Paramount Pictures and Activision have confirmed the upcoming Call of Duty movie will take place in its long-running Modern Warfare universe.

The crew behind the upcoming video game-to-movie adaptation revealed the update as part of a Call of Duty in Culture Panel at Fanatics Fest in New York City today (via Variety). Call of Duty movie director and co-writer Peter Berg made an appearance at the event to share the news.

Berg and co-writer Taylor Sheridan's choice to set their Call of Duty movie in the Modern Warfare universe may come as much of a surprise for some fans, but it might finally give us some clues about its yet-to-be-detailed plot. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the first in Activision's first-person shooter series to introduce players to a, well, more modern take on the franchise when it launched in 2007. As it left behind the mid-1900s battlefields established by previous games, it also brought along new characters, such as Soap, Ghost, Captain Price, and series villain Vladimir Makarov.

On the gaming side of things, Modern Warfare has spent the last two decades attempting to reinvent itself across six mainline entries, and even a few remasters. The first three games, which arrived throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, primarily followed Task Force 141 as they embarked on globe-trotting missions, while gaining (and losing) teammates along the way.

Activision and developer Infinity Ward took a break from the somewhat more grounded settings of Modern Warfare through the mid-2010s before delivering a full-fledged reboot with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2019. It's expanded on this chapter with returning characters and new stories, with its next entry, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, set to launch for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X | S October 23, 2026.

Why Paramount and Activision opted to kick off its Call of Duty film ambitions with Modern Warfare instead of something like the Black Ops series, which recently celebrated the release of PlayStation ports for Black Ops 1 and 2, is unclear. Berg also neglected to mention whether his adaptation will retread events players may remember from the games or carve out its own corner of the universe.

The Call of Duty movie has a release date of June 30, 2028. Its plot and cast remain a mystery, for now. While we wait for udpates, you can see what Berg once said about people who play video games.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Todd Howard has dismissed what he described as “fan chatter” about a supposed rivalry between Fallout developers Bethesda Game Studios and Obsidian Entertainment.

The suggestion of animosity between the two studios revolves around the idea that Bethesda resents Obsidian for making the much-loved Fallout: New Vegas, which some consider to be the best Fallout game.

But Howard himself has never suggested this to be the reality of the studios' relationship, and indeed has outright dismissed it at times. For example, Howard told IGN back in 2019 — after Microsoft had bought Obsidian — that BGS has “always had a great relationship with them” and, on New Vegas, “there’s only one group that we really trust to do this, and it was awesome."

“For me, it was either this group or nobody," Howard said.

Fast forward to 2026, in the wake of Xbox’s latest round of layoffs and confirmation that Obsidian is once again working on a new Fallout game, Howard told Windows Central that BGS is “super excited” to be collaborating with the Avowed, The Outer Worlds, Grounded, and Pentiment developer.

"I appreciate some of the fan chatter, but behind the scenes, there's a huge amount of mutual respect [between Bethesda and Obsidian],” Howard said. “We're always kind of wondering if we could find a way to work together in the right way. And when those things come up, I think I definitely look at the franchise all up, as you see in the note, everything that's kind of happening with Fallout.

"You sort of say, is there a way or a window or a pocket where we could do something together that really, really made sense? And so we're super excited about the opportunity, working together.”

Howard's mention of "the note" is a reference to the roadmap BGS revealed today. It confirms Fallout 5 had entered pre-production and Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are in the works. While we now know Obsidian’s Fallout game is real, we don’t know what it is. Could it be Fallout: New Vegas 2? Or perhaps a different Fallout game entirely?

Obsidian was hit by the Xbox layoffs, too, and reportedly canceled Avowed 2 as part of new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s focus on the company’s biggest franchises. That of course includes The Elder Scrolls VI, which is BGS’s focus.

"Fallout is one of our biggest priorities today," Howard said in his message to fans. "Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination, and we have multiple Fallout projects in active development right now.

"Fallout 76 continues to be home to millions of players exploring Appalachia together. With nearly 70 free updates released to date, the journey is far from over. In fact, we have a major Fallout 76 expansion planned for next year: Raven Rock, a prequel story to Fallout 3.

"Fallout 4, the most award-winning game in the franchise, just celebrated its 10-year anniversary and recently passed over 35 million copies sold, continuing to attract a new audience every year.

"We also know many players want to revisit previous Fallout experiences. While we're not announcing any dates today, we have been working on remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

"Fallout Shelter continues to be the most popular way to experience Fallout on the go, with more than 250 million players. There’s more ahead for Fallout Shelter, including new Seasons. An unscripted Fallout Shelter television project is also in the works with our partners at Amazon Studios and Kilter Films.

"We'd like to congratulate Kilter Films and Amazon Studios on the 10 Emmy nominations for Fallout Season 2. Production on Season 3 is already underway.

"And while we won't host a traditional Fallout Day broadcast this year, we're already planning something special for Fallout's 30th anniversary in 2027, when Fallout Day will be celebrated live in Washington, D.C."

Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images.

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 Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has officially crossed the 65 million units sold milestone, joining fellow fantasy role-playing game The Witcher 3 as one of the top 10 best-selling games of all time.

Confirmation comes from Bethesda Game Studios chief Todd Howard, who today outlined the company’s lineup of games following Xbox’s latest round of layoffs.

Skyrim launched in 2011 and sold over 3.5 million units in 48 hours. Over the past 15 years it’s been ported to pretty much every platform capable of running it, with years of mods helping to keep the game feeling fresh.

Xbox boss Asha Sharma added that with 65 million units sold, Skyrim has become one of the 10 best-selling games of all time. Fallout 4, meanwhile, has crossed 35 million units sold, joining the top 25. Starfield, BGS’ third game franchise, has had 17 million players, but we don’t have a sales figure. Instead, Sharma noted that Starfield was about to cross the 1 billion hours played mark.

BGS is currently focused on getting The Elder Scrolls VI out the door, although it is reportedly at least two years away despite being announced in 2018. Fallout 5, meanwhile, has entered pre-production.

“The Elder Scrolls VI is our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise,” Howard said. “With over 65 million copies sold, players are still exploring Skyrim 15 years later, but we know it’s been a very long wait for the sequel. The next chapter is on the way. We’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day.”

CD Projekt announced The Witcher 3 had hit 65 million units sold in May in what has become a fun head-to-head for game sales watchers. The Witcher 3 is of course set for a new expansion next year, despite being released over a decade ago, in May 2015. And work continues on its own sequel, The Witcher IV. Could both The Elder Scrolls VI and The Witcher IV end up against each other in, let's say, 2028?

For a bit of video game sales context, Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time, with an astonishing 400 million units sold. GTA 6 is in a distant second place with an equally remarkable 230 million sold. Fellow Rockstar game Red Dead Redemption 2 is on 85 million.

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 annual incremental tweaks to EA's behemoth FC series make it easy to forget this was once a genre that took generational leaps every few years.

Soccer sims were defined and redefined throughout the 90s, noughties and 2010s, and certain features were so groundbreaking that they transformed how we play – sometimes instantly, some only in retrospect. With a bit of help from Richard Moss, author of Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games, I've picked nine of the most important features that changed football games forever.

CPU-assisted Passing - Soccer

Playing EA FC with fully manual controls, the ball travelling exactly in the direction you push the control stick, is humbling. You'll realise your aim is not as good as you think and even completing simple short passes is a challenge.

It shows we take AI assists for granted – but they weren't always there to help. The earliest football games took your input (usually in eight directions) as a direct instruction to pass the ball, so you could only really pass to teammates in specific spots relative to the ball.

In 1985, Konami's Soccer on the MSX personal computer and the NES game Soccer both included CPU-assisted passing, Moss explains, "whereby your vague directional input to, say, up-left, is taken as a request to pass the ball directly to the nearest player in that direction, rather than an exact instruction to do a kick angled 45 degrees from the player".

"It took a while to fully catch on, but by the mid-90s that became the standard passing mechanic," he explains. I'm glad: I go through the occasional phase where I turn assisted controls down or off entirely but always, feeling defeated and pathetic, revert to default settings.

3D Graphics - Virtua Striker

Some 2D football games were fantastic, World Cup Italia '90 and Sensible Soccer among them, but the 1994 arcade game Virtua Striker changed everything. It was the first football game with true 3D graphics: its polygonal players are slightly cursed in hindsight, their limbs long and misshapen, but their detailed animations felt like the future, pointing the way towards a true simulation of the sport.

Virtua Striker was perhaps underappreciated because it was only in arcades and the series wouldn't be ported to consoles until several years later. But within a year of its release Konami and EA were in on the 3D act, and they didn't look back.

Through Ball - Pro Evolution Soccer

In the early and mid-2000s FIFA was the more popular, flashier football sim but Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) was the purists' pick. It felt realistically messy and, I'd argue, more satisfying than FIFA when you scored a slick team goal. Its superiority was summed up in one button: triangle. It triggered a through pass, kicking the ball into space in front of a sprinting teammate.

Konami tried it in the 90s – International Superstar Soccer 64's through balls felt rigid and eerily magnetic – but perfected them in the PS2 era. They were incisive without feeling automatic. You still needed to get the timing and direction right, so you felt like a genius when it worked. Other developers were jealous.

"In the late 90s onwards, every other football game developer was looking at [Konami] and saying, these guys have killer through balls," says Moss. "And EA, in this PS2 era, every season, they're trying to figure out how to force a through ball mechanic into their game, when they had an engine that was not built for that."

FIFA eventually caught up, and in both series, lofted through balls over the top to your striker became the de facto way to score in multiplayer against your mates. They've remained a key part of football sims, now with even more variations – but I don't think they'll ever feel as good as they did in those golden days.

Skill Stick - FIFA 2003

FIFA's first iteration of the skill stick, the "Freestyle Control System" in FIFA 2003, was as clunky as its name. It felt slow and unimaginative, but over a decade of refinement it became an essential attacking tool.

Before then, skills in FIFA (and in Pro Evo) were mostly performed with button combos. Mapping them to the right stick enabled quicker tricks and more intuitive controls, and by FIFA 06 skill controls matched the natural shape of a trick. Flick forward and sweep to the side for a step-over, hold the stick left or right for a ball roll.

Today, high-level players rely on skill moves to fool defenders and create space for shots, with a move list long and complicated enough to rival a fighting game.

Finesse Shots - Pro Evolution Soccer 5

Pro Evolution Soccer 5's "controlled shot" was the original finesse. Earlier games let you modify your shots beyond aim and power (you could chip the keeper in International Superstar Soccer, for example) but the precise controlled shot created a whole new way of scoring: Thierry Henry cuts inside from the left, aims for the far top corner, and curls it, starting outside the post but swerving into the top corner, past a diving keeper.

The mechanics of finesse shots have been constantly remoulded – today's finesse shots have even more whip – but the fact you can score that exact goal in virtually every football game since PES5 highlights its importance.

Ultimate Team - FIFA 09

Ultimate Team is the behemoth that helped EA's FIFA series pull away from Pro Evo. EA trialled a similar mode in its 2007 UEFA Champions League tie-in game, but the first proper version of Ultimate Team arrived in March 2009, as paid DLC for FIFA 09.

The core concept was instantly appealing: buying and opening card packs, improving your team chemistry, and building a bank of coins. It combined the stakes and action of online multiplayer matches with the luck-based compulsion of loot boxes – for better and worse.

FIFA 12 was the first to include Ultimate Team for free at launch. Demolishing the walls between the mode and the rest of the game confirmed that EA saw this as integral to the series, and the gamble worked – nowadays, EA FC is Ultimate Team to many people, and it makes the company boatfulls of money. Any would-be rival to EA is contending not just with its on-pitch action but with an entire ecosystem of YouTubers, influencers and real-life players (we've no doubt all seen players react to their in-game cards).

The controversy around the mode will never disappear – EA still can't sell its in-game currency in Belgium because of gambling laws, for example – but Ultimate Team is here to stay.

360-degree Dribbling - FIFA 10

FIFA and Pro Evo still limited your inputs to eight directions as late as 2009 – a fact so unbelievable that I had to boot up PES 6 just to confirm it. Both series masked it with clever animations and by smoothing direction changes when you sprinted but we were, effectively, using D-pads for decades.

FIFA 10's 360-degree dribbling (Pro Evo tried it the same year, with less success) unlocked a new level of freedom and flexibility. You could slip through tight spaces and skip past defenders smoother than ever before, and you felt more connected to the players you controlled. I remember spending hours sprinting around the Practice Arena with Wayne Rooney, spamming tricks and testing every possible direction change. Returning to a D-pad now is unimaginable.

Tactical Defending - FIFA 12

I still remember playing FIFA 12 for the first time. The fiddly defending controls bamboozled me and my friends and we vowed to return to FIFA 11. With a few exceptions, one-on-one defending in football games before then had involved holding a single button to, first, pressure and, second, tackle an opponent. FIFA 12's tactical defending decoupled the two, with one button to "contain" the attacker, staying near them, and another to step in and attempt a tackle.

When I got over my initial frustration I realised that it was a more flexible system that let you choose a level of aggression that matched the situation, such as not diving in as the last defender. It rewarded patience and positioning, and made defending feel like a true skill.

EA FC 26's "advanced defending" is, you might argue, the next evolution, further splintering the tackle button into multiple tackle types. We're never going back to a one-button system.

Playstyles - EA FC 24

The one feature from recent years that feels truly foundational.

FIFA's "traits" – badges that showed star players' strengths and in some cases granted extra abilities – existed 15 years ago, but only for star players. When EA FC 24 changed them to "playstyles", however, they became vital. They boosted specific skills and granted bespoke animations: "Press Proven" players kept the ball closer while jogging, "Bruisers" bounced opponents away in tackles like bumper cars. They were no longer limited to star players, which sprinkled personality throughout every squad.

Until FC 24 you judged a player by their overall rating, or sometimes by specific attributes relevant to their position. But playstyles were so powerful that they became equally as important. Now, I'll pick a player with multiple playstyles even if their overall is underwhelming. In my EA FC 26 career I've just unearthed a young centre back with seven playstyles who'll dominate the league for years.

Bethesda Game Studios, maker of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, has laid out its roadmap for the foreseeable future as both Bethesda and Xbox refocus on their core franchises in the wake of last week's brutal "reset" that resulted in over 3,000 layoffs and several studios being spun out of Xbox.

Game design legend Todd Howard, who is currently working with his team on The Elder Scrolls 6, remains focused on that long-awaited project, which was officially announced back in 2018 — and is reportedly still at least two years away. However, Fallout 5, which Howard previously confirmed to IGN as his next project after TES 6, will be brought along on a shared tech pipeline utlilizing the studio's in-house Creation Engine 3. Fallout 5 is currently in preproduction, BGS confirmed today.

Furthermore, the studio confirmed recent reports of Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment's new Fallout project, along with "several" remaster projects. In a note to fans, BGS finally confirmed Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are in the works. No release windows were offered for any of the games mentioned by BGS today.

Bethesda also confirmed multiple Fallout projects — seemingly separate from Obsidian's game — and a 30th anniversary "Fallout Day" live in Washington, D.C. (the setting of Fallout 3, and pretty close by Bethesda Game Studios' real-life Rockville, MD headquarters) sometime next year.

Meanwhile, BGS said Starfield "continues," although Bethesda stopped short of confirming a sequel is in the works. "With over 17 million players logging almost a billion hours to date, Starfield remains an important part of our future," Howard said. "As we enter Year 3, we'll continue expanding the Settled Systems with new stories, targeted gameplay improvements, and additional updates, while preparing for the launch of new Starborn content next year. More than 40% of players already customize their experience through Creations, and we'll continue investing in creators and giving players new ways to make Starfield their own."

Here's Bethesda Game Studios' message in full:

A NOTE FROM BETHESDA GAME STUDIOS

We love making these worlds as much as you love playing in them. Today, we want to share what's next for Bethesda Game Studios and what you can expect from us in the years ahead.

For forty years, we've built games that have entertained almost half a billion players. More than just games, these are worlds. Worlds for you to explore, shape, and make your own. Worlds we return to together.

That's what's driving us forward. We're investing more deeply in the worlds players love, giving creators a bigger role in shaping their experiences, and bringing our teams closer together so we can get our games into your hands sooner, support them longer, and continue building them alongside you for decades to come.

STARFIELD CONTINUES

With over 17 million players logging almost a billion hours to date, Starfield remains an important part of our future. As we enter Year 3, we'll continue expanding the Settled Systems with new stories, targeted gameplay improvements, and additional updates, while preparing for the launch of new Starborn content next year. More than 40% of players already customize their experience through Creations, and we'll continue investing in creators and giving players new ways to make Starfield their own.

CREATED BY PLAYERS

We've believed from the beginning that our worlds belong not only to the people who make them, but also to the people who play them. That's why we've long provided players with the tools to create their own experiences, dating back to the Morrowind Construction Set. This year marked another major milestone for Creations with its expansion to Fallout 4, joining Skyrim and Starfield. We're proud to say Creators have already earned more than $10 million in royalties from their work.

THE FUTURE OF FALLOUT

Fallout is one of our biggest priorities today. Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination, and we have multiple Fallout projects in active development right now.

Fallout 76 continues to be home to millions of players exploring Appalachia together. With nearly 70 free updates released to date, the journey is far from over. In fact, we have a major Fallout 76 expansion planned for next year: Raven Rock, a prequel story to Fallout 3.

Fallout 4, the most award-winning game in the franchise, just celebrated its 10-year anniversary and recently passed over 35 million copies sold, continuing to attract a new audience every year.

We also know many players want to revisit previous Fallout experiences. While we're not announcing any dates today, we have been working on remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

Fallout Shelter continues to be the most popular way to experience Fallout on the go, with more than 250 million players. There’s more ahead for Fallout Shelter, including new Seasons. An unscripted Fallout Shelter television project is also in the works with our partners at Amazon Studios and Kilter Films.

We'd like to congratulate Kilter Films and Amazon Studios on the 10 Emmy nominations for Fallout Season 2. Production on Season 3 is already underway.

And while we won't host a traditional Fallout Day broadcast this year, we're already planning something special for Fallout's 30th anniversary in 2027, when Fallout Day will be celebrated live in Washington, D.C.

STUDIO COLLABORATION

The wasteland continues to expand as we team up once again with our longtime friends at Obsidian Entertainment. We're happy to confirm they're working with us on a new Fallout project. We'll have more to share in the future.

We're also bringing our teams closer together across Bethesda. ZeniMax Online Studios will partner closely with Bethesda Game Studios on The Elder Scrolls franchise, while continuing to deliver incredible new experiences for The Elder Scrolls Online. Season One: Return of the Thieves Guild recently launched, and the team has more planned for the future. By aligning more directly across the franchise, we can create even better experiences for players.

Bringing our teams closer together is helping us build a stronger foundation for everything we create next.

THE ELDER SCROLLS AND BEYOND

That foundation extends beyond our teams to the technology, tools, and systems that will power the next generation of Bethesda RPGs.

Our teams are now developing The Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 on Creation Engine 3, a shared technology platform we've been building since Starfield's launch. It allows our teams to support multiple projects simultaneously with new tools, rendering, and systems that define our games.

Fallout 5 is currently in preproduction. The Elder Scrolls VI is our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise. With over 65 million copies sold, players are still exploring Skyrim 15 years later, but we know it’s been a very long wait for the sequel.

The next chapter is on the way. We’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Across Bethesda Game Studios, we're building for the future of Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Starfield. We're investing in our technology, bringing teams closer together, supporting our live games, expanding into new forms of entertainment, and developing the next generation of Bethesda RPGs.

We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead and wanted to share as much as we could today. We can’t thank you enough for all you’ve given to us and these worlds. And we can’t wait to continue them together.

–Bethesda Game Studios

This roadmap announcement comes as "part of an ambition Xbox for becoming the #1 gaming platform in the world," which begs the question of whether or not any, some, or perhaps even all of these projects will be Xbox console exclusives. That key question remains unanswered for now, but at least we know that we have a heck of a lot more Fallout in particular to look forward to from Bethesda Game Studios and its partners in the coming years.

Bethesda boss Jill Braff has told staff that the layoffs and change in strategy “reflect the realities of our industry and business – and our responsibility to ensure Bethesda is operating from a more stable foundation.”

"To be successful in the future, we need to change course,” Braff continued. “We must strengthen our business, return to sustainable growth, and ensure we can continue investing in our franchises and our players. I know that doesn't make a day like today any easier.”

Without naming games, Braff said “to best position Bethesda for future growth, we are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what's next for each independent studio to one that focuses on our strongest franchises and determining the content roadmap that best serves our players and Bethesda as a whole.”

“From there, we’ll align the right talent, technology, and resources across the organization to deliver on those priorities,” Braff added.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Obsidian and Bethesda are two beloved RPG studios that complement each other beautifully, in the vein of all the classic double acts. Lennon and McCartney. Beer and nuts. Britain and Post-War Decline. By 2021, Xbox had acquired them both, which led many of us to believe that the holiest of holy grails was now on the cards: a proper follow-up to New Vegas, the acclaimed Obsidian developed Fallout spin-off that brought the series back to its wild west roots, while keeping and expanding upon the grand modernisation effort that Bethesda started with Fallout 3. The result? A game so adored that they’re now making an ultrabudget TV show that directly follows on from it, a game so highly regarded that many consider it the peak of what’s possible from either studio.

And so with these twin RPG stables nestled together under the umbrella of Xbox Game Studios, it seemed nailed-on that the people who now owned both the Fallout series and the best studio to ever do it would leverage that fact for money. And to sell some Xboxes, perhaps. What a concept. And, well, you know what, it looks like that might now be happening – a new report from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier claims that Obsidian is now working on a new Fallout game, headed up by New Vegas’ director, Josh Sawyer.

But in perhaps the cruellest monkey-paw twist imaginable, this long-awaited new Fallout is happening in a way that nobody with any admiration for these studios, love of the Fallout franchise, or possession of any decency, can get truly excited about. Maybe when the dust settles on all this upheaval. But not right now.

Because, once again, Xbox has taken a machete to its workforce, cutting right through the bone of its most prestigious dream factories, as a decade plus of spinning its wheels under chronic mismanagement comes to a devastating but entirely predicted conclusion, while its parent company desperately sells the family silver in order to fund the most destructive gambling habit in human history. One that is, incidentally, making games consoles prohibitively expensive to make, meaning that for the first time in history, current gen machines are going up in price as they age.

So we all have to suffer. And activities that are actually profitable, like making video games and selling them to people, have to get gutted. The people actually responsible for video games, in many cases the keepers of crucial generational knowledge and expertise built up over careers spanning decades? Collateral damage. Artists. Engine coders. Writers – so many writers. Not a single one of them responsible for the terrible decisions that got us here, but somehow being made to pay the toll with their livelihoods. In contrast, those actually to blame for all this are earning golden toilet seat money: more than anyone needs or knows what to do with.

It’s grim. It’s unnecessary. It’s unsustainable. And it’s a frightening realisation of the ancient curse: Interesting Times, etc.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma calls this the “Xbox Reset” – spun as a painful but necessary realignment of the business toward actually leveraging all the intellectual property that her predecessor collected like Pokemon but failed to really do anything with. Xbox studios now have a mandate to play the hits: more Fallout. More Elder Scrolls. More Halo. And, you know what, she’s right about this specific thing: it's something that should have been done years ago, before they laid off thousands of game developers. Had it been so, it would have been a lot harder for the current team to justify these sweeping cuts, to themselves or anyone else.

Under no circumstances do you gotta hand it to someone who just signed off on this much human misery, least of all someone who is in part responsible for the AI rainbow-chasing that has led to such chaos, but it is undeniable that Xbox has not been doing good business since long before AI was a factor in component pricing. Now, despite starting with more highway than China, they’ve finally run out of road: and the blame for this lies squarely at the feet of her predecessor.

The problem with many of Xbox’s acquisitions, as put succinctly to us by industry analyst Rhys Elliot recently, is that they were “brilliant for prestige and rotten for the spreadsheet.” And I think that might get to the heart of how devastating it is for the Xbox business to go from one extreme to the other in terms of leadership. Brace yourselves, because I’m about to do some faint praise for Phil Spencer, and I will have to have a lie down afterwards.

It would be wrong to say that Phil Spencer wasn’t like all the other executives. He was. He donkey-dashed after the carrot of infinite growth like they all do, and it led to all the same kinds of consequences. He’s no less culpable for the misery heaped upon this industry as demanded by the cult of fiduciary responsibility, of which he is a very well compensated acolyte. But I’ll say this for him: in stark contrast to some others who’ve had his job, he undeniably gives a shit about video games.

He cares about the medium. It’s well documented that he plays a lot of games, sinking hundreds of hours into them year on year. He knows what’s good. And I think a lot of his decisions were made with his heart, not his business head. Like, for example, his hands-off approach when it came to Xbox’s studio acquisitions. He understood that a game company isn’t just its IP portfolio, but its talent, its workplace culture, its overall character. Too much executive interference can dilute the magic of a place like Bethesda, Obsidian, or Arkane. We’ve seen it over and over again: in Lionhead, in Rare. The BioWare that exists now is a shadow of what it once was, having been ground down under the benefactorship of Electronic Arts. I think Spencer understood that, and wanted to avoid being responsible for another BioWare situation: buying something only to rob it of its real value.

And so he seems content to have let Bethesda carry on as an outfit that funnels all of its creative decision making through one, incredibly busy, director: Todd Howard, who seems unconcerned by the prospect of going a full twenty years between Elder Scrolls installments. Taking a long detour to make Starfield, a game that has its fans, but is widely considered to be a pretty rubbish substitute for Elder Scrolls 6, which remains reportedly another two years away. Instead of Fallout 5 being anywhere close to active development, we’ve got the TV show. A very good TV show, it has to be said, but TV shows don’t sell Xboxes. Just ask Don Mattrick. In amongst all this, Todd is somehow finding time to go and consult on Indiana Jones.

If this all sounds familiar it might be because over in the PlayStation camp, a similar phenomenon appears to have benched their star studio Naughty Dog for an entire console generation: I did a video about this a few weeks ago, about how funnelling everything through creative director Neil Druckmann in combination with an exodus of top talent appears to have stalled everything over there. Two signature franchises sitting idle. A space thing in the works that isn’t either of them. A popular TV show that appears to have sucked up all the momentum.

And look, I don’t begrudge either of them for wanting to do different things. I certainly don’t begrudge Todd Howard for, allegedly, wanting to be across every decision or taking as long as he can get away with to make things. That’s what creatives are like. I’m a creative, and I’m a pain in my boss’s arse.

But this is where you need the business guys to come in and start putting the foot down. The ones, like Spencer, who have a head for both sides of the equation of a creative firm. Someone who can speak LinkedIn to suits upstairs, and who understands that an artist under duress is not making good art. Neither of those encampments can be permitted to run the entire show, because that’s how you end up here, in a situation where a studio reportedly being instructed to get on with a sequel to the game everyone loves them for is a panic-button decision instead of the reason you acquired them in the first place.

Naughty Dog can afford to take a decade off because in the meantime, studios like Insomniac have massively stepped up with their take on Spider-Man, and the upcoming Wolverine. This is a great synergy of business and talent: a platform holder successfully leveraging two things it has at its disposal, in this case Sony’s long-standing relationship with Marvel and the Spider-Man franchise, and a development studio with tenure, which it eventually acquired.

It’s not a given that Marvel-based video games will be hits, sadly the excellent Midnight Suns is testament to that, but considering the massive crossover between gamers and MCU enjoyers, it’s as solid a bet as anything can be. And so it’s particularly biting that one of the potential casualties of all this is Arkane’s upcoming Blade adaptation. A classic Marvel property that people have been crying out for a new version of, paired with a studio known for its dark fantasy stealth action and visceral combat. A project in perfect marriage with a studio in desperate need of a big hit after much of its post-Dishonored output failed to connect with an audience.

Being unable to sell a Blade game made by Arkane reminds one of a certain phrase involving breweries and piss ups. As landlords go, Spencer and Sharma seem to occupy two extremes: Phil is the laid back one who lets you smoke in the gaffe, but is curiously nowhere to be found when the boiler needs fixing. Sharma is a lot more organised and “On It,” but her response to a large maintenance bill could involve anything from doubling the rent to burning the whole place down with you in it.

Asha, for what it’s worth, is making a lot of the right calls: albeit calls which should have been made years ago, when they might have mattered, when they might have shifted some Xboxes at a time when they had by far the cheapest current-gen console on the market, a prospect that now seems as distant as Marathon bars and white dog shit. Unfortunately, it could well be too little too late: with the Xbox brand being so damaged for so long under the follies of successive regimes, it seems like an unassailable mountain to climb, especially when there’s nobody left to carry the rope.

I never thought we'd end up in a place where we could be getting new Fallout from my favourite studio, headed up by my favourite auteur, and I'd feel bad about it. But then, we do live in interesting times. For years I've waited patiently for Xbox to stop spinning its wheels and start leveraging all those IPs. To actually make a case for owning an Xbox. That it took such bleak circumstances for them to do it is shameful, but I hope it works out in the end, because the industry needs a healthy Triple-A sector, with platform holders who aren't shy of throwing a bit of cash around. And, selfishly, because I don't want Elder Scrolls 7 to come after I'm dead.

But I’ll caveat that with: I’d rather it turn up when I’m dead, than be riddled with generative AI, which I desperately hope isn’t being mulled over at Xbox HQ as an answer to the question “how do we make all these games now that we’ve laid off thousands of people” with any sincerity. But given the parent company’s besottment with OpenAI, an infatuation expressed through doting press releases about Strategic Partnerships and enormous piles of cash, one images it’s coming up a lot.

Finding reasons to be cheerful after all this feels crass, not to mention naive, but if a silver lining is to be had it's that Xbox might now start doing what it should have been doing all along. Getting some Fallout made. Sticking a firecracker under Todd’s backside. And when the ship is righted, stop firing everyone who knows how to do things.

Activision is investigating issues revolving around mods and hackers in Call of Duty: Black Ops on PS4 and PS5.

Last week, Activision dropped ports of Black Ops 1 and 2 on PS4 and PS5. Although they don't feature any significant improvements or upgrades, fans were extremely happy to see these games accessible on PlayStation. However, the fun was spoiled pretty quickly.

Earlier this week, modders and exploiters began compromising lobbies in the Black Ops 1 port, leading to some players calling the game "unplayable." These lobbies allow you to rank up rapidly and basically make the entire progression system irrelevant. Activision took action pretty quickly and removed certain playlists to address the matter; however, concerns remain.

YouTuber Tdawgsmitty interviewed one of the game's modders to try and figure out what's happening. As it turns out, the issue is partially rooted in the fact that the game has exploits left over from the PS3 version.

"Essentially, what you're doing is that it's like PS3 where you copy [a save file] to your USB, and there's a website that lets you unencrypt it," said the modder. "The site lets you use a jailbroken PS4/PS5, and it will decrypt it for you. The save data is the exact same as PS3. What sucks about this port is that Iron Galaxy and Activision didn't bother changing the encryption on the files, which is the whole reason why this is available right now. That's the only reason why."

The modder went on to note that there are people selling services that allow others to have their stats and game modded. Thankfully, there are no aimbots right now that allow people to easily kill other players with minimal effort. Things could definitely be worse, but it's unfortunate that the game is so easily manipulated.

I highly recommend watching the whole video to learn more about the situation. Activision confirmed to Tdawgsmitty that it is actively investigating these issues and looking to resolve things. Only time will tell how long that takes, but at least Activision isn't abandoning these ports after bringing in a boatload of cash.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

New details about Whore of the Orient, the canceled spiritual successor to LA Noire, have been revealed by a former writer on the project.

I recently sat down with Daniel McMahon, a writer who worked on LA Noire for a YouTube video celebrating the game's recent 15th anniversary. In the second half of the video, we dove deep on Whore of the Orient, a controversial game that would've served as a spiritual successor to LA Noire. The game was in the works at Kennedy Miller-Mitchell, the production company of the Mad Max films, and was being worked on by ex-Team Bondi staff, including LA Noire writer and director Brendan McNamara.

It would've been yet another historical crime story, but this time set in Shanghai in the 1930s. McMahon stated that the game would've been more dense than LA Noire, opting to focus on more detail rather than overwhelming scale. He compared it to the shift between Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and Assassin's Creed Unity, which traded the open seas for a crowded version of Paris.

Players would've filled the shoes of a British detective in Shanghai, but Whore of the Orient would've taken a different approach to crime fighting than LA Noire. In LA Noire, players would solve murders and mysteries, meaning the crime had already happened. In Whore of the Orient, the goal was that you would work to prevent crimes before they happened and patrol the city to stop crimes.

Of course, as a British detective in a non-English speaking city, there would've been unique challenges. The team was developing concepts of a language system that would level up with XP as you progressed through the game, allowing you to speak and interact with more people. Similarly, an evolved version of LA Noire's conversation system would've also been featured, adding more branching paths to the game.

In LA Noire, the player could interview or interrogate people over the facts of a case. The player had to then study the facial expressions of the interviewee to detect whether they were telling the truth, withholding information, or outright lying. There was only one right answer, but Whore of the Orient would've had a more dynamic approach.

If the player felt someone was lying, they could choose whether to bully the information out of them or they could try a gentle approach. It allowed players to choose the kind of cop they wanted to be and roleplay, but it also meant that they might get different answers or outcomes based on their approach. There was no "right" answer in WOTO's interrogations, but there would be answers that would be more helpful than others.

"If you hit the suspect just right, you would get the entire truth revealed to you," said McMahon. "If you tried strategies in the middle, you might get an address or a name, and then you would have to go find more suspects and put more information together with."

Whore of the Orient was also exploring a more engaging combat system, with the team taking inspiration from the rhytmic combat of the Batman: Arkham series for the hand-to-hand action. Of course, there would've been gunplay as well, but there was a lot of extra attention being paid to the melee combat.

Ultimately, Whore of the Orient was canceled due to funding and publisher issues. McMahon estimated that the game was only 15% done when it was scrapped and they had a lot of work left to do. A lot of the ideas were just that: ideas. He noted that he wasn't sure all of them would've panned out and they had to nail down a lot of specifics, but it still seemed like a really exciting concept and one that would've helped expand the detective genre in gaming.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

Dead Space creator Glen Schofield has announced his retirement from the "day to day work" of the gaming industry.

Schofield took to LinkedIn to break the news with an emotional video, thanking his fans, colleagues, and the industry for supporting him throughout his career. He also took a moment to acknowledge that, although the industry is experiencing a lot of hardships right now, there are still great minds making great games.

Schofield didn't give an explicit reason for his retirement, but he has had a successful 35-year run in the industry. After beginning as an artist, Schofield climbed the ranks before becoming a producer at EA, where he contributed to James Bond and Lord of the Rings games. After his work on Bond, EA gave him the freedom to create a brand-new IP: Dead Space. With the team at Visceral Games, Schofield built one of the scariest video games ever created, and its impact has had a lasting ripple effect. Although it took inspiration from titles like Resident Evil, it was fresh, unique, and most importantly, utterly terrifying.

Following the game's success, Activision recruited Schofield to co-found Sledgehammer Games with his Visceral Games colleague, Michael Condrey. The two worked on a third-person Call of Duty game set in Vietnam for six months before eventually being asked to help co-develop Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 after Infinity Ward imploded in 2010. Despite being very new to the franchise as a creative, Sledgehammer Games helped Infinity Ward deliver a highly successful trilogy capper that also solidified Sledgehammer as one of the core Call of Duty teams.

Schofield went on to lead the development on the innovative, though notably divisive Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare before taking the franchise back to its roots with Call of Duty: WWII in 2017. Schofield eventually departed from Sledgehammer and went back to his own roots with The Callisto Protocol, a Dead Space-inspired sci-fi horror game. It was the last game Schofield helmed, though he made efforts to pitch a fourth Dead Space game to EA around the time of the 2023 remake of the first game.

Schofield contributed a lot to the gaming industry through not only his games, but also his desire to let creativity triumph. His contributions will be missed, but his impact will be felt for years to come.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

Games Done Quick canceled its sponsored stream with SNK, citing ethical concerns regarding the developer’s majority ownership by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

The cancellation occurred just two hours into the org’s speedrun of Metal Slug in a partnered celebration of the classic run-and-gun action shooter’s 30th anniversary.

The broadcast was interrupted with an announcement from the run's host, Twitch streamer Ateatree, who informed the game's speedrunning duo that he’d received a notice from GDQ regarding the stream.

“Due to ongoing concerns and statements from people watching, we do plan to rain check the rest of the runs for tonight. We all thank you very much for watching. Please be good to yourselves and each other," he said before the stream returned to an interim screen of the show's schedule.

We're so excited to be working with SNK to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Metal Slug with a speedrunning showcase!!

Tune in now and stay in touch on their socials!

Watch: https://t.co/yplBSxDmEz

FB: https://t.co/f0fdzqNmKT
TikTok: https://t.co/A2TompsFyR @METALSLUG_EN pic.twitter.com/oijwKOiYtY

— Games Done Quick (@GamesDoneQuick) July 12, 2026

Games Done Quick (GDQ) also published a statement to its official X account on July 12, explaining that this decision was made in part due to concerns from the speedrunning community regarding “human rights concerns tied to the Saudi government.”

GDQ also said it will neither accept funds from the sponsorship nor work with said sponsor again, arguing that the partnership “conflicted” with its values of “supporting human rights and inclusivity.”

The speedrunning charity group issued an apology to the community, saying it “failed to conduct the level of review our community should expect from us and that was an oversight we deeply regret and take full responsibility for.”

We have canceled our sponsored stream with SNK.

We have heard the concerns from our community regarding this partnership, specifically the company’s majority ownership by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, and the human rights concerns tied to the Saudi government.

— Games Done Quick (@GamesDoneQuick) July 12, 2026

“We especially want to apologize to the runners and our host on this stream, who had nothing to do with this decision and whose runs were disrupted as a result. This isn't a reflection on them and we are grateful for their understanding.”

Finally, GDQ promised to bolster its review process in regards to sponsors and partnerships, “including closer examination of companies’ ownership, to make sure they're aligned with our values.”

Japanese game developer and publisher SNK notably came under majority ownership by the MiSK Foundation in November 2020, a nonprofit organization owned by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.

In August 2021, MiSK Foundation CEO Badr bin Hamoud AlBadr was appointed as a director of SNK, and in the nearly six years since then, MiSK has gone on to acquire roughly 96% of the company.

SNK addressed concerns of Saudi involvement back in 2022, with producer and designer Yasuyuki Oda telling VideoGamesChronicle, “We're not a political company or anything like that, so it doesn't affect us in any way.”

"It has no – no – effect on our creative output. We have full freedom on what we want to create,” he added.

Summer Games Done Quick, the org’s annual charity speedrunning festival, ended on July 12, raising a grand total of $2,408,701 for Doctors Without Borders and bringing its 16th iteration to an end with a bang.

Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.

UPDATE: Activision has disabled select playlists in the Black Ops port as it investigates the issues with exploits.

📢 Call of Duty: #BlackOps on PS4/PS5

Select playlists have been disabled as we investigate reported issues.

— Call of Duty Updates (@CODUpdates) July 13, 2026

The original story follows below.

The new PS4 and PS5 port of Call of Duty: Black Ops is being called "unplayable" by fans after exploits have consumed multiplayer lobbies.

Last week, Activision released PS4 and PS5 ports of the first two Black Ops games, much to the joy of fans. Although they're a bit pricy for games that have no major updates or changes, fans were just excited to be able to revisit the games they love. With that said, the experience hasn't been smooth. In addition to server and hit registration issues, players are also running into compromised lobbies.

Players are able to easily host modded lobbies in Black Ops 1, allowing players to exploit the game. If you manage to get into one of these lobbies, you can just blow yourself up with a grenade as soon as you spawn, leave the game, and you will hit max rank. As a result of this, players are just entering lobbies and blowing themselves up immediately and then leaving. If the entire enemy team quits, you will win by default due to forfeit. As a result, some fans are frustrated as they can't really play or enjoy the game.

Black Ops 1 port is filled with people blowing themselves up to hit max level instantly on a 16 year old COD pic.twitter.com/toYRP8wXfq

— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) July 13, 2026

"So [Black Ops 1] is now infected with the XP thing where you max level by nading yourself then leaving," said one player. "It's leading to unplayable lobbies." Another player echoed these sentiments: "[Black Ops 1 Ground War] is literally ruined with this XP glitch. Cannot play a lobby without 6 people leaving, rejoining, and killing themselves over and over again. What a joke."

Others are using this as an opportunity to point out the hypocrisy among players, as fans have begged for new versions of older COD games only to have players ruin it.

"I don’t know what’s people obsession with getting into EXP lobbies or paying money for an UNLOCKALL like we all moaned about how s**t the current state of COD was and then as soon as we get something good, you find the quickest way to exploit the ports… hasn’t even been a week."

There are still some lobbies you can get into, but you will still see the odd player blowing themselves up in the killfeed. Ultimately, it's far from an ideal experience. Call of Duty fans have been begging Activision to re-release older entries of the franchise for over a decade and now that it has happened, they are trying to race to become the highest level in the game, even if it calls for exploits.

It's a disappointing outcome, and given such little effort was put into these ports, it's hard to imagine there will be any moderation or notable updates to fix these kinds of issues. One can only hope that once a large portion of the player base hits max rank, this issue will go away. However, it's also hard to imagine players sticking around for long if they have nothing to progress towards or unlock.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

The creative team behind LA Noire considered Mad Men star Jon Hamm for the role of Cole Phelps.

I recently interviewed Daniel McMahon, a writer who worked on the Rockstar-published LA Noire, for a YouTube video about the 2011 detective game and its cancelled successor, Whore of the Orient. Our conversation was wide-spanning, but I was curious about one thing: was Jon Hamm ever considered for a part in the game?

For those that don't know, LA Noire features a number of actors from the TV series Mad Men, including Aaron Staton, the man who plays the game's protagonist, Cole Phelps. Hamm's breakout role came from playing the lead of Don Draper in Mad Men, so I figured he must've been on developer Team Bondi's radar.

McMahon noted that Mad Men and LA Noire shared the same casting director, which is likely why the two projects share so many faces. He also confirmed to me that yes, Hamm was discussed as a possibility for the role of Cole Phelps. McMahon shared images of Hamm wearing a suit and hat from Mad Men with the team on the game, showing that he perfectly fit the vibe and tone of LA Noire. However, it didn't happen.

"It was never said at the time, but now, I understand the vision which was Jon Hamm is a wonderful actor, but he's not Cole Phelps," McMahon said. "Jon Hamm would've been a much better Jack Kelso because he's a character of great power, he's a character of control. Jon Hamm knows what he's doing and gets s**t done.

"Aaron Staton was much better at portraying Cole's fragility. A lot of the time, Cole's flapping around having no idea what he's doing. He's very smart, but he's also young, not very experienced, and he's just trying his best. So, I think Jon Hamm would've been incredible, but expensive, and probably, in the end, not as good casting for that character as Aaron Staton was."

Cole Phelps and Don Draper do share similar stories, but are portrayed completely differently. Both men are veterans trying desperately to run away from their failures overseas to avoid being consumed by guilt. They also both cheat on their wives, leading to the implosion of their families. Draper and Phelps are also consumed by their jobs and each career win inflates their ego, creating an unstainable arc. Their stories ultimately take different paths in the end, but it would've been interesting to see Hamm play Phelps or the game's second protagonist, Jack Kelso, as McMahon suggested.

Ever since LA Noire's release, fans of the game have called on Rockstar to green light a sequel. Earlier this year, Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar parent company Take-Two, gave fans a sliver of hope that LA Noire 2 might happen one day.

“Broadly, we’re looking at doing something in the future with all of our intellectual property,” he said. “There’s nothing to announce on LA Noire specifically, and if there were, it would be Rockstar announcing it, not me. But in any case, with regard to our legacy IP, the teams are always looking at what we have and we’re always thinking about it. The question is, at any given time, do we have a team that’s passionate about working on that?”

Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

Obsidian Entertainment director Brandon Adler is tired of seeing "cold take artists" who are "running their mouths" about how the studio has changed following recent Xbox layoffs.

The developer responsible for directing The Outer Worlds 2, as well as a new unannounced project, made his feelings about the conversation surrounding Obsidian clear in a LinkedIn post (via Eurogamer). Noting that it's been "an extremely difficult week" for the team, he spent time bidding farewell to those who were let go before addressing those who have been "coming out of the woodwork to talk about" what the studio "is or what it isn't."

"Another difficult aspect is having to see a bunch of cold take artists coming out of the woodwork to talk about what Obsidian is or what it isn't," Adler said. "The number of times I've seen people, with no understanding of who has worked on our previous games or what they contributed, talk about how Obsidian isn't who they used to be... is staggering. Most of the time they are not just wrong, but spreading an enormous amount of misinformation."

Obsidian was one included in the laundry list of Xbox game developers caught in the line of fire when Microsoft announced widespread layoffs last week. At the time, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma described the cuts as "the most significant restructure" the gaming company has ever seen, resulting in 1,600 staff losing their jobs immediately, while another 1,600 are still yet to come throughout the financial year.

It's a restructure that saw studios Ninja Theory and Undead Labs enter terms with new ownership as Double Fine and Compulsion Games became independent. While the fate of Marvel's Blade developer Arkane Studios remains unclear, developers like ZeniMax Online, id Software, and Obsidian are said to have lost large chunks of their teams.

Amid uncertainty across Xbox, Adler is fighting back against those misrepresenting the talent Obsidian has gathered over the years. He said that, in many cases, "the people in lead or director roles are the same people that worked on games like The Outer Worlds, Pillars of Eternity, and New Vegas."

"Like, literally the same people," he added. "The through line from KotOR2 to our current games is pretty clear.

"Is Obsidian the same as it was 20 years ago? No, of course not. Nothing stays the same. But the DNA at Obsidian is the same as it always was. The same DNA that created KotOR, New Vegas, NWN2, and Stick of Truth.

"I'm extremely proud of our history and I am also excited for who we have become."

Adler signed off, asking readers to remember that "people spouting off about Obsidian, running their mouths about who we are now vs. what we were then" are individuals who have "zero insight into how a game is made and who contributed to our previous games." Meanwhile, in the aftermath of last week's layoffs, Bloomberg reported that Obsidian recently canceled a sequel for its fantasy RPG, Avowed, and started work on a return to the Fallout universe with a new game led by Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer.

You can catch up on some of the other post-layoff news that has emerged here. For a look at what's going on at Bethesda, you can click here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Activision has clarified that its recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 ports do in fact support crossplay between PS4 and PS5, following confusion from players online.

The official Call of Duty Update X/Twitter account confirmed how the feature works amid a flurry of posts from fans across social media. It comes with clarification that those across both PlayStation platforms will be able to play multiplayer with one another, while also sharing that Season Pass owners can matchmake with non-Season Pass owners, too.

"PS4 and PS5 players are able to matchmake with one another," Activision said. "There is no cross-platform play with PS3 or other hardware platforms."

📢 Call of Duty: #BlackOps & #BlackOps2 on PS4 / PS5

PS4 and PS5 players are able to matchmake with one another. There is no cross-platform play with PS3 or other hardware platforms.

Also, Season Pass owners are able to matchmake with non-Season Pass owners in both titles.

— Call of Duty Updates (@CODUpdates) July 11, 2026

When the publisher announced Iron Galaxy was developing PlayStation ports for the classic Black Ops games with plans to launch in July, fans didn't know what to expect. With so little information to go off of, it wasn't a shock to see disappointment sweep across the internet when the titles surprise-launched last week.

A low frame-rate cap and low resolution baffled fans and tech experts alike, but most were even more concerned by what appeared to be a lack of crossplay support between the new versions. Although fans would have been happy to see Activision confirm crossplay from the get-go, news that it is indeed supported in some capacity is better late than never.

Even as players criticize what have been dubbed bare-bones ports for the two 2010s Call of Duty games, it doesn't seem to have stopped fans from flocking to the new re-releases. Despite little information being shared pre-launch, both Black Ops 1 and 2 quickly rocketed to the top of the PlayStation Store's "Best Selling" tab. Each game is available for $39.99 (or $19.99 as a limited-time offer with PlayStation Plus), with their DLC priced at $29.99 each ($9.89 for PS+).

As Black Ops 1 and 2 take players on a trip down memory lane, Activision is charging forward with the first-person shooter series' next installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. For more, you can check out IGN's original 8.5/10 review of Black Ops 1, and our 9.3/10 review of Black Ops 2.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

It’s hard to talk about modern video games without mentioning the influence of Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar’s iconic crime franchise has grown from a controversial PlayStation 1 classic to a universally recognised cultural behemoth, with its most recent entry, Grand Theft Auto 5, becoming one of the best-selling games of all time.

However, the series didn’t grow into a landmark success overnight. Rockstar has been slowly building its iconic crime series for over two decades, creating hyper-immersive open worlds that players explore for years after their release. With over sixteen Grand Theft Auto games dropping since the franchise began in 1997, new players are probably wondering where to start.

To help you get stuck in, we’ve listed every GTA game in chronological order so you can plot the best route through the timeline of this crime-riddled world. Until we finally get our hands on GTA 6, at least.

Jump to:

• How to Play in Chronological Order
  • The 2D Timeline
  • The 3D Timeline
  • The HD Timeline
• GTA Release Dates

The Grand Theft Auto Games in Order

There are a total of 16 games in the Grand Theft Auto series – eleven on home consoles, one on PC and four on handheld devices. The next Grand Theft Auto game, GTA 6, is set to release in November 2026.

Before we dive into the list, it’s first worth noting an important detail about the overall continuity of Grand Theft Auto. As confirmed by Rockstar back in 2011, the GTA series is split into three unique timelines: the 2D timeline, the 3D timeline and the HD timeline. Although events in these timelines might be similar or even identical, Rockstar doesn’t consider all of them canon to each other. As such, we’ll separate the games into their respective universes.

Which GTA Game Should You Play First?

If you're wanting to get into the Grand Theft Auto games before GTA 6 arrives, you will likely want to start with the latest in the series: GTA 5. You can certainly go back to previous games, but GTA 5 is a masterpiece in it's own right and is playable pretty much everywhere. You can also take advantage of GTA Online for multiplayer.

Otherwise, we're pretty close to that GTA 6 finish line, so if you happen to have a console, I wouldn't hold out on being a part of one of the biggest game launches of all time.

The Grand Theft Auto 2D Timeline

Below, we’ll list the Grand Theft Auto games from the 2D universe. These blurbs contain mild spoilers for each game, including characters, settings, and story beats.

1. Grand Theft Auto: London 1961

The second expansion released for the original Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto: London 1961 is one of only two GTA releases to not hit a PlayStation console, with the DLC only available to PC players.

The mission pack acts as a prequel to Grand Theft Auto’s first expansion, Grand Theft Auto: London 1969. It follows a nameless criminal rising through the ranks of the London crime families by completing jobs for a mobster called Harold Cartwright.

2. Grand Theft Auto: London 1969

The first expansion for the original Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 marked the series’ first visit to London.

The tale follows a nameless British criminal who fights against various crime syndicates while building their legend on the city’s streets. These include Harold Cartwright’s gang, which the player joins forces with in Grand Theft Auto: London 1961, as well as a pair of sinister crime lords known as the Crisp Twins.

3. Grand Theft Auto

The first entry in the mainline series, Grand Theft Auto follows the adventures of a nameless protagonist as they make their mark on the criminal underworlds of three locations: Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City.

Set in 1997, the criminal’s adventures see them complete bank heists, assassinations and getaways, building their reputation while aiding various sinister gangs. Along the way, they meet a host of high-ranking criminals, including Robert Seragliano, El Burro and Uncle Fu.

4. Grand Theft Auto 2

The second mainline entry in the series, Grand Theft Auto 2 is arguably the biggest departure for the series to date. Shifting away from the setting of the first GTA, it takes players to a nigh-on futuristic metropolis known as Anywhere City, which bears no striking resemblance to any other location in the series.

The adventure follows a criminal named Claude Speed, who works with various crime syndicates around Anywhere City to make money and earn respect. The game’s position on the timeline is tricky, mainly as in-game references allude to it taking place in both 1999 and 2013. Regardless, it’s the final game in the 2D timeline.

The Grand Theft Auto 3D Timeline

Below, we’ll list the Grand Theft Auto games from the 3D universe. These blurbs contain mild spoilers for each game, including characters, settings, and story beats.

1. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

A prequel to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the PSP’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories takes place in 1984 and follows US military soldier Victor Vance who, after being framed by his sergeant, is dishonorably discharged.

Fresh out of a job, he decides to enter Vice City’s underworld, quickly becoming the head of a crime family with the help of his brother, Lance. The pair embark on an adventure to disrupt Vice City’s crime scene, meeting and recruiting a variety of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s supporting characters along the way. By the time the game wraps up, Vic’s story catches up with the beginning of Vice City.

2. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

The fourth mainline iteration of the series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City takes place in 1986; two years after Vice City Stories. It follows Tommy Verceti, a notorious gangster from Liberty City who is sent to Vice City to oversee the expansion of his boss’ drug trade after being released from jail.

Tommy lands in hot water after a supposedly simple drug deal goes horribly wrong. Losing the drugs and money exchanged in the deal, Tommy is given one last chance to make things right.

To redeem himself, he dives into the seedy underbelly of Vice City, allying with Lance Vance to take on its various crime families and find the drugs and money stolen from him. As he becomes a bigger name around Vice City, he slowly creates a growing criminal empire, which doesn’t go unnoticed by his former employers.

3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

The fifth mainline iteration of the series, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas tells the story of Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson and the Grove Street Families.

Set in 1992, San Andreas follows CJ as he returns to Los Santos after his mother is killed in a drive-by meant to assassinate his brother. Reuniting with his friends, family and local gang, The Grove Street Families, it doesn’t take long for CJ to get stuck back into the criminal underworld, vowing to get revenge on the gang that murdered his mother.

While CJ attempts to rebuild the Grove Street gang’s former glory, it becomes clear that something shady is happening behind the scenes. Pursued by a crooked cop named Officer Tenpenny, CJ deals with betrayal, corrupt law enforcement and the various factions vying for control of Los Santos and the neighboring cities of San Fierro and Las Venturas.

4. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

Set in 1998, Liberty City Stories acts as a prequel to Grand Theft Auto 3 and follows a gangster working for Salvatore Leone named Toni Cipriani. Returning to Liberty City after fleeing to Italy to escape the repercussions of assassinating a member of the mafia, Toni gets stuck back in working for his former boss.

Along the way, he meets several high-level mafia contacts and climbs through the ranks of Sal’s gang, murdering rival crime lords and assisting Leone’s attempts to gain political sway with the mayor. The story concludes with Salvatore Leone’s family standing as one the most powerful crime syndicates in Liberty City, setting up the events of Grand Theft Auto 3.

5. Grand Theft Auto Advance

Taking place in 2000, Grand Theft Auto Advance was a Grand Theft Auto 3 prequel released on the Gameboy Advance. It follows a criminal named Mike as he attempts to get revenge for the death of his partner, Vinnie.

Deciding to leave Liberty City and find new opportunities elsewhere, the story begins with Mike and Vinnie completing jobs for the mafia in an attempt to tie up loose ends and fund their escape. However, the plan falls apart when Vinnie is killed with a car bomb, driving Mike to find and kill his murderers. In pursuit of vengeance, Mike teams with various Grand Theft Auto 3 characters, including 8-Ball and Asuka Kasen.

6. Grand Theft Auto 3

The final entry in the timeline but the first game of the 3D era by release date, Grand Theft Auto 3 takes place in 2001 and follows a new Claude, a bank robber that’s shot and left for dead by his girlfriend, Catalina, during a heist.

Claude survives but is arrested and sentenced to life in jail. However, while en route to prison, Claude manages to escape after the Columbian Cartel raided his convoy in search of another prisoner. Fleeing the scene, Claude is soon inducted into the criminal underworld of Liberty City, working with the mafia, the yakuza and various other syndicates.

Although he rises to become one of the city’s most notorious gangsters, Claude’s goal quickly becomes one of vengeance, as his path eventually crosses with Catalina, setting up an inevitable confrontation between the former couple.

The Grand Theft Auto HD Timeline

Below, we’ll list the Grand Theft Auto games from the HD universe. These blurbs contain mild spoilers for each game, including characters, settings, and story beats.

1. Grand Theft Auto 4

The first game of the HD era, Grand Theft Auto 4 takes place in 2008 and follows an Eastern European ex-soldier named Niko Bellic as he makes his way to Liberty City. Coming to America to reunite with his cousin, Roman Bellic, who has allegedly found fortune after moving to Liberty City, Niko is shocked to find Roman is actually broke, living in a cockroach-infested apartment and running a failing business.

It doesn’t take long for Niko to find work and amass cash through less-than-legal means, meeting and befriending an arms dealer named Little Jacob and working off Roman’s debts with a Russian loan shark named Vlad Glebov. However, after discovering that Vlad has been sleeping with Roman’s girlfriend, Niko kills him, sparking a chain of events which puts him and Roman in the sights of the Russian mafia.

To survive, Niko allies with the crime families of Liberty City, where he becomes tangled in their politics and becomes one of the city’s most feared criminals. All the while, Niko has an ulterior motive, wanting to track down and murder a former comrade from his days in the military that double-crossed him and his squad.

2. Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and The Damned

Set during the events of Grand Theft Auto 4, The Lost and the Damned was GTA 4’s first expansion. It follows Johnny Klebitz, the Vice President of a revered motorcycle gang called The Lost MC.

Released from a long stint in rehab, the story opens with The Lost MC’s President, Billy Grey, returning to the gang and reassuming his position as its leader. During his time away, Johnny led The Lost MC, forming a truce with the gang’s main rivals, The Angels of Death. Once reinstated, Billy and Johnny begin to clash after Billy orders The Lost to break the truce with the Angels of Death, starting a ruthless gang war.

As the two gangs battle it out, Billy begins to lead The Lost down a self-destructive path, guiding his brothers into increasingly dangerous situations. With civil war brewing in the group, Johnny is forced to consider where his loyalty lies.

3. Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony

The second of GTA 4’s expansions, The Ballad of Gay Tony also takes place alongside the core Grand Theft Auto campaign. The story follows bodyguard Luis Lopez as he tries to save the life of his boss and legendary nightclub owner, Tony Prince.

Although Tony is a fixture of Liberty City’s nightlife scene, his businesses are failing. To make matters worse, he’s also in debt to the Ancelotti crime family, who are ready to collect what they’re owed. Swearing to help his boss, Luis tries to square Tony’s debts, helping out his various criminal acquaintances.

It all crescendos with a risky plan from Tony, who decides to acquire millions of dollars worth of smuggled diamonds and exchange them in a deal. However, the plan falls apart, leading Luis on a wild goose chase around Liberty City in an attempt to retrieve the diamonds and keep Tony’s debts from catching up with him.

4. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Taking place in 2009, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars tells the story of Huang Lee, the son of a murdered Triad leader who is tasked with flying to Liberty City to deliver an ancient sword to his uncle.

After arriving in Liberty City, Huang is ambushed, with his attackers stealing the sword and shooting Huang. Believing him dead, they dump his body, allowing Huang to escape alive. Reuniting with his uncle, Huang embarks on an adventure to track down the sword and deliver it back to the Triads. Along the way, he works with various gangs and the FIB, learning that the sword’s theft may have been an inside job.

5. Grand Theft Auto Online

Although it’s difficult to judge where exactly it falls on the timeline, Grand Theft Auto Online begins shortly before Grand Theft Auto 5 and has, over the course of ten years of updates, shifted to a period of time long after the game’s main campaign.

The core story follows a player-created criminal that heads to Los Santos to find fortune, reputation and fame, creating factions, buying property and taking part in criminal ventures. The story has evolved over the years, with one of the latest updates revisiting the character of Franklin years after the events of Grand Theft Auto V, as he tasks the player with helping him in his business ventures.

6. Grand Theft Auto 5

Set in 2013, Grand Theft Auto 5 follows the story of three criminals: Franklin, Michael and Trevor. After staging his death during a bank robbery in the small town of North Yankton, Michael Townley enters a witness protection programme, moving to the sunny city of Los Santos to live a life of luxury in a giant mansion with his family.

However, he’s lured out of retirement when he meets Franklin Clinton, an ambitious small-time criminal sent to repossess Michael’s son’s car. Forming a friendship, Michael begins to mentor Franklin, eventually leading the pair to rob a jewelry store to pay off a local crime lord. However, the act doesn’t go unnoticed.

On the outskirts of Los Santos, Michael’s former friend and criminal associate, Trevor Phillips, watches a clip of the heist on the news. Realizing that his seemingly dead partner is still alive in Los Santos, Trevor heads to the city, joining Michael and Franklin to stage various elaborate heists. However, Trevor’s animosity towards Michael’s betrayal begins to drive a wedge between the group, as tensions rise and the truth behind the pair’s past comes to light.

When Are We Getting GTA 6?

While Take-Two Interactive initially announced a fall 2025 release window, GTA 6 is now slated to be released on November 19, 2026. And Rockstar actually seems pretty confident in that date, having opened preorders for the game in late June. Those preorders confirmed the existence of separate Standard and Ultimate editions, as well as the fact that the game won't include a physical disc, at least at launch. Rockstar has also confirmed the game will only be playable on consoles at launch. Nonetheless, it's already become one of the best-selling games of the year.

Few missions in GTA’s history would make such a big and noticeable change to the geography of the host city as Bomb Da Base Act II, which goes some way to explaining why all 45 seconds of this short, sharp, Tin Can Alley sniper mission remains so memorable.

By today’s standards it’s extraordinarily simple: in a world where there are entire games built around the sophisticated premise of telescopic sharpshooting, GTA 3’s 45-second dalliance with the idea hardly seems like anything to write home about. But make no mistake: with GTA 3, Rockstar invented the modern video game, and with Bomb da Base Act II, GTA reinvented itself.

Bomb Da Base proved to be a tantalising early glimpse at the ever more complex, Bruckheimer-worthy setpieces that would come to define Rockstar’s later games, their narratives, and the subversive mission design that this most Triple-A of Triple-A studios is capable of.

Few games are as seminal as GTA 3 and even fewer of them are sequels: of the big franchise entries that successfully straddled the fault line between 2D and 3D at the turn of the century, only Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time remain as revered. Prestigious company that speaks to how industry-defining this humble little crime sim series came to be, originally hailing from the relative backwater of Dundee in Scotland, a place more readily associated with tracksuit gangs, Desperate Dan, and onion pies.

And sure enough, those of us old enough to have been fans of Grand Theft Auto before it even had sequels felt right at home in GTA 3. Despite the quantum leap in world simulation and graphical fidelity it heralded, the core gameplay loop and tonal flourishes that defined the MS-DOS original were all present and correct: the open world city, the job system, the in-game radio stations. More or less everything except the casual slaughter of Hare Krishnas survived intact. Though Liberty City now felt more tangible than ever in its polygonal reimagining, GTA 3 felt like it did little to advance the series in terms of its mission design.

Until Bomb da Base.

The Italian mob are losing the streets to the Colombian Cartel. Funded by their ruthless control of the drug SPANK, the Cartel have become the dominant faction in Liberty City’s criminal underbelly and Salvatore Leone is desperate to put them out of business. By chance, a Mafia snitch by the name of Curly Bob leads you right to their secret SPANK factory: the freight ship Les Cargo, a rusting hulk of maritime contraventions moored permanently in Portland Harbour. Despite being the lynchpin of the Cartel’s entire drug operation, it’s relatively lightly guarded and structurally vulnerable to a lunch-box sized bomb going off in its bowels.

But you’re not the bomber, you’re an accessory to the bomber. And it’s here that GTA 3 gets properly interesting. Not that it isn’t brilliant up until this point, it is, but Bombing Da Base is a watershed moment in GTA 3 that comes just at the point where you think you’ve got it down.

I get it, it’s GTA with camera angles. Let me on the next island already.

No. There’s a test.

Firstly, you can’t even start the mission unless you can hand over $100,000. At this point in the game you likely do have at least this much, but it’s a high bar for entry that no previous missions have required. And if you’re the sort of player who spends most of their time playing death-by-cop in the open world instead of actually engaging with the missions and side-activities, it’s easy to keep blowing your cash on hospital fees.

So this first part of the mission filters out anyone playing like your wee brother.

Show up with the dosh, and 8-Ball introduces you to the scoped sniper rifle, along with an opportunity to practice your aim with it. Bear in mind, this is a PS2 title from before the twin-stick control paradigm and the aim-assistance that tends to come with it was fully established. The aiming is inverted as standard, which certainly didn’t help matters for the weak hearted, and the fire button is Circle, which you would naturally press with the same thumb you were aiming with. So, frankly, a lot of people needed the practice.

A short drive later, and you find yourself back in the hulking shadow of Les Cargo, the most important piece of real estate in the Cartel’s portfolio, their fortress of SPANKitude. But you’re not here to storm the gates: you’re here to run scoped hot-lead assistance from an adjacent rooftop.

There’s a beauty to the way Bomb Da Base’s action is laid out in this L-shaped curve. From your elevated vantage point, it presents as a sophisticated twist on the classic fairground shooting gallery, sans the smell of candy floss and roll-ups, where the targets don’t pop-out at you, the shooter, because they’re too busy popping out at your accomplice.

The first grunt you pop is 8 Ball’s cue to make a mad dash for the cargo hold. Desperate, yes, but not suicidal: his NPC AI is rudimentary but blessed with a faintly human sense of self-preservation. He will take cover. He will give you a chance to ice every goon before they ice him, but with an ever fleeting window of opportunity to take your shot as the mission progresses, there is a high chance of failure.

The simplicity of the mission brief was, for those of us playing the original GTA 3 in 2001, given ballast by the game’s obtuse control scheme. And arguably, this is by design: it is realistic, after all, for a high-powered sniper rifle to be unwieldy in untrained hands. Or, maybe it isn’t. Maybe the controls are just crap. Whatever the reason, this particular mission was a major choke point. Many players would never even see the next island. A lot of them were casuals, satisfied to simply wage an endless, unwinnable war against the LCPD on the island of Portland. Fine.

For the determined, it was a test of skill, perseverance, and possibly lateral thinking. It was possible to block or slow 8 Ball’s path with some strategic parking before starting his run, giving yourself ample time to take out the guards before letting him loose on the top deck. This method was fiddly and unpredictable but it did demonstrate GTA 3’s flexibility in how the player could use the open world simulation to change the odds in otherwise scripted encounters, something that would become a key part of the fun in later GTA games.

More than that, Bomb Da Base was a bold, early statement about how the player’s actions could, albeit in a contained, stage-managed way, have a permanent effect on the city itself. Most of your actions didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, almost everything you interact with in the open world is a temporary construct that spawns and then gets flushed out of memory as the game sees fit. But in these setpiece moments, your mark would be felt on the narrative, the factional politics, and the very landscape itself.

Inflicting permanent scars on the landscape is a trick that Rockstar uses with uncharacteristic restraint until GTA 5, which is chock full of subtle and unsubtle map changes, permanent and semi-permanent, as the player progresses through the single-player story. It works sensationally there, because it just makes enormous thematic sense in a game set in and around GTA’s equivalent of Hollywood to have a high instance of destructive, high-stakes, action-movie setpieces.

But in the grimy, 2 real 4 U hard-knock life of Liberty City, a rearrangement of geometry on this kind of scale was shocking and hugely impressive. It was a moment in time where the future was being invented, and showcases like this were enormously difficult to engineer on a technical level. But it impresses in a conceptual sense too: casting the protagonist in a support role while an NPC character does the actual mission is a wonderful subversion of a medium where almost nothing happens if not directly instigated by the player themselves.

Bomb Da Base would echo throughout the series as it became ever more bold and expensive. Playing an entire mission from a secondary perspective naturally gives way to the idea of playing through the same events from multiple perspectives, as happens so memorably in GTA 4 and its DLC stories, where the lives of three largely separate player characters become entangled around the nexus of a certain ill-fated diamond deal, which goes on to inform the basic idea of GTA 5’s hugely sophisticated triple-protagonist mechanic.

Like all the best things in life, as in game design, the central idea of Bomb Da Base is extraordinarily simple. But its implications were massive: it taught us that anything can happen in a Rockstar game, and sometimes it even leaves a scar.

Though its impact has been diminished by the ever ballooning spectacle of its successors and decades of quality of life improvements that have flattened out its steep difficulty, it remains one of the most important and iconic missions in what is arguably the 21st century’s most era-defining game.

GTA 3 was not a sure thing. It’s difficult to imagine now, at a time when it seems inconceivable that the next GTA won’t make a billion dollars in its opening week, but back then it was a gamble. There was no guarantee that the simplistic, top-down antics of Grand Theft Auto could be successfully reimagined as a full-blown 3D action game and Rockstar, formerly DMA Design, had seen its fair share of flops in the intervening years. But the quality of the experience, exemplified by the unassailable shock and awe of missions like Bomb Da Base, would ensure its status as a modern classic and the blueprint, the bible, the foundational work that informed everything after it.

For more deep-dives on the greatest stages, locations, and bosses in gaming history check out our previous Art of the Levels, and stay tuned for more GTA themed editions coming soon. Next month we take a deep dive into the hot Caribbean waters of Vice City’s Cop Land, so stick around!

Jim Trinca is a Video Producer at IGN, and when he isn't fawning over Assassin's Creed, he can be found watching Star Trek and eating stuff. Follow him on @jimtrinca.bsky.social, and check out The Trinca Perspective playlist over on IGN's YouTube channel!

Activision’s ports of the much-loved Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 immediately raised eyebrows for their price, but they’ve come under fire for their disappointing graphics performance, too.

The tech experts at Digital Foundry have taken a look at the port of the original 2010 Black Ops to PlayStation, and had a few choice words to say about the work Activision put into it. Chief among their complaints is the fact the Black Ops port runs at 1080p, not 4K, despite being a 16-year-old game that began life on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Not only that, there’s no anti-aliasing.

DF also criticized the frame-rate, which is limited to 60Hz even on PS5. “A 1080p60 presentation would be potentially acceptable for the PS4 version - and there is one! - but for a brand new PS5 conversion, it's disappointingly poor and well below what the hardware is capable of,” DF said.

“For a native PS5 title and a somewhat high-profile port, this is a deeply odd state of affairs,” DF continued. “Even the game's obvious visual blemishes are preserved: shadow quality was necessarily poor back in the day, but why preserve that problem in the present day when so much more graphics horsepower is available?”

If there’s a silver lining, the PS5 and PS4 versions are better than the one currently accessible on Xbox Series X and S and Xbox One via backwards compatibility, which sticks to the original Xbox 360 resolution of 608p. There are no Xbox enhancements at all.

We’ve already reported on the pricing of the PlayStation Black Ops ports, which cost $40 each. Both games also offer a separate season pass priced $29.99. So, if you want the complete experience (Black Ops 1 and 2 and all the DLC), you have to pay $140 for games. All this for games that came out over a decade ago.

It’s worth noting that if you are a PlayStation Plus subscriber you get a massive discount. In that case, both games cost $20 each and their season passes are $9 each, which makes for a $58 total if you want everything. This discount runs until August 6.

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.

Actor Peter Serafinowicz has revealed how a chance encounter with fellow Dark Souls superfan Alex Garland led to him landing a role in the upcoming Elden Ring movie.

Serafinowicz, who is best known as the voice of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, for playing Pete in Shaun of the Dead, Garthan Saal in Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Sommelier in John Wick: Chapter 2, picked Dark Souls as one of his Five Brilliant Things in an interview with British comedian Russell Howard.

Serafinowicz spoke passionately of his love for Dark Souls in the interview, explaining in great detail how its infamous difficulty makes it one of the most rewarding video games ever created. “Once that clicks, it's like, oh my god, this is the game I've been waiting for my whole life,” he said. “It teaches you that no obstacle is insurmountable. And it's just the most satisfying game that I've ever played. And there's a thing about all these games, once you play them and if they click for you, you don't want to play any other game. And I just haven't.”

Serafinowicz went on to explain how he landed one of the most iconic roles in the Dark Souls series and, later, Elden Ring: the male character's dying sounds and pain grunts. He said that he basically bullied his way into a voice acting role in Dark Souls 2, having loved the first so much. FromSoftware cast him as the voice behind Mild-Mannered Pate, but he also ended up doing something far more important…

“I eventually got in touch with the software company and said, ‘Look, I hear you're making Dark Souls 2.’ And I couldn't have been more excited that they were making another one. And I said, ‘Look, I'm an actor. I'm good at voices. I'd love to be a voice in the game.’ And I kind of bullied my way into being… I played a character in the game and they don't have big, huge cutscenes and loads of dialogue blah blah blah and dialogue trees…. kind of boring, right? Just like just these little kind of bits, you know? And so I played this character in Dark Souls 2.

“But far more thrillingly for me, they asked me to provide the exertion noises for if you played as a male character, right? So all the, 'when you die,' which is often in these games. I play Elden Ring now and they've kept my sounds in all the subsequent games.

“I always forget if when I pick it up and have a little go and I die it's like me right? It's a weird way to be immortalized in this. It's one of my proudest achievements.”

At this point Serafinowicz revealed how he went from doing voices on Dark Souls and Elden Ring to starring in the Elden Ring movie. It turns out it all came from a chance encounter with writer and director Alex Garland — also a Dark Souls and Elden Ring superfan — and a friendship that followed.

“Quite a few years ago we were in the same reception area, I was going for an audition. He had some kind of meeting there. Didn't know him, but he came over and introduced himself to me and was like, ‘You're Peter Serafinowicz aren't you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, you're Alex Garland.’ ‘Yeah, I'm a big fan.’ He was like, ‘You like video games, don't you?’ And I said, ‘Well, I like one video game.’ ‘It's Dark Souls, right?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ because I'd talked about it a bit. And he said, ‘I'm just the biggest Dark Souls fan.’ And we were just enthusing about all these different aspects of this wonderful game, and we became friends based on this little interaction, right?

“He had to go into a meeting and I left my phone number at reception. I said, ‘Could you give this to Alex Garland when he comes out? It was like a sort of date, you know. And so we became friends. Anyway, fast forward to now, Alex is currently directing Elden Ring the movie, and I'm in it! I'm in it! I just can't believe my luck. I just can't believe that, that it's like, wow, dude. Wow, man!”

It’s a fun full circle moment for Serafinowicz, who said Dark Souls and Elden Ring fans love that he’s behind the FromSoftware death noises. “One of the other cast in it, I met him the other day when I went for a costume fitting. He also is a big fan of these games. And I told him this story and then I was doing my death noise and he was like, ‘Oh, dude. Oh my god.’”

Then, after delivering a quite wonderful FromSoftware death noise to close out the interview, Serafinowicz added: “And it says, ‘You died.’ It’s so funny, right? You died. Ha ha ha ha!”

Alex Garland’s live-action adaptation of FromSoftware’s masterful, 30-million selling video game hits theaters on March 3, 2028. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Elden Ring is A24's most ambitious project ever, with a budget "well over $100 million." That makes it a more expensive production than the likes of Marty Supreme and Alex Garland's own Civil War.

The cast is headlined by Cailee Spaeny (Alien: Romulus, Civil War, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery), Ben Whishaw (Q in James Bond films Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die, and the voice of Paddington Bear), and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation, The Last of Us).

Elden Ring full cast:

• Kit Connor (Warfare, Heartstopper)
• Ben Whishaw (Peter Hujar’s Day, This is going to Hurt)
• Cailee Spaeny (Alien: Romulus, Civil War)
• Tom Burke (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Black Bag)
• Havana Rose Liu (Tuner, Bottoms)
• Sonoya Mizuno (Ex Machina)
• Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes, The Crown)
• Ruby Cruz (Bottoms, The Threesome)
• Nick Offerman (The Last of Us, Margo’s Got Money Troubles)
• John Hodgkinson (Dear England, Napoleon)
• Jefferson Hall (House of the Dragon, Oppenheimer)
• Emma Laird (28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, A Haunting in Venice)
• and Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace)

The Elden Ring movie is created “under the guidance” of FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, and “based on a mythological story” written by Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin. Last year, the New Yorker said that Garland had completed an “epic” 160-page draft, with 40 additional pages of imagery, as a script on-spec, then flew to Japan to pitch the movie himself.

That came as little surprise, given we know that Garland is an Elden Ring pro. In June last year, he told IGN he was on his seventh playthrough of Elden Ring, and revealed the boss he found the toughest to take down.

Speaking to IGN ahead of the release 28 Years Later — the zombie apocalypse film he wrote 23 years on from penning the first movie in the franchise — Garland revealed which of all of the famed foes in Elden Ring that he has settled on being the most difficult: Malenia, Blade of Miquella.

“It's Malenia who's the tough one”, Garland explained. “I'm now on my seventh playthrough of that game. I've leveled up, I've got lots of juice, and a cool sword, and stuff like that, and I just throw myself at them again, and again, and again, and again.”

“That was the technique I learned with Dark Souls," he continued. “It's not that you get better, it's more like monkeys and typewriters. You just keep doing it, and eventually, one day they're dead.”

Certainly, Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, who worked on the Elden Ring video game with FromSoftware, seems excited. Martin has described Garland as a "first rate director" and production company A24 as "kickass." Martin said his mood upon hearing the project announcement was "hopeful," as he shared a YouTube video titled "Why the Elden Ring Movie WON'T SUCK."

Photo by Sam Simpson/Dave Benett/Getty Images for British Vogue.

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.

Envisioning an alternate-universe, retro futuristic apocalypse teeming with mutated monsters, soldiers in hulking power armor and sinister human experiments disguised as bomb shelters, the Fallout franchise has spent over two decades establishing one of the richest settings in video games.

With reports of a new Fallout game in the works at Obsidian, there’s never been a better time to strap a Pip-Boy to your wrist and reacquaint yourself with the post-apocalyptic world. But where’s the best place to start? Below, we’ll run through the franchise’s entire chronological history, as well as some advice on where to start for those embarking on their first-ever Fallout adventure.

Jump to:

• How to play in chronological order
• How to play by release date

How Many Fallout Games and Expansions Are There?

In total, there are nine main Fallout games - eight on home console and two on mobile devices. There are also thirteen major expansions spread across Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4. The Fallout franchise is a core Bethesda game that will likely continue to receive support.

When does the Fallout TV show take place?

Amazon's Fallout TV series takes place in 2296, 219 years after the Great War. That puts both season at the 'latest' end of the Fallout timeline, picking up around 9 years after the main story of Fallout 4.

How to Play the Fallout Games in Order

These blurbs contain mild spoilers for each game, including characters, settings, and story beats.

One thing to note before we get started: We will not be counting two games on our chronological timeline. The first is the mobile (and now online) vault management simulator, Fallout Shelter. Although the game does follow the lore of Fallout’s vaults, it also features characters and items hundreds of years before they appear in the Fallout storyline, making it non-canon.

We also didn’t count Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, which Bethesda has confirmed takes place in its own chronology. That being said, we have included Fallout Tactics, despite its canonicity being questioned. Although Bethesda has since retconned elements of Tactics’ story, certain events from its narrative have been referenced in future games, making it at least semi-canon to the timeline.

Finally, we won’t be including any expansions that don’t contain story content. For example, Fallout 4’s Wasteland and Contraptions Workshop expansions aren’t featured on the list. The same goes for New Vegas’ Courier Stash DLC.

1. Fallout 76

Bethesda’s most recent addition to the Fallout canon is the first on the chronological timeline. Fallout 76 is an online experience that follows the first vault dwellers to enter the wasteland 25 years after nuclear war eviscerated the world.

Taking on the role of one of these pioneers, the player’s journey begins as they exit the titular Vault 76 and embark on a journey through Appalachia in search of their missing overseer. Along the way, they discover the world they once knew has been transformed into a nuclear hellscape, complete with mutated monstrosities, long-dormant killer robots, and zombie-like irradiated humans known as Ghouls. To survive, they can team up with other survivors, build bases, complete quests, and reestablish a community among the ruins of a fallen world.

Fallout 76 was Bethesda’s attempt at creating a fully online Fallout game for the first time, allowing players to explore the wasteland with friends. Although it was received poorly at release, it has been updated frequently in the years since, with the Wastelanders and Steel Reign updates adding NPCs and new questlines.

2. Fallout

Fast forward 59 years and we reach the events of the first game in the series. Developed by Interplay Productions, Fallout follows a vault dweller living in a bomb shelter known as Vault 13. Hiding away from the apocalyptic wasteland outside their doors, the player’s peaceful lifestyle is thrown into chaos after the vault’s water systems stop working, threatening the lives of everyone living in Vault 13.

They’re tasked with a seemingly simple mission: venture into the wasteland, recover a new water chip, and return home to save their fellow survivors. However, the stakes of the vault dweller’s mission become far grander after they encounter an army of mutated abominations known as Super Mutants and their leader, the Master. Not only do these monsters jeopardize the future of Vault 13, but they pose a major threat to the entire wasteland.

Offering a markedly different gameplay style to the Bethesda-developed Fallout games released years later, the first Fallout was an in-depth CRPG, featuring turn-based combat and a top-down camera. That being said, much of Fallout’s future was present in its first entry, including a heavy focus on player choice and immersive role-playing.

3. Fallout Tactics

Three decades later, we reach the events of Fallout Tactics: a strategy spin-off developed by Micro Forté. Although some of the lore of Fallout Tactics has since been retconned and is considered non-canon by Bethesda, certain events from its story have been referenced in future games, making it at least partially part of the timeline.

The game itself sees players lace up the boots of an initiate of the iconic power-armour-clad faction, the Brotherhood of Steel. Joining the army’s ranks and leading a group of fellow soldiers, they complete various missions across the Wasteland.

Fallout Tactics took the gameplay of Fallout in a new direction, as players command their squad through a series of strategic battles against iconic foes such as Super Mutants, Ghouls and Deathclaws.

4. Fallout 2

Fourty-four years after Fallout Tactics concludes, the events of Fallout 2 take place. With Black Isle Studios taking the reins as developer, Fallout 2 was the series’ first major sequel, this time following a descendent of the Vault Dweller from the original game known as the Chosen One.

After their settlement is hit by a long drought, the Chosen One is selected to leave the confines of their home in search of a terraforming device known as a G.E.C.K. Their adventure takes them across the vast reaches of the Wasteland, landing them in the sights of a highly advanced faction known as the Enclave. As the Chosen One dives deeper into the faction’s goals, they discover the group’s hard at work on a sinister experiment.

5. Fallout 3

After Bethesda purchased the rights to the Fallout license in 2007, Bethesda Game Studios took its first crack at the franchise with Fallout 3. Set three decades after Fallout 2, Fallout 3 picks up the story in the new setting of the Capital Wasteland, casting players as a vault dweller known as the Lone Wanderer.

Living a mundane life within the sealed walls of Vault 101, the Lone Wanderer’s life is thrown into chaos after their father mysteriously disappears, causing the protagonist to be exiled from their home. Beginning a journey across the Capitol Wasteland in search of their father, they discover his disappearance may be more significant than it first seemed and eventually become embroiled in a sinister plot concocted by the Enclave.

Fallout 3 acted as a major reinvention of the Fallout series, trading in the previous entries’ CRPG gameplay for a fully 3D world with real-time shootouts, a first-person camera, and the series’ now-signature V.A.T.S. targeting system.

6. Fallout 3 - Operation Anchorage

The first expansion for Fallout 3, Operation Anchorage offers players a series of new quets set during the events of the main campaign. The story follows the Lone Wanderer helping the Brotherhood of Steel enter a sealed pre-war armory. The only way in is to survive a simulation of the infamous Battle of Anchorage, which took place in Alaska prior to the nuclear war that destroyed Fallout’s world.

Throughout the campaign, the player steps inside the simulation and takes on the role of an American soldier fighting against Chinese troops, experiencing Anchorage firsthand. The DLC allows players a lengthy glimpse of a previously unseen part of Fallout’s lore, as well as offering plenty of new combat encounters.

7. Fallout 3 - The Pitt

Fallout 3’s second major expansion, The Pitt also takes place during the events of the main campaign. It adds a new locale for players to explore in the titular Pitt, a ruthless, plague-infested city found amongst the ruins of Pittsburgh.

After meeting a slave that escaped the city, the expansion begins with the Lone Wanderer venturing to The Pitt to find a cure for a rampant disease that’s been transforming the population into blood-thirsty monsters. Along the way, they become involved in the conflict between the enslaved citizens and their raider masters, making tough decisions that will forever alter The Pitt and its inhabitants.

8. Fallout 3 - Point Lookout

Fallout 3’s fourth add-on, Point Lookout is set during the events of the main campaign and takes players to an all-new setting, with the Lone Wanderer setting sail for the haunting swamps of the titular coastal town. The expansion begins with the Lone Wanderer offering to help a mother find her missing daughter, Nadine, who recently embarked on a journey to Point Lookout.

Upon arriving in the town, they quickly discover the truth behind Nadine’s disappearance runs much deeper than expected. Lodging themselves in the center of a long-standing rivalry between the owner of a local mansion and a tribe of cultists, the Lone Wanderer is forced to contend with the swamp’s eerie mutated inhabitants, confront buried secrets, and even endure impromptu brain surgery in a bid to survive.

9. Fallout 3 - Mothership Zeta

The last expansion added to Fallout 3, Mothership Zeta is set during the events of the main campaign and offers a unique, B-movie sci-fi spin on the franchise.

After responding to a radio signal out in the wasteland, the Lone Wanderer is abducted by a UFO, experimented on by aliens, and imprisoned on their craft. Escaping their cell, the player teams with the aliens' other human prisoners to overthrow their extraterrestrial captors and return to Earth.

10. Fallout 3 - Broken Steel

The third expansion for Fallout 3 but the only add-on to take place after the events of the main story, Broken Steel acts as an epilogue with a new ending. Although players were originally unable to continue their Fallout 3 save after the credits rolled, Broken Steel added the ability to resume their adventure, alongside delivering a short series of new missions.

Surviving their encounter with Colonel Autumn in the Purity Project control room, the expansion sees the Lone Wanderer team once again with the Brotherhood of Steel, assisting the group in eradicating the Enclave from the Capitol Wasteland for good.

11. Fallout: New Vegas

In the years following Fallout 3, Obsidian Entertainment took its crack at the Fallout license with a spin-off titled Fallout: New Vegas. Set four years after the events of the previous game, New Vegas tells the story of a courier who’s ambushed, shot, and left for dead in the Mojave Wasteland while transporting a priceless package to the glitzy, reclaimed streets of Las Vegas.

Found and patched up by a group of local settlers, the courier rises from their grave and proceeds to track down the man who attempted to kill them, unwittingly becoming the center of a power struggle between the various factions vying for control of the New Vegas strip. As they dig deeper into the package they carried and the man who stole it from them, the Courier realizes their decisions have the potential to change the Mojave Wasteland forever.

12. Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money

The first expansion released for Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Money is set during the events of the main campaign and offers a new locale to explore. Taking players to the Sierra Madre, the story sees the Courier kidnapped, fitted with an explosive collar, and forced to rob a seemingly impenetrable pre-war casino with the help of three unlikely allies.

The task, by all accounts, is a suicide mission. The casino is surrounded by a cloud of deadly toxic gas, while a faction of ruthless survivors known as the Ghost People patrol the streets eliminating any and all treasure hunters. It falls to the Courier to organize a daring heist with the help of their allies to bypass the casino’s defenses and access the legendary loot behind its walls.

13. Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts

The second expansion to hit Fallout: New Vegas, Honest Hearts falls within the events of the main campaign and sees the Courier venture to Zion National Park. There, they stumble across Joshua Graham, the legendary “Burned Man” who has become something of a bogeyman to Caesar's Legion after surviving a seemingly fatal run-in with the faction’s ruthless leader.

Finding themselves in the center of a war between the Burned Man’s army and a rival tribe known as the White Legs, the player must team with Graham to save Zion and its people.

14. Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues

The third New Vegas expansion, Old World Blues takes place during the main campaign and begins with the Courier tracking down a crashed satellite projecting a mysterious message. After interacting with the satellite, the Courier is knocked out and taken to a scientific facility contained within Big Mountain, where they discover they’ve undergone a mysterious surgical procedure.

Exploring the facility, they meet a panel of nonsensical AI scientists, who inform them that their brain has been stolen by a nefarious robot known as Doctor Morbius. Teaming with their new AI allies, they adventure across the research facility to defeat Morbius, retrieve their brain, and learn more about Big Mountain’s secrets.

15. Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road

The fourth and final New Vegas expansion, Lonesome Road takes place prior to the conclusion of the main campaign but wraps up a lot of outstanding story beats established during the main game and previous DLCs.

The adventure sees the Courier venture into a new area known as The Divide in search of Ulysses, the courier originally designated the job of transporting the platinum chip before it was entrusted to the lead protagonist. Promising answers about his real identity, Ulysses summons the Courier for one final confrontation, putting the pair on a crash course that will unveil their dark pasts.

16. Fallout 4

Returning to the IP for the first time since 2008’s Fallout 3, Bethesda released Fallout 4 in 2015. Beginning on the day the bombs fell, players take on the role of a civilian known as the Sole Survivor who takes refuge in Vault 111 with their spouse and son. Cryogenically frozen inside the vault, the Sole Survivor wakes up two hundred years later, finding their spouse dead, their son missing, and the world destroyed.

Emerging into the Commonwealth, Bethesda’s apocalyptic take on the Greater Boston region, they begin a tireless journey to track down their son. Along the way, they lock horns with a mysterious, scientifically advanced faction called the Institute, which kidnaps wastelanders and replaces them with sentient robots known as synths.

As their fight against the Institute rages on, the Sole Survivor learns the dark secrets behind the Institute's plans, eventually teaming with the various factions of the wasteland to bring the group down.

17. Fallout 4 - Automatron

The first story expansion for Fallout 4, Automatron takes place during the events of the main story and sees the Sole Survivor go up against an antagonist known as the Mechanist.

It features a short chain of new quests in which the Sole Survivor battles the Mechanist’s robots and eventually tracks their foe down to their lair. The main purpose of the add-on, however, is adding the ability to build and mod robots you can take with you around the wasteland.

18. Fallout 4 - Far Harbour

The second story expansion for Fallout 4, Far Harbour is set during the events of Fallout 4’s main campaign, and sees the Sole Survivor sail to the eerie titular island in search of a missing girl. There they find a secret community of independent synths led by advanced AI known as DiMA.

As DiMA reveals new information about his community and Far Harbour, it becomes clear that the island is caught in a struggle between the locals and a radiation-worshipping cult known as the Children of Atom, who are attempting to cover the island in radioactive fog. It doesn’t take long for the Sole Survivor to get caught up in this dispute, giving them the power to make decisions that will irreversibly change the spooky locale and its citizens.

19. Fallout 4 - Vault-Tec Workshop

A small expansion released after Far Harbour, Vault-Tec Workshop takes place during the campaign and sees the Sole Survivor take on the task of building their very own vault. After liberating Vault 88 from raiders, the Sole Survivor meets an overseer trapped within the ruins who intends to revamp the abandoned bomb shelter.

Assisting her, the player is able to build their dream vault, recruit dwellers to live inside it and increase the shelter to maximum efficiency.

20. Fallout 4 - Nuka World

The final story expansion for Fallout 4, Nuka World is set during the events of the main campaign and hands the Sole Survivor the keys to an all-new area containing a massive, Nuka-Cola-themed amusement park.

After arriving and immediately being pitted against a series of ruthless raiders, trap rooms and robotic enemies, the player is granted the title of Nuka-World overboss. However, the position is hardly the dream job it's cracked up to be. Their new-found leadership requires that they deal with three raider factions living in the park, forcing the Sole Survivor to decide whether to appease them and grow their territory or eradicate them altogether.

What’s Next for Fallout?

Bethesda has made it clear Fallout 5 is on the way, but we're not entirely sure on when to expect it. Speaking to IGN back in 2022, Fallout director Todd Howard confirmed Fallout 5 will come after The Elder Scrolls 6. Howard has also teased additional projects, which may include a Fallout 3 and/or New Vegas Remaster.

More recently, in the midst of a massive Xbox restructuring, Obsidian announced the cancelation of an Avowed sequel in favor of focusing the team on a new Fallout game.

Otherwise, the latest addition to the Fallout universe is technically the Fallout TV show, which has two seasons streaming on Prime Video. The first season quickly became one of Prime Video's most successful series ever. Season 2 brings us to New Vegas, though is taking a "fog of war" approach to the multiple endings from the original game. Season 3 has been greenlit

Callum Williams is a freelance media writer with years of experience as a game critic, news reporter, guides writer and features writer.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 are now available on PS4 and PS5, but they won't come cheap.

Both of the original Black Ops games have been released digitally on PS4 and PS5 for $40 each. That means if you want both games, they'll cost $80... and if you want all of the DLC, that's also going to cost you. Both games offer a separate season pass, priced at $29.99 a piece. So, if you want the complete experience, you will have to pay a whopping $140 for games that came out a decade and a half ago, something fans had been fearing for the last few weeks.

There is one saving grace, though. If you are a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you get a massive discount. Both games are $20 each and their season passes are $9 each, coming out to a total of about $60 total, which is a bit easier to stomach. This discount runs until August 6, so there's plenty of time to jump on this deal.

There is also a free pack for Black Ops 2 that offers access to the customization packs that were available for purchase in the original game. There are no new features with these ports and there's no crossplay, which may actually be a good thing. The servers for the original versions of these games are a mess thanks to hackers, so having a fresh start is probably the best for everyone.

Additionally, some content is missing from these games. CharlieIntel reports that wager matches and theater mode have been removed, something that players suspected when the trophy lists leaked earlier this week. Beyond that, the games' content remain unchanged and players will have full access to the campaign, multiplayer, and Zombies. And yes, the infamous emblem editor also manged to remain in the game.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.