ASFANDYAR Magazine

It’s all kicking off in the Tekken community. This week IGN reported on how Tekken 8 players had reacted in anger to the Season 2 update because of big changes it made to the way the fighting game played.

Patch notes revealed an across-the-board buff to character damage potential and offensive pressure, which caused some within the community to complain that Tekken 8 has strayed too far from the classic Tekken experience.

The backlash got so bad that some pro Tekken players threatened to ditch the game, while others took to Steam to leave angry negative reviews.

In response, the Tekken development team at Bandai Namco issued a statement acknowledging the furore, and confirming an “emergency patch” would be released this month to address Paul and Jack specifically, with more balance changes to come.

Fighters,

we are aware of the current community feedback regarding #TEKKEN8 Season 2.
We are carefully reviewing the balance of the game; expect more information about these changes soon.

In addition, an emergency patch will be released in April to adress the following issues👇 pic.twitter.com/Gvet0IOISu

— TEKKEN (@TEKKEN) April 3, 2025

Now, Tekken development chief has waded in, tweeting one person’s complaint that the Tekken community had gone too far in directing its anger at specific staff on social media.

“In any case, it is clear to me that the result is a disconnect between what the community wants and the tuning results,” Harada said.

“I understand that whatever words I may be accused by the community about it, that is not the essential issue and it is not the time to worry about it.

“We have our Battle & Tuning team working around the clock to read through all the feedback logs from the community and work on future policies and changes for the better.

“Thanks.”

Tekken characters in Season 2 pic.twitter.com/n6UTHsSswn

— K-Wiss 🉐 (@KungFuKobi) April 3, 2025

It seems unlikely that Harada’s comment will calm the angry responses from the Tekken community, or stem the tide of negative user reviews on Steam. Recent reviews there are now ‘overwhelmingly negative’ after thousands of negative reviews were left in the last week.

“I am baffled,” reads the current “most helpful” user review. “I never seen devs so out of touch with the community.

“New season dropped and they made every character into a braindead easy mix up machine without a single buff to defense. From the start of Tekken 8 players were vocal about the prominence of easy mix-ups and the glaring nerfs to defense compared to past Tekken games and yet they do a huge patch with lots of new moves that emphasise on every aspect the players disliked about the game.

“No-one, literally no-one asked for these changes, even new players never asked for more offense in a game that clearly lacks defensive options and is easy to mash button and win like in most Tekken games.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

There’s no denying the excitement of a new console reveal, and Nintendo certainly delivered when it came to the new graphical capabilities of the Switch 2. Despite still no sign of a new 3D Mario game (it’s been almost eight years since Super Mario Odyssey, why must my pain continue?), we got the open-world Mario Kart World, the return of Donkey Kong to the limelight, and a pseudo-successor to Bloodborne in the shape of The Duskbloods. But one aspect of the reveal has overshadowed everything – the price. Not necessarily just the console itself – $449.99 isn’t an outrageous cost for a piece of new technology in 2025 – but the amount of money it will take to buy the games and accessories to enjoy Switch 2 to its fullest. So is the price of admission to Nintendo’s new toys really too high? Let’s take a look.

Many headlines have been written about the $80 price tag of Mario Kart World. It’s certainly an eye-opener in an age when we’re so used to $60 or $70 being the norm. The knee-jerk reaction is to say that it’s too much and Nintendo is squeezing us for every penny as it knows it’s the one game everyone will want at launch. Throw in another set of joy-con if you want to play with friends and family and that’ll be another $90. Want people from across the world to join you? A non-inexpensive Nintendo Online membership is required. It all tots up and when the reveal trailer was so focused on 24-player co-op and the ability to roam around its world with friends, taking advantage of the new GameChat and photo mode features, it’s hard not to think it’s all a bit cynical.

Of course, the counterargument is that it presents good value for money in terms of dollars to hours of enjoyment. World will likely be the only Mario Kart game to be released on the Nintendo Switch 2 if Mario Kart 8’s decade-long lifetime is anything to go by. Is $80 a reasonable amount to charge for a game that will likely provide many years of enjoyment? In an age where free-to-play games such as Fortnite are now the norm, have our perspectives of value for money been skewed? I imagine someone who puts as many hours into Fortnite over a five-year period as a Mario Kart player will likely spend $80 on battle passes and skins. Yes, these examples are apples and oranges, but in a time when a cinema trip for the whole family can easily cost $80 for two hours of animated slop, a decade of Mario Kart doesn’t seem too bad.

Granted, Donkey Kong Bananza is listed at a cheaper $69.99 price, so maybe this is a case of Nintendo knowing they can ask what they want for Mario Kart, one of the planet’s most popular game series. But it does set a worrying precedent, and with the Switch 2 versions of Kirby and the Forgotten Land and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom both also costing $80, the strategy is a little baffling. For a company like Nintendo, which has also appeared player-first and generous in its offerings, it raises the question of whether other game publishers will follow in the footsteps of these inflated game prices. GTA 6, we’re all looking at you. It also turns the attention to how generational leaps between consoles will go in the future when it comes to the cost of upgrading older games.

PlayStation has been doing this for years, consistently offering $10 upgrades to some of its PS4 games making the jump to PS5, with Days Gone doing exactly that later this month. The price for enhanced versions of Switch games on the Switch 2 is yet to be revealed though; if it’s the same as Sony charges then I doubt there’ll be much of an outcry – $10 for a superior frame rate, greater resolution in 4K, and even extra gameplay additions isn’t a bad deal. But if it’s $20 or $30, I’m not sure I’ll be investing in many of these upgrades.

For example, you can currently buy Tears of the Kingdom on Amazon for $52, a whole $28 less than the Switch 2 edition will cost. Surely the upgrade won’t be quite that much? The difference is even starker in the UK, where it’s currently £45 for the Switch version, but £75 for Switch 2. The MSRP for the original Switch version of TOTK is $70, so does that mean the upgrade will be just $10? If that’s the case, why not just buy a Switch copy from Amazon and then get the upgrade pack for another $10, saving yourself almost $20 in the process?

Of course, this is all speculation but the only indicator we have so far is the enhanced versions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom being available as part of a Nintendo Online + Expansion Pack membership, of which the cost is currently $49.99 a year. Assuming that the price doesn’t get raised in the next two months (I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if it does at some point though, Netflix currently charges me $4 million dollars and the soul of my firstborn just to watch Love is Blind), an upgraded Zelda as part of that isn’t the worst deal in the world. But what happens if I cancel my membership? Do I have to go back to playing 1080p, slightly framey Zelda until I resub? These are all questions that need answering.

Finally, we have perhaps the most baffling choice of all: the decision to charge for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. This virtual exhibition littered with minigames reeks of hardware pack-in energy and is the sort of thing you’d expect to be greeted with when loading a new console up for the first time. Astro’s Playroom came free with all PlayStation 5s and was an incredibly generous platformer that both evoked Nintendo’s brand of invention and celebrated PlayStation history while welcoming the new addition to its console family. It felt like Sony learned the right lessons from Nintendo and Wii Sports, whereas Switch 2 Welcome Tour feels like Nintendo taking pages out of the borderline arrogance Sony displayed during its expensive PS3 launch.

I don’t think the Switch 2 will be a step backward for Nintendo like Sony’s jump into the high-definition generation was though. It has enough forward momentum and goodwill from the original Switch, not to mention its frankly absurd library of games, to falter massively. The Switch 2 console itself looks like an impressive if not slightly safe improvement on what’s come before. The games we’ve seen so far largely look great too, with many more to come I’m sure (Mario, come on, mate). I just hope Nintendo doesn’t get too greedy and learns from the instant backlash of the cost of some of its launch offerings. No one wants $80 to be the new standard price of video games, so let’s hope Nintendo doesn’t make that a reality.

Does the cost of the Switch 2 and its accompanying games, upgrades, and peripherals completely overshadow the reveal? Not quite for me. But it certainly didn’t result in it being the universal success that Nintendo hoped it would be.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

Remember Marathon? It’s Destiny developer Bungie’s next game, and it looks like we’re about to finally see more of it.

Marathon is a PvP-focused extraction shooter set on the mysterious planet of Tau Ceti IV. Players inhabit the bodies of Runners, cybernetic mercenaries who have been designed to survive the planet’s harsh environments, exploring the lost colony that once inhabited Tau Ceti’s surface.

It has been some time since we saw or heard of Marathon. In October, Bungie released a lengthy development update video that shed light on Marathon’s mechanics, but stressed how early in development the game was. Player character models were, at that point, still “coming together,” while enemy models were still in an “early state.”

Now, though, half a year later, it looks like Bungie is finally ready to reveal what it’s been working on. A tweet from the official Marathon account, below, revealed a typically cryptic image and accompanying garbled signal noise. As fans have noticed, there’s ASCII art of footage from the debut Marathon trailer. Given this is Bungie we’re talking about, a developer known for its mysterious teasers, hidden clues, and Easter eggs, there’s probably much more here to discover, and fans are already working to find out what it all means.

Either way, it very much looks like it’s finally happening for Marathon after what has been a troubled development.

pic.twitter.com/6NBgIdRVK2

— Marathon (@MarathonTheGame) April 4, 2025

Marathon was revealed in May 2023 as a reboot of the classic Bungie franchise, but with all its themes of “mysteries, eeriness, and psychological creepiness.” But Bungie itself has suffered several controversies in recent years, headlined by the laying off of 220 staff members, meaning 17% of its workforce, in July 2024: a move even industry peers criticized.

This came less than a year after 100 other layoffs at Bungie, at which point staff told IGN the atmosphere was “soul crushing” at the studio.

Further controversy came when a report released weeks after the 220 job losses alleging former Marathon director Chris Barrett was fired after an internal misconduct investigation at Bungie. Barrett subsequently sued Sony Interactive Entertainment and Bungie for more than $200 million.

This all comes as Sony rethinks its focus on live-service games. Sony president Hiroki Totoki said in November 2023 the company was committed to launching just six of the 12 live service games it was working on by March 2026, in a shift in strategy that saw The Last of Us multiplayer game cancelled.

While Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2 was a breakout hit, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks, Sony’s other live service games were either canceled or suffered disastrous launches.

Indeed, Sony’s Concord is one of the biggest video game disasters in PlayStation history, lasting just a couple of weeks before it was brought offline amid eye-wateringly low player numbers. Sony later decided to kill the game entirely and shut its developer.

And earlier this year, Sony reportedly canceled two unannounced live service games, one a God of War title in development at Bluepoint, the other in the works at Days Gone developer Bend.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.