An anonymous reader shares a report: CEO of Sega, Haruki Satomi, and CFO Koichi Fukuzawa have alluded to raising the price of specific titles to bring them in line with other AAA titles published by the likes of Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo. "In the global marketplace, AAA game titles for console have been sold at $59.99 for many years, but titles sold at $69.99 have appeared in the last year," Satomi and Fukuzawa said in a financial earnings call. "We would like to review the prices of titles that we believe are commensurate with price increases." Sega is slightly late to the price-raising party as multiple publishers have already shifted top AAA games to the heights of $70. PlayStation first advertised God of War Ragnarok for $70 on the PS5, and Xbox will also price Starfield at this amount for the Xbox Series X|S. It seems as if this is the new norm for the gaming industry.

While claiming that "the console is the core of the Xbox brand," Microsoft's head of gaming has reiterated the company needs to focus on the wider gaming market if it's to be successful. From a report: During the Kinda Funny Games Xcast podcast, Spencer was asked if Xbox has taken its eye off the console market by focusing too much on PC. In response, Spencer said Microsoft would be wrong to think that just building great console titles could help it overtake Sony and Nintendo in terms of hardware sales. Instead, it has chosen to pursue a different strategy to the Japanese companies, one focused on fulfilling developers' vision of enabling customers to play their games on any screen. "We're not in the business of out-consoling Sony or out-consoling Nintendo," Spencer said. "There isn't really a great solution or win for us. And I know that will upset a ton of people, but it's just the truth of the matter that when you're third place in the console marketplace and the top two players are as strong as they are, and have in certain cases a very, very discrete focus on doing deals and other things that kind of make being Xbox hard for us as a team, [and] that's on us, not on anybody else."

He added: "I see commentary that if you just built great games everything would turn around. It's just not true that if we go off and build great games then all of a sudden you're going to see console share shift in some dramatic way. We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation where everybody built their digital library of games. So, when you go and you're building on Xbox, we want our Xbox community to feel awesome, but this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console that somehow we're going to win the console race, I think doesn't really lay into the reality of most people." Spencer claimed that 90% of the people who buy a console every year already own a PlayStation, Nintendo or Xbox console, and their digital game library lives on that ecosystem.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: The latest Linux kernel is out with a slew of new features -- and, for once, this release has been nice and easy. [...] Speaking of Rust, everyone's favorite memory-safe language, the new kernel comes with user-mode Linux support for Rust code. Miguel Ojeda, the Linux kernel developer, who's led the efforts to bring Rust to Linux, said the additions mean we're, "getting closer to a point where the first Rust modules can be upstreamed."

Other features in the Linux 6.3 kernel include support and enablement for upcoming and yet-to-be-released Intel and AMD CPUs and graphics hardware. While these updates will primarily benefit future hardware, several changes in this release directly impact today's users' day-to-day experience. The kernel now supports AMD's automatic Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) feature for Spectre mitigation, providing a less performance-intensive alternative to the retpoline speculative execution.

Linux 6.3 also includes new power management drivers for ARM and RISC-V architectures. RISC-V has gained support for accelerated string functions via the Zbb bit manipulation extension, while ARM received support for scalable matrix extension 2 instructions. For filesystems, Linux 6.3 brings AES-SHA2-based encryption support for NFS, optimizations for EXT4 direct I/O performance, low-latency decompression for EROFS, and a faster Brtfs file-system driver. Bottom line: many file operations will be a bit more secure and faster.

For gamers, the new kernel provides a native Steam Deck controller interface in HID. It also includes compatibility for the Logitech G923 Xbox edition racing wheel and improvements to the 8BitDo Pro 2 wired game controllers. Who says you can't game on Linux? Single-board computers, such as BannaPi R3, BPI-M2 Pro, and Orange Pi R1 Plus, also benefit from updated drivers in this release. There's also support for more Wi-Fi adapters and chipsets. These include: Realtek RTL8188EU Wi-Fi adapter support; Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 wireless chipset support; and Ethernet support for NVIDIA BlueField 3 DPU. For users dealing with complex networks that have both old-school and modern networks, the new kernel can also handle multi-path TCP handling mixed flows with IPv4 and IPv6. Linux 6.3 is available from kernel.org. You can learn how to compile the Linux kernel yourself here.

Andrew Cunningham writes via Ars Technica: Microsoft is aware of the problems running Windows on the Steam Deck and other similar handheld Windows PCs, and at least some developers inside the company have spent time thinking of ways to address them. That's the thrust of a leaked presentation (posted in two parts by Twitter user _h0x0d_) about a new "Handheld Mode" for Windows, developed as part of an internal Microsoft hackathon in September 2022.

As presented, Handheld Mode includes several components: a new first-time setup screen that simplifies driver installation and setup; an improved touchscreen keyboard that fits better on a 7-inch screen and can be controlled Xbox-style with the built-in buttons and joysticks; a simplified Nintendo Switch-esque game launcher; and improved OS-wide controller support thanks to the open source Steamdeck Windows Controller Driver (SWICD) project. The presentation also calls for other changes to Windows' default behaviors, like always opening apps in full-screen mode when in Handheld Mode, better UI scaling for small screens, and "mapping of controls to common Windows functions."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in 2020, we reported that emulator developers were using a hole in the Xbox Store's app distribution system to get around Microsoft's longstanding ban on emulators running on Xbox consoles. This week, though, many of the emulators that were distributed through that workaround have stopped working, the apparent victims of a new crackdown by Microsoft. Xbox emulator makers and users can't say they weren't warned. In the "Gaming and Xbox" section of Microsoft's official Store Policies, section 10.13.10 clearly states that "products that emulate a game system or game platform are not allowed on any device family."

Microsoft's enforcement of this clause has historically focused on removing emulators published as "private" UWP apps to the Xbox Store. Those apps could be distributed to whitelisted users via direct links accessed on the system's Edge browser, getting around the usual approval process for a public store listing. Previously, users who downloaded one of these "hidden" emulator listings before Microsoft's inevitable takedown could run that emulator on an unmodified retail system indefinitely. That is no longer the case; trying to launch downloaded versions of emulators like Xenia or Retrospection on an Xbox console now generates an error saying, "Unable to launch this game or app. The game or app you're trying to launch violates Microsoft Store policy and is not supported."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Late last month, UK regulators said they no longer believed a proposed Microsoft-owned Activision would bar Call of Duty games from PlayStation platforms, a reversal of earlier preliminary findings. Even if you grant that premise, though, Sony says that it's still worried Microsoft could give PlayStation owners a "degraded" version of new Call of Duty games in an effort to make the Xbox versions look better.

In a newly published response (PDF) to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, Sony says the regulators' recent turnaround is "surprising, unprecedented, and irrational." The company takes specific issue with the regulators' "lifetime value" modeling, which Sony says heavily undervalues what an Xbox-exclusive Call of Duty would be worth to Microsoft. Beyond those technical concerns, though, Sony says it worries that Microsoft might subtly undermine PlayStation "simply by not making it as good as it could be." That could include small changes to the game's "performance [or] quality of play," but also secondary moves to "raise [Call of Duty's] price [on PlayStation], release the game at a later date, or make it available only on Game Pass." Microsoft would also "have no incentive to make use of the advanced features in PlayStation not found in Xbox," Sony says, an apparent reference to the PS5 controller's advanced haptics and built-in audio capabilities.

In its own newly filed response (PDF), Microsoft reiterated that it has "no intention to withhold or degrade access to Call of Duty or any other Activision content on PlayStation." That follows on a March filing where Microsoft promised Sony parity on Call of Duty's "release date, content, features, upgrades, quality, and playability." But Sony's response reflects a continued lack of trust in such promises. The company cites detailed analyses from the likes of Digital Foundry in saying that "the technical quality of Modern Warfare II was similar across platforms" in today's market. After a merger, though, Sony argues that "Microsoft would have different incentives because degrading the experience on PlayStation would benefit Xbox, PlayStation's 'closest rival.'" "This kind of 'partial foreclosure' strategy might 'trigger fewer gamer complaints' than full Xbox exclusivity for Call of Duty, Sony says, while also allowing Microsoft to 'still secure revenues from sales of Call of Duty on PlayStation for a transitional period,'" reports Ars. "But Sony says the long-term results of this kind of 'degraded' PlayStation version would be the same as a full PlayStation ban: Call of Duty players abandoning Sony and moving to Microsoft's platforms."

"Such a move would 'seriously damage our reputation,' Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan told the CMA in a recent hearing. 'Our gamers would desert our platform in droves and network effects would exacerbate the problem. Our business would never recover.'"

How much energy does it take to play Xbox? Microsoft is helping developers find out. At the 2023 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the company announced a new toolkit for developers to measure real-time energy consumption from Xbox games. From a report: The toolkit, which Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft calls the first of its kind in the industry, will allow developers using the Xbox platform to monitor real-time energy use of the games they create -- "down to the nearest millisecond," the company noted in a press release. It will also help Microsoft establish a baseline for Xbox games, which could then serve as a benchmark for developers. The company hopes game-makers will also leverage the toolkit to experiment with approaches that reduce energy consumption. Some 60 years after the debut of the world's first video game, the industry has grown into a $214 billion global juggernaut. With that growth comes an increased environmental impact -- but one that can be difficult to quantify with precision, particularly as it varies widely by console, game and system setup.

Microsoft is preparing to launch a new app store for games on iPhones and Android smartphones as soon as next year if its $75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard is cleared by regulators, according to the head of its Xbox business. From a report: New rules requiring Apple and Google to open up their mobile platforms to app stores owned and operated by other companies are expected to come into force from March 2024 under the EU's Digital Markets Act. "We want to be in a position to offer Xbox and content from both us and our third-party partners across any screen where somebody would want to play," said Phil Spencer, chief executive of Microsoft Gaming, in an interview ahead of this week's annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. "Today, we can't do that on mobile devices but we want to build towards a world that we think will be coming where those devices are opened up."

Microsoft is fighting with regulators in the US, Europe and UK, which have all raised concerns about the potential impact on competition from the owner of the Xbox console buying the developer of Call of Duty, one of the world's most popular games franchises. PlayStation maker Sony has been a vocal opponent of the deal. However, Spencer argues the deal can boost competition in what he called the "largest platform people play on" -- smartphones -- where Apple and Google currently operate what some antitrust authorities have called a "duopoly" over distribution of games and other apps. [...] While acknowledging it was hard to predict exactly when Microsoft will be able to launch its own store, Spencer said it would be "pretty trivial" for Microsoft to adapt its Xbox and Game Pass apps to sell games and subscriptions on mobile devices. Microsoft's current lack of mobile games was an "obvious hole in our capability" that it needed Activision Blizzard to fill, he added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft announced Tuesday that it has signed a 10-year deal to bring its Xbox PC games to little-known Ukraine-based streaming platform Boosteroid. The move is being positioned in part to "mak[e] even more clear to regulators that our acquisition of Activision Blizzard will make Call of Duty available on far more devices than before," as Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in a statement. "If the only argument is that Microsoft is going to withhold Call of Duty from other platforms, and we've now entered into contracts that are going to bring this to many more devices and many more platforms, that is a pretty hard case to make to a court," Smith told The Wall Street Journal.

Started in 2017, Boosteroid boasts 4 million streaming customers using servers based in nine European countries and six US states. Those customers pay 7.50 euro per month to stream games from those servers to any smartphone, Windows/Mac/Linux-based PC, or Android TV device. Boosteroid currently links to users' accounts on other PC-based platforms -- including Steam, the Epic Games Store, Blizzard's Battle.net, EA's Origin, the Rockstar Game Launcher, and Wargaming -- and lets them play games from those services without having to install them on a local gaming PC. With this new deal, that access will expand to include games available through Microsoft's Xbox app on the PC.

Microsoft said it would license Activision Blizzard's "Call of Duty" (CoD) to Sony for 10 years to address concerns raised by Britain over its $69 billion takeover of the games maker, according to a document published by the regulator. From a report: "Microsoft is proposing a package of licensing remedies which (i) guarantee parity between the PlayStation and Xbox platforms in respect of CoD and (ii) ensure wide availability of CoD and other Activision titles on cloud gaming services," Microsoft said in the document published on Wednesday.

"Meta is cutting prices for two of its virtual reality headsets as it continues trying to boost adoption for the nascent technology on which it has bet its future," reports CNN: The company announced Friday that it is slashing the price of its higher-end Meta Quest Pro headset by some $500, bringing its cost to $999, roughly six months after it was released. Meta is also lowering the price of its Quest 2 headset from $499.99 to $429.99. The price cut for the Quest 2 will go into effect in more than a dozen countries including the United States on Sunday. The Quest Pro price drop will take effect the same day in the United States and Canada and on March 15 in all other countries where it is sold.

"Our goal has always been to create hardware that's affordable for as many people as possible to take advantage of all that VR has to offer," the company said in a blog post.
Yahoo Finance believes Meta is lowering prices "because consumers are, well, just not buying as many as the company expected." The Verge agrees that the Meta Quest Pro was "an absolute boondoggle of a device" — but suggests that's not the whole story.

"if you look at the Quest 2, which most people use for playing games, as a game console, it's done reasonably well." Mark Rabkin, Meta's vice president for VR, told staff that Meta has sold over 20 million Quest headsets thus far. That includes both the Quest and Quest 2.... That seems like a small number, but the Nintendo GameCube only sold 21 million consoles in its entire lifespan, and the Xbox Series X and S are estimated to have sold approximately 20 million consoles thus far. So if you look at the Quest 2, which most people use for playing games, as a game console, it's done reasonably well.
Their conclusion? "Meta might have big ambitions for VR headsets and their place in the metaverse, but the reality is that the top software on the Quest 2 are all games.... And while Meta is thrusting metaverse experiences onto users, it's kind of ignoring that core gamer audience."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has largely denied Sony's request to quash a Microsoft subpoena requesting that it divulge confidential documents. Microsoft served Sony with the subpoena in January as part of its defence-building process ahead of an FTC lawsuit regarding its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The subpoena included 45 separate requests for Sony documents, including copies of every third-party licensing agreement Sony has, and "all drafts of and communications regarding" SIE president Jim Ryan's declaration to the FTC. Sony attempted to quash or limit the subpoena, arguing that a number of the requests were either irrelevant to the case or too time-consuming and expensive to carry out.

However, in a newly filed order made by the FTC's chief administrative law judge, most of Sony's arguments have been rejected. Most notable among Sony's requests was that an order to produce a copy of "every content licensing agreement [it has] entered into with any third-party publisher between January 1, 2012 and present" be quashed, a request which has been denied. Sony had argued that this information had no apparent value, and that compiling the documents would mean an "unduly burdensome" manual review of over 150,000 contract records to find which ones were relevant. Microsoft's argument, which the FTC has agreed with, was that since much of the Activision Blizzard acquisition case revolves around whether gaining access to its IP could result in Xbox-exclusive titles that could negatively impact competition, it was important to understand the full extent of Sony's own exclusivity deals and "their effect on industry competitiveness." One request the FTC did grant Sony, however, was to limit the date range of documents being requested -- as such, only documents dated from January 1, 2019 to the present date will be required.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) issued a DMCA notice to a GitHub repo that contained a playlist that let viewers watch Pluto TVs streams on their own apps, such as VLC, MPV, and Tvheadend. From a report: The move was first noticed by TorrentFreak, and GitHub has complied and removed the repo, which ultimately does nothing. If you still have a tiny text file, you can still do exactly what the MPA tried to stop. Pluto TV, for those who do not watch it, is a service owned by Paramount that allows users to legally stream movies and TV shows free of charge on many devices. They have a mobile app, apps for Xbox and PlayStation, smart TVs, and dongles. Users do not even need to sign up to use it. In turn, Pluto's business model is predicated on serving ads and tracking user behavior. It's part of a newer breed of streaming product called free ad-supported television, or FAST. The GitHub repo in question contained M3U playlists to watch Pluto TV's content via an app like VLC. The repo basically took links that were already available and gathered them in one place. It should be noted that M3U files aren't torrent files; it's just a simple playlist file that can direct to local files and web sources.

An interesting profile of EV entrepreneur Horace Luke from Rest of World: During his time working for companies like Microsoft and HTC on projects like the Xbox gaming system and Android phones, Luke mulled over the idea of mobility. In 2011, he pitched the idea that would form the core of his company Gogoro: an electric vehicle that didn't have to take up space and time charging its batteries, but instead relied on a network of batteries that could be swapped at roadside stations, like filling up a gas tank. Multiple investors and vehicle makers told him the idea was impossible.

Today, Gogoro battery-swapping stations are as common as gas stations in Taiwan, and the network supports nearly 400,000 battery swaps a day, by over 526,000 riders. Last year, according to the Taiwanese government, 12% of all scooters sold in Taiwan were electric, and over 90% of those relied on Gogoro batteries. But in order to make the battery network a reality, Gogoro didn't have to develop just the batteries but also the vehicles that use them, along with an internal management software that encompasses everything from the supply of vehicle parts to the number of charged batteries at stations to how far riders can go before their next swap.
And the company now has pilot projects in Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea.

"Microsoft has struck a 10-year deal to bring "Call of Duty" and other Activision games to Nvidia's gaming platform, if the Xbox maker is allowed to complete its much-contested $69 billion acquisition of Activision," reports Reuters. It comes hot on the heels of a 10-year deal with Nintendo that guarantees Nintendo players will get Activision games on the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity. Reuters reports: Regulators and competitors like Sony have come out hard against the proposed Microsoft-Activision tie-up, and a Nvidia deal could allay concerns by ensuring more ways for consumers to get games controlled by Microsoft. [...] Microsoft President Brad Smith told a news conference on Tuesday he was now more optimistic of getting the Activision acquisition done after the Nvidia deal and a similar arrangement with Nintendo.

Phil Eisler, vice president and general manager of Nvidia's GeForce Now segment, said that titles such that "Call of Duty" will not be available on Nvidia's service unless Microsoft acquires Activision but that other Microsoft-owned titles such as "Minecraft" are covered immediately under the 10-year license agreement. "We were a little concerned about it at the beginning," Eisler said of the Microsoft-Activision deal. "But then we reached out to Microsoft, and they were very open about wanting to enable cloud gaming and work with us on a 10-year license agreement. So over time, they made us more and more comfortable with it."

Eisler said Nvidia is not paying Microsoft for access to the titles, which has been the chip company's practice with other gaming companies such as "Fortnite" maker Epic Games. Instead, Nvidia's 25 million customers will need to pay Nvidia for access to its cloud gaming platform and pay Microsoft for its games. Nvidia said it now supports the Xbox maker's bid to purchase Activision, but the deal could still be a hard sell with regulators. Smith said he hoped that rival Sony will consider doing the same type of deal with Nvidia.

Microsoft president Brad Smith announced that the company has signed a 10-year deal to bring Xbox games -- including Call of Duty once it is acquired -- to Nintendo players. From a report: The signed deal means Microsoft is living up to its promise to the Federal Trade Commission that it will make Call of Duty available to other platform companies like Nintendo if its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard is approved. Smith said in a tweet, "This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms." The binding agreement means that Nintendo players will get the games on the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity, so they can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty.

Microsoft said it is committed to providing long-term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms. The FTC has sued Microsoft for potential antitrust claims, and Microsoft has not yet been able to strike a similar deal with Sony, which is trying to get regulators to quash the deal. The feature parity claim is interesting because I think it means that Microsoft will bring the game to a new Nintendo console that hasn't been announced yet, as such a machine would be able to run the full Call of Duty game. The Nintendo Switch isn't capable of running the full Call of Duty, I believe.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority's provisional report on the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard acquisition includes an admission from Microsoft that putting games into its Game Pass subscription service cannibalizes sales of those titles. GamesIndustry.biz reports: "Microsoft also submitted that its internal analysis shows a [redacted]% decline in base game sales twelve months following their addition on Game Pass," the CMA noted in its report. That confirmation runs counter to claims Xbox head Phil Spencer made in 2018 that Game Pass boosts sales rather than undermines them.

"When you put a game like Forza Horizon 4 on Game Pass, you instantly have more players of the game, which is actually leading to more sales of the game," Spencer said, adding, "You say, 'Well isn't everyone just going to subscribe for $10 and go play this thing?' But no, gamers find things to play based on what everybody else is playing." Elsewhere in the CMA's report, it cites Microsoft as saying that Activision took a dim view on putting its titles into multi-game subscription services on any platform, believing that "severely cannibalize B2P [buy-to-play] sales, particularly in the case of newer releases."

Microsoft, implementing the layoff of 10,000 workers announced last month, on Thursday cut jobs in units including Surface devices, HoloLens mixed reality hardware and Xbox, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Cuts to much of the HoloLens hardware team throw into question whether the company will produce a third iteration of the goggles outside of a planned version for the US Army, said the people, who declined to be named discussing confidential matters. At the Xbox gaming unit, reductions came in marketing and the Xbox Gaming Ecosystem, one of the people said.

Xbox Chief Phil Spencer emailed employees Thursday to let them know about the cuts without detailing what parts of his business were impacted. "I encourage everyone to take the time and space necessary to process these changes and support your colleagues," Spencer wrote in the email, which was seen by Bloomberg.

Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard will harm competition in the UK gaming market, Britain's antitrust watchdog provisionally warned, saying it could force the selloff of the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said it took an initial view that the deal could result in a substantial lessening in competition, higher prices, fewer choices or less innovation for UK gamers, according to a statement published Wednesday. Microsoft first announced the Activision deal last year, looking to add games like Call of Duty to a business that already includes the Xbox console, the Halo franchise and Minecraft world-building software.

But the tie-up has fallen foul of global regulators who fear that Microsoft could make it harder for rival platforms to get unfettered access to Activision's most popular titles. The British agency has suggested a number of structural remedies that include the divestiture of the business associated with Call of Duty, the Activision part of the business or blocking the merger altogether. The CMA also said it would consider a behavioral remedies that would promise rivals can access to Call of Duty, although it flagged concerns about its ability to manage these.

The classic 1997 vidoegame GoldenEye 007 "has finally landed on Xbox and Nintendo Switch," writes the Verge: On Xbox, the remaster includes 4K resolution, smoother frame rates, and split-screen local multiplayer, similar to a 2008-era bound-for-Xbox 360 version that was canceled amid licensing and rights issues but leaked out in 2021.
Meanwhile CNET describes the Switch version: You'll need to be subscribed to Switch Online's $50-a-year Expansion Pack tier to access GoldenEye and other N64 games. Online multiplayer is exclusive to the Switch release, the official 007 website noted, but this version is otherwise the same as the N64 original.
But "No high-def for them," adds Esquire: GoldenEye 007 marks a rare case in gaming history, where the title never left the gamer zeitgeist. It has been talked about, wished over, remade, and totally Frankensteined in the modding and emulation community....

Rare, a favorite game studio of mine — its crew is responsible for many of my childhood memories, making Banjo Kazzoie, Donkey Kong Country, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and so many more — was always a Nintendo sweetheart. Until it was acquired back in 2002 by Microsoft. While Rare didn't pump out as many massive hits after the acquisition, the studio is responsible for one of my favorite games, Sea of Thieves. But arguably no game from those folks made more of a splash than Goldeneye.
CNN reports: Based on the 1995 film "GoldenEye," the game follows a block-like version of Pierce Brosnan's 007 as he shoots his way through various locales, all while a synthy version of the signature Bond theme plays....

The return of "GoldenEye 007," often referred to as one of the greatest video games of all time, has been years in the making. The Verge reported last year that rights issues blocked developers from releasing it on newer consoles, including Xbox, since at least 2008. Undeterred N64 fans even attempted to remake the game themselves on several occasions, though the original rights holders usually shut them down.
Modern players "may not realise how many of the features we now take for granted in shooters were inspired by this one game," writes the Guardian. "The game that would introduce a lot of players to the concept of using an analogue stick to look around in a 3D game — it's difficult to overstate how important that was." But it was the multiplayer mode that really counted. Four players, one screen, an array of locations and weapons, and all the characters from the single-player campaign.... We would usually play in Normal mode, but as the hours dragged on and the sunlight began to creep in behind the blinds, we'd switch to Slaps Only, in which players could only get kills by slapping each other to death....

It is interesting how fables around the game and its development have survived — and still intrigue. The fact that it is officially cheating to play as Oddjob in multiplayer mode; the brilliance of the pause music, which has been heavily memed on TikTok, and how it was written in just 20 minutes by Rare newcomer Grant Kirkhope. The fact that Nintendo legend and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto was so concerned by the death in the game that he suggested a post-credit sequence where James Bond went to a hospital to meet all the enemy soldiers he "injured". I think the sign of a truly great game — like any work of art — is how many legends become attached to its making.

It is lovely now, to see the game getting a release on Nintendo Switch and Xbox Game Pass.