Apple Arcade just got its first update of 2025. The subscription service added seven new games to its roster, including three originals and four updated versions of classic games like Final Fantasy and Trials of Mana.
At the tail end of last year, Apple Arcade revealed a handful of games set to come to its ad-free mobile game service but stopped short of giving them a release date. Today, subscribers can download those seven titles on the iOS device of their choice.
The batch is headlined by Skate City: New York, the latest game by acclaimed mobile developer Snowman. The skateboarding game is a sequel to Apple Arcade’s launch title Skate City, an early standout on the platform. Another big addition is Three Kingdoms Heroes, the latest game from Koei Tecmo. The turn-based tactics game essentially looks like a microtransaction-free version of Fire Emblem Heroes but for the Romance of the Three Kingdom series. It’s well-timed, too, as Koei Tecmo is set to release another Three Kingdoms game, Dynasty Warriors: Origins, later this month.
Apple Vision Pro owners are even getting something with the update. Gears & Goo, a tower defense game built for Apple’s headset, launches today. Digital Trends demoed it last year and found a simple but satisfyingly tactile strategy game that made good use of the headset’s eye-tracking and gesture controls.
Those new releases are rounded out by four existing mobile games joining the service. The original Final Fantasy and Visions of Mana are the standouts there, with both receiving “+” versions. Subscribers can also download Rodeo Stampede+ and It’s Literally Just Mowing+ today.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.