Now in it’s 12th year, the free-t0-play loot shooter Warframe is still going strong and the future looks bright coming off a whirlwind series of announcements and teases from TennoCon 2025. The multi-day event included details on new story expansions, new frames, and access to an alpha build for Digital Extremes’ fantasy spin-off, Soulframe.
There was also an update on Warframe for mobile, which is getting a closed beta this fall, and of course every new Warframe expansion gets a new kick-ass song, this year’s included. Here are the five biggest takeaways from the annual fan extravaganza.
Unannounced fall 2025 update will finally explain Warframe’s convoluted mod process to new players
Warframe, like Destiny, is practically ancient by modern live-service gaming standards now, and it has acquired a number of systems that have become second nature to ongoing players but inscrutable to newcomers. One of those is the mod system, which features a lot of customization and crafting.
While Digital Extremes hasn’t dished on what its big fall update will include (more info is coming in a devstream on September 25), we do know it will have a new quest called Teacher that will onboard players to the game’s most important buildcrafting tool. Hopefully it’s a good onramp for everyone still looking for one.
The next story chapter is called The Old Peace
Warframe’s next expansion drops near the end of 2025 and will take players into the past to witness the game’s “most tectonic historical event,” known as “The Old War.” It’ll feature a visual overhaul to player controlled Tenno Operators and WWI-inspired trench warfare.
It’ll include a playable Excalibur Prime for one of the quests, Caliban Prime, new Sentient allies and enemies, the devil-inspired Warframe Uriel, and two new Protoframes. Most importantly, it’ll set the stage for something the game has never done before.
2026 will takes players to the distant Tau star system
Following the events of The Old Peace, players will, for the first time in Warframe’s history, be taken to the new Tau star system. It was a target for colonization within the game’s fiction long ago, with self-replicating terraforming machines called Sentients tasked with preparing Tau for inhabitation. What will await players there next year is anybody’s guess.
Soulframe is still years away but fans went hands-on with an early test build called Preludes
In addition to continuing Warframe’s legacy, Digital Extremes has also been busy with the fantasy-based spin-off Soulframe. An extended demo during TennoCon 2025 showed character customization and a player tracking a monster through the woods, using a combination of melee weapons, archer, and spells to survive various woodland threats. While fans were able to try out the pre-alpha Preludes build over the weekend, a lasting free demo sounds a bit farther away.
Will the game be ready before the end of 2025? That’s sounding less and less likely. “It’s an aspirational goal,” community manager Sarah Asselin told fans during a Q&A over the weekend. “We’re looking at where we’re at by the end of the year, but we want to feel confident that we’ve built Soulframe out to the point where it feels good to do so, for the players and the developers.”
Warframe’s devs would love to make a Switch 2 version but still haven’t received a dev kit from Nintendo
Fortnite, No Man’s Sky, and other Switch 1 ports have started receiving upgrades for Switch 2. Will Warframe, which could certainly benefit from better performance on Nintendo’s handheld hybrid device, be getting a similar treatment? Not until Nintendo gives Digital Extremes a Switch 2 dev kit, apparently. Like lots of other big third-party developers, it’s still waiting for the hardware.
“Our tech team is so excited to take advantage of the high-speed cores and the other really cool features of it,” CEO Steve Sinclair said during a Q&A. “There’s just such a backlog for dev kits. So, yeah, if you know anyone…just one, that’s all it would take. I know our programmers are just, like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait.’ We definitely have plans. When we get a dev kit, we will be doing a custom build for Warframe. Absolutely.”
We’ll see what ends up coming out first: Warframe’s Switch 2 upgrade or Soulframe.
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