Key Note Gaming

Square Enix has announced plans to bring Final Fantasy XIV to Nintendo Switch 2 this August – but there is a catch. FFXIV director and producer Naoki Yoshida (a.k.a. Yoshi-P) and Square Enix president and CEO Takashi Kiryu revealed plans to bring the massively popular MMORPG to the Nintendo platform as part of Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest 2026 today. It’s news that marked an end to a long wait, but it also came with the reveal that players on the hybrid gaming platform will need to rethink their subscription plans. The presentation continued following the announcement with a graphic confirming that subscriptions for FFXIV on Switch 2 will operate differently than other platforms. While players previously only needed to purchase the game itself and the monthly subscription fee to play on any platform, the Switch 2 version will require players to purchase an additional, separate subscription. "After discussions with Nintendo, it was decided that the Switch 2 version of Final F...

Look, if you're just going to leave valuable resources lying around in strategically placed caches, of course I'm going to clear them out. I'm trying to save the world, not earn a halo. The next player can just man up and find their own. You see, the big feature that Tides Of Tomorrow is bringing to the party is the ability to see the actions of previous players and experience interactions with the world and NPCs shaped by their behavior. You can see their physical actions in the world using a second sight-style power that lets you watch a ghost version of them for a short time, while NPCs will refer to them by name and help or hinder you depending on their behavior. If they were a picture of virtue and, say, helped a particular faction, you'll find that people are more inclined to return the favor, but if your predecessor committed a crime or started trouble, you'll have to find different ways to complete your objectives. As someone that has been conned before ...

Former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida has suggested that Sony will struggle to recoup the huge budgets invested in its first-party games without porting them to PC. Yoshida — who previously led Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios — spoke at ALT. Games earlier this month, reflecting on Sony's reported recent decision to pull back from PC releases when games have never cost more to make. "In PS4 days still we are making AAA games with big budget," Yoshida said (thanks, Respawn First ). "I somehow felt the bigger the budget, the safer in some strange way. Creating bigger, better-looking games that people are asking for. In the past it kind of worked, you know, business wise. But in the last five or so years, publishers and developers must have realized that model may not be sustainable. "Releasing games on PC after a couple of years must have helped recoup the investment of these big budget games and help[ed] the team and company to reinvest tha...

Crimson Desert got a huge update this week , and among the many changes it brought, it added new difficulty settings. Now, Pearl Abyss’ single-player open world action adventure has easy, normal, and hard difficulties for players to work through. Hard difficulty makes it so food item effects won’t be applied immediately, and will only take effect after the consumption animation is complete. This makes it impossible to recover health by spamming food, as so many players had been doing, especially in boss fights. In hard difficulty you also take more damage, and the maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents is increased. You also get a reduced timing window for parry and dodge, reduced invincibility duration for roll, and increased frequency of bosses attempting to counterattack or escape when hit. Easy difficulty, on the other hand, reduces the damage taken by the player, reduces the maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents, and extends the...

Sometimes, against our better judgment, we do the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome. Developer Housemarque's new third-person bullet-hell shooter Saros explores this idea in many ways – the roguelite level structure, the repeated combat encounters, and the internal conflicts of its main character, Arjun. It has a familiar gameplay foundation to its predecessor Returnal , too, with fluid gunplay and deft movement. But in trying to be more thematically ambitious, Saros opens itself up to pitfalls Returnal didn't have to manage, leaving some of its more interesting threads unsatisfyingly hanging. Still, its tough-as-nails combat is worth getting good for, even when its repetition can wear you down. Arjun Devraj is an expeditioner for the space corp Soltari; he sports the voice and likeness of actor Rahul Kohli, who absolutely nails the leading role. His crew is sent out to investigate the disappearance of previous expeditions on Carcosa, a planet ri...

Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss has released update 1.04.00, which makes significant improvements to the game. Chief among them is the addition of difficulty settings, new storage improvements, new pets, keyboard/mouse and controller preset options, new category tabs for the inventory, new skills, improvements to distant scenery quality, and a lot more. It’s worth digging into the details here. Hard difficulty makes it so foot item effects won’t be applied immediately, and will only take effect after the consumption animation is complete. This will make it impossible to recover health by spamming food. Instead, you're going to have to carve out the space and time to do so. In hard difficulty you also take more damage, and the maximum health, aggressiveness, and overall speed of opponents is increased. You also get a reduced timing window for parry and dodge, reduced invincibility duration for roll, and increased frequency of bosses attempting to counterattack or escape whe...