Category: IGN

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.

Microsoft has announced the Xbox Game Pass January 2025 Wave 2 lineup of titles.

The announcement on Xbox Wire comes ahead of Microsoft’s Xbox Developer Direct on January 23, where fans will get to see a number of day one Game Pass games, including Doom: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and a mystery fourth reveal.

January 2025 Wave 2 kicks off today, January 21, with Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S), a day one release on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. “Crash over and over until you master the mountain in the snowy follow up to Lonely Mountains: Downhill,” reads the official blurb. “Now supporting up to eight players via cross platform multiplayer – work your way down the slopes as a group sharing a small number of checkpoints, or risk it all in a breakneck race to the base!”

Tomorrow, January 22, sees the addition of Flock (Console) to Game Pass Standard. “Flock is a multiplayer co-op game about the joy of flight and collecting adorable flying creatures with your friends. Soar through beautiful landscapes, seeking out rare and elusive creatures to add to your flock.”

Also on January 22, Gigantic: Rampage Edition (Cloud, Console, and PC) hits Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Standard. “Gigantic: Rampage Edition is a premium and definitive release of the original 5v5 MOBA hero shooter that provides a dynamic and exciting team-based multiplayer experience for fans of both genres. Choose from a diverse roster of unique heroes, each with a set of upgradeable abilities, and team up with four other players to control objectives and take down the opposing team’s mighty Guardian, all while protecting your own.”

January 22 is a busy day for Game Pass, as Capcom’s Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (Console) launches into Game Pass Standard. “A unique Japanese-inspired, single player Kagura action strategy game. It takes place on a mountain covered by defilement. During the day, purify the villages and prepare yourself for sundown. During the night, protect the Maiden against the hordes of the Seethe. Repeat the day and night cycle until you cleanse the mountain of defilement and return peace to the land.”

Sticking with January 22, Magical Delicacy (Console) comes to Game Pass Standard, as does Tchia (Xbox Series X|S), and The Case of the Golden Idol (Console). January 22 is rounded out by Starbound (Cloud and Console), which arrives on Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass Standard having already launched on PC Game Pass.

Eternal Strands (Cloud, Console, and PC) hits Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass on January 28 as a day one launch. “Eternal Strands is the debut fantasy title from Yellow Brick Games, a new independent studio founded by industry veterans from franchises including Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Watch Dogs, and Assassin’s Creed. Fight epic, towering creatures while blending magical abilities with an arsenal of powerful weapons to keep the world from crumbling in this third-person, action-adventure game.”

Also on January 28 as a day one launch, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) hits Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. “Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is an action-packed, third-person shooter and trap defense game. Evolve as an orc-slaying War Mage through rogue-lite choices and obliterate, eviscerate, and incinerate massive hordes with up to four players.”

Moving on to January 29, Shady Part of Me (Cloud, Console, and PC) releases in Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Standard. “Shady Part of Me sends you on an emotional and dream-like journey, with breathtaking artistic direction and the enthralling voice of Hannah Murray from Game of Thrones and Skins. As a little girl and her shadow, overcome emotional struggles through surreal dreamscapes across a touching narrative filled with twists and surprises. Both must learn, cooperate, and evolve to progress in a poetic journey.

Here’s a big one: Sniper Elite: Resistance (Cloud, Console, and PC) launches into Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass as a day one release on January 30. “Offering unparalleled sniping mechanics, stealth and tactical third-person combat, Sniper Elite: Resistance turns the attention of the award-winning series towards a hidden war, far from the front lines, deep within the heart of occupied France. Bring a friend – the full campaign can be experienced in co-op.”

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) is another day one Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass release, this time on January 31. “The highly anticipated sequel to one of 2022’s most acclaimed RPGs, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a dice-driven RPG in a human and heartfelt sci-fi world. You are an escaped android, with a malfunctioning body, a price on your head and no memory of your past. Get a ship, find a crew, and take on contracts while you navigate across the Starward Belt.”

And finally, creeping into early February, Far Cry New Dawn (Cloud, Console, and PC) hits Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Standard on February 4. “Dive into a transformed, vibrant, post-apocalyptic Hope County, Montana, 17 years after a global nuclear catastrophe. Lead the fight against the Highwaymen as they seek to take over the last remaining resources.”

Xbox Game Pass January 2025 Wave 2 lineup:

• Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – January 21 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Flock (Console) – January 22 Now with Game Pass Standard
• Gigantic: Rampage Edition (Cloud, Console, and PC) – January 22 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard
• Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (Console) – January 22 Now with Game Pass Standard
• Magical Delicacy (Console) – January 22 Now with Game Pass Standard
• Tchia (Xbox Series X|S) – January 22 Now with Game Pass Standard
• The Case of the Golden Idol (Console) – January 22 Now with Game Pass Standard
• Starbound (Cloud and Console) – January 22 Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Standard
• Eternal Strands (Cloud, Console, and PC) – January 28 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – January 28 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Shady Part of Me (Cloud, Console, and PC) – January 29 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard
• Sniper Elite: Resistance (Cloud, Console, and PC) – January 30 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) – January 31 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Far Cry New Dawn (Cloud, Console, and PC) – February 4 Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard

Xbox Game Pass games leaving on January 31, 2025:

As usual, a number of games are set to leave Game Pass as new titles flood the subscription service.

• Anuchard (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Broforce Forever (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Darkest Dungeon (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Death’s Door (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Maquette (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem (Cloud, Console, and PC)

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.

2025 is only a few weeks old, and yet we’ve already seen so much. The announcement of a new Nintendo console. The death and resurrection of TikTok. And now, a new Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2 release date theory.

This one (believe it or not there are more than a few GTA 6 theories doing the rounds) was sparked into life by another seemingly innocuous GTA Online promo tweet by Rockstar Games. “Claim a free Vapid Dominator GT muscle car and more with GTA+,” the tweet reads. “Members also earn bonuses on Priority FIB Files and Terrorbyte Client Missions, save with Arcade Property discounts, and much more.”

What information-starved GTA fans were most interested in, however, was the accompanying image, which includes a shot of a metal shipping container with a series of numbers printed on its side. One number is singled out with a slightly enlarged font and a rectangle around it: 2.

A dedicated Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket player has spent the maximum amount of money — around $104 a day using the most cost efficient methods — for the near 12 weeks since launch and finally crossed the 50,000 cards threshold.

As reported by Automaton, Japanese YouTuber Hajimesyacho shared the previously unseen milestone of collecting 50,000 cards on X/Twitter. Pokémon TCG Pocket shares these with players at intervals such as 100 cards, 1,000 cards, and so on, but the 50,000 marker wasn’t heard of given how much spending it requires.

Not even the player who spent $1,500 collecting the entire first set is anywhere close to this milestone, as Hajimesyacho said he has spent the maximum amount of money possible each day since Pokémon TCG Pocket’s October 30 release.

While the digital TCG technically doesn’t limit the spending of real world money, it does limit the spending of its premium currency: Poké Gold. Players can spend $1,000 on Pokémon TCG Pocket every day but only spend a maximum of 720 Poké Gold on booster packs and Wonder Picks and so on.

The most cost efficient standard method of purchasing Poké Gold (outside of rare sales or promotions) is to buy 690 for $99.99. Using the maximum 720 Poké Gold therefore works out at spending just over $104 a day.

Opening packs is the best way to turn this Poké Gold into the highest number of cards possible, with six Poké Gold unlocking one pack containing five cards. Hajimesyacho has therefore opened towards 10,000 packs of Pokémon TCG Pocket booster packs after seemingly spending $8,736.

He hasn’t yet uploaded a video on the endeavour or even said if he plans to, nor did Hajimesyacho show off his specific collection of cards. He likely has multiple copies of the rarest pieces though, such as the Gold (Crown rarity) and immersive art cards.

Instances such as this are perhaps exceptional but Pokémon TCG Pocket is still pulling in a lot of money for developer Creatures Inc. and The Pokémon Company as it is estimated to have earned $200 million in its first month.

The game follows the standard mobile and free-to-play game model, flooding players with rewards in the first few days before soon drying up, with spending real-world money the only real way to re-experience that early thrill outside of the occasional set drop like Mythical Island.

Completing Genetic Apex, for example, the first set of cards which totals 226 officially but also contains 60 rare alternate art cards, will take players not spending money around two years according to one estimate.

Fans’ complaints over this difficulty were exacerbated when Creatures Inc. outlined its highly anticipated trading feature too, which caused such an uproar that it had to release a follow-up response.

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

The people behind the controversial Grand Theft Auto 6 parody game Grand Taking Ages are back with a Steam page after Sony pulled it from the PlayStation Store.

Grand Taking Ages is, according to its creators, a parody management simulator where players run a game development studio.

Last month, despite using what looked like AI-generated art to satirize the ongoing wait for Rockstar’s GTA 6, the inclusion of a list of unlikely gameplay features, as well as fake awards from video game websites, Grand Taking Ages VI appeared on the PlayStation Store with a May 2025 release date. Users were even able to wishlist the game on PlayStation.

Inevitably, Sony pulled Grand Taking Ages VI from the PlayStation Store, but now it’s back on Steam after what its creators said were key adjustments made to convince Valve of the project’s validity.

The developer of Days Gone has said it still plans to create “cool s**t” after parent company Sony canceled its unannounced live-service game.

Last week, Sony canceled two unannounced live-service games that were in development at Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. The Bluepoint game was reportedly a live-service God of War game, according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. Bend Studio’s live-service game remains unknown.

A Sony spokesperson confirmed the cancellations to Bloomberg, adding that neither studio will be closed and that it will work with each to determine next projects.

Sony’s live-service push has struggled significantly. While Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2 was a breakout hit, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks, Sony’s other live-service games were either canceled or suffered disastrous launches.

Indeed, Sony’s Concord is one of the biggest video game disasters in PlayStation history, lasting just a couple of weeks before it was brought offline amid drastically low player numbers. Sony later decided to kill the game entirely and shut its developer. The Concord flop came after Sony had already canceled Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game. Last week, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida said he would have tried to resist Sony’s controversial live-service video game push, were he in the position of current Sony Interactive Entertainment Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst.

In a tweet, Bend Studio community manager Kevin McAllister issued a short message to the developer’s fans: “Thanks for the love and support everyone, especially to those that have reached out. P.S. We still plan on creating cool shit.”

As it stands, Bend Studio’s last release was 2019’s Days Gone on PlayStation 4. It launched on PC in 2021.

In a recent financial call, Sony president, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki said the company had learned lessons from both the record-breaking launch of Helldivers 2 earlier this year and Concord’s failure. On Concord specifically, Totoki said Sony should have run its development gates such as user testing or internal evaluation “much earlier than we did.”

“Currently we are still in the process of learning,” Totoki admitted. “Basically, with regards to new IP, of course you don’t know the result until you actually try it. So for our reflection, probably we need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates, we need to bring them forward. We should have done those gates much earlier than we did.”

The suggestion here from Totoki was that Sony should have noticed and reacted to Concord’s issues earlier in the development process, presumably so that it could have improved the game before launch — or canceled it.

Totoki then went on to point fingers at Sony’s “siloed organization” and Concord’s release window, which may have caused cannibalisation. Concord launched in August, not long after smash hit Black Myth: Wukong hit PS5 and PC.

“We have a siloed organization, so going beyond the boundaries of those organizations in terms of development and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother,” Totoki said.

“And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalisation, so that we can maximize our performance in terms of title launches.”

During the same financial call, Sony senior vice president for finance and IR Sadahiko Hayakawa compared the launches of Helldivers 2 and Concord, saying lessons learned would be shared throughout the business.

“We launched two live-service games this year,” he said. “Helldivers 2 was a huge hit, while Concord ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both.

“We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system.

“We intend to build on an optimum title portfolio during the current mid-range plan period that combines single-player games — which are our strengths and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP — with live-service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release.”

Looking to the future, a number of PlayStation live service games remain in the works, including Bungie’s Marathon, Guerrilla’s Horizon Online, and Haven Studio’s Fairgame$.

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.

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle has outlined the difficulties behind its adaptation, which was originally announced as an animated series but now appears to be a film, headlined by the fact “the game has no plot.”

Poncle said it is “still working with Story Kitchen on a live action film” in a Steam post despite the adaptation being announced as an animated series in 2023. Regardless, Poncle has now acknowledged just how difficult it will be to get a film right, especially as Vampire Survivors is a mechanically simple action game about defeating hoards of enemies.

“As mentioned last year, rather than jumping the gun and make stuff for the sake of making it, we have preferred to wait to find partners that felt right, especially because to make anything that isn’t a video game out of Vampire Survivors requires good ideas, creativity, and that quirky knowledge of the game,” Poncle said.

“That is a very difficult triplet to get 100% right. Please remember the game has no plot — it doesn’t? — so nobody can really anticipate how a film about it is going to be. That is part of what makes it exciting.”

The irony of this wasn’t lost on Poncle upon the adaptation’s announcement, saying, sarcastically, “the most important thing in Vampire Survivors is the story.” It’s unclear how the game will be adapted, even to Poncle, so a release date hasn’t been announced as of yet.

Vampire Survivors is a fast-paced and over-the-top gothic horror game with rogue-lite elements, where your choices can allow you to quickly snowball against the hundreds of monsters that get thrown at you. It became one of the biggest surprise hits of the last few years as what launched as a humble indie game on Steam blew up in popularity and snowballed itself.

Poncle soon added layers of new content to the game and the core experience now offers 50 playable characters and 80 weapons to play with. That’s before the two major expansions too, not to mention the Ode to Castlevania DLC.

In our 8/10 review, IGN said: “Need a game to play while listening to podcasts? This is it. Vampire Survivors is outwardly simple but turns out to be an incredibly deep hole to fall down — though it’s not without extended dull periods when you get ahead of its curve.”

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