Latest Multi-platform Game News & Updates
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🎮 PlayStation, Multi-platformSony announces end of PlayStation physical disc production
PlayStation will stop making physical discs for PS5 and PS4 starting in 2028, implying that PlayStation 6 will be a digital-only console.
🎮 PlayStation, Multi-platformSony is killing all physical PlayStation game discs
Sony has announced that from January 2028 it will entirely stop the production of physical discs for new PlayStation games. From that point onwards, new releases will only be available in digital versions from the PlayStation Store and other retailers. Games released before January 2028 will still be available on disc. "This is a natural &8230;
🎮 PlayStation, Multi-platformSony Confirms PlayStation Disc Production Will End In 2028
Sony has officially confirmed that it will end the production of physical discs for PlayStation consoles, starting January 2028. In a new blog update, the company says that it made the decision based on how physical game disc sales have begun to decline, and in the future, all new games--both first- and third-party--will be available through the PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. Sony added that this new transition "has no impact" on games that have already been released or will be released. "This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today," the company added, while emphasizing that it will "continue to prioritize" resources on where consumers can access its games. The writing has been on the wall for years now, as recent reports from Sony have indicated a massive shift from physical to digital(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-just-reported-a-new-record-breaking-high-figure-but-its-unsurprising/1100-6539856/). PlayStation owners overwhelmingly purchase games digitally when compared to physical editions, and one of the biggest games of the year, GTA 6(https://www.gamespot.com/games/grand-theft-auto-vi/), will also be available purely as a digital product. While a "physical" edition will be sold at retailers, this is essentially a code-in-a-box copy(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/gta-6-physical-copies-wont-include-discs-just-download-codes/). It's also worth noting that both Sony and Microsoft released versions of their flagship consoles in 2020 that did not include a disc drive, and Sony's PS5 Pro doesn't ship with one by default (but it can still be added via a modular attachment). The other knock-on effect is that the next PlayStation console will not include a physical media drive for its base model, as Sony aims to keep costs down. "This pretty much guarantees that PS6 won't arrive until 2028 at the earliest," Ampere Analysis senior games research analyst Piers Harding-Rolls said to Game File(https://www.gamefile.news/p/sony-drops-playstation-discs-2028-ps3-vita-stores-closing). Even physical copies of games don't contain the full experience on the disc, with many acting as an authentication key while all game data is copied to the console--a process that usually requires a hefty download as well. On top of all this, Sony has also announced that it will be closing the PlayStation Store on PS3, as well as on PS Vita.
🍄 Nintendo Switch, Multi-platformRhythm Heaven Groove review: Nintendo's wacky music game sticks to the hits
Rhythm Heaven Groove revives a musical cult classic in safe fashion, with only one or two surprises to keep an old formula fresh.
🎮 Multi-platformNintendo’s Wackiest New Game Feels Like The Devs Getting Away With Something
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have known that Rhythm Heaven was a close cousin to WarioWare, but it never stood out to me as strongly as it did while playing Rhythm Heaven Groove. The sheer unapologetic weirdness of it intertwined with the strict timing-based minigames made this feel like WarioWare, but as a rhythm game. And I feel like a fool for just now discovering that these are two great tastes that go great together. The influences from WarioWare will be obvious to anyone who has played that long-running gonzo microgame series, but unlike those, the individual games in Rhythm Heaven Groove last much longer than a few seconds. After a short practice round to learn the rhythm and button prompts, you go into the actual performance that mixes together commands to the rhythm of a song. Almost all of your commands are mapped to the A button, but more complicated arrangements add one of the D-pad buttons for a different command. In an early game where you're driving a stunt car for a commercial, for example, the A button accelerates while the D-pad Down hits the brakes, so you need to alternate between them on command to stay aligned with the other stunt cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdMwqKiSeEE The WarioWare spirit shines through in both the art style--an eclectic blend of crude simplicity, chunky cartoonism, and occasional hyper-realism--and also in the gonzo spirit of the games themselves. The stunt car example is one of the more normal ones, but many of the games are downright bizarre. Across the breadth of Rhythm Heaven, you'll have to jump and roll as a cat doll, bounce fruits off your muscles as a bodybuilder, sort delicious pudding from tainted living pudding cups as a factory robot, and jump over windshield wipers during a rainstorm. The game frequently surprises you with new creative applications that all feel different, even if they're mechanically very similar. That sense of surprise meant that even when I didn't like a game as much, I loved seeing the creativity. In addition to adapting to each game's rhythm, you also often have to contend with distractions in the background. The kitty-hopping game--Hop, Stop, N Roll--transforms the background from a simple wood-paneled design to a kaleidoscopic beach scene, so part of the challenge is keeping your concentration and the beat going while the world changes around you. When you learn to "read" the games, you also start to notice little signs about your performance, like your fellow performer in the umbrella-folding game shooting you a dirty look if your timing was just slightly off. !(https://www.gamespot.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/NintendoSwitchRhythmHeavenGrooveScreenshot02.jpeg?w=1024) Rhythm Heaven Groove While the WarioWare influence is obvious, my time with Rhythm Heaven Groove also reminded me of another long-lost rhythm game: Elite Beat Agents. While no game has quite substituted for EBA's charm, mixing storytelling with pop songs and rhythmic touch screen taps, Rhythm Heaven Groove is similarly focused on nailing your percussive beats. The sound design has excellent feedback with a sharp, snappy snare that punctuates even harder when you nail a beat perfectly. Sometimes I would simply close my eyes to feel my way through the rhythm, and it worked just as well as watching on-screen. Everything has a sound cue, so this is one game you actually can play blindfolded. My absolute favorite aspect of Rhythm Heaven Groove, though, were the Remix stages. Each column consists of four stages, and they all feel varied as you're playing them and climbing the tower. When you reach the top, all four get remixed into one game, sometimes set to a real, credited J-pop song. At this point, all those games that seemed so different feel like different parts of the same whole, and you get to see them coming together. Sometimes a game will even fade into another mid-beat, showing you that you're actually keeping the same rhythm across both. It's a very cool magic trick. That said, the mapping of commands onto the D-pad would occasionally trip me up, because it wasn't always the same D-pad button across each game. Since the Remix stages start without any warm-up time, I would sometimes finish a set of stages and come back to do the Remix later, only to discover I had completely forgotten which D-pad button to use. Aside from trial and error, the only solution is to quit out and find the individual minigames, and then redo their practice modes as a reminder. It's not terribly intuitive, and there's not any particular reason the D-pad prompt couldn't just be consistent throughout all of the minigames. Yes it's a little more elegant that D-Pad Left triggers a crab claw and D-Pad Down hits the car brakes, but would it really matter if they were the same? On that one point, the game became less about rhythm and more about memorization, which undermined the fun. !(https://www.gamespot.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/NintendoSwitchRhythmHeavenGrooveScreenshot03.jpeg?w=1024) Rhythm Heaven Groove And as much fun as it was in handheld, I struggled with playing Rhythm Heaven Groove on my TV. To its credit, the game recognizes when you've hooked it up to your TV for the first time and conducts a quick calibration game in an effort to reduce the effects of lag. But even after going through that, I struggled to hit my marks across several games playing on my TV with a Pro Controller, even in games I had already mastered in handheld mode. The game does note that some TVs just behave differently than others, so your mileage may vary. Those same struggles with TV lag may have impacted my multiplayer experience, but not enough to detract from the fun. I dabbled in all the games with my two kids of varying ages, and after some early struggles, we found a handful of favorites that created the kind of raucous party atmosphere that Rhythm Heaven is obviously going for. There's a great mix of competitive and cooperative game types, and unlike the single-player columns that offer different games as you climb, these offer new twists on the games you've already mastered. We were only playing with two players at a time, but it fills in the extra spots with bots regardless of your player count for a total of four. As long as you have at least one buddy, you can play all of the multiplayer games. So many of the multiplayer games are strong that it's hard to pick favorites, but a few stand out. A virus-busting game shoots a disease through tubes, so you have to pin them with precise timing as they come, and your position in the four quadrants of protection rotates each turn. A tennis game imitates an RPG as you lob balls to defeat approaching enemies and save a prince. Cake Wait revolves around waiting until exactly 3 o'clock to grab the single slice of cake on the table, testing your ability to count down on-tempo. An Arkanoid-like arrow-shooting game has you break bricks protecting a bomb as you race to be the first to hit and detonate it. There is even a card-flipping memory game, but instead of pictures, you're matching particular drum rhythms as displayed by toe-tapping chickens. All of these are delivered with the same goofball spirit as the rest of the game, which makes it disarmingly funny. !(https://www.gamespot.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/NintendoSwitchRhythmHeavenGrooveScreenshot10.png?w=1024) Rhythm Heaven Groove Still, multiplayer lends itself to the big-screen experience of a TV, and we did occasionally find it hard to master the timing in some minigames. One of the first, in which you pluck hairs from an onion, consistently tripped us up, even after going back to it once we had performed much better on some of the other games. It's hard to say if this was due to TV lag or if that particular game is just surprisingly strict, but it was a noticeable change from the kooky fun of the others to consistently failing out of that one. Nintendo is one of the biggest and oldest game publishers in the world, so it feels strange to say that something it made carries itself with indie sensibilities. But that's always been true of WarioWare, and by extension, it's true of Rhythm Heaven Groove. It's such a strange, low-fi game that it comes off as if the team is getting away with something while the boss isn't looking. But it's also a genuinely welcome addition to my Switch collection, because it's such an oddity. Whenever I feel the need to tap my toes while feeling the beat of a tadpole march, or invite my friends to compete in a foot race as lucha libre across giant bouncy balls, I'll return to Rhythm Heaven.
🍄 Nintendo Switch, Multi-platformRhythm Heaven never misses a beat
Rhythm Heaven isn't Nintendo's best-known series, nor its most prolific. Prior to the launch of Rhythm Heaven Groove on the Switch this week - it's out on July 2nd - there were only four previous entries, one of which was exclusive to Japan. The most recent came out more than a decade ago. Even still, &8230;
🎮 Multi-platformWhat happened to Wolverine's metal claws in X-Men ‘97?
Wolverine's metal claws are absent in the new season of X-Men '97 because Magneto removed them. This comes from a popular comics storyline.
🖥 PlayStation, PC, Multi-platformThe cube was a lie: up close with our Dbrand Companion Cube before it gets destroyed
Dbrand is the company that shipped a product that told Nintendo's legal team to "go fuck yourself," and the company that had a second set of lawyer-dodging PS5 plates ready when Sony threatened to sue over the originals. But on June 29th, the company finally ate some serious humble pie, canceling its Portal-themed Companion Cube &8230;
🍄 Nintendo Switch, Multi-platformMario Kart World update 1.7.0 adds new Knockout Tour routes
Drill Rally and Boomerang Rally have been added to Mario Kart World as part of update 1.7.0, alongside stickers in photo mode.
🎮 Multi-platformWho is Mother Askani in X-Men ’97? The truth behind season 2's most important, most mysterious character
X-Men '97's most mysterious new hero has been 45 years in the making
🖥 PC, Multi-platformPopular Steam Wallpaper Program Removes App Over Malware Concerns
Wallpaper Engine has been a popular wallpaper tool on Steam for the better part of a decade since its release. However, the tool's application wallpaper was apparently hijacked by bad actors months ago who used it to infect users' machines with malware as the desktop wallpaper program ran in the background. Now, Wallpaper Engine's application is going to be permanently removed from the program over those malware concerns. In a statement on Steam(https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/431960/view/699894448411116924), the program's developers stated that users have a limited time to back up any wallpapers used from the application before the app is removed on Monday, July 6. The devs also note that removing the app only affects "0.5% of all wallpapers with actual user numbers being much lower than even that." "The reality is that executable files cannot be reliably secured with automated systems," reads the statement. "There will always be blind spots and ways for people to bypass them. As many of you know, we recently saw people trying to use this old feature to spread malware. At the end of the day, keeping a feature around that lets anyone easily share random .exe files on the Workshop is a risk we are no longer willing to take." A report on Securlist(https://securelist.com/dozens-of-malicious-wallpapers-found-on-steam-workshop/120186/) published earlier this month brought this issue to light and contends that malware had been inserted in the Wallpaper Engine's application as far back as late 2025. The malware could reportedly hijack Steam accounts, cripple hard drives, insert hidden crypto miners, or use ransomware to encrypt important users' data. There have been a handful of games removed from Steam over similar malware issues, including Beyond the Dark(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/another-steam-game-gets-removed-over-malware/1100-6540044/) last spring. The issue has even drawn the attention of the FBI, which announced an investigation(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fbi-launches-investigation-into-games-removed-from-steam-over-malware-concerns/1100-6538786/) into multiple infected titles on Steam.
🎮 Multi-platformLove And Deepspace Cancels Its New Love Interest After Fan Backlash
Shortly after developer Papergames announced the addition of Valko--a new love interest in the mobile action dating sim Love and Deepspace(https://www.gamespot.com/games/love-and-deepspace/)--the backlash from fans(https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fans-seem-disappointed-by-love-and-deepspaces-new-love-interest/) has spilled into the real world. Now, Papergames is reversing course by canceling Valko's debut and pledging to focus on the five other love interests who are already in the game. "We recognize that we moved forward with the introduction of Valko before we were truly ready," reads the statement posted to Love and Deepspace's Instagram account(https://www.instagram.com/p/DaNa7BgIAPV/?igsh=anJubHEzcXh5c2Q0&imgindex=1). "In doing so, we let down the players who have supported us from the start, and we also fell short of delivering the experience that players anticipating Valko deserved. After extensive internal discussions ... we have decided to cancel both the launch and any further development of the new love interest. We also commit that no additional love interests will be introduced in future content plans." According Gaming on Phone(https://gamingonphone.com/news/love-and-deepspace-controversy-escalates-as-angry-chinese-players-send-funeral-flowers-cow-dung-and-ritual-items-to-papergames-office/), angry players made their displeasure about Valko's arrival known by targeting Papergames' headquarters in China with cow dung that was delivered to the company's lockers. White and yellow chrysanthemums--which represent funerals and mourning in Chinese culture--were also delivered. As a further insult, glutinous rice, and pomelo leaves--both of which are used in cleansing rituals--were delivered as well. The outlet also notes that Love and Deepspace lost approximately 1 million followers on Chinese social media since the unveiling of Valko. One of the primary complaints was that Papergames wasn't delivering new story content or developing the characters of the five male love interests who were already in the game. In addition, many fans voiced complaints that the game, at times, felt like it catered too heavily toward whales, and said that they wanted improvements to how you're able to farm in-game resources. In gacha games--like Love and Deepspace--or any type of live service game, a "whale" is a term used to describe a person who drops such a large amount of money on microtransactions, that they effectively keep the game afloat. The average user has been worried that the Love and Deepsace team caters too heavily toward these big spenders, and in an attempt to incentivize whales to drop even more money, the game is making everything too pricy for everyone else. Despite the online (and offline) vitriol for him, there are apparently plenty of players who are now disappointed by Valko's cancellation. Replies left on Instagram(https://www.instagram.com/p/DaNa7BgIAPV/?igsh=anJubHEzcXh5c2Q0&imgindex=1) have called for Valko to be released on Love and Deepspace.