Games Weekly: Pokémon Pokopia Passes Five Million, Phantom Blade Zero Gets Its Date, Mafia: The Old Country’s Man of Honor Is Out#
Longzhiri | August 16, 2026
Hello everyone, Longzhiri here. By the time I typed that line it was Friday, eleven at night. The Chongqing heat still hangs outside the window, and the office is down to me, Zixing, and the ceiling light that refuses to die at quitting time. The week went by so fast I keep feeling something is owed — probably the draft Chasun keeps chasing me for, and the tab at the chuanchuan skewer stall downstairs.
The weekly-report habit comes from my years on the games desk at Computer News. Back then “Xiaosheng’s Notes” was the flagship column, and I loved hovering nearby to watch how Xiaosheng turned the office’s small daily frictions into a full page of fun. Now that it is my turn to write, I finally understand that the jokes and grumbling in those issues could only be written by someone actually living the days.
This week, our editorial desk lived a few of those days too.
Zixing does the Pokémon math fastest#
This week’s news keeps circling back to two numbers: five million, and four months.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company made it official: Pokémon Pokopia has passed five million copies worldwide in the four months since its March 5 release.
The news hit the group chat on Thursday afternoon, and Zixing answered first — he has always been absurdly quick with numbers: “Five million in four months, more than a million a month on average. The Pokémon base is so solid you can swap the gameplay in and out and still out-sell what others spend a lifetime chasing.”
For once Wubian did not push back; he just added the operations angle: “The key is that this thing is built for the long run. The expansion content keeps coming, there is another surge ahead, and this number can still double. Five million is the starting line, not the finish.”
Listening from the side, I could not help thinking of Xiaosheng’s old line about the stock market — “Everyone knows it is a soap bubble, yet no one wants to be the one to pop it.” Is Pokémon any different? Everyone knows it ships new versions year after year, and everyone jumps in willingly anyway. Nintendo understands better than anyone how to serve one fish many ways, and players — knowing full well they are the catch — eat it up happily.
Zixing pulled the topic back to something more concrete: “Do not just look at sales. Pokopia holding up for four months and still climbing means what it has caught is not the old Pokémon collection loop but another crowd’s time. For Nintendo, sales are one layer; whether it can pull new players into this ecosystem is the more important layer.”
Wubian followed up: “Exactly — its biggest value is not the five million, it is that a good share of those five million may be people who barely touched Pokémon before. Once that base is established, there is something to talk about in long-term operations: expansions, seasonal events, offline collaborations all get room to roll out.”
Chasun, rarely looking up from his data, said slowly: “Watch how they ship content going forward and you will know how steady the footing is. Sales are only the entry ticket — whether the game can keep people is where the five million earns its real value.”
Listening to all that, I thought: these people analyze games even more seriously than they play them.
Phantom Blade Zero: the one we are all waiting for this year#
The news that made our own side of the desk most restless this week is Phantom Blade Zero — officially confirmed for a deep gameplay demo at the August 17 State of Play, with preorders opening at the same time and the release date set for October 29.
The story detonated in-house harder than all the industry news combined — because several of us have it on our most-anticipated-of-the-year lists.
As an old soulslike player, what I most want to know is how the “not a soulslike” positioning actually lands. In earlier gameplay, the fluidity of the combos already had me itching; if this demo can explain the boss fight mechanics clearly, the game’s ceiling becomes basically judgeable.
Zixing poured cold water from the performance angle: “A State of Play usually shows the release build. For a high-speed action game like Phantom Blade Zero, frame rate and load times are what matter. The Unreal Engine 5 foundation is there — it comes down to polish.”
The site’s Phantom Blade Zero preview hub has been following along; we have broken down sub-pages on combat, worldbuilding and preorder editions, and the moment the demo drops on the 17th we update. Do not rush us — rushing does nothing, we are more anxious than you are.
Honestly, the office has already privately filed the game as its “second most worth waiting for this year” candidate. Second not because faith is lacking, but because the site has waited through too many delays over the years — the higher the graphics and feel are hyped, the more likely a surprise revision lands right when expectations peak.
The fact that Phantom Blade Zero dared to set a date on a national-level broadcast and open preorders simultaneously says the project is close to done — more reassuring than any “we are in great shape” line could be.
So on August 17, all of us plan to be watching live. If it does not stumble, then the most worth discussing thing this month is not a sales number but how high this high-speed action film can push the ceiling of Chinese action games. On that, nobody here is more eager than I am.
Mafia’s new expansion, starting with a mob ledger#
The one thing in this week’s tactical pool that actually landed is Man of Honor, the expansion to Mafia: The Old Country, released August 14.
Chasun, rarely volunteering a take: “Man of Honor is two new story chapters plus free roam content — essentially another log on the fire of that old-school Sicilian tone. Mob fiction lives on pacing and atmosphere; an expansion that fills in the stretches the main game left thin is worth the price.”
Wubian cares about the roamers: “If the free roam holds up, this is not just added content — it stretches the skeleton of the whole town another ring wider.”
I nodded along. Several of us at the desk came up through Mafia: Definitive Edition, and they know the smell of mob storytelling better than I do. With this expansion, the old Sicilian sense of ceremony gets another chapter written, and players who like slow-burn mob narratives are exactly the ones who will buy in.
Also happening this week#
Beyond the big three items, a few more stories worth a line, each tracked by whoever owns the beat.
Beast of Reincarnation is two weeks past release, and the team shipped a second patch this week: the camera gained near, mid and far distance settings, support for mainstream upscaling and frame interpolation tech, and five new subtitle size tiers.
On top of that, the patch raised the damage and health regeneration of the Kuwu Bloom technique. The official word is that more updates are in preparation. The site’s Beast of Reincarnation guide will follow the patches, with combat, weapons and build archetypes to be filled in over time.
Halo: Campaign Evolved, the series’ first release on a new platform, has not cooled in the community; the guide site has broken down story, collectibles and multiplayer in detail, and the onboarding path for new players is basically paved.
Gamescom 2026 is locked for August 26 to 30; exhibitor lineups are being announced one by one, and the late-August show season is the barometer for the second half of the year’s content — the desk has started scheduling.
Editorial chatter#
At the end of the week, a few of us sat down again at the chuanchuan stall downstairs.
It is new, the owner works fast, and watching bamboo skewers drop one handful after another into the spicy pot settles the heart.
Zhanlan Yingren, blanching beef tripe, opened: “So which is worth more — Pokémon’s five million, or the heat around that Phantom Blade Zero demo?”
Zixing, without looking up: “No comparing. Pokémon is a money printer; Phantom Blade Zero is the hard dish that has not left the oven yet. One earns lying down, the other keeps everyone’s appetite on a hook.”
Wubian counted skewers and sighed: “Fine — tonight’s dinner goes on me, to Phantom Blade Zero’s credit. It does not release until October 29 anyway, so we settle accounts with it then.”
I burst out laughing, and Chasun took a slow sip of soup before adding: “Enough banter. If we are pricing things — when this pile of skewers is finished, how many game discs can it trade for? Oh wait, discs are nearly discontinued, so — how many digital copies.”
The whole table dissolved. The owner peeked half a head over the counter, presumably concluding that something was wrong with us.
And that was the week. Gamescom warm-up starts next week, and the show season will deliver everything it owes. The chuanchuan tab stays open — continuing next week.
See you next week.
— Longzhiri, Editor-in-Chief, NTGame