Julius

Yeah, it really is. It feels like every year for years now we've been saying "next year is going to be the year!", and every year we're proved wrong. Some might point to COVID, but their first true wave of acquisitions were back in 2018, nearly 4 years ago now: Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games (all announced at E3 2018), Obsidian and inXile (announced November 2018). Let's take a look at what these studios have managed since then: • Ninja Theory first showed off Senua's Saga: Hellblade II at The Game Awards at the end of 2019. We've seen the game a few more times, but no release date is in sight. There's also that experimental mental health horror game, Project: Mara, which we've heard pretty much nothing about. • Playground Games is pretty much the exception on this list, but - shocker! - that's likely because of their already strong relationship with Xbox pre-acquisition. Since their acquisition they've shipped Forza Horizon 4 in September 2018, as well as Forza Horizon 5 in November of last year. However, despite being an exception on this list, Fable seems to have got itself stuck in development hell. • Undead Labs shipped State of Decay 2 in May 2018, prior to their announced acquisition at E3 of this year, meaning that the only thing new we've really seen from them after the acquisition is a smattering of DLC for State of Decay 2 (which didn't get much fanfare) and the pre-rendered teaser trailer for State of Decay 3 we got at the Xbox Games Showcase in July 2020. Kotaku reported at the end of March that the studio is in disarray with reports of bullying, harassment, and burnout meaning that the game is stuck in pre-production. • Compulsion Games shipped We Happy Few in late 2018 after it's early access release in 2016, and since then we've only heard that they're working on a third person narrative driven game, and that their team has doubled in size (we heard this in October of last year). Otherwise, not a peep. • Obsidian are another exception on this list in that they've shipped games since being acquired in June 2018. In October 2019 they shipped The Outer Worlds, in July 2020 they released Grounded through early access (which might still be scheduled for a full release this year?), and they've announced Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 as being in development since being acquired. While I think there's rightly some skepticism about how Xbox's slate fits both Obsidian and Bethesda, there have also been reports for months now about Obsidian potentially taking on a sequel to Fallout: New Vegas. • inXile announced a few months back that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was delayed indefinitely due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine: there are much more important things going on outside of games right now. However, even prior to the indefinite delay, it was slated for December 2022 - I wouldn't have been at all surprised if it slipped into 2023 if not delayed for other reasons. So, in four years across six teams we have: • 3 games shipped which were already deep in development at the time of acquisition (Forza Horizon 4, The Outer Worlds, We Happy Few). • 9 games have been announced by these teams in the time following these acquisitions (Hellblade II, Project: Mara, Forza Horizon 5, Fable, State of Decay 3, Compulsion's currently untitled and unseen game, Grounded, Avowed, The Outer Worlds 2) and only 2 of these games have launched, being Forza Horizon 5 and the early access release of Grounded. • 1 game is delayed indefinitely due to war (again, nothing can really be said about that - they have bigger things going on), and at least 2 games are in some sort of development hell. All of this is to say: Xbox aren't doing a good enough job of managing and curating their portfolio of first party titles if in six acquisitions you have two games announced and released during the nearly four year period following these acquisitions. This has long been my concern with their acquisition blitzing of the industry: it's fine buying everyone up, but without a plan and a solid slate which is - again - being curated (for example, you don't want similar games releasing too close to each other), I'm not surprised that we're currently potentially looking at an entire year without a first party release (if we're not counting Grounded potentially shipping). There needs to be better oversight, because how on earth you justify letting Bethesda and Todd Howard announce a specific date over a year out when they aren't even showing off gameplay is beyond me. I think that's pretty much the only route they can go -- well, that and continuing their indie push, which is by far and away the only consistent thing about Game Pass that I've seen as an outsider. There's a lot of them, a lot of the critically acclaimed ones being exclusive in some form or another, they've done a great job there; let's hope none of those guys get acquired, lest they never release another game. I think A Plague Tale: Requiem has already been announced as being on Game Pass day one (which is a good shout as it's a great get). The only game I'd add is a weird one, as it's technically already had multiple releases, but I think we could see Final Fantasy VII Remake finally come to Xbox this year (in its Intergrade form), probably as a Game Pass exclusive. Final Fantasy VII Remake seemingly had a one year exclusivity deal for PlayStation, which I think got re-upped with an additional one year exclusivity deal for Intergrade last year, and so now I think Square Enix can take a third truck of money home by sticking it on Game Pass. The only other announced game I'd add is potentially Project: Mara from Ninja Theory, and otherwise your guess is as good as mine, because I have no clue. You have to imagine they'll announce something to slip into the second half of the year next month at Not-E3, but even then, it'd be strange if it were Forza or Hellblade II for me just because we don't even have a year for them and they'll be leapfrogging everything else. Think it'd be good for them if it happened, don't get me wrong, but it's a weird one where I don't feel like we have any idea of what they're like when it comes to Xbox Game Studios' plans in terms of rollout and release, because we haven't really seen it happen successfully for them yet. Yeah, I hate to be a downer, but I think they've naively gone into these acquisitions thinking that just letting these companies do what they do and sticking the end result on Game Pass makes for a great first party experience, and it just doesn't work. I think it's undervalued just how great a job PlayStation and - to a much greater degree in my eyes, just in terms of sheer volume of their output - Nintendo do in terms of curating a steady wave of high quality releases. They don't really mess around with early access, and it seems like there's a person or team - as there should be at Xbox; and if there is, it certainly doesn't feel that way at the moment! - meticulously planning every quarter for them (more so for Nintendo right now, feels like PlayStation are taking a breather). We very, very, very rarely get pre-rendered trailers from those companies these days, and on the rare occasions we do, they feel warranted due to the size of the announcement, and/or are from studios we trust to ship a game (for example, Insomniac with Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine, or Nintendo with how they handled the reveal of Smash Bros. Ultimate). Xbox, on the other hand, seem to keen to do this as soon as the ink dries on a game being signed off for production. Yeah, agreed, it seems pretty quiet at the moment, and with every delay that gets announced I do get more and more nervous about Ragnarök landing this year. I'm sure there's more in the works, but we don't really know what they are; from a first party perspective, the only things I think we can speculate on to potentially land this year are a potential title from Bluepoint (depending on what exactly is going on with them - are they only working on their new IP, or have they grown to have a team for the new IP and a remake team? Who knows) and something/s from Naughty Dog (Factions and/or The Last of Us remake, though I think the latter depends on how they're handling marketing for the show and I have no idea if these two end up being one package). I miss Japan Studio already

English version of the previously released Japanese overview trailer is up:

Pretends to act surprised

505 Games showcase next Tuesday at 14:00 BST:

Welp, big blow for Xbox's year (in terms of first party content), but smart to get out ahead of the Xbox/Bethesda showcase next month, and it's not totally unexpected (Bethesda's recent track record paired with firming a launch date over a year out never inspired confidence). Still, have to imagine it could still turn up next month seeing as we haven't seen any gameplay yet, and while it's a shame, a delay is pretty much always the right move This is for exactly the sort of thing I've been talking about when it comes to Xbox's pick-ups: it's all well and good buying up one studio after another, but we still haven't seen how they manage and curate their slate of games (sure, this game has been in the works since before the Bethesda buyout, but at the end of the day Xbox allowed them to come out and say 11/11/22 so far out), and how consistently they can get them out of the door. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but does that mean that the only first party Xbox game currently slated for 2022 is S.T.A.L K.E.R. 2? (EDIT: completely forgot this was delayed indefinitely due to the invasion of Ukraine, so yeah, they've got nothing slated currently) Guess it means I can put off picking up the Series X a bit longer

Well, this warms my heart. It's 100% true, and I'm glad that my childhood heroes on the silver screen are getting the love I always thought they deserved 15 days to go. I'm nervous, but so, so excited

Season 3 of Mob Psycho lands this October

Well now you've seen it, I don't need to hold back: totally agree, glad you loved it! Soundtrack is also just banger after banger, RADWIMPS rule gah I guess I'm watching Your Name again sometime soon now

That's my bad then! I had no luck finding what you quoted in any sort of official confirmation from anyone involved - the exact quote is only on three sites currently including N-Europe, it's not on the 505 Games website, the official page of the game hasn't been updated to include Switch, it's not mentioned in the Kickstarter, it's not even been announced on 505's or Eiyuden Chronicle's Twitter page, and heck even on the ResetEra page for the series it's not been given a mention yet - but having another look I did manage to find official confirmation of Hundred Heroes getting a Switch release from Rabbit and Bear's own site (translated): So yeah, forgive my confusion - I couldn't find anything official outside of a clearly quoted statement, because literally no-one is talking about it but us, not even 505 directly when I was looking around Still, I think it might be worth updating the thread title to be about Hundred Heroes and Rising, seeing as that game is what everyone's discussing here at the moment? I'd love to discuss Rising too once I get around to it

@Dcubed think you've got the two titles mixed up, so I'm not sure if the thread title needs updating: while Rising (the 2D platformer) is confirmed for the Switch and launched yesterday (and is the game being discussed), Hundred Heroes (the JRPG) is still being looked into for a Switch release. This is from Monday's Kickstarter Pre-Launch Update for Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising: Not that I really doubt that it will eventually come to Switch one way or the other, but it's still not 100%; that statement you quoted is very confusingly phrased, as it does make it sound like they're talking about Hundred Heroes, but everything else is relating to Rising. I backed it on Kickstarter so thought I'd missed a pretty important update about Hundred Heroes coming to Switch when I spotted your thread! Anyways, I'm curious to check Rising out, but not really in a rush to get into it: sounds a bit too easy, swimming in 7's, etc., from what I've heard, but it does look great visually, and from what I've heard it sounds like it follows Suikoden closely with a huge focus on character bonds. I'm always a fan of whenever a smaller project is made leading up to the main event - and it's a nice little call back to when Suikogaiden did so for Suikoden III to bridge the gap between it and II - and even more so if anything carries over in terms of lore or items/materials. I haven't seen much said about the music so far, which is a shame, as Suikoden had some excellence music and Eiyuden Chronicle as a series has a whole lot to live up to in that regard. Hundred Heroes on the other hand, please inject into my veins yesterday, that's probably one of the games I'm most excited for after enjoying Suikoden and Suikoden II so much

Nah, I'm pretty sure that the official English transcript will be totally different to the fan translation and talk about how they're actually pulling the plug on game development and that Nintendo are shutting down

Just caught up... Ooblets - looks very charming, definitely saw some Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Bugsnax, and Wattam/Katamari inspiration while watching. Didn't really get a great idea of what exactly the gameplay loop was? But seems like a perfectly chill late summer/early autumn game. Batora: Lost Haven - top-down ARPGs aren't something I've played up until now...and this isn't going to be the game that changes that. Just didn't seem like it did a good job of saying whether it did or did not do anything different to every critically acclaimed top-down RPG out there? Elec Head - yeah, instantly sold. Looks charming, love the look, and seems very focused on getting the most out of its mechanics - and unlike the two games preceding it, I actually come away knowing what's different and what the game is going to play like. Short but very effective showing, will be looking for this when it comes out this summer! Soundfall - think it looks visually very generic in its colour palette, and I'm never really a big fan of games that look very round and smooth when it comes to character models...BUT, I'm sold on the idea, and it's a perfect game to shadow drop. Might have to give it a look at some point! Wildfrost - some of those card designs are giving me massive Adventure Time vibes, which is a positive (well, if that isn't a false promise). Card games aren't really something I gravitate towards, but the holiday window seems perfect for the look and vibe of the game. Will wait to see more. TABS: Totally Accurate Battle Simulator - looks like very silly fun, especially with the unit creator. Summer seems a smart window for it, curious to see how they try to format the gameplay loop. Gunbrella - oh hell yes, count me interested. Umbrella-wielding woodsman with a shotgun? How can I not be interested?! Going to be a long wait until this drops next year, but looks like good fun. We Are OFK - honestly just not at all vibing with how this game is always introduced, there's very little gained by their intros, and I'm sure more people would be in if they just went straight to the game instead. I don't know where I stand on this game, but maybe that is my stance? Silt - hand drawn black and white underwater puzzle adventure? You have my interest. And June? Not that long a wait at all! Mini Motorways - was actually thinking of picking up Mini Metro on my phone, but maybe I'll get this instead. Always a fan of a simple but well presented game, and a shadow drop is always a bonus these days in my eyes. Wayward Strand - love the simple hand drawn look, reminds me of Florence, and is also kind of giving me a Roald Dahl vibe? July 21st - I'm curious to see more. Cult of the Lamb - who isn't in? I'm all for some religious cults and the corrupting of innocents, obviously. Looks great fun, shame we haven't really got something a bit more to latch onto in terms of a date outside of it landing this year, but I'll wait somewhat patiently Another Crab's Treasure - Sebastian's origin story is way darker than I was expecting. I'm a little curious, at least. 2023 is a long way away, so hopefully they do a good job of showing this off in the future. Muh-Muh-Muh-MONTAGE! - not much really grabbing my attention here honestly, other than Idol Manager (I'll wait to see more but it kind of looks like a 2D and simplified crossover between Yakuza's cabaret club and idol stuff, which could be good fun if executed just right). Also thought OneShot: World Machine Edition looked very interesting, but we barely got to see it. EDIT: it got a full trailer, and I dig it. In my opinion, this should have been shown in full in the Showcase. Keeping an eye on that for when it lands this summer then. Same goes for OPUS, which is out now and looks much better here than it did in the handful of shots in the montage: /EDIT Overall, I thought it was a fine showing, with a few games I'm interested in grabbing, namely being Elec Head, Gunbrella and Silt. Not sure what was up with the stream or if they just consciously decided to terribly dub over some of the people who showed their faces to announce things, but oh well. Can't help but come away thinking that some games were shown off fairly poorly, and honestly, I would've liked to see more from some of the games included in the closing montage. My Verdict: 6.5/10 Also...where the hell was Omori? I believe it was the last Indie World Showcase in December (?) when we got told that it was coming in Spring 2022, so it being a no-show isn't much of a confidence booster. I believe the physical edition for Switch in the States is slated for release on June 17th (could be a placeholder, but seems awfully specific), so maybe it'll be a shadow drop during/be announced to release shortly after Nintendo's potential Not-E3 showing next month?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Like I said, they'd be lucky if those cash reserves kept them afloat for two years; I mention Ultimate Team's revenue in particular just to illustrate how stupidly well that single mode does. And yeah, I agree that they've been struggling, and I definitely get the vibe that they're gearing up to be sold. I think a lack of ambition outside of Respawn has really taken their wheels off the last few years (can't imagine it's great for onboarding talent either), they completely mismanage exclusive rights time and again (they had some success, but overall the Star Wars licensing deal was poor from an output perspective, and garnered terrible backlash at times; outside of FIFA and Madden, they simply make too many sports games which don't perform well enough), and some of their other IP's have been dwindling (Battlefield) while they've only just figured out that they should bring back popular IP in a big way (Mass Effect, Dead Space remake) yet weirdly have mostly been ignoring the potential of remasters. Their slate is often as predictable as it is straight up boring to read through. Yeah, we'll have to wait and see, but if FIFA (the entity, not the series) is one thing, they are unjustifiably arrogant, so I imagine they were shocked when EA decided not to pay a pretty extortionate amount for their name. It honestly wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they either straight up say "Look forward to EA Sports FC 24!" when the game starts dying down, or runs ads in in-game menus as they already do to tease things, etc. Or, like you suggest, something very shady like a relaunch of effectively the same title just without FIFA's name plastered everywhere. Now that I think about it, I can totally see the PS Store next year recommending EA Sports FC 24's product page from FIFA 23's, not even as an act of aggression, but just because that's how you should be curating your digital storefront (to promote the upcoming football game made by the same company on the page of the current football game).

It's a good question, and it boggles my mind a fair bit that they chose to go with the name of their virtual in-game catalogue rather than snatching the opportunity to rebrand. I think the shorthand to refer to EA's football game will remain as 'FIFA' for the time being, but EA Sports FC is about as half arsed and dreadful as the games themselves often are these days. Virtual Football, Pro Football, Ultimate Football like you suggested (think that's the strongest one to be honest), I mean pretty much anything else will do, hell why not get all high and mighty and name it 'EA Sports: The Beautiful Game'? I think it just needs to be a vessel of a title, as I don't think anything they come up with can really challenge the brevity you achieve with 'FIFA' (and it also inadvertently corrects Yanks on their use of the term 'soccer' ), but unfortunately I really don't think it'll be an issue for them though, even if it's a stupid name. A really stupid name. I mean, I think the only power FIFA really has is their name and FIFPro licensing (which won't impact EA too much anyways at this point, as a lot of their deals are directly with clubs, which has been increasingly frustrating to watch when it comes to the rights of Italian clubs going up in smoke; other than that, I think they've smartly jumped off at the right time while FIFA are looking for their next fix of corruption money). I looked up the figures just (thought it was worth clarifying what is up with respective financial might) and EA's revenues and cash reserves are much larger than FIFA's - which shouldn't be too surprising, as let's not forget that FIFA's main source of income is a quadrennial tournament, which is exactly why they won't shut up about trying to make it a biennial tournament, and us why their finances are looked at as a three year window (culminating in a World Cup year). They're also a non-profit, so while they have some reported $2.7 billion in cash reserves as of 2019, a lot of their money is (supposedly) pumped straight back into the sport. EA reportedly has cash reserves more than twice as large ($5.44 billion in cash reserves as of 2019) and the reported annual revenue for EA's Ultimate Team alone ($1.62 billion FY ending 31st March 2021) is just under a quarter of FIFA's entire projection for their triennial revenue covering the period of 2019 - 2022 (more than $6.44 billion projected for this period as of February). Long and short of it: FIFA has their name and some real money, EA no longer has the FIFA name but also has a lot more money immediately available* and some skin in the game industry already. *for clarity I think it is worth noting that EA's cash reserves would likely only keep them afloat a couple of years if they stopped posting profits. It's very unlikely, but might as well share everything I find. EA are weird. They do indeed. Despite being referred to as FUT in shorthand, EA are the registered owners of the trademark to 'Ultimate Team'. Yeah, agreed. As someone who plays Career Mode exclusively when they do play FIFA, it's long been an afterthought for EA (and that is a generous statement), with so many missed opportunities. They lack ambition. While competition should only be good, FIFA gonna FIFA and stuff their faces with greed and malice. They remind me of that one scene of Chihiro's parents in Spirited Away... Not that EA are much better, mind you. I think it says something that 2K Sports would probably be ideal from a gameplay and potentially single player experience, but let's not forget that they would also be ideal to fulfill FIFA's greedy ask of throwing a crap load of sponsors into their games too in some very disgustingly overt ways, as they already manage in NBA 2K. The biggest shame of all of this for me is that it's a World Cup year, and we're seemingly not going to have any official content for said World Cup. I know we only DLC back in FIFA 18, but still, that was something. I think EA's advantage here is that they already have a successful model which - despite leaving single player modes behind - does a very good job of keeping players informed of major and even some very minor updates (such as Maradona image rights issues the other day meaning he's been pulled from the game temporarily), and I'm sure they are going to plaster the name 'EA Sports FC' all over their unavoidable notifications when you hop onto the game in the coming months. They also seemingly have a year or two to cement EA Sports FC as the new brand name. I do also think we're (collectively as a more hardcore gaming community, not you specifically Jonnas) oftentimes guilty of underestimating the FIFA audience a little bit; most of them might only play a handful of games, but man, do they really keep on top of news for those games. It's anecdotal, but I think back to early June 2016 and the guys in my high school group (people most of us would politely label as being more casual gamers: FIFA, CoD, Assassin's Creed and GTA are 90%+ of their interactions with gaming) were blowing up a group chat as they were busy sharing leaked clips and going mental over the at-the-time unannounced 'The Journey', a single player mode added for the first time in FIFA 17. Now that I think about it, I wonder how - if it does at all - this will impact EA's current agreement with PlayStation for their marketing deal? As I would have to imagine that the FIFA series is directly referenced in such a deal, rather than "the football game from EA Sports."

Thought it deserved a thread, seems pretty huge, but has been rumoured for a while now. Who could've guessed that the one entity greedier than EA would be FIFA itself? I'm sure FIFA will continue to be used as the shorthand, but it's going to be very confusing in the future with an entire generation trained to call it FIFA and bringing their kids up on it. This is all a very long and roundabout way of me pointing out how absolutely awful a name EA Sports FC is, even if it is the name of the virtual catalogue that's been around in these games for ages

Man, the MH Pro Controllers always look so nice, and this one is no exception:

Here we go again... itsfinallyhappening?.gif

It looks...kind of rough in spots? And only mentions next-gen consoles at the end now.

As had been rumoured: Should be fun! I don't play nearly enough indie games, but a lot of the ones I do have interest in have been mentioned in previous Indie World Showcases, so hopefully we get an update here on those (looking at you, Omori).

Don't forget folders and themes! Stares blankly at PS5

I can never feel too bad for corpheads, but I have to imagine they've been a bit shellshocked having to time and again reduce their sales projections for the PS5. I mean, their very first projection for the PS5 as that it would ship 15 million units from launch through to 31st March 2021, and here we are with the results for the FY ending 31st March 2022, and it's only at 19.3 million units sold. It's impressive given the components shortage, but it's pretty crazy that this time last year their projection was to have 50 million PS5 consoles shipped by 31st March 2023, compared to 40 million for the PS4 in a similar timeframe, and again, here we are with it tracking at - potentially under - the PS4's shipments. It definitely screws up their plans for exclusives, like you say it's a bit of give and take right now between having PS5 console exclusives and actually just getting these things out in the wild. With the components shortage I do wonder how it will impact their potential other SKU's - I feel like we'd normally be expecting a Slim right around now, but could be off in saying that? - but yeah, it's messy, and it ain't pretty to watch. Still crazy to me that they waited as long as they did to start selling plates, I feel like they need to grab what they can for the time being and run! And, I mean, it's no real reason to fret, but it does come at a time where I think the Series S being in stock consistently and Game Pass looking a better and better deal for an average player does swing some of that momentum away from PlayStation, even though they'd probably be destroying sales records otherwise. Part of me wants to say you're crazy - and, well, I still just might, just because if you do that it could be a bit of a hassle tracking a PS5 down for a while - but I completely get where you're coming from. At the moment within the next 12 months what is there in terms of true next-gen PS5 exclusives? Maybe I'm forgetting something but I think it's just Final Fantasy XVI (which, you know, I still feel could work its way onto the PS4) and the long rumoured The Last of Us remake (which surely has to be next-gen exclusive, but then is it being bundled with Factions, and if so aren't they completely limiting their player pool by having it be next-gen exclusive?). At the moment my PS5 is a very expensive blu-ray player and a way to get a boosted PS4 experience, it's very bizarre, but I do have a lot of PS4 games on my shelf anyways so it's tough to complain

PS5 sales are continuing to slip off the back of supply constraints, selling 11.5 million hardware units of the PS5 vs their initial target of 14.8 million hardware units for the fiscal year. Been rough for the PS5 since its launch. That's what, still shy of 20 million units in its lifetime now - 19.3 million hardware units I think? Wild, but clearly massively constrained by the components shortage. I'm curious now just how this will impact PlayStation's planned slate of PS5 (Console) exclusive releases, and I wouldn't be surprised (or really blame them) if titles like Spider-Man 2 ended up being releasing across generations; they need to cover their lost ground somewhere, and I think that's probably the most reasonable way to do so.

Nintendo's earnings report for Q4 FY 2022 covering the period of 1st January 2022 - 31st March 2022 has dropped, and it's my favourite time of the fiscal year (is that a thing?), as it's the end of the fiscal year and the annual report! The Big Takeaways 4.11 million hardware units sold for this quarter between the Switch, Switch Lite, and the Switch OLED, bringing the total number of Switch consoles sold to 23.06 million units for the fiscal year (1st April 2021 - 31st March 2022), and bringing the total lifetime sales of the Switch to 107.65 million. It is the second year in a row that the Switch has surpassed 20 million hardware units sold for a fiscal year (achieving 28.83 million units sold in the fiscal year ending 31st March 2021), and marks the second-highest sell-through within a fiscal year for the Switch. This all means that the console just about surpassed the twice reduced sales projections for the year, which at the end of last quarter was put down as being 23 million units sold by Nintendo. Nintendo are projecting console sales of 21 million units over the next fiscal year due to end 31st March 2023, which if achieved, would bring the Switch's lifetime sales to 128 million hardware units, and if it does so, it will be tracking to likely surpass both the Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2 by the end of the fiscal year ending 31st March 2025. However, to achieve this, it needs to overcome an obstacle it has come across multiple times over the last two years, which is the components shortage; don't be surprised if we hear this initial projection get lowered once or twice over the next twelve months. Total software sales for the year are 235.06 million units sold, bringing the total to 822.18 million software units sold in the Switch's lifetime, a growth from last year's 230.9 million units sold in the FY ending 31st March 2021. As of this date there are now a total of 39 titles which are million-sellers, 26 of these being from Nintendo, and 13 others by third party publishers. Nothing has changed in terms of the Switch's position in comparison to the best-selling consoles of all-time: it is still fifth, and within the next fiscal year should successfully chase down the PS4 (117.2 million units sold as of today's fiscal year report from Sony) and Game Boy/Game Boy Colour (118.69 million units sold) to take third. Kirby and the Forgotten Land enjoyed shipping 2.65 million units this quarter, with a sell-through of 2.10 million units, a solid debut considering that it released less than a week before the end of the fiscal year on 25th March. Somewhat surprisingly, Pokémon Legends: Arceus does not instantly leap onto the Top 10 best-selling Switch titles, having sold a still stupidly impressive 12.64 million units since its release on 28th January, which is a feat Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl managed to do within its debut quarter (13.97 million units in roughly six weeks in Q3, now standing at a total of 14.65 million units sold, vs the approx. eights weeks of Legends: Arceus between its debut and end of the quarter). This can probably be explained by Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl debuting in the holiday quarter, however. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl are now the best-selling Pokémon remakes to date, having just edged out the Let's Go titles this past quarter. As expected at the end of last quarter, Metroid Dread has now clinched the title of best-selling Metroid game with 2.90 million units sold (the previous best-selling was Metroid Prime at 2.84 million units sold). Top 10 Best-selling Switch titles as of 31st March 2022 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 45.33 million Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 38.64 million Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 28.17 million The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 26.55 million Pokémon Sword/Pokémon Shield - 24.27 million Super Mario Odyssey - 23.50 million Super Mario Party - 17.78 million Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Pokémon Shining Pearl - 14.65 million Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu!/Pokémon Let's Go Eevee! - 14.53 million Ring Fit Adventure - 14.09 million

Tomorrow™ at 14:00 BST. Funny timing after that PS Store spot over the weekend. My expectations are in check and I'm expecting the announcement of only a 4 player mode.

In the early hours a few days ago there was the news about the deal being wrapped up for us to be sold to Boehly: One of those where once you get into billionaires it feels like pretty much everyone has a seedy past, but hey, at least it's not that racist American or someone from a country where executions are going down, and it's someone who has a track record of backing and maintaining a team at a top level. Some of the rumours going around at the moment are that Boehly and co. are ready to hit the ground hard on transfers as soon as the deal is through, which is definitely needed as we've been doing no work on this while all of this background noise around the sale has been going on, and also seeing as half of our defence is likely leaving us this summer (Azpi, Rudi, Christensen and Alonso) as well as potentially a few others (Lukaku, Jorginho). Going to be an interesting few weeks while we wait for the deal to go through, and then hopefully it's on to a busy summer! Scenes when they get knocked out at the semis of the CL next season Kidding aside, intrigued to see how this goes. Pep has only really worked with one other out-and-out world class no. 9 that he's let stay as a no. 9 - Lewa at Bayern - and while he was still a huge threat during Pep's stint there, I always felt like some of his stronger aspects at the time were dulled by not necessarily being part of a system which best suited his playing style (fast-paced and very direct play under Klopp at Dortmund, and Heynckes and Flick at Bayern). If Grealish really hits the ground running and Foden continues as he has been, I'm nervous for everyone when Haaland comes over with the quality of the service he'll be getting; a lot of times during the Madrid tie where it was clear that they were missing a presence in the box. Also! Fair play to him for coming to the Prem first. La Liga and potentially Madrid are always going to be there if and when he's ready (rumours that he wouldn't get paid as much seeing as Mbappé is their main target, and that he doesn't want to be playing third fiddle to Benzema and Mbappé) but it's great to see a world class player (when he's fit) coming to the Prem ahead of his potential prime rather than coming here after a stint in Spain, as I think his size, strength and explosiveness make sure that he'll be a threat wherever he goes.