Category: IGN

Nintendo has officially revealed the Nintendo Switch 2 and Mario Kart 9 alongside it, which appears to confirm 24 person races for the first time in series history.

A brief reveal trailer for the Nintendo Switch 2 mostly focused on hardware but also unveiled its first confirmed game: Mario Kart 9. While Nintendo only shared a relatively tame look at what’s likely the opening track and characters, something new was seemingly confirmed.

In the opening shots of the race, a total of 24 starting positions could be seen on the track, twice the amount of the standard 12 used in previous games. And while this could solely be an aesthetic choice, the closing gameplay shots appear to show at least 14 individual racers on the track at once.

Not only this, but the track shown in the trailer looks excessively wide, likely to compensate for this increased number of racers (and chaos) Nintendo is deploying in Mario Kart 9.

It’s made similar moves in the past alongside leaps in technology too, as its fighting game Super Smash Bros. for Wii U introduced eight person brawls for the first time, twice the number possible in previous titles.

Fans will likely get a greater look at Mario Kart 9 and its number of racers in the Nintendo Switch 2 Nintendo Direct in April. The brief trailer has already confirmed a few things about the new hardware, of course, such as backwards compatibility features and the addition of a second USB-C port.

Most details, such as its other games and what the heck the mysterious new Joy-Con button does, were left out, though the Joy-Con mouse theory did gain a little traction.

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

Nobody should envy Firaxis. Once a decade or so, the legendary strategy game developer is asked to reinvent Civilization, a video game series that has been absent of any tangible weak points for quite some time. Nearly every entry has presented different flavors of that turn-based 4X recipe, but it’s hard to say that any one is substantially superior to the others. So, that is the burden that Civilization 7 carries with it. Here is a game that, after playing through the first of its three distinct eras, is shaping up to be very good, but the fact that it’s introducing a huge number of major tweaks and reinterpretations that—in both small ways and big—provide a brand-new way to play Civ means that it asks of its veteran players to enter with an open mind.

If you are new to this series, please know that the basic colors of Civilization 7 adhere to the time-tested formula: telling the story of humanity, one turn and one hex at a time. You begin nurturing a teensy village, armed with club-weilding warriors and torchlight, and evolve it into a globe-bestriding empire by balancing their cultural, scientific, diplomatic, and warfighting needs. Countless subsystems are woven into this pursuit, and when Civilization is at its best, it’s easy to enter something of a psychedelic zen as you remix human history. The marquee new feature of Civilization 7, which we detailed at length in IGN’s original preview last August. Rather than selecting one nation and charting a path to victory, you’ll wield control of a consistent leader, but you’ll switch from your original civilization to two others throughout history—which is divided into three ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern—before a win can be secured.

Some Civilization fans were understandably nervous about this pivot. It’s a big change! One of the things people love most about the previous six games and their spinoffs is their ability to tell strange and funny stories, creating a timeline where, say, the dogmatically Catholic people of China build the Parthenon. Will that still be possible if we’re abandoning our flag when the calendar tips over? After experiencing the change between the age of Antiquity to Exploration myself, I can say with certainty that this new approach will be intriguing for Civ-heads that love getting under the hood. There are so many distinct civilizations to choose from, and in tandem with your chosen leader, if you play smart you’ll will be able to uncover some devastating wombo combos. (For example, a highly expansionist Augustus Caesar, who shepherded the proud Egyptians in Antiquity, might find a perfect home with the Mongols during the Exploration Age.) It brings to mind the compositional choices one makes when assembling a League of Legends roster, but with the world at your feet.

The same thing can be said about the way Firaxis has refreshed its diplomacy system, which again chips away at some thematic richness in service of gameplay. If you are a veteran of Civilization 6, you are likely familiar with how mercurial the other barons on the map could be, and the exorbitant fees they’d charge for simple strategic agreements like open borders. All of that has been stripped away. Diplomacy in Civilization 7, like everything else, has become a currency. You accrue and spend “influence points” in the same way you might have spent faith or gold in generations past, and the accords available on the diplomacy screen all have non-negotiable costs. Want a research partnership? Or a denouncement? The price is on the menu. Some might miss the roundabout negotiations of earlier games, but personally, I think this streamlining is long overdue.

In fact, outside of the radical switch to a three-act structure, much of Civilization 7’s other big changes are remarkably subtle, and seem designed to iron out some of the murky micro-decisions that tend to gum up a campaign. Remember how, since the switch to only allowing one unit per tile in Civ 5, mustering an army required you to line up an unwieldy battalion that would inevitably become chokepointed by its own mass? Now you can rally multiple units on an Army Commander and use them to dictate group orders—like a powerful combined assault—on a single target, which should hopefully make military action less of a grind. (Those commanders are now the only units that can be leveled up, allowing you to tailor different ends of your fighting force.)

A change that sounded like a bigger deal than it actually turns out to be is the elimination of worker units. In Civilization 7, your cities lavishly sprawl outwards, upgrading tiles of your choice as they grow. You know the downtime in the early game where you’re mostly waiting around for your population to grow? This time you’re supplied with progression goals for your nation’s economic, cultural, scientific, and military pursuits. If you complete these you can unlock bonuses at the end of the age, and that makes sure that you always have something to do instead of mashing the end turn button.

The goal, from what I can tell, is to ensure that even in the doldrums, Civilization 7 has the capacity to surprise us. The best illustration of this might be the narrative choices threaded across the campaign, where your leader might encounter some flavor text and a branching pair of dialogue options where both are tied to a short-term boon. (In one early game instance, I found an abandoned mine and could either strip it for gold or convert it into a permanent silver resource on the map.) It is the slightest dusting of Crusader Kings-style roleplaying in a series that has typically steered away from any inkling of morality. I can’t wait to see what ethical quandaries the modern age holds.

I played my Civilization 7 campaign into the Exploration Age, when the map begins to open up for startup empires to venture beyond their home continents. Units can begin to trek across the ocean with wooden fleets, and I was pleased to see that, just off my native shores, enticing archipelagos were ripe for the taking. It was interesting to see how quickly my priorities changed between the eras, and how incentivized I suddenly became to explore the open seas. It makes me wonder if the Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern Ages will function more like siloed gameplay experiences, and given how Civilization 7 allows you to boot up a run at the beginning of each of them, I imagine that is Firaxis’s intent.

But even after 10 hours, I was still scratching the surface of all Civilization 7 had to offer. For instance: On the leader selection screen, there is a meta-progression system built into its DNA, allowing you to slowly unlock perks for the characters you invest the most time in. That represents a huge shakeup to how we’ve all played Civ all this time. How will all of these pieces come together? The answers will be revealed in modernity, and beyond.

Video game piracy has entered a new era as Japanese police have arrested, for the first time, someone accused of modifying Nintendo Switch hardware.

As reported by NTV News and translated by Automaton, a 58-year-old Japanese man was arrested on January 15 on suspicion of violating the Trademark Act. He is suspected of modifying Switch consoles to run pirated games before selling them.

This was allegedly done by welding modified parts to the circuit boards of second-hand consoles that allowed them to run pirated games. The man is accused of loading the hardware with 27 illegally accessed games and selling the consoles for ¥28,000 (around $180) each.

He has admitted to the charges and is currently being investigated for other possible violations, according to police.

Video game companies like Nintendo have long battled with piracy. A takedown request in May 2024, for example, saw Nintendo target 8,500 copies of Switch emulator Yuzu after the emulator itself was taken down two months prior. Its initial lawsuit against creator Tropic Haze said the $70 game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo’s premiere video game release of 2023, had been pirated one million times before it was even released.

Legal action like this is becoming more and more common in an attempt to thwart piracy, however. Other successful lawsuits include those against game file sharing website RomUniverse, which was ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages to Nintendo in 2021, while a similar case saw it receive more than $12 million in damages in 2018. It also blocked GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin from releasing on PC game platform Steam.

This week, a patent lawyer representing Nintendo lifted the lid on the company’s approach to piracy and emulation, discussing how the propagation of emulators could lead to software piracy. Nintendo’s Assistant Manager of the Intellectual Property Division, Koji Nishiura, said: “To begin with, are emulators illegal or not? This is a point often debated. While you can’t immediately claim that an emulator is illegal in itself, it can become illegal depending on how it’s used.”

Image Credit: Nintendo

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

It is one of the biggest conundrums in the video game industry: why hasn’t Sony followed up Bloodborne with… anything? A remaster (Sony loves a remaster)? A sequel? A next-gen update? Fans of FromSoftware’s PlayStation 4 masterpiece have begged for more ever since the game launched to critical and commercial acclaim a decade ago. So, what gives?

Fresh from the reveal of his first voice acting gig following his exit from Sony, PlayStation legend Shuhei Yoshida has delivered his Bloodborne no-show theory. And we must be clear up front: this is Yoshida’s opinion, which in an interview with Kinda Funny Games he stressed is not inside information, or the reveal of the current deliberations within the bowels of Sony itself.

“Bloodborne has always been the most asked thing,” Yoshida began. “And people wonder why we haven’t really done anything, even an update or a remaster. Should be easy, right? The company is known for doing so many remasters, right, some people get frustrated.

“I have only my personal theory to that situation. I left first-party so I don’t know what’s going on, but my theory is, you know because I remember, you know, Miyazaki-san really, really loved Bloodborne, you know, what he created. So I think he is interested, but he’s so successful and he’s so busy, so he doesn’t want, he cannot do himself, but he does not want anyone else to touch it. So that’s my theory. And the PlayStation team respect his wish. So that’s my guess, right? Theory. I am not revealing any secret information, to be clear.”

Let’s unpack Shuhei’s comment here. Miyazaki-san is of course Hidetaka Miyazaki, the boss of FromSoftware. And yes, he’s incredibly successful. Not only for the influential Dark Souls series, but, most recently, the mainstream hit Elden Ring, which propelled FromSoftware to new heights. So much so that it’s getting a multiplayer spin-off this year.

And it seems obvious to say Miyazaki will be incredibly busy with multiple projects to direct and a company to run. After Bloodborne came out in 2015, Miyazaki directed Dark Souls 3, then 2019’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for Activision, then the aforementioned Elden Ring for Bandai Namco. What’s next? Miyazaki has yet to say.

What Shuhei is touching on here is a potential desire from Miyazaki to do something with Bloodborne, but he doesn’t want anyone else to do it. And Sony, Shuhei suggests, respects that wish, despite owning the intellectual property. Certainly Miyazaki has earned that respect and the ability to pick and choose his projects.

The upshot is Bloodborne remains dormant nearly 10 years after the first game came out. But is there hope? In interviews, Miyazaki often deflects questions about Bloodborne, pointing to the fact FromSoftware does not own the IP. But in February last year, Miyazaki at least admitted the game would benefit from a release on more modern hardware.

As for Sony, some Bloodborne fans feel a tad… trolled by PlayStation. For example, last month, Bloodborne fans freaked out over a potential announcement after Sony ended its special PlayStation 30th Anniversary trailer with a clip from the beloved FromSoftware game and the phrase “it’s about persistence.”

Perhaps, given Shuhei’s theory, fans will need plenty of it.

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.

A mod dedicated to recreating Liberty City within Grand Theft Auto 5, as a mod, has shut down.

Insider-Gaming reports that the Liberty City Preservation Project, a mod meant to recreate the setting of GTA 4 as a mod for GTA 5, has been taken down at the request of Rockstar Games. In a statement on Discord, user nkjellman said “Due to the unexpected attention that our project received and after speaking with Rockstar Games, we have decided to take down the Liberty City Preservation Project.”

There’s a new mod on the block for GTAV “Liberty City Preservation Project”, I tried out the mod. It’s AMAZING, it has a working subway network, the police and ambient traffic are faithful and it’s so polished.

Amazing work to the team of devs who worked on this! pic.twitter.com/aLLtOMvwsc

— Ben (@videotechuk_) December 31, 2024

Rockstar is well-known for asking modders to take down various mods like this AI-powered GTA 5 story mode mod, or a VR mod for Red Dead Redemption 2. The Liberty City Preservation Project take down is also not without direct precedent as Rockstar issued a take-down for a mod that tried to recreate Grand Theft Auto Vice City within GTA 5.

One interesting development is that while Rockstar is judicious when it comes to taking down mods, they also sometimes hire those very modders to work at Rockstar Games. And some mods, like the Vice City mod, were taken down only for Rockstar themselves to announce remasters of those very games.

This isn’t to say Rockstar is working on a GTA 4 remaster, by any means, but there’s certainly precedent. Still it may be years away before we get an answer as we know Rockstar is currently hard at work trying to ready the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 for a 2025 launch.

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

If you’ve wanted to give VR gaming a try but the cost of entry has kept you at bay, then you might be interested in the first good Meta Quest deal for 2025. For a limited time, Amazon drops $50 off the Quest 3S 256GB VR headset, now only $349. That’s only $50 more than the base 128GB model and a worthy upgrade for storing more games at a time for untethered play. This straight up instant discount is arguably better than the deals that happened during Black Friday, which all involved digital credit or gift cards tied to specific stores.

To sweeten the pot even more, the package also includes a copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow VR game and a three-month trial of Meta Quest+. In IGN’s 8/10 review, Dan Stapleton wrote that “Batman: Arkham Shadow makes most of the Arkham series’ defining gameplay work respectably well in VR, and its mystery story pays off.”

Meta Quest 3S VR Headset with Batman: Arkham Shadow

Marvel Rivals players are being treated to an unlikely crossover that brings the Advanced Suit 2.0 from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 into the game as a new skin.

PlayStation announced the news itself in a post on X/Twitter, revealing a first look at how NetEase Games is reimagining the classic video game outfit for its new hero shooter.

This sleek Spider-Man suit made its debut as an original design for Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man, going on to make appearances in all three entries in that series. The main element setting this suit apart from the rest is its now-iconic white spider symbol, with its appearance in Marvel Rivals cementing it as a surprise collaboration with Sony and its console-exclusive superhero game. Expect Spider-Man’s Advanced Suit 2.0 to swing into the in-game store on January 30, the same day Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 comes to PC.