Dcubed

That's concept art, not a screenshot. I wouldn't expect the final game to look anything like it really. But it does indicate that they're pursuing a more realistic art style than their typical fare though, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. Game Freak do make good action games, so I certainly reckon they could do a good action-adventure title given the time & budget... Either way, going with a western publisher (and Private Division/Take Two of all picks!) is a choice, I'll give them that. Certainly wasn't on my bingo card at least.

A new Action Adventure title targeting a 2026 release. Developed by Game Freak and published by Private Division (part of Take Two). Yes, this isn’t April Fools. https://www.privatedivision.com/2023/05/09/private-division-announces-publishing-partnership-with-game-freak/

No idea what happened with the first part of TOTK’s Ask The Developer earlier on, but part 2 is out now… https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-9-the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-part-2/ Edit: Warning! There is a mild-moderate story spoiler in this part 2 of ATD! I don’t believe it has been officially announced outside of this ATD, so viewer discretion is advised.

Part one of the Iwata Asks Ask The Developer session for TOTK is out now! https://www.zelda.com/tears-of-the-kingdom/en/news/#!/ask-the-developer-vol-9-the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-part-1

Best bit is that the butterfly lore rabbit hole goes even deeper than @Glen-i is suggesting... The very first thing you see when you start Kirby's Dreamland? The very first Kirby game? Oh you little... But wait! I hear you say! That could just be any old butterfly! It's black & white! You have no proof that it's the same butterfly from the modern Kirby trilogy!! Ohhohohoho! But we do have a way to tell... For thankfully, Nintendo & HAL decided to make an officially colourised version for us in the form of Kirby Superstar's Spring Breeze mode... No way... It is indeed yellow & orange... just like the modern butterfly... (granted, the wing pattern is a little different, but we can chalk that up to pallette & low res sprite limitations). Oh, and if you're wondering if Super Star Ultra maintains the lore consistency? Wait. Isn't this a remake of a remake at this point? It does indeed! But oh no, this little fucker has plenty more appearances well before Kirby's Return To Dreamland... If you look veeeeeeeeerrrrryyyyy closely, he's just on the right. Little bastard can't even let Kirby enjoy his cake in peace. Ok, there's some artistic liberties being taken with both games, but the fact that the first "Curse" game ends with a butterfly and the second starts with the same butterfly... come on! Little dude gets around

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/05/advance-wars-switch-director-would-love-to-work-on-kuru-kuru-kururin Not quite the game I was expecting them to pick, but cool nonetheless. I'd be down for a new Kurukuru Kururin!

Just 100%’d the classic difficulty AW1 campaign the other day. Was pleasantly surprised to find that… It’s a nice change that I appreciated muchly. Onto the AW2 campaign! I’ve just beaten the Orange Star portion of the AW2 campaign and this remake is still utterly brill! Super, Ultra happy with how it turned out!

Very good interview, they didn’t pull their punches. I appreciate Spencer’s candour here, he’s in a rough spot and doesn’t give PR fluff. Sounds like I was right and that they weren’t really in a position to cancel the game or delay it any further, given the company’s history and their market position. It’s good that he acknowledges how he didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of Microsoft’s past and force developers into a box where they just stay in their lane and make the games that they’re known for. And it’s refreshing (and also quite sad) that he acknowledges that the console business is one where Xbox is simply never going to catch up to Sony and Nintendo with in terms of hardware sales; and that Starfield won’t change the fate of their console business. It’s clear as day that Xbox will have to differentiate itself by becoming a hardware agnostic service going forward. In that sense, the ABK M&A block is a real huge blow, but ultimately MS want their games (and Game Pass) on every device. Their end goal is to get Game Pass on Sony and Nintendo’s consoles (and eventually on other devices), they don’t really want to keep their games exclusive to their hardware because they realise that it will forever limit their audience reach.

Can’t say I had Roguelike Double Dragon on my bingo card this year, but cool; I’ll tick it off anyway!

That's nonsense. Arkane isn't going anywhere. They've had one stinker amidst a sea of critically acclaimed titles, a track record nearly unmatched in the industry (even critical darlings Naughty Dog and Insomniac put out stinkers like Fuse and Way of The Warrior! Virtually nobody has a flawless track record). There is nothing whatsoever to suggest that the studio is going to be shuttered after Redfall, especially with Microsoft taking the financial hit here. Luminous Productions are now 3/3 when it comes to failed projects (Final Fantasy Versus 13, FF15 and Forspoken) and are a massive money sink that Square Enix simply cannot afford. We all knew that the studio was doomed to be shut down well before Forspoken even launched; it's a false equivilence and you know it.

No, what I'm saying is that their reputation for how they handled acquisitions in the past put them in a position where they couldn't just walk in and cancel an Arkane game that was already far into development without very severe consequences that could've easily destroyed the entire studio (and indeed could easily have damaged all of XGS and Bethesda's other studios in the process). This put them in a bad position where they probably knew that they had a stinker on their hands, but couldn't do anything other than delay the game (which they already did for 6 months, giving up their Xmas 2022 to do so). At some point though, they need to cut their losses and stop throwing good money after bad. It would be irresponsible to throw even more development time and budget behind a game that is fundamentally rotten to the core. They did the brave thing already and gave Bethesda/Arkane amples of extra time (at a very severe cost to the Xbox brand already). At some point though, they have to just release the thing; and it's probably better for them to just leave it now and move on. It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation.

Ohohohoho! But we do know... https://www.eurogamer.net/who-killed-rare https://www.eurogamer.net/lionhead-the-inside-story And one of the biggest things that ended up killing Rare was... yes, the constant cancellation of existing projects (known, but not limited to... Savannah, Perfect Dark Core, Kameo 2, Urchin, and Sabreman Stampede). Hell, Microsoft even performed an obituary for said cancelled games within Rare Replay itself, you can go ahead and watch the interviews where the Rare staff talk about the many, many cancelled projects under Microsoft's tenure). The ghosts of Microsoft's past with how they handled older studios continues to haunt them and it absolutely would have done tremendous damage to drudge them up again here if they cancelled Redfall. The last thing Microsoft needs is another Rare on their hands. And while they're hurting now? Redfall's failure will eventually blow over. They're never getting Rare back though.

Mario Party is the most jip-py game ever made, and it's brill!

Ultimately it's a bit of a delecate balancing act when it comes to exerting control over studios you've purchased isn't it? After all, it was Microsoft's heavyhanded management style that famously ended up killing Rare and Lionhead. They've done the most harm to their studios when they ended up exerting tighter control, and that's even true now (343 being perhaps the best example, with the 18 month contractor period stipulation perhaps being the most obviously damaging thing that Microsoft forced upon the studio). They have put out some good stuff over the past few years (granted, most of it being multiplatform), but its usually come from when they have took a step back and let their developers get on with minimal corporate meddling involved. They already gave Bethesda extra time to polish up Redfall, even giving up their critical November 2022 release slot in order to give them those extra 6 or so months (and that's something that Xbox really suffered for; as they conceded the 2022 Xmas period to Sony and GOWR). At what point do you blame MS as a publisher here for Bethesda's failings? Hindsight tells us that it would've been a better idea to have just cancelled Redfall as soon as MS bought Bethesda, but is that really the case? What do you think it would've done to the morale at Arkane? How do you think it would've damaged their relationship with Bethesda and the rest of their studios? The ripple effects of dumpstering an existing project far into development as soon as they bought Bethesda would probably have been devestating, and people would've cried tears of "It's Rare all over again!!!". Damned if they do, damned if they don't in this situation.

You can blame MS for releasing this game on their watch, but they also released HiFi Rush this year as well (and they were also responsible for the shadow drop release as well, which ended up being an enormously successful marketing tactic in the end for that game). Swings & roundabouts. Not everything involving Bethesda is their fault.

Jump to 52:20 if the timestamp doesn't work for you, but Wayforward are working on a Switch exclusive game due to be announced later this year! Seems like there's a good chance that the Nintendo/Wayforward partnership will be extending beyond just AW 1+2! Which is awesome!

Anyone else feeling this announcement timing being a bit suspicious? Right off the heels of Redfall's poor reviews in an attempt to distract? No? Just me?

Bit late catching up on this, but I just wanted to say congrats on the recreation of Tongo! Looks great! It's always really cool when you see in-show games get recreated as actual fleshed out games! Also yeah, the SNES version of Starfleet Academy is mad impressive. It's nothing like the proper PC release of course (which incidentally is probably my favourite Star Trek game ever made), but it's a huge accomplishment for the SNES nonetheless; and not a single Super FX chip in sight!

I'm pretty sure you are the only person on the entire internet who hasn't complained about Cranky's voice lol.

Man, Redfall is getting utterly savaged critically. Xbox is in a real bad position now. With the ABK purchase going south now... if Starfield is anything less than an absolute blockbuster success? The division might well just be totally done.

It is indeed a true story https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2014/apr/07/video-gaming-jann-mardenborough-motor-racing The trailer does come across as a bit of a cringey Playstation advert, but it's a cool concept for a movie nonetheless. The Tetris movie ended up being pretty dang good, so the concept can certainly translate well to cinema.

Shit, that's a huge loss for Nintendo

Sub 720p resolution on PS5 when in performance mode (and even in that mode it can still drop as low as roughly 35FPS). This game is...

I freaking love Kirby Lore. @Glen-i didn’t even elaborate on how Kirby ends up tearing Haltman’s soul to shreds piece by piece during the final battle, complete with Haltman’s blood curdling screams as you destroy the different parts of him!

Sure. Just like how 3DTVs were going to be the future. And how VR was going to be the future. Cloud Gaming is well over a decade old at this point and it has completely failed to catch fire in that time. I'm sure that it'll happen any day now though... COD will ultimately be coming to multiple new platforms (including other Cloud gaming providers such as NVidia, Ubutus and Boosteroid) as a result of the merger; and Sony have been optioned to be included as well. No matter how you slice it, the merger is ultimately good for the majority of video game consumers and platform holders. It's only really Sony that stand to lose anything... you know, the big dominant market leader with an inassaliable lead in the "high-end" sector of the market... the one that really needs the help competing... the one who just so happens to be a "Big Tech" company in its own right... There is nothing logical about this decision. It's pure politics and protection of Sony's current status quo market position.