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Without Pokémon, 2022 Would Have Been A Sad Year For Switch

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Image: Jim Cooke (G/O Media) / Kotaku

Pokémon saved the Switch in 2022, which was also the year that the console officially started to feel old.

As we approach the Switch’s sixth anniversary, it feels like Nintendo’s innovative hybrid gaming device has finally peaked and is now on the decline. Missing features and poor online experiences that were once easier to forgive have started to feel more frustrating. Even the latest visually impressive first-party games like Kirby And The Forgotten Land and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 struggled to mask the hardware’s aging limitations.

2022 was the unofficial year of the Kirb.
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku

Don’t get me wrong. The Switch’s release calendar was still lowkey stacked month in and month out. The OLED version continues to bring out a level of vibrancy in games big and small that helps make up for some of the technical drawbacks. And despite never receiving a price drop since it launched, the Switch remains an extremely competitive gaming option when stacked up against pricier alternatives like the PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam Deck.

Still, a meaningful hardware refresh has never felt more overdue. 2022 was the year of the missing Switch Pro, and the year it felt like Nintendo’s existing handheld hybrid went from punching above its weight to under-delivering on the promise of its core conceit.

Great games, chugging hardware

Nintendo made up for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom being delayed this year through sheer quantity of new releases. On the first-party side Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Nintendo Switch Sports, Mario Strikers: Battle League, and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes anchored the first half of the year, while Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, and Bayonetta 3 delivered heavy-hitters in the second half.

Gaps were stuffed with many of the year’s biggest indie games: Sifu, Citizen Sleeper, Nobody Saves the World, Return to Monkey Island, OlliOlli World, Shredder’s Revenge, Tunic, and Neon White. Square Enix’s 2022 JRPG bonanza was well represented, including Switch exclusives Live a Live and Triangle Strategy. Plus big ports like No Man’s Sky, Personal 5 Royal, and Nier Automata brought over some of the best games of the last console generation.

At times Arceus gives off the vibe of a Nintendo 64 game in HD.
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku

It’s safe to say, however, that it might have still felt like one of the quieter years on Switch if not for Pokémon Arceus: Legends and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. In addition to selling tons, both games also perfectly represented the platform’s growing pains this year: they iterated on the series’ tried and true collectathon formula in creative and refreshing ways while also looking like ass and running badly.

On the Arceus side, the game’s open world often looked empty and flat. On the Scarlet and Violet side, framerate drops, constant pop-in of objects, and rogue glitches held back an otherwise ambitious new blueprint for the future of the mainline Pokémon games. It’s hard to know how much these shortcomings are due to the Switch’s old chipsets, a lack of development time, a particular set of design trade-offs, or some combination of those and other factors.

This screenshot is not as pretty as I remembered it.
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku

A modern spec sheet probably wouldn’t hurt though. Even Xenoblade Chronicles 3, a sprawling RPG with big open environments that look much better than what you’ll find in Pokémon, brushed up against the limits of the Switch. The frame rate was far from stable in the later half of the game, and the sweeping vistas themselves lose all sorts of detail and definition the second you move away from them. This didn’t stop Monolith’s game from feeling and looking great when in motion, but it does mean that almost every screenshot I have from my time with it is full of jagged edges and washed out textures. Bayonetta 3 was even worse.

Switch Online is still a drag

Another game that gets at the increasing duality of the Switch is Splatoon 3. A gorgeous and colorful sequel with even more content and features, it nevertheless is held back by Nintendo’s online infrastructure. It’s 2022. Splatoon 3 is one of the best competitive shooters out there. And you will almost certainly spend at least part of any gaming session mired in disconnects or other connectivity woes.

It’s especially notable considering some of the biggest shooters around like Fortnite and Apex Legends are also on Switch, and those games also don’t require players to download a separate app to use voice chat. These problems were easier to ignore when Nintendo’s online service was free, but as the company continues to double-down on its monthly subscription service, subpar online performance continues to be a sore spot.

Last year, Nintendo launched the Switch Online + Expansion Pack, a $50 version of the service that raised the price in exchange for access to Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games, as well as various bits of Switch DLC. It felt like a terrible deal at the time, and nothing over the past 12 months has done much to change that.

That’s not to say that Nintendo hasn’t been diligently filling out the Netflix-style retro library. Notable additions included Earthbound, Shining Force II, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.

Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku

In total, Switch Online received five more NES games, six more SNES games, 17 more Genesis games, and 11 more N64 games this year. Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games remain MIA, however, as do notable third-party SNES titles like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI.

As rival services like PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass expand and evolve to include some of the biggest new releases and cloud gaming, it’s hard not to look at Switch Online and feel like it comes up short, despite being significantly cheaper. Switch Online did experiment with week-long free trials for games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe this year, as well as add a new Switch Online missions and rewards feature, but four years into the service’s life it still feels like it’s struggling to justify itself.

Netflix is never coming

If Switch Online still seems like an underwhelming value proposition, the base console user experience remains absolutely barebones. The Switch firmware received six updates in 2022, and the only notable feature added was “Groups” which allows players to organize their game libraries into folders. It’s nice to have and was long overdue, which mostly serves to underline just how little the rest of the console experience has changed since launch.

Despite the popularity of the Switch, Nintendo has never prioritized social features—-and that didn’t change in 2022. There’s no way to search for friends, send them messages, or gift them games. There’s no social feed to speak of when it comes to wondering what they are playing, buying, or sharing. Again, this has been the status quo, but as each new year passes, the fact that the Switch hasn’t improved on any of it becomes more glaring.

*Sigh*
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku

The apps never came this year, either. For years the joke was that you could get Netflix on every modern Nintendo device but the Switch. The streaming wars are in full swing, with services like Game Pass including complimentary subscriptions to Apple TV and Disney+, neither of which exist on Switch. Hulu remains the lone exception, joined last year by Funimaiton and this year by Crunchyroll.

The Switch has been outpaced by app integration in other areas as well. Spotify has been a mainstay on PlayStation and Xbox for years, while social hub Discord was finally added to both this past year. Neither are on Nintendo’s platform, which is especially surprising considering how many communication shortcomings would be solved by the arrival of Discord. The Switch didn’t get achievements or home screen themes in 2022, either.

So…Switch Pro when?

When the Switch released in 2017, holding games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey in your hands and taking them on the go was a powerful revelation. In 2022, thanks to the bar already raised by Nintendo half a decade ago, it’s somewhat less novel.

At the low-end, an explosion in cloud gaming peripherals and third-party handhelds means you can stream Assassin’s Creed Valhalla alongside Dead Cells to a bunch of competitors’ portables. The experience isn’t great but it’s often good enough.

At the high-end, Valve’s Steam Deck went from a trickle of pre-orders to on-demand availability, and let people take Steam hits from The Witcher 3 to Vampire Survivors to the bathroom and beyond. It’s clunky, the battery life isn’t great, and it’s a much less streamlined user experience than the Switch. Valve is also selling the device at a big loss. And yet while it’s only sold less than 2 percent as many units as the Switch so far, it’s shown the massive leap handheld gaming is capable of since the latter first shipped.

The Switch OLED is nice but it’s no Switch Pro.
Photo: Nintendo

While Kotaku has mentioned a mythical Switch Pro in every State of the Switch review since 2018, this is the year it went from “when is it coming?” to “where the hell is it?” Many fans expected Nintendo to reveal upgraded hardware at E3 2021. Instead, it revealed the Switch OLED: a fancy screen atop the same basic guts for $50 more. This led to a lot of questions about repeated Bloomberg reports that Nintendo was gearing up to release a 4K successor to the Switch, but Nintendo’s past history alone says we’re due for a new Switch.

The Nintendo DS launched in 2004. The DS Lite followed in 2006. The DSi in 2008. And the DSi XL in 2009. The first and last iterations of the device showed a long range in terms of improvement. The 3DS launched in 2011. A 3DS XL arrived the following year. A 2DS was added to the lineup the year after that. And a New Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL launched the year after that, both of which notably played a handful of games the earlier versions of the system couldn’t run. The Switch is already two years older than the PS4 was when the PS4 Pro came out, and older than the Wii U was when the Switch launched.

The global pandemic, which created shortages for semiconductors that affected everything from cars to smartphones, no doubt threw any traditional timeline for a Switch Pro out the window. At the same time, that hasn’t stopped the Switch from continuing to age in the interim. From Joy-Con drift to finicky Wi-Fi reception, the console has succeeded despite notable design flaws and shortcomings thanks to its brilliant form factor and exclusives.

The form factor is becoming less and less of a differentiator though, and despite the development wizardry at Nintendo, old hardware is starting to catch up with it. We’ll see if 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom can replicate the magic of Breath of the Wild on a six year old machine. By the time it comes out in May, the gap between them will be even bigger than the one between GameCube’s Twilight Princess and the Wii’s Skyward Sword.

           

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Technology

PC Requirements Reach New High As Popular PS5 Game Hits Steam

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Screenshot: Sony / Kotaku

Pop quiz for you PC nerds: A friend wants to build a gaming PC and wants to know how much ram they should get. What would you say? 16GB for gaming is a safe bet, right? Maybe you could even get by with 8, if you only want to play mostly indie games and perform daily computing tasks? Well, you better hope this hypothetical friend of yours (not that you don’t have real friends, I’m sure) isn’t planning on playing the upcoming PC version of Returnal because according to the game’s new Steam listing, recommended specs are asking for an eye-watering 32 gigabytes of ram.

Originally released as a PS5 exclusive, Returnal is one of many Sony games coming to PC lately. Returnal is a third-person roguelite shooter where you play as a space explorer caught in a never-ending time loop. As an early PS5 title that showed off much of the promise of the system’s graphical horsepower, it’s certainly appropriate for a PC release to up the ante. Word of Returnal’s arrival on PC arrived during the epicly long Game Awards last week, where it was followed by a Steam listing that included the recommended specs of a six-core processor (eight if you’re rocking AMD), a 2000 series GPU, 60gb of space (which is modest, actually) and 32 gigabytes of freaking ram in the year 2022. The future is here alright.

To be fair, the minimum specs of Returnal seem a lot more tolerable, but are still kind of high in the ram department. A four-core CPU on either Intel or AMD will do, and the veritable GTX 1060 graphics card will be fine, but you’ll still need 16gb of ram. For minimum specs! I only got into PC gaming around 2016 or so, but even I know that minimum specs are usually tailored to what’s left from previous generations. And that means you, yes you, with the GTX 980 still in the tank, need to move on.

Returnal’s requirements do seem like a pretty sharp spike to anyone paying attention to this sorta thing—which is what I thought of the upcoming Dead Space’s remake’s minimum and recommended specs of 16gb. Let’s put it into some context though.

In 2015, popular titles like Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3 asked for eight gigabytes on minimum and recommended (min specs on The Witcher were just six gigabytes). Flashforward to 2019 and Resident Evil 2’s remake asked for eight gigabytes on either min or recommended sides. Cyberpunk, which kicks my PC’s 32gb of ram, eight core CPU, and 3000 series GPU’s butt, wanted 12 gigabytes at most in 2020. Just a year later, the gorgeous Forza Horizon 5 had a recommended request of 16gb of ram, as did Resident Evil Village. Now Returnal (which doesn’t have a release date on PC yet) arrives with double the requirement in a fraction of the time.

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Sure, a 32gb recommended spec is an inevitability because we can’t get enough of the pretty pixels. But when you consider that Returnal was, at best, a sleeper hit on PS5 and isn’t, I dunno, the next Crysis or the sequel to Cyberpunk, that number feels awfully high. If nothing else, Returnal’s specs are a sore spot as PC gaming in general is getting more and more expensive, even with crypto’s empire burning in the distance.

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Technology

The Witcher 3 PS5: Everything New and All Improvements in the Next-Gen Upgrade

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What’s new in The Witcher 3 PS5? The ‘next-gen update’ for CD Projekt Red’s open world RPG boasts a range of improvements and additions, over five whole years after the original game’s release. The developer has brought some highly requested features to the upgrade, which boasts graphical boosts, gameplay modifications, and more.

In this guide, we’ve listed everything new and all of the improvements that we currently know about when it comes to The Witcher 3 PS5.

This guide is currently a work in progress. We’ll continue to update it as we receive new information from CD Projekt Red, leading up to the game’s release on the 14th December.

The Witcher 3 PS5: Everything New and All Improvements

Below is a list of everything new and all improvements in The Witcher 3 PS5. We’ve broken this list down into categories for better readability.

New Content

This is entirely new content that has been added in The Witcher 3 PS5.

  • A new quest based on The Witcher Netflix show
  • A new (optional) appearance for Dandelion, based on The Witcher Netflix show
  • A new armour set for Geralt based on The Witcher Netflix show
  • New (optional) armour design for Nilfgaardian soliders based on The Witcher Netflix show
  • New weapons, armour, and items
  • A fully integrated photo mode, complete with editing tools and filters

Graphics

These are the ways in which The Witcher 3 PS5 has improved the game’s visuals.

  • Higher resolution textures throughout the game
  • Improved character models
  • Improved environmental assets
  • More varied NPC (non-playable character) models, especially in cutscenes
  • 30fps ‘Quality’ mode which has ray tracing support (resolution currently unconfirmed, 4K is expected)
  • 60fps ‘Performance’ mode (resolution currently unconfirmed, although The Witcher 3 on PS4 Pro ran at a checkerboard 4K, so we’re expecting similar here)
  • Better draw distance
  • More foliage, denser grasses
  • Improved lighting effects and illumination
  • Additional and more varied weather conditions, like fog

Technical

These are the ways in which The Witcher 3 PS5 is improved on a technical level.

  • Much improved load times, both when fast travelling and loading / reloading a save
  • Improved sound effect audio quality
  • Improved voiceover audio quality
  • 3D audio support on PS5

Gameplay Additions

These are the gameplay additions featured in The Witcher PS5.

  • New ‘Quickcast’ system allows players to cast signs without having to open the radial menu — instead, you simply hold down a trigger and press the corresponding face button
  • New (optional) camera setting places the camera much closer to Geralt, over his right shoulder, which applies both in and out of combat
  • New (optional) movement settings for Geralt, where slow walking / sprinting is mapped to how far you’re pushing the left stick
  • A ‘hybrid’ minimap option has been added, making the minimap and user interface fade away during gameplay until you press the focus button
  • Map filters let you customise how much information you can see on the map screen
  • You can now pause the game during cutscenes

Gameplay Adjustments

These are the adjustments to gameplay in The Witcher 3 PS5.

  • Numerous gameplay adjustments (to be detailed in full patch notes ahead of the game’s release)
  • Rebalanced enemy scaling (when enemy scaling is turned on in the options)
  • Fall damage has been reduced
  • Rats are no longer ridiculously deadly when level scaling is enabled

Other

These are other additions and enhancements that don’t necessarily fit into previous categories.

  • Full cross-save and cross-progression support for all platforms
  • Full DualSense controller support, with haptic feedback and adaptive triggers
  • Subtitles can now scaled
  • Simplified Chinese voice acting and localisation added
  • Korean voice acting added
  • Improved localisation for other languages

The Witcher 3 PS5 FAQ

Below, we’ve gathered together the most frequently asked questions about The Witcher 3 PS5.

Does The Witcher 3 PS5 include all DLC and expansions?

Yes, The Witcher 3 PS5 features all of the original game’s free DLC packs, along with its two expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. However, it’s unclear whether you’ll be able to access the expansions if you’re upgrading from PS4, and you don’t own them on that console. We’ve reached out to CDPR for clarification on this point.

Is The Witcher 3 PS5 a free upgrade?

Yes, The Witcher 3 PS5 is a free upgrade if you already own the game on PS4. This counts for both the original release and the Game of the Year Edition.

Will The Witcher 3 PS5 get a physical release?

Yes, CD Projekt Red has confirmed that The Witcher 3 PS5 will receive a physical release. However, the release date for the physical edition is currently unknown. It’s expected to release after the upgrade launches digitally, on the 14th December, 2022. We’ll update this part of the guide once we know more.

What about The Witcher 3 PS5 Trophies?

The Witcher 3 on PS5 will have its own separate Trophy list from the PS4 version, although the Trophies themselves are the same. Trophies that you already earned in the PS4 version will not automatically unlock if you transfer your save — you’ll have to earn them again on PS5 by starting a new game.

What do you think of everything new and all improvements in The Witcher 3 PS5? Relive your monster-slaying adventure in the comments section below, and check out our other guides for The Witcher 3:



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Technology

Elden Ring Publisher Hacked, Ransomware Group Claims

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Image: FromSoftware / Bandai Namco

Bandai Namco, the Japanese publisher behind the Ace Combat, Dragon Ball Z, and Dark Souls games, appears to be the latest major gaming company to suffer a major hack. The ransomware group BlackCat added the Elden Ring publisher to its list of victims earlier today, though it’s not yet clear the extent of the damage or how much money the group is demanding.

“ALPHV ransomware group (alternatively referred to as BlackCat ransomware group) claims to have ransomed Bandai Namco,” vx-underground, a group that monitors malware source code on the web, posted on Twitter Monday. Attached was a screenshot of the ALPHV ransomware blog where the group tracks its targets, with Bandai Namco listed under the threat of “data soon” as of July 11.

Bandai Namco did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Vx-underground has previously reported on other hacks, including the infamous Lapsu$ one, before the companies themselves have confirmed them. The ransomware watch group DarkFeed also shared a screenshot of BlackCat’s claimed hack earlier today. Vx-underground and DarkFeed didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment either.

BlackCat, members of which were believed to also be involved in the Colonial Pipeline hack last year, have been ramping up ransomware attacks, according to some computer security analysts as well as the FBI. Most recently, the hacks have resulted in BlackCat posting private employee data online if the victims refuse to pay up. In the past, the group has demanded millions, and targeted school districts and other public entities in addition to for-profit companies.

If legitimate, this would be just the latest in a longline of recent hacks at major gaming companies. Capcom was hit in late 2020, with several of its upcoming unannounced releases like Dragon’s Dogma 2 leaking at the time. A now famous hack of graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia ended up leaking tons of other big gaming projects like Kingdom Hearts 4. CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio behind The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, had employee data and the source code for one of its games stolen in early 2021. Even FIFA publisher Electronic Arts was hit, with the alleged perpetrators trying to get media outlet Vice to blackmail the company on its behalf.

It’s unclear how much of the seeming uptick in security breaches is due to new techniques deployed by hackers vs. the greater challenges companies faced when moving to working from home during the global pandemic. Capcom blamed part of its vulnerability on remote work. At the same time, the blockchain network hosting crypto gaming juggernaut Axie Infinity suffered one of the most expensive hacks in history earlier this year, reportedly all because an employee fell for an elaborate phishing scheme.

Earlier this year, Bandai Namco took the servers for Dark Souls I, II, and III offline after a dangerous remote code execution (RCE) exploit was discovered.

    



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Cyberpunk 2077 QA Team CEO Responds To Claims They Misled CDPR

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Get off, you damn bug!
Screenshot: CD Projekt

Cyberpunk 2077 will always be a cautionary tale of how not to make and release a game. It was notoriously marred by technical bugs and developmental woes and now, according to a new report from YouTuber Upper Echelon Gamers, a QA firm allegedly misled CD Projekt Red during the game’s development. But in response, the quality assurance company’s CEO, Stefan Seicarescu, has stated that this is all just a big misunderstanding, according to a VGC interview.

Upper Echelon Gamers posted a video on June 25 going over some deets he got from a whistleblower at Quantic Lab, a Romanian-based outsourcing quality assurance testing team. Quantic Lab has had a hand in ironing out bugs in some big-name games, including Desperados III, Destroy All Humans!, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Cyberpunk 2077. The whistleblower, an anonymous Quantic Lab employee who UEG believes to be authentic based on a series of documents they claim to be in possession of, including a 72-page quality assurance testing file and detailed spreadsheets tracking worker productivity, explained in a June 23 email to UEG what went down during Cyberpunk 2077‘s QA testing.

Read More: CDPR Says ‘Vast Part’ Of Fixing Cyberpunk 2077 Is Done, Focused On Other Projects

According to the source, things started getting bad for Cyberpunk 2077 QA testing around late 2019. Quantic Lab leads were apparently sent to Poland to work directly with developer CD Projekt Red. The team was supposed to consist of “veteran testers,” folks that had “extensive experience with quality assurance who understood the process and workflow,” UEG stated. However, those that showed up were allegedly “junior testers” who had less than a year or, in some instances, just six months of work in the field. According to UEG’s source, CD Projekt Red wasn’t aware of this junior tester team, instead believing they were getting veterans from Quantic Lab who had worked on The Witcher 3.

But it wasn’t just Quantic Lab’s QA department that caused hiccups in Cyberpunk 2077‘s development. Quantic Lab upper management allegedly instituted a “bug quota” policy that required each individual tester to submit no less than 10 bugs per day. The thinking was that the new policy, which inevitably overworked employees, would increase productivity and further polish the game. To accomplish this, though, testers bombarded developers with thousands of minuscule errors, from items clipping to missing textures.

According to UEG, the QA team focused too much on negligible or low-priority bugs to meet the quota. The source claimed the torrential rain of superfluous glitches drenched workers across departments. You should watch the full video.

CD Projekt / Upper Echelon Gamers

In response to UEG’s video, Quantic Lab CEO Stefan Seicarescu lowkey told VideoGamesChronicle that the whole thing was a misunderstanding. He didn’t appear to deny or address any of the allegations specifically; instead, he clarified that the claims made in the video were full of inaccuracies about QA testing.

“The video published on social media as mentioned in your article starts with incorrect statements about Quantic Lab’s history,” Seicarescu said. “There seems to be a lack of understanding in the process of how a game is tested before its release to the market.”

Seicarescu said no global publisher leans on just a single QA team, suggesting CD Projekt might’ve recruited multiple groups to debug Cyberpunk 2077.

“Quantic Lab supports over 200 projects per year from several global leading publishers and continues to maintain a quality comes first approach to all the work we undertake,” Seicarescu said. “All our customer agreements are confidential but in general, global publishers are working with several QA outsourcing companies, not depending solely on one, in addition to internal QA resources at developer level in most cases. Each project we undertake is unique with regard [to] project requirements. Project direction is agreed and adjusted accordingly as per real time requirements with our clients. Quantic Lab always strives to work with transparency and integrity with our industry partners.”

Kotaku has reached out to CD Projekt and Quantic Lab for comment.

 

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Technology

The Best PS4 And PS5 Games From PlayStation’s Summer 2022 Sale

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Screenshot: FromSoft

At this point, it almost seems silly to pay full price for a PlayStation game. Fresh on the heels of one big sale for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, Sony has kicked off another. It’s not as good as last month’s, but it’s not bad, especially for those who’ve been holding off on some of the bigger games of last generation, like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Announced yesterday in a blog post, PlayStation’s annual summer sale runs today through Wednesday, July 6. Whereas the previous sale focused on first-party games—specifically some of the biggest PS5 games—this month’s highlights cross-gen games from third-party publishers. Here’s a selection:

  • Ubisoft’s viking-themed history murder sim Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is down 60% to $24. (Valhalla is also included in the game library for Sony’s revamped PS Plus.)
  • Same price point and markdown percentage goes for Riders Republic, Ubisoft’s massively multiplayer action sports game.
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and all of its DLC is currently listed at $10. It’s getting a next-gen upgrade later this year.
  • Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which some fans say is the best action game in FromSoft’s oeuvre, is half off at $30.
  • Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the bundled 4K respray of BioWare’s totemic trilogy of space RPGs, is also at $24.
  • At $32, Hitman 3’s deluxe edition, a version of the popular stealth puzzler that folds in a ton of bonus content, is now officially listed at a lower price than the base edition.
  • Bandai Namco’s Scarlet Nexus is half off at $30.
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the third entry in Square Enix’s reboot of the long-running action series, is $13. (It also has a demo.)
  • In case you haven’t been overwhelmed by LotR fatigue, the practically endless open-world Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is down to $7.
  • Episodic narrative adventure Life is Strange 2 is down from $32 to $12. (Individual chapters are $4 a pop.)
  • Anthem is $6, lol.

You can see the full list over at PlayStation Blog, though note that it doesn’t indicate therein how much each game is discounted or what they’re currently listed at. You’ll have to go to the PlayStation Store directly to see that.

 

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Technology

CDPR Moving On From Cyberpunk 2077 To Witcher 4 And Other Games

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Image: CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077’s best days may still be ahead but developer CD Projekt Red announced today it’s now shifting focus and resources away to other projects, including its new open-world Witcher game. While the beleaguered sci-fi shooter will still get a story expansion in 2023, it doesn’t sound like it will be getting any more major overhauls in the future.

“We will obviously continue supporting Cyberpunk 2077 and still working on updating it but [the] vast part of the job we believe has already been done and was done in 2021,” the company said during today’s earnings call. It also shared a presentation slide showing how development resources have shifted over time, with “support for Cyberpunk 2077” becoming one of the smallest segments as of February 2022.

That was around when CDPR released the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game, as well as patch 1.5, which added a ton of new fixes, rebalanced rewards and skill trees, and expanded relationships with certain NPCs. Many of the improvements directly addressed earlier criticisms of the game, and I’ve recently been enjoying diving back into the latest version.

Screenshot: CD Projekt Red / Kotaku

At the same time, patch 1.5 struck me as the midway point in Cyberpunk 2077’s redemption arc rather than a final victory lap. There are parts of the game I love and then there are the parts where the simulation still frequently breaks and shatters any sense of immersion. CDPR didn’t say the open-world RPG won’t ever get another patch on that scale, but all signs point to development winding down when it comes to any deeper revamp of how the game plays or is structured. That might not be a retreat so much as a concession to the limits of what the game is.

If so, a No Man’s Sky or Final Fantasy XIV-style comeback might not be in the cards after all. During its rough 2020 launch, including a PS4 version that was so bad Sony pulled it from the PlayStation Store, Cyberpunk sold 13 million copies. Today, CDPR announced it only sold another five million in the 16 months since. Currently, that puts total sales slightly ahead of Super Mario Party and behind God of War, both first-party exclusives. It’s also still severely below some analysts’ initial projections.

And while Cyberpunk 2077’s future is still murky, plans for additional DLC have also appeared to get downgraded over time. CD Projekt president Adam Kiciński had previously said the game would receive “no less DLC than The Witcher 3 had,” and that game received two giant and stellar expansions. For that reason, some had originally presumed Cyberpunk 2077 would similarly get two major paid DLCs in addition to smaller free ones, but so far CDPR has only confirmed one. It will arrive in 2023, the company announced today. Further specifics remain elusive. A previously planned multiplayer component also appears to have been cast aside. CDPR didn’t clearly confirm what its fate was when asked about it during today’s earnings call, and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment when asked to clarify its future plans for Cyberpunk 2077.

It’s not surprising that the company is eager, in the meantime, to move on to other things, especially more Witcher. CDPR revealed today The Witcher 3 has shipped over 40 million copies, with the series as a whole selling over 65 million. As it buckles down on developing the next game in that series, it also has plans for more updates to Gwent and The Witcher: Monster Slayer, a new Gwent spin-off, an unannounced project at the recently acquired Boston studio, The Molasses Flood, and the next-gen version of The Witcher 3.

That last release slipped out of this summer after CDPR revealed yesterday it was taking development away from Russia-based Saber Interactive and finishing it in-house. Despite the lack of a new release window, the company said it was unfair to describe it as “indefinitely delayed,” saying it simply needed more time to evaluate what work was left. “Nobody is saying the game is delayed in some monumental sort of time gap ahead of us,” said Michal Nowakowski, SVP of business development.



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Cyberpunk 2077 Currently The Cheapest It Will Ever Be On PS4

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Image: CD Projekt Red

There’s currently a fire sale on console copies of Cyberpunk 2077 over at Best Buy. If you’ve been cautiously waiting to see what all the fuss is about, now’s your chance.

The sci-fi epic from the makers of The Witcher 3 is going for only $5 on PS4 and Xbox One over at the electronics retailer, with free upgrades to the new-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions. The sale ends at 1:00 a.m. ET April 8, at which point the price will revert back to the normal $30. This bargain bin rate is what I like to call Anthem territory. BioWare’s ill-fated live-service loot shooter was a disaster, but even now there’s plenty to appreciate in it for the price of a Big Mac.

Cyberpunk 2077 was nowhere near as bad at launch, but still had its fair share of major issues, especially on console. The 2020 role-playing shooter had tons of bugs and graphics issues on PS4 and Xbox One, and in some cases looked downright ugly. Things have improved somewhat on the visual front in the months since, and the game is a lot more stable, certainly enough to justify $5.

Read More: Cyberpunk 2077 Is Having Its First Good Day

Developer CD Projekt Red released a massive patch in February that also overhauled a lot of the game’s underlying systems to improve the feel of its futuristic city and make its RPG progression more satisfying. The patch also updated Cyberpunk 2077 for next-gen consoles, and I’ve been having a much better time playing it on PS5 now than I did back at launch. CDPR has also promised new DLC content in the future.

The discount is part of Best Buy’s current spring video game sale. If you’re still not interested in Cyberpunk 2077, or already have it, there are a bunch of other sales going on right now too. GameStop and Amazon are currently running buy two, get one free deals on a number of new games, including Elden Ring, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.

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Technology

Cyberpunk 2077’s Next-Gen Launch Left Us In The Dark About DLC

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After delaying them for months, CD Projekt Red has finally dropped the next-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077. You can go download them right now, alongside a hefty 50 GB patch that makes some vital quality-of-life improvements, like rebalancing combat so enemies are smarter and more reactive. The enhanced editions of the game also come with a few pieces of new DLC, but they’re nothing to write home about. Meanwhile, every previous roadmap CDPR has shared outlining the game’s post-release DLC trajectory is now outdated. So here we are, over a year in, with the game maybe finally approaching the state it should have launched in, and we still don’t know what the future really looks like for the beleaguered RPG. That’s wild!

It’s long been known that Cyberpunk 2077 would get DLC in a similar fashion as CDPR’s previous game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The 2015 high-fantasy role-playing game saw 16 pieces of free add-on content, as well as two big expansions you had to pay for. While some of these additions were on the lighter side, The Witcher 3 became known for meaty DLC that won CDPR a ton of good will. Hell, that game’s exceptional storytelling and jam-packed DLC offerings are the main reasons I look back on it so fondly.

CDPR likely wanted to repeat this again with Cyberpunk 2077. Most of its add-on content would be free, the developer announced, and some of it would be cosmetic, but there are supposed to be major paid expansions coming down the development pipeline, too. However, the game’s launch was a colossal mess, one that forced the studio to spend much more time fixing problems than working on new material. As such, whatever those major expansions might be and when we might see them, no one knows.

There’s been a drip-feed of content since the game’s launch, and CDPR has released some now-obsolete roadmaps here and there, but nothing released so far has been DLC in the traditional sense. The studio didn’t do itself any favors by referring to some very minor bits of new content as “DLC” during yesterday’s livestream detailing the game’s next-gen console release. One such add-on is the ability to take snapshots of Johnny Silverhand in the game’s Photo Mode, complete with various poses you can have the character assume. Now, I love Keanu Reeves as much as anyone. He’s breathtaking after all. But come on CDPR, you know this is not what people mean when they say they want Cyberpunk DLC!

Read More: Cyberpunk 2077 Stream Leaves Fans Unimpressed

DLC is neither always free nor always substantive, but those three letters conjure a particular image in the mind of gamers: it should fill in the blanks. Think of The Last of Us: Left Behind or even The Witcher 3‘s Blood and Wine. These expansions didn’t just add equipment or tweaked mechanics, they introduced whole new characters and storylines, giving you a reason to jump back into those worlds, to see what’s new and how it has changed.

But by comparison, Cyberpunk 2077‘s latest round of updates baked into patch 1.5 is mostly fluff. What’s labeled as DLC feels inconsequential when the game’s been out for over a year and there’s no word on those paid expansions. Don’t get me wrong. These are welcome additions that will improve the overall playing experience in one way or another. (You gotta look cool while blasting your way through Night City, amirite?) But the studio making no mention of whatever larger DLC might be in the works leaves players who have been waiting patiently for new adventures in Night City in an awkward position. Worse than that, it still feels like we’re in the launch window of a game that’s now over a year old. I mean, check out this run-down of DLC for the game:

  • V can rent an assortment of apartments around Night City.
  • There are two new guns V can find in the world or buy from a vendor.
  • V can change their appearance in any safehouse.
  • You’ve got those new Photo Mode options with Johnny Silverhand.
  • A bevy of gun scopes are now purchasable from a weapons vendor.
  • V gets some new cosmetics, including additional jackets.
  • There’s a new whip you can take for a spin around the game’s world.
  • You can reduce weapon recoil with the added muzzle breaks.

This doesn’t strike me as DLC as much as just some minor improvements.

Read More: Cyberpunk 2077‘s Return To Consoles Is Practically A Checklist Of What Everyone Mocked

Now look, I’m not here to disparage CDPR. They’re doing the right thing: addressing the many problems that plagued the game at release and hosting livestreams to update fans on those much-needed fixes, which no doubt required a tremendous amount of hard work. But that doesn’t excuse the lack of communication on any major expansions and proper DLC that might be in the works. Game development is hard, but overpromising in the way CDPR has, and then failing to communicate clearly as plans change and resources get reallocated, just leads to distrust. Which is a bummer.

And that’s my problem: What these patches contain isn’t DLC as much as minor new features packaged together with crucial gameplay improvements. There’s nothing wrong with reapplying the successful tactics used on The Witcher 3. Everyone likes free stuff, even if it’s primarily comsetic. The real issue is that, for as silent as CDPR has been, touting these small updates as DLC is not a good look, especially when there’s no word on the bigger expansions. It’d be nice to know where that stuff actually is.

So yeah, that new Cyberpunk 2077 DLC is a total swing and a miss.

 

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