Today's the day if you own a PlayStation and have a hankering for post-apocalyptic guinea pigs who are packing heat. Yep, Biomutant is now at its lowest recorded price ever. I've also spotted some great Xbox deals on the Assassin's Creed series—from the back-compat OG (that is enhanced) all the way up to Valhalla. I say hoodie up, then watch history come alive again (with death).

Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch

Purchase Cheaply for PC

Exciting Offers for XO/XS

Product Savings for PS4/PS5

Adam's an Aussie deals-aholic who preordered four N64 controllers for Switch. Watch him ruin himself financially in real-time @Grizwords.

More than 20 Activision Blizzard employees have been fired since harassment allegations first came to light, according to Frances Townsend, Activision Blizzard's executive vice president for corporate affairs. In addition, more than 20 others have faced "other types of disciplinary action."

Activision Blizzard's announcements came as part of a larger update in which Townsend outlined the publisher's response to the various allegations that have dogged the company since the summer. They include adding three more positions to the company's Ethics and Compliance team, with 19 more planned for the future. Activision Blizzard also says its will "triple" its investment into training resources.

It is not clear if Activision Blizzard's list includes prominent Blizzard veterans Luis Barriga, Jesse McCree, and Jonathan LeCraft, who were dismissed from the company in August.

Townsend's message was emailed to employees and also posted on Activision Blizzard's corporate website. It was released on the same day that Activision Blizzard asked courts to briefly halt proceedings around the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing [DFEH]'s lawsuit following allegations that the agency had violated ethics rules. Activision Blizzard is also seeking to have the case moved to a court that specializes in complex litigation, potentially stalling or even killing the case. Activision Blizzard previously announced a settlement with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission for $18 million.

Townsend herself hasn't been immune to criticism over the course of the case. In August, she stepped down as the sponsor of the ABK Women's Network after issuing a statement saying the allegations surrounding the company were "distorted" and "false."

Allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination, and abuse of women and other marginalized groups have surrounded the company since the lawsuit first made headlines back in July. The ensuing walkout forced Activision Blizzard to reckon with a pattern of bad behavior spanning more than a decade, with former president J. Allen Brack among those forced to step down as a result.

Activision Blizzard has since promised to address its toxic internal culture while providing payouts for affected employees. In the meantime, Blizzard in particular continues to suffer a notable talent drain. You can read our full timeline of the Activision Blizzard lawsuit here.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN

Game Pass subscriptions have slowed in the fiscal year 2021 according to new documents released by Microsoft.

In a new financial statement, Microsoft revealed that Xbox Game Pass subscriptions rose by 37.5% falling short of its internal target of 47.8%. In contrast, last year Microsoft over-performed on its targets to grow Xbox Game Pass, increasing subscriptions by nearly 86% over a goal of 71%.

What this means is that Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscriptions have slowed this past year, and it’s likely a combination of factors. One of the key promises of Xbox Game Pass is that first-party titles will be available on the service day and date. So far in 2021, first-party titles have been relegated mostly to Age of Empires remasters, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Psychonauts 2.

New first-party titles like Age of Empires 4 and Halo Infinite are still months away and will deliver on Game Pass’ promise of major first-party day and date releases.

And Xbox Game Pass remains a key focus for Microsoft overall. Growing the service is a key performance metric for Microsoft executives, meaning hitting desired growth goals will result in bonuses for members of Microsoft’s leadership team. As Axios reports, Game Pass growth is the only pure gaming metric in the executive payment plan, highlighting its importance.

As Microsoft’s first-party offerings ramp up, it will likely affect Xbox Game Pass’ subscription numbers.

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

Pieces of NHL 22 feel like a callback to NHL 95, which introduced the spin-o-rama. That innovation was a quick piece of showy stick play that made dodging a defender easier, at the expense of realism. Decades later, such skills now turned into X-Factors, giving certain star players special moves. Now universal across NHL, Madden NFL, and FIFA, these shatter the simulation aspects these respective sports brands were previously known for. And thus, NHL 22 finds itself conflicted. It recalls the series’ growing pains in the early ‘00s where the slapstick, arcade-style play ruled before giving way to a fealty to the real sport. Given the near-total lack of penalty calls except for the most severe infractions (even with the penalty slider cranked high), NHL 22 takes steps toward this fantastical style and yet doesn’t fully embrace it.

It should be noted that this is the first NHL game to run on the Frostbite engine – important to say because you probably wouldn’t know it otherwise. The change is almost invisible, which is something of a triumph when you consider that Madden NFL still hasn’t fully recovered technically after it made the switch four years ago. On the other hand, it doesn’t look dramatically better than NHL 21, as you’d expect for the first game designed to impress on a new generation of consoles. So in that respect, no news is good news.

Instead, the changes are mostly those X-Factors, which do make rational sense in context. Some star players gain speed boosts, others better shot accuracy after a deke, or shot power while skating. The idea being that these videogamey skill boosts represent a player’s specific skillset. The impact of those abilities is kept in check by the fact that each team only has a handful of such stars, so it’s not as if every player on the ice has a special ability. Those X-Factors seamlessly blend into the NHL’s modern playstyle and NHL 22’s still-exquisite right analog stick puck handling control scheme; the latter’s precision gets better with each annual game. For all the integration, however, their effectiveness feels awfully insignificant in execution, and in some cases, invisible all together. Being able to deke without a speed penalty is a nice bonus to have here and there, but nowhere near the superpower that NHL 22 makes it out to be.

The bigger issue with NHL 22 is mostly superficial. Supposedly a rink-side reporter, Carrlyn Bathe is relegated to hyping X-Factor abilities as if speaking on a promo reel that runs incessantly at GameStop. During a faceoff between the Blackhawks and Penguins, she states, “Patrick Kane’s puck on a string zone ability is how he manufactures offense. Crosby’s beautiful backhand ability is that wicked shot he uses to score.” That’s jarring next to James Cybulski and Ray Ferraro’s commentary, since they’re calling the game straight (if stiffly).

Compound that with hyperactive screen overlays before face-offs, icon identifiers, and other visual noise (which, mercifully, are customizable to a degree), and NHL 22 looks less like a broadcast than it does an arcade game trying to call your attention. EA is selling this as augmented reality, and nothing here is completely out of bounds when you consider how networks now use ever-increasing computing power to mark up hockey rinks with lines and graphical stat displays that aren’t really there. Yet, the focus of NHL 22 isn’t on real-world stats, but rather these game-ified skills.

It’s strange, too – NHL 22 visually looks wildly uneven, as if wrestling with its style. A quirk like a fan’s hair sprouting noisy polygons during an intermission is a minor glitch. The ice surface that looks like a treacherous, war-torn road filled with streaky potholes rather than scrapes isn’t so attractive. Weirder, brighter jerseys appear almost cel-shaded at a distance, a lighting oddity unnoticeable when you’re in close.

Entering into the solo career Be A Pro mode, strangeness continues. Maybe it’s perspective, but the agents and team managers seen between game events seem to have bizarrely oversized hands. If this reads like a nitpick, so be it; a new console generation brings upgraded expectations, and NHL 22 makes some glaring mistakes despite gains in player likenesses and texture fidelity.

Once on the ice itself, Be A Pro is fine, if stunted. Other sports games mimic movies with characters and spoken dialog, but here, it’s all silent other than Cybulski’s fictional podcast narrating the events while text boxes determine the created star’s personality and team synergy. That certainly feels like a step down in quality compared to what other sports games have done. And yes, progression is designed to push them toward gaining their X-Factor for what it’s worth, although the earned experience points have greater impact.

Franchise mode hides X-Factor players in the free agent/scouting pool, making the hunt for them secondary to winning the Stanley Cup. Having a successful scouting run means gaining those abilities for your team, although it matters more when those players are rated higher in general. This season also brings the expansion, the Seattle Kraken, into the mix, and the resulting expansion draft – which is nice because it’s the only addition to a mode that’s effectively identical to last year’s.

Of course, the eSports-focused CHEL league involves X-Factor abilities, too. In Ones, Threes, or general team play, HUT’s elements push their way in allowing individualized in-game avatars to wear unlockable gear for visual kick, and yes, X-Factors when found. For the hyper-competitive types it’s fine, but general online play against others in one-off matches doesn’t have the bloat of CHEL.

Promotional chatter aside, it’s worth noting the greater gains in NHL 22 are those from leveling the playing field between pros and newcomers. NHL 22’s sublime puck and skating physics retain true simulation qualities as the puck bounces off boards or trickles into the net unseen, but unlike the growing separation between casual and hardcore players in say, NBA 2K, there’s a reasonable middle ground now in NHL. It’s easier to find a realistic play style that results in authentic stats and scoring without needing to understand hockey’s intricacies or fiddling with difficulty sliders. If anything, that seems more worthy of celebration than skills that are tweaked to suit a handful of players.

If there’s a fair comparison to EA’s recent NHL struggles, it’s MLB: The Show. Both found a workable, near-flawless formula to replicate their core on-field/on-ice play some five or six years ago; now the challenge comes from finding the “new” in what was hard to improve upon. In NHL’s case, that’s led to the brash Threes, filled with fireworks, goofy stadiums, and open three-on-three play. There’s still the three-way free-for-all mode Ones too, pitting trios of players against each other and a single goalie in a half-rink contest. At this point, it feels like reaching even if those modes offer competitive charm for small online groups.

It’s also worth pointing out that there’s a repeated pop-up about community inclusiveness when you’re first browsing the menu, and while on the surface that feels like a corporation trying to please activists for brownie points, we also have to keep in mind that hockey in general suffers from a racial divide. For instance, HC Donbass player Jalen Smereck was hit with a racist taunt just last month, so NHL 22 propping up tolerance in the moment is timely.

While Animal Crossing: New Horizons may be getting a massive version 2.0 update and paid DLC in the form of Happy Home Paradise, Nintendo has also announced that these additions will be the last major content updates for the game that has sold over 33 million copies since it launched in March 2020.

In an era where season passes and battle passes and DLC are the norm, why does Nintendo continue to leave behind some of its most successful games, which could live on as live-service games? And even if “live service” is a step too far, Nintendo could still be finding ways to keep its biggest games supported in an era when launch day is hardly ever the last day most games see updates.

While Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t the only Nintendo game that could benefit from sustained post-launch support, the seemingly abrupt end to its major updates is perhaps the best example of the opportunities Nintendo is missing out on. Animal Crossing has all the makings of other continually updated games like Destiny, Fortnite, Final Fantasy XIV, and Call of Duty: Warzone. When it’s October 14 in our world, it is October 14 on your AC island (unless you've changed your clock). Things are constantly changing – seasons, weather, items, holidays, etc. – which means there consistently can be something new to find.

This set-up could be perfect for the constant addition of furniture, DIY recipes, game modes, cosmetics, and other elements that would allow Animal Crossing's creative community to thrive. All of that comes at the cost of more development, sure, but with such a success as New Horizons, which has an audience clearly eager for more, the payoff seems like it would be there.

If this were any other developer besides Nintendo, you could imagine a world where there were actual content seasons in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, where there are free and paid content drops every few months. An MMO like Final Fantasy XIV, for example, usually always has some big expansion on the horizon, like the upcoming Endwalker, and smaller events, like the Halloween-themed All Saints’ Wake, leading up to them.

In a version of Nintendo’s What If…?, an alternate universe could see a Metroid Dread-themed season arriving in time with the game’s launch in Animal Crossing: New Horizons with items, costumes, furniture, and much more inspired by our favorite bounty hunter and her world. While crossovers are always wonderful, these updates could be a mixed bag of paid and free DLC that add reasons for players to come back for more. Not everyone may be interested in a paid Metroid-themed DLC pack, but some might love new free items to help ring in Christmas or the New Year.

Nintendo has actually experimented with this a bit in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp for iOS and Android devices, and it gives fans an idea of what this more live-service take on Animal Crossing could be. If you were to log on to Pocket Camp today, you would see a few paid add-ons that deliver more than what is offered to all who start the free-to-play title. Pocket Camp’s extras are, of course, built on a free-to-play model that wouldn’t necessarily work for players of a full-priced console game, but if Nintendo already has an Animal Crossing it knows how to support so constantly with new updates, why not apply some of that thinking long term to New Horizons?

Granted, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has had a ton of free and wonderful post-launch support in the form of new cosmetics, items, seasonal goods, features like swimming in the ocean, and more. But support doesn’t have to end less than two years after launch. There could be room for a mix of continued free support like an improved and less-eggy Easter event that comes with some type of new themed items alongside paid upgrades like a new Island to explore or even The Legend of Zelda expansion packs timed to the series’ anniversary or new releases like the Breath of the Wild sequel.

Another living sim, The Sims 4, has demonstrated what years-long support can look like. There are countless Expansion, Game, and Stuff packs for the latest Sims, all of which offer different amounts and types of new content to expand upon the base experience. These are all completely optional, but their goal is to draw certain groups of people back into the world of The Sims 4 or keep them there longer.

Animal Crossing could have this type of support that could continue for years on end, much like The Sims 4, which just celebrated its seventh birthday. But Nintendo chose not to go that route, and this wasn’t the first time it has done so.

Nintendo’s Inconsistent Post-Launch Support

2019’s Super Mario Maker 2 was primed to be a live-service game that would continue to get support in the form of new items, objects, and themes. When it launched, the base game included Game Styles modeled after Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U. These styles would change not only the look of your levels to match a different Mario game, but it would add items and movement abilities from each specific game’s world.

Those four game styles were carried over from the original game, but a fifth – Super Mario 3D World – was the sole new addition and was placed under “Extra Game Styles.” The plurality of “Styles” gave hope that we would one day see other art styles introduced into the game. Alas, Super Mario Maker 2’s final update arrived less than a year after its launch and dashed all hope of this platform becoming something greater than it already was.

This abrupt end or lack of sustained support is a pattern for Nintendo, as while it can provide substantial post-launch content for its games, it does so for such a short time when taking into consideration how much these games are selling and how much the community surrounding them loves playing them. And that’s true of so many types of games, not just ones that could fit a live-service structure.

This point is further seen in Nintendo’s very inconsistent approach to post-launch DLC. Some games, including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Pokemon Sword and Shield, received strong post-launch support. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in particular was on the brink of becoming a “live” game before the announcement that Kingdom Hearts’ Sora would be the final fighter added to its impressive roster that saw 12 new characters join the fight.

While that was great for fans of those games, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Nintendo Switch’s best-selling game with 37.08 million copies sold since June 30, 2021 – received very little in the way of DLC besides such small additions as Link’s Champion’s Tunic and Master Cycle from Breath of the Wild and support for Nintendo Labo.

All one has to do is look at the support of the mobile game Mario Kart Tour, which currently has 130 playable characters and 65 race courses, to see that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe could have, maybe, benefitted from another update or two. While Nintendo obviously shouldn’t adopt a mobile approach for its console games, an extra DLC pack or two of tracks for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe ahead of the inevitable Mario Kart 9 (or whatever it may be called) would have undoubtedly been of interest to some of MK8D’s 37 million players. Surely, Nintendo could have found some middle ground, right?

Nintendo Does What We Don’t Expect

Looking outside Nintendo, another racing game – Forza Horizon 4 – took a totally different approach to its game updates and built its foundation on a platform that recently saw its 37th series update. Forza Horizon 4 was released in 2018 and was supported with a bevy of new cars, paid Fortune Island and LEGO Speed Champions expansions, iconic cars from franchise’s like James Bond, a collaboration with Top Gear, a battle royale-style mode called The Eliminator, a returning feature in Horizon Promo, and much more. Support for Forza Horizon 4 has slowed down in preparation for the launch of Forza Horizon 5, but there was consistent, meaningful support for nearly three years.

Of course, one of the gold-standard live-service games is Destiny 2, which launched in 2017 as a traditional first-person shooter game and has since transitioned into a free-to-play game that is much more in line with an MMO. It has seen numerous expansions and has many more on the way, including The Witch Queen expansion in February 2022, the addition of battle passes, and much more.

Destiny 2 has also become something more than a game, as a quick stroll into its community will show you constant conversation with the devs on how to improve the game, artwork that draws on the best it has to offer, celebrations when players discover a rare Exotic of a Legendary with a great roll, and even events like GuardianCon that were started as a meetup of sorts with a shared love of the game that are now raising over $3.7 million for charity. Bungie itself even participates in these events and raised over $400,000 in 2019.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ community has a similar passion for the game and the community-created content is truly impressive. These creations took on more significance as Animal Crossing was released during the COVID-19 pandemic that kept many of us indoors for extended periods of time and away from our loved ones. It brought the world together during one of its darkest times, and that need for togetherness helped propel the game to something akin to a communal beacon of hope.

This bit of hope came in the form of weddings taking place in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Gary Whitta’s Animal Talking Late Night show that debuted new music from Shaggy and Sting, an Animal Crossing meets Survivor mashup game that was a hit on Twitch, celebrities – including former U.S. Presidential candidate Joe Biden – offering up tours of their own Islands, clever uses of the added Mario-themed items to make actual platforming courses, wonderful and hilarious works of art made with its in-game tools, and SO much more.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game that is meant to become your own, one that many people have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in with no plan on stopping. Then why is Nintendo choosing to stop its support? Well, probably because Nintendo never does what we think Nintendo should do.

We’re talking about a company that chose not to bring a thriving Virtual Console on the Wii U with games from NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and TurboGrafx-16 to the Nintendo Switch. Many figured that a new way to play these classic titles would be on its way shortly after its launch in 2017, but we are just getting a small list of N64 games four years after launch.

Speaking of N64 games, the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack service that includes some of that console’s biggest hits alongside SEGA games, bundles in Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Happy Home Paradise DLC as a perk of the subscription plan.

While Nintendo hasn’t confirmed it will add other games’ DLC to this service, including Happy Home Paradise may be a sign of things to come and could explain why Nintendo isn’t choosing to make its most popular franchises adopt live-service models. To Nintendo, these add-ons could be a gateway into locking players into their subscription service, year after year. Instead of just trying to reach a specific player base for a specific game, it could push its Expansion Pack membership and capture even more players than it would otherwise with included offerings of different games over time.

Nintendo Switch owners, perhaps more so than any other platform, buy these systems for that particular type of “magic” Nintendo sells. The attach rate for Nintendo games are much higher than other games, with Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe setting records by being owned by more than 50% of Switch owners.

If this is the case, why would Nintendo, who is already behind the pack when it comes to its online offerings, focus on following trends set by its competition when it can pave its own path with a more traditional-style philosophy that has kept them in business since 1889 and put them on top of the U.S. monthly hardware unit sales chart for 33 months in a row.

Live-service games are great for some, but when a company like Nintendo can capitalize on nostalgia and release Mario Kart 9 and sell another 30 million units or launch Animal Crossing: Tom Nook Strikes Back with the next Nintendo console and do the same, maybe the company sees the smaller victories of a DLC/live-service appetizer that you don’t excel at as a non-essential when it can hit grand slam after grand slam by serving yet another main course?

If you haven’t figured it out by now, trying to guess Nintendo’s next move is a fool’s game, yet that is what often makes it so successful. While it’s had some major misses like the Wii U and Virtual Boy, its successes, including the Nintendo DS family’s sales of 154.02 million and Game Boy/Game Boy Color’s sales of 118.69 million, are some of the best this, or any industry has ever seen.

Sure, we all would have loved to have Animal Crossing: New Horizons continue to grow and evolve over time, but Nintendo has now given us the keys to that mission while it sails on to its next adventure. As we design homes and sip coffee with our favorite villagers, Nintendo will be hard at work making that next experience that will capture not just our imaginations, but most likely 20 or 30 million of our wallets as well, live-service or not.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.