Starfield was supposed to be Microsoft’s biggest release of 2022. When it ended up getting delayed, the company looked into striking deals with third-party publishers like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft for major blockbusters it could bring to Game Pass day-and-date to fill the gap. A new internal email exchange leaked from the Federal Trade Commission trial earlier this year shows exactly how much Microsoft thought those deals might be worth, giving us our best sense yet of what it costs to secure blockbusters like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Grand Theft Auto V on the Netflix-like subscription service.

“This is really a disaster sistuation for us given all we’ve invested in content across studios at our GP content fund,” Phil Spencer wrote to fellow Xbox exectuives in a May 7 email. He was referring to Bethesda’s open world sci-fi RPG Starfield, whose delay at the time threatened to leave a 16-month hole in the Xbox first-party exclusive release calendar just two years into the Xbox Series X/S’s life-cycles.

Sarah Bond, Microsoft’s VP of gaming business development, responded to the discussion later in the month with a breakdown of major third-party games expected to arrive throughout 2022 and early 2023 that could make a big splash on Game Pass. Those included everything from Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, including an analysis of how many hours each game was likely to be played on Game Pass, how much it would cost to get the game on the service, and whether the publisher who owned it would be likely to make a deal.

Here’s the full list of estimates:

• Lego Star Wars: $35 million
• Dying Light 2: $50 million
• Cities: Skylines 2: unknown
• Red Dead Redemption 2: $5 million per month
• Dragon Ball: The Breakers: $20 million
• Just Dance: $5 million
• Return to Monkey Island: $5 million
• Wreckfest 2: $10-$14 million
• Baldur’s Gate 3: $5 million
• Gotham Knights: $50 million
• Assassin’s Creed Mirage: $100 million
• Suicide Squad: $250 million
• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: $300 million
• Mortal Kombat 1: $250 million
• Grand Theft Auto V: $12-$15 million per month
• Blood Runner: $5 million
• Net Crisis Glitch Busters: $5 million

The estimates vary wildly depending on the size of the release as well as whether it would be day-and-date on the service. Notably, some games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Suicide Squad ended up getting delayed (the latter still doesn’t have a new release date). It’s also funny to see Baldur’s Gate 3, one of the biggest games of 2023, low-balled at just $5 million (it’s out on PlayStation 5 now but delayed on Xbox due to issues with the Series S version).

Bond also notes that games like Suicide Squad and Mortal Kombat were unlikely to come to Game Pass due to corporate tumult at Warner Bros. following the merger with Discovery. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor also appeared to be off the table. Gotham Knights and Assassin’s Creed Mirage were considered much more viable and cost-effective deals. And indeed, while not day-and-date, Lego Star Wars did end up coming to Game Pass on December 1 of last year. Today, Microsoft officially announced Gotham Knights is arriving as well.

Companies like Activision (soon to be acquired by Microsoft) and Sony have been critical of day-and-date deals with subscription services, claiming it devalues games sold for $70. The PS5-maker has specificaly said it won’t bring blockbusters like Spider-Man 2 to its competitor, PS Plus, until years later to avoid cannibalizing sales, arguing that the economics aren’t sustainable for high-quality first-party exclusives. Microsoft has disagreed, promoting services like Game Pass as a way to introduce games to bigger audiences and claiming that it actually increases how much subscribers spend on the platform.

Spencer’s email exchange with Bond ends on a note about what ended up being the biggest game of 2022. “Another option with the hit factor around Elden Ring is to try to get all of the Dark Souls games and make a push with [FromSoftware] and an Elden Ring upsell,” Spencer wrote. “Like that one,” Bond wrote back. “Will do.” It’s not clear if Microsoft is still pursuing that deal.

If you have kids, you know what Bluey is. For everyone else, it’s an Australian cartoon about a nuclear family of talking dogs who live in a giant bungalow and love to play silly games. It’s cute and clever, and several years after becoming a global phenomenon, it’s at long-last getting a video game adaptation.

Outright Games announced multiplayer puzzle game Bluey: The Videogame in partnership with BBC Studios on September 19, and revealed that it’s coming to PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC on November 17. Up to four players can choose from Bluey, Bingo, Mum (Chile), and Dad (Bandit) t and participate in playable episodes by completing a range of minigames to unlock new costumes, stickers, locations. It sounds like standard kids’ game fair, with the advantage of looking exactly like the beloved show and starring its same voice talent.

Here’s the trailer:

And here’s how the developers describe the game:

Bluey: The Videogame has been designed with flexibility in mind, allowing fans to engage with the game and explore it at their own pace with the ability to jump between story quests, activities, and exploration at any time. Variable difficulty features have been included that allow the game to be accessible and fun for both preschool and older fans including UI on/off toggle, simple written on-screen instructions and full voice-over. Players will be able to utilize physics-based mechanics to manipulate objects, interact with the world around them, add additional challenges to mini-games, and support free-play in the sandbox.

Bluey has three seasons so far, all of them currently airing on Disney Plus with some additional episodes on the way and a fourth season set to air sometime in the future. The show practically pulsates with “hard relate” vibes for a parent, which is the key to making it entertaining for grownups as much as young kids. Although for me it’s always conjured an unlikely but potent mix of guilt and aspiration.

Being a parent is exhausting. Remember the book The Giving Tree? The titular tree gives everything to a child for nothing in return. It quite literally gets chopped up into wood in the end. Hard relate. But Bluey’s dad Bandit always pushes through, laughing, messing around, and indulging the kids in absurdly specific pretend games and scenarios. Some millennial gamers want to be strong and stoic like Kratos. I just want to have the patience and imagination of Bluey’s dad.

Maybe Bluey: The Videogame will teach me how. I can’t wait to give it a try.

Pre-order Bluey: The Videogame: Best Buy | GameStop

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Since Star Wars Eclipse was first revealed two years ago, we’ve seen and heard little about the next game from Quantic Dream, the developer behind Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. However, the devs behind the game have revealed that as in the studio’s previous adventures, Eclipse’s storyline will continue no matter which characters die, a quality which hasn’t been seen in any other Star Wars game to date.

We first confirmed Star Wars Eclipse was in development in September 2021, before its official reveal at The Game Awards that December. Eclipse is set in the franchise’s High Republic era, a time hundreds of years before Anakin Skywalker and Han Solo. It’s a golden age for the Jedi and the republic it defends, and a vastly different time than the period covered in the films and TV shows.

And unlike past Quantic Dream games—which were narrative driven, QTE-filled adventure affairs—Star Wars Eclipse is set to be an action game. Even so, the studio confirmed that the DNA of its more contemplative back catalog will remain evident in Eclipse, too.

No matter what happens, this Star Wars story moves forward

Lisa Pendse, vice president of marketing for Quantic Dream, told IGN during a recent interview at the Tokyo Game Show that while the studio wants people to know this is an action-adventure game, it will still have “all of the elements that you would come to expect and want from a Quantic Dream title,” including “intricately branching narratives” and the ability to play as different characters. Another key element is that no matter how badly you screw up or who dies, the game’s story will keep on chugging.

“There’s no game over,” said Pendse. “Anyone can die, anything can happen and the story sort of continues so that those signatures are still there.”

As mentioned, this has been the case in past games from the studio. For example, in Beyond: Two Souls, there were parts of the game where you had to escape the police, like while onboard a train. If you screwed that up, you would get caught and the story would change as you had to escape from a different scenario featuring different characters.

What’s interesting to me, as a Star Wars nerd, is that this amount of freedom isn’t something we commonly see in Star Wars games. Sure some have had alternate endings, but outside of the Knights of the Old Republic RPGs, most Star Wars games don’t let you screw things up too much. I’ll be curious to see how the Star Wars community handles this level of freedom in places like Wookieepedia. The perpetual fan question of “What is canon?” will be trickier to answer in a game like Eclipse, and I find that exciting.

Meanwhile, in other Quantic Dream news, the studio has spent the last few years battling some of the former employees involved in a series of 2018 reports accusing the studio of being a terrible place to work.

The report also detailed sexist and racist jokes, and lots of extended crunch. Quantic Dream denied the reports and later sued the publications reporting on the accusations and some former employees in a series of court battles, some of which have ended conclusively.

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Back in February, The Pokémon Company announced it was reprinting beloved cards from the very start of the Pokémon trading card game, including the original holographic Venusuar, Charizard, and Blastoise, as part of a $400 board game set. Pre-orders went live on September 21 and sold out in the first hour.

We now know exactly which cards are in the three decks featured in the Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic set, as well as its release date: November 17. The set also features brand new cards, including Lugia ex, Ho-Oh ex, Suicune ex, and a version of Mr. Mime that’s releasing outside of Japan for the very first time.

Pre-orders went live on The Pokémon Company’s own Pokémon Center storefront and GameStop shortly after the release date was revealed, and stock immediately ran out. Pre-orders are also expected to become available at BestBuy, Target, and other retailers at some point, but it’s not exactly clear when, or if they’ll take any longer to sell out when they do. It’s also possible that some stores are reserving some stock for additional pre-order waves.

The Pokémon Company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic set trades on millenial nostalgia for the original late ‘90s heyday of the Game Boy RPGs and their trading card spin-off. I still remember exactly where I was when I opened my first three Pokémon booster packs ever and got a holographic Venusaur and Poliwrath, both of which have long since vanished. I now have kids of my own, and it’s clear the set and its absurd $400 price tag is aimed squarely at me.

As news of the initial pre-orders selling out made the rounds on Reddit, collectors were quick to point out that you can actually buy copies of the original cards, including holographic Charizards, for way less. The three decks featured in the Classic set aren’t tournament legal either. It’s effectively just an expensive novelty replica. “This is so not worth it,” wrote one fan. “Cool thing but $150 is my price point. Would rather go buy the big 3 vintage and a Switch Lite for this cost.”

For anyone who does want the Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic set, they’ll have to keep their eyes peeled for new rounds of pre-orders. Scalpers are already trying to flip their existing orders on sites like eBay for hundreds more than the standard sticker price. It seems unlikely that anyone will actually buy them at the up to $800 that resellers are currently requesting per set, but if The Pokémon Company doesn’t end up printing enough stock to meet demand, a few desperate fans might.

In the meantime, the Scarlet and Violet-era Pokémon 151 set takes the original Kanto Pokémon and features them with beautiful new art. The expansion launched on September 22.

Update 9/27/2023 12:50 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for The Pokémon Company International said it’s aware fans are dealing with stock shortages and blamed global freight costs for the price of the set outside of Japan. “We are working to address it where it is within our control,” they wrote in an email. Here’s the full statement:

We’re aware that some fans are experiencing difficulties purchasing Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic due to very high demand impacting availability. In addition, due to rising global freight costs, Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic will see higher MSRPs in markets outside of Japan. We understand this inconvenience can be disappointing for fans, and we are working to address it where it is within our control. Fans will have additional opportunities to purchase Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic when it releases on Nov. 17 at participating retailers while supplies last, and some retailers will restock the product later this year.

Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic is uniquely and thoughtfully designed to be a staple playset that is both beautiful and functional, delivering a polished and elevated battling experience for all types of Pokémon TCG fans. We are grateful to the community for their continued support and patience as we work to deliver fun and innovative Pokémon TCG products, including premium items like Pokémon Trading Card Game Classic.

Buy Pokemon Scarlet and Violet 151 Collection Elite Trainer Box: Best Buy | GameStop

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The Google Pixel 8 appears to feature an AI-powered photo editing option that lets you completely change peoples’ faces. A reliable leak from mobile tech reporter and leaker Kamila Wojciechowska to phone site 91mobiles revealed the feature, which is like using Cyberpunk 2077’s fleet of customizable facial expressions in photo mode, except it’s real life, and it’s more terrifying.

In the leaked trailer for the Pixel 8, which is expected to launch with the Pixel 8 Pro on October 4, a narrator lists off a number of camera options. “Engineered by Google, with AI controlled by you,” they say. The Pixel 8 can do what we now gluttonously expect of most smartphones—night vision, microscopic zoom—but it seems to add the rarer ability to edit photos with AI directly in its camera app.

“Swap this,” the narrator says while we look at a little boy grimacing. Suddenly, he’s smiling. And a man checking out his feet is now staring directly into the camera, also smiling. Another boy—this one making the kind of overextended, open mouth grin kids make when they’re allowed a whole Snickers bar—becomes more decorous after the ad’s phone user clicks a small, alternate grin from three possible options. “Nice,” says the narrator. “Photos made perfect with a tap.”

From the trailer, it looks like the Pixel 8’s photo editor also uses AI to remove unwanted objects and completely exchange entire sections of a photo, like a gray sky the ad’s user ditches for a prettier sunset.

“It’ll make you wonder, ‘can a phone be made of magic?’” says the narrator, “Nope. It’s AI.”

The ad doesn’t get into specifics about how AI photo editing works, or the extent to which it does; Kotaku reached out to Google for comment. Other modern smartphones, like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and Pixel 8 predecessor, the Pixel 7, also use AI to touch-up or modify photos, including one S23 Ultra feature that gave toothless babies an unnatural row of chompers.

Historically, people have always made representations of reality more attractive than life itself, commissioning portraits without their blackened teeth and scraping at their albumen prints to reveal smooth skin. But the Pixel 8’s proposed feature makes me pause. It looks more spotless than the S23 Ultra’s graceless shot at AI, and the photos we take now are usually shared to about a million strangers, not only a few friends with access to our Victorian albums.

Reposing Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West’s adjustable photo mode feels okay—she’s not real. She can’t decide what she wants. I worry, though, that the Pixel 8’s AI editing could encourage us to think of ourselves that same way.

In comments this past weekend, Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto asserted that video game prices are too low, pointing to the massive increase in development costs and how game prices haven’t risen at the same rate. He suggested that increasing the price of games would be a “healthy option” for the industry.

It was only a year ago that the era of $70 video games really began, as numerous “AAA” releases—like Gotham Knights and God of War Ragnarök—began selling for $10 more than what players had come to expect. Now in 2023, around half of AAA games from large publishers have adopted the new $70 price point. Yet Capcom is one of the few publishers that’s abstained from raising prices thus far. It has continued to sell new games, like Street Fighter 6, at $60 instead of $70. But that might be changing.

According to a September 23 report from Nikkei, Tsujimoto spoke at the Tokyo Game Show about various topics. While speaking at the event, the president of Capcom reportedly explained that he felt the price of video games was “too low.”

“Development costs are about 100 times higher than during the Famicom era, but software prices have not gone up that much,” said Tsujimoto, referring to Nintendo’s massively successful 8-bit console from the 1980s. “There is also a need to raise wages. Considering the fact that wages are rising in the industry as a whole, I think raising unit prices is a healthy option for business.”

Tsujimoto further explained that even a recession or society’s low general confidence in the business world shouldn’t matter when it comes to game prices, saying that those factors have “little to do with the game industry” and that people still bought games even during the Lehman Brothers stock collapse in 2008.

“Just because there’s a recession doesn’t mean you won’t go to the movie theater or go to your favorite artist’s concert. High-quality games will continue to sell,” said Tsujimoto.

Video game prices will likely go up, even if gamers don’t like it

There’s no doubt that in 2023 it costs a lot more to make a video game than it did in 1983. Games are bigger and more complex than ever before, requiring more people, time, and resources to create. Even many “smaller” games are still vastly bigger and more complex than any game released in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

But games today are also jam-packed with always-online requirements, cosmetic stores, and paid “battle passes.” Sometimes the argument made is that these things are needed for publishers to make money and if prices on games were raised these microtransactions and other annoyances would go away. However, looking at how many $70 games still contain all of that stuff in 2023, I’m not so sure about that.

Regardless, the industry can’t sustain this pace forever. As games get bigger and bigger, failures become riskier, and trying something new becomes more unlikely. Something has to change. And given the choice, publishers will probably increase the price you pay for big games like the next Halo or Grand Theft Auto in the coming years, perhaps even past $70.

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You can no longer buy last year’s hit soccer game, FIFA 23. Nor any other older game from the famous Electronic Arts sports franchise. At least, not digitally.

The publisher has pulled every FIFA game that was previously for sale on the PlayStation 5, Xbox, Switch, Steam, and Epic Games storefronts. The move, first noticed by industry analyst MauroNL, comes ahead of the launch of EA Sports FC 24, the newest game in the series which was re-branded earlier this year after EA abandoned the FIFA licence amid ongoing renewal negotiations.

While some DLC packs for the games, which date back to FIFA 14 on modern platforms, are still available on the storefronts, the games themselves are either missing or don’t show an option to purchase. On Steam, where FIFA 23 has accrued over 100,000 user reviews and a rating of “mixed,” a notice reads: “At the request of the publisher, EA SPORTS™ FIFA 23 is unlisted on the Steam store and will not appear in search.”

It’s not clear if the games will return at some point in a different form, or whether their removal will be permanent. EA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

FIFA games, and now EA Sports FC, come out every year with updated rosters but often minimal changes to the underlying modes and mechanics. EA Sports FC 24, which arrives September 29, currently has a 76 on Metacritic, with GamesRadar calling it the “most playable” version of the series in years, while Eurogamer called it “business as usual.”

Chief among the improvements is a streamlining of Ultimate Team, the series’ loot box mode where players collect packs of cards and then use them to construct hyper-talented all-star squads. According to GamesRadar, EA has improved the feel of the mode on the field, and added an “Evolution” feature for leveling up players’ skills, as well as mixed in star female players who were previously kept separately.

Ultimate Team is the real reason many players shell out for a new version of FIFA every year, abandoning the game they paid $70 for just 12 months prior. It’s also been supremely lucrative for EA, which rakes in more money from microtransactions than the sale of the new games themselves. Though apparently not enough to make the publisher want to pay the International Football Federation the $1 billion it was reportedly requesting to renew the FIFA brand.

Released earlier this month, Starfield is Bethesda’s long-in-development and much-hyped open-world space RPG. And while the hundreds of planets and spaceship building are cool and all, I particularly enjoy Starfield’s fantastic lockpicking minigame. Apparently I’m not alone, because someone out there has taken the time to create a standalone version of the minigame, letting you play it whenever and wherever you want.

Starfield is a very big game. You’ve probably heard that already, but it’s true! A thousand planets, hundreds of quests, starship combat, crafting, base building, and that’s just some of it. Not every aspect is great, but if you can put up with some classic Bethesda RPG jank, you can have a good time exploring the game’s massive galaxy for hundreds of hours. Yet with all the stuff to do and places to visit, it’s wild that maybe one of my favorite things in Starfield is something I usually don’t like much in video games: lockpicking. Against all odds, Bethesda actually developed a fun lockpicking minigame puzzle that is so good I (and apparently others) want to play it outside the game. Lucky, then, someone has gone and built that standalone version to satisfy us digipicking weirdos.

As spotted by Polygon, a Starfield fan and developer who goes by BB-dev has released an open-source digipick simulator for all to enjoy. Click here to play it in your browser. And a recent update made it much more playable on mobile devices, too.

Just like in Starfield, you spin around “key rings” and try to slot them into “lock rings.” The most important point is to make sure you don’t screw yourself and use a key on an outer ring that is needed for a later one. The minigame created by BB-dev supports multiple difficulties, a daily hard puzzle with one attempt, an in-game timer, and a scoreboard that tracks how many puzzles you’ve attempted and solved.

Read More: Starfield: The Kotaku Review
Buy Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

According to BB-dev on Reddit, they have more feature ideas they’d like to work on, including a possible endless mode. But they want to be careful and not upset Bethesda, saying they won’t release an offline version of the game without the company’s permission.

“I hope they’ll see this is open source and let it slide. There’s a ton more I’d like to do with it,” wrote BB-dev. Future updates might be slow to come, though, as they announced in the minigame’s latest patch notes that they started a new job that will be taking up a lot of their time.

Still, even if they never get around to updating it again, the fact they made it open-source means that it’s likely other fans will pick up from where they left off to port this thing to other devices and add more modes and features. I just need a really good mobile version with a few power-ups and I’ll be set whenever I need to kill some time.

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