Yes, you read that headline correctly, rather than pushing the prices up to match what we’ve seen everywhere else in the industry of late, select EU retailers appear to be cutting the cost of Switch 2 consoles and bundles (thanks for the heads up, My Nintendo News).
Amazon France was the first retailer brought to our attention to be implementing such a cut, with the Mario Kart World Switch 2 bundle and pre-orders for the Pokémon Legends: Z-A option now down to €469 (a 6% drop from the previous €499,99). Standard Switch 2 purchases are currently sold out on the online storefront, but French outlet Nintendo Town reports that it has seen the same discount and is now listed at €419.
With a week to go until the official launch of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, fans have issued a warning over online spoilers, as datamined details from the game have begun to leak online — including word of even more new Mega Pokémon.
Pokémon Legends Z-A is due to launch on October 16 for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, but already there’s evidence of early copies filtering out into the wild. And now, as of this morning, IGN has seen evidence that the game is actively being datamined to extract its secrets.
To date, The Pokémon Company has revealed just a handful of the new Mega Pokémon expected to make up the game’s final roster of fresh Mega species. And while an older leak had listed out many of the still-to-be-confirmed Mega Evolutions, there’s evidence today that even more creatures may be included than first expected.
In response to all this, Pokémon fans have now begun signalling that anyone hoping to go into Pokémon Legends: Z-A without seeing spoilers should be mindful of where they click online over the next few days — or log off social media completely. (IGN will not be spoiling any of the new species here.)
New Mega Evolutions include the majestic-looking Mega Dragonite — which has also now made its Pokémon anime debut — plus Mega Victreebell, Mega Hawlucha and Mega Malamar.
Post-launch, Pokémon Legends: Z-A will unlock Mega Evolutions for each of the three fully-evolved Starter Pokémon, available via online play: Delphox, Greninja and Chesnaught. And beyond that, you can already buy Pokémon Legends: Z-A: Mega Dimension, a paid DLC which will add two new Mega Evolutions for Raichu.
Battlefield 6 marks the first time, in all my years of hardwaring, that I have been summoned to someone’s house in order to make a PC game work. I can’t offer this Jim’ll Fix It service to everyone, not least because IGN’s lawyers have issues with the name, so I’ll just say this: Enabling Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 is inconvenient, but not as fiddly as it sounds, and can be done with at most a couple of toggles in your BIOS/UEFI’s Security section.
As it turns out, that’s probably the worst of BF6’s hardware worries. I don’t know who forgot to tell DICE that all FPS blockbusters must now be callously demanding graphics card shin-kickers, but in both the campaign and multiplayer, this seems to run quite… well? Likely well enough that as long as you’re on any reasonably modern rig, you might not need to do much twiddling with the visual settings.
EA has insisted players won’t see anything made by generative AI in Battlefield 6.
The use of generative AI is one of the hottest topics in the video game industry, with the pressure on publishers to cut costs and speed up development in order to boost profits despite the risk of backlash from some fans. Indeed, according to a report by The Financial Times, EA’s new prospective owners (the ones who just spent $55 billion to take the company private) are betting on the use of generative AI to do just that.
For now though, at least when it comes to Battlefield 6, generative AI is taking a backseat. Rebecka Coutaz, general manager of original series developer DICE in Sweden, and Criterion, the UK studio now also a part of what’s collectively called Battlefield Studios, told the BBC that while generative AI “is very seducing,” currently there is no way to work it into the developers’ daily work.
However, Coutaz clarified that generative AI is used in preparatory stages “to allow more time and more space to be creative.”
Based on Coutaz’s comments, and the current lack of an AI generated content disclosure on the Battlefield 6 Steam page, we won’t see something similar in EA’s rival first-person shooter.
“We live in a world now, where there are AI tools,” Leslie told IGN ahead of Black Ops 7’s reveal at Opening Night Live 2025. “I think our official statement we said last year, around Black Ops 6, is that everything that goes into the game is touched by the team a hundred percent. We have generative AI tools to help us, but none of that goes in-game.
“And then you’re going to say, ‘Yeah, but it has.’ I’ll say it has by accident. And that was never the intention. We’ve come out and been very clear that we use these as tools to help the team, but they do not replace any of the fantastic team members we have that are doing the final touches and building that content to put it in the game.
“So everything you play: human-created and touched. AI tools in the world we live in: it’s, how do we streamline it? That’s really the goal. Not replace, but streamline.”
It’s worth noting the Black Ops 7 Steam page does include the AI disclosure.
But will Battlefield Studios’ stance on generative AI hold for much longer, especially with EA’s new owners breathing down its neck? In the interview with the BBC, Coutaz sounded optimistic about the use of the tech going forward. “If we can break the magic with AI it will help us be more innovative and more creative,” she said.
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.
Altruism is a funny concept. Most of us can agree that bestowing a generous gift of greening shelf-stable bread-like product on the local park pigeons is a nice thing to do, but what of the knowledge that moulders in the back of our minds all the while, telling us: keep this up long enough, and you’ll definitely end up with a loyal army of skyborne scavengers willing to enact your every destructive whim at a mere flick of your wrist? Feed them the really good bread, they might even let you throw them at things. From super seeded, to superceding god. Here’s the trailer for The Bench.
Following last month’s release, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is now getting updated to Version 1.05 on the Switch and Switch 2.
Perhaps, most notably, the Switch 2 update will add “image quality and performance settings”. Additionally, there is also a first-person perspective mode. Here’s the translation from the official Falcom website (via Gematsu):
The Switch 2 had all sorts of third-party support at launch, and one of these titles happened to be the Square Enix role-playing game Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster.
This remaster comes loaded with not only the main adventure but also brand new minigames utilising the Joy-Con 2 mouse mode. Now, Square Enix has released the Version 1.0.2 update.
The latest versions of the PS1-era Final Fantasy games are getting physical editions for Nintendo Switch on December 9. Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII Remastered are being released together in a “twin-pack” box, while Final Fantasy IX will have a box all its own. All of the games feature some modern conveniences that weren’t available in their initial release. They cost $39.99 each and are now available for preorder at various retailers.
All of these games are already available on Switch (and other platforms) in digital form. But this is the first time they’ll be available in the US in physical form.
Final Fantasy VII was a major release in 1997, and was the first time the series debuted on a non-Nintendo platform. It follows former SOLDIER Cloud Strife as he and a team of freedom fighters battle against the evil Shinra corporation. This version of the game features 3x speed mode, the ability to turn off random encounters, and “battle enhancement mode.”
Final Fantasy VIII Remastered is an enhanced version of a game that hit the PS1 in 1999. It follows Squall and the rest of the members of SeeD as they fight back against the sorceress Edea, who’s causing quite the global ruckus. This version of the game has various battle assist options, a 3x speed boost, and the ability to turn off random encounters.
At the time of its initial release in 2000, Final Fantasy IX was something of a throwback to the medieval-settings settings of the first six entries in the series. This game follows Zidane and a troupe of actors, who “kidnap” Princess Garnet, who secretly wanted to be kidnapped to get away from her deranged mother, the queen.
The visuals have been gently revamped to look better on modern displays. It has other new features as well, including auto-save and seven game boosters, including high speed and no-encounter modes.
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Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
Invincible VS just announced its eighth playable character: Cecil. The no-nonsense director of the Global Defense Agency is a surprise addition to the roster. He lacks any superpowers, so it’s hard to imagine him lasting more than a blink of an eye against the likes of Omni-Man and co. But Invincible creator Robert Kirkman was adamant Cecil be in the game, and left it to the developers at Quarter Up to figure out how to make him work.
Their answer is to lean on all the cool gadgets we see Cecil use in Invincible, which in this 3v3 tag fighting game levels the playing field somewhat. But there’s more: Invincible VS has a sizeable Story Mode in which Cecil plays a crucial role. Kirkman and Quarter Up won’t say much about it, but they describe is as a “playable episode,” so expectations are high.
In this interview with IGN, Kirkman, Invincible VS executive producer Mike Willette, art director Dan Eder, and narrative director Mike Rogers, talk as much about Story Mode as they are allowed to right now, and delve deep into how Cecil actually works in the game. Read on to find out if Invincible VS is canon to the show, details on Cecil’s kit, and much more.
IGN: It must have been an interesting challenge with Cecil. He doesn’t have any superpowers, but he’s smart and can teleport and uses a lot of weapons. So how did you go about making him work in a fighting game?
Mike Rogers: From a lore and narrative perspective, Cecil’s always in control. We often see him as the man in the ear or the man watching the screen, but people forget that he’s a trained agent. He knows how to get his hands dirty and he’s got all the tech and all the money of the U.S. government behind him that can allow him to do that. There’s just a lot of cool things that we’ve got in there that allow Cecil to be a really different character. We wanted him in there. There was no way we wanted to exclude him. And we saw opportunities like using his teleporter, like using Reanimen, like using The White Room, to get him in there in a unique way that people might not expect.
Mike Willette: From a gameplay perspective, you have all these different types of archetypes, and where Cecil really fits in, in a really unique fashion in our system, is manipulating space, almost like he manipulates people, right? So the ability to put out projectiles like his Sonic Mine, that will basically just hover in space and then detonate after a few seconds. So he can put hazards, put roadblocks, put almost like a bullet hell for the opponent to try to get through. And because of our active tag system, he connects one time, he can tag in one of his assists. And so he’s got a lot of utility for just manipulating the screen, getting around it, pelting the opponent from afar, making it frustrating for them, and then putting him back into our combo system.
IGN: So is he a zoner, would you say?
Mike Willette: Yeah, absolutely. So his combo structure, while he does have auto combos like most of our characters, and the magic chain of light, mediums and heavies, he has a lot of utility for the mid and the long range. He can make people try to chase him down. He has a lot of boosted moves that can cause pop-up or hard knockdown. Or for his… we call it Shellhock, he goes down with a Flaxan weapon and he basically launches like a grenade, but when you boost it you can launch multiples. You can do it
while retreating and try to fill the screen and try to just set up roadblocks, so you can kind of like reset and then continue to pelt from afar.
So he can manipulate a lot more than other characters can, because he has to use these tools. He doesn’t have an air dash. He doesn’t have double jumps. He uses the teleportation a lot to make those old bones work.
IGN: Robert, I’d love to know what your input was on this. He’s not the obvious choice for a fighting game when you look at the characters in Invincible. I’m sure fans will love that he’s in there. Was he a character you were keen to see realized in a fighting game particularly? How did it come to be that he was in the game?
Robert Kirkman: His presence in the game is something that’s really exciting for me because it shows the versatility of what these guys are trying to accomplish with the game, by having characters that you wouldn’t expect and working out how Cecil can be equally matched with all the other people that are coming into it.
It’s really great the way they’re pulling in story elements. There’s a lot of character that is intact from the comics and the show that is clear in every frame of these characters. Cecil actually puts his hands in his pockets when he moves backwards, which to me was something that I thought was just absolutely brilliant. And it’s just a really fun aspect of the character that’s there visually as he’s moving around.
There’s definitely a wish list of characters that I wanted in the game. And Cecil was one where I thought it would be really cool and unexpected if he were to show up in the game. Never in a million years did I think they would be able to pull it off and pull it off this well.
I’m gonna tease too much… I’m going to get in trouble, I can’t say anything! But I’m very excited about this game!
IGN: I wanted to ask you about the story and the story mode. I don’t know if that’s something that you can talk about at this stage, but it’d be great to get some input on the narrative side of things, because I do understand that you’re going big on that.
Robert Kirkman: I’ve been working very closely with Mike Rogers, the narrative lead, and Helen Leigh, who’s one of the key writers on the series. She wrote the Adam Eve special episode with me and has done a lot of great episodes for the show. What we’re really trying to do is provide an in-game experience that is like watching an episode of the television show. It’s a really cool story that uses the characters in a really exciting and authentic way, and I think goes into some directions that people are really going to be surprised by. There’s a lot of unexpected twists and turns.
Mike Rogers: We wanted it to feel like a playable episode. It’s this standalone narrative. In the same vein that the Adam Eve special is like a special episode, this is a special episode, too. And just getting to work with Robert and Helen and really craft something that feels right for the Invincible universe, it’s been a real treat.
IGN: Is this canon, or is it like a What If? sort of scenario? I know it’s an original story, so it’s not something we’ve seen before. But, you know the fans will wonder how it all ties in with everything. They always do. I mean, I do! So what do we actually have here?
Robert Kirkman: It definitely fits very neatly into the narrative of the show. There’s a tremendous level of care going into making sure that the characters are authentic and that everything works. Internally, there’s actually a window where we’re like, ‘Yeah, could fit there.’ But, you know, we’re not going to talk about that.
Mike Willlette: Just sit back and enjoy yourself!
IGN: You’ve got Cecil going up against Omni-Man, for example, which on the face of it would be impossible. But as designers of a fighting game, how do you balance everything where that can be a valid matchup, even though you would think that Omni-Man would essentially tear everyone to shreds?
Mike Willette: What’s so awesome about just jumping right into this universe, there’s so much deep lore and personality with these characters and things to pull from, from like all that comic resource. And then you have the show. And it’s kind of the rule of cool, what makes this character and what’s really fun for gameplay? And then merging these ideas together. And then you get to see what archetypes do they fit within or it’s like, are they rushed down? Are they a grappler, are they strikers? Are they long range? You have this kind of triangle and then you’re like, ‘Oh, do they fit more along these two aspects or these two?’
And then things just naturally start to fall in place, and especially within the meta that we’ve created of like, it’s not just a single character, it’s three characters that actually represent your kit. So you get to mix and match all these different things. I want to play pure keep away, or I want to have something that’s a little bit more balanced where I do have a big bully who can push the corners and then I support that character with a bunch of ranged or mid-range characters.
So when it comes down to balance, it’s really just seeing what’s the essence of the character, what belongs in their kit, and then how it works within our omni tag system, how do characters play well with each other or support each other, whether it’s through the assist systems and the different types of assists that they can have, or how they naturally tag into each other. You can play almost any character like a point character or have it dedicated for a very specific role. It’s really play the way that you want. And again, we’re just given this beautiful sandbox by Robert and company that’s just like, God, we have so much great source material.
Dan Eder: I will say one of the challenges of using an established IP is that you have to find the middle ground between being authentic to the IP but also making a fighting game that’s gonna work. If you’re authentic to the quote unquote power levels of the show, then that wouldn’t be a very satisfying experience because it just wouldn’t be very balanced. And if you know anything about fighting games, it’s that balance is key. We do want to allow people to be able to play with their favorite character and not be completely demolished just because the other one is so OP.
So I think as long as you’re authentic to the character and there’s some sort of plausibility of, okay, that character would use those powers, right? Then I think a lot of it comes down to pure skill of whoever is playing that character. And that’s how you stay true to the source material, but also just make it stand on its own. Because I think the reality is that not everyone is going to be intimately familiar with Invincible. We don’t want to make this game just for the fans. We want to make this game for people who may not be aware of Invincible, and this would be their starting point. So then that wouldn’t matter as much to them. ‘Hey, why is Omni-Man so…’
Mike Willette: We’re gonna turn them into fans, Dan!
Dan Eder: Exactly. So I think there’s a big opportunity to do our own thing, make the game stand on its own, without relying on the fandom, but also make it very pleasing for the fans. At the end of the day we’re gonna have a lot of Easter eggs, we’re gonna have a lot of small touches and character moments as much as we can. And I think it’s gonna be an all around great experience.
Mike Rogers: And Cecil was a character where we got to think about this also. Every character has a round reset in between rounds of the fight where they fly at each other, their fists smash and like, okay, if Omni-Man’s fist is smashing into Cecil’s, that’s not gonna end well for Cecil, but he’s got these Reanimen and can jump in and do that for him. He’s got the teleporter that can allow him to dash around, sort of in the way he has a conversation with Nolan at the end of Season 1. And we got to interpret that and bring those into like, how do they work in a fighting game? And I think it brought an extra level of authenticity to the character. And that challenge for a character like Cecil yields more specificity, which is great.
IGN: Did all you fighting game developers all over the world get together one day and decide 2026 was going to see the return of tag fighters?
Mike Willette: It’s the most insane thing — and it’s true — that all great minds think alike! Because we haven’t seen a really awesome tag battle fighting game since like Dragon Ball Fighterz, and that’s like, what? Eight years now. And then before that, the gold standard was Marvel vs. Capcom. So there was this huge void. And we all approached it differently. Our competitors are different from us. And that’s actually a really good thing. And it’s interesting, everyone has their own take, and we really like our take. We really like the universe that we get to play in, and we like the violence of it, the brutality of the stakes that are involved, and our unique style of combat and what it means to read someone — you read your opponent and be able to have large amounts of counterplay. Yeah, it’s an exciting time. 2026 is crazy!
IGN: Why was a tag fighter right for you? And then 3v3?
Mike Willette: Obviously being a huge fan of the comics in the show, when I was asked like, ‘Hey, Mike, what game do you want to do?’ I’m like, ‘I want to do an Invincible tag battle fighting game.’ There’s so many factions and teams that exist within the universe, whether it’s like the Teen Team or The Guardians or The Lizard League or The Order, like there’s just so many. And when you watch people fight, like yeah, there’s solo fights, but there’s also a lot of team fighting that takes place.
There’s been this lack of team fighter games for such a long period of time. And then this IP had lots of strengths when it came to teams and team synergy, and I always thought about the ideas of like, what happens when these characters team up and do shit together? Like when Eve and Mark fight together, how awesome is that? So we just wanted to play out those fantasies, and what better method than in a fighting game?
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.
