Quick Hits

• Steam Success and Stumbles: The Gears of War: E-Day multiplayer beta is off to an explosive start, blowing past the franchise's historical concurrent player records on Steam. Conversely, Arc System Works' Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is fighting an uphill battle, launching to an abysmal 44% Steam rating due to severe performance issues and forced logins that are particularly frustrating for Linux users.
• Cheaters Beware: With Modern Warfare 4 launching in just a few months, Activision is ramping up its anti-cheat efforts by promising "stronger" hardware bans and weekly progress updates to combat hackers in Call of Duty.
• A Pocket-Sized Decline: Pokémon TCG Pocket has bled nearly half of its player base, a steep dropoff that has put a very real, noticeable hole in creator DeNA's recent financial results.
• Devolver Goes Private: Beloved indie game publisher Devolver Digital has announced its intention to return to private ownership, citing a rough few years of struggles as a publicly-traded company.

Pokémon & Nintendo

It has been a massive day for Pokémon fans! Game Freak just dropped a fascinating video interview with Shigeru Ohmori showcasing early, never-before-seen prototype footage for the development of Pokémon Pokopia. If you're currently playing through the new expansion, VGC's podcast dropped some interesting thoughts on the Pokémon Pokopia DLC, and we highly recommend checking out the new habitat guides to conquer the tough Mermaid's Gym in Bubbly Basin. While exploring the Bubbly Basin region, be sure to keep an eye out to catch the dual-form Frillish!

Outside of the games, the original Pokémon Indigo League anime has officially arrived on Disney+—though the release is slightly cursed, as only 27 of the roughly 80 total episodes are currently available to stream. Speaking of cursed entries, the community is sharing some hilarious and creepy Pokédex entries online today, alongside some incredibly impressive fan art, including a mind-blowing Pokémon pixel art project built entirely in Microsoft Excel over 30 hours, and some cool fan flash tattoos. Finally, in some bizarre geopolitical news, Japan has reportedly asked the United States to stop using beloved gaming mascots like Mario and Pokémon in their official social media posts.

Nintendo

Over on the Switch 2, Final Fantasy XIV Online just rolled out a fresh patch aimed at significantly improving the MMO's load times. If you're looking for a retro deep-dive, Dragon Hopper for the long-dead Virtual Boy gets a fascinating new mini-review highlighting it as a Zelda-like with a surprising amount of heart. In opinion pieces, Nintendo Life celebrates the Famicom Disk System version of Metroid turning 40 years old on August 6th, taking a fond look at a short walk in Metroid Prime that they argue is more fun than most whole games. In other news, the director of Lies of P teased that fans absolutely "won't be disappointed" by the upcoming sequel, stating confidently that "this is the truth, not a lie." Lastly, if you want to game in style, Nintendo and OppoSuits have collaborated on a new line of incredibly colorful Donkey Kong Hawaiian shirts and suits that are literally bananas.

Call of Duty

In addition to Activision's renewed promise to crack down on cheaters with stricter hardware bans ahead of Modern Warfare 4, Kotaku noted that Black Ops has "quietly won the summer." However, players are also saying goodbye to some staple content, as "The RAM is all gone, folks." In a fun bit of crossover news, Obsession star Inde Navarrette expressed a strong desire to branch out into voice acting, specifically noting she would love to play a character in Capcom’s flagship Resident Evil franchise.

Indie Games

In a genuinely bizarre story that has the indie community on edge, an independent game developer was baffled to discover that Google AI somehow leaked their game's private, unreleased content plans that were hidden entirely inside their own private Google Docs. In publishing news, the industry is shifting as Devolver Digital looks to go private after facing the unique pressures and rough patches of the public stock market.

Steam & PC

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick made waves today by predicting that game streaming will ultimately fix the industry's current hardware pricing problem, claiming that "machines that weren't game machines before will become game machines." In hardware experimentation, GameSpot spent an entire month replacing all their consoles and PC rig with a single Steam Machine to see if it could truly serve as an all-in-one gaming solution. If you're looking to upgrade your own rig, IGN has tracked down some killer weekend deals, including a Pokémon TCG Chaos Rising Booster Bundle below market value, the highly sought-after AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, and DOOM: The Dark Ages for PC. On a lighter note, acclaimed author Brandon Sanderson went on record this week to declare that the Speed Racer movie is "unironically a 10 out of 10."

Gaming Roundup

In a major industry shift, Sony dropped the heavy announcement that they will be ending physical disc production for the PlayStation 5 by early 2028, prompting massive online debates about who exactly gets left behind in an all-digital future. Meanwhile, the ongoing corporate "reset" at Xbox under CEO Asha Sharma continues to bring painful layoffs, with Halo Studios being the latest first-party team to be hit by job cuts.