Play Like A Superstar in EA Sports NHL 26 with the EA Play 10-Hour Trial
Juliet NiczewiczSenior Director, Corporate Communications, EA
Summary
The EA Sports NHL 26 10-hour EA Play early access trial is available on Xbox Series X|S.
NHL Edge data powers how your favorite superstars think, move, and play in true-to-life fashion.
Score 3,000 WOC Coins and Season Pass XP Multiplier Tokens, plus recurring rewards.
Game Pass Ultimate members can now take to the ice for up to 10 hours in EA Sports NHL 26. If they decide to buy, their progress carries over to the full game, so they can get ready for the next match.
Members can save 10% off EA digital purchases, including the full version of the game and NHL Points. Plus, score in-game rewards, including 3,000 WOC Coins and Season Pass XP Multiplier Tokens. It’s time to show out and tell the world to check my game.
Ice-Q 2.0 powered by NHL Edge
Think, move, and play like your favorite superstars. By informing player Attributes, Tendencies, and with the all-new Goalie Crease Control System, NHL Edge data brings a deeper level of authenticity to Chel.
NHL Visual Package
Enjoy a litany of visual updates, including the addition of the Delta Center as a playable arena, all-new net mesh behavior, neck guards for players, and a dynamic new menu screen. From Dynamic Cinematic Lighting that turns all preplays and off-play camera moments into a thing of beauty, to a font update for increased legibility, there are a ton of new updates to Chel’s overall visual package.
Be A Pro
The revamped Be A Pro mode lets you live your hockey journey from rookie to superstar with fresh storylines, characters, challenges, and cutscenes. Play your way from World Juniors to the draft. Experience the emotions of your first pro game: the highs of being a human highlight reel, getting grilled at post-game pressers for a lingering dry spell — and if that keeps up, having to work your way back to the big league from the minors.
The EA Sports NHL 26 10-hour EA Play trial is available on Xbox Series X|S. Conditions, limitations and exclusions apply. See EA Play Terms for details.
Battlefield 6 doesn’t have ray-tracing, and its developer has said there are no plans to add the feature down the line.
While ray-tracing has been notably missing from Battlefield 6’s open beta tests, it wasn’t entirely clear if this was just because the game was in beta or if it was a deliberate choice. Turns out, it’s the latter.
Despite being a popular inclusion in some games, ray-tracing’s more natural method of simulating lighting can also prove to be draining on your PC or console’s system resources — and it’s for this reason that the competitive shooter won’t include it. Indeed, Christian Buhl — studio technical director at Ripple Effect, one of the studios working on Battlefield 6 — has told Comicbook that while the PC version of Battlefield 6 will have over 600 different options in its settings menu, “ray-tracing won’t be one of them and there’s no plans to bring it into the game in the near future.”
“No, we are not going to have ray-tracing when the game launches and we don’t have any plans in the near future for it either,” Buhl said. “That was because we wanted to focus on performance. We wanted to make sure that all of our effort was focused on making the game as [optimized] as possible for the default settings and the default users.
“So, we just made the decision relatively early on that we just weren’t going to do ray-tracing and again, it was mostly so that we could focus on making sure it was performance for everyone else.”
While most people would likely sacrifice visuals to preserve performance during multiplayers mode, this may be disappointing news for some players who’d hoped to have ray-tracing in Battlefield 6’s upcoming single-player campaign, when the time comes to play.
Earlier today, we highlighted a nine-minute slice of Battlefield 6’s battle royale mode that has leaked online. This particular video not only gives a good look at what to expect from the mode, but also reveals a couple of gameplay mechanics we didn’t previously know about, too, including swimming, one of the gadgets, and its “massive map.”
Battlefield 6 releases on October 7. We’re having a great time with what we’ve played so far, writing in our Battlefield 6 review-in-progress: “Right now, even in beta form, Battlefield 6 might be the most fun shooter I’ve played this year.”
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.
No videogame fantasy setting will ever disquiet me as much as an empty business park at night under blue and yellow floodlights. A business park, or the access road down the side of a corrugated steel warehouse, where the alcoves cast by the LEDs look like a procession of hooded figures beneath the fixed, unblinking blackness of the sky.
I can’t actually be present in that scene, mind. I don’t belong there. No being does, not even the people who come by day to fill the striped lines with cars or raise the shutters on the loading bays. Instead, I have to be travelling past very fast. Preferably, I will be looking out the window of a train that shows the place for only a few seconds. I will feel as though I’ve glimpsed another planet’s scrolling surface in a mirror. Except this isn’t right. I will never find the words for it. Nothing written above is adequate. Balls.
Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima has announced plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary of establishing his own studio, Kojima Productions, with an event in Tokyo later this month.
Hosted by Kojima himself, the “celebratory event,” entitled Beyond The Strand, will include guest appearances “as well as offer a glimpse into future projects.” It’ll take place at TOHO Cinemas Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Japan, on September 23, 2025.
Fans in the vicinity can enter a lottery to be in with a chance of securing a ¥7700 — the equivalent of around $50 — when tickets go on sale tomorrow, September 2. Or, alternatively, you can watch the action online.
Right now, it seems unlikely we’ll see much of Kojima’s mysterious upcoming PlayStation game Physint — as the developer recently told us the game remains “at the conceptual stage”. More likely, perhaps, we’ll get to know a little more about Kojima’s horror project OD, which is still in development in collaboration with Microsoft, despite Xbox’s recent cancellations of a number of projects, both internal and external.
Kojima first announced his OD collaboration with Xbox in November of 2022, then officially revealed OD along with several of its star cast members at The Game Awards 2023. We learned at the time that Kojima was working with filmmaker Jordan Peele to create a horror experience “no one has seen before.”
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.
Remember when, back in the day, you made the trek through the ashlands to Red Mountain? Within, you encountered an unforgettable foe. “Come, Nerevar. Friend or traitor, come. Come and look upon the Heart, and Akulakhan. And bring Wraithguard… I have need of it”, they said. “Heed my words. I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella. And I have never known defeat.”
Okay, so maybe not, but it’s a nice image with which to open the news that a modder’s managed to port the entirety of Morrowind‘s landmass into Elden Ring. It’s still very much a work-in-progress, as you might expect given its version of Vvardenfell’s populated by copies of the same random woman and goats, but it certainly makes for a surreal watch.
Labor Day deals have arrived to offer shoppers a little taste of savings before the big sale events kick off in the coming months. If you’ve been looking to stock up on video games, you’re in luck: quite a few are on sale right now, including some that are back at their lowest prices yet.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is one of these deals, with the Limited Edition (and Amazon Exclusive) version for PS5 marked down to $49.99 (see here at Amazon). This discount offers you $20 of savings from its list price of $69.99 and marks a return to its best price so far, according to price tracker camelcamelcamel.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Down to Just $49.99
A deal like that is worth taking advantage of while it’s still live, so if it’s been on your shopping list, now is an excellent time to pick it up. The Limited Edition (Amazon Exclusive) version also comes with the “Sekiryu Character Pack”, which includes a gear and weapon set for Naoe, Sekiryu Beast mount, and a Dragon Tooth trinket.
In case you’re in need of some convincing before hitting the “buy” button, it’s worth noting that we found a lot to love in Assassin’s Creed Shadows in our review. Writer Jarrett Green said of the game, “By sharpening the edges of its existing systems, Assassin’s Creed Shadows creates one of the best versions of the open-world style it’s been honing for the last decade.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn’t the only PS5 game to receive a sweet Labor Day discount, though. We broke down even more PS5 game deals that are worth checking out right now during the sale event, including Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and the absolutely delightful Split Fiction. If you’re curious what Amazon’s offering overall during Labor Day sales, check out our full mega-post of Amazon’s Labor Day Sale.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
Games and gear for when you’re not playing Silksong.
Switch 2 is nearly three months old now, and we’re on the cusp of the mad Q3/4 rush as publishers gear up to extract your pennies over the holiday season, which is just a few months away.
Switch 2 is slowly, steadily building a library, and there’s still more Switch 1 games coming than we know what to do with. And with the launch Silksong — finally! — there’s loads to be playing even if you haven’t yet picked up Nintendo’s latest system.
Prepare for a deep dive on 007 First Light! During this special State of Play, the development team at IO Interactive declassifies new gameplay on James Bond’s upcoming espionage action-adventure thrill ride.
Catch the show live on PlayStation’s Twitch and YouTube channels on September 3 at 11am PT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST.
In this upcoming State of Play, tune in for over 30 minutes of gameplay featuring a playthrough of Bond’s first mission as an MI6 recruit. The action includes everything from high-speed car chases to on-foot stealth sequences and shootouts. Stay tuned after the playthrough for insights from IO Interactive on the intense espionage gameplay.
We can’t wait to show you what the team has been cooking up on September 3.
Escape from Tarkov is finally emerging from an early access period that will have lasted nearly a decade, when its full release on November 15th rolls around, and you’ll soon be able to grab it on Steam.
Yep, it’s taken yeaaaaarrrssss. Tarkov’s initial alpha release came on August 4th, 2016, just a few days before No Man’s Sky arrived for the first time, and just after a little game called Stardew Valley dropped. Think about what you were doing back then. I was a teenager, still far from the job-having husk I’ve since morphed into.
