Daily Briefing: Thursday 4th March

Those Switch Pro rumours suddenly got a lot more detailed

A new report from Bloomberg has claimed that Nintendo's long-rumoured "Switch Pro" will begin production sometime in June, and will contain a new 7-inch Samsung OLED screen - a marked upgrade from the 6.2-inch and 5.5inch screens of the standard Switch and Switch Lite.

• The report goes on to state that, while the Switch Pro will continue to display in 720p in handheld mode even with the better screen, it will be able to support a 4K display while docked. Keeping the 720p display should do wonders for the Pro's battery life, but would also mean that devs would have to work with two entirely separate resolutions.

Rockstar's remaster strategy won't revolve around "simple ports"

With the studio currently preparing to release an expanded version of Grand Theft Auto V on Xbox Series X|S and Ps5, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick was asked this week whether remasters would be forming a larger part of the company's strategy going forward - he said no, essentially because Take-Two put so much effort into their remasters.

• Zelnick told the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference that Take-Two have always done remasters "differently than the competition" in that they "don't just port titles over", and instead take time to do the "very best job" they can. Oh, and they're also in no rush to release Grand Theft Auto VI - presumably because they've now spread V across three console generations.

Valheim tops five million sales in four weeks

The Viking survival title really is going from strength to strength, having now reached a massive five million sales in its first month of release. At time of writing there are around 134K players online, which puts Valheim fourth on Steam's Tops Games chart - behind only PUBG, Dota 2, and CS: GO.

• Those really are some crazy numbers - Valheim hit 4m sales just last week. Developers Iron Gate took to Steam to celebrate the news, and giving us a few neat stats in the process. Players have collectively spent 15,000 years playing Valheim which, incidentally, is about how long it takes to max out a character in Square Enix's Avengers game.

Sony may have just filed the oddest gaming patent ever

A new patent applicationfrom the PlayStation maker would allow players to use normal household items, like fruit, as cheap gaming controllers. The technology would employ camera to scan the object the player is holding and then track that object's movements. It could theoretically apply to any object, though the patent highlights bananas and oranges.

• Of course, this is just a patent and as such can't be assumed to be a set-in-stone plan. Still, even the wildest gaming patents in recent memory are much more normal than this one, so you have to wonder what the deal is. Can't wait for ten years from now when there's a class action suit against Sony's banana controller for joystick drift.