The official release date for Hollow Knight: Silksong has finally been announced as September 4, 2025, and while the gaming community is buzzing with excitement over the long-awaited sequel to one of the most popular Metroidvania games of the last decade, game developers are apparently concerned. As pointed out by a recent GameSpot report, a number of indie developers have pushed back the releases of their games to avoid being drowned out by the Silksong hype. At least three game developers have publicly announced that their games will be delayed due to the imminent launch of Silksong. Faeland was meant to launch its 1.0 release, but the developer announced on Steam that "Our v1.0 launch was set for Sept 9, but with today's Silksong news we've made the tough call to postpone." Aeternum Game Studios announced on X that Aeterna Lucis would be delayed, adding that "after the announcement of Silksong, we are fully aware that our game wouldn't have the visibility it deserves." Meanwhile, Panik Arcade delayed CloverPit to September 26, adding that "Silksong is the most anticipated and wishlisted game on all of Steam and we think people will love this game and play it right at launch (including us) but that also means it will overshadow all games launching close to it."

In the days since the announcement of Silksong's release date, the original Hollow Knight has broken its previous player-count record, with SteamDB recording a new record of 23,840 concurrent players on August 22, 2025—that's 800 players more than the previous record, which was in mid-2022 at the height of the Steam Deck's popularity. It has also officially sold over 15 million copies ahead of the official launch. We saw a similar series of events play out surrounding the launch of GTA VI, which even resulted in speculation that the fourth installment of one of the biggest looter-shooter franchises to date had been delayed to avoid GTA VI hype. While the games being delayed surrounding the launch of Silksong largely seem to be indie titles, the outsized hype over Silksong, which has been in development for over seven years, has clearly been felt across the industry.

As expected, Nintendo's lengthy Switch 2 presentation contained very little technical information—the upcoming hybrid console's feature set, software library and user experience were showcased extensively. A series of leaks and plenty of online speculation—going back to earlier in the decade—pointed to the highly-anticipated Switch successor being based on an NVIDIA hardware foundation. A mysterious "Tegra 239" chipset emerged as the "logical" choice for Nintendo's next-gen system, but company representatives will likely not comment on the exact nature of internal components. Several months after the launch of Wii U, independent analysis (by Chipworks) of the host console's "Latte" GPU core verified a Radeon 4650/4670-class design. To the surprise of many industry watchdogs, a Nintendo employee has officially confirmed Switch 2's support of NVIDIA graphics technologies.

As disclosed to IGN—during a press junket—Takuhiro Dohta (senior director of the firm's Planning & Development Division) stated: "we use DLSS upscaling technology and that's something that we need to use as we develop games. And when it comes to the hardware, it is able to output to a TV at a maximum of 4K. Whether the software developer is going to use that as a native resolution, or get it to upscale is something that the software developer can choose. I think it opens up a lot of options for the software developer to choose from. Yes, the GPU does support ray tracing. As with DLSS, I believe this provides yet another option for the software developers to use and a tool for them." When pressed about the exact origins of the console's beating heart, Dohta deflected responsibility in the direction of Team Green: "Nintendo doesn't share too much on the hardware spec...What we really like to focus on is the value that we can provide to our consumers. But I do believe that our partner—NVIDIA—will be sharing some information." As pointed out by VideoCardz, Nintendo's hardware technical manager only mentioned options for the development side of things, not end user features. Yesterday's Metroid Prime 4: Beyond preview segment indicated that the title's Switch 2 Edition will arrive with four profiles; VideoCardz theorizes that DLSS will be used for differing levels—quality/performance—in handheld or docked operation.

Blades of Fire takes place in an age of petrified steel. An all-powerful witch queen's spell turns all the world's steel into stone, apart from that wielded by an army of brainwashed minions who once served her father. This one small technological twist changes everything for this unique fantasy world. Granted a legendary hammer, Aran de Lira is the only one who can forge new weapons and fight back, becoming an unwilling hero on an unlikely quest. MercurySteam's much-anticipated follow-up to Metroid Dread, Blades of Fire is a brand-new IP that aims to reforge the action adventure genre with strategic combat, the debut of a rich sword-and-sorcery fantasy world, and a deep weapon forging system that hopes to deliver unlimited customization. Each weapon you forge is one-of-a-kind, ready to carve out its own destiny. You don't build a character—you build an arsenal. We recently played the opening stages of Blades of Fire and spoke to the team about how they're reforging the action adventure and making players think about weapons from a fresh perspective.

Closing the circle
It was a long path to get here for Enric Alvarez, MercurySteam Co-Founder, CEO, and Game Director. Just as the age of iron and steel was preceded by 2,000 long years of the Bronze Age, Blades of Fire is the culmination of a 24-year journey, a period the Madrid-based studio spent sharpening their skills and burnishing a prestigious reputation. In 2001, the founding members of MercurySteam worked at Rebel Act. The studio only released one game: Blade of Darkness, a PC cult classic sometimes regarded as a precursor to the Souls games for its minimalist storytelling, challenging stamina-driven combat, and a dark fantasy world beyond redemption. The influence of Conan and The Lord of the Rings (pre-Peter Jackson adaptations, as The Fellowship of the Ring came out that December) was strong, pairing exhilarating sword-and-board action with epic grandeur. Perhaps too ahead of its time, Rebel Act closed its doors after Blade of Darkness failed to find a sufficient audience.

Back in 2021, award-winning development studio MercurySteam and publisher 505 Games announced an official partnership that would bring their latest title (codenamed Project Iron) to life. For several years, the talented team at MercurySteam have been hard at work forging their next adventure. The time has come to finally unveil what they've been up to behind closed doors.

FORGE YOUR LEGEND
Introducing Blades of Fire, an all-new action-adventure that takes you across a beautiful world full of uncertainty and challenge. You take on the role of Aran de Lira, firstborn of the King's Ward. The newly crowned Queen Nerea has cast a powerful spell that turns steel into stone and only her arms of abominations wield the divine metal against which other blades shatter. Get ready to forge your own weapons and put them to the test in a unique combat system, as you work towards becoming a master in forging. Develop your skills and craft weapons that suit your preferable fighting style. Remember, when facing your foes, your choice of weapon will be key to success! Only the right weapons will allow you to take down certain enemies.

Team Cherry, the indie development outfit responsible for producing smash hit 2D platformer Hollow Knight (2017), has this week announced that the sequel - Silksong - will be missing its proposed early-ish 2023 launch window. The Australian team's publishing and marketing manager Matthew Griffin confirmed via a tweet that Hollow Knight: Silksong is still a work-in-progress project: "Hey gang, just a quick update about Silksong. We had planned to release in the 1st half of 2023, but development is still continuing. We're excited by how the game is shaping up, and it's gotten quite big, so we want to take the time to make the game as good as we can."

Hollow Knight: Silksong was first revealed to the public back in 2019, with Team Cherry taking a quiet approach to the release of preview material since then. A playable demo was on show at E3 2019, but a wider internet-based public has only had access to a pair of video trailers, some screenshots and minimal written details on official sites and product pages. Silksong was initially conceived as a DLC/expansion for the base game, but the designers expanded their project's scope - thus creating a standalone and entirely new entry in the series. It seems that the development team's ambitions have grown over the years - Griffin has not confirmed a revised release date but requests that fans wait for further announcements: "Expect more details from us once we get closer to release."

Nintendo ceased selling products and wound down its operations in Russia last March, soon after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces. Other notable games software and hardware companies also announced their withdrawal at a similar time. Microsoft/Xbox, Sony/PlayStation, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, CD Projekt, Sega, Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive are among a group that discontinued the sale and distribution of games products in Russian territory markets. Lawmakers within Russia have taken a fairly lax stance on the import of consumer and industrial goods - it is legal to do so, even minus a rightsholder's approval. It seems that a couple of Nintendo of Russia employees have taken advantage of loose import regulations in the past few months.

According to a news piece published online by Kommersant (a Russian politics and business newspaper) a relatively new operation registered under the company name "Achivka LLC" is involved in the sale and distribution of Nintendo games in Russian territories. Nintendo Russia CEO Yasha Haddaji is reported to be the leader and majority owner of Achivka LLC, and former corporate events manager Ksenia Kachalova is listed as being a minority stakeholder in the company. The operation's premises appear to match the exact address for Nintendo of Russia. The firm is involved in the importing (from an unknown source) and selling of Nintendo games - the Kommersant article includes photographic evidence - a physical copy of Metroid Prime Remastered is demonstrated as bearing an Achivka stick-on label. The English translation of the company name is Achievement, which is an appropriate word association in the world of high score driven computer games.

Update Apr 18th: Nintendo has confirmed that Yasha Haddazhi, CEO of the Russian Office, remains as a current employee of the international company - but only on a temporary basis. Nintendo continues to distance itself from Achivka LLC and the selling of rebadged products in Russian territories. See below for more details.