CD Projekt Red's next mainline Witcher game, codenamed Polaris, is at least three years away according to studio president and joint CEO Adam Kiciński.

Following the studio's announcement that it plans to release the new Witcher trilogy over six years starting with Polaris, Kiciński was asked during an investors' call when players can expect the next mainline game to be released.

"For Polaris we are preparing technology. This is the first project to be released on the new engine, Unreal Engine 5, [so] there is a need for some extra work making this technology," he said. "For this project, for sure we need some extra effort to deliver."

Kiciński went on to say that the second and third new Witcher trilogy games would go much smoother due to this foundation being created now. He was then asked, as the two "smoother" to develop games will take on average three years each, would it be reasonable to ascertain that the next mainline game is more than three years away, to which Kiciński said yes.

As Polaris was only announced in March, however, three years may still be on the earlier side of this assessment. Senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski commented during the same call that, based on past experiences, creating a new game alongside new technology like CD Projekt Red is doing with Polaris usually takes four or five years, though this won't necessarily be the case this time.

CD Projekt Red confirmed ahead of the call that at least five new Witcher games would be released in the coming years, alongside a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and a game based on the studio's first brand new IP.

Outside of Polaris and its two sequels, CD Projekt Red's The Molasses Flood studio is working on a new Witcher game with multiplayer elements and a currently unconfirmed third developer is creating another "full-fledged Witcher game".

Very little is known about any of the games however, with Polaris being the only one with some context behind it thanks to CD Projekt Red announcing that it had entered pre-production back in May, and that it's being developed using Unreal Engine 5.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Over the course of our month long IGN First coverage, we saw a lot about the world and lore of Gotham Knights – the crafting and gear mechanics, the suits and customization options – but there’s been one big green riddler-esque question mark surrounding the whole game up to this point: How does it play? Well, I played about three hours of it at a recent hands-on event, and the answer is… complicated. What’s for certain, at least, is that Gotham Knights is a wildly ambitious effort that feels appropriately massive and dense, to the point where even a heavily guided three-hour demo felt like just a scratch on the surface.

My demo was broken into four chunks: I played the tutorial that involved following a lead on Batman’s last case, then jumped into a new save to play the first chapter of Harley Quinn’s multi-part villain arc, then continued with several open-world challenges related to Harley’s story, and to put a cap on the event, I jumped to a late-game save that let me and the Internet’s own Destin Legarie face off against Harley in the finale of her arc.

And that leads to one of the main reasons why my takeaways from this event are complicated: Gotham Knights is a game that is centered around building up your character, setting and understanding your own skills and gear, and developing your own playstyle – something that I just didn’t get to do, since I was jumping around to different save files and trying out the different characters. Without that, the combat felt like it was missing a key ingredient.

On a very basic level, Gotham Knights’ combat is built on the foundation of the Batman: Arkham games. But once you get past the shallow waters, things go in very different directions. Here’s where things will be familiar: You press a direction and the attack button, and your character gracefully spins, leaps, or slides towards the closest enemy for a quick strike that initiates a combo. Enemies will also telegraph their own attack with an icon that appears over them, giving you plenty of time to dodge out of the way to avoid damage. It’s all super smooth, there are a ton of slick animations, and you’re even rewarded for timing your button presses as opposed to just mashing, just like in the Arkham games.

And that’s it, that’s where the comparisons end, because everything else feels very different. Gotham Knights is much more abilities-focused, with a meter at the bottom right that governs your ability to use your momentum skills. As you’d imagine, you gain meter by dealing damage and using your dodge to avoid attacks with good timing, and you lose meter by taking damage. Once you fill a bar, you can use one of your eight equippable momentum skills for a variety of different uses: Red Hood has a close range throw that deals a ton of damage to a single target, Robin has a holographic distraction that he can throw down to take some heat off him and the team, Batgirl can toss out a batarang barrage to deal a bunch of piercing damage right in front of her, and Nightwing has a cool acrobatic leap attack that lets him get the jump on an opponent from far away.

There were also moments where certain momentum abilities were the key to defeating specific enemy types that were armed with powerful armored attacks. Piercing abilities beat armored attacks, for instance, so any time I saw an enemy with a red attack warning, I had to counter with my own piercing attack, whether that was Batgirl’s batarang barrage, or Robin’s staff spin attack.

All of this sounds great, and I’m very much looking forward to the progression of getting to unlock new momentum abilities, purchase skills that synergize with them, find and craft new pieces of gear, add mods that further enhance certain effects, and find a preferred playstyle for each character when the game actually comes out. My concern is how well that progression – those momentum abilities, the gear, and the deep well of customization options – are going to be able to carry the whole experience. Because on a fundamental level, I found Gotham Knights’ combat to be very flashy, but also kind of bland.

Fights quickly started to feel very routine, with very similar enemies in every encounter, to the point where I felt like I had to mix up my tactics – not because I was being forced to, but just to try and make things a little more interesting. My favorite character ended up being Red Hood, because he excelled at a hybrid style of both ranged and melee, which felt quite different from what everyone else was able to do. Plus, he had some neat tricks – like being able to grab an enemy, place a bomb on them, and then kick them away so you can explode the bomb with a gun shot.

The other characters have their fun surprises too. They all generally control the same, which makes jumping between them very easy, but they each have their own combat/stealth focuses and playstyles that are defined by what you put points into on their skill tree. Batgirl can be built to be a single-target DPS machine, a nearly uninterruptible tank that can self-revive, or a stealthy hacker that can make herself invisible to security cameras; Nightwing can build himself to enhance his leaping abilities and deal massive critical-hit damage, he can become a slippery acrobat that gets extra dodges and faster momentum meter gain, or he can be built more like a team leader designed for coop play; Red Hood can lean more heavily into his ranged attacks by giving them higher crit chances and more damage, he can become more of a close-range bruiser that aims to get in and grab his opponents, or he can increase the damage he deals towards various different factions of enemies; And finally Robin can build himself to have a gameplan centered around his decoy; he can become a true Batman successor by investing in stealth skills, including Arkham-game mainstays like vantage takedowns; or he can focus on his gadgetry and elemental damage. Just by glancing at the skill tree, it’s easy to see that there’s a lot to get excited about for each character everytime you gain skill points.

And that’s where I’m torn on Gotham Knights: When I look through the skill trees, the locked momentum abilities, the wide variety of suits that I can unlock, and I think about going through it all with a buddy and taking on more challenging missions, I can’t help but get excited at the idea of what Gotham Knights could be. But in my playtime with this demo, things were very far off from that idealized vision.

Beyond combat, Gotham Knights is very impressive. The city of Gotham is absolutely gorgeous; the many different modes of traversal are all fun in their own way, whether that’s by motorcycle, Batgirl’s Glide, Nightwing’s Glider, Red Hood’s mystical air hops, or Robin’s short-range teleportation; the Belfry seems like an awesome headquarters full of optional conversations that deepen the relationship between the four heroes (and you can even play Spy Hunter!); and the cooperative play feels extremely well-implemented.

Since the demo was so focused on the Harley Quinn sub plot, I didn’t get much of a feel for the overall story of Gotham Knights and how the Court of Owls fits into everything, but I’m very into what I’ve seen of the characters so far. There are great dynamics between each of them, with the standout for me being between Red Hood and Nightwing. Nightwing’s trying his best to step into the role of a leader, while Red Hood himself finds himself struggling between his thirst for violence and his desire to honor the legacy of Batman. There’s a great scene in the Belfry where Nightwing inadvertently touches a nerve by bringing up a story that sets Jason off, and you really get to see the pain and anger that Red Hood is struggling to keep under the surface. It’s very Guardian of the Galaxy-esque, and if Gotham Knights can pack the whole game with moments like this, then its characters will almost certainly become a highlight of the whole experience.

Gotham Knights is not an easy game to demo, and while I walked away from my hands-on time less than impressed with many aspects of combat, I still found myself interested in playing more. We’ll see how it all comes together when Gotham Knights releases on PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC on October 21.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit

A new Disney Plus app is now available for Sony's PlayStation 5 that allows users to stream their favourite movies, TV shows, originals, and more in 4K HDR quality.

As noted by The Verge, PS5's former version of the Disney+ app was actually a PS4 app that was running on the newer console, which meant visuals were capped at 1080p resolution, whereas the relaunched Disney+ app has been designed natively for PS5 and now supports 4K High-Dynamic Range playback across the service's growing catalogue of titles.

"A key part of our global expansion strategy is to meet consumers wherever they are, which is why we're excited to enhance Disney+ for PlayStation 5 users," Jerrell Jimerson, EVP of Product and Design for Disney Streaming, said in a press release. "The ability to support 4K HDR video streaming on the platform will also improve the viewing experience for fans."

The relaunch of the Disney+ app on PS5 comes a couple of months before the streamer rolls out a new subscription model that includes the launch of an ad-supported membership tier. The ad-supported subscription will be available on December 8 for $7.99 a month, while the ad-free subscription will now be known as the "Premium" tier at $10.99 a month.

PS5 users can download the new Disney+ app from the media section of the console's homescreen. Disney+ subscribers will then need to log in to gain access to the service's library and start streaming titles at 4K HDR quality, with a full catalog of movies and shows to choose from, including the likes of Hocus Pocus 2, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Andor.

Andor is Disney Plus' fourth live-action Star Wars show. The series just dropped its fifth episode, which IGN called a "good" chapter that "settles back into setup mode" by plunging further into "the developing dynamics between Cassian and his skeptical new friends," substituting "edge-of-your-seat tension" for "small character moments" that look to pay off in the future.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

A canceled GameBoy Advance game set in the Dune universe has finally been released twenty years later.

As spotted by Twitter account The Spaceshipper, Dune: Ornithopter Assault has been released on Steam as Elland: The Crystal Wars.

“Elland: The Crystal Wars will be released today on Steam,” they said. “This Game Boy Advance game was developed by Hungarian studio Soft Brigade 2 decades ago as Dune: Ornithopter Assault, before being canceled by Cryo Interactive in 2002. This is an unexpected return!”

Elland: The Crystal Wars ↖↗ will be released today on Steam.

This Game Boy Advance game was developed by Hungarian studio Soft Brigade 2 decades ago as Dune: Ornithopter Assault ↙↘, before being canceled by Cryo Interactive in 2002.

This is an unexpected return! pic.twitter.com/w9ap9Kfnxo

— The Spaceshipper 🚀 (@TheSpaceshipper) October 3, 2022

Dune: Ornithopter Assault was originally developed for the GameBoy Advance with gameplay focusing on the iconic ornithopters from Frank Herbert’s Dune universe. Unfortunately, the game was shelved in 2002 with most of the game completed and all of the missions completable. Here’s the game’s original synopsis:

“Trained by Gurney Halleck, the most efficient and honored officer of the House of Atreides, you are going to become a specialist in piloting and fighting ornithopters. Involved in all-out war for the spice, you must surpass all of your flying skill to survive the fall of the House of Atreides and help Paul and the Fremen in their fight for Arrakis.”

The game would have featured more than 20 different missions, including escort duties, guarding, destroying troops and vehicles, and capturing vehicles and spice supplies. It also included five solo and multiplayer modes using link cables.

Now, however, the game has been adapted into something else… though it does sound rather familiar.

“You are Ethan Lancashire, one of the finest of Elland Inc.'s fighter pilots,” reads the game’s Steam description. “Across more than 20 dangerous missions you will pilot advanced flying machines that can move, turn and hover, and come equipped with a variety of weapons and utilities, fitted as the mission requires. Weapons can be set to lock-on or aimed manually.”

Switching up Arrakis to become Elland, the game sounds almost identical to the original. Even the ornithopters have simply been redesigned as “raptors”.

“As an ace raptor pilot, protect the Gatherers as they harvest the precious Crystal from the remote desert world of Elland from the vicious forces of the Trafford Corporation.”

The game is available to download now via Steam, where the store page also gives its own account of Elland's history: "In 2001, development began on an ambitious Game Boy Advance game based on a popular franchise. Maybe the project was a little too ambitious, because it was cancelled in 2002 and the team walked away. Twenty years later, this game finally sees the light of day, albiet without the original franchise license. Experience the game now in this enhanced, emulated version."

Want to read more about Dune? Check out what we know about Dune: Awakening, the recently announced Dune survival game, as well as our review of this year's Dune: Spice Wars strategy game. As for the movies, check out the upcoming Dune prequel show’s latest castings as well as the latest Dune 2 plot details.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed will be joining the planes of Magic: The Gathering.

Announced during Hasbro’s Investor Day, as reported by Dicebreaker, the upcoming partnerships will see characters from both Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed head to the popular trading card game.

Wizards of the Coast president Cynthia Williams revealed that Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed will join the game via its Universes Beyond initiative – allowing MTG to include characters and such from outside of its own realms.

Unfortunately, there were no other details provided, but it certainly isn’t the first time MTG has seen crossovers from other successful franchises.

A well-received Secret Lair set based on The Walking Dead was released in 2020, bringing the likes of Rick, Daryl, Glen, and Negan into the game as legendary creatures. Although a popular seller, the set turned out to be pretty controversial – featuring unique cards instead of reprints.

Many MTG players argued that the cards should have been silver-bordered, making them not tournament-legal. However, Wizards of the Coast argued that an MTG version of these unique cards could be reprinted any number of times in future sets. Since they’re not part of a set, they were never standard legal but could be used in Commander decks.

Other crossovers to date have included Fortnite, Street Fighter, and an upcoming Warhammer 40,000 set.

Although details of the upcoming Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed crossovers weren’t revealed, it seems likely that similar restrictions will apply to these, too. Sure, you may be able to slot Cloud or Ezio into your Commander deck, but you can almost guarantee they won’t be standard legal.

Still, it’s an excellent chance for collectors and video game fans to see their favorite characters as part of Magic: The Gathering, and the artwork is likely to be something special.

Want to read more about Magic The Gathering? Check out the upcoming Warhammer 40k cards as well as MTG’s recent new lotus.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Bayonetta voice actress Hellena Taylor won’t be returning for Bayonetta 3.

A statement from PlatinumGames to Game Informer (via Nintendo Everything) has confirmed that Taylor, who voiced Bayonetta in the first two games, won’t be back.

“Various overlapping circumstances made it difficult for Hellena Taylor to reprise her role,” they confirmed. “We held auditions to cast the new voice of Bayonetta and offered the role to Jennifer Hale, whom we felt was a good match for the character.”

Hale is perhaps best known as the female voice of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series, as well as voicing Samus Aran in the Metroid Prime series.

“I understand the concerns some fans have about the voice change at this point in the series, but Jennifer’s performance was way beyond what we could have imagined,” they said. “I’m confident that her portrayal of Bayonetta will exceed our fans’ expectations.”

Bayonetta 3 is currently due for release at the end of the month. A sequel to Bayonetta 2, the game sees the titular heroine tackling Homunculi as she travels to the island of Thule to stop an evil entity known as The Singularity.

Taylor first hinted that she wouldn’t be back for the third installment earlier this year, as fans took to Twitter to say they couldn’t imagine Bayonetta without her voice work.

“Well you might have to,” she replied.

Bound by a confidentiality agreement at the time, she was unable to confirm whether or not she would return for Bayonetta 3, but now we know.

IGN’s Bayonetta review gave it 8.2/10 and said: “Although Bayonetta has more than a few similarities to Devil May Cry, I believe that this game is worth playing... but it's hard to recommend the PS3 version when the 360 version is so much better. Even when you consider the fantastic combat system, the slowdown and load times really do spoil the fun. With that said, Bayonetta is still stylish, entertaining, and unique. If you have no other choice but to purchase the PS3 version, you'll still get a kick out of it. Just be ready to be exorbitantly patient.” Our Bayonetta 2 review was even more positive, with a score of 9.5.

Want to read more about Bayonetta? Check out our hands-on with Bayonetta 3 and find out about Hideki Kamiya's obsession with classic arcade games.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

If you're in the market for expanding your Xbox's potential storage, then this deal is specifically for you. Right now you can pick up the Seagate Official Xbox Storage Expansion Card for $199.99 at multiple retailers. That's $20 off the MSRP, and the lowest price we've seen on the SSD expansion card in 2022.

Amazon, Best Buy, and Target all have the 1TB expansion card down to $199.99 at the moment, so you've got plenty of options when it comes to your retailer of choice. The only thing I'd take into account is that both Target and Amazon have got big sales set to start soon, so it might be worth holding out a couple of days to see if you can get it cheaper then. Otherwise, I'll leave the relevant links for the deal just below.

Xbox Seagate Expansion Card 1TB for $199.99 (was $219.99)

The 2TB card has also dropped to $359.99 (was $399.99) if you're after that, but the price is still a little high on that one for us to make any kind of song and dance about it for now.

If you're on PlayStation, Switch, or SteamDeck, there's also some extra storage on sale for you right now as well, check it out in our latest deals roundup.

Prime Early Access Sale Starts October 11

Just a friendly reminder that Amazon's next big Prime-exclusive sale is set to start very soon, the Prime Early Access Sale. And, you can find all the latest deal and discount updates right here on IGN.

The Early Access Sale will bring Black Friday-style deals over a 48-hour sale period, with every deal only available to those who have an Amazon Prime membership. It's 'Early Access', as Black Friday isn't until November 25 this year, and Prime members are getting what seems like a sneak preview at the discounts.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

For a while now, the PlayStation brand has been evolving. No longer simply meaning the console that sits under your television, the word "PlayStation" now applies to movies, television shows, or even the brand's console exclusive games appearing on PC.

Now, speaking to a handful of media outlets, Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst has outlined a bit more of what's in store for PlayStation's expanding future.

One clear pillar of PlayStation's business strategy moving forward is live service games, as previously proven by Sony's $3.7 billion acquisition of Bungie. According to Hulst, Bungie's role in the PlayStation family will partially be to serve as an example of how to handle the live service model.

“I've been a long-time admirer of Bungie,” the executive told GQ. “They speak our language and so they've been doing this for a decade since the original release of Destiny. So the battle scars that they have earned, coupled with their absolute transparency means I can’t think of a better partner to have in that space.”

Meanwhile, Hulst told Axios that PlayStation has greenlit 12 total projects in the live ops space. This lines up with the number Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said back in February when we learned PlayStation plans to launch more than ten live service games by March 2026. At the time, Totoki also credited the Bungie acquisition as a key reason why developing, releasing, and sustaining so many live service games should be possible in that window.

You can likely expect PlayStation's live service offerings to be a mix of new IP and recognizable franchises. Hulst told GQ that PlayStation has "about 25 titles in development", and that roughly half of the projects in development are new IP. He also said that PlayStation is "not excluding bringing some of our beloved existing franchises into live games.”

Sony's recent AAA offerings have largely forgone multiplayer altogether, with games like The Last of Us Part II, Horizon Forbidden West, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and the upcoming God of War Ragnarok serving as solo experiences. There are exceptions to that, though, with Ghost of Tsushima Legends and Returnal's multiplayer support both arriving after launch.

As we know, some Sony studios are instead developing standalone multiplayer projects, rather than grouping them in with single player experiences. We know The Last of Us is getting a standalone multiplayer title, and recent rumors suggest a multiplayer Horizon game could be in the works.

Even though Sony will begin to spend more resources on multiplayer live service offerings, Hulst appears to remain committed to Sony's flagship single-player titles, telling Axios that the narrative-driven single-player games aren't going anywhere. They are seemingly taking longer to get here, however, with a history of delays for Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok, while Spider-Man 2 is currently the only major Sony-published exclusive on the books for 2023, outside of the company's PSVR 2 plans.

While the wait continues for new exclusives on PS5, PC players are finally starting to experience some of the best games the PlayStation 4 has to offer. Recently, franchises like God of War, Spider-Man, and Uncharted have started appearing on PC, which will seemingly continue in the future.

Hulst told Reuters that "further investments in areas that will strengthen the expansion on to PC" are a definite possibility.

It's not just a PS5 and PC party from now on, though. In the interview with Axios, Hulst also mentioned bringing more games to PS4 on a "case-by-case basis,” and discussed building up Sony's "internal capability" to make mobile games. Earlier this year, Sony formed its PlayStation Studios Mobile Division to start working on mobile games based on new and existing IPs.

Finally, when Hulst was speaking to Reuters about Sony's recent investment in Elden Ring developer FromSoftware, Hulst said it's "not unthinkable" that PlayStation Productions could work on an entertainment adaptation of a FromSoftware property. FromSoftware is the developer of Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and the Dark Souls series.

For even more on PlayStation, check out how Sony is apparently planning to make 2 million PSVR 2 units for launch. Or read about how the PS5 has seemingly been jailbroken, with people already installing Hideo Kojima's PT.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

If you're struggling to find a match in Overwatch 2, Blizzard shared that it is currently under a mass distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, preventing successful matchmaking.

Blizzard president Mike Ybarra shared that the Overwatch 2 servers are under a mass DDoS attack and that the teams are working to mitigate the damage.

Unfortunately we are experiencing a mass DDoS attack on our servers. Teams are working hard to mitigate/manage. This is causing a lot of drop/connection issues. https://t.co/4GwrfHEiBE

— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) October 4, 2022

It's unclear how long it will take for the servers to be fully functioning, but it is marring the launch of Overwatch 2 which Blizzard has been planning for months.

Social media is full of players sharing their failed matchmaking attempts and extended queues, which are partially related to the DDoS attack.

According to the Overwatch 2 official issues page, players on both PC and consoles are encountering "Unexpected Server Errors," along with issues like certain cosmetics and items not showing up in their collection.

Players are also being disconnected from servers.

The official Overwatch Twitter page will likely be the best source for updated information. In the meantime, you can check out IGN's full review of Overwatch 2 to find out our thoughts on Blizzard's long-awaited sequel.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Sega and Relic Games have announced that Company of Heroes 3 is being delayed to February 23, 2023.

“As we approach the November 17th launch for Company of Heroes 3, our team has decided the game is not quite up to our players’ or our own high standards. There are still bugs to squash, pixels to polish, gameplay to adjust, and feedback to address,” the development team explained on Twitter.

Important Company of Heroes 3 Update pic.twitter.com/z0Pg7PsE10

— Company Of Heroes (@CompanyOfHeroes) October 4, 2022

They continued, “As a result, we’ve decided to move the launch date to February 23, 2023. While we know many of you are itching to get your hands on the game, we believe this to be the best decision for CoH3, our players, and our studio. This provides our hard-working team and partners with the necessary time to deliver CoH3 in a better overall state.”

Company of Heroes 3 has joined the list of many games being delayed to the next year, which includes titles such as Forspoken, Starfield, and Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals.

Company of Heroes 3 will sport features such as modding tools. In IGN’s Company of Heroes 3 North Africa campaign mission hands-on preview, we said, “It also proves Company of Heroes 3 is really not messing around with stretching your skills as a commander to the breaking point, if you're up to the challenge.”

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

A top-to-bottom remake of Dead Space is set to release for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on January 27, 2023. It finds the engineer Isaac Clarke among the last survivors of a deep space catastrophe. The game is available to preorder now in several editions and from a variety of retailers (see it at Amazon). Read on to find out what comes in each edition, how much it costs, and more.

Preorder Dead Space

Physical Version

PS5

• Get it on Amazon - $69.99

Xbox Series X

• Get it on Amazon - $69.99

Digital Version

• Get it for PS5 - $69.99
• Get it for Xbox Series X|S - $69.99
• Get it for PC - $59.99

The standard edition just comes with the game itself, but that’s all you really need.

Dead Space Digital Deluxe Edition

• Get it for PS5 - $79.99
• Get it for Xbox Series X|S - $79.99
• Get it for PC - $69.99

The digital-only deluxe edition includes the game itself, plus five exclusive cosmetics. These include three unique suits and two suit textures.

Dead Space Collector’s Edition

• Get it for PS5 - $274.99
• Get it for Xbox Series X|S - $274.99
• Get it for PC - $274.99

The collector’s edition is exclusive to the Limited Run Games Store. It comes with the following:

• Physical Copy of Dead Space (not included in PC version)
• Dead Space Collector's Box
• Isaac Helmet
• Full-size wearable helmet with working lights
• Dead Space CD Soundtrack
• Lithograph Print
• Foil Stamped Lithograph Folio
• Four Mini Posters
• Ishimura Patch
• Marker Enamel Pin
• Metal 4" Marker Statue
• Dead Space SteelBook

What Is the Dead Space Remake?

The new 2023 version of Dead Space is a from-the-ground-up remake of the 2008 original. It kicks off when engineer Isaac Clarke is dispatched on a repair mission aboard the USG Ishimura, where something has gone horribly wrong. He must fight through hordes of monstrous creatures called Necromorphs, mainly using his engineering tools.

The original was one of the best survival horror games ever made, in my opinion, and this new version adds modern graphics and a lot more as well. This new version of Dead Space features an expanded story line, plus modernized graphics, audio, and gameplay.

If you’re looking for something similar, check out our preorder guide for The Callisto Protocol. That game is being made by Glen Schofield, one of the co-creators of the original 2008 Dead Space.

Other Preorder Guides

Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

Soaring above the clouds in an airplane – or, if you’re extra adventurous, a hot air balloon – is often a joy for anyone inclined toward the excitement of travel. You get to see the world from up above, and not to mention, airline food isn’t always half-bad. Now imagine the very same experience, but the world is absolutely and utterly destroyed. Welcome to Earth in the future: a total garbage pile where the sky is bright green and poisonous. Oh, and don’t forget the brutal thunderstorms and the ravenous roving swarms of giant moths. And that’s saying absolutely nothing about what lives beneath the giant dust storm blanketing the Earth’s lower atmosphere. It all seems so interesting that I can’t help but wonder – and fear – what I might find when I eventually build the right components on my airship to get down there. That’s the feeling drummed up by Forever Skies, an airborne survival (and, eventually, horror survival)-slash-airship building sim that I got the pleasure of experiencing in the form of a closed test.

If you’re interested in tons of combat and moment-to-moment action, you might want to look somewhere else. At least in its opening moments, Forever Skies is a slow-burn survival game that does its absolute darndest to make you feel insect-sized in its ravaged world. You start off by scrounging for the basics: food, water, health kits, crafting materials like metal and synthetics, and other tools you’ll need for survival. Very shortly after that, you get an airship that serves as your customizable home base and primary method of navigating through the world.

You’ll need to build and place the engines and keep them fueled – it’s all very, very meticulous and not to mention, very slow. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, but I was looking for a way to kick back and relax, and Forever Skies is surprisingly very well-paced for doing just that. You can set your airship to simply glide toward a distant point of interest (marked by blinking lights) at a set speed, and then you can just chill out or do some crafting. Especially when paired with its almost lethargic, synth-heavy soundtrack, this can often feel perfectly atmospheric.

Forever Skies has what appears to be dynamic weather and rainstorms that can come and go, or you can pass through them once your airship is up and operational. Since this is a survival game at heart, you’ll need to manage your resource pools including stamina, health, hunger, and thirst. However, these pools go down pretty slowly, all things considered, and the items necessary to keep them filled are all too commonplace. This means you won’t be overwhelmed by the survival aspect if all you want to do is farm resources to build up the biggest airship. It all blends together to create an experience that’s at least thematically paced like Fallout 4, minus the emphasis on shooting and looting.

That said, you’ll unlock a Scanner pretty early on that allows you to remotely scan different items in the world. From these items, you get blueprints that allow you to manufacture new tools and components in your 3D printer-like Fabricator, which coincidentally becomes available to use once you unlock your airship. This all happens very close to where your dropship touches down at the beginning of Forever Skies, and you’ll be crafting and attaching components to your fully-customizable ship within the first 20 or so minutes. Each time you craft a new item, you’ll need to spend the necessary resources and then wait for the Fabricator to do its thing, during which you can hop outside and use the Deck Extractor to shoot down floating resource nodes, refilling your stores for more crafting. It’s a pretty satisfying loop.

Once you get access to the aptly-named Build Tool, you can theoretically start to expand the size of the airship itself via new rooms, catwalks, and other prefabs. It’s a little buggy at the moment, and the only place I managed to place a new room was a spot to the left of my cockpit, clipping the cockpit and making the room inaccessible. It put a damper on the experience, but the idea is definitely very cool.

Each point of interest seems like it has different items, blueprints, and at least one special battery that’s required for more advanced crafting. You’ll need these battery items to build more engines that can push your airship further, and there is even a turbine part that I could’ve built that would’ve allowed me to push down to lower altitudes, where combat is said to take place amidst the relics of Earth’s surface – and where one might also discover more about the catastrophes that befell the world as we knew it. I didn’t exactly get that far in the limited amount of time provided to me in the demo, but I’m excited to see where this post-apocalyptic airshow ends up.

In the sea of roguelites at our fingertips today, it’s pretty easy to get lost among the procedural tides. Luckily, Ravenbound seems to have found a unique and ambitious take on the genre with an open-world action-adventure that’s filled with clashing blades, incredibly nasty bosses, and, of course, birds – because if I can’t turn into a bird and back into a human at-will, what even is the point? The massive map filled with optional random encounters to tackle and loot to claim is a gimmick that helped break up some of the more familiar roguelite elements, like repeatedly confronting bosses and steadily unlocking upgrades after each attempt. After several hours running around the massive, Scandinavian fantasy-inspired world and getting myself killed with my unrelenting curiosity, I’m definitely interested in seeing more.

If you’re into roguelites, most of the notable elements are present and accounted for. I spent plenty of time rolling new characters, engaging in various upgrade systems to improve my stats in the short-term and long-term, and getting beaten down by enemies that were clearly beyond my current power level. But what sets it apart are the absolutely massive open-world hubs I explored as I made my way through the campaign. It’s a fresh twist that made it all feel unlike anything I’ve played before. If you’ve played any of the open-world games for which developer Avalanche is known, like Just Cause or Mad Max, then you might have a pretty good idea of how Ravenbound works as well: I was primarily roaming around an open-world fighting things and improving my character while causing as much mayhem as possible.

But beyond that, the developer throws out the usual formula in favor of design elements that supports its roguelite ambitions. Instead of completing quests and progressing through the story linearly, every chance encounter and discovery fueled my ultimate goal of defeating the absolutely nasty world boss that waited for me at the end of it all. To give you an idea, after conquering three mandatory combat encounters in the first area, I gained access to the area’s boss. Now, I could have decided to go straight from there to tackle the big bad, or I could continue to explore and improve my character further at the risk of getting in over my head and getting maimed before I ever got my shot at the boss. That game of risk/reward ended up being incredibly entertaining, and synergized well with the roguelite formula that had me retracing my steps and taking that gamble again and again. And it certainly helped that the open-world areas are beautiful, the dangerous enemies and creatures I encountered were compelling (and sometimes horrifying), and combat, though sometimes a little wonky and clearly in an unfinished state, was fast-paced and challenging enough to keep me engaged after numerous runs.

Ravenbound also tries some interesting stuff with the loot system, which is a card-based format that had me building a hand of cards that could be used to add certain bonuses and abilities to my character to modify how I played. One such card generated an additional health potion for me to consume after each combat encounter, while another let me turn into my bird form instantly, allowing for a quick escape for times where I got greedy and found myself in some serious trouble – I, uh, used that one a lot.

I only saw a small slice of Ravenbound’s massive hub worlds, but it’s already unlike anything I’ve seen before and could end up being a refreshing new take on an addictive formula I already know and love. I’ll certainly be watching this one closely as it develops.

Reviving a much-loved series can be a gamble. Stick too close to the original, and the project can feel like a retread. On the other hand, reinventing it completely can alienate stalwart supporters. Over a decade after the last chapter of Square Enix’s Norse-themed JRPG series, Valkyrie Elysium departs from its predecessors’ turn-based roots in favor of a new action-heavy, hack-and-slash direction. In that transition, Elysium has established a fun and flashy combat system but sacrifices part of what made the original PlayStation game memorable: a focus on the characters and worldbuilding.

In many ways, Valkyrie Elysium feels like a Square Enix take on Falcom’s Ys RPG series rather than a return to Valkyrie Profile’s original PlayStation-era DNA. And in the way that modern Ys feels somewhat like a throwback to the PS3-era of games in terms of the structure of their worlds, combat, and progression, so too does Valkyrie Elysium. Although I’m largely satisfied with the action it serves up, Elysium is far less successful at establishing an intriguing tale.

The obedient and straight-laced deity warrior known as Valkyrie meets with her creator, the All-Father Odin, before each chapter. Their base of operations is the opulent yet sparse Asgard, which looks wonderful, but is very small with little to do besides choosing the next quest. Once she descends to the mortal realm of Midgar, the environments are much larger than Asgard. Unfortunately, the regions of Midgard, while more expansive than the godly domain, are far less fun to look at. The locations you visit are vacant of activities and life, offering an overly linear path to adventure down with little else to seek out. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of crates to smash for gems, treasure chests with valuable loot, or minuscule lore drops called Hollow Blossoms to find, but I would have liked more reasons to stray from the critical path and spectacular sights to seek out.

Valkyrie’s ever-present mission on Midgar is to cleanse the spirits troubling the human world and claim its salvation in the aftermath of a disastrous war. Though the setup of Valkyrie Elysium deals with a war between gods and mythical creatures with figures like Odin, Fenrir, a rival Valkyrie, and a looming apocalypse in the form of Ragnarok in the mix, Valkyrie Elysium’s story has the potential to be an exciting Norse epic, but its story falters from the start. The main plot is slow to unfold, with Valkyrie and Odin being the only real characters in the opening hours, and yet it takes about half of the 20-hour campaign before it starts to crawl towards Valkyrie’s character development and for the central conflict to come into sight. Even when larger reveals play out in the climax, the impact of the plot is dampened by its overall predictability, and moments that should be eye-opening and emotional simply aren’t earned.

One of the biggest reveals in the final hour is completely missable if you don’t happen to explore a certain part of the map, and if you miss that you’re also locked out of one of a handful of potential endings. Your squad of Einherjar warrior spirits does add much-needed levity, personality, and exposition through their companionship and support to the battle-maiden, but much of it is for naught in the grand scheme of the story. The last few chapters focus on the humanity and agency Valkyrie has absorbed from being around her Einherjar, but when the crux of the finale comes down to a choice, whatever plays out is determined by whether you’ve collected certain items throughout the game rather than letting the player choose their fate. That lack of input from the player is disappointing, considering Valkyrie’s internal conflict of right and wrong is central to her character arc.

Despite the regions of Midgard being rather small, there are only a handful of areas to explore in Valkyrie Elysium. The world lacks life, which makes sense with its impending doom, but it often feels empty to its detriment rather than like a successful atmospheric choice. Luckily, each well-trodden part of Midgar is reused well in great sidequests that warrant the return. These optional adventures offer challenging and fun combat scenarios and reward you with meaningful upgrades and items, and are a better use of time than scouring the usually barren environments for the odd treasure chest.

While I found the exploration and storytelling to be underwhelming, the driving force – and saving grace – of Valkyrie Elysium is its combat. Valkyrie is a formidable warrior on the battlefield, and while controlling her is simple, she has plenty of moves and combos to explore. Once it gets going, that is – like the plot, the ramp-up to unlocking your full set of powers and abilities is dreadfully slow. Your combat options are incredibly limited in the early hours, with vanilla light and heavy strikes accompanied by a guard and a dodge. These are par for the course when it comes to action games, and work well enough here. What spices up combat are the swappable pool of spells called Divine Arts which provides a variety of elemental, ranged, and utility spells, as well as a nifty grapple maneuver called the Soul Chain. I love the mobility the Soul Chain provides, giving Valkyrie the ability to zip to a targeted enemy and start laying in a combo before she even touches the ground.

Most regions you travel to will introduce a new reluctant Einherjar spirit to join your crusade. While the task becomes repetitive after gathering the first two, the act of collecting them and completing their backstory sidequests brings some much-needed purpose to opening hours and adds some semblance of context to those who once lived in these decimated lands. These warriors, like Eygon and Cypher, helped me to care a little about the overall story arc. Their banter, anecdotes, and opinions on the mission at hand often bring lightness and warmth to what is mostly a sterile and uneventful tale. The Einherjar provide a human view of the unfolding events and help to soften Valkyrie's narrow-minded outlook on the world and expand her horizons.

You can also summon them to fight alongside you with elementally charged attacks (and also granting elemental effects to your own attacks), making them strategically relevant in certain enemy matchups. Einherjar make crowded fights much more manageable, and it's fun to decide which to call on to make swift work of enemy hordes that would otherwise be a slog to take out with Valkyrie alone.

However, because there are only a handful of Einherjar to call upon and counter the weakness of monsters, Valkyrie also has to use Divine Arts to deal loads of damage of her own. These are powerful spells like lightning bolts, holy piercing strikes, and fire storms that look great as they exploit enemy weaknesses to deal extra damage and potentially put them into a stunned state. A gauge restricts their use, but it’s refilled quickly enough that Arts are readily available as reliable combat tools that add a much-needed visual flourish to liven up the bland and empty areas when skirmishes arise. I often lose myself in the enjoyable tension of alternating between my Einherjar and Divine Arts and building their resources back up to continue the onslaught. It's an effective distraction from the dull world and slow story, though battles are far from exempt from issues.

Many times I’ve had to fight with the camera while in close quarters with enemies because it catches on walls when you get too close. When this inevitably happens, it becomes nearly impossible to tell what’s going on around you or whether you’re even hitting the enemy you’ve comboed into the corner. Likewise, because the targeting system is tied to the camera controls, the aiming reticle tends to bounce around to different targets, and it becomes a struggle to fire off a Divine Art or Soul Chain in the intended direction. Several settings exist to tweak for the desired camera distance or lock-on preference, but I never found a good solution that left me feeling in full control most of the time.

EA Motive has unveiled a new trailer for its Dead Space remake, teasing some of the nightmarish horrors that await players in the sci-fi survival horror game.

The terrifying teaser follows Dead Space protagonist Isaac Clarke as he navigates the eerie, echoing corridors and workspaces aboard the mining ship, USG Ishimura, where something has gone horribly wrong. He is shown sidling around the vessel to investigate the situation while fighting off any Necromorphs that come into his seemingly treacherous path.

The game features a new damage system called peeling, which actually allows players to shoot the flesh off of Necromorphs. It's a grotesque visual treat that also serves as a sort of diegetic health bar for enemies, much like Isaac Clarke's spine-mounted lights, which deplete as the user takes damage from the deadly ship-dwellers.

Motive's take on Dead Space has been rebuilt from the ground up in EA's Frostbite engine, with Assassin's Creed Valhalla game director Eric Baptizat at the helm alongside creative director Roman Campos-Oriola, who previously promised "all new assets, new character models, [and] new environments" based on the original game designs.

The game's developers turned to diehard fans to help keep them on track in offering all-new gameplay content and improvements while staying faithful to the vision of the original game. The remake team consulted with their very own community council every six weeks to get their opinions on a variety of "polarizing" topics during the project's development.

Dead Space will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on January 27, 2023.

Want to read more about the updated version of the beloved survival horror game? Check out every EA game in development as well as a deep dive into how Dead Space is being remade.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Our October IGN First "cover story" is with High on Life, the upcoming Xbox and PC comedy first-person shooter from Rick & Morty co-creator Justin Roiland and his Squanch Games development studio. To kick things off, we sat down with executive producer Matty Studivan and chief design officer Erich Meyr and roamed around the previously unseen Zephyr Paradise biome.

We discussed Roiland's comedic influence and how there's so much funny dialogue in the game that not even Matty and Erich have heard it all, the unique talking guns and their abilities, and much more. Take a look in the video above, and check out some screenshots in the gallery below.

We'll have exclusive coverage of High on Life all month long through IGN First, including more about the weapons and enemies, an in-depth interview with Roiland about video games and Rick & Morty, and much more!

High on Life will be released on December 13 for PC and Xbox consoles, including day-one availability in Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. We got our first proper look at gameplay back in August at Gamescom – where it totally blew up.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) 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.

CD Projekt Red has announced the codenames and brief descriptions for five new games, including 3 Witcher games, a new Cyberpunk, and a brand new IP.

Revealed on Twitter, it marks a major next step for the developer in multiple respects – from developing its own IP from scratch, to developing multiple 'full-size' games at one time. In a separate release, the company says it is also "adding multiplayer to the majority of future projects." This also marks the first time that we've learned the new Witcher trilogy will not be the only new games set in that universe.

The five games are:

• Orion - "A codename for our next Cyberpunk game, which will take the Cyberpunk franchise further and continue harnessing the potential of this dark future universe." Orion will be developed by a brand new CD Projekt studio set up in the US.
• Polaris - "A codename for the next installment in The Witcher series of games, which we recently announced was in pre-production. It is the beginning of a new saga: we aim to release two more Witcher games after Polaris, creating a new AAA RPG trilogy." The full trilogy is intended to be released "in a six-year period".
• Canis Majoris - "A full-fledged Witcher game, separate to the new Witcher saga starting with Polaris. It will be developed by an external studio headed by experienced developers who have worked on past Witcher games." It's not currently clear which developer is working on this project.
• Sirius - "A codename for the game developed by [The Molasses Flood], set in The Witcher universe and created with support from CDPR. It will differ from our past productions, offering multiplayer gameplay on top of a single-player experience including a campaign with quests and a story."
• Hadar - "A codename for a third, entirely distinct IP, created from scratch within CDPR. The project is in the earliest stages of the creative process, which means we are not developing any game yet, but working exclusively on the foundation for this new setting."

Orion is a codename for our next Cyberpunk game, which will take the Cyberpunk franchise further and continue harnessing the potential of this dark future universe. pic.twitter.com/JoVbCf6jYZ

— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 4, 2022

Canis Majoris is perhaps the most intriguingly different project for CD Projekt among the list. Developed externally by a currently unknown developer, the strategy announcement explains, "This is the first such product being developed outside of the Group. However, this does not imply that its quality will lag behind our in-house productions. From the technological standpoint it will be based on Unreal Engine 5, along with the toolset created for Polaris. Expect additional announcements soon."

Canis Majoris marks what seems to be a newly open CD Projekt, which is willing to work with partners on both games and other media after the success of Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. "Our goal is to work with experienced partners who can meet our quality requirements and deliver worthwhile experiences for our fans," said CFO Michał Nowakowski. "We are doing this to create new, exciting ways of interacting with our brands, and also to enable our internal teams to focus on what drives us as a company: developing revolutionary role-playing games."

Details on the new IP, Hadar, are understandably scant but Nowakowski added, "We started toying with the idea several years ago. Early-stage conceptual work commenced in 2021, and – for the first time in our history – the IP is being incubated entirely within CD Projekt Red. It is important to understand that right now we are still working on basic concepts and laying the groundwork for this new franchise."

The news comes after CD Projekt announced it would begin developing Witcher and Cyberpunk games simultaneously, while also purchasing The Molasses Flood to work on games in its universes. Its new North American studio will incorporate the Vancouver studio it already bought.

As part of the glut of announcements, we also learned that co-CEO Adam Kiciński would be leaving his role to apply to be Chairman of the company.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

The Medium is heading to TV as a new psychological horror series.

A statement from developer Bloober Team has confirmed that its 2021 horror game The Medium is being adapted for TV, in a partnership with Platige Image.

“Both the film industry and the video game industry are close to my heart,” said Bloober Team president, Piotr Babieno. “I am very happy that there is finally an opportunity to bring them both together… The story we told in the game was appreciated by players, and now more people will be able to hear about it.”

Oscar-nominated Polish director Tomasz Bagiński will act as creative supervisor for this project. “Connecting the world of movies and games is a huge, but also fascinating challenge,” said Bagiński. “I am glad that I have the pleasure of working on a project like The Medium with such a fantastically talented team.”

According to Babieno, Bagiński’s involvement highlights how seriously the team is taking the adaptation. “The whole team working on the concept of the series felt they were working on something special,” he said. “We hope that this enthusiasm will be visible in the quality of the series.”

The Medium will be a co-production between Bloober Team and Platige Image, with both companies sharing the costs should the series make it into production.

IGN’s review of The Medium gave it 8/10 and said: “An absorbing and nerve-racking journey from the shriek of its first jump scare to its very last gasp, The Medium delivers a psychological horror adventure that’s all thriller and no filler.”

Want to read more about Bloober Team? Check out those Silent Hill rumors as well as Bloober Team’s response.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

The tattoo artist who designed wrestler Randy Orton's tattoos has won a lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive for recreating her artwork in the WWE 2K video games.

As reported by Reuters, tattoo artist Catherine Alexander received $3,750 in damages after her designs being used without her permission in WWE 2K16, 2K17, and 2K18.

WWE and Take-Two had claimed the artwork was recreated in fair use but a jury voted in favour of Alexander, whose lawyer said the verdict set an important precedent in protecting tattoo artists' copyrights.

Orton features as a playable character in WWE 2K meaning his entire likeness has been recreated in-game. This includes body art designed by Alexander - tribal tattoos, skulls, a bible verse, and a dove and rose - which prompted her to file the lawsuit in 2018.

The case sets an interesting precedent for sports sim creators, who regularly recreate tattooed athletes. While the atheletes themselves may consent to being recreated in-game, tatooed artwork on their bodies may now be deemed to require extra permissions.

It's not the only controversy surrounding WWE 2K recently as its publisher 2K was recently hacked, with fake emails containing malware being sent from a legitimate account. The franchise's reputation had also suffered in recent years as a result of WWE 2K20, which was released with myriad technical issues, that forced 2K to take a year off the previously annualised franchise.

It returned to success, however, as in our 8/10 review of the latest entry, IGN said: "WWE 2K22 is a tremendous leap forward compared to 2K20. The action is faster, more pick-up-and-play friendly, the roster of 160+ wrestlers has never looked better."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Xbox has officially announced its next round of Xbox Game Pass entries for 2022. Game Pass is set for another strong month this October, after September saw the introduction of Deathloop, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Grounded 1.0, and Shipbreaker to the service.

This month, we'll be getting some even more big hitters, such as Scorn, Persona 5: Royal, A Plague Tale: Requiem, The Walking Dead Season 1 and 2 on PC, Chivalry 2, and a whole lot more (see everything else below). But remember, Xbox has so far only announced the first wave of Xbox games at the moment, so you can expect another round of entries to get revealed near the middle of October. For now, here's everything coming to Xbox Game Pass in October (for now).

When is Scorn on Xbox Game Pass?

This month, we'll be getting Scorn, a new horror experience largely inspired by the work of painters H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksinski. It was originally set to release on October 21, but will now arrive a whole week earlier on October 14 instead for Xbox Series X|S, PC, and cloud - which is great news.

Everything Coming to Xbox Game Pass in October (So Far)

• Chivalry 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC) – October 4
• Medieval Dynasty (Xbox Series X|S) – October 6
• The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season (PC) – October 6
• The Walking Dead: Season Two (PC) – October 6
• Costume Quest (Cloud and Console) – October 11
• Coral Island (PC) – October 11
• Eville (Console, PC) – October 11
• Dyson Sphere Program (PC) – October 13
• Scorn (Xbox Series X|S, PC, Cloud) – October 14
• A Plague Tale: Requiem (Xbox Series X|S, PC, Cloud) – October 18
• Norco (Console, PC) – October 20
• Persona 5: Royal (Console, PC) – October 21
• Gunfire Reborn (Console) – October 27
• Signalis (Console, PC, Cloud) – October 27

Xbox Controllers Down to $44.99 at Amazon (was $59.99)

If you've been taking advantange of Game Pass a lot, some of your controllers might be looking a bit tired. Thankfully, there's never been a better time to snag a couple of new gamepads. There's an excellent deal on Xbox controllers at Amazon right now, with controllers coming down to just $44.99 for a limited time only (or £43.99 in the UK). That's a significant $15 off the regular list price of $59.99.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perks for October

• 1-Month Free of Fallout 1st
• Eville: Housewarming Bundle – October 11
• Apex Legends: From Above Weapon Charm – October 11
• Need for Speed Heat: Deluxe Edition Upgrade – October 11

A Plague Tale: Requiem is On Xbox Game Pass from October 18

Available Day One with Xbox Game Pass, A Plague Tale: Requiem is a direct sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence. It will hit Game Pass for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and cloud on October 18.

Xbox's summary of the game reads: 'Embark on a heartrending journey into a brutal, breathtaking world, and discover the cost of saving those you love in a desperate struggle for survival. Strike from the shadows or unleash hell with a variety of weapons, tools, and unearthly powers.'

Everything Leaving Game Pass in October

All these games will leave Xbox Game Pass by October 15, so if you're looking to keep playing them you've got until then to make a purchase.

• Bloodroots (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Echo Generation (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Into The Pit (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Ring of Pain (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Sable (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• The Good Life (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Get 3-Months of Xbox Game Pass for $39 (was $44.99)

Best Game Pass Deal Right Now: 2-Years of Game Pass Ultimate for $135 (Save $224)

First up, your Game Pass subscription must not currently be active - I repeat, you must not have an active Game Pass for this to work. Once you're confident, proceed to the next step.

Next, you need to invest in up to 3-years worth of Xbox Live Gold. You can easily buy 12-month Xbox Live Gold codes from Amazon or other retailers, costing $60/£50 depending on your region.

I Recommend Stacking 2-Years of Xbox Live Gold

The maximum amount of stacking for Gold subscriptions is 36-months (costing $180), any more than that will be lost. So, to keep things safe for those who currently have a Gold membership, I recommend sticking to just 2-years' worth (costing $120/£100).

Now, here's the fun part. Once you've redeemed these codes and stacked your Xbox Live Gold membership up to your liking, you can then convert this time to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at a 1:1 ratio.

Head to the Xbox Live Gold upgrade page and proceed to convert the time you've paid for directly into Game Pass Ultimate. If you've never used the upgrade feature before, this will cost $1/£1 (total cost coming to $121/£101). If you have used this before, it will instead cost you $14.99/£10.99 to upgrade.

Overall, at most, you'll be paying only $135 for 2-years of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (instead of $359). If you manage to pull off a 3-year conversion, at most you'll be paying $195 instead (instead of $539). Now that's a big discount. Once you're done, just make sure you turn off auto-renewal as well.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.