Month: November 2020

Announced last week, Blizzard’ GearFest is now live. The event introduces a whole slew of new products to the Blizzard online store ahead of the holiday shopping season.

According to Blizzard, “nearly 50 total brand-new products” are available as part of the event, with wave 1 hitting today, with “collectibles, pins and figures” featuring prominently.

Check out the gallery below to see some of the new products coming to the Blizzard store.

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Launching today:

• Overwatch 2020 Blizzard GearFest Mercy Funko – $14.99
• Overwatch D.Va Collectible IncrediBuild (from Insight Editions) – $129.99
• World of Warcraft 2020 Blizzard GearFest Illidan Funko – $14.99
• World of Warcraft 2020 Blizzard GearFest Murloc Funko – $14.99
• World of Warcraft 2020 Blizzard GearFest Sylvanas Funko – $14.99
• Hearthstone Collector’s Edition Pin Set – $59.99
• Blizzard Series 7 Blind Pack Pins 5 Pack – $29.99
• Blizzard Series 7 Platinum Signature Pin Set – $199.99
• Blizzard Series 7 Collector’s Edition Pin Set – $79.99
• Blizzard Series 4 Badges Booster Pack (4 Packs) – $19.99

Another wave of Blizzard GearFest merch is scheduled to hit November 16.

Last week Blizzard revealed a massive, collectible World of Warcraft Thrall statue in both colored and unpainted variants, as well as a tease for today’s GearFest kick-off.

The next WoW expansion, originally scheduled for October 27, has been pushed into next month. The new WoW Shadowlands release date is now November 23, meaning WoW players in the US will get their first taste of the new expansion over the Thanksgiving holiday week.

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Seth Macy is IGN’s Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him on Instagram. 

 

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 has given us a number of amazing custom creations from fans building the skate parks of their dreams, from Spyro and Smash Bros to Super Mario Sunshine’s Delfino Plaza. Now, Redditor Skramblez is upping the ante by making Hogwarts Castle from the Harry Potter series into a true skater’s paradise.

Not only did Skramblez recreate the epic-looking magical castle, the THPS fan also created custom skaters resembling some of the characters from the book and film series–though the antics in the video seem more like something the Weasley twins would pull.

While the custom parks in THPS1+2 are limited in the amount of detail or scope that can be included, the Hogwarts park still includes a couple of epic towers, a few of the castle’s courtyards and, of course, the Great Hall, complete with the four house banners on the wall.

This isn’t Skramblez first nerdy custom map–the Redditor has also done Peach’s Castle from Super Mario 64, City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2, as well as the Hyrule Castle Smash Bros map we featured here last month.

Players who have THPS1+2 on PC can try out Skramblez’ custom maps for themselves, though sadly the custom levels are platform-locked, meaning console players will have to make their own levels if they want to skate through Hogwarts.

GameSpot’s review of the 2020 Tony Hawk reboot praised the potential of the now-sharable custom parks in THPS1+2, saying “because you can share your maps, it’s a far more enjoyable mode than it ever was in its early days.”

Halo 4 is the sixth and final game coming to PC through Halo: The Master Chief Collection. It’s available now for testers, but the public release is still a little ways off. While we wait for that, developer 343 Industries has now shared gorgeous new images from Halo 4 on PC and informed fans a little bit more on what to expect when it arrives.

Starting with the images, the screenshots show off a few locations from Halo 4’s campaign. The images had to be downscaled for publishing, but 343 tells fans, “trust me, it’s glorious in 4K 60.”

Halo 4’s official release on PC will also serve as the introduction of new graphics settings. Design director Max Szlagor said these will include the ability to adjust UI gamma and detail independently of game gamma and detail, along with new options for things like graphics quality, shadow quality, effects quality, details quality, and anisotropic filtering.

Additionally, there will be expanded customization. For Halo 4 specifically, players will be able to customize individual armor pieces, and you can see a preview of this in the image below. Finally, Halo 4 will introduce the Champions Bundle weapon skins that originally appeared in Halo 4 years ago. In MCC, these can be earned by completing objectives in the Season 4 refresh.

Halo 4 is the sixth and final Halo game coming to PC through The Master Chief Collection, following Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 3: ODST. These games can be purchased individually or through a bundle.

Despite calls for it, Microsoft has no plans to add Halo 5 to The Master Chief Collection either on PC or Xbox One.

In other news about The Master Chief Collection, Microsoft is updating the game for Xbox Series X/S to support 120fps/4K.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare continues to break sales records. Activision Blizzard has announced that the game’s first-year sales are the highest in Call of Duty’s history. However, the company did not provide an exact sales number.

That is a notable achievement given that the figure only covers up to September 30, so the game–which released in October 2019–didn’t even need a full year to break the single-year sales record for the franchise. It’s not immediately clear which title was previously the record-setter for first-year sales.

Activision also announced that two-thirds of Modern Warfare’s lifetime sales were digital. That’s good for Activision, as the company makes more money from digital game sales than boxed copies.

The battle royale game Warzone helped improve sales of Modern Warfare, Activision said. The company said it saw “substantial growth” in game sales for Modern Warfare that came from people who upgraded from Warzone, which is free, to the paid game Modern Warfare.

What’s more, Activision said that total hours played in the “Modern Warfare universe,” which covers Modern Warfare and Warzone, were about seven times higher compared to Black Ops 4.

In total, Modern Warfare and Warzone saw more than three times as many monthly active users than Black Ops 4 did during the same period last year. Console monthly active users “grew strongly,” Activision said, while monthly active users on PC grew “over ten-fold” compared to last year.

Not only are people playing more Call of Duty, but they are spending more, too. Activision said microtransaction sales for Modern Warfare and Warzone grew by four times compared to the year prior.

The next Call of Duty game is Black Ops Cold War, which launches later this month for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, as well as PS5 and Xbox Series X. The game will become incorporated into Warzone, but not until December.

Monster Hunter Rise is coming to Switch on March 26, and fans of the series are wondering how it will differ from past entries–including the huge Monster Hunter World. Now, in a new video, developer Capcom has shown off an example of combat using the game’s Great Sword–and how some of this entry’s new mechanics will work.

This video details your palamute companions, rideable dogs who will fight alongside you. While riding your palamute, you can sharpen weapons, boost stamina, or use potions, meaning that you can move towards your target while also preparing for battle. The video also shows off more of your Wirebug, which is used to gain height and traverse through the environment–but which can also be used in combat.

The video below shows the first two stages of a battle between a hunter and Aknosom, a bird/wyvern hybrid. The fight shows how the Palamute dogs will jump into the battle and fight alongside you, and how the Wirebug can be used in combat to attack from above and escape danger.

The Great Sword has numerous charge attacks, so using it properly requires good timing, picking your moments to unleash some of its bigger moves. Getting above your enemy also allows you to unleash some big multi-hit attacks.

Monster Hunter Rise promises some deep exploration throughout the game world. The game has a preorder bonus and multiple different editions: check out GameSpot’s preorder guide for more information.

Activision Blizzard has reported new financial numbers for the July-September period, and it was a gigantic quarter for the gaming publisher. One section of the company’s business that did particularly well was microtransactions. For the three-month period, Activision Blizzard made $1.2 billion from microtransactions, which are called “in-game net bookings.”

This is a dramatic 69 percent improvement over the same period last year, when Activision Blizzard made $709 million from in-game net bookings.

Microtransactions are very big business for Activision Blizzard. For the latest reporting period, Activision Blizzard made $1.95 billion in revenue from all of its business combined, so the $1.2 billion figure from microtransactions represents more than half of the company’s total revenue.

Activision’s Call of Duty franchise was a bright spot for microtransactions. Microtransaction sales from Modern Warfare and the battle royale game Warzone were four times higher than the same period last year. Growth was always expected, with far more players jumping into Call of Duty than usual this year

Additionally, Activision reported that Modern Warfare’s first-year sales are the highest in Call of Duty history, and two-thirds of sales came digitally.

Activision Blizzard also owns King, the makers of Candy Crush. Microtransaction revenue from King’s games grew year-over-year, but a specific number was not divulged.

You can read the full report here at Activision Blizzard’s website.

Windbound will expand with a trio of free major updates over the next few months. The first of three major patches is out now, and it contains some new stat-boosting skins, a photo mode, and and new endless mode for the survival game.

The new Witch Skins are made up of three items–the Witch’s Hat, Witch’s Outfit, and Witch’s Staff–which give you a healthy stat boost when equipped. The hat makes potions last longer, the outfit gives you easier, closer respawns, and the staff is an unbreakable weapon that fires out enemy-seeking orbs after each melee attack.

Photo Mode, meanwhile, lets you pause the game and line up a photo, changing how Kara’s posed and adding filters. It lets you change your position, camera orientation, and mess with field of view, exposure, and time, just as in most photo modes. You can also equip Kara with a variety of different hats and accessories, getting some nice shots of your adventures.

The new endless mode, meanwhile, is called Eternal Voyage, and it allows the game to continue on past Chapter 5. The game will continue to get bigger and more difficult as you go–while it won’t expand indefinitely, you can expect challenges beyond what the base game offered.

All of these new features are offered for free, which will also be the case with the next two updates. The next one, which will arrive before the end of the year, will come with more Kara skins, a free sailing mode, and improvements to the Nautilus tower system. New towers, with fresh challenges, will be added.

The next update, coming in early 2021, will introduce more changes to the Nautilus experience, along with new enemies and attacks. A “corruption” system will be added, too, although it’s not clear what this will involve yet.

Kara’s Ancestral gear, which was available as a preorder bonus, is now available for purchase, too. This includes the Ancestral Attire, Oar, and Knife.

Windbound received a 5/10 in GameSpot’s review. “Windbound has its moments,” wrote reviewer Andrew King. “Much of the time, it was relaxing enough to zone out and search for crafting materials. But the game is built around finding towers, and that process becomes significantly less fun after the first level. There are only so many times you can search for a tower, no matter how winsome the presentation.”