Is it likely? Probably not, but as a Killer Instinct fan, one can hope.

Despite backlash to some aspects of the console, the Xbox One had arguably one of the strongest launch line-ups in the platform's history, with titles like RYSE and Titanfall from first-party, and games like Battlefield 4 and Assassin's Creed: Black Flag from third. For me, the best launch title was Killer Instinct, however, which revived Rare's classic fighting game for a new era.

Killer Instinct is a combo-heavy fighting game that is easy to play, and difficult to master. Breaking enemy combos with a satisying "C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER" announcer effect elevated the game to its legendary status, atop its violence and creative character line-up.

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PlayStation cornered the fighting game audience pretty hard in the years to follow, landing exclusivity for Street Fighter for a time, alongside other major fighting games.

Killer Instinct struggled to maintain pace, and ultimately fell into maintenance mode not long after, although it had strong post-launch support bringing in fan-favorite fighters alongside various new ones. It even picked up combatants from other Xbox franchises, such as RAAM from Gears of War and the Arbiter from Halo.

Aside from the occasional update and balance change, Killer Instinct has remained largely dormant over the last few years. There is a small team at Xbox who works on maintaining the game, but the player base is miniscule, likely in the dozens rather than hundreds going from Steam stats.

Could it be revived, though? Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon has once again polled users on the state of the fighting game industry, and it's not the first time Boon has spoken about interest in picking up Killer Instinct.

He asked users to vote on which recent fighting game should grab a second chance, including Riot's ill-fated 2XKO, Rumbleverse, Warner Bros' cancelled Smash-clone MultiVersus, and Xbox's dormant Killer Instinct.

As of writing, Killer Instinct leads by a sizeable margin with over 50% of the vote.

Microsoft's gaming portfolio is currently undergoing a lot of upheaval, with Obsidian moved to Bethesda to work on Fallout, and Halo Studios practically shuttered, with the franchise handed off to Call of Duty producers at Activision.

There's probably not a ton of bandwidth at Microsoft right now to explore what a new Killer Instinct might look like ... but what if Warner Bros' studio NetherRealm and Ed Boon's Mortal Kombat team picked up the flag?

Killer Instinct always had huge potential in my view, it was always my personal preferred fighting game. There are major influencers who often advocate for its revival, like Maximilian_Dood.

As a Spinal enjoyer, I still had a ton of fun playing it despite how invariably poor I was at PvP. It would be intriguing to see a Mortal Kombat-style cinematic take on Killer Instinct's lore and universe — which is undeniably intriguing. It's unclear whether or not Warner Bros. would have appetite for involvement here too, given its attempts to turn Mortal Kombat into a viable movie franchise.

There's probably a universe where Killer Instinct could be revived as a high-quality fighting game, with a cinematic single player experience, with franchising potential into TV and movies. You could draft characters from Blizzard games, or Fallout, and beyond too ... alas, it's probably unlikely.

Still, it's fun to dream, no? What IF?

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Rumors about Xbox's deal with Hideo Kojima's upcoming "Action Espionage" title have been swirling recently.

Xbox is undergoing "restructuring" over the past few weeks, leading to thousands of layoffs and staff reductions in the form of divestitures. Microsoft's new gaming CEO Asha Sharma has made no secret of the intent to focus on big-name franchises like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and less time on smaller projects like those produced by Double Fine or Compulsion — both of whom are now fully independent teams. Existing studios like Obsidian have been moved to be closer to the Fallout franchise for example, and Halo Studios itself was recently shuttered (in essence) with the franchise handed off to Call of Duty publisher Activision.

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There have been some questions about the timing of Xbox's announcement in partnership with Hideo Kojima's "PHYSINT," as a result. With some (erroneously) speculating that the closures have been designed to fund Kojima's long-awaited return to the espionage genre. Metal Gear Solid is arguably among the top 5 (or maybe even top 3) most legendary franchises of all time. To get the spiritual successor to that on Xbox is a pretty huge coup, considering it was originally announced by PlayStation.

But uh, is this project going to cost almost half a billion dollars? And did it lay off thousands in order to do it? The answer is "no," trusted and verified sources tell me.

Speaking on his podcast, Chris Dring of The Game Business reported that Xbox's budget for PHYSINT is at $400 million. He has since walked back the claim after Bloomberg's Jason Schreier poured cold water on the figure.

I was told similarly by first-hand sources with direct knowledge of the contracts that the figure for PHYSINT is far lower than what is being reported here. It has been suggested to me that the "$400 million" figure is potentially what Sony and PlayStation might've been on the hook for until they cancelled the deal. Xbox and Kojima are building towards their Xbox projects on a "fraction" of this reported figure.

I'm told Xbox negotiated a deal with Kojima Productions that includes both movie and TV licenses for PHYSINT, and it also included enhanced terms for OD — Kojima's anticipated atmospheric horror game for Xbox.

We're seeing a more thrifty Xbox, and a more thrifty AAA industry in general

There has been a lot of discussion about budgets in recent years. Some estimates suggest Grand Theft Auto 6 has had a budget upwards of a billion dollars, for example. Developers from the likes of Saber Interactive, Remedy, and Bloober Team have all commented on building AAA-grade experiences on budgets in the tens of millions, rather than hundreds of millions.

Game development in the United States has become incredibly expensive. I'm told part of this revolves around salary competition for AI-adjacent software engineering disciplines, that often share cross-over hiring processes and salary scales with gaming companies. The closer you are to an AI development hub (like Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA), the greater the competition for salaries becomes ... making game development potentially unviable from a purely fiscal perspective in some regions.

Microsoft has been exploring outsourcing in Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom, and other regions where game development is more "affordable" to that end. PHYSINT might have spendy Hollywood actors tied to the project, but Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has quite loudly stated goals around cost-saving and cost-cutting.

Movies and TV shows are also becoming an increasingly crucial tool for both marketing and offsetting costs for gaming projects. Selling the rights to streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime can feed back into game development budgets, and creates a symbiotic marketing beat (if indeed, the content is actually good). Given Kojima's penchant for cinematic games, PHYSINT should be at least one project that pays dividends if everything is executed well.

... I suspect Xbox will have to give Kojima more flexibility than they may want to if they do want the game to hit that coveted quality bar.

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Microsoft just revealed another round of "restructures" for Xbox and its game studios, with Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Turn 10, Halo Studios, and others impacted in various ways.

Last July, Microsoft announced it would be looking to reduce its gaming workforce by around 3,200 staffers. Sources suggest that the total figure will fall short of that previous estimate, as Microsoft opts for restructuring and moving employees around to other departments as much as possible.

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One way Microsoft has sought to achieve some of this is via divestitures. Double Fine and Compulsion have both returned to being independent game studios, for example, with the former starting a Kickstarter to fund its next title. Undead Labs of State of Decay fame is also moving to another publisher, although it has not been revealed exactly who this is just yet. Discussions around the future of Arkane are still ongoing.

Unfortunately, Microsoft revealed today that two previous attempts to divest Ninja Theory of Hellblade fame have fallen through. Microsoft has entered into redundancy consultations with the UK government as a result, per local law. Sources say Microsoft is still trying to find a buyer for Ninja Theory and the Hellblade franchise, but it's still looking a bit bleak.

Furthermore, Halo Studios is also looking at major layoffs in the 100s, as Microsoft seeks a major restructure to the way Halo is run.

In its heyday, Halo was a cultural phenomenon. It turbo-charged the Xbox platform, giving Microsoft's incumbent console a strong basis for growth in a market dominated by Nintendo and PlayStation. Halo 2 and 3 sent the platform even higher, and defined a new era of console-oriented first-person shooters. Those times are well and truly behind it, though.

Through years of mismanagement, Halo is now a shadow of its former self. A disastrous TV show, and two previous games that arguably missed the mark in different ways, Halo Studios' most recent outing (yet another remaster of Halo Combat Evolved) also received mixed reviews from fans and critics for various reasons.

Microsoft announced that it is effectively downsizing Halo Studios into the franchise's production and administration arm, and will place stewardship of the franchise under Activision — confirming some vague industry rumors I'd heard over the summer. Microsoft says around 230 roles will be lost as a result.

Exactly which Activision studio will handle Halo going forward remains to be seen, but it's certainly true that Activision's Call of Duty teams have had far more success than Halo Studios has at building broadly appealing live service shooters.

Furthermore, Microsoft is also placing Rare and Sea of Thieves under Activision too, with Obsidian and Grounded moving under ZeniMax to work more closely with Bethesda Softworks on Fallout. World's Edge and the Age of Empires franchise will also move under Activision. Xbox Game Studios will remain as Playground (which is absorbing Turn 10), The Coalition, InXile, and Xbox's publishing arm, handling games like Hideo Kojima's PHYSINT.

A new dawn for Halo?

The job losses at Xbox have been regrettable over the summer, but it's hard to overlook the fact that in order to have a sustainable business ... games need to actually sell. Whether it's small and quirky projects like Keeper or mismanaged live service ops like Halo Infinite, Microsoft hasn't exactly handled its portfolio effectively in recent years. There's less free time and money for gaming among consumers, and more competition than ever, making the stakes higher than they likely were previously.

Microsoft has seen some big success stories. Minecraft is bigger than ever, as is Forza Horizon, Flight Simulator, Age of Empires, and Blizzard has well and truly thrived in its post-Activision era. Microsoft wants to double down on the bigger opportunities like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, building TV and movie adaptations for its bigger properties like Diablo and Overwatch.

There's also a corporate structural issue here that Microsoft is looking to address. Moving some of its game teams out from the Microsoft umbrella also moves employees out from under Microsoft's bureaucracy and corporate structure, potentially reducing overheads and costs.

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Halo Studios' proximity to Microsoft HQ, I've heard, has long been a source of corporate inertia and cost bloating — which is absolutely no fault of the employees working there. Those employees and projects also have to deal with A.I. money inflating wages of software engineering-adjacent professions, making some game projects unsustainable purely on the basis of the A.I. bubble. It's a weird economy right now.

As for Halo and other games, it remains to be seen if the restructure will actually lead to higher quality products. Halo fans have been long-suffering, waiting years upon years for a truly consistent delivery schedule for the franchise. I've often wondered myself what an Infinity Ward-led Halo might look like ... perhaps we'll find out exactly what that'll be like in the coming years.

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When I learned that it wouldn't be StarCraft, but instead World of Warcraft: Forever to close out BlizzCon 2026, I was admittedly a bit puzzled. After seeing how World of Warcraft: Forever's beta has been going, though, now I get it.

I've been playing WoW since vanilla, and I've seen every permutation of the game since its inception. All the bugs, content droughts, story highs and lows ... World of Warcraft has been an absolutely wild ride since my teens, and it's showing no signs of slowing down.

At BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard revealed the latest incarnation of its legendary MMORPG with thousands of WoW fans and Xbox execs in attendance. World of Warcraft: Forever was received to huge fanfare and promises to deliver on a "Classic+" experience many fans have been asking for for years.

In essence, WoW: Forever is a take on the game's classic era, remixing the original game with new content in a slightly divergent timeline. It adds new characters, thousands of new quests, a variety of new features, new dungeons and raids, and aims to double down on what made classic WoW such a legend. The world itself will be the main character, with leveling, immersion, and social systems as the core driver of play.

World of Warcraft's retail version has shortened its gameplay loop to the game's detriment in my view, hyper-optimizing for maximum convenience and minimal friction. The leveling experience has become trivial, immersion is practically non-existent given that you can just fly over all the content, and the rewards revolve around a weekly chest which feels a bit like picking up a salary from a job.

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It's still fun tackling high-end challenges in Mythic difficulty in modern WoW — but many players yearn for a time when WoW felt more like an RPG, and less like an arcade game. That's what WoW: Forever aims to deliver, and thousands have poured into the beta to catch a glimpse.

To learn more, I spoke to World of Warcraft Forever's lead game designer, Tim Jones, and lead software engineer Nora Valleta all about what the plans are.

World of Warcraft Forever vs. World of Warcraft retail

"I think [World of Warcraft] Classic and Retail just serve different types of audience at this point," Nora Valleta explains. "Like Retail has evolved over the many years, and I was part of that evolution, part of making those decisions along the way."

"For Classic players, it's much more about a social experience. They don't want to queue, they want to be out in the world exploring and have to physically make their way to the dungeon. They like being immersed in the world, meeting people in the wilds. The world is the main character. It's not about Thrall or Jaina, it's about your friends, these places. Your story of, 'oh, we went into this cave, Bob did something dumb, then we had to rescue Tim, and then Tim died.' That story is more important than stories about the NPCs ... and we're providing the immersive world for it to happen."

The team talked about overlap between the two audiences here, and I mentioned that there are things about Classic that I miss in Retail, such as the immersive open world — something I would argue is universally better and more appealing than simply flying over all the content completely free of any sort of danger per Retail.

"I think we [the Classic team] often inspire them to try new things. Retail now has World Bosses inside of a Lair for example now, we borrow ideas from each other," Tim Jones explains. "I could see them borrowing the camping system from us very easily, and perhaps connect it to Player Housing? I would love some day to maybe take Player Housing and bring it into the Classic world."

Lore building and horizontal progression in World of Warcraft: Forever

I asked the team to explain their approach to lore and world-building in WoW: Forever, given that it seems to sit in a slightly different timeline than WoW's modern era. I already wrote a piece about why WoW: Forever's developers decided to include Skyborne elves as the new playable race, despite the fact that there's no mention of them in the modern lore. The team said they want to explore some of the grey areas from Classic, Skyborne will tell the story of Eldre'Thalas and Dire Maul, for example, which was previously never fully fleshed out.

"This is a new continuity," Nora Valleta explains. "We're starting from the same place. Think of adjacent timelines. Some things might be a bit different ... we're not going to do something that is super divergent, like, stopping Arthas from becoming the Lich King for example. Or that Jaina is secretly a Dreadlord ... but who knows?"

"The same philosophy applies to how we'll expand continents. The new zone River Glades for example, the landmass existed in the classic map ... but there was nothing there. It was an opportunity to fill in those spaces and complete those stories too."

"Honestly, every memory you have, every memory that our Classic fans have, we're trying to capitalize on and make something cool out of it. What was that weird gate in Azshara all that time, for example? That's now Timbermaw Hold, right? What's inside Old Ironforge?"

Blizzard is also building a new Legacy system into WoW: Forever to incentivize building alts and experiencing the game in new ways. Indeed, WoW: Forever will be locked at level 60 cap in perpetuity and designed for horizontal progression rather than vertical progression.

"We're really hoping the legacy system will incentivize people to make alternate characters and level up their account through perks, giving them reasons to experience new paths through the world."

Different gameplay milestones will award legacy points in this new system, granting perks in a small talent tree that can boost trade skills, offer extra convenience, and so on. Blizzard says that there are achievements tied to the Legacy system too, which will reward hardcore grinders with exclusive cosmetics. Blizzard wants to add new content at all levels to serve this system, not just the end-game.

"We might add an update where we put in a new zone designed not for level 60, but for level 27 to 32 for example, with a new dungeon. The best way to experience that would be to make a new character. It's not all about level 60, we're going to serve across all levels, as well as awesome level 60 endgame content too."

Approach to difficulty, and Class balance in Classic+

One of the interesting talking points around Classic vs. Retail pertains to difficulty. If you're pushing Mythic+ keys or doing Heroic or Mythic difficulty raiding in Retail, I think there's no real question about which version requires more active involvement. However, Classic's open world is far more punishing than Retail's is. Even if the dungeons and raids are easier, actually acquiring gear is also far more difficult and therefore more rewarding, in my view.

I had a full set of heroic items within a week in the current Retail patch. I remember grinding BWL raids for months before my Nemesis shoulders dropped back in the day. It felt so, sooooo good when I finally got them. In Retail, gear is basically throwaway and forgettable.

There are things about Classic I definitely do not miss, though, and it's how classes were actually balanced. Some specs were just unviable. Prot Paladins couldn't tank serious content owing to not having a taunt, for example. Blizzard is changing its philosophy a bit for WoW: Forever.

"Every single one of our 27 talent trees is now viable for all content in WoW: Forever," says Tim Jones. "That's one big class design goal. That doesn't mean they're all the same ... or all equal. They have strengths and weaknesses. But they're all worthy to bring. None are so powerful that you'll stack your raid with them either."

"You can be a Ret Paladin in raids, you can Seal twist," says Nora Valetta, in reference to how Retribution spec Paladins weren't really raid-viable back in the day. "On the flip side, our attitude towards tuning and dungeon difficulty and raids is that the world should be scary ... raids should be difficult. You'll need to prepare, craft potions, make sure you have class diversity and buffs. Get all the gear you can, do reputation grinds. You should need a good amount of research on what bosses do. But ... we're not going to stomp your face into the ground."

The team explained to me that while they want raids to be tough, they're not gunning for WoW Retail's 100+ wipes Mythic raid difficulty.

"We're going to consistently deliver new 10 and 20 player content every patch. Onyxia will be our 40 man raid. Classic players enjoy a casual experience, we don't want people to do 100 attempts on a boss. If you've formed the group and done your homework, you should be on the road to success. Over-prepare and crush the content, that's what Classic players want to do."

Am I too old for WoW: Forever?

I've been playing through WoW: Forever beta over the past week, and it's equal parts nostalgic and intriguing. The new lighting and fog effects make a big difference to the mood of zones like Tirisfal Glades, and new lore and quests make the world feel fresh in a way that reminisces of the Cataclysm revamp of yore.

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I'm curious how rewarding and active WoW: Forever's endgame might end up being for me personally, though. WoW: Forever made me feel old, and maybe a bit broken. Will I have the attention span to spend weeks upon weeks hunting for specific drops in WoW: Forever? Have WoW Retail's Creation Catalyst "insta-gearing" system and infinite epic drops spoiled me? Do I have the free time to build up in-game relationships necessary to find decent raid teams and groups in WoW: Forever?

I'm going to try my best ... at least.

World of Warcraft: Forever launches on November 4, 2026, for Windows PC.

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BlizzCon 2026 was epic, but as a World of Warcraft retail enjoyer, I was a tad disappointed at the lack of information.

World of Warcraft: Forever more than stole the show. The announcements of Diablo V and StarCraft were huge, but the fact they're both around half a decade away at least definitely put a dampner on things. WoW: Forever is much closer, set to launch in mid-November (going up against GTA 6 no less).

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WoW: Forever is a remix of the original World of Warcraft experience, complete with OG visuals, old-school simplicity, but deep and immersive open-world gameplay. The game is in beta now, and has already blown up on Twitch and other streaming platforms, as aging gamers (like myself) pile in for a healthy dose of nostalgia.

World of Warcraft retail (also known as 'modern' internally) is ticking over in its own right, with the current expansion "Midnight" holding ground as a solid entry in the game's storied expac pantheon. The next expansion is dubbed "The Last Titan," although Blizzard hasn't really shared much of ... well, anything, about what we can expect from it beyond its Northrend setting.

In my recent interview with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, I asked how Blizzard would handle the dichotomy between World of Warcraft: Forever and World of Warcraft's modern timeline. There are things about the "classic" game that were objectively better in the old days, one being world-building atop the general levelling experience.

I mentioned how WoW Classic and WoW: Forever's lower stakes and racial starting zones provide a more engaging and immersive experience than anything offered in WoW retail. As such, I asked Hazzikostas if it's reasonable to expect that World of Warcraft's open world in the "modern" game would effectively be forgotten now developers can point to WoW: Forever as an alternative. Ion Hazzikostas said that isn't the goal.

"We do not think along those lines. Those are problems that I acknowledge are real problems in Modern, and things we want to fix," Hazzikostas explained.

Indeed, WoW: Forever even in beta offers a far more cohesive and immersive levelling experience, where players can more slowly and methodically learn their class alongside the RPG setting and racial fantasy. WoW's modern gameplay is designed to speed you as quickly as possible into its choring endgame loop, which while fun ... is definitely less "RPG"-like than the old school game.

Hazzikostas thinks that offering two experiences to players in WoW retail might be the answer, in the form of a new "Heroic World Tier," similar to Diablo. Blizzard already experimented with this in both Legion Remix and a recent mid-season patch in WoW, where some new instanced zones came with a more difficult "Heroic" mode, removing flying mounts and making monsters more challenging to deal with.

"We've done experiments like the Heroic World Tier in Remix ... I think they're promising," Hazzikostas said. "I think we would like to offer something like that in The Last Titan, for people who want a more challenging, rewarding outdoor experience ... as well as more friction, and more purpose. A world where the outer world is devoid of threats or excitement is missing something. We would never say 'Go play Classic if you want that.' All versions of WoW should have that."

Hazzikostas also said that Blizzard is aware that WoW's modern "new player" experience is lacking, and plans to address it again in the future. At present, retail players are dropped into a random island with patronizingly easy and anachronistic gameplay that not only isn't relevant to current in-game timelines, but is miserably easy and unengaging for most players.

WoW: Forever and WoW: Classic offer a far more sensical levelling experience, moving players through slower-paced and more meaningful progression layers on the road to endgame.

RELATED: Full interview with WoW director Ion Hazzikostas

The disparity in quality between aspects of WoW: Forever and WoW's modern era will likely become a broader talking point as both platforms diverge over time. I'm already planning to riot if WoW: Forever gets playable ogres before retail does ...

WoW: Forever already has better lighting, water, and fog effects than retail. Can Blizzard keep both versions of the game well-catered for, or are they going to end up spreading themselves thin? Time will surely tell.

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