Month: January 2021

Nickelodeon’s special broadcast of the Wildcard playoff game between the Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints was watched by more than two million people, according to CBS. More than 33 million people watched the game across two broadcasts, one on CBS and the other on Nickelodeon.

The viewership from the two broadcasts is higher than any Wildcard playoff game in the last seven years.

The broadcast was weird, to say the least. It had virtual slime exploding in the end zone when teams scored, SpongeBob’s face plastered over field goal nets, and googly eyes placed over players’ faces during shots. Hopefully the wackiness made up for the lack of offense from the Chicago Bears, who only scored 9 points.

The Bears quarterback, Mitchell Trubisky won the NVP award, Nickelodeon’s version of Most Valuable Player, in the loss. He received 49% of the vote with no other player coming close to him. New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton agreed to get drenched in slime after the game, too.

Madden 21 also had a weird crossover with Nickelodeon. The Nickelodeon x Madden event added SpongeBob-themed content to Madden NFL 21’s new mode, The Yard. It includes three new game modes that ask the question, “What if SpongeBob and his pals made the rules?” as well as a new location, SpongeBob Reef-Top, and SpongeBob-inspired gear for you to collect.

You can spend the weekend grinding for epic loot in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone a little faster, as Treyarch has announced a double weapon XP weekend ahead. The event begins on January 15 and runs all the way through the long holiday weekend.

The event begins just after the big mid-season update drops on January 14, which is set to add a new Fireteam map called Sanitorium, a 6v6 map called Dropkick, and a Raid map in Zombies’ Onslaught mode. Zombies also gets a new Cranked mode that resets the timer whenever you take down one of the undead.

Double weapon XP will be active from 10 AM PT on Friday, January 15 through 10 AM PT on the following Tuesday, January 19. This also overlaps with free trial for the Zombies mode, which will last from January 14-21.

A recent update to Black Ops Cold War made new playlist rotations occur on Thursdays instead of Tuesdays. Meanwhile, if you could use a hand getting your hands on the new shotgun before the double weapon XP event drops, check out our Streetsweeper guide.

Pokemon Go‘s big Kanto Tour event takes place next month, and much like Pokemon Go Fest, players will need to purchase a virtual ticket to participate in it. To sweeten the deal a big, developer Niantic is offering an early purchase bonus that will net you some additional tickets for free, but time is running out to take advantage of it.

If you purchase a Kanto Tour ticket by 11:59 PM PT on January 13, you will also receive free tickets for January and February’s Community Day Special Research stories. If you miss that deadline, you can still get a February Community Day ticket for free if you purchase a Kanto Tour ticket by February 3.

The Kanto Tour event takes place on February 20 and is being held to celebrate the Pokemon series’ 25th anniversary. In a call back to the original games, the event will ask players to choose between a “Red Version” and a “Green Version” experience, which will affect what wild Pokemon spawn. Niantic also says that players will have a chance to encounter Shiny versions of all the original 150 Pokemon during the event.

In the meantime, Niantic is holding different “celebration” events focusing on other regions of the Pokemon world. The game’s Sinnoh Celebration is now underway until January 17 and gives players more chances to catch Gen 4 Pokemon. As part of the event, the Legendary Heatran has also returned to five-star Raids for a limited time. January’s Community Day also takes place this Saturday, January 16.

Following the Sinnoh Celebration, Niantic will be holding a Hoenn Celebration. That event will take place from January 19-24, although no other details have been announced just yet. You can catch up on Pokemon Go’s other January 2021 events in our roundup.

The Razer Blade 15 is one of the new gaming laptops coming out of CES 2021 that combines a QHD screen with Nvidia’s new RTX 30-series mobile GPUs. In short, it’s the match we’ve all been screaming for.

Razer’s refresh of its flagship Blade gaming laptop now comes with 10th Gen Intel Core H-series processors and Nvidia’s new RTX graphics, plus a bevy of screen options. In fact, there are a total of nine new configurations for the Razer Blade 15 split between the Base and Advanced Models.

We’re not going to pore over all the different little specs, but the main thing you need to know about the base model is it features a 6-core Intel Core i7-10750H processor and graphics options that go from an Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti to an Nvidia RTX 3060. The Advanced Model starts with an 8-core Intel Core i7-10875H processor and either an Nvidia RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 with up to 16GB of video memory.

The version we’re most excited about is the $2,499 model that combines an 8-core processor and Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics with a 2560 x 1440 resolution IPS display with a 240Hz refresh rate. This is the first time we’re seeing QHD screens on a mainstream gaming laptop, and with the power of Ampere finally coming to laptops it should deliver some pretty high FPS.

The Razer Blade 15 is available for preorder now direct from Razer and will be available for general retail on January 26th

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Kevin Lee is IGN’s Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam

Razer loves to go big at CES. In years past, the company has shown off everything from a triple-monitor gaming laptop to a fully immersive racing simulator. This year, Razer is showing off two concept projects: an immersive gaming chair and a high-tech face mask outfitted with, in true Razer fashion, RGB lighting.

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Project Hazel is Razer’s take on a “smart” mask. It would use a detachable, rechargeable active-ventilation system to regulate airflow, with N95 medical-grade respirator protection to filter at least 95% of airborne particles. The design also features a transparent front panel so that people can see your facial expressions, or, when communicating with people who are deaf or hard of hearing, read your lips. The mask would also use a “VoiceAmp” technology featuring a built-in microphone and amplifier to prevent the mask from muffling your voice. And to top it of, of course, it features Razer Chroma RGB lighting.

Of course, to be clear, Project Hazel is only a concept project, and is extremely unlikely to come to market in its current form, if at all. That said, cheesy sci-fi aesthetics aside, it’s nice to see companies thinking about ways to take on some of the common complaints about masks, given they have become an essential part of everyday life.

Razer’s other concept this year is Project Brooklyn, an all-in-one immersive gaming chair. The idea is an ergonomic chair with built-in haptic feedback and a retractable, wraparound curved screen. Visuals would be delivered by a 60-inch rollable OLED display that retracts and folds into the chair when not in use. Similarly, the armrests adjust and retract as needed depending on if you’re playing on PC with mouse and keyboard or console with a controller. Again, this is just a concept product that likely will never exist as a real product, at least in its current form.

As for real products, at CES Razer also showed off new versions of its Blade 15 and 17 gaming laptops, most notably featuring a new 1440p screen option.

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Bo Moore is IGN’s Executive Editor of Tech. Follow him on Twitter @usebomswisely.