Month: October 2026

At first, HBO’s online service was called HBO Go. Ten years later, they changed it to HBO Now. Then HBO Max arrived, which was renamed Max, which was renamed HBO Max… and which now, apparently, will change its name again, because David Ellison has confirmed that the service, packed with some of the best series in history, will merge with Paramount+’s, which never really managed to gain subscribers in the United States.

HBOmount+ Max

There were doubts as to whether Ellison would want to unite the two streaming services or keep them separate, but now there’s no doubt. At least it seems they’ll think it over a bit and it won’t be immediate, because they’ve announced that it’s a long-term plan… although, for now, there’ll be changes you’ll see right away, like bundle deals for both services.

Of course, Ellison has stressed that AI is in the mix and said it’s the only way for the merger to go through. Well of course, naturally. There are still many things to find out, like the price or what content they expect to add (and remove)… Or what will happen in some European territories, like Spain, where Paramount+ is part of a conglomerate called SkyShowTime with a rather bleak future.

Combined, the two services have more than 200 million users (though we’d have to see how many have both), which would put them in an ideal position to compete with Disney+ and the other services. The merger trend has only just begun, and a huge wave is already building. Little things are coming. Huge things are coming.

We’re beside ourselves, biting our nails while we wait for the BBC to greenlight the new Doctor Who. And now, at last, it has confirmed that it will return in late 2027 or early 2028… but as a series for babies. It’s not what you were hoping for, we know, but it could be worse, right?

Mini-Doctor

The series will be called Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew and it’s pretty clear that anyone expecting grown-up adventures packed with complex wormholes and season-long plots is going to be disappointed, because the protagonist will be a young Time Lord alongside his friends Hannah, Beastie and Toast-IE, who will hop into the TARDIS and face the Doctor’s enemies, including the Daleks.

The BBC promises “imagination, humor and adventure”, trying to win new fans for the Doctor. There’ll be action, stories for younger viewers and it will celebrate curiosity, courage and kindness. It’s more or less Doctor Who, but for kids. Oh! And the little ones aren’t going to be short on episodes, because there will be 52 11-minute episodes. Forget Peppa Pig: the Doctor is coming.

At the end of 2027, the TARDIS will find a new companion on CBeebies, created for children aged 6 or under. It remains to be seen whether it can be ready in time, though, because the series is still in production… and the arrival of a proper new Doctor could change everything. Allons-y (in miniature)!

We usually keep blaming Michael Bay for the first two Transformers movies. However, Steven Spielberg was involved too, even if only as executive producer. And, after 7 movies (besides Bumblebee), the saga has gone back to square one for a new installment that nobody saw coming. It’s more More than meets the eye than ever.

More than meets the Spielberg

Paramount and Warner joining forces has meant all projects are being rethought, and one of them will be the new Transformers. And, of course, with Spielberg involved, Spielberg will oversee every creative aspect, setting aside all the spin-offs and later entries from the latest installments and putting complete faith in his ideas… and in Bay’s. Because yes, although many had written him off, he’s back.

It’s true that the director, for now, hasn’t been confirmed, but it would be such a major comeback for the franchise that it’s hard to imagine them passing it up. The idea is to make a new installment that pays tribute to the original films, but it’s not clear whether it’s a reboot, a remake or a sequel. Bay has been away from Transformers for ten years, and his latest sequels didn’t measure up at the box office (and, truth be told, with critics).

It’s not the only old project being brought back to life at Paramount these days, because it’s already been confirmed that Brad Pitt will return for World War Z 2, directed by none other than Edward Berger. Will they manage to recapture that success by going back to the same formula?

There was a time when extraction shooters were games so far removed from the mainstream that it was inconceivable they could ever be popular. They were too hard, too punishing, and all the rough edges they had made them a popular niche genre, but at the end of the day, inevitably one belonging to a relatively small group of people. Until Embark Studios came along.

With ARC Raiders they showed that the extraction shooter could reach a general audience and succeed. Making only minimal concessions and building on the genre’s foundations, they’ve not only remained for almost a year now as the genre’s leading example, at least in terms of popularity, but also in terms of critical reception. As the winner of Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards 2025, it’s one of the most acclaimed games from last year. And it seems it wants to keep holding onto its throne with its new major expansion: Frozen Trail.

A harsh and brutal territory

We’ve already been able to try it, and the best thing we can say about Frozen Trail is that it’s ARC Raiders, but with one more unexpected layer of hostility added on top. Because the new map, Pendola Pass, is a huge huge region located on the northern border of the Rust Belt, defined by its mountainous terrain and the heavy snow cover, where we have to quickly realize two things: how hostile both the environment and the ARC are.

Since it’s an very mountainous area, the verticality of the setting has been emphasized. And that, added to the presence of many more flying ARC, means it’s easy to find yourself in situations where the only option is to fall to your death or crash into a sheer wall that’s impossible to climb. Likewise, the new map condition, Redirection, only further emphasizes this feeling of constant danger. We can get rewards by calling in loot through the transmitter, but by doing so we’ll alert ARC and rival players alike. Forcing us to withstand waves of enemies to survive.

As if that weren’t enough, Pendola Pass is a mountainous area. And blizzards are common here. If a blizzard catches us in the middle of nowhere, we’ll end up dead, so they’ve added avalanche shelters so you can protect yourself from it. As long as another player doesn’t have the same idea.

And the tools to survive it

But it wouldn’t be ARC Raiders if you didn’t have the tools to survive. And the fact is that along with all this danger, including new ARC like the gigantic Frigate, which you’re unlikely to survive on your first or second encounter with, they’ve also added some new perks. The most notable is that you’ll now be able to set up your own personal spaces outside Speranza where you’ll be able to build and improve workbenches, and customize these spaces however you want. On top of that, the Research Station will let you upgrade weapons beyond their current limits and Weapon Templates will let you change their appearance without changing their stats.

Though we’re not going to lie to you. There has been one thing that won us over more than anything else in this playtest. Because if anything has been absolutely fascinating, it’s been one of the new tools: the grappling hook.

With a relatively short range, the grappling hook can latch onto anything. Rock walls, ceilings, robots, all kinds of structures. If it lands near a horizontal structure, your Raider will climb up to it and we can keep moving forward. The verticality of Pendola Pass makes the grappling hook feel extraordinarily good. Going up and down to and from otherwise inaccessible places, but always so exposed that it doesn’t work for getting out of hairy situations quickly —for that you’d better run—, makes the grappling hook an absolute delight to use.

None of this substantially changes the experience of playing ARC Raiders, but it adds enough novelty to feel fresh and vibrant. Anyone who felt they’d already seen everything has a reason to jump back in; anyone who still felt something was missing will probably find it here. It’s an update that is exactly what it should be: digging deeper into the game’s strengths, developing what its fans like about it and exploring its possibilities from there. Something you’ll be able to discover for yourself in this 2.0 update before long, since it’ll be available October 8.

Xbox has confirmed that GTA 6 will be playable on its streaming service, Xbox Cloud Gaming. This means you’ll be able to play it at launch either by buying the game and playing it directly from your hard drive or by playing it through the cloud.

There hasn’t been clear communication around this

But this isn’t the original announcement they put out. At first it was announced that Xbox would have the exclusive streaming rights, something they later later denied by stating that it applies exclusively to Xbox consoles. This has also sparked some controversy on social media.

This means that you won’t be able to play the game on PC and that Xbox does not have the exclusive streaming rights. This matters because GTA 6 still hasn’t been announced for PC and some console games are playable via streaming on PC. You’ll still be able to stream the game on your console whenever and wherever you want. This clarification that doesn’t radically change the game’s launch, but it does significantly change the experience for those who were expecting to play it via streaming.