The delay of the next Xbox has affected Microsoft’s plans for Call Of Duty according to an insider, as it considers making Zombies a standalone title.

While neither Microsoft or Sony has announced release dates for their next gen consoles, they were expected in 2027 or 2028, until the worldwide RAM shortage put a spanner in the works.

Just recently, a report claimed Sony is considering pushing back the PlayStation 6’s launch to 2029 or later. It’s unclear if Microsoft will follow suit, but with Xbox Series X/S sales falling off a cliff, it has more reason to launch the next Xbox sooner rather than later.

Now, an insider has claimed that the next Xbox console *has* been impacted by delays, as it was originally going to come out later this year alongside Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

This comes from Call Of Duty insider TheGhostOfHope, who has leaked many accurate details about Call Of Duty games in the past. In a post on X, they claim the ‘delay on the next Xbox has ‘hurt’ a lot of COD’s marketing plans’ as Microsoft wanted ‘Modern Warfare 4 to be a launch title and draw a lot of hype to compete with people’s attention alongside GTA 6′.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, while not yet announced, is expected to be this year’s instalment. It’s rumoured to be set in Korea, and prior reports (also from TheGhostOfHope) claimed it was being developed for the next gen Xbox for 2026.

The reported delay of the next Xbox, however, has Microsoft considering other possibilities, according to the insider. ‘Because of this delay, the idea of two Call Of Duty games launching with the next Xbox has been floated,’ they wrote. ‘A traditional Call Of Duty multiplayer and a standalone Zombies title, presumably developed by Treyarch.

‘Likely similar to that of Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered where both released together.’

Additionally, they add: ‘Microsoft want Activision to be more agile and less attached to annualised releases in the future. The consensus is that a more quick and coherent product/development pipeline would have allowed them to cash in on the extraction shooter hype sooner with a DMZ update for example.’

In a follow-up post, TheGhostOfHope clarifies that Activision isn’t going to stop releasing Call Of Duty titles annually, but that ‘stuff like Zombies/DMZ could become paid standalone’ titles which get ‘multi-year support to stay in people’s minds’.

The idea of separating Zombies into a standalone package does make sense considering how content-packed Call Of Duty games are, but we’re not convinced many people will fork out cash to solely play Zombies – unless Microsoft goes the free-to-play approach like Warzone.

The other big question is whether this will impact the value proposition of mainline Call Of Duty titles if these modes are stripped out. A big selling point for Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7, and most previous games, is its breadth of modes despite the lack of evolution – so without that, people might expect more from the campaign and multiplayer portions.

If Microsoft is trying to synchronise the launch of its next gen console with Call Of Duty, it raises the question of what could be exclusive to Xbox, if anything, to attract players over from camp PlayStation.

Microsoft has said Call Of Duty games will remain on Sony’s console following its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but it’s possible that a standalone Zombies offering, or something else, could be exclusive to the next Xbox.

Whether any of this is true remains to be seen, but it’s likely whatever plans were in place have not only been changed by the memory shortages but also the sudden change in leadership at Xbox.

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Phil Spencer has retired from Microsoft and Sarah Bond has resigned, as Xbox starts its biggest shake-up in 25 years – but the future seems more uncertain than ever.

The Xbox brand will be 25 years old this Christmas and for the entirety of that time Phil Spencer has been a major figure at Microsoft’s gaming division, influencing policy and then shaping it directly when he was put in charge in 2014, following the disastrous reveal of the Xbox One.

He’s credited with inventing the idea of Game Pass and for pushing for the acquisition of a swathe of developers and publishers, culminating in Bethesda and Activision Blizzard. We’ve interviewed him several times and consider his claims of being a passionate gamer to be genuine. But as has become obvious in recent years, his various plans and machinations have not worked out.

Xbox hardware sales have flatlined and while first party output has improved recently, in terms of both quantity and quality, the only major commerical success has been Forza Horizon 5 on PlayStation 5. Clearly change was needed but exactly what kind of change remains to be seen.

Who is in charge of Xbox now?

The news broke on Friday evening, but it’s now confirmed that Spencer will be replaced by Asha Sharma, who only joined Microsoft in 2024 but has made a named for herself as president of its CoreAI product.

She has no experience with video games, but on the Microsoft website she insisted that, ‘We will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.’

‘We have done this before, and I am here to help us do it again. I want to return to the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place. It will require us to relentlessly question everything, revisit processes, protect what works, and be brave enough to change what does not.’

The question of how much hands-on experiences those in charge of video game firms need is an open issue, as there’s little consistency within any company. Former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, for example, started out as a programmer, but the next two incumbents were both finance executives.

Former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan had, like Spencer, worked at Sony since the brand’s inception, before leaving under a cloud, while the current boss worked at a consulting firm, before co-founding developer Guerrilla Games – but not as a developer.

Although there have been whispers that Spencer may retire in the next few years it was assumed that Xbox president Sarah Bond was being groomed to take over his role when he left. It seems likely she was assuming that too, as she announced on the same day that she is resigning from the company. Not only that but no one has been announced as replacing her, implying her role may be phased out.

Matt Booty, the other prominent exec for modern day Xbox, isn’t leaving but is instead being promoted to chief content officer. Previously, Booty has been criticised for problems with Microsoft’s first party output, that has led to many delays and the closure of several studios, as well as projects such as the Perfect Dark reboot.

Spencer is 58, so it’s unclear whether he’ll take another role in the industry, but he will make himself available to Microsoft, in an advisory role, until the end of the summer.

‘I’ve made the decision to retire and begin the next chapter of my life. It’s a milestone that’s given me a chance to reflect on the incredible journey I’ve been fortunate enough to share with so many of you,’ he wrote on X.

How will Microsoft turn things around for Xbox?

What happens from here on is a mystery – probably for the execs themselves as much as anyone else – but Sharma has stated that she’s sticking to ‘three commitments’, starting with the promise of ‘great games’. According to her, ‘We will take risks. We will enter new categories and markets where we can add real value, grounded in what players care about most.’

Second on her list is the ‘return of Xbox’, which she says will, ‘Celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with console which has shaped who we are.’

That seems to be intended as assurance that she will not abandon console hardware, but she immediately followed that up by saying: ‘Gaming now lives across devices, not within the limits of any single piece of hardware. As we expand across PC, mobile, and cloud, Xbox should feel seamless, instant, and worthy of the communities we serve.’

The third, and vaguest, of the commitments is the ‘future of play’, which will apparently involve Microsoft inventing ‘new business models and new ways to play by leaning into what we already have: iconic teams, characters, and worlds that people love. But we will not treat those worlds as static IP to milk and monetise. We will build a shared platform and tools that empower developers and players to create and share their own stories.’

All of that is fine in theory but what it all means is very much open to interpretation, which is no doubt exactly as intended.

It certainly seems fitting that Microsoft made the announcements late on Friday, at a time that was only convenient for America. One of the key problems with the brand – and one that it has been loath to admit over the years – is its lack of appeal outside the US.

The Xbox has never been popular in continental Europe or Japan, and it’s rarely ever tried to appeal to those markets directly. In recent years local offices have complained at decreasing marketing budgets, as the failure of the Xbox Series X/S became obvious.

One of the many questions now, is whether Microsoft is prepared to increase its investment in gaming, to the point where it can compete as a console manufacturer and not just a third party publisher.

Microsoft is an incredibly wealthy company but the only time that’s ever really been obvious, when it comes to Xbox, is in the purchase of Activision Blizzard and other companies. The former was such a huge outlay – amounting to $75.4 billion by the end – that it was directly responsible for policy changes such as going multiformat, and put an uncomfortable spotlight on gaming in terms of senior Microsoft execs.

While the exit of Spencer does seem overdue it’d be wrong to say that things can only get better with new people in charge. Things can always get worse and given how much of the industry Microsoft currently controls, everyone should hope that the new boss can turn things around and that the Xbox brand can flourish again. Not least so it can once again provide meaningful competition to PlayStation.

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Multiple Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry games are in development, as Ubisoft’s CEO addresses the cancellation of Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time.

Ubisoft has been in trouble for some time now, after a string of flops, but the company made some drastic moves recently to turn its fortunes around.

Following a bailout from Tencent, Ubisoft announced a massive restructuring which will break the company into five ‘creative houses’, including the already launched subsidiary Vantage Studios. This studio owns all of Ubisoft’s biggest IP, namely Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six.

The news of this restructure was bundled with layoffs and a string of cancellations, including the troubled Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time remake. It was unclear what other projects had been cancelled, but four were unannounced titles (including three new IPs), and a mobile game.

Following all this upheaval, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has now clarified what projects are still in development at the company.

In an interview with Variety, Guillemot was asked if there’ll be new game announcements from Vantage Studios soon, where he touched upon Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry.

‘Under the Assassin’s Creed brand, several titles are in development, spanning both single-player and multiplayer experiences, with the ambition to further grow a community that exceeeded 30 million players last year,’ he replied.

One of these projects is likely to be the Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag remake, which has practically been confirmed already. We also already know about several other projects in the series, including the witch-themed Hexe, along with a multiplayer spin-off codenamed AC League (but that was reportedly cancelled earlier this month).

Guillemot went on to confirm Ubisoft has ‘two very promising projects in development’ in regards to Far Cry. One of these will likely be the inevitable Far Cry 7, but the other is more of a mystery. There have been rumours about a multiplayer-focused entry called Project Maverick, which was previously described as an extraction-based shooter.

Beyond these two franchises, Guillemot teased how it is ‘looking forward to talking more about Rayman soon’, following the recent remaster, but also touched upon the cancellation of the Prince Of Persia remake – stating it is still an ‘active’ franchise.

‘While such decisions are never easy, they allow us to concentrate our talent on the highest-potential projects and ensure that every release meets the quality our players expect,’ he said in regards to its cancellation.

‘Prince Of Persia remains a beloved and active brand and continues to play an important role in our Creative Houses portfolio and long-term strategy.’

Elsewhere, Ubisoft confirmed it had ‘several new IPs in progress’ but didn’t share any details about them.

The big question is when these projects will be announced, with the next obvious place being Summer Game Fest in June. However, after all its financial woes, there’s perhaps a greater urgency than ever to get some of these titles out the door.

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If you’re looking to rival ‘hot uncle’ Leon, Capcom has released a bundle for Resident Evil Requiem which bizarrely comes with a pull-up bar.

Resident Evil Requiem is only a week away and if you’re planning on occupying the sofa for the weekend to play through it, Capcom has your back for some guilt-free indulgence.

While most special editions come with lame in-game cosmetics or a SteelBook, Capcom has partnered with e-commerce company Yume Group for a ‘Terrifying Nightmare Set’, that’s exclusive to Japan. Along with a copy of Resident Evil Requiem, the set throws in a… err, pull-up bar.

Based on the comical adverts, it’s done in tongue-in-cheek fashion, as Yume Group’s president Shigehiro Ishida and co-host Yuri Hoshina are cheerfully superimposed into several terrifying sequences from the game. They even offer an alternative use for the bars, as a rail to hang up clothes.

It’s unclear what a pull-up bar has to do with Resident Evil Requiem, but protagonist Grace Ashcroft is seen suspended upside down in the game’s reveal trailer – which is referenced in the advert.

While it appears to be quite random, the Terrifying Nightmare set managed to sell out in less than five hours – so clearly the novelty has worked its magic. The bundle was priced at 19,800 yen, which is around £95. Hey, we’d take it over a damn Mr. Raccoon charm.

Resident Evil Requiem is set to launch on February 27, but some people have managed to get copies early from retailers. In response, Capcom has said it will be removing any footage posted online before release, and warned others from watching any shared clips.

In a post on the Japanese Resident Evil account on X, Capcom wrote (via machine translation): ‘We have identified numerous gameplay videos of Resident Evil Requiem that appear to have been obtained through unauthorised means.

‘For the sake of customers who are looking forward to this title, we ask that you refrain from publishing or posting gameplay videos on video streaming services or social media before the game’s release date.

‘Posting gameplay footage before the game’s release not only infringes on copyright but also upsets other players. We are taking firm action, including removal and warnings, as these videos are discovered. We also ask everyone viewing this post to please refrain from watching or sharing any such videos if you come across them.’

Based on what we’ve played, Resident Evil Requiem is shaping up to be one of the best entries in years. The game is set to launch on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

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With the next Legend Of Zelda game shrouded in mystery, GameCentral looks at the series’ past to see what discarded elements could potentially be brought back.

February 21 marks the 40th anniversary of The Legend Of Zelda and the series has never been in better shape. Not only are Breath Of The Wild and Tears of The Kingdom two of the best entries (and two of the best video games ever made) but they’ve been financial successes on a scale the series has never seen before.

The only problem right now is that fans have no idea what will follow them or how Nintendo intends to celebrate the anniversary – if it intends to acknowledge it at all.

Currently, all that’s known about the next mainline entry is that it will feature a new open world setting and that it won’t return to the old pre-Breath Of The Wild formula. But it will take some inspiration from Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment… whatever that might be.

But although Nintendo has made it clear it wants to push forward with new ideas, that doesn’t mean it can’t look to the past for inspiration. After all, Breath Of The Wild was very much inspired by going back to the original NES game from 1986.

So, to celebrate the anniversary, we’ve put together a wish list of classic features from past Zelda games we’d love to see be brought back for the next entry.

Of course, we don’t expect all of these to be included in the next game, but they’re all interesting elements from the series’ history and we’d bet on at least a few of them remerging, in altered form, in the future.

Dungeons

Granted, dungeons never technically left the series, especially given the introduction of shrines, which offer smaller puzzle and challenge rooms. As enjoyable as those are, we can’t help but yearn for more traditional, large-scale dungeons to make a return.

We weren’t especially fond of Breath Of The Wild’s Divine Beasts and while Tears Of The Kingdom had a go at more traditional dungeons, they weren’t especially memorable and rather short. They also felt quite awkwardly crowbarred into the existing Breath Of The Wild formula – a rare example of Nintendo attempting to placate fan complaints.

Given how Zelda’s overworlds have evolved, we’d love to see dungeons get a similar overhaul, perhaps being filled with optional secrets of their own and offering incentives to revisit them – ideas Nintendo has experimented with before. Although they also need to be more central to progression, with upgrades and permanent tools or weapons; not to mention better boss battles, although we’ll get to that later.

More complex combat

Zelda’s combat has never been bad – Ocarina Of Time’s was hugely influential in terms of 3D action – but it’s also never been the focus and so has generally remained very simple. Link learned a number of sword techniques in Twilight Princess, but very few of them stuck around, with only the shield parry carrying over to the modern games.

Skyward Sword’s combat was welcomingly technical, as you needed to angle your sword to bypass enemy defences, and the Switch port showed this could be done without motion controls. So, we wouldn’t mind seeing that be further refined.

Alternatively, Nintendo could take cues from action games and make Link nimbler or grant him a wide variety of different weapons that have different functions and abilities, since otherwise his armoury tends to function very similarly in terms of everything but reach.

We’re not asking for something as layered as Nioh 3 or Devil May Cry 5, but if Nintendo is looking for areas to differentiate the next Zelda from prior games, slightly more complex combat is one obvious choice.

Weirder characters

It feels like Zelda games aren’t as unabashedly weird as they used to be. That’s not to say they’re entirely po-faced, as evidenced by goofier characters like Master Kohga and the Great Fairies, but we’re more-so talking about visual designs. Outside of the monster loving Kilton and Koltin, there are few truly freaky looking weirdos populating Hyrule nowadays.

Perhaps this is due to Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom’s more modern art style, since the earlier, less graphically detailed games allowed for more oddball character designs. Examples include the almost skeletal lake scientist in Ocarina Of Time and the weird half-woman/half-bird creature Ooccoo in Twilight Princess.

It’s not just the characters though but the world of Hyrule itself, which has become a more grounded and realistic place over the decades. Apart from anything that tends to limit the gameplay opportunities and we miss weirder scenarios, like the time aliens showed up to steal cows in Majora’s Mask.

More horror

Conversely, we wouldn’t mind seeing a new Zelda embrace its darker side and lean into the horror elements that have always been there. Many will say they found the Guardians and Lynels in the newer games scary, but they elicit a sense of panic because of how strong they are, which isn’t the same as actual horror.

The Gloom Spawn in Tears Of The Kingdom are much closer to what we have in mind. Aside from being very tough to kill, their appearances drown the world in red, the accompanying distorted music heightens their otherworldliness, and they’re just visually creepy to look at.

That sort of eeriness could be felt in creepy characters from past games, like Ocarina Of Time’s shambling ReDead zombies or the Hero’s Shade from Twilight Princess. A single location could offer some degree of survival horror-esque encounters, which would clash nicely with the rest of the game and make it all the more impactful.

Midna

To this day, Midna – Link’s smarmy imp companion from Twilight Princess – remains one of the most popular characters in the entirety of the franchise, even being voted number one in a popularity poll by YouTuber Schaffrillas Productions. So, it’s surprising that Nintendo has done almost nothing else with her since her debut, beyond a playable appearance in the first Hyrule Warriors.

In the run-up to Tears Of The Kingdom, there were fan theories of Midna and the Twili race making a return or at least having ties to the mysterious ancient Zonai race. Despite some very similar imagery and music leitmotifs, though, none of that wound up happening, with neither Midna nor the Twili getting so much as a reference.

You could argue that Midna could only return in a Twilight Princess sequel, but the series isn’t opposed to having old characters come back in new roles, such as Tingle and Beedle. Even if it’s not the original, a descendant or reincarnation of Midna could fill a similar role and give Link an entertaining ally to explore Hyrule with, which would be welcome after two games of near constant solitude.

Hookshot

As one of the series’ most iconic items, the hookshot has been sorely missed in newer Zelda games. Sure, Link can climb most surfaces nowadays on his own, and his ascend ability in Tears Of The Kingdom renders vertical travel almost a non-issue, but there remains something inherently satisfying about using the hookshot.

Plus, it has more utility than just letting Link zip to otherwise unreachable areas. It can be used for puzzle solving and bringing objects to Link. You get two of them in Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, which could be built upon for the kind of momentum based movement seen in the Spider-Man games.

Perhaps it could even be reworked into more of a weapon. We mentioned more refined combat earlier but imagine using the hookshot to pull enemies towards you and following up with an attack or swinging them as a projectile or just off a cliff. It wouldn’t surprise us if the live action Zelda movie gives Link a hookshot to please long-time fans and if so, it’d make perfect sense to bring it back for the games as well.

Fishing rod

Fish are a plentiful resource in Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom, but the only way Link can get them is by hand, which isn’t always easy when he can only swim for so long. You have to wonder why he never considered asking to borrow someone’s fishing rod.

Such an item would be a perfect fit for those games’ solitary adventures, especially when the early hours see you scraping whatever you can get your hands on to survive. Plus, everyone loves a good fishing minigame to unwind and relax.

Many previous Zelda games have had exactly that – the rod was even a permanent item in Twilight Princess, allowing you to fish in any body of water. You could also use it to distract Ganondorf in the final fight, so maybe this could be expanded upon and used for messing with regular enemies too, if only for the sake of comedy.

Vehicles and flight

The Master Cycle Zero was a fun DLC addition for Breath Of The Wild, but most people had already beaten the rest of the game by the time you got to use it. Plus, its high speeds meant the game would often pause briefly, in order to load the next portion of the map, highlighting the limitations of the original Switch.

Meanwhile, in Tears Of The Kingdom, the flying machines you could build only lasted so long and would automatically break apart after a while. No doubt this was to prevent you from flying forever and render exploration obsolete, but we imagine this was a technical limitation too.

With the Switch 2’s beefier hardware, this shouldn’t be an issue and Breath Of The Wild’s map stuttering while on the bike is completely gone in the updated version. Obviously, a speedy bike and/or flying machine (or any sort of vehicle) would have to be a late game reward, but having unrestrained movement on land and in the air would be thrilling and make post-game clean-up less of a chore.

Underwater swimming

With Tears Of The Kingdom expanding Breath Of The Wild’s open world with the underground depths and floating sky islands, it’s understandable why some fans figured Link would be able to explore underwater as well. While that wasn’t the case, it does feel like the natural next step for another open world Zelda game.

Link’s been able to fully swim underwater before, in games like Majora’s Mask, with the use of specific items and it’s something that would add a new layer of Tomb Raider style exploration.

It could be something that’s gradually upgraded as you progress, improving how long Link can stay submerged for, or maybe he could take harpoons with him for dealing with underwater threats.

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Bluepoint Games’ closure is another disastrous repercussion from Sony’s acquisition spree, which has led to multiple studio shutdowns, layoffs, and cancelled games.

This console generation has been defined by unfulfilled expectations, both in how few games actually capitalise on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S hardware, and the output from Sony and Microsoft’s studios.

But the groundwork for this failure was laid the prior generation, when Microsoft started a wave of acquisitions in order to bolster its limited first party slate. In 2018, it bought Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, InXile Entertainment, Playground Games, and several others, which was followed by Double Fine, ZeniMax Media (including Bethesda), and eventually Activision Blizzard.

This rush of acquisitions, which was also mirrored by Embracer Group, sparked a rush for ownership at Sony. Since 2018, Sony has acquired Insomniac Games, Housemarque, Bungie, Firesprite, and others, many of which were set to serve in the company’s hunt for a live service hit.

As we now know, this chase has been disastrous. The Sony-published Helldivers 2 has been a hit, but developer Arrowhead is independent. When it comes to internally developed games Concord was shut down after two weeks, Fairgame$ and Marathon have suffered heavy delays, and others – such as a Twisted Metal live service game and The Last Of Us Online – have been canned entirely.

Bluepoint Games, who were working on a God Of War live service project before that was cancelled last year, has become the latest casualty from this acquisition-to-Sony mismanagement pipeline. It’s the third recently-acquired studio to be closed by the company over the past two years, following Neon Koi and Concord’s Firewalk Studios.

However, as the list below highlights, it’s emblematic of how Sony has mishandled a lot of its recent acquisitions. There are exceptions, most notably Insomniac Games, but several studios are still yet to launch a game (Firesprite, Valkyrie Entertainment, Haven Studios), while others, like Bungie, have been transformed by widespread layoffs.

Beyond its recent acquisitions, Sony has shut down several other studios over this console generation, including London Studio, the VR-focused Manchester Studio, Japan Studio, and PixelOpus, the team behind Concrete Genie and Entwined.

Additionally, many of its other studios – like Naughty Dog, Bend Studio, and Media Molecule – haven’t released a new game (i.e. not a remake or remaster) in the past five years. Naughty Dog is working on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, but that doesn’t even have a release year yet.

The impact of this devastating pursuit for studio acquistions, and a live service hit, probably won’t slow down anytime soon either. Guerrilla Games is working on a Horizon multiplayer title, while the long-delayed Fairgame$ is still in development at Haven Studios – despite widespread gamer apathy.

Microsoft has been just as brutal when it comes to shutdowns and layoffs, and it hasn’t even got the excuse of chasing live service games. Over the past few years, Xbox has closed an abundance of studios, including The Initiative, Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks (before it was reconsituted by Krafton), Alpha Dog, Roundhouse Games.

It’s also cancelled multiple major projects, including Rare’s Everwild, ZeniMax’s Blackbird, Perfect Dark, Contraband, and more.

Beyond Sony and Microsoft, we’ve seen Embracer Group swallow up and shut down studios in rapid succession. Square Enix Montréal, Volition, Pieces Interactive, and Free Radical Design are just some of the studios we’ve lost in the last few years.

All of this combined has contributed to what feels like a stunted console generation, where corporate greed and failures of leadership have done irreparable damage to the games industry as a whole.

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Nintendo has announced remakes of Pokémon Red and Blue will be released on Switch next week, to coincide with a new Pokémon Presents.

After rumours suggested Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen were set be one of the surprises for Pokémon Day on February 27, Nintendo has now confirmed that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

As announced on Friday morning, the Game Boy Advance remakes of 1996’s Pokémon Red and Blue will launch on Nintendo Switch 1 and 2 on Friday, February 27, shortly after the Pokémon Presents showcase which airs on the same day at 2pm GMT.

Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen are download exclusive titles on Switch, so they won’t be part of the Game Boy Advance line-up on Nintendo Switch Online and will instead be sold separately at £16.99 each – a fairly reasonable price considering Nintendo.

While it’s unclear why they are being sold outside of Nintendo Switch Online (aside from, you know, money), it might be related to Nintendo Switch Online’s rewind feature, which would play havoc with the trading mechanics and ruin the tension around shiny hunting.

Additionally, both these titles will support the Pokémon Home cloud service in the future, which would be tricky to implement through a Switch Online app.

Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen on Switch will support local wireless multiplayer for battles and trading, but they won’t have online play. As confirmed on an FAQ page, it will support GameChat functionality on Nintendo Switch 2 but otherwise, ‘there are no major difference in how the games perform’ between the two systems.

Based on this Q&A, it seems like these two titles aren’t a sign that more classic Pokémon titles are planned for Switch – or that any other classic games beyond Pokémon will be released separately outside of Nintendo Switch Online.

‘We remain focused on offering classic games through Nintendo Switch Online and Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack,’ a response reads in regards to the Virtual Console’s potential return.

In response to why Nintendo is handling these games differently, it added: ‘In celebration of 30 years of Pokémon, we thought it would be fun to return to the ultimate versions of the original Pokémon adventures in the Kanto region with these special releases.’ Nintendo also confirmed these games will not receive a physical edition on Switch.

Before this announcement, there was no way to play classic Pokémon titles from the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, or Nintendo DS on Switch. In the past, Nintendo made the games available on the 3DS Virtual Console, also as separate digital downloads.

Beyond the announcement of these ports, Nintendo has released music from Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen on the Nintendo Music App – so you can get into the spirit early.

More announcements are expected on Pokémon Day next Friday. Rumours suggest we could see the announcement of the next generation of Pokémon titles.

We might also see more from Pokémon Champions, Pokopia, and a potential release date for re-releases Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale Of Darkness on Nintendo Switch Online.

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Nintendo’s most embarrassing failure is now available to play via the Switch and Switch 2, but are these obscure, stereoscopic oddities worth your time and money?

The Nintendo Switch Online service is becoming an increasingly comprehensive collection of Nintendo’s retro history, with all their major consoles, from the NES to the GameCube now covered. Some formats have more titles than others but the only absence, unless you count the Pokémon Mini, has been the Virtual Boy.

You may well never have heard of it but that’s no surprise as it was such a complete flop it was never released in Europe. It launched in 1995 and was discontinued that same year, after Nintendo realised that nobody wanted to play stereoscopic 3D games by peering awkwardly into what looked like a VR helmet and putting up with solely red and black graphics.

Nevertheless, we’ve been playing the initial batch of games all this week and while some of them are interesting, and the 3D effect is very good, sitting with your head pushed inside the headset is a deeply uncomfortable way to spend your time. At the time there was a lot of talk of the console causing nausea when you played it; we didn’t experience any of that but unless you have it at exactly the right height it kills your neck.

Nintendo did return to the concept of stereoscopic 3D with the 3DS, but while that involved finding and keeping to a ‘sweet spot’ on the screen, the Virtual Boy works perfectly all the time. Although the console can push a small amount of polygons, most of them are purely wireframe and the majority of games use only 2D sprites. The effect still works great though, from the enemies leaping into the screen at you in Wario Land to the quasi-realistic courses of the unadventurously named Golf.

There were only ever 22 games, from Nintendo and various third parties, but currently there are only plans to release 16 (17 in Japan) on the original Switch and Switch 2. The seven below were made available at launch, with Nintendo confirming another nine for some time after: Mario’s Tennis, Jack Bros., Vertical Force, Mario Clash, Virtual Bowling, Space Invaders Virtual Collection, V-Tetris, D-Hopper, and Zero Racers.

The inclusion of D-Hopper (aka Dragon Hopper), by Fire Emblem developer Intelligent Systems, and F-Zero spin-off Zero Racers is particularly interesting because while the games were finished they were never released commercially, because by that point the Virtual Boy was already dead at retail.

Virtual Boy Wario Land

Developer: Nintendo R&D1

This is the crown jewel in the Virtual Boy library, made by what was at the time one of Nintendo’s key studios (now merged with Nintendo EAD) and the closest thing to a Mario platformer on the system. This was only the second Wario Land game, after Super Mario Land 3 in 1994, but works in the same general manner as the rest of the series, with Wario able to pick and up throw stunned enemies but also barge into them with a dash attack, if he’s powered up by eating a garlic bulb (his equivalent of a mushroom).

In most respects it’s a standard 2D platformer but where objects and enemies regularly move from the background to the foreground, which always looks impressive. There’s also a lot of sections where there’s a whole separate platform layout in the background, which you have to use pipes or jump pads to access – a concept that Nintendo has reused for many modern 2D platformers.

It’s all a bit slow-paced, and losing your power-up drastically reduces the options available, but there’s a good variety in terms of the range of different power-up imbuing hats and things like swimming levels. It is very short though, which was no doubt an irritation upon its original release, and the 3D effect doesn’t really come across as much more than a gimmick.

Score: 4/5

Galactic Pinball

Developer: Intelligent Systems

We’re scoring these games on a one time only five-point scale, to make it clear they’re not compatible with our regular reviews, but in some cases there’s really not much to say. Galactic Pinball is exactly what it says on the tin, with four tables that benefit from the pin sharp 3D, in that you can fit the whole thing on screen at once, with no scrolling.

The tables are reasonably well designed, and there’s a Metroid reference in one of them, but they do feel a bit empty a lot of the time, with little in the way of interesting gimmicks. Pinball games live and die on their ball physics and in that regard Galactic Pinball is… okay. It’s not actually a ball though, but a puck, which we suspect is intended as a built-in excuse for it not always moving exactly as you’d expect.

Score: 3/5

Red Alarm

Developer: T&E Soft

We have played a real Virtual Boy before this time but only a smaller selection of its games and never before this fascinating 3D on-rails shooter, that could easily have been repurposed as a Star Fox game. It’s rendered entirely with wireframe graphics, which makes it seem like something from the mid-80s, but if you can cope with that it’s a fun little shooter, with good pacing and plenty of enemy variety.

Not only is there an optional first person view, and an isometric one that makes it look like Zaxxon, but there are some very interesting effects, like the contoured faces that pop out of the screen towards you. Although level progression is on-rails you have a fair amount of freedom of movement within that space, including speeding up and down, and unlike most wireframe games the frame rate is pretty smooth.

Score: 4/5

Teleroboxer

Developer: Nintendo R&D1

If Red Alarm is Star Fox by any other name, then Teleroboxer is clearly just Punch-Out!! with a different hat on. The 3D effect here is excellent, as your fists, your opponents, and their head and body are all on different planes that give a great sense of depth. The problem is, though, that the game is very easy and once you’ve figured out the trick to beating each of the eight opponents the charm quickly disappears.

It’s a quintessential example of a tech demo masquerading as a launch title, which is a problem as old as gaming itself. The benefit of being on Nintendo Switch Online is that you can try it out at no extra cost, be impressed by the visuals, and then never touch it again when you get bored of the gameplay.

Score: 2/5

Golf

Developer: T&E Soft

Nintendo put out a lot of golf games before getting the idea to turn them into Mario themed party games and this is one of the last examples of that more staid strain of sports sim. This is a very sober recreation of the sport but with some very impressive 3D graphics. Even if it does look like it’s been raining blood the whole time.

It’s essentially flip screen, when it needs to change the camera angle, but it’s above the technical standards of SNES games of the era (the Virtual Boy was considered a 32-bit console). The control system is a minor variation on the norm, as you not only have to set the power on a meter but also try and stop a cursor moving about on an image of a golf ball at the exact place you want to hit it.

It’s fine but there’s little in the way of ancillary options, with no multiplayer, too few courses, and it doesn’t even save your score when you turn it off (most Virtual Boy games still relied on passwords instead of saving).

Score: 2/5

The Mansion Of Innsmouth

Developer: Be Top

There are many problems with the Virtual Boy as a concept but the main issue with the games is that they all feel so old-fashioned. The original PlayStation had already come out the previous year and yet The Mansion Of Innsmouth is an old school dungeon crawler, with no polygonal graphics and where you instead move around the grid-based maps in discreet steps, like Dungeon Master.

There’s plenty of retro charm to that concept but if you’re trying to sell your new console as a cutting edge piece of hardware then the games do not help. The Mansion Of Innsmouth is interesting though, as it’s based very squarely on Lovecraftian mythos, and is essentially a survival horror – complete with the same, cheap, jump scare technique as Alan Wake 2, where demonic faces suddenly appear on screen with no warning.

Unfortunately, the game isn’t much fun, as the level layout is very basic and it’s extremely difficult, with death coming quickly and if ammo runs out there’s literally nothing you can do but die or run out of time.

Score: 1/5

3-D Tetris

Developer: T&E Soft

An argument could be made that this is the most technically advanced of the initial line-up of games, even though most of it is wireframe. It’s similar to Welltris but not the same, as you drop tetriminos down a rectangular hole and try to match them up at the bottom as solid 3D objects, rather than flat 2D shapes. The controls take a few moments to get used to, and the way the camera moves around on its own is initially disconcerting, but it’s actually quite a fun variant of the grandfather of puzzle games.

There’s another Tetris game on the system, called V-Tetris, but that’s just the original flat version of the game. 3D-Tetris is more interesting because it actually tries to use the idea of a 3D effect to make something new, with a couple of additional game modes where you’re arranging tetriminos around a central square or trying to make a specific shape in puzzle mode.
3D-Tetris is not so good that we’re dying for a modern remake but it’s an engaging novelty and one of the few Virtual Boy games with a modicum of lastability.

Score: 4/5

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The developer responsible for remakes of Shadow Of The Colossus and Demon’s Souls has suddenly been closed, with the loss of over 70 jobs.

You’d never know at a glance, but the video games industry is in dire trouble at the moment. Just this week we’ve had suggestions that the memory crisis, which could make it impossible to manufacture gaming hardware in bulk, could last up to a decade, while at the same time gaming is increasingly losing out to things like gambling and porn in terms of how people spend their time and money.

As if to underline the issue, it’s been revealed that Sony is to shut down Bluepoint Games, the studio they bought five years ago and which specialises in remasters and remakes.

Bluepoint has been around for 20 years but after the remake of Demon’s Souls, for the launch of the PlayStation 5, they’ve haven’t announced any new games.

Behind the scenes, it’s been rumoured that they, like most of Sony’s other first party studios, were put to work on a live service game – thought to be part of the God Of War franchise – but it was later believed to be one of two projects cancelled by Sony last year.

Whether they were about to realise their dream of working on a big budget new IP, as they originally intended to do after Demon’s Souls, is unknown, but in recent months they were hiring for people to work on some sort of third person action game.

Sony has made no public annoucement about the closure, but it was first reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, with the text of an email from PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst later appearing on ResetEra.

‘We’re operating in an increasingly challenging industry environment. Rising development costs, slowed industry growth, changing player behaviour, and broader economic headwinds are making it harder to build games sustainably,’ wrote Hulst.

‘To navigate this reality, we need to continue adapting and evolving. We’ve taken a close look at our business to ensure we’re delivering today while still well-positioned for the future. As a result, we will be closing Bluepoint Games in March.

‘This decision was not made lightly. Bluepoint is an incredibly talented team and their technical expertise has delivered exceptional experiences for the PlayStation community. I want to thank everyone at Bluepoint for their creativity, craftsmanship, and commitment to quality. Where possible, we will work to find opportunities for some impacted employees within our global network of studios.’

In addition to various remasters, remakes, and ports Bluepoint also worked as a support studio for God of War Ragnarök, which is presumably why their live service game was based on the franchise.

As awful as the news is, it may only be the tip of the iceberg as far as Sony closures go, with many already worrying about the future of Destiny maker Bungie and Days Gone developer Bend Studio, who haven’t released a single new game this generation.

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The makers of Life Is Strange and Jusant return with a new science fiction adventure that’s been made with the help of actual scientists.

It’s 2062, Earth’s climate has broken down to the point that it’s starting to become unliveable, and the European Space Agency (ESA) has identified a potential lifeline in the form of Persephone, an icy planet nestling in the Kuiper Belt, right on the outskirts of the solar system. Apart from it being habitable, that’s not an entirely implausible set-up for a story, in what is a surprisingly realistic hard science fiction tale.

Aphelion’s developer, Don’t Nod, has been working closely with the ESA to make sure the game’s technology and setting are as close to our likely future as possible, and the fact-based possibility of a new planet in our solar system is one such prediction. You’ll also find authentic looking spacesuits, airlocks, and other hardware, only this time with a European provenance, rather than coming from NASA, which tends to be the basis for most games and films (Don’t Nod are French).

We got a hands-on preview of the first and fourth chapters of the upcoming game, which follows a mission to explore the newly discovered world. Its heroine, Ariane Montclaire is an astrobiologist tasked with gaining an understanding of its ecosystem. Unfortunately, the rest of the crew were killed when their ship crashed into the planet’s surface, leaving only her and an injured crew mate, Thomas Cross, still alive.

At the beginning of the game Thomas is missing, leaving Ariane to escape from the dangling, still burning carcass of their spaceship. The opening section is clearly inspired by Tomb Raider and Uncharted, as you slide down a lengthy portion of the ship’s tilted hull, avoiding obstacles and flaming debris, before desperately clinging onto a ledge at the end, clambering from one handhold to the next in search of somewhere flat to stand.

It provides a useful tutorial, which includes the need to grasp ledges when you leap towards them. Ariane doesn’t automatically latch on, which along with occasional QTEs, adds a small extra dimension to your precarious traversal. You’ll also discover her grappling hook and winch, which let you lock onto predefined points in the wreckage and landscape to hoist yourself up, avoiding tumbling chunks of machinery as you go.

Although best known for Life Is Strange, Don’t Nod’s first release, well over a decade ago, was Remember Me, an action game with a strong preference for platforming and melee. They also made Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden, an emotional action role-player with notably stylish combat, so they’re no strangers to games that go well beyond conversation and decision making.

That said, in this pre-release build Ariane’s movements and interactions with the environment can feel a little wooden. That’s mitigated by some beautifully observed and animated close-ups of her face, as she strains her way past obstacles, her voice betraying the stress and emotion of those moments. She’s a highly trained professional astronaut, but this was not the mission she signed up for.

Not knowing whether anyone else is even alive at this point, she records voice logs in case someone finds them, something her colleague, Thomas does as well, each unwittingly keeping the other in the loop about their activities, even though to start with they both think they’re the sole survivor of the disaster. Earth is so distant, their only hope of living through this is to help themselves.

There’s a clear intent to make ice planet Persephone the third – if not the main – character in Aphelion. Its stark beauty and craggy depths providing a distinctive backdrop, framing its heroes’ orange and grey space suits against its snowy reaches and black rocky promontories. It also helps to establish a lonely, frontier atmosphere. Jumping straight into Chapter 4, it becomes evident that Ariane is not alone on Persephone, and it’s not Thomas who’s quietly stalking her.

Falling through a melting sheet of ice, she ends up beneath the planet’s surface, where she first encounters Nemesis, a life form that, as it name implies, does not want to be friends. It’s a massive, wispy snake-like entity with pointed jaws and a glitching, discontinuous motion like something from a horror movie.

When it’s close to Araine, the screen gets lines of digital interference, like a visual representation of Silent Hill’s radio static, which also warned of the proximity of monsters. She soon discovers that Nemesis is blind, and that it’s drawn to even the slightest sound, leaving her to try and escape to the surface as slowly and silently as she can.

It’s spooky in the depths, and she soon finds herself in an ice maze, picking her way through narrow gaps in the glacier, seeking handholds and winch points in its creaking depths. It’s the very last place you’d want your suit’s head torch to start cutting out, plunging you into total darkness, and that’s of course exactly what happens.

Given the current trend amongst publishers for creating live service games, with so many trying and failing to launch the new Fortnite, it’s great to see smaller publishers still making ambitious single-player narrative driven games. Even a brief glimpse of Aphelion is enough to see the incredible care and attention that’s already gone into its development. We look forward to exploring more of Persephone later this year.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S (previewed), PlayStation 5, and PC
Publisher: Don’t Nod
Developer: Don’t Nod
Release Date: Winter 2026

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Video games aren’t competing with movies and music any more, but with online gambling and OnlyFans, in a worrying new report.

It’s no secret that the games industry is in a difficult position at the moment. Video games are simultaneously more popular than ever and yet struggling to attract enough players to justify the enormous cost of making them, resulting in constant job losses, studio shutdowns, game cancellations, and even a company as big as EA needing to be bought out.

One obvious reason for this is that the industry saw massive growth during the coronavirus-induced lockdown, where everyone was confined to their homes, but afterwards many didn’t stick around – even though most Western publishers gambled that they would.

There’s also the fact that there are so many other entertainment avenues nowadays, vying for peoples’ attention, especially ones that arguably offer a greater sense of social interactivity, with a new report pointing to gambling, AI bots, and pornography as gaming’s main competitors.

This report comes from games industry advisory company Epyllion and breaks down a lot of market data that highlights how interest in gaming worldwide has dwindled since the pandemic. For example, spending on PC and console gaming in the US has dropped 8% in that time.

Epyllion argues that there are seven alternative interactive experiences that are stealing peoples’ attention from video games:

• Social video, including TikTok
• Creator pornography (think OnlyFans)
• AI assistants
• Crypto and memecoins
• Prediction markets
• Online sports betting
• iGaming and iCasinos (digital games that allow you to bet and win real money)

‘Video games not only compete with many new interactive substitutes, but video gamers face a barrage of new, interruptive, and irresistible notifications for these substitutes,’ reads the report.

You can see this in Epyllion’s data. For example, since 2019, spending on video game software in the US has risen by $12.9 billion (about £9.6 billion), but the country’s spending on OnlyFans content, online betting, and iCasinos has collectively risen by $31.6 billion (about £23.5 billion).

Elsewhere, Epyllion reports that more American men aged 18 to 45 are likely to use AI chatbots, use creator pornography, or take part in online gambling than they would play a video game, be it on consoles, PC, or mobile.

‘Video gaming’s post-pandemic problem isn’t that players choose to watch TikTok instead of buy a AAA video game or subscribe to OnlyFans instead of buying a PlayStation; it’s that on a Friday evening, players are placing a growing share of their time and spend elsewhere,’ says the report.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the video games market is dominated by a small number of live service games, like Fortnite and Minecraft, that are often five years old or more, making it difficult for new titles to break through.

We’ve seen it just this month with Highguard, but even established franchises are struggling to grow their audiences to the degree executives want. Take EA Sports FC 25, for example, which should’ve been one of EA’s main money makers for 2024 and yet reportedly underperformed.

So, what’s the solution? Considering the heightened sense of interactivity seen in conversing with AI chatbots and engaging with creator pornography, perhaps publishers will pursue a similar avenue and try to make games more personalised.

We’ve already seen Sony experiment with this, with an AI chatbot based on Horizon Forbidden West protagonist Aloy, making it so players can hold a conversation with her.

Sony has also submitted a patent that posits the idea of ‘LLM-based generative podcasts for gamers’ that would star PlayStation game characters and be personalised to your interests.

The concept of directly interacting with game characters in this manner does seem like the next evolution for the medium, but it’s not something any publisher has talked about openly yet.

Although there is an additional problem, in that gaming hardware may become increasingly difficult to manufacture over the coming years, as AI companies buy up all the components and little is left for gaming.

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A new Switch 2 Edition game has just been announced, available as a full game or an inexpensive upgrade from the Switch 1.

There have been two Nintendo Directs this year so far, but neither had any updates on Nintendo’s actual video game plans for 2026. The first was just a trailer for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the second was only for Tomodachi Life: Living The Dreamm and the third covered third party games from other studios like Bethesda.

A first party showcase is sure to drop sooner rather than later, but if there’s one thing that won’t be unveiled during it, it’s a Nintendo Switch 2 port of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.

That’s because it was just unveiled out of nowhere earlier today and is available for purchase right now, albeit only digitally.

This isn’t one of those simple free updates either, but a full-on upgrade, which means even if you already own the Switch 1 version, you need to pay for it.

The upgrade costs £4.19, making it one of the cheaper upgrade packs alongside Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Switch 2 version, which launched last month.

If you don’t own the original game, it’s also available as a separate digital purchase of £54.99, with a physical version releasing on April 16. However, it doesn’t appear to include any new content.

Both Nintendo’s announcement and its eShop listing only mention improved resolutions up to 4K in TV mode and improved performance upwards of 60 frames per second.

This is likely why the price for upgrading isn’t as high as other Switch 2 upgrade packs, like the ones for Super Mario Party Jamboree and Kirby And The Forgotten Land.

On one hand, this news isn’t super surprising as fans already suspected that Xenoblade Chronicles X would see a Switch 2 port as early as last March, after a hidden 60fps mode was found in the game’s executable file.

That said, it is a bit strange that Nintendo would just announce and release it with zero build-up, but the game’s Switch 1 version was also randomly revealed with a surprise trailer, so Nintendo is being consistent.

What is definitely odd is that Nintendo would prioritise a Switch 2 port of the Xenoblade spin-off rather than any of the mainline numbered games. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 did receive a free update (which made ‘several adjustments’ to the gameplay), but none of them have dedicated Switch 2 upgrades that boost their performance.

It’s unclear if Nintendo plans on further Xenoblade upgrades, although some fans believe developer Monolith Soft teased one for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 via social media last year.

Speaking of Xenoblade, earlier this month the fanbase went into a tizzy when it was alleged that voice actress Caitlin Thorburn, who voiced the character KOS-MOS in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, had updated her profile on casting website Spotlight to mention she had reprised the role for a Xenoblade Chronicles game out in 2026.

A screenshot of this was shared to Famiboards and quickly spread among the Xenoblade community, sparking theories of either a brand new game or a Switch 2 re-release of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It doesn’t have anything to do with Xenoblade Chronicles X, though, since KOS-MOS doesn’t appear in that game and nor does Thorburn provide any voicework.

Assuming another Xenoblade game is being planned for 2026, it might be revealed in the next Nintendo Direct, which is likely to take place in March or April.

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It took over 10 years, but some dedicated fans have finally made a pair of previously unavailable Mario Kart games available to play.

While Nintendo might officially treat Mario Kart World as the ninth entry in its go-karting series (10th if you count mobile game Mario Kart Tour), that’s technically not accurate.

That’s because Nintendo previously released Mario Kart arcade cabinets as part of a partnership with Sega and Bandai Namco. You might have seen them at an arcade but they’ve never been made available on consoles.

Recently, though, this often-overlooked part of Nintendo history was made more widely available thanks to fan efforts, although only via the legal grey area of emulation.

2005’s Mario Kart Arcade GP and its 2007 sequel are now playable through Dolphin, an emulator for Nintendo GameCube games.

While those two games never saw console ports, the arcade system they ran on, dubbed Triforce, was built on similar hardware to the GameCube, with the Mario Kart Arcade games using the same engine as GameCube title Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

This was also the same system used for the arcade release of another GameCube racing game, F-Zero GX, which was developed by Sega and can be played nowadays through the Nintendo Switch 2’s GameCube library.

The Mario Kart arcade games were made by Bandai Namco, which is why they feature some of the company’s characters, like Pac-Man.

Technically, a different group of fans did get these games running before, but through what is described as ‘suboptimal techniques’ that meant they weren’t entirely stable.

‘When we first started on this journey, most of us hadn’t had the opportunity to play any of the Triforce games on an original cabinet,’ says fan JMC47. ‘The best we could do was buy the core systems and games and try to get them running with what we had.

‘The experience on bare hardware was rarely good and never great, but that was not how they were meant to be played. Triforce games were designed to be a part of an arcade experience, with a cool cabinet, interesting features, and unique control schemes. Through emulation, we were able to bring some of that arcade magic back to these games that no longer have a cabinet to call home.’

A third entry, Mario Kart Arcade GP DX, launched in 2013, but that one wasn’t built using the Triforce tech, which is why it’s not been emulated on Dolphin.

There is a fourth Mario Kart Arcade game from 2017, but it’s a VR experience and is only available in a specific Bandai Namco arcade based in Tokyo.

Given the length of time, it’s extremely unlikely Nintendo has any interest in officially re-releasing these arcade Mario Kart games, especially when Mario Kart World is still fresh and expected to see long-term support.

That said, while there have been some gameplay updates since launch, Nintendo’s been shockingly quiet about post-launch DLC. There were theories of Donkey Kong related characters being added to coincide with Donkey Kong Bananza’s launch, based on voice actor credits, but nothing ever came of it.

Hopefully, Nintendo will have something to share during its next Nintendo Direct. After the Partner Showcase earlier this month, we are due for one focused on first party games, but there’s no official date yet.

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After becoming a cult classic on PC, strategy game Death Howl mixes elements of Soulslikes with turn-based battles, in this demanding but rewarding new console release.

Polish developer and publisher 11 bit studios make fascinating choices in the games they design and publish. From Frostpunk and its sequel’s austere politics, where there are no right answers and plenty of unintended consequences that spring from trying to find them to The Alters, an offbeat sci-fi base builder in which your operation is staffed by increasing numbers of subtly divergent clones; their output is thoughtful, often tactically demanding, and always hard to predict.

Their latest is Death Howl, which is described as a Soulslike deck builder. Inevitably there’s quite a lot more to it than that, most notably that along with deploying cards from your slowly expanding deck, turn-based battles take place on a square grid, your positioning and movement on it having a powerful effect on the outcomes of attacks and defences. You’ll need to line-up shots and plan for areas of effect, while stabbing foes in the back proves more effective than frontal assaults.

The son of protagonist Ro dies in the opening scene, forcing her to confront the spirits of the underworld in an attempt to win him back. To do that you’ll need to work your way through the distinctive pixel art biomes – each of which comes with its own enemies, cards, and beasts to fight – in search of a way to free him. You’re assisted by your spirit animal, whose guidance is just as elliptical and mysterious as the environments you wander.

Like the Souls games, Death Howl refuses to spell anything out for you, and that includes how to play. First impressions are that it’s literally impossible, Ro dying quickly in only her second encounter with the magical creatures of the forest. What it doesn’t explain, but you soon learn, is that you can return to sacred groves, all of which are marked on your map, to heal after battle.

They behave like FromSoftware’s bonfires, returning hit points and letting you acquire new skills. They also resurrect every nearby enemy you’ve killed. That’s actually extremely useful because when they die, enemies drop crafting materials that you use to create new cards to add to your deck, making Ro incrementally more powerful in battle.

It’s a peculiar game to play, and we certainly spent the first few hours thinking we must be missing something significant. There are few games that force you to grind before you’ve even really figured out their systems, but Death Howl does just that. In the opening hours, the only way we found to make ourselves viable in battle, was to repeat the first few encounters multiple times, returning to a sacred grove to recuperate before heading back out to fight, gather loot and craft cards.

Combat has something in common with Into The Breach. Although that had a sci-fi setting, and a far smaller selection of units, both sides’ attacks had specific patterns to their firepower as it spread across its grid, along with after effects like knockback, or setting things on fire. Death Howl’s cards are similarly complex, with some working at range and others requiring you to make sacrifices. In your starter deck, that includes surrendering some of your shield capability for an instant boost to defence or disposing of a card from your current turn’s selection in return for a ranged hit.

It means every time you craft a new card, its synergies and demands need to be tested and understood before it becomes useful. Cards also interact with totems, which give Ro extra perks, up to four of which can be equipped simultaneously once you’ve unlocked all their slots. It’s a system that offers an expansive depth and range of potential approaches in any given encounter.

Enemies respawn in exactly the same places and configurations after each trip to a sacred grove, which lets you refine your strategies against them, as you gain new cards and learn how best to use them. Since battles are turn-based, there’s no need to hurry any part of the process, yet despite that lack of pressure there are many moments where you kick yourself for hastily making a play, realising just afterwards that there was a better option.

As well as providing inspiringly different looking backdrops to your exploration, the biomes that make up Death Howl’s world bring their own modifiers, providing cover or slowing down enemies in marshes. You’ll also find the game’s plot unfolding as you search. Unlike Hades and its sequel, which kept story beats safely fenced off from their roguelite gameplay, conversations and discoveries abound as you travel and fight.

It’s a dark place, both literally and metaphorically, the map boiling out of the blackness as the screen follows your motion. Its, also Soulslike in the way its lore is revealed to you in tiny pieces, each of which makes little sense on its own, but that gradually start to reveal a pointillist picture of what’s happening, and Ro’s situation within it.

Death Howl is no place for dabblers. Its complexity and refusal to reveal anything without extracting a high price for it, along with multiple interacting systems that jointly affect the outcomes of its turn-based battles, demand concentration and experience. Nothing comes easily, which makes victories all the sweeter in this strange and wonderfully idiosyncratic game.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £17.99
Publisher: 11 bit studios
Developer: The Outer Zone
Release Date: 19th February 2026
Age Rating: 12

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Bethesda’s Todd Howard has provided another update on Elder Scrolls 6’s development, while adding that Starfield hasn’t been abandoned.

Although Bethesda is prioritising development of The Elder Scrolls 6, with it allegedly in a playable state as of last year, it’s unlikely to launch any time soon. Microsoft once said 2028 at the earliest, but that was three years ago and who knows if plans have changed since then.

Any time the subject has been brought up, game director Todd Howard has been keen to stress that things are going well but the game is still a long way off from launching.

Nevertheless, in a new interview, Howard has offered some new info; namely that The Elder Scrolls 6 is being built with an upgraded version of Bethesda’s in-house engine and that the aim is to stick to the series’ ‘classic’ formula.

Speaking with Kinda Funny, Howard explained that Bethesda is using Creation Engine 3, which, as the name suggests, is the third iteration of the engine that was first used for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.

An upgraded version of the engine was used for Starfield and now it’s been improved again for The Elder Scrolls 6, with Creation Engine 3 to become the new standard for future games too (which no doubt includes Fallout 5).

It’s debatable whether that’s good news as Bethesda’s in-house tech has long been criticised for being outdated, for encouraging bugs, and being subject to poor facial animation. Starfield was an improvement in terms of the latter two issues, but it was far from perfect or cutting edge.

Comments from Kratos’ voice actor point to another God Of War game being revealed this year but don’t expect an Egyptian sequel.

It’s been nearly four years since God Of War Ragnarök and yet the inevitable sequel feels further away than ever. Just last week, series developer Santa Monica Studio shadow-dropped prequel game, Sons Of Sparta (which is primarily made by another studio) and announced that full remakes of all three original Greek era God Of War games are currently in development.

Those remakes are likely still years away from ever coming out and if Santa Monica is the lead developer on those (something that’s not been made clear), that’s too much of an undertaking to also juggle a dedicated sequel.

And yet, it’s rumoured that Santa Monica will be announcing another new game later this year; one that could launch in 2027 or 2028. Its identity remains a mystery but recent comments, including ones from Kratos himself, point to it being some kind of new God Of War spin-off.

Recently, Twitch streamer and YouTuber Fuzhpuzy spoke with Christopher Judge, who did the voicework and motion capture for Kratos in the modern God Of War games, while at a convention, where she asked him about the recently announced remakes.

While it was quite apparent anyway, Judge confirmed he will not be voicing Kratos in the remakes (T.C. Carson, the previous voice actor, will be reprising the role, just as he does in Sons Of Sparta), but he also said, ‘You will hear about what we’re doing probably late summer.’

We couldn’t find the original clip on YouTube, but it’s been shared around on X and considering Judge isn’t visible and you only hear his (very distinctive) voice, it’s possible he didn’t know he was being recorded at the time.

Whatever the case, Judge seems to be referring to Santa Monica’s next game, with the summer reveal lining up with what other reliable insiders have claimed. And if he’s involved, the obvious assumption is that he’s voicing Kratos again, pointing to a new God Of War game.

So, does that mean the Ragnarök sequel is actually closer to coming out than the remakes? Not necessarily, according to insider Ashhong; someone who has claimed to have knowledge of Santa Monica’s next game in the past and has implied it won’t be based on a new IP and nor is it a licensed game.

It not being a new IP has also been claimed by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who added that Ashhong ‘knows what they’re talking about’ last year.

More recently, on ResetEra, when someone said that 2027 would be the perfect time to release a new mainline God Of War game, Ashhong replied with, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

The most likely explanation for all these rumours is that Santa Monica’s next game is God Of War related, but it’s another spin-off like Sons Of Sparta, which could point to it having a different gameplay style. This would line up with Schreier’s comment about how the game is ‘not a new IP but it might feel like one.’

Maybe it’ll be an Atreus solo adventure, with Kratos only making a cameo appearance? Atreus’ playable appearances in the last game felt like Santa Monica testing the waters for a spin-off, which the ending also seemed to imply. It could also serve as a bridge game to build up to the next sequel, whether it’s set in the constantly rumoured Egypt or somewhere else.

There’s also a small possibility that the game isn’t God Of War related at all. Kratos is Judge’s most prominent video game role, but Santa Monica could very well have cast him in a new role for something else.

Judge clearly has a close working relationship with the studio, as evidenced by how Santa Monica and Sony decided to delay God Of War Ragnarök to accommodate for his surgery and rehab rather than recast Kratos.

Whatever it ends up being, you should find out later this year, likely at another State of Play around August or September time (Summer Game Fest in June doesn’t seem to line-up with Judge’s mention of ‘late summer’); just don’t expect a traditional God Of War sequel.

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With Metal Gear Solid 4 finally leaving the PlayStation 3, GameCentral names the other games that should follow suit and get a proper re-release.

During the recent State of Play, Konami announced the long awaited follow up to its Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1. The second volume includes re-releases of PlayStation Portable game Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, the little-known Game Boy Color spin-off Metal Gear: Ghost Babel and, most importantly, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots.

That last one is significant because Metal Gear Solid 4 only ever released for the PlayStation 3, in 2008, and has otherwise been unavailable ever since. As the finale to the entire Metal Gear Solid saga (at least chronologically), fans have demanded a re-release for years and come August, their patience will be rewarded.

But this has us thinking what other PlayStation 3 exclusives could do with a re-release, especially ones from Sony itself, many of which are already in danger of being forgotten.

Sony does have a sizable list of PlayStation 3 games available through its PlayStation Plus service, but only via cloud streaming, which isn’t ideal if you don’t have an optimal internet connection. It also doesn’t include all the games below and is only rarely updated.

God Of War: Ascension

It’s going to be a long time until those God Of War remakes come out and while fans do have Metroidvania prequel Sons Of Sparta to whet their appetites, it’s not exactly a traditional God Of War experience.

A God Of War: Ascension re-release would be a smart follow-up since it’s chronologically the next game after Sons Of Sparta and sets up the original trilogy, with a decently interesting story about Kratos’ attempt to free himself from his bond with god of war Ares, after he was tricked into killing his family.

It’s also just a very solid action game and though its gory violence can be tasteless, it’s one of the best-looking PlayStation 3 games, having launched towards the end of its lifecycle.

inFamous 1 and 2

Sucker Punch is unlikely to ever go back to inFamous when samurai games Ghost Of Tsushima and Ghost Of Yōtei have been far more financially successful, but it wouldn’t hurt to make the original PlayStation 3 games more readily available, alongside the PlayStation 4 sequels.

There are admittedly better superhero games out there, but the first two inFamous games are still enjoyable to play and double as supervillain power fantasies if you’re tired of goody-two-shoes heroes like Spider-Man.

Protagonist Cole McGrath is too much of a boring grump for our liking, although not necessarily any worse than the unfunny and overly enthusiastic Delsin from inFamous: Second Son.

Killzone Trilogy

Guerrilla Games is far too busy pumping out new Horizon games (including the new multiplayer spin-off) to ever revisit Killzone. That only makes it more surprising that only PlayStation 4 entry Shadow Fall and the PlayStation Portable spin-off are on PlayStation Plus.

Re-releasing the Killzone Trilogy compilation from 2012 would prevent the original PlayStation 2 game from being left out. That said, it is the weakest of the bunch and one you could probably skip in favour of its two PlayStation 3 sequels.

Killzone 2 is most fan’s favourite and it’s the only one that has something close to a memorable character, in villain Colonel Radec. The one downside is that any re-releases would obviously lack the online multiplayer.

MotorStorm Apocalypse

If Gran Turismo is like a sophisticated, professional race car driver, who can land sponsorships and cut a winning smile for photo opps, MotorStorm is its grungy cousin, that isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.

For a series that is now all but forgotten there are an awful lot of entries, with MotorStorm Apocalypse being the best of the bunch. We’d take MotorStorm: RC as well, which launched for the PlayStation Vita and is the best Micro Machines game never made.

At the very least, a MotorStorm re-release would be a nice throwback, since developer Evolution Studios is long gone, having joined Codemasters in 2016, who themselves aren’t in a good place nowadays.

Puppeteer

Even if they weren’t always successful, you could count on Japan Studio to craft some memorable and unique video games, which is why it was so tragic to see Sony gut the studio in 2021.

Of all its PlayStation 3 releases, Puppeteer was one of their best, if only for its phenomenally whimsical puppet show presentation. The combat wasn’t particularly impressive, but it had plenty of interesting gimmicks to make up for it, such as the magic scissors that let you fly as long as you had something to cut through.

It might have fared better if Sony had held it back for the PlayStation 4 (maybe even as a launch title) as it’s arguably the most forgotten, but highest quality, game on this list.

Ratchet & Clank Future trilogy

Considering its status as one of the main PlayStation franchises – one that has lasted since the days of the PlayStation 2 – it’s surprising Sony hasn’t made more of an effort to make the older Ratchet & Clank games readily available, beyond cloud streaming.

When it comes to the first three games, most fans would probably prefer the original PlayStation 2 versions than their PlayStation 3 remasters, but the Future trilogy of games made specifically for the PlayStation 3 still hold up well and, tonally, would be a hit with newer fans who joined the series with Rift Apart.

Playing Tools Of Destruction, Quest For Booty, and A Crack In Time back-to-back would risk being exhausting, given how similarly they look and play, but they have some amusingly unique weapons and solid platforming. New fans would also appreciate the interconnecting storyline, with some plot threads continued in Rift Apart.

Siren: Blood Curse

The tonal opposite of the aforementioned Puppeteer, Japan Studio’s Forbidden Siren series has quite the pedigree, having been directed by Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama long before he set up his own studio and released the far inferior Slitterhead.

Unlike that game, the Forbidden Siren series is pure horror through and through. All three entries are of similar quality so, frankly, all of them deserve a second lease at life, and stand to thrive thanks to how popular survival horror games are at the moment.

Since this is a list about PlayStation 3 games, we must highlight Siren: Blood Curse, which is essentially a reimagining of the original game, but with a reworked story structure and gameplay improvements from the second game.

SOCOM 4 U.S. Navy SEALs

SOCOM always seemed like a good fit for Sony’s live service games obsession, given it was a series of tactical shooters and one of the company’s first attempts at running online multiplayer.

The series saw two entries on PlayStation 3, but if one were to come back, it’d have to be SOCOM 4 U.S. Navy SEALs as the other – SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Confrontation – was a purely online game and Sony’s not going to establish new servers for a nearly 20-year-old title.

Multiplayer was a big part of SOCOM, but SOCOM 4 at least has an enjoyablesingle-player campaign, that should appeal to those nostalgic for the older Call Of Duty campaigns.

Tokyo Jungle

Although it’s not entirely a first party game, since it was a joint project between Japan Studio and a little-known studio called Crispy’s, Tokyo Jungle is still seen as one of Sony’s cult classics from the PlayStation 3 days.

Its premise is certainly novel, being set in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo devoid of human life. Rather than some grizzled wanderer, you play as a wide variety of different animals – from Pomeranians and chickens to lions and even dinosaurs – and struggle to survive as long as you can.

Tokyo Jungle makes the most of this premise and what it lacks in graphical flair, it makes up for with an entertaining gameplay loop, some interesting survival mechanics, and a tongue-in-cheek tone that keeps it from being too morose.

White Knight Chronicles 1 and 2

We wouldn’t blame you for not remembering this, but Sony really wanted White Knight Chronicles to take off and pushed it hard as one of the PlayStation 3’s big exclusives. Obviously, that didn’t work, but it was still a competently made action role-player with some neat ideas.

Like Tokyo Jungle, this was another Japan Studio joint project, although the main developer was Level-5, better known nowadays as the studio responsible for Professor Layton and the Yokai Watch series.

White Knight Chronicles 2 also did the Mass Effect thing where you could carry over your character from the first game, along with all your money and equipment, creating a welcome sense of continuity. Not only were there two games but also a PSP spin-off, and yet the franchise never made it out of the PlayStation 3 generation.

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Epic Games’ classic shooter Unreal Tournament 2004 has been resurrected by fans, with a new patch to make it run on modern PCs.

Although Epic Games’ most successful title in the modern gaming landscape is Fortnite, before that they were better known for Gears Of War and, before that, the Unreal series of games.

There were originally two flavours of Unreal games, one a primarily single-player first person shooter and the other a series of arena-based multiplayer titles called Unreal Tournament, with the ubiquitous Unreal Engine powering them both.

Unreal appeared in 1998, with Unreal Tournament a year later. Unreal only got one sequel but Tournament proved more popular and eventually hit the big time with the widely popular Unreal Tournament 2004.

There hasn’t been a legitimate way to play Unreal Tournament 2004 since Epic shut all the servers down in January 2023, and delisted the title from stores. However, thanks to fans, the shooter is now back and available to download and play for free.

The plans to revive Unreal Tournament 2004 were announced last year, as part of the OldUnreal community project to revive and update Epic’s early shooters. The community already got Epic’s approval to bring back Unreal Gold and 1999’s Unreal Tournament, and it’s now done the same with the 2004 game.

As for how you can claim the download, there are a couple of steps. The original disc image for Unreal Tournament 2004 is hosted on the Internet Archive, and while OldUnreal isn’t allowed to host the game outright, you can download it using an installer from the archive, hosted on OldUnreal’s website here.

After you’ve downloaded the game, you need to download a community patch via GitHub for Unreal Tournament 2004, which enables it to run on modern operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Mac.

In the release notes for the patch, OldUnreal project manager Stijn-volckaert wrote: ‘Please note that this is the first public patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 in over 20 years. ‘We have implemented numerous fixes and improvements, written a new SDL backend for Linux and macOS, and even a new renderer.

‘We have also migrated the entire codebase to modern build systems. Some new bugs may have slipped in!’

As a classic of the shooter genre, and for champions of game preservation, it’s good news all round. It’s also a bittersweet reminder of how Epic Games ditched development of the Unreal Tournament series in order to double down on Fortnite.

Although you’d have to say, from their point of view, that was unquestionably the right choice.

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An advert for Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been banned in the UK, after it received nine complaints which believed it trivialised sexual violence.

Call Of Duty is no stranger to controversy, with many of the games purposefully courting it – most notably the No Russian mission from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2. But the series’ adverts are only rarely a point of contention.

In 2012, an advert for Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was banned from being shown during the day, due to scenes of ‘violence and destruction’ but now an advert for Black Ops 7 has been banned entirely in the UK, for ‘trivialising sexual violence’.

The advert in question, which is still available on YouTube (and was also shown on ITV and Channel 5’s on demand services), depicts fake officer ‘replacers’ at airport security, who have been drafted in because the real ones are off playing the game.

In the advert, a male replacer tells a male civilian he has been ‘randomly selected to be manhandled’. He then tells him to strip off, as the other female officer equips a glove and remarks, ‘time for the puppet show’. The final scene sees the man bite down on a handheld security scanner, as the male replacer says, ‘bite down on this, she’s going in dry.’

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received nine complaints over the advert, who claimed it ‘trivialised sexual violence’ and was ‘irresponsible and offensive’. Another two complaints believed the advert ‘encouraged or condoned drug use’.

In response, Call Of Duty publisher Activision claimed the advert for the 18-rated game was ‘targeted at adult audiences only’ who have a ‘higher tolerance for irreverent or exaggerated humour’. As noted by the ASA, the publisher also said the humour, including the ‘bite down’ line, referred to discomfort rather than sex.

Additionally, Activision said the advert had been reviewed by advertising regulatory body Clearcast and approved with an ‘ex-kids’ timing restriction. They also claim the advert was not broadcast during or around children’s programming or content likely to appeal to anyone under the age of 16.

Despite these arguments, the ASA has banned the advert ‘in its current form’. In its ruling, it said Activision Blizzard were told ‘to ensure that their ads were socially responsible and did not cause serious offence, for example by trivialising sexual violence’.

The ASA ruled that because the advert ‘alluded to non-consensual penetration’ and ‘framed it as an entertaining scenario’, it ‘trivialised sexual violence and was therefore irresponsible and offensive’. However, the ASA found the advert was ‘unlikely to be understood’ as encouraging or condoning drug use, so this complaint was not upheld.

This ‘Airport Security’ advert is one of several live action promo clips created for Black Ops 7, with others showing ‘replacers’ in the roles of astronauts and baristas. The adverts star comedian Nikki Glaser, Terry Crews, and Jake Paul, amongst others.

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Business execs think the memory shortage could impact electronics companies into 2030 and beyond, as Sony and Microsoft prepare to launch next gen consoles.

We’ve recently heard about how the worldwide memory shortage could delay Sony’s launch for the PlayStation 6 and Microsoft’s next Xbox, but its detrimental impact on the games industry could be felt for more than just a year or two.

Ever since late last year, the price of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) has increased due to companies like OpenAI and Google swallowing up resources to build AI data centres. This has left other tech companies to fight over the remaining supply of chips, made by the likes of Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix.

These shortages have already affected companies like Valve, through potential price increases to its upcoming Steam Machine hardware and low supplies of the Steam Deck, but there’s concern this crisis could lead to the end of some tech companies entirely.

In an interview on YouTube earlier this week, Pua Khein-Seng, the CEO of Taiwanese electronics company Phison, claimed the memory shortage will lead to a ‘massive die-off’ in consumer electronics companies, with some potentially going bankrupt as early as this year.

While we can’t verify Khein-Seng’s exact comments in the interview (the YouTube video is in Chinese, with no English subtitles available), his answers have been summarised by X user 駿HaYaO and translated by PC Gamer.

駿HaYaO wrote: ‘From the end of this year to 2026, many system vendors will go bankrupt or exit product lines due to a lack of memory. Mobile phone production will be reduced by 200-250 million units, and PC and TV production will be significantly reduced.’

Khein-Seng further claims that memory manufacturers are ‘demanding three years’ worth of pre-payment’, which is apparently unprecedented in the electronics industry. It’s said these memory manufacturers ‘internally estimate the shortage will last until 2030, or even for another 10 years’.

According to this summary, Khein-Seng doesn’t name any specific companies at risk, but he does state ‘large numbers of low-margin brands will exit’ in the second half 2026, and ‘low-end products will disappear’.

While neither Sony or Microsoft could be described as a ‘low-margin brand’, it’s possible these shortages could impact both of them in a significant way.

In fact, in its financial results from earlier this month, Sony chief financial officer, Lin Tao, explained how the company plans to offset rising memory costs by focusing on ‘monetising the installed base’, and growing software and network services revenue.

Tao doesn’t spell out any specific plans but, based on the verbiage, it certainly sounds like price hikes for PlayStation Plus subscriptions are in contention, along with releasing more games, and any other ways of rinsing cash from existing PlayStation 5 owners.

We’ll have to wait and see if this memory shortage will have significant consequences for the games industry in the long term, but for now, the early signs are very worrying.

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