The Wachowskis, the writers and directors behind the Matrix movies, once asked Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima to design a Matrix video game, but publisher Konami reportedly turned it down.
That’s according to Time Extension, which said that while a December 1999 edition of NextGen magazine stated Kojima was apparently in the running to develop a game based on the blockbuster movie, Konami exec Kasumi Kitaue shot down discussions in favor of keeping Kojima focused on the Metal Gear series instead.
“The Wachowskis were big fans of Kojima,” Konami Digital Entertainment VP of licensing, Christopher Bergstresser, told Time Extension. “So Kazumi Kitaue, Kojima, Aki Saito (who still works with Kojima), and I were at the Konami HQ, and we got a call from the Wachowskis, who wanted to come in and meet with Kojima. So they did!
“The two of them came in with their concept artist, and effectively they said to Kojima, ‘We really want you to do the Matrix game. Can you do that?’ Aki translated this into Japanese for Mr. Kitaue, and Kitaue just looked at them and told them plainly, ‘No.’ We did still get to enjoy the Matrix Japanese premiere and afterparty, though.”
Interestingly, that’s not quite how everyone recalls events. Another former Konami employee, this one unwilling to go on record, claimed Konami had actually shown “strong interest” in the game, and there was “immense disappointment” when the project didn’t go ahead.
It didn’t turn out too badly for Kojima or Konami, either; after 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, Kojima and his team then concentrated on the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, which was released in 2001.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
The 2000s are memorable for plenty of peaks. The last truly great salvo of R-rated Hollywood comedies. Finnish mobile phones built sturdy enough to kill a man. Also? NASCAR games. If you know, you know. It’s not a controversial statement to say that, over the last 20 years, no licensed NASCAR game has been able to unseat NASCAR Dirt to Daytona, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, and NASCAR Thunder 2004 from the podium. Enter NASCAR 25. While several elements of it are roughly hewn and underfeatured – and the multiplayer misses the mark – the moment-to-moment single-player racing it serves up is fast, fierce, and fabulously nuanced. Does it slingshot itself past the very best to ever do it? Not quite. However, it has gotten closer to doing so than any other in the last two decades, and that makes it quite notable.
NASCAR 25 isn’t just the first NASCAR-licensed console game in almost five years, it’s the first ever produced by iRacing – the subscription-based racing simulation of choice for professional race drivers and sim-seat warriors alike. Considering the very foundation of iRacing was built using the source code for the legendary NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, there’s an undeniable element of pedigree at play here. There’s obviously a level of expectation that comes with this sort of heritage but, while it still has plenty of scope for growth and refinement, it’s been nice to see NASCAR 25 succeed in key areas where it counts.
Matched Perfect and Staggered Special
NASCAR 25 is at its very best on the track, rubbing panels at nearly 200 miles per hour. While oval racing isn’t a personal speciality of mine, I do find it massively fascinating just how ruthless it can be – and how different it is to typical circuit racing. As such, NASCAR 25 has me hooked right now.
There isn’t always a consistent racing line in oval racing; depending on the conditions and the track itself, the most efficient way through a bend might be low, somewhere in the middle, or even way up by the wall. You may need to start taking a corner differently to be faster, and I’m finding this necessity to adapt extremely interesting. I’m also particularly attracted to the sort of patience oval racing requires, with events that can unfold over hundreds of laps. Doggedly hanging onto the coattails of a breakaway pack of opponents, dicing with them doorhandle-to-doorhandle, is tense and engaging – but there’s also a part of it that I find almost meditative as I stalk slipstreams lap after lap, waiting for the perfect moment to attempt to lunge and strike.
The reason this all comes together in a meaningfully believable way is really thanks to NASCAR 25’s very impressive and tunable AI, and it’s very much what I crave in a racing game of this type. The core thing I look for constantly is racing that I can play by myself, in my own time, that feels authentic against my skill level. That’s it. I don’t want to be at the mercy of online randos, many of whom are ill disciplined and weave unrealistically across the track. Just sell me the fantasy of being a racing driver. Let’s not kid ourselves: I’m driving pretend race cars that I can pause when I need to pee. I’m not here to take on the world; I just want to enjoy my time. I want to believe I’m in the mix amongst a bunch of bona fide professionals who drive accordingly. NASCAR 25’s AI gets this right.
I want to believe I’m in the mix amongst a bunch of bona fide professionals who drive accordingly. NASCAR 25’s AI gets this right.
As a very casual consumer of NASCAR racing from the other side of the planet, my interest has ebbed and flowed depending on the involvement of drivers I have existing familiarity with, like Marcus Ambrose and SVG, so I’m not going to claim I can assure you that the AI always make the right tactical decisions. That said, they really do seem to drive with a lot of credibility. They hold their lines extremely smoothly around corners, and they shrewdly carve through packs of other cars competing for spots, effectively bump drafting and changing lanes. The only thing that undoes them is NASCAR 25’s frankly absurd way of penalising corner cutting, which will literally bring your car to a halt wherever you currently are if it detects a track limit violation. This will result in the AI piling up behind you as they all slam on the anchors to stop. It’s a massive immersion killer when it happens.
AI speed operates on a difficulty slider, meaning I was able to get it dialled in to perfectly match my skill level. The values are arbitrary, but they range between 85 and 105. About 100 was the sweet spot for super speedways for me, and slightly lower on short tracks and road courses.
There are a number of settings available to customise the AI, including their predisposition to losing control, their skill in regaining control after incidents, and their resistance to car-on-car collisions in the first place. I’m currently experimenting with making the AI more susceptible to losing it after a decent whack – and dialling incident frequency way up to make things a little more exciting. It probably hasn’t quite resulted in the turmoil I was anticipating, but I appreciate settings like this. There isn’t one, single way to play NASCAR 25. Keep it stern and serious or let it lean a little more Hollywood? It’s a decision the developers are happy to let us handle.
I Don’t Want You Spoiled, Buck
On the topic of handling, the news is also largely positive. It feels strong and challenging with a wheel, and the laser-scanned track surfaces (which have migrated from iRacing) means the characteristics of circuits with bumpier surfaces come through to have interesting effects on the driving feel from race to race. Cars feel balanced and obedient at high speed, and I was particularly impressed with how approachable NASCAR 25 is on a controller – which is important as a console-oriented game. It’s hard for me to accurately put myself into the mind of an inexperienced or younger racer, but there are also a range of assists available – and the simple tuning slider should be sufficient for anyone not looking to get too lost in the weeds when it comes to minor vehicle adjustments. The handy slider is essentially a bunch of quick tunes you can apply to either tighten everything up (which should make your car quite planted and stable, at the cost of some front end responsiveness) or create something looser (and if I’ve learned anything from Days of Thunder beyond what happens when a load of unwanted lettuce reaches Japan, loose is fast and on the edge of out of control).
One key controller problem so far, however, is a peculiar lack of meaningful rumble – and this creates a disappointing disconnect between what’s happening with my car’s grip on-screen and what I’m feeling through my hands. It just injects an unwanted floaty sensation at times, particularly when you don’t realise your rear tyres are spinning up because there’s no tactile information coming in that that’s happening. It makes playing on the expert level handling settings – where ham-fisted throttle mashing will rotate your car around quick smart – a bit more frustrating than I like. I think it’s also contributing to a skatey feeling on road courses, because I can’t really always feel the edge of the grip.
Information is definitely one of NASCAR 25’s weaknesses, overall. It’s not just the fact that it doesn’t really do a great deal to teach a player the ins-and-outs of, say, oval tactics or road course track limits. It’s also missing useful, basic info, like your opposition’s current qualifying times – which can’t be seen while you’re also out trying to set down a scorching lap. You need to return to pit lane to view where you currently stand in the group. The spotter also has a habit of giving us the wrong info, like noting you have clear space inside or outside when you don’t. I’m very lukewarm on how robotic the spotter sounds, too; being direct and matter-of-fact is all well and good during racing, but being unable to muster any convincing human enthusiasm about winning a race makes him feel like a chatbot – and NASCAR 25 misses out on any meaningful personality as a result.
The presentation of career mode is a bit sterile, too. Your driver is never more than a blank silhouette, and the inability to even select a home state or country of origin is odd. It’s small potatoes, sure, but missing the little things does make it all feel a little more impersonal than I’d want from a custom driver. Cars can be customised using a combination of preset designs and some basic shapes, but the livery system is underdone. A one-button system for syncing your design up with your driver and team gear is handy, but simple stuff like flipping the design from one side of a car to the other hasn’t been implemented. You also can’t apply custom shapes to liveries you want to use online, which is an annoying restriction we don’t typically face in other racing games.
I did enjoy the evolution of the custom racing operation and garage backdrop, which is quite cool as you progress up through the four series (and you can compete in up to two series at once), but this first effort is a bit vanilla compared to other career modes in the official motorsport sim space, like F1 or WRC. There’s a basic economy here, where you need to monitor an overall budget and manage repairs between races with a secondary resource called ‘work points’, but I did find myself ploughing through it between races without too much thought.
While I’ve established multiplayer is not my natural environment, it’s not a particularly strong component of NASCAR 25 either way, which is a tad surprising given the sheer volume of online racing experience the iRacing team has. NASCAR 25’s multiplayer is simply a basic lobby system of random races, and there are no scheduled races or special events. It plays just as smooth and reliably as the single-player – even in races against over two dozen online opponents – which is commendable. It just feels listless.
It’s been almost six years since Crimson Desert was first revealed to the world. Across that period, developer Pearl Abyss has shown off a huge array of ideas, mechanics, and boss battles. It’s frequently been cited as something of an “everything game” – an open world adventure with sky islands, mechanical dragons, wrestling moves, interdimensional gateways, interacting elemental effects, and even a Spider-Man web swing. But the more that’s been revealed, the more there’s been the sense that Crimson Desert may be a lot of pieces in need of a whole. Finding that whole was my main objective when I visited Pearl Abyss’ studio in Seoul for this month’s IGN First. And while I can’t say I’ve found it yet, multiple hours of hands-on playtime has revealed a game that’s maybe not as strange as you’d expect. In fact, Crimson Desert feels pretty straightforward.
Pearl Abyss has crafted a reasonably traditional open world adventure, made up of multiple regions peppered with towns, outposts, and castles. There’s the usual collection of main and optional quests, plus classic distractions like fishing. You’d be forgiven for not realising this, though – Pearl Abyss has put almost all its promotional efforts into showcasing boss fights. Not only that, but Crimson Desert’s blend of traditional medieval fantasy with sci-fi and steampunk elements does make it seem like it’s being pulled in several directions at once.
When you’re on the ground and seeing how all these elements interact, though, it doesn’t feel quite so alien. The continent of Pywel is perhaps less like a typical Tolkien-esque fantasy world and more akin to Dungeons & Dragons – a setting that, in recent years, was host to a Mad Max-like vehicular chase through Hell. Pearl Abyss’ design team explained that they wanted Pywel to reflect the variety of our reality, in which some countries feel much more futuristic than others, and note that some of the Pywel’s leaders may be more resistant to the advancement of technology than others – a conflict that’ll be explored through various faction quests. All this means the variety doesn’t feel artificial or there simply for the sake of being wild, even when you’re at the controls of a flying battle robot (which was, of course, designed by dwarven engineers.)
The inclusion of these mechanised and steampunk elements grant Pearl Abyss the creative license to build quests that are a significant departure from anything we’d see in something like Skyrim. A major part of my hands-on time involved completing a quest for Marni, a scientific genius who cloned his own consciousness to create the AI-like entity, H.A.L.L. Naturally the results of such an experiment have gone very wrong, and Marni’s evil digital-magic twin has taken command of a flying fortress that’s terrorizing Pywel’s skies. Defeating H.A.L.L requires the use of a power core, which Marni reveals is hidden inside a “weapon” called Golden Star. And by “weapon”, he means a giant mechanical dragon. While they presumably have ballistic missiles in Pywel, what with the advanced engineering and all, of course the fantasy version of a nuke is flying Mechagodzilla. All that stands between me and this winged menace is… a fortress filled with angry battle robots.
It appears that fortress assaults will be a significant recurring objective in Crimson Desert, considering that my hands-on time involved no fewer than three of them. I can see why Pearl Abyss was keen to show them off, as they are a showcase for some of the project’s strongest achievements. There’s a great sense of atmosphere, with a legion of men from either side battering the living hell out of each other, and you’re caught in the middle of it all. Fun mechanical wrinkles add texture; during one attack I was able to fire signalling arrows that were quickly followed by a bombardment of artillery, decimating enemy soldiers and reducing buildings to splinters. In another, I was able to circumnavigate the brutal melee entirely, sneaking into the castle through a crumbling wall and using the prison as a shortcut to the boss. And in my fight through the robot fortress, a backpack-mounted EMP device allowed me to fry the circuits of both the lumbering ground threats and the airborne bug-bots in one giant blast. There’s always something new to try, something to experiment with.
The variety of ideas doesn’t feel artificial or there simply for the sake of being wild, even when you’re at the controls of a flying battle robot.
But as much as these fortress assaults are a demonstration of Crimson Desert’s highs, they simultaneously reveal what could turn out to be some of its biggest blemishes. Battling masses of enemies is surprisingly tedious, feeling messy and repetitive rather than an engaging chain of frontline fights. An awkward lock-on feature pushed me away from one-on-one duels and into a more freeform playstyle, but that came with the baggage of imprecise strikes and occasionally kicking the air instead of faces. Absolutely none of these issues hamper the boss battles, which was my only experience of Crimson Desert prior to this demonstration, and I was quite surprised at how different combat can feel in alternative scenarios, even when using the same moveset.
It’s in these smaller, less refined details where Crimson Desert threatens to lose itself. There are occasions where you need to pick up and manipulate objects, such as planting a banner to inspire your allies. Doing so requires standing still, turning to face the object, activating a focus mode, rapidly tapping a button to lift your target, and then finally manually carry it. All of this is a slightly baffling annoyance when erecting flags, but it turns into a genuine frustration in the middle of a boss battle, when you’re desperately trying to swing a fallen masonry column during the precious few seconds in which the boss is stunned.
Thankfully, no such awkward Ultrahand juggling is required to extract the power core from Golden Star. As we explored earlier this month in our making-of feature, this is a boss battle with a unique mechanic that must be discovered in the (quite literal) heat of battle. The dragon’s flaming breath activates an array of pylons dotted around the fortress’ battle arena, which then dispense EMP bombs that you can fire from an arm-mounted cannon. The system creates a repeating phase loop; Golden Star circles above, belching the flames that produce the EMP bombs that will eventually bring him crashing to the ground, where you can unleash a barrage of strikes until he reboots and begins the cycle anew. Pearl Abyss are keen to point out you don’t have to do this – you could, for instance, use lightning-wreathed arrows to apply a stun, or simply chip away at his health bar with ranged attacks – but I feel that the real enjoyment in all of Crimson Desert’s boss fights has been finding the unique mechanic built into the arena or even the enemy itself.
With the power core obtained, I take to the skies on the back of my own (completely organic) dragon to attack H.A.L.L’s flying fortress. The initial assault is pretty simple – I have my mount spit fireballs at a number of weak spots in the structure’s shields to break down the defences and allow me to land. But getting inside the fortress itself is more complicated; a navigation puzzle that’s just the right side of obtuse. My journey takes me up elevator shafts and along a precarious route perched on the fortress’ exterior. At one point I have to activate a machine by rotating a wooden pillar that has no crank, achieved by using the thrust attack to bury my blade in the timber to create my own handle. There’s no prompt for this, and I appreciate that the solution is to think about your ability set in a non-conventional manner.
Such an approach continues inside, where defeating H.A.L.L is more of a puzzle than a traditional challenge of brawn. I like that Crimson Desert’s AI spirit character doesn’t just become another boss brawl – another indicator that the world’s weird steampunk and sci-fi elements actually make some kind of in-universe sense. This time, though, the solution really is obtuse, and someone from Pearl Abyss had to spell it out to me. Hopefully the hours prior to this quest will have equipped you with the knowledge of how to approach this particular foe.
I am a little apprehensive that at least some of Crimson Desert’s offerings will be “stuff to do” rather than meaningful, interlinked opportunities.
H.A.L.L’s flying fortress isn’t the only airborne destination I visited. Suspended high above Pywel are a scattering of Abyss Islands, accessed through portals that are unlocked with mysterious Abyss Artefacts. These islands appear to come in multiple guises; last year we saw that one of them is home to an alchemist called Alustin and his Library of Providence, and my hands-on session included one that was more akin to Zelda’s puzzle shrines. Its checkerboard floor was essentially a room-size circuit board in need of a total rewiring, and finding the correct path through the grid of rotating flagstones unlocks the island’s treasure trove. This is, of course, the sort of puzzle you’ve solved in everything from Watch Dogs to BioShock, but I enjoyed how your equipment is integral to completing it – your lantern illuminates the correct pathway, and your grapple hook is used to spin each tile. So while this challenge is not particularly taxing, I hope its solid foundations are the basis for more interesting puzzles that await among the clouds.
When you’ve uncovered an Abyss Island’s secrets, you can leap off the side and float down to earth, where plenty more traditional open-world fare awaits. There are towns to visit, in which you’ll find shop keepers to trade with and bounties to take on. Out in the wilderness there are camps to clear out and roaming barbarians to slaughter. And then there’s the factions. From what I glimpsed in the menus, there are dozens and dozens of them, although some will be more important than others, I’m told. A few have their own questline, such as House Wells, a family of nobles led by a Duke who’s lost his castle to rebel forces – a situation that’s the catalyst for one of those aforementioned fortress assaults.
Pearl Abyss was quick to clarify that these groups are not like Fallout’s factions, and allegiances with them won’t change the course of the story or impact Crimson Desert’s ending (which is set in stone.) And so I’m left wondering what are the faction quests in aid of? When asked, Pearl Abyss’ design team explained that they were there to ensure the factions felt like significant actors in the plot, and that they offered more content for players to complete. That considered, I am a little apprehensive that at least some of Crimson Desert’s offerings will be “stuff to do” rather than meaningful, interlinked opportunities.
That brings us back to my very first question. What is Crimson Desert as a whole? I know it’s a vast open world with deep, fighting-game inspired combat that works better against bosses than it does against fodder. It’s got spectacle-laden quests that take you from in-the-mud castle assaults all the way up to aerial strikes on a steampunk Death Star. And it’s littered with good time distractions, from fishing to taming bears and buckling up in a battle mech. But I’m still waiting to discover the glue between all this that elevates an open world to new heights.
Shadow of Mordor has the Nemesis system, which chains its enemies together into a foe-conquering big picture. Red Dead Redemption 2’s systems are united by a pursuit of realism and authenticity that makes its campaign feel like a life lived rather than a game played. And this year’s Ghost of Yotei links every activity on its map to a new unlock on your skill tree, ensuring even little diversions are a growth opportunity. That’s the stuff that’s so far been missing from Crimson Desert’s demonstrations, and the thing I hope will eventually be revealed when I get to play multiple consecutive hours, rather than a collection of isolated quests and bosses. Without it, I still think Crimson Desert stands a solid chance of being an overall good time. But with it, it could become something much more special.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.
The long-leaked Battlefield 6 battle royale experience will seemingly shadow-drop across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S soon, with a full gameplay reveal for Battlefield REDSEC now set to premiere tomorrow morning.
EA and Battlefield Studios (finally) confirmed plans to pull back the curtain on its new free-to-play Battlefield mode via social media today. A Battlefield REDSEC official gameplay trailer is now scheduled for premiere at 8 a.m. PT / 11 a.m. ET tomorrow, October 28, with its description teasing a surprise launch. The news follows months of rumors and leaks, suggesting that Battlefield 6 battle royale was nearly here.
Eyes up. Plates on.#REDSEC arrives tomorrow at 8:00 PT / 15:00 UTC 🔴
Those who have enjoyed Battlefield 6 since it first landed for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S October 10 expected to hear news of a proper, complimentary battle royale experience when Season 1 was properly unveiled last week. As first details of EA and BF Studios’ latest came and went, however, there was no sign of what many had expected to be a substantial new game mode to drop into.
It was strange, especially as hints of a Battlefield 6 battle royale game mode began to leak as early as July 2025. The popular, last-squad-standing experience is nothing new for the franchise and remains popular among shooter fans, so with Battlefield promising a return to its roots with destructible environments and gritty gameplay, another stab at battle royale felt like a no-brainer at the time. Community manager Kevin Johnson then confirmed BF Studios had indeed begun work on such a mode in August, adding that only those involved in the Battlefield 6 closed test program, Battlefield Labs, would get to play at first.
Official updates have been quiet since, but that didn’t stop Labs testers from drumming up hype. Battlefield battle royale gameplay snuck its way online in September, confirming that things like swimming, combat, and destruction had been translated over to this new experience. Just as quickly as EA stamped out leaks, more soon popped up on social media.
Even with so little in terms of official word from the developers, a Battlefield 6 battle royale shadow-drop seems all but confirmed for tomorrow morning. Labs leaks date back months ago, so there’s no telling what content made it into the Battlefield REDSEC launch build.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer 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).
Now, a number of screenshots reportedly taken from the canceled project have been published by MP1st, hinting that the game may have be set in Greece once again and feature a range of diverse backdrops, including caverns and temples.
Two screenshots, purportedly of Hades’ Armory, apparently show the same area in different states, one ‘normal’ and the other seemingly infected by a curse or otherworld state with rust-colored stains.
Hades was introduced in 2005’s God of War and appeared in God of War II, but it wasn’t until God of War III that he became a major antagonist before his brutal death at the end of the third instalment. Quite how Bluepoint planned to explain his return in this game we may never know, but it does show the Sony-owned studio was moving beyond the rebooted series’ hitherto Norse setting, although there are some Norse-like touches in the screenshots, too, suggesting Bluepoint was either intending to mix it up or still experimenting.
Sony has yet to announce a new God of War game, although given the success of both 2018’s God of War and 2022’s God of War Ragnarök it seems inevitable that fans will get more from the franchise. The question is, in what form and in which setting will God of War take on next?
Speaking at MCM London Comic Con last week, Kratos actor Christopher Judge said he hoped God of War would cover the Egyptian pantheon. “Because I became best known as Teal’c from Stargate, to go to Egypt would be a completion of my circle,” he teased. “But whatever is decided — wait… if there is another game, I have no doubt that no matter what pantheon it is, it will be great.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
As we reported last week, the director reflected on criticism of the series’s pacing and lengthy instalments. Asked if he agreed with the feedback that “certain sections” in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth felt a little long, he disagreed, saying: “Regarding time management in certain sections, especially in FF7 Rebirth, I honestly don’t believe that they were longer than necessary. I feel like nowadays, players just have too much to do and too much to play; so they often feel the urge that something has to be concluded quickly.”
In a new interview with VGC, Hamaguchi expanded further on this, saying: “Just to explain, the original question I was asked there was, they said that there are some people who played Rebirth, the second game in the series, and they felt that because we’ve added in new story content, which wasn’t in the original Final Fantasy 7, to them it felt like the story was being stretched out,” he explained. “So they asked whether we were considering doing anything related to that in the third game.
“I feel that the pacing, the content, and the balance in Rebirth is exactly as I wanted it. I personally don’t feel it’s been stretched out; it doesn’t feel unnecessarily long. To me, I think I got that right, and I think a lot of people would agree with me.”
Hamaguchi explained that while he is looking at pacing and ensuring “that the story developments move forward in a fairly speedy manner and with the right pace essentially, rather than feeling slow and drawn out,” his comment may have been “misconstrued.”
“I think that may have been misconstrued by people; they may have said, ‘Okay, that means they’re going to cut down on the volume and they’re going to remove story content, it’s going to be a shorter game, they’re going to cut it down’, and that’s not what I’m saying at all,” he added.
“It’s about making sure the pacing feels right, it’s not about cutting out content, it’s making sure that it feels right, the speed that the story progresses at feels right, and it is fairly quick and feels like you can get through it at a reasonable pace. But it has to feel right, so that’s what I mainly intended to say there.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Microsoft’s announcement that Halo: Campaign Evolved is coming to PlayStation is the final nail in the coffin for the Xbox exclusive, and for some marks the end of the console wars. Now, the White House has waded in with an AI image of Donald Trump as a saluting Master Chief that, well… there’s something very wrong about it.
For the uninitiated, Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the campaign of 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved, is due out on Xbox Series X and S, PC, and PlayStation 5 at some point in 2026. It is the first Halo game ever to launch on a PlayStation console, and cements Microsoft’s position as a multiplatform video game developer.
The idea of a Halo game on a PlayStation console would have been outrageous before, say, a few years ago, when Microsoft’s multiplatform push began (reportedly in part due to a need to make an increased profit margin from Xbox studios). Perhaps that’s what prompted U.S. video game shop GameStop to tweet a statement declaring the consoles wars over.
Someone somewhere within the bowels of the White House saw that tweet and decided it would be a good one to jump on. The tweet in question shows the U.S. president as Halo protagonist Master Chief — clearly generated by AI — holding an Energy Sword and saluting in front of the White House and the American Flag.
But look closely at that flag and you’ll see the mistake — there are 40 stars when there should be 50. Has Trump, as Master Chief, teased plans to scrub 10 states from the U.S. map? Did the AI powering the creation of this image hint at generative AI’s endgame? Should we be worried?
Is Trump claiming a key role in ending the console wars? Is the White House making a play for the gamer crowd here? It’s hard to say what this image is trying to achieve, but it has gone well and truly viral, with 9.3 million views at the time of this article’s publication. IGN has asked Microsoft for comment.
It’s an especially odd “collab” from the White House when you consider Trump’s prior comments on video games. In 2019, Trump suggested one way to prevent future mass shootings in America was to take a firm stance against violent video games.
“We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,” he said. “This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this and it has to begin immediately.”
Perhaps, in Trump’s mind, Halo doesn’t count.
The Trump administration has form when it comes to using AI images to promote the President. In May, Trump sparked a backlash from some Catholics after posting an AI-generated image of himself as the Pope. The picture, which was shared by official White House social media accounts, was released as Catholics mourned the death of Pope Francis and prepared to choose the next pontiff.
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.
Microsoft has finally unveiled Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the campaign portion of Bungie’s beloved Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo fans have spent most of the weekend debating the changes Halo Studios has made for this upcoming 2026 shooter, from the addition of sprint to the more pristine art style. But what do the developers of Halo: Combat Evolved itself make of the remake?
Jaime Griesemer is one of the key developers behind Halo. He was most involved with designing Halo’s famous ‘30 seconds of fun’ gameplay loop and designed much of the campaign itself. Now creative director at Highwire Games (Six Days in Fallujah), Griesemer took to X / Twitter to deliver an early verdict on gameplay footage coming out of Microsoft’s Halo: Campaign Evolved reveal.
He did not sound impressed.
“You aren’t supposed to be able to take the Warthog up to steamroll the Hunters,” Griesemer said. “I intentionally placed rocks in the way so you had to fight them on foot. When you can just smash the crates out of the way it wrecks the encounters.
“But the worst part? They put trees in the landing area of the WooHoo Jump. Lame.”
Let’s unpack this a bit. Griesemer is criticizing a key part of the iconic campaign mission, The Silent Cartographer: the first encounter with two Hunters. In the original Halo, this fight is meant to be played with Master Chief on-foot (players soon discovered it was possible to brute force a Warthog into the arena). But in Microsoft’s remake, players can freely take their Warthog up to the Hunters and ride roughshod over their hapless victims. I imagine the Hunters, with their dying breaths, gurgling: “no fair!”
(Oh, and that WooHoo Jump? Griesemer explained: “There’s a ramp that is supposed to have a bunch of jackals at the landing spot. Your gunner would always say ‘Woohoo!’ When you got airborne.”)
It’s fair to say Griesemer’s tweet, viewed 2.3 million times, has sparked a reaction online, with some fans insisting the level layout change ruins the gameplay flow, others saying this change and others like it will make the game more fun. As for Griesemer, in a subsequent tweet, he explained that if Microsoft is going to change Halo’s crates to be dynamic, then they should have also redesigned the encounters that use them as permanent cover.”
He continued: “Most people forced the Warthog through BECAUSE of the Hunters. The introduction of the Hunters was supposed to be intimidating and difficult, but in the light so you can understand them. Then you meet them in an enclosed dark area and they are even harder. But then you get Rockets and Vehicles and turn the tables. It’s a three act play of enemy design and you want to throw it in a blender. Fine, it’ll go down easier but it’s not going to taste as good.”
And: “It’s like the dance remix of a classic song that skips the intro and the bridge and just thumps the chorus over and over.”
Griesemer later offered a potential explanation for this change: “On further analysis I’m sure it’s because the vehicles take damage and so you’re just as likely to destroy the hog as get it over the rocks. If anything that makes it -worse- because -none- of the vehicle tricks are going to work anymore.”
“Make it an option” is the biggest red flag for a dysfunctional design. We have no vision for what this is supposed to be, here’s the tools to fix it yourself.
Another aspect of Halo: Campaign Evolved that Griesemer has taken issue with is the addition of an optional infinite sprint button. Sprint seems to be the biggest talking point about Halo: Campaign Evolved; while you can choose not to sprint, some are saying using it destroys Halo: Combat Evolved’s classic, considered gameplay pace and thus its sense of wonder. Others say believe it’s essential for the fun factor.
Griesemer doesn’t sound like a fan of sprinting in the Halo remake, either. In another tweet, he pointed out that the player was able to sprint into The Silent Cartographer’s shaft vignette so fast that it broke the music transition. “Who is this for?” he asked.
Then: “If the world isn’t scaled to sprint, you will be able to trivially skip encounters.”
Halo: Campaign Evolved’s Needler, too, has caused quite the kerfuffle. This iconic Halo weapon shoots deadly needles into an enemy, then, after a cool-sounding charge, they explode. The Needler stands out because the ammo — the needles themselves — stick out the top of the gun, so you can easily see how much ammo you have at any given moment. Still, Microsoft saw fit to add an ammo counter on the Needler, just in case.
This change has drawn some ridicule online, and Griesemer is clearly not a fan. “By far the most comically unnecessary embellishment in the whole announcement,” he said. “I’m not sure it isn’t intentional satire.”
Then: “But why would you add an ammo counter to a weapon that IS an ammo counter in the first place?”
By far the most comically unnecessary embellishment in the whole announcement. I’m not sure it isn’t intentional satire.
In response to Griesemer’s original, now viral tweet on Halo: Campaign Evolved, one user accused the veteran designer of “crying” about nostalgia, to which he responded: “Because I made it right and they are breaking it for no reason.”
He continued: “… I think there are dozens of changes (reload speeds, no health packs, falling damage, etc) that make the game ‘slicker’ but ultimately less interesting.”
After Bungie left Halo behind to develop Destiny, Microsoft, via what was known as 343 Industries, continued the franchise with Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, and 2021’s Halo: Infinite. The internet would suggest that with these games, Microsoft has struggled to recreate the Bungie “magic,” for want of a better term. Certainly Bungie’s Halo games are more fondly remembered than Microsoft’s. But why has Microsoft struggled so?
Griesemer was asked this question, and in his response revealed his thoughts on the idea of remaking Halo and continuing to make new Halo games now, nearly 25 years after Combat Evolved came out.
“It’s not the early 2000s anymore,” he said. “Halo is of its time, maybe more than any other game franchise. So they are constantly trying to either take Halo out of 2001 and modernize it (which breaks it) or take players back to 2001 with nostalgia (which is impossible).”
“Keep getting them checks.” Remakes and remasters are soul-destroying and I feel for any dev working on one. They can’t win and even if they do they won’t get credit. Bad situation unless you are getting paid $$$.
Probably not. But I’m not sure what the point is of a “remake” anyway. Nostalgia? A new generation of fans? Occupying an enormous art team while you figure out what to do?
One member of the original Halo team who sounds thrilled with Halo: Campaign Evolved is Marcus Lehto, who was the art director on Combat Evolved and thus heavily involved in the iconic look of Halo itself. Lehto, who recently left the now shuttered Battlefield 6 developer Ridgeline Games (and hit out at EA for not properly credited former staff), offered a positive assessment of Halo Studios’ work.
“My honest impression of seeing the new Halo Campaign Evolved is this,” he said on X / Twitter. “I absolutely love where this is going. The game looks and feels genuine. It’s gorgeous in a way I wish we could have built it originally back in 2001. It warms my heart to see Halo CE like this.”
Halo: Campaign Evolved isn’t out until 2026 (and probably near to the game’s 25th anniversary in November), so Halo Studios has time to react to some of the feedback it’s seen and make changes — if that’s what it wants to do, of course. It may stick to its guns on the likes of sprint, those rocks, and the Needler’s ammo counter. Meanwhile, the Halo community continues to debate the changes, fussing over every detail and what it means for the tone, feel, and gameplay of Bungie’s seminal shooter. I suspect this will be a running theme well into 2026.
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.
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Pints of beer after work in a cosy London pub. A glass of wine in the evening at a villa in the Sunset Marquis hotel, West Hollywood. A phone call in the dark outside a Chinese restaurant in Windsor, England.
These three disparate scenes, all more than 5,000 miles from Sony’s headquarters in Tokyo, were backdrops for a decision that helped define the PlayStation 2, Sony’s landmark console that celebrates its 25th anniversary today.
It’s the best-selling console of all time for well-documented reasons: its massive library, its headstart on the Xbox, its mid-life price cut, and its affordability as a DVD player. But the deal that brought a trio of Grand Theft Auto games – GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas – to the PS2 before any other platform was also vital. They collectively make up three of its top six sellers. Some people bought the PS2 just to play GTA and if you didn’t have one, you were nagging a friend who did.
Chris Deering, the then-president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, estimates the deal boosted console sales in Europe by a fifth – a huge margin.
We’ve heard snippets about this deal and about that key meeting at the Sunset Marquis before. But IGN has now spoken to four people at the centre of it all who can tell the story in more detail than ever. They reveal previously unknown twists and turns in negotiations: how Sony nearly missed out on exclusivity in the US, how Take Two got cash and a discount on production costs from Sony, and how Microsoft could’ve derailed the whole thing.
The original 2D, top-down GTA games sold decently but scored middling reviews, and Deering’s interest in GTA 3 was only sparked by a chance conversation.
“We used to have these company pub nights,” he says. “It gave me a chance to deal with people I would never talk to and ask them some dumb questions.”
He asked one such dumb question to the “very sharp” Sarah Thompson, who oversaw a Sony team evaluating third-party games. “I said: ‘You seen anything?’ She said: ‘Yeah, GTA is looking really cool.’ It put it at the back of my mind.”
It was actually a contractor called Andy Macoy who had first flagged a GTA 3 test build as impressive. As well as being filed in Deering’s brain, it sat on the team’s shortlist of games that Sony might want to secure as an exclusive at E3 2000, according to the then-vice president of publisher and developer relations at SCEE, Zeno Colaço, who was Thompson’s boss.
Deering went to LA that June knowing he needed exclusives in order to win a second console generation in a row. Microsoft’s Xbox was on the horizon and Bill Gates had showed off a prototype in March.
“They get a billion dollars a year from Windows licenses. They can do anything they want – they just have to want,” he says. “How do we get out ahead of this? That was in the back of my mind. I didn’t want them to come in and take away the chance of getting two console [generations] in a row. It was almost like a personal, I don’t want to say vendetta, but it could have rained on my parade. So that was a hidden motivation.”
Sony needed it more than we did.
Deering and David Reeves, then head of marketing at SCEE and later Deering’s replacement as president, met various publishers at a villa in the Sunset Marquis hotel. Take Two, the owner of Rockstar Games, was on the list.
Every person at that meeting tells a slightly different version of the story. Non-disclosure agreements obscure some of the details and the intervening 25 years have clouded memories. It’s not clear what was negotiated in the room and what was handled in follow-up phone calls.
But we know at least six people attended. From Take Two it was Kelly Sumner, who led the company outside of the USA and would become CEO in 2001, and Gary Lewis, who was COO and later president of international. From Sony it was Deering, Reeves, Colaço, John Brunning from the legal team, and possibly also Jim Ryan, who later led Sony’s gaming division.
Colaço claims Sumner initiated the meeting “to complain that another one of Take Two’s games was getting a knock back from our content group” – the same group that had earmarked GTA 3 as a winner. He thinks that game may have been State of Emergency, which Sony thought was “gratuitously violent”.
“Anyway, we listened to their complaints,” he says. “I explained our position and thoughts of what adjustments might be an acceptable compromise.” Then, “to smooth the meeting over and throw them a bone, we asked them whether we could do an exclusivity deal on GTA and another game, with the background knowledge that GTA was doing something original”.
Sumner rejects this version of events. “I’m not saying we were happy about the approval process” for games, he says, but any discussion of that was not linked in “any way at all” to the GTA deal. Exclusivity would never have been used as any kind of “sweetener” for Take Two, he says, because “Sony needed [it] more than we did”. (It’s also worth pointing out that Deering intended to bring up exclusivity at the meeting anyway, and that Lewis, from Take Two, also says he doesn’t recall what Colaço describes).
In any case, the starting point of the offer, Colaço says, was “co-marketing” for GTA 3. Basically, Sony would match $1m of Take Two’s marketing money. It offered the same deal for another Rockstar game, but he doesn’t recall which one.
There were at least two other elements to the deal, although they appear to have been negotiated after that initial E3 meeting, likely back in the UK between Deering and Sumner. First, cash up front. Second, what Sumner describes as a “reduction on production costs”.
“In those days, production costs were really, really expensive,” he explains. “Basically for the right to buy a disc and have it packaged and delivered to your warehouse, I think in around 2000 is about $11 per disc… And when you’re selling millions and millions of discs, which hopefully we were, any reduction on that is very nice, thank you very much.”
He won’t say how much of a discount it was, but Deering says it was “in the neighbourhood of a couple of pounds a unit, maybe $3”.
GTA 3 sold 8.5 million copies on PS2 – which, at $3 a unit, would represent more than $25m in potential savings for Take Two and Rockstar.
Take Two also negotiated incentives in exchange for, among other things, Sony getting the rights to sell exclusive software bundles that would include GTA, Colaço says. And as for the cash, Sumner recalls Sony agreeing to pay a “significant amount of money” up front – back then, Take Two was not the mega multi-billion dollar company that it is today, and “any millions that were coming in were gratefully received at that stage”.
We were keen to get into bed with Sony.
Neither side characterises negotiations as tough. “It wasn’t like the United Nations, it was more, ‘Would you like another glass of wine?'” says Deering. “It wasn’t intense.”
“There’s very few formal meetings with Chris [Deering],” adds Sumner.
It’d be a mistake to think that this deal was purely about money. From speaking to all sides, it’s clear that these men got on well, respected each other, and shared a common outlook on gaming’s future.
Deering wanted more “mature” games on PS2 to make the console more relevant to adults – Rockstar fit the mold. Take Two, for its part, knew the PS2’s power could match Rockstar’s creative ambitions. It also knew that Rockstar’s games were edgy and, at times, controversial, so it needed a company that understood its vision and wouldn’t meddle. Sony, which had experience managing stars like Mariah Carey, were ideal, says Take Two’s Lewis.
“So we were keen to get into bed, so to speak, with and work alongside Sony. And interestingly enough, they felt the same,” he says. “You sit down sometimes, if you’re lucky to do so, with certain people in a room and you realize, okay, we’re comfortable with this deal… we knew we could work with them.”
“Everyone knew what they wanted from it,” says Sumner. Sony was “massively supportive… and we just absolutely believed in what they were going to deliver.”
Sumner couldn’t sign the deal off alone, though: he needed his CEO and, crucially, Rockstar to agree. It felt like a “massive, massive bet” to cut off Xbox and to focus on the PS2 as a platform. “It had to be a team decision… but Sam [Houser] and the guys were like, ‘Well, if we want to deliver what we really want to deliver, we can’t keep on PS1. And it has to be PS2.'”
The deal for GTA 3 to have two years of console exclusivity with PlayStation was finalized with an evening phone call. “I was standing outside a Chinese restaurant in Windsor and doing the final negotiation,” Sumner says. “The deal was done at eight or nine o’clock at night, out in the dark, in Windsor.”
Does it look like a fair deal looking back? In a 2013 interview with Eurogamer, David Reeves described it as “remarkably cheap”. Sumner chuckles at the notion.
“I think that’s in hindsight, either that or he’s the best poker player in the world. He certainly squeaked a bit when we did the deal,” Sumner says.
“We were very, very happy at the time. And I think Sony were very happy as well. Yes, it was cheap from what we now know… I wish I could go back in time and renegotiate it and get a few more quid,” he says, chuckling again. “[But] also, it was more beneficial for Take Two and Rockstar than we thought it was going to be. So everyone won.”
Deering, for his part, says he does not think it was cheap, and that it was broadly in line with other exclusive deals negotiated at the time – including securing Tomb Raider as a PS1 exclusive. The concept of the deal, he says, was to “make up what they would’ve made by having the other versions”.
But that wasn’t the end of the saga.
There were conversations about doing something with Xbox. But that just didn’t seem right.
This deal only secured exclusivity in Europe: in the US, Sony was “not as massively supportive” of it, Sumner recalls. In fact, GTA 3 could’ve easily launched in October 2001 as a PS2 exclusive in Europe only. That would have, theoretically, allowed it to release on Xbox in the US far earlier than its eventual November 2003 arrival.
The US “were ambivalent at first,” Deering says. “I don’t think they were focusing on the franchise, and hadn’t had that same tip from their third party team on the rumoured power of the game.
“Then word got out around the industry that this is going to be a good game,” he says. “And finally, I think at the very last minute, the US came in and joined on. ‘Can we hitchhike on this deal?'” He claims they did so “reluctantly.”
Colaço says it may have even been after GTA 3’s initial release. Sony Computer Entertainment America “only really got on board when they saw GTA’s sales impact and the relationship we had established with Take Two flourishing,” he says.
As the Xbox’s release approached, Sony and Take Two’s partnership was tested again.
Microsoft has previously revealed that, in 2001, it rejected Rockstar’s pitch to put GTA 3 on the console. It’s not clear how an alternate version of events would’ve jived with Sony’s exclusivity deal, but Sumner believes that, ultimately, a deal with Microsoft was “never going to happen” even if it was “ridiculously large”.
“There were conversations about doing something with them. But that just didn’t, in my mind, my memory, didn’t seem right,” he says. “They weren’t heavy and they weren’t aggressive about it, Microsoft, but… we were happy with the bed we’re lying in. And there was no reason to change and also, you know, PlayStation were doing better than Microsoft at that stage.”
He also claims Microsoft just “didn’t understand what made us tick”.
“Sony made you feel warm and in my memory, that’s not what we got with Microsoft. They weren’t aloof, but they just really didn’t get it. I don’t think they really understood the market. And they weren’t certainly putting their arms around us. You do business with people you like, or you trust. And that’s what we did. We just trusted [Sony], absolutely trusted them.”
He was serenading the whole hotel… And he’s not a bad singer, to be fair.
That trust, and those flourishing relationships, glued Take Two and Sony together, says Lewis. “You could ring any of the senior management there and they would answer your call and they would listen to what your concern was, whether it be getting approval for the game, whether it be production and marketing, whatever it is… I was speaking to someone from Sony probably daily.”
Sony also helped on the development side, recalls Obbe Vermeij, who was then a technical director at Rockstar North. GTA 3 famously began development on the Dreamcast, and while he was initially sad to leave it behind, Sony made the switch easy by sending 20 PS2 dev kits, which were rare.
Sony didn’t lend Rockstar engineers but it did have what Vermeij describes as a “weird room full of electronics” at its London HQ, where third-party developers could test their games.
“They would be able to find the bottlenecks and tell you, at a very detailed level, these instructions [to fix it],” he explains. “Sony were just super supportive whenever we asked for something, they would give it to us.”
Deering and Sumner’s relationship was particularly strong. They only have good things to say about each other, and, Sumner says, still occasionally meet for beers.
“I have very fond memories of Chris Deering singing outside my hotel in Reykjavik at four o’clock in the morning. He was serenading the whole hotel… And he’s not a bad singer, to be fair.” But those trips – those “jollies” – weren’t nearly as important as the support Sony provided.
“They really went out there to support the company… and I hate to say, in my opinion, unlike Nintendo, unlike Xbox, and unlike Sega,” he says.
“It felt like someone putting their arm around you and saying, actually, guys, you’re part of the team. I mean, it sounds like I’m in the Sony fan club. And I’m not saying that just because it’s about PlayStation 2, I actually truly believe it.”
That trust lasted far beyond GTA 3. It’s not clear when timed exclusivity discussions for GTA Vice City and San Andreas began. Deering remembers the initial agreement as a “three-game deal.” Sumner says each of the games was negotiated separately. Colaço says it was when SCEA joined the GTA 3 exclusivity deal.
There was, at the very least, a renegotiation of terms following GTA 3’s release, Colaço says. “Once the game came out and was a success, much bigger than anyone expected, then to maintain the arrangement the financial numbers went up considerably.”
Take Two, he says, made the argument that losing out on sales on other platforms was becoming more and more costly as GTA’s popularity surged. He says that was “partially true”, but that Take Two also enjoyed being a close partner with Sony.
“So the conversations became much more about becoming strategic partners than transactional ones.” That includes, he says, discussions about exclusivity for future GTA games.
While we don’t know the terms of the Vice City or San Andreas deals, it’s safe to say they were far bigger than GTA 3’s. And, as we know, the exclusivity periods shrunk with each new game. Sony secured a full year for Vice City, but just seven months for San Andreas – both down from GTA 3’s two years. As time went on, the people attending meetings “changed a little as discussions were more global and the financial numbers dwarfed the original deal,” Colaço says.
Sam Houser and others were all like, ‘Oh my God, it’s not doing well.’
The impact of GTA 3 on wider gaming culture and on the PS2’s sales was not immediate, nor guaranteed. Before release, Rockstar was worried that GTA 3 wouldn’t cut through, Vermeij says.
“At the last E3 show before [release], maybe six or eight months before the game came out, it had a really poor showing. People weren’t really that interested. I remember the guys in New York, Sam Houser and others, they were all like, ‘Oh my God, it’s not doing well.’
“But of course, we did know that Sony were into it, and they promised a lot of marketing and they totally delivered on that.”
It wasn’t until six months after release that its success was obvious, he says.
“Typically a game would sell well for three or four months and then it would just die out. With GTA 3, it wasn’t like that. It sold okay, but then it just didn’t die out. It just kept going because people told their friends and it was just picked up organically. It just kept going.”
Sumner and Lewis both say Take Two played into that by keeping the product “tight”: if demand was one million units, they’d ship 600,000. “People were saying it was going to be banned. It was never ever going to be banned, but people believed that, and so what we did is we kept the product really, really tight, so when you saw it in Electronics Boutique, you had to buy it, because if you didn’t buy it they may not be here tomorrow,” Sumner says.
Grand Theft Auto was soon a phenomenon with cultural cache. Sumner, who had moved to New York, was called onto primetime TV shows to defend GTA’s violence. He also recalls putting a music budget together of $600,000, only for Tommy Matola, the head of Sony Music Entertainment, to say he’d do it for free. “He said, ‘I will get you the tracks, I just want to release the CD.’ That was the power of Grand Theft Auto.”
Lewis recalls the joy of success following GTA 3’s release. “You get a sigh of relief, I think is fair to say initially, and then this euphoria, because it keeps happening. We really had arrived when these products continued day in, day out, to sell… every 100,000 new PS2s we could pretty much say, ‘Well, we got to sell another 10,000 GTA 3s.'”
It’s impossible to say exactly how much GTA exclusivity contributed to the PS2’s success, but everyone agrees it helped.
“Of course they would have been successful [without it],” Sumner says. “Would they have been as successful without Grand Theft Auto? Probably not, because the amount of coverage and the desirability of that product just sucked people in at a ridiculous rate.
“Sony delivered a great platform but it’s a piece of plastic unless you have something like Grand Theft Auto on it and that was fundamental to people’s understanding or awakening to the opportunities, cultural opportunities that the PlayStation could deliver.”
Deering adds that, in Europe, “all things considered, recognising and trying to be self critical and not inflating everything, we probably did 20% more than we would’ve without it, at least through PS2 and 3.”
Not bad for what started as evening drinks at a Los Angeles hotel. “They came to the Sunset to complain,” says Colaço. “They went out with $2m they weren’t expecting. And we did the best exclusivity deal of all time!”
Samuel Horti is a journalist with bylines at the BBC, IGN, Insider Business, and Edge.
