NetEase Games has published an X-Men animated series-inspired trailer for Marvel Rivals Season 5: Love is a Battlefield, revealing Rogue and Gambit as its newest playable characters.
The trailer for the latest season of NetEase’s popular hero shooter features a romance theme that puts everyone’s favorite X-Men couple center stage. In typical Marvel Rivals fashion, there’s no gameplay for the mutant heroes here yet, but it does feature a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tease featuring none other than Scott Summers a.k.a. Cyclops. It also sounds like original X-Men ‘97 voice actors A.J. LoCascio (Gambit) and Lenore Zann (Rogue) will be heard voicing the two lovebirds when Season 5 launches November 14, 2025.
“This season centers on Mr. and Mrs. X, Gambit and Rogue, after the Timestream Entanglement interrupted their dream wedding,” Marvel Rivals creative director Guangyun Chen a.k.a. Guangguang said in its Season 5 Dev Stream. “To make up for the disruption, Gambit has planned a honeymoon full of surprises for Rogue. But when their journey leads to a world built by the Elders of the Universe, can their love survive the ultimate cosmic test?”
Gambit leads Marvel Rivals Season 5 as its first playable hero and its next Strategist. The card-throwing, staff-wielding X-Men is said to blend his kinetic abilities and combat skills to offer a unique playstyle for players. Expect to see his powers healing allies, cleansing negative effects, and even applying anti-heal to enemies. Gambit kicks things off later this week, but we’ll have to wait to learn more about Rogue. Expect to see her and her power-absorbing abilities debut at the Marvel Rivals Season 5 mid-season update in around one month.
Alongside its new X-Men heroes, Marvel Rivals Season 5 is set to introduce a new 18 vs. 18 Conquest (Annihilation) mode in the new Grand Garden map come November 27. A new non-combat map, Times Square, is also on the way for Season 5, allowing up to 100 players to gather, dance, and mingle in between tense matches.
NetEase will also soon celebrate one year of Marvel Rivals with a special anniversary update. Those who join the festivities when they begin November 27 will be gifted 2500 Units, as well as a free, school-themed Legendary Jeff the Land Shark costume. More gameplay adjustments, accessories, anniversary costumes, and other updates will arrive as Marvel Rivals Season 5 rolls on.
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).
Former Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has said he “scratched his head a little bit” after seeing the company’s first line-up of Switch 2 software.
Speaking to The Game Business, the ex-Nintendo veteran shared his thoughts on the company’s handling of the Switch 2 this year, as well as Nintendo’s position in the video game market overall compared to Microsoft and Sony.
Discussing the dominance of PlayStation, Fils-Aime, who left Nintendo in 2019, said he expected the company to continue to thrive alongside Nintendo as the latter would never position itself as a direct competitor. As for Xbox, Fils-Aime expressed surprise that Microsoft hadn’t already released more games for Nintendo’s new console.
“From a business perspective, when I first saw that line-up, I scratched my head a little bit,” Fils-Aime said of Nintendo’s decision to fill Switch 2’s first six months with Donkey Kong Bananza, Kirby’s Air Riders, a new Hyrule Warriors game and two cross-gen titles: Metroid Prime 4 and Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
It’s not a threadbare line-up by any means, but it lacks the big one-two punch of a new 3D Mario and Zelda that the Switch received during the same time period, alongside a breakout new franchise: Splatoon.
“Certainly, what I underestimated was the enhanced Nintendo Switch 1 content, which I think has been compelling,” Fils-Aime continued. “The stuff that you get for free as part of the Nintendo Switch Online subscription, I think that has helped drive some of the momentum. And then certainly, [Donkey Kong] Bananza was a key driver for them.”
Fils-Aimé was more complementary about Switch 2’s potential to act as a platform for the biggest third-party games, though said that Nintendo needed to ensure it was enabling other developers to take advantage of its hardware potential in the same way it did — squeezing enormous games like Tears of the Kingdom onto a tiny cartridge through intimate knowledge of the Switch’s innards.
“But let’s be clear,” Fils-Aimé stated, “Nintendo, in my opinion, will never position themselves as a direct competitor to PlayStation. It’s not in their DNA. It’s not how they think about the business opportunity. However, would they welcome some of the latest core gamer-type of content, whether it’s the latest Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty, onto their platform? Absolutely. Do I think that there’s a player base there for those games? Absolutely.
“The key, and this is something that the team there thinks about every day, is making sure that third-party developers have the tool sets so that they have the full capability to bring the best of their games onto Switch 2.”
One company that has notably held back from going all-in on Switch 2 is Microsoft, which launched a couple of games on Switch 1 (including Grounded and Pentiment) but is yet to discuss any future plans for Nintendo’s platform.
“I’m surprised that Xbox has not yet fully embraced Switch 2 from a software perspective,” Fils-Aimé noted. “Certainly some games could easily be ported over to Switch 2. And I’m surprised that we haven’t seen more of that. I thought there would be much more, especially during this timeframe leading into the Holiday. All through the fall, I was fully expecting some dedicated announcement,” he continued. “And I’m surprised it hasn’t happened.”
After bringing Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush to PlayStation 5, Nintendo fans have been waiting patiently for Microsoft to confirm those games, and others, for Switch 2. There’s also the small matter of Microsoft’s previous pledge to launch Call of Duty on Nintendo hardware — though there’s no sign of that happening for this year’s Black Ops 7. Perhaps 2026 will finally see Microsoft make its intentions clear.
Ultimately, Fils-Aimé said he had “enjoyed” playing his Switch 2 so far, though noted: “the company did not send me one for free.”
Image credit: Samantha Burkardt/Getty Images for SXSW.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
As a lover of puzzle games, what can elevate my puzzle-solving experience more than having horrifying monsters breathing down my neck and ready to snap said neck if I fail to solve their puzzle in time? I love these types of games that keep me on edge for hours on end, so Routine is exactly the type of aesthetically pleasing and brutally tense kinds of horror experience I’m always on the lookout for. And with a deeply cool 80’s-tech lunar setting and the beginnings of a story that has me interested in seeing more, I’m willing to overlook some of the things I was less impressed by during the roughly 90-minute demo, like the fact that the monsters searching for me were about as bright as the desks I hid behind and underneath. It remains to be seen if the story will pay off as much as its promising setting and compelling vibe might imply, but I’ll definitely be diving deeper in the future to see how it shakes out.
Routine is one of those horror games where you’re forced to run around solving little puzzles while absolutely horrifying monsters stalk the halls, ready to kill you on sight if you fail to avoid their notice – you know, in the same vein as something like Alien: Isolation or My Friendly Neighborhood. That comes with all the same pros and cons as its genre peers, where you have these really tense moments as you manage to solve a puzzle and rush through a door just before the bad guy you can’t possibly hope to kill catches up with you. But you then also have plenty of instances where you’re stuck in a room waiting for the dumb bad guy to turn around and walk away, leading to lots of moments where the tension sours into a monotonous waiting game. I tend to really enjoy these kinds of protracted hide and seek sequences, even if they do occasionally involve a bit of waiting, so this was right up my alley.
In this particular case, I found myself on a moon base that had been taken over by killer humanoid robots, whose lidless, unblinking eyes searched for me as I repaired various broken electrical systems and tried to get through each area unnoticed. The ambience of this dilapidated lunar base with an ‘80’s tech aesthetic really worked for me, clearly drawing inspiration from fellow retro-tech science fiction worlds like Alien. But Routine also brings with it a unique sense of humor, with silly arcade games to play in between sweat-inducing horror sequences and cheeky, non-murderous robot helpers to find along the way.
Routine’s immaculately creepy vibes, unique retro aesthetic, and tongue-in-cheek jokes in between bouts of utter terror, all coalesce in a way I haven’t seen before.
This is one of the biggest ways in which Routine sets itself apart, as its immaculately creepy vibes, unique retro aesthetic, and tongue-in-cheek jokes in between bouts of utter terror, all coalesce in a way I haven’t seen before. I didn’t get a very strong sense of whether or not the story will deliver something worth all the stress and jump scares along the way, but hopefully all this neat worldbuilding will translate into something as awesome as the setting. With some solid environmental storytelling and hints at some kind of mysterious viral disease at work, it has certainly piqued my curiosity.
The areas I explored ranged from= fairly unremarkable metallic hallways filled with busted droids and signs of something catastrophic having happened recently to really neat areas like an abandoned arcade with janky retro games to play and a shopping mall littered with debris. And, of course, since the whole thing takes place on a base on the moon, they take every opportunity to give you a nice view of the beautiful majesty of good ol’ Selene. Gotta love that. I’m a tad skeptical that they can manage to keep things interesting when you’re stranded on a fairly generic space station on a barren rock in outer space, but hey, so far so good.
Although much of the demo I played featured some fairly by-the-numbers puzzles, like finding codes around the world to enter into a keypad to unlock a door, it also had some neat mechanics built around the C.A.T device you’re given early in the story. This tool is basically just a handheld camcorder that can also do things like fire an electrical bolt at targets in your path. What’s cool, though, is that it evolved as I progressed, like when I unlocked an ultraviolet mode called the Ultraview Module that allowed me to see trace substances like bloodstains that helped me solve some of the space station’s more unintuitive riddles. I only unlocked two modes in my time with it, but it’s clear that upgrading this bad boy is going to be the primary way in which you power up, and so far I like that idea quite a bit. It’ll be interesting to see what clever new uses they find for it.
While you upgrade your C.A.T., read snippets of lore around the space station, and solve puzzles, you’ll find yourself almost constantly hunted by extremely violent robots that chase after you on sight with intent to kill. Naturally, that makes even the most simple brain teasers that much more stressful, as you spend every other second double-checking over your shoulder, or wincing when you hear a robotic sound come from somewhere nearby. It’s not exactly an original premise, but it’s certainly the classic type of horror gameplay I’ve come to know and love over the years – and something we could definitely use more of.
One thing that was a bit disappointing, at least during my extremely early time with the story, is just how easy it was to outsmart the fairly dim robots hunting for me, to the point where I never actually was killed during my time playing. They make a ton of noise as they march around electronically, give up the chase as soon as you start running away since they can’t hope to compete with your speed, and don’t do a very thorough job searching for you if you’re hidden in an obvious corner they haven’t bothered exploring yet. What’s more, one of the abilities you unlock for your C.A.T. early on, is a mode where you can tase the robots chasing you, shorting them out for a second or two to buy valuable time you need to get away, as if it weren’t already easy enough as-is. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still as intimidating as hell – the robotic shrieks they make every once in a while made my skin crawl, and the few times where they were able to get close without me noticing sent me screaming in the opposite direction. They may not actually be very deadly killers (at least early on), but they’re still pretty damn stressful to be around nonetheless.
Fortnite developer Epic Games has detailed how it will soon allow third-party sellers to offer “paid random items” within the game’s creator-made modes — something that opens the door to loot boxes, fans have said.
Back in September, Epic Games announced it would begin allowing third-party creators to sell in-game items in the near future. As of today, creators now have access to the tools necessary to do so, though the feature is not yet live in the game. (To be clear, there’s no suggestion that Epic Games will begin offering randomized items for use within the game’s main modes, such as Battle Royale, which it develops itself.)
An array of blog posts are now available detailing the rules that Fortnite creators must follow when selling items within their own modes — including a series of legal restrictions that blocks randomized items in certain countries and for some users under the age of 18.
“In addition to your responsibility to comply with laws, you must comply with certain restrictions that apply when offering Paid Random Items,” Epic Games wrote in a blog post titled ‘In-Island Transactions Restrictions.’ “Failure to utilize the functions described below will constitute a violation of Epic policies.”
The sale of randomized items is fully blocked in Singapore, Qatar, Australia, the Netherlands, and Belgium — a list that includes several countries which have fought back against video game loot boxes in the past. In the United Kingdom (and Brazil, as of March 2026) paid randomized items are blocked to players under the age of 18.
Epic Games has also stipulated that any transaction involving a random item must disclose the odds of whatever is included within it.
“For example,” Epic Games wrote, “if you offer a health potion pack that has a random chance of granting either 5, 10 or 50 potions, you must disclose the odds of their potential award before purchase (e.g., 60% chance of granting 5 potions, 30% chance of granting 10 potions, and 10% chance of granting 50 potions).”
A wider pool of countries are restricted from seeing direct prompts to purchase (such as “buy now!). This list includes Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada (under 13), Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France (under 17), Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (under 16).
General restrictions on the sale of in-game items also exist, and are fairly straightforward — there’s a whole list of rules around not copying or providing confusingly-similar items to those Fortnite does already. Clearly, Epic Games has already pre-emptively assumed some creators will do this to encourage or hoodwink players into spending money.
Back in September, Epic Games singled out Fortnite’s big rival Roblox by name when explaining how creators will get a better cut of in-game revenue on its own platform. Fortnite creators will earn 37% of in-game sales, temporarily doubled to 74% for 12 months, until December 31, 2026. By comparison, Roblox offers 25% of in-game revenue to creators. But it remains to be seen how many Roblox developers can be tempted away to Fortnite, and also exactly how creators will begin selling in-game items — even within Epic’s rules.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Modders are hard at work developing an ambitious expansion that will bring Mexico to Red Dead Redemption 2.
Nuevo Paraíso — The Forgotten Frontier is a huge expansion for Red Dead Redemption 2, self-described as a “recreation of the Mexican territory from Red Dead Redemption, completely expanded and enhanced.” An official trailer giving us a glimpse of the work in progress, posted to X / Twitter by @videotechuk_, has already garnered over 50,000 views on YouTube.
A group of modders are bringing a fan made expansion DLC to Red Dead Redemption 2 to bring Nuevo Paraiso (aka Mexico) fully enhanced with army patrols, new missions, animals and remastered areas.
“Redesigned from the ground up with incredible detail while preserving the aesthetic of both games,” the modders said, Nuevo Paraíso “meticulously” recreates every town, settlement, and camp to “capture the essence of Mexico, with new vegetation for each region, clean roads and trails, new locations, and immersive landscapes brought to life by the natural movements of its inhabitants as they go about their daily lives.”
“The army patrols the borders, and in some places, secrets and remnants of the past remain,” the description teases. “Discover new secrets, new small secondary missions, and unique locations that expand the game world without losing its core identity. Every detail has been carefully considered to perfectly match the atmosphere, lighting, and tone of Red Dead Redemption 2, offering a seamless and coherent experience that stays true to the canon.”
Nuevo Paraíso — The Forgotten Frontier is currently available in early access form to download from Nexus Mods. It’s currently in an unfinished state, but the creators said players can expect “new areas to explore, adapted mechanics, and a completely recreated world” that lets them “return to Mexico and rediscover how [sic] the state was like in the year 1907.”
As yet, there’s no firm release date, but the team invited interested players to “stay tuned for more details as you prepare for this big expansion, considered a full-fledged DLC for Red Dead Redemption 2.”
Amid the bombsell news that GTA 6 really has been delayed again, Rockstar revealed that Red Dead Redemption 2 has become the fourth best-selling game of all time. As detailed in publisher Take-Two’s investor call last week (November 6), the sequel has sold over 79 million copies — making it the “best-selling title of the last seven years in the U.S. based on dollar sales” — and taking sales of the entire series to 106 million. And yet there’s no word on a next-gen update.
Today, Red Dead Redemption 2 is widely regarded as one of the best video games of all time. We thought it was a masterpiece, too, with IGN’s review returning a 10/10. “Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game of rare quality; a meticulously polished open-world ode to the outlaw era,” we wrote at the time.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
There are all sorts of rumors floating around about potential Fallout remakes, and certainly a growing expectation among fans that Bethesda will turn to its older Fallout video games to keep fans on-side while they wait for The Elder Scrolls 6.
At the end of the Fallout Day broadcast, Howard acknowledged that Fallout fans were probably left a little disappointed by this, and promised that Bethesda was working on “even more” Fallout. Fallout 3: Remastered now seems likely a part of this, assuming it follows the naming convention set by The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered.
But what about a remaster of the beloved Fallout: New Vegas? Ahead of Fallout Day, Hollywood star Danny Trejo, who played Ghoul companion Raul Alfonso Tejada in New Vegas, called on Bethesda to remaster the game. It’s a sentiment shared by many Fallout fans, especially given the surge in interest following the breakout Fallout TV show, which heads to New Vegas for Season 2 in December.
“For other Fallout games in the future, you know, obviously I can’t talk about those right now, but I would say, sort of rushing through them, or we kind of need to get stuff out that is different than the work we’re doing in 76… we don’t feel like we need to rush any of that,” he said. “The Fallout TV show fills a certain niche in terms of the franchise and storytelling.”
The last mainline Fallout game was Fallout 4, which came out in 2015 and this week saw the release of its Anniversary Edition. The multiplayer focused Fallout 76 followed in 2018, and while fans slowly flocked to the West Virginia-set open-world RPG, it wasn’t until the premiere of Prime Video’s Fallout TV show that the Bethesda series leveled up in terms of attention.
Still, Howard wouldn’t budge when it came to fan calls for a substantial video game release. For him, it comes down to wanting to treat Bethesda’s franchises with care.
“Totally get the desire for a new kind of mainline single-player game,” he said. “And look, those things take time. I don’t think it’s bad for people to miss things. We just want to get it right and make sure that everything we’re doing in a franchise, whether it’s Elder Scrolls, Fallout, or now Starfield, that those become meaningful moments for everybody who loved these franchises as much as we do.”
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.
It’s a tough time for Bungie and Destiny 2, with parent company Sony saying the studio has failed to meet its sales and user engagement expectations.
In its latest financial report, Sony said it had recorded a 31.5 billion yen (approx. $204.2 million) impairment charge as a result of Destiny 2’s underperformance. That was significant enough to drag down profits at Sony’s Game & Network Services Segment, which includes Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Sony chief financial officer (CFO) Lin Tao, expanded on the issues with Bungie in an investor related financial call:
“Regarding Destiny 2, partially due to the changes in the competitive environment, the level of sales and user engagement have not reached the expectations we had at the time of the acquisition of Bungie. While we will continue to make improvements, we downwardly revised the business projection for the time being, and recorded an impairment loss against a portion of the assets at Bungie.”
It’s certainly been a tough time for Destiny 2 and Bungie, which is working on the delayed extraction shooter Marathon for a release in 2026.
Sony, clearly, saw something in Bungie and its upcoming slate. But as the acquisition settled in, concerns began to arise about the studio’s future. Destiny 2 was struggling, and Marathon was still years away. Then the layoffs came. In 2023, Bungie laid off roughly 100 individuals and delayed Destiny 2’s The Final Shape DLC, with Parsons taking responsibility for the cuts. Developers told IGN at the time that the atmosphere at Bungie was “soul-crushing” as fears grew of a total Sony takeover of the company. In 2024, this was followed up with even more layoffs, impacting 220 people despite The Final Shape’s success. 155 people were also integrated from Bungie into Sony at this time. In the wake of those layoffs, former workers claimed Bungie misrepresented its finances and had significantly overextended itself when Sony acquired the studio. It was apparently bad enough that at least one source described as a “well-connected former worker” went so far as to claim that Bungie faced dire consequences if the acquisition hadn’t happened, saying that the “alternate history is insolvency.”
Troubles continued to rock the studio through the rest of 2024 and into 2025, with Marathon seeing a delay out of September of this year to an unknown future date. Most recently, Sony confirmed Bungie would be integrated into PlayStation Studios so the company could have more control over the developer.
Destiny 2 has seen its player count plummet as updates have failed to hit the mark. The action shooter hit a new low on Steam this month, with a peak concurrent player count of 13,497 in the past 24 hours. In June last year it hit 314,000. Recent user reviews for Destiny 2 on Steam are ‘mostly negative,’ although overall reviews are ‘mostly positive.’ Steam does not paint the entire picture when it comes to Destiny 2’s popularity, with it widely available across multiple platforms, but clearly Sony isn’t happy with how the studio has performed in the three years since it brought it into the fold.
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.
Arc Raiders has now sold over 4 million copies worldwide less than two weeks since its release date, cementing its commercial success.
Publisher Nexon confirmed the milestone in a glowing press release, which also revealed that the extraction shooter had reached a huge concurrent count of 700,000 players across all platforms.
Within a day of its release, Embark Studio’s shooter hit a Steam concurrent peak player count of 264,673, making it one of the biggest extraction shooters ever on Valve’s platform. That record was smashed again over the weekend when Arc Raiders hit a concurrent peak of 462,488 players according to Valve’s official figures. and now we know that, combined with users on consoles, the true figure is closing in on three-quarters of a million players.
Nexon added that Arc Raiders has “maintained its number one spot on Steam’s global sales rankings” ever since it released on October 30, and congratulated developer Embark, writing: “We are deeply impressed by the enthusiasm shown by our player community and look forward to building on that excitement with our content plans, including new maps, ARC vehicles, weapons, and quests, which will be available starting this month.”
“I thought I was only going to play five or six hours of Arc Raiders on launch day before sitting down to write this initial review in progress, but after just a handful of matches, I suddenly couldn’t pull myself away – and before I realized it, I’d been playing for 10 hours,” we wrote in IGN’s Arc Raiders review-in-progress.
“This is without question the most hooked I’ve found myself on an extraction shooter (and I’ve played a lot of them), with clean and tense gunplay, a progression system that’s been incredibly satisfying so far, and a loot game that has me sweating over what to put in my backpack and what to leave behind.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Ghost of Yotei has sold 3.3 million copies in its first month on sale, Sony has confirmed.
As part of its latest financial results, Sony said Sucker Punch’s PlayStation 5-exclusive action adventure sold 3.3 million units in the 32 days since going on sale on October 2 — so sales up to and including November 2.
Sony announced the figure without any commentary, so it’s hard to know whether the company is happy with the result. However, there is a great deal of context we can add that helps us paint a picture of Ghost of Yotei’s commercial success.
The first comparison we should make is to its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima. It sold 2.4 million copies in its first three days after going on sale exclusively on PlayStation 4 on July 17, 2020, then hit 5 million after 118 days (just shy of four months). It’s now up to 13 million copies sold, including sales of the PC and PS5 Director’s Cut.
So it’s worth remembering that while we don’t have a figure for a comparable period of sales, it looks like Ghost of Yotei is selling about as well as Ghost of Tsushima before it, a suggestion backed up by sales data from the U.S. and across Europe.
But is that good enough? We need to consider that Ghost of Tsushima came out on the PS4, which in the summer of 2020 had a much bigger install base than the PS5 does today, and amid the stay-at-home gaming boom fueled by lockdowns. Ghost of Yotei also sold for $70, which means its dollar sales are greater compared to the cheaper Ghost of Tsushima, whose standard edition launched at $60.
The timing of each release differs also in that Ghost of Tsushima came out in the summer, and Ghost of Yotei came out in the fall. Yotei has the crucial holiday season coming soon, and it will surely be a popular pick for those buying a PS5 for the first time or upgrading to the PS5 Pro.
And finally, multiplayer add-on Ghost of Yotei: Legends comes out at some point in 2026, which will undoubtedly give Ghost of Yotei a shot in the arm next year. And we all know that Ghost of Yotei, like Ghost of Tsushima before it, will eventually launch on PC in Director’s Cut form. Perhaps there will even be a PS6 version, whenever that console rolls around.
So, Ghost of Yotei has some way to go before it matches the total sales figure of its predecessor, but is has plenty of opportunity to catch up. And, as Circana’s Mat Piscatella said last month, its launch sales were “perfectly fine… Not amazing, not bad.”
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.
Incredibly, almost unfathomably, the humble original PlayStation, our little grey slab of joy, is turning 30. It’s got grey hairs, now old enough to have a couple of kids, a few different careers, a car in the garage. You could say it’s accomplished all those things in different ways.
In the before-times, many previous and current IGN AU staff cut their teeth at the Official PlayStation 2 Magazine (Narayan Pattison, Tristan Ogilvie, Luke Reilly, Patch Kolan, and Adam Mathew among them), so it’s an understatement to say that the brand, hardware, games and experiences were formative for us and extremely close to our hearts.
The Little Grey Box That Could
When the original PlayStation launched in Australia, stock was extremely limited and the thing cost $AUD699 (or about $1300 in today’s money) if you could manage to get your hands on it. If you did, you could play nearly a nearly perfect port of Namco’s superb Ridge Racer, try some 3D fighting (a novelty!) in Battle Arena Toshinden, a bit of 3D platforming (woah!) in Jumping Flash!, and 2D sidescrolling platforming in Rayman. The games were perhaps a tad “safe” at the time, but it hinted at big things coming – and within a year, the PlayStation had cemented itself in the Australian gaming landscape.
I picked up my PS1 from a Cash Converters in 1999, then immediately bought Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII. From there, I delived into a catalogue of JRPGs, racing simulators (yeah, that series), scrolling shooters and impenetrable dating games as my N64 quietly looked on, judging me from the shelf. I’m fairly certain I did not see daylight for about two years – and I knew I wanted to do this stuff as a career.
“In the late ’90s, PlayStation was the only console my family had, but that was okay: PlayStation was the only place with all the games I wanted to play – Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Driver, Colin McRae Rally, Medal of Honor, Crash Bandicoot, Shane Warne Cricket ’99. You name it.
“It was also the only place with a simply unbeatable supply of plug-and-play demos.
“My prevailing memory of PlayStation is demos. I inhaled them throughout the late ’90s and 2000s on PS1 and PS2. I played every one, some of them dozens and dozens of times. I bought my first copy of Official PlayStation Magazine – Australia back in 1999 for the Metal Gear Solid demo. I did so with no idea that the magazine that MGS disc was glued to would ultimately change the trajectory of my life, but within 10 years I was the editor.
“This is peak PlayStation for me. No other console or era of games can match the joy I gleaned from my PS1 and PS2, and the people I was playing them with. I would go back in a second.”
– Luke Reilly
By that point, it was also clear that Sony had a stranglehold over the entire industry – delivering a suite of the finest games month after month that neither Nintendo or SEGA could match for sheer volume. It brought gaming out of the niche basements of the stereotypical gamer and put it smack-bang on the covers of cool magazines. It changed everything.
By 2000, the world was getting swept up into the hype machine around the forthcoming PlayStation 2 – a monolithic black slab emblazoned with a twist of striking blue P-S-2 lettering. It looked sleek. It looked powerful. In a Kubrickian way, it whispered, “I am a mysterious and untouchable creation that will change the world”. In a very real sense, it did.
The PlayStation 2 Arrives
With launch games like Ridge Racer V and Tekken Tag Tournament, it brought the PlayStation brand out of infancy and into the big leagues. Sony’s much-vaunted “Emotion Engine” promised state-of-the-art graphical fidelity, showcased in real-time tech demos that exceeded prerendered cutscenes on the PS1.
It was a breakthrough. Everyone wanted it – a DVD player! A gaming console! In one! And at the time, it was shockingly affordable for a device that could offer both. It propelled DVD sales, gave additional breathing room for developers moving towards larger games (and files). The controller even had analogue face buttons! Can you dig it, baby? The Japanese launch was an overwhelming success, propelling international hype for the PS2 into the stratosphere.
IGN AU started up in 2006 – exactly 10 years after the debut of the PS1 (or PSX as everyone had taken to calling it). In those days, the PS3 had only just debuted in Japan to rapturouos response, thanks to the disruptive adoption of Blu-ray players (going head-to-head against HD DVD, then cutting off HD DVD’s head to become the dominant format of the 2010s) and increasing uptake of 1080p displays. People wanted content to showcase their cool tech. Sony delivered the PS3: an all-in-one Blu-ray player, harddrive-equipped media device and, at the time, beastly gaming device.
PS3: Running Up That Hill
Sony, it must be said, made it a bit hard for itself around this time. The birth of the meme-era took on the PS3 press reveal, turning “Riiiiiiiidge Racer!”, “Giant enemy crab” and “George Foreman grill” into internet phenomenons. That seemed to start a period of iffy consumer sentiment, in part aimed at the USD$499 and USD$599 launch pricing. The Australian launch was still off in the distance, over the horizon, but gamers were braced for a sting in the wallet.
After a few years, and a few price cuts and redesigns, the PS3 finally found momentum and delivered on its ambitions. We have the PS3 to thank for Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series – a game that, for many, came out of the mists and made the console a must-buy. By Uncharted 2, it was clear that Nathan Drake was a star for the ages, and Naughty Dog was just getting started.
Without doubt, the system’s pinnacle achievement was The Last of Us. It was a technical showcase for the ageing hardware and a cinematic and gameplay line in the sand for developers. At risk of turning this into a love letter to Naughty Dog, Sony truly understood that this studio propelled its hardware forward – and gamers responded to it.
Around this time, Sony also went on a Wii-inspired foray into motion-based gaming with the PlayStation Move controller and camera. It was successful enough to spawn a whole series of Move-enabled titles.
PlayStation Phwoar!
A whopping 12 whole years ago, the PlayStation 4 was revealed in fine fashion. Cam and Luke waxed lyrical about it in the video above. It seemed then, as it does now, a return to form for Sony’s PlayStation brand. It came out of the gates strong and player focussed. The “For the Players” campaign underscored a renewed focus on the core player experience. Wisely so, particularly with Nintendo’s Switch just around the corner and an industry that was never bigger and more flush with great games and hardware.
Still, there were new experiences to be had – and a new controller design (the first major rethink of the iconic PlayStation controller in the system’s history) was coming. Naughty Dog released another breakthrough title, The Last of Us 2. The power of the PS4 also enabled Sony to experiment with another emerging field: VR.
Oh, the PSVR headset. For the time and not unsubstantial money, PSVR offered impressive VR fidelity combined with great games and IPs that other competing hardware could only look on enviously. When juiced up with the PS4 Pro (a new mid-generation hardware refresh), it improved performance even further.
While VR may have had its moment in the sun, and it now feels like the technology is mostly hibernating until the next big thing comes along, it pointed towards more TV-free gaming experiences that have become more and more normalised.
PS5 and Beyond
Enter: The PS5. PlayStation 5 – the current generation of Sony consoles, in standard and Pro models. By 2020, digital marketplaces were standard and the TV screen was just one way of interacting with your PlayStation. The PS5 ushered in PSVR 2, a souped up version of the PSVR we know and love. Plus, it brought to the table a Switch-like (but not quite) handheld solution: The PlayStation Portal.
If you’ve noticed, we haven’t discussed Sony’s PSP (in gloriously piano black, a luxurious widescreen handheld in 2004) or the PS Vita – pseudo PS3 in your pocket. But all of those handheld experiences seem to have been teasing where Sony (and Nintendo, for that matter) are heading. Already rumours are swirling about the PlayStation 6 and oh boy do I feel old now.
So here’s to you, Sony PlayStation. You are 30 years young in Australia.
It’s a very different world and games industry today than the one that I and many others remember from the turn of the millenium. However, the PlayStation has been an island of stability, joy, and adventure throughout.
Will we all be playing our PS10s in 2055? Jacked straight into our neural cortex like a back alley goon from Neuromancer? Will TVs still exist? What about game stores? One thing is true: PlayStation fans will always adore this brand – so in a sense, the future is up to you.
