Julius

You guys remember Christopher Dring of games industry.biz, the guy who had us sweating bullets over Astro Bot's sales over here in the UK and Europe? Well, the U-turn is now complete: he's now saying that Astro Bot has had the best start to sales for a non-Mario 3D platformer in Europe, which 1) is huge, 2) is very much deserved, and 3) is completely the opposite of his initial tone and concern for the game's sales last month!

Thanks for sharing @Helmsly, watched it on my lunch which was a big mistake because it was just kind of a gutting watch. I'm convinced that you can mute that video and remove the subtitles and it'll still be crystal clear from Sakurai's face that he's talking fondly of someone he both still misses and holds a lot of respect for. I need to go back and catch up on some of the episodes I've missed, but really think it's great that Sakurai has released this series, and really appreciate just how well he's communicated so many different concepts across the series. Appreciate even more that he dedicated the final episode to sharing some of his memories of Iwata. The really gutting part for me was watching and realising "oh damn, this was 10 years ago", and then the second realisation which came after Sakurai mentioned that he was roughly a decade younger and a decade removed in terms of experience in the industry from Iwata. That means, within the space of the next year or so, he'll be older than Iwata lived to be, and similarly, will have been in the industry longer than Iwata was.

@RedShell thanks for sharing, this looks excellent! Just started watched the first couple of minutes to get a feel for it and it feels really high budget and well done. Going to need to make sure I watch the full episode over the weekend Very curious to see the other series that they dig into, I feel like a Dragon Quest episode is a bit of a must and an obvious one if they've done Final Fantasy, especially with Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (or DQIIIHD2DR, for short, of course ) just around the corner. Assuming no Nintendo or subsidiaries (would loooooooove something like this Pokémon though ), would really like to see if they've got the likes of SEGA/Atlus, Capcom, Konami onboard too. It's such a weird one though where it feels like so many creators left things in a strange place, like Kojima with Konami, whereas Sakaguchi seems to still really love being known for and involved with FF where he can be. I feel like talking Yakuza without Nagoshi would also just feel weird, him turning up like a Lieutenant is half the vibe of the game! Will definitely be keeping an eye out for more of these

Just going to cover it here rather than revive every relevant thread. Limited Run have announced that they will be handling the re-release of all the games in the Kiryu Saga, starting with 0 (and Kiwami, covered in the Switch thread) – these are returning physically to PS4 and will be available for the first time on Xbox physically, which is pretty neat. Pre-orders of Yakuza 0 will come with a special slipcase to hold all of the games they are releasing "premium physical" versions of, from 0 to 6. Each release looks like it will come with a special slipcase/cover to match. Seems a neat idea but not really interested in LRG stuff after what I've heard about them here and elsewhere, so

This was confirmed the other day as being 22.5GB on Switch and is going up on the eShop for $19.99 USD. Not a bad price, but that's a lil chunky boi of a game, huh? Limited Run have also announced a physical Switch version of the game, which is being re-released physically on PS4, and (for the first time?) a physical release for Xbox. As someone not really interested in LRG's stuff...meh.

For the second year in a row: Happy New Year, Happy Valentine's Day 2025, and Happy Birthday to Lara Croft No 'Starring Lara Croft' this time around, obviously omitted to go darker for the Darkness Trilogy

I'm choosing to see it as a designated sacrificial lamb ahead of the Switch successor announcement. Get all of the weird energy and ideas and gimmicks Nintendo is known for out of the way with this little alarm clock. I swear it's like they've got a quota to meet on how many funny or strange decisions they greenlight every year, because it's often balanced out by what is very much a "strictly business" approach. Who knows? Maybe that's the deal Miyamoto made with the devil back in that cave from his childhood...

Game is off to a very strong start, over 1 million units moved: Considering it's launch day I'm assuming this is download and shipped numbers, but I'm fully expecting a concrete "X million sold!" by the end of the week. Persona 3 Reload was the first Atlus game to sell 1 million copies in its first week at the start of the year (owing to it being their first big simultaneous worldwide release), but yeah, fully expecting Metaphor to smash those numbers. What a year Atlus has had by the way: Persona 3 Reload, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, and Metaphor ReFantazio. An official announcement next year of Persona 6 would be a great way to carry that hype and momentum forward, I'm just saying...

Reminder (as if you lot needed it ) that F-Zero Climax and GP Legend have landed on the service today! Happy...GPing and Climaxing, I guess?

Potentially off-topic, but I've been thinking recently that this thread has - understandably, I think - kind of morphed into a Gaming Content / Media thread rather than just being a Podcast thread. Would it be worth updating the thread title perhaps? I don't mind starting a new topic but I feel like this thread has already kind of become what that thread would be anyways. Anyways, more on-topic (but also not, because it's not a podcast ), Kyle Bosman of Kyle Bosman and formerly of Easy Allies and GT got the chance to interview Jason Schreier about his new book: I watched it over lunch today and thought it was excellent. Kyle certainly has a knack for interviews and asking unique questions or coming at things from a distinct angle of wanting to learn more, and it's kind of hilarious to me that he's becoming more Keighley-like in my mind with these interviews I think there are so many potentially great interviews he could do, so will be keeping a keen eye on who he lands in the future. For some reason I think a Sam Lake interview would be perfect for him? Just the vibe I get

Digital Foundry have talked a bit about the Halo/Unreal announcement and brief bits of footage that we got to see: I'd completely forgot about the dithering hands on Halo Infinite from John's tech review for the game, such a funny and unique issue to find in a game

Well, not quite the update I was expecting we'd get next on this, but Insider Gaming are reporting that the game is still in development amongst recent fears that it had been cancelled. Ah yes, Snowdrop, that notoriously robust and bug-free engine of Ubisoft's I'm thinking we potentially get an update on this next summer ahead of release in 2026 or 2027? Would be very interesting if Ubisoft could have something of a return to form to cap off the generation between this remake and the Sands of Time remake. Kind of mental, come to think of it, that we're quickly coming up to the third and final act of a typical 7-year generation...

If they're finally going to enter the 2000s with their online functionality, I'm hoping they just recreate this classic frame-by-frame with Koizumi and Takahashi: MY NAME IS CHUCK

The Snorlax is a promo card and so is trapped inside sealed packaging I'm probably going to be leaving it in

I didn't bother as I don't have the Expansion Pack (or NSO, period) right now I think they'll just come out and say what it is, wouldn't be all that surprised if whatever it was ends up being previewed by the press ahead of time and when it lands we see some previews go up alongside it. Because yeah, I totally agree, there's no way to NDA so many random participants. I'm coming back to this – they're calling it a "Playtest". I kind of do feel like it has to be related to the act of playing games. Testing out the reception to and feedback for a potential DS NSO? Every way I imagine it would be weird so I could see why you might want feedback for that, and I guess it would fit the file size. A Game Pass trial run, so this is more of a beta so they can prep for an actual Game Pass launch on the system? Some NSO feature like voice chat on the Switch without the mobile app? Some new, larger NSO-only game?

Nintendo have worked with S-E to compress and bring Advent Children to the Switch, with touch-ups via streaming, there's your Cloud [life]streaming 2.2GB is kind of an odd size, right? I feel like it counts things out like a new system for Switch Online because of the size of games after the N64 fluctuating so much, unless they gave you, say, GameCube Switch Online and one game comes installed with it but it otherwise served as a launcher to download games to? I don't think anyone thinks it'll be that but I feel like we can reasonably count that out. It also seems pretty hefty for an Activity Log or Miiverse replacement, even if we add a bunch of bells and whistles, that'd be a whole lot of bells and whistles you'd need to add in order to get to that sort of size. Hmm...

Actually mental that Nintendo UK updated with a tweet so quickly too: They totally knew what was about to happen Looking forward to hearing what the fuss is about @Glen-i @Dcubed, keep us posted!

Damn, I guess I didn't realise how desperate everyone was for Netflix to finally come to the Switch

Just realised, with it being the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith next year, and thus the 20th anniversary of its game counterpart – do I dare hope for that to be their next remaster? I replayed it just a couple of years ago on PS3 and it was heaps of fun to go back to. Besides that and KOTOR coming to PlayStation, I'd really love to see them figure something out for the Rogue Squadron games. Obviously I've heard so much love for those games that I'd love the chance to check them out for myself!

I KNOW RIGHT?! Okay, so it's also coming to Switch on Jan 23rd too, so I guess it was just for the eShop link that they were waiting on: So weird with this delayed trailer nonsense for other platforms. First up on PlayStation and Aspyr's official channel, then up an hour later on the Xbox and Nintendo channels. Nowhere near as bad as whatever deal Xbox think they're benefitting from with Atlus, but it's just so strange

Overview trailer: That's a chunky boi of an overview trailer right there

List of games confirmed, but still nebulously arriving at some point in the remaining 2½ months of 2024: And some further details: Shaping up to be a really nice package. With no date and just 2½ months left, this has to be shadow-dropping during or after an event, right?

A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one: Enough colons to make you think it was a Kingdom Hearts title. Coming to PlayStation, Xbox and Steam on 23rd January 2025 – Nintendo release (or maybe just the link to the eShop page?) currently listed as 'Coming Soon'. They'll really do anything to avoid bringing the Knights of the Old Republic port to PlayStation, won't they?

Seems like some details went under the radar from TGS this year which might go some way to explaining the released order of the HD-2D Erdrick Trilogy. Per Automaton, reporting based on Famitsu: Very curious. Like @Ike mentioned, the remake of III was teased in XI, so perhaps some sort of tie-in to the Zenithian Trilogy (or later games) in order to tease those games being revisited in a similar way? Or heck, maybe it's even setting up XII in some weird way?