Despite persistent rumors suggesting the contrary, Microsoft has stated that it has no plans to discontinue Xbox Live Gold soon.
The statement comes in response to a change in the Microsoft Services Agreement, with references to Xbox Live Gold now reading as “Xbox online service.” The change seemed to confirm reports that Xbox Live Gold was about to be discontinued in favor of a free online service, but Microsoft has refuted that categorically.
“The update to ‘Xbox online service’ in the Microsoft Services Agreement refers to the underlying Xbox service that includes features like cross-saves and friend requests,” a Microsoft spokesperson told GameSpot. “This language update is intended to distinguish that underlying service, and the paid Xbox Live Gold subscription. There are no changes being made to the experience of the service or Xbox Live Gold.”
Although the statement makes it clear that Xbox Live Gold isn’t going anywhere, it doesn’t rule out potential changes to the service. One change could be a shift to exclude free multiplayer titles from requiring Xbox Live Gold to play, which would work perfect with the recently announced Halo Infinitemultiplayer that will be free-to-play. Without this change, Microsoft would in effect be charging players on Xbox for a service that is free to their PC player base.
In contrast, Sony already omits many free-to-play shooters, such as Fortnite and Apex Legends, from its PlayStation Plus program. Microsoft is reportedly set to host another stream this month focusing on more Xbox Series X titles and the rumored Lockhart Xbox console, so we might hear more about these plans then.
Fans of the comedy group known as The Tenderloins, a collective made up of Joe Gatto, James Murray, Brian Quinn, and Sal Vulcano, will be happy to know there is a lot more of the Impractical Jokers headed to both truTV and HBO Max in the near future as production has resumed on Season 9 of the series.
However, that’s not all. 10 more episodes of the quarantine-friendly Impractical Jokers: Dinner Party–which will air this fall–have been ordered for truTV as well. Additionally, the Impractical Jokers movie will make its way to HBO Max on September 1. The film follows the group as they head to a Paula Abdul concert, and along the way, they challenge each other to embarrassing tasks, of course.
Additionally, truTV’s incredibly fun and purposely cringe-worthy game show The Misery Index, hosted by Jameela Jamil (The Good Place) and featuring the Impractical Jokers, has been renewed for Season 3. The second half of Season 2 will arrive this October.
“We’re excited to continue growing the Impractical Jokers franchise with WarnerMedia,” the Tenderloins said in a statement. “We’re excited to use the word franchise. Each new project or season, we are pushing ourselves to make it bigger, better and funnier than the last. Thanks to our insanely loyal fans over the past year, we’ve really been able to stretch ourselves and have had a blast bringing projects to life, including our first feature film and a TV show filmed from our separate homes. Whether its Impractical Jokers, Impractical Jokers: Dinner Party, The Misery Index or something new, we’re thrilled to keep working with each other and making people laugh.”
The mustaches will live on. TruTV has announced a Season 3 renewal for firefighter comedy Tacoma FD. The series, created by Broken Lizard comedy troupe members Kevin Heffernan and Steve Lemme, follows a group of firefighters in Tacoma, Washington, a place without many fires to fight. But who needs fires when you can watch members of the team join a choir or compete in boxing matches with local cops?
After debuting Season 2 in March, TruTV general manager Bryan Weitz said in a statement that the show’s popularity is still increasing. “With Tacoma FD’s fanbase continuing to grow, the show is a huge success story for us, and we can’t wait to see what kind of Station 24 shenanigans Kevin, Steve, and the incredible cast come up with next,” he explained.
According to a press release, viewers will get to watch Lemme and Heffernan get the renewal news themselves, during the August 6 episode of Talkoma FD–the aftershow hosted by the duo. Naturally, their reaction falls right in line with the type of comedy fans have come to expect from the guys behind movies like Super Troopers.
“I’m incredibly excited,” Lemme said. “Mostly because I get to watch Kevin begin his arduous, six-month mustache-growing process. He only has 12 hair holes in his upper lip, so it takes some time.”
Of course, even during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Heffernan is keeping his mustache game strong. Appearing in a recent short written film from the writer of Minions and The Secret Life of Pets Brian Lynch, Heffernan appeared as the victim of a truly ridiculous prank call. You can check that out below.
New episodes of Tacoma FD air Thursdays at 10 PM ET/PT. The aftershow Talkoma FD follows at 10:30 PM ET/PT. In other TruTV news, it was also announced that even more episodes of Impractical Jokers are on the way, with production restarting soon.
After seeing the success of other live-action remakes of Disney movies like The Jungle Book and others, the House of Mouse has plenty more re-imaginings in store, including Pinocchio. Now, the Robert Zemeckis directed film is reportedly eyeing Tom Hanks for a role.
While the film is still very early on in the pre-production phase–with COVID-19 holding up most TV shows and movies–Deadline is reporting that Hanks is in talks for the role of Geppetto, the caretaker and father of the puppet who comes to life. Disney wanted Hanks in the role years earlier when Paul King was attached to the project.
However, Zemeckis and Hanks have a history together, as the duo each won Oscars for their work on Forrest Gump. The upcoming adaptation will be written by Chris Weitz, whose previous work includes Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Earlier this year, the latest live-action remake Mulan was supposed to release on March 27. However, the global pandemic delayed the release until August. Considering that movie theaters aren’t ready to open yet, there was a surprise announcement that Mulan will hit Disney+ for $30. It wasn’t clear as to whether or not this pricetag is a rental fee or you can watch it multiple times.
Skater XL left Early Access last month and some players have been slightly disappointed with how bare bones the final package is. Modders have been trying to add new content to spice it up–including maps and other items from the Tony Hawk franchise.
Fans have recreated boards, clothing, and some maps from multiple games including Tony Hawk’s Underground and the Skate franchise (gabrielfluorite recreated Skate 3’s Sanatorium). Modder Aaronb543 remade the New Jersey map from Tony Hawk’s Underground from 2003.
Tony Hawk’s Underground Map in Skater XL
“It’s a great sized map with a huge amount of spots and creativity,” he wrote. “You’ll find an entrance to the skate store to the left and the bedroom is also accessible.”
Skater XL, developed by Long Beach-based Easy Day Studios, is a more complicated skater than the classic Tony Hawk games. It has physics-based gameplay and an independent foot control system that gives players tighter control over their board. It currently has mixed reviews on GameSpot sister site Metacritic. It launched in early access in 2018 before officially launching in July of this year. Skater XL joins other skating games like SkateBIRD in trying to rejuvenate the genre.
Modders have implemented all sorts of improvements to Skater XL, including tools that let you adjust the in-game gravity, menus, physics and more. The game only launched last month so it’s likely that modders will bring more to the game as well.
Fortnite’s Week 8 challenges include a few treks to named locations that have been previously flooded. Dirty Docks has been submerged in water for the majority of the season, but you’ll need to head there to complete a new challenge that asks you to destroy shipping containers at Dirty Docks. This guide will show you a quick and easy way to complete the challenge.
This challenge has leaked early. Check back tomorrow to try it yourself in Fortnite.
Where Is Dirty Docks?
Dirty Docks is a named location on the map, although it’ll be hidden until you visit it for the first time now that it’s no longer flooded. You can find it on the right-hand side of the map in the H4 tile. It’s right on the water surrounded by green rolling hills.
You’ll need to destroy seven shipping containers in order to complete the challenge. You can find them scattered throughout Dirty Docks. The best strategy would be to land on the outskirts of the location and then work your way in so you don’t get surrounded by other players.
Fortnite Season 3 Shipping Container Challenge
The shipping containers are made of metal so it takes a bit of time to destroy them. Be aware of your surroundings when you start swinging your harvesting tool.
By all early indications, Watch Dogs: Legion is shaping up to be a particularly ambitious take on the open-world genre, giving you the ability to play as any NPC in the city of London. However, the game’s focus on NPCs doesn’t end there.
According to a recent Game Informer cover story, all of the inhabitants of the game’s digital London follow their own set schedules. Players will be able to use an upgrade to their tech called a “deep profiler” to access this schedule, which will make it easier for you to follow their every move and recruit them to your hacker collective. The story gives a specific example of a player using the upgrade to delve into a woman’s calendar, knowing when she’ll go to marriage therapy, when she’ll relax with her cousin, or meet with her lawyer.
Watch Dogs: Legion is far from the first game to feature NPCs that follow an hour-to-hour pattern–highly influential titles like Shenmue and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask popularized the concept–but Legion is likely doing it at a much larger scale. The cover story suggests that players will use this information to understand how individual citizens view the organization of DedSec, allowing you to come up with strategies to pull them over to your side. Legion may offer a multiplayer mode with a higher player count than its 4-player co-op.What exactly that means remains to be seen.
Watch Dogs: Legion is slated to drop on October 29 for PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One. It will also launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X when those consoles come out this holiday season. You can check out our Watch Dogs: Legion pre-order guide to learn about the bonuses and editions available.
The back-to-school season looks different this year, but retailers are still holding their same annual sales, discounting a lot of laptops that are great for studying, work, or entertainment. Newegg and Best Buy are among those with the best deals, both of which are offering free shipping with their laptops. They can arrive quite soon as well, though the current pandemic may cause some delays.
Among the discounted laptops are several Lenovo options. Lenovo is a great maker of all kinds of laptops, but it also has a bunch of great budget options that are great for students. They work well for schoolwork, entertainment, and social media, but they should also be good for most people’s workdays as long as you’re not handling heavy workloads like graphic design or video production.
There are also a number of Asus VivoBook laptops on sale, which are among the best-looking and reliable Windows laptops out there. Similar to Lenovo, they have some budget options that are great for students.
The Lenovo IdeaPad 3 laptop is the most budget-friendly option we’ve seen, and it has some solid specs for the price, too. It features a 15-inch touchscreen with an i3-1005G1 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. If you’re looking for a laptop for school and entertainment, then this is a great option.
The Lenovo V14 laptop is great for schoolwork, packing a small 14-inch display with a Ryzen 5 4000 series processor, a 256GB SSD, and 8GB of RAM. It’s a sleek-looking laptop with a narrow bezel that wraps around its screen.
This 14-inch Asus VivoBook comes with an i5-10210U processor, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It also boasts a backlit keyboard and a fingerprint sensor that you can use to sign in with.
The Lenovo Yoga C740 laptop is a 2-in-1 notebook that you can turn into a makeshift tablet. Its screen hinge can be bent all the way back so it’s just you and the touchscreen–it’s not the best tablet in the world, but this particular feature makes it great when you’re watching movies or TV shows. It boasts an i5-10210U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD.
This Asus VivoBook features a huge 17.3-inch, 1080p screen that’s backed up by a Ryzen 7 3700U processor, Vega 10 graphics, 20GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB SSD. This is a great laptop if you’re looking for something that can handle a heavier workload.
The Lenovo ThinkPad is a classic, and right now, you can get one for $100 off. This particular 13.3-inch laptop boasts an i5-10210U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It also looks very professional and lasts a long time with its 12-hour battery life.
It’s been an incredibly strange and brutal year, but somehow, it’s already August, and the busy holiday shopping season will be here before we know it. In the United States, Black Friday is known as the best time of year to save money on big-ticket items, to cross all those names off your shopping list and splurge for yourself a little (or a lot) too. But with COVID-19 still a very real threat in the US, some are wondering whether Black Friday 2020 has been canceled entirely.
Fortunately, Black Friday has been developing a strong online presence for years now. With companies like Amazon proving that huge online sales like Prime Day can be a major success, retailers have slowly been offering more noteworthy Black Friday deals online over the years, and this year will be no exception. In fact, with retailers looking to avoid mass crowds that normally push into stores on Black Friday, there’s even greater incentive to make sure the best deals are also available online–and earlier.
So what has been confirmed so far regarding retailers’ plans for Black Friday 2020? Here’s what we know right now about Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday shopping this year.
Many stores are closing on Thanksgiving Day
Walmart led the charge in announcing all Walmart and Sam’s Club locations will be closed on Thanksgiving Day (November 26), breaking a decade-long tradition in which Black Friday offers would be available in-store as early as Thanksgiving evening. Soon after, Target announced its stores will close on Thanksgiving Day as well.
While certainly the best decision to allow employees more time with their families and to avoid huge crowds in stores on Thanksgiving, this is a major change to the typical rhythm of Black Friday, as we’re used to seeing some of the best doorbuster deals kick off on Thanksgiving Day. As a result, we expect to see some great online-only doorbusters this Thanksgiving and an overall shift in the deals schedule.
You can check out more of the major retailers who have confirmed they’re closing their doors on Thanksgiving this year below. Of course, some stores traditionally close on Thanksgiving Day every year, such as Apple and Costco, and it’s likely they’ll remain closed this year as well.
Confirmed stores that are closing on Thanksgiving Day 2020
Walmart / Sam’s Club
Target
Best Buy
Kohl’s
Dick’s Sporting Goods
TJ Maxx
JCPenney
Bed Bath & Beyond
Office Depot
Black Friday deals may start as early as October
Getty Images
To avoid the massive rush of people visiting stores in mid to late November, it seems Black Friday-level deals will start rolling out much earlier this year to space out the promotions–perhaps as early as October. At least one retailer, Target, has confirmed that its “biggest holiday deals” will be available starting in October–and you won’t have to go to a store to take advantage of them.
In a press release, Target stated, “Our biggest holiday deals will be available earlier than ever, so you can shop safely and conveniently without worrying about missing out on deals that usually come later in the season. Starting in October and continuing throughout the season, you’ll find Target’s lowest prices of the year on items in stores and online.”
While other retailers haven’t yet committed to offering Black Friday deals early, this is a natural progression of the way Black Friday has been unfolding in recent years. Black Friday ads usually start to leak in late October, and some retailers have designated the entire month of November as a major deals period. Gone are the days when Black Friday stuck to a single week–the frenzy has been expanding for several years now, so it’s no huge surprise that those promotions may now kick off in October at some stores as part of an overall holiday push.
Keep in mind that Amazon Prime Day has reportedly been pushed back to October 5 this year, putting it extremely close to Black Friday. It’s unclear exactly how or whether this will affect Amazon’s Black Friday promotions, but Prime Day may function as an unofficial kick-off of this year’s holiday promotions.
That said, it’s safe to assume many Black Friday offers will still center around the week of Thanksgiving, with the bulk of the deals kicking off between November 22 and November 30. This year, however, you won’t have to push through any crowds to get the best offers, as retailers will likely avoid in-store exclusives.
Best Black Friday 2020 deals to expect
Console deals may be extremely limited this Black Friday.
This is a unique year in many ways, including the fact that next-generation consoles, the Xbox Series X and PS5, are launching this holiday season–potentially in November, which would line up with previous-gen launch dates as well. That said, don’t expect to see any Black Friday discounts on these next-gen consoles. The PS4 and Xbox One will likely still feature in Black Friday ads this year, but we may not see as many great console bundles as we’ve seen in years past (like the excellent Only on PlayStation PS4 bundle for $200 from last year) as Sony and Microsoft shift the focus onto their new consoles. The Xbox One X and All-Digital Edition have already been discontinued, so expect any Xbox console deals beyond the regular Xbox One S to be extremely limited based on whatever they have left in stock.
Nintendo isn’t launching a console this year, but the Nintendo Switch has remained incredibly popular and has been hard to find since February. We don’t expect any official discounts on the console from Nintendo this year–assuming it’s even in stock by then–but you can sometimes find discounts on the Switch via online marketplaces like Google Shopping and Ebay during Black Friday. If we do see Switch bundles, let’s hope they’re more impressive than last year’s bundle, which featured the older model Switch without improved battery life.
Gaming subscriptions like PlayStation Plus and especially Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will likely feature more heavily in Black Friday deals this year as these services are continuing with next-gen consoles. Of course, you’ll also find all-time low prices on games from recent years, including those from earlier this year and summer, so Black Friday will be a great time to add to your backlog.
You can check out some of last year’s most popular Black Friday gaming deals below to get a sense of what deals may be available this year.
Black Friday 2019’s best gaming deals
PS4 Slim “Only on PlayStation bundle with God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition, and The Last of Us Remastered — $200
PS4 Pro with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare — $300
PlayStation VR Mega Pack with five games — $200
PlayStation Plus 12-month membership — $36
Xbox One X bundle with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Deluxe Edition and three months of Xbox Live Gold — $350
Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons — $60
Nintendo Switch Online 12-month subscription — $15
First-party Switch games — $30
This will likely be the biggest year yet for online holiday shopping, and we’ll just have to wait and see what type of gaming, tech, and entertainment deals are up for grabs this Black Friday. Of course, we’ll be covering all the best deals on games, accessories, consoles, and more here at GameSpot, so keep checking back as we update this story with more information. Be sure to follow GameSpot Deals on Twitter for the hottest discounts, including lightning deals that will sell out fast during Prime Day and Black Friday, and sign up for our deals newsletter to keep up with the latest sales below.
It’s a pretty big deal that another PlayStation 4 exclusive has made its way to PC. This time, it’s the open-world action game Horizon Zero Dawn. It may be a little over three years old at this point, but proper PC ports of former exclusives tend to offer an optimal way to play for a mostly new audience. In my case, I was just hyped to replay one of 2017’s standout games with cranked up visuals, higher frame rates, and, in this particular case, keyboard and mouse controls. After about 12 hours with this version, I’ve come away with some very mixed results.
Horizon Zero Dawn is a visually captivating experience; its depiction of nature and the wilderness is rich with thick vegetation, vast mountain ranges, and sweeping deserts. Remnants of the world’s high-tech past with imposing, beastly machines also contrast with the environments in a fascinating way that entices you to uncover more of the story’s mysteries. That’s all part of why a PC version is such a big deal. However, in the current pre-launch phase, performance hiccups and some graphical shortcomings can overshadow these elements.
During my time playing Horizon on PC, I used a rig equipped with a Core i7-7700K, RTX 2080, 16GB of RAM, and Samsung 970 Pro NVMe SSD–a fairly high-end system. I also used the ultrawide 2560×1080 (21:9) resolution and set all graphics options to their maximum along with TAA (temporal antialiasing). While I could maintain around 80 FPS or a bit higher in many open areas, my mileage varied by virtue of the changing density of towns and villages, or the intensity of certain chaotic combat encounters. Here, I would experience drastic drops in frame rate to about 35-40 FPS. It’s expected that a game of this scale and fidelity would be quite graphically demanding, but what stood out was the inconsistency in performance and the occasional stuttering or hitching.
Another present bug is that the anisotropic filtering option simply won’t work. For a vast open world game like Horizon, it’s an important graphics setting to use since it provides much more clarity and detail for surfaces in the distance. (Also, be sure to update your graphics drivers to the latest versions–using older versions may result in significant artifacting and serious visual glitches, which is a mistake I made when first booting up the game.)
The natural environments of Horizon Zero Dawn are quite stunning, and you’ll spend a lot of time in Photo Mode.
The list of bugs doesn’t end at the graphics department, however. There are a few issues that actually stop the gameplay from working as intended. For example, the Concentration ability is supposed to let you zoom in and slow down time to carefully aim your bow. But in my particular experience, activating it on the PC version only zooms in and does not slow down time at all. Pulling up the weapon wheel should also slow down time, but this does not happen. This problem extends to the perk that’s supposed to slow down time when aiming the bow while sliding or in mid-air–everything keeps moving at normal speed. It seems that the game simply does not recognize any of the time-slowing mechanics. I tried experimenting with different settings to see if it was an issue tied to unlocked frame rates or v-sync, but such is not the case. These mechanics are extremely useful in all the game’s combat situations, and the fact that they are not functioning properly at the moment is a major problem.
The big caveat is that there will be a day-one patch, and I’ve currently only experienced Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC port in a pre-launch state without the upcoming fixes. Once I have access to the patch, I plan on reevaluating many of the bugs encountered to see if they’re addressed for official release.
Aside from the aforementioned shortcomings, this PC port offers some welcome features such as an FOV slider, native ultrawide support, fully customizable control mappings, an uncapped frame rate, and a benchmarking tool to test out the viability of your chosen graphics settings.
As for the game itself, Horizon Zero Dawn impressed back in 2017 as the first open-world effort from Killzone developer Guerrilla Games. While there’s a noticeable reliance on a few tired open-world gameplay tropes, it truly stood out with an excellent combat system that emphasized precise aiming, exploiting weaknesses, and clever use of the many neat weapons and tools in your loadout. Horizon has a distinct David-and-Goliath type of feel as you’re often overwhelmed and dwarfed by the hostile machines, and seemingly ill-equipped–like, how the hell am I supposed to destroy robot dinosaurs with a bow and arrow? Devising ways to overcome these odds has a satisfying feel, especially in big fights that test your mastery of the makeshift arsenal of bows, arrows, tripwires, and slingshots (and your ability to repeatedly dodge roll from danger).
Taking down intimidating machines with a bow and arrow, and other low-tech weaponry, is pretty satisfying.
Horizon’s style of combat always left me wanting to use a keyboard and mouse control scheme, given the need to land pinpoint shots, but that comes with some concessions. The nature of using WASD to move in this style of third-person action isn’t as intuitive as an analog stick, and the need to dodge-roll or platform in high-pressure situations highlights how exact directional movement can be awkward. And with the Concentration ability broken right now, I haven’t really been able to wield mouse-aiming the way I expected. Controllers have native support with the proper button mappings, but there’s an issue: aim assist is hardly present, if at all, regardless of whether it’s on or off in your settings, making combat more difficult than it should be.
What remains intact is Horizon’s narrative ambitions. A 31st century where civilizations are thriving as hunters and gatherers, living within specific tribes, is fascinating as it’s juxtaposed to an “old world” of futurist high tech buried in the waste of a calamity from long ago. Our protagonist Aloy remains relatively steadfast in the wake of wild revelations about her own past as well as the truth about how a super-advanced civilization continues to haunt the present day from its grave mistakes and the technology it left behind. These are also really good excuses to have robot dinosaurs roam the wilderness and pose major threats to you, since it does come together in a thematically coherent fashion.
Our stoic protagonist, Aloy, has a complicated past, and Ashly Burch delivers a great voice performance.
Admittedly, I’m still wary of its amalgamation of Native cultures and Nativist tropes with little proper context. It’s something to be mindful of as you dig deeper into Horizon’s characterization of its in-lore tribes and the ways in which it draws upon our real world with terminology and imagery of tribal practices as a backdrop for its fiction.
Overall, it’s quite disappointing to see the game in a rough state, but again, this is the experience of a pre-launch version before the scheduled day-one fixes. Considering that Horizon was the progenitor for Guerrilla’s Decima engine, and we just saw Death Stranding hit PC with an outstanding port (it uses the same engine), I’m also surprised by the shortcomings. If you’re in the mood for a sprawling open world with some top-notch combat thrills–that sometimes get bogged down in genre routines–there’s a great game underneath. But you’ll probably want to wait and see how the launch day patch goes. I will update my impressions of Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC port for the official launch, which is set for August 7.
