Winter Game Preview (2026)

Puzzle/Action/RPG
Available January 15 for PC, PS5, PS4, XBX, XB1, and NS

This indie from Japanese studio Wonderland Kazakiri may look like a standard NES throwback, but it's got a heck of a twist. In Cassette Boy, you can rotate the camera—and any thing, monster, or person you lose sight of when you do so will cease to exist as long as it's not visible. Got an obstacle or enemy in your way and don't have the tools to defeat or otherwise get past them? Just turn the camera so that you can't see them anymore and walk on by. Not that it'll usually be as simple as that, of course, since it's still as much of an action RPG as it is a puzzler. But that core wrinkle makes Cassette Boy stand out in a big way.

Metroidvania
Available January 20 for PC, PS5, XBX, NS2, and NS
Also coming to Game Pass

Metroidvanias can often feel like they're a dime a dozen these days, since it's such a popular genre for independent developers. That can make it hard to compete unless your game has something unique to offer—and MIO, with its varied impressionistic art style, looks gorgeous in a way that few other games can match. The verdict is still out on whether the game itself is as well-crafted as the visuals, but it's really hard not to like what we see on this one.

PvP Raid Shooter
Available January 26 for PC, PS5, and XBX

Highguard's big reveal at The Game Awards in December didn't go all that well—a PvP shooter not based on any existing IP may not have been the best choice for the show's final reveal. But this is still the new game from many of the folks behind Titanfall and Apex Legends. It's also a very rare example of a fantasy-themed PvP game with a decent budget and it'll let you ride into battle on the back of a bear. Despite that early frustrating buzz, there is still plenty of reason to be excited about this one, since it looks unique enough that it might be able to carve out a new niche for itself.

Action-Adventure/Sports/Survival
Available January 29 for PC and PS5

Whether you've been enjoying Peak and want a slightly more serious version of that idea, or you just love a hardcore video game simulation, Cairn is one that looks like it'll hit the spot. The core idea is straightforward: This is a game about scaling a sheer cliff. But, as anybody who's ever tried doing that in real life can tell you, the actual process is painstaking and slow and requires a lot of planning, all of which should make for a highly compelling and rewarding experience for those who take the time to figure it out. Unlike Peak, however, Cairn is single-player only.

Action/RPG
Available January 30 for PC, PS5, and XBX

Namco Bandai's Soulslike RPG with a slick anime aesthetic is back, half a decade after the original, for round two, now with a motorcycle that you can ride around the world in. You shouldn't get your hopes up that any of your favorite characters from the first game will pop up, though, since it's a standalone sequel that tells an unrelated story in a new world. But that probably won't bother most fans, since folks aren't usually firing up Soulslikes for the plot. No, we're here to fight bosses in lengthy and seemingly impossible battles, so it's really a bonus that we don't need to remember the previous game's story.

RPG
Available February 5 for PC, PS5, XBX, NS2, and NS

This beloved RPG, originally released back in 2000 for the PS1, follows a group of friends who go back in time and discover that the world used to be a lot bigger than it is in the present. Believe it or not, Reimagined is actually the second remake of Dragon Quest VII —though the previous one, released in 2013, had a lot of its content cut and didn't do the original game justice. This time around, Dragon Quest VII has been rebuilt entirely from the ground up to include some new, more modern features and quality-of-life updates, coupled with an all-new, diorama-inspired art style that looks amazing.

Action/RPG
Available February 6 for PC and PS5

The third entry in Team Ninja's punishing action series offers a couple major shakeups—with big, open levels, and by letting players switch at will between the series' standard samurai form and a new, faster ninja form. If all that seems awesome, that's because it apparently is. A number of critics played a few hours of Nioh 3 back in November, and judging by the previews they wrote, nearly all of them came away feeling pretty dang enthusiastic. So with Nioh 3, it seems so far like one of those times when trying something new went very right.

Action-Adventure
Available February 11 for PC, PS5, and XBX

Say what you will about the devs at Grasshopper Manufacture, the studio behind No More Heroes, Let It Die, and Killer7, but they've never released anything that could honestly be considered boring. It certainly doesn't look like that will change with the studio's latest action-adventure title, Romeo Is a Dead Man, in which the title character is forced to hunt down time fugitives after some sort of anomaly fractures time and reality. It's actually more or less the same plot as the Marvel TV show Loki, but with Suda51 and co. in charge, it's probably safe to expect Romeo is a Dead Man to be much, much weirder and a lot more fun than Marvel's multiverse.

Sports
Available February 12 exclusively for NS2

Tennis video games used to be common and were even a crucial part of video game lore, with Tennis for Two being one of the very first games ever made back in 1958. But the genre has collapsed in recent years to such an extent that Mario Tennis Fever will be the first major new tennis video game since 2020. For gamers who used to spend a lot of time back in the day playing Virtua Tennis, Gland Slam Tennis, or previous Mario Tennis games, Mario Tennis Fever is here to fill that void, finally. That it has a much bigger roster of Nintendo characters than the last Mario Tennis game did (38 vs 16) is icing on the cake.

Open-World Action-Adventure
Available February 12 for PC, PS5, PS4, XBX, and NS2

This new remake of Yakuza 3, in which franchise hero Kazuma Kiryu has to balance running a small orphanage with battling a new threat from his past, may seem a little redundant for a game that already received a remaster with tons of restored content in 2019. But that's probably why Sega is tossing in an entirely new game, Dark Ties, with the remake. That bonus game is an entire new story campaign about Yakuza 3's main villain, Mine Yoshitaka, showing us what he was involved with leading up to the main story—a major new wrinkle that could make this remake feel genuinely fresh even for longtime fans.

FPS
Available February 13 for PC, PS5, and XBX (and April 20 for NS2)
Also coming to Game Pass

Squanch Games is back with a sequel to its well-liked first-person shooter in which the guns are sentient beings who have a lot to say. And it looks like they might have even more to say this time, as you embark on a quest to take down a crappy pharmaceutical company. In addition to new guns with new voices (like the MCU's Galactus himself, Ralph Ineson), High on Life 2 equips players with a skateboard that'll make slaying your foes even more off the chain. That sounds like the right kind of escalation for a sequel, if you ask us.

Co-op Horror/Adventure
Available February 13 for PC, PS5, XBX, and NS2

From the devs at Tarsier Studios, who were responsible for the first two Little Nightmares titles, comes this whimsical co-op horror adventure, which looks to make use of its cinematically eerie aesthetic to tell the story of a brother and sister who have to work together to survive their journey through some sort of gloomy, dreamlike hellscape. Yes, Reanimal looks a lot like it could be a new Little Nightmares game with co-op—a thing that actually already exists, since Supermassive Games released the relatively disappointing Little Nightmares III, which pulled a series-worst Metacritic score this past October. Hopefully Tarsier Studios, which is more experienced with this type of game since the company had already made several before working on this one, will do it better.

Adventure
Available February 24 for PC, PS5, and XBX

This title from DigixArt looks at first like a fairly straightforward first-person action game in which you battle enemies across a planet covered entirely by ocean, which would have been fairly novel on its own. But Tides of Tomorrow includes an asynchronous multiplayer component, similar to sharing structures with random players in Death Stranding, in which another player's past actions will affect your game world in various ways—and what you do will impact somebody else's world. It's a gimmick, yes, but it's one that might help each player feel like they're getting a more unique and personalized experience.

Survival Horror/Action
Available February 27 for PC, PS5, XBX, and NS2

The Resident Evil franchise has gone in a lot of different directions over the past decade, but the ninth mainline game in the series is bringing us full circle with a new story that takes us back to the remains of Raccoon City—which the main series hasn't visited since it was nuked at the end of Resident Evil 3. Players will be splitting time between franchise staple Leon S. Kennedy and newcomer Grace Ashcroft, with Leon's part of the story having more of an action focus, similar to Resident Evils 4, 5, and 6. Grace, meanwhile, will get the more traditional Resident Evil survival experience, complete with an upsetting invincible monster that stalks her everywhere she goes. And for the first time in the entire series, you can choose whether to play from a first-person or third-person perspective.

All that sounds awesome, but with Requiem picking up the story of Raccoon City for the first time in over 20 years, it may be tough to live up to expectations.

Action/Roguelike
Available March 5 for PC, PS5, PS4, XBX, and NS

This roguelite dungeon-crawling platformer from the folks who created Palworld comes with a nice little twist: you're playing as the witch's hat, not the witch herself. That matters because the hat can possess enemies, and those possessed enemies will help you progress—if you can figure out the best way to use them. You can even take on the dungeons of Never Grave in 4-player co-op with your friends, and in between runs you'll return to your home village where you can craft items and equipment and build up your home in order to better prepare for future dungeon attempts. In theory, all that makes Never Grave sound like a game that could carve out a nice little niche for itself.

Virtual Life
Available March 5 exclusively for NS2

If you like Pokemon, and you also like Animal Crossing, then this cozy Pokemon life sim is probably going to be right up your alley. In Pokemon Pokopia, you'll team up with all sorts of Pokemon to build a little town and cultivate your world's environment in order to draw out and befriend more Pokemon. And, best of all, when these Pokemon help you build a house, they don't force you to make mortgage payments (as far as we know). So while Pokopia may look a lot like Animal Crossing at a glance, it seems to be going in its own interesting direction in the ways that matter. You'll need a Switch 2 for this one, however.

Survival Horror/Action-Adventure
Available March 12 for PC, PS5, XBX, and NS2

This cult classic PS2 horror title (previously remade for the Wii) follows a pair of sisters, Mio and Mayu, who become trapped in a legendary village where no one, living or dead, can ever leave. Mayu soon disappears, leaving Mio to navigate this hellish town that's full of hostile spirits—and she can only defend herself with her camera, which is what the series title refers to. The remake is rebuilt from the ground up to look gorgeous and handle better on modern devices, and it includes new story content and areas to explore.

Action/RPG
Available March 13 for PC, PS5, XBX, and NS2

The Monster Hunter Stories sub-series represents a pretty dramatic change of pace from the main Monster Hunter titles, dropping the series' usual action gameplay in favor of turn-based RPG systems. While not as popular as the main games in the franchise, the Stories series has carved out a niche of its own for players who like to explore the game's fantasy world but aren't as much into the usual monster hunting gameplay, or who just enjoy a quality change of pace from the norm.

Open-World Action-Adventure
Available March 19 for PC, PS5, and XBX

The folks at Korean studio Pearl Abyss are best known for the MMO Black Desert Online, and as you can probably guess from the title, Crimson Desert was originally planned as an MMO prequel to the company's flagship. But after five years of delays, Crimson Desert is instead going to be released as a story-focused, single-player, open-world RPG. Which is a great idea, since Black Desert is a very solid game, but it's got all the usual obnoxious trappings of free-to-play MMOs. With Crimson Desert, you'll be able to enjoy Pearl Abyss's well crafted combat without having to deal with all that—or at least that's the hope.

FPS
Available March 19 for PC, PS5, PS4, XBX, XB1, and NS

Like the punishing platformer Cuphead before it, this first-person shooter borrows its aesthetic from early 20th century cartoons, marrying it to a detective story borrowed from noir thriller films of the same era. That clever combination, which gives this game the air of a Disney-fied version of Wolfenstein, pretty much guarantees that Mouse: P.I. for Hire will be a memorable one at the very least. And if it's actually fun to play, there's a good chance we'll have a classic on our hands, because how often do we get a new shooter that doesn't look like any other shooters? Basically never.

Want more games?
For a full list of all major upcoming game releases throughout 2026, visit our frequently updated Game Release Calendar.

We also have individual release lists by platform:
PS5 release calendar >
PS4 release calendar >
Xbox Series X/S release calendar >
Xbox One release calendar >
PC release calendar >
Nintendo Switch 2 release calendar >
Nintendo Switch release calendar >
Meta Quest release calendar >