Xbox exclusives make the ~*Switch*~

Art buff favorite 'Pentiment' is one of them

Hi all! In this issue, in addition to your regular gaming news, I’m going to transfer over a SparkNotes of some majorly important books I’ve read recently, including “The Body Keeps the Score,” “Atomic Habits,” “I Will Make You Rich,” and “Crash Override” by Zoe Quinn.

Huge apologies for missing a week last week! I’ve had my hands full with a number of projects and I’ll be excited to share more soon. One big note is that the Scientific American podcast about the neuroscience of video games is still happening this spring. And I’ll be going to San Francisco next month for Game Developers Conference.

Photo by Javier Martínez on Unsplash

Last week, I reported on an internal Xbox town hall between employees and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, Xbox President Sarah Bond, and other top leadership. I also appeared on Destin’s YouTube channel here to discuss the full news, if you’d prefer a video recap.

You can read the full story on Inverse dot com. Robin writes what was said on the Xbox podcast. After Xbox announced four games were coming to other platforms, employees within the company didn’t have much of a reaction to the relatively small news.

Nvidia is one to watch

Nvidia’s revenue from the most recent quarter tripled year over year to $22.1 billion, according to a Wednesday earnings report. The GPU maker forecasts that this quarter’s revenue will hit $24 billion, maintaining that rapid growth and exceeding analysts’ prediction of $22 billion.

Nvidia reportedly has a new business unit dedicated to graphics cards, and it plans to make a custom chip for the Nintendo Switch 2, Reuters reported on Feb. 9. The current Switch uses an older Nvidia chip circa pre-2016 with a lower graphics resolution and performance than an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, so a new chip would be a welcome addition to the next console generation. I’m reminded of when I was playing the online version of Mario Golf and saw a mass pixels lagging, which is partially internet connectivity but also GPU-related.

Street Fighter 6’s new character theme is German rap

Street Fighter 6 is getting a new character, Ed, in late February, and I briefly chatted with the folks behind the character’s theme song.

“Keep fighting, my heart, my way, the self-doubter in me; my constant leader, but I live on, quitting is not an option, fight my own demons and take the throne,” German artist Blumio raps.

Street Fighter 6 executive music producer and music director Koyo Sonae tells me in an email interview that producer GRP first came up with the “powerfully victorious beat for Blumio to rap over, which he delivered with great fighting spirit.” GRP says he went with a strong rhythm, guitar chords, combining major and minor chords to mark “darkness and hope.”

Blumio explains in an email the thought process behind the lyrics and tells us what he and Ed have in common:

“I tried to combine my own experience as a rapper where I had to fight to get recognition — with the life story of Ed. I think there are big similarities. The self doubt, a sort of  identity crisis if you will but also the strong desire to become the best. I also tried to get as ‘technical’ as possible with my flow and my rhyme schemes because Ed is also very skillful and powerful in his fights.”

I read a book so you don’t have to

I’m also including photos of these excerpts that I mentally highlighted while reading “Atomic Habits.”

The essence of “Atomic Habits” boils down to:

1) Make good habits likely and visible

2) Make bad habits unlikely and invisible.

I’ve applied this principle to things as simple as hiding my TV remote, placing a PlayStation 5 controller on my table in an obvious place, and adding a block of creative writing time on top of a habit I already practice every week, which is visiting my grandma.

I also want to share some insights I learned from poring over too many YouTube video essays. Since last week, I’ve been trying this productivity hack and it’s been giving me some minor returns.

Basically, figure out what your domino habit is in the morning, and then work backwards and set yourself a series of alarms (no more than six) that would help you achieve that habit the next day.

So for myself, I decided to wake up at 8AM and begin writing, which meant I had to sleep by midnight, eat dinner at 6:30 and lunch at noon, and workout at 9AM.

Honestly, I may have just discovered a trendy way to create a schedule. For some reason, I’ve gained real momentum in my days. We’ll see how long it sticks!

Bonus links

• In The Industry Is Divided On How To Write Video Game Romance, Kenneth Shepard over at Kotaku writes about the artistic decision in Bioware’s Dragon Age II to make its romantic conquests bisexual and extrapolates that to how the industry handles these issues in their stories.

• On this subject, 17 percent of players surveyed by GLAAD identify as LGBTQ, while only two percent of games on digital storefronts have queer characters. Robin has the story for Inverse.

• It’s been a review-heavy month for me. I reviewed Mario vs. Donkey Kong and gave it an 8/10. I also got to try Figure Skater Peach in Princess Peach: Showtime!, which harkened back to Michelle Kwan’s glory days, for me. On the subject of gaming recommendations, we also rounded up the best games to play after a break-up.

• Natalie Schriefer has the story about how nostalgic music works with your brain and what neuroscience has to say about video game music. It’s a subject that fascinates me and I’ll be following up on this a lot this year.

• Hayes’ take on how Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is simply absurd is a take that is holding up super well. Stay close to Inverse these next few days as we’ll have much more to come.

• Over at The Verge, Adi Robertson has the story on how Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis. The accompanying images are truly something.