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Exclusive: T-Mobile Named Best Mobile Network in US, Adds T-Satellite Features and DoorDash Perks

CNET sat down with T-Mobile executives to break down how the no. 4 carrier vaulted to the top.

During a live event today at its Tech Experience 5G Hub in Bellevue, Washington, T-Mobile announced that it has been named the Best Mobile Network in the US by Ookla, based on half a billion real-world usage tests conducted over a six-month period. This marks the first time T-Mobile has taken the overall top spot. 

(Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

«We made big bets on 5G, pushing the limits to deliver speed and coverage no one thought possible,» said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert. «Now, as the Best Mobile Network in America, with unmatched satellite-to-mobile capability, it’s clear we’re shaping the future of wireless with a network built not just for speed, but for possibility.»

The company also announced additional features as well as a July 23 commercial launch date for T-Satellite, its Starlink-based satellite connectivity service. Because T-Mobile has associated its wireless brand with an ongoing array of perks, the company is also adding free DoorDash DashPass memberships for T-Mobile subscribers with Magenta status.

In less than a decade, T-Mobile has gone from a limited-spectrum upstart with a penchant for bright pink branding to the top of the competitive US mobile industry, largely due to the way it has navigated the transition to 5G networking (and maybe some help from the magenta colors). Merging T-Mobile’s low-band spectrum with Sprint’s mid-band became one of the main reasons T-Mobile is now crowing about its spot in Ookla’s rankings.

As part of these announcements, T-Mobile invited CNET to an exclusive behind-the-scenes conversation about how it arrived at this point and a tour of some of the technologies at work at its headquarters and labs.

An unconventional road to 5G

Every company says it’s the best at something, and for a long time, T-Mobile claimed it was the best value among the major wireless carriers. «US consumers have always had to make a choice between going to a much higher priced but higher quality network, or make a trade-off in network and get a better value,» said Mike Katz, T-Mobile president of marketing, strategy and products. «Now it’s validated by a third party [that] customers don’t have to make this choice. They can get both the best value, which T Mobile has always been known and famous for, and get the best network.»

But how did T-Mobile get to this point? It’s easy to say you have the best value and that customers love you, but those are results. At this scale — being one of the top three providers in the US competing for an essential market — it takes a series of technical decisions, a vision of how technology will evolve and the willingness to take big risks.

From a consumer point of view, a few years ago, the focus of every carrier seemed to be to expand coverage, especially 5G coverage. Specifics got lost in the 5G marketing shuffle — every phone-maker touted its 5G compatibility, and the carriers wanted everyone to know that they were expanding their 5G footprint as fast as possible.

But wireless coverage isn’t like a blanket that covers everything equally, and 5G in particular is made up of several speeds and flavors. That’s why your 5G-enabled phone will sometimes indicate the network as «5G,» «5G+,» «5G UC» or other variations, depending on your carrier.

When 5G technologies began to appear in 2020, one focus was on the high speeds possible using the millimeter wave spectrum. But, although millimeter wave can deliver swift connections, it can be thwarted by obstacles such as windows or even plants.

«Primarily, [5G] was going to be a millimeter wave play, which is very high bandwidth with very poor reach,» said Ulf Ewaldsson, T-Mobile’s president of technology. «We went all-in on a very different strategy. We said, ‘it’s going to be a mid-band play, and it’s going to be TDD [Time Division Duplex, a way to send and receive data in the same frequency] spectrum in the mid-band that you pair with a very strong low band.’ We were able to get our hands on the best possible spectrum, thanks to merging with Sprint.»

Ewaldsson emphasized that it’s not just a prevalence of low-band that’s advantageous. It’s that, at 600 megahertz, T-Mobile has the lowest band in the low-band area. Why is that important? It has better reach, about 25% to 30% wider than the competition.

That Sprint merger in 2020 sounded like a quick way to buy into the top of the market, a shortcut to expand one’s footprint. (Indeed, T-Mobile is taking a similar tack right now in the broadband market by acquiring fiber provider Lumos in April). But buying Sprint wasn’t an immediate ticket to the top.

«It took about a year extra to get through all the regulatory approvals to get this thing done,» Ewaldsson said, noting that AT&T’s and Verizon’s lead in the market made it a challenge for T-Mobile or Sprint alone to actually enter the 5G race. But with a plan in place to use Sprint’s spectrum and infrastructure, «once we came out [of the approval process], we were right out of the blocks,» he said.

Katz explained that many of T-Mobile’s early disadvantages have turned into benefits. «We have more towers than anybody else, and our towers are closer together,» he said. «We had to build more towers than AT&T and Verizon. We didn’t have any low-band spectrum, which propagates better. So we had to build more towers that were closer together.»

Ewaldsson was more specific. «We have about [and here he paused briefly] 82,715 towers,» he said. «Now, as a turn of events, that happened to be the best possible asset when we merged with Sprint, because we could power up all those towers with that TDD spectrum … and create a formidable downlink speed experience.»

The benefits of the standalone core

Merging T-Mobile’s low-band spectrum with Sprint’s mid-band became one of the main reasons T-Mobile is now crowing about its spot in Ookla’s rankings.

«We have [a] secret that nobody else has, which is a standalone core. A standalone core is a smarter control over all those towers that stand alone,» Ewaldsson said. «Core allows us to combine low-band and mid-band and all our bands to get higher and faster experiences for our customers.»

He explained that building out the network more consistently is something other carriers haven’t done. Every T-Mobile tower has nearly the same tri-band configuration.

«You have the same speeds, latency and performance on your apps, wherever you are, and that’s also a secret sauce, too,» he said.

The standalone core enables T-Mobile’s next wave of wireless advancements. In April, the company announced that it had rolled out and successfully tested — with consumer handsets — 5G-Advanced networking, achieving uplink speeds of 550 Mbps. It did so by combining multiple spectrums in a technique called carrier aggregation, which is enabled by the standalone core hardware.

This technology also enables network slicing, a technique T-Mobile has been using commercially for the last two years to guarantee network performance for a specific range of devices, even in crowded or noisy wireless environments. First responders, for example, can be assured they can communicate, even in an emergency environment where other people are all accessing the network.

«You can have a number of different frequencies supporting one single device, one mobile phone,» said Ewaldsson. «If you combine all those resources [into] one device, you can get an incredible bandwidth for a short time, and you can get done with what needs to be done faster. So it creates a better customer experience, because you have an enormous bandwidth that is allocated toward one device, instead of sharing it in one frequency with a bunch of devices.»

How Ookla named T-Mobile the Best Mobile Network in the US

«We’ve known for a long time that the 5G portion of our network is the best,» said Katz, «but this [test] concluded that T-Mobile had the best network. And obviously, we’re very excited about that.»

Both Katz and Ewaldsson emphasized that Ookla’s testing was larger and more comprehensive than earlier metrics. It was performed on over 6 million devices and 500 million test points over a six-month period.

Ewaldsson said it’s an active test, collecting data when customers run the SpeedTest app on their phones, «but it’s also a passive test where, in the background, they’re pulling data from millions of different handsets that are in the hands of real consumers, wherever they are.»

He contrasted that with drive testing, an accepted methodology in which a tester drives routes with a collection of representative phones «to prove that a network is good,» said Ewaldsson. We don’t believe in that. We believe that if you really want to test this, you’re going to crowdsource it, and that’s exactly what this test has done… and it’s a third-party test.»

The benefit to this approach is that it more closely captures real mobile usage — people texting and sending email, viewing social apps, watching video clips, playing games and more. Millions of people are also operating under real-world conditions, which can include factors such as pockets of interference or scarcity.

Getting to this point hasn’t been a glide path for T-Mobile, and it still faces turbulence. Just in the past few months, T-Mobile has raised prices on many of its legacy plans (and then turned around and gave out free lines to some). It has also switched all of its current plans to a model that does not include taxes and fees, some of which incrementally increased this spring. Until this year, the main unlimited data plans incorporated taxes and fees into the monthly cost.

T-Satellite goes online in July with more features

T-Mobile’s wireless performance is not the only thing looking skyward. The T-Satellite service, which enables texting from most smartphones via the network of over 620 Starlink satellites when out of range of cellular or Wi-Fi networks, will leave beta status on July 23 and be open to anyone. Pricing for the service will be $10 a month, except for customers on the Experience Beyond and Go5G Next plan, which includes T-Satellite as part of the package.

That price will apply even if you’re a customer of a competing service like AT&T or Verizon; T-Satellite can be activated as a second eSIM on supported devices. Katz said there are currently over 1.8 million customers in the beta program, including tens of thousands of competitors’ customers.

He also pointed out that during the beta, three times more messages were received than sent. «If you can’t receive an incoming message because you haven’t manually connected your phone, you’re not really reachable and, in my opinion, you’re not really connected,» he said, referring to the way competitors’ phones initiate a satellite link.

The T-Satellite service will include 911 emergency texting later this year, which will be available to any mobile subscriber, even if they haven’t signed up for T-Satellite service (provided their devices can make the connection).

«We just think that with a technology like this, no customer should ever be in a situation where they are unconnected in an emergency,» said Katz.

That’s not the last of the satellite news, though. T-Satellite will enable MMS messaging to send pictures and short audio clips via satellite on Android phones, with iOS support coming later. In a demonstration I witnessed at T-Mobile’s 5G Hub, sending an image, text and requisite burst of emojis wasn’t exactly speedy, but they arrived within 30 to 90 seconds.

Building on that, T-Mobile will bring data service to T-Satellite starting Oct. 1. Considering how satellite bandwidth is constrained, T-Mobile is working with operating system providers to implement an API that developers can use to allow reasonable data access in their apps over the satellite connection. Don’t expect to stream Netflix while you’re camping in the wilderness, but apps such as All Trails will be able to fetch updated information.

«This will be the first time you’ve seen a direct-to-cell satellite network support data services,» said Katz. «We’ve worked with many different app developers to help them build their apps to recognize that they’re connected to satellite and optimize for satellite data.»

DoorDash deliveries without all the fees

When it comes to mobile plan perks, T-Mobile has found success with its Magenta Status goodies, which range from everyday discounts on stays at Hilton hotels to T-Mobile Tuesdays, which offer deals such as a recent Wingstop promotion (during which many of the restaurant’s locations ran out of chicken nationwide). Katz said the company has seen 1.2 billion redemptions of T-Mobile Tuesdays offers.

On July 8, Magenta Status is gaining a new perk: T-Mobile is partnering with DoorDash to give customers on the most popular plans DashPass service free for a year. Eligible customers can claim the offer through Aug. 4 via T-Mobile Tuesdays in the T-Life app. 

«I think DoorDash did something like 2 billion deliveries last year, and the average price of a delivery is $3 to $4,» said Katz. «If you have DashPass, you don’t pay delivery fees at all. This can save our customers hundreds and hundreds of dollars.»

Incentives to switch and T-Mobile’s future

Eager to entice customers of the major competing services, T-Mobile is launching the Easy Upgrade program that makes it «screamingly simple,» in Katz’s words, to switch to T-Mobile. He specifically mentioned Verizon customers «who signed up with Verizon because they believed, and for years it was true, that Verizon had the best network,» he said. «And now that we’re in a place where it’s definitively clear that T-Mobile has the best network, we want to make it really easy for Verizon customers to come and join the Un-carrier.»

Katz said T-Mobile will pay off every cost to switch, including the remaining cost of devices up to $800, and give customers a new Apple or Android device without requiring a trade-in (be sure to read the details of these deals).

T-Mobile’s ascent to the top of Ookla’s list shows that, even though the mobile market in the US is dominated by just a few large players, the field is in flux. AT&T and Verizon continue to build out their own networks and strategies — Verizon has teased a «Project 624» that is rumored to be revealed on June 24, for instance. Now that T-Mobile has established this lead, I’m eager to see how it plans to hold onto it.

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Technologies

CNET’s Daily Price Tracker: I’m Tracking How 11 Key Products Are Reacting to Trump’s Tariffs

Most of the prices in CNET’s daily tariff tracker are remaining steady, and have gone back to normal after a period where several were on sale.

For CNET’s tariff price tracker, I’ve been keeping tabs on several key products we suspect will be vulnerable to President Donald Trump’s contentious tariff policies, watching their price moves every day for possible long-term price hikes. For the most part, prices for these items have remained steady in the last few weeks, aside from notable increases for the Xbox Series X and a budget-friendly 4K TV. A few also gone on sale for brief periods, but as of now, they’ve all mostly reverted back to normal — though you should expect the sale prices to return as Prime Day approaches in July.

With all that said, the broader impact of these import taxes is still on the horizon, especially as Trump now claims that tariff rates against China are going back up to 55% soon. The Trump administration has also been working to undo a trade court ruling, which found that Trump has no authority to set tariffs as he has been — a move now being argued before an appeals court. We’ll see how that ultimately plays out but for now, the possibility that the president’s tariff policies will lead to price hikes remains likely. That’s why I’m continuing to monitor several key products you might want or need to buy soon, to keep track of the potential tariff impacts.

CNET Tariff Tracker Index

Above, you can check out a chart with the average price of the 11 products included in this piece over the course of 2025. This will help give you a sense of the overall price changes and fluctuations going on. Further down, you’ll be able to check out charts for each individual product being tracked. 

For now, the average price for all of the products we’re covering is down noticeably compared to May, although this might be a result of the various sales going around to kick off the summer. You can probably expect that trend to continue into next month when Amazon holds its Prime Day sale, which I anticipate will be a good time to make a lot of purchases before tariff impacts really start to take hold.

We’ll be updating this article regularly as prices change. It’s all in the name of helping you make sense of things so be sure to check back every so often. For more, check out CNET’s guide to whether you should wait to make big purchases or buy them now and get expert tips about how to prepare for a recession.

Methodology

We’re checking prices daily and will update the article and the relevant charts right away to reflect any changes. The following charts show a single bullet point for each month, with the most recent one labeled «Now» and showing the current price. For the past months, we’ve gone with what was the most common price for each item in the given month. 

In most cases, the price stats used in these graphs were pulled from Amazon using the historical price-tracker tool Keepa. For the iPhones, the prices come from Apple’s official materials and are based on the 128-gigabyte base model of the latest offering for each year: the iPhone 14, iPhone 15 and iPhone 16. For the Xbox Series X, the prices were sourced from Best Buy using the tool PriceTracker. If any of these products happen to be on sale at a given time, we’ll be sure to let you know and explain how those price drops differ from longer-term pricing trends that tariffs can cause.

The 11 products we’re tracking

Mostly what we’re tracking in this article are electronic devices and digital items that CNET covers in depth, like iPhones and affordable 4K TVs — along with a typical bag of coffee, a more humble product that isn’t produced in the US to any significant degree. 

The products featured were chosen for a few reasons: Some of them are popular and/or affordable representatives for major consumer tech categories, like smartphones, TVs and game consoles. Others are meant to represent things that consumers might buy more frequently, like printer ink or coffee beans. Some products were chosen over others because they are likely more susceptible to tariffs. Some of these products have been reviewed by CNET or have been featured in some of our best lists.

Below, we’ll get into more about each individual product, and stick around till the end for a rundown of some other products worth noting.

iPhone 16

The iPhone is the most popular smartphone brand in the US, so this was a clear priority for price tracking. The iPhone has also emerged as a major focal point for conversations about tariffs, given its popularity and its susceptibility to import taxes because of its overseas production, largely in China. Trump has reportedly been fixated on the idea that the iPhone can and should be manufactured in the US, an idea that experts have dismissed as a fantasy. Estimates have also suggested that a US-made iPhone would cost as much as $3,500.

Something to note about this graph: The price listed is the one you’ll see if you buy your phone through a major carrier. If you, say, buy direct from Apple or Best Buy without a carrier involved, you’ll be charged an extra $30, so in some places, you might see the list price of the standard iPhone 16 listed as $830.

Apple’s been taking a few steps to protect its prices in the face of these tariffs, flying in bulk shipments of product before they took effect and planning to move production for the US market from China to India. A new Reuters report found that a staggering 97% of iPhones imported from the latter country, March through May, were bound for the US. This latter move drew the anger of Trump again, threatening the company with a 25% tariff if they didn’t move production to the US, an idea CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly shot down in the past. This came after Trump gave a tariff exemption to electronic devices including smartphones, so the future of that move seems in doubt now.

Apple’s flagship device is still the top-selling smartphone globally, as of Q1 of this year, although new research from the firm Counterpoint suggests that tariff uncertainty will cause the brand’s growth to stall a bit throughout the rest of 2025.

Duracell AA batteries

A lot of the tech products in your home might boast a rechargeable energy source but individual batteries are still an everyday essential and I can tell you from experience that as soon as you forget about them, you’ll be needing to restock. The Duracell AAs we’re tracking are some of the bestselling batteries on Amazon.

Samsung DU7200 TV

Alongside smartphones, televisions are some of the most popular tech products out there, even if they’re an infrequent purchase. This particular product is a popular entry-level 4K TV and was CNET’s pick for best overall budget TV for 2025. Unlike a lot of tech products that have key supply lines in China, Samsung is a South Korean company so it might have some measure of tariff resistance. This model was most recently about $33 more expensive than usual on Amazon, but we’ll have to wait and see if this is a temporary change or a more permanent shift in pricing.

Xbox Series X

Video game software and hardware are a market segment expected to be hit hard by the Trump tariffs. Microsoft’s Xbox is the first console brand to see price hikes — the company cited «market conditions» along with the rising cost of development. Most notably, this included an increase in the price of the flagship Xbox Series X, up from $500 to $600. Numerous Xbox accessories also were affected and the company also said that «certain» games will eventually see a price hike from $70 to $80.

Initially, we were tracking the price of the much more popular Nintendo Switch as a representative of the gaming market. Nintendo has not yet hiked the price of its handheld-console hybrid and stressed that the $450 price tag of the upcoming Switch 2 has not yet been inflated because of tariffs. Sony, meanwhile, has so far only increased prices on its PlayStation hardware in markets outside the US.

AirPods Pro 2

The latest iteration of Apple’s wildly popular true-wireless earbuds are here to represent the headphone market. Much to the chagrin of the audiophiles out there, a quick look at sales charts on Amazon shows you just how much the brand dominates all headphone sales. For most of the year, they’ve hovered around $199, which is a notable savings on its list price of $249.

HP 962 CMY printer ink

This HP printer ink includes cyan, magenta and yellow all in one product and recently saw its price jump from around $72 — where it stayed for most of 2025 — to $80, which is around its highest price over the last five years. We will be keeping tabs to see if this is a long-term change or a brief uptick.

This product replaced Overture PLA Filament for 3D printers in this piece, but we’re still tracking that item.

Anker 10,000-mAh, 30-watt power bank

Anker’s accessories are perennially popular in the tech space and the company has already announced that some of its products will get more expensive as a direct result of tariffs. This specific product has also been featured in some of CNET’s lists of the best portable chargers. 

Bose TV speaker

Soundbars have become important purchases, given the often iffy quality of the speakers built into TVs. While not the biggest or the best offering in the space, the Bose TV Speaker is one of the more affordable soundbar options out there, especially hailing from a brand as popular as Bose. 

Oral-B Pro 1000 electric toothbrush

They might be a lot more expensive than their traditional counterparts but electric toothbrushes remain a popular choice for consumers because of how well they get the job done. I know my dentist won’t let up on how much I need one. This particular Oral-B offering was CNET’s overall choice for the best electric toothbrush for 2025.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook

Lenovo is notable among the big laptop manufacturers for being a Chinese company making its products especially susceptible to Trump’s tariffs.

Starbucks Ground Coffee (28-ounce bag)

Coffee is included in this tracker because of its ubiquity —I’m certainly drinking too much of it these days —and because it’s uniquely susceptible to Trump’s tariff agenda. Famously, coffee beans can only be grown within a certain distance from Earth’s equator, a tropical span largely outside the US and known as the «Coffee Belt.» 

Hawaii is the only part of the US that can produce coffee beans, with data from USAFacts showing that 11.5 million pounds were harvested there in the 2022-23 season — little more than a drop in the mug, as the US consumed 282 times that amount of coffee during that period. Making matters worse, Hawaiian coffee production has declined in the past few years.

All that to say: Americans get almost all of their coffee from overseas, making it one of the most likely products to see price hikes from tariffs.

Other products

As mentioned before, we occasionally swap out products with different ones that undergo notable price shifts. Here are some things no longer featured above, but that we’re still keeping an eye on:

  • Nintendo Switch: The baseline handheld-console hybrid has held steady around $299 most places — including Amazon — since it released in 2017. Whether or not that price will be impacted by tariffs or the impending release of the Switch 2 remains to be seen. This product was replaced above with the Xbox Series X.
  • Overture PLA 3D printer filament: This is a popular choice on Amazon for the material needed to run 3D printers. It has held steady around $15 on Amazon all year. This product was replaced above by the HP 962 printer ink.

Here are some products we also wanted to single out that haven’t been featured with a graph yet:

  • Razer Blade 18 (2025), 5070 Ti edition: The latest revision of Razer’s largest gaming laptop saw a $300 price bump recently, with the base model featured an RTX 5070 Ti graphics card now priced at $3,500 ahead of launch, compared to the $3,200 price announced in February. While Razer has stayed mum about the reasoning, it did previously suspend direct sales to the US as Trump’s tariff plans were ramping up in April.
  • Asus ROG Ally X: The premium version of Asus’s Steam Deck competitor handheld gaming PC recently saw a price hike from $799 to $899, coinciding with the announcement of the company’s upcoming Xbox-branded Ally handhelds.
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Technologies

Trump Warns, ‘Keep Oil Prices Down’ After US Strikes Iran: What’s Next for Gas Prices?

The all-caps post came hours after weekend bombings in Iran rattled oil markets and reignited fears of rising fuel costs.

President Donald Trump delivered an all-caps message about oil prices on Monday, less than a day after US and Israeli forces struck three Iranian nuclear sites. «EVERYONE, KEEP OIL PRICES DOWN. I’M WATCHING!» Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. «DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!! And I mean NOW!!!»

The attacks briefly sent Brent crude, the world’s benchmark oil price, above $81 a barrel. Traders drove that price back into the low $70s after Iran retaliated against the US by firing missiles at a US military base in Qatar, a relatively limited response.

What does this mean for drivers?

Crude oil makes up a little more than half of the cost of what drivers pay at the gas pump, and analysts say every $10 hike in oil prices usually nudges the average US gasoline price up by 20 to 25 cents per gallon.

Read more: Best Electric Cars and EVs for 2025

As of June 23, AAA puts the national average for regular gasoline at $3.22 a gallon, with diesel fuel at $3.68. A week ago regular was $3.14, so tensions have already tacked on 8 cents. Californians are paying the most at $4.66, while Texas drivers enjoy the lowest statewide average price at about $2.85.

CNET will track AAA’s daily averages and key market benchmarks as long as the Iran standoff threatens fuel costs.

If Tehran follows through on threats to close the 21-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly 20% of the world’s oil, Goldman Sachs warns that the price of Brent crude could leap past $110, a level likely to push the average US pump price over $4.

Monday’s oil spike faded after the missiles Iran aimed at the US base in Al Udeid, Qatar, were intercepted, leaving energy infrastructure untouched. Traders are betting Tehran won’t endanger its own export revenue, at least for now.

If a tanker is hit or the Strait of Hormuz is even partly blocked, experts say supplies could get tight almost instantly. So far, the OPEC-plus oil alliance hasn’t called an emergency meeting. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the group doesn’t need to act yet, and Saudi Arabia’s energy chief says it’ll wait to see what the market actually does. 

The administration could tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve if Iran disrupts oil flows, but no steps have been taken so far.

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The Expanse: Osiris Reborn Will Take Cues From Mass Effect, Souls Games and More

I spoke with the creative director of the upcoming action RPG game, which is based on the beloved book and TV series.

For a certain kind of science fiction fan, the surprise news of a video game set in one of the most beloved TV and book series, The Expanse, hit like a freight train of hype. The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is an action RPG currently in development from Owlcat Games with no release date yet, but that hasn’t stopped the studio’s creative director, Alexander Mishulin, from giving me some early details about the game.

There are many reasons The Expanse has been so successful, the largest of which is its deft mix of well-written characters interweaved with political intrigue affecting grand theaters. Unlike Star Wars and other popular space fiction, The Expanse — both the books by James S.A. Corey and the Syfy/Amazon Prime show — is «hard» science fiction with realistic physics and scenarios. From chatting with Mishulin, Cyprus-based Owlcat Games is making sure all of this makes it into its game.

The announcement trailer for Osiris Reborn, released during Summer Game Fest earlier this month, shows plenty of hallmarks from the TV show: zero-G ship combat, sealed flight suits, tactical gunplay and the protomolecule. But the end showed something even more promising: early gameplay footage that, despite being prealpha and not representative of how the final game will look, represents the third-person exploration that Owlcat Games is aiming to use. 

It looks, well, very Mass Effect. Many of Mishulin’s teammates are fans of BioWare’s legendary sci-fi action RPG series, and he acknowledged that it in some way inspired Osiris Reborn. But he emphasized that the team also drew on RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 for its cinematic story focusing on companions, while Japanese RPGs served as models for great characterization that keeps you attached to characters through the long story of a game. 

«I’m not saying we are taking something from, say, Persona 5, but the approach, the idea that characters are front and center of the story and how they evolve all through the story up until the end is a little bit similar,» Mishulin said.

Osiris Reborn is set in the same near-Earth area as its source material, specifically during the events of the first and second seasons of the show (or the first two books). It’ll have entirely new characters for the player to meet and add to their party, which was done to give Owlcat Games more creative room to tell stories rather than strictly adapt the books or show, though they may run into some more well-known heroes and villains. 

«You will be seeing with your own eyes the repercussions of Holden’s actions, all the situations like The Canterbury, and how it affects people in the belt, people in the inner planets,» Mishulin said. «You will be having your own adventure with your own goals, choices, consequences in the same universe [with] all the major events unfolding in this universe alongside your story.»

What players will recognize more are the planets, moons and locations they’ll visit in Osiris Reborn — in fact, the game starts on Eros Station. Show and book fans will remember what was happening there at this point in the timeline, and yes, the human-altering extrasolar protomolecule will make an appearance in the game, evoking a similar horror as it does in the show. Relatedly, the corporate subsidiary Protogen that studies the alien molecule will also appear, Mishulin said, hinting that its most sinister project, the human-protomolecule hybrid Caliban, will also show up.

From the trailer and Mishulin’s descriptions, Osiris Reborn sounds like it will be very different from other adaptations of the franchise, such as Telltale’s narrative-driven Expanse game. And for Mass Effect fans, it sounds like Owlcat’s game will have RPG systems and combat that have some similar elements to BioWare’s classics, but give players more capability to build characters and play how they want. Mix in strong characters with comparisons to other popular RPGs and Osiris Reborn sounds like a lot of what fans want in a game adapting the franchise.

Modern third-person space RPG combat

Osiris Reborn’s combat will allow a variety of approaches, Mishulin said, letting players mix and match their reliance on gunplay and various abilities. In the announcement trailer, the trio of heroes showcased three different approaches to fights: traditional guns, drone-based support from a distance and a defensive ballistic shield (along with a shoulder-mounted weapon), which worked in tandem to hit enemies from all sides.

«The RPG system is very open, allowing you to build whatever character you like. It’s part of our vision of the game to allow you to experiment and find things you like,» Mishulin said. 

Characters aren’t class-based, and players can try out weapons and devices they find along the way. Weapons you pick up will have different parameters, like damage, accuracy or recoil, so it behooves the player to find out which guns best fit their build. In that way, Mishulin vaguely compared Osiris Reborn to a Souls game — not in its difficulty, but in discovering weapons during the game and strengthening your play style around it. The team wants players to tinker with their abilities and weapons to find what’s best for them, including finding unique synergies. 

Mishulin gave one example: a visor that highlights enemies through smoke and cover (which «allows you to start feeling a little bit like a character in a lot of ’80s or ’90s movies,» Mishulin said) that will help players shoot enemies through walls. It works better with slow and hard-hitting weapons than with a fast-firing submachine gun, he noted, so it’s only helpful with certain play styles.

In Osiris Reborn, players will also have two companions to bring into combat, though the rest of your ragtag crew won’t just stay on the ship, killing time, Mishulin noted. They’ll help you fulfill objectives as the missions progress — sometimes even forming second teams to handle situations elsewhere. 

As seen in the trailer, players will have their own small ship (similar to the Rocinante in The Expanse books and show) that the main characters call home and use to launch into missions. And while ship-to-ship combat won’t be in Osiris Reborn — at least not controlling it like other dogfighting simulator games — players will get to roam around and lightly customize their vessel.

And while it won’t necessarily relate to combat, players will create their main character and establish their backstory as being from Earth, Mars or the Belt (the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter). Player characters will face hostility due to their origins and other choices or consequences, but later in the game, they’ll be able to shift their allegiances as they choose — perhaps they’ll be born a Belter but slowly shift toward the ideology of Mars, Minshulin suggested, or choose to be a double agent. Ultimately, there will be a lot of paths and choices for players to pick their own experience, one defined by choices.

Adapting The Expanse after working on Warhammer 40K and other franchises

Owlcat Games is most known for its titles taking place in the universes of popular nerdy properties like Warhammer 40K and Pathfinder (a tabletop game similar to Dungeons & Dragons). Games like Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader showed how Owlcat’s developers can bring a specific scenario and story to life in the world of an intellectual property through close involvement with those who hold the rights.

«Our previous games taught us how to communicate this approach, how to communicate our vision and our passion for this particular universe to an IP holder,» Mishulin said. 

Fans of The Expanse among the developers at Owlcat Games put together a pitch for an adaptation and approached Alcon Entertainment. The Expanse universe was a good fit for the studio’s type of storytelling, Mishulin said: grounded, gritty sci-fi with a lot of political power plays and webs of intrigue. More importantly for Owlcat, the universe has lots of opportunities to introduce player agency in choices, consequences and big decisions — which is pretty evident in the books and show. 

Owlcat started developing Osiris Reborn in 2021 and spent almost a year prototyping the game, as it switched from the Unity engine used for its previous games to Unreal Engine 5 to better suit its vision. While its prior games were isometric tactical games controlling multiple characters from above, Osiris Reborn positions the camera over the main character’s shoulder for a more intense experience that suits the shooter gameplay and cinematic approach. 

Owlcat’s game aims to preserve The Expanse’s realistic approach to science fiction, Minshulin said, including how it treats the lethal vacuum of space. 

«One big part of our Expanse experience is [conveying] that space is a very dangerous and unwelcoming place to be,» Minshulin said.

From decompression to navigating zero-G environments to the «click» of boots magnetizing on surfaces, players should see authentic visual and audio touches from the show and books. The one exception they’re making: gunshots will make sounds in space, but should respect the «feeling of the physics and how it should be» in their game, Minshulin said. The studio will have a similar approach to the physics phenomena of traveling in space or being on a space station, especially when it looks cool and immerses the player.

Regrettably, Minshulin couldn’t give me an example of one of these physics phenomena — because it would spoil content that’s going to be in the game’s hands-off demo Owlcat is showing off in August at this year’s Gamescom convention in Cologne, Germany. While Owlcat hasn’t yet set a release date for the game, fans of The Expanse will soon get to see more of what Owlcat has in store for what’s looking like the biggest adaptation of the sci-fi franchise so far.

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