Does Microsoft have a surprise 2026 blockbuster hiding up its sleeve? When will Overwatch get the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners treatment? And will the next Dragon Quest Monsters game actually be good? It’s the latest edition of Kotaku Checkpoint, your daily roundup of gaming news, rumors, and culture. Social media isn’t social anymore. In fact, it feels downright anti-social these days. How long until it’s just bots and fraud all the way down? At least we’ll always have all of the Pokémon crimes that happened along the way.
A bunch of new Xbox games were added to the Game Pass ‘coming soon’ section
Those include Clockwork Revolutions, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, Fable, and a bunch of others. This is interesting because we already know that both Resonance and Fable are planned for release sometime in 2026. I’d expect firm dates for both of those at June’s Xbox summer showcase. Does this suggest Clockwork Revolutions will be getting a 2026 release date as well?
RPG maker inXile Entertainment released its last game, Wasteland 3, back in 2020. Clockwork Revolutions marks not just an ambitious shift away from a top-down tactical viewpoint to a first-person action-adventure structure, but also the the first game developed entirely after the studio’s acquisition by Microsoft in 2018. Its steampunk-infused BioShock vibes and time-manipulation mechanics have me hoping it will be one of the more unique first-party blockbusters to come out of Xbox this generation.
Can Microsoft fit another big game into its packed 2026 release calendar? I guess we’ll find out next month.
No Man’s Sky goes to war in new Swarm update
A mysterious new Death Star construct is coming to the sci-fi sim and I’m definitely getting Helldivers 2 vibes from the way Hello Games is talking about the new content, which went live today in update 6.4. “Players are going to need a combined community effort to figure out what is going on,” studio head Sean Murray announced. “Travelers will boot up to be greeted with a personality test, dividing players into three factions; each will need to co-operate, strategize and compete to counter the Hive of Glass, an existential threat to the universe.”
Will we ever get an Overwatch animated series? It’s not impossible
“Every time we release assets, whether it’s a hero trailer or an event piece, there are all of these comments about, ‘Hey, we would love an Overwatch animated series. Blizzard, what the hell? When’s that happening?’” the Blizzard hero shooter’s general manager, Walter Kong, told IGN. “So we certainly hear that and I think that it is not a huge stretch to believe that there would be a lot of demand for that type of content. So certainly, no, I won’t rule out that sometime in the future there could be other storytelling experiences in the Overwatch universe.”
Resident Evil Requiem now has a free demo
Players on the fence about Capcom’s latest survival horror hit can now try it on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC. While the demo covers the early part of the game, it unfortunately won’t let you carry over progress to the full version.
There’s a new Dragon Quest Monsters game
It’s called The Withered World and it will star the protagonists Bianca and Nera from Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride. Monsters is a series of turn-based RPGs in which players tame monsters and use them for battle. The last game, 2023’s The Dark Prince, sold a million copies but was kinda meh.
Also Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is getting a Switch 2 version
It arrives on September 24 with new visual mode options to improve the framerate. Unfortunately, save files won’t work between the upgraded port and the existing version of the game on Switch 1.
And still more Dragon Quest news
Square Enix’s various HD-2D remasters of the first three games in the series have collectively sold 4 million copies. Not bad. Surprisingly good, in fact! Maybe the publisher should be giving the same lovingly crafted glow-ups to the rest of its storied back catalog rather than just doing upscaled smoothmasters.
