A poster advertising a definitive edition of Tom Clancy’s The Division appears to have been spotted by folks attending a Ubisoft-run eSports event in Japan. At least, that’s assuming this isn’t some elaborate ruse designed to draw in spies from other game studios, while only Jack Ryan can see what’s truly going on.
Gotta build ’em all.
LEGO and The Pokémon Company have finally lifted the lid on the upcoming LEGO Pokémon sets, which were teased last year, and they’re coming on the most appropriate day imaginable — 27th February 2026.
Three sets have been announced, with a fourth available as a special gift when you purchase directly from LEGO in-store and online with the priciest set. And oh boy, is the big one pricey.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Minecraft-style sandbox game Hytale looks set to be a significant hit even at the early access stage. Hot on the heels of predicting over 1 million players for tomorrow’s launch, its developer has said Hytale has already made enough money to cover the next two years of development.
In a social media post, Hypixel Studios founder Simon Collins-Laflamme said that the next two years of dev costs are now covered through Hytale pre-purchases. He added: “combined with my personal commitment of 10 years, we are looking very strong for the future.”
Three pre-purchase options are available: the Standard Edition costs $23.99; the Supporter Edition costs $41.99; and the Founder’s Edition costs $83.99. Collins-Laflamme confirmed the Hytale development team is now “50+ or so.”
It all points to enormous early success for Hytale, which has endured a tumultuous development. Hytale was announced in December 2018 with a trailer that has an incredible 62 million views on YouTube. Here’s the official blurb, as it was back then:
Hytale combines the scope of a sandbox with the depth of a roleplaying game, immersing players in a procedurally generated world where teetering towers and deep dungeons promise rich rewards throughout their adventures. Hytale supports everything from block-by-block construction to scripting and minigame creation, delivered using easy to use and powerful tools.
Excitement around Hytale was fueled by the experience of the developers themselves, who co-founded Hypixel, one of the most influential Minecraft servers in the world. Riot invested in the project and eventually bought the studio.
But in November, League of Legends developer Riot Games confirmed it had sold the rights to Hytale back to Collins-Laflamme after it had acquired the game back in 2020. Riot said that after considering “a range of options,” it decided to sell the IP rights back to Collins-Laflamme as this “gives players the best chance to one day experience a revised version of the game they’ve been waiting for.”
Development on the game had been stagnating despite its sale to Riot, but Collins-Laflamme set out to resurrect the dying IP, confirming he had rehired scores of developers who had worked on it.
In a statement published at the end of 2025, Collins-Laflamme expressed his “anger” at what had happened to Hytale over the years.
“The game has insane potential, but four years of engineering went into rebuilding the engine rather than gameplay features,” he said. “That leaves us with a four-year gap and a lot of catching up to do, and that rebuilt engine is never gonna be used.
“When you don’t invest in gameplay, you don’t just lose time. You lose momentum, iteration, and player feedback. Now the focus has to be on gameplay first and rebuilding trust by actually shipping things at a rapid pace.
“It’s a damn miracle we were able to salvage Hytale. It was barely playable. All basics were broken. Camera, movement, combat, crafting, building, gameloop, sounds, rendering. Everything, everything was wrong.
“It should have taken years to fix, but within weeks, we got the game into a playable, fun state. And now, instead of slowing down or celebrating a release, we have to keep pushing for years to make up for the time that was lost.
“So yes, I feel anger. And I’m turning that into focus and execution. I’m committing more money, more time, and personal sacrifice to deliver the game this vision deserves.”
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.
On Friday, while on the phone to friend of this parish Jeremy Peel, I knocked an entire mug of tea over my laptop. I won’t immortalise in text what I said in that moment; it’s for the best that those curses are lost to the aether.
I immediately shut down the PC, mopped it clean with a kitchen towel, and flipped it over, leaving it splayed open to air dry. I even went so far as to plonk it down in front of a dehumidifier to really sap the tea out of the machine.*
There it sat for two days, a modern day Schrodinger’s laptop. Possibly fine. Possibly broken.
Stellar Blade studio Shift Up has once again given bonuses and gifts worth around $4,000 to its entire team.
According to the South Economic Daily, the South Korean studio gifted each of its 300-ish staff a pair of Apple AirPods Max, an Apple Watch, and a cash bonus of around $3,400.
The studio has previously said that it provides these bonuses to retain and encourage existing talent at the company (thanks, VGC).
This isn’t the first time Shift Up has lavished gifts upon its staff, either. This time last year, the studio gifted all staff a PS5 Pro as well as a cash bonus of 5 million won, which is also around $3,400. Staff also secured a Nintendo Switch 2 each in June when Stellar Blade hit the 3 million copies sold milestone. In 2024, staff were given pre-paid credit cards worth around $6,800, and in 2023, staff were given iPhone 14s, among other bonuses.
The CEO of Shift Up recently received the Presidential Commendation at this year’s Korean Content Awards for his work in the games industry. Hyung-tae Kim was recognized for his contribution to the Korean games industry with the games Goddess of Victory: Nikke and Stellar Blade.
“This Presidential Citation is thanks to the developers and fans who believed in and supported Shift Up,” Kim said at the time. “We will continue to do our best to further promote the competitiveness of Korean games on the global stage.”
Don’t forget that a sequel, Stellar Blade 2, is also on the way. Shift Up is also working on Project Spirits, to be published by Level Infinite.
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.
As we stumble into what increasingly looks like a hardware-unfriendly 2026, RAMnarök shows no signs of petering out. As tech giants continue hoarding memory chips to build their AI farms, and suppliers gleefully jack up their prices in turn, consumer-grade RAM is still laughably expensive – and SSDs, most of which also need these in-demand chips, are seeing some nasty inflation as well.
I bring this up now, when storage prices began climbing back in November, because the past week has been particularly fucked, vis-à-vis the kind of SSDs you’d want in a modern games PC. Keepa, Amazon-tracking the browser extension I’ve long used to gauge the honesty of Prime Day and Black Friday deals, makes for grim reading: the 1TB WD Black SN850X currently sits at £162, having been £116 on January 5th, and £85 on November 5th. Nearly double the price, in barely two months.
Final stream was a speedrun of Pokémon Emerald.
The Awesome Games Done Quick 2026 event has now closed with a total of $2.443.554 raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
The week-long fundraiser ended with a speedrun for Pokémon Emerald by streamer adef, who managed to beat it in 3 hours and 13 minutes. Other highlights from the event include a 70-Star, 70-Player relay for Super Mario 64 and an any% speedrun for Hollow Knight: Silksong from streamer Ceen, who stormed through the game to beat the final boss in 54 minutes and 55 seconds.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The developer of Hytale has issued a warning to fans ahead of what is expected to be a hugely popular early access launch tomorrow.
Minecraft-esque sandbox game Hytale’s hotly anticipated PC early access release date is set for January 13, and Hypixel Studios said it expects over 1 million players to turn up.
Hytale founder Simon Collins-Laflamme took to X / Twitter to make the bold 1 million player prediction, and to call on fans to download the launcher today (January 12) and log in “to help us significantly reduce launch-day stress.”
1 million players on launch day may sound like wishful thinking, but Hytale is one of the most anticipated games around, and views to its various trailers are enormous. This one does feel like it’s going to be big.
In November, League of Legends developer Riot Games confirmed it had sold the rights to Hytale back to Collins-Laflamme after it had acquired the game back in 2020. Riot said that after considering “a range of options,” it decided to sell the IP rights back to Collins-Laflamme as this “gives players the best chance to one day experience a revised version of the game they’ve been waiting for.”
Development on the game had been stagnating despite its sale to Riot, but Collins-Laflamme set out to resurrect the dying IP, confirming he had rehired more than 30 developers who had worked on it.
Hytale was announced in December 2018 with a trailer that has an incredible 61 million views on YouTube. Here’s the official blurb, as it was back then:
Hytale combines the scope of a sandbox with the depth of a roleplaying game, immersing players in a procedurally generated world where teetering towers and deep dungeons promise rich rewards throughout their adventures. Hytale supports everything from block-by-block construction to scripting and minigame creation, delivered using easy to use and powerful tools.
Excitement around Hytale was fueled by the experience of the developers themselves, who co-founded Hypixel, one of the most influential Minecraft servers in the world. Riot invested in the project and eventually bought the studio. Now, it’s ready to go it alone.
“Hytale and Hypixel Studios are independent again, and we are returning to the original vision from the 2018 trailer,” Collins-Laflamme said in a statement issued in November. “Because we went back to an older game build that was now meant for prototypes, some parts of the game will feel behind, but momentum is strong, and we’re working fast to make this into the game we all dreamed of.
“Modding and creative tools are in a decent state; however, they’re not where we want them long term. That being said, they’re ready for players who want to create content on day one. This is a good moment for modders, server owners, and creators to step in early! They will play a significant role in Hytale’s future.
“Since the cancellation, we’ve rehired more than 40 former and new team members, bringing the total to 50. Reacquiring a game from a AAA studio and preparing an early access launch within weeks is rare, and players will be able to watch the progress as it happens.
“If you don’t feel comfortable pre-ordering, please don’t. This is true early access, meaning it’s still very much unfinished and will be buggy for a while, but you have my and the team’s commitment to make Hytale the game we’ve always wanted it to be.
“The first impression will be rough, but the path ahead matters more.”
Then, in a statement published at the end of 2025, expressed his “anger” at what had happened to Hytale.
“The game has insane potential, but four years of engineering went into rebuilding the engine rather than gameplay features. That leaves us with a four-year gap and a lot of catching up to do, and that rebuilt engine is never gonna be used.
“When you don’t invest in gameplay, you don’t just lose time. You lose momentum, iteration, and player feedback. Now the focus has to be on gameplay first and rebuilding trust by actually shipping things at a rapid pace.
“It’s a damn miracle we were able to salvage Hytale. It was barely playable. All basics were broken. Camera, movement, combat, crafting, building, gameloop, sounds, rendering. Everything, everything was wrong.
“It should have taken years to fix, but within weeks, we got the game into a playable, fun state. And now, instead of slowing down or celebrating a release, we have to keep pushing for years to make up for the time that was lost.
“So yes, I feel anger. And I’m turning that into focus and execution. I’m committing more money, more time, and personal sacrifice to deliver the game this vision deserves.”
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.
Magic: The Gathering had some great sets in 2025, but it also showed Wizards of the Coast perhaps straying a little too far from what makes the long-running card game special.
That’s not to say Universes Beyond was a total bust. Final Fantasy brought in record-breaking numbers of players, and Avatar: The Last Airbender was a return to some semblance of form after the disappointment of Spider-Man.
Still, cardboard waits for no Planeswalker, and there are more sets in 2026 – seven, in total. That’s before we even get into the myriad of Secret Lair drops, and perhaps most worryingly, four of those sets are Universes Beyond.
Will they end up being closer to Final Fantasy or Spider-Man? And will the in-universe sets live up to the high bar set by Tarkir: Dragonstorm or Edge of Eternities? Here’s everything coming to Magic: The Gathering in 2026.
If you’ve been yearning for a return to Lorwyn, the first set of 2026 is here to get things started. The set is a Universes Within to kick off the year, and marks the debut of the Draft Night Box.
You can preorder it now, and it’ll see the return of Commander Decks for the first time since 2025’s Edge of Eternities with two options: A five-color, or a Jund option.
Wizards of the Coast revealed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Comic-Con New York, with Universes Beyond going back to The Big Apple for the second time in a few months.
Still, expect colorful new art of the Heroes in a Half Shell, their assorted rogues gallery, and the debut of a Turtle Team Up co-op game mode.
We’ve got a full rundown of the product lineup, so be sure to check out the preorder guide, including a five-color Commander deck that stars all four Turtles.
We still don’t know a great deal about our return to Strixhaven, but it is getting its own tie-in novel.
This Plane has been fertile ground for fun card designs and characters in the past, so here’s hoping for something good when it arrives in April.
Spider-Man arrived in 2025, and now more Marvel heroes are coming to MTG, too.
We’ve already seen cards for Iron Man, Black Panther, Fantastic Four, and more, and the set will lean on comic book versions of the Marvel universe’s characters. Will it be better than the underwhelming Spider-Man set, though? We’re at least hoping the increased roster of heroes and (hopefully) villains will make this more exciting.
We’re expecting a Mentor/Sidekick theme, and for this one to be a popular entry point for new players. It might even be a good choice for a Beginner Box.
We’re going back to Middle-earth! Universes Beyond: Lord of the Rings was a colossal win for Magic: The Gathering, and the fact its fantasy theming fit so well with the card game means it feels a lot less jarring than other crossovers.
The only information we have so far is the following:
“Join Bilbo’s adventure of a lifetime with Dwarves to befriend, Trolls to trick, Elves to outwit, and songs to sing. There’s gold or dragon’s fire at the end, so enjoy the journey!”
Give us some Five Armies Commander Decks, please, or at least a Smaug card that isn’t just a Token creature.
The last in-universe set of 2026 is Reality Fracture, and it’ll feature callbacks to Tarkir: Dragonstorm and Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
The team has suggested it has a theme players have wanted for a long time, but that’s all we know so far.
If you felt Wizards had got the sci-fi out of their system with the (excellent) Edge of Eternities, think again.
November 2026 will see the arrival of a Star Trek set to celebrate that franchise’s 60th Anniversary, and it’ll incorporate everything from the original series to Strange New Worlds. It even got a trailer.
It’s also good idea to take stock of 2025’s sets, because it was definitely a year that divided opinion.
That’s seven sets in total, with three of those being Universes Beyond collaborations with the likes of Square Enix, Marvel, and Nickelodeon. And, from looking at the 2026 schedule, it looks as though Wizards is looking to stick to that ratio.
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.
Get ready for a 2026 release.
Last September, Nintendo revealed Super Mario Bros. Wonder Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup In Bellabel Park would be arriving in Spring 2026.
We haven’t really heard anything about it since then, and now in a slight development, a rating has been spotted on the Entertainment Software Rating Board. Here it is:
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
