Amazon Might Have Just Killed Its Big Lord Of The Rings MMO

Is the Switch 2 doomed to be a physical graveyard of third-party game key cards? Why are so many new special edition controllers so ugly? And has Amazon really pulled the plug on its fledgling Lord of the Rings MMO? It’s another edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s daily roundup of gaming news and culture.

I don’t need any more gaming devices in my life but I’m obsessed with the latest batch of DS knock-offs out of China. Nintendo is really leaving money on the table by not shipping its own legacy handhelds. I mean, people were so desperate for a new Game Boy they hacked the Lego one so it could run games.

The Switch 2 Resident Evil Requiem Pro controller looks bad

Resident Evil Requiem gets a special Switch 2 Pro controller and amiibo www.vooks.net/reside…

— Vooks (@vooks.net) 2025-10-29T22:58:16.000Z

It’s the same dark shade as the normal Pro controller but with graphics from an in-game newspaper over the front. The words Resident Evil are also there but largely interrupted by the central Switch 2 logo. Truly a bummer. In other bad news, the Switch 2 version of Resident Evil Requiem has been confirmed to be a game key card. Rip.

Amazon Games dev suggests its Lord of the Rings MMO has been canceled

As spotted by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, developer Ashleigh Amrine made a now-deleted post on LinkedIn about the layoffs that hinted at the game no longer being in production. “This morning I was part of the layoffs at Amazon Games, alongside my incredibly talented peers on New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings game (y’all would have loved it),” she wrote.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment about whether the project has been killed. It’s always possible the company is still still looking to offload the project or just license it out to another studio. If that game ever does come to market, however, it’ll probably bear no relation to whatever early prototype the New World devs were working on.

Xbox hardware revenue is still in freefall

Microsoft announced its second quarter earnings yesterday. While Azure cloud services and its AI gambles continue to pay off, the gaming division actually shrunk. Xbox gaming revenues were down $113 million with already terrible hardware numbers down 29 percent year over year.

It’s worth noting that this was the same quarter when Microsoft jacked up the Xbox Series X/S consoles to $400 and $600 respectively due to Trump’s trade war. Somehow I don’t think a more expensive PC-like next-gen console with no exclusives will turn that around.

Bloodlines 2 has more hairstyles, fewer bugs thanks to Halloween update

Happy Halloween! 🎃

Enjoy our free Halloween Update with new customization options and bug fixes. Future updates might include an FOV slider, save game options, and custom difficulty settings.

Check the website for more details: https://t.co/sMvXHoerxh pic.twitter.com/9T9PDRoeTG

— Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (@VtM_Bloodlines) October 29, 2025

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2‘s latest free update adds 24 new style customizations for your sexy goth avatars. It also addresses a ton of crashes and bugs. Enough to turn around initially grim sentiments on the messy vampire RPG? Perhaps not. But bigger-ticket changes like FOV sliders and better saving options are on the docket for upcoming patches.

AI slop will not replace video games

That’s according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick who happens to oversee some of the biggest and most critically acclaimed franchises in the world with Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and BioShock. He said AI is currently incapable of making the GTA 6 marketing plan, let alone an entire game. And even if it could, he doesn’t think it would be any good.

“Anything that involves backward-looking data compute, it’s really good for that and that applies to lots of things,” he told CNBC. “What we do at Take-Two, anything that isn’t attached to that, it’s going to be really, really bad at.” Plus, he admits, it’s a legal minefield.

Hideo Kojima had no idea he had a chance to make a Matrix video game

Former Konami executive Christopher Bergstresser recently revealed that the Wachowskis had approached the Japanese publisher about recruiting Hideo Kojima to make a Matrix video game back in 1999. “In all these 26 years, no one ever told me such a conversation had taken place,” Kojima shared on X in response.

I could be projecting but the admission seemed tinge with sadness and a slight sense of betrayal. “At that time, I was already extremely busy with MGS2 and probably couldn’t have accepted the offer right away,” the Death Stranding director concluded. “But if someone had told me, maybe there could’ve been a way to make it work.”