$250 Analogue 3D will play all your N64 cartridges in 4K early next year

It's been exactly one year since the initial announcement of the Analogue 3D, an HD-upscaled, FPGA-powered Nintendo 64 in the tradition of Analogue's long-running line or high-end retro machines. Today, Analogue is revealing more details about the hardware, which will sell for $250 and plans to ship in the first quarter of 2025 (a slight delay from the previously announced 2024 release plan).

Like previous Analogue devices, the Analogue 3D uses a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to simulate the actual logic gates found in original N64 hardware. That helps ensure 100 percent compatibility with the entire N64 cartridge library across all regions, Analogue promises, and should avoid the long-standing accuracy and lag issues inherent to most software-based emulation of the N64.

White and black hardware shells will be available for the Analogue 3D.

Credit: Analogue

To get that level of fidelity, the Analogue team spent four years programming an Altera Cyclone FPGA with a full 220,000 logic elements. That's a big step up from previous Analogue devices—the Analogue Pocket's main FPGA board featured just 49,000 logic elements three years ago. But the Analogue Pocket also included a second, 15,000-logic-element FPGA, which allowed it to run an expanding list of openFPGA cores to support games from other classic consoles.

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Steam adds the harsh truth that you’re buying “a license,” not the game itself

There comes a point in most experienced Steam shoppers' lives where they wonder what would happen if their account was canceled or stolen, or perhaps they just stopped breathing. It's scary to think about how many games in your backlog will never get played; scarier, still, to think about how you don't, in most real senses of the word, own any of them.

Now Valve, seemingly working to comply with a new California law targeting "false advertising" of "digital goods," has added language to its checkout page to confirm that thinking. "A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam," the Steam cart now tells its customers, with a link to the Steam Subscriber Agreement further below.

California's AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer "permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet." Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms "buy, purchase," or related terms that would "confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good." And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that "the digital good is a license" and link to terms and conditions.

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Xbox plans to set up shop on Android devices if court order holds

After a US court ruled earlier this week that Google must open its Play Store to provide more download and payment options, Microsoft is moving quickly to slide into this slightly ajar door.

Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, posted on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday evening that the ruling "will allow more choice and flexibility." "Our mission is to allow more players to play on more devices so we are thrilled to share that starting in November, players will be able to play and purchase Xbox games directly from the Xbox App on Android," Bond wrote.

Because the court order requires Google to stop forcing apps to use its own billing system and allow for third-party app stores inside Google Play itself, Microsoft now intends to offer Xbox games directly through its app. Most games will likely not run directly on Android, but a revamped Xbox Android app could also directly stream purchased or subscribed games to Android devices.

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Nintendo’s new clock tracks your movement in bed

On Wednesday, Nintendo announced Sound Clock Alarmo, a $99 bedside smart clock that uses motion sensors to detect when users move during sleep to keep track of sleep patterns. The clock, which is only available to Nintendo Online subscribers until January 2025, changes appearance based on the selected alarm, with different clock faces corresponding to various Nintendo games like Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Splatoon 3.

Unlike other sleep trackers that require you to physically wear something (such as the Apple Watch), Alarmo uses millimeter-wave presence sensors to track user movement, and it feeds that data into an internal system that keeps track of user sleep patterns (Alarmo does not send any sleep information to Nintendo).

The clock tracks how long the person has been sleeping and how long it took them to get out of bed after the alarm went off. Sleepy users can also use gestures to trigger a snooze function without physically touching the clock.

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The true cost of game piracy: 20 percent of revenue, according to a new study

Throughout the game industry's short history, there's been ample debate about how much piracy actually impacts a game's legitimate sales. On one side, some publishers try to argue that every single pirated download should count as a "lost sale" that they would have logged in a theoretical piracy-free world. On the other side, some wiseacres argue that most pirates would never consider paying for a legitimate version of the game in the first place or that piracy can actually be useful as a word-of-mouth promotional tool.

While the true effect of piracy on sales revenue is likely somewhere between those two extremes, piracy's precise financial impact on a game has always been hard to nail down. Now, though, a recently published study uses post-release cracks of Denuvo's DRM protections as a sort of natural experiment on games sales in pre- and post-piracy worlds. The results "imply an average proportionate loss of revenue of around 19 percent in each week of release if a crack is available," according to the study, suggesting that effective DRM can actually have a significant impact on a publisher's bottom line.

The data dance

In "The Revenue Effects of Denuvo Digital Rights Management on PC Video Games," published in the peer-reviewed journal Entertainment Computing, UNC research associate William Volckmann examines 86 different Denuvo-protected games initially released on Steam between September 2014 and the end of 2022. That sample includes many games where Denuvo protection endured for at least 12 weeks (when new sales tend to drop off to "negligible" amounts for most games) and many others where earlier cracks allowed for widespread piracy at some point.

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Sunderfolk is a couch co-op tactical RPG you play with a phone. No, really.

Tabletop board games and video games typically offer ways to reduce their difficulty. But getting and keeping a group together for a semi-regular game night or impromptu session across different schedules and experience levels? That can be fiendishly hard.

That, more than anything, is what Sunderfolk wants to make easier. At its core, it’s a turn-based tactical RPG with well-worn hero classes and mechanics familiar to fans of crunchy tabletop games and CRPGs. But this upcoming game from Secret Door, led by Blizzard veteran and tabletop aficionado Chris Sigaty, wants to bring more people into the game-night fold. By fusing Jackbox-like accessibility with tabletop mechanics and letting the game do all the hard work, Sunderfolk aims to reduce learning curves, eliminate setup, and encourage game nights with friends.

Gameplay trailer for Sunderfolk, due out in 2025.

Also, you use your phone as a controller, connected to one "big screen," local or remote. But it makes sense, and it worked, at least in the two hours I got to play Sunderfolk. The phone is both a controller and a replacement for all the cards, tokens, and other ephemera a tabletop player would have in front of them. And it allows for quick setup of couch co-op or screencasted play. Sunderfolk is a game that can make use of the QR-code-scanning, Discord-arranging skills many of us learned during the pandemic.

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Alleged Switch modder takes on Nintendo’s legal might without a lawyer

When faced with a legal threat from Nintendo, most alleged modders, ROM pirates, and/or emulator makers will simply give in to a cease-and-desist demand, reach an out of court settlement, or plead guilty rather than hiring legal representation for what could be a lengthy, costly trial. Then there's Ryan Daly, alleged owner of ModdedHardware.com, who has apparently decided to represent himself as a recent lawsuit brought against him by the Switch maker moves forward.

Nintendo says it first approached Daly in March about his site (currently password-protected but archived here) and its sales of modded Switch consoles, console modding services, and piracy-enabling devices such as the MIG Switch card that were pre-installed with popular Nintendo games. At that time, Daly agreed "both verbally and in signed writing" to refrain from these infringing sales, according to Nintendo. It was only after months of Daly continuing those sales and largely ignoring further contact from Nintendo that the company says it was forced to file its June lawsuit in a Seattle federal court.

In that initial lawsuit, Nintendo said it "received a communication from a lawyer purporting to represent [Daly]" in June, followed by a message days later that Daly "was in the process of obtaining new counsel." That search for new counsel has seemingly not moved forward, as last week Daly filed a pro se response to Nintendo's allegations, representing himself without any outside legal advice (thanks, TorrentFreak).

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There’s never been a better time to play Diablo IV

When we reviewed Diablo IV, the latest installment in the long-running action roleplaying game series last year, we said it was off to a hell of a good start. But ARPGs live and die by their endgame loops, and it was far too early at the time to accurately assess the game’s true staying power.

Sadly, after that confident first step, like so many loot-hunting games before it, Diablo IV fell flat on its face. I’ve seen plenty of boneheaded updates to live-service games, but Diablo IV’s first major patch, released a couple of months after the game’s release, was still pretty shocking. By that point, a consensus had emerged that the endgame was a bit barren, and getting to the game’s level cap of 100 was a tedious slog. But that’s the great thing about live-service games, right? Tweak some numbers, throw in a couple of fun high-level activities, and, baby, you’ve got a stew going.

Sadly, the game’s developers at Blizzard had other plans. The patch notes for that first update read like someone had systematically gone through the game and removed anything that could be considered fun. Almost every character build had been mercilessly nerfed, and worst of all, the game became even slower. Fans were incensed, and Diablo IV floundered like this for its first three seasons. I mostly lost interest.

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Alien: Isolation sequel bursts into existence, 10 years after original

The Alien franchise is about uncaring monsters, unfeeling corporations, and horrific, claustrophobic terror. Given this setting, it almost made sense, what happened to the original Alien: Isolation.

The game was released to positive reviews, is now considered one of the best games ever made, and sold more than 2 million copies within its first few months. Despite this, Isolation only got "close to break-even or just about in the black," then-Creative Assembly studio director Tim Heaton told GamesIndustry.biz a year after release. With the rapid evolution of AAA game development, that wasn't enough. And so, like a salvage team diverted to a bio-weapon recovery mission, Isolation and its momentum were seemingly abandoned.

Gameplay and review accolades for Alien: Isolation, released 10 years ago today.

Abandoned, that is, until today, the 10th anniversary of that game's 2014 release. The appropriately named Al Hope, creative director of Isolation studio Creative Assembly, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that his team had "heard your distress calls loud and clear," and could confirm that "a sequel to Alien: Isolation is in early development."

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Teen achieves first NES Tetris “rebirth,” proves endless play is possible

Months ago, 13-year-old Willis "Blue Scuti" Gibson became the first person to "beat" NES Tetris, crashing the game after a 1,511-line, 57-level performance. Over the weekend, 16-year-old Michael "dogplayingtetris" Artiaga became the first to reach an even more impressive plateau in the game, looping past Level 255 and instantly rolling the game all the way back to the ultra-slow Level 0.

It took Artiaga a bit over 80 minutes and a full 3,300 cleared lines to finally achieve the game's first near-mythical "rebirth" live in front of hundreds of Twitch viewers. And after a bit of celebration and recovery on the low levels, Artiaga managed to keep his rolled-over game going for another 40 minutes, finally topping out after a total of 4,216 lines and a record 29.4 million points.

Artiaga's record-setting game starts a few minutes in, while the "rebirth" rollover happens at 1:21:24.

Artiaga's record does come with a small asterisk since he used a version of the game that was modified to avoid the crashes that stopped Blue Scuti's historic run. Still, NES Tetris' first-ever level rollover is a monumental achievement and a testament to just how far competitive classic Tetris has come in a short time.

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Halls of Torment is Diablo cranked up to 50,000 kills/hour

The old-school Diablo games endure for a lot of reasons. Some players like the deep lore and world-building. Some like partnering with friends and working through dungeons as a team. Some like hunting for incredibly rare loot and maybe selling it on a livestream.

Sometimes, though, you dive into high-level Diablo just for a chance to kill a screen full of monsters really quickly.

If that kind of high-density enemy killing is what you're looking for, Halls of Torment's recent Version 1.0 release is a near-perfect take on the concept. Despite the decidedly old-school presentation, the game takes very modern inspiration from Vampire Survivors and its quick-hit bursts of leveling up through overwhelming enemy hordes. In doing so, it has become my absolute favorite way to wipe out enemies at rates approaching and exceeding 50,000/hour, at some points.

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Steam doesn’t want to pay arbitration fees, tells gamers to sue instead

Valve Corporation, tired of paying arbitration fees, has removed a mandatory arbitration clause from Steam's subscriber agreement. Valve told gamers in yesterday's update that they must sue the company in order to resolve disputes.

The subscriber agreement includes "changes to how disputes and claims between you and Valve are resolved," Steam wrote in an email to users. "The updated dispute resolution provisions are in Section 10 and require all claims and disputes to proceed in court and not in arbitration. We've also removed the class action waiver and cost and fee-shifting provisions."

The Steam agreement previously said that "you and Valve agree to resolve all disputes and claims between us in individual binding arbitration." Now, it says that any claims "shall be commenced and maintained exclusively in any state or federal court located in King County, Washington, having subject matter jurisdiction."

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Bazzite is the next best thing to SteamOS while we wait on Valve

I was on vacation last week, the kind of vacation in which entire days had no particular plan. I had brought the ROG Ally X with me, and, with the review done and Windows still annoying me, I looked around at the DIY scene, wondering if things had changed since my last foray into DIY Steam Deck cloning.

Things had changed for the better. I tried out Bazzite, and after dealing with the typical Linux installation tasks—activating the BIOS shortcut, turning off Secure Boot, partitioning—I had the Steam Deck-like experience I had sought on this more powerful handheld. Since I installed Bazzite, I have not had to mess with drivers, hook up to a monitor and keyboard for desktop mode, or do anything other than play games.

Until Valve officially makes SteamOS available for the ROG Ally and (maybe) other handhelds, Bazzite is definitely worth a look for anyone who thinks their handheld could do better.

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Switch emulator Ryujinx shuts down development after “contact by Nintendo”

Enlarge / These copyrighted Switch games shown on Ryujinx's former GitHub page probably didn't curry any favor with Nintendo. (credit: Ryujinx / Internet Archive)

Popular open source Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx has been removed from GitHub, and the team behind it has reportedly ceased development of the project after apparent discussions with Nintendo.

Ryujinx developer riperiperi writes on the project's Discord server and social media that fellow developer gdkchan was "contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project, remove the organization and all related assets he's in control of." While the final outcome of that negotiation is not yet public, riperiperi reports that "the organization has been removed" (presumably from GitHub) and thus "I think it's safe to say what the outcome is."

While the Ryujinx website is still up as of this writing, the download page and other links to GitHub-hosted information from that website no longer function. The developers behind the project have not posted a regular progress report update since January after posting similar updates almost every month throughout 2023. Before today, the Ryujinx social media account last posted an announcement in March.

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“So aggravating”: Outdated ads start appearing on PS5 home screen

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

PlayStation 5 owners are reporting advertisements on the device’s home screen. Frustratingly, the ads seem to be rather difficult to disable, and some are also outdated ads and/or confusing content.

The ads, visible on users' home screens when they hover over a game title, can only be removed if you disconnect from the Internet, IGN reported today. However, that would block a lot of the console’s functionality. The PS5 dashboard previously had ads but not on the home screen.

Before this recent development, people would see game art if they hovered over a game icon on the PS5’s home screen. Now, doing so reportedly brings up dated advertisements. For example, IGN reported seeing an ad for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse “coming soon exclusively in cinemas” when hovering over the Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales game. Webheads will of course recall that the Spider-Verse movie came out in June 2023.

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