Julius

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?

If anyone needs to chuckle through the tears of this being announced instead of the Switch 2 this morning: Feels like a missed opportunity on the last one for Reyn Time

Yeah, I wasn't joking about the Activity Log idea, please let it be that Nintendo The other thing I think there's a very small chance it could be, but might make some sense just considering that they're testing it in such a weird way that we haven't seen before – is maybe some form of modern Miiverse equivalent? With Twitter/X uploads being removed from the system a while back, there's an additional barrier to sharing now than there was at launch, and I feel like that's something Nintendo would want resolved ahead of the Switch 2. And that just feels like the sort of thing you'd want to have tested rather than launch cold turkey with a new system? The method of sharing as it is now just kind of sucks

If anyone's interested in being involved in a test for an upcoming Nintendo Switch Online feature, here's your chance – open only to NSO + Expansion Pack members, with applications opening tomorrow at 16:00 BST: Seems like a neat opportunity, wonder what this is all about? Did someone say Activity Log? Seemed a bit weird to put in one of the NSO threads with how those have been split up (seems like it's open to Expansion Pack members for the Playtest, but will be a potential wider NSO feature?) – hence why I'm dropping it in here

Guess they're just waiting for the unlimited power and potential of the Switch 2 in order to cleanly bring over some 25+ year-old PS1 games