🎮 New Extraction Shooter From Epic, New Spider-Man Game And DLC Is Not Saving Starfield
Also Naughty Dog Allegedly Working On A New Uncharted Game, Bloober Team Is Working On 7 New Horror Games, GTA 6 Leak Actually Done Wonders For Take-Two And Fable Reconfirms Release Date!
Hello friends,
Today is April 23rd 2026 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 New Extraction Shooter From Epic
🎮 New Spider-Man From Insomniac
🎮 DLC Is Not Saving Starfield
🎮 Naughty Dog Allegedly Working On A New Uncharted Game
🎮 Bloober Team Is Working On 7 New Horror Games
🎮 GTA 6 Leak Actually Done Wonders For Take-Two
🎮 Fable Reconfirms Release Date After Rumours About Delay
🫡 True Tribute!
😄 Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 New Extraction Shooter From Epic
While the interest in Fortnite is going down, a new game might be on the horizon, and it’s apparently an extraction shooter developed in partnership with Disney, scheduled to be released in November this year.
According to a recent report from Bloomberg, the company is on track to launch the first game in partnership with the media giant after a $1.5 billion investment two years ago. The outlet received confirmation from at least four current and former employees, and the game is set to be similar to Arc Raiders. But of course, with signature Disney characters who battle each other and other enemies until they can reach an extraction point. The only concerning point is that, according to the same employees, the internal reviews didn’t go great, and people inside Epic Games express doubts about the originality of the mechanics and gameplay loop in general.
Also, it’s said that this will not be the last game as Epic has plans for at least two more.
And I think it has potential to be huge for Epic if executed correctly. First of all, I still have no idea why the company didn’t use what they had with Fortnite to develop an extraction shooter years ago. They already have all the ingredients for it. But instead, for whatever reason, they waited for Arc Raiders and other projects to occupy this niche for them. Second of all, it makes sense. Clearly, something has to change when even they are admitting that Fortnite is not doing well. And what better way to do this than a game with widely recognised characters in a genre that can generate strong engagement.
What I am not clear on is whether this is going to be a new standalone project or if it is going to be a part of the Fortnite ecosystem. And while I understand that they want to revive the interest in their games as soon as possible, they have to be very careful. If they rush this thing to market without thinking things through, it’s not going to end well for them. Unless Epic finds a way to differentiate this new game from Arc Raiders, then what’s the point? I doubt that the majority of people who play extraction shooters are going to jump over to them just because they can play as Iron Man or Mr Incredible.
Still, this project sounds interesting, and I haven’t been interested in Fortnite or Epic since the initial release of their Battle Royale 😅
🎮 New Spider-Man From Insomniac
With Marvel’s Wolverine release date approaching, the studio is already thinking about the next thing. Maybe even more than that.
In a recently deleted Instagram post, Ben Jordan, the actor behind Peter Parker’s face in Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, shared an image showing motion-capture work with the caption “IYKYK” plus a spider emoji. Which might mean only one thing: Spider-Man 3 is already in motion (pun intended). Of course, the post was quickly deleted, but the actor will most likely get an earful after teasing an unannounced project like that.
And obviously, we don’t know anything about the upcoming game. The latest game left us with some cliffhangers, so there is a lot of stuff to look forward to.
With that, Spider-Man definitely remains one of the strongest AAA pillars that Sony has in their portfolio. The second game already made history and became the fastest-selling game in PlayStation history, with more than 2.5 million copies sold worldwide in the first 24 hours. And it was even better than the first one. So, my guess is that Sony will continue making those games as long as this franchise continues pumping those big numbers. The only question is, how are they going to top the previous game? They’ve already raised the bar incredibly high for themselves, and the expectations are going to be astronomical. It’s going to be incredibly hard to plus one the existing formula. If anything goes wrong, all this big work of building a brand like this could be for nothing. No pressure, right? 😅
But before we get into that, it’s Wolverine’s show this year!
🎮 DLC Is Not Saving Starfield
Terran Armada and Free Lanes are live, but it doesn’t look like it is improving things for Starfield.
While neither the free expansion nor a story DLC were positioned as a big overhaul, Bethesda was advertising both pretty heavily, trying to get people back and perhaps lure new people in. But so far, it’s not working. Since the release on April 7, the expansion has already received Mixed reviews despite the fact that this DLC is much cheaper in comparison with other games. And the concurrent player count is telling a sad story as well. According to Steam Charts, the number of people jumped to only a little over 30,000 during the opening weekend, and that’s not great for a AAA game that released with 10 times that number.
So, all in all, it doesn’t look like this DLC is suddenly bringing Starfield back to life.
And I keep saying that, but I have a feeling that stakeholders at Xbox are going to recognise it soon enough. This game is beyond recovery at this point. At least not without a systemic relaunch or some sort of jamor multiplayer/social retention loop, despite what Todd Howard might think. Yes, the initial numbers were big and strong, but it has nothing to do with the game. It was mostly because everybody was curious. And now that everybody has tried it and seen all the rough edges and holes, the majority of their player base doesn’t want anything to do with it.
A continuation like this would’ve worked wonderfully if this game hadn’t lost almost all its players in the first few months. And now it looks like they are just burning resources, trying to squeeze water from stone. I’m honestly 90% confident that pretty soon, either Bethesda is going to pull the plug and refocus the team, or Xbox leadership is going to do that for them.
And if not, then it means that none of them is interested in earning money, I guess 😅
If you haven’t subscribed yet, this button is just for you ⤵️
🎮 Naughty Dog Allegedly Working On A New Uncharted Game
We have known for a while that, in addition to Intergalactic, the studio is working on something else. And now we’ve got new speculations saying it’s a new Uncharted.
At least according to some claims shared by Insider Gaming recently. While the speculations are not confirmed, the outlet also shared some time ago that Uncharted: The Lost Legacy’s Director posted an intriguing Instagram image suggesting that he is researching a potential new setting for an upcoming Uncharted title.
Now, all that is well and good, but the studio still hasn’t officially said anything about their mysterious project, so, however likely it sounds, it is still just a rumour.
I’m a little biased, but I’m still going to say that if that’s the case, I will be a little disappointed. I still want Naughty Dog to continue their work on The Last of Us franchise. Even if they decide not to continue with Ellie’s story, I think there is a lot of potential there. It could be a story about the early days of the outbreak, a story about what’s going on in Europe or even some sort of epilogue story for Abby.
But to be fair, both Uncharted and The Last of Us produced strong commercial results. So, the only thing that matters is the timing. Which might make more sense for The Last of Us, especially since we know the show will have a season 3 at some point. This is a big media beat that nobody would want to pass on without a second project in the wings, and Naughty Dog is already fresh out of remasters at this point.
Whatever the case, we probably won’t hear about it, at least till Intergalactic is approaching a release date that’s not even set yet.
🎮 Bloober Team Is Working On 7 New Horror Games
The team that has brought us Silent Hill 2 Remake and Cronos: The New Dawn is very busy these days. So busy, in fact, that they reportedly work on 7 different projects at the same time.
According to the company’s CEO, the company has two big production teams working simultaneously on two large horror games, while its second-party and publishing segment, Broken Mirror Games, is also handling additional projects. We’ve already talked about Layers of Fear 3 and another Silent Hill Remake, which I assume are the two big projects. But there is also a number of unnamed projects, like Project H, described by the CEO as a new original project in pre-production and the most commercially ambitious title that the team has attempted. Project M, a Nintendo-focused horror title. Project F, publicly listed on Bloober’s 2025-and-beyond release calendar as a Broken Mirror Games. I Hate This Place, another Broken Mirror Games title and Star Trek: Infection, a VR survival horror title.
And that is a lot, even for three separate pipelines.
With the success of Silent Hill, Layers of Fear and Cronos, Bloober Team definitely earned some street cred and can afford more than one project. The CEO shared that it’s risky to rely on only one title, so it makes sense to diversify their efforts. And horror seems to be one of the few genres where mid-sized companies like that could succeed. But there is an argument to be made that they are stretching themselves too thin. So far, the company has delivered good results, but a lot of it comes down to the quality of their games. By making so many bets, they risk jeopardising it by trying to extend their catalogue beyond what they actually need.
On the flip side, if they succeed with at least most of them, they can become something bigger than “that one studio that remade Silent Hill 2”. So, high risks, high rewards, I guess 😁
🎮 GTA 6 Leak Actually Done Wonders For Take-Two
So, Rockstar Games recently suffered a major data breach, and despite the data eventually being released, the company's stock price rose by over a billion dollars.
Not so long ago, Rockstar confirmed that, in their own words, a limited amount of non-material company information fell into the hands of hackers who demanded a ransom to prevent its disclosure. The company decided not to pay anything, saying that the incident had no impact on its organisation or the players. And the information was released shortly after. The weird thing is what happened after that.
The stock of Rockstar went up instead of down. So much so that, according to Insider Gaming, it added roughly $1 billion to the company’s overall value. The outlet says the value was rising because people were seeing information they hadn’t been privy to before, which made investors feel very good. And that’s not common. Usually, when these things happen, and holes in security are exposed like that, people start panicking.
But I guess it’s hard to scare a giant as big as Take-Two. Still, this time, hackers tried to find the Hope Diamond and came up with a piece of glass, but what about next time? If it were any other publisher with a smaller project on the horizon, I think the confidence wouldn’t be as high, and the consequence would’ve been much more severe.
🎮 Fable Reconfirms Release Date After Rumours About Delay
A rumour started to go around lately that Fable might miss their announced release window, but the developers are eager to let us know that this is not the case.
According to IGN, the rumour started with Jeff Grubb from Giant Bomb saying that Xbox and Playground Games are concerned with the release of GTA 6 being in the Fall of this year, as Fable is scheduled to be released around the same time as well, and that the developers could push the launch date into December or even next year. And hats off to the Fable team, as they immediately sent out word via X, saying that they are excited to welcome their players to Albion in Autumn 2026, reconfirming the release window.
Now, we don’t know for sure, maybe there was indeed a concern, but it looks like there is none anymore. Personally, I think they shouldn’t be concerned with GTA 6 as much. First of all, these games are too different and target somewhat different audiences. In my opinion, it’s not about an empty slot in the calendar and getting around other big-ticket items for this year. It’s about how well they are going to re-establish this franchise decades after the original game and how well they are going to cater to the modern audience.
Don’t get me wrong, timing matters to a certain extent, but this shouldn’t be their primary focus. If they were able to deliver a strong AAA open world with confident previews and good feedback from players, they would be able to survive any crowded market. And honestly, people like me, who love the franchise and are looking forward to playing this game, don’t really care about GTA 6. And even if they both release at the same time, they would rather play Fable 🐔
🫡 True Tribute!
Today I wanted to salute Shane Elliott and Feats N' Faults !
Honestly, I was very surprised that Joker didn’t get the gold here. But to be fair, I think both performances from Tom Hardy and Heath Ledger were amazing, as well as the stories about those characters. And I agree, all these villains and these movies are probably one of the best (if not THE best) we've seen about Batman so far. And that’s saying something, considering the first Dark Knight movie came out almost 20 years ago (!!!). Great tier list Shane Elliott !
💎 Hidden Gems
So, I’m starting to experiment with this category of my newsletter and wanted to share some interesting games that I found. Especially those that look very promising, but the ones that didn’t get the AAA spotlight. Or, honestly, any spotlight for that matter😅
Like Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss.
Don’t really remember how I found it, but if you watched the movie Underwater with Kristen Stewart, it looks similar to that. But this time, you play the role of paranormal investigator Noah, tasked with investigating the mysterious disappearance of miners in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. And it looks absolutely fantastic if you like all things Lovecraftian 🦑
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
If you feel like supporting me and my work, consider Powering-Up GameDev Relay 🎮
Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
I was super hyped for Starfield. I took off the day it came out and was beyond ready for it to be my new favorite game. I had my fun don't get me wrong but it got old and did not feel like it had the magic that I felt when I first played skyrim.
I know what the CEO said — you can’t rest on the success of one title, but 7 titles sounds like what Disney made Marvel and LucasFilms do, and everything went to hell because they were doing too much too quickly.