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Winners and Losers: Mario levels up its Switch offering as Nvidia loses Arm
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It’s the weekend again, which means its time to crown another winner and loser for the week.
This week was a busy one for a handful of companies, with the obvious attention-grabber being Samsung.
The brand unveiled its latest slew of flagship mobile devices at the February Unpacked event, including threeGalaxy S22phones and threeTab S8tablets covering various specs and design features for different price ranges.
Nintendo also held its first Nintendo Direct keynote of the year, covering loads of major titles coming to itsSwitchconsole in 2022.
Incoming releases coming (or returning) to the Switch showcased at the event includeFire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes,No Man’s Sky,Chrono Cross,Splatoon 3,Xenoblade Chronicles 3,Portal 1 and 2,Front Mission 1 and 2,The Advance Wars 1 and 2and more.Kirby and the Forgotten Landis also getting some new features, as isMetroid Dread, and Nintendo Wii gameWii Sportsis getting an update withNintendo Switch Sports.
However, none of the above quite made the cut for this week’s winner or loser.
Winner: Super Mario fans
Our winner this week is Super Mario, along with anyone who has been waiting for new Switch games from our favourite Italian plumber.
Nintendo announced two major updates coming to the franchise, including a sequel to the GameCube’sSuper Mario Strikersand the Wii’sMario Strikers Chargedfor the Nintendo Switch titledMario Strikers: Battle League.
As in the other games in the series,Battle Leaguecalls Super Mario characters onto the pitch for a 5v5 game of football.
Though unlike any other football match, players can sabotage their rivals by throwing shells and dropping banana peels and win double goals by picking up an orb and scoring with a tricky Hyper Strike.
There will even be Online Clubs, allowing up to 20 players to team up with their own shirts and stadium and climb the virtual ranks with a Switch Online subscription.
The second big announcement came in the form of a major update toMario Kart 8 Deluxe.
While this one was bittersweet news for anyone hoping to seeMario Kart 9confirmed at the event, it’s exciting to hear nonetheless – especially considering how many new tracks the game is getting.
Nintendo will be introducing 48 new tracks over the course of 2022 and 2023, with them rolling out to users in six batches of eight. Notable additions include classics such as Coconut Mall, Choco Mountain and Tokyo Blur.
Both of the above are fantastic news for any fans of the Super Mario franchise. The two multiplayer games also seem perfectly timed as we begin to head closer to normality and parties and gatherings become a thing again.
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Loser: Nvidia
Nintendo wasn’t the only major name in gaming to take the spotlight this week.Nvidiaalso garnered attention, though in this case it wasn’t happy news.
It seems the company has officially given up on its plan to acquire chipmaker Arm in a deal that could have been worth over £29 billion.
Arm has been around for a while and currently supplies chips to the likes of Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, making it a big name in tech. A year and a half ago, the company made headlines once again when it was announced that Apple would be ditching Intel in favour of using its own Arm-poweredM1 chipacross the Mac line.
An acquisition would have been huge for Nvidia, a company that has already seen massive success from its GeForce GPUs.
Nvidia and Arm owner Softbank had been in talks regarding the acquisition since 2020, but were forced to put the brakes on the deal by the Competition and Markets Authority and the Federal Trade Commission several times throughout the process.
Now, it appears these concerns have won out as both Nvidia and Softbank announced that the deal had been terminated.
Nvidia was forced to pay out $1.25 billion for the failed bid, cementing its title as this week’s loser.
Hannah joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer in 2019 after graduating with a degree in English from Royal Holloway, University of London. She’s also worked and studied in the US, holding positions …
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
