The former creative director of The Chinese Room’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has finally said the quiet part loud and agreed that the game really shouldn’t have been called Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Have you played Bloodlines 2? What would you have called it? I’m going with Vampire: The Masquerade – Third Cousin Twice Removed.
The PlayStation 2’s meteoric journey to become the best-selling console of all time transformed not just gaming, but culture at large. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, God of War, and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty started a new era of interactive stories – one where games competed with films for prestige and attention, and were discussed not just in specialist magazines and forums but in mainstream newspapers and national TV shows.
Today, on the 25th anniversary of the PS2’s launch in Europe, IGN has spoken to two people who witnessed the console’s launch, and rapid rise, from different angles – one insider and one outsider. Shawn Layden was a vice president at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and would later hold some of the most senior roles at Playstation, and Daniel Griffiths was the deputy editor for Official Playstation Magazine in the UK.
They told IGN about their personal memories from that period: Griffiths recalls the panic at the console’s surprise reveal, how Xbox were “in awe of” the press, and how one Sony party turned ended with a river of melted chocolate coins; Layden describes his astonishment at first seeing a PS2 demo, the fear of failure in the console’s first year, and how it made gaming became a hobby you could discuss “in polite company”.
IGN: What was your first memory of seeing the PS2?
Shawn Layden: The first thing I saw was a demo for Gran Turismo on PS2. We were at a corporate meeting and they had a video of it. And it just knocked us off our chairs. Sadly, Gran Turismo 3 didn’t launch with the hardware because that team takes forever to get their games done, but it gave us a glimpse. That leap, I don’t think, has ever been met again in the console generations, the jump from PS1 to PS2. It took you to a different f*cking planet. And on this planet, everything runs in 60 frames per second.
IGN: How did dev teams react when you knew PS2 was coming?
Shawn Layden: You had to start peeling off teams to put them in a double-secure locked room where no one could go in without security clearance because we had the prototype dev kits there. The rest of us [were] just trying to do the day-to-day. If someone who’s not cleared sees the dev kit, then you’ve got to ship them off to an island somewhere. So there’s a lot of energy around the secrecy and the confidentiality around it, but the excitement was off the charts.
IGN: Was there a rivalry between those teams chosen to work with PS2 and other developers?
Shawn Layden: It wasn’t so much a rivalry as it was a sense of awe and wonder. There were our top engineers, our top designers, our top physics guys. They’re all going into this one room in the studio, which no one else can get into. But everyone knows what’s going on there, right? It was as if an alien ship had landed in our backyard. We’re trying to analyze the tech that it brought to us.
IGN: How did the PS2 change the kind of games you could make?
Shawn Layden: In [PlayStation’s London Studio], it created the opportunity for us to make a game like The Getaway, which is the first – in my view anyway – cinematic gaming experience. It was a Guy Ritchie film, except you were in it. It’s not quite Hollywood, but we knew that the game was not just the gameplay itself. And for that story to be compelling and realistic, you had to get real story writers. You had to hire folks who would write scores for movies to write scores for games. It was crazy to be in the studio and have like four or five London-based actors just coming in to do the overdubs and to do the motion capture. Trying to get them used to being in a mocap rig is like trying to teach a bear to do scuba diving. It was fascinating. You realize you’re making a game that’s actually not just going to be a shoot-’em-up, it’s going to be a story. And that was probably the most exciting PS2 moment I had in London.
The PS1 generation was great and wonderful and brilliant, but it was kind of like your dad’s game console. PS2 became a completely different way to create and appreciate gaming – it was really the beginning of narrative-driven gaming.
IGN: How big a deal was the DVD player?
Shawn Layden: We were selling bundles of PS2 hardware and a movie copy of The Matrix. We chose the DVD format early on for PS2 to give us more memory, give us more real estate to build our games on. When it was ready for launch, we recognized that DVD was this emerging format and people were getting rid of their VHS player. I don’t think there was a lot of intention around linking those two things, but serendipity is a great thing, right? Lucky happenstance. It turned out to be a huge accelerator because so many people could convince their spouse or their parents that, hey, this game machine, you can watch DVDs on it too.
IGN: Did you know early on that the PS2 would be a success?
Shawn Layden: It wasn’t preordained. We launched PS2 on the back of Ridge Racer, Tekken and Fantavision, the fireworks simulator. Later on we became sanguine about it but, at that moment, it was like, ‘Oh, dear God, are we going to be okay? We can’t just sell three games for 10 years.’ There was a learning curve, and so some teams took some time to figure out how this worked. The first couple of years of PS2 was fairly white-knuckled, riding it out, hoping that some more games are going to come, right? This is going to be awesome, right? The first year was pretty much fear-driven. Once teams got into the swing of it, the games were coming thick and fast. There was a lot of risk-taking, a lot of games where you’d look at it and go, ‘What is that?’ And you want to discover it.
IGN: How did it change the way gaming was viewed in wider society?
Shawn Layden: People started to accept gaming as not just a bunch of spotty-faced teenagers in the basement. PS2 was when gaming really broke out into a cultural phenomenon. It was the first time where you could talk about your game machine in polite company and not feel embarrassed. Before that, with PS1, you’d hear someone say Tomb Raider in a party, and you go, ‘Oh, do you know Tomb Raider? Oh, that’s amazing?’ But with PS2, we’re all out there. We’re wearing logos on our t-shirts. We’re having conversations at bars and at pubs and wherever about the new game we’re playing.
When we launched The Getaway, we had a premiere in Leicester Square and we showed the 27-minute lead-up reel to the game. And it was like a full-on movie premiere, red carpet, the whole bit, those searchlights going up in the sky, The Times of London covering it. It did give the feeling that, wow, games are at the next level now. It’s not just something happening down at Electronics Boutique – this is happening in Leicester Square.
IGN: Can you remember your first encounter with the PS2 console?
Daniel Griffiths: The call came that there’s a big announcement in Japan. When my editor, Mike Goldsmith, went off [to Japan] we were speculating as to what it was going to be, but it wasn’t certain it was going to be PS2. That issue, Ridge Racer Type 4 was the cover game, and then the announcement of PlayStation 2 is below that, because we weren’t certain [it was going to happen].
Mike went to the PS2 reveal press conference. He’s got no laptop, no computer. He gets given some slides and goes to some Japanese printer and tries to fax them, and he can’t do it. Then he phones me. We’ve got our [Ridge Racer Type 4] front cover, the mag’s all finished. The double spread of news is held back for whatever Mike’s seeing in Japan. He’s like, ‘I’ve got PlayStation 2, I’ve seen it.’ And we’re like, ‘Oh f*ck, what are we gonna do?’
He says, ‘I’ll describe to you what I’ve seen and you write it like you’ve seen it.’ So he read from his notebook, and I literally typed up what he said just from his description. I’d never seen it, but I wrote the whole thing: ‘We’ve been to Japan, we’ve seen this.’
IGN: What happened when you got your hands on it?
Daniel Griffiths: We had the first one in the UK, pretty much. [PlayStation Magazine owner] Future Publishing did football magazines and knitting magazines and canoeing magazines, even the people from the needlecraft magazines came to see [our] PlayStation 2. Everyone was just absolutely knocked out. There was a game called The Bouncer, with depth of field, there was focus and planes. It was incredible. And Fantavision had layers and clouds and the light would be reflected in things. All of these tricks that PS1 couldn’t do, they just went all out on PS2. At the time it was photoreal to me, it was such a step up.
Because it was on DVD, the sound was so much better too. It had genuine music, and genuine spoken word and acting. Things like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, with Harry Gregson-Williams’ orchestral score, and the fantastic, if slightly dubious, script and voice acting. It was next level. PS1 to PS2 was like going from a brick phone to an iPhone and you could see that everything’s going to be brilliant from now on. The people that had held off on PlayStation 1 could see this wasn’t going away.
IGN: How extravagant was the marketing?
Daniel Griffiths: PlayStation 2 was the time when the money landed, and spending lots of cash on nonsense made perfect sense. Nowadays, I don’t think it exists at all. I remember going to one party where it was, ‘Ladies and gentleman, Pulp.’ They were 20 feet away, doing a full gig, and they were the hottest band at the time
For parties they would take over these weird venues, like derelict car parks, and they would put on art displays and have a stage and a band and an enormous free bar that was just Red Bull and Vodka all night, fill a place with cool people and games journalists, and everyone would just come out and say, ‘Sony, they’re the bomb.’ I remember going to one and there was a perfect pyramid of gold chocolate coins, maybe 12 feet high… then on the way out, it was just demolished, and it had melted, and it was just a slick of chocolate, and people were slipping over on it. It was hilarious.
IGN: What happened when Microsoft entered the scene?
Daniel Griffiths: I had moved from OPM deputy editor to be editor of GamesMaster. I remember Microsoft coming to Future Publishing and they took some PC magazines and GamesMaster [staff] to a posh hotel in Bath. And they unzipped a case and produced this shiny metal box shaped like an X. They were in awe of us, that was the weird thing. They took me to one side and they said, ‘We’ve seen how your games magazines have sold [games] to gamers, we’re completely new to the games industry, we need you to be on side with this.’ It seems crazy, but that’s what it was.
They were running scared. You could see they were kind of like, ‘This might be the biggest mistake we’ve ever made, but we’re making a console.’ PlayStation’s marketing team had got it on the telly and in trendy magazines, and they had footballers banging on about their favorite PlayStation games in the press. It was everywhere… and so I think for Xbox to come in and say, ‘We’ve got a console,’ it was just like, you’re gonna have to really prove it. And to their credit, they worked super hard, and I’ve got nothing but admiration for it.
IGN: When do you think PS2 cemented its reputation as an all-timer?
Daniel Griffiths: I think part of the reason it becomes loved is because of the mess that they made of PlayStation 3. PS1 was a games machine. PS2, with the advent of the DVD player, was home entertainment, and then PS3, god knows what they were thinking of. That was going to replace your computer, your television, your everything. The reason why PlayStation 2 is kind of revered is because they f*cked up PlayStation 3.
Do you have fond memories of the PlayStation 2? Were you there, 25 years ago, waiting in line to buy one at midnight? Did you get it for the DVD player, or for the cinematic narrative games that tech unlocked? Or were you a fan of its early advances in multiplayer, perhaps online with SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs, or splitscreen with Timesplitters 2 via the Multitap adaptor? Let us know your stories from the PS2 era in the comments below. And for more tales of the PS2, check out how Sony secured GTA as a PlayStation exclusive.
The interviews in this story have been edited for length and clarity.
Riding high?
Kirby and his warp star are back in business thanks to Kirby Air Riders, and we imagine a lot of you have been racing through the sky (and the “city”) to unlock absolutely everything this past weekend.
The surprise sequel to the under-appreciated GameCube racer Kirby Air Ride has performed much better than its 2003 predecessor, boosted by fantastic visuals and performance, a plethora of characters and stages, and so many custom vehicles.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
While the Magic: The Gathering community remains split over Wizards of the Coast’s big push for Universes Beyond, there’s no arguing that Final Fantasy’s set from June this year was a set done right – and it set big records for the three-decade-old franchise as a result.
Now that cards are being reprinted, we’ve seen a few deals pop up on Commander Decks and Play Boosters, and now Amazon’s Black Friday deals have brought a box of Final Fantasy Play Boosters to a new, lowest-ever price – and it’s not alone, either.
Amazon lists the MSRP for the Final Fantasy box at $209.70 (more on that in a moment), but it’s now down to $162.57.
That’s still more expensive than Universes Within boxes of Play Boosters, simply by virtue of being, well, Final Fantasy. Still, with that taken into account, you are saving almost $50 and still getting 30 Play Boosters of 14 cards each.
That’s 420 cards for $162.57, with some fantastic new designs included among them. Naturally, Collector Boosters, which feature rarer art treatments, have been out of stock (or endlessly marked up) for months, but if you’re looking to kickstart a Final Fantasy collection, this is the way to do it.
Wondering which cards you should be looking for? Check out our list of both the priciest and other great cards that are affordable from the set.
Remember when we said the Final Fantasy box wasn’t alone? You can save a whopping 39% on a Tarkir: Dragonstorm box of Play Boosters, too. Amazon’s deals have it down to $99.99 for 30 packs.
This Dragon-themed set has some awesome cards included, and with this deal, you’re paying $3.33 per pack and still getting 420 cards.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
The performance of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is starting to come into focus, with sales data suggesting it’s struggling not just against rival shooter Battlefield 6, but also last year’s Black Ops 6.
The Game Business reported that Black Ops 7’s European launch saw opening week sales down 63% versus the blockbuster Battlefield 6 during the equivalent launch periods for each shooter. Black Ops 7 is also down by more than 50% versus Black Ops 6, The Game Business said.
There is an important context that must be considered when discussing Black Ops 7 sales. For example, there are Black Ops 7 sales made across various online stores that make it hard to take data from one store only, such as Steam, and use it to make a call on a game’s success either way (Call of Duty releases on Battle.net, for example).
And of course Black Ops 7, like all Microsoft games, launched day one on Game Pass. Downloads made via subscription services are not tracked here, and Microsoft has yet to announce any significant boost to Game Pass as a result of Black Ops 7’s launch. For all we know, Black Ops 7 hit its targets in terms of Game Pass subscriptions. And what even is success for Call of Duty these days in the context of Game Pass?
Meanwhile, much is made of Steam concurrents, where Black Ops 7’s launch appears to have fallen flat compared to Black Ops 6’s. Last year, Black Ops 6’s launch propelled the Call of Duty app on Steam to a peak player count of 315,000 on Steam. Black Ops 7 boosted the Call of Duty app to just above 100,000 concurrents. But Steam, too, does not paint the full picture of a game’s playerbase, given neither Microsoft nor Sony make player numbers public.
Of course, Black Ops 7 has had a big challenger this year from Battlefield 6, and it does indeed look like the tide has turned, at least at launch. Battlefield 6 secured the biggest opening ever in the Battlefield franchise, selling over 7 million copies in just three days. Microsoft — or Activision Blizzard — has yet to announce a sales number for Black Ops 7, nor has it announced a player number or even vague engagement stats, which is more surprising. Last week, Activision released a statement thanking players for their “great response” to the game, which was presumably more about Multiplayer and Zombies than it was the Campaign.
Thank you to our community and developers. This is just the start #BlackOps7 🔥 pic.twitter.com/dWDt6Jvpx0
— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) November 17, 2025
Adding to the brutal competition is the breakout hit that is Arc Raiders, which is doing fantastically well, too. Embark Studios’ extraction shooter has sold over 4 million copies worldwide and had a peak of over 700,000 concurrent players across all platforms since its launch in late October 2025. Arc Raiders Steam concurrents are actually growing, suggesting sales are continuing at a steady pace.
All in all, Black Ops 7 had a “terrible” launch, The Game Business’ chief Chris Dring said in a post on social media. Oh, and that down more than 50% figure on Black Ops 6 is in fact down more than 60%. Anecdotally, there’s certainly a feeling among some Call of Duty players that Battlefield 6 and then Arc Raiders stole Black Ops 7’s thunder. Getting in ahead of Black Ops 7 was crucial for Battlefield 6, and there are many Call of Duty fans who jumped ship and then skipped Black Ops 7 as a result. But it must be remembered that Call of Duty remains a gaming behemoth, regularly tops player number charts, and it’s come through sales disappointments (Vanguard and Infinite Warfare say hi) before. All eyes are on U.S. sales data for November, where we’ll hopefully get more evidence of Black Ops 7’s sales performance domestically.
Thoughts now turn to 2026’s Call of Duty. It seems unlikely that Microsoft and Activision will give the annualized franchise a year off, so will we see another Modern Warfare game? A return to World War 2? Or something completely different? With the threat of GTA 6’s November 2026 release date casting a shadow over Call of Duty and everything else that dares to go up against it next year, things aren’t going to get any easier for Activision.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Right, time for some box news. The Steam Machine. Valve have confirmed, or reaffirmed, that its yet-to-be-revealed price will be in line with a regular PC built to similar specs, rather than subsidised in order to try and compete with consoles.
Maybe it’s time to ask Santa for MicroSD Express cards.
Storage-hungry consumers in Japan have been jumping on available stocks of super-fast MicroSD cards as an ongoing memory shortage continues across the computer industry, with no signs of getting better in the immediate future.
As reported by Tom’s Hardware, a spiralling issue of rising costs and demand that’s far exceeding availability means empty shelves and insane prices as regular consumers swoop on anything that’s left over once large data centres and AI companies have bought up their fill. Oh, AI, is there anything you can’t make worse?
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
PlayStation’s 2025 Black Friday sale is well underway, running right through to December 1, and a fresh wave of newly added games has just dropped into the mix.
A stack of strong PS5 titles are already discounted across every major retailer, including standouts like Astro Bot at $39.99, Battlefield 6 at $52.99, and Spider-Man 2 at $29.99.
To keep things straight, I’ve broken out my top picks into two buckets: the newest heavy hitters of 2025 and the rest of the must-play releases from the PS5’s nearly five-year run.
For the uninitiated, Black Friday deals tend to go live a week early these days, so while Black Friday isn’t until Nov. 28, we’ve already got all the best discounts on PS5 games to check out.
Standout offers for 2025 PS5 games include a few of my personal favorites, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for $44.99, alongside Assassin’s Creed Shadows for just $34.99.
I also love to sing the praises of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 as well, and that’s just hit its lowest price ever as part of the Black Friday sales. It’s just $30 at Amazon right now, a huge $40 in savings.
There’s also a great deal from Amazon Resale, where an extra 30% off at checkout will bag you Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for just $42.99.
That’s a “Used – Like New” copy, so you’re getting the best possible condition, at the best possible price. This can sell out quic, though, so snap it up fast while you still can.
While it came out for Xbox and PC in 2024, it hit PS5 in 2025, so this just scrapes through as a new game for PlayStation users. I love a cheeky Black Friday loophole.
There’s some big discounts on first party PlayStation games in the sale as well, especially from the past few years. My top pick is Game of the Year 2024 winner, Astro Bot, for $39.99, which is endless amounts of fun.
You can also pick up Helldivers 2, Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us 1 and 2, all for $29.99. Stellar Blade is down to $39.99, and you can even pick up Horizon Forbidden West for just $19.99.
There’s also games like Final Fantasy’s 1-6 Pixel Collection for $39.99, which has dropped to its lowest price ever, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake for $34.99, while Elden Ring and Star Wars Outlaws are both just $19.99 right now as well.
I’ve barely scratched the surface across the sales as well, as there’s even more games to check out between now and Black Friday, including a 2025 Game of the Year nominee, Death Stranding 2, for $49.69. That’s $20 off, and matches the best deal on the game so far this year.
There’s also $20 discounts on big Konami hits like Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and Silent Hill f, both also down to $48.99 from $69.99. Both of these can be found in Best Buy’s Black Friday sales, or via the PlayStation Store’s digital storefront.
That’s alongside new all time low prices on physical copies of Battlefield 6, down to $52.99, EA Sports FC 26 for $29.99, Borderlands 4 for $47.99, and more. These are cheaper than buying digitally, small differences for some, while bigger for others.
For example, Battlefield 6 is a significally better deal when buying a physical copy ($52.99 vs $59.49), while where as some games like Death Stranding 2 are just a tiny bit cheaper digitally ($49.69 vs $49.99). So, sometimes it comes in handy to have a disc drive (I’m looking at you, PS5 Pro owners).
Other standout offers in the PlayStation 2025 Black Friday sale include $100 off PS5 consoles and PlayStation VR2 bundles, $20 off DualSense Controllers and PlayStation Portal, and up to 33% off PlayStation Plus memberships.
There are plenty more games on sale that we haven’t mentioned either, so be sure to check out the full PS5 sales pages at retailers like Amazon as well.
Black Friday deals are a bit of a mess these days. Retailers spend the whole of November dangling so called limited time offers, but the truth is simple, the real discounts always land about a week before what I call “Black Friday proper”. And we’re already in the endgame now.
After over six years of tracking PlayStation pricing, one pattern never breaks, once a PlayStation deal goes live, it barely moves. So the prices you’re seeing right now on consoles, controllers, and games are almost certainly the prices you’ll be looking at through to early December.
If you’ve been sitting on your hands waiting for something better, stop. This is as good as it’s getting. Grab what you’ve been eyeing up, because the only thing you’re risking at this point is missing out.
Planning to grab anything in PlayStation’s Black Friday sale? Drop a comment, and keep an eye on IGN for daily updates as we track the best deals of 2025.
Robert Anderson is Senior Commerce Editor and IGN’s resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter/X or Bluesky.
Ubisoft racer The Crew has avoided yet another shutdown after being ressurected in server-emulated form by fans earlier this year. According to the modders behind its revival project, The Crew Unlimited, a bug would have seen the game stop working once 2029 rolled around. Thankfully, they say a solution’s been found.
Udo Kier, the German actor who starred in over 200 films, has died aged 81.
Kier, who appeared in 275 roles including in My Own Private Idaho, Blade, Armageddon, and Dogville, as well as Madonna music videos and video games, died on Sunday morning, his partner Delbert McBride confirmed to Variety. Photographer Michael Childers took to social media to say Kier died in hospital in Palm Springs, California. A cause of death has not yet been revealed.
The horror film specialist had a breakout role in 1970’s Mark of the Devil, before being cast as Frankenstein in 1973’s Flesh for Frankenstein, then Dracula in 1974’s Blood for Dracula — both produced by artist Andy Warhol. His first American role came in 1991 film My Own Private Idaho, which starred River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. Madonna, a fan of Kier’s work, cast him in her music videos for Erotica and Deeper and Deeper. Later notable roles came in the likes of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Johnny Mnemonic, Armageddon, End of Days, and Blade. Kier’s final film was the political thriller The Secret Agent, in which he played a Jewish Holocaust survivor caught in the final years of the Brazilian military dictatorship.
As well as starring in hundreds of films, Kier was no stranger to the world of video games. He famously played Yuri in the live-action cutscenes that formed a part of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2’s story, and reprised the role in 2001’s Command & Conquer: Yuri’s Revenge.
RIP Udo Kier, who passed away today at the age of 81.
His performance as Yuri in Red Alert 2 has always stuck with me, and it’s one I constantly reference. I’m sad we won’t get to see you in Kojima’s OD but thank you for the great memories. pic.twitter.com/d8Y2ZBmV5r
— Bucky | Palworld (@Bucky_cm) November 24, 2025
Later, he had voice roles in 2017’s Call of Duty: WWII, and 2022’s Martha is Dead. He was set to appear in OD, the upcoming horror video game by Hideo Kojima and producer Jordan Peele, and indeed was a part of its teaser trailer, below, showing initial face scan work. It is unclear whether Kier will now be recast in the upcoming Microsoft game.
Kojima took to social media to pay tribute to Kier, expressing his shock at the news.
“I’m at a loss for words,” Kojima said. “It all happened far too suddenly. Because of the strike, we weren’t able to shoot OD for a long time, and we were forced to reschedule to next year. Even during that time, Udo and I exchanged emails frequently. We stayed in close contact. When we met in Milan at the end of September, he told me how much he was looking forward to the shoot starting up again next year. He was full of energy then too, making me laugh with his usual ‘Udo-isms.’
“I still can’t believe this. Udo wasn’t just an actor. He was truly an ‘icon’ of his time. We’ve lost a great ‘icon.’ There will never be another like him. Udo, rest in peace. I will never forget you.”
The tweet video below, shows Kojima and Kier together in Milan in September.
With Udo Kier. pic.twitter.com/6tdXYLY8aW
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) September 26, 2025
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
