Xbox's first chief operating officer Helen Chiang leaves Microsoft just three months into the job

Helen Chiang has left her role as Xbox chief operating officer after just three months, …

Once dismissed as 'for kids,' Nintendo now enjoys rarefied critical status — except when it doesn't Switchboard is Polygon's weekly newsletter for all things Nintendo, sent on Thursdays and published on the site on Saturdays. You can subscribe here.

Giovanni Colantonio is a video game journalist who has covered the industry for two decades. He was formerly a senior editor at Digital Trends and has contributed to publications like Inverse, Fanbyte, and Hard Drive. His specialty is criticism, as he’s focused on a modern approach to video game reviews that’s focused on the nuances of how interactivity communicates to players. He is currently a member of the New York Video Game Critics Circle. Five years after its release, Metroid Dread still occupies a permanent space in my brain. Samus Aran’s nightmarish escape from a robot-infested abyss successfully revitalized the dormant Metroid series in 2021 by delivering a tightly designed Metroidvania full of challenging battles. There’s so much that’s still vivid in my memory now, but there’s one moment I have come back to time and time again: that ending.

Ashely currently works as a news writer for Polygon. After getting her Translation degree, she was hired as a guide and news writer for GameRant and TheGamer. She enjoyed working as an author for these sites for six years, and in 2026, she started at Polygon, where she is able to continue to do what she loves: writing about video games. The next few months just got a lot more exciting

The perfect replacement for Game of Thrones is not what you think If you’re looking for epic fantasy amid a whirlwind of politics and skulduggery, you’ll find little better than George R. R. Martin’s phenomenal Game of Thrones franchise. Whether it’s Game of Thrones, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, or House of the Dragon, the TV adaptations are a fantastic watch, with powerful, star-studded casts and insightful, in-depth worldbuilding woven expertly into the narrative.

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. Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto gave a wide-ranging press conference after winning a prestigious Japanese award