After some fans expressed concern about the performance of ambitious new open world game Crimson Desert on consoles, we finally have a look at the game on a PlayStation 5 Pro.

The reveal comes courtesy of the tech wizards at Digital Foundry, whose John Linneman sounded enamoured with what he called “a stunning game.” The game’s ray tracing features are fully present on the Pro, and the water looks lovely indeed.

Digital Foundry said its counts confirm the PS5 Pro targets outlined by Crimson Desert developer and publisher Pearl Abyss below, but it’s reserving judgment for the final release. Performance Mode “puts up a good fight,” Linneman said, and “by and large” the 60fps target is maintained. “I was surprised by how good it was overall,” he added.

Crimson Desert on console! An extended look at the near-final game running on PlayStation 5 Pro, covering all graphics modes. And one of my favourite video intros I’ve seen from the channel! https://t.co/jCcap1oa7s pic.twitter.com/xLrxVi8WEm

— Digital Foundry (@digitalfoundry) March 12, 2026

DF found the frame rate drops amid larger crowds, anything involving tonnes of NPCs or enemies, with occasional dips also in quieter spots. The frame rate dropped “significantly” during a big early battle, slipping all the way into the 30s. You can trigger similar results in some of the game’s large cities, too. But, Linneman stressed, this is “not the norm at all.” The 30fps and 40fps modes are more stable overall. Linneman recommends the 40fps or 60fps modes because the 30fps mode feels less responsive than he would have liked, but he thinks this “heavy” gameplay feel is a design choice.

Now, it’s worth noting that we still haven’t seen Crimson Desert running on base consoles, including the less powerful Xbox Series S. Digital Foundry notes this in its video. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see how Crimson Desert runs on base consoles soon.

Digital Foundry chief Richard Leadbetter told IGN: “We’ve not seen much of Crimson Desert on consoles, but when Pearl Abyss offered us the chance to take a look at the PS5 Pro version with no limitations on what we could cover, we jumped at the chance. My main concern was not so much about graphics but on demands on the CPU. Yes, it can be demanding, but overall performance across the three modes is impressive. But more impressive is really what this game is about — the scale and the scope and the systems-driven open world. The high-end PC experience scales well to PS5 Pro and we’re looking forward to seeing the other console versions.”

Sony has reportedly pulled back from PC gaming to such an extent that its big single-player PlayStation games will remain exclusive to the PS5, marking a significant strategy shift. And while it was speculated that one of the reasons Sony made the decision was to avoid PlayStation games showing up on the next-gen Xbox, which plays PC games as well as Xbox games, one developer at a studio Sony just shut down has another idea.

Peter Dalton, Head of Technology at Bluepoint Games, took to social media to say a “more interesting possibility” is that Sony is responding to the rise of a Steam-based console ecosystem, aka the recently announced and subsequently delayed Steam Machine.

“Consoles largely exist because they provide a cheaper, simpler alternative to gaming PCs,” Dalton said. “For most households, a dedicated gaming console is easier to justify than building or maintaining a high-end PC.

“However, if Valve releases a new Steam console that provides a console-like experience while still giving players access to the entire PC game library, that could become a very compelling option. In that scenario, if Sony were releasing all of its games day-and-date on PC, the Steam console could effectively offer the best of all worlds: console simplicity with the full breadth of PC gaming.

“It would be quite ironic if, after decades of traditional console competition, Valve ultimately ended up winning the console war.”

The question is, when will Valve actually release Steam Machine, and at what price? Valve recently suggested Steam Machine may not launch until 2027, but walked that back by saying it still intends to release the hardware this year. As for the price, Valve has yet to say, but the company faces an uphill battle keeping Steam Machine relatively cheap due to the AI obsession causing PC hardware to spike in price.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg suggested poor recent sales of PlayStation games on PC and the risk to the PlayStation brand, as well as a potential impact on PS5 and maybe even PS6 sales, were to blame for Sony’s policy shift. But it also suggested the prospect of PlayStation games running on the next Xbox may have encouraged Sony’s return to console exclusives.

Sony has in recent years expanded PlayStation to PC, but refrained from going as far as Microsoft, which releases all its games on PC at the same time as console. Sony, however, has employed a staggered approach, releasing its single-player PlayStation games on PC after a period of console exclusivity. When it comes to live service games like Helldivers 2 it’s a different story, with Sony publishing on PC day-one — and in the case of Arrowhead’s third-person action game, to record-breaking success. Indeed, Sony-owned Bungie launched live service extraction shooter Marathon across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S at the same time. The upshot of this is Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yotei and Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine will not release on PC, but remain PS5 exclusives.

But because some big single-player PlayStation games are already on Steam, then the next Xbox will potentially play the likes of Marvel’s Spider-Man and Ghost of Tsushima. All these games will of course be playable on Steam Machine when it eventually comes out.

As for Bluepoint, the studio behind the remakes of both Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls, roughly 70 employees are going to be impacted by the closure when it officially occurs this month.

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.

Playground Games has grown.

When I first visited the studio in 2014 for Forza Horizon 2, the crew still shared their building with a variety of other businesses. In 2018, when I again flew over to the UK for an early peek at Forza Horizon 4, there was a whole wing of the building filled with developers beavering away on something entirely secret and apparently unrelated to Forza Horizon. Remaining none the wiser, I was escorted past this area with a coy grin from Playground Games co-founder Ralph Fulton – now the director of this year’s highly anticipated Fable.

Today, in 2026, much has changed. Since my last time as a guest, Playground Games now operates in three separate buildings around Leamington Spa, all within walking distance of each other. The team no longer shares its original building with anyone else, either. With Fable being developed across town, every part of Playground Games’ original Rossmore House facility is now devoted to Forza Horizon. The rooms I’m toured through feel familiar to me – packed with desks, dev kits, and diecast cars – but now there are simply more rooms.

Make no mistake: Playground Games is bigger than ever.

So, as it happens, is Forza Horizon 6.

We’ve known for some time that Forza Horizon 6’s Japan is Playground Games’ largest and densest map to date. We’ve known, too, that Playground Games’ version of Tokyo City is set to be the biggest urban space the team has ever made, and five times larger than Forza Horizon 5’s Guanajuato.

Seeing it in person, however, is something else – and obviously extremely exciting. My first showcase of the game in action features a beaming red GR GT – the cover car for Forza Horizon 6 – threading its way from the map’s southern end to the north, up through the outskirts of Tokyo City and onwards to Japan’s Alps. For some stretches I watch as the team drives, and for others they defer to Forza Horizon 6’s new auto-drive accessibility feature. It’s a feature that came about in order to help players with finite energy they want to save for racing and events; energy they may be hesitant to exhaust by driving across the map to reach them (although art director Don Arceta jokingly concedes he’s found himself using it to eat snacks at times).

As with all previous Forza Horizon maps, this is not a 1:1 facsimile of any specific chunk of Japan; it is a greatest hits tour that captures the look and spirit of areas from all over the country, all bundled into a single racing sandbox. From the perspective of someone who has only ever experienced Japan as an occasional visitor, it is instantly convincing. As someone who loves the ability of video games to authentically place me somewhere in the world, I am immediately transported. The colour palette. The road markings. The recognisable bridges. The distinct vegetation. The team has the season set to spring for my very first glimpse of the game in action, which results in zipping past clumps of iconic blossom trees. In the sliver of the map we toured through they appeared satisfyingly occasionally, meaning they remained a novelty when they did so. That is, Playground Games has not turned springtime Japan into an unrelenting and inauthentic sea of non-stop pink – even if pink is the longtime hero colour of the Horizon Festival.

My general interest in Japan itself does not dwarf my interest in other places around the world famous for their scenic driving opportunities, and I should probably clarify that I’m not the sort of person whose admiration for Japan and its culture is the core defining part of my personality. Yes, I love ’90s JDM cars, Godzilla movies, and Japan’s massively affordable konbini beers when I visit. However, I don’t watch anime, I bounce off JRPGs, and… I hate raw fish and cold rice. I’m also way too tall for Japanese public transport, and I have a scar on my head because of it.

I do, however, firmly believe that Japan is an absolutely excellent setting for a Forza Horizon game.

“It’s one of the first decisions we make and it’s historically one of the toughest decisions to make because, as you say, it informs everything,” says design director Torben Ellert. “And there are many components to it that we’ve spoken about at length, but Japan has been a location we’ve wanted to do and it’s been on our shortlist for a number of games. But I think this was the first time that we felt that we could take a shot at it; that the fear was healthy rather than an actual panic response.”

“Each location offers new challenges, and obviously new gameplay and new experiences, but, for this one, Japan had a lot of challenges that we had to figure out and approach and try to solve,” adds Arceta. “And that was one of the things that, at least for myself, intrigued me to tackle Japan as a location.”

One significant rule that the Playground team took specific care to abide by was the fact that simply transplanting the Horizon Festival to Japan and dusting their hands couldn’t be enough. As highly desired as the location was, it could never be the only thing Forza Horizon 6 brought to the table. Happily, Ellert points out that the location does, in fact, give the team a lot of scope to make new features – which is something he cares deeply about.

“I think a lot of the discussions that we had all the way back in concept for this project were around, ‘Is it just Japan? Is it a previous game that is on a new map?’ says Ellert. “And our games are never like that. We always iterate, always innovate. We always introduce new features and push the game forward.”

“So, certainly from a design point of view, we were very careful and very aware of the fact that we needed to think about this as a game that was set in Japan, rather than that being almost like a core part of what the game would be. We couldn’t rely on it being Japan. We wanted this to be the most innovative Forza game that we’ve made; the most exciting game. The game where we push on a bunch of different axes and generate these new features that players would be really excited about. And it’s also in Japan.”

“Japan comes with so many expectations and everyone has their idea of what Japan is,” adds Arceta. “So, obviously, we had to look at those things, like Tokyo City and what they expect – and obviously mountainous roads, which both offer huge challenges for our team technically and gameplay-wise.”

“But it’s also trying to find the things that will surprise and delight players, and things that people don’t immediately think of Japan when they say it. And I think, as with all Horizon games, we always look for those in every location that we choose. For Japan, it’s no different. We have those nice surprises, and we’ve seen it with the footage we’ve shared so far. People are, like, ‘Does that exist? Is this for real?’ And it does exist in Japan, which is really exciting.”

Not too far into the tour, the GR GT reaches Forza Horizon 6’s version of the real-life Kawazu Nanadaru Loop Bridge – a unique, two-story structure that winds into the sky like a giant Hot Wheels track.

“You probably saw this in, I think it was in, the [Developer_Direct] trailer,” grins production director Mike Bennett. “Like, you just know the amount of drift videos we’re gonna get on this road, and I’m so looking forward to it.”

Some time after negotiating the bridge, the first hint of the Tokyo City skyline appears in the distance.

“This flow into the city here is part of how we thought about defining this Tokyo City as a set of experiences,” explains Ellert. “You see it in the distance, on the horizon. You approach it. You drive through suburbs and skirt around the middle of it. You move up onto the freeways and, if I was to turn left, you go down through downtown and the centre of the city.”

“Rather than try to 1:1 rebuild a place we create the individual elements of the experience of driving to a place.”

Entering Tokyo City I’m taken aback by just how vastly different it is to previous Horizon game urban spaces. This is spectacularly different from Guanajuato, and Edinburgh, but that’s not necessarily the pleasantly surprising part. Forza Horizon 3’s modern and vertical Surfer’s Paradise is the closest comparison, but the scale of Tokyo City is immensely more grand. Even skimming around the fringe of the city’s heart and escaping via the raised freeway, it’s clear there is so much more to this take on Tokyo City than has been typical of Horizon games.

“The headline is it’s our biggest ever, compared to Guanajuato; five times bigger than that last urban space,” says Bennett. “But also just the diversity of it compared to previous games is pretty massive as well.”

“I think a criticism that could have been leveled at some of the previous games, within Guanajuato we did have different areas within it – we did have different building styles, and they were really colourful – but maybe it was a bit one-note as you were moving around. There wasn’t huge amounts to separate one area from another.

“Whereas, I think with our version of Tokyo it’s very diverse. You’ve got the tall skyscrapers in the central area. You’ve got the suburban areas with the nice houses as you’re heading in. This is probably the craziest feature, actually, we’ve never done anything like it; just the multiplayered, multi-level road infrastructure that we’ve got going through the middle. Like, we had to go out and build new tooling to allow us to do this, leveraging what we’d learned through Hot Wheels.”

The diversity of Tokyo City stems from the fact that even the city itself, which is regarded as a biome of its own in terms of the overall map, is further divided into four subsections – or districts, as Arceta describes them.

First, there are the suburbs – which Arceta regards as the crust of the city. These are quiet and peaceful areas, packed with all the charm of a clean but cluttered, densely populated Japanese urban area. The roads, covered in bike lanes and school markings, stretch out beneath a spaghetti of chaotic cabling.

If you’ve been waiting for Magic: The Gathering’s return to Middle-earth with a Hobbit-focused set this year to jump into buying cardboard versions of your Tolkien favorites, we’ve got good news for you – and bad news for your wallet.

The Commander precons from the Lord of the Rings set are not only back in stock at Amazon, but many of them are cheaper than they have been and remain cheaper than market value (as seen on TCGplayer).

Better yet, they’re all pretty great decks for jumping in and playing with friends, and while they’re technically all above market value, you’ll find them selling for much more elsewhere.

Save On Lord of the Rings Commander Decks Again

The upcoming Life is Strange: Reunion is an attempt, as superficially befits the supernatural franchise, to rewind time. It follows the lead of 2024’s Double Exposure, which brought back the original game’s protagonist, Max Caulfield, for the first time since 2015, evolving her from nervous high school student to intrepid university lecturer. There’s a sense with this new release, though, that the series is eating its own tail for fan service and sales, and that strangeness is being replaced with comfy morality and memories. Reunion sees not just the return of Max but also her former best friend / girlfriend Chloe, a balm to players who have fixated on this relationship for an entire decade. And with the pair’s reunion, perhaps the most important lesson of the original game has been ignored: the uncomfortable – and very anti-shareholder reality – that we cannot, and often should not try to, ever go home again.

The original game, released episodically across 2015, is undoubtedly one of the best-known “modern” adventure games. Treading the same ground as Telltale’s 2012 The Walking Dead, it used an episodic, “interactive television” approach to bring adventure games back into mainstream awareness. Adopting the narrative-branching choices that had become hugely popular in contemporary RPGs like Dragon Age, Life is Strange asked you to make decisions that could have deeply shocking repercussions. Max’s adventure begins as she saves her friend, Chloe, from death using a newly discovered power to rewind time, and from that moment on you’re never made to feel like a bystander. It hands over as much timeline-twisting control as possible at the earliest opportunity.

Despite its supernatural leanings, Life is Strange’s key appeal perhaps came from being something altogether different from the wider market: a rare video game that explores the ritual of coming-of-age while navigating cliques and classes. The high school drama is something well explored in cinema and for good reason, as most people alive have experienced the chaos of being a teenager. It might seem like niche material for a medium that is typically action-driven, but Life is Strange’s approach found fans from a multitude of backgrounds and has been enjoyed by many millions of players.

What is so compelling about that foundational story of Max and Chloe is how explosive it is. The two characters appear as chalk and cheese, the former reserved and the latter destructively rebellious. The use of Max’s ability to rewind time brings destruction, too, with her interventions harming as much as they help. By the end of the game it’s clear that loss is an unavoidable part of her power, reflected in the final decision: will you save her home, Arcadia Bay, or save Chloe from the incoming storm? An objective appraisal seems to suggest that the only really positive choice you can make is to allow Max to save the town, unlocking a path to becoming a photographer and move forward with her life. Of course, many people have been happy to use Max’s powers to save Chloe regardless of the consequences – it’s not a realistic situation, but it nevertheless reflects the muddy, sometimes unsatisfying nature of emotional and moral realities as we age.

As it has evolved, the Life is Strange series has lost its ability to tell compelling, thorny human stories through a supernatural lens. 2019’s Life is Strange 2 was divisive but presented a story with vast reach: a road trip following two brothers trying to escape the ramifications of racism and police brutality. 2021’s True Colors marked a turning point for the series, moving away from such nuance and embracing a direction that’s excessively sedate. At least some of that shifting direction can be attributed to publisher Square Enix passing the franchise’s torch to Deck Nine, creators of prequel Before the Storm and the current custodians of Life is Strange. There are well-meaning messages, ones hard fought for amidst toxic studio culture across True Colors’ development. Sadly, that doesn’t make up for the lack of real bite and narrative risk, and the sense of a game steered towards the broadest audience possible.

True Colors is, on the surface, very similar to the original Life is Strange games developed by Don’t Nod, but it’s undeniable that it leans into the cosy games movement. It’s set in a picture-perfect rural town, and your arrival there is accompanied by the beautiful-but-saccharine tones of Gabrielle Aplin’s “Home”. The log cabins and flower-laden frontages are joined by an extremely close-knit group of characters, with even the gruff older bar owner not curmudgeonly enough to avoid partaking in a wholesome LARP. There is, as per the wider series, a central mystery, supernatural elements, and some betrayal. The limited number of locations and general warm-heartedness, however, makes this feel like a soap opera for teens – with all the emotional catharsis that implies.

True Colors was the first Life is Strange game to release as a complete story, rather than delivered episodically. While it is divided into chapters, there’s a clear difference between its narrative structure and those of the games that preceded it. The original’s TV season-like approach delivers frequent, striking cliffhangers and distinctive differences between episodes, whether parallel timelines or unexpected deaths. It’s a design that, while perhaps crafted to encourage players to return for the next episode drop, creates a particularly incident-laden narrative.

True Colors and Double Exposure, meanwhile, are more focused on the relationships between characters, creating tales that aspire to be more mature rather than focused on maintaining a propulsive, season-selling narrative. The trade of incident-laden tales for closer-told realism, however, means sacrificing the emotional texture that should be central to the series. A coming of age tale, which all Life is Strange games are meant to be, should be as much about big ideas and even bigger emotions as the utter inter-personal whirlwind that change brings.

Many other aspects of the original experience have been muted. Music was always a key part of Life is Strange but, with the disappearing drama, it’s faded into the background. There aren’t moments like Max popping in her headphones for a listen of “To All Of You”, the ode to Americana which perfectly fits the first moments of the game’s high school experience. And the watercolour visuals of Life is Strange, which made its opening imagery of a towering tornado unforgettable, have been brushed aside in favour of the smooth and realistic. Double Exposure has industry-leading facial animations, but they can’t make up for a world that is devoid of wonder. It’s telling that one of True Colors’ most memorable moments, its characters watching lanterns rise into the sky, is simply a mirror of a sequence in Life is Strange 2.

The return of Chloe after so many years looks very likely to tread familiar ground. With another natural disaster threatening Max and her friends, it seems poised to once again ask what we should sacrifice for love. However, Double Exposure already indicates that these themes won’t be satisfyingly revived. Max’s return in 2024 didn’t bring the original spirit of the series back with her. The young, uncertain student was replaced by an adult fully capable of facing new challenges. Grief and doubt thread their way through the narrative but Max feels too emotionally equipped to deal with them, always with Gen Z quips – or measured reassurances – to hand no matter the situation. It’s alienating to be in the shoes of a protagonist who isn’t in much need of an emotional education, and for her to exist in a world where every character feels poisoned by ironic internet language. And if Reunion intends to simply retread the same ground as the original, its characters – now changed by life and experience, their arcs long since completed – are surely unable to successfully echo what made them so compelling and enduring in the first place.

There was the potential for a bolder approach than what’s coming. Double Exposure introduced the power to switch between timelines, which was an interesting concept but brought about simple, almost immediately explained puzzles. A marriage of that idea and the original rewind power might have allowed for some innovative, layered adventuring that could lend some frisson to the now overly-smooth Life is Strange formula. Instead, there doesn’t seem to be much justification for Reunion’s existence. Comic books have already looked at the possibility of Max and Chloe reuniting, and even those great reads are hard to recall in the long run. The further adventures of that doomed duo seems best left to the imagination or less time-consuming side stories.

Despite the success of the arguably already anodyne True Colors, Square Enix appears to have balked at anything that might make Life is Strange unprofitable. The return of Max Caulfield alone was reported as not enough to bring financial success to the franchise’s publisher, and as a factor in an end-of-year downturn. The return of so many elements from the first game – Chloe, the rewind power, and seemingly even narrative and themes – feels like a crass attempt to profit from uninspired fan service. Repetitive doom and chaste romance are especially likely to be the default given Square Enix is well reported as having wanted to avoid the series being known as a “gay game”. It’s a series that seems intent on keeping its queer fans held at arms length, having refused to definitively determine its characters’ sexualities despite the direction of its story.

It’s reasonable that fans do want to see more Max and Chloe. There are always those who want more of any story, of course, but particularly so when the characters’ story originally lacked much in the way of an overt relationship. The problem is that there seems to be no indication of authentic artistic drive behind the series’ current direction. There can be no foundation to a meaningful story in the mixture of a troubled developer, ambivalent publisher, and weak vision for what the franchise means. Any impact of this title, other than being another product in a franchise, doesn’t look to last beyond Square Enix’s financial year.

It feels altogether like the series has reached a dead end with its trend-chasing and, more recently, profit-seeking, which now appear to be Life is Strange’s guiding principles. A brighter picture of what could have been can be found in Don’t Nod’s successor series, Lost Records, which launched with Bloom & Rage last year. Some maudlin melodrama can be found there, yes, but there’s also a level of emotional unpredictability that has been stripped out of Life is Strange’s DNA. This isn’t to say that Reunion is totally star-crossed, and no doubt fans will be clamouring to see the review scores. This is to say, however, that the risk-taking heart of the series feels long gone. Life is Strange: Reunion looks likely to have little to say about life or its strangeness, but damning things about intellectual property.

Ceridwen Millington is a journalist, gamer, and reader who is almost always ready to dive into science fiction.