Key Note Gaming

Former Bethesda Softworks marketing lead Pete Hines has opened up about how he saw the Fallout publisher get "damaged and broken apart" before announcing his retirement in 2023. The now-retired gaming industry veteran touched on why he chose to step away from Bethesda during a wide-ranging interview with Firezide Chat . When reminiscing about his decades-long journey through the release of everything from Doom to The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Hines shared his feelings about changes within the company and what ultimately drove him to leave. Hines had previously stated that it made sense for him to retire around the launch of the long-awaited Starfield and reiterated that point in the new interview. Although moving on meant leaving colleagues like Bethesda’s Todd Howard and Erin Losi, there was more than simple timing influencing his decision. “I just hit a point of yes, [Bethesda] needs me, and I am powerless to do what I think needs to be done to run this place properly...

Kojima Productions is reportedly on the hunt for its next big villain after recently beginning the casting process for Physint . MP1st shared details about what Hideo Kojima has in mind for his next tactical espionage action game, which is allegedly being worked on under the codename “Shimmer,” in a report published today. While most official information about the project remains under wraps, the site states motion capture company Pivot Motion, which aided on 2025’s Death Stranding 2: On the Beach , and casting director Mari Ueda are searching to fill several new roles with plans to shoot in June 2026. The most interesting of the parts touched on in the report involves a villain character with a German accent. This same character is expected to have a slim complexion and a quiet personality, with other details describing them as “intense” but “confident in a psychotic sort of way.” One last description for the character says they are expected to be like “Madds Mikkelsen in Hannib...

Nintendo’s latest promotional push for the Switch 2 has officially arrived, and on the surface, it’s a straightforward deal: from April 12 through May 9, you can save $20 when purchasing the console alongside Super Mario Galaxy 1 + 2 as part of a new bundle offering. At $500 total, that $20 discount might seem fairly modest, but the broader context of the gaming landscape makes this brand-new offer far more significant than it initially seems. See at Amazon See at Best Buy See at Walmart See at Target For starters, it's immediately obvious that with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie currently dominating the box office , Nintendo is seemingly moving aggressively to convert cinematic hype into hardware installs (as you can see with the combined imagery used for the announcement). Moreover, reports of Nintendo scaling back Switch 2 manufacturing following a softer-than-expected holiday season suggest the company is looking for a reliable nudge to move more consoles and re...

A new weekend has arrived, and today, you can save big on the Resident Evil Generation Pack, M5 MacBook Air, Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2, and more. Check out our top picks for Saturday, April 11, below. Resident Evil Generation Pack Still Available The Resident Evil Generation Pack is still available at Amazon for $89.99, and this is one deal you do not want to miss. This collection packs in Resident Evil VII, Resident Evil Village, and Resident Evil Requiem all for $89.99, which means you are essentially paying $10 for both VII and Village. Capcom has removed this deal as of March 31 digitally, and it's only a matter of time before it's gone physically, too. M5 MacBook Air for $949 You can score an M5 MacBook Air for $949 today, saving you 14% off the usual price. This 13-inch model includes 16GB RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and more. If you're on the hunt for a new laptop, look no further than this M5 MacBook Air. Marathon DualSense for $71.82 ...

Grand Theft Auto VI developer Rockstar Games has confirmed company information was accessed as part of a third-party data breach, after reports emerged this weekend that it had been hacked. In a statement issued to IGN, a Rockstar Games spokesperson insisted “a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed,” and stressed the incident “has no impact on our organization or our players.” Rockstar's statement in full follows: "We can confirm that a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach. This incident has no impact on our organization or our players." This morning, The CyberSec Guru reported that a hacker group called ShinyHunters had used AI analytics platform Anodot, a SaaS cloud-cost monitoring tool Rockstar uses, to breach Rockstar’s Snowflake data warehouse, posing as a legitimate internal service. ShinyHunters has set a ransom deadline of April 14, demanding Rockstar pay, or...

Just a day after Pearl Abyss’ announcement of the various improvements it said were coming soon to Crimson Desert , we have a new patch that adds many of them already — and even a few changes fans hadn't expected. The highlights of the patch, as detailed on the Crimson Desert website , are a new weapons display option, which means you can hide weapons from the back of your character (so long, shield!), the addition of skills for the secondary playable characters, which makes them more viable to play, and various user interface improvements. But there’s a lot in the update (patch notes below) that Pearl Abyss hadn’t mentioned. For example, Pearl Abyss has improved the usability of the Greymane camp (I won’t say how exactly, to avoid spoilers), made the Abyss puzzles easier by adding more hints and making it easier to recognize when certain gimmicks are available to be attached by using Force Palm, and gave Kliff an entirely new ability called Focused Aerial Roll. For me, the ...

Fortnite developer Epic Games is reportedly working on a new extraction shooter featuring Disney characters that is set to launch later this year. A Bloomberg report states the currently unnamed spinoff is expected to launch November 2026. It, as well as the other two unnamed titles, is said to be the result of a $1.5 billion investment Disney made in the gaming giant back in 2024. According to the site’s sources, the mystery extraction experience is said to be a shooting game not unlike Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders , which launched to impressive player numbers and wound up a massive success for the developer late last year. Those familiar with the Disney game say some at Epic are optimistic the project will stick the landing at launch, though internal reviews have expressed concern about unoriginal game mechanics. Disney has had plenty of its characters crossover to the main Fortnite experience in the years since its investment was announced, with two recent examples seeing Bu...