Two Nintendo Directs, a LEVEL-5 showcase, BlizzCon, Wolverine, and Tokyo Game Show opening. Thirteen days. All times Dubai. Everything on this card is confirmed.

Control Resonant is out Thursday and the reviews landed well. Remedy moved the series to an open world, which was the risk, and critics say it works. Art direction and level design are what they keep coming back to. The one consistent complaint is combat. GameSpot calls it impeccable, three other outlets call it repetitive across too large a world. That one is going to come down to you. It unlocks worldwide at once, 18:00 Dubai Thursday. PS5 Digital Deluxe starts 48 hours earlier, 18:00 Tuesday.

Four hours into Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave. Nothing has annoyed me yet, but being bound by time means every activity is a decision about what you give up to do it. That's the design working on me rather than a complaint. If you loved Three Houses, take the leap of faith. The characters and the story are interesting enough on their own so far.

Wilds launched three months before Switch 2 existed, so Friday's 30fps chart is the cost of a back-port, not a shortcut. Onimusha shipped day and date and it's good. Why would I doubt them?

Insomniac's first Wolverine patch makes the blue trail fainter. Not optional. Fainter. The trail was only ever the part you could see. Players have finished a motorcycle chase without touching the stick, and the QTE prompts resolve whether or not you press them. That isn't a visibility problem. Dimming the lights doesn't change what's in the room.

Tokyo Game Show has canceled Monday. This is the 30th anniversary show, and the first TGS ever to run five days. The official theme is "The Longest Five Days of Nonstop Play." Monday was the fifth day. The one they added. Losing it stings, and I'd still rather they called it two days early than have the crowds trying to get out of Makuhari in a typhoon.

Capcom is doing two different things on Switch 2 this fall. Dragon's Dogma 2 reaches 60fps-equivalent from a 30fps base using FSR 3.1 frame generation, toggleable at any time. First Capcom game on the console to use it. Out October 9. Monster Hunter Wilds, which I covered yesterday, gets 30fps and nothing else, while PS5 and Series X get 40 and 60fps modes. Out December 4. Worth knowing where each lands. Switch 2's VRR window starts at 40Hz, so a native 30fps game gets nothing from it. A game outputting 60 through frame generation sits comfortably inside.

The National went to the Red Dunes booth at Tokyo Game Show.

The UAE is getting a Switch 2 with a user-replaceable battery this fall. So are Saudi Arabia and Oman. Not because of anything we legislated. Nintendo is complying with EU battery rules that take effect in February 2027, and the Gulf sits inside Nintendo of Europe's territory for this. The revised console has a 5,172mAh battery against the current 5,220mAh, and weighs 411g instead of 401g. Nintendo says there's no functional difference at all. The Joy-Con 2 in the box get replaceable batteries too. Here's the part that matters if you're buying. Stock rolls over gradually, stores will carry both versions at once, and Nintendo has said you won't be able to choose which one you get. So a Switch 2 bought here in November might have a replaceable battery or might not. Original Switch, Switch Lite and Switch OLED aren't getting the revision at all. They stop being sold in Europe from mid-February.

Capcom has published the full performance chart for Monster Hunter Wilds, and the Switch 2 numbers answer a question people have been asking. Docked, Prioritise Resolution is 2240x1260. Prioritise Framerate is 1920x1080. Both at 30fps. Handheld is 1536x864, also 30. So the frame rate mode doesn't raise the frame rate. It drops resolution to hold 30 more reliably, which matters because Capcom say they use dynamic resolution with upscaling and to expect drops on every platform. Now the rest of the chart. PS5 Pro has 30, 40 and 60fps modes. PS5 has 40 and 60. Series X has 40 and 60. Series S has 30 only. Switch 2 also has 30 only. Which is worth noting after this week. Diablo IV shipped a 40fps performance mode on Switch 2 requiring a 120Hz display. Switch 2's VRR window starts at 40Hz. Capcom had a 40fps target ready on three other platforms and didn't bring it here. One thing in Switch 2's favour. Docked at 1260p, it's rendering higher than the Series S version at 1080p, with both locked to 30. No ray tracing on Switch 2 in any mode. 4 December, $39.99, pre-orders 19 October.

ASUS has opened UAE pre-orders for the ROG Xbox Ally X20 Bundle. AED 10,999, about $2,995. The Ally X is AED 3,499, roughly $953, at the same shops. The X20 isn't just a paint job. It's the first Ally with an OLED screen, 7.4 inches at 1400 nits HDR against the Ally X's 7 inch IPS, plus TMR joysticks, a transforming D-pad and USB4 with Thunderbolt 4. Processor, memory, storage and battery are unchanged. The bundle then adds ROG XREAL R1 Edition 20 AR glasses, which claim a 171 inch virtual screen at 240Hz over one USB-C cable. A dbrand Killswitch travel kit with case, cover, stick grips and skin. A Pelican Protector case with red ROG latches and the anniversary badge. A 68W charger. Early pre-orders get a Pelta headset. Mid October, through ASUS eShop, Geekay, Virgin Megastore, Sharaf DG, Amazon UAE, Emax, Jumbo and Carrefour. Three Ally X units still cost less than one of these.

Japan physical charts, 7 to 13 September. 1. [NSW] Rhythm Heaven Groove – 24,756 (1,000,045) 2. [PS5] Onimusha: Way of the Sword – 19,654 (96,184) 3. [NS2] Splatoon Raiders – 8,163 (656,692) 4. [NSW] Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream – 7,607 (1,603,143) 5. [NS2] Onimusha: Way of the Sword – 7,070 (26,569) 6. [NSW] Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi and Tsukikomori – 3,686 (new) 7. [NSW] Minecraft – 3,324 (4,277,487) 8. [NS2] Mario Kart World – 3,141 (3,031,357) 9. [NS2] Pokémon Pokopia – 2,837 10. [NS2] Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14 Complete – 2,797 (new) Hardware: Switch 2 – 28,341 Switch family – 7,559 PS5 family – 7,494 Xbox Series family – 158 Three things in the numbers. Rhythm Heaven Groove just crossed a million physical copies in Japan. It came out on 2 July, opened at 393,378, and it's still at number one ten weeks later. That's a Switch 1 game, sold in boxes, in 2026. Onimusha's split moved. Week one was 80% PS5. Week two is 73.5%, with Switch 2 climbing from 20% to 26.5% as the launch rush faded. Lifetime is about 122,750 across both. Switch 2 outsold the entire Switch family by almost four to one, and its Japanese lifetime is now 6.29 million.

Red Dunes Games has nine titles on the floor at Tokyo Game Show. Hall 7, Booth N03. Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast from the Past gets its first playable demo there, with the original TV cast back on voice duties. 2027, all major platforms. Princess of the Water Lilies Definitive Edition came out on PS5 today, the same day the show opened. Port of Jumanah is there too, the pearl diving roguelite that launched ten days ago. So are Zozo and the Lost Dreams, Nightmare Circus, Blades of Mirage and Katuba's Poacher. Look at who made them. Blades of Mirage is Agate, out of Indonesia. Katuba's Poacher is Joe Yu, one person, in Korea. Red Dunes isn't only publishing Emirati games. It's an Abu Dhabi publisher signing studios across Asia and taking them to Tokyo. TGS is the biggest it has ever been. 759 exhibitors from 51 countries, nearly 4,000 booths, five days for the first time. There's a UAE stand in Hall 7.

Heart Machine has laid off nearly everyone. A publisher pulled funding on an unannounced game this week. That was the studio's income. Founder Alx Preston posted on Monday that without it, almost the whole team had to go. His words: "I'm not sure yet how or if Heart Machine survives." They made Hyper Light Drifter in 2016, crowdfunded and self-published, and it became one of the games that defined indie development that decade. Then Solar Ash with Annapurna in 2021. Hyper Light Breaker with Gearbox last year. Possessor(s) with Devolver, out this year. Four games. Three publishers. Ten years. This is the third round of layoffs since November 2024. The second came last October during Breaker's development. So it hasn't been sudden, it's been a slide, and a publisher decision finished it. No publisher named. No headcount given. Preston is asking studios with open roles to contact him so he can place people.

Everything from the Capcom Spotlight. Teostra is back in Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, and the TGS demo has you hunting it. Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is 9 October, and the Switch 2 character creator is live right now as a separate app so you can build your Arisen before the expansion lands. Blues in Mega Man: Dual Override plays melee and high attack against Mega Man's ranged game. Arjun arrives in Street Fighter 6 on 13 October. Pragmata gets free Mega Man collab costumes tomorrow. New Monster Hunter Outlanders footage, and a Palico riding something that looks mechanical. And Resident Evil 2, 3 and 4 on Switch 2, 16 October. Capcom's own slide says digital version.

Ocarina of Time is the second Switch 2 game confirmed to support VRR. It's in the eShop listing, next to HDR output and amiibo. The first was Welcome Tour, Nintendo's own tech demo. Six days after docked VRR arrived, two games support it and both are theirs. Digital Foundry read the trailer at around 1080p60 though. A locked 60 sits well inside the 40 to 120Hz window, so there's not much for VRR to smooth. Unless there's an unlocked mode nobody has mentioned.

Wo Long 2 is out 4 March 2027, and it's on Switch 2 the same day as everywhere else. That hasn't happened before with a Team Ninja soulslike. The first Wo Long came out in March 2023 and didn't reach a Nintendo console until two weeks ago. Three and a half years. The sequel ships day and date. Game Pass day one as well, and it's moved to an open world rather than the mission structure of the first game. Wall-running, air combat, no fall damage, and a new mechanic replacing pure deflection. The alpha demo is live now through 30 September. PS5, Xbox and PC. Not Switch 2.

Japan Game Awards went to two games that did the same thing from opposite ends of the industry. Pokopia took the Grand Award. That's the top prize, and it beat Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, Silent Hill f and Resident Evil Requiem to get it. Five million copies, and Inven report it caused Switch 2 stock shortages in Japan. Meccha Chameleon took the Movement Award, the one for games that become a social phenomenon. It's past 20 million copies in two months. I'm not a Minecraft person and I'm not really a Pokémon person either. I still loved Pokopia. It took a franchise everyone knows and a building system everyone knows and made something that isn't quite either. Meccha Chameleon did the same trick with less. Hide and seek, but you paint yourself to match the wall. Two developers, two months. One from the biggest IP in games. One from two people nobody had heard of in June. The indie outsold the Grand Award winner four to one. Same idea underneath. Take things that already exist, put them together in a way nobody has, and let that be the whole pitch. The Pokémon franchise also took the METI Minister's Award, and the Super Mario Galaxy movie got a Special Award after passing a billion dollars.

Diablo IV on Switch 2 has a 40fps performance mode. Docked, it needs a 120Hz TV. That sounds arbitrary until you do the division. 40 goes into 120 exactly three times, so every frame sits on screen for three refresh cycles and the pacing stays even. Into 60 it doesn't divide. Frames would alternate between holding for one cycle and two, and you'd feel it. Quality mode is 1080p30 handheld, 1440p30 docked. Performance is 1080p40 in both. I charted Switch 2's VRR window on Sunday. It runs 40 to 120Hz, and I put Cyberpunk at the bottom edge as one of the few games actually sitting inside it. Diablo IV just joined it. But this complicates my own chart. Most TVs don't have a 40Hz VRR floor, they start around 48. So on a 60Hz set with VRR switched on, a 40fps game drops below the display's range and VRR does nothing at all. Which is presumably why Blizzard asked for 120Hz rather than asking for VRR.

Steam Frame is $1,059 for 256GB and $1,299 for 1TB. Reservations opened Monday. On Sunday I wrote that the people pointing at 14 September were stacking a VR sale email, a dataminer's shipping estimate and an anonymous forum comment. They were right. Valve posted "Steam Frame is here!" at 10:01 AM Pacific on Monday. Weak reasoning, correct answer. Worth saying out loud. It's a randomised lottery like the Steam Machine. Signups close Thursday at 10 AM Pacific, everyone gets a reservation or waitlist email that day, purchase emails start Friday with a 72-hour window. Steam account in good standing, a purchase before 27 April, one entry per household. Both models come with the controllers and the 6GHz adapter. Over 100 games are Standalone Verified at launch. The price came in above where the guessing had it. People were saying $899 to $1,199. None of which applies here. Same as the Steam Deck, we'll be getting it through third party importers at whatever they decide it's worth.