The Daily Game News

News Pulse

A live read on the games news cycle, measured from our own coverage clustering.

live
45stories · 6h window
14outlets tracked
22picked up by 2+
12 stories / hr · 16% below normal
33outlets on top story

The news landscape

When each story broke, and how far it spread. Bigger dots are hotter — hover for detail, click to read.

Guide: When Is the Phantom Blade Zero State of Play? — 2 outlets, 19.4h agoDiablo: The Infernal Path Officially Confirmed for Fall 2026 Ahead of BlizzCon — 3 outlets, 18.2h agoName That Game (August 16, 2026) — 2 outlets, 26.9h agoDragon Ball Super 2: 9 Strongest New Transformations, Ranked — 2 outlets, 8.4h agoStalker 2's imminent free update aims to make the sequel more atmospheric and less relentlessly hostile: 'The Zone isn't one constant gunfight' — 2 outlets, 20.6h agoRideshare Stimulator Reportedly Replaced Lead Writer With ChatGPT — 2 outlets, 15.7h ago9 Anime Characters Smarter Than Batman — 2 outlets, 14.4h agoBest players for FC 26 Pocket Inspector Evolution — 2 outlets, 15.9h agoAnime Origins Tier List – Best Units [RELEASE] — 2 outlets, 9.3h agoWe’re reaching peak camera with the Sony A7R VI — 2 outlets, 24.1h agoThe surprise must-see movie of the summer — 2 outlets, 15.9h agoInsomniac had to ditch Spider-Man's open-world for Marvel's Wolverine because Logan is "not somebody who has a friendly neighborhood" — 2 outlets, 20.9h ago'It's a Relentless Onslaught': Wolverine PS5 Dev Responds to Unprecedented Criticism — 2 outlets, 3.6h ago5 Reasons The Elder Scrolls 6 Should Be Xbox Exclusive (And 5 Reasons It Shouldn't) — 2 outlets, 2.9h agoHow To Unlock All Achievements In Servant Of The Lake — 3 outlets, 20.1h agoIn the Tranquility of Cycles Quest Trigger Guide In Genshin Impact — 9 outlets, 26.9h agoFeature: These 30+ Games Are Coming To Xbox Next Week (August 17-21) — 2 outlets, 1.9h agoGameRant Daily Crossword (August 16, 2026) — 3 outlets, 26.9h agoMatt Groening Himself Says The Simpsons: Hit & Run Is 'Coming Back in Some Form' — 4 outlets, 12.7h agoTalking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (August 15-16) — 4 outlets, 19.9h agoI Hope GTA 6 Borrows a Lot From GTA 4 — 6 outlets, 21.5h agoA Kingdom Hearts Animated Series Is 'Coming Soon' to Disney Channel, Disney Plus — 33 outlets, 22.5h ago
Outlets covering →
6H AGOWHEN IT BROKENOW

Publishing volume

Stories per hour, against what the model expects for this hour.

6H AGONOW
published learned expectation

How the algorithm sees today

Where stories fall, and the boundaries the model has learned. These move.

Steady0.25Rising0.59Hot1.73Breaking2.73
22 clustered stories in this window

How stories spread

Outlet pickup across each story’s life. A steep climb is a scheduled drop.

A Kingdom Hearts Animated Series Is 'Coming Soon' to Disney Channel, Disney Plus — 33 outlets over 22.5hCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's PS5 Beta Includes Campaign Mission for the First Time — 11 outlets over 24.4hIn the Tranquility of Cycles Quest Trigger Guide In Genshin Impact — 9 outlets over 26.9h'Marvel Tokon' Reportedly Moves 500K Units In First Week, Kicking Off Sales Figures Debate — 9 outlets over 43.3hUS Senate launches investigation into Roblox: 'Children on your platform are hurting. Congress will not look the other way' — 8 outlets over 25.1h

Breaking now

Fastest pickup, still growing.

Just published

Newest first, updating live.

Biggest clusters

Most outlets on one story.

Who breaks it first

How often each outlet published first, over 318 clusters.

  • Gamerant 68% · 3 stories
  • Gematsu 65% · 22 stories
  • Xbox Wire 59% · 3 stories
  • Pocket Gamer 59% · 3 stories
  • Dexerto – Games 57% · 14 stories
  • GameRant 56% · 63 stories
  • PlayStation Blog 53% · 6 stories
  • RPGamer 52% · 18 stories

How far behind

Median minutes behind the first report.

  • GameRant first · 33 stories
  • GamesRadar+ first · 30 stories
  • Nintendo Everything first · 5 stories
  • Massively OP first · 5 stories
  • Pure Xbox first · 4 stories
  • GameSpot +3m · 6 stories
  • Google News – Video Games +9m · 10 stories
  • IGN +56m · 25 stories
  • Gematsu +70m · 6 stories
  • Dexerto – Games +103m · 8 stories

Most active outlets

Output this window, and how much was original.

  • GameRant 21 first · 43 total
  • GamesRadar+ 18 first · 27 total
  • IGN 11 first · 24 total
  • Polygon 8 first · 22 total
  • Massively OP 3 first · 17 total
  • TheGamer 3 first · 12 total
  • Nintendo Everything 3 first · 10 total
  • Destructoid 3 first · 9 total

What the press is chasing

Games by total reach.

  • kingdom hearts 33 reach · 1 stories
  • coming soon 33 reach · 1 stories
  • genshin impact 9 reach · 1 stories
  • grand theft auto vi 6 reach · 1 stories
  • marvel s wolverine 4 reach · 2 stories
  • hell let loose vietnam 4 reach · 1 stories
  • wild blue skies 4 reach · 1 stories
  • madden nfl 4 reach · 1 stories

Shape of the window

Every story by level. Most news is carried by a single outlet.

Breaking 0
Hot 16
Rising 6
Steady 0
Quiet 0
Solo 23

Levels are cut at the learned 40th, 75th, 90th and 97th percentiles of heat = outlets^0.6 × (1 + pickups per hour) × freshness, measured over the last 2000 readings. Because the cut-points come from the site’s own recent history rather than fixed numbers, the same story can be “Hot” in a quiet week and “Steady” during a showcase. Breaking additionally requires the cluster to still be growing. Current cut-points: 0.25 / 0.59 / 1.73 / 2.73.

How these numbers are measured

Where the data comes from

The Daily Game News aggregates gaming coverage from 28 outlets and groups reports of the same event into a single cluster. Nothing here is scraped from a third-party analytics service: every figure on this page is derived from that clustering, which is what makes “how many outlets ran this” answerable at all.

Reach, velocity and heat

Reach is the number of distinct outlets in a cluster. Velocity is how many joined in the last three hours — deliberately a current measure, because outlets-per-hour since publication simply rewards a story for being new. Heat combines the two with a freshness decay, and it is heat that the level labels are drawn from.

Why the thresholds move

A fixed threshold is wrong most of the day: six outlets in an hour is a frenzy at 04:00 and unremarkable during a showcase. Instead the site keeps a rolling sample of recent heat values and reads the boundaries off its own percentiles, so the labels keep their meaning as the news cycle changes. The model state shown in the sidebar is that sample, and its adaptation rate.

What “first” means

An outlet is credited with breaking a story when its timestamp is the earliest in the cluster. Because syndication and feed delays make any single observation noisy, scoop rates are smoothed toward the site-wide average in proportion to how little history an outlet has. Lag is reported as a median for the same reason.

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