Tokyo Game Show 2026's 30th instalment ran only four of its five days after the final day was canceled due to an oncoming typhoon, with remakes and legacy IP dominating the showfloor. A preliminary CESA report found 86% of developers self-reported using AI tools, up from 51% last year, while Level-5 drew controversy for prominent AI use in its showcase and trailers, prompting CEO Akihiro Hino to apologize.
This episode of The Game Informer Show spends a large chunk of time on Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, with Eric sharing thoughts after putting 130+ hours into Intelligent Systems' strategy-RPG. The show then briefly touches on early impressions of Control Resonant, and Alex reports back from Blizzcon 2026, including hands-on time with the World of Warcraft: Forever beta.
Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie contains very few overt references to the larger franchise, taking place primarily in Raccoon City with the Umbrella Corporation, a typewriter, and Heavy Field shotgun shells. It follows an ordinary man named Bryan through one night stuck in a Resident Evil-style ordeal, reacting as a player rather than a series protagonist across a 90-minute runtime. The author says it expertly captures the emotional experience of playing a Resident Evil game and replaces Werewolves Within as their favorite video game film adaptation.
Inflated AAA budgets have pushed studios to lean on focus groups and market research in late development, but these methods are deeply limited in usefulness. The real problem isn't executives who think they know game design better than developers, but those who think a room of random strangers does, and the loop of reworks and focus groups erodes both a game's originality and its developers' morale.
Take-Two president Strauss Zelnick said even a well-known franchise like GTA still needs marketing, because "you always have to go out and create enthusiasm." He pointed to the Barbie movie as an example of a globally recognized IP that was still marketed heavily. He noted Rockstar's campaign so far has included a soundtrack album, a Dazed cover story, and an exclusive 27-minute Netflix preview that drew 31.1 million views in four days.
The Chinese animated series "Memory Management Bureau" has sparked discussion for its deep integration of video game elements and its tributes to GAINAX. It uses arcade hidden characters and crosshair halos as its backbone while directly exploring whether gaming has meaning, referencing works like "Evangelion," "Gurren Lagann," and "FLCL." The author argues it carries on GAINAX's spiritual legacy with a more accessible approach.
In Honor of Kings: Chess of Kings, the AI assistant "Lingbao" guides players on when to level up, draw cards, and pick cards, helping the author learn the game from scratch and reach Gold rank. As rank rises, the AI's usefulness declines and opponents start using "unconventional moves" the AI wouldn't use, which the author expects will bring more variety to matches between experienced players.
Saber Interactive chief creative officer Tim Willits said traditional legacy developers make a mistake by employing 200 people in places like Texas, California and New York before they have a vertical slice. He argued big studios should take work-for-hire, remasters and small side projects to keep reliable income, as Saber does alongside titles like Space Marine 2.
Remedy senior level designer Arhi Makkonen told GamesIndustry.biz how the studio approached the open world of Control Resonant, which releases on September 24 and swaps protagonist Jesse Faden for her brother Dylan Faden, moving from The Oldest House to the streets of Manhattan. He calls it the biggest world Remedy has ever made, with colour-coded zones and landmarks used to guide players while keeping movement as unrestricted as possible. Dylan can shift gravity to walk on walls, leading the team to adopt an "if it looks walkable, it is walkable" approach after extensive iteration.
Wuthering Waves' 3.6 main story "烟云幽远心剑鸣" has Qingxiao choose to reconcile with her inner demon rather than defeat or submit to it. The development team says the key to long-term operation is making players trust the game is still growing, not relying on a single major version or crossover. Version 3.6 also adds sword-flight and sword-intent puzzle mechanics, and the official team says it will optimize performance across all platforms by switching programming languages, raising iOS performance by over 10 frames on average.
Game Informer interviewed the World of Warcraft: Forever team at BlizzCon, with lead game designer Tim Jones and lead software engineer Nora Mills discussing new zones like Mount Hyjal and Riverglades, Azeroth's new lighting and particle system, and plans to improve the leveling experience for all players. The interview also covered add-on support, pricing for the new Skyborne elf race, and how Blizzard plans to implement future content such as new classes, including the long-requested Tinkerer.
Murdoku combines Sudoku logic with murder mystery: players place suspects or victims in an N×N grid so each person appears only once per row and column, and whoever shares a region with the victim is the killer. The free web version supports Chinese, and it is based on a same-named bestselling book by Canadian puzzle designer Manuel Garand published in 2025, with 2 volumes out and a third due this October.
IP consultant Christian Fonnesbech, who has worked with teams behind Dead Island, Metro, Conan Exiles and others, argues that switching main characters for a sequel is a common mistake because the protagonist is the easiest part of a new IP to own legally and the main source of emotional connection. He points to Hades 2, Control Resonant, God of War Laufey and The Witcher 4 as examples, questioning the business wisdom of replacing leads like Jesse Faden with her brother Dylan.
EA Sports FC 26 has reached the end of its lifecycle, with Ultimate Team no longer running new events and its web and app versions shut down. Playing only the web-based pack-opening mode, the author earned 4.16845 million coins over the year, about 350,000 a month, enough to buy each season's 500,000-coin paid pass without extra spending. Ultimate Team data resets every year, pushing players to FC 27, while FC 26 still costs at least $69.99.
miHoYo launched the AI companion product BSide: Olivia Lin on Steam on July 13, 2026, and announced on August 11 that it would shut down at the end of August, only 29 days after launch. After the shutdown, a player named Ying Rushi started a group to collect letters and organize Lin Li's persona and reply rules, aiming to recreate her with prompts in common AI tools. Two days after the online version went offline, he released a GitHub open-source project that restores Lin Li's local letter service.
Xbox Game Studios has picked up publishing rights to Hideo Kojima's Physint after Sony dropped the project, which was originally announced at a Sony State of Play event in early 2024. Sony's exit likely reflects Death Stranding 2: On The Beach's roughly 2 million copies sold and Physint's long development timeline, while Xbox is betting on Kojima's return to stealth-action. The move chips away at the goodwill Sony and Microsoft will need as they prepare to sell what will likely be their most expensive consoles ever.
Saber Interactive chief creative officer Tim Willits says the company has never replaced anyone with AI and does not use generative AI in games like Space Marine, Hellraiser and Stuntman, only experimenting with it in Rideshare Stimulator's AI mode. Saber now has 3,500 employees across 15 studios but no real development in North America, keeping its Florida headquarters and a US publishing team. It is balancing tentpole titles such as Stuntman: Hollywood, John Wick, Turok: Origins and Jurassic Park: Survival with remasters including the original Hitman trilogy.
Saber Interactive chief creative officer Tim Willits has responded to accusations that the studio replaced a writer with ChatGPT, saying "we've never replaced anybody with AI" and calling CEO Matthew Karch's earlier remarks sarcasm. He confirmed that Rideshare Stimulator's main campaign story, characters and dialogue are written by human writers, with AI used for voice generation and some localization, while its optional Free Ride mode includes AI-generated passenger missions. Willits said Saber does not use generative AI in its production pipelines and expects bigger games focused on AI at next year's Gamescom.