to the outside studios behind its new hits. [15] A second profit measure fell 23% to $3.2 million, because it spent more on marketing. Staff stayed near 200. [15]

Why it matters. The older games paid for this year's launches, and getting the new ones noticed cost money. TinyBuild says it now plans several games that cost more than $5 million each. [15]

Hard Shark Games released 29 games on Steam on 15 September, PC Gamer reported. [13] Every one is unfinished and sold in early access, and each store text opens with the same sentence. [13] A Steam store page costs $100, paid back once a game earns $1,000. [13] Hard Shark has 217 listings, and the busiest has never had more than 13 players at once. [13] Low estimates from review counts put three of the new games at $1,783 in five days. [13]

Why it matters. When a store page costs $100, many cheap games can pay even if almost nobody plays them. Polygon calls such copies clutter that threatens smaller studios' income. [12]

Brgames Interactive, a studio in Turkey with three people by its own website's count, will put Phantom Vice Auto on Steam on 19 November. [12] That is the day Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox but not on PC. [12] The game offers driving, shooting and a Miami-style city, and goes on sale unfinished. [12] Polygon says most other publishers are keeping their games away from the six weeks around GTA 6. [12]

Why it matters. Rockstar leaving PC out on launch day leaves PC players without the year's biggest game. A tiny studio is putting its game in front of exactly those players, on exactly that day. [12]

Happy Wheels, a gory ragdoll racing game first played in web browsers through Adobe Flash, came to Steam this week for $5. [14] It has been online for 16 years. [14] Its maker, Jim Bonacci, rebuilt it to run without Flash in 2020; Chrome stopped running Flash in 2021. [14] Two weeks after its Steam page went up, 750,000 players had wishlisted it, marking it as a game they want. He had hoped for 5,000 at best. [14]

Why it matters. A game players already remember starts with a crowd that a new game has to find. Nobody has said yet how many of those wishlists became sales. [14]

Jason Chen, head of the PC maker Acer, expects PC prices to rise another 20% before they fall in the second half of 2027, Digitimes reported. [16] He also said memory suppliers have a reason to push the story that costs are rising. [16] Apple's new Mac mini starts at $899, $300 more than the 2024 model with the same memory and storage. [17] IGN says Valve's new Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller arrived quietly because prices rose across the board. [18]

Why it matters. PC prices, the Mac mini and Valve's new machines all rose with the price of memory. IGN links the rising costs to AI. [17][18]

Steam is running two national game festivals until 28 September. [19] The Mexican Entertainment System shows more than 300 games from over 200 Mexican studios. [19] Serbian Games Week shows more than 200 games. [19] A third event, Out of the Box, gathers 130 games with unusual ideas. [19] Day of the Devs, a show aired on 9 December, the day before The Game Awards, takes entries from indie studios until 28 September. [19]

Why it matters. Each festival puts one country's small games together on a page Steam players already visit. Engadget says a studio does not have to pay curators large sums to get its game seen. [19]

Minecraft World, a Minecraft area being built at Chessington World of Adventures, a UK theme park, will include a rollercoaster called Escape the Nether. [1][2] It opens in 2027 alongside the first official Minecraft hotel. [1][8] Drawings released so far show wooden houses, Creepers, TNT blocks and a dining area styled on the Nether. [8] The news came at the same Minecraft LIVE show as the Sift. [8]

Why it matters. Minecraft now sells hotel rooms and rides as well as copies of a game. They open in the same year the Sift reaches Minecraft itself. [1]

Valve quietly added pet chickens to Counter-Strike 2, its online shooter, on 23 September; they are not in the update notes. [20] A player can get an egg in the weekly reward drop, but it cannot be traded and uses up both of that week's drops. [20] After a week it hatches. Fed, it grows into a chicken in one of 35 looks of different rarity, and it can learn tricks. [20]

Why it matters. The egg costs a player the week's other free rewards, so a pet now competes with them. PC Gamer notes Valve added pets rather than fixing the game's anti-cheat system. [20]

Team Jade, the studio behind the free shooter Delta Force, opens a test of Detonation, a bomb-defusal mode, on 27 September for PC and phone players. [21] Consoles get it later in the year. [21] The game is turning two, and a new map, Siege: Valkyrie, built on Unreal Engine 5, comes in early 2027. [21] There, players from different difficulty levels will share a match for the first time, the studio says. [21]

Why it matters. Two years in, the studio is still adding modes, and the game now runs on PC, phones and Xbox. These plans come from the studio itself, so they are promises until they arrive. [21]