what’s up guys welcome back to Newsweave we’re going to start today with Sonic Racing Crossworlds as we had some information come out about sort of postrelease support and actually guest characters which is makes this kind of interesting based on what they could do here so we can see this posted up this is over on Games Radar saying in an interview with Famitsu series producer Tekashi Luzuka revealed the team is planning to add one new character to Sonic Racing Crossworlds each and every month lazuka didn’t specify when the post-launch plans will conclude although the upcoming characters are likely to come from Sega’s roster now we already kind of saw this with like Ichiban for example being revealed in that recent trailer however Luzuka played Koi when asked about the possibility of Shenmue’s return to cart racing after his small cameo in Sonic and Allstars Racing transformed so I mean you can go through and look at the all the different Sega series and franchises obviously we’ve seen kind of Persona already crossover you can take some of the characters from there shami Tensei Fantasy Star Puya Puya Super Monkey Ball are all ones that have at least been had guesses thrown out online yeah that is kind of an interesting idea because then it’s sort of like Sega’s Smash Brothers almost i mean within Sega but who knows maybe they go outside of the the Sega walls and find some other franchise that companies want to have their characters i don’t know honestly the the future be quite interesting for Crossworlds here so we’ll see what they have up their sleeves apparently every month with some new character to introduce also we had an Easter egg that was revealed to us that’s gone undiscovered for the past four years for Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart now the game itself isn’t very I I mean it’s medium length but it’s like it took I think it took me 15 hours to get the platinum on it so it’s not like a long game where big open world easier to hide something off in a corner somewhere of this 100 hour epic experience or something but this was such an obscure thing it went unnoticed just because of the steps that it takes to to make it happen now you can see in this video here those posted up this is over on their official X account and here they have the senior designer Grant Parker showing off this secret prototype miniame and what happens is before you go into the area you have to shoot uh the signs in this weird order it’s like five shots then four shots then 15 shots it again they they explain it here and then when you go inside there’s nothing that tells you it was activated but then you go up to the mechanical bull and it puts you into a very they say beta or early uh early development period for it where you can sort of control your character on the mechanical bull that’s kind of it i mean that’s just sort of the Easter egg the secret that’s been hidden this whole time and until now so hey if you want to follow the steps you should be able to do it without any issues on your copy of Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart until now it’s been really hidden there for the past four years oh and we did have a bit of an outage yesterday when it came to just all kinds of online services but also just games in general so matchmaking in Nintendo Xbox PlayStation seemingly everything was kind of having weird issues and if you look on down detector there was this massive spike in the afternoon it was like 1 or 2 in the afternoon Eastern time all of a sudden stuff was just going down like I know a lot of Google services were struggling so if uh if you were online yesterday in games you kept getting kicked out you weren’t really sure what was going on just seemed to be a massive outage now from what I’ve seen so far everything’s kind of back to normal not only just with down detector but just my own experience of oh wow Mario Kart’s not working right now that’s weird and then come back a few hours and and now it is so just just want to throw that out there just so you know yes everyone else their games weren’t working either and guys with some of the quick news out of the way let’s get into the bigger stuff let’s start right away with the Nintendo Switch 2 and some staggering sales numbers that are coming out of Japan now this of course would cover about half the week for the Switch 2 being on sale last week so starting what Wednesday night at midnight time then Thursday Friday Saturday and in this case the the Switch when it came out back in 2017 in Japan about 330 or so thousand systems sold that were recorded by like Famitsu Tracker okay so we’re looking right around there if it if it can beat that that would be that’d be good i believe the high mark here would be for the PlayStation 2 and that was right around 700,000 when everything was sort of considered and they had some estimates and rounding errors and stuff so okay if you can hit that that’d be incredible it blew that away too so let’s let’s start here though with the hardware this coming from Famitsu we can see posted up that’s a nice little chart here from InstallBase forum the Nintendo Switch 2 947,931 systems were sold at retail in Japan last week very important to note this does not account for the My Nintendo store so if you remember Nintendo themselves were doing invites and stuff just in general like across the like globally but in Japan it was a big story remember there were so many people trying to get in and they were they were doing like a system where it’s kind of just lottery right and in fact that’s still happening at retailers right now and it seems like it’s going to be happening for quite some time despite them selling 947,931 at retail so if you just give a basic estimate of like for my Nintendo store it looks like they sold more than a million systems in a few days in Japan in fact the 947,000 immediately makes the Switch 2 the bestselling system year to date it in a few days yeah so we’ve kind of talked about it after that 3 and a.5 million number was thrown around this just shows you specifically the demand in Japan and it gets a bit more interesting when you do look at the the hardware oh that’s what I do or software i do want to point out by the way the Switch still somehow sold 16,611 systems despite the Switch 2 being there i mean it’s possible that I I hey you’re still buying them for younger audience or maybe you’re somebody who’s like “Hey now’s the time to make the move on on the Switch because the Switch 2 is out and there’s a massive I don’t know i guess I sure people still want the system.” But nonetheless taking a look at the software Mario Kart World was at the top 782,566 now there is a bit of an assumption here and I I believe it’s the correct one that this would be counting bundles so when you sell the system at retail with Mario Kart World packaged in at retail they can count Mario Kart World as selling because it’s going across the register and they of course can mark it so this should count the bundles and it makes sense why so many Mario Kart Worlds would sell here unfortunately because of that everything’s kind of thrown together so we can’t really tell who bought Mario Kart World at retail for like the the full price with the cartridge uh the whole thing there that wasn’t just attached to the system nonetheless massive attach rate for Mario Kart World which you sort of expect since that is the game that’s kind of pushing the system for Nintendo a heavy heavy mainstream title there um with Mario Kart right below that we do have Rune Factory Guardians of Iuma that was 45,73 fantasy Life Eye the girl who steals time 17,180 by the way they did announce that game has now crossed 1 million copies sold so good news there for Fantasy Life fans matsumi’s Book of Friends that’s 16,865 then we have Elder Ring Night Rain another 12,000 copies there rune Factory Gardens of Isuma that’s on the the Switch 2 specifically that edition the Legend of Zelda Heroes of the Kingdom and then Breath of the Wild those are the Switch 2 editions yakuza Zero Director’s Cut on the Switch 2 that was 7,486 and then Super Mario Party Jamberee rounds out the top 10 and really this should be no surprise japan was massive for the Switch there’s tons of people clearly who want the Switch 2 there after the Switch One sold like 33 some odd million systems in that one region so yeah the Switch 2 is going to be heavily sought after for quite some time in Japan alone not to mention just globally as it it seems like Nintendo is trying to roll out a ton of systems again there have been talks apparently internally of them trying to get to 20 million systems in the fiscal year that they’re in currently that ends at the end of March they would try to do 20 million systems realistically in 10 months which would be quite impressive at that point you can kind of put the artificial scarcity talks for Nintendo kind of to bed because that’s that’s just an overwhelming amount of supply for just 10 months so we’ll keep an eye on Japan because I’m curious next week how things go after this supply has been exhausted as Nintendo has said they’re trying to just get more and more stock out to different retail stores all across the world we saw yesterday more supplies seem to come in to different retailers again and then it sold out after a few hours so I I’m not sure if just tons of them are just constantly in transit right now and they’re just kind of trickling into retail stores but I do think that by the end of this month we’re going to hear about a number between five and six million if it’s more than six is that would be mind-blowing so I’m thinking between five and six and I I don’t I don’t really think this the Switch 2 demand is going to slow down for this so we’re talking about the system now with Mario Kart and then you get potentially a direct here in a couple of weeks start setting up the rest of this year and then into next year and then you’re talking about there being another like a new generation of Pokemon you get that crowd involved with it i I think this is going to be a big seller for Nintendo for quite some time so what hey but we’ll see especially as we go into the holidays if Nintendo’s even able to keep up with demand when it comes to the stock side next up let’s talk about the Konami Press Start Showcase as they actually showed up with a decent showing like it’s about 36 minutes and yeah there was some stuff where you’re like “Okay here’s the mobile game.” But they open strong they had another good reveal towards the end of the show and then right at the end they close out it’s like “Yeah here we go we got a big remake.” So is Konami back because it it kind of feels like we can say that now you know let’s see how things go with Metal Gear and Silent Hill F but first though we can start here with that press start showcase where they did lead off with Metal Gear Solid Delta and they showed the the Snake versus Monkey from for PlayStation 5 and Steam and then Snake versus Bomberman for the Xbox series we already knew about that but they just showed it more in depth here which is cool they mentioned they made changes to AI and animations to balance things better the secret theater videos are collectibles in the game they made new ones for this release and said that some of the soldiers you come across some of the enemies will have them attached to them and you can actually see them like on their gear so I think that’s kind of cool to have that as a collectible some a reason to explore and to take out different enemies as you go through and then they did announce this multiplayer mode that they hinted at before it’s called Fox Hunt it it’s an original online mode so it’s not like one that they’re bringing from the from the old Metal Gear or anything but they did say it’s like a hideand go seek kind of gameplay and there’s just more details to come later so I I guess they’re going to have another showing a trailer something to explain it a bit more uh but that is August 28th of course i’m looking forward to it i think it’s looked awesome every time they’ve shown us i’m really excited for that darwin’s Paradox that’s the action uh I’m sorry that’s the adventure platformer game where you play as an octopus they mentioned you camouflage climb you can swim you can spit ink still waiting on more information about a release for that one but it looks creative and kind of fun there and we have eoot that’s just a commercial they had for it it’s free you can download it it will be pro spirit it’s a mobile phone baseball game then there’s some discussion around Yu-Gi-Oh there’s the World Championships 2025 qualifiers there’s uh Yu-Gi-Oh card game the Chronicles short anime series so Yu-Gi-Oh fans got some stuff I guess to look forward to there sweeten in one and two HD remaster of course that is uh is on the Switch too as they showed off and then we in Star Leap that’s the free-to-play game that was for iOS and Android and now it’s also coming to Steam i know people are like uh it’s free to play which yes that means in-game purchases we’ll see though when it when it does release how it all goes uh Gradius Origins though awesome looking collection that’s August 7th deliver at all cost that’s out now eden Zero there’s a demo out now where you’re saved that it carries over that’s releasing July 15th survival Kids that is out now on the Switch too they just discussed it more here i’ve seen that a few times i Let me know if you picked that up because I’m curious if that’s something that would work with uh like uh some of the younger kids maybe they can play in co-op for that on the Switch too silent Hill F big showing here obviously towards the end as it is releasing September 25th i think it also looks awesome so I just like the vibe that they have here where they’re saying you find Beauty and Terror with with how they’re mixing that up and it looks really cool very unique and then of course the big close out that got everyone excited Silent Hill 1 is getting a remake from Blubert Team and I know it sounds weird because it’s like you just did Silent Hill 2 now you’re going back to Silent Hill 1 i mean look Silent Hill 2 is the most popular game in in the Silent Hill series completely so if you’re going to do take a shot at at this whole thing with Blubber Team you at least give them the one that’s going to give them the best chance right the best setup there with Silent Hill 2 and I say they pulled it off really well so Silent Hill 1 is the game that needs it the most a remake i think we can all kind of agree it’s from the PS1 generation and uh leaves a lot to the imagination when you play through it with some of those visuals and animations even the sound so based on what they did with Silent Hill 2 I think this could be awesome they didn’t have much to show just that it’s it’s in development so it’s going to be a while but it is really cool to see that they’re going to continue on with Blubber Team after how they did with Silent Hill 2 again overall I thought it was a pretty good showcase from Konami we’ve seen all these other third parties sort of back out when it comes to the idea of a Ubisoft Forward or something from EA and here’s Konami like “Nah we got more than half an hour of stuff we can show you.” So feels like a different Konami right now doesn’t it and that to me that’s a really exciting thing to have back in gaming right now next up let’s talk about Stellar Blade releasing on PC this being published by Sony as we know they are making that push right now for the their PC initiative and a lot of it is more delayed releases so they’ll have something on console leave it there for a year or more and then they’ll move it over to PC and I’ll say those Windows have been getting smaller and smaller but Stellar Blade kind of followed along as you’d expect here and with its release came quite a bit of success day one now this is over on Steam DB and it’s obviously a way we can track reliably when it comes to PC releases for something like this where there’s not necessarily just a launcher off to the side that you can point to so we can see it did hit a high of 183,830 concurrent players so this this is again just very impressive for shift up obviously and then also for PlayStation publishing for this because I think this is the second game they’ve published on PC that did number that did numbers like this the other one being Hell Divers 2 uh but for a single player game like this that’s not reliant on live service and multiplayer uh this is big time this is it i don’t I don’t know if it’s I want to say opening eyes for PlayStation but the thing with this with Stellar Blade is the port is good the PC release seems to operate very very well high frame rates it looks great visually um the the combat and everything is fluid it’s fun um but it just seems like in this case it’s been received very very well on PC on Steam and then you see the results right so again we need to see how Sony wants to navigate going forward when it comes to their console base it does make me wonder though if they see these kind of releases and go “Huh what would happen if we did release a big single player game day and date PC and PlayStation would it really affect PlayStation sales that much?” Because it kind of feels like people on PC are just going to wait for these games as we see with Stellar Blade whereas you could get that money much much earlier and then rein I mean a year at that point of just reinvestment and capital that can go a long way so for now though Stellar Blade off to a fast start seems like the reviews are good if you haven’t checked it out I think it’s a pretty fun action game and yeah I’d recommend checking it out on PC as I’ve seen some of the screenshots for people showing their ultrawide setups with the nice video cards and the game does look really impressive and in our last bit of news let’s talk about Mind’s Eye which is a game that I’m still working through i play for an hour or so at a time and then kind of put it up for a bit and apparently it’s not a very long game so I even at that pace I’ll probably be done by next week in time for rematch it’ be fun too but it does appear that uh Build a Rocket Boy is working to patch this thing quickly with hot fixes and it needs I’m sure several of them at this point if you’ve played it it it’s kind of it feels like it’s it’s barely held together right now well we can see this is posted up this is over on GameSpot and it has an update schedule from Mind’s Eye so Friday we have a hot fix number one hot fix number two will be the week of June 16th and then by the end of June update three and a lot of it comes down to things like initial CPU and GPU performance improvements along with memory optimizations as they have mentioned that one of the issues that they’ve run into for crashing which a lot of clips of this game crashing on PC on PlayStation etc there seems to be a memory leak according to them okay so there you go they also mentioned a hot fix too continuous incremental performance and stability improvements fix a fix for buggy wheels not visually spinning while driving fix for areas in car manufacturing where players could fall through the world and then by the end of June they’ll have ongoing performance and stability updates animation fixes AI improvement look this we’ve already been over this like the the game clearly wasn’t ready to come out and I’m sure there was just pressure to get the game released already so they can start bringing money in that that’s just kind of how it goes right with publisher versus developer timelines and them not necessarily in sync completely so maybe in a few months the game will be at least somewhat fixed and then it’s worth recommending for a good steep discount maybe but it looks like some people aren’t going to be waiting because PlayStation is just offering refunds for it and this does kind of feel like a parallel to what happened with Cyberpunk where that game was pretty broken and PlayStation just started refunding people no questions asked and eventually they just pulled it off the storefront so this we can see over on the gamer and here they just have several instances of people contacting Sony through their customer support and it just seems like they go “Yep here you go we we are we understand we know what’s happening here here’s your refund.” Because I will tell you this it’s not the easiest thing in the world to get a refund on really any of these consoles xbox is probably the one that’s the most lenient playstation really isn’t they’ll even track it’s like hey if your kid bought that by accident okay we’ll refund this this time we’re going to write it down it’s like okay so it’s not Steam where oh you have it you’ve played it for 45 minutes no problem automated boom money’s back no and Nintendo is is very much like Sony when it’s like okay let’s go through a whole detective thing here and figure out how this happened like they want to investigate and they’ll do it this time but maybe not next time so yeah the fact that it’s so quick by Sony means that they are very aware of the the buggy nature and the state and the low quality of this game so I guess if you hold on to it if you already bought it I guess in a few weeks it’ll be fixed i say I guess because there wasn’t a lot of confidence going into the release and I can’t have a lot of confidence going into really any of these patches despite what they’re describing here i’d recommend if even if you’re interested in like the story or the look of it hold off a bit let’s see how these hot fixes do and before we go to the comment of the day we’ll take a look at the poll that I posted up yesterday where I ask “Have you played the original Silent Hill game before?” Well 64% just say no 36% say yes that’s actually higher than I thought to be honest now some said “Yeah I started it up and then I I didn’t go very far into it because I know there’s nostalgia around this because it’s a PS1 game but it is a PS1 game so it’s games for that era that early 3D era haven’t aged the best so this is one that I I think could look very very impressive again massive jump obviously in terms of visuals audio just gameplay design so after again Silent Hill 2 was awesome I think by Blooper Team so I feel like this is a another chance for them to show what they can do with an established IP and keep in mind they’re going to have to do a little more work here I think with Silent Hill 1 because the foundation isn’t laid as much as it was with Silent Hill 2 where at least with the PS2 generation we had more of that narrative setup because yes the visuals are better but also just kind of everything else going from the PS1 to the PS2 got better when it came to the presentation so I think it’s be really interesting to see what they come up with here i also think we’re several years off so I guess we’ll find out probably towards the end of this generation and we’ll finish up with the comment of the day as you’re seeing here this is from the bone collector says “On one hand sure it sucks that you have to wait 5 to 10 years for the next game in one of your favorite franchises on the other hand there are so many developers now and already too many good games to play in a year if every company was putting out a new game every one to two years we’d be absolutely drowning in our gaming backlog.” So I will agree with you in the the idea opposite side argument of man it takes so long to release games but a lot of games still come out every year last year on Steam 19,000 games released in one year that is insanity isn’t it now I will say is not every game is good the vast majority of the games aren’t good they they don’t get a lot of attention but there’s still games that release on the Switch alone so in its generation we talked about the backwards compatibility thing where they tested 15,000 games or so think about that for a minute a ton of games still came out there then you go okay well there’s PlayStation there’s Xbox there’s just games everywhere so yes in a sense if not all came out with a game every two years or something along with all these other big publishers there just wouldn’t be room and things will just kind of be held anyway because they have to plan out their release schedules but still when you hear about a a a developer taking 10 years to make a game it’s like okay that might be a little long i think the sweet spot is still four to five years for even some of the larger studios out there with these big budget releases and I’d like to see us get maybe back to a cadence like that overall and ladies and gentlemen that’s going to do it here for Newsweave if you