Category: Video Games

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket kicks off a new Wonder Pick event today, January 7, but strangely hasn’t announced it, added missions with rewards, or items to the shop.

Dataminers have already uncovered everything coming to the digital TCG in the near future, however, so details on what’s coming and when are already available.

The Wonder Picking portion of the Charmander and Squirtle Wonder Pick Event is the only aspect currently available, but as reported by Pokémon Zone, datamining confirms the rest will arrive tomorrow, January 8. This is the first time developer Creatures Inc. has staggered an event’s release.

Everything else is relatively standard, however. The Wonder Pick event will let players access free bonus picks for a chance at picking up Wonder Hourglasses, Blastoise Event Shop Tickets, and Charmander and Squirtle cards including two new Promo versions.

Missions will encourage players to do all of the above, awarding players with Event Shop Tickets for Wonder Picking three, four, and five times and for collecting one Squirtle and one Charmander.

Part 2 of the Wonder Pick Event will launch a week later on January 15, offering Event Shop Tickets for Wonder Picking one through six times, and for collecting five and 10 Fire cards and five and 10 Water cards.

These Blastoise Event Shop Tickets can, unsurprisingly, be used to purchase Blastoise themed items in the shop. Part 1 of the event will see a cover featuring Blue and Blastoise released, a backdrop featuring Blue released, and a Tiny Temple backdrop released.

Part 2 of the event will expand these offerings with a Blue and Blastoise card sleeves and playmat, a Blastoise coin, a Blastoise icon, and presumably ten lots of 50 Shinedust.

The event coincides somewhat with the Blastoise Drop Event currently available in the single-player battles, with players able to take on a variety of Blastoise themed decks to win booster packs with new promo cards. The Mythical Island player versus player event is also currently underway.

Pokémon TCG Pocket arrived October 30 and is a certified hit for Creatures Inc. and The Pokémon Company, having earned an estimated $200 million in its first month across more than 60 million downloads.

This huge amount of money comes as Pokémon TCG Pocket follows the standard mobile and free to play game model, flooding players with rewards in the first few days before soon drying up, with spending real world money the only real way to re-experience that early thrill outside of the occasional set drop like Mythical Island.

Completing Genetic Apex, the first set of cards which totals 226 officially but also contains 60 rare alternate art cards, will take players not spending money around two years according to one estimate, while those looking to make it rain can wrap up the collection after dropping around $1,500.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

The astronomical development budgets of the Call of Duty games were revealed for the first time after a court document confirmed Activision pumped $700 million into Black Ops Cold War alone.

First reported by Game File, a court filing submitted by publisher Activision as part of a lawsuit regarding the 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, included official word on the development budgets of 2015’s Black Ops 3, 2019’s Modern Warfare, and 2020’s Black Ops Cold War.

The court filing also includes updated sales figures for each game, showing the huge revenue Call of Duty brings in through sales alone and before its post-launch monetization.

First, some caveats. The figures detailed below include pre and post-launch development. That is, the cost to develop each game for launch, then the subsequent post-launch development costs associated with feeding the ongoing live service, meaning the development lifecycle of the game.

Call of Duty games offer a range of free content following release, including new maps, new weapons, and new cosmetics for use across Multiplayer and Zombies. Activision monetizes Call of Duty post-launch by selling battle passes, store bundles, and, most recently with Black Ops 6, premium event passes, released in the traditional live service seasonal model in the year each game has to itself before the next Call of Duty comes around.

The development of this relentless conveyor belt of content, which often includes high-profile crossovers with popular intellectual property such as Warhammer 40,000 and Squid Game, does not come cheap.

Now, onto the figures themselves:

• Black Ops 3 (2015): $450 million in development costs across the game’s lifecycle, 43 million copies sold
• Modern Warfare (2019): $640 million in development costs across the game’s lifecycle, 41 million copies sold
• Black Ops Cold War (2020): $700 million in development costs over the game’s life cycle, 30 million copies sold

To provide context, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us 2 cost around $220 million, Guerrilla’s Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million, and Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 cost $300 million to develop. However, these games are not live services, and so post-launch development costs are not necessarily related to the figures as they are with Call of Duty.

As Game File noted, these development costs do not include marketing spend, which for Call of Duty will be significant. So the true cost of bringing Call of Duty to market and operating it as a live service will be even higher.

While ever increasing triple-A development budgets are a hot topic within the industry, and have caused some experts to question the viability of these sorts of games, Call of Duty operates on a different level to most of its peers. Black Ops Cold War’s 30 million copies sold will in of itself have generated well over $1 billion in revenue for Activision, then there’s the live service revenue generated by the game during the 12 months before 2021’s Call of Duty: Vanguard launched. Even with $700 million spent on development and more on marketing, Black Ops Cold War will have been hugely profitable for Activision. You can see why Microsoft forked out $69 billion to buy the company.

Speaking of Microsoft, the math is now muddled by Call of Duty’s day-one launch on Game Pass, which some analysts had predicted would impact sales of Black Ops 6 but boost subscription numbers. Microsoft itself sounds delighted with the performance of last year’s game, saying sales of Black Ops 6 on PlayStation and PC were 60% higher compared to the 2023 release of Modern Warfare 3.

Microsoft has yet to say exactly how many new subscribers Black Ops 6 brought through the door, although CEO Satya Nadella has confirmed that Game Pass set a record for new subs on launch day.

However, Microsoft’s gaming business has suffered devastating layoffs, and Activision has taken a significant hit as part of that. Microsoft has cut an eye-watering 2,550 staff from its gaming business since acquiring Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has indicated the cuts were related to the acquisition of the Call of Duty maker.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Sony has announced a movie adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn.

The collaboration between PlayStation Studios and Columbia Pictures was announced during Sony’s CES 2025 press conference. Columbia Pictures produced the successful 2022 Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland as Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Victor Sullivan.

Horizon Zero Dawn is Guerrilla Games’ hugely popular post-apocalyptic adventure starring machine hunter Aloy. No timeframe for the film’s release was announced.

During the same press conference, Sony announced a film adaptation of Helldivers 2 and an anime series adaptation of Ghost of Tsushima.

Developing…

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The US Department of Defense has classified Tencent, a major investor in several big video game companies, as a Chinese military company.

The report from Bloomberg states that Tencent alongside battery maker CATL have been added to a list that classifies them as Chinese military companies. The designation itself does not carry any legal consequences such as sanctions, but inclusion on the list is not ideal for companies looking to conduct business in the United States.

As a result, while there is no immediate impact to what this designation means for Tencent, this is still a company that owns Riot Games, and has heavy investments in a variety of other game companies including Epic Games, Larian Studios, and FromSoftware. There are also reports that say Tencent is in negotiations with investing more into companies like Ubisoft.

Tencent has told Bloomberg that this designation is “clearly a mistake” and both Tencent and CATL will be pushing to remove their names from the Department of Defense’s list. Previously, Chinese phone manufacturer Xiaomi was added to the same list in 2021 and then removed from it a few months later.

In a statement to The Verge, Tencent’s Danny Marti says that the designation “has no impact on our business” but will still be working to remove themselves from the classification.

In a one pager published by the Department of Defense, the US government cites Military Civil Fusion, or MCF, a startegy it says the Chinese government uses to combine civilian research and commercial success to further advance its military, hence why the US government has a list of Chinese companies it suspects as working with the Chinese military, something companies like Tencent and Xiaomi deny.

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Xbox is ringing in the new year by taking yet another step toward its promise of making everything an Xbox: by announcing it will add the Xbox app to LG TVs later this year.

In an Xbox Wire post today, Xbox announced it’s partnering with LG Electronics to bring the Xbox app to LG smart TVs in 2025. What this means is that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will be able to play games on supported LG TVs without needing a console, using cloud gaming tech. And yes, that includes Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

Xbox already implemented this feature on Samsung Smart TVs back in 2022, and added Amazon Fire TV devices to the mix last year. With the expansion to LG TVs, Xbox expands its TV presence even further amid an ongoing ad campaign focused on showcasing the ability to play Xbox on any device. This campaign, using the slogan “This is an Xbox”, positions TVs, laptops, phones, consoles, and other devices as Xboxes thanks to the combined powers of the Xbox app and Game Pass. LG makes several of the best TVs for gaming, including our overall favorite, the LG G4.

Despite numerous moves in recent years to spread its wings from consoles to other devices, Xbox leadership has repeatedly stated it’s committed to consoles as well. Just last year, it announced a mid-gen refresh for the Xbox Series X and S, including an all-digital Series X, and confirmed it’s “full speed ahead” on a next-gen console.

Meanwhile, rumors continue to pop up every few months of a dedicated Xbox handheld, though Xbox head Phil Spencer recently suggested it’s still a few years away.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.