We’re approaching the five year anniversary of the PS5 console’s launch, and it’s amazing to see the number of incredible experiences PS5 has brought to players everywhere – and there are more adventures to come. Through these past five years, our players have shared their reactions of awe, excitement, and surprise at the extraordinary moments they’ve witnessed while playing PS5. That’s the inspiration for our new ad campaign – we’re capturing the spirit of these moments when the most unexpected and unforgettable experiences happen on PS5.
The ad campaign, launching today, will feature three distinct stories:
The Greatest Stunt Jump Ever
The Unexpected Catch
Everyday Problems in Extraordinary Vehicles
In addition to the ad spot, we’re also bringing some of these unexpected moments into the real world, physically. From November to December, players may come across some of these themes inspired by the campaign in various locations around the world – such as UFOs landing in Australia, Spain & Germany or mysterious creatures found in Mexico, Italy & the UK.
We look forward to seeing more reactions and extraordinary moments that our fans share online with the world. There are many more incredible journeys to come as it often happens on PS5!
So, what happened to Agent? Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption writer Dan Houser, now of Absurd Ventures, has finally offered fans a detailed explanation in an interview on the Lex Fridman podcast. According to Houser, despite multiple versions of Agent being attempted at Rockstar, the game never came together, and that’s because, fundamentally, an open-world spy game simply doesn’t work.
“We worked a lot on multiple iterations of an open-world spy game, and it never came together,” Houser began.
“It had about five different iterations. I don’t think it works. I concluded — and I keep thinking about it sometimes, I sometimes lie in bed thinking about it — and I’ve concluded that what makes them really good as film stories makes them not work as video games. Or we need to think through how to do it in a different way as a video game”.
The version of Agent Rockstar announced was set in during the Cold War in the 1970s, but Houser revealed this was just one version of many Rockstar tried and failed to turn into a fun video game. Indeed, there was a version set in the modern day that also failed to go anywhere.
“That was one of the versions,” he said. “There was another one that was set in the current… we had so many different versions of this game, we worked with so many different teams.”
He continued: “Espionage, assassinations… I don’t know what it would’ve been because it never really… We never got it enough to even doing a proper story on it. We were doing the early work as you get the world up and running. It never really found its feet in either of them. And I sort of think I know why.
“Because in one of those films, they’re very, very frenetic and they beat to beat to beat — you gotta go here and save the world, you gotta go there and stop that person being killed and then save the world. An open-world game does have moments like that when the story comes together. But for large portions, it’s a lot looser, and you’re just hanging out and you’re just doing what you want. And I want freedom. I wanna go over here and do what I want, and I wanna go over and do what you want. That’s why it works well being a criminal, because you fundamentally don’t have anyone telling you what to do. We try and create external agency through these people kind of forcing you into the story at times.
“But as a spy, that doesn’t really work because you have to be against the clock. So I think for me, I question if you can even make a good open-world spy game. So lots of things would work as open-world games, but I don’t know if a spy does.”
“We really got going on this one and worked on it for over a year. I remember working on a downhill skiing chase scene with guns for instance,” Vermeij said of Agent.
“The game wasn’t progressing as well as we’d hoped. It was inevitable that eventually the whole company would have to get behind the next Grand Theft Auto. We tried to cut the game down in an attempt to get the bulk of it done before the inevitable call from New York would come. We cut out an entire level (I think Cairo) and maybe even the space section.
“It became clear that [Agent] was going to be too much of a distraction for us and we ditched it. I think it was handed over to another company within Rockstar but never got completed.” Half of the Rockstar North team was working on Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC and Grand Theft Auto 5, while half was set to work on Agent before the importance of its premiere franchise took over.
Agent was developed as a spy thriller akin to James Bond, earning it the codename “Jimmy” within the Scotland-based Rockstar North studio, with Jimmy being a Scottish nickname for James.
“The game was to be set in the 70s, be more linear than Grand Theft Auto with a number of locations,” Vermeij said. “There was a French Mediterranean city, a Swiss ski resort, Cairo, and at the end there would be a big shootout with lasers in space. Classic James Bond. The vibe was very cool.”
Rockstar was kept busy otherwise with smash hits GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, releasing in 2013 and 2018 respectively. GTA 6 is set to follow next year.
Houser went on to say that rockstar also “played around with the knights concept,” following Agent’s demise, “trying to do a version of a mythological game that could have been fun.”
“Still love that idea, but never went very far with it,” he explained. “It never got to writing any of it. Just did some backstory and played around with a few ideas. But it was always something I thought I would never do, and then kind of fell in love with it a little bit.”
While Agent is dead, IO Interactive’s promising 007: First Light is due out next year.
Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
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.
Original Saints Row design director Chris Stockman is talking to the hellgods at Embracer Group about making a prequel open world game, possibly set in 1977 and containing absolutely no dildo bats. This comes almost two decades after Stockman left Saints Row development studio Volition, and a couple of years after Embracer closed Volition amid wider cuts.
Keanu Reeves would love to play Johnny Silverhand again, but how can he given the events of Cyberpunk 2077? It turns out Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith has worked out a way to make it make sense, and has told the much-loved actor: “contact me.”
“Absolutely. I’d love to play Johnny Silverhand again,” Reeves said when asked if he’d be interested in revisiting his legendary rockstar terrorist character in Cyberpunk 2.
Reeves’s love-affair with the Cyberpunk community began with his viral “you’re breathtaking” moment at E3 2019. Reeves, on-stage to announce the release date of Cyberpunk 2077, was interrupted by a fan who shouted out “you’re breathtaking!” Reeves’ response was to double-down with his own “you’re breathtaking… you’re all breathtaking!” Cue wholesome memes across the internet forever more. You can see the iconic gamer moment in the video below.
The question is, could Reeves actually play Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2 even if he wanted to? In other words, could Johnny Silverhand return in the sequel, given the events of Cyberpunk 2077?
Warning! Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 follow:
While many players believe Cyberpunk 2077 provided a suitable ending for Johnny and V’s story, depending on which ending of the game CD Projekt makes canon for Cyberpunk 2, the door may be left open for Reeves’ return. Could Johnny return in cameo form perhaps, having downloaded himself into someone or something else? Canon ending dependent, could V end up becoming Johnny Silverhand in mind and body for Cyberpunk 2? Perhaps we could see Johnny as part of a flashback to events before Cyberpunk 2077, as Cyberpunk 2077 had?
It sounds like Mike Pondsmith has been thinking about this ever since Reeves’ interview with IGN. In a CD Projekt livestream to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Cyberpunk 2077, Mike Pondsmith said, matter of factly: “Not that long ago, I saw that Keanu would like to find a way to come back from the dead and play Johnny again. I have ways to do that, Keanu. Contact me.”
Pondsmith, understandably, did not reveal what those “ways” were, but as we’ve mentioned, there are plenty of theories fans have come up with to make it make sense.
Reeves isn’t the only big Hollywood name to appear in Cyberpunk 2077. Idris Elba starred in the successful expansion, Phantom Liberty, which Pondsmith was delighted by. Indeed, he revealed he worried that CD Projekt might get sued because his character, looked so much like Elba, before it was revealed it actually was Elba playing the role.
“‘So let me get this straight,'” Pondsmith recalled of his reaction to the news. “‘You got Keanu Reeves, and then you turn around and get Idris Elba. What’s next? Scarlett Johansson?’
“Scarlett, you know, I have roles for you. You can do anything.”
Scarlett Johansson in Cyberpunk 2? That remains to be seen. But Pondsmith has been chatty about the hotly anticipated sequel in the past. In May, Pondsmith teased some previously unknown details when he was asked about the scope of his involvement with Cyberpunk 2 (then known as Project Orion) at the Digital Dragons 2025 conference.
Pondsmith admitted he wasn’t as involved this time around, but said he does review scripts and had been to CD Projekt to check out the ongoing work.
“Last week I was wandering around talking to different departments, and seeing what they had, ‘Oh look, this is the new cyberware, what do you think?’ ‘Oh yeah, that’s pretty good, that works here.’”
And then, the morsel on the sequel: that it features a brand new city in addition to the Night City we know from Cyberpunk 2077. Pondsmith described this new city as “like Chicago gone wrong.”
“I spent a lot of time talking to one of the environment guys, and he was explaining how the new place in Orion, because there’s another city we visit — I’m not telling you any more than that but there’s another city we visit. And Night City is still there. But I remember looking at it and going, yeah I understand the feel you’re going for this, and this really does work. And it doesn’t feel like Blade Runner, it feels more like Chicago gone wrong. I said, ‘Yeah, I can see this working.’”
It’s worth pointing out that Pondsmith’s comments do not necessarily suggest the Cyberpunk sequel will feature a future Chicago, rather a city that has the feel of a dystopian version of the city. It may well be a take on future Chicago, but that isn’t confirmed based on these comments. There is also some debate about whether Cyberpunk 2 will expand upon the Night City that’s in Cyberpunk 2077 or feature a new version, and the extent to which it is playable.
It sounds like we’ll have to wait some time to find out. CD Projekt is of course focusing on The Witcher 4, and CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has suggested Cyberpunk 2 won’t be out until at least 2030.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images.
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.
We were late to the party with the last big horse game, Umamusume: Pretty Derby (I confess, I avoided it because I’m not that keen on gacha, though I am not above watching Gold Ship/Michael Jackson crossover memes on the toilet), so I’m getting in on the ground floor with Sha Beast Dressage.
It’s sure to be the next global hit. Who doesn’t want to parade around on a horse that looks like it’s made of ancient Egyptian embalming tools? Who doesn’t want to be trapped in “a perpetual cycle of non-consensual reincarnation” by a god of torture, forced to train up hellbeasts for exhibition to earn your freedom? Who doesn’t want to make the Nuckelavee do a croupade?
Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio are expanding the Yakuza / Like A Dragon franchise on the Switch 2 with the upcoming releases of Kiwami and Kiwami 2, and thanks to updated store pages on the eShop, we now have the file sizes.
Interestingly, neither game comes close to Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut, which takes up a whopping 45.3GB, but if you’re looking to purchase both, then you’ll still need a fair bit of storage.
Former Rockstar boss Dan Houser has explained why the Grand Theft Auto series won’t leave the United States in terms of its setting.
Speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast, Rockstar co-founder and former lead writer Houser said that — GTA London apart — Grand Theft Auto remained firmly rooted in the United States because it leans so heavily on Americana.
“We made a little thing in London 26 years ago — GTA London — for the top-down for PS1. That was pretty cute and fun, as the first mission pack ever for PlayStation 1. I think for a full GTA game, we always decided there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else.
“You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters. It just felt like the game was so much about America, possibly from an outsider’s perspective. But that was so much about what the thing was that it wouldn’t really have worked in the same way elsewhere.”
It’s a trend that’s set to continue with next year’s GTA 6, which is set in the fictional U.S. state of Leonida (a reimagining of Florida). And based on the two GTA 6 trailers we’ve seen so far, that parody of American culture is once again front and center.
It’s an interesting time, then, to wonder if GTA might hop on a plane and venture abroad at some point in the future. But it feels unlikely, not just based on Houser’s comments, but based on the GTA brand — built up over decades at this point — and what the public expects from it. Indeed, such is GTA’s relationship with America over the course of its many video games, that a University of Tennessee history professor will teach a GTA college history class early in 2026.
Professor Tore Olsson recently told IGN: “Video games are great at conjuring fictional worlds, but they also impact players’ thinking about real-world times and places. And just as Red Dead Redemption 2 has shaped folks’ perception of the nineteenth-century American West or Ghost of Tsushima has informed their vision of feudal Japan, millions of people around the globe imagine contemporary America through the lens of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Just think of how many GTA veterans have recognized landmarks in Los Angeles and New York thanks to their hours in Los Santos and Liberty City!”
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.
November is here. The sunny uplands are far behind us. The great gilded procession of Videogaming trundles and cavorts through the deep forest. The bells of the indie jesters are muffled by fog, and the CEOs peer anxiously from their carriages of scarlet and bronze, instructing their guardsmen to beware the union organisers concealed in the undergrowth. Keep watching the trees. Everytime you glance away, they look a little more like placards. Do you see the moths, idly winking on boughs? They are the Maw’s eyes. Those distant, whistling spirals of pine, somehow immobile behind the foreground trunks, in defiance of the rules of perspective? They are the Maw’s lungs. Those squirrels having shouting matches with magpies? Erm. The Maw’s thrombocytes, maybe.
Listen! The crunch of twigs and leaves under hobnailed boots. Approaching torches. It is a refugee party of freshly released PC games. Let us pick the heartiest or strangest from their ranks to bolster our forces, before the shadows close in for good.
Microsoft has confirmed the next batch of games set to leave Xbox Game Pass, and one in particular has caused a degree of frustration with subscribers: Stalker 2.
GSC Game World’s Stalker 2 launched as an Xbox console exclusive last year alongside backing from Microsoft. While it is not an Xbox Game Studios-published video game, Microsoft played a key role in its marketing ahead of its much-delayed release date in November 2024. It even worked with the Ukrainian studio on a 90-minute documentary that revealed the difficulty the developers faced building the game amid Russia’s full-scale invasion.
As confirmed by the Xbox app, Stalker 2 is set to leave Game Pass on November 16, 2025, alongside four other games detailed below.
Games set to leave Xbox Game Pass on November 16, 2025:
It’s Stalker 2’s exit that has caused the most kerfuffle, with some Game Pass subscribers criticizing the move a year after launch, and just ahead of the game’s release on PlayStation 5 on November 20.
“Microsoft backed GSC through all the delays and even the invasion, so it’s surprising they weren’t able to secure a better deal,” said redditor JBishie. “I think it’s a matter of principle: the game was incomplete at launch and is only now starting to resemble a finished product, yet it’s being removed from the service just as the 1.7 update approaches, and with the PS5 release coming up, the timing looks especially poor.”
Indeed, the fact Stalker 2 launched first on Xbox and PC with quite a few problems, which are only now ironed out in time for the PS5 launch, is being highlighted by those who believe the game should remain on Game Pass for a while longer.
“It’s been a year, which is a pretty standard time for non MiS games,” said VickyCriesALot. “I’m not sure why this is such a shock to people like it’s unprecedented. Lmao.”
“Because the game just got to a decent state in that year’s time?” countered davepars77. “It’s going to take another year to get everything sorted, not even talking about DLC yet. It’s been in early access not a finished product so now’s a great time to rip it off the service.”
“I think it’s a really bad precedent that a game stays shorter in Game Pass than we had to wait for it to launch, beyond waiting MONTHS to become properly playable patch after patch,” complained X / Twitter user @ZakkenKloot.
“It’s bad that Stalker is going,” added @Matty_Cs_World. “It was good but basically released very buggy. I don’t like that a premium subscription is just used as a beta testing area for devs. I did want to go back to the game. But I guess that ship has sailed.”
“Xbox has to stop funding unfinished early access games essentially for Game Pass day one titles,” said Minute-Use-8489. “Two games that come to mind Stalker 2 & Payday 3 came out very unfinished and took a year for them to fix and update each game than once their good to play they get removed from Game Pass feels like a scam to the subscribers imo.”
It’s worth noting most of the games on this list are available with a discount of at least 20% until they leave Xbox Game Pass in early November.
It doesn’t help that Microsoft recently sparked a significant backlash by hiking the price of Game Pass. In the case of Ultimate, it went up a whopping 50% to $29.99 a month. That amounts to an extra $120 a year. To justify the price hike, Microsoft upped the number of day one releases per year to 75, and added Fortnite Crew and Ubisoft+ Classics for the first time ever. There were also upgrades to Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming quality.
As for Stalker 2 on PS5, it launches on Sony’s console with full support for the DualSense controller’s features, including haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Further technical enhancements for the PS5 Pro are also in development.
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.
Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga made its debut on the Switch in October and this week the team behind it has rolled out a new update, which enhances the overall experience on Switch platforms.
Here are the details about this, courtesy of the developer’s official social media account. As you can see, there are adjustments, fixes and specific updates for Switch, which also includes resolution enhancements, HD rumble support and more.
