DC Studios Co-CEO James Gunn and other Peacemaker crew members seemingly found out Warner Bros. Discovery would be bringing back the HBO Max name while filming promotional material for Season 2 – and their reactions are priceless.

Minds were boggled when HBO’s parent company revealed it would be reverting its streaming service rebrand earlier today. It’s a move that will see apps ditch the Max name in favor of the original HBO Max banner this summer, and if you thought that was confusing, just know that some of the biggest names at DC have been left scratching their heads, too.

The soon-to-be-renamed Max's official X account shared recorded reactions from Gunn and Peacemaker star John Cena shortly after its announcement today. The pair appears to be reading from a teleprompter encouraging audiences to watch Peacemaker Season 2 when it debuts August 21.

As Gunn is telling viewers where to watch, we get to see him react to the name change in real time. Gunn is taken aback when the script he's reading from says HBO Max and not MAX. He's informed that it's not a mistake and will be announced at the Upfront.

That's good actually. pic.twitter.com/b3WNWOsyT2

— Max (@StreamOnMax) May 14, 2025

“God, we’re calling it HBO Max – what?” Gunn teases. “We’re calling it HBO Max again?”

At this point, we hear other crew members, including DC Studios Co-CEO Peter Safran, chime in. It’s a confusing (and hilarious) moment caught on film, but Gunn, at least, says he’s happy with the change: “That’s good, actually, but I didn’t know that was happening.”

Cena, meanwhile, is firmly in the loop. Instead of the footage showing the wrestler-turned-actor finding out about Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest streaming service rebrand, his video actually sees him breaking the news to some of the people behind the camera.

All of this could, of course, just be an elaborate publicity stunt orchestrated by the HBO Max team. Either way, it’s too funny seeing some of the most important names at DC Studios reacting to the streamer's latest rebrand.

POV: finding out about the rebrand from @JohnCena pic.twitter.com/eyQxhTcJrs

— Max (@StreamOnMax) May 14, 2025

HBO Max originally launched in 2020 and served as a hub for a variety of content to stream. It’s name stuck until 2023, when the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery announced it would be ditching the HBO portion of its name in favor of Max. Now, after subscribers spent two years slowly working the one-word name into their vocabulary, the company has decided HBO Max is actually a great name.

No specific release date for the new rebrand has been announced. While we wait for an update on both HBO Max and Peacemaker Season 2, you can check out the most notable DC projects coming in 2025. You can also read up on our biggest takeaways from Peacemaker Season 2's latest trailer.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor 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).

Electronic Arts has announced to employees that it will be ending its remote working policies permanently, and implementing a full return to office.

In an email sent to employees today viewed by IGN, CEO Andrew Wilson said that in-person work results in "a kinetic energy that fuels creativity, innovation, and connection, often resulting in unexpected breakthroughs that lead to incredible experiences for our players." He then went on to broadly outline that "hybrid work" would now be defined as a "minimum of three days a week in your local office," and that "offsite local roles" would be gradually phased out.

In a follow-up email from EA Entertainment president, Laura Miele, also viewed by IGN, she clarified further details, describing the company as moving from "a decentralized approach to a globally consistent, enterprise-wide work model":

• These changes will not take effect immediately. Employees should continue working as directed by your Business Unit until further notice, regardless of where you live.
• Work model transitions will come with a minimum 12-week notice period before any changes are implemented. The timing will vary by location and will be communicated locally with plenty of notice.
• Hybrid work will mean working from your local office at least three days per week–this aligns with what’s outlined in Andrew’s EA Action.
• We are introducing a new 30-mile/48-km radius around EA locations.
• What this means:
  • Employees who live within 30-miles/48-km of an EA location will transition to a Hybrid work model.
  • Employees who live outside the 30-mile/48-km radius will be considered remote unless their role is designated as On Site or Hybrid.
• We will also sunset the Offsite Local work model. Depending on your location, this transition may take 3 to 24 months.
• Any work model exception and future Remote hires will require a CEO Direct’s /my approval.

Several sources within EA speaking to IGN anonymously said that employees were upset and confused, with some employees sharing hours-long commutes they were now being expected to make, or expressing concerns regarding childcare or personal medical conditions that had benefited from remote work. Others, classified as remote and outside the 30-mile range, expressed concern for what would happen to their roles if they were unwilling or unable to move closer to an office long-term. Two sources explained to IGN that per the breakdown sent by Miele, existing remote workers would have their "exemptions" to return to office "sunset" sometime in the next 3 to 24 months.

While remote work has long been prevalent in the video game industry, it became exceptionally popular during and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, when stay-at-home mandates forced most AAA companies to adapt remote work as a long-term solution. In the years since, more and more companies have hired more and more remote workers, and existing near-office workers have reported moving to cheaper cities away from offices, under the impression that remote work was permanent.

However, other major video game companies have recently been calling workers back to office, resulting in frustration and, at times, employee turnover as workers were forced to choose between expensive or challenging relocation and their jobs. Companies such as Rockstar Games, Ubisoft, and Activision Blizzard have all faced criticism from within and without as a result of these policies. However, the return to office mandates have appeared to move apace, with more companies such as EA opting to require an in-office model once again.

EA recently laid off around 300 individuals company-wide, following earlier layoffs at BioWare this year and the termination of around 670 roles last year.

IGN has reached out to EA for comment.

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.

Bowflex isn't the only option when it comes to adjustable dumbbell sets. PowerBlock is another trusted brand at a much lower price point. For a few days only, Woot! (owned by Amazon) has discounted the PowerBlock EXP Stage 1 (5 to 50lb) adjustable dumbbell set to only $239.99, which is currently $149 cheaper than a comparable set of Bowflex SelectTechs. For those who need more than 50 pounds of weight per dumbbell, PowerBlock also offers expansion kits that can increase the maximum weight to 70 pounds or 90 pounds. Both kits – Stage 2 (50 to 70lb) and Stage 3 (70 to 90lb) – are also on sale at Woot! for $1199.99 each. Amazon Prime members get free shipping; everyone else will pay $6 for flat rate shipping. That's reasonable when you consider the fact that the package is going to weigh over 100 pounds.

PowerBlock Adjustable Dumbbells (up to 90lbs per Dumbbell)

You can now do your best Link impression with a playable ocarina from Deekec. The 12-hole handmade ceramic flute looks exactly how it does in the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and comes with a songbook with 20 iconic songs from the game, like the Song of Time and Song of Storms. It's on sale for $17.99 (10% off) at Amazon right now and is part of a Lightning Deal, meaning only a limited number of these are available at this price.

Grab a Playable Ocarina and Legend of Zelda Songbook

The Nintendo Switch 2 launches on June 5, and while you’ll obviously be able to take it on the go, Nintendo is only claiming a minimum of “2 hours” of battery life in intense games. That’s definitely enough for a morning commute, but if you want your Nintendo Switch 2 to last through longer flights or even just away from a wall outlet, you’re going to need a solid power bank.

While the Switch 2 does include plenty of new hardware features, it’s still just a mobile device that charges via USB-C. That means pretty much any existing power bank is going to be perfect for the portable console. Power banks that are specially designed for the Switch 2 will definitely be coming out over the next few months. Genki, for instance, has a magnetic power bank that attaches to a special Nintendo Switch 2 case to keep your Switch charged without needing to run a cable from your pocket to the console. There are similar solutions out there for the original Switch, but because of the Switch 2’s bigger dimensions, they won’t be compatible with the upcoming handheld.

1. Anker Nano Power Bank

The Best Power Bank

2. Belkin Boost Plus 10K

The Most Portable Power Bank

3. Anker Power Core 24K

An Absolutely Overkill Power Bank

I vividly remember buying my first OLED TV, the LG E8 55 inch back in 2019, right before we all went into hiding. Let me tell you: it was the perfect isolation companion. At the time, I didn’t really know what OLED (organic light-emitting diode) was like. I knew that instead of the backlight in LCD displays, OLED features self-lit pixels, which means infinite contrast. But after jumping onto the pretty boy train in Final Fantasy XV and fighting through scar territory in The Last of Us Part II, it hit me. This is what it feels like to live a nostalgic fever dream-like memory in real time. Naturally, I didn’t stop at the E8.

A few years later, I bought the LG C2 65-inch TV, and since then, I’ve reviewed tons of devices with OLED displays and learned that not all OLED screens are created equal. In fact, not all OLED displays even share the same technology. You might be wondering, “How many OLED types are there?” Well, too many. But there’s really only three you should care about: WOLED, QD-OLED, and AMOLED.

WOLED, QD-OLED, and AMOLED: How They Work

OLED has been around for decades, with companies from Kodak to Mitsubishi trying new takes on the technology. It wasn’t until LG debuted its OLED TVs in the early 2010s that the technology became mainstream.

LG’s variation of OLED is called WOLED (White OLED). The company doesn’t call it that in its marketing because LG is OLED, or so it would love for you to believe. But what is WOLED? As I’ve explained, OLED ditches the backlight and uses self-lit pixels. This gets you the infinite contrast and bold colors. The issue is the compounds in red, green, and blue emitters deteriorate at different rates. As you might know, burn-in is an issue for OLED displays, but this accelerated the process.

WOLED solves this issue by using a pure white OLED layer with a RGBW color filter. So imagine all of those self-lit pixels – they’re not red, green, or blue anymore, they’re just white. However, this has its own issues. Try blasting a spotlight through a bunch of color filters – some of those lights will be brighter than others. This causes imbalanced brightness and reduced color volume. (Pricier WOLEDs try to solve this with Micro Lens Array technology, which squeezes thousands of microlenses onto a single pixel to focus light.)

However, another solution made its debut in 2022, called QD-OLED (Quantum Dot OLED), which was heralded by Samsung. QD-OLED swaps that white OLED layer for a blue one, which hits a layer of quantum dot color convertors. The quantum dots aren't like the RGBW filter because they absorb the light, so when they convert the blue into red or green, they don't lose any of the backlight.

Meanwhile, AMOLED is in its own little category because it’s basically like WOLED except it features a thin-film transistor (TFT) layer, which helps control the charge of each pixel, allowing the pixels to be activated faster. However, that comes at the cost of OLED’s iconic “infinite” contrast.

WOLED, QD-OLED, and AMOLED: Which Is Better for Gaming?

The right OLED tech for gaming comes down to circumstance and preference. If you want the simple answer: QD-OLED is the best. However, there are some situations where you want WOLED, and some where you’re stuck with AMOLED.

First, let’s talk about AMOLED since I was just getting into how it’s in its own little category. Most AMOLED displays are typically found in smartphones and laptops. You won’t see them in many TVs because they’re expensive. AMOLED is flexible (literally, it’s used in foldables), so it can accommodate virtually any screen size and features high refresh rates and better viewing angles. But for the most part, you don’t have much choice in the type of OLED you buy on smaller devices, especially since the display isn’t the sole focus. (Ironically, for something designed for smartphone usage, they are the worst in direct sunlight because of their lower peak brightness.)

When it comes to gaming monitors and TVs, you get the choice of WOLED (marketed as just OLED) or QD-OLED. WOLED gets extremely bright because of its white OLED layer, but that’s only with whites. As I mentioned earlier, the RGBW filter loses a lot of brightness across its colors. So you get an overall brighter visual on a QD-OLED display. And since the quantum dots absorb light instead of filtering it through, you’re also going to see bolder colors.

But let’s go back to the white OLED layer that WOLEDs are rocking. I have my OLED TV situated in my living room across from my windows, so it gets plenty of glare. However, the darkest parts of the TV still look black. Meanwhile, my QD-OLED monitor that’s on my desk does not look black against glare. Instead it gives off a purplish tint. That’s because, in an effort to increase brightness, Samsung removed the polarizing layer from QD-OLED displays, which would normally reduce reflections.

For overall color and brightness, QD-OLED displays technically look better. But in a highly reflective space, WOLED screens are way less distracting. I will point out, however, that this is all in theory. The quality of the displays themselves really comes down to specs. You can’t get around the money factor – the more you spend, the prettier it will be, as a general rule.

But QD-OLED and WOLED may not be the only choices we have for very long.

The Future of OLED Is PHOLED

There are plenty of types of OLED. One of them is called PHOLED (Phosphorescent OLED), which uses phosphorescent materials (as opposed to fluorescent) to convert energy to light. The issue with this technology is that the blue in PHOLED has a significantly shorter lifespan than green and red, which makes a PHOLED panel pretty much DOA.

However, LG just recently announced that it’s overcome the challenge of blue PHOLED and is now ready for mass production. LG refers to PHOLED as “Dream OLED” and that’s because phosphorescence offers 100% luminous efficiency, surpassing the 25% efficiency of fluorescence. That means a PHOLED TV will be brighter and consume less power.

Unfortunately, we won't see PHOLED displays in TVs anytime soon. But we will get a glimpse of the technology in smartphones and tablets sooner than later.

Rami Tabari is a contributing writer at IGN with over 9 years of experience in the tech and gaming industry. You can find his bylines at Laptop Mag and Tom's Guide (and on a random Predator review at Space.com). When Rami isn't wading through a sea of the latest gaming tech, he's agonizing over the worldbuilding in his upcoming novella.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens in theaters Friday, May 23.

For nearly 30 years, the stunts and action sequences of Mission: Impossible have been synonymous with big-screen spectacle. And as expected, the franchise’s newest entry finds Tom Cruise’s alter ego Ethan Hunt risking life, limb, and the fates of millions, this time in pursuit of stopping The Entity, the evil A.I. introduced in 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. But the way I see it, the sequel – which stopped being Dead Reckoning Part Two sometime in the last two years – might be trying a little too hard to top the IMF’s greatest hits.

First thing you should know about me is that I’ve always been a huge mark for James Bond movies. I’ve got a lot of formative movie memories from growing up with those films. So I was, frankly, thrilled to see all the things I loved about Bond captured perfectly in 2016’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, the first of now four Ethan Hunt adventures written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie.

Rogue Nation nails the combination of go-for-broke practical stunts, grinning self-awareness, and just the right touch of believability that make up the most important parameters for a successful IMF mission – Fallout nails it slightly less, and I think Dead Reckoning misses by a wider margin. The Final Reckoning, unfortunately, has gone farther afield.

My biggest takeaway from the eighth and very evidently not final film starring Cruise as fate’s chosen lucky boy is that it’s extremely sober. The Final Reckoning veers into melodrama whenever there is story to be told. The cast, which is an assembling of familiar franchise faces and newcomer cameos, whisper-talk their way through soap-opera levels of tension. Nearly every scrap of dialogue is invested in no less than the end of all life on the planet.

But my first litmus test for these movies is how serious they treat Ethan Hunt getting the mission. Rogue Nation was a flirty encounter at a record shop, Fallout’s knock on the door woke him up from a dream where a nuclear blast interrupted his wedding, and Dead Reckoning was some kind of dramatic poetry slam with the IMF Oath and a new recruit. The Final Reckoning features a lo-fi delivery method thanks to the Entity’s infiltration of all things digital – and it’s honestly kinda fun. But the message is the most dire and serious thing. This is a story point introduced by Dead Reckoning: The Entity as a villain capable of literally every bad thing imaginable, like a laundry list of vague shorthand threats – any one of which could’ve been enough to carry a movie. Instead, they’ve all been lumped together in the form of a nebulous digital boogeyman, and reiterating that in the “this message will self destruct” section of the movie sets a very somber tone for everything that follows. Save for a few bits of humor here and there, it’s never shaken (or stirred).

Absurdly astronomical stakes are one of the biggest issues with The Final Reckoning. A good-old fashioned nuke or biological weapon – those live in Mission: Impossible’s sweet spot: life-and-death at a massive scale, while also real enough to be relatably scary. But all life on planet Earth is just too much to plausibly wrap your head around, particularly with how seriously everyone takes everything else compared to say, Rogue Nation or Fallout.

I know I keep swerving away from The Final Reckoning and back into the rest of the franchise but, for better and worse, this is a part eight that’s very aware that it’s a part eight. You can’t call a movie The Final Reckoning without delivering some degree of, well, finality, and oh boy does this one try.

It’s not merely planting Easter eggs from the earlier films so much as picking entire story points – largely unnecessary ones, I would argue. It’s a nice nod to the diehards, but when you consider the nearly three-hour run time and the relative lack of importance these moments have to the overall movie, I’m not sure what McQuarrie and Cruise were trying to accomplish. This is all to say, The Final Reckoning is impossible to review out of the context of the other seven Missions: Impossible, which is why I keep recapping my feelings for the franchise as a whole.

One of the callbacks that I really did enjoy, though, is a guy we’ve seen in the trailers for The Final Reckoning: William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the poor bastard working in the CIA black vault whose nose Ethan stole the NOC list out from under way back in the ’90s. His part in The Final Reckoning is spot on. He’s a meaningful character for Ethan and the IMF to encounter who also speaks to the themes of the movie: Our lives are the sum of our choices. He’s fun, which is short supply here, and I would’ve loved it if he’d have been the only bit of retconning this movie tried to do.

But I’ve been talking a lot about the things I didn’t like – it’s important to note that there are some things The Final Reckoning very much did right. The action is predictably excellent, with the highlight being Ethan’s infiltration of the Sevastopol, the MacGuffin of a submarine that sank at the start of Dead Reckoning. It is incredibly tense and intricate and claustrophobic and all the other nail-biting things you want from a thriller. More than that, there’s clearly a huge chunk of the reported $400 million budget on screen, and Christopher McQuarrie is getting all the nautical miles he can out of it. The set is equal parts Avatar and the hallway fight from Inception.

The fight choreography is also elevated from previous entries, as other countries send their most special forces after the same prize Ethan is after. The fights are a little more brutal and legitimately feel like the IMF could lose. At this point in the franchise, that’s a difficult tightrope to walk, and McQuarrie and Cruise deserve a lot of credit for that.

They also deserve a fair bit of credit bringing the team together again. I felt that was one part of the Mission: Impossible formula that was a little absent from the last film. The climax of The Final Reckoning gives every team member a job – it’s reminiscent of Fallout in that respect, and very important for the IMF. Because it’s less fun when Ethan is running around doing everything himself. An abiding trust in his team is part of Ethan’s allure – in addition to being, as Shea Whigham’s Jasper Briggs puts it in Dead Reckoning, a mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos.

The climactic biplane sequence is great, too. It’s thrilling in parts, funny in others, and most importantly, all the effort and planning that goes into a stunt like that is apparent. The only question I have about it is, would The Final Reckoning be worse if it were a stunt double walking out on the wing of that plane instead of Tom Cruise? Or would it just have one less interesting thing going for it?

A lot of how I feel about this movie, though, comes down to that subtitle. The Final Reckoning can’t be officially final with the way it ends, and I don’t think there are any of us who believe Tom Cruise is done risking his life for our entertainment. So it’s either the best subtitle for this movie, or the worst. Maybe they completely missed the mark on the “Final” part of the equation, and it’s not a representative title at all. Maybe its not-entirely-successful attempt at tying a neat and all-encompassing bow is the Final Reckoning for the franchise and the path it laid out across 8 movies. From a real world perspective, maybe a messy and self-serious capstone to an otherwise iconic franchise is exactly what they deserve and it’s a perfect subtitle.

For my part, because again, I’m a big fan of this kind of movie, I’m rooting for the latter. Threads have been picked up and tugged on in different directions throughout the course of these eight films. That’s just the cost of doing business with a 30-year juggernaut of a franchise. Their mission now, should they choose to accept, is to take the clean slate they’ve created with all those threads tied up, however clumsily, and get back to what Mission: Impossible does best: not take itself so seriously.

The summer movie season is heating up, and all eyes are on James Gunn’s Superman. Anticipation for this big screen reboot continues to grow, with Warner Bros. releasing a brand new trailer that gives us a bit more insight into the movie’s plot and the relationship between David Corenswet’s Superman and Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane.

But really, it’s all about the villains. The new trailer not only showcases Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor, but also characters like María Gabriela de Faría’s Engineer, Gunn’s creation the Hammer of Boravia, and the mysterious Ultraman.

It all begs the question - who is really the villain of Gunn’s Superman? Is Lex taking a backseat to some of the DCU’s other baddies? Let’s explore the many villains featured in Superman and how these characters all fit together.

Who Is the Hammer of Boravia?

One of the newcomers in the latest trailer is a hulking, armored character called the Hammer of Boravia. Don’t worry if that name doesn’t set off any DC continuity alarm bells. In this case, Gunn isn’t adapting an existing character from the comics, but rather inventing an entirely new villain for David Corenswet’s Superman to battle. It’s an interesting choice, given how vast DC’s character library is and the fact that the large majority have yet to be touched by the DCU.

This character was actually first teased in some of DC’s promotional material for the film. A faux-Daily Planet newspaper features the headline “‘Hammer of Boravia’ Creates Havoc Downtown.” We seem to be seeing that conflict play out in the trailer, as the Hammer trades blows with Superman and unleashes a devastating laser attack.

It definitely appears that the Hammer of Boravia is relying on technology to even the playing field with Superman. This seems to be a soldier wearing a weaponized battlesuit. The suit reminds us of nothing if not the Zaku from the various Gundam series. Interestingly, Gunn has also referred to the various giant monsters in the film as kaiju. This suggests that the director and his design team have taken a lot of inspiration from Japanese media for their Superman villains, even as Superman himself seems to draw more from the classic Silver Age comics and the graphic novel All-Star Superman. This movie is shaping up to be a unique fusion of Eastern and Western elements.

Based on what Warners has revealed about the Hammer of Boravia so far, we know that this character represents the fictional nation of Boravia, which at the time of the film has recently invaded the neighboring country of Jarhanpur. Superman has just intervened to put a stop to that war, drawing the Hammer’s wrath upon Metropolis. We can see scenes of that invasion playing out in the trailer, and we also get a sense of the serious political fallout Superman creates by interfering in said war. Even the US Secretary of Defense is breathing down his neck.

This makes it clear that Gunn’s Superman will explore the challenges Kal-El faces trying to be not just a force for good inside Metropolis, but on the world stage. He’s doing his best to protect all innocents and creating an international incident in the process. In that sense, the new film seems to share a little in common with Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman, which also dealt with the unintended consequences of Superman operating outside the boundaries of the US. Let’s just hope this doesn’t also result in Jimmy Olsen being shot in the head in the film’s first act.

María Gabriela de Faría’s Engineer

After barely appearing in the first teaser trailer, María Gabriela de Faría’s character The Engineer plays a much bigger role in this trailer. We get a closer glimpse of her nanotech-based powers, and it’s clear right away that she’s no friend of Superman’s.

It’s a bit of a role reversal for The Engineer compared to her comic book counterpart. In the comics, she’s a member of a superhero team called The Authority. The Authority are never painted as outright villains, but they are depicted as a much more proactive and militant alternative to the Justice League. They’re far less concerned with things like collateral damage or national sovereignty. In that sense, it’s easy to see why Gunn would want to include The Engineer, aka Angela Spica, in his film. The new Superman movie is all about the conflict between Superman’s brand of old-fashioned heroism and a new generation of more cynical heroes. We see that conflict embodied even in Superman’s costume, as the angular S logo is borrowed from the graphic novel Kingdom Come, which also dealt with such themes.

But again, it’s up for debate as to whether Angela qualifies as a hero at all in the DCU. The trailer makes it plain that Angela is working for Luthor, and she seems all too eager to take on Superman in the field of battle. We see her battling the Man of Steel in the middle of a baseball stadium, and we also see her tearing into Superman’s loyal robot servants in the Fortress of Solitude. Even Krypto isn’t safe from her wrath, though he gets in a good hit of his own.

We assume that The Engineer, like Luthor himself, believes herself to be on the right side and believes Superman is a threat to humanity. Will she have her mind changed by the end? Possibly. We know that Gunn was at one point planning an Authority movie to spin out of Superman, though that project appears to have been put on the back burner. Still, we imagine Superman is the start of a larger storyline for de Faría’s character.

Is Ultraman in James Gunn’s Superman?

The Engineer seems to be looking for Lex Luthor in the movie, but we also see her fighting alongside a mysterious, masked character who’s been the source of plenty of speculation in recent months. Is this character the DCU version of Ultraman?

That’s definitely the prevailing theory, both because of the large U emblem on his chest and the fact that he clearly has the strength and durability to trade blows with Superman himself. But if this is Ultraman, the movie is definitely taking a loose approach to the source material.

Traditionally, Ultraman is a version of Superman from an alternate DC Universe. He hails from Earth-3, a world where the traditional dynamic between DC’s heroes and villains is reversed. In this world, Ultraman is the leader of an anti-Justice League known as the Crime Syndicate of America, a group that also includes Superwoman, Owlman, Power Ring, and Johnny Quick. Earth-3’s Lex Luthor is that world’s greatest hero. Outlandish as it may seem, we have to wonder if there’s an element to Earth-3 Lex in Hoult’s version. He obviously sees himself as Earth’s greatest hero, in any case.

With everything else going on in Gunn’s Superman, we highly doubt the film is going to be delving into the DC multiverse. It’s more likely that Ultraman is being reworked to become something more akin to Nuclear Man from 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, or some versions of Bizarro from the comics. He could be a character who’s been genetically engineered to mimic Superman’s powers. The fact that we can’t see his face or any part of his body may mean he was horribly disfigured in the process… and is the perfect set-up for a dramatic reveal with Corenswet behind the mask.

Physically, it’s looking like Ultraman, not Lex, is the endgame villain of Gunn’s Superman. The Man of Steel will have to contend with a villain who has all of his strength and probably none of his morality. And if previous trailers are any indication, Kal-El is going to get seriously banged up in the process.

Superman vs. Kaiju

The new trailer showcases the massive scale of this superhero movie. At one point, we even see buildings toppling over like dominoes. As much as Superman is devoted to saving innocent lives, Metropolis may wind up with a body count to rival the climax of Man of Steel if he isn’t careful.

The problem is that Kal-El isn’t just fighting humanoid villains like the Hammer of Boravia and the Engineer in this movie. He’s also got a giant monster problem. We see him battling a kaiju that would be right at home in Legendary’s Monsterverse series or the Pacific Rim movies.

Another scene hearkens back to the original costume reveal photo Gunn released in 2024. That image showed Superman suiting up while a mysterious and very massive monster terrorized Metropolis in the background. That scene will apparently play out in the movie itself, though based on these trailers, we know that Lois Lane is also present. We’ll get to the unusual relationship between Lois and Clark in a bit.

The big question here is why Superman is fighting so many kaiju in the movie. Is there a reason these beasts are rampaging through Metropolis? Is this just an average Tuesday for the DCU, or is something (or someone) summoning them? Hoult’s Lex Luthor seems like exactly the sort of guy who would manufacture a kaiju crisis to make Superman look bad.

On that note, let's finally turn our attention to Lex Luthor himself.

Lex Luthor: Supporting Villain?

The trailer makes it clear that Superman will have no shortage of enemies to punch in his latest big-screen outing. But it doesn’t appear that Hoult’s Lex Luthor will be among them. There’s no need for Lex to don his iconic green and purple armor and take on Superman directly when he has so many other pawns who can do the dirty work for him.

Based on what we see of Hoult’s Lex in the trailer, he’s pretty traditional in his motivations. He sees himself as humanity’s savior, the only guy smart enough to lead mankind into a new era. He doesn’t like that the public has grown so enamored with Superman. He can’t abide the thought of humanity looking to an outside force to save itself when it should be looking to Lex himself. Superman is living rent-free in this guy’s head, and he can’t stand it. This Lex is so anti-Superman that he even refers to Kal-El as “it.”

Lex is clearly going to great lengths to discredit the Man of Steel in this movie. It appears he may even be working with ARGUS, suggesting we’ll see an alliance between Lex and Frank Grillo’s Rick Flagg, Sr. At one point, we see Superman sharing a superhuman prison cell with Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho and being beaten by prison guards. Apparently, Kal-El’s political crisis grows dire enough that he’s actually thrown in jail.

All of this suggests that Hoult is playing more of a supporting role in the film than fans might be expecting. Lex is still ostensibly the main villain of the movie. He’s Superman’s greatest arch-nemesis, and that’s never going to change, no matter how many times the DCU gets rebooted. But he seems to be working very indirectly in this film, relying on allies like The Engineer and Ultraman to do the actual fighting while he quietly works to tarnish the Man of Steel’s reputation.

Ultimately, Lex will probably still emerge as the final villain of Gunn’s Superman, but more in a thematic and emotional sense, whereas Ultraman is the prime physical threat. The movie will almost surely culminate in Kal-El proving Lex wrong and reminding the world that kindness, decency, and hope still have a place in our cynical 21st-century world. But don’t expect the two to settle their differences with fisticuffs. And don’t be surprised if Lex doesn’t wind up in prison by the end, but rather sticks around to play a recurring role in the DCU. His defeat will be an intellectual one, not necessarily a physical one.

Lois Lane and Clark Kent’s Relationship

While the villains definitely hog most of the spotlight in this new trailer, it is worth taking a step back to examine the dynamic between Brosnahan’s Lois Lane and Corenswet’s Clark Kent. The opening scene reveals that Lois already knows Clark’s secret. It makes sense. If she’s truly the intrepid, brilliant reporter she’s made out to be, Lois really needs to be smart enough to see through Clark’s flimsy human disguise.

That opening scene is somewhat reminiscent of the one in 1978’s Superman where Margot Kidder’s Lois interviews Christopher Reeve’s Superman for the first time. But in this case, Gunn is downplaying the romantic tension in favor of allowing Lois to really grill Clark on the political fallout of Superman’s actions. Again, she’s a reporter first and a love interest second.

On that note, it’s enough to wonder just what the state of Lois and Clark’s relationship is in this movie. In the comics, Clark only revealed his secret to Lois after they had already fallen in love. But here, she’s already figured it out. The tone of that interview scene suggests that the two are close friends, but not necessarily lovers yet. Though as we see from their dramatic kiss later in the trailer, that will apparently change over the course of the film.

Gunn spoke about the Lois/Clark dynamic when IGN visited the set of the film in 2024, saying “It's a complicated relationship and we really get into it and there's long scenes that are about their relationship and the way they relate and what it would be like for a person, who's this incredibly intelligent, strong-headed, stubborn, skeptical journalist, to have a relationship with someone who can lift a skyscraper.”

One thing is clear - despite the fact that Superman will be contending with villains both human and monster in the movie, Gunn is intent on preventing Lois from falling into the same damsel-in-distress trap that she so often has in past Superman adaptations. This is a character who, intellectually, can hold her own against Superman every bit as easily as Lex Luthor.

Who do you think is the real endgame villain of Gunn’s Superman? Which epic superhero battle are you most excited to see? Let us know what you think in the comments.

For more on the future of the DCU, see every DC movie and series in development.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

You can preorder the next Star Wars novel right now at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. New York Times best-selling author Kwame Mbalia enters the galaxy far, far away with the young adult novel Star Wars: The Last Order, the first time in Star Wars continuity where we get to see a post-Rise of Skywalker universe, even before the upcoming Shawn Levy film Star Wars: Starfighter. The 464-page hardcover book will run you $18.99 and releases on October 21, 2025. It does not yet have a cover you can check out, but it will likely be revealed soon now that preorder listings are live.

Preorder Star Wars: The Last Order by Kwame Mbalia

The release of Game of Thrones spinoff and The Hedge Knight adaptation A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has been delayed until 2026.

Per Variety, Warner Bros. Discovery revealed that the show’s 2025 release date has been pushed to next year as part of its Upfront showcase in New York today. The announcement arrived toward the end of a new trailer which has yet to be made available to the public, so while the latest Game of Thrones series is making progress, it will remain in the oven a little longer before it officially premieres.

While this delay means we'll have to wait until next year to see the show, HBO Content Chairman and CEO Casey Bloys clarified that the series is still expected to release in the winter, suggesting an early 2026 premiere.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has been an especially exciting part of HBO’s slate of upcoming shows set in the world of Westeros, as original author George R. R. Martin teased earlier this year that he couldn’t wait to see Dunk and Egg’s story come to TV screens.

“I’ve seen all six episodes now (the last two in rough cuts, admittedly), and I loved them," Martin said in a blog post in January. "Dunk and Egg have always been favorites of mine, and the actors we found to portray them are just incredible. The rest of the cast are terrific as well. Wait until you guys meet the Laughing Storm and Tanselle Too-Tall.”

Martin continued to celebrate A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, adding, “It’s as faithful as adaptation as a reasonable man could hope for (and you all know how incredibly reasonable I am on that particular subject).”

Despite Martin’s towering praise, we’ve seen little from the show since it was announced in 2021. After locking in actors Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell to play Ser Duncan the Tall and Egg, respectively, HBO went on to reveal one image from the show in June 2024. A brief teaser trailer then followed in August, showing a glimpse at some of the series’ major players and a few shots of familiar Game of Thrones action.

We’ll have a better look at A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms as we move closer to 2026. When it eventually arrives, it will be available to stream on Warner Bros. Discovery’s renamed service, HBO Max. The company announced plans to revert its branding switch-up earlier today. For more while we wait, you can check out everything you need to know about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor 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).

Having spent nearly a decade testing VPNs, there’s one thing that was crystal clear to me from the outset that remains true today: Not all VPNs are created equal. Some boast powerful unblocking and seamless streaming, while others offer a more robust security setup or a stronger stance on privacy. These VPNs are available at prices to suit all budget levels too – some are even free.

The challenge is finding the best VPN for your specific needs. To make this easier, I’ve run dozens of VPNs through a series of tests to see where they excel and, crucially, where they fall short. This includes measuring server speeds, accessing streaming services from abroad, checking for DNS leaks, reading privacy policies, and even contacting each VPN’s support to gauge response time and quality. It’s about as comprehensive an approach as there is, resulting in a fair and accurate picture of the very best VPN services in 2025.

TL;DR: These Are the Best VPN Services:

Still not sure exactly what a VPN is or how it works? Short for Virtual Private Network, a VPN is a service you can use to encrypt your internet connection and spoof your virtual location. When you connect to a VPN, it routes your traffic via a secure, encrypted tunnel to a server in your preferred location. The encryption provides security from hackers and snoopers but, in hiding your IP address, a VPN also allows you to sidestep annoying geographic restrictions on content.

1. Proton VPN

The Best VPN

2. ExpressVPN

Best VPN for Streaming

3. NordVPN

Best VPN for Gaming

4. Surfshark

Best VPN for Extra Features

5. IPVanish

Best VPN for Unlimited Devices

6. CyberGhost

Best VPN with a Free Trial

7. Mullvad

Best VPN for Anonymity

The LEGO Star Wars Spider Tank set (75361) is still available on Amazon despite being officially retired recently in May. For $49.99 you can still pick up this set depicting an action-packed scene from the Mandalorian season 3. The spider tank itself is a to-scale cyborg that towers over the included minifigures just like in the show. At 526 pieces, it's a great gift for any LEGO and Star Wars fan or for collectors looking to fill in any blanks.

For more awesome LEGO Star Wars sets, check out the best sets to build in 2025.

Retired LEGO Star Wars Spider Tank Is Still Available at Amazon

You're never too old to bring out the kid inside you. For a limited time, Amazon is offering 50% off select styles of officially licensed LEGO trifold wallets. They're normally $15 each, but a bunch of them are on sale right now for $7.49 on Amazon. Get free shipping on orders over $35, or no minimum with an Amazon Prime membership.

50% Off LEGO Wallets

Choose from several different designs such as the classic LEGO brick wall pattern or iconic minifigs including the Ninjago Team, Unicorn Girl, or Shark Suit Guy. As cute as these wallets are, they're also practically designed. These are trifold-style wallets that can hold plenty of cards as well as your ID, cash, keys, and even coins. They're made from double-stitched RPET fabric made to survive the wear and tear, even from more youthfully exuberant individuals.

For more LEGO news and deals, check out the recently retired LEGO sets of May, the best LEGO Star Wars sets to build, a LEGO Mario Kart set geared towards adults, and our recent LEGO River Steamboat in-house build. Don't forget to check out the upcoming LEGO The Simpons Krusty Burger, which is set to be released in early June.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

We just found a great deal for anyone looking for an inexpensive pair of earbuds that are a perfect fit (pun intended) for sports, exercise, or fitness activities. Right now Amazon is offering the Baseus Bowie MC1 Open Ear Clip-On Earbuds for just $39.99 with free shipping after you clip a $20 off coupon on the product page and apply a $10 off coupon code "P2XMEPBB" during checkout. That's a 44% price drop from its original $70 list price.

Baseus Bowie MC1 Open Ear Sports Earbuds for $39.99

Seven actors have donned the cape and cowl across nearly 60 years of live-action Batman movies. From campy capers to noir-drenched crime thrillers, Batman has (to varying degrees of success) glided across the gamut of superhero subgenres, though the series’ singular cast of characters and ability to attract top talent has enabled decades of relevancy that transcends its comic-book origins.

For those interested in embarking on the complete big-screen Batman journey, we've compiled a largely spoiler-free* list of every Batman movie ordered by release date, from oldest to newest. At the bottom of the article, you’ll also find a breakdown of the Batman movies by director.

Jump to:

• How to watch in release order
• How to watch by director

How Many Batman Movies Are There?

There are 13 Batman movies included on this list — 11 live-action and two animated. While Bats appears in dozens of films, this list only compiles feature-length theatrical releases in which Batman is a main character. This excludes the bulk of animated Batman movies (including The Killing Joke, which appeared in theaters for just one day) and movies like Suicide Squad in which Batman isn’t a lead figure.

Batman Movie Sets

Although you can easily stream Batman movies online, owning physical copies guarantees you'll always have them. If you're looking to grab a Blu-ray set of your favorite Batman eras, we've gathered some of the best ones below.

Every Batman Movie in Order

*Each blurb contains a broad overview of the plot and mentions the heroes/villains who appear in that film.

1. Batman (1966)

Based on the successful Adam West-led TV series, Batman’s theatrical debut came in 1966 with West once again playing the Caped Crusader. The film pitted Batman and Robin (Burt Ward) against the United Underworld: Joker (Cesar Romero), Riddler (Frank Gorshin), Penguin (Burgess Meredith), and Catwoman (Lee Meriwether). The villains are equipped with a dehydrating device that turns people to dust.

The campy ‘60s film was significantly lighter in tone compared to the gritty Batman of today.

2. Batman (1989)

Over 20 years later, Batman returned to the big screen with Tim Burton at the helm and Michael Keaton behind the cowl. It explores Joker’s origin story, setting up the film’s primary plot: a deadly game of cat and mouse between Batman and Joker, with Kim Basinger’s Vicki Vale serving as a love interest for Batman and a pawn for Joker.

Jack Nicholson earned a Golden Globe nomination for his memorable take on the Clown Prince of Crime.

3. Batman Returns (1992)

The second of Burton’s two Batman movies is a sequel that pits Keaton’s Batman against Danny DeVito’s creepy Penguin, who teams up with Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) to tarnish Batman’s reputation. Christopher Walken also stars as the villainous industrialist Max Shreck.

It’s one of the least successful Batman movies commercially, though it features excellent performances from Keaton, Pfeiffer, and DeVito.

4. Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

The first theatrically released animated Batman movie, The Mask of the Phantasm, was based on the beloved Batman animated TV series from the ‘90s. The film was produced between the series’ first and second seasons and released on Christmas Day 1993.

The Mask of Phantasm explores the interconnected narratives of three characters: Batman (voiced by Kevin Conroy), Joker (Mark Hamill), and Phantasm (voice actor redacted to avoid spoilers).

Conroy, who died in 2022, was the definitive voice of Batman, portraying the character brilliantly across 30 years of TV shows, movies, and video games.

5. Batman Forever (1995)

After two films, Tim Burton stepped away from the franchise, opening the door for Joel Schumacher’s pair of Batman movies. Keaton, later citing creative differences with Schumacher, also elected not to return for Forever, leading to Val Kilmer’s one and only turn as Batman.

Batman Forever is most fondly remembered for its villains: Tommy Lee Jones’s Two-Face and Jim Carrey’s Riddler. The duo, equipped with a mind-reading device called The Box, is pursued throughout the movie by Batman and Robin (Chris O'Donnell). Nicole Kidman also stars as psychologist Chase Meridian.

6. Batman & Robin (1997)

Kilmer was replaced by George Clooney, another one-time Batman, who starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in Schumacher’s follow-up, Batman & Robin. The duo faces off against Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze and Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy, who plan to freeze humanity and replace it with Ivy’s mutant plants. Also on the side of good is Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone), while Freeze and Ivy are assisted by Bane (played by Robert Swenson, a 6’4”, 400-pound professional wrestler).

Despite the strong cast, Batman & Robin is generally considered the franchise’s worst film: It earned less than any other live-action Batman movie at the box office and easily holds the worst score on Rotten Tomatoes. It marked the end of Schumacher’s time at the helm and the beginning of an eight-year hiatus for Batman on the big screen.

7. Batman Begins (2005)

Eight years after the underwhelming Batman & Robin, DC’s flagship hero returned under the direction of Christopher Nolan. Nolan and new Batman actor Christian Bale introduced moviegoers to a grittier Gotham City.

The trilogy’s first film, Batman Begins, provides Nolan’s take on the Batman origin story, eventually pitting our hero against the likes of eminent DC villains Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) and Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson). Begins also introduces Nolan’s Pennyworth (Michael Caine), Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and James Gordon (Gary Oldman). Katie Homes plays Bruce’s love interest, Rachel Dawes, before she was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight.

8. The Dark Knight (2008)

Nolan followed up on his Batman debut with the best Batman movie of all time. The Dark Knight is Nolan’s version of the ultimate comic-book showdown: Batman vs. Joker.

Heath Ledger turns in an Oscar-winning performance as a cunning, terrifying, believable, and sadistically charming Joker. The dynamic between Ledger and Bale, alongside a propulsive plot and excellent supporting performances from Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes) and Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent/Two-Face), led IGN to name The Dark Knight the best superhero movie ever. It's also the second most successful Batman movie at the worldwide box office, grossing over $1 billion USD.

9. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Nolan’s Batman trilogy concluded in 2012 with The Dark Knight Rises. In Christian Bale’s final Batman performance, The Dark Knight faces off against Tom Hardy’s imposing Bane.

Rises had the impossible task of living up to The Dark Knight, but comparisons aside, the movie was a massive success: It’s the highest-grossing Batman movie of all time and the third-highest-rated on Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to returning many staple characters from Nolan’s previous Batman movies, Rises introduces Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as police officer John Blake.

10. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Four years later, Batman entered the DCEU in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Ben Affleck’s Batman starred opposite Henry Cavill’s Superman in the big-budget battle of DC’s most famous heroes.

It’s a messy, action-heavy blockbuster that brings together many of the biggest names in DC Comics: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), and Lois Lane (Amy Adams), to name a few. The movie also serves as Zack Snyder’s setup to Justice League.

BvS is among the most-profitable Batman movies at the box office and among the worst-reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes.

11. The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

The second of two animated movies on this list, The LEGO Batman Movie is a fun, cameo-packed adventure centered around another Batman-Joker conflict.

Will Arnett as Batman leads a voice cast directed by Chris McKay (Renfield). Supporting cast members include Zach Galifianakis as Joker, Michael Cera as Robin, Rosario Dawson as Barbara Gordon, Channing Tatum as Superman, Billy Dee Williams as Two-Face, Conan O'Brien as Riddler, and Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman (before she portrayed the character in 2022's The Batman).

The LEGO Batman Movie also pulls in characters from across the world of LEGO, including King Kong, Voldemort, Sauron, Gremlins, and others. It’s the second-highest-rated Batman movie on Rotten Tomatoes behind only The Dark Knight.

12. Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

Zack Snyder’s Justice League, aka the Snyder Cut, is a revamped and re-released version of the 2017 Justice League film. Ben Affleck reprises his role as Batman for the biggest DCEU crossover event to date.

Batman and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman recruit a team of superheroes — Henry Cavill's Superman, Jason Momoa's Aquaman, Ezra Miller's Flash, and Ray Fisher's Cyborg — to protect the planet from Steppenwolf and Darkseid.

We’ve opted to include the 2021 Snyder Cut instead of the original 2017 release, though its position on the list would be the same regardless.

13. The Batman (2022)

Matt Reeves’s turn at the helm began with 2022’s The Batman, a moody crime thriller that IGN awarded a rare review score of 10/10. Robert Pattinson stars as a pained, antisocial version of Bruce Wayne/Batman investigating the murder of Gotham City mayor Don Mitchell Jr.

Joining Pattinson is Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, Colin Farrell as Penguin, Paul Dano as Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred, and John Turturro as mobster Carmine Falcone.

It’s a must-watch movie for Batman fans and the first in what DC boss James Gunn has called Reeves’s “Batman Crime Saga,” which is planned across three films. It's arguably one of Robert Pattinson's best films to date.

Batman Movies By Director

Leslie H. Martinson Batman Movies in Release Order

• Batman (1966)

Tim Burton Batman Movies in Release Order

• Batman (1989)
• Batman Returns (1992)

Joel Schumacher Batman Movies in Release Order

• Batman Forever (1995)
• Batman & Robin (1997)

Christopher Nolan Batman Movies in Release Order

• Batman Begins (2005)
• The Dark Knight (2008)
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Zack Snyder Batman Movies in Release Order

• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
• Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

Matt Reeves Batman Movies in Release Order

• The Batman (2022)

Theatrically Released Animated Batman Movies in Release Order

• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
• The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

Upcoming Batman Movies

The Batman – Part II (2026)

The next Batman movie is The Batman – Part II, a sequel to 2022’s The Batman once again directed by Matt Reeves and starring Robert Pattinson. There’s no word on plot details yet, but we know the film’s scheduled release has been pushed back to October 2, 2026.

A third film is expected to follow, as Reeves’s Batman saga is planned as a trilogy.

The Brave and the Bold (TBD)

The Brave and the Bold is an upcoming feature film about Batman that will be heavily influenced by the comics from Grant Morrison. Directed by Andy Muschietti (The Flash, It), The Brave and the Bold will be part of the new DCU helmed by James Gunn. Gunn has also confirmed that Robert Pattinson will not be the DCU Batman.

Jordan covers games, shows, and movies as a freelance writer for IGN.

Looking to upgrade the storage capacity of your Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, or Asus ROG Ally? For a limited time, Amazon is offering a 512GB PNY Premier-X Micro SDXC Card for just $23.99 after a 44% off instant discount. An SD card adapter is also included. Despite the low price tag, this is actually one of the faster Micro SD cards we've seen. It's compatible with most gaming handhelds, including the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, and ROG Ally.

512GB PNY Premier-X Micro SDXC Card for $23.99

U3 A2 V30 rated

Update 5/14/25: Digital Foundry has revealed the full specs of the SoC behind the Nintendo Switch. This has confirmed much of the rumors about the system, down to how many CUDA cores the Tegra T239 has. With this information, we now know quite a lot about how the Nintendo Switch will run when it hits store shelves in June, though we will have to wait and see how games will use this powerful mobile hardware. Things are looking bright, though.

Original article:

The Nintendo Switch 2 has finally been revealed, and while it brings huge improvements over the original console, it doesn’t exist in the same vacuum that the original handheld did. With the introduction of devices like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally X, a ton of handheld gaming systems out there can play AAA PC games on the go.

So, while the Switch 2 will automatically have a niche carved out for being a system that plays, well, Nintendo games like Mario Kart World, anyone that’s buying a Switch 2 to play multiplatform games will have to reckon with devices like the Steam Deck – especially with the Switch 2’s $449 price tag.

Now that Nintendo has given a sneak peek into the hardware that’s running its new console, we can take a look at how exactly it will run, and whether or not its 4K promises are more than empty words.

Nvidia’s Custom Chip

The SoC (System on a Chip) that runs the Nintendo Switch 2 is probably the most important part of the console. The Nintendo Switch 2 is using “custom Nvidia processor” that supports DLSS and ray tracing, and Digital Foundry has revealed the final specs of the chip. The Nintendo Switch 2 runs on the Nvidia Tegra T239, an APU with a 8-core ARM CPU and an Ampere GPU with 1,536 CUDA cores. For reference, Ampere is the graphics architecture behind the RTX 3080 – though it won't be nearly that powerful.

Going all the way back to 2023, there were leaks suggesting that the Nintendo Switch 2 would be using the Nvidia Tegra T239 SoC. [Now confirmed.] This APU uses 8 ARM A78C cores, combined with an Nvidia Ampere GPU with 1,536 CUDA cores. Napkin math puts that at 12 Streaming Multiprocessors, which would be significantly smaller than even the smallest Ampere GPU – the RTX 3050 for laptops. However, assuming Nvidia didn’t nerf the Ampere SMs in the T239, each SM would have four Tensor Cores and an RT core, making for a total of 48 and 12, respectively.

To be fair, the Steam Deck is using a custom AMD APU that’s built on 8 AMD RDNA 2 GPU cores, which is smaller than what Nintendo is offering here. But, you have to keep in mind that the Steam Deck has a lower resolution display, and pumps more power into it. Plus, AMD Z2 processors are coming out over the next year, with the Z2 Extreme featuring 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, which will be a huge upgrade. Though, systems with that chipset are going to be much more expensive than the Switch 2.

That small of a GPU basically makes 4K gaming an impossibility natively, but because the Tensor Cores are there, DLSS is going to be a major factor in how the Nintendo Switch performs when docked – assuming this is the SoC that’s actually in the system. However, with so few Tensor Cores, even upscaling to 4K is going to be a stretch in everything but the most lightweight games.

Instead, most games are likely going to target 1080p, even if they don’t natively render at that resolution. There are games like Donkey Kong Bananza that do seem to be rendering at a native 1080p resolution, according to Digital Foundry’s hands-on demos. However, third-party games like Cyberpunk 2077 seem to be relying heavily on upscaling, with native resolutions as low as 540p. I wouldn’t expect the Nintendo Switch 2 to ever be able to handle Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K, even with DLSS, though Nintendo will definitely have better luck with any game it can get running natively at 1080p.

The Ampere cores in the T239 also have RT cores, which should theoretically allow for hardware-based ray tracing in Nintendo Switch 2 games. Though, again, this will be heavily constrained by the processor’s 12 RT cores. Ray tracing will be possible, but don’t expect any jaw-dropping implementations of the technology, and especially don’t expect it in games like Cyberpunk 2077.

Even with RT cores, ray tracing is an extremely expensive workload for the GPU, and the T239 is limited by more than just its small SM count – power is a huge limiting factor, too. I spoke with Richard Leadbetter over at Digital Foundry, who told me that the entire system likely consumes as little as 10W, including the display, the SoC, and the mainboard. We won’t know exactly what the T239’s actual TDP (thermal design power) is until someone finds a way to measure it, but it likely leaves only 5-6W for the SoC itself – a third of the power of the Steam Deck’s AMD APU.

[We now also know how fast the CPU and GPU will run. When its docked, the Nintendo Switch 2 GPU will run at 1,007MHz, just shy of 1GHz. That's a bit slower than the mobile RTX 3050, the closest existing Ampere GPU on the market right now. However, when running on battery, the speed drops precipitiously, coming down to 561MHz. That's going to make for a huge difference in gaming performance between the two modes.

The CPU, however, runs faster when in handheld mode, at 1,101MHz, compared to 998MHz when docked. This seems counter intutive, but it likely has something to do with the lower memory bandwidth allocated to the system when in handheld mode, and that'll be much more impactful to gaming performance.

As for the memory, the Switch 2 will feature 12GB of LPDDR5 memory on a 128-bit, a huge jump from the original Switch. When the system is docked, the Switch 2 will get 102GB/s of memory bandwidth, which will get cut down to 68GB/s in handheld mode. With how important memory bandwidth is to current-generation games, especially those with an open world – looking at you Mario Kart World – this is likely going to have the biggest performance impact.]

However, while the Nintendo Switch 2 might not be able to produce the same amount of power as a handheld gaming PC like the Asus ROG Ally X, that doesn’t mean there won’t be gorgeous games running on the system. After all, games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza look stunning, and it goes to show how clever Nintendo developers are at getting the most out of the hardware in the Switch.

After all, the original Nintendo Switch was powered by the Nvidia Tegra X1, which was built on the now-ancient Maxwell graphics architecture and only packed 256 CUDA cores. Ampere is orders of magnitude more efficient than Maxwell even on its best days, and there are six times more cores in the Switch 2’s GPU. The Nintendo Switch 2 should be way faster than the original console, which bodes well for cross-generation ports like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Battery Life

While a total system power budget of 10W means the system isn’t quite as fast as it could be, it does mean the battery will have a much better time keeping up. Nintendo has come out and said it should last around 2 hours at a minimum. That’s less than was quoted for the original Switch, but that shouldn’t be too surprising, due to its higher-resolution display and more powerful processor.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has a 5,220mAh battery, a large step up from the 4,310mAh battery in the original console. That’s a sizable jump, and if its battery has the same voltage of the original Switch, that would equate to around 19Whr. That’s a smaller battery than the Steam Deck, which is probably why Nintendo quotes a similar battery life to the Steam Deck, despite its less power-hungry processor.

Nintendo probably could have put a more powerful battery in the Switch 2, but its decision likely came down to size constraints. There’s only so much battery that’ll fit while retaining the same thickness as the original Nintendo Switch, after all.

The Display

The most striking difference at first glance between the Switch and Switch 2 is probably going to be the display. While it doesn’t have the OLED screen that made the Switch OLED such a marvel, the display is bigger and has a higher resolution. The Nintendo Switch 2 sports a 7.9-inch LCD display with a resolution of 1920x1080 with HDR 10 support. The display is also fast, supporting variable refresh rate up to 120Hz. That’s honestly a bit overkill considering the silicon powering the thing, but it does mean that older games or indie titles will feel extremely smooth – assuming they have unlocked frame rates. 120Hz is also a useful refresh rate for games that target 40fps since that makes for a clean ratio that won’t result in excessive stuttering.

Nintendo hasn’t released any information about the brightness of the display, but the HDR 10 certification means it needs to at least have a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, so it’s going to be a bright screen. We don’t know exactly how color performance will turn out either, but Nintendo does claim that it supports WCG, or Wide Color Gamut.

The display is probably going to be the thing that lifts the Nintendo Switch 2 above its competitors. The Steam Deck LCD has an 800p display with a peak brightness of 400 nits, and it doesn’t support WCG. The Steam Deck OLED does offer a much nicer display, but it’s still an 800p display. The Nintendo Switch 2 screen is also a huge upgrade over the original, which had a 6.2-inch, 720p LCD display.

Is the Nintendo Switch 2 a Worthy Upgrade?

In a vacuum, the Nintendo Switch 2 is massively better than the original Nintendo Switch. It’s leagues faster, has a screen that’s bigger, brighter and sharper, and has Joy-Con that you don’t have to wrestle with to disconnect. The only problem is that the Switch doesn’t exist in a vacuum anymore.

There are a ton of handheld gaming systems out there now, and while most of them are more expensive than the $449 Nintendo Switch 2, they likely offer a better gameplay experience in multi-platform games. The real appeal of the Switch 2 is going to be Nintendo’s catalog of first-party games, just like with the original console. Nintendo is known for making great games that make the most of its – relatively – weak hardware. If you’re the type of gamer that falls in love with Nintendo games, then the Nintendo Switch 2 makes a lot of sense. However, if you’re just going to get this thing to play Cyberpunk or Elden Ring on the train, there are better gaming handheld options out there.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Sony has announced the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog additions for May 2025, unveiling a list of titles that includes newcomers such as Sand Land, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy, Battlefield 5, and more.

The full lineup of titles coming to its gaming subscription service was revealed in a PlayStation.Blog post today. It’s a collection of six games for PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers that will all drop come May 20, delivering a variety of experiences for fans of different genres and eras of gaming.

Those starting at the Extra tier can take advantage of a whopping nine new titles coming to the Game Catalog for May 2025. Headlining the list of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games is Sand Land, an action RPG adaptation of the Akira Toriyama manga of the same name.

Other PS4 and PS5 highlights include Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted – Full Time Edition and the three-in-one S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy. An enhanced version of the latter was announced for PS5 (as well as PC and Xbox Series X | S) just this morning and is also set to arrive May 20. Developer GSC Game World says those who own the original trilogy release on console will receive the Enhanced Edition for free, though it's unclear if this same offer is extended to those who play on PlayStation Plus.

PlayStation Plus Premium members, meanwhile, get one new classic title in the form of Battle Engine Aquila. Available on PS4 and PS5, this sci-fi action game puts players in the cockpit of a mobile war vehicle that can fight off enemies from both the air and on the ground. You can see the full list of May 2025 PlayStation Plus Game Catalog titles below.

PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium Game Catalog Additions – May 2025

• Sand Land | PS4, PS5
• Soul Hackers 2 | PS5
• Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted – Full Time Edition | PS4, PS5
• Battlefield 5 | PS4
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy | PS4, PS5
• Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising | PS4, PS5
• Humankind | PS4, PS5
• Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life | PS5
• Gloomhaven Mercenaries Edition | PS4, PS5

PlayStation Plus Premium Game Catalog Additions – May 2025

• Battle Engine Aquila | PS4, PS5

While we wait to dive into this month’s PlayStation Plus additions, you can read up on which games joined the Essential tier’s monthly games for May 2025. You can also see Sony’s list of April 2025 Game Catalog additions here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor 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).

Whether you're looking to save on games, storage, or accessories, there are plenty of Nintendo Switch deals to check out right now. We've gathered up some of the best Switch deals currently available, including discounts on Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1 and Super Mario RPG. You can see these deals and even more of our favorites at the moment below. For more updates on the latest discounts, follow @IGNDeals on Twitter/X.

Nintendo Switch 2 Preorder Information

The Nintendo Switch 2 is currently out of stock at numerous retailers right now, but don't let that get you down. If you're still hoping to get your hands on Nintendo's new console, bookmark our Nintendo Switch 2 preorder guide to stay up to date on restocks. For instant updates on what's going on, it's also worth following @IGNDeals on Twitter/X and Bluesky.

Best Nintendo Switch Game Deals

While Woot's Spring Sale is still going strong - with great deals on Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1, Super Mario RPG, and more - Amazon's also offering some great discounts at the moment. This includes deals on Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics and Unicorn Overlord. You can see those deals and many more of our favorites above.

Preorder the LEGO Mario Kart Set - Out Soon!

Best Switch Micro SD Card Deals

The best Switch SD card should be fast and reliable. Therefore, you're going to want to opt for a micro SDXC UHS-I U3 A2 V30 memory card. That's a lot of random letters, so to save you a bit of time we've left our top suggestions and deals below for your convenience. We've also included a selection of Switch 2 compatible MicroSD express cards if you're planning on picking up the brand new console.

Best Nintendo Switch Accessory Deals

Best Switch Power Bank Deals

Looking for a new power bank to keep your Switch charged up? Thankfully, there are some nice deals to check out at the moment. Our favorite picks right now are over at Amazon, where the INIU 22.5W 20000mAh power bank has received a great discount down to $26.98 and the Anker 737 has dropped down to $99.99, after clipping the $10 coupon.

When Should You Buy a Nintendo Switch?

The short answer is that you should buy a Nintendo Switch whenever there’s any kind of sale, regardless of the time of year. Amazon will likely offer the same console bundles on any other sale as it will on Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day, so there’s no real reason to wait if you’re in need of a Nintendo Switch.

That being said, there are sometimes some unique bundles and promotions during Black Friday that you won’t find any other time of the year. They usually include additional games (like the famous Mario Kart 8 bundle) or Switch accessories for free, but quantities tend to be limited. As always, do your research into the seller before you make a purchase and keep in mind that the Nintendo Switch 2 is coming soon.

Where to Buy a Nintendo Switch in 2025

• Nintendo Switch Console for $299.00
• Nintendo Switch Lite Console for $199.00

With how expensive gaming is getting in 2025, we're trying to save you as much money as possible on the games and other tech you actually want to buy. We've got great deal roundups available for all major platforms such as PlayStation and Xbox, and keep these updated daily with brand-new offers. If you're trying to keep costs down while maintaining your favorite hobby, stay tuned for more incredible discounts.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

Insight Editions' Pac-Man: The Official Cookbook is out now and available on Amazon. Like you probably are right now, I was a bit skeptical about how good the recipes could be from a Pac-Man-themed cookbook, but authors Lisa Kingsley and Jennifer Peterson — wait for it — cooked. The 160-page hardcover book features over 60 delicious recipes that are easy to make in the comfort of your own home. This is the perfect companion for when you're hosting a game night or having a video game-themed watch party of the industry's biggest events.

While this latest cookbook may seem a bit strange, there are actually a lot of video game cookbooks already out there. It's actually surprising it took this long for Pac-Man to get in on the action.

Get the Pac-Man: The Official Cookbook on Amazon

Ubisoft's extreme sports game Riders Republic is the latest in a long line of video games heading to the silver screen. The publisher announced today that a feature film adaptation of 2021's Riders Republic is underway, and it already has a directorial duo seated behind the camera.

In a press release, Ubisoft Film & Television annnounced it's partnering with Gaumont for the adaptation of Riders Republic. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, the Belgian duo who directed Bad Boys for Life and Bad Boys: Ride or Die, are already signed on to direct.

The script adaptation will be penned by Noé Debré, whose credits include Stillwater and The World Is Yours.

Not much has been said about the direction, other than the adaptation is "poised to be an electrifying action movie, delivering non-stop thrills, humor, and spectacular stunts on the snowy slopes of the Alps," per Ubisoft.

2021's Riders Republic mixed elements of extreme sports simulation with open-world exploration, akin to Ubisoft's The Crew games. "Riders Republic is an excellent, arcadey extreme sports sandbox with bonkers multiplayer events, an impressive open world, and unfortunate server issues," wrote our reviewer in IGN's 8/10 review of its launch version.

In the years since, Ubisoft has gradually added more to the experience, with Season 14 adding a Park Creator for players to form their own playgrounds. It certainly seems like players have been gradually poking away at Riders Republic over time.

As for a feature film adaptation, it remains to be seen what narrative might be concocted around all the extreme sports action. Hopefully there's at least some sick tricks and crazy stunts, if nothing else.

Video game adaptations are certainly picking up in earnest, though. From box office successes like the Sonic and Mario movies, to recent attempts like Until Dawn, to upcoming adaptations like Clair Obscur and Death Stranding, everyone seems to be getting in on the video game adaptation trend. So why not Riders Republic?

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Actress Scarlett Johansson has two Academy Award nominations under her belt, but she still can’t understand why Avengers: Endgame, which she starred in as Black Widow, didn’t walk away with more than its one nomination for visual effects.

“How did this film not get nominated for an Oscar?” Johansson wondered about the 2019 Marvel Cinematic Universe smash hit in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. “It was an impossible movie that should not have worked, that really works as a film — and also, it’s one of the most successful films of all time.”

Avengers: Endgame is certainly considered one of the best of the MCU outputs in recent years, but the Academy has rarely afforded top honors — such as the acting and directing categories for example — to superhero (or even genre) fare. In fact, the only Marvel film to date to snag a nomination is 2018’s Black Panther. That said, Johansson’s turn as Natasha Romanoff was pretty award-worthy, from her first appearance in 2010’s Iron Man to her death in Endgame.

However, the actress also told Vanity Fair that she most likely would never return to that world. “It would be very hard for me to understand in what capacity [returning] would make sense for me, for the character that I play,” she explained.

“I miss my buddies and really would love to be with them forever, but what works about the character is that her story is complete. I don’t want to mess with that. For fans, too — it’s important for them.”

After Black Widow’s death in Endgame, Johansson returned for one more spin as Romanoff. She starred in the prequel film Black Widow in 2021, which she also executive produced.

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.

Peacock TV just launched another seasonal coupon code. Get one year of the ad-supported Peacock Premium plan for only $24.99 – or about $2.08 per month – when you apply coupon code "SPRINGSAVINGS". This promotion starts now and runs through April 30. That's 70% off the normal annual price of $79.99. Anyone who isn't currently subscribed to Peacock TV should be eligible, and that includes past subscribers. This beats out the previous winter sale price of $29.99.

1 Year of Peacock Premium for $24.99

Earlier in April, T-Mobile launched two new mobile family plans intended to replace the Go5G and Go5G Plus services, which included unlimited talk, text, and premium data. The new plans - "Experience Beyond" and "Experience More" - carry over the benefits of Go5G but also tack on new perks like a 5-year fixed price guarantee, a higher mobile hotspot data cap, T-Satellite with Starlink (for "Experience Beyond"), and more, all at a lower monthly rate.

T-Mobile Experience Plans: What They Offer

DC Studios has released a new Superman trailer revealing three minutes of the upcoming movie.

The James Gunn-directed film, out July 11, 2025, has an extensive supporting cast of superheroes and supervillains, and we get a better look at those characters in this trailer. We see Nathan Fillion in action as Guy Gardner / Green Lantern, batting enemies away with a flick of his hand, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, and our best look yet at The Engineer, played by María Gabriela de Faría.

We now know it’s The Engineer who destroys the robots who care for Superman in the Fortress of Solitude, including, presumably, Kelex. (In a previous trailer we saw a distraught Superman cradle Kelex after a battle.)

We also see Krypto the Superdog perform a flying punch at The Engineer during the battle. Clearly Krypto isn't afraid to get his paws dirty when it comes to fighting bad guys.

We also see Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) and Ultraman in action. There's a lot more of Edi Gathegi's Mister Terrific and Anthony Carrigan's Rex Mason / Metamorpho, too. The Hammer of Boravia, who was revealed in yesterday's trailer teaser, appears as expected in the full trailer (the brand new character created by Gunn for this movie is thought to be Ultraman in disguse).

Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s relationship is front and centre, with Lois interviewing Clark in Superman mode. It looks like the interview ends up in a row as the pair argue over the ethics of Superman’s controversial intervention in a war on foreign soil ("I wasn’t representing anyone except for me... and doing good!"). The Hammer of Boravia attacks Downtown Metropolis in response to Superman's actions in the country.

In another shot, seemingly taken from the battle with The Hammer of Boravia, a member of the public helps Superman out of a hole in the ground. This contrasts with other shots we've seen of the public screaming at Superman and even throwing objects at him.

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.

One of the biggest questions left over after Elden Ring Nightreign’s network test back in February was: “How will the world of Limveld change in the real game”? After all, Nightreign is, for all intents and purposes, a roguelite. And one of the core elements of any roguelite is a degree of randomness or procedural generation that ensures that every run feels just a little bit different. Nightreign has that in the loot department, with every run giving you different rewards and forcing you to cobble together a build based on what you’re able to find within that run; and also in the enemy and boss department, since none of the boss encounters are static, with the sole exception of the Nightlord battle on Day 3. But as far as the world of Limveld, we never really got a chance to see how it changes from run to run during the Network Test.

During my two days of playtime at FromSoft’s office and over the course of about 10 full runs, I got my answer. Here’s how Limveld will change from run-to-run in Elden Ring Nightreign:

Elden Ring Nightreign: How Limveld Will Change

Actually, we jumped the gun. Before we go into the ways Limveld will change, let’s quickly establish what doesn’t change:

• This overall structure of Limveld will not change. The shape of the island, the major geographical features, the positioning of the cliffs, rivers, and lakes, will all be the same, barring a few major exceptions that we’ll cover in just a bit.
• The locations of sites of grace, evergaols, the launching spirit springs, cave entrances and exits, the spectral trees and the wind currents, all of these are static and do not change location from run-to-run.
• There is also a giant castle that features exceptionally tough battles and big rewards right smack in the middle of the map that will never change.

Everything else, from the locations of all of the rest of the points of interest, the types of rewards offered at those points of interest, to the wandering mini-bosses, and the bosses you’ll fight at the end of Day 1 and 2 are left completely up to chance.

That said, there are two other huge factors that can completely alter a run. The first are world events known as “Shifting Earth”. Occasionally, before you even launch into a level, you’ll be made aware that there is a Shifting Earth modifier in effect. In our playtime, the one we encountered was “Crater,” which transformed the northern section of the map, placing a giant crater in the middle and rivers of lava all around it. The enemies around and inside the crater are no joke, and wiped the floor with us when we first attempted to even get close enough to investigate the crater on the first day.

But investigate it you should, and you should do so as soon as the second day begins, if you’re up to the challenge. Exploring the crater took us pretty much the entirety of the second day, but when we did eventually make it all the way to the bottom, we beat a boss that granted us an epic rarity level reward by itself, but then also the unique reward of being able to take any weapon in our arsenal and upgrade it to max for free! It’s a risky endeavor though, as in order to escape from the crater, you need to use a bunch of spectral trees and ride the hawks from platform to platform as you try to escape, which will certainly lead to nail-biting escape sequences when you take too long in the crater and now must race against the clock to get out while the circle closes in around you.

The other big way that runs can change are through the appearance of certain events that seem to occur completely randomly and can throw a huge wrench into an otherwise routine run. I’ve seen a couple of these, and some might be familiar with the Margit invasion from the Network Test, in which Margit the Fell will just all of a sudden jump into your game and mercilessly hunt your squad down wherever they are.

But a new one that I encountered involved the appearance of a swirling tornado-like phenomenon in the sky. When our squad approached it, we were suddenly attacked by a very tough group of AI-controlled Nightfarers who seemingly invaded us from another world. Like typical NPC invasions in Elden Ring, these enemies were smarter and hit a lot harder than typical enemies, making it another big risk/reward consideration to explore the areas near one of these ominous swirling tornadoes in the sky.

The most impactful of all of these random events, though, was the appearance of a mysterious boss that would attack from miles away with mortar shots of level-sapping bugs. That's right, get hit even just once by these telegraphed mortar strikes, and you lose a level. It’s not even limited to losing just one. Get a hit again, it’ll take another level from you. The only way to get those levels back is to find and kill the boss by following the bugs to his hiding spot. Unfortunately, I don’t have footage of this, nor do I know what the reward is for killing him, because by the time we found the boss by following the bugs, the circle had started encroaching, and we just wouldn’t have been able to kill him before the circle killed us. I’m not going to lie, It was pretty soul-crushing to have to just give up on those levels that he stole from us, and it really kind of doomed our run right from day one.

There are certainly more of these that I still haven’t encountered, like the forest of corruption, the madness towers, and more that we can see in the overview trailer released by FromSoftware. It’s worth mentioning as well that if you don’t like the Shifting Earth modifier that will affect the world, you can use the bed in the Roundtable Hold to sleep to either remove the modifier or have it be replaced by something else.

As devastating as some of these modifiers can be, I’m nonetheless eagerly anticipating seeing more of them. They inject a healthy level of chaos into what otherwise might start to feel very routine, and led to some great emergent moments with high emotion between me and my squadmates as we raced to escape the crater, or panicked at an unexpected ambush, or felt true despair as we realized the levels that were stolen from us were gone forever. Moments like these are the heart of any good roguelite, and hopefully Nightreign is able to keep them coming at a steady pace.

This is a nice little treat for Studio Ghibli fans: Grave of the Fireflies is getting a Blu-ray steelbook. This is set to release in a couple of months, on July 8, so you won't have to wait too long to add it into your collection. It is currently listed for $26.99 at both Amazon and Target. Alongside the film itself, this steelbook also comes with quite a few bonus features to keep you busy, which we've broken down below.

We consider Grave of the Fireflies to be one of the best Studio Ghibli movies, so if you've been waiting to add it to your physical media collection there's no better time than now to get your preorder in.

Preorder Grave of the Fireflies Blu-Ray Steelbook

Max is changing its name back to HBO Max from this summer, Warner Bros. Discovery has announced.

The surprise rebrand follows the change of HBO Max into Max only two years ago. Max, soon to be HBO Max, is the streaming platform home to the likes of Game of Thrones, The White Lotus, The Sopranos, The Last of Us, House of the Dragon, and The Penguin.

Announcing the change, WBD said its streaming business had turned around its profitability by almost $3 billion in just two years, and was “scaling” globally with 22 million subscribers added over the past year. It has a “clear path” to over 150 million by the end of 2026, WBD said.

“This is thanks to an enormous amount of hard work, investment and re-focusing the strategy on the programming that is working best like HBO, recent box-office movies, docuseries, certain reality series, and Max and local originals, and de-prioritizing other genres that drive less engagement or acquisition,” the company continues.

So why go back to HBO Max now? Because people associate the HBO brand with quality content that is unique and “worth paying for,” and that’s what people want now, more than ever, amid the sea of overwhelming streaming options.

“This evolution has also been influenced by changing consumer needs, and the fact that no consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content,” WBD said.

“With other services filling the more basic needs with volume, WBD has clearly distinguished itself through its quality and distinct stories, and no brand has done that better and more consistently over 50+ years than HBO.

“Returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering. It is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach – leaning heavily on consumer data and insights – to best position itself for success.”

David Zaslav, President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said: “The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming. Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.”

JB Perrette, President and CEO of Streaming, added: “We will continue to focus on what makes us unique – not everything for everyone in a household, but something distinct and great for adults and families. It’s really not subjective, not even controversial – our programming just hits different.”

And Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, said: “With the course we are on and strong momentum we are enjoying, we believe HBO Max far better represents our current consumer proposition. And it clearly states our implicit promise to deliver content that is recognized as unique and, to steal a line we always said at HBO, worth paying for.”

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 tech experts at Digital Foundry have revealed the final tech specs for Nintendo Switch 2, and with it claimed that the GameChat feature has a "significant impact" on system resources to the point where developers are said to be concerned.

During last month’s Nintendo Direct, Nintendo revealed the Switch 2’s GameChat functionality, triggered by a press of the C button on the new Joy-Con.

Players can watch each other enjoying the same or different titles and, with the help of a camera, even see each other. It's made all the easier by a built-in microphone that is shown to be relatively reliable regardless of each player's gaming environment. The C button's chat menu aims to be an all-in-one multiplayer feature that could result in Nintendo's most successful online push in decades.

Digital Foundry said Nintendo provides developers with a GameChat testing tool that simulates API latency and L3 cache misses that the real world GameChat system incurs on the system. This means developers can test this without needing active GameChat sessions running.

DF is now left wondering whether game performance for the end user is impacted by having GameChat on or off. If GameChat resources are within the system allocation, it shouldn't make any difference. However, given Nintendo provides GameChat emulation tools, the suggestion is there is a hit of some description that developers need to test for.

As Digital Foundry put it: "We'll be interested to see how GameChat may (or may not) impact game performance as this does seem to be an area of developer concern." We won’t know for sure until Switch 2 comes out on June 5.

Meanwhile, Digital Foundry revealed the Switch 2 final tech specs. Switch 2 Memory System Reservation is 3GB, with 9GB available for games. For context, the Switch 2 has 0.8GB Memory System Reservation and 3.2GB available for games. That’s a significant chunk of the Switch 2’s resources that games do not get. As with all consoles, Switch 2 developers don't get access to the full GPU resources, with some reserved by the system.

Switch 2 features a 7.9-inch wide color gamut LCD screen that is capable of outputting at 1080p (1920x1080). This is a big upgrade from Switch 1's 6.2-inch screen, the Switch OLED's 7-inch screen, and the Switch Lite's 5.5-inch screen.

There is also support for HDR10 and VRR up to 120 Hz, which means games can jump up to 120fps if they and your setup allow it.

Slotting the Switch 2 to its new dock will allow games to be played in 4K (3840x2160) at 60fps or 1080p/1440p (1920x1080/2560x1440) at 120fps. We know these higher-end graphics are made possible by a "custom processor made by NVIDIA."

Digital Foundry's specs reveal, which is well worth a read, reveals much more.

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.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has many memorable characters, but few might inspire as much joy as Esquie, the game's lovable giant pal who might as well be a mascot character. The studio is warning against issues with fake merch sales around him, but also teasing an official plush Esquie that's in the works.

In a post on X/Twitter from the official Expedition 33 account, Sandfall Interactive said it has seen a number of "suspicious" websites pop up selling Esquie plushies.

"To be clear: any third-party websites selling Esquie plushies are NOT officially licensed," the studio said. "Many of them are using AI-generated artwork to advertise, and we strongly recommend against purchasing from these sources. They could be scams."

To balance out the wheee with the whooo though, as Esquie might say, Sandfall confirms it is looking into making official Esquie plushies, and wants to get them out as soon as it can. "In the meantime, please be patient — and don’t get scammed!" the studio said.

Those who have played the game probably get why an Esquie plushie might be in high demand. If you haven't gone on Expedition 33 yet, Esquie is a giant helper you meet in Act 1 of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 who becomes both a traveling companion and overworld travel method. He's got the same vibe as Big Hero 6's Baymax.

With that in mind, it's easy to see how an Esquie plush might garner some interest, so it's good to know Sandfall is working on an official solution. A cursory search on Google pulled up both an unofficial site, and a few threads asking about Esquie plush peddlers. If you want the real thing from Sandfall and Kepler, you'll have to wait a bit. No news on whether the real-life plushie will also be filled with wine, though.

Last week, Sandfall Interactive released patch 1.2.3 for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, addressing some balance tweaks around Maelle's Stendhal ability. French President Emmanuel Macron also recently praised the game, calling its developers a "shining example of French audacity and creativity."

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

GSC Game World has announced S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy - Enhanced Edition, a next-gen upgrade version of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy of games due out across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on May 20.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy - Enhanced Edition includes upgraded versions of Shadow of Chornobyl (2007), Clear Sky (2008), and Call of Prypiat (2009). Expect an overhaul for each game with upgraded visuals, next-gen console optimizations, and expanded mod support.

GSC Game World said players who own the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy on Xbox Series X and S or PS5 already get the Enhanced Edition of the corresponding games for free.

As for PC, “to thank our loyal fans,” GSC Game World said owners of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games get the Enhanced Editions free, and buyers of the Enhanced Editions receive the original versions included. The trilogy is available as a bundle for $39.99 or individually at $19.99 per title.

Cross-platform saves between PC and consoles are not supported. Your saved data will be specific to the platform you are playing on.

On PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, players will have multiple frame-rate options available for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition. These options include standard modes at 30 FPS and 60 FPS. In addition, there will be specific modes targeting 40 FPS and up to 120 FPS. However, these 40 FPS and 120 FPS options are exclusively available for displays that support VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) technology.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Enhanced Edition on consoles features different graphical and performance modes, including a Quality Balanced mode, a Performance mode, and an Ultra Performance mode.

• Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro: Quality (native 4K/30 FPS), Balanced (upscaled 4K/40 FPS), Performance (upscaled 4K/60 FPS), Ultra Performance (upscaled 2K/120 FPS).
• Xbox Series S: Quality (native 2K/30 FPS), Balanced (upscaled 2K/40 FPS), Performance (1080p/60 FPS).

(Both the Quality Balanced mode and the Ultra Performance mode are exclusively available when using a display that supports VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) technology.)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy - Enhanced Edition visual upgrades (all platforms):

• Enhanced lighting with godrays, screen space reflections, and global illumination for a more immersive atmosphere.
• Upscaled textures and detailed 3D models for NPCs, weapons, and environments.
• Advanced shaders for water and wetness effects, paired with upgraded skyboxes for a more dynamic world.
• 4K pre-rendered cinematics for dramatic storytelling and improved weapon FOV for better combat visibility.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy - Enhanced Edition console enhancements and new graphic mods (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S):

• Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro: Quality (native 4K/30 FPS), Balanced (upscaled 4K/40 FPS), Performance (upscaled 4K/60 FPS), Ultra Performance (upscaled 2K/120 FPS).
• Xbox Series S: Quality (native 2K/30 FPS), Balanced (upscaled 2K/40 FPS), Performance (1080p/60 FPS).
• Keyboard & Mouse Support: Available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S for a tailored experience.
• Mod.io Integration: Create and share mods across PC and consoles via mod.io (https://mod.io/).

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy - Enhanced Edition PC features:

• Steam Deck Optimized: Play the trilogy on the go with full Steam Deck compatibility.
• Steam Workshop Integration: Access a vast library of user-generated mods.
• Cloud Saves: Seamless progress backup across devices.
• Gamepad Support: Full controller compatibility for a console-like experience on PC.

GSC Game World is the Kyiv, Ukraine developer behind last year’s successful sequel, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Read more on how S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has changed everything for the studio amid the full-scale invasion of Ukraine here.

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.

Marvel has released the debut trailer for Ironheart, the upcoming MCU Disney+ show.

Ironheart sees Dominique Thorne reprise her role as the armored superhero from 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, with Anthony Ramos as Parker Robbins / The Hood. The trailer, below, gives us a good idea of what to expect from the mini-series, which focuses on Riri Williams’ journey to become an iconic superhero in her own right after playing a supporting role in the MCU so far.

Parker Robbins / The Hood is positioned as a character who initially wants to help Williams realize her potential, but it’s clear there’s more to this character than meets the eye.

Ironheart, from executive producer Ryan Coogler, launches with a three-episode premiere on June 24 at 6pm PT/ 9pm ET, on Disney+.

Williams calls her involvement in the events of Wakanda Forever an “internship abroad.” She’s booted out of MIT, which leads to The Hood’s play: "anyone who has accomplished anything has to do questionable things. Are you in or out?"

We see Ironheart suit up, fly about, then in an action scene, ground herself before punching a truck, which flies over her head in dramatic fashion.

Marvel has a number of shows coming up. Also spinning off the Black Panther franchise is Eyes of Wakanda, a four-episode animated mini-series about the Hatut Zaraze, an elite group of Wakandan warriors. That series will launch on August 6.

Rounding out the television front is another four-episode animated miniseries, Marvel Zombies, and the live-action series Wonder Man. Marvel Zombies will premiere on October 3, and takes place in the zombie reality depicted in the first season of What If…?. The series will feature many MCU cast members reprising their roles, such as Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, David Harbour as Red Guardian, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Awkwafina as Katy Chen, Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop and Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan.

Wonder Man, set to premiere in December 2025, will star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Simon Williams, a superpowered actor who is a recurring member of the Avengers in the comics. Ben Kingsley will be returning as Trevor Slattery, the actor who played the fake Mandarin in Iron Man 3, and Demetrius Grosse is set to play the Grim Reaper, Simon’s villainous brother.

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.

Stick with me, here. Mere hours after first playing FBC: Firebreak, I found myself mouth-to-dough with a delicious cream cake. Unfortunately, because I’m a clumsy bastard who can’t be trusted with anything nice, a dollop of that cream landed directly into my blood orange cocktail and melted into it. I stared at the swirling momentarily and found myself transported back into the halls of the Federal Bureau of Control as I fired white hot bursts of liquid into the glowing red enemies that stalk its hallways. It’s this sort of twisted leap of logic that a trip to Remedy’s headquarters does to a brain.

Remedy is a studio with an eclectic library of games – some are horror, others sci-fi or neo-noir detective fiction. But what I've always loved about the Alan Wake and Max Payne developer is that it's unafraid to be silly. Firebreak, the studio’s latest project and its first foray into both first-person shooting and co-op multiplayer action, is very silly. Over the course of a two-hour play session, I found time to both obliterate everyone around me with a murderous garden gnome and wage war against a 30-foot-high sticky note behemoth. All this was enough for me to be convinced that if anyone can stand out in the crowded, often very serious online shooter space, it's Remedy and its unique desire to inject the weird into everything it makes.

Set six years after the events of Remedy’s 2019 single-player hit, Control, Firebreak’s setting of The Oldest House will be familiar to those who played through Jesse Faden’s story. Both the broad strokes and little touches remain, whether it be the severity of its brutalist pillars and walls or the Finnish folk music spilling out of its bathroom speakers, making for a comforting, if slightly uneasy, return. Firebreak tasks squads with reentering this X-Files-like government building to deal with localised outbreaks of the Hiss, Control’s inter-dimensional threat that embodies living and non-living entities alike. You, and up to two teammates, are essentially this universe's Ghostbusters, just armed with double-barreled shotguns instead of proton packs. The twist, though, is that here, crossing the streams is heavily encouraged.

Let me explain. Outside of your standard arsenal of pistols and rifles, you can pick from three different “kits”. Essentially Firebreak’s classes, each kit aids the team in different ways, both offensively and defensively. The Fix Kit, for example, allows you to quickly mend machines such as ammo stations and healing showers (FBC employees top up their HP by getting drenched with water – I did say this was all very silly). The Splash Kit, meanwhile, arms you with a hydro cannon that can both restore teammates’ health bars and douse enemies in water. And finally, the Jump Kit comes with a short-range Electro-Kinetic Charge Impactor that can shock foes and stop them in their tracks. Each kit has its individual uses, but when combined, they conjure up devastating results – you can likely already imagine what sending a high-voltage bolt of electricity into a soaking wet mob might achieve.

Teamwork and communication are key in Firebreak, then, because although the whole game is playable solo, it’s clear that the intention is for three players to come together, especially when things really start to get hectic. All of FBC: Firebreak’s missions (known as jobs) ultimately use the same structure: get in, achieve your objectives, and then return to the elevator you entered the level in. My first assignment was simple: my team had to fix three faulty heat fans in the building’s furnace while dealing with waves of enemies before swiftly retreating back to the safety of the elevator.

But as I said earlier, things get hectic. Up next was “Paper Chase”, a mission involving the destruction of thousands of scattered sticky notes, and it was an entirely different experience from our breezy fan maintenance job. Only once the target number of notes had been removed from the office floors and walls could we exit the area and claim victory. The problem was that hordes of Hiss would turn up at regular intervals to halt our progress, and the notes themselves could attach themselves to us and inflict damage. Never has the phrase “a death by a thousand paper cuts” been more appropriate. The evil notes could be destroyed by a simple melee attack, but they were much more efficiently disintegrated with a quick soak and spark - another smart use of Firebreak’s elemental kit systems. That kind of multiplayer synergy is supported by solid gunplay, so there’s always something you can do without relying on another player. I quickly honed in on the machine gun as my tool of destruction – I enjoyed mowing down glowing red ghouls, which satisfyingly burst into the oily haze synonymous with Control.

The third mission took place in The Oldest House’s Black Rock Quarry and required the most teamwork of the bunch. Shooting squelchy leeches from the cavernous walls grants you lethal radioactive pearls that need to be contained in a shuttle. Safely locked up, these can then be moved along a track to deeper areas of the quarry. It was the most challenging mission of the set, and really did stress the need for good communication. The need to take regular shower breaks to rinse off the radiation, droves of enemies, and instakill astral spike entities all hindered our progress. I did still manage to have fun, even if it got incredibly hectic at times.

While I’m reasonably satisfied by the mission objectives, I do find myself torn when it comes to Firebreak’s approach to map design. In Control, The Oldest House was a devilish labyrinth of morphing corridors and secrets, but the map layouts here are less complicated. This is probably for the better, as tighter, more linear spaces make for a kinder area to navigate in first-person (even if with no minimap me and my teammates still got occasionally lost, despite their small size). But I do feel like the Federal Bureau of Control’s headquarters has lost some of its unpredictable charm as a result. Don’t necessarily go in here expecting something as wondrous as the Ashtray Maze, for example. Instead you’ll find simpler, more grounded surroundings.

These missions may sound straightforward, but after completing them you unlock clearance levels for each, which add further objectives and result in much lengthier excursions. The maps open up on subsequent revisits, adding extra chambers of activity as well as more complex objectives and foes. Just like in Control, bosses gate your progress through certain areas, effectively causing a lockdown. These range from bullet sponges with drastically larger health bars to more interesting beasts like a giant sticky note monstrosity that slammed my team with its giant yellow fists. I found the latter far more exciting, as taking it down required the elements of communication and teamwork that I enjoy in co-op shooters. Part puzzle boss, part damage dealing, it reminded me of the final stretches of some of Space Marine 2's expeditions, where your brawn and shooter skills must occasionally make way for pockets of brainwork.

These monsters made out of everyday objects are some of my favourite elements of Control, so I'm glad to see some of that weirdness make its way over here. This is further explored through randomly spawning corrupted items, none of which I sadly saw during my playtime, but they remain a tantalising prospect (a rubber duck that can redirect all enemies your away so others can focus on objectives did spawn, but due to its small size none of us found it - an unfortunate instance of readability that the development team assured us they're looking into fixing before launch). Another item detailed to me was a large set of traffic lights, where being caught in its red gaze can result in a heavy amount of damage coming your way, which effectively brings a dash of Squid Game colour to the otherwise grey brutalist surroundings.

It's these unreal Remedy flourishes that give Firebreak a chance to stand out from the crowd. They are further explored in your loadouts, too; completing missions grants you unlock tokens that can be used to acquire suitably zany new tools. These include ultimate abilities such as the Splash Kit’s Teapot that burns up any enemy unfortunate enough to collide with its superheated globules. Then there’s the Jump Kit’s erratic garden gnome, which conjures up a destructive electrical storm that strikes anyone in its zone. That ability, in particular, ensured chaos often reigned during my time with Firebreak. Most of the time it's good fun, with swarms of enemies destroyed through chaotic scrambling and juggling of abilities. Sometimes, though, there's just too much going on on screen and it all becomes a bit indecipherable.

There are strong foundations here, but my small number of concerns all boil down to readability. Sometimes it’s unclear where you should be heading on the maps. Other times it’s working out how to avoid hosing your allies down with friendly fire damage, or picking out who exactly the boss is amidst a horde. There’s simply a lot going on here, and with bursts of colour popping off everywhere, it can be a little overwhelming when trying to play tactically and precisely. This is a concern I’m assured that the Firebreak devs are well aware of, though, and they plan to make active improvements to the shooter’s overall readability before its June 17 launch.

Firebreak will feature five jobs at release, with two more promised before the end of 2025. That may not seem like very many, but game director Mike Kayatta tells me that Remedy considers them “more like game modes” than missions. I can see that, with each offering replayability and depth due to their multiple clearance levels and evolving objectives. Combined with the fact that it will cost $39.99 / €39.99 / £32.99 (as well as being included on both Game Pass and PlayStation Plus), I think there’s enough value in here to keep both Control veterans and new fans looking for a fun shooter entertained for many hours.

The always online co-op shooter road is a daunting one for any developer to choose to walk right now. But after playing Firebreak, I’m confident that there’s a strong foundation here, and when combined with injections of Remedy’s unique quirky personality I think it can carve its own niche in the space. Much like that dollop of cream carved its own space in my cocktail. I still drank it all.

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.

Mike Kayatta, game director of Remedy’s upcoming FBC: Firebreak, supports the notion of making games "that respect player time and don't try to overcharge."

This suggestion comes in the wake of a flurry of recent games successfully being released at a lower price point than we’ve come to expect. These include two of the most critically acclaimed titles of the year so far, Split Fiction and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which have sold over 4 million and 2 million copies respectively so far this year.

It’s a pattern that both Mafia: The Old Country – recently revealed to cost $50 when it launches on August 8 – and FBC: Firebreak will be hoping to continue.

Launching on June 17, 2025 and costing $39.99/£32.99 (as well as on both Game Pass and PS Plus), Firebreak is looking towards this newly emerging mid-tier space between wildly budgeted AAA games and indies to find its success. It’s a notion that Kayatta explained to IGN:

“I read somebody describe this recently in a very eloquent way as game developers building cathedrals competing to build these more and more complex, beautiful, expensive things," Kayatta said.

“And it's gotten to the point where you've got a lot of games that cost half a billion dollars to make. And then, of course, when you get into marketing and promotion, I mean, the amount of money involved is staggering. And that can produce some incredible, incredible experiences that I am very thankful exist, but only some of those can exist, and everyone can't compete in that space."

Kayatta continued: “And then on the other side, you've got all of these incredible indie developers. Everything from Inscryption to Stardew Valley to Blue Prince feel like they come out of nowhere and light the world on fire. But then I do think we're seeing that emergence of that middle ground now of, it's messy to call it AA, right? But it is something kind of new. It’s not quite God of War Ragnarok or GTA 6, but it's also something more than a Slay the Spire. And that's not a comment on either end of those spectrums. Those are fantastic games, but it does feel like there is something kind of emerging in the middle, at least to me.

"If it's the future, I'm not sure. I wouldn't say in the sense that it implies that that's where all games need to go, but this idea of a responsible team size, a responsible budget, a responsible amount of time to develop a game, just get it out there, make something that respects player time and don't try to overcharge and don't try to be greedy with time. I do think there's a space for it, and we're trying to touch on it with this game.”

That respect for players’ time and money goes hand-in-hand with Remedy’s all-in-one approach to Firebreak. This is a game you pay once for and get everything for that $40. The idea of a free-to-play model was something never even entertained by the team.

“A lot of that has to do with reducing FOMO (the fear of missing out), which I think has kind of infected a lot of modern games," stated Kayatta.

“And by the way, that's not a blanket statement. I think a lot of games are able to use FOMO to be exciting. So I'm just saying that for this game in particular, it didn't work for us, but it's not just about monetization, I think it's about the value that the game has. So one example would be, I don't know if you've ever played Path of Exile, for example, and you open up that skill tree and you see 10,000 things that you're going to be able to do.

“And for a type of person, they're really excited, like look at that depth and look how many hours I've got, all these other things. And then for another type of person, they're looking at that saying, 'I will never extract the value from this game even if I want to.' And even if those devs, and this is no longer a comment about Path of Exile, which I love by the way, even if you say, 'Well, but you don't have to interact with those systems, you can still have fun.' That may be true, but the minute you see those systems exist, you're instantly put into that frame of reference where you say, 'There is something that I'm not getting from this, and that just feels bad.'

"So for us, we wanted to make sure that the game, both from the way we monetize it, we don't do daily check-ins, timed battle passes, all that other stuff that dictates your time. There's that side.

“But the other side, too, is that we don't want to present a game that feels so complex, like, oh, if you don't come back and do six more sessions, you're not going to be able to do this, and progression's important. You feel like you're accomplishing something over time. So we definitely have that, and we definitely wanted to have a strong meta game, but we also just wanted to keep things feeling like, you know what? I get as much out of this as I want at any given time, and at any given moment, I have the complete experience.”

Firebreak will be hoping to capture both fans of Remedy’s uniquely weird work and fans of co-op shooters alike when it launches on June 17. For an in-depth look at how it’s shaping up, check out our hands-on preview.

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.

Warning: Gross and hilarious death scene images/talk follows!

After a lengthy 14-year hiatus, the Final Destination franchise is finally coming back to theaters with a sixth installment, Final Destination: Bloodlines. The basic formula for this series has always involved someone having had a premonition that leads a group of people to narrowly avoid dying in a disaster – except by doing so, they’re defying the will of Death itself, who’s none too happy as a result and retaliates by then killing each of these survivors off, one by one, in particularly elaborate, brutal – and often darkly funny – ways. So as we get ready for Bloodlines, let’s look back at the first five films and determine which of these crazy demises stand out the most.

First though, some quick ground rules. We’ve decided that the mass casualty premonitions that begin each movie – and, in the third and fourth films, even happen again in the third act – don’t count for our purposes here. Don’t get us wrong: They’re awesome in general and feature spectacular deaths, and wow, that car pile-up that begins the second movie absolutely has us all forever fearing a “Final Destination incident” while driving. But still, in the context of this series, they’re not “real” deaths, since most of the characters we see meet their end in these premonitions will go on to actually die in totally different ways, after first surviving whatever disaster is foretold in these sequences.

But don’t worry, there’s all kinds of gnarly deaths to still sort through... Here’s our look at the 10 best Final Destination deaths so far!

10. Truck Drag & Burn

Character, Movie: Carter, The Final Destination (2009)

The fourth film in the franchise is easily the weakest installment for many reasons, including when it comes to the deaths. Some of them are fun conceptually, but notably lessened by the very fake and often goofy looking, yet very in your face, digital effects used to enhance them, which were meant to accentuate the movie’s 3D gimmick at the time - which isn’t even there to help while watching at home.

However, one highlight death in the film is Carter, who you figured the filmmakers would go big on after making sure we knew he was an absolute piece of trash racist, sporting a swastika tattoo, who’s in the middle of doing horrible racist stuff when he gets dragged behind his own truck and set on fire. Then his truck blows up, blowing Carter up with it - sending both gratuitous 3D debris and Carter’s stupid head flying.

Plus, it is a funny cut from that flaming Carter head to a clip from the 1947 Tex Avery cartoon “Red Hot Rangers,” albeit with some notably updated dialogue.

9. One Sharp Thing After Another

Character, Movie: Ms. Lewton, Final Destination (2000)

We all know spilling liquid on your computer is bad, but high school teacher Ms. Lewton finds out just how bad when her computer full-on explodes after some booze is spilled into it, sending a shard of the monitor into her neck. It seems like that could have been enough to kill her on its own, but no, Death wants this one to last, as soon enough the mixture of sparks and spilled alcohol causes a fire to break out in her house, even as she’s still bleeding out. And then her stove blows up for good measure.

Things take a further turn for the grimly humorous when Ms. Lewton’s desperate attempt to grab a dishcloth to put pressure on her wound ends up dragging her snazzy set of butcher knives down off her counter, one of which flies straight into her body. But even worse, which is to say even funnier, since this is Final Destination, is when Devon Sawa’s Alex attempts to pull out the knife, only for a chair to fall and slam that sucker even further into Ms. Lewton, delivering the literal death blow. Come on, Alex, Death obviously put that knife there for a reason!

8. I Crush Your Head

Character, Movie: Lewis, Final Destination 3 (2006)

In Final Destination 3, our heroine Wendy realizes photos she took of her fellow roller coaster crash survivors contain clues to how they will die, and in the case of football player Lewis, that seems to involve two swords. The super jock’s ensuing death scene is an amusingly testosterone-filled one, as he and his teammates are just so damn excited to be working out. The big payoff stands out, as it turns out the swords themselves – dangerously hanging overhead and, inevitably, falling – don’t cut Lewis, but they do cut the ropes on his weight machine without him realizing it. How can you not enjoy someone’s head being smashed to smithereens right as they’re screaming “I just win!”?

And, hey, at least Lewis died so quickly he didn’t even realize he’d just lost.

7. Chop Top

Character, Movie: Frankie, Final Destination 3 (2006)

Frankie Cheeks is Final Destination 3’s designated overt slimeball and not just because his name is Frankie Cheeks and he refers to himself in the third person. See, this guy’s also a sex pest who keeps being gross with girls from the high school he graduated from a couple of years ago.

What’s notable about Frankie’s death is there’s a huge misdirection in the scene, because Final Destination 3’s main characters, Wendy and Kevin, naturally think death is coming for them when a driverless truck careens down a hill and towards their car, which is stuck in the middle of a fast food drive-thru line. Except what neither they, nor those of us watching, know at first is that the douchebag in the car in front of them, who flips them off as they desperately try to escape, is none other than Frankie.

Even before it’s clear who it is – and it briefly seems like some random dude got Final Destination-ed – his death is pretty great, as the truck’s engine shoots out in the collision that occurs, flying into the back of his head and sawing into him with a fan. Then, as it becomes clear this particular victim is sleazy Frankie Cheeks, we get an exclamation point in the form of seeing the entire back of his head had been torn off.

6. Airbag Meets Pipe

Character, Movie: Kat, Final Destination 2 (2003)

Where sometimes we see people narrowly avoid several different ways they could die before something else finally gets them, Final Destination 2 had a clever swerve on that play out with businesswoman Kat when her tire blows out, causing her to crash and sending a decidedly sharpened pipe tearing into her car and going right through her seat’s headrest - except it just misses her! However, when rescue workers attempt to free her, they accidentally activate her car’s airbag, shoving Kat’s head back violently. And that’s when the force of being lurched back so quickly causes that very same pipe to stab her through the head.

This one stands out for how sudden it is, and also how, technically, the actual moment of death is off camera, obstructed by the airbag, while still using a lethal instrument that was very much set up already. This time, our expectations were that Kat had managed to avoid that particular method of elimination and something else would finish her off, but it seems like Death really, really wanted to use that pipe to get her!

5. Seeing All

Character, Movie: Olivia, Final Destination 5 (2011)

Getting LASIK surgery can be an inherently nerve-racking experience, so of course Final Destination had to make sure it went as terribly as possible – and, okay, maybe beyond possible — in the fifth film. This is one of the most notable deaths in terms of escalation, as so many awful things happen to Olivia in literally the final minute of her life. First, the LASIK machine malfunctions, horrifically cutting into not only her eye but her skin. Then, when she actually manages to escape that, she slips and falls, crashing through a window and hurtling several stories down, smashing into a car. That fall is what kills her, except Death, ever the impish prankster, then has one of her eyes fully pop out from the impact and roll into the street… and then it gets run over by a passing car!

Sorry to say, but you probably should have just stuck with wearing glasses, Olivia.

4. Tanning Bed Flambé

Character, Movie: Ashley and Ashlyn, Final Destination 3 (2006)

Most of the time, even folks who were sitting next to each other during a disaster premonition in these movies still die separately, but Death made an exception for besties Ashley and Ashlyn in Final Destination 3, who die as they lived - doing everything together. At least they got a nice little singalong right before things went horribly wrong!

This death is actually one of the more prolonged and painful ones in the series, as these two poor girls find themselves trapped in rapidly overheating tanning beds, causing their skin to burn while glass shatters in their face… before they become engulfed in flames.

It’s a memorable sequence to be sure, and one also given a dark and funny punch line with the hard cut from their twin flaming tanning beds to their twin coffins.

3. The Bus Hit

Character, Movie: Terry, Final Destination (2000)

There’s absolutely no way we can skip this death from the first movie, both because of how fun and memorable it is in its own right, thanks to the sheer surprise of it at the time, but also for how iconic it’s become to the series. Terry declares how she’s going to move on from the plane crash she and the others survived, only to find out Death has other plans when she steps off a curb and gets pulverized out of nowhere by a passing bus.

Even as the series would move into far more elaborate and gory setpieces in the sequels, Terry’s death stands out as the first time a Final Destination audience found themselves laughing and cheering for one of the deaths – yeah, yeah, we’re all sickos! – so much so that the filmmakers needed to re-edit the aftermath of the moment to account for how well it went over in test screenings, since people were otherwise missing hearing the dialogue in the next scene.

This quickly became such a signature death for the series that it is continually referenced, including providing the conclusion to the fourth movie’s “greatest hits” opening credits as well as that same movie outright repeating this death, albeit with a line of dialogue right before to let the audience know the filmmakers were well aware they were repeating themselves. Even 25 years later, the trailer for Final Destination: Bloodlines ends with a callback to this moment.

Terry, you will never be forgotten!

2. Glass Pane Flattening

Character, Movie: Tim, Final Destination 2 (2003)

The Final Destination filmmakers quickly realized they could have a lot of fun by presenting a ton of ways someone could die and then use that as a fake-out for what was going to actually occur. And few sequences do that better or provide a more amazing crescendo than what happens to young Tim in Final Destination 2, whose trip to the dentist is filled with lethal possibilities.

It starts with pigeons that apparently violently slam into the dentist’s window on a regular basis. That should be a hard pass for any potential patient! Tim somehow makes it out of this death trap, even after a near suffocation, only to instantly pull a “I see pigeons, I run at pigeons!” move outside… which then results in a giant dangling pane of glass that was established earlier just absolutely obliterating the kid!

This death is pure Looney Tunes in a gloriously bloody, Final Destination way. I mean, come on, Tim gets flattened like he’s Wile E. Coyote! Except, unfortunately, he’s not getting up from this one, giving both Death itself and those pigeons an absolute victory the Road Runner can’t claim.

1. The Human Pretzel

Character, Movie: Candice, Final Destination 5 (2011)

This sequence in Final Destination 5 featuring gymnast Candice is another where a lot of the initial excitement comes from first establishing the many ways we see she could meet her demise. A huge air conditioning unit threatening to collapse… a fallen screw on the balance beams ready to be stepped on… an exposed wire with water dripping onto it... Another loose screw on the uneven bars (seriously, this place really needs to tighten their screws better!)...

However, what’s so interesting about the payoff here is that ultimately Candice’s death could be described, in the simplest turns, as taking a bad fall, which doesn’t sound very notable for a Final Destination death.

BUT. WHAT. A. FALL.

Just as she’s doing her routine on the uneven bars, a fellow gymnast steps on that errant screw, knocks over a bowl of that, um, gymnast chalk dust stuff – sorry, guys, we’re generally not gymnasts here at IGN – and blinds Candice, just as she spins into the air and BAM…

One instantly snapped spine later and Candice has provided one of the wildest visuals in the history of Final Destination deaths, which is saying something!

What’s your favorite Final Destination death? Vote in our poll, and let’s discuss in the comments!

Sony has said it is considering price rises in response to the huge impact of tariffs on its business.

The Japanese hardware and software company reported its financial results for the year ending March 2025, and in an investor-focused Q&A session that followed, its executives discussed the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

Chief Financial Officer Lin Tao said tariffs will have a 100 billion yen (approx. $685 million) impact on Sony, assuming the tariffs already announced remain. Tariffs impact Sony because of its heavy involvement in hardware manufacturing, which of course includes video game consoles such as the PlayStation 5.

Tao then suggested Sony is considering passing some of the cost on to the price of its hardware, which would potentially include the PS5 itself.

“In terms of the tariff, we are not just simply calculating the simple tariff to come up with 100 billion yen, but thinking about the currently available information, and also looking at the market trend, we may pass on to the price, and also shipment allocation,” Tao said, as translated live during the investor webcast.

“So we are taking different measures in managing to come up to the 100 billion yen impact.”

Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki spoke about PlayStation specifically, saying Sony is considering making consoles in the U.S. to avoid the tariffs.

“These hardware of course can be produced locally,” Totoki said. “I think that would be an efficient strategy. But PS5 is being manufactured in many areas. Whether it’s going to be manufactured in the U.S. or not, it needs to be considered going forward. We are not in such a critical situation.”

Sony's Hiroki Totoki is considering producing the PS5 in the United States due to the Tarrifs. "It needs to be considered going forward" pic.twitter.com/c1cEQIwXA4

— Destin (@DestinLegarie) May 14, 2025

Analysts have told IGN that they expect Sony to follow Nintendo and Microsoft’s lead and make the jump to $80 games. Could the PS5 family of consoles also see a price rise? Most expect the PS5 Pro in particular to see a jump, something that has caused some to rush out and buy one before Sony makes an announcement.

Daniel Ahmad, director of research and insights at Niko Partners, told IGN that Sony had just raised its console prices in certain regions, but the U.S. might be next.

“Sony has raised the price of its console multiple times outside the U.S.,” he said. “There is a reluctance from both Sony and Microsoft to raise prices in the U.S. given the size and importance of the market when it comes to console sales. That being said, we would not be surprised to see Sony follow suit with price increases on the PS5 in the U.S.”

James McWhirter, senior analyst at Omdia, added. “PS5 hardware is predominantly manufactured in China, exposing Sony's supply chain to greater risk from tariffs originating from the U.S. “Yet what we consistently observe in the console market is that up to half of consoles are typically sold during Q4, the final quarter of the year. This bought both Microsoft and Sony more time to rely on existing inventories. In 2019, consoles were granted an exemption from tariffs on goods from China, but this ruling did not come into effect until August.

“With Microsoft having blinked first with price readjustments this week, it now opens the door for Sony to follow with PS5. This is going to be a particularly tough decision in the U.S., the world's largest console market, which has historically been spared — save for PS5 Digital rising by $50 in late 2023.”

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 Nintendo Switch 2 version of Hogwarts Legacy will include sharper visuals, faster loading times, and make use of those all-new mouse controls, too.

As demonstrated in an all-new comparisons teaser trailer, while players of the original game had to sit through loading screens when players moved in or out of Hogsmeade, the Switch 2 version enables players to transition seamlessly from area to area.

That's not all, either. Playing on the Nintendo Switch 2 also boosts frame rate, textures, shadows, and even the color saturation of Hogwarts and its surroundings — you can see it for yourself in the trailer below:

As for mouse controls? We're intrigued, too. For now, though, developer Warner Bros. isn't ready to expand on that, but we wonder if the new mouse functionality could be used while spell-casting perhaps.

Much like other Switch 1 games, players with Hogwarts Legacy on the OG system will be able to upgrade to the new, improved version for $10.

Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, action, open-world role-playing-game set in the 1800s wizarding world. Beginning as a fifth year, players embark on a journey through new and familiar locations, explore and discover magical beasts, craft potions, master spell casting, upgrade talents, and customize their character to become the witch or wizard they've always wanted to be. It's coming to Nintendo Switch 2 the same day the console releases, June 5.

We had an amazing time with Hogwarts Legacy, awarding it 9/10 in the IGN Hogwart's Legacy review, writing: "in almost every way, Hogwarts Legacy is the Harry Potter RPG [we've] always wanted to play."

Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

I love getting a new phone, but what if you could get the latest Samsung flagship with double the storage and a $50 Amazon gift card at no extra charge?

Welcome to today's deals, everyone. I am all over bargains this morning, including some cool preorders that are still live thanks to Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy Starter Kit and Bundle.

TL;DR: Deals For Today

How about 8 Xbox Game Studios Steam Keys for $10? Humble has you covered. How about 15% off a Nvidia RTX 4070Ti prebuilt gaming PC to play them all on too?

I've even got a solid way to stay hydrated on filtered water with a cheeky $30 discount thanks to Dreo. You'll need a good fan to keep you cool this summer too, so I've found $10 off one of the best Pedestal Fans I've used for a while.

Everyone loves Squishmallows, every plushy or teddy bear should feel this soft. There's up to 76% off them right now on Woot, so there's no excuses this time.

Played Split Fiction yet? It's just got it's first discount for a PS5 physical copy over on Amazon. Don't want to play games? No worries, watch one of the best Anime movies of all time with an awesome steelbook in 4K instead. Of course, we're talking about the cult classic, Akira.

Don't bother cleaning up before putting your feet up either, there's 20% off one of the best robot vac and mop right now too. Let's get into it:

Prismatic Evolutions Surprise Box

MTG Final Fantasy Starter Kit

MTG Final Fantasy Bundle

Xbox Game Studios Game Bundle

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge

Sekiro Statue

Split Fiction (PS5)

Akira 4K Blu Ray (Steelbook)

Squishmallow Sale

Skytech Gaming PC Desktop

Yeedi S14 Plus Robot Vacuum and Mop

Dreo Reverse Osmosis Water Filter Countertop

Dreo Pedestal Fan with Remote

Silent Hill 2 OST 6LP Vinyl

Silent Hill f - PS5 + Steelbook

Pathfinder Second Ed. Asian Fantasy Bundle

Dreamegg Portable White Noise Machine

GravaStar Wireless Mercury M1 Pro

Xbox Game Studios Game Bundle

Corsair K70 RGB Pro Cherry MX Red

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Art Prints

Buy 2 Books, Save 50% on 1

Apple AirPods Pro 2

LEGO Technic Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit

Jason X 4K UHD Blu Ray

Nintendo Switch 2 Travel Carrying Case

Eagle-eyed Helldivers 2 fans have spotted what looks like a leak from PlayStation that suggests players will end up fighting back against the Illuminate on the streets of Super Earth.

This week, developer Arrowhead launched the full Illuminate invasion, adding new enemy types in the process. The in-universe wording of the invasion suggested the Illuminate were heading straight for Super Earth, and now a leak coming out of the official Czech Republic Threads account suggests that the Illuminate will not only make it to our home planet, but we’ll have to fight them off there.

Redditor xTekshi spotted the now-deleted post, which spoke of a "Heart of Democracy" update coming on May 20. While Heart of Democracy is referenced in the official working around this week’s update, neither Sony nor Arrowhead have confirmed it in relation to a May 20 release.

Adding further fuel to the fire is the fact a May 20 release would fit with the timing of the end of the current Major Order.

Official Playstation account for the Czech Republic dropped info on the next title update.
"Heart of Democracy" - May 20th#Helldivers2 pic.twitter.com/gelJbnYMqR

— IronS1ghts (@Iron_S1ghts) May 13, 2025

This all feels pretty much inevitable, and that’s the wording Sony and Arrowhead have used for this update (“High Command believes this Fleet's ultimate objective to be the invasion of Super Earth itself” and “Battle on Super Earth is inevitable”).

So, fans think the Czech account accidentally leaked Helldivers 2’s next major update, and with it plans to fight on Super Earth itself. If true, this would be a significant upgrade for the explosive third-person action game, which currently includes alien planet maps only. Playing on Super Earth would certainly offer something different.

Warning! Spoilers for Helldivers 2 follow:

Now, in a recent development, gameplay of Super Earth Mega Cities has leaked online, via social media account IronS1ghts and their YouTube channel. The gameplay shows Super Earth as a destination in Helldivers 2. You’re able to choose from a variety of city missions, as you can on other planets (“York Supreme” is a city in North America).

On the surface we see future Earth urban areas, with the Illuminate invasion ongoing. SEAF (the equivalent of the national guard or militia) soldiers are fighting alongside the Helldivers. For me, this reminds me a lot of Halo 3: ODST, with the Covenant invading Earth.

How is this gameplay possible? Apparently the Super Earth content is in the Helldivers 2 game files already, waiting to launch.

While we wait for an official announcement, check out the details of this week’s update.

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.

Amazon has restocked Pokémon TCG: Prismatic Evolutions Surprise Boxes today... for $59.99. But is it worth it? Well, in the TCG community right now, you've got MSRP vigilants ($22.99), and those willing to pay at "Market Price" ($59.99).

This Surprise Box is sold and shipped by Amazon, so it's what you'd consider market price; it's just way above MSRP. Whatever side of the fence you sit on, the debate is fascinating.

But still, it's been a popular pick amongst IGN's Daily Deals readers, so who am I to judge? Make your own decisions when buying, just don't say I didn't warn you.

Otherwise, you can also consider picking up the singles you might be chasing via trusted retailers like TCGPlayer. Let's explore the top Prismatic Evolutions cards available to pick up today as well.

If you're, like me, just interested in the Suprise Box for the promo cards, it might be worth just buying the cards standlone. The most expensive (of course it's Umbreon) is going for the same price as one of these boxes, with the rest coming in at well under $20.

So for the price of two to three Suprise Boxes, you can get the complete collection. If you want to rip open packs and pull these promos yourself then go for it, but it'll cost you.

Prismatic Evolution Chase Cards

Dropping over a grand on a Pokémon card sounds mental, but this Umbreon SIR has come down quite a bit after release. Sitting at $1100, that's a fall of around $500 and change.

All the other chase cards of Prismatic Evolutions have fallen to under the $500 mark, with my favorite Roaring Moon ex SIR dropping to $221 at the time of writing.

These prices may very well fall more as the year goes on and attention shifts, but these are pretty good prices considering what the bloated Pokémon card market would have you believe just a month ago.

Pokémon TCG: Best Deals Today

Pokémon TCG's Prismatic Evolutions expansion for Scarlet & Violet has been crazy popular, sending Pokémania 2025 over the edge due to tough pull rates and having few opportunities to rip the set open.

But, if you're trying to keep up with all the other Pokémon TCG without getting ripped off or left behind, here's where to start, including the latest update on what can be bought here and now from trusted retailers in the US.

Want to know more about the best single Pokémon cards out there right now? My weekly Crashes and Climbers articles do just that. Want to pay less? The Glory of Team Rocket Japanese set singles are going for great prices right now too.

Looking to preorder the new sets Destined Rivals or Black Bolt/White Flare? We've also got you covered, alongside every upcoming release for Pokémon TCG in 2025.

Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of "Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior". Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.