Three months after its “surprise” shadowdrop on Xbox, PC, and PlayStation, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has topped nine million players.
In a social media post today, Bethesda announced that the game had reached 9 million players alongside a humorous graphic featuring everyone’s favorite NPC:
Notably, this count is only a player count, not a sales total. Oblivion Remastered launched on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, meaning there are a lot of subscribers who booted up the game at some point without explicitly paying for it.
However despite that, development studio Virtuos laid off 270 staff earlier this month, citing a “rebelancing of roles across our studios and geographies.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
It only took one match of Wildgate to see the potential in its spacefaring PvPvE mayhem. Now, after just over 20 hours of playtime, I’m also noticing where there is still room for it to build on that compelling concept. The intensely cooperative chaos of managing a spacecraft, delving into PvE dungeons for loot, and fending off rival crews makes for complex and exciting contests of teamwork and communication. Unfortunately, that level of coordination doesn’t always lead to great outcomes when matchmaking with random crewmates, where silent players or, worse yet, insanely toxic personalities can make for a bad time. But when a matchmade crew manages to come together, or you bring your own friends to the party, Wildgate’s simple but solid gunplay and multifaceted ship-to-ship combat give Sea of Thieves a run for its money.
Wildgate is a unique multiplayer sci-fi shooter that sends five teams of four players out into the most dangerous section of the galaxy, called the Reach, to battle it out for loot and glory. Their ultimate goal is to find the all-important Artifact hidden somewhere in space and escape with it out of the Wildgate, but since there’s the little issue of only being one to go around, a clash of crews in tumultuous FPS combat is all but inevitable. To improve your chances of survival (and search for the Artifact along the way), you’ll want to hurriedly touch down to enter as many of the small PvE dungeons as possible, killing enemies and solving simple puzzles to claim whatever loot they’re hiding.
Upgrading your spacecraft with better shields, weapons, defensive measures, and stat improvements (like improved turning speed) can make all the difference when an enemy vessel nears and all hell breaks loose, which make for Wildgate’s tensest moments. If you’re able to find and escape with the Artifact, or simply murder all the enemy crews before they’re able to extract it themselves, then victory is yours, and in matches that can run over 40 minutes each, the taste of triumph is one of the sweetest there is.
There’s no story to be found in Wildgate, or at least not one outside of little snippets you can read from a menu between matches, but the world definitely has a distinct and endearing personality to it. That could be in the baddies you run into like raiders and alien life forms who look like booger people, or the playable characters, called Prospectors, who span from a big dog-looking alien to an aquatic creature in a mecha fishbowl. Each Prospector has their own interesting set of traits and abilities they can use to contribute to the team’s success (or demise). Ion, the four-armed alien can use his brawn to damage the hulls of ships just by smacking them with his fists, while Venture the robot serves as a great starter character since they don’t require oxygen to survive, regenerate health faster, and get warned when enemies are behind them.
I’ve had a lot of fun trying each one out to see which suits my playstyle, with my favorite being Mophs the winged, bird-like humanoid that can turn invisible, which is absolutely invaluable when boarding enemy ships to perform subterfuge. But as is the case with lots of stuff in Wildgate, the biggest issue is simply a scarcity of options, because it doesn’t take long at all to unlock and try each of them out. Seeing the same handful of familiar characters aboard each ship just feels a bit underwhelming in an endless galaxy of possibilities.
It could have some real legs with updates, but I already feel like I’ve seen just about everything right now.
Though matches have been a lot of fun to play repeatedly the past few days, with only one game mode, seven characters, four models of starship, and a handful of weapons to use, it all feels a tad thin at the moment. If developer Moonshot Games comes out the (wild)gate swinging with regular updates that introduce new weapons, enemies, characters, and ships in the fashion of something like Helldivers 2, then I can definitely see Wildgate having some real legs. But, at the moment, it feels like just a taste of what will hopefully be a game with a lot more variety down the road, and I already feel like I’ve seen just about everything that can happen across the matches I’ve played so far. There’s still a ton of fun to be found in getting better at winning, and knowing what I know now about the types of dungeons to be found and loot to be claimed has made me a lot more strategic with how I play, but I stopped being surprised by things I saw out in the Reach pretty quickly.
I’ve got plenty more of Wildgate to play before my final review – I didn’t even talk about ship-to-ship combat yet, for example, since I’m still in the process of trying all of the different vessels out – but so far it’s been a lot of fun to play with friends marred by much less fun matches when on matchmade teams (the amount of slurs I heard shouted over the proximity voice chat on day one was frankly startling). I’m hopeful the Moonshot will be quick to add new content, because there’s the makings of a great live-service game here, and I’m eager to dive back in.
A planned crossover event between Hitman and MindsEye has been delayed indefinitely, while developer Build a Rocket Boy says future updates “may be less frequent”.
We apologise that the release of the Hitman x MindsEye Mission, originally scheduled for July, has been postponed to a later date. We look forward to delivering this exciting crossover when the time is right and will provide further updates as soon as we’re able.
The update also says “Moving forward, updates may be less frequent, but with the aim for each to bring more meaningful changes.” Updates are still planned for August and September, but the developer says that these are focused on performance improvements and bug fixes rather than content.
Originally, the Hitman crossover was planned to bring Agent 47 to Redrock City, though it’s unclear exactly what that would have entailed. The crossover came about thanks to Hitman publisher IO Interactive also publishing MindsEye, but no details on the content update have been shared since its announcement in June.
MindsEye’s release thus far has been a disaster for Build a Rocket Boy. The game originally came with high expectations thanks to its studio being led by former Rockstar North employees, including GTA co-creator Leslie Benzies. However, the game itself received poor reviews (including a 4/10 from us) and mixed Steam reviews that largely criticized the game’s poor performance, bugs, glitches, and other major issues.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
You ever wake up and think it’ll be a normal day only to discover that literally everything you thought you knew about reality is wrong? That’s what happened to me today when I woke up, sat down to work, and then read a post stating that Mario and Peach are apparently “good friends” as opposed to, I dunno, anything else I might have thought they were to one another.
“Princess Peach and Mario are good friends and help each other out whenever they can.”
This aggravating discovery comes from the Nintendo Today app. The post that originally included this information is now gone due to the app’s regularly updating, but has since been preserved in several spots including by Twitter user @KirPinkFury, who originally surfaced it online. The post, which was a profile on Princess Peach, included the sentence, “Princess Peach and Mario are good friends and help each other out whenever they can.” Good friends, you say? What about all those times they definitely smooched?
“Look,” you might say, “they could be good friends and in a relationship. It’s important to be friends with the person you love also.” Sure, you’re correct. But who’s describing a relationship like that? I don’t go around referring to my husband as my “good friend”. That would probably confuse several people, including him! The only conclusion I can come to here is that Nintendo is trying to distance Mario and Peach from the previous very, very, very direct ways in which it indicated they were, at minimum, romantically interested.
Nintendo admittedly has been deeply inconsistent about this over the years. Peach has been referred to as Mario’s “special someone,” they’ve been shown on multiple occasions to have some level of romantic interest in one another. Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi has directly said in an interview before that Mario “carries a torch” for Peach. Nintendo celebrated them as a romantic couple, pink hearts and all, for Valentine’s Day at least once. And Mario even tried to propose to her at the end of Super Mario Odyssey. Though she refused at the time, she had also just gone through a wild ordeal with Bowser where he tried to kidnap her and force her into marrying him. If I had just been kidnapped into an attempted forced marriage and then rescued and my boyfriend tried to propose to me the second I was rescued, I’d probably tell him to take a hike too.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
The Last of Us fans have a sweet little holiday treat heading their way. The Last of Us: Part I and Part II Scripts is a hardcover book featuring the scripts from both games, written by Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross. It’s currently listed for $66.63 (a nice little 5% discount off its usual list price of $69.99), and will be officially released on December 16 this year (see here at Amazon). If you’re a mega fan of the games who’s looking to have these stories in your library, it’s worth getting your preorder in now just in case it sells out.
Preorder The Last of Us: Part I and Part II Scripts
The book’s cover features a sleek black design with the title and author names in gold and the games’ Cordyceps fungus spreading across the cover in white. Alongside both scripts for Part I and Part II, you’ll also get the first game’s DLC, Left Behind, to read as well. Some more features of this hardcover release include:
Art gallery with work by Naughty Dog principal character concept artist Hyoung Nam
A buckram-textured cover
Block printing along the pages edges that evokes the franchise’s iconic Cordyceps fungus
If you’re a fan of the games looking to relive their stories as they were originally written, or someone who recently jumped into the games after watching the show, this seems like a worthy pick-up for a library. Beware of spoilers, though, if you’ve not experienced the games yet.
For even more gaming-related items that are worth picking up, check out our breakdowns of the best PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2 deals. In each of these, we’ve highlighted discounted games, accessories, and more that have caught are eye recently. Our overall breakdown of the best video game deals includes even more discounts for PC gamers as well.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
On PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X|S, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is now only $34.99 — $25 off its $59.99 MSRP. That also puts it at the lowest price new physical copies have ever been, according to price trackers like CamelCamelCamel.
There are some exceptions to the deal depending on the platform and store. For instance, and Amazon only have the PS5 and Nintendo Switch versions bumped down to the new 42% off price, whilst the Xbox Series X versions are still marked at $59.94.
This multi-retailer deal hasn’t seemed to have hit all major stories either, with Walmart’s range of the game still around its regular price. Still, Best Buy and GameStop have the game on all three console platforms for $34.99 each, so you’ve got some good options — even if you’re playing on Xbox.
If you’re shopping in the UK, Hit has the PS5 and Xbox versions of the remake on sale as well, for £39.85 and £37.85 respectively. If you’re in the UK and you want to play on Nintendo Switch or PS5 stock runs out, Amazon UK has copies of the Dragon Quest III remake on sale too for £44.85 and £42.95.
Being a modernised remake of the start to the series’ beloved Erdrick Trilogy, Dragon Quest III is still an immersive treat in its HD-2D form that makes this a deal more than worth jumping on, if you hadn’t the chance to try it out already.
In our IGN review of the game by Logan Plant, he called it a “shining example of how to remake a classic RPG and a brilliant reminder of why the original is an essential work”. Granted, there a few areas that could’ve used a bit of extra modernisation, but those are few and far between — being an amazing remake effort for a 37-year-old game.
Ben Williams – IGN freelance contributor with over 10 years of experience covering gaming, tech, film, TV, and anime. Follow him on Twitter/X @BenLevelTen.
The release date of Dying Light: The Beast has been pushed back by four weeks to “allow for extra polishing”. It will now arrive on September 19, 2025.
Developer Techland shared the news that Kyle Crane’s beastly zombie-killing story will be in players’ hands a little later than expected, having shifted from its original August 21 launch day.
It explained the decision via a blog post that said: “It has always been our goal to make Dying Light: The Beast the best Dying Light game we’ve ever released. To honor this promise, we’ve made the decision to move the release date to September 19, 2025 to allow for extra polishing work.”
“We understand that this may be disappointing, but our experience has shown how important the first impression is”, the Polish studio continued. “With just four additional weeks, we can address final details that make all the difference between good and great. Areas we want to improve include finetuning the balance of gameplay elements, looking into clarity of UI, increasing the quality of physics, as well as tweaking cutscenes and player animations further as well as adding last little details.
Alongside the announcement, it was also shared that The Beast will be playable via a public demo at this year’s gamescom, and that next week, updates on the game’s progress will continue with a look into its gore. Tasty.
For our latest impressions of Dying Light: The Beast, check out our recent hands-on preview where we described it as a “supercharged sequel”.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company’s patent infringement lawsuit in Japan against Pocketpair’s open-world survival game Palworld is ongoing. In the latest development, Nintendo has reworded one of the patents in the case, but what led up to this bizarre move?
Palworld is an open-world survival game that skyrocketed in popularity upon its Steam and Xbox early access launch back on January 19, 2024. It sold 8 million copies in just six days and racked up over 25 million players in one month.
The game world is inhabited by creatures called Pals, which you can capture and use (read: exploit) to carry out various tasks. The visual appearance of the Pals and the method of capturing them by throwing a ball (Pal Sphere), quickly drew comparisons to Pokémon, with the game even getting nicknamed “Pokémon with guns” for its darker, black humor-infused take on the creature collecting genre. With Palworld’s meteoric rise in popularity, it wasn’t long before Nintendo rival Sony got together with Pocketpair to form Palworld Entertainment in June 2024, a new business venture aimed at expanding the IP.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company showed signs of keeping an eye on Palworld (for example, this official statement from The Pokémon Company back in January 2024). But it wasn’t until September 2024 that they officially announced they were filing a lawsuit in Japan against Pocketpair for infringement of patent rights.
The case involves three patents granted by the Japan Patent Office (JPO): two related to monster capture and release, and one related to riding characters. All three patents were filed in 2024, after Palworld came out. However, they are actually derived from earlier Nintendo patents dating from 2021. In other words, it seems that once Palworld came on the scene, Nintendo filed divisional patents that were geared to fight specifically against Palworld’s alleged infringement of the original patents.
Since then, Pocketpair has made changes to Palworld’s disputed mechanics. The November 2024 patch removed the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pokéball-like Pal Spheres (now Pals just materialize next to you when summoned). In May, another Palworld update changed how you can glide in the game — instead of directly grabbing onto Glider Pals, now you just simply use Pal-buffed Glider equipment.
It’s worth noting that these changes by Pocketpair are not an admission of guilt. Rather, as Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara pointed out on Yahoo Japan news last month, Pocketpair is following the standard three-pronged defense against patent lawsuits, which is to “deny infringement, argue that the patents are invalid, and avoid infringement through design changes.” He also noted that Nintendo does not have the upper hand, as there seems to be a fierce back-and-forth with Nintendo pushing for patent infringement and Pocketpair pushing for patent invalidity.
In short, Nintendo’s ride mechanic patent (which got a sudden rewrite recently) covers a system for mounting and maneuvering pre-selected “boardable characters” (tōjō kyarakuta). Commenting on X, Japanese lawyer Ryo Arashida pointed out that it could be argued that the way Palworld’s Glider Pals worked prior to the May update infringed part of the patent’s specifications, namely those about the player grabbing onto and hanging from the boardable character, and their subsequent control of that movement.
Prior to the May Palworld update, you could use an actual Glider Pal to glide (by grabbing onto its feet). However, post-update, players have to use a piece of equipment — a Glider — to glide, rather than actually using the Pals themselves. Instead, Pals now act as passive buffs on your gliding.
Ironically, as Arashida noted, Nintendo’s major argument to get the patent granted in the first place was that a “boardable character” was specifically a character and not a tool, like a parachute. “For this reason, claiming in the lawsuit that a ‘Glider’ (which is a tool) is a ‘boardable character’ would create a contradiction.”
This month, Nintendo reworded the ride-switching mechanic patent. Rewording a patent mid-case is legal as long as it doesn’t introduce any new concepts or technical matter. However, as pointed out by IP consultant Florian Mueller at GamesFray, this only tends to happen if the litigant (in this case, Nintendo) feels the patent is “at a fairly high risk of being deemed invalid in its original form.” Nintendo’s rewriting of the patent makes it more verbose. Mueller focused on the addition of “even when” (-attemo in Japanese) to the wording, noting that “even” is rarely used in patents because it’s “too emphatic and subjective.”
Although it’s not clear exactly what Nintendo’s motivations are behind this sudden rewording, it’s possible that it is using this as a last-ditch tactic to make it harder for the patent claim to be dismissed as invalid.
The case continues. Meanwhile, Pocketpair continues to update Palworld with new features, such as the recently released Terraria crossover.
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion, the promising looking beat ‘em-up from the developer of the well-received Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, announced two new playable characters as well as some big names for its voice cast during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2025.
First up, we have The Silver Surfer, which is an appropriately timed character announcement given the release of MCU movie The Fantastic Four: First Steps. “Imbued with the Power Cosmic, the Surfer can stun any adversary,” publisher Dotemu and developer Tribute Games said. “Easily gliding in the skies or close to the ground, insectoid invaders can’t escape Galactus’ former herald.”
The second reveal is perhaps more of a surprise as a playable character: Beta Ray Bill. “A fan-favorite recognized by the mighty Thor as a proven ally, and wielder of his own devastating hammer known as Stormbreaker,” Dotemu said. “Half-cyborg, half Korbinite, Bill’s strength can squash any bug battalion standing in his way.”
The Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill join Captain America, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Storm, Phyla-Vell, Venom, Nova, She-Hulk, and Rocket Raccoon on the playable roster of characters. The game launches with 15 playable characters, which means four are still to be announced.
As for the voice cast, Matt Mercer from Critical Role is set to play Nova and Annihilus.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion voice cast (so far):
Brian Bloom (Captain America, Silver Surfer)
Steve Blum (Venom, Beta Ray Bill)
Trevor Devall (Rocket Raccoon)
Cal Dodd (Wolverine)
Josh Keaton (Spider-Man)
Matt Mercer (Nova, Annihilus)
Aileen Mythen (Phyla-Vell)
Elysia Rotaru (She-Hulk)
Alison Sealy-Smith (Storm)
Marvel Cosmic Invasion is due out later this year on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5 and Xbox. Here’s the official blurb:
In Marvel Cosmic Invasion, the immortal Super Villain Annihilus has launched an unprecedented attack across the galaxy, threatening all life as we know it. Super Heroes both Earth-born and cosmic must now join forces in a star-spanning adventure against the deadly Annihilation Wave. Brawl through the streets of New York City all the way to the depths of the Negative Zone to foil Annihilus’ vow to spread death across the cosmos in classically inspired side-scrolling combat.
Choose and control your own team of two characters while tagging between them mid-fight with the innovative Cosmic Swap system, capitalizing on distinct superpowers and special attacks to create unique team-ups and dish out devastating damage. Unlock stellar powerups and rewards while experimenting with different duos and bash through a fantastic collection of locales and nemeses from the Marvel universe. Marvel Cosmic Invasion’s action includes a range of accessibility features, empowering the whole family to be Super Heroes (or villains), and supports four-player drop-in/drop-out local and online co-op with crossplay.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
The cast of The Fantastic Four: First Steps recently gathered to try out Marvel Rivals for the first time, and the actors’ reaction to Invisible Woman’s skimpy Malice skin has the internet in tears.
Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm), and Joseph Quinn (Human Torch) recently gathered to play NetEase Games’ popular hero shooter with YouTuber Loserfruit. The resulting video is quite funny, showing the new Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) family as they fumble through a few matches as their in-game counterparts.
Meet the family! ✨Marvel Studios The Fantastic Four: First Steps cast’s genuine reactions as they try out Marvel Rivals! 😄 pic.twitter.com/sq8lwMh7pp
It’s goofy and occasionally hard to watch as Pascal flails his stretchy arms at enemies, but the highlight is no doubt the Fantastic Four cast’s reaction to Invisible Woman’s infamous Marvel Rivals Malice skin. Fans of the game had already taken the time to see everything the shockingly revealing outfit had to offer when it made its debut with Season 1 in January. On the eve of the new Fantastic Four movie’s premiere, though, the cast is only just seeing it for the first time.
Kirby is the first to joke about the skin: “Thank you. This is my favorite bit of her as well,” she says of the video game version of her Fantastic Four character. “This is my favorite bit. Guys, watch out, like I said, for the sequel. You better watch it.”
The Fantastic Four: First Steps, of course, has yet to receive the green light for a proper MCU sequel, though we do know at least some of its major characters will make an appearance in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. Invisible Woman’s evil black-and-red Malice skin probably won’t make it into the MCU, but the slack-jawed Pascal still shared some of his thoughts.
“Here we go,” Pascal said. “Costume designer, take notes.”
Loserfruit’s video also includes the Fantastic Four cast’s reaction to other Marvel Rivals cosmetics, including Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman’s The Life Fantastic wedding skins. Of course, it’s how all four actors reacted to the Malice skin that has started to achieve viral status. You can see the group’s reaction at 4:40 in Loserfruit’s video and then see how it’s spread to the internet below.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps officially lands in theaters tomorrow, July 25, and will introduce the first new live-action take on Marvel’s First Family in a decade. Meanwhile, a crossover featuring movie tie-in skins will arrive in Marvel Rivals starting tomorrow.
Screenshot via I Play Marvel Rivals with the Fantastic Four Cast by Loserfruit.
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).
