In this issue, Patrick Garratt analyses what the ancient franchises on display in Microsoft and Sony's summer showcases tell us about the health of the premium console space this year. Has triple-A been backed into its final corner?

We also talk to Turnip Boy studio Snoozy Kazoo about its next title, Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key To My Heart. Its September release date was announced as part of Summer Game Fest, so we catch up with the team about making authentically queer projects and delivering short games while understanding scope. 

"Gears, Halo, and Spyro Headline Xbox Games Showcase 2026." So said the header for Microsoft's PR release last week detailing its highest-profile forthcoming Xbox releases. Given that Gears Of War launched in 2006, Halo in 2001 and Spyro The Dragon in 1998, the announcement could have been made 20 years ago. Interpreting such an apparently acute case of sequelitis as the result of Xbox's 25th anniversary celebrations this year would be easy had last week's State Of Play from Sony not exhibited exactly the same tendency: PlayStation right now, the company said, is God Of War (2005), Silent Hill (1999) and Tomb Raider (1996). 

There were, of course, newer franchises in both showcases, but the question remains: is the risk calculus surrounding new triple-A IP really so broken that videogaming's premium consoles have to be structured around only the most "legacy" of properties? Is third-person or first-person action from the biggest, safest franchises really the only sound foundation for PlayStation, Xbox and the next hardware generation? 

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. The reasoning is a little clearer in Microsoft's case. The Xbox project isn't so much in the middle of an identity crisis, as currently burning out its fourth therapist while upping its repeat Prozac prescription. Having been so roundly drubbed by PlayStation 5 in raw unit sales, Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond pointedly shifted Xbox's focus away from the console and software exclusivity towards the brand as service, towards Game Pass, multi-platform distribution and hardware partnerships, starting with Xbox-branded Ally handhelds from Asus. But incoming Xbox boss Asha Sharma has in recent weeks put the console back at the project's centre, and stated clearly that the Xbox brand needs to have exclusive software in order to reverse its fortunes. That those games should be inXile's Clockwork Revolution – a game that proudly wears influences from 2007's BioShock – and the eighth iteration of Gears Of War indicates a lack of coherence between Sharma's intent and the reality of making and publishing high-risk videogames. For now at least. 

Sony's adherence to past safeties may rest on risk aversion rather than a lack of identity, but it's no less structural. More than 90 million PS5 consoles have been sold globally to date, tripling estimated sales of current-generation Xboxes, and putting Sony's hardware mission on safe footing. But while the PlayStation landscape has always been more artistically flexible and focused on large-budget titles centring character development – versus Microsoft's preference for plot-driven narrative (compare The Last Of Us and God Of War to Gears Of War and Halo) – last week's State Of Play opened with the spectacularly violent Wolverine (the broader MCU is literally the world's largest entertainment franchise), before listing Until Dawn, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill and the Rayman Legends remake as pillars, and therefore reasons to invest in PlayStation.

What we saw from Sony and Microsoft's summer showcases signifies not only an end-game stage to the "creative crisis" that's enveloped triple-A for many years, but proof that large-scale development is now reserved solely for the very safest bets. A third-party example of the terrifying risk now faced by companies in this space is IO's 007 First Light, released in late May to sales of over three million within two weeks. The game's development budget was daunting at around $200 million, but it was built by one of the most respected names in third-person action development and was, critically, locked to one of the world's most successful media franchises (Bond has generated revenue of more than $7 billion, putting it alongside the likes of Avengers and Fast & Furious in terms of commercial reach). As for software on the same scale from Microsoft and Sony, Playground's Fable remains one of the few large-team UK projects left alongside GTA, and backroom chatter has recently centred on the potential consequences for the British development industry – and the direction of Asha Sharma's Xbox leadership – if the rebooted action RPG fails. 

Add the fact that the lines around the console space are constantly blurring – as Xbox's recent handheld ambitions and uncertainty over the position of the main Xbox console attest – and that rising component prices are obviously disastrous for "premium" console manufacturers while playing directly into the hands of those with hardware propositions of more modest specs, and Sony and Microsoft look to be standing on thin ice. From a content perspective, if the videogame as contemporary social narrative has shifted almost exclusively to indie development and Steam because PlayStation and Xbox are led by familiar-looking action games and a constant churning of decades-old franchises, doesn't that leave the incoming hardware generation serving only existing fans? 

"And here's to the next 25," read the message at the end of the introduction to the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, after thanking Xbox buyers for supporting Microsoft's console for two-and-a-half decades. If Project Helix and another God Of War are at the centre of another quarter century of console business for Microsoft and Sony, let's hope that statement doesn't age like milk.

Snoozy Kazoo, the studio behind 2021's indie hit Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion and its 2024 follow-up Turnip Boy Robs A Bank, just unveiled a September 17 release date for its next game, Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key To My Heart. The announcement opened Summer Game Fest's Gayming Pride Parade last week. 

Founder and lead programmer Yukon Wainczak says Rizz Dungeon is very much aligned with Snoozy Kazoo's core identity: a "very openly queer game studio that prioritises making dumb parody games." Wainczak has been making games since she was 11 years old, with Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion initially being a college project. 

"Turnip Boy was a whirlwind, to say the least," she smiles. "That was good, but after that it was difficult to figure out how to make the studio sustainable."  

Turnip Boy Robs A Bank was developed by a different team within Snoozy Kazoo while Wainczak and artist, designer and writer Pearl Slayton wrestled with what would come next. 

"We were in a long experimental phase for two years," Slayton says. "This meant trying out things we wouldn't normally do. Rizz came to be [because] we were trying to push ourselves so hard to do new things." 

The full team of five people ultimately rallied around Rizz Dungeon, a dungeon crawler where flirting is the key to making progress.  

"It's a very queer game, and it's very wacky," Slayton continues. "Development of the game has definitely been a challenge, because it's a lot of new systems, and making the UI, although it's been a joy… You can see it's a very maximalist game. It's a lot of work. But what keeps being brought up in our team is that it feels like Turnip Boy 1. So it's like we're returning back to form." 

Wainczak adds: "It's us trying to tell a very authentic queer story, but then also just trying to find the fun in game dev again. We're building a game based on a lot of properties we like. Anyone who plays Rizz Dungeon can see the Pokémon influences. It's really to be our authentic selves, and try to make people laugh." 

But being an openly queer studio making silly games in the current political climate in the US is not for the faint-hearted. Wainczak and Slayton say they're definitely "going through it", with a recent surge in harassment. 

"Joy is an act of rebellion, always," Slayton says. "So it almost feels dutiful to make something so silly right now, especially that is also so representative of the queer community holistically. People need to feel seen right now." 

To other queer game makers, Wainczak advises to "be your authentic self and people will come." She reflects on the anarchist elements clearly expressed in Turnip Boy and how that resonated with people. 

"If you are queer, or you have opinions about politics – or both – that's going to show through in your games," she says. "I rarely see comments about Turnip Boy being a political game. I don't know if it's because it wears it on its sleeve or if it's because it's such an authentic take on it. But if that's the type of game you're making – and this applies to queerness too – just wear it on your sleeve, don't shy away from it, and don't be afraid that you're not going to find your people, because there's people for everyone out there."

Structuring the studio around the making of Rizz Dungeon has been one of Snoozy Kazoo's biggest challenges. Wainczak describes it as a "continuous push-and-pull." Being such a small studio ultimately afforded the team freedom to be flexible with its approach and not overburden itself with game design documents. 

"One of the biggest things is how much documentation [and] concepting gets done. With our other projects, namely Hobnobbers and Turnip Boy Steals The Mail – games that have been shelved currently, on the back burner for Rizz – there was a heavy push-and-pull of how much of the game should be written down and figured out before we even put mouse to code. And with Rizz Dungeon, it's been really liberating, because there's basically none. We're a very small studio – it's very easy for us to all get on the same page." 

Rizz Dungeon doesn't have a GDD or any all-encompassing document. "It just kind of lives in our brains," Wainczak says. "We found out that that kind of hyper-documented flow doesn't really work for us." 

Slayton and Wainczak recall a similar process for Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, with the game's denouement figured out in the last two months before release. Allowing for flexible development in this way helped them to bring fun back into the development process, as by this point they were feeling "a little burnt out".  

"There's been this shift for shorter games. As a consumer, I'm very happy about that, but as a developer it's an interesting challenge, because it's learning how to develop short games on a very short timetable. Rizz Dungeon was actually meant to be only a couple-month-long project, and it just escalated." 

It's now been in development for a year, but Wainczak says it still "holds that 'short game' badge."  

"We're still trying to be that, and it's really [about] building up a good toolset, so that you can deliver short games while also understanding scope perfectly. That's its own challenge in itself." 

And this time around, Snoozy Kazoo is doing it solo. While it's being supported by Popagenda on the marketing side, it's self-publishing Rizz Dungeon.  

"It was really great working with a publisher, and it propelled our game forward, but there is a drive in me to be able to do it all ourselves," Wainczak says. "I don't just love the process of making games, I'm a nerd over the industry side of it too. It just felt like the natural next step. And with funding, we were very fortunate. The Turnip Boy series continues to succeed. We're definitely in a tighter spot – you know, the industry is a little shakier from COVID. We're a COVID studio, so we also rode the big boom and now we're experiencing the drop-off. So things are a little tight, but we're making it work, and I feel really good about it." 

Wishlist's numbers are "solid", she adds, but Slayton notes that the team "hasn't released a game in a second", which means that nailing Rizz Dungeon's launch is a necessity. Like most indie studios today, success for Snoozy Kazoo doesn't mean selling millions of copies, but simply keeping people in jobs and being able to make more games.  

"It's a little bit of a Hail Mary," Slayton smiles, with Wainczak adding: "Rizz Dungeon is definitely the game to save Snoozy Kazoo."

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Highlights from industry chat channels

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Given Asobo's success with 2019's A Plague Tale: Innocence and sequel A Plague Tale: Requiem, it's a bold move to sideline a signature characteristic in this way, but then Resonance isn't following directly in the footsteps of those games. Rather, it's a spinoff, putting players in control of Sophia, one of the companion characters from A Plague Tale: Requiem, and setting the action some 15 years prior to the events of the previous games. In Edge 425, on sale now, we visit Asobo's Bordeaux HQ to discover how it's pushing in a new direction – and why that doesn't involve screens full of teeming rodents. 

In this issue's other lead features, we talk to Metroidvania masters including Billy Basso and Thomas Happ to sift through the complexities of the ever-growing genre, and meet with composers such as Jesper Kyd, Nainita Desai and Richard Jacques to discover the craft behind the modern videogame soundtrack. In The Making Of…, we chart the difficult process of reinventing Solium Infernum with League Of Geeks, and visit UK developer Jagex for Studio Profile to dig into its ongoing journey with RuneScape. 

With 007 First Light headlining this issue's reviews, we continue the Bond theme by revisiting From Russia With Love in Time Extend, while in Hype we preview forthcoming releases such as End Of Abyss, Ace Combat 8: Wings Of Theve, Godzone 6 and The Sinking City 2. In Knowledge, we report from BitSummit 2026 and also interview Game Freak's Kota Furushima about breaking away from Pokémon, with Day 4 Night Studios co-founders Christian Cantamessa and Davide Soliani joining us for our Profile slot to discuss the origins of Bradley The Badger.  

If you don't yet have an Edge subscription, there's still time to take advantage of our introductory offer, allowing you to pick up your first three issues for just £5. 

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