Pokémon & Nintendo

• The Pokémon North America International Championships (NAIC) is officially moving to McCormick Place in Chicago for 2027! To hype up the competitive scene, The Pokémon Company also revealed a slew of sweet promo cards, plushies, and merch for the 2026 Pokémon World Championships and PokémonXP event arriving this August.
• A new description for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Nintendo Switch 2 suggests the upcoming remake might be a highly faithful 1:1 recreation of the N64 classic rather than a massive reimagining. Get ready to relive Hyrule exactly as you remember it, but with a fresh coat of paint!
• A "holy grail" sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. just shattered records by selling for a staggering $3 million USD at auction. It's an incredible milestone for video game preservation and collecting.
• In the "why did they even bother?" department, Nintendo's ongoing patent lawsuit against the developers of Palworld might net them so little money that you'll wonder why they dragged it out for almost two years.
• If you're still building your console setup, there is already a massive deluge of Pokémon-themed Nintendo Switch 2 controllers hitting the market to check out.

Fortnite

• The countdown has officially begun: The Unvaulting Event for Fortnite OG goes live in just 24 hours, bringing plenty of exciting map changes and classic loot back to the island. Make sure to log in early to experience the chaos before the season shifts!
• Fans are currently obsessing over Fortnite's brand new Pokémon-like Sprite creature collecting mechanic. The hype is so real that players are actively hunting rare species, with some of these digital critters actually being sold for real money on eBay.

Call of Duty

• Activision is bringing back campaign early access with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, letting players dive into the single-player story up to one week before the full game launches. This marks the return of a beloved feature we haven't seen in three years for the highly anticipated Korean Peninsula-set sequel.

Indie Games

• The mid-summer gaming dry spell is officially a myth! Steam Next Fest is delivering the goods alongside a trio of surreal shooters, a massive new Stellaris expansion, and a brand-new RPG from the brilliant devs behind Octopath Traveler.
• Keep an eye on Scarlet Deer Inn, a beautifully hand-embroidered medieval adventure game that looks like a chill time, but hides a surprisingly challenging and dark exterior beneath its pleasant visuals.
• If you're playing Mina the Hollower, the 2D Zelda-inspired action RPG, developer Yacht Club Games has confirmed the game features a deeply hidden secret ending—but good luck figuring out how to unlock it!

Steam & PC

• Following the jaw-dropping Final Fantasy 7 Revelation trailer at Summer Game Fest, PC players are flocking back to Steam to play through the heavily discounted Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth to prepare.
• Playground Games is reaching new heights with Forza Horizon 6, which is earning widespread critical praise and signaling a massive new peak for open-world driving games.
• In a bizarre move, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 just received its first significant Steam patch in nearly a decade, but players are reporting that it appears to have broken more than it actually fixed.
• Over 300 games launched on Steam last week, and a staggering 120 of them featured AI disclosures. Unfortunately, that includes one joker trying to charge $100 for an almost entirely AI-generated game.
• If you're feeling overwhelmed by your backlog before Grand Theft Auto 6 drops, GeForce NOW might be your secret weapon to finally clearing out those unmissable PC titles.

Gaming Roundup

• Behaviour Interactive celebrated Dead by Daylight's 10th anniversary with a massive stream, capped off by the terrifying reveal that Terrifier icon Art the Clown is joining the game in November 2026.
• Ubisoft has published a deep dive into Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced, promising loads of new content that wasn't present in the original release for the beloved pirate adventure.
• Xbox is looking to "accelerate" the release of new Fallout and Elder Scrolls titles, giving fans hope that we might finally get actual updates on whether The Elder Scrolls 6 even exists after eight years of silence.
• Mad Max mastermind George Miller reportedly wants to make one more movie and a TV show before selling the rights to the franchise, so we'll see how that impacts any potential gaming spin-offs in the future!