Thursday, 11 June 2026
Game News Round-Up
Daily curated games-industry news digest for 11 June 2026.
General4 stories
Xbox is exploring ‘radically different business models’ to make its next console (Project Helix) more affordable amid ongoing hardware crisis
Physical Steam gift cards are being ended by Valve because scammers keep using them to trick people
The UK-based semiconductor and software design company Arm has revealed the game Neural Dawn (developed with UK studio Sumo Digital), which takes advantage of Arm's neural graphics technology to allow the use of Unreal Engine MegaLights on mobile devices by using the Arm Mali GPU's neural technology
- The intent for the technology is for Arm is to offer "desktop-class" visuals whilst maintaining battery life
Free Games / Subscription1 story
PS+ June Additions
- Final Fantasy XVI
- Sonic X Shadow Generations
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- Life Is Strange: Double Exposure
- Farming Simulator 25
- Blades of Fire
- Black Desert
- Gitaroo Man
Business3 stories
UK co-development studio CodeDev Launches ‘The Performance Guys’ and Announces Hunt for Senior Optimisation Talent
Ubisoft announces approximately 380 employees have been impacted by restructuring changes
- Insider Gaming claims the affected studios / projects are:
- Ubisoft Winnipeg, 65 employees laid off, and the studio closed
- Ubisoft Belgrade, approximately 100 employees were laid off, and the studio closed
- Ubisoft Barcelona, 51 employees laid off
- Rainbow Six Siege, 120 employees ramped off
- Ubisoft San Francisco, undisclosed number of employees laid off
- Insider Gaming also claims that Ubisoft initially embargoed news to outlets about the layoffs and studio closures
Frontier Developments reported its second-highest revenue to date, rising 16% to £104.8 million in FY26
- Operating profit increased by 44% to £19 million, surpassing the previous record of £15.9 million set in FY19
- The UK-based studio credited its 'strategic focus' on creative management simulation (CMS) games for this growth, with the genre now accounting for 90% of FY26 revenue
Rumors1 story
Rumour — Verified Sources
Xbox is planning major layoffs next month as new CEO Asha Sharma confronts a bleak picture and plans what she calls a "reset" of the business
- In an email sent to employees on Wednesday, CEO Asha Sharma said that the business had plummeted to a 3% “accountability margin,” the metric Microsoft uses to reflect profit margin.
- Also in that email, Asha Sharma said “Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue.”