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Ori and the Will of the Wisps released early this year on Xbox One and PC via Xbox Game Pass, and has since been played by 2 million people. The game is a sequel to Ori and the Blind Forest, which was released for Switch in 2019 despite being published by Microsoft Game Studios. The Switch port of the first game was well-received, and a member of developer Moon Studios has now opened up about whether the sequel is likely to receive similar treatment.

In a Reddit AMA, developer Moon Studios lead engineer Gennadiy Korol answered a question about the sequel coming to Switch. He says that while the team “loves” Nintendo’s console, they are not currently working on a port. “Right now we don’t have anything to share when it comes to Ori and the Will of the Wisps port,” he says. “If it were to ever happen though I can tell you that it would be (an) extremely difficult port to make run at 60fps.”

Ori and the Will of the Wisps faced frame rate difficulties on a base model Xbox One, which would make a Switch port difficult.

Elsewhere in the AMA, lead designer Chris McEntee discusses the possibility of Ori 3, saying that nothing is currently in the works. “We really felt that we told the story that we wanted to tell–Ori’s story–across the two games,” he writes. “We’ve left the door cracked open a bit for a potential continuation, though we don’t have anything specific to share at this point and time.”

Microsoft has previously said that the plan going forward is for Xbox’s first-party studios to make console exclusives. Moon Studios, however, is not owned by Microsoft.

Moon Studios’ next game will not be a fantasy title, and will reportedly be very different from the Ori games.

Of all the games shown off during the PlayStation 5 reveal event, the one that has stuck in a lot of people’s heads is Bugsnax–not just because of its cute aesthetic or interesting-looking gameplay, but because of its theme song. Aside from all the critters shown off, the trailer’s most prominent bug was an earworm.

The game, which is also coming to PS4 and PC and is developed by Young Horses (Octodad: Dadliest Catch), enlisted indie band Kero Kero Bonito to compose the song. In a new post on the PlayStation Blog, song-writer Gus Lobban has talked about how the catchy tune was written.

The song, which is called It’s Bugsnax!, was recorded from home, and Lobban says that the starting point was “the D-Am chords the song rests on”. There’s a lot of technical discussion in this post, by Lobban also digs into the themes and mood he was going for. “The I-Vm chord change and the Mixolydian mode it implies conjure a ‘lost world’ atmosphere to me,” he says. “Positive, but with a definite note (pun intended) of mystical intrigue, much like Bugsnax itself.”

“We couldn’t meet up to record the vocals, so It’s Bugsnax! was the first KKB song to use our remote lockdown recording setup,” Lobban continues, noting that the band’s vocalist, Sarah Bonito, “nailed the vocals the first time.” The lyrics were written out by hand, and were heavily inspired by the theme song for Octodad.

Lobban said that he didn’t know that Bugsnax would be a part of the PS5 reveal when he was working on it, saying that he just knew it would be shown at what was being referred to as “the event”. The song’s reception has pleased the band, he says: “within days of the announcement I’d seen it soundtracking memes, covered by metal and folk artists and reacted to by toddlers. The latter was quite moving, since some of my giddiest childhood memories were fueled by the excitement of new video games, and contributing to someone else’s experience of that is really, really special.”

Bugsnax is due to release later this year. The game will have a mystery at its core, according to one of its developers.

NBA Jam remains one of the most beloved basketball game of all time, 27 years after its initial arcade release. If you were on one side of the Chicago Bulls/Detroit Pistons rivalry of the 90s, though, the game perhaps has endured slightly less well in your memory, because you know in your heart that you were robbed.

As it turns out, you actually might have been. In a new video from Ars Technica about the success of NBA Jam, lead designer Mark Turmell has reflected on the rivalry between the Chicago and Detroit teams during Michael Jordan’s iconic 90s run with the Bulls–and admitted that his internal bias worked its way into the game.

In the video below, around the 19:40 mark, Turmell admits that he was a big Pistons fan, having grown up in Michigan, and that he snuck some code into the game to “get back” at the Chicago Bulls and their fans.

Turmell said that he put in “special code” that would prevent the Bulls from scoring last-second shots against the Pistons, meaning that if you shot just before the final buzzer to try and even the score or pull ahead the shot would never go in, regardless of the Bulls’ stats.

Since NBA Jam matches tended to be close, the cabinet was in high rotation, and these were popular teams, there were no doubt thousands of lost shots (and games) that can be attributed to this code.

On the other hand, the Chicago Bulls won six championships during the 90s to the Pistons’ one, so Bulls fans shouldn’t be too sore about this.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new NBA Jam title, but basketball fans can rest assured that NBA 2K21 is coming to next-gen systems later this year.

I’ve been reporting on Xbox Lockhart having a slightly underclocked CPU, but I now believe it’s the same speed as Series X. Just different GPU frequencies and CU counts 👍

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) June 27, 2020

In The Last of Us Part II, guitars are used as a symbolic tool to show the bond between Joel and Ellie, with several songs popping up in cutscenes. Guitars even appear as playable objects, and it’s possible for experienced musicians to recreate songs on Ellie’s in-game guitar. But one thing has remained unclear–how is Joel able to perform a song in-game that would have never been released in his world because of the outbreak?

In an early cutscene, Joel performs a cover of Pearl Jam’s Future Days, which appeared on the album Lightning Bolt. This album released on October 15, 2013–several weeks after September 26, 2013, which is Outbreak Day in the world of The Last of Us Part II. So how did Joel know a song that never got released?

According to director Neil Druckmann, it’s simple–the song was performed live at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois on July 19, and Joel saw a video of it on YouTube.

This makes sense, but it’s a shame that Joel’s canonical backstory on this song doesn’t involve him getting to go to the concert himself. In fact, getting the song in the game was a bit of a difficult task, and Druckmann nearly flew to Seattle to meet with Eddie Vedder.

Joel’s performance of this song can actually be traced back further to a Last of Us performance by voice actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, which included an epilogue to the game in which Joel began teaching Ellie how to play the guitar. This scene ultimately made its way into the sequel.

Unlike the original game, The Last of Us Part II won’t get story DLC, although a multiplayer standalone mode is coming.

The final instalment in Microsoft’s Halo Infinite behind-the-scenes series of videos about the game’s audio and sound has been released, and it’s a delight.

The video shows off a cute little pug named Buddy whose owner is a program manager at developer 343 Industries. The very good boy came into the studio where he chomped down on snacks and scruffed around, all of which was captured for sounds to be used in the next-gen Halo game.

Buddy is, in fact, that the second pug to have their sounds recorded into Halo Infinite. In September 2019, 343 showcased the recording process for a cute little pug named Gyoza.

For my money, it sounds like Gyoza and Buddy will be providing the sounds for some kind of aliens in Halo Infinite, but we won’t know for sure until Halo Infinite is released later this year.

The “Sound Design Saturday” audio series from 343 Industries has been running for about a year, and it’s offered a cool peek behind the scenes of what will likely be one of 2020’s biggest games.

“We hope you’ve enjoyed a look behind-the-scenes with our Audio Team over the past year. We can’t wait for you to see, and hear, more about Halo Infinite in the coming months,” 343 said.

Previous instalments of the series showcased the various weapon sounds and vehicle noises that will be in Halo Infinite. Other videos focused on the gigantic explosions that 343 conducted in the desert.

Halo Infinite will be properly shown off during the Xbox 20/20 event in July, and that’s a big deal because Microsoft has shown precisely no gameplay whatsoever from the title. A cinematic trailer was trailer released in June 2019, but that’s all we’ve seen so far. Halo Infinite, which is a launch title for the Xbox Series X, is the first mainline new Halo game since 2015’s Halo 5: Guardians.

In addition to Xbox Series X, Halo Infinite will be released on the regular Xbox One and PC.

Key cast members of the long-running X-Men franchise — Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, and Famke Janssen — recently reunited for a brief virtual chat to raise awareness for the Global Citizen: United For Our Future benefit concert to celebrate the heroic acts of healthcare and other essential workers.

It wasn’t long though before a call rang in, bringing Ryan Reynolds into the session (which made McKellen scram immediately).

“I hope it’s okay if I join,” Reynolds says, noticing the awkwardness. “I figured we were all in X-Men together.”

Check out the clip here…

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After James McAvoy and Sophie Turner both enter the chat, Reynolds makes a remark about the multiple timelines and then adds “It’s just like the X-Men movies. It doesn’t matter.”

Make sure you watch all the way to the end for a hilarious final guest.

In Deadpool 3 news, Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld recently said that he thinks, with Disney’s acquisition of Fox, that the Deadpool movies have “set sail” and that Marvel Studios had “zero” plans to make a third film. Back in May, Reynolds offered up his own thoughts as to whether Disney and Deadpool were a good fit.

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.