Category: Video Games

PlayStation will stream a major State of Play broadcast this week, featuring over an hour of news and reveals, including the latest updates from its own teams within PlayStation Studios.

The event will be held this Thursday, February 12 at 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern / 10pm UK time — and as ever, IGN will be reporting live.

Sony has said that the broadcast will run to “60+ minutes” — suggesting fans have a meaty show to look forward to. But what could PlayStation have up its sleeves?

Sony’s last major State of Play broadcast, held back in September 2025, finally treated fans to a good look at Marvel’s Wolverine, which is in development by the talented team behind the console’s various Spider-Man titles: PlayStation studio Insomniac Games. Other games showcased included Saros, the next project from Returnal studio Housemarque, as well as third-party titles such as Battlefield 6 and Nioh 3.

The company then held a smaller-scale State of Play in November 2025 focused solely on Japanese titles, and it was here we got a look at Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, Elden Ring Nightreign expansion The Forsaken Hollows, Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, and more.

PlayStation fans will certainly be keen to see more of Wolverine and Saros, and potentially discover a release date for the former. We’re also likely to see something of Bungie’s long-delayed Marathon, which will finally arrive on March 5 — less than a month away.

Saros has already been dated for April 30, though currently all we know for certain of Wolverine’s arrival is that he’ll land in the second half of this year. (With GTA 6 due on November 16, it’ll likely be earlier, and well clear of that.) Last week, a tease from Insomniac Games hinted at Wolverine meeting Daredevil in the game.

Third-party games set for PS5 in the coming months include Capcom’s Monster Hunter Stories 3 and Pragmata, which just got a showing in Nintendo’s Partner Direct, Square Enix’s climactic Life is Strange Reunion, Hitman developer IO Interactive’s 007 First Light and Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight from Warner Bros. Games.

The confirmation of a State of Play this week will mean that all three major platform holders will have held some form of announcement broadcast within the first six weeks of 2026 — though Nintendo fans still hope there is a dedicated first-party Nintendo Direct also waiting in the wings with more news on the company’s own games (and perhaps a new 3D Mario).

For now, though, join us here on IGN for all of the news and reveals from this week’s State of Play in just a few days.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Epic Games has hit back at claims it made “provably incorrect statements” about controversial horror game Horses, and instead insisted it was transparent with developer Santa Ragione about its inability to sell the game via the Epic Games Store as planned.

Horses, the indie horror game banned from both Steam and the Epic Games Store ahead of its launch in December 2025, is an indie first-person horror game with live-action sequences set in a horse farm. Over the course of 14 days, it “welcomes you into encounters that test your obedience, complicity, and restraint.” The player experiences “the farm’s unspeakable horrors through daily unique interactions,” as they must “withstand 14 days of spiraling dread as the reality of the farm unfolds.”

Horses was first banned from Steam two years ago after the team submitted an in-progress prototype. While some feedback was provided, Santa Ragione insists that no specifics were shared with the team at the time, nor was there an opportunity to appeal. It was banned again in December due to its disturbing imagery, and while violent and sexual content is hardly new for either Steam or Epic, Santa Ragione took issue with what it deemed to be censorship, calling for “clearer rules, transparent processes, and meaningful accountability from near monopolistic distribution platforms and the systems they enforce.”

Fast-forward to this past weekend, and Santa Ragione posted a statement refuting Epic VP Steve Allison’s comment that said “we love [its] studio,” blasting the firm for “refus[ing] to provide details supporting their claims,” and accusing Epic of making “provably incorrect statements about the game’s content.”

“Epic made provably incorrect statements about the game’s content, refused to provide details supporting their claims, and has not shared their claimed AO IARC certificate, which normally includes a link for the developer to appeal,” the studio posted in response to an interview with Game File. “They do not ‘love that studio’, they have effectively ghosted us.”

“The fact that the game does not deserve an AO rating is apparent from the widely available full walkthroughs on YouTube and Twitch, as well as from its distribution on the Humble Store.”

Epic Games, however, has remained adamant that the game violated the Epic Games Store’s Content Guidelines. In a statement to IGN, Epic Games’ senior communications manager, Brian Sharon, said: “Our team played the game and found it violated the Epic Games Store’s Content Guidelines, specifically the ‘Inappropriate Content’ and ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policies.

“We did a secondary check by filling out the ratings questionnaire for the game ourselves and the content got an Adults Only (AO) rating — which we do not allow on the Store. Because this wasn’t an official submission, we do not have a certificate to share with the team. We did give the developers context around the policies they violated. When they appealed, we reviewed the content again, and let them know the decision was appropriately applied and will remain in place.”

Despite the distribution issues, Horses has managed to sell over 18,000 copies. Though that’s not enough for the publisher to fund a new game, it says it has been able to generate $65,000 in net revenue by mid-December, which was enough to pay off loans and settle royalties owned to creator Andrea Lucco Borlera. Our own reviewer gave it a 7/10, calling it “an affecting first-person horror game that, despite some repetitive tasks and signposting issues, delivers a harrowing story you won’t forget in a hurry.”

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.

Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski has said that his scrapped BioShock film adaptation would have somehow included both of the original game’s endings to mess with the audience’s heads.

Verbinski was attached to make a movie version of the beloved game back in 2008 alongside Universal Studios, with a script in place from Gladiator and Skyfall scribe John Logan.

Alas, the project never materialized due to lengthy wrangling over its planned $200 million budget — deemed risky due to it also aiming for an adults-only R rating. Verbinski has previously said the movie came within eight weeks of shooting, before plans faltered. Work continued to try and get the film financed for several more years, though BioShock creator Ken Levine confirmed the project had been fully cancelled by 2013.

“I loved this project when we were getting close to making it at Universal,” Verbinski has said now, discussing the project in a reddit Q&A. “I was going to dive deeply into the Oedipal aspect and definitely keep it hard R with the Little Sisters, and the ‘choices’ the protagonist makes… and the consequences.

“I had worked out a way with writer John Logan to have both endings and I was looking forward to bringing that to the big screen and really f***ing with people’s heads,” he continued. “[We] had some great designs for the Big Daddies and the entire underwater demented art-deco aesthetic. Every year I hear something about the project, but I’m not sure any studio is quite willing to go where I was headed.”

The original BioShock has two endings, based on the player’s choices to either rescue or sacrifice the game’s Little Sisters — and the two very different outcomes you get based on your level of mercy. The game’s ‘happy’ ending — seen if you rescue every Little Sister — rewards the hero with a long life and the surviving sisters present on his eventual deathbed. However, if you harvest any Little Sister, your character is shown instead having influenced Rapture’s citizens to believe that power is all that matters. An ominous final cutscene then shows what looks to be a nuclear submarine being taken over in an attack.

The two endings are pretty different, then — a long and happy life or potential nuclear apocalypse — and it’s unclear exactly how Verbinski’s movie would have shown both. Could one have been a dream sequence, showing what might have been the alternative outcome? Or would the movie have presented audiences with two possible futures, and left viewers unclear as to which actually played out?

The later BioShock Infinite played on the multiverse theory (“there’s always a lighthouse”!) but it’s worth pointing out that this was still years away at the point of Verbinski being involved. Still, it’s fun to ponder how an adaptation might treat the game’s two endings now. Especially as plans to adapt BioShock have since resumed — with Netflix now involved in a potential adaptation.

Netflix announced plans for a fresh adaptation back in 2022, though recent years have seen the project stall again, as cuts changed the scope of the movie, necessitating changes to its script. In September 2025, producer Roy Lee confirmed the project is still in active development, with director Francis Lawrence on board to direct after finishing his work on the forthcoming The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.

“It’s a tricky adaptation, so there’s lots of things to figure out and to get right,” Lawrence told IGN previously. “There’s regime changes at Netflix, and so things stall out and get re-energized and stall out and get re-energized, and I think we’re in a pretty good place, honestly.”

Back in the world of video games, 2K confirmed last summer that it had overhauled the similarly long-awaited BioShock 4, which has been in development for the last decade. Amid layoffs and a further delay to the project’s release, former Gears of War head and Diablo franchise lead Rod Fergusson will now oversee the project. Fergusson will also head up the game’s development studio Cloud Chamber, as it attempts to finally wrestle the project to release.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

More details of the unannounced Rayman remake have bubbled up again, this time from the creator of Rayman himself, Michel Ancel.

In a new interview with RetroGamer, Ancel discussed the secret project, confirming that rather than a remaster that simply presents the same game with slightly snazzier visuals, the re-release — which Ancel calls a “remake” — will also address some of the original platformer’s pain-points, including additional checkpoints to “make it a bit less frustrating.”

“I think Rayman is still a fun game, and there’s a lot of content,” Ancel said in the interview that was shared by fan account, Rayman Merchandise. “The pacing is a bit slow because you have a big character on the screen. It also has pixel-precise gameplay, so it’s not always easy, but it’s interesting that the constraints of yesterday make it still feel original today. Even though it’s complex, I think there’s a kind of remake planned.”

NEWS: Series creator Michel Ancel reveals in a new Retro Gamer article that Rayman 1 will be receiving an HD rerelease! This follows previous reports of a “Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition” being rated. (I apologize for the new post; my prior post was incorrectly worded) pic.twitter.com/jzKlTg6on3

— Rayman Merchandise (@raymanmerch) February 7, 2026

“I don’t remember when specifically, but it will be in HD and I think Ubisoft is adding a few more checkpoints and things like that just to make it a bit less frustrating. I think it’s a nice move, because that’s the only point that could be a problem for non-skilled players. But yeah, I think it’s still a very nice game.”

It’s an extraordinary insight given the project hasn’t officially been confirmed by Ubisoft yet, but it does make sense, as we were told late last year that Ubisoft is set to celebrate all things Rayman as it prepares to mark the series’ 30th anniversary, including information about the “future” of the series. At the time, the official Rayman X/Twitter account had long been dormant, but last September, however, it was resurrected to bring us up to speed on what’s happening in Rayman’s world.

“Rayman turns 30! Join us on our official channels to celebrate an incredible legacy,” the account exclaimed at the time, attaching a brief video. In the video, brand producer Loic Gounon — who has been working on the Rayman franchise since 2006 — revealed that “a very talented team at Ubisoft Montpellier and Ubisoft Milan are currently working together on the future of Rayman.”

Back in October 2024, Ubisoft confirmed a new Rayman project was currently in the “exploration phase” at its Montpelier and Milan studios, after it was reported that Ancel had been contacted to act as a consultant.

Ubisoft began this year by announcing a sizable company restructure, resulting in the cancelation of six games, including its Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake, and a delay to a further seven titles. Two Ubisoft studios will close completely as a result of the changes, while others are subject to further layoffs.

Of the half-dozen games that have been fully scrapped, Ubisoft only publicly named one: its long-awaited Sands of Time remake that had been rebooted once already. Three of the other canceled games were new IPs, while one was a mobile game. We’ve received no specific details of the seven titles that Ubisoft has delayed, either, though this number does include the unannounced game once set for launch before March 31 that is widely expected to be the company’s Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag remaster. This will now launch in the coming financial year — so before March 31, 2027. With Ubisoft’s core focus going forward being open-world and live-service games, it’s not clear how — if at all — a Rayman remake fits into those plans.

Ubisoft quietly released an NFT game featuring Rayman at the end of 2024, of course. Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E. was barely advertised or given the kind of showy spotlight reserved for major releases, quite possibly because it’s a Web 3 game that uses cryptocurrency and blockchain. A top-down multiplayer shooter available on PC, it featured a number of Ubisoft characters, including Rayman.

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.

If Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has been on your list to jump into, but you missed out on the holiday sales price drops, we have good news: Amazon’s currently offering its PS5 version for just $29.99 on both PS5 and Xbox (see it here). What a thrill, indeed.

When it was first released, Metal Gear Solid Delta was listed for $69.99, so this deal makes for 57% in savings overall. For a game we consider to be one of the best video game remakes of all time, that’s a discount worth making a move on. Head to the link below to scoop it up for your PlayStation or Xbox library while the deal is still available.

Pokémon’s promised ad spot at the Super Bowl just aired, and in it we got a glimpse into the Pokémon preferences of celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Trevor Noah, Charles Leclerc, and more.

The minute-long ad shows Lady Gaga, Trevor Noah, Formula One racer Charles Leclerc, singer Jisoo, actor Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Spanish football (soccer, for the Americans) player Lamine Yamal and rapper Young Miko all describing their favorite Pokémon before eventually revealing them.

Lady Gaga (of course) picked Jigglypuff, and Jigglypuff even did a brief little duet with her singing its signature song. Trevor Noah prefers Psyduck, Leclerc chooses Arcanine, Jisoo picks Eevee, Ramakrishnan chooses Luxray, Yamal picks Zygarde, and Young Miko’s partner is Gengar. Shockingly, The Pokémon Company managed not to put Pikachu in this ad anywhere (except in the logo, of course)!

The ad ends with all the celebrities asking the audience, “What’s your favorite?” This question is the start of a year-long campaign put on by The Pokémon Company in celebration of its 30th anniversary. In addition to the ad, The Pokémon Company is kicking things off by introducing a new camera feature to Pokémon GO (which is somehow ten years old this year!) that allows users to participate in the campaign.

Additionally, The Pokémon Company has promised various events including “Day Out” and “Night Out” experiences designed for fans to celebrate Pokémon, with daytime events more family-focused and nighttime events more for adults who grew up with the series. The Pokémon Company has also already announced other celebratory events, such as a themed TCG collection and Pokemon LEGO sets.

Pokémon’s 30th is a big moment for the franchise, and we’re expecting them to celebrate in style. Historically Pokémon has thrown a big digital showcase entitled Pokémon Presents on or around Pokémon Day (February 27), where the company lays out its plans for the year across video games, the TCG, and merchandise. Fans are eagerly hoping for the announcement of a new Pokémon game, perhaps a remake of beloved DS games Black and White, or the kick-off for the next generation of Pokémon, Gen 10. Heck, at this point, I’d just be happy to have the classic games on Nintendo Switch Online!

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.