Hello and welcome to Everything Everywhere Once A Week, a weekly newsletter about the goings on in the video game industry over the last week. I often feel like every time I step away from Tears of the Kingdom to do anything else, I’m dragging myself away from it. But after about 120 hours, I think I’m finally starting to pull away a little bit and can actually, you know, do other things. Maybe I start casting an eye toward the endgame soon.

Nintendo Announces Everybody 1-2 Switch

I can’t not start with this.

About a year ago, I wrote a piece titled The Wild Story Behind Nintendo’s Unannounced 1-2 Switch Sequel - which was as much about reporting sourced information I heard about a then-unannounced Nintendo game as it was explaining how finished games sometimes get stuck in limbo. Not terribly long after publishing that story, we got laid off, the site was essentially shuttered to all content outside of a few games, and I more or less unofficially left games writing. That story is, in some ways, my last big piece. Hell, even when writing it, I felt like I was pulling a ripcord to try and save the site with a high-traffic post. Every single Direct that passed by without Nintendo actually announcing it, though, made me more and more nervous.

I could be extremely confident in something and still feel like a fraud because other people don’t know my sources and can’t see the actual proof of it. There’s a sense of relief when something you report bears out and people can finally see you weren’t just going forward with something poorly-sourced.

Nintendo officially announced Everybody 1-2 Switch on Thursday night with maybe the most joyless and begrudging tweet I’ve ever seen them produce. The title, of which all scant details seem to match my original reporting, is going on sale for $29.99 and seemingly only announced for the eShop, which feels like a last ditch attempt at getting some kind of revenue out of this game. I suspect that the game boxes I had heard that were sitting in a warehouse were likely converted to Tears of the Kingdom boxes instead.

I’m hoping maybe in the last year they improved this game greatly and it will be a surprise summer hit, but I sincerely doubt that will happen. It’s nestled between Tears of the Kingdom and Pikmin 4 in the vague hopes that it will sell without anyone taking too close a look at it critically.

God, even the Horse was real. I didn’t actually believe that originally when my sources told me.

Variety’s Bobby Kotick 12-Step Rehabilitation Program

There’s few people in the industry that I think believe themselves to be the hero to the extent that Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision-Blizzard-King, does. I think a lot of people think it on a superficial level, but I think Kotick believes it, and the way in which he acts on it makes it clear that he believes right and wrong exist relative to his actions.

That is to say: he’s not wrong, it’s the children that are wrong.

Though in this case, the children seem to be all ABK employees and media reporting on him. So, what’s an unfairly maligned hero to do in a situation like this? Let Variety do a completely uncontradicted puff piece, of course!

The piece, which ran this week, paints a very different picture of Bobby Kotick than most other news sources do and yet he still managed to kind of fuck it up. Rather than just letting the outlet expend the labor to carry him over the finish line, Kotick repeatedly spoke up with quotes about how there’s been no systemic harassment issues at ABK (an internal report released the same day contradicts this, substantiating at least 29 incidents of harassment in the company) and that the real trouble is caused by rabblerousers trying to unionize.

I think Variety’s piece is wildly irresponsible, if only because it provides Kotick a platform and a microphone to stand there and say whatever he wants without it being checked in any way. He’s a Fortune 500 CEO, if he wants to just endlessly bloviate and generate quotes about how the union upperdecked his private bathroom he can easily do so, the press should not uncritically provide these things to him.

But like I said, Kotick self-styles as if he is the hero of the story. Variety is merely backing up his assertion through omission of response.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Nailing Down Release Date

In what may be one of the oddest Q&A-style updates on a game I’ve seen from a major publisher in some time, Square Enix tweeted today with a reminder that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth development is still progressing and they’re working on committing to a release date — likely still within the initial window of “winter.”

I bring this up because I had heard recently that Square Enix is panicking slightly over Final Fantasy XVI preorder numbers, which are tracking behind FFXV even accounting for the lesser number of launching platforms. Granted, those are pre-order numbers and they’re usually only useful to gauge guaranteed day-one sales (versus potential day-one sales), so the actual number could blow everyone away. But with the current tracking, I wonder if they want to remind people the next chapter of Final Fantasy VII’s remake trilogy exists and give it more marketing time than they had planned.

The initial sales of Remake were quite good, but it slowed down faster than Square Enix seemed to expect, so I imagine they really want Rebirth to sell as well as possible. Well, of course they do, but I imagine they’re really, really hoping for an uptick in sales.

Other Things:

• I played some Street Fighter VI last weekend and it was the most fun I’ve had playing a fighting game in years.
• I’m going to put Diablo IV on a Steam Deck and then just sit inside and play that for a month after Zelda.