Sega has announced that it’s bringing Sonic the Hedgehog back in multiple ways under the “Sonic Boom” banner, the publisher announced. That includes a new game, toys, and a CG animated series.
Sonic hasn’t exactly been far from the spotlight. He was recently featured in Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, and before that in October 2013’s Sonic: Lost World as a Wii U exclusive. Sega, however, is seeing this as a new “multiplatform franchise strategy for” Sonic.
The Sonic Boom franchise will start with a new game, titled Sonic Boom, that will be exclusive to the Nintendo platforms (Wii U and 3DS) and focus on collaborative play. The game will star Sonic and friends, and it is meant to serve as a prequel to the TV series. The game is the third title developed thanks to the partnership between Sega and Nintendo. More games are in development as well.
When it is released, Sonic Boom will be an exclusive to Western audiences, but Japanese teams are working on their own titles.
The TV series will then air on Cartoon Network sometime in 2014 and run through 2015. It will consist of 52 episodes of 11 minutes each. A new line of toys and merchandise will follow.
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.