 Hey everyone, welcome back to VG news. We got six big stories for you today, a lot to get into, including something that has to do with Nintendo Switch 2. We got some stuff dealing with Zelda, we got some stuff dealing with sales data and Dead Space and a whole bunch of craziness. So if you're really enjoying this, I'd appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel. We are on our road to 150,000 subscribers. We wanna keep this show going. One of my best shows, I think we've ever produced at Nintendo Prime. Let's dive in here. First with an update on Pokemon Go. You guys know about Pokemon Go. Well, today it dropped a new 15 second trailer on a major update using the hashtag rediscover go. Now, we don't actually know what this update is going to be, but what we do know is there's still a lot of people playing Pokemon Go. According to sensor tower and activeplayer.io, there's roughly 86 million active users still playing Pokemon Go just in the last month. Now, this is a far cry from the peak of the game where there was over 200 million active users, but it does show a pretty thriving community that they wanna try to get back to that peak. They got it to release some innovative stuff. Now they've talked about big updates in the past and for the most part of those updates really let people down. They weren't quite what people wanted and they've under delivered. So this one, people are a little bit tepid about, but there is some hope on some very specific changes that people would like to see come. You know, there's speculation about there being a biome update or a Kanto tour, possibly some massive changes to PVP. But again, a lot of this is very skeptical because people really aren't happy with the direction of Pokemon Go in general. When I say people, there's 86 million people playing the damn game. So plenty of people are actually happy with it, but clearly if they wanna get back to the peak, they're gonna have to make some major changes. Again, Pokemon Go is one of the most popular games still today on the app stores. So we'll have to wait and see what this is. There's no announcement on when this update's gonna come, when we're gonna get more information. 15 second tease, something's happening. That's all I can really tell you guys. Now, next up we need to dive into Dead Space. Oh man, if you guys don't know, a Dead Space remake released last year, here's some footage in fact of that. I wanna dive into this because it's really been a big headline over the last 24 hours. And it's not for a reason we actually want it to be a headline. Dead Space is a beloved franchise controlled by EA and created by Motive. And typically if we were talking about it, it would be about a new remake based on the one last year and possibly even a new entry title. Unfortunately, all the news today for the franchise is on the negative side instead. If we look at how this all began, folks, it actually began with video game journalist and insider Jeff Grubb who on one of his many copious podcasts had this to say. They were working on Dead Space 2 and they are no longer working on it. It is on the shelf because the first games had lackluster sales is how it was phrased to me. Yeah, that's so if you were looking forward to a Dead Space 2, it's bad news. It straight up is just bad news. Does this mean it never happens? I don't know if that's the case. It was in the concepting phase, I believe something like pre-production and now that work has been put on the shelf. Now IGN followed this up with really reaching out to EA for comment and surprisingly EA left the following comment. We don't normally comment on rumors but there's no validity to this story. Yikes. Pretty rare for a company to actually comment on rumors. It's not something they typically do. The story may not be that crystal clear, however, just, hey, what Jeff Grubb said is entirely wrong. That's because of another journalist known as Jason Schreyer from Bloomberg who went even deeper into this. But before we do that, I want to actually get into Jeff Grubb's response to IGN's article that he put over on X where he said, I give you permission to believe EA if you want. But whenever a company says that isn't true but they don't specify which part of the story they're talking about, well yeah, Dead Space 2 was definitely being planned. It had a code name and they aren't making it now. So yeah, there's Jeff Grubb doubling down on what he was saying. But let's get back to Jason Schreyer who I already mentioned. He wrote an article on Bloomberg about all of this and thankfully gave a breakdown about it on X since Bloomberg is sitting behind a paywall. Here's what he had to say on X. Yes, Dead Space is on ice once again. EA's motive explored ideas for a new entry early last year but none were greenlit. Chief Hope was for a new game, not a remake of Dead Space 2. Despite today's rumors, though both sides were explored. Okay, so it's possible Jeff Grubb got some information that might've been a bit exaggerated. But what about the code name Jeff Grubb said exists? Well, Jason actually had a very clear explanation of this and he decided to quote, tweet or whatever they call that now on X. Jeff Grubb and give a response on the code name. He said, let me clear this up. Modive used the same code name to describe whatever project that the Dead Space team was working on next. Hence the confusion on Jeff's part. It was never really a Dead Space 2 remake and for nearly a year it had nothing to do with Dead Space. In other words, Modive uses the same code name on all of their new projects and this is not actually industry standard. Most studios will actually have individual, separate code names for each product and yeah, that's just usually how it works. I mean look, we're still waiting on the code name for Nintendo's next system. So code names typically don't work this way but this is how Modive does. So you can understand how, let's say they had a code name for the Dead Space remake and they were using that code name again where Jeff Grubb would presume that meant that hey, Dead Space 2 remake must be in the works because I've been told about this code name that's currently being worked on that lines up with the first game. So I can understand what some confusion might be there. Obviously if Jeff Grubb would've never said they were developing the game, that might have been and got canceled of course that maybe there wouldn't be all this confusion out there but in the end, look, none of this is good news. We can set aside Jeff Grubb and Jason Schreier and all of this and just go with the fact that no, a Dead Space 2 remake is not being worked on. In fact, no Dead Space game is being worked on. So even though the Dead Space remake released last year, Dead Space 1 and was received pretty well, it appears that its sales weren't good enough to continue to make it. I do worry this might be the end of the Dead Space franchise as a fan of the franchise and someone who enjoyed the remake last year. This is unfortunate news. Welcome to the AAA industry guys. Things have to sell quite a bit in order for them to be worth continuing. Now last week we had a story about a new Prince of Persia game called the Rogue Prince of Persia. This came from Tom Henderson at Insider Gaming and it was a rumor at the time because obviously the game had not been revealed and he said it would be revealed on April 10th. He also said that it would be on Steam Early Access and it was made by one of the developers behind, well, Dead Cells. So pretty exciting stuff that they started talking about this back at the Game Developers Conference 2019. Yada, yada, yada. There was a bunch of details we went over last week. Well, the 10th has now come in past. That was yesterday and yes, the game was actually announced with this trailer. Now, the game is titled the Rogue Prince of Persia and the review trailer also stated that the game would be on Steam Early Access on May 14th, so there you go. Congratulations, he was right. Rocking a unique art direction compared to the rest of the series, developer Evil Empire, yes, one of the primary developers behind Dead Cells is clearly taking what they know best from their prior work and applying it to the Prince of Persia franchise. Now, this trailer itself shows a bunch of cut scenes and literally has one of the smoothest transitions to pure gameplay I think I've ever actually seen on a trailer, so it's really cool. It looks fun enough and different enough to the Lost Crown that released earlier this year. Now, we don't have any other platforms but PC announced for the title at this time and beyond Steam Early Access, we have no release dates or pricing information either. You can apply however, if you go to the official website to be part of the alpha, which is probably what Steam Early Access will basically be. Chances are the game won't release either late this year or very early 2025. We don't really know obviously, you know, if this game's almost done. Tom Henderson sort of hinted that it would be in considering that his entire report looks to be correct. The fact that he thinks this game is coming out this year probably indicates that it really is coming out this year. I'm pretty excited about this in general. I really enjoy Prince of Persia and we're seeing a big resurgence this year with the Lost Crown. This game looking pretty solid. Obviously, yesterday we had a bit of news on our Prince of Persia remake of Sands of Time and also from Tom Henderson. So, chances are all these reports from him from Ubisoft are pretty spot on. He's got a really good track record here. Credit to him and Insider Gaming for their scoop. So, really cool stuff and that actually leads nicely into our next story because Saber Interactive recently left Embracer Group which is interesting on its own and we talked about it last week. But what's actually cool is that the CEO Matthew Karch did an interview with IGN and he had a lot to say. One of the biggest thing that he wanted to talk about though was this idea of the triple A game and this idea of how much money it cost to make them and $70 price points on games and how he doesn't think they're sustainable. Now, it is of note that their game that comes out later this year, Warhammer 40K, Space Marine 2, does cost $70. And it's really weird when he looks at this because he does think that, one, the game is the best that they've ever made but he didn't actually wanna price that game at $70. He thought that gamers would think it's a lower quality game if it wasn't priced at $70. Quite a fascinating outlook. But here's what he actually had to say about $70 price points and sustainability in the video game industry. I think as games become more expensive to make, the $70 title is going to go the way of the Dodo bird. I do. I don't think it's sustainable. Look, you remember the hype for Cyberpunk which I think actually ultimately performed okay but then the expectations are so high and so much money was put into one title. It's hugely risky for a company that's doing it. What if it fails? You remember what happened when Ubisoft a couple of years ago all their titles slipped out of the year and then all of a sudden they were in an entirely different place? It's hard to recover from that. I think the market is going to shift to development which is not necessarily lower quality but there's going to be an emphasis on trying to find ways to reduce costs. Now, Matthew Karch, the CEO of Saber Interactive also ended up being on the board for Embracer Group and he was the one that suggested that they should let Saber Interactive go and he obviously left with Saber Interactive. Now, the note here about cutting costs, he does say that, hey, AI is part of the way that they could end up cutting costs but it's not really going to be enough. So some of you guys out there might be like, man, all these thousands of jobs being let go in this industry, they're all replaced by AI, not actually the case. And he would obviously know because he's on the ground floor with these games. So what did he have to say about that? And in particular, why he thinks there's going to be a game shortage, that's right. He thinks there will be a game shortage very, very soon for us in the AAA space that like to play AAA games. I think there's going to be a real shortage of game content over the coming few years. You've seen how many layoffs there's been, you see how many games have gotten killed but we have a lot of good projects going on and I'm proud that I feel really, really strongly about it. Of course, we here at Nintendo Prime, we do realize that Nintendo themselves had their first Switch game launched last year at $70 in Tears of the Kingdom. And Nintendo arguing that the price point of the game, four Tears of the Kingdom is going to be decided on a game by game decision. And Tears of the Kingdom was particularly $70 because, and I'm quoting, a type of experience fans could expect. I don't understand how $70 reflects a type of experience, but then that goes to show that, you know, what Matthew Karch was saying that, hey, if we don't price space marines to at $70, people think it's a lesser game. Nintendo wanted expectations to be higher for Tears of the Kingdom and now they want you to think, hey, if we charge $70, that's the kind of game you're going to get. We'll see if that ends up holding true for future games that Nintendo decides to charge at $70. Meanwhile, though, we have to understand that a lot of times the $70 price point might not be due to this. Really recently, Ubisoft launched Skull and Bones and called it the first quadruple A game and they charged $70, that was their justification because it's a quadruple A game because they got a lot of criticism over it because Skull and Bones is missing a ton of content. It's very lacking and because it's lacking in content, it doesn't feel worth it to most consumers to spend $70. But here's reality, Ubisoft threw a lot of money at Skull and Bones. They ended up not being able to realize their full vision. They're probably out $100 million, $200 million plus dollars. They realize no matter what Skull and Bones is probably gonna lose money so they figure we'll charge it at a price where we can actually recuperate some of those losses at a decent margin. Of course, Ubisoft, the game might already be discounted by now. That's just how they handle things. Still, this is just very fascinating to me and a big story and one that I just wanna say is getting a little crazy. These $100 million, $200 million, $300 million budgets are a little insane and I do think he's right in that they need to find a way that AAA industry does to get this under control. Only very select franchises, such as Grand Theft Auto should really be justifying 300 million plus budgets. So we even saw recent stories that like Sony really hadn't made that much money or any money on Spider-Man 2 yet. So look, the budgets are out of control. That's just reality and we gotta find a way to get them under control and AI is not going to be the be-all-every-one solution. There's gonna be a lot more ways that they're gonna have to be more efficient. They're gonna have to maybe not make games so large, maybe not focus so much on having the greatest visuals all the time. Don't think this will have much of an impact on Nintendo. Tears of the Kingdom is one of the few games that they probably spent 150 million plus on, but I don't know. Just kind of a story to throw out there and give you guys some food for thought. Now, next up, we need to go into the story simply because this is a lot of fun. This is a fun story, but it also shows that Nintendo games in 4K isn't like a dream for Nintendo Switch 2 because you see, Nintendo Switch 2 or whatever they decide to call their next platform, again, we don't have a name, has a bunch of rumors swirling around it about 4K, DLSS, upscaling and all of that and most of the tech sounds pretty fun, but we're all just guessing right now, right? T239, what are the specs gonna be? It's supposed to be a fully custom chip so we don't really know all the particulars. We just have a good idea based on an NVIDIA leak from two years ago and who knows how accurate that leak even is today for a platform that might not come till 2025. They could literally change out the entire chip in that time, so we don't really know. Still, for us Nintendo fans, 4K Nintendo games sounds dreamy and thanks to emulation of the Nintendo Switch, we have seen a lot of Nintendo's games in 4K all over YouTube, but what we really wanna know is what does Nintendo's games when they develop them going to look like in 4K and we actually sort of have an example on Nintendo hardware now thanks to a particular content creator. Now look, we were all thinking Nintendo games would be in 4K due to DLSS and upscaling tricks on Switch 2 and that still might be the case, but did you know that we're actually not that far away from being able to run Nintendo's best games like Tears of the Kingdom in 4K on the Switch? No, it can't be done normally, but this is quite fascinating. Now, a content creator went ahead and did something really unique for Nintendo modifications. You see, we see people go in and overclock the Nintendo Switch and get more performance and slightly higher resolution, especially when there's that bouncing around resolution, that scaling resolution that scales based on the available performance of the system in the given scene. Well, what about adding more actual RAM to the system? Yes, that does require some massive technical knowledge and the ability to do direct hardware modifications to the board, replacing the original RAM with a higher capacity module and just hoping the motherboard even recognizes it and has the power to use it. Well, content creator Naga went ahead and hard-modded an 8-gigabyte module in place of the 4-gigabyte one of RAM onto Nintendo Switch and applied the maximum overclocks he could achieve on a Tegra X1 on stock Switch hardware. And then he ran tiers of the kingdom at 4K. Note that when he says he tried to do this with only 4 gigabytes of RAM, the game actually crashed. Now, here's the game running at 4K. I want to note here all over that his video is unfortunately only in 1080p. So while our video is in 4K, this is a 1080p thing you're seeing and we don't have 4K direct footage that we can share, but still, things do look noticeably sharper and crisper anyways. And of course, the frame rate is tanking hard, hitting the single digits in low teens. And then even when he enters a shrine, which is significantly more playable, it's still only hovering between 18 and 24 FPS. Of course, just upping the RAM wasn't going to simply make tiers of the kingdom playable and enjoyable at 4K. But the point here, at least for me, is showing how easy it was to get a Nintendo game on Switch with Switch hardware at 4K by simply doubling the RAM. The Switch 2 should have at least eight gigabytes of RAM, if not 12 or 16, and also much more modern hardware features, a way better CPU and GPU, et cetera. Showing that at least with what they are doing on Switch, getting those games up and running at native 4K with 60 FPS may be a fairly easy task. Of course, Nintendo's highly likely to push their games even further with the new hardware. So the next big open world 3D Zelda game will probably be targeting 1080p at 30 FPS, reliant on technology like DLSS to get the 4K, but that will be by choice so they can leverage the power of the new platform in new ways. Still, it is fairly impressive that four gigabytes of extra RAM is all it took to get tiers of the kingdom at least running in some form at native 4K on Switch. And it shows that Nintendo should have no problems bringing their old games to 4K 60 FPS, or even targeting native 4K with their games out using DLSS unless there's obviously reasons they wanna use that power for something else. I'm just really looking forward to Nintendo's next platform and this little proof of concept is just a thought experiment but a thought experiment that proves something and makes me just even more excited for that new powerful platform. Now, our next story is some Femitsu sales updates that again come from our good friend Paul Gale Network. He went ahead and posted all of this stuff on here up from last week. So let's go ahead and show his tweet here where it says Femitsu sales from April 1st to the 7th, show Princess Peach Showtime is still number one at 19,612 units. Then you see Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Rise of Ronin, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Minecraft Splatoon 3, Nintendo Switch, Sports, Momotarou Den Tetsu, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate there as well. And then you see the hardware sales chime in with Nintendo Switch at 71,942 for the week, PlayStation 5 at almost 25,000 Xbox Series chime in in there. And this week, back in 2023, Nintendo Switch was actually ahead of that week where it sold 52,510 last week. PlayStation 5 is also ahead as is the Xbox Series. So week to week comparison to last year, actually a pretty good bump. Now, by April 14th, which is less than a third of the year, Nintendo Switch will have sold over 800,000 units in Japan. And you know, that's really fascinating, but did you know this? Femitsu has now stopped tracking 3DS sales. They did it, and they did track it for 384 weeks, which is slightly over 13 years, as you're seeing with Paul Gale's tweet here. This is a reminder that once Nintendo Switch 2 comes out, don't expect the base switch to stop selling. All of a sudden, it will have legs, which is a very good point to just mention. Also, Paul Gale goes out to also mention something else that I'll just toss in here towards the end. Considered a bonus story, but I'm gonna include it with the Femitsu sales. John Cena put out a post featuring an 8-bit version of Link. Now, John Cena does this stuff all the time, and Paul Gale actually got to meet John Cena during the marketing campaign for Nintendo Switch, so he knows him a little bit. What I will say is that I don't think this really has to do with anything. People are speculating it has to do with the Zelda movie and something else. Personally, I don't think it really means all that much, but there you have it. That is our VG News for today. Hopefully you guys had a really good day. I know that I did, and I am looking forward to doing the next episode with you guys, because folks, VG News is here to stay. We're having a lot of fun, and I'm gonna go ahead and catch you guys all in the next video.