The Weekly Round-Up: Nintendo’s Pikmin puzzle, the PS6 hype train and the day the music died
Our light-hearted recap of the week’s most interesting news
Chris Scullion
This is a blog post, where VGC writers post irreverent and (occasionally) entertaining coverage of video game culture.
It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for another of our weekly news round-ups.
For those new to our round-ups, we’ve been doing these recaps of the weekly news on Patreon for more than a year, and have decided to bring them to the main site. These are our way of winding up the past week by recapping its more interesting stories, often signed off with a bad punchline.
VGC Patreon subscribers on all paid tiers will continue to get this in newsletter form on Friday afternoons, so if you enjoy the below article and and would like to get more like them sent to your inbox earlier than the site gets them, you might want to consider supporting us on Patreon.
That said, let’s crack on with this week’s round-up.
Reports of a “remaster” of Red Dead Redemption 2 have swirled for some time. As one of the final major releases on the last generation of consoles, many expected it to migrate to PS5 and Xbox Series in the same way that GTA 5’s Xbox 360/PS3 release was followed up by a PS4/ Xbox One port.
However, nothing has materialised. Now, as claimed in response to a post on X, NateTheHate2, who has a record of reporting information about video games before official announcements, said that the much-desired ports of the game “exist.”
“Yes, they exist,” he wrote on X. “I have no update on timing for release.”
It’s not a massive surprise that the port is taking so long – when you want to have a job done, the last thing you want to do is get a bunch of cowboys involved.
Revealed during a Nintendo Direct trailer published last month, “Vi-O-La” is the new mode of transport Samus will use in Metroid Prime 4, complete with tricks and projectile attacks.
In an update to its Japanese website, Nintendo has now revealed additional details on how Vi-O-La will work.
“You can summon Vi-O-La whenever you’re in an available area,” the website reads. “Dismounting Vi-O-La will return you to Samus’ perspective and allow you to resume your exploration.”
Riding the motorbike will allow Samus to quickly travel the expanse of the unknown planet Byrus, the website says, and perform special actions to fight enemies and destroy ore deposits scattered across the world.
Metroid lore suggests that Samus summons Vi-O-La any time she’s feeling hungry, so she can drive to the supermarket and buy some Ra-Vi-O-Li.
PlayStation The Concert is a live stage show featuring music from across PlayStation’s 30-year history, notably including music composed by Gustavo Santaolalla (The Last of Us), Joris De Man (Horizon), Ilan Eshkeri (Ghost of Tsushima), Bear McCreary (God of War), and more.
The tour kicked off in the UK earlier this year, with shows taking place in multiple cities, including London and Glasgow.
However, the tour’s European run seemingly ran into trouble, with several events reportedly cancelled in countries such as Poland, Sweden, and Norway, Italy, and others planned for Germany and Budapest pushed back until next summer.
And now organisers GEA Live have confirmed to VGC that all remaining 2025 North America tour dates for PlayStation: The Concert have been cancelled.
The news comes as a particularly tough blow to PaRappa the Rapper, who reportedly turned down an offer to support Oasis on the US legs of their world tour, in order to perform at the PlayStation gigs.
The video, which was posted on the official PlayStation YouTube channel, has the soft-spoken circuitry supremo sitting down with the SVP and GM of AMD’s computing and graphics group, Jack Huynh, to discuss the latest developments from the Project Amethyst collaboration.
Project Amethyst is a joint commitment from Sony and AMD to use machine learning based technology for graphics and gameplay, and in the new video the pair discuss three gaming technology breakthroughs that they believe will lead to benefits in the games industry.
The three breakthroughs discussed in the video are Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores and Universal Compression, all three of which are explained in unflinching, extensive detail in the video.
Then, concluding, Cerny said: “Overall, of course, it’s still very early days for these technologies. They only exist in simulation right now, but the results are quite promising and I’m really excited about bringing them to a future console in a few years’ time.”
At this point, viewers around the world suddenly woke up, shouted “WAIT, WHAT” and watched the video again to try to understand what they were talking about this time.
According to a document filed with the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, Nintendo is asking for a default judgement on James Williams, known online as Archbox, after he failed to respond to a lawsuit filed last year.
Nintendo claims that Williams “long has been involved in creating, operating, supporting, and promoting a network of Pirate Shops which have offered to the public extensive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games for free download”.
“Since 2019, Williams has been either directly or indirectly the owner, manager, operator, creator, administrator, supplier, and/or overseer of several online Pirate Shops, and has worked to actively promote these Pirate Shops to communities consisting of many thousands of individuals,” it said.
VGC understands that Nintendo’s crackdown on Pirate Shops has forced the Walt Disney Company to shut down all Adventureland gift shops in its various theme parks, in case Nintendo’s lawyers find out about all the Jack Sparrow shite they sell there.
Musk owns xAI, an artificial intelligence company working on numerous projects, the most notable being the Grok chatbot. Now he claims that his AI company will be able to not only generate a video game by the end of 2026, but that it will be “great”.
On Sunday, one user on X posted a Grok Imagine clip showing an AI-generated video of a war-like video game, saying: “Video games will be dynamically generated by Grok in the future.”
Musk then responded to the clip, saying: “The xAI game studio will release a great AI-generated game before the end of next year.”
In the mid-90s Musk worked at Rocket Science Games, where he was a programmer on Mega CD titles Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm.
Given that both titles had average magazine review scores in the 50% range, we hope Grok isn’t using his previous work as the model for its ‘great’ AI games.
On Tuesday, Nintendo posted the first Close to You video with no explanation or description, offering an animated short about a baby chasing a dummy / pacifier which appeared to be floating around their bedroom.
The following day, Nintendo posted another video, again called Close to You, on its Nintendo Today app. This version is a shot-for-shot replica of the first, but this time all the Pikmin in the scene, which were previously invisible, can now be seen.
Nintendo then confirmed that both animations were short films created by its Nintendo Pictures animation studio, implying that they aren’t necessarily designed to tease any future Pikmin-related game, movie or animated series.
VGC does understand, however, that Nintendo Pictures will now be working on remastered PG editions of horror movies like The Invisible Man, Poltergeist and Paranormal Activity, where it will be adding Pikmin to key scenes to explain all the furniture moving on its own.
A new Community Update posted on the official Battlefield website teased some of what’s to come in the future, including potential ship-based battles and new modes.
“There is much more to look forward to beyond our Seasons as our team continues reviewing Battlefield Labs data, player feedback, and ideating on completely new ideas for the future, starting with an exciting new Battlefield take on Battle Royale,” it said.
“Separately, requests for naval warfare have not gone unnoticed, nor have the calls for a certain fan-favourite little helicopter, platoons, and more.”
On paper it sounds like players who enjoy battling in ships have something to look forward to, but it’s going to be awkward when it turns out the website meant to say ‘navel warfare’ and the plan is to add character skins with exposed belly buttons.
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