Ralizah

Honestly, if it manages to be comparable to the Series S, I'll be surprised. It won't come anywhere close to the big boy consoles. And it frankly doesn't need to.

There's nothing new or exciting about the concept now, so they'll be relying solely on the exclusive games to sell this thing. No wonder they delayed the launch to make sure their launch lineup was ready in time.

I mainly want to know price, launch games, and potential improvements to how Switch 1 games play.

@NorrinRadd God of War: Ragnarok, the PS4 game that runs on Steam Deck just fine? It would run perfectly well on Switch 2 lol.

Sounds like Happy Death Day, which I expect to be better than this.

Literally launches on my birthday. <3333

So excited to revisit these games!

Still curious how they plan to get this running well on Steam Deck.

@Vega37 "You seem to lie to yourself about playing games based upon where they start. Games are games wether you acknowledge it or not."

No idea what this means. Handhelds are simply more accessible for some people than others. In my case, it has nothing to do with 'lying to myself' or not acknowledging that 'games are games,' it's simply the case that untethered hardware allows for less psychological friction between myself and starting a game, since I know I'm not bound to one spot in the house the entire time.

@Octane @nessisonett Yeah, I think Sony pushes the mainline games hard with sales, bundles, marketing, etc. and does well with them that way. They're big budget games with mainstream appeal. But the IP itself isn't really ripe for expansion in the way they want it to be. There's not really room for an entire universe of Horizon products.

I mean, it'd be nice. I actually like Horizon. I even collected the comics. But there's just very little interest in it as a broader IP.

Truly the most emotional and least technical journey in that world to date.

Awesome. Missed the first one because I was away from my computer when it happened. Curious to see how it runs on my relatively modest rig.

Recall how poorly the Lego Horizon game apparently sold. Does anyone think a God of War or Mario or Zelda-themed lego game would sell poorly? I don't. I think that tweet about "mistaking sales for enthusiasm about the IP" is hitting on something.

That said, I also feel like the IP has attracted a particularly vocal hatedom online, and their opinions don't necessarily reflect the common consensus.

@Ultimapunch LOL Nintendo needs to push Mario games further down my throat. I'm so ready for a new 3D Mario game. I can only replay the old games so many times.

Modern electronics are designed to linger in a low-power state when not in use. It's 2025, not 2005.

Best classic DOOM game. Loved it.

Lunar Remastered Collection
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PC Port)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I'm sure DOOM will be awesome, but I still need to play Eternal.

Atlus' output this year was nuts.

Absolute queens of the JRPG genre.

Persona 5 Royal resonated with me more overall, but I adored how this married the structure of Persona to a vibrant fantasy setting and really worked to balance the gameplay and difficulty to create something consistently satisfying to play.

@Vega37 Playing a home console just feels ritualistic, and like I'm preparing to invest time. Gotta sit in this one place and stay there as long as I'm playing.

Handhelds/hybrids are much more accessible, and resultantly, for me, there's less of a psychological barrier to starting up a game in the first place.

The split in opinion on Rebirth between this site's writers and the userbase is probably the biggest I've ever seen on this site.

Looking forward to experiencing it myself next year when it drops on PC.

Makes sense. Ease of Access is a big thing with portables. Having to sit in front of your console and TV feels like an entire thing, whereas just booting up a handheld for a quick gaming session often feels much more accessible.

My PC gaming habit has increased massively since getting a Steam Deck for this reason.

Also, with accessories like Portal, it makes sense to feel more invested in the ecosystem on a financial level as well.

Goes without saying, I think, that Final Fantasy XVII and 7-3 (lol) will be multiplats. Hopefully also DQXII. Sony's PS4-era lockdown of AAA Japanese content is pretty much entirely gone at this point.

If you have a big game and it's not on Steam at launch, you're missing the bus.

@nessisonett Depends entirely on the type of game. A multi-hundred million dollar epic like FF7 Rebirth? Stupid not to put that on as many modern platforms as possible.

Small projects or little indie titles that might stand to massively benefit from the increased visibility gained by access to first-party marketing and inclusion in big livesteam events like Nintendo Directs or State of Plays? Entirely different story.

Best list so far. All great picks, even if I'll probably never catch up with Yakuza.

Really tragic how ignored The Lost Crown was. A really strong metroidvania by one of my favorite 2D platformer development teams, and one of the few non-disappointing ubisoft titles this year.

@nessisonett Olivier being vaguely bi is fine. What I don't like is how much of a sex pest he comes off as, which is pretty typical for bi characters. Ugh.

Evo does sound better, but still, the combat was clunky, the level design was abysmal... I just really don't enjoy the gameplay aspects of those titles. The quartz system is also a pain, which is weird, because it feels like an evolution of FF7's materia and I liked that.

@RamboMike Hi, I'm not a fan of Jim Carrey's performance in these films. Not that the performance itself is bad, but Jim Carrey only ever plays Jim Carrey, so I feel like the casting did a disservice to the character.

Tifa, for sure. That sort of loyalty, devotion, and lifelong affection aren't really replaceable.

Ironically, despite her bombshell appearance, Tifa is very much the one you take home to mom.

@nessisonett Honestly, TitS 1 & 2 are already teetering on the edges of acceptability for me between Olivier and the creepy romantic subplot between the leads.

The gameplay is so darn slow and boring, though. Improving that HAS to improve the experience as a whole.

Glad I didn't buy it, lol.

NISA can't be happy about how this'll impact sales of Ys X.

Eh. This scenario has been explored to death at this point, and games like Persona 5 Strikers and Persona 2 EP have shown the concept works just fine with adults.

If anything, there's more power to people a bit later in life awakening to their sense of justice/true selves/etc.

The real explanation, I think, is that they are still intent on pandering to Japan's obsession with youth.

People are hungry for this structure to be explored in new ways. I think the rather triumphant success of Metaphor: ReFantazio demonstrates that as well.

Nothing comes close to Lunar Remastered Collection for me.

Although I'm also looking forward to Clair Obscure.

MH Wilds and the new DOOM look good, but I need to play their predecessors first.

A decline of only 3% in its eighth year seems wild to me. Makes me wonder how much gas Switch might have left in the tank if they cut the price after Switch 2 drops.

@nomither6 lol you're very confused

Switch outsold PS2 (in the U.S.) in 7-ish years vs the 13-ish years PS2 was on the market. With no price drops. With no killer multimedia functionality like the PS2's famous use case as a cheap DVD player.

Not all that my butt.

Really, China made a strong showing in TGA this year. But I guess there's no arguing with mindlessly ardent Chinese nationalism.

Wasn't a fan of the original. That said, now that Zelda has gone open world, there's even more space for a game in the style of the older entries in this day and age.

For a 'bad year' for Sony, it's overall been a pretty darn good year for PS5 owners.

I don't think Concord bombing surprised normal gamers. Although I didn't expect it to fall quite as flat on its face as it did, lol

Naughty Dog doing work representin' women with alopecia. ❤️

I'm down. Although they're going to need to work to sell people on that main character design, but I'm really happy to see something just... completely different from them.

Finally.

YO!

Can't believe it's coming so soon.

Nice. It's pretty obvious how deeply the devs enjoy their Nintendo games. Very cool they created a platformer of comparable quality now.

That's awesome. Nothing more beautiful than a decently muscular male body.

As usual, DQ is huge in Japan and tepid everywhere else in terms of commercial performance.

I'd love to know the platform split in terms of sales. Switch would be higher, but to what degree? And would the platform split significantly differ between regions?

@Matroska Timing.

DQIII HD-2D was a simultaneous Steam release. FFXVI was a late port.

I'm the last person in the world to defend what they did with XVI, but I think they'd probably have hit higher numbers if it's also been a simultaneous PS5/PC release.

@PuppetMaster FoamStars isn't XDefiant, though, so that's not really an argument. They're different games.

I don't think FoamStars would've ever kicked off super hard, but it's easy to imagine it doing moderately well with a base that is more interested in this sort of game.

And, again, maybe not, but whatever chances it had were definitely quashed by S-E's choices.

@J2theEzzo Yup.

At this point, if you want to be a big new live service title, you either need some KILLER IP/brand power behind it, or you need to do stuff the competitors aren't. Because why stray from what you already know and play otherwise in this respect?

@AverageGamer Pretty sure Obsidian devved Stick of Truth. No reason the South Park people can't just work with Microsoft in the future, right?

Although that would require some tiny bit of savvy on the part of Microsoft Gaming execs, so you're probably right. :

@PuppetMaster I don't know how much it contributed, but, speaking personally, I lost all interest when I realized I'd have to download this on my PS4. Should've been on PC day one. It's a multiplayer game, for goodness' sake!

Might've still pulled a Concord, but I doubt the exclusivity antics helped any, and Square-Enix is very right to back away from such arrangements going forward.

Also should've been F2P from the start.

@ATaco Sounds like a matchmaking issue. Are people supposed to throw matches against newbies? lol

@get2sammyb I can tell you what the "secret sauce" is without even being invested in live service games.

The ones you mentioned all have fairly compelling USPs, whereas XDefiant is an incredibly generic looking entry in the most crowded sector of the live service industry. It looks like one of the fake video games you see in TV series like Law and Order.

Of course it failed.

This looks lovely. I'm preloading on my PC. Exactly the sort of game I could lose many hours in if the currency/gacha aspect isn't too chintzy.

Could be cool. The game is fantastic. Genuinely never played anything even remotely like it, which becomes quite rare as you continue playing games over time. I'd love to see the anime expand on the fascinating worldbuilding hinted at throughout the various gameplay loops as you learn more about the characters.

The funny thing is that, aside from the aesthetic similarities, there's probably going to end up being fewer points of familiarity to Horizon than there was between Astro Bot and Mario, lol.

This seems like a Genshin/BotW situation where the initial aesthetic is heavily inspired by the game it's drawing from, but the gameplay itself isn't really all that similar otherwise.

Playstation consoles tend to pop off late in the generation. Especially now that games have, like, decade-long development cycles lol.

GTA VI is gonna sell so many consoles on its own.

@Steel76 Druckmann won't go for it. We aren't allowed to just lose ourselves in fun stories anymore. No, Naughty Dog produces art, and real art is about suffering.

I remember when Animal Crossing was about moving into and learning to integrate with a new community. It didn't need crafting or endless customization features.

The more I played the new one, the more disenchanted I became. I never even engaged with most of the seasonal events.

@father_noo I mean, it'd be an awful experience, but there's nothing stopping you from hooking up joycons and huddling around the tiny screen with friends to play it, right?

If Nintendo adopts the PS2 strategy and keeps Switch around as a cheap budget console with a million games that also run on the successor, it could significantly overshoot the PS2's milestone. 42+ million of that 160 million total came after the device was already replaced by Sony with the PS3.

Granted, perhaps it won't enjoy as much of a strong tail end due to it not being a good cheap option for playing DVDs.

@IslandLogic Yes they are. Switch Lites play the same games. It's the same device, just in a different form factor.