Welcome back to your monthly report of game news, where I do my best to compile everything into one convenient ad-free place, so you don’t have to worry about the pesky cracks that info can fall through at other publications.
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After all these years of waiting and writing about it, it finally happened.
On the morning of January 16th, with no official advance warning whatsoever, Nintendo released a short standalone reveal trailer for the Switch 2 console, announcing that it will be fully detailed at the first Switch 2 Direct on April 2nd at 6AM Pacific/9AM Eastern, and providing a few main details confirming much of what has leaked since 2023 and in some cases only weeks early: it is a larger, more powerful console continuing the hybrid form factor, an iterative successor with magnetically connected Joy-Con 2 controllers, a new more flexible U-shaped backstand, and featuring backwards compatibility with both digital and physical Switch 1 games. The trailer offers brief first look reveals for both the major brand new Mouse Mode for Joy-con 2 controllers, and the brand new Mario Kart sequel. The console is anticipated to launch this summer after the last hands-on event ends on June 1st.
It was a limited reveal which served its intended purpose of giving a basic look at the new console right at the start of the calendar year without being the company’s main focus until the start of the next fiscal year in April and then a mid-year launch. From my anecdotal experience, it was more than enough for normies who didn’t know all of the info in advance. There’s only one thing I would change: I can live with saving Mario Kart’s flashiest stuff for the April Direct, but then there should have been one current-gen third party game ready to show to help demonstrate the power leap here more directly and be a good get, equivalent to Skyrim in the original trailer. Or at least just show the active upgrade to an existing game, like so:
Mouse Mode delivers another major hardware innovation without bogging down the console itself like the Wii U, standardizing inputs that have only been a barely supported peripheral on consoles before now, and serving as a shot back across the bow at the resurgence of PC gaming and advent of handhelds like the Steam Deck. Using one Mousecon by itself, a Mousecon and a normal Joy-con, and both Mousecons at once will all be available options, as seen in the patent documents I discuss below. It’s not the direct dual-screen experience I know SOME of my readers are craving, but the Mouse Mode cursor will allow for more precise DS game emulation, serving as the stylus with both screens on one display like on the Wii U, and there’s a microphone to help with DS NSO too.
On February 6th, several 2023 patent documents on the Switch 2 console and controllers went public, revealing key information about the hardware: both Joy-Con 2 controllers feature the new Mouse Sensor, the console and both controllers feature an updated Motion Sensor with a magnetometer like the Wii U Gamepad to improve motion control precision over the original Joy-Cons, the console has a new built in microphone, HD Rumble and the Amiibo reader are still featured, and the seldom used IR camera is confirmed to be removed. We still don’t know for certain yet based on the documents, but the Joy-Con 2s are believed to be using Hall Effect thumbsticks which use a different design to provide smoother movement and reduce the chance for damage/subsequent stick drift. There is also a new button which we still don’t have any official info for, but is rumored to be related to native online chat.
The question of backwards compatibility limitations has come up due to the disclaimer in the trailer. I obviously can’t speak to every single game out of the several thousand on the Switch, on PS4 there were a few randos like Joe’s Diner that just couldn’t work on PS5, but in terms of first party, the only problems should be what I discuss here. The new Joy-Cons are larger than the originals, so they simply can’t fit in the Ring-con peripheral, Labo, or the leg-strap. The IR camera has been removed which was only used in a few things like exactly one 1-2-Switch minigame, one WarioWare: Move It microgame, Labo, Ring Fit, Brain Training, and uh, Night Vision? But Switch 2 Bluetooth connectivity for OG Joy-cons is very likely to be supported, making these limitations pretty moot anyway.
Next to consider is the soft reveal for the new Mario Kart, 11 years after the original launch of Mario Kart 8 and 6 years after Mario Kart Tour. I don’t want to engage in overanalysis here for such brief, Youtube-compressed footage, but there are some key takeaways from what we’ve already seen: the introduction of 24 player races over the previous 12 maximum, a new Route 66-themed course with a larger overall scope and improved draw distance to match, new squash and stretch animations on the racers, and what to me seems like an overall retro aesthetic, a throwback to the original Super Mario Kart, most obvious in the complete redesign for Donkey Kong, but not exclusive to him at all.
Without getting too caught up in rumors and speculation, I would also like to overview the current state of Nintendo’s first party and first party adjacent development teams, to consider what we can realistically expect for the Switch 2 generation as Nintendo moves into another phase of more expensive and extensive production after struggling with the HD transition in the Wii U era. We have reason to understand as seen above that the hardware has been in an advanced state and thus its devkits have been as well since at least 2023. I won’t be discussing third parties because that has far too many variables to account for. Several publishers have expressed vague support (Xbox, Ubisoft, EA, Take-Two) but it’s become clear by now we won’t know anything specific until April.
EPD9, led by Kosuke Yabuki, is the Mario Kart team, and we effectively have confirmation that we will see the fruits of their labors launch in 2025.
While we’re at it: Retro, Game Freak, and Monolith Soft have all already announced Switch 1 games for 2025, and they will hopefully see enhancements on Switch 2, but what about what’s made specifically for the successor? Retro will assuredly take a long time on their next game. Thanks to that hack we already know that Game Freak will launch Pokémon Gen 10 in Holiday 2026 as their first Switch 2 effort. Monolith are wildly efficient, shipping two mainline games, two major DLC expansions, and two remasters for the Xenoblade series while also providing support for Zelda, Splatoon, and Animal Crossing, across the Switch’s eight years of life. We could see their next fully new game in another two years if we’re lucky.
EPD8, led by Kenta Motokura, is the 3D Mario team, who last launched the mini project Bowser’s Fury in 2021. They are probably putting the finishing touches on the next full 3D Mario as we speak for an April reveal and 2025 launch.
EPD4 is the team behind ‘gimmick’ and experiment projects such as 1-2-Switch/Everybody 1-2-Switch, Labo, Ring Fit Adventure, Game Builder Garage, and Switch Sports. They release a smaller game annually and a larger game like Switch Sports and Ring Fit every few years. I would expect them to make a launch title to demo the Mouse Mode and ship the next larger game by 2026.
EPD5 contains both the Splatoon and Animal Crossing teams, who share some gruntwork devs but are largely separate. I think we should expect both early in Switch 2’s life, but the next gen Animal Crossing seems more likely to launch first between the two series just based on time since wrapping their previous games.
EPD 3, led by Eiji Aonuma, is the main Zelda team, producing the 3D entries and supervising all others. It has, astonishingly, been almost two years since Tears of the Kingdom launched, but that’s still only two years for games that already took six years apiece last gen, and obviously it’s been even less time since Grezzo’s Echoes of Wisdom. Zelda on Switch 2 will be relegated back to rereleases and spinoffs for quite a while.
Mario Party by Nintendo Cube is also years away as they just launched their biggest series entry yet.
EPD10 is the 2D Mario and Mario Maker team, who most recently launched Mario Wonder in 2023, so we should expect their next game to be further out as well. EPD10 also collaborates with Eighting who is the new primary developer of the Pikmin series, that series obviously also just got a new entry and will take a long time to be ready again, though I do expect it to gain fresh momentum from the success of 4.
HAL Laboratory make Kirby, and launched their last full new game in 2022 with Kirby and the Forgotten Land, the series’ first 3D platformer. Based on that game’s success, I expect they immediately started work on another 3D entry which could be ready by 2026 or 2027, while 2D entries will be covered by rereleases like 2023’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe and the rumored Planet Robobot HD.
Intelligent Systems has three separate teams dedicated to Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, and WarioWare respectively, and all teams also receive support from other groups like Tose, Koei Tecmo, and Nintendo EPD. As a result they’ve managed a very consistent release schedule which makes it look like Fire Emblem is up next again, but it’s entirely possible they’ll still be offloading last/cross-gen games first.
Next Level Games shipped Luigi’s Mansion 3 in 2019 and Mario Strikers: Battle League in 2022, and Strikers had less than half of their team credited on it, so they were already working on something else too. It is distinctly possible we could see Luigi’s Mansion 4 as a Switch 2 graphical showcase fairly soon.
Mario Sports developer Camelot is already in their longest dev cycle ever after launching Mario Golf: Super Rush in 2021, so it’s very likely we see their next game soon, and it’s probably Switch 2-first.
Mercury Steam, the developers of Samus Returns and Metroid Dread, has worked continuously on 2D Metroid while also shipping other projects from a separate team, so the Project Iron they just started marketing has limited bearing on the status of Metroid 6, which should be a relatively early arrival but definitely needs more time right now after Dread’s 2021 launch.
Masahiro Sakurai has explicitly said that his next project started active production in April 2022 after pitching it in 2021 before Smash Ultimate’s post-launch development had even ended. Whether it’s the next Smash or not, it most likely needs more than three years to be ready considering that Ultimate barely got out the door in that timeframe.
Lastly, Nintendo held its latest investors meeting and earnings release on February 4th, giving very little extra information about the Switch 2, just broad comments on its main strategies like that exclusives are of course important to sell it, that pricing it has to take both practical cost increases and “the price range consumers expect for Nintendo” into account, and that manufacturing Switch 2 at such volumes to combat shortages and scalping is a priority, which is consistent with the activity we’ve seen at their supply chain since last year. The company also reported that it sold 4.8 million Switches during the holiday quarter, reaching a total of 150.86 million, and that due to this even weaker than expected holiday, it is revising its sales forecast down again.
For games, sales are generally still slowing down from overall less enthusiasm and tighter wallets, but The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom has now sold almost 4 million copies, while Super Mario Party Jamboree sold over 6 million copies and Mario & Luigi: Brothership sold 1.8 million copies in their debut quarter. Super Mario Bros Wonder is showing the best legs out of the newer evergreens right now, selling around 3 million more copies in 2024 to reach 15.5 million total, while Tears of the Kingdom got a boost from a holiday discount.
The Switch’s lifetime sales will definitely surpass the DS this year, but in this economy beating the PS2 has become an even taller order that might require a price cut. Nintendo’s goal assuredly is for the Switch’s post-successor life to at least match if not surpass the 3DS, which was 10 million more consoles sold over two extra years of life buoyed by rereleases just like we’ve already started seeing on Switch. If you already had a Switch in 2017 or 2018, you might remember seeing Samus Returns, Luigi’s Mansion, or Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn in Directs, and thinking, wish my Switch could play those! Well, this time, every last gen game is a current gen game too.
December 28th: During an extensive Famitsu interview with Sony Interactive Entertainment then co-CEO Hideaki Nishino, he confirmed something already obvious to many of us, that when the PlayStation 6 launches in another two or three years, he fully expects industry at large support for the PS5 will continue for at least as long as it has for the PS4 during the PS5 generation. The real headliner here is that he explicitly continues to insist that plans for the PS6 launch will not change in the face of all the current problems for this generation, from the release cadence for games to the cost inflation from Trump tariffs. So the PS6 should be delayed but it probably won’t be, just like PS5 before it.
December 30th: Team17 cofounder and developer for the original Worms games Martyn Brown passed away at the age of 57.
January 13th: Parent company EG7 announced that it was laying off over 100 people between two subsidiaries and closing down Toadman Interactive, after the two subsidiaries saw their 2024 releases EvilVEvil and Mechwarrior 5: Clans both underperform, and Toadman struggled to acquire new support development partnerships. 38 employees were fired at Mechwarrior developer Piranha Games, and 69 are being fired at Toadman while 42 contractors remain until their existing projects wrap.
Robocraft 2 developer Freejam will also shut down and will be sunsetting all three of their games, and Counterplay Games already quietly closed down during the 2024 holidays, after making Godfall for Gearbox as a PS5 launch title in 2020.
Swen Vincke stated that Larian will be undergoing media blackout for the foreseeable future to fully focus on their next game, outside of updates on support for Baldur’s Gate 3.
January 14th: This deal is getting worse all the time! A new Bloomberg report by Dong Cao suggests that the Guillemot family is exploring a new option for the ongoing potential deal with Tencent, one which would entail establishing a brand new company and moving Ubisoft’s biggest IPs over there where Tencent would have more ownership and control over them. This theoretically is also intended to boost Ubisoft’s share value and allow both entities to coexist, but in practice I’m certain it would lead ultimately to an attempt to abandon Ubisoft’s debts, tens of thousands of employees, and smaller IPs which would fully become lost media. They managed to invent a new worst case scenario out of whole cloth. On January 24th, Ubisoft was reported to have just partnered with Saudia Arabia, receiving funding to make a newly commissioned expansion DLC for AC Mirage.
On January 27th, Ubisoft announced 185 further layoffs across Dusseldorf, Stockholm, Newcastle, and most notably Leamington, where the office will be outright closed and roughly 50 people will be fired, leaving only a few remote workers who can easily be transferred to different projects. Ubi Leamington started as FreeStyle Games, which made all of the DJ Hero games, and recently had been a support studio for The Division, Star Wars Outlaws, and Skull & Bones.
January 15th: Developer MegaWobble announced that Lil Gator Game will receive a new DLC expansion called In the Dark for all existing platforms.
Microsoft engaged in “small” undefined layoffs across multiple divisions including Xbox games.
A solo indie developer announced that their well-received Steam early access game Fortune’s Run will be going on hiatus because they’re going to prison for the next three years for acts committed out of poverty, having just been sentenced after 5 years of waiting through their case.
January 16th: Announced internally across PlayStation Studios and publicly reported by Jason Schreier within hours, two separate first party live service game projects from Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio have been officially canceled after new assessments. After Sony already started to apply scrutiny to its live service initiative in 2023 with the deaths of several projects, most notably The Last of Us Online, the staggering failure of Concord last year has clearly escalated these efforts to steer this Titanic away from its iceberg. After Jim Ryan started with an initiative to launch 12 live services by 2026, at least eight of them have been canceled, only one is an unmitigated success, and the outlook for the several remaining in development, from FairGame$ to Marathon and multiple Horizon spinoffs, is not bright.
Sony has confirmed that neither studio will close, and that it is working with the studios to determine their new projects and minimize “business impact” like layoffs. Bend was later reported to have fired virtually all of its contractors. Bluepoint and Bend haven’t released a new game in four and almost six years respectively, and now they are much, much further away from that goal. Bluepoint, a team which specializes in remakes and remasters for games like Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls, was proud to announce they were working on their first new/non-rerelease game, and we now know it was a multiplayer live service God of War spinoff, in yet another square peg round hole moment for this live service phenomenon, another astonishingly ill-fitting and poor use of a studio’s established skillset. And Bend has just been in a tailspin since Days Gone, churning through one ill-conceived project after another including but not limited to these two simultaneous now also dead live services.
The launch of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD was marred by the recurring practice of failing to individual credit original developers in these new rereleases, affecting active first party dev Retro and their former employees for the second time after Metroid Prime Remastered.
January 17th: In the final act of the Federal Trade Commission under Biden and Lina Khan, Hoyoverse (under its international distributor name Cognosphere) has reached an agreement to pay a $20 million settlement and institute a ban on selling Genshin Impact microtransactions to minors without their parents’ knowledge and consent.
Corrinne Busche announced that she was leaving Electronic Arts after 18 years there, most of which were spent on The Sims at Maxis before she moved over to Bioware to direct Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Busche’s departure was prompted by an “opportunity she couldn’t turn down” to work on a new RPG elsewhere.
Another major mobile developer has participated in the ongoing industry layoffs, with Polish company Huuuge Games firing 122 people or 29% of its previous workforce, closing two of its offices in Finland and the Netherlands, and canceling all new games in favor of supporting its existing…social casino games.
January 18th: In conjunction with the brief Tiktok shutdown, Marvel Snap went offline for two days and was unavailable on the App Store until January 27th. Snap developer Second Dinner was not warned by ByteDance that this would occur, and has now elected to find a new publisher instead of the ByteDance-owned Nuverse, securing it before the end of January. The new publisher is Skystone Games, a small company giving limited funding and support towards the goal of enabling Second Dinner to all but fully self-publish. Ample compensation was provided for players affected by the outage. Skystone also separately announced that it was bringing the international console release of indie survival game Undying in February.
January 19th: With the lawsuit looming overhead on its one year anniversary, Pocketpair announced plans leading Palworld towards its 1.0 launch, with its ending and final boss officially in development alongside other content updates. Pocketpair also announced that it was branching out into publishing by partnering with Tales of Kenzera: ZAU developer Surgent Studios, releasing a small horror game later this year separate from the previously revealed Kenzera spinoff.
January 20th: EA announced that it is permanently killing the Origin launcher on April 17th 2025 after years of de-emphasizing it in favor of EA Play and EA App and support for 32-bit software waning on Windows. Account and game catalog transfers from Origin to EA App are supported, but there will be no accounting for those whose devices can’t support 64-bit apps, EA simply says to get a new computer.
Multiple ratings board listings have leaked that new current-gen optimized versions of older Resident Evil games are coming to PS5 and Xbox Series S|X, with Switch 2 likely as well. Resident Evil 2002 Remake, Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil 4 2005, and Resident Evil 6 were all newly relisted, as well as Resident Evil 7, which already has a current-gen edition but this could point to it receiving its own physical release shortly after the PS5 received one.
January 21st: Developer Reflector Entertainment officially canceled all future plans for their prospective Unknown 9 franchise off the failure of the debut game last fall, canceling a game that had already begun concepting, firing more employees, and pivoting completely to supporting development for a preexisting Bandai Namco IP game.
January 22nd: I am heartbroken to report that Maddy Thorson and her studio Extremely OK Games have canceled their Metroidvania Earthblade, making the decision in December 2024 for two main reasons. 1. Art director Pedro Medeiros, a core member of the development team and cofounder of the studio, recently left the project over a disagreement on the IP rights to Celeste. 2. This prompted Maddy and Noel Berry to assess the facts that they were no longer enjoying making the game and that it still had a lot further to go despite an already long development process. Those two will exclusively focus on smaller scale projects again after this bad experience with making a much larger one, and have already started prototyping. Maddy also discouraged any animosity towards Pedro Medeiros and encourages fans to check out his own game.
Acclaimed games critic Jonathan ash/Jon Pillar, known for his writings in 90s British gaming magazines Your Sinclair and Amiga Power, has sadly passed away. Linked here and here are obituaries from those who know him better than I.
EA held its latest investors meeting, reporting that it was adjusting the forecast for the fiscal year from a small growth to a small decline after both EA Sports Football Club 25 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard underperformed, with the majority of the loss explicitly coming from FC25, even with Dragon Age having to account for the entire costs of its multiple reboots across a decade of production. EA officially announced that The Veilguard has reached roughly 1.5 million players across retail sales and subscriptions, which is half of the 3 million EA wanted for its launch period. EA took a severe hit from shareholders over these results, declining 16% or $6 billion in value. Veilguard did receive its fifth and final major patch before the end of January, its patch notes ending on a goodbye message in Elvish.
And inevitably, on the 29th, the other shoe dropped: EA announced that it was further downsizing Bioware, firing around two dozen staff and permanently reassigning some to other EA teams’ projects like Skate and Iron Man, shrinking the studio down to under 100 people. The rest of Dragon Age’s creative team are confirmed to be among the layoffs, including Trick Weekes, who had been at Bioware for 20 years and wrote the Iron Bull. EA is setting up Bioware for failure with Mass Effect 5 now just as it did with the live service reboot for Dragon Age. A lot of talented people who made a herculean effort are out of work, and the Dragon Age series is likely dead after 15 years. In the most classical EA moment imaginable, EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson just suggested that Veilguard would have done better if it stayed a live service.
Don’t Nod delayed the second half of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage from March to April 15th for further polish, while the first episode remains in February. The game was also confirmed to cost $40 and will have a physical PS5 release later this year. This occurs against a backdrop of increasing tension at the developer,
PlayStation and Sony announced that Insomniac Games’ founder and president Ted Price will be retiring on March 31st 2025, 30 years after founding Insomniac in 1994, and he will be replaced by three Co-Studio Heads: Ryan Schneider for marketing and communications, Jen Juang for business and producing, and Chad Dezern for creative direction.
Against a backdrop of staggering institutional persecution for the trans community, Nintendo received its first ever GLAAD Awards nomination in recognition of the trans representation in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Remake.
January 23rd: Developr Amplitude revealed their first new game since going independent from Sega, Endless Legend II coming to PC Early Access soon from publisher Hooded Horse. This 4X RTS sequel is following up the original from all the way back in 2014.
During new previews for AC Shadows, Ubisoft gave a full reveal for the new Assassins Creed launcher, originally titled AC Infinity and now titled Animus Hub, which will debut in Shadows. Animus Hub will feature its own ongoing new story missions for the series’ modern timeline, until it ends prematurely like all live services. AC Hexe, expected to be the next major new entry as opposed to the Black Flag Remake or multiplayer spinoff, was namedropped for the first time since its 2022 announcement.
After 12 years at WB Games, president David Haddad announced that he will be leaving later this year once his replacement has been found, after financial difficulties for the division.
Former Arkane employee Julien Eveillé, who worked on Dishonored 2, Death of the Outsider, Deathloop, and even Blade before releasing his own self-made game Threshold last year, spoke to PCGamer about Arkane Lyon’s history. He elaborates on what we already know, that the studio has taken financial loss after loss on most of their projects, but consistent critical acclaim, and strong advocacy from codirector Dinga Bakaba after Arkane’s founder left in 2017, gave them enough value to Zenimax to receive protective treatment until the tragedy of Arkane Austin. Illustrative of wider industry economy problems we’re well aware of now, he specifies that Dishonored 2 cost more to make than Skyrim.
Xbox Developer Direct 2025: Opening with the promised surprise reveal, Team Ninja and Platinum Games announced that they are co-developing Ninja Gaiden 4, published by Xbox Game Studios and scheduled to launch in Fall 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate. This is a direct successor to the previous hardcore 3D games from 2004, 2008, and 2012, separate from the new 2D entry revealed just a month ago, after the series spent over a decade on hiatus. It features an evolution of the trademark combat and new traversal mechanics, while starring both new protagonist Yakumo and classic protag Ryu Hayabusa playable in opposition to each other, in a future Tokyo overrun by demons. After many years in development, the game is said to be 70-80% complete and already in its polishing phase.
Ninja Gaiden II Black was also announced and shadowdropped for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate, a new Unreal 5 remaster designed to be more faithful to the original experience than the famously censored Sigma version used in its previous rerelease. This will receive a physical release on PS5 later this year.
In the new story trailer, Compulsion announced that South of Midnight will launch April 8th 2025 for PC and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate, costing $40 and digital-only. Sandfall announced that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will launch April 24th 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate.
And lastly, idSoft appeared to discuss Doom: The Dark Ages. Multiplayer support has been cut after appearing in their previous two entries in order to make a newer, deeper experience, featuring sandbox exploration (not full open world) and wider combat zones, dungeons, and more PCs. The game features advanced difficulty customization, with sliders for enemy aggression, damage, parry timing, stun times, resource amounts, and most notably, a slider for the overall speed of action to account for different reflexes. Glory kills are now faster and not canned animations, and the new composer after Mick Gordon’s acrimonious exit is Finishing Move, AKA the duo of Brian Trifon and Brian Lee White. Doom: The Dark Ages will launch on May 15th 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate, at a base retail price of $70 for a proper console physical edition.
January 24th: Disgaea publisher NIS announced that its president, Tetsuhisa Seko, has passed away at the age of 54 and after almost 23 years at the company.
Astral Chain director Takahisa Taura is now confirmed to have left Platinum for his own new developer, Eel Game Studio, and he attended a “former PlatinumGames drinking party” hosted by Hideki Kamiya as seen on social media, where they were joined by Bayonetta 3 director Yusuke Miyata, Bayonetta Origins director Abebe Tinari, Metal Gear Rising director Kenji Saito, and character designer Masaki Yamanaka. Unrelatedly, did you know Astral Chain as an IP doesn’t belong to Platinum, it is exclusively owned by Nintendo?
Jauary 25th: A new trademark filing by Bandai Namco suggests that they are preparing another Tales Of Remaster with the late PS2 game Tales of the Abyss.
January 27th: Radio host, sports announcer, and actor Wes Johnson was hospitalized in critical condition after being found unconscious in his hotel room. He is now stable but still undergoing testing in ICU, and received ample crowdfunding to support his medical costs. For the gaming community, Johnson is best known for voice acting in Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, playing Sheogorath, the guards who declare “Stop, you’ve violated the law!” and many other roles.
After two years of struggle under parent company/blockchain corp Forte, developer Phoenix Labs announced it was firing the majority of remaining staff with support expected to end for their initially successful Monster Hunter alike Dauntless and life sim Fae Farm.
Koei Tecmo officially announced the PC port for Rise of the Ronin, releasing roughly 1 year after its PS5 launch on March 11th 2025.
Developer People Can Fly announced that it is working as a co-developer/support team for Compulsion’s Gears of War: E-Day, which was rumored by Tom Warren to be targeting a 2025 launch.
January 28th: I generally keep my coverage of annualized sports games to sufficiently unique developments for them, like the FIFA to Football Club transition, the first college football game in a decade, or MLB The Show going multiplat in 2021. Here’s an extension of that last one: in revealing MLB The Show 25, the series’ release platforms changed yet again, dropping PS4 and Xbox One as well as Day One Game Pass, leaving the new entry on only PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and Switch 1. This will presumably become a current-gen only series sometime after Switch 2’s launch, before the cycle starts over again after PS6.
VR’s reckoning continues as developer Fast Travel Games fired 30 employees and restructured to a single development team after none of their six VR games released in 2024 were successful.
Console testing for Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 8 went officially live, revealing that it adds splitscreen co op support on Xbox Series S more than a year after the drama surrounding that feature being cut to get the Xbox port launched ASAP.
During a tenth anniversary event for the Dying Light series, developer Techland committed to more unannounced projects across multimedia coming after spinoff Dying Light: The Beast launches this summer. Additional free updates for Dying Light and Dying Light 2 were also said to be coming soon.
January 29th: Right before launching Spider-Man 2 for PC, Sony and PlayStation offered several announcements, including a pivot on the PC release strategy itself, where the PSN account access will no longer be mandatory, there will instead just be some new small exclusive incentives for having the now-optional account. There was also an update for PS Plus, announcing that the inclusion of last-gen/PS4 titles in the service’s offerings will start winding down as of January 2026. And lastly, there was a leadership restructuring, making Hideaki Nishino the sole president and CEO of SIE, where Hermen Hulst will continue to be in charge of PS studios but now answer to him instead of being co-CEOs, and Hiroki Totoki and Kenichiro Yoshida are also shuffling positions but essentially remain in charge of the entire Sony corp.
Dino Crisis and Dino Crisis 2 both just arrived on GOG not long after the first game arrived on PS4/5 via emulation, in a small but escalating momentum for Capcom’s long dormant series.
January 30th: Xbox abruptly announced on social media that Forza Horizon 5 will be coming to PS5 this Spring with all DLC packed in and full crossplay support, and less than a week later, two more first party ports to PS5 were also confirmed for this spring, Age of Mythology Retold (releasing March 4th) and Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition (no specific date). Both strategy titles’ upcoming paid expansion DLCs will arrive on all platforms at the same time with no timed exclusivities. The Forza Horizon 5 PS5 port is made by Panic Button, who are best known for high level Switch ports like Apex Legends, Doom and Doom Eternal, and who will probably be very busy with ports to Switch 2 as well.
The Video Game History Foundation took its digital library public for the first time, offering scans of over 1500 gaming magazines and various promotional and production materials.
Calvin Robinson, known Gamergater/industry reactionary and the owner of Christian gaming website God is a Geek, threw a Nazi salute on camera during the national anti-abortion summit, and in response the entire staff of the website quit in protest, resolving to start over on a new gaming site.
Sassy Chap Games delayed the launch of Date Everything! for the second time, pushing it from February to June 2025.
Nintendo Switch Online saw Wario Land 4 for Game Boy Advance announced to release February 14th, Ridge Racer 64 added on January 30th, and three SNES games released: Fatal Fury 2 from SNK, Super Ninja Boy, and Sutte Hakkun, a first party Satellaview puzzle game. This is the first ever official rerelease of Ridge Racer 64 and the first international release of Sutte Hakkun.
January 31st: WB and Player First Games predictably announced that they’re ending support for MultiVersus just one year after its relaunch, making it the champion among failed live services by dying twice in three years. They will delist the game on all digital storefronts and kill all online servers as of May 30th 2025, with offline play supported “for the foreseeable future” for existing players. The game is no longer taking real money, but it will not be refunding any money already spent like my own during the 2022 beta. The final season adds Aquaman and Lola Bunny as the game’s final characters.
EA shadowdropped new editions of The Sims and The Sims 2 with all DLCs included for Windows 10 and 11 in celebration of the series’ 25th anniversary, after the plan leaked several days early. These Legacy Collections launched in very poor condition, they are extremely technically flawed and have received widespread criticism.
After serving as the narrative director for both Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West at Guerrilla Games, John Gonzalez announced that he is newly returning to Obsidian where he was the lead writer of Fallout: New Vegas. He made a point of saying it’s not for New Vegas 2.
Peter Tripp Akemann, Skydance executive and the cofounder of COD developer Treyarch, pled guilty to unsafe operation of unmanned craft for accidentally interfering with firefighting efforts in California by crashing his drone into a waterdropping aircraft and taking it out of commission.
February 3rd: In the wake of the Trump administration’s tariffs threatened against Mexico, Canada, China, and Taiwan, the Entertainment Software Association issued an official public response calling for the government to “consult with the private sector” to “avoid causing significant harm to everyday Americans” and the games industry, due to these markets containing vast swathes of both game hardware manufacturing and game software manufacturing. The risk isn’t just a devastatingly massive increase in costs passed down to the consumer subsequent chilling effect on sales in both this particular already unstable industry and the economy at large, but also further exacerbating the fall of physical software and hardware in favor of the highly flawed, consumer-unfriendly, and unpopular digital and cloud based gaming.
At time of publication, tariffs have gone into effect in China, Taiwan’s have only been proposed, while Canada and Mexico have since both negotiated 30 day pauses on tariffs, but the thing about that is as long as the threat remains, the overall economic instability created by the administration remains, costs could still go up anytime, even preemptively.
The late Roll7’s games OlliOlliWorld and Rollerdrome were temporarily delisted on digital storefronts due to a publisher transfer.
EA shared very brief, very early gameplay footage from the next Battlefield game, announced that it is currently targeting a launch between now and March 2026, and opened registrations for Battlefield Labs, a long-term closed testing service. Support for 2022’s Need for Speed Unbound officially ended and Criterion will begin concepting for the racing series’ next game while continuing to work on Battlefield’s campaign alongside DICE and part of Motive.
Kotaku’s Twitter got hacked.
February 4th: Tencent subsidiary Sumo Digital announced that it would no longer be pursuing original games like 2017’s Snake Pass, canceling multiple current projects and laying off employees in the process, in favor of exclusively engaging in commission/work for hire development for external partners, where it has made games like the Sonic Racing series or Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and supported development on recent WB AAAs like Suicide Squad and TERG RPG.
Netflix announced that it has ended numerous partnerships for games already on its app or imminently coming to the app and will largely redirect its gaming investments away from narrative driven and indie fare and towards tie-ins like its shitty Squid Game game and third parties GTA Trilogy because those are what’s getting played most. In the process the company is delisting existing titles and canceling new arrivals, including Tales of the Shire, Klei games Don’t Starve Together, Lab Rat, and Rotwood, Compass Point: West, Crashlands 2, Placid Plastic Duck, and lastly, my precious underrated darling Thirsty Suitors.
The latest Capcom Spotlight presentation offered a few announcements: Capcom Fighting Collection 2 will launch May 16th, several games like Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster and Ace Attorney Investigations Collection have new demos, and Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny Remastered will launch later this year for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One in anticipation for next year’s new Onimusha game, which saw some basic story and gameplay details discussed. The original PS2 Onimusha was remastered back in 2018, and its sequels from the same console have been delayed by mocap actors’ likeness rights issues, including Jean Reno.
Atari announced another retro reboot game, Breakout Beyond by Bit.Trip developers Choice Provisions, for a 2025 launch on all cross-gen platforms and Atari VCS.
Bungie launched Destiny 2: Heresy, an epilogue to the previous narrative saga for the struggling live service shooter. This last update to the Final Shape expansion currently has incomplete voicework due to the ongoing actors’ strike.
February 5th: Ethan Gach at Kotaku exclusively reported that Take-Two/2K has fired Michael Condrey, the president of subsidiary developer 31st Union, over poor early reception to his team’s FTP live service Project Ethos, which was announced in October and has only received closed beta tests so far.
Developer Iron Galaxy announced that it will fire 66 employees as a “last resort” action for “long term survival” after previous non-layoff sacrifices, as funding for small external teams like this continues to be virtually nonexistent. Indie devs on BlueSky estimate that it would take up to a year after the funding situation improves for there to be a true recovery, and that first step has yet to happen.
Developer ProbablyMonsters is reported to have fired more people and canceled a project after layoffs last year.
Capcom announced that it was ending support for the multiplayer Resident Evil: Re:Verse, delisting it from stores March 4th and taking it offline on June 30th.
February 6th: Ahead of a likely premiere at a Sony State of Play coming later this month, the PplayStation Store accidentally leaked the next trailer for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, revealing that it will launch August 28th 2025 and that the Ape Escape cameo minigame will return in the PS5 version, promising more special characters to be announced later, which could include Yoshi from Snake Eater for 3DS.
Ubisoft is rumored to be imminently announcing Rainbow Six Siege 2, an Overwatch 2/Counter-Strike 2 style update to the decade old hit live shooter.
The struggling Paradox Interactive announced that it has acquired Haemimont Games, the developers of Jagged Alliance 3, Tropico 5, and Surviving Mars among other sim games.
After multiple delays and serious issues, developer Sports Interactive elected to cancel their game Football Manager 25, causing a break in their annualized sim series because they were unwilling to ship a broken product and the current football season is almost over anyway.
February 7th: Jason Schreier at Bloomberg reported again on the state of Warner Bros Games, saying that it has no major releases anytime soon to help with its current financial state from two failed live services because Avalanche, Rocksteady, and NetherRealm are only just starting their next projects and revealing that the best opportunity it did have, Monolith Productions’ Wonder Woman, was fully rebooted last year and so is many years out as well.
Wonder Woman only started development in 2021 after three years on a different canceled game, and in early 2024, the director on Wonder Woman was replaced and production reset after over $100 million were already spent on the original iteration, which had been pitched to use the Nemesis system to have Wonder Woman befriend and cooperate with enemies after defeating them. That awesome, perfectly in character main premise has tragically been thrown out in favor of a more conventional open world action game mold.
Schreier also reported that WB Montreal has gained no momentum on its next game in the over two years since launching Gotham Knights, pitching two DC games that went nowhere, one based on Constantine and one based on The Flash which was canceled after the movie bombed, and now developing an early pitch for a Game of Thrones game while providing support development on games like Wonder Woman. During this stagnant process, most of WB Montreal’s leadership resigned in protest of mismanagement from higher ups, as the recently departed David Haddad was slow to communicate and the infamous David Zaslav won’t allow anything not based on a major in-house IP.
PlayStation Network services abruptly went down on Friday night and the outage lasted for almost 24 hours, being restored on Saturday afternoon.
And lastly, it’s not really news but it’s a relevant feel-good story: The creator of the beloved game Tunic, Andrew “Dicey” Shouldice, declared that the game wouldn’t have been a success without the support of LGBTQ+ fans and developers, so he will support the trans community in the midst of the Trump admin’s all-out assault on us by matching and doubling anyone’s donations to Trans Lifeline.
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