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Nintendo’s second Ocarina of Time remake lands on Switch 2 on November 5, and the company has now explained why it wanted to revisit the 1998 classic a second time. In the first of a series of Ask the Developer interviews, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma framed the project as part anniversary celebration and part training exercise for the next generation of Zelda developers.

A 40th anniversary and a teaching moment

Aonuma pointed first to the calendar. This year marks 40 years since the original The Legend of Zelda, and he said he began thinking about what he should create as the series’ producer to mark the occasion. His answer was shaped by a concern about his own team. Many of the people now working on Zelda games, he said, have only developed the more recent titles, which left him wondering whether they truly grasp how significant Ocarina of Time was to the series.

That is a notable admission from a producer who worked on the original Nintendo 64 game and has carried its lessons through the decades since. His theory is that rebuilding the game as a full remake, and learning its structure and development style along the way, could spark insights the team will carry into future Zelda projects. If that happens, he said, it would be “incredibly valuable,” and it convinced him that now was the right time to return to the game.

Why a carefully paced adventure now

The second reason is about players. After Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, many fans have grown used to wide-open exploration. Aonuma said the team wanted them to enjoy the opposite experience: a carefully paced adventure that gradually builds the player’s growth and their understanding of the story. In other words, the Ocarina of Time remake is partly pitched as a counterpoint to the open-world model that defines the series’ recent era.

It is also the second time Nintendo has taken this route. The first remake arrived on the Nintendo 3DS in 2011. Despite the years of experience behind the decision, Aonuma has said he remains “nervous” about how players will respond.

The team behind the Ocarina of Time remake

The same interview series settled a question that fans had been debating. Polygon reports that the Ask the Developer post confirms the project is led by Nintendo’s Entertainment Planning & Development (EPD) Production Group No. 3, the longtime Zelda team. Of the six developers interviewed, four come from that group. The other two are Aonuma, a former group manager of the team, and Hidemaro Fujibayashi, who has directed several Zelda games there.

That was not a foregone conclusion. The 3DS remake was handled by Grezzo, which also made the 3DS version of Majora’s Mask and led 2024’s Echoes of Wisdom. Monolith Soft, the Nintendo-owned Xenoblade studio that supported Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, was another popular guess. Monolith is reportedly busy with Xenoblade Genesis, slated for 2027 on Switch 2.

Polygon notes that some fans may be disappointed to see the main Zelda team on a remake rather than the next big original entry. It also points out that support studios may be sharing the workload, and that Grezzo and Monolith may now be free for other projects. The full list of contributing studios should become clear when the game releases.

What to watch at launch

Several details are still unsettled. Polygon has also published a related report, headlined as the team confirming that fast travel was added and then removed, though the details were not part of the material reviewed here. A separate GamesRadar piece noted that retailer Woot has cut the price of the Switch 2 just days ahead of launch, though that report offered no further detail in the material available.

What is clear is the stated intent. Nintendo says this Ocarina of Time remake is as much about the people building future Zelda games as the people playing this one. Whether that bet pays off will only be visible in the games that follow, but players will get their first verdict on the remake itself on November 5.

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A new Zelda Google Easter egg is live, and it turns the world’s biggest search engine into a time machine. With Nintendo’s remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arriving on Switch 2 this Thursday, November 5, Google is celebrating by restoring the look of search as it was in 1998, the year the original game debuted on the Nintendo 64.

How to trigger the Zelda Google Easter egg

Getting it to work is simple. Search for “Zelda,” “Ocarina of Time,” or even “tloz,” and a glowing Master Sword hovers in the bottom-right corner of the results page. Click it and Link lets out a “Hya!”, according to Polygon. IGN describes the sword being shoved into its pedestal as the screen warps, as if pulling you back through time. Polygon adds that the Triforce briefly takes over most of the screen before the page transforms. Clicking the sword again returns you to the modern version of Google.

What 1998 Google looks like

The throwback page uses the old Google logo, complete with its exclamation mark, and lists results as plain blue text links. Kotaku notes there are no AI summaries, shopping links or ads. IGN points out that the retro page even includes the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which sends you straight to a result.

It is a polished gag, and it fits a long tradition. Polygon notes that Google has paid tribute to games before, including an interactive Super Mario question-mark block in 2015, a nod to Wordle in 2022, a playable Breakout, and a Pokédex mini-game in which players search for and catch the 151 original Pokémon. That last one is still active.

A nostalgic joke with a pointed subtext

Two of the outlets could not resist reading the Zelda Google Easter egg as a comment on where search has gone. Polygon’s Patricia Hernandez called it a “depressing reminder” of how much the product has changed, citing AI answers that she says often fail to link their sources. Kotaku’s Ash Parrish went further, describing the 1998 page as a reminder of a time when finding things on the web was easier and less cluttered.

Kotaku also tied the timing to Google’s finances. It reported that Google lost $475 billion in market value last week, its worst day on the stock market ever, with analysts pointing to missed ad revenue targets. According to that report, the company’s own AI search product was eating into that ad revenue. That is Kotaku’s account of the situation, and the outlet joked that Google should keep the Easter egg up a little longer. The sources do not say whether the company has any plans to do so.

The remake it celebrates

The remake is a Switch 2 exclusive. IGN reports that Nintendo producer Eiji Aonuma recently said some younger members of the development team had never played the original, and that he considered this beneficial for the remake. Kotaku, meanwhile, reports that the developers experimented with extra fast-travel points before dropping them.

For now, the Zelda Google Easter egg is a free, harmless way to feel 1998 again before the game arrives. Whether you read it as a loving tribute or a quiet jab at modern search, it takes about two seconds to try.

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The F-Stop leak has turned one of Valve’s best-known lost projects into something people can actually play. Nearly two decades after the company shelved its camera-based Portal prequel, leakers and members of the Valve Cut Content community have assembled a version that is reportedly almost complete.

Both The Verge and Kotaku reported the news on November 1, 2026. Their accounts agree on the main points, though they differ slightly on some details.

What F-Stop was supposed to be

F-Stop came out of a short, unusual stretch at Valve in 2007. Over about three months, which Gabe Newell would later call the Directed Design Experiments, the studio split into five teams. Each built a rough prototype of a new idea, and F-Stop was the fifth.

It was conceived as a prequel to Portal. Instead of a portal gun, players used an experimental Aperture Science camera. Photographing an object captured it, and the resulting Polaroid-style picture could be used to place that object somewhere else. The Verge likens the idea to the more recent puzzle game Viewfinder. Kotaku describes the core of the game as manipulating perspective to solve puzzles.

Newell was reportedly very taken with the concept, but playtesters were less impressed, and the project was dropped. Pieces of it survived. Some dialogue, characters and mechanics were reworked into Portal 2.

How three leaks became one playable game

The F-Stop leak is not a single event. It is the result of three separate leaks being stitched together.

The first was a huge dump of Steam depot data in late August, which Kotaku says was dubbed “Steam2.” The Verge puts its size at 12 terabytes and Kotaku at roughly 13, so the exact figure is unclear. It reportedly covered nearly every Steam depot from 2003 to 2013, and, surprisingly, most of F-Stop’s assets. But it lacked two key ingredients: the game’s source code and its mapsrc data, which is Valve’s name for the folder holding map source files.

Those final pieces reportedly appeared this week on the Valve Cut Content Discord server. Kotaku says they arrived over roughly 48 hours. It also reports, citing the server’s moderators, that the person behind the map data first asked for $1,000 but ended up releasing it for free. Kotaku adds that the Valve Cut Content team verified the map files as authentic before the community combined everything into a working build.

How complete is it?

According to Kotaku, players say a few assets and dialogue lines are missing but that the game is essentially 99 percent complete. That figure comes from player reports, not an official assessment, and Valve has not commented in either source.

It is also short. The Verge notes that videos of the full campaign all run under an hour, which fits a prototype made in a three-month window. Anyone expecting a full-length Portal game should adjust their hopes. What the build offers is a look at an unreleased experiment and how an idea was tested before being folded into a better-known sequel.

Why the F-Stop leak matters

For fans of Valve’s history, the significance is that F-Stop is no longer lost media. Until now it was known mostly from developer anecdotes, the Half-Life wiki and scraps of surviving material. People can now see how the camera mechanic worked in practice and judge for themselves why playtesters were lukewarm.

It also shows how much of Valve’s past has come to light this year. The August Steam2 dump supplied the raw material, and community preservation groups did the work of verifying and assembling it. Whether Valve responds is unknown, since neither report includes any statement from the company. For now, the F-Stop leak means a game that was 0 percent available a week ago can be played from start to finish.

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The number of new itch.io game pages being created each day has doubled in roughly two months, and the platform says the audience has not grown to match. The figures point to a flood of generative AI projects, a problem many developers had already noticed on Steam.

Itch.io shared the data in a Bluesky post late on October 31. Its graph showed about 3,000 new pages created per day in August 2026. By October 30, the figure was above 6,000. In replies, the platform indicated that AI-made projects account for the majority of the new pages, according to Polygon’s reading of the thread. PC Gamer’s coverage similarly framed AI-generated “slop” as the likely cause, though itch.io’s public statements are brief, and the data shows volume rather than a detailed breakdown of who is uploading what.

More itch.io game pages, but not more players

The most telling detail may be what did not change. Itch.io confirmed in another reply that downloads and purchases have not doubled since August. No graph accompanied that statement, so the exact trend is unclear. But the implication is plain: the supply of games is growing much faster than the number of people playing or buying them.

That matters because itch.io works differently from a curated storefront. It is open to almost anyone, which has made it a home for student projects, game jam entries and experimental work. Many better-known indie developers also use it, and games there are often given away in charity bundles. The openness that makes it valuable also makes it easy to flood.

What it means for indie developers

For developers who hand-craft their games, a larger pile of new releases without a larger audience means a smaller share of attention for each one. Discovery is already a major challenge for small teams, and the new numbers suggest it is getting harder.

Itch.io does ask developers to disclose when they have used AI, but that is a labeling measure rather than a restriction. Whether disclosure is enough to keep AI-generated pages from crowding out other work is the open question the numbers raise.

A wider storefront problem

Itch.io is not alone. Polygon notes that Steam is similarly crowded, and that Steam Next Fest demos have been drowned out, or even copied, by AI-made competitors. One example it cites is the team behind Drunken Goddess Reflux, which canceled its Next Fest demo over concerns about AI clones.

Neither platform has announced new restrictions in response to the latest figures, at least in the material reviewed here. Unless that changes, the pattern in the data is likely to continue: itch.io game pages multiplying quickly, while the players who might discover them stay roughly where they were.

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The Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition has a release date: 12 November, with a demo arriving on the Nintendo eShop the day before. The date came during a surprise Pikmin Day Direct, according to Eurogamer’s report, and the package adds a timed new mode called Dandori Academy.

One caveat first. The source material available for this piece covers the Direct announcements, not a full Nintendo Treehouse play session. It does not describe what a Treehouse stream showed beyond the Dandori Academy exam featured in the Direct, so this article sticks to what has been confirmed.

What the Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition adds

The headline addition is Dandori Academy, a timed exam mode. The Direct showcased one exam, Gargantuan Garden, in which players have to gather gold nuggets before the clock runs out. That fits the series’ long-running emphasis on “dandori”, the Japanese term for planning and organising work efficiently, though the source does not spell out how the mode is structured beyond that single example.

The upgraded version also lets players give voice commands to Oatchi, the dog companion introduced in the original game. The source does not say how many commands are supported or what they do.

Demo and upgrade options

A demo is due on the eShop on 2 November. Progress made in it will carry over to the full game if you buy it, so time spent trying the game is not wasted.

Owners of the original Switch release, which launched in July 2023, are not being asked to rebuy the game. An upgrade pack will be available through the eShop, though the source does not give a price. The new edition is the route to Dandori Academy and the voice commands.

A Direct without new games

Nintendo had said beforehand that the broadcast would contain no new game announcements, and it kept to that. Instead, Shigeru Miyamoto introduced Japanese actor Fuka Koshiba as a new ambassador for the series. Nintendo also confirmed that 1 November is now officially Pikmin Day.

The release lands in a busy month for Nintendo. Eurogamer notes that the Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition is one of two big releases in November, alongside a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on 5 November.

What we still don’t know

Several practical details are missing from the available reporting. These include the upgrade pack’s price, the full list of Dandori Academy exams, any graphical or performance changes on Switch 2, and how the demo is structured. Anyone wanting answers before 12 November has a free option: the demo arrives on 2 November, and its progress will carry over to the full game.

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Call of Duty’s long-awaited return to Nintendo hardware comes with a catch for competitive players: Switch 2 input lag in Modern Warfare 4 is substantially higher than on PlayStation 5. Digital Foundry’s technical analysis puts the gap in hard numbers, and the portable results are the most striking.

The numbers behind the Switch 2 input lag

In multiplayer, Digital Foundry measured 81ms of latency with the console docked and an average of 100ms in handheld mode. The PS5 managed around 49ms. Both consoles were tested with wireless controllers, a Switch 2 Pro Controller and a DualSense. Portable mode was also inconsistent, ranging from 83ms at best to 125ms at worst.

So handheld play has roughly double the delay of PS5, while docked play adds about two-thirds more. Digital Foundry said responsiveness “simply isn’t as good as on other consoles” and called the portable lag “actually deleterious to performance.” IGN’s coverage framed this as a “competitive disadvantage” for Nintendo players, noting that no amount of trigger-finger speed can make up for a console that takes longer to register the input.

Why it matters more in multiplayer

Call of Duty multiplayer has long built its reputation on a steady 60fps, and the series’ fans tend to be sensitive to anything that tilts the playing field. Debate over PC players’ advantages in crossplay has followed the franchise for years. On that front, Switch 2 mostly holds up: it hits 60fps most of the time, though Digital Foundry noted dips in certain situations, such as looking through a riot shield’s transparent visor. Variable refresh rate support on compatible displays helps hide those drops.

Frame rate, however, isn’t the same as responsiveness. A game can look smooth and still feel sluggish, which is why the latency figures are the headline finding here.

A mostly positive port, with visual trade-offs

Digital Foundry was otherwise fairly upbeat about the port, which was developed by Digital Legends with support from Infinity Ward. The campaign is capped at 30fps and uses dynamic resolution. Docked with DLSS enabled, it targets 900p but can fall to 450p in demanding moments such as the Paris vehicle chase. In portable mode the target is 720p, dropping as low as 360p.

The two sources differ on how the docked campaign looks. Digital Foundry’s resolution figures are well below 4K, while IGN’s Simon Cardy described the campaign as running at 30fps at 4K while docked. He also called textures far less detailed than on other platforms, though he said it still felt “snappy” and was a worthwhile experience for Nintendo-only players. Readers should treat the exact resolution as unsettled between the two accounts.

How Call of Duty got here

The release is the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since Ghosts in 2013, a gap the sources describe as 13 or 14 years depending on how it’s counted. It exists because of Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. While seeking regulatory approval, Microsoft offered a 10-year commitment to bring the series to Nintendo platforms, a pledge then Xbox boss Phil Spencer made in December 2022.

For campaign players and casual fans, the port appears to deliver what Nintendo owners have waited over a decade for. For anyone who cares about ranked-style multiplayer, the Switch 2 input lag is the number to weigh, especially in handheld mode, where it is at its worst.

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A Persona 1 remake leak has set the RPG community buzzing after almost two minutes of apparent gameplay footage appeared online on 31 October. Atlus and Sega have announced no such project, and none of the outlets covering the story could verify the clip. Even so, the details inside it have convinced plenty of fans that they are looking at something real.

What the footage appears to show

The clip, which seems to carry the subtitle Be Your True Mind, runs a little under two minutes. According to reports, it shows polished menus and a short stretch of combat that closely resembles the look and feel of Persona 5 and Persona 3 Reload. It also includes a brief social link cutscene rendered in a noticeably different, almost graphic novel art style.

The file was reportedly uploaded to a file-sharing site under a Japanese filename that translates as “Megami Ibunroku Persona Remake”, a reference to the original game’s Japanese title. The accounts of how it spread differ. One report points to a post on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit. Another says a YouTube channel named P1REMAKE shared it first, and that the channel’s account dates back to 2010 and has only a couple of other uploads, the last more than 14 years ago. The sources don’t settle which version is right, which is a good reason to be cautious about the clip’s origins.

Why fans think it’s authentic

Viewers have gone through the footage frame by frame and picked out several details they say lend it credibility:

• What looks like Unreal Engine debug text in the corner of the screen during battle. Atlus moved to Unreal Engine for Persona 3 Reload.
• A new remix of the Pandora theme from the original PlayStation game.
• The protagonist being labelled “Boy With Earring”, the name used for him in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.
• A character summoning animation for Eriko that seems to match the one used for Yukiko in the upcoming Persona 4 Revival, which is due on 18 February 2027.

The length and detail of the video have also counted in its favour. Fake leaks tend to be shorter and less elaborate, and some fans say they can’t imagine someone going to this much trouble to fake one.

The oddities that cut the other way

Not everything fits neatly. Persona 2 protagonist Tatsuya appears in the footage, apparently standing in for what may be an unfinished character model. That could be a placeholder, which would suggest a game still early in development. It could just as easily be a sign that something is off. Some commenters have floated the idea that this is an internal pitch for remakes of both Persona 1 and Persona 2 rather than a slice of a single game.

Nobody can say when the footage was captured either. It could be recent, or it could be years old, and it might be a proof of concept rather than anything close to a finished build. IGN also noted that, in an era of AI-generated fakes, skepticism is the sensible default, even though fan opinion is leaning towards the clip being genuine. IGN said it has asked Sega for comment.

The context behind the rumour

The timing makes the leak plausible, which is not the same as confirming it. Atlus has been steadily revisiting its back catalogue: Persona 3 Reload arrived in 2024, and Persona 4 Revival is on the way. In August, series producer Kazuhisa Wada stopped short of confirming Persona 1 and Persona 2 remakes. Coverage of his comments varies in tone, from saying it’s something Atlus will “probably eventually do” to saying it is something “we have to do”. Either way, he left the door wide open without saying work had begun.

That leaves the Persona 1 remake leak in familiar territory. The evidence is intriguing, the sourcing is murky, and the only people who can settle it are at Atlus and Sega. Until they do, it is best treated as an unconfirmed rumour with a few unusually specific details.

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Activision has agreed to remove real news footage of the Itaewon crowd crush from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, promising that the material “will be completely removed” in a game update due on Nov. 12. The decision follows days of backlash from bereaved families and criticism from a senior South Korean government official.

The footage appears in the game’s opening cinematic, which uses short news-style clips to depict civilian casualties in a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea. Players and reporters later found that some of the clips were archive broadcast material from the 2022 Halloween disaster in Seoul’s Itaewon district, rather than staged scenes created for the game.

What the Itaewon crowd crush footage showed

The crowd crush happened on Oct. 29, 2022, when thousands of people packed into the neighbourhood’s narrow streets and alleys during Halloween celebrations. Polygon puts the death toll at 159, while Eurogamer says around 160 people died. Either way, it was one of South Korea’s deadliest peacetime disasters in recent memory.

According to Polygon, the material in the game reportedly included victims being carried away on stretchers, body bags lying in the street and people attempting CPR. Placing that kind of imagery inside a military shooter’s introduction, as scene-setting for a fictional war, is what drew the fiercest objections.

Activision’s apology, and who has heard it

Activision’s response has come in pieces. In a Korean-language statement reported by Inven Global, the publisher said it bowed its heads “in deep sympathy and apology to the bereaved families and victims.” Separately, a statement given to South Korean broadcaster MBC and reported by The Korea Herald offered “deepest condolences and sincere apologies” to families and anyone distressed by the incident.

The company has maintained that the game is “a work of fiction created to provide realistic immersion” and that it never meant to evoke or trivialise the tragedy. Its earlier statement to Eurogamer said the cinematic “utilises some real world news coverage to establish the game’s fictional narrative.” That is an acknowledgement that real broadcast material was used, paired with a denial of intent to reference Itaewon specifically.

The apology has not fully landed with everyone. The 10.29 Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association welcomed the removal but told the BBC it had not received a direct apology from Activision, according to Polygon. Eurogamer notes that the families’ association and the Citizens Countermeasure Meeting had both called for the footage to be taken out.

Government pressure adds weight

The dispute also moved into politics. Interior and Safety Minister Yun Ho-jung described the footage’s inclusion as “secondary harm” and said, “I believe appropriate sanctions should be imposed.” He argued that using such a tragedy as material for entertainment or business “is something that should be refrained from as a matter of human ethics.”

Yun did not announce a specific penalty. He said it was up to the relevant agencies to decide “whether to impose punishment or block it to make general access difficult.” It is unclear from the reporting whether any formal action will follow now that Activision has committed to a fix.

A game already sitting on a sensitive subject

The timing compounds an awkward launch. Modern Warfare 4 arrived last week with a premise that is itself politically charged: a war between North and South Korea, two countries that remain technically at war because the 1953 armistice was never followed by a peace treaty. Polygon notes the game has drawn criticism for that depiction alone.

For now, the practical outcome is clear. The Itaewon crowd crush footage stays in the game until the Nov. 12 patch, and the remaining question is whether Activision’s statements to the press will be followed by direct contact with the families who asked for it to be removed.

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File photo: Itaewon, Seoul Halloween Crowd Crush on October 29th, 2022.jpg by 열린공감 TV, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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The id Software layoffs were among the harshest cuts in Xbox’s sweeping summer restructuring, and the Doom studio’s leadership is now insisting it came out the other side in good shape. Co-director Marty Stratton says the team is “doing great” and collaborating more tightly than before with sister studio MachineGames, even as questions linger about how a studio roughly half its former size can sustain big-budget shooters.

What Stratton said about the cuts

Stratton made the remarks at a press event earlier this week, according to reporting from IGN that was picked up by Kotaku. Asked about the fallout, he did not dispute the scale of the reductions. “Everybody knows we had about half of our studio exit as part of that,” he reportedly said, while arguing there was “a very deliberate effort” to keep id “incredibly viable” across game development and its technology department.

The timing made the cuts especially stark. Kotaku reports that roughly half the studio was let go just 24 hours before the big expansion for Doom: The Dark Ages launched. The studio’s future has been a point of speculation ever since, particularly because the cuts reportedly hit departments holding decades of combined institutional knowledge.

The engine question hanging over id

The biggest concern has been id Tech, the in-house engine behind the studio’s shooters. In August, veteran programmer Chris Hays said making a AAA game “like we’ve done before with half the people” was “impossible.” Id has pushed back on that view, arguing that the studio is roughly where it was when it shipped Doom (2016) nearly a decade ago.

Stratton’s latest comments lean on a different argument: that id is not facing the challenge alone. MachineGames, which is working on the unannounced Wolfenstein 3, runs its projects on a separate fork of id Tech. Observers have floated the idea that the two studios could pool their remaining engineering resources to cover gaps on future releases.

A closer partnership with MachineGames

Stratton appeared to embrace that idea. “We’re working more closely with MachineGames than ever,” he reportedly said. He described the relationship as long-standing but said both teams now have “incredibly talented engineers” and are on “an amazing path” for technology development. He also said the effort started earlier this year, before the layoffs, rather than being a reaction to them. Both studios, he said, are “really bullish” about what lies ahead.

That framing is notable. If the shared engine work predates the cuts, it suggests the studios were already heading toward tighter integration, though the sources do not say how much of that work survived the reduction in headcount.

What the id Software layoffs leave unresolved

Stratton’s confidence is one side of a debate that has played out publicly for months. Around the time of the cuts, he had said that “what matters the most is that the games are good.” Meanwhile, at least one current developer has been openly skeptical about what a halved team can deliver. These accounts sit uneasily together, and only future releases will settle the argument.

Broader uncertainty also remains. Kotaku notes that Xbox has about a quarter of its “reset” left, with further rounds of layoffs reportedly scheduled for November and January. What Microsoft ultimately plans for franchises like Doom is still unclear, and no amount of upbeat messaging from the studio can answer that. For now, id’s message is that it is stable, focused and leaning harder on its Wolfenstein-making colleagues, while fans and industry watchers wait to see what that adds up to.

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Nintendo has declared November 1 to be Pikmin Day, an annual celebration of its tiny plant-creature franchise, and marked the occasion with a surprise video presentation on Halloween. Hosted by Shigeru Miyamoto, the broadcast offered no Pikmin 5 and no blockbuster reveal. It did lay out a fairly clear plan for how Nintendo wants to keep the series in the spotlight.

Why November 1?

The date does not match any release anniversary. The first game reached Japan in October 2001 and North America that December. According to Miyamoto, the choice comes down to the look of the numbers. Early Pikmin came in only three colors, red, yellow and blue, and when the three stand side by side they resemble “11.1.” The franchise is now 25 years old, so the timing also works as a quiet birthday nod.

IGN described the length as a little more than nine minutes, while Polygon called it a brief video. Either way, it was a small showcase. Miyamoto said that “going forward, I want people to know more about Pikmin,” which suggests Pikmin Day is meant as the start of a longer push rather than a one-off.

Hello! Pikmin brings monthly animated shorts

The biggest new item was a project called Hello! Pikmin, which Miyamoto is making with Nintendo Pictures. The sample short shows a red Pikmin sneaking up on what looks like a sleeping toad to steal a worn baseball. The toad is awake, and hungry, which does not bode well for the Pikmin.

Nintendo plans to release new shorts through the Nintendo Today app and other channels, aiming for roughly one per month in the near future. Animation is familiar territory for the franchise. Nintendo Pictures released a Pikmin short called “Close to You” a year ago, and Miyamoto’s team made a trio of Pikmin animations back in 2014.

Pikmin 4 on Switch 2 gets a demo

The most concrete news for players concerns Pikmin 4 – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Dandori Academy, due November 12, 2026. A free demo arrives November 2, and save data will carry over to the full game. The demo covers the Sun-Speckled Terrace opening area and two Dandori Academy stages.

The Switch 2 version adds voice control. Using the console’s built-in microphone, players can give Oatchi commands such as “rush” and “go to work.” Dandori Academy, the new challenge mode, centers on timed tasks where players try to earn medals by optimizing their strategies. Limited-time exams will arrive every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with leaderboards for competition. Polygon reports that 72 Dandori Academy stages will be released over time.

Secret Caves head to Pikmin Bloom

The mobile game Pikmin Bloom, which launched in 2021, gets a new feature this winter. Secret Caves are battle-focused exploration events in which players send their Pikmin into caves to fight creatures and find treasure. A teaser showed a squad taking on a Bulborb. Treasures shown included a rubber duck, a sword, a cookie and a chef hat, and they will form a new in-game collection.

Entering a cave requires a map. Maps can be found through things like in-game postcards, and Polygon adds that they can also be earned by playing the Dandori Academy challenges in the Switch 2 edition. That link between console and phone is one of the few moments in the showcase where Nintendo ties its Pikmin products together.

A famous fan joins as spokesperson

Nintendo also named Japanese actor Fuka Koshiba as a spokesperson for the franchise, in order to “build more excitement about Pikmin going forward,” per Miyamoto. Koshiba is known for knitting Pikmin-themed headwear in her spare time.

Taken together, the announcements point to a strategy of steady, low-key exposure: a yearly holiday, a monthly video, weekly in-game exams and a seasonal mobile update. Whether that builds toward a new mainline game is something Nintendo has not said. For now, the first Pikmin Day is a reminder that the franchise has more going on than its occasional new releases suggest.

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