tldr videogame curation
melbourne, australia

According to five separate sources - and later seemingly confirmed by Nintendo themselves - the Switch 2 appears to’ve been delayed til 2025. Nintendo is advising publishers that its next-generation console will be delayed until the early months of 2025, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Sources close to the matter have reported that troubled Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM have let go of 24 staff, and cancelled its latest project - for the third time. We now know this included the last writer on Disco - Argo Tuulik - who has now spoken out:

It’s the people on top – the motherfuckers in sailing shoes and bowties – that fucked Harry, fucked Kim, fucked Robert, Rostov, Helen, Olga, Cash, fucked Elysium, fucked you and me too. They are not artists, they are professional fuckers.

He believes the studio “will forever remain a studio known for a single game”, with all members of the ZA/UM art collective now gone, but also reminds us of their promise: “Un jour je serai de retour près de toi.”

According to a new report, FROMSOFT is now the sole owner of the Elden Ring IP, no longer sharing rights with Bandai Namco. This change was seemingly facilitated via investments from Sony and Tencent.

I really want to like this game. It has a really well defined and executed identity and the overarching gameplay loop is super fun at a high level. What stopped me from having a great time won’t stop everyone: the gunplay and movement is chunky and cumbersome by design - and indeed fits the tone well - but it’s a bit too heavy and laborious for me. Still think it’s a super cool game, but it’s not my preferred feel.

[Early Access] Without taking anything away from Pocketpair, it’s kind of wild that it took this long for someone to pull this off. For everything Palworld may lack in (narrow) originality, it makes up for in execution. It throws down the gauntlet for what a creature collector could be, and somehow blends it with modern genres and sensibilities in a way that, surprisingly… just works? Time will tell if they truly stick the landing over the course of EA, but there’s already enough here for an outrageously fun time.

On the back of similar deals with the likes of LEGO, Disney have invested $1.5B USD in Epic, and will collaborate to build an “expansive and open games and entertainment universe” in Fortnite. Not completely unsurprising, but that’s a lotta dough!

Apparently Tencent is developing a mobile adaptation of Elden Ring - with a desire for gacha elements - according to sources. The company acquired licensing rights in 2022 and has initiated a small team to prototype the game, although progress has been slow. This sounds… kinda disgusting, and currently hard to believe.

A space-themed Suika-like, with satisfying, bouncy physics, and a novel way to ease congestion. Simple but cosy, and it’s cool to see something like this made in PICO-8.

Naughty Dog have released Grounded II: Making The Last of Us Part II, a documentary exploring the game’s creation. The film, featuring Neil Druckmann, Halley Gross, Ashley Johnson, Troy Baker and a bunch of other Naughty Dogs, spans two hours. There’s a discussion about a potential Part III toward the end. 👀

Following the DS2 deep-dive, Kojima stuck around to briefly tease his studio’s next project. He summed it up in a tweet:

It is a completely new ‘Action Espionage’ for the next-generation. It will be created using cutting-edge technology and the best talents from around the world, both from film and video games. Of course this is an interactive ‘game’, but the look, story, theme, cast, acting, fashion, sound, etc… are all at the next level of ‘Digital Entertainment’ that could be called a ‘movie’.

OK!