Burned

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.

Please enjoy — and I’ll see you next week.

Summer Game Fest 2025 will be remembered as the one that happened while the Waymos burned.

The SGF Play Days event space, where games media and influencers meet up with developers over a long weekend, is in the fashion district in Los Angeles, and this year it was a few miles from the heart of sprawling protests against ICE. After months of inhumane and legally dubious deportations of LA residents by masked federal agents — emboldened by President Donald Trump’s far-right extremism and equipped with weapons built for war — the bubble of resistance popped. Protestors hit the streets after ICE officers swept up dozens of people across LA in another round of coordinated raids on Friday, June 6. The protests grew over the weekend and Trump called in the National Guard, followed by the Marines. Militarized LAPD officers attacked people with horses and batons, and they fired rubber bullets into crowds and directly at one journalist. On Sunday evening, protestors lit a line of unoccupied Waymos on fire.

The thick, black smoke was visible from the Play Days lot. I saw it as I was leaving the media lounge, heading toward the food trucks, and it stopped me in my tracks just in front of the Capcom booth. The low buzz of helicopters and the cries of police sirens had been a constant companion that weekend, but the smoke was new. I stopped and took a photo as upbeat reggae music pumped out of the speaker beside me. Around the corner, an actor dressed as a Fortnite banana in a suit was enticing passersby to play Ddakji as part of a cross-promotional effort with Squid Game. The dissonance made my head spin.

The sickly pallor of encroaching authoritarianism has hung over every video game convention in the past six months — because it’s shadowed literally everything in the United States this year. I’ve spent a significant amount of this time actively shutting down thoughts about Project 2025, government-sponsored human trafficking, neo-Nazis and all manner of hateful, bigoted policies targeting the United States’ most vulnerable people, because if I didn’t, the stress of these realities would consume me. I think most of us are doing something similar nowadays. We have to deprioritize specific thoughts at certain times, in order to get work done, maintain relationships and make it through the day. Having to ignore these monumental things in favor of, at least in my case, video games is a mindfuck.

The smoke from the burning Waymos, visible from the main alleyway at SGF, felt like a physical manifestation of this constant internal tension. Video games are a vehicle for connection and expression, and they’re deeply valuable to society — but, as with anything else, their importance is a matter of perspective.

Jessica Conditt

The news

Everything — like, everything — announced at Summer Game Fest 2025

Our SGF 2025 roundup post is a comprehensive rundown of all the news from the show, from Day of the Devs to the big Xbox showcase. We’ll be adding our hands-ons and interviews as they’re published over the coming week right at the top of this article, so feel free to keep checking back. Or, Engadget’s Gaming hub will keep you covered.

Resident Evil Requiem is a thing

Arguably the biggest bit of news out of SGF 2025, Resident Evil Requiem is due out on February 27, 2026. It’s a mainline Resident Evil title starring FBI agent Grace Ashcroft, and it features familiar locations from the series, including Raccoon City’s demolished police department.

The Outer Worlds 2 release date

Obsidian’s sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2 is heading to PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 29 — just in time for everyone to understand your fancy-man moon-head Halloween costume.

There’s an official Xbox handheld, but it isn’t made by Xbox

After months of rumors about Microsoft and ASUS teaming up to make an Xbox-branded handheld gaming device, we finally have relief. The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are due out this holiday season, capable of playing Xbox games natively via the cloud or a remote console connection, and with support for other popular PC storefronts like Steam, GOG and Battle.net. There’s no word on price or an exact release date yet, but the Xbox handhelds are definitely, finally coming.

Relooted looks like the kind of fun we need right now

If you only have time to read about one game from SGF 2025, acquaint yourself with Relooted from South African indie studio Nyamakop. It’s a heist game about rescuing African artifacts from the Western colonizers who stole them, and it’s filled with puzzles, action and Afrofuturism. This is one to keep an eye on.

Enter the world of Mat Smith writeups

Engadget’s UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith was on the ground at SGF 2025 and he’s already published a trio of stories directly from the show, each one more delightful than the last. There’s a look at Lumines Arise, complete with input from director Takashi Ishihara; a preview of Patapon spiritual successor Ratatan; and Mat’s thoughts on Supermassive’s sci-fi romp Directive 8020. There’s more coming from Mat, too, so keep that Engadget Gaming tab open.

Sword of the Sea is a return to form for the artist behind Journey

I had a lovely little chat at SGF with Matt Nava, the artist responsible for Journey, Abzû, The Pathless, and the upcoming sand-surfing game, Sword of the Sea. Nava has spent the past decade or so running from his own shadow, but with Sword of the Sea, he’s finally following his intuition again. This story includes impressions of the game — spoiler: it’s fabulous — and development insight from Nava.

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