Borderlands 4 is getting a major update today, including, among other things, the addition of the long-awaited Photo Mode that was announced prior to the game's launch, but was allegedly held due to the need to prioritize polishing other elements.

The update was announced via the official Borderlands 4 website, and it isn't just a Photo Mode being added. Harlowe's Zero-Point Action skill is getting a rework, and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode levels will now increase dedicated loot drop levels.

But Photo Mode is the crown jewel here, and it's available now by restarting your game and downloading the update. Once the update is installed, you can find Photo Mode in the Pause menu while you're playing. It'll let you adjust the camera and apply a variety of visual effects including Field of View and Depth of Field adjustments, filters, changing the time of day, and even toggling visibility of elements such as characters or even damage numbers. Entering Photo Mode will also pause the game entirely in single-player mode (sorry multiplayer folks, just doesn't work that way). There's a full guide to how to use the Photo Mode and all its settings right here.

Photo Mode was promised for Borderlands 4 way back in June of 2025, with creative director Graeme Timmins saying on social media that while it was planned, the team was prioritizing polishing other core elements, and Photo Mode thus wouldn't be around at launch.

I had us prioritize polishing some other elements, more core to the moment-to-moment experience. We've always planned for it, and had it tasked up, we just needed to spend a bit more time on things that would directly impact QoL of playing the game.

— Graeme Timmins (@ProdigyXL) June 24, 2025

Below we've pasted the full patch notes, including all the other updates to Harlowe and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode:

Progression and Rewards

Contract Missions:

• Patrol: Order troops: Now progresses when killing enemies
• Trace: Scrap Core: The scrap core object is able to be interacted with consistently and the contract from Dominion can now be completed
• Convinced the Intrusive Thoughts Vile Ripper, Deep State Phalanx, and Breaux Chambeaux Phalanx bounties to show up when a player has taken their contracts

Vault Card Challenges:

• “Loot or Purchase 10/15 legendaries” Vault Card weekly challenge will no longer reset with a save/load
• “Loot or Purchase Ordnance” will now increase when conditions are met
• “Kill enemies with Torgue guns and gear” will now progress when using Torgue legendary grenade Firepot
• “Kill X enemies with Maliwan guns and gears” and the Maliwan Challenge “Last Wan Standing” will now progress as intended

Challenges:

• Legendary Forsaken Chaos and Legendary Midnight Defiance have been removed from the Collect All Phosphene Challenge
• Updated Maliwan status effects to better identify what triggered the status effects, leading to better tracking on challenges

Progression and rewards

• Addressed a reported issue that was causing travel to Dominion to be locked by a player leaving a transition area in multiplayer
• “Potty Mouth” Mission: Objectives are no longer blocked when exiting to the main menu
• Addressed an issue causing unlocked DLC content to be unavailable while offline
• True Mode is now able to be consistently enabled for newly created level 30 UVHM characters
• Added a tutorial for True Mode when the campaign is completed
• Players creating a new character in multiplayer will now receive all intended rewards
• Addressed a reported issue causing all equipment to be lost when quitting to the main menu during a countdown in multiplayer when switching to solo play
• Addressed issues with the “Gourd Your Loins” cosmetic reward not being awarded with SHiFT code
  • If you were impacted by this issue the first time around, or you missed these gourd-geous heads during the Horrors of Kairos event, this SHiFT code will redeem your missing cosmetic! This code will not reward anything to those that successfully received their cosmetic rewards the first time.
  • Redeem the SHiFT code below (check out our SHiFT User Guide if you don't already know how) to get the "Gourd Your Loins" Vault Hunter Head and the "Hex Appeal" Weapon Skin!*
  • THFB3-R9XKK-CFBJW-T33BB-9R3CC
  • *Requires a copy of Borderlands 4, SHiFT Account, and Internet connection. Must redeem by December 31, 2030. One redemption per SHiFT Account. Terms apply.

Vault Hunters

• Addressed reported issues where critical hit damage sometimes wasn't being applied to critical hits

Specializations

• Daredevil: Action Skill Cooldown rate has been adjusted to .5% and a multiplicative Action Skill Damage bonus has been added
• Runner: Melee Damage bonus is now a multiplicative instead of additive

Harlowe the Gravitar Skill Rework

Dev Note: We’re making several changes to Zero-Point as another step towards making this skill tree feel more satisfying and better balanced relative to Harlowe’s other trees. Because we're changing the fundamental behavior of Zero-Point to include the old Inertia Augment behavior in the base skill, we want to see how these changes balance out before doing more work in the rest of the tree.

We have our eye on a few other passives that may be candidates for some buffs, but between the recent passive buffs that were implemented several weeks ago, combined with today’s changes, we’ll revisit those in the future once we’ve gathered adequate feedback on the current changes.

Long term, we want to ensure that each Vault Hunter has plenty of build diversity, with each Action Skill having its own pros and cons. If and when we see one falling behind, we’ll continue to explore changes like today’s.

• Zero-Point (Base Skill): Now includes the benefits of the previous "Inertia" Augment. Killing an enemy in Stasis now resets the duration, searches for a new target, and makes the duration decrease faster
• Inertia Augment (Changed): Updated to increase Harlowe’s Slam Damage. Whenever she slams an enemy, create Mini Unstable Energy Pocket projectiles that randomly deal Cryo or Radiation damage. Additionally, she also gains increased Status Effect Damage and Status Effect Chance. This effect stacks.

Amon the Forgeknight

• Amon now consistently deals bonus Cryo Damage when equipping Cryonic Thrum Augment in multiplayer
• Prevented unintended increases in the number of segments in the Vault Hunter bar when Amon activates his Action Skill
• Dragon’s Breath now applies properly to Ripper Heavy Weapons with beams
• Firewall Forgeskill will now block Moon-Maddened Callis projectile attacks

Vex the Siren

• Addressed the cooldown for Prismatic Ichors sometimes resetting when applying a status effect
• Phase Pocket Passive no longer resets the Taser underbarrel magazine when using a Vladof Enhancement
• Healing numbers now present correctly when Specters are using Ripper Legendary Sniper Rifle Tankbuster
• Addressed Incarnate Action Skill behavior so that it continues to work while using the Vibe Check Capstone with the Legendary Class Mod Technomancer

General Gameplay:

Bloomreaper Boss Fight:

• Falling into the fog will now consistently kill players instead of having them fall out of the map
• The purple rift will now only appear after the boss is defeated
• Addressed an instance of Bloomreaper keeping the Invincible health bar in the second phase
• Addressed an exploit that would allow UVHM time trial rewards to be obtained while not in UVHM
• Addressed an issue that would cause the chest for Platinum rewards to be empty after fulfilling the requirements
• Disc-shooting heavy weapons will now damage Bloomreaper’s crystals
• Vile Creeps should no longer get stuck in the air

World Events and Bosses:

• Increased the spawn rate of world bosses in the Punitive Manufactorium area
• Rewards will now reliably spawn when completing the Airship or The Goredello world events
• Minister Screw is no longer able to be frozen
• Toy Pinheads are now affected by singularity grenades
• Idolator Sol now takes damage from Elemental Hazards created by skills while Bio Armor is broken
• Vile Lictor’s limbs will now continue to respawn after freezing them
• Gennifer will now remain inside the refugee even if the player is dying near the area
• Lowered the amount of Badass enemies spawning in one spot by Electi Safe Collectable
• Ensured that boss fights consistently reset when all players have died
• Restored the ability to interact with Fortresses if travel was canceled by leaving a transition area in multiplayer

Loot and Stations:

• UVH levels now increase dedicated loot drop levels. The higher the level, the higher the chance of dedicated loot dropping!
• Changed the Respawn Station outside of Umbral Foundry to a Fast Travel station to allow for easier travel to the entrance
• Prevented loot items from dropping into unintended areas after defeating The Oppressor or killing all enemies in Ripper Drill Site Saw’s Clench
• Red Chest in Coastal Bonescape will only unlock when all enemies are killed

Mission, Enemy and ECHO Location Updates:

• Guns Blazing: Arjay will now consistently engage in combat against enemies
• The Power Ballad of Rodd Vomit: Addressed enemy pathing to reach the player
• Missions will no longer progress unexpectedly in multiplayer when switching from splitscreen to solo play
• Radioactive Rail Liner will now attack if players are close to it
• ECHO Location guidance improvements
• Rift Champion icon removed from the Compass, with cleaned-up functionality for those icons in the Map

Guns & Gear

Enhancement:

• Adjusted the Underdog enhancement to only apply to Vladof underbarrel weapons as intended. This will remove an unintended damage bonus that was happening when some guns switched their ammo or element types. We also updated Wombo Combo rockets so they now correctly count as underbarrel damage and receive this boost

Tediore:

• Tediore Legendary Assault Rifle Chuck now throws properly when the player has over 120% gun reload speed
• Addressed a behavior that prevented homing on the third gun spawned by Tediore reloads when specific conditions were met
• Removed extra gun from Tediore shotguns with Ripper magazines

Maliwan:

• Maliwan Legendary SMG Ohm I Got will no longer consume Energy Shield when Overshield is active
• Only active element Status Effects will spread when killing an enemy with a Maliwan-licensed part with Maliwan Enhancement and Transfuser Core
• Singularities now spawn correctly on Maliwan Sniper Rifles with Singularity Grenade Launcher underbarrels

Jakobs:

• Addressed Jakobs ricochet damage to apply the intended amount of damage on Jakobs weapons

Torgue:

• Torgue Legendary Pistol Hardpoint will fire as intended with Tediore licensed-part “Shooting”
• Torgue Legendary Shield Compleation now properly triggers Segment Break armor shield augments

Order:

• Order Legendary Sniper Rifle Rooker needle projectiles will consistently home in on enemies at a distance with the Callous augment. It will also no longer spawn unintended underbarrel projectiles with Jakobs licensed parts and a Jakob enhancement with Leaper and Bounce Pass

Ripper:

• Ripper Legendary Shield Watts 4 Dinner will now consistently give the overshield in multiplayer from Overshield drops

CoV:

• Weapons with CoV magazines now continue to fire when using Bullets to Spare firmware level 3 with the Ventilator enhancement

Daedalus:

• Daedalus SMGs with the Overcharge attachment and a Ripper Magazine will now inherit the Ripper magazine charge-up time

Atlas:

• Atlas Sure Shot perk is no longer triggered by Rafa Peacebreaker Cannons Action Skill while equipping a weapon with Atlas licensed parts and the Sure Shot enhancement
• Updated Tracker Antenna and Trauma Bond to no longer incorrectly apply to gear without Atlas-licensed parts

Ordnance

• Heavy Weapons now cause damage to BoomBoom Drones during the Callis boss fight

Firmware:

• Skillcraft will now receive the proper amount of stacks when dealing skill damage to enemies
• Deadeye 2-piece now functions as intended with intended projectiles
• High Caliber 3-piece now functions as intended with Atlas Tracker Grenade
• Get Throwin’ now properly increases Heavy Weapon Ordnance damage

Visual, Audio, and Animation updates to Guns and Gear:

• Restored prefixes to Tediore Legendary Grenade UAV
• Order Legendary Pistol Bully with Hyperion Shield enhancement now display with all parts on the item card
• Repkit will no longer disappear when trying to heal after climbing
• Corrected animations for Daedalus SMGs with Atlas Underbarrel attachments when switching
• Corrected audio on the Daedalus Legendary Shotgun Missilaser
• Maliwan Legendary Shotgun Mantra now shows the Amara Phase Fist when fired
• Adjusted effects on Maliwan Legendary SMG Ohm I Got and Daedalus Legendary Shotgun Missilaser to be consistent throughout gameplay
• Adjusted animation on Tediore Shotguns to prevent shell cases from appearing when using secondary fire
• Tediore weapons no longer explode when thrown if they overlap with water
• Tediore Assault Rifles and Pistols have consistent laser sights on gear
• Effects for Vladof Legendary Assault Rifle Whiskey Foxtrot will now expire as intended
• Adjusted reload animation for Ripper Shotguns with CoV magazines
• Adjusted Ripper effects when shooting Ripper guns with Maliwan-licensed underbarrel parts
• Ripper Grenade Transmitter effects have been restored when they are despawning
• Adjusted missing effects of needles when using the Order Legendary Sniper Rifle Rooker

Audio & Visuals

• Vault Hunter voices now return to normal after unequipping the Kittycopter head customization
• Marcus now talks at the proper time
• The second round of the Goredello will now announce the enemy type
• Updated various sound effects to play while fighting Bloomreaper
• Updates to various incorrect or missing VO lines
• Damage numbers have been removed when continuing to shoot Arjay when the fight has ended
• Corrected ECHO-4 appearance when using the ECHO-IVIV frame and Nurple paintjob customization
• Ensured Vex the Siren's tattoos glow as intended with all skins
• Melee animations for Rafa the Exo-Soldier will now play correctly in multiplayer
• Characters can now climb after double jumping at the Abandoned Post Safehouse in the Coastal Bonescape
• Resolved climbing animations not syncing in multiplayer
• Using the grapple point by the propaganda speaker in The Howl will now take the player to the roof of the house
• Adjusted Idolator Sol animations when buying Boss replay in multiplayer
• Reduced the brightness of Seeker Witness’ laser effects
• Ripsaw’s rotating blade effect will now disappear after death
• Minister Screw's triangle effects now disappear after death
• Ensured Bruce’s head consistently disappeared in multiplayer during Angry Mob mission
• Addressed reported instances of NPCs performing their animations early or in the wrong locations
• Adjusted effects on power cores during the “Powerdrop” Mission
• Carried items will no longer become attached to a weapon after firing and reloading quickly
• Adjusted fading distance in the intro
• Addressed hitching with Vault Hunter saves in the main menu
• Reduced the number of unused materials throughout the game
• Prevented Shield Boosters from blocking the screen
• Trees inside buildings no longer blow in the wind
• Missing animations when destroying the grate near the Vault Fragment in Tonnage Peel have been restored
• Unintended transition effects will no longer appear on players outside of Vile Lictor boss arena
• Fire no longer starts popping when getting closer to Dominion
• Prevented flickering after opening an Electi Safe
• Haybales in The Howl no longer show glass VFX when hit
• House now displays properly during Breeding Daisies
• The lights on the Candlelight Catastrophe skin now flash consistently
• Ensured the launch pad in Cuspid Climb is consistent with other launch pad areas
• The Black Market Vending Machine will no longer have an obstructed view if spawned in Tonnage Peel
• Lowered several floating items
• Addressed multiple cases of lootables not being able to be opened
• Updated various cinematics for consistency
• Addressed clipping, missing collision, out-of-bounds access, stuck spots, and visual errors in various areas of the game

UI, Text, Localization

• Sorting in the Customization Menu now defaults to show Unlocked Customizations first
• Corrected an issue causing the Backpack to appear empty after filtering
• Repkits now appear as intended in Inventory
• Addressed a reported issue causing Vault Cards to not update or progress in multiplayer
• Addressed a reported issue causing Vault Card progress to reset or disappear after a disconnect
• Vault Cards will no longer carry over progress if the same challenge reappears after the daily reset
• Updates to Vault Card UI
• Various optimization updates to UI
• Addressed various reported issues with scroll bar, sorting, and menu UI
• Updated localization, various text descriptions, subtitle timings, icon visibility, and alignment across the game
• Material thumbnails in the Customization menu now appear correctly
• Updated Credits

Splitscreen

• “Flip Card” functionality has been restored after level transitions
• Corrected various scrolling issues in the Vault Cards Menu during splitscreen
• Corrected a case of a persistent “Logging in” message when a secondary player joins splitscreen
• The Golden Chest will no longer get stuck with the “Transaction in Progress” message when the secondary player leaves after opening
• Both splitscreen players will now see all mission items during “Breeding Daisies” mission
• Resolved an issue with Recent Friends not functioning as intended when a player is added to splitscreen during gameplay
• Adjusted Vault Card UI to prevent overlapping or not displaying the entire Item Card
• Vehicle FOV will now change for both players
• Adjusted nameplate text sizes to scale correctly in splitscreen
• Updated various UI elements for correct placement and to prevent overlapping

Player Experience

• [Console Only] Several instances of incorrect gear meshes have been corrected on consoles
• [PC Only] Adjusted default mouse sensitivity and added a setting option to disable mouse smoothing
• Blended facial animations for better optimization
• Visual optimizations for Jakobs Legendary Shotgun Rainbow Vomit
• Optimizations to Mission Menu
• Various improvements to stability and optimization

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Yeah, you heard me. World of Warcraft is finally getting a Prop Hunt mode, or something like it, sometime later this year.

This is according to today's World of Warcraft: State of Azeroth presentation, which included a breakdown of what we can expect across both World of Warcraft: Midnight and Classic in the next several months. While the presentation contained a lot of exciting details, one thing that really stuck out was a brief moment during the post-Midnight content update roadmap section, where WoW lead Ion Hazzikostas described the new "Decor Duel" mode coming in patch 12.05, which he openly said was basically just Prop Hunt.

In Decor Duel, teams of five compete against one another in locations such as the faction Neighborhoods, or Silvermoon City. One team disguises itself as props, aka random objects, while the other team tries to track them down within a time limit. It's classic Prop Hunt.

For those who are unfamiliar, prop hunt began as a popular game mode in Garry's Mod that worked basically like WoW's version. Prop hunt has since made its way into a number of other popular games such as Call of Duty, Fornite, and Genshin Impact. It feels like an obvious pull for World of Warcraft, especially given the new freedom players have been given in Midnight to acquire and mess around with all sorts of object assets from throughout World of Warcraft via the Housing feature. It's even called "Decor" Duel, seemingly referencing that it's using Housing Decor!

Unfortunately, it does sound like this mode may end up being a temporary event similar to Plunderstorm rather than a permanent addition to the game.

Prop Hunt is far from the only thing announced today. Blizzard unveiled its World of Warcraft roadmap for the coming months, including Midnight pre-launch events, plans for housing updates including pet and mount integration, improved advanced tools, import/export builds, and more. And there was a patch roadmap too, with a standalone single-boss raid coming in 12.07, a new zone, new raid, and friends system overhaul in 12.1, and a new feature called Labyrinths alongside a new experimental event in 12.1.5.

Previously, we've spoken with Hazzikostas about the games changes to mods, or add-ons. We've also played around with the new Housing feature, and even previewed the new expansion. World of Warcraft: Midnight launches on March 2.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Xbox has been having a hard time selling consoles lately, and it didn't get any better over the 2025 holiday quarter. Microsoft has just reported its Q2 2026 earnings, including the news that hardware sales were down 32% year-over-year, after quarter upon quarter upon quarter of hardware declines.

Though we don't have actual numbers to tell how much revenue is being lost out on here, we can get a sense of how grim this is for the hardware by looking at past quarters. Last quarter, Q1 of 2026, hardware declined 29% year-over-year. The quarter before that, Q4 of 2025, hardware was down 22%. The quarter before that? Down 6%. Before that? Down 29%. And before that, 29%, in Q1 of 2025, which was July - September of 2024. Going back even further through Microsoft's earnings reports, the prior year quarters saw declines of 42% (woah) in Q4 of 2024 and 31% in Q3. In fact, you have to go all the way back to Q2 2024, which was October through December of 2023, to find the last time Xbox's hardware revenue was better during that period than it was the year before - it was up a whopping 3% over the holiday quarter.

And yes, it was down 7% the quarter before that, 13% before that, down 30% before that, down 13% before that, and finally up 13% year-over-year in Q1 of 2023, or July - September of 2022, at which point the numbers start finally showing consistent improvement year-over-year, largely due to proximity to the launch of the Series S and X.

Now, look. It's extremely normal for a six-year-old console to not be selling as well as it was in the first few years after launch. That's to be expected. Early adopters tend to buy up consoles in large quantities at launch, distributers run out of stock, more is produced, people continue to buy until the vast majority of enthusiasts who want the console already have one, and then sales slow down as the console gets older. But it...usually takes a bit longer to get to that point! For comparison's sake, we have evidence that neither the PlayStation 5 nor the Nintendo Switch have had this much trouble on this scale selling systems at this stage in their respective life cycles, and certainly not as far back as less than three years after launch. There's maybe a reason why we have hard unit sales numbers of Switches and PS5s from Nintendo and PlayStation, but no official numbers whatsoever from Xbox on the Series S and X.

None of this is surprising to anyone who's paying attention. We've been reading headlines about the strugglines of the Xbox Series consoles for the last several years now. In the U.S., Xbox console sales hit an all-time November low in 2025, after several years in a row of declining hardware sales in what is usually the busiest retail month with Black Friday.

These more recent struggles are likely tied as well to the two spikes in Xbox console prices just this year, which saw the least expensive Xbox rise to $400, and the most expensive to an unimaginable $800. Its recently-released ROG Ally launched last year at a whopping $1000. And because much of the high prices are tariff-related, the U.S. - Xbox's biggest market - is primarily impacted here. According to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella speaking to us last December, the average price per Xbox unit in the U.S. has risen 30% year-over-year in 2025.

Xbox seems to be well-aware that its console business is seriously suffering. While it's promised a new, next-gen console to follow the Series, it's also said such a console would be a "very premium, very high-end curated experience." And even though there have been rumors it's considering backing off about its hardware plans recently, Xbox is still denying them, even as a former Xbox founding member says that "Xbox hardware is dead."

While the hardware declines were the most noteworthy figure from Microsoft's earnings yesterday, it's not like software was doing a whole lot better. Content and services revenue dropped 5% year-over-year, and overall gaming declines caused revenue in the More Personal Computing segment of Microsoft to drop 3% year-over-year. In the investor presentation, CFO Amy Hood said that the revenue drop was "driven by first-party content with impact across the platform," suggesting that its first-party games (perhaps Call of Duty?) didn't do as well as they expected them to.

All-in-all, another real rough one for Microsoft's gaming department.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Elden Ring: Nightreign is getting a tabletop RPG adaptation from Group SNE, the same team behind the tabletop RPG versions of Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Armored Core 6.

This news was first spotted by Polygon having been shared by Kadokawa's official Fujimi Dragon Book Editorial account on Twitter/X. According to the post, it's set to be published soon, in spring of 2026.

There aren't any further details as to what this campaign will entail, but as a Nightreign lover, I don't find it too hard to imagine. Nightreign already has a wonderfully clear-cut class system, and the potential for different DMs to shuffle abilities, monsters, bosses, hazards, events, points of interest is extremely strong. Like the game itself, such a campaign could be extremely replayable as well.

There is a sneak peek of the Nightreign campaign coming in GM Warlock magazine, but unless you can read Japanese, this probably isn't that useful to you. We also don't even know that it will get a localization into English.

Group SNE is responsible for a number of tabletop campaigns, board and card games, and light novels, including the aforementioned tabletop games based on FromSoftware properties, as well as the entire Record of Lodoss War campaign setting and Sword World RPG, a tabletop game first published in '89 that has since gone on to become a phenomenon in Japan.

I hope we see the Nightreign campaign make it to the USA, because Nightreign rips, dude. It's probably one of the most addictive 7/10 games I've played in years, and the recent DLC has only managed to get its hooks in me even deeper. Sure, the new map is confounding, but once you've fallen off it 10 or 20 or 30 times, you really do get the hang of it.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Dispatch, the superhero workplace comedy made by Telltale veterans at AdHoc Studio, is out now on Nintendo Switch. But a number of excited new and returning players aren't super happy about the release, as it turns out the game has been pretty aggressively censored on the system.

It's been well-known since its release on other platforms that Dispatch is a game with signficant adult content. Some characters are fully or partially naked in various scenes, with their full anatomy on display. There are some sex scenes where characters make sounds associated with sex. Sometimes characters flip the bird at one another. For those who don't want to see all this, there's a censorship toggle in the settings that covers up the nudity and the middle fingers, and silences any unwanted sex noises. On most platforms, this is entirely optional and up to the player to turn on.

But not on Nintendo Switch. Earlier today, reports began to drop from reviewers of the Switch version that Dispatch's censorship toggle is missing from the options on the platform. That's because it's permanently turned on (no pun intended). So all the censor bars and silence are just stuck that way, with no way to turn on the more mature version of the game.

Why? According to AdHoc, it's because of Nintendo policies. "Different platforms have different content criteria, and submissions are evaluated individually," the studio said in a statement shared with Eurogamer. "We worked with Nintendo to ensure the content within the title met the criteria to release on their platforms, but the core narrative and gameplay experience remains identical to the original release."

This has understandably frustrated some people. A number of members of Dispatch online communities in places like Reddit and other social platforms have alternatingly expressed frustration with Nintendo for its policies, and AdHoc for bending to them so readily. While it's true that other games in the past such as, notably, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and Fire Emblem Fates, have also been censored in various ways. But by comparison, Dispatch's censorship is extremely blunt and distracting. Who wants giant black bars across the screen? Especially if you can't turn them off?

What's more, as some have pointed out, both Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 are on Switch too. Both of those games have nudity, and neither has been censored in such a way, leading to questions about what makes Dispatch different. We're reached out to Nintendo for comment.

Dispatch is amazing, as we determined in our 9/10 review of the game, calling it "a sharp-witted workplace comedy that charms with its smart dialogue choices, great writing, and lovably aggravating cast." You can play it without big black censor bars on PC or PlayStation 5, but no Xbox version yet.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Since December, we've been seeing (and writing!) headlines discussing the seeming slowdown of Nintendo Switch 2 sales going into the holiday season.

And that narrative feels right, doesn't it? We've seen prices on everything rise this year, and increasing economic uncertainty especially in the U.S. The Nintendo Switch 2 also didn't have a huge holiday game release (my apologies to Metroid Prime 4) to bolster sales through Black Friday and December. It just makes sense that holiday sales were down.

But there's some nuance to this narrative, and not just because so many people seem to be taking this as a sign of doom for the Nintendo Switch 2. So I kicked off the new year by bugging all the analysts I knew for some further context on Nintendo Switch 2's holiday sales: if they were down, why they were down if so, and what it all means for the Switch 2's future.

Did the Nintendo Switch 2 actually have a bad holiday?

Nah.

Were sales slower than they were earlier in the year? Sure. But that was neither shocking nor concerning to any analyst I spoke to.

Manu Rosier, director of market intelligence at Newzoo, described the Nintendo Switch 2's sales thus far as having a strong initial surge of adoption, followed by "normalization." “There are signs of a Q4 normalization versus the launch window, reflecting a shift from launch-driven demand (scarcity, bundles, pent-up interest) to a more typical, steady-state demand mix," he said. This trend was echoed across the globe, with Rosier and several of the other analysts I spoke to all confirming something roughly similar going on in their respective tracked regions across the U.S., UK, and Europe.

Yes, there was a drop off in sales over the holidays from the initial launch surge. As Joost van Dreunen, NYU Stern professor and author of SuperJoost Playlist explains, "The device is more expensive than its predecessors, for one, and went into the holiday season without a clear blockbuster title to incentivize audiences. Don’t get me wrong, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is well worth your time, but it lacks the cache held by Mario and Zelda titles. More so, everyone who was going to buy a Switch 2 at launch has had a chance to do so, especially since Nintendo had been stocking its new console for months prior to its release in anticipation of tariff-related volatility and potential supply chain issues.”

But as every single analyst I spoke to also said, this was extremely expected and normal, and not really an indicator of anything especially concerning. For instance, Circana's annual report on the U.S. games market had the Nintendo Switch 2 as the best-selling console of the year in both unit and dollar sales. It sold 4.4 million units total for 2025 in the U.S., 94% higher than the Nintendo Switch 1 at the same point in its life cycle.

It is worth noting, of course, that the Nintendo Switch 1 launched in March in its release year, while the Switch 2 dropped in June. This means that the comparison point here, seven months into each console's life cycle, includes the holiday period for the Switch 2, but not the original Switch. And it's true that reporting suggests Switch 2 holiday sales underperformed Switch 1 holiday sales in some markets, especially the UK and parts of the U.S. So it's possible in the coming months we see that difference shrink.

Or, maybe not! The Switch 2 has one heck of a lead, and there's a good reason for it: supply. "Switch 2 sales [in 2025] were expected to be more front-loaded than other consoles historically due to the strong rate of supply early on," says Mat Piscatella, senior director at Circana. "Which, of course, is how the Switch 2 has been able to set the record as the US market's fastest selling console ever over the first 6 months in market. You can't sell units that don't exist, etc etc."

Switches 'Round the World

Additionally, the Switch 2's holiday wasn't on the slower side everywhere. In Asia, Niko Partners director of research and insights Daniel Ahmad says the Switch 2 had a good holiday. "In Japan, sales of the Switch 2 during the holiday period were in line with the Switch 1," he says. "Nintendo’s expansion in Southeast Asia is also paying off, with an official launch in the region earlier this year helping drive sales growth. While there is no official release in China, demand for grey market imports is high."

Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Kantan Games, backs this up too. "In the case of the Japanese market in particular, the numbers are very clear: Switch 2 sold like hot cakes over the holidays."

One reason for that is supply. The Switch 2's initial sales success in the U.S. can be attributed partly to Nintendo ensuring there was an ample supply at launch, which also resulted in U.S. total sales being more heavily frontloaded than they would have otherwise. But the console has been difficult to come by in Japan, Toto says. That was true even over the holiday when supply improved, and he suspects the Japan sales would have been even higher if there had been enough Switch 2s to go around.

Piers Harding-Rolls, games industry analyst and researcher at Ampere Analysis, offered an in-depth take as to why the Switch 2 is in the position it's in right now. For one, the market conditions are different than they were when the Switch 1 came out. Not only is there more stock and fewer massive gamers as the other analysts mentioned, but the Switch 2 is also a "known quantity."

"When the original Switch launched it followed a failing Wii U generation - there was a lot of interest but hype and momentum built up in the run up to the holiday sales at the end of 2017," Harding-Rolls says. "This time around at the Switch 2 launch demand was predictably high because of the success of the Switch. Following a record launch, it’s not surprising that Switch 2 sales have not been able to maintain the same massive sales lead on the original Switch. For the record, Switch 2 shipments in 2025 should outperform the original Switch in 2017 and over a shorter period of time.

"...Then there is the whole macroeconomic situation, less disposable income and higher priced hardware. This may be softening demand to an extent especially as lots of new games are still available on the original Switch."

Put all together, it sounds like there's a lot less cause for alarm(o) than some were making Switch 2 sales out to be.

The Switch in Twenty-Six

But what about the future?

Harding-Rolls continues: "I’m expecting Switch 2 exclusives to become more plentiful in 2026 so this will drive upgrades for those sitting on the fence. Overall, Switch 2 games look pretty strong in 2026 so I remain quite bullish on the performance of the platform this year. Longer-term I don’t expect Switch 2 to outperform the original Switch as there were special conditions - primarily the pandemic - which supercharged demand for Switch later in the cycle and elongated it to an extent."

Everyone else agrees 2026 will be a good year for Switch 2, though with some asterisks related to the broader global market. Toto thinks for the current fiscal year ending March 30, Nintendo will be closer to 20 million units sold than their own forecast of 15 million, contingent on them building a more impressive game line-up. Ahmad predicts that the Switch 2 will sell more than 50 million units by the end of 2027, which would be a similar amount to the Switch 1 over the same time frame. He's predicting a price hike, though, specifically a tariff-related one: "Tariffs were already squeezing margins last year, component costs are increasing rapidly, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo passes those costs on to consumers in one way or another."

Van Dreunen doesn't think we'll see component-related price changes that would discourage sales, saying that Nintendo has already priced those in and that he expects sales in Japan especially to remain strong thanks to regional discounts and a heavy focus on the domestic market. "If it looks like Nintendo is selling fewer consoles in the US, you can look to the current administration for an explanation."

Memory Goes Boom

But hardware pricing is a pretty big sticking point for James McWhirter, senior analyst at Omdia. He provided a fairly detailed breakdown of what he thinks is coming not just for the Switch 2, but for the entire console market, insofar as hardware pricing increases could eventually price consumers out of new purchases.

McWhirter thinks that the big story for all console hardware this year will be the effect that demand for AI infrastructure is going to have on pricing. In his estimation, about six months ago, RAM in a base PS5 accounted for at least a fifth of the bill of materials. But by the end of 2025, that cost will have risen by at least 50%.

"Suppliers obviously have the upper hand with any new negotiations, so it’s only a matter of time until Nintendo – and Sony and Microsoft – run through their inventory of memory and renegotiate at higher prices," he says. "Any rise in the cost of console hardware will be passed on to consumers via multiple means: directly, or via a mix of increased software, services, peripherals pricing.

"But this comes at a tricky time for consoles – we are of course simultaneously seeing the spending power of middle-income households declining. This leaves Nintendo more exposed as they are keen on transitioning their Switch audience onto Switch 2 as quickly as possible, with no more cross-gen releases on the horizon."

It's not just hardware that's impacted, he adds. He expects the "memory boom cycle" to impact Switch 2 software specifically soon, due to physical games shipping on NAND memory. "The rising cost of NAND memory places upward pressure on the cost of Switch 2 Game Cards. Switch 2, like its predecessor, is still a physical-first platform. When including bundled software, Omdia estimates 57% of Switch 2 games sold in 2025 were at retail."

What about Game Key-Cards, you say? Sure, that would help, but they're controversial…and may not be enough anyway.

"The upward pressure on NAND memory prices mean Game Key-Cards will be here to stay - even Nintendo has begun experimenting with them starting with March 2026's Pokémon Pokopia. A publisher recently suggested Nintendo is introducing smaller capacity Game Cards, but the cost savings they provide may be eventually wiped out in future.

McWhirter expects that all of this will likely impact the "middle market" of gaming, people who purchase consoles sometime after their initial launch boom or general non-enthusiast gamers, may not be purchasing consoles in the same volume that they have in recent history. These are the people that pushed the Switch 1 to global sell-through of 151 million by the end of last year, but he's not so sure they're going to show up for the Switch 2, especially if it gets more expensive. He recalls the Nintendo 3DS, which had extremely frontloaded sales (17% of systems were sold in the first year on the market) compared to the Nintendo Switch 1 (9% in the first year). A similar scenario could happen again.

There are things Nintendo could do to stave that off. Switch 2 hardware bundles over the holiday providing a "soft" discount would help push sales. Regional discounts extended beyond just Japan would also probably work. He also posits a future docked-only Switch 2 Lite that would help reduce component costs and pass that savings on to consumers.

What does all this mean? It sounds like, as has been reported, 2025 was overall a fantastic launch year for the Switch 2, and that energy will likely continue for some time to come. But there are a number of hurdles the console needs to overcome in the next few years in order to maintain that success long-term. Some of them are obvious and manageable by Nintendo now: does it have a strong 2026 and 2027 game line-up, or not? But others, such as tariffs and component costs, are harder to predict and will require deft handling on the part of the hardware maker in order to drive the Switch 2 generation to a comparable level of success as its predecessors had.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

A new lawsuit filed by shareholders of Hasbro against the company and its directors alleges that company leadership has mismanaged Magic: The Gathering by overprinting sets of cards, thereby devaluing existing ones. It also, quite notably, claims that Hasbro leadership "concealed the true reason" that its widely-criticized, incredibly expensive Magic: The Gathering 30th Anniversary Set was pulled from sale within an hour of its initial release.

The lawsuit, filed in Rhode Island earlier this week, is filed by shareholders Joseph Crocono and Ultan McGlone against Hasbro CEO Christian Cocks, a number of fellow company directors, and Hasbro itself. The lawsuit alleges breaches of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, waste of corporate assets, gross mismanagement, abuse of control, and violations of the Exchange Act.

Specifically, the shareholder plaintiffs claim that, under Cocks' leadership, Hasbro has been printing far too many Magic: The Gathering sets, thereby reducing the value of existing sets. This complaint probably sounds familiar to avid Magic players, as Wizards of the Coast has been printing significantly more sets per year than it used to. This handy chart made in 2022 by jacobwillson2727 at Only on Tuesdays helps illustrate the problem, and it's only gotten worse in the years since:

If Animal Crossing: New Horizons' 3.0 update earlier this month wasn't enough for you, don't worry, there's a new hype train you can board. IKEA just recently posted a TikTok with some very familiar sights and sounds, and it has us hoping for a furniture collaboration soon.

As spotted by Polygon, the official TikTok page for IKEA France posted a video two days ago that very much seems to be teasing something Animal Crossing-related. In the video, a very distinctively Animal Crossing leaf floats down from the ceiling of an empty room, before a hand cursor clicks on it and turns it into furniture, cycling through four different types of IKEA furniture (two bookcases in different styles, a dresser, and a couch). The video description, via TikTok's translation from French, reads, "We still don't accept cash bells. #ikea #animalcrossing"

@ikeafrance On n'accepte toujours pas les clochettes en caisse. #ikea #animalcrossing ♬ son original - IKEA France

The background music, while not identifiable immediately as any specific Animal Crossing theme, certainly has the correct xylophone and according sounds going. And the sound effects of clicking and cycling between furniture are 100% straight from Animal Crossing. To me, that reads that whatever's going on here at minimum has Nintendo's blessing.