Sony says it's increasing production of PlayStation 5, and is "working to bring forward more supply into the year-end holiday selling season."

During its latest earnings results, Sony explained that both software sales and gameplay engagement have dropped year-on-year – not a huge surprise given the huge increase in gaming during COVID-19 lockdowns.

"Taking this situation into account," Sony explained, "we intend to take action to increase user engagement in the second half of the fiscal year, during which major titles including first party software are scheduled to be released, primarily by increasing the supply of [PS5] hardware and promoting the new PlayStation Plus service."

Sony says it still expects to meet its forecast of 18 million units sold during this financial year, and is seeing positive signs for supply after lockdowns lifted in Shanghai, a major components production hub. As a result, Sony now believes it can bring forward production and sell many of those units during the holiday season, a boom-time for sales.

Sony has previously promised to ramp up production this year, but supplies have remained constrained, with new units selling out almost immediately. In a Q&A session, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said, "We want to produce more units as soon as possible."

Sony's been improving its hardware and services consistently since the launch of PS5, most recently adding an update to support 1440p monitors, and introducing the new PlayStation Stars loyalty service.

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 [email protected].

Tomb Raider star Alicia Vikander will no longer be Lara Croft after MGM lost the rights to the franchise.

According to The Wrap, the rights for the Tomb Raider film franchise have lapsed after MGM failed to greenlight a Tomb Raider sequel in time, and that means the franchise is now up for grabs.

MGM had until May this year to put a Tomb Raider sequel into production but has now lost the rights after failing to do so. This has sparked a bidding war in Hollywood with “a host” of studios now putting in bids for the popular video game franchise.

The next film, it seems, will be a complete reboot of the franchise without Alicia Vikander, who starred as Lara Croft in the last movie reboot of the series. Tomb Raider saw Vikander suit up as the iconic Lara Croft and earned a paltry $275 million at the box office, barely breaking even. On top of that, it suffered from lackluster reviews.

IGN’s own review said: “It’s a shame to see the trend of poor game-to-movie adaptations continue with a character as great as Lara Croft. In this new Tomb Raider origin story, Lara’s singular drive to find her father falls flat because their relationship isn’t interesting, and that failure is compounded by a lackluster story and characters.”

MGM had already begun looking at a potential sequel, with Lovecraft Country showrunner Misha Green pegged to write and direct, but that too has fallen apart. GK Films acquired the Tomb Raider rights in 2011 from Square Enix and is now considering offers.

Things look brighter on the gaming side for Tomb Raider. Embracer Group acquired Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics earlier this year, and the studio is working on a new Lara Croft adventure in Unreal Engine 5.

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

Cardy, Joe, and Matt are ready to rank every MCU property that has a release date in the order they are most excited to see them in. If you aren't into your Marvel though, there's still plenty on some of the other news to come out of Comic-Con last week including Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, House of the Dragon, and The Sandman. All after too much chat about egg custard tarts – the sweetest of all the quiches.

Want to get in touch to talk about cats? Custard? Feel free to send us an email at [email protected].

IGN UK Podcast #655: Ranking Every Upcoming MCU Movie and TV Show

• IGN UK Podcast #654: Stray-son?! STRAY-SON!
• IGN UK Podcast #653: Lots of Love and a Crackle of Thunder
• IGN UK Podcast #652: All Things Stranger Things
• IGN UK Podcast #651: The RPG Build-a-Game Workshop
• IGN UK Podcast #650: The One That Isn't Just on Spotify

Ivan and Viktor Drago will be back in Drago – a new spin-off from Rocky and Creed.

According to The Wrap, the upcoming Rocky film is being penned by writer Robert Lawton for MGM and will focus on the Russian father and son after their appearance in Creed II.

The film came about following Lawton’s spec script “Becoming Rocky”, which focused on the making of the first Rocky Balboa film. MGM execs were said to be “impressed” by this, leading to an offer for Lawton to write the upcoming Drago spin-off.

Ivan Drago actor Dolph Lundgren has been teasing a Drago spin-off for some time. “I think there’s some talk about doing a whole spin-off on Drago with MGM,” he said back last year. “So, you may get more of that.”

Creed II starred Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed, with Sylvester Stallone playing the young boxer’s mentor as the former Heavyweight champion turned coach, Rocky Balboa. The sequel saw Adonis takes on the son of Ivan Drago – the former Russian champion, Rocky’s nemesis, and the man who ultimately killed Adonis’ father with a knockout blow during an exhibition match in Rocky IV.

Florian Munteanu starred as Viktor Drago and is expected to return in the upcoming Creed III. Creed III has already been pushed back from its November release date and is now expected to debut in March next year.

Although the plot for the upcoming Drago spin-off is firmly under wraps, it looks as though it’s all change for the Rocky Balboa franchise, with Sylvester Stallone stepping away after revealing that he won’t be back for the third Creed movie.

Whether or not Stallone will be back in Drago remains to be seen, but with Stallone still tussling for the rights to the franchise, I can’t help thinking that’s a no-go right now. Still, Michael B. Jordan will be back as Adonis, as well as making his directorial debut with Creed III.

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

After days of intrigue, it's finally been revealed that the mysterious videos of hitherto unknown areas in Nier: Automata were the work of extremely talented modders.

The 'church saga' began when a Reddit user called sadfutago posted a video of a door that no Nier player had ever seen before, and followed it up with clips that showed bizarre content that included references to other games. It has hooked the Nier community (and many, many others), who couldn't work out if this was an ARG for a new game, or the work of modders – although the latter had been deemed impossible by many.

As it turns out, it wasn't as impossible to mod Nier: Automata as we thought, with a Twitch stream revealing that the entire saga was indeed the work of talented fans creating new content within the game. As you can see in the gallery below, the Twitch stream ended with an admission that all of this was created with mods by three individuals, DevolasRevenge, Woeful_Wolf, and RaiderB.

"THANK YOU," reads a text slide that aired at the end of the stream. "Everything we have shared has been completely in-game, no editing was used. We have been loving all the discussions and theories – it has been an amazing journey. It has been inspiring to see the community come together after so many years, it has made all the hard work well worth it."

While some will be disappointed that this doesn't mean more official Nier content is coming soon, the fact that the team has begin adding in-game content to Automata at all is huge news for the community. Many believed this wasn't possible, but the modders have promised to release "new Blender addons and scripting tools" on an open source basis, seemingly blowing the modding scene wide open for the first time.

The church scene itself will be released to let everyone play what they've been watching, and the team says they have "so much more in store", including an already finished mod from RaiderB.

Subsequent slides apologised to the community for misleading people, saying they wanted to give off the impression of this being cut or secret content, not a full-blown ARG. They also said they weren't trying to impersonate Nier creator Yoko Taro, who has been drawn into the mystery over the last few days (and who has been subsequently praised for not ruining the mystery).

Finally, the team apologside for the "anticlimactic" ending, saying they were running out of time to do it due to personal reasons. However, much of the community has been celebrating the reveal for breathing life into the community, even before mods are released.

"This is the most enamored I’ve ever been with something like this, and it’s insane. I was here," wrote Jinnie-boy. Seasalted-icecream sees this as a new future for the series: "These guys managed to grab the attention of multiple people involved with NieR and have revitalized interest in the series. What we have now may only be a new and incredibly made mod, but [Square Enix] might see that the interest is definitely there and may seriously consider working on the series again."

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 [email protected].