As Stardew Valley fans continue to wait patiently for the previously announced 1.7 update, creator Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) has dropped a couple small, vague, yet exciting hints about what said mysterious update might entail: a new farm type, and "more character/social stuff."

This comes from a tweet/X post from ConcernedApe, where he was asked if he could give any hints about the upcoming update. His response was pretty simple: "there will be some more character/social stuff, it's also traditional to add a new farm type. Lots more but I don't want to reveal much yet."

there will be some more character/social stuff, it's also traditional to add a new farm type. Lots more but I don't want to reveal much yet

— ConcernedApe (@ConcernedApe) December 17, 2025

That's not a ton of detail, but certainly enough to spark the imagination. The new farm type was indeed to be expected. Stardew Valley started with just one style of farm map, and since its release, most major new content updates have added at least one for a total of eight different options. Each farm map centers around a different specialty, with the Standard map being fairly generic and open-ended, and other maps promoting fishing, foraging, mining, combat, multiplayer, a combination of fishing and foraging, and animal raising. Currently, this means that basically every type of playstyle is supported, so there's a lot left to wonder about when it comes to imagining what new farm type could be added. Perhaps something that encourages building NPC friendships?

The "character/social stuff" is a little more vague. This could mean anything from new scenes and events with existing characters to new characters entirely. It's really hard to say at this stage!

Popular fan requests for future Stardew Valley features include more NPCs, including more romanceable NPCs, more dialogue and world lore, but also just generally more of everything: more animals, more crops, more decorations, more clothing, more enemies to fight, dishes to cook, and so forth. ConcernedApe hasn't really revealed anything so far about what 1.7 will contain, or even when we might expect it. He's given no release date, only suggested that it's possible it doesn't come out until after Haunted Chocolatier releases. Maybe. It'll be ready when it's ready.

ConcernedApe did drop one other thing, though. When asked about a potential Nintendo Switch 2 edition, he said he's announce something "very soon." A Switch 2 edition was first announced back in September, and will bring mouse controls, four-player split screen multiplayer, and Game Share multiplayer to the Switch version. No release date has been given yet.

We re-reviewed Stardew Valley in 2024 to account for its many, many updates since launch in 2016. While our original review gave it an impressive 8.8/10, the re-review called it a 10/10 masterpiece, saying, "Stardew Valley is not only the best farming game I’ve played, it is one of my favorite games of all time. That myself and others keep returning to this eight-year old gem each time it gets even the smallest update speaks to how it’s truly a masterpiece in the genre it both reinvigorated and has come to define."

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

Horses, the indie horror game that was banned from both Steam and the Epic Games Store ahead of its launch two weeks ago, has nonetheless managed to sell over 18,000 copies, says publisher Santa Ragione. However, that's not enough for the publisher to fund a new game.

This comes from a press release sent today by Santa Ragione, which says Horses has generated approximately $65,000 in net revenue thanks to sales on GOG and Humble [Disclaimer: Humble and IGN are both owned and run by IGN Entertainment, a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc.]. That was enough to pay royalties owed to creator Andrea Lucco Borlera, as well as pay off the loans the publisher took out to finish development.

But that's not enough to begin work on a new game, and it doesn't seem likely that amount will be reached despite the significant attention the game's controversy gleaned. The team members are still planning to take on other jobs and projects, with the hope that the publisher may be able to fund a new prototype in the future if sales remain steady for long enough.

"While the launch of HORSES compares very favourably to our most recent launches on Steam, Steam’s economics rely heavily on multi-year long tail sales and, for our past projects, on Steam key distribution through bundles, which has also lately been restricted for low-selling titles," the publisher said in a statement. "These structural differences are why a strong two week result on smaller storefronts does not tell us what a full Steam release could have looked like."

Horses is a horror game that follows a young man who travels to a horse farm to work for several weeks during the summer, only to discover that the farm's "horses" are actually naked humans with horse masks forcibly attached over their heads. The game explores themes of complicity and what horrors people are willing to participate in, via the farmer and eventually protagonist's treatment and continued enslavement of these people.

The game contains a lot of disturbing imagery, including violence and sexual content, but none of that's new for either Steam or Epic. Nevertheless, Horses was banned from Steam two years ago after the team submitted an in-progress prototype. While some suggestions were given as to the reason for the ban, no specifics were shared with the team at the time, nor was there an opportunity to appeal. Santa Ragione believes Valve may have objected to a scene present in the earlier version where a child "rode" one of the naked horses by sitting on their shoulders and being carried around. That character was aged up to an adult in the final version of the game, and there are no underaged individuals in the released version.

With Valve unbending, Santa Ragione said at the time it may have to close its doors, due to the overwhelming necessity of a Steam release for most games to recoup development costs. The publisher put its hopes in Epic, GOG, and Humble, but at the last minute right before launch, Epic also banned the game, with Epic citing violations of its policies on "inappropriate content" and "hateful or abusive content."

Both bans prompted a wave of criticism from developers and audience members, who called out the banning of the game as both censorship as well as hypocritical, given some of the other content that's allowed on Steam in particular. Santa Ragione specifically has called out Valve for having unclear policies and communication, problems that it feels essentially ensured the studio's demise.

We also want to emphasize that this outcome should not distract from the broader issue at stake: the need for clearer rules, transparent processes, and meaningful accountability from near monopolistic distribution platforms and the systems they enforce. For every case like HORSES that becomes visible, there are many more games that are quietly banned, delisted, or trapped in indefinite review for unclear reasons, with developers too worried about retaliation or future approval to speak publicly. We are grateful to the journalists and outlets who have reported, and who will continue to report, on these cases.

Critical response to Horses has been across the board, with our own reviewer giving it a 7/10 and calling it "an affecting first-person horror game that, despite some repetitive tasks and signposting issues, delivers a harrowing story you won’t forget in a hurry."

Publisher Santa Ragione has a long history of both developing and publishing standout games. Its most recent successes are Mediterranea Inferno, which it published from developer Eyeguys and which won Excellence in Narrative at the 2024 Independent Games Festival, as well as nominations for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Nuovo Award. Saturnalia, developed in-house and released in 2022, received generally positive reviews. Both games remain available on Steam and Epic.

Starting in 2029, the Oscars will no longer air on ABC. Instead, the awards ceremony will be on YouTube.

In a press release from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it was announced today that the Academy and YouTube have signed a multi-year deal for the exclusive global rights to air the Oscars, beginning in 2029 through 2033. ABC will continue to air the awards in 2026 through 2028 as before, concluding with the 100th Oscars.

This will make the Oscars viewable for free, live on YouTube starting in 2029, including all official related Oscars content and associated events, such as the red carpet pre-show, Governors Awards, Oscars nominations announcement, Student Academy Awards, and more. Select Academy Museum exhibitions will also be made viewable on YouTube.

“The Academy is an international organization, and this partnership will allow us to expand access to the work of the Academy to the largest worldwide audience possible — which will be beneficial for our Academy members and the film community," said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and president Lynette Howell Taylor in a joint statement. "This collaboration will leverage YouTube’s vast reach and infuse the Oscars and other Academy programming with innovative opportunities for engagement while honoring our legacy. We will be able to celebrate cinema, inspire new generations of filmmakers and provide access to our film history on an unprecedented global scale.”

The Oscars were originally broadcast starting in 1953 by NBC, with ABC taking over in 1966 for five years, NBC regaining the rights for another five years, and then ABC taking back over in 1976 and retaining rights ever since.

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

This morning, we learned that November was a surprisingly bad month for video game spending across the board. Hardware dollar sales and physical software unit sales were both at the lowest we've seen since 1995, and all three major console makers were down year-on-year in what's traditionally the biggest month for retail. But one console in particular is really struggling, and that's the Xbox.

According to Circana senior director Mat Piscatella speaking to IGN, Xbox Series consoles dollar sales were down a whopping 70% year-over-year. That's... a huge drop. Other consoles were also down, with PS5 down 40% year-over-year, and the newly-released Nintendo Switch 2 combined with Switch 1 down 10% from sales of Switch 1 only last year, which is pretty shocking on its own.

But that Xbox number is rather astounding. In fact, it's an all-time low for Xbox console unit sales in a November month in the U.S., says Piscatella. Admittedly, Xbox has some factors working against it. As we've already laid out, it's a really bad month for hardware sales across the board. Also, the Xbox Series is now five years old, and with no new hardware refresh this year, there are fewer and fewer reasons to be getting one if you haven't already sprung for an Xbox. In fact, Xbox hardware sales have been in decline for a bit now in the U.S. at least in the busy retail month of November. From 2023 to 2024, Xbox Series sales in November dropped 29%, and from 2022 to 2023, there was a drop of over 20%. 2022 was the last November when unit sales were up, Piscatella tells me, specifically up 11% year-over-year from November 2021.

Critically, though, for 2025, the Xbox is expensive, especially in the US. Piscatella points out to us that its average price per unit rose by over 30% year-over-year. That's because of multiple price hikes in recent years, including some seriously massive ones in September that impacted all types of Xbox Series consoles, raising prices from as little as $20 for Series S to as much as $70 for the Series X 2TB Galaxy Special Edition. And that's after a price hike in May that raised consoles as little as $80 for the Series S and as much as a stunning $130 for the Galaxy Edition. An Xbox Series S, the cheapest of all modern Xbox hardware available now, released at $300 retail, and now costs $400.

And it only goes up from there. There are now rumors and concerns circulating that Xbox may soon raise prices yet again due to skyrocketing prices for RAM, driven by the growth of generative AI. The existing price hikes are happening at least in part due to U.S. tariffs imposed on countries where gaming hardware is manufactured, and while the confusion and uncertainty around what these tariffs would actually be has settled somewhat, the reality of the tariffs themselves has not. Nor is it impossible that those tariffs could shift again in the coming months. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is just generally in rough shape according to basically everyone, with high consumer debt, high inflation, few new jobs, and an increasing unemployment rate. If everyone is worried they can't buy groceries, who's buying a console right now?

While both PlayStation and Nintendo Switch are seeing the impacts of a lot of these same problems, their price hikes have not been nearly as drastic in response. PS5s went up $50 earlier this year, and Nintendo opted to jack up prices on its original Switch and accessories while keeping its new console at the already admittedly higher-than-expected price it was originally set at, for now. Ultimately, this puts the Xbox Series S, and the PS5 All-Digital Edition at $400, and the Nintendo Switch 2 at $450 before sales and discounts. Is it any wonder that people are skipping buying consoles entirely or, if they're buying one at all, they're shelling out $50 more for the brand new one? Or, that if they're shopping for a kid, they're spending $200 on a NEX Playground, which outsold the Xbox Series console in November?

All this amounts to is that everyone is struggling, but the Xbox Series - a console that has largely given up on the idea of exclusives and keeps raising prices repeatedly - is struggling the most. Piscatella tells me that Xbox's hardware sales peak, at least for November, is far behind it, peaking in November 2011, with its second-highest November ever in 2014. If even big day one Game Pass games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 aren't moving the needle to help Xbox hardware regain its former glory, what will?

Xbox, at least, doesn't want to give up on hardware, or so it says. Just this past October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was on record essentially hinting that there would indeed be another new Xbox console eventually, but that it would basically be a PC/console hybrid. At the same time, the company is actively hoping to leave behind big exclusives in favor of a multi-platform strategy. It's already there, in fact, releasing and announcing several major first-party games on PlayStation not too long after their Xbox debuts, and pondering even more. Xbox hardware sales may be floundering, but perhaps a better question to ask is whether or not that matters to Xbox anymore.

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

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 launched last month to become the best-selling game of November in the U.S. by dollar sales. It's both a huge sales feat and a common Call of Duty W, as the franchise has topped the charts in its launch month every year for 18 straight years. However, it looks like its rival Battlefield 6 will reign at the top of the U.S. sales charts at year's end.

This comes from Circana's monthly report, which has Black Ops 7 debuting as the best-selling game of November and the seventh best-selling game of the year-to-date, behind Battlefield 6 at No.1, NBA 2K26 at No.2, Monster Hunter Wilds at No.3, Borderlands 4 at No.4, EA Sports College Football 26 at No.5, and Madden NFL 26 at No.6.

All of those games have a few more months on the market on Call of Duty, but it's still a lot of ground to make up in a single month, and Call of Duty's at a bit of a disadvantage. The game launched into Game Pass, meaning its actual dollar sales on Xbox consoles are much lower than that of its rivals as people use the subscription service to access it instead, and there's no good recent data on how Call of Duty's presence on the service impacts subscriptions.

It is worth noting, though, that Black Ops 7 doesn't seem to be doing as well as Black Ops 6, a fact that's reflected in everything from the critical review scores to fan response to European sales figures to Activision's own admissions. Circana reports that the Call of Duty franchise saw a double-digit dollar sales decline compared to November 2024, and Circana senior director Mat Piscatella tells me that November full game dollar sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 finished below those of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 last November, with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launching in the October 2024 tracking period.

It is Piscatella's projection that Battlefield 6 is "extremely likely" to finish as the best-selling game of 2025 in the U.S. This would not be the only time Call of Duty didn't top the annual charts in recent memory. In 2023, Hogwarts Legacy defeated Modern Warfare 3, and that was with Modern Warfare 3 not launching into Game Pass. However, Black Ops 6 still dominated in 2024, and prior to that only Rockstar's GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 had been able to dethrone Call of Duty going all the way back to 2008's Rockband.

Given all that, it's perhaps unsurprising that Activision is considering significant changes to how it plans and releases its Call of Duty franchises year after year. Then again, while Battlefield 6 had an incredible launch, it recently introduced an update that broke the game in pretty significant ways across PC and consoles.

It was a weird November for all, I guess. Game sales in general had a shockingly weak November in the U.S., as we covered in our larger roundup of Circana's numbers. You can see what's going on and why gaming hardware and physical software just had the worst November since 1995 right here.

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

November 2025 was a shockingly terrible month for video game sales in the U.S. While we traditionally think of November as a huge sales month what with Black Friday and all, November 2025 was the worst November in video game hardware unit sales, and the worst in physical software dollar sales the U.S. has seen since 1995.

That's according to Circana's monthly report, which paints a pretty dismal picture of last month's commercial performance. The industry in the U.S. saw declines across the board in hardware, accessories, and console spending for an overall drop of 4% year-over-year, at $5.9 billion in total spending.

Hardware

More specifically, hardware spending was down a whopping 27% year-over-year to $695 million, the lowest hardware spending total for November since 2005's $455 million. Even worse, unit sales reached 1.6 million, which is the lowest November total since 1995's 1.4 million.

And that's representative of declines across the board. Xbox Series hardware sales were down 70% year-over-year. PS5 sales were down over 40%, and combined unit sales of Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 were down over 10% from Switch sales last year, despite this being a launch year for the Nintendo Switch 2.

What's going on? As pointed out by Circana senior director Mat Piscatella, video game hardware has never been more expensive, reaching an all-time November high of $439 per unit, up 11% year-over-year. The Xbox specifically saw its average price per unit increase by over 30%, perhaps confirming one reason why folks aren't so keen to buy Xboxes specifically.

With the Nintendo Switch 2, Piscatella says he's watching its sales "very closely," and offers this analysis of its current situation:

With six months in the market, it remains the fastest-selling video game hardware in U.S. history. However, part of what was driving that was its availability to be bought during its launch window. It's been extremely rare to have such a successful new device not suffer supply constraints going into its first holiday sales period. Unit sales of Switch 2 were lower than those of Switch 1 during each console's first November, but the price points are also quite different. The average price paid for a new Nintendo Switch in November 2017 was $309 (which, if adjusted for inflation, is approximately $405 in November 2025 dollars), compared to the $486 for Switch 2 in November 2025. Perhaps it is a case of demand having been pulled forward earlier in the year because people could find them. Or perhaps the mass market is not as quickly adopting Switch 2 as it did Switch. Or perhaps consumers are looking elsewhere for holiday gifting as the prices continue to rise in video game hardware. Tough to say at the moment.

There's one piece of hardware that's doing okay, and it's not what you'd expect: the NEX Playground. It was the third best-selling piece of video game hardware of November by unit sales, surpassing the Xbox Series, while the more expensive Xbox Series beat it in dollar sales (the PS5 was first in both categories, the Switch 2 was second). Piscatella calls the NEX Playground a "remarkable story," noting that while everyone else is having a bad time, it just had a superb November by comparison:

November 2025 tracked unit sales at U.S. retailers for NEX Playground were just 7% below its entire tracked lifetime sales at retail through October. With an average selling price of just over $200 in November, strong placement at retail, and some successful influencer and viral marketing efforts, the NEX Playground became one of the hottest video game products of the holiday season during the month. We'll have to see how well the pace can keep up, as there are reports that the NEX Playground is now largely sold out, with secondary market prices on sites like eBay soaring accordingly.

There could be a lesson here that more affordable, family friendly gaming devices carry appeal during holiday gifting season.

Software

Things aren't looking much better on the content side. While Circana reports that content spending was up 1% year-over-year to $4.8 billion, that's with subscription spending rising 16% and 2% growth in mobile. Physical software sales, meanwhile, dropped 14% year-over-year to the worst November since 1995, the year Circana began tracking them.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 put the Call of Duty franchise back on top for another debut month in November as the month's best-seller, marking the 18th year in a row a Call of Duty has launched to the top of the charts. That said, Circana reports that the franchise saw a double-digit percentage full game dollar sales decline when compared to November 2024.

It's a little tricky to make precise comparisons between Black Ops 7 and its predecessor, Black Ops 6, given both games launched into Xbox Game Pass, and Black Ops 6 released in October last year, not November. Still, Piscatella tells me that Black Ops 7's full game dollar sales finished below those of Black Ops 6's last November. Additionally, Black Ops 7 is currently the seventh best-selling game of the year-to-date, and Piscatella anticipates that its rival, Battlefield 6, will end the year as the best-selling game of 2025. This isn't the first time in recent memory it's been beaten, with Hogwarts Legacy coming out on top in 2023. Notably, that year, Hogwarts Legacy beat Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, which did not launch into Game Pass, while Black Ops 7 this year did, almost certainly making its actual dollar sales total lower as a result.

It's worth noting as well that accessories spending was down 13% year-over-year.

Red Flags

This is shaping up to be a pretty weird year. I asked Piscatella what he makes of all this, and what it means for the games industry. He pointed out that much of the story remains to be told in December, and that it's possible consumers are waiting for better deals closer to the holidays. Alternatively, it's possible that economic factors and price of consoles are pushing people to hold off on gaming purchases. Here's what Piscatella had to say:

Retail spending had been holding up relatively well until now, despite the pressure from higher prices we've been seeing in the market. More affluent consumers have kept on spending so far, which has made up for some of the declines in spending from the less affluent portions of the market. Perhaps this is a sign that those higher prices are beginning to impact purchases of pricier items, like consoles. Perhaps not.

However, if the crunch on RAM pricing continues, if we see rising prices on consoles and gaming PCs over the coming months it could, theoretically, be potentially devastating to the dedicated gaming device market. Which would, of course, have potential carryover effects on the content side.

I certainly see some of the relationships between hardware unit sales and pricing we're seeing in the November results as a red flag.

We won't get the December and full-year results in until January, which will tell us a lot more about whether the games industry is about to enter a lean period, or if this November was just a goofy one-off.

November 2025 U.S. Top 20 Best-Selling Games:

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (NEW)
2. Battlefield 6
3. NBA 2K26
4. Madden NFL 26
5. EA Sports FC 26
6. Pokemon Legends: Z-A*
7. Ghost of Yotei
8. EA Sports College Football 26
9. Minecraft*
10. Kirby Air Riders (NEW)*
11. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment (NEW)*
12. The Outer Worlds 2
13. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
14. Donkey Kong Bananza*
15. Marvel's Spider-Man 2
16. Red Dead Redemption II
17. Grand Theft Auto V
18. Borderlands 4
19. Forza Horizon 5
20. Digimon Story: Time Stranger

* Indicates that some or all digital sales are not included in Circana's data. Some publishers, including Nintendo, do not share certain digital data for this report.

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