Hello all! The New Year is minutes away as I type this. Another under the write post to finish things off, but luckily outside of my predictions list, discussing future ideas/plans for SFG is much simpler than the lists I’ve made for the past three days.

We already went into how the year has gone, so let’s not repeat outselves much on that; how about we just get things started with some future ideas?

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Patreon Revamp… Again

So last time I said I had ideas for the Patreon revamp; and well, I still haven’t done anything. The whole “being hyper depressed and focusing on the queue and the monster of an opinion article all year” kinda did it to me. I haven’t noticed the monthly charge changeover yet, but I need to actually poke around a bit more to double check that.

I did finally decide on a new pricing model for the patreon though, with the Ko-Fi being the main source of my tip jar; Every current Patreon backer before this article goes live will now be, in the event I return to making videos, a permanent “Legacy Patron”. No matter the tier, no matter how long, if you were one of the few to join, you’re in. I’ll try to find a way to incorporate it on the website here, too, but I’m unsure how or if I need to get consent from the patrons before doing that.

When I eventually update the pricing, I’m gonna make everything $1. $1, all content. Hence the legacy patron status so that those who pledge more can downgrade or just quit entirely if they so wish. It’s still a way to find my behind the scenes content, my old scripts and other various cutting room ideas I had for the now on hiatus Eternal Memories series. I still plan to put future behind the scenes writeups there, but I’m also debating on a way to also hook it onto the ko-fi: I could just leave the ko-fi as the tip jar and the patreon as the “hey, get fun facts and do this monthly, too” thing, though…

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Switch 2, all around

Despite how much I love the thing, the only Switch 2 related thing to get a SFG review last year was the Welcome Tour game. Oops. Luckily that’s gonna change rather soon: Broken Sword is up next, Majogami will eventually be tackled (maybe by Feb?), and I have a bunch of drafts for games I wanna review in full in some fashion. Obviously crossgen is still a big thing right now so I don’t expect this to change rapidly, but I would like to eventually be able to review S2 versions over OG Switch games at some point.

I may also give some accessory reviews a crack, too. I don’t do those much, but the few I’ve done in the past have been received rather OK. I don’t wanna drown my house in them, but perhaps doing a couple of ones people are on the fence on (maybe the Virtual Boy?) would help matters.

Dev kits seem to be increasing in output, so here’s hoping for good things! I know I’m definitely excited to review a lot more things from this console (And the console itself, eventually)

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Interview Initative, Restart!

With the big focus post M.Y Interview to be my site redesign, and with that done in the form of the new logo, I wanna get back to trying to interview more folk. I have plenty of people in mind, and the events of the past year made me more inclined to want to reach out to certain political creators I admire and get their input, especially since a few of them have deeper ties to the gaming industry than one might think!

I also am gonna start trying to track down people from a certain 90s Genesis publishing outfit, since I am really curious about how that all came together for some of their games, and to maybe find out more about what didn’t come out and ended up getting away. I’m hoping to be able to get at least a couple of interviews knocked out for the former stuff in 2026, and maybe start work on one of these later in the year!

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Evercade keeps on rolling here

I slowed a lot down on the Evercade front this year; my whole schedule and anxiety got in the way, and I wanted to time the Tomb Raider set to be right before the EXP-R, so delaying my cart reviews until that was done was a pain, but the ones I’ve done since have been received pretty well, as has the Alpha review.

Not much changes in the plans. Gonna cover the carts I can, both new, legacy and old, and any systems related to EC I am interested in. No VS/EXP-R Solos or recolors, maybe the super pockets, and yes, even the NeoGeo stuff, though that’s gonna require me to buy them from eBay after the fact, so expect any carts from SNK to get delays on their reviews since I do not want to give them money directly if I can.

Leaning toward that for Microsoft stuff as well, but it depends on the company division since some divisions are pushing back more against MS on the anti-union/BDS thing than others. For instance, Bethesda being more unionized than say, Rare/Activision is enough for me to maybe let that one be less on my uncomfortable radar, and I’d thus review a Doom cart pretty close to me getting it, but I’d still cover it in disclaimers as I would anything by a publisher with very, very questionable ownership IRL right now.

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System Reviews: Perhaps more?

The System reviews I do are a pretty popular part of SFG; they tend to be evergreen articles for one thing, and even if I cover something rather late it still seems to do rather well. The Super Pockets are good things that get nice attention, so I might cover more of those, for instance. I might even try those micro keychains if people want me to cover any, but I don’t really think i’ll like them. I have one in mind I’d nab, and that’s about it.

I’m probably not gonna get an Analogue 3D, but if I did that’d be on the docket, even though I’m way more interested in that FPGA Superstation; That’s the most exciting FPGA thingy I wanna try and cover in 2026, if I can of course.

And obviously, the Switch 2 itself! Tons to say about that. Still, if anything retro and interesting comes out that I can nab during 2026 and write about, you bet I will!

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Xbox is Dead.

Shortly I’m going to remove the XSX from my review queue entirely. With Switch 2 and Steam Deck, i’m pretty sure anything i’d want to review for XSX would be more viable on those other systems. Not only do more people look up switch/steam games than xbox titles, but I’d rather spend less time on my xbox outside of my bluray purposes than I have been.

If I do anything on my xbox, it’d be a quiet stream on my twitch if I end up feeling up for it. Or just working on my backlog of personal games. But yeah, with the end of Xbox’s relevance, the disappointment of my first Xbox being a bust and MS just putting their best games on other systems anyhow, I don’t think this will be one that helps the site. In the future, any XSX reviews are pretty much solely a game where it was a platform I couldn’t get a code for anything else on (ie; if it was Steam or XSX, it’d be XSX if the game didn’t run on Steam Deck)

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2026 Predictions

Here we go! Sorry for the slight delay everyone and the Xenogears-ification of the predictions. My body was way too worn out this week and I was lower on sleep due to working on parts 1-3 this week and giving one last polish to my LRG piece before it goes out. So let’s make some predictions and check back on them in December.

GenAI in the Games Industry will start to weaken: The backlash to GenAI has gotten pretty darn big to the point even people i see that goof around on their own local models are starting to doubt the stupid inflation of a bubble surrounding the US economy on the technology. It’s clear GenAI is not capable of doing the god king things the idiot CEOs keep blabbing it does, and it’s clear most people hate it being shoved into their day to day life especially if AI tools make your work worse.

Thus, I think this will be the year, especially if the AI stock bubble pops or explodes in any violent manner, where GenAI is a thing companies quietly back away from. They’ll either use it in the pre-production phase or quietly, or just not bother at all since people would be happier that way. A lot of people are hyper observant and will sniff out anything generated by AI in anything at this point, so I don’t think the smaller/mid sized companies are gonna leave anything blatantly AI Generated in, unless they’re too big to fail like Call of Duty. (and even that is being hated by a lot of people lately)

Depending on what it does to the overall US economy, some bigger companies may be more inclined to bail on it entirely than others, depending on how much stupid money was pissed away gambling on a crappy word prediction technology that I could very easily trick into saying Seafoam Gaming is a game development company.

Pokemon’s 30th Anniversary will piss people off and be insufferable: I mentioned on Tuesday how the Pokemon outrage machine on Z-A was a bit overkill for a pretty fine, fun game, and it’s clear in the era of “I gotta use the most outlandish, wild hyperbole to get clicks on tiktok” we live in, anything Pokemon does in Gen 10 this year will be ripped to shreds, even if the actual game comes out fine or OK or even outstanding. If it’s actually dogshit or is another Scarlet/Violet technical nightmare, then yeah, anger might be warranted, but not “you are a bad human being if you play the game i do not like” that the Pokemon fandom is known for.

Anyhow, I expect a lot of dumb arguing this year. Complaints on how the series is 30 years old and should be better by now, complaints the anime is boring, complaints the card game has a scalper problem (this is a valid one), complaints because Digimon Story Time Stranger had voice acting Pokemon not including it again is a sin against humanity, and my own personal frustration, we probably won’t get any retro Pokemon rereleases this year.

Oh, and if TPC decides to get weird about protecting against leaks and makes Pokemon Gen 10 Game Key Card games, I expect it to be like a Nuclear Bomb exploding in terms of discourse; pure insufferable behavior and the inability to realize that most normies buying the game at a Target won’t mind a small download. Speaking of…

Game Key Cards are here to stay, sorry: Big companies will still use Game Key Cards. Sorry to break it to you, but you’d be an idiot as a business not to if you’re putting out a game that’s 30-50 MSRP. I think we’ll see more true game cards from small pubs like PM Studios and Atari, and LRG announced they’re fully going all in on that, so it’ll be interesting to see if the Limprint Bubble can inflate again from a new system.

I don’t think it will though, since the whole limprint boom was pre and during Covid during the height of stimulus spending and people getting the Switch during that period of time, and I think most folks would just rather get a physical game from Amazon VS a company’s proprietary store.

Even for games that are small enough, even for games that are $60 and can fit on smaller cards if available, I don’t think you’ll see SEGA/Capcom/Square moving off the key cards. The price of real carts are ludicrous enough as is, and with tech pricing off the charts due to AI and all that, you’ll have to do what I do and just go on the eShop to cut out the middleman of putting a blank card in every time you want to play Bravely Default.

Unless ordinary normie consumers dislike them, they’re here to stay, and with how stuff like NBA on Switch 1 acted like proto Game Key Cards for years and sold bonkers amounts, I don’t think they’ll sell badly either if they’re targeting a casual audience. Like it or not, this is as good as you’re gonna get for some companies.

A Limprint company will shut down: I kinda made this one in the past and it didn’t come true due to stubbornness of some of these corporations, but several of the smaller limprints show blatant signs of running out of money or doing a last gambit. Some haven’t shipped anything out in months/years but still have a store open, the one that goes to Midwest Gaming Classic every year has a ghost town of a booth, and stock for most of these companies barely move.

I mean, they were making games for a small audience of collectors that collected during a boom era. This isn’t like a small scale retro cart publisher that can only order a few hundred, sell out of those, and buy more, these people buy the MOQ for the system. Thus if they sell switch games and only sell a few hundred units, that’s a damaging loss, and thus the ones that suffered the most from this seem to be the ones most likely to call uncle. Either by just not making any more games from here on out but keeping their store/business open and doing something else (like digital publishing), or by outright ghosting everyone and shutting up shop Dispatch Games style. I absolutely expect First Press will do the latter and Premium Edition will do the former.

ININ/SLG might try to bet their entire company on a remaster of Shenmue III, and oh boy, good luck with that guys. Good luck.

The Switch 2 will get a price increase, but not a terrible one: Let’s face it, whether it’s the current tariffs from the US president, or the increasing tech prices due to RAM, or if Taiwan has a coastal storm hit their chip factory, I don’t think the Switch 2 will be $450 forever. I think it will jump up to $500 at some point for just the unit itself. But I don’t think it’ll be like people were hyperventilating about last year, with $700 Switch 2s and $100 Games from tariffs.

I expect them to be small bumps like the other Switch systems got, which kept them doing pretty OK despite that. A major jump like Xbox did will just kill your system’s momentum. I don’t expect the software prices to jump, nor accessory prices by much. (they already went up several times) Pretty annoying, but such are the times we live in, and it seems in hindsight the Switch 2 still ended up being the “cheap” handheld/gaming thing to buy for your kid, unless they wanted a Switch Lite.

Nintendo Won’t have a Super Game this year: I mean nothing like DK Bananza, Mario Kart World or Mario Odyssey. I see a lot of people thinking we’ll have Odyssey 2 this year or whatnot, and with a new Fire Emblem out I think that’ll be a big focus, but there won’t be any major, super duper game family seller not named Pokemon (and is thus, technically the Pokemon Company), and that this will be more of a year like 2018 was for the Switch 1.

More ports, Switch 2 Editions, smaller/spinoffy games, RPG/niche titles, but nothing on the scale of 3D Mario unless they do a Switch 2 Edition for Odyssey or something like that. I expect updates for Mario Kart World to be more likely than anything else. Speaking of said Switch 2 Editions…

Switch 2 Editions will have the floodgates open. Prepare your Wallets: It’s clear the Switch 2 Edition template, dumb as a name may sound, is a fantastic way to update your game for the new system. Push out a patch that adds fancy stuff, and boom, you can basically resell it with the fancy new Switch 2 logo on it. A few small/mid tier games have already gotten updates in this manner, and even some Japanese A-Train game from years ago got a Switch 2 Edition very recently. I expect as soon as dev kits are out more and as ideas get flowing, a whole lot of upgrade packs will hit the eShop and third parties will go nuts.

I think this is a net good. Gives people a good reason to revisit older games on their backlog, check out some new content, or even play around with the mouse mode if a game is particularly suited for it. (Hi, Broken Sword) I know if an older game I have gets a Switch 2 upgrade, I’m buying it and will play it considering how much I love the thing. Bring them on!

Switch 2 Ports will impress more than Switch 1 Miracle Ports: There have been some rougher Switch 2 ports of late like System Shock, but by and large when people discuss miracle ports on Switch 2, they’re way more impressive than on Switch 1 with its miracle ports. 30FPS Doom 2016 still doesn’t feel great in an era where a cheap PS4 can run it way better, but locked 30FPS FF7 Remake in an era with Steam Deck choking on some of these games is pretty damn impressive, and it helps VRR can help smooth out rough edges.

I want more ports on this thing, and I’m excited for them as a result, but of course I don’t want a rushjob or anything of that nature. Elden Ring being delayed is fine by me as long as it comes out as the most stable product it could be. FF7 Rebirth being locked 30 or close to 30 would be a damn miracle I’d take over the Steam Deck’s choking hazard, and if Ubisoft throws up anything random on the system, sure, why not that too. (but not until it’s used/hyper discounted for me)

Not all of them will be perfect, but I’m of the mindset that I can be more impressed by a Switch 2 port of an intensive game than on Switch 1, as Wild Hearts S did to me. That game was a nightmare on other systems, is a nightmare in Switch Handheld, but is delightfully stable in docked mode and was a pleasant surprise. If Pragmata is a stable framerate, I’m absolutely diving into that on Switch 2.

Grand Theft Auto 6 will have a rocky launch: The Car Game is the one all the normies and everyone with a system will rush to buy no matter how it comes out; it’s been super hyped and Rockstar tend to do quality work even if I’m not fond of most of their modern output. (reissue GTA 1/2, thx) But I still expect something funky to happen; either an online outage, a rocky Day One experience, or even another delay/something to do with the London workers that got union busted by Rockstar, it just seems like a game like this is always inevitably gonna have some kind of issue.

Regardless of that, this game will sell an absurd amount of copies, will not hit Switch 2 (maybe GTA IV/V will though), and probably do even better on PC years from now.

We’ll finally see DS/3DS ports more this year: Systems with weird controls are harder to bring to modern consoles. This is a known quantity and has been for a while. Yet with the 3DS and some late DS games, the touch screen wasn’t a gimmick that was shoved in your face all the time, and we’ve seen some DS ports come around in recent years like Mega Man ZX. I expect more of that from all sorts of companies as the system gets to be 22 years old, and the 3DS more so as it gets 15 years old.

Whether that means Nintendo will do a NSO DS app for their own stuff or third parties just copy Capcom, or we see more things like Bravely Default HD come out, remains to be seen, but I feel this untapped library for porting will get utilized more. It’s more viable than Wii games tend to be at least, since most devices have some kind of touch screen/pad/thingy.

Lastly, doomerism and hyperbole, gaming and otherwise, will get worse: The problem with most modern social media is that it is very very easy to get a grift going and hijack a subject matter even if you don’t actually care for it. If you say the most outlandish things, turn into a scold and say that yes this thing WILL Bomb/sell billions/doom the economy/end the world, instead of acknowledging the future is unknowable, then that’s easy way to get money or views on the worst social media platforms like X or Threads.

Not even just politically; gaming space has been this bad in that regard since 2014, and it ebbs and flows depending on the platform. While some platforms are better at their users stomping out grifters and tankies and alt righters than others, an awful lot of them can fall into traps of nonsense purity testing/arguments/petty fights that help nobody and just make everyone mad. If anything with Pokemon looks remotely off to people, there will be a nuclear outrage even if it’s way overkill and the most outlandish of these will be the ones to get the most views and money, rather than a slower, more methodical look at whatever the current subject is.

It’s why you had people posting as if they were one message away from saying they were in a hospital bed of stress for the earlier part of the year, and it is why I primarily backed off most of my socials to autopost and only butt into a place like bluesky when I need to elaborate on something. My mental health has still improved since then, but even as a local political activist, stuff is stressful, I get it and this is not to say “don’t worry, everything is fine”, but rather “stop stressing about every single detail and coming up with multi step what if scenarios in your head and focus on the now and how to help yourself, your friends, community, etc first.

I even left two gaming forums because both of them had a userbase that primarily acted like children despite both of them claiming to be progressive websites only to fall into a similar trap: one of which had an entire half of the site acting like a god damn tumor of people acting like the world was gonna end and it was all hopeless every single week with no optimism or any chance of positivity/pushback, and another which had a thread hyping up new hardware get completely unhinged as the new hardware became real and it wasn’t their god king they theory crafted for several years, to the point it felt like their thread was the definition of Qualified Immunity. (Them having someone randomly praise the Houthis in one thread wasn’t a great look either and doesn’t help anyone in Gaza as well; put your money where your mouth is, get to donating to World Central Kitchen or other such causes, and meet an IRL community group and bond over wanting this horrific genocide to end instead of bickering on a gaming website about it from your sofa.)

I felt much, much, much better being out and involved in my community when I wasn’t doing my day to day life or SFG stuff, and I think that’s a benefit anyone reading this could learn, no matter where you are. Whether it’s an indivisible group, a gaming club, a Pokemon TCG night, or something of the like, you could have a lot of fun and help out/meet new people while doing so! Covid took away that from a lot of people, and I think it’s time we start taking it back for our own mental health, even if the internet will try to ramp up all the insanity more than ever.

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Conclusion

2025 was… An incredibly bad, rough year for sure. I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t sure if I would make it. But I did, am fairly confident I’ll do the same right before 2027, and have some plans for 2026 that are more of your typical stuff (working on the queue, checking out newer stuff as they come along).

Still, I also really apologize for the Xenogears status of the original article. I crunched myself way too hard last month and i’m starting to pay the price for it. After this, i’m just working on touchups for the next big piece before I take a short break and get back to the review queue, laying off big articles for quite a while. This end of year roundup was super fun nevertheless, and while there’ll be scary moments and happy moments, never let fear ruin any joy you might have.

Until next time… See you!