Category: IGN

Doug Cockle, the voice actor behind The Witcher protagonist Geralt, has backed CD Projekt’s decision to focus on Ciri for The Witcher 4.

The Witcher 4, revealed at The Game Awards 2024 with a debut trailer, is the first in a new trilogy of Witcher games set after the events of The Witcher 3. But rather than star Geralt as protagonist, Ciri is the main character this time around.

Speaking exclusively to IGN ahead of the reveal, executive producer Małgorzata Mitręga said Ciri was “the very organic, logical choice.”

“It was always about her, starting from Saga when you read it in the books. She’s an amazing, layered character. And of course, as a protagonist we said goodbye to Geralt previously. So this is a continuation. I guess for all of us it’s like she was meant to be. That was always her.”

Game director Sebastian Kalemba added that because Ciri is younger than Geralt, players will have more freedom to define her character in a way they couldn’t with Geralt. This also affords the developers more space to explore her character.

While both Mitręga and Kalemba acknowledged a potential backlash from some corners of the internet at Ciri’s role as protagonist in The Witcher 4, they insisted Ciri was always going to be the game’s main character.

“There was an intention behind this choice,” Kalemba said. “It was far from roulette. It wasn’t random. I remember we had discussions nine years ago, we were talking about who’s next? The very, very instant answer was Ciri. There are many reasons behind that. We’ve already mentioned a few. But she really deserves a stage and we want players to really experience her story because she has so much to tell, so much to prove. The amount of challenges that are in front of her give us so much amazing energy and fuel to create an epic saga that we had no choice but to go with it. We all felt that this is the way. I believe this is the super right choice.”

Now, speaking to IGN as part of a wider interview on Netflix’s upcoming animated film, The Witcher: Sirens of The Deep, Cockle backed CD Projekt’s decision, even though it sees Geralt take a back seat.

“I’m really excited,” he said. “I think it’s a really good move. I mean, I always thought that continuing the Saga, but shifting to Ciri would be a really, really interesting move for all kinds of reasons, but mostly because of things that happen in the books, which I don’t want to give away because people, I want people to go read. So yeah, I think it’s really exciting. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see what they’ve done.”

If you’ve watched The Witcher 4’s debut trailer, you’ll have heard a line of dialogue that sounded very much like it was coming from previous protagonist Geralt: “Time for a new saga. See you on the path.”

IGN has confirmed that Geralt is indeed in The Witcher 4, and that is indeed the voice of Cockle. CD Projekt told IGN: “Geralt will appear in the game, but we don’t want to spoil his role precisely. You’ll have to wait to learn more for now.”

So, how can Geralt appear in The Witcher 4 after The witcher 3 left the character in semi-retirement at his vineyard in Toussaint? In an interview with IGN ahead of the reveal of The Witcher 4, CD Projekt franchise and lore designers Cian Maher and Marcin Batylda explained how the already established timeline of events makes it make sense.

“I mean Geralt will probably be around for a long time to the extent that in Season of Storms, the prequel novel that takes place actually before Geralt attends that banquet we mentioned earlier on, there is an epilogue in that book,” Maher explained.

“It takes place in a place called Magpie Forest in 1373, 101 years after The Witcher 3. And in that epilogue there is a certain white-haired witcher hunting a monster who remains unnamed, but who behaves in a certain way and obviously he has white hair. So by which I mean I think we can expect Geralt to be around for a long time. The capacity in which he does is, we’ll see, but I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

Sega has launched its own account system akin to the Nintendo Account or Ubisoft Connect that will “maximize” its online services and offer various benefits, kicking off with a free costume for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

The aptly named Sega Account was revealed on its new website and is described as “an online profile that gives you access to a host of benefits when playing Sega and Atlus titles and using their online services.

“By creating a Sega Account, you’ll receive the latest news about Sega and Atlus games, events, and promotions. Additionally, your Sega Account grants you access to exclusive bonuses and the ability to link accounts on various gaming platforms.”

The first of these benefits is the Kazuma Kiryu Special Outfit in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which lets protagonist Goro Majima dress up as his friend, rival, and longtime Yakuza series lead. This is the same outfit Sega is giving away for signing up to email notifications, but it’s unclear if that has now changed.

Those with a Sega Account between January 22 and March 7 will receive the outfit, distributed via a code between February 17 and March 7. Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii itself arrives on February 21, brought forward from its original February 28 date to avoid a clash with Monster Hunter Wilds.

Sega didn’t announce what future benefits fans could expect, but it will presumably include its other flagship franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Persona. It could also tie into a Game Pass style subscription service Sega is currently considering.

As reported by the BBC, the company is currently “evaluating some opportunities” in the subscription service space and, just like PlayStation launched its Game Pass rival on the back of its established PlayStation Plus service, Sega could be setting the foundations for a similar move in the future.

Fans are also speculating a connection with the impending Sega “Super Game,” expected to release by the end of March 2026. While practically nothing is known about this project, Sega described it as a “large scale global title” that many fans are expecting to be an accumulation of various games akin to what Call of Duty has done with its titles or what Ubisoft is working on with Assassin’s Creed Infinity: essentially a hub for myriad other games.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Mortal Kombat 1 development chief Ed Boon has taken to social media to reveal a glimpse at upcoming guest character T-1000 Terminator’s Fatality, and tease “future DLC.”

To mark the release of guest character Conan the Barbarian, Boon tweeted to say Mortal Kombat 1 has now sold over five million copies, up from the four million previously reported. Boon then tweeted a short clip showing one of the T-1000’s Fatalities, which Terminator 2 fans are sure to get a kick out of.

We see the T-1000 drive a smashed up truck straight into his hapless opponent, rekindling memories of the iconic chase scene in Terminator 2 where the T-1000 drives the same truck in pursuit of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator and Edward Furlong’s John Connor.

(5 of 7) With Conan getting into player’s hands, we are excited to keep trucking forward with future DLC ! pic.twitter.com/eC3Aqj5KDc

— Ed Boon (@noobde) January 21, 2025

But it’s Boon’s comment accompanying the clip that set tongues wagging within the Mortal Kombat community: “With Conan getting into player’s hands, we are excited to keep trucking forward with future DLC!”

While the line “keep trucking forward with future DLC” may relate to the upcoming release of the T-1000, some are hoping it’s a tease that more DLC characters are set to hit the game once the current set is rounded out.

T-1000 Terminator is the final DLC character set to be added to the gory fighting game as part of the Khaos Reigns expansion, and follows playable fighters Cyrax, Sektor, Noob Saibot, Ghostface, and Conan the Barbarian. Fans have wondered for some time now whether developer NetherRealm plans a third set of DLC characters, or a Kombat Pack 3, amid questions about Mortal Kombat 1’s sales success.

Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery has indicated, however, that it still believes in the Mortal Kombat franchise. In November, CEO David Zaslav said that on the games side of things, the company plans to double down on just four titles, one of which is Mortal Kombat.

In September, Boon said NetherRealm had decided on its next game three years prior, but promised to support Mortal Kombat 1 “for a long time to come.”

Most fans of the studio’s work expect it to release a third game in its DC fighting game franchise, Injustice, although neither NetherRealm nor Warner Bros. has yet to confirm that. The first game in the series, Injustice: Gods Among Us, launched in 2013, with its sequel, Injustice 2, coming out in 2017. NetherRealm released Mortal Kombat 11 in 2019 and for a time it seemed like the studio would alternate between Mortal Kombat and Injustice games, but it went on to release another Mortal Kombat, the soft reboot that is Mortal Kombat 1, in 2023 instead.

In an interview with IGN in June 2023, Boon spoke in vague terms about this decision. “There were a number of factors, some of which I can talk about, some of which I probably shouldn’t,” Boon said.

Two reasons Boon was willing to discuss were the unfortunate onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the team’s choice to switch to a newer version of the Unreal game engine (Mortal Kombat 11 runs on Unreal Engine 3, whereas Mortal Kombat 1 runs on Unreal Engine 4).

“But we did go to a new graphics engine, Unreal,” Boon said. “We really wanted to be careful with COVID and all that stuff and everybody staying safe. So there were a bunch of variables involved that eventually we realized, ‘Okay, let’s do another Mortal Kombat game and hopefully we’ll get back to the Injustice games.’ “

Just to be sure, we wanted to confirm with him directly that the door was not closed on the Injustice franchise.

“Not at all,” Boon answered.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The New York Game Awards 2024 has arrived and, alongside honoring Remedy Entertainment creative director Sam Lake, the show saw Astro Bot become the big winner of the night as it took home Game of the Year, Best Music, and Best Kids Game.

While Astro Bot led the way with three wins, there were many other incredible games and people honored in the other 10 categories, including Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. The highly praised DLC for Elden Ring was the only other game to win multiple awards as it emerged victorious in the Best World and Best DLC categories.

Other highlights included Simone De Rochefort and Clayton Ashley winning the Knickerbocker Award for Best Games Journalism (The same one IGN’s Rebekah Valentine won in 2022!) for their work on The Great Game: The Making of Spycraft, Troy Baker winning Best Acting in a Game for his performance as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and UFO 50 winning Best Indie Game.

You can check out the full list of the winners and nominees of the New York Game Awards 2025 below and see how they compare to IGN’s Awards in 2024! You can also read our chat with Sam Lake about the honor of winning the Andrew Yoon Legend Award!

New York Game Awards 2025 Winners

Big Apple Award for Best Game of the Year

• Balatro
• Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
• Astro Bot – WINNER
• UFO 50
• 1000xResist
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• Metaphor: ReFantazio
• EA Sports College Football 25

Off Broadway Award for Best Indie Game

• Tales of Kenzera: ZAU
• Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
• Balatro
• I Am Your Beast
• UFO 50 – WINNER
• 1000xResist
• Thank Goodness You’re Here!
• Neva

Herman Melville Award for Best Writing in a Game

• Harold Halibut
• Metaphor: ReFantazio – WINNER
• 1000xResist
• Life is Strange: Double Exposure
• Phoenix Springs
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Statue of Liberty Award for Best World

• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree – WINNER
• Tales of Kenzera: ZAU
• Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
• Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
• Astro Bot
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 Heart of Chornobyl

Tin Pan Alley Award for Best Music in a Game

• Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
• Life is Strange: Double Exposure
• Astro Bot – WINNER
• Arco
• Black Myth Wukong
• 1000xResist

Great White Way Award for Best Acting in a Game

• Abubakar Salim as Zau, Zuberi and Griot Echo in Tales of Kenzera: ZAU
• John Eric Bentley as Barret in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
• Hannah Telle as Max Caulfield in Life is Strange: Double Exposure
• Melina Juergens as Senua in Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
• Troy Baker as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – WINNER
• Humberly González as Kay in Star Wars Outlaws

Coney Island Dreamland Award for Best AR/VR Game

• Thrasher
• Batman: Arkham Shadow – WINNER
• Umurangi Generation VR
• Skydance’s Behemoth
• Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire
• Shattered

Central Park Children’s Zoo Award for Best Kids Game

• Astro Bot – WINNER
• Super Mario Party Jamboree
• Little Kitty, Big City
• Sonic X Shadow Generations
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

A-Train Award for Best Mobile Game

• Rabbids: Legends of the Multiverse
• Wuthering Waves
• Zenless Zone Zero – WINNER
• Ex Astris
• Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket

Freedom Tower Award for Best Remake

• Soul Reaver 1 and 2 Remastered
• Silent Hill 2 – WINNER
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
• Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
• Age of Mythology: Retold
• Persona 3: Reload

Chumley’s Speakeasy Award for Best Hidden Gem

• Ultros
• Vampire Therapist
• Mouthwashing – WINNER
• Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
• Mars After Midnight
• Starstruck: Hands of Time

NYC GWB Award for Best DLC

• Alan Wake II: Night Springs and The Lake House
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown – Mask of Darkness
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree – WINNER
• Remnant 2: The Dark Horizon
• Splatoon 3: Side Order
• Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred

Knickerbocker Award for Best Games Journalism

• Duncan Fyfe
• Alexis Ong
• Grant Stoner
• Mason Andrew Hamberlin
• Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
• Simone De Rochefort & Clayton Ashley – WINNER

Andrew Yoon Legend Award Recipient

• Sam Lake – Winner

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.

While supplies last, Target is offering the excellent Super Mario RPG remake for Nintendo Switch for only $30. You can get free shipping on orders $35 or more, which you’ll want to do to avoid the $5.99 shipping fee. This game is a physical copy so you can sell or trade it off when you’re done with it.

Super Mario RPG for $30

Normally, when a sequel is announced that’s a wild departure from the original, I welcome it with open arms – look no further than my inexplicable but everlasting love of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts as evidence. But after more than a dozen hours with Hyper Light Breaker – a follow-up (though not a proper sequel) to one of my all-time favorite indie games, Hyper Light Drifter – I feel like Vito Corleone telling y’all to look at how they massacred my boy. There’s clearly the skeleton of a good action-RPG hidden somewhere in this incredibly challenging co-op roguelite, but it’s currently buried deeper than the sun can see under sloppy combat mechanics, shallow and frustrating exploration, and scant content that feels repetitive after just a couple hours. Of course, this is its early access launch, so there’s always hope an initially rough package will transform into something much better with enough time, but what’s here right now is largely a disappointment.

The goal of each run is to hunt around a randomized map for better gear and key items before taking on three highly deadly and supremely irritating bosses, then extract yourself back to base to regroup, buy some upgrades, and do it again. The procedurally generated worlds you and up to two friends will spend most of your time exploring at least look quite pretty, using a unique art style that channels the vibe of Hyper Light Drifter in 3D quite well. But these repetitive areas are extremely obnoxious to navigate, filled with awkward cliffs and crooked landscapes that feel like I’m not actually supposed to be climbing them but offer me no other choice. On the bright side, they at least give you a neat hoverboard to ride around on and do tricks, and although the controls are as sloppy as everything else, hoverboards are indeed still dope as hell and there are definitely some good times to be had there.

Sadly, the same can’t be said about the lackluster hack-and-slash combat. There isn’t anything interesting about the melee attacks you are given, the alternative third-person shooting option has very limited ammo, moving and dodging feel unresponsive and inconsistent, and the lock-on system constantly toggled itself off unexpectedly and got me and my crew killed many times – to the point where I just stopped using it altogether. Combine that with the fact that you’re constantly swarmed by mobs that are often more annoyingly omnipresent than interesting, and a Hyper Light Breaker can get quite infuriating. And you better hope you’ve got some friends willing to help you with your runs, because things feel even worse when you’re playing alone as there is seemingly no scaling of any kind to compensate for your reduced manpower.

These things are especially frustrating when Hyper Light Breaker has been balanced to be so immediately difficult – and I mean exceedingly difficult, and that’s coming from someone with all the achievements in Sekiro – but doesn’t bother to explain its rules and often punishes you with an onslaught of enemy attacks that feel cheap. It’s also quite funny that you start with no healing items whatsoever (and are only given them at great expense and extremely sparingly) when you’d think you would need them most at the beginning when you’re learning. Instead, you basically have to throw yourself at impossible odds until you can unlock the bare minimum you need to survive.

There are only two of a planned three bosses to be found in the current version of Hyper Light Breaker: a giant wolf with a sword named Dro, and a melee warrior who wields fiery magic named Exus. Both are incredibly sloppy fights where minions are summoned endlessly and the boss flops around erratically to do massive damage. Dealing with these beefy leaders on their own is straightforward enough, but when you’re constantly bombarded by the same highly lethal enemies you find in the open-world areas, already challenging encounters become downright annoying. It also means you’re almost required to fight them alongside a full crew of three players if you want to win, with at least one person just focusing on crowd control. If your teammates falter in the middle of the fight, you’ll quickly find yourself in a nearly hopeless situation and get swarmed to death. And to add insult to injury, you have to beat the more irritating of the two fights, Dro, twice to complete a run right now in lieu of the third unique boss that hasn’t been added yet. And even when you manage to do so, you’re told that the final boss, the Abyss King, isn’t available yet before your run ends and you get sent back to start a new one.

Unfortunately, Hyper Light Breaker doesn’t currently give you a lot of reasons to continue playing after that. Sure, you’ll unlock small perks that grow you a bit stronger and make runs more manageable, but there’s very little new to see or do once you head back out. Simply having an easier go of it in later runs feels quite backwards to the roguelite formula as well, one that usually has you turning on difficulty modifiers and whatnot so the challenge level keeps up with you in exchange for greater reward. None of that can be found in Hyper Light Breaker at present. Even the two alternate characters you can unlock only have a few stat changes and one unique perk to differentiate them – although playing as a surfing ninja raccoon is at least pretty dope aesthetically.

The lack of any unique or powerful loot also contributed to my waning interest, especially once I completed a run or two. You’ll find a few different types of melee and ranged weapons, from cumbersome greatswords and lightning-fast hand claws, to peashooter sidearms and powerful shotguns, but the common and very weak versions of these items feel incredibly similar to the rare and powerful versions you’ll unlock down the road, merely adding some additional damage over time, little perks like restoring health when you execute an enemy, or some other minor benefit. Completely missing from the pool of items are any crazy game-changing options that substantially increase your effectiveness in combat or alter how you approach a given run.

Finally, and least surprisingly, Hyper Light Breaker is pretty poorly optimized in its current early access state. Frame rate dips and screen tearing were nearly constant during many of my play sessions and crashes or disconnects are a regular occurrence, especially if you aren’t the host. But worst of all, respawning after each death takes minutes of loading screens and menus slowly crawling by before you can get back into the action, making the inevitable failed runs in a roguelite that demands failure feel like a severe punishment. It’s encouraging that improvements have already been rolled out to make some of these issues less severe, and I fully expect this will be an area of continued improvement in the coming weeks and months, but at least right now, it can be quite rocky.

Developer Warhorse Studios and publisher Plaion have announced the Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 post-launch roadmap, revealing the content players can look forward to after the game’s release date in a few weeks.

The plan for free and paid post-launch content was detailed in a video, below. Although there is little gameplay footage for some of the bigger content plans, fans still get an outline of how Warhose will support its medieval sequel throughout 2025.

In spring, expect free updates that range from a Barbers feature with additional customization options to Hardcore Mode and Horse Racing. Summer will then follow with what appears to be the first paid content drop, Brushes with Death, which Warhorse said follows protagonist Henry as he “aids an enigmatic artist with a shadowy past.”

The autumn season brings the Legacy of the Forge expansion, add-on content that looks into Henry’s past by exploring his adoptive father Martin’s history. Finally, as far as this Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 post-launch roadmap is concerned, winter sees the release of Mysteria Ecclesia, which sees Henry embark on a covert mission to “navigate the complex dynamics” of the Sedlec Monastery.

Warhorse promised to release more free quality-of-life updates as each seasonal expansion rolls out. Details regarding what these updates entail have yet to be revealed. It sounds like each expansion will be available for players to purchase individually, but you’ll also be able to acquire the full bundle as part of an Expansion Pass that also includes the Shields of Seasons Passing shield customization DLC.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 launches for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on February 4, 2025. If you’re interested in picking up a copy but don’t know what comes in each edition, you can see our breakdown here. Then, be sure to check out Warhorse’s response to claims that Saudi Arabia had recently moved to ban the game’s release.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP.

Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

The Pokémon Trading Card Game and Pokémon TCG Pocket have teamed up with McDonald’s to give away cards both in real life and the app.

As reported by PokéBeach, the Dragon Discovery event will be available in the U.S. from today, January 21, to February 24. It is also scheduled for Austria and New Zealand beginning sometime in January but no other countries (besides France where it’s already active) have been announced.

The Dragon Discovery event will see Happy Meals — dressed up as Charizard, Dragonite and Pikachu, Rayquazza, and Roaring Moon — give away a special four card booster pack containing one holographic card.

really hope i catch a Rayquaza wbu
order the Pokémon Happy Meal today and unlock Pokémon TCG Pocket rewards with the McD’s app 👀 pic.twitter.com/CMELZPniQo

— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) January 21, 2025

There are 15 cards in the unique set. Pikachu, Miraidon, Koraidon, Hydreigon, Roaring Moon, Dragonite, and Drampa are holos, while Charizard, Jigglypuff, Hatena, Dragapult, Quagsire, Umbreon, Eevee, and Rayquazza are not. The Happy Meals also come with a double sided poster and stickers.

McDonald’s itself revealed on X/Twitter that those who order one of the Happy Meals through the official McDonald’s app will gain rewards in Pokémon TCG Pocket too: 24 Pack Hourglasses and 12 Wonder Hourglasses.

This means players can unlock two packs (which would cost $1 if paying for them otherwise) in the digital TCG and pick up a level one Wonder Pick too.

Pokémon has collaborated on myriad events like this in the past, some of which feature higher sought after cards than others. While McDonald’s cards will be, in the collector’s market, relatively low value, others such as the Van Gogh Museum collaboration have gone very wrong.

What was meant to be a charming event to encourage children to enjoy art instead turned into a scalper’s paradise and a fan’s worst nightmare. Those looking to resell a special trading card flooded the museum shop and caused so much chaos The Pokémon Company cancelled the collaboration altogther.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

NetEase Games has revealed the Marvel Rivals Spring Festival event, which adds a handful of new hero skins and a soccer game mode that might look familiar to Overwatch and Rocket League players.

The team behind the hero shooter hit announced its latest update with a trailer, below, promising to kick off the new year with the Clash of Dancing Lions game mode as well as the Fortune & Colors Gallery Card customization event starting January 23 at 9am UTC.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Clash of Dancing Lions looks an awful lot like Overwatch’s long-running summer event, Lúcioball. The standard version of both modes sees players compete in 3v3 soccer matches with a few unique twists that capitalize on their heroes’ abilities. Both obviously rip elements from Psyonix’s massively popular Rocket League, though, and it looks like the Marvel take on the blown-up soccer experience comes with a few differences, too.

For starters, the limited-time mode seems to focus on at least three characters – Star-Lord, Iron Fist, and Black Widow – instead of just one hero. The soccer ball also seems to be the size of your average, real-life ball, too, as players can be seen carrying it around the competition and to the goal. Marvel Rivals and Overwatch already share more than a few things in common, but it will be hard to say just how similar Clash of Dancing Lions and Lúcioball are until the Marvel event drops in a few days.

The Marvel Rivals Spring Festival event allows players to complete tasks for rewards, including the Star-Lord Lion’s Mane costume seen in the trailer. Additional details remain under wraps, but NetEase tells players that they’ll be able to earn other goodies, such as a nameplate, spray, and more, as part of the event. While the Iron Fist Lion’s Gaze and Black Widow Lion’s Heartbeat outfits were also shown off in the new video, the developers only tell fans to expect to see the three skins arrive in-game “in the coming weeks.”

In other Marvel Rivals news, players are still looking forward to the Marvel’s Spider-Man tie-in skin set to arrive later this month. Meanwhile, many community members are still discussing the project’s alleged bot problem and what it could mean for the future of the competitive Marvel video game. For more on NetEase’s popular hero shooter, you can check out all active Marvel Rivals codes here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP.

Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

An indie developer familiar with making games for the original Switch has explained why that brief look at Mario Kart 9 suggests the Switch 2 is “significantly more powerful.”

The Nintendo Switch 2’s grand hardware reveal last week swept many off of their feet. However, one thing that Nintendo has been suspiciously quiet about is the technical prowess of its new handheld. While we have clear upgrades like new Joy-Cons, a redesigned kickstand, and a larger form factor, we still have no official word on just how powerful the Switch 2 is.

But does the brief glimpse at Mario Kart 9 in the reveal video provide clues? In a new YouTube video (via GamesRadar), indie developer Jerrel Dulay of Sungrand Studios said that he expects the Switch 2 to be much more powerful than the original console. Dulay is credited as being one of the last developers to work on titles for the Wii U and 3DS, and is intimately familiar with Nintendo hardware.

Dulay explained that the new Mario Kart footage in the Switch 2 trailer could give us a glimpse at exactly what the Switch 2 may be capable of. He first noted the presence of “physically-based shaders” on cars and other textures. These shaders can be applied to objects and can be affected by reflections, lighting, or other effects.

In late 2023, Digital Foundry published an extensive report on the Switch 2’s new hardware, which allegedly includes the Nvidia T239 ARM mobile chip. The T239 chip reportedly inside the Switch 2 is projected to have 1536 CUDA Cores (these cores can process shaders), 40% fewer than the desktop variant of the RTX 3050 GPU, which is on the same 8nm Nvidia Ampere architecture. This was corroborated by the Switch 2’s motherboard leaks, which showed a potential 8nm chip.

The original Nintendo Switch’s Tegra X1 chip possessed just 256 CUDA cores, marking a 500% increase in pure availability of CUDA core count alone.

“Every single piece of geometry I see here is using physically-based rendering for the shaders,” Dulay explained. He noted that using complex shaders on the original Nintendo Switch was demanding for the hardware, and using many of them could cause framerates to plummet. Dulay added that the Mario Kart footage also shows off additional material reflections from the ground, his face, and more.

Dulay pointed to the high-resolution ground textures used throughout the footage, saying: “ground textures, because they take up so much space, they are something that will have to be high-resolution.” He went on to explain how high-resolution textures also demand available RAM.

The original Nintendo Switch has just 4GB of RAM to run games and its OS, whereas the Nintendo Switch 2 is rumored to have 12GB of RAM. The Switch 2 motherboard leak showed off two SK Hynix LPDDR5 modules, which could offer up to 12GB of RAM, with each chip offering 6GB each.

We currently don’t know the specific speed of the RAM modules, which could offer significant increases in efficiency compared to the original Switch’s 1600MHz while docked. A similar part from RAM manufacturer SK Hynix can run at speeds up to 7500MHz, increasing the amount of available bandwidth for the RAM pool significantly.

This means that things such as texture loading could be much faster, allowing for the new Mario Kart to use high-resolution textures. “It’s not that they’re just high-resolution, but there’s a high number of unique textures being used,” Dulay added. The potential higher memory transfer rate paired with the pure RAM storage increase could lead to significantly prettier Switch 2 titles.

Dulay further stated that the Mario Kart teaser also includes “true volumetric lighting,” which is taxing for any GPU to run. “It takes into account the distance, the height, you can have certain areas be more dense, you can have light rays.”

According to Dulay, the Switch 2’s display of volumetric lighting in the new Mario Kart title is indicative of just how powerful the Switch 2 could be: “it tells me that the Switch 2 is significantly more powerful, because they want these games running at 60 frames a second.”

“This is a massive deal, this is the most important part of the reveal trailer to me,” Dulay further commented, explaining that implementing volumetric lighting was a significant challenge for developers on the original Nintendo Switch. He also noted the presence of shadows at far distances in the trailer. “Shadows are quite expensive to calculate and draw,” he said, as developers on the original Switch needed to cull the level of detail distances at which shadows were drawn.

However, with the compounding of the Switch 2’s power through the use of its CUDA cores, RAM capacity, and speed, it seems like those difficulties have been significantly reduced thanks to the new console’s raw power.

Dulay pointed out how the number of textures onscreen, high poly-count characters, in addition to the real-time cloth physics on the flagpoles demonstrate just how much of a leap in power the Switch 2 will be for developers used to making games on Nintendo’s 2017 console.

As we wait for more details and footage from the Nintendo Switch 2, Dulay’s video offers a unique insight into what you should expect in terms of graphical power from the new Nintendo console. Nintendo is scheduled to show off more about Switch 2 in a dedicated Direct in April. Until then, be sure to catch all of IGN’s Switch 2 coverage right here.

Image credit: YouTube: Sungrand Studios

Sayem is a freelancer based in the UK, covering tech & hardware. You can get in touch with him at @sayem.zone on Bluesky.