Key Note Gaming

After three years of calling New Orleans, Louisiana the home of the Pokémon North America International Championships (NAIC), the ever-growing tournament and event is moving to McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois in 2027. The news comes out of the closing ceremonies today at Pokémon NAIC in New Orleans. Though New Orleans has been “fantastic” in many ways, Chicago may be even better, said Chris Brown, The Pokemon Company’s (TPCi) Director, Global Esports and Events Producer. “It’s a world class city.” When planning events of this scale, TPCi looks at a few important factors: geographical accessibility, room for growth, and, casually speaking, vacationability. “Chicago checks all the boxes,” Brown said in a group interview. As far as geographical accessibility goes, New Orleans has direct flights from 55 different airports around the world from four different countries, according to FlightConnections.com . Chicago, on the other hand, has the largest airport in the U...

A copy of Super Mario Bros. just sold at auction for a record-breaking $3 million, making it the most expensive video game of all time. Heritage Auctions announced the sale Friday, confirming that the Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) 9.6 A++ copy of the Nintendo game that kicked off Mario's platforming adventures had passed the previous $2 million record set in 2021 . It's also nearly double the price someone paid for a sealed copy of Super Mario 64 that same year . As noted by Heritage, this is the earliest confirmed sealed copy from Super Mario Bros.'s second production run, which featured a very specific gloss sticker upon its release in early 1986. That makes this a 40-year-old item that appeared almost out of nowhere – and in great shape. "It is only appropriate that the most significant video game in the world should bring the more impressive result in the history of the hobby," Heritage consignment director for video games Evan Masingill said in a ...

Dan Houser doesn’t care that much if you get all the way to the story credits on his games, as long as you’re having fun in the worlds he’s created. “If someone enjoyed a game, that's great,” the Rockstar co-founder and Grand Theft Auto/Red Dead Redemption writer said at a panel at the Tribeca Festival in New York City on Saturday. “If you can’t finish a story, but you loved it in other ways: Great, I don't care. I mean, I would like it if you finish the story because I spent ages on it.
If you enjoyed it, that's enough for you.” Houser’s longtime creative partner Lazlow — who founded the multimedia studio Absurd Ventures with Houser after leaving Rockstar in 2020 — also sat on the panel, adding: “We also love burying very deep Easter eggs and games. Sometimes they take one or two years or longer for players to discover. I mean, we love burying stuff so deep that sometimes three or four years goes by, I'm like, ‘Maybe this makes it too hard to find.’ And somebody finds...

A new report has claimed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is speeding up development on new The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Halo games as Microsoft considers restructuring or spinning off its gaming branch. Details on the potential shakeup come from The Information (via Reuters ), which reported on the latest in a long line of recent shifts at the company. It says that, according to three of its sources, Microsoft hasn't ruled out turning the brand into a wholly-owned subsidiary. It's said the move could result in Xbox being operated as a joint venture with other partners or even potentially sold. Though how seriously the company is considering the potential strategy is unclear, it's reported that Microsoft currently has no imminent restructuring plans. Should such a move happen, it would fundamentally change not only one of the big three console manufacturers but the industry as a whole. However, the move could theoretically still allow the 25-year-old gaming branch to operate within...

Ubisoft has published a new Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced deep dive, promising loads of new content that wasn't present in the original release. The publisher put a spyglass up to how the remake expands on the 2013 pirate game with a blog post on its website today. It's a lengthy message that teases new Blackbeard missions, reworked assassination and tailing missions, tweaked level design, a skip time feature, and more as Ubisoft does its best to justify a revisit for one of its franchise's most beloved entries. Remakes sometimes boil down to offer little more than updated visuals and minor gameplay tweaks, but that doesn't seem to be the case for Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced. The post begins with the tease that a new endgame chapter, titled "A World Without Gold," has been added, bringing eight new Blackbeard missions. Although Ubisoft revealed little about the quest, it also promised a new Sequence 8 treasure quest focused on Black...

As the years go by and current hardware becomes increasingly incompatible with the past, the first Gothic gets harder and harder to play, making it the perfect target for a remake. The 2001 RPG is a cult classic for a reason, ahead of its time in worldbuilding and nuanced NPC interactions. While Gothic 1 Remake pulls the original into the near-modern era in terms of presentation and controls, it doesn’t touch much else. This is a mixed blessing. It’s great because Gothic already forces a higher level of engagement and immersion out of those who play it, refusing to hold your hand in a way that still resonates in 2026 – but it’s own sparks of brilliance are regularly challenged by the poor quality of its story, the inconsistent pacing of quests, and shallow combat, and none of that has changed either. I first played Gothic soon after The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, which came out around the same time. I immediately identified them as similar games in many ways, but different in at least...