Welcome back to the show! With some time away, I've been doing a lot of thinking about where Sony and Microsoft are at these days... as usual. In particular, Xbox as a brand feels like it's on a slow descent into a confused existence and I wanted to unpack that as best as I could given the ongoing BDS boycott and increasing Game Pass prices.

Listen here or watch on Patreon.

News Discussed:

I’m Getting Bored of Every PlayStation Game Telling the Same Story by Simon Cardy

• “Don’t get me wrong: I’m a fan of all of the games listed above, each singular in its depictions of characters and each offering wildly different gameplay experiences. But when viewed as a whole, it's easy to hear that their stories are all being sung from the same hymn sheet. Familial grief is at the centre of all of these stories, and while I certainly feel that mature themes have a place in games, it is all starting to feel like I’m getting hit around the head with the same ideas at this point. The “cycle of violence” is in very real danger of becoming a loop of diminishing returns.”

Updates to Xbox Game Pass: Introducing Essential, Premium, and Ultimate Plans via Xbox Wire

• Starting today, we’re introducing three upgraded Game Pass plans based on how players play: Essential, Premium, and Ultimate. Each includes expanded game libraries, including PC titles, unlimited cloud gaming, in-game benefits (including Riot Games titles), and a revamped Rewards with Xbox experience. Today’s Game Pass Core subscribers will automatically move to Essential, Standard subscribers will transition to Premium, and Ultimate subscribers will remain in the Ultimate plan.

• Plans are $10, $15, and $30 a month

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From Nintendo’s official PR blog:

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (HQ: Kyoto, Minami-ku, Japan; Representative Director and President: Shuntaro Furukawa, “Nintendo” hereafter) announced the release of Fire Emblem Shadows, a smart device game that serves as a spin-off of the Fire Emblem series and introduces a new style of battles featuring role-playing and social deduction. The game will be available starting today, September 25, 2025.

It’s not so surprising to see Nintendo trying to prove that lightning can strike twice after the monetary behemoth of Fire Emblem Heroes. What is surprising is that this game seems to be a mashup of Fire Emblem combat and Among Us-style social deduction gameplay?

After the initial battle, players vote to determine who they believe is the treacherous disciple of shadow. The outcome of the vote affects whether the next battle is more favorable or more challenging. Whether the disciples of light can correctly discover the traitor—or the disciple of shadow can successfully deceive the others—holds the key to how the next battle unfolds.

The game doesn’t appear to be out on the iOS App Store just yet, but I’m excited to dip in when it pops up.

Edit: Turns out the game is live on the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store.

Edit 2: I’ve already deleted the game off my phone. It’s almost unfathomably unfun. Fire Emblem is best known for its tightly designed tactical strategy combat… which they’ve eschewed entirely in favor of an auto-battler with big floating buttons you can use to cast area of effect spells on cooldowns. The Among Us-style social deception is actually a game of “watch your two allies to see which one doesn’t take damage from enemies or which one literally just attacks you instead of enemies.”

Stunningly terrible game. Almost impressively so given how immediately it reveals itself to be a disaster. And it’s made even worse knowing its entire existence is being justified due to it being a funnel into a microtransaction nightmare.

Man!!

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I’ve been an iPhone Pro user since the concept was first introduced in 2019 with the 11 series for the simplest possible reasons: I like being at the cutting edge and I like having multiple cameras. The Pro phones always received the latest features like ProMotion and the Dynamic Island, the battery life tended to feature a significant bump over the base iPhone models, and the triple-camera module proved useful as a person who takes photography pretty seriously.

But one year before jumping into the Pro line I was an iPhone X user, and that phone was an absolute revelation. The X was blessed with a stunning “edge-to-edge” display made with gorgeous curved stainless steel rails, Face ID via a notch that people mocked relentlessly despite being totally fine in daily use, and a dual-camera module which began to close the gap between Google’s dominance with the Pixel’s computational photography. At the time, Apple’s Phil Schiller called it “the beginning of the next ten years for iPhone” and in retrospect, he was right on the money. Each iPhone after the X feels like its not-so-distant cousin with slight changes here and there that are all small riffs on the 2017 phone’s winning formula.

This year’s iPhone Air follows the same pattern. Looking at the X and the Air side by side reveals two phones with similar design intentions, both trying to push the envelope but one clearly in service of the trail the other had already blazed nearly a decade earlier. Just like the X, the Air comes burdened with compromises befitting the places where it breaks new ground for the iPhone. Its thinness comes at the cost of battery life, multiple cameras, stereo front-facing speakers, and heat dissipation — but that new form factor and numberless Air name is still a siren song calling myself and many others away from the Pro lineup this year. It’s just the more interesting phone, and if you’re anything like me sometimes that’s all it takes.

I told myself I could live with these compromises for at least one year, and 72 hours in I already have a pretty good sense of what that year will be like. I received my Air about three hours before a weekend of weddings — one in New York City and another in the middle of the woods in New Hampshire — which made for a surprisingly ideal way of putting it through its paces and seeing just how much of a downgrade the Air really is from my beloved iPhone 16 Pro.

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As if participating in the BDS boycott of Xbox wasn’t already easy enough, Microsoft is making it even easier by making sure people who were teetering on the edge of maybe joining the late-lifecycle Series family could happily avoid it at all costs by raising prices for a second time — citing “the macroeconomic environment.”

Rebekah Valentine for IGN:

Price increases will be as follows:

• Xbox Series S 512GB: $399.99 (up $20 from $379.99)

• Xbox Series S 1TB: $449.99 (up $20 from $429.99)

• Xbox Series X Digital: $599.99 (up $50 from $549.99)

• Xbox Series X: $649.99 (up $50 from $599.99)

• Xbox Series X 2TB Galaxy Special Edition: $799.99 (up $70 from $729.99)

We've previously spoken to expert analysts about the rising prices of all gaming items, and they explained that all of these price increases are likely occurring due to a mixture of increased manufacturing costs, competition, and U.S. tariffs, with the latter particular relevant in cases where prices are climbing in the U.S. and nowhere else.

This would normally be a time where we’d begin to get deep price cuts and console manufacturers would be hoping to see a sales boost going into the holiday season as the current generation settles into its fifth year on-market…. but normal has gone out the window at this point. 

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Hello and welcome back to Wavelengths! Switching it up yet again this week as I solo-host an extremely low key episode of the show from the lounge chair in the corner of my home office. This week I'm talking about my experience having wrapped up Silksong, catching up with Borderlands 4's performance issues, having a slight change of heart about Game Keycards on the Switch 2, and answering your questions!

Check out the show here!
And Wavelengths patrons can now watch my entire Silksong playthrough AND the video version of today’s episode!

Also make sure to catch me on The MinnMax Show this week!

The News and More:

Borderlands 4 Performance: https://www.ign.com/articles/borderlands-4-performance-gets-worse-the-longer-you-play-on-console-randy-pitchford-suggests-quitting-the-game-and-restarting-as-a-workaround

Final Fantasy VII Game Key Card News: https://gamerant.com/final-fantasy-7-remake-switch-2-game-key-card-size/

Yakuza Kiwami 3 Leak: https://www.engadget.com/rgg-accidentally-leaked-that-its-working-on-yakuza-kiwami-3-211036458.html

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I’ve been a big fan — and a patron! — of MinnMax for a long time. What Ben and the crew have accomplished in terms of scaling an independent media outlet over the years is as admirable as it is unlikely. Setting out to build a sustainable apparatus for covering games with a such a high content output over a long period of time is a huge undertaking, but they’ve managed to do it together by simultaneously fostering a welcoming and positive community. MinnMax is truly a beacon.

And that’s why I was so amped to be asked on as a guest on this week’s episode of The MinnMax Show! We had a huge rundown between big Silksong thoughts, Borderlands 4, and at least like five other games and it was a really fun time. I hope you enjoy it, too. 

Give it a listen or a watch!

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New York City-based SNOWMEN first popped up on my TikTok feed a few weeks ago with a song called Zero Zero One which felt like it came from an alternate universe where James Murphy’s influences leaned more punk and less dance when crafting the line-straddling sound of LCD Soundsystem. SNOWMEN are back with another new single called Make Time/Waste Time which eschews most of that disco influence and recaptures the magic of the late 2000s indie rock boom. 

I have fond memories of discovering music through monthly indie rock discovery playlists and the soaring guitar tone and driving beat behind Make Time/Waste Time would have been a perfect fit on my iPod in 2009 and are equally welcome on my iPhone in 2025.

You absolutely love to see — and hear — it!!

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The most recent Nintendo Direct was awesome... but MAN was it weird. For every gorgeous Dragon Quest VII remake we got a physical Talking Flower from Super Mario Bros Wonder. For every new Fire Emblem we got Samus on a motorcycle in Metroid Prime 4.

And to make this ABUNDANTLY clear: Weird doesn't equal bad!!

Although some of it definitely isn't great.

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This week I'm talking to Chase Allhart, host of two great video game podcasts in the form of ⁠Video Game Podtimism ⁠and ⁠dotzip⁠! Obviously Silksong is in the air, and the amount of discourse surrounding this one game is off the charts, so we dig into that in a big way before talking about making video game podcasts and, ultimately, Kingdom Hearts IV.

Also! If you happen to catch this early, I’ll be live on Twitch streaming the Nintendo Direct at 9am ET! 

The News and More:

Silksong Discourse: 

007 First Light State of Play:

Nomura on Kingdom Hearts IV:

https://www.ign.com/articles/tetsuya-nomura-offers-promising-update-on-final-fantasy-7-remake-part-3-and-kingdom-hearts-4

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This week I'm talking to Matt Horton, host of Can't Let it Go, In Sequence, and Flow State about the rumors of four upcoming video game consoles... three of which are the PlayStation 6 somehow.

Afterwards we dip a bit into the upcoming iPhone release season before having a meaty conversation about making things online and the inability to stop creating.

It’s a good one, and I hope you enjoy! As always, patrons get an unedited video version of the show by backing at Patreon if you want to support Wavelengths as a whole.

And it’s also worth noting that I was live on Twitch all day yesterday, and will be live all day again today and tomorrow streaming (mostly) Hollow Knight Silksong! Tune in!

The News and More:

Flow State: https://www.youtube.com/@flowstatecrit

There are (Maybe) THREE PlayStation 6 Consoles: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/sony-is-reportedly-planning-a-nintendo-switch-style-playstation-6-portable/

Valve is Working on a Console Codenamed “Fremont”: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/valve-preps-mysterious-fremont-steamos-device-powered-by-amd-ryzen-processor-potential-steam-box-may-sport-a-hawk-point-cpu-with-zen-4-and-rdna-3-graphics

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I love when I find creators who are wholly and intensely comitted to making content about one specific thing. As a person who has spent the past five years becoming a true Dragon Quest sicko, I’ve of course stumbled into the YouTube channel of sackchief more than once. His knowledge about the franchise is stunning and his enthusiasm for sharing it is infectious which makes the current era of Square Enix remaking the original trilogy of games for modern audiences a particularly exciting one. 

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was and is a fantastic video game — but it was also somewhat of an easy slam dunk. Dragon Quest III is frequently heralded as one of the greatest games ever made, a cultural force, and the kind of thing that Square would simply need to “not fuck up” more than anything when it came to bringing it to life in yet another remake capacity. And fuck it up they did not! The remake added plenty of quality of life features to smooth off some of the late-eighties edges, a fully orchestral score, voice acting, and the titular HD-2D presentation which for my money is still the best the art style has ever looked. 

While I was pretty jazzed about III’s overhaul, my bigger questions and concerns stemmed from how Dragon Quest I & II would fare. I could lay out all of those reasons and how the remakes seem to be addressing them, but instead I’ll just say: Watch sackchief’s new video for a good overview of the upcoming release’s changes, and you might walk away as stoked as I am to pick it up when it launches on October 30th.

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The PlayStation 6 seems to be leaking already, somehow — YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead claims that Sony's upcoming console will in fact be THREE upcoming consoles, one of which will be a hybrid handheld akin to the Nintendo Switch.

How will Sony OR consumers navigate the choice of three different products, how have they navigated situations like this in the past, and is this a good idea in the first place?

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Welcome back to Wavelengths! This week on the show I’m talking to Percia Verlin — fashion commentator extraordinaire — about her gaming habits, what would get her to buy a Switch 2, and how we classify genre. 

Having Percia on the show is fun for many reasons, the first of which is that she’s my wife and hanging out with my wife is sick. But she also asked me about a week ago for some recommendations when it came to finding mobile games to play on the subway. She had two very specific guidelines: They must be playable in a vertical orientation and they can’t require internet to play.

I put together a whole list which is available below, but if you want to hear about all of the above AND a short pitch for every single game here make sure to listen to the episode. And if you’re backing the Patreon you can watch the whole unedited conversation in our living room. 

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John Linneman for Digital Foundry:

Nintendo seems to be almost discouraging Switch 2 development to some degree. I’ve spoken with plenty of developers where they were either told that they should ship their game on Switch 1 and rely on backwards compatability. Theres a lot of developers that are unable to get Switch 2 dev kits. 

We talked to a lot of developers at GameCom this year and so many of them said the same things: They want to ship on Switch 2, they’d love to do Switch 2 versions. They can’t get the hardware.

These are the kinds of decisions that an extremely confident Nintendo makes that stack up over time to become a Wii U-level misstep. The Switch 2 is obviously selling very well at the present, but we’ll see how much appetite the general public has for it come this holiday season.

Just because early sales are promising doesn’t mean long-term success, and operating under a strategy of “we won’t provide dev kits for our new console because more people already own the previous one” is — in my opinion — troublingly short-sighted.

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I’ve played a bunch of games clearly inspired by Balatro recently. Raccoin is a roguelike spin on those arcade coin-pusher games that are great at siphoning quarters from unsuspecting passers-by. Word Play, Letterlike, and Wordatro are all Balatro-style twists on Scrabble. Drop Pockets and Ballardo are two takes on billiards. 

Balatro was a hugely influential game from go, and today’s video is all about interrogating what set it far enough apart from the roguelike genre to become its own subgenre in the same way Dark Souls broke out of its initial metroidvania categorization to become the foundation of a genre classification in its own right.

And to a deeper degree, how helpful is it to classify games in this way in the first place? Does placing games in boxes on release color our feelings and perceptions of them in a way that breeds uneven expectations? 

Let’s find out together!

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Welcome back to Wavelengths! This week I'm switching things up a little bit, starting with some news about Hollow Knight Silksong and Gamescom before launching into a chat with my friend AJ Fillari! We chat about podcasting, their show DotZip, producing Into the Aether, our podcast network, and building up the critical muscle.

It's a good one! We had fun!

Listen to it here or find the unedited video version on Patreon!

The News and More:

AJ on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ajfillari.bsky.social

dotzip: https://dotzip.online/

Kirby Air Riders: https://www.polygon.com/nintendo-direct-august-2025-kirby-air-riders-switch-2/

Silksong Event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XGeJwsUP9c

Jason Schrier on Silksong: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-08-21/why-silksong-team-cherry-s-sequel-to-hollow-knight-took-so-long-to-make

Last of Us Online Directors' New Game: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/director-of-scrapped-the-last-of-us-online-says-his-new-us-japan-studio-is-making-a-cinematic-multiplayer-title/

AYN Thor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEzXQkmSWuY

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Jason Schrier has a report on Bloomberg about why Hollow Knight Silksong — now confirmed for a September 4, 2025 release! — took seven years to make. There are a bunch of great lines in the piece, but nothing more wholesome than this quote from developer Ari Gibson:

“We’ve been having fun,” Gibson said. “This whole thing is just a vehicle for our creativity anyway. It’s nice to make fun things.”

God willing, this would be why every game took a long time to make instead of the usual “sick freaks in management forcing devs to crunch” story we hear so often — usually from Schrier! It’s nice to see that the story is essentially “we like making video games enough that stopping is hard.”

Go read the rest of the piece, it’s wonderful.

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Looks like the Odin 3 is finally on its way. Teased via an Instagram post this morning, Ayn seems to be indicating that we’ll hear more about their third generation (presumably-still-Android) handheld at some point tomorrow — likely at GamesCom in some form.

The interesting twist here is the second tease for a handheld called Thor, which they’ve already confirmed in Discord is not another Windows handheld attempt akin to their Loki devices of old. If I had to guess completely at random, I’d say they’re running SteamOS on it somehow. But who knows! 

Either way, I’m excited to learn more. The Odin 2 family of handhelds are the very best out there in terms of price to performance, and a third generation is a no-brainer purchase in my eyes. 

You can check out my review of the original Odin 2 if you want some more context here.

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Gaming handhelds are huge, both in popularity but also in terms of literal scale. Long gone are the days of the Nintendo console you can easily throw in a pocket before leaving the house. How did we get here, and what did we both gain and lose in the process? 

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I know I wasn’t the only one thinking it when the PlayDate was released: Here’s a tiny handheld with a d-pad, two face buttons, and a monochromatic screen… how do I put Game Boy games on that thing?

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