Julius

George Miller?

"we finally caught a cat" in a samurai game trailer is the highlight of the day so far

The weird part I guess is that it was included in a video at the turn of the year saying it was coming in 2024 when we hadn't had that tied to a trailer. And we still don't? Also, they ended the reveal trailer for the Remake in October 2022 with saying it can be wishlisted, too. So yeah, I'm highlighting their weirdness about a lack of an update on release timing, not so much on wishlist availability (though that is also a bit weird because the wishlist on PlayStation sucks compared to Steam)

Huh, that Metro game being VR is about the most interesting thing they could've done with it. Good for them. We're 25 minutes in and 13 games in...how long is that DS2 trailer going to be?!

You can now wishlist the game on PS5! Congrats

Calling the Silent Hill 2 Remake we've known about for a good while now "in development" and announcing it being available for wishlisting is...so weird.

Don't have a proper thread for this I don't think, so I'll clean this up later. Today's combat reveal trailer:

Think we've seen some of this before? But anyways, I'll clean the thread up after:

Announced during today's State of Play, coming to all major platforms:

26th April it is:

Ah, the typical 2 minute casual late start from PlayStation. You'd think they'd buy a clock or something by now...

Expectations are low, and I'm ready to be disappointed which should make for a great show! Will be absolutely elated if we get something from PlayStation Studios which is original (a sequel, spin-off, whatever) and not a remaster/remake of a game from last gen. Hell, I'll take an interesting PS1/PS2/PS3 remaster. Not expecting it, though

For the casual audience who makes up the vast majority of people responsible for the Switch sailing by that 100 million sales mark and still going strong, the Steam Deck is a total non-factor. It is a niche even in the console space (as is pretty much every other, besides Nintendo's, currently); it is limited in supply; and has next to no marketing that the casual audience will have visibility of. Now, if we get reports of Steam upping their manufacturing numbers into the 10s of millions when the Steam Deck 2 gets announced, and throw a massive marketing budget behind it, with TV commercials, brand deals, celebrity sign-ons and such? I'll totally agree. Until then, Nintendo don't have any reason to think about the Steam Deck. I agree with @Hero-of-Time in that the Portal isn't in this conversation (I know you didn't bring it up but that's one of the weirdest products that'll be a brick in a couple of years that I've seen since I got into games, more so than the Vita), and so the only real question, which I think you kind of touch in, is whether Xbox are thinking of doing something similar; I don't know if they will, but well, I think they certainly should be. Xbox adapting the OS approach of Steam and it's stored and making a dedicated handheld to house it which doesn't depend on streaming and can download games, basically their take on the Steam Deck, is a truly scary proposition when you throw some marketing behind it and couple it with Game Pass. But do Xbox even have the balls to do that? Absolutely agree. I'm all for new ideas and new control schemes, but doing it completely for the sake of it seems like a very bad idea, in that it opens them up to unnecessary risk factors like, well...no-one liking whatever they come up with? The Wii motion controls were completely played out by the second half of that console's life, even if it did open them up to a much wider and new gaming audience. I'm not sure either. There are things which sounds interesting conceptually (3D, foldable screens, etc.) which would be great differentiators – but I'm not convinced that they will improve the system in any meaningful way, from a consumer or developer perspective. The main risks I foresee with a Switch 2 being focused on being a more powerful Switch is that they end up bottling the messaging around it (which, well, they've been much better at this last gen with the Switch, and a simply "2" or "Super" added to the name seems more than sufficient; that initial reveal trailer for the Switch has to be one of the most clear and effective "here's our concept, come join us" videos in a long while) or that they simply don't make the hardware powerful enough to last the entire gen. If this gen is anything to go by, they don't really seem all that interested in mid-gen upgrades, so yeah, just make it beefy enough for developers and consumers alike to get a gen of play out of the thing. Super Mario Odyssey DX and Mario Kart 8 Deluxest inbound

Monthly games for Feb: I mean...sure, I guess

Still a bizarre choice, but alas, here's another trailer: Gotta pay the bills I guess, if it keeps people in work, why not?

Reviews are up, and currently showing as 83 on Metacritic and 80 on OpenCritic: Seems pretty solid

@drahkon (and maybe @Hero-of-Time? Can't remember if you'd already picked them up, but think you mentioned they were on your wishlist at some point) the Pixel Remasters are finally on sale on PlayStation, too (by 20%) as part of the Critics' Choice sale that started today Hilariously self-aware that these being on sale is an event in itself, they even released a January sale trailer: ETA: also I guess the plan is that they'll be on sale on all available platforms (judging from the Steam sale and it being included in the description)? But still not showing on the eShop...guess they're waiting for their next sale to go live? Not that it's unexpected when an update like this happens, but the update broke all of the fixes people had modded in, which is very funny (and unfortunate...but also funny) to me

Multiple pieces of DLC planned, including The Answer epilogue from 3 FES. Disappointing, but not unexpected – after the Portable and FES stuff was reported as being left out, it seemed like DLC/an enhanced edition was inevitable. It's a lot of video game as it is, so it's hard to complain, but man, SEGA are really trying to piss people off and milk them for all that they're worth in increasingly frustrating ways. Guess 3 Reload is going to be slipping to the back of the list of new games I want to get this year until we get some clarity on when this is dropping, but with Metaphor also arriving towards the end of the year... I wouldn't be shocked if I either pick it up and play it knowing I'll never get to the additional content when it releases, or just wait until 2025 It's January – why are we already needing to make these calls?!

What do you mean? Those are all JRPGs! You're right though, the sheer volume of quality releases we've got now is stupid – and the crazy thing is, of the games you've listed, all of those were on radars before the year even started. We haven't even got to that point in the year where someone looks back and realises something slipped under the radar - "oh, wait, we all missed that indie!" - which is inevitable, and I don't think we'll realise it's happened until March at this point, because Feb looks pretty unrelenting, too. I'm trying to keep a closer eye on indies this year and have seen two release in the last week alone which look like they might be worth some time, and my Steam wishlist is packed with indie goodness already on my radar for release this year, or of games released last year on Steam which might see console releases this year. It's simply nuts. Great time to be playing games; terrible time to be playing all of them. If nothing else it gets us to make the hard choices...which is why I've spent January replaying two games and fallen in love with them all over again/for the first time and we haven't even mentioned existing backlogs! I'd like to say that I hope it's a quiet summer, which it is at the moment...out of us simply not knowing what's coming. It seems like everyone will have their first major event of the year out of the way by the end of Feb, so we should have a clearer picture of how this year is going to shake out by then, at least

Makes sense, though. Considering how they've added silly ways to spend on almost all of their games, I guess we should've expected something - anything - to be changed here in the slightest way to make an excuse for there to be a new SKU. That it actually sounds on the surface like it could be something kind of sizeable is pretty surprising, purely because it wasn't mentioned in the initial leak/rumour.

Reviews are up and they're looking good: currently at 90 on OpenCritic and 89 on Metacritic. Two 90ish rated JRPGs dropped in the space of a week by SEGA, and they've still got Metaphor up their sleeve for later on in the year. The Year of the JRPG has started real good!

Super Nintendo World is opening at the Universal Epic Universe theme park at Universal Orlando Resort in 2025: "Universal Epic Universe" sounds completely un-epic

Personally, it doesn't bother me, as my Switch is used docked 99% of the time anyways and the other 1% might be a game of Tetris here or there, or out of curiosity checking to see how a game looks in handheld mode before returning it to its rightful spot in the dock. The OLED is undeniably prettier to look at (be it for the Switch or the Steam Deck compared with their original releases) and so I'd be gutted to step down from a Switch OLED to a Switch 2 LCD if I used it in handheld more than a third of the time, though, as I imagine quite a few people do. But that's such a small % of their install base with the Switch, I imagine; I say this without checking the numbers, which I guess I could do, but it was released really late in the Switch's life, and so has only realistically really been an option for people picking up a Switch this late on in the gen and doing their homework to compare the two (I don't see why you wouldn't get the OLED for just a little bit more when compared with the original LCD which still hasn't received a permanent price drop) or because they use it in handheld enough and have the disposable income to upgrade from the LCD to the OLED. I agree with @Dcubed about that budget (both in power draw and construction cost) probably being better off used elsewhere in the console, especially if it's going to set the baseline for the entire generation like the Switch did, including a potential Switch 2 OLED in the future.