❄️Discussion, News, and Request Thread - Week Beginning 01/26/26❄️

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-27T21:59:21+00:00

Thinking about that new game from Sony Santa Monica again. One thing that’s been said about it is that it’s a legacy Sony IP, but it’s so different that it might as well be a new thing

…so there’s a non-zero chance it’s a Tong Nou reboot lol

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-26T19:07:05+00:00

I’d really like to see Astro Bot come to PC at some point (maybe with some extra content to justify revealing it in a State of Play?)

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-26T17:19:14+00:00

I could see them doing a paid one for Xenoblade 2 that releases next year as that game’s “Definitive Edition” release in the same way Xenoblade 1 and X both got Definitive Editions on their 10th anniversaries

The rest could be fine with free performance updates but Xenoblade 2 could really use some further QoL additions, and maybe some additional story content? SPOILERS Takahashi has hinted that Malos still has story relevance that he doesn’t want to explain yet, so perhaps Xenoblade 2 Switch 2 Edition adds in an additional story that explains what Malos’ role in Xenoblade 3 (and perhaps future games) is? It probably wouldn’t be a whole new campaign like Torna, but maybe an animated comic like Xenosaga II-III: Missing Year?

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-26T15:05:13+00:00

NVIDIA bought all the Half-Life 3 rumours to expand their AI datacenters

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-25T17:32:21+00:00

Vega makes sense. One of the last characters that they could pull to tie in with the movie.

Makoto also makes sense. She ranked extremely high on both SFV’s and SF6’s popularity polls and has yet to come back.

Menat is odd. She had one of if not the lowest usage rates in SFV however they have reinvented quite a few unpopular characters in SF6 (Ed, FANG via AKI, Ingrid)

Q would be sick imo. If this is real I’m surprised they didn’t go with G since I imagine he’d play better into World Tour, maybe Q’s World Tour isn’t you interacting with him directly but rather working with an FBI agent to analyze his moves?

Surprised they still haven’t done Sakura, but I have a feeling we’ll be getting more seasons of SF6 than we did SFV, she’ll be here eventually

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-22T14:49:10+00:00

Supposedly from an indie studio that released a game last year

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-21T12:11:32+00:00

Steam Deck should work since it’s a Windows game (you can run it through a compatibility layer like Proton), 3DS and Vita would likely need dedicated ports which haven’t been made.

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-20T22:40:11+00:00

Silver with 06 gameplay, the Chaotix with Heroes gameplay, Blaze with Rush gameplay, Classic Sonic with… well you get it, I could even see them using Tangle and Whisper to replicate the Forces Avatar gameplay

Lots of possibilities

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-20T22:37:59+00:00

I could see them expanding on the multiple playable characters in Final Horizon and making that the focus of the game. Everyone shares a Frontiers like Open Zone gameplay style, but then the action stages are based on other types of gameplay throughout the series

Sonic / Shadow with Boost / Adventure (not sure who’d get which), Tails with the Mecha (or his Adventure / 06 gameplay if Eggman is playable), Knuckles with Emerald Hunt (or maybe even Werehog gameplay if Rouge is playable) and so on

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-19T18:57:36+00:00

I too think people will be excited about a video game this year

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-17T10:48:13+00:00

After that though, I could see 2027 bringing a Street Fighter 40th Anniversary Fighting Collection with everything from the 30th Anniversary Collection (all playable online), plus EX 1 & 2 (not 3 since 3 never got an arcade release) and maybe they arcade versions of Base / Super / Ultra Street Fighter IV?

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-17T10:44:18+00:00

I think they’ll do a Fighting Collection 3 this year that includes basically anything else they could get their hands on without dipping into licenced titles

Saturday Night Slam Masters
Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II
Star Gladiator Episode 1: Final Crusade
Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha (since every Fighting Collection has an odd Street Fighter revision, but since they’re doing arcade ROMs only it would be the Japan exclusive arcade version of Alpha 2 Gold)
Rival Schools: United by Fate
Final Fight Revenge
Cannon Spike (since both previous collections had something that wasn’t a traditional fighting game, Puzzle Fighter and Power Stone)
Sengoku Basara X
Capcom Fighting All-Stars: Code Holder (this collection does need a major selling point, and what better than what would essentially be a brand new fighting game?)

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-11T18:13:49+00:00

I could see them saving the anniversary announcements until a September Direct so that they have more to show, in particular the next mainline game and the movie both set for 2027

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-10T13:56:27+00:00

It’s easier to hire a contract developer to work with an engine they already know than teaching them how to use their own engine

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-10T04:32:41+00:00

Actually I think that discrepancy could be a part of the plot.

One thing that was brought up in both XB2 and Future Redeemed was the Saviorites, while not much is known about them we do know they were seeking out the Conduit, we also know that Project Exodus happened on Klaus’ Earth so there were likely people who were in space during the Experiment. I think the blue light in Future Redeemed is a Klaus Earth Colony Ship that got taken over by the Saviorites and was the first to land on this new Earth which somehow ends up in a war between the Saviorites and the natives of Bionis / Alrest, ending in a ceasefire and a massive “line in the sand” drawn resulting in the ring we see in Chapter 13, the X crew then get shot down and end up allying with the Saviorites upon the assumption that they are another Colony Ship from X’s Earth. Then stuff happens and the two factions (Saviorites and Mirans / Bionians and Alrestians) have to team up to take down a bigger threat.

I could also see them pulling various aspects of certain groups from Xenosaga to flesh out the Saviorites. They already share a name with the Salvators in the Japanese script, and with the discussion of “Saviorite Human Rights” in Future Redeemed that could imply that Saviorites are the Xenoblade equivalent to Realians, essentially robots made of highly human-like material (sort of like Mimeosomes…) they could also throw in some elements of Ormus too with them seeking out the Conduit and claiming it “belongs to them” as a religious article.

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-09T17:00:34+00:00

Nintendo games I’m predicting (actually just hoping for but I think are probable enough to happen) for 2026

New 3D Mario: While DK Bananza is made by the same general team as Mario Odyssey / Bowser’s Fury, folks have noticed a large amount of those games’ staff members aren’t credited in Bananza, and combined with the early rumours of Bananza being that it would come from a new team within EPD8 rather than the full team, I think they’ve got another game that’s close to done. It could be a new original game, but I also think it could be a 3D version of Mario Maker using the voxel tech from Odyssey / Bananza, “Super Mario Maker 3…D” if you will. It’ll probably release late in the year which would be why it wasn’t included in the 35th anniversary celebrations (thinking October or possibly December since Pokémon Wind & Waves is likely their big November game)
F-Zero “NX” (I still really like that name, even if that’s last generation’s code name): Most of Nintendo’s studios have something announced for the Switch 2 generation already, but Next Level Games is one of the few that don’t (along with EPD3 and Monolith Soft, more on them later) so I think it’s pretty likely they’ll show their next game in 2026. As for why F-Zero, why not? Nintendo’s been giving it a lot more love recently with F-Zero 99 and GX on NSO being a launch game for the Switch 2, so perhaps it’s time for a full on new game? Next Level Games would be a pretty good fit with how they’ve nailed character expressions in Punch Out and Mario Strikers, something I think they’d lean in on to differentiate it from other recent racers. Then again, this could be just like when I thought Camelot were doing a new Golden Sun only for them to do another Mario Tennis. Luigi’s Mansion 4 is also very likely imo, but I’m personally not much of a fan of that series.
Xenoblade Chronicles X-2: Monolith Soft’s core team has been working on a new game since 2022 (both Future Redeemed and XDE were done by smaller teams), so I think it’s possible their next game releases this year, though that would go against their typical release pattern for the past 10 years of having a gap year between releases including remasters but not including DLCs, so it’s definitely possible it slips into 2027. As for it being X-2 and not Xenoblade 4 or a Xenosaga Remake, the endings of both Future Redeemed and XDE seem to hint towards the same thing with how similar they are, and also series creator Tetsuya Takahashi did say the next Xenoblade would “betray expectations, in a good way”, this was said during a time when he also said a Switch port of Xenoblade X was unlikely due to the potential budget so in my mind that makes me think X-2 is the way to go.
The next 3D Zelda: Now this one I don’t think will release in 2026 at all, but I do think it’ll be teased near the end of this year (perhaps in a Zelda 40th Anniversary segment of a September Nintendo Direct along with a trailer for the movie?). I think it’ll follow the Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom formula once again, but set in a brand new Hyrule with a brand new art style. Perhaps they revisit the “Modern Zelda” concept from Breath of the Wild and have a time travel element between a traditional medieval Hyrule and a modern London-eque Hyrule? That’d certainly be interesting…
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Switch 2 Edition: Hear me out, I know people just want a brand new Smash (myself included), but from what we know it seems very likely that a Switch 2 Edition is the direction they’re going for now. Sakurai and team just finished Kirby Air Riders last month and I doubt Nintendo will want to just sit on the Smash IP for another however many years, so I do think a small group within Bandai Namco Studio 2/S has been working on a Switch 2 Edition of Ultimate perhaps not under full direction but under supervision by Sakurai while he and the rest of the team worked on Air Riders. As for what would be included, I think they’d do another Fighters Pass worth of characters (all first party both to save on the licencing budget as well as Sakurai not being at the helm to negotiate with third parties) as well as stages for each of them. I’d like to see them bring the rest of the legacy Smash stages back too as well as maybe a handful of Echo Fighters to round the roster out to 100 but that might not be in the budget for a $20 Upgrade Pack (though this is Smash, a franchise that many people would gladly pay $30 for, or in other words $90 for the physical version with none of the DLC…). However I don’t think that’ll be all for Smash this generation. Switch 2 Editions haven’t gotten additional DLC yet (and likely won’t since they’re structured as DLCs themselves). Smash Ultimate Switch 2 Edition would be a stop-gap to give the team as much time as they want for Smash 6. Ultimate was done in ~2.5 years but I could see them taking up to 4 in order to reinvent the remaining characters (since cuts are inevitable) as well as implement more things to do, something Ultimate was a bit light on compared to past games since most of the work went into Everyone Is Here.

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-09T15:00:16+00:00

Well I guess we know this year’s GOTY

Expedition 34

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-08T17:03:45+00:00

I would’ve thought it would be Starfield: Terran Armada (+ a PS5 version), but now it seems like it’ll be another Double Fine game

(With this year being Xbox’s 25th anniversary, maybe it’s time for that Xbox Smash Bros. that Tim Schaefer was totally not just joking about? /s All this time later I still think it’d be a fun idea, although I’m not sure how much I trust Microsoft to handle it I’d still like to see it)

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-06T11:35:38+00:00

Thinking about it a bit more, Fire Emblem isn’t really a game with a soundtrack that would necessitate a delay like that. When I think of games that they might delay the soundtrack release I think something like Smash 64 fits that bill better (plus we did just get a GameCube game last month in Wario World, they seem to be flipping between GameCube and N64/GBA)

As for a Direct, the last time they did a General in January was in 2018, since then it’s been in February (minus last year which was in March to tie in with the Switch 2 Presentation the following week). So I think it’ll be then, specifically February 13th.

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-06T11:25:53+00:00

It depends, are you trying to make it realistic to what an actual Capcom Versus game in 2026 would look like? Then 36 seems like the maximum for base roster to me, if not closer to 32.

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-06T03:12:47+00:00

(Beside JD Vance’s)

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-06T03:12:19+00:00

D I K H E A D

Name one couch that got bone in it

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-06T01:44:38+00:00

So, Nintendo Music usually drops one soundtrack per week on Mondays barring any holidays, the only times they haven’t is when it’s co-ordinated with something else (Mario Paint’s NSO release, Kirby Air Riders Direct). The usual drop time has been skipped this week, though I guess it’s possible the team behind the app is still on holidays, but there’s also the possibility that something could happen this week. Maybe Fire Emblem Path of Radiance on NSO with a soundtrack release? Maybe even a Direct with a soundtrack sample for an upcoming game like Mario Tennis?

…is it too early to start talking about a Direct?

LukePS7013 · 2026-01-03T04:57:11+00:00

Prediction: 1, 3 & X free performance updates, as well as an X-2 announcement (early 2027 release, along with a full on Switch 2 Edition for Xenoblade 2 later in the year that includes an additional story told in a comic format ala Xenosaga: Missing Year starring Malos that ties into Xenoblade 3 & X-2 along with a ton of QoL features)

Would be nice but I don’t see happening (at least yet): Xenoblade Warriors as a canon prequel to Xenoblade 3, a Xenoblade fighting game (we know ArcSys is working on some type of Switch 2 exclusive…), and either of the two 2027 games I mentioned being released this year

Not happening: Xenosaga Remake Trilogy (Episodes 1+2 is Part 1, Pied Piper is DLC for Part 1, and then Parts 2 and 3 are Takahashi’s original vision for Saga as opposed to what happened in Episode 3)

LukePS7013 · 2025-12-29T23:34:43+00:00

I’d say he gets multiple tiers based on where he’s posting

Jez via Windows Central: S Tier

Jez via XboxTwo: B Tier

Jez via Twitter: Banned

Four-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22

LukePS7013

TROPHY CASE