This Week’s Japanese Game Releases: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Final Fantasy Resonance, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, Stupid Never Dies, more

You best start believing in ghost stories, Mr. Wyatt; you might be in one Adam Scott's horror-filled Ireland vacation is now streaming on Hulu

James Stephen Donaldson, the algorithm ruling, product hustling, normal smile having YouTube superstar better known as MrBeast recently made his debut on Shark Tank. During his first episode on the show where celebrity investors put “idea people” through a humiliation ritual, Donaldson cut from the pack to back an AI-powered ball. It rolls. You can throw it. It’s, y’know, got AI in there. Donaldson opted to invest a quarter million into the product. Cousins Andrew Brown and Kevin Langdon presented the Sharks with “Ball 2.” A sequel to ball. Unlike your average foam ball, the second ball is “filled with sensors,” capable of tracking and harvesting data as it is rolled, thrown, bounced and so forth. Reporting information back to a companion app, Brown and Langdon added that through the magic of AI you can instruct the ball to create new games on the fly. Like being thrown further, or being rolled not as far. Watching the new season of Shark Tank and they managed to immediately become a parody of itself by having one of the pitches be Ball 2, the sequel to Ball, powered by AI. To really seal the deal, the ball 2's battery is not rechargeable or designed to be replaced.

"The fabulous, feminine answer to James Bond" Not many Americans got a chance to read this classic British newspaper comic

When the major AI models updated in September, it seemed to usher in a tide of vibe coded havoc. The use of it in the modding community was divisive enough. Now dedicated platforms have been flushed and flustered by this new unprecedented wave. One popular platform, decomp.dev, has opted to throw in the towel. Not just because of how pervasive AI entries have become in their space, but for more philosophical reasons. They are a decompiling community, and they feel AI does not foster community. “It is now clear that, with the right guidance, human input, and code reviews, AI can expedite the decompilation process in a significant way,” writes the site’s farewell message. “What is also now clear is that the community aspect of decompilation has been broken.” Founded in 2024, the site became a popular destination in the rapidly accelerating modding space. New tools and growing communities have made the rate of long-awaited translation patches and decompiles far more frequent, but the invasion of AI-generated decomps have fractured the scene. Decomp.dev’s reasoning isn’t anti-AI per se, but mournful in nature. Decompiling, in short, means disassembling and reassembling a game’s code.

Austin Manchester is a writer and editor living in New York City. At Polygon, he covers gaming and entertainment news, reviews new video games, interviews behind-the-scenes talent, and more. He enjoys discovering hidden gems and sharing them with Polygon's audience. Previously, he was the gaming editor for AIPT Comics and has written for other outlets like XDA, How-To Geek, and The List. He enjoys soulslikes, character-driven RPGs, and third-person shooters plucked straight out of the Xbox 360 era. He also likes to flex his non-video game nerdy knowledge sometimes, whether that's explaining who's who in the new Wolverine game or recommending a comic book series about a sentient sword.

Silent Hill developer Bloober Team wants to make physical versions of its games "for as long as possible. "Studio CEO Piotr Babieno opened up about the company's appreciation for physical media and collectibles during an interview with GamesRadar. He started his thoughts by touching on how the gaming landscape and player desires have changed as technology has advanced over the years, explaining that "we have reached a moment where you can't really do much more" in terms of visual and auditory fidelity. "Like, OK, the game can have a slightly higher resolution and maybe better lighting and whatever, but will it make it a more engaging game? I don't think so," Babieno said. The CEO for the studio behind the Silent Hill 2 remake and its in-development original Silent Hill remake also talked about how stats show "the majority of players are playing on hardware which is five, seven years old, if not older. " He continued, saying, "But are they less interested in games because of that? I don't think so. "As AI shapes a new, controversial future in the gaming industry, the Bloober executive seems to be more interested in "thinking about other senses.