Category: IGN

Bethesda boss Todd Howard will continue to work on Starfield and ensure the company’s ambitious space game can “eventually become something that will be legendary,” according to the game’s composer.

Speaking to RPGsite, veteran video game composer and frequent Bethesda collaborator Inon Zur said he believed Starfield had simply been ahead of its time when it arrived in 2023 to a more muted reception than the company’s usual Elder Scrolls and Fallout blockbusters.

The years since have seen Bethesda launch an initial expansion to the game, 2024’s Shattered Space, but not a whole lot else. Still, Bethesda invited a gaggle of hardcore Starfield fans to its studio before Christmas to show them some of what it is still working on, so we know that more content is on its way — even if the fans themselves have suggested it is not some kind of Cyberpunk 2077-esque version 2.0 relaunch.

“He is very persuasive and has a very strong character,” Zur said of Bethesda boss Todd Howard, who helped drive development on Starfield during its lengthy time in production. “He will also find ways to describe what he wants without really calling it a name. He knows how to allow freedom of creativity on one hand, but also how to steer it to his own vision. He is a visionary. He sees things that people will start to find out years later.

“This also applies to Starfield,” Zur continued. “When Starfield released, I believe people were just not ready for it. It’s a different way of looking at it, but Todd is really strong, and he said very, very lightly, ‘Look, if you don’t like it, then you don’t like it, but this is the new thing that we’re doing, and we’re sticking to it.’

“He believes in his way,” Zur added, “and it just has proven time and time again that eventually people will understand his vision. It just takes time and this is a common thing for all the big visionaries. Sometimes people really don’t understand them correctly, but they were strong enough to stay on course, and Todd will stay on course on Starfield. Starfield will eventually become something that will be legendary. I have no doubt. It’s just a matter of time.”

Does Zur know more about what Bethesda has planned for Starfield? It seems likely, considering the fact that he scored the main game and Shattered Space, and seems a safe bet to be involved in whatever new DLC or expansion Bethesda has been cooking. He’s also clearly close to the company in general, having also served as composer for Fallout 76, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, and parts of The Elder Scrolls Online. Outside of video games, he also wrote the Fallout TV series theme, alongside further work on several episodes.

So what do we expect is coming to Starfield? Well, Bethesda has previously confirmed plans to improve Starfield space gameplay “to make the travels there more rewarding”, after datamined fragments of code suggested the developer had a more streamlined space travel experience in the works. Based on this datamine, while you may be able to travel between planets within the same system, you won’t be able to fly all the way between systems, nor fly directly from a planet’s surface into orbit, like in No Man’s Sky.

A major retail leak last month suggested that this new content was being lined up to arrive alongside a PlayStation 5 version of the game, which is reportedly set to launch on April 7 with physical copies and both a Standard and Premium editions.

Last month, Howard himself confirmed that “a lot of Starfield content” is on the way, and that Bethesda would be announcing it more publicly “really soon.” Speaking to Kinda Funny, Howard teased that the company was “moving into a phase where we’re ready to talk about Starfield. And really show that in the right way, and what’s coming to the game. We’ve been doing a lot of work that we like a lot.”

Elsewhere, of course, Bethesda is mostly working on The Elder Scrolls 6. On the upside, Howard has said this project will mark a return to Bethesda’s “classic style” of games following experiments with online and sandbox-style gameplay in Fallout 76 and Starfield. On the downside, it also sounds like the project won’t be ready for launch anytime soon.

Then there’s the Fallout 3 remaster that fans are desperate to see announced, which is also reportedly in active development, years after it appeared in FTC documents as part of Microsoft’s bid to buy Activision Blizzard. The Verge said Bethesda is keen to ensure the game is polished enough to enjoy a successful launch similar to last year’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, which Bethesda chief Todd Howard recently told IGN he was “really, really pleased” with.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Destiny fans are lamenting the future of Bungie’s sci-fi shooter franchise, following a threadbare update this week, released while the developer focuses on supporting Marathon.

Destiny 2 Update 9.5.5.5 arrived on Wednesday, and its full patch notes read as follows:

And that’s it. Now, to be fair, there was no expectation that this week would bring a vast well of new Destiny 2 content to keep players occupied. Destiny players are also well aware of the fact Bungie is currently busy trying to make Marathon a success. But, as one fan put it in response: “I expected nothing and still got disappointed.”

Last month, Bungie announced via social media that it was delaying its next major Destiny 2 game update, Shadow and Order, by a full three months — from March until June — something it blamed on the need to make “large revisions” to its content.

At the time it announced that delay, Bungie avoided mentioning its simultaneous launch of Marathon, which would have arrived within the same release window — presumably to avoid the suggestion that one project was sapping resources from the other. But Destiny fans have found it hard to imagine a world where, had Bungie not been also focused on shipping Marathon, its revisions to Shadow and Order would not need to take as long.

Indeed, in its statement on the delay, Bungie seemed to go as far as it could to signal that things would be quieter for Destiny over the coming months, with basic maintenance and balance updates likely the only changes that players would see. The studio then thanked fans for their “continued patience and support,” before affirming that it would release more information on the update “closer to launch.”

For many players, the news felt like Bungie effectively moving its public focus on Destiny to the back burner until the summer months — something this week’s latest update has only cemented in fans’ minds, resulting in a mix of frustration and dark humor.

“Almost 3 hours of downtime for… this,” noted one fan, in a lengthy thread of complaints on reddit. “A single fix.”

“I’m curious – how many patches have only ever been one patch note?” questioned one fan. “Even dating back to Destiny 1, I feel like that has to be a rare sight. Not even dogging on the game/studio – genuine curiosity.”

“There’s literally no one working on this game anymore,” wrote another fan. “Dev team is genuinely one part timer huh,” added a second. “So effectively they’ve dropped Destiny entirely to work on Marathon? Sigh, could of at least released the DLC you announced first,” said a third.

“Next [blog] will literally just say ‘please play Marathon’,” reads another comment. “You can only laugh about it and then cry about what has become of the best live service game ever,” reads yet another.

IGN has contacted Bungie owner Sony for more detail on its content plans and resources available to work on Destiny, but did not receive a response. In the meantime, it remains a tough time for the developer and the nine-year-old Destiny 2, while there have also been mixed reports on Marathon’s initial launch performance so far.

Last year, Sony said Bungie had failed to meet its sales and user engagement expectations, following a notable drop in Destiny 2 player numbers. The damage was bad enough that Sony said it had been forced to record a 31.5 billion yen (around $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.

“For years now, Destiny has been on this steady hardening of the core [audience],” Destiny 2 game director Tyson Green told IGN back in November. “More and more core players are staying and playing the game, but relatively few [new] people come into the game. There’s a tightening and contraction, and this presents problems for a game that you’re trying to maintain as a live service, especially when you want to keep serving those core players with great, compelling expansions.” Exactly when these might arrive, however, remains to be seen.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Pokémon Pokopia will soon get an update that addresses an array of issues and improvements, Nintendo has confirmed.

Launched last week to huge success, Pokopia players are already creating blocky Pokémon paradises full of incredible creations — though a few users have gotten snagged by bugs along the way. Now, Nintendo has said it is aware of several issues — and listed a string of bugs and upcoming additions it has planned for Pokopia in the near future.

Happily, Nintendo expects that its planned update will several progression blockers that are currently occurring in players’ worlds, even if players have encountered them already (so no, hopefully you don’t now need to start over).

Other than bug fixes, there’s no mention here of actual new content also coming to Pokémon Pokopia in future — but it is still early days. And it’s worth remembering that the first in-game event “More Spores for Hoppip” is already now live, and set to run until March 25.

Beyond that, it remains to be seen how and when Nintendo will add new Pokémon species and items to Pokopia, though the game’s big launch (with more than 2.2 million copies already sold) means it’s likely the game will be kept updated for the forseeable future.

Nintendo’s current list of upcoming fixes, as confirmed in a new blog post on the official Pokémon Pokopia website, lies below:

Known issues

• When requesting “Let’s build a home!” in “Pasapasa Koya Town,” Squirtle moves up a tree and cannot be spoken to, preventing the request from progressing.
• In the “Gloomy Seaside Town” request “Find a Pokémon Center!”, if you destroy the cracked blocks on the bridge before Mojambo crosses it, it will be difficult to progress with the request.
• When performing the “Find a Pokémon Center!” request in “Dusky Seaside Town,” if you follow certain steps, the event to repair the bridge in “Mojumbo” will not occur, and you will not be able to progress with the request.
• In “Rugged Mountain Town,” if you follow certain steps, the event where you encounter “Rotom” will no longer occur.
• When the request “Let’s clean up the roads!” in “Rugged Mountain Town” occurs under certain circumstances, it becomes difficult to progress with the request.
• The type of “Spinarak” in the Pokédex is incorrect.

Planned improvements

• In the “Pasapasa Koya Town” request “Break the rocks with a Rock Smasher!”, if you place another block in the position of the cracked block near the “Crab Growl”, it will be difficult to understand how to proceed.
• In the “Dusty Seaside Town” request “Take the Professor with you!”, if you place another block in the position of the cracked block near “Snorlax”, it will be difficult to understand how to progress.

Future plans

An update to correct the above will be released soon. Even if the problem has already occurred, applying this update will resolve it. We will continue to investigate any other issues not mentioned above.

If you’re currently playing the game and not stuck at a progression blocking bug, be sure to check out our list of all the Pokémon in Pokopia, and take a look at our Things to Do First in Pokopia guide to make the most of your first few days. To help you get started, we’ve also got a list of 17 things that Pokopia doesn’t tell you, plus How to Raise the Environment Level and How to Raise Pokémon Comfort Level.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Blight: Survival has reemerged with a new gameplay trailer — and its developers are promising big news in 2026 after a whopping 1.5 million Steam wishlists.

In a new development update, publisher Behaviour Interactive, of Dead by Daylight fame, and developer Haenir Studio, announced small scape playtests to help shape the game’s future.

Blight: Survival is a medieval co-op action horror game whose 2022 announcement trailer — an early look at gameplay — has seen 3.9 million views on IGN’s YouTube channel alone. The new trailer, below, shows new in-engine footage showcasing combat finishers.

After the trailer went viral and those Steam Wishlists piled up, Ulrik Langvandsbråten, creative director and cofounder at Haenir Studio, partnered with Behaviour and set about rebuilding Blight’s core systems from the ground up.

In an interview with IGN, Ashley Pannell, senior creative director on Blight: Survival at Behaviour Interactive, acknowledged the pressure the team is now under following its viral success and the weight of so many Steam Wishlists, but said the pressure will result in a better game.

“We understand the heightened expectations of what we are being asked to deliver upon here,” he said. “What I personally really love about this is somehow the zombie trope is so powerful that it’s such an all- encompassing thing that we just have to deliver on those expectations to the best of our ability. And that’s really our goal every day, is to try and reach that benchmark to work towards those goals. And yeah, it absolutely is a big responsibility for us to do that. But one of the things that we have as a result of this, is that we have a community with us, and we have a group of people who are on this journey with us. We’re not alone here. It wasn’t just comments from three years ago. And even now, we are doing small scale play tests with members of the community, with the team, to really try and fulfill those expectations and make sure that we deliver on the game that A, they thought it was going to be, and B, that we believe that it can be at the same time.

“So we’re on a journey together. We may have not been loud to the world, but we’ve been very active with our community, talking to our community, making sure that we get their feedback whenever we can. And like I said, even through actual small scale playtesting already, which we’re doing regularly.”

2022 feels like a long time ago now, and gamers have been burnt before by Steam games that have either failed to meet expectations, failed to even come out, or scammed customers outright. People are more sceptical now of flashy, ‘too good to be true’ gameplay reveal trailers from unknown developers than they perhaps were just a few years ago. And this is something Pannell said the team is well aware of.

“From a dev team perspective, we obviously know that we’re building a real game every day, every moment,” Pannell said. “So on a day-to-day basis, as a creator, I tend not to think too much about it. But it’s true. It’s absolutely true and correct that obviously people have been burned by things that have been released. Our goal is to ultimately, as we move forward, prove that we are making a real game, that it is awesome. We’re focusing on the fun, we’re focusing on the things that really matter to making a good quality, fun game that fulfills these expectations.

“We do talk about it. We do think about it. It does, like anything, that worries us. But then 10 years before that it was, did you have a loopbox in your game? 10 years before that it was something else. There’s always something to worry about. And I guess our goal is to manage the expectations and make sure that as we move forward and develop, that we release what we think is right. What is good, what is right and what is fun? And how can we deliver this message in a way that is meaningful to people and especially our community that if anyone is primed for a fall, it’s the people who started coming along for the ride in the first place. So yeah, it’s a thing we think about, but I wouldn’t say it dominates our thoughts. I mean, certainly, before we had this meeting, we had like, this could come up. It’s a thing that is real in the world right now and it’s important to be able to tackle.”

So, what is Blight: Survival? It’s an action horror co-op game set in a brutal medieval world. “It is a game where tension beats at the heart of the whole experience,” Pannell explained. “So I’m not going to land directly on any obvious genres here other than that overall thing. So as a player, every combat you enter will have a risk and reward. And risk reward is a key element of the overall driving part of many features in the game. So whatever you do, you always have to weigh up your decisions really carefully because every fight might be your last, every investigation might be your last, or it might bring you great reward. It’s not just a traditional action horror, it’s not a hack and slash, but it definitely is beating at the heart of this tension that is driven by risk and reward wherever we can find it in the situation we have.

“So it borrows from a number of different genres, but I think our closest landing point is action horror. It is a combat driven game with elements of exploration, with extraction light elements that are in there, and other elements also from games of that genre that help us drive the internal tension and the risk the players take whenever they’re in a given space.”

As for those extraction elements, don’t expect a clone of Arc Raiders or Marathon. “We have loss in our game, and the decision whether to bank that or keep it at some point in the game will become a key choice the player makes,” Pannell teased. “The decision to take more risk at the consequence of, for want of a description, call it extracting early to bank your reward will or is currently in the game as we would expect and a core component of how the game plays. So we have extraction elements, but it’s not driven exclusively as the extraction genre. And we’re also taking extraction influence from other types of games, like for example, Helldivers or Deep Rock Galactic, that have extraction components as a core part of the phase of the game.

“Again, not a direct analog, but we have both elements of what we normally consider a round-based game with extraction, plus a pure extraction game too. We have both those elements in our game, and they work in harmony with each other over the course of your playtime.

“The core game loop is you go in, you try and amass what you can, and you can always push for more, but you could always back out when you feel like you’ve got something that is meaningful.”

Don’t expect a release in 2026, but things are certainly ramping up. There are 45,000 people in the Blight discord, where playtesters will be plucked from. And the developers will then respond to feedback.

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.

There’s something endlessly endearing about a good-natured dummy. Just a happy, optimistic doofus that can barely scrape two brain cells together to form a thought. You can take your dark and brooding Kratos, or your wisecracking Spider-Man. Give me Dunk from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, or Guybrush Threepwood from The Secret of Monkey Island, heck, even the dog from Up, any day of the week. And soon, give me Davy, the undead nobody, from Stupid Never Dies, the upcoming action-RPG and debut release from the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil veterans at GPTRACK50.

IGN recently met with the team behind Stupid Never Dies for a first look at Davy’s wild adventure. With blazing-fast action, a slick approach to changing combat styles, and a naive goofball of a hero that might just be in over his head, this has the makings of a damned good time. And, like many of the best, most foolish adventures, it starts with a bit of romance.

Romance is (un)dead

Davy is dead. Not figuratively, or metaphorically, he’s literally dead, and risen again as a zombie. The world has gone to hell (again, not a metaphor), and monsters now roam the world, in total control. As a lowly zombie, Davy sits firmly at the bottom rung of monster society. Weak and powerless, he wanders an abandoned shopping mall, his un-life devoid of meaning or purpose, until he “meets” Julia.

Julia, like Davy, is dead. Though in her case being dead stuck. Instead of a zombie roaming around the end of the world, she met her end in a freezer inside of the mall, and has stayed a human popsicle for who knows how long. When Davy shambles upon her one day, it’s love at first sight, and he makes it his mission to bring Julia back to life, and ask her out.

It’s not exactly the sort of meet-cute you’d see in a Hallmark movie, but it’s enough to send Davy delving deep into creature-filled dungeons in hopes of taking on the King of Monsters (or KOM), stealing his powers, and saving Julia. Davy isn’t usually a fighter, but with Julia’s life on the line, he’s willing to make an exception.

This not-even-remotely-thought-out mission might seem doomed before it starts, but, thanks to some dumb luck, Davy finds a strange egg, and, feeling a bit hungry, decides to make a meal of it. While eating random mystery eggs is not typically a good idea, in Davy’s case it works out beautifully. That snack turns out to be a phoenix egg, and eating it has awakened Davy’s dormant zombie power, and granted him an incredible new ability called Style Eat.

Funky Zombie Action

The KOM rules over monsters from deep within his dungeon, and Davy will need to fight through his armies to reach him. The miasma that permeates the dungeon directly affects Davy. Unlike the surface, where he moves with the classic slow undead shuffly, the miasma turbo charges Davy, allowing him to run, jump, and attack freely. His bite allows him to rip through other monsters, and by sinking his teeth into their core, he activates Style Eat, and that’s when the fun really begins.

Style Eat allows Davy to take on the characteristics and abilities of his enemies. Think Mega Man, or even Kameo, but with more gnawing. Snack on a werewolf, for example, and you’ll gain claws, fur, and beastlike agility, allowing you to rapidly tear through monsters and opening up new traversal options. Or chomp on a Lich to gain the ability to raise an army of skeletons from the enemies you kill. There are 11 styles total, and you can switch between them at the touch of a button – though limited slots mean you won’t be able to equip all of them at once. You can, however, combo the ones you do have. One example given was flying above enemies using the Harpy Style, then transforming into a heavy monster made of rock using the Golem Style, and crashing down on top of enemies.

The other trick up Davy’s infected sleeves is Body Hack, which allows you to customize his arms, head, and legs with special gear to add special effects. We only saw a small selection of the arm modifications, but seeing a missile pod strapped to Davy’s arm, and him unleashing ghoulish hell on a group of monsters was a pretty clear tone-setter. These also persist with the Style Eat transformations, so if you want to go into a fight as a Werewolf with a giant sword for an arm, you’re in luck.

While Stupid Never Dies isn’t necessarily a roguelike, it does have some of that DNA in its approach to progression. Each venture into the dungeon has a time limit, and Davy won’t be able to make it all the way to the KOM right away. You keep any loot you collect, but each fresh run resets Davy’s level back down to zero. However, as you progress further you will build an XP multiplier, allowing you to level up faster, and make it deeper on the next attempt.

With enough persistence, Davy may yet be able to slay KOM and Julia, though it remains to be seen if our lovable, undead-doofus of a protagonist will get the girls in the end. Fortunately, we won’t need to wait too long to sink our teeth into some monsters and find out. Stupid Never Dies on PC and PlayStation 5 later this year.

If you’re in the process of building a new gaming PC, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D should be your top CPU pick, especially with the new sale going at Amazon. For a limited time, this CPU has dropped to $429.95 with free shipping, which is the lowest price I’ve seen since its launch. Even better, it comes with a free voucher code for the highly anticipated Crimson Desert game, which will be released on March 19. The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is widely considered to be one of the best gaming processors on the market and outperforms even pricier AMD and Intel CPUs.

The Gamer’s Choice: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU for $430

Includes Crimson Desert

Fortnite fans are in uproar over Epic Games’ changes to the pricing and availability of V-Bucks, and now the game’s developer has finally acknowledged the wave of negative feedback.

This week, Epic Games announced its biggest ever shakeup to how Fortnite’s lucrative in-game currency is doled out, and how much it will cost to buy. In short, you’ll now get fewer V-Bucks for your money, fewer V-Bucks in each battle pass, and fewer V-Bucks as part of the game’s Fortnite Crew monthly subscription.

The response to these changes has been extremely negative, with complaints on reddit and social media criticizing the financial necessity of the changes, as well as their timing.

Fortnite’s recent Chapter 7 relaunch was initially well received, though in-game issues, an ever-increasing amount of premium crossovers, and the sheer length of the most recent season has seen that excitement sour.

Chapter 7 Season 1 is the third-longest in-game season ever, and the first since 2022 to last more than 100 days. It has also featured crossovers with everything from Harry Potter to Kim Kardashian, though outside of a lengthy South Park tie-in, most of these collaborations have simply involved the ability to buy items from the game’s shop.

And then there’s the brief and blunt explanation for the price rises put forth by Epic Games, a video game developer which makes billions. Here it is in full: “The cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot and we’re raising prices to help pay the bills.” It’s a blunt message from a video game developer known to profit enormously from Fortnite, stated with no further context on the game’s running costs or current performance, to which many fans simply rolled their eyes.

I’ve been subscribed to Fortnite Crew since its launch in 2020, but today I’ve decided to cancel it after the news of the V-Bucks reduction & increase in pricing.

The news yesterday was my breaking point with Crew especially because I’ve been so dissapointed with how its been… pic.twitter.com/noKuJkJ6ID

— Rezztro (@Rezztro) March 11, 2026

“Here’s the thing, I don’t doubt the cost of running Fortnite has gone up,” said Typical Gamer, one of the game’s most prolific YouTubers, during a subsequent stream. “But other than that it’s tough. We don’t have all the inside knowledge of them running the company.” Indeed, Epic Games has always shied away from discussing the sheer number of people and studios it utilizes to keep Fortnite’s never-ending content machine constantly whirring.

“The community sentiment was truly that there was just collabs, on collabs, on collabs, and that’s what Epic was focused on,” Typical Gamer continued. “So for that to be the community sentiment and then for them to drop this, it’s just not a good mix. And people are angry. They’re really, really upset. Some people are saying they’re not even going to buy the next season’s battle pass in protest.

“If they had just waited a little bit, until after they’d made Save the World free-to-play, focused on the storyline and Fortnite’s own characters, brought the storyline back and made a banger of a season… I think at that point you get a lot less community backlash. A lot of people are just feeling like it’s a slap in the face after everything that’s going on the last few months… But I do feel it’s rare that Fortnite turns back this decision. The way they worded it, the way it’s so blunt, it’s like they just wanted to rip off the bandage and there’s no going back.”

Responses from fans on social media, meanwhile, have been less measured. “This is the ens***ification of Fortnite,” wrote on player in a lengthy thread on reddit. “[Fortnite]’s not growing anymore so the scumbag C suite will try to squeeze as much money out of what is left by lowering the quality of the product (this season was total ass) and charging more for it (v-bucks price changes). So blatant, so predictable.”

Other threads show players screenshotting the cancelation screens of their Fortnite Crew subscriptions, and making pledges not to play Fortnite’s next season.

“Appreciate the posts in these threads today, everyone,” wrote Epic Games staff member EmptyTux, responding after many hours to the many reddit threads on the subject. “There’s been a lot of feedback here not just about the V-Bucks changes, but sharing your feelings about Fortnite as a whole — especially on this current season. Can’t wait to show you next week’s update <3”

Today brought another teaser for that new season, which sees Fortnite’s storyline truly kick up a gear. There’s word of a fresh in-game story moment this weekend, and another Power Hour to keep players engaged and coming back ahead of next week’s new season launch. But will all the players who walked away from Fortnite this week still be there, playing — and paying — as the battle royale soldiers on?

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Resident Evil fans who have yet to get their hands on Requiem, we have some exciting news: Amazon has restocked physical copies for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch 2. Hooray! All copies are available to pick up for $69.99, though you’ll want to be quick to make a move on them. Who knows how much longer they’ll be in stock at the retailer, so now is as good a time as any to grab them.

Buy Resident Evil Requiem for PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch 2

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.