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!
December 18th: Here’s a big one that got lost in my scramble to finish last month’s article: Jason Schreier at Bloomberg reported yet another abusive AAA workplace back to its old tricks, this time it’s Naughty Dog during the continued development of Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, initiating mandatory overtime and forced full return to office throughout the fall of 2025 in order to finish a demo in time for PlayStation leadership to review it at the end of December after the game had missed multiple previous deadlines. In 2021, Naughty Dog hired its first producers in the studio’s entire 30 year history, assembling a team of them to more carefully maintain development and prevent issues like crunch from arising again, but many of those producers have already left the company only a few years later. The game is currently targeting a Summer 2027 launch, a whopping seven years after Last of Us Part 2, and although the crunch and five day RTO were alleviated for now once the demo was submitted in December, it’s easy to anticipate that these workers will continue to be mismanaged and mistreated and the game will likely need delays anyway just like Last of Us 2.
January 12th: While the trial between fired Rockstar employees and the GTA developer remains ongoing, the former were hit with an early setback as Judge Frances Eccles ruled to deny them interim pay as he finds both parties have made compelling arguments so far rather than seeing the facts as overwhelmingly in favor of the unionbusting accusation made against Rockstar.
As seen through both NYT reporting and public disclosures by now former employees, Meta/Facebook is once again downsizing its VR and games division by firing numerous people and closing three major studios: Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru Games, and Armature Studio have all been completely shut down. Twisted Pixel are the developers of the just-launched Deadpool VR as well as Splosion Man back in the day, Sanzaru Games are the developers of Asgard’s Wrath 1 and 2, the Sonic Boom 3DS games, and the last Sly Cooper game back on PS3, and Armature had made RE4 VR as well as many ports and Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate. RE4 VR, Deadpool, and Asgard’s Wrath are all some of the biggest games in Meta’s catalog.
January 13th: Shortly after a retail leak on Amazon, Squanch Games announced that their current gen exclusive High on Life 2 will release for Switch 2 on April 20th 2026, only two months after its initial launch, including a day 1 game-key physical release.
After the merger with Level-5 followed by Keiji Inafune leaving Level-5 in 2024 and the publisher subsequently letting Inafune’s old Mighty No. 9 studio Comcept out to dry, Comcept has now officially shut down.
Unity’s latest layoffs were revealed to include Larry Major Nelson Hryb, who had only been at the company for 18 months.
January 14th: Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox all published an updated and unified pledge for maintaining player safety on console platforms, after originally doing this in 2020 and in the wake of increased scrutiny towards children’s access to digital platforms for some good but mostly reactionary reasons.
January 15th: Breakout SGF indie Relooted was announced by developer Nyamakop to be launching on February 10th 2026 for PC and Xbox Series S|X.
After massive layoffs at Amazon Games last year included ending support for MMO development, the oppressive technoligarch confirmed that its flagship MMORPG New World: Aeternum is shutting down, being immediately delisted from sale, ending in-game purchases as of July 20th, and unplugging its servers as of January 31st 2027.
Developers Toge Productions and Chorus Worldwide made several announcements, starting with a delay for Coffee Talk Tokyo‘s launch from March to May 21st 2026 for further polish. In the meantime, a mobile port is coming for the original Coffee Talk. Toge is collaborating with A Space for the Unbound creators Mojiken to make WORK WORK WORK, a full-sized puzzle adventure game with ARG elements, based on a previous game jam. Lastly, Toge is releasing three other small game jam projects for free on Steam.
January 16th: Games journalism took another big hit as Inverse/its parent company Bustle completely killed its games section and fired most staff including Shannon Liao, while Vox engaged in more layoffs at The Verge, most notably firing Ash Parrish who quickly moved over to Aftermath and did a feature on Outersloth.
After leaving both his long-held position as Assassin’s Creed franchise director and Ubisoft under obvious duress, Marc Alexis Côté has now filed a lawsuit against his former employer for forcibly pushing him out. The lawsuit is worth 1.3 million Canadian dollars or almost $1 million US, covering damages and denied severance pay while also asking for a release from a current non-compete clause.
Sega continued its anti-preservational policies by announcing that Yakuza 3 Remastered will be delisted from individual sale in favor of its new remake which stars a sexual predator. Like the original Sonic Generations, Yakuza 3 Remastered will remain available in an expensive complete series bundle.
January 18th: The most transparent fiscal report yet for the Epic Games Store has made it clear exactly what the store’s problem is besides general Steam retention: Despite having almost 300 million users, all those EGS users, much like on Xbox, have been trained to never actually buy games by all of the free game giveaways over the years, many of which also had expensive licensing fees behind them. Perhaps this gives further context to the later official confirmation after much buildup that the Epic Games Store will be available on the next mainline Xbox hardware when it launches, which is still currently expected to be in 2027.
January 19th: Valve continued its process of what I have deemed going mask off by updating its genAI disclosure guidelines to reduce to kinds of usage that require formal disclosures to users, because that’s exactly what this new collective hell needs, even less transparency! Meanwhile, Valve lost its attempt to initial attempt dismiss a class action lawsuit in the UK alleging overcharging and anticompetitive practices.
Rockstar North’s Edinburgh headquarters were briefly evacuated and closed after their boiler room malfunctioned and exploded around 5AM. Nobody was harmed and fire crews left the scene after four hours.
Always undermined by something, Bungie announced that Marathon will launch on March 5th 2026 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X by releasing a new story trailer that leaked early on the Xbox store.
January 20th: Shortly after leaking as I covered last time, Deck Nine and Square Enix officially unveiled Life is Strange: Reunion, the series’ next and likely final entry as it only exists because Square and Deck Nine signed an upfront contract for two games telling one larger story after the success of True Colors, before Double Exposure proved to be a major failure. The game is launching March 27th 2026 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X and features both Max’s time-bending and Chloe’s own powers from Before the Storm.
Nintendo announced and released a surprise new major update for Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, fixing the remaster’s preexisting visual issues and co op glitch while also adding new content and Switch 2-based enhancements like native 4K resolution, improved graphics, improved loadtimes, and GameShare support. The update added both a new playable character and the challenging speedrun mode called Turbo Attack; Dixie Kong from Tropical Freeze was fully backported into this sixteen year old game in a delightful and strange moment.
IO Interactive commemorated Hitman 3’s fifth anniversary by announcing full cross save progression for the WOA trilogy across every platform, every console, computer, and even cloud versions. The update went out on February 3rd.
January 21st: On January 13th, not long after the Halifax closure, Ubisoft announced that it was firing workers at multiple more subsidiaries: Ubisoft Abu Dhabi fired 29 people back in November 2025 after canceling some projects but these layoffs were only officially announced now, while Avatar/Star Wars Outlaws/Division developer Massive Entertainment announced that up to 55 people are leaving the developer across its Stockholm and Malmö offices, which includes conventional firings but started as a buyout/”voluntary” layoff program last year. Then, only a week later, Ubisoft unveiled the full extent of the full-scale restructuring/”major company reset” it had been discussing since the Tencent deal first began last year: more layoffs, more studio closures, six games canceled, seven major games delayed, and a full forced return to office.
The headlining game cancelation is the long-awaited Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake, alongside three brand new IPs, a mobile game, and a sixth project with no details. The Assassins’ Creed Black Flag Remake was effectively confirmed as originally planning to launch in Q1 2026 before being delayed by up to an extra year, with all of Ubisoft’s other main projects like Far Cry 7 releasing even later. The aforementioned Ubisoft Stockholm, part of Massive Entertainment, is now fully closed. Even more layoffs and cancelations are likely as Ubisoft also promised an additional €200 million in cut costs on top of what it’s done so far. This was soon elaborated upon with the announcement of up to 200 people fired at Ubisoft’s headquarters in Paris, and more requests for buyouts/”voluntary” layoffs. The IP-oriented corporate structure was also further detailed beyond Tencent’s subsidiary with the three flagship franchises: there’s a Tom Clancy division, a live service divison, a casual games division for stuff like Just Dance, and a black sheep division with the likes of Rayman, BG&E, Prince of Persia, Anno, and more.
The Sands of Time Remake was initially announced in 2020 and set to launch in January 2021, before backlash caused it to be fully rebooted, get barely any information for the past several years, before Ubisoft spent 2024 and 2025 promising that it would launch in 2026. Astonishingly, all available info points to this game having remained in active development and being genuinely almost finished right up to this announcement, being killed at the finish line.
Ubisoft Montreal developer David Michaud-Comp later publicly criticized the return to office announcement and was punished for it, while all unions across Ubisoft’s international divisions called for a company-wide four-day strike for February 10th through the 13th, protesting return to office, layoffs, and lack of negotiation or communication with the unions. Ethan Gach has an extensive feature interviewing Ubi employees about their continued dissatisfaction.
Later, on February 6th, the mystery sixth canceled Ubisoft game was revealed by a report at the French outlet Origami to be Project Invictus aka Assassin’s Creed League, a co op live service spinoff game that may still be repurposed into future multiplayer modes.
Payday 3 developer Starbreeze fired yet more people as seen by the former employees announcing on social media.
In a new interview with Nintendo Dream magazine, Nintendo veteran Kensuke Tanabe announced that he was retiring from game development after roughly 40 years, confirming that Metroid Prime 4 is his final project and longtime colleague Risa Tabata is his successor as the lead producer of the Metroid Prime and Paper Mario series. Though the initial use of ML translation left some early room for doubt, the retirement was soon confirmed by proper translations, along with details on the troubled development for Metroid Prime 4.
Tanabe’s career at Nintendo started in 1986 with Doki Doki Panic and Super Mario Bros 2, as a huge fan I love that Tanabe imported those games’ mechanic for plucking and throwing vegetables into Donkey Kong Country Returns. He did story writing for both Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening. The entire Metroid Prime series is where he’s left the biggest legacy. As Nintendo’s main liaison for both Next Level Games and Retro Studios, he’s credited on Punch Out Wii, Luigi’s Mansions 2 and 3, and DKC Returns/Tropical Freeze as well. Risa Tabata has been by his side since the original Metroid Prime, being an assistant producer on all of those aforementioned games before she took her first lead producer role on Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Remake. Tabata is the second woman to be a lead series producer at Nintendo after Animal Crossing’s Aya Kyogoku.
January 22nd: Fabraz and Atari released a new trailer for Bubsy 4D, announcing that the 3D platformer will launch on May 22nd 2026. The physical edition was detailed, including a complete Switch 2 cartridge.
Xbox Developer Direct: The presentation opened with Forza Horizon 6, confirming the leaked launch date of May 19th 2026, announcing that the game’s world is 5 times larger than the previous games, and revealing The Estate, a new fully customizable large plot of land serving as your main hub. Pokémon creators Game Freak returned from the previous Xbox Showcase to discuss Beast of Reincarnation, which is coming in Summer 2026. The action RPG’s presentation was focused on lore and a parry system, while also revealing that the team within Game Freak working on the project is actually relatively small, the vast majority of development is spread across multiple outsourced studios.
As the traditional secret game of the show, Double Fine revealed their second new project after Keeper just launched in October: Kiln, a 3D brawler 4v4 party game about fully designing your own pot from scratch to control before engaging in Looney Tunes esque battles. Kiln is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox this year. Finally, Playground Games returned for the most extensive reveal yet for Fable 4, which is officially coming in Fall 2026. Classic features like relationship building, reputations, jobs, real estate management, and changing your appearance were all confirmed to return. Each NPC will have individual differing views on your actions.
For The Verge, Tom Warren gave a large overview reporting on Xbox’s current roadmap, suggesting that Kiln is targeting an April launch, Halo: Campaign Evolved is targeting a Summer launch, and Gears of War: E-Day is a holiday title trying to figure out where to fit in away from GTA6.
January 23rd: A second major retirement out of Nintendo’s founding generation of game devs has now been discovered as Hideki Konno, the creator of Mario Kart and director of Yoshi’s Island, quietly revealed that he left the publisher last summer after 40 years. He elected to keep the news quiet at first out of personal privacy. Konno was the head of Nintendo’s mobile department from 2015 to 2025.
The US Congressional Labor Caucus has now formally urged the Federal Trade Commission to intensively scrutinize the proposed acquisition of Electronic Arts by Saudi Arabia’s government.
January 26th: A European retail-based leaker which previously provided accurate release leaks for Oblivion Remastered, Sonic Racing Crossworlds, and Flight Sim PS5, has now given their biggest report yet, saying that Take-Two/Rockstar plan for a digital-only launch for Grand Theft Auto 6, delaying the physical edition by weeks or months in order to control leaks and allow the game to go gold as late as possible.
Koei Tecmo announced that Dynasty Warriors 3 Remastered would be indefinitely delayed from March 19th for further polish.
January 27th: After the continued escalation of violence in Minneapolis A-list voice actor Yuri Lowenthal spoke out to call for defunding ICE in the wake of the agency’s numerous atrocities.
A Target employee went viral for documenting the realtime price increases on hardware due to the AI-inflicted shortages, showing their store’s SSD price listings be updated from $200 to $520 or $150 to $390, and even an old Switch-branded MicroSD card going up by $50.
Nintendo made several smaller announcements all at once, from the 11.0 update for Splatoon 3, to a 1.3 patch for Kirby Air Riders adding GameShare and a brand new Grand Prix mode. There was also the full overview trailer for Virtual Boy on NSO, announcing a launch lineup of Teleroboxer, Galactic Pinball, Red Alarm, Golf, Virtual Boy Wario Land, 3D Tetris, and The Mansion of Innsmouth, while nine upcoming game additions include two completed games that never launched in the Virtual Boy’s very short life, Dragon Hopper by Intelligent Systems and F-Zero sequel Zero Racers.
January 28th: After 14,000 people were fired just a few months, Amazon engaged in another horrific wave of 16,000 layoffs including the gutting of the Washington Post, and some targeting Amazon Games including the departure of division boss Christoph Hartmann who was hired back in 2018.
Several QA developers from Netease Games Montreal reported that they were fired in the latest cuts from the publisher.
The Switch and Switch 2 release of AdHoc’s acclaimed narrative adventure Dispatch quickly went awry when the studio abruptly announced on launch day that this port would be permanently censored for nudity and sex instead of offering the censorship toggle the game already had on PC and PS5. Many, including myself, immediately and successfully applied for refunds based on false advertising.
AdHoc’s official statement on January 30th cleared things up fairly well: AdHoc went into the port’s production believing that game’s content would be unaffected just like the sex and nudity in The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, or Red Dead Redemption on Switch/2, but Nintendo found the game in violation of its guidelines, leading to the blanket application of the existing censorship toggle. It appears Nintendo does indeed apply inconsistent guidelines for sexual content based on whether the visuals are more realistic or more animated, presumably out of the belief children will be more likely to play a cartoony looking game. Never mind the time I met a nine year old whose favorite game is Red Dead Redemption 2.
AdHoc never intentionally obscured the censorship, the eShop page did have the disclaimer from the start, but it had two main problems: it used vague language in order to follow Nintendo’s rules, and from lack of experience with the eShop, they placed the warning so poorly that it was practically invisible and undiscovered. They wound up scrambling to update the page to make it more on clear on launch day once they realized what happened. An update to “address at least some of the censored content” is now promised for near future release, likely just to remove the unnecessary middle finger censorship.
Tribute Games released a new trailer announcing that their beatemup Scott Pilgrim EX will launch on March 2rd 2026 for all platforms, while also detailing new player characters.
Digital Eclipse and Atari officially announced a new edition of the 2017 Disney Afternoon Collection releasing for Switch and Switch 2 on February 26th 2026 with a complete physical release for both consoles in May. Besides bringing the games to Switch so long after the initial release despite the Switch being right there in 2017, this new edition offers additional bonus features and two major games not previously included, Goof Troop and Bonkers for the SNES. Due to owning the collection’s developer, Atari has taken over the game from Capcom, as was initially revealed when an ESRB listing leaked this port earlier.
A current gen upgrade for the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance has leaked via the PS Store.
January 29th: Tomodachi Life Living the Dream Direct: This Direct pitched the core gameplay loop of this unique life sim series while also offering many new details. In the opening minutes of the presentation, Nintendo fulfilled its decade-long pledge to improve queer representation after the 3DS Tomodachi Life even in the face of the current political climate, explicitly confirming queer romances, a nonbinary gender option, and even an aromantic option all in the character creator. More extensive customization options were also newly announced, from personal visual designs for clothes and facepaint, building exteriors, floors, and even pets, to island modification returning from Animal Crossing, to Mii personality traits, dialogue, and animations. Weddings and children are confirmed to return from the predecessor. Lastly, the game will now launch on April 16th 2026. Direct-from-console online image and video sharing, as well as Mii sharing, are blocked for this game to avoid controversy.
Korean games publishing giant Nexon, they of MapleStory and Dave the Diver, had to issue universal total refunds for all microtransactions in the hit free mobile game MapleStory: Idle RPG. The game had earned at least $100 million just since its November 2025 launch, and was plunged into controversy after it was discovered to have multiple glitches in their pay to win gachas where players sometime receive a stat upgrade notification without actually receiving the reward. What makes it believed to be a bug is evidence that some other stat upgrades used to not work correctly but had been fixed later without ever alerting players that they hadn’t been rewarded or that there was a bug now fixed. This escalated on February 3rd, when South Korea’s Federal Trade Commission raided Nexon’s offices to begin an investigation into whether Nexon had intentionally misled players and stolen their money.
The Virtua Fighter 5 REVO Switch 2 port was finally announced to be releasing on March 26th 2026.
January 30th: Davey Wreden’s studio Ivy Road, developers of Wanderstop, have unfortunately announced that they are firing five people (a large portion of a small team) due to no successful pitches or new outside funding since the game’s launch.
The GOG change in ownership has already started to sour as genAI advertising began appearing on the storefront, followed by an AMA interview where it was confirmed genAI will continue to be used.
A legal battle has ended in mutual defeat between ex-Konami composer Motoaki Furukawa and Japanese indie dev Pixel Co over the abandoned crowdsourced project Steam Pilots, on which Furukawa allegedly defrauded both crowdfunders and the studio four years ago. A Japanese court ruled that neither party would receive their requested compensation and the matter is to be considered closed, but Pixel Co does now owe a small sum to the composer for emotional damages.
Iridium Studios and Annapurna announced that their musical turn based RPG People of Note will have a Switch 2 port when it launches later this year, and detailed its voice cast.
EA and Respawn announced that Apex Legends for Switch 1 will shut down in August after five years in favor of supporting the far more functional Switch 2 version.
Take-Two announced WWE 2K26 for a March launch on PC, PS5, Switch 2 day 1 this time, and Xbox Series S|X. The Switch 2 port has several additions over 2K25: user generated content sharing is fully supported this time, while mouse controls, GameShare, and touchscreen support have all been added.
February 1st: Bandai Namco officially announced the season 3 DLC characters for Tekken 8, with Kunimitsu coming this spring, Bob coming this summer, Roger Jr. coming this fall, and a mystery character coming this winter.
February 2nd: Nintendo’s latest earnings release and investor meeting occurred overnight in US time, detailing the Switch 2’s second full quarter and first holiday season after some concern trolling throughout November and December. Between October and December 2025, the Nintendo Switch 2 sold 7 million more consoles, reaching a total of roughly 17.4 million by the very end of 2025. The predecessor Switch sold over a million units during the quarter, bringing its grand total to over 155.3 million consoles, officially surpassing the Nintendo DS to be Nintendo’s number 1 bestselling system and the second bestselling console overall. Mario Kart World reached over 14 million copies sold, Pokémon Legends Z-A sold 12.3 million copies total (more on that in a minute), DK Bananza sold 4.25 million copies, Kirby Air Riders sold 1.76 million copies, and Metroid Prime 4 was confirmed in a statement to Stephen Totilo to have sold over 1 million copies total, it just didn’t reach minimum reporting numbers for the game’s individual Switch 1 and Switch 2 versions unlike Pokémon.
The Mario Galaxy remaster sold 2.3 million copies and and Mario Galaxy 2 remaster sold 2.4 million copies, while Mario Wonder, Switch Sports, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros Ultimate, Mario Party Jamboree and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe all sold an additional 1 to 2 million copies in 2025. Outside of Nintendo’s reporting as a third party produced and published game, Koei Tecmo announced that Hyrule Warriors 3 reached 1 million copies sold. Officially, Legends Z-A sold 8.4 million copies for Switch 1 and roughly 4 million copies for Switch 2, but Nintendo’s data reporting is slanted by counting all digital purchases of the game towards Switch 1 or DLC, those Switch 2 numbers are only the game’s physical copies.
The Switch 2’s first holiday underperformed its predecessor’s by only 3%, with greater supply but also in far worse economic conditions. Switch 2’s sales have so far outperformed expectations in Japan while “slightly” missing expectations overseas, which does have a profit impact due to the weak yen and the lower retail cost in Japan, but a manageable one, and one that is expected to be short-lived due to the 2026 holiday having Pokémon Gen 10 to boost the system.
During the shareholder Q&A, President Shuntaro Furukawa did not mince words for once, saying that the extent of the recent component price hikes have caught them offguard, but they would have to last beyond the next fiscal year, well into 2027, to actually start putting them risk due to their intensive stockpiling efforts and long term upfront contracts secured with suppliers. A price increase is still not considered to be necessary or likely for now and it would be approached very carefully, long term business health is being prioritized ahead of short term profits. Cross-gen upgrades and continued updates like Splatoon’s and Animal Crossing’s are a priority strategy for keeping the last-gen install base engaged
February 3rd: Jason Schreier conducted a big interview for Bloomberg with Obsidian heads Feargus Urquhart and Josh Sawyer, which confirmed that both The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed have been deemed financial failures, with the Outer Worlds series officially ending but the Pillars of Eternity/Avowed series continuing. Grounded 2 in early access has actually been quite successful though, with Urquhart describing the studio’s overall status as setback but not in disaster mode. The Obsidian leadership made it clear they never want to launch two larger scale games in the same year ever again, it was a consequence of development issues for those games and it had lasting negative effects on their workers as they rushed to ship them both out. Obsidian’s software strategy going forward will be to focus on smaller scale games made faster and cheaper while spaced out in release timing.
Take-Two’s latest earnings call announced that GTA6‘s full marketing will start this summer, and that Borderlands 4 for Switch 2 has seen its development paused due to the work the rest of the game still needs. By the way, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, Rockstar lead Sam Houser, and MindsEye creator Leslie Benzies were all included in the latest Epstein files release.
Rebekah Valentine at IGN released a major new interview with Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone where he discussed the game’s 10th anniversary, its upcoming major 1.7 update, and his next game Haunted Chocolatier, which he chose over a direct Stardew sequel. Update 1.7 will include two new romance options, a farm map editor, an overhaul for the children the player can have with their spouse, and more.
In a new interview in the leadup to the launch of Romeo is a Dead Man, Suda51 joined the ranks of game developers taking a public and explicit no-AI stance.
Nintendo also announced and released Yoshi and Balloon Kid for Game Boy on NSO.
February 4th: Blizzard released the Overwatch Spotlight presentation to announce another major overhaul for the hero shooter franchise timed to its 10th anniversary: after deleting the original Overwatch and replacing it with Overwatch 2 in 2022, Overwatch 2 is now being retitled as simply Overwatch again, and it’s being pitched as a story-driven new era just like Overwatch 2 was. Five new player characters are all launching at once on February 10th at the start of the new season 1, including the self explanatory Jetpack Cat. Overwatch Switch 2 Edition will also be coming later this spring.
None of Blizzard’s desperate fanservice can erase the actual legacy of this game’s past ten years, all of the false promises, the suppression of political speech from esports players, and of course the ongoing and escalating genocide in Gaza that is directly supported and profited from by Blizzard as a Microsoft subsidiary. But in some good news, after almost three years of negotiations, more than 60 QA developers for Blizzard have now successfully ratified a union contract which provides “lasting protections in the workplace.” The contract spans three years and includes genAI regulations, protections for being included in game credits, disability accomodations, immigrant worker protections, and crunch restrictions.
As expected, Valve was forced to delay the launch of the Steam Machine and its accompanying accessories, going from early 2026 to “hopefully by the end of the first half of 2026.” Valve also acknowledged the cause of the delay, that the scale of manufacturing and the retail costs of the hardware will be significantly adjusted in response to the genAI-inflicted memory and storage shortages.
Skunkape Games, developer of the Sam & Max Telltale remasters, have announced their newest Telltale back catalog remaster: 2010’s Poker Night at the Inventory starring Strong Bad and the Heavy from TF2, it’s coming March 5th 2026 to PC, Switch, and PS4.
February 5th: Guerrilla Games and PlayStation somewhat unceremoniously revealed their next big first party release: Horizon: Hunters Gathering, the co op spinoff I’ve been reporting on for ages. With more cartoony visuals and three player co op raids a la Monster Hunter, it’s another strange shift for the series much like the MMO. Beta testing will begin soon and the game will simul-launch on PS5 and PC in the future, but with no specific release window yet.
Multiple indie game announcements occurred, including from one of my most hotly anticipated games: Outerloop announced the release date for their Thirsty Suitors successor Dosa Divas: One Last Meal, it will launch on April 14th 2026 for PC, Switch/Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, while an indie open world RPG inspired by Morrowind and King’s Field called Dread Delusion will hit Switch 2, PS4/PS5, and Xbox One/Series in Spring 2026.
Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase: The presentation opened with the Switch 2 exclusive co op indie Orbitals, showing extensive gameplay, GameShare functionality, and a Summer 2026 release window. Next was a quick look at last gen titles, starting with the intriguing mystery visual novel Paranormasight: The Mermaid’s Curse, coming February 19th, and Captain Tsubasa 2: World Fighters coming this year. Binary Haze, developers of the acclaimed Ender Lilies and Ender Magnolia metroidvanias, revealed their completely different new game Tokyo Scramble, a stealth horror game with a friendslop+fumblecore hook of GameSharing with up to four players who are all sharing the controls of one character. The game launches February 11th as a Switch 2 exclusive. Embracer Group announced that their successful open world viking survival game Valheim will release for Switch 2 later this year after a long early access cycle, with up to 10 person multiplayer support.
Team Cherry shadowdropped Hollow Knight Switch 2 Edition. Konami offered several announcements, starting with eFootball, the FTP live service reboot of Pro Evolution Soccer, coming this Summer to Switch 2. Next, Konami had the Super Bomberman Collection, and for Japan only right now, the Ganbare Goemon Collection. Super Bomberman Collection was shadowdropped for Switch and Switch 2 while featuring seven NES and SNES Bomberman games including ones that never left Japan. Goemon Collection features 13 games from NES, SNES, and Game Boy. Square Enix announced that the first HD2D action RPG The Adventures of Elliot will launch on June 18th 2026. Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will launch for Switch 2 and Xbox Series S|X on June 3rd 2026. This announcement essentially confirms heavy rumors that recently emerged: the Rebirth port is timed to an early summer 2026 launch in order to lead directly into the marketing of FF7R3, which will start at Summer Games Fest and ultimately end on an early 2027 launch date to commemorate the original Final Fantasy 7’s 30th anniversary.
Capcom highlighted Pragmata and released a demo for the game on all consoles. Saber Interactive revealed that their new action game Turok Origins is coming to Switch 2 when it launches on all current gen platforms in Fall 2026. A first person mode was newly confirmed for the game. Falcom revealed their action RPG sequel Kyoto Xanadu, which is coming to Switch 1 and Switch 2 in Summer 2026. Bandai Namco announced that their successful RPG Digimon Story Time Stranger will be releasing for Switch 1 and Switch 2 on July 10th 2026, with 4K30fps and 108p60fps modes on Switch 2 (60fps mode is coming to existing versions in an update). Cygames announced that their action RPG Granblue Fantasy Relink: Endless Ragnarok will release for Switch 2 on July 9th 2026. Monster Hunter Stories 3 got one more feature before its March launch, including a demo shadowdrop. Arcade Archives 2 Rave Racer and a brand new Console Archives series of emulated releases were shadowdropped by Hamster. Console Archives is a huge leap forward for retro support on modern hardware.
Sizzle reel featured: Scott Pilgrim EX, Another Eden Begins coming Summer 2026 to both Switches, Reanimal coming to Switch 2 February 13th, WWE2K26, roguelike RTS Star Trek Voyager – Across the Unknown coming February 18th, Disney Dreamlight Valley Switch 2 Edition coming March 26th, PGA Tour 2K25 coming February 6th, Culdcept Begins and Culdcept: The First coming to both Switches in July, Goat Simulator 3 coming to Switch 2 April 1st, Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun coming to Switch 2 on March 18th, and Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn Edition coming to Switch 2 on May 22nd 2026. For Resident Evil Requiem, Grace and Leon’s distinct gameplay details and Amiibos, and new difficulty modes were all discussed. And now for one more thing: Bethesda’s full slate of games all coming introduced by Todd Howard and with native gameplay footage shown for the first time, Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition coming to Switch 2 on February 24th 2026, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle coming to Switch 2 on May 12th 2026, Oblivion Remastered newly revealed for Switch 2 coming sometime in 2026.
The at best bemusing existence of this as a closing announcement aside, here‘s something neat: Against all odds, despite Skyrim Fallout, and Oblivion all just getting codes in a box instead, Indiana Jones has a non-key-card, proper full physical release, with only the DLC and the Polish language pack needing to be downloaded.
February 6th: The Mindseye studio’s co-CEO Mark Gerhard has alleged that there’s a million dollar mass media conspiracy to continually smear the developer and their game, accusing the small content creator management agency Ritual Network of harassing the developers and lying about their game. Gerhard claimed that criminal charges are being filed against the company, which they haven’t, while also saying he wants to repurpose this experience for in-game content.
Thank you to everyone for your support over the years, in all its forms. I am incredibly grateful for you, all of you, for your enthusiasm, kindness, inspiration, and generosity. I will no longer be asking for your financial support, only for your shining presence in my comments. I am proud to say that this train can keep right on rolling!