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Activision Blizzard has confirmed that it won't remove existing games from PlayStation after it has been acquired by Xbox - meaning that games such as Call of Duty: Warzone will seemingly remain multiplatform.

The news comes from an employee Q&A filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a question asking how the deal between Activision Blizzard and Xbox will impact existing partner agreements, the company stated, "We will honor all existing commitments post close. As with Microsoft's acquisition of Minecraft, we have no intent to remove any content from platforms where it exists today."

After Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang developer Minecraft, the hugely successful game remained on PlayStation consoles, where it can still be played today. That being said, Minecraft has since been added to Xbox Game Pass on both PC and console, and Microsoft has already stated that it plans to bring as many Activision Blizzard games across to the service as possible following the integration.

Alongside a brand-new gameplay overview, it has been confirmed that LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will be released on April 5, 2022.

The much-delayed LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga's newest breakdown shows off LEGO versions of all nine films in the Skywalker Saga and how this game is changing up the formula that has been seen for so long in the LEGO games. We also get a glimpse of some of the over 300 characters that will be playable after being unlocked in-game.

Alongside seeing more of the third-person (LEGO?) action that is much more up-close and personal than previous entries, we see that we get to pick to start from the beginning of the original trilogy, prequel trilogy, and sequel trilogy - giving fans of each period of Star Wars a chance to jump where they choose. The later episodes are locked and will become available as you play through the story of each trilogy.

While LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga lets players take part in their favorite Star Wars moments, it tells them with a hilarious and charming lens that is meant to appeal to kids of all ages.

There will also be a Galaxy Map that will grow as you visit more planets. You can pull up the map and travel to any of these planets and travel to them while undertaking space battles in some of Star Wars' most iconic vehicles. Each mission will also have multiple routes that players can explore by choosing a more stealthy approach or a more direct one with weapons blazing.

There will obviously be a main story to complete, but players are also encouraged to explore the galaxy far, far away with side missions and other planets just waiting to be seen and completed.

The return of the WWE 2K series will be headlined by a superstar who’s no stranger to dramatic returns himself, as WWE 2K22 will feature future WWE Hall of Famer and Lucha Libre Legend, Rey Mysterio as its cover superstar.

The news comes from a virtual press conference featuring Mysterio and hosted by WWE color commentator Byron Saxton and broadcast journalist Sam Roberts, who also announced the game’s release date of March 11, 2022.

“This is an incredible moment for me,” said Mysterio. “To be able to represent the culture of Lucha Libre as the cover superstar of WWE 2K22, it’s a moment of great pride, not just for me, but for the generations that come after me and for all my people – for all of the latinos, this is a great moment.”

Along with the honor of being the cover Superstar, Mysterio will also have his career highlighted in WWE 2K22’s Showcase Mode, a mode that traditionally has allowed players to relive key matches and moments in a wrestler’s career, complete with documentary-style intros to set up the context of each match.

Mysterio has had an illustrious career full of memorable matches that would make for plenty of material for Showcase mode, but he said the ones that he’s especially excited to share in WWE 2K22 are the matches against Eddie Guerrero at Wrestlemania 21, and his match against Shawn Michaels on Smackdown November 14, 2005, which served as a tribute to Guerrero, who tragically died the previous day.

Sony says that it expects Microsoft to honor contracts it has with Activision and "continue to ensure" that Activision games are released on its platforms – but there's some room for interpretation about what exactly the PlayStation manufacturer means.

Naturally, after Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion, many began speculating about whether the company would turn traditionally multiplatform releases into Xbox exclusives. Sony has now weighed in on that idea:

“We expect that Microsoft will abide by contractual agreements and continue to ensure Activision games are multiplatform,” said a Sony spokesperson to The Wall Street Journal.

It's no surprise that Sony would expect Microsoft to honor any current contracts it has with Activision – as it did during the Bethesda takeover, leaving Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo as PS5 console exclusives. It's not clear what contracts Sony currently has with Activision, nor how long they're set to last.

Windjammers 2 answers the question: what do you get when you combine air hockey with a 2D fighting game? The result, as it turns out, is an absolute blast to play. Changing very little from the original Windjammers that came out on the NeoGeo 27 years ago, the sequel is simple, sweat-inducing, and extremely addictive. Even though it lacks a few key features you’d expect from something designed to be so highly competitive in this day and age and fumbles its attempt at telling any kind of story, Windjammers 2 is a more-than-worthy successor to the retro classic that came before it.

At a glance, Windjammers 2 looks to be little more than a game of Pong – and in a lot of ways that’s not far off. You frantically move your character around your side of the screen, doing your best at deflecting the frisbee back towards your opponent and scoring points if you manage to snake it past their defenses. But this simple starting point is made a lot more complex by introducing an arsenal of diverse tactics and awesome mind games that draw heavily on the fighting game genre.

Of course if you’ve played 1994’s Windjammers (which is available to this day on PlayStation and the Switch) then this concept should sound very familiar to you, because Windjammers 2 remains incredibly loyal to that design, with only a handful of gameplay tweaks, new characters, and improved graphics to distinguish it from the original. Given how few changes there are, it’s impressive how well the old formula holds up a quarter century later, and the small additions that have been added are all solid improvements. The ability to jump in the air and spike the disc down into your opponent’s court, for example, is particularly useful.

In celebration of the launch of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction, IGN is proud to partner with Ubisoft to give fans a look at the end-game mode known as Maelstrom Protocol. Join IGN’s Stella Chung, Get Flanked, and Velly as they work their way through the Containment Zone as an elite REACT squad.

IGN will be carrying the stream and, as usual, this watch guide will provide you with everything you need to know to watch the let's play, including when it starts, a list of places you join us, and what you can expect to see.

IGN Plays Rainbow Six Extraction - Maelstrom Protocol Start Time

The IGN Plays Rainbow Six Extraction livestream will take place on Thursday, January 20, 2022, at 2:45pm PT/5:45pm ET/10:45pm GMT. If you are tuning in from Australia, that translates to Friday, January 21, at 8:45am AEST.

Where to Watch IGN Plays Rainbow Six Extraction - Maelstrom Protocol

If you’re interested in watching the IGN Plays Rainbow Six Extraction livestream, we’ll be hosting the stream here and across our many channels on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Here’s the full list of places you can watch the show with us:

Activision has announced it is delaying the start of Season Two for Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific and Vanguard. The new multiplayer season will now begin two weeks later on February 14 instead of February 2.

In a blog post, Activision says that the additional time before the next season will allow the developers time to keep adding fixes to the different Call of Duty online games currently up and running, including 2021’s Vanguard and the ongoing Warzone battle royale.

“To date, we’ve deployed a number of updates, but more needs to be done,” Activision writes in its blog. “For this reason, we have decided to reschedule the start of Season Two across Warzone Pacific and Vanguard to February 14.”

The studio says that developers will use this time to “deliver updates, including optimizations to gameplay, game balancing (including weapon and equipment balancing), to fix game stability and bugs, and to ensure an overall level of polish to improve the experience for players across Vanguard, Warzone Pacific, Black Ops Cold War, and Modern Warfare.”

In particular, a focus will be made to improve the core gameplay loop and balance for Call of Duty across both consoles and PC.

So, Microsoft is buying Activision for a startling $68.7 billion. It’s an acquisition unlike any other we’ve seen in the video game industry, and its impact will be felt for years and years to come.

Because of just how monumental it is, we’ve gathered answers to some of the biggest questions around the deal, from studio acquisitions to which of the biggest gaming franchises will be part of Xbox Game Studios.

Here’s the Activision Blizzard Microsoft deal, by the numbers.

When Will the Xbox and Activision Deal Be Completed?

In an e-mail sent to Activision Blizzard employees, CEO Bobby Kotick shared that he expects the deal to close "sometime in Microsoft's fiscal 2023 year ending June 20, 2023."

How Does the Xbox and Activision Deal Compare to Other Deals?

Microsoft’s deal with Activision Blizzard is one of the biggest acquisitions in the video game industry’s history, and in fact, in the history of the entertainment industry, period. Check out the slideshow below to see how it stacks up against the likes of Disney/Marvel and Facebook/Oculus.

How Much Does Activision Blizzard Make Per Year?

Activision Blizzard brought in $8.1 billion in net revenue in 2020. This was a 25% increase from 2019, which saw a net revenue of $6.49 billion.

Halo Infinite's Big Team Battle mode has been a sore point for fans for more than a month now. The matchmaking queues have had major issues, with larger parties having a tough time joining games since early December. Those who do make it are frequently disconnected.

Today's Halo Infinite hotfix was supposed to fix issues regarding Big Team Battle, but it hasn't completely solved them. 343 community director Brian Jarrard took to Twitter to say that there have been minor improvements, but acknowledged that overall matchmaking issues persist. The team is going to continue working on the problem until matchmaking is stable again.

To compensate players for their trouble, 343 Industries is offering five XP boosts and five Challenge Swaps to those who log in before February 16.

Well, damn... today's BTB hotfix does not appear to be the outcome we expected. There are minor improvements, but overall matchmaking issues are still occurring. Thanks to the folks who have been working hard and we're sorry this didn't quite get the job done. Work continues. https://t.co/lKiFibBDtT

In the aftermath of Microsoft's bombshell acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the gaming industry is still trying to assess the impact the move will have on the rest of the market. One of the biggest debates is if Xbox will make Activision Blizzard games like Call of Duty, Diablo, and Overwatch console exclusive. We asked you, the IGN audience, that very question, and the results came back practically split down the middle.

The poll closed with more than 55,000 total votes, and here are the results:

• Almost 41% said Xbox should make Activision Blizzard games console exclusive and add them to Game Pass.
• Nearly 38% of the votes said Activision Blizzard games should be playable in as many places as possible.
• 21% of you said you don't care either way where these games end up.

A handful of household names will now fall under the Xbox umbrella. In addition to massive, multi-billion dollar franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, Xbox will also have control of recognizable characters like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, as well as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Guitar Hero, and more.

The exclusivity debate is just one aspect to think about after yesterday's huge news. There's the uncertain future of Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who has been at the center of multiple scandals over the last year. We'll have to wait and see how leadership changes at the company when Xbox officially takes over, which could happen as late as June 2023.

Switch players will have to wait just a little bit longer to get their hands on Dying Light 2, as Techland has announced the Switch cloud version will not launch alongside the other versions on February 4. Instead, the developer is aiming to release the Switch version "within six months" of the original date, meaning it should be out by early August.

The studio delayed the game to provide Switch players, "with the gaming experience at the level they deserve." Dying Light 2 is still scheduled for February 4 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Dying Light 2 is the sequel to 2015's Dying Light, an open world zombie game with a dynamic day-night cycle. No matter what platform you plan to play on, Dying Light 2 is set to be a big experience. In addition to taking 500 hours to complete absolutely every ounce of content the game has to offer, Dying Light 2 will also receive five years of post-launch support. We've gone hands-on with Dying Light 2, where we thought it felt like, "the natural next step for the franchise."

An RPG that has you leading armies against King Mithridates one moment and trading legal arguments with Cicero on the floor of the Roman senate the next is like catnip for a history fan like myself. I don't tend to root for the Romans, but the appropriately challenging Expeditions: Rome doesn't necessarily either. It's a well-written, nuanced depiction of a tumultuous era populated by many complex figures and very few real "good guys." It manages to capture so much of the spirit that has made the Late Republic fascinating to us for thousands of years, even if it does play fast and loose with some historical details.

With three acts that can each break 20 hours depending on how meticulous you want to be, Expeditions: Rome has a lot to sink your gladius into. Sometimes too much. It layers on so many ways to customize your Praetorian Guard, used in turn-based tactical battles, and legions, used in a semi-random mass combat system where you choose commanders and tactics to influence the outcome. You can craft single-use battle consumables and tactics cards, but there's also traditional RPG loot, gear customization, and tactical skills to level up. Many of the army stats aren't ever actually explained either – for example, Legion Experience says it makes you fight better, but doesn't go into more detail than that, and I would often lose a bunch for no discernible reason even in a battle where I didn't take many casualties. The tooltips aren't very helpful and none of the in-game tutorials do much better.

Horizon Forbidden West is almost here, and it's fair to say we're all itching to get our hands on the game on February 18. If you've opted to preorder, we wanted to pass along some quick advice that could save you a little bit of money if you're looking to play the game on PS5.

Right now Horizon Forbidden West is listed at $70 to buy on PS5, both physical and digital editions, alongside $60 for a copy on PS4. But, if you've been paying attention, you will have noticed that Horizon Forbidden West is still getting a free PS4 to PS5 upgrade. Yep, you read that correctly. Putting two and two together, this means you can save $10 on the game, simply by purchasing the PS4 version (see here) and upgrading for free. Here's how to do it.

Save $10 on Horizon Forbidden West Preorders with This Trick

If you preorder Horizon Forbidden West for PS4, that's $60, and $10 saving compared to PS5 preorders, and you still get both copies of the game (see it at Amazon).

The only difference you'll find if you preorder the game physically is the blue PS4 cover sleeve, instead of the clean white PS5 cover. Before you preorder, better also check out what comes in each Horizon Forbidden West Edition.

TSMC is reportedly increasing the prices for its silicon, which means that CPU and GPU prices are likely to go up this year.

As reported by DigiTimes, the Taiwanese-based semiconductor manufacturer has informed its largest customers, including tech giants such as Apple, AMD, and Nvidia, that it plans to raise pricing quotes of its nodes by up to 20%.

This increase in manufacturing will also impact the consumers as companies may increase the price of their products.

Outside of an ongoing chip shortage, which is expected to drag well into next year, TSMC has also noted other reasons for increasing the prices of its chips. This includes material costs, freight, and logistics. As Tom's Hardware points out the price hike will significantly impact AMD as the company uses TSMC to manufacture its CPUs and GPUs.

AMD CPUs start with processors that use the Zen 2 architecture and its forthcoming Zen 4 architecture, which is slated to arrive in a new line of desktop CPUs sometime this year.

Despite the report omitting any references to graphics cards, Nvidia and especially AMD will likely increase MSRPs for its graphics cards. Though DigiTimes reported that Nvidia has already made prepayments to TSMC for long-term orders of the 5nm silicon.

Here’s some good news for Nintendo Switch-owing fans of history and murder. Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection is coming to Nintendo Switch on February 17 (see it on Amazon). This collection includes Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, along with a bunch of extras. It’s available to preorder now for $39.99.

Preorder Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection

• Get it at Amazon - $39.99
• Get it at Best Buy - $39.99
• Get it at GameStop - $39.99
• Get it at Walmart - $39.99

There aren’t any special editions or anything, so if you want it, this is your only option.

It’s worth noting that only Assassin’s Creed II comes on the cartridge. The other games and content are provided as digital downloads. Ubisoft says you’ll need up to 35GB of free space for them (which means you’ll need a microSD card to load them all on your Switch at once).

Aaryn Flynn is enamored with the idea of a sense of place. His Improbable studio in Edmonton, Inflexion, attests that it's devoted to "creating places," and by extension communities and spaces that feel meaningful to those who inhabit them. It's a goal that carries some significant weight coming from a studio staffed and led by the creators of Mass Effect's Normandy and Dragon Age's Skyhold.

Flynn says it was this desire that served as the ultimate seed for Nightingale: Inflexion's upcoming survival crafting game set in a Victorian fantasy world.

"[There's] this notion that a place is something that has human meaning in it, it's a construct for us mentally and physically, that we invest ourselves in, we put ourselves out there to be socially connected to other people," CEO Aaryn Flynn tells IGN. "And taking something as high level and almost abstract as that, and saying, 'How could we build places as game developers? What could we do there?'"

Initially conceived as an online game where huge numbers of players could come together in the same space, Flynn says that over time it became apparent that this was not the right path. The team was able to overcome the technical challenges with the support of its parent, Improbable, but an MMO-scale game with the goals Inflexion had for Nightingale wasn't as enjoyable as it could be. So they scaled it back to a more intimate, cooperative experience to be played with friends.

One-man development studio Drop of Pixel and publisher Skystone Games have announced Underworld Dreams: The False King, a new first-person horror game that is "built from the ground up" for Nintendo Switch (though it will also be released on PC via both Steam and the Epic Games Store). It is due out this Spring.

Underworld Dreams is based on the work of Lovecraft and set in the 1980s (as the trailer below will give you a clear indication of from its VHS-style presentation), and its goal is to be the first in an Underworld Dreams series of games. In The False King, you play a man who has located his lost brother in a house that is creepier and more dangerous than you could've ever imagined.

Publisher Skystone says you'll "dig into the mysteries of the occult and solve puzzles while constantly looking over your shoulder" as you play. Resources are also promised to be scarce, and a playable demo is promised closer to release.

For more Nintendo Switch horror game coverage, don't miss our coverage of House of the Dead: Remake.

Sony's stock reportedly took a $20 billion dollar hit after Xbox announced that it is set to acquire Activision Blizzard.

As detailed in a report by Bloomberg, Sony Group Corp. shares reportedly fell by 13% in Tokyo on Wednesday - just a day after Microsoft announced its $68.7 billion deal with Activision Blizzard. As per the report, the drop itself is the largest single fall in Sony stock since October 2008.

The acquisition will bring a wide range of new franchises into Xbox's domain including the likes of Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Warcraft, and much more. In comparison, last year Xbox announced that it had acquired ZeniMax, the parent company of Bethesda, for a deal worth $7.5 Billion. With the company's latest takeover offering a ludicrous number of high-profile IPs, it's no surprise that the price on the deal dwarves its earlier acquisitions by a vast margin and has seemingly resulted in Sony's stock taking a hit.

Over recent years, Sony and Xbox have both taken different approaches to encourage players to purchase their latest consoles. While PlayStation has seen great success by offering a number of exclusive IPs and titles such as Insomniac's Spider-Man, Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, and Guerrilla's Horizon Zero Dawn, Xbox has instead opted down its subscription service, Game Pass, as a way to bring additional players into the fold.

Many of us may have, at some point, felt a deep longing (probably spurred by a certain young adult fiction book series) to be swept away to a magical school of spells, potions, and general sorcery. Various games and other media have given us various ways to explore that fantasy over the years, but today, Eastshade Studios has announced a new, musical take on the idea with its upcoming RPG, Songs of Glimmerwick.

Songs of Glimmerwick is a story-driven RPG where magic is cast through music. Players will attend magic classes, learn to play different songs to cast spells, grow a magical garden, make potions, and take on quests to get to know the various denizens of Glimmerwick. There are moth races, forest expeditions, and festivals to attend, mixing plenty of optional mini-games and side quests alongside a main storyline. Characters are customizable, NPCs both major and minor will be voice acted, and the game's music will be composed by Eastshade composer Phoenix Glendinning.

Eastshade, naturally, was the previous game that Eastshade Studios worked on, with the same trio — Glendinning, and developers Danny Weinbaum and Jaclyn Ciezadlo returning for Glimmerwick. Put their screenshots side by side, and Eastshade (a first-person exploration game about painting) looks absolutely nothing like Songs of Glimmerwick (a top-down RPG about attending a magical university). And yet, the two are more alike than they appear.

Ahead of its January 28 release date, a number of leaked gameplay and story elements from Nintendo's upcoming Pokémon Legends: Arceus have begun cropping up online. For those of you looking to head into the game spoiler-free, you may want to stray away from social media - at least until the initial storm passes.

While Nintendo has been relatively quick in its attempts to take down images that contain copyrighted material from Pokémon Legends: Arceus, many screenshots from throughout the game are still currently doing the rounds online.

Unlike previous Pokémon leaks, this most recent wave of content appears to have come from boxed retail versions of the game as opposed to digital review copies. Photographs of a number of players holding copies of the game have begun popping up on social media over the last 24 hours alongside a number of screenshots of the game itself.

While we won't be sharing exact details pertaining to the content that has been leaked itself, Twitter user Stealth40k gave a rundown of what you should look to avoid. According to Stealth, that list of features includes the game's opening movie, new Pokémon, and, well, pretty much everything else that you wouldn't want to be ruined.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus has leaked... the opening movie, new Pokémon, pretty much everything is being spoiled, so definitely take precaution!

Ursun, the bear god of Kislev, is dead, and I have killed him. That's a lot to process on my very first turn of Total War: Warhammer 3, but the consolation prize isn't bad. Slaying this great, fuzzy enemy of chaos has allowed me to turn into a powerful Daemon Prince who can be named and customized with all kinds of different body parts and weapons. While the previously announced Chaos factions will focus on one particular god, the Legions of Chaos can pick any of the four they choose – or mix and match them all by choosing Chaos Undivided.

Warhammer 3's main campaign is very story-driven. Even more than Warhammer 2's Eye of the Vortex. Ursun's death has sent shockwaves across the world that will periodically open up rifts into the Realms of Chaos, spawning destructive neutral armies who had no camaraderie with my upstart prince, and allowing the terrestrial factions to briefly invade the domains of Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, and Nurgle. They all share the same goal of collecting a powerful daemon's soul from each of the four realms so they can breach the prison where Ursun's spirit is being tortured and will soon perish forever. But they all have different reasons. Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon of Cathay, is searching for her lost sister and only Ursun knows where she has gone. Kislev obviously wants their god back. The ogres literally just want to eat him. As for me? I'm out to finish what I started… and become a god myself.

In case you needed to check - though you almost certainly didn't - an FPS where you hunt Pokémon is just as disturbing in reality as it is a concept.

At the best of times, scrolling through Twitter can be a rollercoaster experience, and the platform certainly has its fair share of 'things I wish I hadn't had the displeasure of seeing'. While game developer and Twitter user Dragon has certainly accomplished something unique by making a Pokémon First Person Shooter, it does run the risk of being entered into the aforementioned category.

You can see development footage below, if you're morbidly curious:

Last month I started working on developing a Pokémon First Person Shooter. #IndieGameDev #pokemon pic.twitter.com/dZZTuYWq22

— Dragon (@Dragon_GameDev2) January 17, 2022

During the trailer for Dragon's Pokémon-based FPS, a controllable player character can be seen roaming far and wide to claim numerous pocket monster trophies. The game appears to include a wide array of different Pokémon – seemingly all from the original 151 – that you can track down and fill with lead, as well as multiple different weapons to carry out the deed.

February is looking like one of the biggest gaming months of the year already. For starters, Pokemon Legends Arceus is launching at the end of January, with Dying Light 2 releasing soon after on February 4, followed by PlayStation exclusive Horizon Forbidden West, Destiny 2's The Witch Queen expansion, and finally, Elden Ring rounding off the month on February 25.

This will be a huge month, full of surprises, blockbuster review scores, and plenty of amazing games. But, unfortunately, it's still looking like an expensive one as well. To help with this, we've collected a few tips and tricks to help you get through this densely packed period, and relieve your bank account of, at least a little, stress. Here's how you can save some cash during February's huge gaming lineup.

For Starters, Don't Buy Everything

I imagine most of you will already be commenting this, so let's get it out the way. Don't buy all the games. Yeah, 10/10 advice, IGN, but no matter how seemingly obvious it might be, it's still worth saying and then saying again a bit louder for those in the back.

For example, Far Cry 6, which came out fairly recently in October 2021, has recently dropped and now sits around $20. This isn't an uncommon occurrence with Ubisoft games, but it still stands to show that a lot of big games can quickly drop in price if you're willing to wait a couple of months for a sale. While we're on the topic, make sure to drop a quick follow on @IGNDeals on Twitter, as we'll always inform you when there's a new sale on the latest games.

A group of Firaxis Games veterans has announced a brand new Maryland-based studio called Bit Reactor which will be focused on turn-based strategy games.

Bit Reactor will be headed up by former Firaxis art director Greg Foertsch, who worked with Firaxis for over 20 years on games including XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2, Civilization 3, and Civilization 4. Other members of the studio include former lead developers and creatives who also worked on the XCOM franchise.

The studio will focus on turn-based strategy games, with Foertsch saying that the genre has been "greatly overlooked" amid the current new generation of technology and that tactics games have "an enormous amount of room for innovation." Multiple unannounced games are currently in the works.

Whatever Bit Reactor is working on, we can only hope it's as solid as XCOM 2, which we found to be a brilliant new spin on great tactical combat in our 2016 review. We were also pretty big fans of Civilization 6, with its impressively robust features right at launch as well as its new ideas establishing a separate identity from previous Civilization games.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Horizon Forbidden West is looking to expand Aloy’s story and world in some major ways. The sequel, coming to PS4 and PS5 on February 18, is not only introducing a new region, as evidenced by its title, but is also introducing new tribes and new threats, bringing back beloved characters from Horizon Zero Dawn, and exploring new mysteries about Guerrilla Games’ fascinating world.

A new story trailer ahead of the launch next month teases what’s in store for Aloy, including a focus on new villain Regalla (played by legendary actress Angela Bassett), and what exploration into the Forbidden West means for Aloy’s journey. To find out more, IGN spoke with HFW’s narrative director Benjamin McCaw and senior writer Annie Kitain about what the new trailer teases, and how Forbidden West uses the revelations of Zero Dawn to craft new mysteries.

Also, if you haven’t yet played Horizon Zero Dawn, some spoilers for the original game may follow, as we discuss those events and their relation to the sequel.

New and Returning Faces

One of the most immediate takeaways from the trailer is just how expansive Aloy’s new quest is going to be. But no matter how big the story gets, the writers always intend to keep it rooted in the personal stakes at play for Aloy and the player.

In one recurring mission in Rainbow Six Extraction, your Special Ops veteran is transported into a hellish parallel dimension where they face off against a malignant, mutated facsimile of one of your fellow Operators from the Rainbow Six Siege cast. An armored, multi-tiered health bar appears across the top of the screen, and it depletes as you dump clip after clip of ammunition into their scaly carapace. It is a cosmic, apocalyptic boss fight, and it’s hard not to think about just how far this series has strayed from its once-dogmatic faithfulness to gritty Navy SEAL realism. In Extraction, Ubisoft successfully brings the series to its wildest frontiers yet, but while this high-stakes co-op creates thrills out of the gate, it doesn’t seem to have the same staying power as its competitive cousin.

Extraction does make a meek attempt to justify its science fiction: There are some short cutscenes hovering around the margins and an unwieldy codex overflowing with flavor text that explain the massive onyx obelisks that protrude from the ground all over the globe. Some are the size of skyscrapers — one impaling the Statue of Liberty — and they've unleashed a band of zombified parasitic aberrations annoyingly dubbed the "Archæans," which were first introduced in the 2018 Outbreak limited-time event in Siege. Those same heroes have been deployed to hold the line, and as a party of three, a party of two, or by yourself, you delve deep into the fetid underbelly of this grotesque insurgency. It is pure pulp – body horror blended with steely tactics – and as someone with an appreciation for Rainbow Six's sillier side (like its two trips to Las Vegas) I relished the chance to steep into this bizarre new world without asking too many questions.

Nintendo has revealed that the N64 classic Banjo-Kazooie will be available to all Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack members on January 20, 2022.

Nintendo shared the news in a tweet that features gameplay from the beloved platformer that was released in 1998 and stars a bear and a bird that are trying to stop an evil witch named Gruntilda.

Embark on a wild quest with an unlikely pair! The adventures of Banjo and Kazooie begin here!

Banjo-Kazooie is coming to #NintendoSwitch for #NintendoSwitchOnline + Expansion Pack members on 1/20! #Nintendo64 pic.twitter.com/R349r8gbvD

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) January 19, 2022

While Rare worked closely with Nintendo for years, Microsoft acquired the company in 2002 and still owns the rights to Banjo-Kazooie to this day. Rare Studio head Craig Duncan expressed his excitement over the collaboration between the two companies, saying in a Tweet that it's "always a pleasure to work with our good friends at Nintendo, I’m a big fan of #NintendoSwitchOnline and it’s really important to preserve classic games for future generations to play."

The Microsoft Activision Blizzard acquisition will bring together one of the game industry’s big-three companies, with one of the industry’s leading game developers. As Xbox continues its strategy of major acquisitions, will the Activision Blizzard purchase run afoul of antitrust laws? A legal expert says not likely at this stage.

Remember how Xbox successfully acquired Bethesda without running into complications with antitrust laws? This is because it was a form of vertical integration where a distributor of content, like Xbox, purchased a content producer, like Bethesda.

David Hoppe, a Managing Partner at the San Francisco-based Media and Tech law firm Gamma Law says Xbox’s acquisition of Activision runs on the same principle.

“The acquisition is another example of so-called ‘vertical integration’ in the video game industry — a console manufacturer (distributor) acquiring a game developer (producer). Of course, this is the largest such deal in games industry history, but U.S. courts have historically been unwilling to apply restrictive antitrust principles to vertical transactions,” Hoppe says.

Indeed historically the Justice Department has not had issues with console exclusivities, which is a likely outcome of the Xbox-Activision deal.

Earlier today, Microsoft announced plans to buy Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion, putting huge franchises like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and more under Xbox's umbrella. While we've already seen how the video game industry is reacting to the huge acquisition, you can now take a look at how Microsoft and Activision Blizzard leaders broke the news to their staff members.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, whose future with the company is still unclear at the moment, shared an email with all Activision Blizzard employees, saying Microsoft was the clear choice to partner with.

"In considering possible partners, all roads ultimately lead to Microsoft," Kotick wrote. "Like us, they have been making games for a long time. Microsoft has already distributed games to hundreds of millions of the world’s computers and computing devices and has technologies and innovation that will support the next generation of games."

Activision Blizzard has been under fire for months due to serious allegations of harassment and misconduct, with Kotick at the center of many of the headlines. Kotick told employees Microsoft will help improve Activision Blizzard's culture.

Xbox continues its spending spree, buying Activision-Blizzard for almost $70 billion. We spent almost the entire podcast discussing it, from future game exclusivity to Microsoft's role in cleaning up Activision Blizzard's toxic workplace culture to whether or not so much consolidation is a good thing for the video game industry. Join us for the biggest Xbox story of the year (because we can't imagine anything else in 2022 topping this)!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our new YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week's episode. For more awesome content, check out our latest IGN Unfiltered interview, where Joseph Staten – one of Halo's original creators and now the head of creative on Halo Infinite – discusses his fascinating career:

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For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

Microsoft once again shifted the landscape of video games in early 2022 by announcing a $68.7 billion USD deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, the gaming giant behind Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and several other major franchises. The massive deal comes less than two years after Microsoft bought ZeniMax Media for a then-record $8 billion.

It's a fascinating time for the games industry, which has experienced both unprecedented growth and unprecedented consolidation over the last couple of years. To put this latest purchase in perspective, we've compiled a list of other major studio acquisitions (and their costs) across the video game, film, and television industries.

In short: Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal is worth more than the 15 next most-expensive game studio acquisitions combined, though it is topped by a few film and television deals. Read on or click through the gallery below to see how it compares to other notable acquisitions.

Nearly two weeks after the digital version of the Pandemic board game was quietly delisted from Steam for seemingly no reason, developer Asmodee Digital and publisher Z-Man have finally released a statement explaining their decision. Though some contemplated the decision was due to the impact of COVID-19, Asmodee's statement claims an alternate reasoning.

"The Pandemic app was released 9 years ago, and we no longer feel the current quality and reliability of the game is on par with what Pandemic deserves on digital platforms," Asmodee said. "The time has come to make way for the digital future of Pandemic. "

Asmodee clarified that current owners of Pandemic will not be impacted, and can still download and play the game. A multiplayer version of Pandemic has also remained available on Board Game Arena (which Asmodee owns) despite the delisting.

"We are truly thankful to the whole Pandemic community for their awesome support and involvement over these last years," Asmodee continued. "Stay tuned!"

Asmodee's statement implies that Pandemic's digital version will continue to exist in some form in the future, perhaps an updated version. It's possible that, since the original digital version released nearly a decade ago, it was due for a cosmetic and structural makeover.

In his first interview following the news that Xbox is acquiring Activision Blizzard for close to $70 billion, current Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says the deal is necessary to compete with trillion-dollar competitors.

Speaking to VentureBeat, Kotick says that Activision Blizzard is looking increasingly outgunned in a field that now includes companies like Tencent, Netease, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Sony.

“It’s a reality that started to factor into our thinking. There is more competition from bigger companies with more resources,” Kotick says. “Facebook is spending [billions] a year on the metaverse. I’ve never seen as much competition, and we’re seeing it even in the wage inflation.”

Activision Blizzard makes around $8 billion a year according to analysts, which is no small figure. But as context, Microsoft is valued at over $2 trillion. Other tech giants like Netflix are trying their hands at games and Facebook renamed itself Meta and is positioning its VR platform as a key product.

Back in 1995, famed game designer Reiner Knizia invented a simple two-player Poker variant you could play with a deck of playing cards. Rather than a betting game, it saw players trying to complete several poker-style hands on their side of the table, trying to get a better result than their opponent’s opposite. It was a sort of area control game with a standard deck and it proved so good it spawned an entire genre, the best known of which is Knizia’s customized design Schotten Totten.

Riftforce is the latest spin on this tug of war formula. Underneath a tiresome and generic fantasy setting, its twist is that rather than trying to make groups of cards, you’re using your plays to attack those on your opponent’s side. It might not sound enough to make this stand out from the crowd, but looks can often be deceiving.

What’s in the Box

This is a card-only game, so it comes in a small, neat box filled with cards and a single sheet of tokens to punch out. There’s nothing in particular to praise or condemn about the contents: they’re functional, with good, evocative art.

Rules and How to Play

You start a game of Riftforce with a fast, simple but high impact deck-building round. The game comes with ten sets of elemental cards, each in the same mix of 5, 6 and 7 health. What’s different about them is their special powers. Lightning elementals deal 2 damage to a card opposite and can repeat the effect if it kills the target. Fire elementals, meanwhile, do 3 damage but also deal 1 damage to a friendly card behind them. Players take turns choosing a set for their deck until each has four.

The notion of a “console war” is outdated, and has been for years now. What began as a silly rivalry between fans of different game systems secretly jealous of the games they couldn’t play has been a significant element fueling games community toxicity for 25 years. Because of that, one might think Microsoft’s bold intended acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion is cause for vitriol – no more Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles? – and proof that the conflict is still raging. In truth it’s the signal that it’s over, and the real fight has been revealed.

Ultimately, nobody “won.” You could argue that perhaps all of us did, because the drive to secure increasingly impressive games pushed the capabilities of multiple generations of PlayStations and Xboxes, but there was never going to be an all-conquering singular console. The notion was always preposterous, and leaders like Microsoft’s Phil Spencer have been saying so for years. Back in 2018, Spencer called toxicity in gaming a threat, and noted in 2020 that “console tribalism” was “one of the worst things about our industry. “We’re in the entertainment business,” he said. “The biggest competitor we have is apathy over the products and services, games that we build.”

Microsoft has announced it is purchasing Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion, making it the most expensive acquisition in games history. The games industry immediately reacted to the news with a range of opinions and thoughts ranging from what this means for the highly competitive games industry and how this impacts Activision Blizzard's ongoing sexual harassment and discrimination scandal?

We checked out what some of the industry's biggest and most influential names are thinking and assembled them all here.

The official "ABetterABK" Twitter account, which represents Activision Blizzard King workers protesting against an alleged company culture of harassment and discrimination, shared its thoughts at length.

The news of Activision's acquisition by Microsoft is surprising, but does not change the goals of the ABK Worker's Alliance. (1/6)

The dominoes are continuing to fall after today's bombshell news, where Xbox announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Not only does this give Xbox control of mega franchises like Call of Duty, Warcraft, Overwatch, and more, it also saddles Microsoft with the responsibility to manage the ongoing scandals at Activision Blizzard.

In wake of the announcement, the ABK Workers Alliance, made up of employees of Activision Blizzard and King who demand better working conditions following months of scandal, has released a statement on the acquisition saying the group's goals remain unchanged in light of the shift in ownership.

The news of Activision's acquisition by Microsoft is surprising, but does not change the goals of the ABK Worker's Alliance. (1/6)

— ABetterABK 💙 ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) January 18, 2022

"The news of Activision's acquisition by Microsoft is surprising, but does not change the goals of the ABK Worker's Alliance," the Alliance said in a thread on Twitter.

2021 was a great year to be a video game company, or at least it was if you had a big existing franchise to repackage and make tons of money off of. A surprising number of 2021's best-selling games were also best-selling games in 2020, and the rest were part of big, beloved franchises. Like Pokémon, for instance.

In fact, 2021 was huge for the Pokémon games. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, despite being remakes of games from 2006, were the third best-selling games in December and the fourth best-selling games the entire year in the US, according to The NPD Group. They were also the best-selling games on Nintendo consoles for both the entire month of December and for the full year.

Specifically, a lot of people were buying physical copies of not just Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, but other Pokémon games too, like New Pokémon Snap. In total, physical sales of Pokémon games in 2021 were the best they've been since 2000 when Pokémon Gold and Silver first came out in the US. That doesn't count digital sales, of course, which didn't exist for Pokémon games in 2000 and have likely surpassed total sales ever since, but it's still a massive milestone.

Pokémon games aside, Call of Duty was, as usual, 2021's favorite game to throw money at. Vanguard was the best-selling game for both December and the full year, and Black Ops: Cold War was the second best-selling game of the year.

The developer of an app called Wordle, which was released five years ago, has donated his profits to charity after hundreds of thousands of people mistakenly downloaded it in an attempt to play the popular new browser game that is also called Wordle.

Steven Cravotta created the mobile game Wordle when he was 18 years old, but it recently saw a surge across app stores due to the popularity of the Wordle browser game.

“I built an app called Wordle when I was 18 mostly for fun, to sharpen my coding skillz, and maybe make a quick buck,” he said via Twitter. “It didn’t quite take off like my previous app, Grid, did. So, after a few months and [around] 100k total downloads, I stopped updating and promoting the app.”

Here’s how a mobile game I built 5 years ago suddenly got blown up by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Jimmy Fallon.

👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/aun7YM80p4

— Steven (@StevenCravotta) January 12, 2022

“It’s user growth slowly declined to 1-2 downloads a day for the past 4 years,” he explained. “Until 1 week ago when I logged into my dashboard and was SHOOK at what I saw.”

Of course, the browser game Wordle has become a global sensation after it was featured in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. It is even being played by celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon.

Update 2: According to the Wall Street Journal, sources familiar with the deal say Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is set to leave after the deal closes. Despite contradictory statements saying that Kotick "will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard," the two companies agreed that Kotick will depart once Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard.

Kotick did not specifically address whether he will stay or leave beyond ensuring "the very best integration," but with the deal still waiting to be finalized Microsoft and Activision Blizzard could be keeping the full details of their arrangement private for now.
Update 1: Since posting this story, IGN has learned that Kotick's future at Activision Blizzard is still officially unconfirmed. Due to the time between the deal's announcement and its expected close date in Microsoft's 2023 financial year, IGN understands that no firm decision has been made about Kotick's role at the company after that point.

IGN's original line of questioning – which you can see in the story below – centered specifically on Kotick's future after the completion of the deal, but it seems the response Microsoft sent in reply to that question was not a direct answer and was speaking more generally than that post-acquisition period we were inquiring about.