What’s up, guys? Welcome back to Newsweek. Ever since the Switch 2 to start today with Virtue Fighter 5 Revo as it has been released on Steam. That actually happened earlier this year in January. Fans of the franchise have been hoping to see this version also get ported over to just other platforms at this point. PlayStation, Xbox, and I guess at this point maybe Nintendo’s new system. Well, they have now made that a reality. In fact, we can see this is posted up. This is over on Gamasu saying publisher Sega and developer RG Studio will release Virtual Fighter 5 Revo for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Switch 2. It will support crossplatform play and roll back net code. They did not have a release date ready at this time, but they did have a trailer at least for the the multiplatform announcement. And this version also has like 4K visuals and it just overall is a cleaner looking version than of Street Fighter 5. I think the big thing though is is that roll back net code and one of the reasons people of course would prefer that in their fighting game is just a more responsive and better environment and experience online. So while we don’t necessarily have the release date at this point, it’s just people seemed very happy to see this announcement finally happen. I’m not a big Virtual Fighter person, but I did understand at least the gravity of the the situation here in the story for fans of the franchise. So, I guess we’ll keep an eye out for the release date and I’ll keep you guys up to date. Also, we had a look at that switch to mouse mode. This was over on Nintendo’s Today app. And in that application, they showed it off being used on the main menu, which you can see this video that was shared by Genki this over on Twitter X. And I, you know, I thought about this. it makes sense to be able to navigate the menus for the Switch 2 in general across the board with mouse mode. And I think one of the better applications would in fact be on the eShop, but it seems like you’re able to mostly navigate around with a mouse cursor on screen on the fly because even then when you pick up the Joy-Con and face that IR sensor away from the table they show here, it then has the the mouse cursor disappear immediately. So that that’s actually pretty cool to be able to go on the fly necessarily and maybe if you go onto an eshop page and you have it you’re it’s that annoying thing where you’re trying to get to this one spot but there’s so many buttons you have to cycle through it’s like a flip it on its side and just move around and click it with a mouse. It it’s it’s again sounds like a little thing and technically it is but it it’s also a a major quality of life feature just for navigating what should hopefully be a much faster eshop. Can’t be any worse I assume than what we have right now on the Switch anyway. Oh, and we have some big news in the way of independent media. This was a bit of a surprise because at PAX there, a giant bomb panel popped up. Jeff Grub announced that he’d be on it the day before and then this press release went out as the PAX was going on and you could see the announcement. Yeah, fandom sells Giant Bomb to independent creators. Now, they made this announcement on stage at PAX East and I saw it like blow up online. It was a big thing there, of course. person. Yeah, it looks like they are going independent after purchasing it from Phantom. I’m a little surprised, I guess, that Phantom sold it. Although I I mean, they acquired that and a bunch of other stuff. So maybe they’re thinking, yeah, we’re not really going to do much here with Giant Bomb at this point, the name. So yeah, let’s sell it off and recoup whatever we can. Now, them going independent, of course, being a big risk at this time, but also there there’s a reward there in the sense that they can do what they feel is the correct path forward for the Giant Bomb brand with the people, of course, that are then working there. And uh hey, we’ll see how it goes for him. But I for giant bomb fans, this was a lot of ex really really exciting stuff. And in this case, you at least don’t have it going the way of fandom, which they probably would have turned that into either nothing or some sort of SEO farm with with guides and other things for games. 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 Nintendo, who has been facing backlash online for different aspects to the Switch 2. Not necessarily the hardware, usually the price. I mean, the $80 jump is something a lot of people go, okay, that’s that’s an issue because we are going to see other companies follow suit in time, and Microsoft’s already done it. While we have seen EA surprisingly, be somewhat resistant at this time to it, to me, it’s just kind of a matter of time and the floodgates open completely. But at least for now, we know Mario Kart World releasing next month will be at $80. And while we have seen quite a bit of it in things like the treehouse and stuff, there there are still questions around its worth in terms of the content in the game for that $80 price point. Still, there was one other thing that came up during the Treehouse as people were going through the footage that was shown. And we can see this posted up over on Eurogamer where they say, “The statement comes after eagle-eyed viewers watching the game’s recent Nintendo Treehouse live stream noticed in-game billboards by the sides of the racetrack that featured artwork similar in appearance to that made by Generative AI.” So, let’s take a look at these billboards real quick. And apparently what’s happening here is people believe that Nintendo or someone I guess developing and then turning in some of these art assets were using generative AI to create it. And let’s see, we have a billboard here that shows a bridge where it looks like the top parts I guess aren’t necessarily attached correctly or I mean it says we build your town. it. I guess you could look at that and say it’s uh it’s a it’s an odd artist interpretation of a bridge. And then the other one is a car that has some very weird dimensions. Although I saw this car and I said, “Yeah, that’s kind of like the Mario Kart uh interpretation at times. We’ve seen this sort of design before in previous Mario Kart games if I’m not mistaken.” So the car thing I didn’t really think much about when I saw these images. Even the bridge, you could say it’s just kind of an an artist’s abstract interpretation of a bridge just to be kind of, I don’t know, artistic or some sort of art style that they have to put into the game. Basically, my my first thought wasn’t, oh, that obviously AI generated this and it got past Nintendo and how serious they are about their their their quality. Their bar is like super high for that is how they kind of play it off with a lot of these games and their price points. And I to me it just didn’t click into place of oh yeah that’s obviously generative AI but that was something that was being pushed online with some of these images that people were noticing. Well Nintendo did fire back. This was in a response to Eurogamer um where they say AI generated images were not used in the development of Mario Kart World. That was Nintendo spokesperson once again to Eurogamer. So very straightforward here. And again, I do think online because there is so much AI artwork and generative AI that’s just kind of going around constantly on places like Twitter X, it’s uh it’s not surprising that people would immediately then jump to that. Kind of a knee-jerk reaction when they see something that doesn’t look quite right in their mind. It’s like, oh, AI was trying to put a bridge together and couldn’t quite get it right. Whereas, I mean, 10 years ago, it was just, oh, look, an artist was kind of playing around with it and changed some things up and had their own interpretation of a bridge, maybe to fit into this like different sort of art style in this world. So, I I I would right now take Nintendo’s word for it. I guess it’s possible that uh a rogue employee was trying to come up with it, couldn’t quite figure it out, and they punched in and was like, “Uh, chat, GPT, help me out here or Grock or whatever, create an image of a bridge.” and they said, “That’s good enough for me. Let’s push it through.” Something that tells like the math doesn’t really line up for that with Nintendo. And again, the car just seems to line up with what we’ve seen in other Mario Kart games. So, yeah, I’m actually looking at Nintendo and saying, “Okay, I’ll take your word for this one because Nintendo and Generative AI, the way they’ve talked about it in the past and the fact that this would be more on the art side, I just don’t really think it lines up completely.” So, no, I don’t really think Generative AI was used in Mario Kart World at all. I just think it was more abstract art that was placed for Mario Kart World to kind of set the tone for the game. Next up, let’s talk about Doom: The Dark Ages, which is out on Thursday. And while reviews have gone around and it’s it’s been it’s been pretty good, I feel like it’s a Doom game for the most part. So, if you like Doom, you’re probably going to like this game, there are some differences to it. And actually myself and Nate did sort of a sit down for about 20 minutes talking about the game as Bethesda did send over a code and Nate was able to play through a good portion of the game and just gave some of his thoughts along with 4K 60 gameplay that was posted. That’s over on the Spawncast channel. So check that one out if you’re curious. But of course, we were expecting physical copies for this game. And you know, I I thought about this a bit. See, the Xbox does have a bit of a disadvantage on the physical media side because the way it works with the the Xbox series is the Blu-rays hold 50 GB, not 100 gigabytes. So, if there’s a game that exceeds 50, they have to try to figure it out in some way. Maybe it’s with multiple Blu-rays or partial download in order to complete the entire game itself on your system. Well, it seems like in this case, Bethesda, of course, under Microsoft there is going the route of uh well, there’s not much of anything on on the disc. Technically, it’s a Game Key card just in the form of a Blu-ray that can hold 50 to 100 gigabytes. Anyway, we can see this posted up. This is over on Pure Xbox who documented both of these uh of these messages on Twitter X. One is from uh Nil Nil here is has 324 megabytes on disc on Xbox. So then you have to download the rest of it, which I believe on the Xbox it’s like between 70 and 80 gigabytes. Of course, depending on any patches, maybe they get pushed on day one. And then on PlayStation, it appears 85 megabytes. So we have 326 megabytes on Xbox, 85 megabytes on PlayStation 5. Then you have to download about 80 gigabytes or so there to complete the game. So yeah, it is kind of a license on a disc and not the first time clearly. We’ve talked about this multiple times. Indiana Jones, same deal, which also came from Bethesda under Microsoft. So, you look, I know right now Microsoft is looking at their Xbox and they’ve got to be looking at a 90% like digital, 10% physical market just from the consumer base there. So, they I’m sure are more in line with, hey, we’re already really close to just being all digital at this point. I feel like the next Xbox paired with their handheld won’t even deal with physical media at all. So now it’s also, I think, spreading just consistently into their publishing stuff that’s happening because if they’re not going to have it all on the disc for the Xbox, eh, they’re probably not going to have it all on disc for PlayStation, even if apparently they could fit it there since Doom: The Dark Ages would fit on a 100 gigabyte PlayStation 5 disc. I don’t know what the deal is there. Maybe they’re thinking, hey, you have to download the latest version when you get the disc, so there’s more control for them. Because I guess if it leaks out really early and the servers aren’t on, you can’t do anything with it. Or when you pop the disc in at any time, even on launch day, you’re just getting the latest version. There is no need for necessarily a a day one patch because the whole game is basically the day one patch. It’s a frustrating thing to see because this continues along with the really the hits that physical media has been taking. Whether it’s game key cards in general on the Switch 2 or these discs on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series that have 85 to a couple hundred megabytes on there and then it just calls for the rest of the game in general. Next up, let’s talk about PAL World as of course they’re going head-to-head right now with Nintendo in Japan in the court system and it’s not even necessarily about the likeness of the Pals to the Pokemon which that was the where the discussion started. It’s like, are they just completely ripping off these uh these these copywritten or trademark designs for these Pokemon that are in uh in Nintendo and Game Freak, the Pokemon company’s game? No, it’s actually about gameplay mechanics. And I will say when that popped up under for patent infringement, I said, “Okay, this this could be a kind of messy for gaming in general.” And not necessarily because of precedence that’s set, but more for uh intimidation that’s set. So anyway, let’s take a look as this was a statement that was released not only on their official account on social media but also on their website and I went ahead and just grabbed the pertinent parts here. Starting at the top here with on November 30th, 2024, we released patch version 0.3.11 for POW World. This patch removed the ability to summon pals by throwing pal spheres and instead changed it to a static summon next to the player. Several other game mechanics were also changed with this patch. As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation. Furthermore, we regret to inform our players that with the implementation of patch version 0.5.5, we must make yet another compromise. From this patch onward, gliding will be performed using a glider rather than with pals. PALS in the players team will still provide passive buffs to gliding, but players will now need to have a glider in their inventory in order to glide. So, okay. Obviously, the throwing pow spheres, sure, they’re going to liken that to, hey, you’re basically throwing a Pokeball. We have that patented. We don’t like it. Take that out now. All right, fine. The the pals will just teleport into play. I will I will say though, the whole thing with the glider, that’s the one where I go, okay, okay, Nintendo, that one does feel kind of like the arrow above uh what above the that Sega was all annoyed about and like the Simpsons. Was it Hit and run or what? the the the the miniame during the load screens. The documented issues with gameplay patents that have seemed petty. This one seems kind of petty where you can’t glide with your pal. You uh you have to use like a glider or whatever. It’s just uh I don’t know. it. My thing with this is typically when gameplay mechanics get mixed in with litigation like this, it becomes I think concerning for creativity in games because like who wants to go through this process if you’re a small indie studio and you have ideas, but you’re like, is that too close to what the big billion dollar company deems necessary to protect? And if that’s the case, you go, yeah, we’re just not gonna we’re not going to expand on that. And then you start to stifle creativity overall. I I don’t know if this is something Nintendo would have done if Pal World wasn’t wildly successful because even though it has died down a bit, it’s there are still estimates that Playet about 35 players, 35 million players total that they’ve accumulated since launch. We know they’ve sold more than 15 million copies. And considering there’s I don’t think there’s a POW World 2 coming because they’re still trying to get out of just early access for the first game, there’s a good chance this game will just be larger in terms of player count or number sold than any Pokemon game ever sold, like ever, right, in history. Not bigger than the Pokemon IP, but just in terms of the game side number sold. That would be enough for Nintendo to take notice and go, “Okay, hold on a minute. We we don’t really like that. We think you’re using some gameplay mechanics that we have patented now. we’ll see you in court. But if they sold a million copies of Power World and we hadn’t heard anything since and it wasn’t a big thing that blew up online, would Nintendo have been there right away with the with the court papers? I don’t necessarily think so. So that that is the thing that also kind of irks me a bit. When gameplay mechanics get involved with litigation, I feel like it mostly just hurts gaming in general, things we necessarily won’t ever really know about because indie studios or even mid-range studios just won’t even attempt it. And in our last bit of news, let’s talk about Ark System Works as there was a leak that happened and people are still kind of gathering the details around how it happened. Seemed like it was someone was able to hack into their their like database and they started leaking out all kinds of information about Guilty Gear and the the all the seasons of characters that were planned. So, I mean, I guess if you’re someone who doesn’t necessarily want to be spoiled about any of the surprises for characters popping up for that series, I I guess try to avoid that. But other things have been getting out there. One example are the cartridge sizes for the Switch 2, which we went over in a video for the weekend. So, you can check that out if you’re curious. But the other thing has to do with a game that is currently in development for the Switch 2 specifically. This we can see was posted up. This is over on Twitter X from XOX Leak who says, “The new game is code name. Target releases November 25th of this year. The engine Unreal Engine they say 5.4 before and the platform is Switch 2. So it seems like exclusive title with Nintendo and Arc System Works and people looked at Watari and said, “Oh, that’s uh that means crossing or crossover maybe.” So some were wondering if this is a crossover title. Maybe something with a an IP outside of Arc System Works and then they’re collaborating with something else. Do like a you one of their franchises cross something else. It’s possible. Um, but some of the other ones are kind of interesting as well. Some were wondering if this could be a Smash Brothers fighting game. Like Nintendo is going to uh develop alongside of Arc System Works. They’re going to make a new Smash Brothers game that’s more traditional fighting. And some people are think well hold on. The thing with Smash Brothers is it does appeal to a wide audience because it’s not like a hardcore fighting game necessarily. The other thing though that I think actually does line up is uh maybe Hotel Dusk, something like that because Arc System Works did develop another Code Recollection and it seems like then they would go to a remake for Hotel Dusk. It’s a switch to exclusive from the leak. So that to me that lines up the most. I know there are people out there who are really excited. Then there’s also many who are like, “Oh, that’s kind of disappointing.” But it would make sense. Here’s the thing though. Either way, if it’s coming out in November, I assume we’re hearing about it next month in look, we all figure there’s a direct like it’s it would make sense in June. One, Nintendo does it all the time, and two, it’s like following up the launch of their new generation, their new system, and we still need release dates for things like Metroid Prime 4 beyond. So, it it all lines up and I guess we can expect maybe to see Arc System Works there with something new. Whether it’s a crossover fighting game, Smash Brothers, or a Hotel Dusk remake, we’ll see. 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 asked, “How much do you think the standard edition of GTA 6 will be when it releases?” Well, 41% are just going with $80. And I think that is most likely if I had to take a guess. But the next one was, oh, it’s it’s $100 or more. This is again for the standard edition. Not saying, “Oh, what’s the deluxe edition? What’s the what’s the big special edition that comes with some sort of memorabilia?” No. Some are just think it might be $100 plus just total for that. Uh $90 is the next one. Wow. $70. We are beyond that now. It’s like nope. There’s no way GTA 6 will be 70, which I will say that’d be pretty funny if it was $70 because at that point Nintendo and even Microsoft now would just look dumb. Like they look foolish. Definitely. They look like they like greedy compared to It sounds weird, but Take Two, Take Two makes things like uh NBA 2K that has microtransactions all over the place. They’re developing GTA 6, of course, Rockstar under Take 2. That’s most likely budgeted between somewhere between one and probably 1.5 billion. I I think it is north of a billion pretty easily at this time, but it could go upwards of two billion with GTA online and all the development that goes into that. So, it’s just I think 80 is most likely along with other editions that probably come with some sort of shark cards or or just some big special edition. But if it comes out at 70, I I think that would surprise a lot of people. But I wouldn’t expect it probably $80 or more if it even makes its uh May 2026 release because there’s also many people that are that are doubting even that at this time. Then we’ll finish up with the comment of the day as you’re seeing here. This is from Mike who says, “Was he wearing an Earthbound shirt?” shirt. Oh, he’s talking about the mother shirt. And I thought it made sense like the the the last day of the week going into Mother’s Day weekend to put have the mother shirt on. But yes, it is Earthbound. And that’s good because a lot of times I’ll have uh people in com I’ve seen this before people in the comments and stuff. They’re like, “What is it? What was that mother’s shirt? Is it a fan of the the the song or music?” It’s like, “No, you nerd. It’s Earthbound. Come on.” And ladies and gentlemen, that’s going to do it here for Newsweave. If you enjoyed