January 1 marked the beginning of a new year, and possibly a new beginning for game developer Fumito Ueda. An image appeared on genDESIGN’s website, an independent team formed by Ueda, potentially teasing the fourth game from the creator of ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian.
On the updated website, scrolling past four birds brings visitors to the image posted above. It depicts a long-haired, childlike figure sitting on a stone altar. To her right is a large fist or paw that belongs to a mostly obscured giant figure. Neither figure is immediately recognizable from any of Ueda’s previous games, leading some to speculate that this is from his studio’s next project. According to ResetEra user Rösti, the image’s source code reveals some interesting text. This text labels the image as “Beauty and the Beast 2018.”
Going further into speculation, the birds could be another hint that this is more than just a nice image capturing several themes that made Fumito Ueda famous. As VG 24/7 points out, birds and feathers are a motif that Ueda has used in all of his games. The number of birds in the image could be a clue towards a fourth game.
As a counterpoint to all this speculation, the childlike figure bears a striking resemblance to one of the silhouettes in the genDESIGN logo. Rather than a teaser image, this could very well be more of an expressive image about the studio.
Whether this is a new game or not, history tells us that fans likely won’t see a new game release anytime soon. The Last Guardian took almost 10 years to be released, with many believing it to be canceled throughout development. Fumito Ueda even left Sony in 2011 after the game was delayed, forming genDESIGN a few years later with some of his core members from Team ICO. In the same year, genDESIGN took over the development of The Last Guardian, working with Sony on a contract basis.
For now, fans have plenty of opportunities to visit Ueda’s past projects. The Last Guardian can be finished in a few gaming sessions as long as players are patient when controlling a wild animal. A complete remake of Shadow of the Colossus also releases next month, giving newcomers the best opportunity to play a classic.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
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.”