The movie is being co-produced by PlayStation Productions, Lyrical Animation, and Seán McLoughlin—better known by his YouTube and Twitch persona JackSepticEye. Aside from the announcement itself, no other details about the Bloodborne animated project have been revealed so far.

The fact that Bloodborne’s story is—true to FromSoftware fashion—told quite vaguely opens the door for a multitude of approaches in an adaptation. The movie will likely still take place in and around the game’s primary setting of Yharnam, a gothic-styled city plagued by its citizens turning into beasts, along with a few spookier things happening in the background. We also expect to see the game’s most iconic weapons making it into the adaptation, like the Saw Cleaver, the Threaded Cane, the Kirkhammer, and Ludwig’s Holy Blade, among others. Whether the adaptation will also take into account story elements added by Bloodborne’s The Old Hunters DLC remains to be seen.

Sony has announced several adaptations of its various franchises in recent years. Along with HBO’s The Last of Us series, which wrapped up its second season in May last year, the company has also announced that it is working on a new Helldivers movie. More details have been revealed since last year, including the fact that it will star Jason Momoa and that it is aiming for a theatrical release on November 10th, 2027. The production also involves Hutch Parker, Asad Qizilbash, and Justin Lin.

The company is also working on an adaptation of the Horizon franchise. While earlier reports had indicated that it might be cancelled, the company revealed back in January 2025 that it had entered early production at PlayStation Productions and Columbia Pictures. Originally slated to be a movie, Qizilbash revealed a year ago that the project had been transformed into a TV series.

Of course, Sony isn’t the only major gaming company that has been dipping its toes into movie adaptations. A24 is working with director Alex Garland and George R.R. Martin as producers to create a live-action adaptation of FromSoftware’s open-world RPG Elden Ring. Recently, a couple of videos made their way onto TikTok, giving us a look at the set of a ruined Church of Marika.

Nintendo’s movie adaptations have also been continuing, with the company having recently released The Super Mario Galaxy Movie alongside Illumination. Earlier this month, the film managed to break box office records, having made $372.5 million. While not as big of an opening as its predecessor—The Super Mario Bros. Movie—the film still has the potential to beat its overall opening week box office performance by making more than $500 million.

The date (December 31st, 2026) is clearly a placeholder, but the box art appears legitimate. It indicates that the release is on a Game-Key Card, which might be a dealbreaker for physical collectors. Then again, given the sheer size of the title alongside its expansion, a proper cartridge with everything on it would have been far out of reach for Bandai Namco. At least the full game download is only 75 GB, so there’s some silver lining.

Elden Ring Tarnished Edition was originally slated for 2026. However, after reports emerged of performance troubles, it was delayed. Alongside previous updates, the port includes new weapons, armor sets and mount customization options, which will be available to all platforms in a separate paid DLC. Check out our reviews for more details on the base game and Shadow of the Erdtree.

Besides bringing The Lands Between and The Land of Shadow to Switch 2 players, FromSoftware is also working on The Duskbloods, a PvEvP multiplayer title. It’s allegedly launching in late 2026.

This time, it’s dataminer Lance McDonald, who has uncovered an unused cutscene that showcases the moment Miquella planted the seed of the Haligtree at Elphael. If you need a refresher, Miquella intended for the Haligtree to be the source of a cure for Malenia’s Scarlet Rot, a debilitating condition that she managed to survive for a while before unleashing it upon Caelid in her battle with Radahn during The Shattering. She was returned to its roots, corrupting the tree and lying in wait for her brother, seemingly unaware that he had been abducted by Mohg, the Lord of Blood, who had his own plans for the Elden Throne.

“This is a look at a never-before-seen map file where a cutscene was filmed for Elden Ring, which showed Miquella planting the Haligtree, as well as the process through which, during earlier development and testing, this cutscene was intended to have been played.”

Miquella’s intentions seem pure, although his methods were revealed as rather misguided during our time with Shadow of the Erdtree. It’s still nice to think of a time before The Shattering when the twin prodigies worked to better their own lives as well as the ones of the people around them. It’s also really cool to see the early origins of a tree that served as the backdrop of one of the most iconic boss battles we’ve had over the years.

Elden Ring is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC. It’s also coming to Switch 2 with the Tarnished Edition out sometime this year.

The streamer said through messages on Discord that the set was just a few minutes from where they live. They didn’t quite reveal any precise location, but it’s believed that the shooting is taking place somewhere in England. As caught by PC Gamer, a third video was posted on TikTok, revealing that a trap had been placed over the set. “Hahahaha, people think it might be AI. I’m posting another video today. I went back today and got more footage,” they said.

PC Gamer’s report also points to the film’s production taking place near Windsor Great Park, which the publication has referred to as a popular filming location for all sorts of productions. Among other things, the location has seen the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The live-action movie adaptation of Elden Ring was officially announced back in May 2025. A24 is handling production on the project with Alex Garland—known for his work as director on Civil War and Warfare—serving as its director and writer. George R.R. Martin is also involved, serving as a producer, alongside Vince Geradis, Peter Rice, Andrew Macdonald, and Allon Reich.

Considering the nature of Elden Ring’s main story, the plot of the movie is still shrouded in mystery. However, Garland had revealed in an interview with The New Yorker last year that he had prepared an “epic” 160-page draft, along with 40 pages full of images, which serve as the on-spec script (which Garland used to pitch the movie adaptation to Bandai Namco).

In an interview with IGN, Garland has also revealed that he finds Malenia, Blade of Miquella, to be the hardest boss fight in Elden Ring. “It’s Malenia who’s the tough one. I’m now on my seventh playthrough of that game. I’ve leveled up, I’ve got lots of juice, and a cool sword, and stuff like that, and I just throw myself at them again, and again, and again, and again. That was the technique I learned with Dark Souls,” he continued. “It’s not that you get better, it’s more like monkeys and typewriters. You just keep doing it, and eventually, one day they’re dead.”

Elden Ring was released on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S back in 2022. FromSoftware is also working on bringing the open-world RPG to the Nintendo Switch 2. In the meantime, the other platforms can also check out the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.

Instead, it’s allegedly launching “late” this year, which could mean beyond late September and potentially in October. Why FromSoftware is apparently aiming for such a window is unknown, but this is a multiplayer game, and much like with Elden Ring Nightreign, there could be plenty of closed and open playtests for players to go hands-on.

There’s also the fact that it’s working on Elden Ring Tarnished Edition for the Switch 2, which faced a delay due to performance concerns but has been looking much better lately. Either way, the fact that the studio is reportedly taking its time with The Duskbloods could be a testament to its importance. Alternatively, it could be an absolutely massive game that simply demands more time.

We’ll have to wait and see. Thus far, we know it features over 12 playable characters, each with unique backstories and abilities, and matches support up to eight players (who can be marked as companions and rivals). A new trailer or deep dive will debut this Summer to tell us more.

The demo, offering 15 minutes of gameplay, revolved around the early parts of Elden Ring. Polygon noted that it was enough time to at least get to Margit. However, according to GameSpot’s video preview (which you can check out below), direct capture wasn’t available, leading to footage being captured with an over-the-shoulder camera.

Most importantly, however, the previews noted that, while still not quite as smooth as 60 FPS, the frame rate for Elden Ring Tarnished Edition in handheld mode is quite a bit better than the previously-reported dips down to 15 FPS. While FromSoftware itself is yet to reveal any details about its performance targets, the smoother frame rates in its more recent builds might indicate that the company is aiming for 30 FPS, or maybe even 40 FPS.

Elden Ring Tarnished Edition was announced all the way back in April 2025. While few details were released at the time, the name indicated that FromSoftware was looking at the release as a “definitive edition” of sorts.

However, a few months later, reports started coming up that performance of Elden Ring Tarnished Edition was quite poor, especially in handheld mode. In one video from August 2025, Nintendo Life’s Felix Sanchez noted that the game was capped to 30 FPS, but intense moments had the tendency to bring it down to 20, and sometimes even 15 FPS. He compared it to playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64, which famously ran at low frame rates.

“It’s really bad, and I understand why they don’t want you to see this,” said Sanchez in the video. “It was like playing Ocarina of Time. 20 frames-per-second, sometimes it was like 15 frames-per-second.”

While the previous console releases of Elden Ring had been praised for running quite well, the PC version was well-known for suffering from micro-stutters. The problem was discovered to largely revolve around how the game handles compilation. Linux-based platforms, like the lower-powered Steam Deck, saw a notable performance boost in Elden Ring thanks to the fact that shaders are compiled on the operating system before the game even launches, thanks to how the Proton translation layer works between the game and Linux’s graphics APIs.

Leading up to its originally-planned October 2025 release, FormSoftware announced that Elden Ring Tarnished Edition was being pushed back to 2026 so that the studio could work on “performance adjustments”. The company hasn’t yet revealed any new release date.

Originally released on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S back in 2022, Elden Ring is FromSoftware’s latest single-player Soulslike. It puts players in the shoes of a Tarnished, who has been cursed with living despite already having died, and revolves around exploring The Lands Between. Along the way, players will discover what happened to what used to be a great kingdom, and will get to meet (and fight) many of the key figures throughout this world’s history. The Shadow of the Erdtree expansion dug further into the backstory of the world, giving us hints about some of the less-explored aspects of the lore, like the nature of Frenzy, and the backstory of Marika.

Following the cancellation of its live-service God of War title, Bluepoint allegedly pitched a remake to Sony. However, while the latter felt that it made sense numbers-wise, FromSoftware reportedly “didn’t want it to happen.” Schreier notes that this could be due to Sony respecting FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki’s request that no one else work on the same (which former SIE president Shuhei Yoshida revealed after his departure).

Bluepoint Games apparently tried pitching other projects, including an updated Shadow of the Colossus Remake, a Ghost of Tsushima spin-off and more. Despite approaching other PlayStation Studios, they were apparently “facing heavy financial pressure in recent years,” and couldn’t spare the resources. Eventually, Sony didn’t consider the studio capable of making its own game, and attempts at partnerships fizzled out, which led to its closure.

It seems the studio saw it coming to some extent, with some employees apparently growing “uneasy” after the announcement of the God of War Trilogy Remake. All in all, it’s a tragic end to a capable studio, but other developers are willing to take them in, such as Lords of the Fallen 2 publisher CI Games.

Answering various questions during the release, Kadokawa clarified that it’s still to announce a specific release date and that it doesn’t “disclose forecasts regarding number of copies shipped for individual titles.” All that said, it remains a Nintendo Switch 2-exclusive with the company selling it on a “joint basis” with Nintendo Co., Ltd., based on the region.

As for Elden Ring Tarnished Edition, which was also missing from the Partner: Direct Showcase, Kadokawa reiterated that there’s no specific release date, and as a result, it isn’t included in its forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31st. One could take this as the title won’t launch by then, but it can really go either way.

At the end of the day, we’re back to square one for The Duskbloods, a PvEvP title where up to eight players control the Bloodsworn during the Twilight of Humanity. There are more than twelve playable characters, each with unique abilities and origins, but more intriguing is being able to mark others as companions or rivals. Depending on the objective, you can net specific rewards or even witness “unique interactions.”

The post is a the latest iteration of the Xbox Excellence Awards, which was created last year to celebrate how players engaged with various releases on Xbox. The Store Rating category lists 2025 games with the best ratings on the Microsoft Store, with an added requirement of the title having at least 500 ratings. Player Engagements is about the average number of hours spent on a game by each player within the first six weeks of a game’s release. Daily Active Users celebrates titles, expansions or updates with the highest single-day active users throughout the year. And finally Units Sold is fairly self-explanatory.

Going down the lists, you’ll find many of the biggest releases of the year, from ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6, as well as award-winning RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Indie titles have also been well-represented, with games like Crime Scene Cleaner and Satisfactory making it into the lists. There also doesn’t seem to have been a singular genre to dominate the lists, since everything from sports games like EA Sports Madden NFL 26, to fantasy adventure life sims like Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, and even fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics are well represented.

Curiously, none of the games was present in all four of the categories. At most, we got to see titles like Borderlands 4 being able to make it on to three of them: Player Engagement, Daily Active Users and Units Sold. Even ARC Raiders, which has seen quite a bit of success, is only on the Units Sold and Daily Active Users lists.

Microsoft has also emphasized that the lists represent a diverse collection of games developed by studios of varying sizes. All in all, it represents 48 unique developers based out of 13 countries, with 24 publishers having had a hand in their release. 19 of the games were self-published. “Taken as a whole, it’s an encapsulation of development on Xbox – we want gaming to reach you wherever you are, and for the teams making those games to find you from wherever they are,” wrote the company.

Full list of games:

Store Rating:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Crime Scene Cleaner
• Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles 2
• Digimon Story: Time Stranger
• Dreamcore
• Dynasty Warriors: Origins
• Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
• Final Fantasy XVI
• Lies of P: Overture
• Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
• Little Nightmares III
• Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics
• Minami Lane
• Mullet MadJack
• Poppy Playtime Chapter 4
• Satisfactory
• Silent Hill 2
• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
• The First Berserker: Khazan

Player Engagement:

• Borderlands 4
• Digimon Story: Time Stranger
• Dynasty Warriors: Origins
• EA Sports College Football 26
• EA Sports FC 26
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time
• Farm Together 2
• Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles
• Helldivers 2
• Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
• MLB The Show 25
• Monster Hunter Wilds
• NBA 2K26
• NHL 26
• Rust
• Satisfactory
• The First Berserker: Khazan

Daily Active Users:

• Arc Raiders
• Avowed
• Battlefield 6
• Borderlands 4
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• DOOM: The Dark Ages
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Fortnite
• Forza Horizon 5
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Grounded 2
• Helldivers 2
• Marvel Rivals
• Minecraft
• NBA 2K26
• Rematch
• Roblox
• Rocket League
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

Units Sold:

• Arc Raiders
• Assassin’s Creed Shadows
• Battlefield 6
• Borderlands 4
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
• EA Sports Madden NFL 26
• EA Sports College Football 26
• EA Sports FC 26
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Helldivers 2
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• MLB The Show 25
• Monster Hunter Wilds
• NBA 2K26
• PGA Tour 2K25
• Ready or Not
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
• WWE 2K25

Nioh 3 is the result of several titles that did very exciting things with the Soulslike concept, and is a culmination of Team Ninja’s journey over two past entries and a couple of other great titles.

They’re both giants in their own right, with very different philosophies that govern how they interpret the combat, exploration, and general vibe of a Soulslike. They represent differing design goals that underline core aspects like how player freedom and agency can be woven into combat in a manner that gives it depth, or how difficulty and a challenge is balanced against fairness, and even in how you express your build and how that carries over to New Game Plus.

There’s no way we’re saying that either one of these masterpieces is better than the other. But we think that it’s fascinating that they both deviate and intersect with one another in important aspects of their gameplay loops. Their design goals merit closer scrutiny, and that’s exactly what we’re setting out to do. Let’s get started!

Clear Visions, Forward-Thinking Directions

While Nioh 3 takes a very clinical approach to the open-world, combat, and its take on the player agency that a Soulslike provides, Elden Ring is focused on being an experience that puts you right at the center of an epic tale.

The story in Nioh 3 is there, but it isn’t where Team Ninja has focused its efforts, existing to give you an excuse to do battle across time periods which almost feel like a logical extension of the Spirit Stones’ utility after the first two games. Team Ninja, however, isn’t trying to tell a good story in Nioh 3, aiming to bring a combat-focused game to a region-based progression system that improves on the mission-based one in its previous Nioh games.

The focus on creating builds that suit you, and unleashing your best moves after a lot of practice, potential min/maxing, and a lot of grinding to gain mastery over your chosen weapons. You could choose to ditch your build entirely, with no costs associated with doing so. Nioh 3 is all about the action, and unabashedly so, and it’s a choice that works well for the experience it is trying to be.

Elden Ring, on the other hand, was targeting a different gameplay loop, with a sense of discovery underlining a player-authored adventure. Yes, it does have a lot of build-freedom and multiple options to suit your playstyle but switching things up midway does come at the cost of a Larval Tear, a fairly rare item with a limited number being present in each playthrough. Its story backs all of that up while giving the game a distinct identity, going for a fantasy-adventure vibe instead of Nioh 3’s mythology-driven approach.

But where both games come together is in their pacing, with an exploration-driven focus on allowing your character to gradually grow more powerful and take on more dangerous regions of their maps. They’re both Souslikes in that regard, but their priorities differ wildly enough to make them very different experiences in terms of their combat and gameplay.

Similar Fights, Different Techniques

As far as combat is concerned, it’s a good idea to see where the two titles intersect in terms of how fights are structured before we examine how they vary. They’re both challenging games in their own right, and you’re going to find that out within an hour in either ancient Japan or The Lands Between.

That’s true for both the grunt enemy and boss designs in both titles, as they come with well-telegraphed, readable animations, and openings that you’re meant to exploit as well as you can after considering the situation in a matter of microseconds. That’s a very specific vibe that Soulslikes bring to the table and is almost a given in any title that now enters the genre.

But then you see the differences in pacing and the tools you’re given to do damage in each game. Nioh 3 frankly brings a whole array of systems to the table to better support its faster pacing and a more aggressive playstyle for your character. Deflections are now a thing for the Samurai style, adding on to Ki pulses, stances, and Onmyo magic that can either summon yokai or use spells.

Couple that with the evasive Ninja style and you see a combat experience that has you constantly on the move, seeking an advantage against foes that hit hard and hit fast. It’s pressure-heavy to the point where every fight feels like you’re freestyling a very complex and nuanced dance, and once you get good enough, the consistency of your wins is a reward in and of itself.

Come over to Elden Ring and things are a tad more slow-paced although you’re always in danger of being summarily dispatched towards the nearest Site of Grace. Enemies, especially bosses, come at you with long combos with delayed strikes that vary their timing, requiring a more methodical approach and solid positional awareness for you to exploit openings that they provide.

The timing of each attack, dodge, and counterattack is more deliberate, and you’re meant to recover stamina the old fashioned way without opportunities to quickly regain it in the heat of battle. While you could argue that stamina isn’t an infinite resource in Nioh 3, and with good reason, it’s a lot more precious in Elden Ring thanks to the fact that you don’t get to pulse back chunks of it right after a combo.

But Elden Ring has its own tricks up its sleeve, with the Ashes of War, spells, a hidden poise system, and a focus on moveset mastery to let your Tarnished take on even the most fearsome of foes. Its combat is about spectacle, and a sort of push and pull in which you’re almost always the underdog until you see more of the world it presents and begin to give your Tarnished a distinct identity. Nioh 3 gives you everything you need to dominate its early game and trusts you to make the most of it, in comparison.

And that brings us to an aspect of the experience that is both crucial, and one in which the intersectionality and divergence between these distinct design philosophies begin to be more prominent. And that’s the open-world and their respective approaches to it.

Encouraging Exploration

From the very outset, Nioh 3’s version of Japan stands out in contrast to The Lands Between. The spaces are tighter, and getting from point A to point B is distinctly faster thanks to the Gale Sprint, and perhaps even the fact that you’re travelling on foot instead of a horse. The semi-open level designs are structured around a density of activities packed tightly in every region, and each of them leads back to combat in some way.

That helps with tying the world neatly to your character’s progression, and the approach to loot helps with that. You’re meant to keep updating your Samurai’s and Ninja’s loadouts, trying new combinations to create synergies between your gear, weapons, and stat investments. You’re meant to try and squeeze out as much damage as you can from your build, and exploring the world to make that happen is the way to go.

It’s more like a build-engineering system that’s backed by the exploration loop, the two of them working in tandem to keep you constantly trying out new builds or ideas, or even changing things up entirely if the situation demands it.

In Elden Ring, it’s more about forming an identity for your build, directing your take on the Tarnished in a way that encourages planning your stat spread early for the type of weapons and gear you’re looking at. Are you going to channel your Strength and deal devastating blows to your enemies while tanking their attacks? Or do you prefer a more agile approach, weaving in and out of enemy combos while dealing damage with quick slashes or stabs, or perhaps staying away and using your spells? All of it is viable, and any approach still results in a potent character.

However, new weapons, spells, Ashes of War, and gear are not dropped all over the place. They’re earned in a design choice that ties in to the game’s exploration loop just like Nioh 3, but diverges from it by encouraging a more calculated approach to the open-world. It helps that a plethora of side quest chains and hidden events constantly underscore The Lands Between, encouraging you to take as much of it in as you can with every session of play.

Elden Ring also has The Shadow of the Erdtree, a DLC that feels like a whole game all on its own. It’s going to be interesting to see what Nioh 3 does on that front. But both games do have an excellent replay value in common, with New Game Plus being almost a requirement for players who want to actually enjoy the characters they’ve invested a lot of time in building. Elden Ring a more sprawling, larger map that encourages you to explore it, yes, but for a set of reasons entirely different from Nioh 3.

Where Elden Ring is about an adventure that is built around a sense of wonder, Nioh 3 is one that’s built around a sense of constant danger, and a need for vigilant responses to threats that come at you. And yet, both their gameplay loops drive you towards a throne.

A Shared Crown

Elden Ring and Nioh 3 are excellent at probably the best titles to represent the distinct ambitions they bring to the table. As an adventure myth, Elden Ring places a spotlight on rewarding discovery, weaving in a sense of awe and adventure into its world that’s reflected in the spectacle of the battles you fight in it.

Nioh 3 takes a more combat focused approach, constantly keeping its players engaged through a more technical approach to combat that can get very addictive, very fast. It’s about taking down anyone getting in the way of your rise to the Shogunate with brutal efficiency and stylish grace.

Nioh 3 is sort of a combat laboratory, where you’re constantly looking for ways to tackle its new world design via experimentation and exploration. Elden Ring, on the other hand, is about an adventure that’s uniquely your’s, discovery-driven rewards and a sense of wonder woven into a story and gameplay loop that can have you thinking about it long after you leave The Lands Between.

And yet, despite their differences, the main thing that they share in common is that they’re both excellent titles, and brilliant showcases of what a good studio can do with the Soulslike formula.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.