Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard. Take-Two Interactive buying Zynga. Sony buying Bungie. Embracer Group buying, well, everything. Amid a wave of mass games industry consolidation, it's no surprise that shareholders grilled Ubisoft executives today during the publisher's third-quarter earnings call about its own interest in making major acquisitions of its own, or being acquired. But Ubisoft's leadership is, at least publicly, maintaining an air of disinterest for now.

It's clear that the publisher knew the issue would be on the mind of shareholders, as it tried to preempt the discussion in its own earnings report with a page-long manifesto of sorts extolling the virtues of organic growth. You can read the whole thing here on page 3, but in summary, Ubisoft wants shareholders to see it as successful at slow growth over time, as opposed to a company that spends lots of money buying up other companies. As evidence, it points at what it's built over the years doing exactly that: its library of IPs like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy games, and more alongside various proprietary technologies and, rather ironically, its company culture and organizational structure.

Notably, most of this was accomplished without much need for Ubisoft to acquire other huge companies, though it's certainly done that too, if on a much smaller scale than investors are asking about. In recent years Ubisoft has picked up mobile publisher Green Panda Games, Brawlhalla developer Blue Mammoth, anti-cheat developer GameBlocks, mobile developer Kolibri Games, server company i3D.net, and several more.

But that's not really what's being talked about here. As the publisher points out, Ubisoft has become both very valuable and very successful on its own steam, a notable triumph after the long-running battle between Ubisoft and Vivendi not that long ago. Its discussion of organic growth can be interpreted to mean that the publisher is comfortable not doing much in the way of massive acquisitions of its own anytime soon, so we're not likely to see Ubisoft try to pick up Take-Two or something tomorrow.

But of course, all that discussion of how valuable and successful Ubisoft prompted questions of a different sort from investors on the call. As one pointed out about 12 minutes in, if Ubisoft's assets are so highly valued right now, is this not a prime moment to sell the company to someone else?

CEO Yves Guillemot responded with a somewhat cautious declaration of independence:

"Ubisoft can remain independent...our IPs are sought after by the biggest global players in entertainment and tech," he said. "Having said that, if there were an offer to buy us, the board of directors would of course review it in the interest of all stakeholders."

There are two things of note here. The first is that this is a fairly standard statement for any executive to make when asked this question. Acquisition discussions, especially for companies like this, happen constantly, and more often than not they go nowhere. But we never hear about them until the deal actually goes through due to a number of legal prohibitions to keep financial speculation from running wild, among other reasons. Pretty much any company executive, then, when asked if their company might be acquired at some point, has to walk a tightrope of "Maybe, also maybe not" to avoid both making definitive statements but also outright lies.

But it is somewhat notable that this is a gentler response than Guillemot could have given, especially given Ubisoft's history with Vivendi and fighting off acquisitions. Given how hard Ubisoft pushed back against a potential takeover only four years ago, even a gentle crack in the acquisition door from the company CEO is worth remarking on.

What does it all mean? Given the industry's propensity for secrecy, it's hard to say exactly. But one reading of all this is that Ubisoft isn't in line to be acquired any time soon, even if it's more open to the idea than it was four years ago. It also doesn't really need it. As Guillemot points out to shareholders, Ubisoft is having no problems getting its games on any of the three consoles it wants to put them on, and selling piles of copies of them once it's there. It can make partnerships with Microsoft for things like Game Pass freely, and its games are in demand enough there's no risk of any of the three platform holders closing the door.

Ongoing history of delays aside (where IS Roller Champions?), Ubisoft is doing fine on its own, thank you very much. For now at least, Xbox, Sony, and Nintendo can keep their hands off.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard. Take-Two Interactive buying Zynga. Sony buying Bungie. Embracer Group buying, well, everything. Amid a wave of mass games industry consolidation, it's no surprise that shareholders grilled Ubisoft executives today during the publisher's third-quarter earnings call about its own interest in making major acquisitions of its own, or being acquired. But Ubisoft's leadership is, at least publicly, maintaining an air of disinterest for now.

It's clear that the publisher knew the issue would be on the mind of shareholders, as it tried to preempt the discussion in its own earnings report with a page-long manifesto of sorts extolling the virtues of organic growth. You can read the whole thing here on page 3, but in summary, Ubisoft wants shareholders to see it as successful at slow growth over time, as opposed to a company that spends lots of money buying up other companies. As evidence, it points at what it's built over the years doing exactly that: its library of IPs like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy games, and more alongside various proprietary technologies and, rather ironically, its company culture and organizational structure.

Notably, most of this was accomplished without much need for Ubisoft to acquire other huge companies, though it's certainly done that too, if on a much smaller scale than investors are asking about. In recent years Ubisoft has picked up mobile publisher Green Panda Games, Brawlhalla developer Blue Mammoth, anti-cheat developer GameBlocks, mobile developer Kolibri Games, server company i3D.net, and several more.

But that's not really what's being talked about here. As the publisher points out, Ubisoft has become both very valuable and very successful on its own steam, a notable triumph after the long-running battle between Ubisoft and Vivendi not that long ago. Its discussion of organic growth can be interpreted to mean that the publisher is comfortable not doing much in the way of massive acquisitions of its own anytime soon, so we're not likely to see Ubisoft try to pick up Take-Two or something tomorrow.

But of course, all that discussion of how valuable and successful Ubisoft prompted questions of a different sort from investors on the call. As one pointed out about 12 minutes in, if Ubisoft's assets are so highly valued right now, is this not a prime moment to sell the company to someone else?

CEO Yves Guillemot responded with a somewhat cautious declaration of independence:

"Ubisoft can remain independent...our IPs are sought after by the biggest global players in entertainment and tech," he said. "Having said that, if there were an offer to buy us, the board of directors would of course review it in the interest of all stakeholders."

There are two things of note here. The first is that this is a fairly standard statement for any executive to make when asked this question. Acquisition discussions, especially for companies like this, happen constantly, and more often than not they go nowhere. But we never hear about them until the deal actually goes through due to a number of legal prohibitions to keep financial speculation from running wild, among other reasons. Pretty much any company executive, then, when asked if their company might be acquired at some point, has to walk a tightrope of "Maybe, also maybe not" to avoid both making definitive statements but also outright lies.

But it is somewhat notable that this is a gentler response than Guillemot could have given, especially given Ubisoft's history with Vivendi and fighting off acquisitions. Given how hard Ubisoft pushed back against a potential takeover only four years ago, even a gentle crack in the acquisition door from the company CEO is worth remarking on.

What does it all mean? Given the industry's propensity for secrecy, it's hard to say exactly. But one reading of all this is that Ubisoft isn't in line to be acquired any time soon, even if it's more open to the idea than it was four years ago. It also doesn't really need it. As Guillemot points out to shareholders, Ubisoft is having no problems getting its games on any of the three consoles it wants to put them on, and selling piles of copies of them once it's there. It can make partnerships with Microsoft for things like Game Pass freely, and its games are in demand enough there's no risk of any of the three platform holders closing the door.

Ongoing history of delays aside (where IS Roller Champions?), Ubisoft is doing fine on its own, thank you very much. For now at least, Xbox, Sony, and Nintendo can keep their hands off.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Intel has shared more information on its upcoming line of consumer graphics cards, the Arc series. Today, the well-known CPU maker confirmed that its Arc brand GPUs for laptops will begin shipping this quarter, while those looking to buy a desktop GPU will need to wait until Q2 of this year.

You’ve all been patient, and the first wave of #IntelArc GPUs are launching soon for notebooks. Desktops and workstations will soon follow! https://t.co/rXgX9dGEL1 pic.twitter.com/F6ubSUzSHM

— Intel Graphics (@IntelGraphics) February 17, 2022

Originally announced last August, Intel’s Arc brand will serve as the company’s foothold into a market, taking on GPU giants AMD and Nvidia. But Intel is playing the long game here with the Arc brand as the company also confirmed during its initial announcement that its GPUs will span “multiple hardware generations,” under the codenames “Battlemage,” “Celestial,” and “Druid.”

The Arc brand will also include its own supersampling tech, XeSS, which will compete with AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution and Nvidia’s DLSS. Despite the Arc series not being announced yet, Intel has already confirmed that several developers will support XeSS. And one of the first PC games confirmed to support the tech is the PC version of Death Stranding Director’s Cut.

Another interesting tidbit in Intel's blog post is “Project Endgame,” a new cloud GPU service, allowing users to "access Intel Arc GPUs through a service for always-accessible, low-latency computing experience." While not much is known about the Project Endgame, it could be Intel’s response to Nvidia GeForce Now’s RTX 3080 membership, which allows subscribers to play games on the cloud with an RTX 3080 PC gaming rig. Intel did not share any further details other than Project Endgame will be available later this year.

This announcement comes amid an interesting time for the graphics card market. Unprecedented demand and an ongoing chip shortage continue to cause issues for those looking to buy the latest GPUs, something of which both AMD and Nvidia have struggled to keep up with demand. Nvidia, in particular, has been silent on its forthcoming flagship, the RTX 3090 Ti, which is rumored to have been delayed.

For more info, check out our best graphics cards for 2022, as well as every new graphics card announced at CES 2022.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Intel has shared more information on its upcoming line of consumer graphics cards, the Arc series. Today, the well-known CPU maker confirmed that its Arc brand GPUs for laptops will begin shipping this quarter, while those looking to buy a desktop GPU will need to wait until Q2 of this year.

You’ve all been patient, and the first wave of #IntelArc GPUs are launching soon for notebooks. Desktops and workstations will soon follow! https://t.co/rXgX9dGEL1 pic.twitter.com/F6ubSUzSHM

— Intel Graphics (@IntelGraphics) February 17, 2022

Originally announced last August, Intel’s Arc brand will serve as the company’s foothold into a market, taking on GPU giants AMD and Nvidia. But Intel is playing the long game here with the Arc brand as the company also confirmed during its initial announcement that its GPUs will span “multiple hardware generations,” under the codenames “Battlemage,” “Celestial,” and “Druid.”

The Arc brand will also include its own supersampling tech, XeSS, which will compete with AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution and Nvidia’s DLSS. Despite the Arc series not being announced yet, Intel has already confirmed that several developers will support XeSS. And one of the first PC games confirmed to support the tech is the PC version of Death Stranding Director’s Cut.

Another interesting tidbit in Intel's blog post is “Project Endgame,” a new cloud GPU service, allowing users to "access Intel Arc GPUs through a service for always-accessible, low-latency computing experience." While not much is known about the Project Endgame, it could be Intel’s response to Nvidia GeForce Now’s RTX 3080 membership, which allows subscribers to play games on the cloud with an RTX 3080 PC gaming rig. Intel did not share any further details other than Project Endgame will be available later this year.

This announcement comes amid an interesting time for the graphics card market. Unprecedented demand and an ongoing chip shortage continue to cause issues for those looking to buy the latest GPUs, something of which both AMD and Nvidia have struggled to keep up with demand. Nvidia, in particular, has been silent on its forthcoming flagship, the RTX 3090 Ti, which is rumored to have been delayed.

For more info, check out our best graphics cards for 2022, as well as every new graphics card announced at CES 2022.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

NERF and Minecraft have mashed up once again, this time in the form of a Minecraft Dungeons-inspired Sabrewing motorized NERF bow.

The Sabrewing Bow comes with an 8-round clip, and fires darts one at a time by pulling "back the string with the priming handle to power up the motor" and hitting the fire button. It also includes a clip-worth of darts, so you can go full-bore right out of the box.

They're NERF Elite darts, too, which means they travel fast, far, and surprisingly accurately. As someone who remembers the days of plastic toys that shot crappy suction cup darts, I am constantly delighted by the advancements we, as a society, have made in the world of foam projectiles. Take a look at the slideshow below to see the NERF Minecraft Sabrewing Motorized Bow.

If you haven't played Minecraft: Dungeons, I highly recommend it. I reviewed Minecraft: Dungeons back when it came out, and it's a ton of fun, and they've been making improvements ever since. It's a nice intro to Diablo, basically, but with Minecraft. Plus it's really pretty. While you wait for the blaster to come out, go play Minecraft: Dungeons, it's on Game Pass.

Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him hosting the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.

NERF and Minecraft have mashed up once again, this time in the form of a Minecraft Dungeons-inspired Sabrewing motorized NERF bow.

The Sabrewing Bow comes with an 8-round clip, and fires darts one at a time by pulling "back the string with the priming handle to power up the motor" and hitting the fire button. It also includes a clip-worth of darts, so you can go full-bore right out of the box.

They're NERF Elite darts, too, which means they travel fast, far, and surprisingly accurately. As someone who remembers the days of plastic toys that shot crappy suction cup darts, I am constantly delighted by the advancements we, as a society, have made in the world of foam projectiles. Take a look at the slideshow below to see the NERF Minecraft Sabrewing Motorized Bow.

If you haven't played Minecraft: Dungeons, I highly recommend it. I reviewed Minecraft: Dungeons back when it came out, and it's a ton of fun, and they've been making improvements ever since. It's a nice intro to Diablo, basically, but with Minecraft. Plus it's really pretty. While you wait for the blaster to come out, go play Minecraft: Dungeons, it's on Game Pass.

Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him hosting the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.

Great news, anime fans! If you were looking for a way to catch up with your favorite anime shows while on the go without draining your smartphone battery, Crunchyroll has announced today that it now has a dedicated app on the Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo Switch owners will be able to stream content on the Crunchyroll app offline on the hybrid console, thanks to Epic Games' Unreal Engine tech. Crunchyroll is the latest to join the Nintendo Switch's limited library of streaming/video content apps following the release of the Pokemon TV app, in addition to services such as Funimation, Hulu, and YouTube.

Crunchyroll also confirmed that the Switch app will allow users to stream while the console is in docked mode, handheld, and tabletop mode, allowing fans to experience streaming their favorite anime on Crunchyroll however they want on the Nintendo Switch.

While a new streaming service is always a win for the Nintendo Switch, some fans are still irritated that Netflix, arguably one of the biggest streaming services right now, still does not have a dedicated app on the console. Nintendo said that streaming services like Netflix would come to its hybrid console "in time," but that was back in 2017. With the recent news that the 3DS and Wii U eShops will be discontinued early next year, both of which had Netflix apps before it was discontinued in January 2021, now would be a good time for the Switch to support Netflix.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Great news, anime fans! If you were looking for a way to catch up with your favorite anime shows while on the go without draining your smartphone battery, Crunchyroll has announced today that it now has a dedicated app on the Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo Switch owners will be able to stream content on the Crunchyroll app offline on the hybrid console, thanks to Epic Games' Unreal Engine tech. Crunchyroll is the latest to join the Nintendo Switch's limited library of streaming/video content apps following the release of the Pokemon TV app, in addition to services such as Funimation, Hulu, and YouTube.

Crunchyroll also confirmed that the Switch app will allow users to stream while the console is in docked mode, handheld, and tabletop mode, allowing fans to experience streaming their favorite anime on Crunchyroll however they want on the Nintendo Switch.

While a new streaming service is always a win for the Nintendo Switch, some fans are still irritated that Netflix, arguably one of the biggest streaming services right now, still does not have a dedicated app on the console. Nintendo said that streaming services like Netflix would come to its hybrid console "in time," but that was back in 2017. With the recent news that the 3DS and Wii U eShops will be discontinued early next year, both of which had Netflix apps before it was discontinued in January 2021, now would be a good time for the Switch to support Netflix.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Last year Wizards of the Coast announced a Magic: The Gathering crossover with Street Fighter, and today we’ve got the first official look at the eight cards that will be part of that Secret Lair drop – as well all 33 cards included in the other drops that will be part of the upcoming February Superdrop.

The Street Fighter Secret Lair will include eight legendary creature cards (as well as one more secret card that will be revealed during the Capcom Cup Pro Tour this weekend), each of which depicts one of the fighters from Street Fighter 2’s original roster.

You can flip through the gallery below to see all eight cards, and read on for the rest of the Superdrop reveals and details:

WOTC’s Mark Heggen tells me they began conversations with Capcom for this crossover about two years ago, and that they tried a bunch of different character lineups and creative angles, but that it ultimately made the most sense to focus on the these eight classic fighters. The team even considered making cards based on specific moves or iconic things that weren’t characters themselves (for example, something like a “Round One” or "Perfect" card), but that they instead decided to represent moves as abilities on each creature.

Those abilities are surprisingly wide-ranging mechanically too, featuring everything from Multikicker on Chun-Li to the equivalent of Skulk on Dhalsim to the Untap symbol on Ryu. That last one is a particularly odd choice given it’s only shown up on a single card after its initial introduction in 2008's Shadowmoor block, but Heggen says it was explicitly used as a visual joke here: the symbol looks like the quarter-circle joystick motion required to do Ryu’s Hadoken ability in the video games.

“What happened is the team, for all of these, they sat down at the very beginning and just started going through everything Magic's done and saying ‘is there a fit?’” Heggen explains. “When we're doing the Secret Lair executions of this, it really does unlock the team to go wherever they want to go with it. You would not put all these abilities in a set, we would probably think real hard about putting Untap or Multikicker. You can't just weave these into any of our products, but when you're doing these one-off cards and you're trying to build a Chun-Li that's gonna go on to live a wonderful life in Commander decks where people are pulling through all of Magic, it just unlocks all of that.”

Heggen says that Commander is “the primary lens through which [we’re] viewing these,” but that there’s no “arbitrary threshold” they have to hit in terms of viability or popularity in the format. Commander is unique in that it’s one of the few formats where building the strongest deck you possibly can isn’t necessarily the goal, so Heggen says that “if we make a card that leads to a certain kind of deck with a certain kind of attitude, it will find an audience and that audience will play that deck and enjoy that deck and have fun with that deck, and not simply because it's the right power move.”

Flip through the gallery below to see all the cards in the February Superdrop.

Of course, these cards are legal to play in other Eternal formats like Legacy and Vintage as well, which WOTC also considers from a balancing perspective. Heggen reassures me that they are “thoughtful” about what new Secret Lair cards are doing to strategies outside of Commander, saying “we're not trying to accidentally ruin those formats by casually printing hyper-powerful cards into them.”

That said, the concept of mechanically unique Secret Lair cards existing at all has been a hot topic in the community regardless of power level. Last year I spoke to dozens of players and found a variety of mixed opinions on the matter, but since then some of the displeasure with the idea has softened after WOTC revealed that in-universe reprints of these licensed crossover cards would be available in certain booster packs at a higher rate than many people had assumed they might be – a move Heggen says has “always been the goal” since they decided to make them.

“Before we showed them the numbers, so to speak, with Stranger Things, we weren't surprised that people were a little bit skeptical,” Heggen admits. “Now that we're making these in-world equivalents for these cards, we want those to be around and we want people to be able to get their hands on them. They are not meant to be the ‘chase objects’ – 10 years from now, we want these Street Fighter ones to be the cool ones that have a little bit more caché and are a bit more interesting to see. We want their in-world equivalents to be the ones that are there for people who are just looking for the gameplay.”

The Street Fighter Secret Lair is part of the February Superdrop alongside seven other drops as well, most of which are themed around the recent cyberpunk-themed set, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. We have the pleasure of revealing the cards from those drops too, which you can see in the gallery above. Here are the names and official descriptions of each.

Secret Lair February Superdrop:

• Introducing: Kaito Shizuki — Artist Rorubei brings alternative art treatments for Magic: The Gathering’s newest high-tech ninja planeswalker, Kaito Shizuki.
• Kamigawa: The Manga: The Cards — Artist RIYOU KAMEI created cards using art from the official Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty manga.
• Li’l Walkers — Artist UTA NATSUME presents planeswalkers in an adorable Chibi style.
• Pictures of the Floating World — Artists AMAYAGIDO, AOJI MAIKO, Nagano, SHIE NANAHARA, and TOMOHITO created beautiful lands in the style of Ukiyo-e, an iconic style of Japanese art traditionally found in wood block prints and paintings.
• Shades Not Included — Artist Ben Schnuck gives lands the ‘80s-inspired synthwave treatment.
• Showcase: Neon Dynasty — These cards display neon ink foils that sport a fluorescent ink that pops right off the card and features art from artists AI NANAHIRA, ESUTHIO, SENNSU, and ZOUNOSE.
• Special Guest: Yuko Shimizu — Artist Yuko Shimizu is an award-winning Japanese illustrator based out of New York City. She brings her unique mashup of traditional Japanese art and modern concepts.

These are more standard Secret Lairs featuring reprints with brand new art, some of which are sought after cards that would cost more than the price of the drop on the secondary market if bought together. For example, Bribery in the “Introducing: Kaito Shizuki” drop has a market value of about $30, the same price as the drop itself. This isn't a first for a Secret Lair or anything, but I asked Heggen if that sort of thing is something they actively think about when choosing the cards for each new drop – and while he didn't address the prices of cards specifically, he did say picking the right ones is more of an art than a science.

“Every Secret Lair starts with its concept,” Heggen explains, “and from there we then look to the cards. We want cards that make sense.” While that’s the starting point, he also says they “don’t want to spend a lot of time and energy putting gorgeous, amazing art on cards that we don’t think anyone would ever want to do anything with,” meaning playability is also a factor to some degree. “These are not just small paintings, right? These are game objects.”

Heggen also tells me they are still looking to experiment with Secret Lairs in the future, the latest example of which is a recurring collection of basic land drops based on astrological signs. “We're just trying different things to see what works for people, what connects with people, and what is the best experience for people following along at home,” pointing to the fact that the astrological lands will be on a cycle separate from the regular Superdrops and will be available to order any time during the year.

That experimentation goes for the licensed crossovers as well, as collaborations with Warhammer 40,000, Fortnite, and Lord of the Rings have all already been announced. “We're still in that phase with these where these go back to our very first brainstorms,” Heggen tells me, saying they are still working through the top of the list of ideas they initially came up with years ago – while continuing to add to that list too. “We just can't stop thinking of cards we wanna print and artists we wanna work with and hilarious gags that make us smile. We have a ton of fun stuff in the pipeline and and we'll try different things until we get it right.”

The Street Fighter Secret Lair will be available alongside all of the February drops until March 18 on the Secret Lair website, with the final secret card being revealed on February 19 during the Capcom Pro Tour 2021 Season Final.

Last year Wizards of the Coast announced a Magic: The Gathering crossover with Street Fighter, and today we’ve got the first official look at the eight cards that will be part of that Secret Lair drop – as well all 33 cards included in the other drops that will be part of the upcoming February Superdrop.

The Street Fighter Secret Lair will include eight legendary creature cards (as well as one more secret card that will be revealed during the Capcom Cup Pro Tour this weekend), each of which depicts one of the fighters from Street Fighter 2’s original roster.

You can flip through the gallery below to see all eight cards, and read on for the rest of the Superdrop reveals and details:

WOTC’s Mark Heggen tells me they began conversations with Capcom for this crossover about two years ago, and that they tried a bunch of different character lineups and creative angles, but that it ultimately made the most sense to focus on the these eight classic fighters. The team even considered making cards based on specific moves or iconic things that weren’t characters themselves (for example, something like a “Round One” or "Perfect" card), but that they instead decided to represent moves as abilities on each creature.

Those abilities are surprisingly wide-ranging mechanically too, featuring everything from Multikicker on Chun-Li to the equivalent of Skulk on Dhalsim to the Untap symbol on Ryu. That last one is a particularly odd choice given it’s only shown up on a single card since its introduction in 2008, but Heggen says it was explicitly used as a visual joke here: the symbol looks like the quarter-circle joystick motion required to do Ryu’s Hadoken ability in the video games.

“What happened is the team, for all of these, they sat down at the very beginning and just started going through everything Magic's done and saying ‘is there a fit?’” Heggen explains. “When we're doing the Secret Lair executions of this, it really does unlock the team to go wherever they want to go with it. You would not put all these abilities in a set, we would probably think real hard about putting Untap or Multikicker. You can't just weave these into any of our products, but when you're doing these one-off cards and you're trying to build a Chun-Li that's gonna go on to live a wonderful life in Commander decks where people are pulling through all of Magic, it just unlocks all of that.”

Heggen says that Commander is “the primary lens through which [we’re] viewing these,” but that there’s no “arbitrary threshold” they have to hit in terms of viability or popularity in the format. Commander is unique in that it’s one of the few formats where building the strongest deck you possibly can isn’t necessarily the goal, so Heggen says that “if we make a card that leads to a certain kind of deck with a certain kind of attitude, it will find an audience and that audience will play that deck and enjoy that deck and have fun with that deck, and not simply because it's the right power move.”

Flip through the gallery below to see all the cards in the February Superdrop.

Of course, these cards are legal to play in other Eternal formats like Legacy and Vintage as well, which WOTC also considers from a balancing perspective. Heggen reassures me that they are “thoughtful” about what new Secret Lair cards are doing to strategies outside of Commander, saying “we're not trying to accidentally ruin those formats by casually printing hyper-powerful cards into them.”

That said, the concept of mechanically unique Secret Lair cards existing at all has been a hot topic in the community regardless of power level. Last year I spoke to dozens of players and found a variety of mixed opinions on the matter, but since then some of the displeasure with the idea has softened after WOTC revealed that in-universe reprints of these licensed crossover cards would be available in certain booster packs at a higher rate than many people had assumed they might be – a move Heggen says has “always been the goal” since they decided to make them.

“Before we showed them the numbers, so to speak, with Stranger Things, we weren't surprised that people were a little bit skeptical,” Heggen admits. “Now that we're making these in-world equivalents for these cards, we want those to be around and we want people to be able to get their hands on them. They are not meant to be the ‘chase objects’ – 10 years from now, we want these Street Fighter ones to be the cool ones that have a little bit more caché and are a bit more interesting to see. We want their in-world equivalents to be the ones that are there for people who are just looking for the gameplay.”

The Street Fighter Secret Lair is part of the February Superdrop alongside seven other drops as well, most of which are themed around the recent cyberpunk-themed set, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. We have the pleasure of revealing the cards from those drops too, which you can see in the gallery above. Here are the names and official descriptions of each.

Secret Lair February Superdrop:

• Introducing: Kaito Shizuki — Artist Rorubei brings alternative art treatments for Magic: The Gathering’s newest high-tech ninja planeswalker, Kaito Shizuki.
• Kamigawa: The Manga: The Cards — Artist RIYOU KAMEI created cards using art from the official Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty manga.
• Li’l Walkers — Artist UTA NATSUME presents planeswalkers in an adorable Chibi style.
• Pictures of the Floating World — Artists AMAYAGIDO, AOJI MAIKO, Nagano, SHIE NANAHARA, and TOMOHITO created beautiful lands in the style of Ukiyo-e, an iconic style of Japanese art traditionally found in wood block prints and paintings.
• Shades Not Included — Artist Ben Schnuck gives lands the ‘80s-inspired synthwave treatment.
• Showcase: Neon Dynasty — These cards display neon ink foils that sport a fluorescent ink that pops right off the card and features art from artists AI NANAHIRA, ESUTHIO, SENNSU, and ZOUNOSE.
• Special Guest: Yuko Shimizu — Artist Yuko Shimizu is an award-winning Japanese illustrator based out of New York City. She brings her unique mashup of traditional Japanese art and modern concepts.

These are more standard Secret Lairs featuring reprints with brand new art, some of which are sought after cards that would cost more than the price of the drop on the secondary market if bought together. For example, Bribery in the “Introducing: Kaito Shizuki” drop has a market value of about $30, the same price as the drop itself. This isn't a first for a Secret Lair or anything, but I asked Heggen if that sort of thing is something they actively think about when choosing the cards for each new drop – and while he didn't address the prices of cards specifically, he did say picking the right ones is more of an art than a science.

“Every Secret Lair starts with its concept,” Heggen explains, “and from there we then look to the cards. We want cards that make sense.” While that’s the starting point, he also says they “don’t want to spend a lot of time and energy putting gorgeous, amazing art on cards that we don’t think anyone would ever want to do anything with,” meaning playability is also a factor to some degree. “These are not just small paintings, right? These are game objects.”

Heggen also tells me they are still looking to experiment with Secret Lairs in the future, the latest example of which is a recurring collection of basic land drops based on astrological signs. “We're just trying different things to see what works for people, what connects with people, and what is the best experience for people following along at home,” pointing to the fact that the astrological lands will be on a cycle separate from the regular Superdrops and will be available to order any time during the year.

That experimentation goes for the licensed crossovers as well, as collaborations with Warhammer 40,000, Fortnite, and Lord of the Rings have all already been announced. “We're still in that phase with these where these go back to our very first brainstorms,” Heggen tells me, saying they are still working through the top of the list of ideas they initially came up with years ago – while continuing to add to that list too. “We just can't stop thinking of cards we wanna print and artists we wanna work with and hilarious gags that make us smile. We have a ton of fun stuff in the pipeline and and we'll try different things until we get it right.”

The Street Fighter Secret Lair will be available alongside all of the February drops until March 18 on the Secret Lair website, with the final secret card being revealed on February 19 during the Capcom Pro Tour 2021 Season Final.