Four launches, a reshuffled chart and October’s squeeze

The week at a glance

• Dune: Awakening, Control Resonant, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance and Silent Hill: Townfall all launched by Thursday 24 September.
• Control Resonant costs £49.99, with its £54.99 Digital Deluxe Edition opening on Tuesday 22 September.
• Marvel’s Wolverine topped the UK boxed chart for the week ending 19 September, ahead of Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave.
• Minecraft Dungeons II is due on 29 September, with Minecraft Live scheduled for Saturday 26 September.
• Ace Combat 8 is now confirmed for 2 October, while Gears of War: E-Day starts paid early access on 1 October.

Four launches squeezed into three days

The week’s release list was short but unusually concentrated. On Tuesday 22 September, Dune: Awakening reached PS5 and Xbox Series X|S at £39.99, bringing Funcom’s online survival game to consoles with its single-player option intact. Thursday 24 September then delivered Control Resonant at £49.99 on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance at £24.99 on Switch 2, and Silent Hill: Townfall at £44.99 on PC and PS5.

The early-access wording matters. Control Resonant’s £54.99 Digital Deluxe Edition opened on Tuesday 22 September, as did Silent Hill: Townfall’s £49.99 Deluxe Edition, while the standard releases remained Thursday launches. Remedy’s own release notice also says the Mac version of Control Resonant will follow later in 2026, so the day-one launch is best treated as PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S rather than Mac. The other three releases are offline or single-player experiences, making Dune the clear outlier in a week otherwise built around self-contained campaigns.

Remedy takes Control somewhere bigger

Control Resonant is the week’s most substantial gamble. It keeps Remedy’s paranatural horror but moves beyond the Oldest House into a warped version of Manhattan, with Dylan Faden as the sole playable character and a more melee-focused combat system. That is a meaningful change from 2019’s gunplay-led original, and it gives the sequel a distinct identity rather than presenting another tour of the same corridors.

At £49.99 on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S, Resonant also arrives with a more flexible approach to difficulty than its predecessor. Remedy’s Assist Mode lets players adjust enemy aggression, damage, dodge timing and power recovery separately, rather than choosing one broad difficulty setting. That matters for a game built around close-range combat and repeated encounters, particularly when the story is clearly intended to carry players through its stranger corners. The Tuesday 22 September early access period was reserved for the £54.99 Digital Deluxe Edition; everyone else got the full launch on Thursday 24 September.

A Thursday for horror and old-school action

Silent Hill: Townfall made the louder creative statement of Thursday’s launches. Konami’s £44.99 standard edition is the first full-length Silent Hill game presented in first person, with the PS5 and PC release set in a fogbound Scottish setting in 1996. Its £49.99 Deluxe Edition opened on Tuesday 22 September, giving pre-order customers 48 hours of paid early access before the public launch on Thursday 24 September. That is a notably aggressive schedule for a series whose appeal depends on atmosphere and word of mouth.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance offered the cheaper, cleaner alternative: a £24.99 Switch 2 edition, released on the same Thursday, with higher-resolution handheld presentation and no online requirement. Sega’s choice to put the version on Switch 2 rather than spread it across the week makes it easy to overlook beside two major horror games and Remedy’s sequel. It is nevertheless the most straightforward purchase here: a compact, offline action-platformer for a new Nintendo audience, rather than another long-form premium adventure.

Wolverine wins the week before this week

The latest UK boxed chart covers the week ending 19 September, and it gave Sony the clearest result of the fortnight. Marvel’s Wolverine was No.1, with Nintendo’s Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave at No.2. LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight then jumped from No.40 to No.3 after the Switch 2 version reached retailers. The GfK-backed breakdown confirms that the top three were all shaped by new or returning products rather than the previous week’s order.

The rest of the top ten shows how quickly a new release can displace an established one. The Blood of Dawnwalker fell from No.2 to No.4, Mario Kart World moved from No.4 to No.5, and Pokémon Pokopia slipped from No.3 to No.6. Onimusha: Way of the Sword dropped from No.1 to No.7 after one week at the summit, while Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream fell from No.5 to No.8. EA Sports FC 26 was No.9, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Game of the Year Edition rose from No.9 to No.10 ahead of next week’s remaster.

The next Minecraft date is Saturday

The immediate news story is not a surprise game launch but a date on the calendar. Mojang’s official listing puts Minecraft Live on Saturday 26 September at 1pm ET, with the event arriving three days before Minecraft Dungeons II launches on Tuesday 29 September. The broadcast is therefore positioned to explain the wider Minecraft roadmap while the new dungeon crawler is still fresh, rather than arriving after the release has settled.

Dungeons II is due on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and Switch 2, with Xbox confirming day-one Game Pass availability. The sequel also gives the franchise a useful bridge between formats: it is an online co-op game, but its release is not limited to Xbox hardware. Mojang’s official Minecraft Live page also lists the current Wilderness Bound drop, so the practical takeaway for British readers is simple: check the event on 26 September, then decide whether Dungeons II belongs in the 29 September queue rather than treating the two as unrelated announcements.

Tuesday’s remaster pile-up needs planning

Tuesday 29 September has three obvious contenders, but one date needs correcting. Minecraft Dungeons II and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered remain set for 29 September across their listed formats, while Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is confirmed for Friday 2 October by the latest PlayStation and Xbox material, not Tuesday 29 September. Its launch platforms are PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S, with first-person storytelling and early access for the Deluxe Edition.

The Witcher 3 is the least expensive of the three if you already own the game. CD Projekt RED says the remaster is a free upgrade for qualifying owners, with Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine included at no extra cost. It is also coming to Switch 2, alongside PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. CD Projekt RED’s announcement makes this a preservation story as much as a new release: the original game is returning to the conversation without asking existing players to buy it again.

October starts like a second September

The first week of October is not a cooldown. The Relic: First Guardian arrives on Wednesday 30 September for Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2, followed on Thursday 1 October by End of Abyss on Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and PC and Ghost of Yotei: Complete Edition on PS5. Sony lists the Complete Edition at £69.99, or £11.99 for the upgrade, and the new expansion and survival mode arrive through the 1 October update.

Then comes Gears of War: E-Day. The full release is Tuesday 6 October on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PS5, but paid early access starts Thursday 1 October, creating a second launch day inside the same week. Star Wars: Galactic Racer follows on 6 October, while Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, Hell is Us and Kingdom Hearts III all land on 8 October. By 16 October, another nine games are due. The pattern is clear: 2026 is not waiting for one holiday blockbuster. It is asking players to navigate a continuous stream of editions, remasters and staggered access windows.