Nintendo renewals

Happy Fri-yay. We have a confession to make. We’re pretty hooked on the New York Times Connections game (Wordle who?). While it’s tempting to try and crack the puzzle first thing in the morning, we’re finding that our brains haven’t warmed up enough to catch all those double meanings.

Which mini puzzle is top shelf? Cast your vote in today’s Hive Mind below.

— Derek Neville, Jason Liu

MAIN QUEST: Nintendo Renews Fan Favorites

In yesterday’s Direct presentation, Nintendo announced a few titles that are sure to excite longtime fans of their exclusive franchises:

• F-Zero will be revived as a racing ‘Battle Royale’ with a grid of 99 competitors.

• Several Switch remakes, including Paper Mario, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong.

• A new Peach title, Princess Peach Showtime! — her first solo title since the DS days.

Read the room: Overall, it’s a lot of reboots and ports as Nintendo is likely saving up shiny content for the Switch 2 launch.

Step back: While Microsoft and Sony are always chasing the new new, Nintendo can always dip back into their incredibly valuable legacy IP. Studios can’t ignore Nintendo when it comes to taking their titles to full potential but at the same time, Nintendo is able to escape the brutal head-to-head battle that seems to engulf all things Xbox vs. PlayStation. When they zig, you zag.

HUD

• 🕷️ PlayStation’s State of Play event yesterday gave fans a new look at some of the biggest games coming to PlayStation, including a new trailer for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and news that Spider-Man 2 features over 65 suits.

• 🔔 After Nvidia failed to acquire it last year, chip designer Arm Holdings has gone public with a market value of approximately $54.5 billion, the biggest IPO since 2021.

• 📈 More fuel to the Unity dumpster fire: while executive share sales are typically preplanned well ahead of time, it’s jarring to see the deltas among Unity insiders with almost 3.5 million net shares sold in the past 3 months, compared to nearly 10 million net shares purchased over the course of the last 12 months.

MAJOR W

• 🏴‍☠️ Netflix has renewed the live-action adaptation of One Piece for a 2nd season.

•  📆 Hades 2 will enter early access in the first half of 2024 on both Steam and the Epic Games Store.

F IN THE CHAT

• 🪂 The original Warzone servers, now Warzone Caldera, officially have less than one week left before they are shut down for good.

• 💔 It is reported that Electronic Arts is ending support for RPG Wild Hearts 7 months after the game’s release.

CAREER CORNER

• Community Developer, Forza — Microsoft (Redmond)

• Brand Sponsorships Executive, Gaming and Esports — United Talent Agency (Los Angeles)

• Data Engineer — Rockstar Games (Andover)

HIVE MIND

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