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A year after laying off five percent of its workforce - impacting 670 employees - EA has reportedly cut more than 300 additional jobs, as part of what it called "select changes" at the company. The move has also seen the publisher cancel a number of in-development projects, said to include a new Titanfall game.

EA's latest round of layoffs was initially reported by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who - citing a source "familiar with the cuts" - claimed "between 300 and 400 positions" had been eliminated. Around 100 of those cuts were said to have been made at Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi studio Respawn Entertainment.

An EA spokesperson confirmed layoffs had been made in a statement shared with Bloomberg, writing, "As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we've made select changes within our organisation that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth."

A follow-up statement from Respawn acknowledged it had made some "targeted team adjustments", specifically impacting its Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi teams. "These decisions aren't easy and we are deeply grateful to every teammate affected," it added. The studio also confirmed it had "made the decision to step away from two early-stage incubation projects".

Bloomberg reports one of these projects, codenamed R7, was an extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe. It seems likely this is the same Titanfall project - lead by Titanfall 1 & 2 director Steve Fukuda - confirmed to be in early development at the start of 2024. Notably, this is the second Titanfall project cancelled by EA in recent years; an Apex/Titanfall crossover, dubbed Titanfall Legends, was reportedly canned in 2023.

"Looking ahead," Respawn's statement continued, "our commitment to player-first experiences remains unchanged... For Apex Legends, that means not just delivering competitive, innovative seasons - but expanding what Apex can be." The studio also highlighted its continuing work on the next Star Wars Jedi game, saying it was "aiming to raise the bar again for storytelling and gameplay."

Today's layoffs mean EA has now laid off more than 1800 employees since March 2023. Despite that figure, the company's top executives earned $60m in the fiscal year 2024, $25.6m of that going to CEO Andrew Wilson.

Alongside its next-gen console plans, Microsoft reportedly has three new Xbox controllers in development, including the Elite Series 2's long-awaited successor.

Windows Central's Jez Corden has suggested that three new controllers are in development. However, it's worth noting that the claim during a recent episode of the Xbox Two podcast, as Corden says it's "not necessarily something I'm willing to put into a report yet because I don't have a huge amount of information on this stuff — so take it with a pinch of salt for now."

With that in mind, Corden suggests that alongside a new base controller that will likely be the next generation of the current Xbox Series X|S controller, there are apparently two other premium controllers in the works. One of the controllers is said to be an Elite Series 3, the long-awaited successor to 2019's Elite Series 2.

"We are getting some kind of Elite Series 3," Corden said. "I don't know if it'll be announced in June, though — I think maybe you see it next year, maybe it launches with the next-gen Xbox, we'll see."

As for the other controller, it's reportedly the codenamed Sebile controller that was leaked during Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition. Corden suggests it'll be a mid-range option, with a more expensive version that uses a new feature called Direct-To-Cloud, letting you connect the controller directly to your router as a Wi-Fi connection to eliminate lag when playing games via Xbox Cloud Gaming. According to the original leak, the Sebile controller will also feature haptic feedback, an accelerometer, new modular thumbsticks, and other upgrades over the basic Xbox controller.

Earlier this year, Corden reported that the next generation of Xbox consoles has been greenlit at Microsoft, and could potentially arrive in 2027. Backwards compatibility is said to be a key feature, and the consoles will reportedly be "closer to Windows than ever before," making it easier for developers to port PC games to Xbox. The company is also working on an official Xbox handheld, although Phil Spencer says it is still "years away." With that said, a partnered device could launch later this year from ASUS, and the company seems to be teasing it already.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has already proven to be quite a success with over four million players checking it out at launch, and now the teams at Bethesda and Virtuos are apparently taking suggestions from the fanbase.

If there is something you've stumbled across that doesn't seem right, or ideas you think could improve the overall experience. the official Discord is apparently taking suggestions on board. As explained by a post over on the Elder Scrolls subreddit:

"Bethesda is taking suggestions for things to add/to change in Oblivion Remastered on their official discord. All suggestions are apparently being relayed to the developers and so far nothing has been ruled out so feel free to drop in anything you want to see either in or changed in the game."

As noted, these suggestions are apparently being relayed to the development team, so if you think you've got an idea that might benefit the overall experience, it's well worth sharing. While this remaster has been widely praised, it is still admittedly rough around the edges in some departments such as performance.

Eurogamer notes how some of the top ideas so far seem to include additional difficulty levels, clear tags for completed dungeons, and even quality-of-life improvements and features - like a photo mode and the ability to call your horse.

Oblivion Remastered fixed (and introduced) various bugs, and last week the developers rolled out the first update.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has sold over a million copies, publisher Kepler Interactive has announced.

We already knew the debut RPG from developer Sandfall Interactive got off to a flying start given it hit a sales milestone of 500,000 copies sold within 24 hours, and now it's doubled that.

"And here we are. Three days after launch. One million copies sold. Thank you for believing in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33," the studio said on social media over the weekend.

That's not the only milestone it hit, either. According to SteamDB, over the weekend Clair Obscur hit a concurrent peak of 121,422 players on Steam. That's significantly ahead of the concurrent peak of any other game from notable RPG developer Atlus, including fellow RPG darling Metaphor: ReFantazio, which released in October 2024 and boasts a concurrent peak of 85,961 players.

Of course, concurrent records are not indicative of the entire player base — Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also released on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X and S, and was a day-one launch on the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription — so the actual number of players who jumped in over the weekend is likely much highly than that, suggesting Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is very popular right now.

In IGN's 9/10 review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, we described it as a "modern RPG classic." Developed by the newly formed studio Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG that takes heavy inspiration from the genre classics, and follows a crew of Expeditioners in a post-apocalyptic world where each year, a giant being called The Paintress etches a new number and erases anyone older than it. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sees you join the crew that travels to the ends of the continent to destroy the Paintress.

If you started over the weekend, or are maybe thinking of jumping in this week, be sure to check out our tips for the important things to know before going into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

I'm usually a fan of turn based games (unless it's tactical grid based) but I've gotta say I'm having a great time with this game!

Oblivion Remastered is undeniably the game of the moment right now, although the excellent Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is getting a lot of well-deserved attention too. Bethesda and Xbox both took to social media to share the remaster's latest success milestone: four million players just three days after launch.

"We are so grateful to the over 4 million of you that have already ventured into Cyrodiil with Oblivion Remastered," reads a post from Bethesda that was shared to Twitter and Bluesky. "Thank you!"

Xbox responded with a virtual handshake and congratulations referencing the Elder Scrolls' series much memed-about cheese wheels: "That's a lot of cheese wheels in pockets. Huge congrats."

It's worth meditating for a second on just how successful this remaster has been from pretty much every available metric, although it's also worth noting that its massive impact has been to the detriment to some other developers caught off guard by it being shadow dropped.

Oblivion Remastered has seen near universal acclaim from critics and players since its launch on April 22, it's dominating the Steam charts, and now we know it's selling like cheese-flavored hotcakes (gross?) in general.

This wasn't inevitable. We've seen botched remakes, remasters, and ports of beloved games enough times to know Oblivion: Remastered was never a guaranteed win for Xbox and Bethesda. But as it turns out, meticulously rebuilding an old game for years, adding meaningful quality of life improvements without messing with the core structure of the game, and releasing it in a respectable state on all platforms is a pretty foolproof formula for success. Who woulda thunk it?

Having finally seen The Outer Worlds 2 for myself, it’s clear that leaning into deeper RPG elements was one of the priorities for developer Obsidian. Where the first game was more approachable with streamlined systems and progression for building out your character, the sequel is about avoiding homogeneity, and even egging you on to play in unorthodox fashion. But it’s not entirely about being complex for the sake of it. The Outer Worlds 2 wants players to get creative, become more specialized with the things they spec into, and embrace the oddball choices they may have to make.

“We're looking for ways to incentivize the player to experiment with different builds, either traditional or non-traditional,” design director Matt Singh told me in a conversation about how the team has revamped its RPG mechanics. When speaking to the broader approach, he said “We really wanted to lean into synergies, looking at how player Skills, Traits, and Perks can all infuse into interesting builds that play off of other systems.” You could see some of these ideas at work in our exclusive 11 minutes of The Outer Worlds 2 gameplay, where the new gunplay, stealth, gadgets, and dialogue were showcased. But for this part of our IGN First for exclusive coverage on The Outer Worlds 2, we’re focusing on the nitty gritty of how all these systems have been reworked and what you can expect from them.

Rethinking the Skill System “We would often see characters good at everything, which by the end of the game, minimized your personal experience with your character,” lead systems designer Kyle Koenig told me when reflecting on the first game and considering changes for the sequel. Part of how Obsidian is doing that is by moving away from the Skill categories that grouped your stats together in the original and going with individual Skills that have more drastic differences between them. “We wanted to focus on making each individual level-up and investment really important. There's less confusion on when I should invest in one Skill or the other. If I want to be a player that's all about guns and using medical devices, I know which Skills I really need to care about. By having them separated and not in groupings, it lets characters be more specialized.”

Singh added, “There's more than just a traditional stealth-focused build, combat-focused build, or speech-focused build. There's a lot of blending of concepts, playing with other systems and incorporating those into a pretty broad, but unique range of different player profiles.” He alluded to having certain investments in Skills manifest in other ways such as Observation, which can highlight things in the environment that you wouldn’t be able to identify otherwise like secret doors or objects to interact with that can lead to alternate paths forward.

On the surface, that may seem expected for an RPG – if anything, The Outer Worlds was the outlier with the way it grouped Skills together. However, in the sequel, it’s about using the revised Skill system to create greater distinctions and open more possibilities in character builds, especially as it relates to the revamped Perks system.

The Perks of Getting Experimental Obsidian seems focused on specificity and offering unique avenues for play. “We've significantly increased the number of Perks with over 90 of them – each of those requiring various Skills to unlock. As you invest in Skills, it changes how you can invest in Perks and leads you down many different paths,” Koenig explained. He gave an example with a Perk called Run and Gun for those who prefer using shotguns, SMGs, and rifles which allows you to fire while sprinting or sliding, and combined with Tactical Time Dilation (TTD), bullet-time action can very much be part of your repertoire in The Outer Worlds 2. He also teased Space Ranger, which is a Perk that gives you certain interactions in dialogue while granting you damage boosts based on your Speech stat. “The way we looked at them when designing them was to look at what are all the different modes of gameplay the player has, and what are all the actions they can take and how can we modify them,” he stated.

The Outer Worlds 2 wants players to get creative, become more specialized with the things they spec into, and embrace the oddball choices they may have to make. “We have a lot of Perks that are catered towards non-traditional play styles,” Singh mentioned, giving an example of carving out a build for players who essentially kill every NPC in sight. You can go down that route and lean into it with Perks such as Psychopath and then Serial Killer that’ll grant bonuses, like permanent health boosts, for playing this way. “Especially in an Obsidian game where we allow you to kill anybody – the game's going to respond, it's going to roll with it, and you're going to still be able to complete the game. It's actually a really fun way to play in a second or third playthrough just to see how far you can take it.”

As for more traditional playstyles, Koenig gave some insight on character builds that take advantage of the elemental aspects of combat by exploiting the different damage types. “Even if you want to mix and match them, you can be a character that's all about plasma and burning things alive while getting healing from it – or using shock damage to scramble automechs and have them fight for you temporarily while paralyzing creatures and humans – or using corrosive damage to take away all their armor and make it so all your attacks against them are critical hits that deal insane amounts of damage.”

Singh stressed that there are other avenues to get experimental, referencing opportunities to opt into detrimental effects that’ll buff another aspect of your character. He mentioned mechanics that can reward you for putting yourself in harm's way, positing the question, “How do I construct a build where I'm actually incentivized to get in there and take damage so that I can then do other things effectively? I really like those kinds of creative builds that allow you to play with that idea and convert something that might be negative into a positive aspect of your build.” That design philosophy was part of the original, but now that’s a driving force for The Outer Worlds 2, especially as it relates to Traits and Flaws.

The Positive and Negative Traits “One of the things in The Outer Worlds that was a key off of Fallout was you could have negative attributes that would be actively detrimental to your character, but you get a few extra points to spend somewhere else,” Koenig mentioned. A way that manifested in the original was through the Flaws system, which gave you the option to take a permanent effect based on your in-game behavior in exchange for an extra Perk point. But from what I’ve seen thus far, this idea is expanding two-fold in The Outer Worlds 2.

The system of Positive Traits and Negative Traits is integral to that give-and-take where you can choose a negative one to be able to select an additional positive. For example, you can take Brilliant that grants you extra Skill points in character creation, or Brawny that lets you knock targets down by sprinting into them. And if you want more positives, you’d have to select a negative such as Dumb that locks you out of ever investing points into five Skills, or Sickly that permanently lowers your base health and tolerance for toxicity. Those are just a few of the options I was able to see in these early stages.

Although I will go into much more depth with the revamped Flaws in another article, I can say that The Outer Worlds 2 is getting much more creative in goofy and clever ways (and sometimes both). I found myself turning down most, if not all, Flaws in the original game since I didn’t have much use for extra Perk points and the compromise often wasn’t worth it. In this sequel, the game itself is still monitoring your behavior and habits, but Flaws are now built with specific conditions that are both positive and negative – it’s as if there’s another layer of the Traits system, but popping up unexpectedly based on how you’re playing. You’ll still have to opt into them, but they will be a permanent part of your character.

Guiding Players and Ditching Respec There seem to be a lot more moving parts in The Outer Worlds 2, and another focus from Obsidian was to make these aspects digestible and clear, whether it be from in-game explanations or UI elements. “Right from the get-go, from character creation, we really wanted to put in the forefront what are the differences of these skills and what they do,” Koenig told me. It’s not just in the help text, but also in short videos in the menus that show examples of the gameplay impact. The thing that stood out to me was being able to mark Perks as favorites before unlocking them in order to help organize and plan out a certain progression path or build. Mapping them out seems intuitive as well since the requirements are shown off the bat and icons in the menu help signify a Perk’s general playstyle and Skill it applies to.

“We're looking for ways to incentivize the player to experiment with different builds, either traditional or non-traditional.” It’s apparent that Obsidian wants players to carefully consider these choices, however, especially since there is no respec past the introductory sequence – meaning, once you’ve invested in a Skill, Perk, or Trait, your character has to live with that choice throughout your playthrough. Koenig said, “By removing respec, we really incentivize it to be your experience. It is a part of your experience that no one else had, and I think that's really special about RPGs and something that respec tends to lessen.”

As for Singh, he told me “Philosophy-wise, we really feel all of your choices should matter. They should be meaningful changes to your gameplay experience. And he concluded, “This is just one of those ways where we're asking you to make a choice, stick to it, and see how that plays out in interesting and fun ways.”

We're covering so much more of The Outer Worlds 2 in this month's IGN First. Stay tuned for a breakdown of the new Flaws system, all the wild and wacky weapons, and how expansive its open regions and levels are going to be with our interviews from key developers at Obsidian.

Whether you're a fan of games like this or not, Drug Dealer Simulator is evidently getting a fair bit of interest prior to its Xbox arrival - and it's also been wrapped up in controversy over the past week on the Steam platform.

We talked about this exactly seven days ago - it was the story about Schedule 1 being "investigated" ahead of Drug Dealer Simulator's Xbox release. Since then, Drug Dealer Simulator has continued to suffer "overwhelmingly negative" reviews on Steam, and the publisher actually issued a statement to try and cool the controversy.

Here's a bit of what that statement had to say, along with our original story about it below:

*The analysis and investigation were necessary in the light of repeating opinions that the games are very similar. By not investigating it, Movie Games, being a publicly traded company, could face severe consequences for negligence.

There is no ill will towards TVGS. We even mailed them best wishes shortly before the release, when the game was already huge, but before the investigation was deemed necessary. However, we are obligated to perform this investigation, act accordingly to the scope of the infringement if it is confirmed, and inform the public about it via ESPI.*

Anyway, let's talk about this week's launch! Drug Dealer Simulator has an official Xbox release date of April 16th, 2025. On that day, it'll be available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and you can actually see a comparison of how each of those versions will look in the trailer at the top of this article.

The game has proved popular on PC over the years, and it's since received a sequel that hasn't yet been announced for Xbox. In Drug Dealer Simulator, it's your job to build a crime empire "without the legal and moral consequences", and the Xbox version specifically includes all six content updates along with an apparent "visual overhaul".

We'll throw more screenshots down below, and the game will go live on the Xbox Store this Wednesday.

BioWare suffered from friction between its Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams, a former developer has claimed.

Writing on social media, Dragon Age creator and former lead writer David Gaider has discussed his experiences at the studio prior to his departure in 2016, and said that staff working on the studio's two biggest franchises "didn't get along".

This was something Gaider said he experienced personally when he moved across to join the main Mass Effect team as they worked on the ill-fated Anthem, after completing work on the original Mass Effect trilogy.

"For a long time it was basically two teams under one roof: the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team," Gaider wrote. "Run differently, very different cultures, may as well have been two separate studios. And they didn't get along.

"The company was aware of the friction and attempts to fix it had been ongoing for years, mainly by shuffling staff between the teams more often. Yet this didn't really solve things, and I had no idea until I got to the [Anthem] team. The team didn't want me there. At all."

Gaider says he had been specifically asked by BioWare management to write a science fantasy story for Anthem, after the project had initially been concepted as a "hard sci-fi setting" akin to Aliens. And while Gaider says he was just following orders, his new colleagues were seemingly unaware of why he was writing something they thought was "too Dragon Age".

"I kept getting feedback about how it was 'too Dragon Age' and how everything I wrote or planned was 'too Dragon Age'... the implication being that anything like Dragon Age was bad," Gaider continued. "And yet this was a team where I was required to accept and act on all feedback, so I ended up iterating CONSTANTLY."

"I won't go into detail about the problems except to say it became clear this was a team that didn't want to make an RPG. Were very anti-RPG, in fact. Yet they wanted me to wave my magic writing wand and create a BioWare quality story without giving me any of the tools I'd need to actually do that."

Ultimately, Gaider departed BioWare after 17 years following a failed attempt to bargain for a creative director position on another project after Anthem, and some "blunter words" on the likelihood of him having success outside the company if he did quit.

"I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do, but I wanted OUT," Gaider concluded.

Since departing BioWare, Gaider has gone on to developer Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical at new outfit Summerfall Studios, which launched to a generally positive response in 2023. The studio's next project will be a demonic deckbuilder called Malys.

BioWare continued work on Anthem for several years, though the project ultimately launched as a critical and commercial failure. The studio subsequently released the well-received Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in 2021, followed by Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which garnered positive reviews but lacklustre sales.

A newly-slimmed down BioWare is now working solely on the next Mass Effect, first announced back in December 2020.

I've been trying to distill my thoughts and feelings about playing Marathon into something easily communicable and I keep coming back to Season 6, Episode 13 of The Simpsons. In the episode, titled "And Maggie Makes Three," Homer learns that he's become a father for the third time and, in response, reacts with a despondent thumbs up that simultaneously acknowledges that something good has happened but that it also creates the potential for stress, hardship, and maybe even disappointment. I hate to reduce playing an alpha version of the next game from the team behind Halo and Destiny to a reaction meme deployed by millennials in group chats, but the accuracy of what homersadthumbsup.jpg conveys is undeniable.

After around eight hours of gameplay where I faced off against developers, content creators, and members of the press, I left Bungie's Bellevue studio keen to play more of its high-stakes PvPvE multiplayer game. And at the same time, I couldn't deny that I had serious concerns about the experience that its compulsive gameplay loop is couched within. Putting it plainly, I'm worried Marathon could launch as a solid multiplayer shooter that is brimming with potential but thin on content. And in the dog-eat-dog world of multiplayer games, that could be a major issue.

Even in its alpha stage, what made playing Marathon so compelling was immediately evident. It took just one match of running, gunning, looting, and extracting to identify that the core of the experience leverages Bungie's pedigree as a best-in-class first-person-shooter developer. As longtime Halo or Destiny players can attest to, there's a satisfying texture in the moment-to-moment gameplay that makes Bungie's games hard to put down. The satisfying thump of a melee kill or the glee that comes from sticking an enemy with a plasma grenade has carried Halo through multiple generations. And deep loot-based progression layered on top of that gives Destiny a gravitational pull that's hard to escape. Marathon has all that, but within the framework of an extraction shooter. For those not familiar, this is a relatively new flavor of multiplayer shooter that takes the thrills of PvP and marries it with the tension of battle royale to create a game about dropping in, grabbing resources, and then making it to an extraction point to get out with your goodies in a single life.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Welcome to our latest IGN First – a month of exclusive coverage in April, and it's all about The Outer Worlds 2. This is the very first look at its gameplay in real time, and it takes us through a quest where you infiltrate the N-Ray Facility to show off several of the game’s new features and mechanics, as well as how it’s rethinking level design. And one of the biggest things that stood out to me is how much deeper it’s going to be as an RPG with developer Obsidian looking back at its past and even drawing inspiration from immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored.

While that DNA has always been a part of first-person RPGs, The Outer Worlds 2 has more sophisticated systems compared to the first game like a true stealth system and better tools to make the playstyle viable, including effective melee weapons and skills to make silent takedowns possible. Take, for example, the health bar above enemy heads – there’s a purple-colored readout that displays how damage a stealth attack will do, helping you judge whether or not you can get a one-hit kill or if it’s even worth pouncing on your target. Enemies will also detect dead bodies and alert guards, but you can quickly clean up if you have a skill to disintegrate bodies on the spot.

Later in the quest, you pick up the N-Ray Scanner, which lets you see certain objects and NPCs/enemies through walls. While this is crucial for finding important parts of more involved environmental puzzles, it’s also an important tool for a stealth and combat. There are enemies throughout the N-Ray Facility who cloak themselves; invisible to the naked eye, but not able to escape the lens of the N-Ray Scanner. If you’re not dilligent about using it, cloaked enemies can easily run up on you. That's just one example of how the addition of gadgets add a new wrinkle to gameplay.

There are several interlocking systems that factor into how you're able to play, leaning more into the RPG elements that make up specific character builds. There are several interlocking systems that factor into how you're able to play, leaning more into the RPG elements that make up specific character builds. So, stealth and those immersive sim sensibilities aren’t the only way gameplay is expanding in The Outer Worlds 2. Improving gunplay was a major focus for Obsidian, citing Destiny as a touchstone for what good gunplay should feel like. Not that this game is going to turn into an all-out shooter, but it plays closer to how a first-person game with firearms should play.

You see an example of this in the approach to the N-Ray Facility movement when we go in guns blazing. Movement has been tweaked to complement gunplay as well, letting you be more nimble and do things like sprint-slide while aiming down sights like an action hero – and with the return of Tactical Time Dilation (TTD), the bullet-time fantasy is again an effective part of your combat rotation. We were able to see throwables, which is by no means revolutionary for a game like this, but with their inclusion this time around, you have another tool that you can weave into your arsenal – and even do something sick like tossing a grenade, activating TTD, and shooting the grenade midair to have it blow up on unsuspecting enemies.

There isn’t much to share on the story front as of yet, let alone the context around the quest in the N-Ray Facility, but we do see how conversations have been tweaked slightly in the sequel. In the gameplay video above, there's a moment we confront an NPC named Exemplar Foxworth who's survived the cultist takeover of the place. She's bleeding out and you can help patch her up based on your Medical stat, or respond depending on your Guns or Melee stats. Although we couldn't dig into companions in more detail, this part also highlights the new companion named Aza, a former cultist who's a bit frantic but joins you to seemingly help undo what they've done.

Many of these elements were part of the original Outer Worlds in some form, but where that game was more about laying a new foundation for Obsidian, The Outer Worlds 2 looks to be a fully realized version of what it was trying to build with the first one. In addition to checking it out early, I had conversations with the folks at Obsidian to get insight on a ton of its new features and the vision that drove this sequel. It seems keen on wielding the RPG roots of the studio’s past while considering what a modern first-person RPG can be in the vein of a Fallout – and to be clear, they often referred to Fallout: New Vegas as a touchstone when making The Outer Worlds 2, so my hopes are certainly high.

That's just a taste of what's to come in The Outer Worlds 2 and what we're covering in this month's IGN First. I'll be breaking down character builds, the new flaws system, all the wild and wacky weapons, and how much bigger this sequel is through interviews with key people like original Fallout developer and creative director Leonard Boyarsky, game director Brandon Adler, and design director Matt Singh. Keep checking back at IGN all April long for more!

Xbox has confirmed they’ll return on June 8th, 2025 for their annual Xbox Games Showcase with an Outer Worlds 2 Direct airing afterwards:

The Xbox Games Showcase is back on June 8th at 1PM EDT/10AM PDT with an Outer Worlds 2 direct airing immediately after. Last year’s show is considered one of the platform’s best, and fans are hoping this years is even better. Here is the press release from Xbox:

Make some space on your calendar – the Xbox Games Showcase 2025 will be livestreamed on Sunday, June 8, starting at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK time. Following in the footsteps of the 2023 Starfield Direct and 2024 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Direct, this year we will again have a double feature, with the Xbox Games Showcase immediately followed by The Outer Worlds 2 Direct.

It all begins with our annual Xbox Games Showcase, bringing you a look at upcoming titles from across our first-party studios, in addition to incredible new titles from our third-party partners across the globe. This year, the show will be digital-only – our livestream will bring you everything you’ll need to know about what’s next for Xbox, no matter where in the world you’re watching.

Immediately following Showcase, The Outer Worlds 2 Direct will bring you inside the walls of Obsidian Entertainment, revealing new gameplay, details, and developer insights, straight from the people making the sequel to the award-winning, first-person sci-fi RPG.

You’ll be able to enjoy our June 8 double feature through a variety of outlets, in over 40 languages, as well as American Sign Language, British Sign Language and English Audio Descriptions. These include (but won’t be limited to):

YouTube.com/Xbox

Twitch.tv/Xbox

Twitch.tv/XboxASL

Facebook.com/Xbox

Last year saw 30+ games including Fable, Perfect Dark, DOOM: The Dark Ages and more shown off. What titles are you hoping to see at this years showcase? Sound off in the comments below and let us know what you’re hoping and expecting to see.

Sorry, Deus Ex fans, despite a new Deus Ex game reportedly being pitched by Eidos-Montreal, it sounds like the company's external partners and publishers aren't interested in bringing the franchise back.

Eidos-Montreal's Deus Ex pitches have reportedly fallen on deaf ears

Eidos-Montreal is said to have been pitching a new Deus Ex game The title is said to be different from the one Embracer cancelled last year Eidos-Montreal laid off 75 employees last week

As reported by Insider Gaming, Eidos-Montreal wants to return to the Xbox shooter franchise, and has apparently been pitching a new Deus Ex game "regularly" to its publishers and external partners. Nobody is said to have committed to the project yet, though, with sources claiming that it's clear that publishers aren't ready to take the financial risk the franchise brings right now, and that it is "too niche."

According to the report, this is a completely different game from the one Embracer canceled in 2024 when it laid off 97 Eidos-Montreal employees. This game reportedly has "charm and novelty," but doesn't meet the "expectations or standards typically associated with the Deus Ex brand."

While Insider Gaming's sources say the game being pitched doesn't have anything to do with Eidos-Montreal's recent round of layoffs, the company has laid off another 75 employees. In an announcement on LinkedIn last month, Eidos confirmed that it was laying off a large portion of its team due to an expiring mandate.

"Today, we informed our studio staff that we are going to let go up to 75 valuable members, as one of our mandates is coming to an end. It is not a reflection of their dedication or skills, but unfortunately, we don’t have the capacity to entirely reallocate them to our other ongoing projects and services," the statement read.

"These very talented, highly experienced experts are going to enter the employment market, and we are working to support them through this transition. Eidos-Montréal stays committed to delivering its other projects currently in development."

The last entry in the popular franchise was released in 2016, when we dived into the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided achievements. It launched to pretty good reviews, and holds a Metacritic score of 85, so it's surprising that we're still yet to see another game in the popular franchise.

For now, though, we have the delayed Fable reboot to look forward to, which Eidos-Montreal is assisting Playground Games with. Would you like to see another Deus Ex game? Drop a comment below and let us know!