In a new interview with MinnMax founder Ben Hanson, ex-Vigil Games founders Joe Madureira and Ryan Stefanelli discussed a “pivotal moment” in their development career. They could either make a Sly Cooper game for the PlayStation Portable with Sony or develop Darksiders with THQ. You can probably guess which choice they made.
Sly Cooper: Shadows in Time (not to be confused with Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time) would’ve potentially been a game for the PSP. The pair talked to Sony about a game where Sly would travel through time meeting his ancestors and going up against a time anomaly that looks like an evil version of himself.
“He’s always talking about his ancestors, wouldn’t it be cool if you traveled through time and actually met them and played alongside them,” Madureira explained. There would be themed time period levels, with concept art showing one that’s inspired by the Wild West, but there were also fantasy, medieval-set and prehistoric ideas.
The reason the game never went anywhere was because of Vigil Games’ ultimate passion project: Darksiders. A big portion of the interview discusses an E3 where the duo went from booth to booth trying to pitch the game on an old monitor setup they carted around the show floor. They were able to get a meeting with THQ, which was eager to find an IP that was similar to God of War. It would make Darksiders, but only if Vigil became an integrated THQ studio.
Sony expressed interest for the Darksiders prototype as well, but it didn’t think Vigil could handle a true next-gen game. The company suggested a smaller title for the PSP, which could’ve been Shadows in Time. However, Darksiders was the game they actually wanted to make, and without a firm contract with Sony, they lost their independent status and went with THQ. Vigil Games made the first two Darksiders games, but was eventually shut down after THQ filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Madureira and Stefanelli would later reform as Airship Syndicate and would return to the Darksiders series with Darksiders: Genesis in 2019.
The Darksiders series might be getting a new lease on life of its own. THQ Nordic revealed a teaser during its annual digital showcase for a new Darksiders project, although whether it’s a remake, remaster, or new game is unknown.
However, don’t expect new Sly Cooper projects any time soon. The developers at Sucker Punch Productions said in 2022 that it’s focusing on other projects.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”