TennoCon 2026 has finally wrapped, and developer Digital Extremes has revealed new content for both Warframe and Soulframe – it's two massive online action RPGs. Throughout the TennoCon live show, we got to see the developers showcase long-anticipated updates that will not only take players to new locations but also introduce new antagonists for the larger stories ahead in both live-service games.

In addition to the long-form reveal of Warframe's Tau expansion, which introduces a new galaxy to explore that's filled with new threats, we saw Soulframe showcase a new fable questline focusing on the reveal of a new weapon and darkside powers to adopt, along with the anticipated arrival of new player mounts and a new fishing mini-game.

Continue below for everything revealed at TennoCon 2026!

The long-anticipated Tau expansion for Warframe was finally revealed at TennoCon 2026, and according to the developers, it's the biggest shift forward for the long-running action-RPG that the devs have ever made. Continuing the conflict among the Tenno, Albrecht Entradi, and the enigmatic Man in the Wall, players will finally venture to the long-teased Tau system, which houses the mysterious Sentinels and the Orokin-terraformed colonies. The signature location of Tau is the gloomy, alien, cyberpunk-style city known as the Forax, a new Hub zone that blends open exploration with procedurally generated zones. While not an open-world zone in the vein of the Planes of Eidolon or Fortuna, it does feel like a mix between large-scape areas of Warframe and the bite-sized action zones throughout the game.

"Tau is certainly the biggest shift for Warframe ever, we're adding a full second solar system to explore and have new stories coming," said Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford in an early interview with IGN. "When it came to building up Tau, what we basically asked ourselves was, 'How do we keep Warframe going forever?" And the answer to that was to add a second solar system to the game. 13 years later, you can build up all over again, give the players more, and start planet by planet, moon by moon. and object by object. And there's so much more to come."

Another of the signature reveals in the live demo for Warframe was a new type of Warframe known as Brysko (voiced by Matt Mercer of Critical Role fame), a special Chimera Warframe that is a sentient being created within the Tau system. Along with a playable Lotus section, we also got to see Brysko in action, who plays as a gunslinger Warframe in combat sequences that play out similarly to a fast-paced character action game. Warframe has focused heavily on character-first storytelling in recent years, and one of the key focuses of the Tau update is Brysko's story and how the Chimera Warframe will play into the game's future.

Along with a new reveal for Tau, Warframe will also launch several updates in the lead-up to Tau's launch later this year, including a customizable Orokin Vessel that players will acquire. Firstly, the next major update to Warframe is the Iceblade of Narin, a story quest featuring a new location and a new playable Warframe to acquire. Moreover, new deluxe versions of Qorvex and Banshee, a gameplay rework, and new Nightwave missions with the Amir's Shockwave update are also on the way.

Also revealed at TennoCon was Warframe ‘s first-ever card mini-game, Portau, which is based on the mechanics of poker. The Sentient card game iterates on the rules of poker with its own suite of Blooms, Cores, Moons, and Suns.

Digital Extremes' Soulframe and its growing high-fantasy universe are still in its alpha stage, and the developers have been gradually defining a more engaging and soulful companion to Warframe. At TennoCon, we got to see the latest updates coming to Soulframe, which focuses on the Envoys encountering their darkest challenges yet with the arrival of a new threat, and a new opportunity to engage with the growing corruption to adopt the first dark powers known as vespers.

Firstly, one of the early reveals is that more players will be able to get access to Soulframe Preludes – the current early access for the action-RPG. Players who sign up for access to Soulframe Preludes on the official site before July 12 11:59 ET will earn access to the game. While invites have steadily gone out, this marks the most significant opportunity to get access to Soulframe.

One of the significant reveals was the new narrative and fable mission called Warsongs – which is set for release this Fall. The questline we saw added more details to the player character's origin story and how their mother came into conflict with Tempest Bayor, who is given more background and drive behind his motivations, setting the events of the game into motion. Furthermore, actors Ben Starr (Final Fantasy XVI, Expedition 33) and Jennifer English (Baldur's Gate 3, Expedition 33) have joined the Soulframe cast as recurring antagonist Tempest Bayor – the red-armed anti-Envory – and supporting player ally Empress of Eldveil, respectively, to further expand on Soulframe's growing narrative.

"We probably announced the game much sooner than we should have, but really, what has come out of it is that we're building this game alongside the community," said senior community manager for Soulframe in a chat with IGN. "When we finally got players in to test the game and play early, it was a great opportunity to really see them take in the world and get into the knitty-gritty of the world we're building. In the last year, especially, we have taken a lot of big swings with the game, and we're just constantly building up towards our next steps. Some really big **** is coming soon."

One of the most exciting moments of the TennoCon demo was the battle between Tempest Bayor and the Envoy's mother, who are both briefly playable during the Warsongs demo. The demo culminates in an encounter where the Envoy gets a brief experience with the Vadagar pact – which introduces the ability to embrace the powers of the dark side.

In the new questline, we get to see the player Envoy come into contact with a corruption that grants them a new Vadagar pact and weapon, which showcase Soulframe's first attempts at offering a dark side of sorts to follow. According to the devs, this questline is Soulframe's darkest storyline so far, and it will offer players – if they are so inclined – the chance to build up their corruption powers. The new weapon shown off during the demo focused on the snake sword known as the Coiled Dawn, which uses large sweeping strikes to cut down multiple enemies.

In addition to the expanded fable, Soulframe will also get a round of new quality-of-life updates to the game this year. In the lead-up to the major new updates coming this year, Soulframe players will also be able to take part in a new combat encounter against the Mendicant Reinbreaker, a shadowy dark knight that can potentially be a new ally upon defeat. One of the most requested features from the community was player mounts, and we got to see players riding atop large wolves during the TennoCon demo. Another new feature coming to Soulframe is fishing – referred to as 'Vegan Fishing' – which lets players relax and capture fish across the Alca to gain intel about the wildlife.

"The community support we have is so critical, and it's also – in my view – a gift," said Asselin."There are so many games and so many things players can do with their time in this attention economy. So why would someone play Soulframe after work versus another game or the latest thing on Netflix? So it's up to us to honor that gift and do it right. That's why we have dev-streams and even have Envoy hours where the team jumps into the game to see how the game feels with the community. We're still very early in development compared to Warframe, so I think it's allowed us to have some time with everyone and to help build this game up."

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

What are some of the best-looking games of all time? Many examples that come to my mind are not from this generation, but rather the early 2010s: Metal Gear Solid 5, The Witcher 3, and Batman: Arkham Knight all looked stunning upon release, and still do today.

To this list I would also add Ryse: Son of Rome, German developer Crytek’s ill-fated Xbox One launch title in which you play as a Roman centurion seeking to avenge his dead family. It is gloriously, mouth-wateringly cinematic, more so than many actual works of cinema.

Unfortunately, it’s also rather short, taking only around 6 hours to complete. Former employees say as much as two thirds of planned content had to be cut in the race to make launch day. The crunch was brutal, but many of the game’s creators took comfort in the knowledge they were laying the foundations for not just a sequel, but an entire franchise – one that would take us far beyond Rome.

While work on the original game was wrapping up, four concept artists, a historical researcher, and the key leadership team of Ryse: Son of Rome got together to figure out where they could take things moving forward.

Leading this group was Patrick Hanenberger, a production designer who had previously worked at DreamWorks. He’d initially been brought on board as a visual consultant to help make Ryse feel – as Crytek’s then-CEO Cevat Yerli used to say – like a “playable movie.” Later, he tells IGN, “they offered me a job as the franchise’s art director.”

Also set to be involved in some capacity was Todd Papy of Sony’s Santa Monica Studio. Papy joined Crytek in late 2013 after having directed God of War: Ascension to work on what was then reported to be an “unannounced project.” A former Crytek employee who spoke to IGN under condition of anonymity affirmed what was back then just speculation: that he would apply his experience with games set in ancient Greece to a game set in ancient Rome.

Whether any of the sequels would in fact be set in Rome was, however, the subject of debate. “Part of the conversations that were happening were about what it was that people were liking about Ryse,” Yannick Boucher, who served as one of the original game’s project managers, tells IGN. “Was it the Roman thing specifically, or history more generally? Do we stay in Rome, or go to some other empire?”

“I was super stoked to do a Viking game,” recalls Peter Gornstein, Ryse’s art director and director of cinematics. For one, the opportunities were endless: a game about Vikings could have taken players on raids along the English and French coasts, the shores of Newfoundland, and even the city of Constantinople, where they served as bodyguards to Byzantine emperors. It was also uncharted territory – at least back then. The History Channel’s Vikings TV show was still on its first season, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla nearly a decade away.

“It would have been great to explore a part of history that a lot of people didn’t yet know about,” says Gornstein.

Other settings that were reportedly considered included feudal Japan – Hanenberger mentions a number of events that interested him, including the failed Mongol invasions led by Kublai Khan, the arrival of European merchants, and the civil wars of the Sengoku period – as well as the Ottoman Empire, which defeated the Byzantines in 1453.

Not everyone was on board with leaving Rome. As Boucher puts it: “Some felt like we had just set the foundations for this IP, and now we were already diverging a bit. A lot of people were super keen on Japan, unsurprisingly. But that’s not like going from Rome to Greece. It would have been a big departure.”

Hanenberger thought of several ways to connect and justify expanding settings. Thematically, for example, the franchise could come to explore the question of “how empires rise and fall – and why.” He also considered tying each installment together narratively, with characters and events in one game linking back to another. Each story could be set in motion by that of the previous installment, like dominos. Or, you know, history itself.

Had those planned sequels happened, they would have featured a more open-ended design than the original Ryse. “When we talked about correcting some of that game’s weaknesses,” says Boucher, “changing the levels was among the first things that came up, as most of them were basically just a straight corridor.” The vision at the time was not far off from God of War 2018: not quite open-world, but not completely linear either.

The team also thought about introducing new game mechanics, many of them cut from or left out of the original Ryse due to time constraints, including vehicle navigation and a PVP multiplayer mode (Son of Rome ended up having both solo and co-op PVE where you fought off waves inside the Colosseum).

The anonymous employee tells me they would have liked to have made single-player combat more dynamic. In parts of Ryse, when you venture into Britain to crush the rebellion of Queen Boudica, you advance in testudo formation, raising your shield alongside your fellow soldiers to form an impregnable barrier. In the final game, gameplay is limited to shielding yourself from enemy fire and returning fire of your own – all with the press of a button. “Our original plan was that you’d be able to leave and reenter this formation at will,” they say, “fighting enemies on your own and then returning to position when you feel like doing so.”

The sequels could have played around with other real-world military tactics, like the Parthian shot (where cavalry soldiers feign a full-speed retreat, only to turn around and firing arrows) or Kakuyoku (a Sengoku-era formation where a single defensive line turns into a pincer movement, attacking the enemy from both sides).

One area where the sequels would not diverge from the original Ryse was aesthetics. Son of Rome was not historically accurate, but it did aim for a certain emotional or psychological accuracy. As Gornstein puts it, they did not try to present Rome as it was, but as how it might have appeared to someone “who lived in a village somewhere, five hours away. To someone who visited the city for the first and only time in their life, everything must have seemed completely overwhelming.”

“It’s the same sensation as when, in the game, you go to York and Dover,” Hanenberger adds. “Those cliffs are awe-inspiring. That’s what we were trying to capture, and would have wanted to capture going forward.”

The original game wasn’t just larger-than-life, but also veered into the supernatural, with two seemingly mortal characters – Aquilo and Aestas – revealed to be gods, playing a secret game with people as their pawns. This supernatural element, says Gornstein, would have continued in the sequels, mapped onto different religions and mythologies. As in the original, though, their presence would have remained subtle, pushed into the background.

When Hanenberger and Gornstein pitched their franchise plan to Microsoft, the response was enthusiastic. “They told us it was ‘the most cohesive and well-thought IP pitch they had ever seen,’” Hanenberger recalls. “It all seemed to go very well.”

Until it didn’t.

According to the employees who spoke with IGN, the sequels to Ryse were never formally cancelled. Instead, work on the franchise simply stopped after the original game underperformed both critically and commercially – an outcome that perhaps could have been avoided had the developers not been required to finish the game before the launch of the Xbox One.

Ultimately, the reason the Ryse series ended up in limbo is because Crytek refused to sell the IP to Microsoft. The conglomerate no longer wanted to finance the franchise if they couldn’t buy the rights, while Crytek – to this day a privately owned company – wouldn’t work on something that somebody else owned. As a result of this impasse, the two parted ways, and Crytek switched focus to other projects.

For those who worked on the game, feelings towards Ryse are bittersweet. “The last month, I worked 30 days straight,” Boucher remembers. “Then we breathed a sigh of relief, only to get hit with a 60 on Metacritic.”

At the same time, working on Ryse taught them valuable lessons that they took with them as they went on to work on titles like Hitman, Battlefield 1, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

While Ryse didn’t make the impact that Crytek had hoped for, it still sold more than a million copies upon release. Over time, the game also grew a dedicated cult following that loves it for everything the developers got right. As someone who counts himself among this following, I think I speak for many when I say that wherever this franchise would have led, I would have followed.

Tim Brinkhof is a freelance writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at NYU, he has gone on to write for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.

Bethesda was hit hard by this week’s Xbox layoffs, with cuts to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout developer Bethesda Game Studios, Doom developer id Software, and The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios, among other parts of the business.

A Maryland WARN Act notice shows 213 employees were laid off from ZOS's office in Cockeysville, MD, and 166 from ZeniMax Media Inc. in Rockville, MD, for a total of 379. 96 staff who worked at id Software's office in Richardson, Texas, were cut, alongside a further 40 remote roles. While it’s difficult to pin down exactly what the affected staff were working on at these studios because there are blended teams across Bethesda locations, the WARN numbers undoubtedly make for difficult reading.

The restructure at Xbox — 1,600 staff lost their jobs on Monday, with another 1,600 to go over the course of the next 12 months — has called into question the future of not just the studios Microsoft has on its books, but the quality of the games it’s working on. New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s strategy is clear: studios will collaborate more closely from now on, with a focus on bigger franchises such as Halo, Minecraft, Candy Crush, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls. As revealed by IGN this week, in an email to Bethesda staff sent following Sharma's memo on Monday, Bethesda boss Jill Braff said the layoffs and change in strategy “reflect the realities of our industry and business – and our responsibility to ensure Bethesda is operating from a more stable foundation.”

"To be successful in the future, we need to change course,” Braff continued. “We must strengthen our business, return to sustainable growth, and ensure we can continue investing in our franchises and our players. I know that doesn't make a day like today any easier.”

But what does that actually mean for Bethesda going forward? Without naming games, Braff said “to best position Bethesda for future growth, we are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what's next for each independent studio to one that focuses on our strongest franchises and determining the content roadmap that best serves our players and Bethesda as a whole.”

“From there, we’ll align the right talent, technology, and resources across the organization to deliver on those priorities,” Braff added.

While Xbox sorts its new strategy out, remaining staff are left to wonder if they will be next as part of future rounds of layoffs. After all, Microsoft still has over 1,000 Xbox staff to cut before the end of its financial year. It is an anxious time across Xbox, as it is across the wider video game industry.

This week, IGN reported on concern expressed by staff at BGS that the Xbox layoffs would have a "substantial and cascading effect" on the development of The Elder Scrolls 6. Morale took a hit, we heard, and there were fears of future development crunch. The Elder Scrolls 6 is reportedly at least two more years away from release, despite being announced in 2018, and there are fears it could even be delayed.

"There is a fear that we are going to be replaced by cheaper, contracted labor, or we will hire folks to replace them that will need to be onboarded (our tools are proprietary, other devs aren't going to know how they work) resulting in more delays, and we'll need to crunch to make up the time," one Bethesda developer told IGN.

"We've all been very excited and hyped for TES 6 and this has had a crushing effect on morale," said another staff member. "We were already running a tight ship and are worried about this delaying the game (though a final release date was not yet chosen as far as we know)."

Meanwhile, the BGS union, OneBGS, plans to march outside the studio’s four offices (Rockville, Austin, Dallas, and Montreal) on July 15. In a note sent to IGN, the union said 35 positions at BGS were cut in the U.S. and at least 12 more in Montreal, Canada.

“Microsoft and BGS are trying to frame these 35 cuts as an ‘entrepreneurial change in the scope of business,’ claiming they are transitioning from a ‘studio-based business model to a franchise-based model’ to dodge their legal obligation to bargain the decision with us,” the union alleged. “We completely reject this corporate wordplay. Changing a title on a PowerPoint slide does not erase our legal right to a say in our working conditions.”

As OneBGS sets out to apply pressure on Microsoft to negotiate how these layoffs will impact staff, work on games continues, even under such difficult circumstances. A source familiar with Bethesda’s restructure expressed confidence in BGS’ continued ability to develop The Elder Scrolls 6, and insisted the studio's plans and ambitions for the hotly anticipated RPG remained the same, despite the layoffs.

Anything can — and usually does — change during video game development, so it’s impossible to say now if The Elder Scrolls 6 will suffer a delay, either internally or publically. But as it stands, the game is said to be on track, even if being on track means it’s two years away from release.

Bloomberg has reported that Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment is now working on a new Fallout game having suffered from the Xbox layoffs itself. Bethesda is said to be working to support Obsidian on development of this Fallout game. It is a clear signal of intent: Sharma wants Bethesda to do more Fallout more quickly.

A source familiar with the plans told IGN that there are several Fallout projects in development across Bethesda and its partners, including Fallout 5. It feels ridiculous to consider Fallout 5 right now, but Bethesda development chief Todd Howard has spoken openly about it coming after The Elder Scrolls 6, and has confirmed that it will take into account the canon events of the Fallout TV series. The intention is very much for Fallout 5 to be released, eventually.

The “live” Fallout project is Fallout 76, which IGN understands remains a significant operation, and there are no changes to that development team’s plans as of yet. A source said Fallout 76 still has hundreds of developers working on it, and the multiplayer game retains millions of players.

Meanwhile, Fallout Shelter is alive and kicking. And of course, Amazon’s Fallout TV show continues, with Season 3 filming now. The existence of a Fallout 3 remaster is an open secret at this point.

Sharma’s new drive for collaboration across Xbox studios on its biggest franchises applies to Fallout, as you'd expect, and the Obsidian Fallout game is a part of that. And there is a lot more Fallout coming from BGS, too. The question is, how fast can new Fallout projects be turned around?

One game that has undoubtedly been impacted by the Xbox layoffs is The Elder Scrolls Online, whose development roadmap was forced to change as a result. It’s unclear exactly how many staff directly working on ESO were cut, but there is justifiable concern about the fate of those who remain, as well as the game itself.

A source familiar with the situation at the studio told IGN that ZOS is supporting the new season model for ESO while also looking for ways to collaborate more closely with BGS to support the Elder Scrolls franchise as a whole, which sounds to me like helping get The Elder Scrolls 6 out the door.

Following the announcement of the Xbox layoffs, fans were quick to point out that Starfield was absent from Bethesda's priority list. Starfield largely failed to meet fan expectations upon its 2023 launch, and subsequent updates and expansions haven't really moved the needle. Still, some of the game's more hardcore fans had hoped that Starfield would go on to at least get more expansions, and maybe even a sequel, establishing itself as Bethesda's third franchise. Sources told IGN that there are no changes to the current Starfield roadmap, and the team is still working on updates and content. What that means exactly, remains unclear. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is reportedly in the works.

Microsoft has said Arkane Lyon studio management had begun a consultation with the Works Council in France to "review potential strategic options.” Le Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo (STJV), the French non-representative independent video game workers union, told IGN it was waiting for an internal meeting between studio leadership and worker representatives to learn more.

The situation with Arkane Lyon, developer of Deathloop, could drag on for some time, leaving staff facing an anxious wait to discover their fate. But the hope is the studio will eventually find a buyer, as Hellblade developer Ninja Theory and State of Decay developer Undead Labs have done, and that Blade will see the light of day.

IGN understands that prior to this week's layoffs, Blade was on track for a reveal early next year and a release Q4 2027. IGN has asked Marvel Games for comment but it has yet to respond.

Today, Doom developer id Software issued a statement responding to the layoffs, saying it was now at the staffing level it had back when it made the much-loved 2016 Doom reboot. It also insisted it was still capable of making “great games,” and pushed back on the suggestion that there’s essentially no-one left at the company working on id Tech, the game engine it and fellow Bethesda-owned studio MachineGames uses to build their games. Xbox confirmed to IGN that "there are dozens of people working on id Tech across multiple locations," and that previous reports that there was only one person left in Texas are "inaccurate."

Here’s the statement in full, posted to id Software's X / Twitter page:

While id Software currently has no announced project following the release of Doom: The Dark Ages and its DLC, IGN understands that the studio is prototyping a number of potential projects, with the belief it is still capable of building its own games. According to GamesBeat, id was formulating new game ideas, such as a John Wick-style original IP, a new Perfect Dark game, and a multiplayer / co-op Doom game, before the layoffs hit.

MachineGames was unaffected by this week’s layoffs, with Wolfenstein 3 in the works. But as a European studio (it’s based in Sweden), it may face cuts further down the line, cuts that would have to abide by local labor law, leaving staff looking over their shoulder even as they build a new shooter. A sequel to the well-received Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, however, remains up in the air, despite it setting up another entry.

Xbox staff have been on the receiving end of a bloodbath this week. By Asha Sharma’s admission, it is “the most significant restructure in Xbox history.” Microsoft’s gaming business faces profound questions it must answer over the next few years, not just on its ability to grow profit, as Sharma has said Xbox must, but on its ability to make hit games and grow Game Pass. Some are speculating that Microsoft could sell Xbox off, spin it off as a wholly-owned subsidiary, partner with another company to run it as a join venture, or sell parts of the business to the highest bidders. Then there’s the hardware “crisis,” which could see the next-gen Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, cost north of $1,000.

Could The Elder Scrolls 6 launch alongside it?

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.