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The Pearl Abyss AI strategy is getting bigger, not smaller: the South Korean studio behind Crimson Desert says it is expanding generative AI “throughout our entire development pipeline,” despite the backlash that followed its biggest game’s launch.

What the Pearl Abyss AI announcement actually says

The statement comes from the company’s latest quarterly Earnings Letter, as reported by Eurogamer. Pearl Abyss explains that it used to validate game systems only after building them by hand. It now uses AI to “rapidly validate diverse design concepts prior to actual implementation,” which it says allows “a more efficient allocation of development resources” and faster production.

The letter describes AI being used at “various stages of development,” including automating repetitive tasks, supporting content creation and optimizing tests. The studio frames this as a tool rather than a replacement for people. It says AI “serves strictly as a tool to support concept validation and pipeline productivity,” while core gameplay and actual content creation “remain fully driven by our development team.”

The backlash that came first

The timing is notable. When Crimson Desert launched, players spotted in-game images that looked AI-generated. Pearl Abyss acknowledged that some “2D visual props” had been made with AI tools. It said they were always meant to be replaced with human-made art, and it patched them out quickly.

The new letter suggests that episode did not change the company’s direction. Headlines at PC Gamer and GamesRadar+ framed the update as the studio pressing ahead regardless of player sentiment. The studio’s own wording is more measured, stressing “higher-fidelity games” delivered “more expeditiously.”

DokeV, Switch 2 and the wider industry

The same letter gave updates on the studio’s other projects. DokeV, its creature-collecting game, is now “targeting a launch in the second half of 2028,” with more information promised within the year. It was originally aiming for 2023. GamesRadar+ ties the AI expansion to DokeV as well. Crimson Desert, meanwhile, is being prepared for a Nintendo Switch 2 release “in the first half of next year.”

Pearl Abyss is not acting in isolation. Eurogamer notes that generative AI has become more prevalent in recent months, with “AI slop” flooding Steam and large companies such as Epic Games openly embracing the technology. A recent report estimated that around 40 percent of active developers use AI tools, though another Eurogamer headline says even more developers think the technology is harmful.

That gap between adoption and approval is the tension at the heart of this story. The Pearl Abyss AI approach is pitched to investors as efficiency, while many players remain wary. Whether the studio’s promise that humans still drive the core experience holds up will be judged on what ships, starting with Crimson Desert’s Switch 2 version and, eventually, DokeV.

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The Blood of Dawnwalker is getting a new game plus mode next week, giving players who have finished the vampire RPG a way back into its world with their progress intact. Developer Rebel Wolves announced the feature as the headline item of Update 1.2, which is currently planned to go live sometime in the coming week.

What new game plus changes in Vale Sangora

According to the developer, anyone who has completed the Epilogue can return to Vale Sangora with their level, skills and inventory carried over. The level cap rises to 100 for the mode. Enemies will be “balanced and scaled uniformly across all regions”, and items will have NG+ versions with updated stats.

The uniform scaling is worth noting. Many open-world RPGs tie enemy strength to location, so replaying a game with a powerful character can feel lopsided. Rebel Wolves’ wording suggests it wants a consistent challenge wherever you go, though the studio hasn’t yet said how steep that challenge will be.

Why a second run suits Dawnwalker

The game is built around a fixed clock. Players have 30 in-game days and nights to try to save their family, so no single playthrough can reveal everything. The game’s director has said he is comfortable with that. A mode that preserves your build gives players a chance to chase the quests, characters and routes they missed the first time without starting from scratch.

The timer has been controversial. Coverage of the game notes that the mechanic was once considerably stricter and was loosened in response to pre-release concern. Some players have turned to mods to relax it further. New game plus doesn’t change the clock itself, based on what has been announced, but it makes repeat runs less of a grind.

Smaller tweaks and extra music

The update goes beyond the new mode. Players who own the Eclipse Edition will get an in-game soundtrack “extended with additional songs from the game”, and the soundtrack is expected to arrive on streaming services soon. Rebel Wolves also plans balance adjustments to enemy health pools and to how often enemies use their abilities in combat. Terrain geometry is being improved for “smoother movement during combat and exploration.”

Detailed patch notes haven’t been published, so it is unclear which enemies will become tougher or softer. Outlets covering the announcement describe the update as lighter than Update 1.1. That patch added an easier Story difficulty, a respec potion and animal petting.

A steady post-launch run

The game from Rebel Wolves, a studio with veterans of The Witcher 3 on its team, launched in September on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. It has been well received. Eurogamer’s review called it a “familiar dark fantasy adventure, but one with bold and provocative ideas of its own, that’s mostly, enormously successful.”

Two updates within weeks of each other suggest the studio intends to keep refining the game. For now, the key details of new game plus are the level 100 cap, the carried-over progression and the rescaled enemies. The full patch notes should show whether the mode is a simple victory lap or a real second challenge.

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The Pearl Abyss AI strategy is getting bigger. The South Korean studio behind Crimson Desert and DokeV says it is expanding generative AI “throughout our entire development pipeline,” according to its latest quarterly Earnings Letter. The same document pushes back its creature-collecting game and sets a rough window for Crimson Desert on Nintendo’s next console.

What Pearl Abyss says AI is doing

In the letter, the company describes a change in how it tests ideas. It used to validate game systems only after building them by hand. It now uses AI to “rapidly validate diverse design concepts prior to actual implementation.” Pearl Abyss argues this allows “a more efficient allocation of development resources” and speeds up production overall.

The studio lists several uses: automating repetitive tasks, supporting content creation and optimizing tests. It frames all of this as productivity work. It says AI “serves strictly as a tool to support concept validation and pipeline productivity,” while the core gameplay experience and the actual content creation “remain fully driven by our development team.” It also says it views AI “not as a substitute for human developers.”

The letter is less specific about where the line between “content creation support” and content creation falls. That gap is likely to draw questions from players.

Why the Crimson Desert backlash matters

The announcement lands against recent history. After Crimson Desert launched, players noticed in-game images that looked AI-generated. Pearl Abyss acknowledged that some “2D visual props” had been made with AI tools. It said they were always meant to be swapped for human-made art, and it patched them out quickly.

That episode makes the new language more notable. The studio is not retreating from the technology after that criticism. It is committing to broader use and promising to “continue to expand” it so it can ship “higher-fidelity games to the market more expeditiously.” GamesRadar framed the news as coming despite that backlash and noted that DokeV is among the projects in the studio’s pipeline. The excerpt of the letter available to us does not break down AI use game by game.

DokeV and Crimson Desert’s next steps

The letter also gives a fresh timeline for DokeV, the Pokémon-style creature collector first shown years ago. Pearl Abyss is “targeting a launch in the second half of 2028,” and more information should arrive within the year. The game was originally aimed at a 2023 release, so the new window is roughly five years later.

Crimson Desert, meanwhile, is being prepared for a Nintendo Switch 2 release “in the first half of next year.” The game is already available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

An industry already divided

Pearl Abyss is not alone. Generative AI in game development has been contentious for years, and it has become more widespread recently. One recent report estimated that around 40 percent of active developers use AI tools. Another headline around the same time noted that even more developers consider the technology harmful. Epic Games has also embraced it publicly, while critics point to a flood of low-quality “AI slop” on Steam.

For players, the question is whether the Pearl Abyss AI approach stays behind the scenes, in prototyping and testing, or shows up in the finished games. The studio’s stated line is that people still make the creative decisions. Judging by the reaction to Crimson Desert’s launch, the public will be watching to see if that holds.

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Two former Nintendo marketing leads say The Legend of Zelda was in real trouble before Breath of the Wild arrived, and that fans who claim Nintendo abandoned a thriving formula are rewriting history. Their comments, made on a podcast, land just as the Ocarina of Time remake has reignited a debate about the series’ future.

Kit Ellis, formerly Nintendo of America’s director of social media marketing and original content, and Krysta Yang, a former senior manager of creator relations and original content, discussed the issue on their show. Ellis pushed back on what he called “revisionist history,” the idea that the Zelda team “ripped these away from us at the peak of their popularity.” Yang was blunter. “This series was in dire straits,” she said. “They were selling, like, nothing.”

What the focus groups showed before Breath of the Wild

Ellis said he sat in on focus groups during that period, and described it as “a really dark moment.” The feedback, as he recalled it, was that the fan base was dwindling and the games were not bringing in new players. He said Nintendo had “so much data” showing interest in each new entry was getting smaller, and that the company “had to do something dramatic.” Yang called the period depressing.

The sales numbers behind the claim

The raw figures broadly support the picture they paint, though the exact totals differ between outlets. Twilight Princess, released at the start of the Wii era, is cited at roughly 8 to 9 million copies. Skyward Sword, the last traditionally structured mainline entry from 2011, is put at somewhere between about 3 and 4 million. Breath of the Wild then sold around 34 million copies, with reports putting it between 34.28 and 34.51 million depending on the source. Its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, has reportedly sold about 22.9 million.

The series was never irrelevant, as Eurogamer noted. But the drop from Twilight Princess to Skyward Sword followed by the leap to Breath of the Wild is a stark arc, and it explains why Ellis and Yang see the open-world reinvention as a rescue rather than a betrayal.

Why the argument is back

The timing is no accident. The Ocarina of Time remake has been a hit. Nintendo says it sold more than 5.2 million copies in its first four days, the highest launch-window figure for any Nintendo-published Switch 2 game. Only Mario Kart World, at over 16 million, has sold more on the system. Critics have praised it, and many fans have taken its success as proof that appetite remains for the tightly authored, dungeon-centered style.

Ellis himself said he would welcome a “modern attempt on a classic Zelda game.” The remake’s sales do show demand for the older approach, but they don’t show that the older approach would have sustained the series on its own. A remake of a game widely regarded as one of the best ever made trades on nostalgia and proven design, which is not the same as a new entry having to win over fresh players.

That leaves Nintendo with a familiar question and no announced answer: whether its next mainline Zelda doubles down on the freedom of Breath of the Wild, returns to curated dungeons, or blends the two. Several writers covering the story hoped for some version of the hybrid. The marketers’ message is that the series’ last big reinvention came from necessity, not whim.

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File photo: NYCC 2017 Cosplay of The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild 01.jpg by LostplanetKD73, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The id Software new game is official, at least in the broadest sense: the studio behind Doom has confirmed it is working on another project. Headlines from GamesRadar+ and PC Gamer both report the confirmation, though the material available for this report offers very little beyond the basic fact.

What the id Software new game announcement tells us

The clearest facts come from the two headlines. PC Gamer says the Doom studio “confirms it’s working on a new game.” GamesRadar+ says id “announces it’s working on a new game” and attributes a line to Asha Sharma: “few studios have shaped the first-person shooter genre as much.”

That quote reads as a tribute to id’s place in the first-person shooter genre, a place the studio earned by helping define the form. It also suggests the studio’s parent company wants to be seen backing it. The text available here does not say what Sharma’s role is or where she made the remark, so those details are best checked against the original coverage.

The “Xbox bloodbath” context

GamesRadar+ frames the news as coming “after Xbox bloodbath,” and its headline for the story carries the phrase “casually announces.” Together these suggest the confirmation arrived during a rough stretch for Xbox. The framing implies that a new project at a flagship studio is a notable piece of reassurance in the middle of upheaval.

The excerpts do not explain what the “bloodbath” was. They do not say which studios, teams or people were affected, or how large the changes were. Without that information, it would be irresponsible to guess at specifics or to link id’s announcement to any particular decision inside Xbox.

What we still don’t know

The material is silent on nearly everything fans will want to know about the id Software new game:

• The title and genre. It is not stated whether this is a new Doom entry, a follow-up to another id series, or something new.
• The platforms. No platforms are mentioned.
• The release timing. There is no date or window.
• The development stage. We don’t know how far along the project is.

For now, the reported facts are modest. id Software is making something new, and the leadership commentary around it stresses the studio’s influence on shooters. Anything more specific will have to wait for official announcements from id or Xbox.

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File photo: Rage (id software) at GamesCom – Flickr – Sergey Galyonkin.jpg by Sergey Galyonkin from Kyiv, Ukraine, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Halo Firefight is coming to Halo: Campaign Evolved this winter as a free update, giving the remake its first multiplayer-style mode since it launched in July without any. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced the addition in a social media post on Thursday.

The announcement came with a single piece of art: a squad of Spartans firing a mix of weapons at Covenant and Flood enemies. Beyond the winter window and the fact that the update costs nothing, the source reporting offers no further detail. There is no firm release date, and nothing on how the mode will be structured or how many players it will support.

What Halo Firefight Actually Is

Firefight is a wave-based cooperative mode. Players drop into a map and hold out against steadily tougher waves of enemies until they are finally overwhelmed. The format debuted in the series with Halo 3: ODST in 2009 and has been a recurring fixture since, so the basic loop should be familiar to longtime fans.

It is not the competitive arena multiplayer many players hoped the remake would include at launch. Halo: Campaign Evolved was pitched mainly as a revival of the original campaign, and the lack of versus modes was its most obvious gap. A cooperative mode only partly fills that hole, but it does change the picture: this is the first multiplayer-oriented feature confirmed for the game, and it may hint at more to come.

A Lukewarm Launch and an Uncertain Studio

IGN scored the remake a 7 out of 10, calling it a timeless but “mostly a lean retread” with a decent set of new missions, and more of a test run for the series’ future on Unreal Engine. Adding Halo Firefight for free is one way to extend the life of a package that reviewers saw as thin on content.

The news lands against a turbulent backdrop for the franchise. After this summer’s drastic cuts across Microsoft’s gaming business, Xbox announced a reshuffle that handed the next mainline Halo game to Activision, the Call of Duty publisher, which is assembling a new team for the series. Mass layoffs hit Halo Studios at the same time. Whether those changes affect how future Halo content is made is not addressed in the reporting.

What to Watch For

The timing is notable: the reveal arrived as Xbox marked its 25th anniversary, a moment when the company is eager to show momentum for its flagship shooter series. For players, the open questions are practical. Will the winter update include multiple maps? Will it be playable with friends online or locally? And does it signal that competitive modes such as Team Deathmatch could follow?

For now, the commitment is modest but concrete. Halo Firefight is on the way, it will be free, and fans who wanted more than a campaign replay will at least have something new to do with friends when winter arrives.

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More than 20 former id Software developers, artists and designers have formed Hidden Horses, a new employee-owned studio built by people who lost their jobs in Microsoft-era Xbox layoffs. The team is turning to crowdfunding to get its first game off the ground, a single-player first-person shooter called Danger Pay.

What Hidden Horses says it is building

According to GamesIndustry.biz, the studio’s central idea is shared ownership. Co-founder and executive producer Andrew Willis said the aim is a place “where the developers share in its success and have a commitment to it beyond just another job.” He added that people with a stake in something’s success tend to be more committed to it.

The studio also says the structure should “empower individual developers while maintaining the focused decision-making necessary to build ambitious games.” That is a notable balance to strike. Flat, ownership-driven teams often struggle with who makes the final call, and Hidden Horses is promising both.

Kickstarter and the first project

Hidden Horses plans to fund Danger Pay through a Kickstarter campaign. The money is earmarked for “the typical things needed to start a business and finance game development, including licenses, hardware, and healthcare.” Healthcare in particular is a reminder of what laid-off developers lose, especially in the United States. The studio says its initial funding goal will reflect the timeline and costs of the first project. The sources reviewed do not give a dollar figure or a launch date.

Trading one risk for another

Co-founder and rendering programmer Regan Carver described the move in a video documenting the studio’s founding. At id, he said, the question was whether the company could succeed, and that was “a given” because it was established, had revenue and was making good work. The other question was whether the company cared about him. “For a while, that was true, and then it stopped,” he said.

With Hidden Horses, Carver said, he is “trading one for the other.” The team knows they care about one another, and what remains is succeeding. For a startup with no revenue and a crowdfunding campaign still ahead, that is a considerable gamble, but one the founders appear to have chosen deliberately.

The layoffs behind it

Roughly 136 id Software employees were laid off in July. The studio said at the time that it still had “the crew we need to build the games and tech we’re known for,” even as some observers questioned whether it could maintain its proprietary engines with a reduced team. In a statement, id said its current team is about the same size as when it made Doom (2016), and that it would stay a flat studio “where everyone is a maker.”

A GamesRadar+ headline on the story also carries the quote “It really felt like an attack,” suggesting the founders were blunt about the layoffs in their announcement. The text of that article was not available for this report, so who said it and in what context cannot be confirmed here.

Why it matters

Hidden Horses joins a growing list of studios formed by developers after industry layoffs. This one is notable for its pedigree and its ownership model, which tries to give workers the stake that layoffs showed them they did not have. Whether backers will fund a new shooter from a team with no shipped game under its own name remains to be seen. The founders are betting that goodwill toward the people behind id’s work, along with a pitch built on shared ownership, will be enough.

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File photo: Rage (id software) at GamesCom by Sergey Galyonkin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr (Openverse).

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Capcom had a commanding night at the 44th Golden Joystick Awards, where Resident Evil Requiem won four trophies, including the top prize of Ultimate Game of the Year. The studio itself took home seven awards across the ceremony, which was held on Wednesday.

Requiem, released in February, is the ninth main instalment in the survival horror series, which is now 30 years old. It won Ultimate Game of the Year with 17% of the public vote, beating Phantom Blade Zero, Crimson Desert, Control Resonant and The Blood of Dawnwalker. It also won Console Game of the Year and Best Game Trailer. Angela Sant’Albano won Best Lead Performer for playing new protagonist Grace Ashcroft, an FBI agent who investigates a series of mysterious deaths alongside returning favourite Leon S. Kennedy.

How Capcom reached seven Golden Joystick Awards

Requiem’s four wins were only part of Capcom’s haul. The company was named Studio of the Year. Onimusha: Way of the Sword won Best Audio Design, and Grace Saif won Best Supporting Performer for playing Diana in Pragmata. Together with Requiem’s four, that makes seven.

The result fits a strong year for the publisher. GamesIndustry.biz notes that Requiem has passed seven million sales and helped Capcom secure a ninth consecutive year of profit.

Indie hits and other winners

Capcom did not take everything. The multiplayer hide-and-seek game Meccha Chameleon, in which players paint themselves to blend into their surroundings, was the other big winner with four awards. The public chose it for Best Multiplayer Game and Best Indie Game (self-published), and it also took Streamers’ Choice and Developers’ Choice.

Dispatch won Best Storytelling and Best Soundtrack. Crimson Desert, a Ultimate Game of the Year nominee, won PC Game of the Year. Control Resonant won Best Visual Design, and Subnautica 2 was named Best Early Access Game. Elsewhere, Valheim won Best Indie Game, Doom: The Dark Ages – Revelations won Best Game Expansion, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered won Best Remake/Remaster. Gamers also looked ahead: The Witcher 4 was voted Most Wanted Game. The Steam Controller won Best Gaming Hardware, Iron Lung won Best Game Adaptation, and Balatro and Minecraft took the two Still Playing categories.

A critics’ pick under scrutiny

The cooperative online game Big Walk, from Australian developer House House, won Critics’ Choice. The win came in a week when the studio faced criticism over reports that it used generative AI late in development without disclosing it at release. The studio has said the tool produced only a tiny amount of code.

The ceremony handed out prizes in 25 categories. Twenty-two were decided by a public vote of gamers worldwide, with the remaining three, Critics’, Streamers’ and Developers’ Choice, decided by those separate groups. That mix helps explain why a mainstream blockbuster and a self-published indie game could both dominate the same night.

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The Fairgames cancellation is the latest sign that PlayStation’s big bet on live-service games has not gone to plan. Sony has ended development on the multiplayer heist shooter from its Montreal-based Haven Studios, according to a Bloomberg report that outlets including IGN, Polygon and The Verge picked up on November 10.

Unlike many game cancellations, this one comes with no layoffs. PlayStation told Bloomberg that Haven will “shift focus to collaborating with other development teams across PlayStation Studios, while also exploring new creative opportunities.” In effect, the studio is being repurposed as a support team for other first-party projects.

Why Sony pulled the plug on Fairgames

The reason, per an internal email reviewed by Bloomberg, was a recent playtest. Executives Sean Decker and John Doyle told staff the test showed “strong operational excellence, live ops readiness and community engagement.” But “player feedback and retention results were mixed and fell short of the goals we had set.” They added that “challenging market conditions in the PVP shooter genre” sealed the decision.

That wording matters. Retention is the lifeblood of a live-service game, which needs players to keep coming back for months or years to justify its running costs. A game can be well run and still fail if players drift away.

IGN suggests the playtest in question was likely tied to a mysterious project called Project Espresso. That game resembled Fairgames and began advertising private playtests alongside a gameplay trailer in September. The sources do not confirm the link, and little is known about how those sessions went.

A long road for Haven Studios

Fairgames was announced in 2023 as Haven’s debut. Jade Raymond founded the studio in 2021, and Sony acquired it in 2022. The game was initially slated for release last year, then delayed to spring 2026. Raymond left in May 2025, and Marie-Eve Danis and Pierre-François Sapinski were named co-studio heads. IGN reports the project was also dogged by developer departures and internal struggles, and Polygon says it was reworked multiple times after its reveal.

Part of a larger live-service retreat

The Fairgames cancellation lands against a backdrop of costly setbacks. In 2022 Sony bought Bungie for $3.6 billion, and then-chief Jim Ryan said the company aimed to launch more than ten live-service games by 2026. That target has not been met. Sony wrote down the value of the Bungie acquisition by $765 million in the 2025/26 fiscal year after Destiny 2 and Marathon underperformed. Bungie has since laid off 292 employees and ended development on Destiny 2.

The casualty list is long:

• Concord was pulled from sale two weeks after its 2024 launch, and Sony went on to close developer Firewalk Studios and Neon Koi.
• Planned live-service games in the God of War and The Last of Us franchises were cancelled.
• In 2025, two unannounced live-service projects from Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games were cancelled, and Bluepoint was later closed, costing 70 jobs.
• A live-service Horizon spinoff was recently rebooted after negative player feedback, according to reports.

There are bright spots. Helldivers 2 has been a clear success, and Polygon also points to Gran Turismo 7 as a steady live-service performer. Marathon, which launched this year, has had a rough start. Bungie showed off a December update this week that adds a co-op PvE roguelite mode and a PvP deathmatch mode. IGN notes that the other major PlayStation live-service game on the horizon is 4:Loop, from JJ Abrams’ studio Bad Robot.

What the Fairgames cancellation says about Sony’s strategy

Sony has not abandoned the genre. Sony Interactive CEO Hideaki Nishino has said the company wants to “revitalise” live-service through both first- and third-party content, adding that the genre “itself is relatively new” and that many companies are “trying various things.” But the evidence suggests a more cautious approach. Sony is cancelling earlier, testing more heavily and, in Haven’s case, keeping talent in-house rather than closing studios.

Keeping Haven’s staff is a notable shift from the closures that followed Concord. Whether it signals a gentler approach or simply reflects that the team’s operational skills are worth retaining is not yet clear. What is clear is that the PVP shooter market is brutally competitive, and even a well-resourced publisher with a studio of experienced developers could not make Fairgames work.

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File photo: SCPH-5500 and PlayStation Controller 20060131 (2).jpg by PiaCarrot, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Ocarina of Time remake has sold more than 5.2 million copies worldwide in its first four days, Nintendo announced Wednesday. That makes it the fastest-selling Nintendo-published game in the Switch 2’s short history. The remake launched Nov. 5 and revisits the 1998 Nintendo 64 classic.

Nintendo’s wording is precise. The record covers games Nintendo itself publishes, and the company says it holds globally as well as in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. Eurogamer notes that because Nintendo’s own titles are the biggest sellers on the console, the claim probably holds more broadly. Nintendo does not release sales figures for third-party games, so that can’t be confirmed.

How the Ocarina of Time remake stacks up against other Switch 2 games

The 5.2 million figure puts the game ahead of some of the platform’s biggest launches. IGN reports it is selling faster than Donkey Kong Bananza, Pokémon Pokopia and even Mario Kart World. Context matters for that last comparison. Mario Kart World launched alongside the console, and IGN notes that Nintendo sold 3.5 million Switch 2 units in the first four days, with roughly 80% of them bundled with the racing game, at least in the U.S.

Polygon’s analysis suggests the remake is already the second-best-selling Switch 2 game overall. Mario Kart World has sold more than 16 million copies. Nintendo’s latest financial report put Donkey Kong Bananza at 5.05 million through the end of September, a total the Zelda remake has now apparently passed. Polygon adds a caveat: a third-party game could theoretically be ahead, though it is hard to name one.

The remake isn’t Nintendo’s biggest hit of 2026. Tomodachi Life, on the original Switch, has sold 8.8 million copies. Polygon expects Zelda to overtake it before the year ends.

A risky release window that paid off

Timing was a talking point before launch. The remake arrived only weeks before Grand Theft Auto VI, which Variety says was the one title more anticipated this year. Eurogamer joked that the results answer doubts about launching near the Rockstar blockbuster. IGN suggested Nintendo bet that Ocarina’s legendary status and broad audience would hold up against GTA’s pull. Eurogamer also reports that U.S. Switch 2 hardware sales jumped after the game’s release, so it may be moving consoles as well as software.

The reception helps explain the numbers. Polygon says the remake’s reveal was somewhat controversial because of its radically different art style. Since then it has drawn widespread critical praise and looks like a strong awards contender. Eurogamer gave it a five-star review.

What comes next for Zelda

The launch is part of Nintendo’s celebration of the Zelda franchise’s 40th anniversary. Variety lists a worldwide concert tour starting in 2027 and a live-action Zelda film due in theaters April 30, 2027, along with other games and merchandise. A hit remake gives that run of releases strong momentum.

It also raises a question Eurogamer put directly: will Nintendo mine its back catalog for more nostalgia-driven remakes? Four days of sales suggest the appetite is there. Whether other older Zelda games have the same pull as Ocarina of Time is a harder question. For now, Nintendo has its fastest Switch 2 start yet, and the holiday season is only beginning.

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File photo: Nintendo Switch 2-Konsole IL 20250606.png by PantheraLeo1359531, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.