Nintendo will probably learn nothing from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie getting critically panned. Halo: Campaign Evolved reportedly won’t have a skin shop. And Saudi Arabia buys up more of Capcom amid war in the Middle East. It’s your Morning Checkpoint for April 6, 2026, and an interview with Sony’s Hiroki Totoki from back in February is making the rounds again amid the company’s reported pullback from PC. What if console gaming somehow persists mostly unchanged for another 10 years as AI eats the rest of tech alive?
Mario Galaxy Movie sets a record for animated franchises
According to Deadline, which loves to track hyper-specific achievements, “Super Mario BrosĀ is the only animated franchise to have two titles open over $350M globally.” Cool! When looking at North America exclusively, The Mario Galaxy Movie‘s five-day run has it tracking behind Moana 2Ā ($225.4M), The Super Mario Bros. MovieĀ ($204.6M), and Transformers: Revenge of the FallenĀ ($200M), but ahead of Zootopia 2Ā ($158.8M).
Not bad for a sequel that Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto briefly wanted to have almost zero narrative continuity with the original 2023 release. Hitting during a restless spring break in the states during which parents are itching for something to occupy their kids with no doubt helped.
The Halo: Combat Evolved remake is reportedly content complete
It’s also full of skins, according to Rebs GamingĀ (via Windows Central). Players will be able to customize Master Chief’s appearance with different styles based on the his Mark V armor sets, but the game reportedly won’t feature a microtransaction shop, suggesting they’re unlockable rather than paid cosmetics.
Will the game be a shadow-drop after the June Xbox showcase as some have predicted? Fable is expected to be late 2026, though it could still miss. Gears of War: E-Day has a Direct at the showcase, signaling it will be a late summer or early fall release (can’t be too close to Call of Duty). June wouldn’t be the worst window for Halo, though the franchise could find itself overwhelmed by the May launch of a Forza Horizon game all over again.
The PlayStation Store purges AI-slop Jesus
PSNProfiles reports that the latest wave of shovelware being dumped from the digital storefront includes a number of knock-offs of the recently released I Am Jesus Christ sim on Steam. That game has gotten some surprisingly decent user reviews so far.
Another Crimson Desert patch adds tons of new fixes and improvements
Chief among them is an expansion of camp storage capacity to 1,000 slots, but Pearl Abyss is also continuing to tweak how players navigate the world, by far the fantasy adventure’s biggest pain point. One of the most welcome quality-of-life changes in the latest 1.02 patch is the ability to fast-travel on the map even when Kliff isn’t at a dead stop.
Saudi Arabia ratchets up its stake in Capcom another 1 percent
A subsidiary of the country’s Crown Prince now sits at a 6.04 percent equity stake in Capcom after increasing its total number of held shares from 26.78 million to 32.18 million, according to GameBiz (via Automaton). It continues to claim this is purely for investment purposes. That’s in addition to a separate 5 percent equity stake owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
ICYMI:
- A Call of Duty team ditches one of their players after his unsolicited sexts leak
- The Cyberpunk 2077 card game is breaking records on Kickstarter but it’s just one piece in a broader TCG revival
- The developers of Ghost of Yotei‘s excellent multiplayer spin-off talk with us about making it
