Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

The year 2026 is shaping up to be a total collision course of legacy sequels and high-budget gambles that might actually pay off. We are looking at a calendar where the industry finally stops leaning on the cross-gen crutch and starts pushing hardware to its absolute limit. Between Rockstar’s inevitable gravity well and Capcom reviving dead samurai franchises, the release schedule looks like a minefield of potential masterpieces and expensive flops. I’ve parsed the hype, filtered the noise, and ranked these projects based on their likely market dominance and cultural footprint.

The Titan That Will Swallow the Industry: Grand Theft Auto VI

Rockstar is finally ready to show us where the money went. November 19, 2026, is the date everyone is circling with a mix of excitement and genuine dread for their free time. Expected to push the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S to their absolute breaking point, this is the biggest thing happening in 2026, period. It’s the kind of project that forces every other publisher to move their release dates out of sheer terror. Expect a level of detail that makes current open worlds look like a collection of cardboard boxes. It’s going to be a massive commercial beast, and we’ll see if the writing can still hit that cynical Rockstar sweet spot in today’s world.

The Brutal Edge of Superheroes: Marvel’s Wolverine

Insomniac is carrying the PlayStation brand on its back right now, and this PlayStation 5 exclusive is their most aggressive move yet. We’re expecting a visceral, R-rated Logan that refuses to play nice. If you want a game that feels like a punch to the gut, this is the one. It’s got the high-budget polish and the talent to be the biggest thing outside of the Rockstar orbit. It’s going to sell millions on brand name alone, but the raw grit is what will make it stay on your hard drive. This is easily the silver medalist for 2026 success, catering to everyone who wanted the Spider-Man quality with a lot more blood.

Horror Royalty and Speed Demons: Resident Evil 9 and Forza Horizon 6

Capcom is calling this one Resident Evil: Requiem, and the word on the street is that it’s the bridge connecting the entire series for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. It’s horror for the masses, polished to a mirror finish. Right next to it, Forza Horizon 6 is finally taking the festival to Japan as a flagship Xbox and PC title. The car culture there is legendary, and if Playground Games nails the neon aesthetic of Tokyo and the rural mountain passes, it’s going to be the visual benchmark for the hardware. These two are the heavy hitters for the mid-year window that will dominate the conversation.

High-Budget Fantasy Gambles: Fable and Rise of Hydra

Microsoft needs Fable to be a home run on Xbox and PC. It’s been in the oven forever, and while the pedigree of Playground Games is undeniable, translating that British wit into an RPG is a different beast entirely. It’s a dark horse that could dominate the holiday season if it finds its voice. Then there’s Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, aiming for a cinematic launch on consoles and PC. With Amy Hennig involved, the expectation for a cinematic powerhouse is sky-high. It’s a straightforward action play that will move units on the Marvel name alone, even if it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel.

The Thinking Man’s Games: Control, Slay the Spire 2, and Tomb Raider

Remedy doesn’t make games for everyone, and that’s why they’re great. Control: Resonant is headed to PS5, Xbox, and PC for the heads who want their brains scrambled by high-brow weirdness. It’s a specific vibe that won’t hit GTA numbers, but it will be the critical darling of the year. Slay the Spire 2 is the indie king here, likely dominating PC first. It’s pure mechanical perfection that will ruin your sleep schedule. Meanwhile, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is trying to prove Lara Croft still matters across all major platforms. Reimagining the original is a safe move, but it needs to do more than mimic the Uncharted formula to stand out in the 2026 meat grinder.

Nostalgia Plays and Specialized Hits: Onimusha and Monster Hunter Stories 3

Capcom is digging into the vault for Onimusha: Way of the Sword for PS5, Xbox, and PC. It’s a nostalgia play that has a dedicated following but might struggle with a younger audience that didn’t grow up with the PS2. Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is another specific win, likely finding a home on Nintendo’s next hardware and PC. These are solid performers that know their lanes and stay in them, providing that old-school flavor for the players who miss the straightforward brilliance of the early 2000s.

The Wuxia Dream and the RPG Newcomers: Phantom Blade Zero and Blood of the Dawnwalker

Phantom Blade Zero looks incredible in motion, like a Hong Kong action flick come to life for PS5 and PC. The concern is whether the gameplay holds up under the flash. It’s a new IP from S-Game that could be the breakout hit of the year if the difficulty is tuned right. The Blood of Dawnwalker is the first outing from Rebel Wolves for consoles and PC. It’s got that CD Projekt Red DNA, and RPG fans are starving for something with that kind of depth. It’s a long shot for the top of the charts, but it has the street cred to be a sleeper hit for the hardcore crowd. So lets wayt for Phantom Blade Zero a bit to see.

The Nintendo Guard and the Creator’s Return: Mario Tennis, Yoshi, and Gang of Dragon

With the Switch 2 in full swing, Nintendo is dropping Mario Tennis Fever and Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. They’re the reliable revenue earners—low risk, high polish. They won’t set the world on fire with innovation, but they’ll be in every household with kids. There’s also the faint hope for a Super Mario Galaxy 3 announcement to coincide with the movie, though that’s leaning more toward wishful thinking for the Switch 2.

Toshihiro Nagoshi is also stepping out with Gang of Dragon on PS5 and PC. It’s a gritty urban adventure from the man who gave us Yakuza, and while it’s a niche appeal, the quality is usually undeniable for anyone who likes their games with a bit of street-level grime.

The Expansion Fatigue and the Valve Pipe Dream

Blizzard is trying to keep the lights on with World of Warcraft: Midnight on PC, but the real test is Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred. After the last expansion left a lot of the community feeling cold, this move on consoles and PC is starting to look like a play for a player base that’s already moving on to greener pastures. Then you have the absolute madness of the Half-Life 3 hope. Every year some optimist thinks Valve is finally going to count to three on PC, and 2026 is no different. It’s the ultimate believe-it-when-I-see-it situation, but the cultural weight of that brand is so heavy it can’t be ignored even if it’s probably just another beautiful lie.

The Cult Creeps and Horror Junkie Fixes

The 2026 horror landscape is a chaotic mess of legitimate scares and nostalgia bait. Hellraiser: Revival is bringing body-horror back to consoles and PC, which carries weight if you actually care about visceral aesthetics. The Sinking City 2 is also crawling out of the woodwork on PS5, Xbox, and PC, trying to fix the jank of the first one while leaning into that damp, Lovecraftian misery. Then there is the Fatal Frame: Crimson Butterfly remake for consoles, which is basically the IP holders realizing that we’ll pay for the same trauma twice if the ghosts look high-def enough.

You also have Ghost Master: Resurrection for the strategy nerds and Crisol: Theater of Idols, a PC-focused shooter where your own health is literally the ammo. Poppy Playtime is still kicking around too, proving that the mascot horror trend is far from dead on all platforms.

Indie Grinds and Licensed Brawlers Fighting for Scraps

Mewgenics is finally looking like a real thing on PC, and anyone who knows Edmund McMillen knows that it’s going to be a disgusting, addictive masterpiece. Alongside it, we have Neverway and 1348 Ex Voto representing the smaller, more personal projects that usually end up being the games we’re still talking about five years later. On the fighting front, it’s a weird mix of licenses for all systems. Invincible VS and Avatar Legends are clearly aiming for that specific fan crossover, while Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is trying to carve out its own space in a genre that is notoriously hard to break into. These games won’t be topping the charts, but they provide the texture that keeps the industry from becoming a monotonous loop.

The Nintendo Trap and Remedy’s Backlog

Nintendo is playing the long game with the Switch 2, and their 2026 lineup is a masterclass in emotional manipulation. There’s the faint hope for a Super Mario Galaxy 3 announcement to coincide with the movie, though that’s leaning more toward wishful thinking for the new hardware. On the technical side, everyone is wondering what’s happening with the Max Payne 1 & 2 Remakes. While Remedy is pushing Control: Resonant, the shadow of those noir classics looms large over PS5, Xbox, and PC. If they manage to drop both in the same window, it’ll be a total takeover of the mid-tier market. Meanwhile, Poppy Playtime is still kicking around on all platforms, proving that the mascot horror trend is far from dead for the audience that likes their childhood toys turned into homicidal monsters.

Licensed Brawlers Fighting for Scraps

On the fighting front, it’s a weird mix of licenses for all systems that feels like a fever dream for the tournament scene. Invincible VS and Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game are clearly aiming for that specific fan crossover, while Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is trying to carve out its own space in a genre that is notoriously hard to break into. These games won’t be topping the charts or making Rockstar-level money, but they provide the texture that keeps the 2026 calendar from being a monotonous loop of the same three genres. It’s the grit at the bottom of the pan that actually gives the year its flavor, even if most people are too distracted by the shiny stuff at the top to notice the real work being done here

The post 2026 Gaming Forecast: Rockstar’s Heavyweight Return and the Battle for Your SSD Space appeared first on Game Reviews, News, Videos & More for Every Gamer – PC, PlayStation, Xbox in 2026.

The inclusion of the Waymo look-a-likes appears to be part of a larger storyline that will encourage players to "stop the development of a mass surveillance network."

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It’s the two-year anniversary of GTA 6’s announcement so let’s reflect on the game’s journey and how much Rockstar has actually shared about it.

Technically, Rockstar Games announced GTA 6 in early 2022, but that was a simple blog post, with no proper info about the game or even a single screenshot.

GTA 6’s first substantial announcement came precisely two years ago today, with a short cinematic trailer confirming gorgeous looking graphics, the setting of Vice City, and criminal couple Lucia and Jason as dual protagonists.

Since then, the trailer has garnered over 269 million views on YouTube, making it the most popular trailer on the platform, overtaking the previous record holder for Avengers: Infinity War.

And yet for what’s widely considered the most anticipated video game of all time, Rockstar has been very reticent about GTA 6. So much so that after two years, it still feels like we barely know anything about the game.

What was confirmed in GTA 6 Trailer 1?

As we said, the initial trailer was our first real look at GTA 6, but it’s comprised entirely of cinematics. It’s not impossible that some gameplay has been snuck in there, but there are no obvious examples and certainly no demonstrations of someone actually playing it themselves.

The incredibly good graphics were even better than expected, which is all most people wanted to know at first. Not only has GTA 6 reportedly been in development since 2018 (per Bloomberg), but it’s the first entry to be made specifically for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, although as usual for Rockstar there’s no sign of a PC version yet.

While the trailer introduced us to GTA 6’s two main characters – a Bonnie and Clyde-esque pair of robbers – that was one of the few details to have leaked ahead of time, initially from a 2022 insider report on the game’s development.

The Vice City setting (which returns from 2002 game GTA: Vice City) wasn’t surprising either, as it had been leaked as part of the infamous 2022 hacking incident, which further corroborated Lucia and Jason’s roles as protagonists.

And while the trailer does set the tone of what to expect from GTA 6’s plot and the ways it will satirise current American culture (with plenty of references to Florida related memes), as well as confirming Lucia being in prison at the start of the game, it provides no concrete story details beyond her and Jason being petty thieves.

For as big a deal as that announcement trailer was, it was ultimately Rockstar officially confirming things most fans already knew, which only contributed to the intense demand for a second trailer.

 What was confirmed in GTA 6 Trailer 2?

The second GTA 6 trailer dropped in May, 17 months after the first one, to coincide with the unfortunate news that the game wouldn’t launch this year, and is instead aiming for a May 2026 window.

This trailer is longer than the first one and aside from explicitly confirming Jason’s name (it had leaked long beforehand), it introduced an extended cast of characters and included some scenes that could be actual gameplay.

Unfortunately, there is still no uncut, unambiguous gameplay, but the fact that you struggle to tell the difference between what’s in-engine gameplay and what’s a story cut scene is a testament to how good the graphics are.

And yet, once again, there are no explicit story details, with the video description only offering a very general synopsis of the plot.

‘Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them,’ it reads. ‘But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida – forced to rely on each other more than ever if they want to make it out alive.’

Rockstar’s website does share character biographies explaining their personalities and their relationships with one another. For instance, Jason is described as ex-army, now working for local drug runners, while Lucia is said to have been jailed for ‘fighting for her family’ and was only released thanks to ‘sheer luck,’ but it all remains awfully vague.

Instead, fans have been left to try and piece things together by combing every frame of the trailer. There are theories of a reputation system, the ability to buy property, a fishing minigame, and the return of GTA 5’s heists, but that’s all guess work and nothing’s been outright confirmed.

What else do we know about GTA 6?

Since the launch of that second trailer, there have only been two new bits of info and one of them was another delay. Last month, Rockstar admitted it would need to push GTA 6 back to November 6, 2026.

No reason was given aside from it simply needing extra time, although Rockstar can afford to take as long as it needs to. Not just because GTA 6 is a very important release it can’t risk messing up, but the company is still comfortably making loads of money off GTA 5 and GTA Online.

It has been claimed that GTA 6 is actually finished in terms of content and Rockstar is taking its time to optimise it, so as not to have a Cyperpunk 2077 scenario, which had such a disastrous launch that developer CD Projekt had to offer refunds.

The only new information comes, inadvertently, from a former Rockstar animator, who revealed the game will have a bike rental system. Although that’s hardly the most exciting piece of information you could hope to learn about the game.

Why is Rockstar being so secretive about GTA 6?

Secrecy of this level is nothing new in the games industry, but given how high expectations are for GTA 6, the simplest explanation for Rockstar’s lack of communication is that it doesn’t want to share any details until it’s 100% certain they’re ready to be shown.

Plus, considering how much info has already leaked online, Rockstar must be feeling extra protective about what gets shared and when. Perhaps simply, though, it doesn’t need to say anything, because it knows you’ll buy it anyway.

When is the next GTA 6 trailer?

So far, there’s nothing to indicate when a new GTA 6 trailer will drop. Perhaps something will be shown at The Game Awards 2025 next week, but considering Rockstar skipped both the 2023 and 2024 shows, it’s far more likely it will release the next trailer on its own time.

At the very least, there shouldn’t be another 17-month gap between trailers 2 and 3. If there were, then the third trailer wouldn’t come out till October 2026, which is just a month before GTA 6’s launch.

Then again, a third delay isn’t out of the question either. In May, Strauss Zelnick, CEO of publisher Take-Two Interactive, expressed confidence GTA 6 would launch by May 2026, but refused to rule out another delay, which of course wound up happening.

Some fans have gone to great lengths to try and predict when GTA 6 trailers would drop, but they’ve never been accurate. So, all you can do is be patient and wait for Rockstar to say something.

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Sounds...good.

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Time continues to tick forward toward launch.

Not impossible...but unlikely...

Sometimes, people go deep to learn more.

The Grand Theft Auto 6 developers dismissed by Rockstar for gross misconduct were allegedly fired for leaking internal policies on Slack emoji use, though this may not have been the only reason. That’s according to a new report that reveals some of the messages believed to have contributed to the latest GTA 6 controversy.

There have been a few high-profile departures from Rockstar Games during the development of GTA 6, but arguably the biggest involved Dan Houser. One of the studio's co-founders and one of the main creative forces behind the GTA series' tone, storylines, and direction, Houser left Rockstar in 2020 and later formed Absurd Ventures, a multimedia entertainment company producing podcasts, comics, novels, and most importantly, videogames set across some shared universes. Speaking on a British talk show, Houser reiterates that Absurd's first game still requires "another few years in development," and also confirms that the studio is "dabbling in using AI." However, he also flags the limitations of AI use in game development, calling out companies that "claim it can solve every single problem, and it really can't yet."

Read the full story on PCGamesN: GTA veteran's new studio is "dabbling in AI," but it's not as great as "companies would have you believe"

The house always wins, but this week, you might just break even - or better as Rockstar has shuffled the deck for the latest GTA Online weekly update, and it's a full house of luxury rewards and high-stakes opportunities.

The post GTA Online Goes All-In with a Free Casino Master Penthouse and Double Heist Rewards appeared first on TheXboxHub.