The Weekly Round-Up: Xbox in the car, mystery Sega games and Pikmin in London
Our light-hearted recap of the week’s most interesting news
Chris Scullion
This is a blog post, where VGC writers post irreverent and (occasionally) entertaining coverage of video game culture.
It’s time for another of our weekly round-ups of the past week’s gaming news.
For those still new to our weekly round-ups – which we’ve been doing on Patreon for more than a year and have now brought to the main VGC site – this is our way of winding up the past week by recapping its more interesting stories, often with a shamelessly rubbish joke at the end.
VGC Patreon subscribers on all paid tiers have been receiving these round-ups for more than a year, and will continue to get this in newsletter form on Friday afternoons, so if you like what you read and you’d like early access so you can start your weekend with a laugh instead of ending it with one, why not consider subscribing?
Speaking during a new live stream, director Nomura was asked for an update on the two games and claimed that they were progressing well.
“Regarding Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3, [co-director Motomu] Toriyama supposedly said we will have news around the time of the second anniversary of FF7 Ever Crisis. We are making great progress on the game,” he said.
He added, “On that same note, I’m seeing a lot of comments asking about Kingdom Hearts 4. We are making great strides and going according to schedule. So please wait for more information on that!”
VGC understands that Square Enix recently received delivery of a large dartboard with images of hundreds of Disney movies on it, so it appears that work on the storyline is underway.
Nintendo filed a complaint in July 2024 against Michigan-based Ryan Daly, who operated a store called Modded Hardware.
The lawsuit claimed that Nintendo had contacted Daly in March 2024 and threatened to sue him unless he stopped selling modded Switch consoles and MIG Switches (which enable pirated Switch games to be played on unmodded hardware).
Daly initially denied any wrongdoing, but rather than taking the case to court, Nintendo and Daly have now filed a joint stipulation which agrees that Daly will pay Nintendo $2 million.
A permanent injunction will also be ordered, which will prevent Daly from ever handling, selling or promoting any modding devices or modded consoles, or providing any documentation or information which might help other people carry out their own mods.
Good news for those who don’t like piracy, but bad news for Daly, who just realised that by agreeing to never handle “any modding devices” again his backup plan to become a hairdresser is also technically over.
The Asus ROG Xbox Ally and more powerful ROG Xbox Ally X will be released on October 16 and will feature the ‘Xbox full screen experience’ (FSE), a new mode that boots the handheld straight into an Xbox app instead of loading the full Windows shell.
Now a Lenovo spokesperson has confirmed that the Xbox FSE will also be coming to its newly announced high-end Windows handhelds in Spring 2026.
The Lenovo Legion Go Gen 2 will also be released this October, and boasts an 8.8 inch OLED screen, a 144Hz refresh rate, removable controllers and a similar AMD Ryzen processor to the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X. It will cost $1,099 for the base model, all the way up to $1,479 for the model with the most powerful processor, 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage.
$1,479 may seem like a steep price but when you bear in mind it lets you play Ryse: Son of Rome on the move it can’t be considered anything less than an absolute bargain.
The Swedish studio recently developed Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but before that it was mainly focused on the Wolfenstein series of first-person shooters.
This included two main entries – Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus – as well as a prequel, a spin-off and a VR experience.
However, in the latest instalment of a Noclip documentary series about the history of MachineGames, co-founder and studio head Jerk Gustafsson said the studio always planned a main trilogy of games, meaning a third title remains undeveloped.
“We have always seen this as a trilogy,” Gustafsson said. “So that journey for BJ – even during those first weeks at id [Software], when we mapped out New Order – we still had the plan for at least that character. What will happen in the second one, what will happen in the third one. I think that’s important to say because, at least I hope, that we’re not done with Wolfenstein yet. We have a story to tell.”
VGC understands that one of the reasons we haven’t seen Wolfenstein 3 yet is because MachineGames tried to take inspiration from Square Enix’s creative process for Kingdom Hearts but it’s a lot harder to get a dartboard with Nazi imagery on it through customs.
Cars which make use of LG’s webOS Automotive Content Platform will be able to stream and play games directly from an Xbox app.
Players will need an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription as well as an automotive data plan.
Xbox says the service “operates in compliance with driving safety regulations”, and a trailer showing the service in action specifically makes note of playing from the back seat, meaning presumably passengers in the front won’t be able to play for safety reasons.
At least now when people say 30fps games ‘physically make them sick’, if they’re playing in the back of a moving car they might actually be telling the truth for once.
In early May, Rockstar announced that the game had been delayed “to deliver at the level of quality [players] expect and deserve”, and would now release on May 26, 2026.
The news likely came as a relief to developers and publishers planning on releasing games in the second half of 2025, as releasing around the same time as GTA 6 would likely have been a financial kiss of death.
This was confirmed by Ghost of Yotei creative director Nate Fox, who said the team at developer Sucker Punch have been enjoying a “multi-month hangover” since the announcement, calling it “a great day”.
You’re all smiles now, mate, but don’t you realise you’re still launching on the same day as Japanese visual novel Mahoutsukai no Yome: Seika no Maboroshi to Yumemiru Tabij? Enjoy your silver medal.
On Tuesday, the Like A Dragon publisher launched its official TGS site, along with a list of games it’s set to exhibit at the event, which kicks off September 25.
Alongside the likes of Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, Virtua Fighter 5 REVO, Persona 3 Reload, and Persona 5: The Phantom X are four empty slots marked “coming soon”.
It’s likely that some of these unnamed projects will be related to Like A Dragon’s Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, which is set to hold its annual Summit live stream the day before Tokyo Game Show.
As for the others, we’re not getting our hopes up too much because knowing our luck they’ll end up just announcing three separate Columns games or something.
Pik-adilly Circus
Nintendo has announced that it will be attending the Japan Matsuri festival in London with a special Pikmin booth.
Japan Matsuri, which calls itself “the UK’s much-loved and biggest annual festival of Japanese culture and food”, takes place in Trafalgar Square on September 21 from 10am to 8pm.
The event will be home to numerous stalls celebrating Japanese culture, and this year Nintendo says it will be attending with its own stall dedicated to Pikmin.
Nintendo says the stall will feature numerous interactive elements including an AR photobooth, where guests “will have the opportunity to capture a photo and video with Pikmin that can be downloaded and saved as a digital souvenir”.
Everything at the stall will be free of charge, including free Pikmin visors and postcards, which will be available while stocks last.
A street artist has also been hired to spray paint a bunch of rats red, yellow and blue and release them in the London Underground.
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