Crimson Desert is an open-world action-adventure game set on the continent of Pywel. But how big is the open world, exactly? It’s “absolutely massive,” its developer has said, bigger even than that of Bethesda’s Skyrim and Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2.
Speaking on the Gaming Interviews YouTube channel, Pear Abyss’ Will Powers said that describing the size of Crimson Desert’s world in terms of numbers doesn’t do it justice, because doing so fails to capture the scope and scale of the game. But he did go as far as to compare it to two of the biggest open world games around.
“I don’t think numbers really do it justice because, how big is that in terms of scope and scale?” he said. “But what we can say is that the world’s at least twice as big as the open world, the playable area, of Skyrim. It’s larger than the map of Red Dead Redemption 2.”
Powers went on to insist that the size of Crimson Desert’s open world won’t determine its quality. Rather, what you actually do in it is the key factor.
“The continent of Pywel is absolutely massive, but size doesn’t really matter if there’s nothing to do,” he said. “Open-world games are about doing things, having activities, having distractions. So we wanted to create a world that’s not only massive, but is also incredibly interactive.”
Unlike Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption 2, in Crimson Desert you can fly around on a dragon, so despite the size of its world, you’ll be able to get about quickly. And don’t expect RPG elements in terms of decision-making and choice and consequence as it relates to your character, either. The sheer amount of things to do in the world will facilitate the role-playing part of Crimson Desert, which players will form through “head canon.”
“You choose the type of character you want to play as in terms of your progression within the systems in the game,” Powers explained. “And then through head canon you’re having this very different experience than other players because of the scope and scale of the game. You’ll be distracted by something, you’ll go on this quest line, you’ll have an experience that’ll be radically different than someone else, even though they’re playing the same game and the same canonical storyline that you both are going through.”
Indeed, the part of Crimson Desert shown off to the media in previews is just “a tiny corner of the map,” Powers added. Crimson Desert is due out March 19, 2026.
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.
Over two years after it was announced, Ubisoft is still working on The Division 3. And while it has yet to show off the game, its chief developer has said he thinks it will have as big an impact as The Division 1.
The Division 1 was announced at E3 2013 with a trailer that went down as one of the most talked about of the show. After a series of delays, The Division released on March 8, 2016, breaking sales records for Ubisoft. The Division 2 followed in 2019, although it failed to make as big a splash at launch as its predecessor.
While there’s no release date for The Division 3, the hope is Ubisoft will show it off at some point this year. Now, Julian Gerighty, executive producer of The Division franchise at Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment, has provided a brief but tantalizing update.
Speaking during the New Game+ Showcase 2026, Gerighty said: “So, The Division 3 is in production, right? This is not a secret. It’s been announced. It’s shaping up to be a monster. I can’t really say anything more than that. But this is, within these walls in Massive, we are working extremely hard on something that I think will be as big an impact as Division 1 was.”
That’s not much to go on, but clearly Ubisoft is hoping that The Division 3 will rekindle memories of The Division 1, which was certainly a hot topic when it was announced and enjoyed huge sales when it eventually came out. The pressure is on to deliver, especially with Ubisoft’s recent high-profile struggles.
Meanwhile, support for The Division 2 continues with various updates, and a team in Paris is putting the final touches of a The Division mobile game. The Division Heartland, a free-to-play spin-off, entered development in 2020 but was canceled in 2024.
Two months ago, Massive Entertainment introduced what it called a ‘voluntary career transition program,’ (the studio asked its staff to volunteer to be laid off) as part of a move to focus on The Division franchise and its Snowdrop game engine. It came as part of significant restructuring at Ubisoft that has seen multiple studio closures and rounds of layoffs. Massive Entertainment’s Star Wars Outlaws, released in 2024, was a big sales disappointment for Ubisoft, despite significant development and marketing costs.
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.
Let me level with you folks right up top: Code Violet is a bad game. No judgement (some judgement) if you saw tasteful (and sometimes not) screenshots and trailers featuring its beautiful brunette protagonist mixing it up with dinosaurs and felt compelled to pick this up just to ogle. But if you want anything else from Code Violet, like a compelling story with interesting characters or an engrossing crucible of tense and savvy action horror to conquer, then you’ve come to the wrong raptor-infested space station. The best it can give you is terrible third-person shooting, boring level design, and technical blunders that make stalking through this futuristic bloodbath feel prehistoric.
Code Violet’s story is unapologetically tropey science fiction, mixing far future space colonization, genetic modification, and more to make this final girl survival story as impenetrable as possible. Bits and pieces of the tale are interesting, though that’s mostly limited to side stories and lore found in the journal entries of victims scattered among the wreckage. But almost everything you play through and watch in cutscene form is derivative, awkwardly animated and acted, and forgettable. Avoiding spoilers, even when things get truly bonkers towards the end (in a similar fashion to developer TeamKill Media’s Quantum Error from 2023), all the new and drastic revelations that should be monumental to the story at hand instead feel rushed and full of twists and turns that are either undercooked or entirely too convoluted. The very few other characters you meet are barely more than one-note exposition dispensers who you’ll watch your hero, Violet, worry and cry over and never really understand why.
Violet herself is a hollow shell with no motivations outside of doing what others tell her to do, as well as being incredulous and weepy when weird and sometimes difficult events arise. She’s meant to fill a sort of Jill Valentine or Lara Croft archetype of tough gals that can think their way through most challenges, and shoot their way through the rest. But while those two video game legends have agency and capability developed through their laundry lists of heroic feats, snappy dialogue, and sometimes dense inner monologues, Violet’s own thoughts about the happenings around her seem absent from most interactions. She only feels particularly good at anything when I’m in the driver’s seat, tip toeing down hallways and filling dinosaurs full of lead.
This is doubly damning. Outside of being a missed opportunity to introduce a good new character into the greater video game lexicon, it also makes Code Violet’s leering, pervy camera work and extensive dress up options feel like it’s crossing the line from fun into creepy. There are tons of characters in games who successfully make being sexy or flirty a major part of their schtick, and the best ones are those that come across as completely in control of their own image while they do so. So its an unfortunate irony that in a post-Baldur’s Gate 3/Stellar Blade world, one where people have never been more ready to accept hunky himbos and skimpy seductresses, Code Violet found one of the few ways to do it wrong.
A few parts look good at a distance, but textures can get muddied up close.
I played on a regular PlayStation 5 rather than a Pro, and at mid-to-far distances, a few parts of Code Violet really do look good. That’s especially true in the more creatively designed areas, like when you’re outside looking up as islands float in the purplish void of the sky. When you get up close, however, textures can get muddied and metallic surfaces reflect light in gaudy ways that seem off putting for the grunge and grime that sometimes smears them. And most of the heavy metal halls you’ll skulk down are uninspired sci-fi staples that don’t feel any different than any other game that asks players to escape from a locked down hellhole of a science facility. Doom 3 pulled this aesthetic off far more effectively over 20 years ago.
There’s occasional flair, some statues that would look more at home in a medieval castle than a space base, for instance. There’s no real explanation for them, though you can make inferences based on some late-game happenings, but at the moment they come off largely as “it’s here just because.” One curious thing I did always stop to look at were the soda machines and various oil paintings that stick out like a sore thumb in this setting. Not because I found them to be particularly riveting (some were admittedly cool-looking), but mostly because I couldn’t stop trying to determine if they were AI generated or not – I’m no expert, so the jury is still out on that, but they certainly give off that vibe.
Those cool outdoor skyscapes hang over the rote and bland grasslands you’ll have to trudge through to get from one building to another almost mockingly. The limited time you spend in these zones is transitory. They basically serve as long hallways with bundles of tall grass to crouch behind when enemies are on patrol. You don’t even get a map to use, and you won’t need one as it will be very obvious where you need to go next, with very little opportunity to diverge from this critical path. Maybe these sections were meant to serve as some reprieve from the dark, claustrophobic halls of the various facilities on this planet, but other than having a brighter color palette, they feel exactly the same to navigate through.
Back indoors, rooms that might have something to investigate or shoot are separated by long hallways with nothing to spice up the transition from one action zone to another. This almost never changes across the handful of maps you’ll explore, creating a predictable, slogging pace between rooms. Part of what makes games like Dead Space so tense is that any and every room feels like one you could be maimed in. In Code Violet, you can be reasonably sure that most of its rooms exist just to be walked through by you and nothing else. Scoping out extra upgrade materials to strengthen your weapons or finding hidden keys or combinations to open certain lockers are the only good reasons to stray off the path, and even then I learned to go without these things pretty early on because the effort often wasn’t worth the prize – they usually meant enduring the crumbling fossil of Code Violet’s combat system for longer than necessary.
The camera can render some indoor encounters a completely unintelligible mess until it’s refocused.
Violet herself is agile and swift in line with most third person games of this ilk, and even has a Resident Evil-style back stepping dodge, which you will use a lot to create space between yourself and incoming dinosaurs. In a straight up skirmish with these scaly foes, a well-timed dash back can really befuddle the raptors, shattering their simple gameplan of running at you, taking a big swing, pausing, and doing it again. There’s limited space before you hit a wall or a door that might have automatically closed behind you, though, so you can only backdash so much before making yourself a much easier snack to catch. The camera will collide with these barriers far sooner than Violet will, rendering any encounter that doesn’t take place in the dead center of the room a completely unintelligible mess for as long as it takes you to get the camera refocused. Indoors, this was a frequent headache, and lingered like a second, scarier jump scare waiting to pounce after a raptor bursts out of the wall.
The variety of these jurassic jerks is a let down, with large or small velociraptors and poison-spitting dilophosauruses making up the bulk of the non-boss foes. Each type has its own behaviors, but they are shallow and predictable. Big raptors just run and swipe at you until either you or it are dead. Small raptors are usually in packs and make a conga line toward you, taking a swipe before running away, only to immediately turn around and do it all over again. The spitters just stand in one place and shoot, opting to close the distance only when you do so first. You’ll encounter some gator-like creatures in the last third of the approximately six hour campaign, but they barely bother to deal with you so long as you don’t enter their waters, making them extremely easy targets.
Any challenge I got from these mouthy menaces came from how erratic and stupid they could be, often getting caught in the environment while attempting to reach me or disengaging once I simply walked the other direction. Their bullet spongy, stun resistant nature also means that they can just run up and take a bite out of you before they die, not quite becoming a danger, but definitely becoming an annoyance since any hit from them could potentially cause you to bleed, which can kill you if you don’t treat it in time. This is all true for the remarkably few boss fights as well – you may be facing a scaly man-dino hybrid now, but almost nothing about the strategy of walking backwards, dodging on time, and then countering with a face full of lead has to change.
At the same time, all these lazy lizards have a sort of supernatural omniscience. Even when you make your best attempts to sneak into or around a room, there’s a great chance that they already know where you are and are on their way to kill you. On top of that, so many encounters involve you opening a door to see dinosaurs staring directly at you or are scripted events where they have the drop on you, so there aren’t many attempts to stay quiet to begin with. Unless you’re using the GlassVeil function of Violet’s suit, which can render you sometimes comically invisible for a short period, stealth is a large waste of time in most areas. I say comically because you can use it mid-fight with a dinosaur, and there’s a good chance they will simply give up any attempt to find you and return to milling around aimlessly when you do. Hilariously, this strategy even works on bosses, who will completely stop and wait for you to reveal yourself, usually with gunfire, and then make a half-assed attempt to follow up until you reappear.
The real enemy are the myriad bugs that can’t wait to bite and peck at your progress. Sometimes the sound mix will run off the rails or a very important skybox, one that might hold valuable information about a puzzle, simply won’t load. Weapons sometimes display the wrong ammo counts, or just disappear from your inventory all together – which I guess is a fair trade for the fact that every item I used directly out of my storage box didn’t actually expend it in the review build we were provided, meaning I could always heal to full at any safe room I made it to. (TeamKill Media tells us it’s already aware and working on fixes for some of these bugs, such as the infinite storage item issue, but didn’t say when those might arrive.)
Avowed is the latest Xbox Game Studios creation to head to PlayStation, developer Obsidian announced today.
This news came as part of an interview on the New Game+ Showcase, where Obsidian developers shared that the February 17 launch on PS5 would coincide with the game’s promised anniversary update on all platforms.
The anniversary update contains a number of long-requested features, including a New Game Plus mode, a Photo Mode, the ability to play three new races (Aumaua, Orlan, and Dwarves), a new weapon type, the ability to change appearance in the overworld, and a number of other asked-for upgrades.
Pre-orders for the PS5 version will go live today, and the update will be available for free for those who already own it on other platforms.
Avowed came out almost a year ago (hence the anniversary update), and we gave it a 7/10 at the time. While we said it has “awesome worldbuilding and stellar character writing”, it also “plays it quite safe with a by-the-numbers fantasy adventure.”
Avowed’s move to PlayStation is part of a larger trend of Xbox releasing its first-party games on its competitor platform, including recently Forza Horizon 5, Doom: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and even Halo.. It’s a strategy that seems to be working for them okay in some respects – in one quarter of last year, six of the ten best-selling games on PlayStation were Xbox-published. And its leadership has publicly embraced the idea that consumers find platform exclusivity to be “antiquated.”
Will this strategy serve them well as hardware prices skyrocket and players gravitate more toward forever games? We took a stab at guessing how Xbox’s 2026 will go, and you can read those predictions here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Hey, fellow Undertale and Deltarune fan. Did you know there was a Deltarune ARG going on? Did you know it’s technically been going on for three years now? Yeah, neither did I!
I first learned about the Deltarune ARG (Alternate Reality Game) earlier this week, when a video about it surfaced in my YouTube recommendations. I started out just mildly curious, but I quickly fell down a rabbit hole that had me digging through massive spreadsheets, scouring Reddit threads, and pouring over weird corners of the official Deltarune website. And now, I’m going to infect you with it too.
In order to fully unpack the entire ARG in a way that covers every little bit of what’s happened and what it could mean, I would have to spoil all four chapters of Deltarune, probably some bits of Undertale, and dive into a deep, deep, deep pit of Deltarune fan theories. So I’m going to try to keep the explanation as high level as is possible while still making sense. But as a warning ahead of time: this will contain spoilers for Chapters 1 and 2 of Deltarune, especially the “Weird Route”, and some very light allusions to characters and events in Chapters 3 and 4. Read on at your own risk:
The Deltarune ARG actually began in September 2022, during an event called the Spamton Sweepstakes celebrating Undertale’s seventh anniversary, which raised money for the charity Child’s Play. Most of the event was fun, silly, and non-ARG-related, themed around the eccentric Chapter 2 character Spamton and including a lot of fun new merchandise courtesy of Fangamer.
However, at the time, the ever-vigilant Deltarune community stumbled upon some unusual hidden content within the pages on the Deltarune website dedicated to the sweepstakes. At the time, most of it consisted of fun Easter Eggs, and I don’t want to get into it all, but it was the first major sign that something was up. It wasn’t until May of 2025 (two and a half years later) that things really kicked off. Fans suddenly noticed that there were even more secrets on the Deltarune website dedicated to the sweepstakes. There were a number of new hidden pages, all of which made reference to the game’s deeply eerie and hidden “Weird Route”, but the one that matters most to the ARG was deltarune.com/chapter4/thankyou. At the time, the website consisted of two very small blanks where users could input text, and a blank button that allowed them to submit it. There were no clues as to what needed to go into the blanks, save for a single question:
“How long did it take her to smile?”
Deltarune fans very quickly guessed that the “her” being referenced was Noelle, a beloved character and the childhood best friend of Deltarune protagonist Kris. She’s also the focal point of the aforementioned Weird Route, in which the player (a separate character from Kris) manipulates Noelle into doing something terrible in the interest of becoming stronger. Fans also figured out that the first blank was looking for an email address, with the second blank being for the actual “answer” to the question. Unfortunately, the form was only open for a day, before being replaced with text that just said “Thank You.” Those who had submitted their email in the form began receiving effectively a confirmation email that just contained “You answered [THEIR ANSWER].” No further explanation. Nothing. For three years.
Notably, when all this happened, Chapters 3 and 4 weren’t out yet. Those released earlier this year, and with them, more Weird Route content and a couple of horrifying, hidden scenes focused on Noelle in particular. Then two weeks ago, those who had received the confirmation email the first time received a new email that just said, “Second chance,” and found that the form had been reopened. The community efforts were more coordinated this time, with people experimenting with different combinations of time amounts in days, seconds, years, as well as other textual responses they felt made sense. A number of community members tried to document submissions to avoid duplications, though given the short notice and short time period the form was open, this was once again difficult to do.
The form closed again, and once again, participants received emails. But this time, they were different. Individuals were getting one of a collection of different responses that seemed to be based on what they submitted. For instance, those who said “1 Day” received back “Then, ‘The next day you’ll see her smile.'” People who inputted very small numbers, such as 4 seconds, got back, “So, ‘she never stopped smiling'”. There are a bunch of other creepy answers, like “Do you think that means she still can?” and “Then, ‘It was the first time she ever smiled in her life.'”
Many emails ended with another sentence: “Move forward with this answer,” seemingly indicating the submission was on the right track.
That was two weeks ago, and the form has been closed ever since. There’s no indication of whether anyone got the right answer, what the next step is, or if the form will ever open up again. In preparation for a third attempt, a number of content creators have been rallying fans into communities to track what answers garnered what responses, and piece those responses together to try and figure out a “correct” answer if the form reopens. There are multiple massive spreadsheets out there cataloging confirmed responses, as well as others assigning different answers to each participant ahead of time, so no one wastes an answer on a duplicate.
But what does it all mean? We’re…not exactly sure. The general consensus is that all this has something to do with where Chapter 4’s “Weird Route” leaves Noelle, and speculation about what’s to come in Chapter 5 at the “festival” event we know is going to take place during it. But even though that’s the most likely context, it’s a pretty unusual one: the Weird Route is extremely hard to figure out without assistance from the internet, and its dark consequences make it unlikely that the vast majority of players would ever see it or understand what any of this is about. If this ARG is going to reveal some deep lore, or even impact the game somehow, it’s likely that very few people will understand or even care about the result.
That may be by design, though. Critically, the second time the form opened, only people who participated and received feedback from it the first time were able to use it again. If you’re just learning about this (as I am), you may be entirely too late to participate at all. It’s also possible there’s no progress on whatever this is for months, even years. It was already three years between the first two events in this ARG. How long will we need to wait for the third?
I’m really just scratching the surface here, and probably sound like I’m completely crazy. If you’ve played Deltarune and didn’t know about any of this, you probably had a pleasant time with a cool, well-written RPG with funny, lovable characters, and left it at that. That’s an extremely normal way to enjoy this game, and probably will be most people’s experience! But since Deltarune’s Chapter 1 release, there’s been a whole ecosystem of secrets, fan theories, and conspiracies surrounding the question of what this game actually is, how it relates to Undertale, and what the implications of its hidden, darker narrative might be for the game’s lighter side. It’s complex, weird, and fun as hell to dig into, and we probably won’t know the full scope of it for years to come.
Which is all to say, good luck to the secret hunters, and I’m genuinely sorry I can’t help. I’ve inadvertently gotten invested in this mystery even though I will not personally touch the Weird Route with a ten-foot holiday pencil. Deltarune chapters 1-4 are out now and combined make a very good place to jump in if you’ve been holding off thus far. Chapter 5 is expected to come out this year, likely in the second half.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Embark Studios has outlined its plan to deal with Arc Raiders cheaters after they became a hot topic in the community earlier this week.
Cheaters are a concern for nearly all multiplayer games, but they’ve become an especially controversial subject amongst players recently. Reports of cheaters seem to be increasing in recent weeks, as players share clips and stories of others shooting them through walls and from unreachable areas. The conversation then reached a boiling point when popular streamers like Ninja, Nadeshot, and Shroud began publicly voicing their concerns.
“This might be my last day playing for a very long time… Embark has zero control over their game right now”
Embark confirmed it is taking action against the cheating problem in a message posted in its official Discord server. The note comes with an acknowledgement of the discussion surrounding cheaters in the community, promising that the studio is “taking this issue very seriously” as it awaits further feedback.
“Over the next few weeks, we are implementing significant changes to our rulesets and deploying new detection mechanisms to identify and remove cheaters,” Embark said. “This includes updating our Anti-Cheat systems for improved detection and bans, as well as applying client-side fixes specifically addressing the ‘out of map’ glitch.”
It’s unclear if Embark’s efforts will be enough to deter the most problematic Arc Raiders offenders, but it’s at least a sign the studio will take action through January. The message also comes with a promise specifically for streamers, saying the team is “introducing tools for streamers to help mitigate stream sniping.”
“Thank you for your valuable feedback and for helping us make ARC Raiders a fair and fun experience for everyone,” the message concludes.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
2013’s Batman: Arkham Origins may not be the most critically beloved entry in the series, but many fans would argue it’s the game with the best Batman costume design. Now Hot Toys is finally giving that costume its due with a truly stunning 1/6 scale figure.
Check out the slideshow gallery below for an early look at Hot Toys’ Batman: Arkham Origins figure:
This figure stands an impressive 12.7 inches tall and features a detailed recreation of the character model from the game. The head boasts individually rotating eyeballs and interchangeable faceplates that allow for different expressions.
The figure also includes various other accessories you’d expect, including Batman’s various gadgets and weapons, electric gauntlets, and interchangeable hands.
This is hardly Hot Toys’ first time exploring the Arkham universe. In the past, they’ve released figures based on Batman’s Arkham City and Arkham Knight designs, along with several of the alternate suits from those games and villains like Joker and Harley Quinn. As for Arkham Origins specifically, Hot Toys previously tackled Deathstroke (who makes a cameo appearance in the photos above) and Batman’s armored XE Suit.
The Batman: Arkham Origins figure is priced at $300 and is available to preorder on Sideshow Collectibles. The figure is expected to release between January and June of 2027.
Nintendo Switch 2 sales over the holidays reportedly fell short of those recorded by the console’s predecessor back in 2017, during its first end-of-year season.
As revealed by The Game Business, Switch 2 sales in the US and within key markets in Europe fell behind the equivalent pace of Switch 1 — something an unnamed senior Nintendo source blamed on a “complicated” economic climate today, and the “absence of a major Western game” during the year-end period.
That particular analysis will likely raise eyebrows among Nintendo fans, as the company launched the long-awaited Metroid Prime 4: Beyond during the period — albeit to a more muted critical response than the franchise’s beloved original trilogy. Nintendo has so far made no announcement on how that game has fared.
The Game Business reports that US Switch 2 sales over the holiday period were down around 35% versus the Switch 1’s sales performance back in 2017. In the UK, a similar comparison saw Switch 2 lagging Switch 1 by 16%. Even in Nintendo’s homeland of Japan, Switch 2 holiday sales couldn’t match Switch 1, and were down by 5.5% over the year’s final nine weeks.
In France, 2025’s final tally of Switch 2 sales was down by “over 30%” versus the amount Switch 1 notched up back in 2017, meanwhile.
While these numbers may take some of the shine off of a successful first year for Switch 2 overall, it’s not all doom and gloom. Switch 2’s lifetime sales in Japan are still above what Switch 1 managed in its first year, with less time on sale. And in the UK, Switch 1 continued to sell well enough that it made up Switch 2’s holiday sales deficit.
Looking ahead, Nintendo has a smattering of first-party games already planned for 2026, including Mario Tennis Fever, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, as well as Switch 2 upgrades for Super Mario Wonder and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. There’s also the FromSoftware exclusive The Duskbloods to look forward to, and the promising-looking Pokémon Pokopia life sim.
But as the Switch 2 prepares to celebrate its first anniversary in June, all eyes will be on Nintendo to roll out a truly new blockbuster entry in one of its biggest franchises. Back in 2017, Switch 1’s first year was marked by the launch of both Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Nintendo has not released a major new 3D Mario platformer since, while it will soon be three years since the arrival of 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Switch 1’s other top-selling titles include Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing: New Horizons — and for now, there’s no suggestion a big new entry in either franchise is forthcoming. Smash Bros. series boss Masahiro Sakurai has only just finished work on Kirby Air Riders, while Nintendo is opting to update New Horizons for Switch 2 this year, as previously mentioned.
Could we see a new 3D Mario in 2026? Nine years on from Super Mario Odyssey, now feels like the right time. And then there’s Pokémon, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next month. Could we get a glimpse soon of the series’ long-awaited 10th generation? The arrival of these titles would certainly help Switch 2 keep its momentum, following last year’s explosive launch.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
These next few months of winter are a great time to settle in with big games until spring arrives. Recently, Amazon’s been offering some great discounts on a variety of options to help you stock up your library this January for a little less than usual. Among some of the games on sale right now is Assassin’s Creed Shadows for PS5 (see it here at Amazon), which has dropped back to its lowest price so far of $34.99 at the retailer.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows (PS5) for $34.99
This makes for a huge 50% discount from its usual list price of $69.99, which is an excellent offer to make a move on. This limited edition Amazon Exclusive copy also comes with the Sekiryu Character Pack, which gets you a gear and weapon set for Naoe, the Sekiryu Beast, and a Dragon Tooth trinket alongside the base game.
We think it’s a game well worth picking up, too. Our review gave it an 8/10 score, with writer Jarrett Green saying it, “takes a flashing blade to the series’ established norms, trimming them to a more precise form in lieu of chopping them down outright.”
The review continues on to say that, “Combat is aggressive and requires more intentional parrying and skill management than in the past, and exploring the gorgeous provinces of Sengoku-period Japan is encouraged thanks to the revamped map that deemphasizes collecting icons and checking off lists.” Not to mention, “Naoe and Yasuke are well-realized and memorable protagonists, even though most of the story they drive follows pretty predictable paths.”
After Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty teased the return of Microsoft’s now-annual Xbox Developer Direct showcase last month, the publisher has now confirmed the details. The 2026 Dev Direct will air live on Thursday, January 22 at 10am PT. You can watch it live here on IGN or on IGN’s YouTube channel.
Booty had already confirmed the presence of accomplished Xbox Game Studios developer Playground Games at the event, and now we know for certain that both its upcoming blockbusters will be shown: Forza Horizon 6 and Fable.
Given that both are expected to release this year and they are two of Xbox’s biggest first-party offerings – and that we’ve yet to see proper gameplay from either one – we’re due a proper look at gameplay. And that, according to Microsoft’s announcement this morning, is exactly what we’ll get.
There’s no confirmation of any other games under the Microsoft umbrella being included, such as Gears of War: E-Day, the prequel that’s bringing back Delta Squad to the time period before Emergence Day; or Halo: Campaign Evolved, the Unreal Engine 5-based remake of the original Halo’s campaign. I played it, if you’d like to read or watch my first impressions.
Typically Microsoft does include at least one surprise title, however. Could this be where we get a glimpse at the newly-leaked Life is Strange: Reunion? It’s perhaps worth noting that the franchise’s previous game Life is Strange: Double Exposure was unveiled back during the Xbox Showcase in June 2024.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
