Julius

The more the merrier - Square Enix, Sega, Bandai Banco and more are coming to this year's E3: Can't believe they used a Ghibli GIF. There's going to be a Ni no Kuni mobile game here, isn't there?

Something else worth noting about today's report is that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 10.6 million copies over the course of FY2021. For comparison, we learned Ghost of Tsushima had sold 6.5 million copies back in March, just under 9 months after release. By all accounts, the Mario Kart figure also seems to be higher than the sales of many other AAA titles released last year, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake. We haven't had an update on The Last of Us Part II for a good while now, so we can't compare there, but the fact that it's still going toe-to-toe with some of the biggest new exclusive releases just speaks to Nintendo's success in pumping out evergreen titles. It's pretty crazy! In terms of other titles still going strong released before last year, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold 5 million copies over the course of the last fiscal year, Breath of the Wild sold 4.86 million copies, Super Mario Party sold 4.69 million, Pokémon Sword & Shield sold 3.73 million, and Super Mario Odyssey sold 3.42 million.

Yep, combined. A breakdown of the 84.59 million sold is 69.89 million of those are Switch consoles, and the remaining 14.7 million are Switch Lites

Also found some graphs to look at: Ouch at that Wii drop-off. I don't think we'll see anything like that with the Switch, considering there is no direct console hybrid competition like there was for the Wii and the Kinect/PlayStation Move, and back then their handhelds were clearly under threat from mobile gaming. But I think the Switch's performance in the next FY is kind of out of Nintendo's hands, so it would take a lot of optimism for me to say it hasn't peaked in fiscal year sales yet. Even if they manage to ship the Breath of the Wild sequel, the Pokémon Diamond & Pearl remakes, and Pokémon Legends Arceus by March 31st 2022, I think it's more a question of maintaining stock than anything else, because everyone's being hit by the chip shortage. Then again, even with knowledge of the ongoing shortage, they're forecasting 25.5 million hardware units sold for the next year to their investors, and they've likely left space for that forecast to be bumped up every quarter (as we saw at this point last year - they were only forecasting 19 million hardware units sold for FY2021!), so they seem very confident that they won't be impacted, because we would have seen that factored into their projections otherwise. I think the takeaway here is obviously that the Nintendo ninjas caused the chip shortage Pretty crazy that it's still tracking just below the DS on there. I really have no idea where the Switch ends up when all is said and done a few years from now, Their weakest quarter for hardware sales for this past fiscal year (this past quarter) was just below the hardware sales of their second best quarter of the previous year. Their next weakest quarter, thanks in large part to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, sold nearly triple the hardware units that they would normally sell at that time of year. That's pretty insane!

Nintendo's FY3/Q4 2021 earnings report is out, covering the period of 1st January 2021 - 31st March 2021. It's an extra special one as it's their End of Year earnings release! The Big Takeaways - 4.73 million units sold this quarter between the Switch and Switch Lite, with a total of 28.83 million units sold throughout the fiscal year, bringing the overall tally up to 84.59 million units sold to date for the Switch. - Total software units sales from the past fiscal year are 230.9 million, just under 40% of the console's lifetime software sales of 587.12 million. - Off the back of this, Nintendo is forecasting sales of 25.5 million Switch consoles for the next fiscal year, FY2022, ending 31st March 2022. They are also forecasting a decline in both revenue and profit over the course of the next year when compared to the last year, likely due to the positive impact of the COVID-19 stay at home period on sales, and not expecting an Animal Crossing: New Horizons-sized hit. - These sales have has seen it sail by the official sales figures of the Game Boy Advance family (81.51 million units sold) and the estimated sales figures of the PSP (80 - 82 million units sold). The Xbox 360's sales are a bit tougher to nail down, as some cite it as being a pretty nebulous 84+ million, whereas Statista cites it as being 85.8 million. Going with the latter figure, the Switch has entered the list of top 10 best-selling consoles of all time for the first time, sitting tight at number 9. Next on its hit list would be the Xbox 360 and then the PS3 (reported as being more than 87.4 million units sold) - which it will likely surpass by the end of this quarter - and after that is Nintendo's own best-selling dedicated home console, the Wii (101.63 million units sold). - Nintendo has had broken their own record (set in FY2009 off the back of the Wii and the DS, when they recorded an operating profit of ¥555.26 billion) for highest operating profit in a fiscal year by a console manufacturer, with an operating profit in FY2021 of ¥640.63 billion. - Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury sold 5.59 million units in its first six weeks since launch. This means that it nearly outsold the Wii U release of the game (5.89 million units sold) in that timeframe, and has more than likely surpassed it in the month or so since March 31st. - In just over a year since it launched, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has managed a figure of 32.63 million units sold. Good lord. - Ringfit Adventure has passed the 10 million units shipped mark, with 10.11 million units out in the wild, after shipping 1.43 million units in this last quarter, just missing out on a place in the top 10 list of best selling Switch titles. - Super Mario 3D All-Stars has sold 9.01 million units since its release in September, up less than 1 million units over the course of this quarter. Top 10 Best-selling Switch Games as of 31st March 2021 1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 35.39M 2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 32.63M 3. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 23.84M 4. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 22.28M 5. Pokémon Sword/Pokémon Shield - 21.10M 6. Super Mario Odyssey - 20.83M 7. Super Mario Party - 14.79M 8. Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!/Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee! - 13.28M 9. Splatoon 2 - 12.21M 10. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 10.44M

Continued my Suikoden II journey the last couple of nights and have now passed the 10 hour mark, having acquired what I imagine will become my castle. I'm absolutely loving it. The pixel art has continued to blow me away, the most recent example was when something got thrown up in the air and fell to the floor, it was brilliant. Something I've also noticed since my last post regarding the "shade" is when you step into little pockets of light, such as light filtering through trees, there's a short but noticeable colour transition for your character from dark to light. It's such a tiny detail which really shows off just how polished this game is, every time I notice something new like this I can't help but grin, just realising how much passion was clearly poured into this game. Couple that with memorable moment after memorable moment, so many wonderful standout scenes, and I seriously struggle to imagine this game somehow fizzing out by the end. It hasn't pulled its punches on being a war story, and is so much stronger for it. I need to highlight some cool events in the story, so I'm popping them in the below spoiler tag: Something that I mentioned last time was the storage, and yeah, it has started to become an issue again. While it's still much easier to manage, I haven't seen a storage space for my items (such as the one in a base) for a good 5+ hours at this point, and so have been lugging around a full inventory, but I imagine that will change within the next hour or so. While yes, you can abandon items if you find something else you want instead, it's a bit of a pain to have that message asking whether you want to keep an item or not pop up every single time, and it's meant replacing gear with slightly better gear but not being able to build it up, which I felt was important to an extent in the first game, just considering how many characters you'll probably want to kit out. However, something I really do like, and which has made this somewhat manageable, is that when you buy items from stores you can either place them in your bag (shared inventory) or equip them directly to party members. If you're replacing an already equipped item with your purchased item, for example better headgear, then you get the option to either place that item in your bag or sell it immediately to the shopkeeper if you don't want it taking up valuable space. Little touches like these make some of the systems in the first game seem archaic by comparison! Also helps that I'm completely flush with potch without even trying Having a lot of fun with the battles too. Attached the Double Beat rune - which allows a character to double their number of attempted hits in a standard attack - to Nanami, who already hit twice before, so is attempting to attack four times I thought of attempting to stack it (not sure if it works), but figured the other one might be better off shoring up another party member. But speaking of battles, I've got to share one of my favourite Unite attack animations so far: Riou and Nanami's Family Attack (the one below is a rare one where Nanami also gets to recover some health). Also, this wouldn't be without one of my posts without mentioning music, so here's some more excellent music: Radat Theme, White Deer Inn Theme, Coronet Theme, the returning Moonlit Night Theme, and Dandy Richmond - one hell of a theme for a private eye, that's for sure! Plenty of returning faces, but the new characters feel just as strong, and there's so much connective tissue which makes it all feel so natural. There is something I want to touch upon after having recently visited South Window and Radat, it's speculation more than anything, but it definitely belongs in a spoiler tag: Continuing to have a great time with it, already looking forward to my next session

We made it through to the final of the UCL tonight and I seriously can't believe it, it feels very weird. I don't know if it's just because 2012 was such a special run with such an old spine to our team and this feels like it came out of pretty much nowhere, with a mostly young and inexperienced squad, but we've been solid when it's counted and I guess that's all that matters. Real Madrid might still have some of their star names from their successes in the last decade still around, but they looked tired tonight. It's almost the sort of performance which might make you expect some big signings in the next few transfer windows, they've been very slow to transition this old guard out at this point. Crazy to think this will be Thiago Silva's first UCL final if memory serves, and pretty sure that Tuchel might be the first manager in the modern era to make it to consecutive finals with different clubs, but might need to fact check that. Either way, very, very nervous about the final. A team managed by Guardiola hasn't lost a final for a decade, City are in imperious form, and it feels like there's an energy to them that I can't see in us that I just can't place, it's weird. If we can give as spirited and energetic a performance as we did tonight, though, anything's possible. Great performances tonight by Kante, Havertz, and Mount in particular - super weird (but absolutely awesome) having someone a couple of weeks younger than you who is also a massive fan of a club score to put us through to the final I say that not to compare myself to where he's at, but more that I can't imagine the pressure he's under, and he's thriving in it. Mbappé being a few days older than me and winning the World Cup? Now that does feel a little weird

Episodes of Loki will be releasing on Wednesdays, meaning the show has been bumped up to start on June 9th. Have to imagine that's them wanting to spread their biggest IP throughout the week, no point cannibalising your viewer numbers by having this and The Bad Batch in direct competition on Fridays.

I haven't! Admittedly though, I feel like that's the case for a lot of games for me, as I didn't really have much exposure to them growing up. It's why I tend to jump from one generation to another a lot of the time when playing games, though the preference I guess would be to have everything on the newest system to make things easier. As for Resident Evil, my only exposure to the series, as far as I can remember, was watching one of my friends play Resident Evil 4 around his house straight after school one day, and that must have been over a decade ago now! I have the image of Leon carrying a rocket launcher in a church or graveyard (? There were definitely some Gothic buildings, I know that much) burned into my mind, and that's pretty much it. Actually, now that I think about it, I did also try the Resident Evil 2 demo a couple of years ago, when I noped right out of there almost immediately horror films I'm fine with, but horror in games just isn't something I've had much experience with or exposure to, and I think that's why it gets to me a bit more (also being in control, because you know I'd sprint the other way in a lot of these situations - who wouldn't?!). Playing The Last of Us for the first time last year was putting myself well out of my comfort zone, but I knew that if I wanted to understand games and my own thoughts on them as a whole better (and experience one of the most critically acclaimed ones out there) that it was something I eventually needed to do, and it's up there as one of my favourite gaming experiences (but screw that hotel basement). The Last of Us Part II got to me much more, I got through it over a few days and remember not sleeping particularly well, though that game felt purposely long and much more intense, and the realism of some of the violence in that game is probably what disturbed me the most. Demon's Souls was taking myself even further out of my comfort zone to experience my first From Software game, and that was a tough one because of how much I perhaps had to unlearn about what many games today tell you to do, so there was certainly a learning curve to it, and coupled with some of the imagery, atmosphere, music, sound design, etc. in that game, it was one I was surprised I ended up loving so much. I think that's why it's so important to always be willing to give things a go, you never know what you'll click with or bounce off of. Goodness knows what I'll do when I get around to Bloodborne, though. I'm sure that'll be fun As for how I'm tackling Resident Evil, I've thought about it and read around a bit, but I'm always open to suggestions. My idea was to start with Resident Evil Remake, then play 2 Remake, 3 Remake, 4, 5, 6, 7, and then Village, then likely branch out to other games from there. I'm always willing to give older games a go, and so while Remake might not be the easiest entry point (I have to imagine that 2 Remake or 4 would be?), that's where my mind goes when thinking about where I'll start, and I think it might be tricky to return to after. I know there are the originals for 1 - 3 (I think they're still available on PS3 and PSP/Vita, unless I'm mistaken?), but my concern about reaching that far back to start off is how I'll fare with tank controls, and potentially bouncing off the series if I don't enjoy my experience with them?

Some reviews going up, seems to have done really well: Think this will finally be the summer I get around to playing a Resident Evil game, but looking forward to eventually catching up and trying this at some far-flung point in the future

My younger brother has been keeping up to date with the volume releases, and from what he's told me, the anime essentially makes some of those fights what they are. He still loves it, but can't wait to see how ufotable adapt it. So, once you get to the end of chapter 52 where the first season ends, might be worth checking out some of those Season 1 fights online easily some of the best fight animations, they knocked it out of the park, and you're missing out on some stellar music too!

Agreed, and it's such a shame. I think the next step the industry could greatly benefit from is us knowing more about what goes on behind the scenes, whether that be documentaries shining a light on development (like Raising Kratos which we got for God of War) and the history of the industry, and more transparency over budgets and unit sales. At the moment, what constitutes success to these companies is almost impossible to figure out, as evidenced by Jason Schreier's recent article on Sony Bend and how Metacritic is now seemingly a factor in what success looks like too. Managing expectations better knowing whether you're walking into something being primed as a blockbuster or a smaller release based on their budgets I feel would help, though on the other hand, I guess it could also just further the split between some in the gaming community. At the same time, though, knowing more names and faces to associate with games can only be a good thing in my opinion. Even as someone who has been following gaming news for a few years now, I feel like I know so little about the people behind the games and what they have to go through. Anyone with a shred of empathy should be able to understand to some extent Jason Schreier's work on investigating crunch, but at the same time, it's easier to attach emotions to people than it is simply an article on the matter. Kind of surprised he hasn't tried to put an investigative video together now that I think about it. Plus, it's genuinely interesting stuff!

A fictional film about people walking around playing Pokémon GO would actually be kind of hilarious. But I genuinely also think that a documentary about Pokémon GO's players, it's rise, reception, etc., would be a fascinating watch. It dominated the summer of 2016, and that was an Olympics / Euro's year! And speaking about documentaries, uhhhhhhhh...yeah, let's see some Nintendo documentaries. We saw that footage come out over the last few years of their offices, and I really enjoy going back to watch and read the Iwata Asks stuff, it's brilliant to get more insight into the industry, especially a company which we generally don't get that great a look into. While we still have living legends over there like Miyamoto, let's see some direct-to-streaming documentaries on individuals, put the spotlight on relatively (or completely) unknown stories, and give us a peek behind the curtain. I absolutely adored Disney's Imagineering documentaries, so something similar about the history of Nintendo seems like such an obvious choice.

Well this is...something. So what's going to have the worst stock situation, the console or the shoes?

The retractable lightsaber lives and it looks GLORIOUS. Also just finished the first episode of The Bad Batch. Holy smokes. Uh, yeah, the first episode is 70+ minutes long, and every single of them was great: the animation quality picks up exactly where the end of The Clone Wars Season 7 left off, which is to say it's great; the music has been excellent; they've done a great job of instantly selling me on these characters (much more so than in the adapted arc for Season 7 of The Clone Wars); and it hasn't spent any time sitting around wasting, it's just got on with it. Already so many familiar faces outside of the Bad Batch, too. Best premiere a Star Wars animated series has had by a looooooong shot. Guess I'll dive into a spoiler tag! Great first episode, very much looking forward to Friday for the next one! Haven't really been any announcements today, which is a bit strange as I feel like we do normally get a few things on May 4th, but there's been a rumour going around today that Lucasfilm Animation is looking to start putting out films, which I am all for after how their longer form episodes and arcs from the end of The Clone Wars and the start of The Bad Batch have turned out. Fingers crossed this means we'll be seeing some of the abandoned arcs from The Clone Wars - such as Cad Bane vs Boba, Crystal Crisis, Dark Disciple, and Son of Dathomir - adapted for Disney+.

Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier, and while I could see PlayStation and Xbox grinning and bearing some of it (though some of the internal PlayStation stuff floating around too likely does annoy them quite a bit), I could see Nintendo being absolutely miffed right now, because they clearly seriously hate leaks. Now they'll never hear the end of Samus not coming to Fortnite, which will probably make them clamp down harder and be less inclined to have a character turn up in Fortnite in the future. I honestly could see heads rolling at Epic after this, I wouldn't be surprised if the Big Three put a lot of pressure on the higher-ups at the top of Epic's hierarchy, Sweeney in particular. I have no idea if this was his stupid idea, but I could see them posing to move out of deals which haven't yet been acted on (such as potentially anything they would have in line for Unreal Engine 5) to get their way and get him out. On the other hand though, as someone interested in the industry, this has seriously been eye-opening. Can someone do this to Disney next please? Let's see the Mouse sweat

So let's see what we have here... 1. Cashing In - EA cashing in on the strength of the license with minimal effort. Remember the expansion pass? That was fun. 2. Jedi Falling Upwards - Respawn trying to show EA that you can actually still make a decent game with the license. 3. Cashing In II: The Reckoning - The Mouse Sees All - EA somehow almost losing the license and DICE cleaning their mess after having their reputation dragged through the mud. 4. LEGO Star Wars the Ultimate - I can't believe they didn't try to port this to modern consoles. I'd pick it up for PS3 if not for the Skywalker Saga coming at...some point. 5. Star Wars: Unhinged - played through this again last year and boy is it goofy fun, even if it has aged a little poorly. Some of those facial animations though...yikes. 6. The Last Great Battlefront Game - I've put thousands of hours into this and that's probably an understatement, I know each and every map like the back of my hand, Kamino and Coruscant especially. And those space battles and flying to capital ships to destroy it from the inside! I bought this when I was in Australia in 2007, still have that copy to this day, and played it up until I got a PS4 in 2015 for the new and improved Battlefront (I say, trying to smile through tears). So many great times with that game, I can't tell you how many times I completed the campaign or Galactic Conquest. Speaking of which, easily one of the best campaigns in a Star Wars game, even if it's pretty basic and objective driven when you break it down, getting to live in the armour of a 501st Legion trooper was something I wanted to do since I first saw Episode III. This will always be on my personal list of Top 10 video games. Also spawned what became my own personal Final Fantasy VII Remake having not really grown up on too many video games, Pandemic's Battlefront III: Remember when you could climb into vehicles? It's a shame we can't do that on modern technology, right guys? Frostbite is totally incapable of this, right? Right?! (Also ground-to-space battles is one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in a video game, even if it's just touched up visuals) 7. LEGO Star Wars: The Better Films - I remember reading about this six months, maybe a year, before release in a gaming magazine in a tiny corner shop next to my primary school. First time I ever memorised a video game's release date, man I loved that cantina and watching those cutscenes back. Remember when LEGO games didn't need to be voiced? 8. Star Wars BuT wItH bLoCkS - played this so much around friend's houses growing up, and even at my after school club. I had so much of this game memorised by the time I finally got my own hands on it, it spawned a series of LEGO games and I imagine still holds up to this day. 9. Precursor to Greatness - okay but seriously, the game is probably seriously overlooked, and that's because they decided to release a sequel with so much more content, faster loading times (at least from my experience), etc., just a year later. Still, some seriously cool maps such as Rhen Var and Bespin (which had ground-to-air battles!), and I remember it having Republic Commando-styled orders too. Great game but completely overshadowed by its successor. 10. Without a Shadow of a Doubt - the only game on this list I haven't played, and I'm pretty sure that's just because I wasn't around when it released H-o-T, I've actually never played KoToR, as it wasn't easily accessible (or at least, as far as I could tell as a young kid) and not available on platforms I owned (we had an old PC, and I didn't have an original Xbox), but I still know a surprising amount about the game from playthroughs I watched, scouring Wookieepedia for as much as I could get my hands on about the era, and all of the ToR stuff from the Galactic Timeline Records, which I've probably watched through tens of times: I've got a PC more than capable of running it now, but I'm not particularly keen on playing games on it (weirdly, guess that's just what happens when my only real gaming experiences growing up were on dedicated consoles), so will await the eventual port to PlayStation/Switch (right..?) and remake. Also never played the Rogue Squadron games for similar reasons, unfortunately. Got to imagine the reason that these games didn't crack the top 10 is simply that they weren't available on PlayStation 2, otherwise I'm sure their numbers would have been bumped up enough to make the list.

What timeline is this again? What a strange one. Conte going to Inter after his success there was one thing, but Mourinho going to Roma when he's an Inter legend and was adored by the fans, having won the treble with them? What a strange, strange world we live in. What's next for him after this, Sporting? Wish him all the best, I really want to see Mourinho get back up there amongst the best in the game, it's been over a decade since he last won the Champions League (that's nearly the case for Pep too, which is pretty insane!). Honestly, I'm more surprised that he wants to return to countries where he's already won, he "only" needs to win the league in France and Germany to become the first manager to win it in all of the five major European leagues (I think Ancelotti is on four after missing out on La Liga at Madrid).

Right?! I mean, how many Japanese people emigrated to the States, got brain damage and forgot Japanese, and then only learned English as their primary language in the 90's? Pretty niche audience for sure

Yeah, you know what I meant also I might need to bleach my ears now... I thought there might have been one just considering that there was one for Kirby that my brother enjoyed (to be fair it wouldn't surprise me if there was something out there for a lot of these), but this anime in particular looks like it was limited to OVA's, originally released in 1996 in Japan, and 1997 in the US - wasn't that a few years before the US even started getting Fire Emblem games? Compare that to today and it's a total no-brainer to make a modern Fire Emblem anime. Especially considering that everyone and their mother wants a political fantasy epic these days! I genuinely think it would be absolutely massive as an anime and could be the next step the series takes towards being part of the mainstream consciousness, a game following that (let alone one actually tied directly into it) would sell like crazy.

Agreed, though I think after the inevitable success of Rift Apart next month, I wouldn't be surprised if we see PlayStation ramp up production over at Insomniac with an employment drive. They're releasing games on a biennial basis currently, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if by the end of the generation PlayStation has positioned them to put a game out just about every year, cycling between Spider-Man, Ratchet & Clank, and then either bringing an old IP like Sunset Overdrive back or doing something completely new, especially if Xbox's purchases pay off and we see content coming out consistently for Game Pass. Just a thought, could absolutely go the other way too, because I think they've got a nice pattern to their releases now as it is. But with it getting increasingly competitive in the coming years now that Xbox don't hesitate on pulling the gun on acquisitions (for better or worse), I do think Insomniac are the prime candidate of their first party studios for rampant growth.

Immediate thought is that you could have all of these shows and films about individual IP's, and through Smash Bros. you already effectively have a tournament arc built in if you want to do any crazy crossover stuff to rake it in. From the little I've played of Earthbound, I feel like the Mother series could make for a great anime. Assuming they seriously don't want to release Mother 3 (and I mean, do we have any reason to not assume this?) it could at least give fans in the west an opportunity to enjoy that story, as I think it might be easier for them to censor/alter certain things in a show rather than the game. And I think that's a much easier sell than releasing a censored version of the game at this point, to be honest. Star Fox feels like it's begging to be a Saturday morning show to be honest, and so does Paper Mario. Zelda would need a voiced Link (which I genuinely think would be the greatest hurdle to us seeing anything come of it) but would be awesome in the style of the Castlevania anime, and you could just as well base it somewhat off the manga. In terms of films though, a live-action Kirby would be the stuff of actual nightmares (I imagine a Stitch situation but instead half the town goes missing and it turns out it was the little pink guy all along). EDIT: okay but a Fire Emblem anime would actually kill, get ufotable all up and in on that. It already basically has a rabid anime community following given how many fans idolise characters and the art style too, and it has the gacha game to boot. It actually makes so much sense that that's exactly why we'll never see it

PlayStation trademarked Sunset Overdrive just over a week ago. For anyone wondering what the deal is with ownership of the IP, as the first game was released on Xbox: Interested to see how they traverse this, I imagine any hopes of a port would probably mean giving in to some kind of Xbox demand, which I can't see PlayStation doing to be honest. So maybe a sequel of sorts?