It sure looks like well into development, so I wouldn't be too surprised! Fingers crossed but ultimately I hope they take all the time that they need.

I agree with both @ShogunRok and several commenters. When FF16 is firing on all cylinders, it's peak gaming. Boss fights like Titan, Bahamut and Leviathan are on another level entirely, and the game handles them even better and grander than God of War.

That said, the pacing can really drag, the RPG elements are also minimal and streamlined, and outside of combat and cutscenes there's very little else to do.

Overall, Rebirth scratched my RPG itch far more effectively, delivering everything I associate with the genre: exploration, equipment customization, and a variety of side activities.

But that doesn't diminish what FF16 achieves: it will stay with you and deliver some absolutely stunning moments. Play it, especially if you're not too fussed about deep RPG mechanics!

Elliot's demo was so addictive...but Idk if I want to get it at full price.

R type Tactics has an interesting and refreshing concept, but the reviews for the original games aren't that amazing. Will you guys be reviewing this one?

Doing a Grandia II HD playthrough as I finally picked it up in the days of play sale.

Revisited Saros for the photo-safari of Carcosa - it was fun!

@themightyant Agreed. Well at least with Ocarina we got a tiny sneak peak at the art direction of the game. The craziest thing it Nintendo can probably show a lot more, as the game is coming out in 2026 - probably before Lufey, and we got like 20 minutes of that one.

@DeepSpace5D Agreed, it looks like a fun little excuse to revisit all the biomes.

Fascinating stuff.
Honestly, Persona 6 deserved a much grander reveal than that (kind of meaningless) little teaser - but given everything we came to know about how these showcases were put together, I wouldn't be shocked if it was cobbled together by some Xbox intern about five days before the show.
Well, at least we know green is going to be the colour.

The trailer at Nintendo Direct seemed really rough around the edges. Maybe it was the Switch version but still looked in development.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

Third person? PS5 Pro support? Is this the time of my life when I finally play Halo?

"Our business isn’t particularly healthy"
"The Titanic had some buoyancy issues"
"The Black Death was a bit of a wellness setback"

I really appreciated the gameplay in the demo tbh. I am not sold on the look of things. What settings are you guys using to play? after some tinkering I went with performance mode with raytracing, uncapped, on Pro. Any recommendations?

Come out in November, like a boss.

This tears my soul apart as it's one of my favorite games ever ;_;

@ShogunRok I see your point point, but tbh I never felt obliged to do anything. The minigames rewards didn't bother me nearly as much as Chadley did 😅 I literally muted my TV and put on a podcast during his missions - and the little gremlin STILL talked through my controller like something out of a horror film. Iconic in the worst way.

The Junon Parade or odd Chocobo race (so much fun, agreed) feel right at home in FF - fun one-offs that make the experience more varied and way more elegant than, for instance, FFX's notorious celestial weapons activities, that were practically bordering on a secret society acceptance ritual.

Here's hoping part 3 gives us the best of both worlds - a lot of minigames but a clear indication you don't need to do them. (And maybe less Chadley. Please?)

"Excessive mini-games" or, you know, you could just play the mini-games that you feel like playing! It's not like you have eat the whole supermarket if you wanted a bag of crisps. I prefer the content to be there and choose not to play it than not having it in the first place, at least when it's clearly presented as a side-activity.

That said, I really liked the queen's blood tournament you had to play through on the ship in Rebirth but I see his point.

Witcher expansion: please bring me a new Gwent tournament.

I thought it wasn’t a very strong direct, especially after the other 3 shows, but I got something out of it, namely Muramasa.

Bummer that Metaphor is just a straight port.
Will definitely stay tuned for more Zelda OoT news

Psst, psst...I got 17/253, what did you get? Something feels off, there's no way that's right. Really can't afford to bomb this one.

Finally this beautiful game is out of the cage. This was my favorite announcement from the Nintendo Direct and one of the best from the whole week.

Ah! Told you it looked terribad before knowing it was mobile stuff repurposed. I don't care if it's got Final Fantasy stamped on the box: bad aesthetics are bad aesthetics

@Pandalulz Ah! I don't play mobile games so I missed this. Welp, that's just as atrocious.

Just push it to 2027. Fall 2026 is already a bloodbath, and the audience that vibes with Kena, spirit guides, lush worlds, Zelda-adjacent puzzle-combat, is the same one that'll be deep in the Ocarina of Time remake. No need to fight for the same eyeballs. Take the extra time, polish it up, and give it a clean runway.

What a rich saga to unpack, and I mean: the Nintendo -Square relationship. Great dramatic arcs. A breakup, a cold war, a slow reconciliation, and now what looks like a genuine renaissance.

Some of you know that I'm highly allergic to KH but I am genuinely happy that you got your tailer guys! Square- Enix is sure busy.

I'm really not feeling the art direction. I appreciate HD-2D as a style, but this execution isn't working for me. It gives off vibes similar to that Secret of Evermore, a more Western-oriented entry in the Seiken Densetsu series, which feels like an odd fit.

The protagonist also comes across as a fairly generic anime archetype, reminiscent of a Xenoblad lead. Possibly the lowest the series has gone aesthetically, in my opinion.

That said, I'm curious to learn more details as they emerge.

Best of luck to all reviewers this fall — you'll have your work cut out for you!

Having a lot of fun with it - can confirm that the opening hours are the hardest, it really lets you do what you want later on.

Happy for them!

What now? That is hysterical! XD
Kinda entertaining tbh, you can't make this up.

Hi team XBOX, I am ready to be hired:

We at Xbox are thrilled to announce that we have listened to player feedback and we are proud to introduce our most decisive, unambiguous, coherent and permanent-until-next-Tuesday roadmap yet.

We understand some players have expressed concern that Game Pass is not yet profitable. We want to reassure everyone that profitability is something we are actively thinking about. We have a slide about it. The slide is green. The numbers on the slide are going up. We have not confirmed which direction "up" is on this particular slide, but we have been told by three separate focus groups that the vibes are strong.

We are committed to bringing our games everywhere, by which we mean: specific places, on specific days, under specific conditions.
Our PlayStation offering, originally four games, has been updated to 23 games and a half. The half game is a deliberate design choice that we call a "cross-platform narrative bridge experience." The first half is available on PS5 on Fridays, odd months only. The second half requires ownership of a secondary platform. We cannot confirm which one. We appreciate your patience and your continued willingness to own multiple consoles. Everything is an Xbox. Sometimes. Under specific conditions.

Lastly we are proud to announce that our next-generation console, currently referred to internally as Project Helix, will be named 063 xobx. The lowercase lettering is intentional. It signals humility. The reversed spelling signals that we are approaching the market from a fundamentally different direction than before: specifically, from behind but also forward, laterally but also upwards. The core innovation is that 063 xobx is in fact a green PC with a xobx sticker, which we feel represents a meaningful leap forward in sticker technology and a streamlined supply chain. The number 063 was chosen because all other numbers were already taken, and because we strongly believe that XBOX 063 xobx will create no product ambiguities for the paying customers. Also the other numbers had bad vibes.

I had some innocent fun on the flight home. Don't take this as spite. Could be very easily done about PlayStation or Nintendo.

They sure make PlayStation’s autistic silence sound good.

No rest for the gamer and no way I am picking them all up at launch.
Also: I feel like this September and October we might just want to create a support group for reviewers. Consider strong Italian coffee already brewed.

Guys, I know this is a strange and hard pill for Xbox fans to swallow but in the end it’s just videogames - relax and enjoy the game wherever you feel like it’s the best place for you.

That weird titling was trying to make us all feel Senua’s insanity.

I secretly loved when they uniformed the Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West lettering btw.

@AdamNovice it was announced for PS5 but it will release on launch on Switch 2 instead, skipping Series S for two months and returning to PS5 but only on Fridays during odd months as a part of selected four "odd months games" that will then become 13 games and a half (only half game available on PS, you have to play the rest on another platform). Also: next console called 063 xobx (not capitalized). It’s the strategy ♟️ 🧠

I can see this selling like crazy on PlayStation. Also: disc and code is how it should be! Please become a trend!

Will definitely tune in for this. Let's hope for some kind of dungeon redesign - it seems the last months from golden are included this time around and that's already promising.

Switch skipping day one release still feels a little baffling to me. Do they know who plays their games?

It’s all looking really cool (minus the generative AI) and I hope our gal Eve will also be very present and playable.

Ok guys, stuff we got from this teaser: Persona 6 i s coming out and it’s set in school. I will also tell you from my insider source that Sony is working on a new GT title that features sport cars. 🤫🤫🤫

@Toot1st sometimes guys that have similar taste to mine will recommend a game that wouldn’t immediately pick my interest and I would happily give it a try because maybe I am missing out on something I might like.

This looks rather generic to me but if you guys say it's really good I will play it.

Fable and Halo: Day One on PS5.
Forza Horizon: timed exclusive.
Gears of War: was in full development but now is exclusive.
New announcements like Senua: on everything.

I am happy for xbox fans if that's what they want but this company is all over the place.
It's hard for us hardcores to keep track and we are the kind of person that read gaming news almost everyday...

My favourite Persona game! Please Atlus don't screw this up with weird decisions

@Aba Me too! Thought this was the day. Where is that game?

Do we care? I don't. It looks exactly like some western title I saw a million times.

But the new strategy for this week seem to cherry-pick the exclusives, at least. Idk if it will make sense for them but happy for Xbox fans that were clamoring for exclusives!

I'd say

1 - SGF
2 - State of Play (surprisingly the best paced one)
3 - Xbox showcase

Actually enjoyed all of the shows, XBOX studios stuff is just not my jam and you can only show a certain number of shooters but hey Crazy Taxi, P4R, P6 - can't complain even it was spoiled by leaks.

That was so dark for a moment I thought it was gonna be SMT!
The decision to make it playable day 1 on GP makes a lot of sense since they know not many people are buying it on XBOX, I hope Sega got a big economic return from that

Agreed with many of the points in the comments. I personally don't care about any of their more identitary series but the messaging (and strategy) is confusing and weak.

@Questionable_Duck they clearly have been losing a lot of money and Microsoft is not happy about the state of XBOX (well, who could possibly be?), otherwise these “4” games would have not been published on PS at all.
They just lost credibility and sadly (even for the sake of competition) there is nothing they could possibly do to turn the ship around and these contradicting decisions further solidify the perception of an unreliable brand.

@MichaelNau it looks like some of the best looking, later master system games like land of illusion and sonic 2 (both came out around 1992)

The tv appearance of the alien invader made me chuckle: "we are here to plunder your resources, because that is what we do!" XD

@Questionable_Duck A limited numbers of player will actually purchase the game outside a gamepass subscription.
As Christopher Dring explained, Microsoft's definition of "profit" is just plainly fabricated for PR needs, as the company doesn't appear to factor in lost revenue that its own studios suffer from putting games on Game Pass when calculating profitability. Once you factoring in first-party development costs, Game Pass may be losing money — even if Microsoft claims otherwise. But at this point who believes anything they say?

@trev666 I get that you mean but it's more a reflection on the business - PlayStation doesn't need to publish on PC to make the games profitable, Xbox does need the PlayStation revenue.
Also porting Gears of War 1 and not E-day seems just a bit dumb? Just decide what series you publish and stick to one decision for more than 2 weeks...completely unreliable company.

I have had more fun than I should with this title and I am so happy it is getting a second season. And collaborating with Eva and Godzilla? That is just wild.
Bring on Bayonetta, Gillius and Hulkenberg or any of the guys from Metaphor as pilots!

@AdamNovice Misato would also make a lot of sense behind the wheel. Put her on the light blu alpine Renault