It’s official – Death Stranding is getting a movie from A24 and Kojima Productions.

The news comes today as A24 makes a new T-shirt available – a tie-in that depicts the A24 logo in Death Stranding style… and it’s the product description that has tipped us off to the collaboration.

“It’s official: we’ve partnered with Kojima Productions on the live-action feature film adaptation of Hideo Kojima’s acclaimed video game, Death Stranding,” reads the T-shirt description.

Unfortunately, that’s all we’re getting, for now. The T-shirt itself depicts A24’s instantly recognizable logo complete with strands – mashing up the studio’s own logo with the logo from the hit video game.

Death Stranding was directed by gaming legend Hideo Kojima and is set in the United States following a cataclysmic event that leaves dangerous, destructive creatures roaming the Earth. The player assumes the role of freelance courier Sam Porter Bridges (played by Norman Reedus) who is accompanied by a Bridge Baby – a premature child contained in a mobile pod that allows Sam to sense the presence of nearby creatures (known as BTs).

The game was originally released in 2019 and a feature film adaptation has been in the works for some time. However, while Kojima is said to be “deeply involved” with the film, he has confirmed that he won’t be directing it personally.

“Just to be clear, I am deeply involved in producing, supervising, plotting, look, design, and content of the film adaptation of [Death Stranding], just not in charge of directing,” he said.

The upcoming film adaptation was announced back in 2022 and will “introduce new elements and characters within the Death Stranding universe.”

Unfortunately, little else has been reported about it since, but Kojima has always wanted his studio to start making films, and opened a movie, TV, and music division in 2021.

IGN’s Death Stranding review gave the game 6.8/10 and said: “Death Stranding just can’t consistently get the balance right despite possessing equally lofty ambitions and countless inventive ideas. There is a fascinating, fleshed-out world of supernatural science fiction to enjoy across its sprawling and spectacular map, so it’s a real shame that it’s all been saddled on a gameplay backbone that struggles to adequately support its weight over the full course of the journey. It’s fitting that Kojima Productions’ latest is so preoccupied with social media-inspired praise because in some ways I did ‘Like’ Death Stranding. I just didn’t ever love it.”

Want to read more about Death Stranding? Check out Hideo Kojima’s Criterion Collection favorites and find out how Death Stranding 2 may have been teased with mocap videos.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Minecraft is finally playable in 4K on Xbox Series X and S after developer Mojang released a preview build of the upcoming 1.20.60.23 update.

The 1.20.60.23 update, out now in test form across Minecraft: Bedrock Edition Preview and Beta on Xbox, Windows PC, Android, and iOS, also adds the armadillo, winner of the Minecraft Live 2023’s Mob Vote, and wolf armor.

“Meet the first iteration of the cautious armadillo, a neutral, savanna-dwelling mob that loves spider’s eyes, and rolls up whenever it feels threatened,” Minecraft community manager Jay Wells wrote in a blog post.

Xbox has been surprisingly robust with its selection of post-Black Friday offerings, and continues to overshadow the competition when it comes to next-level discounts this close to the holidays. Xbox Series X consoles are officially on sale right now, alongside Xbox controllers, and even the new Call of Duty has been discounted as well.

The deal is simple, but notable, as Xbox Game Pass members can currently buy Call of Duty Modern Warfare III (2023) for $45.59, over $24 off the MSRP of $69.99. Activision is also running a free trial period for the game from Dec. 14-18 if you want to try before you buy.

This deal is also applicable to gamers in the UK with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 down to £45.59 for those with an Xbox Game Pass membership.

Let’s work out the overall costs if you’re currently buying into the Xbox ecosystem, or planning to buy an Xbox Series X as a gift for Christmas in the US. For starters, an Xbox Series X console will currently cost you $399.99 in the holiday sales (see here), which is $100 off the MSRP of $499.99. Retailers like Target, Amazon, and Walmart all have the console at this new promotional price at the time of writing.

Next up is Xbox Game Pass, a stable for anyone using an Xbox right now. If you’re not currently a member, you can still sign up for Game Pass for just $1; another tremendous deal that will also grant you access to the Modern Warfare 3 discount. (Game Pass Ultimate will renew at $16.99/month).

We’re at $400.99 so far with 14 days of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and an Xbox Series X. Adding on the $45.59 for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, you’re coming out with a brand new game, console, and hundreds of titles on Game Pass for $446.58 in total.

Despite some negative reception and reviews (including from IGN – hi!) Modern Warfare 3 is, unsurprisingly, one of the best sellers of the year so far. But, it is also being rivaled by Hogwarts Legacy for the overall crown.

For new Xbox Game Pass members, it’s worth knowing that Microsoft has announced all the games coming to Xbox Game Pass for December 2023, as well as the first new additions coming to the Game Pass Core library.

“This month, we’re going for a ‘let’s announce everything coming in Game Pass for December’ sort of vibe,” Microsoft said in a post on Xbox Wire earlier this month. “We’ll be back in early January after the holidays for more games coming soon to Game Pass.”

Remnant: From the Ashes (Cloud, Console, and PC) and Remnant 2 (Cloud, PC, Xbox Series X|S) were also a surprise drop on Game Pass. IGN’s Remnant 2 review returned a 9/10. We said: “Where Remnant: From The Ashes was a strong first draft, Remnant 2 is a revolutionary sequel and a sterling manifesto for the looter-shooter soulslike.”

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

Earlier today, we reported on Circana’s monthly US game sales report, which has Hogwarts Legacy and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in a neck-in-neck battle for annual bestseller. A few other new games, such as Super Mario RPG, made their debuts in the top 20 as well last month. But a quick glance over the charts for November reveals a conspicuous missing entry.

Where’s Alan Wake 2? Did it really not sell well enough to break into the top 20? Should we all start panicking about Remedy now?

Speaking to IGN, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella explained why Alan Wake 2 didn’t debut in the top 20 of Circana’s sales charts this month. It’s largely an issue of data reporting: Circana doesn’t have data on every single sale for every single game. They can collect data from physical retailers, and select digital data from publishers and storefronts who choose to supply it.

As a result, while Circana’s data is extremely useful, in many cases, it’s incomplete. The best examples of this are Nintendo, which does not provide digital sales to Circana at all, and Take-Two, which used to provide data but limited its input a few years ago. That’s why you never see GTA 5 in the Circana charts despite it selling a solid five million copies per quarter worldwide.

In Alan Wake 2’s case, there was no physical release, and its publisher Epic Games does not provide digital sales data to Circana, so there’s just no way for Circana to tell us how well it sold. Piscatella did confirm that Alan Wake 2 ranked 147th on Xbox Series and 115th on PlayStation 5 in MAUs in November, but that doesn’t tell us too much.

We can supplement that with a bit more data from Ampere Analysis’ Piers Harding-Rolls, though, to get a clearer picture. Ampere estimates that globally, just on console, Alan Wake 2 sold 850,000 copies as of the end of November.

Our global Alan Wake 2 sales estimate across console end of Nov is ~850k

Think there will be a fair amount of interest at a reduced price, and then there is sub service inclusion down the line (I assume)

Worth noting that AW Remastered got a decent boost in Oct/Nov as well pic.twitter.com/GtI1DFcomQ

— Piers Harding-Rolls (@PiersHR) December 13, 2023

It’s a bit tricky to tell given the limitations of both those data sets, but if you feel like that seems a touch low for a major AAA game that was widely-anticipated and is reviewing phenomenally, well…it is, and it isn’t. Remedy’s last offering, Control, sold two million units in its first year, and that was without any presence on PlayStation. You could argue that Control is doing better because of its physical release, but in that same period, Remedy reported that only 10% of the game’s sales were digital. So physical wasn’t doing a ton of heavy lifting in the first place, and Alan Wake 2 skipping the expensive process of a physical edition entirely could have saved Remedy more money than it would’ve made.

So is Alan Wake 2 really selling poorly? It’s…still hard to say, even with these pieces of data. 850,000 copies on console, sans PC, isn’t bad. And if you assume even just a few hundred thousand PC players, sales could be within reach of Control’s one-year milestones. Still, Control was a new IP, where Alan Wake is supposedly a beloved cult classic riding on Control’s stellar coattails. It would make sense for Remedy to have higher hopes for its success. But as with Control, perhaps word-of-mouth over the next year will keep Alan Wake 2 in the zeitgeist longer than most games and make it a sales success.

We asked Remedy for comment for this piece, but the studio has yet to respond.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Since 2009, Call of Duty has topped the video game sales charts in the US almost without fail, only torn down from its throne by Rockstar hits Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V in their respective release years. But now, a third contender is preparing to overthrow Rockstar and Activision’s domination of US gamers’ wallets: Hogwarts Legacy.

This is according to Circana’s monthly report on US video game sales, which has Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as the best-selling game of November, but still only the second best-selling game of the year to date. It’s currently being beaten by Hogwarts Legacy, and at the rate things are going, it’s possible (though not guaranteed) that’s how it’ll end the year. If Hogwarts Legacy tops the US charts for 2023, that would make this year the first time since 2008 that the number one spot wasn’t held by either Call of Duty, or a Rockstar game (2008’s best seller was Rock Band, per Circana).

So, what’s happening here? Is Hogwarts Legacy just selling that well, or is Call of Duty doing poorly this year? The answer, according to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, is a bit of both. Speaking to IGN, Piscatella affirms that Hogwarts Legacy’s performance has indeed been striking, and has been bolstered further by the recent launch of the Switch version. In fact, it was the second-best-selling game on the Switch in dollar sales for November, trailing only Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

But on the other hand, Modern Warfare 3’s full game dollar sales are trailing Modern Warfare 2’s from this time last year due to a number of different factors, including it launching a bit later in the year. “It’s not to say that Modern Warfare 3 is doing poorly (it is already the 2nd best-selling game of 2023 after all), but no it is not currently meeting what Modern Warfare II did a year ago,” Piscatella concludes.

Hardware is seeing a big drop in 2023

Call of Duty isn’t the only thing in Circana’s report that doesn’t appear to be doing as well as usual. Hardware across the board dipped in November by 24% year-over-year, with all three current generation consoles seeing declines of over 20% in dollar sales. The Switch was the biggest offender thanks to its age and growing anticipation of new hardware, but as usual, the full picture is “a bit more complicated than that” per Piscatella.

I’ll let him take the rest of the explanation:

As you’ll recall, last November was the first that PS5 and Xbox Series saw nearly full available supply. The pent-up demand that had been in place since these consoles launched finally started being met last year, and basically every unit that found its way to market sold. PlayStation 5 unit sales in November 2023, for example, are more than double the amount seen in November 2021. So on a year-on-year basis sure, it doesn’t look great. But pulling the lens back a bit, we’re still up against the comp issue. But instead of seeing huge growth because we were comparing to a supply constrained market (like we saw last year), we’re seeing the reverse now, where we are comparing to a period of elevated supply and existing demand getting satiated. This comp issue is going to be a challenge in December as well and will finally start settling out in January. Tl;dr – it’s (probably) not as bad as it looks.

So hardware is definitely down, but the situation is far from dire for anyone involved, and will likely level off early next year.

Since we’re here, have some other notable figures from Circana’s report. In software, Super Mario RPG remake debuted at No.7 on the strength of physical sales alone (Nintendo doesn’t report digital sales), Naruto X Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections debuted at No.12, and Star Ocean: The Second Story R debuted at No.17. We also saw God of War: Ragnarok get a little boost in the chart in November (possibly due to a nice 50% Black Friday discount), and Just Dance 2024 similarly leaped from No.73 in October to No.20 in November for likely the exact same reason.

Insomniac Games reveals that the next game update for Spider-Man 2 is targeting an early next year release window.

In a statement posted on X/Twitter, Insomniac acknowledged that players were “eagerly awaiting” for new features such as New Game Plus and audio descriptions. However, the development team needs more time to fine-tune the next update before publicly rolling it out to players, with a release window targeting early 2024.

#SpiderMan2PS5 #BeGreaterTogether pic.twitter.com/PgsE4gXSO1

— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) December 13, 2023

“We have been working vigilantly on these features and require more testing to ensure the quality is up to our standards,” Insomniac Games wrote in the statement. “We are now targeting Early 2024 for the next game update and we’ll have a feature-complete list closer to its release.”

Insomniac also confirmed that it listened to feedback from players and is going to add “highly requested features,” such as the ability to change the time of day and replay missions you previously completed.

Spider-Man 2 was released nearly two months ago and has become one of the more popular games to release this year, despite it being limited to just the PS5 console. Insomniac revealed that 11 days after release, Spider-Man 2 sold more than five million copies.

In our review of Spider-Man 2, my colleague Simon Cardy said: “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 delivers Insomniac’s best tale yet, and despite its open world falling short, is a reliably fun superhero power trip.”

The announcement comes just a date after a ransomware group reportedly hacked Insomniac games and put confidential information up for sale. Sony issued a statement the same day saying it was investigating the matter, beleiving that no other studios under Sony Interactive Entertainment nor Sony divisions were affected.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

You can’t keep a good deal down. Lenovo has dropped the price of the Xbox Series X down to $339.99 when you apply coupon code “SANTABOXX“, Target has it for $349.99 with Target Circle coupon, and Xbox has officially dropped the price to $399.99 at their online store as well. That’s up to $160 off the MSRP of a phenomenal current-gen video game console complete with a 4K Blu-ray compatible disc drive. It even arrives before Christmas, and this would make a phenomenal Christmas gift.

Best Xbox Series X Deal: $339.99

For the record, this is a far better deal than the $439 price we saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Sometimes it pays to wait, apparently, even during the biggest sale event of the year. But it probably doesn’t pay to wait right now, as stock will likely be limited, and the price could go up any time.

The Xbox Series X is a current generation system able to drive 4K games at up to a glorious 120fps. It is technically a more powerful system than the PS5 and games that are compatible with both consoles usually perform better on the Xbox console. Compared to the $300 Xbox Series S, the X features more powerful hardware to enable it to run games in 4K (the Xbox Series S runs games at 1440p). The Xbox Series X also has a disc drive that can play 4K Blu-ray movies and physical game media and 1TB of internal storage.

I’ll be honest: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown sounded just fine on paper, but what I really wanted was the long-gestating remake of the greatest Prince of Persia game of them all, The Sands of Time. That 2003 gem channeled the spirit of the classic original game while brilliantly modernizing it. The franchise has arguably been chasing that high ever since. But that remake is still MIA.

So when I sat down to play the first few hours of The Lost Crown, then, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this wasn’t some low-budget, 2.5D attempt to recapture that early 21st-century glory. Instead, Ubisoft’s first properly new Prince of Persia game since the 2008 reboot is its own game – a Metroidvania – and it’s such a great fit that I’m scratching my head wondering how this franchise and genre never got together before.

Playing as Sargon, one of the not-literal Immortals who safeguard Persia, The Lost Crown promises to be a 20-25 hour romp set mostly in the chrono-cursed Mount Qaf following a betrayal of the highest order. Based on the initial few hours I experienced, I’d say that Ubisoft likely isn’t exaggerating; this should be a fairly meaty adventure. And the biggest thing that became quickly and unexpectedly apparent during my quest was that I was going to have to dust off some of my old action-game skills, forged by Ninja Gaiden on Xbox around the same time The Sands of Time came out.

Put another way, The Lost Crown is no joke in the combat department. It harkens back to the original Prince of Persia in that regard. Right from the jump, the bad guys here come out swinging – swords, polearms, and plenty of other weapons – and you’ll need to be quick to parry attacks (the ones with a yellow indicator), lest they take a bit bite out of the three measly health bars you start with if they connect. Unblockable attacks, marked by a red glimmer, can’t be parried, so you’ll need to avoid those altogether. I preferred to do that by sliding underneath them so I could counterattack from behind.

On this note, The Lost Crown also wastes no time in throwing you into one-on-one battles with bosses! I fought several of them in the opening hours, and I found these fights to be just the right combination of challenging without reaching the point of frustration. On this massive monstrosity, for example, I spent way too long trying to brute-force him before finally settling down, learning his attack patterns, and emerging victorious in a white-knuckle battle. That tussle still took a good three-and-a-half minutes on account of his massive health bar.

But this is still a Prince of Persia game, and so there is plenty of precision platforming to do as well. Thankfully, the penalty for failing to clear that bed of spikes isn’t instant death (and instead just one segment of your health bar), but traversal is no walk in the park. In fact, one thing I didn’t especially care for in the first few hours was getting around the map. This is a Metroidvania, and as such you’ll go up, down, left, and right on the map, and you’ll need to return to places you’ve already been. Traveling long distances, which you will need to do, is somewhat cumbersome, particularly in the first couple of hours before you unlock fast-travel stations.

Another layer of The Lost Crown I did like was the upgrades. You can purchase items – like additional health potion capacity, which I can promise you will need – as well as upgrades like additional amulet slots. Amulets are passive upgrades you can find around the world or purchase, and they offer things like extra health, extra damage, etc. I get the sense that I’ll welcome the ability to tailor my build the deeper into this adventure I get.

Visually, The Lost Crown isn’t terrible but it’s not great either, though Ubisoft promises it will run at 60fps on all platforms (including Nintendo Switch). I played on PC and only had a couple moments of slowdown that I won’t hold against it, considering that the team is still polishing the game. Odds are these minor annoyances will be smoothed out by the time it launches in mid-January.

One criticism I’d levy thus far that’s unlikely to be fixed, however, is the onboarding process. For my taste, The Lost Crown takes way too long to get going from a combat mechanics perspective. It took most of the initial three hours of the campaign that I played before I had enough tricks in my bag to start holding my own in combat. And while yes, this is a Metroidvania that’s meant to peel back additional onion layers as you progress, I’d still argue that this Prince of Persia doles out its combat basics way too slowly.

Nevertheless, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a surprisingly deep, no-nonsense Metroidvania that looks set to get our gaming year of 2024 off to a good start.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.