At Sony Interactive Entertainment, we’re committed to providing safe play for gamers of all ages, including enhancing ways for parents to manage their children’s gaming experience. This includes the current parental control features available on the PS5 and PS4 console, such as playtime settings and age restriction settings for games. Today, we’re pleased to announce our next step in this commitment with PlayStation Family, a new dedicated parental control mobile app available on iOS and Android devices*. PlayStation Family app will be launching around the world starting today.
PlayStation Family app is a new experience to help parents set up and manage their children’s gaming experience on PlayStation – straight from their supported mobile device. The app includes a number of new customizable features for parents to manage their children’s playtime, including an activity report, more visibility into what their children are playing, and approving extra playtime requests – all at the tap of a finger.
Here’s a look at the features from PlayStation Family app:
Guided Onboarding – Enjoy a thoughtfully guided experience setting up a child account easily with PlayStation Family app.
Real-Time Notifications – Get notified what game a child is playing in real time. Approve or decline a child’s requests for extra playtime, restricted games, and communicate from a mobile device – you have the final say.
Activity Reports – Review daily and weekly activity reports at a glance. Parents can see up-to-date information about a child’s playtime and activity.
Manage Playtime – Set playtime limits for each day of the week. Children can enjoy more flexibility by requesting additional playtime from the console, while parents can approve or decline their requests from a phone or tablet.
Manage Spending – Manage spending activity by adding funds, viewing balances, and setting a monthly spending limit for a child to buy content from the PlayStation Store.
Content Filters – Choose and configure age appropriate content with a tap of a button. We’ve included presets that automatically apply recommended settings for different age groups, and every setting can also be customized individually to best suit each child.
Social Interactions- Customize privacy settings and how your children connect and play. Manage access to social features.
PlayStation Family app is available for download on the App Store and Google Play in most markets starting today.
We’re excited to bring an easy way for parents to manage their children’s gaming directly from their mobile devices. This is just the beginning with our new mobile app – we’ll plan to continue adding enhancements to PlayStation Family app to evolve the experience over time. We hope you’ll enjoy it and we look forward to your feedback.
*PlayStation Family app is compatible with iOS version 14 and Android 8 or higher.
“After 50, 70, 100 hours, you need something a bit unique,” says Simon Arsenault, content director for Assassin’s Creed Shadows expansion Claws of Awaji at Ubisoft Bordeaux. And it’s true to say that — despite much of the upcoming add-on feeling familiar — Awaji still contains just enough distinct moments that the portion of its additional 10 hours we’ve now played felt fresh enough, rather than only offering more of the same.
Ubisoft is keen to showcase more of these distinct moments individually, and also keep some surprises back for players at launch, when the expansion arrives next week on September 16. But for now, IGN is able to highlight a cool Metal Gear Solid-inspired boss fight that doubles down on the series’ focus on stealth, and is a highlight of the expansion’s first half.
Set in an atmospheric arena deep within Awaji’s dense forest, players are tasked with repeatedly tracking down Awaki, one of the expansion’s four main villains. Awaki is a master of stealth and disguise, and near-indistinguishable from a set of straw decoys also spread around the area. To counter her, you’ll have to scuttle, sneak and crawl while staying out of sight, or risk getting sniped from long range by Awaki, who’s equipped with a teppo rifle.
Every time you’re discovered, or mistakenly attack a decoy, Awaki changes her position — forcing you to start your hunt afresh. The only clues you’re given are an ability to focus in on her voice whenever she taunts you, affording you a sense of direction, and the ability to use Naoe’s Eagle Vision when in very close range, in order to confirm your suspicions.
It’s a relatively elaborate set-piece and something quite unlike anything else in Assassin’s Creed — though stealth genre fans will find it somewhat similar to showdowns seen elsewhere. Indeed, while on a tour of Bordeaux’s studio, developers acknowledged to IGN that the mission was inspired by Metal Gear Solid 3’s The Fear fight, as well Dishonored, and Snake’s MGS5 showdown with Quiet.
The fight also plays into Awaji’s more isolated island setting , and the darker, creepier atmosphere the expansion hopes to differentiate itself with. “We really liked the idea of an island region, with natural boundaries all around, it’s compact, there’s a seclusion we like, something where you’re a bit isoloted,” Arsenault notes. “It brings increased tension to the experience, increased danger. As soon as we added a new faction in there, it’s their world. As players you’re coming into their land. You’re not in control anymore, not as much.”
Awaji’s quartet of antagonists embody much of that tension, and always seem one step ahead of Naoe and Yasuke as they search for answers regarding the former’s mother, and hunt for Shadows’ final mystery box macguffin. Standing in their way are Kimura Yukari, the daughter of a Templar Yasuke previously killed, her bodyguard Imagawa Tomeji, their spymaster Yasuhira, and lastly Nowaki — she’s the cloaked character in a horned mask, above.
Most of these characters look set to have their own unique boss encounter, and it’s these — alongside smaller tweaks to Shadows’ main gameplay, the expansion’s new weapon (the Bo staff), and a smattering of extra skills and abilities for existing play styles that Arsenault is hoping will keep players further entertained.
“It’s not as much countering it, it’s more kind of spinning it,” he tells me, when I ask about disrupting player expectations. “So you’re expecting something and it doesn’t behave the same way.” I mention to him how, when going hands-on with the expansion, I sent out scouts to determine a mission’s location as usual — only to discover a new gameplay system in Awaji where doing so alerts the local populace, making them antagonistic when you arrive. It’s a new trade-off to using an existing system, and something Arsenault hopes will give veteran players something else to consider.
“What should I do? Should I find a new strategy? Should I avoid sending scouts or should I send them somewhere else? That’s what’s interesting with it,” he continued. “You take something that has been learned and has become kind of a routine and you just add a small twist. And we did that with a lot of systems. You’re used to civilians [needing help], or merchants, but now some can attack you — that didn’t happen.”
For much more on the expansion’s story, IGN sat down with Arsenault for an in-depth discussion detailing how Claws of Awaji picks up from Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ finale and, finally, answers the game’s two major narrative threads — even as various story elements shifted during development.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Look, we all know The Sims is a weird little series. You can torture your Sims, meet fairies and werewolves and vampires, have half alien babies. So I feel like I shouldn’t be all that surprised by The Sims 4’s next expansion pack, Adventure Awaits, seeing the return of imaginary friends. And yet here I am, taken aback and slightly horrified by the game’s interpretation of imaginary friends in its first gameplay trailer.
Hola, big Steam update alert, featuring some stuff you might already have tried in beta and a crap tonne of other stuff you might not have. Either way, it’s all in the hands of the masses now, so worth being aware of. Yes, “removed a setting from music settings that wasn’t hooked up to anything” is a change you need to know about, don’t question me!
You can find the full notes for this latest Steam update here, and I advise you whip out your best Sunday Papers pipe and slippers when you do, because there are bullet points for days. In the meantime here’s a quick rundown that you can safely consume without old man tobacco and weird indoor shoes.
While I’m not the one to choose to watch a horror movie or read a spooky book, I actually love a good horror game. The bar-setting remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 4 are fantastic, Alan Wake 2’s unconventional storytelling was incredibly suspenseful and memorable, and my favorite spooky experiences come from passing the controller around with a room of friends trying to keep my character alive in games like Until Dawn or The Quarry. The thing is, while I’m a fan of dreadful atmosphere, creepy ambiance, and shocking, disgusting character designs, I don’t really play these games by myself, and can only stomach the anxiety of good horror if I’m experiencing it alongside other people in the room.
That’s why I’m so excited after playing Little Nightmares 3 for nearly two hours: the third entry in Bandai Namco’s horror puzzle-platformer series is designed to be a completely cooperative two-player adventure (though it can be played solo if you like), and based on the level I played, it’s shaping up to fit the same niche as puzzly co-op classics like Split Fiction and Unravel Two.
To be fair, Little Nightmares 3 isn’t nearly as scary as your traditional rated-M horror game anyways. It’s surreal, fantastical horror made from the stuff of children’s nightmares. The level my co-op partner and I played had us sneaking through a haunted carnival filled with giant blob-like people waiting in line for carnival games, stuffing their faces with apples, and carelessly whacking what appeared to be one of their own kind with sticks, like a pinata. It’s a delightfully unsettling, rich atmosphere, and in my conversation with Little Nightmares 3 producer Coralie Feniello – who also served as associate producer on Little Nightmares 2 – she talked about how the Little Nightmares games are built to star children in a world that is not made for them. The carnival level really nailed that feeling, as we climbed through vents, boosted each other up to open doors, and avoided oversized monsters in an unfamiliar, unwelcoming place.
Little Nightmares 3 isn’t nearly as scary as your traditional rated-M horror game anyways. It’s surreal, fantastical horror made from the stuff of children’s nightmares.
We played as Low and Alone, the two new protagonists being introduced in Little Nightmares 3. The pair is looking for a path that could lead them out of the Nowhere. I controlled Alone: a young girl with pigtails and an aviator helmet who comes equipped with a wrench, while my partner was Low, a young boy who wears a crow mask and uses a bow and arrow. Our two different tools led to combat encounters where Low needed to shoot an arrow at an undead creature charging toward us, and I would finish the job by pulverizing the decapitated head with my wrench before the animated, headless body took one of us out. This required constant communication, and while the instant death for any mistake felt a little frustrating throughout our demo, generous checkpoints kept us motivated to achieve the perfect run.
The controls for all of this are fairly simple, which is another reason Little Nightmares 3 is setting up to be a great choice to play with a partner or friend who may not be as familiar with games. Most actions are performed with just a couple of buttons, and the difficulty comes in through communication and the intensity of doing everything exactly right as you’re being chased around like an unwanted mouse in a large house.
Just like the combat, every puzzle is also designed to be completed by both characters. There was nothing too head-scratching, but one highlight saw us working our way through multiple rooms to find a power source for a radio. Once we found it, one of us had to tune the radio to the right frequency to power on the lights in the room while the other used said lights to open the path forward. Just as in co-op games like Split Fiction, simple puzzles like this are enjoyable when communicating with a partner to solve them. Little Nightmares 3 also seamlessly weaves its world into its puzzle design. In one room, we needed to move a box to use it as a platform to climb higher, and the crate available to us was one component of the classic sawing-a-person-in-half magic trick. Only this time, there was no magic involved and the victim was ripped in half, and as we pulled the box away, their guts unceremoniously spilled onto the floor.
Moments like that really sell Little Nightmares 3’s unique art style that combines claymation-like models with dense, moody lighting. The way light creeps into a dark room through a lone window is striking, and the outdoor segments where the carnival is the only illumination against a rainy, pitch black backdrop creates a very memorable atmosphere. The carnival is just one chapter in Little Nightmares 3, and I’m excited to see how its visuals translate to completely different settings across the full game.
Supermassive worked hard to understand the DNA of the originals while also bringing in their own passion for the universe.
I should point out that this was my first experience with the Little Nightmares series. Outside of researching ahead of this preview event, I never played the first two, which were developed by Tarsier Studios. In 2019, Tarsier Studios was acquired by Embracer Group, and they’re now working on Reanimal, a very Little Nightmares-esque game set to release next year (and which itself is leaning hard into co-op). Bandai Namco retained the Little Nightmares franchise in the transaction and have partnered with Supermassive Games on this third entry, the studio behind horror games like Until Dawn and The Quarry that I mentioned earlier. In my conversation with Feniello, I asked what changes longtime fans of the series should expect from Little Nightmares 3, and she said Supermassive worked hard to understand the DNA of the originals while also bringing in their own passion for the universe.
And, she said co-op was the most highly-requested feature from the Little Nightmares community, which led to Bandai Namco’s decision to build this sequel around that idea. While my impression so far of Little Nightmares 3 is without the context of the originals, I can safely say I really enjoyed my time with this one and it got me interested in checking out the whole franchise, for what that’s worth. It will utilize a Friend’s Pass system, where only one player needs to buy a copy of the game to play online with a friend on the same platform. And for any solo players out there, you can play Little Nightmares 3 alone with an AI companion instead of another person, with Feniello noting that they worked hard to balance the experience for single-player as well.
I’m glad I wasn’t playing alone for the second half of our demo, though, which had us working through a more choreographed stealth-action set piece where we had to escape from an old man and his… son? Pet? It’s unclear what that small creature who chased us on all fours was, but that’s part of the fun. It started when we were forced to wake the pair up by tearing a plank off the wall to progress, and from there, each room was another test in avoiding getting caught.
This sequence required us to learn the routines of the residents in this hellscape, watching as the man poured the little guy a bowl of food in the kitchen, as we learned we needed to make our break for the next safe spot as he crawled across the table to dig in. There was plenty of trial-and-error as we tested the limits and pacing of their movements, and I really enjoyed the loop of learning a little bit each run, forming a game plan with my co-op partner, and ultimately succeeding. We also got split up for a brief section where my partner was locked in a cage and needed to make noise to distract the man while I worked on setting him free. After several failed attempts we finally escaped unscathed, and I left feeling excited to see the other intense scenarios Little Nightmares 3 will drop us into in the full game. Little Nightmares 3 arrives on October 10 for all major platforms.
I regularly go against my best consumer instincts and check out the yearly iterations of sports games. It’s not something I’d likely be doing without some Steam press account magic letting me dodge the yearly cash sacrifice for a game that usually shares a huge chunk of DNA with its direct predecessor; a sense of deja vu is inevitable, unless you’ve been sensible enough to either let a few years pass or wait until you’ve spotted a new feature that piques your interest.
With NBA 2K26, there was one such addition in my mind. As someone who’s been keen to see 2K’s ball-to-basket series get rid of the invisible wall it’d put up between its simulations of men’s and women’s basketball for a good few years, the first-time addition of WNBA players to one of the marquee male-dominted modes caught my attention. Granted, it was MyTeam, the depressing pit in which you fork over either real money or fake money – acquired across hours of grinding – to buy trading cards that may or may not be dished out via something resembling a slot machine.
Despite leaning heavily on tried-and-tested survival horror tropes, Bloober Team’s latest delivers a fascinating story involving time travel, big helmets, and gross, gooey creatures that have the ability to merge with dead bodies. Gross. If you’re a genre fan or you simply enjoy well-told stories, this one might be for you.
A Nintendo Direct is confirmed to be taking place this Friday, September 12. The broadcast will begin at 6am PST/9am ET/2pm BST, and will run for roughly a whole hour.
As for what’s going to be included in the stream, Nintendo has yet to confirm. But seeing as it’s taking place just one day before the 40th birthday of the Super Mario Bros. series, it wouldn’t be a shock to see some plumber-related news.
For context, a similar showcase took place to mark the 35th anniversary of the original Super Mario and included Super Mario 3D World: Bowser’s Fury, and limited release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, and a Super Mario Bros Game & Watch.
What could we expect this time around? Well, we certainly wouldn’t say no to the reveal of a brand-new 3D Mario platformer to mark the Nintendo Switch 2 era, some Mario Kart World DLC, or a sneak peek at the upcoming Super Mario Bros. Movie sequel, scheduled for April 2026.
Developing story…
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.
Better yet, not only does Amazon have Sidon, Riju, and Tulin in stock, but they’re all discounted for a limited time right now.
Amazon Amiibo Sale: Save $10 for a Limited Time
Each of these amiibo figures would set you back $29.99 when they first released, but Amazon has discounted three of the figures to $19.99. That’s a saving of 33% each, and $10 off per amiibo.
So, whether you want Riju, Tulin, or Sidon to drop into your latest adventure, you’re in luck.
As for what they do in-game, all three unlock content in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Using any of the three figures via NFC will net you amiibo-exclusive paraglider fabric options, as well as some additional materials and a weapon or rare item.
Since they’re part of The Legend of Zelda series, you can snag extra goodies in other titles. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening has amiibo-exclusive Chamber Dungeons, for example, while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe players can get a new Mii racing suit.
If you are playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on Switch 2 with the upgrade pack, you’re in for a treat.
The update smooths out that frame rate and improves the resolution throughout, fixing just about the only thing that was wrong with the Switch 1 original: Its performance.
Tom Marks said in his review update that ”This [Switch 2 upgrade] really does feel like the way this game was always meant to be played, and I’m thrilled by the idea of a new generation discovering it for the first time.”
Hard to argue there, really.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
I bring ill tidings from the land of folks who’re usually busy stressing about their heirs, sire. Crusader Kings 3‘s paid Coronations DLC has arrived alongside the Ascendant update, and I regret to inform you that the little expansion’s immediately been put in the stocks. The rotten tomatoes doth fly towards its bonce, and the resulting juice has turned its Steam reviews a mostly negative shade of crimson.
