A retired PlayStation boss makes the case for PS5 games on PC. Atari expands its retro game emulation capabilities. And the “efficiency” purge at Meta continues. It’s your Morning Checkpoint for April 24, 2026, where we can safely report that the next Halo game is not a pottery spin-off. I can’t tell you what might come out of this bouncing, talking Ditto’s mouth, but I can tell you it will be roughly $33 to find out.
In the meantime, Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest is underway this weekend in Anaheim, California. It’s packed, and former Kotaku writer Harper Jay MacIntyre will be on the ground covering it for Kotaku as Square Enix reveals the next expansion for its popular MMORPG: Evercold. Too bad the new Square Enix cafe isn’t opening up in nearby Los Angeles for another couple of months.
A piece of Alice: Madness Returns trivia you probably haven’t heard before
Former id Software designer American McGee recently shared some fresh nuggets about the development of 2011’s Alice: Madness Returns, which was published by Electronic Arts. “It would be fair to say that there was a fairly big disconnect between the game I wanted to make and the game EA Marketing wanted me to make when we were developing Madness Returns,” McGee wrote in a new thread about the game.
It would be fair to say that there was a fairly big disconnect between the game I wanted to make and the game EA Marketing wanted me to make when we were developing Madness Returns.
The marketing team felt strongly that a Hard M title focused on gore, horror, and featuring a… https://t.co/HddXtHuWXz
— 🔪 American McGee 🖤 (@americanmcgee) April 23, 2026
“The marketing team felt strongly that a Hard M title focused on gore, horror, and featuring a ‘psychotic’ Alice was what audiences would respond to best,” he continued. “I did NOT want portray Alice as a psycho, cover her in blood, or ‘make things more sexy’ (yes, that was a request). Famously, I pasted dildos onto the head of a giant snail in response to the ‘sexy’ request and emailed that to the Marketing team. They stopped making those requests.”
McGee added that his ability to retain creative control came from unusual financial terms that revolved around bank loans and Hollywood-style movie production arrangements. Of course, when development was wrapping and the team needed more time, EA responded with similar “gfy” energy.
Resident Evil Requiem sells 7 million copies
That makes it the fastest-selling entry in the survival horror franchise’s history. Not entirely surprising considering it’s the first entry in years to have a simultaneous release on a Nintendo console. Game director Koshi Nakanishi shared the good news on his Instagram (via Twisted Voxel). There was a multi-tiered cake and everything. Even Geoff Keighley apparently came into town for the party.
Retired PlayStation veteran makes the case for PS5 games on PC
“When I was working on the game development side, first-party at PlayStation, from a strategy standpoint, we [were] not allowed to bring our triple-A games to other platforms like PC,” Shuhei Yoshida said during his recent Alt. Games Festival speech in Australia (via Respawn First). “As the game development scale and investment became larger and larger, it makes sense for me that in [the] PS5 generation they started to move their big games to PC.”
He continued, “Releasing games on PC after a couple of years must have helped recoup the investment of these big budget games and help the team and company to reinvest that money into their new games…[I’m] not seeing any proof of them changing the strategy this generation, [but] it’s going to be interesting to [see] how [Sony is] able to maintain the investment on the big-budget games on [the] first-party side going forward.”
The secret to success on Steam? Make good games
Valve product and UI designer Alden Kroll revealed that startlingly obvious piece of advice only half-jokingly on a recent podcast. “Certainly, people explore Steam and discover games that way,” he said (via Gamesradar). “But also, people learn about games all over the internet. So it’s useful to think about how you can reach and engage players in places around the internet where they might be discussing or learning about the kind of games that you make.”
Kroll explained that Valve tries “very hard” to not let Steam be easily gamed by various marketing strategies. Instead of there being a secret to gaining visibility in the PC gaming storefront’s vast seas of new releases, he argued developers “should make a good game and probably get word out so that the day you launch in Next Fest is not the first time anybody has ever heard about your game.”
There’s finally Nintendo music on Spotify, for now
The Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 soundtracks have arrived on the streaming platform in a first for Nintendo’s vast back catalog of classic video game music. “The magic isn’t limited to the music, however,” reads the press release. “As the songs play, the beloved character Luma will appear directly on the playback bar within the Spotify app for Premium subscribers. It’s a delightful detail designed to deepen the connection between fans and the Super Mario universe.” The playlists are tied to the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. and seemingly won’t hang around forever.
The new Toei Games reveals its first three projects
The Japanese entertainment giant revealed its new gaming division earlier this week, and now it’s ready to reveal which three projects it will be publishing first. KILLA from Black Tangerine is a 3D murder mystery story with some Persona-style animations, HINO from UnGloomStudio is a 2D dark fantasy game in the style of an Edward Gorey print, and DEBUG NEPHEMEE from Nephemee Studio is a top-down old-school adventure with a retro chiptune soundtrack.
Atari gets into the PS1 emulation game
The revived retro gaming company has added 32-bit games to its repertoire with the recent acquisition of Implicit Conversions, GamesBeat reports. Atari has quietly become a big deal when it comes to resurrecting classic games. “Alongside the Bakesale Engine (Digital Eclipse) and the Kex Engine (Nightdive), we now have an enviable suite of proprietary tools, and more engineering talent that will enable us to continue to expand our capabilities across our own catalog as well as the back catalogs of our IP partners,” Atari CEO Wade Rosen said.
Meta purges another 8,000 employees from its payroll as it pivots to sunglasses and AI
That’s 10 percent of the social media company’s workforce. The latest round of mass layoffs comes as Mark Zuckerberg races to catch up on AI after burning billions on virtual reality efforts that delivered some cool tech and good games, but no new platform shift.