Gaming, in brief

Nintendo said on Saturday that 1 November will be Pikmin Day, every year from now on. [3]

Pikmin is a Nintendo puzzle-strategy series that is now 25 years old. [3]

In the games, players command an army of tiny, colourful plant-like creatures. [2]

Shigeru Miyamoto, who created Mario, announced it in a surprise video of about nine minutes. [2]

The video showed no new Pikmin game. [4]

Pikmin Day falls on 1 November; the Switch 2 version goes on sale on 12 November. [2]

Kotaku notes the new holiday comes just before that Switch 2 version goes on sale. [4]

Nintendo set the date and filmed a show for it, giving games sites something to report. [2]

Media scholars call that a pseudo-event: something staged mainly so that it gets reported. [2]

Nintendo gets a yearly date to promote Pikmin without having to show a new game. [4]

Nobody outside Nintendo knows if a new Pikmin game is coming; the video gave no hint. [2]

Nintendo made up a yearly Pikmin Day, eleven days before it sells a Switch 2 version of Pikmin 4, and announced it in a video of about nine minutes with no new game. [2][4]

Calling it a holiday makes a promotion sound like a gift to players, so the sales date inside it is easy to miss. [4]

It now has a yearly date for Pikmin news, which this year lands just before a new version goes on sale. [2][4]

Whether a new Pikmin game is coming.

Nintendo gave no hint of one in the Pikmin Day video. [2]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 reacts more slowly on Nintendo's Switch 2 than on PS5. [5]

Digital Foundry, which analyses how games perform, measured the delay after each button press. [5]

In handheld mode, the Switch 2 took 100 milliseconds to respond; a PS5 took 49.1. [5]

Plugged into a TV, the Switch 2 took 81 milliseconds. [5]

IGN says that puts Switch 2 players at a disadvantage in online matches. [5]

It is the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since Ghosts in 2013. [5]

Microsoft promised in 2022 to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo for ten years. [5]

The promise helped win approval for its $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. [5]

A specialist studio, Digital Legends, made the Switch 2 version with Infinity Ward. [5]

However fast a Switch 2 player presses the trigger, the console responds later, IGN says. [5]

Competition lawyers call a promise like Microsoft's a behavioural remedy: a pledge about future conduct. [5]

Microsoft made it while regulators were deciding whether to approve the purchase. [5]

Nintendo owners get a new Call of Duty, the first on their consoles since 2013. [5]

In online matches, they pay for it with slower reactions than PS5 players. [5]

It has kept its 2022 promise to regulators and now sells Call of Duty to Nintendo players too. [5]

Their console responds about twice as slowly as a PS5 in handheld online matches. [5]

Whether an update can shorten the delay on Switch 2.

Digital Foundry measured the delay, but IGN's report gives no fix from Activision or the port studio. [5]

'Save Mass Effect' was spray-painted outside EA's office in Madrid, Spain, a Reddit user showed. [6]

EA, the games publisher, closed BioWare, the studio that made Mass Effect, this month. [7]

With the studio gone, the next Mass Effect game was cancelled. [6]

The Madrid office mostly works on EA's sports games, not Mass Effect. [7]

A fan petition to save the series has passed 290,000 signatures. [6]

Fans also paid for a Times Square billboard and plan one outside The Game Awards. [6]

Some fans cheered the graffiti; others were not convinced spray paint would change EA's mind. [6]

Bloomberg reported that EA put a Star Wars game ahead of the next Mass Effect. [6]

Kotaku judges that none of this is likely to change EA's decision. [7]

Economist Albert Hirschman called a customer's two choices exit and voice: leave, or complain. [6]

Mass Effect fans are trying both: calls for a boycott, and a petition with billboards. [6]

No billboard or graffiti has changed EA's plans so far, IGN reports. [6]

Why companies make up a day for the news to report

News needs something that happened on a given day

So a company with nothing new to show plans a happening: a day, a premiere, a surprise release

It picks a date people will remember, like 11.1 for three Pikmin

Reporters write it up, because it is dated, on the record and easy to show

The reports put the product in front of people just before it goes on sale

Nothing new happened to Pikmin on 1 November. Nintendo chose the date, filmed a show for it, and the news followed.

Pikmin Day is not the series' birthday. Miyamoto chose 1 November because three Pikmin side by side look like 11.1.

Fans paid for a Times Square billboard and plan another outside The Game Awards: events made to be photographed and reported.

Toho held premieres in Los Angeles and at the Tokyo festival, and Japanese TV showed Minus One, all in the days before it opens.

HBO Max released an unannounced episode on Halloween, so the release itself was the news.

The anime was announced on 1 November because Japan calls it Wan Wan Wan Day, after a dog's bark.

A staged event can still hold real news, like Pikmin 4's free demo on 2 November, so the useful question is what in it is new.

Nintendo needed a date, games sites needed a story, and fans wanted something to share. All three helped make Pikmin Day news.

Elsewhere in the day, the owners of games and films set the terms: Paramount's deadline ended a licensed game, Bethesda's rules bind the fan remake Skyblivion, and EA has not moved on Mass Effect despite 290,000 signatures. [18][16][6]

Whether EA will ever revive or sell Mass Effect.

Petitions, billboards and graffiti have not changed EA's course so far. [6][7]

Wildwood, LAIKA's stop-motion film, took about $6.8 million in its second North American weekend. [10]

That brings its total to about $25 million after ten days. [10]

Its first week took $18.3 million, more than Kubo and the Two Strings' $17 million. [11]

Kubo, an earlier LAIKA film, ended with $48 million in North America. [9]

Wildwood cost a reported $100 million to make. [8]

Paramount's Street Fighter film took $3.5 million in its third weekend, for $53 million in all. [10]

In its second week, Street Fighter's takings fell 70%, Deadline reports. [11]

TheWrap counts Street Fighter among October films that have faltered. [10]

LAIKA must earn back $100 million, and Cartoon Brew says one decent weekend is not enough. [8]

Box-office analysts judge a film by its hold: how little it falls the next weekend. [8]

Fathom projected a 35-43% fall for Wildwood, in line with earlier LAIKA films. [8]

Fathom Entertainment, its distributor, added 150 screens for the second weekend, which helps the hold. [8]

Cartoon Brew says it is too early to know if Wildwood will earn back its cost. [8]

How much Wildwood really took in its second weekend.

Its distributor Fathom projected $7 million to $8 million, while TheWrap's estimate is about $6.8 million; final counts come after the weekend. [8][10]

Wildwood, LAIKA's $100 million stop-motion film, took $18.3 million in its first week, more than Kubo and the Two Strings did.

Godzilla Minus Zero, from the Japanese studio Toho, opens in Japan on 3 November. [13]

It reaches North American cinemas three days later, on 6 November. [13]

On 1 November it was the gala film of the Tokyo International Film Festival. [13]

Its stars flew back from the Los Angeles premiere, where applause ran without a break. [12]

It follows Godzilla Minus One, which won the Oscar for visual effects. [12]

Minus One took more than 7.65 billion yen, about $50 million, in Japan. [12]

Japanese TV showed Minus One on the Friday before the sequel's festival screening. [12]

Minus Zero is the first Japanese film certified as 'Filmed for Imax'. [12]

Its world premiere was at the New York Film Festival on 26 September. [13]

Fans in Japan and North America get the film within days of each other. [13]

Nobody knows yet whether Minus Zero will match Minus One's 7.65 billion yen in Japan. [12]

Toho held premieres in Los Angeles and at the Tokyo festival, and Japanese TV showed Minus One, all in the days before it opens.

About two minutes of what looks like a remake of the first Persona game appeared online. [14]

Persona is a role-playing series from the game companies Atlus and Sega. [14]

A YouTube account created in 2010, with only two older videos, posted it. [14]

One character uses the same summon animation as in Atlus's coming Persona 4 Revival. [15]

Persona 4 Revival, Atlus's remake of the fourth game, comes out on 18 February 2027. [14]

Atlus already remade the third game, as Persona 3 Reload, in 2024. [14]

In August, Atlus producer Kazuhisa Wada called remaking the first games something 'we have to do'. [14]

Sega has not confirmed the footage; IGN asked it for comment. [14]

Leaks keep hitting Atlus: Persona 6 images leaked in June, and a trophy list in September. [14]

Nobody outside Sega knows when the footage was made; it may be a pitch video. [14]

Whether the Persona remake footage is real, and how old it is.

Sega has not commented, and the footage could be a recent build or an old pitch video. [14][15]

A former volunteer is threatening legal action against Skyblivion, a fan-made remake of Oblivion. [16]

Oblivion is Bethesda's 2006 Elder Scrolls role-playing game. [16]

Volunteers are rebuilding it in Skyrim's engine, the software that runs Skyrim. [16]

Bethesda lets the project go on as long as it replaces everything taken from Oblivion. [16]

After the volunteer left, the team lost access to the original files of that code. [16]

So it worked backwards from the finished program to fix bugs, which started the dispute. [16]

The team says the volunteer then demanded its leaders' real names and home addresses. [16]

It has removed that code and rebuilt the system from scratch. [16]

It is not clear whether a lawsuit has actually been filed. [16]

Project lead Rebelzize asked lawyers to help for free, and has paid help lined up. [17]

Skyblivion had already slipped from 2025 into 2026. [17]

Intellectual property lawyers would ask what permission came with the code when it was donated. [17]

The volunteer is unnamed, and only the team's side of events has been published. [17]

They face legal threats and a demand for their home addresses, and rebuilt a whole system from scratch. [16]

Whether the former Skyblivion volunteer has actually sued.

The team says the volunteer is attempting to, but no filing has been shown, and only the team's account has been published. [16][17]

Brian Clarke, maker of the horror game The Mortuary Assistant, released Playable Archive free this week. [18]

It is a 30-to-45-minute slice of his cancelled game based on the Paranormal Activity films. [18]

Clarke had pitched it through the publisher DreadXP to Paramount, the studio behind the films. [18]

It was announced as Paranormal Activity: Threshold in November last year. [18]

Clarke, working alone, asked for a small extension to finish it; Paramount said no. [18]

Rather than rush it, Clarke, DreadXP and Paramount agreed to end the game. [18]

Paramount let him keep his work, so he removed the branding and gave it away. [18]

He has started work on a new Mortuary Assistant game. [18]

Eurogamer suggests Paramount wanted the game out for Halloween this year. [18]

Clarke had spent about two years on a game that will now never be finished. [18]

Players can now try part of the cancelled game for free. [18]

It held its deadline and kept control of its films' name; the game that came out carries none of its branding. [18]

HBO Max released a surprise 30-minute episode of It: Welcome to Derry for Halloween. [20]

Welcome to Derry is an HBO horror series set before the 2017 and 2019 It films. [20]

The episode, A Story of Derry, is set hundreds of years before the first season. [19]

Nothing had been announced, though fans had heard rumours that a bonus episode was filmed. [19]

The series began on HBO Max on 26 October 2025. [20]

Its second season, set in 1935, is expected in late 2027 or 2028. [20]

Season two is unlikely before late 2027, so the episode fills a long gap. [19]

IGN calls it a shadow drop: a release that arrives with no warning. [19]

HBO Max released an unannounced episode on Halloween, so the release itself was the news.

Funcom will add Blood and Ice, a free expansion, to Dune: Awakening on 1 December. [21]

Funcom is a Norwegian studio; Dune: Awakening is its online survival game set on Arrakis. [21]

The new map, the Polar Sink, is frozen, so players must hunt for heat instead. [21]

Funcom says the expansion adds about 35 hours of play. [21]

Funcom has also opened a shop in the game selling cosmetic items. [21]

Funcom recently cut staff to work only on the games it already runs. [21]

An offline single-player mode comes in November, and play across different machines in January. [21]

Players get the new map free; Funcom says it will keep expanding the game through 2027. [21]

Economists call it cross-subsidy: a free product sits beside one that earns, like this shop. [21]

Funcom has not said how many staff it laid off when it changed course. [21]

Some lost their jobs when Funcom chose to work only on the games it already runs. [21]

Idoly Pride, a Japanese phone game, will end its online service on 1 March. [22]

Before then, an update will add an offline version of the game. [22]

The game launched for iPhone and Android in June 2021. [22]

Its maker, QualiArts, belongs to CyberAgent, which also owns Cygames, another game maker. [22]

The Idoly Pride project also had a TV anime in 2021 and a manga. [22]

The anime was the first made by CyberAgent's own animation label, CAAnimation. [22]

Players will keep a version they can still open after the online service ends. [22]

Japanese firms call this a media mix: one story told as game, anime and manga. [22]

Players lose the online parts on 1 March and keep only the offline version. [22]

Idoly Pride's players will keep an offline version of the game after its online service ends on 1 March.

OpenCAGE, fan-made tools for changing the horror game Alien: Isolation, reached version 1.0 on Steam. [23]

Matt Filer has worked on them for nine years, after two and a half years' prototypes. [23]

They now let players make whole new maps, missions, characters and weapons. [23]

Filer is building a Halo-themed map to show what the tools can do. [23]

Alien: Isolation is Creative Assembly's horror game, just voted scariest by PC Gamer's readers. [23]

A sequel, Alien: Isolation 2, is likely to arrive some time in 2027, PC Gamer says. [23]

Tools like these let players keep making new things for an old game. [23]

Players call fan-made changes to a game mods; OpenCAGE is the toolkit for making them. [23]

Creative Assembly's old game gets new maps and missions its studio did not build. [23]

One fan's nine years of work now lets anyone build full new games inside Alien: Isolation. [23]

Dead of the Brain, a 1992 Japanese zombie adventure game, got its first official English release. [24]

It first ran on the PC-98, a series of Japanese home computers. [24]

It came out on Steam this weekend, published by FAKKU. [24]

FAKKU is a long-running website for adult manga and games. [24]

FAKKU cut a few racier scenes to avoid a harsher age rating on Steam. [24]

A free patch from FAKKU's own website puts them back. [24]

FAKKU will next publish Dengeki Nurse, a 1992 role-playing game. [24]

Thousands of PC-98 games exist, and fan translators have reached only a few of them. [24]

English-speaking players can now buy the game legally for the first time. [24]

Steam's buyers get a cut version; the full one needs FAKKU's own patch. [24]

It sells a 1992 Japanese game to English-speaking players for the first time, with cuts that suit Steam's age rating. [24]

Dead of the Brain, a Japanese zombie game from 1992, can now be bought in English for the first time.

Shiba Inu Rooms, a manga, will become a TV anime series in summer 2027. [25]

It follows Kori, a high schooler whose new flat is haunted by a Shiba Inu's ghost. [25]

Osamu Yamasaki will direct it at the studio TMS Entertainment. [25]

It was announced on 1 November, Wan Wan Wan Day, named after a dog's bark. [25]

Esu Omori's manga has run on Shonen Jump+ since June 2024. [25]

Shueisha, its Japanese publisher, prints the ninth book on 4 November. [25]

Viz Media sells it in English, and shipped the first printed book on 1 September. [25]

Like Pikmin Day, the date was chosen for what it sounds like, not for a birthday. [25]

No streaming service outside Japan has been named for the anime yet. [25]