ID@XBOX x IGN Showcase Recap: All the News and Announcements

You can smell it in the air can't you? The chill in your nostrils and the earthy whiff as leaves fall and the sun departs for another year. Yes, autumn is here, meaning we're teetering on the cavernous hole of near-nothingness as the entire games industry gives GTA 6 the widest berth imaginable. But that doesn't mean there isn't stuff to be excited about, of course. And the latest edition of the Galaxies Showcase has chucked a few more things onto the 'ooooh intriguing!' pile. Actually, quite a lot of things given its nearly two-hour runtime; but while you can watch the full thing in its entirety if you've got the time, we've also picked out a few of the announcements that especially caught our eyes and highlighted them below. Was all this really just an excuse for Connor to enthuse about penguins? Perhaps! Very promising musical adventure There are no Ghosts at the Grand has a demo

Patricia is the former editor-in-chief of Kotaku, where she spent a decade writing and editing. Prior to that, she served as the Culture Editor at Polygon, and as a reporter at The Verge. Hernandez specializes in Pokémon TCG, Nintendo, and offbeat internet culture stories. The trippy new RPG adventure is presented by Bethesda

You've heard of the drill that will pierce the heavens, so introducing: the drill that is attached to an entire city that will pierce the earth. That's the concept for CitaDrill, a roguelite city-builder where the city is encased in a big ole dome, a larger than life drill attached to its base that you dig through an infested planet. It's a lot, of course, but it's got some lush pixel art and a demo you can try out for yourself as part of this Steam Next Fest, too. When you start things off, all you have is your humble drill, and a need to dig downwards. As you do so, drilling up different kinds of blocks nets you a range of resources, all dependent on the colour of the blocks you've crushed up. In typical city building fashion you use these to build up your domed city, with different fixtures providing various bonuses. Perhaps you add in a pressure valve to reduce a pressure buildup status, or you put up some power lines to get certain buildings and modules working. You may even decide to, uh, print a worker to get some jobs done.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wants to release a new handheld gaming device in 2027. That’s according to a new profile of the executive in Fortune. The plan suggests a successor to the existing Xbox Ally X manufactured by Asus, though fights over the OS apparently remain an ongoing issue. Fortune states that Sharma wants to release a “next-generation handheld device by the 2027 holiday season,” followed by the next Xbox home console in holiday 2028. Whether the Project Helix “family of devices” includes both is unclear, as is the pricing, though Fortune also reported that Project Helix Xbox consoles could cost as much as $1,800 without subsidies. Perhaps the more interesting tidbit from the article, however, is about an ongoing “turf battle” between the Xbox and Windows teams. Sharma’s team wants software optimized for gaming. The Windows team wants the handheld to use a version of Windows Home as the basis for its OS. Here’s the excerpt: Tensions ran high enough that a senior Xbox executive threatened to scrap the handheld project rather than adopt the Windows build, according to people briefed on the clash.

Austin Manchester is a writer and editor living in New York City. At Polygon, he covers gaming and entertainment news, reviews new video games, interviews behind-the-scenes talent, and more. He enjoys discovering hidden gems and sharing them with Polygon's audience. Previously, he was the gaming editor for AIPT Comics and has written for other outlets like XDA, How-To Geek, and The List. He enjoys soulslikes, character-driven RPGs, and third-person shooters plucked straight out of the Xbox 360 era. He also likes to flex his non-video game nerdy knowledge sometimes, whether that's explaining who's who in the new Wolverine game or recommending a comic book series about a sentient sword.

If you thought the Magic: The Gathering money-printing machine was going to peak with last year’s record-setting Final Fantasy crossover, think again. Wizards of the Coast’s collectible card game just had another standout quarter thanks to sets like The Hobbit and Reality Fracture, leading Hasbro to report 15 percent revenue growth year-over-year. How long before they just rename the entire toy company MTG, Inc.? Wizards of the Coast reported $367 million in operating income from the quarter, the majority of which came from Magic: The Gathering. That in turn accounted for over 66 percent of Hasbro’s overall operating income last quarter. That number jumps to roughly 90 percent when you look at the last nine months. Yes, Hasbro owns everything from Hot Wheels and Transformers to Play-Doh and Peppa Pig, but that’s not where the money is coming from anymore. It’s coming from people spending hundreds of dollars on boxes of booster packs that contain cards called things like The Queen of Dale and Ajani Resolute. Wizards’ full year earnings have been buoyed even further by big licensed tie-ins like Marvel’s Avengers and the upcoming Star Trek Universes Beyond set coming in November.