According to a post title on r/Games, Ninja Theory, the studio behind Hellblade, has started laying off staff after Xbox announced it faces closure. The post has no body text, so the number of affected staff and further details are not disclosed.
Gears of War: E-Day is about to launch, and the article lists its unlock times by time zone. Pre-order and Game Pass players already got access last week, and the game is a prequel centered on Emergence Day, when the Locust Horde invaded the city of Kalona.
The Coalition used the Xbox Series S SSD as an extra tier of memory to supplement the console's 10GB of GDDR6 in Gears of War: E-Day, developed with Xbox's platform team and Advanced Technology Group. Digital Foundry says the technique could serve as a blueprint for future games on Series S and other memory-constrained platforms, and other game teams are already interested. With it, E-Day only had to cut one major feature, Lumen reflections, to keep a 60FPS target.
Two Halo fan projects, OpenCE and Project Reclaimer, have emerged in recent weeks, targeting Halo CE and Halo 3 respectively. OpenCE is an open source decomp of Halo CE's original Xbox source code that has gotten 128 players into a single multiplayer match and includes a full server browser. Project Reclaimer is a mod of the MCC version of Halo 3 that adds PC split screen, a server browser with dedicated servers and auto-downloading mods, and support for up to 64 players.
DuneCrawl is coming to PS5, Xbox Series, and Android on October 19. The Switch 2 and Switch versions are planned for later in 2026.
Two more games have been revealed for Xbox Game Pass in 2026, including a surprise shadow drop. Ubisoft's Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is out now for Ultimate subscribers, while Digital Pajamas' Don't Fret arrives in Winter 2026 on Series X|S, PC, and Cloud.
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden said on The Expansion Pass podcast that Xbox needs to pick a lane: either be a platform competitive with PlayStation, or be the biggest publisher in the world with Activision, Bethesda and Blizzard. He argued you can't be successful at both, since a platform needs exclusives while the biggest publisher has to be on every platform, calling it Xbox's Dreamcast moment.
Jez Corden says Xbox has moved World's Edge under Activision because it wants to develop other titles in the franchise, which is why World's Edge was not shut down despite layoffs. He said "AOE is not dead" as Xbox wants to grow the franchise and make new games. Age of Empires 4 released on October 21, and there is no info yet on new titles.
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Star Wars: Galactic Racer, the first release from UK studio Fuse Games, launches October 6 and is available for pre-order on the Xbox Store at £49.99 / $59.99. After a few early hours on Xbox Series X, the writer highlights its fast and furious racing, Burnout 3-style takedowns, a roguelite campaign, top-tier audio and presentation, and a stable 60FPS.
Explore the world, follow the clues, and uncover more about what happened here and what's still waiting to be discovered.
Pure Xbox played a roughly 15-minute combat-focused demo of the Fable reboot at Xbox FanFest in London, drawn from one specific mission and covering melee, magic and ranged attacks. The author found the combat weighty with momentum-based combos, praised the magic and called the crossbow the most overpowered weapon so far, while the parry system felt clunky at first glance. The demo ran at a smooth 60FPS, a 60FPS mode is confirmed for Series X at launch, and companion character Humphrey is voiced by Matt King; the game arrives in February 2027.
Star Wars Zero Company (PS5/XSX) is $47.97 on Amazon https://amzn.to/4rLvQC5
The Coalition Studio Creative Director Matt Searcy and Gameplay Design Director Pax Lyle told Pure Xbox how they made the Locust frightening again, from stripping the Wretch's armour to giving it a shriek attack drawn from a Gears 1 cinematic and letting the Seeder flip out of the ground to grab players. Searcy said the project started from scratch on Unreal Engine 5, so chainsaw duels, meat shields, and frag tags did not make it in, though they could return later. E-Day entered premium early access on October 1 and comes to Ultimate and PC Game Pass on October 6 alongside its full release on Xbox Series X|S.
This week Xbox put CEO Asha Sharma forward for a New York Times profile. The unfortunate takeaway was that Sharma had to deny the platform-holder was for sale.
As Xbox swings the axe, Gears of War: E-Day developers fear they'll be laid off straight after launch - and right before they'd be due their bonuses https://bit.ly/4rOZIh6
Eurogamer interviewed The Coalition art director Aryan Hanbeck, brand director Nicole Fawcett, and creative director Matt Searcy about Gears of War: E-Day's investment in gore. Hanbeck said the team felt fans were getting desensitised to the series' violence, so they aimed to make every kill feel more real, down to headshot audio, blood spray height, lingering mist, and body reactions. Searcy said gore was a huge investment and that each encounter was designed like a coiled spring. E-Day's first Season began with Early Access yesterday and runs eight weeks to 1st December, ranked PvP arrives 13th October, and general release is 6th October.
Reality's collapsing in Manhattan.
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said on the company's FY 2026 earnings call that demand will exceed supply in both 2027 and 2028, with the supply-demand environment only getting tighter. Xbox has said console storage and memory prices have already risen more than 2.5x and expects another doubling by the fall of 2027, making an affordable Project Helix console hard to picture.
Due for some family game time?
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden said Xbox must "pick a lane" on exclusive games, arguing it cannot succeed as both a platform and the world's biggest publisher. He said current Xbox CEO Asha Sharma appears to be trying to "right the ship," having signed Hideo Kojima's Physint and brought back console exclusives like Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution. Layden called it Xbox's "Dreamcast moment," noting the shift has been done before.
Sources say Microsoft has no plans to decelerate on Xbox Cloud Gaming, and the issue with older Samsung TVs stems from those sets no longer receiving updates. The latest Xbox Cloud Gaming requires new Chromium APIs for future features, while Samsung won't update its 2020 Tizen TVs and Chromium there hasn't been updated in almost a decade. Rumors that Microsoft cancelled upcoming Xbox Cloud Gaming controllers are false.
Someone has gotten the Xbox version of Halo: Combat Evolved running in a web browser, complete with multiplayer and split-screen support. It joins a recent wave of odd modded game clips, including Call of Duty operators doing Skate tricks and Black Ops 1's zombie mode running in Skyrim.
The best highlight show doesn't exi—