Today's all-round-up edition of Game File is topped with the veto of an unusual bill in Colorado that would've added a 5% surcharge to video game DLC to fund youth mental health programs Part of the governor's reason for the veto: it'd impact story-based DLC www.gamefile.news/p/colorado-d...

Hmmm

Reviewed Dosa Divas alongside interviewed game’s creative director. Corporatism abound. Stephen truly saw my pitch/vision. If you subscribe to Game File due to this piece—I will get paid more moneys, so please subscribe; so I can get paid even more moneys to allow this type of work at Game File!

It's kind of funny because ordinarily when you see a headline about someone "dialing back past remarks," it's usually been like, "Uh oh, Hillary's got to address the 'super predators' stuff." For Talarico, it's past statements... acknowledging trans people exist?

NEW: "A machine that works slower is better than a machine that runs faster, right?" Today's Game File is not from me. It's from @veerenderjubbal.bsky.social, who reviews Dosa Divas: a game about slowing the gears of capitalism and what it means to do good www.gamefile.news/p/dosa-divas...

Wild that Fleb announced two new games today. From the creator of the ingenious Strange Jigsaws

Death count when I rolled credits Shovel Knight - 194 Plague of Shadows - 180 Specter of Torment- 66 King of Cards - 294 Mina the Hollower - 181

Nintendo’s new mobile game Pictonico doesn’t just look like a WarioWare and play like one, it’s also co-developed by Intelligent Systems, as most WW games are Free to start with $8 and $6 micro game packs. Uses your photo library for the games.

REVIEW: I sensed Mina the Hollower would be special, so I decided to take a crash course at Yacht Club U I played through the studio's four big prior games this month, felt how their skills evolved, then played Mina Conclusion: This studio went from good to great www.gamefile.news/p/mina-the-h...

Last week, Microsoft launched an online forum where Xbox users can request things I looked at what people are asking for (exclusive games, free online multiplayer, better Arabic support, a quieter d-pad And the one request Microsoft has already quickly fulfilled www.gamefile.news/p/what-xbox-...

Seeing a lot of glowing reviews for 007: First Light, which should help its chances for winning best indie game of the year.

Great show last night

My (free) piece about today's settlement Key thing to know: This suit may technically have been about whether Activision was sold for the best price, but it became more and more about litigating the 2021 misconduct allegations against Activision Blizzard www.gamefile.news/p/microsoft-...

"Likely Mature 17+" was a newer Rating Pending that publishers can opt to use for games that aren't rated yet. I think ESRB introduced it 3 or 4 years ago or so and encourage its use for games where it's likely to get an M rating.

Pretty good guess by Xbox www.xbox.com/en-US/games/...

BREAKING: Microsoft agrees to pay $250 million to settle 2022 lawsuit bought by Swedish pension fund over Microsoft purchase of Activision Blizzard I wrote about this suit in January (see linked piece), as it got increasingly bizarre and ugly More to come... www.gamefile.news/p/bobby-koti...

Some more comparisons of Assassin's Creed Black Flag's islands and map (photos of my TV, running on a PS3) vs. Black Flag Resynced (direct feed PC) As my article notes, some of the new landmasses have mini-stories and/or things to collect

To preview Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, I dipped back into the PS3 and PS4 versions of the game And I wound up bothering the developers about relocated manuscripts and the new number of sync points in Havana I hope you're ready for a deep dive: www.gamefile.news/p/an-overly-...

I think my Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced preview may come off a bit more... unhinged?... than others. You'll be able to judge soon enough

This was a lot of fun. The five games I picked for my own dream console were: - The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask - WarioWare Twisted - Red Dead Redemption 2 - Assassin’s Creed Valhalla - WarioWare Move It I explain why throughout the episode (these are not exactly my five favorite games, FYI)

EA's headcount increased in the past year, despite cuts of hundreds of workers last spring - 14,600 as of March 2026 (up from 14,500 a year earlier) - Non U.S. workforce is up by 500 people, suggesting a U.S. drop of about 400 More new EA data in item 2: www.gamefile.news/i/198441522/...

Ubisoft's latest earnings report: - "lighter new release slate" for April 2026-March 2027 - Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon releases in April 2027-March 2029 (yes, a two-year span for that pipeline) - Company's big Rainbow Six, Division mobile releases, years in the making, "had a slow start"

NEW: Why is Titanium Court selling 25k copies great? - For its developer, he can likely "make my next game at my own pace" - For its publisher, it “should be profitable enough for us over time to fund another 2-3 bets of a similar size” Full story, more numbers: www.gamefile.news/p/titanium-c...

As recently as April 2, press releases about Subnautica 2 had lines like: "Subnautica 2 is the official sequel to the Subnautica series..." Since late April, they have lines like: "Created by Unknown Worlds, founded by Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, Subnautica 2 is the official sequel..."

Current-day Atari is really interesting. And this helps explain why

NEW: I wrote about Wolfjaw, a little-known studio that does online backend work on Among Us, Marathon, NBA 2K Colorful quotes in this one, such as: "One of the publishers told me, ‘The best thing I like about you, Mitch, is, if I get rid of you, it’s not bad PR” www.gamefile.news/p/wolfjaw-in...

NEW: The deadline for the release of Sega's "super game" was six weeks ago. Today, Sega said that the "super game" was no more. What was it? I've tracked five years of Super Game teases (including a now-deleted Super Game Q&A) Plus, Sega told me what went wrong www.gamefile.news/p/segas-supe...

As noted in Game File late last week, Nintendo says it sold 70,000 3DS games from April 2025-March 2026 Tomodachi Life on 3DS inched up from 6.72 million copies sold lifetime as of March 2025 to 6.73 million sold as of March 2026 www.gamefile.news/i/196950850/...

Tucked into Nintendo’s latest financial report is an updated headcount for the company 8,666 employees as of the end of March 2026, vs 8,205 at the end of March 2025 www.gamefile.news/p/nintendo-s...

Sony expects a decline in PS5 hardware sales this fiscal year (April - March 2027). Says it will base PS5 hardware shipments on the volume of memory it can procure at reasonable prices. In other words, price increase + memory shortage are major factors dragging down hardware, even with GTA6.

Nintendo just announced a slew of price increases for various regions, including an increase of the Switch 2, effective in western markets on Sept 1 (other increases kick in later this month) Details: www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/re...

With Star Fox 64 being remade, a new James Bond video game on the way, and a new Turok in the works, it is officially N64 nostalgia season. It is therefore imperative that Capcom observes this by adding two new costumes to Pragmata

Which Nintendo franchise will get a surprise cameo in next year’s Zelda movie, leading to a surprise remake a few months later? I think it’ll be Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball, but I could be wrong

This is actually the second Direct for this game. The first had the unusual title of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

I've waited 20 years to interview Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, so we had a lot to discuss - He's feeling better about BioShock - Says a planned NFL game didn't come together - Admits criticism of NBA2K microtransactions Plus: Switch, Civ, my marital status, more www.gamefile.news/p/bioshock-g...

All those PC games that just delayed from mid-May to late-May to dodge Subnautica 2 now have Mina to contend with

uh-oh. This next Game File is a pretty big interview, in more ways than one

horrible. this country’s turn away from science based medicine in the name of “wellness” is killing children and will kill a lot more. www.propublica.org/article/more...

Any gardeners out there? I’m worried about my three-year old fig tree after a frosty winter here in NJ. The tree doesn’t usually start growing until mid-May, but that’s soon and there are no buds, reddish (dead?) branches and I’m not seeing any green when I scratch the bark. It’s a Chicago Hardy

The next Call of Duty skip[ing prior-gen consoles means that there will have been six annual CoDs that shipped on Gen 8 (PS4/X1) and Gen 9 (PS5/XS) Compared to just three CoDs that were on both Gen 7 and 8 I wrote about the extended cross-gen phase last year www.gamefile.news/p/ps4-ps5-xb...

In 2021, the producer of PowerWash Simulator told me his dream item to let players clean in-game would be the Millennium Falcon www.axios.com/2021/06/04/f... Last week: PWS2's Star Wars's DLC revealed www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc-S... I guess, read my stuff for hints about what'll happen in 5 years

Earlier this week, I attended the iicon event in Las Vegas, which was geared toward c-suite gaming and non-gaming execs. I missed a panel on Tuesday that was set to include Xavier Woods. Later, I saw he didn't make it to the panel. Montez Ford attended instead. Didn't think much of it at the time!

Well said! Garrett has done a lot of good for this field of writing about games.

Added a detail to this article to make clear that Story Kitchen's Planet of Lana pitch to studios is for a live action film (with, as I previously reported, Prey's Amber Midthunder attached to star in it)

"We’re also gonna make our cinematics about questions. The gameplay is the answer" A fascinating comment from Saros' co-writer and director Gregory Louden

First time I’ve been able to buy one of these to give to someone I know!

NEW: More from the iicon event... - Sonic movie producers at Story Kitchen tease Streets of Rage movie news and reveal they're pitching a Planet of Lana movie - Capcom exec says sales indicate Pragmata's got a viable future - Niantic reports a Pikmin Bloom boost www.gamefile.news/p/story-kitc...

Just announced.: "Subnautica 2 Launches in Early Access on May 14" May explain why lawyers for the reinstated CEO of Unknown Worlds last week dropped their claim that Krafton had violated a court order in March by allegedly leaking an assessment that the game was ready for a May early access launch

NEW: Sony rep tells me the recently-found 30-day timer on digitally purchased PS4/5 games can easily convert to a long-term license “A one-time online check is required after purchase to confirm the game’s license, after which no further check-ins are needed.” www.gamefile.news/p/sony-30-da...

Person here at iicon said they don’t think there’s been a lot of innovation in video game design/mechanics over the last 10 years, with the exception of battle royale. No big breakthroughs Discuss!