Nintendo has signaled the end of production of the eye-catching Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle, six months after the console launched.
In April, when Nintendo confirmed that the Switch 2 would cost $449.99 and Mario Kart World would cost $80, it announced a bundle that combined the two for $499.99, effectively making the launch title $30 cheaper than its standalone price.
As you’d expect, this bundle proved a popular option among early adopters, and helped fuel not only very strong sales of Mario Kart World, but the Switch 2 itself.
Production of that bundle has now come to an end, however. Over the weekend, U.S. retailer giant Game Stop announced that the Mario Kart World Switch 2 bundle “will no longer be produced” in a social media post that followed the leak of an internal GameStop memo to staff signalling the change.
"This bundle SKU has now reached end of lifecycle, and additional units will no longer be produced,” the memo reads. “Future replenishment of Nintendo Switch 2 will be the base console."
Today, December 22, Nintendo confirmed as much in a social media post of its own, saying: “Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle is available in limited quantities at participating retailers, while supplies last.”
While the bundle was always described as being available for a limited time, it’s interesting that Nintendo has decided now is the right time to cease production. However, given how many bundle units are available at retailers, it seems likely they will be available for some time to come, should you fancy dropping by the Switch 2 party.
Indeed, as IGN reported over the weekend, Best Buy has the Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle on sale for $449.99, which means you’re getting Mario Kart World for free.
Nintendo has so-far resisted increasing the price of the Switch 2, at a time when its console rivals Microsoft and Sony have done so. Nintendo did raise original Switch prices in August 2025 and warned future price adjustments for Switch 2 accessories and games might occur.
Despite launching at $450, Nintendo Switch 2 sold an astonishing 10.36 million units between June 5 and September 30, a record-breaking amount that saw the platform continue its run as the biggest console launch ever. Nintendo even raised its hardware forecast for the year in response to the Switch 2's spectacular performance, and now expects to shift 19 million units of its new console before the end of March 2026.
Mario Kart World, the Switch 2's flagship launch game, has now sold 9.57 million copies, with 8.1 million units of that total from the console's bundle. (So yes, more than a million people paid $80 to buy it separately.)
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Don't panic, but it's Christmas Day on Thursday. Zero pressure, but if your loved ones really love you, they won't mind a late Christmas gift. If they do mind, they need to stop being silly sausages (who do all these kids think they are?).
Joking aside, I'm still manning the Daily Deals desk, finding some bangers, and it's literally the best excuse to avoid doing IRL shopping. If you need to distract your family from late Christmas presents, buy a Fire TV or Fire Stick at a massive discount and stick on some Christmas films. Amazon has some cracking discounts on their range right now, which also includes a code for one month of Xbox Game Pass. Happy days!
Purly because I love Pokémon so much, I've taken the liberty of seeing what's available now on Amazon, then telling you where you can buy it from cheaper elsewhere (because I'm a Pokémon Master, as no one has enough badges to train me).
Need an ear buds upgrade? Apple AirPods Pro 3 are currently down to $199 from $249, shaving off a good chunk of brand tax. Side note: If you're not bothered about turning your Apple setup into some kind of Wizarding World mudblood setup, the best earbuds I've tried this year are:
Speaking of Sony INZONE, their big beefy H9 headset is also on offer right now for $169.29, a massive 49% off $329. And if you're sick of eye strain or dry eyes whilst gaming or watching Fallout Season 2, Gunnar have saved the day with their limited edition Vault 33-themed gaming glasses. They're also 30% off at the moment, down to $69.33 from $99.
Let's get into today's deals:
To be fair to Amazon, some of their pricing isn't far off market price, but then again they're being undercut by independent businesses and sellers that will likely have worse rates from distribution than Amazon. Read between the lines there.
So Phantasmal Flames ETB is $79.94 at Amazon, just shy of $4 more than TCGPlayers $76. Mega Evolutions Three Booster Blister is in a similar spot on Amazon right now too, $29.54 compared to $28.93 on TCGPlayer. But if you're after Mega Evolutions Boosters, i'd suggest going on TCGPlayer and buying single sleeved ones for $8.70 each instead.
This deal stretches across the whole 4K line of Fire TV Sticks, the Fire TV Cube, Amazon Fire TV 43-inch, and Amazon Fire TV 55-inch. The link above will take you to the offer page with all the products available, with the cheapest Fire Stick coming in at $19.99 for the 4K Select.
So AirPods 3 have loads of bells and whistles on, including:
Apple have also overhauled the acoustic architecture inside the earbud to make sure you're getting some cracking definition. Not a bad bundle of features when taking the discount into consideration.
I've been using Gunnar glasses for years, mostly for getting deals in front of all of your stunning eyes. I've noticed fewer strain headaches from looking at a screen all day and vastly reduced dry-eye symptoms (like having dry eyes). They can also do prescription lenses should you need them, but the main three styles they offer are yellow tint (best blue-light reduction), clear, and sunglasses.
If the INZONE earbuds are anything to go off, the H9 gaming headset should be a banger. The mic features a 360 spatial sound feature alongside solid noise cancelling backed up by a dual sensor and full customization via the INZONE Hub software. At nearly half off and with a 2.4GHz adaptor included, this is a great deal.
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.
Since first releasing in 2022, open-world racing game CarX Street has gotten countless updates and pieces of new content, but the update it just dropped is one of its biggest yet. Titled Showdown, it adds a brand-new PvP team mode that pits street racers against pursuing law enforcement.
The mode can be played by up to 16 people at a time, eight on each team. On one side, street racers need to reach a designated area to earn points and then deliver them to a garage. On the other side, police officers are rewarded for neutralizing racers in several different ways, which we’ll cover in detail in a bit.
Each match is played in two rounds, with everyone randomly assigned to either the racers or police, then switching sides between rounds. So you’ll always play as a racer once and a police officer once. The racers have HP, and if their HP is brought down to zero, they lose all their undelivered points and respawn at the garage to try again.
Racers lose HP when they run into environmental objects or other cars, so you can’t drive recklessly. But speed is still very important. If a racer drives too slowly while police cars are nearby, their HP will gradually be drained. So you need to make use of your nitro boosts and consistently drive as fast as possible while still keeping your car under control.
While racers earn points for safely reaching certain parts of the map, police officers earn points for actions that prevent it. They can score points for ramming racers’ cars, arresting racers, or using their unique ability to deploy spike strips that puncture racers’ tires. Plus, they can get points for assisting their teammates, so if you ram a racer that’s later arrested by someone else, you’ll still get points. Police cars can also teleport between police stations scattered across the city, meaning they can strategize and cut off escape routes.
But the police aren’t the only ones with a trick up their sleeves: Racers are equipped with an EMP that can temporarily disable any police cars caught in its radius. Both the police’s spike strip and the racers’ EMP are on cooldown timers, so be careful not to waste them. And for the sake of a fair match, cars in this mode are restricted by class, and tire wear and fuel are both ignored. So it’s all about driving skill and strategy, not raw vehicle stats and durability. Each round lasts for about 10 minutes, and whichever team manages to score the most points after two rounds wins.
Developer CarX Technologies has said that the dev team dreamed of creating a cops-and-racers mode since before the game originally launched in 2022, but it was too labor-intensive and complex to develop in tandem with the open-world experience the rest of the game offers. And the inclusion of unique features and visual effects makes it clear how much work went into this mode. Police cars have flashing lights and sirens, arrests are accompanied by voice lines from a police radio channel, and collisions and EMP activations feature unique glitch-like effects.
The gameplay experience of this mode is in stark contrast to the rest of the game, which sees you travel around the fictional Sunset City and its outskirts, facing off against local racing clubs that each have their own unique identity and narrative. You fine-tune your car, from the body kit and brake discs to the engine and suspension, gradually upgrading so you can qualify to take on more difficult opponents.
A lot went into the development of that core gameplay loop, which then needed to be polished for each platform CarX Street released on. It came to mobile first in 2022, then PC in August 2024, then finally PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this year. Its multiplatform approach resulted in success, reaching more than 1 million sales across Steam and consoles. Once they had it successfully running on all platforms, the dev team was able to focus on development of the new mode, which started about six months ago with the first concepts and prototypes.
It was meant to feel unlike anything else in the game, and police chases were always the primary focus. However, after extensive internal testing, the dev team realized police chases alone weren't enough. That’s how the unique abilities arose, resulting in the addition of spike strips and EMPs.
It’s safe to say that the result accomplishes the goal of introducing a mode with completely different gameplay, but this is far from the end of the game’s evolution. CarX Technologies has stayed engaged with its community and gets regular feedback that helps guide their updates and new content, and that won’t stop anytime soon. Based on that feedback, they’ve previously mentioned that their future plans include additional competitive multiplayer modes, a dedicated highway network added to the open-world map, and a full story campaign with quests.
On top of the new mode and other planned updates, CarX Street is also currently on sale on Steam and Xbox, and it just launched a special promotion on PlayStation as well. So there’s never been a better time to get behind the wheel. If you’d like to join the community, you can follow CarX Technologies on Instagram, X/Twitter, or Facebook. Or you can check out the official website to keep up with the latest info on all their games.
2025 has given us plenty of entertainment worth celebrating, but it’s also gone and brought us consoles that cost more now than when they were first released, a Tron movie featuring Jared Leto, and an even bigger hole in our lives where Grand Theft Auto 6 was supposed to be.
From price hikes to lowlights, and missed expectations to cruel cancellations, these are the biggest disappointments of 2025.
Marvel may have kicked off 2025 by sending a brand new Cap into a Brave New World, but audiences clearly had more than a few gripes with Anthony Mackie’s turn in the Stars and Stripes. Despite what pre-release trailers had suggested, Captain America: Brave New World held back Harrison Ford’s transformation from President Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross into a scarlet shade of Hulk until the final few minutes of the film, which certainly had fans seeing red – just not in the way the filmmakers had intended. All told, Captain America: Brave New World suffered a 68% drop-off at the box office in its second weekend and is yet to break even on its estimated $425 million budget, making it closer to a Hulk shrug than a Hulk smash.
Meanwhile Tron: Ares turned out to be yet another lacklustre system reboot for a franchise that should have probably been shut down, boxed up, and sent to an e-waste disposal center by now. The latest instalment in Disney’s videogame-inspired sci-fi series may have featured a certifiably banging soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails, but audiences weren’t exactly burning doing the new Tron dance. Not since Jared Leto’s Morbius had a Jared Leto-led movie performed so poorly at the box office, with Tron: Ares’ mustering up just $60.5 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Despite its disastrous reception, Tron: Ares features a mid-credits scene that seemingly sets up a potential fourth film. Just don’t expect it for at least another 15 or so years, which appears to be the typical Tron cycle. (Not to be confused with one of those bitchin’ motorbikes.)
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off live-action Disney remakes that audiences seem to have gone, or at least that’s how it appeared after the middling performance of 2025’s Snow White. To be fair, a tick over $200 million in global box office revenue is nothing for Sneezy to, well, sneeze at. However, there was clearly only one live-action adaptation about short people carrying pickaxes and singing catchy songs that most families wanted to see this year, and that was A Minecraft Movie, which hit theaters just two weeks after Snow White and completely dwarfed its performance at the box office. Disney would live to live-action again, though, since its Lilo & Stitch reboot would crack a billion dollars just a couple of months later, possibly due to the fact it was actually a good film. So who’s the fairest of them all? Moviegoers, it would seem.
Elsewhere, The Alto Knights proved that drafting in the writer of Goodfellas, the director of Rain Man, and a double dose of Robert De Niro, didn’t guarantee a good time at the movies. In spite of positive reviews from critics (IGN gave it a 9/10), Elio suffered the worst opening weekend of any Pixar movie ever. (Yes, even worse than The Good Dinosaur.) Sony videogame adaptation Until Dawn managed to both fumble its source material and fail to properly credit the series’ creators. And Dwayne Johnson’s The Smashing Machine failed to punch above its weight, returning $6 million on its opening weekend against A24’s reported budget of $50 million, not including “many millions more on promotional efforts”. It seems fair to say that The Rock is no longer cooking. Now it seems he’s just cooked.
The bombs weren’t confined to the big screen, though, and there was certainly no shortage of disappointment conveniently streamed directly to our televisions, tablets, and toilet televisions (that’s what we call our phones). Anyone who made the mistake of watching Star Trek: Section 31 must have been begging Scotty to beam that stream back up to Paramount+’s servers, because this intergalactic block of generic sci-fi schlock was so surprisingly awful it left audience faces set to stunned. IGN handed it a rare 2/10, stating that “Section 31 will infuriate Star Trek fans and bore everyone else.” Star Michelle Yeoh, coming off an Oscar win in 2023 for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, was forced to concede that “it’s very hard to please all of your audience all of the time.” We’d argue that Section 31 didn’t even manage to please some of its audience any of the time, and that this particular Star Trek would have been better off lost in space.
Unfortunately, Star Trek wasn’t the only legendary sci-fi property to be completely mishandled in 2025. In July, Prime Video went back to the well – or specifically, H.G. Wells – to produce a modern-day adaptation of The War of the Worlds. The century-old classic novel has previously inspired radio plays, feature films, comic books, and video games, but in the hands of director Rich Lee, The War of the Worlds was reimagined as… a 90-minute-long Ice Cube reaction GIF. To be fair, we can’t say that this braindead disaster didn’t deliver on its promise – at least if you took the “It’s much worse than you think” tagline from its trailer as an honest appraisal of the movie’s quality rather than a reference to the alien invasion in its plot. War of the Worlds debuted with a rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, although has since skyrocketed to a whopping 4%. Meanwhile its producer insisted that there wasn’t any product placement in the film, despite the fact that it’s a movie on Amazon’s streaming service that makes a hero out of an Amazon delivery driver and hinges its climax upon the daring piloting of an Amazon drone. You couldn’t get product placement more intentional than that if it was a package left on your doorstep.
Dropping a US president into Die Hard-style scenarios is nothing new, see Harrison Ford in Air Force One or Morgan Freeman in the Has Fallen films, but despite its lack of originality, Amazon’s G20 still had a couple of big positives going for it – namely Viola Davis as the arse-kicking commander-in-chief, and The Boys’ Antony Starr as Homelander turned hammy Hans Gruber. Sadly neither had an approval rating high enough to elevate the dopey dialogue and choppy action sequences of this formulaic action flick. IGN awarded the film a 3/10, stating that “G20 isn’t just another streaming movie that feels designed to be half-watched; at times, it only feels half-made, too.”
The Electric State could also be accused of being half-made, at least by human hands, given that it was seemingly a co-production between the Russo Brothers and Netflix’s machine-learning algorithm along with help from some AI-based post-production tweaks. The controversial practice of using AI in film is widely assumed to be a way to keep production costs down, yet despite that the budget for this thoroughly disposable hodgepodge of superior sci-fi stories still spiralled to a reported $320 million, making it the most expensive film Netflix has ever made. IGN handed it a 4/10, stating that The Electric State “feels calculated to remind you of something you’ve already enjoyed.” For all that money and in spite of the star power of Chris Pratt and Millie Bobbie Brown, The Electric State failed to really spark.
Any year in video games is invariably going to be a bit like a Guns N' Roses album. That is, chock full of absolute bangers but, shortly after you’ve worn out your neck headbanging to You Could Be Mine, My World arrives and promptly ruins the good times. Like the infamously terrible final track on Use Your Illusion II, 2025 has had us leaping for the eject button faster than a flaming fighter jet pilot on more than one occasion.
With a pile of performance issues and a complete lack of freedom, substance, and… an ending, MindsEye was far and away one of 2025’s most disappointing games. Unfortunately, its June launch went so badly that more than 90 staff at its developer Build a Rocket Boy later referred to it as “one of the worst video game launches this decade” in an open letter to company management. The letter called for change at the studio, apologies for not listening to staff concerns about the game, and “proper compensation for laid-off employees.”
On the topic of compensation, 2025 marked the year when Nintendo decided it ought to be compensated in some way for instructional tech demos of its new products, leading the company to release Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour as a paid product, also in June. You want a tutorial about the console you just bought? Better cough up some more cash. Want to fully complete it? Better cough up some more for the required accessories. Remember the much-celebrated free pack-in Wii Sports? Former Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aimé does, and he certainly posted about it on social media at an intriguingly coincidental time.
Of course, just because a game is free, doesn’t mean it’s good. For evidence of that, look no further than EA’s reboot of the much-loved Skate series. 2025’s early access, free-to-play Skate is just like the old Skate games, only without the style, the atmosphere, the pros, the customisation, the campaign, the music, the varied maps, the humour, or the intro movies. It did, however, have a cardboard costume inspired by the Isaac Clarke’s Dead Space exosuit that cost around $35 to secure.
Call of Duty went back-to-back Black Ops in 2024 and 2025, but the only thing to come out of the decision is backlash. Containing what’s quickly becoming regarded as the worst Call of Duty campaign in the long history of the series, Black Ops 7 has been widely shredded to pieces following its November release for its unwelcome reinvention of campaign mode. Now always-online and co-op focused, Black Ops 7’s campaign mode has none of the rollercoaster-like pacing of a cinematic Call of Duty story, and opts instead for multiplayer-inspired maps and progression, with no checkpoints, and no ability to pause (even when you’re playing alone). The result is quite baffling, which is some result considering the fact Black Ops 7 is intended to be a direct sequel to Black Ops 2 despite releasing immediately after Black Ops 6 is already confusing enough. In the weeks that have followed, the Call of Duty team has promised no more back-to-back releases of sub-series like Modern Warfare or Black Ops, but this guarantee feels unlikely to help Black Ops 7 at this stage. Sales figures or player counts are still yet to be discussed, which strongly suggests Black Ops 7 is deep in the red.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the games that disappointed in 2025, and we haven’t even touched on FBC Firebreak, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, Football Manager 26, Project Motor Racing, or the grammatically abhorrent Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game. Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments.
Some of the biggest gaming disappointments of 2025 weren’t the games that came out, but rather the ones that didn’t. After its public alpha test in April drew a heated response from fans and even accusations of plagiarism, Bungie decided to delay its live-service shooter Marathon from its intended September 23, 2025 launch to a March 2026 release window. In a post on its website, Bungie stated “we know we need more time to craft Marathon into the game that truly reflects your passion.” To be fair to the former house of Halo, it is a Marathon and not a sprint.
Meanwhile, Microsoft made the call to hold back its Fable reboot for another year. The fantasy RPG series that hasn’t been seen since the Xbox 360 era is currently being reimagined by the talented team at Playground Games, best known for its Forza Horizon open-world racing series. We’re keen to find out how the developer makes the adjustment from speed racers to chicken chasers, but for now Fable is a tale that won’t be told until sometime in 2026.
At least Fable was only delayed just once, though, unlike Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra. In May, the planned release of the narrative-driven adventure featuring Captain America, Azzuri, and the Black Panther of the 1940s, was pushed out of 2025 and into early 2026. Then in November, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra was delayed again, this time to the somewhat vague sounding window of “beyond early 2026.” Considering we haven’t seen anything new from the single-player superhero story since an Unreal Engine 5.4 tech demo way back in early 2024, we’re inclined to assume that this one is still a ways off. Will it be worth the wait? Well, the fact that it’s being directed by the creator of the Uncharted series fills us with more optimism than a pep talk from Steve Rogers.
Of course, the most devastating delay – and arguably the most predictable – was that of Grand Theft Auto 6. Rockstar Games proved with Red Dead Redemption 2 that it was prepared to take its time in order to produce the best game possible, and that steadfast approach clearly paid off. Still, given that we’ve been waiting for a new GTA game since Ben Affleck was Batman, Game of Thrones didn’t yet suck, and everyone was still doing the Harlem Shake, it certainly left a lot of fans crying in their Pißwassers when the series’ long awaited return to Vice City was pushed back from Fall 2025 to May 26, 2026.
Things only got all the more agonising when that date slipped again, with GTA 6 currently not expected to launch until November 19, 2026. Beyond leaving fans feeling the lowest of Lazlows, the further postponement of Rockstar’s landmark launch will likely cast major ripples across the games industry, with analysts predicting everything from frantic release schedule reshuffling by competing Q4 2026 titles looking to get out of GTA 6’s way, to even a potential delay to the arrival of the next console generation. Will GTA 6 live up to the unprecedented level of hype and expectation? Will GTA 6 suffer another delay? And why do men have nipples? We’ll have the answers to at least a couple of those questions in a little less than a year’s time.
While game delays are frustrating, they’re typically a considerably more tolerable option to the alternative: cancellation. That is, being postponed is better than never arriving at all. One is steaming into New York a day or two late, the other is hitting an iceberg and becoming James Cameron’s favourite holiday destination, two-and-a-half miles below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean.
In July, Microsoft cancelled the long-gestating Perfect Dark reboot and completely shut down The Initiative, which was the development team behind the troubled project. The Initiative had been developing the game alongside Crystal Dynamics, which was revealed to be partnering on the project in 2021. Xbox officially revealed Perfect Dark’s return at The Game Awards 2020, but it had established The Initiative back in 2018 as the company’s first “AAAA” studio. Unfortunately, it appears AAAA appears to have simply been shorthand for, “AAAArgh, it’s all gone wrong.” Perfect Dark actually didn’t completely cease development at that time, however, and remained in production at Crystal Dynamics up until August. Crystal Dynamics was reportedly close to securing a deal with Take-Two to save the game, but this fell through. This resulted in an unconfirmed number of layoffs at Crystal Dynamics as the lights finally went out on Perfect Dark, permanently.
Avalanche Studios’ Contraband was also shut down at this time. The studio behind Just Cause and Mad Max had been developing Contraband in conjunction with Xbox for four years, but it appears we’ll never see it. A co-op, open-world smuggling game set in the 1970s, Avalanche confirmed at the time that active development on the game had stopped while it evaluated the project’s future, but since then Avalanche has laid off staff in Malmö and Stockholm in Sweden, and closed its UK studio in Liverpool.
Legendary UK studio Rare’s Everwild was also cancelled by Microsoft during this same period. Everwild was announced way back in November 2019 during Xbox’s X019 presentation, but little concrete information about how the end product was going to play was ultimately revealed over the nearly six years that followed. These cancellations were associated with mass layoffs at Rare and elsewhere around Microsoft as the company grappled with… record financial performance levels in 2025 and a 15% increase in revenue, at $281.7 billion. These layoffs also hit Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10, with some reports claiming that the Forza Motorsport team was essentially “no more.” It’s since been clarified that Forza Motorsport will apparently continue to see support in spite of the staff cuts, but whether the racing series will have any future after 2025 remains to be seen.
Sadly, one racing game with no future is EA Sports WRC, with Codemasters confirming in May that there will be no follow-up to its official WRC game and that the team has “reached the end of the road” working on the series after just one game. Unfortunately, alongside this news came the additional confirmation that the EA-owned studio is also “pausing development plans on future rally titles,” which is a big dose of dirt to cop in the face from a team that’s been at the forefront of rallying video games for almost three decades, dating back to 1998’s iconic Colin McRae Rally.
WRC wasn’t the only victim at EA, either; the company was swinging the axe quite liberally in 2025. In March it was reported that EA had quietly cancelled an unannounced, multiplayer first-person shooter from Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment, although the game in question was apparently only in extremely early development. It’s not at all uncommon for things like this to happen, however, and if you poured one out for every unannounced, unnamed project that didn’t make it out of incubation you’d die of thirst. That said, a month later it came to light that EA had also reportedly cancelled an unannounced Titanfall game, which does hurt slightly more than usual considering Titanfall 2 contains what’s widely considered to be one of the very best FPS campaigns in the history of the genre. We’re officially living in a world where Bubsy 3D can have a sequel announced in 2025, while Titanfall 2 has one cancelled. Nothing makes sense anymore. This unknown Titanfall game appears to have been a victim of EA layoffs that hit 300 workers, around 100 of which came from Respawn Entertainment. No other details regarding what this Titanfall project was are known.
But wait, because EA wasn’t done: in May it cancelled its Black Panther game and shuttered Cliffhanger Games, which was producing Black Panther as its debut project. Black Panther, which was announced back in July 2023, was set to be a single-player open-world game. EA claimed at the time that the decision to ditch the project was made in order to “sharpen” the company’s focus and put its “creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities.” We’re guessing EA’s spreadsheet squad were unenthused by this single-player game’s lack of a Wakanda Ultimate Team mode.
Black Panther isn’t the only superhero to have the rug pulled out from beneath them in 2025, either. In February 2025 it was confirmed that Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman game was cancelled and developer Monolith would be shut down. In a horrible twist, Wonder Woman would have been Monolith’s follow-up to its much-loved Middle-earth series and was expected to feature Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War’s excellent and patented Nemesis system.
First announced at the 2021 Game Awards, Wonder Woman was a victim of a Warner Bros. decision to restructure its operations around “building the best games possible” with its “key franchises.” Of course, despite an overt focus on more Warner Bros. franchises than you could poke a carrot at, this restructure also didn’t involve the survival of WB brawler MultiVersus, either. The free-to-play fighting game was taken offline permanently and delisted in May.
Rising prices are impacting plenty more than just video games. Hell, if supermarkets get any more expensive, groceries better start coming gold-plated. In the context of video games, however, 2025 has been like Quentin Tarantino sitting down and watching back-to-back Paul Dano movies: it’s just one massive disappointment after another.
In April, Sony raised the recommended retail prices of PlayStation 5 consoles across Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, citing “a challenging economic environment, including high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates” as the catalyst for the increase. Following similar price hikes made back in 2022, the PS5 was now considerably more expensive in many territories than it was at its launch. Sony subsequently also pumped up the price of all PlayStation 5 models in the US, with the RRP of each of these jumping by 50 bucks in August.
Microsoft raised the prices on Xbox consoles and various accessories back in May, and in October it kicked Game Pass prices into the stratosphere, with prices now reflecting a 50% hike in subscription costs since the previous 2024 price bump. Microsoft tempered this October surprise by stressing that there'd be no further price increases for Xbox… outside the US. Inside the US, however, Xbox console prices climbed by a further $20-$70, for the second time in less than six months. Xbox Series X|S? More like Xbox Series Excessive.
Not to be outtrumped, Nintendo also announced a range of price increases in August – for the eight-year-old original Switch and its proceeding Lite and OLED models. Pricing for the Switch 2 was left alone, but Nintendo’s move did come with a warning that price adjustments to things like the Switch 2, physical and digital Switch and Switch 2 games, and Nintendo Switch Online memberships “may be necessary in the future.” Nintendo is likely trying to prepare us for the worst here, but there’s no escaping the fact it sounds like the kind of ultimatum you typically get from two heavyset guys carrying baseball bats, driving a 1979 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.
That said, Nintendo president Shuntaru Furukawa recently indicated Switch 2 pricing should stay put for now, saying Nintendo believes it can “maintain the current level of profitability for hardware for the time being unless there are significant changes in external factors, such as a shift in tariff assumptions, or other unexpected events.”
It’s already been widely discussed how US tariffs have resulted in significant adjustments to how companies balance the books, with increased costs unsurprisingly being passed onto consumers. Inflation pressure is also a contributing factor; after a long period of stability since the global financial crisis in 2008, global inflation surged dramatically in the wake of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The frustrating part, however, is that this remains all quite unprecedented. That is, this generation Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft have completely flipped the script on console pricing trends that date all the way back to the ’70s and ’80s. Over many decades, consoles have reliably and traditionally dropped in price over their lifespans – first via slow but natural erosion in value caused by the effects of standard inflation, and then by overt price cuts that bring the price of entry right down. This current crop of consoles, however, is not dropping in price – in fact, they’re going the complete opposite way.
Unfortunately, if people keep buying them at these prices, console price drops may go the way of old-timey bicycles and the funniest two-digit number between 60 and 70 being 69: a thing of the past.
Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN's Sydney office. Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team.
Battlefield 6 fans have accused EA of selling an AI-generated image after spotting a sticker of what looks like an M4A1 with two barrels in the in-game store.
Following a similar generative AI controversy for rival shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Battlefield 6 has come under fire for selling what some fans have called “low quality AI generated garbage.”
The sticker in question comes as part of the Windchill cosmetic pack for Battlefield 6, which costs 900 Battlefield Coins. It includes six items, one of which is a player card sticker called Winter Warning. The red flag here are two barrels on the M4A1, but the hand position of the soldier as well as the scope do not look properly aligned.
“Remove this AI s**t from the store,” said redditor Willcario in a thread upvoted 4,600 times. “Two barrels on the M4A1, sure. I would literally prefer to have no sticker than some low quality AI generated garbage. You can look at BO7 and see how many favors AI generated rewards won with them.”
The use of generative AI is one of the hottest topics in the video game industry, with the pressure on publishers to cut costs and speed up development in order to boost profits despite the risk of backlash from some fans. Indeed, according to a report by The Financial Times, EA’s new prospective owners (the ones who just spent $55 billion to take the company private) are betting on the use of generative AI to do just that. And EA itself, even before it was bought out, had signalled that it was all-in on generative AI, with CEO Andrew Wilson insisting AI is at “the very core of its business.”
This definitely looks AI Generated right? #Battlefield6 pic.twitter.com/VLYMhEMOqQ
— Battlefield 6 News (@BF6Updates) December 21, 2025
While EA has yet to issue a statement on the Battlefield 6 allegations, fans are digging up past comments from Rebecka Coutaz, general manager of original series developer DICE in Sweden, and Criterion, the UK studio now also a part of what’s collectively called Battlefield Studios, who in October said players wouldn’t see anything made by generative AI in Battlefield 6.
Coutaz said that while generative AI “is very seducing,” currently there is no way to work it into the developers’ daily work. However, Coutaz clarified that generative AI is used in preparatory stages "to allow more time and more space to be creative.”
While this is Battlefield 6's first significant generative AI controversy, Call of Duty has suffered a number of gen AI controversies in recent years, including the now-infamous six-fingered zombie Santa bundle. Earlier this year, Activision was forced to add an ‘AI generated content disclosure’ to the Steam page for Black Ops 6 after Valve changed its storefront rules. Currently, Battlefield 6 has no such AI content disclosure on Steam.
And last month, Activision issued a statement in response to a player outcry regarding the seeming use of generative AI art assets in a number of areas of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Players took to social media to complain about images they believed to be AI-generated across the game, primarily focusing on calling card images that they claimed used Studio Ghibli styling, following a trend of AI-Ghibli images from earlier this year. The Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Steam page also includes the following disclaimer: "Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets."
This week, IGN reported on video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which was stripped of its Game of the Year award by The Indie Game Awards over its use of generative AI. Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian plans to address concern over its use of gen AI in upcoming game Divinity following a backlash online.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
The 27” ASUS ROG Swift OLED may not arrive early enough to be a gift under the tree on Christmas morning, but our top 1440p gaming monitor is back down to its lowest price ever. Every competitive gamer will want to snag this wicked fast display that hits speeds up to 480Hz, all while delivering an absolutely gorgeous picture. This monitor was already priced below competitors at the full price of $999.99, and with 25% knocked off the price tag for a limited time, it’s an even better deal.
The 27” ASUS ROG Swift OLED (PG27AQDP) is one of our top gaming monitors for a reason. It’s just a great all-around option, even for those who don’t necessarily need a ridiculously high refresh rate for esports. The 1440p picture is stunning, with near-infinite contrast and high peak brightness, which allows HDR to shine on this WOLED panel.
IGN expert Chris Coke had the opportunity to review the ASUS ROG Swift OLED (PG27AQDP), and he was particularly impressed with the out-of-the-box color accuracy and the built-in cooling system to prevent burn-in. Even going so far as to claim, “It’s one of the very best OLED gaming monitors you can buy,” and giving it a review score of 9/10.
Of course, the ASUS ROG Swift OLED (PG27AQDP) has gaming chops that are hard to compete with. With an almost instantaneous response time of 0.03ms, motion blur will be a thing of the past. However, the most notable feature is its 480Hz refresh rate, which is up there with some of the fastest gaming monitors. It's a responsiveness you can feel, especially when jumping from a 240Hz monitor. Those speeds are challenging to achieve in anything other than lighter esports games, but this monitor is still exceptional, even when playing at half that refresh rate or lower.
Danielle is a Tech freelance writer based in Los Angeles who spends her free time creating videos and geeking out over music history.
The debut trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has revealed a first look at characters played by Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, and Matt Damon.
The Odyssey, written and directed by Nolan and due out July 17, 2026, is based on Homer’s saga, and is described as “a mythic action epic” shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology. The Odyssey stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, with Zendaya and Charlize Theron.
The trailer begins at the burial site of scores of soldiers. Matt Damon's Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of Ithaca, narrates, saying that after years of war, nothing can stand between his men and home. We then see Spider-Man star Tom Holland as Telemachus, Odysseus's son who is determined to find his father. A concerned Anne Hathaway, as Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, looks on.
We then get perhaps the most iconic shot of the movie, as Trojan soldiers drag the famous Trojan Horse from the sea. Inside, Damon and his soldiers hide, silently. One soldier, cut by a sword that pierces the horse, is forced to stay silent by his desperate comrades.
We then get a shot of the "mythic" part of The Odyssey with a brief look at what appears to be a giant humanoid (the Cyclops, perhaps?), who enters a cave filled with soldiers. Later, the undead appear to rise from the ground itself. There's a classic sail during a storm scene, where a hapless crewmate is washed overboard. The trailer ends with Penelope asking Odysseus to promise he will return. Odysseus responds: "what if I can't?"
Damon recently recalled an incident during filming where Holland personally called the head of Sony Pictures to arrange for one of the company's pristine 70mm prints of the classic film Lawrence of Arabia to be shown to The Odyssey's cast. "Tom Holland, because he’s Spider-Man and he’s everybody’s favourite at that studio, called [Sony Pictures boss Tom] Rothman and he arranged for us to screen it on a Sunday, the full four hours," Damon said.
The Odyssey is Nolan's 13th film, after previously helming Following, Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer. Such is the anticipation for the movie, that a limited number of The Odyssey tickets went on sale during the summer — a year in advance of the film opening.
While Nolan has long been celebrated as one of the great directors of modern cinema, The Odyssey is expected to perform particularly strongly following the breakout success of Oppenheimer, the Cillian Murphy-led biopic that fuelled one half of the Barbenheimer phenomenon. Oppenheimer earned a staggering $975 million during its theatrical run, and walked away with Best Picture at the Oscars.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Displate has denied that one of its pieces of official Warhammer 40,000 artwork was the product of generative AI, insisting “red flags” spotted by fans were the result of human error.
The online marketplace for collectible metal posters, which features a range of licensed art from major brands such as Marvel and Star Wars, came under fire last week after fans spotted what looked like signs of generative AI use in a $149 3D-printed Fulgrim Limited Edition artwork.
Fulgrim is one of the most prominent characters in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. As one of the Emperor’s 20 genetically-engineered ‘Primarchs,’ Fulgrim played a key role in The Horus Heresy (the civil war that acts as the foundation of the current setting), and recently returned to the Warhammer 40,000 narrative with a new model and lore as the Daemon Primarch of Chaos god Slaanesh.
The issue was raised after popular Warhammer 40,000 YouTuber Luetin pulled a promotional post for Displate’s limited run Fulgrim art over concerns that part of the image “looked AI generated.” A circled part of the artwork appeared to contain misaligned geometry.
“I have no way of confirming this, so I must underline this remains entirely speculative,” Luetin continued. “But based on just the potential for this, I have removed that post - and until I can get a clear answer one way or the other - I do not currently intend to work with them again in the future.
“Its very disappointing, as their production of official 40K artwork that I own, and still look excellent on my office wall I would absolutely recommend.
“If anyone did purchase that image yesterday, I would recommend you to personally evaluate its detail for yourself - and if you felt it necessary cancel or refund.”
That post ended up doing the rounds within Warhammer 40,000 online communities, where the artwork was analyzed for signs of gen AI use. Now, Displate itself has addressed the concerns, insisting “no AI was used in the creation of this piece.”
In a post on the Displate subreddit, company representative WallOverthePlace said the artwork was digitally painted by “one of our top in-house artists as part of our licensed Warhammer project.” The part of the image that had become the focus of the gen AI debate is “a human error that slipped through during the final stages of production.”
Displate continued: “the piece went through multiple revisions - including repaints, composition changes, and moving elements around - and a small cut-off edge from an earlier adjustment wasn’t fully repainted before final delivery. That’s on us. Designing a Limited Edition is a long and complex process, but this mistake should have been caught during QC.
“We understand why this raised red flags, especially given how strongly fan communities feel about AI, and we take that seriously. Limited Editions are our highest-tier releases and we treat them accordingly. To be completely clear: none of our licensed artworks have been or will be AI-generated. Every Limited Edition we release is created entirely by real artists, either by our internal art team or trusted external collaborators, and held to the highest standards we apply as a company.”
As a result, Displate called on customers who already have their order of the artwork to get in touch to get a replacement. “You will receive a separate product with the same Limited Edition print run number and the same certificate,” Displate said. ”If you choose to keep the original piece, we completely understand and respect that choice of appreciating this unique variant.”
Those who have an order yet to ship will get a corrected version, but it will be sent after the New Year.
“We appreciate the community holding creators to high standards - that same standard is exactly what we expect of ourselves, and we’re sorry for the confusion this caused,” Displate said.
The Warhammer 40,000 setting is in many ways built upon the evocative and enduring art drawn by the likes of John Blanche, who shaped its "grimdark" aesthetic alongside other key Games Workshop staff. This official, human-made Warhammer 40,000 artwork is beloved by fans, most of whom take a dim view of the mere whiff of generative AI “art” sold or released in any official capacity by either Games Workshop itself, or its partners.
Indeed, Games Workshop sells expensive Warhammer 40,000 ‘codex’ rulebooks that are packed with stunning official art as well as lore. Any suggestion that this art was created either in part or entirely by generative AI tools would likely cause a community uproar.
The issue of generative AI and its use in entertainment is one of the hottest topics across all industries. This week, IGN reported on video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which was stripped of its Game of the Year award by The Indie Game Awards over its use of generative AI. Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian plans to address concern over its use of gen AI in upcoming game Divinity following a backlash online.
Image credit: Games Workshop.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
No Other Choice will be released in theaters on Christmas Day, with a wide release coming in January.
Let’s be real: today’s job market sucks. Layoffs are constant, every moronic executive thinks they can replace their workers with AI, and most people would probably rather commit murder than spend more time on LinkedIn. If any movie in 2025 has its finger on the pulse of the moment, it’s most certainly No Other Choice. The latest entry from Park Chan-wook, the film stars Lee Byung-hun as a man who goes to homicidal lengths to secure a coveted job opening and ensure he can still provide for his family. Beloved by film fans worldwide for movies like Oldboy (2003), The Handmaiden (2016), and Decision to Leave (2022), the South Korean auteur returns with yet another film that defies genre but satisfies in all the ways that count.
Our “hero” is Man-su (Lee), a highly skilled paper industry employee who loses his job after American investors restructure the company where he’s worked for 25 years. Still facing unemployment thirteen months later, and desperate to keep the upper middle class lifestyle he’s grown accustomed to, Man-su hatches a scheme to identify and then eliminate the three men in the region with the credentials to challenge him for a position at another papermaking firm (it’s apparently a pretty small industry). But Man-su is new to the whole “killing people” thing, and needs to work up the nerve to finally do it, grapple with his own ineptitude at pulling it off, and also keep both his family and the authorities in the dark, leading to a cascading effect of chaotic consequences as his machinations go awry.
Like previous Park films, No Other Choice is a dense and thorny affair, weaving numerous subplots and tonal registers together in a way that strengthens them all. It’s a movie that can be hilarious, depressing, and tense all at once, without shortchanging its dramatic aims even as it left my audience frequently cackling in their seats. The comedic bent is of a darkly satirical flavor, and although its bitter absurdism may hit a bit too close to home for some, it feels appropriate for a movie that’s so tapped into the zeitgeist of the mid-2020s. The film is in fact an adaptation of a 1997 novel, The Ax by Donald E. Westlake, but the thematic concepts at play in regards to how capitalism erodes both our morals and sense of self are timeless. The specifics, however, such as the constriction of analog industries with few remaining experts and the looming specter of AI-powered automation, make No Other Choice feel distinctly contemporary.
The film also works well as a family drama even with all the murder and mayhem packed in. Man-su’s wife Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) is just as determined to find a way through the crisis, and although she elects for more reasonable avenues like “take a job as a dental assistant” or “cut down on excess spending” as opposed to homicide, the emotional toll it takes on her and her marriage are mined for both depth and humor. Lee and Son make for an excellent pair of lead performers, bouncing off each other with crackling electricity and proving once again why they’re two of their home country’s biggest stars. The writing and performances convey a lived-in relationship between two characters who radiate history between them even though we don’t see any of their premarital life.
But the aspect that makes No Other Choice its best self is how it evokes sympathy for Man-su’s plight while not justifying his actions by making his situation untenable. This is not a story of a poverty-stricken man fighting for survival; Man-su is never truly at risk of losing a roof over his head or a way to feed his family. Mi-ri makes it clear they could afford to sell their house and move into an apartment, and that if Man-su was willing to make a career change instead of being deadset on papermaking, things would likely be just fine. Even the “loss” of the family dogs to save on pet care is temporary, because they’re not really gone; they’re just staying with Mi-ri’s parents for the time being. The irrationality of Man-su’s actions is counterbalanced by how understandable it is that late-stage capitalism made him this way – how a lifetime of self-worth provided by his papermaking skills have convinced him that there’s, well, no other choice but to slaughter his way back to the top.
If the film doesn’t quite reach the heights of Park’s best – Decision to Leave-heads, rise up! – it’s less to do with any real deficiencies in the craft than it is not quite hitting as hard emotionally due to the subject matter. Sure, the runtime is maybe fifteen minutes too long, and there’s the occasional directorial flourish that feels like Park is stunting instead of doing something that actively contributes to the storytelling, but those are minor complaints. Ultimately, while I wasn’t as overwhelmed by the experience as I am with the very best films, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch this one as soon as you get the chance.
It appears that a few videos have been leaked for Marathon’s latest closed alpha phase. To be more precise, these videos are from the October and December test phases. In total, we have around 20 minutes of gameplay footage from these tests. To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether I should post these videos. You … Continue reading 20 minutes of leaked gameplay footage from Marathon →
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