Ralizah

@Avol Same. Sequel is better, at least, and better paced than the original is.

The gameplay in this looks so improved, though. Maybe it'll carry me through 40 hours of nothing happening.

It's powerful enough to run the vast, vast majority of games well enough, which is more than could be said for Switch. It'll miss out on some stuff, but the AAA gap that existed on Switch probably won't be an issue with Switch 2.

You obviously won't buy it to play the biggest third-party games at the highest level of quality and performance, but just having a Nintendo console that can run most of what comes out is more than enough, considering people will still primarily be coming for the first-party titles.

@PlatinumMikey Adults 20 - 40 comprise the bulk of traditional console gamers, and Nintendo's own data has shown that this was true for Switch 1 as well. Children are primarily playing on tablets and smartphones, I imagine.

Switch 2 may or may not pop off as hard as the first one did, but even if it doesn't, it'll likely sell 100 million lifetime at absolute minimum.

No? It's simply more like the SNES insofar as it's a more powerful iteration of what came before it.

If anything, I'd say Nintendo is the only one of the big three left that isn't completely unrecognizable at this point.

Falcom has long targeted one platform and developed games for it.

Thankfully, NISA seems intent on making sure their games are enjoyable across platforms. Proud Nordics will probably launch across all platforms once it comes West.

Eh, I'm glad they didn't mess with the gameplay too much tbh. I just want to experience cleaned up versions of these classics in HD, not someone's half-baked attempt at 'fixing' classic game design elements.

I'm unbelievably excited to play these classics again.

Picross is a ton of fun. Good one for the Portal owners, I'd say.

That's pretty neat. I remember transferring data back and forth between the PC and Switch 1 versions of The Witcher 3... which was actually slightly painful if I'd been playing the PC version for a while lol

@species No idea why you'd think it wouldn't sell well on Switch 2. TW3 sold well on Switch despite being substantially more compromised in terms of how the visuals and performance needed to be pared back. Plus this is a launch title, so it'll get a boost from early buyers hungry for new games to play as well.

The cutscenes in these games were so awesome. Like watching an old-school anime.

Really looking forward to this collection.

I might be the only person who actually likes the Game Key Card thing. Thing is developers that opted for this would've released codes in a box otherwise. Being able to re-sell digital games is actually a massive benefit compared to traditional digital distribution.

Switch 2 is almost certainly getting Remake AND Rebirth, considering the latter runs adequately on the Steam Deck, and native Switch 2 ports will probably be capable of more than what that device can offer (faster GPU clock speeds even undocked, DLSS, etc.).

Realistically, aside from certain poorly optimized or overtly demanding titles, pretty much everything should be capable of running on it.

Nintendo fans are about to enjoy proper third party support for the first time in generations lol

One of the few Atlus PS2 classics I never got around to, along with the other Raidou Kuzunoha game.

I'm happy to hear they're improving the combat mechanics, which seem like they would be a bit... janky in 2025.

But yeah, this was one of the few highlights of an otherwise underwhelming Direct for me.

I actually had no idea this wasn't already out on Playstation.

Watched a friend play it years back. It's... strange.

One of the few highlights in that otherwise dreadful Direct. Glad Atlus is continuing to dig into their back catalog.

@HonestHick Not at all. I'm not even disagreeing with you.

My point is that the Japanese gaming industry is far healthier overall. You have a lot of companies posting record profits and/or doing well for themselves. I'm sure GTA 6 and Fortnite make those earnings look a bit thin in comparison, but as with the economy at large, it's really not healthy or viable long term to have a few players at the top hog all the wealth and success.

So, yes, the biggest earners are probably American, but the American gaming industry at large is not looking good.

Although I'd be curious to know how Chinese gacha giant Mihoyo's earnings compare to the American titans. They've become extremely prominent in recent years between Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero.

Pretty much all of the creativity in American game development, in particular, has retreated into independent development.

@HonestHick You've pretty much highlighted the issue, right? American gaming is dominated by a small handful of live service titans, and you have an entire industry releasing expensive flop after expensive flop chasing that same success. That's pretty much the opposite of a healthy game dev scene.

I'd also argue that the exploitative practice of dissolving and laying off teams after big projects are finished is antithetical to creating a healthy foundation for future success. Short-sighted corporate greed and trend-chasing has, over time, rotted our development efforts from the inside out. It's no wonder the Eastern world is rising.

@Kienda It's good to have that context, thank you.

To my mind, traveling to another country is like being invited into someone else's home. If they're a proper host, they'll make you feel comfortable and at ease, but at the same time, there's an implicit understanding that you're still just a visitor, and it's not your place to disrespect their property or customs while you're a guest in their care.

Yet again, Western tourists legitimizing every xenophobic impulse still present in the Japanese psyche. 😐

Understandable, but also annoying. 🙄

I'll look much closer at any game that releases around GTA VI's launch.

Don't really care about the game, but the malding from a certain crowd that there wasn't a wider racist backlash to the game is extremely funny.

Keep the articles coming.

Never cared for it. Performance is janky, and I really found the environments to be somewhat samey compared to their other games.

In terms of the fun factor, it wasn't even in the same realm as Elden Ring for me.

This is amazing free advertising lol

lol so many people jumping to conclusions based on very tentative early data to support a narrative. But just the game launching on Steam is significantly different enough that I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from Steam data related to other games in the series.

The game was never going to bomb. Will it sell enough millions to be properly profitable for Ubisoft? Possibly.

I could see a scenario where the 'controversy,' as with Hogwarts Legacy, actually makes people MORE interested in it, but it remains to be seen.

Nope. Only tried a couple of these games in the past, and I didn't like them when I did.

The setting is fun, but I also have a historical Japanese game in my backlog that I still need to beat (Ghost of Tsushima), so... yeah.

Also, I'm not inclined to give Ubisoft any money after they disbanded the Rayman Legends team.

This is why I like smaller companies like Falcom, Inti-Creates, etc. that know what they excel at, know what their fans want, and stick to that, instead of trying to go big with more expensive and generically designed projects.

Not everything needs to be Uncharted or Zelda. I love creatives who make unique projects that can't be found elsewhere.

I mean, no doubt she's hot, but she's kind and loyal and can beat you to a pulp with her fists. She's also one of the most well-developed characters in the game. Basically the perfect girl. 😛

Coders, musicians, artists, writers, etc. are going to hit hard times going forward. Won't be long before large creative works are LARGELY the products of artificial intelligence, with just some people overseeing things in the background. It won't be perfect, but it'll be good enough to satisfy most people, and we're going to be seeing such a huge increase in output in areas that used to reflect human artistry.

More salt of the earth trades will be fine. AI isn't replacing electricians, plumbers, nurses, mechanics, etc. any time soon.

I expect the emergence of more production houses and publications that explicitly advertise the 'novelty' of human-produced art, though. Smaller ones, but they'll give creatives places to go.

There's no way to really stem the tide of this fundamental transformation of human life going forward. Some people will try, and regulations will be put in place once the public notices how obsolete humans are becoming in a variety of fields and freak out, but this is only going to move in one direction, and it won't be toward less automation.

Living in the future is FUN, innit? <3

This looks fantastic. I'm going to wait for actual gameplay before getting too excited, but it's really nice to see a series besides Fatal Frame utilizing these sorts of themes and imagery.

VR won't go big until a console developer puts their weight behind a huge, risky swing with it.

As long as it's a niche, expensive add-on peddling primarily in gimmick titles, consumers will keep treating it as such.

I love all the comments here that are like: "Yeah, this sucks, and I could speak my mind, but look how much more well-behaved I am for daddy than those PC gamers."

Like... I dunno, when did docility become a virtue?

Imagine a AAA game launching as a finished, polished product for once!

It brings me immense joy to see asian devs thriving and growing while the greedy and creatively stifled Western AAA scene self-implodes hard.

Chickens coming home to roost.

Expected, but I'm sure Sony is still happy to see it. MH was huge in Japan years before it gained worldwide popularity.

And yeah, ain't nothing selling Xboxes in Japan. We saw that in Gen 7 when they made a massive push with the 360 and accumulated little more than resentment from gamers there.

@UltimateOtaku91 As I recall, DQXI S took a LOT of work to port to Switch. The original release was developed on a version of UE4 that didn't even support the Switch, and basically every graphical aspect of the game was tweaked to run better on the Switch.

Not to mention it had a ton of additional content added. I'm not surprised it took so long to come over.

Hope this comes to the U.S., since I really want a PS5 for Astro Bot, and basically nothing else lol

Unsurprising. SEGA was easily the standout publisher last year. Banger after banger after banger.

I could see it working if done right. I agree with the sentiment that it's probably better than a third Horizon game, since I think the gameplay potential of the IP is mostly played out on a single-player level.

@nessisonett "I’m sure the chuds could make their sex doll protagonist of their dreams in a character creator"

In a Sony-published game? Yeah right.

@AdamNovice Mario Kart stays at the top of the charts regardless of whether it's part of an active bundle deal or not. Let's be real.

Sony and Nintendo desperately need a more robust storefront like Steam that allows you to filter this stuff out.

lol Mario Kart

No wonder Mario Kart 9 is the first Switch 2 game we saw in that short reveal.

Looks like Terminator 2 meets 16-bit Contra.

Needless to say, I'm there.

@naruball I guess my thing is that I think a game should be appealing apart from the VR element.

I want a game that makes me think: "I can't wait to get a headset to experience this!" Not: "Oh, this is kinda whatever, but I bet it's kinda cool in VR."

The closest we've come to that is a few flat games with VR support like Tetris Effect and the recent mainline RE games. But I want software like that which is built for the ground up for VR. Like, imagine if the recent Astro Bot game was a fully built-for-VR game?

But 90% of the VR games I see I wouldn't play off a headset, which is a problem for me.

My issue is I still can't point at any VR games and say: "I need to play that!"

Aside from the first Astro Bot game, which is PSVR1 exclusive lol

Valve seems happy with how the Deck has been received. Even if it's not moving massive volume, I'm willing to bet it's increasing purchases and engagement a fair deal per customer.

Speaking only for myself, of course, I can say my yearly spending on Steam has increased massively since picking up a Deck OLED. It's nice not to feel trapped at my computer anymore when I want to play a PC game, and laptops just don't have a form factor that makes them truly portable for me. The Deck is what I needed to feel fully at home with Valve's increasingly wonderful ecosystem.

I'm sure Valve is excited to start shipping out SteamOS on competitor's hardware as well. Even if you're not buying hardware FROM THEM, you're still getting funneled into their ecosystem, which is where the real profit lies.

Among other reasons, this is why I think nothing of trailers and reveals without gameplay. Anyone can post a CG cartoon short online and announce an intention to make something, but until you're deep enough in development to have actual gameplay to show off to the public, who can say what'll happen to a project? It's such an easy thing to shut down storied developers and nuke projects mid-development when you're an American tech or media giant run by soulless corpos who lack any long-term vision whatsoever.

@ShogunRok Yup. The only real benefit is you get to be "part of the conversation," for whatever that's worth.

With Monster Hunter, though, the next mainline entry will be supported and actively discussed for years upon years, so even if you wait for a price dip and some patches, there's no real downside. You just get a more complete version at launch.

Live service games like Genshin with events and pulls and whatnot make sense to play soon after launch, but you're only paying for the microtransactions. So do, ironically, games that launch in an almost totally polished state that don't really go down in price for a long time, which barely exists outside of a few Nintendo staples.

Day one is largely just smaller devs for me now. Certain AA Japanese ones, and a few Western developers working on interesting, risky, or niche projects that need as much support as possible.

I still need to play World lol

Will probably be grabbing this when the inevitable MR/story expansion releases in a year or two. Way more monsters at release, and it'll have whatever patches it's going to get to stabilize performance across all platforms.

It's Monster Hunter. Base game story mode is the tutorial. Post-release endgame content and this game's equivalent of Sunbreak/Iceborne will be where the majority of hours are spent.

@nessisonett 😂 Careful now, you don't want to make more "unconstructive" comments.

Even if it was a better port and more successful, though, I have noticed a lot of bristling about PC players not 'deserving' Playstation ports or something. I think a lot of hardcore Sony fans get a bit offended that Playstation Studios is just one publisher among many on PC, and that bad releases will be rewarded with low sales.

That said, I don't necessarily disagree that Sony's tentpole sp games should never have launched outside the PS ecosystem. They're devaluing it, frankly. PS5 is very skippable for anyone with a halfway modern gaming PC.

The same won't be true for Nintendo. They know better than to sacrifice long term brand integrity for short term gain, which is why you won't be seeing Mario on Steam.

This game had almost no promotion leading to to the launch of the PC port and, as I recall, wasn't even preorderable on Steam. The port was also kinda botched on release.

I'm truly shocked it's not selling well. 😂

Cleaning up the achievements in Slay the Princess on Steam.

Will probably also begin playing Class of '09: The Flipside this weekend.