The PS5 Pro’s biggest problem is that the PS5 is already very good

In many ways, the timing of Sony's 2016 launch of the PS4 Pro couldn't have been better. The slightly upgraded version of 2013's PlayStation 4 came at a time when a wave of 4K TVs was just beginning to crest in the form of tens of millions of annual sales in the US.

Purchasing Sony's first-ever "mid-generation" console upgrade in 2016 didn't give original PS4 owners access to any new games, a fact that contributed to us calling the PS4 Pro "a questionable value proposition" when it launched. Still, many graphics-conscious console gamers were looking for an excuse to use the extra pixels and HDR colors on their new 4K TVs, and spending hundreds of dollars on a stopgap console years before the PS5 served that purpose well enough.

Fast-forward to today and the PS5 Pro faces an even weaker value proposition. The PS5, after all, has proven more than capable of creating excellent-looking games that take full advantage of the 4K TVs that are now practically standard in American homes. With 8K TVs still an extremely small market niche, there isn't anything akin to what Sony's Mike Somerset called "the most significant picture-quality increase probably since black and white went to color" when talking about 4K TV in 2016.

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Nintendo confirms Switch 2 will play original Switch games

As US states were busy counting votes to confirm who would be the next president Tuesday night, Nintendo's Japanese Twitter account was busy confirming a key backward compatibility feature for the upcoming "Nintendo Switch successor," which is still only pre-announced, officially.

"At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch," Nintendo posted in a social media update attributed to company president Shintaro Furukawa. "Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well."

This is Furukawa. At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch. Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well. Further information about…

— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報・IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) November 6, 2024

In the full policy briefing referenced in that post, Nintendo adds that it "believe[s] that it is important for Nintendo’s future to make use of Nintendo Account and carry over the good relationship that we have built with the over 100 million annual playing users on Nintendo Switch to its successor." The company also makes the (perhaps obvious) clarification that "in addition to being able to play Nintendo Switch software they currently own, consumers will be able to choose their next purchase from a broad selection of titles released for Nintendo Switch [on its successor]."

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Metal Slug Tactics is an odd mix of arcade shooter and grid strategy that works

Metal Slug Tactics pushes hard on the boundaries of the vaunted run-and-gun arcade series. You can run when it's your character's turn, but it's a certain number of tiles. You can gun, but not rapidly, and only after considering the most optimal target and tools.

Is this just Into the Breach with classic-era SNK artwork and aesthetics? Kind of, and you're welcome.

As a true fan once wrote, Metal Slug games are about "crazy vehicles, amusing enemies and levels, and some of the best sprite art you'll ever see in gaming." To my eyes, you're getting a whole bunch of that in Tactics. Turn-based, grid-mapped tactics have a natural tendency to feel slow and to strip characters down to chess pieces that can do two or three things. Here, the characters and villains cannot stop rocking their bodies, the guns and explosions and scimitars go off big, and the exaggerated-just-enough artwork keeps everything locked into an action-movie mood.

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Dystopika is a beautiful cyberpunk city builder without the ugly details

Some of my favorite games deny me the thing I think I want most. Elden Ring refuses to provide manageable save files (and I paid for it). Balatro withholds the final math on each hand played (and its developer suggests avoiding calculators). And the modern X-COM games force me to realize just how much a 98% chance to hit is not the same as 100%.

Dystopika (Steam, Windows) is a city builder in maybe the strictest definition of that two-word descriptor, because it steadfastly refuses to distract you with non-building details. The game is described by its single developer, Matt Marshall, as having "No goals, no management, just creativity and dark cozy vibes." Dystopika does very little to explain how you should play it, because there's no optimal path for doing so. Your only job is to enjoy yourself, poking and prodding at a dark cyberpunk cityscape, making things that look interesting, pretty, grim, or however you like. It might seem restrictive, but it feels very freeing.

Dystopika launch video.

The game's interface is a small rail on the left side of the screen. Select "Building" and a random shape attaches to your cursor. You can right-click to change it, but you can't pick one. Place it, and then optionally place the cursor near its top to change its height. Making one building taller will raise smaller buildings nearby. Reaching certain heights, or densities, or something (it's not explained) will "unlock" certain new buildings, landmarks, and decorations.

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iPod fans evade Apple’s DRM to preserve 54 lost clickwheel-era games

Old-school Apple fans probably remember a time, just before the iPhone became a massive gaming platform in its own right, when Apple released a wide range of games designed for late-model clickwheel iPods. While those clickwheel-controlled titles didn't exactly set the gaming world on fire, they represent an important historical stepping stone in Apple's long journey through the game industry.

Today, though, these clickwheel iPod games are on the verge of becoming lost media—impossible to buy or redownload from iTunes and protected on existing devices by incredibly strong Apple DRM. Now, the classic iPod community is engaged in a quest to preserve these games in a way that will let enthusiasts enjoy these titles on real hardware for years to come.

Perhaps too well-protected

The short heyday of iPod clickwheel gaming ran from late 2006 to early 2009, when Apple partnered with major studios like Sega, Square Enix, and Electronic Arts to release 54 distinct titles for $7.49 each. By 2011, though, the rise of iOS gaming made these clickwheel iPod titles such an afterthought that Apple completely removed them from the iTunes store, years before the classic iPod line was discontinued for good in 2014.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 accounted for 19% of Comcast Internet traffic this week

You might think that since Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (which was released last Friday) is the 21st game in the franchise, it wouldn't be that highly anticipated. You'd be wrong. Last week's entry set multiple records when it launched.

Specifically, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the game set new records for Game Pass subscribers, particularly for a first-day game launch. That's, of course, to be expected—Call of Duty was a major reason why Microsoft acquired Activision, the longtime publisher of the series.

It gets a little zanier, though. The Internet service provider Comcast says Black Ops 6 was directly responsible for 19 percent of its overall traffic in the past week, according to a report in The Verge.

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Will the new Nintendo Music app lead to more DMCA takedowns from Nintendo?

Last night, Nintendo pulled off a surprise launch of a new Nintendo Music smartphone app, offering many of the company's staple soundtrack songs as a perk to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. But the new subscription freebie could give Nintendo additional motivation to once again crack down on Internet users who have been collecting and posting Nintendo music online for years now.

The Nintendo Music app includes hundreds of songs from titles to download or stream, ranging from 1985's Super Mario Bros. to last year's Pikmin 4. The current music selection is far from comprehensive, but it at least touches on many of Nintendo's most popular series, including Zelda, Pokemon, Kirby, Fire Emblem, Metroid, and Animal Crossing (plus some popular background music from various Wii Channels). Nintendo promises that more tracks will be "added over time," mirroring the process Nintendo has used to add to its Nintendo Switch Online classic game downloads.

A new trailer introduces some of the features of the Nintendo Music app.

Nintendo Music users can build their own playlists, of course, or choose from a number of pre-arranged playlists to suit different moods or character themes. The app also syncs with your Nintendo account to highlight music from games you play and offers options to avoid "spoilers" from certain game music or extend songs in lengthy loops.

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Apple silicon Macs will get their ultimate gaming test with Cyberpunk 2077 release

Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically demanding and visually impressive games in recent years, will soon get a Mac release, according to developer and publisher CD Projekt Red.

The announcement was published on CD Projekt Red's blog and also appeared briefly during Apple's pre-recorded MacBook Pro announcement video. The game will be sold on the Mac App Store, Steam, GOG, and the Epic Game Store when it launches, and it will be labeled the Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which simply means it also includes Phantom Liberty, the expansion that was released a couple of years after the original game.

Cyberpunk 2027 launched in a rough state in 2020, especially on low-end hardware. Subsequent patches and a significant overhaul with Phantom Liberty largely redeemed it in critics' eyes—the result of all that post-launch work is the version Mac users will get.

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Apple is turning The Oregon Trail into a movie

Apple will adapt the classic educational game The Oregon Trail into a big-budget movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR).

The film is in early development, having just been pitched to Apple and approved. Will Speck and Josh Gordon (Blades of Glory, Office Christmas Party) will direct and produce. Given that pedigree (zany comedies), it's clear this film won't be a serious historical drama about the struggles of those who traveled the American West.

In fact, the report not only notes that it will be a comedy—it says it will be a musical, too. "The movie will feature a couple of original musical numbers in the vein of Barbie," according to THR's sources. EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul will be responsible for the original music in the film.

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Video game libraries lose legal appeal to emulate physical game collections online

Earlier this year, we reported on the video game archivists asking for a legal DMCA exemption to share Internet-accessible emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers. Today, the US Copyright Office announced once again that it was denying that request, forcing researchers to travel to far-flung collections for access to the often-rare physical copies of the games they're seeking.

In announcing its decision, the Register of Copyrights for the Library of Congress sided with the Entertainment Software Association and others who argued that the proposed remote access could serve as a legal loophole for a free-to-access "online arcade" that could harm the market for classic gaming re-releases. This argument resonated with the Copyright Office despite a VGHF study that found 87 percent of those older game titles are currently out of print.

"While proponents are correct that some older games will not have a reissue market, they concede there is a 'healthy' market for other reissued games and that the industry has been making 'greater concerted efforts' to reissue games," the Register writes in her decision. "Further, while the Register appreciates that proponents have suggested broad safeguards that could deter recreational uses of video games in some cases, she believes that such requirements are not specific enough to conclude that they would prevent market harms."

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Fallout: London is a huge Fallout 4 mod that is now playable—and worth playing

It took a crew of more than 100 talented modders and another hundred voice actors nearly five years to make Fallout: London. Just as they planned to release it, Bethesda came out with a "next-gen upgrade" of the mod's base game, Fallout 4, forcing the team to scramble and ultimately find a way to downgrade the game. When they finally released London, they then dealt with game-stopping bugs and quality issues that their small QA team could not have caught. It's been a long, maybe even post-apocalyptic road for these modders.

A few updates later, Fallout: London is in much better shape. I've been able to put about 12 hours into it, and that, in itself, is essentially my review: it is worth that kind of time and more. If you can still enjoy Fallout 4, of course.

Any Fallout fan waits a long time between official releases, so it can be tempting to go easy on any new offering, however spit-and-bailing-wire it may seem. But Fallout: London is a game in its own right, with a distinct look, vision, and stories to tell. You can find evidence of its unofficial mod-ness if you look around, but you're better off doing the Fallout thing: wandering, wondering, fighting, and occasionally talking to some messed-up weirdo.

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Meta Quest 3S is a disappointing half-step to Carmack’s low-cost VR vision

It's been just over two years now since soon-to-depart CTO John Carmack told a Meta Connect audience about his vision for a super low-end VR headset that came in at $250 and 250 grams. "We're not building that headset today, but I keep trying," Carmack said at the time with some exasperation.

On the pricing half of the equation, the recently released Quest 3S headset is nearly on target for Carmack's hopes and dreams. Meta's new $299 headset is a significant drop from the $499 Quest 3 and the cheapest price point for a Meta VR headset since the company raised the price of the aging Quest 2 to $400 back in the summer of 2022. When you account for a few years of inflation in there, the Quest 3S is close to the $250 headset Carmack envisioned.

A new button on the underside of the Quest 3S lets you transition to pass-through mode at any time.

Credit: Kyle Orland

Unfortunately, Meta must still seriously tackle the "250 grams" part of Carmack's vision. The 514g Quest 3S feels at least as unwieldy on your face as the 515g Quest 3, and both are still quite far from the "super light comforts" Carmack envisioned. Add in all the compromises Meta made so the Quest 3S could hit that lower price point, and you have a cheap, half-measure headset that we can only really recommend to the most price-conscious of VR consumers.

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Squadron 42’s new 2026 launch date will miss its original target by 11 years

It's been almost exactly a year now since we reported on the announcement that Squadron 42—the single-player campaign portion of the now 12-year-old crowdfunding boondoggle Star Citizen—was "feature complete" and in the "polish phase." Now, many years after the game's original 2015 release target, developer Roberts Space Industries (RSI) says that, with just a year or two of additional "polish," the game will finally launch sometime in 2026.

The announcement came during this weekend's CitizenCon, per IGN, where RSI founder and CEO Chris Roberts showed off a roughly hour-long prologue of the game's promised 30- to 40-hour storyline. IGN also reported that the live on-stage demo suffered "a number of crashes, bugs, and graphical problems," which helps explain why a little more time is needed to get from "feature complete" to "actual release."

"We did say we were doing it live, risking the demo gods, and they brought their wrath down on us," Roberts said on stage, according to the IGN report. "Both the team and I are confident of giving you this game in 2026. Obviously, you can see it’s not going to be tomorrow because you saw a few crashes there."

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MechWarrior 5: Clans is supposed to be newbie-friendly, and I put it to the test

It is a matter of settled law on the Judge John Hodgman podcast that people like what they like, and you can't force someone to like something. It is called the Tom Waits Principle.

I thought about that principle constantly while I was trying to open myself up to MechWarrior 5: Clans. Trying to jump into this game and like it, so that I'd have some critical assessment of it, was akin to handing a friend The Black Rider and assuming they would come back begging for more.

From everything I can tell and what I have read, this game largely delivers on the simulation, and notably a lot of the story, that BattleTech/MechWarrior fans revere. Clans seems very good at what it sets out to do, and I do get the sense that it is relatively accommodating to newcomers compared to other entries. It just did not, despite its stand-alone nature and alleged newcomer friendliness, convert me into a loadout tactician or stomp-and-shoot enthusiast.

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$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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