Some gamers love to customize their gaming experience with special console and peripheral accessories. These include stickers, customized console faceplates, and controllers that range from simple recolors to intense retools (e.g., the officially-licensed Resident Evil 4 chainsaw controller for the Nintendo Gamecube). Nintendo of Japan is trying something slightly different with an empty Splatoon 2 bundle box.
Yes, you heard correctly: Nintendo wants to sell Japanese gamers an empty cardbord box adorned with art from the Splatoon 2 bundle box. Why? According to the product page, the empty box is “recommended for Splatoon fans who already have Nintendo Switch!” This statement implies the box is meant for early adopters of the Switch who didn’t wait for the game/console bundle and its special box.
The empty box might look fancy, but it isn’t exactly expensive. It costs 540 yen, which is just under $5. Also, since this is a Japanese product, the price tag includes tax. The product page claims the box will come unassembled and will not include any packaging or printed materials. Furthermore, the page clearly states, “Domestic delivery excluding some remote islands only,” so don’t try to order it if you live outside of Japan Of course, you can probably buy the box on eBay at marked-up prices in the near future if you don’t live in Japan.
So just what is the purpose of this empty box? As far as I can tell, it’s simply for bragging rights. People who own the box can display it alongside the normal Nintendo Switch box or use it as a replacement/stand-in box to store the Switch while travelling. Or maybe gamers can give the box to cats as a play toy.
While the Splatoon 2 box is only available in Japan, Nintendo might eventually sell it in America and other countries. Depending on the popularity of the box, Nintendo might also sell other special empty Nintendo Switch boxes, even ones with unique, limited-edition box art, but right now this is all speculation.
Splatoon 2, its Nintendo Switch bundle, and the empty box will release July 21st. We will just have to wait and see if Nintendo plans on letting non-Japanese gamers buy these glorified cardboard boxes.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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