Category: IGN

Atari has teased a re-reveal of its handheld console at CES 2025 next week.

In a tweet, below, Atari showed off the GameStation Go device, a portable video game player with extra buttons and a widescreen.

While the Gamestation Go comes complete with the d-pad, face buttons, and shoulder buttons you’d expect on a retro handheld, what makes this stand out is the inclusion of a Trak-Ball and Paddle on the left of the device, and a Keypad on the right.

An icon, reimagined. 🕹️ @MyArcadeRetro#Atari #GamestationGo #CES2025 pic.twitter.com/AvqTLuegR2

— Atari (@atari) January 2, 2025

There’s little else to go on at this stage, but the GameStation Go looks like the final design for a product Atari revealed a year ago. At the time the handheld was called the Atari Gamestation Portable and was due out during the fourth quarter of 2024 priced $149. This earlier version came with the Atari Trak-Ball, Paddle, and Keypad controllers, and we can see a refined design for these in the GameStation Go.

The Atari Trak-Ball is commonly used with arcade classics Centipede and Missile Command, with the Paddle used for the likes of Breakout. Atari games such as Brain Games and Codebreaker use the Keypad. The My Arcade logo is on the bottom of the device, which confirms the maker of the product under official license from Atari.

You’d expect the Gamestation Go to play a long list of retro games bolstered by Atari’s recent aquisition of the Intellivision brand and certain games from Intellivision Entertainment LLC. The purchase included the rights to more than 200 titles from the Intellivision portfolio and the Intellivision trademarks.

That’s all we have for now. Expect more when CES 2025 kicks off from January 7.

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.

Cardy, Dale, and Mat are back with a bang in 2025 to talk about the biggest movies and games scheduled for release over the next 12 months. In this bumper preview, they chat about the GTA 6, James Gunn’s Superman, the Nintendo Switch 2, and much, much more.

Remember to send us your thoughts about all the new games, TV shows, and films you’re enjoying or looking forward to: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast 781: The Big 2025 Movies and Games Preview

• IGN UK Podcast 780: The Alternative Game Awards 2024
• IGN UK Podcast 779: The Alternative Movie and TV Awards 2024
• IGN UK Podcast 778: The Game Awards Reveals and Ferry Fights
• IGN UK Podcast Special Episode: We Visited CD Projekt Red to Talk About The Witcher 4
• IGN UK Podcast 777: Indiana Jones and the Great Game

There were some incredible games released this year, and we wanted to know which you thought was the best of the best. So with our partners at Truth, we picked 64 of 2024’s best games, put them in a head-to-head tournament, and gave you the power to vote for your favorites. After six rounds of voting and more than 1 million votes in all, one game reigned supreme as champion: Black Myth: Wukong.

An action game from developer Game Science, Black Myth: Wukong is inspired by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. You play as the Destined One, an anthropomorphic monkey based on Sun Wukong from the novel. You wield a staff with different stances, have access to several magic spells, and can transform into enemies after defeating them.

In IGN’s review, we cited its fantastic combat, beautiful environments, and well-designed bosses as the areas where it shines. While it may not be a soulslike, its combat can be quite challenging and forces you to weave together quick reflexes, smart resource management, and versatile attacks to take down its many bosses.

Black Myth: Wukong’s popularity was obvious from the very start of our fan-voted tournament. It had a dominant run, culminating in a win over Marvel Rivals in the final with 59% of the vote. Before that, it had to get through Harry Potter: Quidditch Championship, Star Wars Outlaws, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, Stellar Blade, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, beating all of them with at least 67% of the vote.

Marvel Rivals’ run to the final was more contested, with it barely beating out the Silent Hill 2 remake in the semifinals and Astro Bot in the quarterfinals, which was one of the closest matchups of the whole tournament. There were more than 50,000 votes cast in that matchup, and Marvel Rivals won by only 960. Before those close calls, it had to get through some stiff competition in World of Warcraft: The War Within, Batman: Arkham Shadow, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

IGN’s pick for Best Game of 2024 went to Metaphor: ReFantazio, but it didn’t make it out of the first round of the People’s Choice Tournament. Mario & Luigi: Brothership took it down before falling to Black Myth: Wukong in its path to the title. Indie darling Balatro, one of IGN’s runners-up for Best Game of 2024 and winner of our Best PC Game of 2024 Award, also had a surprisingly short run. After narrowly defeating Still Wakes the Deep in the first round, it got only 26% of the vote in Round 2 against Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

Space Marine 2 had a very impressive run overall, taking down multiple big names on its way to the Final Four. In addition to its resounding win over Balatro, it also defeated Sons of the Forest, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, another of IGN’s runners-up for Best Game of 2024. The other member of the Final Four was Silent Hill 2, which won the IGN Award for Best Horror Game of 2024. It got to the semifinals by going through Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, Helldivers 2, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero.

Thank you to the many people who logged votes in this year’s People’s Choice Tournament. Let us know in the comments below what you think of the outcome. If you disagree with the winner, which game would you have chosen? And here’s to another great year of gaming in 2025!

Call of Duty publisher Activision has confirmed plans to charge players extra to earn the best Squid Game crossover event rewards in a first for the series.

In a blog post, Activision detailed the Squid Game event, which includes a Red Light, Green Light limited-time multiplayer mode for Black Ops 6, as well as new operator bundles based on characters from the hugely popular Netflix show for use across Black Ops 6 and Warzone.

One controversial addition, however, is the new Squid Game Event Pass, which includes a free reward track and a premium reward track. While Activision detailed all the rewards included in both tracks (the premium track includes a Front Man Operator skin), it failed to confirm a price.

The Fantastic Four are coming to Marvel Rivals, its developer has confirmed.

In a first-look image, below, we see Marvel Rivals’ take on Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and Thing, as well as the robot H.E.R.B.I.E. The superhero team are sitting in the Fantasticar, and we also see the Baxter Building in the background.

Ubisoft’s PC woes have continued into 2025, with the generally much-loved Assassin’s Creed Origins suffering a review-bomb campaign on Steam after a Windows PC update rendered it unplayable for some.

In November, Microsoft confirmed that Windows 11 version 24H2 accidentally killed Ubisoft games such as Star Wars Outlaws, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and more. The issue was so bad that Microsoft updated its support website to reveal it has placed a temporary block on Windows 11 for users with those games installed.

“After installing Windows 11, version 24H2, you might encounter issues with some Ubisoft games,” Microsoft said at the time. “These games might become unresponsive while starting, loading or during active gameplay.

“In some cases, users might receive a black screen. The affected games are Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Star Wars Outlaws, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

“To safeguard your Windows update experience, we have applied a compatibility hold on devices with these games installed. These devices will not be offered to install Windows 11, version 24H2 via the Windows Update release channel.”

Ubisoft released an update to fix the problem in Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but Microsoft and Ubisoft are both still working to sort out the Assassin’s Creed games, and frustration has finally spilled over into Steam user reviews.

Negative reviews for Assassin’s Creed Origins ramped up mid-December before hitting a peak as we crossed into 2025, with the game’s recent user review rating dropping to ‘Mixed.’ Overall reviews for the game remain ‘Very Positive.’

Pretty much all the recent negative reviews complain about the Windows update making Assassin’s Creed Origins unplayable. Until a resolution is found, Ubisoft told customers not to manually update to version 24H2 using the Windows 11 Installation Assistant or the media creation tool. If the game stops responding, you’ll need to use Task Manager to close the application.

Ubisoft’s Windows problems have hit the company at a particularly troubling time. The company is reportedly in buyout talks with Chinese megacorp Tencent after a torrid 2024 in which it closed studios, shut down games, and made mass layoffs. The company’s next big game, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, was delayed into 2025 and Star Wars Outlaws failed to meet sales expectations.

Ubisoft’s shares fell to their lowest level in the last decade in September after it made a series of dramatic announcements around the performance of its games. As well as delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft announced a return to Steam after a period of PC launch exclusivity on the Epic Games Store, with Star Wars Outlaws recently releasing on Valve’s platform.

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.

Hideo Kojima has revealed the ongoing video game actors strike has affected production on his Xbox game as well as his upcoming action espionage title for Sony.

In a tweet, Kojima said that Kojima Productions was forced to suspend actor scanning and filming for the Xbox-published OD during the second half of 2024 after the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) video game actors’ strike began in July.

Similarly, casting for Physint, Kojima’s hotly anticipated return to the “action espionage” genre, was suspended due to the strike. Kojima added that he hopes to resume production in 2025.

SAG-AFTRA video game voice actors accuse gaming companies of refusing to meet their demands on artificial intelligence. Negotiations over a new contract began in October 2022 and SAG-AFTRA members approved the strike in September 2023. Check out IGN’s feature, What the SAG-AFTRA Video Game Actors Strike Means for Gamers, for more.

What this means for both OD and Physint remains to be seen, with both games without an official release window. Both are video game / movie hybrids, with Nope and Get Out Director Jordan Peele collaborating with Kojima on OD. Physint was announced during a Sony State of Play broadcast, suggesting it may release on PlayStation 6.

Meanwhile, Kojima is working on Death Stranding 2, which is out at some point in 2025, and the live-action Death Stranding film with A24. In his tweet, Kojima teased “other adaptations” are underway, without saying any more.

OD and Physint aren’t the only video games affected by the SAG-AFTRA strike. Last month, Activision confirmed it had recast some members of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 cast after fans noticed much-loved Zombies characters with new voices in-game. Activision said at the time: “We respect the personal choice of these performers. Out of respect for all parties, we won’t add new commentary about the ongoing negotiations with SAG-AFTRA. We look forward to a mutually beneficial outcome as soon as possible.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is not subject to the strike because it was in development before July 25, 2024, when the strike began. However, as suggested by Activision’s statement, the voice actors may have decided against signing new contracts in solidarity with striking union members. IGN has asked SAG-AFTRA for comment.

Photo by Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu via Getty Images.

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.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is projected to make an eye-watering $3 billion in its first year on sale.

Rockstar’s hotly anticipated open-world crime caper is currently due out fall 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, with no word on a PC release for now.

A new report by the Financial Times, based on analysis by video game research group DFC Intelligence, predicts GTA 6 will exceed $1 billion in pre-orders before it even launches. Surprising no-one, GTA 6 is expected to be the biggest entertainment launch of 2025, ahead of any movie or competing video game.

DFC predicted total revenue from GTA 6’s first 12 months on sale will reach $3.2 billion. To put that into context, 2024’s highest-grossing movie, Inside Out 2, made just shy of $1.7 billion at the global box office. In 2013, it took Grand Theft Auto 5 just three days to surpass $1 billion in sales — the fastest to that figure in entertainment history.

Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar parent company Take-Two, told the Financial Times: “I never claim victory before it occurs. That said, I think Rockstar Games will once again deliver something absolutely phenomenal… Certainly the anticipation is high.”

The huge projected revenue of GTA 6 is up against similarly huge development costs, which the Financial Times estimates from the high hundreds of millions to as much as $2 billion. There’s a lot riding on GTA 6, then, but not just for Take-Two and Rockstar. In March last year, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella predicted Rockstar’s surefire hit would spark “renewed interest” in video games, before going one step further: “There’s probably never been a more important thing to ever release in the industry, so no pressure.”

GTA 6 is the kind of game that will sell consoles. Sony’s PS5 Pro will no doubt benefit greatly from interest in GTA 6, too. Let’s remember: GTA 6 is not coming out on PC at launch; to play you must own a PlayStation or an Xbox. Beyond the point of sale, GTA 6’s GTA Online equivalent will surely come packed with microtransactions as the current GTA Online does. Microsoft and Sony will get their cut of any money spent there, too.

As the Financial Times points out, the almost guaranteed success of GTA 6 comes amid one of the toughest periods for the video game industry in recent memory. More than 33,000 people have lost their jobs since 2022, with huge layoffs at the likes of Microsoft and Sony. Indeed, Take-Two itself has suffered layoffs and studio closures.

All eyes are on Rockstar for a firm GTA 6 release date, or, as some are predicting, a delay into 2026. While you wait to find out, IGN has much more on GTA 6 to check out, including an ex-Rockstar dev who says the studio probably won’t be able to decide whether GTA 6 is delayed until May 2025, the boss of Take-Two’s coy response on whether GTA 6 is coming to PC, and the expert opinion on whether the PS5 Pro will run GTA 6 at 60 frames per second.

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.

Half-Life 3 rumor and speculation is in overdrive after the voice actor behind G-Man issued a cryptic tweet teasing some sort of news for 2025.

In full G-Man mode, Mike Shapiro tweeted a narrated video in which he marked the end of 2024 by teasing “unexpected surprises” for this year, alongside the tags #Valve, #Halflife, #GMan, and #2025.

“Another year already,” Shapiro said in the tweet. “Good to see and hear from some many of you. May the next quarter century deliver as many unexpected surprises, hmm, as did the millennium’s first. Then again time is fluid like music. See you in the new year!”

#Valve #Halflife #GMan #2025 pic.twitter.com/mdT5hlxKJT

— Mike Shapiro (@mikeshapiroland) December 31, 2024

That’s pretty vague, but as many fans have pointed out, this is Shapiro’s first non-reply tweet since he congratulated Valve on the success of VR exclusive Half-Life: Alyx back in December 2020. A Shapiro tweet, then, is a rare thing indeed. But does this latest one mean anything?

Half-Life 2 recently turned 20 years old, and still there’s no official Half-Life 3 announcement from Valve despite the story ending on a cliffhanger with 2007’s Episode 2. In 2020, a making-of for Half-Life: Alyx revealed a swathe of games developed and shelved by Valve between the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Valve’s latest VR game. That list included details on a version of Half-Life 3 that was in development for around a year.

Geoff Keighley’s The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx revealed that at least five Half-Life games were canceled between Episode 2 and Alyx, along with a number of other projects — the most notable of which was referred to within Valve as Half-Life 3.

In November, to mark Half-Life 2’s 20th anniversary, Valve opened up about its development in a documentary that revealed never-before-seen work-in-progress footage, a brand-new Ice Gun, and a raft of new concept art. You can see the gameplay segment from the documentary in the video below.

Among the details shown in the video, Episode 3 would have been set in the Arctic, and it would have focused on Alyx as a companion character. Aside from the Ice Gun, the footage shows a blob-like enemy that could split into multiple parts. According to the documentary, the team had completed a “collection of playable levels in no particular order” and expected to be able to release the game within a year or two.

Valve has plenty on its plate already, of course, including ongoing support of Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Steam itself, the Steam Deck, and new game Deadlock. Could it also be working on Half-Life 3 alongside all those other projects?

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 boss of Black Myth: Wukong developer Game Science has pointed the finger at the Xbox Series S over the lack of an Xbox version of the game.

In a post on Chinese social media website Weibo, Game Science co-founder and CEO Feng Ji celebrated PC and PlayStation 5 action game Black Myth: Wukong’s Game of the Year win at the 2024 Steam awards, and in doing so lamented the lack of an Xbox version of the game, which he blamed on optimization trouble with the Xbox Series S.

“The only thing missing is the Xbox,” he said, per machine learning translation, “which somehow feels a bit wrong, but that 10GB of shared memory — without years of optimisation experience — is really hard to make work.”

That’s a reference to the Xbox Series S’ power relative to the Xbox Series X. The Series S has 4TF of GPU compute compared to the Xbox Series X’s 12.2TF, but the killer is the drop in memory allocation, from 16GB down to 10GB.

Microsoft’s Xbox release policy means publishers and developers must release their games across Xbox Series X and S. They are unable to release a game for Xbox Series X only, for example. This has caused difficulty for some studios in the past, perhaps most notably Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian. Baldur’s Gate 3 was originally released on PC and PS5 only, with the Xbox version delayed due to issues with the Xbox Series S specifically struggling to perform splitscreen co-op. In the past, Xbox had committed to parity between Xbox Series S and X for all games, but it ultimately made an exception for Baldur’s Gate 3 so the game could launch later in 2023.

In 2023, Remedy communications director Thomas Puha talked openly about the challenge the studio faced getting Alan Wake 2 running well on the Xbox Series S, saying the console’s GPU “is an issue” and “having less memory is a pretty big problem.” Before then, a VFX artist who had worked on an Xbox Series X and S game said in a now-deleted tweet that “many developers have been sitting in meetings for the past year desperately trying to get Series S launch requirements dropped”.

“Studios have been through one development cycle where Series S turned out to be an albatross around the neck of production, and now that games are firmly being developed with new consoles in mind, teams do not want to repeat the process,” the developer said.

In interviews with press including IGN, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has deflected questions about whether Xbox Series S is holding developers back, and rejected calls for developers to be allowed to release their games on Xbox Series X only. In an interview with Eurogamer, Spencer said: “Having an entry-level price point for a sub-$300 console is a good thing for the industry. I think it’s important. The Switch has been able to do that, in terms of kind of the traditional plug-into-my-television consoles. I think it’s important. So, we’re committed.”

The situation with Black Myth: Wukong, however, is further muddled by Microsoft’s insistence that the game’s delay on Xbox has nothing to do with development issues. In a number of statements issued to IGN, Microsoft has suggested an exclusivity deal with Sony was the cause of the delay.

“As we have said before, we’re excited for the launch of Black Myth Wukong on Xbox Series X and S and are working with Game Science to bring the game to our platforms,” Microsoft has told IGN.

“We’d prefer not to comment on the deals made by our partners with other platform holders but we can confirm that the delay is not due to Xbox platform limitations that have been raised to us.”

Black Myth: Wukong launched on August 19 and sold an eye-watering 18 million copies in just two weeks across PC and PS5, reportedly making over $700 million in revenue in the process. That was enough to put Black Myth: Wukong up there with Grand Theft Auto 5 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as one of the fastest-selling games of all time, and is an astonishing return for a game that had a reported budget of $70 million over six years of development. It did so well that Sony pointed to Black Myth: Wukong as making a significant contribution to revenue during its last financial quarter, making up for the Concord disaster.

DLC is set to follow. In September, Game Science investor Hero Games confirmed plans to release an Elden Ring-style expansion for Black Myth: Wukong ahead of any sequel.

IGN’s Black Myth: Wukong review returned an 8/10. We said: “Despite some frustrating technical issues, Black Myth: Wukong is a great action game with fantastic combat, exciting bosses, tantalizing secrets, and a beautiful world.”

While you’re here, IGN has plenty more Black Myth: Wukong guides to help you out, including Essential Tips and Tricks, Things Black Myth: Wukong Doesn’t Tell You, and our Boss List and Guides.

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.