Somehow, another week has managed to fly by, and we’re here again rounding up the week’s news in the gaming world. How can it be that time flies so?
Well, overly flowery and poetic intros aside, we are, as you’ve probably surmised, here once again to bring you everything important you need to know from the last seven days or so of gaming news.
Without further ado, then, let’s take a look at all of the most important stories to hit the gaming sphere this week!
The PlayStation Plus lineup for June has been announced
Sony announced the PlayStation Plus Essential lineup for June this week, and three games are coming your way, the first of which is an Xbox game. It still feels weird to say that in the year of our lord 2026.
The first game you’ll be able to check out on PS Plus this month is none other than the survival game Grounded: Fully Yoked Edition, which you can enjoy either all by yourself or with your friends.
It’s joined by platform fighter Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 and co-op shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, so let it never be said that PS Plus doesn’t offer variety.
Unreal Engine 6 revealed alongside Rocket League revamp
You wouldn’t have thought Epic would want to bury the lede of an Unreal Engine 6 announcement, and yet that’s exactly what the studio did this week by including the new engine’s logo at the end of a Rocket League trailer.
That’s right: Rocket League is getting a revamp, and as part of that revamp, it’s getting an engine upgrade to a brand new version of one of the most popular engines around.
It’s not technically Rocket League 2, but judging by the impressive visual fidelity on display, it won’t be too far off, either.
The Witcher 3 is getting a third expansion ten years later
It’s been ten years to the day (at time of writing!) since acclaimed open-world RPG The Witcher 3 got its last paid expansion, but this week, developer CD Projekt Red announced a brand new one.
We don’t know much about it yet; the studio simply revealed that it’s developing the expansion alongside Fool’s Theory, the studio responsible for The Thaumaturge, and that more is coming in late summer.
Judging by the artwork, Geralt will be dealing with some pretty nasty-looking tree monsters. Here’s hoping this one can be just as superb as its predecessors; if CD Projekt Red’s recent run of form is anything to go by, there’ll be nothing to worry about.
Sony has shut down Destruction AllStars
Remember Destruction AllStars, the live-service destruction derby game Sony launched alongside the PlayStation 5 back in 2021? Well, it seems like Sony would rather you didn’t, as the game’s servers have been taken offline.
Players received emails from Sony confirming the shutdown, as well as revealing that you’ll still be able to play it in single-player mode until November 25th, at which point the game will disappear entirely.
It feels like a rather ignominious end for Destruction AllStars, but we can’t imagine that many people were still logging in to check it out on a daily basis anyway. Still, this is another major hit for the game preservation crowd.
Dragon Quest XII is back, and Dragon Quest XI is Switch 2-bound
It’s been a while since we heard anything about Dragon Quest XII, but this week, Square Enix assuaged fans’ fears that the game had been cancelled…well, sort of, anyway.
A 40th-anniversary event for the series revealed that Dragon Quest XII development has been restarted and that the game is still a ways away, but hey, at least it still exists. It’s now called Beyond Dreams.
The game looks like it will be taking on a more open-world direction than its predecessors, too. Not only that, but Dragon Quest XI is getting itself a Switch 2 port with fancy graphics and performance improvements.
The Steam Deck is now going to cost you a lot more
If you didn’t pick yourself up a Steam Deck when the machine was first released, then you’re in for a shock, because Valve announced a massive price hike this week.
Picking up the 512GB OLED model is now going to cost you a cool £649, while the 1TB model will set you back an eye-watering £779. That’s assuming scalpers don’t get their hands on the machines, too.
Valve says the prices have been jacked up due to “the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole”, and it’s hard to argue with that.
Planet Zoo 2 has officially been revealed
Frontier announced a sequel to its hit zoo sim Planet Zoo this week, and it’s coming in October, bringing lots of new stuff with it into the bargain.
The imaginatively-named Planet Zoo 2 (hey, sometimes it’s good just to stick to the classics) will bring fully aquatic species, new wildlife reserves, and flying creatures for you to manage, and it will, of course, also have plenty of DLC for you to buy.
The release date is October 13th, and you can expect to play this one on PC and consoles on day one as well, so you won’t have to wait if you’re managing your zoo with controller in hand.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is your next Call of Duty game
It looks like the folks behind Call of Duty are now officially uninterested in creating completely new entries in the long-running shooter series, as the next mainline instalment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, has been revealed.
Continuing a pattern of alternating Modern Warfare and Black Ops biannual releases which began back in 2022, Modern Warfare 4 will foreground (4ground?) a conflict between North and South Korea.
As was previously rumoured, Modern Warfare 4 is also ditching PS4 and Xbox One, so if you’re still gaming on last-gen machines and you’re hungry to check out the latest Call of Duty, you’ll have to upgrade, we’re afraid.
