Month: September 2026

Nintendo has decided that Fire Emblem is one of its flagship franchises. Although for many years it hasn’t sold as much as some of its other big franchises, like Super Mario or The Legend of Zelda, it has always tried to make room for at least one title per generation. And while on handhelds it really took off on the Nintendo 3DS, on home consoles it wasn’t until Three Houses that it did.

The latest entry in the franchise managed to win over a wider audience thanks to its mix of visual novel, date sim and strategy game. But the more classic players wanted a bit more bite from the game: Three Houses fell short when it came to the game’s strategic depth. And now Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave seems to want to fix that. Not by going back to repeat the Three Houses formula, but by taking the best of the old and new formulas to make a more refined version.

An evolution of Three Houses

Set in the same world as Three Houses, everything takes place in the empire of Dagda. An empire that spans an entire continent and encompasses three nations: Samaris, Damascar and Brezarant. The Dagdian empire hosts a gladiatorial event every six months known as the Heroic Games and that’s where the story begins. We’ll choose one of the game’s four characters to take part in them so that the emperor, by winning, grants us our greatest desire.

With this premise, which only lasts through the first act, Fortune’s Weave begins. It otherwise closely resembles Three Houses. We’ll have to choose one of the protagonists and follow their story, facing the other three until reaching its conclusion. The twist is that in this installment it’s much easier to switch between different routes, being able to change between them from the start menu much more easily.

What’s more, the game will let us skip some complete acts once we’ve finished them on other routes. Since some of them are very similar, it’s meant to avoid the repetition and fatigue that a game that can easily run 60 to 80 hours can cause. To do that, to prevent our units from ending up underleveled, a more JRPG-like system has been added where we can have quick battles to level up our characters.

A classic edge

In everything else it’s exactly what we’d expect from a Fire Emblem after Three Houses. Recruiting characters, getting to know them and showering them with gifts is an important part of the game. But past the halfway point of the game its difficulty increases noticeably. And tactics start to become much more important.

That’s where you can tell how they’ve wanted to embrace the more classic players too. The ones who’ve been playing since the SNES and were missing a bit more depth and difficulty in the game. Although it’s still possible to play without permanent death, easing much of the tension, and with a rewind function having been added, reducing tension for those less versed in strategy, this last part tightens the screws for those who want a more intense Fire Emblem.

The only problem is that you have to get there. And that means getting through several dozen hours of gameplay that, while interesting, can start to drag. Which shows they still haven’t quite finished finding the exact blend in the formula.

Even so, Fire Emblem seems to be cementing its place with Fortune’s Weave as one of Nintendo’s great franchises. Having given it their all and rather than just trying to repeat Three Houses’ success, Nintendo have shown that they intend to keep pushing the series further. Which gives us hope that we’ll keep seeing this particular franchise evolve in entries to come.

Everyone knows that part of an actor’s job is, especially since the invention of the mobile phone, taking photos and selfies with everyone. But of course, there comes a point when it’s not only stressful: it can even start to seem a bit ridiculous and undermining your own work. That’s what has happened to Cate Blanchett, who during her London performance had to stop to ask the audience to put their phones away a bit.

Today: a Cate Blanchett dressing-down

It’s hard, if you’ve got an actress of Blanchett’s stature a few metres away from you, to resist the urge to take photos and videos, but the theatre may not be the best place to do it, as she herself said after finishing her first performance in Electra/Persona, Benedict Andrews’ new play: “There are a few places on this planet where we can simply be together and present”, she said.

“I understand that you like to record the final applause, and it’s flattering in a way, but for anyone who is recording the play, please don’t do it, because it ruins it for the next audience who come and are present with us. So thank you very much”. The speech was widely applauded and, of course, we know about it because it was recorded and posted on the Internet. We hear you, but not too much.

The play will continue to run until 10 October, and London’s National Theatre has backed Blanchett’s view of art, and at 57 and with an Oscar in each hand, she isn’t willing to let anyone walk all over her. A queen, really.

Marvel’s Wolverine has kicked the X-Men game argument back into gear. People are praising the story and the sheer brutality of the combat, but the complaints have been just as loud: it feels too linear, too old-school in the wrong ways, and too dependent on gimmicks like scent trails.

The real miss is bigger than Wolverine itself. Publishers still haven’t signed off on the X-Men game that feels painfully obvious: a Xavier Institute management sim where you’re juggling student needs, hiring teachers, containing mutant incidents, expanding the mansion, and somehow dealing with the occasional interdimensional crisis before lunch.

For anyone who comes to X-Men for the found family, the personality clashes, and the mess of team dynamics, that setup sounds more interesting than another solo action template. It also helps explain why X-Men Legends still has so much affection behind it, while the team’s Guinness World Records-recognized game history remains uneven, stretching from Konami’s 1992 arcade classic all the way to the wasted potential of X-Men: Destiny.

Leaked documents suggest Insomniac Games may hold the X-Men game rights until 2035, and that a full X-Men game is reportedly penciled in for around 2030, set in the same universe as Spider-Man and Wolverine. So the safest bet is probably another very good, story-heavy single-player blockbuster, not the funniest or sharpest way to use this property.

You can’t download either game yet, but Marvel’s Wolverine, along with any future X-Men title, is expected to come through Insomniac’s pipeline.

In its fiscal 2027 second-quarter results, Nvidia said its 2027 chip shipments could reach double 2026 levels, a sign that demand may be stronger than the company’s official forecast lets on.

CEO Jensen Huang said that figure refers to unit volume, not revenue, even though Nvidia’s guidance for the fiscal year ending in January 2028 still points to about 70% revenue growth.

Demand is already running ahead of supply. Nvidia said data center revenue hit $89 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, up 117% from a year earlier, and analysts say cloud rental prices for older Nvidia H100 chips have risen more than 20% in a month.

Nvidia says the main bottlenecks are advanced memory, chip manufacturing capacity, and packaging. So if you follow the company closely, that’s the part to watch: doubling shipments wouldn’t automatically mean matching revenue growth, or the same level of profit expansion, especially as memory costs climb and product mix changes.

Blackwell and Vera Rubin are shaping the next upgrade cycle, with Nvidia saying Vera Rubin could generate about $40 billion in revenue per gigawatt, versus roughly $25 billion for Blackwell. Amazon Web Services plans to add 2 million Nvidia GPUs through 2028, and Aolani plans to deploy 22,000 Blackwell Ultra GPUs in Malaysia and the Philippines in early 2027.

For the latest outlook, you can look to Nvidia’s fiscal 2027 second-quarter results and Jensen Huang’s comments.

Rockstar Games has finally put a date on it: Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, putting an end to months of guessing around the release of one of the biggest games in the business.

Pre-orders are already up on the PlayStation Store and Xbox Store. The PS5 listing suggests a midnight unlock in each local time zone. Pricing is set at $79.99 for the Standard edition and $99.99 for the Ultimate edition. As for what you’re buying, it’s Leonida, a return to Vice City, and two leads, Lucia and Jason, at the center of a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style story.

Rockstar still hasn’t said when the PC version is coming. If history holds, that’ll come later. Some estimates place it in late 2027, while unverified claims have suggested it could land before April 2027. The game was also pushed back from 2025 after a messy development stretch that saw gameplay and source-code leaks, a reported 192 GB breach, and two official trailers. Trailer two alone reportedly pulled in around 475 million views on day one. Sales forecasts have topped $5 billion for the first week, and reports have put the budget somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion, with roughly 6,000 developers involved.

If you’re planning to play on console at launch, Grand Theft Auto 6 is probably one to lock in early.

You can pre-order Grand Theft Auto 6 now for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S through the PlayStation Store and Xbox Store.

Google has officially rolled out Googlebooks, a new premium laptop range that pushes straight into MacBook territory on price and leans hard into an Android-centered setup. Prices start at about $899 in the US and £999 in the UK, and plenty of models land closer to $1,200 or $1,300. The first Googlebooks machines, made by Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, come with aluminum or magnesium bodies, crisp touchscreens, 16GB of RAM, and either Intel Core Ultra or Snapdragon X Elite chips. This is a long way from the old budget-Chromebook image.

Google says Googlebook OS combines ChromeOS with Android. Features such as Continue On let you begin something on your Android phone, say in Gmail, and then open it again on your laptop, which will feel pretty familiar to anyone who’s used Apple’s Handoff.

App support still looks uneven. You get native Google Workspace apps, App Cast for mirroring your phone, and Gemini features like Magic Pointer, Rambler, and Create My Widget.

If Android is already what you use every day, this could be a solid buy once more developers start tuning their apps for larger screens.

Google says Googlebooks will be sold in the US and UK through hardware partners that include Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo.

CD Projekt Red has locked in a date for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered: September 29, 2026. It’s coming to Xbox Series X|S and PC through the Microsoft Store, and it’ll support Xbox Play Anywhere. Anyone who already owns the game will get the upgrade for free.

If you already bought The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt digitally on Xbox, you should be able to jump into the PC version through the Microsoft Store without paying for it a second time. That should also mean your saves and achievements carry across Xbox Series X|S and PC, which is always the part people actually care about.

This isn’t being framed as a basic coat of paint. CD Projekt Red is calling it a broader 2.0 overhaul, with reworked combat, a redesigned skill tree, better movement and traversal, upgraded visuals, and improved Witcher sign effects.

For anyone who already owns the base game, or just likes moving between console and PC, this feels like an easy one to pick up, especially when plenty of publishers ask for money again for re-releases that do a lot less.

You’ll be able to get it on Xbox Series X|S and on PC through the Microsoft Store at launch.

For CD Projekt Red, it also keeps one of its biggest RPGs in the conversation before 2027’s Songs of the Past and the planned 2028 launch window for The Witcher 4. The numbers still look huge: according to CD Projekt Red, The Witcher 3 has sold more than 65 million copies, and the series as a whole is now above 90 million.

Resident Evil is in theaters now, sitting at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, with $60 million domestic and $108.3 million worldwide. At this point, it’s the best-reviewed video game movie yet.

That puts it squarely inside a bigger 2026 turn, especially when you stack it up against 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which made $42 million worldwide, and the Paul W.S. Anderson/Milla Jovovich Resident Evil run, which pulled in $1.2 billion without ever landing a Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.

What stands out here is how both critics and audiences are responding to Resident Evil as an actual movie, not just as another franchise entry. It also seems to have cracked a problem this series has had for years: how to feel like Resident Evil without replaying the games beat for beat.

If you’re looking for survival horror, not another action spectacle, Resident Evil is worth seeing. Bryan, a tired medical courier created for the film and dropped into the Raccoon City outbreak in place of Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, or any other canon hero, moves through the story the way the average Resident Evil player probably would: clumsy with guns, too loud when it matters most, easy to rattle, prone to freezing up, and fully capable of misreading danger. He’s still believable enough that you end up empathizing with him as the movie gets tenser, darker, funnier and, in a strange way, more relatable. More to the point, the film understands what the Resident Evil games feel like, not only what they look like, and that makes the old formula work better.

Resident Evil is now playing in theaters.

Apple’s $250 million Siri settlement claims process is now open. The official settlement site says U.S. customers could start filing on September 21, 2026. If you bought an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or any iPhone 16 model between June 10, 2024, and March 29, 2025, you can submit a claim between September 21, 2026, and December 21, 2026.

To file, you’ll need your name, contact information, and your iPhone’s serial number. The official settlement site puts the expected payout at about $25 per device, though that number could climb as high as $95 if fewer valid claims are approved.

The plaintiffs argued that Apple’s WWDC 2024 presentations gave buyers reason to expect a more capable Siri around the iPhone 16 launch, with deeper personal context and the ability to take actions across apps. Those marquee features didn’t show up until iOS 27 earlier this month. Apple denied any wrongdoing and said it agreed to settle rather than keep fighting the case in court.

If you bought one of these phones, this is probably worth filing. It’s also a pretty clear example of how launch promises onstage demos, and feature roadmaps can turn into legal trouble when the features arrive late.

You can file through the official settlement site. But the settlement applies only to U.S. buyers, and it still doesn’t answer why Siri was delayed.