Is *Elden Ring* on NS2 worth the $80 price tag?

Today’s batch of industry news feels like a platforming level full of chained trigger traps: first comes Sony’s organizational reshuffle, then the PC encryption on Marvel’s Midnight Suns gets breached, followed by pre-orders for the Switch 2 version of Elden Ring and Microsoft’s new interaction test. They may look scattered, but put together they form a pretty complete picture of the current games industry: content value is rising, platform boundaries are getting thinner, and players are becoming more and more sensitive to “how they get a game” and “how they play it.”

Let’s start with Sony Pictures. The confirmed news is that Sony Pictures will lay off several hundred employees and carry out a restructuring across its film, television, and corporate divisions. Resources will further shift toward game IP adaptations and anime-related business, alongside changes in leadership. The signal here is not complicated: as growth in traditional film and television slows, game IP has become a more stable entry point for content. For players, this may not immediately affect the games in their hands, but it will affect the density and priority of adaptation projects we see over the next few years.

As for Marvel’s Midnight Suns, this is a different kind of “the wall has been breached.” According to reports from overseas tech forums, the Denuvo used in the game has been bypassed through a new Hypervisor-based method, and unencrypted versions are now reportedly runnable on both AMD and Intel processors. Related files are already circulating online, and some people are even waiting for easier-to-install repacked versions, or following technical guides to configure virtual machines themselves. I’ll just add one reminder here: this kind of distribution carries legal and security risks. Watching from the sidelines is one thing—don’t let your account and devices walk straight into a trap.

What’s really more worth discussing is the Switch 2 version of Elden Ring. The Amazon page has already opened for pre-orders, showing a price of $79.99, while the shipping date is listed as “expected December 31, 2026.” Based on the information currently available, this version will include the base game and all additional content, and its price matches the bundled Digital Deluxe Edition with DLC on Steam. In other words, what it’s selling is not nostalgia for “an old game on a new platform,” but a relatively complete all-in-one package.

So is it worth it? If you’ve already fully cleared the game on Steam or another platform and aren’t particularly attached to the handheld format, then this purchase is more like paying for portability. But if you’ve never jumped in, or you really care about being able to explore, farm bosses, and clear catacombs anytime and anywhere, then this integrated edition may actually be the more hassle-free option. Platform migration is changing the logic of buying games. In the past, people first asked, “Is it launching day one?” Now more and more players first ask, “Is this the version that suits me best?”

Microsoft’s “controller cursor” test is also quite interesting. It turns the left stick in the Windows Xbox app into a mouse-like pointer, allowing users to navigate and click without relying on a mouse or touch input. It is currently only available to Xbox Insider testers. This is not some earth-shaking overhaul, but it feels like the crucial missing brick in a puzzle game: on its own it seems minor, but once added into the overall experience, PC living-room use and controller-first operation become much smoother.

Finally, there’s one small but interesting detail. A few seconds of footage from Resident Evil: Requiem showing a giant spider chasing Leon were compared by an account on X to the classic scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King where Shelob hunts Frodo, and the resemblance is quite striking. This kind of cinematic reference is never the core factor that determines a game’s success or failure, but it very easily sparks community discussion, because players always love hunting for easter eggs in the space between fear and familiarity.

If I had to combine today’s five stories into one conclusion, I’d say this: the games industry is entering a phase where content, devices, and interaction are all being reshuffled at the same time. Elden Ring is selling the full value that comes after going cross-platform, Microsoft is patching the path of use, and Sony is betting on the amplifying power of IP. As for the cracking controversy around Marvel’s Midnight Suns, it once again reminds publishers that technical defenses are never the endgame—what truly keeps players is still the value of the edition and the experience itself.