A Big Overhaul Of Xbox Game Pass Is In The Works

Michael McWhertor is a New York-based journalist and editor with more than 20 years of experience covering games, industry events, technology, movies, and TV. Project Helix might have an eye-watering price when it launches in 2028

A couple of posts back in Guiding Key, Kotaku’s year-long Kingdom Hearts replay book club, I said that Kingdom Hearts was my first foray into Final Fantasy. I was young enough at the time that I didn’t even realize this series was meant to be a crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy until I opened up Jiminy Cricket’s journal and saw those characters listed as having originated from an RPG series I only really knew from the Final Fantasy X commercial that would play on the TV sometimes. Now that I’m an adult and have played a great deal of Final Fantasy games, it’s fascinating watching Kingdom Hearts’ opening hours with full knowledge of who these characters are as they interact with Donald, Goofy, and of course our hero Sora, who exists in between Disney’s light-hearted, family friendly vibes and Final Fantasy’s emotional highs and lows. The opening segments set in Sora’s home on Destiny Islands and in Traverse Town, the place that has essentially become a safe haven for people whose worlds are disappearing, probably best reflect what Final Fantasy fans were hoping the series would be in terms of its crossover potential.

Love And Deepspace, the mobile game that serves players sweet, romantic, and sometimes horny fantasies featuring five hunks of grade-A quality man, hasn’t wholly recovered from the social and economic battering it took when the developers released, then un-released its sixth love-interest, Valko. His fiercely loyal cadre of fans have dug in their heels, remaining committed to not spending a dime on the gacha game until he is re-released. Each new event brings hope it will be The One and while that hasn’t happened yet, this latest event seems to be actively making things worse. New in Love and Deepspace is a crossover event with Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villenueve’s 2017 follow-up to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. I can’t really tell why LADS is featuring an event tied to a Totally Fine But Otherwise Didn’t Really Need To Be Made sequel to one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, unless maybe this is some circuitous attempt to remind people there’s an Amazon TV show set in the Blade Runner universe coming next month. But some of the game’s messaging around the event is rubbing Valko fans the wrong way. What you touch—is it real?

Earlier this year, I embarked on a pivotal journey, one that I'm sure upon finishing will change me for good: I started watching Haikyu!! It's my first sports anime (when you're a chubby little muffin like I was, you take more interest in Not Moving over Sports), an abscess in the lexicon of genres I've dipped my toes into, one I'm rectifying after all these years. And friends, it's good eatin'. I even, incredibly briefly, floated the idea of taking up volleyball. Yet now I don't have to, and it's all thanks to a delightful, incredibly Wii Sports coded game called just volleyball. just volleyball [sic] is a sports game that is exactly what it says on the tin. You are immediately greeted, in its demo, with an avatar customising screen not too dissimilar to the Mii Channel of Wii days gone by. There's lots of hair options, some charmingly skewy face designs, you can set how your voice sounds, choose the number on your jersey, it's all good stuff. And then comes the volleyball.

Updated: Oct 20, 2026 8:20pm UTCPolice in Santa Ana, California estimate that more than $963,000 in collectible trading cards was stolen from a FedEx truck outside of PSA’s Santa Ana headquarters. The theft went viral in mid-October after several card collectors reported that they had received emails from PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) stating that a FedEx truck carrying their collections had been burglarized. One of the most prominent voices in this conversation was a collector by the screen name SKY-B, who claimed that more than $100,000 worth of cards that he’d hand-delivered to PSA at a card show for grading were now lost in the ether. "We will compensate you for the items from your order that were involved, which is based on fair market value up to the Maximum Insured Value ("MIV") you selected for each item. "@natsturner, I pray you handle this and take care of everyone affected in the most professional manner possible. I have an awful feeling PSA is going to be extremely unfair on what the values of these cards are.— SKY-B (@SKYBCards) October 17, 2026 PSA responded to the situation in a statement to IGN, outlining their plans to refund the affected customers and

Electronic Arts created social media accounts for its long-dormant boxing sim franchise Fight Night and the first post was exactly what fans wanted to hear: Fight Night is coming back. The full post reads, "To everyone who stayed in our corner: Fight Night is coming back. " And there's an image of a pair of boxing gloves hanging over a boxing ring with the caption, "The fight is never over. " There are no additional details as of now, such as who's developing the project (the original and most recent two were built by EA Canada in Vancouver, while Fight Night Round 2 and Round 3 were developed by the now-shuttered EA Chicago), whether it's even a new game at all or potentially a remaster or remake – which I find unlikely given all of the licensing involved in these games; odds are it's new entry – or a release window. Or, heck, if it's even targeting the current generation of consoles. Regardless, the return of Fight Night should be welcome news to a lot of gamers, myself included. In the run-up to next month's 25th anniversary of Xbox, I've been writing a series of retrospective pieces about Xbox games I have fond memories of over the past quarter-century.