By Ben Touati. Written from a European perspective, slowly and on purpose, not beholden to the hype cycle.
GiocoNews had spent years reporting on Italy’s gambling industry. After its sale, the print magazine disappeared, the newsroom shrank and the regulator said the site was directing readers towards operators without Italian licences.
Read the article All Ledger pieces →
A month after Cologne, one indie has doubled its wishlists, contacts made on the show floor are still alive and the games industry is still laying people off. So what did Gamescom 2026 actually change?
Lucinda Syson, who cast Alfonso Cuarón’s film, was in Stockholm last week. Twenty years later, the cast still shows how much of a movie gets written before anyone says ‘action’.
‘The Transformers: The Movie’ was supposed to clear space for the next toy line. Children, inconveniently, had become attached to the inventory.
Studio Ghibli has restored one of its loveliest films. It is also the only feature its director ever got to make.
Laika’s puppets now move so beautifully that the handwork can disappear inside the image. Good thing the studio keeps showing us the tiny lungs.
A way into the rest of the magazine, once chronology stops helping.
Everything, in order →
Disney's live-action 'Moana' opened in July 2026, ten years after the original, to a mid-thirties Rotten Tomatoes score and collapsing tracking. Seen from a country where the film has only ever been called 'Vaiana', the fastest remake Disney has ever attempted looks stranger still.
Duolingo gave its cartoon owl a funeral and a resurrection. Its translators got a form email ten days before Christmas. On the cheapest loyalty a company ever bought.
Summer Games Done Quick 2026 ran for a week of round-the-clock speedrunning for Doctors Without Borders. From Stockholm, the best seats were an ocean away.
In Germany they were the Hero Turtles, the nunchaku edited out, and I loved them anyway. A love letter to the 1990 film, and the exact point where my love runs out every time.
I bought both Steam Decks on day one, so the misgiving comes from inside the cult. The price is not about games, it is about who is bidding against you for memory.
A free Australian YouTube cartoon topped cinema charts across Europe, then posted its finale online for nothing. The studios should be paying attention.
It is the most valuable entertainment product of the decade, and it does not exist yet. On the week anticipation became something you can pre-order.
The villain of 'Toy Story 5' is a tablet. The studio warning your kids off screens is the one that taught a generation to sit still and watch.
Dead by Daylight turned ten and is bigger than ever. On how the cheap, weird horror game outlived the blockbusters built to bury it.
Martin Scorsese has become an adviser to a German AI image firm. A note on what a famous name actually buys.
Nintendo announced an 'Ocarina of Time' remake for Switch 2. On why laying hands on the one game the medium crowned is its own kind of risk.
The lost Tolkien work turns out to be an unpaid translation of an 800-year-old sermon. On why that beats another dragon.
EA cut people at DICE months after 'Battlefield 6' shipped as the best-selling game in America. On what the promise of AI is being used to justify.
The industry replaced E3 with eighteen showcases in eight days, clustered around Los Angeles hours. On what Summer Game Fest fixed and quietly broke.
'Balatro's publisher was sold to the private-equity group that also owns Metacritic. On what happens when the house owns the scoreboard.
Electronic Arts is now owned by a consortium led by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. What the takeover means for the most-played football game on earth.
Sebastian Stan wouldn't laugh at a Trump question; days later his director took the Palme d'Or. On Europe's own both-sidesing.
Elon Musk called the finale of 'The Boys' pathetic. He didn't notice it was about him.
On reading 'The Lord of the Rings' the way the slow-reading communities now do, and what the book does that no adaptation can.
A review of the first Raimi film in twenty years where his actual signatures come back.
How franchises spent twenty years building the exact pipeline generative AI now walks straight into.
