Super Bowl 54 Winner Predicted By Madden NFL 20

As it does every year, EA Sports has now released the results of its Super Bowl simulation that uses the latest Madden game to predict the winner of the big game.

According to the simulation, the Kansas Chief Chiefs will defeat the San Francisco 49ers in a very close game, by a score of 35-31. Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes will earn the Super Bowl MVP award for his performance, according to the simulation. You can watch the announcement video below, which follows a teaser featuring Peyton and Eli Manning.

In previous years, EA posts a detailed breakdown of its Super Bowl simulation–featuring player statistics and other key details–but it’s not clear if that’s happening this year.

Whatever the case, the Madden Super Bowl simulation is often wrong, as it has been for the past few years. So 49ers fans shouldn’t get too upset over this. It would be great for Mahomes, who is also on the cover of Madden NFL 20. Then again, if the Chiefs lose, fans will no doubt blame the Madden Curse.

GameSpot also ran a Super Bowl 54 simulation using Madden 20–and we got some very interesting results. Check out the video embedded above to learn more.

Super Bowl 54 takes place on Sunday, February 2 at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Florida. For lots more, check out GameSpot’s breakdown of how to watch the game, what movie trailers to expect, who’s performing at halftime, and more.

Now Playing: Who Wins Super Bowl 54? (Madden 20 Simulation Breakdown)

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Nintendo Has “No Intention” Of Releasing New Hardware In 2020

For over a year, rumors have swirled that Nintendo is planning to release an upgraded “Pro” model of the Nintendo Switch, but in a presentation live-tweeted by Tokyo-based David Gibson, Nintendo Japan president Shuntaro Furukawa shot down reports suggesting that Nintendo will release a new hardware revision in 2020.

According to Gibson, Furukawa said clearly that the company has “no intention” of releasing new hardware in 2020, meaning that a Pro model of Switch is not being planned for release this year.

The Switch Lite released in 2019, and Furukawa suggested that the benefits of the system were not communicated as clearly as they could be. For now, it sounds like Nintendo is planning on sticking with the two available models.

Furukawa also suggested that the system is entering the middle of its life cycle, and while the impending launches of new consoles will change the landscape somewhat, Nintendo has different “lifestyle and customer” targets. They will be looking to extend the Switch’s life cycle beyond what they have previously achieved. Nintendo previously indicated it intends the Switch’s lifecycle to extend beyond the traditional five to six-year window.

With the Switch aiming for a long life cycle, it’s possible that we will see further revisions down the track. There is a precedent for this as the Nintendo DSi iterated on the success of the Nintendo DS and made the system slightly more powerful, back in 2009.

The Nintendo Switch is gearing up for a huge 2020– here are our most anticipated games for the year.

Now Playing: Nintendo Switch Lite – The Pros And Cons

Scott Pilgrim 2: Mary Elizabeth Winstead Wants a Sequel Set 10 Years Later

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who played Ramona Flowers in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, would love to see a sequel to the film that took place 10 years after the events of the original.

Speaking to ComicBook.com at a press junket for Birds of Prey, Winstead, who plays Huntress alongside Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, shared her thoughts on what a potential sequel should look like.

“You know what, I think that would be so cool. I would be so curious to know what happened to these characters when they’re in their mid 30s as opposed to the sort of 20 slacker thing,” Winstead explained. “So I think it would be really interesting. We always talked about a sequel when we were doing it, but we always imagined it would be like, still like a year later. Where are they? But I think it’s way more fascinating to know where they’d be 10 years later. I’m down for it.”

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Even though we called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World one of the best superhero movies of all time, it did not perform well at the global box office.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had an estimate budget of $60 million, and only brought back $47.7 million worldwide.

A sequel with the original cast would also not be the easiest, as it featured such stars as Michael Cera, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Brandon Routh, Aubrey Plaza, Alison Pill, Jason Schwartzman, Johnny Simmons, and more.

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Even though it didn’t make a ton of money, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has since become a cult classic. We also included it on our lists of the 15 Best Sci-Fi Movie Soundtracks and 7 Video Game Movies Worth Watching.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

How To Watch Super Bowl 54 On TV Or Streaming

Super Bowl 54 is upon us. The big game takes place at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida this Sunday, February 2. The San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs are set to do battle in a game that is projected to be an action-packed affair with a lot of excitement.

The game kicks off at at 3:30 PM PT / 6:30 PM ET on Sunday, February 2. You can watch the game on traditional linear TV on Fox or through the streaming site fuboTV, which offers a free trial. The service streams to PC, mobile phones, Google Chromecast, and more.

Outside of the football we’re expecting trailers for the biggest upcoming movies and advertisements for all kinds of products. It’s rumored that Marvel will air a new Black Widow trailer during the big game, while a trailer for Fast 9 is also expected.

Super Bowl 54 will have numerous trailers for products. We’ve already seen a lot of ads, including a recreation of The Shining featuring Bryan Cranston, who gives his wife Mountain Dew instead of trying to murder her. Mr. Peanut is also expected to have some kind of showing during the big game. Check out GameSpot’s roundup of all the big trailers released so far.

Demi Lovato is singing the national anthem at Super Bowl 54, while Shakira and Jennifer Lopez will perform the halftime show.

Here at GameSpot we ran multiple simulations of Super Bowl 54 with Madden 20, and you can check out the results in the video above. EA’s own simulation predicted that the Chiefs will beat the 49ers 35-31, with Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes winning the MVP award.

For lots more on Super Bowl 54, check out GameSpot sister site CBSSports.com.

Now Playing: Who Wins Super Bowl 54? (Madden 20 Simulation Breakdown)

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Star Trek: Picard Episode 2 “Maps and Legends” Breakdown & Easter Eggs

In Episode 2 of Star Trek: Picard, we learn about the Tal Shiar from Picard’s friends Laris and Zhaban, who were formerly members of the Romulan intelligence agency. They suspect that a subset of the Tal Shiar, the Zhat Vash, may be behind the attack on Dahj (Isa Briones). Picard turns to Starfleet for help, but they turn him away. Without their support, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) must lean on others, including Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) and Raffi Musiker. Meanwhile, we get a look at Soji’s work on the Borg Cube called The Artifact, which has been separated from the Borg collective.

For more on Star Trek: Picard, read about what’s wrong with Picard’s brain, and what the Romulans are doing on the Borg cube.

Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

Stadia Addresses Lack Of Game Announcements, Saying It’s Up To Publishers

The Google Stadia has had a bit of a rough launch, with only one exclusive (Tequila Works’ Gylt) and middling reviews from critics. Now, as one owner has pointed out on Reddit, it’s been 40 days since a new game was announced for the service–and when questioned on this, Google has responded.

Google has provided a statement to Gamesindustry.biz about its silence on upcoming releases, and has said that much of this falls on publishers who are gearing up to make their own announcements.

Google has previously said that there are 120 games coming to Stadia in 2020, including at least 10 exclusives in the first half of the year, and in its statement they say that they won’t be announcing all of them directly. “Of course, not all 120 titles will be announced by the Stadia team,” the statement reads, “As we leave it up to the publishers to make the announcement about their IP/games, and which platforms it will appear on–just as we will do with the exclusive content coming to Stadia.”

Google says that there are many reasons why publishers might want to hold off on announcing Stadia games, and that more news is coming. “We continue to work closely with our publishing and developing partners and are here to support them in all areas. We are excited to share more about some of the exclusive games coming to Stadia soon.”

According to Android Police, only 17 games in total are known to be coming to Stadia beyond what’s already available. These include some big titles like Marvel’s Avengers, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, Watch Dogs: Legion, Baldur’s Gate III and Destroy All Humans. Still, it’s a low number.

Earlier in January, Gylt creative director Raul Rubio praised Stadia for being very easy to develop for. Google also recently bought Typhoon Studios, the developer of Journey to the Savage Planet. That game, which was published by 505 Games, has not been announced for Stadia as of yet. Stadia also has its own first-party studio that is working on games, although none have been announced yet.

Now Playing: Cyberpunk 2077 – Official Stadia Reveal Trailer | Stadia Connect

Kingdom Hearts 3 Re:Mind Review – Not Simple Or Clean

Kingdom Hearts 3 Re:Mind’s title doesn’t lie. It’s more of an addendum to Kingdom Hearts 3 than a meaningful addition. In some ways, it’s fitting that a franchise as labyrinthine as Kingdom Hearts received such a strange expansion. Re:Mind is a brief but laborious retread of events we already experienced last year, dressed up with new details that only make the already maddeningly elaborate story all the more obtuse. The DLC also brings back Replica Data bosses, which provide a ridiculous challenge that requires inordinate level grinding. [Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers for the ending boss and area in Kingdom Hearts 3.]

Kingdom Hearts 3 ended with Sora going off on his own to search for Kairi. Re:Mind takes you on that quest in typical Kingdom Hearts fashion: neither simply nor cleanly. It runs synchronously with the events at the Keyblade Graveyard, meaning you actually have to replay the climax again from the Keyblade Graveyard maze all the way to the showdown with Xehanort. Though the explanation for how this is possible is very silly, Re:Mind is essentially a director’s cut.

As a reminder, the Keyblade Graveyard doesn’t really feature any exploration. It’s a series of boss fights separated by lengthy cutscenes. Luxord still hides behind a playing card taunting Sora, and cutscenes stop the action in similar spots. Some of the dialogue and cutscenes are reworked while others are new, but the biggest difference is the option to play as Riku, Roxas, Kairi, or Aqua in several fights. Unfortunately, playing as these characters actually makes the slick and stylish combat less fun. All of them feel like weaker versions of Sora with limited movesets, and it also doesn’t help that the Keyblade Graveyard itself is the blandest world in Kingdom Hearts 3, devoid of the colorful and pleasant trappings of the Disney worlds that made the majority of original campaign hum.

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Even the new content that’s spliced into the repeated events largely fails to make the journey worthwhile. Scala ad Caelum opens up to reveal a new section before you square off against Xehanort. Though the area is fairly big, it’s desolate and exists only as a space to complete a rather banal fetch quest. It’s filler content in a story filled with recycled fights. There’s a fan service sequence that’s actually pretty enjoyable, however. Without spoiling it, it’s the type of scene that will make fans fondly remember the decades-long journey that brought us to this point. It’s a brief event that doesn’t make up for five hours of deja vu, but it still stands out.

For die-hard fans, the Limit Cut Episode that unlocks after watching the same closing cutscene from the base game is the meat of the package. Those who played Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix will be familiar with the mode, which sees Sora in a computer simulation fighting data versions of Organization XIII members like Xigbar, Ansem, and Xehanort. It even features cameos from the long-lost Final Fantasy characters.

Unfortunately, the barrier for entry is extraordinarily high, because Limit Cut bosses are exponentially more challenging than any of the fights in the base game. If you didn’t grind near or all the way to the level 99 cap in the main campaign–and there was no need to–Limit Cut will probably feel like an insurmountable challenge. I’m still working my way through the bosses, and I seriously doubt that I’ll ever actually beat them all. The ocean that exists between the difficulty of the base game and the data bosses is jarring.

It’s of course impossible to separate the DLC from the game it builds off of, and Kingdom Hearts 3’s best moments came in the Disney and Pixar worlds–the individual stories of friendship and love and good conquering evil that could almost be appreciated as self-contained short stories. Re:Mind seeks to tell a very specific story, but along the way it becomes blindingly clear that Kingdom Hearts’ strengths lie in its pieces and parts, not its convoluted sum that threads through and disrupts the franchise’s magical moments.

Even as a longtime fan of the series who adored Kingdom Hearts 3, it’s hard to muster up any sort of enthusiasm for Re:Mind. What’s more, Re:Mind made me understand Kingdom Hearts 3’s story even less, which is a testament to how bonkers it really is. It’s not all that surprising this happened; after all, it’s Kingdom Hearts. Nevertheless, Re:Mind is an incredibly peculiar expansion that simultaneously falls flat and partially obscures the brilliance of Kingdom Hearts 3.

Disneyland Is Going To Hurl A Life-Sized Spider-Man Robot Over Avengers Campus

With the final piece of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge slotting into place now that Rise Of The Resistance is finally open on Disneyland and Disney World’s Batuu, we can now start shifting our focus to the next big project on the horizon: Disneyland’s Avenger’s Campus, the new land in California Adventure, themed around Marvel Studios characters and franchises. Last year’s D23 Expo gave us some up-close and personal looks at what we can expect from the new park area, including a preview of the new Spider-Man themed ride and Ant-Man and The Wasp themed eatery–but now, with the opening of Avengers Campus just months away, the nitty-gritty details are starting to be fleshed out.

And, unsurprisingly, given the sort of characters and stories the MCU tends to deal with, they’re getting pretty weird.

The official Disney Parks blog has announced that Avengers Campus will feature a life-sized animatronic Spider-Man that will periodically hurl itself in a fashion that only a spider can over the rooftops of Avengers Campus’s many Marvel-themed buildings. And if you’re having a hard time figuring out exactly what that might entail, they also posted an official clip of the animatronic in action.

An even better look at what can be expected can be found in this clip of the Disney+ original series, Imagineering Story, which features the Imagineers testing the Spidey-Bot by literally hurling it through the air like a Cirque Du Soleil acrobat.

Nothing says “what could possibly go wrong” like watching a very heavy, very expensive animatronic be launched however many feet into the air to perform stunts over a crowded theme park. But all potential dangers (and/or inevitable Westworld-style robot uprisings) aside, we’re pretty excited to see exactly what this not-so-little webhead can do when the land finally opens.

Avenger’s Campus is coming to Disneyland in Anaheim in the summer of 2020.

Animal Crossing Themed Switch Console And Carry Case Are Coming

Animal Crossing: New Horizons releases for Switch on March 20, and if you’re looking to grab a Switch specifically for it, you’re in luck. Nintendo has announced a new Animal Crossing themed Switch, which will feature custom Joy-Cons, a uniquely colored and textured Switch unit, and the best official dock we’ve seen yet.

The Animal Crossing Switch will be available on March 13, which is a week before the game’s launch. It’s probably the best limited edition Switch we’ve seen so far.

The dock features Tom Nook and his nephews, and it’s very cute. It’s unclear whether the dock or Joy-Cons will be sold seperately.

The images we’ve seen of the Switch also confirm that it’s the new model with better battery life, as it sports the HAC-001(01) serial number. That means you’ll be able to explore your Animal Crossing island on the go for longer.

A unique carry case and screen protector are also coming, for those of us who can’t bring ourselves to buy a whole new Switch.

The console will retail for $300, which is the standard price of the system–the game is not included with it.

If you’re excited for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, check out our preorder guide to make sure you get the best deal on day one.

Now Playing: Animal Crossing: New Horizons – “Deserted Island Getaway Package” Trailer

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Apex Legends Season 4 Trailer: All the Hidden Lore You May Have Missed

Apex Legends dropped their new Season 4 Assimilation trailer today and there is a lot to go over. We finally get a look into Revenant’s backstory, though it’s a very brief look, and we really get to dig deeper into the lore of Titanfall and Apex to uncover why Revenant is causing so much chaos and what he is.

I’m going to be breaking down the trailer bit by bit, so bear with me while I piece things together.

At the beginning of the trailer, we see human Revenant scrolling past several images on a screen and we can catch glimpses of the other robots that Hammond has been working on, like the Spectres. What comes up next is a picture of a Titanfall 2 pilot named Ash who is a Simulacrum pilot. Simulacra are digital copies of a person’s memories, knowledge, and personality. Back in the Titanfall games, it wasn’t really revealed how these Simulacra were made, but the reason for their invention was to preserve a pilot whose physical body had been destroyed. These copies were then downloaded into robotic bodies, to continue using them to live on and fight. Ash was an elite pilot hired by Kuban Blisk, who led the mercenary group Apex Predators.

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This connection is relevant to Revenant as he gets an alert for his next target, which lets us assume that he’s working as a mercenary as well. His target, Marcos Andrade, is a Portuguese con-man and thief for hire. This doesn’t seem super important but Marcos and his wife give their daughter a gift of a silver wolf. We’ll come back to that in a minute. As soon as Revenant crashes the scene of the family dinner, we see his incredible abilities including one that allows him to shift into a “shadow form”, similar to the one we were able to experience in Apex’s   Fight or Fright event. If Revenant is the next Legend to drop for Season 4, we might have seen a few his abilities from playing in the Fight or Fright event. Players who were killed during this mode came back as “shadows” who had the ability to run faster, climb walls without boundaries, and had a melee ability that dealt increased damage.

Reddit user DaVionRainesApex put together a poster of what appears to be leaked abilities for Revenant. Two different sets of tactical, passive, and ultimate abilities are shown because data-miners found he could have two “Stances” for when he’s in his normal form and when he transforms into his shadow form. This is all speculation, of course,  and we’ll find out more about his abilities when Season 4 drops, but it’s an interesting thing to keep an eye on.

Back to the trailer, where we see Revenant take out Marcos and walk by a mirrored wall, seeing his reflection as his prior human self and where a glass shard has embedded itself in his neck. As he pulls it out, something trips in his programming and appears to trigger a malfunction, because  his vision of himself now shows him his true self: a Simulacrum soldier. He starts to panic and lose control of his emotions: betrayal, anger, despair. He was clearly not aware that he was a copy,and maybe had even been copied without his permission. The logo branding on his hand reveals Hammond Robotics, the company responsible for what he’s become. It’s time for revenge.

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So, why would  Hammond replicate Revenant as a Simulacrum without his permission? The Apex Twitter account said that  “Revenant was once the greatest hitman the Syndicate ever had” which implies that maybe the Syndicate commissioned to have Revenant revived if he ever fell, since he was too good at his job. The trailer ends on a powerful close-up shot of Marcos’ daughter looking angrily over her father’s body.

And this is where we return to that scene where she was handed that silver wolf. Wolf in Portuguese translates to “Lobo” but the female version of the word is “Loba.” If this name sounds familiar to you, Loba is the name of a legend who was data-mined back when Apex had launched. This trailer  backs up the theory that Marcos’ daughter will be a future Legend to come to Apex to seek revenge, years after losing her family. So this story trailer could actually take place in the past when Revenant first discovered who he really was and when Loba was just a child.

Assuming Revenant is the next Legend coming to the game, it would make sense for Loba to debut in the next half of the season. Respawn announced there would be a mid-season split between the World’s Edge map and King’s Canyon, but players originally suspected Forge would be coming back somehow. It would, however, make more sense in the story if Loba heard of Revenant’s appearance and decided to take matters into her own hands and drop into the Games herself to take him out. This is all just a theory I’m working on, but it would make for a killer Season 4.

How do you feel about this new story trailer? Do you think Loba will be the next Legend to come into the Apex Games halfway through the season? What are your theories? Let us know in the comments.

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