6 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Games Archive

Archives for July 2026

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
To GameStop, discs dying “doesn’t matter,” says CEO.

Software makes up “less than 12 percent of the business,” while collectibles are “over half,” Ryan Cohen said in a Bloomberg interview. “So it’s totally, totally irrelevant.”

The numbers differ a bit in GameStop’s latest quarterly report, where collectibles were 41.8 percent of sales in Q1 2026. But they’re a growing part of GameStop’s business — the Q1 collectibles figure was a jump from 28.9 percent in Q1 2025 — which could soften the blow from the dire future for discs.

Cameron Faulkner
Cameron Faulkner
Marathon’s game director is passing the baton.

Bungie’s online extraction shooter, Marathon, is having a leadership change as game director Joe Ziegler announced on X that today is his final day with the company. Ziegler, former game director of Valorant, took on the role following former Marathon director Chris Barrett’s firing in August 2024.

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
It’s Ayaneo’s turn to resurrect and upgrade the Game Boy Advance.

Following the release of Anbernic’s RG34XX handheld last December, Ayaneo has revealed its own updated take on Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance. The company didn’t share any specs for its upcoming Konkr Pocket Advance, but like Anbernic’s it will include four action buttons and potentially rely on emulation instead of a cartridge slot.

The Ayaneo Konkr Pocket Advance cartridge in orange on a desk surrounded by other retro electronics.
Image: Ayaneo
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
The Game of Thrones RTS has been delayed.

Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, announced last year for a 2026 release, is now set to launch in early 2027.

“We remain unwavering in our mission to deliver a real-time strategy game set in the world of Westeros that meets the expectations of both RTS players and Game of Thrones fans,” says developer PlaySide. “This decision gives us the time needed to continue building towards that goal and ensure that the game reaches the high level of quality we are aiming for.”

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Jay Peters
Jay Peters
“You know who isn’t the hero? The killer of physical.”

PlayStation uploaded new trailers for Marvel’s Wolverine and Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls today, but the comment sections are pretty much all about PlayStation’s plan to kill discs. And this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.

A screenshot of YouTube comments on a Marvel’s Wolverine trailer.
A screenshot of YouTube comments on a Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls trailer.
1/2Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Valve released the CAD files for the Steam Machine.

Can’t wait to see what people make using them. Hopefully some cool front plates?

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Go read this report from a rally opposing the Xbox layoffs.

Aftermath wrote about a rally on Wednesday at ZeniMax’s office in Rockville, MD. ZeniMax, which oversees studios like Bethesda, was hit with 379 cuts in the state of Maryland as part of the broader Xbox layoffs.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
How well does the Steam Machine work if it’s running Windows?

ETA PRIME tries to answer that question (while we’re revisiting our initial rating) with some benchmarking courtesy of the Windows drivers Valve released earlier this month. As Videocardz points out, on this unit with 64GB of RAM, the results were pretty close across the three games tested, with SteamOS winning in 1080p across Cyberpunk 2077, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Horizon Zero Dawn, but Windows moving a couple of frames per second ahead at 4K rendering.