Tag: gaming

Nintendo Switch 2 price may not be affected by tariffs, analyst says

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Research firm DFC Intelligence said Monday that it was “modeling a 20% price increase over the next two years” for Switch 2. But in updated guidance sent to Polygon from the firm’s CEO David Cole, “the reference to a 20% hardware price increase over the next two years applied to the hardware side in general and not just the Switch.”

“In the case of the Switch 2, we believe much of the 20% increase was already baked into the $450 price,” Cole said. “It is not likely Nintendo will raise the price, and if they do, we don’t expect it to be 20%. Also much of that increase is in the form of NOT discounting prices. So not necessarily a price increase but where we model a 20% price decrease in the next year or so we have the prices holding steady.”

Nintendo announced the launch price of Switch 2 at $449.99 last Wednesday, but that was before Trump outlined “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries, including territories where Nintendo manufactures its hardware. Trump hit China with an additional 34% duty on Wednesday, and Vietnam, where Nintendo has moved some of its production, with a 46% tariff. Trump also hit Japan, where Nintendo is headquartered, with a 24% tariff on Japanese goods.

Trump’s move pushed Nintendo pause Switch 2 pre-orders in the U.S., which were planned to open on April 9, while it “assess[ed] the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions.”

DFC Intelligence’s report did not specifically say that the launch price of Switch 2 could creep beyond the previously announced $449.99 asking price, but that hardware prices could go up depending on costs associated with tariffs. While game consoles have traditionally gone down in price, the most recent console generation bucked that trend; Nintendo still sells the Switch at its original launch price of $299.99. Rivals Sony and Microsoft have both raised prices on their current-gen consoles in certain territories.

“Additional clarity is expected when Nintendo releases its earnings in May,” analysts said in the report.

According to DFC Intelligence’s report, tariffs and uncertain pricing may push Nintendo to scale back its manufacturing, and the research firm lowered its sales forecast for the Switch 2, from 17 million to 15 million units in 2025. But DFC Intelligence still expects Switch 2 to be “the fastest-selling console system ever.”

Even with a possible price increase in the U.S., the firm is bullish on Nintendo’s prospects. Switch 2, DFC Intelligence says, “will continue to grow Nintendo’s growth among PC gamers and the core adult market,” and “has the potential to reshape the video game market.”

Update: DFC Intelligence clarified to Polygon its modeling for this report, stating that it concluded that Switch 2 will not rise in price as a result of tariffs. This story has been updated to reflect this clarification.

Brandon Sanderson’s list of favorite games makes perfect sense

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First thing’s first, here is Sanderson’s top 10:

10. Katamari Damacy
9. Undertale
8. Fallout: New Vegas
7. Super Mario World
6. The Curse of Monkey Island
5. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
4. Halo 2
3. Final Fantasy X
2. Bloodborne
1. Civilization VI

You can go to Sanderson’s original blog post to read a few of his thoughts on each game, but we have a few thoughts on this list (and how it ties into his work) that you won’t get from Brandon himself.

Before we even get into the individual games, one thing that stands out right away is just how diverse it is. There’s practically a game for every genre in here — 4X strategy, first-person shooters, action games, RPGs, and even Katamari — which, it’s fair to say, is a genre unto itself. No one would have expected Sanderson’s list to stay beholden to his chosen literary genres of fantasy and science fiction, but it’s fun to image the ways that games like Undertale or Super Mario World have seeped into his work.

There are, of course, a few entries on this list that seem a lot more related to his literary work, and even a few that help explain his worlds and writing. Games like Bloodborne and Breath of the Wild seem like natural companions for Sanderson’s fantasy worlds and work, fraternal twins tied together by the thoroughness of vision in their settings and the sense of adventure and experimental challenge they offer players. Meanwhile, games like Curse of Monkey Island and Fallout: New Vegas seem like perfect indicators of Sanderson’s sense of humor and the kind of irreverence he occasionally brings to his books as well.

But the real skeleton keys to his work on this list are Final Fantasy X and Civilization VI. Anyone who’s read Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series and encountered the way he blends together dozens of cultures and countries in its world should recognize the fact that it comes from someone who’s clearly spent hundreds of hours in Civilization, pushing the borders of their country’s influence through trade, culture, or simple warfare. Meanwhile, the blog post mentions that Sanderson is a lifelong fan of the Final Fantasy series, and it’s clearly shaped the way he views magic in his written worlds. It would take hundreds of pages to fully unpack the relationship between his Cosmere and the worlds of Final Fantasy, but for now, it’s enough to know that X is his favorite entry.

Sanderson has never been particularly private about the art he loves, or the ways it’s influenced his writing. But with this list of favorite games as a starting point, let’s hope he delves more into how these games have influenced him sometime in the future.

Expelled! will make you feel like a dumb teenager again

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Humor me for a moment while I tell you my most embarrassing childhood story. Back in the AOL Instant Messenger days, my friends and I loved trolling people. We were young and got a kick out of saying totally absurd stuff to people from another town over that we only tangential knew. It was all good fun until someone was smart enough to turn the tables. A person I was poking fun at told me that they’d reported me to the police for harassment, and I was gullible enough to believe them. I started trying to backtrack in the most obvious ways possible, claiming that my account was hacked. The more I lied, the more it ballooned. Long story short, it all ended in my father going to the local police station to talk to them about a report that was never actually filed. As you can probably guess, the whole thing ended with a solid grounding.

The moral of the story? Kids are terrible liars, and that’s what Expelled! is all about.

The latest game from Inkle, the prolific studio behind A Highland Song, is a continuation of 2021’s Overboard! That game was an inventive narrative roguelike that had players trying to get away with murder while on a cruise. It was a genius game about how tricky it can be to lie your way out of something that leaves so many loose threads. Expelled! continues that thesis, but throws both kids and Christian guilt into the mix. The result is a hilarious comedy of errors that will make you feel like an idiotic teen again.

Expelled! begins with a shocking crime. A student at a Christian girl’s school plummets through a stained glass window and is sent into the rose bushes below. The crime isn’t so much murder; she survives the fall. The faculty seems more upset that a window made by God himself has been broken. Oh, but pushing the school’s star student out a window is bad too, I suppose. Who’s to blame? All signs point to Verity, a student whose hockey stick happens to have been used to smash the window. That’s enough evidence to sentence her to a fate worse than death: expulsion.

My job is to get Verity off the hook for a crime that she didn’t commit. Or maybe she did. Who’s to say? What makes Expelled! such a brilliant follow-up to Overboard! is that it doubles down on its unreliable narrator. I’m hearing the story through the eyes of a kid who is desperate to get out of trouble, so it’s hard to trust any detail I get. Verity has the tendency to lie herself into corners which often lead to dead ends. It brings me right back to that fateful day where AIM landed me in hot water.

I can change her fate in a sort of roguelike hook where I go through the day of the crime and try to get out of trouble as best I can. Can I hide the hockey stick? Can I get an alibi? If all else fails, can I frame someone else? Expelled! gives players tons of options to explore as a clock counts down the hours until the day ends. I’ve done several runs now and each has gone in a completely different direction based on which dialogue options I’ve chosen. Some have ended immediately as I got caught at the scene of the crime. Others had me deftly making it through the entire day without getting expelled, only to discover that there’s more to the story than meets the eye. There are layers of mystery here that are naturally uncovered with each attempt to save Verity’s hide.

Verity holds a hockey stick in Expelled.
Inkle

As an added twist on the excellent Overboard! formula, the Christian school setting plays into gameplay too. I’m not just proving my innocence, but also remaining innocent. A meter at the top of the screen shows me what a good Christian girl I am, and it ticks up the more I lie, insult teachers, or just respond like a snarky teen. There’s a tangible pressure that makes me feel like a stressed out Christian trying to play by the rules, even when those rules make me a total pushover. Whether or not Verity abides by word of God — or the school’s headmistress, really — is up to you.

That thread turns Expelled! into a unique coming of age story. It’s about a character trying to separate her personal identity from one that has been imposed upon her by authority and religion. Does Verity actually want to be the goodie two shoes who never talks back? Or does she want to be someone who isn’t afraid to stand up for herself? The central mystery of it all is a great hook that kept me playing, but that’s the journey I really found myself connecting to the longer I played.

There’s one more childhood anecdote that comes back to me when I think about Expelled! When I was a kid, I was forced to attend a CCD class after school once a week at my teacher’s house. One day, I spotted a bag of Goldfish crackers lying around and ate a few. Class was long and I was hungry, sue me. I was caught and reprimanded for it, forced to write an essay about how stealing is wrong. It wound up being a formative moment. Isn’t this supposed to be the religion of sharing and feeding the hungry? It’s one of the first times I remember breaking free from my Catholic upbringing and strengthening my own beliefs. I felt more like myself because of it, and I hope I’m giving Verity the same freedom every time I tell the headmistress to piss off.

Expelled! is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, and iOS.






Silent Hill f, a return to the series after 11 years, gets new trailer

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The new trailer, which borrows imagery from what we saw of the game in the first trailer, follows a young girl living in a small Japanese town during the 1960s — a first for the series. Fog engulfs the town and the girl starts to see flowers before running into a shambling woman. More monsters show up and we see the girl picking up a pipe to defend herself against something off-screen, with a spore-covered house behind her.

Silent Hill f is being developed by a Taiwan-based studio with help from Japanese developers. The stream had more details on the game’s production, with appearances from writer Ryukishi07 and character and creature designer Kera. On the stream, Konami dug into its setting and how it used reference photos and sounds to help create the game’s rural town, and discussed the psychological themes it wants to explore with its young protagonist.

The trailer doesn’t have a release date, but it confirms that Silent Hill f will be released on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. You can also wishlist it now on Steam.

The first Xbox handheld might not come from Microsoft

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It took a few years of dealing with poorly optimized handheld PCs, but Windows Central reports Microsoft may finally be working on an Xbox handheld. The company could announce an Xbox-branded portable device as early as this year, though it sounds like it won’t come from Microsoft directly.

Instead, the company is partnering with a PC maker already working in the gaming space to build a handheld, Windows Central writes. The device, codenamed “Keenan,” will feature Xbox design elements, an “official Xbox guide button” and will likely run Windows 11. Given the clunky experience of navigating Windows on the handhelds you can buy today, the real hope is that Xbox’s take will include a launcher or new way of using the desktop OS that’s fit for a controller instead of a mouse. The big advantage SteamOS has over Windows is that you never have to interact with a desktop environment if you don’t want to.

These rumored plans might line up with what Microsoft’s VP of “Next Generation” Jason Ronald shared at an AMD and Lenovo event from CES 2025 called “The Future of Gaming Handhelds.” According to The Verge, Ronald said that Microsoft wants to bring “the best of Xbox and Windows together.” The company hopes to simplify Windows and make it using it more console-like for handhelds. “I think we’ll have a lot more to share later this year,” Ronald said.

Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has expressed interest in handheld devices before and said the company was experimenting with prototypes. It seems like at least for now, though, Microsoft is borrowing Valve’s approach and making a handheld-friendly version of its operating system available for other PC makers to use.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be a first-party handheld in the future. Windows Central‘s report mentions that there’s a successor to the Xbox Series X, new internet-connected controllers and an official Xbox gaming handheld, all tentatively slated for 2027.

Death Stranding 2 gets 2025 release date, new trailer at SXSW

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Death Stranding 2: On the Beach will be released on June 26 for PlayStation 5, game director and Kojima Productions founder Hideo Kojima announced Sunday during a panel at SXSW 2025 with a lengthy new trailer for the game.

That trailer offered a new 10-minute look at Death Stranding 2 and its stars, including some fresh faces. The sequel to the 2019 action game will once again star Norman Reedus as Sam Bridges, the package-toting hero of its bizarre story. Léa Seydoux and Troy Baker will return too, as Fragile and Higgs, respectively. They’ll be joined by new characters played by Elle Fanning (Tomorrow), Shioli Kutsuna (Rainy), and George Miller (Tarman). Also joining the cast are Luca Marinelli as Neil, Debra Wilson as Doctor, and Alissa Jung as Lucy. (There’s also a cameo from Korean action star Lee Dong-seok, aka Don Lee.)

Death Stranding 2’s new trailer even appears to have a handful of nods to Kojima’s previous game franchise, Metal Gear Solid. Marinelli’s Neil looks unmistakably like Solid Snake at one point, with the giant tar creature that fuses with the DHV Magellan — becoming the Magellan Man, Kojima said — giving Metal Gear Rex/Sahelanthropus vibes. Beyond that, there’s plenty of gameplay action and story hints to chew on for Death Stranding fans.

Kojima Productions’ new trailer explains that Death Stranding 2 is set 11 months after the formation of the United Cities of America. Servers line the beach and deliveries have been automated, ostensibly putting porters like Sam out of work. Chiralium from the Beach continues to warp the environment (and the cats!), just as a new faction is spreading its influence. But none of that, it seems, will stop Sam from doing his job.

In Death Stranding 2’s first trailer at 2022’s The Game Awards, Kojima said his experiences during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic prompted him to rework the game’s script, which will follow the events of the first game’s journey across a post-apocalyptic America ravaged by inky black monsters known as Beached Things.

The second, 10-minute trailer from a State of Play stream last year showed the delivery company Bridges worked for has dissolved and a new organization called Drawbridge has risen in its place. But as with all Kojima-led games, the exact details are murky.

A big Playdate sale discounts 13 of our favorite games

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It’s the second anniversary of the Playdate’s Catalog game store and to celebrate, you can get a bunch of great Playdate games and apps at a healthy discount — in many cases for 50 percent off or more.

The sale starts today, March 6, and ends on March 10 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Over 150 Playdate games are on sale, but if you’re looking for a good place to start, 13 titles from our list of the best Playdate games are currently discounted:

That’s on top of other great options you can buy, like the fast-paced puzzle game XTRIS for $3, historical RPG Quest for X for $1 or roguelite mining game SpaceRat Miner for $6. Panic, the creators of the Playdate, introduced Catalog as a supplement to the Playdate’s first “Season” of games when it was still uncertain if another one was going to happen. The tiny handheld supports sideloading games from third-party stores like Itch, but Catalog offers a more curated selection if you don’t want to spend time finding something good.

Now that Panic’s confirmed that a second season of Playdate games is on the way in 2025, this Catalog sale is a perfect opportunity to stock up on anything you might have missed before the new season launches.

Z-A trailer reveals an absolutely massive version of Lumiose City

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Game Freak held a Pokémon Presents livestream today and we finally got a . The new trailer for the follow-up to the reveals the massive Lumiose City, which first appeared in Pokémon X and Y all the way back in 2013. It’s a bustling metropolis filled with skyscrapers, and a far cry from the serene countryside of Arceus.

The trailer spotlighted the three starter Pokémon players will be able to choose from. They include the gen 2 starters Chikorita and Totodile and the gen 5 starter Tepig. We also got a better look at the gameplay elements, and they seem like something of a hybrid between the real-time capture mechanics of Arceus and the old-school turn-based gameplay of traditional Pokémon titles.

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Pokémon Legends: Z-A will also bring back Mega Evolutions, which turn regular pocket monsters into superpowered monstrosities with temporary stat boosts. This mechanic, just like Z-A’s location, was first introduced in Pokémon X and Y.

We have a bit longer to wait for this one. The game doesn’t come out until the end of the year. It’s also being released for the original Switch, despite the fact that the by that point. However, long-time readers may remember that the Switch 2 is backwards compatible, so it’ll run on both machines.

Game Freak also showed off a new game called Pokémon Champions, which is a cross-platform battle sim. Today’s Pokémon Presents livestream celebrated the 29th birthday of the franchise. Happy birthday, cute pets we force to live inside of tiny balls and fight to the death!

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2 are now available free

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Ah, the Epic Games Store. You come for the exclusive titles, but stay for the free games. Just like its desktop application, the Epic Games Store mobile app is a bit of a mess. However, it does offer a rotating catalog of free games for your phone if you need a reason to check it out. For instance, through Mar. 20, you can pick up the mobile versions of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and its 2004 sequel for free. All you need to claim these titles is a valid Epic Games Store account and the mobile app, available for iOS or Android.

Set roughly four millennia prior to the events of A New Hope, the KOTOR saga is one of the better Star Wars storylines penned in the post-prequel era. Both titles are considered classics of the CRPG genre, and are also responsible for developing the morality and companion systems that later rose to prominence in the Mass Effect franchise.

While KOTOR 1 & 2 first became available on mobile devices in 2013, I’m still baffled that a pair of games that I originally played by shuffling around four, count’ em, four CDs on my desktop can now be called down from the ether of the internet for free, and played on the same device I use to order Mexican food.

An XR game trilogy based on Neon Genesis Evangelion is in the works

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South Korean game development studio Pixelity says it’s working on a series of XR games based on Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the first one will be released next year. In an emailed announcement, the studio said it’s planning a trilogy “based on the world and events of all 26 episodes” of the beloved anime.

We don’t have much in the way of details just yet, but Pixelity says, “Players will experience the narrative through the eyes of an original character, exploring the world of Neon Genesis Evangelion, taking on quests, and engaging in thrilling battles — all while following the timeline and key events of the anime.” The trilogy will offer “interactive and cooperative gameplay with familiar characters.” The developer hasn’t revealed what platforms the games will be available on.

Pixelity has previously made games for the Meta Quest family of headsets, as well as Pico and other platforms. It also recently launched a couple of titles for Apple Vision Pro, and .

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