The Ringer-Verse - Our Most Anticipated Video Games of 2026 | Button Mash

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Ben, Matt James, and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier start a new save file for 2026! First they sum up the subjects they think will define the year, from 'Grand Theft Auto VI' to the Steam Machine to rising prices to anti-AI sentiments. Then they select their most anticipated games of 2026 in several categories and wrap up with big-picture predictions. Intro (0:00)Big questions about the year (3:45)Most anticipated games (35:34)2026 predictions (1:29:12)Outro (1:41:42) Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Matt James and Jason SchreierProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone, it's Amy Poehler, and I'm launching a new podcast called Good Hang. In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice. Just be yourself, and the guests will come. Don't be the celebrity that this is their like six things they're doing. I love two crime and cooking podcasts. Is there any way you could combine the two? Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast. So, join me for Good Hang.

It's rough out there. We're just trying to lighten it up a little. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required. Tramphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severe,

active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfairadio.com. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need Weather Tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo

liner or road trip goes sideways. Ketchup goes rogue ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor at The Ringer, making good on my New Year's resolution to continue posting buttonesh. Already achieved. With me today is a man who just finished 100%ing all the games released in 2025, only to find that they have released a sequel to 2025 called 2026, which could include even more content.

Welcome back, Ringer Deputy Art. lead, Matt James. Ben, I got to be honest with you, I still haven't played Death Stranding, too. Okay, well, you can catch up. That could be your New Year's resolution for 26. Now that your Sisypian task begins anew, you start rolling the bolder composed of every video game back up that hill. I look forward to finding out whether you get there. And joining us today, one of the preeminent gaming reporters and authors, the co-host of the fantastic triple-click podcast, the author of Three. bestselling books and a reporter at Woonberg News, where he writes the weekly Game On

newsletter. It's Jason Schreier. Hello, Jason. Hello, and much more importantly than any of those things, the most prolific achievement-oriented guest for people who remember those. I have not tallied up your appearances on that podcast, but you report everything accurately, so I will trust your track right there. Two sources tell me that, no, until someone tells me, otherwise, I will claim that title. Well, you were certainly a recurring guest on our original video game podcast Achievement-oriented.

Somehow you haven't been on button mash until now, which I know has been gnawing at you for years. It has. So here you are. Every morning, I've been waking up, being like, is this the day? Is this the button-mash day? And it is today, finally,

making your button-mash debut. So, 26, not even a week old. And we have already made your year. You're welcome. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's all downhill from here. unless we have you back on, which could happen. We are starting 2026 the same way we started 2024 and 2025 by discussing the upcoming releases that we are most excited about.

Happy New Year to you both, by the way. We're still within the Larry David approved window for wishing each other. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you and to the listeners. And I thought that for this annual exercise, it might be good to get Jason on finally because inevitably you will report that some of the games that we're excited about have been delayed or canceled. So maybe you could just save us some time right now and just tell us not to get excited about certain things. Grand Theftada 6, definitely getting canceled. We'll get there at a second.

This is an audio-only episode, so nobody else can see you. You can just blink twice if we get to something that you have heard that things may not be going great, you know, just so we can temper our expectations. I mean, that's all video games. Well, yeah, it's never going great until hopefully it does finally at the end. So I figured we could start with some big questions before we get to our categories and our picks for the games that we're most excited about. Just to sort of set the stage for 2026 and some of the defining storylines as they are shaping up right now. And speaking of Grand Theft Auto6, the elephant in the room here, let's just get GTA out of the way, though I'm sure we'll return to it.

Jason, by the time we recorded last year's version of this pod, which you were not on, but I remember mentioning on that episode that you had already said that you expected GTA6 to slip to 2026. Good call. You were early on that one. So I'll ask you what your level of confidence about that 2026 release is right now with the November 19th release dates set in hopefully stone, some sort of. substance. It's amazing how time works because a whole year has passed since our first episode of last

year and yet GTA's release is exactly as far away from us now as we thought it was then, except that we didn't actually believe that because you had told us not to. Yeah, I mean, this is how Rockstar works, or at least has worked in recent decades, I suppose, in the recent, the last decade with Red Dead 2. If you look at the history there, they announced it for fall 2017, then it slipped the spring 2018, and then it slipped again to fall 2018, and there it landed October of that year. So I wouldn't be super shocked if that is what happens again. This time around, this is a big and complicated game, and the last I heard, it was still not content complete. That is to say, that people were still finishing things up, still finalizing

levels and missions and seeing what's going to make it into the game. typically the way that game development works, you kind of have your feature complete, your content complete, your bug testing phases, and there's a lot of kind of boundaries blurred along the way in all of those different stages. But they are still making stuff, and we'll hopefully be done with that soon

and just have a whole bunch of time for fixing bugs. But even during those phases, there's always someone who wants to sneak in some last minute stuff. So it's really hard to say, in other words. It's really hard to say right now. And I don't think anyone at Rockstar could tell you with 100% certainty that they will make it out in November. But I think this feels a little bit more real than fall 2025 did. That was never real and even more real than May did.

I think there were people, even when that May release date was announced, which I believe was like last May around there. They said May 26. Even then, I think there were people, at least that I spoke to, who were skeptical of that. and I think people feel like this might be a little bit more, a little bit more solid. But it's really, it's game development, right? It's so complicated. And with a game like this, the stakes are so high.

They really can't settle for anything less than perfection with this release because there's so much riding on it. The entire, like, the stock of take two lives or dies on this game. Every time this game slips, their shares drop 10%, I should say. So, yeah, it's not something that they will release in any, sort of compromised state. So if it comes to, even if it comes to like October and they're like, you know, the game is not 100% ready, I suspect they would rather slip than release it. And then one more thing I'll say is that their fiscal year, which is when they handle all

their financial reporting, that's kind of the most important part of the way that scheduling works in the finance world is they all pay attention to fiscal years. Their fiscal year ends at the end of March. So they do have a little bit of buffer. Obviously, they would want to be out for the holiday season and Black Friday and all the beautiful Christmas sales that they always do. But I think they have a little bit of buffer to next March if they still want to release the game within the fiscal year. So it does give them a little bit of breathing room. I almost want one more delay just to see how CEO of Take 2 Strauss-Zelnick expresses his complete confidence in the game's release date for the third or fourth time.

just new depths of creativity in press releases and statements to people on financial calls. But I'll take it. That was a slightly less pessimistic outlook than you had this time last year. So we're getting closer. I mean, that's how time works, I guess. Assuming the game comes out ever, we are getting closer, however slowly. So that's good, I guess. My reason for optimism, I did, I took a little trip down memory lane after the

last delay and just recap all the history of Rockstar delays of GTA games. And I don't think they have ever delayed a game three times publicly, a GTA game that is. Once it's out there, of course, you know, there are probably innumerable internal delays before they actually set a public target. But once they announce a release date, I think they have only ever pushed that twice. So they would be breaking new ground if they went to a third delay. I don't doubt that they could do it. This game has already broken new ground and taking forever to come out. So, you know, I think they have it in them. But, uh, but I hope that they won't. Though, you know, it's every time GTA shifts, other games shift to make room for it because everyone wants to avoid it. And yet it's kind of a,

you know, developer who cried wolf situation now. So I don't know how confident you could be in that November 19th release date. Like if you're Marvel's Wolverine or something that's slated for around that time, are you actually going to move because there's not a lot of leeway there, or are you going to just wait and see and hope that that stays? It's almost like the Avengers Dune debate with movies and, you know, Dune's Day or whatever, and will they try to be a tandem deal or will one of them shift and you're kind of playing chicken, I guess, except in GTA, it's just such a behemoth that everyone else is waiting with bated breath to figure out when they should release their game. I think with Wolverine, I think they are almost certainly going to come out in September or

October. Since GTA is a very unusual release for a lot of reasons, but one of the most unusual parts of it is that it's only coming out on PlayStation and Xbox. It's not coming on PC. And Xbox is almost a non-factor. I mean, for this game, it won't be. I'm sure it'll sell in the millions on Xbox, but PlayStation is the main platform. So it's almost, in some ways, it's kind of like a PlayStation exclusive in that most of the sales will be on PlayStation. And it, and it's, will sell a lot of PlayStation 5s alongside it. So I suspect that Sony is planning its entire calendar around GTA and will not release anything within the blast zone.

Well, have fun with that. Corporate bean counters. Okay. Matt, I know that GTA is not necessarily at the top of your mind, personally. I'm sure you'll play it, but it's not the thing you're most hyped for. So what is a big question that you have about 2026?

I'm just wondering what exactly Xbox is going to do. They seem to be in a transitional period right now with some hardware looming at potentially the worst time to have to figure out new hardware in the history of gaming. The RAM prices and prices of all computing technology just skyrocketing right now. Are they going to pivot to a PC ecosystem? And if they do, do they have some sort of plan for accommodating the X? Xbox console releases that everyone has been amassing in their Xbox library over the past however many years. Or are they just going to say, well, you're PC now, and some of those games won't work, but enjoy the premium new hardware that you just bought to enter the next phase of Xbox, which we're obviously very excited about, despite the fact that, you know, exclusive titles are an antiquated. form of thinking, apparently. So Xbox is just between a rock and a hard place right now,

and their hardware, I believe a Series X right now is more expensive than a PS5 Pro. Is that right? There may have been a price hike since the last time you checked, so you might want to refresh the listing. It's a fluid situation. Yeah, I'm trying to get a second Series X. Get a real-time quote. Yeah, I think ASIS has already warned of price races, right, to Xbox hardware partner. And that is just, I think, a big question for this year. Just will AI swallow every graphics card and every piece of RAM in the world? And how will that affect prices for consoles will they continue to escalate forever as they age when they would typically decline?

How will that affect steam machine prices, which we still don't know, still aren't set, seemingly? How will that affect the timeline for the next console generation, such as it is the next PlayStation, do they? they push that back because they're projecting shortages. So that does kind of loom over everything. As we're just talking about with GTA6, are we going to see Xbox in a scenario where they are trying to push people towards PC gaming in a year where the biggest video game ever comes out,

not on PC? Is that where we're heading? Is that a winning strategy for Xbox? Yeah. We shall see. Yeah. Yeah. I am apprehensive.

Xbox is so strange. So I've reported with my colleagues of Bloomberg that they've been under a lot of pressure over the last couple of years from Microsoft. Microsoft has been putting these huge profit margins and basically saying, hey, you need to be more profitable. And what's interesting about Xbox's business is that their hardware has always been sold at a loss. And so that's the opposite of profitable. And so it's almost like if they're being told, hey, you need to get more profits and their hardware does the opposite of that, it almost benefits them to sell fewer pieces of hardware. You're nailing it. To get more subscriptions and more software sales. But they've also really struggled to have software hits, too, despite buying up half of the video game industry. Call of Duty last year was a big disappointment, at least by Call of Duty standards.

I think even the most disappointing Call of Duty is still selling many millions. But by Call of Duty standards, disappointment, also critical disappointment, they've had a few big bets that just have not panned out. I don't think Starfield was what everybody wanted it to be. I think that some of their other kind of games have just not performed and certainly not been considered game of the year candidates, whereas PlayStation and Nintendo are just perennial appearances

in the game of the year, slates every game in the year nominations every single year. So it feels like they're just failing on all cylinders. And I think maybe them trying to do all these things at once is a big reason for that. And maybe if they kind of withdraw from the hardware space, Maybe they can put more muscle into software, but I don't know. They put a lot of money into software and just have not been able to hit the same quality bar as their biggest competitors.

Yeah. Last year, they did manage to ramp up the quantity at least, and in some cases the quality, despite some of the disappointments that you just mentioned there as sort of the acquisition finally showed up in releases. and I guess, you know, in terms of exclusives, which it feels outmoded to talk in those terms now, but Sony had sort of a light year. It was Ghost of Yote and not a ton else, so I wonder whether Microsoft can keep up the pace this year, kind of needs to, given this shift in strategy, and whether Sony will rebound as more sort of big first-party games come out the kind that we're used to seeing from Sony. But yes, Microsoft's perplexing strategy, that's a good one.

Any other big questions on your mind, Jason? Yeah, mine is kind of related in that it's how will the video game industry deal with AI backlash? And that's coming in a few ways. One is the hardware part of this, where AI is so domineering that it is negatively impacting the hardware industry and making it more difficult to get B.C. is more difficult to get any hardware. I mean, AI combined with tariffs, to be fair, not just AI. But also, we are seeing, as we saw last month, with the Larian controversy that I kind of inadvertently caused. Did you have anything to do with that, Jason? Don't recall.

Just, man, I did not think that that's going to be what it is. We can get into that if you want. But we're seeing a really loud, hostile, angry backlash from video game fans to the idea of generative AI in their games are being used to make games. Whereas behind the scenes, so many programmers are kind of using generative AI to assist them with various tasks. I mean, really, if you ever use Google, then essentially are using generative AI. So it's really, it's not a question of if it's a question of like where on the spectrum you are as far as using generative AI. And what is that what is that going to mean for the video game industry? Are these game developers just going to hide the fact that they're using Gen AI? Are they going to start stamping those labels, like in some movies, how you see like this,

is made by humans. I think some shows also had that, which is really cool to see. Long story short, which was my favorite show of last year, had a big label on it that is like, this is made by humans, which I thought was really cool. But even there, like, could they say that if one of them used chat GPT to help them research something instead of a search engine? Like, that to me is a really interesting question that I feel like we're going to start to see really dissected this year. So are these companies going to hide the fact? Are they, they're going to just like, do you have to discuss close it if you use chat GPT to help you research a question as part of your storytelling in a game or like you wanted to research, I don't know, blood spatter. And so you use an AI tool to help you do that

or like what's the kind of the boundary? What's the level that players will accept? It seems right now that players absolutely do not want anything that is created by AI in their game. So they don't want art that is made by AI or concepts that are made by AI. They don't want to see any of that slop inside of the content. They're actually checking out, but will they accept it if it's more behind the scenes? Will they even know about it? Will it ever be disclosed?

And then also we have examples like our creators where the voices are done by AI, where people just seem to have accepted it and be playing it anyway. So this is, I think, going to be the dominating video aim industry question of this year is like how people deal with the AI backlash,

what it looks like, where people draw the line, and like how, where that goes, like if it leads to games just kind of sinking because they use AI. These are all questions that I will be asking quite a lot this year. Yeah, I wonder about that too. I also wonder whether the vocal opposition online translates to an actual loss in sales. Always a good question. Yeah, is this a Twitter is not real life sort of situation where a very vocal subset of people

are very up in arms about these things. But then the normies come out in droves and by the, these games anyway without knowing or caring potentially about the AI use. I suspect that the AI experimentation behind the scenes will not grow any less pervasive in the short term. And so I also suspect that maybe the CEOs will learn the lesson of just being a lot more tight-lipped about it. Because we talked about this on our Game of the Earpod, which was after the interview that you did with the CEO of Larry, and which I think you sort of were taken aback yourself. by the controversy had generated and then the subsequent statements, which were maybe somewhat

ill-advised on their part, which seemed to pour fuel on the fire, I wonder whether it just turns into a no-comment situation. I mean, you know, maybe no comment is itself a comment if you don't come out and just do a full-throated condemnation of Gen A in all its forms, then people will assume the worst. And, you know, to get listed on Steam, maybe you're supposed to disclose it or to be eligible for certain awards. And then it's the question of like, well, if it was used during development, but it's not in the final production unless we accidentally left some texture in there and people got mad at us and we patched it out or whatever. So I do wonder whether that just crisis slash frenzy slash moral panic will be able to sustain itself if this does just get more

and more widespread or whether people will just get resigned to it or, yeah, whether they'll just do a better job of hiding it, essentially, so is not to provoke the PR backlash. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a legitimate question as to whether if you use Google for something and you use the little Gen. AI box to get your answer, are you using Gen AI? Like on your whatever project? Against my will. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, right? So it's like if that is your kind of the line that you're setting, then pretty much every game is going to be using Gen. I.I. And then it's kind of like, again, it's just the spectrum and where you kind of have to set the line. on the spectrum. And yeah, I don't know. I think about maybe a comparison here is

crunch, which is something that I've written about quite a bit over the years. Crunch in video game parlance is the kind of excessive overtime, months, weeks or months or even years of just kind of overtime without any end in sight that a lot of game developers have gone through to make their games over the years. And to me, I've always seen crunch as kind of a spectrum, a gradient, because it's not something as simple as like, are we crunching or are we not because it's very easy to be like, well, I'm just going to put in a couple hours here, a couple hours there. Where do you draw the line for what it means to crunch or when it becomes insidious or kind

of a harmful thing as opposed to something that is just putting in a few extra hours? Because that's how you take that game to the next level. And I don't think there's any easy answer to that question, something that I've kind of talked to a lot of people about and gotten the sense that the way that it's kind of shaken out is that there's a big difference between crunch culture and then just kind of like overtime here and there or overtime with a specific goal in mind. And I wonder if we're going to start to see kind of accepted lines of AI use in a similar way where it's like, well, okay, we're not going to accept it here. We are going to accept it there. Because to me, it just doesn't seem like it would be practical.

I've seen a lot on blue sky of people being like, if you ever have used chat GPT, I will never spend a dime on your company again. which doesn't seem practical to me because, again, if you're Googling things, you've used generative AI. So to me, it seems like you need to have kind of a broader conversation about where you draw the lines and what those lines look like. And it feels the more AI just becomes integrated and all these software programs and all these tools we use on a regular basis, the harder it's going to be to avoid it. Sometimes in very annoying ways, it's so annoying when, like, Google is like,

here is this AI prompt of what your next few words should be in this email you're writing or whatever it is. And yeah, it'll be very interesting to see where it all shakes out. Yeah, I guess there's a distinction between AI use that is forced upon us and AI use that we actually embrace and seek out. Because, yeah, you get any new device now. There will be all sorts of blotware and your new phone will be larded up with all sorts of assistance that actually make your life way harder. and I tried to disable and uninstall them as quickly as I can. It's hard. They're generating themselves.

The AI is generating itself. Right. So I hope I haven't ethically condemned myself just by briefly being subjected to those things before I can turn them off. That's maybe a little bit different from actively sitting about Ben Lindberg. Yes. Boycott button mesh. Ben Googled once and it showed him an AI summary.

He's dead to me. Okay. And I guess my one more question here is about the steam machine and whether the second time will be the charm here for Valve. Because in some respects, it seems like the time is right. The conditions are conducive. I know that I am very intrigued by the possibility of an actual valve made single device steam machine that's completely different from the sort of scattershot rollout of the first generation of steam machines. On the other hand, there is the possibility of sticker shock and the price problem. So it could be that this thing is just DOA because they come out and say it's $1,000 and take it or leave it, and people will leave it. But I want one, and I think it would fit well into my life and open up PC playing to me as a primarily console gamer in recent years.

I am very ready for a steam machine in my life. And I hope that the market will be as well. And I hope that the hardware is there for them to make this viable and affordable. But I have my doubts about that. So, you know, that's pretty important, I think, when it also comes to just the console ecosystem and Microsoft's future plans and how the next generation of hardware shapes up, is this thing a success. And you can throw the VR headset in there as well.

You know, I'm kind of past the point of banking on any particular VR release being the big breakthrough for VR, but if it's another step along the path, then that could be important too. So Valve's long awaited, long in the making, long gestating hardware releases. That is certainly something I'm intrigued about. Ben, do you think Valve would take a loss on the Steam machine because it makes so much through games that it then sells on Steam? I think they would make money on me personally. So maybe, but they have, I think they've said that they don't plan to do that, right? That they don't see it as a loss leader.

But I don't know if Gabe has to sell a mega yacht or something to make this work, I hope that he does to just, you know, increase the penetration of the product and extend the monopoly that Steam seems to have over the industry and just will wait for the inevitable insidification of steam that will come one day. Yeah, you're right. Just to confirm what you said. Val's Pierre-Lupé said on the skill up. podcast that the company doesn't plan to sell steam machine at a loss.

Well, we'll see. Okay. And I guess the only other question, which could come up maybe is what does Nintendo have up its sleeve for the second half of the year? Because as I'm looking at the slate of releases that we know about, there is a notable absence in the second half of the year, as is typically the case, Nintendo tends to play things close to the vest. So we know about their upcoming releases for the next few months, Mario Tennis, and a

Yoshi platformer and a fire emblem and plenty of Pokemon. So it's sort of a continuation of last year where it was just, you're not going to get a 3D Mario or Zelda yet or a smash or anything or an Animal Crossing or a new Animal Crossing at least. But here's a bunch of our sort of second tier franchises and also Mario Kart. And that's kind of the plan for now. But if that is still going on after the Switch 2 has been on the market for a year, then there might be some switch two fatigue. So I assume that they have some aces up their sleeve. And that is not

a Mario tennis joke for the second half of the year. So that is something that I will be watching and waiting to find out. Matt, did you have one more thought about the steam machine? Or you ready to move on? I was just thinking about the steam machine in the context of Xbox's upcoming hardware. Yeah. I don't think we really have any idea of when to expect an announcement from Xbox on that hardware itself. But if I were Xbox, I would just be sitting around like ominously

thinking about what price is that steam machine going to be, what price is that steam machine going to be? Because there's a real chance that if that sticker price on the steam machine doesn't make people instantly check out if it's like

okay in people's minds, I think that's a huge wrench in Xbox's plans. they've told us it's a premium machine. They're going to have to make it premium for sure. If the steam machine comes out and is a success, their only option is going to have to be to try and make a machine that they can demonstrate

is way more powerful than a steam machine. And it's a rough time to be doing that, like I said. So that kind of cat and mouse game between Steam, who probably is not really thinking. thinking about Xbox very much. And Xbox, who is probably thinking about Steam Machine a lot, is going to be something that I'm going to be keeping an eye on for sure. Or just capitulate and say the Steam Machine is also an Xbox,

and you can stream Xbox on the Steam Machine. You can turn it into an Xbox. You can install Windows full-screen mode. Sure. Yeah. It's worth noting, though, that the Steam deck is only available through Valve's store. you can't go into a target and buy it, whereas the Xbox is a mass market device.

It's everywhere you can buy machines. And for that reason. Well, there are plenty of retailers that don't have Xbox. Yeah, that's true. Or at least traditionally it has been, I suppose. I guess nowadays it's a whole different story. But point being that, like, if you did a poll in the Ringer Slack, I would guess that most people have heard of the Xbox

and fewer people have heard of the Steam Deck or the Steam machine. And so I think that when the parents of the world are going out for Christmas to get things for their 12-year-old kids, I think they are thinking about Xbox and PlayStation and Nintendo more so than they are Steam, at least for now. And Steam hasn't really kind of cracked that mass market in the way that Xbox has.

So they still have that advantage. And if the new Xbox does look like a PC, even if it's premium price, even if it's, I don't know, 800 bucks, a thousand bucks. If they're still selling it in stores, it has a big advantage over the steam machine. If the steam machine is still only available on Valve's website. The video games channel on Ringer Slack is not among our most active.

I will disclose. Too bad. You should change that, Ben. It's mostly me and Matt. We post a lot talking to each other every now and then someone asks what console to get their kids. It's all next play around there. We have fun. We have fun.

Yeah. Right. Okay. Let's talk about some games that we're. excited about and hope and expect will actually be in our hands at some point this year. So as we have done in the past, we have six categories. And they are as follows sequel slash prequel. Pretty self-explanatory, though we can exclude GTA from consideration here since we have talked about it already. I'm sure it will come up again. But everyone is aware that GTA is slated for release this year and that people are

pretty excited about that. The next category is called New Game Old IP. So, this is a new game, not an existing series, but it's based on existing IP, characters, universe, et cetera. Last year, for instance, I picked Marvel-1943 Rise of Hydra in this category. And guess what? It's eligible again this year. I could run it right back if I wanted to. The next category is all original, just that hot, fresh IP off the presses.

Then there's rerun, which is a remake or remaster or re-release, and adaptation. So this is outside of the realm of actual game. games. This is game adaptations, video game-based movies or TV shows. And finally, the most nebulous and speculative category, unconfirmed, which could be something that has been announced, but hasn't been confirmed for a 2026 release, but we're hoping for the best. Or something so shadowy and secretive that it hasn't been announced at all. It may not even exist more than just a figment in our imaginations, but we're hoping for the best. So we will each name, name our top pick in each of those six categories. And we'll list some honorable mentions as well.

And as we have done in the past, we will assign a hype rating or ranking to each of our picks. So we each are making six picks. We have a scale from one to six. One is the thing that we're most hyped about. Six is the thing that we are least hyped about. I think we've reversed that from past years. So when we each make our picks, we'll say that was our three, that was our four, that was our five to sort of assess our excitement. And I will say, you know, I always include the disclaimer and stipulate that we don't know a lot of the great games that will come out this year. And so this will, by necessity, be an incomplete picture of the games that we will be talking

about when we do our Games of the Year drafts at the end of the year. There will be some surprises. Though I got to say, I went back and looked at what we talked about a bit on this pod last year, and I have to hand it to us. We did okay, I think, at previewing the great games of 2025. We mentioned Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, but didn't mention Donkey Kong Bonanza, which had not been announced at that point, again, Nintendo, being tricky and secretive. We didn't mention blueprints, which I'd imagine was probably already among Jason's most anticipated games.

No, I didn't know about it until. Oh, okay. So even for Jason, then Jason and Matt spent large swats of their 12. 2025's playing Blueprints, but it was not really on the radar in early January. Didn't mention Silent Hill F or Absalom or the Seance of Blake Manor, you know, lots of indie games that we go on to love do not have years-long releases and rollouts unless they're Silk Song, in which case there's radio silence for years, but we at least know that it theoretically exists.

And, you know, I know there's a perception that Claire Obscure kind of came out of nowhere last year. But I think we've taken that too far in retroactively remembering or misremembering how far from the spotlight it was a year ago. I'm not saying it wasn't an underdog. It wasn't as if we predicted that it would be the no-doubt game of the year everywhere and sweep every category at the Game Awards. But we did spend a couple minutes raving about how hyped we were for it, even without knowing much beyond how beautiful it looked in the trailer. And Matt, you and Jessica Clemm, who was on that episode, picked it in a category. It was your top pick. I had split fiction in that category, but I seconded or thirded your enthusiasm. So I'm not totally trying to pat

ourselves on the back to say that we were first on Claire Obscure Expedition 33. I mean, I'm just saying that just as an industry, I think maybe we're underrating the expectations heading into 2025. It's still exceeded by leaps and bounds, all of those expectations. But it was not a totally unknown or dark horse at this time last year. There had been some hype building about it already. It's true, but I had no idea how much time I would spend on fantasy life by, obviously. Well, no. That was in plain sight. And that took us by surprise. Okay. Our sequel slash prequel picks. Jason, would you care to lead off? Sure. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast,

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So I could have gotten in so many different directions here. Yeah. But I'm going to go with Control Resonant, Control 2, which I really enjoyed Control from Remedy, which came out in 2019. And the thought of a sequel that is just as batched it insane. and has some cool action gameplay and hilarious bureaucracy jokes. I'm totally on board.

A lot of melee combat coming our way. Yeah, that's going to be cool. Yeah, the combat and control one was surprisingly good, and I'm very excited to see what they do with it. Also, it feels like Remedy. Needs a big win after 2025 disappointing service multiplayer game, FBC Fire Break, which is kind of a flop for them. Yeah, that got kind of nice.

memory hold. I think I mentioned on our maybe Game of Game Awards reaction pods that like people just sort of elided the existence of that game and just sort of said that like, you know, the Allen Wake 2 was the last game from Remedy or something. There was one in between there. But, you know, nobody noticed, unfortunately for the makers of that game. Okay. Matt, what do you have in prequel? I almost picked Control Resonant also. The one thing that, The one thing that held me back from picking it was the melee, the pivot to what appears to be a pivot to melee. Control, I love for remedy games, I loved control.

I just need to see a little bit more of that combat before I get fully excited in it. I feel like with Silent Hill F last year, that's a game I absolutely adored. And I did feel like the melee combat, the melee only combat in that, not that melee only combat is bad, but I think it gives you a little bit less to work with,

and I fully get why it was a bit of a slog in Silent Hill F, but I'm just a little bit wary coming off of playing Silent Hill 2 remake and then Silent Hill F about that jump to just melee, and now Control is doing a jump to what appears to be just melee. So I just need to see more of that before I get fully excited on it, as much as I can. Can you can. Guess what you're about to pick instead? Because if you weren't going to pick control, I feel like that narrows it down for me. Yeah, so anyway, the game with all the guns in it, Resident Evil 9 record is. There's my pick. And this is my number two. I have been a Resident Evil fan for a long time. And they're cheating. They threw Leon in and we're going back to Raccoon City. And I don't know, the kids are happy that you can play in third person, even though they want you to play in first person.

They got me. They'll keep getting me, I guess. I'm very hyped. I love the Directions series in the past few attempts. And this really seems to be what I want from them, hopefully. So we will see, actually, relatively soon on February 27th. That's right. We won't have to wait very long, which is always nice.

Okay. Well, there are many ways that I could have gone as well. and I just kind of flipped a coin almost. I'm just going to say, Lego Batman, legacy of the Dark Night. That's my number four, by the way. Where were your respective games on your hype rankings?

Wait, is this a sequel prequel or is this new game old IP? I mean, there have been Lego Batman games before, so I feel like it's an extension of the franchise. If this were the first Lego Batman, and there had been other Lego other games, games before. Then I would say new game old IP. I'd say sequel prequel, but it's, it's debatable. I'll give you some backups in case you don't want to count this, but this is my number four. I'm assuming Resident Evil Requiem and Control Resident higher on your rankings. Is that right?

Yeah, my two. You're two. Okay. What was control for you, Jason? Number four. Okay. So I'm going with Lego Batman because this basically seems to be Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker saga, but for Batman, which is a pretty good pitch. It's been a while since we had a real Arkham game, and this seems like kind of the closest we're going to get, at least with the actual Batman brand. I just enjoy a Lego game. You know what you're going to get, and that's why it's only a four for me. I don't know how much of a surprise there will be here, but it's very reliably charming and family friendly. And it seems like they are really trying to do justice to the license and have a big expansive game.

and I don't doubt that they will do it well. But I guess I'll start just listing a lot of other prequels slash sequels. This is always the most stacked category, culture being what it is. Well, Ben, it's also worth noting this could be the last Batman game before Netflix owns the IP. Oh, that's true. Just under the wire. Okay, the last hurrah. And that's coming May 29th in theory, by the way.

So others that I considered, I'm kind of into Gears of War Eday. I know that the Gears of War franchise has lost some luster, but this pitch, and I liked Gears of War Five, you know, the open world experimentation and the storytelling and all the rest of it. And they're not continuing that thread, but they're not in this particular game. And I'd like to see that continued at some point. But the pitch here, you know, take out the open world. elements, not that I minded them, but just focus on that sort of old school, very well-created linear gears experience and Dom and Marcus and Emergence Day and the origin story and pretty

graphics and all the rest of it. I hope that that revitalizes gears because it needs sort of a shot in the arm. Also, Forza Horizon 6 is also on the horizon later this year, so to speak. I have not really been a big Forza guy because I'm just not a big racing game guy but I don't make new use resolutions but if I did it would be become a Forza Horizon guy. I'm going to give so easy.

I know. It's very easy. I'm going to give six a real shots to immerse myself in this game. It's set in Japan like every game is set in Japan and every show is set in Japan the past few years but I don't care.

It looks quite compelling. So I'm into that. Slade Aspire two is coming out. That seems like something that could take up a lot of our time. I mentioned Mario Tennis Fever. Looking forward to another family-friendly switch game

that I could play with my daughter. Another fire emblem, fortunes weave. Ace Combat 8. Wings of Thieve. You know, I'm excited for Wings of Thieve, Matt. You've discussed that. Bubsy 4D. Anyone?

Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Okay. What were you going to list, Matt? I had the new Onimusha. in this category. Yes, way of the sword. Yeah, it's been too long.

I loved Onimusha back in the day. I'm ready to see a new take, especially while Capcom is absolutely crushing everything they try pretty much, except maybe one of the Monster Hunter Wilds. Tomodachi life, there's a new Tomodachi life coming out. There's rhythm and groove for all of us. Nintendo Weirdos, Good Year, looks like. Speaking of which, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam.

Yes, I am a Professor Layton, I think there's been some questionable stuff going on. Is that right with the Gen AI? Did I hear rumblings of this with Leighton? Has anyone heard this? Yeah, the CEO of the makers of Leighton came out. And I think he was mistranslated because I think people kind of skewed what he said. Maybe you can find it online because he came out later and was like, actually, I was mistranslated.

But he said something about Gen A.I., which again, just CEOs being honest, I guess. since this. Terrible idea. I would love to not have any complications with me enjoying Professor Layton, so we'll see about that. I mean, if Gen. I, if they tried to, like, make puzzles in Leighton and Gen. AI, the answers would just be wrong,

and it would just be impossible to play. And Neo3 was the other, on my radar. That's coming out soon. Next month, right? Or end of this month. Early 20, 26, at least. Okay. Then there's theoretically fable.

What's your, I didn't know what temperature. That's new game old IP, I feel like. Yeah, I guess. It could also be rerun. I'm not, I don't know where that fits. I wouldn't be surprised if what it is is not a 2026 release, regardless of the category, because we just haven't seen a whole lot of it.

Yeah. Yeah, it may very well be. But whenever that comes out and whatever it is, I'm tentatively excited for it. Let's see. Lightning round. I'll just list off some others. Celasta 2. The Legend of Heroes Trails Beyond the Horizon. Vampire Crawlers. That could be good. Echo Generation 2. Monster Hunter Stories 3. Twisted reflection. Super Meat Boy 3D. Tropico 7. Mortal Shell 2. Enter the Gudgeon 2. Warhammer 40K. Dawn of War 4. Residents, a plaid tale legacy. Blackfrost, the long dark 2. Then there's also. I guess, subnotica too. Although troubled development does not begin to describe what is happening with that game. So who knows if that will come out or what form it will be in.

There seems to be quite a disagreement between the makers of the game and the publishers of the game about whether that game is good. So we will see. All right. I guess I've listed most of the prequels slash sequels. Apologies for anything that we owe me there. You got to Bubsy way faster than I expected that. I guess I could have probably saved Bubsey. Maybe. Okay. Next category, new game, old IP.

Jason, what you got? Yeah. So, okay, this is kind of, well, I don't know, I'll just describe it. Are you guys familiar with the Dangan Rampa series? Yes, there's a remake coming. Yeah. So the Dangan Rampa series is this visual novel slash adventure game series about each game is kind of set in this abandoned school where a bunch of students. have been locked and they are told, hey, if you want to survive, you got to kill each other. Last Man Standing kind of Battle Royale style. And they have this, there's this mascot, this adorable sadistic bear named Monakuma, who is always kind of the host of these games.

And it gets pretty sick and twisted and hilarious and very entertaining in that true battle royale style. And so the creator of this series left Spike Chunsoff, the developer and was doing his own thing, including this game that came out last year called 100-line Last Defense Academy. It's just a bunch of words that are just trying to jam together. Again, you spent hundreds of hours playing. Yeah, just forever, forever hours long because it's got 100 endings.

It's just massive work of genius. Anyway, so he left the series. So Dangen Rumpa had kind of ended. And also the third game in the series, Dangen Rumpin V3, had this ending that made it seem like the series was not going to continue. And then kind of out of nowhere, Spike, Spike, Fentsoft announced this remake of the second game, which is bizarre, because the first three games had already gotten remasters,

like for new consoles and they look great and they seem great, and they don't need remakes because they're visual novels. There's something to remake, really. So it just seemed like a very bizarre decision. And they called it Dengen Rompah 2x2. And this is a bit of a spoiler for the third game, but there's actually a very clever twist that plays around with the title of that third game, and specifically with numbers.

And if you look at Dangenrumpa 2x2, it's also an interesting, there could be an interesting twist there, because 2x2 is 4. And so there's a theory that I've been thinking about a lot, or at least that I had when this was first announced, like, hey, wait a minute, is this actually secretly Dangan Rompah 4

that is disguised as a remake of Dangen Rumpa 2? It should be a very Dangen Rompah too. It's buried in some advanced arithmetic there. Yeah, it's kind of, I mean, this is kind of like Hideo-Kishima or what Hideo-Kishipa would only dream of this sort of kind of fucking with fans.

And so I think this is going to be like a new game old IP thing where it seems like it's a remake of Dangerumpa-2 and it's really a brand-new game and I guess it could be considered a sequel also but let's just call it new game old IP. I'm very excited about it especially if it is what it seems to be. If it's actually

just kind of like a remake of Dengenarumpa-2 and it's just the same game over again then I'll be disappointed. But I think it'll be something subversive and totally new, and I'm very excited about the prospects. Okay. I wrote that down in my rerun category, but you've made a compelling case that I may have misclassified it. I also just discovered that I left out some sequels that I meant to shout out so as not to offend any fans. Pathologic 3, Code Vane 2, Coffee Talk, Tokyo, high on life too. Those are down in the Bubsy 4D tier, perhaps. All right. Matt, what do you have

in your game old IP. This is a tough category for me. It is for sure. Yeah. I guess I'm going to have to pick one. I can't really, I was going to pick 007 First Light,

but I'm not going to because seeing Lenny Kravitz as the lead knocked it down a peg for me. Lenny Kravitz famously a musician, less so an actor. Yeah. I don't know why I.O. Interactive has such a fascination with celebrities. I'm glad the bad guy isn't Eminem.

But is Lenny Kravitz a big jump up? I'm not sure. My theory is that this game is just like the ultimate Gen X game and it's only going to appeal to Gen X. It's like James Bond and Lenny Kravitz is, I just am very curious to see if there's a market for this game beyond people who are in their 50s. Right. Yeah. I'm intrigued because.

On the one hand, there basically hasn't been a James Bond game for, what, 13 years since Legacy bombed? And there hasn't been a good James Bond game in 20 years or so. So the track record isn't great, but that again, fresh start and not really connected to the movies at all, and not using a movie character, not tethered to any existing storylines. And it's I-O. It's Hitman meets James Bond, which on the surface sounds like a pretty good pitch, but who the heck knows? And they just delayed it for a couple months for extra polish.

Great. Like, I.O. is fantastic at what they do. It makes so much sense for them to be making a James Bond game. I think I just would have been, with the Lenny Kravitz thing, like if he came out at the Game Awards looking like a character

in that game, and instead he just kind of came out looking like Lenny Kravitz and like Lenny Kravitz is the character. Do you know what I mean? He's essentially playing himself on some level. Yeah, exactly.

And people are, comparing that a little bit to like when Giancarlo Esposito was in Far Cry, and it was like, that guy's a tremendous actor. Yeah.

It's different. And he's got better abs though than John Carlo. So there's that. And I'm tempted to pick Wolverine, but we haven't seen enough of it. So I'm going to, this is very optimistic,

but this game might not even come out in 2026. I'm going to pick Star Wars Zero company. Yeah. Which is, not the most high-profile Star Wars game on the horizon, or maybe even the second most high-profile, but this is the Star Wars game you might have forgotten about already

that is essentially like a tactical Star Wars game, like X-Com needs Star Wars, made by the developers of X-com, and is specifically right in my wheelhouse. So if they can hit on that, make it a good story, I have no doubt that they will do a good job making the, gameplay interesting. That is what they do there. So that is my pick Star Wars Zero company, and I have that as my number four. Okay. What was two by two for you, Jason? Three. Okay. My three, I will just take Marvel's Wolverine since you have left it for me.

And it's true. Maybe we haven't seen enough, but I've almost seen enough just knowing that it's made by Insomniac, and historically that tends to be a pretty good indicator. what we have seen of it and we got a presentation, saw some gameplay. And I guess I'm a little less hyped than I was, say, for the Spider-Man, games just for the nature of it, not being an open-world game. Not that it should be an open-world game with a different character who's less of, I think, lends himself to the open-world format. But it just seems extremely uncharted-ish. And I liked uncharted back in the day. but I don't know whether it will turn out to be more than that.

I guess it's uncharted maybe with better, more visceral combat and certainly more violence, but I'm basically just banking on the track record and Wolverine being a cool character. I don't love that Insomniac has turned into a Marvel-making machine, essentially, for the most part, for years to come. But this is a cool character to use them for, and they are essentially undefeated. And so I will hope that that track record continues. And at the very least, it looks like, you know, globetrotting games, lots of different environments and locales. And I hope it will be good.

Other things that I considered, the other Star Wars game that is probably coming out this year, Galactic Racer, which I think many people are misdescribing as a pod racing game. I don't know if it's a pod racing game at all, but it is certainly not exclusively a pod racing game. That doesn't necessarily make me less excited for it. Maybe we're overdue for a speeder and swoops game. But Galactic Racer, I put Marathon in this category just because it is an existing IP. I don't know if I'm looking forward to it, but it's coming. So we'll find out whether they manage to course correct after the initial response. Also, I mentioned just the cornucopia of Pokemon coming this year. And there's, you know, rumors that that we might get mainline Pokemon games

this year, Gen 10 games. There have been leaks, et cetera, but we know that we're getting Pokemon Pokopia, which is essentially Animal Crossing meets Pokemon, so maybe that's why we don't need a new, brand new animal crossing, because we're going to get Pokemon Pocopia.

There's also Pokemon Champions, which is more of a fighting game, and really there's a lot of, like, branded fighting games this year. There's, well, 2XCO, which already came out in some form, but is coming out in a full release soon.

There's Marvel token Fighting Souls. There's My Hero Academia, All's Justice. There's the seven deadly sins to origin, so that's a little bit different. But invincible versus, you know, lots of just like brawlers and fighters using recognizable properties that's going to be big this year.

There's a Game of Thrones RTS, war for Westeros. Maybe that'll be good, and people can stop playing Game of Thrones mods for Crusader Kings. There's a new Scott Pilgrim game, Scott Pilgrim EX, I guess it's sort of a sequel, but more of a spiritual sequel.

I put it in this category, and that looks kind of good, you know, new original story, et cetera. There is a Halloween game that is called Halloween. There's Battlestar Galactica, scattered hopes coming sometime this year, supposedly. I mentioned the Seven Deadly Sins. Neo3 should have been in the other category, sequels, prequels. So, yeah, there's a fair amount to work with here. I'll go with Marvel's Wolverine, but I could have easily selected. some others there. I guess I'd put Yoshi in the mysterious book in that category too,

and then it's kind of a continuation. I guess you could sort of say it's a sequel, but these categories tend to be a bit blurry. I'm not going to dissect the Yoshi timeline and lore to figure out exactly if it's a single. I will leave that to others. Yes. Okay. All original. Fresh IP. Jason, what's you got? Yeah. One of the games I'm looking forward to most this year is Mina the Hollower. That's mine too. You stole mine.

The next game from Yacht Club Games, the makers of a shovel night. I did a big story about them last month where, was it last month or two months ago? Two months ago. Last one of those. Where, what is time?

Where I went to visit them at their studio and talked to them a bunch about the challenges that have turned this into what they thought would be like a one or two year project into a six year project. And now the future of their studio is banking on it. But fortunately, I think the game looks amazing. It is a top-down kind of cross between Zelda and Bloodbourne that has got the kind of the Link's Awakening style

of gameplay where you go around these screens and slash enemies and cardinal directions and solve puzzles and jump and also has this great vibe and tone from of the kind of the gothic horror of Bloodbourne mixed with the classic humor that Shovel Knight had in Spades, no pun, attended with kind of that soul's level of difficulty and the mechanics surrounding it. Like when you die, you drop your resources and you have to have bones in this case. And you have to go get them. The bones are your money, as Yac Club likes to say. And it looks amazing. The music is incredible from Jay Kaufman, who the chip tune artist also did all the shovel night music. And I played this, the most recent demo, which came out last year,

and I played through it all three times. That's how I'm excited I am for this game. So, yeah, this is, I'm very excited. for this one. This is my number two, would be number one, but my number one is kind of a made-up fantasy that I'll talk about later. I love the demo of Mina the Holloware, too. I was already excited going into that demo, and once I had played that game, the demo,

I couldn't believe how much more excited I got for it. I was very surprised that they delayed it because that demo said to me, like, this game is ready to go. So they must be really getting it right. I couldn't be more excited for that. I hope we do get a release date for that pretty soon. Technically, there is no release date, if I'm not mistaken now.

I think it'll be pretty soon. Within the next couple months, would be my guess. And yeah, I can actually speak to why they delayed it because they showed me. I sat down with Sean Velasco, who's the head of the studio and the director of the game, and he was just kind of zipping through a build of the game for me. And he was like, look at this, this and this. I need to put polish here. we need to do this, this, and this.

Like he was showing me the final dungeon how some of the visuals were a little bit off where you couldn't tell that this was a door here. You couldn't tell that this should be leading you this way. We want to get players' eyes more on this. And so we want to put this little graphical flourish. Or he showed me like this swamp area where he was like, you know,

people couldn't tell that there's a shop over here. So we're going to add a little bit of pink to signal your eye to like the fact that there's this pink in the shop over here. They're yellow painting the whole game, Ben. Exactly. But it's not just that. It's also like, so like you were telling me about how there is this one, there's this one area where there's like a mechanic that you have to like go under a tree branch to protect yourself from this lightning that is striking. And if you go in the normal direction, then you'll learn that mechanic through the context.

Like it'll put a tree in front of you and you'll figure out pretty quickly that you have to do that. But because it is an open world game, you can also reach that area from another way. And so it doesn't have the same tutorialization. So they needed to figure out, okay, like how are we going to make it? you can learn about this mechanic in a safe way, even if you come from this other direction. So it's like it's a million different questions like that or game design little bits of polish that they need to do like that.

And that essentially, I mean, that's what we kind of, when game developers describe polish, that is essentially what they're talking about, where it's just like things that elevate a game from like good to great, often that you would never have any idea about as a player if they weren't in there. Or if they were, you don't even notice them, but they just like make it feel like such a smoother experience. So that's why I was like, yeah.

So excited. Lots of Castlevania comps too, just in terms of the sort of setting more so than the gameplay. Yeah, and smashing candles for items. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So this was my number two as well.

So jinx, Jason and I have high hopes. This was originally slated to release late last year. So like you, I hope that it will not be too long. man, this was really a loaded category too. Yeah, I have a runner up. Just real quick, it's the blood of Don Walker, which is this new vampire game from the director of the Witcher 3

and his brother and a bunch of other ex-Witcher people in Poland. And they're making this game, and it seems super cool. He plays this vampire. And the concept is really cool because it's not really like a traditional RPG where you have this big main storyline,

like Witcher 3 that you have to go through and then a bunch of side quests. Instead, it's kind of set over the course of X number, of days in this city and you have goals, but you can approach them in a bunch of different directions. So it's more kind of a nonlinear experience. More like maybe Disco-Eleasia maybe is a good comparison. I'm not 100% sure what the final product is going to turn out to be like, but it seems really cool and looks really good. Yeah, all their gameplay walkthroughs

have been pretty interesting. Yeah. Matt, what's your pick? This is so hard for me. I have like eight runners. I settled on Saros, the new How Smart Game. from the makers of Returnal. Returnal, I really, really vived with, and I just have full faith in Housemark that they're going to make me an all-original follow-up that delivers the trailers look amazing. I'm intrigued.

It looks like there's going to be another cool narrative in this like there was in Returnal. So that is the one that won out in this category for me, but I also have Phantom Blade Zero, which is the S-game studio. It kind of looks like a Soulsish. Everyone who's gotten hands on this has had a lot of fun with it. That's a Beijing studio.

September 9th, I mean, in the holloway. I'm excited to get into Philibildia with the Adventures of Elliot, the Millennium Tales, where Enix kind of plays like a 2D Zelda. there's a demo out of this that I became absolutely obsessed with. It's got an HD-2D look, and I couldn't be more hype for that. Witchbrook, which has got Stardue Valley vibes in a school of witchcraft with four-player co-op.

That is right up my alley as well. Orbitals, which was a real game awards. Harry Potter without the problematic. Guilt-free Harry Potter. So we learned that they use Gen. A.I.I. or something. But yes, right.

All the spells are genii. Orbitals, which we saw have revealed at the Game Awards, which has like an 80s anime look on Switch 2. That's a co-op game. Mix tape by the Artful Escape devs. I knew you would mention that. Yeah.

Anapurna published whatever that means these days after the deconstruction and reconstruction of Anapurna, but still, yeah. And then there are two more off the radar for me that are really high up there, Mariachi Legend. is a Metroidvania on the horizon that has a beautiful art style,

really cool music. It just looks fantastic to me. There's a little game called Never's End coming out this year. That is a tactics game. If you've enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics, I think this is heavily inspired by that. They have some cool elemental interactions,

environmental interactions. I played an early demo of this and was very impressed. So that's about half of my things that I'm excited for. Yeah, I'm shocked that you didn't mention Pragmata. I'm hyped for that too, man. Yeah, I mean, it really is, it's the year of Capcom. I'm saying that about a lot of things.

The year of Pokemon, the year of, but the year of Capcom, I think there's just a lot of Capcom coming down the pike here. What else did I have? Well, there's mouse PI for hire. which is sort of a throwback boomer shooter with kind of a cuphead look. There's a new from software game, the Dusk pods. Switch exclusive multiplayer only, but a lot of people love Night Rain, so that's new and interesting.

There's a game called Replaced that a lot of people are pretty excited about. It's, well, I guess there's Reanimal and there's also Replaced, which I keep getting confused because they are mostly just titles and not actual games yet. but replaced as like a action platformer sort of cyberpunky. Yeah. And then Reanimal is a horror game, but like co-op, right? And sort of survival horror, stealth kind of game that looks really interesting. Orbitals, you mentioned, we talked about that when it was announced at the Game Awards.

Out of Words is another platformer. You can't talk, so you have to just figure it out without talking. There is Mio memories in orbit, which looks very much like a Matt James game. It is. Yes, I figured. I think people are playing that already. I heard good things. Someone DM me about that the other day.

There is a dentch attack, which just like looks kind of wild and fun and is just about like it's Tony Hawk with like trains basically. You're just like grinding with trains and it's sort of cell shaded and it's. You know, jet set radio looking. There is Romeo is a Dead Man, which is the new Suda 51 game. Yeah, so you know that's going to be weird and wonderful in some way. There's zero parades for Dead Spies, which is one of the many, many games to come out of, you know, the studio that made Disco Elysium. And that's been fractured into so many parts and so many different games contending for the title of successor to Disco Elysium. but that's one of them.

Also, thick as thieves. This must be on your radar, Jason, right? Because it's from Warren Specter, it's a maker of thief and DeiSX and lots of emergent games and stealth stuff. That looks kind of good, maybe. It's a multiplayer immersive sim, which I saw a demo of it at Summer Games Fest last year,

and I came in a little skeptical as to how multiplayer immersive sim might work, and I left a little skeptical as to how multiplayer. I'll leave it at that. We'll see. We'll see. Okay. What else? Quickly, there's, well, John Carpenter, Big Gamerer, has a game called Toxic Commandos. Yeah, and that's made by the same people as Space Marine, too, Sabre Interactive. So I normally wouldn't care about a multiplayer zombie game, but that has my attention. Nocturn, a survival game, Mugenics, which is a tactical, rogue-like RPG simulator. genre maship hybrid. There are no ghosts at the grand. From the greater binding of Isaac.

Right? Yes, exactly. Yes. And there are no ghosts at the grand, which is, I guess, kind of a cozy game, but weird. I'm hyped for that.

First person. Yeah, it's like renovating a decrepit, supernatural hotel sort of situation. Inheritive hotel. It's hard to describe games, I've found. But, yeah, Tides of Tomorrow,

which, you know, it's like a first person adventure game in sort of like an ocean planet sort of setting. Stupid never dies, which is hard to keep all of these unreleased games straight, but it's like a dungeon crawler kind of action RPG sort of set up. It's always like tossing out buzzwords and genres like Valor Mortis, yet another Soulslike. There we go. Do we need another Soulslike?

I don't know, but it could be good. It looks good. It's first person, and it's by the devs of Ghost Runner, who handled first person action very well. Yeah. And there's been people getting hands on this game have been pretty impressed. So that's definitely Ballarmortis on the radar. Yep. Cousan City of Wolves, which is a top-down shooter.

Also, a game that was delayed from late last year that I was pretty excited about and still in. Cairn, which is a climbing game. But I do like climate. It's like a survival simulation climber. My concern is that it will be like too realistic and that it'll turn into like, you know, meters constantly depleting and needing to like craft things to repair my callous torn fingers and such. Ben, did you play a game about digging a hole last year? I did not. No.

You tend to go up. I was wondering if you had the chance to go down last year. Well, I played Ducky Combinanza. So that was down. I could go in either direction. In Hades, too, I went up and down. So, you know, good for you. Swing both ways, as they say, in that context, exactly.

Okay. Anything else in this category? Oh, Bradley the Badger, which is a game that I felt bad that we didn't talk about in our game awards reaction because it was like announced in the pre-show as opposed to the main events. But it's sort of a Conquer's Bad Fur Day like, I guess, you know, spiritual successor, kind of like lampooning video game genres, taking the piss out of them a little bit. that sounds interesting.

Crimson Desert, which we have discussed, I think, Matt. And the closer at the Game Awards, which was maybe miscast as a closer, but still looks kind of interesting if you're into hero shooters, high guards.

My voice keeps going higher and higher and higher, but it looks kind of, the movements, at least, intrigues me somewhere. I imagine we'll be talking about this game a lot in one way or another this year. Yep. Okay.

On Toes. Yeah. There's one more. Oh, yes. Thank you for mentioning. The Game Awards. Yes. Another game by frictional games.

That looks very cool and right up both of our alleys. Yes. And 26 allegedly. Demon Tides, which looks like kind of a throwback PS2 era platformer. And we need more of those post-astrobot. Make as many as you want. I will play them. Okay.

Next categories will probably be a bit quicker because they're a little thinner. But our rerun, remake, remaster, re-release category, Jason, what do you have? Dragon Quest 7. I thought so. That is the remand. You love a 100-hour Japanese RPG. I do. And allegedly, this is going to be fewer than 100 hours because one of the problems of the original Dragon Quest 7 is that it was super bloated, even by JRP's standards, even by Dragon Quest standards.

It was just a little too much. and the creators acknowledge that when they announced this remake, and they said, hey, we're going to streamline some things, we're going to cut some things, and turn it into a little bit of a more focused experience, which I appreciate. I don't know if I'll finish this game because there's only so many turn-based battles

with the same peppy orchestra music that you can play before you just want to go do something else. But I'm still pretty excited. Which is not up endings for you, right? Yeah. It's about 99 more endings. It's true. Yeah, it's true.

And this is not HD-2D. this is a full-on Final Fantasy remake sort of. No, it's not quite that ambitious, but it is like it's got kind of a claimation style, new art style. Yeah, it's kind of on the spectrum of like just traditional remaster and then like Final Fantasy 7 remake style blowouts. I think it's somewhere in the middle.

It's not quite as ambitious as that, but it's more than just kind of like a new coat of paint. Okay. What's that on your ranking? Number five. Number five. All right. Matt, how about you?

I was going to pick that too, but I'll just pick something different to be interesting. It's not too far behind it in my interest anyway. Fatal Frame 2 Crimson Butterfly Remate, which is out on March 12th. I never played Fatal Frame 2 or Crimson Butterfly. And I've heard that it is a really good survival horror game, very scary to twins in an abandoned town,

there's this mechanic with the camera where you're kind of sealing away ghosts. I've just for years been told, like, you've got to play this. And so I'm pretty excited that there is a remake on the horizon, and I'm very amped to finally play it. Is that your five or your six? That is my five. Yeah. Okay.

Well, whatever I picked in this category is probably going to be my six, just because I tend to be a little less hyped about things that exist in some form already, even if a remake is needed. So I considered going in a number of directions. I thought about Tomb Raider, legacy of Atlantis, the remake of the first Tomb Raider. I thought about a little game called Halo Campaign Evolved. But ultimately, maybe against my better judgment, I selected Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time, which in theory, on paper, is actually coming out this year, possibly soon.

And given how long it's been in development and how many times it's been delayed, this is a very risky pick. But it was a great game in its original form. It's been a long time. Enough time has elapsed that I think a remake is acceptable. And it sounds like they're maybe making some interesting changes, whether they'll be good or bad. I don't know, but at least it'll be different enough

that maybe it'll be worth replaying if you already replayed the original. And if it finds a new and bigger audience, then great. So Prince of Persia, sends a time. fingers crossed that they don't completely ruin this thing. What else is under consideration? I guess there's Gothic 1 remake. There's some sort of maybe tentatively like Splinter Cell remake, maybe. Max Payne remake, maybe.

There's an Assassin's Creed remake of some sort of two of five of them. That's unconfirmed, but widely rumored, right? Well, of Black Flag, right? Assassin's Creed 4, which I am actually pretty excited. excited about because that's a great game. So if that is real and if that comes out, then that's exciting. Maybe, I guess, evidently no DSX remaster this year, because that got delayed after the graphics got panned. So, I mean, you know, yeah, probably Halo is like the biggest name here. It's just how excited am I personally, you know, for any PlayStation people out there who just never got to play

the original Halo. I'm happy for you that you get to play the original Halo without multiplayer. I think there's three new missions in there too. Yeah, and they've already worked like the library, so it's a little less annoying evidently, but I don't know. I mean, maybe I'll check it out.

It is a great game. It is one of my favorite single player campaigns for a first person shooter ever. And seeing it all pretty like might be worth revisiting. But, you know, I've sunk untold hours into that game. So I'm, you know, tempering my enthusiasm somewhat.

But you're going to have so much fun with that, I guess. I hope. You're going to be talking about how much fun you're having playing through Halo again, I'm sure. Maybe so. Maybe the nostalgia will kick in. That's what they're banking on and they're probably right. Okay. Penultimate category, adaptation, a video game-based movie or TV show.

I was sort of surprised to see that there's a ton confirmed, especially on TV. but what did you guys go with Jason? I just wrote Mario, I guess, because like, who cares? Yeah, so that's your six. That's my six. Yeah, okay. Matt, what do you have?

You know, adaptation is always my six. And I also was like Mario, I guess. You know, I thought about it. Mortal Kombat 2, I am looking forward to a good amount. They have Johnny Cage in it, played by Carl Urban. The first one was dumb in a way that I enjoyed. I think the second one will be dumb in a way I enjoy. Yeah.

How about you, Ben? I'm taking the other fighting game movie adaptation, and I'm excited enough for this that I gave it a four, and that's Street Fighter. Mortal Kombat 2 is coming in mid-May. Street Fighter is coming in mid-October. It just looks bonkers and bad shit, and the casting announcement alone,

and then that just Game Awards, spectacle of everyone just filling the stage and seeming high on life or something. And I hope that it's good. I hope they strike the right tone, which it seems like they are tentatively, speculatively, hopefully. And maybe it'll be like self-consciously silly and they'll go too far in that direction and it'll spoil it. But I'm hoping that it will be in that sort of so bad it's good sweet spot and kind

of true to the original but better. and just with a bunch of weird, interesting actors. So, Street Fighter for me, though, you know, I'm somewhat looking forward to the Super Mario Galaxy movie, which is coming soon, April 3rd. And I just hope they take some more chances with that one, basically. I don't know why they would, because playing it safe worked out fantastically well

at the box office and on streaming, and that movie completely achieved its goals of establishing a Nintendo Cinematic Universe. So probably they'll just run it back, but at least if it's kind of galaxy based and based on a bunch of different Mario games. And I just, I hope they play a little less safe and maybe make it a little less kind of paint by numbers, Mario, not Mario paint by numbers, Mario, now that, you know, they've done it. They've shown that it can't be done.

It can be super successful. I guess if anything, that gives them greater incentive not to rock the boat. But creatively speaking, I hope that, you know, it didn't overstay its welcome. It was good for kids. It was 90 minutes or whatever, but if it were a little more creatively interesting, for me, at least, that would make it more fun. We've also got Return to Silent Hill. Yes, at the end of this month. Very shortly.

Yes. And a Resident Evil reboot that we haven't really seen anything of yet, from what I understand. Yeah, right. But it's Zach Kreger coming off of weapons. So that alone, kind of a compelling. pitch, I hope. On TV, there's just not a lot, right? Like slim pickings. I mean, maybe some stuff will be announced and will be released, but as far as what we know now, there's Devil May Cry Season 2. There's an animated Sekaro show, no defeat, but unless someone surprises us with,

you know, one of the big budget things in development, I mean, you know, there's like a god of war show and a mass effect show and all sorts of things coming, but probably not soon enough to qualify. So yeah, it seems like a light slate, which I guess is okay because it's been a really full slate for the past several years. So there's a little lull. That wouldn't be the worst thing, but it did make it a little bit difficult to make a pick in this category that I was super excited about, hoping for the best for Street Fighter. And I guess that takes us to our final category, unconfirm. So this is where, you know, Jason can work his source. or not or accuse himself from his sources and just be in the same boat as all of us,

just wildly speculating. But what did you choose for this category? This is wild speculation. Okay. Don't aggregate Jason Trier reports, whatever you're about to say. I think there are two games I could put here, but I'll go with my number one, which is if Ace Attorney 7 comes out this year, I will be one happy camper. I would also go with persona six. I think both of those would be my unconfirmed kind of number ones, I will say.

Those would be number one on the list if either of those were announced and came out for this year. I mean, I think we know it's kind of accepted that both of those are on the way at some point. But if they both came out this year, that would make me very happy. Okay. Matt, what would make you happy? Well, same as it ever was, hoping for a new Castlevania game. just always hoping for a new Castlevania game every day.

So that's not going to happen. So let's pivot to something that also is not going to happen, which is it is the 40th anniversary of Zelda this year. So I would like a new 2D Zelda game. And that's not going to have it either. We just got one. Yeah. We just got one a couple of years ago.

That goes of wisdom doesn't count for you. I'm sorry. A better. Yeah. Yeah. I liked echoes of wisdom, but yeah. I liked it too, but, you know, somewhere when I was 50 plus beds deep, I started to wish for more traditional.

Beds were OP in that game for sure. Yeah. Yeah. That allow me to suggest Mina the Hallower, which is both a new, a new Castlevania and a new TV Zelda game. Yeah. I had a great time with Pipistrello last year as well in that same vein. That was a very great experience for anyone, Zelda.

hunting. Yeah. Jason, I know you recently replayed Oracle of Ages slash seasons, which are just maybe they're not really my favorite Zelda games, but like emotionally they are in a way, just incredible, incredible games. Capcom also, shout out. But yeah, something like that, you know, like the totally traditional, which, you know, Nintendo seems to have moved past that format and it's all about experimentation and putting the tools in the players' hands and it's a sandbox. and that's great too, obviously. But I just want both. Why not both?

Yeah, I think we'll probably, you know, we'll get some sort of reissue or remaster of some Zelda property at some point this year, I assume. Some people are clamoring for an Aquarina of Time remake. That also seems fairly optimistic for me. I would speculate wildly about Winwaker if they didn't just dump the GameCube game onto Nintendo Switch online.

which kind of deflates the possibility to me of a Wind waker HD remake with the widescreen supported. But, you know, I would love to be wrong about any of these things. Yeah. I just played through a link between worlds for the first time, the 3DS Zelda. And, man, they could also give people a way to play that. it would be a good idea that game is outstanding. Greg, yeah. Jason on triple-click this past year,

you replayed Ocarina, which holds up. And as you said, on your pot about that, it's just there's something to the curated dungeon experience. And, you know, it's trade-offs. The open world and the freedom and the creativity, that's all great too. And you maybe miss that when you go back to the old school Zelda's, but there's something to not just a shrine,

but an entire dungeon constructed from the ground up, around a certain item and just using all the possible implications of that tool to just, even if it's linear, that's okay, because it's still brilliant. And I do, I miss that. Yeah, 100%. Or just stack 20 beds and skip to the egg. I could do that too. Well, by unconfirmed, I mean, I'm just, whatever. Maybe this is chalk. Maybe this is obvious. I'm just, I'm going for it. I don't care. Half Life three. I just predict it every year until it comes true, which it may never, but that would be my number one if it happened. I am loath to cite polymarket slash calchi slash other prediction markets because that seems like yet another Pandora's box that we

have opened. But as we record, the odds of Half-Life 3 releasing this year, according to Kalshi, 47%. The odds of it being announced this year on Polymarket, 53%. So the people, seem to think that it's a 50-50 proposition that at least it's confirmed, if not released, that it's just a coin flip. I'd probably take the under on that. And, you know, what people think is mostly meaningless unless Gabe Newell is insider trading on prediction markets in order to afford his next mega yacht. But there is at least a consensus that it could happen. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility. And I went back and, you know, we're about to make some closing predictions. I was reviewing our notes, my notes from last year's episode,

and my prediction was that this would be the year of Valve because we'd get Steam apps on consoles and we'd get a Steam machine and we'd get Deadlock and we'd get Half-Life 3. And none of those things really actually happened in 2025, but maybe I was a year too early because we at least got an announcement of a Steam machine and Deadlock has not been fully released, but a lot of people have played it. And I mean, just imagine how it would break. the video game internet if Half-Life 3 were, say, a launch title for Steam Machine or something.

And there's just, there's enough smoke. I'm not saying there's fire. Jason, you probably have a better sense than I do. But is it completely unreasonable to hold out hope given the just onslaught of supposed alleged leaks and rumors? No, I don't think it's unreasonable. I would have said that like five years ago,

but then Half-Life Alex came out and that very clearly teases like something new at the end. of it, which, I mean, granted Half Life 2 episode 2 also teases something new. And for a long time, people may not remember this, but HalfLife 2, episode 3 was announced since supposedly

coming out for a very long time before it became meme status. But HalfLife Alex came out more recently. That development team has been quite since then. That includes a bunch of the people who used to be at a game studio called Camposanto, made the game Firewatch. That's really cool.

Then they got bought by Valve, went on to make Half Life Valix. And Now I think it's pretty clear that they're making another Half-Life game. Hopefully it's not a VR exclusive, but I'm feeling it's not. And so, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of good reasons to believe that something like that could happen. I don't know if it would be a Steam Machine launch game or something that comes out later on. But I think it's a pretty safe bet. Half-Life 3 confirmed, according to Jason Trayor.

You got me. Thank you. All right. Well, that makes me feel a little bit better about picking it, at least. I'm skeptical personally. Whenever I've seen Valve people interviewed about the steam machine launch, and they are sort of asked about Half-Life 3, the speed in which they shut that down is like instantaneous.

There's no room for like speculative, like, well, I don't know. It's always just like, no. Straight up. Straight up, no. And maybe they're just all on the same page, and they've been prepped very well to not lead anyone in any certain direction. But, yeah, we know that steam machine's coming out. It would make a lot of sense for them to release a new half-life in the same year.

But if it's not at launch, then... I don't know. Maybe it's the next year, Ben. Maybe it's 2027. Maybe it will be right back here, January 2027, and I'll be predicting Half-Life 3 yet again. I remember last year I had a 3D Mario in this category, and I was tempted to run that one back too, because obviously that's coming at some point, and maybe that is one of those mystery second half of the year Nintendo holiday titles. So one can hope. Are we getting a new portal instead of Half-Life 3? Is that what you're saying? Surprise portal drop.

Pivot and release a three that no one is expecting at all. Okay, well, we've covered the year of Capcom with Onimusha and Progmatah and Resident Evil Requiem. We've talked about the year of Pokemon. We've talked about so much. And it all was leading up to one episode ending prediction from each of us. And Jason, you are recording an entire podcast of predictions this year on Triple Click, which I don't want to step on here. So up to you whether you want to recycle or pre-cycle a prediction from that pot

or do something completely different. But I always anticipate your predictions. So what do you have for us? Well, spoilers, I haven't done my predictions for Triple Click yet, so I don't even know if this will be spoiling. I assume you've been working on those all year because the stakes are so high and the bragging rights and there's such tradition in history. I didn't know you were winging it the day before recording.

I have been conditioned from a very young age. to wing everything until the last possible minutes. So that's just what I do. Okay, my prediction is that the steam machine, which was announced for early 2026. So like they've said, coming early 2026 will be delayed quite a while because of RAM prices.

So I think we were talking about this earlier. I think that rather than shooting themselves in the foot and pricing it at $1,200 because RAM prices are out of control, they will kick the can down the road. and they don't have much to lose, I think, by just waiting a few more months. And so they will delay until later in the year, maybe the summer, maybe even the fall. And maybe it also gives them extra polish time for Half-Life 3. Who knows?

But I think that is going to be the plan. Well, that's deflating. But I did say that we had you on in part so that you could dash our dreams. So hold on, this is not inside info. This is not based on any. Just wild speculation. This is entirely speculation. Informed speculation based on market conditions.

Sure, but not informed based on conversations I've had with anyone involved. Important clarification. But I hope you're wrong. But yeah, that checks out. I hope so, too. I want one of those so badly. Ben, I know you were, I remember listening to you talking about it on the episode when after it was announced and how bullish you were on it.

And I was like, yeah, I'm the same boat, even though I already play a lot of PC games, but just having that in my bedroom where my wife could play like Outer Wiles for the first time, like that sort of thing is like dispatch. That has been very excited. So I'm with you. I'm very bullish on this thing. I'm very excited about it. Yeah. Give me my Steam machine. Okay. Matt? I am also very excited about that. I can't, whenever I'm trying to figure out this Half-Life 3 business, I keep thinking about how, how does the Steam frame fit into this? We keep talking about how, you know, if Half-Life-3 launches, surely they'll have this configured so that it's going to run like a dream on the Steam machine, which doesn't have the most overpowered specs. So I'm also wondering if they're going to have Half-Life 3 in a way playable on the Steam frame, which is, as we know, powered by an arm processor or Snapdragon.

I'm so curious to see if Steamframe is planned in conjunction with Half-Life 3, or if that's just a whole other thing. Because you could end up with a Half-Life Alex experience optionally. It could be an optional, Half-Life 3 could be optionally VR on the Steamframe, or not VR. That would seem to make a lot of sense, to me at least. Anyway, just thoughts. My prediction is actually somewhat similar,

but opposite of Jasons, which is that Xbox will announce new hardware at the worst time, and it will be way too expensive. Because they can't just chill and wait like Steam can. They're going to be forced into that. some point, I think that their shareholders will be like, hey, where's this new premium device? Where is this new premium device?

And I don't know. We'll see. The ROG, oh my God, am I going to get this name right? ROG ally Xbox X, no, I was close enough. Their new ACEs is branded handheld seem to be exceeding expectations slightly, I think, in sales. But, I mean, that's nowhere near, you know, where you want to be for an actual console sequel launch or a debut into the PC market as some nebulous, weird marketing speak, new product. So, yeah, we'll see those two things shake out this year. Okay.

How about you, Ben? You have a wild prediction for us. Tomodachi Life Fever. Strikes America. Yeah, I'm scanning my notes to see if I omitted anything before we finish here. There's a platformer called Usual June that I will just name check because it looks kind of cool. And maybe it'll be Game of the Year. And I can mention that we mentioned it.

Also, Markiplier is making a movie that's coming out in less than a month. And it's a video game adaptation of Iron Lung, the horror game. So Iron Lung, Markiplier's movie. That is also happening. Those are words. Those are words. Yep, they sure are. All right, my prediction, I'm sort of threading the needle here

and predicting that GTA6 will come out, but it will not be a consensus game of the year. So whether that is because it disappoints, it has a rough launch, it's almost inconceivable to me that it could have a rough buggy launch, because how could you have a game that's in development for 13 years and decide to release it if it's not actually ready to go. But if it just underwhelms a little, because the expectations are so out of control now that if it's merely next gen, you know, multiple gens forward GTA 5, I don't think that will do it. I don't think that will

satisfy people. It has to be some sort of evolutionary leap here. It's also possible that it just comes out a little too late in the year to be the game of the year. I mean, the Game Awards has an actual eligibility cutoff, which is typically the Friday of the third week in November, which would be November 20th this year, which is one day after the current release date for GTA6. So if GTA6 slips by more than a day, it will, in theory, be ineligible for the Game Awards. Now, would they bend the rules a little bit so that they don't have to have a whole show that doesn't mentioned GTA 6? Maybe. But if they delay that really at all later that year, I mean, there's only a month or so to play with. But if it misses that target, then it might just be too late

for a consensus to form around it, because by that point, maybe there will be such a clear leader in the clubhouse that everyone has been thinking of as the game of the year, you know, pending GTA's release and maybe it'll be too late to change minds. But that's just my main misgiving, I guess, which is sort of your attitude toward GTA, Matt, while you're not as excited, right? It's just that you're sort of maybe expecting more of the same to some degree, right? So if it is just more GTA but prettier or bigger or more interactive or whatever it is, I don't think that will be enough to satisfy people after this buildup. And it could be a great game, but still not game of the year, just because it will be kind of graded on a curve,

I would think. So that's my prediction. We do, in fact, get GTA, not saying it'll be bad just saying maybe it won't be quite everything that it's cracked up to be. I hope it will. Hope I'm wrong, but I can see that happening. That's certainly, as you mentioned, sort of where my head is at. I just, there aren't a lot of areas to improve upon with the GTA formula in my mind. I think the only place where you could significantly improve things is if you have just an absolute banger of a story in characters that, elevated in ways that we haven't seen in a Grand Theft Auto before. But as far as gameplay goes, you steal cars and you shoot and your race and there's a good radio station.

And, yeah, I don't know. Are we adding mini games? Are we playing beach volleyball? I don't know. Yeah, well, we'll find out, hopefully, eventually. Or, you know, we still know almost nothing about the online integration and what does this mean for GTA online and does that cause some sort of mess and is there like a delayed launch for that? And so it's sort of seen as we haven't seen the full vision yet in 2026.

I don't know. Just saying, you know, hold out hope for it coming out, but also maintain some caution about whether it will come out and also whether it will fulfill all of our dreams. But I'm more hype than you are. So I hope so. All right. Well, we have concluded this exercise yet again. hopefully we have at least mentioned most of the games that when we look back at the end of

2026 we say yeah those were the best games of the year except for the ones that haven't been announced yet because you can't blame us for that we are not fortune tellers sometimes jason is but he can't disclose his inside information so it was a pleasure to finally have you on jason now that we've we've broken the shriar seal maybe you'll become irregular again yeah about time Yeah, I predict for 2026 that I will make more appearances. I have the power to make that come true or not, which is not the case for our other predictions. I don't have the power to make half-like to come out.

Can you get odds for that on Kalshi? Not yet, I don't think, but almost everything else. Although if they do have a market for that, I could really make some bank on that one. We'll definitely be on all of our Ace Attorney emergency pods. Nice, yeah. Are there insider trading laws in the U.S. for calls? I guess you can't, like, legally trade on those sites in the U.S., right?

You can now, because it's very much in a gray area under the Trump administration, where they're just like, can we do this? Let's find out. And so far, yeah. There's no, like, SEC regulation. So if I know. Right, there's CFTC regulate, in theory, but it seems pretty clear that there's a lot of insider trading happening there.

I don't know whether they even consider that a bug or a feature. Technically, it's not supposed to happen, but it sure seems like it's happening a lot. So weird. Yeah. My new prediction is Ben goes to jail this year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Well, go read Jason at Bloomberg every week. The Game On newsletter comes out on Fridays, and he does other writing and reporting there as well. He also writes books. He's written a whole bunch of. of them, the most recent being Play Nice, the rise, fall, and future of Blizzard Entertainment, and go subscribe to Triple Click, which is one of my favorite video game podcasts, comes out every week. It is usually shorter than Button Mesh, and it features the excellent Maddie Myers,

who has been on this show, as well as the excellent Kirk Hamilton, and just a good hang every week. And listeners supported as well. So do support Triple Click. Jason, thank you very much. Thanks, Ben and Matt. Thanks for having me, guys. Of course. Such a treat. We kept you for a while, but we're making up for last time today. Matt, thank you as always. For sure, for sure.

Hard to know what games will come out this year, but we usually know, not always, which podcasts are coming out on the Ring ofverse feed. On House of Our, Mal and Joe will be bidding farewell to Stranger Things in their upcoming episode, which should drop not long after this one, and then returning to Buffy Season 3 later this week and next week on the Ring ofers. The Midnight Boys, Pugh, we'll have their over-under's pod on Wednesday, followed by Button Mash. That's me on Fallout episode for First Thing on Thursday.

You can contact us at Ringiverse Gaming at gmail.com. Thank you also to Devin Milnotto for producing this podcast and to our Juno Ramgo-Pal for his senior podcast management. And thanks to the listeners who are still supporting us as we approach the third birthday of Buttmash. We're looking forward to talking games with you this year. And I hope you're into support. eating that too. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy?

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