IGN

Nintendo Switch 2 features new game cards that come with a sleek new red look and faster data reading speeds.

Nintendo dived into the details on how physical game cards will work for its upcoming console during today’s special Switch 2 Direct. In addition to a first look at these updated game cards, the company detailed how additional storage will work. The Switch 2 will only be compatible with microSD Express Cards, meaning you won’t be able to bring your old storage cards over when you pick up the console this summer.

For a better look at everything else Nintendo had to show during today’s Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, you can click here.

Developing…

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

Dbrand isn’t waiting for Nintendo to roll out the red carpet. Ahead of the highly anticipated Switch 2 Nintendo Direct (set for 6 am PT / 9 am ET / 2 pm BST), the company has opened reservations for its Killswitch case for Switch 2. It’s one of the first major third-party accessories available to order for the new console. If you plan to reserve the case, there’s a $3 fee, which will be credited toward the final purchase and is fully refundable.

Another April Fools’ Day has come and gone and we here at IGN had some fun with it by presenting the second round of casting announcements for Avengers: Doomsday following the 27 actors Marvel revealed last week. We loved how the internet reacted to our joke, and we thought we’d share the best ones right here.

While we started off by teasing that actors like Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and Sydney Sweeney were the next choices to be part of Avengers: Doomsday, Meta shared that “we were holding our breath until slide 10.” As you can see in our Instagram slideshow, slide 10 is none other than Marvel Rivals’ Jeff the Land Shark.

The official Sonic the Hedgehog Movie account was next to join the party after seeing Shadow the Hedgehog made the cut, saying, “Shadow’s getting top billing for sure, like cmon now.”

The official M3GAN account was also excited that their beloved, murderous AI-powered doll would be joining the likes of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Letitia Wright’s Black Panther, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom. In fact, M3gan herself wrote, “I’m always #1 on the call sheet babes.”

There were a few, like bryce.nicholls, who were fooled at first with the chairs of Reynolds’ Deadpool and Jackman’s Wolverine. However, they were brought speeding back down to earth with the news that they’d be joined by such heavy hitters as ‘The Sandworm From Dune.’

The aptly-named WeAreVenomNME wasn’t so easily fooled and knew this was all a ruse once they saw Morbius actor Jared Leto’s chair plop into place. NicFlem229 was happy about Leto though, as they replied in the perfect way with “It’s Morbin Time.”

Controller noted that “The Cat From Flow” is all they care about, and that echoed the funny reaction Zoë Rose Bryant had with the real Marvel announcement. It was one of many joke castings that we laughed at and included in our internet reacts to the Avengers: Doomsday casting reveal alongside Emperor Palpatine, Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya, Knack, and more.

The cat from ‘FLOW’ will return in ‘AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY’ pic.twitter.com/f2mFcbDeMN

— zoë rose bryant (@zoerosebryant) March 26, 2025

Those like Mr.Figures loved our addition of Danny DeVito, especially since we mirrored Paul Rudd’s smaller chair from the official reveal.

Which chair was your favorite from our April Fools’ Day video? Was it Heel John Cena? Maybe Dominic Toretto? Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg? Shrek? The Broom From Wicked? The Rizzler? Let us know below!

For more, check out some of our older April Fools’ Jokes, including our infamous Legend of Zelda movie trailer and the fake Nintendo Direct that is the perfect way to gear up for the big Switch 2 reveal happening today!

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.

A video purportedly taken from the next iteration of The Sims has popped up online, and fans have expressed their concern about what it may mean for the much-loved series.

Project Rene – the codename sometimes used interchangeably with The Sims 5, although EA maintains Project Rene is, in fact, a spin-off project – has been bubbling around for a few years now, but early access footage from a game entitled “City Life Game With Friends” has many players thinking that this could well be the next Sims game.

The video itself is a full 20 minutes long and shows the player clicking through text prompts to select their outfit, hair, watch, activities, and so on. He then spawns into a sunlit Plaza de Poupon where he buys some food and mingles with the locals. He later goes to work in the outdoor café.

Characters are clearly called Sims throughout the playtest, talk in Simlish, and are adorned with The Sims’ tell-tale Plumbob.

“I am terribly disappointed with Project Rene. Yes, I know, according to EA, ‘this is not the final game.’ Is this a joke or what?” said one unhappy player on The Sims’ subreddit on a post entitled “I think Project Rene is a redflag (I hope not)” that has been upvoted hundreds of times.

“EA clearly wants to kill off normal Sims games and push people toward the mobile-style experience. So in their mind, a reboot literally means this — at least that’s what I THINK.”

“This is not going to be for me, I can tell already,” said another. “It just seems so basic and I don’t want to play The Sims on my phone.”

“The funny thing is, making a PC/mobile cross-compatible Sims game isn’t a bad idea,” posited a fan. “EA just believes that mobile games HAVE to be ugly for some reason. They’re chasing all of the design trends of the past decade, but it means that this thing already looks dated and it’s not even out yet.”

“The way The Sims was a literally [sic] satire about capitalist suburban consumption-as-happiness…. And this is where the Sims ended up. Endless consumption-as-happiness,” suggested another.

Project Rene — the codenamed game initially thought to be The Sims 5 until EA distanced itself from those rumors — was first teased in 2022 during a Behind the Sims Summit. It’s a free-to-play Sims game that features multiplayer inspired by Animal Crossing and Among Us. It hasn’t yet been formally revealed or received a release date, but EA has been holding small, invite-only playtests for the game since its announcement, with the game’s latest playtest presumably spawning these recent leaks.

The name Rene was chosen because it references words like “renewal, renaissance, and rebirth” that “represent the developer’s renewed commitment for the Sims’ bright future.”

Last October, however, images of Project Rene leaked from a closed online test, prompting complaints about the art style, limited features, and the use of microtransactions. It was the addition of a café that drew the most skepticism, primarily due to the smiliaries to 2018’s The Sims Mobile. It was then that EA said Project Rene was not The Sims 5 but would, in fact, be a different “cosy, social game” released under The Sims franchise.

Don’t forget that The Burglar, a familiar sight for those of us who’ve spent time with any of the older Sims games snuck back into our lives as part of the latest update for The Sims 4.

Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Seagate has earned its reputation for having the best external storage cards for Xbox, but now, there’s a new price drop on SSDs for the Series X|S at Amazon UK today. Notably, the 1TB Seagate Expansion Card for Xbox is down to its lowest price ever since launch, now just £99.99. It’s the first time we’ve ever seen this card actually drop below £100.

The Tekken 8 community has reacted in anger after the Season 2 update changed the game in a number of controversial ways.

Patch notes revealed an across-the-board buff to character damage potential and offensive pressure, which has caused some within the community to complain that Tekken 8 has strayed too far from the classic Tekken experience.

Pro Tekken player JoKa said the Season 2 update means “this does not feel like Tekken AT ALL.”

“Characters getting buffed even in the slightest is not the way along with more stance-based transitions where 50/50 situations are enhanced. Some of the new moves added are insane with little to no counterplay. Characters getting their weaknesses patched and identities being removed by homogenisation is lazy balancing. Oki being gutted and heat just getting buffed makes no sense. Combo damage is too much across the whole roster. I definitely think the sidesteps are better but does that really matter when moves exist with crazy tracking/hitboxes? Chip damage is still excessive with most heat smashes remaining the same. Removing strategy in favour of more 50/50 situations isn’t interesting gameplay and is moving away from the foundation of Tekken.

“Where are the defensive options that were mentioned?”

As you’d expect, Tekken 8’s Steam page has become the avenue through which players are expressing their frustration. The game has seen a flood of negative reviews (over 1,100 in the last two days), resulting in an ‘mostly negative’ user review rating for recent reviews.

“Genuinely good game held back by schizophrenic insane developers sent from hell,” reads the current ‘most helpful’ review.

“New season dropped and they made every character into a braindead easy mix up machine without a single buff to defense,” reads another.

“After promising changes to open up defensive options, the balance team has doubled down on extremely powerful offense that takes away all agency from the defending player,” another negative review reads.

“Not every character needs to be able to force 50/50 canned mixups constantly, but it seems like the balance team doesn’t have any other ideas for how to build characters at this point. It’s just a shame to see another legacy fighting game become entirely defined by character offense and situations with little to no response from the defender.”

Some Tekken fans are so upset with what’s happening that they’re ditching the game in favor of Capcom’s Street Fighter 6. Others are calling Season 2 the “worst patch in Tekken history,” with some pro players threatening to walk away from Tekken 8 entirely.

I don’t know if I’ll continue playing Tekken if this patch stays.
I’m sorry for doomposting, but I thought it had a chance to be a better game.
I’m just really sad.
Like depressed.
I streamed 70 hours of Tekken this past week to prep for s2 just to have those hopes shattered.
Gn.

— END | Jesandy (@Jesandy1572) April 1, 2025

The community is now hoping for some communication from the development team responding to the complaints. Some want the patch rolled back in its entirety. Others want an emergency follow-up patch to make key changes.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

April 1 has been and gone, and so has the video game industry’s penchant for April Fool’s Day gags for another year. But the one the people behind Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 came up may perhaps live a little longer in the memory.

Yesterday, Space Marine 2 publisher Focus Entertainment declared that the new Chaplain class would be released as DLC on April 1.

“In story mode, swap out Titus for The Chaplain and experience the game as a true Codex-compliant Ultramarine,” Focus said, no doubt sniggering from behind their monitors.

This ‘DLC’ supposedly added the new playable character to the story mode, as well as an ‘Enhanced Dialogue System’ that would have the Chaplain, every five minutes, remind everyone around him that “the Codex Astartes does not support this action,” and “I’m telling the Inquisition.”

The Chaplain even has a special ability called Discipline. This would involve instantly reporting “any and all minor deviations from the Codex Astartes for a 5% discipline bonus (but -20% brotherhood bonus).

The joke here works because as anyone who played Space Marine 2’s campaign knows, Chaplain Quintus watches Titus’ every move with a hawk-like distrust for signs of heresy, despite the protagonist’s demonstrable loyalty to the Imperium, the Ultramarines, and the Emperor himself.

Throughout the campaign, as Titus battles against the Tyranids and the Thousand Sons traitor legion, it becomes clear there is something… special about him, and Chaplain Quintus does not like that one bit. He’s a bit like the annoying school prefect who patrols the corridors for a mere whiff of deviant behavior and then— bam! You’re reported to the headmaster. Everyone hates the Chaplain.

The Chaplain has become something of a meme within the Space Marine community, and it’s this status that the Space Marine 2 April Fool’s joke leans into. But some fans have said they would love for The Chaplain to actually come to the game, not, perhaps, with this exact skill set, but as a straight-up warrior-priest who insists upon the veneration of the Emperor at all times.

“This would actually go hard if this was real,” declared ResidentDrama9739 in a post on the Space Marine subreddit that’s full of enthusiastic chatter about the Chaplain and how he might work in the game. Some are even saying

The thing is, Space Marine 2 is getting a new class soon. Focus and developer Saber Interactive have yet to say what it is, but fans certainly have their theories. Most assume it will be the Apothecary, as close to a medic class as Space Marines have. But there is hope that it could be the Librarian, which would mean super cool warp-powered space magic. Does the Chaplain’s star turn in Space Marine 2’s April Fool’s Day joke rule him out?

There’s a lot happening in the world of Space Marine 2, despite the surprise announcement that development of Space Marine 3 development had begun. Space Marine 2’s year one roadmap remains, and Patch 7 is set to be released mid-April. But in the coming months Space Marine 2 will also get the aforementioned new class as well as new PvE operations and melee weapons.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Val Kilmer — star of Batman Forever, The Doors, and Tombstone — has died at age 65, The New York Times reports and Variety has confirmed.

The actor had battled cancer for years — losing his ability to speak due to throat cancer — but his cause of death was reportedly pneumonia, according to his daughter Mercedes Kilmer.

Kilmer, a Juilliard-trained stage actor, starred on Broadway in Slab Boys opposite Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon before his big screen breakthrough in the comedy Top Secret! in 1984. Kilmer followed that with another comedy, Real Genius, before finding broader mainstream success as Tom Cruise’s rival “Ice Man” in 1986’s Top Gun. (In one of his final screen appearances, Kilmer reprised the role for Top Gun: Maverick.) He also played the charismatic swordsman Madmartigan in director Ron Howard’s fantasy film Willow.

Kilmer’s stardom reached its zenith in the early to mid-1990s when he won many accolades for playing two dissolute historical figures: rock star Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors and outlaw John “Doc” Holliday in Tombstone.

By the mid-’90s, Kilmer starred in two Warner Bros. films that added to his career luster. He succeeded Michael Keaton as Bruce in Batman Forever, but would only play the Caped Crusader that one time. (Kilmer famously clashed with its director, Joel Schumacher, who nevertheless sang the actor’s praises as Batman.) Kilmer then played a key member of Robert DeNiro’s bank robbery crew in the Michael Mann crime classic Heat. He also played the ghost of Elvis Presley in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted True Romance.

David Fincher and Brad Pitt are reportedly re-teaming to revive a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel script written by original director Quentin Tarantino.

Details on what could eventually be a groundbreaking entry in Tarantino’s resume come from The Playlist, which says the Se7en duo is propping up the unexpected film to come to Netflix, continuing Fincher’s long-lasting relationship with the streaming giant. Should everything proceed according to plan, the currently untitled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel would see Pitt return as stunt-double star Cliff Booth.

How such a script came into Fincher’s possession is its own wild story. The Tarantino screenplay is said to be an evolved version of a story previously known as The Movie Critic, a project previously lined up to be the Pulp Fiction mastermind’s final film before it was suddenly shelved last year. Tarantino was seemingly uninterested in letting the idea fade to black and is getting Fincher to bring it to life.

The Playlist’s sources say Netflix paid $20 million to acquire the screenplay with an expected $200 million budget and plans to shoot in California in July – just three months from now. No additional casting details have been confirmed just yet, but Leonardo DiCaprio is not expected to return as Rick Dalton. Fincher and Pitt are putting aside all other projects to focus on this new Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel.

Deadline later corroborated The Playlist’s findings that a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel is in development. Its sources say Pitt received Tarantino’s blessing to present the script to Fincher, resulting in the wildly surprising project that is now in the works.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered in 2019 and is largely viewed as yet another outstanding entry in the Tarantino pantheon. That said, what could eventually be known as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 2 has a lot to live up to. The original project came with an unambiguous ending that tied up its story with a brutal bow. However, much of its world has been explored elsewhere.

In 2021, Tarantino released a novelization covering the movie’s events while expanding upon its take on a 1960s California. It brought a few interesting revelations about Cliff Booth’s past to the conversation, including an answer to whether or not the dog lover really did kill his wife as teased in the movie. It’s a book that will no doubt carry more meaning when the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel finally sees the light of day, though it’s unclear just how important to the story it will be.

For more on Tarantino’s catalog of hit films, you can check out how the director feels about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and how we feel it stacks up against his other work. You can also read our original 7.8/10 review for the film.

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

An extended sneak peek from James Gunn’s Superman will be shown ahead of A Minecraft Movie screenings in theaters this weekend, but it was first shown by Warner Bros. at their CinemaCon presentation on Tuesday.

DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran were on hand along with lead actors David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult to promote the film.

The preview focuses on the “take me home” scene from the trailer where a wounded Superman is saved by his super-pet Krypto. However, this preview also features Superman’s automatons and our longest, best look yet at the Fortress of Solitude.

However, it’s Krypto’s crazy dogness and misbehavior that stole the show. Gunn recalled how Krypto’s depiction is inspired by his own rescue dog.

See the #Superman Extended Preview in Theaters on @AMinecraftMovie. pic.twitter.com/lnn1I82ehu

— Superman (@Superman) April 1, 2025

For more on the Man of Steel’s return to the silver screen, find out who’s who in Superman and what James Gunn thinks makes his reboot unique.

Plus, read up on what we think should be the second Gunn-directed DCU movie and get the full rundown on all the upcoming DC movies and shows in the works.

Superman soars into theaters July 11th.