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.
Thanks and credit for the banner image as always goes to the Avocado’s one and only Space Robot!
A few pieces of cleanup from last Roundup to start us off.
February 19th: My personal nemesis Chris Barrett has fucked around and found out, as his lawsuit against Sony-PlayStation and Bungie has prompted the companies to start publishing his very creepy past text messages to female employees, substantiating the sexual harassment accusations made when he was fired.
March 6th: Despite their legal victory of sorts over Nexon’s copyright infringement allegations, Ironmace’s game Dark and Darker was delisted again on the Epic Game Store due to Nexon’s latest legal actions against Ironmace.
March 7th: Gameplay footage inevitably leaked from the Battlefield Next playtests right after they started, revealing many new mechanics, as well as enhancements to the minimap and destruction physics. Those new mechanics include movement abilities like crouch sprinting, diving, and landing rolls, clinging to vehicles for both stealth and transport, and dragging injured allies away to protect them.
March 8th: Voice actors Mike Nerida and Ian Mitchell called out Serene Questworks, developer for independent game Castle of Secrets, for firing its entire voice cast after they objected to generative AI being trained on their audio and used to complete the games’ voicework, after offering only $100 pay. Both actors attest that the developer wants to use AI to create multiple unique voices out of one performance to save on casting costs, even though professional voice actors can just do different voices on their own.
March 10th: Jez Corden for WindowsCentral and The Verge’s Tom Warren went back and forth reporting details about Microsoft’s impending Xbox hardware plans, saying that its main next-gen console hardware is in full development targeting a 2027 launch. It will complete the path we’ve been on since 2013 by making the fifth-gen Xbox fully a Windows PC internally with only the shell of a home console; this and their handheld Xbox plans are the two forks of a grand initiative to unify Xbox and Windows, wherein Taiwanese hardware maker Asus, who already have their own Steam Deck-alike in the ROG Ally, is one of multiple external partners who will be making new handheld gaming PCs with Xbox branding and UI, and that device is currently targeting a 2025 launch. Both of these branches of NeXtbox will not be able to natively play previous generations of Xbox software, only supporting cloud streamed Xbox games and potentially new Xbox emulators, while running both the Windows and Steam storefronts.
Meanwhile, Microsoft continues its AI bullshit, announcing that the Copilot chatbot will begin being integrated on Xbox while scraping info from online game guides when you ask for advice. Guides are the main source of revenue for online outlets that provide them because it’s easier to get repeat visitors and thus increase ad revenue, so this is very bad for these already struggling outlets, and the info will be far lower quality than if the player found it themselves due to chatbot hallucination.
A video has leaked from PlayStation showing a secret internal tech demo of an AI generated version of Aloy from the Horizon games, using multiple combined AI technologies to create custom real-time responses. Tom Warren for The Verge reports that Sony has been showcasing this tech demo since early 2024 and had an “advanced” version at the November 2024 Sony Technology Exchange Fair.
No part of the recorded presentation addresses any of the obvious inherent flaws. The responses that are theoretically more expansive than a real script are also unavoidably generic and strip all life from the character without the precision of real writing and real acting. There’s no usecase for a character you’re already controlling and a minor NPC would definitely be worse, the voiceline limits are there to keep you moving. And of course there’s also very real harm on artists, writers, and actors, and the environment. Let’s not even get into the thematic implications of pairing Horizon with this. The demo has a canned line to excuse the voice being recognizably not Ashly Burch: the AI being trained on Burch’s acting would be even more offensive and still doesn’t create better quality audio because it’s not real fucking acting.
March 11th: The cold war over the legacy of one of the best RPGs ever made had several more developments, most notably that the desiccated husk of corporate ZA/UM actually publicly revealed its next game, espionage RPG Project C4. All of the scrutiny this announcement deservedly invites is already out there, so I want to take a moment to say that the remaining ground level developers at this company deserve sympathy and recognition for their hard work even as the well has been so completely poisoned by owners. ZA/UM also proceeded to announce that a mobile port of Disco Elysium is coming in Summer 2025 with microtransactions and a redesign to “captivate the Tiktok audience,” such as the dialogue menu now based around swiping. The three teams of ZA/UM exiles have also seen new progress on their titles, with XXX Nightshift gaining major music producer John Cunningham, and Longdue previewed their project Hopetown on their Kickstarter. While Argo Tuulik suffered enough from the legal fees of both ZA/UM and Longdue’s lawsuits that he had to crowdfund for survival.
Moon Studios has secured the publishing rights to action RPG No Rest for the Wicked from Take-Two and committed to completing the game’s development and launching it independently.
Aerial Knight, creator of the acclaimed platformer Aerial Knight’s Never Yield, has announced his new game Aerial Knight’s Dropshot, an FPS in which the player is battling for survival as they fall out of the sky.
Just four months after transferring from Head of Netflix Gaming to VP of Generative AI, Mike Verdu has left Netflix altogether.
An interview with the CEO of Lego reveals that the company has begun investing in building up in-house game development resources after decades of Lego games being made in collaboration with partners like TT Games, Epic, Take-Two, etc.
March 12th: Ubisoft shareholder Juraj Krúpa is attempting to organize a protest outside the publisher’s headquarters due to its poor leadership and lack of public transparency around events like the Saudi Arabia deal for special Assassins’ Creed DLC, the Tencent spinoff, and allegations of secret discussions for the potential sale of Ubisoft IPs to Microsoft, EA, and other gaming giants.
Hoyoverse and its VO partner Sound Cadence have escalated from leaving characters silent in Genshin Impact to outright recasting roles in Zenless Zone Zero instead of signing the SAG interim agreement and respecting the wishes of its actors. SAG representation attest that the strike won’t end anytime soon because the latest offer from game publishers’ bargaining group is still “filled with alarming loopholes that leave…members vulnerable to AI abuse.” Specifically, game publishers want to apply no protections (no communication, pay, or room for legal dispute) to all past performances and any not strictly covered by new contract, and to be able to make AI replicas to use during future strikes.
If my deep abiding hatred for and extensive coverage of Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney wasn’t enough for you, brace yourself: Sweeney explicitly aligned himself with Elon Musk’s antisemitic conspiracy theories about the “source” of anti-Tesla protests, comparing them to the opposition his own company has received which he frames as collusion and false allegations.
Niantic did indeed finalize the $3.5 billion sale of all gaming assets to the Public Investment Fund and its mobile subsidiary Scopely, the makers of Monopoly Go, effectively making this the merger of two mobile giants on top of empowering the Saudi royal family.
Another live service bites the dust as indie developer Mountaintop Studios announced that they were out of money, shutting their game down within 30 days, and closing doors by the end of the week after launching their free to play shooter Spectre Divide in September. The exact employee count is unknown but suffice to say many people are laid off.
Long awaited heist game Monaco 2 will launch in April for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, as announced by publisher Humble and developer Pocketwatch Games.
March 13th: As first reported by Nicole Carpenter for Polygon, Prytania Media owners Jeff and Annie Strain have filed a $900 million lawsuit against game publisher NetEase for defamation and unfair trade practices which “caused” the destruction of their several game development studios in Spring 2024. The subsidiary developers in question are Crop Circle Games, Possibility Space, Fang & Claw, and Dawon Entertainment, and NetEase had very little direct involvement, only owning a 25% stake in one of the four studios, Crop Circle Games, with the Strains fully owning and operating the rest on their own when they abruptly shut them down last year.
The Strains blame NetEase for leaking information about their companies to the press via a planned but ultimately unpublished Kotaku article, “falsely” accusing them of financial fraud and causing investor panic and withdrawal. For evidence to the contrary, in August 2024 Prytania was sued by employee management and HR company Omnipresent Group for failure to pay invoices. Prytania settled for slightly more than the 212K originally owed, but then in December, Omnipresent filed again to say that Prytania still failed to pay even with a court-mandated deadline. The Strains accuse NetEase of being motivated to silence them to keep itself out from the radar of the US Treasury and Committee on Foreign Investment.
Jeff Strain achieved success founding ArenaNet and Undead Labs in the 2000s before leaving the latter and starting Prytania with his wife in 2021. Last year’s incident wasn’t his first time clashing with Kotaku, as he also published a very defensive response to the Kotaku report on poor working conditions at Undead Labs in 2022.
Bobby Kotick is suing Kotaku’s parent company G/O Media for defamation. Kotick and his attorneys insist that the settlement Activision Blizzard King received over widespread workplace discrimination had definitively disproven the existence of said workplace discrimination at ABK. He accuses Kotaku and Gizmodo of deliberately lying, omitting mention of the settlement, and singling him out for the “false allegations” in very recent articles “purely for the malicious purposes of causing further harm to Kotick.” Kotick also alleges that the entire internal backlash to workplace harassment at ABK was essentially a false flag conspiracy by the union to drive up membership.
Saber Interactive announced that Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 3 has officially been greenlit off the success of Space Marine 2 last year, although most development resources will still be focused on Space Marine 2’s post launch support for now.
Developer FuturLab revealed that, off the massive success of the original, the current-gen exclusive Powerwash Simulator 2 will launch in Late 2025 fully self-published by FuturLab, with more news in April. The game offers major evolutions and new features ranging from four player online co op and two player local co op, a new customizable hubworld area and full new campaign, and a new soaping system. The game was originally announced for PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and Nintendo Switch 2, before the developer rescinded their statement on Switch 2, claiming they would like to release on Switch 2 but have no current firm plans.
Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy 16 had reached 3.5 million total copies sold after almost two years since launch; keep in mind that the game sold 3 million copies in its launch week. That is to say, it has had absolutely no legs whatsoever despite its PC launch last September and it can now definitively be considered a flop, unlike FF7 Rebirth which has shown to have a very successful PC launch this year.
Silent Hill f Transmission: With Silent Hill 2 Remake finally out and successful, Konami had a livestream premiere to provide more info about the other mainline game they announced a stupid amount of time ago, Silent Hill f: a survival horror game with traditional exploration, puzzle, and combat mechanics and an untraditional setting for this Americana-driven series. The centerpiece of the presentation was a full trailer introducing the game’s story by Ryukishi07, the legendary writer of When They Cry, in which a schoolgirl from rural 1960s Japan has to reckon with her own life and hometown transforming into the nightmare that is Silent Hill. There’s also a more natural, plantlife-based form of mystical corruption instead of the usual industrial decay. The game was announced to be coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X as an Unreal Engine 5 title, and its music will be composed by Akira Yamaoka. No release window was announced, but preorders are open and both the ESRB rating and PC specs were already posted, so it seems as if it’s coming relatively soon, but keep in mind MGS Delta opened its preorders last summerr and still isn’t out yet…
March 14th: Pathologic creative director and Ice-Pick Lodge founder Nikolay Dybowski has resigned and left said developer over allegations of abuse and kidnapping. Another former member of the studio, Aleksey Luchin, says that Dybowski was a “manipulative sociopath” whose abusive behavior was an open secret.
Zynga and Take Two announced that their live service shooter Star Wars Hunters will shut down its servers on October 1st 2025 after its final content update releases April 15th.
Outriders developer People Can Fly announced that they have signed another external partnership, this time with PlayStation for “Project Delta,” which will be based on a preexisting PlayStation IP.
Nippon Ichi Software made new announcements in its livestream presentation for six separate games coming to PS4/PS5 and Switch between 2025 and 2026, including Fuuraiki 5, turn based RPG Curse, action games Gobble, Kyouran, and Shinigami Hime, and horror adventure Renzu.
March 15th: Respawn announced that their Star Wars tactics game developed by Bit Reactor will be fully revealed on April 19th at the Tokyo Star Wars Celebration event. Images have since leaked.
March 17th: As revealed in an interview with Jeff Gerstmann, PlayStation has a brand new first party studio in Dark Outlaw Games, whose studio head Jason Blundell is best known as a co-creator of COD Zombies, and who most recently led a different PS partner studio which closed its doors last year, Deviation Games.
Nightdive Studios announced that it is bringing a remaster of cult classic 90s adventure game I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream to Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox Series S|X on March 27th. I fell in love with this game in high school before losing my PC copy to Mac’s bullshit cutting off 32 bit apps, and Harlan Ellison is dead now, so I’ll be very happy to have a new copy.
March 18th: G/O Media has done something disturbing to the late great Kotaku Australia, an even worse version of Vice zombifying Waypoint last year with a single generic writer. The Kotaku.au domain is now home to “The Kotaku Times,” a content farm that’s either also written by one hopelessly generic freelancer or just completely AI-generated, and it largely doesn’t even engage with any of Kotaku’s core subjects, just the lowest level of SEO clickbait garbage with the likes of “How to Create a Winning Business Plan.”
After a delay out of 2024 followed by silence, Argonaut Games has finally resurfaced to schedule a new launch date for Croc: Legend of the Gobbos Remaster: digital release April 2nd on all platforms, physical release Spring 2025 for PS5 and Switch. I’ve already bought my wife a copy.
Stoic’s game Towerborne was announced to be releasing in Early Access for Xbox Series S|X on April 29th alongside its next major patch for the Steam Early Access version.
The arrival of Blizzard Arcade Collection and Atomfall on Xbox Game Pass came alongside news that one of the service’s biggest success stories has come to an end after five years: the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series will completely leave Game Pass at the end of March when Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami/Kiwami 2, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon all expire. The partnership was hugely beneficial to both Xbox and Sega, improving Xbox’s reputation and user activity while introducing a whole new audience to the series.
Personally speaking, it did directly lead me both back into the Xbox ecosystem and becoming a loud Like a Dragon fan, so this occasion does make me a little sad and nostalgic even though it’s a natural endpoint. It’s quite ironic really: Game Pass went from help to hindrance precisely because it helped to begin with, it helped make the series big enough that Game Pass just represents loss of sales again and not the creation of new customer relationships. LAD doesn’t need Game Pass anymore and that became clear over the past year as Infinite Wealth never arrived on the service.
March 19th: The Communication Workers of America union announced a new initiative at GDC in direct response to the Trump administration making labor rights laws completely unreliable: they are forming the all-encompassing direct-join CWA chapter of United Videogame Workers, where all North American game developers regardless of employment status, studio placement, and job position can join, and will organize outside legal frameworks like we had to before the peace treaty that is the National Labor Relations Act.
Square Enix is suing mobile game developer BlackJack Studio for allegedly taking assets from a canceled Front Mission game they worked on and reusing them for their own new game Metal Storm.
March 20th: Umberto Gonzalez reported for The Wrap about the media conglomerate Valnet receiving a class action lawsuit over its practices of exploiting freelance workers, blacklisting those who speak out about said exploitation, and acquiring and hollowing out preexisting websites. The company was revealed to have a spreadsheet naming over 400 writers banned from working with the site for actions ranging from simply advocating for oneself in the hiring process, to advising colleagues against applying to Valnet websites, to publicly exposing and criticizing its pay rates and even just suggesting that pay rates be publicly listed in job listings. Valnet has also now responded to the lawsuit by sending a contractual obligation to not join any class actions to its existing writers.
At GDC, the ESA announced a new Accessible Games Initiative with publishers like Xbox, Nintendo, EA, and Ubisoft onboard to mark their digital storefronts with clear and standardized information about accessibility features in any given game.
A Digimon Con livestream announced a mobile card game spinoff and detailed the next main franchise game entry Digimon Story: Time Stranger, announcing that it will have the largest single roster of Digimon at over 450 total.
Tencent announced that Dragon’s Dogma creator Hideaki Itsuno will direct an original IP AAA action game at its Lightspeed Studios subsidiary.
Naughty Dog announced that the PC port of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered will launch with new characters and maps for No Return mode which will be patched into the PS5 version at the same time.
Future Games Showcase Spring 2025: Here are some highlights from one of the dullest gaming livestream events every year, which this year was cohosted by God’s Favorite Princess herself, Jennifer English. The latest Future Games installment opened with People Can Fly’s new game Lost Rift, an Early Access multiplayer survival FPS salvaged from a previously canceled project. Self published indie team The Brotherhood offered a new gameplay trailer for Animal Use Protocol, their first person survival horror about a talking chimp escaping experimentation. DestinyBit had a new look at their mecha tactical RPG coming later this year, NITRO GEN OMEGA. An extremely high concept crowdfunded puzzle game about a lost 90s JRPG, The Remake of The Greatest RPG of All Time, released a demo and scheduled a 2025 launch on PC.
Silent Hill 2 Remake makers Bloober Team had two games in the show, their sci fi project Cronos: The New Dawn, and a brand new partnered horror title, I Hate This Place from Robert Kirkman’s Skybound Entertainment, which is an isometric open world game coming to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series. Next came Daedalic Entertainment, who horrifically abused its workforce and then laid them all off and rebranded as a publisher in the saga of the Gollum game. It announced one of those new published titles: sidescrolling puzzzle platformer Once Upon a Puppet by developer Flatter Than Earth, which is scheduled to launch on April 23rd for PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. Nightdive announced that System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Edition Remaster will launch on June 26th for all platforms. Remedy had another new trailer for their multiplayer Control spinoff FBC Firebreak, which is scheduled to launch in Summer 2025.
And finally the show ended with Saber Interactive and 3D Realms fully unveiling a project announced back in 2021 when they were still under Embracer Group’s thumb: the current gen exclusive Painkiller Reboot scheduled to launch Fall 2025, brought to you by a support team stepping up to the plate in Anshar Studios
March 21st: Devolver Digital shadowdropped a brand new game on PC by developer Francis Coulombe: a pixel art survival horror RPG titled Look Outside.
March 22nd: A new Minecraft Live event announced several major updates coming to the longrunning survival game in 2025: Spring to Life launched immediately to increase wildlife variety and add ambient nature sounds, new flying Happy Ghast mounts will come as the second update this year, and lastly the Vibrant Visuals update will come to current-gen consoles and PCs to overhaul the game’s graphics, especially lighting.
March 24th: The latest Xbox-to-PlayStation announcement was a trailer announcing that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will come to PS5 on April 17th, after the port was first confirmed last year, and they went all out with a live action crossover of Indy’s Troy Baker being greeted by Nathan Drake actor Nolan North. The PS5 port’s physical edition will, like on Xbox, be incomplete on disc and functionally just decorative.
Stephen Totilo reported on video game development plans at Hasbro, saying that there are four main internal big budget projects currently in the works, with one production being led by Veilguard’s Corrinne Busche and her fellow Dragon Age vet Christian Dailey. The followup to Baldur’s Gate 3 is understood to be part of this project slate, with Hasbro saying that it’ll have more news about the Baldur’s Gate series in the near future.
Through the unfortunate source of reactionary games press exile Colin Moriarty, it has now been reported that Warner Bros Games was working on another crossover game in a Mario Kart alike which was greenlit and canceled so fast it completely predated the other crossover game MultiVersus. It was in development at the recently closed WB San Diego. And speaking of WB Games, former VP Laura Fryer has released a video discussing her experiences at Monolith, in which she reveals that the Nemesis system we’re all mourning now was actually made in response to a business issue. She explained that WB wanted to prevent the loss of revenue caused by Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum joining the used games market in droves once players beat it, so they tried to create a system to make single player games so replayable they’d never get resold.
Geoff Keighley and recent GI.biz exit Christopher Dring announced The Game Business, a new press outlet which will be directly partnered with Summer Games Fest 2025 through a physical conference center event. The first major report to come out of TGB was about the ongoing panic among major publishers to avoid competing with Grand Theft Auto 6’s launch window, wherein the biggest concern is less revenue itself and more competing for the limited free time of the audience like with top live services. Three different AAA publishers’ executives are all explicitly trying to plan for delays/reschedulings of their upcoming titles due to GTA6’s expected fall arrival, and even two of the top ten live services are planning to keep their updates outside of GTA6’s blast zone.
Toby Fox has commented on social media in response to Deltarune’s content rating being recently updated to say it has in-game purchases: Fox confirms that Deltarune will never have microtransactions, this classification is because of the Undertale store page link within the game.
March 25th: After being teased on March 19th, a relaunch of Game Informer in both print and digital was fully revealed by new owner Gunzilla Games and a complete returning editorial/production team who took the magazine to new heights before its closure last year. They have both completely restored Game Informer’s digital archives and already published articles they never got to do last year due to the sudden shutdown, like GOTY discussions and reviews of holiday titles. This is great to see and I really don’t want to undermine that, but it’s unfortunate to know just where the money’s coming from: GI’s staff say that they are operating independent from their parent, but it’s still a conflict of interest for press to be outright owned by a developer, and especially a blockchain company.
Aptly, this happened at the same time as the fiscal release for GI’s former parent company GameStop, in which the dying retailer announced that it will continue to close scores of stores and sell off its entire Canadian division, AND that it will take on over a billion dollars in additional debt in order to mass invest in bitcoin.
Activision’s user research workers became the latest department to officially unionize with the Microsoft-ABK empire after a supermajority vote.
CD Projekt Red’s latest earnings report provided some interesting data, but most significantly the company explicitly confirmed that The Witcher 4 will launch no earlier than 2027, virtually guaranteeing that it will be a cross-gen release for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 6/Series X and neXtbox. Its CEO suggested that it can build on the game’s foundation to ship its planned sequels on tight three year development cycles. He also commented that, after some research and consideration for its propensity for infringing on the work of others, generative AI will not be implemented into Witcher 4’s production or any currently planned project.
Paradox Interactive has predictably delayed Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 yet again, pushed from H1 2025 to October. Developer The Chinese Room says that the game is content complete and has entered its polishing phase.
March 26th: Embracer Group’s AAA subsidiary Crystal Dynamics fired 17 more employees.
March 27th: Against a backdrop of Assassins’ Creed Shadows finally launching and, relatively speaking, being the hit that this company so desperately needed, Ubisoft has finally officially announced what a suite of reporters Bloomberg had been saying for months: the publisher is spinning off its biggest assets (Assassins’ Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, and their development teams) into a new multibillion dollar subsidiary company that’ll be 25% co-owned by Tencent with royalties after the Chinese publisher won a bidding war. The company cites Ghost Recon and The Division as franchises that will still receive support, and as previously mentioned, is likely to start selling smaller IPs to other game publishers like Microsoft and EA.
Jason Schreier’s latest for Bloomberg: I’m very happy to report that WB Games has canceled the expanded rerelease of Hogwarts Legacy that Schreier had been covering for the past year since Rocksteady joined it as codeveloper amidst the fallout of Suicide Squad’s launch, and their reason why is positively hilarious in the context of the Zaslav regime. The company realized that even by its own skewed standards, even for its godforsaken golden child IP, it was offering too little content and value at too high a price. Avalanche will keep moving forward on a full sequel to the RPG and Rocksteady will keep moving forward on its next Batman Arkham game.
The provincial government of Alberta, Canada decided to scrap its plan for a local tax credit for video game developers which would match those of Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia, saying it will make strategic individual investments in the gaming market instead.
Inexplicable Nintendo Switch 1 Direct: It really feels like Nintendo is consciously fucking with games journalists sometimes. Back in January on the Gamescast, I correctly said the same as many of my peers, that Nintendo would have good reason to make announcements for smaller Switch 1 games separately from the Switch 2 showcase, and we said that without anticipating that they’d wait to do it until just one week before the the other event. It’s a shocking marketing choice and a challenging one for us press operating tight turnarounds. But nonetheless, here we go.
After being teased last year, a full unveiling for Square Enix’s Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake opened this presentation, revealing a brand new party member addition but no update to the release window. Spike Chunsoft revealed a brand new third entry in the AI: The Somnium Files adventure game series: No Sleep for Kaname Date, which will launch on July 25th 2025 for PC and Switch. Happy for you, Merve! Atlus announced Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, a rerelease for Shin Megami Tensei’s Devil Summoner action RPG spinoff series, which will launch June 19th 2025 for PC, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox Series S|X. Bandai Namco showed more from Pac-Metroidvania Shadow Labyrinth and announced it will launch July 18th 2025 for all platforms. Marvelous announced the latest remake for their seminal farm sim Story of Seasons series: Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, based on the 2008 Nintendo DS game and coming August 27th 2025 to PC and Switch.
The astonishing complete reorientation of the games industry continues apace as PlayStation Studios announces two separate first party releases it’s bringing to Switch as well as PC and PS5 with help from Bandai Namco: remastered collection Patapon 1+2 Replay and brand new arcade golf game Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots, both coming in 2025 with a specific July 11th date for Patapon. I suddenly feel bad for the Ratatan creators. Chucklefish’s witchy life sim Witchbrook reappeared for the first time in 8 years with a Holiday 2025 release window. Acclaimed indie puzzler trilogy Monument Valley 1, 2, and 3 are all liberated from their Netflix mobile prison and will be arriving on Switch between April 15th and Summer 2025. Shredder’s Revenge developer Tribute Games revealed their new beatemup: Marvel Cosmic Invasion, which is coming later this year to PC, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series.
Visual novel mobile game Disney Villains Cursed Café was shadowdropped, while Embracer Group’s metroidvania The Eternal life of Goldman got a new gameplay trailer ahead of a holiday launch. Konami announced the Gradius Origins collection, scheduled to launch August 7th for PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series, featuring 18 releases across the shootemup series including the brand new Salamander 3. Brace Yourself Games shadowdropped the Switch port of Rift of the Necrodancer and announced crossover paid DLCs for Celeste and Pizza Tower. Bandai Namco announced Tamagotchi Plaza, a new life sim launching on June 27th for Switch. Square Enix shadowdropped the latest SaGa RPG remaster SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered. The sizzle reel for third parties featured Squanch Games’ High on Life coming May 6th, Level 5’s Fantasy Life i, and indies Star Overdrive (April 10th), The Wandering Village (July 17th), Lou’s Lagoon (Summer) and King of Meat.
So all we have left is the first party stuff now. I apologize for the confusion here but I’ve decided to rearrange any first party news from the Switch 1 Direct that was actively expanded on by news from the Switch 2 Direct into the Switch 2 coverage at the end of the Roundup.
Shout out to my girl Katie, she finally got her wish, right at the end of a generation just like always. Nintendo announced two brand new first party games to launch in 2026 that work perfectly as late last-gen games, reviving two different long-dormant cult classic series, and the announcements were rewarded with absolutely massive traffic in Japan. The first reveal was Rhythm Heaven Groove, the first fully brand new sequel for that rhythm game series in 15 years after the last title Megamix was a compilation. The series’ fate was in doubt after its longtime composer, the legendary singer Tsunku AKA Mitsuo Terada, lost his vocal cords to larynx cancer, but the trailer confirmed his return along wit his production studio TNX.
The second game is also arriving more than a decade after its predecessor, which was one of the 3DS’ bestsellers at roughly 7 million copies, it’s the wacky Mii life sim Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. The previous entry was criticized for featuring exclusively heterosexual relationships at a time when The Sims 3 had recently introduced gay marriage, and Nintendo pledged that any future game would be more inclusive and better representative of all players. So I’ll be keeping my eye very closely on this one, Nintendo.
Two non-game announcements were featured as well. Virtual Game Cards will arrive for the Switch family of systems via update in late April, and they’re a doozy: this opt-in system will seamlessly and wirelessly transfer digital games between two consoles, allowing players to more easily move games over in the generational transition, and share games directly in a permanent or temporary way between NSO family group consoles instead of dealing with the restrictive Primary Console/Secondary Console system I can personally speak to being a pain in the teats. Nintendo has confirmed cross-generational transfer for Switch 1 games while both Switch 2 exclusive games and Switch 2 Edition games can also be transferred exclusively between two Switch 2 consoles. For the more complete cross generational system transfer process, there is a dedicated guide here.
Shigeru Miyamoto appeared to reveal the brand new Nintendo Today! mobile app, a daily newsletter allowing Nintendo to start divesting from increasingly reactionary social media platforms. Miyamoto confirmed that the app will be focused on Switch 2 news after the Switch 2 Direct’s premiere. The very first announcement to arrive in the Nintendo Today app was the release date for the live action Legend of Zelda movie, March 26th 2027.
March 28th: Nintendo released four more SNES games for its NSO service, offering two Nobunaga’s Ambition games, Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4, and Uncharted Water: New Horizons. Nobunaga’s Ambition for SNES will likely have a Switch 2 exclusive feature given that the original notably supported the Super NES Mouse peripheral.
In a new trailer, developer Build a Rocket Boy and publisher IO Interactive announced that their shooter MindsEye will launch June 10th 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.
March 31st: Embracer Group subsidiary and Deus Ex developer Eidos Montreal fired 75 more workers after previous layoffs in 2023 and 2024, saying that there was no “capacity” to transfer them to different projects.
An update to the official website for Sony and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yotei recommitted to a 2025 release window and provided a synopsis with new information, suggesting that the player character has to actively fund their journey of revenge through odd jobs and bounties,
Infuse Studio announced that their open world sequel Spirit of the North 2 will launch May 8th 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, with a physical PS5 edition.
In promotion of the upcoming sequel, Frogwares announced a remaster/free current gen upgrade of The Sinking City.
April 1st: The ZeniMax Workers United union successfully voted to authorize a strike after contract negotiations with Microsoft have entered a second year without resolution, following last November’s one-day strike.
Nathan Grayson reported for Aftermath on the latest controversy surrounding Life is Strange developer Deck Nine after their layoffs and severe workplace cultural problems. It started at the latest Game Developers Conference in California, which hold the GDC Awards: Life is Strange 4: Double Exposure won a Social Impact award, but nobody collected it onstage due to the most recent layoffs. That’s how this story had already been reported, but as Nathan emphasizes, this excludes the key detail that recently laid off Deck Nine employees were in the audience and were intentionally excluded from accepting the award publicly, an opportunity which could’ve helped their career recoveries. The Deck Nine company chose not to send anyone to officially represent itself, chose not to inform any employees current or former that it was even nominated, and only when these ex-employees claimed the award in private did Deck Nine representation act, only demanding that the award be “returned.”
Coffee Stain/Embracer Group’s “Goat Direct” announced a second paid expansion for Goat Simulator 3.
Dragami Games, who debuted with Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP last year and achieved success deeply disproportionate to the remaster’s quality, has replaced its president and CEO.
Embracer Group announced that its Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy Remaster will release for PS4 and Xbox One this month after coming to Switch a whole six years ago.
April 2nd: Microsoft and Xbox were added to the priority boycott list by the BDS National Committee over further revelations of the use of Microsoft’s AI, cloud servers, and tech in Israel’s violence against Palestine.
…Hoo boy. The Trump administration announced steep universal retaliatory tariffs against every single nation in the world including random uninhabited islands, threatening total economic devastation for the American Empire of which the games industry impacts are only a very small part. This shit is coming in way too hot for us to know what will come of its effects on Switch 2 just yet, or even how these policies might evolve within days. It seems likely that the originally announced prices were supposed to account for the tariffs but failed to anticipate just how extreme and universal they ultimately are. All we know right now is that preorders are already live outside the US while preorders in the US are on indefinite hiatus to assess the impact of the tariffs, but the launch date and pricing for the US haven’t currently changed.
In the meantime: we’re all facing extremely scary implications for cost of living on top of the severe sticker shock setting in for our own hobby right now. Nintendo is clearly just a vanguard for what’s definitely coming from the rest of the industry, only further escalation of our own hobby pricing some of us out, and for everything else as well. The current sticker shock is severe and painful, and we’re all scared it could keep getting worse any time now. We’re all scared of the likelihood based on consistent history that any price hikes simply won’t disappear no matter what happens later. This hits me as someone relying on my wife’s salary from a business likely to be affected by the tariffs, it hits you, it hits everyone.
Nintendo Switch 2 Direct:
I want to note upfront that Treehouse footage and hands-on reporting so far has shown further significant across the board quality improvements compared to Direct/trailer footage due to the latter being based on older builds of the games, first and third party, and further improvement from this week’s demos can be expected in some cases. Despite the public instinct that whatever you’re seeing is always the best available footage, that just doesn’t align with the long production timelines required for marketing, and this has been true for Nintendo since Mario Odyssey’s resolution actively increased by launch.
The presentation opened with the full reveal of the Switch 2’s very first core first party exclusive and launch title, Mario Kart World, a Forza Horizon style fully open world racing game where you drive offroad “virtually everywhere” across diverse environments with dynamic daytime and weather systems. It features a stupidly huge roster of characters and cosmetics, wall and rail grinding, and 24 player races as teased in the initial footage, and it runs at 1440p with locked 60fps and has a 120fps mode. Grand Prix is the standard racing mode now with physically driving to the next course (there’s also an Intermissions option if you don’t want to do that), Knockout Tour has players get actively eliminated by missing checkpoints while racing across the world, and Free Roam focuses on no pressure offroad exploration and photography. Some of the wacky new racer options of 42 confirmed so far include Piantas, Moo Moos, Fish Bones, Dolphins, Penguins, Para-Biddybuds, Snowmen, Charging Chuck, and Cataquack. More information will be provided at an April 17th dedicated Direct. Mario Kart World will launch June 5th 2025 on the same day as the Switch 2, with a whopping price of $80 for the physical edition and a discount for the digital edition in most territories. A code for the digital edition is sold at a significant discount in the $500 Switch 2 bundle, up from $450 for the console by itself.
Next was the hardware overview, which firstly and most notably revealed the features of the new C Button, but also re/confirmed various important specifications: the console has 256GB of internal storage with faster data speeds, built higher quality speakers with 3D Audio/audio range, the new larger flexible kickstand, and the top USB-C port for handheld charging and accessory connections. The 8 inch 1080p non-OLED handheld screen supports HDR10, 120Hz, and VRR, while docked mode has 4K60 and 1440-120fps output, VRR, HDR10, and a built-in cooling fan. The Joy-Con 2 controllers have advanced HD Rumble 2, magnetic connection, Mouse controls and fully redesigned “larger and smoother thumbsticks.”
The Switch 2 will also feature system-level accessibility features new to Nintendo likefont size adjustment, screen reader, and text-to-speech within GameChat. From hands-on events we now know that “you don’t need to change a menu setting or press a button to use the Joy-Con as a mouse, you simply flip it on its side and start using it.” After the Direct, Nintendo’s hardware partner Nvidia published a short blog discussing the console, which confirmed the use of DLSS upscaling and Ray Tracing cores. Thanks to hands-on demos, we now know how using Mousecon without a table works: you can put it on your lap, it’s just not recommended for use on bare skin or certain fabrics for proper sensing. Wear pants for Mousecon.
Okay, now the C Button for GameChat and GameShare. GameChat provides in system voicechat using the in system microphone for online multiplayer, including watching live in-picture video stream of your friends’ games, with a new proprietary USB-C Camera accessory, sold separately, integrated for additional remote multiplayer capabilities like video chat and gameplay interaction. Select third party USB Cameras can also be used for the proprietary Camera accessory’s functions. And here is a complete guide to existing first party Switch 1 accessories’ compatibility with Switch 2. GameChat and the new camera are designed as NSO exclusive features, but for most of Switch 2’s first year on the market, GameChat will have a free Open Access period without the NSO requirement, until March 31st 2026. GameShare is a sort of sister feature to Virtual Game Cards without the extra install steps, directly streaming a game from the Switch 2 console it was purchased on to other Switch 2 and Switch* consoles both locally and remotely. One person can buy Mario Kart World and then stream it to their online friends to play without buying additional copies.
*For games that run on both systems.
The expected EPD4 tech demo game is Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, a $10 digital museum game, minigame collection, and launch title. Like Astro’s Playroom, it takes place inside the Switch 2 console itself and explicitly discusses hardware features through minigames about not only Mouse Controls and Gyro, but also things like 4K resolution and 120fps framerates. Hands on demo details have made me a lot more charmed and intrigued by its contents, but that doesn’t make charging for it any less stupid. It’s still more shallow and short even compared to the 3 hour platformer that is Astro’s Playroom, and being paywalled hampers its purpose as a manual for the console. From Stephen Totilo’s Game File, this is what the Super Mario Bros in 4K minigame looks like:
Back to more hardware stuff!
Nintendo Switch 2 cartridges are the same size as Switch 1 cartridges with a red finish, and come in two varieties: Game Cards with game software fully physically preserved operating at much faster data speeds than Switch 1 Game Cards, and Game-Key Cards which are download-only and have download required/game-key disclaimers on their cases. Preorder listings for first party titles like Mario Kart confirm that they require no downloads, only some third party titles have the download only disclaimer. External storage is exclusively supported by brand new MicroSD Express cards rather than the previous console’s MicroSD cards due to said faster data speeds, much like external Solid State Drives for PS5 and Xbox Series S|X. The Switch 2’s exclusive Pro Controller will feature not only all of the same stuff as the Joy-Con 2, but also two separate buttons for extra control mapping, and a built in headphone jack. Four Ask the Developer articles focused on Switch 2 hardware were published right after the Direct.
Nintendo proceeded to highlight that the Switch 2 will support Switch 2 exclusive games, Switch 1 games in backwards compatibility mode, and dedicated Switch 2 Editions for select Switch 1 games. These stand-alone digital Upgrade Packs you can buy for the game you already have provide support for Switch 2 exclusive hardware features and controls like the Mousecon, exclusive new content, and significant enhancements to visuals and performance. There are also retail reissues packaging the upgrades with the games at full price ($70-$80), but in many cases the upgrade content is exclusively a digital download and not on cart, so there’s truly no reason to not just buy the Switch 1 cart cheaper and the upgrade pack separately if you don’t already own a game.
Super Mario Party Jamboree (coming July 24th), Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (June 5th), Kirby and the Forgotten Land (August 28th), and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4 and Pokémon Legends ZA are the first officially confirmed Switch 2 Edition games. Of the older titles in this list, one big reason to give them this level of upgrade would be to support their series while the next entries are still further out, especially Zelda. Mario Party and Kirby are $20 each due to the new exclusive content contained, while Zelda are $10 each or free with NSO Expansion Pack. Based on that model Metroid and Pokémon upgrades should be $10 each as well.
Super Mario Party Jamboreee Switch 2 Edition offers support for improved rumble, mouse controls, microphone and camera play, GameShare, all of those across both existing content and brand new minigames and modes, and 1440p docked resolution, improved visuals and higher framerates. The Zelda upgrade packs offer higher resolution and 60fps performance with higher texture quality, faster load times, a second save file and save data transfer, and compatibility with the new Switch 2 mobile app which provides player guidance, achievements, AutoBuild design sharing, new photo features, and new story content in Voice Memories. Kirby receives the Star Crossed World story expansion with new levels and mouthful modes, updates to every original level in the game, and visual/performance enhancements to 1440p 60fps.
At the March Direct, a new gameplay trailer premiered for Metroid Prime 4, clearly based on the first hour of the game. It established some basic story details, introduced a revamp of the previous trilogy’s object scanning, and discussed how Samus will gain new Psychic Abilities to interact with ancient tech and control the trajectory of her beam cannon shots. During the April Switch 2 Direct, the game was confirmed to have full Mouse Control support, improved textures and loadtimes, HDR support, and a 4K60fps Docked / 1080p60fps Handheld Quality Mode and 1080p120fps Docked / 720p120fps Handheld Performance Mode in its Switch 2 Edition, but there has still been no update to the 2025 release window, so I guess it’s a holiday title after all.
At the March Direct, a new trailer for Pokémon Legends Z-A explained that wild Pokémon captures occur during the day and trainer battles occur at night, in a free for all tournament with a big reward. The trailer also confirmed the last few missing Pokémon in the Pansage evolutionary line will appear, meaning that six years after Sword and Shield’s National Pokédex controversy led to vicious harassment of Game Freak leads, the Nintendo Switch and Pokémon Home will finally have a complete national dex of all 1000~ creatures. The Switch 2 Edition announced in the April Direct will upgrade the visuals and framerate.
There are also smaller completely free upgrade patches coming over time for select first party Switch 1 games to improve performance or add support for features like GameShare, announced to so far include Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom, ARMS, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, Clubhouse Games, New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe, Game Builder Garage, and Big Brain Academy. Echoes of Wisdom’s higher framerate has since been seen in a dedicated trailer for the GameChat feature.
Backwards compatibility is accomplished through a translation layer instead of native internal hardware and will even for non-upgraded games offer some boosts, including decreasing loadtimes. As seen here, over 99% of last-gen games have no currently detected issues, with most third party games currently safe but still mid-testing, and all first party games are fully compatible except for the ones affected by the Joy Con 2 and Switch 2’s size increases, just like I had previously explained. Bluetooth connectivity with last-gen controllers is officially supported and all that’s needed to play most of the small handful of affected games, Labo VR is the only one that’s completely unworkable. The complete set of third party games that currently either can’t boot or have other major functionality issues are listed here and here, and Nintendo and its partners are actively working to improve compatibility for these games.
The next Switch 2 exclusive announced was Drag x Drive coming Summer 2025, a multiplayer 3 on 3 basketball game with all players in wheelchairs, exclusively focused on mouse controls and their interaction with motion controls. The third party announcements started off with Bandai Namco and FromSoftware offering Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition coming to Switch 2 sometime in 2025, with the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion and some new cosmetics included and holy shit I can’t believe I correctly, exactly predicted that title a year ago. Supergiant announced that Hades 2 will like its predecessor be a timed console exclusive for Switch and Switch 2 when it launches 1.0 later this year. Capcom announced that Street Fighter 6 is releasing for Switch 2 on launch day in both the base game and Years 1 and 2 DLC Fighters editions. Both Street Fighter and Elden Ring unfortunately use the download only Game-Keys. Marvelous gave the full gameplay reveal for Daemon X Machina 2: Titanic Scion after it was first announced in 2023, it will launch September 5th 2025 for PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.
EA announced that Hazelight’s Split Fiction is hitting Switch 2 on June 5th right at launch, and that both EA Sports FC and Madden NFL games are coming to Switch 2 starting with their entries later this year. WB Games announced, blech, a dedicated upgrade port of Hogwarts Legacy coming on launch day. Microsoft confirmed a dedicated Switch 2 version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 will arrive alongside all other versions in July. IO Interactive announced that a proper port of the entire Hitman: World of Assassination trilogy will release for Switch 2 on launch day in June, and, hugely, announced that their next game Project 007 will launch on Switch 2. Square Enix announced that a new remaster of the original Bravely Default: Flying Fairy will arrive on launch day as a digital/game-key only title. Sega announced that Yakuza 0 is coming to Switch 2 at launch in June in the form of a brand new exclusive Director’s Cut edition with new story content, a new English dub, a multiplayer brawling mode, and (non-native?) 4K60fps performance. Koei Tecmo revealed the Switch 2 exclusive Hyrule Warriors 3: Age of Imprisonment coming Winter 2025, focused on the (unlike Age of Calamity’s time travel shenanigans, canonical!) Tears of the Kingdom side story of Princess Zelda trapped in the past during the Imprisoning War with Ganondorf.
And the hits came right on rolling as Nintendo proudly announced that Nintendo Gamecube games are coming to Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack’s Nintendo Classics library at no additional cost exclusively on Switch 2, available on June 5th with a roster of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Soul Calibur 2 complete with Link’s guest appearance, and F-Zero GX. Higher resolution and fully customizable controls individual to each game are supported for NSO Gamecube, and confirmed upcoming titles for the service are Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (!!!!!) Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion, Chibi-Robo (!!!!!), the good Super Mario Strikers, Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness (!!!!!!!!!). The new wireless Gamecube controller I pointed out in my The Future of Switch 2 feature will go up for preorder on April 9th with a brief window of only being available to those who qualified for official Nintendo.com Switch 2 preorders. Nintendo 64 games in the NSO library will also support rewinding, button remapping, and a CRT filter exclusively on Switch 2.
A second third party segment rolled on starting with Deltarune Chapters 3+4 which will be available on June 5th 2025 for PC, Switch, Switch 2, and PS4/PS5, at $25 which will cover all future chapters. The first footage of Chapters 3 and 4 was revealed here and the first two chapters have been ported to Switch 2. Friend of the podcast Randy Pitchford and Take-Two confirmed that Borderlands 4 will be coming to Switch 2 in 2025. Take-Two also confirmed a Switch 2 Edition upgrade with mouse support will be available on launch day for Civilization 7, and that NBA2K and WWE2K are coming to Switch 2, which is the latter’s return to Nintendo after dropping Switch 1 since WWE2K19.
Konami appeared to reveal Survival Kids, possibly a reboot of an obscure 90s Game Boy Color game they did, with co op survival play on a tropical island, which will release exclusively for Switch 2 on launch day. Dodge Roll and Devolver Digital briefly revealed a fully 3D sequel to their hit bullet hell roguelike in Enter the Gungeon 2 coming to PC and Switch 2. System Era Softworks and Devolver Digital revealed a new co op spinoff from Astroneer, Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions, coming in 2026 to PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. As anyone who saw how well Switcher 3 sold could’ve guessed, CD Projekt Red announced that Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition will arrive for Switch 2 on launch day (developed entirely in-house) with the entire game and Phantom Liberty expansion on the 64GB cartridge, with just some Additional Language packs being digital only. Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is coming to Switch 2 sometime this year.
A big sizzle reel kicked off: Human Fall Flat 2 coming in the future with first gameplay footage revealed!, Capcom’s Kunitsugami: Path of the Goddess on launch day, Star Wars Outlaws coming this year, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma on launch day, several games from the previous Direct with Switch 2 ports/editions on their respective launch days (Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar Switch 2 Edition, Witchbrook, Marvel Cosmic Invasion, Shadow Labyrinth, Raidou Remastered, No Sleep for Kaname Date, and Tamagotchi Plaza), Arcade Archives: Ridge Racer on launch day, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S on launch day, Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Complete Edition on launch day, fully upgraded Fortnite on launch day, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam coming this year, Two Point Museum coming this year, Wild Hearts S on July 25th, Indie horror Reanimal coming this year from the creators of Little Nightmares, Goodnight Universe coming this year from the creators of Before Your Eyes, and two more games that get their own section. Also, outside the Direct, Sega also announced a Sonix X Shadow Generations Switch 2 port.
Okay, the last third party games. Shin’en are the creators of tech showpony games like The Touryst, the first and only(?) 8K console game, and Switch 1 launch title Fast RMX, and now the latter is getting a Switch 2 exclusive launch title sequel in Fast Fusion. And yes, Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight: Silksong was featured in the sizzle reel with a 2025 release window, although after the Xbox Showcase appearance three years ago that also promised the game was coming very soon, I feel a little cautious for the moment. The final third party announcement was truly astonishing: The Duskbloods, a brand new FromSoftware game directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki launching exclusively for Switch 2 in 2026. Announced with both cinematics and gameplay, the game harkens to Bloodborne’s Victorian England aesthetic, it features batshit cool things like dinosaurs and jetpacks, and it does have a multiplayer focus with PvPvE, but within a more fleshed out story and world compared to Nightreign’s hyper streamlined structure. Miyazaki discussed the game further in an article on April 4th.
A cinematic reveal teaser announced that very game that Masahiro Sakurai has been directing for the past three years as he recently announced: Kirby Air Riders coming in 2025 from his same Bandai Namco team as Smash, a brand new Switch 2 exclusive followup to his 2003 Gamecube racing game, now with jet engines. A second racing game right after Mario Kart feels very awkward, but I will wait for more serious info to judge for sure, I will let Sakurai cook. And the first party One More Thing was a full reveal for the first brand new Donkey Kong game in 11 years and only the second 3D DK ever: Donkey Kong Bananza launching July 17th 2025 as a Switch 2 exclusive.
This fully 3D action platformer pits the redesigned ape against a mining company that stole his bananas in a completely destructible underground world where said destruction physics are used for both traversal and combat. It also features sandbox levels, sidescrolling sections, minecart riding, and returning supporting cast like Cranky Kong. The game is $70 physically and like Mario Kart World has a digital discount in at least most territories. Nintendo refuses to officially confirm who made this game, but between its overall shared visual DNA with Super Mario Odysey and the presence of Yoshiaki Koizumi at hands-on demos, it certainly seems like the big AAA EPD8 Switch 2 game we were all hoping for. But that only brings us to new questions: how much farther away is Mario? Is EPD8 big enough now to actively juggle two productions?
…It was a strange, complex experience. A staggering one, a very palpable culmination of my journalism career thus far. But still deeply strange. Surprising in ways both positive and negative. 8 years ago, Switch only needed one game at launch to matter, three main ones by the end of that year, and it’s fair to say Switch 2 has games that could compete at that general level, but it’s also entering a far more broadly unstable environment, at far greater expense, competing against its own predecessor to a much more meaningful degree. First party news is still being kept very close to the chest, more than I think anyone could have expected. We have the gist of a holiday lineup but no dates, and with somewhat slanted, niche contents: a musou, a second racer. Third party offerings are impressive but more aimed at the (undeniably sizeable) Switch-only part of the install base who now get to catch up on a lot of what they’ve been missing out on, not at those of us who already have a PS5 or a RTX 40. The brightest side here is that there’s enough we don’t know that we could easily get another Direct as soon as June, but unknowing uncertainty is inherently not reassuring, especially when that characterizes our entire world.
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