Kingy

This is a good reason why you never take these award shows seriously

@UltimateOtaku91 Yes, all of this should be dolled out through the events tab which I've never seen lock anything behind progression. Though obviously you'll have to pull for the characters that are getting buffed before you can use them.
Also I imagine you'll still be able to redeem the Jane skin regardless if you actually have her or not.

New Jane outfit is wild lol

@Bez87 No goal posts over here, bud. I'm going off the definition of "Indie" as it is classified. You're the one adding qualifications based off your preferences.

If you want to use the literal definition of Independent then there's no such thing as an indie game.

I mean the definition is right there. Sandfall isn't a subsidiary to any major publisher so it's an independent studio.
We don't live in a world where everyone gets to invent their own definition of a word like it's the goddamn tower of Babel. Or maybe we do at this point lol

Budget and outside funding isn't a factor for whether a studio is independent, just publishing. And Kepler isn't a major publisher in the industry.
And if you think self-publishing constitutes an indie game than nothing published under Devolver Digital is an indie game, which would be a ridiculous take to have.

Fire Emblem is my most anticipated but that's on Nintendo, so other than that-

I've gone from cautiously pessimistic to cautiously optimistic for RE9 after seeing Leon's gameplay.
The other Capcom games coming 2026 also look promising, here's hoping Pragmata is good.
Not thrilled that DQVII Reimagined is cutting half the original game's content, but I'll give it a chance.

Big Hops, Romeo is a Dead Man, Arknights Endfield, Reanimal, Demon Tides, Crimson Desert, Mouse P.I. for Hire, Saros, Control Resonant, Ontos, Enter the Gungeon 2, Mariachi Legends, Silver Pines, Valor Mortis, TankRat, Tomodachi Life, Rhythm Heaven... You get it, a lot of neat stuff coming out.

I'm just glad Youmamasuemay won mobile game of the year

Ah yes, Great Value AI Sonico, my favorite Sony character to ring out the new year.

Problem isn't sequels so much as it's almost exclusively sequels. Exclusively sequels to their most recent lineup on the PS4, and all of them seem to be iterative of the first.
None of them are as well regarded as the first either, the closest one being Ragnarok. Why should someone shell out $500 for a game that looks and plays almost identically to the one they already have on PS4? The story? You can watch a long play for that

I like my PS5, it gets way more use than my Switch or PC. But Sony's library for it is very weak. The weakest generation by far, and that's sworn me off getting the PS6 (or any future console for that matter, I'm not impressed with the Switch 2 either).

Expedition 33 will definitely be on there and will almost certainly win. Only other game that could take it is Silksong.
As for the other four...
Split Fiction seems very likely,
Death Stranding 2 does to, it's Kojima and the obligatory Sony pick.
Donkey Kong Bananza has a decent shot cause they typically have a obligatory Nintendo pick too. Maaaaybe Mario Kart, but that game's reception went off a diving board (for good reason it sucks) so I doubt it.
Last one will either be KCD2 or Yotei due to recency. Can't really think anything else that would feasibly be there, so that's my prediction.

@nhSnork True, there was also that crow game that got dragged for being too close to Hollow Knight. I guess we've been at this point where every Metroidvania is now a Hollow Knight just like every 3D action game is now a Dark Souls

Hollow Knight didn't invent dark caves, this looks distinctly like its own thing. People are brain broken by Palworld discourse

There were a couple of cool things but this didn't need to be a whole presentation.

They made this specifically for me

Not surprising. Switch 2 is cheaper in Japan than anywhere else thanks to the region locked model, so I imagine that's where the highest concentration of adopters are.
Dragon Quest also does crazy numbers over there.

2023!? Jesus, I didn't know this thing existed until this article

Final Fantasy VII original >>>> Remake and Rebirth

Boring game anyways, no wonder it's struggling to have legs

I'll stick with the original

First one was decent, I'll definitely grab this.

On my DoA/ Ninja Gaiden series playthrough I'm currently just out of the first DOAX and onto Ninja Gaiden Black.

So still a ways to go. But definitely sooner than later.

@dskatter I saw Ayane is in the game but idk if she's playable or not

Aw wtf, that's terrible. I've been playing through the DoA and Ninja Gaiden games and watched his G4 feature just last week.
He's a legend and international treasure, sad to see him gone

Nah, I'm moving to PC next year. Sony and Nintendo aren't really offering anything worth investing over half a grand in anymore. PS4 to PS5 has been an era of diminishing returns and I expect the PS6 to follow that trajectory.

Cowards.
Not that I'd expect them to handle anything without a dose of titanium cringe

"We have Isaac Clarke at home" looking ass

Microsoft has been spinning its wheels for over a decade now. Game Pass helped them a lot but I don't think they ever truly recovered from the XBONE fumble. Sony has definitely been running uncontested for awhile now, unless you want to count the Switch, but I would put a big asterisk next to it.

The Playstation's actual competitor is the PC, which more and more people have been adopting (myself included next year). Eventually the price of a console is going to outpace its convenience, and I think we'll be seeing that soon.

I don't think the stories themselves matter, modern Sony games just don't have much identity so releases tend to bleed into each other. If the majority of your output is some variation on an open-world action RPG, people naturally start to see a hazy cloud of similarities as time passes and they forget the minutia of what makes each one unique.

It's why the "PS5 has no games" meme is so pervasive, all they've really accomplished this generation is making sequels or remasters of PS4 games. I'm sure the games still sell decently well, but I wouldn't blame anyone for losing interest in this formula.

As much as I hate Nintendo and think we're witnessing the dying gasps of a headless corporate sludge factory only capable of reselling you the same game you played 20 years ago at premium dollar... At least the games they're reselling come out consistently and are unmistakably distinct from each other.
Mario Kart doesn't look or play like Donkey Kong, which doesn't look or play like Pokémon, or Metroid, Zelda, Kirby, Fire Emblem, Splatoon, Xenoblade, so on and so forth.
Sony doesn't have an excuse. They're sitting on a dragon's horde of unique IPs, and they can market new ones anytime they want. But I imagine they plan to stay the course so long as their current output is lucrative. Idk, they're REALLY trying to force a successful live service game into the market, so who can say.

Way down the line. Not a priority right now.

@ShogunRok REALLY like that one! Intense

@Eduard_Brenton Lmao that's the first thing that popped into my head too

@Ainu20 So to clarify, if this game had a less on-the-nose title and /or some tweaks to the main character so she didn't look as similar to Aya as she does now - there'd be no issue to you?

If I have that right, while I don't wholly agree I do understand where you're coming from along with the principle. There ought to be some expectation to make something with distinctness no matter how inspired it is of something else. Despite Expedition 33 having no unique components to it, the way those components are combined and presented gives the game its uniqueness.
That being said, I don't have a problem with something being a hardly-legally distinct this or that. Especially in this context where the franchise being copied is almost certainly dead. That seems to be the only point we differ on. I appreciate the response!

@nessisonett @Ainu20 @AdamNovice Genuine question, because I've been hearing a lot of this rhetoric for Ananta and other Chinese games recently.
How do you parse the endless stream of indie games that wear their inspirations like a badge of honor, sometimes looking and playing exactly like them?
Does it bother you that the two highest received games this year are a collection of "stolen" ideas from JRPGs and Metroidvanias of the past?
How about established IPs that churn out games that are functionally identical to each other, reusing the same ideas everytime? A lot of these old guard studios are a revolving door of employees, many of the innovators who created the formulas they use are gone now. And typically when new ideas ARE introduced, they come from another studio's game. Does this not constitute plagiarism to you and why?

Finally, can you give me some examples of recent games you think are original? I'm in the camp that we've ran out of original ideas a long time ago, and everything made today is iterative, not innovative. Which I don't think is a problem, but you guys clearly equate some form of artistic integrity to originality. Where does that start and end for you?

Hope for the best but keep those expectations low. Capcom makes a lot of big games but they're very hit or miss as is.

Looking forward to this one

@nessisonett I know right. Can't believe Spider-Man for the PS4 just blatantly copied Spider-Man for the PS2. Get an original idea already.

Biggest reaction out of me was for Soulcalibur III lol. Saros looked cool. Wolverine was a movie trailer, no gameplay no care.

This is a game by crackheads for crackheads and that's precisely why I'm going to play it.

PS1 is still the best of the three but I still like what the new one is going for. Not a fan of that like hazy dream filter Reimagined has, the colors are washed-out.
3DS version did a remarkable job for the limitations it had on a handheld, it looks excellent in motion.

So many games coming out in the late September though October period that this one falls short. I don't think Sony's done a good job showcasing this game, maybe the idea was the reception of the first game was meant to sell you on the sequel but idk how effective that'll be. I might pick it up used down the line.

The first game is the scariest, but II is definitely the best one by a wide margin. I really don't like the look of this remake though. For anyone interested, give the original a shot first.

Very nice.
The only series they have left is Legends then they'll officially be out of Mega Man games to resell us...

until Mega Man GB collection, Mega Man & Bass, Battle & Chase...
...***** Mega Man Soccer

My now most anticipated game of 2026 alongside Fire Emblem.

@4fold DQVII is an extremely long game, they're probably planning to trim the fat or at least relegate some of the scenarios to optional content.
Like with any remake, I recommend playing the original beforehand, but prepare for a whale of a video game if you do.

Guess I'm playing solo then. Hope the uh... "tension" is worth the lack of options.

@beltmenot SpongeBob and Beevus & Butthead are also anime since words don't mean anything anymore.

@tameshiyaku A lot of these dog ***** shows have 2 season contracts from the start. Almost certainly the case with Tomb Raider too, I doubt it pulled in decent numbers.

CrossWorlds doesn't look great but definitely looks more fun than MKW. Fingers crossed that it's good but if not at least Air Riders looks promising.

@LazyDaisy I don't disagree that there are leagues of goonery between Resident Evil and NIKKE, the point me (and I assume PuppetMaster) were making was that sex appeal has always been a staple for Jill's character design. Ergo why she would be a fit for a game like this, or why Capcom thinks she would be at least.